The initial answer would be refering to your signature, ie navels.
But I suspect it\'s a more complex answer than that.
But I suspect it\'s a more complex answer than that.
Did Adam have a member?
- Thread starter Infidel Castro
- Start date
We, as a species, have been around for maybe 500,000 years.
We\'ve been intellectually curious for about 50,000 years.
We been curious about the heavens/sky for about 10000 years.
We\'ve only had telescopes for a few centuries.
We\'ve only had rockets for a few decades.
The universe is about 13 billion years old.
Science only claims to try and explain patterns in our universe through observation. Religion, holistically speaking, only claims that a divine hand is responsible. Science hasn\'t been around any longer than religion (or vice versa), in the universal sense.
You can ask difficult questions of science, just as you can religion. And science will always cop-out on the *really* tough questions.
\"We don\'t claim to be able to explain everything--only the patterns we can observe.\"
So what *really* behooves me, is how either side of the argument can claim to be \"superior\"----considering that we\'ve been \"thinking\" for about 50,000 years of that 13,000,000,000 years.....
And yea..that percentage/number is easiest written in scientific notation...
Cheers,
Kev
We\'ve been intellectually curious for about 50,000 years.
We been curious about the heavens/sky for about 10000 years.
We\'ve only had telescopes for a few centuries.
We\'ve only had rockets for a few decades.
The universe is about 13 billion years old.
Science only claims to try and explain patterns in our universe through observation. Religion, holistically speaking, only claims that a divine hand is responsible. Science hasn\'t been around any longer than religion (or vice versa), in the universal sense.
You can ask difficult questions of science, just as you can religion. And science will always cop-out on the *really* tough questions.
\"We don\'t claim to be able to explain everything--only the patterns we can observe.\"
So what *really* behooves me, is how either side of the argument can claim to be \"superior\"----considering that we\'ve been \"thinking\" for about 50,000 years of that 13,000,000,000 years.....
And yea..that percentage/number is easiest written in scientific notation...
Cheers,
Kev
Amazon warrior
New member
I say that 50% of the population seems to manage perfectly well without a prominent aiming device! lol
wiccanpony
Official Freak Bar Witch
:twisted: Score a rim shot!! for Amazon Warrior!!! the voice of reason:beer::beer::beer:
fieldarchy
New member
You were banned for that question? I thought it was a good one. hmmm sounds like it\'s just a bunch of wankers running that site mate.
Godlikebuthumble
New member
Given that \"superior\" usually means \"best available option\", going after limited, but verifiable knowledge sure beats catch-all fairy tales in my book. Otherwise, I could claim there are little three-legged Boobies living on the side of the moon we can\'t see, and it would be as true as if someone went and checked.
Also there is the matter of adaptability. See:
And Rev\'s question is actually very good. Possible answers:
a) Made in God\'s image... So God had some danglies as well, though why is another question. Maybe, being omniscient, he had already equipped himself for an encounter with a certain Mary... who knows.
b) Pee-pee, upgraded to Sexual organ after the addition of a companion.
c) Omniscience. He (btw I\'m referring to God as a \"he\" \'cause that\'s what the authors saw it as, sorry WP
) knew that Adam would get lonely, get a woman, need a penis, eat of the forbidden fruit, be ashamed of his penis, and get thrown out. Divine plan and all that. Which still makes God somewhat of an ass for pretending A&E had a choice in the matter of the fruit. The problem with \"b\" (just thought of it): How about sexual organs of all the other animals created (and at least a \"day\" before Adam)? Did they become sexually functional about the same time as homo sapiens\', or did they get leave to \"go forth and multiply\" from the get go? If so, giving Adam a functionally reduced one would go against the \"created perfect\" creed.
Fun mental exercise, but try not to play it around the kind of people that might read stuff like this, mkay, Rev?
fieldarchy
New member
sounds great to me godlike!
