It should be locked. I am getting angry over some of the posts and I do not want to resort to writing something I will regret. We all have a right to our own views.

Quote - not locked yet? admin should lock a religeous themed thread immediately.
even as new to the internet as i am, i have seen far too many threads with this topic descend to flaming.

in my humble opinion the mods/admin are being irresponsible in allowing it to continue.
my tuppence worth, take it or leave it  :)

Lets show the Admins and Mods we can be trusted and their decision to leave this open is a good one.

so far they've not had to say much past please be civil. so lets trust their judgment huh?

Quote - It should be locked. I am getting angry over some of the posts and I do not want to resort to writing something I will regret. We all have a right to our own views.

then stop posting. no one is forcing you to even open the thread or look at it. if you don't like it.. why look?

The Mods and Admins here have been around the proverbial block on this more than once. I think they know what they're dong. Being new, watch and learn from some of the best.

I haven't seen anything to be angry about in this thread. On the contrary, there are a few things that make one pause and reflect. Just the diversity of views is interesting. This isn't a win/lose debate. No one has any vested interest in who makes the most 'points'.

Have we heard from anyone espousing the Hindu religion yet?  

I look because I can't help myself, LOL! I am angry because Sam debunked my Spaceman theory, LOL!

 Rest assured that we not only know about it, but are watching it closely.

Rest assured that we do not lock threads simply because a few members are uncomfortable with it.  If the posts violate the TOS, then we lock it, and warn the members involved.  

If a post in a thread makes you uncomfortable, you have two choices.  

1. Close the thread.

2. Contact a staff member.

In either case, the end result may not be the one you set out to attain.

Well, in a roundabout way, we could all be Martians. Bits and pieces of Mars have been pelting us for eons. 

Quote - Well, in a roundabout way, we could all be Martians. Bits and pieces of Mars have been pelting us for eons. 

Looking at it in a similar way, we're all alien - even the aliens are aliens. ;-)

Nothing existed in the entire Universe except for hydrogen and helium prior to the first star lighting up in nuclear fusion, and no elements heavier than helium, beryllium and boron can be created except in a star, and nothing heavier than oxygen can be created without a supernova explosion of a star.

As the late great Carl Sagan used to love to say, we are all made of star stuff. ;-)

Quote - It should be locked. I am getting angry over some of the posts and I do not want to resort to writing something I will regret. We all have a right to our own views.

Seems a bit of a strange and contradictory statement to me. You say we all have a right to our own views, which I agree with, but you also say the thread should be locked, which would prevent us from expressing those very views that we have a right to hold! So it's OK to have a view, but not to express it?

As long as we can continue in a civilised manner, without disrespecting or insulting each other there is no reason to lock the thread. Marley expressing a contrary view is neither disrespectful nor insulting, it's called "Free Speech". People who don't like the views expressed in this thread are free to go and find a thread where they do like the views that are expressed. I don't agree with all the views in this thread, but I want to know what others think. To suppress ideas and prevent free speech is a very bad thing. We learn by the clash of ideas, and our own views are either strengthened or changed to better views by participating in debate and listening to other views.

Seek the truth. If you think someone's view is wrong, say why! Don't insult the person. Educate them as to why you think they are wrong. They may think you have a point, they may think you use bad logic and only strengthen the contrary view, or they may just stick their head in the sand and ignore you. It does not matter, you will probably cause someone reading the thread to think, and thinking is a good thing.

You know, it's truly amazing how life seems to arise in a universe that is full of everything that could be hostile to it. I mean, with all the enormous  explosions, collisions, and extremes of every kind, why living things? It makes you wonder if life forms are just organized chemicals, or something else. Miniscule emulations of stars? Natural parasites of all the energy in the universe?  And where's the line of delineation between inert matter and life, and what sparks the crossing? Where's the logical explanation for 'why life?' Does it have any purpose other than proliferation? 

It's enough to make your head spin.

Quote - I saw photos of cliff painting in the Sahara desert showing man dressed in a spacesuit. This is 1000s of year old. What do you make of that?

