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Post by ed1066 on Mar 8, 2011 13:20:35 GMT -5
Glad you're here , deminmaine!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2011 13:38:15 GMT -5
Religion, abortion, politics, gun rights
Topics easily argued about....and we happen to have great debaters on both sides of the aisle here
Religion is based on FAITH....either you believe or you dont
It is a concept argued about for centuries
My personal belief is that there is a GOD....but at the same time i hate what has become of religion as a whole...like so many other things it is all about the money now
Liberal, conservative, democrat, republican, libertarian.....just all labels designed to pigeon hole people in a grouping....so that others can call them wrong or argue with their ideals
I dont fit into the square hole....and i would assume most here are the same
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Mar 8, 2011 13:43:28 GMT -5
gdgyva-see reply #104.
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billisonboard
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Post by billisonboard on Mar 8, 2011 13:47:02 GMT -5
... Except for the part about God, there is nothing in the bible that discusses any of what you mentioned. The bible does not mention the age of the earth, it does not mention man cohabiting the earth with dinosaurs, and it gives no details as to the process of how humans were created (read Genesis, it is very vague and allegorical). All of that is interpretation, flawed in my opinion (as it should be), by humans trying to rationalize God's word with our puny brains... Here is an area that I really struggle with when it comes the God of the Bible. Why didn't God either give us a brain able to understand his word or keep his word to himself. Seems a weird and cruel game "The Almighty" is playing.
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Post by ed1066 on Mar 8, 2011 14:59:28 GMT -5
If you believe that the number one purpose of your life is to strive to better know God, then it is neither weird nor cruel that we are made to be intelligent and inquisitive, but not all-knowing...
If you believe your life ultimately has some other purpose, then I could see how it would seem cruel...
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billisonboard
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Post by billisonboard on Mar 8, 2011 22:14:07 GMT -5
If you believe that the number one purpose of your life is to strive to better know God, then it is neither weird nor cruel that we are made to be intelligent and inquisitive, but not all-knowing... If you believe your life ultimately has some other purpose, then I could see how it would seem cruel... Good point. If striving to "better know God" is the proper number one purpose for an existence that God gave me, it isn't so much weird or cruel as self serving on God's part.
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Post by ed1066 on Mar 8, 2011 22:24:36 GMT -5
Unsurprisingly, you missed my point. The idea behind getting to better know God is to make YOU a better person, not to do anything for Him...
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billisonboard
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Post by billisonboard on Mar 8, 2011 22:37:23 GMT -5
Unsurprisingly, you missed my point. The idea behind getting to better know God is to make YOU a better person,... And Heaven knows we could all work on being a better person...
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Post by marjar on Mar 8, 2011 22:42:37 GMT -5
Unsurprisingly, you missed my point. The idea behind getting to better know God is to make YOU a better person, not to do anything for Him... You can't strive to be a better person without belief in God?
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Post by ed1066 on Mar 8, 2011 22:44:32 GMT -5
Of course you can...
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Post by marjar on Mar 8, 2011 22:48:35 GMT -5
Of course you can... Then what is the advantage of believing in God, as far as striving to be a better person?
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billisonboard
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Post by billisonboard on Mar 8, 2011 22:50:33 GMT -5
Of course you can... Then what is the advantage of believing in God, as far as striving to be a better person? And conversely if you aren't willing to become a better person?
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Post by ed1066 on Mar 8, 2011 22:50:56 GMT -5
There are many advantages, but I'm not here to convert you to Christianity, so I'll leave it at that...
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Post by marjar on Mar 9, 2011 0:01:27 GMT -5
There are many advantages, but I'm not here to convert you to Christianity, so I'll leave it at that... Been there and done that. Wasn't a good fit.
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Loopdilou
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Post by Loopdilou on Mar 9, 2011 0:47:47 GMT -5
There are many advantages, but I'm not here to convert you to Christianity, so I'll leave it at that... No, I'm genuinely curious.. what are the advantages? From a purely theological standpoint. I promise I won't even call you stupid ;D
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Post by ed1066 on Mar 9, 2011 0:49:12 GMT -5
I don't think so...
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2011 0:50:19 GMT -5
I think if you believe in God there is some kind of extrinsic reward for being a better person... ... us agnostics/atheists just have to settle for internal satisfcation
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Loopdilou
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Post by Loopdilou on Mar 9, 2011 0:53:31 GMT -5
I think if you believe in God there is some kind of extrinsic reward for being a better person... ... us agnostics/atheists just have to settle for internal satisfcation Sucks to be us
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Shirina
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Post by Shirina on Mar 9, 2011 14:52:58 GMT -5
Yes, it is far more rational to believe that an invisible, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent entity that exists outside of the space-time continuum simply poofed everything into existence using magic.
