My friend, who has visited Sai Baba's ashram, is convinced that he has seen Sai Baba perform miracles. He is just as certain that Sai Baba has visited his home in home by astral projection. Why shouldn't I believe him, rather than believe you? You can no more prove your God to me than he can prove his claims. If there is a God why doesn't he just come down and prove his existence to me. And while he is at it he can also prove that he is worthy of worship which, I personally don't think the Christian God is worthy of. Any God who would let people be punished for eternity is worthy of worship. At least Quakers don't believe that God would punish people in this way.
Holy shit. You know Luther if you really want to continue this, it ought to be in a new thread. This one is about religious belief and scientific belief coexisting. I personally belief they can coexist as long as the religious belief does not make dogmatic claims which are testable by science and are shown to be false. Luther, you make incredible claims (demons, devils, God exist) without any evidence to back them up. That's fine because those claims are not testable and there is no way to factually refute them. But you also claim that my view is incomplete because I have not "asked God into my heart yet". That has no place in this thread because the idea that facts are revealed to you by "asking God into your heart" is totally incompatible with science. Voices in your head are definitely NOT objective evidence. Apparently, you are an evolution-denier yourself so why are you even in this thread? INCREDIBLY, you claim that I will not be persuaded by facts. Dude, I am atheist/agnostic and a Secular Humanist! Facts are exactly the thing I am most impressed by and WILL be persuaded by! You got facts to lay on me? Bring them on!
Hey! Where did your sombrero go? You must've just changed that...it seemed like it was there just 5 minutes ago!
My sombrero? - I haven't worn one for months. However my profile picture still has me wearing a sombrero.
Actually, when you look at the way the world is, classical paganism starts to make more and more sense. I mean, how could one God possibly run the whole show? He must at least have department heads, or executive vice-gods or something. These numerous deities are basically humans writ large, with all of the human weaknesses, failings and foibles. And the best way to gain their favor is to suck up to them, maybe sacrifice a goat or something, and try to stay off their shit list. Besides, that old Mount Olympus bunch were FUN gods! They knew how to party. There's an old joke: When we talk to God, it's called prayer. When God talks to us, it's called schizophrenia.
If the Christian God had run the whole show he really should have delegated the designing of species to someone with more experience. The natural world is full of badly "designed" animals that are explainable by evolution, but not if they were designed by a perfect being. The early biblical God liked animals sacrificed to Him which is another illogical thing about him (and other Gods as well). Do these Gods need to eat or did/do they just like the smell of burning flesh?
Including us. The human brain, appendix, wisdom teeth and tail-bone are examples. As are the male prostate and the female clitoris. None of these things make any sense at all if you assume an intelligent designer but perfect sense when looked at in the context of evolution.
That's called the darkwing_duck defence. Suffices to say, it doesn't work very well. Well, I guess this is the reason why for some people science and religion can't just get along. Luckily, a lot of people here have come forward to say that believing in a deity doesn't mean you have to throw science out of the window. Mmh, and this is the Lookingglassman defence. You are really throwing everything on the floor, aren't you. How... unsurprising.
Science and religion can coexist just fine. I do wish they were both equally adaptive, though that rarely seems to be the case. I feel lucky that I was raised in an environment where I feel little conflict between the two.
Christian/Muslim/Jewish mythology is a total mess. Dozens of different authors from dozens of different decades, and all these fantasy stories are slapped together in one book. Then there are so many translation errors. Anyone who takes these books word for word is not right in his mind. The bible tells you just as much about our universe as Lord of the Rings or the Nibelung saga. They share the same level of credibility. At best you can interpret some metaphorical meaning, but you really have to keep in mind what time the original text was written in and who could have possibly written it to make a valid interpretation.
Anyone who claims to have seen or experienced undocumented lifeforms or has heard voices needs to seek professional help. You either have a serious mental disorder and/or you ingested a hallucinogen. This is what all visions in the past were based off of---tripping out over some moldy food or accidentally eating the greens from a nightshade plant (potato, tomato, eggplant, etc.)
My son is in Catholic school too, and he is learning all sorts of science. I truly believe that most people can either accept both science and religion and if they're just on one side of the fence, they can respect the other side. It's the few hard-core extremists on either side that are the ones that get the publicity, I blame the media.
I look at it this way: God created the dinosaur. He wasn't happy with them, so he cleaned the slate with a big rock and tried again. Some dinosaurs survived and became birds. God wasn't happy with the humans of Noah's generation, so he told Noah to build a big boat and wiped out most of the human population with a big flood. Again, some of his creations survived. What does that tell you? That evolution is God's way of trying different things.
^interesting point. I too believe dinosaurs were God's first idea. Not mine to wonder why He changed His mind. I think people who don't have enough room for faith and science in their lives are living half a life. Reconciling the two is a lifelong adventure well worth the time. People who choose one over the other are missing a much bigger picture. If the human mind could grasp all the intricies of the cosmos it'd be a very poor one indeed. Let science find evidence of Faith. I am confident it will all work out. You say I'm weak minded for having Faith someone bigger than me is in charge? I'd say a leap of that kind of faith takes a fairly strong person.
There are hundreds of channels on my TV, but only anything worthwhile on a few of them, and that only occasionally. If there were an infinite number of channels I rather doubt the situation would change significantly.
Why does the Almighty have to change his mind? If he is Almighty, he knows the outcome before it happened.