Your Religous Views

[omgitsgodzilla]

Well, you can't really prove that God doesn't exist. It's an unfalsifiable hypothesis - a being that can't be seen, heard, detected or communicated with by any but the vaguest and most uncertain means. You can't prove it doesn't exist because there are no scientific means that could be used to show that it exists, assuming it did. The only way to prove it would be if such means detected nothing. Basically, religious folk have created an idea so that it can't be disproved, allowing them to carry on in their beliefs by just responding to atheists "You can't prove that!" Of course they can't. God was created that way.

[Malchik]

That just proves that God designed the earth to host life, not those planets.

There is no such thing as a fine-tuned environment, only fine-tuned lifeforms, and evolution is what drives survival. The majority of this planet is inhospitable. Miles below the earth's crust lay oceans filled with organisms that out-populate the surface. Volcanic fields on the ocean floor that would scald your flesh, house some of the most bizarre creatures you will sea, while fish swim in underground rivers with an acidic level that would strip your skin.

Earth is a planet that is forever changing, and life will change with it, dramatically. They will change to the point where they may not even resemble their ancestors, but they certainly show their true colors on a morphological, fossil, and phylogenetic level.

But what it comes down to, is that both theories don't prove everything perfectly. If they did, there would be no discussion. There's difficulties with both, and ultimately, you just have to come to a conclusion that you think is logical and makes the most sense.

No, no it doesn't. You see, we have less of an understanding of most other theories than than we do evolution. It's ironic becasue people with a layman's knowledge of evolution will gladly present evidence and discuss the topic challenged. You've set up an unprovable explanation and somehow still demand people show physical evidence to back up their claim. And when they do, you simply fallback on "we'll never know for sure lol. God is untestable and we all know he's real."

I don't care if God is real or not, it's irrelevant to the facts at hand. And the fact is evolution has mountains of evidence from all different varieties of science and you have a few pages in a book. A few pages that, for some reason, you will not ignore, but cast away others that inconveniences you.

[omgitsgodzilla]

Not to mention that said book has gone through millennia's worth of translations through numerous languages (during which some things were inevitably lost) and human revisionism, even ignoring whether it was the result of divine inspiration or just written down by humans. If I could get my hands on the original texts in their original languages, learn the necessary languages and then compare them side-by-side with something like the New International translation or the New King James version, I'd be very interested to see what got dropped or changed over the thousands of years since they were first written.

Also, Christianity is terrible at changing its views when confronted with hard science. Hell, the Catholic Church's official declaration expressing regret for the handling of Galileo's case wasn't issued until 1992.

[Cimmerian Dragon]

My religious views are simple. I'm open to the idea of a creator, but any being that could form the universe would, by definition, be so vast in power that no human being could ever hope to comprehend it. A transcendent force must transcend our feeble human conceptions. So, any religious ideology that purports to know exactly what "God" is or wants, seems like it would be inherently insulting to the very nature of this Brobdingnagian overseer.

That being the case, I am tolerant of anyone's religious views, provide that they never attempt to convince me that they are any more valid than anyone else'. The only arguments I respect are those based upon objective facts that can be tested based upon our current knowledge and technology. If your religious views cannot thus be tested, then they are articles of personal faith, and cannot be argued rationally.

By all means, believe what you wish. But don't ever call my house, or show up at my door spewing evangelism and tossing out pamphlets full of arguments that appeal to anything but the scientific method.

[cloverfan98]

My religious views are simple. I'm open to the idea of a creator, but any being that could form the universe would, by definition, be so vast in power that no human being could ever hope to comprehend it. A transcendent force must transcend our feeble human conceptions. So, any religious ideology that purports to know exactly what "God" is or wants, seems like it would be inherently insulting to the very nature of this Brobdingnagian overseer.

That being the case, I am tolerant of anyone's religious views, provide that they never attempt to convince me that they are any more valid than anyone else'. The only arguments I respect are those based upon objective facts that can be tested based upon our current knowledge and technology. If your religious views cannot thus be tested, then they are articles of personal faith, and cannot be argued rationally.

By all means, believe what you wish. But don't ever call my house, or show up at my door spewing evangelism and tossing out pamphlets full of arguments that appeal to anything but the scientific method.

