First, I understand that. I tend to gravitate more towards what a scientist can tell me of the world, more than a religious person.

BUT. I still believe that when you talk to the right people of faith, more than the ones that seem to be working on the assumption they get a free toaster upon signing up 10 lost souls-it can be fascinating. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find someone that can talk to you without convincing you. I think that makes it difficult to engage in a conversation on the subject.

I remember years ago, I worked at a restaurant that was about 50% thumpers, and the other 50% was us heathens. So we'd inevitably end up talking about religion and stuff while it was slow. One day, "they' invited us to a church thing. It was for those outside of the church to come and learn. So naive. I was a fan of Sheryl Crow at the time, and one of them says, "oh, and he worked with Sheryl Crow!" Well, yippie. Well, I kind of had the hots for one of them, so it didn't take a huge amount of convincing.

Off we go. It's at the Christian Megaplex in langley. I'm from back east, where our churches were the size of large houses. I show up to this fucking shopping mall of Christ and I'm like, "I'm in trouble".

It was a visiting pastor from Pensacola Florida. He tells all the believers, "thank you for doing what you needed to do to bring the lost souls to us". The look on my face must have been priceless. And he launches into a fire and brimstone style sermon that was classic tv preacher-with the rolling r's and loud booming voice. And he brings up Sheryl Crow-how when he met her, she was a lost soul, and still is.

And I start thinking, "I've heard this before." She has a song called 'Maybe Angels' where she writes, "I drove down to Pensacola/All I found was a bunch of holy rollers/They don't know nothing 'bout saving me"

The end of the thing ends in an alter call where a bunch of lemings all gravitate to him and kneel on the floor before him with their arms raised. Ego move much? I was furious. Oh, they also took the liberty of offering to drive...so I'd be without a car. Nice.

So there is that whole angle to wade through, which I now avoid at all costs.

That turned me off a lot of aspects of 'religion'. But, I still hold that it isn't all like that. There are lessons to be learned from religion, not just Christianity, but religion that can be fascinating. It just gets layered deep under a LOT of other stuff that can be really off-putting to someone that is interested more in the stories and lessons, and less of the saving my soul after death shit.

It's also important to note, there's a big difference between "religion", and "faith" or "spirituality". ANYTHING can become someone's religion.

A Christian speaker/comedian once postulated that everyone believes in a "god". For some it's money, for some power, for others its alcohol or drugs... "whatever you turn to in your time of need, that thing is your god."

I think there's a certain truth in that. Few people will NOT look outside themselves when things are at their worst; at some point in (almost) everyone's lives, something will happen that you can't handle on your own and you'll look for strength somewhere else.

As the old saying goes, "There are no atheists in foxholes."

I'm not sure if I follow your point about creationism, I hope you are not inferring it deserves any merits as it is complete rubbish.

When one wants to call science a religion, one needs to be more clear on the definition of a religion. To me, the very essence of a religion is based on its claim that it knows what happens after one dies. Which is why I consider the following religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism (all with stories about heaven and hell), and Buddhism (reincarnation).

As far as I am concerned, just because many people are fascinated by an ideology doesn't make it a religion. Astrology, rock and roll, Communism, or the belief that Elvis is still live are not religions in my books.

Falsifiability is the fundamental difference between science and religion, of course scientists can argue and fight what is true, and disagree on many topics, and that is exactly how progress is made.

“Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.”

Many people are confused about what science is, thinking that it is a set of facts. No, science is an approach.

The end result is that we get better and better answers to the mysterious world we live in. Of course, we make assumptions about many things, and the most obvious one is that there is a material world beyond our own consciousness. No one can prove that we are not in a dream, but we make a judgement call on what is most likely and move on.

Do we call this a faith or a religion, believing that we are not in a big dream?

You raised a good point about cults, some believe that the only difference between a cult and a religion is that latter has political acceptance, the former doesn't.

It's always fascinating to talk to people of faith, I don't even mind the convincing part as it makes the discussion more engaging. Similar to your adventure, I have been to a couple of alpha courses to learn more about the attraction, but find the sessions rather one sided, it's a one-way preaching setup instead of an open Q&A. Reminded me of those LGAT gatherings almost.

We learn about humanity and our culture and history through religion. Religion should be taught in school, not as a science topic, but as an important humanity subject, and should include all religions in the world with equal footing if you ask me.

