Question for Athiests and church bashers

Ghost Buster · 14-09-2011 09:44AM

yutta wrote: »

Not everybody does, but when you're on your death bed you will.

Perhaps some major world religions could work this idea into an advertising campaign:
RELIGION
FOR WHEN YOURE DESPERATE, IN MENTAL ANGUISH AND AT YOUR MOST VUNERABLE.

marty1985 · 14-09-2011 03:43PM

My position on this is not one of a believer, because my argument undermines religion.

Edward O. Wilson:

The highest forms of religious practice are essentially a genetic adaptation and that religion is subject to the explanations of the natural sciences.

Evolutionary biologist Michael Blume points out, in his study on the reproductive benefits of religion, which I have linked, "In evolutionary terms, survival without reproduction is a dead end."

My argument is that religion is a evolutionary product of natural selection. Why are the reproductive benefits of religion so important?

Nicholas Wade, in his book on How Religion Evolved And Why It Endures:

Natural selection, a motive force of evolution, is about survival and who leaves more children. Many of the social aspects of religious behaviour offer advantages-such as a group's strong internal cohesion and high morale in warfare-that would lead to a society's members having more surviving children, and religion for such reasons would be favoured by natural selection. This is less true of the personal aspects of religion. Personal beliefs seem unlikely to enable them to have more surviving offspring, natural selection's only yardstick of success. Rather, the personal rewards of religion are significant because they draw people to practice it, without which the social benefits could not have been favored by natural selection.

Religious behaviour evolved in the hunter-gatherer societies, well before settlement. No manipulative priests. You don't think they were egalitarian:

Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, in his book Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society:

First, some empirical facts. Anthropologists don't agree on much, but they agree that modern hunter-gatherer societies around the world are remarkably egalitarian. The most impressive fact is that meat is usually scrupulously shared. The successful hunter and his immediate family get no more than the rest of the band. Hunter-gatherer egalitarianism extends beyond food to social relationships. The request "take me to your leader" would be met with incomprehension, or perhaps ridicule, by a hunter-gatherer. There are no leaders other than those who have earned the respect of their peers by being models of good conduct, and who can only advise and not dictate. Hunter-gatherers are egalitarian, not because they lack selfish impulses but because selfish impulses are effectively controlled by other members of the group. This form of guarded egalitarianism has been called "reverse dominance" by anthropologist Chris Boehm (1993, 1999). In hunter-gatherer groups, an individual who attempts to dominate others is likely to encounter the combined resistance of the rest of the group. Boehm's survey of hunter-gatherer societies includes many examples of reverse domination, ranging in intensity from gossip, to ridicule, to ostracism, to assassination.

Anthropologist William Irons:

The cohesiveness of religion is too little appreciated by skeptics who focus on religious texts and beliefs rather than on ritual. (The rituals in hunter gatherer societies were communal, with everyone on equal footing.)

The theory of religion as it applies to commitment emphasises the vital importance of religion to most human communities and the fundamental role religion plays in the lives of most human beings. The core of religion is not belief, but rather, for the most part, commitment to socially constructive behaviour."

You rejected the notion that religious people have more children. If you really think religion has no effect on reproductivity, you're lost at sea.

Higher-birth rates of religious affiliated have been empirically verified globally. (Inglehart and Norris, 2004, Birg 2004, Newman and Hugo 2006, Philipov and Berghammer 2007, Frejka and Westhoff 2008, Pew 2008). An argument of causality misses the point, and is clutching at straws. A Sunday Times article based on the work of Blume, Eric Kaufman and other researchers worded it thusly: For atheists it is the ultimate irony. Evolution, the process they believe is solely responsible for creating humanity, actually weeds out non-believers while favouring the religious, new research has shown. While I wouldn't word it so strongly, the fact is atheistic societies inevitably disappear. Falling below the replacement rate is a big disadvantage. In other words, religious societies enjoy a big advantage. The advantage is to the people.

While religion obviously has many advantages to religious societies, it's not that I think all surviving features of evolution must have advantages. It's just that it makes your argument all the more highly improbable. If religion is just information that was just passed on to gullible children, it's an argument that is a little stretched because non-sensical information is not of great help in the struggle for survival and seems unlikely to have been passed on for 2,000 generations in every known human society since the dispersal from Africa. The enormous costs religion imposes! The time it takes up, as evident from the rites of Australian Aborigines. If it had no benefit, what a severe disadvantage that would be in the fight for survival against tribes that were spending all day on military preparations. Be careful when using metaphors without any particular evidence.

Often, people are willing to stretch their unseeing credulity to extreme lengths to hang on to an idea, such as meme theory. Without any evidence, you use an unhelpful metaphor, a "meaningless metaphor" in the words of the great Stephen Jay Gould, that only makes sense when we realise it is an extension of your personal belief system. When there is no evidence, is it ok to make it up? "I haven't done the experiment, but I have a strong prediction of what the result will be." There is no observational evidence that demands the meme hypothesis. It's an irony in an argument for evidence based reasoning.

Michael Ruse, on meme theory:

One is really just taking regular language and putting it in fancy terms. No new insights. No new predictions. No astounding claims that turn out to be true. More importantly, one is not really using Darwinian evolutionary theory to do any work.

I am not suggesting that all atheists tow a specific line or believe the same thing.

Bruce Sheiman, An Atheist Defends Religion:

Thus, we are to believe that all the majesty and mystery of religion; all it's temples, wisdom, art, worship, ceremonies, and myths; all it's complexity and diversity-are just a fortuitous and extraneous side-product of something else more important to evolution - what, exactly, is not specified.

Evolutionary biologist Michael Blume, who specialises in the reproductive advantages of religiosity, not because it's the only part of evolutionary studies that matters, but because it matters so much:

Although a clear definition of meme was never achieved and a Journal of Memetics had to close down as no empirical studies could be published, the easy-to-grasp idea caught on and became the most widespread theory of religion in popular internet culture. Since the start of the concept, scholars pointed out that the very metaphor of competing cultural transmitters would lead logically to dual-inheritance models of biocultural evolution, with specific genes and memes bringing about succesful symbiosis. (Kirkpatrick 2010). After having accepted findings and studies concerning the reproductive benefits of religiosity, Susan Blackmore recently acknowledged the empirical failure of the virus metaphor (Blackmore 2010).

Elsewhere, he writes:

Most of us human beings tend to interweave their scientific and emotional worldviews as part of our self-concepts, clinging to them even against strong arguments. And this is especially true concerning the evolution of religiosity and religions, where a whole sub-culture of antitheism ignored Charles Darwin for the sake of popular metaphors as e.g. describing religions as "viruses of the mind".

But then, the fable came true, and it happened to me. As I finished my talk at the "Explaining Religion"-conference in Bristol, Susan Blackmore added some tough questions - and then admitted on the spot that the religion-virus-metaphor that she had advocated for years was wrong.

The gullible child conjecture, and the manipulative priest argument, is driven less by any particular evidence than by the implicit premise that religion is bad, and therefore must be nonadaptive.

