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If gene therapy gave us a way to eliminate religious belief, who would be in favour?
Personally, I don't like the idea one little bit.
As in "A clockwork orange", change is useless if it is forced. It has to come from within the raised consciousness of the individual.
Yes on the one hand we have mudsharks opinion of science on the other hand the current Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford.
The experiment in question is not a valid test of prayer - not sure what would be as if something like prayer is real then by it's nature it's unlikely to be testable - for instance God is part of the process and will know about the test and alter results as he sees fit. Not saying that God exists but if you want to test prayer and God you have to be open to the outcome.
As for Dawkins - he has many critics amongst atheists and agnostics so I ain't alone.
As for Spaceman, I'm sorry but I find nothing worth debating from you.
[i]Mike - Stalin is a good example of someone using "atheism" as an excuse perpetrate mass murder. [/i]
This one crops up in virtually every debate about religion I've ever seen. Dawkins deals with it admirably well in Chapter 7 of The God Delusion. Individual atheists may do evil deeds but it's NOT in the name of atheism, Stalin did it in the name of dogmatic and doctrinaire Marxism, Hitler (who contrary to popular belief was probably not an atheist) did evil deeds based on an insane and unscientific eugenics theory. That's quoted more or less verbatim from The God Delusion.
Christian baiting is just a fun sport, lets not get worked up about it. After all it's only a persons personal view that we offend. In a who cares selfish society it's always the easy targets that we take a pop at, bit like bullying really, christians have been subject to it for years, they love it, throw them to the lions.
Lets stick with the reasoned arguments not the insults please. One suspects that if Christians met in small groups and planned tube bombings the arguments would be less combative or not at all.
[u][b]NOTE:[/b] I never advocated the banning of religion, just to clear that up.[/u]
When my wife had cancer and despite my knowledge and the doctors knowledge, it was our faith and prayers that really made the difference.
I'm sorry your wife had cancer but to believe that your prayers made more difference than highly trained doctors and the most advanced medical care? I am guessing you can offer no evidence to prove this hypothesis then I am sorry that is delusional. Glad it worked, but its still not how it happened.
My point was that for those who have faith death is not the end and also it really made a difference in being able to cope with something you have no control over.
If death is not the end and a better life awaits you in heaven with god, why are so many religious people afraid of dying? I don't believe you should "cope" with anything, you should accept it and then work with it or arround it. Throwing up your hands and putting it down to a devine plan is as much a cop-out as burying your head in the sand.
So you find it hugely amusing that a large number of people choose to believe in a devine being but are happy to believe that suddenly, like a Paul Daniels magic trick a couple of atoms mysteriously appeared into the cosmos (which of course didn't exist at that time) and exploded with such a mighty bang that we have a universe that is trillions of miles wide and still growing and filled with all manner of gas and rocks and minerals. Right. And you think Christians are a funny bunch? So which of these can be conclusively proved? The universe started with a big bang or God doesn't exist?
1) You can't prove a negative as Mr Bush and Mr Blair have found out in Iraq.
2) The Big Bang [u]Theory[/u] is just that, it is the best model scientists. physics bods and cosmologists have been able to come up with so far. It is open to pretty fierce peer review and additional data from new experiments. And it wasnt a "couple of atoms" it was the entire universe condensed into a singularity. I have had the good sense to investigate religion before giving my opinion on it, please extend the same courtesy to science.
As Richard Fynman said in the forword to QED:Quantum Electro Dynamics, "It can explain how things work, not [u]why[/u]" Lets get the ToE sorted and see what happened before the Big Bang (if that is even a valid question)
The experiment in question is not a valid test of prayer - not sure what would be as if something like prayer is real then by it's nature it's unlikely to be testable - for instance God is part of the process and will know about the test and alter results as he sees fit. Not saying that God exists but if you want to test prayer and God you have to be open to the outcome.
If it can't be tested its not a theory it's merely an idea. I am all for testing the power of prayer in a scientifically stringent, double blind test with a large sample size. I have a feeling that it just won't happen and if it does many people will provide the "defense" that you just have. If any god/s would alter the results of the test to prove / disprove / void the test they are not the sort of beings I would p!ss on if they were on fire, much less worship. That sort of capricious, insecure and vengeful god belongs in the Old Testement...oh hang on...
SSP
Crazy-legs.
That's why I put "atheism" in quotation marks.
It was a badly argued point, trying to respond to those of a religious nature who stated that Christianity is not to blame for those who commit attrocities in it's name. I should have spelt that out clearly - getting lazy.
if something like prayer is real then by it's nature it's unlikely to be testable
just wrong if it is NOT real it can be tested as you cannot prove a negative.
