First: i never said any of these things hold true for everybody...

Well some people kill themselves and others in the name of religion... You can't win an election in the US without being religious and that gave us G. W. Bush... He started a world-spanning war and invaded 2 countries... Let's get rid of religion and we'll get drugs and politics later...

(*DO NOT READ IF CATHOLIC* The Vatican actually supported Nazi Germany during WW2... It might just have been in order to survive but the rest of Italia turned too and Spain and Ireland remained neutral...)

Watch "Jesus Camp" and come back to me... You'll find that some fundamentalists don't care shit for the environment simply because they believe that the Harmageddon is moving closer...

Not really... In many third world countries they pray instead of going to the doctor... I some village in Africa (can't remember where so sorry for lack of evidence) they believe a virgins blood can cure diseases and such... Therefor some girls all the way down to age 4 are being raped as a way of curing AIDS... Oh holy Maria, come back to me

A priest in the 1920's or so forbid cars because it "gave people a way of getting out of town on Sundays"... I think he was technophobic, but religion gave his meaningless fears power... And what is it, Genetic Manipulation is a sin against god 'cause we change our bodies that was made in his image... Some people didn't even think we should have gone to the moon because god gave us Earth... Abortion? i mean WTF?!

That time religion was the major source behind people being afraid and uneducated... Witchburnings anyone? "Shit! She cured my child! It's the devil, BURN HER!!!" Besides i'm a Dane and we sailed to America a thousand years ago... Even though we were stupid pagans that believed the only way into Valhalla was dying in open combat... The church and it's oh so holy 'the-Earth-is-the-center-of-the-universe'-policy was the only stupifying institution at that time... Galileo Galilei anyone? "It looks like we're turning around the sun" "BLASPHEMY!!! Lock him up!"

20,000 years ago there we're absolutely no rules and humans fought each other and killed over raw meat... How much relevance does Survival of the Fittest have today? None... Today weak humans are brought to the hospital... Also you can't really compare the rules written in a book with scientific FACT that is used every day in machines and in medicine and in our own minds when we read and count... I just don't think "Eye for Eye" and "stone any women that's unfaithful" is useful in todays society... Not for mentioning "thou shalt not kill"... What good is that gonna do?
(if you believe Adam and Eve were the first humans and the world only is 10,000 years only, just drop this part and we'll discuss the others)

Got that right... But respect for being rather well speaking and coming with valid points even as your supporting something i believe is utter bullshit... PROPZORZ 2 TEH 1337!

ps: no need to get rude...

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"Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. It's just an oppressors way of suppressing a minority..."

"Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals."

"Knowledge is knowing how to, Wisdom is knowing why."

"An open mind is like a castle, with its gates unbarred and guards asleep."

(1)if spaghetti exists, then the flying spagetti monster exists
(2)spaghetti exists
(3)therefore the flying spaghetti monster exists

the universe has a cause then god exists? thats quite the jump

ARGUMENT FROM MULTIPLICITY (V)
(1) There exists a web page
(2) That page has hundreds of purported proofs of the existence of God.
(3) They can't all be wrong.
(4) Therefore, God exists.[/quote]

if you actually kept reading the site half of them dont make sense, are insults against athiests, and the rest actually rely on on god to prove that the occurance is true, so its not really proving god.

chesty i thought you were smart, this is nothing but retarded religious propaganda.

if you actually kept reading the site half of them dont make sense, are insults against athiests, and the rest actually rely on on god to prove that the occurance is true, so its not really proving god.

chesty i thought you were smart, this is nothing but retarded religious propaganda.[/quote]

If you read the whole thread you may have understood why I chose to put that link in. Somewhere down the line and Im not going to search for it someone was talking about logic, proof and scientific facts etc...So for me that link was meant to be a joke, sorry if that did not come readily across by the absolute absurdity of the links content.

