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Interesting..

Every tried to explore things that you KNEW were absolute truths? Such as..

 

Unbiased Absolute truths:

 

- Everyone is born?

- The moment you are born you are already dieing.

 

Anyone wanna expand on these? Add some more ABSOLUTE truths. That EVERYONE can agree on.

 

I wouldn't call these absolute truths. It would be possible for somebody to be created in a laboratory, and what's your definition of "dieing"? (It's dying btw)

I guess that depends on your definition of 'born'. Is it when the foetus turns into a baby, or is it the moment of conception?

 

Or maybe we are never born or dead. Matter doesn't disappear when we die, it just changes forms. Same with birth, matter doesn't just come out from nowhere it just changes forms into a being. Our bodies and minds just change forms, it is just the idea of them that dies and is also born.

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Interesting..

Every tried to explore things that you KNEW were absolute truths? Such as..

 

Unbiased Absolute truths:

 

- Everyone is born?

- The moment you are born you are already dieing.

 

Anyone wanna expand on these? Add some more ABSOLUTE truths. That EVERYONE can agree on.

 

I wouldn't call these absolute truths. It would be possible for somebody to be created in a laboratory, and what's your definition of "dieing"? (It's dying btw)

I guess that depends on your definition of 'born'. Is it when the foetus turns into a baby, or is it the moment of conception?

 

Or maybe we are never born or dead. Matter doesn't disappear when we die, it just changes forms. Same with birth, matter doesn't just come out from nowhere it just changes forms into a being. Our bodies and minds just change forms, it is just the idea of them that dies and is also born.

I would say that we are dead, although born I'm not so sure about. I would say that death comes once our selfawareness (however you spell that) goes away. So yes i think you could "die" without really "dying"

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I once met a man named Jesus at a Home Depot. Is this the Messiah returned at last?

 

And i once beat someone named Jesus in a chess game. Does that mean I'm smarter than the messiah?

BOW TO THE NEW MESSIAH

 

 

Maybe a president who didn't believe our soldiers were going to heaven, might be a little less willing to get them killed. ~ Bill Maher

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I'm gonna go ahead and be traditional, you're alive once your heart starts beating (as a fetus) and dead once it stops. Self-awareness is separate from this, in my opinion. You could be alive and not self-aware, maybe you can be dead and self-aware (afterlife) but no one knows that.

 

So to get back on a discussion about religion instead of biology, afterlife?

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Perhaps if religion hadn't been holding back science, Columbus would have been landing on the moon.

 

I am an atheist and am annoyed by most religions, but I have to say, I have never seen evidence that the church actually held back science, and that it was the fault of having a religious institution. A lot of people just say "blah blah blah THE DARK AGES!!!!" but I have never seen a description of any events that took place in the Dark Ages that actually convince me it is the fault of religion.

The middle/Dark ages gave us some of the most epic pieces of architecture though,

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Whilst, as an ignostic, I won't be debating the concept of god(s) I do have my 2c on religion. Well, organised religions to be specific. Any possible benefits that have come as a direct result of organised religion are exponentially outweighed by the harm that they have done. In the past 1000 years alone we have these tragedies:

 

  • The Holocaust.
  • Every crusaude to date (22-or-so.)
  • World Trade Center bombings (extremely minor in comparison to the other things.)
  • Wars of Religion.
  • The justification of slavery in America.
  • We also have wars in the middle east, because their religious figures are saying how another country are following the wrong god and deserve to die.

 

I am also highly sceptical of the validity of the Torah, and through that, the Bible.

 

No, they don't. We know for a fact the Earth is round and we've known this since the 16th century. We've sailed around it, we've seen it from space and saw that it was, in fact, round. There's simply not a single piece of evidence that says otherwise. Calling them irrational might be a bit unfair, uneducated would match the situation better. But honestly, show me anyone that thinks the earth is flat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society

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Hitler's Anti-Semitism stemmed from belief that the Jews killed Jesus. This is shown through his public and private writings, as he saw himself as doing the work of "the Lord" by killing Jews. He was also working very closely with the Catholic church, and to this day has never been excommunicated. Through his beliefs he also enacted many Catholic doctrines as law in German, outlawing abortion, waging a death war against homosexuality and demanding corporal punishment in schools and home. On top of that he viewed Atheists with the same regards as he did the Jews.

