The pope has a pacemaker

[Brian37]

Because the development of science and technology points overwhelmingly to a reality incompatible to centrality of god.

Why?
Because you only understand god to be mythical? What if 'God' can be now classified as a 'Transdemsional being?" does it make Him any less God simply because we have expanded our vocabulary? Does our vocabulary somehow superceed what this being has done?

A religionist is either stupid, or disingenuious, or both, if he avails himself the benefit that something that was only made to work because of the strength of the world view which expells god from centrality, while clinging ostentatiously via words to the centrality of god.

Or maybe, one needs to open his mind a little and not assume he knows how a 'religionist' should think when he claims not to be one.

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Why a sunflower as your avatar, Drich?

I took that picture in my darkest time, it was/is a reminder of however dark it gets, their is hope.

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Not compared to this.....

David, Ran from those who persued Him for a time. Christ intentionally kept a low profile (telling the deciples not to tell anyone He was God) until the time was right. I am not a big fan of the pope, but protecting yourself from the evil this world may want to visit on you is not a matter of faith.

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Yeah, it's just a coincidence that 'God' had to wait for medical science before 'he' could deal with so many medical conditions.

How do you know this to be true?

Of course protecting oneself IS NOT a matter of faith, that's reality, and you don't need a god or a pope to buy bullet proof glass, own a gun, or join the military.

Do you need Allah to protect yourself? Do you need to be a Muslim to have a gun in your house? No and you don't need faith either. The bullet proof glass makes the idea of an all powerful god pointless and exposes the absurd concept for the fraud it really is.

The Pope protects himself because that is reality, but the reality that someone may want to kill someone else for ANY reason, doesn't make stupid stories of Superman vs Lex Luthor real.

[Drich]

would it not stand to reason that I would know "my thinking process" better than you would?

Irrelevent. The salient characteristic of your "thinking" process - predictive power - is better assessed by someone other than you, regardless of anything else of your "thinking" process about which you might conceive to "know" more.

This is why science works and you don't.

You Moved the goal post..

I guess you were right! The salient characteristic of your "thinking" process - predictive power - is better assessed by someone other than you, regardless of anything else of your "thinking" process about which you might conceive to "know" more.

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Do you need Allah to protect yourself? Do you need to be a Muslim to have a gun in your house? No and you don't need faith either. The bullet proof glass makes the idea of an all powerful god pointless and exposes the absurd concept for the fraud it really is.

Surrounding the Pope with bullet proof glass only point to the knoweledge that the death of the pope may not be against God's will. thus causing one to ask why, cascading into one questioning the church. (which from my POV is indeed in God's will.)

[Brian37]

Irrelevent. The salient characteristic of your "thinking" process - predictive power - is better assessed by someone other than you, regardless of anything else of your "thinking" process about which you might conceive to "know" more.

This is why science works and you don't.

You Moved the goal post..

I guess you were right! The salient characteristic of your "thinking" process - predictive power - is better assessed by someone other than you, regardless of anything else of your "thinking" process about which you might conceive to "know" more.

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Do you need Allah to protect yourself? Do you need to be a Muslim to have a gun in your house? No and you don't need faith either. The bullet proof glass makes the idea of an all powerful god pointless and exposes the absurd concept for the fraud it really is.

Surrounding the Pope with bullet proof glass only point to the knoweledge that the death of the pope may not be against God's will. thus causing one to ask why, cascading into one questioning the church. (which from my POV is indeed in God's will.)

No, there is no "God's will" or "Allah's will" or "Yahweh's will" or "Thor's will."

Evolution is why we protect ourselves, if we did not we would not survive as a species. THAT is why humans protect themselves, not because of the fantasies they concoct.

Your point of view is bullshit, I hope for your own sake you don't waste your entire life in your fantasy.

[Violet]

Because technological prowess is the result of a thought process that has demonstrated itself to be both uniquely valid, predictive, and incompatible with such thought techniques as might arrive at some particular god, metaphysical or not; where as metaphysical god is the predictive result of of thought technique that have been demonstrateds to be overwhelmingly lacking in predictive power whereever its predictive power has been tested. It takes a sickening case of special pleding to argue that even so, the bullshit technique remains valid in this one case where the weakminded happen to wish there to be a god.

Do you even know what half of those words mean?

You speak against special pleading.. and yet you plead specially for science. Damn right it's sickening.

Prior to the achievement of technological prowess, it was possible to argue with less obvious disingenuousness than would be needed today that such thought processes as might arrive at metaphysical god was, while not demonstratably valid, was also not demonstrably more invalid than anything else. Hence in the absence of, or obliviousness to, track record for different thinking techniques, it might appear that wish think was as good as any for truth finding, while affording the additional benefit of increasing the chance that such "truth" as might be "found" would also "happen" to comply more to one's own wishes.

Regardless of our technological 'prowess', metaphysical and philosophical subject matter is not impacted by it. I think your word and sentence structure needs some serious work, as I'm having serious difficulty reading that second sentence. Perhaps you should rephrase.

Reading that as it's written is a laugh and a half

So metaphysical god was only justified on the basis of "when everything is bullshit, this is as good a piece of bullshit as anything else". But with the advent of technology, is has been shown that not everything is bullshit, and those which have been shown to be not bullshit does not include metaphysical god, and all those which have been shown to be non-bullshit are also arrived at with techniques, thus validated, that are also incompatible with such god as might have been arrive with other techniques.

I justify a metaphysical god on the basis of bananas existing. Justification is not made better by changing the subject matter of that justification: in every case... righteousness is assumed.

This 'advent' of 'technology' you praise so religiously? It happened at least hundreds of millions of years ago when the first 'tool' was used to an end. No matter how 'far' your treasured technology has progressed: it is irrelevant to metaphysics.

Materialism is the inside of the box, but there is always an outside of the box (even if it consists of nothing). In any case of dualism that involves a metaphysical creator: *THEY BUILT THE FUCKING BOX*. There are rules they use in the box, and they can choose whether to follow them or not. In the case of the 'perfect creator' nonsense: there would be no reason for them to make a rule they did not intend to follow to the letter.