Is religion a superstition?

[muldoon]

Stop, think, and thank.

Aren't you the guy who thinks it's someones destiny to be murdered or raped?

[StackinGreen]

There are plenty of things I can prove myself; even if I haven't directly conducted experiments for everything I believe, I'm content with the knowledge that given the opportunity nobody has been able to reputably disprove them, and that the predictive conclusions drawn from them lead to even greater truths. Making and proving claims is almost always predictive, in that the hypothesis can be used to predict a future action as verification that it's true and as an indication of the usefulness of the knowledge. Believing in a god fails both these criteria, as it's can't be proven and is completely helpless to predict future actions.

Compare that to your beliefs, which is just you declaring something to be true with no justification or results to show for it (aside from some possible placebo effects easily explained by well-documented science). Facts don't require you to believe in them, and reason and logic can be employed by people who either disagree or agree with a statement. Unfortunately, like many who subscribe to a higher power, you seem to have thrown logic and reason out the window in this area. This is how you are failing.

Ok, so we have to take a step back. My point was more to show that most people (not saying you) don't realize the degree of faith on which they take "scientists" word about theories, experiments, etc. The best example of this is what is thrown around so casually as the theory of evolution (macroevolution) which is downright unscientific and is totally faith-based. Science is about observable phenomena and the possibility of falsification, two things which don't pertain to the so-called supernatural and our conversation here (God, spirit, etc.). The issue, however, is that there are things which are very real that cannot be quantified. Anyone rejecting that is living a delusion. What's more, we only have 5 senses. Why would we believe that in those 5 senses are all of the things deemed "real" in some way or another. It's absurd.

Everything that gives life meaning and fullness is actually NOT measurable. Ponder that and appreciate that this point is really what undergirds these ongoing discussions that we are having. Reducing humanity to the level of observable phenomena is silly, even from a scientific point of view. And yes, I am a scientist. But I know what questions science asks and how it derives answers and therefore I don't have a problem with science nor faith. They ask different questions. More importantly, rightly used they do not contradict one another. At all.

[recon1]

Claiming an entire race doesn't value education? That's not racist?

Another "Christian" with his idle threats.

Maybe you'll go blow up an abortion clinic to make your point and prove what a tough guy you are.

You are the biggest drama Queen. You add zero value to a discussion, only thing you do is spread hate, intolerance and twisting of words.
A man who believes in nothing, will fall for anything.

[muldoon]

You are the biggest drama Queen. You add zero value to a discussion, only thing you do is spread hate, intolerance and twisting of words.

Can't address the point I made, so resort to deflection. Seems about right.

A man who believes in nothing, will fall for anything.

Without any factual basis to back up your unattributed quote, it's just background noise trying to justify your childish inability to let go of the pretend.

You're a grown up who believes a fantasy with less facts to win an argument against a kid who believes that Santa is real. Simply because you have others who believe along with you, you somehow feel that strength in numbers gives credibility.

It doesn't.

[rkelly110]

Aren't you the guy who thinks it's someones destiny to be murdered or raped?

Yep, that's where the stop and think part comes in.

[muldoon]

Yep, that's where the stop and think part comes in.

Indulge me. How do you reach that conclusion (through thinking - not through someone else giving the idea).

If I carry a gene which makes me more likely to contract parkisons, there is a % of possible destiny.

How does a child get abducted, raped and murdered fit into their known destiny?

[Triple_D_Bet]

Ok, so we have to take a step back. My point was more to show that most people (not saying you) don't realize the degree of faith on which they take "scientists" word about theories, experiments, etc. The best example of this is what is thrown around so casually as the theory of evolution (macroevolution) which is downright unscientific and is totally faith-based. Science is about observable phenomena and the possibility of falsification, two things which don't pertain to the so-called supernatural and our conversation here (God, spirit, etc.). The issue, however, is that there are things which are very real that cannot be quantified. Anyone rejecting that is living a delusion. What's more, we only have 5 senses. Why would we believe that in those 5 senses are all of the things deemed "real" in some way or another. It's absurd.

