Gilbert W asked:


This is really getting to be boring. I have almost forgotten the real issues in this campaign because of less important issues.

Do you think Americans will ever see beyond skin color and religion?

Biinje asked:


I think Science and religion can stregthen each other, for example, Evolution theory and creation theory can go hand in hand. While Christian accounts give the outline of how God created the world, science tells exactly how it was done.

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” – Albert Einstein.

asked:


This is a serious question, no mocking please.

I’m just interested in how veganism can relate to religion.
Toney, check out this website. I’m not trying to be on a moral high horse, I’d just like to make you think.
I think cows do suffer to produce milk (and therefore cheese and yogurt).

http://www.milkmyths.org.uk/

Also, I’d advise researching hen factory farms. I think you might find the way we farm hens for eggs is unethical.

Aleksandr asked:


Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This specifically refers to Congress. Why can’t the states ordain their own official religions, ban other religions, control what people can say or print, or ban assemblies? Or ban petitions?
Of the 14th amendment, which part? No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States?
Not a Christian fundamentalist or anything, by the way, just trying to understand how the law works… it specifically states the Congress may not do these things, not the States… if anything, there should be an amendment to correct this oversight

KRISstal asked:


I just want to know from the Battle of Hastings of 1066, how religion had to do with it.

tommmytee asked:


I have not read in the Bible where it says Jesus was politically correct. I do not believe he pussy-footed around town trying not to offend someone. He believed that his words were law and they were for the benefit of everyone. Yahoo has the roles mixed up.
NOTICE TO YAHOO. If you had been censoring Jesus your ass would be mud.

peterhutch asked:



The relationship between religion and science takes many forms as the two fields are both broad. They employ different methods and address sometimes different questions. The scientific method relies on an objective approach to measure, calculate, and describe the natural/physical/material universe. Religious methods are more subjective (or intersubjective in community), relying on varying notions of authority, ideas believed to have been revealed, intuition, belief in the supernatural, individual experience, or a combination of these to understand the universe.

Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.

Relation of science to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically, one is inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events – provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God’s eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.

The relation between these two great cultural forces has been tumultuous, many-faceted, and confusing. This entry will concentrate on the relation between science and the theistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam and theistic varieties of Hinduism and Buddhism, where theism is the belief that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing perfectly good immaterial person who has created the world, has created human beings ‘in his own image,’ and to whom we owe worship, obedience and allegiance. There are many important issues and questions in this neighborhood; this entry concentrates on just a few.

There have been many conferences recently discussing the relationship between science and religion. The Templeton Foundation, for example, has supported numerous conferences on this theme. Many of those participating in these discussions apparently assume that science and religion are compatible. They argue that there is no contradiction between them, and some even maintain that science confirms the basic principles of religious faith.

Daniel Jowssey asked:


What is religion? There are many definitions for the term “”religion”" in common usage. On this web site, we define it very broadly, in order to include the greatest number of belief systems: “”Religion is any specific system of belief about deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics, and a philosophy of life.”" Thus we include here all of the great monotheistic religions, Eastern religions; Neopagan religions; a wide range of other faith groups, spiritual paths, and ethical systems; and beliefs about the existence of God(s) and Goddess(es). We recognize that most people define “”religion”" in a much more exclusive manner.

Many philosophies hold that the world is an illusion. Yet you experience it as real. Which is correct, the idea or the experience?

The world is an illusion. This is a view held by Vedanta, Sikhism, Buddhism, Plato, Arthur Schopenhauer, Christian Science, and A Course In Miracles.

Contradicting this view is your own sense experience of realness, the constancy of stimulus, the enduring nature of time and events.

Which view is correct? The idea of the illusion or your experience of the realness?

This answer proposes an objective observer, one who is not part of the system that is being observed. Newton held that time is absolute. Einstein held that it is relative to the observer. Perhaps that same paradigm shift can be applied to answering the question of what is real and what is not.

