Well, if you aren't Christian (or religious, rather) you probably don't care all that much. But if you really do believe, then you wouldn't want all your friends to go to hell for disbelieving in God, would you?

//edit. just so we're clear, nothing i say in this thread is any reflection on what I actually believe, I just wanted to make this comment.

Quote:I was waiting for someone to bite. Have you ever tested Christianity? It's a toughy, because to test it, you have to abandon your indifference or objection to it, and actually embrace it, which is not required of most scientific examinations.

Christianity CAN be tested, but not by inviting God into a lab and measuring the length of his beard.

Agreed. There are very clear testable abilities given to believers that are described in Matthew 17:20, and Mark 16:18, but the Bible states very clearly that believing is a prerequisite to having those abilities. You can indeed have demonstrable telekinetic powers and immunity to all poisons, but you must believe first.

Quote:There are very clear testable abilities given to believers that are described in Matthew 17:20, and Mark 16:18, but the Bible states very clearly that believing is a prerequisite to having those abilities. You can indeed have demonstrable telekinetic powers and immunity to all poisons, but you must believe first.

Then why hasn't anyone demonstrated these magic abilities before? If someone believes, they can go to a lab, get injected with poison and show the scientists that he/she won't die. Then the scientists can figure out what they want to make of the expiriment.

By the way, you are appealing to the Bible to support your claim that "Christianity CAN be tested," but you have, in fact, not proven the Bible as true. So you can't use the Bible for arguing until you prove its claims are true.

Quote:Original post by Quat
Then why hasn't anyone demonstrated these magic abilities before? If someone believes, they can go to a lab, get injected with poison and show the scientists that he/she won't die. Then the scientists can figure out what they want to make of the expiriment.

By the way, you are appealing to the Bible to support your claim that "Christianity CAN be tested," but you have, in fact, not proven the Bible as true. So you can't use the Bible for arguing until you prove its claims are true.

I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. Not that it changes your point, though.

Convincing yourself that you've proven something doesn't mean you have. That's why they call it faith.

Quote:Original post by Quat

Quote:There are very clear testable abilities given to believers that are described in Matthew 17:20, and Mark 16:18, but the Bible states very clearly that believing is a prerequisite to having those abilities. You can indeed have demonstrable telekinetic powers and immunity to all poisons, but you must believe first.

Then why hasn't anyone demonstrated these magic abilities before? If someone believes, they can go to a lab, get injected with poison and show the scientists that he/she won't die. Then the scientists can figure out what they want to make of the expiriment.

Better yet, you could set up the experiment with the Randi Foundation and receive 1.3 million dollars for your favorite charity.

Quote:By the way, you are appealing to the Bible to support your claim that "Christianity CAN be tested," but you have, in fact, not proven the Bible as true. So you can't use the Bible for arguing until you prove its claims are true.

And the way that you would prove a work or subset of a work to be true would be to test its claims and see if they actually fit with reality. If your geometry textbook states that the square of the hypotneuse of a triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the remaining sides, you can test that claim and see if it's true. Ditto for claims in other works. If they occur in reality, then the claim is demonstrably true. If not, then the claim's not true.

Quote:Original post by Avatar God
//edit. F**king rating system. I try to rate somebody down for being a jerk (regardless of position, mind you) and his rating goes up.

Was that me by any chance? You can't bring me down. I carefuly balance my idiotic posts in the lounge with half decent posts in maths section.

oh feck, what the hell, here I go again...

OK, I've been baptised, did my first communion, and confirmation, like any good little french catholic schoolboy. I had to attend catholic studies every wednesday morning. Not that it bothered me as such, but aged about 14-15, it was we really started questioning the teacher about serious stuff in the bible (not just Santa Claus) that did not make sense, like kids do. We never ever had any satisfying answer, always the usual "It's in the bible, shut up". It always brought more questions.

