Audie
Veteran Member
There was no flood so he who did
what didn't happen isn't real either
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God is disproven by science? Really?
- Thread starter MrIntelligentDesign
- Start date
what didn't happen isn't real either
The description of natural fact is the object of science, and fact has a close relationship with truth. “A truth” is an assumption about what is actual, while “a fact” is a statement of actuality. Since science makes statements about the actualities of the natural world, it therefore initiates assumptions about the further, untested actualities of the natural world.
Never mind.
I'd have said that was true some of the time but not all of the time. For instance, the Jewish God's name is the tetragrammaton, the Christian god's name is Yahweh, and I guess for Trinitarians, also Jesus and Ghost. However, I have the impression (but readily open to correction) that Allah's name is Allah end of story.
I take your point, but if your name is John then by your argument wouldn't it be the case that it would still mean what its etymological origin, Hebrew Yohanan, means (which I read is 'Yahweh has favored')? Whereas no such concept has ever been associated with the various folk named John that I've met over the years.
I did make a further comment which you might have missed:
I hope that addresses your question…
Audie
Veteran Member
I will go with "close relationship to truth".
Not "Truth" as per our hero of the quoted passage.
Okay.
Audie
Veteran Member
Circumstantial evidence"??
Surely you misspeak.
No God made a " great flood".
If it's said that one did, that God is a lie
if there's no flood ( see fundy 101), then
plainly that God doesn't exist.
Like there are turtles. But none that fly.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
So when I am subjective I am also not subjective since I am objective as a part of objective reality as with truth. That is a contradiction.
If you walk into your flat after a long day, and are surprised to find a stain of dried liquid on the countertop and a glass containing some residue of milk nearby on the countertop, the you have circumstantial evidence that the milk had spilled from the glass onto the counter, and then dried. You may also conjecture that there was somebody other than yourself in your flat who poured the glass of milk and then spilled it onto the counter, but you have no definitive evidence that that is true. This is a highly imperfect analogy, but it’s the best that I can do “off the cuff”. The point of it is, if there seems to have been no flood, then we can merely conjecture that there is no God which is proposed to have caused a “great flood”. Such a conjecture…such a supposition, though, does not definitively prove the non-existence of such a God.
Evolution is a theory, and natural selection is an observation.
Religion and belief in popular concepts, like gods, is behavior and it can affect how any given society behaves. Look at the Branch Davidians, and Jonestown, those groups of people decided to kill themselves due to their religious beliefs, including many children. So they removed themselves from future reproduction. Human evolution favored individuals who were cooperative and aligned to tribal norms, and this led to religion as an early form of social contract and self-governing. Humans lacked knowledge about the universe so formed myths and religions as explanations. There is a reason why modern nations opted for secular governing rather than theocracies, and that is due to the diversity of religions and the lack of evidence for their claims.
Well you might as well not forget that Christians executed about 30,000 witches in the 17th century, which eliminated all those wicked people from the gene pool.
Of course your statements above are absurd and not fact based. You fail to explain what was added to DNA, and how it was selected artifically.
Also called imaginary.
Sure, show us the facts and data, and then the experiment that demonstrates it's valid.
Evolve together? Do you mean how isolated populations of humans evolved with different features? This was due to slow migration rates.
Fictional characters are not data, so irrelevant.
Creationism isn't a theory, it's fraud. It was the best Christians could invent many hundreds of years ago because all they had was the Bible as a source, but science has revealed none of it can be taken literally. Anyone who promotes creationism these days is promoting fraud.
Many former believers leave religion for various reasons, but it is often due to being abused and feeling targeted in some way. I'm an atheist because I was never convinced the ideas were true. Even as a child I had serious doubts, and as I observed Christians around me I could see they did not live via the beliefs they claimed to value. Once I developed reasoning skill I examined the claims and found them not only without evidence, but contrary to what we understand of reality.
There is good evidence we humans evolved to believe, as I noted. The book Emotional Intelligence has chapters that explain how the human brain evolved as a believing tool. About 85% of the world population is "wired for God", and these people will be more likely to adopt religion from their social experience.
