Heaven, hell... God, satan. How stupid are people really?

[Horseman 1,513]

57 minutes ago, stonewall said:

I will be charitable, and assume that you are intelligent enough to realize that is a blatantly untrue statement. All organizations in the world, since they are manned and staffed by humans, "religious" or otherwise, suffer similar maladies...and always will, unfortunately.

Not necessarily. I am fortunate, as it pertains to this conversation, to have vast personal experiences/relationships with both during the course of my lifetime, mostly due to my career path. Of course, I have known those in the secular world, without any spiritual interests or leanings, that were laudably charitable....seemingly innately. Genuinely good people. Perhaps that describes you. Perhaps not. I have also know those who claimed to embrace Christianity, that were sickeningly stingy and uncaring. We're dealing with humans, after all. However, when viewed in its totality, from the wide prism of many decades, those who truly sought to be pleasing to their God were vastly more inclined to be charitable toward their fellow man....and it's not even close. Of course, you are free to dissent, but it will not alter what I have personally observed and experienced, which in the end, carries the most water for any individual.

All would have received help eventually. After all, we live in a great country, don't we? However, I do know that those in dire need wouldn't have received ample help that day. I witnessed it. If an individual is unwilling or unable to give proper credit and distinction to those directly responsible (Christians, in this case), whether derived from a position of prejudice or not, or if they are hesitant to admit that they are often a force of good in the world.....then I have found it most difficult, if not impossible, to engage in an even-handed or productive dialog. 

Honest positions are never arrogant, although the people that present them sometimes are.....and, interestingly, the only times in my life that I have been accused of arrogance was through the discourse of written medium communications, similar to this. Never once in person.

 

All organizations suffer from human maladies.  Religious organization suffer from all the same human maladies plus religious maladies.  You're conveniently assigning any malady caused or fostered by religion to it's people.  That is incorrect.  Let me try again with my two examples:

Priest molestation - yes a percentage of humans have an illness that causes them to molest children.  In the Catholic Church's case that was fostered, incentivized and magnified by the the religion itself.  The rape was committed humans, however, it was the religion (belief) that priests must be celibate and in charge of children.  A false belief directly contradictory to the biological needs of a man.  Then it was the perceived power of the religion (god himself) that gave the power to the pope, cardinals and priests to keep these molestation covered up and the molestation to continue, for as long as they have.  That doesn't happen in any other type of organization.

9/11 - I could write volumes on this one, but, I'll try to keep it short as it shouldn't take much to illustrate my point.  There isn't any greater instinct natural selection has given us, or any of the other species, than the instinct for survival.  Most every time individuals break that instinct it is because of Altruism.  The only thing I've seen in my lifetime (unfortunately) or read about in history different is the false promise of everlasting life.

I think your wide prism of several decades is shielded from the history of mankind.  We've been able to survive quite well for 195,000 out of our 200,000 years without religion.  And we will do quite well once we've evolved past the spandrel of religion.  Our survival instincts protect the tribe and help our fellow men, including those hit by a tornado.  Your response team of Christians will be replace by one with a different name, one where they take credit for themselves.  

I didn't mean that you were an arrogant person, I'm sure you're a great guy and would buy you a beer anytime, you are just suffering from a religious malady. 

[stonewall 647]

5 minutes ago, Horseman said:

All organizations suffer from human maladies.  Religious organization suffer from all the same human maladies plus religious maladies.

Or, one could state: Religious organizations suffer from all the same human maladies as their secular counterparts, but at a lesser rate due to moral convictions generated by their religiosity.

 

10 minutes ago, Horseman said:

Priest molestation   That doesn't happen in any other type of organization.

Obviously, you didn't attend my (secular) school. 

No one in their right mind would defend what happened to countless children in the Catholic church. Sickening and indefensible. It illustrates, to me, the darkness that can emerge when a Christian organization (much less the most powerful on Earth) insists upon adherence to "Biblical principles" that are nowhere to be found in the New Testament (Priests unmarried).....and then in their pomp and pride (both of which are Pharisetical traits repeatedly rebuked by Jesus), attempt to hide their black eye. 

It is the most credible and powerful modern example of Christian errancy, granted. However, again, it evolved from non-Biblical principles, and doesn't (or shouldn't) negate the overwhelming good that Christendom has brought to the world.

23 minutes ago, Horseman said:

9/11 - I could write volumes on this one, but, I'll try to keep it short as it shouldn't take much to illustrate my point.  There isn't any greater instinct natural selection has given us, or any of the other species, than the instinct for survival.  Most every time individuals break that instinct it is because of Altruism.  The only thing I've seen in my lifetime (unfortunately) or read about in history different is the false promise of everlasting life.

