Author Topic: Religion Discussion  (Read 57819 times)

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Offline Hayleia

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #60 on: May 22, 2013, 08:42:09 am »
Ok. So then this can be said:
"How was the world created?"
"It wasn't. End of story."
No need for God then.

Note: I am still not saying "don't believe in God", you believe in anything you want. I just say that God is a possibility but only a possibility among others, maybe there is a God, maybe not, maybe there are two Gods, I don't know :P
That is right, and that is why I stated:
This is not at all proof of a God-- this would be like saying, "if wizards existed, they could perform magic, so therefor magic must exist" without proving that wizards exist.
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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #61 on: May 22, 2013, 09:09:06 am »
I'd just like to congratulate everyone on getting to 5 pages without a flame war. :)

I think this prove we really can have a religious debate without going off the deep end.

Also, if this thread does start to develop into a flame war, could the offending posts be removed instead of locking the whole topic?



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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #62 on: May 22, 2013, 09:11:31 am »
We did get trolling before page 5, though, but again only two people noticed it on page 4 after I gave hints on OmnomIRC. :P

But yeah I agree that offending posts should be removed (although not deleted, just moved to a separate, locked thread in spam, maybe merged with other religion debates there)
« Last Edit: May 22, 2013, 09:12:47 am by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Hayleia

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #63 on: May 22, 2013, 09:13:27 am »
I'd just like to congratulate everyone on getting to 5 pages without a flame war. :)

I think this prove we really can have a religious debate without going off the deep end.
True this. I think the main reason for that is that for once the debate is in its own topic and not derailing another one, which already upsets the topic starter but also pushes people to try to convince everyone quickly to end the off topic as soon as possible, which obviously doesn't lead to a calm discussion :)
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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #64 on: May 22, 2013, 09:47:55 am »
Well, to me it seems illogic to think that the world had no origin and was always there.
A God is a lot more plausible to me, since He doesn't have to bend to the rules of physics and therefore also doesn't have to be created.
(Imagine a programmer making an AI on his calculator :P)

The thing is, it's so obvious to me that there's a BRAIN behind almost everything. And when you look at it that way, start reading the Bible it all starts making a LOT OF sense.


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Offline mdr1

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #65 on: May 22, 2013, 10:34:37 am »
In order for me to believe something, I require evidence; that's just how my mind works.
See my answer:
Really? So you have to believe in very few things. And you're doing as Pierre did. But since you need to believe to get the hard evidence in you, you're on an impasse.


I would not say that evolution and Christianity are equal in that they both are believed in by faith. Evolution is not blind faith; there is massive support and evidence for it.
Fine, evolution is a theory, but people often misinterpret "theory" for just a guess. A scientific theory actually very comprehensive and is tested and confirmed repeatedly. There is tons of evidence for evolution that can be seen in both living and dead creatures.
Religions are also confirmed in the time. The real difference between science and religions is that sciences are practiced with the brain, and religions with the heart.

Also, theists frequently say that there must be a first cause to start everything, so therefore it must be God.
Even if there is some supernatural creator to set the universe in motion, how do you know that it is the Christian god? It could be any other supernatural being.
I also find that this is somewhat saying, "Science doesn't know, therefore God."
If we don't know something, it isn't very reasonable to conclude that it must be because of God. I'd instead rather search harder and attempt to find an explanation that can actually be supported.

Even if an explanation can never be found by science, I'd rather leave that gap of knowledge empty as opposed to filling it with religion
Ok, the need of everything to be caused isn't an argument for saying that God exists, and then? Moreover, religion doesn't fill a gap left by science since their domains are not the same at all. Even if God existed, we could explain all with science. Science says how, religions say why.

As a generalization, Christians believe that they are the only religion and that all other religions are completely false.  They feel they will be the ones to live while everyone else suffers in H E double hockey sticks.  Zero tolerance...
At Muslims have some sort of respect for Christianity because of the same sort of belief in one supreme being.
It is a real generalization. And I don't know where you find your statistics, but it is completely false. Catholics really respect other religions. And when you speak about "They feel they will be the ones to live while everyone else suffers in H E double hockey sticks", I think you're confounding christians with some sects that use bible to have some credibility.

Religion in general, however, is silly.
>:(

We use it like myths to explain things we really can't.  We use it only when it suits us and when we feel like we need something to make us feel better.
See my answer upon about "things we can't explain". And maybe you need yourself something to feel better, when you couldn't accept that a superior being could exist. ;) So it is not an argument.


