Religion

Any reason on the selection of what to eat and what not to ? Are the animals listed only local fauna on the middle east, not including other 'creations of God' from other continents ? Guinea pigs, crabs, lobster, turkey, clams... are they "unclean" ?

I came across the following posting at another website, a posting that I wished to respond to. An atheist or agnostic would just laugh at this person's thinking. But besides being unscientific it could be exploited by unscrupulous individuals (and perhaps has been) who couple such thinking with the idea that certain individuals (or members of some minority group in the community) spread or are a source of "negative energy". Here is the statement:

SECOND COMING OF CHRIST The blind guides of the "letters" make most people to believe that Christ Jesus shall appear again but very unfortunately the qualities of "Christ" are not perceived by many of them. Christ cannot be perceived unless God blesses the person with "Holy spirit", common sense called SURTI in Punjabi, to do so. You will be unbelievably surprised to know that the second anointed Christ came in India in the name of "NANAK" in1469 and has gone!!! "Christ" stands for the "Royal Priest of our Royal Father God" and in Panjabi, He is called a "SATGURU", the "Spiritual Preacher" or DANDORCHI. So, we call SATGURU NANAK DEVJI as the "Christ Nanak" and His…

Everyone knows that Pascal's Wager is terrible. In fact, Pascal knew it was terrible (that's why he never published it). This video is a clever wager that turns the table on the original. Thoughts? Rebuttals?

I think everyone registered in this forum - or at least any majority - would agree with me if I say that it is almost necessary to develop a definition of "God" and whatever is divine able to include and integrate what is purely scientific. This because a mere religious meaning of God is no longer exhaustive if referred to our contemporary: by now, human societies need a spiritual ideal able to sublime science, art and philosophy into the same "being". In other words, we need to redifine what is divine in order to create a system more comprehensive of everybody's acception of life: simply, the solution is a web of ideas which considers every kind of discipline and integra…

I am a theist & tried to conceive god in various ways. The one way which has satisfied me most is that god is dimensionless point of consciousness & cosmic space is his mind & that universe is a day dream of god.

Today, I'll be attending a debate about whether or not belief in God is reasonable where the Christian in the debate has said: "Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa."-Reasonable Faith p.36 and An open-armed embrace of confirmation bias is by no stretch of the imagination "reasonable". The more I think about it, the more this hurts Craig. The first quote, the one from his "published works" is merely a statement about his personal irrationality. The s…

If we were to take the word God from our currency and coin, what words should we replace it with? I would suggest perhaps the word judgment. Allowing people to take it anyway it works. The two words together though I think are rather important considerations, both on a societal level and on an interpersonal and individual scale. Who or what is the beneficary and who or what is the trustee. Who or what is the judge and who or what is the judged. Trust is a forward looking thing. A promise or a contract Judgment is a backward looking thing, used to decide our next action or inaction. Human judgment, replete with biases, and trust as uncertain as a …

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/03/atheists-find-togetherness-and-ritual-in-londons-new-godless-church/ http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2051730 Atheists going to church...a good idea? What is your opinion? If you are an atheist please state why you would or would not attend church services?

Why, the atheist church, of course! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21319945

I would like to discuss prophecies concerning the second coming and the outcome on the credibility of religion if these prophecies were to come to pass. Here's some relevant information Much of the Bible is dedicated to the theme of the Second Coming. There are over 1500 prophecies of Jesus’ Second Coming recorded in the Bible. For every prophecy of His first coming mentioned in the Old Testament, there are eight predicting His Second Coming. Christ’s return is also mentioned once in every five verses in the New Testament. Jesus discusses the events prior to His Second Coming. He intermingles His warnings about the destruction of Jerusalem with the destruct…

Hi, I am Rameesha,and i am new member here,this is my first post,therefore I hope that I will be welcomed here warmly,and we will discuss this topic in friendly enviornment rather then having troll posts and headache! There are many people who asks about God's exsistance,and where we come from?where shall we go?Is there a heven?Or does HELL exsists?and Who are angles?Do they really exsists?Adam and Eve were really first humans?Islam,Christanity,Jewdisim,hinduism,bhuddism etc Which religion to choose?why to should I choose? I don't trust on anything etc These are the various questions that spins our mind,we are to scared to discuss this,and whenever we try to res…

Hey guys, it has been lately in the news that there has been a group of fundamentalistic muslims in the UK that has harassed people, and tries to lay on the Sharia on people. It is very obvious to me that fundamentalism is not only limited to muslims, but that there are radical jews and christians as well (and from many other religions). All this got me thinking, there are a couple of things I do not understand about fundamentalism (as an atheist) that I do not understand. I've tried googling this topic, but it came up with very little results. First of all could someone explain to me why there are people that are so devouted to their religion, and why they even s…

Is it true that women who have been sexually assaulted are more likely to convert to Islam, given the opportunity, in comparison to someone who wasn't?

