Other There's probably no God...

[LeMaltor]

Can anyone answer why God lets little kids starve to death in Africa? Or gives them HIV/AIDS?

[liratheal]

Originally Posted by LeMaltor

Can anyone answer why God lets little kids starve to death in Africa? Or gives them HIV/AIDS?

I can't, without sounding incredibly insensitive.

I think it is touched on in God, The Devil and Bob, though. Great cartoon.

[Nexxo]

Originally Posted by VipersGratitude

Look, both Science and Religion are at their most basic, ideas. One has a framework to prove itself, the other requires blind faith. It was my assertion that the one with the framework to prove itself (over time) is less dangerous than the one without - There is a big difference between "The word of god holds absolute authority over this dominion" and "Here's my theory, lets do some tests to see if it's true".

Also there are no absolute truths in ethics. Ethics are to support the needs of the community, but these needs change over time. There isn't any religious law that cannot be subverted through mere circumstance.

There is also a difference between: "I believe that all people are equal" and "Let's test the theory that all people are equal".

I don't know about absolute truths in ethics, but I figure that murder or rape are pretty unethical acts no matter how or when you look at it. Some human needs are universal and eternal (think Maslow's hierarchy of needs).

Originally Posted by VipersGratitude

Science did not set out to disprove religious ideas, that was just a bi-product of understanding the universe around us. They arent at loggerheads with each other. There is no balance to be maintained between the two. One simply disproves the assumptions of the other. There ends the relationship.

They are not at loggerheads --they cover two completely different domains of existence altogether. Science cannot contribute anything useful to morality or meaning of life, and morality and meaning of life are not useful frameworks for making planes fly or medication cure diseases. Both contribute significantly to quality of life.

Originally Posted by VipersGratitude

Science is ethically neutral.

That's part of the point I'm making.

Originally Posted by VipersGratitude

All I'm saying is that there are no absolute, unchanging laws of ethics.

There are, in as far as they are about human needs. Certain human needs are universal and will be there as long as humans are there. Food, warmth, shelter. Safetly, love, belonging. The need for self-determination and to express onseself creatively.

Originally Posted by Coldon

Yeh, but people's version of what is right and wrong differs, across religions. Look at fundamentalists, they are running around beating people over the head with their holy books, and they moral standpoint is so skewed its ridiculous. They are throwing their lives away due to blind faith...

Science is entirely neutral, a scientist will develop something because its challenging or the work in that field is necessary, someone else will be the one to use it. How many of the atomic bomb scientists actually used the bomb? and yet due to their work we now have clean and safe nuclear power.

if religion had its way, we'd still be in the dark ages.

Look at scientists: they make terrible weapons so people can beat each other over the head more effectively. They are sacrificing lives on the blind pursuit of science...

How many priests actually go out and kill heathens? They just provide a framework that other people choose to abuse to that end. Yet due to the same religious frameworks we also have charities and volunteers trying their bit to make people's lives better (I've seen it happen: give credit where credit's due. And no attempts were made to convert souls. Some people lead by example). Same argument.

There are primitive tribes that live in what we would consider the "Dark Ages". There are drawbacks --no medicine, no flush toilets, no supermarkets. On the other hand: no worries about terrorism, job loss, the credit crunch, homelessness, just wild animals. You know what? They don't consider us advanced, just different.

Originally Posted by Coldon

As for eugenics, the most common example anyone can think of would be the nazi's, and yet people forget that the nazi's were quite a "christian" bunch of chaps, i don't think their religion stopped them:

http://nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm

No, the most common example you can think of. Eugenics was pretty popular once. From its inception it was supported by prominent people, including H. G. Wells, Emile Zola, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, William Keith Kellogg and Margaret Sanger. Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities. Funding was provided by prestigious sources such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the Harriman family. Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenicists with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York. Eugenics' scientific reputation only started to decline in the 1930s when Ernst Rüdin began incorporating eugenic rhetoric into the racial policies of Nazi Germany.

Eugenics was supported by Woodrow Wilson, and, in 1907, helped to make Indiana the first of more than thirty states to adopt legislation aimed at compulsory sterilization of certain individuals. Although the law was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court in 1921, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions in 1927.