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A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.
- James Freeman Clarke

That gets right back into free will in my humble opinion. God gave us the ability to either follow his commandments or we can chose to disregard them.
As far as Bush goes I am not going to discuss him in this thread, that would seriously derail this.

I assume you are referring to this document? We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah? The apology in that document said nothing about a pope siding with Hitler, because no pope ever did side with Hitler. That document discussed the history of Jewish-Christian relations. It did contain an apology, but not of the sort you are getting at. It quoted Pope John Paul II's letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente saying:

"It is appropriate that, as the Second Millennium of Christianity draws to a close, the Church should become more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal".

But the idea that any pope sided with Hitler in his anti-Semitism is absurd.
I would definetly want to see some concrete proof on that statement.

As I understood it (I will do some digging on this), they took a stance of No Involvement. I think it is also important to note that many million Catholics died during this conflict.

Understand I am not catholic but that statement was shocking to me. I will do some additional research on this matter. In the meantime can you toss me some links that support this so I could read further?





I will indeed watch this but my point is still valid and I think you can agree with my logic here religious people do not corner the market on polluting. Keep in mind also a small segment of Christians do not equal the whole anymore then one bad apple spoils the bunch or one bad president makes all Americans evil.

Again I say to you on this point with respect that this over all is a very small portion of the Christian population. As far as virgin sacrifices or rapes I think I can guarantee you that is not a Christian thing to do and no true mentally sound Christian would do it, so lets remove that segment from the equation as well please.



Not all Christians are against Genetic Manipulation some of us see it as using what God gave to us and exercising our free will to live better lives.



No argument here that was a very dark period for the Church and Humanity and one of the main reasons I am happy for the division between church and state.

Christians do not stone women your confusing us with some Muslim cultures and traditions. And the eye for an eye bit went out with Moses. When Jesus came to us he said "Love one another as I have loved you". He also said vengeance is for god alone and "Turn the other Cheek" (which does mean Christians have to be punching bags). We live under a new covenant today under Jesus Christ, those things are no longer binding. As far as evolution goes read on this from Michael Behe quoted from Time magazine (Link included below)

"MICHAEL BEHE
Biochemistry professor, Lehigh University; Senior fellow, Discovery Institute

Sure, it's possible to believe in both God and evolution. I'm a Roman Catholic, and Catholics have always understood that God could make life any way he wanted to. If he wanted to make it by the playing out of natural law, then who were we to object? We were taught in parochial school that Darwin's theory was the best guess at how God could have made life.

I'm still not against Darwinian evolution on theological grounds. I'm against it on scientific grounds. I think God could have made life using apparently random mutation and natural selection. But my reading of the scientific evidence is that he did not do it that way, that there was a more active guiding. I think that we are all descended from some single cell in the distant past but that that cell and later parts of life were intentionally produced as the result of intelligent activity. As a Christian, I say that intelligence is very likely to be God.

Several Christian positions are theologically consistent with the theory of mutation and selection. Some people believe that God is guiding the process from moment to moment. Others think he set up the universe from the Big Bang to unfold like a computer program. Others take scientific positions that are indistinguishable from those atheist materialists might take but say that their nonscientific intuitions or philosophical considerations or the existence of the mind lead them to deduce that there is a God.

I used to be part of that last group. I just think now that the science is not nearly as strong as they think."

Can You Believe in God and Evolution? - TIME




Fair enough.

This was not my intention I found the initial remarks to be rather inflammatory and generally lacking substance and I called those remarks into question. I am debating the issues and calling them into dispute, I however am not and will not attack you personally.

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A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.
- James Freeman Clarke

Well technically if there was a god he could in fact be proven. Hard physical evidence such as god appearing and proving that he was god would work, but that hasn`t and will not happen. There is absolutely no evidence for the existence of god(s). Since you definitely can`t prove the non existence of god ,because you can`t prove a negative,the burden of proof lies on those who do believe in god to provide any evidence or proof of any deities existence, which of course they have failed to do. Until there is proof for the existence of god, I don`t think there is any point to believing.

