Is there a GOD?

[waza1960]

I'm not saying that religious people are weak simply that they have a need to believe to make their world complete.They are unwilling to consider the mysteries of the universe,evolution etc.Believing in religion ties up the loose ends.Some people are a lot stronger with religion but some do unspeakable acts in the name of god

 

[Happy]

Interesting that many use the argument that religion is used by the weak for comfort.

The same people state that religion is the cause of all the strife in the world.

So if all these religious people are so weak and comfortable why are they causing so much strife?

Aggressive religious fanaticism could account for some strife.

 

[tech/a]

Besides, has anyone noticed how, if God does not exist since the beginning of time, we keep on debating these kinda things month after month, year after year, decade after decade, centuries after centuries, even millenia after millenia? Interesting, ain't it?

If the human sepecies as we know it were obliterated by say a comet hitting earth.
What would we be left with?
No religion.
Evolution would continue until another life form evolved that had conscious thought.
Would it not be natural as they evolved to then start again with Sun,Mountain,Sea etc worship to explain to the developing mind the un explainable.
Are we so primative that even when we can explain the un explainable we chose to ignore it---for a time anyway.

Many of the Old religious ways of primative people are looked upon as laughable now.
Perhaps in not so many years so to will todays civilisations also be laughed at for their fanaticism and primative beliefs.

Mind you power in religion guarentees a long fight between rational arguement and dogged determination in the spreading of "faith".

 

[Rafa]

i can't believe that people still actively purport the myth that is the problems in the world are because of religion...

the problems in this world are becuase of greed, corruption and a quest for power.

religion is just used as a motivating factor, just like race, culture, ethnicity and nationalism! If you take one away, smart politicians will just use another 'divisive' factor to get their way.

the posts on this thread have mostly been so intelligent and informative, its a credit to everyone here... please don't devalue this thread by trying to throw this overtly simplistic and flawed argument into the mix...

and even if you really believe that religion is the cause of all these problems, that still doesn't mean God exists or doesn't... (which is the topic of this thread)...

No one here can lay claim to know what God is thinking by saying, if I was God, i wouldn't want this, or i wouldn't do that, or let that happen, etc, etc...

everything happens for a reason... 99% of the time, i have no idea what the reason is...

 

[retroaugogo]

If the human sepecies as we know it were obliterated by say a comet hitting earth.
What would we be left with?
No religion.
Evolution would continue until another life form evolved that had conscious thought.

Evolutionary scientists themselves started looking at the odds that a free-living, single-celled organism (a bacterium, for example) could result from a chance combining of life building blocks (amino acids, for example). Harold Morowitz, a renowned physicist from Yale University and author of Origin of Cellular Life (1993), declared that the odds for any kind of spontaneous generation were one chance in 10100,000,000,000. 3

Sir Fred Hoyle, a popular agnostic who wrote Evolution from Space (1981), proposed that such odds were one chance in 1040,000 ("the same as the probability that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard could assemble a 747").4

Scientists from various disciplines generally set their "Impossibility Standard" at one chance in 1050 (1 in a 100,000 billion, billion, billion, billion, billion). Therefore, whether one chance in 10100,000,000,000 or one chance in 1040,000, the notion that life somehow rose from non-life has clearly met the scientific standard for statistical impossibility.

3 Harold Marowitz, Energy Flow in Biology, Academic Press, 1968.
4 Sir Fred Hoyle, Nature, vol. 294:105, November 12, 1981

 

[wayneL]

As i have said previously - faith and devotion to any religion involves the participant allowing themselves to become 'infected' with its linguistic and ideological viruses - once they take hold - 'true'' believers are very hard to de-program - religion is merely a manipulative social tool for cementing and propagating a particular agenda - usually a dominant, mysogynistic discourse.

Oh yes!

