<p>organized religion is a means to promote discrimination. i never said it was a direct product. it is evil. it brainwashes people into thinking that there is an absoulte right or wrong when there so obviously can not. Right and wrong will forever be subjective. Current majority views on right and wrong should not be influenced by sexist old men that were as good writers as JR tolkien from a few thousand years ago.</p>
<p>mahras - to say that as all-encompassing is very…yea.</p>
<p>i think by religion i think you mean misinformed radicals.
besides, there are many things you exclude that cause death.</p>
<p>qwilde - einstein believed in God. lol. yea but seriously on the subject.
i really don’t know how to respond to you on the time/causation argument, if God does exist, God is not susceptible to the laws and logic that he himself created, which would only make sense; thus your argument doesnt really apply.</p>
<p>I have repeatedly stated this, EINSTEIN DID NOT BELIEVE IN GOD. </p>
<p>Einstein: “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”</p>
<p>evolution is not proven. nope. that’s why its still called a theory. there may be substantial evidence but no proof, sorry. by the way, there’s even a lot of evidence in the scientific community about the validity of evolution. only a small portion of scientists today totally back evolution. but that’s besides the point. evolution does not refute god.</p>
<p>I didn’t say that evolution refutes god, but evolution is definitely a fact. Evolution, occurs everyday. You think that the dinosaurs magically appeared out of nowhere dissappeared and then we magically replaced them? Or do you not believe in dinosaurs? I don’t believe they were ever in your bible. Why did god never mention them?</p>
<p>and yes, even your tidy uncertainty principle is up for debate (from wikipedia): The basic debate between Einstein and Bohr (including Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle) was that Einstein was in essence saying: “Of course, we can know where something is; we can know the position of a moving particle if we know every possible detail, and thereby by extension, we can predict where it will go.” Bohr and Heisenberg were saying the opposite: “There is no way to know where a moving particle is ever even given every possible detail, and thereby by extension, we can never predict where it will go.”</p>
<p>You are using Wikipedia. No more comments needed.</p>
<p>anyone can say “God instructed me to do so.” just like you can lie and say, “the government made me like this.”</p>
<p>Yes, but if I killed someone then it must have been in God’s ultimate plan otherwise God is not all powerful. Your logic is flawed.</p>
<p>sidenote: my friend used wiki as one of his sources for a college paper, he got an F. lol.</p>
<p>4815: I posted that to show the other side of the coin. Many things other than atomic bombs have led to deaths. Science has led to saving and enhancing health and age rather than destroy it for the most part (reason why we live so long…regardless of whatever the older generation may say about clearer food or air).</p>
<p>i think you should highlight “PERSONAL” in enstiens quote. he believes in a god.</p>
<p>actually dinos are mentioned in the bible, and the bible is not a history book.</p>
<p>and i was using actual quotes, get it right*.</p>
<p>to qwildes second post: there’s soemthing called free-will.</p>
<p>o nice were talking about this again!</p>
<p>so now i can put my post in!</p>
<p>and 4815 - i think you mean right</p>
<p>sorry i havent been in this discuission… i was watching the saints game (irony???) and saw drew brees light up the dallas secondary… i LOVE that hes on my fantasy team </p>
<p>neway, my views</p>
<p>qwilde - my problem with you is that you make no sense (referring to your post #13). if you want to say that god is responsible for the good and the bad fine, ill accept that. if you want to say that god is not responsible for the good nor the bad fine, ill accept that. but you cant say that god is responsible only for good things and that an individual gets no credit for good things while simultaneously i am fully to blame for nething bad. u cant have it both ways</p>
<p>my views on religion</p>
<p>basically, I think that organized religion is a horrible, horrible thing. Do I think that theres some sort of higher power? Yeah, I do. Do I subscribe to ne religions? No. I believe there is some sort of higher power, but I don’t live my life to appease him or in fear of him. I live my life on my values. Regardless, organized religions are the bane of society. Every year hundreds of thousands of people will die defending their religious principles. Now yes, these people may have perverted the religious principles that the religion holds, but the principle BEHIND religion is the same. You have a bunch of people telling people how to live their lives, and then one person takes the extra step. </p>
<p>In my opinion, the values and the morals that the church and that religion teaches are the best thing. Religion requires a leap of faith, but the religious tenants do not. Trust. Loyalty. Goodwill to men. Helpfulness. Honesty. Virtue. Valor. Compassion. These are things that every man of every religion can agree to live by. No matter how you get to believing these things, you should believe in some good virtues/values. Whether religion is the medium to which you achieve that is your choice. </p>
<p>In the end, organized religion is pretty horrible. I mean, you have the jews killing the muslims over holy land that their religion teaches them belongs to them… uh, ■■■■■■■■. Especially more ■■■■■■■■ cuz in every holy text it has some variation of “thou shalt not kill”. Killing for religion, then, is slightly ridiculous (note the sarcasm)</p>
<p>If you want to believe in religion, that’s great. I applaud you. But please, don’t force it on me or others and don t follow things blindly. The thing that I don’t like about religion is that it causes people to take leaps of faith and to blindly follow things that are unproven and cant be shown/demonstrated. For faith, that’s fine. Its called faith for a reason. But if you take those same principles and apply them to the real world u get a society where the people are so conditioned to not questioning and taking leaps in faith that they do not question those in power. </p>
<p>Religious people, I am not against religion or religious people. My best friend is a huge Catholic. I don’t mind you people, the least you can do is not mind me. The only time that I have problems with religious people is when they try to get too preachy and try to enforce their relgion on me. Ive had the choices and choses not to accept that, please do not try to convince me to your way of thinking. </p>
<p>And the other thing about God – if humans could understand all the things that God did, then he wouldn’t be God. </p>
<p>Excuse the typos</p>
<p>And btw, no matter what you believe, good luck on the 14th</p>
<p>which is why we have a judiciary system separate from the bible? come now, u cant tell me that the entire world takes their religions as literally as random radicals do (hence the term “radical”). its supposed to be a guide to life…abuse of the guide is not the fault of ‘organized religion’, its the fault of over-zealous believers (not unlike the ones on here).
