If anyone has taken any biological Anthropolgy, Natural Selection and culture plays a role in Religion.

Hundreds of years ago, many people wanted to fit in, and being an outkast did not help you Financially or socially. If everyone around you and the people you associated with wore a Turbin, Cross etc, you would want to be inclined to be like these people in order to fit in. Not fitting in would mean you don't find a mate, or starve to deaf because people wouldn't have business dealings with you.

Religion was an easy way of keeping order and allowed the young to be taught basic morals. So back then, religion actually helped people keep order and didnt create soo many hardship like it does today.

+ 1.

I was one of these people, mostly because I didn't know any better. My parents raised me to believe what they believed in. I just followed the people like my friends around me like a sheep in a herd.

It wasn't until I educated myself in University and learned more about the world and the ability to make unbiased, informed opinions that allowed me to better shape my morals and views.

I used to believe that religion was the answer and then I met God.

A right angle is 90 degrees. We can MEASURE it. Show me how we can measure god, measure heaven, measure hell and everything else that requires "faith" and I'll listen to your argument.

You couldn't possibly be more wrong btw.

I thought my post in the other thread might be interesting to some since you guys are talking about this.


If you haven't already, check out History Channels Ancient Aliens and it might answer some of your religious questions, as it did mine.

http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens

Way to ruin a thread

When I regard to faith as a basis for knowledge, I'm not saying religion. To be clear, faith is the complete trust or conclusive belief in someone or something rather than proof while the word ‘reason’ would require justification or explanation of a belief or action as evidence.
Faith is indescribable and hard to visualize and understand. In fact, it is not easy for someone to have faith because there’s actually no proof or reason in a god’s existence. Some would agree that faith applies to our ways of knowing while some would disagree. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was once asked in 1915 what he would do if the experiment he did on his general theory of relativity did not agree with his theory. He calmly replied, “So much the worse for the experiment. The theory is right!” Although it was an unjustifiable theory at that time, he had faith and instinctively believed that his theory was correct, paving the path to the most innovative scientific discovery of the 20th century.
Science is all about acquiring knowledge based on repeated experiments and observations for a consistent pattern to find the answers, and faith does not fall under any of this. On the contrary, what makes us think that the consistent pattern that we are working so hard to find is not based on faith that the universe even has governing principles in the first place? In mathematics, if a series of steps used to solve a problem works, we assume that this procedure would be able to solve similar problems. However, it’s a matter of time before a new theorem will be discovered and that the old theorem will become obsolete, going through a paradigm shift. Now, how can reasoning be a legitimate basis for knowledge when it is so inconsistent? Faith, such as in religion and mathematics, gives the tendency to remain firm on principles even when we face contrary evidence, and that is its strength.

I totally understand all the opinions about religion out there and I am not arguing anything further than this in any religious aspects. Just so much of HOW we gain knowledge and the fact that we all subconsciously apply faith in this.

They had at least 1 collision so far at the LHC.

The higgs boson could not be found. However, that does not eliminate the possibility of its existence. They'll just have to perform the test continually. Until the boson is found, m theory is just that.. a theory.

Any belief system that promotes ignorance, hate in all forms, can't possibly be the basis for someone's "faith"

It should be noted that it still isn't being used at its full power. They're gonna get there in time.

Half a century after the demarcation project and people are still arguing over the fine line that stretches between religion and science. Point in case, the numerous responses in this thread.

Hawking did a good job presenting himself in such a way that he doesn't deny the existence of faith and its various ramifications (God, afterlife, what will yous).
People should learn to keep science and religion the fuck away from each other.

http://u3.thpo.net/d4/h1KW/i127T/t4/...-thor-2011.jpg

Jane Foster: Describe exactly what happened to you last night.
Thor: Your ancestors called it magic...
[Thor skims through a book on Norse mythology]
Thor: ...but you call it science. I come from a land where they are one and the same.

^that quote doesnt explain anything imo. seemed more like a deus ex machina

Doesn't it? Any technology advanced enough will appear as though it were magic to those who are unaware of its technology.


