Nature of God

[loseyourname]

All right, you are completely mischaracterizing everyone here. No one ever said that science can produce incontrovertible, 100% certainty of anything. Science gives us explanations that work. Newtonian mechanics can still produce correct answers in any equation at a non-particulate level in a system not moving close to the speed of light. Even Ptolemy's equations for retrograde motion can still accurately predict the locations of heavenly bodies at any given time.

There is a huge difference between the way that science comes to conclusions and the way that religion does. Science has an established epistemology consisting of parsimony, repeatability, independent confirmation, and peer review. Scientists at the theoretical level do not always agree, but they have agreed upon methods by which they may come to agreement given enough evidence. Faith has no such devices.

You have sown the seeds of your own destruction by refuting religious fundamentalism. You have said that they misinterpret God's message. You do not believe that a fundamentalist Muslim is correct when he says that he will spend eternity in heaven with virgins at his disposal, whereas you will be banished to hell. It doesn't not make any difference whether or not Mormons and Christians agree on some points. They do not agree on the one essential point that defines Christianity. Mormons do not believe that Jesus was the messiah, or that he was divine in origin. Christians believe he was both. Both of these belief sets cannot be correct in this regard. There is no way in which you might twist things around to make it otherwise. It does not matter what the religions have in common, or where they originated. The fact remains that the Pope in Rome comes to the faith-based conclusion that he is the human voice of God while an LDS separatist hiding out on a compound near the four corners thinks JP II is full of it. There is no means by which these men might come to agreement. Faith does not have any way of differentiating between competing claims, as is the case with science.

Now I never said that it is certain that there is no god. I think it is highly unlikely, but it wouldn't surprise me. But as dusken was pointing out, nothing about our universe dictates that there must be. Science explains perfectly well the state of our universe given nothing more than a very small set of physical laws and constants. For the purposes of parsimony, "Occam's razor," as it is called, there is no need to postulate any further explanation.

I am certain that you will now attempt to claim that I am myself being a fundamentalist by saying that only science can produce knowledge. Before that happens, I will reiterate for the thousandth time that that is ridiculous. I have continually used the examples of self-knowledge, rational knowledge, and mathematical knowledge as types of knowledge that do not come from science, and I will use them again preemptively before you mischaracterize me yet again. Furthermore, I will not rule out divine revelation. I will say, however, that divine revelation can only impart knowledge to that person which is the subject of the revelation. It is not a very useful form of knowledge, as the possessor will have no way of demonstrating his knowledge to any discerning listener, particularly if his claims are illogical and superfluous.

One last aspect of science that makes it superior to religion is its malleability. Science may not always get it right, but science admits when it is wrong. It may take a while, as some scientists do have a vested interest in maintaining a certain theoretical status quo, but the truth cannot be withheld in the scientific arena. When evidence is found that falsifies a certain hypothesis, that hypothesis is discarded and science is back at square one. Religion, in contrast, obstinately clings to outdated beliefs that cannot possibly be true. No Christian will ever accept any amount of evidence that God does not love him. Religious believers will not listen to any amount of reason, as there seems to be this Kierkegaardian belief that virtue lies only in the strength of ones faith, and that faith that stands opposed to logic is even more virtuous than faith that stands in accordance with logic. This is a dangerous idea that has led to a lot of bloodshed and ideological hatred. You will no doubt no point out that science can kill people as well. There is one key difference that you will ignore. Faith is used to justify murder. Science can create a weapon, but the scientific method cannot be perverted so as to make the killing of an innocent person morally acceptable. Richard the Lionheart and Osama bin Laden could not have went into the lab and concocted proof that Muslim infidels needed to purged from Jerusalem and the World Trade Center needed to be brought down while killing thousands of innocent Americans. Only faith could convince them of that.

Now back to the original question: Does God exist? Any freethinking, discerning, rational person that has not been the subject of divine revelation can only come to one conclusion: that he does not know. Only a fundamentalist would claim that he has the answer.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname You have sown the seeds of your own destruction by refuting religious fundamentalism. You have said that they misinterpret God's message. You do not believe that a fundamentalist Muslim is correct when he says that he will spend eternity in heaven with virgins at his disposal, whereas you will be banished to hell. It doesn't not make any difference whether or not Mormons and Christians agree on some points. They do not agree on the one essential point that defines Christianity. Mormons do not believe that Jesus was the messiah, or that he was divine in origin. Christians believe he was both. Both of these belief sets cannot be correct in this regard. There is no way in which you might twist things around to make it otherwise. It does not matter what the religions have in common, or where they originated. The fact remains that the Pope in Rome comes to the faith-based conclusion that he is the human voice of God while an LDS separatist hiding out on a compound near the four corners thinks JP II is full of it. There is no means by which these men might come to agreement. Faith does not have any way of differentiating between competing claims, as is the case with science.

Science itself is a faith based system, let's not veer off or forget that. With that said I never claimed fundamentalists misinterpret, but exactly do what fundamentalists do, resort to fanaticism. The underying concept of all religions, is humility, love, modesty and a code of morality. The only thing that pervets it is man. Because one may believe the other to be "evil" does not make it so. Your point is completely a rash attempt at trying to drill something for the sake of having to negate one religion with the other. It matters every more that religions show common root and similarities because then it is only evident that man is imperfect and naturally misinterprets it. It is not one religion only, but the basis of all religions, the origin of all religions and the truths of all religions that have owed their life to the foundation which they were reared, that we can understand any religion. Science deals only with phenomena, with this world, with behaviors and reactions. It is charlatanism when it babbles about the powers and or causes that produce these things we see, their essence, only giving mere names. That is why science is another form of religion, contrary to what you claim. It has more theories than laws. All religions deal with morality, just like they deal with God or Gods, for that is what they attribute morality to, that there are certain things man must do and certain codes he must uphold, in other words, it is universal in all religions; just like all thought is result in action, the purpose of religion is an ethic. So in all there is a basis of truth, and pure morality. They all stem from the same source.

