Religions are based on faith and what a person hopes there is, Religion does not need facts. It is a personal thing to each person and some find comfort in it especially in hard times.
I am reminded of a baby needing a heart transplant, the parents and people praying for a heart, the Cardinal of Chicago also prayed. They didn’t stop to think that it was necessary for an other couple to lose a child so theirs could live. Like praying to win a game(though not as grave) it is in a way praying that the other team loses.
Some people are said to convert to a faith but do not really believe it, they convert to please another person or because some one in that religion was good to them. I know several people who go to church, have their children baptized and say they do not believe in it’s doctrine but they do it to please their parents or some one else dear to them.
If it helps for a better world fine. In all cases it doesn’t.
Doesn’t it make sense that a Creator have the ability to operate beyond the constraints of what he creates? In fact, let’s ask it the other way: can you give one example in which a creator of something is subject to the all the constraints of the thing he created. If I build a model railroad, I can operate outside the limitations of where the tracks go. A person that creates a computer program or virtual reality game can easily operate on other, higher planes. So, can you give one example?
And thanks for the intro to Dio-speak, where going to bed at 2:30 equals “running away”. It’s truly a fascinating world you live in.
Only if you assume that everything needs a creator. Only if you’re willing to dismiss any possibility that are any non-magical explanations for the beginnings of the universe. Our lack of understanding about something in no way implies the existence of a magical cause.
Perhaps if you told us how old you think the Earth is, we’d have a better frame of reference for your viewpoint.
You know, I agree with a good portion of your post that contained this. But your continually using “invisible men in togas” as shorthand for religion is not only insulting to people of religion (of which I am not one), but it makes your argument come across as childish. If you were truly confident of your position and wanted to give religion a fair shake with your Martian friend, you’d present religion in it’s most favorable light, not stack the deck against it to an absurd extreme.
And you, and others, seem intent on applying science to religion. Religion is an act of FAITH. You might as well apply the thinking you use in making a cake to football.
You’re conflating two different things: 1) Is a Creator necessary? 2) If their is a Creator, would he be subject to the constraints of the world he created. Your question goes to the first. My post to which you replied went to the second.
6,000 years old, of course. Give or take 4 or 5 billion years. Sorry to disappoint you.
Actually, I would say that diet often combines 1, 2, and 3. Many people do believe that their choice of foods is based on objective study of nutrition, and that their dietary guidelines are best in an absolute sense. Most folks (at least in this country) just assume that the government’s food pyramid is based on sound research into what foods are healthiest.
In any case, many things that we teach are children certainly do include 1, 2, and 3. For instance, we teach our children that democracy is the right basis of government and that free markets are better than communism. Is this evidence against democracy and capitalism?
Lastly, of course, atheists claim a monopoly on truth, and atheists are certainly more concentrated in some geographical areas. So if Sage Rat is right that atheist parents produce atheist children 99% of the time, then atheism also combines 1, 2, and 3. Is this evidence against atheism?
Let’s attack this from another angle, and go back to basics. A newborn baby knows how to suckle and cry, but not much else. Everything that an adult knows comes either from other human beings or from direct observation and deduction, with other human beings typically accounting for the lion’s share. So does this provide evidence against almost everything that humans know?
This is typical of the simplistic thinking employed by theists. Atheism isn’t the opposite of theism. It is the absence of it. The argument you’ve listed is an argument that Atheism isn’t divinely inspired. Which I don’t have a problem with. But you simply must see things as binary and simplistic. Give up looking to a collection of bronze age fables to answer things for you and think.
Another example of your simplistic reasoning. Again, if you accept the premise, it would be an argument against divinely inspired knowledge.
Man creates religion and people pretend it’s real.
Except that I never made any attempt to argue such a thing. Sage Rat began this line of debate by saying “Historically, religions generally either spread via the support of the government, or by simple conquest.” I am challenging that claim.
At the best all you’re saying here is that Christianity spread due to government pressure except when it didn’t, which is a tautology. Now let’s look at individual claims.
“Most of Europe was converted under the support of the Roman government.” Really? A map assures us that even at their most powerful, the Romans never ruled most of Europe. By the fourth century, when Christianity became the dominant religion, various tribes from the north had been nibbling away at the Empire for some time. The story of the fourth and fifth centuries is the story of the Germans conquering the Roman Empire. If religion was imposed by force, the Germans would have imposed their religions. There’s no way that the Romans could have forced Christianity on the German tribes.
As for Africa, I await evidence that the colonial governments forced Christianity on the native Africans. It may have happened in some cases, but not the majority. If that happened then why is the northern two thirds of Africa still mostly Muslim? And why are so many African Christians Pentecostal rather than following the mainline churches of their former imperial rulers?
I assume you’re referring to those laughable prayer studies that Richard Dawkins and Valteron like to cite. If so, what do they prove? That sometimes prayers are unanswered? Well, don’t large portions of the Bible consist of people lamenting that their prayers are unanswered? So don’t those studies support the message of the Bible? The Bible never promises a quid pro quo exchange of anything for prayer, so pretending that it does is simply catering to anti-intellectualism.
So testing the power of prayer is a waste of time? You should just accept it’s real based on zero evidence? The lack of prayer’s effects is evidence for the veracity of the bible? It must be nice to argue for a cause where its utter laughable failure adds one in the win column.
Prayer is the equivalent of asking Captain Kirk to save you from a house fire.
I’m not really interested in this debate, but I just popped in to let you know that your understanding of the HUP is incorrect. There is a also a time/energy uncertainty principle, and that is what the author is talking about. Link. The HUP applies to many different conjugate pairs, not just position/momentum, although that is the most commonly known pair.