Beginning with Connecticut in 1896, many states enacted marriage laws with eugenic criteria, prohibiting anyone who was "epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded" from marrying. In 1898 Charles B. Davenport, a prominent American biologist, began as director of a biological research station based in Cold Spring Harbor where he experimented with evolution in plants and animals. In 1904 Davenport received funds from the Carnegie Institution to found the Station for Experimental Evolution. The Eugenics Record Office opened in 1910 while Davenport and Harry H. Laughlin began to promote eugenics.

Stand back: we're going to attempt science...

Originally Posted by books

Could it not be that millions have died in the name of religion, and continue to do so? Or because religion is often pushed on people, and atheism is not. So perhaps this is a reaction to that. There are religious signs and statements all over the place, so having one that's the opposite to that might make people think. And perhaps it's helpful to make people think. Religion can have quite a significant impact on people's lives, often in a negative way (no sex before marriage, no alcohol, church every sunday, prayers however many times a day, no hair cutting, etc) and IF it's all based on a phony story, then perhaps if people care, they should step in and make a statement about it?

I can see how it's nice ideal for people to be left alone to do what they like and believe what they want, but there are times when that shouldn't happen. When something is harmful, then it's time for other people to get involved, and many believe religion creates far more harm and very little good. If there was no religion in the world, wouldn't it be a better place? And would anyone really be any worse off?

You'd be surprised. Religion is not some useless phenomenon randomly emerging from our ability to fantasise and anthropomorhise. It actually has a bunch of important psychological functions (other philiosophies will do just as well, but the point is we have to have something). Look at Communist Russia or China: they banned religion. Now how well did that work out for them? Any better off?

Well then.

Originally Posted by books

I am in England, and I care! I think lots of people care. There is a big issue about what should be presented to children at schools, and it's all about Science Vs Religion. It's a big deal. And the happy children analogy I don't think is quite right, because happy children are most likely completely innocent and harmless, but religion isn't, for the reasons I said above. When you think about all the stuff that has happened over the decades in Northern Ireland and is still happening now in the Middle East etc. That all mostly comes from religion, and it's just not really a good thing to have people here who blindly follow a bunch of beliefs that in most cases, they had drilled in to them at such a young age that they never had a chance to think about it for themselves, or were scared to question it. (And who can blame them seeing as they are told they will burn in hell for eternity etc..). If some other organisation behaved like that, it would be shut down immediately and everyone would probably be imprisoned. There is also the whole thing about how religion completely defies basic scientific understanding, and ignoring that it doesn't make much sense, it surely isn't a good thing to be teaching and preaching something that goes against science and logical thought.

No, that's about tribalism, not religion. Substitute for culture, race, social class and the same dynamics occur.

[woof82]

Originally Posted by Coldon

In my experience it also seem like being religious results in a massive drop in IQ: here take a bible, that'll be 50 IQ points please.

I went to a Christian lunch once. Of the ten people sitting on the table, 8 of them had been to, or were going to either Oxford or Cambridge university. Some to study science, some to study humanities.

I'm getting so sick and tired of hearing people bash on religion because the think that extremists are represantative of the whole. You might as well think that all brown people are terrorists.

What is this idea that science and religion cannot co-exist? The Church of England promotes evolution. My maths, physics and chemistry teachers at school were christians. There are Christians, Muslims and Jews studying my course and uni. In fact, the only religious people I've encountered are intelligent rational people. The deep south is not equal to the rest of the world.

Can we pease stop making statements that suggest that all religion is inherently evil?

[mvagusta]

Originally Posted by woof82

What is this idea that science and religion cannot co-exist?

Is there any scientific proof of the beliefs in any religion?

[woof82]

What's the point in that question? What does that even mean?

How about this: there's a plague of locusts mentioned in Genesis. I think that since then science has proved that locusts travel in swarms.

[steveo_mcg]

Originally Posted by woof82

Sure, all of the plagues of Egypt are scientifically plausable.

Eh? Plausible and provable are very very different concepts.

[UrbanMarine]

There are scientific findings showing up left and right these days but people still stick with their original beliefs. Which does matter anyways because like I've said in the past the Messiah for any religion could show up right now and people wouldn't believe it.

