Some clearing up please (yes, another atheist thread)

A pro-atheist one even!

Anyway, maybe ye believers can help me clear up some questions:

For example. If I recall correctly (and if I don't, just ignore this part completely and recite me the story how it really went) when Adam and Eve were in paradise, there was this nice big apple tree somewhere in that garden (maybe even the center?), with (golden?) apples that for some super awesome reason would give you some kind of knowledge or something. Anyway, god really didn't want Mr. and Mrs. First-Of-Their-Kind to eat from that apple because its Evil!(TM). He even warns them every now and then and they never think about that silly tree again. Then some snake comes along (mind you, a TALKING snake, how awesome is that?!) and convinces Mrs. Eve to eat an apple, or take a bite, or whatever. God promptly punishes then, throws them out of paradise and through some miracle they manage to produce millions of children that have different DNA all over the world without a single prospect of any deformity by having incest. Now how awesome must their DNA have been to take all those generations without deteriorating?

Anyway, why would such a loving benelovent god put that damn fucking tree down there anyway, if it was so imperative for them NOT TO EAT APPLES FROM THAT DAMN TREE, why did he create that tree AT ALL? Yes, yes, free will bla bla. Lets take this example:

If I had children (let's talk about babies here) I wouldn't put a loaded 9mm handgun in the midst of their toys. But let's assume I did, and I tell them vigorously not to play with that thing. Eventually they will toy around with it and somebody gets hurt. Yes, my babies have a damn free will, but why would I go and test if they do what daddy says by placing something dangerous in their midst? The reasoning somehow eludes me.

Let's jump to my second question here:

All those stars up in the sky. Scientists have already proven that those stars are real and not shiny angels or little light bulbs screwed on, on some ginormous 360° panorama sphere.

Now there are millions of galaxies, each featuring billions of stars with a couple dozen of planets around them.

Now why the hell would god create such a gigantic universe if the only people who believe in THE god, the ultimative, unquestionable, omniscient, omnipotent ubermensch/god being, live on earth, why would there be so many planets out there?

Was he bored or something? Maybe he wants people to go out and settle on that planets... but no wait! A little logic error, sorry, to get there we need science, now silly me, how could I ever think of that!

Maybe at some point in time God will provide us with a Faith-Highway to other planets. Yes, that sounds much more likely.

And what if some day little blue/green/pink men/women from some other planet come to visit and they tell you they believe in "CHOPSTICK!". Who is to say that they are wrong and that YOU, and yes ONLY YOU(!) are right. That GOD ("Father", being his more concrete name I presume?) is infact THE god.

Why is it absolutely not possible that you believe in the wrong god? Who is to say that maybe CHOPSTICK! is the real uber-deity after all, and that the bible you are reading now was their bible sent to earth, but there were some little translation errors on the way. After all, nobody's perfect.

I'm really curious... Please endulge me!

You made my day and I apologise for not providing anything useful to this topic!

You'll quickly run into the 'faith' issue here. They do not know whether or not their God even exists, let alone if they're praying to the one true God (which probably doesn't exist either, regardless of what you'd call it)... but it doesn't matter to them, as they simply believe to be right. Blind faith... got to love it.

24 hours, no answer... thought so

=D

Its just like picking the "good" parts out of the bible by saying "this one is a symbol.. and this one not"

I will answer my thoughts on the subject, although to be honest, I am a christian in a different way than others are. I am not sure it is true, but if it is (the basis is that you need to accept a free gift) than I accept
Wow, that sounded like a programming line

anyways, I only am answering a couple, and only with my views, so dont generalize my views to all christians


FIRST does not mean ONLY. FIRST means FIRST. its common sequential logic.


Again, your not looking at it with logic (granted not a lot of religion is based on it, this isnt even close). Where are you getting that the bible claims to be the only planet with life, and on top of that, until you meet an alien race you can't know where there religion setup is needed to be the same as ours, maybe "God" is different for them and has a different system.

Hi Michael, hey nice avatar you got these days.

Well, just for fun i'll answer these things. lol

The bible says that a man and a woman was created, and not children. lol Therefore, they are old enough to know right from wrong, while for a child, then that might be a tougher decision.

