tony de wonderful

You're still trying to rationalise it from a scientistic/physicalist POV. At the end of the day it's the 'leap of faith' as per Kierkegaard.

jonc

From a creationist's point of view the Earth is 6000 years old and was created in 6 days and that dinosaurs co-existed with man.

Is this basis for those who believe in intelligent design?

JTaylor

The name of God is ineffable. 'It' is the only accurate description of God within the constraints of English language, and indeed within the shortcomings of the sum of human language. 'Him' implies that God is male, whereas I'm of the view that God is neither male nor female. An anthropormorphic description is simply the result of humanity's limited capacity to contemplate and articulate the Almighty. 'Him' is a remnant of patriarchy amongst early scribes and pharisees and perpetuated, within Christianity for example, by the Nicene Creed.

With regards multiverse theory, it seems the most likely explanation
for the existence of this universe among all other explanations that have been thus far revealed.

Well, our universe has been around for 13.5 billion years and humans have only existed in this outpost of this universe for between 100-200 thousand years. As such, I'm of the view that the odds of God taking human form are so slim as to be close to zero. I did say "almost" as, being untestable, 'absolutely' would've been remiss.

tony de wonderful

ID is obscurantist I'm not 100% sure actually.

jonc

I put it down to probability as the most likely answer.

JTaylor

So? Esoteric Christianity requires no such leap.

JTaylor

Anthropic principle.

tony de wonderful

How doesn't it? If it doesn't it's science.

Carlh

Well, that explains it all. Along with the number that is the meaning of life.

Youve just reminded me to watch that movie again, its ace.

Carlh

If there is a god, we're all going to get our asses kicked sooooo badly when he decides it time. We crap as a civilisation. Some of the stuff you can view on the internet (liveleak.com kaotic.com) will astound you at the stuff we are capable of.

an example of something i saw earlier today, a man had been beaten to within a twitch of his life (actually twitching), his brains spewing out of his head and the guys who done it and was videoing it, wrote a message (in arabic) with his finger scooping out the blood from his head and brains.

This truly is a fooked up world guys.

JTaylor

A craft would be a more accurate description. Faith is for the profane; keeps them under control, you see.

jonc

How do you know whether God is male or not? Was man not created in his own image? Is God not referred to as The Father? You have taken this as a limitation of language eons ago and through your own thought processes and belief's conclude that God is neither, that is fine. Though the underlying belief that there is one almighty entity still stems from what was written thousands of years ago. If this is your interpretation, your adaptation and thus evolution of God as it were from the bible, therefore I could define this belief as to be "man made", just as the bible was written by a man as a rational comprehension of recorded historical events and to fill in gaps of what man cannot comprehend.

Geezer

This is my main contention with modern definitions of God. It is, as you say, just an evolution of a more primitive and uninformed idea. The very notion that early humans had an awareness of the Universe they lived in or it's age, or their own evolution is preposterous. The notion of God is man made, any modern notion of God that is not literal is also man made, just more 'elegant' and in line with what humans have discovered along the way. It's almost as if the idea of God is too hard to let go, so fit it to modern thinking.

Geezer

JTaylor

You need to try to get beyond the Bible, Jonc. It's just a book. Best selling and most widely owned book of all time, admittedly, but it's just a book. For example, these are some of the missing books from the Old and New Testaments:

Book of Covenants
Book of wars of the Lord
Book of Jasher
A book of Statutes
Book of Acts of Solomon
Books of Nathan and Gad
Prophecy of Ahijah and Visions of Iddo
Book of Shemaiah
Book of Jehu
Acts of Uzziah written by Isaiah
Sayings of the Seers
Apistle of Paul to the Ephesians and to the Laodiceans
Apistle of Jude
The Propheces of Enoch

Then you have the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas, Judas, Mary and Simon Peter. Additionally, you're not considering works like the Bhagavad Gita, The Book of the Dead, The Sumarian, Babylonian and Canaanite Texts and so on and so forth.

All attempts, by humans, to explain the Almighty. "Father"; "Own image"; big deal. I prefer an equalateral triangle or a circumpunct or a vesica piscis - more accurate reflections: these symbols allow for speculation. Words are very limiting.

Carlh

Id agree with you on that geezer, but the Mayans were quite an advanced civilisation who mapped out the stars and predicted planetary position within "hours" of it actually occurring, for 5,125 ahead of their time....

Thats not to go onto the 2012 myth of end-of-times etc.. just pointing out that 2,000 BC these people were WAY ahead of their time.

I suppose that could lead onto an outside influence of their knowledge as mayan drawings depict "men from space" with space suits and leads further onto possible time-travelling....

http://www.syfy.co.uk/blog/warehouse...s-part-4---anc

Carlh

One view could be, that at some point in the future (this may have already happened because of our beliefs as they are now and also the fact that we are talking about this, has already happened) that we develop time travel (the mayans have clear pictures of men with space helmets, UFO style ships), go back, really far in time to see where we developed, found nothing but chaos because without religion although we developed advanced technology, had no moral highground when developing it, instilled beliefs using our technology to make us look like "god"(s) therefore writing our own future...

