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@DiggDtw:"Specifically the part about believing that following the moral teachings of Christ are unnecessary. I agree - they are not unique. But I do believe that following them can bring a person peace in their life."I agree that believing in and following the moral teachings of Jesus can bring a person peace in their life. I know many people (I myself was one of them) who draw on that particular tradition for inspiration and hope. That doesn't make it *necessary* however. I also know people who use the teachings of Buddha to similar effect, as well as people who use the writings of moral philosophers to similar effect.Again, I didn't mean that the teachings ascribed to Jesus regarding being kind to one another were *incorrect*. I said that they are *unnecessary*. The fact that it is not necessary follows from the fact (which you agree with) that it is not unique. If one can find similar teachings in the writings of pagans who lived long before Jesus was said to have lived (ex., Aristotle), it clearly isn't necessary to have faith in Jesus (or any of the claims of Christianity) in order to be good or happy people.'I appreciate you are well read. Philosophy was my secondary course of study in college. I found much acceptance of my agnostic views in school from my professors. We explored the origins of morality in depth in my Ethics course. I gave up the study of philosophy after arguing myself into a corner in a Existential paper exploring "Being and Nothingness" and some other works. After trying to determine what my role in life is, (the existentialists will tell you we all have them. i.e. identity) I noticed that I had come full circle back to the primary question: "Why are we here?" I concluded I was wasting my time and quit philosophy. (Please don't flame me on this stuff - I'm just giving background as happyfappy did.)'Thanks for the kind words, and for sharing your history.My path was different. I passed from religion to philosophy, where I was endlessly frustrated by the apparent up is down / down is up / rabbit hole and drove myself mad for a while. After peeling away years and years of religious beliefs, I was left in a state of total confusion.I didn't stop there, though, and I didn't (really, I couldn't) turn back to religion. My inability to find satisfying answers in philosophy did not erase the fact that religion failed to provide answers also.I kept going and found a bridge from philosophy to science in a study of the mind/brain. (The particular book was The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul by Paul Churchland, who -- along with his wife Patricia -- are some of the speakers in the conference I linked to earlier.) Unlike religion (which, in general, treats the mind like an indivisible and essentially magical "soul") and unlike philosophy (which, in general, asks tons of questions about the mind without any means of actually answering any of them) neuroscience WAS able to answer some basic questions about how the mind works, and why the mind should work at all. It provided, at the very least, SOME answers to the so-called "easy" problem of consciousness, even if it left most questions unanswered and most problems unsolved.In addition to neuroscience, that book sparked questions that led me to study psychology (particularly cognitive psychology), computation, and mathematics (as well as some very recent philosophy). All of this helped me appreciate how truly difficult the so-called ultimate questions really are. There's no getting around that -- these are HARD questions. We can pretend that they're easier than they are so we can answer them right away, or we can acknowledge the fact that they really are hard, that we really don't know the answer to most of them and that we probably will never know the answer to many of them, and move on with an earnest attempt at developing a world view (however incomplete) that we can buttress with evidence."Religion is a means to an end. Intelligent people take the important aspects from it and include it in their lives. We need more intelligence in Religion. It's a shame you abandoned it. The job of a good religious leader is to interpret the teachings for the followers and make them relevant to their current lives."I would rather have an intelligent religious leader like Teilhard de Chardin than a relative simpleton like Jerry Falwell. However, all religion is fundamentally flawed in that it places an emphasis on faith over reason. (Note that even in Theology, it's "Faith seeking understanding" rather than just "Seeking understanding.") The faith is taken as a given, and the reason is used to fit everything else in the world into that faith. It's better to fit evolution into one's faith than to reject evolution entirely, but it's better still to not have a prior set of assumptions that you are bound to fulfill regardless of what evidence you uncover."HappyFappy, please read this, you'll appreciate it (they are 4 parts): <a class="user" href="http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2006/11/the_god_delusio.html&quot;&gt;http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2006/11/the_god_delusio.html&lt;/a&gt;&quot;Thanks for the link. I read the first part. I don't have the time to dissect everything he says, but in a nutshell, he makes many invalid inferences about what Dawkins is saying, and many inaccurate assumptions about what scientific knowledge is.For example:"...the truth, which is that many scientists are religious and many of the greatest scientists (including Newton and Einstein) probed deep into the existence of God."Dawkins specifically refutes this. Einstein did not probe "deep into the existence of God" except in a metaphorical sense that most atheists would agree with. He was NOT religious. Likewise, a growing majority of the world's scientists are NOT religious -- and the more elite the sample of scientists you look at, the less likely they are to be religious."Is science the only route to knowledge? Obviously not. I know that my mother loved me all her life, as I love my own children. I feel genius in great works of art. None of this knowledge is validated by science."This is false. One "knows" that one's mother loves them for good reason -- i.e., because a vast amount of evidence suggests that to be the case. If my mother were to ignore me, injure me, abandon me, etc., then I would rightly suspect that she really doesn't love me; likewise, if my mother were to pay attention to me, take care of me, look after me when I'm sick, call me on my birthday, hug me and kiss me when she sees me, etc., etc., then I would rightly infer that she loves me. That's scientific reasoning.The example of beauty is a much more difficult one to grapple with. The truth is that science doesn't entirely understand why people find things "beautiful." There ARE, however, some small pieces of the puzzle that have been uncovered. For example, a face that's considered to be beautiful by adults is more likely to be stared at by infants, thereby indicating that this is an inborn trait. Further, these "beautiful" faces share similar features -- in particular, symmetry. The more symmetrical a face, the more likely a person is to find it appealing. Recent studies also suggest that how "average" or "normal" a face appears to be reduces the amount of time that it takes to recognize the face, and increases the likelihood that this face will be seen as being "beautiful" or attractive.The evolutionary pressure for desiring symmetrical faces, for example, should be quite clear: symmetrical features are a sign of good health. Someone that has one eye in the middle of his forehead and another down by his cheek is probably not all that healthy; for one thing, their vision is probably terrible (stereoscopic vision depends on having eyes that are placed just right), and if their vision is terrible they probably can't find food, predators, or worthy mates as well.Other areas like music are still unclear, although again there are pieces of the puzzle emerging. Even so, the fact that the puzzle is incomplete does not mean that a religious view (which essentially casts away the real complexity involved in answering the question by falling back on a simple, but unsubstantiated, narrative) is any better at answering the question.There's a lot more I'd like to say on the matter, but in a nutshell, I read what Chopra had to say here (I've read some of his stuff before, btw) and his reasoning is based on a number of flawed assumptions and misunderstandings of what Dawkins is saying in particular and what science claims in general.If you've read this far, you get a gold star. :-)

