<p>And every time I have given you the equivalent answer that you believe in creationism because of your belief in the divine ordinance of your holy book. Creationism is purely theological, not objective in nature. Your perspective is rooted in fundamentalist theology and not systematic rigor, which fundamentally slants your scientific opinions. For instance, you previously made this statement:</p>
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The reason I interpret it in this way is because I feel that the evidence supports the theory that humans and other life emerged in complete forms within the last 10,000 years.<a href=“Source:%20Post%20#538”>/quote</a></p>
<p>The answer is unequivocally no, inasmuch as you don’t adhere to Islam despite never studying the Qur’an.</p>
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<p>Contemporary moral positions and legal codes have very little (or absolutely no) direct derivation from Biblical assertion, including, but not limited to, positions towards homosexuality, slavery (a blatant biblical espousal), and women’s equality. Those who deem themselves fundamentalists towards the Christian faith (that is, one who adheres to the infallibility and historical acuity of Scriptural claims) give in me a wondrous sense of whether they have actually read it.</p>
<p>But despite the all-too-frequent phony mythological attempts to explain reality, religious faith-claims do shed light on pervading cultural opinion and underlying literature. Given the influence of the Bible on American and English literary traditions, it is nearly requisite to have some elementary knowledge of it to fully extract the most out of the reading experience. I have personally lived in eight separate countries across six different continents, so I am highly initiated in the ways in which religion, or secularization for that matter (i.e. Sweden), influences thought along political boundaries. In fact, I attribute much of this more comparative education towards religion – and a profound interest in the scientific endeavor – as a key element in shaping my personal outlook.</p>
<p>I reject Islam based on what I know, not on what I don’t know. If I was going to argue that “Islam is false because the Qur’an commands Muslims to kill themselves on years ending in '77”, then I’d better have some knowledge to back up that claim.</p>
<p>Naturally, since many Americans are not Christians and thus cannot be expected to accept Biblical authority on such matters.</p>
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<p>People who base various immoral claims on the Bible (whether to justify such acts or to refute the Bible) give me the same feeling. When you take verses in context and consider the whole, rather than a few cherry-picked verses, most of these objections disappear.</p>
<p>But in any case, I’m not trying to shove the Bible down people’s throats. I believe that it is the only thing that can save a person, but I also believe that it can only do so by that person’s free will.</p>
<p>Democratic legal systems, if one were to reference an occasion of “applied morality,” are primarily derived from a progressive, socially enlightened zeitgeist and increasingly justified according to empirical and statistical models, rather than multi-thousand-year-old scriptural records.</p>
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<p>Similarly, to the return to the point, we certainly don’t believe in leprechauns, or other silly little chimerical beings, because their existence is so baselessly conceived and foreign to our understanding of reality. Clearly, I don’t need to squander my time studying Irish folklore and mythology to disbelieve in dwarfish, bearded, shoemaking, forest-dwelling, rainbow-seeking, auriophilic, green pygmy-fairies who possess the capacity to grant three wishes in the event of their capture. For the rare few who do believe in them (namely, those outside the ingenuousness of childhood), the onus is on them to support or prove their existence. It is not the obligation of you, I, or anyone else to disprove that in which doesn’t have any evidence in the first place.</p>
<p>Perspective must be based on account of objective evidence and its subsequent accumulations and factual integrations. Despite the common consensus on the existence of the atom, the most discrete unit of matter, it is not enough to simply “believe” that it is there. Judgment ought to be reserved until the evidence is presented. Scientists know exactly what would refashion their understanding with regard to the atom: evidence (although atomic theory has been so widely buttressed by massive amounts of supporting details that it safe to say that it is insuperable, irrefutable fact). The religious fundamentalist knows that nothing will, particularly as it pertains to belief in the divine ordinance of the particular scripture to which they adhere. Religious dogma and mythology die hard, primarily because its beloved ideas come to compose such a profound source of individual identity. </p>
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<p>Likewise, you cannot select certain verses that rightfully accord with more civilized and progressively cultivated contemporary moral standards, while neglecting those that are quite embarrassing and illiberal.</p>