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There were political motives for both of those:

 

* Anti-Semitism - provided a scapegoat for most Germans to direct their anger over the Versailles Treaty and the subsequent financial fallout Germany suffered during the peace years. Also gave an easy target the NSDAP could use to whip up the kind of emotional frenzy they thrived off. If some Nazi policy wasn't working, they would always just blame the Jews.

* Lack of Vatican opposition - The Vatican was petrified that, after looking at how communism was going in Stalinist Russia and how much religious organisations were being systematically persecuted to create his Cult of Personality, the same would happen in Germany, Europe's most populous nation. The Nazis promised they would not harm Catholicism in Germany so long as the Vatican shut up about its more honest opposition to what Nazis were doing on the international stage, and didn't try to disrupt the Party's actions in Germany itself. Also, the doctrines of Catholicism were more in-keeping with the Party's stance on social politics than full-blown liberal Atheism.

 

Divide the Jews from everyone else in Germany, and isolate the country from the Pope's influence. Neither of which requires much religious enlightenment to work out really. Both of them are fairly simple political decisions for autocratic dictators wanting to maintain control over a country. This is brought out even more with the fact that Hitler himself had many Jewish friends during his pre-Nazi life, but suddenly wanted to persecute them as the political need to do so grew.

 

They were political decisions, not religious and apparently not emotional ones.

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Heres a fun fact, the reason why the new testament has the books in it that you see is because they were the ones Constantine wanted in his state religion to keep his empire from collapse. ... and there are a number of Gnostic gospels that didnt make it into the bible because it violated Constantines state religion design.

Source: Dan Brown, fiction writer.

 

The development/formation of which books were in and out of the Bible didn't take place at the council of Nicaea, it was a much more early and gradual process. While there was debate on which books should be in the New Testament, this happened about 200 years before Constantine.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratorian_fragment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

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No, they don't. We know for a fact the Earth is round and we've known this since the 16th century. We've sailed around it, we've seen it from space and saw that it was, in fact, round. There's simply not a single piece of evidence that says otherwise. Calling them irrational might be a bit unfair, uneducated would match the situation better. But honestly, show me anyone that thinks the earth is flat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society

 

Fair enough, but to me this just seems like a society of crazy people, pardon the crude wording. Especially the "Round Earth doctrine is an elaborate hoax" they mention on their own website made me think of it in the same way I think of crazy conspiracy theory people.

 

EDIT: Also, it seems they don't believe in a flat earth per se. I can't be bothered reading through their whole wiki, but it seems like some kind of strange theory about infinite earth or something.

 

Also, regarding all the bad things religion has caused, are you claiming that if it wasn't for religion, there'd be world peace? Fact is, people will always want to wage war, and religion gets picked out as an excuse to do it.

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Also, regarding all the bad things religion has caused, are you claiming that if it wasn't for religion, there'd be world peace? Fact is, people will always want to wage war, and religion gets picked out as an excuse to do it.

To quote a game; "... long as there's two people left on the planet, someone is gonna want someone dead."

 

I'm in no way saying that war is a product of organised religion, just look at what Stalin did. What I am saying is the organised religion is often a tool to amplify a person's hate towards one or more groups and to subjugate those groups. It's so easy to have society blindly following the teaching of churches and other places of worship where they listen to a religious person teach them, especially so with children.

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But it's just as easy to teach those same children that (for example) capitalists are thieving bastards that need to die. Though right now we seem to be agreeing with each other, so arguing further would be pointless. Unless of course you're not agreeing and I'm just completely misinterpreting your post.

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Heres a fun fact, the reason why the new testament has the books in it that you see is because they were the ones Constantine wanted in his state religion to keep his empire from collapse. ... and there are a number of Gnostic gospels that didnt make it into the bible because it violated Constantines state religion design.

Source: Dan Brown, fiction writer.

 

The development/formation of which books were in and out of the Bible didn't take place at the council of Nicaea, it was a much more early and gradual process. While there was debate on which books should be in the New Testament, this happened about 200 years before Constantine.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratorian_fragment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

 

Wasn't the council of Nicaea more of a ratification process for the books in the new testament?

 

But it's just as easy to teach those same children that (for example) capitalists are thieving bastards that need to die. Though right now we seem to be agreeing with each other, so arguing further would be pointless. Unless of course you're not agreeing and I'm just completely misinterpreting your post.