Not saying that God exists but if you want to test prayer and God you have to be open to the outcome
It was tested we were open we found no evidence to support it .. this is what we did.
Granted god may be tricking scientists but seems a bit perverse as god we get a lot of business if god just proved that god was real....marketting may not be his strong point ?
Individual atheists may do evil deeds but it's NOT in the name of atheism
To be fair it would be an odd person who did something in the name of a disbelief!
Tis a fun sport, largely because the two sides of this debate can never really agree, even if only to disagree.
I'm on the side of the atheists, thankfully my parents saw fit to avoid all religion like the plague and I've grown up singularly unencumbered with any of it's trappings.
What fascinates me most is the intellectual hoops anyone who believes in any religion would seem to have to jump through, from the Ark story, through Virgin birth, miracles, re-incarnation and so on.
Do you really believe this stuff? I mean honestly?
Junkyard - but as I understand it a point of Christianity is that God doesn't want it to be obvious - hints and clues but not absolutes. Otherwise we'd all believe right? Possibly.... Anyway, I think a view is that choices we make now determine whether we get into heaven or not. It does all sound a bit odd but I suppose by it's nature it has to. Like the idea of a virgin birth; if it happened it only happened once so no point arguing how unlikely it might be.
Do you really believe this stuff? I mean honestly?
Do you not think that martyrs do...well did?
[i]To be fair it would be an odd person who did something in the name of a disbelief! [/i]
My point exactly, no-one has ever started a war out of disbelief, contrast that with the number of wars done "in God's name"...
Surely if God were omnipotent, he'd be able to deal with the problem himself rather than have a bunch of people do it for him?
as I understand it a point of Christianity is that God doesn't want it to be obvious - hints and clues but not absolutes.
Christianity - the worlds first viral markiting campaign?
Otherwise we'd all believe right?
Surely the idea? Everyone lives nice lives, goes to heaven and is saved. Or is it required to have some heathans to look down on?
See my previous comment about a capricious god...
SSP
crikey they do without evidence and then the book says they will be persecuted for their beliefs so when we argue we reinforce this belief ... it is foolproof.
If a science fiction writer can invent a religion (Scientology and L Ron Hubbard) that states we come from aliens and get believers to follow it then there really is no limit to a persons ability to suspend their senses and belief in anything sadly.
Junkyard - but as I understand it a point of Christianity is that God doesn't want it to be obvious - hints and clues but not absolutes. Otherwise we'd all believe right?
Possibly but also an excellent excuse for no evidence.
Going for my tea should learn to ignore these threads no one ever convinces anyone of anything.
Enjoy the debate at least we stayed civil
Martyrs were from a different time, so I'm asking, not in a take-the-wee way, but seriously, in a sit down and be truthful way, do you really believe those things actually happened?
...and if you do truly believe that, how do you square it with your own life and experience now?
I know a number of people who seem to be able to almost suspend their disbelief or turn off their critical faculties in the name of religion, and I find it fascinating, almost schizophrenic in a way. That's not an insult b-t-w, just the only way I can describe it.
Ever decreasing circles. All relevant points made.
Think the atheists took this one on a hotly disputed penalty. 😀
Enjoyed that!
What fascinates me most is the intellectual hoops anyone who believes in any religion would seem to have to jump through, from the Ark story, through Virgin birth, miracles, re-incarnation and so on.
No no no, you're getting mixed up. You can be Christian but not believe the Bible. If there were a God, would that preclude people making up a load of nonsense and putting it in a book? No!
A lot of laziness and closed minds on this thread.
It's about the psychology of faith, not what's wrong and right, unfortunately.
These threads are endlessly entertaining. At first i always start of quite indignant at the usual "[i]Religion should be banned[/i]" statements and the use of Dawkins as a serious commentator on anything except evolutionary biology: on theology and the philosophy of science he is, to be honest, a bit of a thicket to anyone who has read anything other than, um, Dawkins on the subject.
Bad religion led to the horrors of the inquisition and countless wars.
Bad science led to the horrors of the gas chambers and the gulag (and, arguably, provided the justification for the horrors of the slave trade).
The common feature of both? Humans. Eventually we'll wipe ourselves out and the ends of natural selection will have been served.
No no no, you're getting mixed up. You can be Christian but not believe the Bible.
So how are you a christian with out following the will of god? And how do you know the will of god?* Is there a separate "Even Newer Testement...no, this is really the real one, Honest" that has come to light?
