Two arguments that give the creationists the upper hand.

[Peter]

String theorie: it isn't disproved, so it could be right. Desame as all the other theories. All theories are based upon some formula, and pretty much theories are altered or proven not true. I am not even sure if there is a einstein-theorie that is completely intact. Many of his theories have been proven wrong later.
I find it strange that you can't see the evindence of the string theorie, the theorie has desame results as the four phycics theories. Four theories in one, meaning there are much, very much simple phycics where it could be proven wrong, it isn't proven wrong in any. It has four times more proof then any individual theorie, in the way I see it.

Ispettore: I could be wrong, I just looked up the minister that wanted to abolish the darwin-theorie. I could be wrong there, but it seems like the evolution-theorie missed from some kind of school-program. It doesn't really seemed like the minister intended it, maybe it was by mistake forgotten or anything. And if I am right now, it is back again.

Jezus was killed in jeruzalem, that is far away from italy, and far before the country Italy existed.
The clear link with Italy is that it was at the time owned by the romans. The romans of that time where other people then the Italians now, but it was done by an country that had it offspring in the land that now has the name of Italy, very true.

Jews are the chosen people, not the protected ones. You could see it if they have been tested in WW2.

Religion: We can agree, I think. On the fact that religion isn't fighting with science.

But the point is, is it rational, if I read right this seems to be Erics point. A rational human can be a christ or some other belief, but will it be a terrorist, I think not.
I don't think belief makes terrorists.

I think unfair treatment causes terrorists, and belief is just some cover for it.

For example the unfair treatment between jews and palatinas in Israel.

There are also much terrorist acts done by organisations or countrys, to (try to)wreck another countrys stability. The attack on the twin towers could be said as one of them. You can always find inrational people to help you, it doesn't have to be involved by belief.
You sound a little like someone that never heard of terrorism and suddenly with 9/11 the terrorism action in your country, you have heard of it and inmidiatly blame the beliefers, becouse it was someone who was a beliefer.
It is not like america is free of terrorism, they have done it themself too. See here for example, there are many other cases.

And no, it wasn't the only terrorism act. Here you only see the Al Quada acts. From 1992 to 2007. Yes strangely also, a part of the time is when Bin Laden was protected by america. As a dear ally.

Edit:
Or it is my browser, or this board. I doesn't seem to load png images.

Oh, link

[rsucoop]

Ah, but the logic it is derived from is very basic, and does not rely on deranged lunatics hearing voices. Every thing has mass. All mass is energy (Einstein's theory of relativity). All energy is movement, with all Newtonian laws applied one can see how this aplies to say, light or magnetism. So all mass has a frequency. All particles have a frequency. Therefore it is most likely that we are all just made of vibrations, or strings if you will. There isn't much speculation involved, not like the speculation that some God exists.

Reread what you just said: if that doesn't sound like the deranged rantings of a lunatic, I don't know what does   It's no more absurd than the animistic viewpoint that all matter has a spirit self.  String theory at best is a sort of mathematically based metaphysics.

Furthermore, it does not matter who wrote the bible, the basis was that God had to prove he existed to the prophet or the saint by speaking to him. If God exsisted, he wouldn't have to talk to the prophets. Beyond that, Mark Twain makes many good remarks on why its so obsurd to even believe in a God (or at least one that pays any attention to the Universe). Finally, if God doesn't exist and the saints say he does, then God cannot exist by virtue of their writing (Yet if God does exist, then why is he not runnign the Universe? Better yet, why is he not creating more universes and dimensions). Because under saint prestense, god is all-knowing and all-powerful, so it would only make sense that a simple planet would be a waste of his effort (he would already know the outcome of anything he did, and he would know that before humans can do anything to help it, the Universe will hyper-expand). So this idea of a God in the bible sense has many logical errors, making it ilogical and irrational. But the idea of a God who somehow built something seems abit odd too. Why build something that you'll outlive if you're so smart? Seems like a big waste of time if I was god. Sort of like doing this  

Not at all.  It should be amply clear that the Judeo-Christian monotheistic God has a very straightforward goal in mind: growing a larval stage of His progeny on Earth: namely mankind.  That is, raising his literal children.  Why do you think the imagery of "Father-Child" is used?  It's the same way that teaching a kid to ride a bike isn't a waste of time.  Sure, you could ride the bike yourself, in a fraction of the effort, but the act of teaching is infinitely more meaningful.  That God isn't directly visible gives us a hint of the level of growth mortal life represents: mankind is something like a toddler going to preschool for the first time.  Sure it seems to us like our Parent has abandoned us, but in reality it's just the first step of growing up and becoming independant.

