Shinjula

Its from the one you yourself posted, you labelled it deut and its got a 15 in front of it, you'd think you'd know your own posts :) That does not sounds remotely like a loving god, that is an extremely paranoid and jealous god. It's one thing to be saying worship only me because itll improve your life, or because its simply the right thing to do, but worship me because i damn well tell you to, oh and ill smite your enemies too is just the actions of a dictator.

>>>15 for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God ...jealous god, ok?

Mind you, those passages do show that that sort of god is a very suckky one, I'm all for omnibenevolent gods, but jealous gods are just not worthy of worship by any intelligent conscious being. Christian God = fail

Just throwing that out there for you guys trying to prove Yahweh/Jehovah exists. They're your bloody rules, so don't freak out. Two very good reasons NOT to worship that god.

The second hand smoking statistics have been massively over played by various governments, the statistic referred to people living with smokers in low ventilation places, and people working in smoky atmospheres such as bars, but they've been used by various people to imply that any second hand smoke instantly increases your chance of cancer by 30%, its a terrible terrible lie. I'm quite happy with a general ban on smoking in public places but it goes too far, I really dont see why we can have license smoking premises staffed by people who are smokers themselves. I would perhaps suggest that the government limit such places to maybe one or two such smoking clubs per town, much in the same way only a limited number of strip joints are allowed per city in the uk, but I see no need for a total ban when it is unneccessary. Working on an oil rig is dangerous and people are paid well to do it, working in a smoking club could be similar.

Sly, id like to join in with your part of the thread, if i may. Part of what you seem to be arguing is that if you allow marriage you should allow alsorts of things, such as incest, pederasty, polygamy & bestiality. But I'd like to reduce those options a bit. Marriage is something which must be done with consent of both partners. This completely rules out bestiality and pederasty . This leaves polygamous relatioships and incestuous one, I would be entirely fine with the idea of both of those being given legal statuses as well. There is nothing inherently bad for society about polygamy, and whilst I understand that you may feel incest breaks too many social taboos I would urge you to reconsider it. There are obviously bigger pitfalls with incestuous relationships, and I would think there would need to be quite rigorous inspection of such relationships, but there are no inherently terrible problems with it. Obviously assured consent would have to be required and the nature of the familial relationship would make a difference, for example, whilst with two cousins marrying there would be not much likelyhood of problems, obviously if a father were to marry a son (taking what I imagine to be the most extreme case imaginable in this scenario)there would have to be strict checks to make sure that the sons upbringing had been correct and there were absolutely no signs of abuse, and obviously they would both have to be clearly over the ages of consent. There would also presumably need to be some sort of medical checks to ensure no children are born in a mother/son, father/daughter brother/sister relationship as the genetic problems that occur can be very serious, perhaps some sort of mandated medication similar to the pill could be instituted. But really I see no difference either, what two people do in the privacy of their own homes is nothing I need to concern myself over, and any group of people in the same situation as a marriage should be eligable for the same rights and protections of society. Bestiality and pederasty however are completely dissimilar to homosexuality, an animal cannot give informed consent and neither can a child, so please can we leave these two subject out of the debate as they have no relevance?

What? About the mathematics, those things fitting exactly together. Let's not forget humans came up with the whole mathematics, numbers 1-9, that genious who came up with the 0, etc. Well thats very arguable, man may have learnt to conceptualise two cows, two sheep and two apples, and the extrapolate from that the concept of two, but the results in maths, those things which are provable are not crated by man, they are fixed, the ratio between the radius and circumference of a circle IS twice the ratio between the radius and the area of a circle, man did not create that, it was the case before man existed. So to say man came up with mathematics is inaccurate at best. Still I suppose this'll get ignored since we seem to be having the stupid debate about proof at the moment. It should be clear to any fool that there is no proof for god at the moment, neither is there proof for a lack of god either, both sides here seem to be arguing that the burden of proof is for the other side to do but to me thats just stupid, we ALL would find proof of the existence/non-existence of god a fantastic thing, so we should all be working towards finding out if god exists, the burden of proof is on all intelligent beings which ever side there support, so quit argueing about it and get on with solving the problem instead of arguing who's job it is.

