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But all religions claim that information is given, and that people have used their freedom to reject the choice, for whatever reason. Christians go further and say that men killed God when he came to offer them the choice again. Christians also argue that their murder did not end the choice.
Now you may believe that the choice is not a real one, and that people don’t have free will. That’s another argument.
Paige was merely making the argument against your point that God should be making people worship him if he exists.
That’s just a misunderstanding. You’re mixing up God’s creation of a universe and God’s interaction with an already created universe
My post was never about the ‘creation’ of the universe.
Therefore, in measuring the universe, we are measuring God’s creation.
No, you have to prove that God exists before you can prove that God created the universe.
Secondly, as alfie points out, religions claim that God did interact with the universe. God appeared to Moses and (in Islam) to Mohammed.
Claims that have never been verified, which would be trivially easy to do if they were true.
In Christianity, God appears as a man, who was rejected and killed by men.
There is no mainstream branch in christianity in which God is killed by a human. What does it even mean to kill a being that exists outside of time and space?
That means that god appeared at a particular point in space and time, and therefore it is possible for historical evidence to be gathered which can disprove that Jesus actually existed and did the things he claimed. So far History hasn’t been able to disprove this; quite the contrary.
There is no evidence that Jesus existed, even if there were. It does nothing to prove he was anything other than a normal human.
As far as I know, the only part of the bible that has been proven to be true is that the remains of human sacrifices have been found in the general area thought to be described as Caanan. The bible describes the Canaanites as people who worshiped the god Moloch (one of many other gods that exist in the bible) by human sacrifice.
This doesn’t even prove that Caanan existed, there are no cities, or other evidence of that part of the world being significantly populated at that time. Just that there was a small tribe who had some form of ritual involving human bodies.
Paige was merely making the argument against your point that God should be making people worship him if he exists.
I never said that God would make people worship him, only that more people would choose to worship him if they knew that he existed.
Jane, I agree with your point, but… JWs are not alone.Christianity and Islam are the two missionary religions – they believe in conversion. That’s why their conflicts are bloody when it turns physical, from the Crusades to ISIS. However, one thing you can say to them is no, or amusing variations, and they’ll go. I always tell the JWs that I belong to the opposition and close the door. Unlike ISIS, they won’t kill you. As just not6hing points out, you have to develop a thick skin sometimes, but it’s part of the belief systems of evangelicals, charismatics etc that we all need to be converted. Not all Christians or Muslims believe that shouting at someone or knocking on their door is any good at converting people, but many do. Something you have to put up with – like adverts for sugary foods.
The crusades were hundreds of years ago and bear no relevance to Christianity in the 21st century. You may as well start talking about people getting leeches put on their bodies if they were going to an NHS hospital if you keep bringing up past transgressions centuries ago as a valid argument for persecuting a faith of today. Islam is another matter entirely.
The post says that Religion is like a penis..you don’t push it on children. The analogy is clear to all.
Of course, you are free to interpret this how you feel best. How I interpret this is, and I hope how most will interpret this is :- For the vast majority of us penis owners, we should, and I’m sure the very vast majority do, know as a natural instinct one does not push it onto children, just like we know not to put our hand into an open fire or heads into the oven. Even cats and dogs have a natural instinct to keep a safe distance from an open fire. Thus, that natural instinct we have to not put our heads into the oven, hands into an open fire, or push our penis onto children, should equally apply to pushing religion onto a child. So the analogy is actually anti pedophilic rather that pedophilic, which is how you seem to have interpreted it, hence me using the word warped to describe your way of thinking. Richard Dawkins goes one step further by saying pushing religion onto a child actually constitutes child abuse. Personally, I find it difficult to disagree with Dawkins on that point.
How does that atheist bigot Dawkins justify singling out religious preaching to your child to be equivalent to child abuse??? .
If preaching to a child led to that child committing terrorist activities for eg as a consequence of indoctrinated mythology subsequently leading to death or life long imprisonment, what you define it as?
