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Post by andrew on May 29, 2006 15:37:05 GMT -5
Im new to this forum and I am loving reading this forum, I am an Agnostic (border line Athiest). I do think Religion does play a part in the world, just not mine. Religion in a whole has got to be the biggest and the best Morality Check in the World. I do not hold it against anyone for believing (its a great thing), just not for me. I do think our sociaty is going down hill since they are trying to take Religion out of our schools and homes. I think prayer in school is much better then fighting in school, the ten commandments statue should be allowed to stay, even the pledge of allegience (under God) should stay. I just think it is needed for some to beleve just to keep them right. The idea of going to hell or do right keeps alot of people doing right(my thoughts). I went to School to become a preacher. After a few years I felt churches were not preaching the written word anymore, only the things that met there needs. I am no longer in that state of mind and dont look back on it. Still love to conversate about it tho.
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Post by lennie on May 29, 2006 17:40:11 GMT -5
Im new to this forum and I am loving reading this forum, I am an Agnostic (border line Athiest). I do think Religion does play a part in the world, just not mine. Religion in a whole has got to be the biggest and the best Morality Check in the World. I do not hold it against anyone for believing (its a great thing), just not for me. I do think our sociaty is going down hill since they are trying to take Religion out of our schools and homes. I think prayer in school is much better then fighting in school, the ten commandments statue should be allowed to stay, even the pledge of allegience (under God) should stay. I just think it is needed for some to beleve just to keep them right. The idea of going to hell or do right keeps alot of people doing right(my thoughts). I went to School to become a preacher. After a few years I felt churches were not preaching the written word anymore, only the things that met there needs. I am no longer in that state of mind and dont look back on it. Still love to conversate about it tho. Andrew Like you, for many years I was an agnostic. My belief now though is that there is a power greater thasn myself. I believe religion is for those who do not want to go to hell, and spirituality is for those who have been there. |
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Post by efm on Jul 22, 2006 17:24:54 GMT -5
lennie,
Hell is not a place. One does not go there. It is created by you on this earth.
Hell is a place without love: without forgiveness: without acceptance: without self worth.
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Post by lennie on Jul 24, 2006 1:44:01 GMT -5
lennie, Hell is not a place. One does not go there. It is created by you on this earth. Hell is a place without love: without forgiveness: without acceptance: without self worth. Hell is where you live when you are a practicing alcoholic like I once was. Believe me, I know. |
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Post by efm on Jul 24, 2006 10:02:12 GMT -5
lennie,
Like I said we create our own hell on this earth and we do not have to try too hard at times as our God gave us FREE WILL.
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Post by lennie on Jul 25, 2006 6:22:49 GMT -5
lennie, Like I said we create our own hell on this earth and we do not have to try too hard at times as our God gave us FREE WILL. Yea - and thats one of the problems with us Alcoholics. We run on our own free will when we're drinking.  |
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Post by buzz on Jul 25, 2006 16:59:57 GMT -5
Intelligent Design is an interesting variation on an old argument, but ultimately a disappointing attempt to discredit science - one that does a disservice to people of faith, argues the Reverend Dr David Millikan.
As a Uniting Church clergyman, you might think I would welcome a call to teach 'Intelligent Design' theory in schools, since it presupposes a guiding hand in the creation of the universe. We clergy certainly need all the help we can get! But Intelligent Design (I.D.) is both bad theology and bad science. Let me explain.
Brendan Nelson, Australia's Minister for Education, Science and Training, has argued that schools should be allowed to teach it, later clarifying that it should be taught as part of philosophy or religion classes. U.S. President George W. Bush agrees with him, and so does Tim Hawkes, headmaster of Australia's oldest private school, the King's School in Sydney.
What is it that is so threatening about this suggestion that it has the scientists and science teachers up in arms? There is a beguiling simplicity about what I.D. is saying. It goes like this: the Earth is full of living things displaying complexity and order so remarkable that it makes more sense to say it was made by an intelligent creator than to say it came to be by the impersonal forces of natural selection.
I.D. has emerged in the past 15 years as something of an intellectual juggernaut. It is at its most powerful in the U.S., where there are institutes and impressive websites devoted to its advocacy. But I.D. has been around in different forms since the time of Plato and Aristotle. Its first introduction and most famous argument came from English theologian William Paley, the bookish Archbishop of Carlisle. In his Natural Theology in 1802, it became the 'watchmaker argument'. He put it like this: if you stumbled on a watch, having never seen one before, what would you think? Here was something quite different from the world around you. Its mechanism would seem wonderfully intricate and ordered. If someone asked you: "Where did that come from?", you would be obliged to say: "Some clever person has made this".
This is what the supporters of I.D. are saying. Look at a single living cell and be astonished at its complexity: this surely cannot be explained by the crudities of the evolutionary theory? Such order must be the product of mind, they argue.
So why are 70,000 Australian teachers and scientists so angry about the introduction of this argument into schools that they would write an open letter? Why is the Dover School board of education in Pennsylvania defending itself in the U.S. district courts for teaching I.D.? And why are many of its opponents, including me, believers in God?
The problem lies in two places, the first being the internal consistency of the argument itself. The other problem is related to the way in which I.D. advocates are using the argument to attack contemporary scientific theory.
I.D. is susceptible to the 'God of the gaps' criticism. Before the work of Newton and Galileo, many Christians believed the planets were pushed around the heavens by angels. In earlier times, an eclipse of the Sun was such an aberration, whole civilisations thought could only be an act of God. In New Testament times, many people believed that epilepsy was caused by sudden assaults of evil spirits.
But as science came to understand what was happening, supernatural explanations were pushed aside. So basing an argument for the existence of God on gaps in our scientific knowledge leads to the progressive marginalisation of God, and intellectual retreat by religion.
I.D. looks suspiciously like this. It is arguing from 'irreducible complexity' so inexplicable that it defies contemporary understanding. But that proves nothing. It simply argues that at the moment we don't know. It is dangerous to use God to fill the gaps because when the gaps are eventually filled by science, God is chased out.
If I.D. has this vulnerability, why don't scientists just continue to go about their business and, in time, I.D. will be overtaken by the increase in human knowledge; which after all, is what science is about. Right?
No, the scientists who oppose I.D. see a darker purpose at work: they believe I.D. is an attack on science itself. And I am inclined to agree with them.
The advocacy of I.D. is not as innocent as it seems. It is the latest skirmish in the battle against the 'evils of Darwinism', one that has been fought vehemently in the United States for more than a century. But American culture differs from that of Australia and New Zealand. Sectarian passions run deep in the U.S.; evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity have never truly forgotten - nor forgiven - the way they were humiliated by the evolutionary theory. But they have been unable to dismantle it, so I.D. is an attempt to destabilise it.
According to Gallup polls, 47 per cent of Americans accept the literal account of creation in the book of Genesis. Bush holds this view too.
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Post by efm on Jul 25, 2006 21:02:36 GMT -5
buzz,
I am sure that more than 47% 0f the USA thought they made Iraq a democracy when they were told by G Bush that they won the war against IRAQ about 3 years ago.
My belief and understanding of my God does not allow me to begin to understand how he thinks and/or operates.
In science/maths my God can be represented by Infinity plus one. As I am unable to understand infinity how can I understand one more than infinity.
To suggest that there are people on this world with the ability to understand how God made a thinking man with a spirit and they are able to tell others is an insult to all men and pure ignorance of the nature of a loving God.
Ask those who think they know to explain INFINITY first.
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