The entire story about the "garden of eden" mirrors all of our personal lives. We all live and we all have choices. But, we are all constantly being tempted by un-seen forces. At least adam and eve saw their foe in the form of a snake, but we do not see, but only hear in our little heads their talk.


The entire "paradise" scenario is a mirror of heaven. They listened to the devil and were booted out and we are the same. We listen to un-seen angels and are also booted out from heaven or paradise. I'm not trying to explain away the genesis story, but only to say that it is for us to realize and know the pathway to life eternal in heaven.

The whole thing is for you and me. If you wait for the green martians, then you will wait for a long time. All those stars reflect the majesty of God and they just light up the sky for you and me. That's it. lol amazing.

y The bible's oldest piece, which is the "old testament" can be proven to be near 100% accurate, by simply comparing the DEAD SEA SCROLLS to a newer bible today.

Found from 1947 - 1956, these ancient scrolls detail precisely and more than prove the bibles accuracy. Click on the link below.
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS WERE FOUND PROVING THE BIBLE ACCURATE!

All it takes is for a scholar to compare the ancient Hebrew to the modern english language and compare to see if any errors are present.

Unfortunately for all the atheist of the world, <sorry guys> these newly founded scrolls just showed the bible's many translations to be a proven fact.
The bible, therefore, is the most accurate ancient book ever!
Even more than shakespere's works actually.

Oh, but trust me, if they were proven in-accurate after the scrolls were found, then you would hear about it on every darwin-atheist site already on the internet. haha!

Hehe, yeah, either put the apple or the snake, accidents are bound to happen :P. Sounds like you just watched some Ricky Gervais..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pbEjOH7t0Q


PS: Conitec, fix your youtube BBCODES..

Hi,
Has anyone read sitchin?
This seems to
make more sense to me than the bible, and probably makes the events in the bible much clearer.
//
Quick rundown.
Aliens (long life 3600 earth years = 1 year) landed on earth, genetically manipulated the humans to be workers(slaves)
and gave all their knowledge to the first creation.
Then, being knowledgeable, the humans soon started a revolution.
Catastrophe comes, and afterwards, the aliens started over again.
This time they kept the knowledge from the humans, (tree of knowledge), basically kept them dumbed down so they would not cause revolutions.
Satan, "the snake" did not feel it was right to keep the knowledge from the humans, so he started to give it freely, so the humans were now banned from the
"garden".

Then they (aliens) had reproductive intercourse(sex) with the humans and these resulting children elevated themselves as being better than humans. I suppose this is where "royal blood" comes from.

This would explain (at least to me) many things in the bible, which apparently
was originated in Sumer, (today Irak area) long before it was originally thought
to have been written.

The children of the ruler of Sumer soon got their own kingdoms, (a Son ruled)Egypt and the (a Daughter ruled)the Indo lands, both earlier colonies of Sumer, carried the story with them, (much like Superman is recreated every generation) changing it to fit to their new way of life.
I once read that even the "Robin Hood" story comes from as far back as Sumer.
//
Problem is, is it all just a story? Or is there some truth to it.

I suppose that's for each and every one to decide for themselves.

I find it all so fascinating, like GOOD Sci-Fi.

Wow, that's not sci fi, but has a bible story root actually. lol

Have you guys ever heard of the Nephilim?
Basically the "angels", or demons, took the daughters of men and had children.
these were called Nephilim. and were a super race.

You can read about them below.
THE NEPHILIM ARE HERE! :-0

Anyways, that is the real reason for God wiping out the earth with the flood.
These half human, half demon men were screwing up the planet big time and were giants.

Here are the bible verses describing this phenomena, pre flood.

Gen. 6:2-4: “That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.…There were giants in the earth in those days; and also afterward, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

I think you just answered your question, didn't you?


Part of me understands why people tend to get more fascinated about wise ancient books or Paranormal activities, like ghosts and guardian angels and telekinesis and levitation. In certain periods in my life I used to believe in each one of them. But now I found a much more fascinating subject to do my research on. Science.

