"God cannot create a square circle"

[atrib]

Rhea
It really is all about how much more wondrous science is than your god.

All created by God in the first place, so not so sure I can agree.

Enough with the fucking preaching. This is a forum to discuss ideas and share opinions, not to get on a pulpit and preach to us about your imaginary sky-beast described in a book written by our Bronze Age goat-herder ancestors. Instead of repeating this assertion over and over you could try to explain why you believe this universe was created by your preferred sky-beast )as opposed to the tens of thousands of other sky-beasts that other people's ancestors have invented). You are not going to do that because you likely do not understand the reasons yourself and are unwilling to acknowledge that you have been indoctrinated into the Christian death cult and cannot bring yourself to break the habit.

 

[Eric H]

Rhea;
And I realize that you did not explicitly say that you felt Christians volunteered more than those who are not christians (though you sounded like it was a surprise),

A couple of years ago, I met a remarkable man, he had broken his back in an accident; and was told he would never walk again. He went to a day centre for disabled people, and noticed the huge garden was a jungle due to neglect.

His vision was to landscape this garden, that happens with a pick axe, spade and wheelbarrow, but he had been doing this on his own from his electric wheelchair. He is a staunch atheist, nearly sixty, and a really sound guy. I was told about him by another chap in a wheelchair from our church, and have since been volunteering with him in the garden.

I meet many volunteers outside of faith groups, they are remarkable people and do wonderful jobs.

 

[Eric H]

Elixir;

How do you explain the fact that well over 99% of relevant (earth and life sciences) scientists - many if not most of whom are theists - accept the fact of common ancestry?

Evolution is not the problem, the theist who accept evolution, also accept that it could not happen without God.

Which is good. The more that theistic thought embraces scientific advances, the further it dumps god concepts into irrelevancy. When one accepts that a gap in our knowledge where they used to think that God was hiding has been filled without finding God in it, the number of gaps for God to be hiding in grows progressively smaller and smaller. Eventually, he just becomes pointless and you're left with harmlessly irrelevant religions like deism as opposed to the religions which cause all the problems.

Now we know why people are so passionate to promote the ToE, it is not to do with science, it is to shake people's faith. Sometimes that shows here with the apparent desperation to defend evo at all costs, and overlook all the problems.

My bolding above, I may be wrong, but it does sound as if ToE is being used to prove there is no God. My apologies if my response is seen as confrontational.

 

[Keith&Co.]

My bolding above, I may be wrong, but it does sound as if ToE is being used to prove there is no God. My apologies if my response is seen as confrontational.

No, Eric.
We've been saying that gods are not necessary to explain the ToE, or any science.
God concepts being irrelevant does not mean that there's no god. Just that you don't need god to explain evolution, or morality, or electricity, gravity, germ theory, cancer remission, cancer treatments, cancer....

We tend to think that's because there's no god.
You try desperately to support your claim that evolution would not work without God, but that's not what the science shows. Your argument just looks more and more foolish. You should probably try a completely different venue to support your belief in a god, because nothing has been found, so far, that absolutely demands a deity to explain it.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

My bolding above, I may be wrong, but it does sound as if ToE is being used to prove there is no God. My apologies if my response is seen as confrontational.

As was said, it doesn't prove that there's no God, what it does do is show one more area where God was previously used as an explanation which is now shown to be explained without any need for God. The more things there are like that, the more irrelevant God becomes. It's just one more aspect of the world that works perfectly well without any divine hand in it at all.

We just keep finding that with everything. For every gap we're able to look into that once had a Goddidit explanation postulated, that gap has been filled without any need for a god whatsoever. That adds validity to the assumption that any other gaps which we currently cannot look into but have the same Goddidit explanation that the now-filled gaps did will eventually be filled up without any need for a god as well.

The obvious exception to this, of course, is the fact that the lack of frost giants in our world is proof positive of the existence of Odin killing off all the frost giants. That's just basic common sense.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Tom and the Frost Giants.
Tom and the Frost Giants.
It's always Frost Giants with Tom, isn't it?
Dammit, Tom, you act like the Fire Giants don't even exist!

 

[Rhea]

I meet many volunteers outside of faith groups, they are remarkable people and do wonderful jobs.

So are you agreeing with me that whether a person has faith in any god, particularly yours, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether they will be a volunteer in society?

That was my point. God-Belief is not necessary to generate volunteerism. God Belief does not have any positive effect whatsoever on the behavior of individuals.

I assume that if something crashed your faith, you would still be a volunteer. (Wouldn't you? or would you go on a rape and murder rampage as soon as you realized hell was not on your itinerary?)

How do I malign the work of other people in my community?

Have you torn the pages out of your bible that say women should cover their heads and not speak in front of men? Have you destroyed the pages that say children should be murdered by their parents (or anyone) if they disobey? If you still carry around a book that you revere that includes those pages, then you are maligning your neighbors. You think we don't know what it says about atheists in that book you carry? That no good only wickedness comes from us (in your opinion)? Isn't that like claiming that you volunteer side-by-side with your community but you wear a "god hates fags" sticker on your forehead, but who should have a problem with that, we're just all volunteers?

Tear out those pages. Reject them publicly, and then you can claim to not be maligning the work of others.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Tom and the Frost Giants.
Tom and the Frost Giants.
It's always Frost Giants with Tom, isn't it?
Dammit, Tom, you act like the Fire Giants don't even exist!

You're fucking right they don't exist. We have Odin to thank for that.

 

[Elixir]

I may be wrong, but it does sound as if ToE is being used to prove there is no God.

By whom?

