Religion

I believe there is a god. I believe all gods are this one, and that he has manifested in several forms for reasons we cannot understand. The religions don't match up, so either humans made errors in interpreting God's wishes, or God made them incompatible for another confusing reason.
I believe the universe exists on a system of checks and balances, and that, given some exceptions, everything is not balanced, things will go to Hell. Literally. I believe the Apocalypse, if it happens, will only be possible through a major imbalance.
For purposes of religious discussion, I take on a more agnostic/christian hybrid attitude so I don't confuse people.
I believe that religions are meant to be taken morally ans figuratively. Whether or not anything in any holy text happened literally, it's the metaphorical meaning that is meant to get across.
I believe that there is no such thing as "good" or "evil" except as names. There is "wrong" and "right". But, assuming good and evil is real, then I am evil. I have almost every trait assigned to evil, yet I only work toward good ends. This isn't reasoning to not believe in them, just something I felt like sharing. Honestly, I believe humans are not basically good or evil, but "have basic potential". Every moment we are given the choice to do the right or wrong moral action, but even though our choices shape us, they do not define who we are. I feel that in that respect, good and evil are a form of stereotype. In other words, just because someone has done nothing but wrong deeds, they are still capable of doing good. So even though they will probably do more wrong, it's still a form of prejudice.

I might have more to say later, but that's all I can think of right now.

I think everyone knows by now that I am indeed a Christian.

I don't believe following God and worshiping and loving Him should be considered as a religion, but as a natural way and part of life.

Hoo boy. My position on religion is a bit complicated but I'll try to get a general idea of it out there to you guys, so bear with me, and please don't judge me if you disagree.

If I had to simplify my religious position I'd say I'm a vaguely spiritual agnostic. I consider myself a logical analyst of life, and I've always been persuaded by the Aristotelian cosmological argument later developed by theologians such as Aquinas; that if causality is true, there must be an "Uncaused Cause" to which we owe the creation of the universe, for otherwise there'd be an infinite illogical regress of causes. That cause, being self-sufficient and all-producing, might as well be called a god, since a god in the traditional conception sometimes has these attributes. It's debatable if it deserves the title of a god, though, but that's just semantics.

I believe the question of whether a supernatural god or pantheon of gods exists is unanswerable. I directly disbelieve the idea of an interventionist god who exerts physical changes in the world, unless that god is to be defined as physics itself or a superset thereof, as in some monistic systems (haha, oxymoron). I think the gods that are the subject of world religions are largely man-made, but that in a way a lot of people worship the same god by different names. I feel that all gods exist on a meaningful plane. They exist as ideas, and ideas transcend humanity. To quote Pirandello, "The history of mankind is the history of ideas." I think all gods exist as ideas invested with the power to influence the course of human action; and who are we to say gods are not real? Meaning is often more real than substance; to deny this is to deny the reality of things like love. As ideas, gods are capable of terrible things. Stuff like the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, the Spanish Inquisition, the Huguenot Wars, and tons of genocides and persecutions. One could argue these are human nature and would exist without religion, to which I respond that gods as ideas are human nature, for ideas are human nature.

However, gods as ideas are also capable of wonderful things. I'm partial to the philosophy of the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard, especially what I consider to be his magnum opus, The Sickness Unto Death. The idea of faith as the antithesis of despair, and choosing to live an authentic life infused by the meaning of a god, is from some angles admirable. The idea of a god or gods can provide many positive functions, such as comfort and aid in times of great difficulty. God(s) can be the one constant in times of change and like someone that is 100% reliable and always there for you. I think gods (as ideas) can be a source of inspiration which motivate people, e.g. Mother Teresa, to effect positive change in the world. This stands in contradiction to what Marx would believe is the interplay of religion and dialectical materialism. One thing with which I definitely don't agree is when people depend on their god to do stuff for them, instead of doing it themselves. I think gods (as ideas) can serve inspirational functions, motivating people, giving them strength, and so on; but I definitely disbelieve they can physically intervene in the world, and I feel such a belief is dangerous, and if someone displaces responsibility onto a god to solve all their problems or sicknesses, these things will just get worse. Stuff like Jehovah's Witnesses refusing blood transfusions, faith healing, and so on are examples with which I strongly disagree.

