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Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Religion or Science - How do they compare? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NoNukes Inactive Member
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I've heard it said that if you can visualize/imagine it, you can create it. Well, then I guess that's all the evidence you need. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World. Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith No it is based on math I studied in sixth grade, just plain old addition, substraction and multiplication. -- ICANT
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Paboss Member (Idle past 1795 days) Posts: 55 Joined: |
jar writes:
That Biblical concept of morality unfortunately continues even today in much of Christianity; with Christians seeing nothing immoral in the God they market condemning everyone but the "Select" (meaning those that Cult selects) to eternal damnation and by creating Apologetic Justification for events documented in the Bible that could only be seen as immoral by any current moral standard person.
Many of those Christians do genuinely believe in those apologetic justifications. But many also fight with their own conscience. They force themselves to believe because they are afraid of losing their faith. There are reasons for this:
jar writes:
The problem is not the Bible; it's the readers and the writers. Their sense of morality is all too often selective; they have one set of standards for "us" and a different set of standards for "them".
I understand that ultimately the problem is people using double standards and using the Bible to justify horrible ideas. Just as a gun doesn’t kill by itself unless a person pulls the trigger. But just like a gun was designed for killings or harming, the Bible was designed or put together for a reason. The reason was to subdue people into obedience. When Constantine decided that Christianity would be the state religion, he must have seen the potential that this belief system had to dominate people through fear and to maintain the status quo. Later, when the Bible was put together, plus all other creeds and doctrines made up by the church through History, it was with the objective of legitimising this status quo as God given. The Bible encourages the less fortunate to suck it up, serve their masters and be content with the hope of a recompense in the afterlife. I know the doctrine of afterlife is not present in the Old Testament, but only in the New, as it was taken from Zoroastrianism. But this is just one example of convenient ideas and doctrines made up from verses from the bible and used to subdue the people. The Bible is a problem in the way it has been used as an excuse to justify a lot of horrible things through history.
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Paboss Member (Idle past 1795 days) Posts: 55 Joined: |
GDR writes:
Sorry being so slow on getting back to you. Life seems to happen.
No worries, I can’t be here as often as I wish, either.
GDR writes:
Either we are the result of a virtually infinite string of causes based on chance or we are the result of intelligence. As has been pointed out to me by atheists on this forum, (and I agree with them), there is no point in talking about time before the BB or when time=o because it is a meaningless question. However you insist that you have to go back before time=0 to ask the question of who created God.
That is precisely the problem. When you want to bring into the equation a creating being, is your view the one that requires us to go back in time beyond the Big Bang to try and understand how this god came to exist. If you want to go with the dichotomy Intelligent design-chance (and here is a caveat: evolution either of the universe or life on Earth are not strictly chance driven processes), you cannot have a god designing everything while this god himself appeared by chance. And to say that this god has existed forever is meaningless as it explains nothing. The thing is you cannot explain something complex like the universe we live in with something even more complex like a being capable of designing it. I don’t know what, or if anything happened before the Big Bang, but if we are all creation of some intelligent being, this being itself must be the result of a long process that started with simplicity and eventually allowed this god to appear on the scene.
GDR writes:
Why when some physicists claim that our universe is infinite, then can we not also accept the possibility of there being an infinite intelligence that is responsible for the fact that we exist?
We can conceive that as a possibility, but with no evidence whatsoever the default position is it doesn’t exist, until proven to exist. And then again, if we happen to find evidence for this creating being, that will not be the end. The next question we should strive to answer is how this creator came to be.
GDR writes:
I don’t think that religion pretends to answer the why but it does attempt to explain why just as science attempts to explain how. However, science uses physical evidence in its attempt to explain how, whereas religion uses recorded history and philosophy to explain why.
It may well be that you use religion as your attempt to figure out the answers to the important questions for you. But if you look at the Bible or other sacred text for that matter, they do present themselves as the definite truth, not simply as an attempt to answer. Furthermore, why assume that it needs to be a why regarding our existence?