And who says that Earth is the only planet God is working on?  I'm pretty sure I've heard phrases like "worlds without end" at various times in different services.  The whole idea of the Judeo-Christian God is that He's quite literally the God of the whole universe.  Or at least our observable neck of the woods.  Other sentient life is presumably also under God's charge.

Also, its odd that a believer of God would deny that there aren't more dimensions that cannot be percieved with limited 3 dimensional sensors. After all, is that not what religion is abou? Some higher place out of sight, even when using the Hubble Space Sattellite.

I make a careful distinction between belief and science.  If you came to me and said that you're religion claims that there are an extra 8 unobservable dimensions, and that all of everything is built from vibrating strings, that's fine, that's what you believe.  However, when you claim it's good science, I require supporting evidence before I accept it.

Also, your analogy does not seem to fit. You're comparing some language that cannot be interpreted (but can be percieved) to something which cannot be percieved yet can be interpreted.

Perhaps something such as this would make more sense?

(BTW, time is the 4th dimension. Can you see time? Einstein's proof is 100% accepted and solid. And many things are beginning to show that this fact is the case).

Time is observable.  We can percieve time.  Time was understood (in our rather constant inertial frame) long before Einstein.  That's what makes general relativity work: it makes predictions about things we know about.  Einstein didn't have to invent anything new, he just reformulated what we already understood.  When you start talking about compacted dimensions, I must scoff.

Only religon claims to have all the answers and proof in the positive.  Ask your religious leader "what experiment could I perform where if the results came out a certain way would falsify your claims?"

Here's what I almost guarentee a Christian priest would answer:

"Let Christ in to your heart and life, allow him to be your personal savior, and I guarentee you that you will receive a testament of the truth of these things".

The problem is that you as a science minded individual want to measure with a ruler and stopwatch, whereas a priest wants to measure in warm fuzzies.  They're really orthogonal to each other; you might as well be speaking different languages.  Almost everything religion is about (morality, our place in the universe, our relationship with our ancestors, our future destiny, etc.) are things that science has no business even asking.  How do you measure morality?  How do you develop a theory about the meaning of existence?  It just doesn't work.

Really the whole idea that science and religion are in direct competition with each other is extremely stupid.  There is a tiny portion of Judeo mythology that modern science conflicts with: namely Genesis and the creation story.  And only like the first 10 chapters at that.  And even then the only reason it's a big deal is that most Christians don't seem able to read more than the first 40 pages of their Bible.  They worked hard on reading that first chapter.  It's all they have.  I mean, once you get into later Genesis you start having all sorts of boring geneologies, and the Mosaic law, and who in their right mind wants to read that?  If the bible started with something like Isaiah, I think people would have a better idea about the whole point of all this.

1st, its a matter of genetics. Every action we make is simply genetic. We can choose, put the choices we make are almost always genetic based. Think about the health choice we make, we choose to live longer even though life brings no extra benefits to the old. We chose to itch because we feel the itch, but even the act of itching has a gene. Science and religion have similair backgrounds and beginnings, but that is not because they are the same. Science is merely observation; we are naturally curious beings, our closets genetic relatives are curious beings (I don't mean monkeys, apes are way closer), almost 50% of all beings on Earth have some amount of curiosity. All behavior is genetic. So logic becomes a new gene; obviously those with stronger abilities in analytical thought would have a different gene from a person very good at creativity (not that they lack either, just different). The problem with creationists is they cannot answer the whole of the question, Where did we come from?

Douglas Adams made a very point about this in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; where a race builds a machine to answer the ultimate question (which they did not know), and all they got was 42. Its like saying a man did it. You're not even sure what the question is but your asking it, it always comes out with God in religion. As Mark Twain pointed out, if God controlled everything we would have to question the need for a God.

