The non-thinking that is Religion.

[Keerin]

Man, that was said in a shorter post by johnny like, 2 pages ago. (directed at Mark)

This is going round already and it's only page 4?

[Pubic Wig]

Originally Posted by RiseAgainst

i may not have great historical knowledge of World War 2 but didnt the Nazi party not just single out jews but also Jehovah's witnesses and Catholic clergymen?

and gays, gypsies, artists, school teachers. Yeah, anyone that didnt fit in with their way of Nationalist thinking.
Hitler himself was an aethiest, vegatarian, non-drinker and a lover of animals.

[Pubic Wig]

Originally Posted by Keerin

Man, that was said in a shorter post by johnny like, 2 pages ago. (directed at Mark)

This is going round already and it's only page 4?

I like it. heehee, its been a pretty good thread.

[Keerin]

Originally Posted by Pubic Wig

I like it. heehee, its been a pretty good thread.

Aye,. better than we could have hoped for, minus the 101 contradictions. a link to a .txt file would have been more appropriate.

[Thee Alex]

Originally Posted by LesMts

The odds aren't astronomical. Given the size and nature of the universe it was a foregone conclusion that it would happen somewhere. So the probablity is, for all intents and purposes, 1 (i.e. a certainty).

That it would happen in any pre-selected location (such as a planet (or even a star system) chosen without insight) is astronomically improbable. But this doesn't make it any more amazing that it happened on Earth because these questions can only be asked and these things pondered wherever it did happen. It's the anthropic principle, more or less

I agree with you, and probably didn't word myself clearly. The argument creationists come up with often goes 'there is so little chance of life developing exactly as it has here, with apparent design, that it MUST have been created'.

In a near infinite universe, over a massive period of time it is extremely likely that life will appear - the very fact that we are here to discuss it on an internet forum is evidence enough that we were one of those places where it did.

We were lucky though, not 'created'

[LesMts]

Originally Posted by Thee Alex

I don't think I'm risking much by guessing that more people have died as a result of religion (whether it be in war time or otherwise) than of anything else.

Availability and management of resources is probably at the heart of more deaths and wars than anything else, I'd imagine.

[RiseAgainst]

Originally Posted by Keerin

This is going round already and it's only page 4?

Page 5, keep up! hehehe

probably the best thread on UGS in awhile!

there's no fun in fundementalism.

[RiseAgainst]

Creationism being taught in American schools however is a different subject all together...having to put disclaimers in Theory of Evolution books is a complete joke id say.

[LesMts]

Originally Posted by RiseAgainst

Creationism being taught in American schools however is a different subject all together...having to put disclaimers in Theory of Evolution books is a complete joke id say.

I've nothing against them teaching creationism in school. I'd even, gasp, encourage it.
I'll fight tooth and nail to keep it out of our science classes, though.
Keep that baws for RE or philosophy.

[Rebelius]

Just to bring up the whole "6000yr old world is nonsense" thing that you mentioned on the first page Alex, do you know anyone who is over 6000 years old? Can you prove without any doubt that the world is older than 6000 years?

If Artificial Intelligence existed and I created a game like the sims where the people could actually think for themselves and spent so long making it that I had modelled the whole of this universe and put in things like fossils and the like and gave all the sim-people memories to think they hadn't just popped into existance and they ended up having this argument, they would probably be able to prove just as well as you can that their world was over 6000years old, they'd be wrong though.

[johnny?]

Originally Posted by Rebelius

as we can clearly see here, lack of religion doesn't imply tolerance.

outstanding

[Thee Alex]

Originally Posted by Pubic Wig

Do i believe that a carpenter son born some 2000 years ago to an alleged virgin was both the Son and the physical mmanifestation of God. Yes i do.

But why?

Dawkins makes the very interesting point in 'The God Delusion' that belief in religion is just an evolved impulse gone wrong.

He argues that we have evolved to believe what we are told as infants by our parents (the child that doesn't listen to 'don't walk off that cliff' doesn't live to have offspring and rules itself out of 'survival of the fittest'). If our parents tell us religion is true it is our evolved instinct to believe them....no matter how insane what they are telling us is.

It only takes two or three generation of a story being passed on as fact to children for that story to become 'true'.

It's like a moth flying around a lightbulb - the evolved response to light and its use for navigation isn't in itself flawed. It's just that light sources that aren't at infinite focal depth (ie. Sun, stars, moon) are a relatively recent thing in the evolutionary lifespan of the moth. The evolved method is perfectly good, but it's being caused to misfire by outside forces.

Same thing (IMO) with the pernicious nature of religion.