NIN: Heresy
he sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see
he tries to tell me what i put inside of me
he's got the answers to ease my curiosity
he dreamed a god up and called it christianity
god is dead and no one cares
if there is a hell i'll see you there
he flexed his muscles to keep his flock of sheep in line
he made a virus that would kill off all the swine
his perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain
demands devotion atrocities done in his name
god is dead and no one cares
if there is a hell i'll see you there
your god is dead and no one cares
if there is a hell i'll see you there
god is dead and no one cares
if there is a hell i'll see you there your god is dead
god is dead and no one cares
and no one cares drowning in his own hypocrisy
and if there is a hell i will see you see you there

burning with your god in humility
will you die for this?

[mvagusta]

Originally Posted by woof82

What's the point in that question? What does that even mean?

How about this: there's a plague of locusts mentioned in Genesis. I think that since then science has proved that locusts travel in swarms.

Are you even half serious? You can't understand my question? You think that because a type of insect travels in swarms, that prooves that a plague occured?

I'm starting to believe that touching a bible robs at least 50 iq points I'm just joking, i don't believe in things that i can't proove.

Originally Posted by UrbanMarine

There are scientific findings showing up left and right these days...

Name one, please

[UrbanMarine]

They've been using IR technology to read the Dead Sea scrolls and other old writings. Can't remember what text it was but the Virgin Mary was a miss translation and now they're saying Mary wasn't a virgin. The correct translation was young mary or something like that..it was on the history channel a while back. They also found out Jesus wasn't hung in a grand area like they though but he was hung in what we call the city dump.

Anyways I really don't care because God's been on my **** list and I don't believe in the Churchs mumbojumbo. Just wanted to say science is working but the brainwashed don't believe.

[mvagusta]

Originally Posted by UrbanMarine

...science is working but the brainwashed don't believe.

True

[woof82]

I understand that the concept of a deity cannot be proved explicitly by scientific studies. I assume this is the point you were trying to make by asking that rhetoric. Your question was meaningless, you might as well ask for scientific proof that the stone henge wasn't built by aliens. I assume we're talking about Christianity, in which case we have plenty of reliable documentation of the events surrounding the life of Jesus. That's not science, that's history. What do you want? An equation? Does this equation prove the holocaust too?

Science does not aim to disprove religion, and religion does not aim to disprove science.

Religion does not aim to teach us thermodynamics.
Science does not aim to teach us how to treat others with dignity and respect.

[Timmy_the_tortoise]

That motto is the exact theological conclusion I came to a year or so ago.

Brilliant. I like it. I'm glad they're taking atheism in the traditional meaning of "without theism" rather than the modern corruption of atheism to mean "anti-theism".

[steveo_mcg]

Originally Posted by woof82

I assume we're talking about Christianity, in which case we have plenty of reliable documentation of the events surrounding the life of Jesus. That's not science, that's history.

We have ample proof that a chap named Jesus was born, got to love the Roman records. We also have reasonable historical records of the events that happened around when he would have been alive and I'm fairly sure we have records of his execution. Every thing else is very open to interpretation.

Originally Posted by UrbanMarine

They've been using IR technology to read the Dead Sea scrolls and other old writings. Can't remember what text it was but the Virgin Mary was a miss translation and now they're saying Mary wasn't a virgin. The correct translation was young mary or something like that..it was on the history channel a while back. They also found out Jesus wasn't hung in a grand area like they though but he was hung in what we call the city dump.

Anyways I really don't care because God's been on my **** list and I don't believe in the Churchs mumbojumbo. Just wanted to say science is working but the brainwashed don't believe.

Ahaha quality.

[VipersGratitude]

Islam means "Surrender" as in "Surrender to the will of Allah". Being saved means surrendering your life to the will of Jesus. Religion one of several ideas that demand servitute, and under the right circumstances, self-sacrifice. In other threads, Nexxo, I have seen you condemn patriotism as the virtue of the viscious (as Wilde so eloquently put it). But they are intrinsically similar - both demand servitute, and under the right circumstances, self-sacrifice. There are other ideas that people die for too. Such as Democracy, Capitalism, Communism, Freedom, Truth, I could go on...

What makes religion stands out is it's authority - Where the buck stops. That is what makes it so dangerous. The buck doesn't stop with a President, or any other fallible human position, but with the omnipotent creator of eeeeeverything!!!! (omgwtf!). God cannot be questioned. He shouldn't be questioned because God works in mysterious ways, ways that we mere mortals cannot understand. Everything happens for a purpose. Your whole family died? That was God's will, so you must go and fight for him, and in death you will find His Love and the love of your family once more. So onward Christian (or Islamic, or whatever) Soldiers. You must not question your orders from God. You must not falter. We will march until the walls of Jericho fall.

