Following somebody without knowing whether you actually do agree with them or not is both dangerous and stupid. If you're going to judge people for something, at least have the courtesy to know why you dislike them for it.

I chose to let it go because I felt like it proved that point so clearly without my even saying anything, but yes, you are absolutely right. If you can't say why it's wrong, then it isn't wrong.

And saying it's ookie is not a reason for it being wrong.

I thought it was kinky, does that make it right?

So what are you saying? That you should be able to do these things.

I've done all four of those things, and at no point did I feel like what I was doing was wrong. Can you tell me why they are?

If you think that that is boring, you have not been paying attention. I already know that you have missed almost everything, as evidenced by your argument.

I respect honesty.

None say that at all. Quite apart from the way you attempt to sum up decades of physics, astronomy and cosmology into a single non-sequitur, the Higgs boson to which I assume you are referring has noting to do with the Big Bang theory at all. The Higgs boson is a type of particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. These are the observed particles of the standard model:


The four in the red squares are the gauge bosons. These bosons are force carriers which mediate three of the four forces. The massless photons mediate the electromagnetic force between electromagnetically charged particles, the heavy W+, W−, and Z gauge bosons mediate the weak interaction (weak nuclear force) between all flavours of quarks and leptons, and the eight “colours” of gluons mediate (and participate in) the strong interaction (strong nuclear force, or colour force) between quarks. It is the latter than bind two Up quarks and one Down quark into the composite particle known as the proton, and one Up quark and two Down quarks into the neutron.

Part of the Standard Model is the Higgs mechanism (also Higgs field), which explains why the elementary particles have mass, in particular why the W+, W−, and Z bosons are so heavy while the photon is massless. All elementary particles, composite particles and atomic nuclei have a fundamental property known as spin, which is not what it sounds like. It is a kind of intrinsic angular momentum. Actually the bosons so not have intrinsic spin, but rather integer spin. Don’t worry about it. The point is that the Standard model predicts a massive scalar elementary particle with a spin of zero, which would make it a boson. This would be the Higgs boson, and would confirm the standard model and the Higgs mechanism. It hasn’t been observed yet because it is also predicted to require an exceptionally large amount of energy and beam luminosity to isolate and observe it within a collider. Though it may well have already been produced but not observed.

This is how the elementary particles interact with one another:


After this it all gets rather complicated.

No doubt the public confusion concerning the Higgs boson comes from the media’s ridiculous and infuriating habit of referring to the Higgs boson as “the God particle”, after the title of Leon Lederman’s book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? Though it seems to have increased media and public interest in particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider, I don’t know any scientist who likes this name. From a competition to select a new popular name, a jury of physicists selected “the champagne bottle boson,” which accurately describes the immediate effect of the boson on the human race.

I personally guarantee you that every single intelligent species that has ever and will ever exist in the universe will look upon its native environment, be it planet or otherwise, hot or cold, acidic or alkali, high pressure or low, and observe: “how uncannily perfect is the world for beings such as we?” or however they might express the sentiment. The less thoughtful among them, should their minds be wired this way, would go on to conclude that it was made for them specifically. This is a conceit that many children can see through. Point out to a class of nine-year-olds that the world is made green because it is more pleasant to our eyes, and there is always be one who, without any knowledge of chlorophyll, will see that we find the colour green pleasant because the world is already green.

We were only ever going to find ourselves on a worlds suited to our kind of life, because there is no other kind of world that our kind of life will ever find itself on. Not without very large rockets, at least. And if the world was different, a different kind of life would thrive on it. Or none at all. We are not required. Any world that would be the cradle of humanity would have been called by them “Earth”.

