Thread lasted for a while, but it is getting out of hand, locking.

/lock

The only thing I hate is when one side of this "debate" gets defensive and acts like you have to choose between them as though there is complete exclusiveness and zero comparability.

"I think science is more important than religion." OK THEN GUESS NOBODY SHOULD HAVE MORALS LOL LETS MURDER BABIES SINCE LIFE IS MEANINGLESS

"I think religion is more important than science." OK THEN GIVE UP YOUR TOASTER AND FRIDGE LOL SEE HOW LONG YOU LAST ON FAITH INSTEAD OF FOOD

Shadow_Anndroid

Zemor

Shadow_AnndroidNo. Religion is no more than having a fetish for words on a fancy piece of usedtoilet paper.

Back to r/atheism/ with you, bud.

Back? I'm already there.

I tip my fedora to you good sir. Let us stroke our neckbeards in unison

Zemor

sualeos
What i was saying was, if something complex "needs a watchmaker" so this complex universe obviously needs a creator. Wouldn't the creator be fairly complex as well? And according to your beliefs he did not have a creator, he was just always there.

Why can't this apply to the universe?

Because it's pretty obvious that the universe had a beginning. You're grasping at straws if you claim otherwise.

I think what he's getting at (based on his past posts) is that there is that quantum fluctuation that initially started this Universe. And his last question would be referring to that fluctuation as having the possibility of being eternal, rather than the actual universe itself.

Zemor

Shadow_AnndroidNo. Religion is no more than having a fetish for words on a fancy piece of usedtoilet paper.

Back to r/atheism/ with you, bud.

Back? I'm already there.

sualeos

41paladinman

sualeos
Explain how the watch is more complex then the watchmaker.

It doesn't have to be, God can create something more complex than a watchmaker can.

What i was saying was, if something complex "needs a watchmaker" so this complex universe obviously needs a creator. Wouldn't the creator be fairly complex as well? And according to your beliefs he did not have a creator, he was just always there.

Why can't this apply to the universe?

Because it's pretty obvious that the universe had a beginning. You're grasping at straws if you claim otherwise.

Shadow_AnndroidNo. Religion is no more than having a fetish for words on a fancy piece of usedtoilet paper.

Back to r/atheism/ with you, bud.

Shadow_AnndroidNo. Religion is no more than having a fetish for words on a fancy piece of usedtoilet paper.

Why do you have to say these kind of things? these are the comments that get threads locked.

No. Religion is no more than having a -snip- for words on a fancy piece of usedtoilet paper.

I don't care what you believe in as long as you believe in what you want to, not what somebody forces you to.

41paladinman

sualeos
Explain how the watch is more complex then the watchmaker.

It doesn't have to be, God can create something more complex than a watchmaker can.

What i was saying was, if something complex "needs a watchmaker" so this complex universe obviously needs a creator. Wouldn't the creator be fairly complex as well? And according to your beliefs he did not have a creator, he was just always there.

Why can't this apply to the universe?

We sometimes will lock threads temporarily to perform cleanup to prevent users from quoting stuff that might be deleted.

Thought this got locked yesterday..

arlodee

Tanasmmo
-snip-

I've also found another interesting theory. Many believe that life is a reality, but there are several theories, including one from old zen Buddhism, that life is just a dream, or that we aren't controlling ourselves, but are rather being controlled and puppeted by a greater being or high power. I've found these idea's intriguing, but not plausible.

I can actually work out the dream part.

First, lets take a piece of paper and explore a different religion.
There's a religion (Or belief, both mean the same) that heaven, the place we go to when we die, is like a piece of paper, and we live in the piece of paper. Everything we draw on the paper is in your heaven. If I were to draw undead unicorns on the paper, the heaven would have undead unicorns.

So, if dream is the 'reality' we're in right now, could heaven be our 'fantasy' that is really the reality? Who'll know.

No one get mad, but I saw a photo on Facebook and just wanted to share it (though I won't be putting the picture. Only the text).

It said, "what if 'God' is just a metaphor for the universe?".

I am Catholic, and I don't believe this. But I don't want to start a war so I'll say it's up to you to believe or not.

This is the stupidest thread ever. Please lock it. You can believe in two things at once, a deity and evolution (which isn't as flawed as you seem to think.) I refuse to respond to anyone flaming at me on such a dumb thread. You can politely disagree, but I probably won't respond anyway.

