[kongming]

They can be verifiable if you ask God what s/he did and didn't say. That's assuming s/he wants to let you know.

Isn't that precisely part of the problem? Claims of faith are not verifiable in any way at all. They are totally personal and a good actor is really no more ore less believable than a lunatic. How do you begin to test someone's claim in cases like these? But what astounds me even more is that people so readily believe claims of this sort, when they cannot even truly recognize and act upon the causal effect of smoking on lung cancer!

[kongming]

I agree. And you'll notice that the more secular society has become the more technology we have that helps us kill more people efficiently.

I have to take issue with this: when I first became an atheist, I liked to think that religion was the cause of all man's problems and that if we did away with it that things would be better. However, I then looked at the problems caused by secular regimes such as Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia & Mao's China.

Religion is not the cause of problems, it is one of the most popular excuses for our problems. Take it away and people immediately find other excuses to wreak havock & destruction if they so choose.

[kongming]

Well this statent is a fallacy as well. You assume that the logic of the orriginal statement implies that all claims are equal. That's not how it has to work. The nature of the universe is as it is. It has rules, laws or reasons. those don't change a or b do whatever they do and if they do somehting different then that is caused by c. It doesn't matter what we think about what a or b arer doing, what they should be doing or will be doing. We can say whatever we want about them, they'll still do whatever they're supposed to do. If science reveals the TRUTH well good for science. But if we accept sciences anser as the TRUTH and it happens to be wrong it only matters to us, because we happen to be wrong no matter that everybody belives sciences answer. The only time a claim is better than another is if one reveals the actual TRUTH of the universe and the other does not. But since it's unlikely that we would truly know which was which makes them equal by our perception.

1) since all justifications run out somewhere, all claims come down to faith (for science it would be faith in reason and observation)
2) if all claims come down to faith, scientific claims can't be used to trump religious claims

What makes this argument so bad is that if it's true, then no claims could be used to trump any other claims, ever (!!), which is the same thing as saying all claims are equally true, which is absurd. All claims are not equal. If this were not the case, then science and technology would in fact be impossible, since both depend on the comparative superiority of certain claims over others. Obviously, having faith in reason and observation is quite different than having faith in God. To argue along these lines is to commit a clear fallacy of equivocation..

[kongming]

Skepticism is just another form of faith. You believe something to be untrue or unlikely or improbable

- then it's impossible for them to be skeptical, which is to say, to employ doubt as an integral part of their claim-making process. This is to simply say that skepticism itself is impossible. .

[kongming]

One must believe in something. One must benefit others.

Must one believe in God and nothing else?

[kongming]

The same could be asked of you.

Doesn't that worry you even in the slightest? The fact that you may very well be committing your life to a delusion.

[kongming]

Has anyone read: The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Phillip K Dick?

This is an on topic (sorta) aside question b/c it's agreat book.


I know, I know, the catholics and there priest/ninjas going around fomenting coverups and killing the one guy who can proove that Jesus was the mass hallucination of a bunch of drunk Jews. First off, I trust you can tell the difference between reality and fiction. Second, if you ever find out that there really are 'priest/ninjas', tell me. I want to be one. I mean how cool would that be? :D .

[kongming]

I would argue that they did believe in God and worshipped /him/her by a different name.

My father didn't believe, but he also didn't have any desire to seek answers. His parents and grandparents and for generations beyond back to the begining of time never believed in 'God'. They were Native Americans and belived in communing with Nature and an abundance of spiritual entities.

[kongming]

Of course not... the Hindu are perfect and they'd never fight a religeous war. The Kasmer is the complete fault of the muslims. :p

The Hindu never forced anyone new into their religion. They never forced a 'spreading' of the word like Christians. How can a God imposed on others by force be taken seriously?

[kongming]

The church was helping jews during WWII. Could they have done more? Maybe. I think so, but then not so many people are willing to die for others. But I do know one thing. The Church could not have continued to exist in this form if they publicly opposed the fascists. It would have gained them nothing but executions for all those who were secretly opposing them.

I was actually referring to the Pope during WWII. Free will? That's is a sad excuse for not opposing genocide. I believe that the recently deceased Pope recognized that. But it seems to me that if the Pope truly has God's ear, he would have heard that 6 million jews among the millions of other innocents were being gased. Or was God on vacation? Maybe he was helping another group on some other planet in the universe and he just couldn't get back on time to save the children as they were shoved into the ovens?