So you know its basically a legal cult
Since "legality" is the only thing that differentiates a cult from a religion, this is an oxymoron. It's a bit like saying it's dry water.
Also unaltered basically says that its pretty much the same as it was hundreds of years ago.
You'd have to be terribly ignorant of Catholic history and current events to believe this, which I get the strong impression you are. To start with, ever heard of Vatican II?
In the bronze age slavery and rape were okay. So if it is unaltered, that would mean those things or things like it would be okay too.
This is some of the most spurious reasoning I've ever read on this site, and there are a lot of incoherent retards around here. Do you even know what period the term "Bronze Age" refers to? Catholicism didn't exist in the Bronze Age.
so you're 11 is what you're saying
i'm actually really curious about how you lead your extra-ebate life. do you have a facebook? a blog? how do you interact with family members and classmates? do you have a mode of interaction other than "laughable tryhard condescension?" how have you managed to live longer than a decade acting this autistic? who is nummi
In doing so you implicitly brought up the US's moral quality,
How? If I were to contest abstractly that the quality of food is subjective, that shouldn't be taken as an invitation to talk about whether pizza is objectively the best food. You're confusing relation with relevance.
You seem to have a very clear understanding of exactly what constitutes the "pursuit of justice"
I don't, actually; I'm baiting. I'm waiting for someone to object to what I'm calling just and tell me why it isn't, in which I might evaluate their reasoning and decide whether I agree with them. The reason I start discussions isn't out of great conviction that mine is the correct position, but for the purpose of seeing the merits of different viewpoints laid out by their believers. I'm about as unsure of this as I am of anything, which I mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
I'm broadening the discussion to highlight its inadequacy.
Who did you root for in the Superbowl?
no, i actually make every effort to be as receptive to substantial criticism as possible, and to reevaluate any stance or view i'm given cause to. blindness to constructive criticism is probably my biggest pet peeve! h/e like i said that shit has to be qualified, and with your determination to demonstrate irreverence + prejudice at every opportunity your opinions are p well qualified as "worthless"
tbf dude your evaluations of my intelligence don't much concern me. usually, you respect somebody's opinion on something because they have clearly demonstrated their authority on that subject. taking your word on who's smart and who's not would be a little like asking dan brown for writing advice.
In His image, not in His identity. The Bible (assuming the Biblical God is the one you're talking about) is emphatic that humans are flawed in contrast to Him. Perfection entails supreme power, and supreme power entails the ability to do anything that isn't impossible. Analogue to a skilled author: can a good writer write well exclusively? Or can he choose to write like Stephanie Meyer if he wants to?
If God "equals" truth, you have to throw out whatever definition of it you used to arrive at the conclusion that it "doesn't exist, has no real evidence of existing, is imaginary and does not even attempt to derive itself from scientific, natural or physical law." You can make arguments that for truth to be anything other than truth is incoherent or unnecessary, but you're kind of missing the point here.
You talk as though it's impossible to be educated about religion and something else. Theology is often called the master of all studies, as it's necessary to have at least a passing familiarity with most disciplines to have a robust understanding of it. I have to say, personally, that I've met more ignorant Atheists than ignorant religious. This website's preponderance of nigh-illiterates cursing God and hoping to provoke someone is abounding evidence that Atheism and ignorance are not mutually exclusive.
It's definitely not a cult, legally (which is the only thing that differentiates a cult from a religion). To say it's "off" Christianity, apart from being grammatically incomprehensible, is just historically incorrect. Protestantism was formed in protest of the corruption of Catholicism, which as a Christian denomination is about the most unaltered since its conception (with the possible exception of Greek orthodoxy).
Did I ask for your opinion?
Haha, no, but this is a debate website, silly. It's kind of implied that you want someone to respond to you. :)
Everyone's so eager to accuse everyone else of hypocrisy these days, as if that had any bearing on the truth of a single belief.
Even granting that failure to practice what you preach is an essential character flaw (ignoring that fact that it's pretty much universal and that calling attention to character flaws in place of an argument, no matter how significant, is literally the definition of ad hominem), it's impossible to know whether someone is a hypocrite without intimate knowledge of the bases of their belief. You can't just look at two opinions and say "that's contradictory." An infantryman could be a vegan and you wouldn't know whether he was a hypocrite unless it was certain that, for example, his vegetarianism was an expression of extreme pacifism and not just a health concern, and his participation in aggressive military action was disregard of that. And even then, you and he could quibble about what constitutes hypocrisy for ages and ages.
Failure to practice what you preach is dependent on what it is you're actually preaching, and the vast majority of people's opinions can't be boiled down to "THIS AND ONLY THIS FOR ALWAYS" no matter how much you'd like to belittle them.
Maybe. Maybe the world would be a much better place if a certain type of plant had never evolved in primordial times, or if humans had a different sense in place of smell. I don't really see the point of speculating about this though, as religion has been so persistently and indelibly part of human history that it's impossible to imagine it (or even human nature) without it.
It was totally fair the way we took Native American land.
