Religion continued..
"The thing is though. If we go by your way there is no life after death. There is no hope and death is the worst thing that can happen to us. If we go by your way the end of everything will be death. You are enslaved to death.
However, if we live for Christ then there is no need to fear death. The problem with a lot of you is that you don't offer hope and salvation while you try to drag Christians away from salvation. That is why your arguments are very weak. Your pathway leads to death. The pathway to Jesus leads to life."
Your delusion is driven by an irrational fear of death. That "death is the worst thing that can happen to us". And out of that primal fear, out of that selfish fallacy, you construct a coping mechanism and illusory god to justify your actions and escape their finality.
Death is not the worst thing that can happen. Only a shallow man who cannot escape his ego can say that.
Those who hide inside their religious crutches miss out on the beauty and fullness of the life they are given. A deep rooted obsession with death, hiding it behind a false prophecy and promised second life, does nothing but stop you from appreciating the true life, from having your full effects. You fear emptiness, but in irony, you become it, your empty delusion with no weight still drags you down and keeps you from enjoying the complexity and nuance of this world.
Your delusion is a crutch that hobbles you.
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Modal Ontological Argument:
P1- It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
P2- If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, than a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
P3- If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, than it exists in every possible world.
P4- If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, than it exists in the actual world.
P5- If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, than a maximally great being exists.
P6- Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
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When you subscribe to a religion, you substitute nebulous group-think for focused, independent thought. Instead of learning to discern truth on your won, you’re told what to believe. This doesn’t accelerate your spiritual growth; on the contrary it puts the brakes on your continued conscious development. Religion is the off-switch of the human mind.
Religions are authoritarian hierarchies designed to dominate your free will.
Seriously, if you have insomnia, try reading religious texts before bedtime. You’ll be asleep faster than you can say Methuselah. Why do you think hotels put Bibles next to the bed? It’s the greatest sedative known to man. I have to give props to the Scientologists for at least incorporating space aliens into their stories. It’s a shame Gene Roddenberry didn’t formally invent his own religion; Stovokor sounds like a lot of fun.
The top religions are decided by popularity, not by truth.
Why aren’t Catholic priests allowed to marry? This has nothing to do with what’s written in the Bible or with any benefits of celibacy. This ule was invented by the Church to prevent their priests from producing heirs. When the priests died, their property would go back to the Church, thereby enriching the rich even more. Apparently God needed more cash. It was a very effective policy, as the Church is now among the richest and most powerful organisations on earth. It’s hard to fail when you have a loyal force of lifetime indentured servants who work cheaply and then yield their life savings to you when they die.
Lay religious people (i.e. non-clergy), on the other hand, are encouraged to have lots of babies because that means more people are born into the religion, which means more money and a bigger power base. Condoms are a big no-no; they’re bad for business. Marriage is a big yes; it means more brainwashed babies will be made.
If you’re one of the saved, blessed, or otherwise enlightened individuals who stumbled upon the one true belief system, then supposedly everyone else remains in the dark. Certain religions are overtly intolerant of outsiders, but to one degree or another, all major religions cast non-subscribers in a negative light. This helps to discourage members from abandoning the religion while still enabling them to proselytize. The main idea is to maintain social structures that reward loyalty and punish freedom of thought.
This us-vs-them prejudice is totally incongruent with conscious living. It’s also downright moronic from a global perspective. But it remains a favoured practice of those who pull the strings. When you’re taught to distrust other human beings, fear gets a foothold in your consciousness, and you become much easier to control.
When you join a religion, your fellow mind-slaves will help to keep you in line, socially rewarding your continued obedience while punishing your disloyalty. Why do they do this? It’s what they’ve been conditioned to do. Tell your religious friends that you’re abandoning their religion because you want to think for yourself for a while, and watch the sparks fly. Suddenly you’ve gone from best friend to evil demon. There’s no greater threat to religious people than to profess your desire to think for yourself.
What if you were born into a different culture? Would you have been conscious enough to find your way back to your current belief system? Or are your current beliefs merely a product of your environment and not the result of conscious choice?
Many religions are just a mish-mash of what came before. For example, Christianity is largely based on pagan rituals. If those pagan beliefs and rituals had been protected by copyright, Christianity wouldn’t even exist. If you take the time to dig into the roots of Christianity, you’ll encounter various theories that Christianity’s teachings were largely assembled from pre-Christian myths and that Jesus himself was merely a fictional character pieced together from earlier mythical figures. You go, Horus!
