HydroAC, I actually agree with you on some of the things you questioned about my post. I also enjoy saying "I don't know" to many of life's questions and I really enjoy looking for answers to complex, wonderful things found on Earth. This discussion started with someone claiming to be aetheist and I was keeping it in that realm. Saying I dont know and looking for the answer only increases my awareness of how awesome and greater than myself God is.
When questions arise, problems occur, or bad things in life happen, you naturally question it or look for an answer. Saying "I dont know" isnt what I was referring to as sad. Science is not inheritly (sp) bad. Relying solely on science to seek your answers and rejecting any ideas as to a higher power, that is what I think is sad.
Also, aetheism, regardless of who may post on this forum, tends to stem either from this complete dependence on intellectualism and science, or from some anger and disbelief at some incidence in your life, resulting in rejection or denial of a God. Not always, but most of the time. Of course, no one on this forum would fall under either of those categories, and I'm sure they will let us know, but I've done extensive councilling, outreach, and discussions to see it myself time and time again.
I wholeheartedly believe in witnessing, which some people feel as forcing my beliefs on others. I would never "force" anything I believe on someone. All I can do is rationally discuss with someone what I believe in and let God do the rest. But, I do feel its my duty. If you felt you knew something that would improve someone's life (or afterlife), would you not want to share it? Not force it, but share it? Discussing religious ideas with an aetheist is one of the most difficult things to do. You are on completely different grounds to start. It is like explaining the importance of good shoes to someone who doesnt believe they even have feet.
I have a hard time keeping up with the forum to read all the posts due to scheduling so I probably won't be able to keep discussing it here, but lest anyone think I am saying my mind then ignoring replies, you can always ask for my email and I would be happy to continue that way.

Christ isn't God's creation, He is one Person of the Holy Trinity. So you can say that God sacrificed Himself for the renewal of His creations. Death was only one part of the plan, to show that with His Resurrection He has power over death and the importance of death is obsolete. The most important part is the Resurrection and it wasn't done to make people live in fear but live in hope.

WoW ... nice to see someone else has stumbled on what I call "the bubble theory" ... which is similar to your words in basis, but expounds upon the dynamic aspect. I.E. - the physics of the individual's aura and the influence it exerts on other individuals' "auras" and how they combine to change the next interaction ... it get's quite complicated ... but then, a mere Human trying to explain how God actually makes it happen is maybe relatively kind of like a bacteria trying to explain why a galaxy spins ...


You're still alive, ain'tcha? ^-^

You are one smart cookie, Becephalus. IMHO (in my humble opinion) they are all true, in one way or another. I respect that tremendously, especially when I think of all the agony and suffering each society went through to make advancements. Too bad we can't just take all the good discoveries from each one and combine them into something realistic and constructive, in spite of bigotry or selfishness or whatever.

Religions developed in unique, ever-changing environments that can no longer be duplicated exactly (that would maybe be like trying to put genie back in the bottle, or trying to put the smoke back into the fire). The same is true for Humans. If I had been born in France, I'd be 'white-skinned savoir-faire french dudelet' too ... and so would anyone else on the planet, all ignorant pretensions aside. What's important is that we're all Human, and the rest is just window-dressing. (man, you guys really make me think ... I'm getting a headache  )

Sure it is! It does say “Off topic”!



That's very nice, and inspiring.



Neat! I question the qualifications and ability of your Sunday school teacher. How can there be understanding without questions? In Christianity and Judaism you there is a written tradition and an oral tradition. There is also mythology. Some works of fiction have definitely polluted the oral tradition with mythology, such as Dante Alighieri’s “Divina Commedia.” It would even seem that some sects of Christianity have plagiarized Dante in their scriptures. When you go directly to the sources you will find that Satan is definitely not the being people imagine. Evil is also not the concept people imagine. The Quran handles this effectively, because it is a long and well defined poem, so that if it is changed the scheme is corrupted and the reader will be aware of the attempted deception. A way was found around this: you keep people illiterate and explain what it contains.

I have found in my experience that any institution that wants you to accept doctrine without question does not have your interests in mind and is seeking to exploit you. To give an example, supremacist groups (national, racial, cultural, religious, political) want members to blindly accept doctrine for the benefit of the organization. The promised membership rewards are frequently vague enough.