Forgive me for not exactly following your line of thought on this one. Altruism is supposed to be the bedrock foundation of Christianity. Jesus said: "No greater love hath man than this; that he lay down his life for a friend" ~John 15:13

The promise of eternal life for those that live Godly (Biblically principled) lives (as well as the promise of eternal destruction for those that don't), has, undoubtedly, saved untold lives.....both from self-destruction and the destruction of others.

31 minutes ago, Horseman said:

We've been able to survive quite well for 195,000 out of our 200,000 years without religion.

Survive? Yes. Thrive? That's debatable, at the very least.

32 minutes ago, Horseman said:

And we will do quite well once we've evolved past the spandrel of religion. 

Unprovable, although I obviously do not concur.

34 minutes ago, Horseman said:

I didn't mean that you were an arrogant person, I'm sure you're a great guy and would buy you a beer anytime, you are just suffering from a religious malady.

If it is to be deemed a malady by you or others, then it is an ailment that I wish to be both chronic and incurable.

I would appreciate sharing a cold beer with you. I can tell that you, like myself, are not easily stirred....and it would be a thought-provoking conversation, I am sure.

[edjr 5,557]

Who invited frick and frack to join the conversation?

[Utilit99 4,099]

3 hours ago, TimHauck said:

Utilit can you share some of the evidence of God existing in this thread?

You said to come here for that discussion but it seems to be mostly you copying and pasting the same stuff about atheists as in the other thread.

Ok. So it's hard to write in a post here everything I've read, seen, and talked about with others over the years that have led me to my faith. There so many things that have been stated by mathematicians, physicists, philosophers, psychiatrists,  religious folks, and everyone else who has left behind thoughts about this world based on  the non physical characteristics of human consciousness and how it relates to mathematics, the physical nature of things, and the universe as a whole.

To me, since so many people in the past have discovered and formulated so many ideas and pieced together so many logical, common, understandings of the universe that all coincide and/or relate with one another. I've concluded one thing. The universe is not just a random accident. The laws of nature apply (both physical and mathematical) across the board, or across the universe, and they were all discovered by a non physical entity. Human consciousness. 

The universe is almost too perfect. Too mathematically planned out. Too a lot of things. And this is why I think the existence of a God, is way more realistic than not.

And like I said, I can't really post everything that leads me to that, and I may have even not written the above very eloquently, but I am not a writer by trade and I don't have hours to sit and take a fine comb through my exact word choice here. So I looked up something to start a discussion about to post here that covers a small sense of how I feel as well. But for me to go into details from sayings and findings from hundreds of different items from physicists, mathematicians, logicians, etc...impossible to do here. And I won't post anything from what religious folks that I thought were very spot on because it's obvious the majority of the folks here wouldn't respect their opinions.

I searched for some articles or writings that can initially start to address some of what I have had going on in my mind over the years. Here is one item that also tells how I think as well in a manner:
 

Much of life may seem uncertain, but look at what we can count on day after day: gravity remains consistent, a hot cup of coffee left on a counter will cool, the earth rotates in the same 24 hours, and the speed of light doesn't change -- on earth or in galaxies far from us.

All of the sciences--molecular biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc.--hinge on the consistent laws of nature.

Dr. Emily Baldwin commented, "One of the most important numbers in physics, the proton-electron mass ratio, is the same in a galaxy six billion light years away as it is here on Earth…"

How is it that we can identify laws of nature that never change? Why is the universe so orderly, so reliable?

"The greatest scientists have been struck by how strange this is. There is no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone one that abides by the rules of mathematics. This astonishment springs from the recognition that the universe doesn't have to behave this way. It is easy to imagine a universe in which conditions change unpredictably from instant to instant, or even a universe in which things pop in and out of existence."

Physicist Paul C. Davies, comments, "…to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws…”

All of our ability to discover, solve problems, create is made possible by the orderly laws of the universe that never change and can be measured with precision.

Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, said, "Why nature is mathematical is a mystery...The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle."

Here are some comments from a different source:

In 1960 the Princeton physicist – and subsequent Nobel Prize winner – Eugene Wigner raised a fundamental question: Why did the natural world always – so far as we know – obey laws of mathematics?

As argued by scholars such as Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh, mathematics exists independent of physical reality. It is the job of mathematicians to discover the realities of this separate world of mathematical laws and concepts. Physicists then put the mathematics to use according to the rules of prediction and confirmed observation of the scientific method.

But modern mathematics generally is formulated before any natural observations are made, and many mathematical laws today have no known existing physical analogues.

Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity, for example, was based on theoretical mathematics developed 50 years earlier by the great German mathematician Bernhard Riemann that did not have any known practical applications at the time of its intellectual creation.

In some cases the physicist also discovers the mathematics. Isaac Newton was considered among the greatest mathematicians as well as physicists of the 17th century. Other physicists sought his help in finding a mathematics that would predict the workings of the solar system. He found it in the mathematical law of gravity, based in part on his discovery of calculus.