Originally posted by loseyourname One last aspect of science that makes it superior to religion is its malleability. Science may not always get it right, but science admits when it is wrong. It may take a while, as some scientists do have a vested interest in maintaining a certain theoretical status quo, but the truth cannot be withheld in the scientific arena. When evidence is found that falsifies a certain hypothesis, that hypothesis is discarded and science is back at square one. Religion, in contrast, obstinately clings to outdated beliefs that cannot possibly be true. No Christian will ever accept any amount of evidence that God does not love him. Religious believers will not listen to any amount of reason, as there seems to be this Kierkegaardian belief that virtue lies only in the strength of ones faith, and that faith that stands opposed to logic is even more virtuous than faith that stands in accordance with logic. This is a dangerous idea that has led to a lot of bloodshed and ideological hatred. You will no doubt no point out that science can kill people as well. There is one key difference that you will ignore. Faith is used to justify murder. Science can create a weapon, but the scientific method cannot be perverted so as to make the killing of an innocent person morally acceptable. Richard the Lionheart and Osama bin Laden could not have went into the lab and concocted proof that Muslim infidels needed to purged from Jerusalem and the World Trade Center needed to be brought down while killing thousands of innocent Americans. Only faith could convince them of that.

Since science serves the purposes of a religion, namely to explain human origin and destiny, they are invariably bundled. Therefore, your point is moot. Everything eventually becomes a class of faith, because man is born to believe. It could never satisfy human nature to not believe. Let's not forget the horrors that rationalism and science can lead to as well. Your idea of trying to cast out faith as being worse and causing more horror and destruction begs the question, for what doesn't cause destruction when reduced to fanaticism? Even Hitler and his Darwinism can be pointed out as the evils of science, yet you don't see me blackballing science over that, do you? But it is naturally for those of the scientific persuasion to try to use the same thinking regarding religion.

Originally posted by loseyourname Now back to the original question: Does God exist? Any freethinking, discerning, rational person that has not been the subject of divine revelation can only come to one conclusion: that he does not know. Only a fundamentalist would claim that he has the answer.

Whether one believes in it or not, one must know that to approach God, one must first accept that man is a spiritual being, and reason will divert from immaterial truths.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse Science itself is a faith based system, let's not veer off or forget that.

I just told you exactly what science is based on. It is based on parsimony, independent confirmation, repeatability, and peer review. There is no faith involved. You are mistaking inductive logic with faith.

With that said I never claimed fundamentalists misinterpret, but exactly do what fundamentalists do, resort to fanaticism.

You claim that they are incorrect. They say you will go to hell. You say you will not. Those are two irreconciable claims.

The underying concept of all religions, is humility, love, modesty and a code of morality.

The underlying concept of Christianity is that Jesus was the human incarnation of God, born of a virgin, that he died on the cross for the sins of humanity and rose again on the third day and that salvation can come through his grace alone. The underlying concept of Mormonism is that Christianity is a bunch of baloney.

The only thing that pervets it is man.

You are a man. Why is it that other men pervert religion, but you get it right?

Because one may believe the other to be "evil" does not make it so. Your point is completely a rash attempt at trying to drill something for the sake of having to negate one religion with the other.

I'm not negating either religion. I'm showing that they can't both be correct and that there is no means by which their competing claims may be reconciled. That is where science is superior. Scientists can come to agreement. A Christian will never agree with a Mormon about the central tenets of their respective faiths.

It matters every more that religions show common root and similarities because then it is only evident that man is imperfect and naturally misinterprets it.

It is very difficult to see how you might connect atheist Jainism with polytheistic Aztec beliefs with reincarnationist Buddhism with non person-God deism with Orthodox Judaism. There is no underlying connection between these disparate faiths. If you told any of their true believers that they were misinterpreting anything, they would likely ostracize you. They would certainly not agree with you. Either they are right, you are right, or neither of you is right. You cannot be correct in saying that they are misinterpreting God's message at the same time that they are correct in saying that they do not misinterpret the message.

It is not one religion only, but the basis of all religions, the origin of all religions and the truths of all religions that have owed their life to the foundation which they were reared, that we can understand any religion.

Greek mythology teached that the gods were fickle and emotional and that they were the cause of evil in the world. Judaism teaches that God is benign and that it is man that brings evil into the world. It is hard to see how these two beliefs might have a common foundation. It is easy to see that they can't both be correct.

Science deals only with phenomena, with this world, with behaviors and reactions. It is charlatanism when it babbles about the powers and or causes that produce these things we see, their essence, only giving mere names. That is why science is another form of religion, contrary to what you claim.

Science doesn't talk about the essence of anything. Vitalism and ether theories were discarded a very long time ago. Science, as you say, deals with the material world, and it explains the material world quite well. Where it becomes irrelevant, as in moral theory, reason takes over, as reason deals quite well with immaterial concepts and ideas. Faith deals well with nothing. Faith only creates disagreements. You can see that right here. If you were a reasonable materialist, you would not disagree with me. In fact, bring any other reasonable materialist in here, and they will agree with me. Several already have. Bring another Christian like say, Violette or sleuth, and they will say you are a heretic for questioning the validity of belief in Jesus as the sole means of avoiding the fires of hell. That right there is the fundamental difference between reason and faith.

It has more theories than laws.

Quite true, which is exactly what I said. Science is malleable. It never claims to have an absolute hold on the truth, unlike religion, which does make such a bold, unfounded claim.

All religions deal with morality, just like they deal with God or Gods, for that is what they attribute morality to, that there are certain things man must do and certain codes he must uphold, in other words, it is universal in all religions; just like all thought is result in action, the purpose of religion is an ethic. So in all there is a basis of truth, and pure morality. They all stem from the same source.

