Religion IS crazy!

[Value Collector]

but if our universe is the only one in existence, then it's valid to ask why it formed at all..

It may not be a valid question, it depends what you mean by it. If you are asking How it formed it is a valid question, But if your asking "why" it formed, as in whats its purpose, then it is probably a silly question. We can answer How mountains formed.

If it formed because of pre existing laws of quantum physics, then where did these laws come from ? Did they always exist ?

I don't know, perhaps the universe is infinite, and as I said perhaps the laws of quantum physics just are, perhaps its impossible for it to be any other way, So they didn't come "from" any where, there just are, they are eternal.

 

[Value Collector]

I'm sure you can see a parallel with the God argument. We will always be going around in circles on this question, and I can't see any end to it.

The thing is though, all we can say is that we don't know if a god exists. That's the only logical answer. And to add to that, not only do we not know if one exists, but we don't even know its possible.

So that's why I am an atheist, simple because there is no good reason to believe one exists.

But religious people go a step further, not only do religions claim one does in fact exists with 100% certainy, but they also claim to know his mind, and what he wants from us. They also claim he talks to them, and answers prayers etc.

This is along way from the topic you and I were just discussing, I am happy to say that even though I don't know if a god exists, I think the various types of gods defined by the religions most certainly do not exist, and can be put into the same category as fairies and unicorns.

 

[SirRumpole]

The thing is though, all we can say is that we don't know if a god exists. That's the only logical answer. And to add to that, not only do we not know if one exists, but we don't even know its possible.

So that's why I am an atheist, simple because there is no good reason to believe one exists.

But religious people go a step further, not only do religions claim one does in fact exists with 100% certainy, but they also claim to know his mind, and what he wants from us. They also claim he talks to them, and answers prayers etc.

This is along way from the topic you and I were just discussing, I am happy to say that even though I don't know if a god exists, I think the various types of gods defined by the religions most certainly do not exist, and can be put into the same category as fairies and unicorns.

Just for the record, I'm not a religious person. I call myself a secular Deist, I don't believe in a God of the Bible or the Koran. If your only reason for being an atheist is to reject a religious God, then I have some sympathy with your beliefs.

Your first sentence does though contain some contradictions. If we don't know if a God exists or not, how can we rule out the possibility ? I have mentioned some evidence in that there exists laws of Physics and we don't know how they came about. You chose to ignore those laws as evidence of a God. I suppose that is your right, but I get the feeling that you start off with the belief that a god does not exist and you then chose to ignore evidence that it may.

An open minded person is almost by definition an agnostic, ie one defined by your first sentence. Perhaps the fact that you take another step further to atheism is more a rejection of religion than evidence.

 

[Value Collector]

If your only reason for being an atheist is to reject a religious God, then I have some sympathy with your beliefs.

.

The only reason I am an atheist is because I have never been convinced of the existence of a god.

I don't believe one exists, so I am an atheist.

Your first sentence does though contain some contradictions. If we don't know if a God exists or not, how can we rule out the possibility ?

Where are the contradictions?

I haven't ruled out the possibility, I just haven't seen anything that says we should rule it in.

I have mentioned some evidence in that there exists laws of Physics and we don't know how they came about. You chose to ignore those laws as evidence of a God.

The existence of the laws of physics, isn't evidence of the existence of a god. Saying "I don't know, therefore god" is an argument from ignorance.

I suppose that is your right, but I get the feeling that you start off with the belief that a god does not exist and you then chose to ignore evidence that it may.

what evidence have I ignored???

My default position on anything, is non belief. I move from non belief to belief when I am presented with evidence that convinces me.

An open minded person is almost by definition an agnostic, ie one defined by your first sentence. Perhaps the fact that you take another step further to atheism is more a rejection of religion than evidence

Agnostic and atheist are not mutually exclusive terms, one is a position on knowledge and one is a position on belief.

I am an Agnostic Atheist.

Agnostic and gnostic are postions on whether you Know or don't Know

Atheist and Theist/deist are claims about what you believe.

I say I don't know if a god exists, which makes me an agnostic. But I also claim that I don't believe one does which makes me an Atheist.

Anyone with enough intellectual honesty to admit that they don't know for sure is an Agnostic, However a person can still Believe or not believe with out knowing for sure.

So some one that says "I believe in god, but I don't know for sure" is an agnostic theist/deist.

Some one who says "I don't believe in any of the gods, But I don't know for sure" is an agnostic atheist.

