^Exactly.^

If God says you are, you are. :D

Ever since I admitted I was a Christian there's a red dot on my head,and if I move there's a bullet hole in the wall.I somehow think Jacob or Havoc is behind this.

Havoc probably. But he's certainly not alone.

But, never fear, I will always be here do defend religious people against the ravages of atheism. Or at least I would be if I hadn't just choked on a pretzel and died.

Well, it wouldn't be me. I'd just drop a bomb from the air.

Athiesm is a rare thing online. its celebrated in some sites, cursed in others.

Yous get theists, they beleive in personal, human like gods. Then deists, who simply accept something bif and powerful, but why should it concern itself with us? Then atheists, who don't have any gods. This includes Buddhism and Taoism, among others.

Did you know that horse meat can be used as Christian repellant?

Also, rotton horse meat can be used as a people repellant! The uses for horse meat are numerous! and duisgusting.

You know? It's kinda the same here, except for the dot being green. And it's not really aimed at me on this site...

uh, care to explain?

CHARACTER LIMIT

That's a very confrontational and personal way of going about things MF. Why don't you concentrate on my idea, rather than me, or you are not a good debater and will be struck down by lightning :P

That's a very high and mighty, 'holier than thou' way about going things Mushie. Perhaps it would behoove you to concentrate on the humor intended with that statement rather than show control.

:B

I don't think it would be Jacob, as he is Catholic.

Because there are a lot of people that attack christians (just like how a lot christians attack others.) just because of their religion.(especially online) I've seen a lot of people do it, and I wish it would stop. That's why I agreed with ANGRY ELEPHANT to a certain extent.

The only time I see a religion going too far is when they try to stop people learning about other religions. This is beginning to become a debate topic over here {Ireland}. Should we keep religious schools, or remove religion all together {ala France}.

My idea? Teach people about religion. For 5 years of school {high-school equivalent} I was taught the basics of Belief vs. Fact, Symbols, Jewdaism, Christianity {and some sub-sections of it}, Hindu, Muslim, Budist {again, Zen and other sub-sets}. This allows you to know that other people worship the same guy {Jews, Christains and Muslims... possibly more, can't remember} and that other people are people {the last 2 years split into racism and Sex Ed.}.

It's only when people force their belief on others {which chirtianity has done so much historicaly that it became multiple factions} that religion goes too far, IMO.

Not quite true. Atheists doen't believe in any higher power, but Buddhism is is not truely atheism. Budda ignored any questions about higher powers, causeing some people to think he did not believe in them and some people to believe that he himself was a higher power.


So each religion is equally likely to be true?
The problem with your logic {that I can see} is that you're using probability. This would be a mathmatical way to distinguish religions, but you then ask for scientific proof. From a scientific stand-point, anything within 0.1 - 5 % would be considered "identical". Percentage accuracy is vital in science since by measuring something you change it {wikipedia "quantum mechanics" for a confusing explination}. There are currently a finite number of religions with close to 3.6 billion variations of these religions (since very few people have an identical belief system).

There are a finite number of actual religions, but an infinite number of possibles. Also, where is 3.6 billion from?

I think that's a great idea except that many of these religions have debates within themselves regarding what they're all about. Are you going to teach Reformed, Conservative, Modern-Orthodox, Mitnagdish, Chassidish, etc Judaism? Further it's impossible to teach even one religion fully in a classroom environment (speaking as someone who went to religious schools and who's brother in law is a Jewish-studies teacher) so you're not going to get anything more than a cursory run-through. And with religion, it's very easy to miss a major point that looks like a minor one.

Heres my opinion:

http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/5...ignkhandu9.jpg

You're not really giving all the info about any religion in Ireland, not even the one your worshiping. The idea is that, just like French or Geography, you learn a little about the great-big subject that is Religion and its many forms and sections. You don't learn every little thing about one small area of one small area of it.

With catholisim vs. protestism, we learned a few differences {like "what the priest wears" and "what the church looks like"} but this was because in Ireland, these two faiths are historical enemies for no valid reason (no valid reason IMO, at least). We didn't learn about every little branch of Christianity, but I think there was a list of some of them.