I take some views from a number of canonical sociologists when I express my view that gods are a reflection and projection of society. I was influenced especially by Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life and his study of totemism in primitive tribespeople. I think people often take their own attributes (e.g. creative potential), amplify their effect to a superlative degree, combine them all, and assign them to a super-being they call a god. On the subject of Durkheim, I likewise subscribe to his ideas of collective effervescence, and believe religion follows from ritualism. In this same sense, I think stuff like concerts and sports games have to them a religious quality; or at least the same sort of energy from which religion is born. In an age of reason I feel stuff like these are the new religions. Religion can unify, and it can also divide; it can tear people apart, but also bring people together. What it does and how it does it is a matter of the religious individual and how he or she approaches religion.

Like kyoo, I read the Christian Bible but I'm not a Christian. I've read the entire tome cover-to-cover, several times, and reflected upon it at length. I've read Hindu texts like a great number of the Vedas and the Upanishads, and I've studied Mahayana and Theravada Buddhist doctrine and some of the East Asian variants as well as the direct teachings of Siddh?rtha Gautama. I haven't done much primary reading on Egyptian polytheism as I'd have liked but my knowledge is okay; and I'm very familiar with the Taoism kyoo mentioned, having studied the entire Tao Te Ching, the Zhuangzi, and some other Eastern philosophies with tie-ins to Taoism, like Confucianism (which, admittedly, is in a lot of ways pretty distinct). I find a lot of these texts to be amazingly insightful, written by very brilliant, wise people. I have taken wisdom and learned lessons from all of them, each of which had a great impact on the way in which I think. They all offer unique philosophical approaches to the world, and within these approaches, valuable knowledge. In this respect, I think religion can often be a vessel for wisdom; a way to take wisdom and, so to speak, legitimize it with transcendence, which gives it a lasting quality that endures through generations.

Something I feel for many religions, and cross-denominational Christianity in particular, is that people don't follow what is written in their holy books. There's a picture to which I was once linked by a friend that provides a really excellent synopsis of my feelings on this here, if anyone is curious. I feel some people use religion as a way to sublimate hatred. They use it as a socially acceptable cover behind which they can hide to bash people different than them. They then displace the responsibility for their own hate onto their religion and offload the blame onto their god. It's not their god telling them to hate; they choose to do so themselves, and rationalize it as scriptural. Religions should be about love, not hate, and practiced religion often differs dramatically from the books on which the religion is based.

I could keep going forever on how I feel about religion, but this post is already pretty long so I'm going to stop here. That's my 2¢; I hope nobody thinks less of me for it and I hope you guys find it interesting.

I don't think less of you for it. The Bible says to love one another, and to treat your neighbor as yourself. So I won't treat you any different.

By the way, here's an interesting video:

http://www.youtube.com/v/ppIgFEFUpjw&hl=en_US&fs=1

Okay, I don't mean to step on any toes here but I felt the video Ravior posted was addressed specifically to me, so I'm going to respond to it.

The first thing to note is that the video is titled, "Scientific Proof of God," and the guy who starts talking is Lee Strobel of what he himself describes as the "#1 Video Apologetics Resource. It's important to understand, going into this video, that this guy is a journalist and a pastor, and not a scientist. This indicates two things from the get-go. First, his field is not science, so any scientific claims he makes should not go unquestioned. Second, he's going into this with an intense subjectivity and bias. His goal is not to neutrally examine the facts. He doesn't hide his goal because it's in the very title — his goal is to make a "[c]ase for a [c]reator."

The second point of note is that videos like this are the worst possible way to proselytize to people of an agnostic or atheist persuasion. I'm not trying to say you were proselytizing. I'm just saying this is a really bad tool by which to do it in general. Trying to "prove God" is what causes a lot of the differences between the religious and skeptics, and serves just to divide rather than unify. If God could be proven then everyone would believe in God and he would no longer be supernatural but a part of mainstream science. I feel that even the Bible commands against trying to prove God. Allow me to post the following quote from Matthew 4:5–7:

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6“If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Trying to convince people of God from a scientific point of view, I feel, falls outside the domain of religion, is misguided, and is what reinforces a negative popular conception of Christians. A central concept of the Bible and Jesus' teachings is faith. If there actually were proof of God, there would be no need for faith in God and Jesus because they would be demonstrably divine. The best way to make a case for God to an agnostic or atheist person, I feel, is to make a case for faith and, as in my love example, advance the idea meaning is just as real as substance.

