Religious People Need Evidence TOO!

At one point in humanity religion seemed like the logical answer based on all the evidence. Greek mythology was all based on evidence, occurances in every day life. Just an exemple. But as time went on, evidence started to suggest a much more uncomfortable universe, one in which we are not rewarded for our good deeds and our enemies are not punished. Some were willing to accept this, some were not. But even today you see religious people relying on evidence, as little as there is left... And that is what science has no explanation for... Whenever science can't explain something, God usually seems to comes up in conversation... That in itself is a form of evidence, and really the only one religion has left. And they always have it, cause science will never explain everything. It will only explain more and more, and leave less and less space for God. "God in the gaps" theory. Thus back far enough, and us athiests and theists were once the same... We parted ways when evidence took one hand and faith took the other...

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

In other words, as science expands, religion loses power.

Religion once provided comfort from a harsh reality and explanations of the world. Now science makes our reality less harsh and provides explanations of the world.

Eventually, the only religious people will be those who are too weak to stand the fact that, yes Virginia, life is hell.

I suppose most religious people are like this, to some extent. But if your theory is correct, notme, eventually all religious people will be this. Simply weaklings who cannot handle reality and flee into fantasy.

Alls leben ist krieg alles leban ist pein
Und du kaempfst allein deinen eigenen krieg
Krieg
Das ist krieg.

(All life is war, all life is pain, and you will fight alone in your personal war. This is war.)

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

thats where u guys r wrong, as science expands, religion grows with it as the truth is unfolded, especially in today the fact that life forms are extremely detailed ordered specie and one word describe its existence, "Intelligence" plain and simple...

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Entschuldigen mich, aber ich kaempfe bestimmt nicht allein.

 

If this were true, there would be no difference between religion and science, and I'm sure we can agree that there is. Science is based on evidence, and new evidence is collected every day, changing science. Religion is based on faith, and every human is born with that ability, from day one.

 

There's a difference between religion as a science (theology), and actually believing in and following God.

 

"What about transitional evolution of the species, there is no evidence to support it, "

What do you call fossils that show transitionary phases then?

But I agree with you. Transitional evolution lacks the proof required to teach it as fact. The idea of evolution should however be taught as fact, because there is enough evidence for it to do so. The right thing to say would be "organisms do evolve, but we aren't sure yet exactly how they go about doing this"

 

Back when there was no scientific explanation for why things happened. People had to find reasons that things happened that they could not explain. Their answer was 'God'.

Do you believe that faith and prayer gives you an edge over atheists? So, no religious people died on 9/11?

I think Xev said it best in her earlier post:

 

Not very good arguments, Jan.

Obviously, I am referring to the creation of religion/mythology. It continues today, for some people.

So, you think there is a chance that no one who died on 9/11 was religious? That's a good way to kill the discussion. But, you cannot prove to me that only sinners and atheists died on 9/11.

Because, surely, God would not have made a devout christian jump from the 90th floor.:bugeye:

 

Notme,

Yes this is sad and largely reflects the immature and unscientific thinking of most people. I.e. most people do not know how to think. Human history has been steeped in superstition and religion and consequent ignorance so the temptation still remains for many to introduce archaic superstitions when presented with a mystery.

The atheist and skeptic perspectives avoid this trap by insisting on having knowledge, or when knowledge is absent then maintaining the stance that one simply does not know. I.e. either we have knowledge or we do not. The religionist does not have the same mental discipline and foolishly insists on answers regardless of the state of knowledge.

I hope one day we will know everything and the discipline of the scientific method is by far the best first approach we have to achieving that goal.

Cris

 

Muscle,

The evidence shows otherwise.

Religion has shown itself to be a very reluctant follower of science, even to the point of persecuting and murdering scientists for daring to show evidence that conflict with religious dogma.

Example – the persecution of Galileo -
http://www.geocities.com/buyu_2000/evolution/conflict.html

Extract: In 1992, Pope John Paul II (reluctantly) formally apologized for the persecution of Galileo. I for one think that we should not let the church forget their crimes, lest they be repeated. If the Church still had the power of sword and firebrand, and the power to cross national borders at will, I believe that they would even now return to their policy of world conquest through threat, torture and murder.

