The religious nutcases use the phrase “ONLY a theory” to refer to many of the accepted tenets of science, such as gravity or the molecular theory. Theories are called that because science, being honest, won’t state something to be factual without absolute, incontrovertible proof. Unlike, for example, the assertion that Jesus comes back from the dead every Sunday and turns his body into crackers (and why don’t they put some sesame seeds or something on those suckers; man, they’re tasteless). (The theory of Jesus the snack food.)
I hate to point out the obvious, but that ‘food for the poor’ thing? That’s what Social Security and Medicare are for.
Assuming that churches chose to refocus their money on food for the poor and other good causes, sure, that would be grand, but generally that money goes to make more or bigger churches.
Cite?
The churches I have attended were in the same building for decades. My current congregation did move recently to a new location, but we did it without adding to our debt.
Social Security, and the various welfare programs, do not cover everything. That is why next week we will have 5 families staying at our church. We will provide them with a week of housing, all meals, and some other assistance. None of this shows up in our budget aside from the food. We would have them stay longer, but we have a specific use situation in our zoning laws (temporary shelter is allowed, permanent is not, with a certain number of days somehow counted).
We scholarship local children to our preschool. Again, not in the budget.
We allow other groups to use our facilities.
We are very active politically on issues of homelessness, food aid, etc.
Just glancing at our budget won’t come close to understanding how we operate, and the services we provide.
You don’t say? 
Making that claims does nothing to establish that religion is incompatable with either science or religion, Desert Dumpster, or even to explain why you beleive either to be true, in the teeth of considerable evidence. You must see that.
Do you make this stuff up as you go along? Judaism is the obvious counter-example.
I’m not going to ask you again to produce either arguments or evidence in favour of your claims. I’m sure if you had either argument or evidence that would stand up to even minimal scrutiny, you would have produced them by now.
My! Ignorance stated with the full force of confidence.
“Religion” says nothing about a six thousand year old Earth. Among all the various religions in the world, one set of denominations–specifically a subset of Christianity limited to various parts of the U.S. with smaller followings in Britain and, perhaps, Canada and Australia–hold to a six thousand year old Creation. The majority of Christians have no such belief. A rather small number of Jews have a similar belief. Some unidentified number of Muslims also share a similar belief. However, the overwhelming numbers of Christians and Jews, along with Hindus, Buddhists, and any number of other believers accept the scientific explanations for the Earths’s origins.
As to your “every single one” silliness, you are overlooking the Sadducee tradition of Judaism that held that there was no afterlife–a tradition that some number of Jews have carried forward to today, despite the overall success of the Pharisee tradition.
If you are going to make flat declarations about subjects, please take the time to learn about those subjects. We are supposed to be fighting ignorance, not supporting it.
I think there’s at least a 55% probability that you can make whatever point it is you’re trying to make without being an insulting jerk. Well, maybe 45%.
In terms of “ignorance,” you are wrong about the Sadducees: they believed in Sheol, a place of existence after death. In any case, a tiny offshoot of a minor sect wouldn’t really serve as an important exception. Religion is ubiquitous in human society because death sucks, and religion denies its reality. That’s pretty basic and you look silly when you deny it.
Sheol can equally be seen as extinction or non-existence after death. Any kind of articulated belief in an afterlife is a late arrival in Judaism, and is still an aspect of Judaism which receives little emphasis by comparison with Christianity. The suggestion that it’s only the hope of an afterlife that lead anyone to adhere to Judaism is laughable. Simlarly, the notion that people adhere to to Buddhism in the hope of reincarnation is difficult to reconcile with the cold hard fact that Buddhism aims to show people how to escape reincarnation and acheive nothingness.
If you’re going to make criticisms of religion in general (and want them to be taken seriously) then you have to make criticisms which are generally true. (And in don’t mean “generally” in the sense of mostly, or more often than not; I mean generally in the sense of always.) Criticisms of a belief in the afterlife may be valid as criticisms of a belief in an afterlife, but that doesn’t mean that they are valid as criticisms of religion in general.
The opening claim here was that religion was incompatible with science. This raises the question of how so many scientists are, or have in the past been, religious believers. When invited to defend this proposition, the response was to offer a different proposition, which is that religion is imcompatable with reason. A similar objection immediately arises - many apparently reasonable people have been religious - and again we see no real attempt to engage with this. Instead yet a third proposition has been advanced - that religion is “obviously false”. Once again, you’d expect anyone advancing this proposition to acknowledge that, with 80% of the world’s population embracing some religious identity, the falsity of religions is plainly not “obvious” to them. The conclusion is that those who say that religion is “obviously false” are using the word “obvious” in a sense which is, well, non-obvious. But so far they decline to make any argument in support of this claim, or even to explain it.
The key issue is this; the core propositions of religion are metaphysical propositions to do with the conditions of existence, meaning, destiny. Science - at least in the sense of natural science - is not well-adapted to examine metaphysical propositions. Clearly, we can find particular beliefs that are held on religious grounds and that can be scientifically falsified - creationism, for example - but it’s not generically true of religious beliefs that they can be scientifically falsified (still less that they have been) and therefore a general assertion that religion and science are fundamentally incompatible is, basically, silly.
Similarly, there is no case for saying that metaphysical propositions are incompatible with reason - anyone who claims that they are marks himself out as one who has never read Aristotle - and the claim that religion is incompatible with reason falls.
