Spirituality vs. Science

[Hat_Truck]

Please note that this is not a religion thread, so please keep your religious views to yourself.

Specifically, I want to talk about (as the title states) the concept of Spirituality vs. Science. It seems that throughout history, spirituality has always been a huge part of the human existence. It's very natural for most of us to assume or believe that there's something more to ourselves and to the world than what we can observe with our 5 senses. The problem with spirituality (or perhaps the strength of it), is that it is very hard to define, and that it differs from person to person. Spirituality, is, in its truest form, a very personal experience. Many would argue that our moral values and our tendency for altruism comes from objectives moral values influenced by natural human spirituality.

Many Scientists would argue that "Spirituality" does not exist, and is just a natural human construct, based on natural human genetics and behaviors. Many Scientists would also argue that anything that can't be defined (such as Spirituality) can't really be believed in, at least with any degree of certainty. I hear the argument often that Scientists attribute our tendency towards "Spirituality" with our inherent hyperactive agency detector (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_detection); in other words to see purpose or sentience in arbitrary or natural events. The Scientific argument goes that there is a natural, genetic explanation for all human behavior, including the idea of spirituality.

Religious people who may consider themselves very "spiritual", may wonder why their views are not relevant to this thread. The reason I don't want this to become a religious discussion is that religion is, inherently, the hijacking or tainting of spirituality. If spirituality is inherently present in all of us, then it is something we should be able to find on our own, not have to be indoctrinated in to. The fact that 95% of religious people share the same religion as the society they were brought up in, means that their religion is not an intrinsic spiritual value, but a result of an external influence. The effects of external influences on people has been well-documented by Science, and thus the results of these experiences can not be qualified as "spiritual". If Spirituality does exist, it should be something that naturally exists within us, outside of the realm of Science, and which can be accessed without the influence of others.

So what do you guys think, does Spirituality exist, or can it all be explained by Science?

[Graviton]

science does not claim that spirituality or human behavior can be explained through genetics. Yes there are some scientists that will say that but they are the equivalent of the over religious people that think god is a fact not a belief.

[Hat_Truck]

I think you would be wrong there. There are some very good arguments about what makes people behave as they do. Many accredited Scientists do say that human behavior can be explained or defined through genetics (I'm not saying I agree with them though). Check out Daniel C. Dennett's book "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/067003472X)" in which he explains (or attempts to explain) religion and spirituality through cognitive studies and the use of Science.

[Blueflash]

Here we go again.

[Graviton]

Hes hardly a real scientist and that book has hardly anything scientific. Btw I dont consider psychology to be a science. The only way we will ever explain behavior is when we understand the brain which is one of the main problems science is trying to solve.

[Norroar]

Evolution is just a theory! :wild:

[Smacklust]

I think you would be wrong there. There are some very good arguments about what makes people behave as they do. Many accredited Scientists do say that human behavior can be explained or defined through genetics (I'm not saying I agree with them though). Check out Daniel C. Dennett's book "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/067003472X)" in which he explains (or attempts to explain) religion and spirituality through cognitive studies and the use of Science.

Could you list some of the main arguments / studies of that book here :)?

Unfortunately it is quite impossible to actually prove rock solid that a human is just a very complex machine. Its usually the hardline behaviorists that claim this. You can... of course study the human as a bio,psycho,social creature and come up with a model that you can use as a point of view to study a human, sometimes very well. Unfortunately however it is impossible to reduce humans to "just that". Many have tried and an equal amount has failed. Then again in science especially in psychology you always suffer from some level of reductionism.

I do have to somewhat side with Graviton. Scientists that argue that humans are "nothing but a..." naively believe in science like some believers naively believe in god. Both paths are bad. Especially in science, since it allows no room for self criticism thus removing 1 very important aspect of science, which is that science always strives to correct itself, and criticize itself.

Then there is the question. Why cant god, or some higher being, or some cosmic power use those psychological processes? Do they rule each other out?

[Drasha]

Evolution is just a theory! :wild:

Its a shame theory in science means some thing completly different from what it does in english.

[Norroar]

http://i.imgur.com/PiZWc.png

my name is not triassic :disclaimer:

[STDMachine]

Its a shame theory in science means some thing completly different from what it does in english.

This.

[Hat_Truck]

Could you list some of the main arguments / studies of that book here :)?

Unfortunately it is quite impossible to actually prove rock solid that a human is just a very complex machine. Its usually the hardline behaviorists that claim this. You can... of course study the human as a bio,psycho,social creature and come up with a model that you can use as a point of view to study a human, sometimes very well. Unfortunately however it is impossible to reduce humans to "just that". Many have tried and an equal amount has failed. Then again in science especially in psychology you always suffer from some level of reductionism.

I do have to somewhat side with Graviton. Scientists that argue that humans are "nothing but a..." naively believe in science like some believers naively believe in god. Both paths are bad. Especially in science, since it allows no room for self criticism thus removing 1 very important aspect of science, which is that science always strives to correct itself, and criticize itself.

Then there is the question. Why cant god, or some higher being, or some cosmic power use those psychological processes? Do they rule each other out?I'm not disagreeing with you, in fact I tend to lean a little more towards the spiritual side than Scientific when explaining many aspects of human behavior. Of course, like you said, most of it is still up for interpretation until we know more. I was just curious of people's opinions.

In terms of your final question about whether Science and "God" can co-exist; I think this is multi-faceted. In terms of a generic "spiritual god", of whom can be defined in nearly infinite ways, I don't see how Science directly contradicts with that. However, specifically defined Gods, who exist in the texts of religion, are very contradictory to Science. For example, Creationism and Evolution are not really compatible at all. The miracles that most religious books claim are improbable or impossible according to Science. The Earth is older than 6,000 years old according to Science etc.

[Smacklust]

I'm not disagreeing with you, in fact I tend to lean a little more towards the spiritual side than Scientific, when explaining many aspects of human behavior. Of course, like you said, most of it is still up for interpretation until we know more. I was just curious of people's opinions.

Ah I see :)

[Sauron`]

Here we go again.
This :mage:

[Smacklust]

It is the improbability of macro evolution(life originates from Microorganism) that actually makes me doubt it. As an example. The complex biological structures such as the electric motor (http://cronodon.com/BioTech/Bacteria_motility.html)in some bacteria, it can't be mutated in 1 stroke randomly. There has to be many mutations spanning many generations for that thing to be born. And as long as it's not 100% working it's actually a disadvantage to that said organism, thus that specimen gets taken out by natural selection. It's just very very very improbable. Almost impossible...
Some have explained this by saying that that motor is somehow a sum of many different smaller parts that just happened to fuse, but yeah... I don't know.
Evolution inside species is true however and should not be questioned. Its a fact. Heck by continuing that i could see some species branch out even, but from microorganisms to lets say... frogs. I just see too many problems with it.

*Edit* I dont think OP wanted this to be the subject of this thread though :D

[xmangosx]

OP wants to hear:

1. Scientist have it all figured out so far, they have a pretty good grasp of things.
2. Spirits do not exist (even though God is a spirit, angels are spirits, and we have a spirit/soul)
3. Spirituality is just something that humans made up so they can feel more important than a dung beetle.
4. Science can explain everything and anything using our 5 senses.

I'm just saying this is what he would like to hear. God is super natural, spirits are supernatural, you will find out when you die, or when Jesus returns.

[Proletariat]

*Edit* I dont think OP wanted this to be the subject of this thread though :D
No, I doubt it was. I doubt anybody here really wants to school you on how wrong you are about evolution. We'd rather just laugh.

[Nolifer]

i love u all : )

[Norroar]

http://icb.s2games.com/0/71/71838/1.cai

[Malefication]

Actually, Hat_Truck says he's leaning more to the spiritual side, which is quite obvious if you read many of the posts he has written in religious discussions.


Me, however, science all the way. Also, we have more than five senses.

[Apostate]

My experiences:

While I would call myself an atheist, I have had spiritual experiences which puzzle me and which at this point I cannot explain. More specifically, I am prone to very vivid and almost prophetic dreams. These dreams differ distinctly from my normal dreams.

A few very glaring cases:
I dreamed that my girlfriend was perched on my neck, sucking the blood from my neck while I grew weaker and weaker. Upon waking I felt vividly that the dream meant something. Later that day she called me and asked if I could only apply to colleges that were local so we could stay together. I broke up with her that same day.
-You could argue that the dream reflected my inner worries about the inbalance in the relationship and that what happened was coincidence, but I can't explain how vivid the feeling was upon waking that the dream had somehow portrayed a powerful truth.

A second instance: I had a dream that a friend(she used to be one of my teachers while I was in high school) was climbing a cliff, slowly crawling up the steep ledges with her shoulders bulging. A dark skinned baby was strapped to her back, screaming and crying. When I woke up I had the sense that I needed to tell her about the dream. I called her and told her what had happened, and she started crying and said a quick goodbye and hung up. I heard later that she had broken up with her boyfriend that day, who was a black man and who I had known nothing about.

I've had a few dreams where I dreamed that I would meet someone in a specific place and then the following day I met them there. I dreamed the face of a woman and I met her the next day and ultimately dated her for two years.

I have also had many vivid dreams during which I live another life as a native in a tropical region, possibly South America. I don't know what to make of it but the dreams have fantastical detail and some of the things that have happened in the dreams I have researched and found out were actual native traditions. I've speculated that this is a past life or something, but it could be anything really. Maybe someone else's memories are floating as energy in some dreamscape or some other fantastical speculation.


So that's my take. I don't know what it means or if it means anything, but my suspicion is that there is more to life than meets the eye. I think it's possible that science could explain everything if we had the right tools and knowledge; I don't think anything is "magic". But I do think there is still a lot we don't know.

I also think that spirituality is an important part of being a rounded human. If you lose touch with (for lack of a better word) your inner God, then you are less of a person. I have lived some periods of my life where I felt out of touch with my true purpose, and other times where I was doing what I feel like I was made to do and I felt vibrant and alive. I can't explain it really but it's how I feel.

[Graviton]

As the above poster, I am with science all the way (i hate religion with a passion) but I am against those "scientists" that rely on beliefs instead of facts. If you really know what true science is then you would know that the "miracles" that occur in creationism are not far fetched if you compare to what you encounter in relativity or quantum physics. This universe is very strange place and anything that appears logical probably has the wrong explanation. True science tries to explain that which is beyond the 5 senses. Compare the lifespan of universe to that of the our planet, its not even like .00001% of it. How can we approach things logically if our our common sense as humanity is limited to the few millions of years we have existed compared to the universe?

[Beanybag]

It is the improbability of macro evolution(life originates from Microorganism) that actually makes me doubt it. As an example. The complex biological structures such as the electric motor (http://cronodon.com/BioTech/Bacteria_motility.html)in some bacteria, it can't be mutated in 1 stroke randomly. There has to be many mutations spanning many generations for that thing to be born. And as long as it's not 100% working it's actually a disadvantage to that said organism, thus that specimen gets taken out by natural selection. It's just very very very improbable. Almost impossible...
Some have explained this by saying that that motor is somehow a sum of many different smaller parts that just happened to fuse, but yeah... I don't know.
Evolution inside species is true however and should not be questioned. Its a fact. Heck by continuing that i could see some species branch out even, but from microorganisms to lets say... frogs. I just see too many problems with it.

*Edit* I dont think OP wanted this to be the subject of this thread though :D

What you're talking about is irreducible complexity, and it has been debunked many times.

As for me, I don't believe in the soul. I do think humans can be spiritual through experiencing deep emotions and powerful expressions of art. And probably some other stuff. And I think there might be some limits to science. It can describe the wavelength of the color red, the energy that the red photons have, how red light is produced, and what historically our instincts tell us about the color red... but it can't describe what we see when we see red. It's this confusing thing, human experience, and some of it is just so indescribable. That's my take on spirituality at least.

Also, Apostate: That story was kind of awesome lol. Dreams can often help us describe what our sub-conscious has put together, or maybe it was just coincidence. I think dreams can mean things sometimes, but they're so hard to understand and remember for me.

edit @Graviton: Just... no.
__________________
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/4694/honsig2.jpg

[Malefication]

True science tries to explain that which is beyond the 5 senses.
We still have more than 5 senses. Wish people would stop saying that.

[Hat_Truck]

My experiences:

While I would call myself an atheist, I have had spiritual experiences which puzzle me and which at this point I cannot explain. More specifically, I am prone to very vivid and almost prophetic dreams. These dreams differ distinctly from my normal dreams.

A few very glaring cases:
I dreamed that my girlfriend was perched on my neck, sucking the blood from my neck while I grew weaker and weaker. Upon waking I felt vividly that the dream meant something. Later that day she called me and asked if I could only apply to colleges that were local so we could stay together. I broke up with her that same day.
-You could argue that the dream reflected my inner worries about the inbalance in the relationship and that what happened was coincidence, but I can't explain how vivid the feeling was upon waking that the dream had somehow portrayed a powerful truth.

