Why is there religion

[jonathanchow]

im a atheist, and i beleive in science. i beleive in what i can be proven.

Before science, people belief in the bible literally, even Jesus stated that he believed in it literally. Its hard to understand, science comes along, disproves many of the beliefs, and now people are saying that the bible is just a message. I’m confused. Jesus beliefs in the bible literally, yet Catholics don’t? And I understand, the earth being created in 7 days is a bit hard to believe. I believe in science.

There are so many religions out there, in your case as Catholics; you would think other gods are false; it would be the same for the other religions. So which one is the true god? It is very safe to say that if they are all false, then there is no god.

We are products of Mother Nature, we are not born equal. Long time ago we wonder how and where we came form, I think this is when religion is born. I think people just make up stories which grow, and grow into what is now religion, a belief in false Storys.

Here is the truth (or at least the truth for me)
Evolution!!! I think its evolution makes more sense then gods creating them.

I also think that religion causes many conflicts. When you mix two religions together, the result is never good. As human we will always judge people, and we will fight over dumb thing.

I think Satanism makes a lot of sense, I read a little bit of their bible.
These are the stuff I think makes sense.

Thou shalt not take thy children to a Bible-believing church
Thou shalt not teach thy children to know and serve Jesus Christ
Thou shalt not spank thy children
Thou shalt enroll thy children in a day care center
Thou shalt teach thy children to worship sports
Thou shalt provide thy children with unrestricted entertainment
Thou shalt permit thy sons and daughters to start dating by the age of sixteen

Although the satanic belief is much widely rejected, the commandments make much sense.

anyways
I use to be a catholic, and I was taught to forgive people, in the bible it made sense, but in reality if you forgive, then people just walk all over you, and the more you forgive, the worst your situation gets.
I was bullied, so I called my friends, and we did some payback, now he stopped bullying me, and the problem is solved.

I believe in science, because it has prove which other religions don’t.

 

[chewchoo]

hi jonathan
welcome to the forums.

speaking of proof.

if you meet a friend of yours that you haven’t seen in a while and they say that they were just thinking about you, do you believe them? if yes, then why? what proof to you have that they were indeed thinking about you? you only have their word on it.

take some time and read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

 

[jonathanchow]

hi jonathan
welcome to the forums.

speaking of proof.

if you meet a friend of yours that you haven’t seen in a while and they say that they were just thinking about you, do you believe them? if yes, then why? what proof to you have that they were indeed thinking about you? you only have their word on it.

take some time and read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

well it depends, because you have loyal friends, and you have the ones that are just friends. i beleive in loyal friends because theres a reseon why i consider them loyal, i can trust them, i chat with him/her all the time, or i know him for a really long time.

but really, theres no way to tell if hes lieing or not, we cannot read minds.

 

[theistgal]

Here is the truth (or at least the truth for me)
Evolution!!! I think its evolution makes more sense then gods creating them.

Jonathan, did you know that evolution says absolutely nothing about where life originated? Evolution is the study of how life evolved (hence the name).

It is perfectly possible to be a theist and accept evolution. Abiogenesis is a completely different field.

 

[GCMac87]

While I won’t address the central question of your post as I think there are others on this board that are better suited to do that, I would like to point out that many Christians such as my myself also believe in evolution. You spoke of Bible literalism, which is something that a lot of non-believers point to; yet Biblical interpretation is much more nuanced.

Fr. Robert Barron has a great video regarding the science/religion discussion, he begins discussing Bill Maher’s “Religulous,” but his comments are quite useful and perhaps you’ll find something of interest in it.
youtube.com/watch?v=Sk0el9nH6Q4&feature=channel_page

 

[jonathanchow]

While I won’t address the central question of your post as I think there are others on this board that are better suited to do that, I would like to point out that many Christians such as my myself also believe in evolution. You spoke of Bible literalism, which is something that a lot of non-believers point to; yet Biblical interpretation is much more nuanced.