You say religion is bad because nobody has ever shown you a single benefit of religion. A priori improbable as it is empirically false. I mention Dawkins because he's the only biologist I can safely assume you and most other atheists have read. Even then, he did not focus on the evolutionary origins of religion. I just mention that he accepts it must have had evolutionary advantages because I am aware he is revered among most atheists.

In studying religion, I would be misguided to only accept Dawkins view.

David Sloan Wilson:

When Dawkins’ The God Delusion was published I naturally assumed that he was basing his critique of religion on the scientific study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. I regret to report otherwise. He has not done any original work on the subject and he has not fairly represented the work of his colleagues.

Richard Dawkins:

"Because Darwinian natural selection abhors waste, any ubiquitous feature of a species - such as religion - must have conferred some advantage or it wouldn't have survived."

It is at this point we depart, where most atheists follow meme theory. I won't, as the theory has failed the test of academic scrutiny and professional peer review.

So, who benefits from religion? Google this, and you'll find the following from a website called Science Notes.

Being a priest is a wonderful way to get an income without actually having to produce anything. However sincere, he gets paid to utter magic words and make mystical signs and ask for miracles, just like the witch doctor of a village. And with as much reality behind him.

That's it. A typical atheist response, which most people on this website would thank a million times. On a website called Science Notes. Another example of how both ends of the spectrum, militant atheists and religious fundamentalists, both abuse science. Where exactly is the science?

Search again for an actual study entitled "Who benefits from religion?"

Daniel Mochon, Michael I. Norton, Dan Ariely:

Religious involvement has been shown to provide a wide range of beneﬁts at both the individual and societal level. At the societal level, higher religious involvement is related to increased levels of education (Gruber 2005), lower crime rates (Baier and Wright 2001; Johnson et al. 2000), increases in civic involvement (Putnam 2000; Ruiter and De Graaf 2006), higher levels of cooperation (Norenzayan and Shariff 2008; Shariff and Norenzayan 2007), lower divorce rates, higher marital satisfaction and better child adjustment (Mahoney et al. 2001; for a review, see Sherkat and Ellison 1999). At the individual level, many studies have shown that religion is linked to various measures of physical health, such as lower rates of coronary disease, emphysema and cirrhosis (Comstock and Partridge 1972), lower blood pressure (Larson et al. 1989), and longer life expectancy (George et al. 2002; Hummer et al. 1999; Idler and Kasl 1997; Koenig 1997; Larson et al. 1997; Litwin 2007; Plante and Sherman 2001; Seybold and Hill 2001) Researchers investigating a wide array of psychological disorders—such as depression—have generally found religious involvement to be related to better mental health as well (Hackney and Sanders 2003; Kendler et al. 2003; Larson et al. 1992; Smith et al. 2003).

Finally, there is ample evidence that religion is positively related to higher levels of subjective well-being. Myers (2000) reports data from a national sample showing that those who are most involved with their religion are almost twice as likely to report being ‘‘very happy’’ than those with the least involvement (see also Ferris 2002), while Ellison (1991) found that religious variables accounted for 5–7% of variance in life satisfaction (see also Witter et al. 1985). It is likely that a number of factors underlie the link between religiosity and well-being, from the social support and prosocial behaviors that religion encourages (Barkan and Greenwood 2003; Cohen 2002; Taylor and Chatters 1988), to the coherent framework that religion provides (Ellison et al. 1989; Pollner 1989), to the coping mechanisms that alleviate stress and assuage loss (McIntosh et al. 1993; Pargament 1997; Pargament et al. 1998; Strawbridge et al. 1998). One recent investigation traced the beneﬁts of religious involvement to the cumulative effect of the positive boosts in wellbeing that people receive each time they attend religious services (Mochon et al. 2008).

That's not to even mention the benefits anthropologists and evolutionary biologists agree religion must have conferred in the fight for survival. Which should I believe? The other typical atheist response is to scorn the other worldliness of religion as a form of mental weakness. How can anyone be so stupid to believe in all that hocus-pocus, the "magic words" and "mystical signs" pointed out by Science Notes, in the face of such contrary evidence?

Biologist David Sloan Wilson (an atheist) in his book on Religion, Evolution and the Nature of Society:

The stance can itself be criticized for misconstruing and cheapening a set of issues that deserves our most serious attention as scientists and intellectuals. Religious belief is intimately connected to reality by motivating behaviours that are adaptive in the real world - an awesome achievement when we appreciate the complexity that is required to become connected in this practical sense. Much religious belief does not represent a form of mental weakness but rather the healthy functioning of the biologically and culturally well-adapted human mind. Rationality is not the gold standard against which all other forms of thought are to be judged. Adaptation is the gold standard against which rationality must be judged. The well-adapted mind is ultimately an organ of survival and reproduction. It is the person who elevates factual truth above practical truth who must be accused of mental weakness from an evolutionary perspective.

While typical-atheist-writer mentioned already referred to magic beliefs and mystical signs, he would do well to remember that factual knowledge is not always sufficient by itself to motivate adaptive behaviour. At times, a symbolic belief system that departs from factual reality fares better.

You pointed out you researched my previous posting history as you like to know who you're talking to. In the interest of full disclosure then, you should have said that you work for Atheist Ireland, rather than saying you don't identify yourself as an atheist. Had I known, I would not have mistakenly thought we were having a dialogue rather than you correcting me on what I am to believe. You will know from my posting history that I have never gotten into a long debate before on this website. I do not want to be ridiculed and I don't want to make enemies with anyone here because I don't agree with the prevailing groupthink. I just presented the arguments I found most convincing in the interest of balance. But I thank you for the discussion nevertheless, and I'll leave it there.

hatrickpatrick · 14-09-2011 04:22PM

Downlinz wrote: »

If you believe the church is corrupt + power hungry and that god isn't real.

What does that say about your judgment on the intelligence of your parents, grandparents and other relatives who more than likely devoted so much of their lives to these causes? As a huge part of our society wouldn't it imply you believed they were gullible and naive people to live the way they did? Perhaps weak-willed to stand out from the crowd and question accepted truths?

(p.s. I am an athiest and pondering this question myself. Not looking to start some sort of shame parade or anything)

I believe in Jesus and God but not in the organization of the church, I think the organization is rotten and corrupt to its core.

And yes, I do indeed think pervious generations were quite crazy. I'm very glad I don't live in a society where I can do what I want in my own life without worrying about society "disapproving" of me. Previous generations were incredibly judgmental, prudish, and generally right wing (socially speaking) from my experience.

Live and let live I say. If you can't do that, IMO, you have issues. Some kind of superiority complex at the very least, to say that your way of life is better than someone else's when it's none of your damn business.

nozzferrahhtoo · 15-09-2011 07:30AM

marty1985 wrote: »

"In evolutionary terms, survival without reproduction is a dead end."

I will focus on one of your errors at a time from here on in for reasons I will explain at the end of the post.

I am not sure why you insist on defending a wrong point by ignoring your own point and instead defending points that no one is actually arguing against.

I am fully aware and entirely in agreement with comments like the one above and which essentially make up the entirety of your post. I have not once disagreed with them and your continued insistence on acting like I have is just a cop out from defending the points that you are wrong about.

I have not once disagreed with the idea that species need to reproduce. I have disagreed with your idea that a higher number of off spring equates to an advantage every time.