That is not true. Jainism and Buddhism, just to name two, do not attribute morality to a god.

Since science serves the purposes of a religion, namely to explain human origin and destiny, they are invariably bundled.

Science explains material interactions, nothing more. It says nothing about anyone's destiny, but it does explain perfectly well how the human body came into existence. If you think there is more to a human than his body, then that will not be enough. That doesn't change the fact that faith cannot answer these questions either.

Therefore, your point is moot. Everything eventually becomes a class of faith, because man is born to believe.

That is quite an arrogant statement. How is it that theologians and philosophers have debated this for millenia but here you come with the answer? Man was born to believe. A baseless statement.

It could never satisfy human nature to not believe.

I am human. I do not believe. I am satisfied. Your point is invalidated.

Let's not forget the horrors that rationalism and science can lead to as well.

Indeed. If you can show one instance where someone used legitimate science or reason to prove that one person or class of persons must die, then please do so, because lord knows I and others have provided plenty of examples of where faith has done just that.

Your idea of trying to cast out faith as being worse and causing more horror and destruction begs the question, for what doesn't cause destruction when reduced to fanaticism? Even Hitler and his Darwinism can be pointed out as the evils of science, yet you don't see me blackballing science over that, do you?

Social Darwinism was most decidely unscientific. Science has absolutely nothing to say about moral values or about the worth of human life.

Whether one believes in it or not, one must know that to approach God, one must first accept that man is a spiritual being, and reason will divert from immaterial truths.

There is no reason to believe this. Man may or may not be a spiritual being, but he is most certainly a rational being. Our universe is most certainly a rational universe. Why should one assume that anything existing outside of the universe be irrational? On what do you base this claim?

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname I just told you exactly what science is based on. It is based on parsimony, independent confirmation, repeatability, and peer review. There is no faith involved. You are mistaking inductive logic with faith.

Too bad evolutionists don't corroborate this. They start babbling of the causes and the beginnings, that's not science, thats imagination no different than a religion.

Originally posted by loseyourname You claim that they are incorrect. They say you will go to hell. You say you will not. Those are two irreconciable claims.

How do you know what I claim? I claimed they are perverting religion, no different than a fanatical scientist perverts science. Your point?

Originally posted by loseyourname The underlying concept of Christianity is that Jesus was the human incarnation of God, born of a virgin, that he died on the cross for the sins of humanity and rose again on the third day and that salvation can come through his grace alone. The underlying concept of Mormonism is that Christianity is a bunch of baloney.

You've stated this a thousand times, and I have yet to see what you are getting at. Human saviors, resurrections, gods are not knew, and are based on more ancient pagan religions. Thus all religions have some truth and similarity and common root. Mormonism itself is an offshoot of Christianity. It has its roots in the same thing, it still adheres to a God, and morality, just differs in its idea of who the savior is, yet a savior nonetheless.

Originally posted by loseyourname You are a man. Why is it that other men pervert religion, but you get it right?

Did I claim to have gotten right? All I claimed is that religions teach a fundamental truth, any religion. You can cherry pick certain aspects and try to use one to negate the other, yet it remains they have more similarities than differences in criteria and structure.

Originally posted by loseyourname I'm not negating either religion. I'm showing that they can't both be correct and that there is no means by which their competing claims may be reconciled. That is where science is superior. Scientists can come to agreement. A Christian will never agree with a Mormon about the central tenets of their respective faiths.

To claim science is superior is arrogant at best, but you are entitled to beliefs. Science cannot explain many things and yet tries to, such as origin, and the causes of what we know. You keep rehashing and saying the same thing. Yes there are different religions based on human finitude and imperfection, yet religions nonetheless, all preaching the same fundamental truth. But I as a Christian prove you wrong by agreeing with a Mormon and that a Morman can be saved as well. St Anselm, proved the absurdity of your argument in the 12th century, and I just did it right now.

Originally posted by loseyourname It is very difficult to see how you might connect atheist Jainism with polytheistic Aztec beliefs with reincarnationist Buddhism with non person-God deism with Orthodox Judaism. There is no underlying connection between these disparate faiths. If you told any of their true believers that they were misinterpreting anything, they would likely ostracize you. They would certainly not agree with you. Either they are right, you are right, or neither of you is right. You cannot be correct in saying that they are misinterpreting God's message at the same time that they are correct in saying that they do not misinterpret the message.

Okay, you are obviously using semantics to try to "corner" me that all these religions are different and compete. That may appear so outwardly, yet they are all religions because they all deal with a code of morality, and inspired not by human reason, but by spirituality, all attesting to humanity being spiritual beings.

Originally posted by loseyourname Greek mythology teached that the gods were fickle and emotional and that they were the cause of evil in the world. Judaism teaches that God is benign and that it is man that brings evil into the world. It is hard to see how these two beliefs might have a common foundation. It is easy to see that they can't both be correct.

They can all be correct for all we know. There is truth. There is a spiritual existence. All religions begin with that a priori synthetic truth. They all begin with a God or Gods or a spiritual plane of existence, and morality emanating from it. Whether they believe as God or Gods is no concern, but only shows human finitude at trying to grasp that eternal truth. If you haven't read on Graham Hanxxxx, or Zechariah Sitchin, or the book we are about to read, you don't know the similarities in many of the religions, or that Jesus was alleged to have visisted the east and been influenced by Bhuddism, or the story of Eden prevalent in many religions, or the symbolism of the serpent, that is prevalent in the Americas, the Near East, and Asia.

