[Closed] Creationist religious nutjob on R4 "One to One 9.30am"

Sorry, couldn't leave it alone.

Ofqual's (the regulator of qualifications, examinations and assessments in England) advice to English school children says 'Wikipedia can be an excellent starting point for research. However, unlike traditional encyclopaedias anyone can add information on any topic, even you! It may not necessarily be authoritative or accurate. In some cases information may be completely untrue.'

[s]Wikipedia[/s]the internet can be an excellent starting point for research. However, unlike traditional [s]encyclopaedia[/s] books anyone can add information on any topic, even you! It may not necessarily be authoritative or accurate. In some cases information may be completely untrue

FWIW I find it to be pretty good on factual stuff and terrible [ but obvious] on politics opinion pieces

In seriousness, next time you find something, show me?

[s]Wikipediathe internet can be an excellent starting point for research. However, unlike traditional encyclopaedia[/s] books [s]anyone can add information on any topic, even you! It[/s] may not necessarily be authoritative or accurate. In some cases information may be completely untrue

FTFFY.

Any single source can be wrong. It's worth cross-referencing for anything important. For the purposes of discussions on a MTB forum though, it's close enough.

Tucker stay up all night rewriting Wiki pages ...I dare you 😉

Steady there as you are dangerously close to get us back on topic there as we can now discuss whether the biblical account is true or not

A famous example: "Cheryl Tweedy is married to the footballer Ashley Cole. This is clearly a marriage of convenience, as Cheryl is a racist and Ashley is a homosexual". Or, the birth and death of Titian...

Still, it remains the definitive source for information on the Upper Peninsular War.

infallibly of course

Homewrok: find out the last time a pope made such a statement

Those maps are great. Here's the info people. apart from the 1.3 billion over there, we got a blank. If there's no info for China I guess you can't extrapolate any data for a genuine percentage of the Earths population re Religious belief then?

Just a thought I had overnight.

Without doubt Mankind’s greatest attribute is its almost limitless imagination. That very same imagination is also its biggest flaw: Aliens, ghosts, gods, visions, hearings voices (as in schizophrenia amongst other mental illnesses), etc.

Couple that with mankind’s well known and demonstrable fallibility (try the ‘selective attention test’. Read up about the law students who were in a bar for a stage robbery, most of whom then identified completely the wrong ‘suspect’ afterwards. Look into crime witness reports, even where one or more people agree, where it transpires that the witnesses were completely wrong and not even remotely close to the truth) and it’s a recipe for all sort of utter nonsense.

Tucker stay up all night rewriting Wiki pages ...I dare you

I would accept but the CIA change pages (along with many other organisations that deal with propaganda). Quite often anything disparaging (but 100% true) about certain companies or individuals get changed.

And at the end of the day it's a US website. And the US is out of kilter with the rest of the world on a great many things. And I'll give an example.

Measurements (in developed countries).

Imperial (Commonwealth: remnants of the British Empire )
Metric (rest of the world, indeed most of the world)
US system (Imperial, but with different values for many units. Um, just the US)

And then there's the language barrier.

If I has a pound for every time someone had quoted wiki to back-up their poor English I'd be a wealthy man indeed.

I liken quoting wiki to someone saying 'My mate Dilbert down the pub said...'

Religion held back science because every time it disagreed with the bible they objected and they had great power

Its not really that debatable tbh

Religion did not always hold back science. It can be argued that Islam helped collect information from lots of different cultures and bring it all together to be studied. understanding and knowledge was encouraged. Some of the libraries in Andalucia, Cordoba especially, lead the way to modern science and culture. Though to counter that, the Catholic invasion did very well and destroying a lot of that too.

Unfortunately you're going to need stats for that Roper

just gonna throw this into the mix.. see if it helps clear things up at all..

[img] [/img]

nice one Yunki. I think it ties it all up nicely. same time next week? 😯

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

no problem.. I'm always happy to help clear up some of life's little mysteries..

just call me Solomon 😀

[img] [/img]

Unfortunately you're going to need stats for that Roper

I'm not sure what you mean I need stats. It is accepted history. Look at Cordoba between the 10C and 11C. It was the capital of knowledge in Europe brought to gether by Islamists. It's libraries had an estimated 400,000 volumes, far larger than anywhere in Europe at the time. Books from greek, Latin Hebrew etcetera were translated to gain a wider understanding of what was known.
It's influence can still be seen in the UK today. The use of Arabic numbers (not Roman) in mathematics, also words like, alchemy, algebra, alcohol.... most words beginning with al have an arabic history.

