Pope @ world. "God isn't magic"

[D44kpunk]

I realize where you're coming from but in my opinion you should be more angry at people who have the same opinions as you that aren't voting rather than the Christians who are. as a straight guy do that is not religious at all (inb4 homophobic) i don't want to see two dudes kissing. it's not really my cup of tea. i don't know if that's because of religion or not, and it wouldn't make me vote for or against gay marriage (i don't vote, i would probably vote for legalizing gay marriage if i was forced to vote.)

with all that being said, i live in iowa, if they moved our state line significantly north not only would it cause a huge jump in the average IQ it would also cause a huge jump in Missouri's IQ too. i know several, and by several i mean every single one of my friends (these are people who do not go to church or really feel that religious) that live more south than i do that would vote against gay marriage just because they do not want to see two dudes kissing or think about it. this may seem jaded more than open to criticism about it but these are people who get out and vote

[Tyrath]

I realize where you're coming from but in my opinion you should be more angry at people who have the same opinions at you that aren't voting rather than the Christians who are. as a straight guy do that is not religious at all (inb4 homophobic) i don't want to see two dudes kissing. it's not really my cup of tea. i don't know if that's because of religion or not, and it wouldn't make me vote for or against gay marriage (i don't vote, i would probably vote for legalizing gay marriage if i was forced to vote.)

Yeah but thats making the assumption that you should abandon one problem because there's another to tackle. Why can't I be angry at both?

And on that note, go out and vote more motherfucker.

[D44kpunk]

Some of the church hate comes from people who have had negative experiences with Church and that's very common in Protestant / Evangelical sects where these motherfuckers will ruin you if you go outside the lines. It's anti-intellectualism dialed up to 11 and it's worse if you refuse to mesh. This is pretty common America where everyone and their pet dog Spot wants to run an extortion rac... er church where they're God and you need to empty your wallet, motherfucker.

It's painfully shortsighted to think people don't like Church cause they want to be cool. It's insulting almost.

wasn't intended to be insulting, it just seems like sort of a high school smoking in the bathroom thing to do to bash every Christian/catholic based on your experience with another, but I guess you could argue that is what i was doing when comparing my experience with atheists to the atheists of the world.

i also find it insulting you're implying that most american churches are just out to fill their wallets, i don't think you really know how church finances work

edit to the above: never said you couldn't be angry at both, i just said i would think you should be more angry at

and my only reasons for not voting was not wanting another piece of paper with my name on it in a hat when jury duty comes around, plus not wanting to deal with political ads/phone calls coming to my house or phone. plus i do not feel strongly enough about abortion gays or weed to put forth the effort

[Pirian]

Spoiler: show

No, it is different from that, and you have to be specifically obtuse to ignore it.

The argument isn't that as we find out more scientifically, the farther that god recedes. The argument is that while we gain more understanding of our world, we do not gain more understanding of why properties exist. For example, we understand that gravity is the attraction of masses (very generally speaking), but the cause of this attraction is because of inherent properties down to the atomic level. The argument is that God (the creator, whatever) is the one that assigns these values.

While we can gain more knowledge about the fundamental scientific functions of our universe, we can't understand how or why these values were made to exist.

Says whom? Says you? Do you now decide what science can and cannot figure out? Just because something is currently unfathomable doesn't mean it will always stay that way, and in your own words, you have to be specifically obtuse to ignore it. What you are saying is separate from science is really just another aspect that while has not been explored, is not excluded from being explored.

[notorious bum]

i also find it insulting you're implying that most american churches are just out to fill their wallets, i don't think you really know how church finances work

The definition of a mark, right here.

*passes around the collection plate*

[D44kpunk]

The definition of a mark, right here.

*passes around the collection plate*

if you even knew before googling what financial code a church operates under i would be impressed

[notorious bum]

Asked the church pastor down the street about it. He just laughed and said: "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man."

[notorious bum]

Just so that you understand the absurdity of your statement and that my small jokes about what you claim to be an expert about are not lost: you are not going to make the case that the majority of churches in this country aren't actual businesses out to make a profit. Most of us here don't have to google basic info on the fact that church property is tax-free and donations are tax-free and why this is a big fucking problem leaving the door open for fraud and abuse.

You aren't serving the community if the majority of your work is done off the donations and backs of other people, meanwhile your pastor's salary shits on actual important members of the community (educators, non-religious counselors, firemen, etc.). Let's not even bring up the fact that churches are fucking terrible at re-appropriating money or donations because they are either a)corrupt or b)incompetent and have no clue on what the local community wants/needs.

[SephYuyX]

I dont donate to any organization anyway, so whatevs, but,

When I was younger my parents were on the council or whatever it was and I remember them always talking about how the church always had to stretch to meet means. I recall one year they barely had enough to heat during winter (running on expensive oil at the time, saving for hvac upgrades, etc). The preist did of course ask for extra during those months, but it's not like it was going in to someones pocket, it was going towards actual expenses.

