Yes, it was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

Or was that what started The Italian Renaissance?

Wait....no.....The Italian Renaissance was started when Miss O'Leary's cow kicked over that lantern! Yeah, that was it. At it's because of that that the Cincinnati Reds traditionally play the first game of every new MLB season.

HA! Bet you didn't think I was that smart!

Haha.

Here's some good information if you'd like to do some reading:

The Crusades

Inquisition FAQ

The decline of the witch trials in Europe

Thanks but I minored in history in college. I think I've done enough studying.

Even if I grant the conditionals that may qualify the necessity of evil, I would dearly like to know what thought processes of God led to this being the most perfect of worlds in which to realise the divine purpose. Even given my negligible-by-contrast human imagination, it seems that there are many improvements that could have been made which would realise the same end in a far more just fashion.

To me, the abundance of apologia in theology used to explain or excuse the unsavoury or contradictory aspects indicates that it is the system itself which is wrong. If you had developed a new calculus, say, and at each stage had to code dozens or hundreds of exceptional cases, then you would hopefully come to realise that it is your foundational assumptions which are wrong. But when these systems become institutionalise and generations of people become invested in them, then it becomes very difficult to make those admissions. So instead we go along, patching and jerry-rigging and draping concealing cloths, in an attempt to keep a collapsing engine running and relevant.

There is a deeper mystery to the universe. There may even be a great consciousness which to us is godlike. For that matter there may even be a god. But it is not Zeus, or Vishnu, or Yahweh, or Jehovah, or any of the other numerous Sky Daddy figures that litter the human theological landscape. If such a being exists, it is so utterly beyond us and alien to our experience that it would likely have as much to say to us as we do to viruses. Less, since we and viruses at least have the Earth and some amino acids in common.

Imagine a being which perceives the entire electromagnetic spectrum at once. A being that sees time as a solid, and four-dimensional space as simplistic as a line. A being that can hold not just contradictory thoughts in its head at the same time, but the entire gamut of every variation of a thought at once. A being whose emotional spectrum contains things we couldn't name with even the longest compound German adjective.

Now imagine that being in turn imagining the most amazing being it can.

That second being still isn't what a true god would be, and yet how far from us now?

While other people battering you with their beliefs might get to be extremely annoying I would think the opposite would be worse. Most religions believe that those who don't follow its teachings will go to a place of eternal suffering after they die. So the way I see it, its more disturbing if they don't say anything and just smile and wave.

to me it's not that it could mean anything you want - the meaning seems fairly obvious or merely requires some research into the language of the time. That it's meaning can be twisted to different interpretations doesn't negate it. What? That some things are metaphors? Yes, 'lake of fire' is a metaphor - needn't have actual fire. Or did you mean something else? That used to be the atheists' argument - that the universe was eternal. Best current scientific theories point to an origin in the finite past and a future of entropy. Maybe He can. Depends what you mean by 'eternal'. If you simply mean 'everlasting' then He can. If you mean 'having no beginning and not needing to be created' then it's back to not making sense simply from the definition and not a limitation in power. (Though I guess He could create something that extends into the infinite past) 'Eternal' and 'not-eternal' are mutually exclusive things by their definitions. (Unless you mean something else by them). Whereas 'dead' and 'alive' are 2 states that can easily change - we see alive things become dead all the time. This is usually the atheist's view, yes. That's why we require faith. If it was proven to everyone's satisfaction, we wouldn't be having this conversation. However, 'unsatisfactory to you' evidence is not the same as 'no evidence' (but I suspect we'll be again debating the meaning of the term 'evidence' here). Oh, now I understand. Thank you for showing me the light. I didn't realise that if you can laugh at it then it must be true. [Since you have trouble with language that isn't spelled out, I'll just point out that that was sarcasm ;) ] It does, who said it doesn't? You're the one that brought up Mormonism - I said "They no doubt have their explanations." I've not got an in-depth knowledge of Mormonism, but from what a Mormon friend has told me, it's basically a Christianity but they don't believe Jesus was divine - they see Him as an Arch-Angel. They also think this world is already 'hell' of a sort and that everyone is going to a better world (how much better depends on how good they've been). Nice idea, not something I personally believe. To say that one way to know it's false is an admission is not the same as saying that a lack of admission is the only way to know it's false. Anything's possible - do you believe that? Either way, it wouldn't touch on religion.
It means that it depends on how we define 'eternal'. Is it merely 'everlasting' after now? Or is it 'without beginning or end'? Beyond a simple "It's what survives of us after death and 'goes on' to the afterlife" I don't have a definition for it or its properties. It's not something, I think, that can be defined without greater knowledge than we have.
I base it on God's words in the bible that we will go before Him after death on the last day. Plus a general feeling of 'me'. It's not a literal 'fire' - That's why I think it's a metaphor. My reasons for thinking of it as 'oblivion' are just the way it's presented in the bible. It seems to be saying that that's the final end of something. I could be wrong of course.

