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[Armok]

You people really don't get this, do you? The existence of god is not decided by a popularity contest. If a god exists, that's a fact abaut the world, not a value judgement.  I might be "mal-adjusted" but being unpopular dosn't make me less good at maths and biology and philosophy. And yes, those things are EXACTLY what you can use to tell if a god exists or not. Also, did you miss the part where I included philosophy and RELIGION as courses I have top grades in?

Sir Pseudonymous, you are confusing philosophy with the history of philosophers. And in fact, even throughout they were wrong, their opinions were very very much better than other peoples, by virtue of having spent their entire freeking lives studying and thinking about this stuff.

WTF is up with people here thinking they could do as well as professionals in their hosen feild of specialization? Do you also think you could build just as good a spaceship as a  rocket scientist, cure mental illness as well as a psychologist, or create new strains of rice as well as a microbiologist? Philosophy is a science and philosopher is a profession.

[Aqizzar]

WTF is up with people here thinking they could do as well as professionals in their hosen feild of specialization? Do you also think you could build just as good a spaceship as a  rocket scientist, cure mental illness as well as a psychologist, or create new strains of rice as well as a microbiologist? Philosophy is a science and philosopher is a profession.

Because philosophy is literally nothing more than thinking about stuff.  And you know I know what I'm talking about, I'm as much a shuttered liberal arts collegiate as you are.  You are no more qualified to say whether you're right or not than anyone is qualified to judge themselves.  Which is to say, not at all.

Every time there's a thread about anything having to do with thought, you pop in to announce how awesome and qualified you are to tell everyone what's what on the subject.  And every time, I keep saying one day, you're going to have to actually list some of these "countless" books or classes or whatever that magically make you so much more qualified to say whether God exists.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Philosophy is a science and philosopher is a profession.

No. Philosophy is in no way scientific, and "philosopher" isn't a profession. *Writing* books about philosophical bullshit is; *teaching* students about philosophical bullshit is; *thinking* about philosophical bullshit is not.

Science requires a whole host of things which philosophy by its very nature cannot even aspire to.

[Psyco Jelly]

Wow guys, we really broke a record with this one.

[Diablous]

Wow guys, we really broke a record with this one.

Again, this will wind up locked. This is just to volatile a subject.

[Euld]

It was an interesting read nonetheless.

[Akigagak]

Not really. One atheist/christian (And it is always christian) argument is much the same as another.

[Fooj]

You people really don't get this, do you? The existence of god is not decided by a popularity contest.

I thought we were contesting to justify our opinions, not actually prove something. Or at least that's what it seemed like to me. This is way better than any other religion thread I've ever seen so far.

Also, the "This is stupid and will burn to the ground" sentiment is the only part of this thread that has been doing so.

[Tofu]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You people really don't get this, do you? The existence of god is not decided by a popularity contest. If a god exists, that's a fact abaut the world, not a value judgement.  I might be "mal-adjusted" but being unpopular dosn't make me less good at maths and biology and philosophy. And yes, those things are EXACTLY what you can use to tell if a god exists or not. Also, did you miss the part where I included philosophy and RELIGION as courses I have top grades in?

Sir Pseudonymous, you are confusing philosophy with the history of philosophers. And in fact, even throughout they were wrong, their opinions were very very much better than other peoples, by virtue of having spent their entire freeking lives studying and thinking about this stuff.

WTF is up with people here thinking they could do as well as professionals in their hosen feild of specialization? Do you also think you could build just as good a spaceship as a  rocket scientist, cure mental illness as well as a psychologist, or create new strains of rice as well as a microbiologist? Philosophy is a science and philosopher is a profession.

For the first part, you referring to us as "you people " insult me slightly..ugh..
I used to respect you, man. What happened to you ?Ah, well it doesn't matter though.

what blows all of what you have said out of the water is that everything that you see is what your brain has interpreted from your surroundings, as it is with all of us. Then how can you call your opinion "the ultimate answer to life and everythingamajig" or whatever.
Everything that exists is what you interpret it to be. No one's wrong, no one's right.
In the same sense that you might say that grass is green and you associate it with some sort of color in your head, doesn't mean it's the same color that I see, or my neighbor for that matter. Since it's just the name of the color that you know from us.
Then you can't really be sure of how everything is, since it's you interpreting it.
Sooo then everything in the universe is in fact decided in a "popularity contest" or whatever....I think.

