Why bother with Religion?

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kellie said:
I would like to ask the OP how he knows Pythagorus existed, and that Pythagorus was the man who came up with the theory as follows :

In any right triangle, the area of the
square**whose side is the hypotenuse(the side of a right triangle opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs (i.e. the two sides other than the hypotenuse).

This is a highly mathematical and scientific theory, and because atheists tend to lean towards the scientific proof of existence, I wish to know how any of us can know that Pythagorus really existed.

You may say, “Well it is written down in history” or “His theories were passed on by his students to following generations”.

Bingo!

That is how we know of Jesus, and His life and Resurrection.

It was written down by people who were with Him, and passed down to following generations.

I dont know why people seem to find it hard to believe that the Bible is a history book, much the same as Pythagorus, Freud, Galileo, and Socrates are written into history books.
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Imagine, can you please answer this?
 
Gilbert_Keith said:
With reasoning like this, Christians should have no fear of atheism. It will, as it always has, intellectually implode upon itself.
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This is a good point: formal dogmatic atheism is untenable and self-defeating. I wish more Christians (and atheists, for that matter) would realise this, because I sense–particularly amongst the Evangelical crowd–that many people are insecure in their faith and put up overly hostile defenses against skeptical freethinkers because of a fear that some critical tenet of their beliefs might be proven wrong, and thereby dash their hopes in an afterlife. On the other hand, many nonbelievers are moved to hostility based on fears that their reasoning is not sound enough to rule out the probability of an afterlife!
 
Imagine23 said:
It’s not silly at all. It’s a clear example that the body was not perfectly, or “intelligently” designed. If fact, if we were “perfectly” designed we might not ever die at all.

Another example for you, birth defects. Some children are unfortunately born with them and die very young. Does that suggest a perfect or “intelligent” design?
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No, it suggests corruption as a result of the fall.
 
Imagine23 said:
I see, so God will kill corrupt people. Is he going to kill Tom DeLay?

So God is vengeful. If we piss him off we won’t get to Heaven. Interesting. Is Jesus the only one that forgives? Not God? Please clarify.
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God is a loving father. It is because He loves us so much He disciplines us just like our father did for you.
 
Imagine23 said:
I would say at birth. This doesn’t mean that I support third trimester abortions that are not necessary to save the mother’s life.

In fact, I think abortion is an unfortunate reality. Outlawing it will not stop it however. Just as outlawing narcotics does not stop their consumption, but rather just causes additional and more harmful side effects.

Whatever your belief regarding the stage at which a fetus becomes a “human”, it should not be hard for you to understand that a 150 cell blastocyst cannot feel pain or exhibit other human traits.

It does not have a developed nerve system, brain, etc.
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Gee, even way back when it was quickening. I think you have to go back several thousand years to find people who thought that.

Laws are meant to raise the bar. No law stops its targeted behavior completely. But good laws give us a reference point.

What does feeling pain have to do with the genetic uniqueness that makes the unborn baby human?
 
Imagine23 said:
It’s a simplistic, untestable “system” which is basically have faith in unprovable stories which explain difficult questions, that way you don’t have to think for yourself.
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No one said that the religious can’t think for themselves. Quite the opposite. There are countless great writers and thinkers within Christianity.
 
Belief in God is a reasonable result of searching for the truth. Although God does not allow Himself to be emperically proven He is found through reason. Science by its own definition has a very limited say on what goes on in the universe. To allow science to be your god is truly unreasonable.
 
Imagine,

Back in post #94, I asked you 2 questions to which I’m still waiting for an answer.

I’m beginning to wonder if you’re just looking for a fight or are you like an arsonist going about starting little fires here and there and taking delight in watching the firemen scurry about?
  • Do you believe in God, yes or no?
  • Do you believe the bible to be a work of fiction or revelation from God?
What do you want from this thread???