When you're speaking about logic, what is logic about the big bang the appears from nowhere ? It's impossible, it must have an origin. Nothing can be its own origine.
This is quite strange to me when a page or two back you said:
Quote from: mdr1
God lives forever and fromever, that's all. There's no origin to his life. He invented time, so you can't apply to him this notion.

These two statements seem contradictory to me. You say that God has no origin and has always existed. Yet you state that the big bang could not simply have just happened, nor could it have created itself. You also say that everything must have an origin. Why is it acceptable for one thing but not the other?
Those two statements are not contradicory: it is true that big bang must have an origin because it is in time and it has a beginning. God doesn't have beginning. So he doesn't have origin.


I noticed a new point emerging to this debate: a thing could create itself, magic could take place on the reasons of the world etc. I don't think that saying that is really interesting: maybe those things could be said on the topic My existencial Phylosophy where we can doubt everything:

Are you saying that to convince us that you do exist ? How could we trust in you because you say that you could believe that we don't exist ?

Moreover, how can you be sure that you really exist ? Isn't it an illusion ? As a case in point, AI in computer games have the illusion that they exist, but it is not true.

But here, if we start to doubt everything, we cannot debate more.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2013, 10:39:34 am by mdr1 »



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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #66 on: May 22, 2013, 11:05:18 am »
I'd just like to congratulate everyone on getting to 5 pages without a flame war. :)

I think this prove we really can have a religious debate without going off the deep end.

Also, if this thread does start to develop into a flame war, could the offending posts be removed instead of locking the whole topic?
What's more is that we have done this even with a language barrier o.o
Being on Omnimaga is awesome like that because you have to actively try to understand others, keeping in mind that there is a high chance that the other person probably comes from a different  culture, different language, different religion, and different calculator and programming language preference >.>

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #67 on: May 22, 2013, 12:34:25 pm »
I'll have to do a huge, tl;dr on this (though I'll certainly read through the topic once I have time)

But I have a few things I have with religion.

This one is more geared towards the abrahamic religions, but it's something to do with the concept of Heaven as a paradise. Everyone has their own version of what is paradise in their heads. A kind of ultimate universe where everything is perfect.
 Emotion such as happiness and sadness, etc, stem from physical reality either moving towards or away from this paradise, as we perceive it. The largest flaw with the concept of Heaven, is that you actually reach this paradise. Because you are at perfection, because you cannot go higher, happiness ends. Change ends, motion stops. There is nowhere left to go because of that. To me, this is a really bad thing because ope itself comes from the prospect of achieving such a reality. But once you reach is, there's nowhere for hope to come from anymore since there is no imperfection to overcome.

There's also a few things I have with the idea of intelligent design. If nothing existed before God, and God created everything, what was God's reason/motivation to create anything and what was His point of reference for creation? Because nothing existed, there would be nothing that could cause God to begin His creation. Conventional concepts such as boredom and discontent would not exist because there counterparts such as excitement would not exist either because there was nothing that could elicit such emotion.

Now this net one as rather little to do with religion, but is more my ideas on what a soul is. I believe a soul is a construction who's existence lies in higher dimensionality. It is created, but not by any God. More being's whose role it is to create souls. I believe a soul is comprised of many parts, only one of which is "immortal." That would be the "observer" part, or the actual art of the soul that experiences. Now, here's the thing with that, when created a soul is a blank slate. It could become anything, anyone. There's a problem with that, every soul would be too similar to eachother. In higher planes, your perspective would be vastly greater than in lower. Souls wouldn't "specialize" because of that, as in that setting since by and large, they would perceive the same things in the same way. And when your perspective is much greater like that, you wouldn't learn as much and change from it. The solution? Bind the soul to a lower plane temporarily so it can change from other souls and form different conclusions and ideas from them.  In other words, life. All that life is then, is a learning phase. And this makes sense for it to be so when you consider that the majority of our existence (provided there is an afterlife) in death.

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Offline jwalker

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #68 on: May 22, 2013, 01:07:34 pm »
I saw this thread and I knew I had to jump in.
I have an intersting relligious development in my 16 years of life.  When I was a wee little lad, my brother and I used to blame all the bad things on "God and Jesus".  We used to say it was all their fault.  As we grew older we went through a super religious phase.  Now that I'm older, I am agnostic, not atheist, but agnostic.  I find the concept of religion to be annoying, but Chrisitanity by far really upsets me.  As a generalization, Christians believe that they are the only religion and that all other religions are completely false.  They feel they will be the ones to live while everyone else suffers in H E double hockey sticks.  Zero tolerance...
At Muslims have some sort of respect for Christianity because of the same sort of belief in one supreme being.

