I don't really believe in reincarnation for the fact that it poses the question of where all these extra souls came from. If there are more people in the world then say a century ago, how did these new souls form and from where? Not all these new souls can be the result of twins, the possibility of one soul separating into two identical souls and even if they are not twins each soul has it's own personality and experience that is unique. What exactly does your soul carry from it's previous life? I like the concept of a soul but it seems an everlasting soul is a bit of a fantasy idea.
Does God exist? (8 Viewers)
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Not-That-Bright
Andrew Quah
I don't believe in reincarnation because I see no evidence for it.. hypothesising might be fun, but there's no real point.
Along the same line of thought: what if the population of beings/creatures decreases, where do all the excess souls go once their physical form fails? Do they just sit in limbo or is there some sort of queue system?lengy said:
Not-That-Bright
Andrew Quah
There's evidence to say that the population of beings/creatures (at least on our world) has decreased.
KeypadSDM
B4nn3d
How can you test it?
If reincarnation was a process that you could remember, surely someone would have said "Holy crap, I was a bird" by now. If it's only fleeting memories, who's to say it's not just a dream?
If there was concrete lifelong memory of your previous life, then you could get into experiments.
If reincarnation was a process that you could remember, surely someone would have said "Holy crap, I was a bird" by now. If it's only fleeting memories, who's to say it's not just a dream?
If there was concrete lifelong memory of your previous life, then you could get into experiments.
blue_chameleon
Shake the sauce bottle yo
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Yeah, the whole concept of reincarnation sounds ridiculous to me. I mean, yeah sure it might be interesting to wonder what being a bird might have felt like, of that once we grow old and die, that we can be reincarnated as a chimpanzee (I know I do). But at the end of the day, we take look into the concept with any seriousness because it has so many unanswered questions, which as Keypad said, cant be tested.KeypadSDM said:
But we can always imagine.
$hiftyIceQueen
Banned
how many people here actually believe in god?
CSI: CRIMES ™
Member
read this article!!
MY parents were atheists, but whenever a school form required an answer about our religious denomination, my mother would tick "Presbyterian", because "that's what you're supposed to be".
This aura of respectability around religion - oddly - still exists; and that is why whatever last week's census shows about the extent of religious belief in Australia, it is almost certain to be an overestimate.
Even so, the percentage claiming no religion is likely to be higher than it was in the 2001 census, when it was a little more than one-fourth, because the numbers of non-believers have been growing steadily since 1971. (I use the term non-believers for convenience; because people don't believe in God it doesn't mean they don't believe in anything.) Even better news is the finding of a new survey that only 48 per cent of young Australians (those born between 1976 and 1990) believe in God, though the result is unlikely to be viewed as good news by the Catholic University and the Christian Research Association, which, together with Monash University, commissioned the survey.
Despite the general view that religious belief is on the rise everywhere, the picture around the world is that in nearly all prosperous liberal democracies, atheism is strong.
In Britain, about 44 per cent claim no religion; in France it is 48 per cent; in Canada, 30 per cent; in Sweden, surveys have put the proportion of those who describe themselves as agnostic or atheist at between 46 per cent and 85 per cent. Even in the most religious of Western countries, the US, a 2004 Pew Forum survey found 16 per cent of Americans had no religious affiliation.
It is likely that globally the proportion of people who believe in God is growing because of the simple demographic fact that countries with high rates of religious belief also have high fertility rates. In Lebanon, those claiming no religion made up less than 3 per cent of the population. In Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iraq, they are less than 1 per cent. In Nigeria, according to a 2004 poll for the BBC, 100 per cent of the population believed in God or a higher being.
One reason the trend to non-belief can be welcomed is that those countries with high rates of voluntary non-belief (that is, where atheism is not forced by the regime) are also the healthiest and wealthiest countries in the world, as judged by the annual UN Human Development Reports. Cause and effect should not be confused here: it may be that people who are comfortable and secure have less need for religion, rather than that an absence of religion leads to greater happiness; but it does show that an absence of religion doesn't cause societies to break down. I don't think the Swedes are notable for their criminality.
The other reason is that the briefest study of world history will show that religion has been directly responsible for countless world conflicts, resulting in the loss of millions of human lives, whether it was Christians killing Jews in Europe, Muslims and Hindus killing each other in Kashmir, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland or Muslims and Christians in Sudan. Meanwhile, a look at the nightly television news will show the extent to which religion is still tearing up the world.
At this point religious people will jump in to point out that more people have been killed by communism than religion. Leaving aside the fact that communist ideology is similar to a religious ideology, this is like saying there is no point in curing tuberculosis because malaria kills more people.
