The Route Of All Evil

[TeePee]

Who needs the church? What about the Bible? If that's gods word, why has he nothing to say against slavery? Why must adulterers be stoned to death at the city gates?

[iranu]

[QUOTE=fuddam]FACTS? yes, there are facts that can be debated.

eg1: my father spent most of his life with one leg an inch shorter than the other. One day he had it prayed for. His leg grew that missing inch..

Over what time period? Did anyone in the medical profession confirm this? Did the leg physically grow or was their a purely medical explanation? Doctors the world over would be astounded and would certainly study your dad.

eg 2: my friend was travelling away from the UK, in Europe. No-one had been told where he was going - destinations were on a whim. nonetheless, one day he was walking down a road in Germany, out in the countryside, a relatively desolate area - all forests and things. He walked past a phone booth. The phone rang. It was his friend back in the UK who needed to contact him urgently, and had prayed to Christ and received the phone number in answer to his prayer..

There have been many similar instances of this happening. Random things and flukes do happen. Fluke or ESP is as justified an explanation as God. There's an excellent parody of this in The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Universe to do with Trillians phone number and the probability of their survival iirc.

eg 3: this past week a number of my friends have been in India, performing to crowds of 1000s. Gospel band - rock oriented etc. Well, some of the meetings were to huge crowds. Some 30,000, some 300,000 - one even was 650,000. Anyway, at one of the meetings was a famous healer by the name of Ram Babu. Normally he prays over particular people, but at one of his meetings 30,000 approx turned up. No, not 30,000 Christians, mostly hindu or otherwise. Anyway, they turned up en masse because they'd heard there was this healer in town. Yep, I know a lot of you atheists / skeptics are rolling your eyes already, visions of the hardsell seen partic on a lot of American evangelical channels, which often seems a request for cash. Well, thing is that all these people heard was that they could be healed. From the slums, they didn't have cash. No cash was mentioned etc. These people just ran to the front to be healed. Ram Babu was kinda taken back - hadn't seen this before. One woman he saw had only a hand growing out of her shoulder - birth deformity. He saw her arm GROW out of her shoulder. The streets outside the venue afterward were just litttered with abandoned stretchers and empty rickshaws.

Placebo effect. The woman was most likely a "plant" in the audience. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. Ill educated, poor desperate people will believe anything because they are exactly that, desperate. I'm not saying that what happened isn't good but these things always happen in India and not Solihull. Paul Daniels is not being guided by God or performing miracles when he saws Debbie in half.

This last example confirms my point. You see God in everything no matter how easy it is to give a simple explanation. It's similar to the UFO craze where people believe that Aliens are here conducting experiments. Everything can be explained by the aliens but you never see them shopping in Walmart. You see, once you succumb to the cosiness of faith you shut out every other explanation subconciously.

[fuddam]

Yes, i'm aware religion has different meanings, hence pointing out the fact. I don't find I need to persue atheism with conscientious zeal and devotion however, I know it's right, I don't need to 'believe' in it.

lol - you KNOW something to be true without believing it to be true

The point made was the topic refers to religion i.e. reverence in supernatural beaing/teapot etc etc, i.e. not the other meanings, no matter how funny you think it is that they can be described by the word religion (haw haw). Quite a simple concept really.

my point is that you have a god. it is your ego, your self-belief. And no, that is not a criticism.

Your great list is truly astounding. You do realise anyone with a fair dosage of common sense is capable of good, they don't need to presribe to a religion.

never said otherwise or implied otherwise. Someone, however, made the ignorant statement that religion is a burden

Now lets make a list of all the terrible things that happen in the name of religion. Let's see, i'll go first, then maybe someone else can mention another thing.

Errm, Pope Innocent III, "Outside the Church there is no salvation". Quite a chilling tale I think you'll find.

quick question: what is your definition of church? Very important detail, since it may differ (and probably does) quite drastically from that of that Pope's.

In MY understanding of the word, and that of pretty much most if not all of my Christian friends, it means people who believe in Christ, as a body of people. Not an institution. Not a building. Christians shouldn't go it alone. Some try to, but is a pretty masochistic exercise, and likely doomed to failure. Whether Pope Innocent meant that exactly, I have no idea, but as the sentence pertains to Christians in general, I agree with it.

