All I'm saying is that if someone says "I believe in God" and then goes about murdering people, one must wonder what God he professes belief in, whether that belief is true, or whether his idea of God is completely different from normal, sane people.
Last time I checked, genocide was a sin...
What is your stance on the crusades, jihad and "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"?
Hitler's regime murdered priests, nuns, monks, pretty much anyone that defied the State. The tendency for any dictator is to try and stamp out religion because it is a competitive source of power - especially when that dictator considers himself a deity of sorts. Hitler was no exception. The image you posted is an example of Hitler attempting to twist religion to support his regime.
He mentions Yahweh in Mein Kampf and multiple times during nearly all of his speeches. His soldiers swore allegiance to Yahweh and had "GOTT MIT UNS" on every soldier's belt.
I think it would take quite a leap of faith to believe that Hitler didn't subscribe to Yahweh.
With that said, I'm not interested in point scoring with historical figures.
When you have 2 newbies in your team, you have nothing to do to win the battle. I could say the game is decided in the first 5 min. The team which controls the rich minerals and gets to destroy the scvs from the other team during the first 3 min, have already won the game.
I concur. Any suggestions? I want the income to remain under total player control. I was thinking of just removing the gold mineral field entirely (so there would be 4 fields total), though I'm open to other ideas.
everyone is religious weather you like it or not, Religion, like noted is a set of beliefs, you dont have to believe in god to believe. if you did, then your life what suck at every turn.
And the reason why Christians, Muslims, Jews, get infuriated when you talk about their god is because they love him, and they learn to love him, because your going to love the Person, or entity that you turn to in the times of Crises its as simple as that.
Religion isnt the reason your mommy didnt love you Eiviyn :D just kidding about that though, but seriously, you cant blame Religion for everything, Religion is a set of beliefs nothing more, Weather you like it or not YOU ARE RELIGIOUS!!! Atheist are religious Not in the Theism sense, but in the sense of you believe that there is no god.
Perhaps if you know my values better than I do, you'd be better off arguing with a mirror?
How you draw the causality to religious superstition is beyond me. Do you honestly believe that if religion hadn't existed at all, we wouldn't have had these problems? Or that different problems of the same scope wouldn't have arisen? If the bible hadn't preached any kind of homophobia, do you think the problem would have been non-existant? If the bible hadn't preached any kind of female subjugation, do you think all females would've lived as free equals to men from the dawn of mankind?
The best example you offered is still that 'witch hunt' article from a couple of topics ago. Let me ask you again; do you honestly think that if religion had never existed, those two folks would have never murdered anybody and be completely fine and upstanding individuals? Yes, religion has a ROLE in all of these instances, but that doesn't make it the cause. PEOPLE are the cause. Like I said multiple times, religion is what you make of it. If I choose to believe in a god and proceed to murder everyone who doesn't believe in my personal god, that makes me a moron, not my religion stupid. If this were untrue, we could assume that religion, as the 'cause' of these evils, makes anybody able to commit them. Which would mean that any upstanding citizen, upon convertion to Christianity, would suddenly become more likely to commit murder than before.
The whole ordeal just doesn't make sense to begin with. The number of Christians in the world has only been on the rise since the 1500's, yet violence has gone down, and 'holy wars' have lessened to nearly the point of extinction. If religion is what causes men to murder, how do you explain this? I do so through stating that our morals as a whole have shifted, not our belief in God.
The only correlation I really see is that 'stupid' people (or rather, 'people capable of murder') are more easily drawn to radical causes because of their state of mind. Or in a nutshell; people who are stupid (or rather 'capable of murder') to begin with are also the ones more prone to believe in lies, making religion not a cause of their violence, but rather a hint to their state of mind.
Only a politician could write half a page of text and not address a single point.
You're just throwing links of people committing crimes and citing religion.
Let me remind you of my examples.
1) Preservation of Polio
2) Subjugation of women
3) Denial of contraception
4) Propagation of Homophobia
5) Opposition to stem cell research, therefore preventing life-saving derivatives
6) Opposition of cloning, therefore preventing life-saving derivatives (cloned organ transplant)
Which of those is "people committing crimes and citing religion"? I've even numbered them so that the seemingly 8 seconds of time you warrant to my posts can be well spent by simply replying with a number.