"Proof" in science today is derived using our current understanding of science. Keep in mind that science has been wrong plenty of times in the past and I'm sure some of the stuff we believe today will be proved wrong a century or two from now. To suggest that anything is the "correct" theory is just wrong.

The nature of science is that it continues to prove itself wrong and improve on it. It's not a fixed set of findings that remains static, it's an approach, a method.

Judeaism --> Christianity --> Baptists, Catholics, etc
Judeaism --> Christianity --> Islam

Hinduism --> Buddhism

And I really dont know much about religion but they do indeed change

Okay... prove it. Prove it didn't happen. Scientifically. I'm not talking about things like "the earth is only 8,000 years old" and what not, I'm simply saying, as one supporting a scientific view of the world and holding to its tenets, PROVE that the universe wasn't created by an all-powerful being.

Not so easy when the shoe is on the other hand, is it? And do note, I'm not arguing FOR it here either... I'm merely saying, if you're going to support scientific method, and then make a blanket statement that something is "rubbish", you should have evidence, if not PROOF, to back up your claim. Otherwise, you're not really using proper method, you're merely (ab)using "science" to support your own viewpoint.

See, that's a problem: you're defining/dismissing/arguing against something based on your own narrow definition of it. It would be like me saying that "I believe all vehicles are the size of smart cars, so I dispute that it's possible to carry more than 5 people in ANY vehicle.

So if you're going to discuss religion with ANYONE, it would help to start with a more commonly accepted definition of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
Notice that besides being a VERY BROAD subject, there's a LOT of words like "some", "many", "sometimes", "often", "tend", "may"... nothing is really absolute to ALL religions.

Not for you. But again, the point is, to SOME PEOPLE, any of these things can hold the meaning of a religion in their lives. Some people base their entire lives on the study of astrology and "what the stars tell them," for example.

I don't see anyone here disagreeing. The fact remains, some people go overboard on accepting things just because "science says so", and that places it, if not in, then very close to a "religion" to those people.

And like I said before, tell that to your average evolutionist or Climate Change<tm> scientist, both of whom seem more than happy to bash us over the head with, "This is the absolute truth and if you doubt it at all, you're an idiot."

The burden of proof should be on the person that is trying to convey that god exists; not on the person that doesn't believe in IT (Him/her/it).

We dont go around and ask people to prove that a fire breathing dragon ISNT flying over Richmond as we speak. lol..

meh, interesting thread non the less
/rant

The burden of proof should always be on the one making the claim, especially one like "creationism is rubbish". I wasn't aware the "rubbish" was a scientific precept.

I'm not making any claims either way, therefore I have nothing to prove.

The point here goes back to Ulic's original premise for this thread, which is that religion and science both have faith at their core.

Science isn't about dismissing evidence. Creationists feel they are being dismissed and not taken seriously because its theory is based on religion and that's not true. The insane amount of evidence for evolution, in this case, leads people to believe it is the best theory out there. On top of that, creationists have a terrible source book (the bible) as it is absolutely littered with contradictions, inaccurate translations (angelos, armageddon, virgin) and testimonial to scientific events that can be credited to natural occurrences instead of God (locusts, bloody river, pillar of fire...).

I'm talking shit. I have no authority on the matter.

Okay... so which one? Which of many different theories or variations on a theory?

And again, I'm not supporting either... I'm saying if you're going to claim a THEORY as "fact", it would be a good idea to have an idea what that theory actually is.

if I'm misunderstanding you -->(hangover)

There are so many creation theories from all sorts of religions around the world. eg:Aboriginals, Vikings..etc.

Of course, I'm not claiming to be an expert that has all the answers, but I've heard arguments on both sides and I'm leaning towards evolution as fact. I found one of the major hurdles for evolution is how it all got started (life). Well.. some smart fuckers have been on that for around 13 years...

How Did Life Begin? | LiveScience
.."Chemist Nicholas Hud has been working on this problem at the Georgia Institute of Technology for more than a decade. He and his students have discovered that small molecules could have acted as "molecular midwives" in helping the building blocks of life's genetic material form long chains, and may have assisted in selecting the base pairs of the DNA double helix... "

Please say no to creationism
 

Again, I think you and I don't agree on what science is. Science is the continual process trying to find out the likelihood of propositions. Which is more likely, creationism without an evidence or evolution verified independently by different sources?