H-MAN_25

Doughtylolsnip.

It's always nice to see someone who doesn't believe everything they hear about their religion, and adds their own theories.

< this guy

H-MAN_25

TanasmmoNow...Before anyone gets mad at me, I want you all to think about this, as I'm only saying what if everything we believed was false, nothing more and nothing less. It doesn't necessarily matter how many facts you throw out, millions of beliefs have the same amount of reasonable facts.
Honestly, I don't believe much right now, as for all I know I'm talking to squids. (Not saying that I am lol...) But I just wanted to throw this out there.

Have you seen The Matrix and Inception?

Both of those are very confusing for me.

TanasmmoNow...Before anyone gets mad at me, I want you all to think about this, as I'm only saying what if everything we believed was false, nothing more and nothing less. It doesn't necessarily matter how many facts you throw out, millions of beliefs have the same amount of reasonable facts.
Honestly, I don't believe much right now, as for all I know I'm talking to squids. (Not saying that I am lol...) But I just wanted to throw this out there.

Have you seen The Matrix and Inception?

Tanasmmo

happymanisepic
Ahem. Not A god... God.

-snip-

No. A god. Since there's multiple beliefs, you have to speak like your talking to every belief in history. For example, some beliefs believe there's multiple gods, and others believe, "oh her der theres one god" And since one god falls under "a" cause we're not specifying gods like "How did Selene change your life?" but instead saying "How did a god change your life?" there's no limit to what or how many gods..or goddesses..

But how do we know all of our facts and statements are true?
For all we know we could have developed from an 'alien' race/culture that founded the earth after it 'developed' after several meteors grouped together to shape the earth, and that alien race made the earth like it is today (Just to have their older version fudge it up again) and we 'grew' from that race? (Not quoting this off Dr. Who just so you know, I actually believed this before I even took a stand to look at Dr. Who or even knew about Dr. Who)
But even then...How do we know that is real? I can't expect any of you, even with your million facts, to pop off on how you believe its real.
Also, please don't pop off on the million facts. ._.

Now this is where I get optimistic. What if everything we believed was false, and something else we never thought of was real? However, don't answer, not that I mean to be rude.
For all we know the 'god' or 'gods' you all worship could all be female and male? Or if that one god wasn't a god but a goddess? I don't expect you all to have the true answer, as we all believe different things we have no way to actually clarify what is and isn't real. (Unless your some insane person who has a time machine )
Now...Before anyone gets mad at me, I want you all to think about this, as I'm only saying what if everything we believed was false, nothing more and nothing less. It doesn't necessarily matter how many facts you throw out, millions of beliefs have the same amount of reasonable facts.
Honestly, I don't believe much right now, as for all I know I'm talking to squids. (Not saying that I am lol...) But I just wanted to throw this out there.

I've also found another interesting theory. Many believe that life is a reality, but there are several theories, including one from old zen Buddhism, that life is just a dream, or that we aren't controlling ourselves, but are rather being controlled and puppeted by a greater being or high power. I've found these idea's intriguing, but not plausible.

happymanisepic
Ahem. Not A god... God.

-snip-

No. A god. Since there's multiple beliefs, you have to speak like your talking to every belief in history. For example, some beliefs believe there's multiple gods, and others believe, "oh her der theres one god" And since one god falls under "a" cause we're not specifying gods like "How did Selene change your life?" but instead saying "How did a god change your life?" there's no limit to what or how many gods..or goddesses..

But how do we know all of our facts and statements are true?
For all we know we could have developed from an 'alien' race/culture that founded the earth after it 'developed' after several meteors grouped together to shape the earth, and that alien race made the earth like it is today (Just to have their older version fudge it up again) and we 'grew' from that race? (Not quoting this off Dr. Who just so you know, I actually believed this before I even took a stand to look at Dr. Who or even knew about Dr. Who)
But even then...How do we know that is real? I can't expect any of you, even with your million facts, to pop off on how you believe its real.
Also, please don't pop off on the million facts. ._.

Now this is where I get optimistic. What if everything we believed was false, and something else we never thought of was real? However, don't answer, not that I mean to be rude.
For all we know the 'god' or 'gods' you all worship could all be female and male? Or if that one god wasn't a god but a goddess? I don't expect you all to have the true answer, as we all believe different things we have no way to actually clarify what is and isn't real. (Unless your some insane person who has a time machine )
Now...Before anyone gets mad at me, I want you all to think about this, as I'm only saying what if everything we believed was false, nothing more and nothing less. It doesn't necessarily matter how many facts you throw out, millions of beliefs have the same amount of reasonable facts.
Honestly, I don't believe much right now, as for all I know I'm talking to squids. (Not saying that I am lol...) But I just wanted to throw this out there.

