I think this begs the question: do you? Also, why do you ask?

I think this is very true and agree with you completely; people do bad things and people do good things. However, attribution isn't a one way street; you can't blame the individual for something bad happening without blaming the religion if you give credit to religion for good things happening.

If the gun comes with a little book that states you have to use the gun for salvation, and get as many other people you know to buy guns as well, then I would feel perfectly justified with this very stretched metaphor.

ping CamEdwards

What gun comes with a little book about salvation?

Right. That's logical. Demonstrate this proof without invoking the Holy Bible.

Hey, it's your metaphor, not mine.

Not sure about that. We don't exactly put the gun or knife on trial, do we? Free will means the responsibility is eventually on you. In a way, religion is more a tool than a rule.

No. In fact, I almost never play the lottery. Why? Because I understand my chances of winning are so remote that I shouldn't spend the money if there is anything else at all that I would otherwise use it for.

As a matter of fact, I don't think I ever stomp my feet and shout at the sky over anything. There has never been anything above me in the sky that was worth shouting at.

At this point, this thread has de-evolved into "my belief vs. your belief" which is probably where this was inevitably going anyway.

As I have repeatedly said in this thread, my goal is not to convert anyone, but simply to point out that I think your own beliefs about what Christianity and religion is and is not are sorely mistaken.

At this point, I back out and allow you to continue your Christian-bashing circle-jerk.

I have to tell you. If the Invisible Pink Unicorn lobby starts trying to push forward their dogma through the force of government (by creating laws based entirely on their religious views), then I will start making a bigger deal about it. As long as they just go off and do their Invisible Pink Unicorn thing without thinking, "Hey, you know what? I think we should force EVERYBODY to live by our Invisible Pink Unicorn rules!", they're doing alright by me.

If I can read correctly, I don't remember a whole lot of correcting beliefs and more Holocaust/gun/alien references. That's what brought me back to this thread.


Something about heat and a kitchen, I suppose. I see no circle-jerking, I see people responding to your God/aliens question, a conversational thread you seemed to drop.

I thought there was some pretty good discussion. I hope that you weren't offended by anything that I said. I am glad that you are content in your faith and it makes you happy (just as with Tarcone). Thanks for sharing your point of view!

I do. And as said before, I wonder how the same people whom believe aliens exist also insist to no end that there is no probability that a God of some sort or form does exist.

Nah, wasn't offended or angry. It just seemed that this thread was steering more to the "YES IT IS! vs. NO IT ISN'T!" debate that noone will win. But, I guess that's where threads inevitably end up about this topic anyway.

Again, blame the politicians, not the tools they use to further their agenda

I haven't bashed anything. I am merely a skeptic asking questions that no satisfactory answers have yet been provided for. Instead of picking up the toys and leaving, perhaps you could come up with some convincing evidence to change my mind.

Was it "the politicians" voting on Proposition 8? As far as I have been able to find, there has not been one single secular reason to vote for Proposition 8.

I agree. I agree that no one will ultimately change their mind, but it is fun and enlightening to discuss beliefs. As a fellow human being, it's helpful to know where other people are coming from although you don't necessarily agree with them. The political threads are like that as well.

Ultimately, we'll all find out who is right when we die. :)

The holy hand grenade comes with explicit instructions. :)

"...And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy." And the Lord did grin and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats and large chu... (you can skip a bit, brother) ... And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it."... Amen."

I approve of any thread where Monty Python references come up. :)

I think the point is that there will never be an answer which "satisfies" you enough. I could probably dress up as Jesus and haunt your house, yet that still would not satisfy you. :)

What answers have been given that aren't self-fulfilling prophecies? Everything is God exists because I believe he exists, and I believe he exists because he does exist.

Edit: I agree that this isn't going anywhere. These conversations never do, because of wildly varying thoughts about "necessary proof." I have no reason to believe something just because someone told me its true.

I had to snip out these quotes because they pretty neatly correspond to my thought-process on the whole thing and I felt like weighing back in now that I'm basically dead in the WW-game.

that being said - I'm happy for Tarcone and I'm happy for RKG. And I'm happy for my parents and my grandparents, who are all believers.

