Anyone who believes in one of the major 3 abrahamic religions is logically flawed on several levels, mostly having to do with the inconsistencies in the holy books and the logical impossibility of an omnipotent, omniscient god.
It's also impossible to logically determine
why (not how) gravity works the way it does or why approaching the speed of light causes relative time to appear to slow down, it's also impossible to go back in time and prove that carbon dating is
not dynamic and thus could be potentially extremely different from what it is now, because the practice is obviously younger than a millenium. What is your point?
Just because you do not know why does not mean you can disprove it.
But my issue is less with this and more with the fact that if you show this off to them, they will refuse it. They will ignore logic out of fear of their "eternal souls". They will shun science for the purpose of religion.
Define "science", I don't see too many people trying to disprove the laws of physics. >_>
If you're referring to just the shunning of evolution in particular, then that's different. I don't consider it a "science" because you can't go back in time, live millions of years, and come back and prove that the animals changed over time to the degree that they did. You can't directly observe it, so it should be considered a concept.
Now before you go and say that this is stupid logic, think about it for a moment, does mutating the gene of an animal turn it into an entirely "new" animal? (Well, not yet anyway)
At the rate that a successful mutation occurs, and the length of time it takes for it to be distributed through a population, I'd think that 2-5 million of years would be
not enough time. Also, I also feel that there are several animals who's existance prevents me from believing in evolution. I've mentioned the issue with bats before (if the webbing grew first, the intermediate animal wouldn't be able to dig, and would be helpless, if the fingers grew long first, it would have a hard time moving and would be helpless, if they grew at the same time, bats wouldn't exist, because it would have difficulty moving, climbing, walking, or catching food.), but there are plenty of other oddities out there. Why would an intermediate Narwhal find a tooth sticking part of the way through it's
facial flesh as sexually attractive or at least a pain or deterent? Why would it grow forward in the first place? Why is it a
highly complex sensory organ?
Coloration and other, similar properties are a slightly different subject, but, if they don't improve a species' ability to survive, what was the point in them evolving to uniformally [within a species] have the same style of coloration? Especially when you're a brightly colored species like a
Neon Tetra, which are near the
bottom of the food chain?
There are other examples of animals that I feel conflict the idea. It's not that I'm going "hur durr, I believe in God, so evolution is dumb", I seriously find it flawed.
(Not that evolution being proven would disprove the possibility of God anyway . . . . .)
K, first of all, the imaginary number comparison is completely false. "imaginary" numbers are not so much a made-up fiction of our imagination as they are a new class of numbers, in the same way that the square root of 3 and other irrational numbers were entirely different classes of number to the typical ones we knew beforehand. They are mathematical constructs; part of a model we use to understand our world better. You could pull the whole "mathematics is entirely fictional" bit, but it serves a clearly defined and irreplaceable purpose in the way we see the world.
Except square roots and irrational numbers can still occur in real life, and negativity is possible to replicate relative to another amount, the square root of -1 (i) however, is not a possible number to replicate in reality, just like "∞" does not truly exist [though extremely high numbers
approaching ∞ are possible, ∞ can not actually occur, nor can you divide something by zero, black holes come close to doing that, but there still must be a point of extremely tiny volume located within the forces of one].
The reason why logical reasoning should always win out over religious dogmatism is the track record of each. I think the british ad campaign put it best: "Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings". That's pretty much what it boils down to.
Ah, yes, because suicide, ****, murder, theft, mutilation, arson, harrassment, terrorizing acts, stupidity, and other actions are caused by
religious beliefs and have never been commited by atheists at any point in time, I'll keep that in mind . . . . .
By the way, that is quite an ironic quote you chose to use, considering that of the men to fly in Apollo 11, no less than two of them were heavily religious. Buzz Aldrin even performed Communion
on the Moon. Not to mention that in Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft mission to leave Earth orbit, involved all three crew members on-board taking turns reciting read the first ten verses of the Book of Genesis, while being filmed and broadcasted.
Pragmatically speaking, religion should be abandoned, because all it promises are intangibles that cannot ever be confirmed, whereas science... well, come on, you posted in this thread!
