[floatingslowly]

you guys shouldn't be so hard on Rob. he's just working out issues with his father.

and by father, I mean, his dad (not Gawd -- Gawd is a she).

[Rob Instigator]

ha!

me and dad worked out our differences when i was 13!

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

my religion is mine alone and does no such shitting.

I am a monotheistic pagan. I believe that Zeus, Jah, Gawd, Allah, Buddah, etc. are all culturally-biased representations of the same source; a source that lies outside of direct observation and cannot be quantified and categorized by normal scientific means.

that is not a religion. that is a personal belief.

religion is a codified belief system. Yrs is just a personal faith. diff-rent strokes.

the existence of people we would call evil in no way validates a belief in a supernatural being.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

nigga pleez...

i'm merely restating stephen jay gould's take on the demarcation question.

have a summary, and a good day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocks_of_Ages_(book)

additional readings:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html

we're no longer in the 16h century-- though some people are (e.g. creationists and their ilk-- those who do not understand science, as stated in my first post).

stephen Gould is not the be all and end all of this topic man.

MOST people in the USA are creationists.

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

that is not a religion. that is a personal belief.

religion is a codified belief system. Yrs is just a personal faith. diff-rent strokes.

if I were to gather together 2-3 like-minded individuals, would you bump me up to cult status?

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

the existence of people we would call evil in no way validates a belief in a supernatural being.

that's easy for you to say. you didn't have to spend the night with her.

[Rob Instigator]

but I did have to hear you guys through the thin walls.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by Glice

I find this sentiment laughable at best, and offensive to whacking great swathes of people at worst.

I think the problem in America is that America seems to have an incredibly vocal minority of often right-wing fuckwits who come to represent the whole of religion for an equal number of not-terribly-bright left-wing headcases. ALL I'M SAYING is that I'd rather people who belived in God, such as myself and others in this thread, weren't tarred with the idiocy-stick as if they were blindly servile to science.

The problem I'm suggesting is that you can quite easily make science some monolithic God-head, but it'll quickly become the tower of Babel if you treat it as the answer.

twas just a personal view of the matter man. just answering the question.
we are all entitled to our views. this is a question of religion, of codified, dogmatic beliefs, not of any personal spirituality.

[davenotdead]

i know a family of missionaries.

they work in costa rica and often find tribes/indigenous who have had little to zero contact with the outside world.

what i find fascinating is that when an unconnected tribe is found... one of the few things they share in common with other humans is a deity/ies . they usually have a concept of family/communitay and a 'religion'. its a basic human quality to them. they eat, they have family, they have god/gods.

my question to those like rob, is: because its so natural for us to believe in a supernatural creator, doesn't it make sense that one would exist?

of things/traditions that have lasted throughout centuries without losing too much popularity, religion is one of them. and it has remained largely unchanged. things that constantly change are our own human "scientific" ideas about the universe and how it started, and medical knowledge/communications/transportations.

aside from the biological needs, humans need community/family/relationships and a "god". those are the most common traits.

you say that it is unnatural for a man to deprive his self a basic human desire like sex, and i say the same for religion/spirituality. it makes sense to people who only know how to make sense of very few concepts. granted, a lot of them do it wrong [witch doctors, etc], but they do other basic things wrong as well [hygiene].

[Satan]

there is no god.

good day.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

twas just a personal view of the matter man. just answering the question.
we are all entitled to our views. this is a question of religion, of codified, dogmatic beliefs, not of any personal spirituality.

Sorry, but 'just a personal view' doesn't negate what you said. If I said 'you're a useless cunt' and said 'but that's just my opinion', you're still well within your rights to take offence at the fact I just called you a cunt (hypothetically - obviously, I'd never use such knavish language).

Personal spirituality and 'codified, dogmatic beliefs' (Newtonian physics, anyone?) are often one and the same. I think this word 'dogma' is thrown about with scant regard for its actual purpose.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by Satan

there is no god.

good day.

Maybe it wasn't a serpent but a vagina that led Adam astray.

[davenotdead]

Originally Posted by Satan

there is no god.

good day.

its funny, cuz yr username

[pbradley]

Philosophy precedes science and theology. To hold either as truth is to be satisfied with particular answers from which they derive. As it is, I am never ideologically satisfied.

This show asks philosophical questions to those who are largely unpracticed in, and in some instances resentful of, philosophy.

