Religion: If You Don't Believe In It Why Does It Bother You?

Making a broad assumption from one person is the same exact thing as most Americans make about "Osama Bin Laden". I would think that if ANYONE would know that making an assumption of a religion based off one person is a false accusation, it would be someone who has had to put up with all the propaganda against Islam being just like what Osama Bin Laden wants.

If everyone justified their religion based on each of its participants, I would hope no one would be religious.


tldr:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=det7TUsLy8U

WOW, I mean really! God(Jehova) is forgiving loving kind gentle and compassionate beyond human understanding. This is not accountable in any religious relevance or even ok by any social norm.

Be at peace with one another. This is far from peace, lol.

;)

A number of people who've smoked pot, get an intense feeling of this "Deja'vu" during their high. Considering this, I think it's plausible to say that it has something to do with chemicals in the brain.

http://boards.cannabis.com/cannabis-com-lounge/150853-deja-vu.html

To say that it's a religious experience, is the same thing that native Americans say when they smoke paote.

Oh, no change. Just surprised it's still going. Srsbizniz.

Speaking of Deja Vu, I've been getting an incredibly amount of it recently.

I freaked out my mum by predicting things she was going to say like 6 times.

Seriously... the ***?!

(they weren't easy to predict either, she said "I want to try Tomato juice" and I said "Tomato juice" the exact same time... we've never talked about it and I didn't even know it existed until that moment)

I'd say it is srsbizniz. Some people devote their entire lives to it, and then force it upon the lives of their children. Anything that important is worth talking about, in my opinion.

I wasn't being sarcastic. <_<

It'd be great if we could all choose what we wanted to be from and think that this was fact. I'd pick a Velociraptor for sure.

To say the human body was the greatest thing ever created is something of a biased statement as well. Though I know how hard it is for humans to not think they're not #1. We're still afflicted with diseases, viruses, wild animals still can potentially eat us, etc. Why would a perfect god make such an imperfect and unpredictable world? In this view, if you believe in god, then you believe that he has the capacity to be completely merciless. If anyone's familiar with the phrase, "The Almighty Idiot". I'll stick to my reasoning that the universe was born out of chance and probability.

I read this somewhere: Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe.

But I can't remember who said it. :/

Muhammad:

Actually, the monkey analogue is further helping my point. Considering the size of the universe, eventually atoms will combine to make this element, and these elements will combine to make this.. etc, until we're faced with basic life, which would be something like an ameoba. Which brings us to our evolution theory. Probability.

How many other planets in our galaxy have life? I have a feeling that some planet, somewhere in the universe, has some form of life. It may not be carbon based, it may be silicon based for all I know.

I'm sorry. I can't look around me, at trees, animals, the solar system, let alone human life, and think we just got lucky. I've tried, honestly, but I don't think I'll ever be able to see how that isn't ridiculous.

Well, you said yourself that monkeys a million monkeys at a million typewriters would eventually type out Hamlet. Now consider this: There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Also, our current version of the universe is said to be approximately 14 billion years old. I think it's amazing that by chance we've come to this, but also, it just makes sense to me.

The theory of evolution holds very little water in the sense of macro evolution. Micro evloution however happens everyday. The gaps for MacroEvo are huge and still this can not be explained by science. The fact that Mankind has maintained a mamster exsistance since the first archeological remnants found of said man only gives more prof to a higher power at work. Statistic guessing is not science, true science is hard linier fact that can be reevaluated conected though date lines and DNA. However all the science in the world has yet to link man to the primordial stages of the earth. Hence why the whole "Missing link theory" becomes less and less powerful over the years. An interesting fact to consider is that Rats have closer DNA strings then some of the origanal Monkey fossils used in evolution chart. Do some research and get back to me (*^.^*)

Yeah, but Hamlet isn't a living being. It's letters on paper. Humans have feelings and thoughts.

Honestly, I think the problem with people accepting chance as a determining factor for their creation, is with a person's unwillingness to accept they are meaningless. Knowing that you were created out of happenstance is a truly humbling experience. While the opposing side is convinced that god created them specifically to serve a higher purpose. You may argue that this is a humbling experience as well, but only in the same way that a dog discovers that he is not the alpha male of the pack. People of religion consider "god" to be that alpha male.

