Predict the 1st Banning for uncivil behavior in the new Religious Threads...

[steveh_131]

I have no wish to teach religion.

Jesus didn't come to start a Religion
He Cam to Save the WOrld.

You left last tie I started showing Science is less sure of these foundational belief and the act. Tat would be Evolution - anthropologically and fossil records and sort of scientific proof MACRO Evolution happens. Because a plate of bacterial or a generation of Fruit Flies behaves on way (micro-evolution) doesn't mean Marco is real and any evolutionist will tell you so, then they will genuflect to the altar of science and deny they told you this or they will loose their funding.

I know why you're mad but that has only to do with religious Christians and not those who like me simply follow Jesus. When you learn the difference between religion and Faith, you are a lot closer that how you are thinking now. Now tell me I can't possibly know what I am thinking.

This is nearly unreadable.

 

[indiucky]

Hitch was a great man, but Atheism has no saints.

Neither does my Faith...I am one of those Calvinist break away from the Saints folks....I have noticed there are Atheist gatherings taking place....Can tent revivals be far behind????

"Raise your hand Brothers and Sisters and revel in the joy of Existentialism and Quantum Physics. Can I get an AMEN from the white lab coats????"

Hitchen's brother is the head of the Anglican Church of England and is pretty sharp in his own right...I would have given anything to have been at their dinner table back when they were young...

"Look Christopher, we can't both believe in a higher power because we would have nothing to sharpen our debate skills with.....I know it may risk your eternal soul but are you willing to follow the Atheists Faith?"

"For you brother I shall...One day I will be famous in America for my Atheism and smacking down fellow Atheist and B Grade film actor Bill Mahar..."

"Raise the bar little brother...I will one day be head of the Anglican Church.."

"Whatever....I will get a bigger audience on C-Span."


It's funny...The only (public) debate they ever did was over the Iraq War...Christopher took the Patriotic Pro War side and his brother took the Gray Ponytail Hippie Birkenstock side...It's a great debate and even disagreeing their love and respect for each other shines through...

 

[CathyInBlue]

This is nearly unreadable.

Ah, c'mon. If you can read Harleyrider50, you should be able to read that.

I've seen many an hour-long smack-down laid by Hitch on YouTube, but I don't think I've ever seen Hitch vs. Hitch.

 

[warthog]

This is nearly unreadable.

Yeah, I need a typist, Sorry.

I will try to do better in the future. I have a spell check but I don't always see the marks with my crappy eyes tell me I screwed up.

 

[warthog]

Let's try again (to Cathy as a reply I think)
=======================
I have no wish to teach religion.


Jesus didn't come to start a Religion
He Cam to Save the WOrld.


You left last time I started showing Science is less sure of these foundational beliefs. One is Evolution - anthropologically and fossil records and the sort of scientific proof MACRO Evolution happens. Because a plate of bacterial or a generation of Fruit Flies behaves one way (micro-evolution) doesn't mean Macro is real. Any evolutionist will tell you so, then they will genuflect to the altar of science and deny they told you this or they will loose their funding.



I know why you're mad but that has only to do with religious Christians and not those who like me simply follow Jesus. When you learn the difference between religion and Faith, you are a lot closer than how you are thinking now. Now tell me I can't possibly know what I am thinking.

I can't understand HarleyRider without study either.

 

[CathyInBlue]

You can't divorce the beliefs from the system whereby those beliefs are communicated from generation to generation and from some members of a community of believers to the other members of that community, any more than you can divorce the study of stars from the physics of electromagnetic radiation whereby information travels from those stars to our instruments and eyes, or any more than you can divorce special interest politics from the money those interest groups give to politicians.

If I didn't respond to a challenge to the surety of scientific beliefs versus the absolute faith of religious beliefs, it is only because I don't see the ability for science to abandon existing firmly held truths in favour of newly discovered truths which explain the universe better to be a weakness. Religion deals in absolutes. Science deals in good enoughs. This is a strength of science and a weakness of religion, because there are no absolutes in nature.

Any honest evolutionary biologist will admit that there is no actual distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. One is merely evolution on a time scale that can be easily perceived by humans with our limited lifespans. One is that self-same evolution taking place on time scales that human civilizations and empires have yet to match. There is no assurance from science that there will be found a fossilized example of organisms at every meaningful step along its evolution from one form to another form. The idea that this lack of fossils is a stake of holly through the heart of evolution is farcical. Fossilization is an extremely rare phenomenon, requiring a specific sequence of events to accomplish, and life is prolific, producing many periods of prehistoric developement that simply out stripped the rate of fossil production. Remember, one principle of Darwinian evolution is superfecundity, more individuals are born during any time than can ever possibly survive. If there are stiff pressures to compete for territory, food, mates, and/or evasion of predators, a species can change rapidly with no intermediary forms managing to make it to a fossilization phase. Still, there are entirely enough fossils that do make it through the eons of time to modernity to be discovered by paleontologists to be pieced together to form a clear lineage across the the gamut of lifeforms this planet has produced.