I\'m probably going to get strung up for asking this, but it\'s something I truly don\'t understand...
First, as many of you know, I make no effort to hide the fact that I\'m Christian. The thing is, I don\'t expend a lot of effort patronizing athiests or any others for that matter who disagree with me. Even when their arguments are blatantly flawed and/or obviously develop on ignorance. And to be sure, many have good arguments. I don\'t bother arguing with them too much either. As I\'ve stated before, arguing on a message board is like running in the special olympics: even if you win you\'re still retarded.
That said, I am always overwhelmed by how many forum denizens are not just non-Christian (which is certainly acceptable) but are, in fact, antagonistically anti-Christian. It\'s very easy to discount all people of faith (be they Christian or any other belief system) as ignorant narrow-minded twits, but to do so completely disregards some of the great thinkers of our time.
Don\'t get me wrong, I\'m not offended or anything, but I gotta say, I fancy myself a pretty empirical thinker and at the same time a pretty faithful Christian and I don\'t really think those two things have to be mutually exclusive.
So....as a Christian among you, I have to ask: why the animosity?
Myself, Shawn, Airhead and others that participate here and are otherwise accepted as intelligent contributors to the community are all people of faith...are we considered narrow-minded and cognitively handicapped?
Just my thoughts.
First, as many of you know, I make no effort to hide the fact that I\'m Christian. The thing is, I don\'t expend a lot of effort patronizing athiests or any others for that matter who disagree with me. Even when their arguments are blatantly flawed and/or obviously develop on ignorance. And to be sure, many have good arguments. I don\'t bother arguing with them too much either. As I\'ve stated before, arguing on a message board is like running in the special olympics: even if you win you\'re still retarded.
That said, I am always overwhelmed by how many forum denizens are not just non-Christian (which is certainly acceptable) but are, in fact, antagonistically anti-Christian. It\'s very easy to discount all people of faith (be they Christian or any other belief system) as ignorant narrow-minded twits, but to do so completely disregards some of the great thinkers of our time.
Don\'t get me wrong, I\'m not offended or anything, but I gotta say, I fancy myself a pretty empirical thinker and at the same time a pretty faithful Christian and I don\'t really think those two things have to be mutually exclusive.
So....as a Christian among you, I have to ask: why the animosity?
Myself, Shawn, Airhead and others that participate here and are otherwise accepted as intelligent contributors to the community are all people of faith...are we considered narrow-minded and cognitively handicapped?
Just my thoughts.
freakinacage
Well-known member
rofl
@godlike - found these also:
Top Ten Signs you Might be a Christian
10. You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of your god.
9. You feel insulted and dehumanized when scientists say that people evolved from lesser life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
8. You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a trinity god.
7. Your face turns purple when you hear of the atrocities attributed to Allah, but you don\'t even flinch when hearing about how God slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in Exodus and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in Joshua.
6. You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who was killed, came back to life, and then ascended into the sky.
5. You\'re willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically-established age of the Earth (4.65 billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by stone-age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that the Earth is a couple of generations old.
4. You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs - though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet you consider your religion to be the most tolerant and loving.
3. While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, someone rolling around on the floor speaking in tongues may be all the evidence you need to prove the truth of your belief.
2. You define 0.01% a high success rate when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% failure rate was simply the will of God.
1. You actually know a lot less than many atheists do about the bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
*edit* one more for mattrock:
lol
@ freak - I lol at the Jack Bauer thing but Aquinas and Augustine already decimated Epicurus\' arguments there so I have to disagree with that one. In fact most all of the arguments made by non-theist thinkers have had equally compelling answers from Theists throughout history. As Solomon said: \'There\'s nothing new under the sun\'
As for the top ten: They\'re hilarious if you know very little about Christianity.
And I don\'t like the special olympics poster.....
...I LOVE IT!!! I\'ll be saving that to my image library.