When technology becomes sufficiently advanced and dispersed, it become an everyday thing; in time our machines will make more machines, and it will do it all at the wave of a hand and at the call of our voice.


There's a scifi novel I read, where each room in a hotel is assigned a "call name". Room 402 would be "Chiron" for example. Anyone in the hotel who wants service for their room or billed to them needs to just say their call name and order what they want. You're telling me that asking an invisible voice for something to happen or be called for wouldn't be seen as magic? It's all relative. It's magic 'til we understand it.

As a Christian, I couldn't agree more with the above statement.

I don't know if I understood you correctly, but are you saying being Christian is about not sinning? If that is what you're saying, then I'm sorry to say that you misunderstood what being Christian is about.

Sorry to hear about your lost. My condolences. It's good you realized the importance of those relationships we take for granted everyday.

I am so fucking high, and this makes SO much sense right now. Star Trek had the voice thing, and their little food making things.

Haha... well put. :thumbsup:

Science is the HOW. Faith is the WHY. There is no contradiction between science and faith, because they are different perspectives.

I never post, but I just had to respond to this. There is an entire section of math devoted to proofs of concepts such as this, it's called LINEAR ALGEBRA.

Another flaw in your post is that these concepts are in no way related. The concepts of right angles and parallel lines HAVE to exist, the fact they have special names attached to them is irrelevant.
With religion/God, the universe could exist without either, does it? Who knows... But please do not make a mockery of mathematics in a poor attempt to prove your point.

TL;DR Please Learn2Math

I'm an agnostic atheist. It is ignorant to be blindy on either side (religious vs atheist.) There are as many religious bigots as there are atheists, but the problem I have with religion is the indoctrination. Many children are raised to blindly believe and many never question their religion. This type of blind faith and indoctrination can easily be manipulated to breed extremists. The scary thing is that those terrorists know full well what they're doing but believe that they are just in doing so.

Altruism: 1. The belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others. I don't see the problem with believing that we're here by chance and also promoting altruism. Are you implying that people are only altruistic because they believe that's what their god would want them to do.

Could you explain this a little more in depth? Maybe I don't sufficiently understand the implications of wave-particle duality.

Why does there need to be a basis for morals? woob provided a beautiful quote. Just because someone is pro evolution and natural selection, they should be pro killing too? Purposely killing would be entirely contradictory to how natural selection functions.

Again, the quote from woob addresses this quite eloquently. Why does there need to be a basis for morals? woob provided a beautiful quote.


Yeah, I would agree that faith is present in science and in all our lives, but the faith in this context is merely holding on to what theory fits best to explain a situation and has no religious connotation at all.

I disagree. If you were arguing about something like, the big bang theory vs some other scientific theory on how the universe was created, you might have a point.

But arguing religion vs science is not even 'apples vs apples'. One is science which CAN eventually be proven with study, the other is a story book that people only believe in because that's what they've been told to believe in since they were born.

It is not ignorant to say that you don't believe in fairy tales. It is ignorant to even consider it a possibility that just because we are human, there is some great reason for us to exist in this universe. There's not. We're just here because we are.

Sorry I probably should have clarified, I think being religious is a good thing, like neggo mentioned earlier in this thread. It is the mostly institutions of religions that cause problems. Faith in a higher being, heaven and hell, or karma gives some people the strength they need to carry on with their lives. I genuinely think it's great that some people can find strength in faith, but personally, I can't bring myself to take that leap of faith as much as I want to.

And you might notice that being an atheist is the popular thing to be now. You have tons of little kids that just bash on theists without a god damn clue what they're talking about. All they ever do is revert to stating that their faith has no logic, no shit. Anyone who tries to logically debate a theist with the expectation of "winning" and converting the theist is silly.

Seriously, is this guy serious? I have never seen more a biased view than this. Where the hell did you get all your ideas from? Just like a brainless religious fanatic who spews out statements without any basis, you seem to have some extreme views planted in your head since you were small too.

The best you can do is act like a mindless troll? We have enough of those, thanks.