I'm thinking of starting a religion

god's name is burt.... if you follow him, you have to have monday's off work as that is a day of rest and reflection, apart from that, burt pretty much lets you do what you want

Originally posted by eatmybishop
god's name is burt.... if you follow him, you have to have monday's off work as that is a day of rest and reflection, apart from that, burt pretty much lets you do what you want

Then he won't mind if I don't believe in him.

Originally posted by josephw
Then he won't mind if I don't believe in him.

Well then that'd be one reason he'd be better than Jesus 😉

L. Ron Hubbard of scientology fame (or infamy) said the best way to make alot of money was to start a religion (and he would know). Its also a great way to get laid. Good luck.

I would like to starting a new religion: one where the god that is worshiped is the “god of logic” or, to be more specific, “god of critical and independent thinking”

There will have to be a special bible for this religion called “the logical testament” which has scripture and lots of catchy beautiful verses that preaches the big-bang theory, genetic engineering and evolution etc such as a catchy beautiful verse vaguely along the lines of:

“thy beautiful innocent children’s faces evolved from thy hairy gorilla-like faces from thy ape-like ancestors” (Ok!, I am not good at making verses. So just imagine I came up with hundreds of really nice catchy beautiful verses).

Children will be brought up to learn these verses and sing beautiful “Hymns of pure logic” in Sunday school and be preached to think critically and independently. This critical and independent thinking will eventually cause the followers of my religion to first question and then disbelieve the existence of the “god of logic” thus my religion will sow the seeds of its own destruction. But, by then, the religion would have already done its job so that’s ok. 🙂

-unless! -this “god of logic” is not supposed to exist but is always said to be a purely imaginary and hypothetically perfect rational mind that we should all strive to have as far as possible even though we can never expect to achieve a state of ultimate “perfect rationality”?
That would make the whole “religion” (if you can still call it that) completely logically self-consistent and immune from the very same critical and independent thinking it promotes!
Seriously, I think I may be onto something here!

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
I would like to starting a new religion: one where the god that is worshiped is the “god of logic” or, to be more specific, “god of critical and independent thinking”

There will have to be a special bible for this religion called “the logical testament” which has scripture and lots of catchy beautiful verses that preaches the big-bang theory, gene ...[text shortened]... critical and independent thinking it promotes!
Seriously, I think I may be onto something here!

well the jews thought their book was pretty cool then. so if you find evolution cool and want to insert it in a religious book, and then later on it is found to be incorrect, won't the future generation view you as illogical as we find those jews with their OT or the christians?

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
well the jews thought their book was pretty cool then. so if you find evolution cool and want to insert it in a religious book, and then later on it is found to be incorrect, won't the future generation view you as illogical as we find those jews with their OT or the christians?

If it's verifiable as true then people wouldn't see it as illogical. The OT and NT aren't verifiable - and in some cases are verifiable to be false.

I'm against putting those things in a religious book though because it would tend to remove the tentative part of science from it. Evolution, relativity, atomic theory et al are the best explanations that we have for what we see in our world, but we can't remove the possibility that someone will come up with something better.

Originally posted by PsychoPawn
If it's verifiable as true then people wouldn't see it as illogical. The OT and NT aren't verifiable - and in some cases are verifiable to be false.

I'm against putting those things in a religious book though because it would tend to remove the tentative part of science from it. Evolution, relativity, atomic theory et al are the best explanations that ...[text shortened]... world, but we can't remove the possibility that someone will come up with something better.

they were logical to those people. doesn't matter that they used the wrong methods to reach those conclusions. maybe we will be proven wrong as well.

maybe future generations will say "Quantum physics? how cute, but so wrong" doesn't matter that our experiments verified quantum physics, the prophets of the OT were as believable to the jews as E=mc2 is to us.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
they were logical to those people. doesn't matter that they used the wrong methods to reach those conclusions. maybe we will be proven wrong as well.

maybe future generations will say "Quantum physics? how cute, but so wrong" doesn't matter that our experiments verified quantum physics, the prophets of the OT were as believable to the jews as E=mc2 is to us.

I didn't say believable, I said verifiable.

E=mc2 is verifiable.

The prophecies of the OT are not.

The difference isn't how believable they are, the difference is how verifiable their statements are.

You're right that maybe we will be proven wrong. That's why I specifically said that I wouldn't put these things into some kind of religious book because religious books become dogma as religions are and that we have to maintain the tentativeness of science.