I just got back from the theology online site and I think I answered my own question. If this is the exposure that you guys are getting to the \"christian\" worldview I fully understand your animosity. That is a site comprised wholly of boobs. And not the good kind.
As for the top ten: They\'re hilarious if you know very little about Christianity.
And I don\'t like the special olympics poster.....
...I LOVE IT!!! I\'ll be saving that to my image library.
I just got back from the theology online site and I think I answered my own question. If this is the exposure that you guys are getting to the \"christian\" worldview I fully understand your animosity. That is a site comprised wholly of boobs. And not the good kind.
I have no animosity towards Christians (or members of other faiths, for that matter) as long as their belief systems don\'t interfere with my life and as long as they are not harming anyone. Unfortunately, that is not the case in many situations. For example:
Anywhere without division of church and state - combination of religious zeal and political agenda is a recipe for disaster, IMO.
Forced underage marriages in Mormon polygamist sects.
The views of Scientologists, Jehovah\'s Witnesses, and Christian Scientists on standard medical therapy.
Attempts by certain fundamentalist Christian groups to undermine science education in public schools.
I personally think all of those examples above are misguided beliefs, and I will criticize them appropriately. I don\'t assume however that all those whom profess a religious belief support those examples.
No Such Agency
New member
They\'ve got ink:
FLAMING SKULL
MERMAID
\"Eve\" HEART \"For Ever\"
See, we scientists seem to prefer admitting ignorance to pulling a textual description out of an ancient holy book and claiming it has validity equal to that of disciplined observation and experimentation.
Mattrock, want to know why some non-religious people seem antagonistic to Christianity? A good example would be this: I don\'t mind if people go to church, or synagogue or whatever. I don\'t mind if they believe in one god or many or none. I DO mind if they expect their scriptures, or their sexual morals, or their creation story, to be taught in public school science class, as if they had any scientific validity.
Godlikebuthumble\'s flowcharts, while perhaps insultingly frank, are essentially true. Some religious people criticize science for changing its ideas about the universe - we are \"inconsistent\". But we will reconsider anything in the face of strong enough evidence. Many religious people simply refuse to reconsider their beliefs at all, no matter what evidence is presented. And that is their right. But it is NOT their right to use the public institutions to seduce others to that inflexible viewpoint with theological sweet-talk and lies.
(Maybe that\'s what disturbs me the most, is the lies. Certainly, it\'s not a majority of believers who will lie to sway others\' minds. but the ones who do... are they pursuing faith in god, or power over man?)
freakinacage
Well-known member
i agree
@mattrock thought you\'d like it. certainyl not pc though!
And I would like to think that most folks of the religionists view would have the same outlook on the whole subject. You believe in this, I believe in that. So we\'ll just agree to disagree until the day of judgment and you are burning in hell
The problem is that the \'nutjobs\' on both sides of the debate are both vocal and closed minded. In turn getting the majority of the press, making the \'moderates\' on both sides look like they agree with the views of the minority.
The problem is that the \'nutjobs\' on both sides of the debate are both vocal and closed minded. In turn getting the majority of the press, making the \'moderates\' on both sides look like they agree with the views of the minority.
And that\'s my point. You claim superiority, when in fact, we scientists\' practice no discipline that is any older or more proven (in universal terms) than any other discipline. And it\'s not all scientist that claim ignorance....and some *do* resort to \"divine intervention\", rather than claiming ignorance, when explaining some things.
Stephen Hawking comes to mind.....
Fact is, humankind is generally ignorant. We\'re just too egotistical and bigoted to admit that we don\'t know *anything* about the universe....rather we cite from scientific observation (which is a limited view in *all* circumstances) OR we cite from a holy book (which is a limited view in *all* circumstances).
No Such Agency
New member
Sorry, but it doesn\'t matter how old our discipline is. Seniority on its own is worthless, if it was not so, I\'d expect you to believe that the world came about when Apsu and Tiamat* mixed their sweet and salt waters, creating the sky and the earth.
