The Church And The Origins Of Western Civilization

[PoliticalChic]

Cat fight. And for the record, I find Hollie very intelligent and well thought out. Could it be you don't like her calling bullshit on your bullshit?

I am sure PoliticalChic can handle her own affairs,

but I do notice that you have nothing of value or specific criticisms of PC’s claims on this thread?
Which reminds me a lot of Hollie and her “rebuttals” which were vacuous save for attitude.

The other day I was watching this guy ask for people to call in and pay $70 x 10 months and said you will receive a miracle if you pay. Do you buy that? It's a scam!

Anyways, I just googled him and it turns out he makes over $1 a year.

You keep believing you dopes.

And that is as far as your investigation of Christianity goes? Or your desire to know the truth?

Well that explains a lot.

I am not sure how you can be reached? But we will keep trying. (but not judging)

Faith is absolute trust or confidence in a belief. Conversely, scientific theories are inherently falsifiable – meaning they can be proven wrong. No claims of absolute truth are believed or need to be taken ‘on faith’ in science because none are made. True scientists say, “We are aware that our theories and conclusions are not perfect, just the best fit for the available evidence”.

Scientific knowledge is a form of justified belief grounded in empirical evidence and the demonstrable reliability of the scientific method. Faith is an unjustified belief based on fantasy, superstition and wishful thinking.

Science converges on the truth via questioning. Its solutions and explanations do not differ between nations or cultures because they can be tested by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Whatever knowledge science produces is valid everywhere. Religion, on the other hand, diverges into a myriad of forms and beliefs based on individual experiences and interpretations which cannot be tested against reality.

If all knowledge of science was lost, someone could potentially figure it out again. What is true remains true, and anyone could discover that truth again using the same method that revealed it in the first place. Conversely, if every trace of religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created in exactly the same way again.

Science is the pursuit of truth, not the presumption of it.

First of all, your tributes to science are far too magnanimous and noble. Science goes far beyond this pristine, honest altruism and honorable state you want to attribute to the entire historical endeavor. What did Mark Twain say?... “There’s something fascinating about science. You get such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

Jonathan Swift (17th century English satirist) was more specific to the crux of the matter. Referencing the achievements of science and its reflection upon its own laurels. ---- "And he, whose fortunes and dispositions have placed him in a convenient station to enjoy the fruits of this noble art; he that can with Epicurus content his ideas with the films and images that fly-off upon his senses from the superficies of things; such a man truly wise, creams off nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. This is the sublime and refined point of felicity, called, the possession of being well deceived; the serene peaceful state of being a fool among knaves."

In other words, science thinks far too highly of itself and does not even put a toe in the water to answer the greatest questions and needs about life and the person. Science may maintain their field of discipline does not deal with proving God, but it appears they are surely in the business of trying to disprove Him.

==========================================


No need to tell me about faith either. You and yours always try to put it in terms that fit nicely with your agnosticism or total disbelief. Our faith is not blind. It is based on evidence and reason. We are long past wondering if God is real or not and which God. We know it is Jesus Christ. Just because you demand that nothing can be known is no concern of ours. The faith we practice is in the areas of believing in some of God’s promises or teachings, but surely not of His existence. We have faith in the real presence in the Eucharist, that our sins are forgiven in the confessional, that the Lord is assisting us in our sufferings and the sufferings of others, that all our sacrifices and acts of kindness and prayers make eternal differences in our future and those others, etc. But we do not need faith to know who the One and Only is. That is very clear and known.

But as long as you continue to believe life sprang from lifeless rocks and then formed incredible cells with thousands of machines within them, and amazing organs all by random rendezvous of molecules without any intelligent designer, I do not see where I will ever convince you? As long as you take documented miracles and call it hysteria such as the 70,000 at Fatima showing up on the day three little shepherd children prophesied a miracle would happen for all to see, I will never be able to convince you. As long as you choose to ignore the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1968 at Zeitoun, Egypt seen by more than 200,000 Egyptians over 20 or more apparitions on top of a Coptic Cathedral – where neither legal authorities or science could explain the vision, or the colorful lights and smoke appearing each time, I will never expect to convince you.

As long as you keep demanding carbon dating ruled the Shroud a medieval fraud even though many scientists and studies since have given very plausible explanations for that faulty testing --- and also spoke to the inexplicable qualities of that image as impossible for a forger to produce --- as long as you walk away from that without being honest about its marvels, I will never be able to convince you. As long as you ignore or dismiss hundreds of weeping statues and paintings of Mary and Jesus and just laugh it off because a few frauds were detected by some zealous crazies, I will never convince you. (Note: I notice science stays far and clear of those bleeding statues, too.)

