The right think they are all tough guy
The left are all snowflakes

Get it right.

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:rofl:

Have to love that example and the constant fear tactics

Wait until they figure out, if/when the election goes to the Supreme Court and the Justices have to appoint the President due to electoral vote issues and it comes down to one vote... due to Justice Roberts being a RINO, guess who it will be left up to? duNh duNh duNhhhhh.

I watched this lecture again today and thought it was relevant to the thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2w

Probably too long for the average TW attention span.

the series is very good. Hes going to start an exodus series soon too.

Ive gone from catholic, to rabid anti-religious to just being a more considerate person. I understand the personal benefit religion brings, as well as much needed sense of community that is very missing today.

I may feel that belief in sky wizards is silly, but i also see a lot of happy religious people so...why would i want to **** on them unless i was just an angry, unhappy person?

Ding ding ding !! Winner.

Caring about truth and recognizing that false beliefs are potentially harmful doesn't mean you have to **** on people.

I think you may have been doing it wrong.

Guys it's POTENTIALLY HARMFUL ok? We have to eradicate it. Like Mao and Stalin. Then we'll have utopia.

Still waiting for the single good reason to be religious btw.

Don't worry guys amapedo and his group of autis..atheists will decide which of your beliefs are harmful. They'll vet your reasons.

The best cure for potentially harmful ideas are re-education camps imo. Though crimes and potential crimes can be fixed with just a little focus and concentration

It helps you learn how, and continue, to be a good person by providing examples of how to live your life.

Obviously not everyone needs that, but some do.

Don't you want fewer douchebags in the world?

Note: I'm referring mainly to Western religions here.

Good thing amRam and Pagy have learned not to **** on people.

Can also be done via secular means, try again.

So can genocide.

Yeah, I ****ing said that. Just because there are alternatives doesn't make the religious option any less valid. You understand that we're not all the same, right? One size does not fit all.

God damn you're thick.

Whisky gives me a headache. We should ban all whiskey in favor of wine

Tail end of 19th century, Nietzsche proclaims god is dead.

20th century rolls in with some of the worst genocides in human history all done at the hands of atheistic dictatorial sociopaths who thought they knew what was best for people.

21st century pedos now tell us religion is useless and harmful.

Many lulz.

Are you saying that some people are incapable of behaving well without relying on fairy tales?

No ******* he's saying people can choose whatever ideal they want to follow in life and you're a loser pedophile.

Just curious, do you agree with this? Only asking because you're the one who tried to argue that people are not in charge of their own moral compass. Can I take this post as you having revised that position?

You're the one completely misconstruing others' posts. Data could not have possibly been more clear in his statement. Maybe just read what he ****ing wrote, Cathy Newman.

Real question for tpk, and on topic.

Originally I asked why people whose their respective reasons. Most of the time it is location and upbringing; in your case you chose it later in life. Did you do a review of the major (or even minor) religions? How did you choose the one you follow. I ask that with zero judgment attached. I'm curious.

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Because people should be free to believe what they want to. As long as it's not hurting anyone, who gives a ****? No one on this planet can tell us where we are. No religion has the answer. We are all exactly equal in this regard. Furthermore, we are never going to figure out where we are. So, we float through our short lives and if a person needs an explanation to avoid feeling lost, who cares? It's only when groups of people get together and start pushing their agenda on others that is becomes a problem. Religion doesn't kill people, people do.

It's an interesting perspective that you have. However I think the focus of our two different minds are very different.

You recognize God as something supernatural and therefore it can be difficult to apply the scientific method towards his nature. I understand that.

To me this seems like a dead end you keep ramming into, and I understand why your truck stops here. "Can't test it, therefore not true." is the conclusion.

In contrast, my focus goes to the physical laws of the universe that you speak of, such as gravity. Gravity is quite testable indeed. Much of the physical nature of the universe is entirely testable by the scientific method.

I believe most Atheist science-based thinkers all believe that the universe had a starting point, which is why the big bang is so popular.

We know that everything that comes into existence has a cause behind it.

How is it not logical to believe that there is a cause behind the universe?