At the time, however, many people initially resisted Newton’s conclusions because they seemed to be “occult.” How could two distant objects in the solar system be drawn toward one another, acting according to a precise mathematical law? Indeed, Newton made strenuous efforts over his lifetime to find a natural explanation, but in the end he could say only that it is the will of God.

Despite the many other enormous advances of modern physics, little has changed in this regard. As Wigner wrote, “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”

In other words, as I argue in my book, it takes the existence of some kind of a god to make the mathematical underpinnings of the universe comprehensible.

Fast forward to something else:

How can physical atoms and molecules, for example, create something that exists in a separate domain that has no physical existence: human consciousness?

It is a mystery that lies beyond science.

This mystery is the same one that existed in the Greek worldview of Plato, who believed that abstract ideas (above all mathematical) first existed outside any physical reality. The material world that we experience as part of our human existence is an imperfect reflection of these prior formal ideals. As the scholar of ancient Greek philosophy, Ian Mueller, writes in “Mathematics And The Divine,” the realm of such ideals is that of God.

Indeed, in 2014 the MIT physicist Max Tegmark argues in “Our Mathematical Universe” that mathematics is the fundamental world reality that drives the universe. Mathematics is operating in a god-like fashion.

[Horseman 1,513]

3 hours ago, stonewall said:

Or, one could state: Religious organizations suffer from all the same human maladies as their secular counterparts, but at a lesser rate due to moral convictions generated by their religiosity.

 

Obviously, you didn't attend my (secular) school. 

No one in their right mind would defend what happened to countless children in the Catholic church. Sickening and indefensible. It illustrates, to me, the darkness that can emerge when a Christian organization (much less the most powerful on Earth) insists upon adherence to "Biblical principles" that are nowhere to be found in the New Testament (Priests unmarried).....and then in their pomp and pride (both of which are Pharisetical traits repeatedly rebuked by Jesus), attempt to hide their black eye. 

It is the most credible and powerful modern example of Christian errancy, granted. However, again, it evolved from non-Biblical principles, and doesn't (or shouldn't) negate the overwhelming good that Christendom has brought to the world.

Forgive me for not exactly following your line of thought on this one. Altruism is supposed to be the bedrock foundation of Christianity. Jesus said: "No greater love hath man than this; that he lay down his life for a friend" ~John 15:13

The promise of eternal life for those that live Godly (Biblically principled) lives (as well as the promise of eternal destruction for those that don't), has, undoubtedly, saved untold lives.....both from self-destruction and the destruction of others.

Survive? Yes. Thrive? That's debatable, at the very least.

Unprovable, although I obviously do not concur.

If it is to be deemed a malady by you or others, then it is an ailment that I wish to be both chronic and incurable.

I would appreciate sharing a cold beer with you. I can tell that you, like myself, are not easily stirred....and it would be a thought-provoking conversation, I am sure.

To your first paragraph, you can restate it that way, but it wouldnt be true as my examples demonstrate.  

Flying planes into buildings killing yourself and thousands of others is not Altruism.  It was on the promise of everlasting life with 72 virgins and a kingdom in the paradise garden.  Nothing else explains those acts. Religion is 100% responsible for suicide terrorists and undeniable religious malady. Most every other example of humans freely forfeiting thier lives has been Altruism, the vast majority having nothing to do with God. Altruism is just another thing, along with charity, that religion has stolen from humanity and purports as their own. 

99% of human existence has been without religion.  You're mistaken if you think we didnt thrive without it, let alone require it. 

Cheers.  

[Utilit99 4,099]

18 minutes ago, Horseman said:

 

99% of human existence has been without religion.  You're mistaken if you think we didnt thrive without it, let alone require it. 

 

That communism was totally humans thriving. 

[frank 2,144]

9 hours ago, Horseman said:

The tornado (natural disaster) is always an interesting one.  People like to give god credit when humanity steps in to help people who have been affected by natural disasters while ignoring the fact that God could have stopped the tornado altogether.  The same god who used natural disasters on a whim to destroy thousand of people at a time in the bible.  The god people say "did this for a reason" every time a natural disaster occurs.  The idea that god should receive gratitude for life while not being held accountable for disasters is a transparently disingenuous double standard by Christians. 

 

[drobeski 3,061]

 

[Hardcore troubadour 12,627]

 Nothing coming out of modern Christianity is as absurd as what is coming out of the religion that is the Democratic Party . Talk about a cult believing in fairy tales.  

[Utilit99 4,099]

Here's another one started by who again? 

[posty 2,296]

Just now, Utilit99 said:

Here's another one started by who again? 

He forgets what he starts right after it is started...

[Utilit99 4,099]

7 minutes ago, posty said:

He forgets what he starts right after it is started...

Must be. I guess he just can't go back and re-read these to see how people feel about this topic. 

[edjr 5,557]

 

[Utilit99 4,099]

38 minutes ago, edjr said:

 

dancing banana.