Questioning Religion

[ledhed]

We need to get a Hindu a Muslem and a Budist invoved along with some Jews and Coptics etc.
How many different religions are there any way. do they all claim to be the right one ? do they all claim to have thier Gods or Gods mandate ? Do they all claim the others to be followed by heritics , infidels and other forms of unbelievers who will sufer Gods wrath ?
why"s God so pissed off any way ? Why be so wrathfull ? Why do all of the religions have the feel of something man ceated ?
If you study the history of religion why does it make you less inclined to believe any of it ?

 

[Famine]

Out of interest, SuperCobraJet et al., what's your stance on the use of Ouija Boards?

 

[Ten]

Comparing the hethens to dogs huh? So I'm a dog now? Nice.

Not in that context, no. Sorry for the misunderstanding. What I meant was that there are some that just can't be "reached". Don't forget my stance in this whole thing, danoff. I just don't see how he can be selectively adamant about who he preaches to. Is it any less important that his dog prays than if I do?

 

[Ev0]

Out of interest, SuperCobraJet et al., what's your stance on the use of Ouija Boards?

To tell you the truth, this is one of the few things keeping me from becoming a full fledged atheist. My dad has had some incredible experiences using these. It predicted the name of a hockey team he would play for 10-15 years before the team even existed!

Since there are some things like Ouijia boards (and other supernatural occurences) that science has yet to explain, it leads me to believe that perhaps there could be some sort of higher power at work.

 

[Bocha]

Originally Posted by SuperCobraJet
I don't think you know what a theory is. A theory is just that, speculation, unproved assumption,conjecture, hypothetical. In short someone or someones opinion based on their judgement. It is not a provable or conclusive fact.

Then, God is theory, and is a very very weak one.
You can't support your theory only in just believe.

 

[SuperCobraJet]

Ummm.... Huh?



Please explain cancer.

I mean with regaurd to reproduction.

 

[Famine]

Genetics can be manipulated, but someone has to do it. It doesn't happen on its own.

Please explain cancer.

I mean with regaurd to reproduction.

Ummmmmm.... huh wha huh?

Gametes - eggs and sperm to you and I - are the product of "meiosis", or "reduction division". The chromatids cross over and swap parts of themselves by entirely natural processes, with the result that no two eggs - or no two sperm - have the same genetic complement. And bearing in mind you fire out 3,000,000 of them each time, that's SOME variation.

Would you kindly tell me what you're talking about with "Genetics can be manipulated, but someone has to do it. It doesn't happen on its own." because it is patently nonsense in any context.

 

[KieranMurphy]

Please explain cancer.

Never mind cancer, explain the six legged cow!


KM.

 

[SuperCobraJet]

And if we were created by god, who created him? Or did he just *poof* and was given all mighty power by some unknown entity? If something can come from nothing (which we "know" or have popularily determined to within an extremely high probability), then why hasn't more than one god been created (if god is real anyway)? .

I want to touch on this again. These questions only exist because of your exsistence and if anything help proof that you are, as to opposed to negating it.
Likewise for the above question which does not negate, that something is.

 

[SuperCobraJet]

Ummmmmm.... huh wha huh?

Gametes - eggs and sperm to you and I - are the product of "meiosis", or "reduction division". The chromatids cross over and swap parts of themselves by entirely natural processes, with the result that no two eggs - or no two sperm - have the same genetic complement. And bearing in mind you fire out 3,000,000 of them each time, that's SOME variation.

Would you kindly tell me what you're talking about with "Genetics can be manipulated, but someone has to do it. It doesn't happen on its own." because it is patently nonsense in any context.

Oh is it. The chromatoids aside, you will still get a dog when you breed dogs, corn when you breed corn, so on and so forth.

 

[SuperCobraJet]

Out of interest, SuperCobraJet et al., what's your stance on the use of Ouija Boards?

You have it on your signature.

Sorry if I'm multi posting, I have to catch as catch can.

 

[SuperCobraJet]

How can you say that considering you don't know what he really said or whether he really existed. You take the bible as absolute truth but question science as though it were all a big lie. How about redirecting that scepticism at the bible?..

I did not take it(Bible) originally as absolute truth, but yet I could recognize that it contained many truths, as well as claims, promises,and declarations not found in any other resource.

You're proving yourself to be a waste of my time. I'm surprised that you're too dense to realize what I'm talking about. PS had no trouble following me..