Fr. Robert Barron has a great video regarding the science/religion discussion, he begins discussing Bill Maher’s “Religulous,” but his comments are quite useful and perhaps you’ll find something of interest in it.
youtube.com/watch?v=Sk0el9nH6Q4&feature=channel_page

very interesting. i do see your point. but Bill Maher’s does make alot of sense in what he says. science is more mordern, and more and more people are starting to move away form religion, im not sure if its moving towards science. but i think we as humans have to move on. this whole religious thing is very confusing.

 

[chris_molter]

im a atheist, and i beleive in science. i beleive in what i can be proven.

Before science, people belief in the bible literally, even Jesus stated that he believed in it literally. Its hard to understand, science comes along, disproves many of the beliefs, and now people are saying that the bible is just a message. I’m confused. Jesus beliefs in the bible literally, yet Catholics don’t? And I understand, the earth being created in 7 days is a bit hard to believe. I believe in science.

When did science “come along”? Can you give me a date? When was this magical “Before Science” epoch?

 

[buffalo]

Religion means to “bind oneself to God”.

 

[TheWhoFreak]

im a atheist, and i beleive in science. i beleive in what i can be proven.

Before science, people belief in the bible literally, even Jesus stated that he believed in it literally. Its hard to understand, science comes along, disproves many of the beliefs, and now people are saying that the bible is just a message. I’m confused. Jesus beliefs in the bible literally, yet Catholics don’t? And I understand, the earth being created in 7 days is a bit hard to believe. I believe in science.

Jesus didn’t have a Bible as we know it. He had what we call the Old Testament, known to the Jews as the Torah. Btw, no one knows how Jesus interpreted the Creation Stories. So to say that Jesus interpreted the Scripture literally is probably incorrect. I doubt he would have taked Psalm 114:3-4 literally. It says, "The sea looked and fled, the Jordan [River] turned back; the mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs." I personally doubt that happened in a literal sense. Also, you don’t have to believe in Creationism to be a Christian, all that matters is that you believe God created the world.

There are so many religions out there, in your case as Catholics; you would think other gods are false; it would be the same for the other religions. So which one is the true god? It is very safe to say that if they are all false, then there is no god.

Very true, if all are false, how can we know the truth? But what if one is right?

We are products of Mother Nature, we are not born equal. Long time ago we wonder how and where we came form, I think this is when religion is born. I think people just make up stories which grow, and grow into what is now religion, a belief in false Storys.

Taking Christianity as an example, how can you disprove any of Christianity’s claims? How can you disprove:
The existence of God
Jesus Christ’s Resurrection
The existence of Heaven and Hell
That God created us (whether through Intelligent design or evolution, it doesn’t matter)

If you return with something like, “Why don’t you prove them instead”, I’ll take that as you can’t disprove them.
Here is the truth (or at least the truth for me)
Evolution!!! I think its evolution makes more sense then gods creating them.

I also think that religion causes many conflicts. When you mix two religions together, the result is never good. As human we will always judge people, and we will fight over dumb thing.

That’s human nature. No one is perfect, that is obvious. Think about this: is it the religion itself causing the conflicts, or is it the people who practice the religion that cause them?

I think Satanism makes a lot of sense, I read a little bit of their bible.
These are the stuff I think makes sense.

Thou shalt not take thy children to a Bible-believing church
Thou shalt not teach thy children to know and serve Jesus Christ
Thou shalt not spank thy children
Thou shalt enroll thy children in a day care center
Thou shalt teach thy children to worship sports
Thou shalt provide thy children with unrestricted entertainment
Thou shalt permit thy sons and daughters to start dating by the age of sixteen

Although the satanic belief is much widely rejected, the commandments make much sense.

Tell me, how can providing kids with unrestricted entertainmet do anything productive or right or good? How does this make “much sense” to you? Surely you could see the dire consequences of doing this.

