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What's more offensive to you?
I fail to see how entities expressed as nouns can be offensive. Something you can say can be offensive; something that just exists cannot be offensive, and it is a part of nature.
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just good old god
Talking of morality do you think you could please answer me this question: "Are morally good acts willed by God because they are morally good, or are they morally good because they are willed by God"
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just good old god
@maxx
>oh forget it. It’s a hypothetical question and all you are doing is talking in circles.
I am not talking in circles, you just don't know what debate is. You also seem intellectually ill equipped for the topic at hand.
>if you can not accept that god has character the same has humans then you are blinded by your faith.
I guess you do want your opinion taken on faith. As I am not a liberal, I will require logic. It is humans who have some of the characteristics as God. God has no "bad" flaws (or flaws of any kind)
>the bible itself points out that he has both bad flaws and good traits; or must I point them out for you?
You can try, but I think you'll find that you are conflating your opinion with scripture. The bible affirms God as perfect in every way and without fault. But like Abdul, perhaps you think some trait of God is "bad". It is your opinion, so what?
>And if you can not understand that they add up to his character, then it is worthless to debate it.
I have not disputed that, I have rejected your designation of those traits as "bad".
>how is my opinion uniformed when I am getting these traits from the bible?
The problem is not the traits you get, or where you get them, but your silly way of calling them "bad".
>Why don’t you look up the definition of the word “ character
I know English better than you. Drop your politically correct mindset and think with an open mind. You have not even once mentioned any trait that is supposed to be bad.
There are good resources on the net that teach what debate is and how to debate. Avail yourself. -
just good old god
OK.
So you're one of those serial posters who don't address questions put to them.
I'm here for debate, not to just listen to some anti-theist rant.
>My post was about the character of God
Your post was about your uninformed opinion about the character of God.
Perhaps someone else views your opinion as truth, and will take your post on faith without question. That isn't me.
You have a nice day. -
The Difference Between Science and Religion
As I said before, science and religion both share a mixture of beliefs and understanding and an understanding of why they may believe some of the things they understand. It's not beliefs and understandings (or misunderstandings for that matter) where the differences lyes; it's what those beliefs are based upon which is where they lye.Now, in order to answer the question about the difference between religion and science one first needs acknowledge that there are two different kinds of religions collectively; Theistic and Non-Theistic and that there is a multitude of different branches of sciences. And a number of religions will share a mixture of differences as well as similarities with several different branches of sciences. -
The Difference Between Science and Religion
The difference is primarily that Science and Religion do not share an epistemological status, and that is what the "faith in science" statements tend to suggest, in that sense these statements are wrong...It is true that scientists take certain things on faith. It is also true that religious narratives might speak to human needs that scientific theories can’t hope to satisfy.
And yet, scientific practices—observation and experiment; the development of falsifiable hypotheses; the relentless questioning of established views—have proven uniquely powerful in revealing the surprising, underlying structure of the world we live in, including subatomic particles, the role of germs in the spread of disease, and the neural basis of mental life.
Religion has no equivalent record of discovering hidden truths.
So why do so many people believe otherwise? It turns out that while science and religion are as different as can be, folk science and folk religion share deep properties. Most of us carry in our heads a hodgepodge of scientific views and religious views, and they often feel the same—because they are learned, understood, and mentally encoded in similar ways.
Many religious beliefs arise from universal modes of thought that have evolved for reasoning about the social world. We are sensitive to signs of agency, which explains the animism that grounds the original religions of the world. but this perspective is incomplete...There are many religious views that are not the product of common-sense ways of seeing the world. Consider the story of Adam and Eve, or the virgin birth of Christ, or Muhammad ascending to heaven on a winged horse. These are not the product of innate biases. They are learned, and, more surprisingly, they are learned in a special way.
To come to accept such religious narratives is not like learning that grass is green or that stoves can be hot; it is not like picking up stereotypes or customs or social rules. Instead, these narratives are acquired through the testimony of others, from parents or peers or religious authorities. Accepting them requires a leap of faith, but not a theological leap of faith. Rather, a leap in the mundane sense that you must trust the people who are testifying to their truth.
Many religious narratives are believed without even being understood. People will often assert religious claims with confidence—there exists a God, he listens to my prayers, I will go to Heaven when I die—but with little understanding, or even interest, in the details. The sociologist Alan Wolfe observes that “evangelical believers are sometimes hard pressed to explain exactly what, doctrinally speaking, their faith is,” and goes on to note that “These are people who believe, often passionately, in God, even if they cannot tell others all that much about the God in which they believe.”
People defer to authorities not just to the truth of the religious beliefs, but their meaning as well. In this article, the philosopher Neil Van Leeuwen calls these sorts of mental states “credences,” and he notes that they have a moral component. We believe that we should accept them, and that others—at least those who belong to our family and community—should accept them as well.
None of this is special to religion. Researchers have studied those who have strong opinions about political issues and found that they often literally don’t know what they are talking about. Many people who take positions on cap and trade, for instance, have no idea what cap and trade is. Similarly, many of those who will insist that America spends too much, or too little, on foreign aid, often don’t know how much actually is spent, as either an absolute amount or proportion of GDP. These political positions are also credences, and one who holds them is just like someone who insists that the Ten Commandments should be the bedrock of morality, but can’t list more than three or four of them.
Many scientific views endorsed by non-specialists are credences as well. Some people reading this will say they believe in natural selection, but not all will be able to explain how natural selection works. (As an example, how does this theory explain the evolution of the eye?) It turns out that those who assert the truth of natural selection are often unable to define it, or, worse, have it confused with some long-rejected pre-Darwinian notion that animals naturally improve over time.