Originally posted by loseyourname Science doesn't talk about the essence of anything. Vitalism and ether theories were discarded a very long time ago. Science, as you say, deals with the material world, and it explains the material world quite well. Where it becomes irrelevant, as in moral theory, reason takes over, as reason deals quite well with immaterial concepts and ideas. Faith deals well with nothing. Faith only creates disagreements. You can see that right here. If you were a reasonable materialist, you would not disagree with me. In fact, bring any other reasonable materialist in here, and they will agree with me. Several already have. Bring another Christian like say, Violette or sleuth, and they will say you are a heretic for questioning the validity of belief in Jesus as the sole means of avoiding the fires of hell. That right there is the fundamental difference between reason and faith.

Your point? If you are going to pass that is the fundamental difference between reason and faith, you are making too much of a narrow leap. We've already been through this, and how faith plays more of a role in daily life, than say, reason. Moreover, we reason only to have faith. A means to an end. We reason only to believe, and believe only that which ultimately reason cannot grasp, and that is most of the 'knowledge' on earth.

Originally posted by loseyourname Quite true, which is exactly what I said. Science is malleable. It never claims to have an absolute hold on the truth, unlike religion, which does make such a bold, unfounded claim.

Sadly, that's not the way your demeanor is regarding evolution, nor for that matter on evolutionists.

Originally posted by loseyourname That is not true. Jainism and Buddhism, just to name two, do not attribute morality to a god.

I never claimed they did. Is this your attempt at trying to refute the core of what I am saying, that morality is attributed to God? God is simply one name, it can be attributed to many things, in the latter it is spiritual, nonetheless stemming from immaterialism. I'm sure you also know that Bhuddism claims man is spiritually immortal.

Originally posted by loseyourname Science explains material interactions, nothing more. It says nothing about anyone's destiny, but it does explain perfectly well how the human body came into existence. If you think there is more to a human than his body, then that will not be enough. That doesn't change the fact that faith cannot answer these questions either.

Explaining human origin and destiny is exactly what evolutionary theory does. To deny this, is to deny evolutionary theory, and evolution is the basis of what we know as 'science'. Thus it shows you how misrepresented science is today, akin to a religion.

Originally posted by loseyourname That is quite an arrogant statement. How is it that theologians and philosophers have debated this for millenia but here you come with the answer? Man was born to believe. A baseless statement.



I am human. I do not believe. I am satisfied. Your point is invalidated.

I never came with the answer, in fact philosophy is only a wing of religion. One cannot leap without the other. With that said, you don't believe in God, but you believe in something else. That you do not believe in God is itself a belief for otherwise would mean you know everything there is to know.

Originally posted by loseyourname Indeed. If you can show one instance where someone used legitimate science or reason to prove that one person or class of persons must die, then please do so, because lord knows I and others have provided plenty of examples of where faith has done just that.

Social Darwinism was most decidely unscientific. Science has absolutely nothing to say about moral values or about the worth of human life.

Shall we say Marx and Hitler as being perhaps the two most obvious materialists? Of course, you will now argue against this to save the breath of science, yet what was preached starting from the 19th century is precisely in rational thinking and science, to purge the rest, whether it was the filthy race, or the filthy upper class. And it is expected that now scientists in an effort to distance themselves away from Darwinisms effect have now cast aside "social darwinism", a term invented to somehow still give Darwin legitimacy, but the fact remains that ideas have consequences, and it was science that led to Hitlerian and Marxian epistemology to conclude one group of people or class have to be purged in the name of the other based on their materialist conceptions of the world.

Originally posted by loseyourname There is no reason to believe this. Man may or may not be a spiritual being, but he is most certainly a rational being. Our universe is most certainly a rational universe. Why should one assume that anything existing outside of the universe be irrational? On what do you base this claim?

There is reason to believe man is a spiritual being. And we all "know" we are aware of ourselves and we are our own spirit. Of course for the purposes of this discussion and to uphold your view on the supremacy of science in all matters, we will not be sympathetic to such a view. Reason would not have us believe in God. To believe in God is to go against reason. As William Bramley defines spiritual being, it is an "entity possessed of awareness, creativity, personality", and strangely enough he goes on to say that the modern trend is to view the brain as being the center of all.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse Too bad evolutionists don't corroborate this. They start babbling of the causes and the beginnings, that's not science, thats imagination no different than a religion.

Mousy, the core of evolutionary theory has nothing to do with the origins of the universe. It is explanation of how biological complexity could have arisen from pre-existing inorganic molecules. You are taking the theory way too seriously. Some scientists try to take it way outside of the realm of science, I will admit, but they are not in the mainstream. Most evolutionary biologists stick strictly to what is shown in the fossil record and phenomena that are known to occur and are well studied in both a laboratory and natural setting.

How do you know what I claim? I claimed they are perverting religion, no different than a fanatical scientist perverts science. Your point?

They claim you are going to hell. You claim you are not. Therefore, you are claiming they are wrong. Is that really so hard to see? I'm not saying you think they are wrong about everything. But you do think they are wrong about certain things, and these are things that they believe based on faith. You are believe these things are wrong based on faith. Faith has no means by which it may be determined which of your claims is correct. Science does. That really is the end of the story here unless you can come up with some means of evaluating competing faiths.

You've stated this a thousand times, and I have yet to see what you are getting at. Human saviors, resurrections, gods are not knew, and are based on more ancient pagan religions.

Mousy, John Paul II would not agree with you on that. He would say that Jesus most certainly was the one true savior and nothing about him was based on earlier Pagan traditions. The fact that you know he is wrong about that and still call yourself a Christian is strange to say the least.

Thus all religions have some truth and similarity and common root. Mormonism itself is an offshoot of Christianity. It has its roots in the same thing, it still adheres to a God, and morality, just differs in its idea of who the savior is, yet a savior nonetheless.

Mousy, it is a negation of the central tenet of Christianity.

Did I claim to have gotten right?