So, as I understand it, the current theory on the beginning of the universe is that an extremely small particle that was unimaginably dense suddenly exploded and our universe began expanding correct? If so, where did this particle come from? It had to come from somewhere right? I know, if a God created the universe who created God and who created the being that created God I understand this concept. But, in my speculating(hence the speculations part of the forum), since God created the universe, no one had to create God. I know non-monotheists have a difficult time believing this, but think about it. If a deity created time and space and us, then no one had to create the …

Sweden is a poster child for social justice. How did she get that way? Moral values a mix between those of Nordic Legendary Kings and those of the Bible turned Catholic by Christ, and Catholic turned Protestant by Luther. The current social order is maintained by a mixture of nobility (Weath is not as equally distributed as income) and a democratically elected parliment. The economy controlled by knowledge based large industries, fueled by great scientific minds (The Nobel Prize). I left a lot out, no doubt, the ideas of Marx and those derived from the French Revolution have worked their way into Sweden as well, but the low religiousity of the people, many if not m…

It's been linked by me on this board about ten thousand times on a societal level, religiosity and just about every measure of social health are strikingly inversely correlated. But why is that? A study from last year in Nature may give us a clue. It shows that increasing analytical thinking makes one less likely to be religious. The correlation on a societal scale could all simply be because of higher proportions of educated people in the populations. I guess education really might kill gods.

"Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries." - J. Robert Oppenheimer The allegory of the cave, the metaphor of the Sun and the platonic realism of Plato are indeed true. An intelligible realm indeed exists and the whole Vedic thought is culminated on knowing the different manifested light rays of this intelligible realm and knowing these light rays individually helps us understand how the cosmos works and gives you freedom from the cave. The Secret of the Vedas by Aurobindo

Offering to the Gods: A Neoplatonic Perspective by Edward P. Butler, Independent Scholar. http://henadology.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/offering.pdf Ritual is important for religion as experimental physics is important for physics which means ritual deals with the practical knowledge and methodologies through which religious ideas and beliefs are tested to see whether the beliefs and ideas is in accordance with the nature of reality out there, even though rituals exists in all religions it is explicitly practised and is given much importance in pagan religions and ritual was the only means to achieve oneness with God. The author gives us a perspective of a rit…

If they lose to the 49ers does that mean Ray Lewis is delusional?

Alvin Plantinga is famous for his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, so I decided to turn it on its head. A few probability rules: P(A&B)=P(B&A) P(A&B)=P(A|B)XP(B) Substituting, we get: P(A|B)XP(B)=P(B|A)XP(A) Rearranging, we get: [math]P(A)=\frac{P(A|B){\times}P(B)}{P(B|A)}[/math] Plantinga tells us that if unguided evolution were true, then it is very probable that our ability to naturally come to true beliefs is unreliable. That is, P(T|U) is very very close to 1 (Plantinga wants it to be as close to 1 as possible if not 1). It is, however, a fact that our ability to naturally come to true beliefs is unreliable. Our logical and probabilistic in…

Is God a living being or something entirely different?

Who gets to decide what the "proper use" of religion is? Who gets to determine what the "proper interpretation" of religious texts is?

A comment in another thread: Wanted to comment on this without hijacking the thread in which it appeared From the second link: One theory is that religion plays a more functional role in the world's poorest countries, helping many residents cope with a daily struggle to provide for themselves and their families. I think that's true. If your life is hard, you can lean on religion and the thought that a better life awaits you.

Hi, I have a simple question. I am an atheist who believes in absolute morality. This event was immoral because it offended the harm-based moral ethic system, the only ethic system. I haven't had much luck with intelligent conversations on the issue so I'll ask here (bad idea maybe). If Any of the many gods that were said to have exist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_religion ) existed, why did they not stop the children from being slain? This is one isolated incident, I know. When I was a theist, I hardly remember asking questions about deity intervention as I was told that it was wrong but as an atheist that is all I ask. If it's free will that killed the …