Everything that gives life meaning and fullness is actually NOT measurable. Ponder that and appreciate that this point is really what undergirds these ongoing discussions that we are having. Reducing humanity to the level of observable phenomena is silly, even from a scientific point of view. And yes, I am a scientist. But I know what questions science asks and how it derives answers and therefore I don't have a problem with science nor faith. They ask different questions. More importantly, rightly used they do not contradict one another. At all.

K, taking the step back with ya...before we go too much farther, can you elaborate your views on evolution and what alternative method you believe in? The use of a term like "macroevolution" strongly implies what you might believe, but seems better to check first. As you've stated evolution is unscientific, despite the wealth of science proving it, please show a part of evolutionary theory that hasn't been proven in your eyes.

Non-overlapping magisteria has always seemed like an arbitrary barrier to me...everything in the universe is within the realm of science to discover and explain. There are things we can't detect directly with our 5 senses, but we can reason that they exists based on a chain of consequences that result in something observable by our senses. The technology we use today is increasingly full of such properties; and even though we can't observe them directly, we can conclude they're real, based on our ability to successfully predict their behaviors. Similarly, if you have something like god/spirit/etc which produces no observable phenomena and can't be falsified, it is essentially the same as any other figment of our imagination. Bottom line: if the human brain can perceive something, that something is within the realm of science to observe and discover. The subjective workings of our consciousness are far from entirely known, but we know quite a bit, certainly enough to allow us to conclude that with enough time and research we could discover how it all works. In my eyes, the scientific explanation for even the most mundane of natural processes is far more awe-inspiring than "god did it" anyways!

Science and "faith" certainly do ask different questions, but that doesn't mean they can't ask questions about certain areas. Indeed, the major distinction seems to be that science asks questions and tries to prove them true or false to gain knowledge, where faith seems to ask questions and create an answer with no interest in proving it. The former should be respected as a pursuit which allows the human race to go forward with maximum comfort and success, where the latter is simply irrationality that should be tolerated as a right to have the beliefs, but certainly not encouraged.

[rkelly110]

Indulge me. How do you reach that conclusion (through thinking - not through someone else giving the idea).

If I carry a gene which makes me more likely to contract parkisons, there is a % of possible destiny.

How does a child get abducted, raped and murdered fit into their known destiny?

I'm sorry you believe you are one and done. Maybe I'm just gullible, but I believe we came from a spiritual world
where that is our actual home. Our physical bodies are only temporary, a tool to learn, experience life we can't
in our spiritual world.

There are a thousand ways to die. You get to chose how before you came here to learn, experience or help
a loved one.

I'm sure you've heard the stories of people who wrote their wills, got their financials in order or told family,
friends good bye and said they loved them out of the blue before they died? They knew.

It's ok not to believe in a God per se to believe you are here because you want to be here and can come back
many times if you wish.

Bad things happen to good people, but if you stop and think of what I said, it does make sense. They chose
how to die like that.

[muldoon]

There are a thousand ways to die. You get to chose how before you came here to learn, experience or help
a loved one.

(CNN)A Missouri woman kept captive in a wooden box for four months escaped in April, only to be shot to death this week along with her son

Skydiving
House Fire
Old Age
Cancer
Bus rollover
Train Accident
☑ Captive in a box, then finally escape, but then shot to death...with son

[bigtymer56]

(CNN)A Missouri woman kept captive in a wooden box for four months escaped in April, only to be shot to death this week along with her son

Skydiving
House Fire
Old Age
Cancer
Bus rollover
Train Accident
☑ Captive in a box, then finally escape, but then shot to death...with son

The fact he believes that is mind blowing. The spiritual world must be a boring place, if tons of people would choose to come back here in order to get raped and murdered, blown up, die from some disease, get their heads chopped off by religious zealots, etc. etc.

Reminds of this article I saw a few days ago. People don't like atheists, because thinking about them causes them to think about death, and you know death is unpleasant.

http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/atheists-inspire-thoughts-of-death-in-many-americans-150523.htm

[Ghenghis Kahn]

The fact he believes that is mind blowing. The spiritual world must be a boring place, if tons of people would choose to come back here in order to get raped and murdered, blown up, die from some disease, get their heads chopped off by religious zealots, etc. etc.