It's not about knowing every religion though. It's about allowing people to know there are other religions, and getting them to understand a little more about the bigger ones.

3.6 billion: One for almost every person on the planet... give or take a billion at this stage.
With an infinite number of possibilities the odds of what is taken as Existance being real is so damn small as to be insignificant; and nothing more than flawed human mind tricks. This doesn't stop things from existing. There are always infinite possibilities; physics says so, quantum mechanics says so, Steven Hawking said "infinite parallel universes" at one point and meant it. Mathamatical existince doesn't work that well, since the more you think about the odds of Life on earth or that we really exist, the more you realise you can only begin to question it on the assumption you exist to question it. (Okay, I haven't done enough pholosophy to really cope in this area. Socraties may as well have been a bear to me; I know nothing about him.)

My point was that learning only a little about any religion can be extremely misleading. Because (and I'm giving a personal example here) you could give the impression that all Jews wear big black coats and hats and have long earlocks. Or that we have this temple where we brutally sacrifice huge numbers of animals. Or that we endorse slavery and holy wars.

You get my drift.

Too little info is a bad thing. But if you learn "Jews worship the same god as chirtians.", and you know that most christians around you are pretty good people (i.e. Not extremists), you should think that most jews would be pretty good people.
Learning only a little about ANYTHING is normally misleading. This is why year 1 of science at college is based around taking everything you learned in secondary/high school and correcting it, even the mathmatical areas.

Don't know, and I do not really care.
bwhahahahaaaaaa....... smell the irony
no, you think?
My answer to mf would probably be ''**** you'', but tastes are different...

I do not belong to any faith, and i'm not an atheist. I'm just, well, nothing.

Its funny when you drop out of a religion. People's attitudes really change about you. I got into a shouting match with my Pa over it( He's Lutheran, conservative religiously and politically). We chilled out and watched Andy Griffith afterwards. Cool show.
I think its a bunch of shit how they'll pretend to feel "sorry" for you, pester you for two weeks, and just throw their hands in the air. "Well, I tried. He can get tortured for all eternity!"
The only religious person I ever knew who was worth anything was a pastor of a local church. He still comes over every once in a while and we watch football.

A. There are more than 6 billion people.

B. Yeah, I try to not descend to mf's level.

C. It is just that there is no distinguishing factor of any religion that makes it more likely to be true.

I'm a mix of a whole bunch of religions, and a couple of my own ideas thrown in.
I really don't get why some people think they understand religion, and think that they're 100% right. I mean sure, you might get some of the really basic things down, but I highly doubt anyone could figure out something as complex as a god. And I don't think a god would be like anything we picture him/her/it to be. Our ideas about the universe have changed a lot since most of the religions were created. Surely some have been edited since then.

Our ideas about the universe have changed, but a lot of people have first-hand experiance of something beyond our current ideas of the universe. It goes a bit like this:

"I got an odd itch/rash. Never happened before and I wasn't exposed to anything new. I'm not allergic to anything. It got worse, so I got some lotion on it. I got hives.
Then I got my crystal off the window-sill {a small quartz point, about 2 inches long}. I held the crystal in the palm of my hand and held my hand over the rash, palm up...and then something I can only describe as "water flowing out and over my hand"-sensation happened. I knew it was the crystal. A lot of people would say "placebo"."

Any experiance will normaly cause people to believe in something. As long as you aren't force-fed some religion, it only takes one experiance to make you think "wow... someone up there likes me" or something to that effect. Once you have personal proof, you have faith. This makes you know you're right. Of course, there's always the large chance you're completely wrong. The thing is, once people get something into their heads, they tend to think it's right until disproved. This is something even I do; I just assume "what I know" = "correct".

Its because people want to see patterns and themselves as more important than they actually are. Did you know that I have magical pubic hair? Swear to whatever you find holy, ever since I got my pubes I've never been attacked by an animal.
I also have some magical rocks that protect people from elephant attacks. Only 500 dollars a rock, real bargain, and a 100 percent efficacy track record too!

*Hides sniper rifle...*

Hey, don't you mention my name without my being present! Especialy when it concerns sniping down christians! Because you know, thats just way to funny to mention without me present :).

