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Post by ForeverKuroi on Sept 28, 2017 21:31:19 GMT -5
i guess we never will know till we die. Even though i think most "gods" are aliens. Or something far beyond our understanding just like the universe. That's why I've read up on Taoism - It's all about recognizing we don't know what happens after death so it focuses how to make the life we have as happy as possible.
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Kira Izumi
J-ROK Staff
XHF's Resident Weeb
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Post by Kira Izumi on Sept 28, 2017 21:33:02 GMT -5
thats agood thing then.
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Post by Mongo the Destroyer on Sept 28, 2017 21:43:04 GMT -5
It's a good thing if Christianity is wrong.
If Jesus really is the only way to heaven, then it's not so good finding out after you die, lol
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Kira Izumi
J-ROK Staff
XHF's Resident Weeb
Posts: 5,913
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Post by Kira Izumi on Sept 28, 2017 21:52:15 GMT -5
also all the evil people who "acceted jesus in their hearts" thing. but if heaven is real, it's likely personalized.
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Post by ForeverKuroi on Sept 28, 2017 22:34:15 GMT -5
also all the evil people who "acceted jesus in their hearts" thing. but if heaven is real, it's likely personalized. Now you're thinking like someone with a relative philosophy!
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Post by Mongo the Destroyer on Sept 28, 2017 23:01:17 GMT -5
also all the evil people who "acceted jesus in their hearts" thing. but if heaven is real, it's likely personalized. Now you're thinking like someone with a relative philosophy! An evil person probably hasn't actually accepted Jesus- they just may be claiming as such in hopes that their words (though not matching their hearts) will help them- or they're just straight-up evil. The Bible notes, " Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them" (Romans 2:14-15). What that means is that even though non-Jewish people were never given the commandments to follow, upon accepting Christ they tend to move that way anyway by nature due to God's Spirit being within them; making them feel guilty for doing bad and pushing them to help people. Do "bad people" go to heaven? Certainly, for one, Kuroi will be the first to mention that "bad" very relative. Not only that but the Bible actually says, " But God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). We're all sinners in God's eyes and when a horrible murderer or rapist in jail finds Jesus, he also finds eternal life. I certainly didn't "earn" my way in to heaven. BUT, that's not entirely unfair. There's no standard for good or bad enough, and the fact of the matter is that we sin pretty much every day (if not all the time). Yet through Jesus we're forgiven. It's not fair, that's the grace of God letting us in when we don't deserve it. Even when Jesus was on the cross, both the guys he was hanging with were giving him crap about it; but before he died, one of them converted and was promised heaven. Keep in mind both of the guys were criminal scumbags and razzed Jesus as he was dying- but one got to heaven. THE OTHER ONE decided that he'd take the philosophical high-road even though that's only satisfying for a long as you believe said philosophy (which is prone to change with the wind and new ideas). You can't invent heaven yourself and then expect it to be waiting for you.
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Post by ¥Ezriel¥ on Sept 29, 2017 12:57:44 GMT -5
This thread is right up my street. I am a christened but non practicing roman catholic who denounced my faith and became agnostic at around 15 or so. I read a lot of RichardDawkins and Stephen Hawkings who are my two personal favourite scientific authors, as well as listening and reading to a lot of Christopher Hitchins, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson, only one of who is religious in any way. My approach to any belief in a diety or supernatural designer is that there is simply no evidence to support such a theory and moreso there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to suggest that life itself is a cosmic and natural anomaly which despite all odds succeeded.
Evolution is a huge cornerstone of this to the best of my knowledge and if you want a pretty simple crash cours in understanding it I would reccommend "The Greatest Show On Earth" by Richard Dawkins. It shows you the simple ins and outs of evolution and almost obliterates the point of view that it is a far fetched hypothesis and in fact I tend to lean more towards the thinking of it being more fact than theory, as the basic evidence is overwhelming. The beauty of evolution and life as we know it is in the simplicity and the fact that we as human beings can not grasp the concept of hug passages of time, millions and billions of years. You just have to look at the makeup, or natural design if you prefer, of a human eye with all it's flaws but inevitably it's almost perfect function. The fact that we see upside down and the brain must flip the image every waking second of our lives is enough for me to suspect that an omnipitent and supernatural power is not behind the creation of such mechanics. It would be a hugely wasteful and roundabout way of working for a creator to blueprint humans the way they are put together as hugely flawed living creatures who are highly susceptible to horrible illness and genetic diseases. Surely an almighty creator would do a better job than this. Evolution takes care of as many flaws as it possibly can across a grandiose time scale and eradicates weaknesses and hinderences to that particular species' needs. That's where natural selection sets in. billions and billions of different species have lived and died off as they were simply not adaptive enough to survive in the extremely unforgiving environments that we see all around our home, the planet earth. This is why we, human beings are so incredible. The way we have evolved through the eons has been positively staggering and the rate at which we have populated, colonised and set up civilisations is something that has always had only the most miniscule chance of happening. In fact even the way the earth was formed, with the moon being the perfect size to shield us from meteors which would have destroyed the planet during it's early birthing period, the distance from the sun being the only correct distance for life to come to fruition in the first place and the formation of the right chemicals at the right time to bring small micro organisms to our planet which was the pefect pea tree dish for the building blocks of life... well all this could easily be too much for anyone, it being a lot easier to throw up their hands and say "god did it".