Think of the difficulty of just getting a bunch of bones, all belonging to different great apes: chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas, with just a couple of humans mixed in. Maybe there are 1,000 individuals represented in the skeletons, but none of them are complete, each one missing some random 10% of their number. In the field, each bone discovered is likely to be represented by only 10% of its fossilized material, but for this mental exercise, we'll let all remaining bones remain whole. Now, you get these bones all jumbled together, and your task is to attempt to disambiguate them, not only from the jumble into their species-specific group, but from all other individuals within a species into individual skeletons. If all individuals are of the same sex and of mature adult specimens, it might take an untrained anatomist a week. Make some random proportion of the jumble a different gender and make the skeletons' ages range across infants, juveniles, young adults, to the elderly, and then run the exercise again and see how you do. Can you guarantee that you won't make such an error as assigning a juvenile human bone to an orang or an orang bone to a chimp, or a female gorilla bone to a male human? This is the task of paleontologists simplified by a few orders of magnitude. I think the wonder is not that they don't find and dig out more fossils, but that they do as well as they do with the fossils they do find.

 

[ChristianPatriot]

How does science explain consciousness?

 

[CathyInBlue]

I would first have to know what it is that you consider consciousness.

 

[ChristianPatriot]

Oy with the poodles already. Now everything has consciousness?!

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Again, it's hyperbole. It's better to not watch Modern Family where you know something tempting may lie.

So at least we agree not everything is literal and avoidance of temptation is important, yes?

 

[D-Ric902]

nevermind
I'll shut up

 

[IndyDave1776]

So at least we agree not everything is literal and avoidance of temptation is important, yes?

There you go. Cheating on your wife isn't a good thing, but we don't recommend making you sing soprano.

Seriously, the best explanation I have heard for correctly understanding the contents of the scripture is to start with the 'plain sense' meaning--not misinterpreting literal truth by making an allegory out of everything but at the same time not going to the opposite extreme of taking figures of speech literally as a matter of principle.

 

[warthog]

You can't divorce the beliefs from the system whereby those beliefs are communicated from generation to generation and from some members of a community of believers to the other members of that community, any more than you can divorce the study of stars from the physics of electromagnetic radiation whereby information travels from those stars to our instruments and eyes, or any more than you can divorce special interest politics from the money those interest groups give to politicians.

If I didn't respond to a challenge to the surety of scientific beliefs versus the absolute faith of religious beliefs, it is only because I don't see the ability for science to abandon existing firmly held truths in favour of newly discovered truths which explain the universe better to be a weakness. Religion deals in absolutes. Science deals in good enoughs. This is a strength of science and a weakness of religion, because there are no absolutes in nature.

Any honest evolutionary biologist will admit that there is no actual distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. One is merely evolution on a time scale that can be easily perceived by humans with our limited lifespans. One is that self-same evolution taking place on time scales that human civilizations and empires have yet to match. There is no assurance from science that there will be found a fossilized example of organisms at every meaningful step along its evolution from one form to another form. The idea that this lack of fossils is a stake of holly through the heart of evolution is farcical. Fossilization is an extremely rare phenomenon, requiring a specific sequence of events to accomplish, and life is prolific, producing many periods of prehistoric developement that simply out stripped the rate of fossil production. Remember, one principle of Darwinian evolution is superfecundity, more individuals are born during any time than can ever possibly survive. If there are stiff pressures to compete for territory, food, mates, and/or evasion of predators, a species can change rapidly with no intermediary forms managing to make it to a fossilization phase. Still, there are entirely enough fossils that do make it through the eons of time to modernity to be discovered by paleontologists to be pieced together to form a clear lineage across the the gamut of lifeforms this planet has produced.

Think of the difficulty of just getting a bunch of bones, all belonging to different great apes: chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas, with just a couple of humans mixed in. Maybe there are 1,000 individuals represented in the skeletons, but none of them are complete, each one missing some random 10% of their number. In the field, each bone discovered is likely to be represented by only 10% of its fossilized material, but for this mental exercise, we'll let all remaining bones remain whole. Now, you get these bones all jumbled together, and your task is to attempt to disambiguate them, not only from the jumble into their species-specific group, but from all other individuals within a species into individual skeletons. If all individuals are of the same sex and of mature adult specimens, it might take an untrained anatomist a week. Make some random proportion of the jumble a different gender and make the skeletons' ages range across infants, juveniles, young adults, to the elderly, and then run the exercise again and see how you do. Can you guarantee that you won't make such an error as assigning a juvenile human bone to an orang or an orang bone to a chimp, or a female gorilla bone to a male human? This is the task of paleontologists simplified by a few orders of magnitude. I think the wonder is not that they don't find and dig out more fossils, but that they do as well as they do with the fossils they do find.