Noel.
 
buffalo said:
No, it suggests corruption as a result of the fall.
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Exactly. This was God’s punishment for sin. Immortality was God’s original intention. It amazes me how some people can be so dismissive of a wonderful design like the human body…even in it’s fallen state…there is nothing else like it that man can dream up. Human engineering can do some amazing things…but nothing that even remotely compares with the human body or an amoeba for that matter.

And the arguement that unless something is perfectly designed, it’s not intelligently designed is absurd. I’m an engineer. Rockets are amazing examples of human design. But occasionaly one blows up…demonstrating the imperfections in the design…but certainly not a lack of intelligence of the designers. In fact, it is a mark of intelligence to learn from mistakes.
 
Imagine23 said:
I see, so God will kill corrupt people. Is he going to kill Tom DeLay?

So God is vengeful. If we piss him off we won’t get to Heaven. Interesting. Is Jesus the only one that forgives? Not God? Please clarify.
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For folks who take the Bible literally, God may appear to be a vengeful entity. Catholics however do NOT take the Bible literally at least not all of it. Many of the stories in the OT are allogorical. They were meant to teach a lesson, if you are bad you will be punished. That’s a fairly simple concept.

What Christ and the NT teaches us is that God is in fact not vengeful. BTW to us God and Christ are the same. Jesus is in fact God, and vice versa.

Reaping the results of your own evil and godlessness is not vengeance but justice. When you murder someone and you get tossed in jail for life or executed, that is NOT revenge.

IF you wish to abandon God for all eternity that is your own choice. To say that God is somehow spiteful because you choose eternal damnation makes no sense at all. You have a free will to choose Heaven or Hell.

IF you want Heaven by all means do whatever is necessary to get there. IF you want Hell do nothing at all or choose Godlessness and you will achieve that as well.
 
God does not need to kill corrupt people, everyone dies, and then they all receive whatever reward or punishment that they deserve. The stories in the the Bible, particularly the OT just happen to be more literal about the punishments or more immediate about God’s judgement.

We know that evil in fact does not lead immediately to death (except in some instances), but in fact evil sometimes flourishes for quite a while.

BUT when folks who are evil die, they will be judged and punished. Some folks may get away with murder in this life, but they can not escape judgement in the next. Yes, evil leads to death, but that death may not be immediate or physical only.
 
Imagine23 said:
It’s a simplistic, untestable “system” which is basically have faith in unprovable stories which explain difficult questions, that way you don’t have to think for yourself.
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Does it make sense for someone who wants to be a doctor to discard all medical knowledge before him and try to learn all about the human body from scratch ? Such a beginning would not only be impossible, it would be incredibly stupid.

IS it not infinitely easier, far more achievable, and wiser to learn from books and people who are already experienced and knowledgeable in his field ?

There have already been thousands of theologians, historians, philosophers, who have explored the evidence or proof that you so desparately seek. Just because you reject their findings or disagree with their conclusions does not mean they are unprovable or untenable.

Have you examined the folks who have been miraculously cured or listened to the eye witnesses or interviewed the saints or even bothered to read up on any of these accounts ? IF you have not then you have absolutely no grounds to discount or question any of this.

To say, you want evidence and to not even research it when it is available is not only laughable and illogical but incredilby stupid. IF you can prove that all the evidence (or even most of it) is fabricated, unreliable or in error is one thing. But to rubber stamp everything as myth or untenable without proper research smacks of intellectual laziness.

That is not a legitimate reason to ignore the truth
 
kellie said:
Imagine, can you please answer this?
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I will respond to this question because this and various other posts have made clear to me the distinction with which some of you are having trouble. I apologize for the length of this post but it is necessary to fully respond to the question.

I am willing to accept as truth various historical (and contemporary) accounts of events, explanations of phenomena and existence of persons without actually being able to verify such things with first-hand knowledge or through some other reliable and testable method. At the same time, I am unwilling to believe certain biblical accounts of religious stories ostensibly on the grounds that I am unable to verify the accuracy of these stories with first hand knowledge or by some testable methodology.