Socially and morally I have different stands on different religions. I have read and reread the Bible, Torah, Quran and funnily enough the Book of Latter Day Saints and have taken one basic principle away from them. They are books which can be interpreted in all sorts of different ways and can be used for good and evil, depending on where your moral compass points. I do have a very big problem with Islam in the modern day and age and the way it is warped to incite religious violence and bigoted thinking, while at the same time trying to disguise itself as a book which should be respected and followed in day to day life. Whereas Christians follow a tolerance and acceptance preaching hippy whose commandment was unconditional love to all fellow men, even your enemies, ESPECIALLY your enemies. In comparison to that; Islam follows a barbaric warlord who partook in many morally questionable and corrupt things during his lifetime and calls for the destruction or enslavement of non believers. I do still believe that ANY form of religion can sway people to do the most horrible things in it's name, just look at the crusades, or closer to my home and time the troubles in Ireland with horrible sectarian violence. You just have to look at the middle east and more specifically Israel to see just how primitave and dangerous belief in a higher powr that commands you to do certain things can be.
All in all I cannot disprove the existence of a god just as there is noone so far who can prove the existence of one. The way I look at it though, is that the duty of believers is to present evidence to me for the for the existence of god, not the other way round. The is no burden on me to prove something I cannot scientifically see, hear or use any of my other human senses to experience. That just makes logical sense to me. Dear god, I literally am Spock.
Anyway, just my tuppence worth, live and let live for the most part I say.
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Post by ForeverKuroi on Sept 29, 2017 13:01:25 GMT -5
This thread is right up my street. I am a christened but non practicing roman catholic who denounced my faith and became agnostic at around 15 or so. I read a lot of RichardDawkins and Stephen Hawkings who are my two personal favourite scientific authors, as well as listening and reading to a lot of Christopher Hitchins, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson, only one of who is religious in any way. My approach to any belief in a diety or supernatural designer is that there is simply no evidence to support such a theory and moreso there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to suggest that life itself is a cosmic and natural anomaly which despite all odds succeeded. Evolution is a huge cornerstone of this to the best of my knowledge and if you want a pretty simple crash cours in understanding it I would reccommend "The Greatest Show On Earth" by Richard Dawkins. It shows you the simple ins and outs of evolution and almost obliterates the point of view that it is a far fetched hypothesis and in fact I tend to lean more towards the thinking of it being more fact than theory, as the basic evidence is overwhelming. The beauty of evolution and life as we know it is in the simplicity and the fact that we as human beings can not grasp the concept of hug passages of time, millions and billions of years. You just have to look at the makeup, or natural design if you prefer, of a human eye with all it's flaws but inevitably it's almost perfect function. The fact that we see upside down and the brain must flip the image every waking second of our lives is enough for me to suspect that an omnipitent and supernatural power is not behind the creation of such mechanics. It would be a hugely wasteful and roundabout way of working for a creator to blueprint humans the way they are put together as hugely flawed living creatures who are highly susceptible to horrible illness and genetic diseases. Surely an almighty creator would do a better job than this. Evolution takes care of as many flaws as it possibly can across a grandiose time scale and eradicates weaknesses and hinderences to that particular species' needs. That's where natural selection sets in. billions and billions of different species have lived and died off as they were simply not adaptive enough to survive in the extremely unforgiving environments that we see all around our home, the planet earth. This is why we, human beings are so incredible. The way we have evolved through the eons has been positively staggering and the rate at which we have populated, colonised and set up civilisations is something that has always had only the most miniscule chance of happening. In fact even the way the earth was formed, with the moon being the perfect size to shield us from meteors which would have destroyed the planet during it's early birthing period, the distance from the sun being the only correct distance for life to come to fruition in the first place and the formation of the right chemicals at the right time to bring small micro organisms to our planet which was the pefect pea tree dish for the building blocks of life... well all this could easily be too much for anyone, it being a lot easier to throw up their hands and say "god did it". Socially and morally I have different stands on different religions. I have read and reread the Bible, Torah, Quran and funnily enough the Book of Latter