immortal

I care, I think Moontanman was right when he said that it is people who have moderate beliefs are the one's really broken since they don't criticize those fringe extremists of their own cult. These religious leaders come on streets and fight when a politician of their own cult is arrested for corruption but they don't criticize or even raise a single voice when a false self-proclaimed leader of a cult openly exploits women and sexually abuse both men and women. We expect that the world around is good, but its not, this is where the scientific attitude of critical thinking should be exercized, just as we criticize pseudoscience and frauds with a scientific attitude we should criticize religious beliefs. I am not asking anyone to abandon their belief but stop blindly accepting things as true, stop believing in god so much that it affects your life and the lives of others especially when you have no knowledge of god. Its normal to have doubt and if a god is true he won't be angry at me for not believing in him when I didn't had sufficient evidence to accept his existence. We should make our children develop critical thinking and a scientific attitude to not to fall into pseudoscience or frauds and put one's life in jeopardy. Therefore scientific attitude is very essential and I think same kind of standards should be applied for religion too. But that doesn't mean that we should expect evidence for god to come from a peer-reviewed journal, that would be unwise but don't accept things as true unless you see it with your own eyes. The video is not in english but the following example of a case study clearly depicts her narration of how she was exploited by this cult leader who seem to have a foundation in the U.S http://www.lifebliss...org/default.asp Dominance and Submission: The Psychosexual Exploitation of Women in Cults - Janja Lalich Don't believe in anyone who is self-proclaimed without testing them even though he claims to be a God. I don't understand why someone has to build a foundation to make people believe in him or in his god, put your evidence on the table people will follow you but such evidences are really hard to come by, while there might be some truth in such a philosophical practice don't accept it on face value, research and analyse it from all perspectives and sources. For example - This philosophy of non-doership is used to evade from sin while doing basic actions not to justify yourself for your wrong doings which causes harm to others. This is pseudoscience, this isn't science. There is no such thing as "third eye" in the brain, if it exists it is non-empirical and metaphysical, it definitely doesn't exist in the brain. In an another incident a man had gouged both of his eye balls and the justification that he gave was that god came in his dream and asked for his eyes. I agree with the OP that we should minimize ignorance and perhaps keep religious beliefs out of our real world activities as much as possible so that its effects are insignificant but we don't have to go to such an extreme as to make everyone look down on all those who believe in God treating those who harm and those who don't equally.

Anyways, I have to agree to disagree here, its not convincing.

Science can't say much about beliefs which doesn't have positive evidence against them. I wouldn't ask or force people to stop believing and promote science as an ideology but atleast people should update themselves and withdraw those beliefs which are contrary to the available evidence. I wonder how many people still believe that the earth is flat.

The definition of an embryo covers the stages from the start of fertilization until it hatches or gives birth. In developmental biology even the protoplasm plays an important role in regulating the expression of DNA and its not all about DNA. Its not appropriate to say that there is something like chicken Kinase or chicken phospharylase. IMO chicken as such doesn't exist until its developmental pathways are well established and distinguished effectively (i.e the first resemblance of a chick embryo).

There is a lot of difference between the words "chicken" and "chicken embryo". I think one should be careful while replacing one with the other. Throughout this process the organism can be called as a chicken embryo and once it hatches out it is called as a chicken.

The correct answer is that the chicken embryo came first but when someone specifically asks whether the chicken or the chicken's egg then the answer is chicken's egg.

You've outsmarted me there.

To be literally called as a chicken, as a separate species from its predecessor there must be a point in time where a breed between the new population and its predecessor failed to produce a fertile offspring, as long it was producing a fertile offspring it ceases to be a chicken and once it fails it can truly be called as a chicken and that one chicken came from an egg, a chicken egg which produces a chicken. So I think it was the chicken's egg which came first.

The problem or the criteria is not just to determine how many people believe in god, the criteria is to determine how much correlation exists between rational interpretations of different religious traditions through out human history. Whatever such results throw out, it will be an objective way of accepting or believing that those religious traditions were indeed in contact with some aspect of objective reality with an unbiased presupposition. Such a consensus is incomplete and inconsistent, take all the religious traditions of the world not just the bible and evil is not the cause of suffering in this world, a morally perfect god doesn't have to strive to end evil what he has to strive for is to end suffering allowing necessary evil to fulfil his works.