That is obviously the other possibility, that it just is the way it is, It's the level of beauty that I find in math that makes me think of someone behind it all, otherwise, why would it seem beautiful, knowledge of maths has clearly no been around long enough for us to have evolved some sense of aesthetics around it (and I'm a firm believer in evolution), yet there it is. Maths doesnt need to be elegant and beautiful, so how come it is? Pretty much everything in the Universe that scientists have looked at is based on some kind of reason, the sky is blue because the air refracts light at certain wavelengths, light refracts because it slows down in different material and so on, sure there are limits to the knowledge we have found so far but as we continue to look we find more reasons behind things and more questions to ask. But in maths there dont seem to be reasons behind some of these things, either they are the way they are, and thats that, or its because theres something behind them. I'm completely open to the possibility that it just is, but my instincts tell me thats not the case. There are also other experiences I've had which back up the idea that there is a god, personal experiences of my own which I may go into later on. I also think it possible that given large portions of the population have had religious experiences that there may be something behind the curtain as it were. There is however large amounts of psychological work done in this area which leads me to believe the people are heavily putting their own spin on it. So I'm looking for commonalities between the religions to try to discover what patterns lay beneath. And I'll say this again. I'm a mathematician, I do not accept things without proof, it is not proven to me that there is a god, I just reckon there is, which to me is not the same as accepting that there IS a god. However as long as I behave in such a way as to account for both possibilities, it doesnt make a difference. What I said about Game theory for example is just as valid if there is no god as it is if one exists, but if there is a god then I'd like to know what the properties of that god are and mathematics must surely be a good marker of the mettle of any god of this universe.

One of the most important result i feel for my life which i have taken on board from mathematics is game theory. The Prisoners Dilemma is a classic puzzle, and in repeating games of it it can be show that the best strategy is a [bleep] for tat one with opportunities for redemption given. i.e. I'm always nice to people from the get go but if people cross me I'll stop being nice to them but occasionally offer them chances to reset and return to us being nice to each other. This is one reason i cannot believe in the Christian idea of heaven and hell, its against god (maths) we cannot be damned for eternity it is a faulty strategy. Equally this applies to the idea of original sin and the garden of eden scenario, it simply does not match up to game theory and maths and the universe we find ourselves living in. Symmetry is also important to me which is one reason i cant get along with islam their attitudes to gender are simply unsymmetric. Buddhism I find terribly sympathetic to how i see the universe and I could easily find myself believing in it, although its rules on bahviour seem too rigid and arbitrary (no eating of meat, no drugs) for me, but the underlying theology are very attractive none the less. But for the most part i prefer to stay away from ritual and conformity and describe myself only as a seeker of wisdom, I only take that which seems useful and true, if its unproven then it is suspect, and i take care to be sceptical of even my most deeply held beliefs, i hold them but rarely act on them unless it is for a damn good reason that is itself beyond that belief.

aw thanks, thats really made my day, i dont often talk in those terms cos im a bit scared of people looking at me funny, but thats really touched me

lol, well it was properties of circles which started it all off for me. The proportion of the radius to the circumference of a diameter is half that of the proportion of radius to the are of a circle, which is 4/3 the proportion of the radius to the volume of a sphere. The question I have is, why? Pi has some really weird properties, and it seems to me that there must be a reason behind it. The only reason I can come up with is that it was designed that way. It clearly isnt a random phenomena, its very precise the way pi crops up in all sorts of places. The only thing I can imagine is that some sort of agency set it up that way. Now I've looked a bit into intelligent design (in a disapproving kinda way) and found it very lacking because of obvious flaws, but those flaws dont seem to crop up in mathematics, there arguments against intelligent design which are nonsense in a biological setting which appear to me to apply here such as that "What use is half an eye" argument, mathematics is not an evolved system it seems to be existing in its entirety without anything to have sprung it into existence, yet it is a highly complex system, where did it come from? It doesnt seem to me to be something we are creating, since we cannot create it to be different than what it is, we arent engineering a creation, when you attemtp to prove a theorem it is either true or false, and thats not decidable by the mathematician. The clincher for me was the discovery of a formula when i was studying my a-levels which blew my socks away... e^ip + 1 = 0 the seven most basic components of mathematics of maths all contained in one simple formula, with no real explanation of its existence. I find it very difficult to concieve of a universe where this just sprung up from nowhere. One of the most important arguments in the debate about god is the anthropic principle, it work even on a universe scale, that we are here observing this universe purely because this is the sort of universe where life can exist, but it seems to me that this most powerful argumet still doesnt help with mathematics as mathematics is independent from the universe, things true in mathematics would be true no matter what sort of universe you lived in, the language used to describe them would obviously vary dependant on the culture but the threads that bind them are the same, and even in a barren universe mathematics whilst lying dormant would still underlie that universe. My only conclusion is that there must be some sort of agency involved. One obvious problem worth mentioning with the idea of an agency is whether or not it too would be subject to mathematics, and im interested in debating this with others. But the level of beauty I have found in mathematics (try looking up minimal surfaces for some amazing structures, or just remember all those fractal pictures from the eighties) does make me think there is something of an artist behind it all.