Day Saints and have taken one basic principle away from them. They are books which can be interpreted in all sorts of different ways and can be used for good and evil, depending on where your moral compass points. I do have a very big problem with Islam in the modern day and age and the way it is warped to incite religious violence and bigoted thinking, while at the same time trying to disguise itself as a book which should be respected and followed in day to day life. Whereas Christians follow a tolerance and acceptance preaching hippy whose commandment was unconditional love to all fellow men, even your enemies, ESPECIALLY your enemies, Islam follows a barbaric warlord who partook in many morally questionable and corrupt things during his lifetime. I still believe that ANY form of religion can sway people to do the most horrible things in it's name, just look at the crusades, or closer to my home and time the troubles in Ireland with horrible sectarian violence. You just have to look at the middle east and more specifically Israel to see just how primitave and dangerous belief in a higher powr that commands you to do certain things can be. All in all I cannot disprove the existence of a god just as there is noone so far who can prove the existence of one. The way I look at it though, is that the duty of believers is to present evidence to me for the for the existence of god, not the other way round. The is no burden on me to prove something I cannot scientifically see, hear or use any of my other human senses to experience. That just makes logical sense to me. Dear god, I literally am Spock. Anyway, just my tuppence worth, live and let live for the most part I say. Fuck. I can't win against these sort of RPs. I forfeit.
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Post by ¥Ezriel¥ on Sept 29, 2017 13:07:55 GMT -5
Im going to create a Richard Dawkins character and RP as him solely on evolution and how it can win wrestling matches. That would be some great material!
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Post by ForeverKuroi on Sept 29, 2017 13:09:39 GMT -5
Im going to create a Richard Dawkins character and RP as him solely on evolution and how it can win wrestling matches. That would be some great material! OR I make a similar character and we call the stable Evolution.
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Post by ¥Ezriel¥ on Sept 29, 2017 13:25:11 GMT -5
Just as a scientist I feel the need to step in and say we absolutely can see evolution. You just need lifeforms that have VERY short generational spans ... on the order of hours-days. We can empirically prove that evolution takes place through the works of Henry Bates in the Amazon with butterflies but more to the point. We have WITNESSED evolution via natural selection in viruses (which may or may not TECHNICALLY be alive... another topic) and in bacteria (very alive). In fact we have created evolved bacteria in the form of MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus auria). It's a standard staph infection that was not adequately killed off with antibiotics (they stopped taking them early etc). The few survivors would have been those LEAST affected by the antibiotics which then caused that particular mutation to be the only surviving variant. It then grows (staph generations are on the order of hours so what takes millions of years in mammals and reptiles etc takes place in weeks/months in bacteria) and mutates and the selected traits will be those who maintain that resistance (residual drug effects killing those who undo the mutation while those who are even more resistant are even better protected.) Scientists have basically evolved bacteria and fungi themselves for specific traits as well in the lab. So yes while it does take a LONG time to see evolution on the vain of say ... small reptile to first theropod to first tyrannosauroid to first tyrannosaurid to good old T-Rex ... it is not nearly as hard to see evolution that hasn't yet pushed into new species. (There is a part of science that suggests we the generations that exist now are the first set of generations in a new tech based species of humans that are technically different than homo sapiens sapiens or alternatively on the cusp of becoming a new species.) It is also important to note that just because a species evolves doesn't mean the original ceases to exist. We can see this in dinosaurs where various ankylosaurids all existed at the same time and the one that eventually diverged still existed. (We can see it today with Galapagos finches.) Now I may not be religious anymore but I am not one to take that away from anyone and if you believe that there is a being who can basically do whatever, why couldn't it have just set into motion all these changes and let everything play out on a big cosmic timescale to admire its work and see what happens? If humans are made in His image and humans are naturally curious why is it so hard to think a God wouldn't be curious as well and set this whole Universe spinning as science says (and is still discovering) just to see how it would play out? SIdenote: Yes I was just at the Museum of Science in Boston and saw a movie on Henry BAtes and bought a book on Dinosaurs so sue me I love science and dinosaurs rule. Sidenote 2: According to the way science classifies animals birds are TECHNICALLY considered a subgenre of dinosaurs so when you eat fried chicken you are