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GLneo wrote:it's simple, if god exists you will goto heaven, if not the faith will make you happier and you will live longer, much more rewording

Lets take the muslims, the majority live in southern asia, with relatively lower life expectancies, in countries where diseases and violence are relatively common.
Now take atheists, mostly prevalent in the US and Europe, where proper medicine and education has boosted life expectancy generally over 70 years.

IMNSHO religion influencing lifespan is not more than wether your pray or look when you cross the street

Candy wrote:Anyone willing to take up the above proof request

Are you excluding the Prime Mover argument as a proof or?

Combuster wrote: Lets take the muslims, the majority live in southern asia, with relatively lower life expectancies, in countries where diseases and violence are relatively common.
Now take atheists, mostly prevalent in the US and Europe, where proper medicine and education has boosted life expectancy generally over 70 years.

Are you stereotyping based on religion?

a) You were comparing the life expectancy of different regions, not religions.
b) The stereotypical Christian lives in a big house, large family, stable income, private schooling. The stereotypical atheist lives alone/divorced, low income, uses drugs, unstable relationships, public schooling. We all know not all Christians/Atheists fit into these arch types, so stereotype isn't a good habit to pick up and it can be insulting to some (I was stereotyping for the point of an example).

Wrong take. He was trying to show that you might find statistical "evidence" for religion impacting live expectancy, but that it isn't the determining factor. You're both saying basically the same thing.

hmm, i could store brynet with 7 bytes.. "Use BSD" (waiting for comments about \0 or unicode..)

iirc the last book of the bible mentions that on the judgement day all people will raise from their graves, meet god and well, like have a second chance to go to heaven. thats my plan B if god actually does exist..

Solar wrote:

pcmattman wrote:Even now, the theory of evolution is springing holes.

Oh please, no...

Godess, protect me from the ignorant.

evolution is rong lol

it is like BANG and were here

were moe lokical

our theory is like

god says HEY and it is like BANG and were here

o wait

There seem to be some hidden assumptions going around here on both sides of the discussion... First, there is an assumption that in order to believe in God, you have to believe somewhat literally the events described in holy books that some claim were written by God, and you must belong to a great big social club that likes to read this book on a regular basis ("church"). This is bogus IMO. It is perfectly reasonable to have faith without being involved in religion. To deny this is simply being exclusionary, and as Solar said, ignorant. "You'll go to hell for not believing in this book because the book says so!" Give me a break. I believe in God, not in books that may or may not have been written by God.

Second, there is an assumption that science and belief in God are mutually exclusive. I think this really stems from the whole "book and social club" thing I mentioned previously. I don't see anything in science that denies the existence of God. As long as there are crazy mysteries that science can't yet explain, there is room for God in the universe IMO. So what if we did evolve through billions of years of cell splitting? All this suggests is that the Bible is not to be taken literally, it does not suggest that God doesn't exist. Maybe this universe of irreducible complexity is God, and we're still too limited to perceive it.

All of the rest of it -- "this religions is better than that, religion is better than no religion, etc." is complete crap IMO. It is human nature to form groups for mutual protection and label the others "outsiders". It has nothing to do with faith or God, just organized hypocrisy.

Personally... and i expect much loss of the little respect few of you have for me for this... i think this entire topic is a load of bollocs. How any self respecting intelligent person can believe in God is beyond me. Faith began as a method for control, and it exists to comfort the weak minded.

To believe in god despite the obvious he is not real is as similar as believing that any character from a fictinal book is real, or that you really have an imaginary friend. You all laugh at the idea that people could think these things, and yet you continue to believe in God.

I recently heard an argument from my own Sister that she did not want to risk hell if it turns out it was true, so she considers herself christian. This is simply the weak minded believing the stupidest story ever because they can't think for themselves. I have never met a person whose intelligence i respect even consider a term to describe there religious beliefs, they simply have no interest in naming each other after fiction. This topic is as useful as a "What Fan are?" Topic. With the answers being, "Trekkie", "Gater" etc...

Even Einstein recognized that so many things of such complexity in the universe must have been made by a higher intelligence.

I don't see all of this as fictional. With an infinite space in the universe there must be also infinite species of incredibly intelligent beings and they are not gods yet. But the point of that is that, when humanity reaches such advancement, there could be another rational species far away who don't believe in higher intelligences just because they are in their own primitive era, whilst we will exist as humanity here, with an unknown intelligence level for them.

Anyway, the universe and its laws don't have its center in humanity; they have always existed and they will always exist independent from us or our little perceptions.

I don't see why not believe, it doesn't surprise me that there are much more advanced beings than we humans. Why is that impressive or hard to believe?

Tyler wrote:Personally... and i expect much loss of the little respect few of you have for me for this... i think this entire topic is a load of bollocs. How any self respecting intelligent person can believe in God is beyond me. Faith began as a method for control, and it exists to comfort the weak minded.

Stop with your sad, pitiful blabber, please.
Thank you.

I think what he said is a bit "direct" but true.. how could anyone accept such fiction as fact.. then deny it's fiction.. and yet show no fact..

Maybe a majority of the human race is just delusional.. Who knows?

Brynet-Inc wrote:then deny it's fiction.. and yet show no fact..

This has 'evolution' written all over it.

Alboin wrote:

Brynet-Inc wrote:then deny it's fiction.. and yet show no fact..

This has 'evolution' written all over it.

There is a lot of fact backing evolution, missing links sure.. but for example Apes & Neanderthals are considerably close to use..

Some snakes have remnants of legs pointing back from when they evolved from lizards.. originally walking on land..

Brynet-Inc wrote:Some snakes have remnants of legs pointing back from when they evolved from lizards.. originally walking on land..

Or are those from before God removed the snake's legs in the Garden of Eden?

Why such a mere mechanism should disprove any other possibility of higher existence?

When I mean that, I am referring that just like in this huge sphere there exist life, there can exist life in any other planet as well, and not necessarily has to be simple animals but species that rivalize with humans and even beyond, and beyond, and beyond.

That's evolution, but of another kind, and the only type that concerns humans as conscious entities, which is mental development, the only strong point in intelligent beings: they have no muscular power, they can't resist any extremely adverse envorinments, they cannot live in many different means like water and air, they have no means to fly, they are physically slow and couldn't endure for themselves in a place where there are specially adapted animals. But they can build their tools, and that's the only strong point of such intelligent individuals.

Even mainstream scientists are starting to accept that we as humans are not as exclusive in nature as we thought, taking into account only other animals other than apes that exhibit high intelligence.

By the time when humanity gets an unsuspected development, there will surely be other "skeptic" species anywhere. There is always evolution, surely not exactly as understood by our simple intellect, but by that path it's not surprising that there exists layers of beings more and more "evolutioned", more advanced.

Tyler wrote:How any self respecting intelligent person can believe in God is beyond me. Faith began as a method for control, and it exists to comfort the weak minded.

If you simply replace "Faith" with "Organized Religion" and "God" with "The typical God-anthropomorphized-as-father-with-the-big-white-beard", then I agree with you 100%. My point was that God is just a name for the great unknowable mystery of existence. There is no need to take "God" so literally, or to listen to what any church has to tell you. Reasonable people can make up their own minds.

Alboin wrote:This has 'evolution' written all over it.

As it turns out, you can actually observe evolution directly by watching what bacteria do in a petri dish when you start making changes to their environment. This is possible because of the brevity of their lifespans and the incredible rate at which they breed. Evolution is an observable phenomenon, just like gravity. Don't confuse the (provable) theory of evolution with the more specific (and only slightly more contentious) debate over the origin of our species in particular.