The Religion Discussion

[crock101]

Habit ... you do realize the key word was "evidence" . If there is evidence then I would be open to it. I really don't know how to explain this any simpler.

[Habit7]

Habit ... you do realize the key word was "evidence" . If there is evidence then I would be open to it. I really don't know how to explain this any simpler.

Well to even expect evidence means you think it is possible, you just want evidence to objectively validate your belief.

For the religious they don't just expect evidence, they have evidence (evidence you choose to reject or ignore) and the evidence they have validates their beliefs and it will be consummated at their death.

You are no different than the people you ridicule, just with less evidence.

[bluesclues]

I kind of dont believe in science fiction anymore. If it can be imagined it can be done, or for that matter, has already been done elsewhere.

news.discovery.com/history/ancient-babylonian-used-calculus-to-find-jupiter-16012.htm

[crock101]

Bluesclues ... talking to yourself is not necessarily a bad thing..The problem arises when you start thinking that the voice talking back is in fact another person, a magic man in the sky for example and he wants you to chop of the end of your penis. This is not a sign of a healthy mental state.

[crock101]

Habit ..a claim is not the same as evidence.Religious book are claims of the existence God the same way Lord of the rings is a claim about the existence hobbits, neither is evidence. Your so called evidence is a fabrication of a delusional mind ,that in any other area of academics would warrant a mental health evaluation by a trained professional.

[bluesclues]

Bluesclues ... talking to yourself is not necessarily a bad thing..The problem arises when you start thinking that the voice talking back is in fact another person, a magic man in the sky for example and he wants you to chop of the end of your penis. This is not a sign of a healthy mental state.

lol chopping off the end of ur penis is pagan. and well it depends...

if u say.. lord give me a sign that ill get a new car... and jusso jusso the bank call u saying, if u want a car we'll give u 90% financing and u can pay over the next 30 yrs. then it can be considered communication. not in words, but in signs, actions, symbols of life and living.

[Habit7]

Habit ..a claim is not the same as evidence.Religious book are claims of the existence God the same way Lord of the rings is a claim about the existence hobbits, neither is evidence. Your so called evidence is a fabrication of a delusional mind ,that in any other area of academics would warrant a mental health evaluation by a trained professional.

Well firstly LOTR doesn't claim the existence of hobbits, besides the fact any sane reader would know that, the author said it is imaginary.

Secondly, you proudly proclaim your ignorance of our origins, yet you ridicule other's explanation. You are contradicting yourself. Either you know how everything came into being by a natural process, or you do not know and therefore you are in no position to assess anyone's mental condition based on it.

[brainchild]

Finally figured you out Habit, short version...you're against science because they leave room for being wrong but religious texts make bold claims and stand by their claim (no matter how far fetched).

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

Just for the record atheist are not a group like

They are a group, and for you to reference them as a group refutes what you are saying. They are grouped by their theological view, not their view on origins. In the same way theists are grouped by their theological view, not their view on origins.

we've been through this already in this thread. Atheism is not a religion.

They have no theological view. Should we claim that the people who "do not believe unicorns are real" is a group?

[crock101]

Atheism is a religion in the same way that off on the tv is a channel

[Habit7]

Finally figured you out Habit, short version...you're against science because they leave room for being wrong but religious texts make bold claims and stand by their claim (no matter how far fetched).

I have never been against science. Empirical science showing an ordered and defined world which is consistent with an all powerful, intelligent creator, not a result of random unguided process. Science is one of the many evidences of God.

Just for the record atheist are not a group like

They are a group, and for you to reference them as a group refutes what you are saying. They are grouped by their theological view, not their view on origins. In the same way theists are grouped by their theological view, not their view on origins.

we've been through this already in this thread. Atheism is not a religion.

They have no theological view. Should we claim that the people who "do not believe unicorns are real" is a group?

Nobody mentioned religion. If someone is claiming that they lack a theological view, then they have no basis to judge other's theological view. I can't say I have no view on Spanish but "me conozca Duane" lacks the personal 'a' as a preposition between the verb and the noun.

Atheism is a religion in the same way that off on the tv is a channel

So that we are on the same page, unlike Duane I define atheism scholastically, not by the opinion of talking heads.

Atheism, from the Greek a-theos ("no-god"), is the philosophical position that God doesn't exist. It is distinguished from agnosticism, the argument that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not (Academic American Encyclopedia).

Atheism, system of thought developed around the denial of God's existence. Atheism, so defined, first appeared during the Enlightenment, the age of reason (Random House Encyclopedia-1977).

Atheism is the doctrine that there is no God. Some atheists support this claim by arguments, but these arguments are usually directed against the Christian concept of God, and are largely irrelevant to other possible gods (Oxford Companion to Philosophy-1995).

