Moontanman

I have seen data that says that most scientists represent themselves as Christian, I'm not sure if that is a personal god or just their belief in a god and the christian one is the one they are most familiar with but I honestly think it's irrelevant to the discussion because the idea that all scientists are atheists and therefore cannot be trusted is bogus... The idea that god has to be believed on faith alone has not always been true, stopping the rotation of the earth would be quite convincing...

I understand that and I disagree, it would be quite easy for god to provide real evidence of his existence, he has in the past if you believe his holy books, now days a miracle could be documented for all time, simply stopping the sun in the sky would be quite convincing, exchange the orbits of Mars and Venus so they can be inhabited without disturbing the orbits of the other planets would be an absolute miracle, and don't say we can't demand a test of god, he has done miraculous things in the past, very distant past, not with the time frame that would allow us to know it to have happened, wild claims are easy to make, showing them be real is more difficult, but aside from that you are offering it as evidence of your god and as I said it supports the notion of all gods not just yours...

None the less your statement "for those that believe no evidence is needed and for those that do not none is possible" is not evidence of anything what so ever and does not support your Christian god, if you insist it does then it supports Lord Krishna just as much, and my ancestors Great Spirit and Odin, Zeus, Jupiter, Adrianna, the list goes on and on.... Have you ever considered the reason saying you are religious is damaging to your social life might because it indicates you are likely judgmental and consistently trying to tell people the good news they do not see as particularly good or even news?

Scourg, if you can agree to disagree then you are not part of the problem but it's still scary that you don't seem to see there is a problem... No i have no salvation to offer anyone, all i have is reason i also lack hell fire to threaten them as well but i do offer reason, to me reason is very important because with out reason religion spirals into the black hole of fundamentalism, persecution of anyone who doesn't believe and on down into death and destruction, it has many times before and will again unless we can all agree to disagree and go on with our lives...

njaohnt, evidence is just a made up word, are you really suggesting that??? Atheist scientists? Most scientists are religious in some way most of them are Christian. You are the extreme fringe, your ideas lead to things like burning heretics at the stake, can you not see this? And rightly so but why does the idea that god, and in fact by your own assertions your god, made the world not need evidence? Show some evidence stop making empty claims... I gave evidence it is social pressure, now show evidence it is not...

I have a real problem with these belief and faith concepts. I have spent considerable time in my life trying to understand religion, much of it was as a true believer. I am talking years here, but every time i question a theists beliefs they automatically make the assertion that if i had just read or listened to their arguments or their holy book i would see the error of my ways. It's quite insulting, but if i ask them to listen to my point of view or read a link to some information or spend even a few minutes watching something on the subject they rarely even bother to do anything but come back with the old if you only looked really close to our argument with faith you would see the error of your ways. I have looked, I have read, I have tried to have faith but all i ever see are people being manipulated by other people, either for for personal gain or by genuine concern but never by anything even close to real evidence. Human beings are easily manipulated by peer pressure and by social pressure. It is easy to show this, and I do mean easy. How can 2 billion people be wrong? Easily, because of social pressure, if enough people tell you that throwing a virgin into a volcano will keep it from erupting then that's what you do, blind faith and belief can lead to insanity on a large scale. Not understanding this has the potential to destroy civilization, it has done so in the past and if it continues will do so in the future. I have no desire to convert others to atheism or to some idea of god 3.0 but it's important to understand that just because a large group tells you something is true this doesn't have any bearing on it's veracity. Believe if you must or even if it is simply easier to do in your peer group but always remember that anything you are told by another or even if you experience it your self unless it can be verified you should be skeptical and not allow your self to feel motivated to make others conform because that is basically what religion does. It allows people to justify their need to make others conform to what they think are the right social norms and it can lead to really horrendous things, yes even the really really really wonderful news you feel the need to give inevitably leads to crazy. It can be shown all throughout history, once the idea that you are correct and that "god" is on your side anything can be justified and often is. Does everyone do this? Of course not, i am sure that when witches were being burned or Catholics or Protestants or Pagans or who ever a large number of people were horrified... but social pressure and fear of unjustified beliefs allowed them to allow it to happen. All religions seem to trend in the direction of fundamentalism at the fringes, in the US these fringes are doing their best to gain as much control as possible and good Christians can't seem to see how insane this idea is. Once the fringes gain control over the masses they start to persecute others and eventually it will be you.... either you will be persecuted or be a part of the group that persecutes, it's inevitable, it always happens. the only way to avoid this is to avoid unsubstantiated beliefs and to stop trying to make others conform, allow others to disagree because it allows you to disagree as well.... i have no desire to convert anyone to anything but the very fact that so many theists come here to a science forum to try to convince others they are correct is indicative of what I am saying. It's rare to see anyone who does not believe go to a religious site and try to convince them of anything but theists seem to be attracted to non believers like a moth to a flame, the flame is evidence of reality, and the results are the moth being burned or the flame being snuffed out...