I don't know if I make much sense, but I'm tired( up for a couple of days. Insomnia)
I'm trying to help.
And please..this thread isn't "the cancer that kills general discussion" or whatever, as long as YOU keep it civil. ESPECIALLY YOU, ARMOK D: <

[Euld]

You people really don't get this, do you? The existence of god is not decided by a popularity contest.

I thought we were contesting to justify our opinions, not actually prove something. Or at least that's what it seemed like to me. This is way better than any other religion thread I've ever seen so far.

I (sorta) had a similar impression.  I see this thread as a chance to explain how/why/purple I believe what I believe, I certainly won't become an atheist because of this thread but I'm still interested in what people have to say on the subject... minus the slights to my intellect    I knew about the Pi thing from another religious debate (on Facebook though, never doing THAT again), so anything here I can use for later, build new arguments, learn new things, and understand other people better.

[Leafsnail]

I'd say the Pi thing does sortof make sense - the Romans (and possibly some other ancient races) lazily approximated Pi to 3, so they may have just used that figure.  Or maybe the bowl wasn't measured accurately, and was just rounded.

Not really. One atheist/christian (And it is always christian) argument is much the same as another.

You can't really tell someone else what they find interesting...

[chaoticag]

Personally, I think beliefs ought to be personal. If you guys find Armok a little annoying, it is best to ignore him. Saying that a set of beliefs is higher than another set of beliefs because having a set of beliefs makes people closed minded is not a really good arguement, because it is self defeating.

I'm sure we can all agree on that.

[dreiche2]

Some people seem to like to make "this thread is going to end up in a flamewar" a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Everyone, stop the swearing please. Thanks.

Anyway, before this potentially gets locked, I wanted to share this blog I've been following recently. Warning: It's polemically anti-religious and full of angry hyperbole, so if you are even a tiny bit religious you should stay away from it, or you will, understandably, be offended.

The reason I'm sharing it anyway is that he actually goes through Genesis and analyses various passages in quite a detail and with quite some knowledge about biblical studies, or so it seems to me. So as an agnostic/atheist like me who was never really confronted with the bible, I'm actually learning quite a bit.

But yeah, please don't take this as another reason to argue:

YHWHY: An Anti-Theist's Commentary on Genesis

[Jude]

Islam and Judaism have had more violence. Christianity led to the Catholic zealotry of Medieval Europe, Crusades and Inquisition and such, but Judaism's birth was by sword and after the foundation of Israel it's existence continues to be such. Same goes for Islam. They've both had a much longer (IE as long as they've existed) violence streak.

Judaism's violent periods have been, about the first thousand years (during a lot of which it wasn't even what we would call Judaism - during the evolution from polytheistic belief just like other Canaanites, to YHWH being superior to other gods, to YHWH being the ONLY god, and then from there to the Judaism that we know today), and then the past 60, and that last part is extremely debatable since more Zionism than not is probably secular. Other than that, name me a major event where Jews were violent AS RELIGIOUS JEWS, much less aggressors in any conflict.

As for Islam, I'd say it and Christianity have a lot in common. Christianity's been invading and killing people for 1700 years, Islam for 1400 though, which is why I gave the gold medal to the former...

[Armok]

Philosophy is bullshit!

No. Seriously, I thought I had already explained this.

For the first part, you referring to us as "you people " insult me slightly..ugh..
I used to respect you, man. What happened to you ?Ah, well it doesn't matter though.

what blows all of what you have said out of the water is that everything that you see is what your brain has interpreted from your surroundings, as it is with all of us. Then how can you call your opinion "the ultimate answer to life and everythingamajig" or whatever.
Everything that exists is what you interpret it to be. No one's wrong, no one's right.
In the same sense that you might say that grass is green and you associate it with some sort of color in your head, doesn't mean it's the same color that I see, or my neighbor for that matter. Since it's just the name of the color that you know from us.
Then you can't really be sure of how everything is, since it's you interpreting it.
Sooo then everything in the universe is in fact decided in a "popularity contest" or whatever....I think.

I don't know if I make much sense, but I'm tired( up for a couple of days. Insomnia)
I'm trying to help.
And please..this thread isn't "the cancer that kills general discussion" or whatever, as long as YOU keep it civil. ESPECIALLY YOU, ARMOK D: <

Guess what? Examining exactly those kinds of thoughts and seeing if they hold are one of the main things philosophy is about. Althou you are not very clear, you sound like a sophilist, and we don't need to redo all the several thousands of years of arguing for or against sophilism.

2+2=4. If X is true, and X leads to Y, then Y is true. Logic is something you CAN trust.