ive read mainly on the bible and thats where most of my studying has been done, not the big bang.
Why should the bible hold any weight to what's true or not?
Quote from dabigE13
yes and i can understand that as well, and truthfully it was almost a personal annoyance to be told i need to be more educated on the subject to be a liable debater when i knew i was educated already. from my point of view i had learned enough about the basics to place my opinion of it being illogical.
You said you hardly read about the Big Bang. How could you be educated on it?
Um, because the Big Bang is a very well-tested (and tested over hundreds of times) theory that has been tpractically proven and accepted widely by the scientific community? It is the best explanation for how the Universe began? Because it provides a comprehensive explanation for a very broad rage of phenomenons that we still observe today?
They say there are no stupid questions but that might have been the first one, man
The bible should be credible because some curious, money hungry fuckers wrote it a thousand years ago?
Don't avoid questions by asking other people questions. Why should they answers yours when you haven't answered theirs? Have the courtesy to reply to a person with a decent explanation. Then you can ask any questions you want. Otherwise, you are implying that you have no arguments/evidence to support your claim.
i didnt mean to make it seem as if i was avoiding the question. i was replying with "wheres the big bangs proof?". and all i get is reasons it COULD have happened.
the bible provides to much information to sum up for one non-believer. i suggest doing alot of reading in it so you can learn enough to understand. then get back to me. ive been reading more then usually on your big bang theory, you could atleast research the other end so you wont go through knowing only the single explanation. people have believed in God for ages. generations and generations. so how come proof of the big bang is only things we can analyze right now or recently? the only proof we have of the big bang is accusations we came up with from what we have now. and if your thinking of saying millions of generations of people are full if shit then i would think again because i would trust them way more then these people coming up with theories just because they looked at some cells under a microscope. debates such as this are never won by anyone, because God is only revealed to those who believe and accept him, and the big bang has lots of fun scientific possibilities but no proof that its the only explanation or even real.
people have believed in God for ages. generations and generations.
People believed that the earth was flat, that the all the planets, stars, and the sun revolved around the earth, that people got sick because of demons and a whole bunch of things that were proven false for generations and generations. Why don't you still believe all of these?
so how come proof of the big bang is only things we can analyze right now or recently?
Because we didn't have the tools to observe them before. We do now because we progressed as a species so we know more things that we previously believed from ignorance.
the only proof we have of the big bang is accusations we came up with from what we have now. and if your thinking of saying millions of generations of people are full if shit then i would think again because i would trust them way more then these people coming up with theories just because they looked at some cells under a microscope. debates such as this are never won by anyone, because God is only revealed to those who believe and accept him, and the big bang has lots of fun scientific possibilities but no proof that its the only explanation or even real.
They aren't accusation. They are tests that are observed to be consistent with the Big Bang, so that's the best explanation we have of the universe right now. I don't know how else to explain it.
i didnt mean to make it seem as if i was avoiding the question. i was replying with "wheres the big bangs proof?". and all i get is reasons it COULD have happened.
the bible provides to much information to sum up for one non-believer. i suggest doing alot of reading in it so you can learn enough to understand. then get back to me. ive been reading more then usually on your big bang theory, you could atleast research the other end so you wont go through knowing only the single explanation. people have believed in God for ages. generations and generations. so how come proof of the big bang is only things we can analyze right now or recently? the only proof we have of the big bang is accusations we came up with from what we have now. and if your thinking of saying millions of generations of people are full if shit then i would think again because i would trust them way more then these people coming up with theories just because they looked at some cells under a microscope. debates such as this are never won by anyone, because God is only revealed to those who believe and accept him, and the big bang has lots of fun scientific possibilities but no proof that its the only explanation or even real.
holy shit dude i am not usually resorting to ad-hominem but that has got to be THE dumbest thing i have ever read
this is the fucking modern era
the era of SCIENCE
the era of REASON
get the fuck out of your little dark age time period in your head and wake up. You still think that the earth is flat too? you still believe that the Sun is hell, where bad people go when they die? You still think that witches exist?
Quote from Preserve
eople believed that the earth was flat, that the all the planets, stars, and the sun revolved around the earth, that people got sick because of demons and a whole bunch of things that were proven false for generations and generations. Why don't you still believe all of these?
Quote from Preserve
Because we didn't have the tools to observe them before? We do now because we progressed as a species so we know more things that we previously believed from ignorance.
The Big Bang theory is a THEORY that has many scientific support
Religion is a BELIEF that does not have any scientific support whatsoever. There are personal evidence, but they are not reliable.
absence of evidence =/= evidence of absence
The truth is that skeptics do not need to have an argument to go against your claim that your religion is true.
Another thing is that you are not against the Big Bang theory but rather the reliability of your own claims. The fact that you eliminate the possibilities down to "the bible vs big bang" is seriously ridiculous..
What about other religions? What about other claims that attempt to explain how we came about? I'm agnostic and believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth and that if something lacks evidence, one should remain skeptical. So I'll be taking the side of questioning your claims.