A second instance: I had a dream that a friend(she used to be one of my teachers while I was in high school) was climbing a cliff, slowly crawling up the steep ledges with her shoulders bulging. A dark skinned baby was strapped to her back, screaming and crying. When I woke up I had the sense that I needed to tell her about the dream. I called her and told her what had happened, and she started crying and said a quick goodbye and hung up. I heard later that she had broken up with her boyfriend that day, who was a black man and who I had known nothing about.

I've had a few dreams where I dreamed that I would meet someone in a specific place and then the following day I met them there. I dreamed the face of a woman and I met her the next day and ultimately dated her for two years.

I have also had many vivid dreams during which I live another life as a native in a tropical region, possibly South America. I don't know what to make of it but the dreams have fantastical detail and some of the things that have happened in the dreams I have researched and found out were actual native traditions. I've speculated that this is a past life or something, but it could be anything really. Maybe someone else's memories are floating as energy in some dreamscape or some other fantastical speculation.


So that's my take. I don't know what it means or if it means anything, but my suspicion is that there is more to life than meets the eye. I think it's possible that science could explain everything if we had the right tools and knowledge; I don't think anything is "magic". But I do think there is still a lot we don't know.

I also think that spirituality is an important part of being a rounded human. If you lose touch with (for lack of a better word) your inner God, then you are less of a person. I have lived some periods of my life where I felt out of touch with my true purpose, and other times where I was doing what I feel like I was made to do and I felt vibrant and alive. I can't explain it really but it's how I feel.Thanks for sharing these things Apostate; seeking experiences like this is why I made the thread.

I think everybody experiences "Spirituality" differently, but I really like hearing about your experiences; those stories are fascinating.

For me, I want to believe in Spirituality, but I also see the danger in believing things without evidence.

I've had some powerful "spiritual" experiences of my own that I can't explain, but like you, I sometimes question them and wonder if they were just coincidence or have some other explanation. Specifically my connection with people, especially people I care about, is unbelievably strong. Sometimes when I meet people, even for only a few minutes, I can tell them things about themselves that they never told me, or that most people don't even know.

One particular example I can remember was with my girlfriend at the time. I remember feeling perfectly fine all day, but then I had this sudden urge to just burst into tears for no particular reason, even though there wasn't anything wrong. She called me a couple hours later and told me that she had been crying because she missed me, and it all seemed to make sense.

You hear stories like this all the time, but it's hard to tell how much stock to put into them, since most of them are personal and anecdotal; but at the same time, I guess we can't just immediately discredit them if they can't be proven empirically by Science.

Also, concerning the last part of your post, I completely understand and agree with that. I spend a lot of time practicing self-reflection and meditation, and seeking my 'inner being'. I absolutely refuse to take orders from others or do things which (in my mind) betray who I am. Though this makes my lifestyle choices seem unorthodox and rather strange to most other people (specifically because I don't conform to the standards of society), I find that I feel, like you said, the most vibrant and alive when I'm seeking my own inner peace.

[Apostate]

That's a good way of looking at it, and at life, I think.

The way I try to approach it is to just be as unbiased and uninventive as I can be. I know how prone the human mind is to superstition, and I really try to avoid that. But at the same time I can't ignore what I've felt and I want to make sense of it.

[Hat_Truck]

It's the same fundamental dichotomy for me. My heart and personal understanding tells me to trust in my own judgement and experiences, but seeing what horrible things people have done in the past by trusting those same influences makes me fear my own decisions.

Like I said though in the first post, I don't think religion is Spirituality in its true form, I think it is the corruption and dissection of it, created to control the masses. It's certainly something I ponder about a lot.

[xmangosx]

How about having both? The reality is, that is what people do anyway.

[Apostate]

I don't think any(or at least most) religions start that way. Most start when someone becomes convinced that they know something that in fact they don't. It's the people that come once infrastructure is built that are really the ones who then make it a power game.

The movie Avatar is a good example of a sort of "biological" spiritualism. I don't think that's what is in reality but it could be something similar in some ways.

[Apostate]

How about having both? The reality is, that is what people do anyway.

The problem here (and this isn't a religion debate thread) but in my personal experience, religion sort of acts like a funnel. We have these wide powerful hearts and minds, and religion pours all of our energy into a narrow channel of experience when in reality we could be a waterfall. I've been a Christian for 4 years, and now that I've been an atheist-agnostic for 2 years I can at least personally testify that I feel much less limited in my experience now, on a spiritual level.

[xmangosx]

The problem here (and this isn't a religion debate thread) but in my personal experience, religion sort of acts like a funnel. We have these wide powerful hearts and minds, and religion pours all of our energy into a narrow channel of experience when in reality we could be a waterfall. I've been a Christian for 4 years, and now that I've been an atheist-agnostic for 2 years I can at least personally testify that I feel much less limited in my experience now, on a spiritual level.

I didn't mean having religion. I meant having both science and a belief in spirits (beings who exist outside of what we can sense). Also, I don't believe your testimony of being a Christian, although I am sure you were religious. Experience and feelings have nothing to do with Gods revelation through his word. I never sought out an experience, only the truth. I care less about feeling a certain way. A wicked generation seeks a sign not the truth.

[Tay_z0nday]

The problem here (and this isn't a religion debate thread) but in my personal experience, religion sort of acts like a funnel. We have these wide powerful hearts and minds, and religion pours all of our energy into a narrow channel of experience when in reality we could be a waterfall. I've been a Christian for 4 years, and now that I've been an atheist-agnostic for 2 years I can at least personally testify that I feel much less limited in my experience now, on a spiritual level.

I dont think you were a real christian you know why....
Rihanna is pretending to be a real christian, but god knows what is truly in her heart.$$$$$
Last time she wore her cross around her neck, she was almost naked...
I doubt you had faith in you.
I could be wrong but it doesnt matter.

[Zwai]

A wicked generation seeks a sign not the truth.

The relevant passage from Matthew 12:38 is:


Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”

39 He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

It's clear from context that the Pharisees and teachers of the [Jewish] law were the ones targeted, not a bunch of people on an online gaming forum. And the sign was only to refer to Jesus being buried, not to Apostate's dreams.

Are you *really* going to discredit *anyone* who asks for a sign? What about Gideon - who was asked to do some things that were patently absurd? Here's what he says on the matter in Judges 6:36-40


36And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said,

37Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said.

38And it was so: for he rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wringed the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water.

39And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew.

40And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground.

Not once but twice does he say, "Yeah, I know you want me to do all these crazy things. But can you adjust the wetness of this fleece and the surrounding ground as a sign in this specific way so I know it was you?"

And don't even get me started on Ezekiel. :nymp:

[Apostate]

I know you won't believe me, but I was Christian. I really was. I wasn't one of those loosey-hypocritical types either. I was seriously deep into my faith. Deeper than most people I've met who are still religious. I've personally read the Bible 5 times and led 9 people to Jesus through the gospel.

Suppose that you were on a college campus, and someone told you that the campus has a super-janitor who was omniscient and whose sole role was to keep the campus in perfect condition. He was perfect at this job. Then suppose that you walked into a classroom and saw that there was vomit all over the floor, that the walls were covered in feces, and there was a dead animal in the corner. What would be the most reasonable thing to do? Discredit the man who told you there was a perfect janitor, or assume that the ruin of the classroom actually was part of some experiment and had a purpose in the janitor's plan?

This is how religious people think all the time, though. Rather than modify their worldview when presented with new evidence, they choose to mold every new finding to what they already think so that they remain unchanging and comfortable. I challenge you to go beyond that.

[xmangosx]

The relevant passage from Matthew 12:38 is:



It's clear from context that the Pharisees and teachers of the [Jewish] law were the ones targeted, not a bunch of people on an online gaming forum. And the sign was only to refer to Jesus being buried, not to Apostate's dreams.

Are you *really* going to discredit *anyone* who asks for a sign? What about Gideon - who was asked to do some things that were patently absurd? Here's what he says on the matter in Judges 6:36-40



Not once but twice does he say, "Yeah, I know you want me to do all these crazy things. But can you adjust the wetness of this fleece and the surrounding ground as a sign in this specific way so I know it was you?"

And don't even get me started on Ezekiel. :nymp:

I would still discredit them as it is faith that they need to be saved...they won't get a sign anyway and I wouldn't waist there time telling them to look for one.

[Hat_Truck]

I didn't mean having religion. I meant having both science and a belief in spirits (beings who exist outside of what we can sense). Also, I don't believe your testimony of being a Christian, although I am sure you were religious. Experience and feelings have nothing to do with Gods revelation through his word. I never sought out an experience, only the truth. I care less about feeling a certain way. A wicked generation seeks a sign not the truth.
Don't you feel a little arrogant to call Christianity the truth as if it were a fact? The Bible, the book that Christianity is based on, is full of errors, mistranslations, and barbaric text. It can not be Scientifically verified, and seems to be a poor source of morality or Spirituality as well.

Bart D. Ehrman was raised as a Christian, and eventually became a fundamentalist, attending and graduating from Moody Bible Institute, and is a 1978 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois. He received his PhD and M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied under Bruce Metzger. He received magna cum laude for both his BA in 1978 and PhD in 1985. Bart's eventual to "conversion" Atheism was due to his extensive study of Bible Literature. He learned at least 4 new languages, including Greek, Latin, Hewbrew and German so he could have a deeper understanding of the various Bible copies and translations, and due to his study, he began to realize how fundamentally flawed the Bible really is. Since his graduation from Princeton, he has written dozens of books and articles, attended countless seminaries, appeared on national television several times, and has been a college-level professor for many years. If you want his extensive credentials, you are welcome to read up on it here: http://www.bartdehrman.com/curriculum.htm

According to him, the massive amount of errors and mistranslations in the Bible, coupled with the fact that we don't have the original copies, puts the validity of the entire book into serious question. If the Scientific examination or Scientific standards that we use today were placed on the Bible, it would be discarded as an unreliable source of information in Genesis. Furthermore, the fact that the Bible claims the existence of numerous "miracles" makes it even less credible. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of miracles have been claimed since the beginning of human history, yet we don't have Scientific proof of even one claim, which most likely means that they do not exist; and any source of information claiming they are true is usually considered fallacious. As Carl Sagan put it, "Extraordinary Claims require Extraordinary Evidence". Yet we have no evidence for any of the Biblical claims of miracles, or any of the other claims throughout time for that matter. In addition, Scientific study reveals truths that contradict what the Bible says. If you study the Geneology of Genesis, you will realize that, according to the Bible, the Earth was created 6,000 years ago; obviously we know that this is not the case. When you examine the evidence, realizing how flawed the Bible is, how many errors it contains, how it trips all over itself, the extraordinary claims it makes, and all the hundreds of thousands of different copies and translations that exist, it becomes very clear that the book is not a reliable source of information. Even if the original text was "Inspired by God", and there would be no way to prove that, it has been bastardized and altered to such a degree that it can not be taken seriously for that purpose.

It's fine that you have your own beliefs, and I even encourage that, but why you do pretend like your Scientifically baseless belief systems are fact?

You call others wicked for "not seeking the truth", yet you seem to be the one who is totally oblivious to it.

Please educate (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/the-bible-telling-lies-to_b_840301.html)yourself.

[Reldnahc]

Been spending most their lives living in a Gangster's Paradise.
Been spending most their lives living in a Gangster's Paradise.
Keep spending most our lives living in a Gangster's Paradise.
Keep spending most our lives living in a Gangster's Paradise.

[xmangosx]

Don't you feel a little arrogant to call Christianity the truth as if it were a fact? The Bible, the book that Christianity is based on, is full of errors, mistranslations, and barbaric text. It can not be Scientifically verified, and seems to be a poor source of morality or Spirituality as well.

Bart D. Ehrman was raised as a Christian, and eventually became a fundamentalist, attending and graduating from Moody Bible Institute, and is a 1978 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois. He received his PhD and M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied under Bruce Metzger. He received magna cum laude for both his BA in 1978 and PhD in 1985. Bart's eventual to "conversion" Atheism was due to his extensive study of Bible Literature. He learned at least 4 new languages, including Greek, Latin, Hewbrew and German so he could have a deeper understanding of the various Bible copies and translations, and due to his study, he began to realize how fundamentally flawed the Bible really is. Since his graduation from Princeton, he has written dozens of books and articles, attended countless seminaries, appeared on national television several times, and has been a college-level professor for many years. If you want his extensive credentials, you are welcome to read up on it here: http://www.bartdehrman.com/curriculum.htm

According to him, the massive amount of errors and mistranslations in the Bible, coupled with the fact that we don't have the original copies, puts the validity of the entire book into serious question. If the Scientific examination or Scientific standards that we use today were placed on the Bible, it would be discarded as an unreliable source of information in Genesis. Furthermore, the fact that the Bible claims the existence of numerous "miracles" makes it even less credible. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of miracles have been claimed since the beginning of human history, yet we don't have Scientific proof of even one claim, which most likely means that they do not exist; and any source of information claiming they are true is usually considered fallacious. As Carl Sagan put it, "Extraordinary Claims require Extraordinary Evidence". Yet we have no evidence for any of the Biblical claims of miracles, or any of the other claims throughout time for that matter. In addition, Scientific study reveals truths that contradict what the Bible says. If you study the Geneology of Genesis, you will realize that, according to the Bible, the Earth was created 6,000 years ago; obviously we know that this is not the case. When you examine the evidence, realizing how flawed the Bible is, how many errors it contains, how it trips all over itself, the extraordinary claims it makes, and all the hundreds of thousands of different copies and translations that exist, it becomes very clear that the book is not a reliable source of information. Even if the original text was "Inspired by God", and there would be no way to prove that, it has been bastardized and altered to such a degree that it can not be taken seriously for that purpose.

