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| I believe... |
| ...in the literal truth of the Christian Bible (Old and New Testement). |
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17% |
[ 7 ] |
| ...the Christian Bible (Old and New Testament) is allegorical. |
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5% |
[ 2 ] |
| ...Jesus was a real (not divine) person who preached his philosophy of love and peace. |
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5% |
[ 2 ] |
| ...Jesus was a real (not divine) man (possibly of the line of David) who was executed for preaching sedition against Rome. |
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7% |
[ 3 ] |
| ...I do not know and will stay firmly on the fence and not commit to believing one way or the other. |
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5% |
[ 2 ] |
| ...I want to have faith in Jesus but need proof of the existence of God. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| ...in the teachings of ____________ (please explain). |
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2% |
[ 1 ] |
| ...there is some "higher power" but I cannot explain what it is. |
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20% |
[ 8 ] |
| ...there is no god. |
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37% |
[ 15 ] |
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| Total Votes : 40 |
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| Author |
Message |
Newbie
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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 Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:08 am Post subject: |
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| willneverteachagain wrote: |
i can
i picked #1 since im roman catholic but i'd like to have proof so my faith isnt blind. |
psst.... Catholics don't take the Old Testament literally. |
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SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
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| Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:47 am Post subject: |
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| kkrumrei wrote: |
I couldn't find any category to vote for but i found the thread sincere and interesting enough to elicit my two cents...
| Quote: |
| The epistemological problem of an infinite regress of explanations |
it's not strictly epistemological, is it? wouldn't you call that metaphysics? so if i say, "explanations don't regress infinitely, and there's a god," i fear we can't really turn to epistemology one way or the other.
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It's both. It's epistemological for the simple reason that it concerns our knowledge. The god hypothesis has no explanatory power.
Basically, we do not understand natural phenomena. That being the case, the very last thing we ought to be offering as an explanation is something supernatural.
| Quote: |
the same goes for hawking and the big bang, and i'll be the first to admit that my limited intellect is not up to the challenge of following all of his theoretical physics. especially when he starts talking about time. yikes.
what would you say about the very idea that there has to be a beginning? or let me put it a different way - doesn't causality (which is itself metaphysical) compel us to suppose that there has to be some sort of beginning that solves the (metaphysical) problem of an infinite causal regress? |
Bang! and voi la
Piss poor stuff.
The Big Bang:
(a) cannot explain the origin of universe,
(b) cannot explain its own singularity,
(c) cannot explain the expansion of the universe, for which it was brought into existence.
In total, there are 48 major problems with the BBT.
| Quote: |
| what do you do with the question "why"? |
'Why' seeks explanations and nothing more.
| Quote: |
| this is not attempt at proselytization. i'm actually much more interested in how you decide what is and what isn't science than what you might think about theism. |
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Missile Command Kid
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:54 am Post subject: |
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| SPINOZA wrote: |
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I posted the following comment on Bad Astronomy a couple of months ago when I first saw that flowchart:
The assumption here is that the left-hand of the flowchart is talking about science as a whole, right? Wouldn’t it be fair to assume that the right-hand section of the flowchart talks about religion as a whole? There’s three good arguments for why not all religions or religious adherents do not always ignore contradictory evidence.
No religion is static. Within Judaism, you have the change from worship centred around the temple cult before the destruction of the temple and worship in the synagogue after the destruction of the temple, continuing until today. In Christianity, there have been two major schisms resulting in three very distinct wings (four if you count the small Assyrian Church of the East), each with different ideas about the core beliefs of the religion. Take a look at reformers such as Zwingli or Luther: were they content to ignore contradictory evidence and believe it forever? Even Jesus was a rabbi brought up in the Jewish tradition who founded a radically new religion out of the old. Was Jesus content to keep the status quo? What about Mohammed? Henry VIII?
Religion is not as completely divorced from reality as the diagram suggests. Creationists attempt (!) to reconcile the physical world with the Bible. Judaism was very concerned with interpreting the Holocaust in light of the Torahic and Talmudic tradition (”Were we punished because we sinned?”, for instance). There are branches of Zen Buddhism that attempt to incorporate quantum physics as a linguistic model for their relationship with the universe. Vatican II attempted to bring the Catholic church into the 20th century by allowing, among other things, birth control for practitioners. Some Protestant churches are actively recruiting women for senior pastorships. As sociological ideas about the body and the role of gender changes, so too does religion. Most religions have a vested interest in central ideas, so while there are certain core ideas that will not change, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t less integral ideas that won’t. This is different from the scientific process, of course, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
Finally, some people change religions, or stop being religious, or go from non-religious to religious. They examine their system of beliefs, find them to be lacking, and change what they believe. Religions are made up of people, and while some people blindly adhere to certain beliefs, others challenge their beliefs.
On many levels, this flowchart is incorrect. Entire religions change because they refuse to ignore contradictory a priori evidence, and some religions are born out of others because of this refusal. Individual religions sometimes conform themselves to sociological beliefs rather than adhere to outdated ideas. Some people take a priori knowledge and change their religious status. I’m not saying that all beliefs of any given religion are up for grabs, but certainly the diagram’s implication that all religions (and religious adherents) ignore contradictory evidence all the time isn’t true.