As a Christian I must say that I do agree with you that God is COMPLETLY beyond human comprehension. What we know about God from the Bible isn't because the writers of the books wrote what they thought about God, but rather what He told them to write about Himself. As for your last statement about not appealing to the scientific method, wouldn't God being the vast being that He is, wouldn't he as the creator of everything, be totally beyond things like the scientific method? Those things are part of the physical world that He created, and as the Creator the rules of the creation don't apply to Him. For example the rules of a video game world do not apply to the video game designer. I believe you can find scientific evidence of His existance, but you're right in that you can't take a part of God and subject it to a experiment and prove that He exists.

[Dash 7]

I am a Christian. However I am pretty open-minded.

[GotengoXGodzilla]

My only religious view is that there is a higher power of some kind that watches us, and when we die, we go to heaven or hell, depending on how we acted during our life times.

Other than that, I have no religious views at all.

[PopInPicsPresents]

I recently had an idea about life and death. When you die you go back to being born. You're born again as the same person you were before, but you remember certain memories. These memories are Deja Vu. Sometimes you make a different choice then you did in your previous life. Life is just an endless cycle repeating its self. It does make sense for the most part.

Again, just my 2 cents. Either that or we live and we die. End of story. Not a big believer in "religion" par say.

Another theory of mine is that God is real and he did vistit different people throughout history. They just skreeonk up what God told them and shat out a bunch of religions based off of the one original religion. It would kinda make sense seeing as how many religions share figures with the exact same traits as others.

[Crocodile]

It would kinda make sense seeing as how many religions share figures with the exact same traits as others.

Well historically, many of today's religions evolved out of older ones.
What started out as a jewish cult is today it's own religion.

Funny how that kind of thing works.

[PopInPicsPresents]

It would kinda make sense seeing as how many religions share figures with the exact same traits as others.

Well historically, many of today's religions evolved out of older ones.
What started out as a jewish cult is today it's own religion.

Funny how that kind of thing works.

People are just lazy Bottom line lol

[Crocodile]

People are just lazy Bottom line lol

Eh, most of the more colorful theologies have faded into mythology.
There's a thin line between Theology and Mythology, it's the number of people who believe.

[Cimmerian Dragon]

As for your last statement about not appealing to the scientific method, wouldn't God being the vast being that He is, wouldn't he as the creator of everything, be totally beyond things like the scientific method?

Right, thus I hate listening to anyone spout off at me in an attempt to spread their faith. An article of faith is a personal decision to believe in something despite the lack of objective evidence. If you could prove God exists, then you wouldn't need faith.

Now, I refuse to argue any point that cannot be objectively proven or dis-proven, so until objective support for the existence of a certain deity is available, I will not declare the total supremacy of any sect. I will respect a personal decision to believe that sect represents the most worthy religious tradition, but I will not tolerate believers denigrating the beliefs of others who haven't made the same decision.

What that all translates to is very simple: I tolerate almost anyone. So long as a group isn't bothering others, or trying to impose their will on them, I don't care what they believe.

Now, I do make one exception: If a religion advocates beliefs that result in harm to the innocent, I'll tell practitioners to drop dead. You advocate ritual genital mutilation of children? Go to hell, bastard. You refuse to bring your child to the hospital because God frowns upon that, and then they die of pneumonia as a result? You're a murderer in my eyes. They can rationalize and explain their beliefs all they want, but sects like that put faith in the intangible ahead of the welfare of the people before their eyes. That sickens me.

Also, if you're one of these young earth people: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_date.htm

...I don't hate you, but I can't possibly respect that belief. It's no different than someone walking into a room where the television is turned on, and then telling me that it is turned off. All I have to do is look at the evidence, and I can see that they are wrong.

[Tomzilla]

Well, like I said, I don't know all the complexities on the evolution subject.

You don't need to know all the complexities to have a firm grasp on what evolution truly is.

I'm not faulting you here for not being an expert. I'm faulting you here because you're deliberately ignoring the evidence because you think it conflicts with your religious beliefs, which is one of my criticisms on religion as a whole.

In my biology books it always said that (in simplified terms) that humans were evolved forms of apes. That's what I've read in the past.

And to paraphrase, you don't believe this because it wasn't written in the Bible. That's not a very logical thing to do. It's like rejecting modern medicine because none of the medicine books written back in the days of Jesus Christ mention it.

Would you like to know what else the Bible didn't mention? The Theory of Gravity, the Human Genome, the Laws of Thermodynamics, the General Theory of Relativity, the Special Theory of Relativity, Microbiology, Theory of Circulation, Quantum Mechanics, the Speed of Light, the Periodic Table...

