Religion - a respectful discussion, for those interested

Church Serves as ‘Field Hospital’ in Healing Stateside, Abroad

"Pope Francis offered his help to the people of Nice, France, in a surprise phone call following a deadly attack during Bastille Day celebrations, said the head of an association of Italians living in France. ...

...We come before him at this Eucharist to ask him to heal the divisions that weaken us as community,” he said, “that he strengthen us when we tend to lose hope, that he enlighten us when we fail to see his image in one another, and that he use us, his Church, as the field hospital he desires to tend the wounds of those who are hurting at this difficult time.”

...On July 12, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and former President George W. Bush joined Mayor Mike Rawlings, Police Chief David O. Brown, the families of those officers killed and injured, hundreds of other law enforcement officials, and elected and interfaith leaders at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center to remember the “heroes.” Those heroes were represented in the audience not only by their families, but by five seats, draped in black, with a folded American flag and a policeman’s cap."
http://cny.org/stories/Church-Serves-as-Field-Hospital-in-Healing-Stateside-Abroad,14281


Yet another example of the tremendous good that organized religion, and the Catholic Church in particular, does worldwide, that the mainstream media won't report on because it doesn't fit their agenda.

 

...I know, sad isn't it, with all the great things the Catholic Church is doing in the world, the mainstream media only reports on the Pope falling down. #MediaAgenda

 

The Catholic Church Is Everywhere

“...Everywhere”; “all over”; “everybody”; “universal”; “all-embracing”; these are all synonyms for “Catholic.” ... And, as I am vividly reminded now, the Church is not constrained by race, blood, or maps. Here in India, I can find the same Catholic faith I savor in the Bronx, on Staten Island, or up in Ulster County....Don’t compliment me! Praise Jesus! He commissioned His Church to be Catholic, and, as James Joyce noted, that means “Here comes everybody!” I see it here in India; I’ll see it in Krakow; I see it at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

“I believe in one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.”

http://cny.org/stories/The-Catholic-Church-Is-Everywhere,14264?

 

"According to a much-discussed survey reported in the journal Nature in 1997, 40 percent of biologists, physicists and mathematicians said they believed in God"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/us/scientists-speak-up-on-mix-of-god-and-science.html?_r=0

 

That's a myth, which I disproved about 50 pages ago.

 

...just like the myth that science and religion are incompatible:

10 Brilliant Scientists and Their Views of God:

Max Planck, German Physicist, founded Quantum Theory. Simply put this theory gave a tool for understanding atomic level activity and the influence of surrounding fields. Some claim this theory is where science and theology intersect. He was a Christian but did not condemn those who thought differently. He once said, “"Religion is the link that binds man to God." Max Plank: Believer.

Albert Einstein’s philosophy about the supernatural is complicated and perhaps brilliant, like his theories in physics. His most telling statement was, “I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”

Einstein seems to have rejected traditional religious views in favor of a force that gives order to the universe. We might call Einstein a “Deist” since he believed in some organizing power but completely rejected the idea of a personal God.

http://hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/10-Brilliant-Scientists-and-Their-View-of-God

Francis S. Collins, who directs the National Human Genome Research Institute and who speaks freely about his Christian faith...
Dr. Collins, who is working on a book about his religious faith, also believes that people should not have to keep religious beliefs and scientific theories strictly separate. "I don't find it very satisfactory and I don't find it very necessary," he said in an interview. He noted that until relatively recently, most scientists were believers. "Isaac Newton wrote a lot more about the Bible than the laws of nature," he said."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/us/scientists-speak-up-on-mix-of-god-and-science.html

 

Wow, someone told you all that and you believed it?! I should spend more time reading posts on here to see the crap that some people have been led to believe about the Bible and religion in general. Show me one verse in the Bible that says anything about any of that? I'm not holding my breath. ...Now you may be referring to the fact that there is a lot of history in the Bible, and sadly, slavery and sacrifice were part of world culture back then. But the Bible describes hope and a way out for people not only of that time, but for people throughout the ages, including today when we have a nice name for killing babies (abortion), the routine abuse of women is legalized in the pornography industry, genocide is still practiced around the world, and Christians are being beheaded and persecuted once again. .... but believe what you want. The mainstream media will gladly feed you a false narrative tailor-made to justify your lifestyle, while the shrinks clean up ("everyone should have a therapist" they say, but don't bother going to Church or following organized religion, that helped countless people in the past but today we "know better".)

 

First of all, are you an atheist who has actually thought it out (because, although there are very few actual atheists in the world, about 1% of the world's population, the ones I've known just run away any time you ask them a serious question; they don't want God to exist and they don't want to think too much, in case the evidence and reason starts to make them question their beliefs. But if you've actually thought it through (let alone researched it), please answer these questions for me:

1) According to science, nothing comes from nothing. Matter and energy are never created or destroyed, they just change form. That's a basic principle underlying all science. So where did anything come from in the first place then? (hint: if you bother researching it, you will find that even atheist scientists don't have any good answers for this most fundamental question). The Big Bang started with a tiny dense singularity, with nothing, not even space or time, existing before it. So where did this singularity that exploded to form the universe come from? The Bible explains it as God saying "Let there be light" [the explosion of the Big Bang] with creation following that, but science has nothing that makes any sense. Just a bunch of convoluted nonsense designed to sound fancy and sophisticated, but empty when you really study and analyze it (I did).

2) And even if "space dust" somehow "always existed", how did this matter suddenly decide to get up, organize itself, and create complex self-sustaining systems (ie. the first bacteria and tiny single-celled organisms). Another basic law of science, entropy, states that over time, systems will break down, and disorder will result. Yet somehow life built itself up to the incredibly complex organisms we see today all by itself, defying laws of nature along the way? These "random" events somehow organized themselves into more and more complex systems, despite the fact that apparently everything is happening randomly?

3) Maybe science has got it all wrong, and those most basic, fundamental laws (matter and energy are never created or destroyed, and entropy, the natural move toward disorder) need to be scrapped? But even then, what started it all? In the empty void of space, where did the first matter and energy come from, and what caused it to organize itself into the staggering complexity and order we see today?

.....do you have answers to any of that?

 

You missed the key word there, a PERSONAL God. That excludes the other 30% or so who would describe themselves as deists, or those who believe in a supernatural underlying cause for the universe but not a "personal" God who intervenes in history.