A right is something the strong give to the weak from a sense of altruism. Does that work for you?

Lol, just seen this on bash.org (dont go there) and thought it pertinent...

Thats so not true, its the the majority of a society believes they have a cost to them, for example in a lot of christian societies they beleive that it will errode family values and destroy the society. Now many people believe them wrong, but thats why they do it, its not just for no reasons, that would be silly.

Although I'd like to put in that as I've progressed through learning mathematics (I did my degree in it and now work in a related field - I'm a sculptor who creates pieces based on mathematics), I do find more an more evidence, through the sheer elegance and beauty of mathematics of a god, which is kinda working as theory at least in my head, but its certainly not approaching the provenness (is that a word) of the big bang theory. Maths is the reason i believe in god. I'd quite like to debate this both with christians and athiests alike. I've never put my own beliefs up for inspection before, mostly because they seem to me most uncommon, but if anyone would like to, I'd be more than happy to. [i'm currently thinking how to write a post to best explain some of the thoughts ive had, but please feel free to ask question in the mean time]

I have to admit to having a small piece of disgust reaction myself, at the reverse image, the idea of being at a glory hole and finding out its a woman on the other side, ew!

id prefer we group everyone into a single group of 'alive' and try and reconcile the fact that were all a bit messed up and try to work together to sort out some of the problems. Still i do have a great deal of faith that life will find a way.

everything is a theory in those term, but a scientific theory is a testable one, one that can predict events which we can then use to develop technologiesr. Your theory about god does none of these which is why it is not a scientific theory. In science there is a difference between a theory and a hypothesis, god is a hypothesis, the big bang is a theory. [incidentally in case you have the wrong perception, i should mention i totally believe in god, but just very differently to you]

ah, that old chestnut, um, are you aware that in those terms its also just a theory that you are sat on a chair, its also just a theory that you live in america?

um, well the easy response to that, is "Have you actually had sex?" I'm not trying to impertinent nor do I wish an actual answer, but firstly sex is just the best, any sort of sex. secondly, when your actually doing that, all that thought about stuff just goes away and you are in the moment. So thinking about performing those acts is just simply not something which has any relevance to what occurs during sex. As to the disgust thing, thats just a learnt response. I didnt learn it so it doesnt bother me in the slightest. Lastly most of those acts are simply ones which women will perform on men on straight relationships, you arent disgusted by women so why would you be disgusted by men. If its disgusting that men put their penises in the hole that [cabbage] comes out of in other men, why isnt it disgusting that men put their penis right by the bit that wee comes out of in women? If it disgusting that men put [roosters] in their mouths, why isnt it disgusting that women do the same?

im not convinced its anything to do with public schools, im also from a publiclly funded school. so whats the problem with the big bang theory? The universe is getting bigger, so projecting backwards it came from something smaller, if it came from a single point there would be a remnant of radiation in the microwave range which would be detectable, we look for that remnant, and hey presto we find it. Its one of the most simply breathtaking results of the modern world, a theory which makes a single prediction, something no one else had every thought to look for and when we look and find it thats damn good evidence that the theory is right. Beyond that, thousands and thousands of results have also been predicted by the theory and lo and behold those results have been found to be true. There are some smaller pieces of data which have initially fail to fit the pattern but really all thats done is to slightly improve the theory.

seriously though, it supports my argument as well aas being a funny response, sexual characteristics can be seen across the species, so clearly homosexuality which is seen across the species has got to be 'natural'. Ok sure i can accept that you find it culturally unacceptable, but thats not the same thing

ok sure not a prob, everyone makes mistakes, but at least from a science guys perspectiive those two things are so far away from each other, that i hope its understandable if i do a double take, and do wonder a bit about your education, im not meaning an insult to you, but to your teachers so whats the problem with the big bang?

lol, sounds like most women ive met too

evolution, er, and the big bang theory is probably quite different to qhat you imagine also, are you aware it doesnt talk about what happened right at the start of the universe? and that its entirely compatible with a creator god?