The numbers game for Earth-like planets has already been played by others in the thread. Could have done better, guys. But we already know that you don’t need an Earth-like planet to support life. Hell, for most of its existence, Earth hasn’t been Earth-like! We find the planet as it is only after billions of years of industrious, unthinking and thankless activity by the single-celled organisms that makes up all but the tiniest fraction of the history of life on this planet. Cyanobacteria, which produced oxygen as a waste product. Oxygen, which we rarely appreciate to be the toxic and hazardous element that it really is. Our immune system uses it to kill bacteria and infected cells! At first the oxygen, highly reactive as it is, reacted with iron and other minerals, keeping levels low. But eventually the oxygen sinks ran out, and it filled the atmosphere, poisoning and killing off the very organisms that provided it. Only later does life find a way to exploit oxygen, which is like rocket fuel for multicellular life, as only with oxygen do organisms gain access to the energy required to be multicellular. But atmospheric elemental oxygen is not a stable state. It reacts so easily that we cannot expect to find an oxygenated atmosphere uninhabited. Oxygen is not a requirement for life, it is an indicator of life. And it has to be maintained. If all the plants on Earth died, but left enough food for animal life, in just 500 years the oxygen levels in the atmosphere will have been halved.

Let us not forget that not only did life craft the world we see today, but it evolved to fit into it. We did not evolve to survive on prehistoric Mercury, we evolved to survive on present-age Earth. The peg of life becomes whatever shape the hole of its environment happens to be.

Before I continue with this point, I have to address the facts of your last point two points. The Earth does not remain the same distance from the sun, and its orbital speed changes as it goes around.


The Earth rotates once on its axis every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.100 seconds. Today. It is slowing very gradually and measurably due to the tidal forces of the moon. When it was just formed it would complete one rotation in perhaps four hours, generating colossal wind speeds as a matter of course. By 400 million years ago, the Devonian (aka Age of Fish), a day was 21.6 hours and there were over 400 of them in a year. The changing Earth is an important point that I will come back to.


Yes, the Earth is very suitable and pleasant for our kind of life. But that’s only half the story! Take a closer look at the situation we find ourselves in. Of the planet we can live on, we can only survive in a very thin film of life delicately spread over its surface. We can dig and live certainly not much more than 2km down, and not for long. An atmosphere that extends some 60km up, almost all of which we cannot breathe in, and of what we can almost all of it is entirely inaccessible. We are surface dwellers, yet two thirds of the surface of the Earth is entirely inhospitable to we land-dwelling air-breathers, and in half of what’s left we will freeze and or starve to death. Some design.

The perfect warming and cooling of the Earth you praise is necessary but not perfect in the slightest. The planet’s axis is tilted, first of all. This means that for six months at a time a not insignificant portion of the planet is left in total darkness, or total light. This tilt creates seasons, which certainly makes life more interesting (particularly concerning migratory, hibernating and breeding behaviours) but is absolutely unnecessary for life. Indeed, it regularly transforms pleasant habitats into hostile wastelands that kills of most of it, and relegates the lifespan of many of Earth’s species to no more than a year. And the division of the surface into water and land, necessary for life, also prevents perfect warming and cooling. These completely different surfaces absorb and radiate heat differently, and among the outcomes are winds and the hurricanes that regularly clobber us. This is a system in which the only solution that permits life also causes deadly effects. Some design.

There’s life itself. The Bible irresponsibly teaches that we have dominion over the animals of the world, but neglects to mention that microorganisms have dominion over us. We know why, of course. Some design.

The surface of this world to which we so desperately cling to is only the sold crust. The world has not yet cooled, and is liquid below (where the pressure permits), upon which the cracked segments of crust float and grind and overlap. And a good thing too! Without the still-molten core there would be no plate tectonics, and without tectonic activity the carbon cycle would grind to a halt as all the carbon of which we are made makes its way into the rocks and the seabed, permanently. The only solution to a world with the oceans and marine microorganisms necessary for life, but look at the other outcomes: earthquakes, which shatter our meagre cities and cause untold suffering, and volcanoes, essential to the carbon cycle but which bury our lands in ash, and every so often threaten our very existence. 60,000 years ago, before we have even left the continent of our birth, the Toba supervolcano erupted and caused grand climactic upheaval that reduced our species to between 1000 and 10,000 breeding pairs. The brink of extinction, and ever since has left our species genetically impoverished by comparison to other species, making us vulnerable as a species to plagues and disease. This is the solution to the carbon cycle! Some design.

Tsunamis, as well. Over half of the human population and civilisation is on the coast, where it is extremely vulnerable to tsunamis. They are caused by earthquakes somewhere beneath the two-thirds of the planet’s surface covered in water, where most do, related to the above point, but by asteroid impacts too. The inner solar system is a shooting gallery by geological time scales. There’s one being tracked now, appropriately named “Apophis,” that runs the risk of sandblasting every Pacific coastline. Some Design.