There ARE limits to science, see what I wrote about gravity and time above, also, there is a point where even
dimensions can not be thoroughly explained. We are aware of a
minimum of four, but who's to say there aren't more? There's even a theory that there might be 11-dimensions and there are at least two variations of even that idea! That's not even the theoretical limit, that would just be the limit of
possible comprehension that we can have, who's to say there aren't 20, or even 100 dimensions, and that our minds aren't
complex enough to fathom beyond that? There are also plenty of other oddities in physics that will probably
never be explained, even with advancements in science, just because of their very nature. That's part of the reason of why we do not know how the universe will end, will the expansion of the universe decelerate and reverse into an implosion? Will it just expand until the cold turns it into a barren land of nothingness? Not to mention that it has been recently discovered that the universe seems to be
accelerating, which logically makes little sense with our knowledge of how the universe works, and now, that opens the door to other possibilities of how physics works, from causing the universe to literally tear itself to pieces by accelerating to the point that molecular bonds cease to exist to an assortment of other things that are extremely difficult to logically comprehend, much less prove true or false.
And this is ludicrous, unprovable, and manipulable. Reread the OP. They think this, fine by me. The moment it touches anyone else, including-no, ESPECIALLY their children, then there is a problem. It's not rational. It was hammered into their heads as children. What's the ratio of adult atheists becoming religious to religious people becoming atheists?
I guess it never occured to you that it works both ways, if we're touching our children's beliefs by enforcing our
own beliefs onto them, how does that not apply to athiesm, too?
And also, who's to say what is and is not rational? For example, in a world without God [take it for what you will . . . ], what does it feel like to be dead? Is there any rational way to actually describe it? What does "nothingness" feel like? What about rational explanations about how we think, or even the purpose of memories? How about dreams? Is there any reason for them? What is the rational purpose of a dream, and why can sounds and visions of memories be decipherable to the degree that they are, what causes oddities in them, or even remembered after waking up to begin with?
Yep. But again, reread the OP. It does not matter. Why? Believe all they want, if they are wrong, they just dragged down all of society. And they have no way of proving that they are right. Meanwhile science proves things constantly, in a real way. Any pragmatist at this point should open their eyes.
Yeah, because religious people
never contribute to society, I guess Isaac Newton was a nobody . . . . .
By the way, society drags down society, no matter what religion it is, you can not tell me that there aren't atheists [or people of any religion] out there that do virtually nothing with their life. If we all
did do something producive toward science, mathematics, etc., the world would be WAY more productive. There are always many followers in comparison with a few leaders.
...And it's an extra freedom given to someone because of their religion. I thought we weren't playing favorites.
You can't be seriously thinking that it's only religious beliefs that are played "favorites" out there, how many people would complain about a show where a caucasian was the subject of comical abuse or was just dim-witted? How about if that person was Latino or African? If a handicapped person in a wheelchair is getting assistance or bonus wages to assist their living, isn't that playing "favorites" too? And don't get me started on how it is with gender in society . . . . . .
I guess celebrating July 4th is playing favorites too, because it's an extra freedom given to someone because of their country.
And for the record: yes, not every religious person is a terrorist. But almost every religious person who is a terrorist is a terrorist for their religious beliefs, and exactly who I am targeting with this. The people who refuse to listen to reason are more likely to fall for dogmatic bull**** and blow up the empire state building.
Those are still in the sheer minority, and there are plenty of other people that don't listen to reason, and there have been plenty of massacres [unfortunately] in the past that
weren't related to religion.
LOL. My dad drives high all the time. It actually aids concentration on the task at hand if you're familiar with the task. Nice try, try again.
I'm glad that you think that's a good thing . . . . . .
No, but they all have fallen for childhood brainwashing.
So has everyone else, nearly every thought you made as a child was based on what happened to you, how someone else reacted, how someone else behaved. I guess being polite, civil, kind, or not being insulting are "brainwashing" too, because those traits are imprinted by others (such as parents) and generally aren't used in half-of-society anyway.
Yep, and these people are not who I'm talking about.
Then why did you stereotype us [religious people] as being "brainwashed" in the previous statement? (Not to mention elsewhere)
BOOM. This is where you fall right into my trap. When a religious group deems a piece of science "immoral", say, like in the case of conservative christians crying out against stem cell research, why doesn't the well-being of all of humankind come before their religious beliefs?