Hypocrisy, you declare! How can I accept certain “facts” without first hand knowledge and refuse to believe biblical stories (just because they deal with religion).

Here is why. First, I should point out that I am willing to accept that there was a man named Jesus that lived around the time the bible was written (actually most historians believe he died several decades before the bible was written) and that certain accounts of his life reported therein may be true. The reason why I believe this is for the reasons various posters have alluded to, and are as follows.

For the sake of efficiency of learning, it is necessary that we as a civilization accept various accounts of others as fact, even if we cannot verify them ourselves. To go about proving everything we “know” about the world would be incredibly inefficient, and in many cases impossible. We have to rely on such things (assuming they fit within the bounds of logic and within the bounds of things which we can test).

Think about everything you “know” about modern medicine. For example, most of you have already established that you know, without in most cases having ever gone to medical school or engaged in medical research, that we each have a unique genetic blueprint (which we call “DNA”) that can be extracted from any cell in our body. You know this because it has been widely reported by other members of our community after having been verified by individuals we trust as having special skills and knowledge in this area.

This should not be confused with “faith” in the sense many of you use it to justify your belief in an omniscient, benevolent (although sometimes vengeful) superpower. Nobody says they just have “faith” that each of us has a unique set of DNA. You logically rely, on the scientific abilities of our most gifted group of doctors and scientists, many of whom have verified that they have tested and confirmed this theory.

The biblical accounts upon which I cannot rely, are those that have no comparable equivalent that I can test. For example, a man being born of a virgin 2000 years ago, about 1970 years before in vitro fertilization is rather hard to believe. A man “rising from the dead” is another thing that has no verifiable equivalent. (And unlike my DNA example, there are no “spiritual levitation” experts among us on whose expert abilities we can rely).

Conversely, it is not difficult to me to believe that a Jewish carpenter and his wife had a child who went around claiming to be the son of “God” and that we was executed in Jerusalem. Within our logical framework that we’ve established as a society, I have no reason to believe that this could not have happened.

Please let me know if this makes sense or if you require further clarification.
 
Imagine23 said:
I will respond to this question because this and various other posts have made clear to me the distinction with which some of you are having trouble. I apologize for the length of this post but it is necessary to fully respond to the question.

I am willing to accept as truth various historical (and contemporary) accounts of events, explanations of phenomena and existence of persons without actually being able to verify such things with first-hand knowledge or through some other reliable and testable method. At the same time, I am unwilling to believe certain biblical accounts of religious stories ostensibly on the grounds that I am unable to verify the accuracy of these stories with first hand knowledge or by some testable methodology.

Hypocrisy, you declare! How can I accept certain “facts” without first hand knowledge and refuse to believe biblical stories (just because they deal with religion).

Here is why. First, I should point out that I am willing to accept that there was a man named Jesus that lived around the time the bible was written (actually most historians believe he died several decades before the bible was written) and that certain accounts of his life reported therein may be true. The reason why I believe this is for the reasons various posters have alluded to, and are as follows.

For the sake of efficiency of learning, it is necessary that we as a civilization accept various accounts of others as fact, even if we cannot verify them ourselves. To go about proving everything we “know” about the world would be incredibly inefficient, and in many cases impossible. We have to rely on such things (assuming they fit within the bounds of logic and within the bounds of things which we can test).

Think about everything you “know” about modern medicine. For example, most of you have already established that you know, without in most cases having ever gone to medical school or engaged in medical research, that we each have a unique genetic blueprint (which we call “DNA”) that can be extracted from any cell in our body. You know this because it has been widely reported by other members of our community after having been verified by individuals we trust as having special skills and knowledge in this area.

This should not be confused with “faith” in the sense many of you use it to justify your belief in an omniscient, benevolent (although sometimes vengeful) superpower. Nobody says they just have “faith” that each of us has a unique set of DNA. You logically rely, on the scientific abilities of our most gifted group of doctors and scientists, many of whom have verified that they have tested and confirmed this theory.

