Religious debate (split from main board)

[OrangeEmpire]

How did your baby sacrificing go over the weekend?

 

[gsvol]

As the review you linked said:

I thought you would take the bait.

Are you going to let that reviewer decide what to think of the man's ideas or consider them yourself??

Get back to you soon, one of my kids knows someone who reviews books for a living and sometimes gets too many books to review in a timely manner and so dumped some on my child and one ended up in my hands, it's all about mathematics, both facts and theories.

Wernher von Braun; "I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science."

 

[BeecherVol]

Interesting.

 

[rjd970]

Wernher von Braun; "I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science."

This is a far cry from acknowledging the miracle reaking, prayer answering, personal God of everyday conversation. It is even further away from acknowledging said God is Christian as opposed to anything else.

 

[gsvol]

This is a far cry from acknowledging the miracle reaking, prayer answering, personal God of everyday conversation. It is even further away from acknowledging said God is Christian as opposed to anything else.

Yes but it exibits an open mind and most men of exceptional talent in the sciences display the same sort of openmindedness and that is a very far cry from announcing there is no personal God.

In other words their beliefs are born of knowledge and not of ignorance and superstition.

 

[rjd970]

Yes but it exibits an open mind and most men of exceptional talent in the sciences display the same sort of openmindedness and that is a very far cry from announcing there is no personal God.

In other words their beliefs are born of knowledge and not of ignorance and superstition.

I disagree. Einstein did this very thing. While he is often quoted using the term "God" he looked at the idea as nothing more than a placeholder for the unkown. He quite frequently, and vigorously denied the existence of a personal God.

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

- Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

- Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2

If he was something, he was more agnostic than anything. That was probably the result of his knowledge. IMO, ignorance and superstition would have driven him to other conclusions.

 

[IPorange]

If I took the bait, where's the trap? It isn't like that idea hasn't come up in this thread before.

 

[gsvol]

I disagree. Einstein did this very thing. While he is often quoted using the term "God" he looked at the idea as nothing more than a placeholder for the unkown. He quite frequently, and vigorously denied the existence of a personal God.





If he was something, he was more agnostic than anything. That was probably the result of his knowledge. IMO, ignorance and superstition would have driven him to other conclusions.

You're no Einstein, you know that don'tcha??

Other quotes;

"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."
(Albert Einstein)

"The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness."
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)

"What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos."
(Albert Einstein to Joseph Lewis, Apr. 18, 1953)

"When the answer is simple, God is speaking."
(Albert Einstein)

"But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
(Albert Einstein, 1941)


The point is that you can't find many great men of science, now or at any point in history that don't at least agree somewhat with these scientific facts and ideas about them, it is so far from ignorance and superstition as to make your statement completely laughable.

If I took the bait, where's the trap? It isn't like that idea hasn't come up in this thread before.

You just regurgitated the thoughts of the doubter, what do you personally think of the ideas of Hugh Ross???

Best science text book you will ever get for $5.

In this book he shows that science and Christianity are not at odds. It is the philosophical beliefs of (some) scientist that are at odds with Christianity not the facts of science.

 

[rjd970]

You're no Einstein, you know that don'tcha??

Other quotes;

"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."
(Albert Einstein)

"The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness."
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)

"What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos."
(Albert Einstein to Joseph Lewis, Apr. 18, 1953)

"When the answer is simple, God is speaking."
(Albert Einstein)

"But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
(Albert Einstein, 1941)


The point is that you can't find many great men of science, now or at any point in history that don't at least agree somewhat with these scientific facts and ideas about them, it is so far from ignorance and superstition as to make your statement completely laughable.




You just regurgitated the thoughts of the doubter, what do you personally think of the ideas of Hugh Ross???

Best science text book you will ever get for $5.

The fact that you completely overlooked my point (and your original point, for that matter) is far from surprising.

You made a specific claim about a personal God. Even in your quotes, find me one place where Einstein endorses the idea of a personal God.

 

[OrangeEmpire]

I was watching Naked Science and I finally found a reasonable explaination of the Big Bang.