It seems to me that this diagram idealises science and looks at the worst-case scenario in religion. Don’t some scientists cling to contradictory evidence and try to fabricate their findings? Like some religious fundamentalists, they cling to an elegant thesis and try to bend the facts to fit their model. In an ideal world, science adapts, and religion adapts. It seems to me that the creator of this diagram has a vested interest in portraying Judaism, Islam, and Christianity in a negative light. I don’t know anything about the author, so what I’d like to know is why science and religion aren’t portrayed on equal terms, and why the author has compared apples and oranges in an attempt to discredit the validity of faith. |
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uberscheisse
Joined: 02 Dec 2003
Location: japan is better than korea.
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| Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 7:28 am Post subject: |
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...Jesus was a real (not divine) person who preached his philosophy of love and peace.
...Jesus was a real (not divine) man (possibly of the line of David) who was executed for preaching sedition against Rome.
...there is no god.
my three beliefs.
the fact that people clicked that they believe "the literal truth of the christian bible" is shocking.
rational people believing in orcs and wizards, that's something that i can get behind. |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 7:47 am Post subject: |
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There is no god.
Jesus was real and a nice guy; I've always been a fan of the wisdom shown in the parable of the woman taken in adultery. Makes good sense to me. But he wasn't divine, as none of us are.
Threads like this are unspeakably dull. |
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Kyrei
Joined: 22 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:13 am Post subject: |
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| My apologies... I didn't think about the categories enough to separate them properly, and I let my own beliefs cloud the polling options. To be clear those beliefs are: 1) there is no god and 2) the person we know as "Jesus" is a fictious creation based on several people. I was curious how most of the people on Dave's rate their beliefs but I clearly did not delineate the list of options clearly. That and I found there is a limit to the number of poll options... I had a bunch of other ones originally... oh well. Live and learn. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:30 am Post subject: |
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| Missile Command Kid wrote: |
| SPINOZA wrote: |
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I posted the following comment on Bad Astronomy a couple of months ago when I first saw that flowchart:
The assumption here is that the left-hand of the flowchart is talking about science as a whole, right? Wouldn�t it be fair to assume that the right-hand section of the flowchart talks about religion as a whole? There�s three good arguments for why not all religions or religious adherents do not always ignore contradictory evidence.
No religion is static. Within Judaism, you have the change from worship centred around the temple cult before the destruction of the temple and worship in the synagogue after the destruction of the temple, continuing until today. In Christianity, there have been two major schisms resulting in three very distinct wings (four if you count the small Assyrian Church of the East), each with different ideas about the core beliefs of the religion. Take a look at reformers such as Zwingli or Luther: were they content to ignore contradictory evidence and believe it forever? Even Jesus was a rabbi brought up in the Jewish tradition who founded a radically new religion out of the old. Was Jesus content to keep the status quo? What about Mohammed? Henry VIII?
Religion is not as completely divorced from reality as the diagram suggests. Creationists attempt (!) to reconcile the physical world with the Bible. Judaism was very concerned with interpreting the Holocaust in light of the Torahic and Talmudic tradition (�Were we punished because we sinned?�, for instance). There are branches of Zen Buddhism that attempt to incorporate quantum physics as a linguistic model for their relationship with the universe. Vatican II attempted to bring the Catholic church into the 20th century by allowing, among other things, birth control for practitioners. Some Protestant churches are actively recruiting women for senior pastorships. As sociological ideas about the body and the role of gender changes, so too does religion. Most religions have a vested interest in central ideas, so while there are certain core ideas that will not change, that doesn�t mean that there aren�t less integral ideas that won�t. This is different from the scientific process, of course, but there�s nothing wrong with that.
Finally, some people change religions, or stop being religious, or go from non-religious to religious. They examine their system of beliefs, find them to be lacking, and change what they believe. Religions are made up of people, and while some people blindly adhere to certain beliefs, others challenge their beliefs.
On many levels, this flowchart is incorrect. Entire religions change because they refuse to ignore contradictory a priori evidence, and some religions are born out of others because of this refusal. Individual religions sometimes conform themselves to sociological beliefs rather than adhere to outdated ideas. Some people take a priori knowledge and change their religious status. I�m not saying that all beliefs of any given religion are up for grabs, but certainly the diagram�s implication that all religions (and religious adherents) ignore contradictory evidence all the time isn�t true.
It seems to me that this diagram idealises science and looks at the worst-case scenario in religion. Don�t some scientists cling to contradictory evidence and try to fabricate their findings? Like some religious fundamentalists, they cling to an elegant thesis and try to bend the facts to fit their model. In an ideal world, science adapts, and religion adapts. It seems to me that the creator of this diagram has a vested interest in portraying Judaism, Islam, and Christianity in a negative light. I don�t know anything about the author, so what I�d like to know is why science and religion aren�t portrayed on equal terms, and why the author has compared apples and oranges in an attempt to discredit the validity of faith. |
Science and religion can't be compared obviously. I agree 100 % here. Religion is based on believing without proof. Science is all about proof. Why compare apples and oranges as you say.