Thats pretty rich, coming from a guy who doesn't even know he exsists.

I can't know if you exist because I can't know if I'm imagining everything I experience. I can't know if it's real or a hallucination, perhaps I'm in a matrix like world. So my perception of you typing on and on about Jesus and salvation could be totally fake - and so that is not sufficient to prove to me that you exist...

Call your Boss and tell him he doesn't really exsist. Or your job, or your paycheck.

That's completely irrelevant. You said you question everything. Then you said that you don't question the things you know the answers to. Those two things are contradictory. You should have said "I question everything except what I know that answers to". But then I'm doing your job for you... If you'd said that I would have picked it apart anyway....

Which comes first, the question or the answer?

 

[Danoff]

Thats pretty rich, coming from a guy who doesn't even know he exsists.

Which is rich considering I told you already that that's the only thing I actually DO know.

Call your Boss and tell him he doesn't really exsist. Or your job, or your paycheck

I don't know that he doesn't exist so why would I tell him that? I also don't truly know that he does - I think it's highly probable though, so I'll stick with that.

Which comes first, the question or the answer?

The answer.

 

[Famine]

Oh is it. The chromatoids aside, you will still get a dog when you breed dogs, corn when you breed corn, so on and so forth.

What if you breed dogs with corn?

Or whales with dolphins?

Or how about breeding dogs with really short legs with other dogs with really short legs? In the wild, the short-legged dog offspring will find it hard to breed with long-legged dogs (just through mechanics) and will naturally breed with other short-legged dogs, exacerbating the problem further - the long legged dogs have long legged offspring and the short legged dogs have short offspring and eventually, after several hundred generations of these two isolated populations of dogs breeding with themselves you will have two populations which cannot breed with each other because they are too genetically indistinct. This process is called "speciation" - the creation of species. Look up Darwin's Finches.

As an aside, this illustrates the simple fundamental lack of understanding "anti-Evolutionists" have of Evolution. Mankind didn't evolve from chimpanzees. Mankind and chimpanzees evolved from a common man-chimp ancestor which is now extinct, having been subject to speciation and subsequently supplanted by mankind and chimps.


How can a piece of cardboard with letters printed on it and some impressionable gimps with an upturned beaker release the Devil?

On "Penn & Teller's Bull****!" they ran an experiment with a Ouija board. It gave totally plausible and reasonable results. Then they blindfolded the participants and, without telling them, turned the board round 180 degrees. The tumbler still moved to where they thought "Yes" and "No" were on the board, but there was nothing there.

Pretty dumb Satan if he can be negated by blindfolding other people but leaving the supposedly evil Ouija board in plain sight, eh?

 

[Tacet_Blue]

Oh is it. The chromatoids aside, you will still get a dog when you breed dogs, corn when you breed corn, so on and so forth.

Dogs were bred from wolves

 

[SuperCobraJet]

Then, God is theory, and is a very very weak one.
You can't support your theory only in just believe.

He is until you find him and know him.(see prior posts).

If I descibe to you a wild, exhilalarating roller coaster ride I took ,but you hadn't ridden it, to you it could not be real. You would only have my testimony of the experience. But when you ride it, you will experience it firsthand, for yourself, and then, it becomes a reality to you. That is what I'm talking about.

 

[MrktMkr1986]

He is until you find him and know him.(see prior posts).

If I descibe to you a wild, exhilalarating roller coaster ride I took ,but you hadn't ridden it, to you it could not be real. You would only have my testimony of the experience. But when you ride it, you will experience it firsthand, for yourself, and then, it becomes a reality to you. That is what I'm talking about.

That's an excellent analogy!

 

[Danoff]

On "Penn & Teller's Bull****!" they ran an experiment with a Ouija board. It gave totally plausible and reasonable results. Then they blindfolded the participants and, without telling them, turned the board round 180 degrees. The tumbler still moved to where they thought "Yes" and "No" were on the board, but there was nothing there.

Yea, ouija boards are retarded. Sure, for 15 bucks you can go to walmart and tap into the devil.

If I descibe to you a wild, exhilalarating roller coaster ride I took ,but you hadn't ridden it, to you it could not be real.

Not really even close to parallel. Bad example. What I think you're trying to say is that God is an experience and that only by experiencing God, or God's love, or whatever you call it, can you truly know that he exists.

