I don't think the Bible proves God. I don't think God justifies the Bible. I just don't see how anyone or anything could prove God to you unless God chose to do it. I am not trying to make God credible to you, you don't believe in God. I sure don't want you to take my word for it. If you wanted to know out of sincerity and asked my opinion I would give you some direction. But I wouldn't give you proof. It's like searching for hidden treasure, I only have a map. ( BTW BTW- I've never had the experience of God jumping all over someone to prove Himself. Just the opposite.) Whatever God is going to do about AIDS in Africa He will do through people that believe in Him, that is how it works, but you should be able to see the problem with that... what are the American believers doing anyways??? Hosting TV shows, Million Dollar Church Buildings, Tebowing?!?! I believe with all my heart that God alone has the power and will use it to right every single wrong ever done- there will come a day that everything will be made right. If you are just trying to say you don't believe in God, got it. If you are looking for proof from a Christian, can't help you. If you ... nevermind- good old Christian circular ...
It's the first 'You' we don't see the same, but the rest I understand, we all agree as to the fate of the body. Isn't a person more than the body, more than the enzymes and chemicals and electrolytes?
Leaving aside that it is very presumptuous for non-believers to be telling a believer how they should be interpreting their religion. Just because someone may have read the Bible, Qu'ran, or any other holy book doesn't mean that they know how it should be interpretted when clearly they don't accept the message of it in the first place. It is like saying I don't really care about the forest but am going to argue about individual trees. To your example of Inception this isn't a matter of literary interpretation but of the practice of faith. As a literary exercise one can certainly find all sorts of things that are contradictory or unsavory in a holy text that is true but that isn't the same as saying that someone isn't practicing the religion correctly. Even if there are contradictions in the Holy text how a believer or sect chooses to interpret them is up to them as their faith practice. Yet frequently that very argument is brought up by critics and as we have seen even in this thread we have critics and / or non-believers argue that believers are just cherry picking their religious text. Perhaps in a literary sense they are but that if it all is a matter of faith then picking and choosing is their prerogative not something to be imposed by presumptuous outsiders.
Just to follow up on my last post let me give an example that ties into this thread. MadMax and Rhester have stated what their view of Christianity is and why they are a Christian. As a non-Christian I have asked them why they downplay or not follow certain parts of the Old Testament and the answer they have given me is that through Christ the New Testament has fulfilled the Old Testament so while the Old Testament isn't invalid the message of the New Testament is the most important. From a literary criticism angle I can go and point out all of the stuff that is in the Old Testament and argue that if it isn't invalid then you should be following it and not eating pork, stoning adulterers, keeping slaves and so on. The problem though is that the key to understanding how the New Testament works and its relationship with the Old is through faith in Christ, a faith which I do not share with them. So while I might be able to memorize the Bible and quote it verbatim I don't really understand what it is about since I don't accept it's primary message. Since faith is the key to understanding.
I'm certainly not an expert on Christianity, so perhaps one of our resident Christians can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are some significant differences between it and other prior and newer religions (at least Western ones). For starters, the New Testament is not primarily written by the person doing the teaching. While it's considered in the inspired word of God, it wasn't written by people claiming to have communicated with God or anything like it. It's being relayed second hand by external observers. Second, the originators did not stand to benefit or be glorified here unlike many other religions and modern day cults. There was no glory for the early followers or the writers of the books - in fact, many suffered as a result, if you believe what is written. Third, at the time, religion time was about pleasing God in some way or another and being rewarded for it with better lives. Christianity kind of turned that upside down - both in terms of the role of God and people's purpose. It was no longer about being rewarded or trying to make God happy. Regardless of what you think of that, it was something new at the time. To a skeptic, most religions can easily be dismissed as "someone wants to be important/rich/powerful, so they create a religion and con people into following them." But that's a harder story to make fit with Christianity.
While I can understand why you believe this way, natural selection is readily observed, not evolution. In order for evolution to occur, mutations have to positively impact DNA as to fundamentally change the organism. Mutations do not change organisms in a positive way except in a few rare cases. If there is sufficient evidence for anthropogenic global warming and evolution, then why is so much scientific data on the subjects falsified? I understand the word theory itself; I am questioning some of the empirical evidence used to form such theories. Gravity is a law, not a theory. No one is questioning how gravity works.