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Paboss Member (Idle past 1795 days) Posts: 55 Joined: |
GDR writes:
Just a thought on this. In many ways I agree with this but with a few caveats. It isn’t the bad things that Christianity has done, but the bad things that some people who wore the label Christian who have done some very bad things.Christianity is a man made religion as all religions are man made. It takes some things such as the life and teaching of Jesus as well as his death and resurrection as being historically true and then forming a theology around that. As I responded to Jar, who raised a similar point about the Bible not being the problem but the people who use the Bible to do bad things; yes, I understand is people that ultimately are responsible for what they do. But religion provides a justification for them to do what they have done. The New Testament says on the one hand nice things about Jesus. On the other hand encourages slaves to serve their masters with all their will, even the more if they are Christians too. It tells women that they cannot teach men and must be submissive. These things have been excuse for a lot of inequalities. After all, as you say, religions are human inventions. They are made up after the moral values of the people who created them and that’s why they tend to provide such ill advice.
GDR writes:
I believe, (no matter how imperfectly I live it), that God thorough the CHRISTian faith calls me to live a life that is based on sacrificial love, as Jesus lived, or, put another way, to the life that my signature calls us to. The rest of it is all theology.
But then is you as an adult person with the capacity to tell right from wrong, who decide which parts of the Bible you take to inform your views. There is no criteria given by the Bible itself to tell you what is God-inspired and what is human construction. You have to decide by yourself. If you decide to take Jesus example is because you have a sense of empathy that tells you that the words attributed to him are (mostly) good advice. That sense of empathy has been the result of the evolution of our social and moral standards, which make us judge as obnoxious many of the things that appear on the Bible which are attributed to God. It is certainly a great relief that our moral standards of today are well above those of the times when the Bible was written.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
But religion provides a justification for them to do what they have done A lot of things justify folks doing bad stuff including capitalism, racism, love of family. Most of the stuff that motivates us can also provide justification for doing bad stuff. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World. Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith No it is based on math I studied in sixth grade, just plain old addition, substraction and multiplication. -- ICANT
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Tangle Member Posts: 9516 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
NoNukes writes: A lot of things justify folks doing bad stuff including capitalism, racism, love of family. Most of the stuff that motivates us can also provide justification for doing bad stuff. That's why we have secular law and regulation, to attempt to contain our excesses. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Paboss Member (Idle past 1795 days) Posts: 55 Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
A lot of things justify folks doing bad stuff including capitalism, racism, love of family. Most of the stuff that motivates us can also provide justification for doing bad stuff.
Yes, there are ideologies, cultural traits or human values that have nothing to do with Religion and those have also been used by people to justify bad stuff. But an important difference with Religion is that the justification in the latter is presented as coming from an omniscient perfect being who knows better than us. For people who believe in such a God, and believe in his sacred book to be his perfect message is a lot easier to justify doing bad things. No wonder religions like Christianity and Islam have lasted for so long and it seems like they will be with us yet for quite a while. When someone thinks that, for example, gender inequality is God’s will, even if they don’t like it, still feel compelled to support it. Look at this example:
Faith in message 193 writes:
How would I know what to believe if I hadn't read what I've read? And actually I don't pick and choose according to what I believe, I often understand that things I don't agree with are nevertheless true so I subordinate my own opinion to them. The teachings on women's role for instance.
By the way, as you know, people have profusely used the word of God to justify racism.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Yes, there are ideologies, cultural traits or human values that have nothing to do with Religion and those have also been used by people to justify bad stuff. But an important difference with Religion is that the justification in the latter is presented as coming from an omniscient perfect being who knows better than us. Yes, those are distinctions. But the point remains. The fact that people use something to justify evil does not make the something evil. It instead means that people do evil. I maintain that it is not a directive from God to do evil, and that the evil comes first, and the excuse or justification comes after. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World. Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith No it is based on math I studied in sixth grade, just plain old addition, substraction and multiplication. -- ICANT
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Paboss Member (Idle past 1795 days) Posts: 55 Joined: |
Your point, which has been also made by jar and GDR, is taken. I don’t argue against people being ultimately responsible for doing bad things; we are. But the something which in this case is Religion, is not innocent. It is is a human creation, injected with its fair amount of poison which has encouraged people to entertain their selfish motives and feel justified to act on them.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Nevertheless there are moral problems in the Bible, whether you attribute them to God or not. The Curse Of Ham is hardly less problematic because it is directed against the Canaanites rather than Africans. And the existence of these problems has consequences. It rules out the idea that the Bible is wholly the product of a supremely good God, for instance. That is not an idea that you or GDR put forward, but there are those who do. Perhaps more significantly, it seems to me that the Bible is compromised as a source of moral guidance if we must apply our own moral sense to it, to sort out the good from the bad.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9516 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
NoNukes writes: But the point remains. The fact that people use something to justify evil does not make the something evil. You have to admit that some parts of the bible are actually evil though don't you? Purely as an accademic question, would the world be a better or a worse place if the Bible, the Torah and the Koran hadn't been written? My guess would be that so long as they had been replaced by a fair secular constitution it would have been. But it's part of our evolution as a civilisation.
