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Religion IS crazy!

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Julia said:
Illogical theory. It is not necessary to have any belief or interest in any sort of god to possess a sound moral philosophy. The self-righteous tone does become irritating, pavilion.
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You have missed the point.

"Sound moral philosophy" - who defines this morality? Society? The individual?
If so then which society or individual defines it?
Hitler? Mother Teresa?
Without a God (a moral law giver) it is by definition subjective. This is not an opinion. Look at the works of atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Self-righteous? In no way am I being self-righteous in stating that without a God there are no moral absolutes. Even Nietzsche, an atheist realized this. If anything I am being the opposite of self-righteous by admitting that my definition of morality cannot be trusted, and thus I put my trust in the objective morality of God.

Now don't get this mistaken for me saying that I don't think an atheist can be a good person morally. Of course they can, many are. I'm just saying that without a moral law giver morality is subjective. This is a fairly obvious statement I would have thought, one accepted by 90% of the atheists that I know!!!
 

But God's morality is based on the fundamental principle that his character is 'good.'
God cannot go against his character.

Morality isn't considered good because God defines it. It is considered good because a 'perfectly good' God defines it.
 
I knew I'd regret any involvement in this. It's not possible to have a logical discussion with a religious zealot.
You contradict yourself constantly. You say a conscience is 'god given', then assert an atheist may of course have a good moral compass (paraphrasing).

Enough nonsense for me. I'll leave you to your convictions.
 

God gives a conscience to all. We can choose to follow its promptings or not.

I have not contradicted myself once. In fact my argument remains consistent the whole way.

If there is one thing that I cannot be accused of it is being contradictory. I hold to the same logic, which you are unable to realize.

It's sad that some people get hot under the collar when God is mentioned because someone is making a truth claim. Yet the person who is getting hot under the collar is also making a truth claim and gets defensive when someone disagrees!
 
If you want to list my contradictions I will address each one. One by one.

If you can't, then don't waste my time throwing up smokescreens to derail discussion and attack me personally.
 
As someone intelligently said: no one will change their mind in here. Each time I come back I regret the wasted time doing so.

I came to this forum for trading. I am going to go back to the trading threads now.

Good luck with continuing the interesting discussion in here.

If anyone wants to PM me they can. I will answer any questions. But this thread is not for me. It could go in circles for ever.

I'm leaving it all at the door. See you all in the trading threads!!
 

In a nutshel, or small cocoon, tech. +1
 
pavilion103 said:
I'm asking how can you know that such a thing as truth even exists?
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I don't know it in my experience, otherwise I'd be enlightened (Truth-realized), and I'm not. I have had certain experiences that make me think it's likely, however.

Here, Jed McKenna does a good job using logic, strangely enough! This is an excerpt from his book "Theory of Everything":


“Okay, it’s two forty-seven right now. Loser buys the
beer. Good beer.”
“You’re on. Do you believe that truth exists?”
“I won’t make it that easy for you.”
“Good, let’s try it the other way. Do you believe that
truth does not exist?”
“I sense a trap.”
“If we say that truth does not exist, then we are saying
it is true that truth does not exist; a self-nullifying statement
like saying there are no absolutes. Would you agree?”
“I suppose so.”
“This much is not belief or feeling, it’s simple logic. Do
you find fault with the logic?”
“No, I agree that the statement truth does not exist is a
logical contradiction.”
“Therefore?”
“Based on the fact that truth cannot not exist, because it
would be absurd to say that no-truth is truth is true, I agree
that truth must exist. I don’t know what truth is, only that
something must be true.”
“So you agree that something must be true. Regardless
of what it might be, truth must exist. Yes?”
“Yes, I agree with that.”
“I don’t want to have to revisit this point because we
left too soon. Do you have any reservations about agreeing
that regardless of all else, something must be true?”
“I am convinced of it. No-truth can’t be true, so
something must be true. Four minutes left.”
“Okay, now that we have determined that something
must be true, regardless of what it might be, let’s see what
else we can say. For instance, do you think it would be
possible for truth to change? Could it be one thing now and
another thing later?”
“If it changes it can’t possibly be true. Truth must be
unchanging. Even if time comes to an end, truth must still
be true or it never was.”

