I respect everyone's right to believe in whatever religion or non-religion they choose to. Freedom of belief & expression is a wonderful thing in a civilised, integrated society (aspects which are sadly lacking in some societies).
What I don't appreciate though, is having one-sided conversations where one side thinks they can get away with providing no evidence to support any of their wild claims, & still has the cheek to continually scrutinise the other side which is constantly providing evidence to support their own beliefs.
@ichwar.....OK then, you have no evidence of your god that you wish to provide, no evidence of who made him, no evidence of how he made everything else, no explanation as to why there are so many different belief systems out there if your god is so
self-evident & so powerful. I guess that's you out of any conversation here then. Bye!
Re. the Earth being no more than 10,000 years old: Just because you find the clear evidence of carbon dating too hard to understand, & wish to mis-describe actual evidence as "assumptions", then kindly try not to ignore all the other evidence. Before you start disputing the additional geological evidence, fossil evidence, evolutionary evidence etc - don't bother. Just start to provide
us with evidence to support
your beliefs. Oh no, wait, you couldn't do that could you? - because it's all just unsubstantiated hand-me down stories.
....You still need to get back in touch with reality.
Can you explain how many of history's greatest scientists were creationists?
Just a quick list so you can see what I mean: Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johann Kepler, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Cotton Mather, Samuel F.B. Morse, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, James Clerk Maxwell.
You see then that not only have plenty of famous scientists been creationists, but also, we who believe in a Creator are NOT anti-science.....
You seem to have lost the plot completely with this one. Just because a scientist discovers something, doesn't mean they know all the answers. They can also believe in a god, just as they can also believe in fairies. Science isn't a religion, it's a system of acquiring information - information which can be verified by others using the same methodology, & is built on underlying principles. Unfortunately, religion doesn't have any wish to be checked & verified, because there is no substance to it.
If you believe in a creator, you may not profess to being anti-science, but you are in fact blatantly disregarding it's principles, whenever it suits you.
.....No, not coincidence.
Is it coincidence that you have the same religion as your parents?....
Well Duh!!! That's my point. It
isn't a coincidence. People haven't arrived upon their religion or faith because they worked anything out, or because they've looked at all the other faiths & non-faiths out there & decided that this faith is the right one because of any evidence.
No, one's religion/faith is usually what one has been spoon-fed (dare I say "brain-washed"?) with since an early age.
There are so many belief systems out there, some involving gods, some not, & they go back as far as cave-man times. And kids generally stick blindly to what they have been indoctrinated into by their parents. To them, of course, their system is always the right one, & everyone else is wrong.
As to science not providing all the evidence & facts yet - it doesn't need to, it is a work in progress. In relation to how the universe exists, for example, what science is doing is looking for answers, & attempting to produce facts with evidence to support it. It
is enough to say that "these are the possibilities we have come up with so far, & there could be more". Thus science doesn't say that any one theory must be right or wrong, it
allows for alternatives.
Religion, on the other hand allows for
no alternatives & yet provides
no answers. Creationists, for example, insist everything must be made by a god, no other explanation is possible. Unfortunately, as I already stated, this explains nothing. It seduces people with its simplicity ("one Being has made everything") & yet, it actually hides the nonsense on which it is based. In reality, of course, it now just passes the problem onto new questions such as ;
"where did this god come from?", "how can it make something from nothing?", "why would it bother to make humans which didn't previously exist, only to then insist they love it & follow its rules or else get sent to a hell?", "so are we just this god's play-things?", "why is there so much suffering in this world?", "why doesn't my god just let everyone know that he exists, rather than leaving most people on this planet not believing in him/having my religion?", and "why would you even want a god as selfish & cruel as this to exist?"
And of course, any attempt at an answer would be mere speculation, or taken from a book of fiction.
I'm not going down the road that others have been manipulated into going down, in this thread: of providing endless evidence to endless questions - because people of religion aren't interested - they won't even hear what is said.
Why waste my time? Plenty of other people have tried in this thread already. All the "faithful" want is a blind faith to believe in, where they don't have to check for any evidence. It's all nice & neatly arranged for them as a set of rules, which they must not question or seek evidence for.
And their motivation for having a religion is obvious: To put them in the good-books of someone powerful. To earn their place in a heaven after they're dead. To give them a feeling of moral superiority over the heathen. To take away their responsibility to think for themselves. To give their lives some sort of meaning. Or many similar such delusional concepts. All quite selfish, of course.
Sorry guys, there most likely is no pre-determined meaning or purpose to life, & even if there was one, there's no reason to suppose that it could only be a good or worthwhile purpose.
Time to smell the coffee? No, of course not. You'll all just carry on in your own little parentally determined lifestyles. I'm not foolish enough to think that anything I've written here will have a jot of influence on you.
But Oh Well, I at least offered you an olive branch to the sad reality that is Life.
I have every respect for all of you, whatever your beliefs. But just don't try to make out that unsubstantiated stories are anything more than fairy stories.
P.S. Still waiting...........
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