Maybe not, but I don't see anyone advocating we just vacate America to give it back to the natives. That's what Palestinian nationalism is about. And it might have been longer ago that we encroached on indigenous Americans, but also weren't seeking asylum when we did it, while the Jews were.
it was totally unfair for the Jewish people to take the land which belonged to the Palestinians for centuries upon centuries
In what sense did it belong to the Palestinians? They hadn't set up borders. There was no Palestinian state. They were simply the nomadic tribes that occupied the territory, with little sense of property--much in the way the native Americans had.
they gave the land up, the least they could do is accept the consequences of permanently leaving your homeland for such a long time.
You talk as if their exile was voluntary.
it would have been reasonable for them to simply move there, just as long as the Palestinians can support immigration of the Jewish people in that small area
They did. Wealthy Jews had been buying up land in the area since the 1800s. By 1948, there were more "foreign" Jews living legitimately in the area than natives.
but no, they literally barged in under the banner of the UN.
What would you rather have been done with the Jews following the Holocaust? There were certainly some Jews lobbying for the territory to be declared a Jewish state as according to scripture, but their options were kind of scarce to begin with. Much of Judaism had been subject to reform voiding the old prophesies of a return to the holy land already. The Allied armies didn't have the kind of supplies necessary to feed and clothe and house all of those refugees. Many of them hadn't any family or shelter in their home countries to return to. Pretty much anywhere we could have put them they would've intruded upon somebody.
now 67 years later, the Israeli government have committed quite the rack of human rights abuses
Israel is among the best states to live in for human rights in the Middle East.
while at the same time illegally moving into whats left of the Palestinians land creating more neighborhoods, and leaving the Palestinians more crammed in their land mass everyday.
There's a long history of generous partition proposals that have been accepted by the Israelis but rejected by the Palestinians. Palestine has kind of an all-or-nothing mentality. They'd rather see Israel and Judaism wiped off the face of the earth than for their people to have the basic necessities of living.
if it's true, it renders this debate rather, how I say... shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-ish(?)
I see it more as recognizing of nuance. The emphasis of this debate is on the positive aspects of society, more of which I think can be traced back to Judeo-Christianity than to Greco-Roman or enlightenment influences. It's a matter of degree. It doesn't need to be so absolute as "Christianity is evil," which is how a lot of atheists on this site like to put it.
It's no more good than bad. In order to reject it wholly as an institution, you kind of have to write the majority of recorded history off as a mistake. Which you might do if you're an edgy teen looking for a reaction, but most people tend to average out over time.
Nope. But this question isn't the stumper 15-year-olds tend to think it is; it's just equivocation. Omnipotence is the ability to do all things that are possible. Saying Jesus isn't God because he couldn't microwave a burrito so hot that even he couldn't eat it is like saying science isn't useful because it can't determine whether there is or isn't a God. It's moving the goal posts. Omnipotence would be incoherent as an idea if it included the ability to commit logical contradictions.
That's a widely-believed-in variation of God. Yo.
It's kind of discouraging that your ignorance is so encompassing and that you are so unashamed of it. On a personal note, what makes you think you are qualified to have this discussion? A lot of it seems over your head.
Physical/empirical evidence isn't the only kind of evidence. But, again, this discussion is starting to fall outside the scope of this debate. We're not talking about what we are or aren't justified in assuming; that would be an epistemological debate. We've got the epistemology for this discussion very strictly defined: that of the scientific method. Under the established epistemic rules of scientism, are we justified in ruling out the "existence" of a God-figure?
This is off-topic. The resolution is "Science refutes god," not "Science can refute god" or "It is the responsibility of science to refute God." You can start one of those debates if you want and invite people here to participate, but that's not what I'm interested in and it won't get us anywhere in this debate.
I downvote bad arguments, usually with an explanation of why in a message if not in the thread. The above comment doesn't even contain any arguments. I'm not sure how someone could take issue with it. I don't think it's impossible, but I sure would appreciate some illumination.
I am not "people who represents religions" (nor a Christian Scientist, which is the denomination that believes in the things you're talking about). I am this person who is opposing this resolution. If you'll check my recent arguments, I just claimed that intercessory prayer is not effective. I'm afraid you'll have to tailor your attacks to me, and not just make whatever generalized, half-formed argument you'd normally levy against those who weren't able to defend themselves.
Jesus, you are just too tough a guy for me to handle. I can't handle it. My handling skills are insufficient. He's gonna drink poison for his non-faith! What a saint!
I haven't claimed that religion is an adequate substitute for medicine, buddy, and you'd have to stretch my words pretty far to claim I did. I don't get your point.
Yeah because old storybooks hold so much more weight in evidence than scientific facts.
In some ways.
anyone can see it was a religion made into a get rich quick scheme.
Roman Catholicism is original, (mostly) unaltered Christianity. It is the wellspring from which all other forms of Christianity originate. In this sense, it is the purest iteration of the faith. You're right that it's gotten corrupt over the years, but the essence of it (and the purpose for which it was created) is clearly for the worship of Christ, and the traditionalism appeals to a certain sort of person.
The pope can lick my balls.
Woah! This is the edgiest thing I've ever read! I can't believe any teenaged male Atheist is this irreverent! How unexpected! You, sir, are a true iconoclast!