Yes, you have claimed that fundamentalist are perverting religion. They don't think they are. Why are you correct and not them?

All I claimed is that religions teach a fundamental truth, any religion. You can cherry pick certain aspects and try to use one to negate the other, yet it remains they have more similarities than differences in criteria and structure.

You are completely missing the point here. The fact remains that two people can make competing claims that cannot both be true, both based on faith, and there is no means by which one can determine which is correct. That is not the case with reason or science. I'm not trying to say that religion has no truth to it. You are utterly misunderstanding what I'm getting at.

To claim science is superior is arrogant at best, but you are entitled to beliefs. Science cannot explain many things and yet tries to, such as origin, and the causes of what we know.

Regardless of what science can't explain, the fact remains that it can explain an awful lot, and just about everything it has explained proved some religious belief incorrect. Religion has been unable to explain anything.

But I as a Christian prove you wrong by agreeing with a Mormon and that a Morman can be saved as well. St Anselm, proved the absurdity of your argument in the 12th century, and I just did it right now.

So you agree with a Mormon that your savior is in fact a fraud and that you should completely deny his divinity or be faced with damnation? If not, then I have just proven you wrong.

Okay, you are obviously using semantics to try to "corner" me that all these religions are different and compete. That may appear so outwardly, yet they are all religions because they all deal with a code of morality, and inspired not by human reason, but by spirituality, all attesting to humanity being spiritual beings.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here. I post a devastating criticism that you can't address, so you argue the semantics instead and utter yet another vague sophist non-statement that you can't back up with anything. The fact remains, there religions have far more dissimilarities than similarities. They disagree more than they agree, and you have no way of evaluating their respective claims. You seem to be saying that you know a claim is true when it is a claim made by all religions. The only claim you have been able to come up with that is made by all religions is that human beings should live by a code of conduct not dictated by reason and that humans are spiritual beings. If that is the case, again, why do you insist on calling yourself a Christian?

They can all be correct for all we know.

Two claims that contradict each other cannot both be true. If you really believed that to be the case, you would have absolutely no grounds from which to argue with me.

There is truth. There is a spiritual existence. All religions begin with that a priori synthetic truth. They all begin with a God or Gods or a spiritual plane of existence, and morality emanating from it.

Funny that you should say that right after I just posted multiple religions that are atheistic.

Whether they believe as God or Gods is no concern, but only shows human finitude at trying to grasp that eternal truth.

You should said they all begin with a god or gods, and two lines later you say that whether or not they believe in god is of any concern. You used to at least space out your contradictions a little better. You're losing it, my man.

If you haven't read on Graham Hanxxxx, or Zechariah Sitchin, or the book we are about to read, you don't know the similarities in many of the religions, or that Jesus was alleged to have visisted the east and been influenced by Bhuddism, or the story of Eden prevalent in many religions, or the symbolism of the serpent, that is prevalent in the Americas, the Near East, and Asia.

I've read these dudes, and a man, such as yourself, who claims that evolutionists are making an unfounded leap in saying that one species that is almost exactly like another it follows in the fossil record in the same geographic region came from it should know that their evidence, while certainly provocative, proves nothing.

By the way, how would I know so much about the differences between religions if I knew nothing about the religions or their origins? Please begin to make sense.

Your point? If you are going to pass that is the fundamental difference between reason and faith, you are making too much of a narrow leap.

How can a narrow leap be too much of a leap? Are you suggesting I make a broader leap? But wouldn't that be even more of too much of a leap?

We've already been through this, and how faith plays more of a role in daily life, than say, reason. Moreover, we reason only to have faith. A means to an end. We reason only to believe, and believe only that which ultimately reason cannot grasp, and that is most of the 'knowledge' on earth.

Again, you are mistaking faith with inductive logic.

Sadly, that's not the way your demeanor is regarding evolution, nor for that matter on evolutionists.

If any evidence is ever produced that disproves evolution or if a better theory ever comes along, I will discard Darwinism, as will the scientific community, because that is the way the scientific community operates. Outside of when it was forced to cling to a certain belief by the church, it has an excellent record of accepting new ideas. It is religion that stands stagnant in the face of negative evidence and refuses to accept very obvious truths.

I never claimed they did. Is this your attempt at trying to refute the core of what I am saying, that morality is attributed to God? God is simply one name, it can be attributed to many things, in the latter it is spiritual, nonetheless stemming from immaterialism. I'm sure you also know that Bhuddism claims man is spiritually immortal.

None of this changes the fact that Jainism and Buddhism no not attribute morality to a god. If you are going to reduce the word "god" to include the spiritual aspect of a human being, then you have the stripped the word of all significance. In the interest of parsimony, we may now refer to the creative, intelligent force driving the universe as "man."

Explaining human origin and destiny is exactly what evolutionary theory does. To deny this, is to deny evolutionary theory, and evolution is the basis of what we know as 'science'. Thus it shows you how misrepresented science is today, akin to a religion.

Uh, whatever. Evolution explains how cumulative selection can produce biological complexity. It doesn't say how the universe began or how life first came into existence. It most certainly has nothing to say about where life will end up. You are the one terribly misrepresenting the theory. Start talking to any evolutionary biologist about "destiny" or any "origin" other than the origin of diverse speciation and he will laugh in your face.

I never came with the answer, in fact philosophy is only a wing of religion.

You said man was born to believe. That is an answer. It's cool. Keep backpedalling.

One cannot leap without the other. With that said, you don't believe in God, but you believe in something else.

All right, do you really think you have any right to accuse me of arrogance when you actually have the gall to tell me what I believe?

That you do not believe in God is itself a belief for otherwise would mean you know everything there is to know.

When you know something, you hold a belief. I would think that is rather obvious. The fact that I don't hold a belief shows that I don't know. If I don't know any one thing, regardless of what that one thing may be, how can I possibly know everything? I'll cut you some slack because English isn't your first language, but you aren't making any sense.

