If you read my last post, you can see an indicator that I agree with you there. I could go on and on about that one.
This is at the root anti-democratic. People vote for the laws that they want to have. That’s why we have votes and a republic. Laws are inherently moral judgements on actions taken. Those morals are inextricably tied to your religious/philosophical beliefs. So saying that people shouldn’t try to push their religion on you is saying that they shouldn’t be able to vote from a different moral belief system.
Will you please come and talk to my cow-orkers? Every time something like this comes up and I’m just moments away from getting them to actually concede something in their religion doesn’t make sense, even though it should, they spook, cover their ears with their hooves, and start mooing ‘Sometimes you just have to have faaaaaaaith.’
Not to say that all people who believe in a god or whatever are this way. It’s just me that’s stuck in a pasture with so many dedicated to unthinking, willful ignorance of the world and how it does or does not jibe with their own religion, I’m sure.
If I ever decide to make up a religion, you won’t be allowed to join if you can’t defend what we’ll believe. I’ll make everybody have to show their work, too. None of that poof! crap, because it would reduce our religion to nothing more than a magician with a really good show. Come to think of it-- magicians can actually explain how their tricks work…
Proper application of a system’s rules is what leads to valid arguments. It doesn’t matter whether the rules are applied by scientists or scientologists.
You’re really giving too much weight to validity, as though it were something that lends your side some sort of superiority. Every circular argument is, by definition, valid. And every argument with false premises that otherwise properly applies the rules of its system is valid. And finally, science is not a system of logic anyway.
Yes, I know the definition of refute, to anyone upset about my usage of such I refer them to sarcasm I’m using the “fake” dictionary in solidarity with my pal VegemiteMoose.
Not responding to this thread for a while is the best thing I could have done. To explain to those too smart to understand this thread. This thread was not advocating science or religion. It was actually advocating for people coming out on the side of “SCIENCE!!!” to actually hold their own opinions on the subject to some sort of standard of scientific rigor. I am sick of the stupid “If random factoid then random factoid therefore God does not exist” argument.
As for the comment about computers, the saturation of computers in homes does actually say something about the respect we have for science. Let me explain. In the beginning there was a scientist. This scientist stumbled upon the idea that he could make a machine simulate “thought” by turning the electricity on and off very rapidly, in order to create a pattern based upon binary code. Now this scientist needed certain materials that happen to be very expensive, like gold to use to conduct the electricity, silicon to house it, and other odds and ends like vacuum tubes and punch cards. So what this scientist did was approach other scientists, some of whom said “That’s impossible, I don’t believe in magic, you’re an idiot.”, and others who said “Wow what a great idea, I should try and help you in any way that I can.”, so this scientist decided it was time to compose his magical scroll that would outline what he was trying to do in simple words that the creature known as the “Venture Capitalist” would understand. He had to employ some intermediaries to get an audience with the great VC creature, so he used such beings known as lawyers and accountants in order to translate his idea into a format that the great VC god would easily comprehend. The VC God controls what is known as money, and as time went by and the scientist made greater and more impressive discoveries, the VC God saw that he could turn this into profit, so he gave the scientists even MORE money. At first their alchemy produced a computer that was prohibitively large so that only the most wealthy VC Gods could afford to maintain them. However, as time went on they found more and more legitimate uses to maintain a ‘revenue stream’ and to help fund their research that would make the computer what is known as ‘smaller’. Finally when it reached a point where the computer was small enough and inexpensive enough, the VC Gods began to sell it to the average person. Once it was in the hands of the average person, everyone wanted to be either a scientist or a VC God, and trillions of dollars were spent on (and this here is the important part don’t miss it) “SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH”. And this is the story of how computers in every home equates to a healthy respect for science by the average populace.
