[QUOTE=Pvt. Martin;44804712]That's why there are different kinds of Christianity.
Latter Day Saints, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, etc.
All stem from one simple book, and one Jesus.[/QUOTE]
Well, the difference between the Catholics and Orthodox has more to do with political issues rather than interpretations.
As a matter of fact, while Catholics are not allowed to go a protestant mass, they are on the other hand allowed to assist to Orthodox mass....go figure.
[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;44805122]absolute truth wasn't even my initial point, all i was saying is that what falubii was saying made no sense, because a story and its meaning don't necessarily take a 180 turn once they're interpreted as fables instead[/QUOTE]
Then what if the concept of god is just a metaphor? What if the whole book is a metaphor?
[QUOTE=Falubii;44808124]Then what if the concept of god is just a metaphor? What if the whole book is a metaphor?[/QUOTE]
Metaphors are only metaphors if they relate to something real.
[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;44805122]absolute truth wasn't even my initial point, all i was saying is that what falubii was saying made no sense, because a story and its meaning don't necessarily take a 180 turn once they're interpreted as fables instead[/QUOTE]
But absolute truth is religion's point. A religion is supposed to make a claim about the supernatural or the nature of our existence. And if a talking snake or flooding world is obviously fable, why should I believe a man duplicated fish and bread. Or that he rose from the dead? Or that he's the son of God, or that there even is one?
[QUOTE=sgman91;44808221]Metaphors are only metaphors if they relate to something real.[/QUOTE]
Sorry, I didn't mean what if the concept of god was a metaphor, I meant what if god was a metaphor. Indeed god is very real according to the Bible.
As a side note: Assuming earth is our case study I would be VERY surprised to find a space fairing race that happened to be completely atheistic for one simple reason: atheism and secularization destroys the birth rate to way under replacement levels. This simple fact is found consistently throughout the world. The less religious one is the less children they tend to have. One great example of how this makes creating a fully atheistic nation (or planet) essentially impossible is Turkey. They have an interesting mix of being both one of the most western and secular nations in the area while also having a growing group of people who are very religious (Islamic). Over time, because of the high birth rates of the religious and low birth rates of the secularists, the secular part will simply die off, leaving the country to the religious. The Mormons in the US are another great example.
[QUOTE=Killer900;44796007]
A highly religious spacefaring species isn't impossible, just very unlikely since space is more closely associated to science than it is religion.[/QUOTE]
Associated by who? Humans?
[QUOTE=BFG9000;44814328]Associated by who? Humans?[/QUOTE]
That's what im thinking, maybe alien religion works completely different to human religion, maybe alien religion promotes scientific discovery and exploration instead of encouraging you to take everything on faith?- if that was the case then maybe the more religious they would get the more scientifically inclined they would become.
However i will agree its very unlikely that any space-faring species would have religious views similar to those found on earth, it would be even harder to swallow an awful lot of stuff in the bible and the like if you met sentient alien life- for example, the stuff about being the special chosen ones created in the image of the gods.
[QUOTE=fulgrim;44815917]That's what im thinking, maybe alien religion works completely different to human religion, maybe alien religion promotes scientific discovery and exploration instead of encouraging you to take everything on faith?- if that was the case then maybe the more religious they would get the more scientifically inclined they would become.
However i will agree its very unlikely that any space-faring species would have religious views similar to those found on earth, it would be even harder to swallow an awful lot of stuff in the bible and the like if you met sentient alien life- for example, the stuff about being the special chosen ones created in the image of the gods.[/QUOTE]
The part that people are completely misunderstanding here:
If that were the case then it would be silly to even call it a religion. That is not what people mean when they speak of religion. Yes there's lots of scholarly ways to define religion, but there's always some amount of faith involved, which is fundamentally in conflict with the methodology of science.
[QUOTE=sgman91;44810228]As a side note: Assuming earth is our case study I would be VERY surprised to find a space fairing race that happened to be completely atheistic for one simple reason: atheism and secularization destroys the birth rate to way under replacement levels. This simple fact is found consistently throughout the world. The less religious one is the less children they tend to have. One great example of how this makes creating a fully atheistic nation (or planet) essentially impossible is Turkey. They have an interesting mix of being both one of the most western and secular nations in the area while also having a growing group of people who are very religious (Islamic). Over time, because of the high birth rates of the religious and low birth rates of the secularists, the secular part will simply die off, leaving the country to the religious. The Mormons in the US are another great example.[/QUOTE]
except we're dealing with a race that has most likely discovered immortality, cloning, and digital sentience. So the question of how much they bone each other becomes kind of moot, even assuming that's how their reproduction works.
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