I just wanted to throw those ideas out there before I got into the arguments made by the video, since I feel they're blanket ideas that cover a lot of my general feelings about it and about videos like this as a whole.

01:06 - 04:33

I feel in this segment, Strobel spends a lot of time trying to persuade unbelievers that he is credible — accomplished just by the presentation, really, where he sits in a suit before a large bookshelf — and that he was once on nonbelievers' "side," and then converted to Christianity. It's a means by which to be persuasive. Neither the previous beliefs of this guy nor the suit he's wearing nor the bookshelf before which he stands, however, affect the quality of the arguments he advances, or the things he says.

04:33 - 04:46

If you can show scientifically that life can emerge without any outside assistance — if life can emerge just from naturalistic circumstances — then God was out of a job. - Strobel

Okay, as far as I know (and I may be wrong) this is the first direct argument Strobel makes. I have two thoughts about this.

First, one might mistake this for evolution since Strobel, immediately thereafter, starts talking about evolution. I want to make it clear that life emerging without outside assistance is not evolution, and nowhere does the theory of evolution say that life emerged without outside assistance. This is a pretty common misconception due to the inadequate state of science education in America. The idea that life came about in this way is called abiogenesis, and is something very different. Could life have arisen from abiogenesis? It's possible, is the accepted naturalistic explanation, and there's a lot of evidence for it, but a religious view might disagree with it; we all have different beliefs, but I just want to make the terminology clear, because it's important to understand life arising from non-life is not evolution.

Before getting into my second point, I'll link and post another quote, because it cross-applies to that quote as well:

04:48 - 04:55

From there the acceptance of Darwinian evolution, and full-blown atheism for that matter, was pretty easy. - Strobel

First, from a religious point of view, evolution is not mutually exclusive with the idea of a god. I could talk forever about theistic evolution, but instead, I'll just link everyone here. It's written by a very devoted Christian who subscribes to theistic evolution.

Second, evolution is not atheism. The science of evolution does not necessarily lead into atheism and, like in the site to which I linked here, it's possible to be an extremely devoted Christian while not denying science. In fact, one could argue that to deny science might make one a less devoted Christian, since, as far as I'm concerned, this beautiful world many people believe was created by God should, for these people, be natural revelation. Like in the quote at the beginning of this video, "From a knowledge of God's work we shall know Him." Evolution is, as a matter of fact, true; and I feel that Christians shouldn't feel it's a challenge to their faith, but rather an opportunity from which to learn about God through His work. The idea that evolution should lead to atheism, I feel, is absurd.

Third, it's absurd to say "Darwinism" leads to atheism. When his magnum opus On the Origin of Species was published, Darwin was a deist who believed in a god. When at Cambridge, Darwin was a Christian; and in his later years, he was agnostic. He at some points embraced the idea of theistic evolution, where a god designed the laws by which evolution operated, with a predestined foreknowledge of the outcome. Darwin directly disavowed atheism, and was never an atheist, and was opposed to atheism as a movement and an ideology, and if Darwin himself was never an atheist it is absurd to call something "Darwinism" and lump it in with atheism.

Fourth, the imagery and soundtrack juxtaposed with this quote is just silly, ridiculous, and insulting. It's of a dark, cloudy, scary sky with creepy, sci-fi percussion as the narrator talks about such terrible concepts as "Darwinian evolution" and "full-blown atheism" like they're some evil, looming plague on humanity. I don't see why this is okay. If he said "full-blown Judaism," or "full-blown Buddhism," and juxtaposed the same imagery and soundtrack, people would be outraged. Why is it okay to do this for atheists? While I am not atheist, it seems like this kind of implicit bashing is culturally accepted when against atheists but not against other religious views with which Christians disagree outside of a few exceptions like denominations of Satanism and the occult. I don't feel this is right.

04:56 - 05:00

...because if living organisms could emerge by themselves out of this primordial soup... - Strobel

Again, the narrator conflates abiogenesis with evolution. This is abiogenesis, not evolution. I'm also opposed to the "primordial soup" phraseology. While I know it's common and legitimized by some people, I still feel it connotes that a bunch of chemicals just mixed together and BOOM bacteria was born. This isn't how the theory of abiogenesis works. The theory of abiogenesis does not jump from chemicals to bacteria. It progresses from chemicals, to monomers, to polymers, to replicating polymers, to a hypercycle, to an intermediate stage between a hypercycle and a protobiont, to a protobiont, which then becomes bacteria. The progression is very logically transitional. I just don't like the common strawman that there's a big soup of chemicals and a miracle occurs and then there's bacteria. I feel this misrepresents a complex and well-understood process into what is an Underpants Gnomes-like argument for the purpose of knocking it down.