4. "increasing" life spans? Humans used to live hundreds of year, and look what that has been reduced to.
And yes, I do know that animals have the same problems. There in this world too, aren't they?

5.1. Yes, I have.
5.2. Because God has changed my heart as stated before and made me believe. I see the truth now that he has opened my eyes.[/quote]

How exactly has he changed your heart? can you please elaborate a bit more?
I've had the exact opposite occur to me. If there is a creationist God or divine being, he/she hasn't answered any prayers that I have issued. I've realized this since a young age, when I converted years ago.

Snowy

sualeos-snipforshorties-

I'm not saying asking "what came before" is ignorant, i'm saying "i believe in god because science can't explain this.." is ignorant.

Eh, I still don't really see it as ignorance, since there's no scientific medium surrounding that "thing we don't know" for people to ignore. Again, it's like "why are cats jerks?". No one knows so we make up theories. eheh

I'm essentially saying the scientists are ignorant (not in a bad way), we don't know what came before, the before the big bang, and using that current ignorance as a basis for believing in a deity is (i don't want to say bad, because it's not 'bad' i just honestly can't think of another word) bad...

In other words, we don't know therefore god is not a very good reason to believe in something.

Also, i want to point out that people ask what came before the big bang (which is in no way a bad question) and i answer; my response "an eternal, infinitely large energy field fluctuated into a universe" and then you can obviously ask "well where did that energy come from" i say it didn't come from anything, it was simply always there. That never seems very acceptable with theists, but when we ask "where did your god come from" you reply with the same answer.

sualeos-snipforshorties-

I'm not saying asking "what came before" is ignorant, i'm saying "i believe in god because science can't explain this.." is ignorant.

Eh, I still don't really see it as ignorance, since there's no scientific medium surrounding that "thing we don't know" for people to ignore. Again, it's like "why are cats jerks?". No one knows so we make up theories. eheh

someone shut this post down man its got a world war flame war

iyecte

41paladinman

iyecte

4:
evolution and the survival of the fittest
it's not just humans that have DNA you know lol
and here's the thing
"god" created everything without flaws, right?
then why, in our DNA, do we have so many lurking diseases and issues?
if we choose to believe that god stil did that with full knowledge of it, what conclusion would you draw about god?

5:

1: you're looking at the bible which is pretty dang unreliable
these are the opinions of a bunch of fanatic followers of him, it's almost guaranteed that they'd be using hyperbole

2: *facepalm*

4.
The fall. Man sinned, and made the world imperfect. That's why over time, the average life span of humans dying of natural causes has slowly decreased. It's also the explanation of our being perceptible to disease.

5.
*Ok, I'm going to go about this one with your logic.*
So? there are fanatic followers in every religion, but as the post was stating, The Bible has the clearest, most specific picture of God showing himself to us. Other religions don't have anything like that, which is what sets the bible apart and is part of the reason why I think it is truth.

Why the facepalm?

4: in genesis of thr bible that you think is so accurate god DIDN'T want humans to be smart - our increasing lifespans have been due to our getting smarter, not because of god

...you know animals get the same problems as us too right?

5: TONS of religions have things like that: well, the mainstream one anyway
but hang on I'll just ask a couple of questions instead of assuming here
1: have you read the bible?
2: if so, why do you trust it so?

4. "increasing" life spans? Humans used to live hundreds of year, and look what that has been reduced to.
And yes, I do know that animals have the same problems. There in this world too, aren't they?

5.1. Yes, I have.
5.2. Because God has changed my heart as stated before and made me believe. I see the truth now that he has opened my eyes.