And how does instructing children to worship sports make “much sense”? I thought that you were an atheist. I would hope that you can see the sheer stupidity of worshipping mere men.

How do the rest of those commandments make sense to you? Satan is evil, and nothing good can come from him. Why would you place trust in someone who only wants to steal, kill, and destroy?

anyways
I use to be a catholic, and I was taught to forgive people, in the bible it made sense, but in reality if you forgive, then people just walk all over you, and the more you forgive, the worst your situation gets.
I was bullied, so I called my friends, and we did some payback, now he stopped bullying me, and the problem is solved.

If you forgive people, it means that you deny your right to punish them or get revenge on them. Look, forgiveness is the hardest part of love, because if you fight back, that will only stir up more anger. Forgiving people is not the same as being a doormat. If someone is doing something wrong to you, and you forgive them, you’ve done your part. If they don’t apologize to you, that’s their problem. However, the Bible says that if you forgive people, God will forgive you, but if you do not forgive people, then God will not forgive you.

I believe in science, because it has prove which other religions don’t.

There is a reason that religion and faith go hand in hand. It is because all religions require a personal faith in something supernatural, which is something science cannot measure. You cannot apply science to God, because He created science. Science only works in the physical realm. It can’t work in the supernatural realm.

 

[buffalo]

Jesus didn’t have a Bible as we know it. He had what we call the Old Testament, known to the Jews as the Torah. Btw, no one knows how Jesus interpreted the Creation Stories. So to say that Jesus interpreted the Scripture literally is probably incorrect. I doubt he would have taked Psalm 114:3-4 literally. It says, "The sea looked and fled, the Jordan [River] turned back; the mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs." I personally doubt that happened in a literal sense. Also, you don’t have to believe in Creationism to be a Christian, all that matters is that you believe God created the world.

Very true, if all are false, how can we know the truth? But what if one is right?

Taking Christianity as an example, how can you disprove any of Christianity’s claims? How can you disprove:
The existence of God
Jesus Christ’s Resurrection
The existence of Heaven and Hell
That God created us (whether through Intelligent design or evolution, it doesn’t matter)

If you return with something like, “Why don’t you prove them instead”, I’ll take that as you can’t disprove them.
Here is the truth (or at least the truth for me)
Evolution!!! I think its evolution makes more sense then gods creating them.

That’s human nature. No one is perfect, that is obvious. Think about this: is it the religion itself causing the conflicts, or is it the people who practice the religion that cause them?

Tell me, how can providing kids with unrestricted entertainmet do anything productive or right or good? How does this make “much sense” to you? Surely you could see the dire consequences of doing this.

And how does instructing children to worship sports make “much sense”? I thought that you were an atheist. I would hope that you can see the sheer stupidity of worshipping mere men.

How do the rest of those commandments make sense to you? Satan is evil, and nothing good can come from him. Why would you place trust in someone who only wants to steal, kill, and destroy?

If you forgive people, it means that you deny your right to punish them or get revenge on them. Look, forgiveness is the hardest part of love, because if you fight back, that will only stir up more anger. Forgiving people is not the same as being a doormat. If someone is doing something wrong to you, and you forgive them, you’ve done your part. If they don’t apologize to you, that’s their problem. However, the Bible says that if you forgive people, God will forgive you, but if you do not forgive people, then God will not forgive you.

There is a reason that religion and faith go hand in hand. It is because all religions require a personal faith in something supernatural, which is something science cannot measure. You cannot apply science to God, because He created science. Science only works in the physical realm. It can’t work in the supernatural realm.

How Jesus interpreted His own inspired writings?

 

[TheWhoFreak]

I guess a better way to say that would be that we don’t know if God meant the Creation Stories figuratively or literally.

 

[HickmanJosh]

Although the satanic belief is much widely rejected, the commandments make much sense.

did you ever wonder why satanic belief is so wildly rejected?