Which is more likely, fossils made by God to look like millions of years old, to test our faith, or are they truly older than what the creationists claim?

Science is not a static and is continuously evolving. No scientist is claiming that they possess the absolute truth, but they propose the most likely explanation, unlike religions which claim to know everything, exactly what happens after we die, etc.

It's all about assessing likelihood.

Sorry, it's really quite simple, creationism doesn't have the extraordinary evidence to support its extraordinary claim, thus is rubbish.

Again, proof is not absolute, as I stated earlier, if one cannot prove that one knows anything beyond ones consciousness, what facts are we talking about.

Goes back to the essence of science, assessing likelihood.

However, since you like to talk so much about faith, maybe it's helpful for you to define what it is before making the claim that faith is at science's core. Or if you want, prove it?

I'm not so sure Soundy, most of the readings I have done on evolution, they actually give many examples to prove their points. Haven't done enough reading on climate change to comment though.

But wait, are you seriously doubting evolution?

I think you just proved my point, that we all have different understanding of what a religion is, which is why it's useful to set the boundaries before we get into a discussion.

But still, I'll be surprise if most people would call astrology a religion. From your perspective, do you see astrology as a religion?

Instead of calling them change, to me, it's more like branching out, as the central core value is somewhat constant, such as we are all born as sinners, heaven and hell, reincarnation, etc.

Of course, the worldview of the Vatican and Church of England has slowly evolved as well, at least they now officially accept evolution.

this thread reminds me a little of this video:


to me science is a method of discovering new things. can we prove god doesn't exists? no. but god is NOT a good explanation at all if you take the bible literally. saying he made the earth in 7 days, just popped everything into existence, doesn't make sense. period.

clearly if a supreme being is able to create such complicated objects like dna and life and stuff, then that raises the question of who or what made the supreme being, which doesn't answer ANY question and instead raises even more.

was there a force that started the universe into existence? maybe. was it the big bang? maybe. was it some other mysterious process that we _don't_ yet understand but maybe we will in the future due to the scientific method? maybe.
but to call that force 'god' is misleading and unecessary because that term brings along so much baggage and unrelated emotions out from people.

my 2 cents

See the first post in this thread.

I already excluded the "8,000 year old earth" idea.

That's exactly the point: nobody knows exactly how it started. Some of ideas around the autonomous formation of life (and there are many) are just as wild and unfathomable as "God waved his hand and life appeared".

That's something I've always had an issue with, and I've seen a lot of debate over the years over whether it's referring to actual 24-hour days.

Of course. Which is the same as Yodamaster's example on the first page, "We figure that the universe is infinite, and yet we have no proof, but we believe in it anyway."

And yet, to DENY that that force COULD be "god" defies basic scientific principle.

If the universe is infinite and we have no proof, then how is it that we are able to determine that galaxies are moving away from each other? If it isnt infinite then where are they going lol.. I like the bubble idea of how the universe was created. I cant think of the name right now but the general idea was that there are different universes in bubbles and when they collide they create a new universe with a massive explosion. I will try and find a link later when I am at home.

Not to play devil's advocate here, but you will accept that it was created in an instant during a big bang? Just because the guy that tells you "this is a thing" is more credible to you because he wears a tweed jacket with suede elbows, instead of a robe at a pulpit?

Think about it: there are a lot of things in the bible that don't really ring as true, because we can't picture them in today's world. Noah's ark for me is my usual go to. A) I don't like the idea of having a god that smites me and my people, through mass drownings no less and B) it just does not fucking make sense.

BUT. The Big Bang THEORY. We're talking something so beyond our comprehension in the actual, "fuck me, its Big Bang 2.0...look at all the pretty lights!" its happening now scenario as a big flood. It rains. Sometimes it rains a lot. Floods happen. Can we comprehend a world wide flood that destoys everything? I can picture what it would look like(the animals smile when I do that..damned childrens books) I can actually picture that more than the actual Big Bang.

This is what turns me off on a lot of these conversations. As I said before, both sides have a tale to tell. They just get there a bit differently. For everyone who says, "here's what we consider proof" you can pull out another guy that says, "I have the word of a god on my side"

Automatic stalemate.