As long as you call all these fantastic Near Death Experiences the result of “a dying brain” which makes no scientific or medical sense, I will never convince you. As long as you laugh off the testimonies of so many witnesses to exorcisms who are freaked out by the child’s ability to speak of events in the witnesses’ past they would never know, or who speaks in Latin and other foreign languages the child could never know, who utters the most vulgar, obscene tirades at all present in the most disturbing guttural language, and so many other demonic manifestations, I will never be able to convince you.

As long as you insist the bleeding wounds from Padre Pio’s hands, feet and side were caused by him secretly gouging himself for 50 years, and deny the heavenly fragrance eminating from the wounds, and deny all the witnesses who say he can read their souls and minds, and has bilocated, and of course accept the fringe scientist who says he did it all with carbolic acid --- I will never convince you. Never mind there are many other stigmatics who science says they bleed regularly with their mind control. Right. As long as you insist all these scores of saints whose bodies remain incorruptible hundreds of years after their death are all secretly preserved by tricky nuns, I will never convince you. As long as every miraculous healing at the waters of Lourdes are dismissed as mind over matter and no thanks to prayers and faith, I will never convince you of the presence of God.

I cannot explain what appears to me as this denial or blindness? But I can understand their antipathy towards those like me who insist God is absolutely known and factual, no need for faith. Anyone can bombard you with their messages or cases of importance on TV or the internet or newsprint or political promises, but let a Christian send out his message and it’s a act of us “shoving our message down your throats.” Pardon our opinions of what’s going on here, differing from yours. But why must it become so unnerving for you or them? Because of what’s at stake, that’s why, I am guessing? (again) Deny it all you want, but for almost the entire cognizant world, to wonder what happens when they die (and possess great concern) is as natural as anything a human experiences. I do not care what Ingersoll is trying to sell us. It is temporal and flawed. He calls that freedom? I call that utter despair.

"First of all, your tributes to science are far too magnanimous and noble. Science goes far beyond this pristine, honest altruism and honorable state you want to attribute to the entire historical endeavor."


Excellent!

The brain-dead attribute higher than normal attributes to "scientists."

The are simply folks who found a different way of making a living.
Many blue collar workers have as much integrity as many scientists.


Then, there is this:

"...It took only a handful of days. The students wrote a simple computer program that churned out gobbledegook and presented it asan academic paper. They put their names on one of the papers, sent it to a conference, and promptly had it accepted. The sting, in 2005, revealed a farce that lay at the heart of science.

But this is the hoax that keeps on giving. The creators of the automatic nonsense generator, Jeremy Stribling, Dan Aguayo and Maxwell Krohn, have made the SCI gen program free to download. And scientists have been using it in their droves. This week,Nature reported, French researcher Cyril Labbé revealed that 16 gobbledegook papers created by SCIgen had been used by German academic publisher Springer. More than 100 more fake SCIgen papers were published by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Both organisations have now taken steps to remove the papers.

Hoaxes in academia are nothing new. In 1996, mathematician Alan Sokal riled postmodernists by publishing a nonsense paper in the leading US journal, Social Text. It was laden with meaningless phrases but, as Sokal said, it sounded good to them. Other fields have not been immune. In 1964, critics of modern art were wowed by the work of Pierre Brassau, who turned out to be a four-year-old chimpanzee. In a more convoluted case, Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of France's best-known philosophers, was left to ponder his own expertise after quoting the lectures of Jean-Baptiste Botul as evidence that Kant was a fake, only to find out that Botul was the fake, an invention of a French reporter."
How computer-generated fake papers are flooding academia Science The Guardian




Show me a poster who speaks in glowing terms of "scientists" and I'll show you a dunce.

 

[Unkotare]

[ However, the number of lives that could be saved using stem cells greatly outweighs the number of abortions. ...

Bullshit. You don't know that at all. And in case you haven't heard, stem cells can be harvested from adult cells now, professor.

 

[Coloradomtnman]

[ However, the number of lives that could be saved using stem cells greatly outweighs the number of abortions. ...

Bullshit. You don't know that at all. And in case you haven't heard, stem cells can be harvested from adult cells now, professor.

Adult vs. Embryonic Stem Cells

Embryonic stem cells are better for medical research and have the POTENTIAL to save many lives. Is that better phrasing?

I like you Unkotare, why are you so pissy lately?

 

[Unkotare]

Embryonic stem cells are better for medical research and have the POTENTIAL to save many lives. Is that better phrasing??

