[Kimmo]

Do you believe?

I know it is not an easy question but I would honestly like to know. I lack the energy to start a full-fledged study on it and try to correlate religious beliefs to nationality, age, gender, political affiliations, income etc.

Personally I consider myself an agnostic and I know it is a bit of a cop-out...kinda hedging your bets...but there you have. Those are my principles and if you do not like them, I've got others! (I believe Marx said that.......Groucho that is).

So.....do you?

Are you a believer (I believe there is A GOD/GODS be it the Christian God, Allah, Jahve, Zeus, Odin or Flying Spaghetti Monster or any of the million others known to man on the planet Earth....what the heck....let us put in Fate in there as well)

Are you an agnostic (I do not know if there is a God/Gods but I do not want to exclude the possibility).

Are you an atheist (There is no god or gods. End of story)

Remember this is not a referendum on how the world was created or if we are alone in the universe or anything like that purely because even amongst believers there are hundreds of varying opinions on those topics. We'll get to those later perhaps.

So I would appreciate honest answers

[Kimmo]

If anyone has seen this, could be an interesting topic to discuss.
http://youtu.be/LksVbHxLRvY

[OneIron]

I think it takes far more faith to believe the universe was created from nothing by nobody for no reason than it does to believe in God. It takes more faith to believe that the creation of complex life, such as a butterfly, was accidental than to believe in God.

I also believe that organized religions make a feeble attempt to understand God but that they are largely wrong in the details. We'll never know the details.

As far as science is concerned, we are vainly nibbling around the edges of the issue while arrogantly announcing that we know it all. I am well aware that I know basically nothing about the workings of the universe. But I can look out my back window each morning and confidently believe in a Creator.

[vasilios]

When you look at the universe and notice all of the organized recycling going on it makes it a little tough to accept it as a happy accident.So i am going with a big boss is or was in the office.



bill

[our_auctionguy]

Ask the opposite question and therein lies another point of view to answer your question.

Do you belive in the existence of Satan, demons, or intelligent forces of destruction?

If they exist, then one must believe that the oppositie in the form of a divine creator does too or we would have never survived this long.

Hitler, Sadam, Idi Amin, Charles Manson, Charles Wayne Gayce, Jeffrey Dahmer are just a few of the many names I would associate with demonic possessions that this world has witnessed in the last century. Psychiatrists would prefer to say they are insane... it keeps them employed.

[Fatboy]

this thread should get about 3,000 posts and 500,000 views. A new war on AZB, LOL

[TX Poolnut]

Agnostic Atheist.

[Kimmo]

Originally Posted by OneIron

I think it takes far more faith to believe the universe was created from nothing by nobody for no reason than it does to believe in God. It takes more faith to believe that the creation of complex life, such as a butterfly, was accidental than to believe in God.

I also believe that organized religions make a feeble attempt to understand God but that they are largely wrong in the details. We'll never know the details.

As far as science is concerned, we are vainly nibbling around the edges of the issue while arrogantly announcing that we know it all. I am well aware that I know basically nothing about the workings of the universe. But I can look out my back window each morning and confidently believe in a Creator.

well I think one should always try to separate church from religion. What I mean by this is that Church is just a man-made structure and hierarchy to bring organization to a very esoteric theme.

I do not mind religion, but organized religion (as in church) has managed to do a lot of crap over the human history.

When it comes to comparing science vs religion, I do not agree with the premise that it takes much more faith to believe in scientific evolution of the world rather than creationist view. At least science is attempting to explain the world whereas religions are basically just saying "trust me, I know what I am doing/saying" (probably the scariest words ever to be uttered).

As far as science claiming they understand everything, I am yet to see a single scientist that would have claimed that. Pretty much all of them actually state that we have only scratched the surface, whereas religions are the ones that seem to be claiming they have the ultimate truth (all of them do...except I believe Hinduism that have more the philosophy of "oh what is your God called? Coool! Come meet my Gods we'll have a party"). Also the religious claims cannot be all right....which means that most of them will be wrong and that in turn kind of undermines the whole credibility of any religion.

