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The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

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Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Kepler said:
Agrarian cults tend to focus on death. You plant god in the ground and he comes back up (as the "bread of life") -- this is simply the metaphorical celebration of the cycle of planting and harvesting. Humans participate in the god's resurrection either directly (reincarnation) or indirectly (immortality in an afterlife). When you consider how large a part of life death is for primitive peoples, it's not a big surprise.

The farce of religion is that people forget these myths are human-created self-help strategies, and instead hard-code them as literal facts long after they are no longer relevant to the culture. The isolation of these sects as they fall farther and farther out of step with reality feeds both their paranoia and their parochial self-centeredness as a "chosen" people. This becomes a tragedy when those sects become violent.
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And your reality is, what? What is the ultimate purpose and meaning of life to you? Posts like this are so dismissive of those who have religious beliefs, but I've never seen you offer a viable alternative and I've seen you note before that the lack of such alternative is a problem.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Required reading. "Those who subscribe to the idea that science and religion exist in tense, perpetual opposition are largely those without a religion themselves." Science and religion are not in conflict. They describe different realms (our current one and the eternal).
 
geezer said:
Required reading. "Those who subscribe to the idea that science and religion exist in tense, perpetual opposition are largely those without a religion themselves." Science and religion are not in conflict. They describe different realms (our current one and the eternal).
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Ha ha ha ha. Good one. I guess all those people who excommunicated scientists and outlawed teaching of evolution and who refuse medical treatments didn't have a religion, then? Or maybe not a "real" religion? (cue 5Mn...)

People who are okay with dividing the domains are the same ones who would have been okay with Solomon dividing the baby. There's only one baby, and the side of religion has been losing its grip for the last 400 years or so.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Bob Gray said:
And your reality is, what? What is the ultimate purpose and meaning of life to you? Posts like this are so dismissive of those who have religious beliefs, but I've never seen you offer a viable alternative and I've seen you note before that the lack of such alternative is a problem.
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This is my reality:

There is no meaning or purpose in nature. However, there is a drive to find meaning and purpose in human psychology. This creates a seeming paradox -- how do we satisfy our need for purpose in a universe that does not contain it?

The paradox is solved by the duality of human life. We live both within nature and also within a "second level" of reality -- culture. We do not only live in the natural world, we also live in a sociological world, connected to other people, and the rules there are psychological. Those rules are not limited to natural reality because humans have the ability to think of things that are not real. (This is actually an amazing ability if you think about it. It might count as humanity's super power.) Psychology can include any concept -- even fictitious ones. Concepts are subject to a cultural analogue to natural selection, and the concept of gods has proven to work very well indeed. So gods have become a "social fact" -- absent in nature, but present in culture. We've got plenty of these. Law is another good one.

So, why are humans, who are after all a part of nature, weirdly distinct from nature in our ability to speculate beyond reality, and where does "purpose" come from? We don't know. Perhaps it was a successful evolutionary adaptation to have a brain that could put together a goal. Human thinking gradually developed "purpose" as a tool, like language or ethics. It was a useful way to organize experience -- for example, to get from "I am hungry" to "holy crap -- I made an arrowhead!" Inevitably, the restless brain turned its Purpose-Creating Subroutine inwards and began speculating on the meaning of life and the self.

As for the former post, it is speculation on the gestation of myth and the potential risk of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (a whole different issue). Religions are human-created institutions which have a human history. It is as interesting to look at that history as it is to look at, say, the history of science. Please do not interpret that as an attack on faith -- that is not intended. Obviously, if you interpret the statement "god is a made up concept" as an attack, I can't help you there. It is what it is.
 
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Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Kepler said:
This is my reality:

There is no meaning or purpose in nature. However, there is a drive to find meaning and purpose in human psychology. This creates a seeming paradox -- how do we satisfy our need for purpose in a universe that does not contain it?

The paradox is solved by the duality of human life. We live both within nature and also within a "second level" of reality -- culture. We do not only live in the natural world, we also live in a sociological world, connected to other people, and the rules there are psychological. Those rules are not limited to natural reality because humans have the ability to think of things that are not real. (This is actually an amazing ability if you think about it. It might count as humanity's super power.) Psychology can include any concept -- even fictitious ones. Concepts are subject to a cultural analogue to natural selection, and the concept of gods has proven to work very well indeed. So gods have become a "social fact" -- absent in nature, but present in culture. We've got plenty of these. Law is another good one.

So, why are humans, who are after all a part of nature, weirdly distinct from nature in our ability to speculate beyond reality, and where does "purpose" come from? We don't know. Perhaps it was a successful evolutionary adaptation to have a brain that could put together a goal. Human thinking gradually developed "purpose" as a tool, like language or ethics. It was a useful way to organize experience -- for example, to get from "I am hungry" to "holy crap -- I made an arrowhead!" Inevitably, the restless brain turned its Purpose-Creating Subroutine inwards and began speculating on the meaning of life and the self.

