The Pledge of Allegiance

[Dark Jaguar]

I won't say I'm a huge theologen either, but I do know from my mom telling me about Catholosism when she snuck out to them as a kid.

ABF, I must say that though you make the point about various religions worshipping the same God, that's hardly enough. Just because one link is there doesn't mean the religion is the same. It's the core of the faith that matters, and the core of Christianity lies in the idea that we can't earn our way to Heaven. From what I understand of what my mom and a few Catholic friends have told me, Catholosism has a system of works to earn your way into heaven, things added onto the Christ thing. The second you have a system of works that MUST be done to earn your way into Heaven, it stops being Christianity. I hope you understand that the difference is at the very core of the two faiths. The core is more important than ANY external similarities or differences. So long as the core is the same, it's the same faith. That having been said, most other denominations are just denominations. They are still Christians at the core of the faith, it's just external stuff they disagree on (I am non-denominational, purely because I don't think Christians should be fighting with each other on such non-issues). I hope you understand why the core being different is enough to completely seperate the religions. It seems you are kinda stuck on the "but you all worship the God from the bible" thing and don't see that that's not quite the core of the faith. I mean, if you replaced the core of a nuclear reactor plant with delicious Purina 1 cat food you wouldn't have a nuclear power plant would you?

I just will end with saying I don't see why science has to be so seperate from religion either. There is a key seperation of course, faith vs the whole concept of science, tangible proof (and yep, that's a biggy), but the thing is there's something wrong with going completely in either direction. Needing tangible proof for everything in life means you can't ever love anyone, or trust them, or really just live in happyness. You do have to just trust lots of things blindly, mainly in people. Going too far into the "faith" side however means you can really end up deep into a state of weirdness. You end up like I was, believing EVERYTHING that comes your way, no matter the proof, and as was the case with me, going way off mark in how to live my life. The key is to use "dicernment" and just make up your mind on what you need proof on and what you just will have to believe in. Myself, I require proof for scientific studies and news, but when it comes to people, and God, it's trickier. I just have decided to place all my faith into one thing, and ignore all other religions. That's what faith is, ignoring the other options in choice of the one you now know is right. They can live in harmony just fine, when you find a balance.

Oh, and Weltall, don't mean to rain on your parade at all, since I agree with most of what you say, but "theories" are actually what science works towards. What most people think theory means is what a hypothesis is. People think theories eventually become laws, but only certain things can become scientific "laws" and every law is still considered a theory. All a theory is is a set of explanations that accuratly describe given phenomenon that it's scope is supposed to define. If it doesn't accuratly describe all phenomenon in it's scope, it's a failed hypothesis. It's all semantics really, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Regarding e=mc^2, that particular formula has in fact very well been proven, as many people in two unfortunate places in Japan will tell you, since it was in fact the entire basis of nuclear weaponry. Now that's got direct applied proof, or something more complecated explains why those bombs actually worked, but in science there's something called Occam's Razor, which essentially is a tool that says "Given multiple explanations, always choose the simplest explanation for phenomenon that perfectly describes said phenomenon". Remember, this is a tool for science, not for faith, so no need to worry about it when going through deciding where to put your blind faith (oh, and faith by it's very nature is blind, it's kinda redundant to say blind faith). Again, just giving a stupid little mini-lecture on scientific methodology. Nothing important regarding the debate at hand in the lot of it, and your point is quite good. One must have faith when going forward that your science books you have studied are accurate (in a number of cases, they in fact are not) when studying any scientific field, so yes even in scientific pursuit, there's faith, which I do belive was your point.

Anyway, yeah I see your point LL. I guess I was afraid I wasn't seeing myself doing something and you were pointing it out. I certainly do not wish to get into some sort of name calling thing here, or the whole prooving God exists thing (though, to be honest, a God kinda follows the simplest explanation rule of Occam's Razor, multiple gods isn't as simple, and springing from nothingness certainly won't be a simple explanation).

One last thing, regarding something ABF said. You mention miracles and the explanations for why they could all be false as why we wouldn't get into prooving God exists. You nailed it right on the head there. All miracles can be explained away. Going forward from there, even if God did proove Himself constantly to all people all the time (that's obviously well within His power, and He could even beat Buu), would people actually believe it? Some might, but I'm pretty much positive that people would ignore the razor and go for all sorts of other explanations, like mass hallucination, or perhaps a strange effect of the sun, or maybe a part of the human psyche constantly revealing itself (psychologists would have no trouble here, after all if God is appearing all the time, the argument that it's humanity-wide genetic defect that we are all seeing (maybe they would even say animals see it, and in fact if God chose to let house pets see Him, it would only help that claim).