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Religion IS crazy!

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With all due respect Julia, as John Howard might say ...........this post is dripping with hubris.

I thought it was only we "Christians" that rode on high horses.

Duckman
 
Obedience to indoctrinated beliefs replacing critical thinking. Is that the same for evolution too?

- genetic information is never increased only duplicated or decreased (natural selection is the opposite of macro evolution)
- irreducible complexity of the cell (which throws into strong doubt whether Darwin would still believe his theory - based on his own quote about of they discovered the complexity of the cell)
- no examples of life coming from non-life. Yet we assume it just can (no evidence)

Or are these critical points overlooked.


The same with the belief in a God.

Why do people in here believe in it? Blind faith? If not then what evidence?

How about people on each side of the argument provide EVIDENCE rather than say the other side is indoctrinating people at the expense of critical logic. Pot, kettle, black.
 
pavilion103 said:
How about people on each side of the argument provide EVIDENCE rather than say the other side is indoctrinating people at the expense of critical logic. Pot, kettle, black.
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This has been covered at length earlier in this and other threads.
No one has proved either the existence or the non-existence of a god.
Imo agnosticism is the only position that makes sense.

What are you actually asking for evidence of?
 
Julia said:
This has been covered at length earlier in this and other threads.
No one has proved either the existence or the non-existence of a god.
Imo agnosticism is the only position that makes sense.

What are you actually asking for evidence of?
Click to expand...

Yeh this isn't an issue that will get a consensus resolution

I just don't like generalizations that either religious believers, say Christian, or atheists aren't being logical simply because they believe a certain position.

I may have misinterpreted your previous statement (if it was in a specific context) because I only saw it in the quote above.
 
pavilion103 said:
How about people on each side of the argument provide EVIDENCE rather than say the other side is indoctrinating people at the expense of critical logic. Pot, kettle, black.
Click to expand...

Well, perhaps follow the entire discussion, rather than inappropriately focusing on a single phrase outside of any context.

I think my comments have made pretty clear what my argument is against the Catholics saying that they are dependent on the Church to provide them with a moral code by which to live, when quite obviously the Church's own moral code is significantly lacking in view of their systemic and prolonged covering up and actually perpetrating the ongoing abuse by its priests for so long.

See also remarks by McLovin, Ruby and others.

I should have thought the hypocrisy is pretty plain. Hence the observation that adherence to dogma is replacing logical and critical thinking.

If you disagree, you might like to be specific about your disagreement.
 

In a word NO. Irreducible complexity is pseudo-scientific nonsense invented by creationists in the vein hope that it's a viable alternative to evolutionary theory. It simply a sham and if you seriously investigated the case against it you would not consider it worthy of mention here. Evolution theory is just that and the supporting evidence for its validity is quite compelling but discovery and refinement continues. Evolution theory is not a godless philosophy, atheism is not a religion and non-belief in religious superstition is not a dogma.

Reason and the scientific method are tools we use to try and discern fact from fiction and develop evidence based beliefs from. Such discipline does not apply to supernatural imaginings.

Ask the religious for "evidence" (that is something verifiable, testable, reproducible or in any way provable) for their faith based beliefs and you get quotes from iron age scrolls or metaphysical gibberish. Scientific discoveries force modification to religious beliefs over time so that religious faith must be forever elastic in response to science.

Satanic serpents, virgin birth, resurrection of dead bodies, prayer to invisible beings and the magic books that describe these things are not subject to "critical logic". They are inventions of human imagination that subjugate the minds of millions of deceived religious slaves desperate to live forever and join their celestial dictator in a state of eternal servitude.

By all means, let's hear the evidence in support of the supernatural claims of the religious that involves something more than quotes from magic books. As Sagan would say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
 
pavilion103 said:
The teachings of Mohammad are nothing that I aspire to. A religion of compulsion and not love.
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You may not aspire to Mohammed's teachings, but over 1 billion Muslims do.
You may not aspire to Jesus teachings, but we are about to celebrate Easter in Australia.

Richard Dawkins points this out a lot of times - 'Nit picking' good/bad points from the Qur'an(Ko'ran)/Bible & other holy book, as I did in my previous posts.

To take these 'holy books' at face value (verbatim), can have dangerous outcomes.
 

My wife was born and and raised in a strong Catholic family in Ireland, went through all the usual Catholic hoo haa, was forced to undergo various processes and rituals of religious indoctrination from an early age when she was too young to understand what was happening.
Then as a teenager, climbing some mountain on top of which was some symbol of religious significance, walking around and around it on her knees like hundreds of other people were doing. Kissing the Cardinal’s ring, being blessed by people in silly costumes, etc etc.

As a young adult she underwent nursing training, then worked as a registered nurse in Glasgow, Scotland, which is a very strong Catholic area and a very poor socio-economic area.
As a midwife she was faced with many issues that gradually caused her to question the teachings of the Catholic church.
I’ll give just one example....
A mother of six children was in labor with her seventh child, having serous life-threatening complications. The doctors told her and her husband that they could save either mother or baby, but not both.
They called in their Catholic priest to consult with him. He was adamant that the baby should be saved, even though the mother would almost certainly not survive. They pointed out to him that there would be six children at home who’d grow up without a mother.
The priest was adamant – the baby must be saved.
They rejected his advice – why deprive six children of their mother?
The long and short of it is that the mother lived, the baby died, and their Catholic priest shunned them thereafter.