05:26 - 05:30

There is no way you can harmonize neo-Darwinism with Christianity. I could never understand Christians who say, "Well, I believe in God, but I believe in evolution as well." - Strobel

I feel this is patently wrong, many of the reasons for which I do being enumerated by this Christian, and that for Strobel to make such a statement is disrespectful to the Christians who do believe in both. The man is entitled to his beliefs, and it's okay if he can't harmonize them, but there's plenty of Christians who can and who do, and it's almost like he's judging them as fake Christians, and I don't feel it's his place to do so. I feel stuff like this is divisive. I feel all Christians should simply be united by their faith in God.

Moreover, that he can't understand something isn't a valid argument against it; and if he doesn't understand it, he should inquire about it, not declare out of his lack of understanding that the two are impossible to harmonize.

05:41 - 06:10

You see, Darwin's ideas about the development of life led to his theory, that modern science now generally defines, as an undirected process completely devoid of any purpose or plan. Now, how could God direct an undirected process? How could God have a purpose and a plan behind a system that has no plan and no purpose? It just does not make sense! It didn't make sense to me in 1966, and it doesn't make sense to me now! - Strobel

The man here completely misunderstands how science works. Science is not antireligious, as he here presumes, but rather science is secular. While there may be particular scientists that are antireligious, many of whom, like Dawkins, Harris, Myers, Pinker, Stenger et al., have achieved a public spotlight, there are also a great number of scientists who are overtly Christian, and the predisposition of scientists does not affect the science they conduct because to be published in journals requires one to undergo an arduous process of peer review and requires one to keep to the scientific method. The difference between antireligion and secularism is that antireligion argues directly against religion and aims to contradict it, while secularism makes no arguments at all on matters of religious belief.

What I'm trying to say is that he's misrepresenting the scientific definition of evolution. Science doesn't say evolution is undirected, unpurposed, and unplanned; it just doesn't assume it is directed, purposed, or planned. This is a matter for religion, and not science, to decide. It's outside the authority of science to invade and encroach upon the domain of religion, so science doesn't marry evolution to teleology. Therefore, any criticisms he makes are criticisms made against a misunderstanding of not only evolution but the scientific method and science as a whole. They're simply invalid; his premises being invalid, so too are the conclusions he draws from them.

Again, regarding it making sense to him, it's irrelevant whether or not something makes sense to him. His lack of understanding on the subject does not mean that theistic evolution is untenable as a valid religious and Christian position.

06:12 - 07:04

...later, [his wife], an agnostic, became a Christian. - movie narrator

...and I thought, "This is divorce. This is gonna be the end of our marriage." But all the negative things I expected to happen in her, as a result of her newfound faith... they didn't happen, and instead I saw positive changes in her values and her character and the way she related to me and the children. And I thought, "Wait a minute... she is attributing this to God. And I don't believe God exists! So that was the main thing that prompted me to say, "Maybe I need to investigate this, and get to the bottom of this, and determine, "Is there really any rational way I can believe that this kind of a God really exists, and really causes this kind of transformation in a human being? - Strobel

I don't necessarily disagree with this and I do feel that, for some people, religion can produce positive changes from within them for the better; and I do feel that gods do exist as ideas that can transform people, and that this existence isn't necessarily less valid than, say, some of ancient history. I think I agree with him more than I disagree with him on this point. However, I don't feel that faith always makes people better persons, and that such an idea shouldn't be taken from this as a lesson. His wife is merely a personal anecdote of his, and as most good logicians know, anecdotes are the weakest, yet for many often the most persuasive, way to evidence a point. Some people will do great things because of religion; and others will do really terrible things. It really depends on the person themselves. If the person wishes to do evil, they'll do evil and offload the blame to their religion. If they wish to do good their religion will motivate and inspire them in this goal.

