itsTolkien_time's forum posts
Hey, just stopping by to suggest names. They might not be so good, or original...:?
Tech Central
Hardware Repair
PC Central
Got Tech?
Modems and More :?
Gigabyte
Motherboard (the white ones are my favorites)
(insert last name here)'s Tech (e.g. "Anderson's Tech", or "Anderson's Computer Repair")
I'm sorry, this may be a wasted post, I don't have any good ideas.
I have some other sort of quaint names in mind, but they sound ridiculous for a computer store.
[QUOTE="ghoklebutter"][QUOTE="Gambler_3"]The quran on several occasions passes off unbelievers as fools who cant see the "clear signs" that God has given. It really puts emphasis on the "very clear signs" making it sound like rejecting them is equal to retardedness. Again it seems like muhammad is really trying hard and is playing mind games to convince the people...Gambler_3
It only refers to the time of Muhammad. This is not applicable today. What you are talking about right now is a whole different story. We still need to respect non-Muslims, despite their "rejection" of Islam.
The unbelievers who are rejecting "clear signs" is refering to unbelievers in general and not just for those times. And yes muhammad was succesful as my mom still tells on how I am exactly like an example in the quran that Allah will make people blind, ignorant and deaf to the truth.She even says that it is more proof of the truth of the quran as it's example still fits today, I am like *facepalm* divided by 0.:|
This is when I would venture to say that your mother's belief is a self-reinforcing delusion. ;)[QUOTE="Gambler_3"]HOW DO YOU KNOW??Don't worry, that doesn't sound like skipping over the gaps at all. -_-Sorry about the caps but this really annoys me. How do YOU know what parts are for whom?? Why doesnt the quran specifically mention it?
Because that's the way it is.
ghoklebutter
[QUOTE="SimpJee"][QUOTE="domatron23"][QUOTE="Gambler_3"]Wasnt spontaneous generation a conveneint answer to "intelligent creation"??
A great no. of biologists believed in spontaneous generation if I am not wrong. A layman could have thrown away the theory as fantasy but yet the more "knowledgable" ones seemed to believe in it. We all know how this turned out, neither were the scientists right and nor the religious people. There was a truth far more deeper than anyone had thought about.;)
domatron23
I'm not so much throwing parallel universes away as I am acknowledging that it has nothing going for it that would provoke positive belief at the moment. I'm an agnostic disbeliever on the matter not a strong disbeliever.
How much have you read into it though? Not saying that I have much either, just that maybe before we say it "has nothing going for it" that we might look into it a little deeper. Just browsing through articles, there are a few written by well known scientists at Cambridge, Harvard, etc.
I hereby qualify my remark with an "as far as I know" on the end. MGN did provide a link earlier on which purported to have evidence but as I am happy in my ignorance I haven't clicked on it.
Ignorance is bliss. ;) That's what sucks about science. The scientists barely attempt to communicate findings to the mainstream population. Science NEEDS to become "popular", before everyone leaves it in the dust. I barely know anything on the subject, and that makes it very easy to discard it. I still am not sure how any of this universal science makes sense to anyone.Dawkins against O'Reilly is a bit like Evander Holyfield demonstrating his boxing prowess by beating up a 50-year old amateur that's never won a title... and who is openly acknowledged by the local boxing community as a has-been that never was. Poor choice of opponent. Find someone who can fight back.ChiliDragonI meant:
Dawkins against O'Reilly is an unfair debate since Dawkins has solid credentials as a biologist and also as an atheist philosopher used to debating his views. He is also respected by theists and atheists alike as being good at it. O'Reilly is not very well educated on the issue they were debating, is know as a poor debater to begin with, and the way he presents his religious beliefs as facts tends to be uninformed, poorly phrased, and sometimes incoherent. Dawkins is guaranteed to come off as the better educated and more eloquent one in a debate between the two of them, and if what he wanted was an intellectually stimulating debate with someone who can actually challenge his arguments rather than attack his character, Bill O'Reilly is not the opponent he should have chosen.ChiliDragonSo just to make this absolutely clear: I think Bill O'Reilly is a narcissistic, pompous, self-important douche who should not even be on TV. I think nothing about Dawkins's character since I haven't seen enough of it to have an opinion, but I respect his academic credentials and his intellect. There. Done. Are we all clear on who Evander Holyfield is? :D Well, at least I understood what you meant, anyway. :P And frankly I have to agree. It was like a rhino breaking a toothpick, pretty much. An atheist could've presented a more valid argument for Christianity. :? :P
[QUOTE="GabuEx"]And that right there is a huge leap of faith.If every possible observation in this universe must have a cause behind it - which by all accounts appears to be the case - then it seems to me that the only logical conclusion is that something outside the universe is the cause of this universe. Nothing existing in our universe has ever been observed to just pop out of nowhere without a reason for it being there.
