Atheism or agnosticism?Follow

So clear my ignorance by further explaining this "singularity" and how it isn't something that came from nothing. Where did this "singularity" come from and how was it able to expand?



Why are you so concerned on my reason of believing?

1. It's the most logical explanation for me
2. It creates a better life style and better environment if followed as intended.

The second one can be broken down into further sub categories, but that is the overall theme.



Serious question? Are you trolling or being serious? If you are trolling, I'll concede that you got me.

I have a personal opinion that the belief of a higher being is more logical than "something came from nothing but it really didn't come from nothing". I kept that opinion to myself. I was asked why I believe and do what I do, I gave the above statement as my answer.

I did not create a "us vs them" environment, other posters did by asking my why I believe what I believe instead of just accepting it and moving on. Till now, I haven't asked anyone why the believe what they believe, because I don't care. That's their beliefs. These posters are merely questioning me in an attempt to show how "I'm wrong for not believing their beliefs". Yet, you continuously attack me for creating this environment. How come you haven't said anything to them?

I am deadpan serious. Or as serious as I can be when posting here. And after the suggestions of others who know you better, since I havent had as much time to be on here as I used to, I realize I need to lower my expectation on your ability to understand certain aspects of this discussion. The saddest part is, I really dont think you are trolling, nor do I think you realize the implications on how you present yourself to the rest of us here. I think you are genuinely unable to comprehend why it is that this discussion, and others that dabble within religion, happen as they do in regards to your posts.

That troubles me.



No, they are not. They are questioning you for 2 reasons:

1. People are genuinely curious to understand *why* you believe as you do, since you originally put yourself out there, claiming that we attack you anytime religion crops up in a discussion. What made you choose as you do? Thats not an attack, thats genuine curiousity.

However your responses are what is continuing the discussion. For one thing, you dont know when to quit for your own benefit. You need to have the last word. And your responses are lacking in intellectual substance. To actually post that you feel it is more logical to believe in a divine being than to believe in science and that is why you are religious is absolutely fantastically ludicrus. But you cant comprehend why that is.

Here is a definition of science, to hopefully explain to you why this comment makes no logical sense to the majority of us:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science


So when people question you on this line of thinking, trying to understand, you find that as an attack.

2. A side effect of asking you these questions is ( or at least it was for me) in the hopes of having you actually take a moment to stop and think about your answers, and see why we are questioning. Maybe, just maybe, you might gain some knowledge here that is beneficial to your own personal needs. Maybe you might learn something. Im not trying to change your mind on your religion. I dont think anyone else here is. But your responses to the questions are lacking in depth. Maybe you can look deeper. And thats not a bad thing to do. you should always strive to better yourself.



1. They did not create with their comments a feeling of broad generalization, thus hurting others who share your faith. Their questions are very specific and directed only at you.

2. You seem *quite* willing to continue the discussion. You have the power to stop it at any time. Thats in your hands, not theirs. By you continuing to respond to their questions, and mine, it shows me that you really do not feel attacked. You may wish to claim it and feel validated that religious folks get attacked when they bring up their religion.Or if you really do feel like you are being attacked, you are willing to be attacked for reasons of your own. But you can not call foul when you yourself allow it to continue. Thats not how it works.

3. I dont think you are beng attacked. If you were, with it being here in the Asylum, this discussion would be a hell of a lot harsher. As it goes, this is a fairly tame thread. I dont think you have a clue as to what an Asylum attack truly is. =)

Please, dont feel like you have to. It might be better if you just let it go.

I told you, we don't know. That doesn't mean you get to fill in the gap with your particular god. Why do you not understand this?

All I'm reading here is "I don't understand what you're telling me". That's not my problem. Go and read a Physics book. But know this, just because you don't understand what is written therein, does not mean you can dismiss it out of hand.

I'll say this, you are clearly not an intelligent person Alma. You can not follow any kind of argument put before you. You do not hold the idea of "god" by the same scrutiny you demand of scientists and this makes you hypocrite.

Again, just because we do not know everything, does not mean you can fill the gaps in our knowledge with god.

You demand answers, yet you offer none. If you were trolling, I could forgive you, but you're not. You're being deliberately and wilfully ignorant of everything that disagrees with your book of fairy tales. And better still, you demand these fairy tales be given equal weight as peer reviewed papers and hundreds of years worth of scientific knowledge in the Science class room.

If you honestly knew any better, I'd say you should be ashamed of yourself.

I wasn't going to mention it before, because it was just one occurrence, but you seriously need to stop with the announcements that you're done posting, regardless of how often you break them. No one cares. When I'm done posting, I just stop posting. I don't pretend the forum is hanging on my every word. You've got this thing where you believe you're the center of attention and that people's thoughts and motives are either positively or negatively related to you, but always related to you. You need to get over yourself.