I maintain that it is not a directive from God to do evil, and that the evil comes first, and the excuse or justification comes after. Well that starts with the presupposition that this god thing is real. But it's pretty obvious that the bible is man-made, hence all the problems resulting from it. God made things really ought to be better.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Paboss writes: Your point, which has been also made by jar and GDR, is taken. I don’t argue against people being ultimately responsible for doing bad things; we are. But the something which in this case is Religion, is not innocent. It is is a human creation, injected with its fair amount of poison which has encouraged people to entertain their selfish motives and feel justified to act on them. Again, of course religion like capitalism and socialism and communism and guns and throwing stones and spears and ... are human creations. And yes, really bad things have been done through religion and justified by religion but also good things and beautiful things and kind things have been done through religion. No movement, no political system has been more effective at genocide than Christianity. But within Christianity there is also a procedure, one of the basic and required procedure, designed to address such issues. Once again, it is the people that do not use the tool provided that creates the problem. Christianity in general has not acknowledge and bewailed its manifold sins and wickedness, made an effort of recompense, made an effort to not commit the same sins and wickedness in the future. IMHO much of that can be attributed to the perversion common in much of Christianity of "Christ died for our sins".
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Once again, it is the people that do not use the tool provided that creates the problem. Christianity in general has not acknowledge and bewailed its manifold sins and wickedness, made an effort of recompense, made an effort to not commit the same sins and wickedness in the future. This is quite true of Roman Catholicism. Pope John Paul made a pathetically inadequate "apology" for the Inquisition some years ago that blamed it on ordinary Catholics when in fact it was engineered by the papacy itself. The Office of The Inquisition still exists, has never been repudiated by the Roman church, and the anathemas against Protestantism by the Council of Trent also still stand, curses against the Reformation doctrines of sola scriptura, sola fide, sola Christus and so on that are the backbone of true Christianity. Though Catholics are now allowed to read the Bible, at least in western countries (Catholics in Catholic countries are still as illiterate and superstitious and misguided as ever, and persecution of Protestants still happens in those countries) but it's just an expedient political move to cover up their real objective of world domination, which they had had in Europe and lost at the Reformation. They're supposed to read only the Catholic version of course, which has been revised to accommodate the worship of icons which is otherwise forbidden in the first tablet of the Ten Commandments. abe: Just remembered there was a similar sort of inadequate "apology" made for the incitement of the murders in Rwanda by a Catholic priest over the radio. /abe abe: About the Inquisition, when Garibaldi conquered Rome in 1848, long after the Inquisition had supposedly stopped, he found dungeons for torture of "heretics" in the Vatican still being used: Reference: So you think the Roman inquisition ended? /abe The Lutheran Church did sincerely apologize for Luther's anti-Semitic outburst, however. Otherwise I don't know of any church-authorized "wickedness" on the Protestant side. Unless the condemnation of interracial marriages in the south was church-authorized. It would have been local in that case however. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
But the something which in this case is Religion, is not innocent. It is is a human creation, injected with its fair amount of poison which has encouraged people to entertain their selfish motives and feel justified to act on them. If you have a case to make after conceding that your original statements don't prove your case, then make it. Christianity was not conceived to do evil, but because some folks believed it freed them from evil. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World. Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith No it is based on math I studied in sixth grade, just plain old addition, substraction and multiplication. -- ICANT
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Perhaps more significantly, it seems to me that the Bible is compromised as a source of moral guidance if we must apply our own moral sense to it, to sort out the good from the bad. Well, that depends upon if your religion is Biblianity or Christianity. As far as I am concerned, the New Testament sorted that stuff out completely. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World. Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith No it is based on math I studied in sixth grade, just plain old addition, substraction and multiplication. -- ICANT
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