Here are your EXACT words:

marty1985 wrote: »

People in more successful groups left more surviving children, evolution's only yardstick for success.

The fact is this is NOT “evolutions only yardstick” and in fact sometimes having lower number of off spring is, in the right circumstances, “more successful”.

30 Seconds on the internet will find many famous evolutionary biologists contradicting your claim in the quote above such as Richard Dawkins in the updated Aniversary edition of “The Selfish Gene” where he says the yard sticks for success in evolution are “Longevity, Fidelity and Fecundity”. Your quote is essentially ignoring the first two and suggesting the last one is the only “yardstick”. In fact Dawkins has these in order of importance and Longevity is more important than Fecundity as Fecundity even if very low can still result in higher measures of Longevity.

Regardless of importance however it clearly flies in the face of your claim that fecundity is the "only yardstick" of success. It plainly and simply is not. No matter how often you want to say it is.

In fact simply put your error into theoretical practice and look around at the real world and see if it even makes sense to think that fecundity is the "only yardstick" of success. You will find it does not make sense even in theory. Take Humans for example. Why have we been naturally selected to evolve towards a situation where we do not produce 100, 20 or even 10 off spring per litter but in fact almost always 1 at a time? Why have we evolved towards a situation where while breast feeding hormones are released in a woman to help prevent her becoming pregnant. Why have we evolved towards a situation where child care reduced the level of testosterone in the human male.

None of these things make sense in light of the error that reproducing more and more often is the best “yardstick” of success. It however makes a LOT of sense in the light of correcting that error and realizing that reproducing less and taking better and longer care of the off spring increases the longevity measure that Dawkins talks about above.

So not only are you wrong and unsubstantiated in your claim that I quoted above, it simply does not even make sense when you follow it through. You insistence on holding on to your errors so preciously therefore just becomes comical. I can see why you want to though because you have noticed a correlation between religion and higher family size and so you desperately want to paint that as a good thing so you can claim... without even showing a causal link between the two.... that this automatically makes religion a "good" thing because higher family size is automatically a "good" thing... when in fact it is not.

So you were, and remain, wrong on this and your insistence on defending points no one actually disagreed with in order to avoid defending the one that is just plain wrong is highly telling. There simply is no quotes by any top evolutionary biologists you will find that will support your quote above because it is THAT wrong.

Drop this idea that reproducing more means having more success and you will stop being so wrong, so often. Until you are willing to let go of this error, and the other one which I have also address regarding the survivability of traits, your entire posts will remain permeated with these errors and be wrong too. So I choose in this reply and possibly further ones to solely focus on one of your errors at a time, to avoid your insistence on avoiding dealing with them by diluting them in long winded posts that avoid them all through sheer volume of text and behind comments about others peoples ignorance while wholly ignoring your own in the face of someone who simply knows more than you on the subject.

nozzferrahhtoo · 15-09-2011 07:40AM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Live and let live I say. If you can't do that, IMO, you have issues. Some kind of superiority complex at the very least, to say that your way of life is better than someone else's when it's none of your damn business.

Indeed but alas there are all too many theists who MAKE it our "damn business" by taking their god ideas into our halls of power, education and science and demanding that policy and law and curricula be based upon them. When they stop doing that, it will stop being our "damn business" and you will find most of us will leave you well alone and sites like Atheist Ireland will shut down or become defunct.

Lady Chuckles · 15-09-2011 08:45AM

Helix wrote: »

atheism tends to come with education

Controversial muck that is... :rolleyes:

KeithAFC · 16-09-2011 03:56AM

As someone from a Protestant family background (although we barely discuss it, I don’t know if anyone in the family believes in god because no one seems to care about the subject) I have always struggled with the concept of a deity who is all commanding and is watching over us all.

The one thing which makes it rather unbelievable on why I do doubt if a god exists is the fact that there is more stars in space than grains of sand on the beaches and yet so many people actually “personally” pray towards this deity as if they are 100% convinced he exists and he is listening to them when if you look at the size of space and the vastness of it, I find it rather amazing how that is even possible in a spiritual sense. Never mind the physical aspect of it.

Surely there are so many other planets in this vast amount of space, so big it would hurt the human brain trying to imagine it all, that it would be “spiritually” impossible? I might be using the logic of how we communicate in a sense here but I still struggle to see how it could be possible in any sense.

Even going with the Gods argument, lots of little gods in space, how do we know which one is a Christian, Muslim, Judaism and so on. Christians on this planet might praying to a Christian god and it could be on the other side of space, would that god know exactly what is happening on this planet and is watching over us all?

A religion has the belief of anti-contraception and how some would feel deep shame in using contraception because they would feel it is a sin and think god is watching them. But how would god be watching thousands of people on the planet doing the same thing, at the same time and this going on 24/7? Is it going to throw everyone into hell?

It doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me in that regard. I fail to see how it is possible and I know it might be coming from a materialistic point of view and it is sort of seeing is believing

The heaven and hell aspect has never really made much sense either. They say you will burn in hell for a thousand years. What do you do when that is finished? Go to heaven and tell Jesus you have learnt your lesson?

The idea of hell for a group of humans who aren’t and never will be perfect is rather farcical and completely defeats the whole point of Jesus and other “prophets” who talked about forgiveness and yet not everyone is going to believe in Jesus.

Why must everyone believe in one person who existed to avoid going to hell? Surely the only judgement will be from god? You must live your life following Muhammad or Jesus or one of the other “prophets” to get into heaven and yet I thought it was only god who made the final judgement?

Never have understood it and even if the spiritual (paranormal) aspect is interesting and can be fascinating, I don’t see the point of worrying about death. If it is anything like before 1989, I really couldn’t care less as I would not have a clue.

Perhaps the best thing for us would be to just die and that is it. A way of helping the earth move on and evolve, just like all the animals before us. We don’t need a belief in god if you think about it. What has it done? None of us had a clue about the word god before we were born, we simply didn’t exist. The more I look for the inner truth, I feel that is just what is going to happen when we die and for me, as sad as it may be to some, is perhaps the best way of living because if you are somehow wrong and we do go to a different dimension, then great, let me past the pearl gates.

And if you don’t get in because you weren’t a believer, then just put me back to eternal sleep or something because I don’t see why god would create such a flawed animal and not accept all of them into heaven when he created us all.

He is either a rather shyte designer or likes playing games with us. Either way, I would probably prefer an eternal sleep and I have no problem with that. But I would not be “sorry” if a different dimension did exist. Just hope we don’t need shyte rules when we pass those gates.

KeithAFC · 16-09-2011 08:15PM

I believe that God created the universe and gave us the gifts of science to do good (i.e. cancer treatment research) and not evil (nuclear bombs, guided missiles). Science is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Why do you think that?

Caulego · 16-09-2011 09:10PM

KeithAFC wrote: »

As someone from a Protestant family background (although we barely discuss it, I don’t know if anyone in the family believes in god because no one seems to care about the subject) I have always struggled with the concept of a deity who is all commanding and is watching over us all.