This is where science actually has the upper hand in my eyes as their observations and claims tend to be empirically studied and the entire "scientific method" is based on repeatability of the tests and results. Ie Apple falls down just the same in every part of the world...and outside of our world, the smaller objects tend to gravitate towards the larger objects due to gravitational pull. Whether this is caused by so called gravitons or something else, is a whole other story. The bottomline is that the science is WIP whereas religions, as far as I can see, claim to have the ultimate truth from the start.

anywhooo....back to work.



PS. Did anyone watch the youtube-link I provided above. it is Mr Derren Brown (well known British Magician, Illusionist, Performance artist) digging into this topic from atheist perspective. He is showing how easy it is to mislead people into thinking what you want them to think. If you find this video is interesting, then you might want to also check out the

Derren Brown - Messiah
and
Miracles for sale

Do you think it just might be in the realms of possibilities that what those videos indicate, could have happened also in the "real world"

[LWW]

The scientific view of the beginning of the universe and the religious view of the beginning of the universe are the same ... creatio ex nihilo.

[chefjeff]

Originally Posted by LWW

The scientific view of the beginning of the universe and the religious view of the beginning of the universe are the same ... creatio ex nihilo.

My scientific view is different than either of those choices.

Based on current science, I cannot see how there was any beginning, only the process continuing on.

Jeff Livingston

[Kimmo]

Originally Posted by LWW

The scientific view of the beginning of the universe and the religious view of the beginning of the universe are the same ... creatio ex nihilo.

At least the way i understood one of the theories around big bang, it was a follow up from Big crunch and therefore at least big bang did not happen from nothing

[LWW]

Originally Posted by Kimmo

At least the way i understood one of the theories around big bang, it was a follow up from Big crunch and therefore at least big bang did not happen from nothing

That is a hypothesis and not a theory.

A hypothesis means that somebody had a thought they cannot back up yet.

A theory means that a hypothesis has been verified as the best and most likely scenario.

The cyclicl uniberse hypothesis has a major defect ... it has no explanation for how or why everything turned into nothing and then back into everyting again.

It also violate's Occam's razor in that it requires multiple superatural events instead of one.

Good toic f discussion however, and hopefully we can keep it troll free.

[Kimmo]

Originally Posted by LWW

That is a hypothesis and not a theory.

A hypothesis means that somebody had a thought they cannot back up yet.

A theory means that a hypothesis has been verified as the best and most likely scenario.

The cyclicl uniberse hypothesis has a major defect ... it has no explanation for how or why everything turned into nothing and then back into everyting again.

It also violate's Occam's razor in that it requires multiple superatural events instead of one.

Good toic f discussion however, and hopefully we can keep it troll free.

but was there life before trolls?


anywhooo..

science does not have any explanation for many things, but at least they are working on them...ie. trying to explain them.

Whereas, in my opinion, religion does not try to....and therefore is the easy way out. When looked through what is possible through the techniques illustrated by Derren Brown, it certainly give some food for thought and in my mind creates reasonable doubt on the whole religion-thingy. So in that sense, while science has many major faults on theory/hypothesis levels....religion has even more and shows no interest in trying to explain them other than "trust me". Specifically Christian religions have a very poor track-record on physical stuff anyway....like the earth-centric and later helio-centric universe -teachings they had for a long while. As a matter of fact many other religions had those down much better...ie Mayans, Druids etc.

[LWW]

My point is that faith in a Creator requires creation from nothing in the natural universe ... and scientific theory is the big bang, which also requires creation from nothing.

Taken a step further, the BBT was developed by a catholic priest ... and immediately rejected by atheists and agnostics because it required a Creator.

Following the work of Hubbell, Penzias and Wilson ... which pretty much proved the BBT beyond a reasonable doubt ... atheists and agnostics have largely invoked doublethink by claiming the BBT somehow precludes a Creator.

[fan-tum]

Originally Posted by LWW

The scientific view of the beginning of the universe and the religious view of the beginning of the universe are the same ... creatio ex nihilo.

I don't see how you can compare BBT with mystical creation.