"There is no heaven; it's a fairy story"
Discussion
standards said:
Superstitions are disjointed practices, attempts to control fate or nature-like a footballer always putting on kit in a certain order...
Faith is. Sorry should be, a way of life based on a commitment to live a certain way. Trying to be more fully human, to reflect on what you are, how to live, how to choose. How to face death.
You can have a philosophy of life without any supernatural element - I do, and I suspect the other atheists here assembled do too.Faith is. Sorry should be, a way of life based on a commitment to live a certain way. Trying to be more fully human, to reflect on what you are, how to live, how to choose. How to face death.
You can also have rituals and lucky socks without any supernatural element...
standards said:
I really can't accept the wisdom of centuries of various faiths in struggling with what it is to be human is the same as superstition.
The wisdom is (or may be) valid despite the underlying superstition not because of it.standards said:
No one I have ever met really lives their whole life dictated by superstition; many try to live their lives by faith. However misguided others might see them as being.
Nowt wrong with striving to live a good life but I can't see any need for a supernatural/superstitious element.standards said:
People study philosophy of religion; does anyone do this with footballers being last out of the tunnel carrying a ball?
Stranger research has been funded...fluffnik said:
That's the plan, there's nothing of significance good happening now because of religion and a whole heap of bad.
Now I think you'd just prefer it if religion wasn't out there.But for right or wrong it is and I'm OK with a study of religion and some of the alternatives. It is still an influence in society albeit a fading one.
standards said:
Now I think you'd just prefer it if religion wasn't out there.
But for right or wrong it is and I'm OK with a study of religion and some of the alternatives. It is still an influence in society albeit a fading one.
Fading in which part of the world?But for right or wrong it is and I'm OK with a study of religion and some of the alternatives. It is still an influence in society albeit a fading one.
In the US we have Rick Santorum running for presidency, and aiming for a closer coupling of church and state, in blithe ignorance of the founding principles of the US, saying “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute”.
In Afghanistan, we have had people dying this week because somebody - unintentionally - burnt some copies of a supposedly holy book.
In Malaysia an Eryka Badu concert was banned after photographs emerged of the singer bearing a temporary tattoo of the word "Allah" on her shoulder.
In the middle east, Iran and Israel are eyeing each other nervously, and you can bet that religion is playing a part in that potential conflict.
The problem is always the same one, people saying "I believe x, therefore you must do y or not do z!" And by people, I mean people of religion.
standards said:
So you'd be in favour of it being studied then?
If that is aimed at me, and "it" is religion, then sure. Studying religion in a comparative sense is one of the best defenses against the dark arts. (Sorry, I've been watching Harry Potter with my son.)One of the very worst things that every religion does is claim a monopoly on truth. Seeing every one claim truth very quickly leads to the realisation that they can't all be right...but they can all be wrong! So as cultural artefacts, they are worth studying. In the same way that it's worth knowing about all the dead religions that have gone before, because the informed a stage of human culture, it's worth knowing about existing religions.
S13_Alan said:
ChrisGB said:
Just talking to myself here:
Listened to the epic Dawkins and Krauss youtube roadshow posted earlier. I think Krauss is a pretty sympathetic figure, whereas Dawkins comes across as someone literally hateful.
The interesting part really came when Krauss explains that if you have nothing, and you leave it alone for long enough, you will get a universe.
He says that philosophers he talks to assume this is some sort of scam, but he is quite clear: nothing, left alone, gives you everything, there is no scam, he repeats.
OK. Well, to simplify and probably mis-summarise from what I have managed to read and discuss with physicists in the last couple of weeks:
You basically have two mutually exclusive views of the origins in physics (bear with me!) - either some form of string theory or not. The difference will basically be whether "stuff" (I use the term loosely) like space and time are considered emergents, or not.
But uniting both approaches is the realisation of the inadequacy of everyday language for describing what is going on. There are then two options:
metaphor and/or mathematics.
Krauss will be of the mathematics camp. His "nothing" will be basically: what there is, once the constants he wants to make zero are made zero.