These are real issues in today's world who's sole causality is religious superstition.
How you draw the above to "people who have murdered for silly causes" is... rather beyond me.
I don't recall stating I was an atheist nor that I deny the possibility of a god.
Science operates on probabilities and observations. The probability of there being a god is not 0 nor 1. It would be profoundly unscientific of me to state that there are no gods, just as I view anyone who knows that a god exist as unscientific.
As for science being used to prove science, that's simply not true. Any hypothesis must draw on observable facts before a conclusion is drawn.
The cake analogy is just plain unfair. Firstly, cakes don't breed other cakes with slightly different qualities per each generation. Secondly, in this context, your "baker" is your mother. We are discussing a designer here, not the "baker". I don't really see how your example is relevant.
As for the section on apathy, good science is communicative science. I'm a million miles from Dawkins, but I can do my part. I listen to religious debates, and they all have one thing in common; a fundamental misunderstanding of the science they are abusing. While I don't think I could achieve much on a forum, nor convert a single person even if I had a wider audience, I can at least try to explain the misunderstandings.
Of course they do. You included. Luck and chance and randomness. That is your God.
Destiny, Intelligent design, purpose. The God of the bible.
I'm not sure what you expect to achieve by telling me what I do and don't believe. "Your god" also says the Earth is held up by pillars (Samuel 2:8) but I wouldn't accuse anyone of believing such nonsense.
Gene mutation is random. Bad mutations are expunged.
lol, So god couldn't have made a self evolving species? if anything your statement furthers religious argument. It says god flooded the earth to rid of a species that was living at the time, nope that couldn't be possible?, OH WAIT Cro-Magnon were wiped out mysteriously and the current humans took over after that.
What God did was write the code for everything(he wanted) , and then he hit the COMPILE button, and it executed without error.
The human eye is wired backwards and upside down and requires an enormous amount of brainpower to edit out the veins that criss-cross over the top of your eye's photo-receptors (which, for some bizarre reason, point away from the light). Sounds rather erroneous to me.
Do you know what impossible miraculous chances/odds it is for you and us to be here today?. Have you the slightest idea?
A man is taken to be executed. He sees the firing squad before him; 99 of the best marksmen clad with rifles. His mask is pulled over his eyes, and he is thrust against the wall.
With a sudden bang, he hears the shots go off. To his surprise, he feels no impact. How can 99 elite marksmen miss?
He removes his mask in bewilderment, only to see that there were 100 prisoners.
If you seeded life in every crevice of the universe, we would still be alone in this solar system at least, because this is the only place capable of supporting us. We are here because we cannot exist anywhere else. You would not be here to contemplate this if life had originated, and perished, on Venus. The probability of us being here is 1. This is the anthropic principle.
How the moon was formed, how water was created on the planet
I'm not really sure how moon formation nor water formation lend clause to a designer. They're both extremely common occurrences. If moons or water were unique to Earth, I might agree, but they're very, very much not.
Furthermore the most common elements of this universe are hydrogen and oxygen (disregarding Helium because it's inert). Does it then really surprise you that water forms?
the formation of protein and DNA?. Ive studied and researched all of that(among other things). Everything just points toward intelligent design, its almost impossible to think otherwise.
I'm a biochemist. You're in my ballpark now, welcome.
I could write a thesis on this, but I'm going to ask you a simple question instead. If your DNA is designed, why then do you retain all the genetic information of your whole ancestry, right back to fish?
DNA is quite possibly the most conclusive proof of evolution. You should be extremely careful about using it to support creationism.
Can you really say chance/randomness/luck is the reason for everything?. And what is chance/randomness/luck then?. You have more faith than me then in your belief if you think that.
I haven't read the full thing, but that doesn't mean I don't know the things that are in there (as per your mention, heavy/ridiculous punishments on non-offenses like homosexualism). You're missing my point, though. The bible should come with a big sign saying 'READERS DISCRETION ADVICED'. You can be a Christian and view the bible as 'God's word' without clinging to every sentence in it as the absolute truth.