Early sci-fi?

Actually, I find it highly interesting.  As it is a single picture with no context, I just could not immediately conclude that it depicts a man in a spacesuit as drawn by a person who saw one.

Quote - You know, it's truly amazing how life seems to arise in a universe that is full of everything that could be hostile to it. I mean, with all the enormous  explosions, collisions, and extremes of every kind, why living things? It makes you wonder if life forms are just organized chemicals, or something else. Miniscule emulations of stars? Natural parasites of all the energy in the universe?  And where's the line of delineation between inert matter and life, and what sparks the crossing? Where's the logical explanation for 'why life?' Does it have any purpose other than proliferation? 

It's enough to make your head spin.

You gotta figure though, in spite of all the hostility "out there", it's such an enormous place that much of the condensed matter (planets, stars and such) is hugely isolated from other matter.
Not just that, but the time scales are so immense that there are billions of years that go by without anything seriously drastic happening that life has plenty of opportunity to arise and thrive.

Like our sun for example. It's been around for 4 or so billion years, like our planet has. Our planet spent its first BILLION  years as a completely inhospitable, violent place, but slowly changed enough to allow all that we see.
In another 4 billion years the sun will swell up to a red giant and incinerate everything out to Jupiter's orbit before contracting to a white dwarf and slowly cooling and dimming.

In the course of those 8 billion or so years, the Earth will have gone through all kinds of tumultuous change and who knows how much variety of life, but to the universe it all just happened, just came and went, just one of probably trillions of regularly occurring dramas that nobody in the far future will ever even know about...

From my point of view - I havent seen anything that make this thread "close worthy" Even if i dont agree with all that have been written by others, its a very intresting thread and I havent seen any angry or bad behavior - or have I totelly missed it?

Keep it up girls and boys - very intresteing reading while waiting for an vue render :) 

I see no reason to doubt the existence of aliens. I believe pretty much the same thing that Carl Sagan used to go on about, that it's not just likely, but extremely likely.

Of course, there's also the very valid point to make, also in agreement with Sagan, that the chances of them ever finding us or vice versa is extremely slim.

So while I believe there is plenty of alien intelligence out there, I see no reason to believe that we've ever been visited, and plenty of reasons to believe that we haven't.

I wouldn't argue either way though really. Truth is, nobody knows, so the best we can do is speculate on the probability.

the thing about life and all

we live in a very hot universe, where gunk gets together because of gravity and pressure and has a lot of energy.  a high energy state is not the ideal state though, so reactions occur between little gunkies that take them from a higher energy state to a lower one.  atomically speaking, things cooperate out of the "need" for efficiency.
then when you look at biological systems, there's a lot of energy going on there too.  the little gunkies there come together and cooperate, saving each of them a little energy and promoting the whole local area to a lower energy state.
so those gunkies get together and make creatures.  the creatures don't exist as an exception to the rule of the universe.  creatures are smaller gunkies that come together to save each individual gunkie energy.
and so it goes on up to us.  we exist, in terms of physics, because we are more efficient states of existence for the beings that make us, for the microbes that make them, for the atoms that make them, and so on.

it's because where we are in the evolution of the universe, things are very very hot and compact.

life is not the exception, it's the rule.  everything will cooperate because it uses less energy overall.  cooperation makes atoms, micobes, fish, and us, and society.  society is a larger organism composed of us.

by the very laws of nature, life and societies will arise, likely damned near anywhere.

Quote - I look because I can't help myself, LOL! I am angry because Sam debunked my Spaceman theory, LOL!

:lol:

they aren't arbitrarily locking threads, at least for now.  mods/admins come and go with alarming
frequency, but in the past they've had some who locked threads, and said actions caused a
general uproar, even unto members leaving this site en masse. I daresay they want to avoid
that approach for now.  the offended members always come back, but let them try this more
even-handed approach for now, to see if it works.

the real problem would not be aliens or religion in general, but members attacking a specific
religion. then they'd likely lock such a thread.

