Times when you should question your religious belief!

it was moses came down from the mountain with the commandments i think and got mad about the golden calf(a false deity)

Mossy Monk wrote: »

Where was his God when that thing started growing on his face.

Never mind that, what did he think he was playing at when he created the disorder in the first place?

Rob_l wrote: »

it was moses came down from the mountain with the commandments i think and got mad about the golden calf(a false deity)

Yeah I know, she was accusing people of having no clue of their religion and then talking balls.
THats why I said that was my favorite part of her rant.


Did anyone see the Futurama where Bender meets God?
Best representation of faith ever. What God said really made sense to me.

whoah, talk about picking the wrong cult to follow :eek:
Should have went with one of the more mainstream ones!

bleg wrote: »

What?!

Is that actually a serious argument? You think that the same sections of the brain would be "lit up." What has that got to do with anything?

Have you got any evidence to support what you think?

Well until you do I'm not going to accept what you think might be happening in the brains of a theist or atheist.

Much in the same way that I'm not going to believe in a supernatural being without any evidence to support such a belief.

I don't have any evidence on hand, I'm sure I've heard it in the past though. It's like kickoutthejams says, atheist can be just as narrow minded and almost militant in forcing they're views on people they believe are stupid and misguided. They're no difference IMO between a fundamentalist Christian, Muslim or Atheist.

I'm none of them and would consider myself all religions and a believer in human knowledge and sensibility.

Depeche_Mode wrote: »

What is an atheistic crime? Who commits crimes because they don't believe in God? Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of atheists who commit crimes, but I doubt that the fact that they are atheist has the slightest thing to do with it. Religion on the otherhand is far too often used as justification for immoral acts.

"Without religion a good man may do good things, and a bad man may do evil things. But for a good man to do evil things you need religion."

Pol Pot/Stalin regimes?
Oppression on theists based on their belief by an atheist?


Religion is often used as a justification but usually it's just nutjobs who are psychos regardless. They just use religion as an excuse.
If you read the bible, it's filled with progressive things about tolerance, love and understanding. A "good" man who commits evil in the name of religion is hardly good. He might think he is but it's important to remember the times the bible were set in. Especially in the old testament things like eating pork and circumcision are far more to do with desert surivival than with following God.

ScumLord wrote: »

I don't have any evidence on hand, I'm sure I've heard it in the past though. It's like kickoutthejams says, atheist can be just as narrow minded and almost militant in forcing they're views on people they believe are stupid and misguided. They're no difference IMO between a fundamentalist Christian, Muslim or Atheist.

I'm none of them and would consider myself all religions and a believer in human knowledge and sensibility.

i agree with you, extremism is never acceptable and i dislike it as much as the next person. i don't have much of a problem with moderate religious people at all. i do think that religious extremism in the USA and middle east is quite worrying.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Pol Pot/Stalin regimes?
Oppression based on people's religion.

It is true that Stalin and Pol Pot were atheist, but the fact that they have this as a common denominator does not automatically mean that it was the root cause of their atrocities. I would argue that it was instead a combination of their almost religious adherence to dogmatic Marxism and their paranoia in positions of total power which led to their actions, and that arguing that just because they didn't believe in God made them do it is far too simplistic.

It was AJ Ayer or Kierkegaard who made an excellent point ( i forget who)
It was along the lines of:

It is pointless to talk about God existing or not, we have no evidence for or against so we must make a leap of faith in deciding what we think of him.

Rob_l wrote: »

even supposing this were true this would be simple to explain obviously you would use the same part of the brain when arguing about the same topic. eh

yes, no?

There is a specific part of the brain dedicated to religious/spiritual/meditation thinking, this part of the brain can be overactive in some people.

Depeche_Mode wrote: »

It is true that Stalin and Pol Pot were atheist, but the fact that they have this as a common denominator does not automatically mean that it was the root cause of their atrocities. would argue that it was instead a combination of their almost religious adherence to dogmatic Marxism and their paranoia in positions of total power

Religion as the opium of the people is an aspect of marxism, which both followed. They oppressed people who were religious for no other reason than they were religious, rather than they were bourgeois or capitalist or whatever.

The point is, they were atheists who had an intolerance of religion, and as such persecuted theists in much the same way Christian states persecuted Jews and Atheists in previous times.

Depeche_Mode wrote: »

arguing that just because they didn't believe in God made them do it is far too simplistic.

Please do not put words in my mouth. I never said they did it purely because they didn't believe in God. They were not balanced men and had the idea that religion was a bad thing to have and were personally atheist. They used their power to oppress as they were not sane, amongst those they discriminated against were theists.

However, a Christian or Muslim who thinks he is doing God's law by murdering innocents is acting in direct contravention of his holy book. An atheist has no such work directing him and cannot be accused of being a hypocrite. Rather he is just being a bad person.

ScumLord wrote: »

Have you got a better explanation for how it all got here? Isn't it just as likely some highly intelligent life form started off the universe as not. Especially now scientists think they could do the same thing given a strong enough power source.

HOld up there mate, I was quoting a philosopher. I'm saying it's too hard an issue to dogmatically adhere to a single issue when it's such an awesome concept. We have no authority here except what we ourselves believe.
I could use Aquinas' cosmological argument or Paley's Teleological argument for God's existance but I'm an open person.

Depeche_Mode wrote: »

I would say they oppressed people who were religious because the religious institutions oppossed their Communist regimes and were a threat to total communism.

Religion still functions other COmmunists dictators- Castro, End of century Soviet Union.
These man had paranoia and were atheist. Other control freaks still allowed religion to function under them, but Stalin for example was was an atheist who oppressed theists.

Depeche_Mode wrote: »

I agree with you here. What we had was:

Psycopaths + total power + atheism = mass murder.

I would argue that it was the psychopaths in power aspect of the above sum which was the problem. I would think that had balanced minded atheist been in the same positions there would never have been genocide and mass murder.

Agreed,
balanced minded atheists or theists wouldn't have resulted in genocide. The important thing is people who commit these crimes are psychos first, and theists/atheists second.

Depeche_Mode wrote: »

Here I would disagree, I am sure with a little research I could come up with plenty of murders and genocide commited on the instructions of God in the Bible.

Different times back then mate. I'm a Christian, I studied the New Testament, and there's almost no hate or sanctioned murder there.
The Old Testament is more important to Jews and I'm no expert on that, but it's important to remember that a lot of it was a survival guide for the desert and for tribes back then. Peace in a tribal system would be hard pressed to work, whereas the New Testament takes place in more civilised times. But I can't defend the Old Testament as I follow the New Testament more and am very ignorant about the old Testament.

froosh69 wrote: »

As a science student I'm basically studying how to prove that God never existed, that how everything you see around you was a complete accident and how to find cures for diseases that were at one time uncurable because "God was angry at you..."

However, I don't believe that it was all an accident and there is a very helpful little phrase that I use in arguments like this:

"Science prolongs and improves life,
Religion deepens it..."

I don't think it was an accident that solar systems, planets and life formed it's an inevitable result of the big bang. At this stage we could probably predict what course evolution would take should climates change again.

Rereading my posts I realized it wasn't the best place for me to post them.
Apologies, they belong more in the Religion or Debate forums.