I like all the stuff you said there, because you didn't give any good reasoning for the existence of god either. Come back to me when you prove "god" exists. (*^.^*)

That has nothing to do with it. I don't care about purpose or whatever. The logic is broken; that's all there is to it. Going back to the Hamlet thing, if you told me to read Hamlet and said a bunch of monkeys had typed that up, I'd think you were an idiot. If you told me one of the most brilliant writers in history had written it, well, that would make a lot more sense. Likewise, if you showed me a living organism, not necessarily a human being, and told me it just happened out of nowhere, I'd think you were insane.

When your mind was not fully developed, were you capable of this independent thought? Surely, you can say that you made actions and did things as a child, but I have a feeling you can't remember what your thoughts were at that time(talking about the ages of 1-12 months or more). At that time, you didn't think to yourself the things you are capable of doing now. Why is that? The chemical composition of the brain. It's so advanced that some people mistake it for a soul. If you do some research on lobotomies, you'll find quickly that without certain parts of the brain, you cease to function as you are now.

Given all this, it's safe for me to say that the elements that I'm composed of - are my god. And the chance and probability of all that happened before me, is also my god.

Thank you. You made my point. "It's so advanced that some people mistake it for a soul." A human couldn't even replicate the human brain. Yet chance can. Ridiculous.

"A human couldn't even replicate-"
See? This is the attitude you continue to see in religious people. The attitude that humanity is by some means #1!!! If a human can't do it? No one can! What a cop-out from a logical argument.

Um. 1. bad stereotype, I never said I was religious. I just think the whole chance theory is ridiculous. 2. I'm sorry, no other creature with the ability to reason came to mind. Maybe I should have said monkeys...

I see the thread took off a bit in my absense. Well, what the heck, I'll jump back in.

First, on evolution: it is not up for debate. It is the theory that best explains the origin of species. Period. You want to debate it, you absolutely must have evidence that newer species do not arise from older ones. A single anonymous fossil or a new discovery of species popping into existence in a puff of pink magical smoke would toss the whole theory out. If you don't have any evidence, then you have nothing to debate about. I'm fine with accepting a theistic world view that incorporates science, including evolution, into it; anyone who does not, is clearly uneducated or being willfully ignorant and is the debate equivalent of someone showing up to a baseball game with a tennis racket.
Cool, yes, but here's what I don't get. You claim to respect and appreciate science and you are okay with any science that backs up some minor scripture. But you are not even-handed about it. If you don't like it, you ignore it:Claiming to be scientific and then whirling around on legitimate research because of your own bias is hypocritical.

Next:You have it down wrong, the Monkey Hamlet Argument was invented by theists to suggest that the random chance happening of things (originally, life forming from primordial elemements) was absurd because the monkeys would NEVER type up Hamlet.

For the universe, claims about it happening being wonderous are largely, well, biased. We only have ONE universe that we know about, so it's kind of hard to guess how often they happen and how often they appear so ordered. It's not that the universe is wonderfully suited to us; it's that we evolved to adapt to life IN the universe. We don't know that there aren't other very different universes with other forms of life that are living where we would perish. It's like being amazed at a car license plate that says F83 4723. ("Wow! What are the odds?!")

The reason why it's a poor explanation for things is because it seems weird if we assume that life just got here fully formed. I'll borrow from Bill Bryson's excellent "A Short History of Nearly Everything":Ok, still with us? Now, pay attention...For the sake of wrapping this up, I'll summarize the rest of what he says, though I suggest reading the book. If you take all the stuff that's in a human body individually and put it in a big blender, you wouldn't expect to pour out a human being, but that's the same as assuming protein chains formed all at once. In fact, chances are amino acids formed, gained advantages that let them exist a little longer, bumped into other amino acids, and formed hardier chains. Polymers form spontaneously in nature all the time, and ordered self-assembly is no big deal, you see it every time you see a beautiful and symetrical snowflake.

It is perfectly fine to be amazed at the universe, but there is no basis for equating its mind-boggling complexity with god, nor is there anything psychologically wrong with an atheist who does not.

I have to agree with Karianna on the possibility of chance. While it is plausible that we're all here by chance, the odds are extremely in favor of creation. (Gravity, Universe expansion, plate tectonics, moon, Earth's mass, distance from the Sun, etc.) However, it doesn't rule out the possibility of chance.