It's fine that you have your own beliefs, and I even encourage that, but why you do pretend like your Scientifically baseless belief systems are fact?

You call others wicked for "not seeking the truth", yet you seem to be the one who is totally oblivious to it.

Please educate (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/the-bible-telling-lies-to_b_840301.html)yourself.


No I don't feel arrogant at all. I say nothing of my own but only what I have learned and know from the Word. Sure I can have my opinions and rationalize everything out like you do, but at the end of they day I have my faith. As for other bible versions and the earth being 6000 years old, you're points about them are moot and I hear them millions of times over. Modern day bibles are corrupt as the companies making them only want to make money.

Call me oblivious to the truth if you want...also I'm not calling them wicked, Jesus did and I believe it. All you are doing is spouting off rhetoric you've heard against the Bible ect. Much of the opposition concerning the bible have been addressed over the years by Christians who actually study the book properly (the most dissected and studied book in history and sold book).

Seems to be a poor choice of morality and spirituality? Are you kidding me? Really really locked up in that box of yours.

[Suda]

Don't you feel a little arrogant to call Christianity the truth as if it were a fact? The Bible, the book that Christianity is based on, is full of errors, mistranslations, and barbaric text. It can not be Scientifically verified, and seems to be a poor source of morality or Spirituality as well.

Bart D. Ehrman was raised as a Christian, and eventually became a fundamentalist, attending and graduating from Moody Bible Institute, and is a 1978 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois. He received his PhD and M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied under Bruce Metzger. He received magna cum laude for both his BA in 1978 and PhD in 1985. Bart's eventual to "conversion" Atheism was due to his extensive study of Bible Literature. He learned at least 4 new languages, including Greek, Latin, Hewbrew and German so he could have a deeper understanding of the various Bible copies and translations, and due to his study, he began to realize how fundamentally flawed the Bible really is. Since his graduation from Princeton, he has written dozens of books and articles, attended countless seminaries, appeared on national television several times, and has been a college-level professor for many years. If you want his extensive credentials, you are welcome to read up on it here: http://www.bartdehrman.com/curriculum.htm

According to him, the massive amount of errors and mistranslations in the Bible, coupled with the fact that we don't have the original copies, puts the validity of the entire book into serious question. If the Scientific examination or Scientific standards that we use today were placed on the Bible, it would be discarded as an unreliable source of information in Genesis. Furthermore, the fact that the Bible claims the existence of numerous "miracles" makes it even less credible. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of miracles have been claimed since the beginning of human history, yet we don't have Scientific proof of even one claim, which most likely means that they do not exist; and any source of information claiming they are true is usually considered fallacious. As Carl Sagan put it, "Extraordinary Claims require Extraordinary Evidence". Yet we have no evidence for any of the Biblical claims of miracles, or any of the other claims throughout time for that matter. In addition, Scientific study reveals truths that contradict what the Bible says. If you study the Geneology of Genesis, you will realize that, according to the Bible, the Earth was created 6,000 years ago; obviously we know that this is not the case. When you examine the evidence, realizing how flawed the Bible is, how many errors it contains, how it trips all over itself, the extraordinary claims it makes, and all the hundreds of thousands of different copies and translations that exist, it becomes very clear that the book is not a reliable source of information. Even if the original text was "Inspired by God", and there would be no way to prove that, it has been bastardized and altered to such a degree that it can not be taken seriously for that purpose.

It's fine that you have your own beliefs, and I even encourage that, but why you do pretend like your Scientifically baseless belief systems are fact?

You call others wicked for "not seeking the truth", yet you seem to be the one who is totally oblivious to it.

Please educate (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/the-bible-telling-lies-to_b_840301.html)yourself.


This is more intence then a 1500 braket game.

[Hat_Truck]

No I don't feel arrogant at all. I say nothing of my own but only what I have learned and know from the Word. Sure I can have my opinions and rationalize everything out like you do, but at the end of they day I have my faith. As for other bible versions and the earth being 6000 years old, you're points about them are moot and I hear them millions of times over. Modern day bibles are corrupt as the companies making them only want to make money.

Call me oblivious to the truth if you want...also I'm not calling them wicked, Jesus did and I believe it. All you are doing is spouting off rhetoric you've heard against the Bible ect. Much of the opposition concerning the bible have been addressed over the years by Christians who actually study the book properly (the most dissected and studied book in history and sold book).

Seems to be a poor choice of morality and spirituality? Are you kidding me? Really really locked up in that box of yours.
*Facepalm*

Okay, back on topic.

[xmangosx]

I know you won't believe me, but I was Christian. I really was. I wasn't one of those loosey-hypocritical types either. I was seriously deep into my faith. Deeper than most people I've met who are still religious. I've personally read the Bible 5 times and led 9 people to Jesus through the gospel.

Suppose that you were on a college campus, and someone told you that the campus has a super-janitor who was omniscient and whose sole role was to keep the campus in perfect condition. He was perfect at this job. Then suppose that you walked into a classroom and saw that there was vomit all over the floor, that the walls were covered in feces, and there was a dead animal in the corner. What would be the most reasonable thing to do? Discredit the man who told you there was a perfect janitor, or assume that the ruin of the classroom actually was part of some experiment and had a purpose in the janitor's plan?

This is how religious people think all the time, though. Rather than modify their worldview when presented with new evidence, they choose to mold every new finding to what they already think so that they remain unchanging and comfortable. I challenge you to go beyond that.


Sorry but you were just a false Christian, as Judas was. Many many are out there. A Christian is someone who does the will of God, which is to believe on the one he sent (Jesus) and to keep believing. It is something you simply do BECAUSE you are saved and born again.

[xmangosx]

*Facepalm*

Okay, back on topic.

You should facepalm indeed, as you de-railed this topic as you do every one that you post in.

Back on topic folks for some more circular arguments!

[Lethe]

of course this thread dips into religion -_-.

Anyways my PoV is similar to that as Apostate, I try to be as objective and unbiased as possible.

I also rly liked the perfect janitor analogy. good stuff.

[Blueflash]

My experiences:

While I would call myself an atheist, I have had spiritual experiences which puzzle me and which at this point I cannot explain. More specifically, I am prone to very vivid and almost prophetic dreams. These dreams differ distinctly from my normal dreams.

A few very glaring cases:
I dreamed that my girlfriend was perched on my neck, sucking the blood from my neck while I grew weaker and weaker. Upon waking I felt vividly that the dream meant something. Later that day she called me and asked if I could only apply to colleges that were local so we could stay together. I broke up with her that same day.
-You could argue that the dream reflected my inner worries about the inbalance in the relationship and that what happened was coincidence, but I can't explain how vivid the feeling was upon waking that the dream had somehow portrayed a powerful truth.

A second instance: I had a dream that a friend(she used to be one of my teachers while I was in high school) was climbing a cliff, slowly crawling up the steep ledges with her shoulders bulging. A dark skinned baby was strapped to her back, screaming and crying. When I woke up I had the sense that I needed to tell her about the dream. I called her and told her what had happened, and she started crying and said a quick goodbye and hung up. I heard later that she had broken up with her boyfriend that day, who was a black man and who I had known nothing about.

I've had a few dreams where I dreamed that I would meet someone in a specific place and then the following day I met them there. I dreamed the face of a woman and I met her the next day and ultimately dated her for two years.

I have also had many vivid dreams during which I live another life as a native in a tropical region, possibly South America. I don't know what to make of it but the dreams have fantastical detail and some of the things that have happened in the dreams I have researched and found out were actual native traditions. I've speculated that this is a past life or something, but it could be anything really. Maybe someone else's memories are floating as energy in some dreamscape or some other fantastical speculation.


So that's my take. I don't know what it means or if it means anything, but my suspicion is that there is more to life than meets the eye. I think it's possible that science could explain everything if we had the right tools and knowledge; I don't think anything is "magic". But I do think there is still a lot we don't know.

I also think that spirituality is an important part of being a rounded human. If you lose touch with (for lack of a better word) your inner God, then you are less of a person. I have lived some periods of my life where I felt out of touch with my true purpose, and other times where I was doing what I feel like I was made to do and I felt vibrant and alive. I can't explain it really but it's how I feel.

This, amongst all my friends, i record the highest amount of experiences which may be called Deja Vu, 705 of my dreams come true, and im not overestimating. granted. i don't dream often

[Apostate]

Sorry but you were just a false Christian, as Judas was. Many many are out there. A Christian is someone who does the will of God, which is to believe on the one he sent (Jesus) and to keep believing. It is something you simply do BECAUSE you are saved and born again.


I understand the line of reasoning. If I fall away then I wasn't really born again. You can judge by the fruit that I am bearing that I was not a real convert; or maybe that if I am, I will come back one day to the faith.

But just step outside of that for a second. Try to put aside what you know and feel and just think about this. Don't you think it might be wrong that, when confronted with new testimony, you can just push it away because it doesn't line up with the Bible? What do you risk getting a little outside the box and considering the validity of where you stand?

[xmangosx]

I understand the line of reasoning. If I fall away then I wasn't really born again. You can judge by the fruit that I am bearing that I was not a real convert; or maybe that if I am, I will come back one day to the faith.

But just step outside of that for a second. Try to put aside what you know and feel and just think about this. Don't you think it might be wrong that, when confronted with new testimony, you can just push it away because it doesn't line up with the Bible? What do you risk getting a little outside the box and considering the validity of where you stand?

Why "wait" to come back? What a foolish thing to do when God is offering you a free gift. To think you are loosing something as if you had anything to begin with.

As to your second point, I would risk much questioning where I stand because I have done it for a while.. I have much assurance from studying the Word and fully trust what God has done for me. It's not about what I know, its who I know. I don't go by my feelings in these matters as most would.

[Emiya]

At the first page I thought mango was trolling and I was lulz

and now I'm very sad

As for the thread, I've never had any "spiritual" experiences, nor have I ever felt any surging emotions from stupid things like clouds parting or whatever it is nutjobs credit to their deities. However, I do know my mother (a former buddhist and current christian, somehow, I dunno) is very spiritual but not necessarily as religious despite being christian.

I also believe there's a clear distinction between "religious" and "spiritual". This is very obvious in eastern countries where most people are athiest but are highly spiritual. They believe in funny things, too, just like religious people, but regardless...

[Apostate]

Why "wait" to come back? What a foolish thing to do when God is offering you a free gift. To think you are loosing something as if you had anything to begin with.

As to your second point, I would risk much questioning where I stand because I have done it for a while.. I have much assurance from studying the Word and fully trust what God has done for me. It's not about what I know, its who I know. I don't go by my feelings in these matters as most would.

Because I'm convinced that it's false. I don't think you're at a point where I or anyone else could convince you, so there we are.

[Hat_Truck]

Sorry but you were just a false Christian, as Judas was. Many many are out there. A Christian is someone who does the will of God, which is to believe on the one he sent (Jesus) and to keep believing. It is something you simply do BECAUSE you are saved and born again.
How DARE You tell someone else what they believe. I can't even believe Apostate is taking this in stride; I would be offended by your bigoted remarks.

It is a ridiculous thing to say that "if you stop believing, you were never a Christian". Maybe you stopped believing because its claims are utterly ridiculous. I was a devout Christian for the first 19 years of my life. I praised Jesus, went up to the altar, brought other people to god, and did my damndest to worship and praise him. I was a hell of a lot better Christian than anybody I've ever met in person to this day; I actually went to church on Sunday and prayed forgiveness for my sins, and even when my life got tough, I never gave up on him. I went to the mental hospital 2 times in my life, and asked god, BEGGED him to help me, begged him to save me from my living hell, and he never did a thing.

You have a lot of nerve telling other people what they believe or who they are.

And people ask, "Why do you hate Christianity so much?" You have no idea what Apostate and I went through because of people like you. People who taught us Christianity as the inerrant truth of the world, without even mentioning that it was an opinion, over which there is virtually no evidence. People who refuse to look at the hard facts, and the overwhelming Scientific research, that almost certainly proves Christianity to be barbaric, man-made, and untrue. It would be one thing if you were keeping your baseless belief system to yourself, or even admitting that you could be wrong, but how dare you tell other people what they believe.

[Apostate]

Mainly I tolerate it because I have done it myself, and many more offensive things. You should see some of the stuff I said on web boards arguing for the other side. It was pretty horrible.

I've never actually heard your story Hat_Truck. I've had mixed opinions on your approach but I didn't know you'd been through that. Cheers for making it, like I did.

[Hat_Truck]

Yes for "making it". I would never have had to "make it" if the people in my life had just been honest with me (and themselves) from the very beginning. Individuals who purport opinion and personal experience as fact, then have the audacity to tell you that YOUR opinions and personal experiences are wrong make my blood boil.

