Atheists, how did life start to you?

[pandamonk]

I'm also a reiki and spiritual healer and I've no doubt the psychologists have an explanation for the heat generated through this process and the pain going in people or the lack of bleeding after a cut through a fall, once I've started healing and the flow of blood stops or slows dramatically in a few seconds. I've read of tumours in animals being shrunk to insignificance through Reiki but I bet science says it was a natural process through some reaction. ( I believe its God using people as a channel )

Psychologists and scientists do love to have an answer for everything and its great that they challenge and try to disprove things, as I'm sure there are many cases that can be claimed yet disproved but very few actually admit it when they are truly baffled by something happenning before them, that they can't explain.
Science doesn't know everything. Remember,it wasn't that long ago they thought the world was flat and earth was the centre of the universe and everything revolved around earth and not the sun.

But skepticism is healthy in general and works to also prove things are stranger than fiction as well as debunking them too.

My mum is actually a Reiki healer, but i believe it to be more of a placebo effect. I had cancer a few years ago, and the reiki did nothing but make me feel better. It didn't reduce the tumour, and in fact, even the chemotherapy didn't even reduce the tumour. I had an operation to remove my knee joint(where the tumour was)and now have a prosthetic knee. If God was all-powerful, and my mum channeled his power into my knee to heal the tumour, then surely it would have strunk to nothing instantaniously. I do know that science does not have all the answers, but at least they are stiving to eplain the unexplainable. They are doing everything in their power to understand, and have advanced so uickyl compared to religion. Science was ruled by religion for many years(back i nthe day when "they thought the world was flat and earth was the centre of the universe and everything revolved around earth and not the sun", and whenever some challenged these fews, they were deeply frowned upon, and sometimes sentenced to death, by the christian leaders. In my opinion, religion is(even now) holding us back, or at least trying to), and if they lost their grip we'd advance at a much quicker rate.

 

[randb]

It was the aliens...i tell you!!!!

 

[Valjean]

When you ask "how life started," tiano, are you asking for an explanation of the physical mechanism by which life developed, or are you asking weather there was some Personage that set some biogenic process in motion?

Note that these are entirely different questions. One asks "how?", the other, "who?'

Science does not deal with "who." It only explores mechanisms.
Religion asserts agency, but says nothing of mechanism.
If you assert that all things must have a creator but ignore the obvious "then who created God" question, you have your head in the sand.

Clarify please. What, exactly, is your question?

 

[tiano]

Hi Pandamonk,
I'm sorry the reiki did little more than make you feel better but at least some comfort was taken in the process. I can fully understand your question of why didnt the healing just shrink it instantaneously if god was the all powerful, I don't know so I I'm not going to claim I do. How long was the healing done for and for how many weeks, months etc? There's also the possibility of mind set making a difference, i people believe nothing can be achieved, nothing will.
I also read in a book ( that I can't find here at the moment ) of how some specialists were getting there cancer patients to visualize the white blood cells in their bodies attacking the reds and destroying them. These excersises were to be performed daily for 20 mins at a time and when tested later on ( cant remember the exact amount of time ) they patients had found a very significant reduction in their tumours and some even disappeared completely.
There was also a bloke that had very advanced cancer and wasn't expected to live through the weekend. He wanted to try a drug that was just out but the doctor thought he had no chnace of living more than 48 hrs or so and wanted to refuse.
He relented after the bloke kept at him and this unfortunate chap had tumours the size of tennis balls. He got an injection of the drug and within days the tumours had disappeared.
Then came the news that the firm had found that the drug wasn't actually a cure, when the cancer patient found out the tumours returned within days and he was again at deaths door. The doctor said he had a new strain and it was more potent and gave the man a placebo and the tumours again shrunk away but after a few weeks the man had become convinced the 'drug' couldn't work and the tumours flared up and he died within days.
That is very much evidence for the placebo camp and I recognize that completely but there also been tests of people using reiki in labs to stop or reverse the growth of E-coli in a test tube, which again then leads me to believe there IS power in the healing but the mind is a powerful tool that can be just as destructive as benificial depending on its owners beliefs.
Was you convinced the cancer could be cured by healing? If not, then your subconscious mind could of held sufficient enough doubt to not have any healing form your mum.