im just saying that popular human trends have been to pervert noble attempts at suggestion (like the “scriptures”) and turn them into weapons of their own acquisitive natures. kinda liek the way the caste system was effed up by selfish idiots. sometimes, what was intended to be, is not. the way this original post became a polarized discussion of the existence of god. </p>
<p>organized religion didnt mean to do that, humans just kinda messed that up</p>
<p>Okay mmkay: “christianity promotes sexism, homophobia, classism and more.”</p>
<p>Back in medieval and even post renaissance times, women were not educated by mainstream society. however, religious oriented institutions (nunneries) educated women and trained them to contribute to society. Sexism is more of a product of men who do not respect women not christianity.</p>
<p>Homosexuality is wrong. its not natural and its a perversion of God’s gift to mankind - sexual intercourse.</p>
<p>Classism - the church has always helped out the downtrodden and has done what it could to promote equality when no one else did. Its corrupt members of the church that cast this classist atmosphere.</p>
<p>It is the evils of men who make the church seem so bad not the church itself.</p>
<p>What about predetermined destiny? Which theory is right? It’s all BS. And whether dinosaurs were in the bible is disputable. If the bible were taken literally, the earth is only 30k (I may be off here, but it’s nowhere close the age science says) years old, there would be giants, and we would have all started from two people (not evolution) in a mythical garden. right…I’m sure.</p>
<p>Okay, I feel the need to respond to mahras2 because his posts are highly offensive. So yay first post! </p>
<p>Just because you don’t believe in religion or anything for that matter does not mean you need to come here and insult others for their beliefs. Yeah religion is one reason why many people kill others, but at least they believe in something. </p>
<p>And fyi, your defintion of theory is wrong. </p>
<p>Go be an atheist but don’t insult believers.</p>
<p>yourbfwants me - “homosexuality is wrong”… wow…</p>
<p>and with that name too… come now</p>
<p>that stops there. don’t debate about homosexuality now…</p>
<p>its about the god or no god thing right now</p>
<p>lol christians <em>shakes head</em> ya’ll are cute sometimes. </p>
<p>^personal statement (just kidding), not representative of whatev religion im sposed to subscribe to or anything like that.</p>
<p>stargazed: So whats your definition of theory? </p>
<p>I didn’t insult a religion (find me a post), I pointed out someone’s misuse of scientific terms and statements. </p>
<p>Go be a religious nut somewhere else :).</p>
<p>4815162342</p>
<p>Yes, but Einstein defined his god as the laws of physics and the natural beauty of mathematics. That is not a conventional god, which religion supports. That is according to your religion: blasphemous. He was a Pantheist.</p>
<p>qwilde - my problem with you is that you make no sense (referring to your post #13). if you want to say that god is responsible for the good and the bad fine, ill accept that. if you want to say that god is not responsible for the good nor the bad fine, ill accept that. but you cant say that god is responsible only for good things and that an individual gets no credit for good things while simultaneously i am fully to blame for nething bad. u cant have it both ways</p>
<p>I never said that god is only responsible for good things. I previously stated something similar to the theodice problem, but David Hume’s eloquence says it better than I can. </p>
<p>If the evil in the world is intended by god he is not good. If it violates his intentions he is not almighty. God can’t be both almighty and good. There are many objections to this, but none that holds since god is ultimately responsible for the existence of evil. Besides, if only god can create he must have created evil. If somebody else (the devil) created evil, how can one know that god, and not Satan created the universe?</p>
<p>there are many theories of time and the beginning of the universe and they are not all “substantially proven.”</p>
<p>mebbe evil exists to highlight good? idk, just a thought about the opposites thing.</p>