He is right that this is not a scam.
But he is wrong that this has any consequences whatsoever for religious belief.
His "nothing" is basically the label for a state of affairs where certain constants are "zero", others not.
It is, and he may well just not realise it, a million miles from the philosophical notion of "nothing", which I suggest is impossible to imagine.
So when I say there is a question about the universe that is unavailable to the scientific endeavour, a fundamental question that the universe raises but cannot answer i.e. viz. to wit. How come anything at all rather than nothing? I can be absolutely confident that I am talking sense. This is not a god of the gaps question, the answer to which "science" will one day have, this is the big one.
(This is not to say that theology will provide a physical explanation - creation is not a sort of making).
Why don't you email him...Listened to the epic Dawkins and Krauss youtube roadshow posted earlier. I think Krauss is a pretty sympathetic figure, whereas Dawkins comes across as someone literally hateful.
The interesting part really came when Krauss explains that if you have nothing, and you leave it alone for long enough, you will get a universe.
He says that philosophers he talks to assume this is some sort of scam, but he is quite clear: nothing, left alone, gives you everything, there is no scam, he repeats.
OK. Well, to simplify and probably mis-summarise from what I have managed to read and discuss with physicists in the last couple of weeks:
You basically have two mutually exclusive views of the origins in physics (bear with me!) - either some form of string theory or not. The difference will basically be whether "stuff" (I use the term loosely) like space and time are considered emergents, or not.
But uniting both approaches is the realisation of the inadequacy of everyday language for describing what is going on. There are then two options:
metaphor and/or mathematics.
Krauss will be of the mathematics camp. His "nothing" will be basically: what there is, once the constants he wants to make zero are made zero.
He is right that this is not a scam.
But he is wrong that this has any consequences whatsoever for religious belief.
His "nothing" is basically the label for a state of affairs where certain constants are "zero", others not.
It is, and he may well just not realise it, a million miles from the philosophical notion of "nothing", which I suggest is impossible to imagine.
So when I say there is a question about the universe that is unavailable to the scientific endeavour, a fundamental question that the universe raises but cannot answer i.e. viz. to wit. How come anything at all rather than nothing? I can be absolutely confident that I am talking sense. This is not a god of the gaps question, the answer to which "science" will one day have, this is the big one.
(This is not to say that theology will provide a physical explanation - creation is not a sort of making).
S13_Alan said:
However none of anything in what you've written really makes any sense to me, it's even worse waffle than usual. Especially the end part in brackets.... 'God created everything... oh wait, he didn't, he didn't make anything he only sor tof started it but not really, oh lets redefine until we find a definition that makes so little sense it cannot be challenged'.
The end part is essential. I do not know what creation is, because it is not a physical process, obviously. What physical process would give you something out of the philosophical concept of nothing? Obviously there isn't one. Essential because we are not talking about obscure science, we are talking about something that we couldn't imagine.Surely the physics bit makes sense to you?
kingmoosa said:
ChrisGB said:
(The whole thing was:
Sorry, but how other people consider me affects me.
Of course people's sex lives affect me.
We are not little islands, and how we act affects others.
If I am someone addicted to porn and tending to view others as potential objects for satisfying my lust, with their agreement hopefully, I will view people differently from the person who is very clear in their head that others are not a means to an end, or that a person is not an object, etc.
How you think of and act towards others in one particular situation (eg. the bedroom) will over time turn you into a particular sort of person who tends to do particular sorts of things. So what you do towards others will determine in some way what you do towards me.)
Sorry but how you can present this as factual is beyond me. Perhaps you think you would be affected in such a way but to presume others would be is ridiculous (and somewhat patronising).Sorry, but how other people consider me affects me.
Of course people's sex lives affect me.
We are not little islands, and how we act affects others.
If I am someone addicted to porn and tending to view others as potential objects for satisfying my lust, with their agreement hopefully, I will view people differently from the person who is very clear in their head that others are not a means to an end, or that a person is not an object, etc.
