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Science says Bible and Quran are equivalent

DrZoidberg said:
You can't have free will in a universe with an omnipotent agent. Since God has a choice in everything that happens it has made a decision in every case. An omnipotent agent can't chose to leave things alone. It's just simple logic. Yes, it's yet another omnipotence paradox.
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Just define omnipotence in a way that God can leave things alone if he wants? I mean, that's hardly going to take away from the power of God is it, in any essential sense.
 
DrZoidberg said:
Meh... religion adapts to economic realities and politics. Islam being more violent just means that the governments in Muslims majority countries are less stable.
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So imagine a million Muslims and a million Buddhists living and growing up in Western countries, they would be equally likely to get involved in terrorism? Or the Muslim or perhaps Buddhist group would be more likely to be violent, but that has to do with the country of their ancestors?

Back when the Islamic world was the more economically prosperous and political stable, it was the Christian world that was backward and violent.
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What exact time period are you thinking of?
 
Vork said:
DrZoidberg said:
Meh... religion adapts to economic realities and politics. Islam being more violent just means that the governments in Muslims majority countries are less stable.
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So imagine a million Muslims and a million Buddhists living and growing up in Western countries, they would be equally likely to get involved in terrorism? Or the Muslim or perhaps Buddhist group would be more likely to be violent, but that has to do with the country of their ancestors?

Back when the Islamic world was the more economically prosperous and political stable, it was the Christian world that was backward and violent.
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What exact time period are you thinking of?
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Seems that you think there are no buddhist terrorists... you are sp wrong.
 
Well I haven't noticed any Buddhist terror attacks taking place in Western countries, by Western born Buddhists, or by Buddhists at least growing up in the West. (Or even recent migrants.)

I'm pretty sure that kind of terror threat would be tiny compared to the threat in the Western world of Islamic terrorism. Now there are a lot less Buddhists living in the Western world, but still, they don't appear, on the face of it, to have the same tendency towards terrorism.

If you can show examples of Buddhist terrorism taking place in the West that I have missed? And these need to be *religiously* motivated of course: "We carry out these attacks in the name of Buddha" or something along those lines. It can't just be a Buddhist that had a political cause, but never claimed their religious worldview was also central to their actions. There would also need to be multiple cases for there to be any chance of a real comparison to Islamic terrorism.

Obviously you can find examples of Buddhists being violent, in some sort of way, some of the time, in various places and times, as you could for most or virtually all groups.
 
Vork said:
Well I haven't noticed any Buddhist terror attacks taking place in Western countries, by Western born Buddhists, or by Buddhists at least growing up in the West. (Or even recent migrants.)

I'm pretty sure that kind of terror threat would be tiny compared to the threat in the Western world of Islamic terrorism. Now there are a lot less Buddhists living in the Western world, but still, they don't appear, on the face of it, to have the same tendency towards terrorism.

If you can show examples of Buddhist terrorism taking place in the West that I have missed? And these need to be *religiously* motivated of course: "We carry out these attacks in the name of Buddha" or something along those lines. It can't just be a Buddhist that had a political cause, but never claimed their religious worldview was also central to their actions. There would also need to be multiple cases for there to be any chance of a real comparison to Islamic terrorism.

Obviously you can find examples of Buddhists being violent, in some sort of way, some of the time, in various places and times, as you could for most or virtually all groups.
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Not in the west, in majority Buddhist regions they can be repressive. I believe the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar of Muslims is by a Buddhist majority.

Bhuddism that aheres tothe original fundamental precpts is conservative, similar to conservative Abrahamic faiths.

No fornication, intoxicants, and limitations on speech and social behavior. Right action, right speech, right livelihood I think it goes.
 
Right, so Buddhists aren't immune from ethnic clashes. But that doesn't mean there aren't major differences between the Buddhist and Islamic religions, which would make them comparatively less likely to get involved in terrorism.