There are exceptions, of course. There are those who can talk your ear off about cap and trade, and can delve into the minutiae of selfish gene theory and group selection. And there are people of faith who can justify their views with powerful arguments.
But much of what’s in our heads are credences, not beliefs we can justify—and there’s nothing wrong with this. Life is too brief; there is too much to know and not enough time. We need epistemological shortcuts.
Given my day job, I know something about psychology and associated sciences, but if you press me on the details of climate change, or the evidence about vaccines and autism, I’m at a loss. I believe that global warming is a serious problem and that vaccines do not cause autism, but this is not because I have studied these issues myself.
It is because I trust the scientists.
Most of those who insist that the Earth is 6000 years old and that global warming is a liberal fraud and that vaccines destroy children’s brains would also be at a loss to defend these views. Like me, they defer, just to different authorities.
This equivalence might lead to a relativist conclusion—you have your faith; I have mine. You believe weird things on faith (virgin birth, winged horse); I believe weird things on faith (invisible particles, Big Bang), and neither of us fully understands what we’re really talking about. But there is a critical difference. Some sorts of deference are better than others.
It’s better to get a cancer diagnosis from a radiologist than from a Ouija Board. It’s better to learn about the age of the universe from an astrophysicist than from a Rabbi. The New England Journal of Medicine is a more reliable source about vaccines than the actress Jenny McCarthy. These preferences are not ideological. We’re not talking about Fox News versus The Nation. They are rational, because the methods of science are demonstrably superior at getting at truths about the natural world.
I don’t want to fetishize science. Sociologists and philosophers deserve a lot of credit in reminding us that scientific practice is permeated by groupthink, bias, and financial, political, and personal motivations. The physicist Richard Feynman once wrote that the essence of science was “bending over backwards to prove ourselves wrong.” But he was talking about the collective cultural activity of science, not scientists as individuals, most of whom prefer to be proven right, and who are highly biased to see the evidence in whatever light most favors their preferred theory.
But science as an institution behaves differently than particular scientists. Science establishes conditions where rational argument is able to flourish, where ideas can be tested against the world, and where individuals can work together to surpass their individual limitations. Science is not just one “faith community” among many. It has earned its epistemological stripes. And when the stakes are high, as they are with climate change and vaccines, we should appreciate its special status.
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The Difference Between Science and Religion
@ZeusAres42
>Generally speaking, in a lot of sciences a concept is what's known as a hypothesis, and they need to understand this in order to be able to test it to see if it is either true or false.
I get that, but we can understand a concept or the reality it is to explain. I understand a concept only when that concept is correctly representing reality.
For example, if I think the internal combustion engine runs because nature abhors a vacuum, I may understand my concept very well, but I do not understand internal combustion engines at all.
Concepts are supposed to correctly define reality -
Does Google know everything?
Google does know everything. This is not a joke. Of all the corporations involved in Illuminati, Google is the one that knows what the rest know. Google is the most Noble one which is why flat earthers are always welcome on YouTube and Google search results while facebook and Instagram have been known to suppress them. Twitter is different, it oppresses rudeness without mercy but controversial views it seems welcome to so be a flat earther on Twitter if you want.
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Does Google know everything?
I've come across a problem recently while trying to get globe earth proponents to snap out of their trance, and come to the realization, as I have, that there is no curvature to the earth. I'll try my best to explain it in a way that even a third grader can understand, because frankly, the site seems to be littered with third graders. No competent adult has argued for the globe as of lately.
You can pull up a Google search engine from laptops, a smartphone, a desktop PC, a Mac, or a tablet, amongst others. When "googling" something, nearly everything you ask, Google, within a second, will give you an accurate answer. You can ask Google, "what is the distance between Japan and Greenland, and in under one second, Google will tell you:
You can, within a click or two, determine the miles, kilometers, or even nautical miles between those locations, and more.
You can even ask Google questions like: what are the dimensions, in inches, of the Washington monument? Within a second, you have your accurate answer:
6,666 inches, and 666 inches wide.
Now to a flat earth scientist, the amount of allowed curvature between two points, IF the earth were a ball is important. Testing to see if that allowed amount of curvature is imperative to test and see if that curvature is there, which is a deciding factor on the shape of the earth. Ergo, if the alleged amount of curvature is not there, then the earth couldn't possibly be a ball that is 25,000 miles in circumference, as modern astronomy claims.
But when asking Google these questions, it won't give me an accurate answer. For instance the question: " how much curvature is there between Hawaii and Los Angeles?" Brings up biased sources, either flat Earth website, or anti- flat Earth websites, none giving an accurate answer to the question in particular.
So, does Google not recognize that there is curvature between Hawaii and California? It appears so. So, until Google recognizes that the earth is or isn't a ball, I'll have to rely on calculating that alleged curvature the old fashioned way.
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Marijuana should be legal, change my mind.
@John_C_87
Your argument has no basis, being that none of the laws in those states, that legalized weed for recreational use, can't be used justifiably support your whole truth argument?
Now show the public, where the below linked information, is explicitly mentioned, in those states Marijuana Laws?
From your shared web-page:"Pollution Issues
Learn about the different types of pollution in your community and what you can do about them.
Environmental Laws and Regulations
Learn which state and federal agencies manage environmental protection and regulation.
Open All +Air Pollutants, Clean Water, and Safe Drinking Laws
Wildlife and Endangered Species Protection
Laws Governing Pesticide Use on Food
Environmental Concerns at Work
Find State, Local, and Tribal Offices That Handle Environmental Concerns "
You don't have an argument, because its all John's opinion.
