Summary of studies: Religiousity and intelligence

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
And scientists are immune?

I've never seen a country with a ruling class of scientists...

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Elok

http://members.tripod.com/~shtyetz_john/life-of-st-john-sanfran.html

First pic on the page. Looks fakeable by modern technology, but the fade effect would be tricky and the photograph was taken in 1952. You could argue that the image was edited recently and there's a massive coverup, but that's stretching it AFAIC.

Looks like part of the film was under-exposed.

That can also easily happen when you are putting the picture through the various chemical baths. It was easily done at any time.

-Drachasor

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I've never seen a country with a ruling class of scientists...

scientists **** up when they try to rule science (ie the labs and academic departments)

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

honestly Kuci, if you saw how academy was really like, you would wish that scientists were even less involved in politics than they are

JM

[Ben Kenobi]

Evolution is well proven, but the origin of life is still to be fully understood. Lack of knowledge does not imply god.

True, but that still means your justification for the origin of life to occur in this manner does not rest upon any empirical basis.

Microbes can survive in space.

DanSed my post, but not quickly enough.

It is possible there are earth-like planets in Binary systems, it is possible that almost every single star like the Sun has a planet capable of supporting life. We simply do not know. It's a very interested area that will be explored, but we are ignorant in this area.

Look at the stable orbital forms for binaries.

Not likely for life to be present around binary stars.

You can have a number of suitable orbits that lack the stability, or a number of stable orbits that lack the suitability.

No. You have only said that we couldn't survive on another planet.

I haven't said that at all. I believe that the conditions necessary for any life to arise on Earth are present in very few areas. I'm not talking yet about evolution.

Evolution needs something to start with. And right now, you don't have that something, according to the probabilities.

A lot of cases are sheer inevitability or quite possible so. For all we know life inevitable evolves on planets that can support it, given enough time (and a few billion years is certainly enough time).

Sure, a few billion years is lots of time, but consider the stability that is necessary to procure such an arrangement. If you have a massive collision between two planet size bodies, then you are not going to get a very good start.

Secondly, a few billion years, is only enough time because we are assuming what we are trying to prove. That because it only took a few billion years through evolution to make us, therefore we should consider that ample time.

However, this debate is over whether such a thing happened in such a way, that whether chance directed the formation of life on Earth.

We have a poor idea of what the minimum requirements for carbon-based life are, even less for it to come from raw materials, and no idea for other types of life.

As we gain greater understanding, we gain greater appreciation.

We haven't even made 1 successful biodome.

As for my opinion, I feel honoured that you credit my creativity, but none of this is my own.

Probably because Science, when it examines 'miracles', finds there are not any.

Miracles are not empirical phenomenons. They cannot be replicated at our will. Therefore, science cannot properly assess them, which is neither a fault of science, nor of miracles.

You define something out of the natural world, then you can't observe it anymore.

Do you believe the two to be indivisible spheres, that the supernatural cannot influence the natural?

What's your justification for this belief?

My point is there no reason to believe they are true. Every religion claims to have miracles supporting it.

So, does believing in one miracle mean that another must be true as well, that if you accept one, you must accept all?

Clearly, if you believe that only one of the miracles must be true, then you cannot draw the conclusion that two different religions with miracles must be equally valid.

Christianity claims that the miracles are not necessarily an indication of holiness, as Christ bluntly tells people that there will be no sign, other than the sign of Jonah for his wicked generation.

Claiming a miracle happened is not the same as a miracle happening.

True, but we have an account of a miracle, and given that these accounts were written after the fact, tends to lead credence that they would be true, and not subject to ignorance or exaggeration.

And there record has already been altered, by early Christians and the Catholic Church. The earliest known paper accounts were already 40 years after the incident, a lot of misconceptions and falsehoods can be honestly believed after that amount of time.

Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in around 55AD, or 20 years after Christ. Many of those who testified on the life of Christ on earth would still have been alive, even after 40 years, and would be able to corroborate the accounts.

Secondly, if you believe that 40 years is too little time, than we have nothing in the history of the period that can be considered equally reliable, since they are all dated much later than the Gospels. If the Gospels can be distorted, why not all the other historical sources that we rely upon?

Especially in a world where superstition is seriously believed in because the world is so poorly understood.

The world 500 years after Plato haunted by superstition, that managed to build roads and aqueducts that last even today?

You have too little credit for your ancestors. Why do you believe them all to be credulous fools, and yourself the paragon of discernment?

They wanted their religion to grow, they wanted people to believe them, they wanted people to belive Jesus was the son of god,

So why would they die for the cause if they fabricated their accounts to include the miracles?

Seems to me that the miracles come part and parcel with the rest of it, that if you accept their trustworthiness on some matters, it lends credence to their account on others.

Wouldn't it have been more believable to take out the miracles, so to encourage more people to believe in Jesus, the man of Galilee?

it could have been well-meaning exaggerations or poorly remembered items.

If you don't have any paper, how do you remember things? They had much better memories than we do for recalling dates and events, long after they occurred.

they provide no evidence at all and their testimony clearly has a bias.

That's not how it works. Given the account, you must assume the account to be truthful, unless given evidence to the contrary.

If we threw out all testimonies because they have a bias, then we would have no history.

Sure, the Federalist Papers were about the constitution and the bill of rights. They were written about the same time.

These papers are only covering events 200 years ago.

The bible talks about events going back 2000 years ago.

That's a pretty good argument in favour of the Gospels, if they can be considered as accurate an account about Christ, as the Federalist papers are for the constitution of the US.

As for the Bible, there are no Roman accounts of anything that special happening. Best thing you have is an account of sentencing a guy named Jesus to crucificy, about the same time.

That's pretty good corroboration for that period. Better than for Caesar crossing the Rubicon, for which we do not have any non-Roman sources.

That only corroborates that he was killed by the Romans though.

Again, given the standards for the time, that's pretty good. And you do not have them all. You can find the others here.

http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/jesusexisthub.html

God still produced a world that, by itself, kills people, even if there is world peace.

But there is not a world peace. People kill each other all the time. If you are blaming God for the deaths of people in the world, why not also blame him for these wars too?

I don't think anything comes from god, I don't think he exists.

Then why do you blame him for natural disasters?

For the miracles? Sure, all of our knowledge of nature. They certainly provide nothing that refutes that; they provide no evidence at all and their testimony clearly has a bias. Remember, they are making the claims, so they must prove their claims. I don't have to go around and disprove every book. That sort of reasoning could be used to say Star Wars must be true because you can't disprove it.

If you have no evidence against it, then we are forced to accept the Gospel accounts.

That's your only alternative. Of course you can reject them because they do not fit in with what you believe, but then, that's not logic anymore.

The book the Five Gospels goes over how references to hell and suffering do not generally fit in with everything Jesus said, and were very, very likely added later. Additionally, when the Bible was assembled, some accounts they didn't care for and left out.

What makes you trust this book, written well after the period in question?

Let's apply the same skepticism that you have on the Gospels, towards this one book.

What evidence do they have to back up their claims that these parts of the Gospels do not fit in with what Christ actually taught?

Who would you be more likely to believe, those who saw Christ, knew him and spoken with him, or people who never knew him at all?

How do they know that the Gospel writers took parts out that they didn't care for? Did they tell you, and show you what they took out?