I am the later.

 

[Value Collector]

For anyone interested, Here is a discussion of agnostic vs atheist.

It's a common misunderstanding that agnostic and atheist are mutually exclusive terms.

 

[bellenuit]

I'm sure you can see a parallel with the God argument. We will always be going around in circles on this question, and I can't see any end to it.

But I think that illustrates the point that VC, I and others have made before. The difference between the scientific method and the God argument is that the scientific method urges us to look for answers whereas the God argument says to stop looking, God is the answer to everything we currently do not understand. There is nothing wrong with saying we don't know and may never know, but we will keep trying.

 

[SirRumpole]

But I think that illustrates the point that VC, I and others have made before. The difference between the scientific method and the God argument is that the scientific method urges us to look for answers whereas the God argument says to stop looking, God is the answer to everything we currently do not understand. There is nothing wrong with saying we don't know and may never know, but we will keep trying.

Religious people may say stop looking, I never have said that. Scientific enquiry is far more interesting than going to church and I hope it never stops, just that I believe that so far no evidence has been found that conclusively proves the non existence of a God, so the question is still open, as is my mind.

 

[Value Collector]

so far no evidence has been found that conclusively proves the non existence of a God, so the question is still open, as is my mind.

Or the non existence of fairies, unicorns, bigfoot etc etc.

As I said the time to believe something is when you have evidence.

The default position should not be, belief until disproven.


Do you believe in fairies or unicorns?

If not, why not? you can't disprove them.

You have to have an open mind, but you also have to have a filter of scepticism to allow yourself to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible.

 

[SirRumpole]

Or the non existence of fairies, unicorns, bigfoot etc etc.

As I said the time to believe something is when you have evidence.

The default position should not be, belief until disproven.


Do you believe in fairies or unicorns?

If not, why not? you can't disprove them.

You have to have an open mind, but you also have to have a filter of scepticism to allow yourself to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible.

Huh, things are getting a bit absurd when you start mentioning fairies and unicorns.

Explorers discovered ancient ruins in jungles but we did not assume they created themselves. Apparently Creation (the Universe) is the only thing in Nature that can create itself. How did it do that ? Provide me with the mechanism.

Until you can I'm entitled to believe that an external entity was responsible. That's why I say this discussion goes in circles. We have been here before so many times and nothing has been proved. Time to exit until you can show how a Universe can create itself.

 

[Value Collector]

Huh, things are getting a bit absurd when you start mentioning fairies and unicorns.

Explorers discovered ancient ruins in jungles but we did not assume they created themselves. Apparently Creation (the Universe) is the only thing in Nature that can create itself. How did it do that ? Provide me with the mechanism.

Until you can I'm entitled to believe that an external entity was responsible. That's why I say this discussion goes in circles. We have been here before so many times and nothing has been proved. Time to exit until you can show how a Universe can create itself.

I think the idea of fairies is no more absurd than the idea of a god. In fact it is much more likely that something like a fairy exists some where in the universe than a god.

 

[Value Collector]

Explorers discovered ancient ruins in jungles but we did not assume they created themselves. Apparently Creation (the Universe) is the only thing in Nature that can create itself. How did it do that ? Provide me with the mechanism.

.

We have many examples of cities created by humans, we have no examples of gods creating universes.

There's a big difference between a creation and something that is produced by natural causes.

Eg. A painting has a painter, a mountain doesn't require a creator, well understood geological processes cause mountains to form, same with planets and stars, they form them selves, and are forming every day.

 

[luutzu]

Huh, things are getting a bit absurd when you start mentioning fairies and unicorns.

Explorers discovered ancient ruins in jungles but we did not assume they created themselves. Apparently Creation (the Universe) is the only thing in Nature that can create itself. How did it do that ? Provide me with the mechanism.

Until you can I'm entitled to believe that an external entity was responsible. That's why I say this discussion goes in circles. We have been here before so many times and nothing has been proved. Time to exit until you can show how a Universe can create itself.

Nature does create itself - through adaptation/natural selection.

The Universe and its "laws" and physical, chemical properties are as they are through billions of years of random interactions.

That just because something exists in a form that we recognised - like humans, animals, the sun and the moon... does not necessarily mean it will remain static or was designed and created by some intelligent being. Take the Sun for example, for the last billions of years and probably the next few billion years, it would [i'm guessing] be seen as "the Sun" as we now see it. But what would it be when it expand, expired then explode and become the black hole? At any of those major stages of the Sun's life cycle, does the Creator create it that way, have it in that form and that image... or does the Creator meant to create the Black Hole eventually?

