Tyrany42 said:
Squigie said:
Tyrany42 said:
Cliff_m85 said:
Tyrany42 said:
Cliff_m85 said:
Tyrany42 said:
Cliff_m85 said:
Jetsetneo said:
hurricanejbb said:
Just an aside, my aunt is religious and she doesn't consider the idea of alien life blasphemous. Rather, she believes that if extraterrestrial life were discovered, it would be further proof of God's majesty. I know this is pretty irrelevant to the topic, but I just felt I should bring up that I don't think all religious people would react to aliens the way Kristen Whig's character does.
Very much so, I'm not a catholic, but even the pope has had some reconciliation with the idea of other intelligent life.
Aliens are 'far' from the 'nail-in-the-coffin' of religon in general that Militant atheists want it to be. Much like evolution in general. Religion tends to roll with the punches, always have, always will, whether its Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, or Scientology.
Woah woah woah. Roll with the punches as in "fight if for a multitude of decades before realizing they lost the battle and readjusting their belief with apologetics and claiming that there was evidence for it in the Bible/Quran/Torah/Etc the whole time"?
Are we forgetting that the Catholic Church imprisoned Galileo? Let's not pretend that religion is absolutely all for scientific discoveries.
You do realize that was a few hundred years ago, right? And that large organizations change over time? Does America still allow slavery, too?
Yes, I do. But it shows the span of time it takes for the Church to get with the program. It just recently accepted Evolution. It took hundreds of years for them to accept that we aren't the center of the universe. It comes late to the party, but stands outside said party screaming "LIAR" for the first four hours before finally coming into the house.
Change hardly ever comes quickly, especially change of beliefs. This applies to everyone, not just close-minded religious leaders. In fact, you could call it a sort of evolution. You might as well rip on humanity for taking so long to walk upright and to stop flinging poo.
No, change hardly does come quickly. However having to wait for the 2000s for the Catholic Church to admit that there MIGHT be some truth to Evolution is not feasible. That's not "change hardly ever comes quickly", it's "change is fought against violently by religious institutions until they finally concede because their numbers are dwindling". We're talking about hundreds of years going by before they admit that evolution has some truth to it, duder. And they get their knowledge from a supposed higher source?
I suppose I wouldn't know how Catholics think, as I'm not Catholic myself, but I'm just saying, what if someone came up to you and said your whole exsistance was a lie, that everything you thought was real is an illusion, and they presented some barely feasible evidence that what they're saying is true. Don't pretend that you won't be in denial and don't be quick to scoff at people who have a hard time letting go of beliefs they have held for centuries.
Well, I was Catholic, and I can tell you there is a difference between what the Church actually teaches and believes and when official proclamations against past wrongs are (finally) made. For instance, in theology class at my Catholic high school (class of 2000) the priest teaching the class explained, in detail, why they reject a literalistic interpretation of scripture (numerous unavoidable contradictions both within the text and with known historical and scientific facts). Among those rejected beliefs were geocentrism and creationism.
The Roman Catholic Church is (extremely) slow to accept and acknowledge change, but they do put a great deal of thought and effort into why they believe what they do.
Interesting...I went to a Christian school that wasn't any specific denomination, and we were taught how much of the Bible could be open to interpretation. Taking every single passage literally would be kind of foolish, seeing as how the writers are from a society that is millions of years old and that the Bible was translated and re-translated several times. For instance, it says that God created the world in 7 days, but since the Bible also says God is beyond time, how do we know that it wasn't actually billions of years in which God manipulated things to evolve accordingly? Sounds stupid, I know, but I thought it was fascinating. You know, I come across a LOT of you people on the internet...lapsed Catholics, I mean, if you don't mind me asking, what is it that Catholics teach that makes you turn away so angrily?
I don't want to add to this religion vs science debate, since it's pointless (those who like to believe in fairytales, will do so regardless). But I need to point out few problems.
Saying (and teaching) that Bible is open to interpretation is creating single-handedly a whole new bag of issues - for example where does the interpretation come from, who is responsible for it, and how will we know that it is what god meant? The same thing is happening in Islam - there are people who will tell you that Islam is a "peaceful religion" and then there are people who blow themselves up in a crowded marketplace, because some cleric told them to.
For example, how would you interpret the stoning of disobedient children (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)? Or how about selling your daughter as a slave (Exodus 21:7-10) or burning her to please god (Judges 11:29-40)? Or that women need to give birth in order to get to Heaven (1 Timothy 2:15)? I guess some religious people would run to their priest to ask what those things mean, but most would bury their heads in the sand. Hey, if you don't know about it, it doesn't exist (like evolution), right? Besides the Bible is filled with examples where god or Jesus tells someone to do something and they go and do it, not sit on their behind and try to interpret it (Abraham comes to mind).
And I had an impression that Bible was supposed to be the word of god (Deuteronomy 18:17-19) - so, if it was written long time ago and then translated again and again (as you put it) it shouldn't really factor into things at all. Which creates another question - if it was written by a Stone Age man to Stone Age men, then why believe in it at all? This is where religious and non-religious people will come to a T-junction - religious people (even if they understand that it is a book of prehistoric fables and tall tales) will believe in it regardless, while atheists will realize that if the Bible was a story of Red Riding Hood (Jesus was sort of a child led astray, Devil was the wolf, and god was the hunter) people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Just FYI, god created the world in 6 days (tsk-tsk, and YOU went to Christian school).