Atheist billboards in Atlanta

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

If you arent as skeptic as an atheist or agnostic, you are going to commit intellectual suicide, become a creationists and belive everything on FOX news. How is that not a slippery slope?
Theists use this argument really well. If you play violent video games, you are going to and kill people

You initially presented me with the arguement that if someone is too skeptical then they won't accept anything. All I did was state the opposite and cited examples of the kinds of people who are all too gullible. That's not a slippery slope.

Perhaps what I said is an understatement, John Calvin (Allegedly a great reformer) used to KILL scientists! Some religous people suffocated science. However, you may find this like interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chr...in_science

What is this you're presenting me with? What are you trying to prove?
You've stated that one guy used to murder scientists and that some religious people suffocated science.
And... what? You need complete thoughts here because you don't appear to have presented me with anything.

Could one argue, that it wasnt Religion itself. It was Christianity entering a primitive place (Europe) Western Europe was where the Babbarians (Franks, Lombards, Anglo-saxons) were, With the decline of the Roman Empire, the Babarians took back the land. (Although Theodoric the Great tried to keep the Roman Empire in tact (he was an Ostrogoth). The papacy only cared that the babarians accepted the Nicene Creed, thus were not followers of arius's theology and philosophy. So perhaps the Roman Empire more so collapsed on itself, for not having their priorities right? The Babarains were primitive people and could of easily contributed to the collapse of science, philosophy, theology etc...

I argued that it was the entire (general) religious establishment of the time. It's also the philosophy (religion has conflicted with virtually every major advancement in astronomy and that tends to lead to the most famous examples of church v science.) How is it not "religion" itself. How does a religion entering a 'primative place' have anything to do with their actions. Moreover, it was your arguement that christianity is the cause for modern science - so why is it that during the early middle ages/dark ages that the predominance of religion means that it, for centuries, did little to bring a civilization those areas during that era?
It wasn't even until the end of the dark ages and the beginning of the renniassance (when religion, while still predominant, was not nearly as influential) for the enlightenment to take hold and scientific advancement to skyrocket and bring humanity to places it could have never have dreamed of in the centuries and millenia prior?
Both religious faith and the prominance of the churches have been waning in the developed world ever since, except in places that have held on to the power of their churches (like the middle east).
Even in the United States, which is fairly unique among developed nations due to the perponderance of the "religious right" is still one of the top nations of the world for scientific achievement and it's no coincidence that it is because this country was founded as a secular government with "seporation of church and state" clause written directly into the founding documents.

Now, just to make something absolutely clear: I'm not saying that christians and christianity is absolutely a roadblock to scientific advancement. Despite the power and affluence of the church during the dark ages, the reason it isn't actually called the "Dark Ages" anymore is because the middle ages do have some advancement, discoveries, and things that occured that isn't all negative. While I don't know of any, I'm sure there are organizations throughout the world who fund research and things of that nature (the vatican, I've recently learned, apparently has its own astronomers - but again even catholocism, despite still being centuries behind in accepting certain scientific ideas and civil rights ideas (and many other backwards beliefs, like any religion) - still accepts and promotes certain aspects of science.

However, in relation to your main point, modern science is not the solely (or even primarily) the result of christian influence. If anything, it has been the opposite of conductive to research.

This isnt true at all. Theology is always being redefined! How we view Romans is being redefined by scholars like N.T Wright. So you cant say that theology is stagnent...

Okay, then enlighten me as to one way that any one religious faith has changed in its viewpoints of the natural world in any significant way. Has any religion rewritten their bible based on new findings or discoveries? Has new theories about god and the events leading from what they believe as the creation changed over the course of the past century? The past decade?
Twenty years ago, the medical field would have said that regrowing entire organs or body parts was impossible. Nowadays, we can regrow simple body parts (ears, noses, skin, etc) while the possibility of being able to grow a human liver, a lung, or a hand is really big news in the medical field right now.
The science textbook of 1900 and the science textbook of 2000 are barely the same kind of book with completely different views of the possibilities of the natural world and the everyday natural world.

The bible I have in my room right now is a King James International english bible written and printed in 1978 with another print run done copyright 1973. Everything in that bible, save a few author notes and perhaps an appendum or preamble done in this and other variations throughout the centuries, is little different than the same version first completed in 1611, according this link.
From what I'm aware, however, it is merely a differently translated version of a prior novel of the same name, which apparently means it didn't change all that much. Modern novels go thorugh this all the time to reach different countries.

I am aware that sometimes this involves also deciding which stories are cannon and which ones are not. The History Channel has touted that there are apparently 'non-cannon' stories that were supposed to be biblical (and some have even been lost - one I would very much like to read because it repudiates the centuries long tradition of the christian love of chastity and abstinence.) Though how a story can be cannon or not cannon for a book that is supposed to be "God's Word. Period." is beyond me.

Still, science changes every day because of discoveries and advancements which can even cause some branches of scientific literature to have to completely rewrite whole textbooks - recently astronomy had to do that because we fully defined what a planet was due to the discovery of 'trans-neptunian objects'.

"Religion isn't stagnant" isn't an arguement. At best, each generation manages to rationalize their beliefs in newer and more interesting ways but the foundation of that faith is always the same - plus, you have the middle east and places like that around the world that have little or no scientific value because - despite their desire for the fruits of science - everything you need to do good science goes against their faith and their world view.