You are at best being condescending and at worst insulting... Do you think I never looked into religion? It dominated much of my life. I at least have made a real effort to understand religion, yes i once believed, very deeply, but it's irrational to believe something on faith alone and your idea of belief is not evidence for anything but your own faith. As I pointed out every other religion demands and gets the same faith from it's followers and they believe just as strongly as you. How is your faith justification of belief in any god much less yours? Is faith just part of group social pressure? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2NduSCLiMA

Want to rethink that Justin? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States Race and ethnicity Main articles: Americans, Racial and ethnic demographics of the United States, and Hyphenated American The U.S. population's distribution by race and ethnicity in 2010 was as follows:[43] Race / Ethnicity Number Percentage of U.S. population Americans 308,745,538 100.0 % White 223,553,265 72.4 % Black or African American 38,929,319 12.6 % American Indian or Alaska Native 2,932,248 0.9 % Non-Hispanic Asian 14,674,252 4.8 % Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander 540,013 0.2 % Some Other Race 19,107,368 6.2 % Two or more races 9,009,073 2.9 % Not Hispanic or Latino 258,267,944 83.7 % Non-Hispanic White 196,817,552 63.7 % Non-Hispanic Black or African American 37,685,848 12.2 % Non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native 2,247,098 0.7 % Non-Hispanic Asian 14,465,124 4.7 % Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander 481,576 0.2 % Non-Hispanic Some Other Race 604,265 0.2 % Non-Hispanic Two or more races 5,966,481 1.9 % Hispanic or Latino 50,477,594 16.3 % White Hispanic 26,735,713 8.7 % Black or African American Hispanic 1,243,471 0.4 % American Indian or Alaska Native Hispanic 685,150 0.2 % Asian Hispanic 209,128 0.1 % Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander Hispanic 58,437 0.0 % Some Other Race Hispanic 18,503,103 6.0 % Two or more races Hispanic 3,042,592 1.0 % Total 308,745,538 100.0%

It's all in your perception, a dung beetle has a completely different world view. I wasn't trying to say we are shit in the sense you seem to mean but so many seem to think that something had to create the universe and then go on to say that something has to be an intelligent creature. Why couldn't the universe simply be the result of natural forces we know nothing about and have nothing to do with intelligence of any kind? A creature that excretes universes as a by product and is totally unaware of what it does is just as justifiable as an always existing intelligence...

My point would be that it's not an argument for any god much less the Christian one unless it's also an argument for every other god. Do you think that Muslim do not have faith? or Hindus? Wiccins? All religions require you to have faith and believe in things not demonstrably true. Your faith shows nothing but your gullibility... Faith with no evidence is... horse feathers....

njaohnt, yes we are controlled by our brains, what part of that do you have a problem with. Injure your brain and you stop, no mysterious soul comes to the rescue and keeps moving you around. You are your brain, your brain is you, cut off the oxygen to your brain and you die, you do not continue to move around inside your body with out a brain.... your body can live with a dead brain or mostly dead anyway but it is just a body, it has nothing and will never be anything with out your brain... there is no mysterious soul telling your body what to do independent of your brain... ever hear of brain dead? that is dead, dead njaohnt, dead... actually only a very small part of your brain is you the rest is just machinery... Horse feathers....

