2008-03-02, 03:29 | Link #501 | |
is this so?
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Gradius Home World
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I understand what you're trying to say though. You get a cookie.
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2008-03-02, 18:04 | Link #504 |
耳をすませば
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Toronto, Canada
Age: 34
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I don't have a religion, and I'm hesitant to call myself an athiest because that implies a disbelief in God and an intentional decision to disbelieve in one. Myself, I just do not give it much thought. There's no way to know if there or if there isn't. So I focus my time on other things, like education, helping others, etc. If in the end, I face a judgement day, than I hope that my good deeds and morality will be enough.
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2008-03-03, 01:35 | Link #505 | |
"Begin, the operation!"
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My so-called "religion" is really a compromise between all the rest of them, in that none of them are right, but none of them are wrong either. Just different views on potentially the same thing. I'm almost one-hundred percent sure of that (contribute the part that's still skeptical to being human ). Besides, the way that the universe was created leads me to believe that there's no way it could have happened by chance.
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2008-03-03, 18:01 | Link #506 | |
lover of the g-pa hair
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Merlin hon
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and sorry i really... didnt know... how to |
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2008-03-03, 20:30 | Link #510 | |
廉頗
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Massachusetts
Age: 34
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I think the validity in a God belief is apparent. While some, including myself, may choose not to accept it, there is no need to disparage it (not all theists are Bible lunatics or blind believers). Last edited by ChainLegacy; 2008-03-03 at 20:43. |
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2008-03-04, 19:37 | Link #513 | |||
Senior Member
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Than that is a self-contradiction. Quote:
Yes, very hard to prove things that don't exist, well don't exist. That(my response) sort of sounds sarcastic =/. It's not. Quote:
Even if they are not all bible lunatics or blind believers, THOSE are the type of people that somehow manage to shape my opinion of one who TRULY believes in god. Don't criticize me for my "grammar", it was on purpose as you can clearly see my opinion. |
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2008-03-05, 00:55 | Link #514 | |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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There was a theory in biology known as "spontaneous generation" - people thought that life formed spontaneously. It was even believed that there were certain recipes for forming life. I believe the recipe for mice was putting some old corn kernels among old cloth and then placing those objects inside of a dark room and leaving them alone for three days. When you came back, the cloth was disturbed or entirely missing, the kernels were gone, and there were mice! Imagine that! Even after the field of microbiology developed and people began to understand that there were organisms that we couldn't see with the naked eye, the theory of spontaneous generation persisted. Anyone who said otherwise was waved away by high-level scientists. Louis Pasteur finally devised an experiment which proved the theory of spontaneous generation to be untrue. It's worth noting that even before Pasteur's experiment there were others who performed similar experiments, but scientists claimed that those experiments only proved that spontaneous generation couldn't occur without air. I bring this up because it illustrates an important point. We as a society are constantly making new discoveries. We take our current knowledge for granted and laugh at the ignorance of people in the past, such as those who thought that mice could form from some random objects. Yet very few people are willing to accept that new discoveries can shake up our understanding of even the basic scientific principles. Spontaneous generation is one example among many. More recently one need only examine basic biology - in the past, the "tree of life" was made up of five kingdoms (perhaps more even before that?). The five kingdoms were later reduced, I believe, and currently we have three domains in the tree of life - the kingdom model was almost entirely abandoned. The field of genetics has increased our understanding of the relations between living organisms, which were previously viewed based on morphology. We can't prove God, you are right. But we can't disprove God, either. If you want to be a skeptic of religion and base your views on science, you should understand the scientific methods and realize that under science everything is a possibility unless proven otherwise. Does God exist? It's possible until proven otherwise. Even when something is disproven or proven, new evidence may present a new understanding or interpretation of something that was completely accepted. If you believe there is no God your faith is no different than that of a religious person; only the agnostics can claim to follow scientific principles in this case.
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2008-03-05, 04:42 | Link #516 | |
バースタド
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2008-03-05, 11:43 | Link #517 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
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argh.... no, no, no. One is rational, the other is irrational (and no that isn't an insult, its descriptive). The scientific method has skepticism as its core. Set up a hypothesis, test for failure, modify til silly or a better hypothesis is formulated. Religion has no "test for failure" within its precepts - its *FAITH* based. Faith, by definition, is a belief without evidence -- its either based in revelation, epiphany, or indoctrination.
Its a classic semantic trick to equate "believing in science" with "believing in a religion". There is no equivalence and that isn't what Ledgem said. He simply said you can't *disprove* God just like I can't *disprove* fairies, Thor, or Cthulhu. Atheism does not equal science (though science sometimes leads to an atheist viewpoint, personal experience or revelation can also).
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2008-03-05, 14:03 | Link #518 |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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Vexx has it right, but I can see where the "belief in science" idea comes from. I've met a number of people who are educated in science yet haven't kept up with certain advancements, or have an understanding of certain sciences while lacking in others. These people are not open to expanding their understanding.
For example, I know of someone's mother who is aware that sickness can be induced by microorganisms. She tends to focus on bacteria, however, and as such is one of those mothers who believes that everything must be sterile and is terribly afraid of "dirty" things, including the floor and anything that touches the floor. Similar to any religion, she indoctrinated this belief into her children. While the mother herself isn't a scientist, one of her children is quite good with the sciences. Despite my explanation that bacteria are everywhere, we need them to survive, and that you're in trouble if you're too clean (too clean - a totally foreign concept to most people), the fear of bacteria and dirtiness in general remains. In that case, science is a belief - but it's like being stuck on Immunology version 1.0 when current research is at Immunology 8.0. Other beliefs include a fear that a person will suffocate if there isn't an open window, be it in a car or a house - don't ask me how the child, highly skilled in chemistry, didn't overcome that one by realizing that materials are porous and that diffusion of molecules still occurs (or, for that matter, that those of us from cold climates sure as heck don't have any open windows for close to half the year). The example I cited isn't really science, though. It's a person hearing some information and then linking it with what they'd like to believe. One has to wonder if a similar phenomenon hasn't occurred with the religions as we know them. For example, the common Christian belief is that good people go to Heaven, a sort of afterlife-party up in the sky. I mentioned it before but a different interpretation is that when you die, you're dead - but if you're good, you'll be resurrected to help build the new world when the apocalypse comes. That doesn't sound quite as nice as the first version, does it? Keeping in mind that this isn't about which version is true, which version do more people seem to believe? If you have an interest in the religions you should speak with people of faith, but study them for yourself and be aware that people are prone to picking and choosing what they'd like to believe in.
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2008-03-05, 20:28 | Link #519 | |
Senior Member
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2008-03-05, 20:41 | Link #520 | |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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Microbiology was an area of science that required certain advancements to be made before people could even begin to discover it and understand it. Perhaps God is something similar. Just like the people of the past who could only observe sickness, all we have are some faint clues referring to what God is. Perhaps God really is just a fairytale, or perhaps what we know of God is a misunderstanding that was passed down for generations. I don't think anyone knows for certain, and that's partly what makes it so interesting.
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not a debate, philosophy, religion |
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