Do you believe in God and why

[VincentRJ]

14 hours ago, mauGR1 said:

Since the very beginning, you have not considered the possibility of the existence of some sort of intelligent design, whose rules govern the visible world, which some people call God; perhaps it's time, at least for those who have a truly scientific mind, to concede that this sort of attitude is unscientific. 

I've been considering the possibility of the existence of some sort of intelligent design long before this thread started. Around the age of 5, I wondered if it were possible for Father Christmas to enter my bedroom through the chimney, to place a present in the stocking at the foot of my bed. So, on Christmas Eve after going to bed, I did my best to keep awake, whilst pretending to be asleep, so I could witness this amazing event.

 

What I witnessed was my own father quietly entering through the bedroom door and placing a present in the stocking. ????

 

I've had a general interest in religious issues for much of my life. I spent quite a few hours reading the Bible many years ago. I've also read parts of the Koran, and various Hindu texts, visited Yoga Retreats, practiced Hatha Yoga for a while, and have also read detailed explanations of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution as well as scientific articles and books in the disciplines of anthropology and paleontology.

 

I even taught English to a class of monks at Wat Mahathat in Bangkok when I first visited Thailand in the early 1960's, in exchange for free accommodation because I was broke. ????
 

[mauGR1]

5 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

I've been considering the possibility of the existence of some sort of intelligent design long before this thread started. Around the age of 5, I wondered if it were possible for Father Christmas to enter my bedroom through the chimney, to place a present in the stocking at the foot of my bed. So, on Christmas Eve after going to bed, I did my best to keep awake, whilst pretending to be asleep, so I could witness this amazing event.

 

What I witnessed was my own father quietly entering through the bedroom door and placing a present in the stocking. ????

Lol, I did the same with my younger brother, keeping him awake till my mother sneaked out of the room with the presents, and started playing noisily in the middle of the night, and waking up everyone ????

Rarely seen my dear mother so angry, and me and little brother so amused, thanks for bringing out this great memory. 

On a serious note, i'd ask you why you don't save some of your righteous skepticism for the consciousness dilemma.

What is born first,  the man or the consciousness ?

Or, would consciousness exist without the man ?

[seedy]

10 Commandments - Do as I say or go to Eternal Damnation

Sounds like a great way to live.

Totalitarian States use the same message, only they create the Hell you go to here on earth

Jewish and Christian faiths - two of the most tolerant religions on earth !!! 555

[VincentRJ]

35 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

On a serious note, i'd ask you why you don't save some of your righteous skepticism for the consciousness dilemma.

What is born first,  the man or the consciousness ?

Or, would consciousness exist without the man ?

It seems just plain common sense to me that consciousness requires an active neural network. I've not come across any evidence that consciousness can exist independent of a neural network or brain, but you can speculate to your heart's content. ????

[mauGR1]

29 minutes ago, seedy said:

10 Commandments - Do as I say or go to Eternal Damnation

Sounds like a great way to live.

Totalitarian States use the same message, only they create the Hell you go to here on earth

Jewish and Christian faiths - two of the most tolerant religions on earth !!! 555

I would gladly argue your false assumptions, but tbh , i can't be bothered. 

What about getting some historical knowledge, just saying ????

[mauGR1]

25 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

I've not come across any evidence that consciousness can exist independent of a neural network or brain

What kind of evidence do you need, would you ask a molecule in your physical body to prove the existence of yourself?

The laws of physics, geometry, maths etc are evidence of a design, and you know very well that you can't prove that all this originated from the man..

..so, at least, a little skepticism is fair.

[seedy]

1 hour ago, mauGR1 said:

What about getting some historical knowledge, just saying ????

Here are 2 examples from today

Judiasm - Palestine

RC Church - Kiddie Diddling and no accountability except "I'm Sorry" Pay a few bucks and under the carpet it goes.

But every Sunday they send a plate around to get more money from the Gullible

Why ? God told them to 2000 years ago

What is wrong with this picture ?

 

[mauGR1]

9 minutes ago, seedy said:

What is wrong with this picture ?

Almost everything. ????

[WhiteBuffaloATM]

3 hours ago, mauGR1 said:

Nope, skepticism, as opposed to blind faith, is a pillar of true science. 

So, now, while intelligent design seems to be unproven thus non existent, i think it's fair to be skeptical about that.

.. or do you really believe that humans are the greatest form of intelligence in the vast universe ?

 

As for religious belief, which is mindlessly vilified in these dark days, you might find out that, having got ridden of the superstition bit, it's just pure and simple common sense.

The 10 commandments,  for an easy example, it's just common sense for a peaceful cohabiting. 