Most local churches donations go towards the flavor of the month (ebola, 3rd world hungry, local poor), the rest goes towards the expenses of the church itself (renovations, maint, bills, salery), and very very little goes back to HQ.

I'm sure there are some churches out there that abuse their members and the money that comes in, but any of the ones i'm familiar with run on very little monies. The priests have very little to live on.

[D44kpunk]

most pastors that i have encountered do free counselling including marriage counselling(people really seem to take advantage of this), they spend all day talking to various people in the church that have various concerns. they take calls at all hours of the day from people wanting to complain about their lives. i'm not saying that they should get paid what they get paid, but i think you're kind of a moron if you think all they do is sit and collect a pay check

again i think you're really really grasping and making assumptions that might have applied in your situation but definitely don't apply in most. i work for a very large financial group, given i do IT for them currently but i was in a small loans department for a year. i'm not saying i'm an expert but i do know that churches come under a lot of scrutiny and saying otherwise just seems kinda silly.

editting: forgot to mention that every paid member of any church i've ran into is salaried

[D44kpunk]

i wish firemen/teachers/etc were paid more too though. but obama

[notorious bum]

True. And I know there are some churches out there who try to do good and don't spend their cash on "getting the word out" and thus gaining larger membership/more donators, but the bar is set so low for most communities. Any kind of help is considered good to those in-need, and this is were there are 10 other churches waiting to take advantage of them because they know they won't complain or can't do anything about it anyways.

[Marootsoobutsu]

but you're talking about an individual that, in his free time, synthesized Calculus in less than a year. From everything you said, one would have expected somebody like this to have completed these works and simply not published them, but he didn't.

This part right here is pretty important: he very nearly didn't publish them. He was hugely pressured to by one of his only friends.

As for his position at Cambridge, he basically did the bare minimum necessary to keep his position, so that he could do his alchemy. He was a BRILLIANT mathematician, but he certainly never made it his life's work.

For sources, start with "Isaac Newton" by James Gleick. If you want, I can pull out my notes from classes I took... I took a course on him at the University of Washington, and an additional independent study with the University's head of History and Philosophy of Science. I could probably track down my papers there and get a more extensive bibliography to go through, and exact page numbers on the idea.

Most notably, I cannot recall having heard atheists claim Newton as anything other than devout. The only thing that I can say is that if what you said about what Newton wanted were as clear-cut as you seem to believe it then the religious apologists and theologians would use it as a counterargument. Again, I'm not arguing the facts of his interests, or his reasons for publication, or even his abrasive personality; merely his established religiosity.

My take on Newton's religion is partly the result from some more-recently found journals of his, but if you look at Newton's edits of the Bible, and some of his personal musings, while he seemed to very much believe in God, in a great many ways his views of God are at the very least very outside the norm for Christians even in his day, let alone any of the many views that are around today. And his certainty of Christ is much, much, much less sound, and the Christ he describes bears very little resemblance to the Anglican, Catholic, or Protestant descriptions of him. He was savvy enough to know that his views on God were way outside the norm of the day, and he said all the right things. But I very, very strongly get the impression from everything he wrote to himself that he used God much more as an excuse and as a tool for political/occupational power than he did from faith. Not that he was without faith-- perhaps saying Jeffersonian was a bit far-- but as a Christian (and as a religious apologist, or at least a wannabe), I'd be very hesitant to claim Newton as a Christian.

[Ksandra]

You aren't serving the community if the majority of your work is done off the donations and backs of other people, meanwhile your pastor's salary shits on actual important members of the community (educators, non-religious counselors, firemen, etc.). Let's not even bring up the fact that churches are fucking terrible at re-appropriating money or donations because they are either a)corrupt or b)incompetent and have no clue on what the local community wants/needs.

Even with te abuse, it's not going to make much difference to those other workers (ie educators). The big issue with raising those salaries is to increase overall wages so people can afford to pay more taxes towards those fields.


I don't think there's been an overall increase in tax-exempt churches, but there has been a severe reduction in school budgets. They aren't really related.

[Pirian]

This part right here is pretty important: he very nearly didn't publish them. He was hugely pressured to by one of his only friends.

Yeah, not debating this at all, as I think it's a pretty well established fact.

As for his position at Cambridge, he basically did the bare minimum necessary to keep his position, so that he could do his alchemy. He was a BRILLIANT mathematician, but he certainly never made it his life's work.

I'm also very familiar with his love of alchemy, and the high likelihood of that being the ultimate cause of his death due to the poisonous nature of the materials he worked with.

For sources, start with "Isaac Newton" by James Gleick. If you want, I can pull out my notes from classes I took... I took a course on him at the University of Washington, and an additional independent study with the University's head of History and Philosophy of Science. I could probably track down my papers there and get a more extensive bibliography to go through, and exact page numbers on the idea.

I will add this to my read list, but I would like to note that this book was published in 2003, so it has had plenty of time to make it through the scholarly circles - especially the debaters that seem to be pretty on top of the most current stuff. I think you may have been referring to newer material than what is covered here, though when citing the "more-recently found journals".

