Because Christians refuse to believe science.
Seriously, don't talk rubbish because you're biased and ignorant.

I'm a Christian, and I believe ghosts and ufos and spiritual energy is rubbish also. They might be real, but I don't see any reason to think so.

BTW Mort, Jesus loves you.

Go right ahead..

1. I don't really participate in debates of religion or existance of God

2. I believe in God as well.


So um...yeah..I really don't see what your point was but ok.

Because randomly insulting people and automatically assuming you're correct is definitely not delusional.

It's only 'closed-minded' in that it won't accept anything unless there is reason to accept it.

That is rational.

There is nothing 'wrong' with being irrational. If you believe something through faith, and nothing else, then I can't touch you. I don't have a problem with 'faith'. Trying to construct a 'faith vs. logic' argument is impossible, because you'd be using logic from the start, and faith doesn't do arguments anyway.

But when you actually start requiring proof for your irrational beliefs, that's when I have a problem with you.

Miracles, signs from heaven, ghosts, karma, your 'energy'; it's all the same. It's people unsatisfied with 'faith' alone, yet unable to abandon it altogether. So they try and mix and match, and that's when they're screwed.




Uh, of course you automatically assume you're correct.

You assume you're correct until it is proven otherwise, either by yourself or someone else.

If you didn't, you wouldn't have an opinion to begin with.



Of course I'm biased. Everyone is biased. That's sort of the whole point of having an opinion.

You stated it like it was a fact. That "the religious idiots" reject science completely.

It's his opinion by virtue of him saying it. It's unnecessary for him to add any qualifiers such as "in my opinion" or "I think", because it's obvious that what he's saying is his opinion. Because he said it. Get it?

....It lives.... *dramatic pause* ... out in those woods, in the dark... something... something that's come back... from the dead!

Insert random expletives into that and you would have had my exact response too.

I don't know about you guys, but I find it comforting to live with an open mind (to a healthy extent), even if that means inviting beliefs of paranormal activity, spirits, god, ect. Of course that way of living is not for everybody, so don't put another person down for having a closed mind. If that's the way they want to live, then I say let them.

[/obviousstatement]

In my eyes, some sort of God has to exist. The universe is too complicated to be such a large coincidence where every little minute detail that is needed to make things the way they are.

This is really just a complex way of saying "If things were different, they'd be different!".

I don't see why people try to justify God's existence. It's stupid and generally against what the religion teaches. God does not want to be proven through logic, test, science, anything. That's why he calls for FAITH. Not test tubes and experiments.

You take reality itself for granted, Mort. We have ordered laws of physics, gravity ect. We have logic and math. It all fits together, perfectly, down to the tiniest detail. A reality that existed by chance would be totally random and unordered.

BTW, Creationism and science aren’t mutually exclusive, as you constantly imply. They just have a different theory as to how the earth began, which I might add, isn't dependant on a multitude of interlocking, wildly improbable events. Obviously, no theory of that magnitude is perfect down to every detail, as no one was around at the beginning to write every thing down in detail. But, while you do nothing but scoff at Creation, Evolution is not with-out its many quirks that scientists find difficult to explain. Instead of continuing your endless, baseless scoffing, you might try actually researching Creation some time, and finding some good arguments against it. I used to respect you Mort, but I am sorry to say that your totally un-scientific attitude toward Creation makes you look more and more like an idiot.

It's possible to have an opinion without assuming it to be true. For example, I don't believe in the vast majority of religions, but that doesn't mean I assume I'm right. If it did, I wouldn't spend time studying others. Being aware that your opinions are created by only your perceptions is the first step away from arrogance.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]I don't see why people try to justify God's existence. It's stupid and generally against what the religion teaches. God does not want to be proven through logic, test, science, anything. That's why he calls for FAITH. Not test tubes and experiments.[/QUOTE]
Because people continually assume science and religion are opposites and therefore must contradict. And while they are opposite, they can't genuinely contradict. Religion deals with spirituality, and science deals with the physical. How can they contradict if they don't even cover completely opposite topics? It baffles me to no end.

So... how did this turn religious?

Oh right... paranormal=religion. (What? )

Except they do contradict.

Science states life evolved over time.

Most big religions state that people were created by God.

If that's not contradiction i dont know what is.

I take an unscientific view towards Creationism because creationism isn't science.

We've been through these many 'quirks' of evolution many times already. Evolution is fact, there is no 'uncertainty', there is no 'hmm! that's odd!' about evolution. The only thing that exists is ignorance about how evolution works, and creationism is bred out of that. Although we've done this a dozen times, do please specify exactly what the 'quirks' are and I can answer them.

Mathematics certainly doesn't 'fit together' with logic perfectly. The vast majority of all functions cannot be integrated. Why is that?

