There is no God.

[Cato]

8 pages of this thread and still no sign of God.

[Bibliofagus]

What use is your bible then?

What use is any rule book? It helps you get there quicker and more efficiently than having to work all of that out yourself every time.

So you would oppose the bible if it was proven to you that it's actually not helping people reach god?
Now that's interesting. I for one considered converting, but then I read the actual bible...

[fr0d0]

I believe pickup, that the literal translation of Genesis has nothing to say about cosmology. I do indeed accept current popular scientific accounts of the history of the universe.

A species of ape developed sufficiently to want to work out it's purpose. Later, more apes tried to use their findings as an alternate to real science. They ridiculed the preceding apes and called their stories "inconsistent". How the preceding apes laughed in their graves.

Ho ho ho

---

What use is any rule book? It helps you get there quicker and more efficiently than having to work all of that out yourself every time.

So you would oppose the bible if it was proven to you that it's actually not helping people reach god?
Now that's interesting. I for one considered converting, but then I read the actual bible...

I might be encouraged to write translation #865346890655

[Bibliofagus]

Erm what?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Science always works on proof though, and if shonuff claims that science claims something, anything, then he better be prepared to support that claim with evidence.

BZZT. Wrong, wrong, wrongidy wrong. Science NEVER works on proof. Nothing - absolutely NOTHING - in science is ever 'proved'.

Science works on 'best answers'. If science operated to a standard of proof, then science would never progress. To paraphrase Gould, 'proved' in science means that something is established to such a level of certainty that to withhold provisional assent would simply be nutty. 'Provisional' is the key word here. Pickup made the claim that science supports his position that God is a myth. In this, he is perfectly correct. Pickup doesn't make the claim that science proves God is a myth, just that science supports the idea.

I'll grant you that it is a negative kind of support, since there isn't exactly evidence that God is a myth, but since there isn't any evidence whatsoever to demonstrate that God is anything other than a myth, this is good enough to go on with.

Boru

[fr0d0]

No I wouldn't oppose the bible because I know through personal experience and the experience of a massive amount of other people that it's good. Lots of people don't understand it, or interpret it in the opposite way to me. I see no serious opposition so I wouldn't agree that it doesn't work. Haters gonna hate.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

So...there's nothing divine or supernatural about it at all? Just another book?

It's an ordinary book, or set of books made by humans. It just happens to be the best there is/ as perfect as we have, and as such the ultimate guide.

Hardly 'ultimate'. I certainly wouldn't drive over a suspension bridge built by engineers who used the Bible as a guide. I've read the Bible more than once, and I don't recall seeing Paul's Epistle to the Metallurgists. Perhaps it's in the Apocrypha?

Boru

[fr0d0]

I'll grant you that it is a negative kind of support, since there isn't exactly evidence that God is a myth, but since there isn't any evidence whatsoever to demonstrate that God is anything other than a myth, this is good enough to go on with.

Boru

Castigation accepted.

Scientifically there's nothing to say at all about God. Although pickups focus on the gaps in knowledge as evidence of an ever shrinking God is his own misconception which leads to his claim. If bad information was the stuff of science then I'd honour him with some credulity.

[Mudhammam]

Scientifically there's nothing to say at all about God.

So you believe in a God who never interacts in the world? Who has no influence over natural processes such as life and death, disease and catastrophe, either because he can't or cares not to, and that sin is a mere human construct developed before a more sensible, comprehensive approach to moral philosophy came about?

GLAD TO HEAR IT!

Although pickups focus on the gaps in knowledge as evidence of an ever shrinking God is his own misconception which leads to his claim.

Don't put words in my mouth. I did not say "the gaps of knowledge" are "evidence of an ever shrinking God." That's true but on the contrary, the actual facts of reality that minimize those gaps are antithetical to most (incoherent) notions of God, especially yours.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I'll grant you that it is a negative kind of support, since there isn't exactly evidence that God is a myth, but since there isn't any evidence whatsoever to demonstrate that God is anything other than a myth, this is good enough to go on with.

Boru

Castigation accepted.

Scientifically there's nothing to say at all about God. Although pickups focus on the gaps in knowledge as evidence of an ever shrinking God is his own misconception which leads to his claim. If bad information was the stuff of science then I'd honour him with some credulity.

Actually, the 'God of the gaps' is a fairly well known line of reasoning.

There was a time in human history when it was believed that nothing (literally) happened without the direct intervention of God. For instance, a flower simply couldn't bloom unless God said, 'Flower, open thou.' Given what we know of plant biology, God becomes irrelevant to the opening of a flower - God may direct a flower to bloom, but God isn't needed for the phenomenon to occur. This applies more and more as we learn more and more about the world around us. There simply isn't very much left for God to do.

And a God with nothing to do looks suspiciously like a God that isn't there at all.

Boru