As long as they don't launch into tirades against me going to hell and all, I've adopted a policy of not launching into tirades against them for their belief in something that i consider to be about as likely as invisible pink unicorns. And I'm glad they find some measure of happiness in it. But it's not for me, and I damn sure don't want it codified or influencing the political system.

With the notable exception of the Prop 8 / gay rights thing. I'll throw down with our 86 year old Jesuit-friend about that if anybody brings it up. But I won't bring it up.

That would actually be very satisfying for me - are you available for dinner parties? .... ;)

"Hey, it isn't Jesus, it's just Old Man RedKingGold!"

"I woulda got away with it if it wasn't for you meddling atheists!"

I don't know. Let me ask you this... Is there any example from the Bible of God or Jesus demonstrating or explaining some scientific concept that was ahead of its time? Something that no human would have known at the time. Something along those lines could be very persuasive. God didn't mind laying down The Ten Commandments on Moses, so perhaps he also told somebody a few scientific principles to boost their science program as well? Maybe Jesus could have explained how his father/God told him about all the elements that He used to construct everything in the universe, and Jesus could have shared that with his apostles. Maybe God/Jesus could have told people that the Earth was not the center of the Universe, even. It could have saved us some time and trouble, for sure.

I haven't read all the post, but I noticed no st.cronin.

Anyway, I believe. My dad always told me I could die at any moment and go to hell. Pretty rough thing to do to a 6 year old all the time. Anyway, my beliefs couldn't be stronger because of it. I would never do that to any kid I had and makes me not even want to pressure anyone. I think I got me some issues.

Simple. Based on scientific evidence, there is, in all likely probability, life on other planets. Be it simple one celled organisms to something we have never seen before.

Scientific evidence for the exisitence of a god or gods? None.

Actually there is no scientific evidence for life out there. None. Everything that we have done in that regard is based on 1) finding water and 2) looking at what life does here and assume that anything that resembles that elsewhere must be evidence for life.

I'm not going to argue that in the billions of galaxies with trillions of stars with countless planets that one other one out there probably is life, however, that does not mean that we have found scientific evidence of life.

I would actually put our evidence for extra terrestrial life on par with what we have for the existence of God.

I disagree completely, as I said it is most likely probable that there is extraterrestrial life based on scientific evidence. The scientific evidence encludes much much more than just finding water and looking at what life does here.

Again, there is zero scientific evidence for a god or gods. I put any evidence for a god or gods on par with big foot or the loc ness monster.

Are you sure those are on equal footing?

Umm, this isn't correct at all.

Evidence: Millions of species of life right here on earth.

Evidence: Gods? none here on earth?

Postulate: Life probably exists elsewhere because it exists here

Postulate: God probably doesn't exist elsewhere because it doesn't exist here


now for Life, we have at least ONE example of existance, so it is perfectly acceptabl to say it COULD happen elsewhere.

For God? We have no evidence anywhere of such a being, so we can't accurately say there COULD be GOD anywhere else.



We search for life based on what we know to be true, that does not negate the possibility that it ALSO exists in some other form that we aren't actively searching for.

With the search for extra terrestrial life and the plausibility of it existing there is at least some existing evidence that LIFE does exists SOMEWHERE.


emphasis for clarity only, its a happy happy Joy Joy day ;)

What you guys are doing is quite different from what actual evidence consists of. You guys are using Descartian logic, I personally like Descartes, but I can use his same arguments to prove the existence of God and the soul.

My point is that there is no evidence of extra terrestrial life. Some of the arguments that you guys make are ridiculous. It it similar to taking a snap shot of what happens in a volcano eruption and extrapolating that to the rest of the earth. No life exists there, so there isn't any life anywhere else on earth.

Again, I am not arguing that there isn't life out there, I believe that there is, however, I am not going to say that we have found any evidence of it. I think a lot of what we are doing in that field is faulty. We are looking for the type of life we have here, and what is out there may not be water/carbon based life.

Regarding God, Descartes (of Cartesian coordinate fame) argued that since he has the idea of a perfect being and what that entails, he must have been exposed to it at some point. Because there is no perfect being here, he must have experienced it at some point prior to this life. He postulated that since it did not happen in this life, he must have been exposed to it prior to birth. Therefore, it must have happened when his soul was created. That experience was imprinted on his soul, etc., etc., etc.