Once I believed in nothing. I felt a little like Hamlet. Ever read the “To be or not to be” speech? Great! Now do it again with a proper English dictionary and make sure you understand what it means. Hamlet asks himself: Why live to suffer? Why not end the suffering? He finds he is afraid of what may come after death due to the uncertainty. I realized I could not believe in nothing. Belief gives me hope. Hope leads me to dream. Dreams make me free. Lock me in a little box and I can dream. People without dreams are easy to control (misquoting the wolf in ‘The Never Ending Story’, by Michael Ende, great book).

Thomas Paine makes some persuasive and logical arguments against Christian beliefs in “The Rights of Man.” Be warned as this book contains extremely dangerous ideas.

However Paine fails to account for a key concept and virtue: sacrifice. What animal sacrifices? What law of nature defines this as a good survival tool? Within the fullness of my reason why would I sacrifice myself? Sadly animals make preprogrammed decisions, with some of the higher orders being able to store more complex behaviors in their brains. I argue that dying engaged in aggressive behavior is not sacrifice, these are survival strategies. The leopard that would fight the bear to defend her cubs would also abandon them in a fire. It would seem to me sacrifice is a human behavior. Sacrifice is a crappy survival tool: you die, your genetic line ends. People sacrifice for one thing: love. But why sacrifice? Why love? Why suffer? These are the why’s that challenge understanding and defy science.

I like the book ‘Watership Down’ by Richard Adams. The following is a quote from the cartoon film version:

Hazel (the hero): Lord Frith, I know you've looked after us well, and it's wrong to ask even more of you. But my people are in terrible danger, and so I would like to make a bargain with you. My life in return for theirs.
Frith (God): There is not a day or night when a mother doe does not offer her life for her kittens, or an honest captain of Owsla his life for his chief's. But there is no bargain. What is, is what must be.


Yes I think it should. I can't keep up with this thread!

I respect and appreciate your opinion. However I did have this comic thought (fade out to a change of scene):

2359 Mankind is finally liberated from religion.
2360 The Drengin attacks humanity.

Human leader: "Why are you attacking us on our first contact?"

Drengin leader: "That's what we do! Conquer all known species when they are weak."

Human leader: "How long have you known about us?"

Drengin leader: "Oh, for about 1000 years."

Human leader: "But why attack us now? How are we weak"

Drengin leader: "Well you see last year you had God on your side."

In the beginning of time, man had no understanding of simple science, so he created a god of the sun , one for the moon one for water and so on and so on. As man's understanding increased he shed most of his gods in favor of one God, although different clans still could not agree on the name of this god. Today we have many religions all claiming to be the master religion. To some he is God, Alla or Jesus. Regardless, we still have a God fugure, because we still need protection from the things we do not understand.

Tell me, when man created a molecule using a quark collision acellerator, did he become a god to that new life? Or was he just a scientist.

When we compare this to the big bang theory, many similarity come to life. Even though the molecule only live for a few milliseconds, in our time, how long did it last in theirs?

As I said before, you have absolutly so evidence to support any of what you just said. You are using speculation mixed with rhetoric to create an unprovable scenerio for the sole purpose of explaining an otherwise (in your mind) unexplained event, while catering your answer to conform to your own pet theory about life.

You are doing exactly what you accuse religion of doing.

you missed a subtle point of speech. he said "religion... which developed," not, "religion was developed." you way of talking about it makes it sound conscious and intentional. it is historically irrefutable that religious institutions evetually became such that they have consciously influenced people (on non-spiritual matters) and governments, served as police, judge and executioner.

that a religion of a particular era developed from religions of earlier eras is also irrefutable: christianity and islam from judaism; modern hinduism and buddhism from ancient vedic religion; and to a lesser degree of difference, protestantism from catholicism. this shows that religions do develop, but it doesn't show what they first developed from. what the earliest religions developed from is less clear, but the ideas about it are definately more than speculation. the theories about very early development of religions are typically based on material archaeological evidence and analysis of language and discourse.