It mind bending....

and because we done this, have stalled development of time travel (amongst other technologies) because of the dark ages....

JTaylor

Or humans can't let go because we're hard-wired to search for God.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology

Religion, Philopsophy and Science are all chasing the same thing; truth. When we mature as a race and develope our language, and when our frontal lobes grow and our adrenaline glands shrink and when we can plug into AI, the three will be indistinguishable. Unless we're overrun by a totalitarian and immutable monotheism; then we're stuffed.

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

Nobody has mentioned Created Aniquety / Omphalos hypothesis

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

God created the past at the same time he created the Earth

Shaun

Geezer

The Mayans are well within the realms of 'civilisation' in a historical context though. Recognisable religions started about 11-12,000 years ago, with good evidence for spiritualism and other rites well before that, whereas the Mayans rose about 2,000 BCE, some 7,000 years later.

Religion, it would seem, pre-dates science by some margin (unless you count humans using tools of course, but that does not encompass knowledge of the Universe....).

Or, you could say, religion is the first science. Like lots of other scientific discoveries, it was incorrect, understandable given the collective knowledge of humanity at the time, but unlike most other scientific discoveries, could/would not move on and find a better explanation.

It has since (for the mainstream, large organised ones at any rate) become a means of control.

Geezer

tony de wonderful

It's more true than you think. Someone like Faucault would say that there are limits to our knowing because language is imperfect....how else is knowledge described and transferred?

That being so then we can't know the truth, there are only signs and pointers and we come full circle to Jung, Nietzsche etc

Really the physicalism that people like Dawkins and Hawkins etc rest there science on as THE road to truth is very much not solid ground, when you get into ontology etc and what we REALLY know about the nature of being....answer is not much with complete certainty.

tony de wonderful

C'mon that's pseudo-scientific guff.

JTaylor

"Guff" - now there's a good word!

Anyway, what is that you question?

jonc

I only refer to the bible as merely a widely accepted form of religious literature that we can all refer to in this discussion. But it makes no difference as all form of religious literature is still a product of man. As our understanding grows with mankind striving for more knowledge of how we came to be, the literal meaning of all religious literature becomes ever more redundant and is compensated with more than a hint of an existential philosophy. It is understandable that we all would like to think that there is “more”, that what goes through our heads is more than just electrical impulses and chemical reactions in our brain.

tony de wonderful

You are describing a philosophical position: physcialism, rather than a scientific position you realise?

JTaylor

Just. We're just a way for the Universe to know itself.

bigsinky

dont forget Bel and the Dragon and Maccabees

Henrik

iTrader: (5)

The difference is that if the evidence doesn't fit the "dogma", then science changes, where-as religion makes up excuses as to why something isn't like it says in the various scriptures.


FWIW, I'm an atheist. I believe ( ) that all religions are man made, and there certainly is no personal god, that would bother listening to human prayers.

As science/true knowledge has advanced, the space taken up by religion in peoples lives have shrunk. I hope that at some time, humanity can get rid of the scourge of religion.


From scientific observations we know that the universe is really, really old. We also know that there are billions and billions of stars. That there would be some god creature that would take particular interest in what humans did on some little insignificant planet on the outskirts of a plain galaxy is, well, ludicrous.

Evolution can explain the origin of life, and the variety we see on earth. People used to turn to religion to explain what they saw in nature, but with scientific advances this is no longer necessary.

The only thing there might still be room for religion is in my opinion where the universe "came" from, but I think it's just a matter of time before science comes up with a consistent theory for the "start" (if there was such a thing - indeed it might not make sense to ask the question, because we don't fully appreciate what time means). Once the "beginning" (again, there might not even be a beginning) can be explained, there is no longer any need for any God, even to "start" the universe off.


Religions are totally inconsistent in their teachings and most seem *evil* (certainly judaism, christianism and islam) with their jelaous god(s), that I think everyone should reject them. A lot of really, really, bad things have been done in the name of religion, but I still haven't heard of anything bad being done in the name of atheism.

Btw, just as a side note, christianism is certainly polytheistic with the tripartite stuff going on.

jods

I can't get my head around the concept of infinity but I also can't get my head around the concept that the earth was created in 6 days - That seems to be so unlikely.

Of course - there is the possibility that nothing truly exists and your life is purely an abstract existence.

If I had to choose a position - I'd probably go for a concrete existence.
There are approx 6 billion people on the planet today. It makes sense to me that, over time, the 100 Billion Neuron connections in a human brain could be duplicated EXACTLY.

In that situation - "Reincarnation" could be on the cards. I honestly believe that I will experience life many times. All that needs to happen is that the "code" that makes up my 100 Billion neuron connections needs to be exactly replicated, environmental, social, parental influences pay a part - but they are just meta-attributes.

fast bloke

Is there not one that says "Thou shallt not covet thy neighbours wife and kids?"

fast bloke

How do we know this story about god anyway. Where does the religious concept originate?