So, the whole thing appears to be just a bit more complex that you appear to think ????

skepticism essential to science. but only where facts unproven. flat earthers are loons not “skeptics”. challenging settled science corroborated by thousands of scientists over centuries is lunacy/trolling.

religion is mindfully challenged. resisting untruth & unreason is not “vilifying”. 

 

evidence so far and some scientific theory is that we ARE the only advanced life form in existence.

one hundred years of radio waves travelling one hundred light years in all directions…..and no response. religion WAS indeed common sense. when humans knew nothing much about the universe religion “explained” everything. just makes no sense with scientific method around.

 

the 10 commandments have to have been around for the entire existence of homo sapiens. archeological digs evidence neanderthal cohabitation for 800,000 years. documented laws since 3000 bc.nonsense to suggest we “knew not right from wrong” until abrahamic religion invented !

[VincentRJ]

2 hours ago, mauGR1 said:

What kind of evidence do you need, would you ask a molecule in your physical body to prove the existence of yourself?

Don't be silly.  ???? 

A molecule is so small it's completely invisible to the naked eye. Even if one were viewing the molecule through an electron microscope, it would be very foolish to expect it to hear and understand your questions. 

 

The kind of evidence I would require is evidence that meets the requirements of the 'methodology of science', that is, evidence that can be repeatedly either confirmed through controlled experiments or falsified through controlled experiments.
Evidence that can be neither confirmed nor falsified is useless.

 

"The laws of physics, geometry, maths etc are evidence of a design, and you know very well that you can't prove that all this originated from the man..
..so, at least, a little skepticism is fair."

 

The laws of physics, geometry, maths, etc, are all creations of mankind that have slowly evolved since the beginning of civilization, and continue to evolve because science is never 'completely' settled.

 

Everything is gradually evolving or changing to some degree or at some rate, including our climate. Even the Buddha knew this, 2,500 years ago. ????
 

[mauGR1]

41 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

Don't be silly.  ???? 

I did a comparison,  which went over your head.

If you think that try to ridicule what you can't understand makes you smarter, just carry on, it's not my business ????

[VincentRJ]

13 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

I did a comparison,  which went over your head.

If you think that try to ridicule what you can't understand makes you smarter, just carry on, it's not my business ????

If I write something which someone can't understand, I'm willing to help them understand it by clarifying what I wrote, or rephrasing it.

[mauGR1]

1 hour ago, WhiteBuffaloATM said:

skepticism essential to science. but only where facts unproven. flat earthers are loons not “skeptics”. challenging settled science corroborated by thousands of scientists over centuries is lunacy/trolling.

religion is mindfully challenged. resisting untruth & unreason is not “vilifying”. 

 

evidence so far and some scientific theory is that we ARE the only advanced life form in existence.

one hundred years of radio waves travelling one hundred light years in all directions…..and no response. religion WAS indeed common sense. when humans knew nothing much about the universe religion “explained” everything. just makes no sense with scientific method around.

 

the 10 commandments have to have been around for the entire existence of homo sapiens. archeological digs evidence neanderthal cohabitation for 800,000 years. documented laws since 3000 bc.nonsense to suggest we “knew not right from wrong” until abrahamic religion invented !

Your faith is moving me, but I'm skeptical of your theory of settled science, and I'm trying to be polite.

Hint : too much faith in materialism, combined with an over-exposure to TV and movies,  can be seriously harmful,  even lethal to critical thinking.

As your nearly correct last paragraph is showing,  you don't even understand what I'm saying.

[mauGR1]

1 minute ago, VincentRJ said:

If I write something which someone can't understand, I'm willing to help them understand it by clarifying what I wrote, or rephrasing it.

That's what I'm doing hopelessly since many months here.. 

I understand very well what you are saying btw, and, in the limits of the material realm, it makes sense.

Yet, i have to say once again,  you cannot see the intelligent design, or the universal consciousness, or the source of existence with your physical eyes, and this is a fact.

 

 

[mauGR1]

1 hour ago, VincentRJ said:

The laws of physics, geometry, maths, etc, are all creations of mankind that have slowly evolved since the beginning of civilization, and continue to evolve..

Yeah,  right, and Columbus discovered America. 

...sometimes i suspect that education and indoctrination are dangerously close ????

[transam]

I wonder why, if there is a God, a creator, why his planet Earth is filled with creatures that were created to kill and eat each other.

 

Doesn't sound a very nice place for Galaxy holiday folk to come and visit...????

[WhiteBuffaloATM]

lots of pseudo hokum nonsense mau from you but still, from your side , Zero Actual Science, Zero Scientific PROOF of anything you say and even “challenging” Scientific Method. The Ancients EASILY Disproved God using the simple Unbreakable Rock riddle and proved Earth orbits the Sun with sticks and shadows. yet 2500 years later here you are “ challenging” Science and “defending” childish God Nonsense……. 