Which is another way of saying that you don't have any proof.

 

[Famine]

If God is a rollercoaster, what's wrong with the other rides - and where's the theme park?

 

[Danoff]

If I descibe to you a wild, exhilalarating roller coaster ride I took ,but you hadn't ridden it, to you it could not be real. You would only have my testimony of the experience.

If I watch a sad movie and it makes me cry - I've just had a very emotional powerfull experience. That doesn't make the movie real. I only have the emotional response because I've suspended my disbelief. I'm willing to pretend it's real for a little while and get absorbed into that world.

Just because you're moved by the bible or by things you think are out there, doesn't mean they're there.

 

[MrktMkr1986]

If God is a rollercoaster, what's wrong with the other rides - and where's the theme park?

OK, now you're just being facetious.

If I watch a sad movie and it makes me cry - I've just had a very emotional powerfull experience. That doesn't make the movie real. I only have the emotional response because I've suspended my disbelief. I'm willing to pretend it's real for a little while and get absorbed into that world.

It sounds as if you're taking what he said a little too literally. I think you're being overly critical -- justifiably so -- but it's not fair to "twist" what he was trying to say.

 

[SuperCobraJet]

What if you breed dogs with corn?
Or whales with dolphins??

I think you already know the answer to that.

IOr how about breeding dogs with really short legs with other dogs with really short legs? In the wild, the short-legged dog offspring will find it hard to breed with long-legged dogs (just through mechanics) and will naturally breed with other short-legged dogs, exacerbating the problem further - the long legged dogs have long legged offspring and the short legged dogs have short offspring and eventually, after several hundred generations of these two isolated populations of dogs breeding with themselves you will have two populations which cannot breed with each other because they are too genetically indistinct. This process is called "speciation" - the creation of species. Look up Darwin's Finches.?

I know of no dog family that cannot breed within the dog family.

As an aside, this illustrates the simple fundamental lack of understanding "anti-Evolutionists" have of Evolution. Mankind didn't evolve from chimpanzees. Mankind and chimpanzees evolved from a common man-chimp ancestor which is now extinct, having been subject to speciation and subsequently supplanted by mankind and chimps..?

Were back to faith again. If you believe that, its certainly your perogitive.
However, I believe it takes a lot more faith to believe that than creation.

How can a piece of cardboard with letters printed on it and some impressionable gimps with an upturned beaker release the Devil?.?

Were back to demension again.You are only considering it on one demension.

On "Penn & Teller's Bull****!" they ran an experiment with a Ouija board. It gave totally plausible and reasonable results. Then they blindfolded the participants and, without telling them, turned the board round 180 degrees. The tumbler still moved to where they thought "Yes" and "No" were on the board, but there was nothing there..?

I fail to see the signfigance of that one way or the other.

Pretty dumb Satan if he can be negated by blindfolding other people but leaving the supposedly evil Ouija board in plain sight, eh?

If you did not want to be detected, would you inadvertently give yourself away?

 

[MrktMkr1986]

I fail to see the signfigance of that one way or the other.

I don't believe in the "power" of Ouija boards. It's all marketing.

If you did not want to be detected, would you inadvertently give yourself away?

Are you implying that "something" is in control of Ouija boards?

 

[Tacet_Blue]

Yea, ouija boards are retarded. Sure, for 15 bucks you can go to walmart and tap into the devil.

On the ouija board thing, I don't know if you guys get to see Derren Brown in the US, but did anyone see his "Seance" (sparked most number of complaints ever sent to Ofcom) or his "Messiah".

The five experiments he sets up vary from standard tests for psychic
ability to physical methods of religious conversion. They cover
all areas of belief, organised religion and purchasable salvation.
In each case his stated aim is to get a reputable authority to
endorse the results of the experiments in order to demonstrate
the validity of people's experiences in the confusing world of
belief. By securing this validation, he aims show how little such
endorsements mean, even if they are genuinely motivated. After
all, we know that he's not a Messiah he's just very good as pretending to be one.

But there is another agenda in the programme: to encourage people
to investigate what they believe more rigorously. Derren himself
used to be an evangelical Christian until his mid-20s. Then he
started to realise that his faith was just as vulnerable to suggestion
as any of the New Age theories that annoyed him so much. His faith
was rocked and he abandoned it. That could certainly be one response
to this programme since, while we know that his amazing acts are
done by suggestion, they are immediately endorsed by almost all
the 'authority' figures he approaches.