And what's more, we don't live in an ordered Universe.

The Universe is fundementally random.

Yes, that is a very difficult concept to grasp, and I can understand misgivings about it. 'Random' is a concept that doesn't really make much sense intuitively, but the reason we have science is because 'intuition' isn't good enough. And Quantum Mechanics tells us that the movement of tiny particles is totally random. Not 'difficult to predict' or 'very complex', totally random. What sort of God would create such a Universe?


And also, all of God's creation, why are they all killing eachother? Why has God created a world where basic survival requires killing, a world dominated by predator and prey? It's certainly not due to a little 'evil' being spattered across the place by Satan corrupting stuff, every animal of nature, ourselves included, needs to kill in order to survive. Why does God require some of his creation to be killed by his own creation?

And why is God's creation so incredibly inefficient? Why do we have an appendix? Why do we have a tail bone? Why do we have so much DNA that doesn't do anything? Why is our respiration system so incredibly inefficient?

If God is the creator of everything, he totally sucks as a creator. This world isn't 'beautifully perfect', it's far from it.

'God' doesn't answer any of these questions. Luckily, we have an alternative to 'God'. We have evolution, and it answers all of them.



If you don't assume your opinion to be true, then it isn't your opinion. It's just an opinion, one of the billions of different possible opinions.
Even if you selected one of those billion at random, you'd have to assume it to be true until you've proven otherwise and adopted a different one, to do the same with.



No, religion and science deal with the same thing: explaining the world around us. Science does so by observing the world around us. Religion is just bad science, antiquated science.

You keep contradicting yourself in your own posts, mort.

[QUOTE=IRG SithLord]You keep contradicting yourself in your own posts, mort.[/QUOTE]
Where?

Uh... examples?

This is assuming you take everything physically, which is science's department.
Not to mention evolution doesn't cover creation of life at all.

Nice circular logic. Even though I don't support creationism in it's literal sense.

And if such movement wasn't random, then what?

That just simply makes no sense. But humans have a tendancy to play the blame game. It's like when someone blames me when they spill my drink because I put it there. It's fun to shift the blame.

I fail to see any point to this argument. Are we supposed to eat dirt? Anything alive contains energy and nutrients, and consuming it transfers that energy to sustain us. Try taking a look at how life recycles itself. Even our waste is nutritious to plant life. Plant life is food to various organisms, they may in turn be food to another organism, and so on in a perfect cycle. Take away any one of these elements, sustainence ultimately will crumble.
If it were inefficient, it wouldn't exist. Yet clearly, we are more than efficient enough to sustain ourselves. If we took in more oxygen than we do, we would hyperventilate constantly. No. An opinion refers to the opinion itself. It's your opinion when you believe it, and it's arrogance when you assume it's true just because it's yours.
Since I've never actually sat down and read manuscripts from other religions (if they have any), I can only vouch for one on that level. And I can say definitely that there are only 2 chapters of the Bible that deal with creation. That's less than 99% of the book. If you actually read the thing, even if for the sake of debating, you would know that it's purpose is to explain the spiritual. It makes that blantantly clear.
I seem to recall Islam being along similar lines.

No, it's my belief, not my excuse.

Abiogenesis.



A scientific theory requires falisifiable predictions. Creationism doesn't offer any, therefore it isn't science. It's only a circular argument if you assume the premise to be true when concluding it is.




...Then we'd live in an ordered Universe.

but we don't.

This was all in response to Obi's post.. which you don't seem to have read.



Eh? There's no 'blame'. Merely observation. All the animals killing eachother, I'm not saying that's a 'bad' thing. It's just very unusual for a God that says thou shalt not kill to have a world where killing is such an integral part.




Surely a benevolent God would create all his creatures with the opportunity for life? Did he create the gazelle merely to be a walking lunchbox for the lion? And did he create everything to merely be a host for the bacterium?



Except why do you believe it if you don't assume it to be true?
Assuming something to be true is a requirement for believing in it. That's what 'believing' is.

If you don't assume it to be true, then there is nothing 'special' about that opinion, there is nothing that makes it yours.

No, you don't assume it to be true merely because it is yours. The opinion is yours because you assume it to be true. You probably have some other reason for assuming it is true.




'Explain the spiritual'?

What exactly does it explain? Do you mean 'morality'?



I never said it was an excuse. I just said it was false.

Let's see it dude - an ARGUMENT NOW or SILENCE! Too many people are allowed an opinion nowadays. Say something now or forever hold your peace. Deadline is one week. That goes for ALL of you.

Actually, you've taken his "ordered universe" statement way out of context.

Sounds to me like you're blaming God for something he doesn't have a direct hand in. And that commandment, btw, is 'thou shalt not murder, which implies two things - the one being killed is human, and is being killed for no justifiable reason.