I have no problem with religion as long as it is kept as far away from politics and the running of countries as possible. Unfortunately In our world which is not ideal this isn't the case. I get a little sick everytime I hear a religious person try to push their belief over scientific progress, or deny scientific fact(large consensus i a field) due only to their beliefs. Evolution deniers being the worst offenders. |
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Trixie
Joined: 15 Apr 2007
Location: Anatolia
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| Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 2:13 pm Post subject: |
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| "Smite the heathens"??? |
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Missile Command Kid
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 2:26 am Post subject: |
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| Trixie wrote: |
| "Smite the heathens"??? |
Not very hard. You know, with a pool noodle. |
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seoulunitarian
Joined: 06 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:26 am Post subject: re: |
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"...in the teachings of Gabriel and Yeshua."
These are my extraterrestrial teachers, Yeshua being the one who incarnated as Jesus Christ (and many others) in earth history.
Peace |
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Satori
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Location: Above it all
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:39 am Post subject: |
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No god, and no need to "prove there is no god" since I dont feel it needs to be proved, its self evident, and its generally the person who is making the positive assertion that needs to provide proof. I would never be talking about whether there is a god or not unless someone believed there was.
We are all god. |
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 4:09 am Post subject: |
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I'm a Christian. Baptist to be exact. I think its funny that athiests and agnostics can argue against Christianity but won't touch Islam with a 10000 foot pole.
Well, I just think its funny. I've had conversations about religion with Athiests and Agnostics. Nothing wrong that they believe what they do. We all have free will. However, I've never seen an Atheist or Agnostic tell a Muslim that Allah and the teaching of Muhammad aren't real. Have you?
Can you picture in your head an Atheist in the Middle East saying that?
Anyways, my 2 cents is that we are all humans and we have free will. If an Atheist, Agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, Taoist, etc... had a religious conversation with me, I would tell them my beliefs. I wouldn't push it on them, preach at them, or vehemently tell them their beliefs are wrong. I will simply tell them what I believe. If they wish to learn more then I'd be happy to oblige them. |
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Satori
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Location: Above it all
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 4:49 pm Post subject: |
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| pkang0202 wrote: |
I'm a Christian. Baptist to be exact. I think its funny that athiests and agnostics can argue against Christianity but won't touch Islam with a 10000 foot pole.
Well, I just think its funny. I've had conversations about religion with Athiests and Agnostics. Nothing wrong that they believe what they do. We all have free will. However, I've never seen an Atheist or Agnostic tell a Muslim that Allah and the teaching of Muhammad aren't real. Have you?
Can you picture in your head an Atheist in the Middle East saying that?
Anyways, my 2 cents is that we are all humans and we have free will. If an Atheist, Agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, Taoist, etc... had a religious conversation with me, I would tell them my beliefs. I wouldn't push it on them, preach at them, or vehemently tell them their beliefs are wrong. I will simply tell them what I believe. If they wish to learn more then I'd be happy to oblige them. |
I feel exactly the same about Islam as I do about Christianity, I think its nonsense. I dont go up to strangers and tell them thier relgion is absurd, whether they be Christian or Muslim, at home or abroad, that would be just asking for trouble. However is someone approaches me and wants to talk about thier religion, I'll tell them I dont believe, whether they by Christian or Muslim. So yes, my attitude is exactly the same about both religions, and in fact all religions. |
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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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Since there is no evidence for God I am left agnostic, since I see no reason for God I am atheist.
The Christian god is too contradictory, you can not be loving, merciful and peaceful then be vengeful, jealous, warmongering and a poor wrestler.
If there is no God then there is no Jesus. Saying Jesus was just a man is pointless. It's like saying Robin Hood was real but lived in Papua New Guinea, didn't wear a green hat, never fired an arrow and wasn't called Robin. |
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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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| pkang0202 wrote: |
I'm a Christian. Baptist to be exact. I think its funny that athiests and agnostics can argue against Christianity but won't touch Islam with a 10000 foot pole.
Well, I just think its funny. I've had conversations about religion with Athiests and Agnostics. Nothing wrong that they believe what they do. We all have free will. However, I've never seen an Atheist or Agnostic tell a Muslim that Allah and the teaching of Muhammad aren't real. Have you?
Can you picture in your head an Atheist in the Middle East saying that?
Anyways, my 2 cents is that we are all humans and we have free will. If an Atheist, Agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, Taoist, etc... had a religious conversation with me, I would tell them my beliefs. I wouldn't push it on them, preach at them, or vehemently tell them their beliefs are wrong. I will simply tell them what I believe. If they wish to learn more then I'd be happy to oblige them. |
Most atheists don't survive that long in Muslim countries 
But you can look at Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins who do question the Muslim faith. Christian societies are probably more open to self examination then Islam anyway. You can also look at the SAQ
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/index.htm
Also since you are Christian, when an atheist meets you in debate they are more likely to question your beliefs rather than someone else's.
I never hear a Christian attacking Hinduism. |
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