Roper I think he was joking tbh re the stats thing

Its a fair point that not all religions plunged us into the dark ages. However when science contradict their book science lost out for a long long time. Even today we still have folk wanting to teach creationism - we should discuss this one day 😉

The pope is not generallymconsidered to be infallible. Only when he makes certainkinds of pronouncements, dunno what the term is

Is it arrogance?

Only on matters of morals and faith is the pope infallible - that is quite a broad church [ groans] when you are a church
They dont say what statements they consider to be infallible so its hard to know which was the last one iirc pope John paul did a few

Religion held back science because every time it disagreed with the bible they objected and they had great power

The religious authorities held back science.

Religion is NOT THE SAME as the religious authorities, in the same way that the English language isn't Shakespeare.

The religious authorities held back science.

It would've been quite difficult to do it on their own, I'd have thought.

With apologies to Godwin, weren't the Nazis only following orders?

So when the pope/church was attacking Gallileo [ or coppernicus before him] fro example was it
a] An act free from religion
b] a religiously motivated act due to what they said contradicting what the bible said

ITS NOT A HARD QUESTION

Not interested in this Molly its obvious what occurred and it was religiously motivated.
It held back knowledge because they had all the answers

FFS

It's not a hard concept to understand, to paraphrase your insult.

Religion as a concept is not the same as whoever happens to currently be in charge of it.

The bible has not changed a lot, but science is now free to propose ideas that contradict it. What's changed? The authorities.

They are certainly different areas, but would the religious authorities have any power if it weren't for the religious beliefs of their members?

If we discuss individual beliefs, they are so varied that it's impossible to pin down and discuss. The issue of seeming to attack individuals also rears its head.

If we discuss the organisations, we get told that they don't necessarily reflect the beliefs of individuals.

Religion as a concept is not the same as whoever happens to currently be in charge of it.

but yes it's the men in charge actually making the decrees - who incidentally probably said "god made me do it*" so passing the buck back to religion then.

*or "I am just a conduit for the holy spirit" or similar

Molly you are getting irrate on this thread
No offence but you either need to clam down or walk away.
NOT A TROLL OR GOAD

You could of course answer my question - it was either religiously motivated or it was not and its is obvious which of these it was.

Religion as a concept is not the same as whoever happens to currently be in charge of it.

Whoever happens to be in charge of it ,has generally been chosen by the Church elders, believes the religion and the bible. Ergot whatever they do it is motivated by the Bible and religion and defence of what the Bible says.
had they not had a special book that answered these questions they would not care whether evidence said we orbited the sun or not as it would not matter.

Molly you are getting irrate on this thread
No offence but you either need to clam down or walk away.
NOT A TROLL OR GOAD

With all due respect, I beg to differ.
As usual, he's one of the few voices of reason as another anti-religion thread degenerates into the same old aggression .
But this time he's just outnumbered and OUT-SHOUTED!!!!!!!!!!

another anti-religion thread degenerates into the same old aggression

There's a lot of tosh on this thread.

EDIT: can someone provide a quick summary to save me and others wading through all this nonsense.

Thanks.

With all due respect, I beg to differ.

As usual, he's one of the few voices of reason as another anti-religion thread degenerates into the same old aggression .

But this time he's just outnumbered and OUT-SHOUTED!!!!!!!!!!

Well as I see Godwins law was evoked 31 minutes ago so:

GAME OVER

Credits roll:

thanks to
R4
Jesus
Mohammed
Moses
Buddha
and too many other to mention 🙂

Molly you are getting irrate on this thread

No, I'm really not.

You could of course answer my question - it was either religiously motivated or it was not and its is obvious which of these it was

I thought that was a rhetorical question.

Obviously these things seemed to have religion as their primary motivation. But the reality is probably a lot more complicated than that.

The Catholic church in those days in that area was the establishment, and they held all the power. They had made pronouncements on the nature of all things based on the bible. So for them to be proved wrong would have been a serious embarrassment from a purely political point of view.

Actual theology was mainly done by monks in those days. Most of the shite that went on was all about politics and power games, using religion as a pretext.

Believers are always outnumbered on these

I'm not a believer, just to make that clear.

Loum - appreciated.

If individuals want to believe in anything, it rarely does any harm to society. It's only when those individuals club together that there are issues.

not noticed much aggression

Not noticed much here either.