Naked Science | National Geographic Channel

 

[gsvol]

The fact that you completely overlooked my point (and your original point, for that matter) is far from surprising.

You made a specific claim about a personal God. Even in your quotes, find me one place where Einstein endorses the idea of a personal God.

It's you that can't see the forest for the trees.

I'm completely unsurprised.

All the statements from Einstein are his personal views about God.

Einstein just didn't think that God took much personal interest in the individual man.

After Carl Jung had retired and not so long before his death someone did a very in depth interview with him, one of the quesions was; 'do you believe in God.'

Jung took a puff off his pipe and reflected for a moment and then said; "the answer to that question would have to be no, because if I said yes, that would imply that I think there is a God, on the contrary, I know there is a God."

Unfortunately psychiatry has leaned more heavily to the thoughts of the atheistic Sigmund Freud, who was a nutcase extroidinaire.

My personal view about God is that He will take a personal interest in the life of an individual and He has proven that to me beyond any reasonable doubt.

What is your personal view about God??

 

[Snakes on a Wii]

It's you that can't see the forest for the trees.

I'm completely unsurprised.

All the statements from Einstein are his personal views about God.

Einstein just didn't think that God took much personal interest in the individual man.

After Carl Jung had retired and not so long before his death someone did a very in depth interview with him, one of the quesions was; 'do you believe in God.'

Jung took a puff off his pipe and reflected for a moment and then said; "the answer to that question would have to be no, because if I said yes, that would imply that I think there is a God, on the contrary, I know there is a God."

Unfortunately psychiatry has leaned more heavily to the thoughts of the atheistic Sigmund Freud, who was a nutcase extroidinaire.

My personal view about God is that He will take a personal interest in the life of an individual and He has proven that to me beyond any reasonable doubt.

What is your personal view about God??

:lolabove:

Good lord sometimes you just hang yourself with these arguments. Einstein is the WORST example you could have picked.

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. " - Albert Einstein

Edit: And also, you obviously know almost nothing about modern psychology (which you erroneously termed "psychiatry", no doubt because you are ignorant rather than sloppy), because Freudian ideas have been out for awhile. Sure, there are some "Neo-Freudians" who continue to advocate his ideas but they are marginalized and generally not taken seriously (like global warming deniers or evolution deniers)

 

[Snakes on a Wii]

Now let's time how quickly gsvol can jump ship with his Einstein quoting. If we accepted his construction of an argument from authority as correct, then quoting Einstein would be evidence against the existence of god. I've got money on him continuing to defend it because Einstein never came out and said "I do not believe there is a god" in exact wordage.

 

[Snakes on a Wii]

Yes but it exibits an open mind and most men of exceptional talent in the sciences display the same sort of openmindedness and that is a very far cry from announcing there is no personal God.

In other words their beliefs are born of knowledge and not of ignorance and superstition.

You will never catch a true intellectual denying the possibility of anything, even God. Not even Richard Dawkins believes that there "absolutely can be no God", because it is logically impossible to prove anything absolutely. Carl Sagan used to use the parable of the "Invisible Dragon".

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.​

 

[OrangeEmpire]

Or the universe is in this jar.

 

[Snakes on a Wii]

Or the universe is in this jar.

I think I finally realized what your professor was talking about. Awhile ago it was thought that in a certain specific case it might be possible to create "big bangs" in the laboratory, because a mechanism similar to cosmic inflation would take place, but into itself (if that makes any sense. protip: it doesn't). Of course stuff like that isn't science because it isn't testable.

 

[BeecherVol]

Or the universe is in this jar.

Looks like that would make a good "night light", for my 5 year olds room.

 

[gsvol]

:lolabove:

Good lord sometimes you just hang yourself with these arguments. Einstein is the WORST example you could have picked.

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. " - Albert Einstein

Edit: And also, you obviously know almost nothing about modern psychology (which you erroneously termed "psychiatry", no doubt because you are ignorant rather than sloppy), because Freudian ideas have been out for awhile. Sure, there are some "Neo-Freudians" who continue to advocate his ideas but they are marginalized and generally not taken seriously (like global warming deniers or evolution deniers)

Listen Einstein, I quoted Wernher von Braun to illustrate my point and rj came back with Albert and I gave other quotes that further illustrated my point, that point being, most of the accomplished, learned men of science do NOT deny the existance of God.