If this is what you are arguing then why does god have to be intelligent at all, why couldn't god be some uber universal creature that just shit's universes and has no idea it does? Unless of course you follow most of the scripture of the worlds major religions... and not just the Abrahamic ones either...

Raelians? Book of Urantia?

I don't know dude, he seems to have what Hillary wants and that has to be at least a Herculean task... Demi god possibly?

Why does it have to be anal to be homosexual? Of course there was always bear fat as a lube, then there is the slight detail of getting the bear to let you have some fat... Possibly you could offer him a BJ to distract him??? No "honey I'm off to the adult book store to get some lube, be home soonest" of course obtaining the bear grease would be a testament to true love...

That's actually really not a bad point, if god is real then he is, if nothing else, completely fair, he ignores everyone equally...

No, I do not mean mulattoes, almost no one who has ever met me has identified me as anything but white. Right now my eyes are sky blue, my hair is white and wavy but I'm old, when I was a tot my hair was straight and almost white, then it turned curly and was light brown, in my twenties my hair was like wool and dark brown. My skin, where it is exposed to the sun, is darker than say a Scandinavian person but darker than most where the sun doesn't shine as well. My racial make up is mostly Native American, Scots/Irish, Melungeon, and no doubt some more recent African as well. Where would you put me, what does your racist world view tell you...

Sex does seem to be a topic of many leading questions...

Either you didn't watch the vids I posted or bother to listen but I watched yours. The guy is a racist asshole, he cherry picked his data and obviously has an ax to grind. Your incredulity is irrelevant, gene flow occurs, the environment determines which genes are most successful. Genes for dark skin do not do well in northern climates and tend to die out but other genes do not. Genes for light skin do not do well in more equatorial climates, you seem to think that skin color is some kind of defining trait of human beings. This is demonstrably not true, very dark skinned people are not necessarily of "negro race" or "black" as racism suggests. Of course race exists, there are differences among the populations of various peoples determined by overall population dynamics and climate. These differences are not fixed, not definitive of humans in anyway, and cannot be used to show any character or cultural superiority as defined by racists... This is true but they are not genetically isolated, genes flow through human populations but as genes are absorbed into "ethnic" populations they are dominated by that gene pool and traits that do not show value are filtered out, skin color is one of these traits.. A population of "ethnic" Chinese who have green eyes are probably descended from Roman soldiers who were part of a lost army that went that direction in search of something centuries ago, green eyes survived but the local population is still Chinese...

Radioactive mercury, that sounds particularly nasty as elements go...

Dolphins have sex with each other for fun, homosexual sex, they even have sex with other species... There is at least one species of bat that oral sex is a necessary part of their matting behavior. Your premise simply does not hold up.

What do you do with people of indeterminate race? How do you determine race? What do you do with those yellow men or the red ones? Then there are those Jews and the Arabs, Polynesians, Hispanics, wow the list goes on and on... Race realism is insane... it's nothing but good old fashioned racism dressed up to look like something it's not... You cannot determine what a persons character is by his skin color... or his intelligence... or anything else...

This guys basic premise is false, the races were not isolated for hundreds of thousands of years... As the videos i posted show gene flow around the world has been continuous for most if not all the existence of humanity to suggest that humans have been genetically isolated from each other for hundreds of thousands of years ignores gene flow and population dynamics. Even blonde blue eyed Scandinavians can count black brown eyed Africans in their historically recent ancestors. Comparing dog breeds to human races is insulting and shows how racist this guy is, dog breeds are completely artificial, left to their own devices dog breeds do not breed true. Race is determined by gene flow, genes for dark skin do best near the equator, genes for light skin do best well above the equator. Gene flow is continuous around the world and has been from the beginning of humans march out of Africa.... there is no genetic isolation....

This may not be appropriate for this thread but this pretty much says it all as to why i don't believe in a god...