Ahh yes, one of THOSE church vans

[markseven]

There a real, ancient documents(as I said before) that are in there. You can look them up anywhere else, I just thought that was a nice collection. If you choose not to look? Oh well. Not my life, nor my choice.

The self professed intellectuals are some of the most close-minded pot-calling-kettle people on earth. Or at least this subforum :p

[cale]

You linked to a website which believes the world to be 6000 years old, and you expected it to be considered as evidence? No bud, you're going to have to try harder than that. You may as well reference to the bible to prove itself as infallible.

[herbivor]

And I think since their is proof that txts and story's from the Bible is true, proves that it indeed inspired writing by a God above. So yes, our faith is comparable.

See this for just a handful of proofs that support the Bible as a whole.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/arti...port-the-bible

So how did you make the correlation that historical events that happened and were depicted in the bible mean that the recordings of those events were inspired by God? By that logic any history book I pick up must have been divinely inspired. There is plenty of proof that the Bible was edited, significantly throughout history. The new testaments is just a collection of gospels out of hundreds that were selected based on popularity at the time. There is nothing divine about the bible. Read "Misquoting Jesus" by biblical scholar, evangelist turned agnostic, Bart Ehrman for more insight.

[cale]

The self professed intellectuals are some of the most close-minded pot-calling-kettle people on earth. Or at least this subforum :p

How is it closed minded to reject resources from uncredited sources who's views contradict not only the strongest scientific theories of our time, but scientific laws. You want to try to justify your beliefs through more than faith, that's fine! But you're trying to do so using the scientific method so you're bound by all the same requirements anyone else is going that route and you're going to be shut down with your incompetence and inability to make a valid case for your beliefs.

Stick to faith, it's all you've got.

[FunfGan]

So how did you make the correlation that historical events that happened and were depicted in the bible mean that the recordings of those events were inspired by God? By that logic any history book I pick up must have been divinely inspired. There is plenty of proof that the Bible was edited, significantly throughout history. The new testaments is just a collection of gospels out of hundreds that were selected based on popularity at the time. There is nothing divine about the bible. Read "Misquoting Jesus" by biblical scholar, evangelist turned agnostic, Bart Ehrman for more insight.

You're asking how does the fact that the Bible is proved true, prove it was divinely inspired? See, you have to know what the Bible understands to actually argue bud.

[cale]

You're asking how does the fact that the Bible is proved true, prove it was divinely inspired? See, you have to know what the Bible understands to actually argue bud.

The bible hasn't been proven true you fucking tool. Some historical accuracies (giving you this just to prove a point) doesn't mean the entire thing is word for word truth, including the parts where everything we know about our world has to be turned inside out for them to fit. You're an idiot, plain and simple. You cannot even understand why your argument is sod weak.

ps. argument is done for me. Enjoy a life of ignorance and being a part of propagating stone age beliefs which do nothing but hold us back, fortunately you seem well equipped to fit right in what with your inability to be the slightest bit rational or any reasonable comprehension of the world you live in.

[Dozyproductions]

Cool.


To claim that you only base your worldview off of rational and reason would be a great leap of faith in yourself as how can you truly know you've found that great "reason" and "truth" inherently by whim? Have you visited the great thinkers of your time to test your worldview and knowledge against what they might have to offer? Are you operating in your worldview and self view on the premise that what you know is real and everything else must be tested? Or is it the reverse, that you're testing everything you "know" against what other's "claim"? See, there's a pretty large grey area here that you're trying to paint black or white, i.e "Faith" vs " Science". Have you delved into the reasoning that you are wrong and might very well be completely off base? My point isn't that you can't come to these practices or assumptions or anything else reasonably and with rational, I'm saying that everything takes some form of "Faith" when it comes down to it. You can penalize Christian's or "Religion" for having "faith" in something when everyone does to some degree or another.