In my opinion, this is the difference between true Spirituality and religion. Truly Spiritual people don't need to state their experiences and opinions as fact, it's enough that they believe it themselves. Religion has to convince people that they're always right, even though the criteria is exactly the same. Even though I didn't want a religious discussion in this thread, I think xmangos has proven my point.

[Smacklust]

How DARE You tell someone else what they believe. I can't even believe Apostate is taking this in stride; I would be offended by your bigoted remarks.

It is a ridiculous thing to say that "if you stop believing, you were never a Christian". Maybe you stopped believing because its claims are utterly ridiculous. I was a devout Christian for the first 19 years of my life. I praised Jesus, went up to the altar, brought other people to god, and did my damndest to worship and praise him. I was a hell of a lot better Christian than anybody I've ever met in person to this day; I actually went to church on Sunday and prayed forgiveness for my sins, and even when my life got tough, I never gave up on him. I went to the mental hospital 2 times in my life, and asked god, BEGGED him to help me, begged him to save me from my living hell, and he never did a thing.

You have a lot of nerve telling other people what they believe or who they are.

And people ask, "Why do you hate Christianity so much?" You have no idea what Apostate and I went through because of people like you. People who taught us Christianity as the inerrant truth of the world, without even mentioning that it was an opinion, over which there is virtually no evidence. People who refuse to look at the hard facts, and the overwhelming Scientific research, that almost certainly proves Christianity to be barbaric, man-made, and untrue. It would be one thing if you were keeping your baseless belief system to yourself, or even admitting that you could be wrong, but how dare you tell other people what they believe.

Damn this stuff always makes me feel bad :/ Regardless who it happens to something like this should not happen. Ever. And what makes me feel even worse is when believers start judging or telling you what to do. Fact is NO ONE can tell you whats right, what you should do, what you did wrong. That's a thing between you and god or if you don't believe, it's your own experience and position. It's impossible for someone to know how you feel.
I have this friend who suffers from a very hard mental disease and he struggles with it every day. 1 day he might cuss god and think of killing himself and other days he might be doing really good. It's impossible to put myself in his place. I can just listen to him and be there for him. Somehow he has kept his faith on god though... And his life has not been easy. Relatives doing suicides left and right and good friends dying in gang fights.

I believe that the christian god is a god that lives and does things, not just some dead god that you can learn of in the scripture. That's why I can't understand why god let all that happen, I can't understand why god lets people suffer like that. You found your answer, god does not exist, atleast not in a way you used to believe. I haven't found my answer yet, I never might.

However it's very sad to see that you are saying that scientific research proves that christianity is barbaric and man made and untrue. Yet in the next sentence you underline how stupid it is to tell others what to believe in. I've read many books on the subject and yes you can come to that conclusion, but that does not mean that its the only conclusion you can come to. Archaeological evidence can be interpreted in many ways. Guess my point is that "hard facts" might give direction, but they are not absolute, atleast not in this subject. But yeah not meaning to offend. Just felt a bit attacked there.

I actually study theology in an university and I am a christian and I do believe in god so I can't be completely objective on this matter, then again can anyone?

[YawningAngel]

Just throwing the disclaimer that if people feel this thread is overstepping the mark, they're free to contact me and ask for arbitration. Otherwise, I will let the discussion proceed unrestricted.

[Sauron`]

Religion threads? In my OT..
it's more likely than you think.

[Hat_Truck]

However it's very sad to see that you are saying that scientific research proves that christianity is barbaric and man made and untrue. Yet in the next sentence you underline how stupid it is to tell others what to believe in. I said it almost certainly proves the Bible to be untrue; I never said that it did. I have yet to hear a good argument for the Bible or the things in it. The Bible has a HUGE burden of things it must prove, including miracles, blatant contradictions with Science, the effectiveness of prayer (which has been shown to not work), and ridiculous claims like the existence of an invisible all-knowing Creator. If you're honest with yourself, what you realize in the end is that this is a faith-based belief system. There's nothing wrong with that, but Christians themselves need to realize that, being faith-based, it is no more valid than Scientology, Mormonism, Islam, Hinduism, Zeus, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Russel's Teapot, The Pretty Pink Unicorn, and millions of other faith-based belief systems throughout time. No, I won't come out and say they are wrong, but at the same time, I don't give a lot of credence to them either.

I don't mind people like you who view Christianity as an opinion, and a personal belief; I'm absolutely okay with that. I find it a little silly that you think (if you believe the Bible) people who don't believe the same thing as you are going to Hell, but hey, the more power to ya. Just please Christians, don't enforce your belief system on others as if it were fact (especially innocent children), because that is a horrible thing to do.

[Apostate]

Just throwing the disclaimer that if people feel this thread is overstepping the mark, they're free to contact me and ask for arbitration. Otherwise, I will let the discussion proceed unrestricted.

I'm hoping you don't have to.


Does anyone have any secular meditation techniques that they want to share? I'd be interested in learning more about that.

[YawningAngel]

I imagine religious ones should work perfectly well, just contemplate something other than god.

[Bobble]

However it's very sad to see that you are saying that scientific research proves that christianity is barbaric and man made and untrue.

Science has done nothing of the sort. While experiments and tests and theroys have gone so far to show that most things that people put to as divine will or heavenly intervention are simple phenomenon, there is nothing to say that Christianity is a barbaric faith. Faith is, and has been, extremely important in human society, and we may not have even lived to this point without the values that a lot of religions teach us.

Neither does it state that a lot of things in the Bible are untrue. A lot of situations are. We just think they could have explained by something else, rather than God (of course, the whole 'speaking to God thing', and Jesus' powers, of course, I don't believe).

But on the man made part, that's where atheists (not science, a lot of scientists believe in God as well) differ on the point. We believe that the Bible is an amalgamation of stories, all of which were created by man. Does it make it less important? Not by much, the Bible is perhaps the most important book to ever exist for some people, but saying it came down from Heaven is, imo, silly.

[Malefication]

The current lack of importance of the Bible can't be understated though. There's absolutely no need for the Bible to still teach us any "moral" values or anything similar in this modern day.

[JoOKie]

The current lack of importance of the Bible can't be understated though. There's absolutely no need for the Bible to still teach us any "moral" values or anything similar in this modern day.

Sigh. You are so narrow minded.

[Beanybag]

Sigh. You are so narrow minded.

Haha
__________________
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/4694/honsig2.jpg

[Hat_Truck]

Sigh. You are so narrow minded.
Are you kidding me?

[Smacklust]

No, I won't come out and say they are wrong

Thanks for the clarification :) It seems I miss interpreted you.


But on the man made part, that's where atheists (not science, a lot of scientists believe in God as well) differ on the point. We believe that the Bible is an amalgamation of stories, all of which were created by man.

I'm very familiar with all this :) I actually study this stuff in the university. That'd a good point though. It's not really science that tells us god does not exist - science can't really study god as you can't put stuff like god or spirits or soul under the microscope.



Does anyone have any secular meditation techniques that they want to share? I'd be interested in learning more about that.

I'm not sure if any meditation techniques are fine but I'm actually in process of reading a book on religion psychology. According to it the TM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation) technique is the most wide spread meditation technique in the west. And some have got great results from it.
However there is some pretty scary psychological crap that you can trigger via meditation as well, especially if done wrong :/ Can't find the page(browsing the book right now...) but it had this example of a guy who was trying out this chakra meditation technique, he messed up somehow and now sees a delusion of snakes coming from his pants and trying to bite his face. (still had them after a long time of therapy.) Human mind is damn scary :D

[Bobble]

It's not really science that tells us god does not exist - science can't really study god as you can't put stuff like god or spirits or soul under the microscope.

If they exist, of course, which is the basis of the argument. We have people on one side who believe that God cannot be seen because we as man have not created the technology to study Him or show any evidence of him, and there are people who believe that since there is no God, or angels, or souls, they, of course, cannot be shown. I try to stay neutral on these affairs, mostly.

[Suda]

Sigh. You are so narrow minded.

Gawd killeded moar people in da bible then lucy bro.

[Suda]

Are you kidding me?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3mDLsyn6ns http://www.turnbacktogod.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/warrior.jpg

Kill non christians for 2000 years

Convert people to christianity after crusades

?!??!?!?!?!?!?!

Profit!?!?!??!????

[Anilein]

ignorance on "every" side, as expected, thanks. nice read.

[Smacklust]

I try to stay neutral on these affairs, mostly.

Good :) That shows that you are much more mature than most of the atheists and believers out there.





Kill non christians for 2000 years

Convert people to christianity after crusades

?!??!?!?!?!?!?!

Profit!?!?!??!????

2000 years? Really?
Tens of thousands of non christians were killed. It's very sad and in my opinion just proves how wrong people can use religion to manipulate others.
To light some perspective. For an example The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion. Killed hundreds of thousands christians and other believers. and The soviet union is just 1 of the many examples like this. I don't see your point here.

[Hat_Truck]

Good That shows that you are much more mature than most of the atheists and believers out there.
You know the solution isn't necessarily to stay neutral. I wouldn't mind staying neutral if Religion didn't have so much power in my country. We pay billions of dollars to the churches every year tax free (http://taxthechurches.org/), Creationism is taught in school, and innocent children are indoctrinated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Camp) like I was, their lives often ruined. Until churches are taxed, Creationism in school is nixed, and child indoctrination of religion becomes an official form of child abuse, I will not stay neutral on these topics.

It should be noted that I'm not completely against teaching Creationism in school. However, if we're going to do that, we also need to teach Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, Scientologyism, Pink Unicorniverse Theory, and all other baseless and Scientifically unfounded belief system as well. (I hope people can realize I'm being sarcastic)

[Chaosboom]

Until churches are taxed, Creationism in school is nixed, and child indoctrination of religion becomes an official form of child abuse, I will not stay neutral on these topics.

Sounds to me like the illusion of making a difference. If you have passion, do something about it. This is not something.

Wasn't this thread closed like yesterday? Oh different name.

I thought the Off-Topic section was the good part of this forum.

[YawningAngel]

My stance remains consistent: if you wish to discuss things like this, go nuts. I only come and take away the toys once you start throwing them out of the playpen, what you do with them until then is your own concern. I believe that most of my posters are mature enough to not post in threads they think are worthless, the one I locked got killed because a) it was a duplicate b) it was from GD and c) nothing was being discussed.

[Hat_Truck]

I am doing something about it thanks, but having rational discussion with people is also doing something about it as well. I made this thread to get opinions, and though the opinions I got weren't what I expected (for the most part), I'm still learning how people think. In a week or so I probably won't even be on these forums at all, because I'll be spending all my time trying to change our corrupt system. Until then, I don't mind some enlightening discussion with Christians (even if it wasn't this thread's original purpose).

[Chaosboom]

Wake up call, man. There is no evil system. No one is trying to hurt anyone with Christianity. There will always be Christian people and Christian schools.
You know Churches build schools in Africa to teach the kids there for free? Maybe you can do that?

[Smacklust]

You know the solution isn't necessarily to stay neutral. I wouldn't mind staying neutral if Religion didn't have so much power in my country. We pay billions of dollars to the churches every year tax free (http://taxthechurches.org/), Creationism is taught in school, and innocent children are indoctrinated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Camp) like I was, their lives often ruined. Until churches are taxed, Creationism in school is nixed, and child indoctrination of religion becomes an official form of child abuse, I will not stay neutral on these topics.

I see. Well those are quite heavy charges you are throwing around. I'm not going to respond to them since honestly nothing good will come out of arguing about this, especially when for you it is at an extremely personal level. My arguments back would most probably seem like personal attacks against you.
Also unfortunately the situation here is quite different, I do not have enough information on your situation there to draw any opinions on the matter myself. Of course there are very weird, sick and wrong ("christian")religious movements here as well but those are far from the christianity I stand for.

I hope everything will turn out allright for you man :) Good luck in your life and my best wishes for your future!

[xmangosx]

Remain "neutral" if you wish but you are really not. You believe in SOMETHING whether you like it/know it or not. If you live you're life doing whatever you want without it hurting anyone else you are a satanist. If you are not sure what you believe or if there is a god you are agnostic at best. Those Christians who did those things in the past were wrong, the great commission never commanded Christians to do those things, but only to spread the gospel message to the lost and THAT'S IT.

Having a hard time distinguishing between real Christianity and everything else? Go to your local independent fundamental Baptist church, sit down, and talk to a pastor there. I PROMISE you will get many questions answered. Get out of your little box in front of your PC screen and stop being a hypocrite.

[YawningAngel]

Sorry, I'd just like to confirm that I did not, the last time I looked, worship Satan.

[Malefication]

Sigh. You are so narrow minded.
How so?


Does anyone have any secular meditation techniques that they want to share? I'd be interested in learning more about that.
I was brought up with transcendental meditation from my childhood, and my mother is a... uh... Well, she's "licensed" to teach people TM. Did it from sometime before I was 10 to when I was 18-19 or something like that. During all these years I never experienced anything but relaxation, and I doubt you will gain anything more from any kind of meditation unless you make yourself believe something will happen. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything now that I don't meditate any longer.