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"If humans could, logically resolve the concept of God the creator "He" in all respects would be rendered worthless."Why? I don't see how. Sounds like a handy excuse to me."While some claim in there own ignorance that there is freedom beyond religion, they are completely oblivious to the needs of human beings."Because atheists are not human beings themselves? Nonsense."The impact on morality was devastating. Evolution became what well-known scientist Fred Hoyle called ?an open charter for any form of opportunistic behavior.?"Please provide evidence for the devastating impact on morality.And what is it with Creationists and Fred Hoyle? You do realize that he was an atheist don't you? Later in his life he raised some issue with chemical evolution but he was an astronomer, not a biologist.He also raised issue the the probabilities of life, much as you cut and pasted in a previous posting. Richard Dawkin's had this to say:- "If he'd said 'chance' instead of 'natural selection' he'd have been right. Indeed, I regretted having to expose him as one of the many toilers under the profound misapprehension that natural selection is chance."Hoyle believed in panspermia - a steady influx of viruses arriving on comets as the main catalyst for life here. There's no evidence at all for that. He was also completely wrong about Archaeopteryx and he was wrong about steady-state cosmology."Sadly, the trend of science as practiced seems to undermine morality, values, and standards."This is essentially a lie."Here we find a critical difference between the Bible?s view of humanity and atheistic evolution?s view. God?s Word stresses that humans hold a special place in creation; evolution suggests that humans are the accidental product of blind natural processes. "Unfortunately 'God's Word' is clearly just the words of human authors trying to make the same sad appeal to emotion that you are."evolution, with its emphasis on the struggle to survive, is at a loss to explain the human qualities of love and altruism."And here you are wrong again. These things are explainable in evolutionary terms. Your ignorance on these matters does not invalidate existing explanations."Evolution cannot offer any real hope or purpose."It does not intend to. It is a scientific theory that explains the propagation of lifeforms, not some kind of emotional life-jacket."Creation o the other hand offers a grand purpose for our future. It is clearly declared as such: ?I will bless you with a future filled with hope.?"And what is that purpose? To spend all eternity brown-nosing the creator? In an afterlife where the gullible are rewarded with such, while those that got it wrong or were born into the wrong families (and hence belief systems) cook in hell?Your whole posting seems to be some kind of appeal to wishful thinking. Claiming a preference for a particular belief because you find it 'nicer' does not make it true.