Reminds of this article I saw a few days ago. People don't like atheists, because thinking about them causes them to think about death, and you know death is unpleasant.
http://news.discovery.com/human/psyc...ans-150523.htm

that's fukking retarded, if you're religious, you should want to die asap so you could be in heaven.

gotta love religious fukks, they are so easily offended by the littlest things.

alien bless...

[rkelly110]

The fact he believes that is mind blowing. The spiritual world must be a boring place, if tons of people would choose to come back here in order to get raped and murdered, blown up, die from some disease, get their heads chopped off by religious zealots, etc. etc.

Reminds of this article I saw a few days ago. People don't like atheists, because thinking about them causes them to think about death, and you know death is unpleasant.
http://news.discovery.com/human/psyc...ans-150523.htm

Come on man, they don't come here just to experience some of the horrors of dieing, (though sometimes I wonder)
They/ you come here to learn something or help someone/ mankind.

Maybe you can explain prodigies? Kids born with superior knowledge or know what they want to be before age two?
Gene pool? Lucky? Mom ate the right things? Nope. Mind boggling shit.

[muldoon]

Maybe you can explain prodigies? Kids born with superior knowledge or know what they want to be before age two?.

Which kids are these? Even the previously unfathomable savants (be it mathematics or art) are now much better understood (various excess proteins etc).

Because a kid wants to be a doctor at 2...how many do? Do the kids who want to be raped and murdered chat about it pre-2 as well?

What you see as "mind boggling", others see as "awesome, let's figure this out"

One mindset leads to missions to mars. The other burns people and accuses them of witchcraft.

[rkelly110]

It is possible to believe in a higher power and science such as myself, which is why I generally keep my
beliefs to myself, because I could literally explode heads. This is a faceless forum, so why not let it rip?

You have your beliefs (or a lack thereof) and I have mine. There's no sense trying to disprove each other
into eternity. There's a 50% chance either of us are right or we both could be 100% right. We won't know
until our time is up.

[Ghenghis Kahn]

It is possible to believe in a higher power and science such as myself, which is why I generally keep my
beliefs to myself, because I could literally explode heads. This is a faceless forum, so why not let it rip?

there are plenty of people like you. you are an agnostic.

this is from the god delusion, richard dawkins' book...

"1) Temporary Agnosticism in Practice, or TAP, which denotes that there “is a truth out there and one day we hope to know it, though for the moment we don’t.”

2) Permanent Agnosticism in Principle, or PAP, for questions that can never be answered. Some people assign the question of God’s existence to PAP, which means that they “cannot say anything, one way or the other, about whether or not God exists” (p. 51). He, however, believes that “the God question is not in principle and forever outside the remit of science” (p. 71)."

[statnerds]

Ok, so we have to take a step back. My point was more to show that most people (not saying you) don't realize the degree of faith on which they take "scientists" word about theories, experiments, etc. The best example of this is what is thrown around so casually as the theory of evolution (macroevolution) which is downright unscientific and is totally faith-based. Science is about observable phenomena and the possibility of falsification, two things which don't pertain to the so-called supernatural and our conversation here (God, spirit, etc.). The issue, however, is that there are things which are very real that cannot be quantified. Anyone rejecting that is living a delusion. What's more, we only have 5 senses. Why would we believe that in those 5 senses are all of the things deemed "real" in some way or another. It's absurd.

Everything that gives life meaning and fullness is actually NOT measurable. Ponder that and appreciate that this point is really what undergirds these ongoing discussions that we are having. Reducing humanity to the level of observable phenomena is silly, even from a scientific point of view. And yes, I am a scientist. But I know what questions science asks and how it derives answers and therefore I don't have a problem with science nor faith. They ask different questions. More importantly, rightly used they do not contradict one another. At all.

i can measure my bankroll and bank account. i can measure my son's height, his performance in school. i can measure the hours i get to spend today grilling food and drinking beer.

1. have a retarded brother-in-law. my favorite in-law actually, the other ones are all fukks. being a 'scientist' as you claim, you have got to be aware if we took all the less than ideal humans, retarded ones, missing limbs, babies that get that disease that makes them live in pain for a few months before slowly losing their sight and then dying (find god in all of those) and plotted their number as a portion of the population we would see an distribution similar to other fukked births across all species. normal is the mean. we would expect a distribution to cluster around it but still a large sample that is far removed from it.