Furthermore, you were quite right: terrible things have happened IN THE NAME OF RELIGION, as have terrible things in the name of almost every political movement. That does not indict the religion or the movement, but the people in particular who did the terrible things. Well said.

[fuddam]

Furthermore why don't you attempt to answer some of the difficult questions, rather than focusing in on the minute details of peoples arguments. I'm sure you'll find you will be a more rounded person as a whole if you do.

I couldn't have said it better. That's exactly what you should do.

[RVF500]

Pretty terrible things have happened in the name for science. Dr Mengele for example. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.

If you want a pretty nasty peice of work using religion as a tool to manipulate people in the worst way why not look at pope Gregory IXth. To organise the armoured thugs ruling Europe in the 11th century he told them that they could basically find salvation by killing non-christians. Hence he managed to mobilise armed help for Alexius, emporer of Byzantium. The net result was the crusades. Which today come back to haunt us in the form of Islamic terrorists who, surprise surprise, use faily simple people's belief systems as a means of manipulation. This is not religion, this is the politics of religion.

Wonder how long it will be before the same large scale effect is seen in the persuance of a scientific dream?

Of course branding people as stupid and blind for following a belief system is shortsighted and arrogant. Equally people could brand those who don't with the same labels. Next thing we are divided and fighting over whether science is to be the new religion or not. The thing is science has not unequivically proved the non-existance of God or in fact Jesus. Just that there is no evidence, scientifically, to support the view. I would say that people who adopt a view of possible existance are actually keeping an open mind. Not the opposite as has been argued.

Just a thought, scientifically the bumblebee can't fly. Whatever you do, don't tell the bumblebees they are living in wonderous blind, stupid delusion At least they don't have to walk to work.

[fuddam]

Over what time period? Did anyone in the medical profession confirm this? Did the leg physically grow or was their a purely medical explanation? Doctors the world over would be astounded and would certainly study your dad.

time period? instant.
you think this little example of mine is unusual or uncommon? LOL. Ignorance is bliss. Those things happen every day. I mentioned it expecting skepticism. Your response is entirely predictable. If you had said something about certain happenings being beyond explanation or similar, THAT would have surprised me.

There have been many similar instances of this happening. Random things and flukes do happen. Fluke or ESP is as justified an explanation as God. There's an excellent parody of this in The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Universe to do with Trillians phone number and the probability of their survival iirc.

Am well familiar with the book. To use an explanation here of 'fluke or ESP' is a massive cop-out. You have just appealed to something that cannot be explained or proved. Hope you haven't betrayed yourself and revealed a faith in something beyond yourself, something scientifically and evolutionarily impossible. Uh oh............

Placebo effect. The woman was most likely a "plant" in the audience. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. Ill educated, poor desperate people will believe anything because they are exactly that, desperate. I'm not saying that what happened isn't good but these things always happen in India and not Solihull. Paul Daniels is not being guided by God or performing miracles when he saws Debbie in half.

the woman who's arm grew out of her shoulder is a plant? LOL. Of the quick growing variety, I hope The difference here is I know Ram Babu, you don't know Paul Daniels. If Paul sincerely told you about something he saw (not the woman or an audience member), what would you say? Either that he's lying or delluded? Go ahead. The only person who clearly is not, is you.

And you mention India and not Solihull - again a load of bollocks. My father doesn't live in India. Nor, for that fact, my mother, who has just beaten her 8th cancer (breast, spinal, lymphatic, various malignant cysts etc) and continues to confound the doctors. She's become something of a special case in the cancer clinics of London. All she does is pray - only had radiation on the 7th, no chemo etc.

anyway, no matter how spectacular or amazing someone's healing is, you will always doubt - that's blindingly obvious. Even if you stood right next to that woman and touched her arm as it grew out of her bare shoulder, you would still convince yourself it was an illusion. As I said quite emphatically, I'm not trying to prove God's existence - merely wanted to hear how open some atheists could be to unexplained phenomena. You appear to be sealed shut.

You see, once you succumb to the cosiness of faith you shut out every other explanation subconciously.