Get it??

Psychology and psychiatry were both contributed to by the works of Jung, Freud, Adler and others, you seem to know a quite bit, have you been commited or on psychotrophic meds lately??

Many of Freud invented terms are still used, even in everyday language, such as ego, which you seem to have a lot more of than let's say, assgo.

You never cease to be willing to display your ignorance do you, I guess that makes you and ignornace denier.

You pay thythes to al-Gore??

Now let's time how quickly gsvol can jump ship with his Einstein quoting. If we accepted his construction of an argument from authority as correct, then quoting Einstein would be evidence against the existence of god. I've got money on him continuing to defend it because Einstein never came out and said "I do not believe there is a god" in exact wordage.

The wrod 'god' is derived from Greek and is generic, usually meaning something like; 'divine being.'

You're picking hairs now, look back again at the Einstein quotes I produced.

You will never catch a true intellectual denying the possibility of anything, even God. Not even Richard Dawkins believes that there "absolutely can be no God", because it is logically impossible to prove anything absolutely. Carl Sagan used to use the parable of the "Invisible Dragon".

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.​

Do you spray paint a lot of grafitti in your spare time???

I may have seen some of your work on overepasses in the past, otherwise I don't have the faintest clue what you are talking about although I do get it has to do with what you think of as some sort of logic.

When playing Mah Jong in the past I have had a Pong-Kong with red dragon hand or two and maybe a couple of three dragon hands, never when I was playing for money though.

The highest scoring hand possible is 'three concealed Kongs of Dragons plus a pair of the players' own Wind.
The hand is called the "Imperial Mah Jong."
(and all must be concealed.)

The three adopted sons of the dragon nine (or one either) will score about half that many points and the snake of dragons will score about half that.

You play?

Or the universe is in this jar.

You remind me of a man.

 

[Oldvol75]

You guys are getting deep here. The answer is in its simplicity, but some can't see the forrest for the trees. Its like looking for lost keys, its always in the last place you look.

 

[rjd970]

I love how gsvol has bactracked now and it is no longer a "personal God" but God in general, a "divine being".

I'm still waiting to see our most prolific thread starter here show us where Von Braun or Einstien believed in anything approaching a "personal God".

 

[Oldvol75]

I guess it would only matter, what Einstein thought, if he was God. But since he wasn't, what difference does it really make? If he believed in Spanoza's god, created the universe and everything in it or a persoanl god who wasn't concerned with the day to day concerns of man, it doesn't matter. What matters is you believe and what I believe and our relationship to a personal God. Individuals.

 

[Brog]

Evan Williams is what matters.

 

[Oldvol75]

Evan Williams is what matters.

And if you drink enough of it it leads to idol worship! It will put you on your knees in front of the porcelain god.

 

[Snakes on a Wii]

I guess it would only matter, what Einstein thought, if he was God. But since he wasn't, what difference does it really make? If he believed in Spanoza's god, created the universe and everything in it or a persoanl god who wasn't concerned with the day to day concerns of man, it doesn't matter. What matters is you believe and what I believe and our relationship to a personal God. Individuals.

That is exactly my point Oldvol. I couldn't care less what Einstein thought because faith is a personal matter, but gsvol continues to make false statements that he believed in god. That's a stretch, but if you really look at it Einstein's god was so different than what you think of when you hear "god" that I doubt even Richard Dawkins would have a problem with it.

 

[Snakes on a Wii]

Listen Einstein, I quoted Wernher von Braun to illustrate my point and rj came back with Albert and I gave other quotes that further illustrated my point, that point being, most of the accomplished, learned men of science do NOT deny the existance of God.

Get it??

Psychology and psychiatry were both contributed to by the works of Jung, Freud, Adler and others, you seem to know a quite bit, have you been commited or on psychotrophic meds lately??

Many of Freud invented terms are still used, even in everyday language, such as ego, which you seem to have a lot more of than let's say, assgo.

