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I think we should get back to the beginning...no pun intended.
What is the definition of "god?"
A challenging question,
As I understand the religious definitions:
Abrahamic religions (Judism, Christianity, Islam) generally define God as the Creater of the Universe
Hinduism has many branches, some like Jainism and Sikhism which may not consider themselves to be Hindu, these Indian religions have a wide variety of definitions, Brahman being a single example of a Hindu definition, where Brahman is a super soul composed of all souls
Budhism, Taoism, Confuncianism and Shinto do not all have a definition of God, though some sects like Amitaba Budhism do
There are many more definitions beyond the major religions, including beleifs that there is no such being.
Many of the newer religions have newer definitions of God.
My conclusion is - it depends on who you ask
sigpic"If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees.
If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children."
Hmmm. My natural inclination is that this is going to end terribly. I trust you're all going to be grown up about this and not start throwing poo at each other.
In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.
Muslims in Turkey and Malaysia have also accepted changes. They have learnt to live with changes. It is upto the people to bring about the change. The fundamentals of the religion are still preserved while the other minor details have changed over time in these two countries. Also as I mentioned in my previous few post that majority of the people who truly believe in God are rather poor and uneducated and they follow the book as it says. For them this life is test of Allah and they can only succeed if they follow what is mentioned in quran (which has been misinterpreted in many ways).
Have they changed the Quran, or are they just changing what they wish to believe in the Quran?
One is religion changing, the other is followers changing.
If you ask me, it is just a book like any other. People take these things very seriously. Just like Stephen Hawking takes physics very seriously. One should take all good from all religions and learn from it, rather than trying to debunk it.
You make it sound like as if Religions are these wild things that popped into existence that we don't know about instead of what they really are, which is a set of rules and moralities mixed in with a story based on ideas of the time. Meaning the ideas were PRESENT before the founding of that religion. Hence, there is nothing to loose in debunking Religions.
Most of the original scriptures in all major religions have either been lost/destroyed or as lost in translation/ misinterpreted. Why is it even important to follow the book as it says? Most people know that the fundamentals of major religions rotate around peace and non-violence. Trying to interpret in our own way (or by scholar who use it for their personal gains) has lead to a lot of bloodshed.
I never said they should follow what the book says, I merely said they tend to pick and choose what parts of the book to believe in based on PRESENT morality. Indicating that our understanding of morality does NOT come from Religion.
It was the Christian invasion that lead to the birth of Islam. Mohammed did not want bloodshed neither did he ask his people to kill. However, he believed that killing in defense and defending others in need is justified. A friend of mine who is muslim actually told me that Mohammed once said that in a war if your opponent tries to attack you, you have every right to kill you, however if in a war your opponent surrender, do not just let him go but escort him and his comrades to a safe location. Many great Muslim rulers like Saladin have used his message successfully and gained respect from Muslims as well as Christians alike.
Like how he didn't really care about distinguishing combatants from civilians when he ordered the beheading of Jewish men with pubic hair?
I believe all religious scriptures talk about bringing peace and love to this planet, but a few twisted mind have misinterpreted it in their own way to befit their own ideology.
They also talk of how followers of other faiths are inferior, evil, by design non-human like.
Again, morals in religions reflect their time, we simply pick and choose what morals we want to follow based on our Current already established morals. Muslims in Saudi Arabia have Very different morals from Muslims in the US. This is very proof of what I mean.
I don't equate leprechauns and unicorns with God, while I beleive that God is relevant to me, I beleive that leprechauns and unicorns are irrelevant.
But you make that assumption that they are irrelevant, what if Leprechauns are responsible for bringing rainbow into existence? And only fooling us with false facts about light refraction?
How can you be absolutely certain that leprechauns don't exist?
You see, this is what I don't get about agnostics. They claim to be neutral on the subject of God due to lack of evidence on either side, and yet they have a default Negative point of view on every other superstition. But when it comes to God, it is automatically Neutral despite such a position have proven to be completely useless.
I would classify your fallacious agument as Argumentum ad Hominem
This isn't ad hominem as I am demonstrating the fallacy of assuming things to be neutral despite the lack of evidence.
I can bring many other examples, one of which stopped my Religious Professor right in his tracks.
It was:
If I claim God lived inside a chalk board duster, and you have no evidence to refute it otherwise, then should you accept this claim as valid and is equally plausible to be true than not to be?
Nope...both from the same source. He was compenstaed for his affliction with his brilliance.
And why not make him a genius without making him what he is now? Many scientists in the past have been arguably just as brilliant and yet they lacked the severe drawbacks hawkins did.
And don't bring up "God works in mysterious ways" "argument".
But you make that assumption that they are irrelevant, what if Leprechauns are responsible for bringing rainbow into existence? And only fooling us with false facts about light refraction?
How can you be absolutely certain that leprechauns don't exist? This is the fallacy of straw man - you are making up a position, attributing it to another and defeating it
This isn't ad hominem as I am demonstrating the fallacy of assuming things to be neutral despite the lack of evidence. This is ad hominem abuse you are attempting to ridicule the person whom you are arguing with by equating their widely accepted ideas with other ideas which are widely discredited
If I claim God lived inside a chalk board duster, and you have no evidence to refute it otherwise, then should you accept this claim as valid and is equally plausible to be true than not to be? If you claim to beleive this, I accept your right to beleive it".
I find this argument pointless and tiring - I intended to have a discussion, not this.
