"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him." - Prvb 26:4

"Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding." - Prvb 17:28

Only if the OP would be a good Christian and burn his New Testament section of the Bible. Old Testament > New Testament.

Die in a fire please.

i second this

^EY.. i here blak ppl cantt go heeven.. es dat true..

how do we know heaven exist.. I know you have to have faith and everything but what if we are devoting faith into something that doesn't exist...

like a high power? how do we know that the government didn't write the bible or some ancient government to scare people in trying to take over... hmmmm I dont know lol

That would make way more sense than a bunch o' old guys telepathically talking to a sky daddy...

buu how you all gon listen to some frodo baggins tellin you how to get heaven when he cant get to mordoor all by his sorry lil self

Ok this is basically just some guy who wants to tell us that HIS beliefs is the ONLY one right and that the rest are false

Besides I know ill be going to hell no matter what

Sorry but Jesus (pbuh) never died... nor was ever crucified. Read the Apocalypse of Peter.


You're praying and worshipping a Roman pagan mythology.



Thanks to your ridiculous trinity garbage religion.. you have made God nothin more but a joke and have turned many to atheists and agnostics. You have failed and now we have to clean up your mess.


Good day to you.

haha wow that dude has no life

A Note to Individuals Who Think that Their Religion is OK


You are wrong.
Now, I know what you're thinking -- everyone does it, a billion chinese can't be wrong, it makes us be humble and care about our neighbor, and sure, there are people out there doing shitty things in the name of their religions, but their religions are different from yours, and, it's worth mentioning, worse than yours.

The problem, the one that you may not see, is not what your religion says, in particular -- although most likely, you believe in some pretty horrible things, like stoning adulterers or killing the children of your enemies or hating homosexuals or jews or not touching menstruating women or having as many babies as possible. And if you don't it's probably only because you've decided which parts of God's word are good enough for you, and which parts aren't to be taken seriously, since they bother you personally, and that they can therefore be considered to have been mistakes on His part.

The problem is not what your religion tells you to believe, but how it tells you to believe -- that is, it tells you that you can -- no must believe in the absence of the type of evidence that you're used to demanding out of life. In fact, your salvation depends on believing without evidence -- skepticism will actually damn you to hell for all eternity.

You: "Well, it looks like a dog and it barks."
Your Religion: "It's a cat."
You: "Are you sure? I think it's a dog."
Your Religion: "Do you want to burn for all eternity, smarty-pants?"
You: "Oh, right. It's a cat."

Now, let's not get into the fact that this is really, really undignified -- the fact that, if humans are different from, say, squid in any meaningful way (thinking-wise) it's in our capacity to think abstractly enough to perform complicated logical comparison and deductions. But you're going to chuck out what makes you human. That's fine. Whatever.

And let's not get into the fact that all the crappy stuff it tells you is pretty crappy, or that it's all internally contradictory, or that most people aren't very meek or poor or any of those things, in spite of what their particular Book says.

The point is that you believe it's a cat now. So what? Well, the 'so what' isn't that you're going to look like an idiot trying to make a golden retriever shit in a box, although you are. The 'so what' is that once you decide that it's OK to believe in the absence of evidence (or in the fact of contradictory evidence) you've endorsed two related points of view:

1. No one in society has any responsibility to anyone else with regards to thinking things through. I believe my car's brakes don't need to be checked, even though I don't know for sure. Here, borrow the keys, you'll probably live. In one grand gesture, you've gotten on board with the idea that there is no such thing as negligence. As long as I believe a thing, even if a cursory look at the facts might convince a reasonable person of the opposite, well, hey, that's my right. It's ethical and reasonable. There's no need to look, no need to think. It's 10 pm, do you know where your children are? Nah, but I believe they're upstairs, and I don't have any responsibility as a parent to check.
2. No belief can be judged against any other. You believe that God tells you to love, I believe He tells me to fly a hot air balloon around the world. You'd like to tell me that I'm wrong, but you can't, because argument is an act of demonstration of facts, or chains of facts, deduced logically from one another or derived directly from experience. By getting on board with faith, you've rejected argument as a meaningful activity, and rejected thinking critically altogether. You can no longer critically consider or compare ideas, since you believe that it's OK to have faith in spite of critical evidence. Got an argument against genital mutilation? Who cares -- you've already come out on the side of belief in the face of contradictory evidence. I agree. Where's my knife? Everything's OK with you, once you decide that you don't need to believe your eyes or your brain.

