Hell's bells that is a site! Reminded me of the Baptist church in Stephen King's Needful Things. Just nasty. Did you read about the European Royals (naked teen) hunting trip? Or the $30m lawsuit settlement for "brutalising" two younger members of the congregation? The Nazi / Catholic photos are published not for historical or educational reasons but to stir hatred against the catholic church. It's a hate church. It epitomises everything I hate about religion. Utterly sickening. Good spot!!
According to Wikipedia, Tony Alamo, the founder of the church has been found guilty of tax evasion and child sex offences. I don't think, even with the broadest definition, he could be called a Christian.
I consider myself to be Agnostic but after listening to what Stephen Fry said about those horrible little insects who live simply to burrow through the eyes of children.....I think I have to perhaps reconsider my stance, and lean more toward Atheism.
I have spent most of my working life as a pro gardener ... many folk think a garden is a place of peaceful repose ...The reality is somewhat different, a bloody war zone is more appropriate . I'm often asking why did god create this or that ? My biggest headaches currently are caused by a squadron of free range chickens , which trash my efforts on a daily basis . ( surely there must be a more efficient way of making eggs ) . There was a time way back , when I counted several nuns as good friends ...I worked in a convent ! They were lovely ladies .
I have not really made up my mind on this issue of "three parents". I think there are scientific issues that need to be questioned and am pleased that it is the subject of debate etc. However it could take forever to satisfy everyone and there will always be crazy scientists dug up by the like of the US fanatical religious groups to dispute things. Ultimately the only ones who are affected will be those who are the recipients of the "new" egg. If they are content why should anyone else be allowed to prevent it. The Ebola vaccine is being used before it is really approved to save lives - this is not dissimilar and does not need people with their moral certitudes poking their noses in.
Going back, for the moment to the original post, I happened upon this YouTube upload last night which adds a bit more context to Fry's comments and some historical background. I urge you to watch it through and the commentator's closing remarks are particularly pertinent given the on going atrocities in the Middle East. https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=Fu1137ImSR4
It's the eye worm Thai, see about it here! http://www.christiantoday.com/artic...till.believe.in.the.goodness.of.god/47259.htm
Everyone has the right to believe in the God of their choice and I would not ridicule them just because I think differently. I have a friend who is a Catholic and he refuses to discuss any aspect of his religion, he just accepts it, and I have no respect for that. I have another friend who came to Christianity in his 20's who is always prepared to discuss it and I know it was a difficult leap to take, I have a lot of respect for that. Cologne I am sure you are in the latter camp. Dawkins, Fry and possibly some on this tread are deliberately outspoken and contentious about God as they want people to think rather than accept and form their own opinion. From birth the whole establishment (monarchy, church, parents, education, politics, media etc) reinforce the idea there is a God and you are made to feel bad if you don't believe this, so most atheists keep quiet. Personally I am very annoyed that I was carted off to church to be baptised months after my birth and even in my early teens to confirmation when I really did not what my beliefs were. I think religious belief should be treated like politics & sex and should not be participated in until someone is able to take an informed view - say 18 years. Religion should be covered during one's education in an objective manner and all belief systems covered with all the pros & cons covered. I have another question for the God entity, the supposed creator of the known and unknown universe(s) and all the magnificent things in it, should I ever meet him..... ... Who created you?
Re who created God ...Believer's usually say something daft such as "God is like a circle ..he has no beginning and no end" . If only all the big questions had such simplistic answers . Are 18 year olds able to take an informed view ? Mind you this 51 year old certainly knows considerably less than when he was in his teens .
Thanks to the links given above I came across a very good one by Russel Brand - yep that sounds impossible but as a Christian he tries to debunk Fry and makes some excellent points. In particular he points out three aspects of the universe - the strong force, gravity and the like which have been shown by scientists to need to be absolutely precise - had they been less than a small part of 1 % stonger or weaker the universe would fall apart. His argument is that the likelihood for these forces to have been set so precisely is infinitesimal - they would not happen at random - yet they are set at those precise levels. I think his "take" from that is then that a god must have set them. His concept of god seems to me more like Cologne's if I have understood him correctly or perhaps Fez's gnostics. I am not sure how he squares that with a "creator" god as his "forces that are in everything around us is not the same thing. Leaving all that aside you come back to the question Scullion raised - the old if there is a god then how did he comes into being? Without the "god is a circle" non answer we find that sticking god in between nothing and the universe does not help anyone. I think in answer to RB's laws of physics problem that some scientists argue that there are an infinite number of potential universes so that every level of force that could be set IS set in some of them. In the ones that don't "work" there is nobody to question them so inevitably it is only in those that have the precise values needed that everything comes together and we can have this discussion.
We went to the pictures at the week-end to see The Theory of Everything. From the beginning it was clear that he was very anti-religion, whilst his first wife was a reguilar church goer. What has interesting was during the working of his theories around Black Holes, he came to the conclusion that there must have been a god for his theory to prevail! However later on he changed his view on the theory and it meant that there did not have to be a god afterall - it was quite amusing. BTW - an excellent film and well worth gping to see it. Eddie Redmayne was excellent - a very dear friend of ours died from MND and alas only lasted 2 years and Redmayne captured everything that MND does...
I was trying to make this point in the other thread. You don't need God to explain why everything works in harmony (from a basic POV)
The worm's purpose is to survive and procreate. No creature is meant to have a "useful purpose", unless you think the universe was created for mankind.
Most creatures do serve a purpose - albeit as part of the food chain. Others have appear to have a purpose that is beneficial to mankind. You cannot tell me bees do not have a purpose in life? They seem to think otherwise.
Their 'purpose', like the worms', is to survive and procreate. They have a different way of doing it, but they're not pollinating flowers to be nice to other creatures. Those worms are surely part of the food chain too, every creature is.
I've kept myself to myself during nearly all of this. I'm reminded of the Christopher Hitchens quote: "If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world." I work for a Christian organisation that recently stated that all members of staff must take part in the prayers and singing of hymns that take place during working hours. Irrespective of one's personal belief system. Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Athiests and those who prefer not to have a religious label, like myself. Hmmm. In regards to what I've selected to quote from Scullion, I would add two things. My Dad told me never to discuss sex, religion or politics. Perhaps a little restrictive, but I've seen things get a little heated on the boards recently with regards to two of these three. That saddens me. I am probably with cologne very much on one and very much not with him on another. But where we all meet is in our love for the Hornets. Perhaps I shouldn't read these threads, I have been a little turned off the site recently because of the division they seem to create, whilst finding it impossible not to 'like' certain comments. I am a hypocrite, I accept that. Should these things be kept to PMs? I can understand why most would say no. At work I have been subjected to a great deal of bullying because of a whistleblowing issue, the details of which I know would cause every person here to expect me to alert appropriate authorities. I did and the results are horrible in terms of what you learn of human nature and how authority, in its various forms, is often corrupt, even if it claims to be institutionally impossible for that to be the case. I come to the site to share my unity regarding something I love. I think I need to keep to the predictions only maybe. Matej is not of an age where he would understand what I've written, thankfully. I don't think he'd come trawling through this thread anyway. Suffice to say, we're all Hornets ('cept Dave, and we're working on him ) and I hope that is where focus shifts back to. I'll sing, shoulder to shoulder, standing or sitting (whoops that's a can of worms I want to duck out of ) with any and all of you. Come on you Golden Boys! Pray continue... ( ) I'm outta here.