1) Everything that we know that has come into existence has had a cause behind it
2) The universe came into existence.
3) Therefore something caused the universe to come into existence.

If there is a failure in my logic, please point it out. I'm eager to see it.

I completely agree with you. Many people on this board would disagree with both of us. I have pointed that out multiple times to many people and they just ignore it. I believe you are absolutely right. A scientific experiment must be repeatable. Educated guesses, are indeed, unacceptable.

So then here is my question: "Where is the measurable, observable, repeatable experiment that proves that one animal can become another one entirely?"

This is where I hit a wall. ^ I keep pointing this out and everyone says "look at the fossils". Can a leap of logic not be seen here? Darwinian theory takes place over millions of years, and therefore it is not repeatable, directly observable, or easily tested. And yet, all of that talk about repeatable experiments being required suddenly just do not matter anymore. You just gotta "believe" and not dare question it. This is because Darwinian Theory has moved into Dogma. Yes, there is very strong evidence to support that it may be true, but where is the repeatable experiment?

I'm very open to the possibility of it being true.

That is sad if that is the case. In my opinion, ID has nothing to do with religion. It is simply the teaching of an obvious truth that this universe was designed by something highly intelligent.

I completely disagree with you that ID is "because God". ID is simply observing the universe and drawing the most obvious and most likely truthful conclusion based on scientific evidence and applications of the scientific method that are used on the fine-tuning of the universe.

Everyone loves Occam's razor until it can be heavily applied against their own worldview.
The simplest and best explanation for our universe is a creative intelligent causal agent. As a note, I'm not saying that Occam's razor is always correct. I am saying that God's existence is the best explanation for our universe by far, and it's not even close. It's perfectly logical and reasonable to believe in ID.

When we look at the fine tuning of the universe, we see impossible complexity.

If you were walking on the road and there was a computer sitting on a sidewalk, and your friend said "Hey look a computer, I wonder who built it?" You would never ever reply with "that's preposterous, it likely has randomly spawned out of chaos!"

And yet, when we shift the scene to the universe which is infinitely more complex and finely tuned than a computer, you are very willing to say the above.

Why is it foolish to question the creative agent behind a computer, but intelligent to question the creative agent behind the universe?

This logic is akin to:

1) This monster is level 20, surely it should be very challenging.
2) This monster is level 500, surely it should be very easy to defeat.

This is one reason why I do not find Atheism very logical.

If you are certain that someone has created a computer, then you should be even more certain that someone created the universe.

If you are not certain that someone created the universe, I fully accept that, but then you must please question any computer you see with due diligence.

The next time you open this website to make a post on the form, please take at least 5 minutes before posting to meditate on the notion that this forum likely has spawned from random chaos.

That is a very interesting point. I am curious to know more.

I wasn't saying that science teaches that life has no purpose. I completely agree that that is not science's job and would never refute that. I was rather saying that the worldview known as secular humanism teaches that life has no meaning or purpose, and that humans don't have any meaningful intrinsic value.

However, I'm glad to learn more about why I am wrong.

In the above quote I read that humans are "part of something" and are "star stuff" but I do not see how being "stuff" or "part" of a thing automatically renders meaningful intrinsic value.

Can you teach me the meaningful purpose and intrinsic value that secular humanism proposes that humans have?

This is not any sort of challenge. I'm simply curious where I am in error and interested in learning more.

I completely agree that science has no dog in that fight. I'm worried we have a misunderstanding of the basic premise of this point of discussion.

Science is simply the search of truth through testable means. Of course it would have no say in morals.

Yet, the worldview that most Atheists prescribe to, states that there is no objective moral truth.

Since things do not exist if they cannot be proven scientifically, and one cannot prove that objective morals exist by using the scientific method, they therefore do not exist.

When science is your only applied method of ascertaining of truth, so many other useful and viable tools are discarded. What you are left with is the positive affirmation that objective moral truths do not exist until prove otherwise.

So yes, secular humanism very much so asserts the view that there are no objective moral truths.

