When did that mean something productive?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

When you think about it though, there are really very few situations where nothing constuctive can be done.

Well I was thinking along the lines of terminal illness and old age etc.

If you're truly terminal you are more than likely confined to a bed hooked up to dozens of tubes. Its not a movie of the week where you act out all your last wishes.

Or does it rule out the validity of my position based on age?

Actually yes , it very much does , you are at that age when life has not yet thrown you the bodyblows it eventually will , you still think your indestructible and have no real tangible idea of your own vulnerabilites and mortality.
( Youth is wasted on the young ... no truer statement ever spoken ! )

That will come , and human nature being the way it is , you will take on board whatever delusions et all that give you peace of mind. ( a reason to live ...if you like ) .

Its all ahead of you really , it is very revealing to see on here the gleeful derision thrown at religions by the young , however the older generation keep this as a form of peace of mind , it allays a fear of Death , and no young person will ever appreciate this , Death is a very tangible daily thought for the older person , this daily fear has to be dealt with , and this more than anything else , is the basis of most religious beliefs. You will take on board whatever nonsense gives you peace of mind , something that has no value to you now , but will one day.

Andy, that has to be one of the most ridiculous posts I've ever seen.

I guarantee you, short of me going completely insane, or there being a world shattering event like the bonefide return of Jesus, I will never, ever have religious belief. I'm well aware that I'll die, I've lost friends and family members, and no matter how cool I think it'd be to not actually die, I can't believe it without proof. And there is none.

Now, I don't know what sort of ignorant little man you were at 22 years of age, but I assure you, I have a well developed world view.

Of course, your whole argument ignores the fact that there have been plenty of atheists who lived to old age and never jumped on the belief-trolley.

Believing you are necessarily wiser because you are older is a delusion.

andy1249 wrote:

That reactionary reply , as well as everything else in that post , is typical of what I would have said at 22 ....... !! Everyone else is stupid .... a classic 22 year old reply !!

No I didn't say everyone else is stupid. You're building a strawman. I think what you are saying is fairly stupid, lets leave the rest of the human race out of this.

And I said , " Whatever nonsense gives you peace of mind " , not necessarily religion , most people have delusions of some sort , whether you always think you have another 20 years no matter what age you are , or believing in Buddhism or forming some false truth in a nugget of quantum mechanics or just adopting a position of possibilites

I have a rigorously sceptical out look on life, the chances of me indulging in delusion of any sort is highly unlikely. Obviously we can't see the future, but evidence so far would suggest that I will never indulge in unfounded beliefs.

like admitting you dont know everything !!

I'm painfully aware of how little I know (compared to what can be known, not neccessarily in relation to what the average person knows), and I will instantly admit that, I regularily do. Hence why I don't jump to conclusions without enough evidence.

The nonsense will come .....everyone needs some kind of hope ....religious or otherwise

Believe me , you'll get there ....

Somewhat tellingly, I'm not going to accept that position considering the only support for it is your unfounded opinion.

How could you possibly know what any atheist has thought from birth to death ? Is the nonsense starting already ?

Because they wrote books, made talks and had their final moments documented. There have been many people that were strong atheists right until the last moment.

humbert wrote:

Believing you are necessarily wiser because you are older is a delusion.

Exactly. Wisdom is a factor of how much you have learned and experienced. Older people will often have learned and experienced much, but assuming they have is a fallacy, as is assuming that someone who is young has not learned and experienced much.

Let me make some things clear ,

Im not religious , I dont have a religious bone in my body ,

Second , I wouldnt call myself an atheist either because I dont really know what that is , never being interested enough in religion or the lack of it to find out , I do believe that death is the end , the end of this particular conciousness , And I also believe that most people know this , religious or not.

I believe that when your young , death is something that happens to someone else , and is not tangibly tied to yourself , and that this only comes with age.
By this I dont mean that you dont understand , I mean that its so far away from you that it doesnt strike home like it does when your older , this comes with age.

This position of mine comes from experience , I travel a lot with work , have met a lot of people , young and old , and like to talk , so , I am pretty sure in this conviction of mine. ( not that I talk about death all the time , but you get a feel for people , how they live , their hopes and fears.)

While Im not religious , its easy to see its value to people , and this is a view that in my experience young people dont see , ( when your young its easy to jump on someones mistakes ) , its easy to deride until you see what these people actually gain from it , and that is always a way to deal with some kind of fear , something to turn to when things look black .

That is where Im coming from , people will find refuge from their fears , whatever that might be.