[flashlight69]

trust me there is no good. good is a product of human phantasy.
religion makes people dumm and to a tool of bad forces.
believe on kims pantys or thurstons dick or noise feedbacks

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by pbradley

This show asks philosophical questions to those who are largely unpracticed in, and in some instances resentful of, philosophy.

thats exactly my problem with this show, it is rather pretentious. It asks big questions to people with small answers. I was hoping for much more but as let down as I was with the God Delusion by Dawkins. Most atheist arguments are as ignorant, baseless and unsophisticated as most common people's defense of theism, and further many scientists and scientifically minded people are as duped, deceived and ignorantly brainwashed to accept the status quo's of science theories and not even delve into theology for a second, where as theologians and philosophers who are wise use science as a tool to expand their own understanding of theology or philosophy. Scientists today are blindly following beliefs without testing them for themselves, which is not science, where as many people in fact find religion the way scientists should be actually searching for the answers instead of dismissing the question.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

we're no longer in the 16h century-- though some people are (e.g. creationists and their ilk-- those who do not understand science, as stated in my first post).

many scientists are just as ignorant and lacking of understanding of theology, where as quite a few theologians have a rather deep understanding of science and many religious people are practicing scientists, engineers, chemists, doctors etc etc (in other words, theoritical scientists who blindly dismiss theism are ignorant and misunderstand, when there are plenty of religious people who so deeply understand science that they practice its principles for their living. Religion can be for everyone, but some scientists act like its only for priests and ignorant masses, but many religious people are practicing scientists and see no such dichotomy)


In regards to this thread, I do not believe that I posted the questions correctly. I need to watch some clips and discuss some specifics, I was hoping for a more specific kind of discussion based on more specific questions. Those ones I posted are just the titles of the episodes, but in the shows themselves they ask dozens of questions related, and these kinds of questions are the ones I wanted to discuss, such as the Cosmological Argument as I posted above.

I do not see enough science coming from scientific arguments against theism, and I enjoy detailed science, so I am often disappointed. Science is a valuable tool for theology, it asks theology very sophisiticated questions which require heart-felt and intelligent consideration.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

5) Are Science and Religion at war?
Only for those who don't understand either.

truth : )

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Glice again.

This is the best response yet. This is deep, it is both scientific and theological.




9) Fallacies in Proving God's Existence?
There is no proof, so all arguments are fallacious.

Thats often my point, but I rarely accept the concreteness of reality to begin with. Most people dogmatically accept science as doctrine, its the new gospel, where as in reality, there is no such proof of anything, science, religious or otherwise. Proof itself is illusory, all of life is subjective, there is no possibility for an objective reality, so how could science truly have discovered such objective evidence? Their evidence is no more proof than an aparation of the Virgin Mary or a miraculous vision.. they only prove things to the individual, but they are hardly proof in the real sense.

12) Arguments for Atheism..
We've never spotted the old bastard.

well, taking into consideration the above response, no body has ever spotted anything right? but, on the other hand, billions of people, myself included, are convinced of our own deeply personal, individual and very real experiences of divine perception. We believe that we have 'spotted the bastard' as much as Newton believed that the moon went around the earth because of gravity.

[SYRFox]

Originally Posted by flashlight69

trust me there is no good. good is a product of human phantasy.
religion makes people dumm and to a tool of bad forces.
believe on kims pantys or thurstons dick or noise feedbacks

it's been a while, westernquinoxrocks

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

you know that's a bullshit answer !@#$%

religion has been at war with science since religion first realized science can and does undermine nearly every single bit of bullshit that religions have tried to feed to the ignorant masses.
religion killed off so many of science's adherents. science has never truly fought back, except in ideas. fuck religion.

well, war is war, and whether warmongers have used religion or science as a pretext, it plagues mankind since the beginning. BUT, what is scary is that while religion may have hung, stoned and burned enough people to death in the past, science today has equally had a penchant for blood, only much to our own horror, as upped the scale dramatically. Religion did not invent the atomic bomb, or the machine gun, or the chemical weapon, these were the toys of curious scientists who with a lack of empathy and hope, used their skills to create tools of death and destruction..

scientists at war are much more frightening to me than religious fanatics. The jihadists are pussies compared to the destructive powers of modern military technology..

 

 

while apocalyptics have prophecises the end of the world since its beginning, today scientists have truly made it a potential reality.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by Glice

Sorry, but 'just a personal view' doesn't negate what you said. If I said 'you're a useless cunt' and said 'but that's just my opinion', you're still well within your rights to take offence at the fact I just called you a cunt (hypothetically - obviously, I'd never use such knavish language).

Personal spirituality and 'codified, dogmatic beliefs' (Newtonian physics, anyone?) are often one and the same. I think this word 'dogma' is thrown about with scant regard for its actual purpose.

by it's very definition, dogma is not up to questioning, nor to corrections, nor to any type of investigation.

newtonian physics STILL works 99.9999 % of the time. it does not apply in highly specific areas such a sthe big bang, quantum world, or black holes.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

by it's very definition, dogma is not up to questioning, nor to corrections, nor to any type of investigation.

Dogma is not unerring and is privy to change. The two cathechisms produced within the last century propose often conflicting 'dogmas'. It's only extremist nutters (of whatever stripe) who propose that the an absolute, total interpretation of scripture should be abided by by the faithful. Again, America's vocal Christian extremist minority are among the most abhorrent in the world.