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Post by David Murray on Mar 6, 2007 21:01:32 GMT -5
Believe me - I don't want to turn the forum into a debate and flame war about religion. In fact, I'm going to refrain from even voting myself until there are a few votes in the system (so nobody will even know what religion I am - that way nobody will feel like I'm trying to promote something)
After our discussion on the "future carnival worker" I realized that we are all more different than I thought. I mean, we always talk about Commodore stuff, so we all have that in common. I thought it would be interesting to start finding out some other things about each other.
I'm going to make an educated guess on what I'm going to see on these poll results. I'm going to guess nobody or very few are Muslim. The only reason I say that is once before we had a poll on what country we are all from and I don't think there were any users from Muslim-majority countries (that I can recall). Next I'm going to guess 40- 50% of the users are probably atheist. The other 50% probably filter out into the other sub-categories of thesim.
Oh... sorry for the spelling mistakes on Jehovah's witness. Just now noticed it and it is too late to let me edit it.
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Post by Golan Klinger on Mar 6, 2007 23:12:59 GMT -5
I'm going to make an educated guess on what I'm going to see on these poll results. Oh irony, how you plague me.
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Post by thurstan on Mar 7, 2007 5:23:48 GMT -5
I was baptised as a christian, but I'm about as religious as a very non religious thing! However I do believe there may be something out there at a much higher level. Organised religion causes too many problems.
Having studied Astrophysics at university you realise the universe is a VERY strange and weird place. Many things imply other universes and dimensions etc.
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Post by David Murray on Mar 7, 2007 9:25:21 GMT -5
Yes, I tend to think of myself as an amateur physicist. I've spent the last 15 years of my life trying to answer the basic question of "is there a god?" Honestly, it has been a long and hard struggle. For every argument for, there is an equally powerful argument against. Except a few arguments that I just can't see any explanation for.. just a few examples I've come up with:
1) Where did the universe come from? Why does it exist? If it had a beginning (which the big-bang theory suggests) where did it come from?
2) Evolution or no evolution, where did the first living cell come from? I argue with atheists all the time over on some of the usenet groups. They are very rude people and prefer to call me an idiot than explain this one. They often throw out random facts about various experiments, but when I go look those experiments up I find they were actually failures or inconclusive. ANd basicaly being that this is the year 2007 and it still remains impossible for scientists to take mineral and create a living thing out of it (without using some other living thing) in a controlled lab experiment - I say life is too complex to have begun by chance. You can argue evolution all day and I'll listen to you. But I don't give any credit to abiogenesis.
3) I think the rules of our universe have been defined. After all, you can take a molecule and define its behavior based on the atoms it is made of. The same is true with the atoms based on the sub-atomic particles, and you can keep going down to the fermions or strings (if you believe string theory) but at some point you reach the smallest particles. Now. What defines their behavior? There has to be some grand reason why they react and interact with forces the way in which they do.
I've compiled a whole list of unexplained phenomina (which would take some time to read) which I believe points to the existence of a creator. Unfortunatly, my search continues for positive proof of a particular religion. I remain in a Christan church currently, although we rarely get to discuss any of the deep philosphical aspects like I just mentioned. But I often still struggle with aspects like the "personal God" or afterlife. I mean, I want them to be true. I hope they are true. Most of the time, I even think they are true. Most people on the planet who believe in God also believe in an afterlife. But it is one of those concepts that is tough for me.
But the atheist point of view is just to terrible to believe. Essentialy, I exist out of complete chance of nature. Okay, fine, that isn't too tough to come to terms with. It isn't great, but I can see how they come to that conclusion. This is the part that gets to me. For an atheist, nothing you do matters. After I die, I cease to exist. Even if I did lots of good things while alive, that all ceases to exist too. After all, the Sun will go supernova someday (in a few billion years) and everything that any human being ever did will be wiped from existence. Unless we managed to migrate to other star systems by that time, which I doubt. So someday this entire planet and everyone who ever lived will be a giant ball of dust floating in a nebula somewhere, maybe to eventually reform as another planet. That is so depressing, I think I'd commit suicide if I had to believe that line of thinking.
I'm not trying to attack any atheists - I totally respect your decision to believe that way. I'm just saying that is why I can't believe that way.
Anyway.. this is getting long winded.. better finish up.