I struggled giving up smoking for years and through hypnosis and the programming of my subconscious mind to accept that I would give up smoking I did indeed stop, so that in my situation gave credence that the subconscious mind can really have an effect on swaying things. Before Hypnosis I pretty much thought that I'd really struggle to stop smoking.

I certainly don't have all the answers which is why I ask many questions, my mindset is only what it is today and it changes every time I hear convincing evidence in regards to anything, thats all part of the learning process.

 

[tiano]

Hi Seyorni,
My question was how did life start for man and you could include animals too. Most other life is static and animals and we are very different in that sense.
We are energy (as is all life)and somehow through some process with energy, we are in a body that grows yet I believe (my personal belief) that we are fundamentally energy and once we ' die ' in this life we as energy go back to where we came from, maybe to even return through reincarnation again. I think we are here to learn lessons for our progress in what some call the spirit world, afterlife, heaven etc. I believe this material world is just something we can relate to through the senses we have in human form, to some extent the world is an illussion and in our natural form of energy we can't touch,smell and taste etc.

I believe there is a god that created everything as everything is in my eyes energy that through its different processes or reactions causes things to look the way they do or be the things we give different names in life ie flowers, water, trees, humans, cows, rock etc etc.

I don't think god is some bloke in a beard who lives at 43 whereever street up in the heavens.
I think that the basis of everything is its energy and that the energy is conscious and has different levels of intelligence and that we are all learning and for a bigger reason than what intellect is used for here on earth in the sense of getting better jobs to have more comfort in this material world, I think there's far more behind our being here than that.

I also think that 'god', is the highest form of conscious energy and that this energy is something we are all a part of and have been from before this life in the material world.(us being attached to this main source of energy, 'god' ,but moving through different levels as we progress in life here and maybe also in the 'afterlife' )

One way to put it across is like god being the centre or core of a circle and us on the outskirts getting closer and closer to the centre with our development. This isn't how I think life is I'm just using that to try and explain us being attached to god and progressing in development closer to 'him' and the knowledge god has acquired.

Thats just my view and I expect it change more and more as I go on through life as I experience new things and learn new things.

Where did 'god' the first and highest form of energy come from, I haven't a clue but I do believe we are off shoots of this energy. Considering the state of the world I can only presume we are a nigh on eternity away from reaching 'gods' knowledge.

The question was to atheists mainly because religions tend to have their ideas of what their god did to create the world, they just don't seem to express how their god was created. I left the question open to all others to see what other people of other religions would offer as there belief to how man got here.

So that was my question, how did man get here?
As you now know, my belief is conscious energy is the source of everything and that the highest form of this energy is commonly referred to as god, its just some people think of god as manly in form, as we are said to be made in his image. That image to me though is the image of our natural form, whats in this body, the energy form.

I know just as little as anyone else and no one can credibly describe who created god, at least not anyone I've heard or had the pleasure of reading. If you indeed can, I'm all ears and as I said I love to learn so please share your theories with me.

I personally believe we'll never know for sure the answers to the how or who questions until we 'die' in this life but its very interesting to listen and learn of everyone's theories.

 

[Æsahættr]

Psychologists and scientists do love to have an answer for everything and its great that they challenge and try to disprove things, as I'm sure there are many cases that can be claimed yet disproved but very few actually admit it when they are truly baffled by something happenning before them, that they can't explain.

Scientists do admit that there are some things that they can't explain. For example, most physicists admit that they can't fully describe the inside of a wormhole. Perhaps scientists do not admit their ignorance as much as they should, but they're only human. Of course, admitting that you don't know an answer and agreeing with someone else's explanation are two very different things.


