cleveland124 said: Andir said: See, that's where I disagree with views like yours cleveland124. Any belief without a God figure doesn't mean that spontaneous generation occurred. It could also mean that something or someone did create something in the past, but that being may be dead or is capable of dying. Just as Atheism is a leveling of the playing field. As an Atheist I don't rule out that there may be something in control of us indirectly, but I believe that that being or collection of beings is capable of death and it not infallible as religion would have you believe. And a Godless person is NOT a person without morals. As individuals, we can live without other people, but we can live a better life with people. Morally, if you go around killing other people, you detriment your own life by taking away the collective social environment. This is why, I think, religious people are actually the egotists, assuming that a world without God is a world of chaos because people would not control themselves. Natural selection would weed out the societies that followed chaos and only those intelligent enough to understand that a collective group is stable and healthier would live on. You see this in the animal kingdom with packs, herds, and the like. So how did this person thing, that is now dead, come to be before the creation of everything?  Spontaneous generation?   I didn't infer that only religous individuals have morals.  My point was if you don't start with a religion how can you say anyone is wrong in their beliefs?  Assume no God.  I go kill person B because I wanted something of his.  How can you say this is wrong?  If you impose some sort of group theory you could argue that said individual is valuable to the group and thus I shouldn't have killed him.  But what if he wasn't valuable to the group.  Then maybe it was good that I killed him.  Either way, without religion individuals are only held responsible to themselves, not the group.   And you are very wrong if you think natural selection weeds out the morally bankrupt.  Are all millionaires moral?  Do only the animals that don't attempt to eat their children survive?  If Germany would have won (they were close) World War II, would that mean they were moral?  Even if you say that they didn't most "great civilizations in the world were extremely immoral, even most around the world would say the same thing about todays US.

This now dead person could have come about by some random means... maybe we did.  Maybe, in the past, there was a race of people that looked kind of like us, but they became so technologically advance that they found a way to manipulate matter into the universe we know today, but in doing so, they inadvertantly destroyed their own universe.  Who knows.  We don't have enough evidence to say what happended.  Thus, you create God to fill in your blanks.  But until the point when God gets off his arrogant ass and tells everyone that he does exist, you can't prove that he does.

By killing someone else, you could be harming your own group of humans.  Lets say this person was an expert fisherman and he pulled in 95% of the food that your community eats.  By killing said individual, you hurt everyone in your community including yourself.  You now lead a lesser life because you killed someone that was a prime benefactor.  Now, if this person was a do-nothing slob that provides nothing to the community, you're helping natural selection by removing that detriment and providing more food to the rest of the group.  Now, don't you think that the slob would get off his ass knowing that someone might be gunning for him?  I know I would.

That is the way natural selection works.  The weakest or most detrimental to society just might die or be forced to in order for the rest of the community to survive.  That's essentially what our world is like today as well.  If you go around killing people, thus harming the community, you will be locked up or killed for your actions against the greater good.  The world would be the same with or without God.

And to answer another question.  When you die, you don't see anything.  Your dead.  Your body decomposes and leaves matter and energy for other forms of life to use.  This energy and matter is returned to the universe, just as it has been for billions of years.  What brought this matter into existance is highly debatable, but I can guarantee you that there's no magical fairy controlling it.  Only a few simple rules.  If you want an example of what a few simple rules can actually do, look up John Conway's Life. http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/  It's a simulation that could easily show you how life works today (if you keep an open mind) using only a few simple rules.  If you scale this down to the molecular level, and throw in a few bagillion pixels (particles of matter), you'll start to see something that kind of resembles life as we know it today.  If you look at it from the greater scale (as most religions do) you assume that there must be someone in control of this.  But their isn't.  You take miniscule dots of matter, throw them in a big emtpy expanse of space and see that they do.  They will collide, create heat, energy, gravity, and eventually with enough time you'll get planets, people, and the Internet.

fkusumot said: kergeten said: fkusumot said: What does religion have to do with the existence of god? Next thing someone is going to prove the existence of Obi-Wan. O ye of little faith. Do you know anyone who has a firm convition in God and doesn't belong to any religion? BTW I belive in God, just that i Don't believe anything the church or the bible or any religios text has to say. Better said I belive in a Universal order that most mere mortals could only define as God.  Yes I do. It sounds like you're one of them. But anyways, what does it matter if someone has a firm conviction in god and does or doesn't belong to any religion? Does that have a bearing on the matter of whether god exists or not?