Recently I picked up a book about quantum physics. Here's some facts which actually are true:

• Every breath you take contains an atom breathed out by Marilyn Monroe.
• There is a liquid that can run uphill.
• You age faster at the top of a building than at the bottom.
• An atom can be in many different places at once, the equivalent of you being in New York and London at the same time.
• The entire human race would fit in the volume of a sugar cube.
• One per cent of the static on a television tuned between stations is the relic of the Bing Bang.
• Time travel is not forbidden by the laws of physics.
• A cup of coffee weighs more when it is hot than when it is cold.
• The faster you travel, the slimmer you get.

So my point is, if you're up for reading exciting stuff, you don't have to waste time on stories that might be true. The real thing is much, much more exciting than any science fiction writer (including the apostoles, Ron Hubbard, etc) could ever envision.

Just my two cents. Sorry for skewing off topic.

Cheers,
Aris

Yes i've heard of them the Nephilim.
I suppose they were the aliens, seen as "Gods" by the human population.
Some say the "flood" is a recurring event that happens on Earth
every 3600 years, sometimes major, sometimes minor, and the aliens took to their spaceships to escape it, and did not let the humans know because they wanted to get rid of them. One of these aliens did however save genetic material (not the ark 2 by 2) of humans and animals for later recreation. This became the story of the ark.
Revelations describes the catastrophe, and the writer (one of the lucky ones taken up with the aliens) records looking at Earth from above seeing it flooded completely and then later when the waters receded, become a "new earth".

I wish i could time travel with a video camera and much film to see what really happened, even as far back as 50,000 years ago, which is when they the aliens are supposed to have landed.

One could easily argue that incest is something that happens more often within more advanced societies (nobles marrying each other, severely increasing incestuous relationships), so it actually makes sense that it didn't happen very often in the ancient days where people would marry people from other groups and therefore deformations were far less common.

I doubt one could say it 'never happened' though, I am sure there must have been plenty of deformed people (that had a bad chance of surviving) and honestly there's a fossil record that back that up.

Also, don't forget that certain reproduction errors that we call for example the Down Syndrome do have their own origin as well. The fact that in modern days chances are incredibly high that you'd get deformed kids when having incestuous relationships doesn't mean it used to be the same in ancient days.

Add to that the mere fact that we're globally mixing our genes for quite some time too now, meaning people will inevitably also have more genetic information in common.

It still doesn't mean we're doomed to end up only being able to reproduce people with the Down Syndrome either though. ( Isolation of groups and merging them later on having evolved independently for example will be good for the gene pool and many other workings of evolution will keep larger groups healthy for a very long time. )



Technically this is not true, as this is only valid for individual atoms, not groups of atoms, nor entire beings from what I understand.

When you look at this from the probability perspective of where an atom will be at any given time, this doesn't mean our body is time traveling all that time being in different places. Of course, when you look at this from a multi-dimensional perspective, it could very well be true for entire beings as well... but that's rather a stretch of the evidence as far as I can tell.

That's why I said atom, not atoms. Decoherence won't allow big things like trees and houses to exhibit the same behavior. But you can easily find evidence of superpositioning atoms in your everyday life.

If you look real close to a window pane, you may be able to see your reflection in the glass. But if light is made of photons, and each photon is identical, how come some of them go through the glass, and some bounce back? Shouldn't they all go through or all go back? The most acclaimed explanation so far is that when a photon hits the glass it BOTH goes through AND comes back, similar to a ripple in the sea hitting a rock, creating two ripples one going beyond the rock and a smaller one going back. Which is why we say that light has both the properties of a particle AND a wave.

Yes, you're right, I just interpreted your comment there as implying the same would be true for people/beings/big things made of many atoms, as to me you seemed to imply that.

Photons are identical, but doesn't the whole reflection stuff has a lot to do with intensity and waveforms of the photons? I'm thinking that's the reason why there's no crystal clear image every time a reflection is a possibility. I thought light wasn't a particle?

But I'm probably wrong here, as I am very much a layman on this subject though.

Einstein showed us why light is indeed a particle.. The photon. But still behaves like a wave. It baffles scientists up to this day..

