Searching for GOD...

[Dicky Underpants]

Perhaps we should all put our posts past you before we put them out for general reading on the forum just in case there's a comma or a full stop out of place.

The fact we don't all use exactly similar terms when we write is overcome by most of people that recognise these slight errors but still have the ability to easily understand the intended meaning of whoever wrote the post; why the need to be so picky of people that are writing to this forum and not trying to set out important legal documents. 

You've entirely missed the point. It's not about NS being pedantic over a small matter of spelling or grammar or not accepting the general sense of something that should have come across as being obvious. It's about a major aspect of evolutionary theory which needs to be clarified. NS has tried to clarify this on several occasions to Floo, but to no avail - all she can do is to arrogantly ask NS to demonstrate  'his qualifications' - even though she has none whatsoever on the subject, and probably the only book she's ever looked at on the matter of evolution is a child's book about dinosaurs. On her own admission, the only book she reads is the Bible (for the bizarre reason that she wants to confirm to herself how evil the 'God of the Bible is').
Floo doesn't read people's explanations (Brownie has pleaded with her recently - several times -  to return to various points in several threads that she has raised, in order to continue the discussion - she never does, she just barges on with one assertion after another). That's Floo's way, and I don't expect anyone will change it.

[Dicky Underpants]

My post would be like that to you, perhaps next time I post I'll put it all in a P M to you first so that you can edit and make whatever you will from my post and the I can submit my revised post to the forum confident in knowing I haven't broken any of your rules.

Oh for fuck's sake, it's not about "breaking NS's" rules - and it's not about spelling and punctuation. The first matter was about clarifying an aspect of evolutionary theory, and the second was about Floo challenging NS's authority to make statements about evolution, (even though she knows fuck all about it herself).

Then came the matter of double standards - and I'd hope that none of us would want to be shown as displaying these. It's a question of general decency - not NS's decency. Over the matter under discussion, Floo has displayed double standards.

[floo]

Blimey DU you are on a roll, four posts one after the other on the same topic!

[Dicky Underpants]

Blimey DU you are on a roll, four posts one after the other on the same topic!

Have you worked out what NS has so patiently tried to explain to you yet?

[floo]

Have you worked out what NS has so patiently tried to explain to you yet?

'Patiently', not the word I would have used!

[Brownie]

Have you worked it out with a degree of impatience then?  Or just scanned and discarded it.

[ippy]

Have you worked it out with a degree of impatience then?  Or just scanned and discarded it.

I think it's semantics, I've read a few of his posts and I think we are on the same side, and he seems to me to read into my rather loosely worded posts and gets me wrong; I end up with not knowing what it is he's talking about although I'm sure he's an all right guy.

ippy

[Bubbles]

 

Having ploughed my way through this thread, I don't think anyone reading in is going to think human beings are more evolved, unless it was in nit picking 

[ippy]

Having ploughed my way through this thread, I don't think anyone reading in is going to think human beings are more evolved, unless it was in nit picking 

And what makes you say that Rose!

ippy

[Khatru]

You still have to explain why (when there is nothing AB can say to convince you of anything)

What would it take to convince you that the Hindu religion is the true belief system?

What standard or measure of evidence would you set as acceptable evidence for the Hindu deities?

Would that standard be of an equivalent to those you use for your invisible sky pixie?

[Alan Burns]

Yes, there can be no measurable quality of anything resulting from a process of evolution driven by natural events with no aim or objective.

Yet we can perceive these qualities in the human product:

The ability to override natural instincts.
The ability to wilfully over indulge for pleasure.
The capacity to love and be loved.
The capacity for subjective free thinking.
Artistic creativity
Artistic appreciation

It is hard to see how any of these attributes could have come about purely from a criterion for survival.  But no doubt some humans will come up with intelligently thought out reasons why these attributes can be achieved by survival alone.

And there we get yet another fascinating human attribute - the ability to use their intelligence to concoct various scenarios which explain how we come into existence without any help from God.

So we offer our wonder and awe to the lifeless random forces of this universe which are indifferent, if not hostile, to the existence of any life.

[Shaker]

It is hard to see how any of these attributes could have come about purely from a criterion for survival.  But no doubt some humans will come up with intelligently thought out reasons why these attributes can be achieved by survival alone.

"It is hard ..." does not equal "... therefore God."

And there we get yet another fascinating human attribute - the ability to use their intelligence to concoct various scenarios which explain how we come into existence without any help from God.