No. Like I said, it's balanced. All creatures do have an opportunity for life, because each one has both it's own defense mechanisms and its own particular method of acquiring food, be it agility in hunting, waiting in ambush, or setting 'traps.' Or whatever.

If you have a reason, it's no longer an assumption.

No. 'Morality' exists for a related reason though, which I'll get to in a moment.

I like these two definitions of a spirit:
1. The vital principle or animating force within living beings.
2. Incorporeal consciousness.

The spiritual would be anything relating to these things, in addition to, for example, beings which exists only (or at least originally) in a non-embodied form. Simply a matter of existing differently than us.

The reason for morals (in Christianity anyway) that seem to be in excess of the Golden Rule is because they are believed to cause damage to one's spirit, but not necessarily to one's flesh. Being that the spirit cannot be seen with a natural eye, we tend to determine morals based only on what we see. If more is being done to our spirit, it would be incredibly unfair for a God who can see such things (being a spirit and all) to not inform us of it.

Spiritual vs. physical is not to dissimilar from a theory of parallel universes/dimensions. Matter in our universe is adapted to certain laws of physics. If in another universe physics were completely different, it stands to reason that matter (if it could still be called that) and life would adapt to it differently to abide by those laws, laws which we, not living in that nature, wouldn't have a good chance of understanding. At all.

The difference is that the spiritual and physical are supposedly interconnected. Much in the way that 2D is connected to 3D, but at a higher level. I'll use that analogy to attempt to illustrate what I'm saying. Let's say we have a 2D person (I know, 2D people don't actually exist, except perhaps for Kate Moss), and we have some sort of square box in front him. We, in 3D, could see inside the box, the 2D person could not. If the person were to go inside the box, we could still see him with no effort, the 2D person could not see us because that field of vision simply doesn't exist to him. If we were to do something ordinary in 2D, it would be deemed a "miracle" by the 2D guy.

Apply that to the physical and spiritual, and you have the same scenario. The spiritual "dimension" would reside above the physical, be linked to it, yet we could not see anything in it unless it first interacted with us, or unless we had a spiritual element of our own. This would explain why it seems that in the Old Testament, God doesn't seem to regard physical life too much. And why would he concern himself with only the temporary part of our existence?
In this way, God could be right next to you and you wouldn't even know it.

So hopefully, I didn't suck too much at explaining that viewpoint. :-\

Quit trying to explain your faith with logic and science. It's really, really pathetic.

Although I agree, a better debate tactic would be to try to actually counter his points. But then Mort can do a better job of that than both of us...

This topic got crappy fast

Okay.



Nice hypothesis. Even if you could come up with some experiments to test it, they wouldn't prove that matter from another universe is 'spiritual'.



How do you know? My guess is you're using a combination of intuition and the Bible. Even if that is correct, in what way are they connected? You have not the slightest idea. It's ridiculous to try to explain your faith like this.





Call me when you can back that up with the slightest semblance of proof.



Proof?



God forbid you would base your conclusion on the evidence rather than searching for evidence to support your conclusion. You can find supporting evidence for just about any claim. It doesn't mean the evidence proves something or that it's strong evidence.



That's a nice theory; proof?

Basically what it comes down to is that you CAN NOT prove or rationalize your faith in any possible way, because your claims are not provable.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

True, but you can say that about the teapots orbiting jupiter as well.

Tensh, didn't you know the British sent astronauts there in the late 19th century? Jeez..

Absence of evidence is absence of anything.

Without evidence, you don't have anything. We only deal with evidence.

Though people even question something that has decent evidence so in the end it's all pointless, like arguing over it.

I find people argue over everything... heck there is even people that will argue that we didn't land on the moon and that the US government secretly caused Sept 11.

Sounds like evolution.



No, education is never pointless.

Education? The whole argument is both sides basically telling people what they should believe. That's not education, that's ridiculous. Just let people believe what they want to believe and stop before it gets any more hostile like every thread that mixes religion into arguements.

I believe in God, UFOs, ghosts, bigfoot, etc. You don't gotta believe in them, but don't tell me I am wrong for doing so.

You're wrong for believing in them.

That's right, I went there! :p

I'm ready to accept anything with enough evidence/proof and a solid argument, including the Harry/Hermione pairing.

I'd love to, but reality shows us people who try to teach bigfootism in biology class, or people who wage bull**** wars with bombs and terror because dude A believes in another skyfriend than dude B (or a distant, distant relative of victim A practices a different form of collective delusion than murderer B).

Keep it to yourselves, and I'd be entirely chill with it. That's not what's happening though. That's also why noone here can attack me on calling you delusional or you making up invisible friends.