Religion and the Martial Arts

[Kensai]

KungFuGrappler, I am sorry. But again you telling us what to believe. I dont wanna make this into a flame war, but you saying that bothing ever excited before 20000 years AGO?! But we KNOW, scientific fact that the earth is much older than that. Also the Earth is moving closer to the sun? Thats news to me and I am a Physical Geography student. Global warming has more to do with ozone gases and various other unpleasant chemical reactions than it does do with god. IMHO ofcourse.

 

Jesus Christ may well have died for me. But I dont believe that he was anything other than a myth. Its my opinion. Now I know the TKDMaster and yourself seem to be very pro Christian.

 

I dont believe in GOD period. I dont want to, I have no need to. If there is something that I can see, feel and touch then its real.

 

I am not trying to talk anyone out of Christianity. But when people say JESUS CHRIST IS THE SON OF GOD! Then great he is, but thats only to YOU and other Christians.

 

Not to me.

[omnifinite]

Hmm. I don't know why this thread was unlocked again, but most of what was said recently has been deleted, when there are plenty of off-topic (and much more inflammatory) posts that came before mine. Hopefully those posts still would have been deleted if they'd all been in support of Christianity... you never know.

 

But what I did say in one of the posts was that the burden of proof is on the person making the claims about the seemingly unprovable, not the other way around.

 

A hypothetical example.

 

I propose that the universe was created by gnomes (yes, a purposefully silly example for the sake of contrast), and day to day they run everything that goes on everywhere and will be for eternity. These elves are massless, invisible, and completely undetectable in every other possible way. You either have faith that they exist or you don't, and often they make things happen in the world that are seemingly contradictory to their existence just to test your faith in them. They are everywhere, watching everyone all the time. Nothing could exist without them.

 

Prove me wrong.

 

You can't and you don't have to... that's my job. It's my claim. Either I can undeniably back it up or I can't (and no matter what I say someone will feel they have reason to deny it because they're going on a different set of assumptions about what can rightfully be considered knowledge and what can't).

 

A flood probably did happen 4,000 years ago. Legends tend to be fueled by actual events. But according to my assumption-set, the existence of a flood only proves the existence of a flood, not divine influence.

 

The whole earth's orbit thing sounds like pseudo-science to me, probably gathered from a book or website that had an agenda. If you seek to prove that God exists, you'll succeed. If you seek to prove that God doesn't exist, you'll succeed. Only objective science that asks questions and lets the conclusions come naturally really gets anywhere. Incidentally, the dark side of Mercury is one of the coldest places in the solar system. Global warming has more to do with atmosphere than proximity to the sun. Look to Venus for what happens when global warming goes horribly wrong. And then compare the temperature of Venus to the temperature of the hot side of Mercury for that matter.

 

I'm not exactly an atheist... if I were forced to pick a label (which won't be accurate since my beliefs don't fit some encyclopedia definition) I'd go with pantheist. So I'm not against super-natural beliefs, but (real) science has never contradicted what I believe either.

 

Guess I can say goodbye to this post. Maybe I should tie it into martial arts somehow .

 

Ok... art vs. art... style vs. style... I don't believe any of these arguments have answers that aren't circumstantial and subjective. No one fights in a vacuum. We simply have to make a personal choice as to who we listen to. In every art, there are people who give ego-based rhetoric-laden reasons for why their art is best. And in every art, there are people who give extensively-researched objective reasons for why their art is best. You just have to decide which approach you find more valid. I find it an easy choice.

 

(edit: On second glance, the locked thread is still intact and this is a duplicate thread. Hmm. I don't get it.)