Why do people always think God = religion?

Pretty hard to talk about Christians in general outside of core dogmas. I even know for sure that some Protestants in France are Unitarians (they don't believe in Trinity, or One God as one substance in three hypostases) and are still acknowledged as Protestants. From a more subjective point of view I as West-European Roman Catholic feel nowhere near Born Again Pentecostal Christians from oversea or Orthodox Churches from the East, for doctrinal but also cultural reasons of course.

On OP's topic : it's also good to notice that criticsm of religion have been offered by people highly involved in religious and theologic activities. The most powerful Christian example of this is probably Karl Barth, a Swiss Reformed theologian and pastor. In short he wanted to emphasized the sovereignity of God and (in line with the great philosopher Søren Kierkegaard) the infinite qualitative distinction between God and man. On that regard religion was of course a target of choice since it claims to be the premium medium between God and men (especially for Catholics against Protestants). That leitmotiv pushed him to bring some caustic statements on the table (for those of you that are a bit in philosophy and philosophy of religion, statements like "The Analogia Entis is an invention of Antichrist" or the Incarnation is God touching the world only "as a tangent").

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Even if the books did happen to be static, religion isn't limited to what's written in it, it's also dictated a lot by its leaders.

As an ex catholic, I had a fairly progressive education anyway, so I lived that, :P

As many people say here: RNG is RNG, and maps are RNG on top of RNG. Maybe too much RNG.

I once ate this but have not managed to find it again unfortunately. I sometimes wonder if the experience was not a product of my young easily impressed mind; If the deliciousness was real...



Do not mean to denigrate your religion whatever it is, but choco taco is the one true god.

take one bite and be converted

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Xavderion wrote:

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There's a lot of bias within that meme:

+ You will tend to not pay attention to any result that doesn't correspond to what you are looking for (life), but not to others, just like you pay a lot of attention to the roll 6-6-6-6-6-6 on 6D6, but not to 3-6-2-2-1-4, even though they are equally improbable.

While rolling a single six sided die and getting 6 then rolling it again and getting 6 then then rolling it again and getting 6 in exact order, or getting 3 then 6 and 2 from the same process are equally probable - Rolling a six sided dice twice and then having the dice roll all by itself and consistently generate sixes (a few fives here and there) is a completely different problem.

There may very well be rational explanation for the process at some point in the future, but the "we are here, so it must have happened" has no more validity than the stack of turtles. I'd prefer if scientists would just say "We don't have any answers for X, YET, but we are trying to figure it out."

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DalaiLama wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

(...)

There's a lot of bias within that meme:

+ You will tend to not pay attention to any result that doesn't correspond to what you are looking for (life), but not to others, just like you pay a lot of attention to the roll 6-6-6-6-6-6 on 6D6, but not to 3-6-2-2-1-4, even though they are equally improbable.

While rolling a single six sided die and getting 6 then rolling it again and getting 6 then then rolling it again and getting 6 in exact order, or getting 3 then 6 and 2 from the same process are equally probable - Rolling a six sided dice twice and then having the dice roll all by itself and consistently generate sixes (a few fives here and there) is a completely different problem.

There may very well be rational explanation for the process at some point in the future, but the "we are here, so it must have happened" has no more validity than the stack of turtles. I'd prefer if scientists would just say "We don't have any answers for X, YET, but we are trying to figure it out."

I'll be happy as long as I don't roll a 5 - having the Dragon block my Rod of Thunder would severely deplete my available action points.

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Have you ever studied polymerization? Because that's exactly what happens with that specific process.
When you start studying chemistry, you see that self-sustaining life appearing by "pure chance" makes a lot of sense. At least as much as an anthropocentric superior will that decided we had to exist.

Did you mean the spontaneous emergence of lipid bilayers instead of polymerization?