Technically, yes. The human brain is not fully developed until age 25 on average. Interestingly enough the frontal lobe is the last section to develop (the prefrontal lobe is responsible for your rational thought).

The same can be said about any part (thinking organs here) of the body. The brain is nothing more than tissue, a muscle, it just so happens it includes the function of thought. What I've always found interesting is that thought is arbitrary-it's not necessary for the body to function.

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Why do I even bother? >.>

Seriously, read the post right above you, Serik, and you'll see why the odds are NOT in favor of creation.

The irrational can never understand logical thought.

But dammit that keep us from trying and trying and trying and ... wait who was irrational again? ^^

This is getting so old. I think chance being our creator makes no sense. You say the opposite. Let's say we're both illogical and call it a day.

If you don't know this great man yet, Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970) , Nobel Prize, proliferate writer and famous for several quotes (my favorite being: "I would never die for my beliefs because I know I could be wrong"). This man's life was filled with effort and accomplishments, whether it be traveling the world speaking to politicians, trying to stop the second world war and later, nuclear proliferation or questioning religion at at time when it was seen as unacceptable to do so. He did not believe in creation, or God... which is quite surprising for someone of his time.

About the complexity of the universe and the argument that "it's so perfect it has to have been made by some kind of intelligence" ... an argument that creationists seem to enjoy throwing over as if it was indisputable evidence all the time... here's what he wrote in 1930 in his essay "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?" It's certainly worth a read for anyone trying to defend creationism as more than just a theory :

The usual argument of religious people on this subject is roughly as follows: "I and my friends are persons of amazing intelligence and virtue. It is hardly conceivable that so much intelligence and virtue could have come about by chance. There must, therefore, be someone at least as intelligent and virtuous as we are who set the cosmic machinery in motion with a view to producing Us." I am sorry to say that I do not find this argument so impressive as it is found by those who use it. The universe is large; yet, if we are to believe Eddington, there are probably nowhere else in the universe beings as intelligent as men. If you consider the total amount of matter in the world and compare it with the amount forming the bodies of intelligent beings, you will see that the latter bears an almost infinitesimal proportion to the former. Consequently, even if it is enormously improbable that the laws of chance will produce an organism capable of intelligence out of a casual selection of atoms, it is nevertheless probable that there will be in the universe that very small number of such organisms that we do in fact find.

Then again, considered as the climax to such a vast process, we do not really seem to me sufficiently marvelous. Of course, I am aware that many divines are far more marvelous than I am, and that I cannot wholly appreciate merits so far transcending my own. Nevertheless, even after making allowances under this head, I cannot but think that Omnipotence operating through all eternity might have produced something better. And then we have to reflect that even this result is only a flash in the pan. The earth will not always remain habitable; the human race will die out, and if the cosmic process is to justify itself hereafter it will have to do so elsewhere than on the surface of our planet.. And even if this should occur, it must stop sooner or later. The second law of thermodynamics makes it scarcely possible to doubt that the universe is running down, and that ultimately nothing of the slightest interest will be possible anywhere. Of course, it is open to us to say that when that time comes God will wind up the machinery again; but if we do not say this, we can base our assertion only upon faith, not upon one shred of scientific evidence. So far as scientific evidence goes, the universe has crawled by slow stages to a somewhat pitiful result on this earth and is going to crawl by still more pitiful stages to a condition of universal death. If this is to be taken as evidence of a purpose, I can only say that the purpose is one that does not appeal to me. I see no reason, therefore, to believe in any sort of God, however vague and however attenuated. I leave on one side the old metaphysical arguments, since religious apologists themselves have thrown them over.

The entire essay is available here: http://www.solstice.us/russell/religionciv.html

And I think both sides agree - nobody on the science side thinks that everything happened by chance. That's actually more the creation side, like "poof" and then it was all there.

I think it's hard to let it go because although certainly this forum doesn't hold a lot of bearing on the world as a whole, it's a big topic in our society with fierce advocates all around. The discussion shapes so much in our lives whether we want to talk about it or not. I guess I talk about it in the vain hope that somehow I could make more people agree (honestly, the side that I'm on isn't actually important, I just want a consensus). I do know that will never happen, but since I'm an eternal optimist I will always try.

I can't agree with everything Ayn Rand says, by far, and I hated the only book I ever read by her, Atlas Shrugged. But here are some clips that some of you might find relevant concerning her views on God.