It is very safe to say that if they are all false, then there is no god.

How is it safe to say there all wrong?

 

[O.S.Luke]

The scientific method works thus:

• propose a hypothesis
• testing its accuracy by collecting data on events the hypothesis predicts

If the predictions match the new data the hypothesis is supported.

So… apply this to proving that God doesn’t exist, JonathanChow. See the problem?

 

[geometer]

The scientific method works thus:

• propose a hypothesis
• testing its accuracy by collecting data on events the hypothesis predicts

If the predictions match the new data the hypothesis is supported.

So… apply this to proving that God doesn’t exist, JonathanChow. See the problem?

No, the method begins and ends with observations. It is an empirical method.

 

[O.S.Luke]

No, the method begins and ends with observations. It is an empirical method.

Hmmm… I thought you ended by accepting or rejecting the hypothesis. Maybe it’s been updated since I went to school.

Ok - we’ll try it your way. How do we use the empirical method to prove/disprove the existence of God?

 

[jibbler]

Perhaps an observation of a God that could be demonstrated would lead me to think there is such a thing. What reason is left to believe in something when it can’t be seen, smelt, touched, or heard? I suppose you can try and tell yourself there is a God, maybe after a while you might even think it’s real, but that doesn’t change the fact that all you have to go on is an ancient book written by a bunch of dead people. You have to take their word for it, I am Jesus returning to rapture some people don’t you believe me? At the very same time I am also the magnificent Flying Spaghetti Monster please kneel so that I may bless you with my noodley appendage.

 

[HickmanJosh]

Perhaps an observation of a God that could be demonstrated would lead me to think there is such a thing. What reason is left to believe in something when it can’t be seen, smelt, touched, or heard? I suppose you can try and tell yourself there is a God, maybe after a while you might even think it’s real, but that doesn’t change the fact that all you have to go on is an ancient book written by a bunch of dead people. You have to take their word for it, I am Jesus returning to rapture some people don’t you believe me? At the very same time I am also the magnificent Flying Spaghetti Monster please kneel so that I may bless you with my noodley appendage.

so…you want God to demonstrate his existence? Maybe you should take a good long look at the people who believe in him instead of just looking for him, God works thought people so that’s the best place to start.

so your saying just because the authors of a book are dead there book’s are less correct?

How does insulting us do any good?

 

[theistgal]

so…you want God to demonstrate his existence? Maybe you should take a good long look at the people who believe in him instead of just looking for him, God works thought people so that’s the best place to start.

Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment and tell you what’s wrong with that suggestion. (Not to pick on you, Josh, but I’ve seen it before and wanted to comment. )

You are telling nonbelievers to look at believers to see evidence of God’s existence. But let’s say the nonbeliever looks at a believer who is committing some sort of horrible crime/sin (and you and I both know there are believers who behave badly!).

The nonbeliever comes back and says, “Hey! I looked at people who believe in God and they were doing [fill in your favorite sin]!”

To which they’re told, “That doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist! It just means the people who follow Him aren’t perfect! Look at God, not His followers!”

See why that doesn’t work?

 

[Contarini]

Before science

What do you mean by “before science”? When did science begin? For about as long as we have record of people reading and interpreting the Bible, people have interpreted the Bible in some literal ways and some non-literal ways. You don’t seem to know much about how Christians (and Jews) have interpreted the Bible historically, so maybe you shouldn’t be basing arguments on this premise.

Obviously the cultural factors that influenced how people interpreted the Bible in ancient or medieval times were *different *than they are today. But people have always found difficulties in Scripture, and (among other strategies) have always had various kinds of interpretation that could be considered “non-literal.” Of course, what counts as “literal” is itself up for debate.

even Jesus stated that he believed in it literally

I know the NT pretty well and am confident that no such statement can be found. I think what you mean is that Jesus (assuming that the NT records Jesus’ words accurately, which seems an odd assumption for an atheist to make) spoke of the Bible in ways that implied a more literal view than many of us now find plausible. But even then the questions I raised above apply. For instance, Jesus arguably spoke as if Moses wrote the Pentateuch. But in fact the Pentateuch itself doesn’t literally say this. It was later tradition, which Jesus probably accepted (unless one wants to say that as the omniscient God he can’t have done so, which requires us to believe that He was just using “Moses” as a conventional shorthand, as some people still do today). So you need to refine the categories of your argument a bit.