Now, temperature: 2.4 billion years ago we had the Oxygen Catastrophe. All the oxygen being produced by the cyanobacteria for over a billion years had already oxidised the metals and minerals of the crust, and was now spilling into the atmosphere. At this stage the atmosphere was rich in, among other gasses, methane. As we know, methane is a very potent greenhouse gas. As the highly reactive free oxygen poured into the atmosphere it began oxydising the methane into water and the less potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. This catastrophic loss of greenhouse gasses cooled the Earth phenomenally, and caused a glaciation, written indelibly into the rocks, reaching all the way down and up to the equator, putting the pathetic ice age of modern times and its glaciated periods to shame. I’m talking, full blown, maximum Hoth, Snowball Earth.


It lasted for 300 million years. That’s half again longer than the age of mammals and the age of dinosaurs put together. This was not the only time this has happened in the Earth’s history. The most recent was sometime before 650 million years ago, just before the Cambrian and the rise of multicellular life. You want to talk about how if the Earth wasn’t perfect, we’d all freeze? Dude, its, not, and it’s happened before. Life continues. We cut it pretty close, but we’re still here. Earth was not Earth-like. The solution to oxygenating the atmosphere into a state in which multicellular organisms could exist, it turns out, almost wiped life out altogether. Some design.

The mind-expanding exercise of considering Earth in different periods of its history applies to the other planets, too. Once upon a time Venus, Earth’s sister and twin, is thought to have been pleasant and balmy, without horrific pressures and temperatures. Mars had running water and a thick and proper atmosphere. There was Hell on Earth. But as time ticked away the little differences in size and solar distance made themselves known and they became the hells they are today. Earth has become what it is, but the clock of this grandest of experiments has not yet run full. Earth is “perfect” for life, so far, but we still have to see how that works out in the long run. The thing about stars like our sun is that they grow brighter as they age, even before they go red giant. The habitable “Goldilocks” zone around a star, in which Venus once sat, steadily expands. Sooner or later Earth will drop off the inside edge, and Snowball Earth will be out of the question. But Well Done Or Extra Crispy Earth, now there’s an eon to get behind. Some Design.

Is it truly any surprise that, off all the ages of the Earth, we find ourselves in the one between these extremes? No divine providence is necessary for that.

Look at the sheer volume of the universe, including the Earth, in which you can't live. A universe in which our galactic orbit may occasionally bring us in range of a supernova, the radiation from which will strip our ozone layer and sterilise the surface of the planet. What I'm saying is, this universe should not make you praise your god, it should make you question the competence of the designer. Or at the very least, give you pause to cast off the madly egotistical conceit that it was made with you in mind. If there is one thing we can be certain of, it is the the universe does not care that we exist, will not notice when we are gone, and will carelessly exterminate us at a moment's notice. Some design.


I really hope that that was an honest and simple error on your part.

I can see that the argument from personal ignorance is going to become a theme, but I must cry foul at your quote mining. I have no doubt at all that Weinberg said that, since it is a poetically accurate description of what our theories predict, however I can find no example anywhere besides Christian propaganda websites. What you won’t have heard is that the universe (smaller than a person at this stage) was filled with will light and was perfectly dark, on account of being opaque. Lots of light, but it couldn’t go anywhere without colliding with a particle.

Besides, Weinberg is one of ours, and I can summon quotes with the best of them. “Religion is an insult to human dignity.” –Steven Weinberg.

Actually Stephen Hawking has proposed one, though it hasn’t filtered down to me yet. Besides, should there be no explanation, I am perfectly comfortable with an “I don’t know... yet.” Science is progress, and mystery its stock in trade. Science doesn’t know everything, and it knows it doesn’t know everything, otherwise it would stop. But it doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairytale that most appeals to you. You will get burned when science comes along to fill the gap with discovery, as it always has. Religion retreats further and further into the most distant and aloof reaches of mystery, but the tentacles of discovery continue to rape its every orifice with unbridled delight.

Historically, few people have been content to reject nonsense when there is no sensible alternative. One of the earliest few was David Hume, who lived some decades before Darwin, and saw fit to reject religious creationism as an evidently and objectively bad explanation for life. He had no alternative, but you don’t need one to recognize a bad idea.