As for the last point on atrocities on the past, I recognize that there are horrible atrocities on both sides. That discussion is a black hold in my opinion. This discussion is already large so I'll get to the rest of your content unless you want me to touch on that more. My basic opinion is "I don't know which worldview did better/worse things throughout history."

I agree with you that there are some Atheists who would be thrilled and super happy in their worldview. However, in statistics, it is very clear that Atheism loses in the battle against depression.

Atheism and suicide - Conservapedia

"Concerning suicide rates, this is the one indicator of societal health in which religious nations fare much better than secular nations. According to the 2003 World Health Organization's report on international male suicides rates (which compared 100 countries), of the top ten nations with the highest male suicide rates, all but one (Sri Lanka) are strongly irreligious nations with high levels of atheism. It is interesting to note, however, that of the top remaining nine nations leading the world in male suicide rates, all are former Soviet/Communist nations, such as Belarus, Ukraine, and Latvia. Of the bottom ten nations with the lowest male suicide rates, all are highly religious nations with statistically insignificant levels of organic atheism.

Through my own personal experience, I have seen this work in action and I was very shocked to learn that my ex-manager that I used to work with who was perhaps the strongest Atheist I have ever met, took his own life. I went back to visit him and say hello after graduating college, and when I asked about him, all my ex-co-workers became so dismal and gloomy and quiet. It was a dark moment.

And then there is life in Japan, where the last time I visited I almost missed my flight due to a "human accident" on the train tracks on the way back. That is a super regular thing in Japan. Of course arguments from experience are usually worthless. But for me, it is obvious that the statistics hold up.

I think that they point to how religion often very strongly emphasizes sexual reproduction within the bonds of marriage.

In contrast, a non-religious individual might say "Hey, go out and have sex with as many people as you can. You only have this life after all. May as well enjoy it!"

That's the best brief take I can do on it. If you want we can go further into this... I actually hadn't researched this argument very much.

fully agree.

I'm realizing that religion is a very broad word. I don't agree that religion is always just "making up stories to make people feel comfortable." I think we just have a direct disagreement on this, which is fine.

As for adjustments needing to be made upon hard scientific conclusions being made, we absolutely agree.

The difficulty lies when people say "it is a scientific fact that I am a three-tailed magic hippo" and then suggest that you must believe in that because it's a "scientific truth."

There seems to be wide sweeps of "all these idiots just don't believe in science," and wide dismissals of intelligence towards theists.

There are many, many, many brilliant scientists that moved humanity massively forward that were of a Theistic worldview. They aren't all dumb. It's just simply a falsity.

I'm very curious to know what the IQ or intelligence test results of Atheists vs Theists would be. On average I would guess that the Atheists would win. Are there graphs on this?

Secular Humanism does indeed tell people how to live their lives.

It is no different than religion in that regard.

I'm happy to do more on this point if you want. Just prompt me.

1) Everything that comes into existence has a cause behind it

Your question is almost always the one that follows, but you can see a difference in wiring and focus in that question.

If you read the above statement again, you will see that that is not a question that would actually logically follow.

By that I mean:

1) Any charred meat has been cooked.

Following question: "Ok, who cooked this raw meat then?"

If there is a causal agent, then it must have pre-existed the creation of the universe. It also must have set all of the parameters for the universe to exist within, such as time and space. If it pre-existed matter, time, and space, then it must not be constrained by them. If it is not constrained by matter, time, and space, then it rests outside the realm of everything we know and the possibilities are endless.

The short form of this is: "The causal agent never came into existence. It always existed."

If it never came into existence, than the above logic about our universe does not apply to it, much like the statement about charred meat does not apply to raw meat.

Completely agree.

In the case of the murder scene, this revision must be done quickly, before innocent people end up in jail.

The vacuous sponge-like nature of the human mind is very real. It needs to be filled or it will fill it for you.

This concept is one highly overlooked by most everyone.

It's not a controversial statement meant to provoke. It's just math and statistics. You can look at a graph and see what religions are strong and which ones are not.

Shamanism would have no chance against Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Paganism, etc..