The way in which you are attempting to link religion to pointless bloodshed is just wrong. Earlier today I watched an episode of Spartacus: Vengeance in which multiple men get slaughtered in a bloody way. Does this mean I should go out and slaughter people because I enjoy the series? No. The right way to treat Spartacus is to take from it what you can in terms of enjoyment and knowledge as long as it is within reason. Religion works the same way. You read the bible, embrace 'god' and live by the rules it states. This does not mean you are supposed to take EVERYTHING literally and cling to EVERY SINGLE LINE OF TEXT. If you do that, ANYTHING can cause bloodshed. People who think this way have FAR larger problems than religion, which I've been dubbing stupidity over the course of this discussion.
I give you sources
I cite atrocities such as preservation of polio and denial of contraception
I reference religion's prolific role in promoting homophobia, slavery and subjugation of women
I quote religious leaders empowering poverty
I highlight wars over who's way of praying to Yahweh is the best
And these are just what is going on today in the name of "god"
All I get in return is apologies, "You can't think of it that way", "You don't understand it" and "You're just wrong".
It's time we, as a species, grew out of this violent, bigoted and arrogant nonsense.
maturation in mankind's understanding of the relationship between God and His people.
This sentence interests me. Most of the edits to the bible were removal of content. While physical edits ended at the King James edition, subsequent discarding of biblical laws has continued throughout the decades.
Even in this century alone, we have seen biblical stances on homosexuality, slavery and women's rights discarded and replaced by "amoral" secularist values.
Now, assuming you accept the above, I propose to you;
How much of the bible do you believe will be left after another 1k years?
What the pope's quote is, is a stupid claim by a stupid man. People should recognize it as such. If they don't, the cause of that is their own stupidity, not the fact that they also believe in a deity. The only way I could possibly call religion as a whole 'bad' is in that it is a method that can be used for evil. That said, Weinberg's quote makes no sense.
I gave you quite a nice list of current evil acts perpetuated by today's religion, and all you did was apologise for the Pope.
I'm curious, have you actually read the bible? I recommend starting with Leviticus.
While I'm sure you're already typing "But they're metaphors!"; just go ahead and read it. All of it. I'd be entertained if you retained this "bible neutrality" attitude after actually reading the holy book of the faith you're defending.
Don't be insulting. Many of the things you listed are still hot-button issues over which there is no clear moral delineation for society at large.
Your response also betrays a severe lack of understanding about what religion actually is. It is not some powerful man dictating a series of orders to zombie followers. It is a relationship between a worshiper and the Divine.
And therein lies the problem. There are many "divines", and all are mutually exclusive. Ireland is the prime credence to this, with kinsmen quite willing to slaughter their neighbour's children because of what brand of Christianity they believe in.
Looking further afield, Islam has it's fair share of complications down to disagreements over Muhammad's rightful heir (which tends to resort to brutalization rather than discussion), and the Palestine issue over the Jewish "divine" having promised Jerusalem to them, while the Islamic "divine" quite clearly lays claim to the same place.
These are today's examples. This is in today's world, and there are today's people suffering and paying the ultimate price for what deity they subscribe to.
As for not understanding religion, I don't think you really believe that.
The Catholic church has had good popes and bad popes throughout history. A pope is merely a man with a very special responsibility. He is not the sum total of all Christian attitudes and beliefs. The pope can commit sins and is not exempt from Divine punishment.
Unfortunately, regardless of your opinion, his word has real power. The cure for poverty has always been empowerment of women, and this is something the Pope is very much against. Women's rights, specifically choosing when and how often to give birth, have been shown in study after study to drastically reduce poverty. I can source this a thousand times over if you wish.
Subjugation of women and denial of contraception are the pope's "gift" to Africa, and frankly, I'm disgusted. You can claim he is a sinner all you like, but his word resonates throughout the whole Christian world, and it is actions that count here, not words.
Your "witch trials" link is a joke. Some crazy people kill a kid and claim it was religiously motivated, so you use that as an example of all religious people. That's about as narrow-minded as racism. You might as well call all black people stupid because those involved in the drowning were black and couldn't tell that what they were doing was wrong.
Not just a kid; their own flesh and blood. And not just any witch trial, but one that happened here in the first world; this year.
It's commonplace far more in 3rd world countries, where ritualistic slaughter of a "witch" daughter should a family's precious son die is regarded as saving family honour.
