Debriefing > Off-Topic Lounge
God and the universe...
Konrad Beerbaum:
--- Quote from: jjmusicnotes on August 23, 2009, 10:50:06 pm ---From a religious standpoint, if God is all powerful, then God created evolution, and since you guys believe in evolution, then you believe in a thing that was created by God.
--- End quote ---
Huh? If you don't believe in god, that is irrelevant.
--- Quote ---And although it has been said that you can't rationalize a belief, I am willing to bet that no one here has actually seen something evolve with their own eyes, and because of that, we cannot help but believe that the data reported to us is true. We cannot help but trust that the researchers who gathered the data know what they were doing.
The only reason any of us believes anything to be "true," is that evidence of the contrary occurred at a rate non-conducive to supporting different results.
--- End quote ---
Sure.
--- Quote ---To the athiest: What is so wrong about believing in something that promises to yield only positive reward?
--- End quote ---
It doesn't yield only positive results. For most people, living their daily life, who follow a religion, I have no problem with. My mom is pretty religious, and I have no problem with it.
There are really only 2 issues I have with religion.
1. In science, when something is unknown, Scientists try to find out what it is. They are constantly looking for answers, and theories are constantly being tested to see if they are true or not. If new information is discovered that contradicts a theory, the theory is thrown away and they try to find out the answer again.
With religion, when something is unknown, religion makes it up. If new information comes to light, religious doctrine rarely changes to reflect that new information. Not only does this result in incorrect information, but it stops people from looking for the real answers.
2. Religious intolerance and the refusal to be rational. Some religious people think they have all the answers act act negatively towards others because of this. One example would be in the other thread and Beatles intolerance of Islam. I saw that thread and just ignored it even though his beliefs didn't reflect mine, but Beatles had to post a long post bashing his religion. Other examples would be when people blindly follow religious doctrine and it negatively affects others.
--- Quote ---
I've heard arguments from athiests that say, "Well, what if I go about my life, live a happy life, help people, do good works, and am a decent person? Do I really need to believe in God to do those things?"
As I understand it, no, you don't. However, if you're an athiest, then you believe that after you die, you're just going to rot in the ground for another 10 billion years until the Sun implodes and then explodes.
So where's the motivation? If you think that the end result of your life is not contained within the measurement of those whom you help along the way, is not contained in what lies beyond the life of your flesh, then there's really nothing for you to look forward to is there?
Is it that you don't want to feel like you're "auditioning" for heaven? Is it that you don't want to feel like you're obligated to act or behave a certain way? Is it that you're afraid of feeling constrained, like you won't be able to live the life you want to live?
Or is it that you don't want to be one of those people "blindly" following God without any proof?
In the end, aren't your fears and worries all beliefs based on your perception of reality?
In my experience, all athiests ever do is try and poke holes in things that they're too afraid to talk about or explore.
You guys want to talk about rationalization. Ok.
How about we figure out the probability that our Earth, and everything on it, was created by chance?
Any takers?
It's easy. First you just need to figure out how much stuff is in our uniformly expanding universe (which, at it's present state is 13.7 billion light years in diamter.) Of course, assuming that we have just the one universe.
'Cuz I think quantum physics says otherwise. Oh yeah, that's a type of science.
Anyway, once you figure out how many things we have, you then need to figure out the most basic conditions that need to occur to support life.
Then you need to calculate the likelihood of the conditions for each "thing" in the universe to see whether or not life would be possible...
blah blah blah
and then you figure out how all those conditions just happened to appear in the Milkyway Galaxy, 93 million miles away from our sun.
--- End quote ---
How the earth was created doesn't really concern me too much. Science has some good theories, but nothing that is fact. Who cares. They are always looking for answers, and it really has no effect on my life, so it doesn't bother me.
Death doesn't bother me either. When I die, I'll rot in the ground, big whoop. Until then, I'll live my life the way I want to and the best I can. I don't need to pretend that there is some magical meaning to life in order to live happily. I think this is all I've got, so I'll live it the way I want to. I kinda feel people are cheating themselves by thinking they are going to get an afterlife, and not living the way they want to. But hey, its their decision, and I'm sure there are positive and negative effects to both sides.
--- Quote ---@ Konrad -
Whether or not you want to believe it, life is based on faith. Faith that someone loves you, faith that you're confident in the skills that you have, faith that you're family is going to be there for you when you need them. Faith that you're going to be able to have a job every day.
Even the numbers that we all hold so precious, the numbers that quantinize our "beliefs" into what we percieve as reality, are all based on faith.
