I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.
My Personal favourite
(Seneca the Younger)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful _________________ Having a family is the kind of thing that could be held against a person
it seems unfair that anyone should have to defend themselves so frequently against unfounded attacks when in any other situation people wouldn't even need to question whether someone really was what they said they were.
Plate tectonics is an interesting study. I think that there is much to be learned about the 7 primary and 7 secondary plates. I feel it's an important subject of research due to the fact that it's at the edges of these plates that major earthquakes occur.
I feel quite comfortable in calling the Bible science of scientific. Science is the state of knowing.Knowledge as distinguished from ignorance. Personally I know the Bible is fact and feel that before I did I was ignorant. I might add that Theology is defined as science repeatedly.
As for physics let's see what the 1921 Nobel prize winner in physics has to say.
ALBERT EINSTEIN quotes
"Before God we are all equally wise and equally foolish".
"What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world".
"True religion is real living. Living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness".
"When the solution is simple, God is answering".
Einstein also said these:
"the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
"the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions."
"I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws."
In my opinion Einstein was a deist at most and probably more thought of God as nature and not the God of the Bible.
I know. I think he was a deist as well. But hey, I'm trying. Gotta keep fighting the good fight. Seems that I'm outnumbered like 9,000 to 1 on this topic. _________________ .
I owe $100,000 and wasted 4 years of my life.
It's okay just remember .. The opposite of skepticism is gullibility. _________________ Having a family is the kind of thing that could be held against a person
yeah, that's not really a good argument at all, thomas. GARY's right in being skeptical about science, as we are right in being skeptical of a god(s). I do think that if you call into question explanations of observables, and then invoke explanations of something unobservable (e.g. god) that it's kind of like going backwards. It would make more sense to me to go forward, and be skeptical of the entire observable world.
And I suppose I should have specified before, GARY: I don't think anyone would agree with you that the bible is scientific because, semantically, scientific is generally taken to refer to the natural sciences, which requires observable things explaining the natural world. And, obviously to you god explains the natural world, but that belief is based on faith rather than human senses. I would say theology is social science though. I'm not trying to say the bible isn't fact, I'm just trying to make the topic less grey, and have it focus on actual arguments for each, rather than semantics.
I wasn't talking about being skeptical of science. Science isn't a belief system. _________________ Having a family is the kind of thing that could be held against a person
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