No, that's not a dig at Islam. It's a dig at atrocities committed in the name of religion, of which there are many.

I'm not sure why anyone would say that I wouldn't call out the atrocities done by all religions. I've done that so many many times in this thread. The amount of atrocities that religion has piled up is daunting to say the least.

I completely agree about muslims. Many of them are genuinely kind and loving people.

Agree.

I'm also certain the baby in the womb would be equally as unhappy to learn that the supreme court decision went against it. Human beings generally don't like being dismantled.

This is however an extremely sensitive topic that I generally don't tread on.

People lose their beans on this topic.

It's interesting because, while you say there is significant possibility that there is no painter, you have never once challenged any single one of your friends on this.

1) "Nice painting! I wonder who painted it?" -Your Friend.

2) "Why would you assume that automatically? It likely could have spawned from universal constants." -MC Hamster

You make these statements, and yet, if you observe your life you can see that this assumption of universal constant spawning was never applied to any clock, any painting, any computer, or any encyclopedia you ever encountered.

Are you certain you hold this view?

1) "Man, this is a wonderful Pepsi can design. Whoever made it probably got rich!"

2) "Or they just got lucky that the design spawned from universal constants!"

I see no logical consistency in this stance.

Whenever you see a design, you assume there is a designer.

The universe is more highly designed than any computer or any encyclopedia or any pepsi can you have ever seen, and it's not even comparable.

I don't feel I'm adding any elements to this point of discussion at all. Rather I think I'm keeping it as simple as it can be (i.e. Here is a computer, someone designed it).

This is actually really refreshing to hear.

It seems the experiences are so varied.

From my limited experience of stories that I have heard, they have been quite negative.

It's nice to know someone had a pleasant experience.

No doubt no doubt. And yet, if anyone heard you say to your daughter "be quiet" they would not find you to be sexist. Nor would they find you sexist to tell your son "chill out and stop raging." By that I mean, people would be able to recognize that you were teaching your child, whom you have a deep and unique relationship with, aspects of life that it needed to learn. In the same way, Paul's letter to Corinth was a personable and specific letter addressing specific people. In the very same letter he chastised men to not rage and fight with one another, and no one bats an eye, because that was directed towards men, and not women.

The reaction that these unique verses in the bible gather come across to me as indeed, a product of the times. People seem to want to be upset at everything nowadays, nobody is keen on investigating and listening, always blaming and getting upset. What if he had done the reverse and told the men to be silent, and the women to stop raging?

Would he then be sexist again for saying that "women are angry creatures" in an unequal manner?

Where is the anger towards him telling men to stop being angry? Nowhere to be found...

It's a very unfair accusation of sexism, based on mistranslation, removal of context, and a heartfelt desire to find a reason to dislike a particular individual.

There's no doubting that "be silent" sounds dramatically worse than "be a good student and listen when the professor is lecturing" or something to that degree. My point is that people mostly rage at their own constructions of what they are seeing, and not what is actually being presented in the material.

As a linguist, I've experienced countless difficulties similar to this with language. There are some words in foreign languages that have gotten me into tons of trouble and even slapped, because they have varied meanings depending on how you use them and the situation you are in. One slip up and you can make yourself look awful. Multiple times I have said something truly inappropriate indeed by accident.

In my Japanese 101 class, I stood up in front of the teacher and everyone and said "Where is the clitoris?" completely by accident. I thought I was saying "Where is the map?"

The summary is, if you are not actually trying to understand people, you can basically make them say whatever you like in your own mind, and then proceed to be fully justified when you become upset at them. At that point, you can paint them with any accusation you please, and it will be entirely sinister when you do so.

The modern day version of this, and it's a word that I do not like to use and really never do, but the recent term "Karen." These people are unfairly upset at random innocent people that do not deserve any accusation or any of the trouble that gets sent their way.

Paul was educating and elevating women to positions of power and authority during a time period where women were generally treated as property.

If any of us grew up in that time period in that society, would we have had any hope of being even half as progressive? Doubtful.

