The Black Vault

orangetom1999 wrote:

You know...khanster ...now that I re think it....how would you define a demi-god?? That should be a good place to start.

A demi-god is a being of limited power that requires worship from weaker beings.

The ultimate God is an unlimited Being that requires nothing of its creation. In fact, the ultimate God is invisible and unknowable. Such is the nature of the absolute infinite.

Here are some historical cases of human beings killing and slaughtering in the name of the Biblical God and other demi-gods...

http://blogs.usd.edu/anai/entry/the_cat ... nst_native

For fairness, the Catholic Church is not the only organized religion to prey like wolves upon its own flock and spread misery and suffering across the face of the Earth. The Protestants, fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Hindus, Evangelical Christians, Mormons - LDS, Jehovah Witnesses, Gideons and many other fundamentalist religious factions of all faiths have all committed their share of crimes and atrocities against humanity. The Catholic Church is simply the first large world organized religious faction to finally confess and admit their genocidal crimes against humanity and ask for forgiveness. But first - we must thoroughly explore and understand and explore what terrible crimes they are genuinely guilty of - then - perhaps - we can find a way to come to terms with those awful crimes and possibly consider forgiving the Church and keep a vigilant eye upon them to insure they do not fall back into their naturally evil tendencies.

If there is a god of the universe, he is unknowable and not limited by the laws of physics as we know them. Christians believe that god is infinite, all powerful and unknowable. Those 2 sentences seem compatible. But I would be careful in assigning blame for history's atrocities to religion because in reality it was certain individuals and groups who were corrupting religious organizations who did that (much like today). You have to separate a religion from its organizations. Otherwise you're limiting yourself to 1-dimensional thinking and you miss the point.

Science has theories of perpetual cyclic universes, multi-verses, infinite separate timelines and non-existence. That's a whole lot kookier than religion. I'm not saying to choose religion over science though, just making a point.

As far as intelligent design goes it seems to me its as if the purpose of the universe is to create life, as if it was inevitable, not an accident. As part of that, Mother Nature seeks to create and maintain a balance and anytime anything gets out of balance, MN alters something to bring it back into balance (e.g. Weather). Works with global climate change. I think its possible the global climate change crowd may have made a terrible mistake. They failed to take into account that MN created humans just like it created everything else and everything humans do was expected by MN, including the things that WE think are bad, like detonating nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, which creates a lot of dust and blocks out the sun which cools the planet. All according to plan. Some folks come along and wave their magic wand and declare things good or bad. How do they know? It could be that when we went on this anti-pollution binge in the 1970's we confused MN which is now trying to catch up. However, I reserve the right be wrong.

But why does this balance need to exist? Who made that rule? The universe began with a huge imbalance (zero entropy). Seems highly unlikely that MN created the imbalance. So who or what did?

Balance is merely a condition of equilibrium.

Harmony and dissonance play complementary roles in the great cycle of being.

Where I live, as far as you can drive in a day, there is a church within 1 square mile, at least 1. That's how popular religion is. But apply that to science. There are 0 churches of science per square mile. Religion is far more popular than science because religion provides at least some of the WHY the universe exists. And with religion comes intelligent design. It seems like the question of intelligent design has already been resolved by our civilization.

No one ever says, "quick, I need to get to the church of science".

Actually CodeBlack, religion has not just given us a "why", religion has given us hundreds of different "whys", most of which are contradictory, and unfalsifiable, and we do not know which of those "whys", if any, are even remotely true.

Providing a "why" is only useful if the "why" explanation is demonstrated to be correct, and without solid evidence we don't know whether it is. Otherwise, I could just say the Universe was crapped out of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's ass because he ate a bad burrito the previous night. That's a "why" explanation, but without some evidence that it's actually true, it's just me pulling an explanation out of thin air and is effectively useless.

So when people say "religion gives us the why", they're fooling you, because it doesn't, it just gives us "a why", and that's an important difference.

Science gives us plenty of "why" answers, though, contrary to popular belief, we know "why" things fall (because of gravity), for example, among a billion of other "why" answers science has provided. It has not solved the big "why" of existence yet, but give it time, if it is possible to provide a why it can only come from science, not religiously fuelled guessing.

As for your other statement about the kookiness of many things in science, that is true, much of what we find in this Universe could be considered very kooky, just look at quantum physics, but these kooky things have been proved to be real, or at the very least have promising evidence in their favour, that's more than can be said for anything that comes from religion.

No one ever says, "quick, I need to get to the church of science".

Let's hope it stays that way. Science has no use for churches.

People often say "quick, I need to get to a hospital" though, or "quick, I need to get somewhere fast", and in both cases, you would be going to places and using things made possible through science.

Are you saying churches and religion are for answering only scientific questions?

Science gives us plenty of "why" answers, though, contrary to popular belief, we know "why" things fall (because of gravity),

I am not against science..as science has put us in better clothes, better cars, better foods, better water sources, etc etc et al..

but..gravity??




The Religious Affiliation of Influential Scientist
Isaac Newton

http://www.adherents.com/people/pn/Isaac_Newton.html

and

Issac Newton On Religion

http://www.enlighteningscience.sussex.a ... n_religion

and

Isaac Newton's religious views

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_New ... ious_views


This is an arena pretty much avoided by those who desire to give no credence to the Word or the God of the Word...while promoting science as the new religion to follow and in which to find faith.

Sir Issac Newton is not the only person someone does not want us to know about in this Light.


Thanks,
Orangetom

Your point is what, exactly?

The beauty of science is, anyone can do it, whether Christian, Buddhist, Atheist, it does not matter, as long as the evidence supports your theory. I don't recall anyone trying to suppress Newton's religious views either

humphreys wrote:Your point is what, exactly?

The beauty of science is, anyone can do it, whether Christian, Buddhist, Atheist, it does not matter, as long as the evidence supports your theory. I don't recall anyone trying to suppress Newton's religious views either

Who ever said religions suppress science? There is not a country on earth that does not pursue science for the betterment of humans, from space exploration, energy production, and medicine. Its only the atheists who have the affront against religions, and seek to suppress those beliefs.