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Atheism (pg. 3)
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| Kevin |
If there is one fact i have learned over my short life of 20 years, is that humankind cannot confirm or deny the existence of a higher, or supreme being responsible for our conscious existence. Therefore i choose to be an agnostic with the situation. I do not know if there is a higher being therefore i choose not to devote my thoughts, or life to one. I also do not condemn those who choose to believe. I belive man will NEVER know why we exist the way we do, or what the purpose or end result is of the perpetual re-creation of DNA that seems to rule all life.
As far as the afterlife goes, i believe that the last thought of your conscious brain is where you remain for all eternity after your death.
I know it seems strange to say this, but i have seen this end, i have felt it.
But there's no point in worrying about it all because the greatness of life exists in the here and now!
Kevin |
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| AnotherWay83 |
ok the thing that struck me most abt all these posts is that MANY of u'll perceive religion as something created and given to man by God...so if you don't follow a religion, you are an atheist...
that is NOT true...religion is entirely man-made...God is NOT...
and God is not just a concept, pls. remember that...
i for one believe in God, but don't follow any religion
if u're an atheist then none of this will even matter..
peace |
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| hypronix |
I don't believe in the with "I don't believe cuz it's easier". not an argument.
neither in the one with "I believe because it's the right thing to do". same problem.
I guess there R two types of atheists. the ones that don't believe in God and the ones that don't believe in a religion. I myself don't find any religion as being perfect... and that's just because is man-made (as some1 was also pointing) and from this religion is just a way to control people, to try and prevent them from doing too much evil... although religion itself was the cause of many evil acts in history.
I believe in God though. As a form of energy, something outhere, even if impossible to touch, to see, yet so simple to feel... God is the 5th element, THAT which U feel at all times... evry1 feels it, just U don't realize. So I've made my own religion (hardly named like that), from an analysis of existing religions and taboos
but too many are atheists just because they want to be different by this mean... so stupid! |
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| torontotrance |
| Ok, i'm a Christian (basically means, i believe there is a God who created the World in six days and rested on the the 7th day.) I also believe the Bible has NO errors in it. I have never had an error proved to me and it will never happen that someone finds an error, and also the bible speaks for itself. This is just my personal opinion. I'm kinda different from other christians in a couple ways, a)I don't force my beliefs on others b)i'm not out converting the world. I bet some of you ppl are peeved off at Christians cause some ppl forced the Christian Beliefs down your throat. I always view it like taking food, if something is forced down, you either a)throw it up b)you end up with a upset stomach. Personally i view evolution as a theory that keeps changing to fit the circumstances. Here are my reasons for not believing the view of evolution. 1)the world is just too complex to happen by chance, our bodies are perfect examples of it cause it is sooooooo complicated, that i believed that a Higher Being ie. God created us. 2)The so called fossil theory, we have old fossils but we seem to have a gap in the theory and it has never been found and never been explained. Also if we decended from monkeys and stuff, would'nt there be fossil in the process of changing like humans with monkey tails and stuff. 3)I also have found that the laws of physics go against evolution. Evolution believes we are going for disorder to order and christianity believes it goes from order to disorder. Now the 2nd law of theromodynamics (law of physics that governs most laws and stuff), that in a closed system that everything winds down, it simply means that the evolution's theory goes against this law. So it means the sun is losing energy, not gaining and also same thing with our bodies, our bodies go from order to disorder. I could list more and more reasons but i'm exhausted from school and i like to keep things brief. I'm sure you ppl have arguments against it, i would be happy to hear what you guys have to say. It's always interesting with things like this. Oh and i do apologize for ppl from my religion trying to shove it down your throats, ppl should learn not to pressure ppl cause if you do, i view that people have to make their own decisions on their own time with a clear mind cause then whatever they decide, they mean it. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. |
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| InsomnEac |
| quote: | | The so called fossil theory, we have old fossils but we seem to have a gap in the theory and it has never been found and never been explained. Also if we decended from monkeys and stuff, would'nt there be fossil in the process of changing like humans with monkey tails and stuff. |
hehehe, so you think there is more proof/evidence that god created humans than the evolutionary theory? ok so there is a missing link in one part of the chain, but there are still fossils of species like cromagnons, homo-habilis, homo-erectus etc., did god create these before he created homo-sapiens? or did he put them on the earth at the same time? no, because carbon-dating places these at different times in pre-history. they were around long before any fossil record of homo-sapiens, its been a few years since anthropology classes, so i forget the dates, but there are millions of years of fossil record, each with different stages of our evolution. how do you explain the fact that animals adapt to their surrondings to be best suited to them? because they do, there is proff over the last few hundred years since we've been studying this stuff. thats simlpy what we have done over millions and millions of years. we are changing every moment with every mutating gene. i dont understand how someone could so easily reject this theory. desended from monkeys, lol, if you've studied anthropology at all, you would know that it doesnt work like that. way back there was a divergence in a species, one branch evolved into certain types of primates, and another branch evolved into another type of primates. each group then split into more and more different species. do you know we are 98% genetically the same as chimpanzees? anyway man, you have your beliefs, i have mine, i'll stop typing cos im tired.
