"Please educate me! Why do these stories that are in the Bible hold such important sway"

i dont think they do. the church came before the bible. the church created the bible. the bible is a tool to teach the religion. one day abunch of important people in the catholic church got together, and decided what was in the catholic church's bible.

"the guy who cares enough that we must call him by the right name"

i still dont see where you're getting this

"You are also generalising. You have said a few times "generalizations, most christians do not believe this"'

i am, because you only want to talk in generalizations. i have already summed up everything that isnt a generalization. christians beleive in Jesus; religious people beleive in something. everything else is a generalization.

"me that the majority of Christians do not in fact believe that it was God (edit: entering a new example here; talking snakes gets boring) who sent the plague of frogs, locusts, or kill first-born.... yet did/did not send the boxing day tsunami or Katrina?"

Christians believe that God is all-powerful and all-knowing. so yes, we would believe that God is responsible for everything, including  the boxing day tsunami and Katrina. When he created what we call reality, he knew everything that would happen, including katrina, he created the world so that Katrina would happen.

"Almost every post before this one. See below, the 'not every christian believes that' point"

saying not every christian beleives that point, is not saying whether that point is right or wrong, but saying its a generalization.

you are beyond help, i show you the largest sect of christianity in the world by far doesnt beleive in what you claim almost all christians beleive in and you still say it. you are a moron, an idiot, and a bigot; good day sir. you dont understand religion, stop acting like you do; there are much, much, much greater minds then yours that were religious, as a general rule of thumb, wherever you see a fallacy there isnt one, you just dont understand it.

the north knows that war will destroy them. they are seeking nukes and icbm's so that nukes will destroy us, the only logical coarse of action is to destroy their ability to destroy us in the future.

"He's concerned by tripe things such as people taking his name in vain,"

says who?

"your arguement that one group of christians, or one particular religion is right, and the others are wrong, is just plain worthless"

where did i argue that?

"
People thought that the earth was the centre of the universe because that's what the church told them, not the other way around, otherwise there wouldn't have been that whole Galileo fiasco. The church was proven to be wrong."

Galileo was not in trouble until he explained how his findings did not contradict the church, because then he was interpretting the church's teachings which was the church's job. the church did not just one day say, the earth is teh center of the universe, it was a beleif even before the time of Jesus in many cultures.

"I'm not providing any because your argument will go back to "oh those other christians think that, not me", which is not relevant."

thats not my argument. my argument is the vast majority of christians dont beleive that, so stop generalizing and saying christians beleive that. yes, theres some christians that beleive that, but theres also some New Zealenders that beleive that. and a generalization that New Zealenders beleive that, is just as valid.

"Only with regards to one unsubstantiated belief that they have. Otherwise, no."

well with a series of beleifs. and calling people delusional in the OP obviously doesnt encourage debate, and there has been no debate about religion you have failed to get religious people to debate about religion at all.

"Not any person belonging to any group is the same. Yet the vast majority of religious/Christian/Muslim people believe in the same things"

i would agree with all of this, if alot of the things you bring up in the original post, were some of those things that most religious people believe in, but they arent.

"I dare say that they share a lot of similar/identical beliefs past that! Part of the "delusion" in the title of this thread (well I have discussed many things that fit under the 'delusion' and 'destruction' in the title) is how God / Jesus hasn't done / didnt do anything to make sure that all these branches of the church join together"

doesnt the latter statement in this quote disprove the orignal statment? there is no unified church, there is no unified beleifs for christians, except for what the definition of the word is, which is a beleif in Jesus.

"Thanks for getting his name right so I could look up the right guy"

yeah, sorry about that, for some reasont he end of his last name got cut off... 

"which the church would reject for many years - is probably taking it a step too far."

which church? im assuming you mean the catholic church? they didnt "reject" the big bang theory. they also didnt say "this is how it happened! definitely" but a member of the church did propose the theory, and the church didnt oppose or reject the theory or him.

"No, I'm promoting discussion."

making very negative generalizations about a group of people is not a good way to promote discussion. if i say "niggers are dirt" im not promoting discussion about black people.

