join me

[Alec]

Oh, how I´d like to have Carl Sagan here backing me up now... just kidding.

I recognise that you may be right to some extent and that you have a substantial amount of scientific info backing you up, but I´d like you to understand that I think thet believing in God is actually limiting yourself. You said before that are probably other dimensions that we can´t perceive. I´m open to that, but we can´t rush to call them God or whatever. I don´t gamble, either. It´s just that I prefer to stay put than to take a step into the wrong direction. It´s not lack of perspectives, It´s just that I don´t need any divinity to make me happy or live my my life to the full.

Well, I´ve got to go, I´m at work.
I have to install Internet at home (I know it´s ridiculous not to be connected at home, but the Internet system and prices are changing and I´m waiting for the new prices )

[Jammrock]

cjolley,

You called?



Alec,

Being religious and believing in God shouldn't, "...actually limit yourself." I know many people who are religious and incredibly brilliant people. People whose minds are only limited by their short life span. One guy in particular was a Astrophysicist at the University of Indiana for 30 years, and was one of the most religious people I have ever met.

IMHO, anyone who is in a religion that tries to limit their ability to think and learn...needs to find a new religion. As the 'ancient Chinese' proverb goes:

The more you learn, the more you realize, how little you know.

Jammrock

[Alec]

Jammrock, I agree completely with you. Being a believer does not necessarily truncate you as an individual.
What I meant is that, when you believe in God and embrace religion, you lose other things. When you take a step to the North, you can´t tread other soil. You end up losing South, E, NE, W, SW, etc. You do not free yourself completely. For me, religion may be personal deliverance, but it´s not universal deliverance. To embrace means to compromise. But this does not mean, I repeat, that you are less intelligent or a person with no culture. I would be stupid from head to toe if I said that.

For me, God is a human invention. It´s that simple. Its utility is a different question.

(If we were in a social reunion having this talk, It would be time for a beer)

[This message has been edited by Alec (edited 06 March 2001).]

[Guru]

Well, the enlightenment brought good and evil into the world. In my opinion, mostly good I suppose, with 'truth' and 'goodness' being on the same side of the fence. (Jury still out on that one, though.) But really, in this day and age you have to accept science as the new religion. This has broad moral implications we'll be confronted with some great problems in the times ahead. Or maybe I should make that "legal implications" now that the concept of morality seems to be all but dead.

The gap between science and religion is widening and religion will lose — make no mistake about that — leaving a 'moral void' of sorts. Science will continue enticing us with clean water, food, comfortable shelter, sights and sounds, medical technology, a 90-year life expectancy, microwave ovens, microwave burgers, microwave coffee, microwaveable instant water ("just add water"), computer games, and the stuff of the next millennium which I can't even begin to imagine. "Hey, where do I sign!"

Well, consider me signed up. As for myself, usually, I am an atheist on odd days and an agnostic on even days. This would mean that today I am an agnostic because today's date is the 6th (well, in New York it is, anyway!) Especially growing up in the latter part of this century, when there has been a bit of time to reflect and analyze the most modern atrocities (and even analyses of the analyses in the "postmodern spirit"), I think I'm justified in being a bit of a nihilist.. how can you do anything but laugh tiredly at the concerted effort of a bunch of sentient cell clumps* to eradicate a bunch of other sentient cell clumps? And it keeps happening...

But I don't detest people that are religious, not anymore at least. When I was young I was a rabid atheist, never hesitating to throw myself headlong into an argument or trying to "prove" that there's no support for religious beliefs in all of reality. Nowadays I'm older, more experienced and wiser. (Read: more tired and less apt to waste time on complete idiots that I by now know never change their mind anyway). Anyway, my absolute grand prize for cheesiest religion, all categories, all time periods, goes to Scientology. Right up there together with hallucinogenic drugs. My favorite religion would probably be Buddhism. I loved the concept of a 'secular humanist church' that Zappa talked about in his autobiography.

The problem to me with most religions: The questions they ask (if any) are frequently the wrong ones. And the answers are wrong. They ask questions that can be easily answered by "bullshitting": refering to dogma, a book, a few hours (or years) of idle speculation. ("How did the Universe cause to be? Santa Claus created it out of a ball of dung.") They sometimes ask questions that are not fundamental enough or irrelevant — questions that center around some minor point in a previously established belief system ("how many angels on the head of a pin").

Here are some questions that I'd like to see adressed, for you to scoff at (again, I have a Judeo-Christian bias here, I hope I'm not offending any other religions by not including them):

Why are we and the universe here? (IMO not an answerable question, and if you spend too much time concentrating on this question you will lose valuable time just enjoing life. To be sucked in, chewed up and spit out of a religious belief system, you should not have a merciless hunger for the truth; rather, a merciless hunger for an answer. Two quite different things!! That's my 5 cents anyway.)

Is there a purpose or reason for Human consciousness?