Yes the bible was a great story, so was the Qur'an. They both contain great elements of historical events, and great stories about happenings to culture, people, and the times. As someone who is not blindly devoted to religion A or religion B I have had the privilege of an unbiased look at both books, and both were great reads.

The bible and Qur'an both use literary metaphors to great extent, they both use wonderful language and descriptive text. But to fully appreciate the nuances of the text you have to understand a lot of the text is written in an old tongue (so to speak) in the sense a lot of the wordings don't literally mean what is written.

For example:

When mosses led his people from egypt the bible says he parted (or divided, split depending on the version the words change around the same principal theme of separation of the waters). When viewed literally this gives the reader the image of he parted the waters making a land bridge (as seen in many movies, and depicted in much art). What is more likely the real reason is that after the Jews left egypt the headed east across the red sea and settled there. Thus the red sea was now shared or divided between 2 nations, Egypt and Jerusalem.

Another is the story of Noah. Where the "world" was flooded. At the time the world was smaller (metaphorically speaking). There was no NA, no EU, no Russia, nothing outside of the middle east egypt and some medeteranian islands. That was the "world". Much like in the mid centuries the world was Eur-Asia and Africa, and outside that it was flat and you would fall off if you sailed to far. It is likely that the known-world did experience some type of massive flood, especially considering the location of ancient cities on major waterways such as the Nile, the Tigress, and Euphrates rivers. More likely they experienced a climate shift and had a very wet season, which would help explain the 40 days of rain. With the extra water and the known world mostly living in proximity to massive rivers, it is highly likely that these rivers spilled their banks, there was landslides as "the water swallowed the land".

I read the bible for its great historical information, and the fun that can be had thinking of rational explanations to many of its texts. Its quite possible that God did do all that, it could literally mean what it says, but it is very exciting breaking down great stories in there into more logical occurrences rather then assuming that an invisible man did it all.

Another example regarding Noah is his age 950 years, which is biologically impossible. What is likely is that he lived for 950 moon phases, as the moon played an integral part in the passage of time for millenia. This would put his yearly age at 79 years (12 moon cycles /year), which is crazy long likely for someone of that period but within reason for the life expectancy of a human. I am sure anyone would agree that 950 years is very unlikely.

This is why I like reading the bible. It makes me think about what the people who wrote it could have actually been writing about, and how they came up with certain things. Which makes it to me the greatest book ever written, not only are the stories great in their literal sense, but looking into them is a whole different adventure.

This is sort of a semantic quibble, but atheism is itself not a belief of anything, and certainly not a religion; however, there are atheists who believe strongly that religions are harmful to humanity and should be fought against. Just because you lack the one belief doesn't mean that you don't fervently believe something else, possibly something related and possibly not. People who do fervently believe that religion is harmful and should be attacked are often called militant atheists. I occasionally attend atheist group meet-ups myself-- the people are all very civil and mostly discuss science and philosophy, with the rare crack at organized religion and its beliefs, but nobody is really militant. On the whole, atheists are no more likely to attack an individual over their religion than a religious person would be to attack someone for their lack of religion (I would guess less likely, if anything). We all would like to see an atheist world, sure, but that's really no more a religion than being a democrat or a republican. It's a social issue, not a matter of faith.



Three shamefully obvious things (with some possible redundancy):

1. Why can't the universe have always existed? As humans we tend to assume that the universe must have had a birth, just like us. Isn't that a somewhat self-indulgent notion? It actually makes more sense to many science-minded individuals that all that exists has always existed. Theories like the Big Bang only explain the current orientation of what exists, not an origin per se.

2. If the universe had to have been created, then why wouldn't a God have to be created? Turtles all the way down, anyone?

3. Even if you conclude that there must be a god, why any particular god? Why the Christian god? Why not a god who created the universe for a biology class project, failed, and threw it in some cosmic garbage can?

I don't know, I think a lot of religious people just blindly follow without questioning their beliefs. If you manage to truly question those beliefs and end up concluding that they are truly right for you then that's great.

My religious views are constantly evolving as I read more and more.

What do you think qualifies as a lot in this scenario? 20%? 50%? 75%? I'd be hard pressed to see it be near 20%.

Sorry if I missed it, but... Alma, why do you think religion makes more sense than science? I didn't see you answer it before, and I'm curious as to your reasoning.

Not sure, I was careful say "a lot" as opposed to "most". Even 1% would be a lot, but I see what you mean.

Done.