Personal ignorance again. The exact origin of life remains unknown but a mystery that is actively being studied rather than ignored and put down to the glory of god. Science is a philosophy of discovery, intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. The reason no one has recreated abiogenesis in the lab yet is due to a combination of current ignorance and the lack of a lab with sufficient scope, or indeed scientists with sufficient lifespan.

There are a number of interesting hypotheses about the origin of life. This one I find the most compelling, and the individual aspects of which are all demonstrated:


As for DNA, it is well documented, observed, proven and explained how information can be generated and preserved through purely natural processes. I am not going to relate grade-school science or even university-level science, especially not at this point. However, these videos and those they link to cover it quite well.


Baseless assertion. Why is it that that so-called “evidence” is only ever evidence of the god one already believes in, yet is always evidence of something much more amazing and much less petty and human when examined with fresh eyes with the intent to solve it?

It’s a common criticism that I encounter, but an intrinsically silly one. Can you with all honesty think of a single example of something that anyone spends any time, attention or energy at all to refute something that they don’t think is untrue? Wings of Fire is peculiar and doesn’t count.
Personally I have many motivations, but chief among them is that it is fun. Others include living in a world where the majority of the population appears, on the face of it, to be mad. A world where people seek to impose their questionable moral values on me, a world where people seek to replace education and discovery with their own brand of stifling ignorance. A world where parents, educators and self-described priests and holy men commit the unforgivable crime of extinguishing the unbridled curiosity of children, threaten them with hellfire and willingly install a slave mentality that actually wants the ridiculous aspects of religious dogma to be true. A world where religious institutions are unquestionably awarded charitable status even though their works frequently include proselytising, preaching and preventing the one thing proven to lift people out of poverty; while organisations seeking charitable status that promote reason and science are asked “It is not clear how the advancement of science tends towards the mental and moral improvement of the public. Please provide us with evidence of this or explain how it is linked to the advancement of humanism and rationalism.”

Above all else, I live in a world in which faith is considered, of all things, a fucking virtue.

Oh dear. I haven’t even gone on the offensive yet. I was just getting into first gear for the last one.

Perhaps my argument need expanding.

Unfortunately I don't think I can counter argue all your points, so assume that I assume the ones I haven't answered are rhetorical...that and I think your scientific mind outshines my religious/philosophical/scientific one in most aspects. ;)

Ok, I believe I can counter your argument in eight points, sorry if sounds rude, I'm not saying that your argument can be summed up into eight points I'm just not very good at expressing long paragraphs off the top of my head.

1.) On a non-religious level God exists in all of our minds and therefore, even if God is not physical he is a mental creation and therefore he exists as firmly as the idea of social equality.

2.) God is a possible being or supernatural being, he may exist in reality because there are no internal contradictions in his existence.

3.) (The third point I quote from St. Anselm, although all my other points are loosely based on his, I'm sure you already realised this.) "If something exists exclusively in our understanding and might have existed in reality then it might have been greater. This simply means that something that exists in reality is perfect (or great). Something that is only a concept in our minds could be greater by actually existing."

4.) Suppose then God only can exist in our imaginations, dreamt up in a time of hopelessness or moulded from an age old story.

5.) So then God is greater than he is in the physical realm (sounds like De Carte here)

6.) "This would mean that God is a being in which a greater is possible."

7.) This is stupid and impossible because the Lord, a being in which nothing greater is possible, is a being in which a greater is possible. Herein lies the obvious contradiction.

8.) Thus it follows that it is false for God to only exist in our understanding.

So God can exist in reality and our mind.

Yes, sorry.

Easily, a petty example would be me and my brother, he says that I have never had a girlfriend yet I knew he was obviously arguing for the sake of arguing, I applied time and energy to prove him wrong with photographic evidence.

I refuse to believe that you honestly believe that anyone who believe in God/ a god, i.e. different to you, is mad.

The history of man and the nature of man is to be ignorant, we are a minor body in an enormous Universe, we can only create ideas were we lack understanding and debate conflicting ideas were it is impossible to find truth, this can be said of the scientific bodies debating the creation of the Universe via the Big Bang v Other theories, it is unlikely we will ever truly know how we came about, we just are.