for example, many historical scholars of india's religions believe that region's earliest creation myth, that of the Purusha man, probably was brought with traveling Aryans as they passed through modern Iran (another place they settled). these myths bear striking resemblance to what became judeo-christian creation myths (the separation of land from water and the belief that words were used in creation, most especially). this parallels linguistic patterns that identify Persian and Sanskrit as members of a language family shared by all of Europe. aztec creation myths and language are markedly different, not surprisingly. moreover, new religions start as cults. before there was christianity there were hundreds of jesus cults, and it wasn't until Emperor Justinian declared christianity the official religion of Rome that christianity was a religion (official or not) at all.

of course, you don't have to believe this stuff. some people refuse to consider evidence that they haven't themselves seen or found. to this i say: while i don't know how to be an archaeologist, that doesn't mean archaeological findings are unture or not worth considering. just because you haven't learned to look at things the way others have, doesn't mean they're not actually seeing what they're seeing. that'd be like saying just because a novice star watcher can't readily see the difference between galaxies, planets and regular stars, that those celestial bodies are in fact all the same type of thing.

personally, i think when a "new" religion starts, it's a form of social dissent. jesus was going against the mainstream jewish praxis. the buddha was going against a number of philosophical assumptions common in india. in any regard, many of the religions we can examine seem to begin with a single person (i'll say 'professor' as a person professing a belief, code of ethics, or whathaveyou). the professor takes on students who admire and agree with his/her teachings, who themselves become the next generation of professors. but as the teachings become more popular over time and more people follow them, the professors give way to insitutional pundits. the thing about institutions, once they exist, their first priority is to continue existing, regardless of what their foundational priciples were. teachings become dogma partly becasue being able to influence lots of people attracts anyone who'd want to do so, anyone who wants power.

but i think part of it also happens because of the followers. i think some people don't have a taste for introspection. they're content to be told what's right and how to live well without examination. they see the trappings of authority and assume that's good enough. this is when students become sycophants.

i think it happens in all institutions; i can definately see similar enough patterns in higher education, the workplace and government. i'd say it's a product of bureaucracy and complex social systems.

edit: i realized i went on a tangent and missed my original point. i don't agree with a statement like "religions developed to explain things and help people cope." no one set out and said, "i'm going to invent this thing i'll call religion, and it'll help people cope with problems and explain things." i'd say coping and explanation are two things religion does, but there wasn't ever a conscious design to religion. over time, these human needs have been filled by religions, but they have also been fulfilled by other institutions and individuals in different societies. this isn't the only thing religions do, and they don't always have to do them either.

it goes back to defining the concept of religion-in-general, which as i've tried to say, is difficult to do without relying on historical western assumptions. the above definition is functional (based on what it does), but it's no more accurate and comprehensive than defining religion substantively (based on what it is - i.e., "religion is based on faith").

If Aliens Landed on Earth and said they started life here on Earth,,, then who started life on the Aliens planet?

All that happened is that the question of the begining of life has not been answered, just exported somewhare else!

I liked how Clarke dealt with aliens and religion in Childhood’s End. The aliens contacted us, but refused to show themselves. Eventually they did when we were ready **spoiler alert!** – and they looked like the Devil, completed with forked tail and horns. But by the time we were ‘ready’ most of the human social and physical ills had been remedied and religion had mostly died, and small children willingly crawled up into the devil’s benevolent (?) lap. Humanity's childhood was over once we left our weaknesses behind and we were then ready to move on. I won’t say any more in case you haven’t read the book, which I read 25+ years ago and should probably re-read.

Hydro

I would agree, and in many cases there is no reason for conflict between science and religion. In fact, my mentor (head of the geology department where I was an undergraduate) was a devout Methodist who had a very spiritual life, and is a man that I deeply admire. He was a paleontologist and had no problem with evolution – it was part of a coherent system for him.

But science will be in conflict with religion when it disproves 'facts' established by religious doctrine. I would be thrilled if religion and science could live happily side by side, but that is hard when fundamentalists of any sort will insist (for instance) the Earth is 6000 years old, the Grand Canyon was created by Great Flood, and that dinosaurs lived at the same time as man - and then try to teach this drivel in the science classroom and force this down a geologist's throat. Please.

The same goes for strident atheists (like Dawkins) who use their well crafted and coherent arguments and evidence as a club. It comes off as a bit preachy to me, even if I can’t find anything in his lines of evidence that I would identify as false or misleading (the same can’t be said for creationists, by the way – logic and evidence is not their strong suit).

Hydro