The truth is that it is now too dangerous for religion to be given the special status it has always had. When large numbers of people, some of them living among us, want to kill us and our innocent children (surely "innocent children" is a tautology) for no other reason than that we do not believe in their God, we can no longer afford to tiptoe around religious sensitivities. It is time to get rid of the taboo that says religious beliefs have to be quarantined from criticism. It is time to hold some religious beliefs up to ridicule.
God may or may not exist; I don't presume to know. But I am fairly certain that a god does not exist who wants everyone killed who does not believe in a certain book; or a god who takes an obsessive interest in what women wear; or a god who cares about whether we eat pork rather than lamb (though if I were god I'd be pretty annoyed at human beings eating any other animals); or a god who wants little bits of babies' genitals cut off.
The holy books on which Jews, Christians and Muslims rely were written at a time when ideas about human rights and the scope of scientific knowledge were very different from today. We are expected to respect religious texts that contain invitations to genocide, rape and slavery. We are supposed to respect all religions when the central tenet of every religion is that its holy book is the right one and all others are in error or at best incomplete. Unbelievers are those who declare, "God is the Messiah, the son of Mary," says the Koran. "Believers, do not make friends with any but your own people." We are supposed to respect beliefs that if they were held by one person, rather than millions of people, the person holding them would be judged insane. Catholics are enjoined to believe that during the mass a piece of wafer is transformed not into a symbol of the body of Christ, but into the actual body of Christ.
Millions of people also once believed that witches cause crops to fail, or that thunder is the noise made by the gods fighting. They stopped believing in such things either because scientific knowledge proved them wrong, or because they discovered that sensible and reasonable people found the beliefs ridiculous.
In Victoria, politicians are tying themselves in knots over whether to support or reject the state's racial and religious tolerance laws. Once I would have written in support of these laws; but as we have been reminded yet again in recent days, the world has changed. Millions of kindly Christians may be able to ignore the nasty bits in their holy books but, though most Muslims are not extremists, too many are unable to ignore what's in theirs.
Yes, let's have laws against racial vilification, because people don't have a choice about their race and in any case racial slurs are based on assumptions that are unfair and scientifically wrong. But unless we accept there is no such thing as free will, religious belief is a matter of choice.
As the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved, it is no more moral to believe than not to believe. The best hope for a less religious and thus safer world is for religion - all religion - to be open to rational and stringent examination and criticism, and yes, to ridicule. Newspapers would be doing the world a favour if, as the "thought for the day", instead of printing the nice passages out of the holy books, they printed the most absurd and abhorrent texts, so that they can be seen as the dangerous nonsense they are.
Don't blame the unbelievers for the end of tolerance.
Blame the religious ideology that persuades young men that by strapping explosives to their bodies and killing as many infidels as possible, they are assured of glory in paradise, surrounded by dark-eyed virgins. That's where the wickedness lies.
Pamela Bone is a Melbourne writer.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20133610-5007146,00.html
MY parents were atheists, but whenever a school form required an answer about our religious denomination, my mother would tick "Presbyterian", because "that's what you're supposed to be".
This aura of respectability around religion - oddly - still exists; and that is why whatever last week's census shows about the extent of religious belief in Australia, it is almost certain to be an overestimate.
Even so, the percentage claiming no religion is likely to be higher than it was in the 2001 census, when it was a little more than one-fourth, because the numbers of non-believers have been growing steadily since 1971. (I use the term non-believers for convenience; because people don't believe in God it doesn't mean they don't believe in anything.) Even better news is the finding of a new survey that only 48 per cent of young Australians (those born between 1976 and 1990) believe in God, though the result is unlikely to be viewed as good news by the Catholic University and the Christian Research Association, which, together with Monash University, commissioned the survey.
Despite the general view that religious belief is on the rise everywhere, the picture around the world is that in nearly all prosperous liberal democracies, atheism is strong.
In Britain, about 44 per cent claim no religion; in France it is 48 per cent; in Canada, 30 per cent; in Sweden, surveys have put the proportion of those who describe themselves as agnostic or atheist at between 46 per cent and 85 per cent. Even in the most religious of Western countries, the US, a 2004 Pew Forum survey found 16 per cent of Americans had no religious affiliation.
It is likely that globally the proportion of people who believe in God is growing because of the simple demographic fact that countries with high rates of religious belief also have high fertility rates. In Lebanon, those claiming no religion made up less than 3 per cent of the population. In Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iraq, they are less than 1 per cent. In Nigeria, according to a 2004 poll for the BBC, 100 per cent of the population believed in God or a higher being.