Anyone who threatens another with hellfire must be certain in their mind that they are right and this shows a great worry for the person they threaten, enough to try and scare their 'enemies' into seeing how they see things.

On a non-debate note it's a shame you ended such an intelligent offensive with a pointlessly rude embellishment.

So I suppose this will not by my last argument, I'm preparing for a second offensive from you already, however duly note that I believe you must be one of the most creative, argumentative but intelligent people I know so congratulate yourself on that. =)

OK here is my view on the whole thing,

it basically comes down to god vs science, there is no 100% proof for either god or science so these debates will continue untill the second coming (or untill the sun explodes depending which side you choose, although I think that a supernova could be the clensed by fire that is mentioned somewere in the bible)
someone mentiond something about "it can't all be randome chance" well I think that's why scientists came up with the parralell universes theory were anything that can happen has happened, eliminating the randomeness factor (which means in some universe I'm the president of earth fighting off an alien attack)
although I am religiouse I do belive in aliens (most religiouse people I talk to don't) god created an infinate universe I find it hard to belive he would only put one life bearing planet in it.
I am willing to accept the possability that the bible Isnt 100% accurate as it is a very old book and it was written a while after the events and unless every singal person writing it had a perfect memory then... you get the drift (many christians would probably feel like killing me right now, thankfully there prohibited from doing so)
there is one thing I want to set strait right now and that is that some christens say that they are the most persecuted but to be honest I think the mozlums get persecuted most, think about it christens get persecuted in some third world countries but just about anywere on the planet mozlums are seen as teroists because of one teroist group that happened to be mozlum, that's the equivilent of saying birds eat insects therfor anything that eats insects is a bird therfor spiders are birds. (I'm not mozlum Im just saying they get the brunt of the persecution)

to close of Ill leave something for non belivers to think about, if were wrong we have a lifetime with meaningless restrictions but if your wrong you have a blissful life but forever suffer in hell afterwards (Okay we christens do seem to overstress the hell factor)

LDG519, your ideas are similar to mine, your are one of the few Christians I have known that also believe the bible is not 100% accurate, do you believe in The Creation according to Genesis?

that is an area that Im a bit fuzzy about, (evan people who belive the bible is 100% accurate will argue in that area) it may have it may not have, I havent made up my mind on that one yet, for all I know the universe could have been created exactly like the scientists say just god was there making sure it works out right, on the other hand he could have clicked his fingers and there we were.

my grammer and spelling might be a bit off so I apologize if anything I say is a bit hard to understand

Clearness is the key to good communication. If you feel that something is unclear, why not fix it instead of leaving it?

I put things as clear as I can but sometimes I just cant figure out what the right spelling or grammer is so I just do the best I can

I have no problem with the idea that god exists in our imaginations. That is, however, a very imaginative use of the word "exists".

As for the logic of the argument, which I have heard before:

1.) On a non-culinary level the perfect cookie exists in all of our minds and therefore, even if the perfect cookie is not physically real it is a mental creation and therefore it exists as firmly as the idea of lunch.

2.) The perfect cookie is a possible snack or supernatural snack, it may exist in reality because there are no internal contradictions in its existence.

3.) "If something exists exclusively in our understanding and might have existed in reality then it might have been greater. This simply means that something that exists in reality is perfect (or great). Something that is only a concept in our minds could be greater by actually existing."

4.) Suppose then that the perfect cookie only can exist in our imaginations, dreamt up in a time of hunger or moulded from an age old restaurant critique.

5.) So then the perfect cookie is greater than it is in the physical realm.

6.) This would mean that the perfect cookie is a snack in which a greater is possible.

7.) This is stupid and impossible because the perfect cookie, a treat in which none greater is possible, is a treat in which a greater is possible. Herein lies the obvious contradiction.

8.) Thus it follows that the perfect cookie is in my mouth.

I'm not sure we can really pursue sibling teasing as an honest example.

I said "on the face of it". There is a compelling case to be made, I think, even though it is probably untrue. Superficially the differences are few. Believing in something that cannot be said to be there, claiming to be in telepathic communication which such an entity, seeing patterns and signs of it everywhere. It doesn't look good.