Those who propose that the world is an illusion are correct.

Those who propose that the world is real are also correct.

The idea that the world is an illusion can be argued in the following way.

1. You do not see the world as it is.

You see the world as you are.

This happens in two ways:

One, you can never escape your subjectivity. You may claim that the world is objective, but this is a claim made from the subjective state. Hence, if you were to lose your mind, you would also lose the world. Without an observer, there is no world. With your disappearance, the universe disappears. Does it exist despite you? If you are not there to ask or hear the answer to the question, it has no meaning.

Two, the world that you see is a direct result of your experiences in it. A rock is not just a rock; it is also your memory of all rocks seen by you. When what you see is more complex and engaging, you experience more emotions, sensations, and ideas about it. Thus, you never really see anything as it is. You only see it through the lens of your own thoughts about it.

2. All forms will pass away.

Entropy is built into the system. Nothing can escape this iron law of nature. Neither beauty nor truth, wealth nor power, genius nor intent ever last. Death and decay is the lot of everything, from atoms to stars, from our own sun to the universe itself. However, this collapse is a dissipation of energy, not an absence of it. According to the law of conservation of energy, which has never been refuted, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. What dies, then, is the form of things, the structure the energy was supporting.

3. The microscopic.

On the level of atoms, a vast space exists between the electrons and the nucleus, and even the subatomic particles are not solid bits of matter but transient energy forms that appear and disappear and reappear again. It is mainly empty space.

4. The macroscopic.

On the level of the cosmos, a vast space exists between stars and moons and planets, gas clouds and nebulas and galaxies. The universe, too, is mainly empty space.

5. The field of all possibilities.

On the level of the consciousness that organizes all things, this world is only another possibility out of an infinite choice. How many worlds with sentient beings exist? Is our universe only an electron in a cosmic atom? Given a field of infinite choices, how much weight does one choice hold?

The idea that the world is real can be argued in the following way.

1. What you are experiencing is real to you.

When you think of the world as an illusion, a sense of despair arises because it slights the beauty of your realness. It is pleasurable to touch and hold, to see and hear, to act and change things. It is ennobling to see the vast sky above your head and feel the wind in your hair and hear the squawk of a passing bird. It means much for us to be here and to be alive in this moment.

Neither science nor philosophy can deny the realness of your experience.

And in this context, even your dreams are real enough, because while you are in them, your entire experience is authentic enough for you. If you are being chased by a lion in your dream, it will feel as real to you as if you were being chased by one in the waking state.

2. Who you are is important to you.

Your life is important. You desire to be more than you currently are because you can feel the vast throb of life within you expanding ever forward to know more, experience more, and touch a fullness not yet known.

Your past is not just useless memory but a scrapbook of struggle and change, triumph and adversity, risk and new learning. Your present is the vividness of your current experience. Your future is your promise, to yourself and to the world.

Reality, then, is not fixed. It is an interpretation of consciousness and how it is interpreted depends on the inner and outer experiences of the observer. The world you live in is real enough to you as you live it. If this world is an illusion, does it mean that there is a really real world, as Plato conjectured. Probably not. If this world is an illusion, then so, too, are all worlds. And if this world is real, so, too, are all worlds.

Appreciating the miracle of having a consciousness to live in a world may be all we need to know to live happy, fulfilling lives, whether in this world or in other worlds which we will transition into after this one.

Consciousness, like the law of conservation of energy, can neither be created nor destroyed. Where you find consciousness, you will also find energy structured into the form of a world. And since consciousness never dies but appears to only grow increasingly more refined and sophisticated, worlds, too, probably evolve along similar lines. Are these worlds illusory or real? They are real enough to those who live in them.

MAB asked:


I hear so much about the religion of the republican candidates but not the democratic candidates. Is Barak Obama muslim? What religion are they?

matt t asked:


I was raised catholic but never really bought the Jesus concept, but I want to. How do I go about it realistically?