Genuinly interested on this point.
SSP
*"Just knowing" or "through messages relayed by my cat" will do nothing for the cause!
While Christianity may get knocked it does provide a framework and a moral guide to many people against which they can assess their decisions and how they live their lives, to motivate them to think of others and do good for society as a wider entity that just themselves
No it doesnt. We interpet the bible with 21st C morals. We ignore the bits that tell us to kill our children if they talk back to us or kill our wives and leave their bodies on their Fathers doorsteps if we find they are not Virgins on their wedding night.
Its absolute rubbish to say the bible provides with any moral framework in fact the opposite is the case.
People who do good because they believe they are going to heaven are morally nferior to those that do good but believe they only have one life. In effect in this instance one could argue those who dont believe in god have the high moral ground.
No no no, you're getting mixed up. You can be Christian but not believe the Bible.So how are you a christian with out following the will of god? And how do you know the will of god?* Is there a separate "Even Newer Testement...no, this is really the real one, Honest" that has come to light?
Genuinly interested on this point.
SSP
(Just butting in here: I know of people calling themselves Christians who set more store by the Nag Hammadi Library (mostly Gnostic Christian texts) than the New Testament (and only then in the Coptic versions) or, alternatively, other Apocryphal books.
It's a shame that such an endlessly amazing example of human psychology and interaction gets submerged in the arguments. I'm a real dyed in the wool unbeliever, but I do enjoy the subject.
It's about the psychology of faith, not what's wrong and right, unfortunately.
I dont have time to come back on your response earlier, may do tomorrow.
To me the incredible pirouettes that people can go through to surround belief in a fog of pseudo intellectualism in the name of religion is staggering.
Anyway agree with Junkyard always rely on these hotly contested matters staying relatively civil.
2) The Big Bang Theory is just that, it is the best model scientists. physics bods and cosmologists have been able to come up with so far. It is open to pretty fierce peer review and additional data from new experiments. And it wasnt a "couple of atoms" it was the entire universe condensed into a singularity. I have had the good sense to investigate religion before giving my opinion on it, please extend the same courtesy to science.
My, it gets even better. And people have difficulty in believing in a deity? So, we play with semantics a little with the big bang. But even so, surely a reasonably intelligent person would struggle to believe that the entire universe was compressed into a singularity?
And why the scepticism over someone's wife being healed through prayer when, as has happened in a number of cases, the physicians have done all they can have no other options open to them? I have no idea why she was healed and I have no idea whether there really is a God that healed her. I think you will find a majority of Christians who will struggle to answer the question of why some are healed and others are not.
Anyway, as had been commented I don't think our rambling uninformed discussions on here will change what anyone does or doesn't believe. Or solve world peace. Or make those nice new Shimano bits I want any cheaper.
Martyrs were from a different time
Well that's not true! I'm told that there are Muslim martyrs....
Anyway, certainly there are people who truly believe thought hard for an outsider to prove. Perhaps those people that give up their comfortable lives to become missionaries are showing true belief? I think a large number of those that call themselves followers of whatever faith do seem to blindly follow with little real understanding. This might be more obvious with those that are born into a religion in the sense that Catholics, Jews and Muslims are.
You can be Christian but not believe the Bible.
Well I think that's a bit of a dodgy view but I can imagine there are people who call themselves Christian but more or less ignore the bible. More mainstream Christians might say they are not Christians if they don't believe it but as long as they believe the key aspects of the bible then that's all that matters I think. Possible Molgrips is saying that Christians don't need to believe the entire bible in a literal sense.
Who is it that does the custom head tube badges? One of those Darwin Fish would look great on a headtube.
Anyway, here's an interesting take on religion vs evolution by [url=
Minchin[/url]
Its absolute rubbish to say the bible provides with any moral framework in fact the opposite is the case.
People who do good because they believe they are going to heaven are morally nferior to those that do good but believe they only have one life. In effect in this instance one could argue those who dont believe in god have the high moral ground.
Perhaps you should have a read of it sometime. You seem to be stuck in an Old Testament time warp with some obscure examples. Not sure how you arrive at the opposite point either.
I also think you will find that Christians do not do good becasue they believe they are going to heaven but rather because they believe it to be the right thing to do even if it is a cost to themselves. Christians / religious people do not claim to have exclusive access to "doing good". No good act is morally better or worse than another. Religious people though are driven through a combination of their own personal moral compass and the lens of the faith that they subscribe to. Where the two differ, they will endeavour to do the thing that their faith suggests is the right thing to do - which is not killing babies or lynching homosexuals.