eating dinosaur meat. And by the by our old friend gallus domesticus (and all species of gallus/chicken wild and otherwise) are GENETICALLY the closest living relatives to T-Rex and still contain the genes for some of the traits, they're just inactivated (epigenetics, a WHOLE other study which is frankly bloody brilliant and bloody terrifying). Scientists have found the genes that inactivate the other genes and have picked around in there and created chickens with long dinosaur-like tails and with sharp teeth in their beak. ...... I wanna eat one. (Sometimes it can be very enlightening and fun to have a background in both hard science (and I guess a bit in the soft sciences) and in religious studies. I was named after KIng David after all. My brother for Daniel in the Lion's Den, 2 of my favorite tales of intrigue and one of which historians are pretty sure happened! -- Yes I know Goliath was basically Andre the Giant and a hit to the head would have ruptured the pituitary gland and killed him but DAMNIT I WANNA BELIEVE I WAS NAMED FOR A MAN WHO FELLED A GIANT WITH A FREAKING PEBBLE IN A SLING!) This explination is brilliant and concise. Evolution is a hard process to observe as human beings can not be around long enough to witness it first hand, that's the most important part. The development of human grown viruses and fungi etc is a great example of how we can observe genetic mutatin and changes at the most basic level. Also another very important and well made point about evolution and the root species not disappearing because another evolves from it. If you really go deep and delve into the more advanced side of biology you will see species of what we perceieve to be mammals, say rats, mutating into species of amphibian, say frogs or other largely amphibian looking creatures, and in turn types of frogs evolving into more mammal like animals. The whole thing is, if you can wrap your head around the concept, there is no such thing as a perfect rabbit, or a perfect dog, or a perfect deer. We simply have an image bult in our mind of what we know to be a rabbit, or a dog or a deer. Dogs are a perfect example of genetics as far as breeding goes too and is a smal nod to longer evolution. In fact evolution is so open ended that we have seen certain animals who evolve from mammals to more amphibious creatures and can be traced all the way back to more or less the identical creatures they once where, although there will be differences. A good example of that is e one given by Dave when he talks about dinosaurs who fall in somewhee between reptiles and birds. Dogs are an interesting case.The majority of all species of dogs are man made from inbreeding and it has come to the point where breeds like pugs are almost sub dogs in observation, as they tend to develop degenerative bone ailments and can hardly breathe due to their facial structure and respiratory system. This is an example of imperfect breeding and imperfect evolution. Without our domestication of these creatures they simply would not exist as natural selection would have done it's job and they more than likely would have become extinct, being too weak, sick and genetically flawed to keep up reproduction and survival.
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Post by ¥Ezriel¥ on Sept 29, 2017 13:25:50 GMT -5
Im going to create a Richard Dawkins character and RP as him solely on evolution and how it can win wrestling matches. That would be some great material! OR I make a similar character and we call the stable Evolution. I kind of really want to do this.
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Post by ForeverKuroi on Sept 29, 2017 13:31:19 GMT -5
lol now I feel bad. I want to do it but I have like 10 characters (slight exaggeration) in use, and another really good idea. I have no room for more characters.
EDIT: Just counted. Six.
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Post by Dave D-Flipz on Sept 29, 2017 14:31:37 GMT -5
As a side note I do just need to reiterate for those who forget (not that anyone here has but ... I watch the news a lot) a SCIENTIFIC THEORY is not called a theory because it's a thought that needs proof. Theory in colloquial language is more equivalent to hypothesis in science. The closest thing to scientific theory we have in modern language would actually be Law. But since law in science refers to something HARD SET that we are so sure of that to find evidence against would COMPLETELY upend our systems and ruin centuries of science instruction, we use theory for things we are VERY sure of but that evidence to tweak or even contradict some of that idea would not be the end all and would actually strengthen science as a medium. Just to put that out here cuz I am SO SICK of hearing people (in COngress ...) use the "it's just a theory" line of thinking.
Also WEATHER DOES NOT EQUAL CLIMATE OH MY ZOMBIE JEEBUS!
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Post by ¥Ezriel¥ on Sept 29, 2017 14:39:35 GMT -5
I actually prefer using the word theorem to theory. Theorum refering to a tried and tested theory that has been around long enough to stand up to further scientific scrutiny and can be demonstrated rather than just observed as an idea, although I still believe theory is itself a fine enough word for this purpose. People just seem to need one more level of differentiation to be as specific as possible.
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