2. but i do agree, those fukking scientist, when have they ever been right? with their the Earth isn't the center of the universe, and their law of gravity, and their supposedly 'precise' calculations of how heavenly bodies should move through space or their predictions that there was an unseen planet (neptune) affecting the calculated path of another. yes, math predicted a planet was there before we had the technology to see it.

3. we are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. everlasting life? no thanks.

4. evolution is not faith based. global warming is.

5. holy fukk man, they don't contradict each other?!?! see number 2 above.

6. find me this religion that asks questions. find me a religion that doesn't require complete faith from its followers. find me a religion that doesn't promise eternal damnation for followers that leave the faith, question any of the teachings or blaspheme. find me a religion that doesn't promise eternal damnation for followers of other religions. "there is only one true god, and we have him"

[rkelly110]

there are plenty of people like you. you are an agnostic.

this is from the god delusion, richard dawkins' book...

"1) Temporary Agnosticism in Practice, or TAP, which denotes that there “is a truth out there and one day we hope to know it, though for the moment we don’t.”

2) Permanent Agnosticism in Principle, or PAP, for questions that can never be answered. Some people assign the question of God’s existence to PAP, which means that they “cannot say anything, one way or the other, about whether or not God exists” (p. 51). He, however, believes that “the God question is not in principle and forever outside the remit of science” (p. 71)."

Thousands of testimonials of those who passed and came back to tell about it. Or is that a lack of oxygen to the brain? Maybe the scientists who say it's a lack of oxygen and the heart stops, maybe try that experiment on themselves and get back to us on that.

If thousands of testimonials are bullshit and I'm gullible enough to believe them, maybe you to are gullible to believe a scientist with his bullshit. Works both ways. Scientists are proven wrong time and time again.

[Ghenghis Kahn]

Thousands of testimonials of those who passed and came back to tell about it. Or is that a lack of oxygen to the brain? Maybe the scientists who say it's a lack of oxygen and the heart stops, maybe try that experiment on themselves and get back to us on that.

If thousands of testimonials are bullshit and I'm gullible enough to believe them, maybe you to are gullible to believe a scientist with his bullshit. Works both ways. Scientists are proven wrong time and time again.

what are you mumbling about? you say you believe in science and believe in higher power at the same time, hence i point out that you are an agnostic.

then you go on some tangent about some crazy shit. never mind, you're not an agnostic but a crazy nut. disregard my last post...

[rkelly110]

Ok man.

[ByeShea]

4. evolution is not faith based. global warming is.

lol

[Triple_D_Bet]

Thousands of testimonials of those who passed and came back to tell about it. Or is that a lack of oxygen to the brain? Maybe the scientists who say it's a lack of oxygen and the heart stops, maybe try that experiment on themselves and get back to us on that.

If thousands of testimonials are bullshit and I'm gullible enough to believe them, maybe you to are gullible to believe a scientist with his bullshit. Works both ways. Scientists are proven wrong time and time again.

I'd say we have way more than thousands of testimonials on hallucinations caused by screwed up brain chemistry, and none of them are evidence for any kind of fairy tale. Although I have no clue how ghenghis is labeling you an agnostic when you've declared you believe a higher power exists

When a scientific hypothesis is disproven, it's not "science" being disproven; it's the scientific method working to determine what's true and what's not. Science only claims things to be true after they're proven, where beliefs in the supernatural start with the assumption it's true and spend the rest of the time trying desperately to come up with mistaken assumptions to support it

lol

Yeah, that seems a bit weird...maybe he meant "man-made global warming", which intelligent people can disagree upon the extent instead of climate change which is happening beyond any reasonable doubt.

[jtoler]

I'd say we have way more than thousands of testimonials on hallucinations caused by screwed up brain chemistry, and none of them are evidence for any kind of fairy tale. Although I have no clue how ghenghis is labeling you an agnostic when you've declared you believe a higher power exists

When a scientific hypothesis is disproven, it's not "science" being disproven; it's the scientific method working to determine what's true and what's not. Science only claims things to be true after they're proven, where beliefs in the supernatural start with the assumption it's true and spend the rest of the time trying desperately to come up with mistaken assumptions to support it

In seeing they do not see. If that's the case then God is the author of the "scientific method".

