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sundin13 on 20 October 2014
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Soriku said:
sundin13 said:

a. Actually, there is scientific evidence of a great flood (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/evidence-suggests-biblical-great-flood-noahs-time-happened/story?id=17884533). Whether or not that proves anything is arguable. 

b. If everything was spelled out and clear, there would be no need for faith. He doesn't want to convince everyone with certainty, he wants you to doubt and he wants you to test your faith. You seemed to have completely missed the point. Everybody acknowledges that religion is, by definition, unscientific. It cannot be proved wrong, and it cannot be proved right. Some people may use that and say "it cannot be proven, therefore I will be an atheist," and that is a perfectly acceptable conclusion to come to. I don't see why people need to try to deny other people of their faith though. 

If you try to use the Bible as an argument against science, I will be among the first to tell you how wrong you are, however, if you try to use science to counter someones faith, I wont really take too kindly to that either. 


What is the point of faith? What does it accomplish? I thought it was a matter of going to heaven or hell here. God, if he even exists, could stand to be less transparent.

Also, what's wrong with using science to counter faith? Are you insinuating faith shouldn't be questioned, especially when it's based on little to no basis in reality?


a. I've known quite a few people who gave gotten their lives back on track with the help of religion. People always like to talk about all the harm of religion but ignore all of the people who got back on track because of it or have done plenty of good in its name. Religion helps many people center their own moral compass (not saying religion is required to be a good person of course).

Basically, when you are a person of faith, you are saying that you will follow the moral compass imparted upon you by the bible (although there are some antiquated ideals that get propagated by people who forget that hate is not encouraged by the bible). You will do good whenever possible.

If god was transparent, it wouldn't be much of a test would it? It would be like giving someone all of the answers for a quiz and then acting like that quiz actually told you anything. Our faith is our answer to that test...if the test was too easy, it wouldn't tell us anything, so the test is really hard. (PS: My own personal belief is that a good person may go to heaven regardless of whether they hold correct beliefs...but thats partially just me)

b. As I said, religion can't be countered with science. You can say "there is evidence that the world is billions of years old" and the religious people can counter that by saying "well, God created the earth with age" and be on with their day. Thats not to say that religion should go unquestioned, but those questions should be personal. I said in the other thread that everyone should define their own religion. They should take in the facts around them and make their own conclusion. They should look at the bible and other religious texts and science and come to their own conclusion. 

I don't think much good comes from challenging the religion of others...discussion is fine as long as it is open ended and inquisitive instead of attacking. You shouldn't say "your religion is false because we haven't found archeological evidence of the Tower of Babel", but you are free to say "How do you explain the lack of archeological evidence of the Tower of Babel". One tries to take impart your own beliefs on another person and the other attempts to get them to think. I have had some great discussions with people who believed different things than me because we both threw open ended questions at each other and explained our answers. We should, as religious folk, think about our religion and being blindly religious should be a sin because you are just ignoring the gift of critical thinking that we were given by God (or evolution). That being said, when we say we are religious, we don't deserve to be called stupid or ignorant or be jumped on by a bunch of blind followers who know less about evolution/science than I do...

I know that was a bit of a mess of a response, but I hope that made some semblance of sense. 

PS: The bible, regardless of its religious merits is a masterpiece of literature...sure, there are sections (namely the lineages...blegh) that are dreadfully boring, but overall, theres a lot of good stuff