Hmmmm, good post, I'm not trying to win a debate with pure syllogisms of logic. Perhaps on those grounds I am not very persuasive. However Rotaerk you are not understanding what I am saying.

I'll clarify.

There ARE Absolutes with my faith.

I'm not a fence sitter.

God Exists.

God is Real.

God is all that is good.

I do not place faith in human rationality or reason, SINGULARLY.

I have both Reason & Faith.

Seriously read some of St. Thomas Aquinas' stuff, or Blaise Pascal or even C.S. Lewis.
Christian philosophers.

It's a battle Rotaerk, I am not neutral.

I have declared my loyalty.

It is to God.

God/Country/Family

I turn to the Holy Scriputures as my guide.

I am wearing this on my sleeve, I hide nothing.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Persecute all you want.

as an addendum to this~ Realize please that as a follower of Christ, I will always respect that our will to pursue Faith is CHOICE...

Judge Not.

However on issues that revolve around morality, I have strong thoughts on those.

I understand that within your faith, there are things which are absolutely good and absolutely bad. Similarly, to me there are certain things which I find absolutely right and absolutely wrong. However, neither case implies that right and wrong are absolute. In fact, the difference in our views of right and wrong is a prime example of why it is not absolute.

Even if God himself told me "this is right, and that is wrong", I won't suddenly change my views on right and wrong. God simply has a different opinion, one that happens to be enforceable by a power that is absolute. You say God is the essence of good? Well obviously, if he's defining the standard by which you judge right and wrong... I'm the essence of good by my own standard too.

If God exists, then yes, there is a standard which can be enforced absolutely. This is similar to the law. I may not agree with the law, but it is absolutely enforceable within the country. However, that doesn't make the law the final word on what is right and wrong.

Furthermore, this battle of which you speak is within your mind. The so-called "evil" people you fight do not usually hold the same dichotomy of right and wrong that you do. They don't choose to be evil. They merely live by a different idea of what's right and wrong. They may not even be aware that you're trying to fight them, and then when they do become aware, they consider you evil for attacking them. The Islam extremists who demolished the trade centers were fighting evil in the war that lies within their own minds.

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Oh, and I have read some theist philosophy. I read five proofs of the existence of God, one of which was Aquinas's. I demonstrated that all five were fundamentally flawed. I do not recall which they were, but if you want to present me with one to evaluate, I would be more than happy to do so.

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Oh, and why are you saying "Persecute all you want."? I am not persecuting. This is debate. If you didn't want to debate, you wouldn't be on here.

God's existence cannot be proven by any human being.

I will not attempt to do so.

Pick an issue, I can use rational thought to back up any basis of my Absolutes in God's authority.

Abortion for example.

One cell of a newly formed egg/sperm zygote contains contains two copies of each chromosome, one from each parent. Egg and sperms cells, on the other hand, each contain only one copy of each chromosome.

Separate life.

Separate mitochondrial DNA.

One CELL.

We were ALL just ONE CELL!

The miracle of Life!
That's Science.

No talk of God, no talk of absolutes.

Science.

I present the Conservation of Mass~ aka Lomonosov-Lavoisier law
the equivalent to matter cannot be created/destroyed.

What is the origin of this "stuff" we call the Universe?

Science offers no PROOF of origin, just that it exploded in a "Big Bang".

Theory is NOT proof.

God can neither be proven or disproved.

My challenge to you is, PROVE to me in Mathematical terms that God does NOT exist?

I never asked you to prove God's existence. It's impossible to prove so since he is unobservable. Similarly it is impossible to prove his nonexistence. Empirically, the question of God is irrelevant and indeterminate.

Also, correct, theory is not proof. Did someone say anything to the contrary?Theory only models chunks of the universe in a way that is consistent with observations. The big bang theory doesn't seek to explain the cause of the big bang, only to model the universe as having had a big bang.

Now, regarding abortion... The issue of abortion is not over whether the fetus is distinct from its mother, but that whether it should be considered life in the morally meaningful sense. A fetus is alive in the biological sense, but not necessarily in the sense that a mind (also known as a soul) is present.

Consciousness, the key factor of a soul, is like God: unobservable. One cannot prove that anyone is conscious, except oneself. In order for inter-human morals to matter, one must assume that others do have a soul as well. Some people might like to think everything has a soul, such as rocks and plants, but I personally find that paranoid.

Empiricism seems to correlate mind-like behavior with the brain, so I consider that a reasonable criteria: Abortion doesn't bother me unless a brain has developed, because otherwise I will assume that like rocks, it has no soul. It may still have no soul even after the brain has developed, but I'd rather be safe than sorry (but again, not paranoid).

Now, it is understandable that a religious person might think differently on the issue. They think of souls as not originating from the brain, but rather as some thing entirely independent from the body. I consider this a possibility (and I would love for it to be true), but as consciousness cannot be observed, this is unknowable. Anyway, if theists consider this true, then it becomes very uncertain as to what point in time this soul attaches to the body.

Also, assuming that abortion does occur before the soul becomes active or attached to the body, there's another moral issue: Is it wrong to prevent life (soul, not cells) from starting, or just to cancel it once it has started. I personally have no qualms with interrupting a process that will naturally lead to a soul coming to life. I only consider it wrong to kill that soul once it has already come to be. Of course, there are many who will disagree.

