Religion. Thread

I won't bother with most of your questions, except where you make flat out baseless assertions.

Please, demonstrate we have such a need. In any sense which would be valid to your point, I don't feel a necessity of purpose in the slightest.

Please, demonstrate animals are satisfied. Substinence living by chasing fleet-footed organisms in unforgiving environments and elements, not to mention being the prey and having to hesitate at every snap of a twig when drinking for fear a pack of predators will emerge from the forests and chase you until you suffer cardiac arrest, is a harsh existence.

Not true, 9000 years old for the earliest traces of Sanskrit. Besides, pictograms predate such languages by many more millenia.

And to populations passed the holes science cannot fill is lightning, rainbows, volcanic activity, earthquakes, plagues, orbit of the planets, etc.. You would as well call the diversity of life, origin of life, formation of the planets, the process of the sun, and the origin of the current state of our universe a 'hole' that science cannot fill. What use is there in actually answering your questions?

However, a more interesting predicament, when you say "there are no records of any languages that are more ancient than 6-7000 years old" I wonder immediately how you know this? A simple explanation, how were those dates discerned? Or...let me assume, you did not ask questions...

This question is handled by evolutionary psychology. Belief is a natural position to accept information from the family unit, and a belief in a false positive is evolutionary advantageous to disbelief of a true negative, aka, better to presume a predator where none exists than ignore one where one does. However, the base position is belief as well, a belief must be fabricated in order to base experience against it.

I prefer Dawkin's layman explanation for this in comparing our mind with a computer, as both are very similar. The early stages of computers were based solely on being calculating machines, however, as they became more powerful those simple calculating functions meant the computer could now be used as a word processor, spread sheets, on until the high-end graphical processing we have today. In much the same way, spatial awareness and composition are direct results of our increased ability of pattern recognition and social interaction.

Reread my statement. I have no necessity of purpose. I would be content without one. I see nothing philosophically grander about having been made by a deity for a purpose than I do in ascribing purpose to myself. I feel sorry that you require a deity to give you purpose.

Your assumption is that all animals meet only their fundamental needs. Organisms create hierarchies, organisms demonstrate greed, organisms are sadistic or empathetic. Your assumption is as well that our evolved function to accumulate knowledge is not a result of our niche. We may not need to do X, but to do X we had an evolved survival mechanism such as pattern recognition requiring a larger brain, or the creation of society from reciprocal altruism due to kin recognition and in-group/out-group formation.

Because God is not an explanation of anything. God has no demonstrability. God is not natural. Science cannot, by definition, consider the supernatural because once observable the supernatural becomes the natural. Except, any scientific consideration of the efficacy of prayer, of the necessity of supernatural explanation, of the appearance of design, or the necessity of a designer, of whathaveyou, says that a God is not in those locations.

Please, answer my previous question of how whatever your source which said the oldest languages are 6-7000 years old knew they were that old?

But here is the real predicament for you. You tirade against this being all that there is, and I can answer most of your questions even if you don't enjoy the answers, however, nothing you posit if true is evidence of a deity or of necessity of a deity or of good reason to consider a deity, it would evidence that our current explanations fail us.

Can you defend your premise?

Edited by: Vangor

mZEROq :

But the question is,who created god, or did he came into existence for the only reason to create man.
Becuse if you take man out of the equation, there is no need for God.
Imagine this,in the middle of nothing there appears  God (with nothing i mean nothing, no space, no time, no darkness , absolutely nothing !!!!)
And in that moment he decides to create space, time,the whole universe ...... For one reason,only 1 man (woman was created becuse adam got bored), also  the animals were created to serve and entertain him.

In the space there is no need for a god or gods,we use god just for explanation of ourselves.
So remember in the universe YOU Are not Important,and why would god create a small unimportant being,to mock him and to ban him from the paradise cuz he ate a apple???? or did god(allmighty being) got bored???

And  if you want to do something good for the community ,you dont need the church who takes a slice of the pie.
To a man in need you can give the money(or whatever) yourself.
And the church can have their propaganda,if you wanna be a good person you dont need it.

I hope this post will reach your stubbornes....

P.S. (please dont try to correct any of my error on the knowledge on the bible....)

this may be a bit off specific topic but, i belive that someone that is without corrouption of fundamental evil is someone to be worshipped. my status on religon remains neutral though.

Explain what you mean by 'fundamental evil' and how a person is has or is free of 'corruption of' and why this means they should be 'worshiped' and in what manner.

I do not believe in a fundamental evil, nor that anything which can be called evil has any corrupting effect such as greed can be said to. Nor should anything or anyone be worshiped, revered perhaps.

By stealing do you mean petty theft, digital resources, something necessary for survival, accidental, theft by lying, theft by lying by omission, theft by lying by ignorance, and etc.? Is this only with regards to legal definitions of ownership? In reality, you could be stealing by not returning land taken from ancestral populations forced off by barbaric settlers. Or even further, you're stealing land once owned by organisms to nest, hunt, etc., in. You're stealing by taking fruit off of a tree and throwing away the seed.