This was just one of the many incidents that caused my wife to start questioning the decency and the teachings of the Catholic church.
She consulted the Catholic priest back home in her Irish village, told him of her concerns and her questions. His reply was that it’s a sin to question the teachings of the church – as a good Catholic her responsibility was to believe, not question.
She consulted two more Catholic priests, and was told the same thing.

She grew increasingly disillusioned with the Catholic church as her nursing career progressed and she saw more incidents that in her opinion showed the church in a poor light.
She eventually abandoned her Catholic faith and has never returned to the church.
 
Rumi was a Muslim. One of the greatest poets of all time. This poem is proof of 'seeing'.



Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make any sense.
 
Tink said:
Its obvious none of you believe in God, but thats your business, but dont crush others.
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Tink, I really don't care what you choose to believe in. Quite frankly, it's none of my business. What I object to is the morally arrogant "our system is the only right way of thinking" that all religion seems to have encoded in its DNA. That's the difference between your beliefs and mine, I don't believe that the way I think is the way everyone has to think in order to not be a morally retrograde individual.
 
I don't have time at this minute to put forth all my opinions (I will endeavor to do so).

I disagree with the irreducible complexity point. It would have to be shown how the original cell could have existed in its entirety (incredible complexity) without evolving. Darwin's own comment cast doubt as to whether he would continue to uphold his theory with modern discoveries.

Anthony Flew couldn't help but change well established beliefs held for 50 years in light of those discoveries. He stressed he will go wherever the evidence leads. And this is the foremost (former) atheist of the past 50 years. Amazing how people will quote him for years and then when modern science points in another direction and he changes his mind (in line with Darwin's own comments), people like Dawkins label him as 'too old.' Pathetic.
 
Everyone is an atheist. There are thousands of gods you could believe existed but you choose just one (basically contingent on where you were born). You are therefore an atheist with respect to the thousands of other gods that other people believe in. Why don't you believe any of these other gods exist?

There is nothing more immoral than not valuing what is truth. How you feel is exponentially less important than understanding and respecting what is true.

In my opinion whether or not a god exists is a redundant question that, in the relatively near future, will evolve into complete insignificance. In much the same way that witchcraft, magic spells and the like have become silly and insignificant in explaining what was once unknown in centuries gone by, religion will follow the same path despite being held as truth by many today.

The more interesting question is why would you want a god to exist. I identify as an anti-theist. Christopher Hitchens puts it quite well:

 
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An atheist means to believe in NO Gods.

So someone cannot believe in one God and because they don't believe in another God be an atheist towards that other god (they can only be a disbeliever of that other god). An atheist is to believe in NO gods so this is a contradiction of terms.
 
I have no doubt that evolution will be looked upon as one of the biggest cons in history in years to come. People will look back and think 'how the heck did people believe that!!!!'

The reason why someone would believe one god over another would include 1) looking at philosophical reasoning 2) look at historical evidence e.g manuscript evidence, evidence in secular writings of the time, etc... rather than limping them all in the same boat and dismissing everything without examining this evidence.
 

Point is you take the same position with respect to all these other gods that atheists do.
 

Evolution describes what has happened. Saying it will be looked back on and disbelieved doesn't make sense.

So what philosophical reasoning and historical evidence do you have that leads you to believe in your god? I bet in most cases there is a very high correlation with where you are born and what you were brought up with.
 


....and number 1 reason people believe in a particular god: because their parents did.
 

Atheism (by the generally accepted definition) is a statement of non-belief, not of belief. On the basis of the evidence available, an atheist does not believe there is a God. This is not the same as saying that an atheist believes there is no God. It is a subtle but important difference.

Let's assume that for a particular atheist (using the generally accepted definition) to believe in a God, certain evidence must be provided. And let's say that such evidence is available in regards to the Christian God, but not in regards to any other god, but this particular atheist has not yet heard of the Christian God.

This atheist goes through life travelling from country to country and being presented along the way with claims of the existence of various gods; Hindu, Ancient Greek etc. None of them provide the evidence he demands so in relation to all those gods, he is true to his atheist credentials. He eventually encounters the Christian God and after assessing the evidence, he accepts that the Christian God exists. This cannot be viewed as a change of mind or that he has in someway been proved to be wrong.

However, someone who believes there is No God, undertaking the same journey would be proven wrong. They would have to reassess their belief system (because they held a belief that is proven wrong, not a non-belief based on available evidence).

So it is quite acceptable to say one can be an atheist in relation to all Gods other than the one you believe in.
 
For those who say that atheism is a belief system (that there is NO God) just like any other religion, rather than just non-belief as per my previous post, it is the same as saying that the Off Button on a TV is just another channel, or as Bill Maher puts it, that abstinence is just another sex position.
 
An atheist doesn't have a belief in ANY gods. If you believe in one god, saying you are an atheist towards other gods obviously isn't the right word to use. It's not a major point, just the wrong use of the word.
 
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