08:57 - 09:02

As biologist Jonathan Wells explained to me, Miller's experiment has now been thoroughly discredited. - Strobel

What they don't mention in this video is that Jonathan Wells isn't just a biologist. He's a theologian with a Master's Degree in Religious Education, a PhD in Religious Studies, a teacher at the Unification Theological Seminary, an Intelligent Design advocate, and a fellow of the Discovery Institute. Wells himself has confessed that the only reason he sought a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology was to "destroy Darwinism," rather than to conduct an unbiased investigation of the matter. Here's the relevant quote by the man himself:

"Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.

With his intentions established and his mission in life literally being to "destroy Darwinism," everyone should take anything this man says with not just a grain but rather the entire bag of salt. He is not representative of the biology community as a whole and should not be interpreted as such.

I'd like to make a quick note too of the fact I disagree with the term "Darwinism" being used to describe the science, theory, and fact of evolution. I disagree with it on multiple grounds - first, because evolutionary science has progressed a long way since Darwin, especially since the advent of Mendelian inheritance the fusion of which some creationists now call "neo-Darwinism," which is a term also with which I take some issue. The second reason for which I disagree with it is because it seems to make a religion out of a scientific theory. To say "Darwinism" is like saying "gravityism" or "atomism" or "relativityism" or "electricityism." Evolutionary theory isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact just as much, if not more so, than the aforementioned.

The Miller-Urey experiment has never been debunked. Due to its fame many people have tried to do so, but all this did is make it stronger. Its conclusions have been repeatedly reinforced by other researchers, both through other lines of evidence and through re-analysis of the experiment. So let's see what Jonathan "I want to destroy evolution" Wells has to say about the Miller-Urey experiment.

09:03 - 10:10

Stanley Miller put together a glass apparatus, and in that apparatus he put together a mixture of gases that people of the time thought reflected the atmosphere of the early Earth. Those gases were methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor. But then, the professional opinion of what was there on the early Earth changed. In the 60s, geochemists revised their hypothesis and decided that the hydrogen, being very light, would have escaped into outer space; the Earth's gravity isn't strong enough to hold it. And probably, the early Earth's atmosphere then consisted of what we now see coming out of volcanoes today. Mainly, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor. Well, if the early Earth's atmosphere consisted of those gases, then Stanley Miller's experiment would not work. In fact, he himself tried it with those gases, and he found that he couldn't produce any amino acids at all. So, the experiment falls apart once you use a more realistic mixture of gases in the apparatus. - Wells

In response to the hydrogen being light and escaping into outer space, this is misleading. Geochemists do not believe this. This situation is only accepted by geochemists if a ton of qualifications and contingencies are met. Ignoring the fact he's citing outdated stuff from the 1960s, for the early Earth to have less hydrogen than in the Miller-Urey experiment, the mantle of the early Earth would have to have the same geological composition, which is probably untrue. It'd require earthbound volcanoes to contribute to the atmospheric composition, which may not be true. It'd require the atmospheric climate of the early Earth to equal the atmospheric climate of the modern Earth, which is not true. Even if you suppose all of this were true for the sake of argument, which it's not, you would still have hydrogen in the atmosphere. Maybe to less a degree than in the Miller-Urey experiment, and therefore maybe there'd be less production of amino acids than in the Miller-Urey experiment. This is debatable though because scholars have actually found that Miller-Urey understated the amino acid production.

From what I understand, taken in light of the greater context of other statements I've seen Wells make in other media, it seems he's saying volcanic carbon was oxidized (the process by which carbon dioxide is formed) in the past like it is today when life originated around 4 billion years ago, and he is using this oxidation to claim that Miller-Urey's experiment wouldn't work in an early Earth environment because that oxidation makes the experiment fail. While it's true the experiment will fail if under significantly oxidized conditions, his assertion that the early Earth atmosphere was oxidized is false. Oxidization occurred around 2.5 billion years ago. If anyone doesn't want to take my word for this, research stuff like red beds. You probably know rust is iron oxide; that is, that rust occurs when iron is oxidized. Yet, rust never occurred on any significant scale before 2.5 billion years ago. Also, unoxidized pyrite has been found in geologic strata. Discrepancies between banded iron formations 2.5 billion years ago and thereafter also contradict Wells, as do deposits of uraninite which can't form in oxidized environments. He conveniently overlooks all these facts. Why? It's because he wants to mislead people, in accord with his stated mission of destroying Darwinism according to his own words.

