Is it a conspiracy, or are you an ostrich?

Originally posted by shavixmir
Is there a difference?

Between blaspheaming and what?

And anyway if it's becasue a person is in the habbit of cursing then wouldn't they pray to pete huh for pete sake etc 😵

What do you think about my theory anyway, that a persons picture of God effects their beleif in Him. What is your picture/imiage/concept of Him Shav?

Originally posted by sh76
That makes no sense.

For the past hundred years (give or take a few decades), how can anyone dispute that the percentage of atheists/deists/agnostics/anyone who doesn't believe in religion, has increased with every generation, especially in the West?

Obviously, many or most of those were born religious and had to be convinced.

I for one know several people who used to be christians and are now nonbelievers. Among people of my age, believers are now a fairly small minority here.

Originally posted by yo its me
Between blaspheaming and what?

And anyway if it's becasue a person is in the habbit of cursing then wouldn't they pray to pete huh for pete sake etc 😵

What do you think about my theory anyway, that a persons picture of God effects their beleif in Him. What is your picture/imiage/concept of Him Shav?

God, to me, looks exactly like Alanis Morrisette and sounds awfully like Alan Rickman.

Originally posted by shavixmir
God, to me, looks exactly like Alanis Morrisette and sounds awfully like Alan Rickman.

That has to have been influenced by the films you've watched. Maybe your idea of His personaity has been influenced too?

Originally posted by yo its me
That has to have been influenced by the films you've watched. Maybe your idea of His personaity has been influenced too?

It probably has.
Some prankster God running around planting dinosaur bones all over the planet, which has to be square because the bible mentions the four corners of the Earth, to test our faiths, doesn't make him sound very nice.

Nor the fact that he's forever testing the Jews. That's pretty bizarre behaviour.

Originally posted by shavixmir
It probably has.
Some prankster God running around planting dinosaur bones all over the planet, which has to be square because the bible mentions the four corners of the Earth, to test our faiths, doesn't make him sound very nice.

Nor the fact that he's forever testing the Jews. That's pretty bizarre behaviour.

But God did get his revenge in the form of pancreatic cancer.

Originally posted by shavixmir
It probably has.
Some prankster God running around planting dinosaur bones all over the planet, which has to be square because the bible mentions the four corners of the Earth, to test our faiths, doesn't make him sound very nice.

Nor the fact that he's forever testing the Jews. That's pretty bizarre behaviour.

I expect you know more about the Bible stories then I do. I find the books hard to read and to know which bits to take litterary, I'm still trying to work it all out myself. Here is where you'd win the argument, except that I do firmly beleive that God is real. I know you think that's my brain washing 😉 Still. Maybe God has changed and He used to test His people but now He dosen't, maybe He had a spicific race He'd chosen but now He choses all of us, maybe maybe. But there's no way we all sprang up from a big bang of space that arrived from nowhere with two atoms that arrived from nothing.

Originally posted by yo its me
So, my answer is. I think to call something a conspiracy is to say that you don't fully understand what's happened either because you're too lazy to look at all the facts or they're not avaliable to you. There must be somethings that aren't in the public domain like evidene that people have messed up, the fabrication of weapons of mass distruction for exam 's head differs to what the reality is, but how would anyone know which is which!? haha

I think at the heart of the matter is ones beliefs. For example, Shav is more likely to believe that Israel has a conspiracy and I am more likely to believe that the left wing has a conspiracy. You see, everyone has a devil and everyone has a saviour of sorts. It is then simply a matter of feeding into these already existing beliefs. Of course, you will have those out there who claim to be "objective". But no one is 100% objective, simply no one. They are simply fooling themselves.

In the politics in the US, both the left and right know this fact and feed into it consistantly. The retoric gets heated as they work up their followers into a religious frenzy of sorts. Then behind closed doors they help each other accomplish pretty much the same goals. Of course, without this frenzy of support, their legitimacy would be questioned because it would be nonexistent. Most of the support is generated emotionally, not intellectually.

Woops, there I go again, another conspiracy!! Somebody stop me!! 😛

With the religious question... i do kinda believe in a God, or more a greater good, but can't tie it down to a religion, think most corrupt this idea.
A friend said to me there is no lord greater than truth and i hang on to this for now.

Its not for me to figure out or impose my ideas on other people, History looks to me like snooker game where all the balls have been knocked round the table, each blaming the other for the collision. I they had a spliff or two ... I am no hippy , but think cannabis brings out clarity with such thoughts.

I only think about the middle east at all because we have lots of 'News' I stopped watching it a while back and just tried to read history in search of more facts but even this is distorted . i dunno

Originally posted by shavixmir
It probably has.
Some prankster God running around planting dinosaur bones all over the planet, which has to be square because the bible mentions the four corners of the Earth, to test our faiths, doesn't make him sound very nice.

Nor the fact that he's forever testing the Jews. That's pretty bizarre behaviour.

Ok, this really made me laugh.


Personally I was once converted away and once converted back, still religious, but not very good at getting back at being as good at being religious as i'd like to be.

To answer the Middle Eastern assumptions, I think they assume too much.

Israel seems to be acting in what it views in its political and security interests, which is to compromise where there is realistic lasting compromise and otherwise call the violent groups out on there nonsense. Meanwhile Iran seems to be acting in its political and security interests which is play hardline for the hardliners and act like others ought not to mess with your country like they did Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam, etc. I think they are both missing opportunities to improve their nations' long-run security interests, but they are boxed in by politics.

Originally posted by Black Star Uchess
With the religious question... i do kinda believe in a God, or more a greater good, but can't tie it down to a religion, think most corrupt this idea.
A friend said to me there is no lord greater than truth and i hang on to this for now.

Its not for me to figure out or impose my ideas on other people, History looks to me like snooker game whe ...[text shortened]... and just tried to read history in search of more facts but even this is distorted . i dunno

I they had a spliff or two ... I am no hippy , but think cannabis brings out clarity with such thoughts.

it certainly does.

Originally posted by yo its me
But there's no way we all sprang up from a big bang of space that arrived from nowhere with two atoms that arrived from nothing.

That is because you are thinking too simplistically. In the vast majority of cases, you don't get complex molecular structures that give the illusion of "life" out of less complex structures, but given enough time and space, and it is plausible.

All it requires is the right conditions, billions of years, and you can get a molecular structure that can self replicate. From then on, natural selection takes over and newer more complex forms develop.

It is worth noting that experiments have been done by the biochemist Sidney W Fox back in the 50s and 60s which demonstrate one possible way on which life had formed on this planet. Where he studied the spontaneous formation of peptide structures under conditions which duplicated possible conditions millions of years ago. Certainly these were in closed clean systems, because if you create these structures and put them out into the world today, bacteria that already exists would destroy it.

Since Darwin, there are many thousands of experiments that fit so well with natural selection and evolutionary theory, that it is accepted as the norm now within the scentific community. All they experiment with these days are the finer details.

You may argue "how is the Earth just the perfect conditions to sustain life? That must mean the Earth and life had been designed to do so". The point is that life evolved to fit the conditions, not the other way around. Evolved to the stage where we could come to the point to ask that question.

Life can easily (and may well do) evolve on the other side of this galaxy, where these life forms ask the same kind of questions. Natural selection evolves life that fit the environment, so it seems "perfect".

This reminds me of Douglas Adam's puddle:

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."