Atheism (Greek, a- [private prefix] + theos, god) is the view that there is no divine being, no God (Dictionary of Philosophy, Thomas Mautner, Editor-1996).

Atheism is the doctrine that God does not exist, that belief in the existence of God is a false belief. The word God here refers to a divine being regarded as the independent creator of the world, a being superlatively powerful, wise and good (Encyclopedia of Religion-1987)

Atheism (Greek and Roman): Atheism is a dogmatic creed, consisting in the denial of every kind of supernatural power. Atheism has not often been seriously maintained at any period of civilized thought (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics-Vol II).

"I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God" (Charles Darwin's Letter to Rev. J Fordyc, July 7, 1879)

[crock101]

Habit. You are a person who openly admits to believing in talking donkeys and talking snakes , the only reason you are not in a mental institution being treated for some sort of psychosis is because you claim to believe these things because you read it in an old and scientifically inaccurate book, for some reason this has become acceptable in society ,while I find it highly distasteful, I will continue to defend your right to believe it.

[Habit7]

And will endure your belief in aliens, things popping into existence and all your straw man fallacies like what you posted above.

[crock101]

Habit ..you keep misrepresenting my statements. I never said that I believe in aliens, I said if there was EVIDENCE to support their existence I would, the key word is EVIDENCE, I cannot reiterate this point strongly enough.
In the very same way I would have to change my views on fairies if the necessary EVIDENCE was presented .
For the record I don't believe that an alien race so sophisticated to be able to travel light years in to space to get to earth only to anally rape farmers and kill there cattle actually exist , simply because there has never been any EVIDENCE to suggest it is true.

[Habit7]

No I didn't misrepresent your views, let me remind you.

If the evidence suggests that it was aliens who seeded life on earth I would go with it ,as long as the evidence was sound ,whether I liked the idea or not.

You never said if there was evidence to support aliens, you said if there was evidence to support them seeding the earth. Your statement presumes the existence of aliens. Substitute aliens in the above quote for hobbits, dwarfs, elves, orcs (since you like LOTR) and that is how incredulous it sounds.

However if you are backpedaling that alien statement, fine. But if you claim ignorance for the antecedences of the natural world, then you cannot judge supernatural claims. You are being inconsistent. As well as you keep dodging this reality by bring up talking snakes and donkeys is if that is more unbelievable than a immense, complex, organised world coming about by itself.

[crock101]

Habit. There might be some kind of language barrier here,the entire point of that statement was to highlight the fact that without evidence,I would not just believe any wild story.
In the case of aliens,fairies,hobbits and whichever god you think is watching over you tonight as you sleep ,there is no EVIDENCE .
Remember these religious books make claims about biology,chemistry and physics,many of which can be easily disproved in school laboratories across the country.
There is a story in the bible about a woman being turned to salt, ponder that for a moment, the human body contains hydrogen,oxygen,carbon,nitrogen,calcium,phosphorus and a multitude of others yet this book would have us believe that these elements were some how changed into sodium chloride . to turn an element into another you would need to change the number of protons and electrons in each atom , you would likely believe this story based on faith (correct me if I am misrepresenting your position on this),while i would only believe it if evidence supporting this story was presented .my need for evidence does not equate belief.

[Chimera]

Habit does sound like such a bright reasonable person in all the other threads eh. Then yuh does read what he saying in this thread.

[Computerman]

"I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God" (Charles Darwin's Letter to Rev. J Fordyc, July 7, 1879)

Also in the letter:

"an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind."

“I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”

[Habit7]

Habit. There might be some kind of language barrier here,the entire point of that statement was to highlight the fact that without evidence,I would not just believe any wild story.
In the case of aliens,fairies,hobbits and whichever god you think is watching over you tonight as you sleep ,there is no EVIDENCE .
Remember these religious books make claims about biology,chemistry and physics,many of which can be easily disproved in school laboratories across the country.
There is a story in the bible about a woman being turned to salt, ponder that for a moment, the human body contains hydrogen,oxygen,carbon,nitrogen,calcium,phosphorus and a multitude of others yet this book would have us believe that these elements were some how changed into sodium chloride . to turn an element into another you would need to change the number of protons and electrons in each atom , you would likely believe this story based on faith (correct me if I am misrepresenting your position on this),while i would only believe it if evidence supporting this story was presented .my need for evidence does not equate belief.

What you are engaging in is a logic fallacy called category error. You are judging the Bible within a limited category you ascribe to it while ignoring the category it claims, so that you can falsify its claims. You are being naturalist, meaning that unless it can be empirically proven then it cannot be true (a point I will later go on to show you cannot be consistent with). The Bible is a supernatural book, while it contains mostly naturalistic events, it does include supernatural events such as the creation of the world, floating axe heads, feeding 5000, etc. The Bible narrates how an omnipotent God creates a natural world supernaturally and gives it natural laws for it to be governed by. However God either intervenes Himself supernaturally or allows for the intervention supernaturally of other supernatural created beings to demonstrate divine purpose and thus carry out His will.