You never cease to be willing to display your ignorance do you, I guess that makes you and ignornace denier.

You pay thythes to al-Gore??

Wow you're getting pretty defensive here. I assumed you would take the opportunity to actually educate yourself on the distinction but I shouldn't be surprised given you've demonstrated an interest in confirming only your myopic view of the world while projecting (that's a psychology term, by the way, look it up) this close-mindedness on others. If you want the honest truth from me, I couldn't care less who believes in God and who doesn't. If Madalyn Murray O'Hair was resurrected by some feat of technology tomorrow and proclaimed Jesus her lord and savior I wouldn't think any differently, because unlike you my beliefs (or lack of them) are formed from evidence, not what someone 2,000 or 20 years ago said about a hypothetical Sky-Fairy that grants wishes.

To this date, no one has given me any evidence. Call me cynical, but God is the only thing in the human experience that people are willing to accept without evidence. That is not an accident. It is because religion has been constructed to take doubt as a sin and faith as a virtue.

And to my knowledge; no, I have not been committed or put on meds in my life. Just goes to show how low-brow the faithful will go though. Nothing like setting an example for open-mindedness like calling anyone who disagrees with you mentally ill. While we're on the subject let's look in the mirror shall we? When a person hears voices in their head it's called auditory hallucinations. Normally that's a symptom of a psychiatric disorder, but when those voices are identified as being the creator of the universe it's a good thing and you should keep it up.

I doubt you will read this (in fact you probably stopped reading somewhere through the first paragraph) but for your sake I will explain the difference between psychiatry and psychology so you don't embarrass yourself anymore making these silly "arguments from authority".

Psychiatry is a medical discipline focused on physiological (that means chemicals and stuff in the body) causes for disorders (or diseases, if they are identified with a specific pathological cause). It's an evidence-based discipline that treats the phenomenon of "mental illness" as a biological one.

Psychology is a social science that attempts to form top-down models for the phenomenon of mind. It's concerned with the brain as "black box" machine and tends to use grand unifying explanations (like Freud's id, ego, and superego) to explain all the phenomena of human thought, not just mental illness (in fact psychology rarely treads there, since psychiatry is more successful).

And let's be clear. I have no problem with people who just don't know this. I didn't either until I educated myself about it. But to go on and act like you know so much while (ironically) accusing other people of being ignorant, when in fact you are just wrong, is a problem to me. I have plenty of well-educated Christian friends who are making a personal choice about what they believe. But you are just ignorant and ideologically blinded.

The wrod 'god' is derived from Greek and is generic, usually meaning something like; 'divine being.'

You're picking hairs now, look back again at the Einstein quotes I produced.

Oh cool it's gsvol's favorite game! Twist the definitions! Remember, when the words don't fit your view of the world, just keep trying until they do. While you're looking up "god" in the dictionary, why don't you try "cognitive dissonance", as well?

5 points if you convince yourself Einstein believed in God.

10 points if you convince yourself Richard Dawkins actually is blindly faithful to "atheism's god"

25 points if you convince yourself that that Darwin was:

PICK ONE:
1. an atheist
2. a racist
3. a nazi (bonus points if you can also claim that he endorsed the holocaust's principles)
4. a communist​

Do you spray paint a lot of grafitti in your spare time???

I may have seen some of your work on overepasses in the past, otherwise I don't have the faintest clue what you are talking about although I do get it has to do with what you think of as some sort of logic.

When playing Mah Jong in the past I have had a Pong-Kong with red dragon hand or two and maybe a couple of three dragon hands, never when I was playing for money though.

The highest scoring hand possible is 'three concealed Kongs of Dragons plus a pair of the players' own Wind.
The hand is called the "Imperial Mah Jong."
(and all must be concealed.)

The three adopted sons of the dragon nine (or one either) will score about half that many points and the snake of dragons will score about half that.

You play?

What? Now you're just incoherent. I have no idea what you're talking about with the graffiti.

As for the Sagan story, it's a parable. I can't help you if you don't get it, it's fairly thinly disguised (in fact he pretty much openly states what he's getting at near the end).