GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

The Root of all Evil : The God Delusion

POSTED BY: CALHOUN
UPDATED: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 20:12
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Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:16 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL


Quote:

Originally posted by Calhoun:
That seems to be the general concensus among religiousy types. Rule of faith number 3:If faith is challenged - stick head in the sand. Also referred to as the "ostrich manouvre".

Not really. I don’t really have a whole lot of time, and I think I’ve already heard what this guy has to say. Scurrying up fear of people because they are different, whether it’s skin color or religion, is a really old story.



Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Thursday, May 31, 2007 3:46 PM

CALHOUN


Quote:

Finn mac Cumhal wrote:
Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:16
Quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Calhoun:
That seems to be the general concensus among religiousy types. Rule of faith number 3:If faith is challenged - stick head in the sand. Also referred to as the "ostrich manouvre".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not really. I don’t really have a whole lot of time, and I think I’ve already heard what this guy has to say. Scurrying up fear of people because they are different, whether it’s skin color or religion, is a really old story.



You see, I like to know what i'm talking about before I opine..

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Thursday, May 31, 2007 4:05 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL


Quote:

Originally posted by Calhoun:
You see, I like to know what i'm talking about before I opine..

I’m sorry no one gives a crap about this documentary your so fascinated with, but if you read though the thread, you’ll see that no one was really discussing the documentary, just the issue in general.




Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Thursday, May 31, 2007 4:23 PM

LEADB


Well, if you'd like I'll post after I've had a good look over the book (which I have on reserve at the library)?

I've not found a legit free source of the documentary, and I'm not interested in putting money in this guys' wallet (at least, not until I'm reasonably confident he hasn't stepped off the far end of reasonableness).

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Thursday, May 31, 2007 4:50 PM

CALHOUN


Quote:

Finn mac Cumhal wrote:
Thursday, May 31, 2007 16:05
Quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Calhoun:
You see, I like to know what i'm talking about before I opine..
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’m sorry no one gives a crap about this documentary your so fascinated with



Whoa! wipe the rabid foam from your chin and start again...
Quote:

Finn mac Cumhal wrote:
Thursday, May 31, 2007 16:05
Quote:

, but if you read though the thread, you’ll see that no one was really discussing the documentary, just the issue in general.



Exactly my point....

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Thursday, May 31, 2007 4:57 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL


You’ll get over it.

This thread could have been a disaster, but it turned into a very well-behaved and interesting discussion on religion between many well educated people with varied opinions. That’s probably a first internet history.



Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Thursday, May 31, 2007 8:45 PM

CALHOUN


Quote:

Finn mac Cumhal wrote:
Thursday, May 31, 2007 16:57
You’ll get over it.




Again with the voicing opinions on things you know nothing about!

but..

as it happens.., I am over it.

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Friday, June 1, 2007 5:08 AM

MALACHITE


Quote:

Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:

"This thread could have been a disaster, but it turned into a very well-behaved and interesting discussion on religion between many well educated people with varied opinions. That’s probably a first internet history."




Malachite's comment starts here: (I didn't use the "reply with quote" function properly, evidently...)

I've got to say that I've appreciated being able to have reasonable, generally non-antagonistic conversations with intelligent people of varying opinions. I've generally avoided posting in most threads because some would rather throw out insults rather than try to see that intelligent, reasonable, educated people can have different opinions. I've observed that people sometimes resort to attacks when they are perhaps insecure in their own beliefs or feel that their beliefs are threatened in some way by someone else having a different opinion.

As a side note, I've been wondering: have we come to a consensus that the "God Delusion" is not the "root of all evil"? I would venture to say that no particular religion (or lack thereof) would get to claim this distinction. But, if it isn't religion, what is? Some ideas mentioned in this thread have been that man is the root of all evil. Some have also mentioned that perhaps God is the root of all evil, since he created man with a free will and the potential to do evil. (Of course, the statement that God is the root of all evil, assumes that God exists -- so I would think that it would be difficult for a true atheist to hold this position).

Some have also said that this thread has been going on for way too long...

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Friday, June 1, 2007 10:15 AM

MALACHITE


Quote:

Originally posted by leadb:
What I personally think is amazing is the effort that is put into fleshing these 'theories' out when, at the end, they don't prove anything.

For instance, cannot we presume that, if God were any good at this universe creation thing, he could simply 'initiate' a universe with physical properties that the coming of 'semi-intelligent' life (I'm referring to humans here, in case anyone isn't sure) somewhere in that universe was pretty much a 'sure thing.' Why the constant need to say 'then God found the universe not quite to his liking and stuffed people into it'? In the 'God initiated the universe' view, science's only failing regarding the begining of life is to have failed to identify (yet) the means by which God very cleverly designed into the universe so this would happen as a pretty much 'sure fire' thing.

The only reason I can see for this is a need to literally interpret the bible; and for that reason, I tend to sit out the discussions. The folks holding onto the literal interpretation aren't going to be convinced, so I don't bother.