Following up on Cometswin post you are conflating religion with science and they are two very different ways of looking at things. Evolution, Global Warming and other scientific theories aren't a matter of belief but a matter of probability as things in science are never fully proven just shown to have a higher or lower probability. That is why Einstein's theories have superseded Newton's Laws. It's not that Newton's laws are wrong it's that Einsteins theories are more probably and provide more likely explanation of the Universe than Newton did. As far as that scientists in the field can't provide empirical evidence to support Evolution and Global Warming or experimental evidence there is a lot of evidence both from observation and from experimentation to support those theories. These have been extensively debated here on D&D and a simple search will turn up several threads where they have been exhaustively discussed. Finally I will add that Evolution doesn't necessarily contradict faith beliefs unless you take the text in the most literal and shallow way. Science and spirituality are two ways of understanding existence. I believe as human beings both are important but it is a mistake to use the means of one to prove or disprove the other.
To be frank you are showing an ignorance of the subject. As I said everything you bring up here has been extensively discussed and a simple search will address your points. Actually the exact mechanism of how gravity works is not understood is a subject of debate. Also the term that gravity is a law isn't quite correct. As noted there are several things that are called "law" in science that have been superseded by later "theory."
Oh don't even start with that. Why does life have to be fair? What is life without suffering? (Paradise is what it is).
Actually, everyone is questioning the why of gravity and that's why it's a theory. Evolution has been observed in labs. Scientific data is falsified in all kinds of fields just like people lie about all kinds of things. If others can't review and duplicate the results then it doesn't have so much credibility. Anyone can claim a scientific study (Exxon?) just like any preacher can say the world's going to end on a certain date. That someone claims something to be science doesn't give it credibility. It's when it's reviewed, duplicated, and verified that it has credibility.
I don't doubt their sincerity certainly in what they believed but I think human thought and philosophy in general goes through an evolution. So that the message and motivations might be different in some way or even revolutionary in some way I don't think gives their stories some inherent believability over the rest. I frankly believe there'll be a third testament at some point to suit the times in which it's written. In 400 years we may very well be talking about a new religion focused on some other principle that gains just in the evolution of thought and philosophy. We see our present moment in time as kind of the final word, sort of an arrogance that we have that we're not just another civilization in time on this planet. I'm sure 3,000 years ago they thought the same thing. And it's probable that there might not be such thing as religion in 400 years. The number of people that are more spiritual than religious or just flat out not religious is rising quickly, especially in first world countries.
Someone explain what points of evolution you can prove, or post the links to the original forums. Thank you.
Think of this as an dialogue between scientists and people searching for truth. Pretend we are just asking these questions in 2013 and there is no religion, or theists. I don't think it's fair to blame religion as the reason why people believe in God. It's inevitable. I find it ironic that atheists hate religion. Atheists don't believe in creationism, so why hate something that developed into your existence? Without religion or the idea of god, so much would have changed and the chances of anyone being here without creationism today is zero. Religion has changed so much in history. It does not hinder our development, stupid people may, but not religion.
Christian vs Non-Christian debates remind me of VY sucks or doesn't suck debates. Both sides are equally ridiculous.
For the atheists and non-atheists, if God exists there must be proof that he exists somewhere. The question is, if God exists, then there must be proof, so WHERE is that proof? The chances that the proof would be inside our known universe, accessible by us, recognizable by our sensory tools, understandeable by our minds, and proveable by scientific theories which have been constructed by a construct of said God, which have worked extremely well only for a relatively small amount of time... the chances of that are zero. So you can have faith that God exists. You can believe he does not exist, or not have any opinion about it at all. We will never know. There is no proof. It is precisely the absence of proof which created the concept of God - whether he exists or not is irrelevant. The idea that people are trying to resolve something utterly unresolvable seems to be begging for conflict. The idea that belief or non-belief is a source of conflict is also ridiculous - the only time they become a point of conflict is when they cross their limits in order to do what's going on in this thread... insist that the other side agree with them, or insist that the other side stop believing something. Instead of asking why people have to believe what they believe, try asking yourself how we can allow people to believe whatever they want to believe while maintaining as much liberty in a civil society as possible.