It DOES matter that our experiments verify quantum physics because that's how we actually verify these things. Verification in science is critical. In religion it's not important.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
they were logical to those people.

I rather doubt that. You probably mean "some of the people back then had blind faith as some do now."
Nowadays some people think their religion is logical (but cant back that up with logic) and others are quite happy leaving their religions illogical. knightmeister for example thinks that illogicality is one of the hallmarks of his religion and would not have it any other way.

Originally posted by PsychoPawn
I didn't say believable, I said verifiable.

E=mc2 is verifiable.

The prophecies of the OT are not.

The difference isn't how believable they are, the difference is how verifiable their statements are.

You're right that maybe we will be proven wrong. That's why I specifically said that I wouldn't put these things into some kind of religious bo verify these things. Verification in science is critical. In religion it's not important.

Jonah saying "i got eaten by a whale" is verifiable to the OT people. To verify is to ask questions and compare answers. the people of the OT only asked "what did he say?" "If he said he was eaten by a whale sent by god then it must be true". The people of modern time might ask "can a whale eat a man?" "How could the man have survived?" and arrive to the conclusion that it is false.

what i am saying is that different cultures have different methods of discovering truth.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I rather doubt that. You probably mean "some of the people back then had blind faith as some do now."
Nowadays some people think their religion is logical (but cant back that up with logic) and others are quite happy leaving their religions illogical. knightmeister for example thinks that illogicality is one of the hallmarks of his religion and would not have it any other way.

those people, some people. i am saying that viewing some people illogical in some aspects doesn't mean we will not be viewed the same by future generations who will wonder how were we so ignorant as to not figure out how easy time travel is (for example)

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
Jonah saying "i got eaten by a whale" is verifiable to the OT people. To verify is to ask questions and compare answers. the people of the OT only asked "what did he say?" "If he said he was eaten by a whale sent by god then it must be true". The people of modern time might ask "can a whale eat a man?" "How could the man have survived?" and arrive to the co ...[text shortened]... at i am saying is that different cultures have different methods of discovering truth.

If he said he was eaten by a whale sent by god then it must be true". The people of modern time might ask "can a whale eat a man?" "How could the man have survived?" and arrive to the conclusion that it is false.

And who do you think is right?

what i am saying is that different cultures have different methods of disovering truth.

Yes, that's true. However, not all methods are as reliable as others. We have methods today that are objectively better at determining the truth than anything they had even 500 years ago, not to mention 2000 years ago.

Our methods will hopefull get even better and in another 2000 years they may look back on us and laugh at the methods we had, and maybe rightfully so. I sure hope they are that far advanced that they can think of our methods as being primitive.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
they were logical to those people. doesn't matter that they used the wrong methods to reach those conclusions. maybe we will be proven wrong as well.

maybe future generations will say "Quantum physics? how cute, but so wrong" doesn't matter that our experiments verified quantum physics, the prophets of the OT were as believable to the jews as E=mc2 is to us.

Given the restrictions on how we can edit it here, it is better written E = mc^2 because I have learned from my advanced maths courses that the ^ can be taken to mean “to the power of”.

If E = mc^2 was wrong then both nuclear power stations and atom bombs would not work!
If quantum physics was wrong then the semiconductors in the transistors in microchips wouldn’t work and so no modern computer would work.
There is a vast number of other technologies that simply wouldn’t work if science was wrong. E.g. TV, mobile phones, cars, …virtually every type of modern machine you can name.
It is therefore totally absurd to suggest that the whole of science is wrong.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
Given the restrictions on how we can edit it here, it is better written E = mc^2 because I have learned from my advanced maths courses that the ^ can be taken to mean “to the power of”.

If E = mc^2 was wrong then both nuclear power stations and atom bombs would not work!
If quantum physics was wrong then the semiconductors in the transistors ...[text shortened]... ine you can name.
It is therefore totally absurd to suggest that the whole of science is wrong.

e=mc^2 is the mass energy equivalent. nuclear power stations use fission, no connection there, look it up. if e=mc^2 would be wrong it won't change the fact that an atomic bomb goes "boom" . so it would still work but we wouldn't know the exact amount of energy released.


it is not absurd to suggest that todays science may be wrong. and i didn't suggest the whole of science. and i did say "maybe" it is wrong. so do try to get your facts straight.

the science of ptolemy has been proven partially wrong. so was newton physics proven wrong in some circumstances. so it is not absurd to think quantum physics might be proven wrong.