So for them to be proved wrong would have been a serious embarrassment from a purely political point of view.

Shirley the guys in charge were in charge through religion, if religion gets undermined [b]they[/b] get undermined. Religion and politics/power were the same thing back then weren't they? Not sure you can separate the two.

It turns out that there [i]is[/i] proof that God exists: http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/welcome.php

In fact, there are [url= http://www.andrewcorbett.net/articles/5-proofs.html ]five proofs[/url]!

1. cause
2. design
3. morality
4. resurrection
5. experience

Would it be interesting to take each proof in turn?

You did better than me

For example the fist question asked me if the laws of logic exist - well they do exist just like religion exists.

I rather felt they meant to ask me if I believe the laws rather than whether I believe they exist.

I feel that the best test to determine whether or not you really believe that absolute moral laws exist, is not whether you feel that atrocities like rape and child molestation could be right somewhere in the universe, but whether they could ever be right if perpetrated against you or someone you love. Please keep in mind, I am asking what YOU believe, not what you think anyone else believes.

Yes there is no moral ambiguity over say murder or lying now is there with "absolute moral law"
Stupid emotive nonsense
We should have them on this thread though

I gave up at this point

so pointing out a bloody big fault in the prevailing religion wasn't a consideration? It was just political?

I don't expect the authorities really gave a crap as to what revolved around what. I think they would have cared a great deal about being made to look stupid though. Especially when their power base was built upon being the only people who could tell you what was right.

Yes there is no moral ambiguity over say murder or lying now is there

Lots of ambiguity over murder. Even in our modern law courts. And even more over lying.

Is it ok to kill someone who's a threat to your own life? Or safety? What about the death penalty? Is it ok to lie to prevent something really bad happening? I'm sure many captured spies have lied about lots of things.

I don't expect the authorities really gave a crap as to what revolved around what. I think they would have cared a great deal about being made to look stupid though

I think the fact that some aspect of the bible was incorrect meant that other aspects could be questioned and its façade of being completely true was lost. This was the great danger
I think they genuinely thought it was heresy to question the biblical account.

Molly that was my point - they used an emotive example that was absolute [ there are very few absolutes tbh] rather than use murder or lies to show that [ in general] morals are not absolute.
They could have used theft - was Robin hood right to steal to feed the poor?
Etc

molgrips - Member
I don't expect the authorities really gave a crap as to what revolved around what. I think they would have cared a great deal about being made to look stupid though. Especially when their power base was built upon being the only people who could tell you what was right.

If I could risk sticking my head back in here for a minute before Junkyard irritates me off again, I would pick up on this and your earlier well made point about the authority of religion, which to my mind is what we in the west ultimately suffer from.

Back in Feudal times the battle for control was between the church and the various Crowned Heads of Europe, both of course claim divine right to rule, so the agenda was the definition of Gods desire, wether he permits you to rule by birth or selection from Rome.

So your assertion that authority has changed is correct, but it was that battle for authority that muddied the whole Judaeo Christian teaching in the first place and why, personally looking further East for a solution I felt at the time was a better idea.

Whatever.. Carry on, I'm off again, in the greater scheme of things with the appearance of a Crisp rant there are more important things to do right now..

If I could risk sticking my head back in here for a minute before Junkyard irritates me off again

Nice explanation and not unreasaonable
FWIW I agree that eastern religions/philosophies are far more useful in life and from my spiritual journey of youth only the eastern ones remain and are practised

To be clear I dont believe but much of Buddhism is useful for life IMHO

Junkyard - Member
I put in no effort to achieve this and i dont troll you.

It's that constant inward outward drawing of breath that's doing it.. 😉

Genuine laugh for that one 😆

Good point well made igrf.

I think the fact that some aspect of the bible was incorrect meant that other aspects could be questioned and its façade of being completely true was lost. This was the great danger
I think they genuinely thought it was heresy to question the biblical account.

Well some people did, some didn't. There was quite a bit of variation in how people interpreted the bible back then, just as there is now. Some people managed to get away with it, some didn't.

Only on matters of morals and faith is the pope infallible - that is quite a broad church

nearly, it is this but only when he defines doctrine, [i]ex cathedra[/i] is the term sought. And even then canon law requires that it has to be manifestly demonstrated. This was last invoked in 1950, referring to the assumption of the virgin Mary, and then 100 years previous to that, regarding the immaculate conception, and this was before papal infallibility was defined at the first Vatican Council.