Thanks for taking your time to contribute to this thread. I am not claiming to show that Roman Mithraism was the same as Persian Mithraism, The Mithras of the romans might be of a separate origin altogether and it is very much likely that it was but that was not the main aim of this thread. I have read the Marvin Meyer's translations of Mithras Liturgy and I have also read the Mitra tradition of the vedic period and there are strong similarities between them. 1. In both of those unparallel traditions the ascent to heaven is used to achieve immortality. 2. Both of those traditions clearly mentions about the gate keepers and the apparent difficulty in having a safe passage to their final destination to the ultimate pleroma of God. The initiate is guided by Mithraic/Mitraic gods so that he may have a safe passage. 3. Both are worshiping the Sun God (There is no doubt that the vedic Mitraic tradition was purely based on sun worship and in the Mithras Liturgy the egyptian initiate clearly mentions about the sun god "Helios-Mithras-Aion" and the religious experience described in the process of acsending to heaven is very much similar to the followers of vedic Mitraic traditions). One can find the translations of Marvin Meyer here - > http://hermetic.com/...as-liturgy.html One can find the descriptions of ascent to heaven in the vedic Mithraic tradition in this book - > http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/291003.MahaDarshana I have tried to buy an english translation of that book but they say that the publishers still haven't released the english version of that book, otherwise I would have quoted that particular passage here. Devudu Shastry was not a scholar of Roman Mithraism, he was a scholar of vedic Mithraic tradition. You won't find much info about him over the internet. There are things which google can't find you. In fact this gives support to my case that disconnected people following different traditions across different cultures are describing the same things giving rational interpretations. My sources are well referenced and its official as to this particular sub-topic is concerned. Let me clarify some of the things on what is commonly accepted and what is still under dispute. I think everyone agree with Max Muller here, the proto Indo-Iranian religion was a clearly a Sun worshiping religion. There is no dispute here. The characteristics of the Persian God of Mithra and the vedic God of Mitra is very much identical. He represents friendship, witness to a political treaty, righteousness etc etc. If Roman Mithraism originated from the Persian Mithraism then the Mithras of Rome does has an history of atleast 3000 years behind it. If Roman Mithraism was purely a roman invention or discovery then the claim of "Mithras predated Jesus" is questionable. I have read that the apostle of gentiles, Paul was worshiping Mithras before his conversion to Christianity and they said that he thought Mithras was Jesus. I am not sure about the credibility of that source and its entirely irrelevant to the main aim of this thread. What I am interested is in the religious experience of the ascent to heaven by Paul himself. Yes, I said that the origin of Roman Mithras from Persian Mithraism is still under dispute and many have different opinions to it. However as Max Muller said that the persian Mithra and the vedic Mitra were derived from the same proto god and we can pretty much agree on this. The connection of Mithras Liturgy with the Roman Mithras might be dubious but when you look at the similarities of Mithras Liturgy with the proto Indo-Iranian religion one is forced to conclude that in both Mithras Liturgy and the people of proto Indo-Iranian religion were worshiping the same Sun God. Mithras Liturgy predates Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and they were developed much later according to this source -> http://bmcr.brynmawr...2006-07-41.html. As you have said it has no connection with gnosticism or the jewish God or even with Christianity. I didn't made that claim it was Marvin Meyer who said that the Roman Mithras has connections with Christianity. But it might have influenced later Gnosticism. Even in Gnosticism which came at a later time, there is mention of Aeons guiding the initiate to have a safe passage to the ultimate pleroma of the God and they teach that Jesus is one of the Aeons. There is so much similarity between the Platonic realism of Plato and the Mithraism of the far-east of Indo-Iranians. Mithraic traditions support that Plato was right in his claim of existence of forms in a separate Platonic realm and the way we access this platonic realm is still a mystery but Mithraic traditions have observed the platonic realm and also the human mind. Plato didn't knew about Mithraism and neither the Mithraic traditions knew about Plato's works and yet they conclude the same thing giving rational explanations. These things indeed need explanations. Religious experiences are ineffable. Both Paul and the Indo Mithraic traditions say that it is way better for one to experience it oneself rather than trying to understand it through language. I wish I could translate that passage for you but I don't get clear words to clearly transfer the meaning from my mother language to english and things can get misrepresented. It is better to read it from the primary source as I given in the link above. There is very little that we know about the Roman Mithras and so is the same for the proto Indo-Iranian Mithraism but since they were well organized, we do have a lot of information about them and it provides a good enough source to study the Mithras Liturgy. The proto Indo-Iranian Mithraism should be considered as orthodox Mithraism, they were well organized in the ancient times, ofcourse it has been lost as we moved on to the modern age and both of the nation's religion has transformed quite a lot. But the Indo-Iranian Mithraism was not borrowed from any other sources. Now if there is indeed a connection between the Mithras Liturgy and the Persian Mithra then these varieties of Mithraism would make Persian Mithraism as the orthodox Mithraism. The Mithras Liturgy is based on stoic philosophy and so is the proto Indo Mithraic religion, both are based on Sun worship. As far as the Roman cult of Mithras is concerned we need to study their way of life and what they were doing in their underground temples. As I said earlier, he was not a scholar of the Roman Mithras, he was a scholar of the vedic Mitraic tradition. I did spent considerable amount of time researching this and I am not interested in the issue of the connection of Jesus with Mithras, it seems very likely that Roman Mithraism seems to have been invented rather than derived from the Persian Mithraism. You're coming from the view of Roman Mithras but that's not the only source which I used to build my case on. I am looking at Mithras Liturgy from the angle of orthodox proto Indo-Iranian Mithraic religion itself. When seen from such an angle with credible sources it does compels me to take Mithras Liturgy seriously.

