The Religion subforum.

huh?

 

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this hits the nail on the head as far as i am concerned.
a society without hope is as good as dead.

 

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What I feel honestly is this:

bearing in mind my IQ of 155 thus calling me stupid is....stupid

Those that study life forms at a cellular level and still conclude that it all happened by accident and not by design are..................STUPID

although that is not really fair so I immediately withdraw that comment,

they are not stupid........they are indoctrinated with the thoughts of their
forefathers.

They reject God because they associate God with religion and religious practices which they despise. They do so forgettting that religion itself is merely a 'fan club' of sorts, but that does not make Kylie Minogue any less real.

 

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superluminal, I don't think it's some kind of vain hope, believed in despite their true feelings.

The vast majority of people honestly do have a deep sense of mystery about existence, it's just how they express it that changes from culture to culture, person to person. Sure, people can believe bizarre, outrageous things. That's obvious, but it's not because they are stupid or they want to believe in these things because they can't bare thinking that what they sense is all there is, it's because they realize that there are limits to the knowledge and control that people can have. It's a gut instinct, born out of a need to cope with a hostile environment (both nature and other people) by finding some meaningful way to relate to it.

People ritualize their behaviors over significant events, like deaths, births, marriages, the hunt, the harvest, the foundation of a new construction project, before a battle, etc... and then those rituals have to be connected somehow, so myths are created in order to provide a context for this ritual behavior. In an academic sense, and this is where I think most atheists have missed the point, religion should be seen like this. The beliefs aren't meaningless, because they are rooted in a need to create a coherent, hidden, inner world that binds the ritual behavior that people engage in at events which are accompanied by intense emotional states. In a purely philosophical sense, this coherent, hidden, inner world cannot be proven or disproven, and it is quite frankly irrelevant because religion is meant to be used by the religious to give order and meaning to their lives. I never considered religion to be the search for ultimate truth, because most religious activity is undertaken not by the high minded and philosophical, but by ordinary folks.

You say, religion is dangerous. The beliefs that accompany religious people cause them to do things which are morally reprehensible. I say that is also irrelevant, in the sense of discussing the nature of religion. Morality is a separate issure, quite frankly, and any seriously academic theologian will tell you that morality is there because it is good for us. Why? Not really because God wants us to do this and not to do that, but because we need it for our survival. They credit it to some kind of supernatural force or entity, but that's just a way of making moral judgment coherent with myth. People do horrible things, not religion. None of you people seem to understand that. More often than not, religious reasons are only used to justify violence when people feel that their belief structure, and their very way of life, is somehow being threatened. When the foundation of all you believe in is under attack, you yourself are under attack.

The atheists here at sciforums feel the same way, because you consider the body of knowledge which has been accumulated by scientific inquiry to be the foundation of all you believe. Whether it is true is irrelevant. I believe that the findings of science represent a useful model for the universe, but many people have taken this and turned it into their own pseudo-religious belief system. When someone expresses something contrary to the the findings of scientific inquiry, you guys flip in the same way that theists do when you question their beliefs. The ultimate truth of either doesn't matter, because whether or not it is true does not necessarily justify a belief system's removal or continued existence. This is an attempt at assigning some kind of ultimate moral judgment on the world, and as someone who believes that there is no ultimate morality, only that which is necessary for our survival, I find this just as reprehensible as you would find the attempts at removing evolution from the High School curricula.

If it came down to voting over religiously based issues vs secular, pragmatic issues, I would be right alongside you and every atheist in here voting to ensure that the religious issues don't infringe upon my, or anybody else's, rights, privileges, or survival. But the point I am trying to make to you is that you shouldn't be debating the ultimate truth or falsity of religious beliefs, because they have always served a very pragmatic, positive (for the person who holds the belief) role in the lives of common people, and the only really reasonable arguments against religion (and not really against religion in general but only against specific beliefs) are pragmatic ones, and it's usually not that the belief is stupid and irrational, but merely that it's not suited to this particular point in time and this particular society, but that at one point in time it served a very useful function.