"I haven't met every religious person in the world and personally taken account of their views on every subject, so according you, until I do meet that last religious person, then I am generalizing."

no even then you would be generalizing. if i meet everything, of a group, i could describe them, and if it isnt true about all, it would be a generalization. in reality theres 1 similarity with all Christians, they believe in Jesus. there's 1 similarity with all religions, they believe in something. everything else you post is a generalization, not because you havent met all religious people, but because all religious people arent like how you describe.

"I'm an uneducated hick because I haven't heard of this one particular theologist? Nice one, shows how much class and good be-nice-and-love-everyone-morals religion has given you. I looked him up, but I didn't feel like buying any books. Eventually some info came back to the 6000-yrs old world and I stoped looking. In the end, I couldn't find anything to justify us saying that this man's guesses and wild stabs in the dark come anything close to Hawking. This is already a rediculous claim that you are making, I can't believe I'm replying to this one."

im not claiming he is comparable to Hawking. He is the inventor of the Big bang theory, Georges Lema

> You_Fool wrote:

> nolio: Still doesn't make Primo right.... IN fact it re-inforces the wrong part of the politics forum... Tag point should be put to those who can argue rationally and can accept opposing points of view when those opposing points have been laid out in a structured argument... and i don't care how much is "mods r alwaz right lol!!!11!!1111!" mods should try and do a proper job, even if they are as gay as primo...

i think he did try to do a proper job, its not like all these people politically agreed with him. sure, they were probably all people that Primo liked either their idealogy or their reasoning, but i think it looks like he at least tried to do a reasonable job. and what is and isnt rational is very subjective.

yeah, i havent been very active recently, probably shouldnt of claimed that.

> Zarf BeebleBrix wrote:

> And before anyone says it... it doesn't seem politically biased, to be honest.  Hell, xeno got one, and I don't think he had one person who agreed with him. 

i disagree. what are constructive posts depends on how the moderator's value their input which is largely based on politics. but yes, the people getting the tags werent of one position. unbias isnt practical in real life, and although it was biased, it appears they attempted to make it less biased which is admirable.

> Red Phoenix wrote:

> "Christianity says that the world is about 6000 years old"

No it doesn't say that at all.  A small percentage of protestant fundies say that.  They are the ones that this post should be directed against, not the straw man that you have made Christianity out to be.

theres alot of things that arent true about the protestant fundies though, that he posted. you are right in saying all a tiny percentage of protestant fundelmentalists beleive the world is about 6000 years old. it was infact the Catholic Church (the largest sect of christianity in the world) that invented the Big Bang theory, that is what most scientists believe how the universe began. and darwin, the single largest contributor to the theory of evolution was also a christian. and then Einstien although, he wasnt Christian, was certainly religious, and was probably the brightest mind of the 20th century.

more specific generalizations to quote

"A scientist will say "I dont know what was around the outside of the particle at the start of the universe". Our minds can not really comprehend it. We can not comprehend the mass of this particle. You think that their must be a God because you can not comprehend the universe. You can not comprehend that there is no meaning to life.  A scientist will own up to what he doesn't know. A religous person will claim that they know everything because God created everything."

"In schools you advocate the teaching of creationism alongside evolution."
"but because of your religious dogma, you say that only abstinience is acceptable"
"Why must the work you do be in the name of God? Why not follow the example of Doctors without Borders and Engineers without Borders and take part in truthful, practical work that does not spread Christianity?"
"If you believe that HIV was created by God to punish"
"There are many hundreds of thousands of strands of virus and a similar number of beetles in the world. Did God decide that the planet needed all these little insects and greated everyone of them individually? Why did he create a bunch of virsus that are bengin? My absolutely favourite illustration of evolution vs creationism can be found here:"

you are making all these generalizations about christians, when you dont know anything about them, you're jsut spouting anti-christian propoganda and are no better then Zidi spouting McCain wouldnt of even tried to improve the US if he was elected. you're a confused kid that is criticizing points of view he doesnt understand.

its only poking fun of Obama in one line at the bottom of the page, its mainly poking fun of the senate committee. way to miss the ball again econ.