Evolution and the Pope

Quote: FrGamble

Finally, do you think their non belief in God led them to believe instead in some other type of gods such as the state, power, money, greed, or material things?

The belief or otherwise in god is not important to make men wish for power and material conquest.

Religion has it's own power, and those seeking power do not wish to share it.

Quote: TheCesspit

The belief or otherwise in god is not important to make men wish for power and material conquest.

Religion has it's own power, and those seeking power do not wish to share it.

Actually Christianity exists to encourage us to serve others and to share power, wealth, etc. especially with those in need. It is the antidote to our sickness.

Ah, the power of "cognitive dissonance"?

It befuddles me how someone can deny God and nearly in the same breath swear fealty to the republican party?

If you are going to believe in what you claim is a "false deity" at least go big.

Ok, I will try and help a little bit.

Hold out your hand. In that hand, contains all the time that has ever passed or will ever pass.

Time does not pass. Only the measurement of time passes. The measurement of time was created by man as a shield to protect him from his eventual demise.
When he perceives x amount of time before his death, he can act differently then when it is up close.

Spacetime ala Einstein and wormholes discovered mathmatically using quantum physics almost proves the existence of "the multiverse" or multiple universes existing in the same space and time. The first statement of quantum mechanics "reality is created by the observer" is useful in grasping the totality of infinity.

I hope this helps.

Nareed, surely you recognize that there are truths that cannot be know through observable science. Philosophy can discover truths like the equality of all people without scientific evidence. To discover the beginning of all things is obviously something that science is helpless to know anything about. What is there to observe or test before time or matter existed?
We also are not left to guessing about alien bats or monkeys either. Reasoned thinking knows that once you go back far enough or break something down small enough you will eventually have to reach an ultimate beginning. Without an ultimate beginning we continue down a meaningless path looking for the foundation upon which what obviously exists can be justified. This is the beginning to which science points but does not dare to go and which only our reason can take us. But do not despair or devolve into childish solutions or crazy maybe statements. What can we know about this beginning?
At the very least we know this beginning is not material, because all matter is contingent on something else for its existence. So we know the beginning is spiritual. We also know if every atom, every bit of matter was created by this spiritual force then we are dealing with immense, infinite power. Space alien bats do not fit these criteria so we can be absolutely certain that they did not create the universe.

Quote: FrGamble

Actually Christianity exists to encourage us to serve others and to share power, wealth, etc. especially with those in need. It is the antidote to our sickness.

I thought Christianity existed due to the belief in a higher power, knowable through Jesus Christ.

Christianity has been used by many to horde riches and power, to control the masses and to dictate to the common man. Maybe that's a corruption of its purpose, but to deny it has happened is to deny gravity.

Some of us choose to live in the real world,
while others (religious people mostly) choose
to live in a world made up in their heads.

Nothing wrong with that as long as they don't
try and force us along for the ride, as Christians
used to do and radical Muslims are doing now.

Quote: petroglyph

The first statement of quantum mechanics "reality is created by the observer" is useful in grasping the totality of infinity.
.

This was Krishnamurti's main theme. He's
the guy who was raised to be the leader
of the Theosophists over 100 years ago
and when it came time for him to take
over, he rejected it. He said listen to no
teacher, not even him, you're born knowing
all the answers.

He would say in every speaking event that
the observer is the observed, you can't
separate them. That we create our own reality.

Quote: FrGamble

To discover the beginning of all things is obviously something that science is helpless to know anything about.

There are a lot of certainties you throw out that I think are quite illuminating. I almost believe there must be a biological difference between our brain processes that make each of us not unwilling, but truly unable to comprehend the other.

Like the above. You say it is "obvious" that science is helpless to know about the pre-beginning. My own reasoning says it is possible that science may never be able to crack it. But "obviously helpless"?

The only way for us to judge the unknown is to compare it to the known. We must look at track record. And here, I think, is the foundation of my atheist beliefs.

Both paths are pretty piss poor. Pretty sure science is the one that said life comes from nothing until Pasteur came around. Pretty sure many of its "miracles", like MTBE, end up being worse that the problem they tried to solve. The book of scientific failures is thick and continues to grow larger, and faster, by the day. Religion? Same thing. The claims found in ancient texts continue to be refuted with every discovery. We know the sun isn't toted by chariot, we know lightning isn't thrown, we know the biological aspects of Noah's journey are impossible to accomplish.