Religion in general, however, is silly.  We use it like myths to explain things we really can't.  We use it only when it suits us and when we feel like we need something to make us feel better.  Also, I feel that all religions are false.  They have no truth in them at all.  My opinion on death might seem... strange, however.  To me death is death.  I do not fear death because its not like after you die you're gonna be all upset that you're dead right? (Yeah that's pretty bad...)  It just happens, there's no afterlife just an end.

This is very incorrect...
The only Christians that say that their faith is the only one that goes to heaven are the people that probably attend a church similar to the Westborough Baptist Church. For example I am Catholic, and I have heared, in more than one serman, that if you are a good person and believe in God you probably will go to heaven. Catholics have had good relations with Jews for years and I think we are also trying to improve relations with Muslims. Also when it comes to tolerance, the first colony in America to allow religious freedom, as in actual religious freedom, was the Catholic colony at Baltimore. As far as I know most Christians are very tolerant, so are Jews and Muslims.
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Offline mdr1

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #69 on: May 22, 2013, 02:01:16 pm »
Everyone has their own version of what is paradise in their heads.
Some people don't have a version of paradise for one of the following reasons:
  • They believe there's no paradise.
  • They trust God and obey him to do good without thinking about a reward.

Because you are at perfection, because you cannot go higher, happiness ends. Change ends, motion stops. There is nowhere left to go because of that. To me, this is a really bad thing because ope itself comes from the prospect of achieving such a reality. But once you reach is, there's nowhere for hope to come from anymore since there is no imperfection to overcome.
And what if there's no time in paradise? All the problems you reach here disappear.

There's also a few things I have with the idea of intelligent design. If nothing existed before God, and God created everything, what was God's reason/motivation to create anything and what was His point of reference for creation? Because nothing existed, there would be nothing that could cause God to begin His creation. Conventional concepts such as boredom and discontent would not exist because there counterparts such as excitement would not exist either because there was nothing that could elicit such emotion.
What motivation? God doesn't need humans. But His infinite love created us. Though for humans it is really hard to understand that. When you talk about the beginning of creation, such concept doesn't exist because there was no time before.



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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #70 on: May 22, 2013, 02:21:18 pm »

Personally, I believe in science. I believe that the big bang created the universe, and that humans evolved from other live forms. It just seems the most logical to me. And what has triggered the big bang? We'll never know. It's one of the mysteries of life, a gap that science will never be able to fill.
The idea that a god creates everything feels more like moving the problem. The fact that you just have to believe that He always existed, and that he is a creature so advanced that he can create everything doensn't sound logical to me, but I guess the big bang doesn't sound logical to a religious person either.
I find it easier to believe that an explosion suddenly started to exist than that a creature so advanced as a god suddenly started to exist and createdeverything. But it all comes to your point of view. There is now way to prove for the other parties that you are correct. Because there are hundreds of religions (let's just count science as one for now), the chance that you are fully correct is very small. That is why we should respect anyone who shooses an other religion as you.
It does not mean anything to "believe in science". Science isn't a religion. You can believe in God and pratice science, there's no problem for that.
When you're speaking about logic, what is logic about the big bang the appears from nowhere ? It's impossible, it must have an origin. Nothing can be its own origine. Another point: believing in God is not like loto to play for chance.
Ok, this is pretty ridiculous statement imo. Just because something isn't a religion doesn't mean you can't believe in it. I can just as easily say that religion is ridiculous because there is no evidence for (the need of) a deity. For this point, I take my stand with what ben_g posted earlier in the thread.

It's impossible, it must have an origin. Nothing can be its own origine. Another point: believing in God is not like loto to play for chance.
Yet you still claim that God didn't have an origin and just was there all the time. That sounds a bit contradictionary.