| quote: | | I also believe the Bible has NO errors in it. I have never had an error proved to me and it will never happen that someone finds an error |
i dont understand this attitude...a 2000 year old book that has been translated and transcribed so many times, and theres no possibility of errors?
dont get offended man, im not trying to put you down, i just disagree.
peace
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| Izzy |
| quote: | Originally posted by torontotrance
I also believe the Bible has NO errors in it. I have never had an error proved to me and it will never happen that someone finds an error, and also the bible speaks for itself |
im with Insomneac....
just as the last case i brought up ( thanks for the support Miss P :) ) this is another example of closed mindedness.... it seems that you are bound to your belief that the whole purpose of arguing is meanless because you define something as perfect. keep an open mind, maybe there are some errors, dont go by what someone (in this case god) said in a book (the bible).
plus as insomneac said the bible has been translated so many times... i mean the first language that it was written in was hebrew (at least the old testament). and i had teachers actually point out differences in the hebrew compared to the english.
i dont know, it just makes me mad when i see someone so closed minded... sorry |
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| Daffer |
| I do believe that there is someone or something out there much greater than us. but I do not believe in religions, I've tried to understand and see some of them but I haven't been convinced (respect to all religions). so answering directly YES. |
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| Renegade |
Okay then, this is directed at Torontotrance and anyone else who disagrees with the theory of evolution.
It never fails to piss me off: the amount of people who just don't understand what evolution involves. Just on what was said here:
| quote: | | Personally i view evolution as a theory that keeps changing to fit the circumstances. Here are my reasons for not believing the view of evolution. 1)the world is just too complex to happen by chance, our bodies are perfect examples of it cause it is sooooooo complicated, that i believed that a Higher Being ie. God created us. 2)The so called fossil theory, we have old fossils but we seem to have a gap in the theory and it has never been found and never been explained. Also if we decended from monkeys and stuff, would'nt there be fossil in the process of changing like humans with monkey tails and stuff. 3)I also have found that the laws of physics go against evolution. Evolution believes we are going for disorder to order and christianity believes it goes from order to disorder. Now the 2nd law of theromodynamics (law of physics that governs most laws and stuff), that in a closed system that everything winds down, it simply means that the evolution's theory goes against this law. So it means the sun is losing energy, not gaining and also same thing with our bodies, our bodies go from order to disorder. |
I'm sorry Torontotrance, but this sounds like the kind of bull spouted and regurgitated by 7 Day Creationists world-wide. All the arguments are the same and they're all wrong.
Personally i view evolution as a theory that keeps changing to fit the circumstances.
Firstly, the theory of evolution and natural selection is unique in scientific theories, in that the fundamental principles behind it haven't changed much over the past 150 odd years since Charles Darwin devised it. Secondly, the nature of science is that theories should be revised and updated to make them compatible with new evidence that contradicts any part of the existing theory: this is good science. So, if paleontologists dug up evidence tomorrow that rendered the old theory of evolution wrong, scientists would have no problems embracing the new theory. That's what science is.
Religion on the other hand involves closing your eyes, placing your fingers in your ears and pretending that all the evidence supports your point of view, refusing to change your position regardless of how much evidence appears to contradict it. Scientists don't say that the theory of evolution is correct just to protect their reputations or so they can hang on to their beliefs or anything like that, they say that the theory of evolution is correct because it is the best theory we currently have to explain the evidence we have.
1)the world is just too complex to happen by chance, our bodies are perfect examples of it cause it is sooooooo complicated, that i believed that a Higher Being ie. God created us.
Too complex? How exactly?