One reason the trend to non-belief can be welcomed is that those countries with high rates of voluntary non-belief (that is, where atheism is not forced by the regime) are also the healthiest and wealthiest countries in the world, as judged by the annual UN Human Development Reports. Cause and effect should not be confused here: it may be that people who are comfortable and secure have less need for religion, rather than that an absence of religion leads to greater happiness; but it does show that an absence of religion doesn't cause societies to break down. I don't think the Swedes are notable for their criminality.
The other reason is that the briefest study of world history will show that religion has been directly responsible for countless world conflicts, resulting in the loss of millions of human lives, whether it was Christians killing Jews in Europe, Muslims and Hindus killing each other in Kashmir, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland or Muslims and Christians in Sudan. Meanwhile, a look at the nightly television news will show the extent to which religion is still tearing up the world.
At this point religious people will jump in to point out that more people have been killed by communism than religion. Leaving aside the fact that communist ideology is similar to a religious ideology, this is like saying there is no point in curing tuberculosis because malaria kills more people.
The truth is that it is now too dangerous for religion to be given the special status it has always had. When large numbers of people, some of them living among us, want to kill us and our innocent children (surely "innocent children" is a tautology) for no other reason than that we do not believe in their God, we can no longer afford to tiptoe around religious sensitivities. It is time to get rid of the taboo that says religious beliefs have to be quarantined from criticism. It is time to hold some religious beliefs up to ridicule.
God may or may not exist; I don't presume to know. But I am fairly certain that a god does not exist who wants everyone killed who does not believe in a certain book; or a god who takes an obsessive interest in what women wear; or a god who cares about whether we eat pork rather than lamb (though if I were god I'd be pretty annoyed at human beings eating any other animals); or a god who wants little bits of babies' genitals cut off.
The holy books on which Jews, Christians and Muslims rely were written at a time when ideas about human rights and the scope of scientific knowledge were very different from today. We are expected to respect religious texts that contain invitations to genocide, rape and slavery. We are supposed to respect all religions when the central tenet of every religion is that its holy book is the right one and all others are in error or at best incomplete. Unbelievers are those who declare, "God is the Messiah, the son of Mary," says the Koran. "Believers, do not make friends with any but your own people." We are supposed to respect beliefs that if they were held by one person, rather than millions of people, the person holding them would be judged insane. Catholics are enjoined to believe that during the mass a piece of wafer is transformed not into a symbol of the body of Christ, but into the actual body of Christ.
Millions of people also once believed that witches cause crops to fail, or that thunder is the noise made by the gods fighting. They stopped believing in such things either because scientific knowledge proved them wrong, or because they discovered that sensible and reasonable people found the beliefs ridiculous.
In Victoria, politicians are tying themselves in knots over whether to support or reject the state's racial and religious tolerance laws. Once I would have written in support of these laws; but as we have been reminded yet again in recent days, the world has changed. Millions of kindly Christians may be able to ignore the nasty bits in their holy books but, though most Muslims are not extremists, too many are unable to ignore what's in theirs.
Yes, let's have laws against racial vilification, because people don't have a choice about their race and in any case racial slurs are based on assumptions that are unfair and scientifically wrong. But unless we accept there is no such thing as free will, religious belief is a matter of choice.
As the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved, it is no more moral to believe than not to believe. The best hope for a less religious and thus safer world is for religion - all religion - to be open to rational and stringent examination and criticism, and yes, to ridicule. Newspapers would be doing the world a favour if, as the "thought for the day", instead of printing the nice passages out of the holy books, they printed the most absurd and abhorrent texts, so that they can be seen as the dangerous nonsense they are.
Don't blame the unbelievers for the end of tolerance.
Blame the religious ideology that persuades young men that by strapping explosives to their bodies and killing as many infidels as possible, they are assured of glory in paradise, surrounded by dark-eyed virgins. That's where the wickedness lies.
Pamela Bone is a Melbourne writer.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20133610-5007146,00.html
Not-That-Bright
Andrew Quah
Yea as I said in this thread when the census was on, my mum filled it out.... she put me down as a catholic - I am not
Good article.
Good article.
$hiftyIceQueen
Banned
i just want to know do you beilieve this?CSI: CRIMES ™ said:read this article!!
MY parents were atheists, but whenever a school form required an answer about our religious denomination, my mother would tick "Presbyterian", because "that's what you're supposed to be".
This aura of respectability around religion - oddly - still exists; and that is why whatever last week's census shows about the extent of religious belief in Australia, it is almost certain to be an overestimate.