[Triple_D_Bet]

In seeing they do not see. If that's the case then God is the author of the "scientific method".

Some people certainly believe so, and take all we've learned and simply append "God made it that way" to the beginning of it. While it is certainly less ridiculous, it's just as inconsistent, and doesn't answer the question, "If god created everything, who created god?"

People trying to believe in both are making the same mistake as people who discredit science; claiming "god did it!" simply because you want to believe it is suspending use of your brain to believe in a fairy tale, no matter what else you believe in.

[StackinGreen]

i can measure my bankroll and bank account. i can measure my son's height, his performance in school. i can measure the hours i get to spend today grilling food and drinking beer.

1. have a retarded brother-in-law. my favorite in-law actually, the other ones are all fukks. being a 'scientist' as you claim, you have got to be aware if we took all the less than ideal humans, retarded ones, missing limbs, babies that get that disease that makes them live in pain for a few months before slowly losing their sight and then dying (find god in all of those) and plotted their number as a portion of the population we would see an distribution similar to other fukked births across all species. normal is the mean. we would expect a distribution to cluster around it but still a large sample that is far removed from it.

2. but i do agree, those fukking scientist, when have they ever been right? with their the Earth isn't the center of the universe, and their law of gravity, and their supposedly 'precise' calculations of how heavenly bodies should move through space or their predictions that there was an unseen planet (neptune) affecting the calculated path of another. yes, math predicted a planet was there before we had the technology to see it.

3. we are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. everlasting life? no thanks.

4. evolution is not faith based. global warming is.

5. holy fukk man, they don't contradict each other?!?! see number 2 above.

6. find me this religion that asks questions. find me a religion that doesn't require complete faith from its followers. find me a religion that doesn't promise eternal damnation for followers that leave the faith, question any of the teachings or blaspheme. find me a religion that doesn't promise eternal damnation for followers of other religions. "there is only one true god, and we have him"

1. Have no idea what your point is, and I have no issues with whatever you are trying to say either, I don't think. I don't find this numerical sensical.

2. Who said scientists aren't right about things? Another weird non-sequitir

3. Your take on things means nothing as far as reality is concerned, especially when you are incorrect.

4. Macroevolution is in the way people generally talk about it. Global warming is too. Read what I wrote again.

5. Science and faith don't contradict each other at all, rightly applied. Why do I have to write that again. You bring a lot of baggaged into this topic, apparently. You must make all sorts of assumptions and then project them on others.

6. Your ignorance is astounding on this number. Everything you suggest is incorrect. While there are religions that teach what you suggest, there are many that don't. It seems to me to be a waste of time to talk further about this, as you clearly haven't studied many (sounds like you just know Islam and its teachings).

[Triple_D_Bet]

5. Science and faith don't contradict each other at all, rightly applied. Why do I have to write that again. You bring a lot of baggaged into this topic, apparently. You must make all sorts of assumptions and then project them on others.

I imagine you have to write that again because the last time you did, I asked you to explain and you have yet to reply:

K, taking the step back with ya...before we go too much farther, can you elaborate your views on evolution and what alternative method you believe in? The use of a term like "macroevolution" strongly implies what you might believe, but seems better to check first. As you've stated evolution is unscientific, despite the wealth of science proving it, please show a part of evolutionary theory that hasn't been proven in your eyes.

Non-overlapping magisteria has always seemed like an arbitrary barrier to me...everything in the universe is within the realm of science to discover and explain. There are things we can't detect directly with our 5 senses, but we can reason that they exists based on a chain of consequences that result in something observable by our senses. The technology we use today is increasingly full of such properties; and even though we can't observe them directly, we can conclude they're real, based on our ability to successfully predict their behaviors. Similarly, if you have something like god/spirit/etc which produces no observable phenomena and can't be falsified, it is essentially the same as any other figment of our imagination. Bottom line: if the human brain can perceive something, that something is within the realm of science to observe and discover. The subjective workings of our consciousness are far from entirely known, but we know quite a bit, certainly enough to allow us to conclude that with enough time and research we could discover how it all works. In my eyes, the scientific explanation for even the most mundane of natural processes is far more awe-inspiring than "god did it" anyways!