The number 4 is only worth what it is because all your life, everyone has told you that, and you have never believed otherwise.
--- End quote ---
I never said faith was a bad thing, or that I didn't believe in things.
Look, it comes down to this. Deep down, I just don't believe there is a higher power, and I'm not going to pretend there is to make myself feel better. I live my life accordingly. I also have no problem with those who do, as long as they don't negatively affect others. There are a lot of good things about religion, and I'm not naive enough to believe that my moral code isn't somewhat based on principles that come from religion. But there are bad things that come from religion too, and I dislike those parts.
If you'll read my original post, I never said religion was bad. I said that beatles wasn't going to convince anyone of anything using religious arguments, and that trying to change people's minds about religion is pointless, especially in a forum.
jjmusicnotes:
Thanks for the reply to the post Konrad. I know that it was a long one, and I appreciate you taking the time to exerpt quotes from it.
Thank you also for clarfying your points. While I may not agree with some of your opinions, I respect them, and I thank you for respecting mine.
My only real intent was to prevent Beetles from being "ganged" up on.
Truth be told, I was athiest / agnostic for few years. It's funny how things turn around though.
Sporkfire:
haha I knew someone in highschool who would use any opportunity to say/talk about atheism or bash anything religious at moments notice. Then I saw him a year later wearing a crucifix and talking about church, I was like ???
WatchMyTrace:
There is only one true religion...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
kraid:
Religions were found just becourse of some reason:
1. ppl need answeres to not be afraid of the unknown
2. they need explainations for things they don't understand
3. they wanna have a meaning
4. they want to belive in something
5. they want to have solace when going through hard times
6. they don't like the idea, their existence might end with dead
etc.
It doesn't really matter what they belive, but everyone belives in something.
So far so good, now there comes the sad part.
Some ppl who are aware of this needs, have found religions.
They give you exactly what you need (see 1-6), but in most cases they do it for their own benifits.
They got might, influence and are shaping the world like they want it.
By formulating laws & rituals, they achive control over these ppl.
They determine the standarts of moral, they tell us what's right and what's wrong.
Partially this isn't a bad idea at all, otherwise we might still slaughter each other without any reason. That way we got at least a reason, even if it's foolish.
In fact there has been so much cruelty in the name of religion, since they were found, so many slaughtering, war, crime, abuse etc. and all of it in the name of god(s).
But what's the alternate?
If we didn't belive in something we might come to the conclusion that we're only deers, tiny creatures on a giant dirtball flying with enourmouse speed through the void. Deers that are to dumb to handle their intelligence the right way, instead of using it to harm each other.
An unhappy acident, a joke of the universe.
Do we really want to belive in this, when the other explainations sound much more plesent to us?
At the end it's on us to give our lives a meaning, a purpose. Everyone should find his/her answeres for him-/herself.
Ofc. it's much easier to rely on things which have been dictated by others, but finding your own answeres is much more satisfying.
Use the religions/sience/ your imagination on your own and you'll see it's not that hard as you might have thought before.
For the Bilble, it's an interresting book, but it was written and assembled by humans. Someone decided which writings will be included and which will not.
There's a lot of history in it, but also legends and myths.
The ppl at this time told the Stories of things that happened to others for centuries, they altered it added things to make it more interresting.
As for me, i belive the one Person refered as Jesus, was not one Man, it's more a collection of true stories which were altered to make them more interresting, combined with the need of a 'hero'.
As for God, i don't belive in a superior beeing which is described by many religions.
This is beeing caused by the need of ppl to have some kind of ueberfather figure.
------ I belive ---------
... it's the universe itself, which is searching for a meaning and does this by creating live.
... there's something remaining after we died, not really a messurable energy or a soul, coz what we describe that way, is just the reflection of a small pice of the whole thing.
And even our universe isn't the allmighty thing, it's just one out of a huge ammount, to big to be ever counted.
All these universes might be the smallest pices of another existing layer.
The whole live cycle of our universes, which i think are alternate realities, might be just a splitsecond out of the view of the next layer. A little flash to small to be ever found.
Our whole collection of alternate realities might be just one dustparticle in this Layer.
The universe we know, created by what we call the Big-Bang, is only one pulsating which will repeat itself over and over again, and always ends in a big crash which causes the next Bang.
Next time we might have the whole cycle of another of these alternate realities, but there surely will be one which exactly repeates the cycle we are running through now.
Anyway, we'll never find out the whole true, and if someone could, he/she would instantly go insane coz of the unbelivability of it.
Maybe it's also wrong to take it as a fact that there is the 'one and only' true.
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