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"How can I know whats right or wrong unless God tells me?"
First of all, I dont need a god to know that killing and raping and lying and adultery is immoral behavior. Morality predates your, or any, religion.
Second, if I see an old woman crossing the road, and I help her, am I a better person because Im doing it to get a divine reward or because Im doing it simply because its nice?
God is a pretty bad moral authority if thats what you want to believe, I know I wouldnt create a species with free will, then kill all of them with a flood for not acting the way I want. That would make me a narcissitic murderer.
"How can I know whats right or wrong unless God tells me?"
First of all, I dont need a god to know that killing and raping and lying and adultery is immoral behavior. Morality predates your, or any, religion.
Second, if I see an old woman crossing the road, and I help her, am I a better person because Im doing it to get a divine reward or because Im doing it simply because its nice?
God is a pretty bad moral authority if thats what you want to believe, I know I wouldnt create a species with free will, then kill all of them with a flood for not acting the way I want. That would make me a narcissitic murderer.
Again, if you can just pull yourself away from your witch hunt for a second....you could see that *I* certainly am not saying we NEED religion....
You're too fixated on tearing down peoples faith...why?
You would be much better received if you could present HOW the world would be better if religion was negated. As of right now, all you have stated was "We'd be closer to the truth"...
OK, but how does "being closer to the truth" remedy humans being self-centered, manipulative, gluttonous and savage creatures?
Again, if you can just pull yourself away from your witch hunt for a second....you could see that *I* certainly am not saying we NEED religion....
You're too fixated on tearing down peoples faith...why?
You would be much better received if you could present HOW the world would be better if religion was negated. As of right now, all you have stated was "We'd be closer to the truth"...
OK, but how does "being closer to the truth" remedy humans being self-centered, manipulative, gluttonous and savage creatures?
Religion!!
All religion has ever done since ignorant, primitive camel herders came up with the idea is the Crusades, The Inquisitions, hundreds of thousands of innocent young women slaughtered because they were accused of being a witch, slavery, the subjugation oif women, most wars, etc. If somebody really wanted to get righteous they could concentrate on feeding the poor....which was their original charge to begin with. Modern religion is a scam...plain and simple.
If you examine string theory and the multiple "solutions" for the same mathematical equations, it suggests several hundred thousand independent universes, which occur in an ordered fashion. The brass tacks of advanced physics suggest an ordered nature of the universe which could not have occurred, by statistical probability, by chance.
Not arguing your observation, however consider the ordered existence of an ant, it's incredibly ordered and regimented in it's existence. By observing an anthill could you predict that the ant itself has a very regimented and ordered nature? Because that's the corollary, we observe the universe (the anthill) and ultimately begin to identify the life of the lowly ant.
Whether there is any creator or not, or some universal puppeteer isn't relevant, to what we're seeing, what we're seeing is the fundamental processes of the universe so clearly they're going to appear to be relatively ordered in nature, just by chance, because of the uncountable instances where multidimensional forces resulted in the creation of a physical universe (as we know it), only the ones that by chance had some ordered nature of those forces, resulted in the creation of a sentient being that could analyze and identify those forces and see them as being ordered.
Just a tip, given enough time there is NO "could not" in statistical probability, every outcome is guaranteed to occur.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hawkeye2009
Likewise, theoretical physics shows us that there are up to sixteen parallel dimensions, most of which are subatomic, which occur in our universe. Could "heaven" or other realms be a part of one of these parallel dimensions? One simply needs to look at the data for the "loss" of energy when photons collide with a diffraction screen. Where did it go?
Nope there are not 16 parallel dimensions, in the way you're describing them, there is the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics, where every quantum interaction results in one or more universes where the result of those interactions are fully described (i.e. if there are four outcomes all four outcomes occur one in each universe so created). In various theories (Superstring, M-Theory, and Bosonic string theory) there are 10, 11, or 26 dimensions, which would be 6, 7, or 22 more dimensions, they're not parallel either, they're within the universe and operate at the quantum level. I think you might be referring to supercharges of type I Superstring theory...
Quote:
Originally Posted by hawkeye2009
Further, the true solution for Einstein's famous E=mc2 is actually E=+/-mc2, which suggests a movement of energy, of equal and opposite magnitude, out of our sphere of reality. Where is that?
Nope, it just means that mass is not a true scalar value, and that certain particles can have a negative mass value. Or that the stress energy tensor is larger in magnitude than the mass density for any region of space.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hawkeye2009
If we believe in science and statistics, we should (or must) believe in religion. To call religion a "superstition" is somewhat ignorant and reveals a lack of understanding of many of the nuances of physics. Did you know that Werner von Braun and James Van Allen were Christians? Were they just idiots?