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Post by Golan Klinger on Mar 7, 2007 10:56:06 GMT -5
Yes, I tend to think of myself as an amateur physicist. I've spent the last 15 years of my life trying to answer the basic question of "is there a god?" Doing so would make you a theistically-minded philosopher; not a physicist. Some amino acids got together with some peptides in the primordial muck and formed proteins. Who is suggesting that life emerged from mineral? You are a chemical amalgam. If the phenomenon is unexplained, how can you use it to draw a conclusion? The key word in that sentence is "believe". Good luck with that. You're confusing atheism with nihilism. I think it would be best if I bowed out of this discussion as I can't see it coming to any fruitful conclusion and the more I write, the more caustic, acerbic and condescending I'll become (impossible though it may seem). I'll leave you with this... "Joyous distrust is a sign of health. Everything absolute belongs to pathology." - Nietzsche
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Post by David Murray on Mar 7, 2007 11:54:26 GMT -5
You're right here. Do doubt about it. However, one has to ask oneself - is there such a thing as positive proof? I mean, for the hard-core atheist, he "believes" there is no God. If God himself came down in front of him and said, "I'll do anything you ask, any miracle you desire to proove to you that I'm God." The atheist would likely still not believe. No matter what God does, there can always be some other explanation for the phenomenon. You could start with things like delusion, drug-induced halucinations, some gag being pulled by your friends, perhaps you are dreaming, etc. So when it comes down to it, a person has to decide to believe one way or another and there will never be any universal proof one way or the other.
So.. keeping that in mind, I have made a decision to believe these unexplained phenomenon are proof enough for me of the existence of a creator. --- That is, until somebody can come up with a better explanation, if that ever happens.
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Post by MadModder on Mar 7, 2007 14:06:15 GMT -5
Agnosticism, anyone? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgnosticismI don't believe in any kind of creator, higher beeing or anything like that, and I refuse to believe anything like it. I guess I'm a nihilist then... But that would mean I don't believe in the meaning of life either, whatever it is. Well... actually I can't think of any meaning with it. We're here to breed maybe, and then die. Game over. Make the best out of it while you can. ;D
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d0c
Junior Member
Posts: 57
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Post by d0c on Mar 7, 2007 16:50:41 GMT -5
i dont believe in any religion, but you can say the closest i am to a religion is the commodore 64... hehe
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Post by megaboz on Mar 8, 2007 0:07:03 GMT -5
I was baptized Catholic, but I think my beliefs align closest to Liberal Quakerism (which is probably not what most people think of when they think Quaker). Heres a little blurb: www.beliefnet.com/story/80/story_8038_1.htmlBeliefnet is a great little website for overviews of different religions and denominations. I'm a huge fan of all religions in general, its always interesting to see what different people believe in.
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Post by sixty4k on Mar 8, 2007 0:24:56 GMT -5
My parents were raised christian, but left me open to choose my own spiritual path.
When I was young I went to my friend's churches and religious events, trying to get a feeling for them, for what it was all about.
I always found things that I liked, meshed with things I didn't like.
The one path I felt most affinity for was Buddhism, but I was always too busy to actually learn more about it. Now that I live down the street from the Bay Area Zen Center, I'm beginning to go for the evening meditations.
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Post by thurstan on Mar 8, 2007 6:23:47 GMT -5
The thing with evolution is that it has been given a LONG time to do its job. if life formed in a short time then fair enough somebody was probably involved! Loads and loads of random events over a long time etc.
The sun wont go supernova by the way (its not big enough), it will gradually get bigger and turn into a red giant whose rather hot atmosphere will roast the Earth into a molten blob. then it will shed its atmosphere and shrink into a white dwarf, slowly cooling into a brown dwarf.
There are some wild mathematical theories on how everything can be, even down to the laws of physics themselves.
Regarding God, if you can ask what governs the smallest particles etc, then ask where did God come from? what governs gods behaviour? where does god live? etc
too many mind bending questions that NOBODY can answer at least in a way that everyone agrees with!
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Post by expertsetup on Mar 8, 2007 11:27:25 GMT -5
At this link you will find a conference held by some of the worlds most prominent scientists. What they talk about for three days and a multitude of hours is this topic alone. You will be hard pressed to have a more in depth look into this topic. The entire conference is on-line for viewing for free. beyondbelief2006.org/Now go get informed about the state of the world and religion.
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TMR
Newbie
Posts: 38
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Post by TMR on Mar 9, 2007 14:16:56 GMT -5
i'm an atheist, but i put Jedi on the last census and i worship Crossbow/Crest... but that's between the two of us! =-)
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Post by Jeff Ledger on Mar 9, 2007 15:54:57 GMT -5
Lack of options! Where is the Jedi entry anyway! JEff
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Post by thurstan on Mar 10, 2007 8:43:36 GMT -5
there was a campaign here in the to get enough people to put their religion down as Jedi on either a census or when voting so it would be deemed a religion. Sadly the government said no chance dont be silly.
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