So there it is. I don't care if God tells you to suffer the little children, or feed the poor. If that's the only reason you've got for doing those things, you're a shitty person, and your beliefs do more harm than good. Your existence and your attitude demean you, and, much worse, help weaken two of the most important quantities in any society: our ability to trust that other people are telling us the truth and being responsible in their statements and thoughts, and our capacity as a society to look for answers using our brains and our capacities to reason from evidence. Those are all we've got, and once they're gone, society isn't doing anyone any good, since you can't trust its members to be responsible, and you can't rely on reason to dictate your course of actions.

And you, by tolerating religion, have taken a big fat dump on both of these commodities.

That said, every religion is fundamentalism.
It's worth pointing out at this point that a lot of what you hear about how the problem is 'fundamentalism' is bullshit. When people say this, they seem to be talking about something like XXXXTreeeeeme religion, that says completely crazy things.

The problem, as I've mentioned above is that once you accept religion, in the sense that you've decided to tolerate (or even embrace) beliefs in the absence of justifying evidence, you've no longer got any rational or ethical basis for judging one doctrine against another. You've decided to take part in an occasionally comforting dance in which reason and evidence can't be used to judge ideas, and once you've done that, you've got no ground on which to judge anything to be 'fundamentalism', and even if you did, you'd have no grounds to judge that it was a bad idea, and even if you could say that it was a bad idea, you'd have no grounds on which to say that it can't be tolerated, since you've already decided that a rational case against an idea should prevent you from believing it.

Here's how the discussion goes:

Me: "My book says that women who learn to read should be stoned to death."
You: "That's barbaric! It's bad for women, who have natural rights guaranteed by my constitution! It's unfair! It's cruel! Think about it!"
Me: "So what? You believe that Moses talked to an invisible man in space through a burning bush, and you're telling me that I can't believe what I want because it doesn't make sense? Who are you to tell me I'm nuts? Go to hell, infidel."

The only thing fundamentalist about fundamentalism is that what these people (whoever you decide is a fundamentalist) believe requires that they ignore the evidence of their senses and suspend their ability to reason -- it's not double-think, it's willful ignorance. And if you're a religious person, any religion at all that requires faith in the absence of evidence, you do this to. You have everything that's important in common with every other religious person in the world -- you believe what you want in spite of evidence for or against your case.

You are a fundamentalist.

To sum up.
To paraphrase someone who thinks about these things for a living, your immediate reaction to the assertion that your faith is unethical is something along the lines of, "No it's not. Some people's are, because they make you mean, but mine's about being nice." Your religion doesn't tell these maniacs what to believe. In the end, however, that doesn't matter, because your religion, like all others, does tell maniacs how to believe. It tells them -- you tell them, every time you do it, every time you tolerate it -- that it's OK to ignore evidence, it's OK not to exercise your capacity for logical deduction.

So the next time someone blows up a building, or shoots an abortion doctor, or prevents young girls from learning to read, in the name of God, I hope that you won't get too self-righteous about it. In fact, you and they are peas in a pod. You enable this person to do what they do. You promote in society a tolerance and understanding for this behavior. Your failure is their failure. Your willing ignorance is their excuse. Your desecration of society's respect for the truth, for our responsibility to be intellectually diligent, for judging what might be true against what we can discern with our senses to be true, your faith is the exact same thing that makes what they do OK. Your guilty pleasure, your insistence on ignoring what your senses and your intellect tell you removes you and helps remove society from any position in which it is sensible to pass moral judgment on anyone else for believing in the absence of evidence, and then acting on these beliefs, however loony, because you do precisely the same thing they do.

Your religion is everyone's religion, because you've rejected the validity of rationally judging ideas on the basis of our senses and minds. You do it. You OK it. You bring it on. Thanks a lot.

Bloody. Hell.
Did you type that all or is that mega copypasta?