What kind of Christians were they however? They certainly were not fundamentalists, indeed I would suspect that if you discussed their religion with them, they could be mistaken for pretty much any denomination of theist, however either their moral positions fitted better with Christianity than any other theism, or they were traditionally Christian.
Hey look I did this stuff at University, and I can tell you when you look into the bowels of the universe and understand what's being said, it's very tempting to become very metaphysical and speculate on origins. Consider this. One of the results of Heisenberg shows that for our universe to exist, there is a requirement for an observer to initiate a quantum waveform collapse (i.e. is Shrodingers cat alive of dead?), the question is what level of sentience of the observer is needed? For instance using Shrodinger as an example, a robot could open the lid of the box at random, and the cat could then depart or be dead in the box, the robot has no sentience, yet initiated the waveform collapse of the cat in the box, to a state where the cat was either dead or alive. Thus the universe could itself be an observer and initiate the collapse, which could be argued is "god". Or the observer was the person who set the robot up to perform the action it did and in this instance remote from the actual measurement. However as I said at the start of that somewhat wordy sentence, it's tempting to speculate.
All religion has ever done since ignorant, primitive camel herders came up with the idea is the Crusades, The Inquisitions, hundreds of thousands of innocent young women slaughtered because they were accused of being a witch, slavery, the subjugation oif women, most wars, etc. If somebody really wanted to get righteous they could concentrate on feeding the poor....which was their original charge to begin with. Modern religion is a scam...plain and simple.
First off....societies prior to the advent of religion were not exempt from acts of savagery by any stretch of the imagination.
Listen....level with me here.
I agree that God worshipping is stupid...Religion is stupid....I will even go.as far to.say that some peoples arbitrary explanations of spirituality is stupid.
Ideally, humans would simply respect one another and leave well enough alone....there would.be no greed, no envy, no rage etc. That is utopian. So, as a society we adopt values that promote non-aggression and any acts of aggression are relegated to controlled activities that do not impede ones path to prosperity...correct?
Well in a world free of religious indoctrination...we still enlist bodies of authority to enforce these preferences. And like djacques alluded to previously...there is always a phenomenon of Appeal to Force.
So if there is appeal to force whether by fear of damnation or by force of the state....how does science solve this? This is the human condition...we've had thousand and thousands and thousands of years to figure this stuff out...
You see, I denounce religion....I also denounce government. The "lesser of two evils" is just double speak for a false dichotomy. Yes, many horrible events have come under the shell of religion....bt last time I checked we are fighting a war in Afghansitan notbunder the name of God
We aren't about to have a proxy war with Syria in the name of Christ...
How does negating a culture of Religion fix the problem of "humans suck"???
Then you should have no problem posting the explanation and examples of how one species has evolved into an entirely different one.
Actually things are quite obvious. If all life forms evolved from a single cell then the similarity one to all should be identifiable. Over a million species of mammals have a brain, lungs, heart, kidneys, a digestive system, a mouth at the top or front and a rectum at the bottom or end and genitals located at or near the bottom,. Each one must ingest food at the mouth and discharge waste from the rectum. If either of these activites stops death soon follows. If there had been a creator with a little imagination he could have opened and hinged the rib cages so that occasionally a food supply could have been inserted and when one needed to a waste bag might have been removed. There's nothing quite as frustrating as diarrhea at one's daughter's wedding rehersal dinner.
Palestinian conflict...in my opinion an honest individual closes down the 'Israeli state's existance' argument when they realize the bible is just another truthful document of Israel's existence in Judea an Samaria. Are you saying this as a critic of religion? if so i might like to discuss your 'Big Bang' theory for the creation of the world.
Hard to answer but, science is forever probing but they have never been able to prove there is no God. This is the mystery of our universe and life. There has been no valid explanation from science, as it too changes as new discoveries have been made.
New discoveries?
Not really.
"In the beginning God made the heavens and the Earth" (see Big Bang).
Because your belief that the earth was created in 7 days by an invisible deity is based on ignorance. Prove that the earth was created by a god. Prove that man was created in a single day. I've asked for this proof numerous times but to date, NO ONE has presented any. On the other hand there is ample proof that the earth is billions of years old and man is the result of millions of years of evolution. I know you don't like to hear that but it's an OBSERVABLE fact.
What is "a day" is actually the Hebrew word "yom".
It has been used in the Bible to describe periods of time of various lengths.
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