The biblical accounts upon which I cannot rely, are those that have no comparable equivalent that I can test. For example, a man being born of a virgin 2000 years ago, about 1970 years before in vitro fertilization is rather hard to believe. A man “rising from the dead” is another thing that has no verifiable equivalent. (And unlike my DNA example, there are no “spiritual levitation” experts among us on whose expert abilities we can rely).

Conversely, it is not difficult to me to believe that a Jewish carpenter and his wife had a child who went around claiming to be the son of “God” and that we was executed in Jerusalem. Within our logical framework that we’ve established as a society, I have no reason to believe that this could not have happened.

Please let me know if this makes sense or if you require further clarification.
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Great post 👍

What you’re saying, essentially (correct me if I’m wrong), is that you simply reject the possibility of miracles and revelation?
 
Imagine23 said:
For example, a man being born of a virgin 2000 years ago, about 1970 years before in vitro fertilization is rather hard to believe. A man “rising from the dead” is another thing that has no verifiable equivalent.
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Dear Imagine, what has IVF got to do with anything?

Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. Doesn’t
it make sense that the Son of God should be born of a Virgin who was without sin (because of her own Immaculate Conception i.e. born without original sin).

God bless,
Noel.
 
Imagine23 said:
I have a serious question relating to the utility of religion. I was baptized as a Catholic but ever since I can remember I have doubted all of the stories I was told about Christianity. When I asked for evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, he was born of a virgin, and all of the other unbelievable myths, I was told to have “faith.” When I was old enough to do as I chose, I rejected the mythology of Catholicism, much in the way the ancient Greeks eventually tossed aside their beliefs in Zues, Poseidon, etc.

Religion strikes me as a waste of time and the source of much of the conflict in the world. It’s also clearly an impediment to the advancement of our civilization. In this modern era, things like stem-cell research are actually being blocked because religious fanatics don’t want to “kill” a small group of cells.

While Catholics are sitting around debating thing like whether Mary ever sinned, atheists are thinking about how to save the planet.
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:eek: Yes, this shocks me. And it also saddens me. 😦 I can’t believe you don’t believe in God. And that you don’t believe in our Church, you don’t believe that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. God can do anything. So even the “impossible” (what you think would be impossible) is possible with God.

All I can do is pray that God’s Grace touches your soul. I think He has already done that. You are here, so that’s a start.

Pray this prayer. Or at least read it. 😉
**Breathe into me, Holy Spirit,
that my thoughts may all be holy.

Move in me, Holy Spirit,
that my work, too, may be holy.

Attract my heart, Holy Spirit,
that I may love only what is holy.

Strengthen me, Holy Spirit,
that I may defend all that is holy.

Protect me, Holy Spirit,
that I may always be holy.**

Prayer of St. Augustine

I wanted to ask what you are doing here if you are an athiest. But I don’t have to know.

All that you need to know is that you’re here and that means that God has touched your soul even if you’re only here to argue.

You will be reading some of these threads and posts and so the seeds will be planted. God can decide when He will want them to start growing. The Holy Spirit will have to start melting your heart so as to water the seed. With that, the seed will start to grow and you will feel it. One day “Imagine” … one day. :gopray:
 
Let’s all pray this prayer for Imagine. :gopray:

**Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
enlighten our minds to perceive the mysteries
of the universe in relation to eternity.

Spirit of right judgment and courage,
guide us and make us firm in our baptismal decision
to follow Jesus’ way of love.

Spirit of knowledge and reverence,
help us to see the lasting value of justice
and mercy in our everyday dealings with one another.

May we respect life
as we work to solve problems of family and nation,
economy and ecology.

Spirit of God,
spark our faith,
hope and love into new action each day.

Fill our lives with wonder and awe
in your presence which penetrates all creation.
Amen.**

Prayer of St. Augustine

A Hail Mary won’t hurt. 🙂

Hail Mary, full of grace
The Lord is with Thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners, now and at the
hour of our death. Amen.
 
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