So, we play with semantics a little with the big bang. But even so, surely a reasonably intelligent person would struggle to believe that the entire universe was compressed into a singularity?
I have a background in Physics and Cosmology and I would say I was reasonably intelligent and I have a hard time imagining the entire universe in a single point. What matters is that the observational data supports the theory that is was all at one point a long time back and did expand violently. Star life cycles are widely observed and the heavy elements scattered by the super novas all goes to make nice Shimano gears, hard to believe but there you are 🙂
So as I don't believe the bible but do believe that killing people is wrong does that make me a christian? Surely not coverting a neighbours ox is the supression of desire and thus a Buddhist idea and so all christians are buddhists.
Glad we sorted that one out.
SSP
It's always quite amusing on threads like this to watch the God-botherer-botherers getting all worked up about religion, quite desperate for someone who is Christian to post something denouncing stories like the Daily Mash thing as evil. I'm afraid though that about 99.9% of Christians would simply regard it as a reasonably witty, but harmless, spoof newspaper story, and would likely have a good chuckle over it.
There does almost seem to be a competition along the lines of "Look at me, I'm the most anti-Christian person on here". Well sorry guys, but no-one really cares. None of the religious people I know get bothered how worked up you get.
Oh, and I know it kind of suits your view of things to believe all Christians believe literally in the story of Adam and Eve, the world being created in 6 days etc. Well I'm afraid they don't. They see it as an allegory, and actually believe in evolution as well.
It's only when we'll die that we'll find out what the truth is (unless the aetheists are correct of course, and they may well be), but until then it would be nice if some folk on here could accept that the vast, vast majority of Christians (and other religions too) are not extreme bigots. If you're going to argue either for or against religion, do try and do it in an intelligent way.
Along with his noodlyness "well **** me those are gonna come in useful" have made my day
The CERN particle accelerator thingy was made by secular scientists to search for, as I understand it, the higgs-boson, the existence of which is theoretically essential because if it does not exist then it is hard to see that there can be enough mass in the universe. Is that roughly right? I suppose it is possible to imagine a world in which the Vatican perhaps had decided that the way to go was to "prove" seriously the existence of phenomena pointing to the existence of god.
Imagine, if you will, a thing the size and budget of the particle accelerator, staffed by hundreds of highly trained Investigative Theologians, cardinals and bishops with degrees in Spiritual Measurement and Applied Divinity conductiong gigantic experiments to demonstrate that, for example, there is a measurable surge of energy produced by a soul leaving the body when someone is killed, or that it is possible to re-arrange the molecular structure of water so that it becomes wine when prayed at hard enough. I suppose it is not an original thought, and the experiments that Philip Pullman describes in His Dark Materials are most of the way there.
Point is, that christianity has mostly accomodated itself with scientific progress (by belieiving that god pulled the lever to start the big bang) or by outright pig-ignorant rejection of the sort evident in that "quarter of an eye" leaflet. If things had worked out differently, it is not beyond imagining that the most sophisticated science in the world would today be being conducted to support a an explicitly religious world-view, that people mostly accepted the incredibly rarefied scientific methods that produce the search for the higgs-bison but were completely convinced that god existed and that it was part of his divine plan for his creation that mankind should come to know him through scientific endeavour. Presumably, an experiment of the grandeur and sophistication required to proves the existence of the higgs-bison [i]could[/i] also be couched in such a way that a less secular population and/or more fervently religious scientists would regard it as supporting the existence of god. I guess the psychology of it would be that we would assume they must be correct because what they were doing had moved substantially beyond our understanding and was having so much spent on it that it simply couldn't be nonsense and had to be both important and correct. 🙂
I find both science:
Dresden
Hiroshima
Nagasaki
and Religion
(all faiths)
as equally both dangerous and misguided but also both very capable of doing a great deal of good.
the problem is with power, not religion or science.
Most Christians would subscribe to the fact that God made man and gives him wisdom.
It's only when we'll die that we'll find out what the truth is
not necessarily - you might just be reincarnated as a maggot or mountain - or shift into some other mode of existence, with or without knowledge of what went before...
as for seeking the 'truth', that maybe a meaningless chimera if all there is is subjectivity
Could all the christians on here please do me a favour and write to their leaders (*the real ones, here on earth, with real postal addresses please) and suggest that the minimum age of christening should be set at 18. Then the person being christened could make a much more informed choice on whether they want to or not.
gusamc - or join a Baptist church instead of C of E?