The Dawkins atheist crowd seem a bit freaky to me. How can you say science can prove things? It shows a total ignorance of science. Science is about the testing of hypotheses, and the hypotheses are constantly being disproved. Very few scientists (other than Dawkins) believe that science proves things. Even Dawkins, in a moment of self-honesty, admitted that some force may well have created teh cosmos. Science just can’t prove or disprove the existence of a God. If God created the cosmos, science was created along with everything else. Science is part of the puzzle, not the solution to the puzzle. If you discuss God(s) – whatever type of God(s), Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu etc etc – you need to use different paths than experimental science.
Nothing that we currently know of can prove or disprove the hypothesis of a ” creator” but science can and continually does contradict and discredit all mainstream religions rendering them unfit for purpose. A simple example is evolution which is commonly accepted rather than some laughably constructed scenario of Adam and Eve in the garden of eden being responsible for humanity found in the Christian church.
The diverse world of science is brought together on this by the philosophy of science. Of course the testing of hypotheses leads to results, but no scientist nowadays thinks that leads to closure. Ever since Popper, scientists have accepted that falsifiability is the fundamental condition of experimentation. If it’s not falsifiable, then it’s not scientific. Nothing can be done with it. That’s why Marxist-Leninism and religious faith aren’t scientific. They’re not falsifiable. And that is my point. Religious faith deals with questions with which science can’t deal without becoming unscientific. As soon as you look at the traditional proofs for God’s existence set out by Anselm and Aquinas, and the discussion of these proofs by Hume and Kant (they are the milestones, obviously it can get pretty complicated) it becomes clear that science can’t really deal with these. Science is concerned with exploiting the nature of the physical cosmos in all its levels – religion with the force(s) behind the cosmos. When atheists say God doesn’t exist, Christians were there before them. God doesn’t exist because God created existence – space and time are ways in which we humans understand that existence. Scientific thought has extended our understanding of space and time in some pretty freaky ways, and they are fascinating. The old 19th century materialist science isn’t held by many scientists now. It’s seen as a mystery, a mystery whihc some do hope to solve (like Hawking). maybe they will. Who knows? not me, not you. Not Dawkins. What we do know is that we are talking about a mystery, and it’s unscientific to pretend otherwise. That means that if we’re going to discuss God, then experimental science and the testing of hypotheses (for the moment at least ) doesn’t work. Other ways have to be used. Discussion of the Gospels as historical works, books written in a particular time, is one starting point for Christianity, and the conclusions are not clearcut in the way broadcast by the Dawkins crowd or by the Biblical literalists. There are other discussion points where a grown-up dialogue can take place, as opposed tot the schoolyard bragging of the atheists and the scary certainty of the religious fundamentalists during the last few years.
If a human being wrote a book, subsequently labelled it a “religion” with numerous aspects of it proven to be false using factual evidence derived from science, why would you entertain the notion that the rest was correct or even bother discussing such a book of mythology? You say the discussions in the Gospels are not clear cut by Dawkins which implies you believe for eg that we originated from Adam and Eve in the garden with Satan slithering down the tree in the form of a snake. If you accept it’s at best symbolic nonsense , why would you want to explore a work of such clear misleading fiction set out from such an absurd starting point, it becomes a book of comedy contrary to anything worthy of exploration or discourse?
but no scientist nowadays thinks that leads to closure.
May I ask what makes you feel qualified to speak for every scientist on the planet?
. But modern scientists who takes their methodology seriously start off from doubt and falsifiability. To assume that science is a replacement for religion is to demonstrate a real ignorance iof developments in thinking on the topic.
If science starts off from a basis of doubt, what would you say something derived from a book written 2000 years ago talking about myth used as a template for ” religion” starts off from then? Can you give an example of how science and religion are compatible, or is it a case of a search for knowledge exposes all known religions for the emotional crutches of deluded drivel they are so concessions are made in religions in order to facilitate some credibility in a world which increases their ridiculous status?
I was laying in bed one morning, I was visited by the holy ghost, I was pinned, the spirit told me, things ,… Amen
Are you sure it wasn’t the holy spirit rather than the holy ghost which visited due to large quantities of cider consumed?
I rember I was floating through a long dark tunnel was very surreal then there was this friendly guy with a beard beckoning me at a gate
It could have been hugs and winks tbf who has a long flowing beard apparently
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