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ORIGINAL: Nexus Wookie

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ORIGINAL: adambatman82

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ORIGINAL: Lazarus munkey
Exactly. So which is worse, the person that can't help but ignore the evidence or the person that actively chooses to?

Ah, but this is where we see it differently: I don't think a religious person (necessarily) chooses to ignore anything, but that they choose to believe in something, an off-shoot of which is a disregard for something else. So here, their faith in their religion outweighs their interest in the reality.

To say that a religious person chooses to ignore 'evidence' is bullshit at best. How do you explain the Arab scientists of old who made leaps and bound's in their chosen field's of science,mathematics, medicine and astronomy? That was made possible because of their faith which told them to embrace science, and evidence, not shun it!

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ORIGINAL: Nexus Wookie

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ORIGINAL: Lazarus munkey

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ORIGINAL: Nexus Wookie

The theory of evolution is just that - a theory. There's a lot of thing's in the evolutionist 'dogma' that still cannot be explained. And even evolutionist's have admitted this themselves. I've gone over these point's so many times, each time i've been faced with something which shows that there was intelligent design behind every living thing. So there is no way you can call something which has yet to realistically beproven as evidence! The ape to man thoery itself is full of discrepancies.

Life is so complex, even a single cell organism - that it could not have been created by mere chance. This has even confounded evolutionists today and many have admitted as much.

DNA mapping has all but proven that evolution by natural selection is scientific fact. The idea that there are gaps in our understanding of it lends absolutely no weight to the case for ID and to claim that it does is a logical fallacy. And to claim that any gaps in understanding mean that both theories remain equal is, quite frankly, nonsense.

No it hasn't! If anything DNA mapping has shown how complex life is - even more than the evolutionist's thought it was! It poses more question's, about the complexity of life!

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ORIGINAL: Nexus Wookie

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ORIGINAL: Lazarus munkey

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ORIGINAL: Nexus Wookie

The theory of evolution is just that - a theory. There's a lot of thing's in the evolutionist 'dogma' that still cannot be explained. And even evolutionist's have admitted this themselves. I've gone over these point's so many times, each time i've been faced with something which shows that there was intelligent design behind every living thing. So there is no way you can call something which has yet to realistically beproven as evidence! The ape to man thoery itself is full of discrepancies.

Life is so complex, even a single cell organism - that it could not have been created by mere chance. This has even confounded evolutionists today and many have admitted as much.

DNA mapping has all but proven that evolution by natural selection is scientific fact. The idea that there are gaps in our understanding of it lends absolutely no weight to the case for ID and to claim that it does is a logical fallacy. And to claim that any gaps in understanding mean that both theories remain equal is, quite frankly, nonsense.

No it hasn't! If anything DNA mapping has shown how complex life is - even more than the evolutionist's thought it was! It poses more question's, about the complexity of life!

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ORIGINAL: BigKovacs

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ORIGINAL: Nexus Wookie

The theory of evolution is just that - a theory. There's a lot of thing's in the evolutionist 'dogma' that still cannot be explained. And even evolutionist's have admitted this themselves. I've gone over these point's so many times, each time i've been faced with something which shows that there is intelligent design behind every living thing. So there is no way you can call something which has yet to realistically beproven as evidence! The ape to man thoery itself is full of discrepancies.

Life is so complex, even a single cell organism - that it could not have been created by mere chance. This fact has even confounded evolutionists today and many have admitted as much.

Evolution is 'just' a theory but it's 'just' a theory versus 'nothing', there's not a single shred of evidence suggesting any other method in which we were created. Nothing, not a single thing.

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To be believe in a divine creator you have to ignore evidence as evidently we evolved. That's ignoring evidence right there and also this Arab scientists were good at science becouse they practiced science, God didn't magically teleport them blueprints for a telescope, they created them through a scientific process, not a religious one.

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ORIGINAL: homersimpson_esq

If nothing else, the idea that it all comes down to chance and chemicals is really, really boring... But that's a whole other argument.

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ORIGINAL: homersimpson_esq

I don't talk about my faith very much, often because I struggle with it daily. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. But the world is a richer place for me for it.

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And ditto Superdan. Nature is a wonder to be marvelled at.

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ORIGINAL: Dpp1978
There are certainly times where calling a person a cunt is not only reasonable, it is a gross understatement.

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ORIGINAL: elab49
I really wish I could go down to see Privates

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ORIGINAL: homersimpson_esq

YAY, it's been a while since we had a good ol' fashioned Religious debate.