“So you would agree that, whatever truth is, it must be
both unchanging and whole?”
“Certainly it must be constant and unchanging, yes.
And I would agree it must be a whole, not a part, because
what would the other part be? A different truth? Obviously
not. Untruth? Obviously not.”
“Well then, do you think truth could be a matter of
perspective? Do you think my truth could be different from
your truth? Can truth be relative?”
“Certainly not. We have established that truth must be
universally true or it is not true aall.”
“Would you suppose truth to be finite or infinite?”

end of excerpt.
..... and so on it goes. It's a great little dialogue.
 

This isn't the first time you've told us 'This thread isn't for me, I'm out of here, see you on the trading threads'.
Yet you always return to shove your religious dogma down our throats.
Good luck with your trading - I hope your trading strategy makes more sense than your fanatical religious views.
 
I’m not going to get involved in a stupid religious debate. But I do find it amusing that I seem to have started one!
I’m not ‘playing games with God’. I’m simply looking for a practical demonstration of the power of prayer.
I don’t know or care how many people on this forum will pray for mild weather conditions to alleviate the fire situation in the Blue Mountains. But I think it's a pretty safe bet that there will be hundreds, probably thousands of God believers across Australia, and particularly in the Blue Mountains area, who will be and have been praying hard for God to step in and help them out with these fires by sending them favorable weather.

I’m sure they’ll all say ‘thank God’ if they get the good weather conditions they’re praying for. That’s what I’ve always noticed about Christians – they’re always quick to credit God with anything favorable that happens, but are most reluctant to ever admit that God let them down.
Anyway, today is forecast to produce horrific bushfire weather across the Blue Mountains region. Let’s wait and see if the power of prayer can do anything about it.
 

I gave you a whole bunch of information about intentional prayer for a certain outcome. Did you investigate or are you stuck on the topic of the Blue Mountains?!!

If you're saying "life is cruel and praying to God won't save us from pain", then yes I think that's mostly true (depending upon how the word 'God' is defined). But certain people throughout history have found ways out, loopholes, where suffering can't penetrate, even in the worst situations. Other people seem to have found ways of manipulating reality with their intentions. If you're really keen on being able to do this yourself, those links are the sort of thing you need to study.
 
tech/a said:
Well mine was changed when I realised how insignificant the human race is in the scheme of existence.
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Tech, if intelligent life were ubiquitous throughout our known universe, I'd probably agree with you, but as far as we know from all of our efforts to discover evidence of it, it's not.

Therefore given the distinct possibility, however illogical it may seem, that we could well be the one and only form of intelligent life in existence in our known universe, I'd say we're reasonably significant given what we've managed to achieve in our short time here on Earth (unfortunately not all of it good).

It's worth bearing in mind that our perceptions of time, distance, etc. are based on our little planet's gyrations and our frames of reference on it.

4.6 billion years is an unimaginable period of time for most of us, but an intelligent being elsewhere might perceive it quite differently. Everything is relative.

Your chart refers to the evolution of life on Earth from primitive pond life to us. In the creation versus evolution debate, it's worth considering this image:



Would you agree that our wheeled vehicles have evolved over time?

Along the way there have been mutations (both successful and unsuccessful), extinctions, adaptations and selection.
* Bicycles ... a successful mutation.
* Three-wheelers (eg the Reliant) ... an unsuccessful mutation, now extinct.
* 4WDs ... an adaptation.
* The Ford Edsel ... classic example of "natural" selection at work.
etc. etc.

My point is that the first Roman chariot was created by an intelligent being and it has evolved, in a similar way to life, into the multitude of vehicles we see today. It didn't just randomly assemble itself from stuff on the ground (or in a pond).

Everything in our world has been intelligently created at some stage and has evolved ... including our societies, businesses, governments and even our religions.

Creation and evolution work hand in hand!

So why is it so inconceivable that life was created by an intelligent being?
 
Chris.

A topic I could discuss with you for hrs.
My Kris who is a Doctor of Physics and I
do chat at length on the topic.

Infact my wife believes WE--you and I come from Aliens.
This in itself is a possibility. So WE could have been created or evolved from
a more intelligent life form which could be a GOD.