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Just a semantic issue here -- Religion and science aren't "mutually exclusive." (but close to it)The PROBABILITY of god existing based on testable hypotheses is absurdly low since no empirical evidence has shown statistical significance to pass Occam's Razor. People can continue to test all they want. Just like scientists today COULD still test whether one of the aforementioned junk-theories may still be true (e.g. the phlogiston theory of combustion), although since far superior evidence exists to support chemical oxidation, etc etc. The only difference between god-theory and phlogiston theory is that people get testy when you show them that no evidence exists to support their hypothesis.So... science does leave room for the possibility that some day, the god theory might be testable, but as our knowledge and understanding of the universe CONTINUALLY (sorry for the CAPS, digg needs formatting options) fills in gaps which were once ascribed to divine cause (lightning, birth, lottery winnings, near-death experiences, cycles of night and day), the "God of the Gaps" becomes increasingly less convincing.On the other hand, religion could include science (however unwelcome or laughable that may be for scientists), by saying "god did it all," which is the last refuge of many creationists today, who, faced with overwhelming scientific evidence, have rewritten their forefathers' faith by inventing things like "Intelligent Design," or explaining away the once literally translated passages of scripture as merely metaphor, like suggesting that one "day" in the book of Genesis equals several hundred million years, without suggesting why the subdivisions would need to be unequal to remotely fit planetary and geologic evolution. Reconcilliation is difficult, and requires the rules of one theory (religious/scientific) to be rewritten with the rules of the other, antithetical to the entire basis of each. I see religious fanatics want so much to cling to their beliefs because they are deathly afraid of the possibility that their universe might not be as comfortable as they like, despite their ability to have coped thus far with reality, as though somehow their continued existence were somehow a function of their faith.

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I love God with all my heart but the f**ker don't love me.

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@ I think this poll was manipulated to support a specific point of view,Isn't this the case with everything?

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nobody ever claims they saw GW turn water into wine or heal lepers or however that story goes either...or rise from the dead...

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dying. Digg even teaches us how to spell. ;)

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@dimensio"You are incorrect. The theory of evolution does not state that "the universe" is becoming more organized, slowly or not. Also of note is that "more organized" is not the opposite of "having greater entropy"." Evolution states that a puddle of dirt, or soup, or whatever it is you believe, had a lot of energy and life slowly spawned over the billions of years. The second law does state that entropy increases with every process, meaning the universe would either have a finite beginning, or have suffered heat death an eternity ago. You ask me to list Christian doctorates, how their degree relates to their works, etc. No thanks, I don't have the time. If you want to know, you can look them up. If you look for them and find they don't exist, then talk to me. Personally I suggest C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, he makes a great argument based on morality for the existence of God, though he is an evolutionist. When you go through everything I say, and ask for examples of each, am I right that the only reason you ask that is to bother me, or to slow me down? Or because you can't think I can find Christian Ph D's who write books and make arguments for Christianity? If you want to find them, look for yourself.The Ph D's I know, one I referenced wrote a book on Aesthetics, I believe he had the opportunity to publish his dissertation. The other one I know personally hasn't had the time to write a book, he is a minister and a high school teacher. The "it" I am arguing against is pretty much atheism, I disbelieve evolution as well, but I think that the problem of atheism is much more fundamental. And, you asked for references to material supporting that. Run a google search for apologetics, or classical arguments for God, etc. Run a search for "Summit Ministries", or creationism.When did you state that no such arguments exist? You didn't; you just act ignorant of them. I think one of the first things I said on here was to encourage people to just research views opposing that which they believed, and I hope that you do, and I realize that I need to more as well. Arguing this on digg is rather pointless, this just runs in circles. No one will change what they believe because of anything they read on here, whether they are right or wrong, and see a great argument for what they disbelieve. @annonimalityLook in a physics book, you will, very near where it explains the second law of thermodynamics, see a picture of a broken cup, or something like that, with the point being made that a broken cup won't spontaneously fix itself if the proper energy is applied. Most physics books will go on to explain that all processes aren't reversible. Look up reversible and non-reversible processes. I believe both Giancoli and Wilson Buffa physics books hold the second law to be a reason that closed systems, or even parts of closed systems, like a clump of dirt becoming an amoeba, become more organized. and, finally, @justinvtI read about the first paragraph of what you said. Yes, I do believe that life is organized, more organized than "what it evolved from". If you don't believe that the human body is more organized than whatever lifeless matter it was supposed to evolve from... then I really do not know what to tell you.

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The debate was again won by Atheism. Dont try and dismiss reality in order to maintain your pet dogma.

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...and also, "in god we trust" was added to the dollar bill in 1957, long after the USA was founded on Christian principles.

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