SCREW IT, DUMB ASS AND IF YOU DON'T GET IT, YOU NEVER WILL. STEPHEN HAWKINS MADE UP IMAGINARY TIME TO SOLVE IMPOSSIBLE EQUATIONS AND NOW YOU TOOK THEM TO BE REAL.
IMAGINARY AND COMPLEX NUMBERS HAVE THEIR PLACE. I WILL NEVER DISAGREE WITH THAT ... but when they're taken to be God Equations, ie, they know how the universe is created with ZERO PHSYICAL EVIDENCE AND ALL MATH PROOFS, then, SCREW YOU! The math has been wrong and it continues to be wrong. Dark matter cannot explain the expansion of the universe, and neither does dark energy and nothing a combination of the two.
You HAVE NOT STUDIED THE MATH ... and tried to tell me the observations is correct if we include dark matter (at first but failed) and now dark energy (but also failed). You know one way we can make all this math work? Intelligent design! I am not ready to accept it but I can accept the beauty of that arguement ... and for a total nobody, if you cannot accept the beauty of that math, ie of the intelligent design, then you are not ready for the 12 dimensions that M theory argues for ... for in the end, they are one and the same.
Universe is expending fast cause the big bang has just exploded in the Space. The expending Universe (projectiles) is to reach its maximum speed yet. Hope this will help us to know the current age of this Universe.
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In Indian Astrology its well mentioned that God do not interfere with the laws of Physics and Universe. God has nothing to do with stupid Big Bang explosion.
Ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing comes from nothing. Greater philosophers then Stephen Hawkings came up with this very logical tenet a long time ago. I'm assuming he's a philosopher/metaphysicist now right? As I understand it, Hawkings is using the Law of Gravity as the reason why the universe can come spontaneously from nothing. Okay, fine. Where did gravity come from? How the hell does any of this disprove "God"? :madder:
Yes, all these M theories, the 11 (or is it 12 now) dimensions (minuscule in size, less than even atoms!), multiverse theory etc. appear too abstract and just made up to satisfy some imaginary mathematical equations.
So now some people (supposedly among the best minds in the world) claim to solve the riddle of the big bang and the singularity on the train ride to watch a play! It may cause flutter in a small cult, I don't think it has the kind of rigor and solid evidence from the physical world that will cause it to be taken seriously outside that cult.
Ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing comes from nothing. Greater philosophers then Stephen Hawkings came up with this very logical tenet a long time ago. I'm assuming he's a philosopher/metaphysicist now right? As I understand it, Hawkings is using the Law of Gravity as the reason why the universe can come spontaneously from nothing. Okay, fine. Where did gravity come from? How the hell does any of this disprove "God"? :madder:
some views by a guy who has written a book on it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
Its physics, depends upon what we can observe, btich can change when we observe something new. At least it works on observations though.
Yes, all these M theories, the 11 (or is it 12 now) dimensions (minuscule in size, less than even atoms!), multiverse theory etc. appear too abstract and just made up to satisfy some imaginary mathematical equations.
So now some people (supposedly among the best minds in the world) claim to solve the riddle of the big bang and the singularity on the train ride to watch a play! It may cause flutter in a small cult, I don't think it has the kind of rigor and solid evidence from the physical world that will cause it to be taken seriously outside that cult.
I doubt anyone could make statements from watching a documentary or reading a book, though one must trust his own reason after putting some thought into it, or not, everyone is going be dead anyways, and if my mother is to be believed after that all go to fela devta (the deity who watches over my village) :D
After looking at Dr Hawking's work I am getting the impression that he is a victim of journalistic interpretation. I get the idea that his recent theories complete some equations and boundry conditions which were previously incomplete or undefined, and that is the extent of it. The point of his work wasn't God doesn't exist, it was we don't need to say "a miracle occurs here" to complete this particular mathematical model.
What of your opinion on the existence of leprechauns?
What about them? Are we talking about Leprechauns?
Can anyone definitively provide proof supporting or denying their existence?
Dunno, can they, have they?
Are you going to be a leprechaun agnostic too?
I'll humour you this one time. Allow me to provide you with an explanation of agnosticism so you may be informed to the nature of what I wrote.
From Wikipedia...
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.[1] Agnosticism can be defined in various ways, and is sometimes used to indicate doubt or a skeptical approach to questions. In some senses, agnosticism is a stance about the similarities or differences between belief and knowledge, rather than about any specific claim or belief.
Now read carefully, I am only going to explain this once. I cannot prove nor disprove the existence of God, which is all that agnosticism deals with. Therefore, I cannot deny or support the existence of such. Basically, I don't know, and will not pretend that I do. I hope that there is something more to life than what I can see, I think heaven would be great, if it exists, and I have no proof that it does OR it doesn't. So I may be in for a happy surprise, the question is, who REALLY knows. To claim that one knows beyond any doubt either way, is stupidly arrogant IMO.
However, for my beliefs on leprechauns, bigfoot, chupacabra, the mothman, the jersey devil, ghosts, vampires, wherewolves, extra-terrestrial aliens and honest politicians or lawyers, I have never seen any of these in person, so the existence of such cannot be confirmed IMO. Until there is proof, ie, bodies, spacecraft, etc. I will not take a side on whether they exist or not. I thought I saw a zombie once, but turns out it was Nancy Pelosi. I know, very close.
On a side note, I figured bigfoot would be easier to find than God, so I keep up on the sightings and would love to go on a bigfoot hunting expedition. I have seen some damn good pictures, but not good enough. If I ever spot one, let's just say I plan to get irrefutable evidence.;)
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