"Better"? "Potential"? Are you joking? How about this phrasing: not killing babies in the womb is a virtual certainty of millions and millions of the most innocent, vulnerable lives saved; lives that would be taken by virtue of no natural process. That's a lot more concrete than your "better" and "potential."



Simply not taking innocent life is much more immediate and sure than "research." You talk of morality, but I wonder if you've reserved any for yourself.

 

[PoliticalChic]

[ However, the number of lives that could be saved using stem cells greatly outweighs the number of abortions. ...

Bullshit. You don't know that at all. And in case you haven't heard, stem cells can be harvested from adult cells now, professor.

Adult vs. Embryonic Stem Cells

Embryonic stem cells are better for medical research and have the POTENTIAL to save many lives. Is that better phrasing?

I like you Unkotare, why are you so pissy lately?

Answered in #58

 

[Unkotare]

I like you Unkotare, why are you so pissy lately?

Call me eccentric, but human life means something to me.

 

[Unkotare]

Unless he who you call a fool is off the bike and ready to board the rocket - to beleaguer this analogy further.

Two points emerge....1. You hate religion, and 2. You don't know what you're talking about.



3. Prior to the Enlightenment, people rarely considered science to be antagonistic to religion. Most of the major figures who started modern science were devout Christians: Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Boyle, Newton….

a. In 2003, sociologist Rodney Stark identified 52 “stars” who launched the scientific revolution, and discovered that all but two were devout Christians.(The two skeptics were Edmund Halley and Paracelsus). Stark, “For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery,” chapter two.

4. "According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power."
Scientists and Belief Pew Research Center s Religion Public Life Project

I don't "hate" religion, Do you hate atheists? You seem to think atheism is evil.

Like I said in my first response on this thread, Christianity played a role in the development of many aspects Western Civilization, including science.

Now religions need to stay out of the way of the scientists doing science, including religious scientists doing real science.

You really have no grasp about the subject.

1. Science without religion is deadly. Without religion, science has no restrictions in terms of the value of human life.

a. Even in the 19th century, as religious conviction waned, the warnings were there. Ivan Karamazov, in “The Brothers Karamazov,” exclaimed ‘if God does not exist, then everything is permitted.’

2. In 1984, Holland legalized euthanasia, the right of Dutch doctors to kill their elderly patients. Would they do so based on their whim?

a. “The Dutch survey, reviewed in the Journal of Medical Ethics, looked at the figures for 1995 and found that as well as 3,600 authorized cases there were 900 others in which doctors had acted without explicit consent…. they thought they were acting in the patient's best interests.”
Involuntary Euthanasia is Out of Control in Holland




3. Sam Harris, in “Letters to a Christian Nation,” writes that “qualms” about stem-cell research are “obscene,” because they are “morally indefensible” because they represent mere “faith-based irrationality.” Can you say ‘slippery-slope’?

a." Euthanasia, as Dr. Peggy Norris observed with some asperity, "cannot be controlled." If this is so, why is Harris so sure that stem-cell research can be controlled? And if it cannot be controlled, just what is irrational about religious objections to social policies that when they reach the bottom of the slippery slope are bound to embody something Dutch, degraded, and disgusting? How many scientific atheists, I wonder, propose to spend their old age in Holland?"
David Berlinski



Do you begin to see the abysmal stupidity of "Now religions need to stay out of the way of the scientists doing science"?

Do you truly think that Christians hold a monopoly on morality in addition to being absolute in their morality? Are atheists from all cultural backgrounds equally immoral?

Is any human system perfect? Your link to a pro-life, and therefore partisan, website cites no studies. You are prolife. So don't get an abortion. However, the number of lives that could be saved using stem cells greatly outweighs the number of abortions. Which side of the moral balance hangs lower? You don't currently want to be euthanized. Others do. To stop them sounds like big government to me...

"... the number of lives that could be saved using stem cells greatly outweighs the number of abortions."



Earlier I wasted the phrase "abysmal stupidity."

It should have been reserved for this post.


It is clear that you have all the depth of bumper-stickers, as is usually found in religion haters.

No one objects to stem cell research......no one......if it is the successful variant, adult stem cell or tissue research.
It is destroying embyos to which many object.

"Many" meaning those with a concern for human life.




