Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham on New-Earth Creationism

Evolution




oh wait...

 

"the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."- Albert Einstein

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."- James Madison (Father of the US Constitution)

 

Good quotes, but its good to take them with a grain of salt as we don't know anything about the context of which they were said.

 

You didn't understand my post.

I wasn't saying you have to be wrong in order to see someone else's view. That does not make any sense.

I was saying that more people need to practice more humility and consider the fact that they may be wrong. Atheists are no better than religious zealots, they're just another kind of zealot.

 

Einstein himself refers to himself in the quote you responded to above as an "Agnostic" and I don't recall ever reading him ever referring to himself as a "Deist".

What is your point?

 

Two quotes out of context. Read the full quote I included earlier in the thread about Einstein--it allows for a more thorough statement of his views. According to Einstein, he was even more incredulous of Atheists than Bible--following Christians. Einstein thought Atheists were fools.

“The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against traditional religion as the "opium of the masses"—cannot hear the music of the spheres.” ― Albert Einstein

Madison graduated from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) in 1771, where he demonstrated special interest in government and the law. But, considering the ministry for a career, he stayed on for a year of postgraduate study in theology.

So, while Madison and other founding fathers were against religious intolerance, they believed in God.

Bill Nye, himself, states that he is Agnostic, not an Atheist; so even Mr. Nye has the humility to admit that he doesn't in fact know whether there is, or there isn't, a God. He's just confident in the fact that science proves the earth is older than 6,000 years old. And there are plenty of religious people, including many who do consider themselves Christians, that agree with him about that and are open to scientific proof.

 

Einstein did not believe in any anthropomorphic "god". He had to say it over and over again...because people kept trying to claim him as a "believer". (usually religious types...who are trying to do it to this day). He was not. He wrote: " It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

As for Madison, he was a DEIST. Deists do not believe in a personal god. They believe in a "master watchmaker" who may have created everything...but is totally uninvolved. Madison lived in a time when you could not openly be an outright non-believer (although Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen were open about it). You have to look at his personal letters. It's quite clear....deist (same with Jefferson). Deists do not pray, nor adhere to any religion. They are first and foremost...non-christian.

 

I generally agree with the above, but I don't believe you're 100% correct with Madison and Jefferson. Einstein wasn't a Christian, but he believed in a Creator and God.

Madison spent a year studying theology and considered entering the ministry. So it would be hard to believe he didn't believe in a personal god.

And Jefferson believed strongly in Jesus' teachings and considered them " the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man." He just had misgivings with certain parts of the Bible/Christianity.

I think they, and many of their generation, were heavily influenced by deism. But Jefferson considered his beliefs unique to himself and he attended church regularly, often alone.

If your point is that neither man could be considered a "true Christian" according to modern day more extreme right-wing Christians, then I would agree. But all of these men did believe in a God and Creator. But they didn't believe in anything simply because a book stated it.

 

Nope, he's right. Einstein did not believe in a conscious god whatsoever, and even as a Deist, which should consider (not believe in) a creator god, was as casual as Spinoza and his shaggy, disappearing god concept. Plenty of works have been devoted to his thoughts on the matter. As well, Madison, Jefferson, Paine & others, clearly distinguished between the language required for addressing the populace, invoking gods, and their own personal thoughts on the matter, which were many, studied, and entirely dismissive. They did not mince words, and to reprint some of them, most notably Jeffersons, would amount to hate speech in these enlightened times.

Texas's solution, in determining the textbooks the rest of the US receives, was to finally quit trying to paint them as theists, and simply demote Jeffersons role in the formation of the country, writing him nearly completely out of history instead.

Typical.

 

As an "A-theist", I do not go to a church or meetings of any kind, don't ask a "congregation" for money, don't speak in tongues or handle venomous snakes, don't "preach" to others, and don't tell people they will go to "hell" if they don't believe as I do, etc. I simply live my life in the complete absence of any kind of "religion". I don't pray, I don't think about being an "A-theist", or try to convince or recruit others to become "A-theists". I don't 'practice' "A-theism" at all. My days are spent either working or playing, and enjoying the game of life. I don't need or desire a book to tell me what is right or wrong, or what I can and cannot do. Carry on.

 

REMARKABLE !!

You also don't rely on other people to tell you what is cool to ride on the trail.

" Luke I am your Father "

Where is Proraptor with the light saber photo from the fully loop ?

 

Nothing is settled The Higgs Boson seems to have opened a new can of worms. Am eagerly awaiting more developments. I like reading this stuff.

http://www.livescience.com/46478-universe-should-have-collapsed.html

 

In the interest of presenting the ever-opposing viewpoint, that is a pretty poorly written article that takes the point of Hogan and Fairbairn's words ballistically out of context. The headline is sensationalism.

 

Holy Slow Reading - it took you two months to process all of that? j/k :wave:

 

Close reading.

 

Holy thread-necro; didn't even realize it was that old. It showed up in the "threads I've posted in" list at the top of the homepage and I replied without checking dates.

 

Pastafarianiasm

http://www.venganza.org/

Who could argue the correlation of global warming vs. Pirates?

 

oh man this was as good of a read the second time around

 

No. I didn't state that Einstein believed in a "conscious god" or that he believed Jesus was divine or that there was a God that intervened in peoples lives. I simply stated that he believed in a Creator, a God. That is quite clear.

It is quite clear from historical fact that Madison, Jefferson and others believed in God. I'm not saying they believed that Jesus Christ was divine, as it's quite clear that at least Jefferson and Einstein and probably Paine did not, but they believe in a Creator / God.

The problem with Religion, including Christianity, is man, not God--if one exists. The subjugation of reason and independent thought for the sake of controlling the minds and hopefully therefore the actions of the mass of humanity has been proven to do more harm than good over perhaps nearly the entire course of human existence. And, paradoxically, religion has driven many brilliant minds away from being open to the concept of / existence of God.

It's at least as much a subjugation of reason, if not more so, to state there is no possibility that a God exists than it is to admit to the possibility that one might exist.

In Einstein's own words:

The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer.

— Albert Einstein
in Goldman, p. vii​

[h=1]In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human understanding, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.[/h]

— Prince Hubertus zu Löwenstein, Towards the Further Shore (Victor Gollancz, London, 1968), p. 156; quoted in Jammer, p. 97​

I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional "opium of the people"—cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims.

— Einstein to an unidentified adressee, Aug.7, 1941. Einstein Archive, reel 54-927, quoted inJammer, p. 97​

 

...I doubt the existence of bikes. They were created by evil men to suck the energy, financial means and attention away from things that matter greatly.