Fundamentalists and hardline atheists represent the extremes at both ends. When you read reviews on Amazon, the recommendation is to ignore the 1 and 5 star reviews, and the rest will be something accurate. Same thing here, essentially.

Interestingly both ends of the spectrum get their point of view from a literal interpretation of the bible. The one say, "look, this is how it happened". And the others say, "uh, actually, that's a little bit silly, look how silly your religion looks if you look at it literally, with your zombie saviour, etc". And yes, looked at in that light, it looks daft as a bag of hammers.

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ORIGINAL: BigKovacs

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ORIGINAL: Nexus Wookie

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ORIGINAL: adambatman82

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ORIGINAL: Lazarus munkey
Exactly. So which is worse, the person that can't help but ignore the evidence or the person that actively chooses to?

Ah, but this is where we see it differently: I don't think a religious person (necessarily) chooses to ignore anything, but that they choose to believe in something, an off-shoot of which is a disregard for something else. So here, their faith in their religion outweighs their interest in the reality.

To say that a religious person chooses to ignore 'evidence' is bullshit at best. How do you explain the Arab scientists of old who made leaps and bound's in their chosen field's of science,mathematics, medicine and astronomy? That was made possible because of their faith which told them to embrace science, and evidence, not shun it!

To be believe in a divine creator you have to ignore evidence as evidently we evolved. That's ignoring evidence right there and also this Arab scientists were good at science becouse they practiced science, God didn't magically teleport them blueprints for a telescope, they created them through a scientific process, not a religious one.

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ORIGINAL: Dpp1978
There are certainly times where calling a person a cunt is not only reasonable, it is a gross understatement.

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ORIGINAL: elab49
I really wish I could go down to see Privates

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ORIGINAL: Deviation

Just because it's a reaction doesn't any better. The rise of Islamism is partly a reaction of the Arab dictatorships, doesn't make them any better for that.

The result is them sounding extremely obnoxious on ANYBODY who might have faith, which in the case of these atheists (not the others which actually took it to another murderous extreme, like Pol Pot, Stalin, the Resd during the Spanish Civil War, a certain Mexican government, etc...) is thankfully the worst thing I can say about them, and occasionally being intellectually crass, the other side can be even worse.

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ORIGINAL: elab49

I don't think anyone is arguing they are incompatible - many modern scientists follow faiths of various sorts as well. But it is also a fact that religion has both passively and actively inhibited science through the centuries as well as limited the thinking of even some of the greatest scientists as their possibilities have been limited by their beliefs.

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ORIGINAL: elab49

I don't think anyone is arguing they are incompatible - many modern scientists follow faiths of various sorts as well. But it is also a fact that religion has both passively and actively inhibited science through the centuries as well as limited the thinking of even some of the greatest scientists as their possibilities have been limited by their beliefs.

The part you are missing with the comment on some of the great Arabic scientists is that this didn't come out of nowhere - much of their work followed on from the classical work of earlier civilisations - in fact, via Muslim Spain, many lost works made their way back into Europe and latin translations. The empirical views of earlier scientists were practicised in the Arab world. There were some limits to what many were doing, however - the object of much of the work on maths and astronomy, e.g., was the need for an accurate calendar to aid worship, hence the symbiosis with religion.

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ORIGINAL: superdan

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ORIGINAL: homersimpson_esq

If nothing else, the idea that it all comes down to chance and chemicals is really, really boring... But that's a whole other argument.

I actually find it as amazing as anything that the Bible has; the possibility that given the right combination of chemicals, in the right environment, and with enough time and luck life can almost literally grow from nothing. That's fascinating to me. But I admit it lacks the poetry of the creation argument Having said that, with regard to the Big Bang and the creation of the universe, so little is understood at the moment that there's a point where even non-believers such as myself have to admit that 'God' is as valid an explanation as anything else, because it's all pure speculation. Doesn't mean I believe, just that in the absence of information about a unknowably mysterious event it can't be completely dismissed.

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ORIGINAL: BigKovacs

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ORIGINAL: superdan

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ORIGINAL: homersimpson_esq

If nothing else, the idea that it all comes down to chance and chemicals is really, really boring... But that's a whole other argument.

I actually find it as amazing as anything that the Bible has; the possibility that given the right combination of chemicals, in the right environment, and with enough time and luck life can almost literally grow from nothing. That's fascinating to me. But I admit it lacks the poetry of the creation argument Having said that, with regard to the Big Bang and the creation of the universe, so little is understood at the moment that there's a point where even non-believers such as myself have to admit that 'God' is as valid an explanation as anything else, because it's all pure speculation. Doesn't mean I believe, just that in the absence of information about a unknowably mysterious event it can't be completely dismissed.