In response to your OP, I believe that man got here exactly the same way as every other type of life. I think that humanity as a species got here through the process of evolution, where it wasn't that there was suddenly humans, but that we gradually changed, and we choose to call our current form human. As for each of us individually, I do not believe that there is any life-energy, I believe that there is nothing more mystical in our orgins than conception and growth. I believe that our minds and our consciousness are nothing more than results of our brain. Does that answer your question?

 

[Valjean]

"Perhaps scientists do not admit their ignorance as much as they should"

What an odd statement.
I've always found scientists much more aware of, and eager to learn, what they don't yet know.
Ask any scientist about his/her field and you're likely to get an excited, hour-long lecture on all the things he doesn't know, but is eager to find out.

 

[Æsahættr]

"Perhaps scientists do not admit their ignorance as much as they should"

What an odd statement.
I've always found scientists much more aware of, and eager to learn, what they don't yet know.
Ask any scientist about his/her field and you're likely to get an excited, hour-long lecture on all the things he doesn't know, but is eager to find out.

It was more intended as a level of caution in my defence of scientists, just in case tiano came back at me with an example of scientists not admitting that they didn't know, rather than as a personal criticism of scientists myself.

 

[Tony]

I'm not bound to any religion and I don't believe any one religion can be right in the fullest sense. I do believe that there is a God who was the creator though.


I'd like to know the views of any atheists though on how they think life started for man.

Thanks all

For some unexplainable reason, my atheistic point of view is the same as the scientific point of view.

 

[DakotaGypsy]

"Perhaps scientists do not admit their ignorance as much as they should"

What an odd statement.
I've always found scientists much more aware of, and eager to learn, what they don't yet know.
Ask any scientist about his/her field and you're likely to get an excited, hour-long lecture on all the things he doesn't know, but is eager to find out.

Yeah, whatever Seyorni said.

 

[DakotaGypsy]

Hey, I've noticed a tendency for folks to get all screechy and hysterical about something they call "Scientism." I'm kind of trying to understand their point, but I'm not really sure that they have a point.

 

[Valjean]

What's "scientism?"

 

[mr.guy]

What's "scientism?"

No, no, no man. It's scientism.

 

[standing_alone]

No, no, no man. It's scientism.

No, it's Scientism.

 

[DakotaGypsy]

A myriad of definitions from Wikipedia:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

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

The word scientism may be used in various contexts:

• Scientism is the use of the style, assumptions, techniques and other attributes typically displayed by scientists.
• "Scientism is the use of scientific or pseudoscientific language."
• Scientism is the contention that the social sciences should be held to the somewhat stricter interpretation of scientific method used by the natural sciences.
• Scientism is the belief that the social sciences are not science because they commonly do not hold to the somewhat stricter interpretation of scientific method used by the natural sciences.
• Scientism was a common ideology in the 19th and 20th century which places its trust only in scientific progress.
• Scientism is a belief that scientific knowledge is the foundation of all knowledge and that, consequently, scientific argument should always be weighted more heavily than other forms of knowledge, particularly those which are not yet well described or justified from within the rational framework, or whose description fails to present itself in the course of a debate against a scientific argument.

It can be contrasted by doctrines like historicism, which hold that there are certain "unknowable" truths. [5] This viewpoint is typified by comments such as "Scientific research has demonstrated that substance x causes cancer in humans."

• As a form of dogma: "In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth."
• Scientism can also be used to reject the assertion that the application of scientific understanding to all phenomena produces the predicted results and is therefore a reliable guide to policy.

 

[DakotaGypsy]

My own personal definition of "scientism" is that it a word created by those who are afraid of scientific inquiry in an effort to smear that inquiry and shut it down.

"Scientism" according to those fearful folks means that science will some day know absolutely the answer to everything.

I think that every serious scientist would throw up his or her hands at that and start tearing his or her hair.

The truth of the matter is that everytime something new is discovered via scientific inquiry, usually a hundred or so more questions about what's going on come into being. The more science "knows" and discovers, the more science realizes that there is much, more more to know and discover.