The collection of early gases he presents isn't necessarily that to which geochemists subscribe, either. His analysis is superficial, doesn't consider pelagic vents, and completely ignores other lines of evidence like the Murchison meteorite, the replicability of the experiment, and so forth which support the Miller-Urey findings. The fact Wells uses big, convincing words doesn't matter worth a flip if someone knows what he's actually talking about; and what he's actually talking about and the claims he's making about the prebiotic atmosphere and world do not make sense nor hold water when subjected to serious scientific analysis. As is common with Wells, he obfuscates the truth out of a very public anti-evolutionary agenda.

In the final analysis, I really can't watch more than 10 minutes of this thing. While there's an odd thing or two with which I agree, I feel the majority of it is deliberate misinformation and propaganda; and were I to write anymore on the subject, this post would be its own book. I have nothing but respect for people's religions, and I respect Christianity, and I respect others' beliefs, but I just got more and more annoyed watching this video. What I can't stand is when people try to propagandize science because of their religion. I find it far more obnoxious than evangelism and I feel it's not the place of religion to do so. Religion and science should just coexist in peace and get along. I don't go into mathematics classrooms and start yelling about how I hate the quadratic formula and how it leads people into the clutches of Satan. It's just silly. I feel that holy books are not books of science, but books of spirit; therefore, they should be given spiritual authority, not scientific authority.

Again, that's my 2¢. Or 4¢, since I gave my 2¢ already. Actually I've probably given the whole dollar by now. I hope I don't offend anyone but I do feel strongly about everything I've written above.

Science does explain that there is a God, just think about the second law of thermodynamics.

No, science does not explain there is a God, religion explains there is a God. These are two very different forms of knowledge; and I believe religious knowledge can be very valuable, but it's not scientific knowledge any more than it's mathematical knowledge. Both religious and scientific knowledge have their own place and purpose and each is better than the other in achieving different aims. If science explained there was a God, then religion would be science and, as I pointed out in my last post, Jesus himself didn't want people to prove his divinity (cf. my last post). He wanted people to have faith, and doing otherwise, while unfortunately mainstream, is, like so much of mainstream Christianity, unbiblical. I'm with Jesus on this one, and I feel that for a Christian to be Christian, he or she should be true to his or her title, and therefore, to Christ. Even from a nonreligious but spiritual perspective, I feel Jesus' teachings were wise.

I assure you, and I'd bet my very life on this statement, that there has been no scientific argument in the history of humanity, whether modern or ancient, that has proven the popular conception of God. I don't know what you heard or where you heard this, but arguments appealing to the second law of thermodynamics are falsehoods propagandized through creationist literature by people like Hovind, Morris, Wallace, Whitcomb, Yahya et al. that 1) take advantage of a public misunderstanding of thermodynamics, and 2) do not make any positive claims about the existence of a God, just against the fact and theory of evolution. Evolution is compatible with religion (cf. my last post). I don't blame you for this misinformation so much as I blame texts that exist on a more macrosociological scale. "[J]ust think about the second law of thermodynamics" is an unfalsifiable argument, because it does not make any positive claims. It just urges people to "just think about" it, about which I absolutely assure you I have, in great depth; and if you want me to and can keep an open mind, I'll be more than willing to explain where and why what you read was mistaken provided you give me the specific argument by which you were misled.

I tried to find a good way of saying this, but was afraid of offending people. So thanks for putting that out there.

I actually know two very devout christians (three if you count Ravior, but I can't speak for his position on this), and they are very clear to distance themselves from, to borrow your words "mainstream christianity". I don't have much of a point, other than thanking J. I'm just happy to know that there are still people who believe in a religion as a way of life and a set of teachings, rather than something to assign to yourself. It makes me hopeful.

I'm also glad you addressed that evolution and religion aren't mutually exclusive. I always believed God created a world with evolution because a)it's a system that fixes itself, and if humans recognize it as a good idea, God must find it obvious, and b)as stated, His divinity is not supposed to be proven. I know that was about Jesus, but the same principle is there; He wants us to believe because we believe, not because we know.
My friends pointed out that evolution could not happen in the timeframe presented in the Bible. I think they kind of missed the point, but the point isn't invalid and is worth mentioning.
They also said that that would be like God asking them to ignore fact, or be intentionally wrong, which is something He wouldn't want. Put simply, God would be asking us to lie on his behalf.
These are things the aforementioned friends pointed out. I personally don't agree, though I see their point on the second one, but that's the entire theory I have on the subject. Shortened a bit, to be honest, but I don't think anything is left out.