Which is why you don't belong in the conversation. Your mind is closed and already knows what it thinks it knows. Too bad it thinks that Science isn't Faith when it shows so much of it in this supposed Science.

You also have no idea of things if you feel Religion cannot be divorced from simply reading the Bible and going it alone or in a small group. How could you when you don't even really understand what you are talking about.

MANY people think that Science is all about embracing the newest beliefs, tell that to someone who has found something revolutionaionary in their Egyptology evidence. Or someone who found something actually showing something cannot be true and has evidence but since it isn't something that supports the traditional view finds themselves out of a job and unfunded. You only THINK you know and since you are so sure you do, you never will.

 

[CathyInBlue]

I have to say that of all the closed minded statements made in this thread, that one's not just closed, not just locked, but welded shut.

I never said I didn't have faith. I have faith. I have faith in abundance, but not in the divine, the supernatural, the paranormal, the spiritual, the ethereal, the ghostly, the fantastical, the incredible, or the other-worldly, unless we're talking about exo-planets. I have faith that my fellow human beings will follow their human nature. I have faith that science, following the Scientific Method, will eventually fill in our current gaps of knowledge.

Religion is the practice of faith beyond the every day acts of living as a carbon-based lifeform. Going to a particular building, sitting in a particular seat, singing a particular song, and listening to a particular speaker can all be acts of religion, and so can reading from a particular book. Anything you do out of a sense of your religious faith, that's your religious practice. A small group getting together to read the Bible, that's religion. Sitting alone in the dark and reading the Bible, that's religion.

There are plenty of "the latest fad"s in science that fell flat. String Theory is rapidly falling on its face. It came, it experimented, it can't seem to prove anything. Eventually, when the last string theorist at the last university to teach it dies, String Theory will prolly be a dead-end science, right along side phrenology. Just like Darwinian evolution decrees for organisms with superfecundity, more scientific ideas are thought up than can ever be proven. Science is not weakened by someone having a new idea, testing it, and finding it's not true. It's strengthened. A radio astronomy site has numerous spurious signals that seem to be coming from deep space. They eventually figure out, their break room microwave is leaking radiation. Science is strengthened. A CERN experiment appears to send neutrinos through a fiber optic cable at faster than the speed of light and publishes their results. Then they discover that the fiber was attached improperly and an oscillator was tuned too fast. Science is strengthened.

 

[rambone]

Praying to God's creation and other dangerous forms of idolatry

I've been a Catholic all my life. I can tell you that we do not worship anyone but GOD. We honor Mary. We pray to her as well, but we do not worship her. MANY people don't understand that.

As a bit of a complication, it is ok to pray for intercession from any loved one who has passed away and who (you think) is in Heaven. Yes, I can see how that might look like ancestor-worship, as I concede that this idea of intercession can be interpreted as you describe. It is a similar denunciation to the Mary-worship accusations.

I can only say that it is not like that. Frankly, I think it is a part of an hidden agenda to simply have Catholics pray more. So you're all set to pray. You pray to God, the father, because He's, like, the Big Guy. Then you pray to Jesus, the Son, who knew what it was like to be human. Then you pray to the Holy Spirit, the Great Do-er of the Holy Trinity.

Ok. We're done here, right?

Not exactly. As a Catholic, probably helpful to do a decade of the Rosary for Mary's intercession. But wait, you're going to be felling some trees later? Not a bad idea to pray to St. John Gaulbert for his help and protection. But wait, the trees are on your deceased grandfather's property? He was a good man, hopefully he's out of purgatory. He taught you responsibility and how to work a chainsaw safely. Not a bad idea to pray for his intercession on your behalf, too.

Before you know it, prayer-time doubled. Which is not all bad.

So, that's a bit facetious.

The whole intercession thing is a bit of a red herring IMHO when it comes to critics of Catholicism. It is a misunderstanding (intentional or otherwise) to compare Catholicism to the pagan system. Is Catholic dogma on this point nuanced? Perhaps. But it doesn't mean the nuance can be ignored.

Saints, or other deceased, are not idolized in the sense of being worshiped as gods. They sometimes act on behalf of God to further His will.

Gentlemen...

Can you provide any biblical basis for praying to Mary, or any saint, or any other creature made by God? Where has God ever condoned speaking/communing/praying to the dead? Further, what basis have you to think that God's creations have any influence over God?