I often see this idea from atheists "Why would someone so powerful and smart even notice us, let alone care"
It reduces God to a very large, very clever, very powerful and perceptive human.
We're not saying He doesn't also notice the grand universal content, but that He also notices the ants and can focus on both and care about both ('both' here should actually be 'all' and refer to everything in between).
He made the angels AND the humans (and possibly any other extra-terrestrial life) and so He cares about us.
*shrug* just because we can't understand Him in his entirety, doesn't mean we can't relate to Him on one level and He to us on that same level.
'Nothing is insignificant to an omniscient being'.

If God took all of the possible suffering in the world, lined it up from least to greatest, removed the greatest, and created a new world where it was no longer possible, then people would still complain just as much about suffering. If God continued to do that until He had created a world where the worst suffering imaginable was stubbing your toe, then we could still question why an all-loving God would allow that to happen. Furthermore, if God created a world where all we could experience was joy or great joy, then why would God ever allow us to have the lesser experience? So it appears that your many improvements would lead to God creating us in some sort of stasis field where we could have no change in experience.

If all you ever experienced was one temperature, then you wouldn't be able to tell whether it was hot or cold because you would have nothing to contrast it with, so it is questionable whether someone in that stasis field could even recognize it as the greatest experience. If this all-loving God wants us to love Him, love others, to trust Him, and to do good, then creating us in a stasis field would defeat that purpose. In order to have the ability to love, we would need to have to ability to hate, and in order to have the ability to do good, we would need to have the ability to do evil. If we were already experiencing the greatest experience, then there would not even be any good available for us to do.

I think that by creating a world where moral evil exists, we are given an incredible privileged to do good, to overcome evil with good, and to become better than we could be in a world where moral evil didn't exist. It's the same principle of overcoming an obstacle making someone a stronger person than they would be if there hadn't been an obstacle.

What do you think is contradictory?
I think the Kalam argument and Aquinas Five Ways show that the classical God of theism is a logically necessary being that can't not exist. I think the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus shows it to be the best explanation for the facts, so this necessary being has the identity of the Christian God, but it is possible I could have misinterpreted the evidence, and this being could belong to a different religion or no existent religion. However, Christianity holds that God made us in His image, meaning that he made us with the ability to relate to Him.
If the greatest possible being is imagining the greatest possible being, then it is imagining itself.

But it should mean that you don't take it as the inerrant word of some omniscient thing.

I mean lots of things, there are so many thing that some christian sects take seriously and some declare as metaphores.

But if we find out that it is eternal, what then? Best scientific theories just don't know what happened during the "first" moments.

But not the other way around, which is just as nonsensical. Dead and alive is mutually exclusive as well. If you stop being alive, you are dead. If you stop being eternal, you aren't eternal anymore.

Well what did you expect when you post something ridiculous like " Christianity doesn't have more obvious failings." I mean is that why there are like 50 sects that contradict each other based on what they think the bible says? Is that why next to no christian gives a shit about all ten commandments?

You said it doesn't, because you are ready to dismiss this faith, why don't you have some faith? You require more faith.

And you are telling this to the atheist? Gee, thanks, never would have occured to me! Also, did this address my point in any way? No, you said that Scientology is made up because the author admitted it, but you still can't know it is made up, he might have lied. Sure there are other reasons, but that doesn't bother you with other religions.

Dude it is just a metaphore for your last reflections before death, there is no afterlife, no soul. All metaphores for the last moments of your brain.


Only because the assume the physical universe is not eternal. And they assumed that because they had no clue about quantum mechanics. You should be smarter than that.

I'll respect your beliefs as long as I can keep a straight face while thinking about them.

And if we find out that the universe is eternal after all, it would lend some credence to it not needing a creator. That's a big IF though. (And depending on how we're defining eternal, see below, could still need God) Ok, we're clearly defining 'eternal' as different things. I thought you were going with a 'no beginning and no end' version of 'eternal' , in which case an ending to its eternal-ness would mean it wasn't 'eternal' after all. This is not the same as something alive becoming dead. (And although we can't make a dead thing come to life, this isn't a problem for God).
If you're defining 'eternal' as simply 'will last forever unless something changes' then we're onto a different argument about whether some things are eternal or not. In that case, the universe could be 'eternal' in the future but maybe not in the past. I'd describe this as 'infinite' rather than 'eternal' but that's just semantics. You keep telling us what Christians think/do and ought to think/do. And while it's true that we all fail to live up to the high standard set by Jesus, it doesn't mean we're all ridiculous. Those many sects agree on a lot of stuff too. The differences are often about how to worship Him, rather than about whether He exists or whether the 10 commandments were given or whether Jesus' 2 main commandments were given. That stuff they tend to agree on.
What I 'expected' ('hoped for' would be more accurate) was a declaration of precisely 'why' you think it's not true. You've mentioned some things before, I've given my rebuttal. Laughing isn't a rebuttal ;)
Either debate it or not, but a LOL adds nothing to the discussion. The amount of faith isn't the same as the nature of the faith. My beliefs are somewhat the same and somewhat else incompatible with the Mormon faith. Hence I'm not a Mormon. But I'm still a Christian. Sure, I said 'anything's possible' - doesn't seem likely though. I don't have to believe something just because someone said it was(n't) true. Faith is a matter of belief, not science. (I like science too).
(+ points for use of sarcasm though - anyone reading this in a thousand years can think you were talking literally because 'how could they know what you meant' ?) And you know this how? It's your belief. And it is a belief, not a scientific conclusion. quantum mechanics don't make an eternal universe. Best science (even taking it into account) makes for our universe to be finite in the past. It's possible it came out of something else, another universe for example, but that's a sci-fi guess, not something we know either. String theory (M-theory I think is one) might have around 11 dimensions, it's still a guess, not a scientific theory at this point.

exactly the kind of person I'm talking about. Thanks for proving a point on the stereotype.

Nope, that is the beauty of it, there could be a myriad of other possibilities more likely than "a being".

Yes it is the same. If you make something alive, then it wasn't really dead, since dead is dead.

I thought we are above that, showing how religions are not true is too easy, now we really arrived at Deism, which is a bit harder. But we can do that if you will also show how Mormonism, Islam and Zoroastrianism are wrong, pick one. Spoiler alert, the same way to disprove will work for yours...

But if you had more faith you could arrange both someway, you seem to have no problem doing that for the inconsitencies of your own religion.


Great, I see the seeds of atheism in you, you just need less faith!

I know it, because as we touched upon before, the whole concept of a soul that is seperate from your personality and experiences is illogical.


That is not a scifi guess, it is a reasonable assumption. There is no nothing, there is no reason to assume that there ever was any nothing. We know this thanks to quantum mechanics, that why the old people ignorant of this are excused, but you guys still using their old flawed arguments aren't.
If everything consists of eternal matter or energy, then our universe is just part of that matter/energy.
The time to respect irrational beliefs is over. I laugh in your face the same way you laugh into the face of someone who thinks astrology is true.