Mega copypasta that I have read all the way through at least ten times, and is exactly what I believe.

that's all great & all, but the rationalist movement was strong in the mind of the christian; today, most christians believe they have good reason to believe in god, & even their specific permutation of god.

of course, they're f*cking wrong. but, usually you have to demonstrate that before you can make the argument against faith (i.e. they have to resort to pure faith before you can assault faith).

i believe in God,
i believe in Heavan.
i won't force anyone, but seriously, whats the point in going on in life without knowing where the world came from. can anyone explain any other way to me, that God couldn't have done?
i'm jw.:)

&i'm a stronggg believer, please don't bring me down. thanks!

Get some grammar and then talk about religion.

That's like investigators at the scene of a burglary saying, "What's the point in doing detective work if you don't find out who did it? Let's chalk it up to elves." Filling in a blank with just anything isn't better than nothing.

Here's a thought...

Non-religious people accuse religious people of "shoving" or "preaching," but religious people don't accuse non-religious people of doing the same when said non-religious people insist that the religious people are wrong.

There's just as much a lack of evidence proving evolution as there is creationism. They're both theories.

Let it be.

whaaaaaaaaaaat



these kind of things make me sigh, this topic is never ending

nuh uh

Yuh huh. It's just a bunch of creeper scientists saying, "Ooh, that sounds cool!"

And never-ending topics are snazzy.

And oh, idk, lots of scientific proof, or something like that. But I guess it could be a massive conspiracy that's accepted world-wide by people who would definitely get together to start a conspiracy to trick kids!!!

Theory != Law

They can call it proof, but in the end it will always be just a theory, until we invent the time machine and get one hell of an awesome time-lapse camera.

that's a false dichotomy because it isn't a matter of either or. you don't have to be either a theory or a law. for example, gravity is considered a law and a theory. but we don't call gravity a made up conspiracy by a bunch of creeper scientists. there's a misinterpretation of the words going on here.

For the record, I didn't call it a conspiracy. My point is, that without absolute proof (i.e., watching bacterial sludge evolve into a human), then I can't believe it to be true. Granted, I've made my choice to follow faith without absolute proof, but people following evolution are doing the same thing. If I were given proof of long-term biological evolution, then I'd believe that.

Nuh uh. You see, we have historical proof, tons of other scientific evidences that I'm not going to pretend to know exact, and lots of other proofs. We've seen short term evolutions, we've found evidence of long term ones, of gradual changes to their environment, and sudden changes that occur once every so often. The thing is, we have proof of evolution, not so much of some hippie who comes back to life turns water to wine and feeds masses. I mean I guess a cool morality filled storybook constitutes a more proof than science.

Tell me, what sounds better.

or

I'll admit, there isn't much more evidence for evolution than for creation, but there is a lot more against creationism, while almost none against evolution.

your ignorance is stupefying. first & foremost, you're equivocating; in science, when we say "theory," we don't mean "guess." gravity, as mentioned earlier, is a theory. a theory is, in science, a measured & substantiated explanation for an observed phenomena. For something to be accepted as a theory, it must not only exist as the "best" explanation for an observed phenomena, it must also stand as rigorously tested: it must go against critical assessment, it must be falsifiable, cohesive, compatible, useful, predictive, & proven far beyond reasonable doubt. the theory of evolution, given these criteria, is actually one of the greatest scientific theories of all time.

we know that things evolve, that is a fact. we know that we all share a common ancestor, that is a fact. we know men have evolved from lower forms, that is a fact. the theory of evolution concerns itself, primarily, with the mechanisms that permit such phenomena. we're talking about natural selection, genetic mutation, genetic drift, sexual selection, etc. etc. etc.

to deny the reality of evolution is to deny a century worth of biological, genetic, historical, geological, etc. evidence. you're denying everything that allows science to progress today. & worse of all, to compare the evidential status of "creationism" with that of a fully established scientific theory... it's tantamount to denying that the earth revolves around the sun, or that the earth is spherical. you are a dinosaur of a person if you don't believe fully in evolutionary theory.

it's just really obvious you have no idea what science is, what evolution is, or what critical thinking amounts to. i highly suggest you start to inform yourself appropriately. i highly suggest you start here: http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html

^ Hahaha. That is unbelievably pompous. Because I have different beliefs, I'm ignorant? Evidence does not dictate proof. I didn't say I don't agree with short term evolution. I know things adapt to their environment; I can observe that happening. All I'm saying is that I don't believe organisms as they are today evolved as so many scientists say they have. I hardly think that means I'm denying our existence.