The one thing which makes it rather unbelievable on why I do doubt if a god exists is the fact that there is more stars in space than grains of sand on the beaches and yet so many people actually “personally” pray towards this deity as if they are 100% convinced he exists and he is listening to them when if you look at the size of space and the vastness of it, I find it rather amazing how that is even possible in a spiritual sense. Never mind the physical aspect of it.

Surely there are so many other planets in this vast amount of space, so big it would hurt the human brain trying to imagine it all, that it would be “spiritually” impossible? I might be using the logic of how we communicate in a sense here but I still struggle to see how it could be possible in any sense.

Even going with the Gods argument, lots of little gods in space, how do we know which one is a Christian, Muslim, Judaism and so on. Christians on this planet might praying to a Christian god and it could be on the other side of space, would that god know exactly what is happening on this planet and is watching over us all?

A religion has the belief of anti-contraception and how some would feel deep shame in using contraception because they would feel it is a sin and think god is watching them. But how would god be watching thousands of people on the planet doing the same thing, at the same time and this going on 24/7? Is it going to throw everyone into hell?

It doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me in that regard. I fail to see how it is possible and I know it might be coming from a materialistic point of view and it is sort of seeing is believing

The heaven and hell aspect has never really made much sense either. They say you will burn in hell for a thousand years. What do you do when that is finished? Go to heaven and tell Jesus you have learnt your lesson?

The idea of hell for a group of humans who aren’t and never will be perfect is rather farcical and completely defeats the whole point of Jesus and other “prophets” who talked about forgiveness and yet not everyone is going to believe in Jesus.

Why must everyone believe in one person who existed to avoid going to hell? Surely the only judgement will be from god? You must live your life following Muhammad or Jesus or one of the other “prophets” to get into heaven and yet I thought it was only god who made the final judgement?

Never have understood it and even if the spiritual (paranormal) aspect is interesting and can be fascinating, I don’t see the point of worrying about death. If it is anything like before 1989, I really couldn’t care less as I would not have a clue.

Perhaps the best thing for us would be to just die and that is it. A way of helping the earth move on and evolve, just like all the animals before us. We don’t need a belief in god if you think about it. What has it done? None of us had a clue about the word god before we were born, we simply didn’t exist. The more I look for the inner truth, I feel that is just what is going to happen when we die and for me, as sad as it may be to some, is perhaps the best way of living because if you are somehow wrong and we do go to a different dimension, then great, let me past the pearl gates.

And if you don’t get in because you weren’t a believer, then just put me back to eternal sleep or something because I don’t see why god would create such a flawed animal and not accept all of them into heaven when he created us all.

He is either a rather shyte designer or likes playing games with us. Either way, I would probably prefer an eternal sleep and I have no problem with that. But I would not be “sorry” if a different dimension did exist. Just hope we don’t need shyte rules when we pass those gates.

Well written and thought post Keith. I think you've worked it out that it's all a load of make-believe, and that whatever does exist can be found out by using reason and diligent study, as all else is time wasting and delusion.
If something is real then there is no need to close your mind to it to see it, as that's psychological blindness, which is a choice. If you want to see what is real, even if at first you don't fully understand it, walk on the path of life a little, take stock of what you already know to that point in time, and be aware that you don't know yet what you need to know in order to know better. You can't 'believe in better', as is pumped at you on TV and the propaganda that machines of Church and State dogma, as the only way to be better and know better is to be better informed by fact, and not bump-in-the-night godmongering that deliberately plays on people's most primitive base fears and imagination.

KeithAFC · 17-09-2011 08:16AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVsHjnY-o9s

One of the huge questions which have puzzled every mind to have ever existed.

Laisurg · 17-09-2011 08:33AM

I'm not sure if my grandparents were atheists or not but i do know that they were likely to be stoned to death if they said they were but i wouldn't think any less of them either way, not everyone who's religious is an idiot you know! Many of them had it forced upon them at a very young age.

AudreyHepburn · 17-09-2011 01:39PM

Personally I think anyone who judges another persons intelligence on their faith or lack of wants to be taking a serious look at themselves.

Threads like this make me despise athiesm. They also make me laugh a little because the same people going on about naive and intolerant and stuck up the religious are, are themselves intolerant, stuck up and naive. They just can't or won't see it.

There are smart theists and athiests and thick athiests and theists, thats life.

I think the Jewish Albert Einstein might disagree with the sentiments on religion and intelligence being expressed in this thread.

miss no stars · 17-09-2011 01:59PM

Downlinz wrote: »

What does that say about your judgment on the intelligence of your parents, grandparents and other relatives who more than likely devoted so much of their lives to these causes? As a huge part of our society wouldn't it imply you believed they were gullible and naive people to live the way they did? Perhaps weak-willed to stand out from the crowd and question accepted truths?

I think the churches of this land have done a lot of harm to innocent people over the years. How is that a reflection on what I think of my relatives?

Why would I think less of them for being victim to the psychological abuse and bullying of a worldwide organisation? So what if they went to mass on a Sunday?? Jeez, an easy life is better than social ostracisation.

I do not think that my parents and grandparents show any lack of intelligence through faith. I do not think that faith in a deity is any indicator of intelligence. I also find that the more I know about the world, the less I find the teachings of religion to be compatible with it. But that's just my view.

What does it say about my judgement? It says I believe in live and let live. Lest we forget, the society we live in today was not forged by the younger generations of the present day, it was shaped and moulded by those who went before us. We just happen to be living in it and shaping our society and its expectations for future generations. That people are no longer living under the terror of the church is a testament to my parents' and grandparents' generations. Not to mine, thank you very much.

mascaput · 17-09-2011 02:47PM

AudreyHepburn wrote: »

Personally I think anyone who judges another persons intelligence on their faith or lack of wants to be taking a serious look at themselves.

Threads like this make me despise athiesm. They also make me laugh a little because the same people going on about naive and intolerant and stuck up the religious are, are themselves intolerant, stuck up and naive. They just can't or won't see it.

There are smart theists and athiests and thick athiests and theists, thats life.

I think the Jewish Albert Einstein might disagree with the sentiments on religion and intelligence being expressed in this thread.

It's not people's 'religion' as a specific attitude that makes their thinking questionable, as their thinking is greatly influenced by how they rationalise their choices. What all ideologies, 'religious' or otherwise, that are based on 'faith' without the clear explanation of what exactly that trust (faith) is based on, is what is at issue, as that is what their belief structures are founded on, be it Nazism, Stalinism, Roman Catholicism, or any other -ism (meaning a distinctive doctrine, theory, system, or practice). The factor that is common to all of these is belief, and a belief is the mental acceptance as fact that which is not capable of being verifiable, but yet creating the mental impression of being true and real. Religions, as a system of devotion to belief, wilfully promote the following of beliefs, regardless of the lack of evidence for their ideas, thus lending their approval to the ignoring of fact. This attitude colours the thinking of the populace, like any other propaganda system, and the rest is history. To act on what you do not know, and to accept that you can apply such thinking to any endeavour in life and hope to justifiably profit from it, is delusional, as all actions results from causes, and in the case of the human condition, from the use or abuse of the minds. Think crap, produce crap. Use fact, not fiction, and you increase the possibility of outcomes that will have a positive effect and do least harm, which is what life should be about. Do you think this is 'atheistic' or 'religious', and can you tell me why you think so?