<p>Of course they are. Since not everyone agrees on a single ethical standard, we have decided that it is beneficial to create a system that allows every citizen’s opinion to be balanced against all the others to decide our national policies.</p>
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<p>If that were our only reason for disbelieving them, then we would be poorly justified in doing so.</p>
<p>I do not believe leprechauns exist because I have not observed the things I would expect to observe if they did exist. Specifically, if leprechauns existed, I would expect to hear reliable sources reporting about them, and I would expect that either live or dead leprechauns would have been brought into the open on major news sources.</p>
<p>Now, if someone had actually found tiny houses deep in the forest, and followed tiny footprints from these houses to hidden pots of gold, then it might be perfectly rational for them to believe that leprechauns exist.</p>
<p>And if I wasn’t there, then it might be perfectly rational for me to disbelieve their story.</p>
<p>But it would be foolish of me to think that their story was impossible, and wrong for me to attempt to make it illegal for them to tell their tale to others.</p>
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<p>But we do not wait for that evidence before going ahead with useful applications of atomic theory, because we consider the benefits to outweigh the small chance of it being false.</p>
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<p>That is true. That is why I cannot say that the Bible condones extramarital sex, or divorce, or that it does not command women to submit to their husbands, or that it does not say that belief in Jesus is neccesary for salvation, even though those things would be more palatable to our modern culture.</p>
<p>When discussing any theological issue, it is neccesary to take the Bible as a whole, rather than focus on selected verses.</p>
<p>Well, the dialogue has stagnated and I do not necessarily have any remaining points of discussion on my mind at the moment. And due to academic obligations, I will no longer be able to persist in any extensive engagement with this thread. So if I do not converse with you here again, MosbyMarion, I wish you the best in your future.</p>
<p>K…well if we want things to be logical, then </p>
<p>1) God had the idea of a day in his mind
2) God set the rotational speed of the earth to be in accordance with this.</p>
<p>Also, I’m not a Christian, and I don’t particularly care for this line of discussion–this thread is in the midst of its last gasps of breath, anyway.</p>
<p>However, it is worth noting that this survey is predominantly comprised of American secularists, who are notably less apathetic of religious belief than those of other cultures (i.e. those from portions of Asia).</p>
<p>This regresses back to one of my points that the more one understands the science governing religious thought, its historical details, and social origins, the less one is likely to be a sitting duck for ideological dogma and other emotively enticing quackery.</p>
<p>That is an interesting survey. However, I disagree with your conclusion.</p>
<p>First of all, the survey tests little real religious knowledge. Knowing that “Pakistan is primarily Muslim” or that “Buddism desires to reach Nirvana” has little or nothing to do with an actual understanding of any of those religions.</p>
<p>It doesn’t suprise me that Athesist/Agnostics scored higher. There are no masses of ignorant atheist believers pulling their scores down. But the fact that large numbers of people do not have a solid foundation for a belief does not invalidate that belief.</p>
<p>Most of the people who believe in nuclear physics couldn’t adequately explain it. Someone who didn’t believe in it would most likely be a physicist who is arguing for another theory. If you did a survey of people comparing their understanding of nuclear physics with their belief in it, I expect that those who rejected it would score higher.</p>
<p>Incidentally, this is why Mormons and Evangelicals score higher on questions about the Bible. Fringe groups tend to know more about the arguments involved, because otherwise they get absorbed back into the mainstream.</p>
<p>Firstly, the survey does touch upon an assortment of many fundamentals of common religious knowledge, which can only be learned by having a background in the matter. The conclusion holds that the non-religious often possess a certain degree of reflectiveness and are disposed to prioritizing reason and evidence, rather than those who are merely the products of early indoctrination and are more motivated by emotionally ingrained, naive ideological hankerings than by thoughtful deliberation.</p>
<p>Secondly, don’t call atheists “believers.”</p>
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<p>Thirdly, this a poor analogy. If you used evolution as a scientific example (comparing evolution acceptance between scientists and commoners), such attempts at finding a conceptual correspondence in this regard would be entirely invalidated.</p>
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<p>This is absolutely the wrong way of analyzing this. The lack of compelling evidence shouldn’t engender belief in the first place. For instance, believing in invisible, pink unicorns frolicking about the cosmos shouldn’t be credulously rooted in the notion that there isn’t the slightest bit of disproof of their existence.</p>