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Shirina
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Post by Shirina on Mar 9, 2011 14:55:04 GMT -5
I would be happy to accept this challenge. Do you care to take me on?
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Post by ed1066 on Mar 9, 2011 15:03:13 GMT -5
Wow, there are a lot of atheists on this board!
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Shirina
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Post by Shirina on Mar 9, 2011 15:05:20 GMT -5
Oh no, it's the dreaded "God of the Gaps" argument. Because we don't know something, then it can only be explained with God!
What I find silly is how God can be used like a wild card. Need an Ace? Just insert God! Need a 2 of diamonds? God will suffice. God is a great way to explain something without actually needing facts, proof, or evidence.
Satan and demons are also wonderful stand-ins for actual knowledge. It reminds me of the story of the French town threatened to be overrun by a glacier. The local church sent a troupe of priests to the glacier's edge to mumble some prayers, wave some incense around, and hammer a big crucifix into the ice. They thought the glacier was possessed by demons. LOL!
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cael
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Post by cael on Mar 9, 2011 15:15:35 GMT -5
Us atheists have to stick together! I don't think it's irrational to not believe in god, that's a pretty ridiculous thing to say. I also don't think it's necessarily irrational to believe.
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Post by ed1066 on Mar 9, 2011 16:09:46 GMT -5
Replace "God" with "global warming" and you have the entire "climate change" hoax described in a single sentence. Good job!
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Post by marjar on Mar 9, 2011 16:14:59 GMT -5
I think if you believe in God there is some kind of extrinsic reward for being a better person... ... us agnostics/atheists just have to settle for internal satisfcation Sucks to be us Not.
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rockon
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Post by rockon on Mar 9, 2011 16:23:27 GMT -5
Every society in human history is thought to have believed in God or Gods so it seems any poster on this board describing this as irrational is in the minority. For me it seems more inconceivable that are world and it many wonders were formed from some random explosion. It can be described by imagining blowing up a lumber yard and somehow a beautiful house with all of its appliances in place was somehow formed by the blast. Nope I have to think there was some intelligent design in my world.
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Shirina
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Post by Shirina on Mar 9, 2011 16:53:03 GMT -5
And ... ?
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Shirina
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Post by Shirina on Mar 9, 2011 17:07:36 GMT -5
This argument is used all the time, but it's an invalid comparison. You're comparing something that happens nearly instantaneously (blowing up a lumber yard) and something that happened over time.
The second reason why the comparison is invalid is that neither lumber yards or the resultant debris are organic and capable of passing on genes to the next generation. Without that ability, an exploding lumber yard would have to get everything right the very first time because it would only have one chance. This disingenuous argument is what drives the point home about random chance. Oh, but the odds of it happening ....
That's concerning life. What about the universe?
The problem is that we have no idea how many Big Bangs there may have been before ours, thus it's impossible to calculate the odds with any degree of accuracy. We don't know how many chances the universe had in "getting it right" ... at least for humans.
The Creationist premise has always been that there was one Big Bang and that was it ... but what if there had been more than one?
To use an analogy, Creationists believe that there was only one lottery ticket in the whole world and humanity had it. When the random numbers were drawn, wow, what a coincidence! Humanity had the winning ticket thus we were blessed with a world fit for our habitation.
However, if there are trillions of lottery tickets and only a few hundred billion possible random number combinations, the statistical probability of there being at least one winner is greater than one ... a mathematical certainty. Suddenly, it doesn't seem so incredible that we're here because someone had to win.
Is this speculative? Sure, but no more so than speculating about a Bronze Age set of superstitions centering around an invisible God that demands worship under threat of eternal torture if we don't.
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Angel!
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Post by Angel! on Mar 9, 2011 17:51:52 GMT -5
This is true. I was just reading a study yesterday about how only 19 out of 1500 cultures in some book have any reference towards atheism. A lot of this has to do with the fact that we are built to make connections - cause & effect. So, when we are unable to make connections rationally, them we start to assume some outside force is at work (god, devil, etc). Anyway, the actual point of the study was that because evolutionarily speaking we tend towards having some sort of god, then atheists are going against this trend, making atheism a evolutionary novelty. This was the reasoning why on average atheists have a slightly (but statistically significant) higher intelligence. The study also argued that liberalism & male monogomy are also evolutionary novelties & those people also have higher intelligence than their counterparts. spq.sagepub.com/content/73/1/33.fullI thought it was an interesting study & explaination for the differences in IQ.
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Post by ed1066 on Mar 9, 2011 17:54:50 GMT -5
Built by those random electro-chemical reactions?
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