Holy friggin' horsedump man

[SaiKar]

I ascribe to the "I'm a Christan but also a scientist, a if I can make that work than you can at least make an effort not to be a douche when we talk" school. Mostly, I just like discussing things with people, even if they have different beliefs, but too often it generates into lol@u nonsense.

[fruckert]

I hate zealots.
Of any kind.
If all you really feel like doing all day is trashing what other people hold dear, then **** you. If you seem to think that if you screech loud enough about just how wrong another person is, the world will listen, then sorry to say, but you're wrong.
Good for you, for believing in something, but **** you for saying I'm a heathen/idiot for not thinking the same way.

Other than that, religion is pretty cool if you step away from the crazies. People getting together and hanging out, based around a single belief? I can get behind that.

[Phayre]

I wish I could think Chick was a gigantic troll. But even if he is, I met people in my foster parents' church who bought all this and then some.
Barred me from playing FF when they found out there were black mages. Actually set fire to one of my writing notebooks because I wrote fantasy.
(And yet! They also bought me Fire Emblem. XFD.)

[lilsniffs3]

I'm Catholic and I firmly believe this is bs. People like these are like people who believe Landover Baptist is not a parody and support the mindset of the fake members of that site (Landover.)

Anyway, the only people who would believe this is some uneducated people who have been completely restricted to anything not "phallic shaped" or "devil-worshipping."

Just my angry two cents.

[zuhane]

I think there's this misconception that all Catholics act like Arthur Mitchell out of Dexter, and that all atheists
go round rubbing their noses in people's faces because they think they're wrong, and that all Muslims are
extremist terrorists. People need to remember that everything works on a spectrum, and some people take things more
seriously than others. I choose not to base my life on any kind of religion, but I don't think people are stupid for doing so. My best
friend's a Muslim, and that's completely his choice. I'm fine with it. He's fine with me being an atheist. We don't ridicule each other,
let alone even mention it at any point. Everybody has their vices. Some believe in the great afterlife, others believe in helping
others, and some believe in living in the present. All a matter of personal preference.

Having raw hate towards atheists is just as bad as dissing a religion. I'm not lawless, and I don't go round bashing religions.
I'm just me. I also believe in evolution purely because my course delves into that area and discusses it an awful lot, so I can't
just blindly ignore it. Doesn't mean I then preach about velociraptors to my Jewish friends!!

[Razor]

What was the point in the apostrophe in f*ucking

[SaiKar]

Also, you know what really pisses me off? When I hear a creationist saying something along the lines of "Oh, so you really believe that man "evolved" from a monkey?". I mean, DUDE. Not a ****ing monkey. We and monkeys had a common ancestor. We're not evolved monkey. Well, not literally, anyway.

It’s a gross simplification of evolution. It seems like you understand enough to know it’s not exactly true but sort of is. But the point isn’t that we’re from monkeys – it’s that even people that have scientific backgrounds believe things based on faith.

"How do you know God exists?"
"Because the Bible tells me He does."
"That's stupid."
"Yeah? How do you know the Big Bang happened?"
"Because some eggheads tell me it did. But I don't understand any of the science involved at all."
"Who's stupid now, eh?"

As someone working with science, I can tell you that I understand worrying little about the chemistry and physics I use everyday. I mean, REALLY understand. Most scientific beliefs are theories built on theories built on theories and many of them cannot be explained to people that don’t have a strong background in science. And if you get deep enough down into many of them, you find “well we don’t know why this is, but all our observations say it is, so I guess it is!” type situations. How does gravity work? Cuz it does.
 
Now, granted, we are taught that if a theory is acting up and not giving the proper results than it is analyzed and perhaps altered or discarded. But most people don’t ever do that in their day-to-day life and have no way of verifying if science is really true.

All of this is without touching on concepts that, thusfar, science has totally failed to even come up with the slimmest possibility to explain. Things like why we have a sentient consciousness that allows us to sit around on forums and write posts like this. Where this thing that I call myself that inhabits my body came from and where it goes if my body takes critical damage that prevents it from continuing to function. Why life – a massive collection of controlled chemistry and electrical impulses, even exists in the first place and why it exists in crazy places, even under the ocean, in total isolation. The world is weird, man. We’re so smug with our particle colliders and hubble telescopes, thinking ourselves the master of the universe, and we don’t even understand why single-celled beings exist in the first place.

[zuhane]

SaiKar + lucas, you ought to give 'The Selfish Gene' a good read. It's absolutely fascinating. It's the theory that molecules accidentally competed
for resources on an atomic level, as some free-floating elements became more scarce or had already bonded to other elements in a stable form.
Then some stencil-shaped molecule gave rise to the first form a DNA - an RNA strand capable of self-replication without the need for enzyme
helicase. Works on a similar principle to natural selection, but with no conscious decisions and pure kinetic energy accidentally causing these
molecules to collide.

It then expands on this principle by saying that all life is purely accidental and is a result of things being able to compete with each other better
without reasoning or knowing. Things such as emotions, conscious thought, working together, etc, have all arose from this in the first place as
some means to pass our DNA on and act as "Outer shells" which coat the DNA and keep it safe from harm. Dawkins even explains why certain
genders prefer certain colours, how humor arose and why most species never kill their own species, but simply battle them. You have to remember,
there's no reason to evolve if you're adapting just fine to your environment in the first place. That's why it's so interesting to look at the variation
of organisms all over the world. Some of them just seem pointless, but they're doing just fine where they are. It's a pretty nihilistic outlook on life
for some people, but I find it a pretty beautiful concept.