As regards Einstein, he was Jewish by societal tradition, but not in the religious sense, though there seems to be a faulted popular bias towards believing that he was, but I'll leave it up to himself to say how he evolved his thinking as he clearly stated on becoming a freethinker:

"When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being.
As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came - though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents - to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve.
Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression.
Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment — an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causalconnections...." Link

The final paragraph of this account is probably familiar to anyone who grew up in this country and later took the time to actively and enthusiastically look for actual purpose behind the veil of cultural rules and dogmas that pervade much of our thinking, as all effects can be traced back to their root if you look hard enough:

"The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.

Basically, Einstein was saying that there are two ways to walk the Path of Life. One is to travel forwards, and the other backwards. To choose to go backwards, or to even stay in the same spot while time moves on, is to retreat from using the faculties, talents and knowledge that took millions of years to accumulate at this point in time, so that we too could choose to advance and improve our individual and collective understanding, and therefore to improve, which is what life is supposed to be about. Or maybe you don't agree? Religions, and other systems of belief, promote rote obedience under the guise of being 'spiritual' by way of following some ideology, but spirit, being real, has nothing to do with non-fact (belief), so how can it hope to find anything useful to understand of better?

miss no stars · 17-09-2011 03:08PM

mascaput wrote: »

However, what I can't quite figure out, and no one can seem to clearly explain to me, is why, if the 'Church' was the agency that taught them to accept the ideas surrounding 'God' and 'Jesus' etc, they accept that these things could possibly be real, valid and factual if they accept that they were preached by the very same perverted body of men and a few women?

I know some very, very intelligent people who believe in God, and heaven and all that stuff. By their own admission, they can't deal with the idea that when we die there's nothing more. So they believe in a God and an afterlife and eternity and all that comes with religion, because they find that they can't not believe in it. If their belief is what's allowing them to function normally and to be good people, then to them clearly God IS real - that is a REAL effect. I don't believe in God and have no problems with the idea that once we're dead that's it forever more. If I'm wrong, happy days, if they're wrong, they wont know any different but for now it's doing them good. If something is having a real and positive influence then in some sense of the word, that something is real. Didn't take the catholic church to make it so.

mascaput · 17-09-2011 04:26PM

miss no stars wrote: »

I know some very, very intelligent people who believe in God, and heaven and all that stuff. By their own admission, they can't deal with the idea that when we die there's nothing more. So they believe in a God and an afterlife and eternity and all that comes with religion, because they find that they can't not believe in it. If their belief is what's allowing them to function normally and to be good people, then to them clearly God IS real - that is a REAL effect. I don't believe in God and have no problems with the idea that once we're dead that's it forever more. If I'm wrong, happy days, if they're wrong, they wont know any different but for now it's doing them good. If something is having a real and positive influence then in some sense of the word, that something is real. Didn't take the catholic church to make it so.

Those are some very good points Miss no Stars. I wonder why do you think that they can't work out that if they know that they existed as something at all points of their existence up to this point, that they won't continue on as something, be it different in form or combination, into the future? Life, as a force, and not an entity-being, shows us that things break down into constituent elements, only to be recombined within the overall universe or world. This is obvious to anyone who watches and wishes to learn, so there is no need for any entity or being to be sitting there presiding over it all, as 'God' is a 'being' by image and mental concept. That concept can and is mainly generated and enhanced by religions to create fears of whatever is real and could be found if we took the time to look, and they only look at what they want to promote in the name of power. So to my way of thinking, though perhaps I am not fully correct on this, it does harm because it is a waste of life to pursue such blind thinking. It's like driving around in circles while the fuel tank of life runs dry.

Also, if energy cannot be either created or destroyed, but changed into different form, and we change every second of every minute of every day as we go through life, then why would it stop at the point of the winding down of the body? The life energy that is in us all and in all that lives, must have existed before we became self aware of our identity as 'beings', and the only way for that force to make a positive contribution to the greater fact of life, though being born and active, is to learn about it and build on it. Why pay for people who produce fanciful stories about its purpose, which is obviously about improvement, as life is about expansion and evolution of improvement? Why pay for something to be imprisoned by, when you have the keys to set yourself free in the first place?
If people do consciously know that they are just making up or accepting stories to feel better, rather than knowing better, which seems to be quite a lot of it, then how can such delusion be restricted to one part of the mind, as all parts or elements of the mind interplay in a process, therefore influencing all judgements?
I know only too well that all humans, myself included, are prone to manipulation by fear, by way of our animal nature, but surely if we don't override those irrational barriers, as further enhanced by rote systems of belief, then we are ignoring whatever could be known that would remove the fears in the first place? If so, is that not ignorance, the wilful ignoring of something, which to my view at least, cannot be a positive move or serve any good purpose?

M

miss no stars · 17-09-2011 05:15PM

mascaput wrote: »

Those are some very good points Miss no Stars. I wonder why do you think that they can't work out that if they know that they existed as something at all points of their existence up to this point, that they won't continue on as something, be it different in form or combination, into the future?

Entropy is increasing. They know that as well as I do

mascaput wrote: »

Life, as a force, and not an entity-being, shows us that things break down into constituent elements, only to be recombined within the overall universe or world.

And all the time losing energy. (You should read up on the heat death of the universe)

mascaput wrote: »

This is obvious to anyone who watches and wishes to learn, so there is no need for any entity or being to be sitting there presiding over it all, as 'God' is a 'being' by image and mental concept. That concept can and is mainly generated and enhanced by religions to create fears of whatever is real and could be found if we took the time to look, and they only look at what they want to promote in the name of power. So to my way of thinking, though perhaps I am not fully correct on this, it does harm because it is a waste of life to pursue such blind thinking. It's like driving around in circles while the fuel tank of life runs dry.

I'm going to have to disagree. They may not become leading theoretical or particle physicists (then again they might), but that doesn't mean they're wasting their lives. Or that they have to be atheits if they should decide to go into particle physics! I don't know how you can justify accusing anyone of wasting their lives simply because they're religious or simply not athiest? Quite a sad statement, unless I've misinterpreted you? Also, did I define their belief in God to be a belief in a single entity watching every single being, all the time? The only time I've really thought that faith in a deity was akin to your person driving around in circles was the case of that genius child in the states trying to disprove Einstein. Now that, is a waste of talent

Could be much better used in further developing our knowledge than in trying to prove the existence of God through physics. But then again, maybe he'll stumble upon something? Maybe he'll make a discovery during his research or develop a tool during his research. We don't know, so how is his life being wasted really?

mascaput wrote: »

Also, if energy cannot be either created or destroyed, but changed into different form, and we change every second of every minute of every day as we go through life, then why would it stop at the point of the winding down of the body? The life energy that is in us all and in all that lives, must have existed before we became self aware of our identity as 'beings', and the only way for that force to make a positive contribution to the greater fact of life, though being born and active, is to learn about it and build on it.

Again, entropy is increasing. The heat death of the universe will occur.

mascaput wrote: »

Why pay for people who produce fanciful stories about its purpose, which is obviously about improvement, as life is about expansion and evolution of improvement?

