Evolution, creation or something else?

[thepixiesrock]

You're both jerks.

 

I'll jerk YOU

[Dark_Raven]

O RLY?

Edited August 23, 2007 by Dark_Raven

[Jorian Drake]

this thread just turned from very bad to very bad + gross

[Calax]

gods are creatures created in part via belief. or it's just one guy who gets his jollies by using humanity as a army against itself in his name

[Fionavar]

*wonders how all the sand got kicked out of the box ...

[metadigital]

it would become a false hypothesis, actually... just a nit.

 

i think the mayans also had a cyclical concept of existence. at least, i think they thought after the "end" there would be a new beginning (which was pegged for 2012, right?).

Doesn't the universe just reboot and start again? (I'm not convinced the Mayans would be able to give a satisfactory answer to that question.)

 

Well, this is probably the tequila talking, and I'll regret saying this in the morning, but I wouldn't mind sharing my thoughts on Catholicism with you folks. I'm just not going to share my views when the very question is framed out of animosity. This thread isn't about creationism vs darwinism. It's not even about religion. It's about how people view and interact with the world. Or at least, that what I think it should be.

 

At my former work, folks were fairly hostile to religion, at least as far as I can tell. That's fine. I've been around folks who were hostile to me as a Catholic pretty much all my life. That goes not only for atheists and agnostics, but also for other Christians. Folks assume some of the stupidest things about us, though. I'm not trying to offend anyone, and I shy away from berating them about my beliefs. ...But I'm not going to be ashamed of my Catholicism. I'm not going to let someone frame the debate in such a way that I have to act as a defendant on a trial.

 

...But it doesn't even get that far. When folks ask me questions that amount to, "how can you follow such a religion? How can you believe in this stuff?" I just have to wonder why they'd even put the thought in the form of a question in the first place. They might as well just make the statement as an accusation in the first place.

 

Pixies is right. These aren't open discussions. These aren't reasonable debates. They're not even an exchange of ideas. They're trials.

 

One of these days, I'd like to post my views on my religion, flaws and all, and let folks respond. ...But as long as the question is essentially, "How can you be so stupid as to believe in that religion," I'm afraid I'll just keep approaching these threads, when I approach them at all, as nothing better than petty attacks. You have reason to be embittered by religion. Well. So. Do. I. I have reason to be embittered by all sorts of things. We must live through past slights if we are to go forward. Disagree with religion. Speak out against religion. Just don't crusade against it.

I'm not hostile to religion, per se, but I AM very short tempered with stupidity. (Nb, I am not calling people of faith stoopid, merely clarifying why I may respond slightly differently to someone arguing about cheese flavours and another arguing about who I should believe in and what I must do to show that I am pious.) (Also, it is pretty annoying to compose a serious response that encompasses several replies, references many other factors and makes an intelligent summary of the research, only to be spammed with something infantile and not talking to the point at hand. And some people I don't expect much from, and others I do. ")

 

To be clear, I was actually interested in why you are so devout. Tell me you're a deist and I'll say "good for you!" because it makes no nevermind to me and I might even be tempted to agree at times. (Not really.)

 

I do find it an amazing lottery that you are a Roman Catholic: most of your neighbours in a radius of five thousand miles (apart from South) are NOT Pope apologists (and, for the record, the immigrants from South America are more likely than not to join an Evangelical communion rather than stick with the establishment). A diameter length of the same circle we used to marvel at the remoteness of being born Catholic in the US takes us to the Bosphorus, and there you would more likely than not be a pious Muslim. Because your parents were. Another circle and we're swimming in Hinduism and Buddhism.

 

The popularity of a faith speaks more to a measure of cultural mores than a statement of the vitality of a particular religion. Most of my searching for (religious) meaning has taken me on a quest for wisdom, gained (inelegantly and unpredictably) from the OCD accumulation of knowledge (at least I am working on that theory ). Religion stands up in the middle of my thinking room, festooned with sheafs upon reams of scribbled observations, and tells me to stop thinking. (And don't get me started on prosetylizing religions.)

 

I'd be a lot less critical if the political establishments that call themselves churches would only allow adults to join, rather than encourage the inculcation of young minds before they can think critically.

 

God (apparently) made the world. Humans definitely made religion.

[metadigital]

Oh, as I'm expecting to be around for a few days, I'll re-open the topic.

[Tale]

I was wondering why you asked a question in a closed topic.

[metadigital]

I asked a question?

[Tale]

Doesn't the universe just reboot and start again? (I'm not convinced the Mayans would be able to give a satisfactory answer to that question.)

[metadigital]

It was rhetorical.

[metadigital]

And

[metadigital]

People could PM me their answers; the first correct one I pick out of a hat wins a date with Pixies. (Second prize is two dates.)

[Tale]

Isn't he a bit young? I mean, there are laws against that in some states.

[Xard]

No meta, leave this open, please :sad:

[Walsingham]

People could PM me their answers; the first correct one I pick out of a hat wins a date with Pixies. (Second prize is two dates.)

 

Soviet humour ftw!