Not necessarily.

If mathematics is a language used to formally define and establish the relationship between things with out any ambiguity and if physical models are mathematical models used to model observed reality then why there are so many interpretations of those models? Why do they arise? Does different interpretations mean that the model is incomplete or what does it mean? I am just not able to understand relationship between interpretations, mathematics and physical models.

Yes, that's really something which we should ask ourselves, what is our potential, are we divine or are we just an intelligent mammal with a highly developed culture as espoused by evolutionary psychology, there is nothing wrong with questioning these things and this is why we have philosophy.

How is asking whether a synthetic posterior statement in metaphysics is possible or not, a form of wishful thinking. All scientific knowledge comes from the senses and all religious knowledge comes with out the senses. Even theists don't accept something as true without seeing. Faith == ignorance, we are not claiming to know something which we don't know.

I never said that the god of the bible used evolution to get us here, in fact that is exactly what I don't blieve. I said "I am convinced that god doesn't use DNA to design life" which implies that he didn't used evolution. It shows how natural selection can add new information by developing an adaptive gene which codes for a functional protein which is contrary to your statements in this whole thread.

Yes, I said I'm a theist and for me god has nothing to do with evolution nor the big bang, in fact the idea of a god has nothing to do with the natural world. Darwin's ideas were one of the powerful ideas in the history of mankind and there is undeniable evidence for evolution, there is no excuse for not believing in evolution. Whether god exists or does not exist, evolution by natural selection remains as a fact. And also those intelligent design proponents are wrong if they are thinking that it is god which is designing the bio-machinery of life, I am convinced that god doesn't use DNA to design life, however that doesn't mean intelligent design is wrong if they are talking about something else other than god like aliens or any other things. What ever it is if intelligent design have to be called as science and to be taught in schools they should first come up with predictions which can be falsified so that we can know whether there are designers or not and that's a huge challenge, I am open to other possibilities if they indeed make it as proper science but I seriously doubt that they can come up with a falsifiable scientific theory, hence I can safely put ID into the unfalsifiable world of metaphysics.

Explaining gene duplication - this paper clearly shows why the bold part of your statement is false, it is very much possible. http://euplotes.biology.uiowa.edu/web/ibs593/week8/zhang.pdf - Here is the actual literature. Once lucaspa, one of the biological experts said that this is one of the important paper for evolution by natural selection.

The allegory of cave from Plato and Socrates clearly depicts the funny battle that is going on between the religious people and the non-theists. Here is a small dialectic of my thoughts. Atheist: You're broken, you use faith to accept something as valid which is inconsistent. Theist: You're the one who is in ignorance, you're like those prisoners in the cave who ridicule and make a mockery of those prisoners who were set free and who have achieved enlightenment and had seen the light. Athiest: You don't question the existence of god and just accept it on blind faith. Theist: You don't question the experience from your senses and you just accept it as real. For me anything or anyone outside of it is god. Atheist: Religion has not contributed anything to the progress of humanity and you're self deluded and the idea of god is an infectious meme which needs to be minimized. Theist: The natural world is ever changing, there is no point in investing our time in something which will eventually turn into a star dust. The world of forms is eternal and unchanging and truly worthy of knowing. You're the one who is deluded. Atheist: We need to minimize the impact of religion and our political leaders should make rational decisions which affects all our lives in turn. Theist: No, the world should be run by philosopher-kings who can give the right justice based on their knowledge in lofty things. Atheist: We have explanations from pyschology as to why you hold such childish beliefs. Theist: We have theistic explanations as to why some people don't believe in God. I am just too ignorant of many things to call anyone broken.

Its worth adding some additional information and other opinions.

I don't have any expertise on mathematics and I don't know whether mathematicians invent it or just discover it and mathematicians like Godel was a strong platonist. Kurt Godel said "I don't believe in natural science" and also "Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine".

From the Gnostic point of view, faith == ignorance, you either have knowledge of god and know that he exists or you don't have any knowledge of god and do not know he exist. Faith is more of a practical commitment towards god, it doesn't mean we have to completely accept his existence and start believing in him blindly, this is of no use, its darkness, its ignorance. Whether one is willing to show a practical commitment towards god is left to the individual depending on his interpretations on the available data and evidence.