Shall we say Marx and Hitler as being perhaps the two most obvious materialists?

Neither was a scientist. Don't mistake materialist for scientist. Besides, you are proving my point by using these examples. Legitimate science and reason can show that these two men were way off base. In fact, you quite regularly employ reason to show how idiotically wrong Marx was. However, use faith to disprove the validity of what Osama bin Laden is doing. You can't do it. Reason can show that he is wrong. Faith cannot, because his faith is just as strong as yours, and faith provides no means by which to evaluate competing faiths.

There is reason to believe man is a spiritual being.

Perhaps, but current neuroscience seems to be hinting at a completely mechanistic explanation of man that accounts for all thought processes and emotions. Whether or not this proves to be the case remains to be seen. I am not going to take a stand on this issue. I will keep my mind open because that is the only rational thing to do. You, on the other hand, will jump right back in with your fundy nonsense saying that yes, man is most decidedly a spiritual being, and there is no question.

And we all "know" we are aware of ourselves and we are our own spirit.

Unfortunately, Mousy, if you knew anything about neuroscience (admittedly, it is an extremely new discipline and there isn't any reason for you to know anything about it) you would know that that awareness may be completely explainable in terms of molecular scanning processes. On the other hand, it may not be. I don't know, and neither do you.

Of course for the purposes of this discussion and to uphold your view on the supremacy of science in all matters, we will not be sympathetic to such a view.

Mousy, please stop mischaracterizing me. I am not unsympathetic to the view. I have said several times that my intuition tells me that neuroscience will not explain everything. However, the fact remains that my intuition is just that, intuition. It is not clairvoyance, it is not prophecy, and it proves nothing.

Reason would not have us believe in God. To believe in God is to go against reason. As William Bramley defines spiritual being, it is an "entity possessed of awareness, creativity, personality", and strangely enough he goes on to say that the modern trend is to view the brain as being the center of all.

Strangely enough, the brain may very well be the center of it all.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, the core of evolutionary theory has nothing to do with the origins of the universe. It is explanation of how biological complexity could have arisen from pre-existing inorganic molecules. You are taking the theory way too seriously. Some scientists try to take it way outside of the realm of science, I will admit, but they are not in the mainstream. Most evolutionary biologists stick strictly to what is shown in the fossil record and phenomena that are known to occur and are well studied in both a laboratory and natural setting.

You just confirmed what I was saying. Evolutionary theory does in fact talk about how we originated and where we will go, based on a model, with its structure, no different than Marx, or Adam Smith or other people making a theory for historical development.

Originally posted by loseyourname They claim you are going to hell. You claim you are not. Therefore, you are claiming they are wrong. Is that really so hard to see? I'm not saying you think they are wrong about everything. But you do think they are wrong about certain things, and these are things that they believe based on faith. You are believe these things are wrong based on faith. Faith has no means by which it may be determined which of your claims is correct. Science does. That really is the end of the story here unless you can come up with some means of evaluating competing faiths.

Mousy, John Paul II would not agree with you on that. He would say that Jesus most certainly was the one true savior and nothing about him was based on earlier Pagan traditions. The fact that you know he is wrong about that and still call yourself a Christian is strange to say the least.

You are restating the same things, over and over, without having a working knowledge of religions. Christianity, better yet Judaism, all have their roots in religions prior, by recosntructing the symbolic story of the Sun, with mystery school allegory symbolism such as that of the serpent, and the concept of savior. I never claimed they are wrong, you see, you are forcing upon me, quite incorrectly, in order to have something to debate here. I, like St. Anselm of Canterbury, hold that those who are not Christian can be saved. In fact, anyone who understands the message of their said religions will be tolerant of those who have different faiths. You are basing your whole argument on fanatics in given faiths. Let's examine saviors in pre-Christian religions. The Phrygians had the Son of God called Attis, who was born on Dec. 25th to a virgin. He was the Father and Son combined in an earthly body and when we died to the underworld, three days later he rose up and his body was symbolized as bread and eaten by the believers; Krishna, the Son of God of India; Dyonysus the Son of God of Greece, again born to a virgin mother on Dec. 25; other dieties of whom the Jesus story were told of are Apollo, Hercules, and Zeus of Greece; Marduuk of Assyria; Thor, son of Odin for the Nordics; Mithra of Persia.In fact the story of Mithra is the exact same story of Jesus. Even several of Jesus' parables came directly from Buddhism and Jainism.

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, it is a negation of the central tenet of Christianity.

It is an offshoot of Christianity, if you know anything of the founder of the religion, and their ties to the Jehovahs Witnesses, Watchtower Society. It presents another substitute savior, basing itself on the Old Testament which prophesied the return. "Christ" is of the Greek origin "Christos", simply meaning "Annointed", thus it has no bearing on what you are arguing for, since there have been many Saviors past.

Originally posted by loseyourname Yes, you have claimed that fundamentalist are perverting religion. They don't think they are. Why are you correct and not them?

Precisely, because they have a dogmatic understanding of their faith and not the pillars that came before it. Anyone can be correct too, all one must do is read. That is how I know I'm correct. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Originally posted by loseyourname You are completely missing the point here. The fact remains that two people can make competing claims that cannot both be true, both based on faith, and there is no means by which one can determine which is correct. That is not the case with reason or science. I'm not trying to say that religion has no truth to it. You are utterly misunderstanding what I'm getting at.

Yes, both can be true. Why not? I have already address this a thousand times, yet your hang up with it won't allow you to let it go, since it would mean an obvious blunder, due to your misunderstanding of the issue. Everyone in reality is worshipping one religion without knowing it.

Originally posted by loseyourname Regardless of what science can't explain, the fact remains that it can explain an awful lot, and just about everything it has explained proved some religious belief incorrect. Religion has been unable to explain anything.

Really? When did "Science" ever prove anything? No one can know if reality is existent. They can know they are real due to the fact that they have a concious mind, but they can never know if life or all it entails is truely existent or some elaborate hallucination because they cannot know if anyone else has a concious mind. See solipsism.

Originally posted by loseyourname So you agree with a Mormon that your savior is in fact a fraud and that you should completely deny his divinity or be faced with damnation? If not, then I have just proven you wrong.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here. I post a devastating criticism that you can't address, so you argue the semantics instead and utter yet another vague sophist non-statement that you can't back up with anything. The fact remains, there religions have far more dissimilarities than similarities. They disagree more than they agree, and you have no way of evaluating their respective claims. You seem to be saying that you know a claim is true when it is a claim made by all religions. The only claim you have been able to come up with that is made by all religions is that human beings should live by a code of conduct not dictated by reason and that humans are spiritual beings. If that is the case, again, why do you insist on calling yourself a Christian?

When did I say a Mormon is wrong? Scroll back up. You have misread my quote apparently, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I merely confirmed they can be saved, and my explanation is already obvious for this. But that is nonetheless a clever way of trying to phrase the question to somehow attempt to entrap the debater into a corner of admitting something he didnt admit. You have once again gone into tautology mode, simply because you can, and your so called attempt at trying to use one religion to negate another, based on fundamentalists, is failing, and because if improper knowledge regarding religion. In reality they all derive from one in the same. Mary for example is the virgin that gave birth to Jesus, but it has had many different forms in history in different cultures, from Mari, to Marratu, to Marah, to Mar. It represents the sea, the feminine moon, and "queen of heaven", to balance the masculine sun. Isis is the Egyptian equivalent of Mary, the moon goddess and the virgin that gave birth to Horus. The Hebrews worshipped a goddess called Mariel, and others include Isis, Artemis, Diana, etc. So next time you try to use one faith to negate the other you should at least have some working knowledge. And what is the message of every religion? Morality a code of ethics.

Originally posted by loseyourname Two claims that contradict each other cannot both be true. If you really believed that to be the case, you would have absolutely no grounds from which to argue with me.

I don't see any contradiction. I see similarities. That one fundamentalist says the other is wrong, and for you to use that as "evidence" for your argument here is ignorant, for that saves you the trouble of actually having to read the material. You have done nothing more than make tautological statements and restated the same thing over and over "they make competing claims both cannot be true". Well, I have told you I disagree several times and my reasons as well.

Originally posted by loseyourname You should said they all begin with a god or gods, and two lines later you say that whether or not they believe in god is of any concern. You used to at least space out your contradictions a little better. You're losing it, my man.

How is my statement a contradiction? I stated the existence of God and our inability to grasp it, whether one believes it or not, hence tying to my initial claim of God being Truth. Of course, if you want the illusion of having the upper hand you have it.

Originally posted by loseyourname I've read these dudes, and a man, such as yourself, who claims that evolutionists are making an unfounded leap in saying that one species that is almost exactly like another it follows in the fossil record in the same geographic region came from it should know that their evidence, while certainly provocative, proves nothing.

When did I say they proved anything? It is a theory, and I choose to believe that over evolution anyday, simply because. In fact, this theory would suggest that it is alien intelligence interfering and causing the "evolution" which we come to see. The difference between them and evolutionists is they don't attack someone for disagreeing with a theory

Originally posted by loseyourname By the way, how would I know so much about the differences between religions if I knew nothing about the religions or their origins? Please begin to make sense.

You are repeating fundamentalist claims of "if the Muslim believes you are wrong because you're a Christian, and the Christian believes he is wrong because he is Muslim", is not taking into account the religion or its origin, but the mere opinions of two fundamentalists who themselves obviously did not heed the message of their respective religions.

Originally posted by loseyourname Again, you are mistaking faith with inductive logic.

What can you claim that you "know" without believing?

Originally posted by loseyourname If any evidence is ever produced that disproves evolution or if a better theory ever comes along, I will discard Darwinism, as will the scientific community, because that is the way the scientific community operates. Outside of when it was forced to cling to a certain belief by the church, it has an excellent record of accepting new ideas. It is religion that stands stagnant in the face of negative evidence and refuses to accept very obvious truths.

Your above statement assumes that somehow evolution is a proven empirical fact. That is not so. What is proven about evolution? "We evolved". Really? How do you know that? "The fossil record shows evolution". Right, it doesn't prove it. Stating so doesn't make it so. That is simply an assertion, a belief. Darwinism requires as much belief, as the Mohammedan has, or the Christian, or the Zoroastrian before.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname None of this changes the fact that Jainism and Buddhism no not attribute morality to a god. If you are going to reduce the word "god" to include the spiritual aspect of a human being, then you have the stripped the word of all significance. In the interest of parsimony, we may now refer to the creative, intelligent force driving the universe as "man".

"God" is really in us, our spirit. Hence the phrases such as "God is in all of us". It is our sense of morality, which is universal among mankind, that we attribute to a higher power, whether we call it "God" or not, makes no difference. What does Buddhism assign morality to I ask? It is very similar to the morality of other religions. Eventually it is something not of this material world. And let's not forget it is not against a Buddhist to believe in a God. By "God" we don't mean a guy in the cloud. "God" can mean many things to many different people, ultimately it is admission of a spiritual existence on has. So if God is defined primarily as cosmic compassion and wisdom, then some Buddhists may be inclined to say they believe in "God."

Originally posted by loseyourname Uh, whatever. Evolution explains how cumulative selection can produce biological complexity. It doesn't say how the universe began or how life first came into existence. It most certainly has nothing to say about where life will end up. You are the one terribly misrepresenting the theory. Start talking to any evolutionary biologist about "destiny" or any "origin" other than the origin of diverse speciation and he will laugh in your face".

Evolution can explain everything and nothing, by clouding itself with nice scientific words to give itself an aura of science, yet it proves nothing. Based on the claims of Darwin and how the fittest survive and the best fit move on, this would then be taken for "higher breeding" to "breed superhumans to rule the world", and it isn't coincidence that some people have had these ideas and put them in practice. As for origin, well, alot of evolutionists make claims of origins, with big bangs and other imaginitive calls.

Originally posted by loseyourname You said man was born to believe. That is an answer. It's cool. Keep backpedalling.All right, do you really think you have any right to accuse me of arrogance when you actually have the gall to tell me what I believe?

First of all, I never gave an "answer". That we are born to believe is not even a question, for it to have an answer. That we believe is simply the way it is. What can you point to that we "know"? Every thing in some way, shape or form, is based on our ability of believing it is.

Originally posted by loseyourname When you know something, you hold a belief. I would think that is rather obvious. The fact that I don't hold a belief shows that I don't know. If I don't know any one thing, regardless of what that one thing may be, how can I possibly know everything? I'll cut you some slack because English isn't your first language, but you aren't making any sense.

That makes no sense to me. How can you know something to later believe it? That defeats the purpose of believing in it if you already know it. Thus, it's the other way around. We believe we know. If we knew, then we wouldn't need to believe anymore, belief would be something human nature wouldn't need. By you admitting you don't know, you automatically believe something, maybe not God or religion, but in its place science, which is another form of religion.

Originally posted by loseyourname Neither was a scientist. Don't mistake materialist for scientist. Besides, you are proving my point by using these examples. Legitimate science and reason can show that these two men were way off base. In fact, you quite regularly employ reason to show how idiotically wrong Marx was. However, use faith to disprove the validity of what Osama bin Laden is doing. You can't do it. Reason can show that he is wrong. Faith cannot, because his faith is just as strong as yours, and faith provides no means by which to evaluate competing faiths.

I never mistook the two for scientists, however I did pair them up with scientists because all they believed in was success in the material world, yes "belief", just like scientists.

Originally posted by loseyourname Perhaps, but current neuroscience seems to be hinting at a completely mechanistic explanation of man that accounts for all thought processes and emotions. Whether or not this proves to be the case remains to be seen. I am not going to take a stand on this issue. I will keep my mind open because that is the only rational thing to do. You, on the other hand, will jump right back in with your fundy nonsense saying that yes, man is most decidedly a spiritual being, and there is no question.

Unfortunately, Mousy, if you knew anything about neuroscience (admittedly, it is an extremely new discipline and there isn't any reason for you to know anything about it) you would know that that awareness may be completely explainable in terms of molecular scanning processes. On the other hand, it may not be. I don't know, and neither do you.

They don't know, indeed, what do they know? What does anyone know? Hehehe. The spirit or soul has no interface that can be mapped or plugged into an equation. If you believe that the brain would be the cause of our spirit, or awareness, that in itself is a belief. But to me that would make no sense, for how can the material world make something spiritual? This goes back to the idea of creation, how did man get here, and in order for the material world to be, what created it?

[loseyourname]

Look, I'm not gonna bother going into another point by point rebuttal. This is getting tedious. Either address what I am giving you or don't. The origin of respective religions is not the relevant issue here. The earliest of all religions is Animism, and ultimately all current religious paradigms stem from Sumerian mythology. Does this mean you are going to subscribe to some synthesis of the two?

Most modern people do not base their faith on the earliest known texts from which their own religious texts are derived. As I have already pointed out, talk to any Christian on this forum, and they will tell that Jesus Christ was a real man who was really the son of God and that he did everything the bible said he did. They do not believe that any of it is based on older traditions. You do. You have scholarly research to back up your position, and that just goes to prove my point. Faith cannot resolve the issue, so you turn to reason. You read. You find the links that connect Christianity to earlier mythologies. I still would like to know why you insist on calling yourself a Christian. When two people have faith alone to go on, they disagree. Your point about how they would come to agree with if they knew what you knew is support for my argument, that reason, and scholarly research, will create agreement, whereas faith does not. Again, reason is superior.

[God]

What Does the Bible Say About God and Jesus?

IF PEOPLE were to read the Bible from cover to cover without any preconceived idea of a Trinity, would they arrive at such a concept on their own? Not at all.
What comes through very clearly to an impartial reader is that God alone is the Almighty, the Creator, separate and distinct from anyone else, and that Jesus, even in his prehuman existence, is also separate and distinct, a created being, subordinate to God.
Does God Really Care About Us?
AT SOME time in your life, you may have asked: 'If there is a God who really cares about us, why does he permit so much suffering?' All of us have experienced suffering or have known someone who has.
Indeed, throughout history people have suffered pain and heartache from war, cruelty, crime, injustice, poverty, sickness, and the death of loved ones. In our 20th century alone, wars have killed over 100 million people. Hundreds of millions of others have been injured or have lost homes and possessions. Ever so many horrible things have happened in our time, resulting in great sorrow, many tears, and a sense of hopelessness on the part of countless numbers of people.
Some become embittered and feel that if there is a God, he does not really care about us. Or they may even feel that there is no God. For instance, a man who suffered from ethnic persecution that caused the death of friends and family in World War I asked: "Where was God when we needed him?" Another, who survived the murder of millions by the Nazis in World War II, was so grieved by the suffering he saw that he said: "If you could lick my heart, it would poison you."
Thus, many people cannot understand why a good God would allow bad things to happen. They question whether he really cares about us or whether he exists at all. And many of them feel that suffering will always be a part of human existence.


An Earth Free From Suffering Do u believe in that? yes or no,give me your oppinions...