Answer: Nothing! Absolutely Nothing! Duh! That book is my source of Truth. You call it hogwash thats fine thats your opinion. But lets be real. If I was a muslim I would quote from the Koran. But I am a Christian so I quote from the Bible. It isn't that hard to understand.
I am not having a hard time understanding it at all. I am simply saying it is ONE source. I think it is pretty pathetic that you take a single source of mythological stories as pure truth, while all the scientific facts around you suggest otherwise.
Although, I am very sad to hear that you have no point in life and you are without purpose. That is sad. Why don't you just die I mean thats not logical to me so I guess we have mutual feelings.
What makes you say I have no point in life? That is a statement of pure ignorance and stupidity. Just because I don't live my life thinking that I am going to eventually get into this imaginary land called Heaven doesn't mean my life has no point. I am a good human being and I do good deeds for myself and others because it is the right thing to do, not because I am trying to buy myself into the holy land.
Many things do not sit well with you. What does sit well with you.
The fact that religion is becoming less and less popular as people become more intelligent. I found this, which I thought was excellent writing:
Why religion will be quickly eliminated by the field of emergent systems:
Religion is an institution that invokes unobservable and unprovable entities to explain the natural world. It provides a default explanation for anything not currently understood. Over the last few thousand years, the number of unknowns has exponentially decreased along with religion's monopoly on why and how. Now, religion is almost never invoked to interpret reality. When someone has a seizure, a hole isn't drilled in his head. When our children ask where AIDS or lightning comes from, we no longer answer "God."
We now have a wonderful array of social and natural sciences at our disposal. Sociology tells us why people behave seemingly oddly in groups. Psychology explains that people aren't strictly good or evil. Biochemistry shows us how the neurons in our brain work and even gives recipes for chemicals that make us happier and less anxious. Physics tells us how these molecules are bound together and how they can be split apart.
Each of the sciences is pretty confined to its scope. The pure sciences explain the simple in slightly simpler terms. The social sciences explain the complex in slightly less complex terms. However, they do string end-to-end very nicely, one picking up where the previous left off.
There does seem to be a large gap that is covered by no field at this time. That gap is between neurobiology and psychology. The first explains how each individual neuron operates. The second, what they do when about 15 billion of them get together. What happens in between that creates consciousness and apparent self-awareness? To many, it's obvious that this gap will be filled by another scientific field. However, to most of the world, this is the final unknown. Like the unknowns before it, it's filled by religion.
Nearly all current religious beliefs are concentrated around this remaining scientific gap. What are the most prevalent remaining religious beliefs? People no longer believe the earth is the center of the universe or disease is punishment from God. These contradict existing hard sciences. The remaining beliefs are those that fill in for this missing scientific field. The soul and the afterlife.
How are the soul and afterlife related to this missing field? The soul is a catch-all concept that substitutes for our lack of understanding of consciousness. Afterlife is recognition that because the mind (soul) is not understood, it is to be treated as a black box. The afterlife concept is a hopeful presupposition that because we do not know what goes on inside the black box, it may possess an ability to transcend its apparent cease of functioning.
The field that will connect neurobiology and psychology will be emergent systems. Emergence is the tendency of simple elements to organize themselves into a complex system. Emergent systems is a very real field that attempts to explain how an ant colony or an economy can be made of simple pieces with simple goals and achieve an incredible level of complexity. Coupled with our existing understanding of neural networking (a subset of computer science), this field will probably figure out consciousness in a few decades.
With the removal of the final discontinuity in our scientific view of reality, religion's remaining strongholds will disappear in a single generation. There will simply be no room for concepts like soul or afterlife in the mind of someone who grows up with knowledge of how consciousness emerges and why they perceive sensations like free will and self-awareness.
I thought this was a great piece of writing, and nothing will make me happier than to see the downfall of religion. Obviously it will never be eliminated completely, I know there will still be many wackos that refuse to give up their faith, but the more people that give up their religion, the better.
George W. Bush is one of the reasons that I cannot wait to see the downfall of religion. He has limited stem-cell research because of religious reasons. Research on embyros created outside of the humans body, a "test-tube" embryo so to speak, that could possibly lead to the development of cures that could save millions of human lives has been limited because HIS religion doesn't believe in it. I don't really want to go into politics, but don't you think it makes sense to do this research? Religion has nothing to do with it. These embryos were never going to be humans anyway. They were created for testing, it's not like they were taken from their mother and were going to be born. It is rediculous to limit research like this that has so much possibility.
Besides you have no hope, besides the fact that your life is pointless and one day you will cease to live and rot.
Who are you to say my life is pointless? Just because you think my life is pointless because I do not believe in some imaginary being does not make my life pointless. Life is what you make of it. LIFE. Not what happens after death. Whether I believe in God or not does not effect whether or not my life is pointless.
But hear is something to scare you. This forum that you are on the reason you have the right to do so many things is because of God and yes what you call a rediculous unlogical belief in somefictional charachter called God is the reason you are where you are.
That is your opinion. I do not believe that God exists and I do not believe that he created me. It does not scare me in the least.
That little thing shouldn't bother you, after all it is stupid and rediculous remember. It isn't just part of our heratige. People came so they could worship freely. Man just stop and think what that rediculous belief has gotten you. I don't intend to be mean, I am sorry if you get offended please forgive me. Why would you let someone who believed in something rediculous who must already be that stupid to believe in it offend you. Wow you have to be smarter than that.
Yes, people came here so they can worship freely. But the point is, Bush is indirectly saying that HIS god is the only true god, and that everyone in the country should be following it. He basically says he makes decisions based on what God wants him to do. Therefore, it forces the rest of America, who does not necessarily believe in God, to live with these decisions.
You do not have a problem with it because it is your god that he is talking about. But you are telling me that you would have no problem if our currency said "In Allah We Trust" on them?
Man just stop and think what that rediculous belief has gotten you.
What, exactly, has it gotten me? You think that religion is what formed this country? This country was formed with the idea of freedom, and I am well aware what freedom has gotten me. Look what religion has gotten us: 9/11. A religious fundamentalist group attacking the U.S. because their religion sees our country as evil, and the more American's they kill, the more holy they will become, they believe. To paraphrase George Carlin, more people have been killed for religious purposes than every war in history combined. It's true too. Think about it, The Crusades, The Inquisition, The Holocost, and of course 9/11, just to name a few. I'm no history buff, but people have been oppressed from the beginning of history for their religious beleifs, is that really a good thing?
I know you have problems with what I believe but stick to the argument.
What is the argument anyway? This is a religion forum, I am simply expressing my opinion about how childish and foolish religion is.
Anyway, I'm glad Christmas is finally over, people go insane on Christmas. All the stress makes people nuts.
