5000 different Gods but don't worry 4999 of them are fake and yours is real :/ I'm only really against religion when it interferes with social or scientific progress.
Why not just say you're against religion? Why do you need to make yourself sound so righteous? Why are you trying to make Jay Z jokes? You Numpty
This is why we can't have nice things. I'm not mad at you guys, just disappointed. The thing is, there is no way to prove or disprove the existence of a god or after life. Attacking each other's intelligence and buttcrack gifs won't change that. What we can all do is a hold a personal belief system and keep it personal. Keep your freedom of religion (in America), but note that by default, that includes the freedom FROM religion. Make sure that the separation of church and state is upheld to the highest degree. I don't give a good gosh darn what you believe in as long as your sky daddy doesn't influence my rights or government. Religion belongs in your heart, your prayers, your home and your chosen building of worship. No place else.
Op, you do realize the church donates most of its money to the poor and do lots of things for the homeless? Matter in fact if you've ever volunteered for a homeless shelter or anything the church offers for the homeless they have more faith in God than you ever will. God loves you no matter who you are, the beauty of it is you can reject him all you want and when your ready he will be there to listen to your prayers. Now that also goes along with going to confess your sins, it also doesn't say anything in the bible about how missing church is a sin. So if you pray daily and proclaim your faith you can worship him. That being said all your choice!
Btw: I have volunteered in my community, and the church run shelters refuse to help you if you're gay or won't let them baptize you. Very loving and helpful.
The church, at least in the old days of the Western World, was responsible for racketeering schemes, mass executions, costly wars, and righteous bigotry. Regardless of the good intentions of many of its members, both then and now, the actions taken bybits leadership often create a stereotype that is not desireable. This stereotype is then applied to every religion We, as the judgemental and insecure people we are find it easier to classify every religion but ours by its extremist following or less PC followers. This makes it so much easier to justify the existance of only "our God". In all actuality, religion, along with a few others, is one of the biggest controversial and dividing factors in our society. Many preach acceptance, love, universal kindness and so on, but only a select few actually follow it.
Even science through quantum physics believe there is life after death, if you think that's it when you die you are a simple minded fool.
You're right. It isn't a big stretch to imagine more. Take a soul for instance. What exactly is it? It sounds as if it's a special energy that makes up the essence of humanity. We all know, through science, that energy can't be destroyed, it can only change forms. Instead of an afterlife in a heaven/purgatory/hell type setting, what if our afterlife is simply a new life? What if when our body dies, our energy is released and finds itself a new host body, such as in a baby that's just taken its first breath? Perhaps there is no after life at all, only a continuation of life.
Look up the research of the guy who set out to prove that people had souls which contained mass. He weighed terminally ill patients immediately before and immediately after their death by means of a giant scale that contained their hospital bed, so loss of bodily function after death could still be contained for accurate measurement. He did indeed find that the patients immediately weighed slightly less. I don't remember the exact amounts, it's been years. But it's a very interesting read nonetheless.
Like a few other people said before, I don't care if u believe in your imaginary friend(s) of choice as long as you don't affect other people's lives. That means: -no ringing of door bells early in the morning to try to sell me your flavor of religious bs. - no required pledges where children are forced to acknowledge the existence of the imaginary friend of ur choice. - no restrictions of free speech, however ignorant that speech is. - no discrimination of others for whatever reason - no taxes from the general public going to religious causes Check out the study of the bible knowledge made not too long ago. One of the best scoring groups there were the Atheists/Agnostics. The more people understand religions, the more they will reject it. The sea of knowledge/science/ enlightenment is rapidly eroding the island that is religion ...
I love these threads with their walls of texts, i didn't even read OP, the thread title was enough. Lol.
21 grams I think but wasn't scientific or anything and I believe others have tried to replicate this with no success.
I assume this study took into account the last breath, often started ante-mortem and finished post-mortem? That could account for some of if not all the missing weight.
I was told by a teacher years ago that he factored in average lung capacity, but I was never able to find out for sure in any articles that I read. I agree it wasn't a perfect system for accurate measurement, but for its time, it was pretty groundbreaking and thought provoking.
I like the whole missing weight argument. But to me if your going to think spiritual you have to think outside the physical all together. Nothing physical will ever prove or disprove anything spiritual. This being the case, no words in any text can describe exactly what a higher plain of existence is, it can only attempt to provoke thought as to what it might be. Just have to wrap your mind around the idea that there is more to the universe than the physical aspect our perception is limited to, and that conciousness itself transcends, in part, the physical.
So... I'm gonna come out and say that I do believe in the Christian God, just so there isn't any confusion about my personal beliefs in this discussion. There are many people that say they are against religion because "religion causes a lot of damage" (not a quote from this thread, but it seems to be a common theme). This is a big misconception of what causes problems related to religion. What really can cause damage are the institutions (like the Church). Another misconception is that religion has to be about the afterlife, which isn't necessarily true (Hinduism for example). Some people thought it would be cool to make a mock religion by praising the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Again, a misconception is that religion has to have a God or gods (like religious naturalism). What all real religions share is a "reconnecting" of sorts, based on the Latin roots of re and ligio, meaning to reconnect. It can take a lot of digging to find a religion's true ideas about the reconnecting because of the human interpretations of human interpretations about religion and/or God(s). For example, when you look deep into the Bible, Christianity is about reconnecting with a pure soul in a fallen world. I can clarify more in later comments if anyone would like to debate these ideas of mine, because they are afterall only my views on religions in the world based on close examination on the history of religions, their roles in global human rights, and their roles in relation to Nature.