Creationism/Intelligent Design is not science. It's faith, and the only reason why there's any debate about the existence of the God in the Bible is because 3 major world religions and probably halve its population believe in it.

You wouldn't take the god/s in Scientology seriously would you? Not many people took Jesus Christ seriously until Constantine's back was against the wall and seeing the meteor the day before the battle, claimed the Christian God is on his side, won it and made Christianity the Roman Empire's state religion - and himself the 13th Apostle.

When you want to debate religion and God, trying to prove God's existence... you cannot do it through logical, scientific means. You'd just lose. And the atheists will also lose because we'd be wasting a lot of time and the religious guys will just move the goal post.

A good example of this was in the Russell Crowe's Noah movie - where "In the beginning..." of the book of Genesis [?] somehow include the montage of the Big Bang, the planets rotating around the Sun, the dinosaurs, then Adam and Eve. The new scientific discoveries are incorporated while throughout most of its history, the Earth was 7 days older than Adam and Eve and history starts with Adam and go on to his descendants; where the Earth was Flat and the Sun and the Moon rotates around it etc etc...

You can't seriously debate someone who change their thesis and incorporate new and undeniable evidence when it suits them like that.

Noah was a pretty good movie, so was Jurassic Park... I remember going to see Jurassic Park with a friend of mine and afterwards he said it's a good movie, but it's not real, that it's just silly because we all know God didn't create the dinosaurs. And he was serious too.

If you believe in there being a God, do you also believe in Zeus? He was a real God back in the days of the Greeks then the Roman Empire... now he's just Liam Neeson and "release the krakens" kinda light entertainment.

----

Religion is just a tool of state and of the politicians.

I think that if you believe in it, just be mindful of its origin and not let it be used against your judgment.

If religion bring you peace, make you a better person... what are you arguing for? Unless you want to convert people, it's your belief and amen to you.

But the problem with really religious people is they often let it and the leadership of it too far and it become immortal and harmful to both themselves and other people. Like how Pope John Paul II not allowing condoms and contraception and so, if i remember correctly, all Catholic charities/hospitals and organisations around the world, in particularly Africa, does not offer condoms and as a result, millions of people die from contracting HIV/AIDS. Or Bush Jr. banning stem cell research... that's 8 years of scientific advancement gone elsewhere.

Then there's religion being use to further political/military objectives.


I think one of the best thing to ever happen to humanity and scientific progress was the separation of Church and States as set out by the US founding fathers.

I don't think it's a coincidence that great leaps in human welfare and literary, scientific, technological advances come about soon after that kind of separation. And the strange thing is, we in the liberal western democracies attribute our advances to our God being kind and liberal while those of the "terrorists" and the Koran and what not are barbaric and backwards - we tend to forget that our political system and social structure separates religion from state policies, and that the God of the Koran, the Bible and of the Old Testament [?] are the one same God.

----
As an aside, I was watching this Chinese TV series about the Emperor Wu of Han [the Martial Emperor]... whose reign was about 120 BCE.

After the death and soon disintegration of the Ch'in empire [by the First Emperor], Su and Han fought for supremacy... Liu Bang's Han won and established the Han Dynasty... soon after Liu's wife, the empress Lai set about establishing her family line on the throne... civil war ensue and soon, the only surviving Liu descendant was the Wu Emperor's father.

Once the Liu's line was restored and soon passed to the Wu Emperor, there were discussions by the Senators as to how a country could be united and civil war abolished. Remember that before the Ch'in unification, China was, for almost 1000 years a collection of kingdoms established after the collapsed of the Chu. There were dozens of kingdoms/states but at the time of Ch'in's unification, there were 6 major powers, each with its own cultures etc.

The advisors saw that since unification was only some 3 generations ago, and since then there's been rebellion and civil unrests... the best way to unite the people of the 6 kingdoms cannot be done through rules and regulations as they've seen under the First Emperor. To unite the people the state must unite the mind, and that can only be done by establishing a state religion. That if people are taught the same religion, have the same mind set and beliefs and values, they can be united and not try to regain their independence.

So there were debates over whether the state religion is to be Taoism [Lao Tzu's] or Confucianism... and it was thought that Confucianism is more suitable as it preaches, among other things, the obedience and respect the young must hold for the elders, the sons for the father etc... and sit atop this, Confucius said, is the Emperor - the father of the people.

