Here is the new topic.

This topic doesn't contain any content! So it's SPAM!

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I think Hydra wants us to argue about religion. That's fine by me, but I think Hydra should start the argument. Over to you, Hydra . . .

Well if you go to Schools Back in off-topic you will see the arguments I posted last time.
:)

This topic is nonesense.

Having just read the 'schools back' thread, I now know why this was started. Sorry to anyone who doesn't want a religious discussion on this site, but I NEED TO REPLY!

 From 'schools back':


 One of the basic principles of most religion is that there is only one God with one standard of worship. And this is exactly why most religions view each other as a bad influence and are opposed. The thing is that there can only be one true religion worshiping God correctly, and it's terribly ironic that so many think they're right when opposing others also thinking they're right. I think this is why so many hate religion, because they're in such a mess of confusion and hypocrisy.

 This is also why I love religious discussions, because I am religious and believe the best thing to do in defence of God and how He is terribly misrepresented, is to carefully and tactfully explain the truth from the bible whenever appropriate to those who may benefit from knowing more about God and His purposes for mankind.

 I can only grimace at the mental response of atheists reading the above, but the thing is that we're not so different. We are all in search of the truth, or if we believe we already have it, we can only benefit by expanding our minds to new concepts and ideas and learning more about what we think we already know.

 I am not one of those people who think that religion and science are speaking different languages, but I believe they can live in harmony. (The bible never says the earth is only 6000 years old!) And there are no proven scientific facts that contradict the bible.

Thread of interest

QUOTE FROM G3K: (To the best of my knowledge, he was a practising Catholic. In addition, despite my beliefs (or lack of any) I go to a Catholic school (on a sidenote, the "Catholic/everyone else" divide is a pretty major cause of segregation and hatred in my country, which brings me to dislike the Church even more)

Well, G3K, to the best of my knowledge, Catholic teachings are against us evolving from apes. So your teacher was teaching anti-Catholic things.

Oh well, seems like I've been taught by the anti-christ himself then... ¬_¬

Hey, Conway! Nice to have another creationist on the forum! However, I don't know from where you got the idea that Jesus was an angel? Is it from the Bible somewhere?

I'm not sure. But somehow I'm glad I was taught by protestants. Even I don't care to it now. If you are happy with god, be happy.

Okay, I'd better outline my beliefs right here right now...

Recently I came across the term "agnostic", and decided that suits my position far better; for the unenlightened, Google defines "agnostic" as "a person who believes that, at our present level of knowledge, we cannot know whether or not a God exists."

I'd like a world free of discrimination and hatred where people are free to pursue their beliefs without obstruction of any sort, it's just that I don't see how ANY sort of supernatural being could exist.

A large portion of the evolutionists' theory seems to be that religion causes nothing but trouble. As I already stated, it HAS caused trouble. But then atheism has also caused problems.

One of Communism's main tenets is that religion should not be allowed. To this day, Christians are persecuted by Communist governments because of their beliefs.

Atheistic Communism is FAR more violent than Christianity ever was. For example, about 3000-4000 people were executed in the Spanish Inquisition. Under Mao Zedong, China's Communist leader, 10's of MILLIONS died! So as far as body count goes, it seems that atheism is winning!

It is beyond human comprehension.

Hm, You have to see it from another point of view. If there are only atheism people, no one can be killed because of his religion. :D

Haha! :D Well, if everyone agreed, we couldn't post on an ARGUMENTS topic, could we? And that wouldn't be any fun!
:D

It's really easy to point to something bad, and blame it on 'religion', and so conclude that anything involving the word 'religion' is bad. But that's a pretty vast concept to be condemning - and when you think that the term Christian literally translates to 'footstep follower of Christ', you have to wonder if it's the belief system at fault, or the people unsucessfully attempting to follow it. Can you imagine Jesus being alive now, and encouraging people to be racist or to condone war? (considering this is the guy who talked about a samaritan helping a jew, and hung out with lepers and former tax collectors.)  

And btw, in response to the 'School's back' thread: Conway and I were also home educated! Whish egsplains our wunderful levl ov educasion!  B)

Well, go I went to the schools public happen and see can you better my spelling be!

Whoa, this is strange...We start a topic about school, it turns into a religion argument, so we start a new topic...We argue about religion, and then we start talking about school...CREEPY! X_X

Lol! I suppose it's 'cause Andi locked the School's Back topic :-/

Looking at religion strictly pragmatically:

1) It would be impossible to have a society in which morality was non-existent.

2) The system of morality that Christianity sets up is amazingly good, even if it is not divinely inspired.

3) Positivism simply has not worked. Look at America-- we can't decide what marriage, or even life, is.

I would say that government commissioned agnosticism is much more harmful to the good of society than a false belief in Christianity ever could be.

A couple things ------

WHY ARE THE STORIES IN THE BIBLE SO UNBELIEVABLEY UNBELIEVABLE???