Science and "faith" certainly do ask different questions, but that doesn't mean they can't ask questions about certain areas. Indeed, the major distinction seems to be that science asks questions and tries to prove them true or false to gain knowledge, where faith seems to ask questions and create an answer with no interest in proving it. The former should be respected as a pursuit which allows the human race to go forward with maximum comfort and success, where the latter is simply irrationality that should be tolerated as a right to have the beliefs, but certainly not encouraged.

[jtoler]

Some people certainly believe so, and take all we've learned and simply append "God made it that way" to the beginning of it. While it is certainly less ridiculous, it's just as inconsistent, and doesn't answer the question, "If god created everything, who created god?"

People trying to believe in both are making the same mistake as people who discredit science; claiming "god did it!" simply because you want to believe it is suspending use of your brain to believe in a fairy tale, no matter what else you believe in.

I won't go back and forth with this because its futile, I've done it before here and it was about as time consuming as Dufresne chipping away on a cinder block. Anyway don't call God fake until you've done the "scientific method" on Him. He's not a God of fairy tales, all through the bible he's said he moves by faith which is an action. Countless verses all through the bible about God saying what he will do if faith is employed, but if you haven't put forth your "scientific method" to inquire if He will indeed uphold his end of the bargain then how dare you or anyone can have the gall to proclaim He isn't who He says He is. The problem here is an aged old problem, that problem is people who denounce Him are natural men, dealing in the natural, when God is a spirit and to know Him one must employ spiritual means.

[Mr KLC]

No use in even responding in these threads. Both sides are firm in their thinking, and no opinions are ever going to change, at least on this website.

[Triple_D_Bet]

I won't go back and forth with this because its futile, I've done it before here and it was about as time consuming as Dufresne chipping away on a cinder block. Anyway don't call God fake until you've done the "scientific method" on Him. He's not a God of fairy tales, all through the bible he's said he moves by faith which is an action. Countless verses all through the bible about God saying what he will do if faith is employed, but if you haven't put forth your "scientific method" to inquire if He will indeed uphold his end of the bargain then how dare you or anyone can have the gall to proclaim He isn't who He says He is. The problem here is an aged old problem, that problem is people who denounce Him are natural men, dealing in the natural, when God is a spirit and to know Him one must employ spiritual means.

I've employed the scientific method, and you can follow along too: the notion of God as you and others define him isn't a falsifiable hypothesis, as supporters have gone to great lengths to constantly revise the hypothesis so it remains so. Because of this, it can't be tested, and there is no more reason to believe it to be true than, "Wizards are real like in Harry Potter", or any other hypothesis based on a work of fiction.

On the other hand, there is strong evidence (the entirety of evolution) that shows the existence of your god is incredibly improbable, to the point where it's not functionally different from non-existence...I think it's pretty reasonable to say "God doesn't exist" as a shortcut for "God is so incredibly unlikely to exist that we might as well assume he doesn't". Your use of "spirit" and "spiritual means" seems to be just an arbitrary label you throw on to ideas that agree with your beliefs when you don't wish them to be disproven. A piece of advice: claiming ideas to be simultaneously true and unable to be proven by science is a contradiction that only calls attention to your irrationality.

[Triple_D_Bet]

No use in even responding in these threads. Both sides are firm in their thinking, and no opinions are ever going to change, at least on this website.

Almost always the case that minds are not changed, but the same could be said for a wide range of conversations unfortunately. The distinction to be made is that one side is willing to change its mind given any kind of evidence, while the other side is unwilling to change its mind despite the evidence.

And of course, both sides get to feel good about being smarter than the other side and a little sad that people can cling so desperately to their beliefs without evidence...even if only one side is accurate in feeling this way, the wonderful subjectivity of the human experience lets even the losers walk away thinking they won. Otherwise these threads would shut down as soon as someone posted the facts, and the internet would be a good deal smaller

[jtoler]

I've employed the scientific method, and you can follow along too: the notion of God as you and others define him isn't a falsifiable hypothesis, as supporters have gone to great lengths to constantly revise the hypothesis so it remains so. Because of this, it can't be tested, and there is no more reason to believe it to be true than, "Wizards are real like in Harry Potter", or any other hypothesis based on a work of fiction.

