09-18-2010, 07:23 PM | #16 |
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I've seen Einstein referred to many times in similar discussions. I don't get it. Why should anyone think that his opinion on this subject is any more respectable than anybody else's?
Copernicus and St. Thomas Aquinas were priests. Does Einstein trump them? |
09-18-2010, 07:27 PM | #17 |
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since he was Jewish when he DID identify with a religion, I doubt he gave them little thought
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09-18-2010, 07:53 PM | #18 | ||||||
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I always thought the direct quote of Einstein summed it up.... "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." All else is pretty much speculation about what he meant or how he arrived at that conclusion. I prefer to just stick to what he had to say on the matter. Quote:
What I asked was if you thought discussing the matter with him would be like "rolling in mud with swine"? The point of my OP and this thread was not a debate about who is right or wrong, it was about being civil to each other when discussing it. Quote:
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Cheers, PKFFW |
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09-18-2010, 07:55 PM | #19 | |
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I did not suggest he was right or wrong on the matter. Cheers, PKFFW |
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09-18-2010, 08:08 PM | #20 | |
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Actually, I think you'll find swinging from the chandeliers is OK, so long as one puts one's Zany Carter down first. If it isn't I should probably get down now |
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09-18-2010, 09:07 PM | #21 |
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I really think these threads are a waste of time.
No one here can prove they are right. For both sides it is simply a matter of faith. And, personally, both sides are responsible for all the hate. |
09-18-2010, 09:48 PM | #22 |
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maybe it's because I started a lil ol fire the last time I did it. knocked a few of the candles out of their holders.
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09-18-2010, 09:56 PM | #23 |
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09-18-2010, 10:52 PM | #24 | |
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It's the difference between believing there's some sort of cake in the tin, and the belief that, not only is there a cake, but it's a victoria sponge with a 90 degree slice missing. One is more likely to be true than the other imho. |
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09-18-2010, 11:02 PM | #25 |
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I had a feeling faith was the wrong word to use.
Try this: There is a cake tin. Some believe there is a cake in the tin. Others believe the tin is empty. Until the tin is opened and the contents, or lack thereof are revealed, all either side has is their belief. I don't think anyone can open that tin yet. And I believe there are people on both sides who don't want it opened. |
09-19-2010, 02:36 AM | #26 | |
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Civility - to sum it up in a short sentence - lead us to 9/11, fatwas against cartoonists, jews calling every critiscist a nazi and so on. IMHO, no thinking person can be religious, and ergo most religious people can't think! Some can, but they just make profit of the stupidity of others (collecting money from their followers, or using the following crowd as canonball meat). Indeed none of the sides can prove they're right, but it's not a matter of faith, it's a matter of reasoning: the arguments against the existence of a god (personal or not) just make much more sense. Did you know their was an unwritten pact between church before educational revolution? Taxes kept people poor, and churches kept them dumb - poor and dumb people are the best prerequisites to wage a war. |
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09-19-2010, 02:51 AM | #27 |
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And here you are, trying to incite one.
This thread was meant to be a civil exchange of ideas. |
09-19-2010, 03:09 AM | #28 | |
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FWIW, here's my personal theory, formed from decades of experience - there are arseholes everywhere. Some use their religion as an excuse. Some use others' religion as an excuse. But they're still arseholes, and they still stink. |
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09-19-2010, 03:35 AM | #29 | ||
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If there is a closed cake tin, does it matter if there is anything in it? We can't open it anyway, so why bother... Quote:
Isn't that what THEY are said to be doing all the time? How is this different then? It's funny how one could just "invert" most atheist to get a religous zealot. You'd not really need to change anything, just the sign, from minus to plus, so to speak. -- Agnostic FTW! |
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09-19-2010, 03:50 AM | #30 | |
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In an article titled "Is There a God?" commissioned, but never published, by Illustrated magazine in 1952, Bertrand Russell wrote: "If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time." |
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