I am all for testing the power of prayer in a scientifically stringent, double blind test with a large sample size.
Triple blind, surely? 🙂
So how are you a christian with out following the will of god? And how do you know the will of god?* Is there a separate "Even Newer Testement...no, this is really the real one, Honest" that has come to light?
A lot of Christians believe the bible is exactly true, and a lot believe it's allegory as kennyp says. The rabid anti-religious people on here should wipe the spume from their lips and speak to some Christians.
To me the incredible pirouettes that people can go through to surround belief in a fog of pseudo intellectualism in the name of religion is staggering.
What's pseudo about it? One's interpretation of reality depends on a great many things, and is hence subjective. A very long debate though and too much for STW 🙂
I have a background in Physics and Cosmology and I would say I was reasonably intelligent and I have a hard time imagining the entire universe in a single point.
I have a background in Physics too. You don't have to imagine it, you just have to look at the evidence and draw your conclusions from it. I'm not particularly well informed in the area, but I understand there are problems with the theory. Still, it's the best one we have 🙂
I would say that Mr. Nutt has said the most sensible thing on this post.
Oh, and kennyp makes some good points as well. I always find the aetheistic zealots particularly amusing with their own pecualiar brand of extremism.
Its absolute rubbish to say the bible provides with any moral framework in fact the opposite is the case.
People who do good because they believe they are going to heaven are morally nferior to those that do good but believe they only have one life. In effect in this instance one could argue those who dont believe in god have the high moral ground.Perhaps you should have a read of it sometime. You seem to be stuck in an Old Testament time warp with some obscure examples. Not sure how you arrive at the opposite point either.
I also think you will find that Christians do not do good becasue they believe they are going to heaven but rather because they believe it to be the right thing to do even if it is a cost to themselves. Christians / religious people do not claim to have exclusive access to "doing good". No good act is morally better or worse than another. Religious people though are driven through a combination of their own personal moral compass and the lens of the faith that they subscribe to. Where the two differ, they will endeavour to do the thing that their faith suggests is the right thing to do - which is not killing babies or lynching homosexuals.
I've read lots of it my point is that we use our own modern moral compass (to use your phrase) not that of the bible. We have thrown out both the old and the new testament, (both of which advocated the keeping of slaves by the way) because we have derived a modern ethical framework that tells us this is morally wrong. The bible in any of its revisions doesnt provide us with this guidance so where does our decision to not treat other races as farm equipment come from? Society has developed it all on its own, in spite of the bible not because of it.
Of course the bible says lost of good things as well, which believers will focus on whilst ignoring the spiteful and nasty. However it would have been more useful for an all seeing and all knowing god to provide us with a cure for cancer. Now that would be a reason for believing.
People can do good without resorting to evangelising and telling lies about contraception but these re seldom religious groups but "doctors without frontiers" who provide medical support and help without any religiou conditions.
Possible Molgrips is saying that Christians don't need to believe the entire bible in a literal sense.
Which bits? A pick and mix approach? The miracles? Water into wine?
regarding prayer...Richard Dawkin outlines an experiment where three groups of very ill people are split up so that one group was being prayed for and didn't know it, one group was being prayed for and did know it, while the third group were not being prayed for atall. The group being prayed for who knew it fared the worst out of the three (pressure to perform?) Prayer doen't work, might make the person doing the praying feel better but thats it.That really annoys me - bad science. In fact by metioning it Dawkins weakens his position as mixes science with bllx.
This was a scientific experiment. Religion doesnt like science for obvious reasons however I seem to recall the scramble to adopt scientific method when the shroud of Turin was discovered. The church tripped over itself in its haste for carbon dating. Once it didnt say what the church wanted it to say reverted back to its previous approach.
Hey surfer, where do morals come from? Animals don't have them.
Hey surfer, where do morals come from? Animals don't have them.
I understand our closest relatives monkeys dislike certain behaviour that we find distasteful such as sexual deviance and disloyalty. Sam Harris discusses this in his book "the end of faith"
Its a moot point however we do have them the debate is where do they come from. We are an advanced specied and as Dawkins points out they come from a developing social zeitgeist which is conatantly evolving. The question is do we get them from the bible? I would argue we dont. The fact that the bible says lots of nice things is neither here nor there. We throw out the bad bits and accept the good bits if we use the bible as our guide how do we determine which are good and bad?
We decide because we have a more highly developed sense of right and wrong.
Okay then, where does the 'highly developed' sense of right and wrong come from?