[QUOTE=Cardinal]
If you read my last post, you can see an indicator that I agree with you there. I could go on and on about that one.;/QUOTE]
All is well then, with that one
Here we have some disagreement, but not completely. I agree that laws are moral judgements. However, some people would not stop there… school prayer, injecting evangelical/religious dogma into public schools under the guise of “science”, Kansas’ latest rerun of the Scopes monkey trial, etc. Some people want to push their own version of religion on other people. Worst case scenario - It wasn’t so long ago, people were twisting the bible to justify slavery and lynchings. It was even a shorter time that a certain pair of preachers (on telvision) claimed that such things as a major terror attack on New York, and a huge tsunami were God’s vengeance on gays, liberals and nonChristians (and others). See what I’m getting at? I’m not sure if I’m stating it well enough. These days, everything has to be a Holy War all the time, there is no discussion, no middle ground, no give and take. It’s all “God says do it my way”. Often that “do it my way” is a giant step backward, toward bigotry and ignorance.
I’m sure we’re miles apart on spirituality, but one of the things that gets me hopping mad is people putting stupid words in God’s mouth. Again, I could go on and on.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart. O what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
-William Shakespeare
This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; their worship of Me is vain, for they teach as doctrines the commandments of men. You neglect the commandment of God, in order to maintain the tradition of men."
Mark 7:7
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.
– John Adams
So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.
Gary North, “The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right” in Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of the American Baptist Culture, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), p. 25.
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
-Robert A. Heinlein
While very poetic, this is not the story of how computers in every home equates to a healthy respect for science by the average populace. It is the story of how computers in every home equates to a healthy respect for the functional advantages of having a computer in the home by the average populace. An important distinction.
Anyone who claims that science has disproven god is stepping outside of the realm of science. I personally find the idea of god to be somewhat silly, but there isn’t really any way to prove or disprove something so fundamentally abstract.
That is what is happening, and people like mswas, lekatt, etc. swallow it hook, line, and sinker.
"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you.I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good … Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism. [TheNews-Sentinel (Fort Wayne, Indiana), August 16, 1993] - RANDALL TERRY
“We must fight against those radical minorities who are trying to remove God from our textbooks, Christ from our nation. We must take back what is rightfully ours.” (Moral Majority Sermon, March 1993) “I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be.” (America Can Be Saved, 1979) - JERRY FALWELL
“Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. … Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.” - Rev. Jimmy Swaggart
“No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.” - George Bush
“It is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.” - Pope Leo XIII, “Great Encyclical Letters”
The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim is an atheist who deserves to be punished." - Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, Supreme religious authority, Saudi Arabia, 1993
Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith… We need believing people. - Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933
Hey stupid, stop eating my soul. Please read what I actually wrote. I never once made a mention of what God wants you to think or anything like that. Merely proposed that it was unscientific to say whether or not God exists.
And secular schools are a flat out lie. There is no such thing as an unbiased method for manipulating the way people think. All education is based upon some sort of belief system. We largely base what we call “Secular” schooling on a Hellenic rationalist model that is not more open minded than a christian school, it merely has it’s own method of codification.
Let’s give an example of your bias. You made a comment regarding my buying into something that God said or didn’t or whatever, yet I never made a comment about what God wants you to think or not think, only that lekatt was an idiot for claiming that because science proved that an afterlife doesn’t exist (it hasn’t proved any such thing) that therefore God does not exist because no afterlife exists (God’s existance is not dependent upon an afterlife).
I once in a while try to explain my spiritual beliefs on this forum, and people rarely even understand what I am talking about. Science does not conflict at all with my beliefs, and yes I do believe in God.
My biggest gripe on this forum is all the idiots claiming this hardon for science yet their arguments are not even logical. I find that generally the most ignorant people are the first ones to spit out the “we’re dedicated to fighting ignorance” line at you. I hear so often from people that this board contains some of the greatest minds…blah blah blah…and I completely disagree.
There are five types of dopers. Lurkers, Newbies, Everyday people, Extremely knowledgeable and smart, and Idiots
Lurkers and Newbies are obvious. Everyday people make up the bulk of the people who post here, the extremely knowledgeable are about 5% of the population here and the idiots are probably around 15%. The idiots drive off the average people and the extremely knowledgeable people regularly. I know lots of people who find posting on these boards tedious and tiresome, people I’ve met at dopefests who don’t even come here anymore because the idiots chased them off. People get tired of having to apologize for not being a scientist and giving caveats for just trying to talk about a subject. The way people act here you’d think they were going for their PhD. even though by and large the people here would fail on their dissertation.
