Gene Frenkle

An infinite regression is infinite. Therefore your statement is retarded. I can be a lot more certain about the plausibility of something that has been repeated a million times than about something that happened once in a story. Say, Gravity vs. the Resurrection of Jesus.

Science is more importantly a method for making accurate predictions about the observable world.

Science is malleable. If something is accepted as science it means that to the best of our knowledge it is so. It must be repeatable by others and must stand up to continual scrutiny and testing. If it does so successfully it remains, if not it is either modified or abandoned in favor of a better theory. There is no need for suspension of disbelief. More confirmations lead to greater certainty, though one can never be certain of anything of course. Practicality one can be nearly 100% certain of many technically "unprovable" things. Religion is non-malleable for the most part. When something is discovered to challenge a religious belief, that belief is either re-interpreted or, as in the case of evolution, the science is attacked and challenged so that the religious belief may survive. Religion is stagnant because it it untestable and unbending.

Fair enough I guess, devoid of any physical relevance then. All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster. No, you certainly can't!

I'd say between the two of you, he has a better grasp on what faith really is, blasphemer!

The only difference I can come up with is that an empirically disprovable belief at least has the balls to make real concrete claims. An empirically unprovable belief is a much more common thing, devoid of any tangible value. Eating hot pockets will cure cancer. (we can fee hot pockets to cancer patients and see what happens) vs. There is an invisible, undetectable man in the sky watching over us all. (uhhhhh...nothing more to do here - make sure to fill the collection plate!)

If I say something true, even if it is oft-repeated, does that make it less true? It certainly makes it no less amusing.

This thread is awesome. It illustrates how wrapped up people get in their religion - there is real anger here! The bottom line is, you can't defend irrational belief in a rational way. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't believe in your religion-of-choice personally, but understand that it is in no way a rational way of thinking and that it simply cannot be defended with any sort of evidence.

You should read the Bible. You can find a copy in just about any hotel room.

My contention is that religion is basically worthless and the sins I'm talking about are the sins of the leaders of the group, both in action and in cover-up/denial. In this case, I would imagine that there are a higher percentage of priests who are pedophiles than "lay" pedophiles in the general population. I would also imagine this has more to do with the type of people who are attracted to the priesthood, but that's beside the point. If religious people are no more moral than the rest of us and there is no rational basis for believing in any religion, then what's the point of religion? Why believe some made-up, unprovable story when it doesn't buy you anything but self-delusion?

Seriously? I'd have much less of a problem with them if their leadership was not doing exactly that. Religious people are no more moral than non-religious people.

Yes, posses slaves from other lands (both male and female), kill the gays, sell your daughters into slavery, kill those who work on Sunday, don't eat shellfish and kill or convert those of other religions. And of course there's always good old jihad. I mean, we've all seen how valuable that is... And that's really just the tip of the iceberg. Do you not think the human beings are incapable of doing the moral thing without the motivation of fear? Why is there such commonality between the tenets of so many religions? Because these tenets come from man's inborn morality. Actually, the 'good of the tribe' drives your altruism in this 'hamburger incident', not religious belief. If we both survive, our combined skills and abilities will better provide for both of us in the future. We're more likely to find additional food and other necessities if we work together. Those who share over time will win out. The morality you infer from this is nothing more than your rationalization of your own hard-wiring.

Yes, in retrospect that was not a very good study to cite.

I guess that would be true if we were just talking about the United States. A lot these talk more about comparisons betwen predominantly non-religious countries like the UK vs. predominantly religious countries like the US.

Looking at it again, I think you're right. This was probably a poor study to cite.

Strong statistical correlation across multiple studies between faith and higher rates of homicide, STD, sex crimes, teen pregnancy and abortion. So no, it's not really based on assumptions.

Forgive me for citing actual research and I'll forgive your citing of...oh, that's right - nothing. You have convinced me that you are not worth responding to. Good luck with all of your future logical fallacies.

Which concludes that sexual offenders are highly likely to be religious. Correlation does not equal causation of course, but there is a body of evidence here and this just reinforces that.

You have no clue what you're talking about. Please at least try to back up your nonsense instead of just inverting and regurgitating the statements of others like a five year old. .......... The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: "Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly skeptical world. In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece Large-scale surveys show dramatic declines in religiosity in favor of secularization in the developed democracies. Popular acceptance of evolutionary science correlates negatively with levels of religiosity, and the United States is the only prosperous nation where the majority absolutely believes in a creator and evolutionary science is unpopular. Abundant data is available on rates of societal dysfunction and health in the first world. Cross-national comparisons of highly differing rates of religiosity and societal conditions form a mass epidemiological experiment that can be used to test whether high rates of belief in and worship of a creator are necessary for high levels of social health. Data correlations show that in almost all regards the highly secular democracies consistently enjoy low rates of societal dysfunction, while pro-religious and anti-evolution America performs poorly. There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms. http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html Churches are being advised to protect congregations against pedophiles and rapists in their midst as The Times uncovers figures showing a clear link between religion and sex crime. The Home Office has disclosed statistics for the first time, showing the prison population according to their faith and type of offense committed. Two trends emerge: a strong tendency for prisoners who declare a religious faith to be serving time for sexual offenses; and a large proportion of fraudsters from oriental faiths. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article649517.ece

Did he molest alter boys?

You don't know what rational means, do you.

That is such a bunch of BS. We are all hard-wired to be moral through years and years of natural selection. Your religious beliefs (which were created by people) are a direct result of that hard-wiring of right and wrong. There are plenty of studies that prove a common set of human morals that transcend geography, race, religion and just any other categorization you can think of. If religion equals morality, why is it that the REALLY religious people always seem to be the ones committing the most heinous of heinous crimes?

The reading comprehension part of the SATs was pretty difficult, huh?

He famously rejected the basic tenets of quantum theory - mainly he had a problem with the non-deterministic nature of the whole thing, the fact that at a quantum level, everything is based on probability instead of actual state. This prompted the famous quote you paraphrased about god not throwing dice. Unfortunately, much of Einstein's intuition about quantum mechanics has so far been off the mark. Which, like you said, has nothing to do with religion because Einstein was not religious.

I'll pray for understanding tonight and will let you if it smartens me up enough to believe some solid supernatural claims.