I am raised in a protestant home. and i do Believe in God. I have gone to a christian school all my life. If you look at charlie darwins life at the end of his life he said that his theory could not be right and he did acknowledge that evolution can be real. (right now i am gonna start talkinga bout different beliefs ia m not putting it down so dont get on my back just my opinion) Just look at the most simplest cell in your body. Even tho its the most simplest scientist cant even make a 100% diagram of it. HOw could that just come together. Gosh i wish i had philosphy HW this weekend so i would have my notebook. God is the beginning this is nothing before him. Gosh i really wish i had my bible notes here well if anyone wants to debate or talk with me you can pm me

After putting ~30 minutes of thought into analyzing my beliefs I'd say that I don't believe in a God or multiple Gods. But I might be open to the old "clock maker(s) who walked away from his/her/their creation" concept. In any case, I don't feel the need to attend a church service, and I do believe in nothingness (aside from lots of rotting [except for those who are cremated]) after death. I'm even less inclined to accept documents written by people (and are therefore fallible) as the word/command of a God. This isn't to say that I don't respect peoples' beliefs in their Gods. I think people should be perfectly free to practice their religions as they wish. I just don't want people to attempt to force me to join in ("Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, "In God We Trust" on money, the 10 Commandments on display for the public in Local, State, and Federal buildings, et cetera). I guess I'll stop before I start some sort of flame war.

Not this again!

Yes this again....
Srry didn't notice the religion post earlier, but I have been having this debate w/ some of my friends on anther site and it is been going on for about a week, and it's already over 14 pages. And I was just wondering how many religious ppl we have in FIRST.

Personally I beleive there is a God. And for those who don't beleive, just look at nature and tell me that it all came from a pile of inorganic matter, and works so perfectly now. God's out there...

If it didn't work perfectly, we wouldn't be here wondering about it. Evidence has shown that the universe is infinitely large, and uniformly ful of matter, so why can't it have happened?

First off science has never explained where the universe came from. They say that Stephen Hawkings (sp) found the equations that created the earth, and created the theory of randomally appering matter. One question for this, since we have the equation y can't we create our own randomally appearing matter, and if it happened before, y don't we occationally see something just appear out of nowhere. And if you say well the universe was just there, then where did all the dust and derbis come from?

Here's what scientists do... just because they don't know something, they don't automatically attribute it so something else, ie. god. Yeah, I agree, it's pretty freaking confusing as how stuff exists, but just because it's confusing doesn't mean I will try to fill up that void of confusion with god.

A good book to read that provides a look at a scientist who struggles quite a bit with religion is "Contact", by a local Ithacan (we have a planetwalk in his honor), Carl Sagan.

From the book:
My favorite quote:

Same here, I am spiritual not religious. My mom (redheadjokes) found a quote about it. Don't know who said it though.

"Religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell, spirituality is for those that have already been there,"

This post brings up a very interesting thought. I think that the results of this post so far are so close because in most cases, one either believes in science, or religion. personally i believe in science. I want sure evidence that there is a god or isn't. So, i voted no. But I'm also a confirmed catholic. I haven't decided if that was a mistake or not yet, but i'd rather not think about it incase i feel it was a mistake! 9 years of ccd, down the drain!

I just wanted to refute the statement that science and religion are mutually exclusive.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
- Albert Einstein

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A little science estranges a man from God. A lot of science brings him back.
- Francis Bacon

I won't chime in on this topic myself, because I don't know most of you well enough to feel comfortable talking about something so personal.

Also, Nick: Those years in CCD are only wasted if you learned nothing. I hope you at least recieved a solid moral foundation from your Catholic upbringing.

I'd also like to commend everyone who has posted in this thread. I'm very impressed with how much everyone is respecting the opinions of others. *This* is where the true test of Gracious Professionalism is passed, not in some silly competition.

I'll leave you with one more quote. It's a good one to remember whenever discussing controversial topics.

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority; the test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
- Ralph W. Sockman

What i was trying to say was that ever since the beginning, before the Europeans inhabited America, you were either pro-science, or pro-religion. You either believed, or needed concrete evidence before you could believe that there was/is a god. I guess that i'm the type that needs the concrete evidence.

I didn't mean to say that i tuned out my nine years of catholic education!!...what i was saying is that i'm not sure if i believe in what it was that I learned.


With all of that mentioned, i am also one of the people that criticizes God when something goes wrong. And i turned to God when my grandfather died. I'd really like to believe that there are reasons for why things happen. But i know that i will always ask the question "why?" and never fully accept.

the big bang HAD to happen, because before it, there was no time dimension, and therefore for everything possible to happen is inevitable


say there was x probability of the big bang happening (nonzero because there cannot be a zero probability of ANYTHING happening) at any given moment

so it's x/t

but t is zero, so the probability of it happening is infinite or undefined.

and god? never much cared for things that couldn't be proven to me (hell, it took them a while to convince me that working hard in school would, indeed, get me better grades) but i'm not a devout atheist (is that even possible?) or anything that goes around denying it.

i used to, but then i stopped caring :D

you're making it seem like a simple math equation. And if it was that simple why haven't we tried to duplicate it on a much smaller scale??? Or is it just an equations that is made up, trying to look like it's a fact?

There are two things I don't argue about (well almost never, have a few times with FIRST people): religion and politics.

All I will say is that I personally don't believe in any religions, or any gods, or a God. And this isn't an absent minded choice. I've been in catholic school for 11 years. I know religion very well.

I believe that science can explain everything, and if you insist on the concept of a god, to me, a god is the equivalent to the greatest potential of the human race.

-Jill

A few things that I don't get. Maybe someone can explain them to me?

1) Today, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, my Rabbi made a sermon on how Judaism and Christianity, and Islam (only touched on this) were all related, and all "children of Abraham". So then, why so much bloodshed between the three? I mean, siblings don't hate each other that much, do they?

2) Days of rest reflect a purely business motive. Judaism came first, with Sat. being the "day of rest". Christianity came around, changing the day of rest to Sunday. Islam also came around, and it's day of rest is Friday (from what I remember, please correct me if I'm wrong). This shows religion being shaped around the economy, which if you ask me, shows that man is more powerful than God(s), no?

3) Much of Christianity used to deal with the Earth as the center of the universe. It was blasphemy to consider otherwise. Heaven and Hell can't exist as physical planes of existence in this universe right now, because there's that whole thing called outerspace, and Hell can't exist under us, because that'd mean each planet had it's own individual Hell (or something like that).

There's some more stuff I've been thinking about, but I don't want to cause too much of a ruckus :).

Remember, this isn't out to hurt anyone, it's just some questions I have regarding religions, also kind of why I don't exactly believe in everything I hear in Temple. Those three questions by themselves are enough to shake my small amount of faith in religions as a whole, but I'd like to see how some other people view them.