There is very little, almost no evidence for evolution, and most of the published "evidence" is either fake or turns out to be something totally different than what they and not support the theory of evolution at all (or in some cases, actually refute it). On the other hand, there is overwhelming evidence for creation and God, which isn't fake, and has not been proven to be something else.
Also, if there is a God, then there is proof that he is a Christian God. He has to be omnipotent, He has to be all-merciful, and He has to be all-Good. Nothing good can come from an evil creator.
The so called 'evidence' for a god isn't exactly trustable either and often is contradictionary too much more than evolution sometimes is(discussed somewhere earlier in the thread). Why does this deity or super natural being have to irrevocably be a christian god? I think this is where religion comes short in some places. It is ok to believe in different things, but most of the time when you ask if two gods can be the same yet in a different form, it's out of the game and the other party is being silly.

Because you are at perfection, because you cannot go higher, happiness ends. Change ends, motion stops. There is nowhere left to go because of that. To me, this is a really bad thing because ope itself comes from the prospect of achieving such a reality. But once you reach is, there's nowhere for hope to come from anymore since there is no imperfection to overcome.
And what if there's no time in paradise? All the problems you reach here disappear.
Don't you think that's a little false argumentation?

I think the main problem is that over time science and religion got separated. Churches and other societies didn't like what they saw being discovered, so they rejected it, marked it as heresy. This has carried on for so long, that people now can't think differently anymore. This leads to conflicts. If the world can't change its mind into something that accepts that both can be there, it will not turn out good for either side.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2013, 02:24:46 pm by ElementCoder »

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #71 on: May 22, 2013, 02:33:56 pm »
@mdr1: The point I was trying to make was that you said everything must have an origin. I was wondering with you making that statement how you could choose to exclude god in that. If you think about it, It's possible that the conditions required for the big bang and the forces behind the big bang always existed. When the universe was created, something caused those conditions to occur. Just as in Christian faith, something had to cause god to create the universe.

In regards to time, Id say it's just a unit of measurement just like anything else. You could say existence of some sort has always been (if that is how you choose to believe).

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #72 on: May 22, 2013, 02:37:58 pm »
A God is a lot more plausible to me, since He doesn't have to bend to the rules of physics and therefore also doesn't have to be created.

That's a distinctly unsatisfying answer from my point of view. It reduces the notion of divinity god to little more than magic simply for the sake of primordial causation.
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Offline merthsoft

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #73 on: May 22, 2013, 02:42:48 pm »
There is very little, almost no evidence for evolution, and most of the published "evidence" is either fake or turns out to be something totally different than what they and not support the theory of evolution at all (or in some cases, actually refute it).
This is just incredibly factually inaccurate. The evidence for evolution is actually overwhelming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolutionary_synthesis
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html
The theory is certainly changing as time goes on, but the evidence keeps piling up. At this point not 'believing' in evolution is about as defensible of a position as not 'believing' in gravity. And a belief and evolution and a Christian God are certainly not mutually exclusive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution
The Catholics certainly don't have any problems with it, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_and_the_Roman_Catholic_Church
It seems, at the very least, that a discussion about evolution is mostly out of place in a discussion on religion.

Also, if there is a God, then there is proof that he is a Christian God. He has to be omnipotent, He has to be all-merciful, and He has to be all-Good. Nothing good can come from an evil creator.
You should read about Deism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism
You can most certainly have a deity that isn't the Christian God (hell, look at every other theistic religion). Event if there being a god means that is was to be omnipotent, all-merciful, and all-good, that still doesn't mean it has to be the Christian god--it could be another god that fits those qualities, and maybe no religion has even yet described it.

Offline Hayleia

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Re: Religion Discussion
« Reply #74 on: May 22, 2013, 02:50:49 pm »
Because you are at perfection, because you cannot go higher, happiness ends. Change ends, motion stops. There is nowhere left to go because of that. To me, this is a really bad thing because ope itself comes from the prospect of achieving such a reality. But once you reach is, there's nowhere for hope to come from anymore since there is no imperfection to overcome.
And what if there's no time in paradise? All the problems you reach here disappear.
And what if there is no paradise ? Even more problems disappear :P

Sorry for not answering anything in any of my posts here and adding questions, but I prefer remaining with questions rather than inventing answers to fit the question. Just imagine you at an exam, we ask you "prove this" and you say "it is true because there must be a God that wants it" or something like that.

And as merthsoft said, ok, there might be a God or more, there might be a paradise or more, but heck, we are just at the "there might be" point, where those "there might be" are described by existing religions and "there might be" other possibilities that we haven't taken in account yet, and maybe the truth is among them.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2013, 02:51:07 pm by Hayleia »
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