How you think of and act towards others in one particular situation (eg. the bedroom) will over time turn you into a particular sort of person who tends to do particular sorts of things. So what you do towards others will determine in some way what you do towards me.)
If meeting someone just to satisfy your lust makes you see them as objects, are you against meeting a friend somewhere purely for non sexual fun? At a theme park for instance, you meet them to go on the rollercoasters, just to have fun together, nothing else. Does this objectify them as someone you have used as means to an end, which will negatively effect how you behave towards others?
Surely you would have to apply the same standards to both scenarios? Or is it just the sex side which makes the church twitchy?
Repeated acts form/are habits which shape action. This is I think the basis of virtue ethics. Another way to say it might be: do something over and over and you might get addicted to it and addiction changes who you are.
In that context, what is the objection to what I wrote?
How does going on a rollercoaster with a friend fit in? How is that using them as an object?
As it happens, in terms of church twitchiness, the writers who shaped ideas on virtue ethics considered sex sins the least serious, because within the disordered desire is often a seeking for friendship, communion etc., in itself a good.
ChrisGB said:
The end part is essential. I do not know what creation is, because it is not a physical process, obviously. What physical process would give you something out of the philosophical concept of nothing? Obviously there isn't one. Essential because we are not talking about obscure science, we are talking about something that we couldn't imagine.
Surely the physics bit makes sense to you?
Both of us likely agree that 'something' needs to have happened for 'everything' to be here. Surely the physics bit makes sense to you?
Nothing may be a difficult concept and finding a true answer could be a never ending search. Whether there's a God at the end of that search, well the evidence so far would suggest there's no reason to think so. None of the questions answered by science recently have pointed to it, if anything we move away with each discovery, with the theists scrambling to find some new hidey hole for their deity.
Krauss states that with scientific advances each time we get a point 'nothing' is being redefined, it's found that indeed 'nothing' is not so, and that definition of 'nothing' doesn't hold. So you need another. Now in science that's easy, we just accept it's furthered knowledge.
For people who propose a supernatural explanation it gets a little harder as far as I see, as that gap, that space in which you are trying to use the lack of answers in science to house your supernatural explanation gets smaller.
Only one of us is filling that gap with a supernatural being and demanding that we prove it's non existence, while offering nothing to prove existence.
Not only that, you are filling it with what seems to be the God of Christianity. You don't argue for deism in the traditional sense, you attach all of this other stuff that needs to be true as well. You can't have one part of what you argue for and just ignore the lack of actual miracles for example... seeing you word danced your way around that one too.
Nothing is, quite possibly, just a place-holder term. We don't know that what there was the other side of the singularity at the start of our universe is nothing but it's likely to require a completely new set of terms. Scientific terms and mathematical if were were ever able to unravel it which seems incredibly unlikely.
If you go 'back' (not that one could have a back without time...) far enough one ends up with the same regression issue that goddidit hits. From both a religious and scientific perspective it cannot be reduced further than that.
The religiously minded claim that god is eternal and was always there and are happy with that.
The rational amongst us say we don't know and are happy with that.
So why, when faced with two irreducible claims do I choose to reject religion and god and embrace and alternative, atheist, humanist stance? I do so because, when applied to the world we do know and can examine god fails to explain anything at all with the simplicity, finesse and honesty of science.
It's absolutely certain that the chance of any particular god out of all the gods that have had followers being the right one, let alone all the gods that have been worshipped and are yet to be worshipped. When we look at the contents of their texts we see conflicting pictures and blatantly fraudulent claims. When we look at their followers we see no superiority. We see no benefits.
I could continue with why I reject the god hypothesis but I will say this to any religious person:
As much as it's my right to reject it it's absolutely your right not to and I have no right to impose otherwise and I demand it be reciprocated. In my view this is where believers and atheists should meet: in secularism. Secularism is the only place that guarantees your religious freedoms and my freedom from religion. If, as a person of religion, you cannot join me there then there will be conflict. I will not bow before your altar without a fight.