In your opinion

mascaput wrote: »

Why pay for something to be imprisoned by, when you have the keys to set yourself free in the first place?
If people do consciously know that they are just making up or accepting stories to feel better, rather than knowing better, which seems to be quite a lot of it, then how can such delusion be restricted to one part of the mind, as all parts or elements of the mind interplay in a process, therefore influencing all judgements?

Delusion? Wouldn't call it so much. But as a quick aside, who gets harmed by santa? Because kids think santa is watching them, they actually behave in the run up to christmas as they know he's makin' his list! Surely a good thing for the parents

So yeah, it influences their decision making in all areas, but it does so in a positive way. I firmly believe that religion can be good for the soul, in a chicken soup for the soul kinda way. The elderly go out to mass and get to see their neighbours - it's a community thing. People belong to something. The need for belonging is intrinsic to humans. As for religion/faith affecting judgement, I'm undecided on that one/if it does whether its a bad thing or not. As an example why, I know for instance that I have a shocking tendancy to mix up numbers and mathematical symbols, to write them down in the wrong sequence and to just misread them in general, words to a lesser degree. I'm also aware that I do that, so I do my best to check that I"m not doing it when I'm working. I would like to think that if I was say, RC, and talking to a Muslim/Atheist/Buddhist/CoI/Jew, I would be aware of my own bias and account for it. Much like I don't assume that my answer/solution is correct, just because I didn't read 5 intead of 2 by mistake, I wouldn't like to assume that my actions and decisions would be correct just because they're correct according to the docterine of whatever faith I theoretically subscribed to. If you get what I'm saying.

mascaput wrote: »

I know only too well that all humans, myself included, are prone to manipulation by fear, by way of our animal nature, but surely if we don't override those irrational barriers, as further enhanced by rote systems of belief, then we are ignoring whatever could be known that would remove the fears in the first place? If so, is that not ignorance, the wilful ignoring of something, which to my view at least, cannot be a positive move or serve any good purpose?

M

It takes all colours and creeds to make up the world we live in. Each one of us ascribes to beliefs that allow those fears to be placated and for us to carry on with the rest of our lives the best way we know how. It is not on any one of us to judge another for how they cope with what they fear most. Fear is a natural part of our makeup - it allows the species to survive. Let's not do away with one of our strongest survival instincts just yet

I'm afraid of heights. Petrified. Like, totally irrationally can't deal with heights. On the boat I sail, I sometimes go up the mast to lubricate the pulleys and check the instruments etc. While I'm being hoisted, i don't look down. I pretend I'm not at height. I willfully ignore the fact that I'm being hoisted more than 2 meters in the air. I do the maintenance and come back down. The sails are then a little easier to hoist. But by your standards, the fact that I've ignored the fact that I'm high up has only done bad (because I'm pretending I'm not high up?) despite the fact that life is easier and the boat is better maintained? But again, I could have misunderstood what you were trying to convey.

Mickeroo · 17-09-2011 06:48PM

AudreyHepburn wrote: »

I think the Jewish Albert Einstein might disagree with the sentiments on religion and intelligence being expressed in this thread.

"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one."

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

- Albert Einstein

He wasn't a devout Jew in terms of his beliefs at all, wouldn't say he was an out and out atheist either though, funnily enough he really really hated it when atheists would quote him to back up their views :pac:

miss no stars wrote: »

I know some very, very intelligent people who believe in God, and heaven and all that stuff. By their own admission, they can't deal with the idea that when we die there's nothing more. So they believe in a God and an afterlife and eternity and all that comes with religion, because they find that they can't not believe in it. If their belief is what's allowing them to function normally and to be good people, then to them clearly God IS real - that is a REAL effect.

The effect of any delusion is real *shrug*

mascaput · 17-09-2011 10:21PM

miss no stars wrote: »

Entropy is increasing. They know that as well as I do
And all the time losing energy. (You should read up on the heat death of the universe)

In fact I'm well aware of the principles of entropy, but as energy can't cease to exist, and as it has to come from somewhere and go somewhere, or be originated at some point, then neither is it 'lost'. Either way, as we know that we don't actually know the full extent of the Universe (or how many universes exist), then the quantification of entropy on that scale is as yet academic, so we are not going to fizzle out in the near future.

miss no stars wrote: »

I'm going to have to disagree. They may not become leading theoretical or particle physicists (then again they might), but that doesn't mean they're wasting their lives. Or that they have to be atheits if they should decide to go into particle physics! I don't know how you can justify accusing anyone of wasting their lives simply because they're religious or simply not athiest? Quite a sad statement, unless I've misinterpreted you?

I'm actually not accusing anyone, just questioning. I just don't see why religions say that they are in pursuit of truth, as truth is objective understanding, while believing is supposition at best and pure fantasy at worst, as wars of belief show us. Only reason and knowledge prevents us from killing each other to get stuff, and lack of these qualities permits excuses for doing so.

I an neither an 'atheist' or a deist, as I just consider that I either know something or I know that I don't know something, so that either way I need to be aware of being sure or not being sure, if you know what I mean .

miss no stars wrote: »

Also, did I define their belief in God to be a belief in a single entity watching every single being, all the time?

No, you didn't but you also didn't say anything to give the impression that you were not referring to the One-God idea of Judaism, or if you meant the Trinty God of Christianity, or Baal or Moloch or Ganesh, so I took what you wrote as being the popular idea of 'God', an entity who is 'everywhere', so if it/he is everywhere it must be aware. Christians and other monotheists refer to their deity as being 'omnipotent' and 'eternal' and 'ever present' so he/it can't be subject to enthropy or it could not be 'eternal'.

miss no stars wrote: »

The only time I've really thought that faith in a deity was akin to your person driving around in circles was the case of that genius child in the states trying to disprove Einstein. Now that, is a waste of talent Could be much better used in further developing our knowledge than in trying to prove the existence of God through physics. But then again, maybe he'll stumble upon something? Maybe he'll make a discovery during his research or develop a tool during his research. We don't know, so how is his life being wasted really?

To be frank (and no, that's not my name) I really have no idea as to what he will or might do, as I don't know him or what he is about. At the same time he won't find anything unless he goes and examines the evidence, or lack of it, and gives some solid basis for his findings. If he did find 'God' sitting on a methane rainbow on the twenty-second moon of the sixteenth planet from the left hand side of Betelgeuse (as seen from the blue rock moon of the fifth planet of Rigel), then he would upset a lot of religious people...as their idea of 'God' would evaporate and they would most likely want to punish him for being so arrogant

.

miss no stars wrote: »

Again, entropy is increasing. The heat death of the universe will occur.

So I wonder, will 'God' also be subject his/her/its own laws, and just 'fade away'? Maybe that's why we can't see it? Maybe it disappeared...

miss no stars wrote: »

Delusion? Wouldn't call it so much. But as a quick aside, who gets harmed by santa? Because kids think santa is watching them, they actually behave in the run up to christmas as they know he's makin' his list! Surely a good thing for the parents So yeah, it influences their decision making in all areas, but it does so in a positive way.

So why not tell them the simple truth that if they are good during the year that they will get a present, a surprise gift? Would that not teach them to know what is truthful, and encourage them to not expect 'rewards' from a religious man (St. Nick) who enters your house or bedroom at night? I suppose that there must be HSE guidelines on this :rolleyes:.

miss no stars wrote: »

I firmly believe that religion can be good for the soul, in a chicken soup for the soul kinda way. The elderly go out to mass and get to see their neighbours - it's a community thing. People belong to something. The need for belonging is intrinsic to humans.

People were probably grouping together at the divisions of the seasons for tens of millennia before the idea of 'God' was introduced. At least they worked on factual and natural markers of time, not like the innacurate dates used today. It served a practical purpose, many of which were syncretised into religious rituals, thus losing their original meaning. I completely agree with you that people need to belong, not just want, but why not base it on reality rather than belief?

miss no stars wrote: »

As for religion/faith affecting judgement, I'm undecided on that one/if it does whether its a bad thing or not. As an example why, I know for instance that I have a shocking tendancy to mix up numbers and mathematical symbols, to write them down in the wrong sequence and to just misread them in general, words to a lesser degree. I'm also aware that I do that, so I do my best to check that I"m not doing it when I'm working. I would like to think that if I was say, RC, and talking to a Muslim/Atheist/Buddhist/CoI/Jew, I would be aware of my own bias and account for it. Much like I don't assume that my answer/solution is correct, just because I didn't read 5 intead of 2 by mistake, I wouldn't like to assume that my actions and decisions would be correct just because they're correct according to the docterine of whatever faith I theoretically subscribed to. If you get what I'm saying.

I agree with your thinking as to self-correction, but I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you said "I wouldn't like to assume that my actions and decisions would be correct just because they're correct according to the docterine of whatever faith I theoretically subscribed to". Is this not exactly what a person, religious or otherwise, who is a believer (accepter without fact) rather than a knower (aware of the facts) would do? For a person who acts according to their particular doctrine of faith to not presume that they were correct, would be 'sinful' and disloyal to that ideology. Or maybe I've got it wrong? Belief is great for making us feel sure, simply because we want to, but to deliberately accept a doctrine of faith and then trying to justify setting it aside as though it were not a valid method of evaluation, to me, is a complete contradiction. What's the point of going out to measure something if you throw away the ruler when you get there?

miss no stars wrote: »

It takes all colours and creeds to make up the world we live in. Each one of us ascribes to beliefs that allow those fears to be placated and for us to carry on with the rest of our lives the best way we know how.

Do you not think that knowing the facts, as far as you can, is the way to get rid of fears, rather than easing them so that they can rise up again? Once you know something, you can rely on it and it won't fail you, as it is sure and certain, like 1+1= 2

I completely agree with you when you say that we carry on with our lives "the best way we know how", but you can only know something if you operate on fact, not beliefs that something is reliable. Knowledge destroys beliefs, as you can only believe something if you are not aware of the facts. We don't say, when we realise that me made a mess of something important, "I wish I believed then what I believe now", do we? It was belief that caused the problem, and awareness of the unreality of the belief that made us know that it was a faulty idea in the first place, no? Knowledge and belief are not synonymous, are they? Then again, maybe you believe that they are?

miss no stars wrote: »

It is not on any one of us to judge another for how they cope with what they fear most.

Ok, but are they 'coping' with it, or getting rid of it? Why hold on to it? To overcome something, don't you have to understand it, and then realise that it is not to be feared any longer? Beliefs are inclined to exaggerate fears, not mitigate them, no?

miss no stars wrote: »

Fear is a natural part of our makeup - it allows the species to survive. Let's not do away with one of our strongest survival instincts just yet I'm afraid of heights. Petrified. Like, totally irrationally can't deal with heights. On the boat I sail, I sometimes go up the mast to lubricate the pulleys and check the instruments etc. While I'm being hoisted, i don't look down. I pretend I'm not at height. I wilfully ignore the fact that I'm being hoisted more than 2 meters in the air. I do the maintenance and come back down. The sails are then a little easier to hoist. But by your standards, the fact that I've ignored the fact that I'm high up has only done bad (because I'm pretending I'm not high up?) despite the fact that life is easier and the boat is better maintained? But again, I could have misunderstood what you were trying to convey.

Lol....but from my reading of what you just wrote, you are not ignoring your fear of heights (actually a rational fear of falling from a height), but are aware of it as being a genuine fear and dealing with the fact. It's not exactly a 'rational' thing to be dangling from a rope way up on a pole on a boat. However, you recognise the fact that you know that its something you don't particularly like to do but need to do to avoid something worse in the long term. That's working with your brain, overcoming the fear by a practice that gets the job done.

Yes, there is a benefit to having some fear, as it helps to prevent you taking stupid risks, but if you can weigh up and calculate the risks involved in doing it versus the cost of not doing it, and in this case, using the right pulleys and ropes, then you succeed. To not overcome your fear would be to submit to it. What benefit would looking down do you anyway? Being brave is not about taking stupid risks, but doing what must be done regardless of the fears. Now if you decided to be hoisted up on a piece of string in a gale force wind, then that would be stupid.
I presume that you didn't have someone teach you to be afraid of things, as religions all too often do? Adding irrational fears and taboos to people's already inherent natural fears is a pretty sick practice, in my opinion, and is like adding fuel to a fire, but maybe you might not agree.

jill_valentine · 17-09-2011 10:44PM

mascaput wrote: »

In fact I'm well aware of the principles of entropy, but as energy can't cease to exist, and as it has to come from somewhere and go somewhere, or be originated at some point, then neither is it 'lost'.

Slightly off topic, but it's always remarkable to me how some folks can hold one scientific principle to be so absolute as to support their position, and dismiss others as and when it suits as just theories.

It's cheating, dudes.

Regarding energy, my understanding is that it neither appears from nowhere, nor is it lost. It undergoes a process.

mascaput · 18-09-2011 05:35AM

jill_valentine wrote: »

Slightly off topic, but it's always remarkable to me how some folks can hold one scientific principle to be so absolute as to support their position, and dismiss others as and when it suits as just theories.

It's cheating, dudes.

Regarding energy, my understanding is that it neither appears from nowhere, nor is it lost. It undergoes a process.

I'm not clear what exactly the first part of your post means or refers to. Did I say something that seemed to contradict something else I later said? Or were you addressing someone else (also)? If you clarify what the point you feel is at issue, then maybe we/I can address it.

Partly right on the energy thing. It can neither be created or destroyed, but may be converted from one form to another. Life is often described as being a circle, or like a circle, with energy and matter passing through cycles. Break the cycle and you end up with energy that can no longer change, as life is a process of change, using energy and matter in concert.

4leto · 18-09-2011 07:43PM

I kind of see delusions on both sides of this debate.

Its fair to say religion gives meaning while science gives control, you can-not get a meaning out of science, because by its nature it progresses by discarding falsehoods. So you can't have faith in science but you can have a faith in religion. Another irony if you believe there are laws in nature, then that implies a god, the law maker. So can you have true science without a theism??

But the myths that are the components of all religion are not neccessarilly proved false by science. As long as the religious recognise them as that. Myths have nothing to do with faith. Is the story of Icarus rendered pointless with the discovery of psychology or astro physics. The Bible is just that, a myth, and should be treated as such by both sides of the debate.

I like to fence sit on this debate and not get heavily involved on either side, I am an unbeliever with a recognition that, with in, there is religion, whether we like it or not. But one thing I do hate is the evangelistic zealots on the religious and atheist side of this debate. I think the atheist debate is utopitarian as I do the religious as well. Perhaps because the old political debate of old between left and right, communists and capitalists is over, maybe this is its replacement as a way to find a new order.

But there is never order, is society or science just chaos, but there is "an" order in religion.

Zen65 · 18-09-2011 08:16PM

4leto wrote: »

Another irony if you believe there are laws in nature, then that implies a god, the law maker. So can you have true science without a theism??

Certain elements of reality have predictable behaviour, and scientists describe these predictable behaviours in terms of "natural laws" (such as gravity, motion, electric force, etc). These laws are not made in the same manner as the laws of state, so there is no implication that a law-maker much exist. The only law-maker is ourselves, using laws as a mechanism to describe that which already exists.

The absence of a God does not imply chaos in the universe. At its core the atheist believes the order that exists in the world is not brought about by a higher sentient being, but rather by the properties inherent in matter itself.

BTW, I'm not arguing for or against the existence of God. That's a matter for others.

Be at peace,

Z

Paddy Cow · 18-09-2011 08:27PM

Downlinz wrote: »

If you believe the church is corrupt + power hungry and that god isn't real.

What does that say about your judgment on the intelligence of your parents, grandparents and other relatives who more than likely devoted so much of their lives to these causes? As a huge part of our society wouldn't it imply you believed they were gullible and naive people to live the way they did? Perhaps weak-willed to stand out from the crowd and question accepted truths?

(p.s. I am an athiest and pondering this question myself. Not looking to start some sort of shame parade or anything)

What a load of ****e. I had an uncle who died of kidney cancer. He went to mass and his faith gave him comfort. Should I have told him when he was facing death and leaving behind a wife and young child that he was naive, unintelligent and weak willed to believe that he would go to a better place after dying a slow and degenerative death?

Another family member has been again diagnosed with cancer and is to lose his remaining kidney. He is also religious. If his faith brings him comfort then I will not belittle that.

I have no problem with people who are hold religious beliefs.........as long as they don't try and convert me. It's only when one side tries to convince the other that they are right that problems arise.

4leto · 18-09-2011 08:42PM

Zen65 wrote: »

Certain elements of reality have predictable behaviour, and scientists describe these predictable behaviours in terms of "natural laws" (such as gravity, motion, electric force, etc). These laws are not made in the same manner as the laws of state, so there is no implication that a law-maker much exist. The only law-maker is ourselves, using laws as a mechanism to describe that which already exists.

The absence of a God does not imply chaos in the universe. At its core the atheist believes the order that exists in the world is not brought about by a higher sentient being, but rather by the properties inherent in matter itself.

BTW, I'm not arguing for or against the existence of God. That's a matter for others.

Be at peace,

Z

Agreed but when certain elements of scientific reality have predictable behaviour such as light or gravity it suggests the universe is explainable and the scientific goal is to find an order, a "the theory of everything", but even a description of chaos cannot be a description of chaos, just a representative of it.

So if the quantum principles underlying the universe is chaotic, that is not something man readily accepts, there is something in us that seeks order. A faith, a religion.

So we can't be truly pure atheist, we will always have a spirituality. I have read everything Richard Dawkins has written, I love his books, but he seems to be the great atheist evangelist, but from his writings about nature. I always regard Richard Dawkins as a very spiritual man.

4leto · 18-09-2011 08:57PM

On religion and intelligence or on science and intelligence. It true to say both have their fair share of historical and present day stupidity.

Its fair to say less harm comes out of religion then science. Every advance science makes has a consequence for our very future survival as a specie.

Lets take medicine and agricultural science, those sciences have prolonged life and eased suffering, but they have led to a population bomb, that probably has already made this planet potentially uninhabitable for us in the not to distant future. For modern science has enabled each of the world citizens to be a consuming bonfire from birth of the world's non-renewables.

So science has done more harm then good in the long term. So what could potentially fix the mess. A tech solution or a religious one. I sometimes thing the Green **** (not a fan) go for the religious one, perhaps there is salvation in that.

So religion is just another expression of a part of us, it has nothing to do with intelligence

Sleepy · 18-09-2011 08:58PM

I honestly think my mother's belief is more a desire to believe in a "God" and need to be "normal" in society despite her lack of faith in the tenets of the Catholic church has her professing to be Catholic. If she believes in what she says she does, she's a Protestant (like most Irish "Catholics" tbh).

My father's atheist like myself.

Other close family members that are religious I'd see as being from a different era and having been subjected to sufficient indoctrination to render them unable to question their brainwashing.

Zen65 · 18-09-2011 09:12PM

4leto wrote: »

..... there is something in us that seeks order. A faith, a religion.

So we can't be truly pure atheist, we will always have a spirituality.

Not everyone seeks nor needs to seek a faith, a religion. It is a choice.

So some people can be pure atheists. An atheist can be spiritual, believing that there is a connection between all things that goes beyond the simple explanations offered by conventional science. Their awareness of that connection between all things is, to them, spiritual but does not involve a belief in a higher being.

Be at peace,

Z

4leto · 18-09-2011 09:36PM

Zen65 wrote: »

Not everyone seeks nor needs to seek a faith, a religion. It is a choice.

So some people can be pure atheists. An atheist can be spiritual, believing that there is a connection between all things that goes beyond the simple explanations offered by conventional science. Their awareness of that connection between all things is, to them, spiritual but does not involve a belief in a higher being.

Be at peace,

Z

What else could it be, logically there is no "spiritual" feeling connection between all things, how could there be. I have no nerves connecting me to the natural world. I am an independent feeling being connected to a culture. I am alone and I die. So when I do, it is the end of the world. For nothing matters for when I am dead it will be as if I never existed. But obviously I do, but on death this existence is negated, my life does not matter.

But you can see that is not the human way of things. A religion does connect us to the living and to a future when we know we wont be. A religious spiritual sense is an explanation, but granted not a whole one.

So its not a higher being that makes religion but a higher out of body spiritual sense that does. Spirituality is religion. There is even a section of the brain that houses it, somewhere in the temporal lobe.

Now just because we have a sense of religion does not mean religion is truth.

Caulego · 23-09-2011 10:45PM

4leto wrote: »

.
So its not a higher being that makes religion but a higher out of body spiritual sense that does. Spirituality is religion. There is even a section of the brain that houses it, somewhere in the temporal lobe.

Now just because we have a sense of religion does not mean religion is truth.

What authoratative evidence can you produce or link to to confirm or explain your reference to the idea of spirituality being 'housed' in the temporal lobe? Does that mean that all the rest of the being is not spiritual, as in say the hand, the knee, the liver? All are linked, so I can't see how a claim for it being located in a specific 'place' makes sense, though I would be interested in having it better explained to me.

Thanks

Question for Athiests and church bashers

Comments