I suppose I could point to all the charitable organizations, the Vatican, the accumulation of wealth by the Jews etc. But for me personally, the reason religion works is it represents 2000 years of man’s spiritual quest, and all I have to do is modify this and change that a little and the value system works smoothly and the quest continues. To me it’s superior to trying to build a value system from scratch.
Your definition of both “working” and “religion”, of course.
Worse than useless.
Um… I am going to just ignore this except to say that highlighting the accumulation of wealth by Jews right after you mentioned the Vatican is kind of hilarious.
Everybody understands that you think religion is good. They have been trying desperately to explain why you’ve come to believe that’s so, why you think things like revelation are trustworthy and reliable guides to the world. You have done pretty much everything except break into song and dance to avoid answering these questions. I don’t see how this could possibly be worth the effort.
Let me use a metaphor, Magic Johnson dribbles down the Court and from the corner of his eye sees a teammate but realizes that man is double-teamed. So he immediately realizes that James Worthy on his right must be free and passes the ball to him without even glancing in his direction.
Magic Johnson’s unique skills and intuitive grasp of basketball can only be understood by people who watch and love basketball.
In the same manner, unless you are religious yourself, it is difficult for you to have the sense of wonder I experience when I’m in church with my Pastor explaining passages in the bible to me. Or when I’m at religious services at a great cathedral. Or the sense of calm I feel when God reveals the proper course of conduct for me.
Because I knew most of you were not religious, I felt it was pointless to go into detail about intuition and revelation.
Fine, but then you needed to start a thread on that, not on silly Intelligent Design.
Do you feel that it is your divine duty to drive as many people away from religion as you possibly can? That is the only way I can make sense of your participation in this thread.
I’m religious; I happen to be Jewish; we happen to believe Christianity is false; by your definition, are there enough of us to make that belief “rational”?
Since when was religion required to understand ‘intuition’ or ‘revelation’?
While we would always dismiss “divine revelation” as, well, - whta it is - we certainly understand what the term means and what people claim it is -
Intuition is certainly not limited to the ‘faithful’.
I honestly think you don’t have a clue of what you are talking about - and with the number of inconsistencies, I think you are not at all what you claim to be (whatever that is).
There are plenty of people willing to say that astrology works, or that homeopathy works, or that voodoo works. The difference is that science defines what it means by “works” and works hard to demonstrate that something works or not.
I’m Jewish, and you guys are newbies. But I’m curious about the accumulation of wealth. I don’t remember anything in any of the services I went to about making money. In fact in the old days it was very honorable to be a scholar who lived with the support of his family. (My great-grandfather was one.) Accumulation of wealth might have come from the economic illiteracy of the dominant religion back then.
I also don’t know what you mean by the Vatican working. Their ATMs don’t. 
Architecture does not equal religious truth - even an atheist can be blown away by Notre Dame. (I was.) And religious services are carefully tuned to have the impact you mention. It has nothing to do with God.
I never claimed that. I am saying that you can’t say there ISN’T a god.
The only way to definitively prove the existence or not of god is to die and come back with proof. Good luck with that.
Yes, I can. The evidence is as strongly against there being any gods as there is against anything else that people dismiss as not existing. The difference is that people keep insisting that a special standard of evidence be used for popular religions. Not unpopular ones though; somehow we don’t get the same lectures about how “you can’t prove there is no Zeus!”
Of course, Judaism is rational. But Christianity is also rational. Judaism comes from different premises makes a rational argument and comes to a conclusion. Christians happen to believe that Christ is the Messiah and the Jewish don’t, but they also make a rational argument and come to similar conclusions.
You said you were going to quit using the term “rational” in that manner.
Yes I did, but it was a special request from a friend…so when are you going to decide we are friends. What…are you going to check the data on the probability of meeting a friend through an internet MB?
- You told a moderator you would refrain from using that term that way.
- What is this stuff you are spewing about “friends” got to do with anything?
Look are we debating on a friendly basis or are we debating on a cutthroat basis.
If we are debating on a cutthroat basis, I’ll be more than happy to start asking questions about why U.S. scientists were more than happy to design nuclear weapons for Dept. of Defense before entering WWII.
No one ever claimed science is a good method for deciding questions of ethics. It is, however, a good way of determining facts. Religion falls notably short in that regard.
And I’ll be more than happy to point out that that would be as off-topic as your attempt to turn this into a personal matter about how I make friends.
The OP:
What evidence do you have to support your bias that your god “started the ball rolling”?