You on the other hand affirm naturalism, empirical science must account for anything otherwise it is not true. However science cannot account for how a natural world came into existence naturally, it must have a supernatural source. The same goes for matter, energy, space and time but we already all have it existing here, we work with it and at best you can have faith that there is some naturalistic explanation that you are unaware of but you still don't have it. Does that means it doesn't exist? Likewise we have no scientific evidence for abiogenesis, the complexity of DNA, the process by which DNA is improved upon up the evolutionary chain, the common ancestor of most phyla, the common ancestor of man and ape, all to name a few but you accept it by faith. A faith that hopes in a naturalistic explanation in time to come, but currently doesn't exist.

So when you come a biblical narrative like the serpent in the garden, or Balaam's donkey or Lot's wife and you cry that it can't be true because there is no naturalistic explanation! You are committing a category error because the Bible is not saying these are natural common occurrences, it is saying these are supernatural rare events that so shape the biblical narrative it is recorded and emphasised. Furthermore these are also presupposed on the even greater supernatural claim that God created the world in the first place so supernatural events subsequent to that are kinda pedestrian.

So to summarise, there are no empirical scientific errors in the Bible. God allows for supernatural interventions in the natural world. Empirical science is not the only arbiter of truth.






BTW the human body contains about 0.4% of its body weight in NaCl (common table salt). We can taste it every time in a good workout when sweat trickles into our mouth or when my toddler cries and her tears leaves a trail of salt down her cheek. So if I was to suffer the fate of Lot's wife, expect to see just over a pound of salt remaining.

[crock101]

Really ...a 100+ pound person is killed and we all have left is a pound out salt , but wait doesn't the good book describe a pillar of salt ,something tells me you would need quite a bit more than a pound of it to make a something big enough to be called a pillar.
You keep claiming that because there is no explanation for something then the answer has to be supernatural,this is just silly,this is the same mentality that people have had about the wind,tides,sunlight earthquakes,hurricanes...The list is endless,these things are not supernatural and have been explained after serious scientific inquiry.science is the best tool man has ever invented to understand the world we live in ,while the books that you subscribe to just seem aim to keep mankind in a most primitive and uninformed state.

[Slartibartfast]

Wow... really... Habit you really downgraded from your past arguments if you are now taking the "I don't know therefore God did it route"


A small lesson just for you Habit
If something can be empirically proven then it is definitely true (eg. If I push an object off my desk it will fall downwards)

If something can be empirically disproven then it is definitely false (eg. If I push an object off my desk it will fall upwards)

If something cannot be empirically proven then it can either be true or false. It requires additional forms of proof or disproof

Large scale evolution takes place over thousands and sometimes millions of years. It can therefore not be empirically observed by creatures such as ourselves with an average life span of less than 100 years. Does this mean that because it cannot be empirically observed it is destined to be forever false? No. There are other forms of evidence that can provide evidence. Fossils provide historical evidence (open to some interpretation) and direct observations of the same principles on a smaller scale provide a proof of the concept of evolution (for example evolution of bacteria etc.)

The bible and Christianity cannot be empirically proven because the historical passages written in it cannot be directly observed. Therefore additional proof or disproof is needed. Additional disproof has been put forth. The sequence of events in Genesis were disproven (i.e. the bible is inaccurate). If the bible is wrong in one passage then that proves that it is not perfect and can be wrong elsewhere. There is no proof of Adam and Eve. There is no proof of God. There is no proof of the supernatural occurrences in the bible except in the writings of the bible and maybe some other scripts written be people just as ignorant of the world around them as the people that wrote the bible.

I.e. Science has been proven as true. It's limitations are clearly marked and are growing smaller each day

Many tenets of Christianity have been disproven (i.e. definitely false) and the "supernatural" occurrences that you hold so dear have no unbiased proof to back them up and are so absurd that they cannot be taken seriously. Prove to me that a person can be turned into a pillar of salt (or at the very least show me how a person can be vaporised completely except for the NaCl in their body. What special property does salt have that no other compound have?). Prove to me how 5 loaves of bread and two fish (that can all fit in a hand basket) can feed 5000 people. Or at least prove to me that the author of that story was not exaggerating.

If you find those proofs too difficult to do then just disprove the following. I'm sure it must be extremely easy to disprove given the absurd nature of the statement.
"I, Slartibartfast, am God"

[meccalli]

And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;

The term 'of salt' has been referred to as of unsure composition, but it's cause is helped considering those cities were located at the edge of the dead sea where salt stalactites grow to the size of columns.

