JagMagMan

Good post SS! And a fair question too! No, it does not need to be discussed in every thread or post, But it should NOT be a taboo subject either! To a Christian believer, it is a natural thing to see God's work in all things and it does not need to be something that you should have to hide either!
The thread title should tell folks that there is SOMETHING inside the post about God & Christ. The best thing that a non-believer could do is just ignore and avoid this particular thread, not come knocking another's beliefs and demanding that the thread be deleted! Trying to silence another's beliefs does infringe upon their Constitutional rights, pure and simple! However, it seems more and more that even here in America, Christians are the only group that should not be allowed any public opinion!

Murby

I was reading an article about the common housefly. Ever notice how good they are at avoiding a fly swatter in mid air?

Their brain, about 1000 times smaller than a "pea" literally does a mathematical calculation to determine the trajectory and speed of the fly swatter and compares that answer to their own flight path to develop an avoidance solution.

It is an amazing feat that has been developed over billions of years of evolution.. but no supreme being ever played a part in the roll. (unless you count the guy with the fly swatter as a supreme being)...

I'm a bit disturbed at how quiet the non-believers are in this thread.. Many think they won't be accepted for thinking differently and that's a shame.

Many of my friends are deeply religious and I could care less. Its fun subject matter to debate but means nothing to me when one of them calls with car trouble at 2am.

Murby

Actually, I thought it was just some clever religious spam.. Had it come from a user who had been here for some time, I wouldn't have had the same reaction.

I have absolutely no problem with folks who believe.. In fact, I am fascinated by the thought process that compels others to believe and how those thought patterns differ between persons and belief systems.

That said, if you spout it off in a public place, please respect my right to challenge it in same.

SnakeEater

God is amazing.

Bullcamp82834

Yes God is amazing. Too amazing for me to get my mind around so I keep things simple.
I often pause for just a minute when I'm out in some wild and beautiful place and give my simple thanks.

Thank you for this beautiful day and for letting me be alive in it.

Whoever or whatever God is I think a simple expression of appreciation is well received.

Father Forkhorn

Murby, if you break down that process of evolution down, you quickly see what it takes to get a life form--scads of improbable events over literally billions of years. Could it be entirely random chance, the product of a universe that simply had enough time for all of the astoundingly improbable occurences that result in a fly to occurr? Possibly.

Then again, it raises the kind of question that comes up if we were playing poker and I got dealt a royal flush four hands in a row. That's mathematically possible and happens to be far simpler than what it takes to get even a simple life form. I'm still guessing that you'd accuse me of stacking the deck.


Even if we accept what you say about believers being uneducated, it still leaves you with plenty of people who are highly educated who do believe. I am a monk and priest. I have three fellow monks who are PHDS in microbiology, one a PHD in nuclear physics, a couple dozen who hold various degrees in philosphy, and a number on theology. I'm working on my own PHD in history and have three masters degrees, and the equivalent of a philosphy degree.

We're catholics, and the intellectual tradition of the church extends 2,000 years. It means the idea of believers being uneducated comes crashing down. The Big Bang theory comes from a Catholic priest in the Vatican observatory, who decided Einsten had gotten something wrong. Pasteur was a Catholic, as was Gregor Mendel. Any Catholic university contains literally dozens of brilliantly educated, beliving Christians. There's a risk here of making yourself look foolish by typifying religious people as uneducated.

Now, I'd be interested in hearing about your last hunt....

Murby

Hi Father Forkhorn!
Nothing I love more for a good conversation than talking to one of the leaders of a religious faith. It's not often I encounter someone of such position who is willing to argue their side. Thank you for the opportunity. I just hope I don't get my non-believer butt kicked!!

The flaw in this statement is the word "improbable". The news media sneaks in words like that when they are reporting stories designed and slanted to elicit strong responses with the viewers. Rather than report the facts, they sneak in words designed to strengthen their version of the story, as opposed to sticking to the facts as much as they can. My personal favorite is how every gun used in a crime is a "High power firearm".. Sticking the word improbable in there is much the same.
If you simply left it at "if you break down that process of evolution down, you quickly see what it takes to get a life form" then you quickly see that the meaning changes.

Again with the sneaky set-up words. Try saying that sentence out loud without the words "astoundingly improbable" and you see it quickly changes its meaning to a more factual argument.

This is a misleading argument because it would depend completely on the conditions available for the life form to be created.
If you throw liquid water and the right organics into a melting pot, and then dose them with U.V light, life is going to be created in short order. However, remove the liquid water and now those four royal flushes look easy.
In this instance, I would not accuse you of stacking the deck.. More like comparing a known value (52 cards creating a specific pattern) to an unknown variable.