Even so, the percentage claiming no religion is likely to be higher than it was in the 2001 census, when it was a little more than one-fourth, because the numbers of non-believers have been growing steadily since 1971. (I use the term non-believers for convenience; because people don't believe in God it doesn't mean they don't believe in anything.) Even better news is the finding of a new survey that only 48 per cent of young Australians (those born between 1976 and 1990) believe in God, though the result is unlikely to be viewed as good news by the Catholic University and the Christian Research Association, which, together with Monash University, commissioned the survey.
Despite the general view that religious belief is on the rise everywhere, the picture around the world is that in nearly all prosperous liberal democracies, atheism is strong.
In Britain, about 44 per cent claim no religion; in France it is 48 per cent; in Canada, 30 per cent; in Sweden, surveys have put the proportion of those who describe themselves as agnostic or atheist at between 46 per cent and 85 per cent. Even in the most religious of Western countries, the US, a 2004 Pew Forum survey found 16 per cent of Americans had no religious affiliation.
It is likely that globally the proportion of people who believe in God is growing because of the simple demographic fact that countries with high rates of religious belief also have high fertility rates. In Lebanon, those claiming no religion made up less than 3 per cent of the population. In Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iraq, they are less than 1 per cent. In Nigeria, according to a 2004 poll for the BBC, 100 per cent of the population believed in God or a higher being.
One reason the trend to non-belief can be welcomed is that those countries with high rates of voluntary non-belief (that is, where atheism is not forced by the regime) are also the healthiest and wealthiest countries in the world, as judged by the annual UN Human Development Reports. Cause and effect should not be confused here: it may be that people who are comfortable and secure have less need for religion, rather than that an absence of religion leads to greater happiness; but it does show that an absence of religion doesn't cause societies to break down. I don't think the Swedes are notable for their criminality.
The other reason is that the briefest study of world history will show that religion has been directly responsible for countless world conflicts, resulting in the loss of millions of human lives, whether it was Christians killing Jews in Europe, Muslims and Hindus killing each other in Kashmir, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland or Muslims and Christians in Sudan. Meanwhile, a look at the nightly television news will show the extent to which religion is still tearing up the world.
At this point religious people will jump in to point out that more people have been killed by communism than religion. Leaving aside the fact that communist ideology is similar to a religious ideology, this is like saying there is no point in curing tuberculosis because malaria kills more people.
The truth is that it is now too dangerous for religion to be given the special status it has always had. When large numbers of people, some of them living among us, want to kill us and our innocent children (surely "innocent children" is a tautology) for no other reason than that we do not believe in their God, we can no longer afford to tiptoe around religious sensitivities. It is time to get rid of the taboo that says religious beliefs have to be quarantined from criticism. It is time to hold some religious beliefs up to ridicule.
God may or may not exist; I don't presume to know. But I am fairly certain that a god does not exist who wants everyone killed who does not believe in a certain book; or a god who takes an obsessive interest in what women wear; or a god who cares about whether we eat pork rather than lamb (though if I were god I'd be pretty annoyed at human beings eating any other animals); or a god who wants little bits of babies' genitals cut off.
The holy books on which Jews, Christians and Muslims rely were written at a time when ideas about human rights and the scope of scientific knowledge were very different from today. We are expected to respect religious texts that contain invitations to genocide, rape and slavery. We are supposed to respect all religions when the central tenet of every religion is that its holy book is the right one and all others are in error or at best incomplete. Unbelievers are those who declare, "God is the Messiah, the son of Mary," says the Koran. "Believers, do not make friends with any but your own people." We are supposed to respect beliefs that if they were held by one person, rather than millions of people, the person holding them would be judged insane. Catholics are enjoined to believe that during the mass a piece of wafer is transformed not into a symbol of the body of Christ, but into the actual body of Christ.
Millions of people also once believed that witches cause crops to fail, or that thunder is the noise made by the gods fighting. They stopped believing in such things either because scientific knowledge proved them wrong, or because they discovered that sensible and reasonable people found the beliefs ridiculous.
In Victoria, politicians are tying themselves in knots over whether to support or reject the state's racial and religious tolerance laws. Once I would have written in support of these laws; but as we have been reminded yet again in recent days, the world has changed. Millions of kindly Christians may be able to ignore the nasty bits in their holy books but, though most Muslims are not extremists, too many are unable to ignore what's in theirs.
Yes, let's have laws against racial vilification, because people don't have a choice about their race and in any case racial slurs are based on assumptions that are unfair and scientifically wrong. But unless we accept there is no such thing as free will, religious belief is a matter of choice.
