RRC Archives

Buddhism is based on living in the present- past and future hold nothing for anyone quite like science, when past accepted science is proven to be incorrect it loses its relevance to the present... it can be hard for scientists to have faith in something other than science since they realize they may well find the basis for their faith (acceptance) in scientific doctrine may well be folly. I'm not getting all sharia law here and wanting to return to the 6th century like your boy Osama because I appreciate the magnificent strides science has afforded us but saying science can refute the existence of God is not sound doctrine to me anyway because tomorrow your very basis could be proven to have been inaccurate. I am the light and the truth bitches, sayeth the Lord

so if I greet you with "what up dawg"...am I a racist?

religion must still be relevant. the most powerful folks in our country running for president still feel its pull, and the need to address its place. if it weren't relevant, then they'd skip the discussion.

but you did hit the nail on the head...religion has been just as much a force for good as it has for evil. but no more than the common man off the street. wasn't MLK a rather relgious man? and I dare say he did a WORLD of good with his faith. it is so easy to pick out the bad apple and say "haw, I told you so...religious people are a bunch of fakes." yet we ignore the preacher working inner city missions, the lady gathering clothes for the homeless, the unsung mother teresa's, the person who believes (right or wrong) that faith in God keeps them from being an alcoholic, etc....faith evolves, just like our scientific discoveries. I can embrace both and still sleep at night.

it's the old adage....if you "hate" religious folks, then you have not truly resolved your internal issues with faith. truly not caring and not being offended by it is possibly the best place you could ever be. if you don't believe, I can only wish that for any of you.

caribe, those are painstakingly unnerving realities I'd never noticed before.

News Flash, people suck.

I can assure you my Grandma would have been happy to have you over for dinner. She was special in that even though there are many evil lessons in the world, she remained a kind person. My bro in law is a slant-eyed chinese immigrant, and even though she was 90 when she met him she still loved his yellow ass.

That said, I will not defend my personal faith (such that it is) to anyone. None of you have to pay rent on my existence. I don't have it figured out any better than any of you and (with some notable exceptions) I seriously doubt any of you have it figured out any better than I. Passing judgment on people for their beliefs is not too terribly different than passing judgment on people because of their lack of belief is it?

Lumping people together because of a label is prejudicial, biased, and simpleminded. Color of skin, tenor of belief, sexual preference*........ they are all prejudices and I think it's more often than not a hypocritical argument.

That is the point I'm trying to make.

*of course this does not include sports denominations.

Thanks Pigsteak, faith evolves, nice concept, looking outward Darwin discovered that species thrived when certain traits were present and diminished when those traits were not passed, faith evolves from an inward look see, it would be interesting to know what traits favor the evolution of faith, strife, tragedy, or is faith not a byproduct at all but a different entity altogether.

There is no way for experimentation to rule out a god or gods. Experiments have removed god(s) from mountain tops and have modified our concept of heaven; even though when most people think about heaven they look up ... no matter where on the planet they are. Gods have certainly retreated to experimentation. The weather is much less an act of god today than it used to be. The god of thunder has died in light of lightening explained as static electricity. In fact, in our society the only god(s) still breathing are the god(s) of WTF, he, she, it or them come out when we are faced with questions about how did all this get here?

A good barometer for the god concept is to consider it a theory. This god theory existed when flatulence was a demon escaping from our body, good to do but please wait until I am not around. The god theory was coexistent with throwing salt over ones left shoulder so it flies in the face of the devil. There are many more examples that mark a retreat from the metaphysical. Science correlates x to y, the items that do not correlate are being pushed out of our worldview. We, collectively, are losing our religion -- there was a time ~ 1850 when I could go to jail in KY for just talking against god. Thank god that these days are gone... wait that is not the entity to thank.

Losing my Religion by REM, a song about Aids, I personally like the older stuff like Superman which was actually a cover for them- when I think of the 1850's and that era its seems conflict was more based on nationalism and expansion than the religion based conflicts raging currently I couldn't follow the other stuff

Charlie: good to hear. I am not and no else is asking you to justify your worldview.

Pigsteak: I am not even all that American, but besides that, racism is not the point. MLK did great work. He was eloquent. Because his society was structured around church he was able to mobilize a lot of people against institutionalized injustice. He worked within his paradigm. He was a hero. His enemies were largely other people who characterized themselves as Christians-- he stated this many times. We inherited Christianity from these people who were largely racists. This means that religion is less relevant to social injustice, the issue then at hand.

I'm sorry I reread, you make the case that religion is being confined to the argument between creationists and say Big Bang theory adherents as science is able to explain some elementary physical processes- dig it but faith evolves and like Buddism does not concern itself with yesterday- would an explaination of time back to one second after the Big Bang dispprove God? would it prove God's existence? Faith by its nature is irrational but some of the developments of natural selection are not discernible to the present generation of naturalists and as such could well defy rational explainations- perhaps man is not God, is that more than science can handle?

pigsteak wrote:religion must still be relevant. the most powerful folks in our country running for president still feel its pull, and the need to address its place. if it weren't relevant, then they'd skip the discussion.

People running for office and waving the cross do so to get votes from the right. A major problem before us is world population and its impact on resource usage, pollution, global warming, biodiversity, etc. the church lot are not going to be inclined to tackle this one in light of the edict to 'be fruitful and multiply'

There will never be anything wrong and when there is we are at the end of times as predicted by Revelations. Take a look back at the mind set of the Regan-era politicos --scary. Their worldviews were not relevant to our modern problems, neither is 90% of the bible and the god theory.

Remove God and you have Africa then?