God's Major Laws (not the commandments):
1
Every living being is given an inherit trait, all the animals have their own strengths. The lion is loyal, territorial, lazy and self-concious; the cheetah is fast and fierce, while the eagle is majestic, nobel and proud. Humans were so-said to have been created with all of these traits inherited within their conciousness.

2
Every living being (including humans) can do no wrong under the laws of god, as they were inherit within their being and soul and cannot be denied.

So having judgement over humanity, as written many times in the bible, is completely against god's laws. So therefore the idea of God cannot live through such a system.

Yet humans continue again and again to lack in certain logic genes. Walmart, George Bush Sr, George Bush Jr, WW1, WW2, American Exspansionism, White Man's Burden (Manifest Destiny), Slavery, Genocide, Chemicaly infused tobacco products, The Atomic Bomb, The Combustion Engine (crude oil only limitations), AIDS, Money (yes, money is a form of greed which has lead to the knowing deaths of billions of harmless beings), etc... Show me intelligent design, and I will show you a man with a very poor idea of what is logical. The only thing which has seperated humans from the other animals, is our larger brains for more memories (prepairing us once we realize how to live longer) and the weight and degree that we feel the pain of others. It does not take the hand of intelligence to destroy everything regardless of your own survival.

So I assume you would call that freedom of choice, but that is not given to anyone, and cannot be taken away from any being. Therefore God not have given us this quality, we gave it to ourselves. That is how genetic selection works; random things happen to complex organisms running with way more variables than is capable in DB, so a wierd change can create continuous thought, or dilusional thoughts. If God were present in Humanity's life, then there would be more Einsteins, fewere wars and people would be enjoying themselves amongst people from everywhere. The idea of learning is a very primative idea (according to humans), because all animals teach their young, because the young are more receptive to memories, and obtain important behaivors from their first few memories; that is how people like George Bush Jr happen, or Ghandi, or even Buddha (although he drew from more memories). All religion has to offer is hope and love for the weak and hopeless and unloved; which is a very wonderful thing to have in a life filled with many problems and few rewards. It is genetic for humans to believe their will be something better than this moment, because that is how humanity has survived without a massive suicidal end; optimism is a very powerful genetic tendancy which cannot be learned, but is inherited.

So, religion false, bible false, idea of bible wonderful. So by silogism, God is wonderful, and false. Perhpas, in our minds which behave similar to holographic plates, the thought of good creates an illusion of god more powerful than reality, but reality will never go away, and the illusion is inherently a dillusional trait, so its almost a schizofrenic tendancy. That tendancy is very common in humans because we have such powerful thoughts and emotions compared to say a tree; we can see images not in existance, but in our thoughts, which are controlled by hormones and chemicals, which are in turn controlled by genetics.

(reference: Letters to the Universe, Mark Twain)

[apothegm]

This is quite a contentious topic, and there's been some good discussion here... I've enjoyed reading it and I feel like I know some of the DB forum posters a lot better now   .  To throw in my own two-cents-worth:

I consider myself a scientist, and it seems to me that the scientific method is the most productive and effective paradigm to use in interacting with the universe. I also think that the act of "believing", of maintaining a conviction despite the lack of any observations supporting it and despite the presence of observations that would tend to counter it, is highly dangerous. However, there can be great value in things that are outside of the realm of science, like myths, stories, and symbols. Science has many uses, but when you're trying to figure out what you need in your life to make you happy or what movie to see tonight, science has very little to offer. As such, when the bible has stories about virgin births or resurrections, it doesn't mean you should dismiss them as scientifically innaccurate and therefore false, but instead look at them as symbols that have helped to shape our culture and our identities, and can serve as common reference-points that allow us to relate to one another more effectively. In a way, our lives as we subjectively experience them can be reduced to stories, and so it makes sense that all kinds of stories help to shape our perceptions.
Take, for example EricL's post about the DarwinBots bar (which I love btw). It's difficult to quantify or measure the utility of this piece, and the characters of the bartender, the old sage, and the escaped mental patient are certainly symbolic rather than literal, but reading it has without a doubt enriched my experience here.
If only fewer people would try to take our myths so literally...

And of course, these views would be completely out of place in a scientific discussion    .

[Numsgil]

Reminds me of Orson Scott Card.  He likes to talk about exactly that sort of thing: stories/myths, and how they interact and bind a community of people.

[EricL]

perhaps it's not so much the god that matters but rather the belief itself....

Which many might do.

If someone acknowledges it is belief itself, in any god, that is important and not the god itself, that any god will do, that while there may be benefits to belief itself, gods don't really exist outsides one's head and don't really perform supernatural acts, then they are no longer religious in my book.   I will be the first to admit that there may be benefits to beleiving in a god or gods - physcological, social benefits rooted in evolved brain and social behaviour - but belief in the power of belief is very different than actual belief in the supernatural.  The placebo effect is very real.   It is actual beleif in the supernatural I have a problem with.

Religions conflict with one another (and with science) because they proport different and conflicting frameworks for how the universe came to be and which god or gods are in charge, which should be worshiped and how, how to kill those who whorship the wrong gods and so on.  If a monotheist acknowledges that another god is just as valid as their own, they have taken a huge step torwards secularism IMHO.

Your warm and fuzzy speculation that all religons may somehow be simply mutations of an original truth is interesting and there may be some value in it from a historical perpsective, but it does not add support for the existance of the supernatural.  It mearly demonstrates the inventivness and creativity of humans.  If you allow the possibility that all of the worlds religons have been modified and changed so dramatically from some root form through human invention, then why not acknowledge that religion itself may also be a product of the same inventivness?

If science is about removing the human component from our understanding of the universe (removing bias, superstition, etc.), religion is about understanding the universe through the human component.

I think that's crap.  Religion is mythological hangover from the dark ages rooted in a time before we understood the way the universe actually works. It gets in the way of understanding the universe, it doesn't enhance it.  People came up with religion as a way to explain and make sense of the world around them.  Before Darwin, there was no competing theory for how life in it's many varied forms came to be.  Before cosmology, there was no competing therory for the orgin of the universe or why the stars moved across the heavens.   Religion was it.   Until recently, religion was science.

Over the centuries, religon's domain has been erroded and largly supplanted from the outside by science.  The world does not sit on a giant turtle or on Atlas's shoulders.  The earth is 4.55 billiuon years old, not 6000.   Humans evolved, they were not created in a garden.   The modern interpretation of religion as simply a way to find personal meaning and understanding is a much diminished role, the last vestigages of a dying world framework.   There is no need to believe in fairy tales to stand in awe of nature and the universe or to find personal meaning.  Really, it's such a poor cousin to the truth.

What if I answer "I like to kill people" on your questionaire?  Is that a moral or amoral act?  How do you even begin to define "good" and "bad" in a purely scientific manner?

It's really easy actually.  Morality is a function of social norms.   Humans are social animals and the fact that we all share a set of general principles that one might term "morals" is because it's rooted in our genes.  Killing others in your tribe for no reason generally resulted in your genes getting removed from the gene pool.  Selection favorred certain behaviours and disfavorred others.   You see the same thing in chimps, gorrillas, wolves and so on.   There are norms of behaviour, often complex, often with cheaters, often with consequences for being caught cheating, often with a whole economy of behavioural practices.   There is always genetic variablity, always the one guy that likes to kill people for no reason, but that person is a rare anomily.    So, you use control groups, you use your questionaires to find a baseline across the population and then you test different demographic groups and look for corrolations.  It's been done hundreds of times.   This isn't hard.  I'm surprised you find it so.

but at some point someone is going to have to make a judgement call about what is desirable and what is not.  That's the realm of religion, philosophy, etc.  Things that are definately not scientific..

I strongly disagree.   As above, right and wrong, immoral and moral, these are social norms rooted in our genetics as highly complex social animals and as such as clearly within the domain of science.  

Higher dimensions may or may not exist in any real sense, but they do not effect our normal, everyday life.

No argument here.  If they did, we would have evolved intuition to better understand them.  

Sept. 11 was about as much about religion as the crusades were: meaning only a flimsy pretense.

I did not say that Sept. 11 was about religion.  I said that religon and specifically beleif in an afterlife allowed it to happen.  Were there no belief in an afterlife, no promise of 70 virgins and so on, I claim it would have been harder to find intelligent, educated people (as the hijackers were) willing to willingly kill themsleves for whatever the cause.  It would certainly not have been impossible. There are certainly many causes both religious and non-religious people would willingly die for, but religion tends to produce zelots in quanity like nothing else.  Certainly suicide bombers capable of flying 767's might be harder to come by were there no beleif in an afterlife.  (And yes I know many suicide bombers are misled and exploited).      

People hide their hate behind religion because they're ignorant and stupid.  Don't blame religion.

I don't.  Religon has no monopoly on hate just as it has no monolpy on love or morality (all a function of brain chemsitry - a science BTW).   There have certainly been atrocities perfromed in the name of religon and just as certainly there have been atrocities performed in the name of other agendas such as racism or facsism.   The common thread is ignorance.  

Islam certainly does not advocate military attacks on civilian targets.

There are those who would disagree with this.  I'm no religious scholar, but from what I've read, the position that Islam is really a kind, gentle religion being misinterpreted by extremists may be wishful thinking.  It really does say in the Koran that your duty as a muslim is to kill non-muslims.  

people will act stupid and hateful regardless of what religion, belief, or philosophy the believe in (or don't).

Unfortuntly, I agree with this.

If anything, religion, belief, and philosophy are what prevents Man from being stupid and hateful all the time.

Surprisingly, I don't necessarily disagree with this.  It could be true that belief in a god makes people better members of society on average but this lends no support to the actual existance of gods or the supernatural.  

How easy would it be to fall in to a science-only world view, and adopt Social Darwinism as a guiding principle?  How would that make you any better from someone who falls in to a religion-only world view and adopts I-don't-understand-that-it-must-be-magic guiding principle?  Both views can cause so much harm.

I agree it does not take religion to do harm, but I'd rather live in a world where people use their brains and go through their life with the eyes open, beleiving what there is evidence to beleive and questioning beliefs in contradiction to evidence.  

[EricL]

This is quite a contentious topic, and there's been some good discussion here... I've enjoyed reading it and I feel like I know some of the DB forum posters a lot better now   .

Ya think?  We're nothing if not opinionated.    

However, there can be great value in things that are outside of the realm of science, like myths, stories, and symbols.

I agree there is great value in these things but I disagree they are outside the realm of science.  To say something is outside the realm of science is to say it is outside the realm of rational investigation.   Why are myths good teaching tools?  What makes a story worth retelling?  Why do certain symbols have meaning to human brains and how did this evolve?   These are scietific questions.  I love a good story as much as the next guy, but I don't need mystisism to appreciate it.

Science has many uses, but when you're trying to figure out what you need in your life to make you happy or what movie to see tonight, science has very little to offer.

Perhaps.    Why are you not happy in your life?  Is it chemical of phsycological or behavioural?  What are the biological roots of happieness and why do we seek happieness and why some movies contribute positivly and others negativly to that happieness?   I'm being extreme to make a point and I agree with you that some things are perhaps too trivial to be worth scientific investigation but that does not mean their causes are not within the realm of science or incapable of being studied.  There are companies that woudl pay big bucks for a better scientific understanding of what makes people happy or why certain movies are appealing at certain times and not others...

As such, when the bible has stories about virgin births or resurrections, it doesn't mean you should dismiss them as scientifically innaccurate and therefore false, but instead look at them as symbols that have helped to shape our culture and our identities, and can serve as common reference-points that allow us to relate to one another more effectively.

I can do both.  I can both dismiss them as scientically inaccurate as well as look at them as symbols that have shaped our culture.   I'll be the first to admit that stories and myths have value and that religious stories have played a huge role in our history and culture.   Not to do so would be naive.  The bible for example is a wonderful book, full of elegant liturature of both historical and literary value.  I can enjoy the stories and learn from the parables without actually believing them.  It's called fiction.

Take, for example EricL's post about the DarwinBots bar (which I love btw). It's difficult to quantify or measure the utility of this piece, and the characters of the bartender, the old sage, and the escaped mental patient are certainly symbolic rather than literal, but reading it has without a doubt enriched my experience here.

Thanks!

If only fewer people would try to take our myths so literally...

If only...

And of course, these views would be completely out of place in a scientific discussion    .

Again, I disagree.  Perhaps I'm using a broader definition of scientific discussion than others, but really, there is nothing in my opinion that is outside the realm of rational and reasonable discussion.

[shvarz]

This argument has gone long enough and showed enough results to deserve this picture:

[Numsgil]

Oh, but we're having so much fun

[EricL]

Indeed!

I have to catch a plane to Hawaii in a few hours anyway, so I'll see you all in a week plus!

[Numsgil]

If someone acknowledges it is belief itself, in any god, that is important and not the god itself, that any god will do, that while there may be benefits to belief itself, gods don't really exist outsides one's head and don't really perform supernatural acts, then they are no longer religious in my book.   I will be the first to admit that there may be benefits to beleiving in a god or gods - physcological, social benefits rooted in evolved brain and social behaviour - but belief in the power of belief is very different than actual belief in the supernatural.  The placebo effect is very real.   It is actual beleif in the supernatural I have a problem with.

Then you have a very narrow view of what is "religious".  But I digress.  As to wether or not there exists a God: no compelling "scientific" evidence either way.  But I'm not arguing for the existence of God.  I'm arguing for the belief in a God; that it's a Good Thing.  Not to be universally scorned, but exalted as a wonderful, telling example of the human condition.  It's like the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (ie: the Bladerunner book) by Philip K Dick.  Could matter less if a religion is based on something that actually happened or not.  Believing in something is healthy and good.

Religions conflict with one another (and with science) because they proport different and conflicting frameworks for how the universe came to be and which god or gods are in charge, which should be worshiped and how, how to kill those who whorship the wrong gods and so on.  If a monotheist acknowledges that another god is just as valid as their own, they have taken a huge step torwards secularism IMHO.

Creation stories are only cursorally related to the religions they're from.  If you view the Judeo-Christian belief and Genesis as the same thing, you've really missed the point.

Your warm and fuzzy speculation that all religons may somehow be simply mutations of an original truth is interesting and there may be some value in it from a historical perpsective, but it does not add support for the existance of the supernatural.  It mearly demonstrates the inventivness and creativity of humans.  If you allow the possibility that all of the worlds religons have been modified and changed so dramatically from some root form through human invention, then why not acknowledge that religion itself may also be a product of the same inventivness?

Religion is universal to all tribes, cultures, and identities.  At the very least, that means there's something fundamental that religion fills, the same way that language is something fundamental.  Assuming all present religions represent a mutation from an original, if you take the commonalities between all religions, you arrive at what it is about religion that works and makes it valuable.  I would claim those qualities are community and spirituality.  Maybe a couple others.  All the back story you're so concerned with doesn't really matter except as a means of heightening those virtues.  Like a laser light show at a rock concert.

I think that's crap.  Religion is mythological hangover from the dark ages rooted in a time before we understood the way the universe actually works. It gets in the way of understanding the universe, it doesn't enhance it.  People came up with religion as a way to explain and make sense of the world around them.  Before Darwin, there was no competing theory for how life in it's many varied forms came to be.  Before cosmology, there was no competing therory for the orgin of the universe or why the stars moved across the heavens.   Religion was it.   Until recently, religion was science.

Say my mother dies.  Science can tell me exactly what's happening to my mother's body.  How the body fluids will turn septic and my mother's flesh will turn rancid, and how little worms will crawl around in her eye cavities.  Does my mother exist still, in some way?  Well, there's no compelling evidence for that in science.  That makes me upset, and will lengthen my mourning, decreasing my utility to society.  If my mother is in heaven, I can get on with my life much sooner.  I'll meet her later.  Doesn't actually matter which is true, because I won't find out until I'm dead.  And then I'll either embrace oblivion (and thus not care), or go to heaven with her (and thus be happy).

Religion is about that sort of thing.  It's about finding a mental framework that places us in a universe and makes sense of all of it.  Do not confuse early science (Atlas and such) with early religion.  The two used to be very close only because specialized labor is a luxury not all societies can afford.  If your priest is also your doctor, scientist, and psychologist, you're being conservative with your labor.  No doubt in the future further specialization will come.  But the core of religion fills a purpose that science can not, and that's been true and will continue to be true for the foreseeable future.  Science is concerned with the universe and "truth", religion with people and emotion.

It's really easy actually.  Morality is a function of social norms.   Humans are social animals and the fact that we all share a set of general principles that one might term "morals" is because it's rooted in our genes.  Killing others in your tribe for no reason generally resulted in your genes getting removed from the gene pool.  Selection favorred certain behaviours and disfavorred others.   You see the same thing in chimps, gorrillas, wolves and so on.   There are norms of behaviour, often complex, often with cheaters, often with consequences for being caught cheating, often with a whole economy of behavioural practices.   There is always genetic variablity, always the one guy that likes to kill people for no reason, but that person is a rare anomily.    So, you use control groups, you use your questionaires to find a baseline across the population and then you test different demographic groups and look for corrolations.  It's been done hundreds of times.   This isn't hard.  I'm surprised you find it so.

That's certainly a method for describing morality, but it fails to capture the idea of difficult to attain morality that many societies are based on.  It's like beauty: if you take the average of everyone's features, you'll arrive at an attractive person.  But there's still a higher beauty that you haven't captured.  I guess you could ask what people consider moral instead of what it is they actually do, but that begs the question of "what is morality".

I strongly disagree.   As above, right and wrong, immoral and moral, these are social norms rooted in our genetics as highly complex social animals and as such as clearly within the domain of science.

Have you ever played Star Control 2?  Take the Ur-Quan race for an example.  Their internal instincts made civilization very difficult for them, because they were deeply territorial.  Clearly asocial creatures.  Morality for them was defined as fighting their baser instincts in order to achieve civilization.  Obviously this is a fictional example, but not all morality necessarily follows from our instincts.  If it doesn't come from our instincts, it must come from our thought, from our higher brain functions.  A realm that science is decidedly hesitant to scratch (so called black box psychology).  Religion fills the gap from the other direction: positing morality based on the human condition, from that black box.

There are those who would disagree with this.  I'm no religious scholar, but from what I've read, the position that Islam is really a kind, gentle religion being misinterpreted by extremists may be wishful thinking.  It really does say in the Koran that your duty as a muslim is to kill non-muslims.

This is a complex issue, but basically you have to understand that when Islam was founded, it was surrounded by very pagan, very hostile cultures.  Baby sacrifice was not uncommon.  Slavery was quite common.  Islam fought against these cultures for its very survival, and the liberation of enslaved nations.  Any militant scriptures are from this conflict.  Towards Christians (and Jews) the scriptures are very clear: brotherly love with a hint of condescension for them missing the whole point.  Maybe a trace of pity.

Surprisingly, I don't necessarily disagree with this.  It could be true that belief in a god makes people better members of society on average but this lends no support to the actual existance of gods or the supernatural.

Well good, I've made you a believer then   Remember I did not argue for the existence of God (I argued against the non-existence of God, but that's not the same thing).  Just that religion is "Good".

[Testlund]

It really does say in the Koran that your duty as a muslim is to kill non-muslims.

I haven't read the Koran so I don't know if this is what it says, but I know a lot of muslims wouldn't agree with this. If you've seen the movie about Mohammed then you know he too spoke against it. He said that the Christian religion should be respected because it is the same god, and men and women are equal and even animals should be treated with respect. I think that if religion is used right then anybody can follow it nomatter if you're a believer or not, because it just makes sense and would make anyone's life better. If something doesn't make you happy it's wrong. Most religions doesn't make peoples life happier, it mostly causes problems.
The book 'Light From The Spirit World' mension this. It speaks about unholy marriages done in churches, to take an example. Spirits divided are forced together which is against God. It mensions that when spirits have chosen each other and when they live in harmony and treat each other equal they can't be divided by death, but unequal spirits will do anything they can to get away from each other. There will be constant conflicts in the marriage. If they can't even chose their partner right and families will be created without any love in them, how can they possibly do anything else right? It's bound to be a society based on hate and conflicts.

[EricL]

I haven't read the Koran so I don't know if this is what it says, but I know a lot of muslims wouldn't agree with this.

Muslims can agree with it or not I suppose, but it's what their book says.  Like Christians, I suppose most really don't have a clue what their holy books actually say and would be surprised to learn the truth.

From the Koran:

[4.89] They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.

[5.33] The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement,

[8.12] When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

There are many other similar passages.  Really, this is not new news...

[rsucoop]

Religion is universal to all tribes, cultures, and identities. At the very least, that means there's something fundamental that religion fills, the same way that language is something fundamental. Assuming all present religions represent a mutation from an original, if you take the commonalities between all religions, you arrive at what it is about religion that works and makes it valuable. I would claim those qualities are community and spirituality. Maybe a couple others. All the back story you're so concerned with doesn't really matter except as a means of heightening those virtues. Like a laser light show at a rock concert.

I agree with you, yet each culture defined religious figures in a way that was significant to their way of life. Take the Sioux for example, their gods never spoke I, because it was not in their language. Or the Japanese, their power was drawn from myths and channeled into swords for better combat, which was necessary for unifying their lands. Religion is a product of humanity; its the stoned monkey theorie. It doesn't matter what you think about 'getting high' every animal attempts it in some way or another; wether its bathing in the deserts, sex over and over again I.e. mice, or caring for a life, or consuming a mushroom just for the toxins, or injesting a chemical to feel good (more than 50% of Americans above age of 18 are on some anti-depresant). And the idea of better than now is a small form of this want. And many animals want something to happen so bad, they do not react to their instincts to make things better, this is how abusive-dominant relations are formed. Morrality is something humans thought up one day, lack of it would be considered almost inhuman in society, but its mere genetics.Sociopaths cannot understand what others feel in suffering, they lack certain genetic pieces. So morality is the same concept to many humans as is time (not saying time is not real to a scientist). Morality will happen, but no one is sure how or when it ends and begins.

Elaborte:

A poor man has no money, three kids and a wife, and no job. THere's a major depression with no jobs until the next country. Can't afford a visa or passport so he breaks the law to create an income. Is this immoral? Only from the view of the wronged. Therefore morality has to be weighed but cannot be weighed by a human, because we're imperfect in decision making.

[Numsgil]

I haven't read the Koran so I don't know if this is what it says, but I know a lot of muslims wouldn't agree with this.

Muslims can agree with it or not I suppose, but it's what their book says.  Like Christians, I suppose most really don't have a clue what their holy books actually say and would be surprised to learn the truth.

From the Koran:

[4.89] They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.

[5.33] The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement,

[8.12] When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

There are many other similar passages.  Really, this is not new news...

Again, those verses aren't directed towards Christians.  They're directed against the rather wicked (even by modern standards) pagan cultures that surrounded the early muslims.  Remember, Jews, Christians, and Muslims ostensibly believe in the same God, so to an (early) Muslim a Christian would in no way "wage war against Allah", etc.  Crusades, etc. may have changed some groups' interpretations of those scriptures, but it's obvious that they are not the intention of the angel Gabriel, and thus represent a perversion.

In the Quran, Christians and Jews are jointly referred to as "those of the scriptures" or something like that.

I would also point out the strong parallels with the Old Testament.  For instance, when the Israelites were conquering the land after their wanderings.  God tells them to slaughter not only the men, but the women, children, and even livestock.  The israelite soldiers end up keeping some of the jewelry and eat some of the meat, if I remember my story right, as their spoils of war, and God gets pissed.  God really hates pagans.  That should be the lesson to learn here.  Anyway, these stories are part of our "peaceful" Christian mythology, and look how we turned out

[Testlund]

But you also have contradictions in the bible I think. For instance the 10 commandments like 'Thy shall not kill', and Jesus who tought new ways, which could mean that the bible writers were a bit confused and missinterpreted the will of God. That's why you have two testaments. The 10 commandments is an example that everyone can follow nomatter if you're a believer or not, because it makes sense and make things better for everybody. That should be the goal for all religions. Truth is very simple and can usually be said in just one sentence, but lies are complicated and confuses people. That's why politicians like to use a lot of fancy words and talk for hours, because they try to manipulate people and hide their real intent. Believe the ones that are easy to understand instead.