Sexton Blake Posted October 6, 2014 Share Posted October 6, 2014 After leaving off from it for some years, I have done a bit of debating with christians lately and it is the some old nonsense. Nothing ever changes when you are talking superstition. But there has been big changes in science in recent years, notably astronomy in the last 18 years. It was once thought even amongst astronomers that this might be the only solar system in the Universe, but now we know that planets are common. With better telescopes, we will not only see smaller, Earthlike planets but even be able to not just detect what their atmosphere are made of, but the pollutants in them caused not only by life but even by industry from a civilization there. In just a decade or two we expect to have proof of life elsewhere in the Universe. As well as planets, we know that the birth of solar systems produce a lot of water in the early days of new stars. We have also detected an increasing number of complicated organic (carbon based) molecules in space, some necessary for life (as we know it), leading some to again ask the question: "Did life originally come from space?" There are claims that there could be 8.8 billion inhabitable planets in our galaxy alone, and there is over a hundred billion galaxies so possibly billions of trillions of inhabitable planets. So life starts, and it goes onward and upward, by evolutionary pressures so ever higher forms of life, so not just pond slime or vegetation inhabiting most of them. While faster than light travel is the staple of most science fiction, we have no evidence that it can be done, and maybe it cannot. So we have many, many races separated by unimaginable distances and no real will to invest in such journeys which can produce no tangiable benefits for such a colossal outlay. Back to religion. The crazies talk about the coming End of the World. You can point them to: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/says_about/end.html showing that Crazy Jesus got it wrong as did all his crazy disciples and even pointing out that probably not a year has gone by in 1950 years without others saying the world will end very soon yet we are still here, and it makes no difference. But with a Universe full of life, if Earth was hit by a very large asteroid tomorrow and every bit of life on it killed, it would make no difference and the Universe would go on as if we had never existed. And that is what the crazies do not understand. We do not matter. If a real God made us, we are just one grain of sand in the whole Sahara desert, so why should any God give a damn about us when he can just magic up a zillion more inhabited planets with a wave of his hand? Religions offer the standard reward for gullible followers claiming that if they do as they are told, they will go to heaven where God and his angels will wait on them hand and foot forever. Any rational person knows this is nonsense, but religious people are not known for their rationality. So with zillions of planets full of billions of beings going to heaven, it would indeed be a very crowded place to say the least. We look around and ask where heaven is. In the bible it was in the sky above us, in the clouds, where the stars are just fires which can fall to the ground. Jesus after his alleged death rose up into the sky (according to the late christian forgery), to the clouds where God lived, and angels are portrayed in paintings (but not in the bible) as having wings to fly between heaven and the ground below. Some christians now claim God lives outside the Universe (does such a place even exist?) so when someone who knows zero science claims this, ask for the bible reference to show they are not lying. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeThinkerNZ Posted October 6, 2014 Share Posted October 6, 2014 Billions and billions of planets... and ceiling cat is watching you... Ridiculous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikey101 Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 Many Christians believe the Christian God belongs to an ethereal world. The heavenly realm. They could possibly attribute this as a place outside our earthly realm. Maybe that is what gives contemporary Christians the idea that God exists beyond the material world. They include the universe because it too is material, not spiritual. Remember God is of another substance all together. As was written in Genesis: His Spirit roamed the waters of the earth. Classic Christian dualism. God/heaven/spirit is good, we/earth/flesh is bad. Please God and he will make your bad flesh good with his spirit. God loves you even though you're so very evil.. blah blah blah. This dualistic 'truth' is not accepted in all the world. Many people believe things much healthier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sexton Blake Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 Billions and billions of planets... and ceiling cat is watching you... Ridiculous. Why ridiculous? It is what astronomers now think. They have detected a few thousand planets with the poor quality telescopes we have, and they even have some photos of some. Our galaxy from one of many sites: . http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/billions-of-earthlike-planets-found-in-milky-way/ . And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sexton Blake Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 HenryCD. The old testament makes it clear that god lives in the clouds above us. After the resurrection, Jesus went up into the clouds to join his dad. God on the waters is where Genesis stole from the Egyptian creation myth*, where the firmament was a mountain which came pout of the river (Nile), so there was water above and below (upstream and downstream) of thew firmament (NOT clouds or sky). The rock was the first dry land. . https://bible.org/article/genesis-1-2-light-ancient-egyptian-creation-myths. What substance is god? Play dough? * In the lean times, the Israelites went to work for the Egyptians, so would have known their creation myths. The Moses nonsense was made up from their regular visits to Egypt, as people working for their keep and not as slaves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sexton Blake Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 Brian Cox showing his creationist tendencies: . http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2809183/We-universe-Professor-Brian-Cox-says-alien-life-impossible-humanity-unique.html . I thought he was OK when I thought he had a brain. Fortunately he is a lone crazy and the search for life goes on without any need of him. We have already found water worlds and gases in planetary atmosphere outside our solar system and better telescopes will see much more*. * I remember an old edition of "Scientific American" and it had a blurry view of Jupiter, with the planet filling a whole page. The gloomy headline of the article was that we may never take any better pictures of the planet with Earth based telescopes. Decades later, amateurs have taken better pictures, and the big professional telescopes on Earth have taken pictures that writer could not have imagined possible thanks to multiple mirror telescopes, CCD's, lasers used to overcome atmospheric turbulence, computer clean up of pictures, etc.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
violetbutterfly Posted October 31, 2014 Share Posted October 31, 2014 Billions and billions of planets... and ceiling cat is watching you... Ridiculous. Why ridiculous? It is what astronomers now think. They have detected a few thousand planets with the poor quality telescopes we have, and they even have some photos of some. Our galaxy from one of many sites: . http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/billions-of-earthlike-planets-found-in-milky-way/ . And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies. I think she means the idea that, with all these hundreds of billions of galaxies, the idea that Jesus is watching one person masturbate and judging them for it is ridiculous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeThinkerNZ Posted October 31, 2014 Share Posted October 31, 2014 Billions and billions of planets... and ceiling cat is watching you... Ridiculous. Why ridiculous? It is what astronomers now think. They have detected a few thousand planets with the poor quality telescopes we have, and they even have some photos of some. Our galaxy from one of many sites: . http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/billions-of-earthlike-planets-found-in-milky-way/ . And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies. I think she means the idea that, with all these hundreds of billions of galaxies, the idea that Jesus is watching one person masturbate and judging them for it is ridiculous. Thanks Violet, I was about to say that. It blows me away when I think about how much is out there and how extraordinary it is that humans survived and and evolved through time and can now study planets and stars that are so far away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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