[mauGR1]

16 minutes ago, transam said:

I wonder why, if there is a God, a creator, why his planet Earth is filled with creatures that were created to kill and eat each other.

 

Doesn't sound a very nice place for Galaxy holiday folk to come and visit...????

So you think that you deserve better, eh ????

Just be good Johnny, be good, being grateful for what you have, instead of complaining for what you don't have, will make your life better, i guarantee ????

[mauGR1]

Just now, WhiteBuffaloATM said:

lots of pseudo hokum nonsense mau from you but still, from your side , Zero Actual Science, Zero Scientific PROOF of anything you say and even “challenging” Scientific Method. The Ancients EASILY Disproved God using the simple Unbreakable Rock riddle and proved Earth orbits the Sun with sticks and shadows. yet 2500 years later here you are “ challenging” Science and “defending” childish God Nonsense……. 

Put down the bottle, is all that i can say to you. 

Hatred is bad for your health too ????

[transam]

4 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

So you think that you deserve better, eh ????

Just be good Johnny, be good, being grateful for what you have, instead of complaining for what you don't have, will make your life better, i guarantee ????

Try again, I haven't a clue what you're talking about.....????

[WhiteBuffaloATM]

7 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

Put down the bottle, is all that i can say to you. 

Hatred is bad for your health too ????

classic predictable “ad hominem”. taken a sound beating. clueless.

[mauGR1]

2 minutes ago, WhiteBuffaloATM said:

classic predictable “ad hominem”. taken a sound beating. clueless.

Pot, kettle, black ????

[Fat is a type of crazy]

On 11/5/2021 at 6:05 PM, VincentRJ said:

I hope my following response is not considered to be out of context in this thread. I consider a belief in God to be a belief without sufficient evidence, which is similar to a belief in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.

 

I agree that one should look at the evidence. That's exactly what I do, or at least try to do. I check various sites for more precise and reliable information than is provided by the media. I check sites such as the Bureau of Meteorology, NASA, NOAA, and the Working Group 1 section of the IPCC reports, as well as contrarian sites which are skeptical of the significance of AGW. It's important to consider both sides of the story if one wishes to be unbiased.

 

The Working Group 1 section of the IPCC reports deals with the scientific evidence rather than the political advice to policy makers, which is in another section. This WG1 section of the report provides (at least sometimes) a more balanced view of our current state of understanding of climate change. It uses terms such as 'Low Confidence', 'Medium Confidence', and 'High Confidence', relating to the frequency of extreme weather events, for example.

 

What I find in my enquiries is that there seems to be terrible confusion in the media and the general population about the difference between weather and climate. As a result of the widespread 'meme' that has been promoted by the media, that we are on a trajectory of increasingly disastrous changes of climate due to our CO2 emissions, every extreme weather event is seen as yet another example of a looming, world-wide catastrophe due to AGW, yet even the IPCC has clearly stated that one cannot attribute the cause of any particular extreme weather event to AGW.

 

Consider the recent flooding of the Ahr Valley in Germany this July. Angela Merkel immediately associated the event with climate change. "She said the force of the storms suggested that they had "something to do with climate change," adding, "We have to hurry, we have to get faster in the fight against climate change."

 

What you probably won't find mentioned in the media is the history of flooding in the Ahr Valley region. I had to do a lot of searching to find the following site which lists 75 major floods in this region that have occurred during the past 700 years or so, which is more than 7 floods per century, on average.
https://www.kreis-ahrweiler.de/kvar/VT/hjb1983/hjb1983.25.htm

 

Here are descriptions of just a couple of the floods mentioned.
"1590, May, Hemmessen: At the end of May, the Ahr swelled higher than in living memory due to a large storm with torrential rain."

 

"1601, 30 May, Antweiler: On this day, a thunderstorm with rain and hail suddenly arose in the afternoon, the sky darkened, the locks of the sky opened and unimaginable masses of water fell down, so that the horrified inhabitants believed in the end of the world." 

 

In Australia it's common for the media to report on every extreme weather event, such as a major flood, as unprecedented, or the worst in a century, or the worst on record. However, when I do my own research into the BOM records of past flooding events, I find these media reports are false, and that the flood, in terms of flood height, is only the 5th or 6th or 7th worst on record.

 

If you take the trouble to look where the consensus of opinion lies, as you suggest, you will find that the consensus varies depending on what aspect of climate change is addressed.

 

For example, I imagine there would be a very large consensus that we are currently in a slight warming phase, and that average, global temperatures have risen around 1 degree C during the past 150 years or so. However, when one starts being more specific, and asks questions such as: "Is a mere 1 degree warming over 150 year period bad for the environment? Is the current warming mostly due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, or mostly natural? If we continue using fossil fuels, are computer projections of future temperature rises and catastrophic changes in climate, reliable?", then the consensus will change significantly.