1. "Somatic stem cells, such as blood-forming stem cells in bone marrow (called hematopoietic stem cells, or HSCs), are currently the only type of stem cell commonly used to treat human diseases. Doctors have been transferring HSCs in bone marrow transplants for over 40 years. More advanced techniques for collecting, or "harvesting," HSCs are now used in order to treat leukemia, lymphoma and several inherited blood disorders. The clinical potential of somatic stem cells has also been demonstrated in the treatment of other human diseases that include diabetes and advanced kidney cancer. However, these newer uses involved studies with a very limited number of patients."
How are stem cells currently used to treat disease NYSTEM



2. "There are currently no approved treatments using embryonic stem cells. The first human trial was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in January 2009.[14]However, the human trial was not initiated until October 13, 2010 in Atlanta for spinal injury victims. On November 14, 2011 the company conducting the trial announced that it will discontinue further development of its stem cell programs.[15]ES cells, being pluripotent cells, require specific signals for correct differentiation—if injected directly into another body, ES cells will differentiate into many different types of cells, causing ateratoma. Differentiating ES cells into usable cells while avoiding transplant rejection are just a few of the hurdles that embryonic stem cell researchers still face."
Stem cell - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


3 . "While the potency and success of adult stem cell treatments are becoming evident, treatments using embryonic stem cells have not produced any clinical successes. Rather, embryonic stem cell treatments tend to create tumors in numerous animal studies. The public should ponder these issues and ask why the media do not cover such results. In a world with limited funds for research, why are we arguing about unproven and often dangerous embryonic stem cell treatments when treatments using adult stem cells are today producing real results for real patients?"
Adult Stem Cell Success

Bears repeating.

 

[Coloradomtnman]

I like you Unkotare, why are you so pissy lately?

Call me eccentric, but human life means something to me.

Implying that it means nothing to me. Despite that I support medical research that could save lives, cure horrific diseases, improve or even normalize people woth catastrophic injuries, and increase the quality of life for all.

I can't imagine a person who wants more abortions. The only time I can imagine someone who wants an abortion is when she feels she isn't ready to be a mother or give birth. When women to have control over their bodies empowers them, economically and personally.

Abortions are generally the last resort. There are exceptions as there are in all things. The world isn't a perfect place. Women having access to abortion saves their lives because the alternative is back alleys, home remedies, and home surgeries.

Human life means something to me as well. It is not you or the pro-life movement alone who have the moral high ground. Your absolutism changes the subject of abortion from nuanced and complex to simple black-and-white. Reality doesn't work that way.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I like you Unkotare, why are you so pissy lately?

Call me eccentric, but human life means something to me.

Implying that it means nothing to me. Despite that I support medical research that could save lives, cure horrific diseases, improve or even normalize people woth catastrophic injuries, and increase the quality of life for all.

I can't imagine a person who wants more abortions. The only time I can imagine someone who wants an abortion is when she feels she isn't ready to be a mother or give birth. When women to have control over their bodies empowers them, economically and personally.

Abortions are generally the last resort. There are exceptions as there are in all things. The world isn't a perfect place. Women having access to abortion saves their lives because the alternative is back alleys, home remedies, and home surgeries.

Human life means something to me as well. It is not you or the pro-life movement alone who have the moral high ground. Your absolutism changes the subject of abortion from nuanced and complex to simple black-and-white. Reality doesn't work that way.

1. The vast majority of abortion performed in the United States are carried out for reasons that can be broadly categorized as “matters of convenience.” In a study of 27 nations, reasons for abortion services were found to be the following:

a. “Worldwide, the most commonly reported reason women cite for having an abortion is to postpone or stop childbearing. The second most common reason—socioeconomic concerns—includes disruption of education or employment; lack of support from the father; desire to provide schooling for existing children; and poverty, unemployment or inability to afford additional children. In addition, relationship problems with a husband or partner and a woman's perception that she is too young constitute other important categories of reasons.” Reasons Why Women Have Induced Abortions Evidence from 27 Countries

b. A 2004 study of American women yielded similar results: “The reasons most frequently cited were that having a child would interfere with a woman’s education, work or ability to care for dependents (74%); that she could not afford a baby now (73%); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%). Nearly four in 10 women said they had completed their childbearing, and almost one-third were not ready to have a child. Fewer than 1% said their parents’ or partners’ desire for them to have an abortion was the most important reason. Younger women often reported that they were unprepared for the transition to motherhood, while older women regularly cited their responsibility to dependents.”
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/psrh/full/3711005.pdf




2. "Human life means something to me as well."
Clearly untrue.

Those of us who do value human life, reject the view that inconvenience of a mother’s informed choice outweighs the unalienable right to life of the child she bears by virtue of that choice.


On-demand abortion is antithetical to the ideas and ideals upon which America was built.

