RRC Archives

With all the stuff written down by the Apostles, you dont think anyone would have written down how the T-Rex started eating everyone when Adam ate the Apple???

gunslnga wrote:With all the stuff written down by the Apostles, you dont think anyone would have written down how the T-Rex started eating everyone when Adam ate the Apple???

hahaha

ElectricDisciple wrote:why are you people so intolerant of others' views?

Because it is not a fucking view!! It is called a lack of science classes and brainwashing by parents and religious elders. It is as dumb as parents wanting their children to be taught the world is flat, the center of solar system, and universe. Maybe if they pray harder all of the science books will disappear so their children will bot be swayed by elitist scientists.

GPS is the work of Satan, it's just that simple. Through a long chain of ideas I have come to that realization - unless, of course, the Bible isn't 'literally true'. Did you ever wonder why Europeans thought that you could sail off the edge of the earth? Because of the Bible. It's pretty clear that the 'world' (landmass, aka 'the firmament') is a circle in the middle of the oceans. (for centuries, European map makers had to try to warp the known world into a circle on world maps because, well, that's what the Bible says God created.) Here's a pretty example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:FraMauroMap.jpg

Remember - it isn't a circle because the earth is 'round'/spherical (lie!) it's a circle because that's what the Bible says.

It's totally unambiguous. The languages in which various parts of the Bible were written had ways of describing three dimensional spheres and two dimensional circles, and the words in the Bible describe a two-dimensional shape. Full stop.

As a result, the world is flat. Satellites can not orbit something flat. Satellites don't exist. (Also, the 'earth' doesn't orbit the Sun, of course) Obviously, GPS doesn't actually work, and is the work of Satan.

Any objections to this reasoning?

ElectricDisciple wrote:why are you people so intolerant of others' views?

Personally, I know Christians who read the Bible and 'believe' it intensely. But they don't confuse these stories of God's love with tangible reality. The biggest fundamentalist I know is a physicist and isn't about to claim that the earth was literally created 6,000 years ago. He'll out dogmatize and evangelize anyone on this board, given the chance, but he knows that people and dinosaurs didn't exist at the same time.

Almost more importantly, they don't try to force it down anyone's throat. They don't try to hijack our school system to present their faith-tradition's creation myth as somehow competing with science.

The theory of evolution is the root from which our treatments for deadly, horrible diseases like cancer and AIDS have been developed.

I have a question for people who support the world-view that evolution isn't happening and that the earth is only about 6,000 years old: Obviously we use oil, natural gas and coal all the time. It exists. Science says that it's many millions of years old biomass. Young Earth Creationists claim that isn't possible, and perhaps the oil and gas comes from the 'great flood'. Science uses evolution and geology to predict where to drill or dig to find these things - not perfectly, but more or less usefully. So, if 'the truth' is that the earth is only about 6,000 years old, how would a Creationist do a better job of locating oil, gas and coal than the 'false' theories of science allow us to do currently?

ElectricDisciple, I don't expect you to answer the above question (although, it would be interesting to hear someone attempt it). But I would like you to explain why you immediately lept to an assumption that criticism of this 'museum' which presents a factually false premise as 'real' is inherently 'intolerance'?

pigsteak wrote:here is a more concrete example for you..Chris Sharma is a practicing and very devout....(fill in the blank if you know)...anyone on here calling him a flake for his stupid, dark age beliefs? why not? oh, because he has a cute smile, can crank 5.14 in flip flops, likes a bit of weed, and promises to never down grade your project.

On the one hand, I think that Sharma is a practicing Buddhist*, but I don't know which variety.

Anyway, back to your point: I saw Dosage IV, and in part of it, Sharma is picking at the wax from some burnt-down candles mubling something about predicting the future from the drippings. Hogwash! (I suspect he was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but for argument's sake, I'll take him way too seriously)

What a load of crap!

There - someone was critical of (part of) Sharma's beliefs.

(* Note that I said practicing, not believing. That's a pretty critical split between religions like Buddhism and ones like Christianity and Islam. One set emphasizes practice and the other is based on belief. On a thread here, someone said that in order to be a Christian, you have to believe X, Y and Z. (Interestingly, I don't think that Jesus came up with that list, but I digress during my digression). You don't have to actually do anything like give up your worldly possessions and serve the poor, according to this common definition of Christianity - you just have to profess certain beliefs. Buddhism, in contrast is all about practice - action - all the time, every day of your life, not just Sunday.

Is one good and the other bad? Who can say. Ironically, though it seems like the religions that are all about believing one thing or another and not much about action seem to get into wars all the time over those abstract beliefs, while I can't think of a single Buddhist war of religion, which is strange for a religion which is all about doing things. (And yes, I know that Zen is pretty internalized - I'm talking about mainstream Buddhism. And, no, the Japanese in WWII were largely going on a nationalist version of Shinto, not so much Buddhism. Not that us foreign savages could appreciate Shinto if we tried, so they sure weren't out to convert the world at gunpoint.))

It seems to me they're having a crisis of faith in their scramble to justify it with science. Faith is a hard sell and this is what you do when you don't have a grasp of it.

Unfortunately, it's going to be another hit on KY's terrible record of turning out educated students. I don't see a good reason to tolerate it, they're goal is to influence policy. They are not innocently ministering to their followers.

tomdarch wrote:He'll out dogmatize and evangelize anyone on this board, given the chance

Well, give him the chance! It'll give Alan something to gnaw on for a little while.

Way to keep track of all those parentheses and closing them, Tom. You make the programmer in me very proud.

Cognitive Dissonance

the only problem with religious debates is how angry people get. Its hard not to appear to be condescending towards ones religion when you are explaining why you don't believe in their views. I guess by the nature of the conversation you are essentially explaining why you think they are wrong. Most people don't take being told they are wrong very well.