When you externalise compassion into a set of rules and laws, what you’re left with isn’t compassion at all. True compassion is a matter of conscious choice, and that requires the absence of force-backed rules and laws.
Religion is the systematic marketing of fear.
Blessed are the poor (donate heavily). Blessed are the meek (obey). Blessed are the humble (don’t question authority). Blessed are the hungry (make us rich while you starve). Blessed are the merciful (if you catch us doing something wrong, let it go). Blessed are the pure of heart (switch off your brain). Blessed are the timid, the cowardly, and fearful. Blessed are those who give us their power and become our slaves.
That’s the kind of nonsense religion pushes on people. They train you to turn your back on courage, strength, and conscious living. This is stupidity, not divinity.
Religion will teach you to fear being different, to fear standing up for yourself, and to fear being an independent thinker. It will erode you self-trust by explaining why you’re unable to successfully manage life on your own terms: You are unworthy. You’re a sinner. You’re unclean. You belong to a lesser caste. You are not enlightened. Of course the solution is always the same – submit to the will of an external authority. Believe that you’re inadequate. Give away your power. Follow their rules and procedures. Live in fear for the rest of your life, and hope it will all turn out okay in the end.
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Defeating the idea of Solipsism:
A way we could go about disproving solipsism, is by showing that it is only acceptable in an outmoded view of the mind. Specifically, a mind-body dualism. This is because nowadays we know that the mind itself is sort of contained within our brain. So, one way we could go about disproving solipsism, is denying the entire premise that it is based upon, id est, that we can prove that there are other minds by monitoring brains. We can show that everything that is in our mind is a result of a brain. Therefore, we can show that other minds, that is, brains, exist in other people, and that their own experience comes from their own brain, and that manipulating our own, or their brain, can result in experience in their mind, and our own mind, respectively. Additionally, if we map out the brain entirely, we will find that we cannot find any parts of our brain that contain other minds, or any abilities that would allow us to make a part of our world disappear, as, supposedly, we contain the entire universe within our minds. Therefore, solipsism, when divorced from the mind-body dualism, and when a transcendental mind is denied, proves to be false.
Counter argument:
The other minds we observe could just be false sensory input granted by our own mind.
Rebuttal:
When we accept that the brain is the generator of the mind, then we disprove solipsism.
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‘God’ is simply an outdated ‘answer’, for the unanswerable. Merely using a god-of-the-gaps argument, otherwise known as an argument from ignorance. When there is a gap in scientific knowledge, religion fills the gap, claiming it an act of god. This subsequently ‘must prove the existence of god’.
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Religious faith discourages independent thought, it’s divisive, and it’s dangerous.
Children are especially vulnerable to infection, by the virus of religion. A child is genetically pre programmed to accumulate knowledge from figures of authority.
If Adam and Eve is just a symbolic story, than Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin (original sin) by a non-existent individual.
It’s absurd. We wouldn’t dream of labelling children, yet when it comes to religion, all society is quite happy to talk about a Catholic child, a Protestant child, a Muslim child. Why the double standard?
Religion will remain entrenched in the human consciousness as long as human beings cannot overcome their primitive fears, particularly that of their own mortality.
Religion becomes obsolete as an explanation when it becomes optional or one among many different beliefs.
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No fossil evidence of human evolution. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and palaeontolgy does not provide them. Darwin couldnt find an answer, so he concluded that the necessary fossils will be found in a later time. 150 years later, theres still no evidence.--> Quite wrong. Intermediate species have been found
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils . I'd say one of the strongest cases of transitional fossils and evolution being shown in them is in human samples. The various species of Homo Habilis, Neanderthalensis, Erectus, Sapiens, Cro-Magnon and other finds show both the branching of species into several (common ancestor) and some going extinct whilst others survive and continue to adapt.
Thousands of life Forms preserved in amber show that creatures millions of years ago are still no different from their current day counterparts.Evolution does not deny the possibility of species being able to exist for very long times. As long as those species can survive and fit their environment, there is no reason for them to change/go extinct. This is not an argument against the theory of evolution.