The God of the Bible does not leave any room for us to be praying to his creations. God repeatedly condemns idolatry (which is by no means limited to physical gold idols), and describes himself as jealous for our praise. "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength," He commands in Deut 6:5. It would be difficult to argue that we should give God the leftover prayer time after we finish Hailing Mary fifty times. No, God does not share.

Deuteronomy 18:11 tells us that anyone who "consults with the dead" is "detestable to the Lord."

If that is not compelling enough, why is there a need for anything beyond the one perfect (and explicitly named) intercessor, Jesus? Paul writes: "For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). If it weren't condemned already, it would certainly be insulting to Christ to turn to others to do His exclusive work.

 

[rambone]

Heaven for everyone?

Catholic beliefs ( I believe what I'm about to say is related, but I may be off) is that only those who truly believe Jesus is the Way and still turn their heart from Him are the "sinners" which it sounds like you've heard Atheists compared to. I fully expect to see Atheists, Agnostics, Jews, Muslims, etc. in the afterlife. Only believers who turn away willfully are thought to be doomed to an eternity separated from Grave.

If Heaven is for everyone, that makes Jesus a liar. The Bible says absolutely nothing of all-inclusive salvation, where faithless people can reject Christ and reap rewards. If there is one Bible verse that a Christian ought to know, it would be this one: "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me." ( John 14:6)

This is, in fact, the central theme of the Bible. The only path to heaven is faith in Jesus Christ, by the grace of God. Yes, it is a very exclusive club and the criteria for entry is specific and non-negotiable. The doctrine of "Do what thou wilst" and expect a reward is theology from Satan.

"If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9

"Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12

"Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.
No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also." 1 John 2:22-23

 

[Kutnupe14]

I have to say that of all the closed minded statements made in this thread, that one's not just closed, not just locked, but welded shut.

I never said I didn't have faith. I have faith. I have faith in abundance, but not in the divine, the supernatural, the paranormal, the spiritual, the ethereal, the ghostly, the fantastical, the incredible, or the other-worldly, unless we're talking about exo-planets. I have faith that my fellow human beings will follow their human nature. I have faith that science, following the Scientific Method, will eventually fill in our current gaps of knowledge.

Religion is the practice of faith beyond the every day acts of living as a carbon-based lifeform. Going to a particular building, sitting in a particular seat, singing a particular song, and listening to a particular speaker can all be acts of religion, and so can reading from a particular book. Anything you do out of a sense of your religious faith, that's your religious practice. A small group getting together to read the Bible, that's religion. Sitting alone in the dark and reading the Bible, that's religion.

There are plenty of "the latest fad"s in science that fell flat. String Theory is rapidly falling on its face. It came, it experimented, it can't seem to prove anything. Eventually, when the last string theorist at the last university to teach it dies, String Theory will prolly be a dead-end science, right along side phrenology. Just like Darwinian evolution decrees for organisms with superfecundity, more scientific ideas are thought up than can ever be proven. Science is not weakened by someone having a new idea, testing it, and finding it's not true. It's strengthened. A radio astronomy site has numerous spurious signals that seem to be coming from deep space. They eventually figure out, their break room microwave is leaking radiation. Science is strengthened. A CERN experiment appears to send neutrinos through a fiber optic cable at faster than the speed of light and publishes their results. Then they discover that the fiber was attached improperly and an oscillator was tuned too fast. Science is strengthened.

I believe in ghosts, lol.

 

[Kutnupe14]

If Heaven is for everyone, that makes Jesus a liar. The Bible says absolutely nothing of all-inclusive salvation, where faithless people can reject Christ and reap rewards. If there is one Bible verse that a Christian ought to know, it would be this one: "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me." ( John 14:6)

This is, in fact, the central theme of the Bible. The only path to heaven is faith in Jesus Christ, by the grace of God. Yes, it is a very exclusive club and the criteria for entry is specific and non-negotiable. The doctrine of "Do what thou wilst" and expect a reward is theology from Satan.

"If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9

"Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12

"Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.
No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also." 1 John 2:22-23

Keep in mind there MUST be a denial. Ignorance isn't a denial.

 

[ChristianPatriot]

Keep in mind there MUST be a denial. Ignorance isn't a denial.

Titus 2:11 "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men."

 

[Kutnupe14]

Titus 2:11 "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men."

There a difference in translation. I personally don't believe the word of God is known to all men (men being used to describe all people). Other translations changes "bringeth" to "offers," and has "appeared" showing up, prior to. which is quite a significant difference, IMO, as it makes note of the word existing, and is for man's salvation, but does not take for granted that he has been exposed to it prior to death. This reconciles well with the thought of those incapable of accepting Christ, as not being automatically condemned to hell (ie children, mentally disabled. Etc).