Who cares? Christians who only read KJV commit intellectual suicide, that doesnt mean that all Christians are like that. They will never win, thankfully we are a secular world today (in the developed countries)

Most christians aren't even particularly religious. They'll say they believe in god and they'll say they're christians, but most of them haven't read the bible (or much in the way of theological literature) and they'll take or leave whatever does or doesn't make sense to them.
However, the professionally religious - the priests, rabbis, and those of that nature - are precisely the ones you've stated have committed 'intellectual suicide' - assuming they still actually believe what they're preaching.
The fact of the matter is that the KJV bible is supposed to be the how-to guide to being a christian (or one of it's denominations) with or without their own books in addition or instead of the KJV bible. Just as how Muslims have the Ko'ran, mormons have their own book, I don't know what scientologists have, but my point is that generally, if you don't believe the bible, you're not christian. I'm not sure how this applies if you believe in parts of the bible but not others.
People who believe in a god but not necessarily any bible or particular faith is a deist.
People who believe in a spiritual world without necessarily a divine god are simply spiritual.
People who believe there could be a god to whatever degree but acknowledge that it's unknowable is agnostic.

In any case, I think you may have even proven a point of mine. You and I can certainly agree that christianity is intellectual suicide.

Like what?

Stem Cells.

I was making the point that religous people can and do contribute to science...
However, that should not be an argument. People's world view will make them religous or non religous, so even if al the scientists in the world were atheists/theists, it wouldnt matter at all...

Which is antithical to the point I actually was primarily responding to:

Modern Science owes it existence to Christian Scientists. Period.

However, I did look through more of thos Neil Tyson Speeches and he actually made another point to this same arguemetn as well as his overall point to the entire speech (the link was only a small segment of a much longer speech which was also a part of a much greater conference, which also, I think, included a room full of scientists and experts). Even Richard Dawkins was there, as another video from the same conference had a short discussion going on between them.

In any case, Neil Tyson made the point over the larger speech about intelligent design in our history and that it should be taught in schools from that respect.
The idea being that even as the great thinkers of history were often very religious themselves, they made tremendous contributions to society. Even Newton, a man Tyson himself seems to admire very much, attributed god as to how the motions of the planets kept in motion.
However, Tyson goes on to say that another scientist, before him, who was among the first to chart the heavens and motions of the stars, the 'wandering stars', and the moon was himself also very religious.
However, each and every one of them came to a point of saying "God is there."
For the first scientist, who postitulated of a geocentric universe (I forget his name), said that god was responsible for the motion of the heavens. Despite being very learned himself, that's about as far as he got. Newton, one of the greatest minds of the human race according to Tyson, at one point said that attributed god to being the mind that set the heavens in motion and bound the planets after he himself found the motions of the planets to be centered around the Sun and not the Earth.
Today, people are arguing that god created the universe by 'causing' the big bang.

This, he argued (I am paraphrasing,) was because God has always been the "God of the Gaps" because he can exist no where except in our own ignorance. Even our greatest minds stopped investigating when things got too difficult to figure out and all they had to do was invoke god and all the inquisitiveness and investigation ceases "becaue god was there."

In no better manner does anything ever showcase the human propensity for self-induced ignorance than the idea of intelligent design or any god of the gaps.
It's not one religion or one circumstance or 'some people' that have caused religion or religious folks to hamper science - it's the entire philosophy and there are far, far more examples of religious opression of science than there is of acceptance from it, until perhaps the modern day in secular governments. Yet, even then, only because they have to and there are still fights between science and religion over things like evolution (which is overwhelmingly evidenced for) and pretty much all of astronomy, geology, archeology, and many more due to the conflicts with the idea of creationism.

I should of used something with empirical evidence lol.
If the whole world didnt believe in God (or Jesus for that) doesnt mean that they are right...

It doesn't mean they're wrong either.
Persionally, I'd rather live my life the way I want to than enter the crap-shoot of picking a religion, devoting my life to that religion adn those religious beliefs and find out I'm going to hell (or whatever equivelent punishment there is) for picking and choosing the wrong one. Every one of them has miracles, saviors, a creation story, and each one of them claims to be the 'one true path' in some fashion or another. They can't all be right and I find it far more likely that they're all wrong.
If god existed and he wrote a book, it wouldn't be anything like the bible. God (as theists often define it) is omnipotent and omnicient with infinate intellectual attributes.) If this being existed and it chose to write a novel, it would be consistent, eloquent, simple but with a depth that would test the limits of human understanding, and it awe-inspiring to such a level that no human writing could ever compete with it. The actual bible - any of them at any time in history - is not that novel. It's not even close.
I've read the bible and I've read (most of) the lord of the rings. Tolkein is far better at the craft of hte written word than the bible's authors could ever hope to be.
No human should EVER be able to compete with the written word of a deity or even a sufficently advanced intellect and I find it hard to believe that if any of the written texts are actually the word of god, then there wouldn't be thousands of faiths varying by the individual so widely as it does - there would be one religion and there would be no such doubts, but even with centuries of the written word of god, we mortals have figured out far more about our world, the universe, our origins, and the facts of life with far greater eloquence and beauty than any story in the bible.
It's certainly nothing to base your life around.