SirEaglestrike wrote:
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You left out a possibility: Maybe we don't know how everything started, and we're OK with that. Seriously, it's not so bad to not understand everything. You're here; make the most of it or don't. That's all anybody needs to know.
That's sort of my point. So many people who engage in this topic of debate are SO SURE the other side is wrong. The only side which should "allow" that belief is the religious side. The scientific side should be open to the concept of it being possible there is a God. Which many in this thread have shown they're not.
There are religious scientists. However, science is nothing without evidence, and there is none for god. No, an isolated subjective experience is not evidence, because one of the first things scientists discovered was that human perception does not always match objective reality. Throw in quantum physics and things start getting weird, but we're still talking about empirical evidence gathered from experimentation, not a feeling some lab-rat got while puffing on the bong one night.
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Everything makes perfect sense if you assume god created everything? But where did god come from, smartypants? Why does god do what it does? If you take an ineffable phenomenon and call it god you haven't explained a god damned thing, you've just stuck a pretty label on it.</freshmanphilosophy>
Your post is just more evidence that theology is just a way to avoid facing the fact that we don't know sh*t. Sack up and deal with it.
Again, sorta my point...you base the Big Bang happening based on a mass of energy and matter, but where did that come from? You must assume those things are there and thus make the same leap of "faith" that a religious person does when assuming God is there.
The big bang is extrapolated by observing that the universe is expanding, then using mathematics to run that expansion backwards to the point that it's a singularity. There is a bit more behind it, but I'm not a physicist so I can't explain it much better than that. My point is that the big bang theory is simply the best model to explain the evidence available today. That's all it's meant to do.
Also, like I said before, saying "god did it" doesn't ultimately explain anything, because the next question is, "Where did god come from?"
See this for a more entertaining way of saying so. Quote:
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If safety means women should be completely subservient to men and people can walk on water if their faith is strong enough, then I'll live dangerously, thank you.
Read context please. When in context it is much less harsh than you put it. Women, serve your husband, HUSBANDS RESPECT YOUR WIFE. I think it's even the same sentence. They work at the same time. If both of these things happen, I bet you'd have a decent marriage. However, times have changed and I bet God isn't against (all) change and thus the womens rights movements wouldn't be a bad thing. However the original line I'm referencing was mostly to calm down a people and help get them on a good track towards peace and civility. It was a letter written to a Church, not a commandment from God. It should be taken and treated as such, not as the Divine Law from God's mouth.
What's wrong with "husbands respect your wives, and vice versa"? According to nearly every Christian doctrine, the bible is the perfect word of god, so you can't just dismiss anything in it as "just a letter." I don't think we're in disagreement that this is pretty dumb, but there're plenty of people out there trying to make this the law of the land, and that's ultimately my problem with Christianity.
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No, I'm not. I often do act as if my existence is meaningless. Hence why I live in my mothers basement and do nothing. I mean, there's really no point to doing more in life if I enjoy what I'm doing right now, right?
Life is what you make of it. Many atheists believe they should work to make the world a better place for those who come after them, but there's no reason for that beyond simple compassion.
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My personal belief is that God set up this system and for the most part has left scientific laws to keep things running semi-smoothly.
That's called
Deism. There's nothing new under sun. That puts you in the same company as many of the US's founding fathers, and that's not so bad. Thom Jefferson was kind of a hypocritical ***, but he did some good stuff too.
EDIT: Can people stop going arrow crazy here? This is a civil conversation, there's no need to default people arguing in good faith.
Edited, Sep 21st 2008 5:27pm by MrSenethSomed
