Einstein On Religion
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- gramme0
2cents. Read the Bible, especially focusing on Jesus' sermon on the mount in Matthew 5–7. Then tell me if Hitler and his cronies bore ANY resemblance to Christ. None of us model him perfectly, but those who are truly transformed by God's saving grace are known by their love. Hitler was not known for love of any kind, except for a love of power. Hitler misinterpreted the Bible, or worse – he knew what he was doing in twisting those words to support the Aryan agenda.
Seriously man. That's the most brittle straw man I've ever seen. You can do better (I hope).
- teleos0
Hitler gave lip service to Christianity for political reasons. In reality he fully embraced Darwinian materialism as evidenced by his actions.
- By targeting Jews & other religious cults? How is that a materialist viewpoint?Mimio
- because it treats humans as though they are the product of blind natural processes which didn't have them in mind.teleos
- unplanned accidents that can be exterminated at will.teleos
- But why the specific religious target? Why not Christians as well?Mimio
- I'll give you a hint:
THEY WERE CHRISTIANS.Mimio - Would an Atheistic regime put "Gott Mit Uns"(God with us) on their military belt buckles?Mimio
- Christians were killed as well. Research it. And having references to God on a belt does not make one a Christian.teleos
- gramme0
Oh my gosh dude...do you actually believe people are what they are merely because of what they claim? Sure, Hitler claimed to be a Christian. I knew that before you posted the quote from 1922. Saying he's a Christian does not make him one any more than me standing in a forest makes me a tree. Hitler believed that Jesus came to fight the Jews. The Bible clearly states otherwise. Jesus came to redeem Israel, not destroy it. Hitler saw the surface-level story – that Jesus was persecuted and crucified at the behest of the Jews – and put his own earthly spin on it.
After Jesus ascended and his followers took up the cause, some stayed in Judea, preaching to the Jews, while others spread out (Paul, Barnabas etc.). None of those men wished harm on the Jews. Jesus certainly never did.
- ninjasavant0
I think both sides of this argument could benefit from compromise trying to understand each other.
- NO. Theists don't understand what they claim is false. They pick and choose their logic. And they're not smart enough.mikotondria3
- mikotondria30
Noone has ever killed IN the name of atheism.
There is no NAME of atheism, its a linguistic fallacy in the same way that saying someone IS a vegetarian. You cannot name or categorise someone on the basis of what they DON'T do..
Word-games, the whole lot of it.
Something did come from nothing, however we do not have the language or technology to fully understand what the something is, let along what the nothing is, so that idea is kind of a place-holder - it inidicates broadly what we understand of the problem.
Knowing that there IS a God tells us nothing extra about the world, tales of same, however old, do not give us new information about our world, they are merely conjecture.
There is no evidence of a god, anything that people hold up as evidence has another cause - known or not. This is not an article of faith, it is one of observation. There is no need to create a god - if you do not find meaning and wonder and majesty in the world without this idea, then you're really not looking hard enough.
Look at the trees, the sea, the mountains, arent they wonderful - isn't it amazing to be able to appreciate them, and to use our language and intellect to understand at least some of how they came to be ? (ah yes, isn't God great ? - what ? no - look at the mountains...look...there....in front of you, stop abstracting and live right now in this moment, and you'll find the need for secondary causes and concepts kinda falls by the wayside.
- BonSeff0
yo- read the bible
- breadlegz0
Jesus loves designers, even when your clients dont. And Jesus would never tell you to 'make his logo a bit bigger'...
- designbot0
"there is no evidence of a god"
Do you have evidence to back that up?
- hahaha...man you're thick.Mimio
- you're not a lawyer, are you...mrdobolina
- Ironically his misunderstanding is the backbone of the creationist/personal god argument.Mimio
- gramme0
I believe in God largely because the pursuit of excellence is a core value and a motivating principle in my life. I think most if not all of you can relate to that – we as designers are always trying to outdo ourselves.
I find much beauty and meaning in the world, and that meaning is only enriched by my relationship with and knowledge of God. I value quality. I don't want to merely see the forest, I want to see what it could be, and what its essence is. I don't want good, I want best. I strive for it in my relationships, my work, everything. I have delved into my religious options and have found that Biblical Christianity is the most excellent. Other faiths contain "good." None of them, from what I have encountered, contain "best."
C.S. Lewis said that "we are far too easily pleased." I believe that. I believe people are afraid to hope for something more than what this world offers. We walk through life from one quick fix to another. Even if hope is foolish...I'd rather be a hopeful fool who expects more than what the temporal offers, because I long for the best there is in every single category of existence. Not the biggest and brightest mind you, but the most meaningful. And before anyone says that meaning is completely relative – remember that to a great extent we are all wired the same. Personality and experience are surface-level superfluosities. The common thread of our need of fulfillment and meaning is predicated upon our shared God-shaped emptiness. That is not a paradigm unique to me or my dad or my wife. We are all in the same metaphysical boat.
- ismith0
Religions are merely ideas, it's the people who follow them (including those who claim leadership within them) who commit all actions. They can use religion as an excuse for anything, just atheists could use nihilism as an excuse (not trying to say all atheists are nihilists, but it's the quickest example that came to mind). Organized religion has become a second-level politic, but in reality they have the same framework and the same ability to sway anyone's ethics or morals in the favor of its most influential leader. I don't blame religion for any of my problems, nor do I blame atheists for any of my problems as someone with some religious views (my views are very complicated, but in the end I get trashed by both the religious and non). Just because Jerry Falwell said that the Iraquis deserve to be given judgement by the US doesn't mean I hate Christians, and just because China's government imprisons and executes missionaries of many faiths (I know a few missionaries personally who were captive for over 5 years) doesn't make me hate the Chinese. I think the people who made the decisions to do such things (Bush, et al) are horrible leaders for any group of people but instead of focusing our energy on defaming anyone who is related to them through religion, political stance, skin color, or whatever we should simply recognize why we believe what we do, put it out there for others, and when people ignore you because they prefer their own beliefs just leave it alone...