Well it can be completely dismissed becouse there's zero evidence to support such an argument.

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Later on you can say the decline of the Islamic golden age was due to the 'dictators' as you put it, and wealth and power and everything else that corrupt's. But i'm referring to the earlier period when the leader's/ Caliph's encouraged debate. They had learned scholar' from all religious back ground's, Jewish, Christian, agnostic in their circles, and they encouraged debate and the sharing of knowledge and sciences for the betterment of theirselves and their communities.

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By the way, there is no such thing as 'Islam-ism', the correct term is just Islam.

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the object of much of the work on maths and astronomy, e.g., was the need for an accurate calendar to aid worship, hence the symbiosis with religion.

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ORIGINAL: Dpp1978
There are certainly times where calling a person a cunt is not only reasonable, it is a gross understatement.

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ORIGINAL: elab49
I really wish I could go down to see Privates

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ORIGINAL: superdan

There's zero evidence to support anything when it comes to the cause of the Big Bang, or what existed before it. Everything prior to the Planck Epoch is pure guesswork, and as such 'God did it' is as valid a guess as anything else.

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ORIGINAL: superdan

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ORIGINAL: BigKovacs

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ORIGINAL: superdan

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ORIGINAL: homersimpson_esq

If nothing else, the idea that it all comes down to chance and chemicals is really, really boring... But that's a whole other argument.

I actually find it as amazing as anything that the Bible has; the possibility that given the right combination of chemicals, in the right environment, and with enough time and luck life can almost literally grow from nothing. That's fascinating to me. But I admit it lacks the poetry of the creation argument Having said that, with regard to the Big Bang and the creation of the universe, so little is understood at the moment that there's a point where even non-believers such as myself have to admit that 'God' is as valid an explanation as anything else, because it's all pure speculation. Doesn't mean I believe, just that in the absence of information about a unknowably mysterious event it can't be completely dismissed.

Well it can be completely dismissed becouse there's zero evidence to support such an argument.

There's zero evidence to support anything when it comes to the cause of the Big Bang, or what existed before it. Everything prior to the Planck Epoch is pure guesswork, and as such 'God did it' is as valid a guess as anything else.

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ORIGINAL: BigKovacs

Well it can be completely dismissed becouse there's zero evidence to support such an argument.

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ORIGINAL: Nexus Wookie

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ORIGINAL: BigKovacs

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ORIGINAL: Nexus Wookie

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ORIGINAL: adambatman82

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ORIGINAL: Lazarus munkey
Exactly. So which is worse, the person that can't help but ignore the evidence or the person that actively chooses to?

Ah, but this is where we see it differently: I don't think a religious person (necessarily) chooses to ignore anything, but that they choose to believe in something, an off-shoot of which is a disregard for something else. So here, their faith in their religion outweighs their interest in the reality.

To say that a religious person chooses to ignore 'evidence' is bullshit at best. How do you explain the Arab scientists of old who made leaps and bound's in their chosen field's of science,mathematics, medicine and astronomy? That was made possible because of their faith which told them to embrace science, and evidence, not shun it!

To be believe in a divine creator you have to ignore evidence as evidently we evolved. That's ignoring evidence right there and also this Arab scientists were good at science becouse they practiced science, God didn't magically teleport them blueprints for a telescope, they created them through a scientific process, not a religious one.

I have to disagree with that mate. I've read into this for a while, and a lot of Islamic scholar's have cited this aswell and most scholar's and professor's of today will be in agreement that one of the sole reason's the Arab's went through a renaissance, discoveries in the field of science and astronomy was because of Islam. Their scripture tell's them to 'Read', not take thing's at face value but to look at the evidence. Muslim's believe the Qur'an to be the word of God and hence you can say the Arab scientist's took inspiration from it. The Arab's before the advent of Islam were in the dark ages, tribe fighting against tribe and living life without any moral basis. The pre-Islamic Arab's were united, and brought forth from their ignorance via the Qur'an and the prophet Muhammad. It (the teaching's) told them to explore, to question, to discover and hence we had the golden age of Islam.