Not really. But unlles god was created as humanity created it then it does not exist, or you could argue taht god is still yet to be fully defined, then why do we even bother since that means the truth will only be reveled once we fully define GOD and thats when we ourselves become gods, blah, blah etc etc. Problem with this kind of reasoning is its aplying philosophy to a redundant issue, thats like arguing why there isnt an elf in my room, give it a few hundred years and some smart but misguided philosophers, and this simple question becomes a discussion like this which is ultimately completely pointless. I've said it before and I'll say it again, The God of contemporary popular christian culture DOES NOT Exist, anlize that statement and marvel at its geniousness lol!

 

How did Judas Die?

"And he cast down the pieces of silver into the temple and departed, and went out and hanged himself." (Matt. 27:5)

"And falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all of his bowels gushed out." (Acts 1:18)

Actually, here's another example of the falsity of Christianity and religions today. If there really was a God that wanted everyone on Earth to follow his 10 Commandments, don't you think that he would have told everyone instead of one man?

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2007/penn-teller-bible-p1.php

 

-removed-

kergeten said: Not really. But unlles god was created as humanity created it then it does not exist, or you could argue taht god is still yet to be fully defined, then why do we even bother since that means the truth will only be reveled once we fully define GOD and thats when we ourselves become gods, blah, blah etc etc. Problem with this kind of reasoning is its aplying philosophy to a redundant issue, thats like arguing why there isnt an elf in my room, give it a few hundred years and some smart but misguided philosophers, and this simple question becomes a discussion like this which is ultimately completely pointless. I've said it before and I'll say it again, The God of contemporary popular christian culture DOES NOT Exist, anlize that statement and marvel at its geniousness lol!

 Sorry, I'm a Platonist. You've misread the direction I was going in.

@fkusumot
Damn! I want some fundamntalist christians in here to debate with! You're no fun lol.

CrashMan said: Insects have 4 legs? LEV 11:21 Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth; LEV 11:22 Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind. LEV 11:23 But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you.

" which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;" I thing you answer your own question

 

 

CrashMan said: " Hmmm the bat is a bird? DEU 14:11 Of all clean birds ye shall eat. DEU 14:12 But these are they of which ye shall not eat: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray, DEU 14:13 And the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after his kind, DEU 14:14 And every raven after his kind, DEU 14:15 And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind, DEU 14:16 The little owl, and the great owl, and the swan, DEU 14:17 And the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the cormorant, DEU 14:18 And the stork, and the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the "

What if back then they didn't have a specific word or definition for a bird? See in old hebrew the world could have been "flying animal" and over many translations once it reached the english version they just put bird.

 This happens all the time. Like the verse where its mention that jesus has brothers. But in the old hebrew brother and cousin is the same word. Many old languages didn't have a seperate word for differnet things. Like for english the word orange

 

 

CrashMan said: How did Judas Die? "And he cast down the pieces of silver into the temple and departed, and went out and hanged himself." (Matt. 27:5) "And falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all of his bowels gushed out." (Acts 1:18)

 what if judas hanged himself, then he felled off the tree and his head busted open and it gushed out? Many people believe the "falling out" was used to denote judas falling of God's grace.

 

 

Do you have a website where your getting all this? If your really interesting why don't you go do some researh or you own?

Edit:

It CLEARLY states in the first passage that you can eat all things that crawl on 4 legs and meet that criteria, then name locusts, beetles, etc, which DO NOT have 4 legs.  I don't even see HOW you twisted that.

the second is completely ludicrous, were that the case, why was it not translated "flying creatures"

the third, why would the second make NO mention of hanging, seems obsurd

here are some more gems.

Your parents ever work on a sunday? Kill em.

Your neighbor's kid mouthing off to his parents? drag him in to the town square and stone him

Need some extra cash? Sell your daughter in to slavery

All these great moral teachings and more from the bible.