Also: serious question here guys; why is scientology made fun of, but mormonism isn't? They're both as ridiculous as each other. Yet for some reason it seems to be the cool thing to mock people who believe in alien spirits, but when a religion is started by a con-man with equally ridiculous claims it's not?
EDIT: Thanks machomuu, for picking up on that error.
"Nobody is above the taking of the piss" and mormonism (ignoring Christian roots for a second) much like the others it is very fractured. Unless of course you mean in this thread in which case I am not sure- if needs be I am sure we can get a few people coming out firing with both barrels.
Re Atheism as a belief system (apologies for dragging this back up)- if indeed it is a belief structure can I have a word that describes someone having none as that seems like it would be pretty useful to have one.
Re qu'ran predicting scientific advancements (others remember it was compiled after Muhammad's death (arguably refined after that- some say reordered rather than something mirroring the bibles being written considerably after it all went down) and that was after a fair bit of conquest). This is an interesting line of logic alas my Arabic is very rusty (not to mention I focused more on Persian than the more useful dialects in this case) and as it is still in the original language unlike most bible related things (give or take it being an Abrahamic religion as well) so I shall have to bow out of pulling it apart on translation for now.
My chief concerns are that such things are like reading codes in books that might well have none (people finding substitution codes in Moby Dick being the usual example of choice), equally much of the ancient Greek body of scientific work (well known to have been kept and returned to Europe post dark ages and containing many ideas "ahead of their time" (although I might argue dark ages were something of a regression)) which predates Islam by a considerable amount would have been readily available not to mention improved upon by scholars of the time (of which there were many amazing ones around that time and place that ultimately laid the foundation of modern science) if not more so around the Hijra to say nothing of the fair bit contact with things more eastwards not to mention large tracts of science are predictive in nature or indeed a fairly good test of a theory/hypothesis- quantum mechanics and related disciplines do this a lot (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Gk_Ddhr0M and a lot of what people are looking to the LHC and the like to confirm or disprove), one of the early tests of evolution was that of the long tongued moth and orchids (got an orchids but the moth was not discovered for a while after that). Equally some of these might be subject to same thing that fells things like horoscopes- given a large enough sample and vague enough words/basic psychology you can net something and something is not necessarily prediction (thinking being- awesome you got something right but how could you fail to mention this though*).
*not necessarily calling it incorrect although it is not ideal but this is usually short circuited with "it was an example", to go back to Christian examples for a second the Lazarus and the rich man story.
QUOTE(Metalik @ Apr 9 2011, 09:13 PM) I'm Orthodox Christian