[SaiKar]

I blame my existence on sheer luck.

It's the theory that molecules accidentally competed for resources on an atomic level, as some free-floating elements became more scarce or had already bonded to other elements in a stable form. [...]Works on a similar principle to natural selection, but with no conscious decisions and pure kinetic energy accidentally causing these molecules to collide.
[...] all life is purely accidental and is a result of things being able to compete with each other better without reasoning or knowing.

There is no luck in science. There aren’t even probabilities. Everything is certain and deterministic. What we call probabilities and accidents are us not understanding the full situation. When you flip a coin, you don’t have a 50% chance of heads and a 50% chance of tails. You have 100% chance of one and a 0% of the other, since everything that influences the coin flip is finite and, theoretically, measurable. You simply do not understand the situation well enough to know ahead of time what the outcome will be.

(this doesn’t discount the existence of God – He could be the one that decided and controls the deterministic possibilities by having direct control of all variables of the situation. You do the same exact thing when you mix two chemicals together)

Now, it could be that life just happened because the conditions were right and it kept evolving because the conditions were right, succeeding until some creature like me was able to sit here and write forum posts. But we don’t know what those conditions were or how to replicate them. Have there ever been any successful experiments of scientists creating life out of material components that were never, at any point, ever alive? We have technology that can replicate heat a fraction of a degree warmer than absolute zero or hotter than the surface of the sun, and pressure lower than the deepest spaces between the stars or as strong as a stellar mass. We have access to every chemical and material on the planet, including some that have crashed from the moon or comets. We should be able to make this happen again.

[drenrin2120]

I <3 sai.

[Archem]

I blame my existence on sheer luck. Everything necessary for me to exist, from the first molecules of nonlife that decided to get together and form living organisms, to the fish that started becoming an amphibian, to the early mammal who didn't get nuked when the meteor come, to the right sperm that came out of my dad's ball and landed on my mother's uterus - It all took some very, very large amounts of luck. I believe that what made the universe and earth what they are now is just a combination of random events that ended up working quite well for us (could be better, but hey, could be much worse). So in the end, I'm one lucky bastard. And that's why I enjoy life so much. Can't go and waste all that luck, now can I?

[zuhane]

There is no luck in science. There aren’t even probabilities. Everything is certain and deterministic. What we call probabilities and accidents are us not understanding the full situation. When you flip a coin, you don’t have a 50% chance of heads and a 50% chance of tails. You have 100% chance of one and a 0% of the other, since everything that influences the coin flip is finite and, theoretically, measurable. You simply do not understand the situation well enough to know ahead of time what the outcome will be.

(this doesn’t discount the existence of God – He could be the one that decided and controls the deterministic possibilities by having direct control of all variables of the situation. You do the same exact thing when you mix two chemicals together)

Now, it could be that life just happened because the conditions were right and it kept evolving because the conditions were right, succeeding until some creature like me was able to sit here and write forum posts. But we don’t know what those conditions were or how to replicate them. Have there ever been any successful experiments of scientists creating life out of material components that were never, at any point, ever alive? We have technology that can replicate heat a fraction of a degree warmer than absolute zero or hotter than the surface of the sun, and pressure lower than the deepest spaces between the stars or as strong as a stellar mass. We have access to every chemical and material on the planet, including some that have crashed from the moon or comets. We should be able to make this happen again.

I was speaking in generalities to save time and explanation, but thanks for clearing it up anyway

[Drakiyth]

http://media.chick.com/digital-comics/0111/0111_5.html
Talk about sabotage.

Trying to convert people to your faith is one thing, completely mutilating history and backing up your nonsensical claims with "historical" facts that someone with less knowledge might believe is ****ing wrong, dude.

Read the whole thing if you have time. I thought I'd get some laughs from it at first, but now I'm just pissed. This just ain't right man. No matter what religion you follow (or don't follow), that thing should probably make you not very happy. Even [real] Christians will probably [and rightfully] think that guy is a moron.

The worst part? At a bunch of points he has footnotes where he tells people to look up books where they can find more info on the subject. Dear ****ing lord, I don't even want to think about what kind of insane **** they are making up in those books.

:/

EDIT: Oh, and a short story by the same guy talks about how Dungeons and Dragons and Rock and Roll are a tool used by the devil to corrupt the youth. Dungeons and Dragons also gives you mind controlling powers, but you have to join a cult and sell your soul first.

Actually, the history you read is false. Schools teach you jack and **** and are ran by the government who do nothing but lie to you. This comic was actually a very interesting read. You should do research on the Illuminati. A lot of things said in this have ties to it.  This seems to be a comic of somebody trying to warn of the NWO. Big time.

Did you know the first president of the united states was actually a black man?  They don't teach that **** in school, kid.

[fruckert]

That was one of the most mind-boggling displays of stupidity I've ever seen,
Good job, Drak.

[drenrin2120]

I'd love to see where you read that from, Drak.