The ruling faction is the pseudo-science crowd, constantly bitching about religious people, sounding like whiny christians with a persecution complex, except they are espousing a different ethos. Like whiny christians they don’t actually stick to the tenets of the ethos they are espousing and say dumbass shit that isn’t logical at all in the name of “SCIENCE!!!” and god forbid you try to point out their dogmatic view of it, because you’ll get the knowledgeable idiots that will argue that science isn’t a religion quoting all sorts of shit they read like the guy in Good Will Hunting that Will bitches at the beginning of the movie. Then the idiots go back to their dogmatic religion with impunity because they know someone smarter and more knowledgeable than them has a vested interest in keeping the status quo. In the end the fighting of ignorance becomes almost incidental.
Spirituality is strictly forbidden on these boards. You cannot discuss spirituality or else someone will start quoting the massive hoard of scripture that they studied, and you get lost in the constant “cites” from literary sources.
In the end I am just tired of hearing people arguing about the virtues of science while not being scientific at all. I’m tired of people pointing to the extreme idiots like Jerry Falwell as proof that something is false.
It’s hard to take this place as seriously as so many people do because I’ve seen the dopefests and watched as people lose all respect for the place after they see the person who was acting all haughty and smarter-than-thou going around grabbing women’s titties while drunk and drooling, clearly one of their only forays into actually being a social creature in their entire lives. The clear disrespect for life experience on here is patently ridiculous as it’s almost painfully obvious who barely even gets out of their house.
Ok, for computers to be created, scientists must be enfranchised. I never once made a blanket statement about everyone individually I made a comment about the overall macrocosm. I think trillions of dollars dedicated to scientific research in the development of computers is proof positive of the enfranchisement of scientists in our culture. I don’t care if Joe Redneck likes scientists, but he likes his Cable Television, which was developed by scientists.
See the theory is sort of like a chain, you take a whole bunch of cause and effect relationships, and follow the chain backward for a while, and then it will begin to make sense. When you can hold more than one concept in your mind at a time, then you’ll be well on your way to understanding that scientists are not persecuted in modern society.
The scientist persecution complex has got to stop for the love of Socrates! (I know all you infidels couldn’t give a fuck about the big G-man ;p)
Are you kidding? Religionists have elevated self-martyrdom to a high art! No one is preventing you from practicing your religion,* so long as you don’t foist it on anyone else against their will. *
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Scientists are held to the standards of scientists, they are not held to the standards of religious fundamentalists. Religious fundamentalists actually have more room to be irrational because they are not claiming rationality as the highest ideal. So for a religious zealot to hold a science zealot to the scientific zealots ideal, they themselves are not a hypocrite for expecting a person to live up to that person’s own ideals, while not holding themselves to those ideals.
So the vibe I am getting from this thread is that if you expect ANY sort of scientific rigor to be applied to science hobbyists, that makes you a religious zealot?
I attracted a lot of stupids by starting this thread.
Cite? That really doesn’t sound like anything Lekatt would say.
While you’re right that saying “scientific theory X disproves God” would be inaccurate and, if you see someone make that claim, call them on it, but I’m afraid I really don’t see the point to this thread.
Are you claiming that such a claim is becoming more prevalent? if so, actual examples would be helpful. As right now it’s almost like pitting killing sprees perpetrated by stabbing people with a quill pen. Everyone can agree that such ink filled murders are wrong, but most will find their infrequency would make for a weak pitting. Sure, every so often we get someone who makes similarly weak anti christianity rants, but they generally get shouted down, or looked down upon, as was the case with Ex Machina’s recent “my best argument against christianity thread.”
Is this a pitting of DSeid? if so, it is a weak pitting, merely harping on his use of hyperbole( unless you really think he means to suggest we shoot people, which would be a ridiculous misreading on your part), and would be better served if you separated it from your vague accusations against science people in general. Is this just a place to air your rant against science people in general? if so, it’s no better than those who air their grievances against religious people in general, rather than focusing on the truly religously erroneous, such as Flwell and the like.