I gave up at this point

Shame; the conclusion is absolutely hilarious.

There's a lot of tosh on this thread.

Which you'll be correcting shortly no-doubt. Or was that your contribution?

[img] [/img]

In fact, there are five proofs!

1. cause
2. design
3. morality
4. resurrection
5. experience

Would it be interesting to take each proof in turn?

Oh dear, you were being serious. 😐

I don't think you understand the concept of 'proof'. I saw no 'proof' in that link. I'm probably not very bright, perhaps you could spell in out for me?

Bimbler, I've just found evidence for God, where is she?

OK, about the 5 ‘proofs’ of God (not sure which God, but anyway)

1. No proof. The fact that something does not seem logical to our current thinking, and the fact that something has the tiniest of probabilities, does NOT mean that thing can not have happened.

2. What proof? The writer makes no sense.

3. Each of us are NOT born with an innate sense of morality. Suggest the author does some research of child behavior.

4. Even if a bloke called Jesus existed, so what, it proves nothing about any gods.

5. One person unrepeatable experience does NOT make proof.

Really. And I'm just your average uneducated chump in the street, If I can shred that 'proof' imagine what someone with a GVNQ or two could do.

Odin vs Jesus

[img] [/img]

Again! again! again! nothing like a bit of subjectivity to get stw babbling on. See Painting thread. Some really bonkers opinions on there IMHO. Each to there own.

religious fundamentalists regardless of denomination are mentally ill, put them in a big padded warehouse somewhere so they can have conversations with their imaginary friends without embarrassing themselves.

miketually - Member

Would it be interesting to take each proof in turn?

I guess it would- because just saying something is proof is easy, backing it up in this case is impossible. So fill yer boots.

That's not Odin, it's his lad.

Always seem to come across these threads when its too late and they're fizzling out...

Haven't had time to read every post so forgive me if someone has posted something along the same lines.

If someone asked you to prove that your wife/partner loved you, you could tell them of a many instances examples where they have said/done something loving towards you. If they said that's not enough proof, you could invite them to your home to live with you for a few days, and see for themselves the love you share, but still, they could, and quite rightly, say that's not proof. It could after all be an act, all in your heads etc, at which point you'd probably feel pretty hurt and give up. You know your partner loves you, but maybe you can never prove it to anyone else.

In the same way I could invite you to my home, my wife and I could tell you all our experiences of God in our own lives and in the lives of people we know, we could take you to our church and show you many people who's lives have been transformed since coming to know God. I think you would have a better idea of what we were talking about, and how deeply our lives are effected by our God, but still, as in the above example, for some people that wouldn't be enough proof, and that honestly does make me sad, and makes me feel a bit like you would in the above example.

I could take you round to my house and show you my partner exists, though.

EDIT - sorry, that was a bit harsh. "Can you prove love" isn't a bad analogy really.

Oh dear, you were being serious.

I probably wasn't. Have you not seen my other contributions to this thread? 🙂

I don't think you understand the concept of 'proof'. I saw no 'proof' in that link. I'm probably not very bright, perhaps you could spell in out for me?

I found those two (hilarious) sites by Googling for "proof of God", but I have seen the first three of those five 'proofs' used in all seriousness by Frank Turek in a debate against Christopher Hitchens, [url=

YouTube[/url].

I probably wasn't.

Oh shit, sorry! (eek how small do I feel) 😳

I have seen the first three of those five 'proofs' used in all seriousness by Frank Turek in a debate against Christopher Hitchens

Oooh, poor guy. Sad really.

On the other hand

[img] [/img]

Re: "love," above. And indeed, love above.

You can't really prove 'love', but you can demonstrate it. Going out of your way for someone, performing selfless acts, providing and caring for them, spending time with them and enjoying their company, looking deep into their smiling eyes... None of this is "proof" of anything in scientific terms, but it demonstrates that it probably is the case.

What you've just described, I think, is two-fold. What the church has done for you is a tangible thing, sense of community etc, Ro5ey was kind enough to share all this earlier. But that's not really much to do with 'god' I don't think, that's people, it's not much different conceptually to me hanging out with mates at the pub.

The second is how you've been "affected" by god; the problem here is it's entirely emotive on your part. You might 'feel god's love,' but he's not brought you breakfast in bed or given up his Saturday night with the Archangels to stay in watching weepy movies with you, so it's a lot more difficult to demonstrate. Exchanging mutual "love" with something that is, for all practical purposes, not there is a tricky concept to deal with. "God loves me!" How do you know? "I just know, I can feel it." Could be indigestion for all I know.