...


There is an ant scurrying on the ground. He climbs up a blade of grass. It is a great effort for him, and when he gets to the top he falls. But that little ant, god bless him, he dusts himself off and he climbs up that blade of grass again. And yet again he falls. But that little ant never gives up. He keeps on climbing and falling, climbing and falling. What caused such admirable determination in this ant? Is the only ant with a steel will such as this, or is it a fluke?

It is a fluke. It's a Lancet Fluke, Dicrocoelium dendriticum. The Lancet Fluke is a parasitic brain worm that has to get in to the stomach of a large mammal, such as a sheep or a cow in order to reproduce. Just as salmon swin upstream, the lancet fluke commandeers a passing ant, crawls in to its brain and drives the ant up to the top of a blade of grass in hope that it will be eaten by a grazing animal.

There never was anything in it for the ant. The ant's brain was hijacked by a parasite that infects the brain and drives it to, what is essentially, suicide. Does that sound farmiliar? Being infected doing something on behalf of a cause beyond one's own genetic fitness? It's ideas, not worms, that hijack our brains.

All of our brains have been hijacked by ideas, there are psychological rewards for it. How can you be happy in western society? Well, you find something larger than yourself and dedicate your life to it. Right? The secret of happiness isn't maximising the number of grandchildren you have. Our evolutionary success, thanks to our higher brain functions have subordinated genetic interest in favour of other interests.

But we must choose the right ideas, such as furthering human understanding through science...and not an idea, such as religion, that will drive us to self-sacrifice given the chance. Yes I will agree that people die due to scientific discovery, mistakes are made, but there is a pay-off. Science evolves and serves us. Whereas religion is stagnant, and its only agenda is to replicate itself by hijacking our brains and driving us to pointless ritualistic endeavours, which may include self-sacrifice.

[Nexxo]

First, you have to make a distinction between fundamentalist religion and faith. We can point to the extravagances of the Catholic Church and extremist Muslim terrorists, but they're a far cry from the people that visit the local community church and do a bit of volunteer work.

Religious beliefs perform six functions:

1. It provides a useful catch-all explanation for all the random, non-sensical outrageous random crap that happens in life all the time. If we did not have some sort of framework to integrate these experiences, we'd be adrift in chaos. Some people can handle complex chaos theories and uncertainty; some people need something firmer and simpler to hold on to.
   
2. It provides meaning: you're not a pointless speck in a random sequence of cosmic events; your life has meaning and purpose. Everything that happens to you is preordained destiny. It is a test, a learning experience, a step on a directed path to a higher destination.
   
3. It provides reassurance: you're not an insignificant speck in a vast, cold, indifferent and infinitely lethal universe, here today, gone tomorrow, but you are cradled in the love and care of an omnipotent benevolent creator, who will take you to paradise after your death. God is an attachment figure.
   
4. Better not piss him off, then: it provides you with a sense of control over the uncontrollable. Get the Big Guy on your side; please the Creator, and he'll look after you (and if bad stuff happens to you, you obviously deserved it. Repentance means salvation).
   
5. It provides a sense of tribal cohesion. You all believe in the same God, you follow the same rituals. You are His chosen people (and the others are heathens who you can optionally ignore or destroy with impunity).
   
6. It provides a hierarchical framework for leadership (this is the one that formal religous institutions have caught onto). As above, so below. Obey God, obey His representative. Slay the heathens that will not toe the line.

Unlike the Lancet Fluke, religion is not an independent parasitic entity. It is an emergent phenomenon: an inevitable product of the human mind once it reaches a certain level of complexity of thinking (five orders of intentionality, in fact). Like many of our core beliefs on How The World Works it has psychological survival functions and is self-sustaining in the face of contradictory evidence. And like anything else, it can be constructive or destructive.

...