What religion is incompatible with is the belief that all reality is empirically testable; that nothing which cannot be scientifically verified is real or true. In short, religion is compatible with materialism, which is a philosophical stance commonly (but of course not necessarily) adopted by atheists. Ironically materialism is itself a metaphysical position not susceptible of scientific falsification or verification.
No they aren’t. Medicare provide health care and Social Security provides money. Neither is particularly geared towards the poor.
Says the one who uses the terms “religious nutcase” and “The sentence you had so much trouble reading…”. Mr. Pot, meet Mrs Kettle. It’s not just you, DD, I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy that invariably pops up on both sides of these debates.
Point taken on my use of the word “theory”, I can’t think of any true scientific theory of the formation of the universe that has been disproven in modern times. In my defense, the concept of a net zero energy universe mentioned by Der Trihs, which he described as theory, does not reach that level either. Regardless of his phrasing, though, I should have rephrased and explained. Particularly since part of my my point was correct word usage!
As for evidence vs. proof, I don’t think this can be discussed on the basis of evidence. Most any religious adherant will tell you that they have empirical evidence to support their belief (as per this definition in Wikipedia - “In the empiricist view, one can only claim to have knowledge when one has a true belief based on empirical evidence.”). Discussing based on that would only lead to more obfustication. Since neither the existance of God nor the genesis of the energy and matter required for the big bang can be proven (ever for the former, to date for the latter), I went with that angle. Wasn’t meant to be a bait and switch, but I can see how it could be taken as such.
As a side note, every two or three years I start a thread titled something like “Do you have any evidence for the deity you believe in?” One of the first posts(if not the very first) will demand that I prove that God(notice the assumption that there is only one deity under discussion here) doesn’t exist. This is soon followed by claims that posters have evidence but they won’t bother to post because it would just be dismissed anyway, accusations that this is just another hate/attack thread, and the eternal “Puppies/rainbows/waterfalls are direct evidence of the existence of God!”(again with the assumption that. of course, only one deity is under discussion.)
Yeah, sure, but I’m thinking it’s you who denies the nasty reality of death.
The nasty reality of (atheist) death is that nothing matters at all, nothing. Once you die, nothing exists. It doesn’t matter if you cured cancer or raped all the babies in the world, there is no legacy.
Why study science? Why improve the world? What is “improve the world” for that matter? Anything and everything you did, lived, experienced, disappears; not even forever, because time doesn’t exist after you die; in fact there is no “after you die”.
The nasty reality of death is how inconsecuancial everything is. Your friends, your family, your loved ones won’t remember you because they won’t exist the nanosecond you expire.
That’s the nasty reality of (your point of view’s) death. Death is the end of the universe.
PS: I’m sure **Czarcasm **will soon tell us that atheists volunteer in soup kitchens for blind, HIV positive orphans in Mogadishu. Nothing I said means that atheists can’t or won’t help their fellow man, but simply that once they die all goes to naught.
Yep, and after I leave a theater I despair that the movie is over, instead of believing that I will someday be whisked away to a magical place where said movie continues on forever. :rolleyes:
I am happy with life, love and legacy, and with the fact that I have probably gotten more than my share of all three.
I’ll give a D on the movie analogy. C+ for effort.
It’s more like watching a very nice movie and, just after it ends, you completely forget everything about it, including having watched it, like itnever happened. Why would you watch the movie?
What legacy, after you die? Who’s there to remember you? I don’t think you’ve understood the whole “death” thing quite right. It may not worry you, that’s your right, but there is no legacy
“Love”? You mean “chemical reactions in the brain”, don’t you? As relevant as taking crap or sweating.
Everyone has a share of life, then they die.
There is no “more than your share” of chemical reactions and not dying.
Whatever. If it gives you a cheap thrill to believe that atheists lives are for naught and that we believe the universe ends when we do, then who am I to rob you of your petty excitements. As long as I know that I am happy with what I have done, have and left behind, then all is well and good as far as I’m concerned.
How did I miss this little gem? Are you implying that, without religion to guide us(and the rule of law), there is nothing stopping atheists from becoming immoral beasts?
Church is where people have fellowship with like minded people on their way to heaven … it doesn’t get much easier than that.
Why would they want to stop doing what they do and do what you want them to do?
We don’t have the same believes anymore in a world full of sin we try our best not to resist the will of God … as for the ten percent Christians give, called tithes. That is just a suggested starting place. we are commanded to love the Lord thy God with all of our heart and all of our mind and with all of our strength.
Not all Christians tithe ten percent of their income. I know, because I only believe in giving five percent (before taxes that is).
The tithe is suppose to be your first fruit providing you were a farmer or a rancher in those days before Piggly Wiggly had a store you could purchase everything from.
The reason given behind tithing your first fruit of your tree’s, flocks or pasture lands was to increase your latter harvest of fruit and flocks, etc.
You reap what you sow is the oldest law known to man.
You should spend your time and efforts to convince non-Christians to study the sciences and to give 20% of their wealth to your plan to increase man kind, after all many have already done as you wish and work on the Lord’s day giving into none of his charities.
Since I am a believer, I don’t believe they are for naught.
Please, do tell me about the universe existing after you die, especially the proofs you could profer after such demise shall occur.
How do you know what happened to what you “left behind”?
Why does it matter?
No, I’m not.
Rather than continue this hijack, if you wish to start a new thread on why atheists bother to do anything, I’ll be happy to participate.