If you go 'back' (not that one could have a back without time...) far enough one ends up with the same regression issue that goddidit hits. From both a religious and scientific perspective it cannot be reduced further than that.
The religiously minded claim that god is eternal and was always there and are happy with that.
The rational amongst us say we don't know and are happy with that.
So why, when faced with two irreducible claims do I choose to reject religion and god and embrace and alternative, atheist, humanist stance? I do so because, when applied to the world we do know and can examine god fails to explain anything at all with the simplicity, finesse and honesty of science.
It's absolutely certain that the chance of any particular god out of all the gods that have had followers being the right one, let alone all the gods that have been worshipped and are yet to be worshipped. When we look at the contents of their texts we see conflicting pictures and blatantly fraudulent claims. When we look at their followers we see no superiority. We see no benefits.
I could continue with why I reject the god hypothesis but I will say this to any religious person:
As much as it's my right to reject it it's absolutely your right not to and I have no right to impose otherwise and I demand it be reciprocated. In my view this is where believers and atheists should meet: in secularism. Secularism is the only place that guarantees your religious freedoms and my freedom from religion. If, as a person of religion, you cannot join me there then there will be conflict. I will not bow before your altar without a fight.
S13_Alan said:
ChrisGB said:
The end part is essential. I do not know what creation is, because it is not a physical process, obviously. What physical process would give you something out of the philosophical concept of nothing? Obviously there isn't one. Essential because we are not talking about obscure science, we are talking about something that we couldn't imagine.
Surely the physics bit makes sense to you?
Both of us likely agree that 'something' needs to have happened for 'everything' to be here. Surely the physics bit makes sense to you?
Krauss states that with scientific advances each time we get a point 'nothing' is being redefined, it's found that indeed 'nothing' is not so, and that definition of 'nothing' doesn't hold. So you need another. Now in science that's easy, we just accept it's furthered knowledge.
IainT said:
Nothing is, quite possibly, just a place-holder term.
And that's probably all that needs to be said. There's an element of arrogance, deliberate or otherwise, in this something-from-nothing argument. "I can't imagine what came before the universe and therefore I'll call it nothing and because something can't come from nothing then God must have done it."There are many things in science that cannot be reduced to their linguistical approximations and then argued about. A photon, for example. What is a photon? It's an elementary particle. What's an elementary particle? It's something that has attributes, but what is it? We don't know, we just think of it as a small object but it's not actually an object and it's not small either (it can't be said to have size at all as we understand the concept). Elementary particles might be composed of vibrating strings but these aren't strings and they don't really vibrate either. But our inability to imagine these concepts does not demand the presence of God, just a good head for mathematics. Language fails to describe any quantum notion except at the grossest of levels, and seeing that the universe originated from a quantum event then it's not surprising that we can't just take those approximate words and stick them into some random philosophical framework and produce 'the truth'. It really is the most childish of arguments.
ChrisGB said:
Well you omitted the at least as long explanation of mine of what you quoted, didn't that shed any light?
Repeated acts form/are habits which shape action. This is I think the basis of virtue ethics. Another way to say it might be: do something over and over and you might get addicted to it and addiction changes who you are.
In that context, what is the objection to what I wrote?
How does going on a rollercoaster with a friend fit in? How is that using them as an object?
As it happens, in terms of church twitchiness, the writers who shaped ideas on virtue ethics considered sex sins the least serious, because within the disordered desire is often a seeking for friendship, communion etc., in itself a good.
Because the subject of discussion which lead into your statement on which I quoted you was other people's sex lives and how that affected you, not addiction. This stemmed from abortion if I remember correctly. I substituted 'fun' for 'sex', not for 'addiction'. Repeated acts form/are habits which shape action. This is I think the basis of virtue ethics. Another way to say it might be: do something over and over and you might get addicted to it and addiction changes who you are.
In that context, what is the objection to what I wrote?
How does going on a rollercoaster with a friend fit in? How is that using them as an object?
As it happens, in terms of church twitchiness, the writers who shaped ideas on virtue ethics considered sex sins the least serious, because within the disordered desire is often a seeking for friendship, communion etc., in itself a good.