The case you are talking about, you have a Muslim migrant population. I'm not saying they are first gen, but they are basically seen as illegal immigrants. Elements within the Muslim population have been waging an insurgency for decades, and the latest government crackdown was triggered by attacks on police/security forces if I remember correctly. A lot of innocent people may get caught up in this kind of ethnic violence, but still, you could say that this is Muslim violence followed by an authoritarian regime cracking down hard on them in an indiscriminate way. Local Buddhists have probably participated in attacks, just as some Muslims have participated in attacks against security forces and Buddhist civilians.

If a migrant population moves in, and starts waging war against you, it's not really a surprise if things turn ugly.
 
So...Would you care to explain the Buddhist actions in Sri Lanka for me?

I also understand the 'Buddhist' history of Tibet is strewn with internecine bloodletting. Lots of it. And an imperialist military expansion, at one point.
 
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Also, there was that time around 1950 when a bunch of bloodthirsty Buddhist terrorists murdered innocent members of the Chinese army who were valiantly defending their government’s territorial claims.
 
You need a lot more than pointing to such and such a case of violence, to disprove that (1) there are differences between religions, and (2) these differences have real-world impacts in terms of behaviour.

In many cases of Buddhist violence, the Buddhists in question may not even be claiming that it's religiously motivated. Surely we can imagine Buddhists carrying out attacks for revenge, or for political reasons, that have very limited or zero connection to the Buddhist religion yes?
 
Vork said:
You need a lot more than pointing to such and such a case of violence, to disprove that (1) there are differences between religions, and (2) these differences have real-world impacts in terms of behaviour.

In many cases of Buddhist violence, the Buddhists in question may not even be claiming that it's religiously motivated. Surely we can imagine Buddhists carrying out attacks for revenge, or for political reasons, that have very limited or zero connection to the Buddhist religion yes?
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You think so? I think you need to check in with U Thuzana or Phra Kittiwuttho about that, yes?

But then, maybe they are not 'true' Buddhists, no?
 
Somebody using quasi science drew a conclusion, science does not 'say' anything.
 
Lion IRC said:
Why you should mostly trust what science tells you

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170328-why-you-should-mostly-trust-what-science-tells-you
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That is a good description of what science is, how it works, and why we should mostly trust it. Since you appear to be acknowledging that science is a good way to explain the behavior of the material universe, how do you handle the contractions between established science (like biological evolution for example, which tells us that modern humans evolved gradually from older hominid ancestors, which in turn had evolved from older ancestors still all the way back to the origin of life on Earth) and Biblical claims (humans and other modern animals were created a few thousand years ago by God over a matter of days)? This is just one example, and there are many more contradictions.
 
I don’t think the biblical forming man from the dust is contradicted by anything science ‘says’.

Neither do I feel compelled to accept the advice of argumentative bible skeptics who (ironically) are the ones telling me that I have to take Genesis literally.
 
Lion IRC said:
I don’t think the biblical forming man from the dust is contradicted by anything science ‘says’.

Neither do I feel compelled to accept the advice of argumentative bible skeptics who (ironically) are the ones telling me that I have to take Genesis literally.
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That's actually something I like about the Catholic church. They don't let religion get in the way of science. They've always been pro science

Factoid. When the pope shut Galileo Galilei down it wasn't because of science. Galileo's family was prominent and allied with the Jesuits or Dominicans. Can't remember which. That pope was in power early in his life. Which gave him a lot of leway. And apparently he was a bit of a dick who abused this power. When the pope died and another order took control Galileo was out of supporters, but kept behaving like a prince. When he openly disrespected the pope it wouldn't have mattered what he said. The pope would shut it down. So basically, all family politics and little science
 
Lion IRC said:
I don’t think the biblical forming man from the dust is contradicted by anything science ‘says’.
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There is some counterevidence, in the form of study of genetic variation and estimates of the sizes of past genetic bottlenecks. I've seen estimates like a population of 1,000, but no evidence for a population of only 2.
Neither do I feel compelled to accept the advice of argumentative bible skeptics who (ironically) are the ones telling me that I have to take Genesis literally.
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But if one doesn't, then one can interpret away anything that one does not like. For instance, I'm sure that if one is sufficiently imaginative, one could "show" that the Genesis creation stories mean that the Universe is eternal.
 
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