Gambler_3
And why is it a more logical conclusion? There HAS to be something out there that has no cause whatsoever, why is it any less logical to assume that it's the universe which we live in then to assume that it's God or the multi-verse?
Oh and quantum mechanics has something about "pop out of nowhere" IIRC.
No, quantum theory does not deal with "things popping out of nowhere". To my understanding, it has to do with unpredictable and immeasurable events on the quantum level. The relation between "unpredictable" and "uncuased" was presented earlier in your discussion with Gabu, I think. I am guessing (so tell me if I'm wrong), but you seem to assume that the universe being deterministic = God. This is unbased and untrue. A cause-effect system is just as valid from an atheistic viewpoint, if not more so. Gabu has presented a very nice argument for my views thus far. Thanks, Gabu! :)[QUOTE="MetalGear_Ninty"][QUOTE="Gambler_3"]I don't know enough about gnosticism to comment on it either way. Hopefully someone else who does will be able to answer that question. As for your other questions, I'll give you one simple example: Living organisms. The proteins and molecules that make up the genetic code that makes my body what it is, are organized. They are a part of a system that we can see, analyze, and in some sense predict. I think of it like source code. Just because we can't track down the person that wrote the "I Love You" email virus, doesn't mean he doesn't exist, if anything, we assume he exists, since there must have been an intelligent mind behind the code. The number of coincidences that have to be absolutely right in order for life to exist, life to go on, and life to reproduce, is too staggeringly large for me to accept unless there is an intelligent creator behind the scenes running the show. So I chose to believe there is one, since it makes perfect sense to me to believe that the source code for our and other species' DNA was somehow "written" by an intelligent creator at some point in the past. I would also say that there is no such thing as an "agnostic Christian" since that would be quite a contradiction in terms. :)[QUOTE="MetalGear_Ninty"]
[QUOTE="ChiliDragon"][QUOTE="RationalAtheist"]The thing I don't get is the reason leading to choice. The reasons you have for belief can not be rationalised deductively (can they?). So you seem to make a choice, based on inductive reasoning or logic - inference. I'm constantly aware that people think deeply about what they believe. People can intellectualise all sorts of beliefs. People also are willing to re-enforce them and justify them to themselves. So intellectualism isn't necessarily the only requirement when it comes to faith. I'm wondering what empirical observations and rational thought processes can lead you to a faith-bound belief.(EDIT: Could you answer my Gnostic Christian question please, to help me understand? Thanks)Gambler_3
Most of what you said there can be explained by natural sselection.
Ah actually there's no real explanation for how and where the instructions in the dna came from.But "God did it" is no answer as it opens up another question of who did God who unquestionably has to be more complex than all life combined.
I'm not sure I know what you mean; DNA is just a heteropolymer of four different nucleotides, with two polymer chains being arranged in a double helix.I am talking about the billions of genome instructions in DNA... ...determined by the arrangement of the nucleotides on the chain, you mean? ;) Anyways, while I might not believe in God, or think it is a rational decision to do so, I can certainly understand why I think many would make that choice. It's like when a family member dies. What do you expect a person to feel? Grief, and I think we can all agree that feeling grief is an expectable and understandable reaction. We may not understand the very basis of emotion, but people being emotional is reasonable. But there are always those who don't feel grief, and they've simply reasoned differently. Maybe not the best way to say it, but oh well.[QUOTE="Lansdowne5"][QUOTE="danwallacefan"]You do realize that the high emphasis on faith over reason is found only in Protestant christianity right? Catholic theologians have emphasized the paramount role of reason since midieval times.
So, even if it were relavent, only some strains of Evangelical, protestant christianity would be "self-reinforcing"
danwallacefan
When you say "high emphasis on faith" -- do you mean "blind faith", or something else? Just curious.
just belief. eh, so there is a religion that places little importance in believing said religion? :? I understand that many denominations place less importance on blind faith, but you make it seem that you mean otherwise.
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