So you should be able to show us somewhere on this forum where kurto has displayed accurate knowledge of scripture, other then that he is capable of cherry picking verses off of google? or religion for that matter? Don't hate because the man's statement was dead on.
If the Bible teaches people how to use power the way God wants them too, how is the Bible not meant to be political?

Please explain to us how the golden rule could be laid out for you guys any clearer. But your right, you can't blame someone for being an idiot, it's God's fault right?

Now this is what you call a flat out ridiculous statement. Uh...if someone else was chosen to write the Bible, then they would be "chosen" right? So are you upset there weren't more "chosen" people who wrote the Bible? I don't understand. Please refrain from posting when drunk.
It is not even that hard to interpret, when honest with yourself, and you actually take the time too...

I suppose if one mistakes a w for two v's, it is the maker of the alphabet's fault correct?
Why is an older brother "chosen" to set an example for the younger brother?

The Bible go's into great detail describing how we are all came from the same 2 ancestors. We should all treat each other equally, fair, and love each other as much as we love ourselves. But i understand, that if you miss these parts in scripture, you may come to the conclusion that some people are just special while others are not.

Its negative for those of us who dont want to be united by its various contradictory ideas.

Someone said in this thread: Something as complex as a computer is built by a creator, thus the universe must have a creator.

Well hello there William Paley, Have you met The Blind Watchmaker ?

No, I'm Muslim, but it's obvious why people would mistake me for Christian (see: majority of theists here).

He missed the point that was: One religion, or even still, one specific verse or line in one religion does not mean that religion itself pits man against one another, as was claimed.

Yes, he's addressing what religion is according to his take on it. I simply spelled it out.

Because it plays a huge role in politics - which itself is just the outcome of mixing society and economics - does not mean that it was its intended purpose. If you take the time and study philosophy of religion, you'll probably see that fairly easily.

Again, people make it tribal. Moses', Jesus', Mohammad's and many others' messages were not intended for their own people only; it was intended for all of mankind. Sure, the message was sent to a group of people initially, but that doesn't mean that the message must be insular to that society or group of people.

As for it being personal. What I meant was that it would be incorrect to think, "this is our/my religion," in the possessive and exclusive sense.

Note the inappropriate usage. This is simply talk of abuse of power, which holy messengers never did, but people to this day still do. It's fallacious thinking to say, "well, people abuse religion for power, so religion must be a tool for power abuse." You'll note that 100% of the time when somebody abuses religion for political purposes, they are going against the very tenets of that religion.

In other words religious people don't do such.

That's up for personal contention. Believe what you will, but not before examination, investigation and analysis.

If you had the job of explaining wifi technology to people from the bronze age, how and where would you begin? You get the idea here, right?

See above. It's the biggest example of politics abusing religion. If you were to personify the two, politics would be the shady, sleazy guy with that TV anchor smile in a suit that stinks of a used car salesman, and religion would be that wise, quiet person that people know and generally know is a good guy, who on occasion happens to get tricked and deceived by politics into doing something wrong.

You can reduce that and ask why did any one person need to be chosen by God? You're turning something simple into something complicated.

You have to add what they would be chosen for exactly.

I'll be holding my breath.

Fine, though, nobody is stuffing it down your throat and forcing you into consuming religion. People incorrectly (against their religions) did, back in the day, and that was - still is - very, very wrong.

Sure they are and in all kinds of ways including laws i must follow or be jailed. Not that i dont want to force my values down their throat with laws too.

hardball - perhaps you should define what you mean by religion. Because I can only conclude that you mean something different then any of us disagreeing with you.

I'm basing my views on a definition like this:
The Judeo-Christian religion is based on the teachings (among possibly others) the Bible. If I criticize that the Christianity is divisive because the Bible commands that people do A, B & C which involves declaring some people chose above others, killing non believers, etc. If the followers do as they're instructed because they're following what they believe is the commands of god; then this is a component of the religion. And to ignore this is willfully sticking your head in the sand, imo.

Now... that isn't to say that religion can also have good parts and encourage cooperation between some men, but usually between OTHER believers. Because its quite clear that people who don't believe are not worthy.

I know from the Holy Bible that God created the universe, but He doesn't explain how He did it.

God has existed forever.

I'd just like to point out that you've yet to provide a strong argument that "it's illogical to not believe in gods".

Would you be interested in retracting that statement? It's quite a bold claim, and one that I doubt many theists would be arrogant enough to make.

I love your phrase "wall of drivel" to descibe my post. Well, maybe it's drivel, but it's my drivel.