Again, my focus is on EXTRATERRESTRIAL life not that here on Earth.

wait... wait... what if God was an extraterrestrial lifeform?

***my whole world just exploded***

Welcome to Hollywood Mr Cruise!

Weren't the methane plumes they found on Mars a decent sign that there was/is life there?

Methane plumes are also formed through natural processes as well. Methane is a pretty common element, it is a hydrocarbon chain. It can be formed several ways, but it is CH4, essentially a carbon atom surrounded by hydrogen. Is it something to investigate? Sure. I question it because to detect something like that, you would need to have significant amounts on cows sitting with their asses in the air farting...

There are a few possibilities for what can cause the methane plumes on Mars, life being just one of them.

dola

This video explains the two probable causes for the methane. One being underground life (simple single or multi-cellular life). The second being Water and CO2 coming together under very hot temperatures and high pressure.

(sarcastic)
Thats fantastic - taking that literally it means there's a planet made out of a donut with strawberry jam on it - I thought about it last night and haven't seen it in real-life, but because I thought it, its 'obvious' it existed at some point.
(end sarcastic)

Is it just me or is thats on the strangest possible philisophical argument I've ever heard - I thought of something therefore it must exist?

Most creations which people come up with via. their imagination may have their entire basis in fact but are skews of things they've seen/heard and not at all accurate reflections.

As such the fact people have an 'idea' of a perfect being isn't at all impossible - it could be based partially on the fact that as a very young child you're totally dependant on your parents and can't see any limitation to their 'powers' which are at that point far beyond what you know.

(taking this further)

The idea of having a perfect being protecting your future is very appealing and I could see why having experienced that sensation as a young infant it'd be something that would be continually appealing to people even into adult life.

In an attempt to convert the wary to the way of 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' I will now post a small except from the first book, quiet please everyone and listen ...

Babel Fish
The Babel fish is small, yellow, leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NONexistence of God.

The argument goes like this:

`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, "Well, That about Wraps It Up for God."

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

The only thing I will concede is that there has been no DIRECT evidence of extraterrestrial life. I've only mentioned the PROBABILITY of the existence of extraterrestrial life (from one celled organisms to something we have never seen) based on scientific evidence.

Speaking of volcanoes...there has been life discovered in undersea volcanic vents. Underwater Clues to Alien Life :: Astrobiology Magazine - earth science - evolution distribution Origin of life universe - life beyond :: Astrobiology is study of earth science evolution distribution Origin of life in universe terrestrial However, I do agree that life inside magma or lava would be pretty close to impossible of living.

I would agree that Descartes has some very interesting viewpoints regarding god and science, which at times, to me at least, seem contradictory, but that's because I have an extra, almost, four hundred years of scientific advancement and discoveries to reference than what he had in his day. :)

no, but that'd be an excellent excuse to sneak into a female lockerroom.

Are you suggesting (sorry if I misinterpreted) that the different religions of Earth over the years have been the Christian/Jewish/Islamic god's way of showing himself to the different cultures? OK, but the Animists, for example, lack basic fundamentals such as the Ten Commandments and may worship many gods. Basically, the different religions and their spirituality are completely different. Different rules to get in to "heaven" (or whatever they term their afterlife), different origin stories, etc. etc. Humans aren't that different culture-to-culture that they'd need entirely different rules.

BTW, I think this is the first time I've heard a Christian mention this angle.


If everything on this planet was beautiful and perfect, maybe. Humans have physical imperfections and genetic carry-overs from back when we walked on all fours.


This is exactly the problem. This is your interpretation of these passages. Back when I used to get religious instruction, I heard a different interpretation to these passages, and many others. It's a matter of semantics. The church's "offical line" on just about every passage in the bible changes as often as they deem fit, and with no hope of clarification ever coming from a divine source, well...

"Believe"? No. Think it's possible? Yes. If life can develop here, why not elsewhere? But hey, maybe life as we know it is a heck of a lot rarer than we imagine. I tend to think that our planet and the creatures that inhabit it are a miniscule and, comparitively, insignificant part of a great whole that we'll never ever know anything about.

I always liked Oolon's trilogy.