Unfortunately (for you :>), I did study the Bible. And boy is it full of holes. The account of someone's death has about 3 different versions. Some of the stuff are exact copies of other people's point of views.
Last words of Jesus are all different from other people's point of view.
Matthew 27:46
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Luke 23:46
And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost
John 19:30
When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
How did Judas die?
Matthew 27:5
Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself.
Acts 1:18
Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out.
Jesus claims that he did not come to abolish the old testament then comes later and say to disobey some of the old testaments.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place." (Matthew 5:17 NAB)
Jesus criticizes the Jews for not killing their disobedient children according to Old Testament law. Mark.7:9-13 "Whoever curses father or mother shall die" (Mark 7:10 NAB)
“Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law" (John7:19)
AND THEN
Romans 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.(Law of Moses)
(Eph. 2:14-15), "For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, 15 by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace."
There are some other stuff where he prevents extreme violence about following rules. Like saying eating fish is ok and stuf but i can't remember where it was.
But it leans on the side that Jesus did NOT nullify the old testament laws. Which means that you must kill disobedient children, homosexuals, and treat woman lower than men. Kill people who work on Sundays.
The old testament also approves of slavery if the slave is from a different country.
If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.' If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever. (Exodus 21:2-6 NLT)
Teachings of Jesus and the imagery of Mother Mary are strikingly similar to buddhist teachings and imagery of some woman. The story of Noah is exactly the same as the epic of gilgamesh.
Every murder is a sin but psychopathy is proven to be genetic.
The story of Noah's Ark can be proven wrong with geographical studies of animals. Not that the idea of a handful of people making the biggest boat on earth isn't ridiculous enough.. lol
Questions you should ask yourself.
How does can a spiritual concept (sin) be "cured" from a materialistic concept (some guy 200 years ago getting beaten up lol)?
Do Catholic people go to hell? Do people of Judaism go to hell? Do people who believe in old testament but not the new testament go to hell?
Why is homosexuality punished when evidence show that it is a natural behavior among any creatures? (found in other animals)
Why are animals considered to be soul-less when they clearly have emotions? (Dogs and dolphins can commit suicide)
Why must the whole humanity suffer for what adam and eve did? Does having a dad who is a pedophile make you a pedophile? Why are we kicked out of the garden when our ancestors are at fault?
Why do humans have the ability to sin? -> Why can't free will exist without evil? -> Isn't God capable of everything?
Why did God create humans? If worship was what he wanted, he sounds more like a human than an all mighty being.
Epicurus (341 BC – 270 BC)
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
If you can't get any answers for these flaws and questions, it's time to think that maybe the book that claims itself to be absolute truth may not be the absolute truth lol. Get me?
TO THE OP OF THIS THREAD
Agnostics are people who leave the question of an unanswerable of question with uncertainty. 50/50? no offense but that is one of the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard...
First of all, you do not put exact possibilities on CONCEPTS. Second, who determines what counts as a possibility? (in this case, you, who is completely unreliable so far lol)
Third, if I play along with that possibility, wouldn't you be ignoring every other attempts of explaining the creation of the universe? Lastly, you are seriously not in the position to decide
what has a chance and what doesn't.
We determine what is MORE likely by looking at how much evidence it has. AND NOT PUT A SPECIFIC NUMBER ON IT !
Moving on to.... THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE IN BELIEF ...... for dummies (dabigE13)
Humans are not capable of creating from nothing. Everything has a beginning. Every thought has a beginning (wheels are inspired by rolling rocks, etc you get the idea). Memories are built with experiences.
you know this already.
Now lets take this logic to how our brain functions. Our brain is capable of encoding memory. You do not decide what to remember and what not to remember most of the time. Encoding of short term memories and long term memories are beyond your control. Meaning, you could remember the most random thing ever in your life more than your brother's graduation or wedding. (like some unimportant conversation about ketchup or whatever) There are also memories that exist beyond our noticing it.
(im not talking about the Freudian stuff. O:)
Our experiences are obviously reflected on the way we behave and they are also very predictable at times. This is exactly why stereotypes exist lol
lets recap 1. our experiences shape the way we are 2. we have no control over experiences 3. we cannot choose what memory to keep and what to forget.
So for an easy example, compare a boy who grew up in a ghetto neighborhood and a boy who grew up in a nice friendly neighborhood. They are obviously going to behave differently.
What im getting at is that we do not choose to be the selves we are now. Some ideas that others reject may be very appealing to you since you look at the idea from a perspective which was developed with different experiences.
The same idea can be applied to pretty much destroy religion.
We do not believe in something because we choose to but because we find them appealing according to our memories. So what about the people who "failed" to believe in your religion? Should they suffer for having a different life from you?
super dumb example: Can you believe that i have 3 unicorns in my pocket right now with all your heart by choice? Or does skepticism naturally flow into your brain?
If it's the latter, then you are into my world of view about religion.
There are also many other factors that contribute to our brain like brain chemicals and genetics (psychopathy, autism etc) that supports our disposition to become a certain way.