Why do I suddenly feel like I'm part of a mold infestation?  

Quote -

the real problem would not be aliens or religion in general, but members attacking a specific
religion. then they'd likely lock such a thread.

Got me thinking that it would be a really unusual irony if a thread about religion got locked not because of heated religion arguments, but due to fighting about whether threads about religion should get locked. ;-)

Quote - Why do I suddenly feel like I'm part of a mold infestation?  

There are those who would consider us an infestation of sorts, yeah. Like Greenpeace or PETA or Al Gore, for example. :-D

Except I'm a left-wing kook, who supports Greenpeace and PETA, but you can keep Al Gore, thank you. ;)  Al Gore and bears scare me. 

Quote - Except I'm a left-wing kook, who supports Greenpeace and PETA, but you can keep Al Gore, thank you. ;)  Al Gore and bears scare me. 

Oh come on now, without Al Gore we wouldn't even be having this conversation. After all, the internet didn't just invent itself. ;-)

Quote - I have a feeling humanity would have figured out how to get along fairly well without any help from religion, just as we'd get along fine (perhaps even better) without it today.

Very early man learned from experience that if you steal from someone else or try to take their wives, they'll club you and take their stuff/women back. Kill someone, and friends of the deceased will likely kill you for doing so.  We certainly must have had basic guidelines of social behavior before any religion came along.

You forget that humans are not born with experience.  They could easily join a Hitler Youth group.  Humanity is very good at producing torture chambers and concentration camps.  Without the Bible, there would be no US Constitution.  Without the US Constitution, there would be no US.  Without the US, the entire world would be torture chambers and concentration camps.

Quote - there is no hell. No heaven either.
While the man known popularly as Jesus Christ may have existed, and while he was likely an exceptional figure, he was nothing more than a teacher and a "missionary" of sorts. An exceptionally intelligent and brave teacher no doubt, but very human and there was nothing godlike or metaphysical about him.

No salvation, no Creator, no messiah... just space, matter, energy, chemistry and the laws of physics that all eventually led to an intelligence so consumed with its own self-importance that it invented gods, heaven and salvation to ease its troubled mind and make its existence more bearable...

I guess you have your work cut out for you to prove all this.

Quote -
Got me thinking that it would be a really unusual irony if a thread about religion got locked not because of heated religion arguments, but due to fighting about whether threads about religion should get locked. ;-)

I'd be disappointed either way.  Then again, CGTalk locks any thread that falls into the "app X vs. app Y" category (though many such threads could be considered religious arguments in their own right).

Quote - > Quote - there is no hell. No heaven either.

While the man known popularly as Jesus Christ may have existed, and while he was likely an exceptional figure, he was nothing more than a teacher and a "missionary" of sorts. An exceptionally intelligent and brave teacher no doubt, but very human and there was nothing godlike or metaphysical about him.

No salvation, no Creator, no messiah... just space, matter, energy, chemistry and the laws of physics that all eventually led to an intelligence so consumed with its own self-importance that it invented gods, heaven and salvation to ease its troubled mind and make its existence more bearable...

I guess you have your work cut out for you to prove all this.

I wouldn't even try.
That's the conclusion I've come to after 35 years of learning about religion and science and overall human society, culture and nature. And half that amount of time regularly actively debating it both with many other people as well as myself.
I would have to write an entire book explaining how I came to that conclusion and I'm not about to do that, especially since so many others already have.

Besides, it's an opinion, which should be pretty obvious, and opinions don't demand "proof".

But if we ever get together with a case of beer, I've been known to go pretty far into discussing it all. ;-)

Schecterman, LOL! I forgot that Al invented the inter-webs!  I knew there was something creepy about him. ;)

Quote - Without the Bible, there would be no US Constitution.  Without the US Constitution, there would be no US.  Without the US, the entire world would be torture chambers and concentration camps.

You mean like Guantanamo Bay?

So... The English, French, Germans, Dutch, Italians, Swiss, and such countries were uncivilized before we arrived? Where do you think we all came from? Hubris is not attractive. Of course, the Greeks had something to do with the development of western civilization, too.