 

Whad'ya mean teach the children that capitalists are thieving bastards? We are thieving bastards :-P:

 

In my opinion the best government would be a cross between capitalism and socialism. Free market with some regulations is good and all, but we also need some of the social safety nets that a socialistic government would provide.

Dheginsea.png

 

I once met a man named Jesus at a Home Depot. Is this the Messiah returned at last?

 

And i once beat someone named Jesus in a chess game. Does that mean I'm smarter than the messiah?

BOW TO THE NEW MESSIAH

 

 

Maybe a president who didn't believe our soldiers were going to heaven, might be a little less willing to get them killed. ~ Bill Maher

Barrows drops: 2 Karil's Coifs (on double drop day)

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But it's just as easy to teach those same children that (for example) capitalists are thieving bastards that need to die. Though right now we seem to be agreeing with each other, so arguing further would be pointless. Unless of course you're not agreeing and I'm just completely misinterpreting your post.

Oh, I'm not saying it's exclusive to organised religion. Back in the 60s a teacher managed to turn over 200 kids fascist in just a few days. It was so bad that they had to move the sceptical kids to the library to keep them safe, since they planned a coup to end the exercise.

 

However, organised religion is encouraged in most western nations, whereas fascism and communism are actively fought against.

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I wouldn't say organized religion is encouraged in western countries at all, if anything, it's looked down upon. These days, people have to defend being religious versus in the past, where atheism had to be defended. Though I won't lie and say that organized religion doesn't cause problems, especially as someone who originally comes from Egypt I've seen first-hand how people bring religion into things that should be kept separate from religion (specifically, government), which is something that mostly stems from a bad education system; some people don't know better than to follow these politicians lest they go to hell.

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I wouldn't say organized religion is encouraged in western countries at all, if anything, it's looked down upon. These days, people have to defend being religious versus in the past, where atheism had to be defended. Though I won't lie and say that organized religion doesn't cause problems, especially as someone who originally comes from Egypt I've seen first-hand how people bring religion into things that should be kept separate from religion (specifically, government), which is something that mostly stems from a bad education system; some people don't know better than to follow these politicians lest they go to hell.

sorry misread your statement disregard what i said if you saw it

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I once met a man named Jesus at a Home Depot. Is this the Messiah returned at last?

 

And i once beat someone named Jesus in a chess game. Does that mean I'm smarter than the messiah?

BOW TO THE NEW MESSIAH

 

 

Maybe a president who didn't believe our soldiers were going to heaven, might be a little less willing to get them killed. ~ Bill Maher

Barrows drops: 2 Karil's Coifs (on double drop day)

92,150th person to 99 defense

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Wasn't the council of Nicaea more of a ratification process for the books in the new testament?

No, they were discussing a heretic belief that was springing up among other things. The books in the New Testament, as I said, were put together pretty much 200 years before it. There was no evidence that this was discussed at Nicaea then, and even less evidence that Constantine had anything to do with the bible (other than commission 50 copies of it). The list of books, while widely accepted, was never really "ratified" until the Council of Trent, in 1546.

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And I won't be till my head falls off ♪♪

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Not true the unaccepted books were considered heresy even back then.

The Council of Nicaea was to discuss the Arian controversy, not the books included in the New Testament.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arian_controversy

 

Like I said before, the list of books in the New Testament can be dated to as early as 170 A.D., with the Mutarorian Fragment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratorian_fragment

This is more than 150 years earlier than Constantine, and the books listed on the Mutarorian Fragment match very closely to the books in the New Testament today.

 

 

Also here is a little other fun fact (that I am not sure if I mentioned originally) NONE of the gospels were written by the apostles they were all written a generation later by their followers.

I'd be very surprised if fishermen at the time were able to read or write. I don't think anyone is arguing this point.

 

There are other gospels who are arguably as old as mathew, mark, luke and john that were banned (whether banned at Nicaea) or just that the early Christendom collectively felt they werent legitimate and made them heresy to read.

 

I admit my source for this isn't amazing, its one of those history channel documentaries. They made several claims:

1.) the council of Nicaea didnt outright ban them but every book that made it into the bible were books that Constantine himself approved of

2.) the Gnostic gospels were later considered heresy because they had different views of jesus then Constantine's state religion agreed to.