On the other hand, there is strong evidence (the entirety of evolution) that shows the existence of your god is incredibly improbable, to the point where it's not functionally different from non-existence...I think it's pretty reasonable to say "God doesn't exist" as a shortcut for "God is so incredibly unlikely to exist that we might as well assume he doesn't". Your use of "spirit" and "spiritual means" seems to be just an arbitrary label you throw on to ideas that agree with your beliefs when you don't wish them to be disproven. A piece of advice: claiming ideas to be simultaneously true and unable to be proven by science is a contradiction that only calls attention to your irrationality.

You're not alone, most of society doesn't even know they are spirits, have a spirit, therefore man doesn't even know who he is, what he consist of, and is therefore dead men walking. I think that is a great tragedy, for man to learn about everything in the world yet not even know who he is or what he is. You quoted me but said nothing in your defense of the quote, your answer each time is simply God doesn't exist.

[Triple_D_Bet]

You're not alone, most of society doesn't even know they are spirits, have a spirit, therefore man doesn't even know who he is, what he consist of, and is therefore dead men walking. I think that is a great tragedy, for man to learn about everything in the world yet not even know who he is or what he is. You quoted me but said nothing in your defense of the quote, your answer each time is simply God doesn't exist.

So most of society doesn't know they are spirits, a concept which is unproven and is claimed to be unprovable (because it's "spiritual" and only capable of being known by simply wishing it to be true). Because it's unknowable and can't be shown to have any impact on anything we do know, it can be deemed of no value to believe in...doesn't seem like much of a loss to society, except for the people who waste their time and lives trying to appease the spirits and other wacky beliefs.

I quoted you and responded to your points (that the scientific method should be applied, that the bible is any kind of evidence, that spiritual means are anything other than someone proclaiming something they want to believe in as unfalsifiable). The conclusion to be drawn from all of them might be the same (that god doesn't exist, or is so unlikely to exist that it's the same thing, as I mentioned)...but all of your points were addressed. Unless you care to point out something I didn't address?

[rkelly110]

I'd say we have way more than thousands of testimonials on hallucinations caused by screwed up brain chemistry, and none of them are evidence for any kind of fairy tale. Although I have no clue how ghenghis is labeling you an agnostic when you've declared you believe a higher power exists

When a scientific hypothesis is disproven, it's not "science" being disproven; it's the scientific method working to determine what's true and what's not. Science only claims things to be true after they're proven, where beliefs in the supernatural start with the assumption it's true and spend the rest of the time trying desperately to come up with mistaken assumptions to support it



Yeah, that seems a bit weird...maybe he meant "man-made global warming", which intelligent people can disagree upon the extent instead of climate change which is happening beyond any reasonable doubt.

That's a whole lot of words to say they were wrong, had to go back and reevaluate to come up with the right hypothesis. Maybe a year after, find they were wrong again and come up with some other bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I love science. The word of the lord is consistent. Stories in the bible have been proven true. (according to shows on the Discovery channel)

[Triple_D_Bet]

That's a whole lot of words to say they were wrong, had to go back and reevaluate to come up with the right hypothesis. Maybe a year after, find they were wrong again and come up with some other bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I love science. The word of the lord is consistent. Stories in the bible have been proven true. (according to shows on the Discovery channel)

Yup, when science gets their guess wrong, thy make another and try to prove it...nothing is declared to be true until it is proven though. On the other hand, the bible gets it wrong and then adherents try desperately to reinterpret all the contradictions as "metaphors" so they can go on believing it's true. I agree that certain parts of the bible are based on actual history; the same is true of many works of fiction set in the real world...but that doesn't mean the supernatural mythology has any reason to be believed, especially not when so many of the stories are stolen from previous mythologies

[Ghenghis Kahn]

That's a whole lot of words to say they were wrong, had to go back and reevaluate to come up with the right hypothesis. Maybe a year after, find they were wrong again and come up with some other bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I love science. The word of the lord is consistent. Stories in the bible have been proven true. (according to shows on the Discovery channel)

what? i saw a show on discovery channel that said mermaids were real. give me a break in putting discovery channel as your reference pal. i was totally off, you're not close to even being agnostic. most agnostics are intelligent.

[rkelly110]

That's why I put in parenthesis. Some shows like the mermaid are tongue in cheek. At least triple D caught that part.