Now, if what you're trying to say is that the military involvement of the US in WWII prevented the Nazi's from establishing world domination, I'd have to agree. Not because we're the sword of righteousness, but because we had sufficient raw materials, manufacturing, and men to tip the balance.

Besides, I thought the Constitution was written by Free Masons, and contained all sorts of nefarious references and secrets.  Or have I been watching too much alternative TV again?

I predict this thread will now go downhill faster than Gary Glitter's career. 

"I guess you have your work cut out for you to prove all this."

Actually no, many more tangible facts about the universe, our world, and existence in general has been proven by scientific study than by religious study. Religious people often say that science has the burden of proving that there is no God - no, the religious has the burden of proving that there is a God, heaven, hell, and everything else we cannot see, and all they seem to have are the writings of people who didn't know a whole lot about how things worked back then.**

**If I told people that little atomic-sized aliens followed me around and protected me from harm, they would obviously ask "where are they?" and "how do you know they're really there?". If I said "I just know they are!", I'd be ridiculed and branded a lunatic. If I said they were guardian angels or our Lord watching over me though - no problem. No fair.

SnowS

Yeah, if I sounded snippy, it wasn't intentional. It was the history major coming through. It tends to sound pedantic.  Sorry.

Quote - Yeah, if I sounded snippy, it wasn't intentional

Snappy or not, it was nice to hear from someone who did not learn U.S. history by watching Rambo movies.

You forgot to mention  the Deists along with the Masons. Or the fact that the Christian bloc amongst the founding fathers wanted Washington to take the crown as King George I (keeping in mind that the Christian church in question was adherents of the Church of England, or schismatics like the Pilgrims who thought the church to liberal). Or make their religion a legal constitutional requirement....although there would be unspoken 'tolerance' winkwinknudgenudge for other faiths.

And yeah, it is rather apalling at how much subjective wish fulfillment gets spouted as fact. Although it can be highly satisfying if you can get a dogmatic to stop and actually think for a minute.

It is funny how these things always lead to questions of ethics and the belief that atheists have no foundation for morality. Yet the converse question never seems to get answered. I wonder if Mr Driscoll is familiar with Euthyphro's dilema? If he is, then he should at least understand why many philosophers are of the position that a God alone cannot provide a foundation for morality - perhaps he could address this so that we can better uderstand his position? Rather than claim that atheists need religion for such a foundation, explain how it is possible for religion to provide one.

The truth is that most religious folk do not use their religious texts alone to prescribe their ethics, but their text plus there own judgement. A book such as the Bible has many condtradictions and at times prescribes many things that most Christians would find objectionable - so they use their own judgement as to what to accept and what to reject. This is in part why there are soooooo many different Christian demoninations, and so often a great deal of argument within them.

Also, the arguments over who killed how many and why are pointless. We see such killing from both atheists and theists alike and frankly, with the exception of fundamentalist actions (be they suicide bombs or shooting abortionists), they have seldom been about either atheism or theism. They have been about power and the elimination of any competing authority. Further, such arguments are irrelevant in that they do NOTHING to establish the truth of either theism or atheism.

My own position is that I find the concept of God to lack coherence and so I can no more believe that it exists than I can believe in square triangles. Nor do I accept the notion of objective morality as usually understood because, like Hume, I don't find it very coherent. However, that does not make me a nihilist.

Mr Driscoll's comment that "[atheists] believe in things such as celebrities and/or governments to tell them how to live and make choices for them.  They know about God, but choose to reject him.  They feel they are smarter and that there are far more superior/intellectual things to believe in." is frankly absurd. I am perfectly capable of thinking for myself, which is why I questioned the religion I was brought up with in the first place - I certainly don't follow celebtrity and I only accept states as de facto and acknowledge them out of pragmatism. If he is suggesting that I put aside intellectualism and let a priest or a book do my thinking for me, then I'm afraid that I would consider that irresponsible. I will think for myself, act accordingly, and accept responsibility for the consequences.