I didn't say that complexity by itself implies a designer, but rather I said that complex information systems imply a designer. Take the human eye, as an example. Literally thousands of things have to work perfectly for sight to happen. Michael Behe uses the eye as an example of "irreducible complexity." That is, if any of the thousands of parts were taken away, sight wouldn't be possible (using that eye). It is obviously (to me, anyway) the the eye was created for the express purpose of allowing a man or animal to see. To say it just happened "by chance" would be silly, IMO.

Also, I do believe in "natural processes." But the elements of the "process" have to be somehow "programmed" for the process to be effectual.

You basically conceded the point about there being only two possiblilites: planned universe or fortitutous universe when you said, "perhaps the original starting point was chance." If there is a third option, please tell me what it is so a correction can be made to any subsequent revisions of Professor Joad's book.

I've already presented my arguments. You can take them or leave them. (I suspect that you'll "leave them.")

Your arguments are pretty poor and I've already pointed out the flaws and assumptions. There's no sense in clinging to an idea that you have no effective argument for.

So I will "leave" your arguments, but only because they have clearly not established what you say they establish.

What exactly do you mean by a complex information system, what classifies as a complex information system and why does it imply a designer?

What do you mean by programmed? Do you mean programmed by something intelligent? If so, why?

No I did not. I said the starting point could be chance or actually incredibly likely. Then I recall saying "I don't claim to know".

But even if the starting point was chance, this does not mean the entire universe is a byproduct of chance. It would be possible to have the beginning happen by chance, which then leads to a natural process, which causes the universe to develop like it has. This is much different than claiming the entire universe is the way it is simply by complete and utter random chance.

I do not know how the universe started however. There is probably an infinite number of possibilities for the universe to come about. God is merely one of these, and it has not shown itself to be any more probable than any of the other infinite possibilities.

Basically, a "complex information system" is a mechanism that requires a precise interplay of "hardware" and "software". It requires that certain physical parts of the mechanism (hardware) be developed in a very specific way based on a design (software). A computer is an example of a complex information system. A far more awesome complex information system would be the brain of a human or an animal. Every part has to work optimally, or "thinking" won't take place. (Some have suggested that "thinking" doesn't take place in my posts, but that's another topic for another day.)

"Programmed": The code that "commands" the mechanism what to do.

In the spirit of consistency, do you also chastise atheists that claim that "believing in God is illogical" for being arrogant?

Not particularly. There is no evidence of gods, nor any good arguments for their existence. Most theists admit that their belief is largely based on faith. I feel this is somewhat irrational, but I have no problem with it and admit that I may be wrong.

I find your claim to be arrogant, because you act like God has been clearly established, when this is not the case. I wouldn't have a problem if you simply stated that you believed in God, truly thought he existed, and accepted people's non-belief.

Instead you feel the need to characterize it as illogical, which you cannot back up when called out on, and refuse to backtrack on. Your arrogance is further shown by your call to "take my arguments or leave them" - basically saying that they are correct and refusing to listen to any objections.

You've simply stated that the universe is either a product of God or complete random chance, and then refused to clarify why. Forgive me for not taking your claims as 100% truth without evidence or reason.

It's still called religion if you remove "based on the teachings of a spiritual leader." The set of beliefs, values and practices themselves is religion. Of course, it also takes into account supernatural explanation, and moral governance, but I didn't think I needed to have mentioned that.

You're still making the same very basic error. If one leader of a religion (note: not religious leader - difference should be clear) instructs his/her followers to rise up against another group of people (for no good reason, at that) and that it's their religious obligation to do so, the idea of religion is not responsible, nor are other religions obviously. You can fairly and rightly criticize that religion, but you'd be grossly generalizing and mistaken if you thought to yourself that this is what religion (and the concept of it) does.

I don't even know where you get these ideas from or why you still cling to them. Think about this on a very simple, logical level. If religions purposefully segregated those outside of their religion and treated them differently, it wouldn't last very long, since they wouldn't proselytize, because they're all not worthy and thus inferior. More importantly, they would have their own insular society, since they wouldn't live harmoniously in a society with those not of their religion.

hardball, im on my phone so i cant address your entire post, but i would like to say that your description of the politics guy as sleazy and the religious guy as wise and quiet is a horribly flase generalization. politics involves setting up rules and structure for a society, and religious texts do the same. "you can do this, but you can't do this", makes it "political".

why didn't you answer my question about god appearing more/less complex than an atom? surely an entity who can poof all this into existence falls in your category of "complex informational system"???

This thread and conversation is a good example.

Atheism is the most dangerous religion of all, because it takes away social unity. Government/science becomes God, every man is looking out for himself and the family unit is almost nonexistent.

Exactly atheists have no family units their kind of like caged animals.

Government/science become a non-existent fairy tale? You cannot look at secular nations and tell me with a straight face that every man is looking out for themselves, or that the family unit becomes non-existent.

Historically, the lack of "religion" has been a terrible, terrible thing.

Welp, im convinced...