So where does that leave us. For me, I use was you ask. Reasoned thinking. I see that science keeps pushing. They say "life comes from nothing" and make a little jar of meat to "prove" it. They cap it, let it sit, then viola!, maggots appear. Life comes from nothing, and here's your proof. Ah, but then another guy comes along and says "ye daft fool, it's not a proper experiment". He does it the proper way, and now the answer we finally had goes up in smoke, leaving us at square one. What is science's response? They keep pushing. There indeed are fights to suppress the new info, those who make discoveries do try to protect them. But in the end, and the bottom line is, truth prevails.

Religion doesn't do this as well. I think it's because religion isn't a process; it's an answer. It cannot evolve, cannot grow. If science is proven wrong, it uses the wrong to continue to search for the right. If religion is proven wrong, it ceases to be. The Judeo-Christian belief has already been strained deeply, IMO, because of stories and concepts we know not to be true today. When a religious claim is refuted, there is no further study, no rewriting of the script. You have to use what I feel are cop-outs. "Oh, that story is allegory". It doesn't feel genuine.

I admit I have difficulty in what we talked about before, keeping science to the "how" and only using religion for the "why". I actually like that idea. But so much of what I know from the Bible does try to usurp the "how". How the world was made, how the universe was created, how man came to be. And if that's part of the argument, I have to look at is as described above.

Two guys, both almost always wrong. But one guy admits when he's wrong and goes back to try to get it right. The other guy just keeps making the same claim, using the escape of "allegory" whenever he's painted into an impossible corner. Which would you do business with? Which would you trust with your (after)life?

Quote: Face

The other guy just keeps making the same claim, using the escape of "allegory" whenever he's painted into an impossible corner.

Or they have a big broom to sweep it under
the rug and pretend it never happened. The
'truth' of the Catholic church today is a far
cry from the 'truth' is spewed forth just 500
years ago. They held power over parts of
the world that we can't even imagine today.
They've never gotten over losing it.

Quote: FrGamble

Nareed, surely you recognize that there are truths that cannot be know through observable science. Philosophy can discover truths like the equality of all people without scientific evidence.

Philosophical ideas can be tested by applying them. Depending on the idea, the application can be easy or hard, large or small. Such things as equality did require a shift in world view, which is not easy (and which religion obstructed, BTW). In part this came from scientific advances, either directly or indirectly. Industrialization, a scientific by-product of sorts, gave the common people power. This let the elites revise their world view.

Quote:

To discover the beginning of all things is obviously something that science is helpless to know anything about. What is there to observe or test before time or matter existed?

Yes, exactly: what is there to see "before" the Big Bang took place? That's a fascinating question.

Think: what is there to see in a drop of water? Thanks to van Leeuwenhoek we know the answer to that.

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Reasoned thinking knows that once you go back far enough or break something down small enough you will eventually have to reach an ultimate beginning.

Reasoned thinking also tell you the universe is deterministic, and that objects have fixed locations in space-time. Yet at the quantum level things are not deterministic and you can't find their fixed locations, only probabilities for either events or positions (BTW, I highly recommend reading George Gamow's books about Mr. Tompkins. Translating quantum laws into the everyday world proves fascinating).

It may be there is no ultimate beginning, and that the universe, in one form or another, is eternal.

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Without an ultimate beginning we continue down a meaningless path looking for the foundation upon which what obviously exists can be justified.

We're looking to see what things are like. We don't always like the answers, but ultimately we get used to them.

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At the very least we know this beginning is not material, because all matter is contingent on something else for its existence.

That's an unwarranted assumption. we know the matter and energy (they're the same thing) in the universe existed in the primeval atom. We don't know how, or even whether, it was created.

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So we know the beginning is spiritual.

We know nothing of the sort. See above.

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We also know if every atom, every bit of matter was created by this spiritual force then we are dealing with immense, infinite power. Space alien bats do not fit these criteria so we can be absolutely certain that they did not create the universe.

Alien space bats are a convention in Alternate History to "explain" a point of departure (the difference which makes the history go alternate). These include alien invasions (as in Turtledove's series where aliens invade in 1942, rudely interrupting WWII), alien devices, some forms of time travel (likely involving mad scientists), etc. I don't know that any actual alien space bats were ever used by anyone.

Anyway, "We don't know," actually and truly means we don't know. It doesn't mean "We can make stuff up and pass it as true," nor does it mean "anything goes." This means that any "explanation" which involves no evidence can and should be dismissed out of hand. it may be true, but without evidence there is no way to know it's true.

So, sure, maybe it was God.

Let's see the evidence.