Edit by J Squared: I fixed your BB Code for you.

Yeah, I think from the above statement that you have an understanding of what I feel religion should be; an understanding that, unfortunately, many people can't grasp.

Are you sure this is your friends' position and not your position? I get the feeling you might be substituting in "my friends" for yourself, in order to deflect the brunt of a refutation. It's pretty meaningless though since an argument does not gain or lose quality based on the identity of the person who voices it.

Contrary to the claim you make, the point is indeed invalid. You stating the point is not invalid does not make it more valid, it is the evidence that determines its validity. It is invalid because the Bible is not a scientific authority. The Bible also says pi = 3 in 1 Kings 7:23, the relevant line of which I copy below from the New International Version (NIV):

He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.

I could offer, literally, at least over a hundred examples like this. Nobody who's intellectually honest can read this and say the Bible is a mathematical authority. Sure, you can put on your theologian hat and lawyer with the semantics, but let's be honest with ourselves — this is a mistake. Does this mean the Bible is wrong? Not necessarily. It does mean a small subset of the Bible is wrong on the specific subject of mathematics. This is because the Bible is not a mathematical authority. However, it doesn't dilute the spiritual message of the Bible any more than a typo would dilute the overall message of my post, and it certainly doesn't mean God doesn't exist. Those who go in the Bible looking for mistakes will find them. It's full of mistakes. Some atheists will look at this and say, "The Bible is a bunch of false trash." This is likewise wrong, because the mistakes are irrelevant to the spiritual message of the Bible.

I believe I saw you post somewhere that you wanted to be an English teacher. Suppose you achieved this dream and, when teaching one day, a student asks you how to spell a word of which, for the sake of argument, you don't know the meaning. Let's say this word is "entomology." You hear "etymology" instead, as it's a subject with which you're more familiar, and write that on the board. Is this an English mistake, or is it a mistake arising from your unfamiliarity with zoology? Do you feel it would be proper to call into question your authority as an English teacher because you made this mistake? Suppose you were correcting a student's essay on Christopher Columbus, in which he or she wrote, "It was in 1495 that Christopher Columbus arrived on the sures of the New World." You'd change "sures" to "shores," surely a SpellCheck mishap — but what if you overlook the fact "1495" should be "1492"? Does this indicate your English knowledge is lacking? Does it mean you're a bad English teacher? Of course it doesn't, because that's on the subject of history, not English.

The point up to which I'm leading is that the Bible is the same way. The domain of the Bible is the spirit. It has spiritual authority, and it conveys spiritual knowledge. It doesn't matter if it's scientifically accurate, as it's not supposed to be. Nobody sits down and reads the Bible because they want to learn about Linnaean taxonomy, and churches don't lecture about the molecular formula of carbon tetrachloride. There's no need for people to have a crisis of faith when the Bible is scientifically mistaken, anymore than there is to have a crisis of appetite because your alphabet soup has incorrect grammar. That's my take on stuff, at least.

Even if you want to espouse the Biblical inerrancy doctrine, which is definitely not something I support but a conviction some people will nonetheless have, evolution can still happen in the timeframe presented in the Bible. One such view is Day-Age creationism. This is a very popular position taken up by individuals such as Dr. Hugh Ross, whose greater theology with which I definitely disagree, but who founded a Biblical apologetics group called Reasons to Believe which advocates a Day-Age ontology. The Day-Age position suggests what its name implies: that each of the six "days," in the Genesis narrative, actually represents a long age. This can actually be reconciled with science, for what it's worth, because of time dilation, an effect of Einstein's theory of relativity in which time, as interdependent with space, slows down. I think I spoke more of this phenomenon in the Time Travel thread, so for further reading feel free to check that. If days are defined in terms of the sun, and the sun was created in the fourth day (Gen. 1:14, NIV), then Biblical days have to be defined in terms of something else. If they're defined in terms of the axial rotation of the Earth, the ground was created on the third day (Gen. 1:9-10, NIV); so they can't be defined in terms of that. This lends support to the Day-Age theory within the context of the Biblical inerrancy doctrine.