Maybe not, but don't sell the human race short. We can produce extraordinarily accurate models of the universe, which is all science strives to do anyway. And certainly scientific theories have evidence to back them up. I'm loathe to call the "other" theories "theories" at all. Nothing is certain, but we have a damn good idea, and it is getting better all the time. No other enterprise does or is.

Children, mostly. You can tell from their questions that they see through religion from an early age. Is it any wonder this treatment is "required".

I don't think it was rude. And if I'm honest, I'm not truly bothered if it was. It's what I think. If you mean the use of the word "fucking," frankly it was the only word available to properly express my disgust, emotion, vehemence and generally provide sufficient emphasis to the point.

100% proof is neither possible nor required, but you will find that when it comes to evidence, science is holding all the cards.

Parallel universes are proposed mainly as a solution of quantum theory, which concerns genuinely random events unaffected by anything that preceded them. However, these quantum events are only appropriate at the subatomic level and don't have on affect on the macroscopic world. But the significant effect of random on the universe cannot be ignored, but it doesn't actually pose any problems for science.

It is somewhat different in their own countries, in some of which you can be put to death for not being a Muslim, and especially for leaving Islam. In many of them atheism is actually illegal, making false accusations that lead to corporal or capital punishment against non-Muslims is not uncommon (and permitted according to some holy texts). Atheism is not recognised at all in Indonesia, where your religion has to be registered in your ID (neither is Judaism, which is a bother for the nation's 25 Jews). Though in many Muslim countries the number 1 oppressed demographic is most certainly women.

In America simply stating that atheists exist, especially if you are one, is enough to cause a disproportionate fuss.

Pascal's Wager is so flawed that even Pascal, a celebrated mathematician and progenitor or probability theory, did not consider it valid. It is religious hucksterism of the cheapest, nastiest, most vulgar kind it is possible to imagine. It says "what have you got to lose?" Quite a lot, I should think, but that is another story. "What have you got to lose? I've got a good offer for you! Come into my used-car lot! Come on baby, just lie a little, and you'll never know!" Don't talk to me like that, and don't call it piety when you do. As if one can simply believe in the obscene by sheer force of will. You imply your god is both very cynical and very stupid. One who is either fooled by this or else says "I notice you make a profession of faith just there, and I also know why you did: in aid of gaining favour with me. Well that's all right then, come on in!" That is a contemptible thing, a contemptible person, and a contemptible god (nothing new there). And were I to find myself sitting, surprised, before your god in a celestial tribunal, no lawyer, no jury of my peers, no appeal, no order (why the faithful want this to be true, I'll never know), all I will be able to say is "I was honestly unable to believe the word of your Earthly representatives." Not that any particular outcome at this point is very attractive to me at this point.

But I turn the point back at you. Suppose, having believed all your life, presumably on actual faith and not this petty gambit, you find yourself before the celestial tribunal, and it's the wrong god. Who is in the worse position now, eh? You'd best hope that the real thing isn't the jealous type, like the one that you had bet on. Thousands of human gods (I've seen the lists), an infinite number of possible gods no one has yet thought of, no reason to believe that any are true or reflect in any way any actual gods, and there you are, believing to be true the religion that you happened by the sheerest chance to be born into. Which itself takes the arrogant and egocentric to the extremes and beyond. I can expand on this further. But how confident are you, really? Keep in mind that the exact same source of confidence and faith you may hold to be true in the deepest reaches of your person is identical to that of those of all the other religions that have ever existed.

You guys are writing a novel. This is a whole heap of trouble.

Okay I admit my petty gambit is wrong, but I didnt put as much thought into it as I should have and that is a fault in me not my religion, no matter what religion you look at you must allow for some human error. and say I do end up at the celestial tribunal and it's the wrong god, I can at least say I tried. If you were blind in an open field with a gun with one bullet and you knew there was a man that would kill you if you didnt shoot first would you stand there second guessing yourself and get killed or would you take a blind shot hoping to hit something. me personally I would rather take the shot

note: I was never intending to offend anyone and if I did I apologise
and for the record I was not born in my religon

Come off it. The people seeking the origin of the universe are working on just as much faith as any Muslim.