You must remember this first: the Bible is a couple thousand years old.  Several times it has been translated into different languages.  The Greeks translated it.  The Germans had it translated.  The Anglicans, Spanish, blah blah blah blah blah!!!!!  What relevance does this have?  Imagine a TV.  Imagine you record something from the tv onto a vhs.  Then imagine that you record the info from the vhs to another one, and another, and another, and another.... eventually, the information gets really distorted or is lost, right?  Same case here.  The Greeks did a translation of it first, I believe, and the Greeks tend to glorify things.  Doesn't the parting of the Red Sea sound like some Greek Myth?  Also, what about Adam and Eve?  Think about it!  Also, the story was most likely exaggerate, this I know because: The area Moses supposedly crossed, was known to be exetremely shallow in the winter, revealing crossings, and in the spring, huge rains could suddenly sweep down and quickly flood the paths across the sea.  It was early, early spring when Moses crossed the Sea, and He was a couple of miles ahead of the pharoa's army.  Another thing:  When the USA still had slaves, the slave owners would send slaves to church.  The priests, when they noticed several slaves present, would preach from the Bible about how slaves were supposed to be loyal to their masters.  Does that really sound like something Jesus would say?  Heck no.  There had to be some sort of distortion of info or an added section in a translation somewhere.

next
THE CRUSADES---------
Why did Europe attack the Middle East?

For VERY good reasons, let me tell you!  They didn't simply go and attack them simply because they weren't christians.  They went and attacked them for multiple reasons.  They:

1.Were growing like a weed into European borders.
2.The Byzantines had called for help against the Turks.
3.The turks destroyed several churches and important Christian religous points in their conquests.
4.The middle east was always the aggressor (The Moors in Spain and France, the Ottoman turks in Asia minor and near Italy, the Seljuk turks in Byzantium, The islamic Jihad.)

It's true that the wars were somewhat religous, but, the other reasons for going to war must also be considered, for they were good reasons.

You are always talking like "no religion = no morality". I don't understand this. Do I have no morality? If I would have no morality, some of you would be already banned because you don't share my oppinion. I don't do this. And I'm not christian. So there's something wrong.

You have a knowledge of right and wrong because it was given to you by God. Where would you get this sense of right and wrong through evolution?

You can observe how a lack of a belief in God is hurting our society, such as the increase in violence, Satanism, etc.

I don't understand the second part, but for the first one:

It cannot be given by god, because everyone has another oppinion of right and wrong. If this is given by god, the nazis are as well from god, because he gave them the believes for right and wrong. I'm not sure if that is your oppinion, but it's a result of what you said.
It's not given through evolution, it's given through our thoughts. Every animal knows what's wrong and what's right. We know what's wrong and what's right because we can think of what the results will be. I won't kill anyone just for un because I know I'll get in prison.

They made researches and found out the bible has been almost 1:1 copied through the monks in these thousands of years. And it has been always transleted from the original latin version. (was it latin?) So that's not the thing I worry about.
And because of Adam and Eve. My teacher for religion also said it hasn't happened like this. It's only a metapher.
And it's not so that I don't believe the bible. The fact is: It doesn't ineterest me. I think it's possible that gods exist. "When someone starts to pray a new god is born." This is how Black and White starts. If this god really exists or if it's luck is another thing. But I don't pray. I believe in my own strength.



1. The European where growing like weed in America. So it's okay if these few Indian in america start to slaught down the Europeans.
2. Where's the problem?
3. It was a conquest. And destroying a church is good to take the morality from the enemies. If you see a burning church and a dead priest you feel sad. If you feel said you can't fight.l That's normal. The vikings did that, too. And they ruled Europe.
4. I have to make some researches.

So you are saying that you WOULD kill people if there were no penalties? I hope not!


I'm not sure what you mean by that. Does a wolf feel guilty when it kills a rabbit? Or perhaps you were just referring to people?


I agree with you!


Well, it must, or you wouldn't be posting in this topic!


I don't see why you should. Are you responsible for your own existence? Do you think you could even survive without the assistance of at least other people? Or are you only very lucky that you live on a planet and in a society in which you are able to survive?


Before the start of the Crusades, the Byzantine Empire stretched through what is now Turkey. However, it was invaded by the Muslim Turks, and faced total destruction. Therefore, the Emperor called on Europe to help in the Empire's defense. If the Byzantines fell, then all of Europe would be vulnerable.

However, the Crusades ultimately failed, and Europe came very close to its destruction. Invasions came in through France and Turkey. In France, the Muslims were defeated at Tours (Spain would remain in Muslim hands for a long time more). And did you know that Vienna was besieged by the Ottoman Turks in 1683? Hmm...comes pretty close to Germany, doesn't it? The only reason I can see that you would hate the Crusades is because of your ignorance of history. (Probably not your fault, but the fault of school.)


I can understand perfectly why the Indians fought against the U.S. army to protect their land. Killing civilians is another matter, but something that usually occurs in all wars, whether just or not.

You're right. I know too less about the crusades. But schools not out for me so I have time to learn. I'll try stop talking about things I don't know.