As for the former post, it is speculation on the gestation of myth and the potential risk of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (a whole different issue). Religions are human-created institutions which have a human history. It is as interesting to look at that history as it is to look at, say, the history of science. Please do not interpret that as an attack on faith -- that is not intended. Obviously, if you interpret the statement "god is a made up concept" as an attack, I can't help you there. It is what it is.
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How do you know that God is a made up concept? To be able to definitively make such a statement would pale your noted (and very interesting) human super power to be able to imagine things that (to our perception) do not exist. I can respect that people can argue that to the best of their understanding there is no God, but that's different than to make a statement of fact, which is a much harder (and I'd argue impossible) place to get to.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Kep

We're the only (known) species on this planet who believe in The Powers That Be (or God). When our ancestor figured out that there was a God(s), that distinguished us from the animals.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

joecct said:
Kep

We're the only (known) species on this planet who believe in The Powers That Be (or God). When our ancestor figured out that there was a God(s), that distinguished us from the animals.
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I wouldn't say that what distinguishes us from animals is anything we've figured out or not, but rather that God made us fundamentally different than other creatures that roam this earth. There are many people that never figure out that there is a God (as much as I can tell), but they are still fundamentally distinguished from other creatures.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

I'm not sure being programmed by your culture into a belief is "figuring it out." ;)

Intelligent believers have obviously considered the possibility that religion is manufactured and have rejected it. My main man on religion, Charles Taylor, spends the first chapter of his masterpiece summarizing the non-theist understanding of religion as a human institution far better than I could, in all its subtleties.

99% of arguments for or against religion simply come down to "hurrah for our side."
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

LynahFan said:
Ha ha ha ha. Good one. I guess all those people who excommunicated scientists and outlawed teaching of evolution and who refuse medical treatments didn't have a religion, then? Or maybe not a "real" religion? (cue 5Mn...)

People who are okay with dividing the domains are the same ones who would have been okay with Solomon dividing the baby. There's only one baby, and the side of religion has been losing its grip for the last 400 years or so.
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You'd have to go into the fine print a little more. It's about half of "believers" who don't sense a conflict between the two realms. It explains the feelings of those people that many of you scratch your heads over (wondering, for example, how so many people can be "so stupid" as to think resurrection from the dead is possible)... assuming you have any desire to understand, of course.
The "creationists" et al who show up in the news trying to explain the bible with pseudo-science (or excommunicate scientists, etc) are another story entirely. Obviously they are highly conflicted.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

I think part of the reason many of us struggle with why it is we humans seem unique in our ability to contemplate the existence of something like god is our limited ability to process how extreme lengths of time can affect us. Nearly all of us agree that we are evolving organisms and that we are not what we were as little as 2 million years ago. But it's hard for nonexperts to conceive of such basics questions as how the cold hard fear of many unknowns, including the dark, might affect our thought processes. And what can 3 billion years of development explain? I mean, it's easy to see it on a graph and distinguish one era of development from another, but how can we really understand the slow and steady effect that even two million years of survival will have on our ability to conceptualize around fears and emotions that we experience but struggle to understand?
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Bob Gray said:
How do you know that God is a made up concept?
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Oh, I'm totally guessing. But I think parsimony is on my side.

I can respect that people can argue that to the best of their understanding there is no God
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That's all I'm trying to do. As I think I've said before, I assume every sentence on the internet should include the qualification "In my opinion," so I dispense with it for brevity.

There is no way to make a definitive statement concerning the proposition "God exists" in the same way there is no way to make a definitive statement concerning the proposition "time began milliseconds ago with all matter and energy exactly as it is now and all our memories were created in situ and do not represent prior time." In neither case is the inability to definitely evaluate the statement any grounds for believing it probable.
 
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Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Bob Gray said:
How do you know that God is a made up concept?
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Maybe he just made that up??



Maybe a better question might be, if there is a Deity, why would She have any interest in us as individuals or in the outcome of activities in our everyday life?

Maybe She is like a Mother who gave us birth and raised us and then pushed us out of the nest to make our own way in the world. How different is the story of The Fall if it were to be told by a fledgling pushed out of the nest by a mother bird who until then had fed the fledgling on demand whenever hungry?
 
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Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Kepler said:
Oh, I'm totally guessing. But I think parsimony is on my side.

That's all I'm trying to do. As I think I've said before, I assume every sentence on the internet should include the qualification "In my opinion," so I dispense with it for brevity.

There is no way to make a definitive statement concerning the proposition "God exists" in the same way there is no way to make a definitive statement concerning the proposition "time began milliseconds ago with all matter and energy exactly as it is now and all our memories were created in situ and do not represent prior time." In neither case is the inability to definitely evaluate the statement any grounds for believing it probable.
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Fair enough, it just really doesn't come across that way at times.

'm not sure what the parsimony comment is about. The God I know is very generous, so you don't like that and want a frugal God or something? :confused:
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

FreshFish said:
Maybe he just made that up??



Maybe a better question might be, if there is a Deity, why would She have any interest in us as individuals or in the outcome of activities in our everyday life?

Maybe She is like a Mother who gave us birth and raised us and then pushed us out of the nest our own way in the world. How different is the story of The Fall if it were to be told by a fledgling pushed out of the nest by a mother bird who until then had fed the fledgling on demand whenever hungry?
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Why or as easily, why not? Theoretically speaking.
 
Re: The Religion Thread: A Believer-Atheist Alliance

Every time I come in here I learn something new. The Article about the Pew study was interesting. I thought it was more interesting that it separated the domains. I never got that. Why is science a separate domain and the enemy? Why can't it be because God gave the ability to understand the knowledge?

Ex: Humans chose to interpret the creation story as 7 days but are they 7 human days or 7 'God' days. It doesn't list every animal or living organism that was created. I don't see how it excludes evolution. Rusty and too lazy to look things up but from what I recall if you aren't wed to the 7 days being human days and look at it more as things were created it doesn't contradict science. (I of course could be way off base).
 
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