Anyhoo, I will say this once again I guess. I have nothing again religion by itself. I have nothing against the bible, god, jezus or Allah!
Yes I do find blindly following a book rather stupid, but even that you can get away with around me. No, what gets my tail in a twist is the majority of downright assholes that have taken the entire bible out of context. Yes I'm pointing at you, f*cking Americans. Nowhere in the bible, new or old testament, does it say that god hates gay people. Nowhere does it say that gay people can't marry and neither does it say that interspecie relations are bad for that matter. But somewhere along the line, some important guy in church mingled his own opinion in with that off the bible and so somehow it became a believe that gays are bad.
Also, where in the bible does it say that us humans are the judge jury and exocutioner of everything that is (supposedly) marked bad in the bible? If my memory serves my right, the first rule on the 10 commandmends was: Thy shall not kill. Nowhere in my memory do I recall anything remotely close to: Thy shall throw hard solid rocks at a faggot untill he is five different kinds of dead.
If god thinks gay people are bad, then it would seem logical to me that he would have struck a few gay people with lightning by now. He is your god, you believe in him, you take trust in the lord's judgement, yes? Then let him do is damn job and stop telling him what to do.
And it's not only the gay thing being put out of context. There are thousands of things but the biggest most arrogant thing ever... is teaching INTELIGENT DESIGN in goddamn science class.
It's stuff like that pissed me off to the max, and if you are defending stupidity like that then it also explains where the red/green dot between your eyes comes from.

Now, remember what I said here so I don't have to post it again in the next religion topic, plz :).

Havoc

Oooooh dear. So it has come to this. The Evo/ID war. There's a parody of it on film soon: A Flock of Dodos. But it would do better in another thread. A long, exhausting, full-of-old-news thread (I am rather tired of this argument).

For ease of writing I'm going to restrict this to the science-Christianity argument.

It has been long established by most rational and thinking Christians that the theory of evolution is no problem to their faith. It is important not to take the Bible literally, or you will have to run and hide from the contradictions in it. Even one of the Popes (they do seem to blur together sometimes) has given evolution grace in the church. Link

Even those who do not accept evolution agree that creationism and ID should not be taught in science class.

However, it is becoming ever clear that for those against evolution, it is no longer about faith, but about the challenge to old traditions, and the beleived effects on their lives. This precipitates as the old Darwin-bashing. And a large part of the support that ID gets is down to the people involved, and/or the observer's perception them. The local, smiley, have-a-beer-with-friends, "normal" proponent of ID seems far more appealing than the scientists, seen to "look down on intellectual inferiors" and use big words. This, and the general way science is taught everywhere, are symptoms of a bigger problem for science today, and a source of ever increasing "magical thinking".

And remember, scientists started out as devout religious people trying to find out about God's world, and trying to make it easier to understand. However, the need for God phased out of many with the discoveries, and eventually science made it harder to understand the universe, with things like quantum and string theory. Christianity seems to be the only religion that sees the universe as something that can be understood, that has a distinct purpose, as opposed to many other faiths, in which the "creator" and its intentions are entirely unfathomable.

Link

I've said this before: That is the only thing religion is. An excuse so you can say that you understand what no-one CAN understand.

I happen to be an Orthodox Christian, but I don't give a fuck about what religion everyone else wants to be. Honestly. I don't go to church here either. Too fakey. I used to, back in Moscow...

And about the creationism, blergh. I believe in evolution...I guess the Bible is just this whole giant metaphor.

By the way, (I know this is going to trigger a flashback to the WPYO thread in some of your minds), but I remember stumbling upon a sentence somewhere in the Bible where it said something about homosexuals not entering the kingdom of God.
Just posting my two cents.

Actually, religion has always been "going too far". Ever since the medieval ages where christianity was basicly used to drain the money out of all the gullible followers. That is, until they finally smartened up and created a seperate church. I'm not even gonna go into all the muslim and hindu fighting and whatnot.
Which reminds me, Jesus preached about peace, but so many people have been killed in his name... huh.

"The 3rd Planet is sure that they're being watched by an
eye in the sky that can't be stopped
When you get to the promise land your gonna shake that
eyes hand" -Modest Mouse