Infact tribes started worshipping the Aeroplane gods when they first saw them---planes.
I'm sure ancient man would have worshipped anything he didn't understand--Sun Moon Storms Lightening.
Religion also evolved---quite separately to GOD.

So if we say there is evidence that cannot be denied that we are not the only life form
(Science is of this opinion.) we could theoretically become in twinned again with--who
came first the alien or the aliens aliens alien---

Then there are dimensions science has identified and PROVEN 12
Strings and worm holes
and lastly a universe which is expanding away from us quicker than light---
One day we will be alone---no stars nothing but BLACK.

Look what you've done---you've got a Duck talking about religion and evolution.
 
Bunyip, as Pav pointed out God doesn't take kindly to being challenged to demonstrate his power. Jesus Christ is reported to have said, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test", which I think is fair enough.

God gave us all brains and I imagine he's wishing we would use them (as Jesus tried to tell us in the parable of the talents http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25:14-30&version=ESV) and not do stupid things like building expensive houses in fire prone areas surrounded by highly flammable vegetable matter so that we can be "close to nature".

But as I understand it there are three wills at play here, God's will, Satan's will and our will to choose between the previous two.

I'm told that Satan is very cunning and mischievous and maybe he puts thoughts into people's minds about where is a nice place to build their houses close to nature, so that when nature does a bit of routine cleansing and maintenance, God will get the blame. I wonder who suggested to the army that doing a bit of "live fire" a few days ago would be a good idea, or to those two kids that lighting a little fire would be an exciting thing to do?

As for the power of prayer, I'm finding that prayer does work well ... if my prayers are reasonable. Giving frequent thanks to God for all of the good things I enjoy in life helps maintain my optimism and inner peace and my reasonable prayers for help are usually answered positively, however it would be unreasonable to expect God to grant my EVERY wish and that would be naive and selfish.

I imagine that at any point in time, different people would be praying for different and often conflicting things, so just how God decides who's prayers to answer in these cases, I don't know.

But even if God doesn't exist, and prayers are just a placebo, or mind over matter, or whatever, (which I don't believe is the case) if they bring positive results then that's a good enough reason for me to continue with them. They don't cost much!
 
tech/a said:
Look what you've done---you've got a Duck talking about religion and evolution.
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Hahahaha!!! Good stuff Tech. I'm glad your mind is still open to all sorts of weird and wonderful possibilities and I would LOVE to be a fly on the wall during one of your chats with your son.

The Raëlian Movement is a religion started by a French racing car enthusiast, Claude Vorilhon, who believes that we were created by some aliens. I went along to a couple of their local meetings here ... it was very amusing.

I like the possibility that we are a lab experiment being conducted by two masters of another universe in an as yet unknown dimension.

PS. How are your earthquake predictions going?
 
Chris45 said:
Bunyip, as Pav pointed out God doesn't take kindly to being challenged to demonstrate his power. Jesus Christ is reported to have said, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test", which I think is fair enough.
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Chris, the people of the Blue Mountains have been praying to God over the last week or more to lend a hand with the fire situation. They weren’t challenging God to demonstrate his power - they were simply asking their mate to help them out, just like you or I might ask our neighbor or our mate down the road to give us a hand with something.
This is what Christianity teaches – time and time again when I was a practicing Christian I sat in church or Sunday school and listened to the minister or the teacher extolling the virtues of prayer as a means of getting help from our friend, God.

The Blue Mountains folk were not making some stupid, selfish request such as asking God for the winning numbers in next weeks Gold Lotto. They just wanted their homes and families and friends and neighbors to be safe.
And then there are the people who don’t even live in the fire-affected area, but prayed that the area would be spared simply because they were concerned for their fellow human beings. None of these people were challenging God to demonstrate his power. They simply believed in the power of prayer, and wanted to utilize it for the benefit of others.

The power of prayer either works or it doesn’t work.
You tell us it works for you – that’s great.
It hasn’t worked in the fire emergency in the Blue Mountains – yesterday produced high temperatures, low humidity and strong winds across the region. A few days ago more than 200 homes were lost.
The power of prayer was a failure again during the Black Saturday fires in Victoria a few years back, when more than 200 lives and one thousand homes were lost. And the Canberra bushfires a decade or more earlier demonstrated yet again the shortcomings of the power of prayer.

