Re: Religious talk...
 

Come on, guys. There is NO proof, not even the chance of it.

Talking about it won't make a bit of difference.

Re: Religious talk...
 

Re: Religious talk...
 

As a fellow christian, I'm a bit skeptical on the existence of some kind of proof... I've been through all the "proofs" and interesting as they are, they're just as unconvincing as the arguments against His existence.

I highly doubt there's some end-all-doubt proof.

The predictions sound interesting and only interesting. I haven't rendered any personal judgement on any prediction aspect.

Please do share here, though. I'm interested and while I'm not impossible to offend, I haven't met anyone able to do so yet.

Re: Religious talk...
 

Chris, I can think of one book, written before the bible, that predicts the future. Google the "I Ching"....now theres a good read.

Re: Religious talk...
 

Why are you guys talking about outdated buggy firmwares?

Re: Religious talk...
 

There are a few very interesting scientific experiments going on to explore whether there isn't rather more to the nature of consciousness and human existence than the mere material. Qole quoted one in the other thread about people praying for plants. They've done the same with heart patients. There are quiet corners of science exploring (and getting statiscally significant result for) telepathy, distant mental influence of living systems, even a rather nice experiment at Oxford looking at NDEs and trying to check them out.

None of which will 'prove God' - but they may (if taken seriously) go a long way towards suggesting that a purely materialistic view of existence and humanity is incomplete. They may even go some way towards supporting a view that human consciousness is not dependent on the body, and so could 'survive death',

My opinion is that in addition to the 'scientific' evidence, there's a huge amount of qualitative, anecdotal evidence: religions are culture's way of codifying that into something that makes sense. (And along the way, religions get badly used as a way of controlling, exploiting and abusing people sometimes - just like any good thing). In that sense, you 'pick' the one that most fits with your own experience. Unfortunately, as your experience is internal and non-communicable, that doesn't make it 'provable'. "I believe in God because I've met him" is a damned good reason for me, but pissing in the wind for you unless you have had the same experience.

One interesting statistic: religious belief and practice is very strongly correlated with better health, longer life-expectancy and higher contentment/satisfaction. In fact, if a chemical produced the same stats, it wouldn't be sold over the counter, it would be put in the water supply. ;)

Re: Religious talk...
 

I think the issue is that somebody claims that the buggy firmware actually contains support for new features, but they've been just commented out in the code. I'm looking forward to hearing how to supposedly compile it with support for rational thinking, but yeah, I agree, the code is just too old and should be dumped. Too many non-rational legacy features that nobody uses anymore. Even the remaining users seem to cherry-pick what they like and ignore the rest.

But anyway, go on Chris, this should be interesting.

Re: Religious talk...
 

So, have the plants answered? Or do they continue holding it back in terms of interspecies communication?

Re: Religious talk...
 

Praying for plants, not to them. ;)

You injust two sets of plants (I believe they soak seeds in saline solution). One set you pray for their recovery, the other you don't. If the prayed for group recover quicker then the control or grow better,you have a result. ;)

Re: Religious talk...
 

There's an article on this, in a book that's a bit older than Wikipedia (and one of my all-time favorites)...