My only comment on that is that this "meme" you describe not only infects the faithful, it also infects the non-faithfully, for it is this that they are rejecting. In the construction of the atheist argument, and in the anti-religious component of their argument, this meme invariably surfaces in the portrayal of the God they deny.

Is this fair?

Yes and No.

It is fair to reject the meme, but is it fair to reject outright the concept of the Great Kahuna in whatever form it may exist? Not without considering alternatives (many have been discussed here) for it then simply becomes an emotional stance which must be backed up by available logic. (a completely normal human trait)

This logic is compelling, but only within the narrow confines of their programmed judeo/christian "linguistic and ideological viruses". In this regard, atheists are also "very hard to de-program" of the model they reject.

This is a favourite discussion topic of mine and I have made some observations regarding the combatants. The religious are often emotionally dogmatic and steadfast in rejecting all other considerations. Others find this quite repugnant TBH.

However the most remarkable observation I make is that atheists, though priding themselves in intellect and an inquiring mind, are often identical in this regard (emotionally dogmatic and steadfast in rejecting all other considerations). I think there is no clearer example of this than Dawkins himself. This man of science can become quite irrational and uses numerous disingenuous arguments to bluster his view forward.

Every discussion on this topic ultimate reverts to this polarized battleground.

It's a nonsense and discredits the debate.

Cheers

 

[Rafa]

well said WayneL....

i have always said, that in todays world, especially with everything we know today, to actually beleive in a Big Kahuna requires one to be open minded...

after all, the easiest thing to prove is that God does not exist... coming from a mathematical, engineering backgroud... beleive me, i know a lot about proofs.

I can prove God doens't exist... yet, i know this being (in whatever form its in)... (call it God, the Force, the spirit, etc).... does!

 

[Wysiwyg]

The original (open to opinion) inhabitants of individual land masses on earth had a belief in something beyond what was solid or real.Spirits,Dreamtime or Inti for example.So it seems to me groups,races etc. needed something to believe in to maintain social structure.This is the purpose of believing in a god or other.To bond the group, to maintain order.

With so many different groups on the planet then there are going to be as many different beliefs.As the numbers multiply the beliefs will vary too.I really can`t see how social structure will be maintained/controlled with so many beliefs in different gods.The group with the most convincing story will obviously have the most numbers.

Strange enough , in my search for meaning to life and how the mind works I find some of the lines in the bible are really good practices and guidelines to live life by.Though in no way do I limit my belief to one particular following and in this way I am not bound to the words. or am I....The individualist society.

 

[weird]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins

In his book Collins examines and subsequently rejects creationism and Intelligent Design.

His own belief system is Theistic Evolution (TE) which he defines as:

(1) The universe came into being out of nothingness, approximately 14 billion years ago,

(2) Despite massive improbabilities, the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life,

(3) While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of biological diversity and complexity over very long periods of time,

(4) Once evolution got under way no special supernatural intervention was required,

(5) Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes,

(6) But humans are also unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout history.

 

[Sean K]

Of course!

 

[allan998]

Take a swag, camp in the outback and have a look at the Milky Way on a clear crisp night.
The big bang created all of that and what created the big bang?I am calling him God.

 

[Sean K]

Take a swag, camp in the outback and have a look at the Milky Way on a clear crisp night.
The big bang created all of that and what created the big bang?I am calling him God.

And what created that particular God?

 

[Bobby]

This is a favourite discussion topic of mine

Hello Wayne,

I found that post clever & interesting looking forward to more.

Have Fun
Bobby.

 

[2020hindsight]

Take a swag, camp in the outback and have a look at the Milky Way on a clear crisp night.
The big bang created all of that and what created the big bang? I am calling him God.

When I look at the stars I think of Galileo, who was clever enough to reason from that that the earth moved around the sun, (maths in motion) and was placed in house arrest by the Pope until he died 9 years later
Surely the Galileo incident did nothing to help the cred of the church.

