doodad

Do Australian flies have cognitive ability? Apparently the flies get some value from the sheep dung or they wouldn't eat it.

Jeremy's point was this. If 4 million people find it acceptable to think that God exists then others see little reason to challenge it.

Granted, some believers continue to believe in God for fear of the consequences of not doing so, but many believe in God of their own free will and because they hope to gain from doing so.

doodad

Oh my the_cave, you have forgotten something again. People are completely drained of creative energy by their belief systems because their faith is all consuming of their time, energy, and attention. A mere human just can't handle being faithful along with being productive. The meager GDP of the US, which is full of believers, should tell you that. Doncha know nuthin. Surely some of the vast wisdom and skill of this crowd should have rubbed off on you a little bit. Are you tryin' to be stubborn or sumthin', or are you just plain dense?

doodad

He didn't say that. Can't you read? He said their faith did not impede their talent to the point that they did not produce the work they did.

By the way, the practice of religion has led to some marvelous achievements, such as the Gothic cathedrals. Even the pagan
Greeks and Romans built monument to their gods, some of which still stand today. Having the belief in these gods is what motivated people to construct these monuments.

A number of popular songs were derived from the music of religious hymns. Elvis had more than a few of them himself. Was he an under achiever?

doodad

The "truth" of a matter is based upon what evidence is available at a point in time, and as time progress more evidence may come available, making the present day truth obsolete. So it seems to me that "truth" is relative rather than absolute, even to a non-believer.

Most people do in fact choose what they want to be the truth on a given issue, and they will continue to hold that view until something comes along to prove otherwise. The history of science is replete with such assumptions.

doodad

I assume you are referring to Bush and his crowd of right-wing zealots in your last two sentences. Hopefully in time he will be replaced and his bunch will be shut down. Any support they may garner probably comes as a knee jerk reaction to the deterioration of our moral fabric over the years and from the escapades of Bill Clinton, who certainly wasn't my kind of national leader.

I see another risk in trying to use theocratic policy to counter the communist influence, which supposedly is anti-religious. Either way we would have totalitarian rule by a select few. Isn't there some kind of a happy medium?

I am a fiscal conservative, but socially speaking I am more moderate or centrist in my views. It seems we need a president more like Reagan or Ike. Both these men were very popular but I don't remember either of them being bible thumpers.

Darth Dane

whoops wrong thread


DD

the_cave

Alright, I won't argue that religion is good just because it has produced great art. Maybe you're right, talent is talent.

However, I will protest any attempts to divide human achievement along the lines of "religion=lost potential" "secularism=fulfillment of human ambitions", because it just ain't so. You can waste your time & talent equally well believing in nothing as you can believing in whatever you want. I'll concede that I don't really know whether JEST2ASK is saying this. All I'm saying is that a lot of things waste human potential, and a lot of religious beliefs are fairly benign and creative, and better than many alternative activities (like, for instance, war.)

theophilus

I was not going to post here (this is a trivial argument) but since you've mischarictarized Presuppositionalism, I might as well.

The Bible is clear that all men know God through creation and in their conscience but supress this knowledge because they are in active rebellion against God (your posting here is evidence of this - why spend time arguing against something you deny?).

Your statement that believers act in "destructive, tyrannical, or insane ways" in both untrue and meaningless. Most believers do not behave in ways that are radically different from the average person. But more significantly, since you can't demonstrate a normative standard by which human actions may be judged, it is meaningless for you to speak of anyones actions as being a problem.

K

theophilus:

I'm sure if this country starts making laws based on Scientology beliefs, you won't say a word - why spend time arguing against something you deny?

Maybe nobody should have done anything when the Nazis were promoting the master race ideas - why spend time fighting against something they denied?

Philosoft

Who said "most believers" act in such ways? Certainly not Jobar.
It is incorrect to claim our standards of judging don't have meaning. You can say that they are wrong, or that they are not objective in the sense that they are not a demonstrable part of some universal fabric of space-time, but it is rather underhanded to simply call them "meaningless." Regardless, I fail to see how standards of judging that are endorsed by some other conscious, free-willed being are any more meaningful.