I don’t think a person should burn in hell for these things. But I also think you shouldn’t do these things. (Except for the saying your child’s name in vain. I’m not sure what that means exactly, so I have no opinion on it.) In all honesty, I can’t actually explain why I think these things are wrong. I just do, but not because “god” said it was wrong. It’s just a personnel feeling. But after thinking about this for a while it made me realize that’s just it. This is based on personnel feelings, so I have no real claim that these things are truly wrong. In other words, I withdraw from what I said earlier.

This thread is so goddamn tl;dr. I mean I can understand trying to get your point out, but goddamn.

finally someone with sanity, this type of debate usually gets confruntational and I think it is a subject to be avoided in future

You want to avoid it because there is dispute? I thought that the whole point of discussion was to communicate your point and try to convince people that you're right.

a calm debate is fine but this has obviously gone out of hand

It's not out of hand. It's just quite long, which means they're having a stimulating discussion since they clearly have a point to prove.

If human error is in all religions then how can you claim religion to be divine?

And I hate this idea that you HAVE to worship a deity to get into their afterlife. Whether or not you believe in them shouldn't be relevant, a fundamentally good person should still be deserving of heaven or whatever you want to call it.
If God turns away good people because they didn't pray to him every night then I'm sorry, that's not an all-loving God.

Also way to take a blind shot at a person who is likely in the same position as you. Where's the moral high ground in that?

well my analigies may have some flaws but again a falt in me not my religion, human error is in all religions simply because no human is perfect, the relgion itself is still divine it is the people who are portraying it that are in error

although you are correct in one area, most people say it is because nobody is good but I find that a little hard to wrap my head around, evan if that is so I fail to see how 1 lifetime of sin warrents an eternaty of torment

Well to be fair I won't be continuing this argument, I think BM's scientific intelligence outshines mine to the point were I'm really digging for answers, it comes down to this though, religion requires faith, some people are lacking or were never fortunate enough to be brought up into a religious family. This argument was never going to change either of our ideas on how the Universe came about and such but nevertheless, it was an interesting debate. Well done BM I suppose.
Perhaps we need a debate thread?

I agree, us trying to goe against bullet magnets scientific knoledge is like trying to take down an armourd personel carrier with a sword and shield.

Which I have done but nevertheless... ;)

I just think it's strange, that even now when you realize there's no point in going against BM, you seem like you haven't learned much.

In conclusion, I think that most people know their religion is bullshit deep-down(I'm sorry, I really don't mean to offend any of you). They are just so scared of death, and are lacking meaning in life so much that they'll ignore their sanity, and go to whoever first says: Oh, I have the answers for you, boy!!

Really, I wish you'd continue STM, just to see when you truly run out of arguments, cos that's how religious debates always end up. All the one's I've seen. The religious person will always give up and say something along the lines that you said.
Why wont you defend your religion? As it stands now, BM won the debate.
I just wanna come across one religious person who can stand their ground, and actually give good reasons to why they believe. Well.. two, actually. Cos I already met one in my life, and He's my friend. But I'm greedy <.<

Also, science isn't faith, cos Science follows a line of well-documented evidence, while faith/religion has no evidence that all, except personal experiences which could mean anything. I really hate when people say that science is just faith. Or a religion. They really do not know the meaning of this.

I don't think that science can explain everything yet. SO I'm just one of those agnostic people who will wait and see.

There's tons of fun theories based on science that can also replace your religious need for meaning and afterlife or something. Dunno. That'd at least be a step up and less biased.


I just hate that religion still has an effect on non-religious people's lives. Such as sex-related laws, people who try to scar children with the word "hell" and shit like that. There's so much cruelty in religion. It also encourages direct denial of scientific evidence.
At least if you'd have picked a peaceful one. One that didn't slyly put their 'ethics' above the development of our race and our wellbeing.


Yea, my words aren't as intelligent as perhaps BM, but this is just the opinion of a non-scientist agnostic person =)

Yarp...

I was quoting what God would have said. Too be honest BM just blew my fucking mind and I probably won't read back on it to understand it completely... at least anytime soon.

I'll leave this discussion by saying if he doesn't exist I'll continue to live life as I want to. If he does exist, I'll continue to live life the way I want to... life is too short to worry about being saintly on the off-chance that there is a higher plane of blissful existence. Also why would he want to punish someone who didn't waste what must be the most precious thing you'll ever have.

fucking thread.

you haven't seen anything yet. trust me.