You take aim at a pope for calling condoms more wicked than AIDS. The reason he said this is one of morality: The use of a condom is a deliberate sinful act, while the contraction of AIDS (a disease) is not a sin.
I'm... more than a little dumbfounded as to how condoms are "sinful", and rather question who's side "morality" is really on when you deny a tool to control birth rates; a proven tool in the arsenal to counter poverty.
Your response suggests that you have an almost superstitious cynicism with regards to religion and religious people.
I just oppose any ideology that brandishes truths to a point where man is willing to brutalize man over who's truth is divine.
That's even ignoring recent events like religion's role in preserving Polio, the cause of 56mil deaths per year, since Polio is Yahweh's creation and all.
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What is your stance on the crusades, jihad and "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"?
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He mentions Yahweh in Mein Kampf and multiple times during nearly all of his speeches. His soldiers swore allegiance to Yahweh and had "GOTT MIT UNS" on every soldier's belt.
I think it would take quite a leap of faith to believe that Hitler didn't subscribe to Yahweh.
With that said, I'm not interested in point scoring with historical figures.
0
I concur. Any suggestions? I want the income to remain under total player control. I was thinking of just removing the gold mineral field entirely (so there would be 4 fields total), though I'm open to other ideas.
I'm thinking this;
http://i.imgur.com/Zqy73.jpg
With the whole thing arranged in a circle. No golds.
Will try it when I've finished the zerg ship.
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Truth hurts.
Kinda curious who taught you history. Conservapedia?
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Perhaps if you know my values better than I do, you'd be better off arguing with a mirror?
0
Only a politician could write half a page of text and not address a single point.
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Let me remind you of my examples.
1) Preservation of Polio
2) Subjugation of women
3) Denial of contraception
4) Propagation of Homophobia
5) Opposition to stem cell research, therefore preventing life-saving derivatives
6) Opposition of cloning, therefore preventing life-saving derivatives (cloned organ transplant)
Which of those is "people committing crimes and citing religion"? I've even numbered them so that the seemingly 8 seconds of time you warrant to my posts can be well spent by simply replying with a number.
These are real issues in today's world who's sole causality is religious superstition.
How you draw the above to "people who have murdered for silly causes" is... rather beyond me.
0
Yeah, I noticed. It's all your posts seem to be. "Religion is an innocent tool and you are wrong".
I'm arguing that religion predisposes mentally healthy individuals to commit grievous or illogical acts in the name of their subscribed deity.
0
@EternalWraith: Go
I don't recall stating I was an atheist nor that I deny the possibility of a god.
Science operates on probabilities and observations. The probability of there being a god is not 0 nor 1. It would be profoundly unscientific of me to state that there are no gods, just as I view anyone who knows that a god exist as unscientific.
As for science being used to prove science, that's simply not true. Any hypothesis must draw on observable facts before a conclusion is drawn.
The cake analogy is just plain unfair. Firstly, cakes don't breed other cakes with slightly different qualities per each generation. Secondly, in this context, your "baker" is your mother. We are discussing a designer here, not the "baker". I don't really see how your example is relevant.
As for the section on apathy, good science is communicative science. I'm a million miles from Dawkins, but I can do my part. I listen to religious debates, and they all have one thing in common; a fundamental misunderstanding of the science they are abusing. While I don't think I could achieve much on a forum, nor convert a single person even if I had a wider audience, I can at least try to explain the misunderstandings.
You are absolutely free to do that, but know that science does not need any god to operate.
I'm not sure what you expect to achieve by telling me what I do and don't believe. "Your god" also says the Earth is held up by pillars (Samuel 2:8) but I wouldn't accuse anyone of believing such nonsense.
Gene mutation is random. Bad mutations are expunged.
I'm sure they will, because the human mind is hardwired to reject opposing input to pre-existing ideas. Unfortunate really.
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You misunderstand.
A god could have orchestrated evolution, yes.
However evolution removes the need for one.
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The human eye is wired backwards and upside down and requires an enormous amount of brainpower to edit out the veins that criss-cross over the top of your eye's photo-receptors (which, for some bizarre reason, point away from the light). Sounds rather erroneous to me.
A man is taken to be executed. He sees the firing squad before him; 99 of the best marksmen clad with rifles. His mask is pulled over his eyes, and he is thrust against the wall.