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Disregarded. You probably know that the phrase "not even wrong" means neither the term wrong nor right apply. A claim has to be falsifiable to be shown to be correct or incorrect, neither of which is possible for the unfalsifiable.
I'm not sure why you've included this. I haven't been discussing ancient views, just modern god claims and how they should be viewed and evaluated according to the principles of reason applied to evidence seen in science and law, for example. I don't consider any god claims ancient or modern factual. As I said, if they're unfalsifiable, they are neither correct nor incorrect.
In an episode of Seinfeld, Jerry and George are arguing about whether Superman had a sense of humor, since although he smiled, he didn't laugh and wasn't witty:
Jerry: I think Superman probably has a very good sense of humor.
George: I never heard him say anything really funny.
Jerry: But it's common sense. He's got super strength, super speed. I'm sure he's got super humor.
George: You would think that, but either you're born with a sense of humor, or you're not. It's not going to change even if you go from the red sun of Krypton all the way to the yellow sun of the Earth.
Jerry: Why? Why would that one area of his mind not be affected by the yellow sun of Earth?
George: I don't know. But he ain't funny.
Which one is right and which is wrong? Neither is either, because they're making unfalsifiable ("not even wrong") claims.
Others have already said this, and I agree with them: The god of the Old Testament flooded the earth. If that never happened, that god doesn't exist. Perhaps other gods that never flooded the earth exist, but not that one. In the past, people have argued that we are misunderstanding what the Great Flood was, and they redefine it. But that doesn't rescue the god that allegedly drowned the earth. It presents a new mythology worthy of a new god or pantheon of gods that didn't drown the entire earth.
You're confusing biological evolution (the natural selection of genes) and cultural evolution (the artificial selection of memes).
What's ingrained in humanity is children engaging in magical thinking and viewing the father figure, whether the head of the family or tribe, as powerful, intelligent, judgmental, and to be obeyed. The priesthood exploited these tendencies and carved out a great niche for itself - no hard labor, work indoors, supported for life by people bringing them money every week to tell others how to live, and instant respect and social status. But notice the need to maintain these immature ideas through adulthood, which is especially difficult in a world trying to educate children to think critically. Religion is dying where education flourishes, which is your evidence that there is no god gene. Just stop telling susceptible people about gods, let them mature outside of religion, and they have no need for either.
A contradiction you create for yourself, as you seem to like being confused more than having understanding.
You make many good points here, but your conclusion is questionable. The essence of what we call “religion” is the display of care for something which is deeply meaningful to us as individuals. It may not be directly ingrained in our genetic code, but “man’s search for meaning” in life seems to be a universal characteristic which appears to represent an integral function of the mind, and so to result from common human brain architecture. Let us not forget that “religion” subsumes many other than theistic modes of thought, and the common characteristic of religious modes of thought lies in the provision of meaning to human life. “Religion” can be applied to any behavior which repeatedly shows deep concern for something which provides meaning to human life…any behavior. There may not be a “god gene”, a gene for theism, or even a gene for religion, but inasmuch as man’s search for meaning is universal, religion seems to be a universal product of the human mind, and of profound import.
Yes , and I think that this is a good thing. Hierarchy and authority are facts of life, and if we do not accept certain rules for the establishment of authority, if we “critically think” ourselves away from that, then we become no more than a bunch of individualistic monkeys waiting for somebody to physically enforce their authority over us…an undesirable situation, for certain. A child who refuses to accept the authority of its father (assuming the father to be reasonable) becomes no more than a little beast in need of a thrashing.
I don't think meaning is as important as you say. The search for meaning seems a rare occurance among US citizens, but what is important is belonging. There does appear to be a strong motivation to fit in and belong to some group, and this can be circumstantial or deliberate. I don;t see many who end up being religious as having a strong deliberate motive to be a believer, and be committed to a certain religion for specific reasons. There are excevtions, but asking these folks questions they have exchanged one non-rational framework for another, and not for rational reasons, but for a different tribe to belong to. I suspect many people feel lost and confused because they are part of groups they don;t relate to, or do relate to but not sure why. There's a strong case to be made that despite we humans being capable of reasoning we behave in very irrational ways to seek emotonal satisfaction.
