This was a topic that was brought up in another thread, and it seems there is a common conception that Christians are war mongers and advocate violence.
Despite what some war mongers in the past have said and did in the name of Christianity (whether it was sincere or not), I thought I would...
Autodidact requested I create this thread so here it is! :D
I used to be a materialist and this very topic turned me towards mysticism and spiritualism.
If nature determines all things, doesn't that mean we are determined by nature? In a sense we all would be automatons, programmed by...
This topic came up in another thread. How can God exist outside of time? It is a good question, because God is perceived as a mindful, acting entity, and it seems like the passage of time is necessary for "acting" and "thinking".
My answer is that God is capable of existing outside of time...
I have heard the God of the Gaps argument come up several times lately and so I thought it was appropriate to start a new thread on it.
First off, the argument can treat the belief in God merely as a means to explain how the physical world works. That is the purpose of science, not theology...
This has been a challenging year for my family and I. Last December I was diagnosed with colon cancer and in May I went in for surgery to have it removed. There were complications and I was stuck in the hospital for 3 and a half months and went through a total of four major surgeries.
One...
I am very skeptical that there can be one.
Whether you believe in naturalistic evolution or creation, humans are made to adapt with our environment. We are very proficient at anticipating and predicting how nature behaves around us; this is key to our survival. Our spacial awareness and...
Since the enlightenment, we have seen a fascinating development of Western philosophy. The landscape is dominated by the transition from Christianity to deism, to naturalism, to nihilism, to existentialism, to postmodernism.
We are now left in a world where the dominant philosophy tells us the...
What do you think of when you hear the word "fundamentalist"?
There is no doubt that this word has a negative connotation these days and I was curious what people's thoughts are on it.
I would consider myself a "fundamentalist" because I believe in the fundamentals of my religion. How does...
Hello Everyone. I have been away for a while, but thought I would come back and try to prevoke some interesting debate. :)
My argument is basically a criticism against atheism. Not all forms of atheism, but just of the sort that belongs with materialism and naturalism.
This form of atheism...
I live in the foothills of the Catalina mountains in Tucson. I know that the Catalina mountains exist and that they have specific rock formations that exist which are held together by specific EM forces which exist in a specific space-time framework.
If we call this Universe, with its spacetime...
Suppose we have reverse-engineered the brain with a suffient level of detail to predict the decision a person makes given an exact set of inputs (sensory inputs, memory, etc).
Suppose I am given the inputs for a person who is deciding whether to propose to their girlfriend. I then work through...
In the past 70 years, our fundamental understanding of nature has not improved substantially. This sudden drop off is remarkable considering that during the previous 200 years the progress was spectacular. We have not run out of open areas for discovery.
Also, during the past 70 years...
How many Christians believe that there should be a separation of church and state? By this I mean that the government should not have an official religion and that there should be no organizational or financial ties between government entities and churches.
As a warning, this post contains some spoilers for the new Superman movie, so skip it if you haven't seen it yet and don't want to have key elements of the plot revealed.
I was stunned by the amount of Christian allegory in the new Superman movie. It was far more prevalent and up front and...
Wahooo!!! :woohoo:
For those of you that don't know, I am a big C.S. Lewis fan and I am very excited the new Narnia movie.
Anyone think it will hold true to the spirit of the book? I always worry if the author is not involved in the production.
Does relativity show us that time and space are not infinite? I believe so.
If there is no absolute time and space, then it is only meaningful to talk about frames of reference, and what the position of something is relative to something else. Therefore, for space and time to be infinite...
This subject came up in a different thread and I thought it might be an interesting subject to discuss in more detail, particularly for anyone with an interest in mathematics.
Kurt Gödel is generally regarded as the most significant mathematician from the 20th Century. He was a close friend...
A while ago Deut started a thread Anti-Humanism and the Enabling Power of Religious Dogma
In this thread he basically asserted that "theology ... enables the sweeping and brutal dismissal of humanity on the basis of virtually nothing".
I have been thinking about this...