Because you're still killing humans to prevent other humans from dying? Not to mention that it's easier to stop stem-cell in your
own country, than to go to, say, Africa, and stop slavery, an issue that, unfortunately, is still continuing on.
When people refuse to teach evolution because of religious beliefs, why do they get to place their religious beliefs ahead of actually teaching the truth to people?
The "truth" is ambiguous, and is viewed differently by many people. Until it is possible to directly show living proof of evolution, it should NOT be considered the only possibility.
(
"Creating" breeds of animals do not count, as they are still the same kind of animal, not to mention that usually the genes are there to begin with in said breeds [or are minor mutations], which are focused on by the breeders to make more prominent.)
Why can religious people get away with claiming that sexuality is a choice?
Once again, because you can't prove that it
isn't, the only way to have physical evidence that it's an instinct of any kind is if it is due to genetics, and at that point, why wouldn't it have been eliminated by evolution to begin with over the amount of millions of years that it had to have occured? Surely the inability to homosexually reproduce in most land vertabrates would have resulted in heterosexually oriented organisms completely eliminating the presence of homosexual genes, or at least make them closer to 0 (i.e. 1-in-100 million) than there are. And how do you actually prove which gene would cause gender orientation to begin with? And what if that gene actually required other, specific genes to activate in order to cause homosexuallity, when those genes had been previously discovered to be incorporated into a different purpose at the same time, regardless of whether that orientation gene is present or not?
It will be years before we actually know the answer.
If religious freedom comes second to the well-being of the nation, then every time that religion and science get into a spat, religion loses. Automatically. By default. Any answer to that one?
A. It's not that simple, they aren't polar opposites and do have large gray areas, not to mention plenty of compatibilities in most areas.
B. Governments behave differently from the norm, there are plenty of millionares that did crack, did murder, or other attrocities, yet because their lawyers are paid well enough to scan every single line of the documents related to a case, they can go free without any time! I fail to see how that goes toward the well-being of the nation. Heck, half of the time the government does things that are against the well-being of the nation. (Earmarks, not using oil in US Territory, bailouts, allowing outsourcing to such degrees that companies that don't end up collapsing, etc.)
And, continuing the above thought, these people are placing their religious beliefs above the good of the nation by deluding themselves, and teaching their children the same bull**** as absolute truth.
This is really starting to get old fast, who are YOU to say that those people tha place their religious beliefs up high are deluding themselves? Who are YOU to say to say what is defined as being placed "above the good of the nation" and what is not? Are you going to tell me that if A government was taken over [in a negative way], that most of the population in that country WOULDN'T save their ***es and leave rather than take part in reclaiming the land they lived in? It isn't like that hasn't happened before, and it certainly wasn't for the good of the nation.
Sadly, I doubt it in most cases, the US, Canada, UK, India, Indonesia, Australia, and a few others might be the only exceptions, just due to their sheer populations, relative stability, and world powers.
Anyway, claiming what is truth when it comes to the subject you are talking about IS [once again] arbitrary, because you can't see it in motion, you have to
believe that the fossil evidence indicates evolution, though you can't replicate it as proof in realtime, just like we
believe that God created the earth, etc. but can not accurately prove it in realtime either.
The fact is, there's no way to go back in time and prove either as the truth, and claiming a belief as stupid BS just because of your
own is unjustified and crude. I could easily just go over and say that your belief is bull**** just because I don't believe in it. I could also very well counter that if all the presence in the universe is physical, then everyone should think [nearly] the exact same way without wild differences in preference, tastes, opinions or personality, self-well-being should be the dominant factor and thus companionship with non-humans should be an impossibility on both ends (as the animals are putting themselves at risk by being with humans, and thus should be treating them as predators), and that unnatural objects [as in, related to things not found in nature especially electronics] should not be as easily useable as they are, because we as a race never needed to have the capability to use them ingrained into our brain, and thus should have never come up with how to make them in the first place because ingenuity should be mentally limited to what is vital to life. And if creativity is caused by natural functions of calculations, how does it occur? How do you accurately describe the process of creating an idea with math and science without first starting out with the result: the idea?
I await your reply.