I believe something kinda like a fusion of religions and science.
There is an energy field across the earth, activity is usually stable.
During events that induced emotional changes in many people, such as 9/11, activity spiked. Scientists placed a helmet type device on 2 people's heads, which connected to a machine that transfers activity from inputs on 1 helmet, to outputs on the other.
The output test subject has a flashlight shined in their right eye for a while, then the machine was deactivated. When asked if they felt anything unusual, the input subject said they felt something in the right side of their face, near the eye and temple. (or something like that, i don't remember exactly what was said, just the general message) This test was in a lead encased room, there were no outside signals to mess with the machine. What i believe is that this energy field is created by all living animals, such as humans and cats. People are almost always sending and receiving information from this field, sometimes the field can gets strong enough to interact with nonliving objects. (dont know if or how this happens, still researching) When people die, residual imprints on the field remain for extremely long periods of time. This field explains ghosts, visions of the afterlife, psychics, and some other things that traditional science doesn't deal with that often. (for all you people who believe in ghosts, haven't you wondered why you haven't heard of neanderthal ghosts haunting some place?) This is just my personal half-belief.

Sorry, the pictures are kind of larger then i accepted.

Before the big bang?

Quantum fluctuation origin.

A infinitely large zero-point energy field, the same one that surrounds you now may have existed before the initial singularity.



Fluctuations in this field happen all of the time, but one (13.7 billion years ago) fluctuations was large enough and created enough momentum to create the singularity.

Our universe is a finite blanket over this zero-point energy field.

This may also mean there are many universes and many big bangs in this infinite field.



D-Branes colliding

If string theory is correct, and all of it's components are correct too then our big bang could have easily been a collision between two D-Branes.



Our universe may just be a three-dimensional brane, in a higher dimensial field that has many many more of these branes/universes.



"Our universe is just one slice in the infinite cosmic loaf" - Brian Greene.

You can always ask "what happened before that" In no way is that evidence of god, and ignorance shouldn't be a reason for believing.

41paladinman

iyecte

4:
evolution and the survival of the fittest
it's not just humans that have DNA you know lol
and here's the thing
"god" created everything without flaws, right?
then why, in our DNA, do we have so many lurking diseases and issues?
if we choose to believe that god stil did that with full knowledge of it, what conclusion would you draw about god?

5:

1: you're looking at the bible which is pretty dang unreliable
these are the opinions of a bunch of fanatic followers of him, it's almost guaranteed that they'd be using hyperbole

2: *facepalm*

4.
The fall. Man sinned, and made the world imperfect. That's why over time, the average life span of humans dying of natural causes has slowly decreased. It's also the explanation of our being perceptible to disease.

5.
*Ok, I'm going to go about this one with your logic.*
So? there are fanatic followers in every religion, but as the post was stating, The Bible has the clearest, most specific picture of God showing himself to us. Other religions don't have anything like that, which is what sets the bible apart and is part of the reason why I think it is truth.

Why the facepalm?

4: in genesis of thr bible that you think is so accurate god DIDN'T want humans to be smart - our increasing lifespans have been due to our getting smarter, not because of god

...you know animals get the same problems as us too right?

5: TONS of religions have things like that: well, the mainstream one anyway
but hang on I'll just ask a couple of questions instead of assuming here
1: have you read the bible?
2: if so, why do you trust it so?

Ya know what I believe? That this should be locked before an all out flame war.

Cadet_Craft wrote:
oh wow, a site mod actually talked in this. happy to see you don't immediately shut this down, man . OK, so here's how i see the 2 sides. side 1: Religion. this is religion as a whole, but the more prominent one i'm talking about is Christianity, because it's the one i'm more familiar with. OK, so in the beginning a god or gods created the world. already we find potholes. where did this god come from? how does he have all of this power? why make US, imperfect beings that are screwing up every day? when they created it, they created all other complex beings made from thin air. we can't just poof into existence, that would require infinite amounts of energy. so unless Zeus was there with his lightning bolt to make us here? i'm not seeing where all of this energy came from, unless he had the power to do this. oh, and after they made us, they where just like. here's some free will and some prophesies that will come true and answer all of your questions. but, the only problem is, they DIDN'T answer all of our questions! things are still just missing! just as well, some things just don't match up! according to a religious website i read awhile ago, Noah (created the arc) was over 600 years old, and his father more than that! why don't we all live to that age! and why have the gods or god not spoken to us now that more things are easily spreadable. it took the bible hundreds of years to spread around Europe, where multiple split-offs created their own bibles! (Lutherans and Mormons and such). but here's the other side; side 2. The big bang has some evidence, but like always, there is not absolute proof. evolution seems to be great, and i personally find little flaw in this, but how did we get here in the first place, and why is earth in the perfect spot? a moon to control the tides, a perfect rotation speed to make a perfect temperature range, a sun in mid-life for plenty of time to grow up, an earth with little things that easily kill us (i know about illness, but now it's not so prominent) it just seems like these little things are so perfect, it's almost like a divine intervention. like i earlier said, we simply don't know.

but it sure would be nice for everyone to hear how we got here by some celestial being or something.