 

I also suspect there would be a high consensus that the severity of heat waves has been increasing since the industrial revolution. This is to be expected because we are currently in a warming phase and have created many Urban Heat Islands, that is, cities, suburbs, roads and pavements which absorb a lot of heat when the sun shines, and have also created additional heat which is emitted from lots of vehicles and air-conditioners and other devices. The temperature in cities can often be as much as 3 degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside.

 

Of course the media will create bad news from rising temperatures and heat waves, because creating bad news is their business. The human mind is instinctively programmed to pay more attention to bad news than good news because of our instinct for survival, and the media capitalizes on this fact. They'll report on rising death rates due to heat waves but never mention falling death rates from extreme cold as the climate warms. The reality is that far more people, world-wide, die from extreme cold than extreme heat. As the temperature warms, and cold areas experience less extreme cold periods, the fewer number of deaths from extreme cold are far greater than the increased number of deaths from extreme heat.

 

I think I'd better stop here. ????

It's clear you have a good knowledge of these issues but I just don't concur with your conclusions. For example ,the concerns of scientists are by far based on actual warming, rather than this or that event. I agree that media's claims about links are by nature often just suppositions, or worse, but science can link increased CO2 = higher temperatures = likely more of certain events. Bushfires in Australia and California, I live surrounded by gum trees, are not necessarily caused by climate change but it's not unreasonable to at least propose a link. Otherwise we'll be like frogs boiling in water watching temperatures rise but shouting down anyone who might suggest that there could be a causal effect. 

That's the problem with religion in my opinion. It's fine for people to believe what they want but  it affects all our lives. The religious have a fall back position believing someone is looking out for them if they are good, that there's this other place free of warming and other earthly failings that they will go when they die, that they see some bigger picture that we can't see. So they can look at things like climate change with derision but believe in things like intelligent design. 

[seedy]

37 minutes ago, Fat is a type of crazy said:

That's the problem with religion in my opinion. It's fine for people to believe what they want but  it affects all our lives.

Good point. The True Believers look down with scorn and derision on anyone, for whatever reason, who do not agree with their beliefs.

Us against Them seems to be the rally cry.

Which is just like armies in war behave, against both the opposing forces and any civilians caught in the crossfire.

Police the same.

[zzaa09]

9 minutes ago, seedy said:

Good point. The True Believers look down with scorn and derision on anyone, for whatever reason, who do not agree with their beliefs.

Us against Them seems to be the rally cry.

Which is just like armies in war behave, against both the opposing forces and any civilians caught in the crossfire.

Police the same.

......as well as politics and politicians - almost religious zealotry. 

[Skeptic7]

13 minutes ago, zzaa09 said:

......as well as politics and politicians - almost religious zealotry. 

Yes and in USA people vote and politicians legislate based on subjective superstitious beliefs. And even some judges, put these beliefs before the secular Constitution they all have affirmed to uphold. They are required to state an oath to uphold the Constitution, not any book of superstition, yet many put Bible before Constitution. Before the law of the land. Dangerous, divisive and unacceptable.

[mauGR1]

Well, I'm starting to realize that for you Americans, the religious zealots are playing an important part in politics and everyday's lives.

It's just not the same in other countries which I've been, except Iran during the revolution in 79, but I just run away quickly. 

I guess I would detest them if I meet them, there are some "jehovah witnesses" in my home country,  which can be a bit obnoxious, yet not really dangerous. 

Yet, the "divisive feeling " is becoming very deep, as much as I can see, in all modern societies, and i just disagree in putting all the blame on religion and spiritual theories and stuff. 

 

[seedy]

1 hour ago, zzaa09 said:

......as well as politics and politicians - almost religious zealotry. 

Hear Hear !!

[Thunglom]

11 hours ago, VincentRJ said:

Of course I'm able to see the difference. That's why I used the word 'similar'. Do you understand the difference between 'similar' and 'identical'? ????

they are not "similar" they are opposites

[Thunglom]

9 hours ago, mauGR1 said:

Nope, skepticism, as opposed to blind faith, is a pillar of true science. 

So, now, while intelligent design seems to be unproven thus non existent, i think it's fair to be skeptical about that.

.. or do you really believe that humans are the greatest form of intelligence in the vast universe ?

 

As for religious belief, which is mindlessly vilified in these dark days, you might find out that, having got ridden of the superstition bit, it's just pure and simple common sense.

The 10 commandments,  for an easy example, it's just common sense for a peaceful cohabiting. 

So, the whole thing appears to be just a bit more complex that you appear to think ????

try this for size......

https://herebedragonsmovie.com