Religion

I dreamed I was aloft in the heavens. Everywhere I looked I saw the magnificent cosmos, yet when I peered upon myself, I saw nothing. I thought, what am I? The many eyes of God. As I looked I also heard. The multitude of acoustical waves were periodically buzzing like the swarming of birds and insects, vibrating my inner core. What am I? The many ears of God. While I looked and heard I also felt. The interfering electromagnetic waves granted not only my sight, but a sense of hot, cold, and pressure. Again I wondered, what am I? The many hands of God. So the fragrant universe surrounded me. Although I maintained all my senses, there was no breath from my lungs nor beating …

Hello, I'm Andromus This is my personal view, my own perception on the life I'm living, I just wanted to share my thoughts on the matter. If you're looking for a place to administer your faith, to me it would only be logical to place it within yourself and others, and the universe we live in... Not an unfathomable construct of man that's primarily used as an excuse to shed blood. Half of my family is christian, and half of my Grandpa's town prayed for him in his final hours. I am grateful for these loving caring people, but I am sad they are fooled into believing they are required to follow a middle man religion in order to be allowed to place their faith in a high…

Perhaps there is hope for humanism and rational thought.

Dear friends,I am an atheist but I think if god would send a sign I will truly believe in him.All the people here are very good in science so I have to ask a question to you all-Situation 1 - What if you asked God for a sign and said you will believe after it comes to you.You asked it at night and you suddenly find your self in the holy site of Islam - Mecca and you were in suppose London.You can take a thing from that place which would prove that you visited there after again coming back to London. Dont laugh ,I am not mad.What will you conclude?.If you deny then why?.Thank you.

England was the place where newton was born and grew up, when he was born he was a very small baby, his mother said to his father : oh, he will be a little man, he will not be able to defend himself, his father said : No darling, little body great mind! and he was right, newton fought the early church and he won the war, people told him :the church has authorty here Newton there is no palce for scientists here , he said : No , science is the authorty of all time, when he discovered the gravity, the church protested the idea saying : but don't you know that Jesus left earth without undergoing any kind of gravity, he replied you the church do not know religion , I will tea…

Where does the idea of God come from? It is not present and therefore it cannot be understood in order for it to be reproduced, and it has to be made up by something; the question is, what leads us to making up God? For what reasons do we force ourselves to believe in a higher being, specifically 'God', what gave us the impression that God was the correct answer? When we believe in things that are non-existent, purely fictional, is it belief in a perfect universe where this was possible? That would mean that God could be perfection, or the closest that we can get to understanding it. Why omnipotence? What leads us to worship this kind of power (not stupidity)? Isn't it a …

Jesus was almost certainly politically savvy, intelligent and could see the writing on the wall as regards his imminent demise. He’d done his work in terms of getting his message across and like most probably didn't want to die. That message probably reached as many Romans as it did his own people; maybe he formulated a plan, with soldier sympathisers, to go through the motions of crucifixion with a display designed to fool the watchers, then was taken down early and hidden in the cave to escape when the coast was clear. Maybe initially, he was going for a message that didn't include a deity, given his anger at the established religion, but was forced down a road tha…

Imagine being 100 and looking back as if you were 6. You probably have little to no recolection of your life then. As well, when you were 6 society was probably more forgiving of misbehaviors than they would if you were an adult. Hence why we try minors and adults differently for the same type of crimes. At 100 years old, you may or may not consider a 6 year old to be in their infancy compared to your accumulation of life experiences and their accumulation of life experiences. Presuming a God exists and life is eternal,, comparing our 100 year life span to 1000 years, we are all still infants in that relative time frame. Thus If Hell exists, and God is sending people …

The first topic about Islam was closed - as it was quite messy, I decided that it would be better to create a new one in order to discuss Islam's nature in a more orderly manner. I decided to begin this discussion by writing a brief biography of Muhammad. Muslims deny that they worship anyone but Allah but in fact the status of Muhammad approaches that of God. He is viewed as the most perfect human being - to the point that students of Islamic academies learn how he slept, what and how he ate, how he washed himself and on which leg he put the most weight while defecating. Under Sharia criticism of Muhammad is punishable by death. So, if we want to understand the minds o…

This question is for theists.. In most religions, religious texts say we were created in a deity's image. In that case, why did we evolve (It seems like random chance we turned out the way we did, only controlled by the habitat), and why will we keep evolving. If a god created us to be like them, and we evolved to get into the position we currently are, then why are we, and will be evolving, to change that? After all, it says we already are in His image.

Why did Adam and Eve not eat of the tree of life first? Was it because life is not worth living without the knowledge of good and evil? Which tree would you eat from first? Regards DL

Most people would not teach their children to use a scapegoat at school because of the reputation and shame it would give the child. Yet Christians plan on doing that very thing to get themselves into heaven. They call it the sacrifice of Jesus, but regardless, it is still using a scapegoat. Christians have to embrace human sacrifice and the notion that it is good justice to punish the innocent instead of the guilty. Is that a good moral teaching for Christians or not? Regards DL

So, lately I've been spending quite a bit of time on William Lane Craig's Facebook page, and he is always espousing the idea of the universe being caused to come into existence ex nihilo, which is here defined as coming into existence with an efficient cause but no material cause. Now, to me this simply seems incoherent, because I cannot for the life of me think of a single coherent way in which this could logically occur. When we say that, for example, a carpenter causes a table to come into existence, we don't mean that the carpenter literally causally influenced the non-existent table such as to make it come into existence, what we mean is that the carpenter causally i…

