Crazy Monday Poll - A serious one

[BionicMike]

When poker meets theology, I like this thread. Nice job old man Swanky, but it has left me wondering, who is " The Other Forum"?

[Swanky]

The other forum is The Perfect Man cave it was a forum spawned by a majority of the members of the old Scott Keen Poker Table Building Forum after Scott went a bit nuts. I actually lived with him in Hawaii for a very small time and is a great bloke. Anyway PMC is a place where you can go to find out all sorts of cool things about building your Perfect Man Cave. Great before an after pics and great advice although mainly American content. If you sign up you also get access to the Off Topics section where it's pretty much like here. Blokes that like poker shooting the sh*t.
What ever you do though, if you join up, don't tell 'em old man Swanky sent you, because it would be like one of them coming here and saying I sent them, you would bar them for life!

[David]

Blatant advertising.
Banned.

[Swanky]

[Origami]

I thought this was relevant to the "Just because" statements. This was posted by a mate on the other forum.

I'm all for those who believe in a god. I want the freedom to believe what I want, and therefore that needs to extend to everyone.

However, if your belief in your god is to rationalize the existence of something (meaning: "I just don't see how such-and-such could be otherwise"), then that's not faith, that's intellectual laziness.

That argument has been used for millenia. For earthquakes and tidal waves and plagues and all kinds of events. Those people back then simply didn't know enough, but we have answers for all of that now. So how arrogant do you have to be to think that 1,000 years from now, humans will not have discovered a million things we haven't yet? And yet even then - we still won't know everything.

But it is the curse (or possibly ego) of humanity to think that in their lifetime mankind has finally reach that pinnacle of knowledge. That everything that is known at this point is all there is to know, and anything outside that realm can only be attributed to some divine power. Which is of course preposterous because that idea is continually being proven false.

So all of that unexplained stuff that even today's 'top notch' scientists are attributing to some divine source? Guess what? They don't know yet. That's it. That's the answer.

So the Earth was Flat ????

[Shannon]

I don't quite understand how you can be so sure that the universe had to be created, but God doesn't.

What if the universe is a god-like object, that didn't have to be created? It just ... is? And always was?

There was never a time that God did not exist, so God was never created.

All other things in the universe have a moment of creation.

Why does everything have to have a creation point, except God?
Why is it that the universe can't have just "always been" just as you say God has??

Why can't God just exist? There is no need for God to have been created. Why can't the entity (God) have always existed and been there? This is not unreasonable to believe that something just IS.

We are taught that things are created, live and die (for simplicity). That doesn't mean that that is what happens. I believe that we as humans don't understand much of anything at all, we are short visioned and can only learn from what we have been taught and build on those ideas.....science is based on what we know, can prove and can test/hypothesis, but we got there by someone else doing/learning/trying.

Why can animals sense an earthquake/tsunami/volcanic eruption and we cannot?

Why are there black holes and to where or what do they lead? (please no scientific reasoning, its a rhetorical question).

What is the purpose to life? (again rhetorical)

I am not as articulate as Adrian or Ben when it comes to this topic. But the post that I like most is the copied one from 'old man Swanky' that states for me to believe what I choose to, I need for everyone to have free will to believe what they choose (or something to that effect).

[David]

That's my point Shannon.

Why can't the universe "just be" - without being created.
It works both ways.

[Sinitster]

Why can animals sense an earthquake/tsunami/volcanic eruption and we cannot?

They must be smarter than humans , perhaps ......

[bennymacca]

the answer is, a small animal that has all 4 legs on the ground and weighs a few hundred grams, is going to pick up slight tremors waaaaay before humans will be able to detect them (without the help of seismographs of course)

its pretty simple really.


once again, if someone can't explain something via science, (either because the science hasn't been invented yet, or secondly, they dont understand the science) then people turn to god as a one stop shop answer all.

[Shannon]

yes, but the elephants in Indonesia knew of the Tsunami and ran inland well before people...

they are far from little