Joy to the world

[Winstonm]

What is disturbing to me is how similar is this quote:

 

As a Christian, my beliefs are things that are fact to me.

 

 

to this definition:

 

Psychosis: significant mental disorder in which a person is unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.

 

While this statement:

 

I know all of this because I received the Holy Spirit when I was baptized.

 

has a striking paralel in one symptom of schizophrenia:

 

believe that he/she has a special link to God

 

Minds and emotions are powerful tools of illusion; belief is no more than denial of an alternative reality.

[BebopKid]

Psychosis: significant mental disorder in which a person is unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.

Exactly. Like the people who don't believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?

 

Alas, there is no way for the argument to end, unless of course, everyone converts.

[Winstonm]

Therein lies the difference, methinks: to me there is no argument. I simply submit that there are (to me) interesting comparisons between some statements and sysmptoms of mental illness. I did not say believers were mentally ill.

 

I do not wish to convert you to atheism or agnosticism; live and let live; as long as you don't invade my state to force your righteousness down my throat, I have no problem with your right to believe what you wish.

 

Hey, you could be right.

[the hog]

Psychosis: significant mental disorder in which a person is unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.

Exactly. Like the people who don't believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?

 

Alas, there is no way for the argument to end, unless of course, everyone converts.

When you make blanket assertions of this nature, you have to prove them. You can't just say, "This is true because I know it to be true or because I believe it to be true."

 

There is no reliable evidence to support this contention. The gospels were written years after the death of Christ and have been edited and rewritten many times since. Some of the purer gnostic gospels do not make the assertion that Jesus Christ is the son of God. I say "purer", because they have not been edited and are largely in their original form. It was only the Council of Nicea which decided which gospels should be included. How do you answer these arguments? This is the third time I have asked and you have never once given an answer apart from saying, "I know.." and "God gave us a choice...."

[Quantumcat]

What an interesting discussion! Let me put in my two cents (I had a lot of these kinds of discussions with my ex-boyfriend - he was religous to the point of excess)

 

God knows everything. When he designed us, he knew all our future thoughts and actions etc and decided to design us to do those. So punishing us for that which he chose for us to do makes no sense. The solution usually used is that man was given free will. But this means he might do things that God didn't know would happen - thus man is more powerful than God. This also does not make sense.

 

Either we have free will, which makes us more powerful than God, this doesn't make sense. Or we don't have free will, and God chose for us to do the wrong things we do and "punishment" makes no sense either. Either we have free will or we don't (tautology) and both possibilities lead to contradiction.

 

Another thing. God knows us thoroughly, right? So he would know what kind of evidence each of us would require to realise he's there. He doesn't give us this evidence, thus choosing for us to not know or realise he's there. The bible says his wish is for everybody to know him, yet he is choosing for most of the world not to. That does not make sense. So, either he does not want people to be saved, or he is not there at all.

 

There was an experiment performed where about 200 victims of a disease with very similar histories and life expectancies etc were divided into four groups. One group had groups of jews, chritians and muslims praying for them another other had beatiful scenes out of their windows and paintings on their walls, one group had both and the other had none. Can you guess what happened? The two groups having beautiful scenes out of their windows and paintings had a much reduced death rate in the time period they did the study in while the only prayed-for group and the nothing group retained the expected higher death rate. They didn't know they were being prayed for.

 

If God wanted the person carrying out this research to realise he was there and listening to people's prayers, he could just miraculously heal all those people, as we here about in anecdotal reports from churches (never any medical evidence for those sorts of "healings")

[pokerbids]

Everyones sounds like Gods Warrior!

[Fluffy]

I know that God used his Power to put only the true Word of God into the Bible.

I've heard this before, I agree on many things with you (at least more than other posters here), yet, I am not so sure about these, 2 questions:

 

-The truth of the Bible is part of Christian beliefs, but it is part of it because Church says, Jesus didn't say it, did he?. This doesn't make a difference for you probably, but it might do for me.

 

-The interpretations on the Bible have changed from time to time, so even if Bible is right, humans who interpret it might not. So we cannot fully beleive in what we think it says because it can be wrong. Does it sound logic to you?

 

Thanks

[Codo]

What an interesting discussion! Let me put in my two cents (I had a lot of these kinds of discussions with my ex-boyfriend - he was religous to the point of excess)

 

God knows everything. When he designed us, he knew all our future thoughts and actions etc and decided to design us to do those. So punishing us for that which he chose for us to do makes no sense. The solution usually used is that man was given free will. But this means he might do things that God didn't know would happen - thus man is more powerful than God. This also does not make sense.

Either we have free will, which makes us more powerful than God, this doesn't make sense. Or we don't have free will, and God chose for us to do the wrong things we do and "punishment" makes no sense either. Either we have free will or we don't (tautology) and both possibilities lead to contradiction.

 

 

Besides the very extreme positions I like this discussion too. So let me put some tries of an answer to your examples:

 

I do believe in a god who gave me a free will. So I am able to decide what I do with my live. And later I will be judged by what I did and what I repent in case I made something wrong. So he does not punish me for anything I did wrong, put just for the things I did wrong and do not repent. I think this is nice, because as anybody else I am not able to life without some majors mistakes.

Man is not more powerful then god,but we have a lot of power and it is our responsibility to use it in the correct way. ( Whatever way this may be.)

 

Another thing. God knows us thoroughly, right? So he would know what kind of evidence each of us would require to realise he's there. He doesn't give us this evidence, thus choosing for us to not know or realise he's there. The bible says his wish is for everybody to know him, yet he is choosing for most of the world not to. That does not make sense. So, either he does not want people to be saved, or he is not there at all.

 

I find this point frustrating too. What will happen to all the people from former times who lived before Jesus lifed? The Aztecs and others are good examples too.

I have two maybe not very convincing answers:

1. God is something universal, there is no "one and only way" to god. If you live in Thailand and follow the common rules there, if you are a muslim, a christ a hindi or whatever, as long as you follow the common rules (basically the ten requirements) you have a chance of paradise.

I know that this believe is far away from the believes of most churches, but as I told before, I am a protestant and this church gives other a lot of room (at least here in Germany). My sisiter (baptist) would believe that I am on my way to hell with these thoughts. :P

 

2. God is allmighty. We are not able do understand all/most of his descissions. This is an easy "argument", but not very helpful if you do not believe in a allmighty god.

 

There was an experiment performed where about 200 victims of a disease with very similar histories and life expectancies etc were divided into four groups. One group had groups of jews, chritians and muslims praying for them another other had beatiful scenes out of their windows and paintings on their walls, one group had both and the other had none. Can you guess what happened? The two groups having beautiful scenes out of their windows and paintings had a much reduced death rate in the time period they did the study in while the only prayed-for group and the nothing group retained the expected higher death rate. They didn't know they were being prayed for.

 

I doubt that this really happened (sounds very inhuman) but even if:

There are other statistics which say that believers live longer then non believers.

 

But again, who am I to understand all of gods descisssions? If I would judge with my understanding, I would ask about massacres in churches, dying babies and thousands of other horrible things which happened to believers all over the world. But maybe there is a reason for this, but just too mighty for me to understand.

Or there is a reason I may understand: There had been a nice story about Hiob in the bible. If I understand this story correct, all the bad things which happen are just tasks we should fullfill.

So maybe the worst problems happen to the people he loves most and they will get their reward in paradise.

 

If God wanted the person carrying out this research to realise he was there and listening to people's prayers, he could just miraculously heal all those people, as we here about in anecdotal reports from churches (never any medical evidence for those sorts of "healings")

 

I believe he could, but why should he?

And I am not sure about the wonders, I never checked this personally. But this is more a catholic thing, they take care about wonders, I don´t. But I believe that woders and miracles do happen. Why shouldn´t they?

[Gerben42]

I don't mind if people believe in God, for me personally any religious story sounds "unbelievable", so I don't buy it. That's my choice and I've given it a lot of thought.

 

Man is not more powerful then god,but we have a lot of power and it is our responsibility to use it in the correct way. ( Whatever way this may be.)