And by killing do you restrict this to plants, animals, or strictly humans, self-defense, self-defense when the aggressor is incapacitated, in retribution, and how do you determine threat to life, is capital punishment killing, is it permissible to assassinate someone who may incite further violence, or who is inciting violence, do soldiers need to qualify the morality of the war first, collateral damage, accidental deaths due to the current urban tactics, consequential deaths by removing electricity from a hospital or scorched earth policies, and what about such policies when they can demonstrably lower the duration and thus death total of the war? Does this fundamental evil that is killing apply to animals and what differs us in this regard from animals?

Asking, because that is a lot of presupposition to say there is evil and there is such a thing as fundamental evil.

Deathball you are naive if u believe in such allegations....
No killing and stealing Yea right.

picture = un-necessary and again, NO INSULTS. and i mean that divinity is impossible but good people are not. and appearantly everybody here  is pessemistic

You consider "naive" as an insult??
It wasnt meant as an insult....
I just wanted to post that picture and i added some text lol.

To Vangor,
   There are many ways of interpreting things.  I interpret what makes sense to me, you interpret what makes sense to you.  I see design everywhere, you see design nowhere.  Man has very creative ways of explaining everything, always have.  It wasn't too long ago that homosexuality was considered a mental illness in the U.S., but now it is beginning to be normalized on a grand scale, starting in Massachusetts and California.  The "experts" of psychology, these scientists, have "bent the knee" to what is popular and politically correct at this time.  Pretty soon I won't have the right to teach my children what I believe is right and true.  It is now illegal to home school children in California, the state feels that it is better equipped to train your children the "right" way to think, all the while indoctrinating them with all sorts of beliefs my faith doesn't allow...talk about state sponsored propaganda!!!: the Massachusetts Commission on Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Youth is getting $700,000 of TAXPAYER MONEY this year to go into schools and spread their "gospel".  Read an article about it here:  Massresistance.org).  I mention this not to devalue science.  I love science.  I just think there are too many assumptions made from the data, even if there is "emperical evidence" and "mounds" of it.  How can we assume that such and such happened in the distant to recent past based off of what we currently see?  It can make all kinds of sense but yet still be totally wrong.  This isn't a ploy to defend creationism or intelligent design, but to merely state that we shouldn't assume so much; at the atomic level the Universe doesn't obey the nature laws of physics, the laws that we function in and make scientific conclusions from, yet science has assumed that millions of years ago things have operated pretty predictably, just as they do now, pretty much...that's a big leap of faith to me.

It is reasonable enough to me, then, to maintain my relationship with my God in light of all the science has to offer.  I'm not 100% convinced.

As far as defending my premise, I'm not too concerned with defending my opinions as much as I am just merely stating them.  My goal here is not to persuade or to "brainwash", but to present a different point of view as accurately as I can.  I do accept that my views, at this point in human history, especially in the States, are not very popular, and I don't really care.  "Wide is the path that leads to destruction, but narrow is the gate and there are few that enter it."  A person doesn't have to be a successful debater to be right.

To Emperor:
   Per your request, I won't try to "correct" your biblical views.  I would only state that they are not fully correct based on the text and you might do well to re-read some of the passages your are paraphrasing. 
   On another note:  Romans 5:8 says, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."  We don't deserve salvation, and while I was "mocking" Him, He still sent His only begotten Son do die for my sins (and your sins).  When the God of the Universe sends His own son to die for you, then you are more significant than you think.

To Kee715:
   Yes, I believe people are brainwashed.  Of course, that happens on both sides of the fence.  There are brainwashed evolutionists too.  This is not to say that evolution is correct or incorrect.  Just as you say that people should question their religion and religious leaders, I think people should also question their science and their scientific leaders too.  I've seen many brainwashed Christians who are no more going to heaven than Anton LaVey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Szandor_LaVey ).  There is a phenomena in the Christian world called "easy-believism", akin to "nominal" or "carnal Christian".  It means that there are those who believe themselves to be of the faith, but in reality are not for many reasons.  It is not easy to come to true faith; the enemy has put many obstacles in our way. 
   So, I wholly agree: QUESTION EVERYTHING.  Question what I'm saying, question what Vangor is saying, question the bible, question the science text books, etc...  Of course, people normally stop questioning when it gets too "hot under the collar".  Without a creator there is no true accountability accept to yourself; people love worshiping themselves.  Still, it is tempting sometimes to think that I'm just another animal on the planet...what's that line from that song, "Hey baby we ain't nuthin' but mammals, so lets do it like they do on the Discover Channel."

Not this thread again.

theres a copper age copper mine over the hill from me, and stonehenge and the whitehorse, the universe is there for the taking, you can travel in peace or on warships, if your local star supernovas before anything suceeds then its to bad is what i know, my bloodline will carry on and do the intelligent darkness with warships, rock m roll and thousands of tanks just like a movie

Edited by: p0rt