I wasnt talking about the truth in christianity, I was talking about its spreading in far east and growing all over the world. Why does that insult you?

Thats not what I believe in

http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/f/fd/Amazingatheistrage.jpg

See? I can be stereotypical too.

(tho, there are high chances i get banned for that)

The point is that what reality has nothing to do with what we would describe as 'plausible'. You cannot dismiss something simply because it sounds too fantastic to be true - none of the great minds of our time have done that.

*search (whoops)

Since we are talking about religion in this thread and you were excited to share how Christianity is spreading I assumed it was some sort of argument. It doesn't insult me! I am questioning what you are saying.

Sorry, just butting in here. I agree that the theory of special relativity does seem implausible, like the story of Noah's ark is. However, the difference between them is how well they stand up when you make predictions about the observations you will make. You can make predictions for both ideas easily enough, and you can look at the evidence based on those predictions.

Special relativity makes predictions about space and time which sound far fetched to anyone reading about it for the first time. But what's important is that these predictions are measurable, and under experiments and observations they have held up well. For example the extended lifespan of muons travelling at speeds close to the speed of light are consistent with special relativity. This is extraordinary evidence that backs up an extraordinary claim.

We can make the similar predictions based on Noah's ark. For example, if the whole world flooded violently only a few thousand years ago then we should see evidence for this in the hydrogeology of the Earth. One example off the top of my head is the carving of water features. If the flood did happen then water features such as rivers carved by the flood should be straight as the water would have had a lot momentum and carved the river over a short period of time. However, pretty much every river on Earth meanders quite a lot with the natural features of the environment, and this is what would be seen if water was flowing with a low momentum over a long period of time. This is just one example, but you can see how Noah's flood crumbles when you make predictions and then look at the evidence.

I'm not saying that special relativity is the be all and end all, end of, maybe one day someone will come along with a better theory that can explain the observations more accurately. Who knows, maybe the new theory would tell us something new about mass and velocity that would destroy my example I used in the case of Noah's flood.

But the point I'm trying to make is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Regardless of how counterintuitive and implausible nature may seem, you can always attempt to make predictions and measurements. If evidence is found for an extraordinary claim, then it then it may still be an extraordinary claim, but it is one that can be backed up. But an extraordinary claim that can't backed up remains just that, and extraordinary claim.

In the case of special relativity and Noah's ark, both sound equally implausible, but one is consistent with our observations and the other isn't.

I agree, we should never dismiss an idea that sounds too fantastic to be true, we should always investigate it... Then we can decide whether we dismiss it or not.

For some reason I thought you were Hindu. I don't know why.

@pizzahut451:

But no Christian chinese person died in that riot because he/she was a christian, right? The diffrence is, people tried to froce their beliefs on eachother by violence back than. And today, we are seeing a peacefull rise of Christianity in China with no violence whatsoever.

No violence yet. You can be sure they'rr become opressive if they ever try to get power.

Not if its rising in the country where atheism is a majority

Atheists are not the majority.And you claim you don't insult atheists, yet you want them to be wiped out.

Whatever makes you sleep at night buddy. I can only respond insults with insults, and if i do that a certan mod will ban me. you just keep telling yourself that. I just wonder where zexen is to teach us about religious intolerance now...,

This isn't meant to be an insult, it's just a plain fact. Christianity is intolerant (it claims to be the "one true religion" and all other religions are wrong and evil) and opressive (the fact that it tries to control every aspect of people's lives and surpress their free will and fre thought).

There can only be one true religion, and dont act like other religions dont claim to be the right ones. Your bias against christianity and christianity only is jaw-dropping.

Buddhism doesn't claim that other religions are wrong. Actually, most of the religions from the part fo the world are very tolerant of others. A phenomenon called religious syncretism is really popular in the far East (many people are both Buddhists and Shintoists in Japan, for example). Christians would ruin the balance in that part of the world, and the Christians would eventually try eliminate the other religious faiths.

See? Your just so ignorant and biased against everything christian, you dont even see what happening and choose to close your eyes and tell yourself all that nonsense to make yourself feel better about your beliefs. I dont insult judisam, islam, buddisam or even atheism to make myself feel better and more secure about my beliefs.