But I guess we're going off topic..

the Particle-wave thing, Must have something to do with how the ether is made.

That's the thing. Because light isn't just a wave, ether has been thrown out of the equation. Before 1905 scientists had a hard time explaining how can light, as a wave, travel through space, since a wave needs some sort of substance to propagate through. So, physicists called this hypothetical substance ether which filled the entire universe. A photon though, can travel through vacuum just fine so after Einstein's relativity paper, ether was gone from physics.

The wave-qualities of light is now perceived differently than it did at those times. It's only a mathematical wave, which gives us the ability to predict the motion of those photons, and any other microscopic particle, with some uncertainty. Another way to predict the motion of particles, as shown with Young's double slit experiment, is to calculate two different instances of the very same atom that collide with each other, predicting its final destination. These two instances are located at two different places at the same time.

That must mean, the "single" lightwave travels though both slits at the same time, to be able to make an inference pattern. (like waterwaves) strange...

@Damocles: Yes indeed. However if you put a filter between the slits and the target-screen to find out which slit a photon has taken you won't see any interference anymore (although the filter should not influence it).
Together with some more experiments you can show that the more information you try to collect about the way a photon travelled the less inference pattern you'll get.
At least that's what we were thought in school, if I remember correctly.

@ mike:
i ask those questions alot...
i also ask why we have pix of jesus and his old father if we may not picture god...
and how is it possible that pre-flood, a whole new race was generated from six people...

@ ran man
yo, those scrolls prove one thign: there was somebody two thousand years ago that was able to write....

same goes for your "proofs" in all points. it proofs that there lived people that were able to write or to tell you something. in other words: it proofs nothing.

you base your whole beliefs in assumptions and hope. nothing of it is real. and i still dont understand why you want to believe anyway?

why do religios people want to be slaves of a god? why dont they want to be free?

cant you jsut cope with the fact that you, your life and everything is insignificant and worthless? because thats what it is.
and please, spare me your "but god says" and "but the bible" crap, because you have NO PROOF that ANYTHING religous is even slightly true.

but i have the proof that if i shoot somebody, he dies because of biology, he falls down because of gravity and i go to jail because of the law. and i know that when i die, i wont go to any hell, because there is no hell.

science has disproven the concept of a soul, i can disprove the concept of an allmighty god and my penis ahs disproven the concept of virgin birth...
case closed...

i just hope that one day all those religios people wake up and see how stupid and idiotic they are...
do you believe everything they tell you?

@LarryLaffer

Yea i used to believe that this is true or that is true, but i now realise that truth is ALWAYS relative to something, which makes it changeable depending on the perspective that one percieves it.
//
Quantum physics may well be true today, because that is the latest perspective, but as we go on it will probably be overturned and changed to reflect the new knowledge that mankind has grasped.
//
Therefore i do not anymore believe in any absolute truth anymore, EVERYTHING is changeable and does change. But still it is all very interesting and fascinating.
//
What i mean is, don't let quantum physics become your "religon", just take it as knowledge that is not fixed or absolute, and be open to when a change comes, else it will become your religon and we will have the same problems in the future that we have with religonists today.

He dies because God works in mysterious ways




He falls down because of Intelligent Falling. Angels are pushing from above.




You go to jail because the Devil got you.. When you were born you were all pure and shit. And look at you now, shooting people..


I just realized, being a Christian in an argument is the easiest thing one can do.. Try it if you want to annoy the shit out of your friends..


@pararealist, there's many differences between science and religion. First of all, I don't do it because of some future reward (eternal life in heaven) but purely from a thirst of knowledge. My beliefs are also not carved in stone (or some ancient book), so I could easily change views if a certain theory is disproven.

However, that thirst of knowledge is what keeps us all going. If we all thought like you do, we wouldn't be doing any progress at all. Part of the process of learning about something is making claims that may or may not be true, and correcting them later. Finally, not all scientific theories turn out to be false. Democritus predicted the atom 2500 years ago and we still go with it. How long do you need to wait for a theory to be disproven before you can believe in it?