With a sudden bang, he hears the shots go off. To his surprise, he feels no impact. How can 99 elite marksmen miss?
He removes his mask in bewilderment, only to see that there were 100 prisoners.
If you seeded life in every crevice of the universe, we would still be alone in this solar system at least, because this is the only place capable of supporting us. We are here because we cannot exist anywhere else. You would not be here to contemplate this if life had originated, and perished, on Venus. The probability of us being here is 1. This is the anthropic principle.
I'm not really sure how moon formation nor water formation lend clause to a designer. They're both extremely common occurrences. If moons or water were unique to Earth, I might agree, but they're very, very much not.
Furthermore the most common elements of this universe are hydrogen and oxygen (disregarding Helium because it's inert). Does it then really surprise you that water forms?
I'm a biochemist. You're in my ballpark now, welcome.
I could write a thesis on this, but I'm going to ask you a simple question instead. If your DNA is designed, why then do you retain all the genetic information of your whole ancestry, right back to fish?
DNA is quite possibly the most conclusive proof of evolution. You should be extremely careful about using it to support creationism.
No respectable scientist on Earth thinks that.
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I give you sources
I cite atrocities such as preservation of polio and denial of contraception
I reference religion's prolific role in promoting homophobia, slavery and subjugation of women
I quote religious leaders empowering poverty
I highlight wars over who's way of praying to Yahweh is the best
And these are just what is going on today in the name of "god"
All I get in return is apologies, "You can't think of it that way", "You don't understand it" and "You're just wrong".
It's time we, as a species, grew out of this violent, bigoted and arrogant nonsense.
Sigh...
0
This sentence interests me. Most of the edits to the bible were removal of content. While physical edits ended at the King James edition, subsequent discarding of biblical laws has continued throughout the decades.
Even in this century alone, we have seen biblical stances on homosexuality, slavery and women's rights discarded and replaced by "amoral" secularist values.
Now, assuming you accept the above, I propose to you;
How much of the bible do you believe will be left after another 1k years?
0
I gave you quite a nice list of current evil acts perpetuated by today's religion, and all you did was apologise for the Pope.
I'm curious, have you actually read the bible? I recommend starting with Leviticus.
While I'm sure you're already typing "But they're metaphors!"; just go ahead and read it. All of it. I'd be entertained if you retained this "bible neutrality" attitude after actually reading the holy book of the faith you're defending.
0
And therein lies the problem. There are many "divines", and all are mutually exclusive. Ireland is the prime credence to this, with kinsmen quite willing to slaughter their neighbour's children because of what brand of Christianity they believe in.
Looking further afield, Islam has it's fair share of complications down to disagreements over Muhammad's rightful heir (which tends to resort to brutalization rather than discussion), and the Palestine issue over the Jewish "divine" having promised Jerusalem to them, while the Islamic "divine" quite clearly lays claim to the same place.
These are today's examples. This is in today's world, and there are today's people suffering and paying the ultimate price for what deity they subscribe to.
As for not understanding religion, I don't think you really believe that.
Unfortunately, regardless of your opinion, his word has real power. The cure for poverty has always been empowerment of women, and this is something the Pope is very much against. Women's rights, specifically choosing when and how often to give birth, have been shown in study after study to drastically reduce poverty. I can source this a thousand times over if you wish.
Subjugation of women and denial of contraception are the pope's "gift" to Africa, and frankly, I'm disgusted. You can claim he is a sinner all you like, but his word resonates throughout the whole Christian world, and it is actions that count here, not words.
Not just a kid; their own flesh and blood. And not just any witch trial, but one that happened here in the first world; this year.
It's commonplace far more in 3rd world countries, where ritualistic slaughter of a "witch" daughter should a family's precious son die is regarded as saving family honour.
I'm... more than a little dumbfounded as to how condoms are "sinful", and rather question who's side "morality" is really on when you deny a tool to control birth rates; a proven tool in the arsenal to counter poverty.
I just oppose any ideology that brandishes truths to a point where man is willing to brutalize man over who's truth is divine.
That's even ignoring recent events like religion's role in preserving Polio, the cause of 56mil deaths per year, since Polio is Yahweh's creation and all.