And it worked. Han lasted for some 400 years, its political and social structure lasted til the 20th century, it influence even the countries it colonised and dominate - long after its political/administrative control was defeated, like in Vietnam, Korea, Japan... Japan wasn't colonised but its literature and religion was greatly influenced by China.


What the Han did under Emperor Wu was done by all other kings and emperors throughout the world - from Moses and the Israelites to Constantine and the Christians, Mohammad and Islam... Buddhism I don't know...


If you ask me, you could debate the existence of God until the end of the world and no one will be convinced otherwise... it's probably more useful to take the good lessons, the good morality from these good books and try to practice it.

That would make you a better person, probably will make the world a better place... and definitely not make you a pawn of the state and religious leaders with differing motives.

 

[bellenuit]

Great post, Luutzu

 

[Tink]

Yes. Not just ME.
Different places impacts at different times.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/bloody-history-communism/

Great post, Pav.

Communism was the bloodiest ideology that caused more than 120 million innocent deaths in the 20th century.
It was a nightmare which promised equality and justice, but which brought only bloodshed, death, torture and fear.
This three-volume documentary displays the terrible savagery of communism and its underlying philosophy.
From Marx to Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, discover how the materialist philosophy transforms humans into theorists of violence and masters of cruelty.

 

[SirRumpole]

Creationism/Intelligent Design is not science. It's faith, and the only reason why there's any debate about the existence of the God in the Bible is because 3 major world religions and probably halve its population believe in it.

There you go with religion again, I told you I don't believe in it. Show me the mechanism by which the Universe was created out of nothing instead of blathering away about Bibles, fairies and Zeuses.

 

[SirRumpole]

I think the idea of fairies is no more absurd than the idea of a god. In fact it is much more likely that something like a fairy exists some where in the universe than a god.

Really ? What do they look like ? What are they made of ? What is their purpose in life ? Can we communicate with them ? Could they be at the bottom of the garden ?

 

[bunyip]

I think the idea of fairies is no more absurd than the idea of a god.

I agree

Really ? What do they look like ? What are they made of ? What is their purpose in life ? Can we communicate with them ? Could they be at the bottom of the garden ?

The same questions could be asked of the various gods that mankind has created - including the Christian god.

 

[bunyip]

Great post, Pav.

Communism was the bloodiest ideology that caused more than 120 million innocent deaths in the 20th century.
It was a nightmare which promised equality and justice, but which brought only bloodshed, death, torture and fear.
This three-volume documentary displays the terrible savagery of communism and its underlying philosophy.
From Marx to Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, discover how the materialist philosophy transforms humans into theorists of violence and masters of cruelty.

No argument from me about the evils of communism.

But to be fair, there are many examples throughout history, and many examples in the bible as well, of thousands of people being slaughtered in the name of God and Christianity. In fact the bible tells us of God conducting mass killings in person.

Not to mention Islam - another great example of a religion with a track record of slaughtering people en masse.

 

[bunyip]

If you ask me, you could debate the existence of God until the end of the world and no one will be convinced otherwise... it's probably more useful to take the good lessons, the good morality from these good books and try to practice it.

That would make you a better person, probably will make the world a better place... and definitely not make you a pawn of the state and religious leaders with differing motives.

That’s long been my philosophy as well......rather than getting too caught up in all the religious dogma and god worship routine, focus instead on being a good and decent person, one of honesty and integrity who tries to lead a good life and help other people.

If you can be such a person throughout your life, then I have no doubt that your god (if it exists) will view you favorably on judgment day. (if there is in fact a judgment day)

And if there’s no god and no judgment day, then leading a life as described above will give you the best chance of being happy and contented and respected. And we can’t really ask much more of life that that.

 

[Value Collector]

Really ? What do they look like ? What are they made of ? What is their purpose in life ? Can we communicate with them ? Could they be at the bottom of the garden ?

I have no evidence that fairies exist, So just like gods, I don't believe in them, I am Afairist in the same way I am Atheist.

But can you disprove them? You seem to think if you can't disprove something you should believe it, So why believe in gods over fairies?

From the stories fairies seem to be small, humanlike creatures, with wings and limited magic powers.

I don't believe in fairies, But it would seem logical that it is far more likely a small, humanlike animal, with wings and powers that someone might describe as magic would have evolved somewhere in the universe. It's much more likely that this small creature exists than an all powerful, all encompassing god, lives outside space and time, and created the whole universe.