[Zwai]

I will not stay neutral on these topics.


Remain "neutral" if you wish but you are really not.

xmangosx making big claims. :blac:

[Malefication]

xmangosx making big claims. :blac:
Word up


Also, I don't know why anyone even bothers arguing with him.

[Beanybag]

Go to your local independent fundamental Baptist church, sit down, and talk to a pastor there. I PROMISE you will get many questions answered. Get out of your little box in front of your PC screen and stop being a hypocrite.

I'm pretty that if I walked into one of these churches, they'd have someone walk me right on out. I hear they don't like my kind round their parts.

@Zwai: I think he was actually calling Bobble a satanist.
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[Apostate]

I'm pretty that if I walked into one of these churches, they'd have someone walk me right on out. I hear they don't like my kind round their parts.

Why, what do you look like?

I'd like to share this video, it's fairly relevant to this thread:

Sam Harris on Spiritual Experience (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpaVLLObU80)

[Blueflash]

Why, what do you look like?

I'd like to share this video, it's fairly relevant to this thread:

Sam Harris on Spiritual Experience (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpaVLLObU80)


He means he likes the penis

[Bobble]

I'm pretty that if I walked into one of these churches, they'd have someone walk me right on out. I hear they don't like my kind round their parts.

@Zwai: I think he was actually calling Bobble a satanist.
__________________
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/4694/honsig2.jpg

Yeah, I got that too. It's not that I don't believe in one thing over the other, if indeed we're taking sides of the issue, I just don't really care about enforcing either side of this issue

And remember everyone, Satanists do NOT worship Satan. It's a term used for people who reject God in all of his forms. In that term, then yes, I guess I am a Satanist.

[Hat_Truck]

Wake up call, man. There is no evil system. No one is trying to hurt anyone with Christianity. There will always be Christian people and Christian schools.
You know Churches build schools in Africa to teach the kids there for free? Maybe you can do that?Uh yeah, and the Pope tells them that wearing condoms is bad, spreading AIDS is better.


I'd like to share this video, it's fairly relevant to this thread:

Sam Harris on Spiritual ExperienceThank you for that, Sam Harris is so brilliant. I take your Sam Harris on Spirituality video, and raise you a Sam Harris on Christian morality (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HthQ6a7FZeA) video.

I actually love his specific and detailed distinction between "religion" and "spirituality". I had never heard him talk on this topic, but it seems that we are in agreement about the hijacking and corruption of spirituality by religion.

[Apostate]

^That's exactly what I considered saying about the church schools.

That is also a good video. I really want to buy another of his books to read over winter break.

[Chaosboom]

I don't want to get into a debate on whether or not AIDS is Christian, I can tell you this though, the Pope doesn't do that out of menace, he is old and he has some principals which many disagree on, including myself. Then again I am not Catholic, and you did a great job answering the part of the post you felt secure with bashing. What about the schools, hospitals and humanitarian help?

[Apostate]

I think that stuff is fantastic, and I'm glad they are doing it. It doesn't change how I feel about religion. I greatly respect people of faith who truly abide by "blessed are the poor", and all of the other great humanitarian passages of Scripture.

[JoOKie]

I'm not even religious. I gave up being a christian when I was 13. I actually give my mom sh*t all the time for being a christian (yes i'm a bad son), but it doesn't mean religion is pointless. It's like saying stories are pointless. You don't have to believe in it, but if you can't see that it has some value then you are just choosing one side and sticking with it arrogantly. Yes, bad things come from christianity. But bad things come from every damn thing in life.

Not like I expect to convince any of you though. People have a hard-head on the topic of religion, but being hard-headed is just as bad as being ignorant.

I'm not even saying christianity is necessarily a GOOD way of conveying morals, but to say it isn't/it's completely useless is so wrong.

[Hat_Truck]

I don't want to get into a debate on whether or not AIDS is Christian, I can tell you this though, the Pope doesn't do that out of menace, he is old and he has some principals which many disagree on, including myself. Then again I am not Catholic, and you did a great job answering the part of the post you felt secure with bashing. What about the schools, hospitals and humanitarian help?
Okay? So there are good things being done in the name of religion? There are also terrible things being done in the name of religion. I don't see your point.

Besides, just because SOME Christian people do good things, it doesn't make the Bible true, or God real. Plenty of Atheists and Agnostics do good things too. Your post did not merit an answer, because its point was bafflingly arbitrary.



I think that stuff is fantastic, and I'm glad they are doing it. It doesn't change how I feel about religion. I greatly respect people of faith who truly abide by "blessed are the poor", and all of the other great humanitarian passages of Scripture.In other words, Apostate greatly respects people who cherrypick which parts of the Bible they want to believe in, and pretend like the horrible bits don't exist. This is what you have to do be in a Christian in today's society, otherwise you would get locked up in jail for killing homosexuals, people who work on Sundays, and women who aren't virgins on their day of marriage (so every woman in America basically).

[Apostate]

^While that's true, the way I choose to look at it is that some people are more morally conscious and compassionate, and that their personal qualities shine through their faith.

That being said, the Bible is actually a very loving and compassionate book in regards to the poor and the hungry. The Bible is a very strong and very morally right book in that regard; I challenge anyone to find a verse that speaks lowly of the poor. The Bible is only immoral in that at the time it was written there were a few very glaring mistakes about morality which we have now figured out. Now we understand that consensual sex is rarely wrong, and that many traditions and rituals are less important and none of these violations merit death.

That's how I look at it. I think it's an honest view.

[Tay_z0nday]

:madm:

[Apostate]

^Unintelligent and offensive, serves no purpose. Mods delete please.

[Zwai]

I'm pretty that if I walked into one of these churches, they'd have someone walk me right on out. I hear they don't like my kind round their parts

In my experience, they wouldn't do any such thing - historically, churches tend to be quite tolerant of people: They were accepting of blacks being ministers or such when slavery was common, they accept the prostitutes in as equally valuable when the rest of society rejected them as street trash, etc. Of course, they're accepting them *as Christians*, but they won't reject you from going to the church just because you look funny or think weird things. :nymp:

Unless maybe you tried to go into the women's bathroom or something. But surely if you're walking into a church to get information from the pastor, you'd be willing to make a slight cultural adjustment and use the men's bathroom? :empa:

[Tay_z0nday]

yeah your right, I was quite mad when I wrote this but I rode most reply from the thread and the only thing he can say his how retard we are and him not.
We are clearly blind and him not.
And you know what even worse, he is doing a thread about religion but he dont want to hear religious anwser.
The only thing he want to hear is all the things he already believe so what's the point of doing a useless thread...
Even if I know what I wrote is not true at all, I hope he understand the fact it's not everyone reading this thread who has the same opinion as him.:mad:

[Apostate]

yeah your right, I was quite mad when I wrote this but I rode most reply from the thread and the only thing he can say his how retard we are and him not.
We are clearly blind and him not.
And you know what even worse, he is doing a thread about religion but he dont want to hear religious anwser.
The only thing he want to hear is all the things he already believe so what's the point of doing a useless thread...
Even if I know what I wrote is not true at all, I hope he understand the fact it's not everyone reading this thread who has the same opinion as him.:mad:


I understand that, but it would probably serve the discussion better if you were more calm and less insulting. Not that Hat_Truck isn't guilty of being insulting himself at times.

[Tay_z0nday]

So do you guys know why most christians these days are black?
It's because they didnt had an easy life like most of us.
Im pretty sure religion did help a lots of black peoples some years ago when racist was everywhere.
And when your one step from killing yourself, you really need someone to help you make a stand in life.
Cause no matter how hard is your life, god will never let you down.

[Hat_Truck]

Did you know that most black people originally inherited Christianity from their white slave owners? Christianity was not an African religion. The slaves that were forced to the United States became Christians because their "masters" taught them the religion, to, as it has been used throughout history, keep them down and keep them occupied.

In some ways, by continuing to worship the God of your old white masters, you are still enslaved to them. No man can be free (white or black) while they are under the oppressive chains of religion.

If you would read the Bible, you would see that it supports slavery:
" Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)"

Leviticus 25:44-46
Exodus 21:2-6
Exodus 21:7-11
Exodus 21:20-21
1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT

[Beanybag]

Unless maybe you tried to go into the women's bathroom or something. But surely if you're walking into a church to get information from the pastor, you'd be willing to make a slight cultural adjustment and use the men's bathroom? :empa:

Hey, hey, don't get me started on gendered bathrooms now. I see what you're doing! :poll:
__________________
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/4694/honsig2.jpg

[Zwai]

Did you know that most black people originally inherited Christianity from their white slave owners? Christianity was not an African religion. The slaves that were forced to the United States became Christians because their "masters" taught them the religion, to, as it has been used throughout history, keep them down and keep them occupied.

In some ways, by continuing to worship the God of your old white masters, you are still enslaved to them. No man can be free (white or black) while they are under the oppressive chains of religion.

If you would read the Bible, you would see that it supports slavery:
" Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)"

Leviticus 25:44-46
Exodus 21:2-6
Exodus 21:7-11
Exodus 21:20-21
1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT

I'm not keen to just say "Throw out the Old Testament entirely because it's outdated with the New Testament", but you should understand that much of it gives the law and practice for old Israel and the Jewish faith. If you'd like to discuss slavery in the Old Testament, that's fine; but if I don't throw out your first 4 references I'm going to have to bring up what exactly a slave was in both ancient Israel and ancient Rome and that's just too much information.

In Rome before the first century, when the New Testament was written, upwards of 40% of the population were "slaves." They were generally either the result of a conquered territory or people selling themselves into slavery to pay off a debt, and even though they were "slaves" they could still marry, purchase land, run a business, and had legal recourse if their masters beat them.

I'm not saying it makes everything alright, but it's very different from the way you normally think of slavery in the US South. Further, you quoted 1 Timothy, which is a *letter* from Paul to Timothy to encourage him in his ministry at Ephesus. Again, I'm not saying to throw it out completely because it's a letter, but Paul is writing a letter of encouragement to a friend to help him with circumstances at the time and isn't really wanting to start a countrywide rebellion against slavery.

The historical context is that there was a huge slave rebellion recently(at the time), and the resulting crackdown made it worse on everyone else. Christianity was struggling with the government at the time, so the message isn't that "slaves need to obey their masters" like some big brother Nazi propaganda; it's more a statement that, "Timothy, your church needs to make sure not to cause too much trouble because the message of Jesus is more important right now that campaigning for freedom right at this second. If they catch us starting another rebellion, the churches are going to get lumped in as criminals like the others, the government's going to twist our words against us and accuse us of being traitors, and our message will be lost on the people."

"Slaves obey your masters" because it's more important to get the word of Jesus out:


Eph 6:5-7: “Bondservants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ; not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men.”

but masters too don't mistreat your slaves, because *all* Christians were "bought at a price" and "bondservants in Christ":


Eph. 6:9 “And you, masters, do the same things to them, giving up threatening, knowing that your own Master also is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.”

The country at the time had widespread slavery and Paul warned not to cause too much trouble in upsetting them, but the message is reasonably clear that everyone is equal under God("there is no partiality with Him").

The "bondservants to Christ" is another metaphor that might cause concern on the surface("What, we're all slaves to Christ? What a terrible message - I advocate Freedom(tm)!") If you haven't read enough of your Bible to see that it was intended in context to be in a positive light, I can expand on that too.


Hey, hey, don't get me started on gendered bathrooms now. I see what you're doing! :poll:

:empa:

[Hat_Truck]

Why are you making all these excuses? If God is all-powerful, he could have abolished slavery at any time; in fact if he's all-knowing, he created humanity knowing that slavery would exist to begin with. The fact that the Bible is supposed to be inspired by God, and that there is so much slavery in it, is just proof that it's a man-made book, or that god supports slavery.

Oh, let me guess, "God is mysterious." Give me a freaking break.

[Apostate]

What Burge has just said is pretty much exactly true. You could also bring up that Israeli slavery was very humane for the time and the fact that the religion regulated it at all was pretty revolutionary at the time.

We have way too much cultural static and fuzz to discuss the issue of slavery clearly. Is it clearly not repudiated in any way in the Bible? Yes. Is biblical slavery or the social environment of that time anything like what we know? No.

[Zwai]

Why are you making all these excuses? If God is all-powerful, he could have abolished slavery at any time; in fact if he's all-knowing, he created humanity knowing that slavery would exist to begin with. The fact that the Bible is supposed to be inspired by God, and that there is so much slavery in it, is just proof that it's a man-made book, or that god supports slavery.

Oh, let me guess, "God is mysterious." Give me a freaking break.

This is an entirely different and much weaker argument than you first gave. I give historical context and you give a vague philosophical argument.

Why would God abolish slavery in ancient Rome? These people are Gentiles - the word means "People who aren't Jews". Why is that important? Because the Jews were God's chosen people at the time, not the Romans. If you read the Old Testament, you'd see that having Israelites as permanent Southern-style slaves was forbidden - you could sell yourself into slavery, but every 7 years the country had a complete "reset" where families would be given their Biblically-described land back if they had sold it, and people who sold themselves were freed. There was also a cycle every 49 years(maybe 50? I forget) with a stronger reset that also cleared out debts, I believe.