I don't think that this is an issue that is likely to be settled any time soon, given the difference between the two views, and at the same time, the unwillingness for either side to compromise.

Agnostics are Atheists with out balls- Stephen Colbert

Your thread is very . . . artistic.

I am not an athiest, but have you considered that if there was no religon at all there would be no holy wars, extremist groups, etc etc

Also I contemplated this, while taking an ice bath for my soreness, so i must project it.

Religon if anything expects the worst of man. The whole reason why churches and moral codes etc are established is so that man does not do the wrong thing. . . Honestly, it doesnt take a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu, (Scientology? sure why not), to figure out not to murder, lie, cheat, steal, rape etc


Now if you excuse me I must develop this line of thought further with some sort of non-denominational/Cao Đàist form of medition.

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This Machine Kills Fascists!

Resistance to Tyranny is Obedience to God

Remember the Children of Sderot

Any meme which results in a tribalistic attitude where other people are dehumanized into "the others", and where "the others" are doing something to anger the hosts of such a meme can result in conflicts akin to holy wars. Religions are only a subset of such memes. Heck, a secular campaign to end religion for the sake of ending holy wars could result in brutality... now wouldn't that be ironic. Another example is the so-called war on terrorism, an American "patriotic" meme which follows this pattern. It starts out as a fairly reasonable outrage, but an overreaction occurs, irrational decisions are made, and bad things happen.

believing in God means religion IMO.
organized religions are ok, the problem is their time. Jesus came 2000 years ago, Mohammad came 1400 years ago. the text in holy books are about those eras. so you can't measure them by today's scientific language. I believe in Islam, because I saw signs in it. signs of reality, signs of God. I know herk found it in Christianity, and I respect his choice. God is the same for all, God is God, everybody who believes in God, has a relationship with God, and knows God according to his capacity. this is exactly why we have different religions in the world, but hey, they all believe in God, and that's the point. even Buddhists have nirvana.

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you're either an agnostic, or religious, or deist. if you believe in God, then you know that waging war is a sin. if you're agnostic, heh, you described yourself well!


I don't mean any offense to agnostics out there. I'm just using his beliefs for himself, nothing more. I respect agnostics as mankind.

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I respect this statement. It's pretty similar to the quote and philosophy I've mentioned before:

There is more than one way to climb to the top of a mountain. I don't think there is just one way or one right religion. There are elements of truth to be found in all of them, and I believe a real understanding comes from the study of all major religions, philosophy and spirituality. Most of all it comes from a curious and open mind. Even one that adheres to a single religion like Islam or Christianity should have an open might about its interpretation. As you said, these books were written hundreds and hundreds of years ago, they must be understood in translation and in historical context.

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True knowledge exists in knowing what you don't know.

And yet you keep referring to Aquinas and Lewis, as evidence.
I read CS Lewis many years ago and was thourougly "underwhelmed"

I am in the process of reading Thomas Aquinis (sp?) now. So far I am at the point where he is trying to convice us that God is self evident.

1) So you seem to indicate you believe in the conservation of mass or the 2nd law of thermodynamis. Yet, you will probably claim that God created mass, thus indicating you DON'T believe in that as a strict law.

2) Human understanding of math doesn't work or fully explain the Big Bang. It is still under study. The new super collider might give us further information.

3) There are several hypothesis about what happened before the "Big Bang".

4) Since time did not exist until the Big Bang (see Einstein) There is no beginning/end/middle prior to the Big Bang. So you can't say "what happened before", because there was no before, Time did not exist.

5) Lets look at the various hypothesis of the "origin" and the Universe. In one corner we shall place Relgion, in the other we shall put Science.
In your educated opinion, which corner has done a more accurate, and better theories of our universe?
(Hint: Do you still think Zeus's parents created the universe?)

You guys keep saying, there is only one god, and all religions lead to the same path. Does this hold true for Zeus worship?

Correct. There is actually no such thing as proof, there is ONLY Theory.

Nothing in existance can be proven. You can only disprove or provide supporting evidence.

God can not be disproven, because you just have to create an ad hoc explanation.
In addition, it would be impossible to disprove the existance of something that is "BEYOND human comprehension, space/time, and the laws of nature!!"

I challenge you to PROVE to me in Mathematical terms or any other terms, that an Invisible, all powerful bunny named Greg, who lives in San Francisco, whose power and existance is beyond the laws of nature, and whose only interest is directing/coercing Human's into eating more chocolate, does NOT exist.
(Hint: You can't disprove any fairy tale, or wacked out thing that I can think up, as long as I add - it is beyond the laws of nature/human comprehension!!"

Your challenge was no different than mine.

More importantly... I am going to make this big so you totally get it.

THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON THE PERSON MAKING THE CLAIM, NOT THE SKEPTIC.

Since we are talking about SCIENCE, this is how it works. You make claim - YOU prove it.

If I claim the Thanksgiving Day Llama, cries tears of solid gold. The onus would be on ME to prove my claim, never on you to disprove it.

Ixtellor

P.S. Kneel before Vishnu or suffer eternal Hell Fire!

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George W. Bush "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building"

Blasphemy is a victimless crime.