Like talking to a brick wall. You have faith, absolutely. You just haven't identified what it is in.

[Kumagoro]

Science is not for proving the non existance of something.

Why do you have so much need to believe in a god!

You cant prove to someone indoctrinated, why believing in a god is a waste of time,
their ears are already closed they will believe anything, they have been conditioned to...

The great teapot told me so you know.

Also I have a story of coincidence,

My grandad while out night fishing on a pier. dropped his door keys half way along and
they went inbetween the wood and into the sea. As he had no key he stayed out fishing
all night.
Several hours later he got a bite, reeled it in and lifted out a crab with
his keys on its claw/legs.

Witnessed by 3 other people.

[Agent]

On one hand are the photo sensitive cells, on the other is the eyeball. There is no middle state, or evidence of a middle state anywhere in a natural history. There are multiple forms of eyeball, of course, peculiar to each species, but each functions fully. There are no species with 'half-formed' eyeballs, other than Long John Silver and his cronies.

The problem with issuing statements such as "There are no species with 'half-formed' eyeballs" is that it only relates to the current time (or even the past if your not up to date with the news ).
Go back in history and you could have said the same thing, only substituting "eye" with almost anything, as links had not been discovered.


Either way, I don’t care about God, I don’t care about ID and I don’t care in what religion other people want to believe in.
I don’t accept either, but I don’t discard either.
I don’t care why I am here, or how I got here. I’m more interested in enjoying the time I have here. Even if I lived until im 100, it’s still not that long in the scheme of things.

There is a nice little passage from “the hichhichers guide to the galaxy” which springs to mind:

Now it is such a bizarrely impossible coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The arguement goes something like this:
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," say Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't though of that" and promply vanishes in a puff of logic.

Of course, you can substitute the Babel fish for anything of which we have no current explanation for.

Im honest to myself and admit that even if someone provided me with solid evidence of either, I would still question it. Safe in the knowledge that its highly unlikely that I will ever have this ‘evidence’ presented to me, I don’t worry about it. Im too busy trying to enjoy life

[yamangman]

lol - you KNOW something to be true without believing it to be true

Yes. Probably where the difference is. I don't hope you to expect ever to understand, for someone who has 'heard' god for 25 years, and nor I you.

[Stevo]

I find that arguments like this are not about who is right, it's about who is better at arguing their point.
Also on a forum like this it is very easy to make each other look like idiots. If your really interested in arguing a point then ask someone on a personal basis.
Quoting "proof" proves nothing either, did you know 70% of all statistics are false? 50% of people know this.
I personally know what I believe and as far as i'm concerned nothing anyone says will convince me otherwise, a lot of you i'm sure feel the same way.

[obvious]

Of course, atheists are religious by definition as they have a belief system that does not depend on evidence. If I had to adopt a label it would be agnostic/humanist. Scientific rigour is the best approach (unless something better comes along ).

I find faith based indoctrination of children abhorrent. Schools should cover religion as part of a wider 'social studies' type curriculum, not forcing children to chant brainwashing religious mantras at every assembly.

I hear the death knoll of religion - or maybe it's just wishful thinking.

[Stevo]

Ok then so its not ok to tell children about a God who many adults believe in. But it is ok to tell children about a nice chap called santa who we all know doesn't exisit?

[obvious]

Santa is a funny magical fantasy that gets comprehensively debunked as a child grows up. There is no comparison......unless of course you are a santa worshipper?

[TeePee]

There is a comparison. Smart children stop believing in Jesus when they find out their parents lied to them about Santa.

[obvious]

There is a comparison. Smart children stop believing in Jesus when they find out their parents lied to them about Santa.

[fuddam]

I find that arguments like this are not about who is right, it's about who is better at arguing their point.
Also on a forum like this it is very easy to make each other look like idiots. If your really interested in arguing a point then ask someone on a personal basis.
Quoting "proof" proves nothing either, did you know 70% of all statistics are false? 50% of people know this.
I personally know what I believe and as far as i'm concerned nothing anyone says will convince me otherwise, a lot of you i'm sure feel the same way.

uh-oh.............................you've brought a logical, sensible approach into this discussion

now what will we do?



think I'll go prune my knees

*wanders off*