Actually, slaves had different values depending on where in the cycle they were - if you bought a slave 5 years in the cycle, he'd be freed 2 years later so he wasn't worth as much as one fresh in the cycle. Is time-limited indentured servitude really as bad as you make it out to be? People today join the military to get financial aid for their schooling, "selling themselves for money."

In the old testament and before Jesus' coming, if you weren't a Jew("naturalized" Jews are considered Jews) then you didn't matter. Your nation isn't God's chosen people and probably rejected him, so why would he bother helping you? I mean, it's perfectly well and good for you to reject God Hat_Truck, but are you really about to complain when you demand complete independence, make a bad decision like letting your country enslave itself, and then whine when God doesn't help you? Fix your own problems if you reject Him.

The "grace of God" in Christianity is that you can (spiritually) achieve the same status as a Jew in God's kingdom by accepting Jesus' sacrifice.

[Blueflash]

Did you know that most black people originally inherited Christianity from their white slave owners? Christianity was not an African religion. The slaves that were forced to the United States became Christians because their "masters" taught them the religion, to, as it has been used throughout history, keep them down and keep them occupied.

In some ways, by continuing to worship the God of your old white masters, you are still enslaved to them. No man can be free (white or black) while they are under the oppressive chains of religion.

If you would read the Bible, you would see that it supports slavery:
" Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)"

Leviticus 25:44-46
Exodus 21:2-6
Exodus 21:7-11
Exodus 21:20-21
1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT

eh erm, Don't generalize africans please, not all of us were enslaved by you white people, my village for example fought long and hard against slavery but eventually succumbed to the superior firepower, not one person from the general area fo y vllage was sent into slavery, there records back home are still there unless you arrogantly believe we africans were too unintelligent to keep records, in which case i might point you to the three hundred and sixty seven human heads adorning my king's palace, all heads of white colonists and their sympathizers.


Sorry for ranting, but i just dislike it when you people who know nothing, just spout off africa as if it isnt your fault we are poor,undernourished and generally uneducated /end rant.

If slavery and similar bullshit have to come into play this thread, i will personally pm every moderator requesting they close this, ****ing bullshit.

[Coolcollo]

I don't want women in my male only bathrooms.

They might do something like try and rape me. We all know women are prone to that when an attractive male is in a setting such as a bathroom where is muffled screams won't be heard.

:rhap:

[Hat_Truck]

What Burge has just said is pretty much exactly true. You could also bring up that Israeli slavery was very humane for the time and the fact that the religion regulated it at all was pretty revolutionary at the time.

We have way too much cultural static and fuzz to discuss the issue of slavery clearly. Is it clearly not repudiated in any way in the Bible? Yes. Is biblical slavery or the social environment of that time anything like what we know? No.
But even if I agreed with you, it only proves that most the Bible is an outdated, antiquated, and often barbaric way of doing things. Trying to apply it to the 21st Century is like mixing oil with water. It was written by people that had no idea of how life would operate in 3,000 years, and even to the people that do apply it to our current lives, they have to pick and choose which pieces are relevant.
eh erm, Don't generalize africans please, not all of us were enslaved by you white people,I didn't say ALL, I said most. And you can't deny that Christianity was originally the white man's religion in the United States, which was passed on to black people, most often through slavery (and then passed down to their descendents from there). Also, I don't see why slavery can't come into play in this discussion, it's in the Bible, and therefore if you believe that, you should be ready to defend it.

[Coolcollo]

Honestly I would rather read and practice Sun Tzu's Art of War.

At least it is sensible :rhap:

[Hat_Truck]

This is an entirely different and much weaker argument than you first gave. I give historical context and you give a vague philosophical argument.It's not a vague philosophical argument, most Christians are just apparently unaware of how huge the burden of proof on them is. God created the conditions in which slavery came into being did he not? Even if you did explain the context of slavery in the Bible, you also need to explain why an "all-good" God would allow it in the first place, and how it still applies to today. For example, even if you were to give the historical context of the condoning of rape in the Bible, you still need to explain why God allowed it to happen at all (and even commanded it). Do you see what I'm saying? The fact that the book promotes these things at all, regardless of context, is unacceptable in what we've come to know in modern-day society. And explain why, in God's commandments, he decrees "thou shall not murder", yet murders over 2 million people himself throughout the Bible. These kinds of contradictions are not only philosophical, they are a factual problem that needs to be explained by Christians if the Bible is to be taken literally. (As well as thousands of other mistranslations, lies, misinterpretations, and blatant errors that the book is filled with). If you are honest with yourself, and you research the topic like I have (please read the numerous books on this topic by Bart D. Ehrman), you realize that it is simply a man-made book designed to fix the problems of the times. It no longer applies to our lives.


I mean, it's perfectly well and good for you to reject God Hat_Truck, but are you really about to complain when you demand complete independence, make a bad decision like letting your country enslave itself, and then whine when God doesn't help you? Fix your own problems if you reject Him.
Also, I don't really understand this question, or why it's directed at me.


The "grace of God" in Christianity is that you can (spiritually) achieve the same status as a Jew in God's kingdom by accepting Jesus' sacrifice. Now that, is philosophical bullshit. You want to give historical contexts for all the other ridiculous claims and happenings in the Bible, acting like that justifies it when God made things this way (and can change it), then turn around and give your own philosophical claim that "you can achieve the grace of God" if you do x and y. What proof do you have of this? Where is the historical context? Oh wait, you're using the same baseless philosophical statements that you accused me of at the beginning of your post.

[Apostate]

But even if I agreed with you, it only proves that most the Bible is an outdated, antiquated, and often barbaric way of doing things. Trying to apply it to the 21st Century is like mixing oil with water. It was written by people that had no idea of how life would operate in 3,000 years, and even to the people that do apply it to our current lives, they have to pick and choose which pieces are relevant.

I completely agree with you, but the slavery argument about Christianity that you were making is simply a bad and unconvincing argument. No educated Christian who has looked at history and studied what his book says on the subject will be impressed--especially with taking that snippet of Ephesians out of context. That is the worst mistake that atheists, even leading atheists, make.

When I was Christian I would look at those types of arguments and I would just see an angry atheist trying to slander Christianity. You will not convince anyone by using that argument. Burge has already explained why thoroughly.

There are dozens of other ways of arguing against Christianity, of course. But that happens to be a bad line of attack that will just shut someone completely down to what you're saying.



On the topic of good arguments, here is an interesting fact: The tax that supposedly caused Mary and Joseph to have to go to Bethlehem did not happen. There are two possible taxes that are around the time that the Bible could be referring to, and neither of them are anything like the tax described in the Gospels. Now, why bother fabricating such a thing? Jews at the time knew that the Messiah was supposed to have been born in Bethlehem according to the prophecies. Jesus was commonly known to have been from Nazareth, which caused many Jews to have doubts about the legitimacy of the Christian's claims in the years after the death of Jesus. So you fabricate a tax to give Jesus an excuse to be so far from home during his birth, all the way in Bethlehem.

It is unknown when or who exactly added this embellishment, but I have found no Christian refutations or even acknowledgments of the problem.

[Zwai]

On the topic of good arguments, here is an interesting fact: The tax that supposedly caused Mary and Joseph to have to go to Bethlehem did not happen. There are two possible taxes that are around the time that the Bible could be referring to, and neither of them are anything like the tax described in the Gospels. Now, why bother fabricating such a thing? Jews at the time knew that the Messiah was supposed to have been born in Bethlehem according to the prophecies. Jesus was commonly known to have been from Nazareth, which caused many Jews to have doubts about the legitimacy of the Christian's claims in the years after the death of Jesus. So you fabricate a tax to give Jesus an excuse to be so far from home during his birth, all the way in Bethlehem.

It is unknown when or who exactly added this embellishment, but I have found no Christian refutations or even acknowledgments of the problem.

Interesting - I thought it was a "census" and not a tax? Or are you referring to one of the tax collector incidents? It's been 8 years since I've read my Bible all the way through, and I'm *really* rusty. Can you link a verse? :doct:

Edit: Yep, Luke says it's a tax but I didn't catch it in Matthew or Mark. I haven't heard this concern before, or spotted this difference - I'd be interested in what a Christian thinks about it too.


then turn around and give your own philosophical claim that "you can achieve the grace of God" if you do x and y.

Your statement still doesn't refute what I said - you're not Jewish in any way(not even spiritual), so you don't get any benefits. This "philosophical" claim provides a possible exception I was thinking of(to relate it to Christianity), which most people in the world happen to not meet. Soooo, not all people are equal and there isn't a reason for God to care about anyone who isn't Jewish. Even then, the only thing binding him is a promise because he liked Abraham; it's not like Jewish people are inherently better, just chosen. Anyone else is out of luck; you weren't picked.

[Apostate]

It was a census, but they are essentially the same thing. The only purpose of a census was for taxation. That would have probably been a better word to use though.

Christopher Hitchens mentioned it briefly in a debate in his opening statement, I was astonished as I'd never heard it before. It was one of the things that his opponent didn't touch, but there was a lot going on so he may have had something to say. Afterwards I researched it myself and couldn't find much about it from Christians, although I did find one or two odd articles explaining the problem. The wikipedia page for the specific census in the Bible is also somewhat insightful.

I'd be interested to hear what they have to say too. There is a very knowledgeable Calvinist theologian and apologist named Dr. James White who hosts a radio show twice a week, I've considered calling in and asking him about it. To be honest I would be very surprised if he had absolutely nothing to say, theologians and apologists are extremely scrupulous and thorough with their study.

Edit: Here's a few links I've dredged up about it:
Info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_of_Quirinius


Christian Explanations:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aiia/census-luke2.html
http://www.biblehistory.net/newsletter/quirinius.htm

[Hat_Truck]

Cool Zwai, you seem like a reasonable guy. You made this claim:
The "grace of God" in Christianity is that you can (spiritually) achieve the same status as a Jew in God's kingdom by accepting Jesus' sacrifice.Can you explain this to me then?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzzORZhnCao


It was a census, but they are essentially the same thing. The only purpose of a census was for taxation. That would have probably been a better word to use though.

Christopher Hitchens mentioned it briefly in a debate in his opening statement, I was astonished as I'd never heard it before. It was one of the things that his opponent didn't touch, but there was a lot going on so he may have had something to say. Afterwards I researched it myself and couldn't find much about it from Christians, although I did find one or two odd articles explaining the problem. The wikipedia page for the specific census in the Bible is also somewhat insightful.

I'd be interested to hear what they have to say too. There is a very knowledgeable Calvinist theologian and apologist named Dr. James White who hosts a radio show twice a week, I've considered calling in and asking him about it. To be honest I would be very surprised if he had absolutely nothing to say, theologians and apologists are extremely scrupulous and thorough with their study.Have you heard of the many contradictions of Jesus' "Resurrection Sequence" argument before? I personally find that to be one of the most compelling myself. What do you think?

http://ffrf.org/legacy/books/lfif/?t=stone

[Apostate]

Cool Zwai, you seem like a reasonable guy. You made this claim: Can you explain this to me then?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzzORZhnCao

Have you heard of the many contradictions of Jesus' "Resurrection Sequence" argument before? I personally find that to be one of the most compelling myself. What do you think?

http://ffrf.org/legacy/books/lfif/?t=stone


That video is a horrible argument, made by an ignorant. It pretty much mocks everything that theologians have to say about what all of those passages mean after years of study. He's reading the Bible at WAY too face value. The Bible is a sophisticated book; listening to that guy practice terrible hermeneutics was pathetic. I'm too disinterested to properly refute it, but let's just say that he's being extremely simplistic with complicated texts and then taking his simplistic interpretations and making COMPLEX assertions based off of them.

As for the second one, I have heard Christians talk on it but in essence I believe the argument laid out in that article to be sound. However, all it serves to debunk is the idea that the Bible is 100% factual perfection, written by God himself with perfect knowledge. The fact that 5 men had slight factual dependencies in their stories that were written years apart and in many cases of events that they heard secondhand should not surprise us as reasonable people. Most intelligent Bible scholars have learned to accept the fact that their naive view of the Bible as completely perfect was wrong, and have learned to adjust their beliefs about what the Bible is as a book accordingly.

[Zwai]

To be honest I would be very surprised if he had absolutely nothing to say, theologians and apologists are extremely scrupulous and thorough with their study.

You can say that again - anyone who thinks theologians just make stuff up at a whim to sound good hasn't used a Strong's Concordance before.


he decrees "thou shall not murder", yet murders over 2 million people himself throughout the Bible

Please refer to a Strong's Concordance on the word "murder". For someone who was a devout Christian for 19 years, you're making really elementary mistakes that would be corrected with a year of serious study on the subject. Honestly, I'm Atheist and those "bible contradictions" sites are the biggest loads of BS. :nymp:

If you're unwilling to commit to that degree of study, the NASB translation of the bible is a much more literate version that avoids some of these apparent contradictions. They don't reuse the same English word for distinct Hebrew words for example, and you don't have to mentally match early modern English to ancient Hebrew every time you're reading a sentence. It doesn't flow quite as poetically, but I liked the logical structure for study. :fors:


Can you explain this to me then?