And what you say is true! My approach to life is to question everything that needs a questioning. (Too bad that still and will always be the case!) Definitely sounds like something from a college philosophy class but I'll admit some of those crazy old guys had a point. Yet when I can no longer make an informed decision I am totally contempt into not knowing the solution. There doesn't have to be and there won't always be a definitive answer to everything. I will tell you this though, asked what kind of super power I would have, mine has and will always be to have infinite knowledge. Or even just to understand what that means would be great.

As for the bad? Yeah, of course there's been a lot of bad things done by bad men. Tons. Loads. That's actually talked about a lot in the Bible. It's the Bad Men that fuck it all up to begin with. It's the Bad Men that continue to fuck it up for everyone. As you said and several others have said, if it wasn't for the big names on the Television begging for your money and driving around with signs (the reason this thread was created) not many people would have an issue with Christian's. It's not the per se the Christian's as it is the Fringe group of radicals and BAD PEOPLE. The same type of bad people are in the scientific world as well. You know the ones. The ones that get so angry over religion they end up looking crazy. Or the ones that did some pretty bad shit to some pretty innocent Jew's back in the Hitler era. Right? But I don't sit here and try and say all scientists are crazy wack jobs that want to burn Jew's in ovens and gas Children, am I?

And truth be told here. As for the past, I was taught to never judge the past with modern standards or else everything would look horrible. But with religious institutions you can't give a pass so easily. They still adhere to the same principles that have been written down for over two thousand years! Saying that though, I rather enjoy the small church trying to make a difference approach. Man is very susceptible to greed and that rule still applies to religion. Too bad the Catholic church has such a dirty past to tarnish its stigma.

And just to clarify, in no way was I drinkin the Haterade on this one. Instead of getting disgusted with my religious friends I find new questions to challenge their own beliefs. They hate me for doing it but it makes them better Christians in the end :)

[iidesu]

time has changed. oh, we have a black Muslim president, no?

[Frog]

The world would be a better place without religion...

We have so many religious extremists in this country, yes, christian extremists.

[mrsleeve]

^

With out religion we would not have this country, catch 22

[kronus]

^

With out religion we would not have this country, catch 22

we also wouldn't have this country without the native american genocide or slavery.

[cale]

Question, if you had the ability to rewrite history and literally erase religion would you? Knowing that millions would have not only lead better lives, but not suffered horrendous deaths. One stipulation, you cannot imply that the acts would have been perpetrated by others for different reasons, those terrible atrocities would never have happened if you took religion out of the equation. Of course this is all hypothetical.

[FunfGan]

Question, if you had the ability to rewrite history and literally erase religion would you? Knowing that millions would have not only lead better lives, but not suffered horrendous deaths. One stipulation, you cannot imply that the acts would have been perpetrated by others for different reasons, those terrible atrocities would never have happened if you took religion out of the equation. Of course this is all hypothetical.

See thats the problem though, even if we pretended it all was just there, forgetting about a God, creation/ evolution blah blah blah, we would still have to imagine that nobody would "come up with" the idea of religion, or worshipping one thing or another. Now, that said, there would be nothing to unite us, leaving every man for themselves(I'm going back to the VERY BEGINNING of man and civilization). Now, I myself could see only two things happening.

Scenario A: Man(humans as a whole) organize/ stick together. This could be based on many things. Race/ color, interest, their ideals/ morals and what not. See where this is going? There is still difference of opinion, superiority and so on, so there would still be violence, fighting and mistreatment of others, with no stopping. The strong would win.

Scenario B: Men and woman would not ban together and would continue their differences of opinions alone, and fight it out that way. They would each be fighting amongst each other, maybe united by ancestry.


Any way I see it, there would still be fighting, chaos, violence, mistreatment... Thats how I see it though, I'm interested to see others response's. That was an interesting comment/ question Cale...

[kronus]

religion is not the cause of violence. Interestingly, it is an extremely common EXCUSE for violence that is typically brought on by greed and prejudice on the part of weak-willed men.

[joshh]

we also wouldn't have this country without the native american genocide or slavery.

Religion is linked to slavery how? There was slavery way before we had slavery here in America and it had little to nothing to do with religion.