Yes you do. Now I'm not gonna go and search the forums about Islam to search for your hateful posts, but you've given great examples of your hatred for atheists on this very topic. If I said that "I hope more and more people become Atheists in Italy, because that would weaken Christianity in the world", you'd accuse me of being hateful, but appearently your kind likes to insult others, but not be insulted themselves.

Except that this is totally diffrent than that rebelion. People are CHOOSING to follow christian religion, not to force it on others. No one is opression no one, no matter if you want to believe otherwise.

People are manipulated by missionaries who are feedign them lies. And if they ever gain more power they'll push for more people to become converted, and that could possibly lead to violence.

Yes, it would be IF I was talkking about Africa or Philiphinos, but since i was not, its irrelevant. Not to mention those events happedn 300 years ago, and Im talking about TODAY!!

You were talking about (the made-up) fact that Christianity did not spread through violence and opression. And the Philipinos are from the part of Asia we were talking about.

Absolutely, because inquisition wasnt about spreading christianity on innocent muslims who never raised sword against christians, it was about keeping church in power of the kingodms and lands of europe.Christianity would have been just fine without inqusition. Church and western kingdoms? I dont think so. As for muslims in Spain, go educate yourself on Spanish Reconquista

I think you don't really know much about the Reconquista. It was essentially Christians from the North of Spain stealing lands that for centuries belonged to muslims. They also forced millions of muslims to convert, and they other killed those who didn't, or banished them to North Africa. It was essentially ethnic clensing. And no, without things like the Inquisition Christianity would've been totaly different today.

Woah, long read. Yeah, I never meant to equate Noah's ark and Special Relativity! It is my belief that the Noah's ark story isn't the fact. 

I get your argument about predictions. This is exactly what the scientific model is based on, and it prevents science from straying too far from the truth.

''I agree, we should never dismiss an idea that sounds too fantastic to be true, we should always investigate it... Then we can decide whether we dismiss it or not.''

Here's a thought. Some of the most brillian men on the planet (including this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten) are so convinced of string theory that they keep working on it despite widespread mocking from many prominent physicists. Edward was once recorded as saying that String Theory must be true since because of its elegance. The important thing that I wanted to mention is that all these big guys know that String Theory cannot possibly be tested... Furthermore, just to give you an idea of what they believe:

An atom as you know is very, very, very small. To illustrate this:

In a single drop of water there are: 6 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 atoms.

Now, if you think that's small: If the nucleus of the atom were as big as a golf ball, then the atom would be a few kilometers (depending on the type of element) in diameter.

That's seriously small.

Now, in string theory all matter is made up of tiny vibrating strings. The type of vibration that the string has determines what type of particle (proton, neutron, electron, positron, muon, gluon...) is associated with it. So matter is just tiny strings of energy vibrating in the fabric of space-time.

Here comes the mind-job. If a string was the size of a regular tree, then an atom would be the size of...OUR SOLAR SYSTEM.

Ok, I got a bit carried away (being a physicist and all), but that's some hardcore sci-fi stuff right there!!!

Mmm, sorry about the long postI tend to get carried away too, so I know where you're coming from.

Anyway, I was trying to show how even though two ideas can both seem implausible, one can still be dismissed as fantasy whilst the other one is taken seriously. I was just using your examples. It could have equally been *Insert supported theory here* vs *insert unsupported theory here*.

As for string theory, it's certainly an interesting that it's essentially near impossible to provide evidence for, and perhaps it's an exception to my statement. However, it can still be falsified under certain conditions (say we find a serious fault with our current quantum theory for example), so we can decide to dismiss it if the knowledge it's based on is found to be in error in some way. Maybe it half meets my statement you quoted, I'll give you that at least.

I agree with that. You know, all I don't like is when people are so chauvinistic that they just dismiss everything religious because they ''adhere to science''. Usually these people know jack about science anyway. 

Mostly its very hard to reach a conclusion in an argument on these topics. I agree with what you say and understand why you pointed it out.

:)