Intelligent Design as a 'wedge' will never work the way the folks with this agenda wish; because many scientists will grant that all they are trying to do is understand the mechanism God has put in place such that 'here we are.' It would be more honest if folks with this agenda simply stated, 'this is contrary to the Bible, the Bible is literally true, ergo, we don't accept this', rather than try to wrap psuedo-science around it; which just confuses things. The first stance I can 'accept', the second stance simply seems dishonest to me. O.. well, we do have the seperation of church and state... so they can't simply teach that the bible is literally true and thus the science is 'wrong' in a public school. Well. They are in a bind, aren't they?

You know, I'm not sure I've thought this through from the this perspective before. To me, it is -so- obvious that science is not 'incompatible with' or 'tries to prove religion is wrong'; but then I've never really pondered it from that perspective. Not that it changes my mind any, but they -really are- in a bind.

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I agree that the "theories" don't prove anything. That is partially my point: why do we say that people who doubt a naturalistic origin of life are irrational when the claims we make about a naturalistic origin cannot be established with scientific evidence and, equally important, cannot even be disproven? I agree with your point about how science and God don't have to be incompatible and that approaching science with an agenda (the example you used was proving a literal interpretation of the bible -- but I would add, that other scientists can have agendas as well) do not approach science as objectively as is ideal . I personally don't think that finding a naturalistic explanation to the origin of life deals a mortal blow to one's belief in God.

Where I take issue is when someone either 1) claims that a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life somehow disproves the existence of God or 2) claims that it is irrational to have doubts in a naturalistic origin of life and then uses the lottery argument to state that a naturalistic origin of life is inevitable or even highly probable. If my walking-through-walls analogy is actually a more realistic one for describing the chances of life spontaneously forming, I think it is very reasonable to have doubts about the inevitability of life forming spontaneously. Even if that analogy doesn't pan out, I still think if you ran millions of Miller experiments without a "trap" for as long as you wanted, you wouldn't get anywhere near the formation of life. I think you'd just get messy lab equipment. Why don't we hear about those kind of studies, anyway? It seems to me that a realistic simulation of prebiotic conditions might be helpful. For example we could run something like the Miller experiment (except without a trap) for a year and see what we get. In a different scenario we could add some clay, or different amounts of UV light, or other modifications and see what happens. (Somehow, I doubt there would be funding for such experiments... oh well...)

I must say, it sounds like people are still stating that they believe life could have originated naturalistically, despite the fact that if my walking-through-walls analogy is valid, the odds are stacked against them. It's true, we don't really know, but such optimism for something in the face of (potentially) such low odds with no ability to be proven or disproven, sounds an awful lot like... (dare I say it?)... faith. Hmmmm... Does it sound a little odd to say that one has faith in science? I hope I'm not sounding antagonistic, here. I personally think people demonstrate faith (note, this isn't limited to religious faith) all the time, and in order to have any trust at all (Will the sun rise tommorrow? Will my significant other cheat on me? Will my chair support me when I sit on it?), a person has to have faith. Otherwise, the person is left with such unpleasantness as anxiety, jealousy, insecurity, etc.

Well... that's enough writing for now. I've appreciated all of these discussions, as they have really gotten me thinking about things.

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Friday, June 1, 2007 4:39 PM

LEADB


I really can't say I disagree with you.

I have faith that someday, a scientist will figure out the mechanism by which life is fairly 'obviously' going to arise in a 'naturalistic' way; as I think if God exists he's too clever to tip his hand like that ;-)

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Friday, June 1, 2007 9:07 PM

ETHAN


double post

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Friday, June 1, 2007 9:08 PM

ETHAN


Quote:

Originally posted by leadb:
I really can't say I disagree with you.

I have faith that someday, a scientist will figure out the mechanism by which life is fairly 'obviously' going to arise in a 'naturalistic' way; as I think if God exists he's too clever to tip his hand like that ;-)



I'm fairly confident the most crucial elements which bring about life occur with ubiquity throughout the natural world. The most essential of these keys is self replication. We see this in rudimentary forms all over the place...in crystals..amino acid chains...snow flake symmetry and other fractals.. .memes..ect. Yes, DNA represented a significant advance over these relatively simple forms..but I'll go out on a limb and say that most of this advance is owed to a single mechanism which in of itself was a development of exceedingly simple elegance...random mutation.

Within this context of beneficially imperfect replication, we have seen arise limitless forms of explainable complexity.

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Saturday, June 2, 2007 2:35 AM

LEADB


I am fairly confident as well.

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Wednesday, December 16, 2015 8:12 PM

JAYNEZTOWN




Religion can be very damaging, harmful but I'm not sure Atheism is the answer



the ex-muslims are interesting to listen to


Quote:

Originally posted by Malachite:
I certainly agree that non-religious people can be charitible. I think that religious people can sometimes find it hard to acknowledge that non-religious people are capable of doing just as much good as the religious ones and that this is insulting and a shame.



I would rank Communism above Islam, as bad as commies were Islam is worse, the loss of Soviet ideas and fall of Afghanistan to radical Muslim thought made it one of the worst places on Earth, lowest education, worst life expectancy, terrible child mortality, 0.1 doctors per 1000 people, highests deaths, lowest GDP, worst health system, life expectancy at birth was 30.9 years in Afghanistan, worst secondary school levels and university levels, trash, disease, drugs....one of the ugliest most backward places to live

It's improved since the US invasion but drugs are up 600 hundred and 50% percent

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