3.) the aposels couldn't write (or didn't) and they spoke of their lessons and experiences with Jesus to their followers which later got written down 40 years after the events occurred.

4.) there is also a gospel they suspect to be earlier then the 4 in the bible which only listed what Jesus said and made no reference to the stories and miracles that you see in the bible.

 

If the source is correct then if you were to say that the banned gospels are inaccurate because their followers smugged information to suit their beliefs and took an apostles name to confirm it then why should I suspect that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John arent all the same?

 

If the source isnt correct then disregard this post [depending on which information from the source is wrong]

Sounds like a special they put on to hype up a movie. See if you can figure out the title of it, instead of guessing the contents from memory.

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Have some respect for someone more forgetful than yourself ♪♪

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Wasn't the council of Nicaea more of a ratification process for the books in the new testament?

No, they were discussing a heretic belief that was springing up among other things. The books in the New Testament, as I said, were put together pretty much 200 years before it. There was no evidence that this was discussed at Nicaea then, and even less evidence that Constantine had anything to do with the bible (other than commission 50 copies of it). The list of books, while widely accepted, was never really "ratified" until the Council of Trent, in 1546.

 

Not true the unaccepted books were considered heresy even back then.

 

 

Also here is a little other fun fact (that I am not sure if I mentioned originally) NONE of the gospels were written by the apostles they were all written a generation later by their followers. There are other gospels who are arguably as old as mathew, mark, luke and john that were banned (whether banned at Nicaea) or just that the early Christendom collectively felt they werent legitimate and made them heresy to read.

 

I admit my source for this isn't amazing, its one of those history channel documentaries. They made several claims:

1.) the council of Nicaea didnt outright ban them but every book that made it into the bible were books that Constantine himself approved of

2.) the Gnostic gospels were later considered heresy because they had different views of jesus then Constantine's state religion agreed to.

3.) the aposels couldn't write (or didn't) and they spoke of their lessons and experiences with Jesus to their followers which later got written down 40 years after the events occurred.

4.) there is also a gospel they suspect to be earlier then the 4 in the bible which only listed what Jesus said and made no reference to the stories and miracles that you see in the bible.

 

If the source is correct then if you were to say that the banned gospels are inaccurate because their followers smugged information to suit their beliefs and took an apostles name to confirm it then why should I suspect that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John arent all the same?

 

If the source isnt correct then disregard this post [depending on which information from the source is wrong]

 

The History channel also runs shows about how people think that aliens who came from other planets have been a major part of human history and are responsible for significant human progress. They also ran a special called "the real face of Jesus"

 

The History channel is far from academic.

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Wasn't the council of Nicaea more of a ratification process for the books in the new testament?

No, they were discussing a heretic belief that was springing up among other things. The books in the New Testament, as I said, were put together pretty much 200 years before it. There was no evidence that this was discussed at Nicaea then, and even less evidence that Constantine had anything to do with the bible (other than commission 50 copies of it). The list of books, while widely accepted, was never really "ratified" until the Council of Trent, in 1546.

 

Not true the unaccepted books were considered heresy even back then.

 

 

Also here is a little other fun fact (that I am not sure if I mentioned originally) NONE of the gospels were written by the apostles they were all written a generation later by their followers.

 

 

I feel like though I'm not positive that one of those gospels may have been written/partially written by an apostle but I'm not sure about it.

 

Also there are a total of 56 other gospels that we know exist/have existed. Not all are preserved and some we only know through references.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gospels

Dheginsea.png

 

I once met a man named Jesus at a Home Depot. Is this the Messiah returned at last?

 

And i once beat someone named Jesus in a chess game. Does that mean I'm smarter than the messiah?

BOW TO THE NEW MESSIAH

 

 

Maybe a president who didn't believe our soldiers were going to heaven, might be a little less willing to get them killed. ~ Bill Maher

Barrows drops: 2 Karil's Coifs (on double drop day)

92,150th person to 99 defense

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I wouldn't say organized religion is encouraged in western countries at all, if anything, it's looked down upon. These days, people have to defend being religious versus in the past, where atheism had to be defended. Though I won't lie and say that organized religion doesn't cause problems, especially as someone who originally comes from Egypt I've seen first-hand how people bring religion into things that should be kept separate from religion (specifically, government), which is something that mostly stems from a bad education system; some people don't know better than to follow these politicians lest they go to hell.