Met an old man loved star-gazing, sat me down and pointed skyward
Love those fires (kind eyes blazing), (searched the darkness for more firewood)
Many way's to see them sonny, Heavens, Gods, astronomy,
So much better gods than money, find your own autonomy.

Key to life is search the night sky, find your star and give it name
search your conscience, set your sights and let that star become your aim
Next thing son is find the Pointers, limits like celestial gates
left and right like pope's annointers, goalposts like Magellan's Straights

Last one son is find your cross, that's Crux to some and crutch to others
learn that you're your moral boss, and go with truth and help your brothers
sisters wives
and even mothers
………………..
Think of Galileo’s quest in questioning the Papal vespers,
Shadows on yon Venus’s breast, “earth is moving” heard in whispers
Papal sentence? house arrest, “and denounce what science proves”
Finally recanted, bless you, eppur si muove, “and still it moves”.

I copy this from a previous post (to Bloveld who introduced Semmelweis award)
I think Galileo 1564 - 1642 takes the cake for the Semmelweis award, at least for the 17th century - over his opinion that the Earth revolved round the sun, although the church insisted otherwise. "G was forced to recant his views and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. Following his recantation, G is said to have murmured Eppur si Muove (still itmoves). He was finally cleared of heresy by a Vatican commission in 1992!" Who said the church wasnt heavily into forgiveness.

Church controversy- the Galileo affair
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and Chronicles 16:30 state that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." Psalm 104:5 says, "[the LORD] set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "the sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises."
Galileo defended heliocentrism, and claimed it was not contrary to those Scripture passages. He took Augustine's position on Scripture: not to take every passage literally, …. By 1616 the attacks on Galileo had reached a head, and he went to Rome to try to persuade the Church authorities not to ban his ideas…. For the next several years Galileo stayed well away from the controversy.
He revived his project of writing a book on the subject, …Pope Urban VIII personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in the book, and to be careful not to advocate heliocentrism. He made another request, that his own views on the matter be included in Galileo's book. Only the latter of those requests was fulfilled by Galileo. Whether unknowingly or deliberate, Simplicius, the defender of the Aristotelian Geocentric view in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was often caught in his own errors and sometimes came across as a fool. This fact made Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems appear as an advocacy book; an attack on Aristotelian geocentrism and defense of the Copernican theory. To add insult to injury, Galileo put the words of Pope Urban VIII into the mouth of Simplicius. Most historians agree Galileo did not act out of malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to his book. However, the Pope did not take the public ridicule lightly, nor the blatant bias. .. Galileo was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy in 1633. The sentence of the Inquisition was in three essential parts:
• Galileo was required to recant his heliocentric ideas; the idea that the Sun is stationary was condemned as "formally heretical." .. (for instance, in the formal condemnation of Galileo) that "The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures", and the converse as to the Sun's not revolving around the Earth
• He was ordered imprisoned; the sentence was later commuted to house arrest.
• His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial and not enforced, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.
After a period with the friendly Ascanio Piccolomini (the Archbishop of Siena), Galileo was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri near Florence, where he spent the remainder of his life under house arrest, going blind and dying from natural causes on January 8, 1642. It was while Galileo was under house arrest when he dedicated his time to one of his finest works, Two New Sciences. Here he summarized work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials. This book has received high praise from both Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. As a result of this work, Galileo is often called, the "father of modern physics".
Galileo .. was formally rehabilitated in 1741, when Pope Benedict XIV authorized the publication of Galileo's complete scientific works (a censored edition had been published in 1718), and in 1758 the general prohibition against heliocentrism was removed from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled ...

 

[Sean K]

When I look at the stars I think of Galileo, who was clever enough to reason from that that the earth moved around the sun, (maths in motion) and was placed in house arrest by the Pope until he died 9 years later

I'm not sure how Galileo got into this (is he God? ) but criticising religion for its follys probably shouldn't be in this thread. It's man (and women) who has been the construct of our blundering through history. Plenty of non believers have turned the gas switch on, as but one example. I'm sure there will be plenty more to come now that atheism is almost an acceptable philosophy of life.

