There are many "artistic types" who sway from mainstream religion but still seek something spiritual.  I guess they "know" a good story when they see it.

Scientology looks to me like a business which wanted tax-exempt status. Not much difference between that and the 700 Club to me

I'd completely agree that this is the origin of religious structures.

Cmon Jafo....

I just said I wasn't arguing RELIGION.  I am talking about GOD.  Not religion. 

 

What is "quaint" is you lumping God into religion... If there is a God, he would be above religion, beyond religion.  Religion is simply behavior modification and control.

 

If a God exists, It transcends human concepts of "religion"...as well as human concepts about whether or not it can exist or is the figment of someone's imagination.

I'll quote Samuel Clemons again, "The problem with self made men is too often the worship their own creators" and who was also smart enough to respond when asked if he wasn't worried about the things in the bible he didn't understand to reply with, "It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do".

OK then....if you must....religion is the pomp and ceremony surrounding the 'belief' in a God....whether he's a cosmic muffin or not there'll be a religion for it/him/her.

Hardly....as the acceptance [belief] in his/her existence is equally a human construct as the religion by which his 'existence' is lauded.

And you know this as fact how? It's your opinion.

I like the proof implied with the first word. Nice and solid … and typically religious.

Ditto!!!

Could care less about Catholics ... but the RCC, yep, that one I do hate. It is my belief (therefore it cannot be denied, hahaha) that the RCC has done more to corrupt god and everything he should stand for. Religious folk just seem to need the answers to everything right now which is childish at best. We know more today than yesterday and we will learn more tomorrow. I have the time to wait for reason ... I don't need to fill the vacancies with generic religious prattle. Imagine the audacity of those rascally atheists … to compare god with religion … guess it was just old fashioned of us huh.

This evolution process they like to refute (without facts) is the process by which inadaptable creatures go extinct because they are ecological dead ends … is that why they hate evolution … because it is the instrument that will be their demise … or what? They are free to fill in the blank areas however they choose to … but they cannot throw away those facts we do know just because there are some gaps. Well, sane people couldn’t anyway.

When Christians actually were children as opposed to being adults and believing in fairy tales ... Was it actually necessary for them to connect all the dots in a 'dot' picture before they knew exactly what they were about to color? Well I don't need all of life’s dots filled in to get the bigger picture either … but who am I to stand in the way of perfection?

Pick up any encyclopedia besides the Catholic one … more proof than you can shake a stick at. How much information do you need for me to go fetch for you? At times, you act like there is none at all???

 

Alright Boobz, I'll enlighten you.  But it will take more than my typical short postings....

 

I'll compile a decent sized listing of the different problems I have with evolution and it's supposed "science"

 

Here is the list preview, if you want to educate yourself ahead of time -

- Genetic Entropy

- Phyletic Gradualism

- Punctuated Equilibrium

- The Miller/Urey experiments

- Evolution and the human ear - gradual?

- Darwanism and the missing link

- convergent and divergent evolution

- sexual genetic deterioration (this is a fun one )

- adaptive evolution

- evolutionist dogma

- instinct vs. imprint development

- evolution geology

- sediment fossilization

- uniformitarianism

- Dinosaurs and history

- neo-cautastrophism

- the flood

- glaciers and the ice age?

- Cambrian layer "explosion of life"

- seismic wave discrepancy

- cosmology

- DNA

- big bang?

- helium science

- infinite time?

- Oort cloud and comet life

- regenerative magnetic fields vs decaying magnetic fields

- spectrometers and carbon 14

- mysteries of science

- star formation

- language

- time and the domino effect

- Censored Science

 

I will go into much more detail on all of it if you wish.  Or you can ask me specifics on certain points.

Like I said, I have EXTENSIVELY studied this stuff.

I am not some priest following Christian with a suppressed curiosity.  I intend to have proof for what I believe, BEFORE I believe it.  I've spent many years searching, verifying and meditating on God, religion and science.  I hope you will have the courage to do the same, and not just write off this opportunity.

 

More to come....

Why bother studying science...The science simply proves that Genesis etc. is mythology. It has nothing to do with God.

Simply research "Leap of Faith" and then decide whether to jump or not.

Studying the history of Mythology is worthy as well. That will show you where most of the Myths and related symbols of the Bible and other religious mythology originated from. Joseph Campbell-Mythos I...on netflix is a decent series on this.

If there is something constructive you would like to actually say … don’t let me stop you any longer, hahaha. Braggadocio doesn’t impress me in the least … and your language with your choice of words pretty much tells me how much sense I would be able to make out of your ‘sense’ … being that I haven’t seen any here yet. I don’t know what you think you are, but maybe you will tell us some day then we would all know too. Courage … is THAT what you have been demonstrating between your whining spells? If all you want to talk about god (not religion) … why are you talking to an atheist???