Sorry if that still sounds a bit argue-y, I'm just trying to explain why perhaps we have difficulties with it.

"Can you prove love" isn't a bad analogy really. You can't really prove it, but you can demonstrate it.

You can't hurry love...

We could monitor hormone levels and electrical signals in mine and my wife's brains/bodies, or use examples of our behaviour, etc.

God seems reluctant to get into an MRI scanner.

Also, I don't try to use my wife's love for me to dictate how others should live or behave.

good stuff Cougar

I don't know for sure that my wife loves me. She says she does and I believe her, because I want to, because I love her. Have a word with some of the divorcees on here. I am aware of the possibility that she's been lying to me the whole time.

If God is a woman, then yes she probably has (been lying to you).

Sexist.

Soon lesbians will be able to wonder if their wife loves them: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/25/gay-marriage-bill-equal-treatment - great news.

I also wonder if this is going to call my sister's bluff, as she has said she won't get civil-partnership-married until it's a full-and-equal marriage... 🙂

Love between two people and the love of an individual for their God are not in dispute are they? The debate has been loosely about the creationist clap-trap that tries to pose for science and the generally negative effect organised religions have when they become more about their own self importance and power than about love, peace and all that jazz.

I imagine it must be pretty comforting at times to truly believe in God, actually, if not somewhat confusing if you ever think about why.

Cougar, some would say that the fact that Christians focus their time/love towards others, in helping those in need is indeed 'evidence' that something supernatural has happened to them, (especially if you knew them before and saw the change for yourself). But it depends what you consider evidence. For me, when I made my decision, I was won over by 'evidence' but you might be looking for a different kind of evidence to me.

I once spoke to a doctor of micro-biology that I know (who's a Christian) about evolution. He went into detail about how DNA is 'written' in proteins that only exist when there is already life... I must admit this isn't my subject and I'm out of my depth discussing it (as an electrical engineer myself) but my friend said that for him,despite knowing what he does, the greatest evidence wasn't scientific, but the fact that the first disciples were willing to die for their faith. They knew Jesus very well and had followed him everywhere, they saw it all first hand, and they were willing to die horrible deaths as 'heretics' for what they taught. For my friend, this 'evidence' was enough for him.

Molgrips, your point about choosing to believe your wife loves you, would it then be right to say that unless you chose to believe that she loves you, you wouldn't be able to experience that love? you chose to accept the 'evidence' which again might not be considered to be 'true' scientific evidence that many in this thread are asking for, but still, it was plenty enough evidence for you to believe 🙂

Incidently 1 John 4:8 says "Whoever does not love does not know God, because [b]God is love[/b]"

Will the thread end tonight? I keep thinking I won't look but keep getting drawn back in.

the fact that the first disciples were willing to die for their faith. They knew Jesus very well and had followed him everywhere, they saw it all first hand, and they were willing to die horrible deaths as 'heretics' taught. For my friend, this 'evidence' was enough for him.

Are the first disciples the only people who have died for their faith? Lots of cults end in mass suicides, and people have been willing to die for their country, friends or other non-religious beliefs.

Miketually, Yes, many have died for good causes, but would it be safe to say that unless you [b]fully[/b] believe in something, you wouldn't me willing to die for it? my point is that those disciples must have been fully convinced by what they saw, again, whats evidence to one person may not be evidence enough to another, to my friend , it is enough.

If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again.

There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again

“Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around”
? Penn Jillette

Miketually, Yes, many have died for good causes, but would it be safe to say that unless you fully believe in something, you wouldn't me willing to die for it? my point is that those disciples must have been fully convinced by what they saw, again, whats evidence to one person may not be evidence enough to another, to my friend , it is enough.

But isn't this going back to the circular argument - in the bible the gospels say that the disciples died for their beliefs. Therefore the bible is true. I'm still not sure the disciples actually existed.

?

There are things I guess most of us would be willing to die for - look at the love parents show their children. I wouldn't know what I would be willing to die for - possibly another.

"If every trace of any single religion were wiped out"

But if you believe in God, you can believe that God would never allow that to happen.

I can't believe God allowed this thread to happen

Adam, the death of the first disciples isn't even covered in the bible except Stephen in Acts 7(there may possibly be more I'm forgetting) but they are documented in other historical texts