They had been taught from a young age that religion and science is compatible. In fact their holy book (Qur'an) is full of scientific texts! It mention's the big bang, the expansion of the universe, and describes the ozone layer in exact detail, aswell as the developement of the foetus in the womb in exact stages. Aswell as many other scientific facts which science has found to be true -and they have yet to know how a man living in the desert 1400 plus year's ago could know about. The french scientist Maurice Bucaille wrote a book on this called 'The Qur'an, the bible and science'. And some of the thing's he has studied in regard's to science in the Qur'an is absolutely astonishing.

I urge anyone with an open mind to give it a read. It is proof that science and religion is indeed compatible. Today it is the people who due to extremist views (from both sides) shun science or religion without any real thought. So coming back to the original post, my point is that the Arab scientist's, astrologer's of old were inspired by their faith.

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ORIGINAL: Larry Of Arabia
... and as a guess is subject to being completely dismissed.

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ORIGINAL: BigKovacs
God has to be proven to exist before claims can be made on its input in the universe. Seeing as no one has managed that it can be dismissed out of hand.

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Also 'goddidit' is borderig on the absurd, the word God be interchanged with literally anything, Zeus, Cthulu, Katie Price, whatever.

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ORIGINAL: Dpp1978

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ORIGINAL: BigKovacs

Well it can be completely dismissed becouse there's zero evidence to support such an argument.

No.

You can only completely dismiss something when all possible avenues of investigation have been exhausted, and as new methods of investigation are discovered all the time that will probably never happen. Just because we haven't found evidence doesn't mean there isn't any out there to be found should we know where and how to look. Absence of proof is not the same as proof of absence.

The best you can say is, "There is currently no known evidence to support the argument so I reject it until such time as evidence is found." That is a totally rational approach and one I happen to subscribe to.

If I were to completely dismiss the remote possibility there was a creator I would be being as irrational as if I stated that God's existence was a matter of fact rather than an article of faith.

Faith, at least religious faith, is not a rational thing; whatever the evangelical brigade would like to think. It defies rational though, and flies in the face of it. While I do not possess it I am very respectful of those who do, and in general, outside of cultists and fanatics (I can't stand fanatics of any persuasion: religious, political or other), they tend to be normal decent people.

I believe in live and let live. If people choose to believe things I find slightly odd or slightly silly, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, where's the harm? I'm secure enough in my own beliefs to not need validation from science or religion for it not to matter.

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ORIGINAL: Dpp1978

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ORIGINAL: BigKovacs

Well it can be completely dismissed becouse there's zero evidence to support such an argument.

No.

You can only completely dismiss something when all possible avenues of investigation have been exhausted, and as new methods of investigation are discovered all the time that will probably never happen. Just because we haven't found evidence doesn't mean there isn't any out there to be found should we know where and how to look. Absence of proof is not the same as proof of absence.

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The best you can say is, "There is currently no known evidence to support the argument so I reject it until such time as evidence is found." That is a totally rational approach and one I happen to subscribe to.

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If I were to completely dismiss the remote possibility there was a creator I would be being as irrational as if I stated that God's existence was a matter of fact rather than an article of faith.

Faith, at least religious faith, is not a rational thing; whatever the evangelical brigade would like to think. It defies rational though, and flies in the face of it. While I do not possess it I am very respectful of those who do, and in general, outside of cultists and fanatics (I can't stand fanatics of any persuasion: religious, political or other), they tend to be normal decent people.

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ORIGINAL: Dpp1978

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ORIGINAL: BigKovacs

Well it can be completely dismissed becouse there's zero evidence to support such an argument.

No.

You can only completely dismiss something when all possible avenues of investigation have been exhausted, and as new methods of investigation are discovered all the time that will probably never happen. Just because we haven't found evidence doesn't mean there isn't any out there to be found should we know where and how to look. Absence of proof is not the same as proof of absence.

The best you can say is, "There is currently no known evidence to support the argument so I reject it until such time as evidence is found." That is a totally rational approach and one I happen to subscribe to.

If I were to completely dismiss the remote possibility there was a creator I would be being as irrational as if I stated that God's existence was a matter of fact rather than an article of faith.

Faith, at least religious faith, is not a rational thing; whatever the evangelical brigade would like to think. It defies rational though, and flies in the face of it. While I do not possess it I am very respectful of those who do, and in general, outside of cultists and fanatics (I can't stand fanatics of any persuasion: religious, political or other), they tend to be normal decent people.

I believe in live and let live. If people choose to believe things I find slightly odd or slightly silly, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, where's the harm? I'm secure enough in my own beliefs to not need validation from science or religion for it not to matter.