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"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."
-Ambrose Bierce
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle. - Vique
If there is a God...I think most reasonable people might agree that he's at least incompetent and maybe, just maybe, doesn't give a shit..." -George Carlin

You can quote one scientist who denies evolution, but that doesn't make it true. There is overwhelming consensus that it has occured. The debate is now between gradual evolution or punctuated equilibrium evolution.

Beyond that biochemistry is not evolutionary biology, his mastery is not in the study of evolution but in Biochemistry, the study of chemical processes in living organisms.

Here is what Christians are doing, they have a preconceived notion of a god, that created man. They see the evidence, then try to make their preconceived notion work. The notion is not based off of what the facts show, but off of the beliefs already held. It's just like the old Greek Philosophers and their models of the Universe. They all had Aristotle's notions of uniform motion if their heads, and tried to make their observations of the Universe match their preconceived notions. The Catholic Church adopted Aristotle's viewpoint and persecuted anyone who challenged that with Heresy. With a Scientific viewpoint, that goes in without preconceived notions, or is at least ready to throw them out if the facts reject them, we now know the earth revolves around the sun, and that our universe is a whole lot bigger than our solar system.

The facts show natural evolution. The debate is how that evolution occurs. The "Theory of Evolution" is that it occurs by natural selection. Evolution is a fact, how it occurs is a theory.

I could look up and name a few hundred thousand scientists who believe in evolution. Does that beat a handful of hacks that can be thrown out by creationists.

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Yes that would beat the so called "hacks" in TIME magazine I referenced. While you look that up I will try and compile a list of the hundreds of MILLION Christians which will of course beat your handful of scientific hacks.

As I recall you and I agreed to disagree since our arguments had become circular at best. You for a fact can not prove unequivocally that there is no God. I can not prove unequivocally that there is a God, I just have my faith in God and you have your faith in science and evolution. In Chess we call this a stalemate.

My discussion now is with someone else because neither of us is going to convince or change the mind of the other Caltex, I still have hopes for some of these other guys.

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A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.
- James Freeman Clarke

so this conversation is over, this entire thread was meaningless, lets all go home.

what choo talkin bout chesty?(clasic gary colmen). im pretty sure by looking at this entire conversation that nobodies mind has been changed, every one is right were they stared, and by happen chance who are these "other guys"?

That would be anyone Besides Caltex he and I hit a brick wall.
As far as the other guys go...that would be anyone else reading this thread. The funny thing about Christians we have this annoying habit of looking for the best in people and having faith in them as well as God. With God all things are possible Future leader. With God even Caltex could be convinced to believe I realised early on unfortunately that I do not have the necessary theological background to debate him as I am not skilled enough. So if you are looking to hear that I failed to change anyone's mind. Then Rejoice because I indeed have failed.

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A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.
- James Freeman Clarke

Free will? If you could somehow know that X religion is correct, lets assume it's Christianity, then you could either conform to that doctrine and be ridiculously rewarded with some kind of utopia in the afterlife, or suffer eternal torment. There's no real choice there. Christians are always saying, "Well deep down you know." No not really. If there's really some benevolent God out there why would he choose to be so silent? If this God does exist, he cannot possibly be benevolent, because any reasonable person cannot believe in a silent, invisible, imperceptible god based upon some fanatics and an old book. Yet they, regardless of how many or few people they hurt or helped, would burn in hell simply for not believing in something they do not have sufficient evidence to believe in. Isn't it self-evident how insanely unjust that is?

I suppose Christianity is an unfair target, because it above all religions is the most self-refuting, contradictory, non-sensical one that is widely believed. By that I mean the doctrines to begin with don't make sense, e.g. having God send himself/son to earth to suffer and die so that he can change his own rules, and that himself/son dying somehow exonerates people who believe it happened.

Yes perhaps it is stupid to claim there is no God because it lends excessive credence to the claim that there is a God, where the burden of proof lies.