I think the word Logos and God completely derails the thread, if we can for a short moment keep aside an ill-defined term like God we can discuss about this thread effectively. I don't think this thread has anything to do with the existence of God or the literal Greek mythology, I think Athena is talking about the morals based on human experience which guide our political conduct and a right conduct to our life. Such stories are known as Panchatantra. See- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchatantra These are not creation mythos, these are logos based on repeated human experience on the nature of humans and the world. What Athena seem to be accusing is that in your country you lost such a liberal education when an education purely based on technology was introduced without much knowledge about right wise conduct. This has nothing to with morals coming from religion or god, these are morals based on common experience which should be taught in schools among all youths.

Topic split - http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/66663-mithras-liturgy/

According to Max Muller, the proto Indo-Iranian religion started of as sun worship and later branched into independent religions of the Persian god of Mithra and the vedic god of Mitra. Mithraism was one of the most popular religions of the roman imperialism along side Christianity and the origins of Mithraism in Rome is still disputed (See - Mithraic Mysteries and Mithraism and Christianity). What is Mithras Liturgy? It was first coined as Mithras Liturgy by the german scholar Albrecht Dieterich. The Germans were always interested in these things and they are still interested in it even to this date. It was later translated into english by Hans Dieter Betz who also a german scholar. Here is an abstract pdf review of his book. http://www.plekos.uni-muenchen.de/2004/rbetz.pdf. Marvin Meyer - http://www1.chapman.edu/~meyer/ who was interviewed in various TV channels like the National Geographic for the documentary Gospel of Judas is a strong proponent of this view. So there is evidence that these varieties of Mithraism which were being practiced in Egypt and in the Greco-Roman religions had its roots in the orthodox Mithraism of the Iranians and of the Aryans in the far east. Marvin Meyer has translated the text. http://hermetic.com/pgm/mithras-liturgy.html As you can see the text of Mithras Liturgy appears from no where in between a section of Greek homeric writings about Zeus. The egyptian scholar seems to have had an habit of collecting religious rituals and clearly mentions about Helios-Mithras-Aion, the god to whom the text and the ritual is addressed to. The ritual is about achieving immortality by ascending the soul into different realms, an epiphany which is a commom feature in orthodox Mithraism where Mithras appear to help the initiate to guide him into a safe passage to the highest pleroma of the supreme God and these similar experiences have been documented by the later gnostic traditions where the term Aeons appear instead of Mithras to guide them into a safe passage upto the pleroma of God. This is a common feature to be seen in the orthodox Mitraism of the vedic period and is still very much alive up until this age. Similar experiences of the ascent to heaven is claimed by Paul (Corinthians). http://wordtrade.com/religion/bible/corinthians.htm Similar parallels can be seen in the works of a scholar from Bangalore named Devudu Narasimha Shastry(1920-1970's) who was well versed in these mystery religions and clearly describes the ascent of an initiate into higher realms. What is more interesting is that he too lived his life based on stoic principles and that confirms the stoic philosophy inherent in all varities of Mithraic religions. The scholar seemed to have behaved with a calm mind even after hearing the news of his son's death which came through a letter while he was away with his wife for a religious program and on that particular day he seemed to have given the most outstanding speech of his life and later when his wife came to know about this she had fell down unconscious and the scholar didn't even attended his son's funeral. http://rand-rambler.blogspot.in/2005/09/devudu-sthitaprajna.html. The stoic philosophy is quite inherent in these religions. Now these things do deserve explanations and challenges our accepted worldviews and these things are bothering me from quite some time. The ritual might look magical to us but to those who have understood its deeper meaning knows the rational importance of such rituals. A collaborative work is needed to reconstruct the practical knowledge of such rituals and I don't even know where to begin searching for it. These claims do suggest that a God hypothesis is an equally competing hypothesis to explain our origins in the cosmos, its not the job of scientists to figure out this, this is a completely different numnious world and has nothing do with science, its the job of theologians and theists and they need to scratch their heads. There is an equal possibility that religion might provide us with true immortality. There is lots of evidence for god and one can see how silly it is for one to demand empirical evidence for god when the very realm of god is non-empirical. We have already lost a lot of knowledge and by suppressing such thinking we will lose it forever and New Atheists and people who directly attack faith have to address such things if they ever want to succeed in their campaign of intolerance towards religions.

Let's stick with the above conclusions. Stephen Hawking is a recent high profile advocate of positivism, at least in the physical sciences. In The Universe in a Nutshell (p. 31) he writes: Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by Karl Popper and others. According to this way of thinking, a scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make. A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested… If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes.