Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So you find it quite acceptable to believe someone who says they come from another planet, and combine his comments to back up conspiracy theories (http://www.serendipity.li/eden/hatonn.html).

Yet dismiss modern science? I find that rather unusual.

Why?

It is a logical contradiction. How can you affirm a negetive in the absolute? It is like me saying to you there is not a white stone with 3 black dots anywhere in all the galaxies of this universe. The only way I can affirm that is if I have unlimited knowledge of this universe.

To say there is no God is to say I have infinite knowledge in order to say there is nobody with infinite knowledge (God).

So to claim to be an Atheist is unscientific.

Maybe we need a religon thread.

And what is the oldest religon anyway. Wouldn't a creater have wanted to be the first religion or maybe the second having seen what the first one was like. Most of us live in the 'what happened in the last 2000years' but shorely we've been around a little longer than that.

So you choose to accept as true only that which is valid according to your belief set, yet deny things which don't conform to your preconceived beliefs.

Isn't the purpose of science to apply techniques that are independent, that can be measured and quantified to the best of our knowledge.

Not at all.... Only from the perspective of someone who believes in god.

If this is true then there is just as much validity in saying that every god/goddess/mythical creature and fairy tale that has ever been believed throughout history by a myriad of cultures, is also just as true. For according to the same theory we can't prove them to be untrue, so therefore they must be true, they must exist somewhere?

Monotheism is the huge change that came from the Jewish religion- it had never been practiced anywhere in the world before …

and now we have the big three- Judaism, Christianity, and Muslim, in which all three have the same biblical beginning

all center in Israel

The Muslim religion splinters off after Noah's flood and Christianity begins where Judaism ends.

I accept it where it confirms Intelligent design. There are no weird convolutions and contradictions of thinking to make it work. Simple and true. True science I have found confirms my beliefs in a Creator.

The "grey men"? I have merely accepted what he says when it is line with what I believe. That I accept he is from another planet....... I choose not to believe that.

To be an Agnostic is easy – all you have to prove is that you don’t know. In Greek A is negetive,,, gnos …is to know….. one who doesn’t know. In latin this would be an ignoramus.

Jokes aside. The most scientific answer I have ever discovered to how the universe came to be is that there is a Creator. When science confirms this it makes sense to me. When science does not I find all kinds of strange convolutions and contradictions of thinking. It does not hang together as a whole either....... but comes apart in other areas too. Remove God and man seems to be unable to progress forward but starts disintegrating within society.

On the subject of Islam. Religion or ideolgy? Much debate.

Fear of the radical Muslim? I must add that not all Muslims are the same. We have some very gentle folk in South Africa who are Muslim. They live peacably.

Will the Muslim rule the world as they say? They seem determined to annihilate anything and anyone in their way.

Is Barak Obama a closet Muslim?

Not entirely true…. Judaism worshipped multiple “gods”… even for some time after the crusifixtion of “Christ”…

It was “Christianity" as imposed several centuries later.. (by the Romans)… that enforced monotheism….

There are still some sects of Judaism that recognise the existence of other “gods” within scriptures…

Absolutely true …. And usually completely overlooked…

A self fulfilling prophecy… if it fits and seems to confirm “intelligent” design… then you accept it… otherwise you reject anything that might not fit…

Why not…. Doesn’t most of the evidence for “intelligent design” actually suggest and just as easily support … some would say even better… a concept of “creator”, “intelligent design” and/or “intervention” by an extraterrestrial race/entity…. An appearance to “man” as a god… or someone who was “godlike”…

Certainly would have made all the same impressions on a “primitive” lifeform such as early mankind…

So why can you not except that “God”… the creator… was not some form of extraterrestrial intelligence… all other events, interventions, prophecy, historical distortions, accepted evolution, intelligent design…

All fit just as comfortably with such a concept…

Here Cyara… is where I fall out with you totally… and as I’ve said before… appears to be a very confined concentric caucasion view of history, religion, belief and politics…

“Islam” is no more or less a religion or ideology then “Christianity”… or “Judaism”…

At least as practiced by the ignorant, misinformed, bigoted extremeists of all three sects…

In the name of there current interpretations of “religion” … and almost ALWAYS for pure self-interest… not for religious belief…

It is an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS and jaundiced point of view… and the cause of the major problems of the world TODAY…

If you belive in God… the creator Cyara… then your “religious” perspective must be that of one of the “older” religions…

“Christianity” is not an “old” religion… and you yourself even acknowledge it isn’t a religion…

Yet you so often seem to embrace a “recent” interpretation and construct within whichto express your beliefs and faith

Jesus was a ARABIC JEW… Christianity wasn’t invented until several hundred years after his death….

And the modern state of Israel has almost nothing to do with “Christianity”, very little to do with “Judaism”…. And virtually nothing to do with the blessed “tribes”

More to come ..

Let the more to come be more soundly based. Sorry Rupe, but this is just another diatribe of claims without anything convincing to consider.

Judaism? Ah. No. Monotheism is the basis of Judaism. "You shall worship no other God beside Me." When the Israelites turned to other gods it was not Judaism. Need to get your facts in context and not just make wild claims.

Do adherents of the major Western monotheistic religions all believe in the same God? When Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship on their different holy days, are they worshipping the same divinity? Some say that they are while others say that they are not - and there are good arguments on both sides.

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about this question is that the answer will depend almost entirely upon important theological and social presuppositions that one brings to the table. The fundamental difference seems to be where one places the emphasis: on religious traditions or on theological principles.

For the many Jews, Christians, and Muslims who argue that they all believe in and worship the same God, their arguments are based largely upon the fact that they all share a common set of religious traditions. They all follow monotheistic faiths which grew out of the monotheistic beliefs that developed among the Hebrew tribes in the deserts of what is now Israel. They all claim to trace their beliefs back to Abraham, an important figure who is believed by the faithful to have been the first worshipper of God as an exclusive, monotheistic deity.

Although there may be a great many differences in the details of these monotheistic faiths, what they share in common is often a good deal more significant and meaningful. They all worship a single creator god who made humanity, desires that humans follow divinely-mandated rules of behavior, and has a special, providential plan for the faithful.

At the same time, there are many Jews, Christians, and Muslims who argue that while they all use the same sort of language in reference to God and while they all have religions that share a common cultural traditions, that doesn't mean that they all worship the same God. Their reasoning is that the commonality in ancient traditions has not translated into commonality in how God is conceived.

Muslims believe in a god who is utterly transcendent, who is non-anthropomorphic, and to whom we humans are required to submit in total obedience. Christians believe in a god who is partially transcendent and partially immanent, who is three persons in one (and quite anthropomorphic), and whom we are expected to show love. Jews believe in a god who is less transcendent, more immanent, and who has a special role for the Jewish tribes, singled out from all humanity.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims all seek to worship a single god who created the universe and humanity, and hence might come to think that they therefore do in fact all worship the same god. However, anyone who studies those three religions will find that how they describe and conceive of that creator god varies dramatically from one religion to another.

It is, then, arguable that in at least one important sense they don't actually all believe in the same god. To understand better how this is so, consider the question of whether all people who believe in "freedom" believe in the same thing - do they? Some may believe in a freedom that is a freedom from want, hunger, and pain. Others may believe in a freedom that is only the freedom from outside control and coercion. Still others may entirely different conceptions of what they want when they express a desire to be free.

They may all be using the same language, they may all be using the term "freedom," and they may all share a similar philosophical, political, and even cultural heritage that forms the context of their thoughts. That does not mean, however, that they all believe in and want the same "freedom" - and many intense political struggles have resulted over different ideas of what "freedom" should mean, just as many violent religious conflicts have been caused over what "God" should mean. Thus, perhaps all Jews, Christians, and Muslims want and intend to worship the same god, but their theological differences mean that in reality the "objects" of their worship are all entirely different.

There is one very good and important objection that can be raised against this argument: even within those three religious faiths, there are many variations and discrepancies. Does that mean, then, that for example not all Christians believe in the same God? This would seem to be the logical conclusion of the above argument, and it is strange enough that it should give us pause.

Certainly there are many Christians, particularly fundamentalists, who will have a lot of sympathy for such a conclusion, however odd it sounds to others. Their conception of God is so narrow that it can be easy for them to conclude that other self-professed Christians aren't "real" Christians and hence don't really worship the same God as they.

Perhaps there is a middle ground which allows us to accept the important insights that the argument provides but which doesn't force us into absurd conclusions. On a practical level, if any Jews, Christians, or Muslims claim that they all worship the same god, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to accept this - at least on a superficial level. Such a claim is normally made for social and political reasons as part of an effort to foster interfaith dialogue and understanding; since such a position is largely based upon common traditions, it seems appropriate.

Theologically, however, the position is on much weaker ground. If we are going to actually discuss God in any specific manner, then we would have to ask of Jews, Christians, and Muslims "What is this god that you all believe in" - and we'll get very different answers. No one objection or critique a skeptic offers will be valid for all of those answers, and this means that if we are going to address their arguments and ideas, we'll have to do it one at at time, moving from one conception of God to another.

Thus, while we may accept on a social or political level that they all believe in the same god, on a practical and theological level we simply cannot - there's just no choice in the matter. This is made easier to understand when we remember that, in a sense, they don't all actually believe in the same god; they may all want to believe in the One True God, but in reality the content of their beliefs varies wildly. If there is a One True God, then most of them have failed to achieve what they are working towards.

In any reaction where energy is transformed into matter, it produces an exactly equal amount of antimatter; there are no known exceptions. Instead what we see in the universe is that Matter fills it with only trace amounts of Antimatter. So the Big Bang Theory – which has no matter to begin with but only energy – should produce equivalent amounts of Matter and Anti-Matter. In fact lets follow this through further…

If equal amounts of Matter and Anti-Matter were to be found then we have a scientific problem. When Matter and Antimatter come together they violently destroy each other. Life is not possible. Oops!

Only 4% of the Universe is made of ordinary matter. Following the latest measurements and cosmological models, 73% of the cosmic energy budget seems to consist of "dark energy" and 23% of dark matter. The nature of dark energy remains a mystery, probably intimately connected with the fundamental question of the "cosmological constant problem".

Dark matter turns out to be the majority component of cosmic matter. It holds the Universe together through the gravitational force but neither emits nor absorbs light. Dark matter (including a small admixture of massive neutrinos) has likely played a central role in the formation of large scale structures in the Universe. Its exact nature has yet to be determined. The discovery of new types of particles which may comprise the dark matter would confirm a key element of the Universe as we understand it today. The favoured candidate for particulate dark matter is the lightest supersymmetric (SUSY) particle, most probably the neutralino.

Astroparticle physicists have developed a variety of tools for direct and indirect neutralino searches and will explore a large fraction of the best motivated theoretical models. These explorations will complement SUSY searches at the Large Hadron Collider, LHC. An alternative possibility is that dark matter consists of axions, light pseudoscalar particles copiously produced in the Early Universe, or of bosonic particles with axion-like interactions. Other particles beyond the standard model of particle physics may contribute on a smaller level to the cosmic inventory, such as magnetic monopoles or extremely heavy SUSY states. Last but not least, the extent of matter-antimatter asymmetry is explored by searches for antiparticles and tested against theories of the early Universe.