As for \"proven\", well, you can claim otherwise if you wish, but scientific models of how things (the immune system, evolution, plate tectonics, quarks, the universe, etc.) work are based on countless experiments and observations, revisions of theory and consistent mathematical models. Stephen Hawking is a theoretical physicist, so his work is definitely a lot more abstract and mathematics-based than the majority of science... but it is still founded in mathematical rigour and is \"falsifiable\" (it is logically possible to disprove the theories by observing contradictory evidence). If Hawking believes in god (he does IIRC), that is his personal faith and he does not use theology as a foundation for his cosmology.
* not the dragon, you D&D nerds!
But the nice thing about the scientific method is it allows for the revision of theories. I don\'t think that there are too many folks out there that still believe that the sun is a golden chariot that is pulled across the sky or that the Earth is flat, largely due to the efforts of scientific inquiry. Sure, we are still woefully ignorant about many things, but we strive to understand them better rather than accept a supernatural explanation for them.
@ NSA - Alot of what you said I agree with. I have to say though that there seems a double standard in the way \'scientific validity\' is evaluated. Under current conditions, Darwinian evolution is not really falsifiable either as no one was there to witness the origins of life as we know it. It is speculation based primarily on a generalization of a known process (micro-evolution) and a need to answer a question: where did we come from. To subscribe wholeheartedly to Darwinian evolution is to submit to an imperfect theory that ultimately runs its course at some point and thus has to at the initial origin be attributed to chance. A chance I might add that is rationally impossible from the perspective of mathematical probability. I believe in micro-evolution - I think it\'s obvious that species evolve into adapted forms. I don\'t however, believe that evolution can adequately explain the origin of life from a scientific perspective. And neither to many scientists. That\'s why there\'s a very large contingient of the science community that believes in the idea of \"efficient causation\" or \"intelligent design.\" It doesn\'t mean that my God was necessarily the cause of the designer (which I do believe) but it simply says that the idea that the order around us was created is for many, easier to believe and just as credible as the idea that it all happened by random chance. So....I don\'t picket in the streets to say that my local school system should teach creationism rather than evolution. But I would think it reasonable for them to teach both. They don\'t even have to teach it from a Christian perspective but I don\'t really see where the danger is in teaching efficient causation as one of multiple theories for the origins of life. As for sex ed and the like...I\'d just as soon the public school not teach my kid this matter at all. That\'s a matter for me to be responsible for as his parent. With STDs at all time highs and teenage pregnancy a veritable epidemic, I don\'t want the \'public\' having major influence on my son\'s sexual health any more than I want the Federal Government giving me financial planning advice. Their track record simply won\'t support their claim of qualification.
I wasn\'t raised Christian, nor did I come to it lightly. Much of my family is still athiestic. That said, when I weighed the evidence on both sides of the coin, I found the secular humanist side lacking personally. I won\'t beat people over the head with my beliefs, but I also will never denegrate someone who is athiest because their interpretation of the world before them differs from my own. Christianity is rife with passionate yet ignorant followers. Secular humanism has the same problems. And Science, while having value, often suffers at the hands of it\'s most ardent supporters.
We all have our problems, but I assure you that I am no idiot. I don\'t think you are either. So what I\'m proposing is this: can\'t we all just get along?
I wasn\'t raised Christian, nor did I come to it lightly. Much of my family is still athiestic. That said, when I weighed the evidence on both sides of the coin, I found the secular humanist side lacking personally. I won\'t beat people over the head with my beliefs, but I also will never denegrate someone who is athiest because their interpretation of the world before them differs from my own. Christianity is rife with passionate yet ignorant followers. Secular humanism has the same problems. And Science, while having value, often suffers at the hands of it\'s most ardent supporters.
We all have our problems, but I assure you that I am no idiot. I don\'t think you are either. So what I\'m proposing is this: can\'t we all just get along?