Everything I just mentioned above are scientific theories. I'm sure you and scores of other Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and other people of religious faith, believe in them. If you're going to reject Evolution because it's just a "theory", you should stop believing in gravity and everything else on that list. Oh, and you should stop believing in God, because that too is just a "theory" (more like a flawed hypothesis). The only difference between the Theory of Evolution and the Hypothesis of God is one has overwhelming evidence in its favor and the other doesn't.

For the record, I believe in God; however, I don't believe in the God of the Bible or the God in any other religious texts I've read. What I believe I know I can't currently prove. The difference is if what I believe has been debunked by overwhelming scientific evidence, I'll happily find something new to believe in instead of blindfolding myself from the truth.

And yes, I think the fact that God made the first humans sounds more logical than a cell mysteriously appearing out of nothing, (out of nothing) then being able to reproduce just automatically.

Oh, I agree. I think it's ludicrous to believe life appeared out of nothing. I think it's ludicrous to believe cells came from nothing. Science doesn't think that either. So I don't see why you're rejecting evolution over this, since evolution doesn't make that claim.

And then somehow over billions of years, it forms complex things the human brain? It just doesn't sound logical.

You did this in 9 months before you were born. You did this in 9 months only because it took our ancestors and life itself billions of years to accomplish. It did this through evolution.

If you disagree, please explain why with evidence.

[Destroyer]

And to paraphrase, you don't believe this because it wasn't written in the Bible. That's not a very logical thing to do. It's like rejecting modern medicine because none of the medicine books written back in the days of Jesus Christ mention it.

I don't believe it because I believe in the story of Adam and Eve. A Christian, a real Christian, believes what the Bible says. Now I'm not saying that new theories I will denounce or any new type of medicine, but if I were to believe in evolution, that would conflict my belief in the story.

You did this in 9 months before you were born. You did this in 9 months only because it took our ancestors and life itself billions of years to accomplish. It did this through evolution.

Well, that's cause and effect. My original cell didn't appear out of nothing without a cause. And that's the thing, Evolution talks about how life started as a cell, but nothing could explain what came before that.

I'm probably not the best debater on the subject, cause I haven't devoted time to fully study Evolution and the things scientists find regarding the subject.

[Legionmaster]

A Christian, a real Christian, believes what the Bible says.

This is a phrase that bothers me. You can believe what the Bible says literally or metaphorically and still be believing in it, even though those are incompatible viewpoints.

And if you're going to be a Biblical literalist, then a real Christian stones women who get raped.

[SuperSaiyan4Godzilla]

A Christian, a real Christian, believes what the Bible says.

This is a phrase that bothers me. You can believe what the Bible says literally or metaphorically and still be believing in it, even though those are incompatible viewpoints.

And if you're going to be a Biblical literalist, then a real Christian stones women who get raped.

Or makes them get married to their rapist. Either or.

[Legionmaster]

A Christian, a real Christian, believes what the Bible says.

This is a phrase that bothers me. You can believe what the Bible says literally or metaphorically and still be believing in it, even though those are incompatible viewpoints.

And if you're going to be a Biblical literalist, then a real Christian stones women who get raped.

Or makes them get married to their rapist. Either or.

Unless she's not engaged or married and gets raped out in the wilderness. Because then she's not at fault for no one being around to hear her screams.

[Destroyer]

This is a phrase that bothers me. You can believe what the Bible says literally or metaphorically and still be believing in it, even though those are incompatible viewpoints.

There's a lot of things in the Bible that doesn't make sense since sometimes it doesn't use literal terms. I'm not trying to say anything wrong, I'm just saying that I believe the Bible stories and Psalms/Proverbs, which are morals to follow.

[RedZillaKing]

Dinosaur's bones are really Satan's bones. Ammonite shells? Satan's testicles. Do I even need to elaborate on what petrified wood is? See, years ago Satan gave up his body to sabotage the belief in God. He split into all the fossils we now know. In doing so he began the process that would eventually lead to the belief in evil things like natural selection and Kim Kardashian.

Long story short the Earth is approximately 700 years old. The world did not exist prior to this span of time. My proof is no proof. Show me a photograph that predates this time span. You can't. And don't give me any of that "carbon dating" shit. Why would I want to date carbon? I'm not even attracted to it...

[HeiseiGodzilla117]

A Christian, a real Christian, believes what the Bible says.

Hot damn. I guess since I see a lot of the bible as a metaphor/method of explaining things during the time they were written AND I recognize that evolution is a fact, I'm not a Christian. And here all these years I've been calling myself a Christian. Thank you, Destroyer, for opening my eyes.