Above based on “Voices of the Damned,” found in “Reinventing the Right,” by Robert Wheeler, pp. 89-99.

 

[Unkotare]

I support medical research that could save lives, cure horrific diseases, improve or even normalize people woth catastrophic injuries, and increase the quality of life for all....

Me too. All that can be done using adult stem cells. In fact, as PC has shown, the only promise to such research has been shown via research with adult stem cells. So...........

 

[Unkotare]

The only time I can imagine someone who wants an abortion is when she feels she isn't ready to be a mother or give birth. ...

Well, those certainly sound like life or death circumstances...........

 

[Unkotare]

Abortions are generally the last resort. ...

No, they are not.

 

[Coloradomtnman]

I support medical research that could save lives, cure horrific diseases, improve or even normalize people woth catastrophic injuries, and increase the quality of life for all....

Me too. All that can be done using adult stem cells. In fact, as PC has shown, the only promise to such research has been shown via research with adult stem cells. So...........

She did not show that. She showed that because of religious reasons, only adult stem cells are allowed by law.no one has suggested we fertilize eggs and use those embryos; but why not use the embryos from abortion procedures?

 

[Coloradomtnman]

The only time I can imagine someone who wants an abortion is when she feels she isn't ready to be a mother or give birth. ...

Well, those certainly sound like life or death circumstances...........

Quality of life for the child, the mother, the family, and our society are valid circumstances when considering to terminate a fetus. A fetus, by current medical standards and law, is not a person.

 

[Coloradomtnman]

Abortions are generally the last resort. ...

No, they are not.

When birth control is too late, when chemical abortifacients are too late, and when the mother is unwilling to give birth and give up the child, there is only one last resort to choose between motherhood and not.

 

[Unkotare]

I support medical research that could save lives, cure horrific diseases, improve or even normalize people woth catastrophic injuries, and increase the quality of life for all....

Me too. All that can be done using adult stem cells. In fact, as PC has shown, the only promise to such research has been shown via research with adult stem cells. So...........

She did not show that.

She most certainly did, with facts and sources and everything.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I support medical research that could save lives, cure horrific diseases, improve or even normalize people woth catastrophic injuries, and increase the quality of life for all....

Me too. All that can be done using adult stem cells. In fact, as PC has shown, the only promise to such research has been shown via research with adult stem cells. So...........

She did not show that. She showed that because of religious reasons, only adult stem cells are allowed by law.no one has suggested we fertilize eggs and use those embryos; but why not use the embryos from abortion procedures?

Help me here....for clarity....is that simply untrue, or are you lying?

Myth 1: Bush banned federal funding of hESC (human embryonic stem cell ) research. (Some people even thought that he outlawed the research itself.)

(1) from President Obama’s address on March 9, 2009: “we will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research.”

(2) from the media: “President Obama lifted the eight-year-old ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research yesterday…” – Washington Post, March 10, 2009

(3) from progressive websites: “With the stroke of a pen, President Barack Obama today erased the Bush administration’s eight-year-old restrictions on federal funding of research involving human embryonic stem cells, reaffirming his commitment to evidence and biomedical hope over his predecessor’s ideological distortion of science.” – Science Progress

(4) from bioethicists: "After eight years of zero-budget funding of embryonic stem cell research, it is hardly fair and completely disingenuous for critics to point to the practice and wonder why it lags four decades behind government-funded adult stem cell research," -- Art Caplan, University of Pennsylvania

Fact 1: Bush was the first to initiate the federal funding of hESC research.


President Bush announced, on August 9, 2001 that federal funds, for the first time, would be made available for hESC research on currently existing embryonic stem cell lines. President Bush authorized research on existing human embryonic stem cell lines, not on human embryos under a specific, unrealistic timeline in which the stem cell lines must have been developed.
Stem cell controversy - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[Unkotare]

Abortions are generally the last resort. ...

No, they are not.

When birth control is too late, when chemical abortifacients are too late, and when the mother is unwilling to give birth and give up the child, there is only one last resort to choose between motherhood and not.

When there is "no choice" but to kill the unborn, eh? And you claim you don't want more abortions? Sure as hell sounds like you are all for it. You are morally bankrupt.

 

[Unkotare]

The only time I can imagine someone who wants an abortion is when she feels she isn't ready to be a mother or give birth. ...

Well, those certainly sound like life or death circumstances...........

Quality of life for the child, the mother, the family, and our society ...

Quality of 'what'? What was that word?

 

[Unkotare]

but why not use the embryos from abortion procedures?

Why don't we harvest the organs from prisoners on death row? Guess what happens in countries where they do?