There will be glitches in my transition from being a saloon bar sage to a world statesman. - Tony Banks
Religion is ... "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children."
Holy texts ... "contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre."
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of the idea. John Ciardi
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of the idea. John Ciardi
[ flickr ]
A good example of this is the change from the Old Testament to the New Testament. It's fairly clear that the NT view of the universe is heavily influenced by Greek philosophy and is quite different in feel to the OT. This enabled the religion to spread out of the Middle East and into the larger Greek influenced area.Originally posted by Ashok Mash:
they are born in some corner of the world, they evolve and mature
There will be glitches in my transition from being a saloon bar sage to a world statesman. - Tony Banks
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Originally posted by Tony Alicea:
... it's the Constitution.
However, the separation of state and religion in the Foundation of our country was intended to protect the state from religion and its fanatics.
JavaBeginnersFaq
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift; that's why they call it the present." Eleanor Roosevelt
There will be glitches in my transition from being a saloon bar sage to a world statesman. - Tony Banks
Originally posted by Dave Lenton:
Its interesting that in the US there is a constitutional separation between church and state, but at the same time politicians often use religious statements in their campaigning, and in some cases religion becomes a factor taken into account when voting.
MCSD, SCJP, SCWCD, SCBCD, SCJD (in progress - URLybird 1.2.1)
This would be true if we look at everything in the universe in a binary way - as either proven fact or disproved.Originally posted by stephen gates:
Why is this an issue? Because the same reason people condmemn Religious fanatics of being thick headed and unrealistic are the same things you can accuse Engineers and Scientist's of. Your way or the highway as they say.
There will be glitches in my transition from being a saloon bar sage to a world statesman. - Tony Banks
Fact was Pluto used to be a planet. Fact is it no longer is....Yeah facts are facts as long as somebody else doesn't come along with more money, more power, more intelligence and change what everybody believes and thinks are fact.
Originally posted by Paul Sturrock:
I'd urge anyone who has time on their hands and an interest in this to read Hume's "Dialogues concerning Natural Religion". Whether you are religious or not there has been no better discussion of this stuff ever written.
There will be glitches in my transition from being a saloon bar sage to a world statesman. - Tony Banks
Originally posted by stephen gates:
Fact was Pluto used to be a planet. Fact is it no longer is. Fact is there were other planets that are no longer Planets.. Yeah facts are facts as long as somebody else doesn't come along with more money, more power, more intelligence and change what everybody believes and thinks are fact.
Fact is there used to be 4 major oceans. There are now 5 major oceans. Fact is nobody knows how Earth was really created, they just have theories.
Yeah there are certain things that should always remain facts. But in reality, that is rarely the case. What is a fact today might be considered ridiculous tomorrow.
Why is this an issue? Because the same reason people condmemn Religious fanatics of being thick headed and unrealistic are the same things you can accuse Engineers and Scientist's of. Your way or the highway as they say.
Originally posted by stephen gates:
There are certain things that are "facts" but then again, We've barely visited the depth of the Ocean's, we've barely visited Space, and one day maybe certain "facts" change because of new found realities or new found political agenda's.
Right now Global Warming is the big thing. You have one side claiming the end of the world as we know it. You have another side claiming it's all BS. But the reality is, both sides are Scientist's who claim these things. What is fact and what isn't? It depends what side of the story you believe.
[ May 15, 2007: Message edited by: stephen gates ]
Originally posted by stephen gates:
You say Evolution is closer to fact than religion. Somebody else will say How did we go from dinosaurs to humans? Nobody knows what's evolved. For all intensive purposes humans as we know it don't seem to go back past 10,000 years.
It depends what you mean by "caveman". If you mean Neanderthals, then yes, most likely we did not evolve from them, but early humans would have lived in caves as well.Yeah "cavemen" might, but then again new scientific evidence suggests humans' today did not evolve from those "cavemen."
Absolutely, neither are certain. However we can look at the balance of evidence. There is a lot of evidence which suggests where humans evolved and what our predecessors were like. There is very little evidence that God exists. To me this implies that evolution is quite likely to be true, and God is quite unlikely to be true.Like I said. Can we prove if there is a God? No. But can we prove where Human's really came or evolved from? No.
There will be glitches in my transition from being a saloon bar sage to a world statesman. - Tony Banks
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of the idea. John Ciardi
If you are not laughing at yourself, then you just didn't get the joke.
"I'm not back." - Bill Harding, Twister
Originally posted by Arun Kumarr:
Consider this thought.
When communication was not that easy like it is today, when there was no international calls, no ships, no sea travel, no internet, when people hardly knew if people existed in other parts of the world, when hindus dint know about a religion called christianity, when muslims didn't know about jainism, Every single person believed about a supreme power, something like GOD to exist and controlling the threads of anything and everything. How's that possible. Is GOD a personification of the fears which humans had? Fears like lightning, earthquake, volcano etc., How did GOD himself evolve as an entity among different cultures, when they don't even know that there are different cultures existing in this world.
any rationale?
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
"Thanks to Indian media who has over the period of time swiped out intellectual taste from mass Indian population." - Chetan Parekh
Originally posted by George Harris:
If you are Atheist did you lose your faith or were you never religious?
[ flickr ]
There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors
There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors
Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
Arun, how can you be sure that "every single person believed about a supreme power, something like GOD to exist"? Sounds a little exaggerated to me; we can't possibly know that. Various Greek philosophers expressed considerable skepticism over the existence of gods, for example. However belief in some sort of supreme power was pretty widespread, true.
But, just because most Hindus did not know about Christians and vice versa does not mean that no communication took place. The Roman Empire traded with India, for example. Even in cases where no direct communication took place, most societies have at least some people who talk to some of their neighbors, who in turn talk to other neighbors, etc. And thus, ideas can spread. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but they spread. In fact the very languages we speak are evidence of this - there are many ties between European languages and Indian languages such as Sanskrit. Surely if the very words we speak were transmitted from one location to another that far in the past, the idea of gods could be as well?
If you are not laughing at yourself, then you just didn't get the joke.
Originally posted by Arun Kumarr:
But every stupid thing which was believed in those days was disproved in the later time. GOD was the only belief which has stood the test of time.
Did you see how Paul cut 87% off of his electric heat bill with 82 watts of micro heaters? |