My take on Newton's religion is partly the result from some more-recently found journals of his, but if you look at Newton's edits of the Bible, and some of his personal musings, while he seemed to very much believe in God, in a great many ways his views of God are at the very least very outside the norm for Christians even in his day, let alone any of the many views that are around today. And his certainty of Christ is much, much, much less sound, and the Christ he describes bears very little resemblance to the Anglican, Catholic, or Protestant descriptions of him. He was savvy enough to know that his views on God were way outside the norm of the day, and he said all the right things. But I very, very strongly get the impression from everything he wrote to himself that he used God much more as an excuse and as a tool for political/occupational power than he did from faith. Not that he was without faith-- perhaps saying Jeffersonian was a bit far-- but as a Christian (and as a religious apologist, or at least a wannabe), I'd be very hesitant to claim Newton as a Christian.

You may be, but that is not necessarily true of any religious debater I've ever seen. I would also like to note that it wasn't simply Christianity that I was referring to when I first made reference to the comments that "religion stifles innovation". Don't worry, I don't blame just Christianity, in this regard, and I didn't mean to give that impression, if I did

Newton did not need to be a strict Christian, or even a Christian at all for him to have been looking at a problem and think "I don't immediately see the answer from here, it must be Gods work". I might argue even more that because this excuse is so easy to call upon that to Newton, whose brilliance brought mathematics to him so easily, when coming upon a problem that wasn't apparently obvious, he might invoke this as to move onto a new, more interesting problem. That isn't to say that he would not have found some other excuse if not God, but we will never know because this is the one he invoked.

[Khajit]

The people that wrote that article failed science class and I'm disappointed in how many don't realize that some of these concepts were sponsored by the church or made by a priest.
They have a fucking science pope academy with nobel prize winners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifi...my_of_Sciences
Related institutions date back centuries.
The maker of the big bang, red shift, and hubble theories was a catholic priest.
On another note conflict thesis (Science and religion hate each other) is retarded. It's stupid to the point that typing into google "The Most Wrong Thing On the Internet Ever" will lead you to a scientifically sourced rant on exactly how incorrect modern pop culture about science and religion interacting is. Please stop subscribing to it. There's a reason theists think you're an idiot when they get told they don't don't really believe in science because RELIGION.

[Stilzkin]

There's a reason theists think you're an idiot when they get told they don't don't really believe in science because RELIGION.

Maybe if most theists simply believed in a very abstract version of god this would make sense.

If you actually believe in a religion then you then you have beliefs about how the universe works which are not backed by anything other than your feelings.

[Pirian]

This right here:

when they get told they don't don't really believe in science because RELIGION.

This never happened here. You either didn't read what I wrote or you read something into what I wrote that wasn't there. That isn't what is being discussed here, and nothing has been said to indicate this. So much vitriol, lol

[BaneTheBrawler]

Maybe if most theists simply believed in a very abstract version of god this would make sense.

If you actually believe in a religion then you then you have beliefs about how the universe works which are not backed by anything other than your feelings.

This right here:



This never happened here. You either didn't read what I wrote or you read something into what I wrote that wasn't there. That isn't what is being discussed here, and nothing has been said to indicate this. So much vitriol, lol

orly

[Marootsoobutsu]

he might invoke this as to move onto a new, more interesting problem. That isn't to say that he would not have found some other excuse if not God, but we will never know because this is the one he invoked.

Well, he pretty much DID do that-- I just think he did it not because he was confounded, but... well, Newton was PROUD. He went through an incredible amount of criticism and skepticism from people who were both jealous of what he had done (and the attention that came from it), and who couldn't understand what he had done. He haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated the fall out of the Principia. He seriously loathed it. He hated that these people would dare question him, he hated that he was accused of plagiarism, he hated that he had to constantly explain it. He didn't WANT another work like that, which is why he basically just went, "Uh, yeah. So, here's God and stuff." He didn't stop because of his faith... he stopped because he had literally zero motivation or interest in doing so. I mean, Principia was pretty much the result of helping a friend with a puzzle. It wasn't his interest, or his calling. It wasn't a field he was passionate about.

Also: re the date of Gleick's book, a lot of the Newton-quit-science-because-God talk has been going on for a long while, and when we're talking about a dude who's been dead for 300+ years, the last decade or so is "recent". Also, I still think 1990 was like 5 years ago in my reckoning of time, so... perhaps I should have prefaced that with "relatively". I do think the dialogue on him is sort of changing, and while I don't disagree with the overall point that a lot of people just hand-waved what they couldn't explain right away (I also think that that point ignores the MANY contributions to science that have come because people believe that a knowable God created a knowable universe, and find science an elegant way of describing what *IS* while using religion to explain WHY it is)... I just think that Newton is at the very least a questionable enough example of it to leave out. Except that he's pretty much the biggest name people can drop, and so people keep doing it to get points across.