Also the raw basic silliness of pinning gender and sexism on every single comment ever uttered. You can't really say anything to anyone anymore in 2020 without opening yourself up to horrible accusations.

I will definitely put that on my list of things to check out.

The huge positive of this thread is I have a very long list of materials gathered from it that I'll be consuming for a while. All very interesting stuff.

I really appreciate your awesome discussion on all these points. It's been super fun.

I burned all my time replying to MC Hamster, but I will definitely get to your previous post and this one as well eventually. It might be a long while before I can.

The answer to your first question cus it is short, yes.

I became a fanatic student of religion in college and took every course on religion I could find. I was super close to just getting a minor in religion, but I already had enough credits to graduate. Most of my study was in addition to those courses and I did it for fun cus I was fascinated with the topic of religion.

It's worthy noting that I was a very strong Atheist during this time period of my life and regularly argued with Christians that I felt were uncomfortably pushy and would sit down next to me in the cafeteria. I have a wild story about some of these experiences.

The only major holy book I'm not familiar with currently is the Quran, though I learned many basic concepts of Islam through listening to debates on the topic, and listening to public speakers that grew up deeply rooted in the Muslim faith.

On top of this, I used to download hours and hours and hours of audio content on religion and burn it all onto CD's and listen to them in my car while I was driving around in Japan. It got to the point that my box of CD's was so heavy that I had to just toss them when I moved.

I can tell you all about Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, the Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Paganism, Hinduism, and I even wrote my final Thesis on Confucianism which was perhaps the hardest for me to understand, but I got an A- on the paper. The professor was a hardass and I was certain he hated me, so I was very surprised.

The topic is vast indeed and there is still quite much to learn.

I can make a brief statement that there are very large differences between many of these religions.

Whenever I hear anyone say "religions are all the same" it makes me cringe pretty bad.

Even as an Atheist I could have never agreed with that statement.

----------wall of text incoming---------

Not really, no. The concept of Intelligent Design as an issue of science (which is how it was originated - as a method to have a "non religious" (but religious) explanation of the universe taught as part of science, so bypassing the constitutional block of having religious studies in state schools. I'm describing why that fails as a form of science. Your point there highlights why I find 'strong athiesm' to be a fairly silly position to have as well.. Professing there is absolutely no god is just as flawed a position as the one they rail against. I don't believe there is one, as I've never seen anything to suggest that's the case, but I won't discount the possibility as an impossibility - it's basically just irrelevant.

Why does that cause need to be a conscious one, though? If you say this Designer has always existed, and brought the universe into being, could the same not be true of some other factor, without the need for the added complexity of some conscious sentience to do so.

Dog breeding? We have centuries of evidence showing how inherited traits can be selected and passed on. We do the same with flower cultivars, breeding new species quite regularly.. As far as "proper", wild stuff goes, there's a finch in the Galapagos which has been observed and tracked since the late 70s in which we've witnessed an "immigrant" species arrive and spawn off a recognisably distinct species...

https://www.pnas.org/content/106/48/20141

If you want to "go large", with widespread whaling historically having vastly reduced its numbers, the Humpback Whale is split into two separate populations, in the North and South Hemispheres, which do not follow the same migration routes and so do not generally interbreed. They are growing distinctly different and there's some argument that they're genetically distinct subspecies already.


The concept of ID has been around for centuries, but it has always been in a theological context - all religions have some form of creation mythology. The term itself however was relatively unused until it was basically levered in to replace the term "Creationism" in the 1980s when teaching of that topic in US state schools was challenged and deemed unconstitutional, due to its overtly religious nature. The 'religious right' in the US adopted the new phrase, dropped out the overtly religious bits, and re-worked the idea to get around the ban and get it back in schools. The "something highly intelligent" creator you refer to is a god in all but name.

Except that it isn't. Go look back on the history of it and you'll see the flaw. It's started with the answer it's looking for and then has worked backwards to find support. It's literally that guy at the murder scene you described, pointing at "a creator" and saying "he did it!", then finding the evidence that fits.

No. The simplest and best explanation for it is an agent. Doesn't have to be creative, doesn't have to be intelligent, doesn't have to be any sort of consciousness, just a 'thing'. That's adding complexity that need not be there. (For reference, M-Theory does kinda address what that thing might be.)


Again, back to the puddle...

Ok, let's say for your example that it's possible for that computer to have spawned from chaos. Insanely unlikely, infinitesimally small odds, but theoretically possible.

The chances of you stumbling across it are similarly preposterous.

But in an infinite number of cases, it will happen, under some bizarre circumstance. What if those same, bizarre circumstances were the same prerequisites that were required for you and me to exist, be walking along that road and arriving at the computer?

All that complexity you see as being the result of some intelligent design has absolutely no need to be 'design'. Given a specific set of constants and interactions, it's actually impossible for that computer not to spawn from the chaos. If those same constants and interactions that produce that computer are the same ones that produce you and me on that street, then yes - it's an absolute fact that that computer spawned from the chaos. In an infinite cosmos, there are an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of variables. In one of them, is us, where computers randomly spawning from the aether is nonsensical... but there's another one out there where you can't take two steps without having to dodge a freshly spawned Macbook Pro.

You're viewing the universe as a place built specifically for you, and therefore seeing all this amazing 'fine tuning' to make it fit your needs, rather than yourself as the natural and logical product of that configuration.

The puddle takes the shape of the pothole, not vice versa.


Nope, sorry. I have no idea what secular humanism proposes or teaches, I'm generally not that big into labels. I'd probably agree that life in itself doesn't hold any sort of 'value' you can measure. Again, you're delving in philosophy rather than science. As far as a philosophy of life goes, I'd say: Treat other people the way you'd like them to treat you, don't be an ******* (which goes back to a: ) and try to leave the world in a better state than you left it (which also goes back to a:, who wants to arrive to a mess?)

I'd say that's because morality is a completely subjective matter. It's based on your own personal conditioning to what is normal and what is not. I'd suggest most people would find the idea of a human sacrifice to be deeply objectionable and utterly immoral, yet to the Aztecs it was a noble and revered act of worship that people found great honour in. The morality of it is determined by those involved - it is subjective, not objective. So yeah, I'd be perfectly happy to say there is no objective moral truth. Morality is subjective by definition.

Have to say that that 'conservapedia' site (whose neutrality on the subject I'll take with a pinch of salt) references a single study. Here's another (emphasis mine):

Number one on that list of suicide rates is Lithuania. As someone with Lithuanian heritage, I can tell you it is a deeply catholic country. A quick check shows over 77% of the population identifies as Roman Catholic, and one of the notable tourist attractions it has is the 'Hill of Crosses', where people plant crosses to honour their dead. During the Russian occupation of the Soviet times, that hill was regularly bulldozed as part of the Russian efforts to stamp out the religious practices - the crosses were inevitably replaced overnight, and the russians eventually gave up on it. I'm not sure how he's drawing his conclusions there, but to me it would appear to fall at the first hurdle.

Not to diminish this one (I've seen suicides pretty close up, too), but what you've described doesn't really suggest his death was due to his athiesm, nor that it would have been avoided by religion. That's really not a conclusion you could form one way or the other. It may have helped him, it may not. Maybe any number of other things would have as well.

No, not really what I meant if that's how it came across. I see religion as being a way of making sense of things we don't otherwise understand. It's the caveman witnessing a sunrise and trying to explain it, without any concept of a solar system or orbital mechanics. It's cowering from a thunderstorm without being able to understand thermodynamics and electricity. It's finding answers to fill in the blanks, that satisfy our curiosity. That's all I mean by "taking comfort" - it's providing some sort of working answer to a nagging and possibly disquieting question.

As I said (or.. maybe I edited it out? I've lost track), There's no reason religion and science need be in opposition. Science does not seek to give meaning for things, only what is and what is not. The only time they conflict is when science provides an answer to one of those 'caveman questions' which we've previously answered through religion, and the dogma is 'challenged'. In general though, at their fundamental levels, they are completely separate schools. I see religion as a form of philosophy - where we look to explain our human foibles.



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Correct. Now: Why does that 'causal agent' need to be intelligent? Why do you feel our universe need be 'designed'? In an infinite multiverse, our universe is just a single example, and we are the natural products of that example - as the same seed in a computer-generated 'random' number will always return the same result, we are the inevitable result of the same conditions that spawned our universe. No intelligence, no design, just mathematics.

I'd suggest that's a lot less to do with the content of the religions themselves, and a great deal more with the power of the institutions behind them. I'd say the Christian domination of Latin America has little to do with whether Jesus or Quezalcoatl had the more persuasive arguments, and a lot more to do with Spanish gunpowder.

This is the bit we keep circling back to. You see design where there is none. Given the right 'seed', this is the only way our universe can exist. Change the seed just a little, and we're no longer who we are, we're now coloured purple, breathe liquid iron and are having this same discussion from our homes in the atmosphere of a gas giant - all of which are absolutely normal things - and in an infinite multiverse, exactly that is happening.

So what you're saying is that it's not intended for anyone other than the long-dead Corinthians to whom it was written? Then we should probably stop having people read it out every Sunday, then. If these teachings are no more than a product of their times as you suggest, then let them remain as that and stop trying to hold them up as some sort of universal truth.

Hamster youre a better person than i am

the issue with tpk is that hes never studied science. Hes studied what creationists say about science.

I mean hes making statements straight out of their playbook. Lol 2nd law of thermodynamics! Has he tried to talk about eyeballs and irreducible complexity yet?

intelligent design isnt science. if tpk is honest about understanding why, there are mountains of materials online regarding the kitzmiller v dover trial. there are many youtube videos explaining what science is and why id isnt it.

if he starts studying scientific sources instead of what creationists claim about science...hed stop asking questions like “why are there still monkeys”

Has anyone mentioned how just studying our circulatory system shows how we evolved from being fish/amphibians/quadrapeds?

And if people bring up te eye, we'll that just won't work. Our eyes are messed up technically. If our eyes were cameras we have cables right in front of the lense and have figured out how to compensate for it.

Maybe we just adapt intelligently to poor design?

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and you’re correct. The eyeball, if designed, was designed by a retarded person.

The eye evolved underwater; it requires constant lubrication. They rarely work well. Something like three quarters of asians are near sighted. They are delicate, painful and uncomfortable and cannot heal. Our eyes suck at night. Only see a limited piece of the spectrum. We see things upside down. Our photoreceptors are backwards. And our optic disc creates a literal blind spot.

If we were designed intelligently then most of our systems were contracted out overseas. When the God or whatever got them all and started putting us together he was probably like "oh what the **** is this?? Ok ill handle the brain. "

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People should also be free to go into the woods, spin around and pee in their own faces. That doesn't mean there's a good reason to do actually so.

I'm not asking if there's a good reason to be allowed to be religious. I'm asking for a good reason to actually be religious.

I'm not misconstruing Data's post, I'm taking it to its logical conclusion. If people can be good both with or without religion (something you already agreed to btw when you said you can't think of any positive benefit of religion that cannot also be achieved via secular means), then how is that a good reason for belief? Why eat the asbestos burgers?

Can we remove Amadeus talking about pissing in faces from this pls

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For adherents religion is NOTHING but good. That's all the reason necessary. To them your atheism is asbestos turkey stuffing. So shut the **** up, because the point you're making is not the point you think you're making.

Yeah, I remember some incredibly good airplanes flying into some very deserving skyscrapers. :rolleyes:

You keep glossing over the point that people's beliefs inform their actions which affect others, and it's kind of important.

So let me phrase my question this way: is there any good reason why people should base their decisions on anything other than reality?

Everyone experiences a different reality, though.

for instance, a lot of people are going to vote for Biden because in their reality, they have no clue about how corrupt the Bidens have been with money laundering in the ukraine and china, and they have no clue that hunter biden is a pedophile and that Joe is quite likely one too. That is because they don't pay attention or they don't watch anything but straight up propaganda mainstream media. They are making a decision based on their reality, though. :shrug:

:lol: