What is your religion?

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Originally Posted by sameerrao ^^ Liv Tyler/Charlize Theron/Salma Hayek are more my thing

My main Goddess is pictured below but just below her, Lauren Graham, Jenna Jameson, Devon (yeah the last 2 are porn stars..but they're HOT!) Amy Lee and Elizebeth Hurley

..i think one thing can be said for sure: We worship some HOT women

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Originally Posted by nejcdolinsek I'm a very proud athiest Thanks for asking EDIT: One of my favorite quotes: "Religion is the opium of the masses" - Karl Marx

Actually I think it's "opiate" not "opium", but I could be wrong about that.

[noliebro]

The first problem that I have with some of the people's thinking in this forum is that they believe that faith should come from the inside or something like that, this is a very bland statment that means that just because you believe that 2+7=3, that it is correct, and that you could learn nothing your whole life from anyone else, or "books" and still come up with the right answers in your own mind and that would be okay. Secondly you guys have been saying that evolution has been proven, I don't know what books you guys are reading in other countries, but I believe there have been more scientists that have found nothing that supports it and many have given up the study, and it is suprising that most of you who have some sort of "humanistic" views can lower the human race to being derived from a fish or ape or something. I am sorry if I sound heated about this but I believe that boths sides that are arguing have no real solid evidence either way and it can go on both ways forever.

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Originally Posted by nthfinity i havent partipated much here; so i dont think there is a lot to say on my side. i was born into a religous family... for years i thought little about it, then i decided it couldn't be true... it just doesnt make any sence in many regards... then what i 'knew' to be true one day wasnt at all at an instant... i'll just say an event changed me, and because of that, it is impossible for me to say there isnt a God. there are basic moral arguments... such as personal accountability which cirtainly is a key factor in religion... what makes a person want to be upright? others look at religion as a control of the populus... and historicaly, that has been true in various cases; but in todays society, it really doesnt apply (dont bring up the red vs. blue states silly argument, as it isnt remotely the case) traditionally, people who dont believe in anything but themselves truly dont... but are actually refusing to believe in something rather then understand it... which is an unscientific way to self discovery. im not saying that about any here, as its impossible to ascertain from a few paragraphs where one's theological beliefes stem... but most arguments stated can be refuted, while a few are more in theory one way, or another. on an interesting side note, on BBC news radio this morning, they reported focils of a mamal with dinosaur young (mabey eggs) in its stomach... please note im not refuting the age of the universe... even if that was the case, then a host of celestial time markers show otherwise

Yup, a fossil of a small carnivorous mammal was discovered in China, within its skeletal remains were the remains of another creature, not eggs, but actually a small dinosaur. The only thing that this lends some support to is the idea that mammals weren't necessarily only tiny and ran around trying to keep out of the way of their larger reptilian neighbors.

As for those of you trying to refute Carbon-14 dating, here's a little more information. C-14 is only useful in dating items less than approximately 50,000 years old, as C-14 is only present in organic matter. In fact, all living organisms contain a certain concentration of C-14 in the organic matter which makes them up. After an organism dies, the supply of C-14 is stopped and an exponential decay occurs. Thus, the remains of a bone from a Wooley Mammoth or the dwellings of a Neanderthal are generally within the range of this dating technology. However, when it comes to fossilized remains Carbon-14 dating is absolutely useless.

The process of fossilization is in essence the replacement of organic matter by minerals over the course of extremely long periods of time. It is well understood that fossilization of bone gives a certain set of mineral deposits. Since there is NO organic matter in these deposits or in fossils in general for that matter, Carbon-14 dating cannot be used. Thus, we must depend on isotopes of different elements with significantly longer half-lives. Uranium-238 is a commonly used isotope for fossil dating because its half-life is approximately 4.5 billion years (instead of 5730 years for C-14) and therefore measureable concentrations of U-238 are available in any and all fossils found on Earth.

If you want to argue about decay rates, don't bother, I'm working with a variety of radioactive isotopes in my physics lab and I can sit down and measure decay rates with a reasonable degree of accuracy.


With regards to the process of evolution, the fossil record gives a reasonable account of a progression of species which appear to have quite a great deal in common and can be arranged into groupings of organisms with similar characteristics. The tops of these "family trees" if you like, are the genus and species "branches" and "twigs." If you take two organisms which share many characteristics today (a lion and tiger for instance) and compare their DNA without a doubt, the number of differences in genetic code will be extremely small if not negligible.

DNA is of course made up of sets of amino acids. The question was raised several years ago by a scientist whose name escapes me at the moment (and I'm too lazy to go look him up), "Is it possible that in the 'primordial soup' amino acids could be formed by natural processes?"
To find out he devised an experiment using what we know from rock composition dated to roughly the time when the first organisms begin to appear in the fossil records. He sealed the contents in a glass ball at approximately the appropriate temperature, humidity, pressure, and with the appropriate gasses and solids, including sulfur, carbon, and a variety of other elementary compounds and subjected the mixture to a high-voltage electrical stimulus...he imitated lightning. The result was a series of chains of amino acids, not DNA, but definetely what we know to be the building blocks of life. This to me gives a good firm basis for the theory, yes I said THEORY, of evolution.

On the other hand, religion is NOT a theory, it is a belief system. It has its merits, primarily in the fact that it functions as a code of moral statutes and provides people in times of need with something which they may find comforting. However, unless you question your faith and actually make the effort to scrutinize what it is in which you believe, then you are only blindly following dogmatic principles set out by those in the church, temple, mosque etc... to whom you look for guidance.

As has already been iterated, "Religion is the opiate of the masses," it keeps people content with their lives and happy. There's nothing wrong with that. I merely choose not to believe and to question scientifically everything I see, it is in my nature to do so.

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Sorry about my previous post, I had a little diarrhea of the brain....

[mindgam3]

Originally Posted by noliebro The first problem that I have with some of the people's thinking in this forum is that they believe that faith should come from the inside or something like that, this is a very bland statment that means that just because you believe that 2+7=3, that it is correct, and that you could learn nothing your whole life from anyone else, or "books" and still come up with the right answers in your own mind and that would be okay.

I dont know why but I think alot of religious people do think athiests and the like don't have any morals etc.

Just because we aren't religious and we don't have a particular faith doesent mean we don't know whats right from wrong. Any sensible person will learn from life and other people. Atheists dont believe in a religion because they don't need that support or foundation of thoughts to fall back onto or live their life by - this doesen't imply we don't have our own morals etc.

I think someone else said about gods being "invented" as an explanation to things we can't explain, eg floods and storms years ago.

Now the unknown is more about the universe, but just because we dont understand it yet, doesen't mean there MUST be an almighty god. There might well be, but i dont believe there is.

Also, a minority of the scientific community debate darwins theory. Scientific theories have always been debated, rejected and dismissed. But the majority believe, that in some way it is highly likely that all living organisms evolve. This is seen throughout the entire world and is the reason so many spicies of basically the same animal exist.

The simple fact that there are fossils outdating human civilization means that there was definately life before humanity.... why isnt any of it mentioned in the bible? Why isnt the creation of the universe mentioned? Why isn't even the moon, any other galaxies mentioned? Why aren't the dinosoars mentioned? Who wrote the bible? How do you know it isn't some story an ancient hebrew author wrote? Why does christianity have one god, and others have many? Why arent all religious books the same and relate to each other completely?

Theres far too many questions like these to make me feel that no religion is actually based on true happenings or beings and therefore there's little point in me relating to any of it.

Purely out of interest i'd like to hear what religious people here think about all religions, although have their similarities, are all different.... How can each and every religion be true if they all have different guidelines and god's?