 

[Famine]

I think you already know the answer to that.

Yes, if you breed whales with dolphins, you get wolphins. Check it out.

I know of no dog family that cannot breed within the dog family.

The dingo cannot breed with the wolf.

Were back to faith again. If you believe that, its certainly your perogitive.
However, I believe it takes a lot more faith to believe that than creation.

Belief is unnecessary. One can demonstrate speciation with short-generation creatures, like Drosophila melanogaster. You can easily create a new species of fruit fly which is incapable of breeding with any other fruit fly species but its own.

Were back to demension again.You are only considering it on one demension.

It's dimension, and no, I'm considering it in 11, seeing as it's an 11 dimensional object within the 11 dimensional universe.

If I get a big piece of paper, write the letters of the alphabet, the Georgian numerals and some punctuation marks (I might conjure up a grammatically correct spirit) and put a kid's mug upside down on it, can I suddenly contact the Devil?

Would I have trouble communicating with spirits older than 400 years, given the natural evolution of the written language and the prevalence of one number counting system over another?

I fail to see the signfigance of that one way or the other.

I'll spell it out then.

1. A Ouija board with people looking at it can be used to communicate with the dead.
2. A Ouija board without people looking at it cannot, but the people still think it can.

Common denominator? I'll give you a clue - it isn't the Ouija board.

If you did not want to be detected, would you inadvertently give yourself away?

Probably not, no. But would I have previously given myself away in a room full of people watching, but not when they're all blindfolded?

OK, now you're just being facetious.

Damn. You spotted that?

It is a fair question though. If God is a rollercoaster, can Allah be the log flume? Maybe Buddha is the ghost house. Guru Nanak is the whirling teacup thingy, for sure. Haile Selasse would be a bouncy castle.

You're in the theme park of religion. Which is your favourite ride? You'll have fun on all of them and be totally convinced that it's the greatest ride ever if you only go on one and never bother with the others...

 

[MrktMkr1986]

Yes, if you breed whales with dolphins, you get wolphins. Check it out.

Found this on "wolphin".

A wolphin is a rare hybrid, formed from a cross between a bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus (mother), and a false killer whale Pseudorca crassidens (father). Currently only one exists in captivity, in the Sea Life Park in Hawaii. It shares characteristics of both dolphins and orcas.

Although the word 'wolphin' is a portmanteau of whale and dolphin, since false killer whales are members of the family Delphinidae, that is, dolphins and not true whales, the wolphin is a kind of dolphin.

 

[Famine]

Found this on "wolphin".

Yep. The bottlenose dolphin is genus Tursiops and the killer whale is genus Pseudorca, both belonging to the Delphinidae family and the Cetacea order.

Just as the wolf is genus Canis, the fox is genus Vulpes, both belonging to the Canidae family and the Carnivora order. Don't see many fox/wolf crosses though.

 

[Danoff]

It sounds as if you're taking what he said a little too literally. I think you're being overly critical -- justifiably so -- but it's not fair to "twist" what he was trying to say.

I don't think I twisted it at all. He claimed that the only way to know God is to experience God - to have an emotional reaction to God.

I was explaining how one can experience something and have an emotional reaction to it without that thing being real.

 

[SuperCobraJet]

Which is rich considering I told you already that that's the only thing I actually DO know.
I don't know that he doesn't exist so why would I tell him that? I also don't truly know that he does - I think it's highly probable though, so I'll stick with that...

Yea, I bet you will stick to the paycheck too. You know, somewhere in here I think there is some reality.

The answer.

How can there be an answer if theres no question?

 

[Tacet_Blue]

More Hybrids! Were all these creatures on the Ark as well?

Liger F Tiger/ M Lion
Tigon M Tiger/ F Lion
Leopon - Lion / Leopard
Zebroid - Zebra/Horse
Zorse - Horse/Zebra
Zony - Zebra/Pony
Jaglion - Jaguar/Lion
Yakalo - Buffalo/Yak
Cama - Llama/Camel.
Pumapard - Puma/Leopard
Ocelot / Puma
Caraval/Servical
Yak / Milk Cow

And on the corn...all modern roses are Hybrids. Plenty of Hybrid fruits too, like the Pluot (never heard of that one before myself)