I used to wonder why God repeatedly ignored people’s prayers when what they asked for was quite reasonable. But now I just think that if we ask an imaginary being for a miracle, we shouldn’t be surprised when nothing happens.

Good luck to anyone who believes they can benefit from the power of prayer – if it works for you, then by all means keep using it. Hopefully prayer will produce better results for you than it produced for the owners of the 200 homes that were burnt over the last week.
 
Bunyip, I read that the Blue Mountains fires did in fact receive some rain: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/w...s-to-leave-blue-mountains-20131023-2vzz3.html
"Rain that fell overnight on four major bushfires burning in the Blue Mountains and the southern highlands actually hampered firefighting efforts, authorities said, as strengthening winds had already ramped up to 70km/h early on Wednesday morning. ... Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said up to five millimetres of rain had fallen across fire grounds on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning."

So it looks like God sent some rain but I guess he gets no credit for that because probably what the people were praying for was a massive downpour to instantly extinguish the fires so they could continue on their merry little ways and not be forced to consider the consequences of their actions. Then I imagine they'd all be praying for the rain to stop because some of their houses were being washed away. Whatever he does he can't win!

Detonate some explosives on a hot dry day and start a wild fire ... no problem, quick prayer ... immediate downpour ... problem solved.

Build a nice timber house amongst the trees ... wild fire breaks out ... quick prayer ... immediate downpour ... problem solved.

Throw a cigarette out the window onto some dry grass ... grass catches fire ... no problem, quick prayer ... immediate downpour ... problem solved.
Etc.

Wouldn't it be marvelous if God intervened like that every time we had a problem? We would never need to use our brains and think of possible consequences to our actions because when we stuffed up ... no problem, a quick prayer ... problem solved. However, I'm not sure if that's the way God wants us to behave.

Australia is largely a hot dry country and wild fires in bushy areas are a natural occurrence and part of the routine cleansing and maintenance process, so maybe people who like to build their houses in such areas should be expected to take that into consideration in their planning.

If their stupid greeny governments and councils pass stupid laws that prevent them from creating sensible fire breaks etc. then maybe they should start jumping up and down and demanding some changes. Perhaps they could create the fire breaks and then plant trees elsewhere to make up for the ones they cut down, build fire fighting systems into their designs, restrict the numbers of people moving into sensitive areas, push for world population control to slow the numbers of migrants, and so on.

It's obviously very sad and devastating when individuals lose everything in a fire or flood, etc, but really what's a few hundred houses in the big scheme of things if that's what's needed to force people to accept responsibility for their actions and make some intelligent changes to their behaviour, instead of just repeating the same mistakes over and over again and then expecting God to bail them out every time it goes pear shaped?

If you were God, sitting on your golden throne up there in the clouds, looking down on your creations around the world and seeing everyone squabbling and fighting with each other, polluting and destroying the beautiful environment you created for them, wiping out many of your other marvelous creations through their greed and stupidity, etc. and then begging you to fix all of the problems they've created for themselves, wouldn't you be just a little bit peeved? Maybe you'd even be thinking it was time to redirect one of those massive asteroids you've had parked in a harmless distant orbit and wipe the whole lot out and start afresh.

Then again, maybe God is just an imaginary being, as you said, and we shouldn’t be surprised when nothing happens. That's something we have to decide for ourselves and that's all part of his grand experiment.
 

If I was that type of God (an individual up in heaven) , then I wouldn't be complaining at all, because I created man to be just this way - prone to upset, squabbling, fighting and destruction. It's my fault. I created man with this propensity so I can't sit back and blame man for having such issues. What sort of nasty piece of work would offer Adam a tasty apple and punish him when he eats it? It's like breeding a dog for fighting and scolding it when it gets into fights.

But anyway, I don't suspect for a moment that God exists as a separate entity. There's far too much evidence against it. God is either everything or not at all... and by everything I mean even the dog **** on the bottom of your shoe. God is consciousness, and consciousness is what you are. Meaning that you are God, and you am I. You dig? I am that!
 
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