I do very much like the Galileo story though. The Catholics probably still think it was cool. Thanks!

 

[2020hindsight]

PS Allan, saying that God created the big bang is ok by me. (and having set it in motion has been watching on since).

Even Weird's proposal that evolution is all ok (which is what cdk007 said incidentally) - granted a few riders that God somehow planned it that way, which I find a fairly severely watered down version of creationism.

But having the Pope tell us that it is God's will that third world countries don't use condoms, or that he is the arbiter of what is or isn't moral (etc ) what the??

Kennas - ok lol - guilty as charged. I've linked the church with the concept of God..

Question (to myself) is it possible to separate them ?
answer , I guess it is , at least if you try hard lol - certainly results in more harmonious discussion lol.

PS there have been other threads about religion as you say, and usually a lot of bruises and black eyes

PS I guess I defend reference to Galileo becos he wos the father of the cosmos (scientifically speaking - well at least one of them - many a paternity suit argued out in scientific court there as well ) and kinda relevant in that the current Pope has just stated that he is "cool" with evolution
- lol even the church is evolving !

 

[weird]

Thanks 2020hindsight.


http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/sciencefaith.php

# Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Einstein is probably the best known and most highly revered scientist of the twentieth century, and is associated with major revolutions in our thinking about time, gravity, and the conversion of matter to energy (E=mc2). Although never coming to belief in a personal God, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe. The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." This actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: "I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." Einstein's famous epithet on the "uncertainty principle" was "God does not play dice" - and to him this was a real statement about a God in whom he believed. A famous saying of his was "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

 

[allan998]

And what created that particular God?

I will leave that question to others to bust their brain cells over.

 

[heads up]

Galileo, who, asserted a scientific truth of profound importance denied it when faced with torture and death. To tell the truth is a futile exercise.

 

[weird]

http://www.catholic.com/library/galileo_controversy.asp

Tortured for His Beliefs?


In the end, Galileo recanted his heliocentric teachings, but it was not””as is commonly supposed””under torture nor after a harsh imprison- ment. Galileo was, in fact, treated surprisingly well.

As historian Giorgio de Santillana, who is not overly fond of the Catholic Church, noted, "We must, if anything, admire the cautiousness and legal scruples of the Roman authorities." Galileo was offered every convenience possible to make his imprisonment in his home bearable.

Galileo’s friend Nicolini, Tuscan ambassador to the Vatican, sent regular reports to the court regarding affairs in Rome. Many of his letters dealt with the ongoing controversy surrounding Galileo.

Nicolini revealed the circumstances surrounding Galileo’s "imprisonment" when he reported to the Tuscan king: "The pope told me that he had shown Galileo a favor never accorded to another" (letter dated Feb. 13, 1633); " . . . he has a servant and every convenience" (letter, April 16); and "n regard to the person of Galileo, he ought to be imprisoned for some time because he disobeyed the orders of 1616, but the pope says that after the publication of the sentence he will consider with me as to what can be done to afflict him as little as possible" (letter, June 18).

Had Galileo been tortured, Nicolini would have reported it to his king. While instruments of torture may have been present during Galileo’s recantation (this was the custom of the legal system in Europe at that time), they definitely were not used.

The records demonstrate that Galileo could not be tortured because of regulations laid down in The Directory for Inquisitors (Nicholas Eymeric, 1595). This was the official guide of the Holy Office, the Church office charged with dealing with such matters, and was followed to the letter.

As noted scientist and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead remarked, in an age that saw a large number of "witches" subjected to torture and execution by Protestants in New England, "the worst that happened to the men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof." Even so, the Catholic Church today acknowledges that Galileo’s condemnation was wrong. The Vatican has even issued two stamps of Galileo as an expression of regret for his mistreatment.