Rocks from the earths Cambrian Period (600 million years ago) reveal fossils of trilobites, sponges, sea urchins, swimming crustaceans and other complex invertebrates. Only fossils of fully formed creatures have been discovered - no signs of precursor life forms have been found in earlier layers of the earths crust. Dawkins said "it is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history."There are plenty of fossilized bacteria
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/bacteriafr.html extending to pre-cambrian and even Archean times.
Flat out no proof that we descended from apes.Evolution does not state we descended from apes, only that us and primates descended from a common ancestor. The exact fossil of the species that branched out into Bonobo/Chimp and eventually humans has not been found yet, but that is not proof of the theory being wrong. Similarity between humans and primates are not just found in their anatomy
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Ape_skeletons.png , but are also reflected in their
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/fitch/resources/student_papers/silver.pdf .
The old theory of a self-replicating cell spontaneously forming in the beginning is now fiction. Scientists now know that a cell, even the simplest bacteria has genomes consisting of approximately one million codons. Each codon, or genetic word, consists of 3 letters from a 4letter alphabet. It was originally believed that a cell was just a blob... As for human cells, the information stored within them is even greater. Dawkins said "there is enough information capacity in a single human cell to store the encyclopaedia britannica, all 30 volumes of it, 3 or 4 times over."
Yes, cells are very complicated little machines, and DNA is complicated too. But not every species is as complicated as the other, there are quite simple examples relative to us humans
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/12/991213052506.html . As the earliest fossilized species of life were bacteria, they were a lot less complicated than multicellular organisms. And with a time window of 1 billion years, a lot can happen.
The coded language structures in DNA are non-material in nature, therefore require a non-material explanation.There is a large problem with this statement. There is no inherent language structure in DNA, we have just discovered patterns in them and define them in our language. Just as certain materials manifest themselves in different crystalline structures under different conditions, different structures of DNA are used for different processes in an organism. There are also large parts of genome without any structure that we know of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA .
A cell cannot just appear from nothing. Life depends not only on DNA but RNA and proteins. All must be present if life is to exist. Converting DNA information into the proteins (needed in a living cell) requires at least 75 different protein molecules (for the process to actually take place). But each and every one of these 75 proteins must be synthesized by the process in which they themselves are involved. How could the process begin without the presence of all the necessary proteins?... (and) could it be that a strand of DNA just happened to be in the same place as all these proteins?
Yes, life is complicated, but why would it have to start with full blown cells? Most theories assume that first simple aminoacids were synergized, and proteins developed after. How exactly is not known, but certain experiments, though flawed, have shown that aminoacids can synergize in very primal conditions without any life existing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment .
Professor sir Fred Hoyle calculated that the odds of just ONE of the many bio polymers upon which life depends evolving by chance as 10^50. "if you believe the information content in living systems to be The result of chance, then you believe that a tornado can go through a junk yard and assemble a jumbo jet!" - professor sir Fred Hoyle
When you have 3.1536 x 10^16 seconds on a planet with an estimated number of 1 x 10^50 atoms, it becomes more likely.
No fossil structure between scale and feather is known. "pro-Avis" creatures (half reptile and half bird). Reptiles are cold blooded and birds are warm blooded, explain that.
Birds are extremely complicated creatures. A feather is easily frayed in the absence of oil, which a bird provides from its preening gland at the base of its spine... Without the oil the feathers are useless. Furthermore, a bird can only fly because it has an exceedingly light bone structure due to its bones being hollow. Lastly, the birds tail, which needs and utilizes a muscle that operates the variable wing surface, holding the plumage spread out, for example, when coming in to land. Any bird lacking one or more of these mechanisms involved is simply not going to fly - and survival of a bird is dependent on all of them being present to begin with.Several species of dinosaur have been found to be feathered
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur , and it is assumed that many of the Theropoda were (including species of the infamous T-Rex and velociraptor). Feathers are not just used for flight, but also for insulation and courting. Feathers could have evolved before preening glands or flight had, just for courting and mating purposes. A T-Rex didn't have natural predators, so it wouldn't need to fly away from anyone in fear.
Gecko's are able to run up walls and not fall off because of their feet. They have very fine adhesive hairs called setae - about 5000 per square millimeter. These tiny setae then have up to a thousand minute branches, each ending in a spatula-like structure less than 1/50,000th an inch long. Reproducing this adhesive mechanism is beyond the limits of human technology.We are pretty damn close to synthesizing Gecko feet
http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=39794 .