I don't remember where I was ultimately going with this, but I hope you haven't been arguing with me so much as to not comprehend what I am saying anymore because of an emotional reaction to my defense of theists around here. I really hope that you and everyone else here understands what I'm getting at, because I really think it is the key to progressing in some really meaningful way on this issue, on this message board. I'd love to see what you have to say about my beliefs on religion, but if you're not interested in my argument I could totally understand, because I also have the tendency to react with hostility and derision when someone says something that I think is totally contrary to reality.

 

Guess that 155 iq test of yours didn't test your understanding of evolution, did it?

That's an awfully large generalization, wouldn't you say?

 

interesting you do not question that Kylie Minogue is God? :bugeye:

 

I wouldn't call you stupid, Tor. Ignorant is a better word.

 

I wouldn't call you anything, I am unfamiliar with you. I am guessing it will remain that way.

 

Yes. It's not fair because no one who studies life forms at a cellular level concludes that it all happened by accident. That's just plain ignorant and lazy. Read a book.

This idea that life evolves by chance must be stopped.

1) Life evolves by natural selection, a completely deterministic process.

2) The environment provides opportunities that can be viewed as random.

3) The genome provides a palette of potential solutions to environmental challenges (called mutations, which are largely random).

4) However, natural selection is mercilessly deterministic in its weeding out of those mutations that do not compete well in a given environmental circumstance, and results in a species that - if it survives long enough - is finely tuned to it's niche.

 

Don't worry guys and gals. I fixed it ^^^^^^

 

explain the complexity of the human eye ball

 

Hope for a sky daddy? That's rediculous. There's always the hope for amazing things in our future as residents of the cosmos. Real hope for things wrought by humanity at its best. Not bedtime fantasies for children.

 

no you didn't you made some points about the ingredients that go into making a cheese flan, but you forgot that the cheese flan does not become a cheese flan without a chef to put those ingrdients together and in a VERY particular way and there's the preparation, the cooking time, temperature etc..or did the cheese flan just evolve? All these things just 'happened' over time to make this incredible tasty dish?

 

Ignorance of evolutionary theory must be bliss. Pleas don't base you ideas on evolution on a few posts at sciforums. Get a book. Or two. With lots of pages devoted to teaching you why the evolution of species is not random.

And if you are speaking about the origin of life itself, that's called abiogenesis - a completely different subject.

 

Get a book. I know you can read.

 

explain the complexity of the eye ball please and how by the process you describe in your list it came into being thus.

 

there is no adequate scientific answer to this question, as I am sure you are aware

meanwhile

"Darwin's book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (published in 1859), had presented an argument that modern organisms had evolved, over immense periods of time, from simpler ancestral forms, that species changed over time. Darwin himself declined to speculate on some implications of his theory - that at some point there may have existed an ur-organism with no prior ancestor and that such an organism may have come into existence, formed from non-living molecules."

If this can happen randomly why with all our intelligence can't we create life from non living molecules?

 

don't you find it odd that you even have to state this?
deosn't this say anything about what is taught in our schools?

 

Our schools teach that random events are capable of phenomenally more than we deliberate intelligent beings are.

meanwhile your comment is evidence of your indoctrination.

I think for myself.

 

Me neither. It's just not true, that's all.

A good solution to this paragraph is called science. What your pet theists are engaged in is fantasizing.

Fine. It's a ritualistic behavior for giving meaning to the mystery of the world around you. We have a new one that isn't based on hope, fear, or mental masturbation. Look it up: science.

You talk about your serious theologians a lot. They're really atheists aren't they? This paragraph still supports my assertion that religion is a human frailty in the face of the unknown. Run and hide. Plus, I'm not attacking religion, just pointing out how silly it is. We all know the truth of it.

Well, this is the same old pseudo mystical mumbo jumbo. No. A leaf is a leaf and that's all there is to it. And what does morality have to do with this? Morality is an evolved set of instincts. And who says science gets at the ultimate truth? This entire post is a strawman frought with misstatements.

Right. It's silly.

Progress? Why? Religion is a silly holdover from the childhood of our species and it has zero benefit that couldnt be filled far better by purely secular enlightenment. Creme filld donuts have good attributes too, but we could sure use some more substantial calories, don't you think?

And yes, this post was too long for me today.