Another Christian position is Gap creationism, which proposes the days are non-sequential and that, like the name implies, there was a "gap" (or in rarer cases gaps) of time in between creation events. This idea can be found in the literature of even some Church Fathers themselves; for example, in De Principiis, a text written by Origen. The Church Fathers' writings, in Christian theology, are often considered to have almost as much credibility as apostolic documents. Therefore, even if because of the Biblical inerrancy doctrine you don't accept the literary framework view of creation and, for some reason unbeknownst to me, reject the Day-Agers' ontology, you still have Gap creationism as a feasible reconciliation of evolution and the timeframe of the Bible. If you want to literally interpret everything in Genesis then you'd be saying that the Earth was created 6000 (or slightly more, by some estimates) years ago, despite the fact multiple consilient methods of science independently converge at an estimate of 4.54 billion years. This is silly and intellectually dishonest, as a point of fact, and believers have a ton of other options at their disposal that allow them to maintain their beliefs without taking an unsolicited dump in the backyard of science.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. If you're trying to say that the God of the Christian Bible wouldn't want Christians to distort science and facts to fit their imperfect understanding of Scripture and their own, personal theologies, then I agree with you.

Again, I reiterate that I feel that religion should be a spiritual matter, and science should be a scientific matter. I think both have great value if used properly and, if scientists were going into religion classrooms, churches, et cetera and saying God isn't real, I'd be equally annoyed as I am when religion tries to encroach upon science. I say both should be left to their own doings, and neither should try to claim the authority of the other. In closing, I'd like to throw out there that Pope Pius XII didn't believe evolution and the Bible were incompatible; nor did Pope John Paul II, who supported evolution as "more than just a hypothesis;" nor does Pope Benedict XVI, who believes evolution was a teleological process directed by God. To finish off, and in the final analysis, I'll post the following quote by Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the most respected ancient theologians in Christian history:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.... Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

It was definitely my friends who pointed those out, but I may have been using them so I didn't have to admit I believed them. They know more about Christianity than I do, so I usually take what they say about it on good faith (no pun intended).

I have nothing else to add to this train of thought. But I learned some interesting stuff out of this, so thanks.

What do you guys think of Dan Brown (the DaVinci Code)? I read Angels and Demons, and I thought it was a good book and did a clever job of tying things together. I saw the movie for the DaVinci Code, so I know the story. I'm just curious for a religious view on the book.

Me too. It's all about faith. Faith in the Father of all that is glory.

It's not possible to become a believer through scientific fact. God wants us to believe in Him through faith. However the video I posted is only to strengthen our belief. Believe it or not, most, if not all Christians, at one or many points of their lives have doubt in their faith. We are human, after all, and God knows this. Those who have perseverance and a strong faith will get passed their doubt through the help of God. Things like the video I posted are only there to help strengthen and encourage our belief. But it will never make someone become a Christian, because you need more than scientific proof to find God. (But I guess it depends on the person.)

I dont believe in God. I know that he is. Its just fact ( Not fact for all people ) But for me yes.

I am not in any religion. I just dont need it. God is for me something hidden but I feel I know that he exist.

I have recently started a "cult" It is the Holy Brotherhood of dinosaurs and we are awesome. There are currently 7 members and we are awesome.

@Ganymede.
No. I just wanted to say how awesome we are.

It's pretty late/early right now, so I didn't feel like reading all those big posts to see if my view has already been explained. I'm really sorry if that offends anyone somehow, I hope you'll learn to forgive me.

Anyway, my view on religion is slightly complicated. I don't believe in a magical man sitting on the clouds waiting for somebody to break one of his ten golden laws so he can write us a hall pass to the depths of hell. I don't believe there's a giant tower-like mountain owned by a bunch of rapists that can control the weather who fight giant titans made of rock. I don't believe in a big fat Asian man...actually that one is slightly realistic.

All that being said, I don't see how anyone can possibly say that there isn't a God, or series of gods depending on the religion. There are millions of people who believe whole-heartedly in a man who could walk on water and then turn it into an alcoholic beverage. Personally, he seems like a lush in the winter-time, but I digress. They pray to him-- they trust in him. If one person can have this much support, how can anyone refute his existence? It may not be a physical manifestation, but it most certainly is a psychological one. The being lives within the hearts of millions of people, and that is enough for me.

Another thought of mine (and again, I only skimmed the previous posts, sorry if I'm restating something) is that people have created an ultimate being as a scape goat-- someone to blame all their misfortunes on.

I just realized what time it was, I really need to skedaddle soon, I won't have time to finish what I was going to write right now.