 

Here is where my problem starts. People think they know what is the correct way to use our power because of some interpretation of a story which is different for everyone, and then force this interpretation onto others. What's worse, because of the belief they "know" they are right.

 

But I believe that wonders and miracles do happen. Why shouldn´t they?

 

Depends what you mean by it. If you mean "a very unlikely combination of events with a positive outcome", yes sure they happen. If you mean something that is violating physics by divine intervention, then not.

 

One of the famous miracles was Moses crossing the Sea of Reeds, a shallow area of water that was passable by foot exactly at the right time at the force of a strong wind. This does not break the Laws of Physics, which are universal because that is the way they are defined. Moses was lucky there and I don't know what the odds are that this wind blew exactly at the right time for the right length, but:

 

If there hadn't been a "miracle", we wouldn't remember the story! History is quite selective. Of course one CAN interpret this in the way that some higher being helped tilt the odds a bit, but there is no need.

[the hog]

Roland, actually an experiment DID take place to assess the effect of prayer and is fully documented, though it wasn't quite like Quantumcat described. Prayers were said for a group of patients recovering from illness; there was also a control group.See Dawkins "The God Delusion." for details The results showed that there was no difference in the recovery rates between the group which was prayed for and the group that wasn't.

[Fluffy]

Roland, actually an experiment DID take place to assess the effect of prayer and is fully documented, The results showed that there was no difference in the recovery rates between the group which was prayed for and the group that wasn't.

I cannot be sure, but this doesn't sound very scientific, and stadistics are manipulated all the time for demostrating what you wanna demostrate anyway.

[Fluffy]

I don't mind if people believe in God, for me personally any religious story sounds "unbelievable", so I don't buy it. That's my choice and I've given it a lot of thought.

We have talked about this before, but anyway.

 

I take as unbelievable that universe is there with no purpose at all. I don't buy it, and I've given a lot of thought also.

 

I must admit that when I started to think of it I was determined to demostrate god's existence, and I am not stupid enough to ignore that it can play a role on my conclusions.

 

 

One of my conclusions wich I found funny was that if God (by God I mean anything able to violate physics) didn't exist, there would be no randomnes, and in the end that would mean time is cyclic, not linear.

 

Time cyclic is also depresing, that means I'll have to be born again in an uniamginable amount of time, and grow the same, make the same mistakes, and fail again ont that 6NTx that made easilly on a strip squeeze.

 

Even worse, this would happen infinite times. Ugh.

[Gerben42]

One of my conclusions wich I found funny was that if God (by God I mean anything able to violate physics) didn't exist there would be no randomnes

 

What most people perceive as randomness is in fact chaos theory. In principle if you flip a coin you can at any point in time calculate if it's going to land heads or tails if you would know everything about the system. Chaos theory tells us that the accuracy you need to predict this is however unattainable. Even if you try to throw, the coin EXACTLY in the same way the 2nd time, the chance of heads or tails is 50% again.

 

There is randomness in quantum mechanics but it could well be that this is also perceived randomness in the same way as in classical mechanics which we simply don't understand, and instead our description of the theory is just a workaround so that we can make predictions of the behaviour.

 

Let me ask a tricky question. Humans have free will (let's assume this is simply a fact, and not get into philosophy what this actually means).

 

Do chimps have free will?

Dolphins?

Cats?

Dogs?

Mice?

Ants?

Where does it stop? How do you tell?

[Fluffy]

Never asked myself this question, I cannot tell now. Simiraly you could also ask in wich time of the pregnacy process does a human get free will/soul and I would also be clueless.

 

I'll think of it, at first I see 2 possible answers:

 

-Cells have free will/soul (meaning humans are composed of millions of free wills)

 

-Not every alive form have soul/free will (meaning some humans don't have soul, and some animals do).

 

My grand-father believes world is made for humans, and that dogs have no feelings, but that's not my case.

 

 

Ok, now my question turn:

 

 

How do you think evolution works?, why don't species evolute backwards?.

 

I can hardly see that DNA chain can take in 42 chomosomes all the info of a human body, what I cannot understand is how a simple cell is able to read and interpret it inside itself.

 

Maybe 2 different questions, sorry.

[hrothgar]

Roland, actually an experiment DID take place to assess the effect of prayer and is fully documented, The results showed that there was no difference in the recovery rates between the group which was prayed for and the group that wasn't.

I cannot be sure, but this doesn't sound very scientific, and stadistics are manipulated all the time for demostrating what you wanna demostrate anyway.

This study got a fair amount of coverage a year or two ago. (I heard it discussed on NPR).

 

Here's a link to the study. There is a good discussion regarding methodology and experimental design.

 

http://www.templeton.org/newsroom/press_re...060407step.html

[Codo]

I don´t believe that randomness/ chaos theory is a proofe that there is/isn´t a god.

But as I stated before, there could be no proofe for something we believe. With a proofe we know.

 

And I don´t understand your question: Lets say that just we have a free will, or that we and the monkeys and the dolphins have one. What excatly has this to do with my believes?

 

Do you know the following question: Any believer should pray to his god that god should build a stone which is so heavy that not even god can carry it.

 

What will happen? Your god cannot build such a stone, so he surely is not allmighty.

Oh he can? So he cannot carry it and is not allmighty either.

 

Does this proofe that there cannot be something allmighty out there? Maybe but maybe the answers are just beyond our understanding, a little bit like "42".

[Fluffy]

Roland, actually an experiment DID take place to assess the effect of prayer and is fully documented, The results showed that there was no difference in the recovery rates between the group which was prayed for and the group that wasn't.

I cannot be sure, but this doesn't sound very scientific, and stadistics are manipulated all the time for demostrating what you wanna demostrate anyway.

This study got a fair amount of coverage a year or two ago. (I heard it discussed on NPR).

 

Here's a link to the study. There is a good discussion regarding methodology and experimental design.

 

http://www.templeton.org/newsroom/press_re...060407step.html

I ahve read it but I think I didn't understand pretty well, who did pray for the patients and how did they know they were praying?

[Codo]

Roland, actually an experiment DID take place to assess the effect of prayer and is fully documented, The results showed that there was no difference in the recovery rates between the group which was prayed for and the group that wasn't.

I cannot be sure, but this doesn't sound very scientific, and stadistics are manipulated all the time for demostrating what you wanna demostrate anyway.

This study got a fair amount of coverage a year or two ago. (I heard it discussed on NPR).

 

Here's a link to the study. There is a good discussion regarding methodology and experimental design.

 

http://www.templeton.org/newsroom/press_re...060407step.html

The foundation itself said there had been other studies with different results, so what does this prove exactly?

 

And even if you are right, and prayers from foreigners have no influence for the healing process, what does this prove?

 

When I was very young, I always prayed for a win in the next football match. It did not work. I do understand this now, it could not work. After all, what should god do if there is at least one guy in the other team with the same wish?

 

Most believers know that not all- not even most whishes to god are fullfilled.

God is not working that way: You pray and he works for you. This does not happen and rightly so, I mean who wants such an easy life: Good god, please let this finesse work amen and wooosh so it is?

 

But there are studies that religious people life longer then atheists. Do I think that this is because we have a guardian angel and you don´t? No, I think it is because for most people religion makes life easier and satisfying and that makes them healthier and life longer.

( I know that millions of you atheists in this forum are happy healthy people, but I see no other reason for the long livety of believers, do you?)

[Fluffy]

But there are studies that religious people life longer then atheists. Do I think that this is because we have a guardian angel and you don´t?

I'd say this is just becuse they suicide more :).

 

Do you know the following question: Any believer should pray to his god that god should build a stone which is so heavy that not even god can carry it.

 

What will happen? Your god cannot build such a stone, so he surely is not allmighty.

Oh he can? So he cannot carry it and is not allmighty either.

 

Ok this might sound worse blasfem for logic people (like I think I am), so don't take it too sreiously:

 

If God is able to break physic rules, what does it make you think he cannot break logic rules as well?.