And besides, science is going to win anyway in the long run if for no other reason than it works … and religion doesn’t.

Oh, religion works perfectly well....just don't poke it under a magnifying glass.

Scientific research is for science.  There IS no room for it in religion.

They are [by definition] mutually exclusive.

Perhaps though....Scientology is when the REALLY deluded think there is a connection..... or it's just a way for people to make a SHITLOAD of money out of a SCAM and call it a Religion.

I love how you immediately jump to me studying mythology.  Does any of that in the list scare you?  Or are you worried that your precious science may prove something otherwise?

 

 

And this sounds like nervous banter as well....

 

 

At least you Jafo don't resort to putting words in other peoples mouths and jumping to conclusions....

 

But I thought science teaches that there is no absolutes... therefor there is no mutual exclusivity....

 

I'll get into the details that you all seem to be nervous throughout this week, time permitting.  Don't worry, I'm not blowing smoke up your skirts....

 

I will break down all this into 3 sections for easy writing on my part, and easy understanding for the rest of you all.  Hopefully this writing will enlighten some of you, and further your search for the truth.
For easy identification, I will refer to Evolutionists as the sect of science that pushes Evolution ideas exclusively.  I will refer to Science as the rest of the scientific community.  No need to get offended over the labels, they are
just there for ease of identification...

First up is the broad topic of Biology.

The 150 year old theory of Charles Darwin is the basis for modern Evolutionary theories.  This theory basicly states that species advance over time and can make large evolutionary jumps to form new species, by way of adaptation, mutation and natural selection.  Darwin, and subsequent scientists, have also proposed the Origin of the Species, as being a gradual advancement in all species from single cells up to complex beings.  You all should know this theory well enough, it is taught in every major university on the planet, and has been forced into every science classroom, usually touted as fact.

But there are many problems with this old theory, as modern science has shown.

The first being Genetic Entropy.
Genetic Entropy is the degradation of the genetic code in organisms by means of mutation in replication.  Mutations can change a creature, but it has yet been shown to advance a creature, consistently.  For example: Say you have a 1000 page instruction manual, with each page containing 1000 words.  If we randomly changed 100 letters on one page, we could still build the item.  The end result would still be 99.99% the same.  Now imagine that done over many, many times.  

More and more of the product will be rejected, because it doesn't function properly.  Occasionally one set may have a bonus, but what about subsequent mutations?  That bonus will be lost in the continued degradation of the code.
This is the proven science - Natural selection CANNOT cause an increase in information complexity. It can only filter and change what is present in the organisms DNA.  Mutation eventually leads to extinction, not a higher complexity.

Secondly, we will address interdependency of the functional parts of an organism.
There are two parts to this issue... Phyletic gradualism - the assumption that small changes compound over time, and Punctuated Equilibrium - the assumption that functions stay the same, but rapidly change, leaving no fossil record.
Interdependency shows that all the parts of an organism must be there and functioning for that organism to survive. On the molecular scale, it is called irreducible complexity - the minimum number of steps/feature that are needed for an organism to survive.
A good way to illustrate this is will blood.  Blood is the means of nourishment in many complex creatures.  It supplies nutrients to the different parts of the body.  But without clotting, any creature that gets even a small cut, would bleed out and die.  There are 17 different steps that blood must go through to react to the oxygen, thicken the surface blood, withstand high pressure and heal over time.  If any one of these steps is missed, the creature dies.  So if every step must be there from the start, how could it have evolved over time?  Natural selection would weed out any creature that is not functional in its development.

Along the same idea, is the Urey/Miller experiment.
This experiment was first conceived in 1953, and has been duplicated/expanded upon many, many times by modern scientists.  It attempts to show how simple chemicals could be transformed into amino acids, the basic building blocks of life.  Yet this experiment has never been able to produce ALL the necessary amino acids, nor has been done in a "natural" setting that could have existed on earth.  This experiment has only produced a biologically useless mixture of chemicals, none of which use oxygen, a major component to life.  Even if it had, there are still many problems with the theory...
How could the right chemicals find each other, and react in proper sequence?
How could the "right" chemicals not react in the "wrong" ways?  For example, DNA is a reversible reaction and rapidly "unzips" when placed in water.  But wasn't life to have formed out of water?  How can that be?
Even with splitting bacterial membranes in a test tube, giving all the correct chemicals, temperature and proportions, NO life has ever been formed.
So HOW could the first cell have formed, and learned to reproduce itself, while maintaining its functions to survive?  There are 350,000 DNA code pairs in the most simplest of organisms... How could it have formed from simple amino acids in water?

I will add more later.  I need to sleep

Whose to say what is a valid religion or a scam? After All the RCC is the wealthiest institution in the world. Even the smallest autonomous churches elect elders that decide where the money goes. Look at the wealthiest religious organizations in this  country. Most do support charities but they are also buying influence in government, and who knows what else they have their hands in.