Well, not all western countries, but a lot. More often than not coming out as an atheist is social suicide, I have friends who would never tell family and real life friends that they don't believe in a god, because they know their parents will kick them out and they'll become a pariah. I've never heard of this happening to a religious person in an atheistic community.

 

Don't get me started on organised religion in politics.

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I wouldn't say organized religion is encouraged in western countries at all, if anything, it's looked down upon. These days, people have to defend being religious versus in the past, where atheism had to be defended. Though I won't lie and say that organized religion doesn't cause problems, especially as someone who originally comes from Egypt I've seen first-hand how people bring religion into things that should be kept separate from religion (specifically, government), which is something that mostly stems from a bad education system; some people don't know better than to follow these politicians lest they go to hell.

 

I myself am an atheist although this hasn't given me a whole lot of trouble. A few of my religious friends will make jokes about it now and again but i try to keep my views private in public unless specifically asked. Luckily nothing extreme has really happened to me, sometimes people snicker when they here this but besides that nothing. Although once on the runescape forums me and some other former clan members of a certain clan (that is now dead) were posting on the clans forum with the clans leader, eventually we began to talk about religion. I remember that the conversation ended with my former clan leader saying that when i die and cry in front of Jesus on my way to hell, He'll be walking by laughing as he goes on up to heaven...

 

Anyway being atheist doesn't really affect me to much but i definitely would not be able to run as president as one.

Dheginsea.png

 

I once met a man named Jesus at a Home Depot. Is this the Messiah returned at last?

 

And i once beat someone named Jesus in a chess game. Does that mean I'm smarter than the messiah?

BOW TO THE NEW MESSIAH

 

 

Maybe a president who didn't believe our soldiers were going to heaven, might be a little less willing to get them killed. ~ Bill Maher

Barrows drops: 2 Karil's Coifs (on double drop day)

92,150th person to 99 defense

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Regarding not being able to run for president as an atheist, wouldn't black people or women have said the same thing about 30 years ago? Just something I considered.

 

@Furah, about people being exiled from religious communities for being atheistic, that's an unfortunate side-effect of the reason people believe in the first place; a believer will believe their religion is right and the others are wrong. It's a simple fact, because they wouldn't go for that religion if they didn't believe that. In a way though, going that far with it that you kick your children out because they're atheist, is a form of extremism, albeit a relatively common one it seems. I won't deny that it's a bad thing, because it is, and I'm speaking from experience; if I were to tell my parents I'm agnostic I'd probably be viewed as a devil.

 

The point I was trying to make got lost somewhere in the process of making it, though. See it as agreeing with what you were saying, because I can't honestly tell you I believe that's a good thing.

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Regarding not being able to run for president as an atheist, wouldn't black people or women have said the same thing about 30 years ago? Just something I considered.

 

@Furah, about people being exiled from religious communities for being atheistic, that's an unfortunate side-effect of the reason people believe in the first place; a believer will believe their religion is right and the others are wrong. It's a simple fact, because they wouldn't go for that religion if they didn't believe that.

 

Actually, Buddhism is accepting of other religions and atheism. I understand that this is one specific religion, but it just goes to show that a religion doesn't have to be something where you become crazy obsessive about what other people believe and waste your life trying to make people feel like they deserve eternal punishment just because they don't think that a bearded man rose from the dead 2000 years ago.

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Regarding not being able to run for president as an atheist, wouldn't black people or women have said the same thing about 30 years ago? Just something I considered.

 

@Furah, about people being exiled from religious communities for being atheistic, that's an unfortunate side-effect of the reason people believe in the first place; a believer will believe their religion is right and the others are wrong. It's a simple fact, because they wouldn't go for that religion if they didn't believe that.

All three things are because of organised religion. Christianity was a driving force behind the longevity of slavery in America. Same with sexism, after all the bible constantly goes on about how women are inferior. It's rather disturbing really.

 

Actually, Buddhism is accepting of other religions and atheism. I understand that this is one specific religion, but it just goes to show that a religion doesn't have to be something where you become crazy obsessive about what other people believe and waste your life trying to make people feel like they deserve eternal punishment just because they don't think that a bearded man rose from the dead 2000 years ago.

Deists usually are too.

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