It’s not fiat. It’s the logical consequence of being the creator of the universe. If there is a creator of the universe, then this being must have been outside the universe itself. Furthermore, if this being created all material things, then this being must not be inherently material in nature. Ergo, there is no reason to insist that this being must be bound by the laws of nature.
Because this creator, if he exists, would have to be non-physical in nature.
“But there’s nothing outside of the material realm!” one might object. Indeed, some on the SDMB have made that very claim in previous debates. That is supposition though, not evidence. Furthermore, it assumes the very thing that one is attempting to argue – namely, that there is no creator, since a creator of the material realm would have to be capable of existing outside of the realm itself.
Again, incorrect. As I’ve pointed out numerous times before, some people may choose to use the term in that manner, but that’s not how most dictionaries or encyclopedias of philosophy define the term. Rather, in the majority of cases, they define atheism as the rejection of theism.
Now, this is the point at which Revenant Threshold usually jumps in to say, “Wait a minute! We’ve talked about this before! I found a dictionary which says that atheism is the disbelief in God, and which also says that disbelief can be just the absence of belief.” Once again though, remember that I was talking about the majority of these references. I will grant that some of them can be interpreted in that manner.
More importantly, that’s only a problem for people who insist that atheism IS a mere absence of belief and who jump down the throats of people who use the term differently. The majority of these references use “atheism” in a much more narrow sense, referring specifically to the active rejection of theism. An argument can be made for using the broader sense of the term, but let’s not pretend that it is THE correct definition. That would simply be foolish.
You know, I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what system of belief involved floating musclemen accompanied by toga-wearing bears, but I didn’t want to derail the debate by asking.
“It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to the profession of that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since, in our judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority which in accordance with the will of Heaven shall decide to inflict.” (bolding added)
Now Charles Martel decides to set off as the protector of the Roman Catholic church, fights Islam out of Spain and begins spreading his kingdom into an Empire. Charlemagne continued this and now Germany becomes Christian. Charlemagne is rumored to have used conversion by the sword.
In the East, Justinian spreads the Empire out through Turkey and Egypt and was quite persistent in supporting Christianity:
“At the very beginning of his reign, he deemed it proper to promulgate by law the Church’s belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation; and to threaten all heretics with the appropriate penalties;[47] whereas he subsequently declared that he intended to deprive all disturbers of orthodoxy of the opportunity for such offense by due process of law.[48] He made the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan creed the sole symbol of the Church,[49] and accorded legal force to the canons of the four ecumenical councils.[50] The bishops in attendance at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 recognized that nothing could be done in the Church contrary to the emperor’s will and command;[51] while, on his side, the emperor, in the case of the Patriarch Anthimus, reinforced the ban of the Church with temporal proscription.[52] Justinian protected the purity of the church by suppressing heretics. He neglected no opportunity for securing the rights of the Church and clergy, for protecting and extending monasticism. He granted the monks the right to inherit property from private citizens and the right to receive solemnia or annual gifts from the imperial treasury or from the taxes of certain provinces and he prohibited lay confiscation on monastic estates.”
The Eastern Roman then begins to give strong incentives to the Russian nobility to convert to Orthodox Christianity. The government remains Christian even as it moves from Kiev to Moscow and continues to promote Christianity among their pagan populace and converts them. Russia itself expands, filling out the rest of Northern Asia and converting the native people to Christianity as they go.
Spain, Italy, England, France, Germany, Greece and all those places around there, Turkey, Russia…hmm. Outside of Scandinavia, government support and conquest was how Europe became Christian.
But my point isn’t that they were evil and nefarious for doing this. Nor am I saying that proselytizing doesn’t work. The point is that Shinto could just as easily have been the religion that you happened to be if Japan had conquered Eastern Asia a few millennia ago and Shinto had been a proselytizing religion. We could all be Mongol whatever-it-is-they-had-ism if Genghis Khan hadn’t been forgiving of other religions.
There’s no mystical explanation for the success of Christianity or Islam. People aren’t religious because there’s evidence of deities. It’s because of history and human interaction. If you look around and see religious people and assume that they know something that you don’t, it can be safely said that they don’t. That’s my point.
For most of history people considered deities to be human shaped people in the clouds looking down on them. As science progressed, these images became more enigmatic.
Since my whole goal is bring about some self-realisation, I think this is a fair point. Where we are today–with a universe that wasn’t created 10,000 years ago, with animals not specifically formed by the hand of God, with the Earth not the center of the universe, and it shown that there aren’t giant men living in the clouds over us–is point following after a long process of having the goalpost be gradually shifted further and further back, the DoC always placed one step beyond the limits of scientific knowledge. Your version where the DoC is one step before the Big Bang is just such an example. But if you had lived a thousand years ago, you would probably be thinking in terms of a big bearded dude in a toga in the sky. And if it wasn’t for science making that image seem absurd, it would still be the way it’s envisioned by you and I and everyone else.
And if it does seem like an absurd image to you, then probably the modern incarnation is just as much so–simply that we haven’t yet discovered enough of the universe and its creation to make it seem so.
But like I said, my goal is self-realization. Allowing the goalpost to be shifted back from laughable absurdities to something that passes muster in modern society is silly. If deities are so malleable as to be refashioned according to the styles of the day such that on any one day “bearded man in a toga” is a serious description and the next it’s use will get you yelled at as being flippant and an asshole, it seems pretty likely that the format of our deities have more to do with human intrinsics than reality.
But you simply must see things as binary and simplistic. Give up looking to a collection of bronze age fables to answer things for you and think.