So I basically gave up, thinking it was just a load of rubbish. I just figured the bible was just a mean for catholics to explain the unexplainable to them in an uncomplicated no-hassle way, what formed the stars in the sky, earth, how it happened, why we are here, for what purpose, if any, what happens when you die and so on. Simple, you don't question things, just accept them. I mean, I was a not specially bright 15 years old, it doesn't take much really to bring it all down.

Every religion has a different take on how the world comes to life. Most accepts the fact that God (or Gods) created the universe with a bit of magic powder, as this is the most comforting, less complicated solution. Well, that's cool, science is a bit like that. You take an hypothesis, verify with your scientific equipment that it can stands on its head, if it does, it's probably true, until someone refutes it.

Unfortunately, some religions don't accept change. It's written, what was true 1,000 years ago must be true today. Evolution takes a leap of faith in a way. You have to project yourself so far back in the past, it's just mind-blowing. Looking at the scales of evolution, civilisation is a tiny tiny tiny speck. From the point of view of someone lifetime, nothing changes. Cats stay like cats, and they are quite different from dogs, there is no reason it would have been different for my grandfather, and his grandfather and so on. Science changes all that and allows you to explore times well beyond imagination. Who knows what cats will look like 3,000,000 years. They'll probably look like a cross between Cliff Richard and James Brown, wear cool suits and keep saying "So, what is it?".

I believe in God, and he must look like a neat mathematical equation, but all Noah, the flood, the garden of Eden, give me a break... The bible for me is more like a guide to living than the book of Truth. If christians never survived the Romans, we would probably be having the same discussion about Jupiter, Neptune, and the hundreds of other gods. So who is more 'right'? Now Roman beliefs are nothing more that myths and nice little bedtime stories.

So, my belief, there is no ONE truth. Science at least is a belief that accepts that and is constantly evolving according our current perception of the world, which also changing, quite rapidly I must say. Science can be wrong, accepts it and just moves on to new pastures.

Who knows, maybe in some weird twisted future, creationism will indeed be the right theory. And I'll drink to that.

OK, ...enough mildly drunk posts for tonight.

Suppose I test Christianity in the prescribed manner, going down on my knees and praying for Jesus to come into my heart. And suppose nothing happens. Have I disproved Christianity? Indeed I have not, the faithful will cry : I wasn't sincere. Hence Christianity is not, in fact, testable : A negative test will not disprove it in the eyes of its believers.

From "Even Einstein Had His Off Days", January 2nd, 2005, the New York Times.

Quote:The Big Bang model was initially ridiculed by the scientific establishment. For example, one of its pioneers, Georges Lemaitre, was both a cosmologist and an ordained priest, so critics cited his theology as his motivation for advancing such a crackpot theory of creation. They suspected that the model was Lemaitre's way of sneaking a Creator into science. While Einstein was not biased against Lemaitre's religious background, he did call the priest's physics "abominable". It was enough to banish the Big Bang model to the hinterlands of cosmology.

However, in 1929, Einstein was forced to eat humble pie. Edwin Hubble, working at Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California, showed that all the distant galaxies in the universe were racing away from one another as though they were debris from a cosmic explosion. The Big Bang model seemed to be correct. And while it would take several decades before the theory was accepted into the scientific establishment, Einstein, to his credit, did not fight on. "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened," he said, and even called his repulsive force the biggest blunder of his career.

Don't judge a book by its cover. Science has been wrong before -- and you shouldn't use the people espousing a theory to deride the theory itself.

I look at it this way:
If creationism is true, would accepting it as such help explain the universe? In my eyes, not really, because religion isn't made up of precise formulas and algorithms for understanding the workings of the universe - IMO they're made up of codes of conduct and the like. If the big bang theory is true, would it help explain the universe? In my eyes, it does, because it can be expressed via algorithms and formulas that neatly fit into the existing approximations.

Thus, the only reason for a scientist to pursue creationism would be to create a new kind of science, which is a daunting task to say the least. Pursuing the big bang theory allows for smaller steps and easier progression based on what has already been done.

Also, science isn't entirely incompatable with a divine being, because it is always poosible "God caused that" or "God made it that way" etc.