That's not how I define religion. That describes parenting as well.
Religion is only one approach to that. But let me tell you what I mean by the word. A religion is a supernaturalistic worldview featuring gods. My worldview is atheistic humanism through which lens I find meaning in my life and the best answers available to questions of what is nature, what am I, what is my place in and relationship to nature, and how is life best lived.
That sounds more like my definition of love as discussed in my post just above this one, which we are capable of outside of religions.
And religion is one approach to this. I do it without religion as I define the word, although it seems like earlier you defined doing that as religion.
Hierarchies in childhood (and prisons, the military, and dictatorships) are different from hierarchies in a modern political state for autonomous, self-actualized citizens, who are volunteers in a social contract they can freely leave, as I did when I expatriated from America, which now has almost no authority in my life except that I need to file taxes annually, and I can get out of that by forfeiting my citizenship.
Others have suggested that the proclivity of humans to become religious means that such behavior must confer a survival advantage. Dawkins offers an alternative perspective. Paternalistic hierarchies in childhood are a due to an instinct that promotes survival. This is what is in the DNA, not gods, and it is this instinct that the clergy coopt. Edited from https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialScie...HAPTER_10_DEFINITION/What-Use-is-Religion.htm
“What is the survival value of religion?” may be the wrong question. The right question may have the form, “What is the survival value of some as yet unspecified individual behavior, or psychological characteristic, that manifests itself, under appropriate circumstances, as religion?” Darwinians who seek the survival value of religion are asking the wrong question. Instead, we should focus on something in our evolving ancestors that we would not then have recognized as religion, but which is primed to become recognizable as religion in the changed context of civilized society.
"Moths fly into the candle flame, and it doesn’t look like an accident. They go out of their way to make a burnt offering of themselves. We could label it “self-immolation behavior” and wonder how Darwinian natural selection could possibly favor it. My point, again, is that we need to rewrite the question before we can even attempt an intelligent answer. It isn’t suicide. Apparent suicide emerges as an inadvertent side-effect.
"Artificial light is a recent arrival on the night scene. Until recently, the only night lights were the moon and the stars. Being at optical infinity, their rays are parallel, which makes them ideal compasses. Insects are known to use celestial objects to steer accurately in a straight line. The insect nervous system is adept at setting up a temporary rule of thumb such as, “Steer a course such that the light rays hit your eye at an angle of 30°.” Since insects have compound eyes, this will amount to favoring a particular ommatidium (individual optical tube radiating out from the center of the compound eye)."
We are the moths, and religion is the Johnny-come-lately light source exploiting preexisting instincts, not the reason we have those proclivities. This is:
"there will be a selective advantage to child brains with the rule of thumb: Believe whatever your grown-ups tell you. Obey your parents, obey the tribal elders, especially when they adopt a solemn, minatory tone. Obey without question."
Audie
Veteran Member
Any claim that there was a flood is ignorant or
a lie.
There are loggers. And oxen.
There was no giant Paul Bunyan
who logged with a great blue ox.
There are floods, but no god who
committed a great flood
That god is as phony as Paul Bunyan.
And his ox.
This is a particular example of the more general idea. Etymologically, “religion”, from Latin religio (religio < re- “again”/“repeatedly” + lego “to care for/about” + -io ‘suffix forming nouns from verbs’) indicates that which a person repeatedly, or ritually, displays a profound concern about. Of course, this can be a deity, or it can be a nature trail, or nature in general, or finding peace and freedom from psychic pain in this life (the pursuit of moksha), or nourishing the expectation of the eventual shrugging off of the illusion bequeathed by existence in the physical universe when one has reverted to ultimate reality (Brahman), or a beloved dog walk, or any of a number of things. Point is, it need not involve the supernatural.
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