Its hard to understand, science comes along, disproves many of the beliefs, and now people are saying that the bible is just a message.

Again, the phrase “just a message” is vague. If you want to base your life on reason, perhaps you should reason a little more sharply and precisely and not use so many vague generalizations.

I’m confused. Jesus beliefs in the bible literally, yet Catholics don’t?

No form of orthodox Christology requires us to hold the scientific beliefs common in the 1st century. Some conservative theological positions require people to argue that Jesus didn’t really share the common errors of His time, and to explain away the passages that sound as if He did (this is possible though a bit tricky at times). Other Christians (including myself) would say that Jesus’ “self-emptying” in the Incarnation may well have meant that He would have shared the common beliefs of His time where these beliefs were irrelevant to His mission and were not incompatible with wisdom and holiness.

And I understand, the earth being created in 7 days is a bit hard to believe.

Who asks you to believe it?

There are so many religions out there, in your case as Catholics; you would think other gods are false

No one claims that polytheistic gods are a monotheistic God. That would be incoherent. I would argue (and it seems that official Catholic teaching agrees with me, though some conservative Catholics have problems with it) that by definition anyone worshiping a monotheistic God is worshiping the true God. So this problem goes away when you think clealry and carefully.

Catholics do not believe that any being other than the One God should be worshiped with that kind of worship which is technically called “latreia” (the main outward sign of which is sacrifice).

it would be the same for the other religions

Even religions which don’t believe in one true God, or in the case of Buddhism don’t put much importance on the concept of “gods” in the first place?

So which one is the true god? It is very safe to say that if they are all false, then there is no god.

No, it’s not safe to say this at all. It’s completely illogical. It’s quite possible that God might exist even if all existing religions are to some degree wrong about Him/Her.

We are products of Mother Nature, we are not born equal. Long time ago we wonder how and where we came form, I think this is when religion is born. I think people just make up stories which grow, and grow into what is now religion, a belief in false Storys.

Your reconstruction of the history of religion would be a bit more convincing if you gave us reason to think that you have actually studied the subject.

I think its evolution makes more sense then gods creating them.

And what makes you think either that evolution is incompatible with the idea of creation, or that all religions believe in creation? Buddhism and Jainism don’t. Indeed, if you define creation strictly as creation out of nothing (the traditional Christian/Jewish/Islamic view), then only the “Abrahamic” religions believe in it (and it’s not entirely clear that the ancient Hebrews, from whom these religions derive, believed in this kind of creation–Genesis 1 can be read differently), and some liberal Christian theologians today have abandoned the idea. Again, your criticisms of religion would be stronger if they were based on a little more knowledge.

I also think that religion causes many conflicts.

Of course. Anything people care about causes conflicts.

When you mix two religions together, the result is never good.

Good by what standard?

As human we will always judge people, and we will fight over dumb thing.

And just how is this relevant to a discussion of religion? If this is a basic human tendency anyway, people will do this whether they have “religions” (a concept you haven’t defined or examined very carefully) or not.

Edwin

 

[1beleevr]

Johnathan: We must also keep in mind, that God is not constrained by time, as man is; thus seven(7) days to God, could be an eternity to us! I have always countered those who question His existence, and His Creation, by saying,"Why is the sun positioned in exactly the right place? Why do we hurt, cry, laugh,hate? If we evolved from some lower life form, why do we have a soul? And what exactly about the catholic church caused you to flee?