Well said philebus!

Philebus pretty much summed up my thoughts on the subject, with some reservations re the matter of objective morality.  I believe it - or a reasonable facsimile - exists but it is not a simple IF-THEN structure but has a very deep and complex architecture.

I do, however, take great exception to being told (not by philebus) that I base my beliefs on celebrities and/or governments.  They would be the very last people I would ever look to for enlightenment, instruction or truth.  In fact, I have a hard wired distrust of anyone in a position of "authority", simply because the people who gravitate to such posts are usually those least fit to hold them.

Am I correct in thinking Sam has the same attitude towards direction that I do? "I'll take that under advisement, and get back to you."  

That's pretty much it.  I do have enough common sense to know when something absolutely, positively has to be done right then without question.  

Then again, how often is that gonna happen unless you're a member of the armed forces?

To steal a quote, I don't take orders worth a damn.

Quote - I predict this thread will now go downhill faster than Gary Glitter's career. 

Who's Garry Glitter?
Oh... right... ;-)

Well, the thread seems to be surviving at least, no major downward spiral as of yet.

RE: morality...
Whose morality? Even among the monotheistic religions based on God/Allah/Yahweh - Christianity. Islam, Judaism - there is no consensus on morality.
I don't know enough about Islam and Judaism to give too many examples, but I know plenty about the various Christian denominations, and they all have their own versions of morality - what is a "sin" and what is not and so on.

The only real morality worth subscribing to is the societal morality that we really need...

One commandment, no God required:
Thou shalt not do stupid shit.

There's your morality for you, and nothing more is required. It's up to the individual to determine what's stupid and what's not, and if a person doesn't know what is or isn't, his society's laws have some pretty good suggestions, and the local jails and morgues and hospitals can offer some pretty good examples of why it's a great commandment. ;-)

Quote -
..no major downward spiral as of yet.

 

There fucking well will be if anyone else tries to tell me how I think, as in a previous post.

Not, I assure you, directed at you.

 Just a reminder that were still here ;)

Also, I wanted to point out....

I think that some of the conclusions being jumped to on both sides of the coin are...well, at best, demeaning.  People of faith are not inherently followers any more than atheists are inherently amoral.  You'd be surprised that, when  you step back and take an impersonal look at this thread, how much everyone is saying the same thing, but with different words.  

Just a thought ;)

Thank you.

It needed saying and you put it a lot more politely than I would have. 

Quote - Religious people often say that science has the burden of proving that there is no God - no, the religious has the burden of proving that there is a God, heaven, hell, and everything else we cannot see, and all they seem to have are the writings of people who didn't know a whole lot about how things worked back then.

Right, religion predates science.  That's why it's up to science to disprove god.  Before science, religion didn't have need for proof of god.  Only if religion had arrived after science would it need proof of god to base its claims on.

Quote -

Right, religion predates science.  That's why it's up to science to disprove god.  Before science, religion didn't have need for proof of god.  Only if religion had arrived after science would it need proof of god to base its claims on.

Science can't disprove God. Science has already come pretty close to explaining the creation of everything from the universe as a whole to how the 92 natural elements came into being, to the creation of RNA, amino acids, DNA, life, evolution, intelligence... gravity, light, and all kinds of other things.

If that's not enough to disprove at least the Creation theory, then I don't know what is.

And even that's not enough for the religious people. They just blindly write it all off as science fiction or whatever. They can appreciate that science tells them the next generation of cell phones will be more advanced than what we currently have, and eagerly grab them up when available, on the "faith" alone that science told them it would be good...

But when it comes to Creation...
"Nope, sorry, science may be right about everything else, but it's dead wrong about that."

The real religious people who can't accept the scientific proof of creation yet who worship the feats of science along with the rest of us heathen out here... I'd say it's almost some form of blatant hypocrisy.