To refute the existence of God, I must first define what I mean by God. It seems to me that God, defined in the broadest terms, is simply: the origin of all that exists. I think most theists could agree with this basic definition (with the exception of Mormons, who believe God to have evolved from a human being). It presupposes nothing of God's alleged qualities such as omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. Neither do we presume any attributes to God such as personality, gender, emotions. Having defined God as that which is the origin of existence, we naturally move to our second definition: what is existence? Again, we will go for the broadest definition …

We often ask whether life has meaning, for example, there is a thread in the speculations section that asks whether there is cleverness behind the universes creation. Wisdom gives life meaning, if we are wise then there is a certain action for every reaction, an action that we should employ-- the wisest action, and by employing this action, my life has meaning, for I was meant to follow wisdom. I suppose, to be wise is to know such things as 'thyself', your wife or your environment; things we are consumed by. Is the ultimate wisdom greater than the ultimate intelligence? Do we possess the wisdom to know the extents of this universe? I think we are little in comparison to …

Why Martin Luther's Reformation did not improve the lives of European Christians?

Is Islam really the religion of peace their followers claim it to be? Looking at the daily news contradicts this claim don't you think?

For those of you that don't know, tonight Bill Nye (the Science Guy) debated Ken Ham (YEC guy from the Kentucky 'Museum') on the topic of "Is Creation a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era?". If you missed it, you can watch it here. Basic rundown: 1) Ken Ham failed to actually address the topic of the debate even once in the entire 3 hours. 2) Bill Nye hammered home that Ham's "model" fails to fit the evidence and fails to make predictions. That is, it not only is not a viable model, but it is not a model at all! The most telling part of the debate, imo, was in the Q&A. When asked what would change his mind, Ham stood there for a …

Recently, when looking after my niece and nephew, I had to broach the subject of death. The death of a previous pet goldfish was mentioned and my nephew asked, 'Is he in Heaven now?' Looking into his hopeful eyes, I found myself saying, 'Yes, he is, maybe he is even watching down from Heaven now' - despite the fact that there is no evidence for the existence of Heaven and I suspect the likelihood of its existence to be exceedingly close to zero. Of course, the reason I lied was to provide psychological and emotional comfort, but the question remains - is it morally justifiable to lie to a child in this way and to suppress their critical thinking skills? Is this not the re…

There are so many religions out there....so many Gods... so many "bibles" (i.e. religious texts). Who are you to tell people to believe in what? What gives your "particular religion" the authority to claim ultimate truth? This phenomenon alone supports the idea that religion is merely a man-made entity, arisen from different cultures/geographic areas, and is not the truth. Obviously, one may argue, there is "good" religion, like Christianity, hence you should believe in Christianity. But how can you base the validity / truthfulness of a religion on merely if it's morally good or bad? In psychological experiments, animals are giv…

To begin with, I wasn't sure where to place this, because it is an ethics question, but it addresses religion quite heavily. Faith is not something without place in the world... Hey, wait a minute, don't laugh just yet! Read on for a bit. In any kind of social relationship, faith is necessary for normal functioning. When someone asks you to come over to their house to watch a movie, you have no way of knowing that they don't intend to tie you to the sink and steal your kidneys, so you must take it on faith. In cases like this, faith is what separates 'normal' people from those with certain anxiety disorders. In a more realistic situation, you often have faith tha…

I go to a private high school, and we are reading an awful religious book by C.S. Lewis. My mind hurts when I read it. The teacher loves this book, and she says it represents the basis for Christian morality perfectly, which is why we are being forced to read it. I feel bad for the gullible and "open-minded" people who take what this author has to say seriously. He throws his "factual" premises all around, acting like he as a higher level of thought than atheists or people of other religions, and makes open-ended statements to prove his point. Anyway, the book is riddled with irrational and now incorrent statements, ranging from how organized the universe is, to how p…

for Christianity, there is no doubt that Jesus declared the message of love , for all people , even your enemies , you must not resist an evil person, if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. I wonder why he started saying the right cheek, instead of the left cheek, perhaps, a person will hit you in your right cheek with his left hand, and his left hand is weak (for most people), then turn to him the other one , the right cheek, he will hit you with his right hand which is strong, Jesus was trying to say, if someone hits you weakly by his left hand , enable him o hit you strongly , with his right hand, wow , great teachings, anyway, Jesus n…

Atomic bomb is not the existing theory. If it is existing, the thing has to be equal to God. It means by logical fact, God is absolute truth to be by sentence. God admit us to pray against His creation to work on, and it is love that there is no atomic bomb. Also when God is not for us, that is the end of this world as nothing.

I find myself in a bit of a difficult situation. I live in an area that has lower than average public schools and no secular private schools. I am the parent of a 5 and 6 year old. K and 1st grade. In order for me to feel confident that they are getting a solid education, I have sent them to a private Christian school that has amazing academic scores. I myself absolutely do not believe in the Biblical story of creation. I need some advice on becoming a science teacher when it comes to explaining to children that the rock we live on is more than a few thousand years old. Also, some resources for teaching this in more than just a few conversations here and there. I…