I believe, and most Catholics, integrate theology with the aspect of God. That God is this being in order to explain why everything happened. What happened before the big bang? What happened to cause the thing that caused the Big bang, and it goes on to infinite.

I wanna say that we are imperfect because imperfection is a thing we must overcome. However, being imperfect makes life more exciting in my opinion. With all of our problems solved there wouldn't be a lot to do. Imperfection is just how nature works.

We are all apart of this huge-ass thing called the universe. Like I said, bible shouldn't be taken word for word. A lot of the stuff in the Old Testament is mythological stories such as the Adam and Eve thing.

Life on earth is pretty much coincidental, but you gotta think, this places has billions and billions of Galaxies each containing a near infinite amount of stars in which almost all of them have planets. You gotta think that at that point there's gotta be that planet that can support life, in fact quite a few. I believe scientists have found some planets that are in that sweet spot range.

TL;DR: God is a thing we utilize to explain the unexplainable.

Yes, i completely agree. i wasn't asking for a reply, but alright. i'm not mad, just saying.

Wasn't expecting a reply.

anypoo, i would just like to congratulate everyone on being good people and not being butt-wipes about this. there are some great discussions on this, and although noone's really changing their opinion (exept for a select few) it's good to get it all out there so other understand more.

Cause ignorance in the world is the worst thing to deal with. like really, read a book or something. understand your topics. repeating the same thing over & over doesn't win you the argument. it wins you the "you look dumb and inconsiderate. GTFO." award, but nothing more. perhaps a free pie from that free pie stand, bt NOTHING MORE. no kettlecorn, no minecraft capes, no Sakura-con tickets. nothing. just Go.

[quote="Cadet_Craft"]oh wow, a site mod actually talked in this. happy to see you don't immediately shut this down, man . OK, so here's how i see the 2 sides. side 1: Religion. this is religion as a whole, but the more prominent one i'm talking about is Christianity, because it's the one i'm more familiar with. OK, so in the beginning a god or gods created the world. already we find potholes. where did this god come from? how does he have all of this power? why make US, imperfect beings that are screwing up every day? when they created it, they created all other complex beings made from thin air. we can't just poof into existence, that would require infinite amounts of energy. so unless Zeus was there with his lightning bolt to make us here? i'm not seeing where all of this energy came from, unless he had the power to do this. oh, and after they made us, they where just like. here's some free will and some prophesies that will come true and answer all of your questions. but, the only problem is, they DIDN'T answer all of our questions! things are still just missing! just as well, some things just don't match up! according to a religious website i read awhile ago, Noah (created the arc) was over 600 years old, and his father more than that! why don't we all live to that age! and why have the gods or god not spoken to us now that more things are easily spreadable. it took the bible hundreds of years to spread around Europe, where multiple split-offs created their own bibles! (Lutherans and Mormons and such). but here's the other side; side 2. The big bang has some evidence, but like always, there is not absolute proof. evolution seems to be great, and i personally find little flaw in this, but how did we get here in the first place, and why is earth in the perfect spot? a moon to control the tides, a perfect rotation speed to make a perfect temperature range, a sun in mid-life for plenty of time to grow up, an earth with little things that easily kill us (i know about illness, but now it's not so prominent) it just seems like these little things are so perfect, it's almost like a divine intervention. like i earlier said, we simply don't know.

but it sure would be nice for everyone to hear how we got here by some celestial being or something.[/quote]

About why the earth is in a "perfect spot with a moon to control the tides and a perfect rotation speed to make a perfect temperature range, a sun in mid-life for plenty of time to grow up and an earth with little things that easily kill us" Life is able to adapt to situations, due to evolution. It is estimated that there are 10^23 planets in the universe. If there is only one in one trillion of these planets which are liveable, wouldn't this mean there are 10^11 planets suitable for life? This wouldn't require a deity.

Except that you can take it all as truth, seeing as it is God breathed. All of the bible was inspired by God. He put it in the writers hearts.
The only parts where it can be read but not practiced is when the text pertains to a certain group of people as stated in the bible (i.e. Leviticus, I believe) and the traditional laws that have been fulfilled by Jesus ministry, death, and rise from the dead.