 

That is very good answer, I think I can explain anything with it :), But it makes me wonder if I really wanna join that world after I die hehe.

[hrothgar]

The foundation itself said there had been other studies with different results, so what does this prove exactly?

This study was funded in response to some earlier studies that seemed to suggest a positive relationship between prayer and recovery rates. (I've seen some rather outlandish claims advanced)

 

This study was designed to compensate for what are perceived to be flaws in the methodology of the earlier studies.

 

Does the Templeton study prove anything with 100% certainty? No...

Is it the best the best information about linkages between prayer and recovery that we have available? Potentially...

[helene_t]

Michael Shermer had a nice comment on those prayer experiments in Scientific American (SA). After having debunked it from a scientific point of view he concludes:

The ultimate fallacy of all such studies is theological. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He should not need to be reminded or inveigled that someone needs healing. Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion.

FWIW, patients who knew they had been prayed for did worse than patients who did not know it. The comment in SA (not Shermer) was that maybe there was an adverse psychosomatic effect of "am I so sick that they need to call the prayer team?". I'm not sure if that comment was serious or sarcastic, though.

[Gerben42]

How do you think evolution works?, why don't species evolute backwards?.

 

Evolution works like this: Through random mutation and breeding there are minor differences between several animals from a certain group. Some of the differences work beneficial, others detrimental for the goal of making as many copies of the genes as possible. Those of the group with a larger evolutionary success will soon outnumber those without the beneficial difference. This is a continuous process.

 

New species evolve when they get seperated from another group and the differences between the two groups are so large that they can no longer interbreed. It could be that one of the groups is still the "original" but it need not be.

 

Sometimes evolution does go "backwards" but only by going forward. An example are cetaceans (whales, dolphins). After their predecessors roamed the land, they adapted again to sea life. Some forms are optimal for certain lifestyles so often you have species that are completely different but look similar: Convergent evolution. A good example are dolphins and sharks.

 

If you want to know more about how evolution works, check out:

 

"The selfish gene" (Richard Dawkins, 1976). This was his first book and not preaching about god or lack of god or things like that, rather an explanation how to understand evolution.

 

I can hardly see that DNA chain can take in 42 chomosomes all the info of a human body, what I cannot understand is how a simple cell is able to read and interpret it inside itself.

 

46, not 42 :)

 

The short answer is that a cell is not simple. For the complicated answer, ask a biologist. As far as I understand it, it is similar to a Turing machine reading a ticker tape. A string of DNA is a base plan for one or more proteins.

[Fluffy]

My 2 cents upon that:

 

-Praying for someone to heal is an egoist act, like asking for winning lottery so doesn't need to be heard.

 

-Whoever was praying, how do you know he did really pray, and how do you knwo he really believed in what he was praying for?

 

-And how do you know there weren't people praying for the other guys?

[Fluffy]

Evolution works like this: Through random mutation and breeding there are minor differences between several animals from a certain group.

I have my problem with randomness, animals evolute to adapt to habitat changes, why does a bear become white on the pole and not orange?, they evolutie with a purpose, it is not as simple as random.

 

There are also zounds of possible tiny changes that wouldn't make a difference, another teeth, a small horn, and I don't buy that a specie would die for getting a tail or something like that.

[helene_t]

P.S. Some of the worst leaders in history had been atheists: All soviet leaders and Hitler to name just some. So being an atheist does not always make you a good leader.  :)

Whether Hitler and Stalin were religious is disputed. In "The God Delusion", Dawkins discusses this at length, concluding that Hitler probably was religious and Stalin probably not, but since both kept contradicting themselves for opportunistic reasons, we cannot be sure.

 

If there is a difference between the behavior of the average religious ruler and the average atheist ruler, all kind of confounders could explain it. It could be that a ruler who thinks he depended on popular support would pretend to believe in whatever God the majority of his people believes in, while a more arrogant ruler would claim to believe in whatever he wanted his people to believe in. For example, Sadam Husein used to be considered an atheist until the second Gulf war. Then he became a devout muslim.