Why is it that evolutionists can't think with an open mind? If someone puts forth a different idea, it's immediately blasted down as ignorant, stupid, far-fetched, only conceivable by a moron. How is it that I'm not capable of "critical thinking" because I'm not part of the bandwagon? On the contrary, that's exactly what critical thinking is. There's absolutely no definitive proof of long-term evolution. And in asking what you think the proof or evidence is, please don't throw dinosaurs and rock permutation at me. That's so childish; it's nothing more than regurgitating what a high school science book spits at you.

How did life come to be? The earth mutated so it could support life? Then some magical electricity turned a rock into a bacterium? Then billions of years later we're all involved in this roundabout, endless argument? That idea is exactly the reason why I don't believe it to be true. Fossils are dated by radioactive isotopes. But who's to say that the half lives of those isotopes are the same today as they were a million years ago? If the earth can change so much that life pops out of nowhere, why can't the physical properties of atoms change as well?

Calling me ignorant doesn't make you superior in any way. Rather, it makes you seem like a minion to general ideas. Try thinking for yourself and making your own conclusions. And no, being taught evolution and hearing a hundred people say that creationism is a fool's game doesn't mean that you thought for yourself. Why do you believe evolution is true? What proofs or evidences drew you to that? If there wasn't any controversy in the idea, there wouldn't be this age-old debate. Are you going to call creationist scientists morons, when they're doing just as much advancement in science as evolutionists are?

...Evidence does dictate proof. We can't have evidence without proof. You could call proof evidence. Evidence dictates proof.

We have evidence that person A pulled the trigger on a gun and put a bullet in person B. We can prove that person A shot person B.

oic




I hear Nate jumps on the bandwagon with social norms and has no controversial opinions nor does he go against the flow of things. Total bandwagoner.

Evidence is grounds leading to a proof. It's not proof in itself. That's why it takes multiple instances of evidence for an idea to become a theory. Like I said before, it's impossible to absolutely prove long-term evolution. I'd like to see anything against that otherwise.

We have evidence to show that Person A shot Person B. Unfortunately, even after all that evidence, Person A is innocent.

i'm confused. does this mean you reject every other scientific theory as well?

I have evidence to show that all black people eat chicken.

Is it true? Yes.

Not at all. Biological evolution is a completely different area of science. Like I already said, what I believe and don't believe is only related to long-term evolution. I know mutations occur, because you can see it happen. Someone with Down's suffered a genetic mutation.

The only thing that I disagree on is how we all came to be. Evolutionists believe we magically appeared because of some flying sparks and explosions. I believe we magically appeared because of an invisible being in the sky. Call me illogical, but both theories are equally flawed. What evolutionists say is proof of evolution, I can say is proof of a God or gods. It just goes back and forth.

mutation != evolution

Mutation: The act or process of being altered or changed.
Evolution: Change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.

Mutation == Evolution

nope. That's like saying rectangle == square. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not always a square. Evolution and mutation may be similar, but a mutant is not evolved just because of a mutation. Hey look a fish with three eyes, I'M WITNESSING EVOLUTION! ALL FISH WILL SOON HAVE THREE EYES!

I think we're letting comparison symbols get in the way...

!= is not equal to
!== is not identical to
== is equal to
=== is identical to

Mutation !== Evolution but Mutation == Evolution

And just because a mutation is for the worse, that doesn't mean it hasn't evolved. Evolution is just change.

You do know that Pope John Paul II made the Catholic Church's official position accepting of evolution? Evolution is a fact, just as the "theory" of gravity is.

Creationism is as much an equal position to evolution as the stork theory is to childbirth.



Science has nothing to do with magic.

I'm not Catholic, nor orthodox anything, so what the Pope does affects me no more than a blade of grass being stepped on in China. And if life appearing out of nowhere isn't magic, what is it? Comparing creationism to the stork is saying all creationists are ignorant. Creationist scientists are ignorant?

That neither assumed nor insinuated you being Catholic, or even Christian. It shows that you'd have to be pretty fringe to go beyond a group that says AIDS in Africa is bad, but not as bad as condoms.



Unknowns in science aren't chalked up to magic just because they haven't been substantiated. Solar eclipses weren't magic when our ancestors cowered in terror at the blotting out of the sun.



No, I'm afraid you're the only who made that leap, and you'd be wrong even if it was intentioned because ignorance is from a dearth of knowledge. Plenty of creationists believe the way they do despite said knowledge, not because they've never been exposed to it. There isn't, however, any more evident reason to believe in creationism than there is to believe in the stork theory (but at least most proponents of the stork have the excuse of being 5).

creationists can't even use the scientific method, the most basic element of science.

My point behind the "magic" is that neither evolution nor creationism have solid grounds to be the absolute truth. Neither are known "facts." Theories may have facts within, but they are not law until proven. Hence, long-term evolution is a theory. I find it a bit humorous when evolutionists insist that it's fact. Is it really so wrong to believe in a theory?

How does the study of evolution have any more knowledge than the study of creation? Darwin and the guys he stole his ideas from weren't around 10,000 years ago. How do they know the events that happened in the Bible (or any other religious book for that matter) didn't happen? Religious books are supposed to be historical accounts of what happened oh, so many years ago. Why is that inexcusable to base beliefs? Why must I base my beliefs on what scientists have decided in the past 200 years?

It's just silly when evolutionists say there isn't any reason to believe in creation. Tell me why there isn't. Tell me why scientists believe their theories are the right ones when it comes to the formation of life. Tell me how a scientist explains infinity. What was there before the Big Bang?

Evolution does not concern itself with the question of the origin of life; it answers the question of how life changes over time.

Evolution is an incontrovertible fact that's been proven through it as a theory being propagated. Theory in science isn't hierarchically lower than fact. They're simply two separate things. And no scientific fact is "absolute truth" because that would be antithetical to science in the first place, a process that's always amenable to self-correction. False point to make.



You don't need to be somewhere in person for it to be confirmed. How do you know any historical figure existed when you weren't there to meet him or her? That's just solipsism.

How do we know that many of the events in the Bible didn't happen? Because birds didn't come before reptiles. Because the genealogy in Matthew is scientifically invalid. Because the omission of marsupials makes evident that this was written by men who hadn't discovered Australia, and because the plethora of contradictions read as if this really was composed by a species barely a chromosome away from being chimpanzees.



The onus is on you to validate a belief without scientific evidence, not me.

I don't know about the nature of the "nothing" before the Big Bang anymore than you do. The difference here is that science not only admits to ignorance for the time being, but is perpetually working on overcoming it.

Also, you're left explaining what was before god. If you answer that god is outside of time, then you're left explaining the circumstances of the new problem. You're trapped in an infinite regression.

Eh, well it kinda split into two topics. Abiogenesis, adaptation, mutation; they all deal with evolution, whether it be the evolution of earth, or evolution of a species. Observable evolution I do agree with. But like I've already said, evolution regarding change from one organism to an entirely different organism is not provable. Yes, from what scientists have gathered, it may appear to be the truth, but there's no way we can be positive of it. It's simply being passed off as an accepted truth.

1000 years ago, people were crucified if they didn't believe in God. Today, people are crucified if they don't believe in evolution. 1000 years in the future, people will be crucified if they don't believe aliens dropped us here.

Speaking in terms of evolution vs. creation, you can't really say that we know the events didn't happen, because that's saying that creation isn't true. There's no debate in that. It's just an assumption. The "omission of marsupials" is irrelevant in the fact that the Bible doesn't list all species on earth. And technically it is an "on you" issue. It's a topic that was started on the basis that there is a god. So anyone against it would have to provide grounds as to why the original idea is wrong.

I'm not claiming to know what there was before us. I'm just saying that I believe there's a God. And God is said to be timeless. I don't claim to understand infinity. No one can.

Comparing physical torture to academic admonishment (only the latter is based on evidence, by the way) is ridiculous.

We can be as close to positive of evolution as we can be about any other confirmed scientific theory. It's a straw man to keep saying that science can't be absolutely certain about it because science always leaves room for future rectification and doesn't ever set out to put things in immutable stone.

But said rectification only happens through more science, not superstition.

That's the problem in the argument between evolution and creation, though. One is constant improvement, the other is considered absolution. What I don't understand is why I'm wrong to believe in the absolution, rather than the testing.