I'll give you an example , some years ago I was working with this woman , who's husband worked as a binman ,( back in poor Ireland that was a good job ! ) Aids was big news then and when the discussion came up she told me about the vaccine for aids that was given to her husband !!

I jumped on this and asked her how could she believe such nonsense , she rabidly defended it , I backed down , because she was clearly upset , it turns out that she needed to believe this because her husband was at risk , collecting bin bags in inner city dublin had a big aids risk back then !!
This is an extreme case but it illustrates my point , people will take refuge in nonsense to get them through the day ,

Everyone has their fears , and to me people with religion have an acute fear of death , it gets them through , it gives them hope , and rather than deride it , and take away that hope , I leave them be.

At an age like 22 we are in the enviable postion of not having developed the worries and fears that come with age , when these come , you need some refuge , however small or however large that refuge happens to be , these fears and anxieties will come , and in most cases they will probably be irrational ,like whatever solutions you take refuge in , but if they work for you they have value .

Thats my point ..... young people have a certain youthful and deliberate attitude , you like to think you'll be this way forever , but life erodes that and you will , like it or not , develop vulnerabilities and fears , whatever they may be , and you will deal with these , everyone does it differently , but in almost all cases they will be irrational fears and irrational solutions , thats not to say you'll get up on a box and shout your solutions to the world ,in most cases they will be private , and they will get you through , but they will not necessarily be true.

Deriding these , like deriding religion etc. , is to not realise their value. And they do have a value , a very real one to the individual involved.

By far the biggest fear anyone has to deal with is Death , ask any young person the last time they thought about death and they may not be able to put an exact date on it , Ask any older person and they will always say today!! Try it , ask , its a fact !
And how people deal with this is not to be derided , nonsense or not !!

Blah blah blah blah.

andy1249 wrote:

At an age like 22 we are in the enviable postion of not having developed the worries and fears that come with age , when these come , you need some refuge

No I don't, stop making baseless assertions.

Thats my point ..... young people have a certain youthful and deliberate attitude , you like to think you'll be this way forever , but life erodes that and you will , like it or not , develop vulnerabilities and fears , whatever they may be , and you will deal with these , everyone does it differently , but in almost all cases they will be irrational fears and irrational solutions

Ah, so now its "almost all" cases. So we've backed down on asserting that I personally will indulge in false beliefs. Great. Now wasn't that easy?

andy1249 wrote:

Man you are as arrogant as any 22 year old Ive ever come across , .... its not all about you .... it never was ...... my points are all general ... and it only includes you as a young person in general .........

Thats some mighty fine back-paddling! Dig up, dig up!

I present Exhibit A:

andy1249 wrote:

Actually yes , it very much does , you are at that age when life has not yet thrown you the bodyblows it eventually will , you still think your indestructible and have no real tangible idea of your own vulnerabilites and mortality.
( Youth is wasted on the young ... no truer statement ever spoken ! )

That will come , and human nature being the way it is , you will take on board whatever delusions et all that give you peace of mind. ( a reason to live ...if you like ) .
[snip]
You will take on board whatever nonsense gives you peace of mind , something that has no value to you now , but will one day.

You might just be an atrocious communicator of course...

SimpleSam06 wrote:

When we can adequately explain how puddles of inanimate mud hopped up and started to leave footprints on the moon (and seriously don't bother posting links to the current theories, they are more like theology than science), we will be far closer to a more complete understanding of our spiritual nature, or lack thereof. What I would call reason for optimism is the fact that life indubitably tends upwards.

That is one of the most common reason for a belief in the supernatural, because those theories are created by man to explain what he doesn't understand they are simple and easy to accept whereas theories constrained by scientific evidence and investigation become very complicated and often unintuitive and therefore people have more difficulty seeing the truth in them.

Oh right! You meant people evolving and becoming astronauts and walking on the moon right? I thought you were implying life had started on the moon or something.

But yeah, like I said, evolution by natural selection perfectly describes (with vast amounts of evidence) how life has become so complex and is constantly scaling up. Its really quite a beautiful explanation, and it fits all available evidence.

The only thing we haven't resolved is the initial origin of life, but its really not as insurmountable as it seems. It possible that inorganic goop with a supply of energy could spontaneously create some sort of replicating molecule, and from there evolution seamlessly takes over.

And while it is very unlikely that such a molecule could appear, bear in mind that the Earth sat there doing nothing for billions of years, essentially waiting for this to happen just once.