I'll summarize one of them: The particular rich man that Jesus was talking to had the problem that he was too attached to his money; if that man sold all he had, it would show that his attachment to God was greater than his attachment to his money. You should be *willing* to sell everything you have if required, but it's not a direct command for every Christian to sell everything they have. Remember that Jesus was talking to a person about that person's problems in getting into heaven.

Now, maybe *you* aren't very attached to your possessions because you don't have much in the first place so you have nothing to lose. In that case, selling everything you have and giving it away wouldn't really show much faith. Or, maybe you don't have much and giving away $3 that would've fed you that night shows you have an extreme amount of faith. The money isn't important; the faith it shows is.

The "honor vs. hate" arguments for parents is also a result of not having a Strong's Concordance handy.

[Apostate]

You can say that again - anyone who thinks theologians just make stuff up at a whim to sound good hasn't used a Strong's Concordance before.

I've read most of John Calvin's commentary of the New Testament. Just his commentary was well over 100 times longer than the text itself. I've read a Systematic Theology too. So many of the errors made by religious critics would be solved if they took a little more time to recognize how much more Christians know about their own book than they do.




Please refer to a Strong's Concordance on the word "murder". For someone who was a devout Christian for 19 years, you're making really elementary mistakes that would be corrected with a year of serious study on the subject. Honestly, I'm Atheist and those "bible contradictions" sites are the biggest loads of BS. :nymp:

If you're unwilling to commit to that degree of study, the NASB translation of the bible is a much more literate version that avoids some of these apparent contradictions. They don't reuse the same English word for distinct Hebrew words for example, and you don't have to mentally match early modern English to ancient Hebrew every time you're reading a sentence. It doesn't flow quite as poetically, but I liked the logical structure for study. :fors:


What he's trying to say Hat_Truck is that there is a distinction between "Kill" and "Murder" in the Old Testament. Murdering is the unjust slaying of a civilian by another civilian without good cause. Killing someone can be a punishment, part of war, or even a decree by God himself. To claim that Moses meant "Don't kill anyone ever for any reason" would be like calling him a pacifist, which he certainly wasn't.

[Hat_Truck]

Thanks for the discussion guys, and at this point I'll concede and admit that I am not knowledgeable enough on this subject to contribute. However, it seems like way over-complicating something simple to me. You can spend your whole life trying to explain the barbarism, impossible claims, errors, and flaws with the Bible in a logical or scholarly way, just like you can spend all your time splitting hairs over anything, but in the end it's much more likely that it's just a man-made book than a confusing God-inspired text which no longer applies.

[Apostate]

That's very true, and I would tend to agree with you. It is a fascinating and rewarding subject to understand, though. I sort of view it like learning a foreign language that you don't expect to use very often--a lot of work for little practical reward, unless you enjoy the simple pleasure of learning about a complicated topic.

Studying the Qu'ran is a much easier task because it is written all in one language, has a far less complicated textual history with far fewer variants, and was written 600 years sooner to our time. The Bible just has so much **** going on that understanding it properly takes forever.

[Malefication]

So about this Science vs Spirituality...

[Hat_Truck]

I would like to hear more about people's unexplained, supernatural, or "Spiritual" experiences if we could. I know more people have had them, they're probably just afraid to come out.

[Apostate]

As a small child I have had a few "ghost" experiences where I was convinced I saw a spirit. My girlfriend is Costa Rican and belief in those sorts of things is very common over there, she claims to have seen things as a small child multiple times.

Two options with that really: 1) Children can see what adults can't; 2) Children see things that aren't there due to overexcited imaginations.

Ghost and spirit stories are incredibly common. If you go to a third world country the stories of demons and other things are huge and everywhere. The alleged miracles are allll over the place.

I think the simplest explanation is that superstition and lack of education are the main factors that contribute to this phenomenon, but who knows? There could be all sorts of things going on here. It's an interesting subject for speculation.

[Rumjal]

At the age of discovery, when the European ships were coming to the new land (America), its said that the natives didnt see the ships coming at all, because they thought they were clouds (the sails), from the clouds came men, with pale skin, shiny armours and colourful robes and they thought that they must be gods, and they did worship them as such, until the "gods" started to murder them etc. then they became demons to them.
Its easy for the human mind to claim something a diety or supernatural because of lack of information.
On the other hand everything today is based on the assumption that the universe functions in defined laws and logic. Because thats the only way we can explain things to ourselves. But if it doesnt, if there really is no logic and strict law, then nothing we claim to "know" is true. Theres chaos.
People have this habit to divide things, like either you believe in this or in that, you cant have both, either its black or white, wrong or right, + or - .
Im not a religious person, because ive seen what ppl do in name of religion... it creates a divide amongst humans, and that makes no sense for me.
I believe what we need to do is find balance. Without balance nothing functions, rather withers and dies. Starting from our body to our minds, and beyond.

When I was 17, during gym i fell off the swedish ladder on my back, i couldnt breathe and i fainted. While i was "out" i could see every1 standing next to my body, i could hear them talking and see how they were trying to wake me up. I wasnt afraid or anything, but i thought i died. Next thing that happened was that i was "sucked" back into my body trough my head.. or at least thats how i remember it.

[senzation54]

My experiences:

While I would call myself an atheist, I have had spiritual experiences which puzzle me and which at this point I cannot explain. More specifically, I am prone to very vivid and almost prophetic dreams. These dreams differ distinctly from my normal dreams.

A few very glaring cases:
I dreamed that my girlfriend was perched on my neck, sucking the blood from my neck while I grew weaker and weaker. Upon waking I felt vividly that the dream meant something. Later that day she called me and asked if I could only apply to colleges that were local so we could stay together. I broke up with her that same day.
-You could argue that the dream reflected my inner worries about the inbalance in the relationship and that what happened was coincidence, but I can't explain how vivid the feeling was upon waking that the dream had somehow portrayed a powerful truth.

A second instance: I had a dream that a friend(she used to be one of my teachers while I was in high school) was climbing a cliff, slowly crawling up the steep ledges with her shoulders bulging. A dark skinned baby was strapped to her back, screaming and crying. When I woke up I had the sense that I needed to tell her about the dream. I called her and told her what had happened, and she started crying and said a quick goodbye and hung up. I heard later that she had broken up with her boyfriend that day, who was a black man and who I had known nothing about.

I've had a few dreams where I dreamed that I would meet someone in a specific place and then the following day I met them there. I dreamed the face of a woman and I met her the next day and ultimately dated her for two years.

I have also had many vivid dreams during which I live another life as a native in a tropical region, possibly South America. I don't know what to make of it but the dreams have fantastical detail and some of the things that have happened in the dreams I have researched and found out were actual native traditions. I've speculated that this is a past life or something, but it could be anything really. Maybe someone else's memories are floating as energy in some dreamscape or some other fantastical speculation.


So that's my take. I don't know what it means or if it means anything, but my suspicion is that there is more to life than meets the eye. I think it's possible that science could explain everything if we had the right tools and knowledge; I don't think anything is "magic". But I do think there is still a lot we don't know.

I also think that spirituality is an important part of being a rounded human. If you lose touch with (for lack of a better word) your inner God, then you are less of a person. I have lived some periods of my life where I felt out of touch with my true purpose, and other times where I was doing what I feel like I was made to do and I felt vibrant and alive. I can't explain it really but it's how I feel.

I'm an atheist. I'd say you think too much about your dreams. I'd also say that if you think your dreams are visions of an earlier life then you're not an atheist, but who cares really.

I Found this post interesting so I'll reply thoroughly.

Dream one:

Your girlfriend is going twilight on your ass in a dream, you wake up feeling like it means something and dump her. Did you dump her BECAUSE of the dream? Had you already been thinking about what to do with the relationship for a while? I'm betting you had. You knew you were both going off to college.

Judging by your dream you viewed her as this "parasite" sucking the life out of you and dragging you down. Was this because of the college, or were you generally unhappy with the relationship? Did you have a particular college in mind? Something in particular you wanted to study?
If you had great plans for Harvard space engineer school and she was asking you to go community college, I can understand your actions.

However, I'm thinking you weren't going to Harvard and I'm also thinking you probably didn't take something that would have been impossible to do at a school she would also want to go to. I mean, there's plenty of room for compromise. She could have moved based on your school choice, you could both agree on a school that works for both of you, or you could try long distance which in my opinion would be a dumb idea but then again it is the THIRD option and that's not even counting dumping her which is the fourth.

Conclusion: You either just didn't want to be with her in the first place, dumped her because it was time and moved on - which is fine - or you had dire plans of going to Harvard and Yale and Harvard again which she was in the way of - which is also fine.
The last option however; You had a creepy dream about your girlfriend going twilight on you, woke up with a bad feeling and you dumped her over it!? I mean seriously, you're not that dumb?

I once dreamt something about a friend of mine, told her and she said she had a dream about me too. Another time, I dreamt about another girl I know, told her about it and she hadn't been dreaming about me. Actually I don't specifically remember ever telling a girl (or dude) that I dreamt of them and then didn't get the same response. I just know that I've done it on several occasions and this is my point, which has been taken up on the first page of this thread:

People are always looking for angels.

You casually look at the clock, it just hit 00:00 or 13:37 or whatever. You send your friend a text just as he sends you one. You dream about your friend and he dreams about you. They're all just coincidences. A rational person doesn't make decisions based on the shape of the nearest cloud. You shouldn't dump a girl just because of a dream.

Also, about the thing you wrote about meeting a woman you'd dreamt about:
Memory is a funny thing. When you add dreams to the equation, it starts becoming quite bizarre really. At least for me.
I often(usually) wake up thinking "where the **** am I?!". I realize I just woke up and I try making sense of the dream I just had, but I can't. I remember what happened, I remember what I did, but what I can't understand is how the stuff that just happened didn't seem odd to me. What I mean is that dreams are weird ****. Especially when it comes to remembering them. I often look back at a dream knowing that the person I dreamt about is a near friend of mine, but I don't know which one.

When you dream, you may not even see a face at all. It's impossible to dream about a person before you've met that person. It is however, not only possible but VERY common that people attach faces to their dream-friends AFTER the dream is over. I read an article or something about this once. Basically you can't say you saw a person for the first time in a dream, unless you're a REALLY good drawer and you drew the person accurately before you met them.

[Sauron`]

Wasn't this not supposed to be a religion thread?

[senzation54]

When I was 17, during gym i fell off the swedish ladder on my back, i couldnt breathe and i fainted. While i was "out" i could see every1 standing next to my body, i could hear them talking and see how they were trying to wake me up. I wasnt afraid or anything, but i thought i died. Next thing that happened was that i was "sucked" back into my body trough my head.. or at least thats how i remember it.

I actually had an experience sorta like that once. Except I woke up completely paralyzed. Basically I was having a sick dream that I cba to explain, my friend was trying to wake me up because we were in a cottage on the mountain, skiing (this was the real situation, we were actually going skiing).
So anyway, I come out of the dream, open my eyes and see my friend saying something to me and getting dressed and ****, but I can't do anything. Then I slipped back into the dream, back out again, still paralyzed it felt like this went on for 20 minutes and it was horrifying because of the nature of the dream, as well as the dream taking place in the cottage I was actually sleeping in.

So anyway, I googled it, turns out it's a thing. Sleep Paralysis. Basically your brain detaches from your body when you sleep, to prevent you from like trying to walk irl when you're dreaming you're walking, all that kind of ****. Some times the brain can be a bit slow in reconnecting to the body, which leads to short-term sleep paralysis. Completely harmless but trust me the first time I experienced it I was SCARED. I had no idea what was going on, what was real or why I couldn't move in one of my realities.

[senzation54]

Wasn't this not supposed to be a religion thread?

I'm pretty sure that's what it wasn't supposed to be. Also, religion blows.

[Sauron`]

I'm pretty sure that's what it wasn't supposed to be. Also, religion blows.

Hence why I said "Wasn't this NOT"

[Chaosboom]

You know Hat_Truck, saying that God isn't all powerful because he doesn't abolish all evil is a misconception many anti-religious people make. According to the bible, people are put on the earth with free will, everything that has happened is the result of human actions, not divine punishment.
If you are going to criticize the bible, at least do it on it's on premises.
In your belief in Jesus Christ's death and reincarnation you are promised everlasting life in paradise, not wealth, immunity to diseases and infinite amount of iPhones.

[Malefication]

You casually look at the clock, it just hit 00:00 or 13:37 or whatever. You send your friend a text just as he sends you one. You dream about your friend and he dreams about you. They're all just coincidences. A rational person doesn't make decisions based on the shape of the nearest cloud.
This, this, this and very much this.

[LiaNNN]

Imagine there would have never been religion. Would the world be a better place to be in?(In my opinion, yes!)