As the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved, it is no more moral to believe than not to believe. The best hope for a less religious and thus safer world is for religion - all religion - to be open to rational and stringent examination and criticism, and yes, to ridicule. Newspapers would be doing the world a favour if, as the "thought for the day", instead of printing the nice passages out of the holy books, they printed the most absurd and abhorrent texts, so that they can be seen as the dangerous nonsense they are.
Don't blame the unbelievers for the end of tolerance.
Blame the religious ideology that persuades young men that by strapping explosives to their bodies and killing as many infidels as possible, they are assured of glory in paradise, surrounded by dark-eyed virgins. That's where the wickedness lies.
Pamela Bone is a Melbourne writer.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20133610-5007146,00.html
sam04u
Comrades, Comrades!
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There is no evidence of the universe being created 'naturally', there should be more evidence. (perhaps we have yet to find it), therefore it is logical to believe it was created, 'supernaturally', therefore it is more logical to believe 'God' created the universe. Therefore God (creator of the universe) is more likely to exist, then not. Logically. At, this moment in time.
*Love-2-Hate-U*
Banned
me, I do :uhhuh:$hiftyIceQueen said:
but I've gone less religious these days
only because they get sick of reading the same type of posts over and over again.
sam04u
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Scenario: In the Jungle, I find a calculator. It works perfectly, I have no evidence it is created naturally. (I think how could it be created, with numbers, how could they come on the calculator?) I conlclude, super naturally.
Scenario: I make a hole to find water, I see a shiny object, with prisms. It looks a bit 'unrefined', kinda blunt. It perfectly bends light. (I think a diamond), it's not really perfect, has little detail. It has flaws. I believe it to be natural.
Scenario: In the desert, I find a dented can. It seems to be imperfect. It has detail on it, it has writing and a logo. It seems to be designed. I have no way to see how it could be created naturally. A welded opener is used to open it, it is not apart of the shape. I do not knwo whether it is created naturally or not. I conclude it is more likely to be supernatural, because I have no way to prove it to be natural and have too many inconsistancies.
Scenario: I make a hole to find water, I see a shiny object, with prisms. It looks a bit 'unrefined', kinda blunt. It perfectly bends light. (I think a diamond), it's not really perfect, has little detail. It has flaws. I believe it to be natural.
Scenario: In the desert, I find a dented can. It seems to be imperfect. It has detail on it, it has writing and a logo. It seems to be designed. I have no way to see how it could be created naturally. A welded opener is used to open it, it is not apart of the shape. I do not knwo whether it is created naturally or not. I conclude it is more likely to be supernatural, because I have no way to prove it to be natural and have too many inconsistancies.
Not-That-Bright
Andrew Quah
There is no natural explanation for alot of things yet, are we to assume that they're all supernatural before hand? Even if you get past that hurdle, it does not mean it's more logical to believe 'god' created the universe than any other supernatual imaginary being.
That's silly, you should conclude ' I don't know how this calculator came here '.
All your examples suffer, because they're based off of what we already know / our observations about the world....
$hiftyIceQueen
Banned
have you never questioned about what will happen to you after you die? or what is your purpose of living anything? you just believe that theres no god full stop?
Not-That-Bright
Andrew Quah
I'm afraid it all ends.
How do you gain any great purpose from belief in god? To me, I find believers find purpose in the same sort of mortal things I do.
About as much as I believe that there's no tooth fairy.
sam04u
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It could be any supernatural being. (Imaginary? Lol sure why not. ) Imagine it really was the Flying-Faghetti Monster. I would laugh, then we would eat spaghetti for eternity. [But, I 'choose' to follow Islam.]
True, True, But, it's more logical to believe, not the correct answer. Just, 'most logical'. You understand that concept. 'The Universe', based on what we know and what I've hypothesised is Imperfect, but I don't see a way how it could be created naturally. Do you? As far back as I go, I end up with another obstacle, unless I use the 'No-Law' theory, which is still not as plausible as "Flying Spaghetti Monster", Lol.
It's not 100% right, it's just most logical. (not using personal faith which is 100%).
Besides, my main concern is 'morals', as we've discussed. Get a philosopher, psychologist and Psychiatrist to come up with ethical and moral laws, then I give you guys my 100% support. (not it's only like 30%). I still follow Islam till the end! Lol, stealing is WRONG!
N-T-B, Im'a ask if I can get you membership in HIQS free, cause yah, you're pretty smart. (atleast over 126 easily).
The Brucemaster
Member
Yes, Yes and Yes.$hiftyIceQueen said: