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Post by behemoth on Mar 23, 2009 15:10:15 GMT -5
Personally I do not know what I believe, but i know that I cannot stand what today's christian "religion" has become. I guess you could say i have faith in God, but absolutly no faith in the people that claim to be christians and abandoned entirely what it means to be a "believer". The single greatest problem with Christianity is Christians, my friend. If you want my advice, do not look at the mainstream pit of mediocrity that is a majority of people who call themselves Christians. If you do, you will get depressed, discouraged, and ultimately who knows what will happen. I know that we don't know each other, but I am speaking from personal experience here. Keep your eyes on Christ, not on Christians. There is no question that many people who profess Christianity are blazing hypocrits and don't even care that they come across that way. The problem is that we are all sinful, fallible people and we don't live for Christ as fully as we should. I work at a Family Christian Bookstore part time while studying at seminary, and we partner with the World Vision organization to help get kids sponsored so that they can have holistic care including food, medical supplies, education, and receive the message of the Gospel. As it would be wrong to try to "sell kids" to people. Thus, after a person's transaction is over and they know we aren't selling them anything because they've already paid, we say something to the effect of "We know that not everyone is able to sponsor a child, and we don't want to guilt anyone into it, but what everyone is capable of is prayer. So on your way out if you could say a quick prayer for our World Vision Children, we would greatly appreciate it." Most people at least say yes and we must assume that they pray for the kids as they leave. Some actually stop by the table and pray for the specific children. I had one lady who just bought nearly $200 worth of "Christian" dvds and other garbage including a pack of tracts look me in the face and say "No, thank you. I won't," when I asked her to simply pray for kids who are literally starving to death. That's overtly depressing. I actually got angry and almost yelled at her for the hypocrisy and generally disgusting ethics she was showing, but of course I didn't. That bothered me for almost a week, and I've run into other situations similar. What I'm saying to you is something that I have to continually remind myself. Don't get caught up in how ridiculous others are. We are all human, and ultimately we can be pretty terrible. We should not let that shift our gaze from Christ though. Sorry this was so long, and sorry if you feel it wasn't an appropriate response.
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Post by Josh on Mar 23, 2009 16:08:44 GMT -5
It was behemoth and thanks.
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Post by Brent on Mar 23, 2009 17:20:24 GMT -5
Agnostics/Atheists need faith also to believe the things that they do, in fact they are a religion in and of themselves. No they don't. A lack of belief is not a religion.
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Post by Josh on Mar 23, 2009 17:34:53 GMT -5
Uhm in a way it is. They believe in evidence and in themselves.
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Post by Atheo on Mar 23, 2009 17:47:14 GMT -5
Sorry, I should have explained before. NOMA is Non-Overlapping MAgisteria. It's the concept that theology and science occupy entirely different realms of thought, and that as long as neither tries to influence the other's territory the two are compatible as modes of thought. NOMA is often touted by the religious as a way for one to be religious and scientifically credible, but unfortunately few ever actually follow the concept. As soon as one tries to explain anything about the physical world- anything at all- with God, they have violated NOMA (and become wrong).
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Post by mountair on Mar 24, 2009 1:32:38 GMT -5
Uhm in a way it is. They believe in evidence and in themselves. religion n. No. Definitely no. No. No. This is vacuous to the point where anything can be defined as a religion, so no. Also, "atheism" and "agnosticism" are antonyms of religion.
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Post by alspal on Mar 24, 2009 5:52:23 GMT -5
Would Christ/God's teachings be considered religious? Cause I haven't really been of this whole man made religion thing.
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Post by Muffy on Mar 24, 2009 8:59:42 GMT -5
Science is what our senses tell us about the truth. Religion is expanding beyond the limits of science, opening more doors than our 5 senses allow, in order to find truth where science cannot.
Modern society continues to give Darwin credit for a lot of things, but where is the proof? Sure we have books written by him, about him, but was he really what we are told that he was? How can you believe in history at all when you limit yourself only to evidence? Not everything historical is easy to prove. The same goes for predictions made by science, like global warming for instance. 150 years of observing what happens to the earths climate and the effects is a very tiny, tiny part of the cycle of the earth. Yet all their "evidence" supports the theory that the earth is warming because of human Co2 emissions and such, when they have only measured a fraction of the actual climate change.
So it seems to me that it takes an awful lot of faith in order to understand life as it is.
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Post by mountair on Mar 24, 2009 15:13:18 GMT -5
A big part of science is theoretical, seems an awful lot of people fail to grip this. The theories are based on pre-existing formulas, observations, and inferences about how the world works based on experiments, objective data, and repeatable outcomes. Although we don't know everything and it's very possible that things can behave in ways that science cannot account for yet, like the vast majority of astrophysics.
But at the same time, science has a major root in objectivity. Empirical evidence, observable processes and effects, repeatable conclusions. It's not some hocus-pocus mysticism with nothing to back it up, and I'd be deeply scared and confused if there were still people who think that way.
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Post by Josh on Mar 24, 2009 15:47:05 GMT -5
Still science is far from perfect, Id rather believe insome greater being than humanity, as we know us humans are not as intelligent as we believe ourselves to be.
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Post by Atheo on Mar 24, 2009 16:35:05 GMT -5
Surely you are not attributing your faith in God to a belief that humans are not humble enough? That seems to be a very, very shaky reason.
In any case, you seem to be operating under the misconception that science claims to know things it cannot, and that scientists are pretentious fellows. I must tell you that the aggravating thing about working in scientific fields is that we cannot claim to know that which we do not, or our papers will be laughed out of every journal. I'm actually in the beginning stages of a research paper on the foraging habits of local chickadees, and I can tell you that my paper will probably be inconclusive. This is because if our statistics calculations cannot show that our results have a less than one-in-twenty chance of being the product of coincidence, our data is unusable- and getting that precise is very, very hard. Science, unfortunately, does not actually know a whole lot compared to all that we could potentially know, but this is due to the same reason that science's findings are usually reliable: it takes a lot to convince a scientist that a fact is a fact. A wealth of evidence is required.
Therefore, I would argue that saying we 'are not as intelligent as we believe ourselves to be' is precisely the opposite of the truth. In science, we are often forced to discard ideas we suspect are true because we don't have quite enough evidence to make it a certainty.
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Post by behemoth on Mar 25, 2009 0:11:22 GMT -5
I might respond to all of this...later. Might not. Depends on if I get up the motivation after having class from 8 am tomorrow until 9:30 pm. No time at the moment because I need sleep.
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Post by unicycletim on Sept 30, 2010 2:45:33 GMT -5
I'm studying Physics at University, and the way i see it is this: 1) The Bible is the inspired Word of God and is Truth. 2) The data that is determined by studying the nature of the universe is true
If what I come across does not agree with what I believe, then either the scientist interpreted the data wrong or I have interpreted the Bible wrong.
What I can't stand is when Christians see a new scientific discovery on the news and just laugh at it when they know nothing about the science or how the data was obtained or interpreted.
One thing that I am sure that science will never be able to give a reasonable explanation to is the start of the universe. With the big bang, where did the energy come from to start it all? Theories like the ones suggesting that our universe spawned out of another, and we're all part of a bigger multiverse don't cut it with me either, it's just pushing the 'but what started the first event?' question back a step.
I just can't see how anyone with any sort of intelligence can actually believe that God didn't create everything. It takes a lot more faith to believe some nigh on infinitesimal occurrence than to simply accept that there must've been a Creator
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Post by clareabel on Oct 1, 2010 16:12:07 GMT -5
OOOOLD thread is OOOOLD. I study physics too, so you're still awesome.
Yes science, yes God. I agree. I am too tired to think further.
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Post by unicycletim on Oct 2, 2010 18:27:52 GMT -5
Yeah, I only thought about that after I posted. I don't frequent many forums.... Oh, well
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