[Sauron`]

You know Hat_Truck, saying that God isn't all powerful because he doesn't abolish all evil is a misconception many anti-religious people make. According to the bible, people are put on the earth with free will, everything that has happened is the result of human actions, not divine punishment.
If you are going to criticize the bible, at least do it on it's on premises.
In your belief in Jesus Christ's death and reincarnation you are promised everlasting life in paradise, not wealth, immunity to diseases and infinite amount of iPhones.
If you haven't noticed, it's pointless to discuss anything with him.

[Hat_Truck]

Because I won't change my stance? By that logic, you won't change your stance either, so doesn't that make you a hypocrite?

The "free-will" argument Christians use is outright ridiculous. If God is Omniscient, then how does free will exist? If God can see the future, and know everything in it, then how is free will even possible? If God does know the future, like the Bible says, then free will is impossible, because it would be impossible to know the outcome of the future.

Secondly, if God knew everything in advance, then he created us all with the urges and "evil nature" that would ultimately cause all these horrible things to happen. People think that "free will" automatically absolves God of all blame; NO, not so. God obviously created us with the desire to do bad, and even be worthless sinners from birth according to the Bible. He could have just as easily given us the ability to have free will between 2 "good" choices. Just because you don't have evil in your nature, does not mean free will could not exist. We could have the free will to choose between multiple good things, but God didn't choose that, he chose to create evil, then blame us for his shitty design.

In the words of Epicurus:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
Finally, I'm tired of arguing with you Christians. I have nothing against you but your arguments are so stupid that it's a waste of my time to even respond. When I made this thread, I said, "No Religious Dogma Please", but you people just can not resist spamming your baseless beliefs everywhere you go. It was fun for awhile, but if you want to discuss your talking snakes and forbidden apples, please make your own thread.

I would like to stay on topic, there's been some really good discussion about Spirituality and unexplained experiences in this thread.

[Chaosboom]

Victory!

[Sauron`]

VICTORY!!!! WE WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kRTxHZ-lQk&feature=related

[Hat_Truck]

Awesome, now be gone.

[Octavia]

You could possibly dream about things you have never experienced -- experiences of ancestors passed down to you genetically. There's no reason that memory cannot be inherited.

[senzation54]

The "free-will" argument Christians use is outright ridiculous. If God is Omniscient, then how does free will exist? If God can see the future, and know everything in it, then how is free will even possible? If God does know the future, like the Bible says, then free will is impossible, because it would be impossible to know the outcome of the future.

I have this theory that God existed once, for just a moment. Then he disappeared in a puff of logic.

Yes, I did in fact softquote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Now can you stop discussing Christianity? It's boring.. Everyone knows Jesus is a scam, everyone knows the pope has sex with little boys and everyone knows the average dedicated christian's intelligence is below the actual average.

The last point is proven quite elegantly by a girl on facebook who claimed that "Stinger bees disprove evolution because how does evolution favor stinger bees when they die if they sting?".
The answer to that unasked question is, of course that if bees didn't have stingers everyone would be snaggin their honey. (Un)fortunately everyone stayed away from the hives of stinger bees so they prevailed while the stinger-less bees got eaten along with the honey they gathered.

Oh, and in case you're wondering; A soft quote is like a regular quote, just a tad softer. If you're female and very curious, I'll show you my hard quote :drun:

[Malefication]

Just like there's no reason that memory can't be inherited, there's no reason it's not just a dream either. Until there's at least evidence supporting the inheritance of memories, there's no reason believing such dreams are more than dreams.

[senzation54]

You could possibly dream about things you have never experienced -- experiences of ancestors passed down to you genetically. There's no reason that memory cannot be inherited.

Well, yes you are right. One thing though - When did Humans develop genetic memory?

You can't inherit a memory. There's a large difference between memories and instincts. The key difference being that you're born with instincts but you create memories. If humans had genetic memory that would mean that every child would know everything their parents knew, and we'd probably be walking on other galaxies (Yes. We would have traveled to them, explored them, and then actually have found a way to literally walk on galaxies.) by now.

And no, there is no genetic memory. Not in humans and I don't know of any other species that possess it. Not in the sense that you're expressing anyway. That's sci-fi stuff.

The only example of genetic memory you could possibly find in humans, would be if a person always had a tendency to react to a certain situation in a certain way. I'm a bit wordblocked right now so I'll just pick a dumb example. For instance; If your grandfather(or father, or mother for all I care) always reacted to things being thrown at him, like balls, by grabbing them - then you could be born with a natural "talent" for catching unsuspected balls thrown at you.
This is because of the way the brain works. There's an unimaginable number of connections between different nerves and receptors and all that ****. When you're presented with a decision you need to resolve quickly, people will react differently, but most importantly anyone will react quicker if they know what they're doing. This is because all those little receptors and stuff connect to eachother a million times for each little action you perform. If you're presented with a situation you're comfortable in, like catching an unsuspected ball, your little dots may connect correctly and you'll catch the ball. IF you fail to make the required connections in the time before the ball hits the floor, you don't catch it. These things can be practiced, and if you do it long enough may become a genetic memory of sorts.
So basically it might be possible to inherit little things like catching a ball - and I'm not talking about catching balls when you're 4 months old, I'm talking about when you start school and **** and start practicing it as well - you may get an edge over others.


TLDR; Unfortunately, there is currently no way for sons to remember being conceived from their dad's POV. Whether or not that's a good thing, I do not know.

[Proletariat]

How about we get this back on topic?
And to begin, how about you actually provide a valid definition of spirituality so it can be discussed. Otherwise it's a meaningless useless word.

[Apostate]

I'm an atheist. I'd say you think too much about your dreams. I'd also say that if you think your dreams are visions of an earlier life then you're not an atheist, but who cares really.

I Found this post interesting so I'll reply thoroughly.

Dream one:

Your girlfriend is going twilight on your ass in a dream, you wake up feeling like it means something and dump her. Did you dump her BECAUSE of the dream? Had you already been thinking about what to do with the relationship for a while? I'm betting you had. You knew you were both going off to college.

Judging by your dream you viewed her as this "parasite" sucking the life out of you and dragging you down. Was this because of the college, or were you generally unhappy with the relationship? Did you have a particular college in mind? Something in particular you wanted to study?
If you had great plans for Harvard space engineer school and she was asking you to go community college, I can understand your actions.

However, I'm thinking you weren't going to Harvard and I'm also thinking you probably didn't take something that would have been impossible to do at a school she would also want to go to. I mean, there's plenty of room for compromise. She could have moved based on your school choice, you could both agree on a school that works for both of you, or you could try long distance which in my opinion would be a dumb idea but then again it is the THIRD option and that's not even counting dumping her which is the fourth.

Conclusion: You either just didn't want to be with her in the first place, dumped her because it was time and moved on - which is fine - or you had dire plans of going to Harvard and Yale and Harvard again which she was in the way of - which is also fine.
The last option however; You had a creepy dream about your girlfriend going twilight on you, woke up with a bad feeling and you dumped her over it!? I mean seriously, you're not that dumb?

I once dreamt something about a friend of mine, told her and she said she had a dream about me too. Another time, I dreamt about another girl I know, told her about it and she hadn't been dreaming about me. Actually I don't specifically remember ever telling a girl (or dude) that I dreamt of them and then didn't get the same response. I just know that I've done it on several occasions and this is my point, which has been taken up on the first page of this thread:

People are always looking for angels.

You casually look at the clock, it just hit 00:00 or 13:37 or whatever. You send your friend a text just as he sends you one. You dream about your friend and he dreams about you. They're all just coincidences. A rational person doesn't make decisions based on the shape of the nearest cloud. You shouldn't dump a girl just because of a dream.

Also, about the thing you wrote about meeting a woman you'd dreamt about:
Memory is a funny thing. When you add dreams to the equation, it starts becoming quite bizarre really. At least for me.
I often(usually) wake up thinking "where the **** am I?!". I realize I just woke up and I try making sense of the dream I just had, but I can't. I remember what happened, I remember what I did, but what I can't understand is how the stuff that just happened didn't seem odd to me. What I mean is that dreams are weird ****. Especially when it comes to remembering them. I often look back at a dream knowing that the person I dreamt about is a near friend of mine, but I don't know which one.

When you dream, you may not even see a face at all. It's impossible to dream about a person before you've met that person. It is however, not only possible but VERY common that people attach faces to their dream-friends AFTER the dream is over. I read an article or something about this once. Basically you can't say you saw a person for the first time in a dream, unless you're a REALLY good drawer and you drew the person accurately before you met them.

You are right to be skeptical. But believe me, if I am anything I am a skeptic myself. But I have to reconcile my own experiences. This isn't a fanciful imagining that I have; I've had some weird **** happen in my dreams that I can't explain.

Just last night, I was plagued all night by dreams of my girlfriend drowning in the ocean. Every time I tried to make it a lucid dream so I could save her I couldn't, and I was powerless. When I woke up in the morning she called me and told me she had had horrible drowning dreams all night. This is the second time that I have sensed and dreamed her nightmares alongside her.

As for the woman's face thing; I swear to you, I saw her face clear as day in the dream and I had never seen her before in my life. Then the next day I met her. That's how it happened.

I don't expect you to really believe this or give it much credence. I certainly wouldn't if it hadn't happened to me. But then, you don't need to believe it because it isn't your dreams or your life. But To me it's real enough to give it at least a small measure of credence. I didn't break up with my girlfriend because of a dream; I broke up with her because I saw something deeply horrifyingly true about our relationship that was shown to me via a dream. I'm at UC Santa Cruz, not Stanford but eh ;) That girl is still at some community college back at home living with her mom.

[Zwai]

So basically it might be possible to inherit little things like catching a ball - and I'm not talking about catching balls when you're 4 months old, I'm talking about when you start school and **** and start practicing it as well - you may get an edge over others.

You don't inherit memories or skills in your genetics, because genetics don't encode memories or skills. They encode for amino acids that are assembled into proteins - and that is *it*. DNA does not contain "the blueprints for a human being" the way that people think of blueprints as being coherent logical plans; for example, about half of your DNA is deactivated "junk" that is fragments of viruses that infected creatures millions of years ago, and it just happened to get carried along for the ride. Those proteins are never assembled, because viruses require very specific triggers to start assembling; but researchers are capable of activating them if they really want to in a controlled lab. :chro:

Diseases and vulnerability for diseases can be inherited because, for example, being an Albino is the result of you not having a particular protein that encodes an enzyme your body uses to produce melanin, which gives your skin pigment. You can't change someone at the genetic level "to make them stronger" or "better at catching balls", the same way you can't rewire the CPU in your computer to give your Windows taskbar a new icon(that is to say, strictly speaking you can if you really wanted to; but it's not the right way to think about it). You're not born with "instincts" either - these are an emergent behavior rather than something like a "scared-of-snakes gene". :nymp:

Another argument against it is that your genetic code doesn't change while you're alive(it might in individual cells, but that's called cancer not memory). If you were storing memories in your genetic code, you'd expect it to change at least slightly. But it doesn't, so you aren't. :fors:

[senzation54]

You don't inherit memories or skills in your genetics, because genetics don't encode memories or skills. They encode for amino acids that are assembled into proteins - and that is *it*. DNA does not contain "the blueprints for a human being" the way that people think of blueprints as being coherent logical plans; for example, about half of your DNA is deactivated "junk" that is fragments of viruses that infected creatures millions of years ago, and it just happened to get carried along for the ride. Those proteins are never assembled, because viruses require very specific triggers to start assembling; but researchers are capable of activating them if they really want to in a controlled lab. :chro:

Diseases and vulnerability for diseases can be inherited because, for example, being an Albino is the result of you not having a particular protein that encodes an enzyme your body uses to produce melanin, which gives your skin pigment. You can't change someone at the genetic level "to make them stronger" or "better at catching balls", the same way you can't rewire the CPU in your computer to give your Windows taskbar a new icon(that is to say, strictly speaking you can if you really wanted to; but it's not the right way to think about it). You're not born with "instincts" either - these are an emergent behavior rather than something like a "scared-of-snakes gene". :nymp:

Another argument against it is that your genetic code doesn't change while you're alive(it might in individual cells, but that's called cancer not memory). If you were storing memories in your genetic code, you'd expect it to change at least slightly. But it doesn't, so you aren't. :fors:

I'm just going to assume you're right here, because you surely know more about this **** than me.

[Proletariat]

According to the bible, people are put on the earth with free will, everything that has happened is the result of human actions, not divine punishment.

Yeah those sinful Japanese caused that earthquake.

[Bobble]

Another argument against it is that your genetic code doesn't change while you're alive(it might in individual cells, but that's called cancer not memory). If you were storing memories in your genetic code, you'd expect it to change at least slightly. But it doesn't, so you aren't. :fors:

Actually, your genetic code can be changed, and it does, all of the time. UV dimers (ok, they are pretty carcinogenic..), DNA methylation (relates to memories), transposons (junk DNA, sure, but it is changing the genetic code).

[Sauron`]

Yeah those sinful Japanese caused that earthquake.
Actually Earthquakes are caused by Elastic Energy stored along fault lines. I can see where you would be confused though.

[Octavia]

Actually Earthquakes are caused by Elastic Energy stored along fault lines. I can see where you would be confused though.Exorbitant Exposition of Exemplary Eulogy, friend.