I don't think creationists would have problems with science if it were not for certain beliefs that science shows to be counter-factual. All the rest of it is A-Okay with them.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Elixir;

How do you explain the fact that well over 99% of relevant (earth and life sciences) scientists - many if not most of whom are theists - accept the fact of common ancestry?

Evolution is not the problem, the theist who accept evolution, also accept that it could not happen without God.

Which is good. The more that theistic thought embraces scientific advances, the further it dumps god concepts into irrelevancy. When one accepts that a gap in our knowledge where they used to think that God was hiding has been filled without finding God in it, the number of gaps for God to be hiding in grows progressively smaller and smaller. Eventually, he just becomes pointless and you're left with harmlessly irrelevant religions like deism as opposed to the religions which cause all the problems.

Now we know why people are so passionate to promote the ToE, it is not to do with science, it is to shake people's faith. Sometimes that shows here with the apparent desperation to defend evo at all costs, and overlook all the problems.

My bolding above, I may be wrong, but it does sound as if ToE is being used to prove there is no God. My apologies if my response is seen as confrontational.

No more so than basic biology, i.e. discovery of genes, how cells work, viruses, etc...

 

[rhutchin]

...certain beliefs that science shows to be counter-factual. All the rest of it is A-Okay with them.

What Biblical beliefs has science shown to be counter-factual?

 

[Keith&Co.]

...certain beliefs that science shows to be counter-factual. All the rest of it is A-Okay with them.

What Biblical beliefs has science shown to be counter-factual?

Well, the Flat Earth society that quoted scripture to make their case comes quickly to mind.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

...certain beliefs that science shows to be counter-factual. All the rest of it is A-Okay with them.

What Biblical beliefs has science shown to be counter-factual?

A setup question. What biblical beliefs or what beliefs you have that you say are biblical beliefs?

The Bible doesn't understand disease. There are myriads of rules about things being unclean. But instead of explaining that they just need to cook the food properly, they have to avoid it all cost, it is simply "unclean". Women are unclean during their "intelligently design" week of the month. No explanations about what it really is or how best to stay clean... just banish them for a while. The bible doesn't understand the issues of cleanliness, disease prevention, proper cooking. It just uses vague rules of banishment in order to avoid the whole issue.

 

[Rhea]

...certain beliefs that science shows to be counter-factual. All the rest of it is A-Okay with them.

What Biblical beliefs has science shown to be counter-factual?

Well, the Flat Earth society that quoted scripture to make their case comes quickly to mind.

The day the sun stood still for another.


And, obviously the noah flood story, from the lack of sedimentary evidence to the wrong fossil evidence to the wrong number of extant species.



...aaaaand the whole exodus story, science proves that one didn't happen.



And of course we can count on recorded history to show that no zombies came out of their graves and walked around when a jesus supposedly dies. And science shows there was no earthquake that day, either.



science shows that lots of people wake up after being thought dead for 3 days, so the lazarus as well as the jesus story are proved to not need a god explanation.

 

[Rhea]

But are you just going to pretend these obvious points never came up and dodge addressing them, the way you dodged doing your math on the post-flood speciation which proves that it didn't happen? You just sorta jumped right away from that one, didn't you! And then come up with this question that pretends you never started-to-reply-but-quickly-abandoned-the-damning-topic?

G'head. Go back and finish answering that question (doing your math to prove that the rules of evolution can account for the number of animals and species and their range of habitat seen today - you can't do it, it doesn't add up, science proves you cannot have repopulated the planet after a flood).

Pretending you never saw that question, nor engaged in starting try to answer it, is bearing false witness; which gets you a lake of fire for eternity.

 

[Mageth]

...certain beliefs that science shows to be counter-factual. All the rest of it is A-Okay with them.

What Biblical beliefs has science shown to be counter-factual?

For one, the first woman wasn't fashioned from a rib taken from a man.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

...certain beliefs that science shows to be counter-factual. All the rest of it is A-Okay with them.

What Biblical beliefs has science shown to be counter-factual?

Have you read Numbers 5? It's pretty specific and detailed about how to go about finding out if your wife has been unfaithful to you. Zero of the things they mention have any relevance in figuring this out.

It's a minor one, I know, but it's a really fucked up section that bothers me for no particular reason.

 

[Rhea]

[

It's a minor one, I know, but it's a really fucked up section that bothers me for no particular reason.

Not minor at all, and bothers me for very particular reasons, not the least of which is how monstrous it is to say that a man with unfounded jealousy has done nothing wrong when he publicly accuses his wife and makes her take a poisonous drink that will cause her to miscarry and it's all her fault that he was jealous in the first place so it serves her right even if she is innocent.


rhutchin and EricH- do you believe this passage and worship the god who wrote it? Are either of you one of those monsters?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

[

It's a minor one, I know, but it's a really fucked up section that bothers me for no particular reason.

Not minor at all, and bothers me for very particular reasons, not the LEAST of which is how monstrous it is to say that a man with unfounded jealousy has done nothing wrong when he publicly accuses his wife and makes her take a poisonous drink that will cause her to miscarry and it's all her fault that he was jealous in the first place so it serves her right even if she is innocent.

I meant minor from a scientific perspective. When compared to all the stuff that the Bible gets wrong about the creation of the world and the history of our species and all that, this is a fairly trivial error.

 

[Rhea]

I meant minor from a scientific perspective. When compared to all the stuff that the Bible gets wrong about the creation of the world and the history of our species and all that, this is a fairly trivial error.

I see your point, although I bet it was used a whole lot more than many of the others and with greater tragic consequences than, say, the earthquakes after the crucifixion. But I see your point.