Yup.. I completely agree. But it is nearly impossible to filter out which ones pretend to gain acceptance and which truly believe.

Wow!! And I'm just a lowly engineer who's major hobby is reading about scientific advances. I feel out classed here.. I do not have a degree in philosphy but I do enjoy discussions based on philosophy.


Oh my.. I am flabbergasted that someone who claims to have so much education would even utter those words. "Intellectual tradition and church" should never be used in the same sentence together.
The real tradition of the church has been to burn people alive for being intellectuals under heresy laws. There's a rather large pile of intellectual human ashes out there.. Nice tradition..
And this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.. To someone who is uneducated, that statement is designed to resonate in their mind to hold the church up high.. when in fact it is the polar opposite that is actually true.
If it wasn't for modern day laws, the church would still be burning people alive.
The fact that you say you are working towards a PhD in history and then go and make that statement is a bit peculiar to me.


I believe the reverse is true and that you just made my point above.

Are you sure you don't mean Lemaitre??? What' interesting is that most think its Hubble. But I'm not a history buff..

As any prison contains dozens of highly educated people convicted of murder, but most would agree the vast majority of convicted murderers are uneducated.
The higher educated are the tiny minority and do not represent the overwhelmingly vast majority.
Your argument here is just strengthening what I said earlier.. The vast majority are uneducated.. those who are educated were mostly indoctrinated at an early age.. Their physical brain patters are hardwired for believing because it was intensively instilled at an early age while their brain was still developing. You call it catechism. Indoctrination is a tough cookie to crack.. This is why pedophiles prefer to "groom" their victims from an early age. Where do we see a lot of pedophiles?


You know what I would like to do? I'd like to walk into an inner-city church filled with the local population of African-American's who are doing their prayer thing and stand at the podium like a pasture and start discussing Leviticus 25:44-46.
Ya! Lets have a discussion on how the bible condones slavery as a divine institution. I wonder how that would go over!


Shot an 8 or 10 pointer but the arrow didn't penetrate far enough (3 to 4 inches).
Never thought in a million years that I would go on a manly forum and publicly announce that I am having penetration problems. But there it is!

I want to thank you again for your willingness to debate. I find that those who's faith and understanding is weak tend to run away quickly or become combative, while those with strong convictions come up with some pretty interesting answers.

Mojotex

Looks like they have found the "hot" acorn tree. Neat video. Thanks for sharing it.

Father Forkhorn

Though it's not my emphasis, I've studied the middle ages and church history specifically. The fact is, burning at the stake is a much rarer thing than people realize, and much of that reputation came about from anti-Catholic polemics in the Reformation era--a propaganda attack from those in conflict with the church. A lot of it has no basis in fact. A good example, I'm told, is Fox's Book of Martyrs.

I can tell you as an historian that a lot of scholarship debunks the conventional wisdom that the church was out burning heretics left and right and that it was some bastion of ignorance. It's much more complicated and the church comes out looking pretty good, though not lilly white.

Remember, the modern university was preceded by the medieval ones, inevitably linked to the church. Prior to that, the monasteries were the centers of learning, enough so that they essentially preserved western culture through the dark ages after Rome fell. I'm not a medievalist, but that's scholarly consensus. A good read is Thomas Woods' "How the Catholic Church Built Civilization." It presents a reader-friendly tracing of the contributions to art, architecture, science, law, political theory, economics, etc. to western civilization.

You're an engineer. Did it ever occurr to you that Chatres cathedral was built by those that many want to deem a bunch of ignorant rubes? That should alert you to a distortion in popular conceptions of history.

A telling thing right now is that medievalists have been churning out an extraordinary amount of material showing the Catholic intellectual activity in that period. They're own field is at risk when it's asserted that the medieval era was nothing but ignorance. They can show otherwise and have been doing a lot of it lately to make sure their field of study is taken seriously.


It just happens that American slavery is one of my concentration areas. One of the interestig things is how slaves never bought into this and used chrisitanity to forge a resistance to their condition. They saw right through biblical justifications of slavery. Religion became a defense against slavery. It's a fascinating process. The bible also supplied abolitionists with their own weapons, among them loving your neighbor as yourself.

Sosalty

Thanks for the vid, I find God in all that is beautiful. Scientistis can't explain how the incredibly complex genetic code came about in the 1st single cell creatures. Kudos to the hunters that contribute to conservation (dominion over the beasts). Being educated, I find a)genetic mutation, b)random adaptation, and c)natural selection; useful in appreciating His creation, in a micro, not macro sense of course.