So it won't matter even if science does somehow one day definitively disprove God, because the religious people will still believe anyway. Otherwise what's left for them? it's not like they're gonna hear the news and say, "Well, there ya go kids, now we can sleep in on Sunday." ;-)

Of course, I feel that science has in fact already disproved the existence of God...

Proof requires not only the evidence, but also for people to accept the evidence. Many people have accepted that science has disproved God, but no matter how blinding all the proof ever is, there will always be a multitude who simply don't accept it.
Hence, science will never disprove God.

Science's job is to answer questions and figure things out anyway. Any scientist who thinks he's going to "disprove God" is simply wasting his time.

I think it should be the other way around, religion/god should prove it's existence to science.

And theres one simple way to do that.  I'd like an ice cream please.

Strawberry cornetto is fine, mint at a push :), seriously my point is if there is a an powerful alien/god that can control the universe, then shouldn't she/he/it be able to materialise a tasty cold snack into my hand? 

Quote -

Strawberry cornetto is fine, mint at a push :), seriously my point is if there is a an powerful alien/god that can control the universe, then shouldn't she/he/it be able to materialise a tasty cold snack into my hand? 

Well according to the Bible, yeah, no problem. God could do that in his sleep.

Then again, the Bible also says that God doesn't perform miracles like that just for proof. In fact, it's all supposed to be taken simply on faith and God has no intention of proving his existence to anyone.

So the Bible says... and if you think about it, they couldn't possibly have devised a better way to get around that whole problem of proof.  ;-)

I've got a couple questions.

Why did God have to rest on the seventh day after creating the universe and Earth? He's G O D.

Why even count the seventh day if He rested when we don't count the 8th or subsequent days? Did He get back to work on the 8th, and if so, what did He do?

How does anyone know how long it took God to create everything when no one else was around? Did He tell someone or did people just, you know, guess?

If man and dinosaurs lived together like Creationists believe, why did they become extinct and we didn't?

Eagerly looking forward to answers.  :)

SnowS

Quote - > Quote - Religious people often say that science has the burden of proving that there is no God - no, the religious has the burden of proving that there is a God, heaven, hell, and everything else we cannot see, and all they seem to have are the writings of people who didn't know a whole lot about how things worked back then.

Right, religion predates science.  That's why it's up to science to disprove god.  Before science, religion didn't have need for proof of god.  Only if religion had arrived after science would it need proof of god to base its claims on.

I do hope that I haven't misunderstood you here, so do correct me if I'm wrong about your meaning.

Science is just a methodology. That religion predates science is irrelevant to the burden of proof - that burden is determined by reason and did not require anyone to understand that to be so. It is an extraordinary claim and like any other must pass two hurdles 1) it must be shown to make sense and 2) it must either be supported by empirical evidence or shown to be necessarily true. Reason shows no bias in this, which applies to all such claims, be they in God, cold fusion, or bacteria causing stomach ulcers.

Though I'm enjoying some measured and intelligent responses in this thread, this thought must have sprung from the 'As above so below principle'. Ie that the macrocosm is the same as the microcosm, the universe is the same as God, man is the same as the cell, the cell is the same as the atom, etc etc.

I once had this 'inspirational' vision that we are simply microscopic  bacterial colonies in the palms of the great Creator just as bacteria flourish and live  upon our skin. [Well, like  a certain type of microbes at least, called archaea which diverged and evolved independently of other forms of bacteria - bit of elitism here]   The colonies that have formed on other parts of the body given our microscopic size compared to the Creator  might be light years away and unreachable. A day in the life of the Creator might seem like six billion years to us. Since some bacteria are airborn we might well have had 'space visitors'. The Creator periodically  taking a shower would have catastrophic consequences of course.

We  share some common traits with bacteria, for instance we duplicate and mutate at an incredible  rate, we can cause deadly diseases by befouling and corrupting  our own environment, which makes me fear that one of these days the Creator is going to get irritated enough to do more than just scratch and apply some deadly anti-bacterial  to kill us right off.

And thus might a brand new evolutionary cycle begin.

None the less ever since this insight I want to mumble a little prayer  each time I wash my hands now.