But these crimes continue today. The outrageous decision by Bush and his Christian cronies to ban stem cell research is a major blow to scientific research in the USA and probably denies many Americans cures for many terrible diseases; fortunately more enlightened governments in the rest of the world especially the UK are forging ahead with this major area of research.

But we know from the facts of evolution that man has evolved from lower life forms and they from even lower life forms, and so on. Many of the theories that explain these processes are well understood while others are still being developed. If you follow the very clear line of dots you should have little trouble seeing that man evolved from very simple structures over millions of years. I see no reason to conclude that this process is being directed by intelligence, especially since the human form is extremely fragile, short-lived, and with numerous major faults and failures. If man was designed then the designer should be executed for criminal incompetence.

Try studying the metabolic pathways of the human cell. It is a disaster. The cell has evolved through numerous phases and there are leftovers from these phases that conflict with each other today.

Cris

 

To Cris and everyone else in this thread,

Im going to go ahead and tell all you people to ignore muscleman. He is a retard. He does not listen to reason/examples and will only call you a rambling atheist.

Heres a example:

Its gone on like that for 100+ pages. Dont even mention his cellphone (he will try to claim that its a building). Its not a lie, its the truth. Go check it out.

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=11294&perpage=5&pagenumber=10

Note: That is the first post that he made in that thread, not the first page of the thread.

 

LOL!

Sorry, I shouldn't laugh. I was insulted earlier today.

muscleman, I don't think you're retarded. But, I do think you are...um...a little confused.

I already saw the thread you referred to, CounselorCoffee. It does seem hopeless at times.

But, for or against anyone, I do like the dialogue!

 

"muscleman, I don't think you're retarded. But, I do think you are...um...a little confused. "

I think he's retarded.

 

Counsler,

I hear you but –

The term ‘retard’ is not accurate for MM, he is an insult to those unfortunate people who are genuinely retarded. An accurate term for MM is ‘stupid’ in its strict dictionary sense, and for which there is little excuse for such a state.

As for ignoring him: I understand the temptation but I think that would be a mistake. He is fairly mild to some we have had here. But there is a definite advantage to ‘entertaining’ his moronic prose. He offers such a clearly erroneous view that it makes it easy for the rest of us to destroy his arguments. In effect he offers some pleasant light relief to the more serious debates that sometimes occur here.

I suggested a similar strategy (of ignoring someone) a long while ago regarding another far more seriously irritating character, but tiassa showed that such idiots do present a wonderful opportunity to expound ones own counterpoint. MM offers a good practice target for the basics in philosophy. It’s a lot like shooting at a stationary target. Such targets never return fire. In the case of MM I don’t think he even understands the arguments, so whatever he says appears largely irrelevant. However, there are others here who might see the issues and should simply join the fun.

But more importantly is the fact that there are people like MM in the world who do surface into the world outside of bulletin boards, in places where they cannot be easily ignored. If we cannot learn to deal with him here then what chance do we have in the real world? But in the real world insults and profanities are usually anti-productive, as they are here mostly. Another challenge I enjoy is to keep ones cool even when faced with such direct stupidity and ignorance, and that is not so easy as you might think.

So if MM is as stupid as we see him then we should have little difficulty presenting the more enlightened responses to his gibberish. Perhaps he might even learn something, but that would be just a bonus.

Cris

 

Or perhaps "either they are some lieing sons/daughters of bitches, or they have faith that one day everything will turn out fine" or you don't know what the evidence is/ lack that which would allow you to accept any evidence.

Let me ask what kind of evidence would be acceptable to you? What proof would you expect to find if evolution is true and what would convince you of this?
Let me ask what your theory is, how is it falsifable and what evidence supports it?

 

Let's say you were dropped in the middle of a room with no lights. You had no idea how big the room was, what was in it, and if you were alone. What would be the smarter way of handling this situation? Slowly feel your way around, learning slowly but surely, grasping more and more the reality of the room you are in, OR to simply assume you already know everything about the room based on your needs, then stumbling over things as they come at you out of the darkness and either ignoring the fact that it just happened, or with silly logic, incorporating it in to your pre-conception of the room you are in? This is the athiestic aproach vs the religious approach (I won't say theistic). The religious community stumbles over evidence where as science feels it's away around and learns it surroundings. Athiesm only seems logical. Man's first blessing was doubt, his first sin was faith.

 

Re: Not very good arguments, Jan.