And the wolf kills the rabbit because he knows after eating it he won't be hungry anymore. So after his oppinion it's good to kill and eat a rabbit.

And I wouldn't kill people just for fun. Too much waste of time and bullets. And because life is better than death. I don't say that because of religion, I say that because it's a fact.

As for the bible: I used to read the bible often in the past. But only because it was so funny to laugh about the odd things that happened there... :D

To quote something I said on Yahoo...

"Seems like the Religious Argument has turned into the 'Christians vs. Atheists vs. Jews vs. Muslims vs. Jedi' flamewar it was destined to be"

Why is life better than death? What gives YOU the right to say that? Do you just FEEL that life is better than death? And why should you care about whether others want to live or not? In other words, why does it matter?


What parts are you talking about?

It's my own oppinion. And I prefer life to death. That's all. And I often read the part where god send these funny things to the egyptians.

And G3K is right. For every arguement here is an arguement against it. It's useless to go on. Be a happy christian if you want, if not, leave it. I'll leave this topic open, but don't plan to post here anymore.

Anatol, what is your theory on cannibalism?

If, as you suppose, man is born with an innate sense of right and wrong, how could a system develop in which man kills and eats another man? This action is not only contrary to Christian morality, but to so-called "natural law" theory as well.

Ok. So, if what's good and bad is based on opinions...

THEN EVERYTING I DO IS GOOD AND BAD. so no matter what I do it's wrong and there's no point doing whats right cause it's wrong and doing what's wrong cause it's right and vise-versa. :D

Hmmmmmmmm...:???:..He's right. Technically, if people thought it was ok to have controlled battles watched by audiences
(cough Roman colloseum cough) then it would be right and good if everone agreed with it. (depending on your religion EG- catholics think that's bad)

This isn't an argument:

At times, I have thought about this thing called heaven, and how it's supposed to be a place where you stay forever after you die.  Have you ever actually thought more that forever part?  I mean, it takes awhile to hit you, but eventually, you realize what forever really is.  It is FOREVER.  Imagine.  Time does not end.  There is no limit.  Things continue endlessly.  Doesn't that just scare you?

EDIT: I've toned my response down a little, because these kind of topic bring out the worst in me. It's just that I'm a philosopher specialising in ethics and meta-ethics (the question of where our moral values originate from), and it annoys me to see people talking nonsense about my subject when they don't know much about it themselves.

Firstly, the question Anatol actually asked was: "Where would you get this sense of right and wrong through evolution?" That's a question not about moral values, but about our moral sense. There's no doubt that we do have feelings about what is right and wrong. I don't know what a real biologist would say, but I think these feelings can be explained within evolution either as an inevitable concomitant of the development of intelligence, or because morality is necessary to hold together a society, and humans within a society are better equipped to survive than those without one.

The other question that could be asked is: if there is no God, how can statements about right and wrong be true? To answer this, I want to make it clear that the right/wrong distinction is not the same as the good/bad distinction. Everyone agrees that there are things that are good -- for instance, playing Lemmings is good because I enjoy it. I can also do good to other people by giving them things that they want. One action can be more good than another if it achieves more good things for more people. Once this is clear, we can take the right/wrong distinction away completely without losing any of our moral values. Atheists are just as likely to be moral people as believers -- it doesn't take much of an observer of the world to see that.

It's complete nonsense to say that if you think there are no divine moral commandments you MUST believe that right and wrong are just conventions. These are possibly the two easiest positions to understand, but there are many others -- try reading some actual works on meta-ethics if you really want to know more.

AhRibar, I have a teacher named Mr. ribar. Strange.....

To me, there's no true 'universal' right and wrong. All I think about when I decide to do something is feelings and consequences, which vary from person to person and also tend to make a more accurate and easier to follow 'guide to life' than religion. No matter what, that's all I follow, and I've lived a happy eleven years. Because of the fact I have no true religion, I'm also a little harder to tease and apply stereotypes to, which, if you've been to a school like Holy Family or Abbey Infants, both of which are stuffed to the brim with bullies and future racists, is an advantage.

Before I decide to do something, I take this string of thoughts from when I wander around my brain, and apply it to the situation.

"Whatever I can do to get to heaven, I should do.  Well, then again, life is a valuable thing, and maybe not everything should be focused on using life as a tool to get to heaven.  I allow room for that already though.  Thusly these things are in check.  The thought of heaven and infinitely existing there is so scary.  Until a person thinks about it, they don'y realize what forever means.  Eternity is enternity.  This makes me afraid of heaven in a way.  However, I think of the even more sinister option, and, I must say, I will take heaven.  If I do anything that would take me away from going to heaven, why would it be worth it?  If my lifetime is an infinitely small speck in my entire being, then why should I worry so much about it?  Should I not worry more about whether or not I get to heaven and peacefully exist forever?"

Folks, my thoughts run into the weirdest little nooks and crannys you can find.  This is just a small piece of everything else.  So far, the above has provided me with a decent life, but at the same time, what seems to me will be a decent afterlife.