I think religion has many more uses than simply to explain the unexplained like "the sun and moon rising". A belief in deity in general which, as I understand is what athiesm denies, is more useful than finding an easy out for unanswered questions. It can get you thinking about things most people take for granted, your general philosophical questions. It can also be a great way to get rich or start a war but honestly do any of you athiests beleive we wouldn't have war, genocide, greed, or any of the other wonderful things done behind a veil of religion if there was no religion? IMO most wars are started over money/land regardless of what the masses involved choose to believe. Also I think some of the posters so far seem to misunderstand what science really is and how it works. Science has no interest in explaining or unexplaining god. One particular school of science that gets mentioned a lot in religious debate is history. While history may disprove the occasional story from the bible it does not usually set out for this purpose, to do so is to throw out the scientific method and come to a conclusion before the research is finished. Physics and Astronomy are another fun pair. Astronomy and physics study and build up empirical knowledge about the universe and its behavior, they don't ever even attempt to explain WHY it's here or where it may all have started. The Big Bang theory is still just a theory that may be proven or disproven in the course of our lives, but lets pretend its fact since so many believe in it. It basically states that there was a singular point of mass and energy that was so contracted it exploded into the universe creating stars etc. over an extremely long span of time. It never even tries to ask why. It never attempts to explain where the mass and energy came from in the first place or where the vast emptiness of the universe it exploded into came from either. Whenever anyone actually tries to think about these things they will eventually come to a mental barrier where they simply cannot think about it any further without just making something up. Infinity and omniscience are good examples of this sort of unthinkable concept and is what the idea of deity imo supplies a solution for. Your mind is not infinite and so you cannot concieve of true infinity. For example calculate Pi in your head and don't stop till you reach the point of infinity. A lot of the ideas about god in the first place seem to come from the way we think about things. The duality of our thought process. If there is good there must be bad. If there is finite there must be infinite, if there is a limit to our conciousness then there must be unlimited conciousness out there. I don't neccessarily think these things are true but it is the way humans seem to think about things and it is the kind of thought process that science should be careful not to follow. Yet I see many here saying if the christian bible has been proven wrong then god doesn't exist. It is just as silly of a jump of logic as anything else. God is a word that to me signifies the unknown. Something more than we are capable of. The idea of universe and god are very similar actually. The universe is still a hypothetical. It is a term we use to describe ALL THINGS when of course we really don't know with objective fact that the universe behaves like the parts we know of at all or if there really is even such a thing as everything, it might go on forever. Same is true with god. If there is order to all things then we should think there must be an orderer if there is an effect such as the big bang then their must be a cause. God=cause universe=effect. Might not be true but at least its a better definition of God than old dude in the sky who makes puppies and old ladies die. I personally think Carlin is right but thats another post... Science is knowledge that can be determined from observation and on further observation that knowledge can and is sometimes proven to be wrong, philosophy and religion culturally fill in the gaps and give the why did it happen answer for the scientific how it happened. The trick with both science and religion is of course humans who care nothing for knowledge twist it to fit their own, usually power hungry, goals and by the time its all said and done the knowledge is all gone and the "facts" are really just what everyone agreed to and not really true in any sense of the word. I personally think science is all about thinking we a right as long as it works until we fall down and find out we were wrong and religion is all about taking the unkown and perhaps unknowable and putting it into a box with a big label on it so we can pretend we are smarter than we really are.
it's all bullshit. who cares. just another ploy to live your life according to someone else's standards. take pride in yourself and live your life the way you see it fit to be lived. if that involves a religion then hooray to you. but don't preach to me about how you think that i should live my life. it's my choice, not yours.
huh...god ain't no scientist...He's the ALL KNOWING....his knowledge is infinite...people these days don't believe in god because they don't believe the miracles that happened. The things they should understand is that GOD CAN DO ANYTHING! science cannot disapprove god (only in their minds because our knowledge is no where compared to Gods). Knowledge Stats: Humans = Limited GOD = Infinite
'Might' is a big word, the fact remains that the earth in its form was perfect for mankind and there is no evidence of life elsewhere. Astronauts have expressed the fact that looking into space there is no other planet with the beauty of planet earth and maybe this is no coincidence. To me life as the result of an intelligent creator makes far more sense than all of these things happening by chance. 'Bacteria-like' substances are not life, nor is there any indication that they could become the jet-propelled octopus, the humming bird or the human being. None of us know for sure if there is life on any other planet or not, personally I doubt it and that is because of what I read in the bible, coupled with the lack of other evidence. That is of course true, the creation of man was only required once, from there it became a matter of procreation with the 'miracle' of the conception, growth and birth of an offspring. Of course it only takes one sperm to fertilise an egg. Lol, then I'll research some historical facts for you later in the day. No surprises then.
God is the Greatest. People these days try to disapprove god by using science lol amazing! but science cannot compete with god hehe...I wonder why some people say that don't mix science with religion and its all true...Science can answer things but not everything...science can have Theories but not facts unless proven...
Good point, the proponents of evolution or science before God fail to take note that many of the teachings they follow are just that ... theories, yet they accuse believers in God of being 'unreal'!
That is a very ignorant statement. I suggest you follow stOx's advice asap. Bacteria are very much alive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory#Science In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it can in everyday speech. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations that is predictive, logical and testable. In principle, scientific theories are always tentative, and subject to corrections or inclusion in a yet wider theory. Commonly, a large number of more specific hypotheses may be logically bound together by just one or two theories. As a general rule for use of the term, theories tend to deal with much broader sets of universals than do hypotheses, which ordinarily deal with much more specific sets of phenomena or specific applications of a theory.
Even if I accept that a possibilty, what is the probabilty of that man seeing a dream that he would make recovery on thursday and he does?
Quite high. In fact, I would think that it's more likely that someone would have a dream about him than not. If i thought someone i knew was about to die i would expect to dream about them a lot. You aren't basing your faith on evidence, You are trying to find evidence for your faith. And as a result you try to credit god with a load of things that are likely to have simple explanations.
When dealing with someone who has a scientific understanding comparable to a child... Yes, I think it is the best i can do. If you can't even understand evolution there is little hope of having any kind of reasonable adult discussion with you. Go read the bible and stay out of modern day mans way, You are primitive and holding us all back.
So you would be ok with being called a "woman", "gay", "pussy", "woosy", "old fart" etc..?? Same thing isn't it?? Col