Will there be Neanderthals in heaven? Dogs? Amoebas? Why isn't it a sin to kill animals? Where is the absolute borderline between "slaughter" and "murder"? 98% identical DNA? 99%? (99.9999999999999999% identical — to my DNA? Then I could kill you all! But then nobody would visit my web pages.) A mongoloid has less genetic material in common with a "normal" human than a chimp. So why can't I just chop the head off any mongoloid I see? If I killed a Neanderthal, would it be murder? *

If God is good and omnipotent, why did he create evil? (The answer is clear: this "God" is a complete idiot and should not be wasted time on)

If I made an exact copy of myself, would I experience consciousness in both places? If the copy was exact, which one would be the "real" me? How could the copy prove to me that it was conscious, before I chopped its head off?? How could I prove it to the clone, before it chopped off mine? (I know, I know, exact copy, down to the quantum level including the relative position and momentum of every particle — present day physics says is not possible. Screw present day physics!)

What about if there in the future was some way to reproduce the state of an entire human mind inside a machine? (This is not at all that far fetched. Give it a couple of hundred years..) Would the machine have a soul? Is it possible for a machine to be conscious? Would it have a soul even if the design was not based on human modes of consciousness? Would aliens have souls? Is the Turing test a valid test for consciousness?

What about a genetic clone of me, would it have a soul? Would it be identical to my soul? If it would be my soul, I have an instant recipe for going to heaven: clone yourself, and kill the copy before it has any opportunity to sin. What about twins? they're genetic copies of each other. Do they share a soul? (Obviously not!) But how could there be such a thing as one twin going to heaven and one to hell? Anything, on any level, that happens to each twin after the moment of conception could be classified as "external factors" — be it quantum fluctuations, positions on the placenta in the womb, birth order of the twins, childhood traumas, upbringing. So any difference in behavior (aka "free choice") is due to these "external factors" (note that I'm including "chance", or quantum fluctuations in these). What does that mean for the concept of free choice?


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Join the MURC SETI team! | SETI @ MURC

All extremists should be taken out and shot.

[Alec]

Helllooooo, GURU!


P.S. I liked the hallucinogenic drugs part. I can relate to that.

EDIT (after reding the next post):
Yes, cjolley. Although the DNA is the same, the soul is a different story altogether. Guru, I believe you can´t mixup these two things, as they belong to different planes of existence.

For me, the religious "soul" does not exist. Our emotions and passions are purely chemical. In spite of this, I feed off emotions, as I believe that art and love are the beauty in life. It seems like a contradiction.

[This message has been edited by Alec (edited 06 March 2001).]

[omegaRED]

Personally, i choose to believe that a "Higher Being" exists. Because i refuse to believe that we all are just a "coincidence". A mistake. Or anything.

It would be pointless to live my life for nothing. Money? Fame? Crap. If there`s nothing after , we are all lying to each others. I mean, what would be the point in living anyway? You live some ~70 years, and then die. Nothing.



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Seth, are you ok ?
I`m peachy, Kate. The world is my oyster.

[cjolley]

1) OK
2) See #1
3) Murder has always been in the eye of the beholder.
4) You can't create one with out the other. There is no way to create a table with a top but no bottom.
5) Logic & the physical universe are part of the same system. If you allow that the rules of one can be broken in your argument you can prove anything.
6)See #3
7)Clones are not doppelgangers. They are completely separate beings. See #5

chuck

PS. See, that wasn't so hard.

[Admiral]

I kind of like my religion teacher's view of things :
God's kingdom is like a garden behind a wall. We are on the other side of the wall and can't see over it. We all describe what it might be behind the wall, what we think it is, we assume but we don't really know. We'll instantly know the truth when we'll be able to see over the wall.
We could call that moment death.

[Gurm]

There are many things which are beyond our comprehension. My belief in God in no way hinders my understanding of the universe. In fact, it inspires it.

But Guru, your arguments are all foolishness. You are confusing bad logic with religion, when in fact they are totally unrelated.

I find it amusing that atheists and agnostics rely on science to disprove religion, when all the scientists they quote were fervent believers.

Logic, Philosophy, and Science have all been pioneered by people who believe in God (or in a plethora of Gods, depending on the system in which they were raised).

I'm being general and vague, yes. I don't particularly like the way this thread started, and would love to have a separate thread for intelligent discourse on the matter before I get too much more specific (and long-winded!)...

- Gurm

[cjolley]

Know God by Faith.

The only thing more pathetic than a scientist trying to use physics to disprove that God exists:
A Believer trying to use physics to prove that God does exist.
chuck

[The Rock]

I think some of you people took too much offense to this thread. It takes very little to offend some of you folks. RELAX people. Lighten up. I can't imagine how a person who is secure in his/her religious beliefs would take offense to this thread. I don't think the originator of this thread is an anti-God troll.

Bart

[cjolley]

Ahwww, Jammrock started it
chuck

PS Hey, this joke works on several levels if you read back a way.

[windigo]

sorry there aint no such thing as God or satan no little elves or nubile cupids running around, man created god.

the one truth is that the earth is our provider and we were born of the stars and will return to the stars and then it will happen all over again nothing special nothing contrived, life, no time, no past, no future, only dreams.

and if you dont believe that I have a voodoo doll a lady from Haiti made for 250 dollars US. and im perfectly willing to use it on any un believers out there.
any takers? or any sugestions who would be a good candidate


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MSI K7TPro2 Duron 750@900
256Ram G400DH32mb
Pioneer SCSI 16xDVD

[Joel]

I am not Grum and Gurm is not me, although I have been referred to around here as 'Father' Joel.

Joel

[Ant]

Erm so if God created man the universe and everything, who created God?