Now, I did type this during class and it is finals week which means I've only slept about 1-2hrs a night for the past three+ nights, so if a sentence completely doesn't make sense, let me know since I probably didn't mean to type "We should teach tolerance... towards slaughtering Muslims", mmmkay? Hopefully the basic idea gets across, because all this religious/antireligious bickering is some of the most childish stuff I've had to deal with in my life between my parents, family, and friends.
- TheBlueOne0
Hitler was neither a darwinian materiallist or a christian (although he used both to further he cause when it suited him), he was more of a neo-pre-christian european mythology bullshit artist combined with a machiavellian traumatized war veteran with deep psychosis. He was a dick in other words. Use h m to prove/disprove your points at your own peril.
- TheBlueOne0
Good read form a scientist whom I admire deeply, on Why Humanity Needs a God of Creativity:
- hmm, that's a nice neo-science-New Age spin. Nirvana, anyone?gramme
- why do you deeply admire him?breadlegz
- He's a smart guy and I buy the Complexity approach...TheBlueOne
- BattleAxe0
right or wrong I love these comics, here is the short version of "moving up"
full version and other comics here http://www.chick.com/reading/tra…
- if anyone ever gave this to my kid, I would kick them in the nuts.
Please fuck off and die Jack T Chuck.mikotondria3 - I too find this silly and tasteless.gramme
- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... gotta love ridiculous religious propagandalocustsloth
- Too wordy. And I'd nut kick as well....TheBlueOne
- The devil looks like my uncle Ron, wtf.harlequino
- ending seemed rusheddanthon
- if anyone ever gave this to my kid, I would kick them in the nuts.
- ********0
God exists no differnet than any other extremely prevelant and powerful idea exists throughout history. Fuse that with personal experience, your emotional attachments to yourself and death, other people, fear and hope for the future, and the magnitude of human activity and you have evidence of God.
- ...or we're just rubbing up against the nature and limits of our existence.Mimio
- i just consinder the type of activity around God and 'progress' technnology and conciousness. i don't think it's suffcient to say we're just this, nothing.********
- ...sufficient to say we're just this...as we are and nothing. It works in a zen personal way but in history.********
- ...but not in history.********
- TaylorB0
Raised in a church-going family in the Church of Ireland, C. S. Lewis claimed he became an atheist at the age of 15, though in contradiction he later described his young self (in Surprised by Joy) as being "very angry with God for not existing". He returned to his Christian beliefs at age 33.
His separation from Christianity began when he started to view his religion as a chore and as a duty; around this time he also gained an interest in the occult as his studies expanded to include such topics. Lewis quoted Lucretius as having one of the strongest arguments for atheism:
Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
Naturam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa (Lucretius)
"Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see."
Lewis's interest in fantasy and mythology, especially in relation to the works of George MacDonald, was part of what turned him from atheism. In fact, MacDonald's position as a Christian fantasy writer was very influential on Lewis. This can be seen particularly well through this passage in The Great Divorce, chapter nine, when the semi-autobiographical main character meets MacDonald in Heaven:
...I tried, trembling, to tell this man all that his writings had done for me. I tried to tell how a certain frosty afternoon at Leatherhead Station when I had first bought a copy of Phantastes (being then about sixteen years old) had been to me what the first sight of Beatrice had been to Dante: Here begins the new life. I started to confess how long that Life had delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly and reluctantly I had come to admit that his Christendom had more than an accidental connexion with it, how hard I had tried not to see the true name of the quality which first met me in his books is Holiness. (Lewis 1946, pp. 66 – 67)
Influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and friend J. R. R. Tolkien, and by the book The Everlasting Man by Roman Catholic convert G. K. Chesterton, he slowly rediscovered Christianity. He fought greatly up to the moment of his conversion noting, "I came into Christianity kicking and screaming." He described his last struggle in Surprised by Joy:
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. (Lewis 1966)
After his conversion to theism in 1929, Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931. Following a long discussion and late-night walk with his close friends Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, he records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. He became a member of the Church of England — somewhat to the disappointment of Tolkien, who had hoped he would convert to Roman Catholicism (Carpenter 2006).[2]
A committed Anglican, Lewis upheld a largely orthodox Anglican theology, though in his apologetic writings, he made an effort to avoid espousing any one denomination. In his later writings, some believe he proposed ideas such as purification of venial sins after death in purgatory (The Great Divorce) and mortal sin (The Screwtape Letters), which are generally considered to be Catholic teachings. Regardless, Lewis considered himself an entirely orthodox Anglican to the end of his life, reflecting that he had initially attended church only to receive communion and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honoured by worshipping with men of faith who came in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymns.- C. S. Lewis (from athiest to christian - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._…)
Everyone interested (again I state...to those interested) in learning more about Christianity at it's core, should read Lewis' book Mere Christianity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me...
it's the best christian apologetics book I've ever read.
- BonSeff0
"there is no evidence of a god"
Do you have evidence to back that up?thats the myopic argument.. prove to me that something imaginary doesnt exist. how can you win an argument with that insanity.. its fucking delusional.. and then they're like- yo the bible this and the bible that.. its awesome
- blaw0
I give as much of a fuck about what Einstein believes in spiritually as I do the previous 99 posts + notes.
Nobody can figure this stuff out on their own, 'eh?