So your response referencing addiction as the subject is moving the goalposts a bit!
If I'm completely mistaken with my interpretation of what you've said, and what you were getting at wasn't the danger of liberated sex with contraception, I'm sure no sane atheist would advocate addiction as a healthy state of mind, in any form, sexual or not.
GilbertGrape said:
Some of you non religious guys are more religious than you realize.
GG, some of the more eloquent and educated posters on here seem to me to have provided good examples and evidence of the macro evolution which you have decried as being untrue. Do you have a response to the posts which give the theory credence? A response with its own evidence of something tangible, apart from 'it's not true'?kingmoosa said:
GilbertGrape said:
Some of you non religious guys are more religious than you realize.
GG, some of the more eloquent and educated posters on here seem to me to have provided good examples and evidence of the macro evolution which you have decried as being untrue. Do you have a response to the posts which give the theory credence? A response with its own evidence of something tangible, apart from 'it's not true'?standards said:
fluffnik said:
That's the plan, there's nothing of significance good happening now because of religion and a whole heap of bad.
Now I think you'd just prefer it if religion wasn't out there.standards said:
But for right or wrong it is and I'm OK with a study of religion and some of the alternatives. It is still an influence in society albeit a fading one.
Sadly it's not fading.I grew up with the white heat of technology and fully expected religion to have faded out long before now...
kingmoosa said:
GilbertGrape said:
Some of you non religious guys are more religious than you realize.
GG, some of the more eloquent and educated posters on here seem to me to have provided good examples and evidence of the macro evolution which you have decried as being untrue. Do you have a response to the posts which give the theory credence? A response with its own evidence of something tangible, apart from 'it's not true'?As far as arguments against so called macro evolution goes, the Cambrian explosion tells it's own story, and at a level of detail far greater than I could ever put in to words.
GilbertGrape said:
Should I be feeling inadequate because my level of education and eloquence disappoints you?
As far as arguments against so called macro evolution goes, the Cambrian explosion tells it's own story, and at a level of detail far greater than I could ever put in to words.
No you shouldn't be feeling inadequate about your lack of education, but you may want to consider the wisdom of jumping into a debate that requires a certain level of education in order to participate. The education you require is available from any book store. You could try "The Blind Watchmaker" or "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Dawkins. He doesn't stray from evolution into religion, so quite safe for your from that point of view.As far as arguments against so called macro evolution goes, the Cambrian explosion tells it's own story, and at a level of detail far greater than I could ever put in to words.
For a different view on evolution, try pretty much anything by Stephen Jay Gould. SJG requires a degree of concentration and patience. He frequently tours off on diversions such as baseball and probability theory, but he writes really well. Try "The Panda's Thumb".
Gould and Dawkins are held up as representatives of two views of how evolution takes place. Gould, I think, argues for saltation, which is to say bouts of fairly swift changes. The other point of view - which I think is Dawkins's - is that evolution is continually taking place.
Please do your best to explain how the Cambrian explosion can be read as an argument against macro evolution.
PS - "its" not "it's". "It's" is used an abbreviation of "it is". "Its" is used to indicate possession.
PPS - "into" not "in to".
PPS - No need to thank.
OK, less about the PH Spelling Bee, and back to the matter at hand.
Regarding the Cambrian Explosion, is it for or against the macroevolution idea and how?
I keep seeing terms thrown around with no mention of how they fit into any argument or on what side the "thrower" is standing on.
Also, how does the Cambrian era fit in with religious timelines?
Regarding the Cambrian Explosion, is it for or against the macroevolution idea and how?
I keep seeing terms thrown around with no mention of how they fit into any argument or on what side the "thrower" is standing on.
Also, how does the Cambrian era fit in with religious timelines?
GilbertGrape said:
bikemonster said:
Dawkins, Gould
You're trying to argue by sticking your fingers in your ears and declaring your unwilling to listen.
If you want to cling to faith-based explanations for everything then don't get involved in debates where people are using reason.
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