We can point to any piece of our anatomy, and I could point out approximately when, down our on our millions and billions of years of evolutionary ancestory, we inherited these traits from. The cells which make up our body first came into existence some 3 - 3.5 billion years ago. Obviously they've changed a lot since then, but if those original cells had been even slightly different, we wouldn't be here having this conversation right now. Our skeletal structure and the structure of our internal organs haven't changed much since fish evolved such structures some 500-600 millions years ago. It took some 2 billion years for this anatomy to evolve, a very long time. More than long enough to evolve these "complexities" you talk about. And think that it took some 600 million years for fish to evolve into modern-day homo-sapiens. All vertabrates share incredibly similar structures. You can look at the skeletons of any vertabrate animal and identify: a backbone, a skull, ribs, any limbs - all vertabrate animals are remarkably similar. Then think of how similar the organs are: brians, hearts, stomachs, lungs - we can trace all these qualities, in all vertabrate animals, back to fish. If god did create all animals on the same day, why would he have bothered to make them so similar? And if man is so special and different to all other animals that god decided to create us on a different day, seperate from the animals, why are we animals ourselves? Why are we, biologically, indistinguishable from most vertabrates? Why is our DNA 98% identical to chimpanzees and some 54% identical to wheat plants? The answer, of course, is that he didn't create us, all life on Earth evolved from the same place.
2)The so called fossil theory, we have old fossils but we seem to have a gap in the theory and it has never been found and never been explained. Also if we decended from monkeys and stuff, would'nt there be fossil in the process of changing like humans with monkey tails and stuff.
This is another falsity being spread by wishful thinking creationists. Considering how rare fossilisation of land-animals is, and how such a small percentage of those fossils are accessible (i.e. not buried under several hundered meters of rock) it's remarkable that we do have such a complete evolutionary tree.
Would you mind telling me where the fossil gaps lie? For every major evolutionary step, we do have a transition specimen, that has intermediate qualities. Now I'm not going to dig out my old school books and tell you the complete evolutionary tree of animalia, or, more specifically, of homonids, but pick up any book on evolution and they'll be able to tell you exactly when these evolutionary transitions were made, and the fossil evidence they have to support it.
So, again, would you mind telling me exactly where these supposed evolutionary gaps exist?
3)I also have found that the laws of physics go against evolution. Evolution believes we are going for disorder to order and christianity believes it goes from order to disorder. Now the 2nd law of theromodynamics (law of physics that governs most laws and stuff), that in a closed system that everything winds down, it simply means that the evolution's theory goes against this law. So it means the sun is losing energy, not gaining and also same thing with our bodies, our bodies go from order to disorder.
I think, with the exception of the theory of evolution, Newton's second law of thermodynamics would have to be the most misunderstood scientific theory on the planet.
Look carefully at what you just wrote. Within any closed system the overall energy within will either decrease or remain constant, and entropy (disorder) will generally increase. The point, though, is that the Earth, in itself, is not a closed system as it is constantly receiving new energy from the sun. Obviously if the sun weren't there, then life could have never come about, because the Earth would then be a closed system, without the energy to allow order to spring from disorder. But, as the Earth is involved in an open system with our sun, the emergance of life in no way contradicts the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Now the solar system is a closed system, so obviously, over time, disorder will increase, energy will be lost. The sun is, second by second, dying. In a few billion years it will disipate, and the Earth will no longer be able to sustain life, but until then, the fact that Earth has supported the evolution of life in no way contradicts this law.
Now I know that nothing I can say will make you change your mind, torontotrance, but if you must attack theories that contradict your point of view, at least make sure that they're accurate. Otherwise I shall be forced to shove something long and pointy up your backside. :D |
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| Izzy |
^^^ wow that was an interesting read.
i'd like to see what kind of response torontotrance will have |
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| randal |
Here is a collection of quotes I've collected on this subject..
"I contend that we are both atheists, I simply believe in one less god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you'll understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen Roberts
"God made me an atheist, who are you to question His wisdom?"
"If you love someone, you don't want them to suffer.
You want to take their suffering on yourself.
If even I feel this way,
why doesn't God?" - T.S. elliot
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. --Thomas Jefferson, (letter to Rev. James Madison, July 19, 1788)
When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. --Abraham Lincoln
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. --Albert Einstein, _The Human Side_, 1954
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. --Albert Einstein, _The Human Side_, 1954
Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with insubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control the world? --Euripides, Hecuba
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. --Bertrand Russell
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. --Thomas Paine
No miracle has ever taken place under conditions science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe them. --Ernest Renan
In view of the stupidity of the majority of the people, a widely held opinion is more likely to be foolish than sensible. --Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals
Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish. --Timothy Jones |
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| InsomnEac |
good job randal :D
those are some great quotes, right on target.
where did you find all those?
:cool: |
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| randal |
| quote: | Originally posted by InsomnEac
good job randal :D
those are some great quotes, right on target.
where did you find all those?
:cool: |
thanks, I've just been collecting them from different websites throughout the years... I always collect quotes on whatever subject if I like them. |
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