When a baby is conceived, The genetic DNA code governing the eye programs the baby's eye to begin growing a million microscopic optic. Nerves simultaneously from the optic centre of the brain and from the eye. Each one of these one million optic nerves must find and match up to its precise mate to enable vision to function perfectly. Your retina is thinner than paper, yet its tiny surface (only one square inch) contains 137 million light-sensitive cells. These retina cells perform up to 10 billion calculations per second in determining the nature of the image transmitted to the eye by light photons. To mimic the human eye, you would need a single enormous computer chip that would weigh at least 100 pounds. The retina weighs less than 1 gram. None of the hundreds of thousands of imagined intermediate mutations could have any survival value whatsoever until the completed optical system was in place to allow vision to take place.
Charles darwin said "to suppose that the eye with all it's inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, an for correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." some other amazing organs are the brain, heart, liver and tongue.Many species have very simple eyes, which just detect whether there is light or not
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/variation/eye/ . Eyes do not have to be as complex as ours are, and the same goes for those other organs. They can be very simple, or they can be very intricate. We are the product of a long long time of evolution, remember!
The bible correctly described the hydrologic cycle 3000 years ago: "he draws up the drops of water, which distil as rain to the streams; the clouds pour down their moisture" (job 36:27-28)
The bible repeatedly states that god gave Moses the regulations to ensure the health of his people. Moses commanded the Israelites to circumcise male children on the 8th day after birth. The 8th day is the best day to facilitate and heal a wound as two blood clotting agents are at peak.
The Israelite priests were also instructed to use hyssop oil in an act of purification whenever they touched a dead body - we know now that this contains 50% carvacrol, an anti-bacterial and anti fungal agent still used in medicine. This was in a time when the Egyptians used human feces in their medicines.Even Jews disagree with you here:
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48964686.html . No mention of blood clotting being better at the 8th day. Marcus Vitruvius had thoughts on the hydrological cycle a good few years BC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrology . The use of hyssop oil is very easily explained by the Israelites using something that works. If you see some people using hyssop oil and not getting sick, and some people don't use it and do get sick, it's easy to decide what you're going to do.
Over 200 ancient narratives about a great flood have been identified in countries and cultures all around the world. In china, there is an old legend that the Chinese are the descendants of Nu-Wah, an ancestor whose name bears a striking resemblance to Noah. Nu-Wah built a large boat to survive the flood.Legend is nothing to science. The simple stratification of the earth and it's fossils is enough to disregard that a Biblical flood has ever happened.
The remains of Noah's ark lie in a valley near Mount Ararat in Turkey. The valley is 6,500 feet above sea level. An intriguing long boat object was captured there by the Turkish air force. An earthquake in 1978 caused the object to become more visible. The length of the boat, covered in mud and grass, is exactly the same as Noah's ark - 300 cubits, which is about 158 meters or 518 feet. Petrified wood and remains of iron rivets have been found at the site, as well as a black tar-like substance (Noah covered the ark with pitch).http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100428-noahs-ark-found-in-turkey-science-religion-culture/ Even creationists disagree amongst themselves about that. Scientists think it was just a form of early settlement, maybe a temple.
Another dramatic biblical story tells of the mighty exodus of the Israelites from Egypt (around 1450 bc). The bible tells us that "Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry, and the waters were divided." (exodus: 14:21) the terrified Israelites escaped and at day break, the waters closed to drown the Egyptian army. In the 19th century, ancient inscriptions were rediscovered in the Wadi Mukatteb (the valley of writing), in the Sinai peninsula. These inscriptions independently refer to events that occurred during the exodus, including the miraculous parting of the red sea.
At a place called Nuweiba there is a shallow underwater "bridge" leading across to the Saudi Arabian coast. Adding to the evidence that this was where the Israelites crossed, has been the discovery of huge piles of skeletons of humans and horses, plus ancients 4,6 and 8-spoked chariot wheels, on the seabed. In Cairo, 8-spoked wheels were only used for a brief time during the 18th dynasty (the period when the exodus took place).This is easily explained by normal passengers and chariots traveling on ferries or ship, and crashing, aswell as bodies/remnants of chariots being carried by the current and getting stuck on the shallows. Multiple instances of scripture referring to the exodus can just be the same story being very widespread, and still being a story, consisting of both truths and untruths. There is no way to verify now that the parting of the red sea actually happened, nor is it proof against the theory of evolution.
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