And this goes to the OP of this thread as well. You are entitled to your opinion and no matter how objective you try to be, you will always have a hint of bias that you have no control over. It's the reason why I said you are not in the position
to put down a number on a chance of something you have no clue about..
The fact that you put a number down means that you are certain. That is not what being agnostic means.
dabigE13 Here is your simple explanation of natural selection.
An animal has sex. In fact, it's more likely that two animals have sex. :
A baby animal is conceived. :
It turns out that at some point in the process some of the genes didn't copy over properly. The baby animal is mutated, very slightly different to its parents. :
99 times out of 100, the baby dies. Random mutation is not very efficient. You're more likely to lose a lung than gain telepathy. Fortunately we have billions of years to play with here, so we can wait for a non-lethal mutation to continue our story. :
If the baby survives it will pass on it's mutated genes to its children. This means some animals in this species will have different traits to the others, for instance in a species of moths you might have some black moths and some brown moths. :
Let's say that there are some birds flying around who like to eat the moths. The moths sit on trees and hope the birds don't see them. The black moths are much more visible on brown trees than the brown moths, so the black moths get eaten more often. Over time the gene for making moths brown will become more prevalent in the population, because the brown moths are more likely to survive and have children. :
If the environment changes, for example the trees get covered in soot from a nearby factory, then different traits might become beneficial. Now the black moths have the advantage, so there will eventually be more black moths in the population than brown moths. :
In this manner, a species of brown moths can evolve into a species of black moths. There is no need for intelligence. It's the simple mathematics of some members of the species being better at not dying.
I also think you need to understand that there is a difference between understanding someone and accepting what they're saying as true. Most of us have read the Bible and we know what you're talking about. The thing is, just knowing the story isn't enough to instil belief. I know a reasonable amount about the Harry Potter stories but I don't believe them to be true.
The reason we want you to read something about evolution is that you're dismissing it for completely wrong reasons. You think it requires intelligence from atoms, but it does no such thing. It is an explanation of how different species can arise without any intelligence being involved. You need to have some kind of understanding of an idea before you can completely dismiss it. We understand your point of view and we reject it. Now you need to understand our point of view so that you can make up your own mind.
Agnostics are people who leave the question of an unanswerable of question with uncertainty. 50/50? no offense but that is one of the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard...
First of all, you do not put exact possibilities on CONCEPTS. Second, who determines what counts as a possibility? (in this case, you, who is completely unreliable so far lol)
Third, if I play along with that possibility, wouldn't you be ignoring every other attempts of explaining the creation of the universe? Lastly, you are seriously not in the position to decide
what has a chance and what doesn't.
We determine what is MORE likely by looking at how much evidence it has. AND NOT PUT A SPECIFIC NUMBER ON IT !
Kinda shocked lol
Didn't really want to re-visit this topic because (at around a few pages in to this thread), I admitted defeat after a lengthy discussion on it. Nevertheless, I feel I should explain my original position a little better. Whilst you cannot put exact probabilities on concepts, indeed, that is what a great many strong atheists and theists do. To reside with the belief that a god is improbable is to say that the probability is less than 50/50, so that's bringing probability into the equation.
"Who determines what counts as possibility?" Well for one, there's no need to call me unreliable, the whole point was to try to explain why I thought what counts as possibility does count as possibility. It's stupid to act as if it's self-evident that what I said was wrong and just leave it as that. So far all you've said is "you can't put probability on a concept, also who decides what counts as probability? Oh YOU, LOL, why should I trust you?".
As for your third point, you say that I'm ignoring the other attempts to explain the creation of the universe. I was NOT ignoring them. You can say that I'm using them in the wrong way, but you can't make the claim that I'm ignoring them. If you'd read all of my posts you'd see that I actually addressed that. What I was saying is that there's 2 categories: 1) intelligent creation, 2) non-intelligent creation (ignoring the infinite universe theory, because if that were the case then it would just bring 50/50 down to 33/66, which would still serve the purpose of saying that a deity is more probable than strong atheists believe). What I was saying is that if we take those 2 classifications, we end up with a roughly 50/50 probability. For example, if we take the spaghetti monster, the spider, yaweh and a giant tub of smarties falling over unleashing the universe, there we have a 50/50 probability: the spaghetti monster and yaweh fall under category 1, whilst the smarties and the spider (assuming the spinning was an accident) fall under category 2.
Listen, I know this view is flawed, we've been over all of this before. I just don't agree with your response, acting as if the view was COMPLETLY ridiculous and I was ignoring obvious things, when actually I'd taken them into account.
[edit]
And Jesus fucking christ, please not another Automaton vs Jeff scenario, PLEASE. I did NOT use the term agnostic in the correct way, I didn't use it as it's literal definition referring to knowledge, rather I used it to put a name to the belief of a 50/50 chance. Yes, I know that definition is incorrect. No, I don't think I was wrong to use it in that way considering I said how I was using it in the OP.