Here's a story of my own. Although I have altered some personal details to protect the identity of the patient, the salient points are true. About a decade ago, an illegal immigrant came to the UK. She arrived on a Saturday with no more than a small suitcase of clothes, and ten pounds in her pocket. On Sunday she was cleaning buildings. She had no family; she came from a home where she was beaten and neglected. She was raped in the UK but too afraid to go to the police --illegal, you see? This resulted in a pregnancy and a little girl --her only possession in the world, and her most treasured one. She had to leave it alone in a bedsit while she went to work --long shifts, seven days a week. Two years later she was diagnosed with cancer. This was a problem as she had no National Insurance, and management was going to turn simply her away but the hospital doctors and nurses did some creative paperwork to stall matters and got her treated anyway. Unfortunately the cancer was too advanced --out of fear and having no GP, she had ignored the symptoms for too long. She died a year later.

I was her cancer psychologist. I saw her in a homeless hostel once she was discharged from hospital, but still on chemo, wrecked with pain. Hostels are very unpleasant places for the flotsam of society: uncontrolled psychotics, low-level criminals, addicts. How was she going to manage, I wondered after my first visit.

On my second visit it turns out that one day, in desperation, she went to a local chapel to pray. The local church community discovered her there, and mobilised vast social and practical resources to help her, this foreign stranger, the lowest of the low, for no other reason than they thought they should. They visited her there, gave her food and clothes, took her on community outings and meals, and continued to visit her at her death bed in hospital.

That, too, is religion at work.

[bigsharn]

"Bendy-buses, like atheism, are a danger to the public at large."


Atheists aren't opposers of believers, Atheists are those that just don't believe... Satanists are opposers (Look up the word Satan and it actually translates to Opposer)

And +1 on the bendy buses (slightly straying off-topic)

[cyrilthefish]

Originally Posted by Nexxo

Here's a story of my own. Although I have altered some personal details to protect the identity of the patient, the salient points are true. About a decade ago, an illegal immigrant came to the UK. She arrived on a Saturday with no more than a small suitcase of clothes, and ten pounds in her pocket. On Sunday she was cleaning buildings. She had no family; she came from a home where she was beaten and neglected. She was raped in the UK but too afraid to go to the police --illegal, you see? This resulted in a pregnancy and a little girl --her only possession in the world, and her most treasured one. She had to leave it alone in a bedsit while she went to work --long shifts, seven days a week. Two years later she was diagnosed with cancer. This was a problem as she had no National Insurance, and management was going to turn simply her away but the hospital doctors and nurses did some creative paperwork to stall matters and got her treated anyway. Unfortunately the cancer was too advanced --out of fear and having no GP, she had ignored the symptoms for too long. She died a year later.

I was her cancer psychologist. I saw her in a homeless hostel once she was discharged from hospital, but still on chemo, wrecked with pain. Hostels are very unpleasant places for the flotsam of society: uncontrolled psychotics, low-level criminals, addicts. How was she going to manage, I wondered after my first visit.

On my second visit it turns out that one day, in desperation, she went to a local chapel to pray. The local church community discovered her there, and mobilised vast social and practical resources to help her, this foreign stranger, the lowest of the low, for no other reason than they thought they should. They visited her there, gave her food and clothes, took her on community outings and meals, and continued to visit her at her death bed in hospital.

That, too, is religion at work.

I love this story, it's an example of good human nature at work.

The thing is the religion is completely superfluous to this story, you could replace the religious group with nearly any other group/community and get the same effect. it's a basic product of human nature, not a product of religion.

people are good/evil and will help/ignore other people
religious people are good/evil and will help/ignore other people

why is religion relevant at all?

I'd say this is more a product of communities, there's plenty of examples of various communities helping each other out, whatever the focus of the community is. All it takes is a few good people to rally a group and you have a real force for positive action, the actual original reason/ideal for the group is pretty much irrelevant

I know i'd help help out the person you mentioned if i came across them, and i can be rabidly anti-religious at times

[liratheal]

Originally Posted by cyrilthefish

I love this story, it's an example of good human nature at work.

The thing is the religion is completely superfluous to this story, you could replace the religious group with nearly any other group/community and get the same effect. it's a basic product of human nature, not a product of religion.

people are good/evil and will help/ignore other people
religious people are good/evil and will help/ignore other people

why is religion relevant at all?

I'd say this is more a product of communities, there's plenty of examples of various communities helping each other out, whatever the focus of the community is. All it takes is a few good people to rally a group and you have a real force for positive action, the actual original reason/ideal for the group is pretty much irrelevant

I expect that religion is the most noticable, and easiest to work with, common ground that those people share.