Lot's wife case was that of a supernatural event. Tradition holds that it existed as a pillar where grazing cattle would lick it.

[Slartibartfast]

How do the stalactites help its case? Are those stalactites supernatural in nature as well? Is it impossible to think that a primitive person not understanding the science behind the "man sized" "salt" pillars inferred that it must be a human figure turned to salt? I mean, if your scientific knowledge was that limited and your views that biased what else would you think?

The fact that numerous pillars naturally form in that area is a mark against the credibility of the story.

[Habit7]

Really ...a 100+ pound person is killed and we all have left is a pound out salt , but wait doesn't the good book describe a pillar of salt ,something tells me you would need quite a bit more than a pound of it to make a something big enough to be called a pillar.
You keep claiming that because there is no explanation for something then the answer has to be supernatural,this is just silly,this is the same mentality that people have had about the wind,tides,sunlight earthquakes,hurricanes...The list is endless,these things are not supernatural and have been explained after serious scientific inquiry.science is the best tool man has ever invented to understand the world we live in ,while the books that you subscribe to just seem aim to keep mankind in a most primitive and uninformed state.

You forgot that you doubted that the human body had NaCl in the first place now you are shifting the goal posts to whether how much can make a pillar (I don't know how much Lot's weighed neither what consistutes a pillar). Nevertheless, you are engaging in another logical fallacy called a straw man, I did not say things that have no explanation are supernatural, I am saying you cannot be consistent that without empirical evidence something doesn't exist or did not happen. There many things we cannot explain empirically, believe in, or in science we accept axiomatically. That is the point I am making and you cannot help but dodge it.

It was people who had a biblical worldview who pioneered modern science because the Bible doesn't say wind,tides,sunlight earthquakes,hurricanes are supernatural but that everything natural has a supernatural source, the one true creator God.

[meccalli]

The fact that numerous pillars naturally form in that area is a mark against the credibility of the story.

Lot had already fled the city with his wife before she looked upon its destruction. The geology of the location lends itself to being constructed in the valley with the structures on the mountains. The tradition that surrounds its location further supports it as cattle can't graze in mountainous terrain consisting of barren sodic soils that surround the salt sea and associated stalactites. Ghoeyr and Souf saffa runs towards that valley and are popular grazing areas for bedouins that rest there and are quite a distance away from the cities locations.

[Slartibartfast]

Lot had already fled the city with his wife before she looked upon its destruction. The geology of the location lends itself to being constructed in the valley with the structures on the mountains. The tradition that surrounds its location further supports it as cattle can't graze in mountainous terrain consisting of barren sodic soils that surround the salt sea and associated stalactites. Ghoeyr and Souf saffa runs towards that valley and are popular grazing areas for bedouins that rest there and are quite a distance away from the cities locations.

Kinda lost me on this one.

The geology of the location lend what to being constructed in the valley with what structures in the mountains?
The tradition surrounding what location as somewhere that cattle can't graze?
What is the significance of Ghoeyr and Souf Saffa if it's not in the valley and not close to where the stalactites are?
Where did Lot's wife turn into a pillar? Was it by Ghoeyr, Souf Saffa or in the mountainous areas with the rest of the stalactites?

[meccalli]

The cities of sodom and gomorrah are located on the edges of the the dead sea which is a valley bordered by mountains. Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt after leaving the proximity of the dead sea. Tradition holds that the pillar is an area which cattle graze which would most likely be in an area that's conducive the the growth of pasture i.e non sodic soils, open land and fresh water. The two named places are known grazing areas so it is most likely one of the two which are both not in the proximity of the dead sea and thus the pillar can't be hoped for as a naturally formed stalactite as a result.
I only pointed out the stalactites as someone mentioned NaCl which is a funny tidbit considering the location.

[Slartibartfast]

Ok so the stalactite doesn't have anything to really do with your story? It occurred where stalactites normally occur and this area is not the area where lot's wife turned to "salt" (Do I have this correct?)

So this leads me back to my original question. What proof is there of lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt besides unverifiable stories?

Also, what proof is there that I am not God. (This question is also aimed t Habit)

[meccalli]

Yes, that's right.
As for proof, for starters- the cities are still there turned to ash and riddled with brimstone as the scriptures say. Many people have named pillars of rock and mineral deposits as lot's wife but we probably wont be able to decipher one from the other after a few thousand years of weathering processes.

God doesn't buy sauce doubles.

[crock101]

Habit. There really is a language barrier here , cause here you go again misrepresenting my statements.
At no point did i say that there is no salt in the human body,my issue is how does all the other elements in the human body get turned into just sodium and chlorine.
Enough so, that you get a pillar of the stuff.
I expect that your explanation is that God did it and therefore needs no further explanation(if I a misrepresenting your position please say), this is not an acceptable answer for a rational human being from earth.