Reason, they call it. Don't add needless entities as pseudo-explanations which don't actually explain anything and indeed stand in need of explanation themselves, because that's intellectual suicide.

So we offer our wonder and awe to the lifeless random forces of this universe which are indifferent, if not hostile, to the existence of any life.

Indifferent is the proper term - hostility implies conscious intent. Yes - what about it? The Andromeda galaxy knows or cares nothing about me or indeed any human being or anything else, yet we can find it awesome. We are so constituted as human beings that greatness in any respect - physical size; oldness; physical power - impresses us. The Book of Kells is regarded as more significant, more praiseworthy than last Tuesday's Daily Express. The Domesday Book is thought of as more important to us than the Swindon phone directory. Mount Everest more so than Pen-y-Ghent. Niagara Falls more than Malham Cove. (I've been to one of these places. Feel free to guess which). We find these things awesome. If you're like me the constellation of Orion that I see in the night sky walking the dog through the autumn to spring months is awesome even to the naked eye, let alone through an average telescope where the Orion nebula is enough to take your breath away. The same goes for tigers and the last movement of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony.

What's the problem here? Are you of such shaky self-esteem that you can only invest awe in something that you think can respond to you in some sort of personal way?

Your capacity for awe seems to me seriously and severely limited if not downright stunted, in my opinion. If I'm absolutely honest, your daft fables of gods seem to this man to be only so many silly little parochial tales of exactly and precisely the sort of thing that a primate sharing half a chromosome with a chimpanzee, spinning tales of a tight, narrow, claustrophobic hole-and-corner universe would dream up. More grown-up to me, more adult, clearer-eyed, more far-sighted, more aware of our right place in the cosmos, are almost any page of Stephen Hawking or dear old Carl Sagan, and building on them these few momentary words of a great man we lost a few years ago: https://goo.gl/XI0WUI

[savillerow]

Msg 12303 AB You keep shaking that tree but all you get is plastic fruit. Theres nothing real.

[torridon]

Yes, there can be no measurable quality of anything resulting from a process of evolution driven by natural events with no aim or objective.

Yet we can perceive these qualities in the human product:

The ability to override natural instincts.
The ability to wilfully over indulge for pleasure.
The capacity to love and be loved.
The capacity for subjective free thinking.
Artistic creativity
Artistic appreciation

It is hard to see how any of these attributes could have come about purely from a criterion for survival.  But no doubt some humans will come up with intelligently thought out reasons why these attributes can be achieved by survival alone.

Hard to see, maybe, but do we give up in the face of hard to see ? Or do we rise to the challenge of attempting a real understanding.  Nobody says that science is easy, it requires hard graft and commitment sometimes, I rather fear that you don't rise to the challenge to understand through lack of brainpower, but more through lack of commitment, your commitment has all been channelled, seduced, by your God theory.

And there we get yet another fascinating human attribute - the ability to use their intelligence to concoct various scenarios which explain how we come into existence without any help from God.

Sly inversion of the burden of proof noted. Your God theory, you prove it.

So we offer our wonder and awe to the lifeless random forces of this universe which are indifferent, if not hostile, to the existence of any life.

I don't 'offer wonder' to anything, and I'm not sure if this peculiar active/passive inflection was supposed to carry significance or not.  I am awed by things; and the things that fill me with awe are those things that you remain determinedly blind to - the real story that is being uncovered through steady but determined research - the insights that we are made from stardust from long dead stars, that we evolved from humble microbial beginnings, that matter becomes conscious under certain circumstances, that the flow of time is distorted by mass, and so forth.  You can keep your capricious petulant sky god with his magic powers because I have grown out of that and I remain baffled as to why so many people remain in the clutches of such a gooey facile infantile mindset into adulthood.  When I stopped being a boy I put away Postman Pat because I found far greater richness and insights, in Shakespeare, for example.  I don't want trade in knowledge of the real world for the dumbed down storybook version that says you can live for ever so long as you agree to believe it.  You have sold out your adulthood to a puerile childish fantasy.

[Rhiannon]

Top post, Torridon.

I think I do offer awe but I offer it back to the things that awe me - stars, sea, sky - with no need for more.

[Enki]

I don't "offer" wonder and awe, but simply feel it. If I actually believed it came from some sort of consciousness entity, then I might well feel other emotions such as disgust and repugnance towards said entity. Luckily, having no belief whatever in such an entity, I find the positive emotions I feel to be entirely satisfactory, and, on occasions, positively exhilarating.

[Rhiannon]

I think I do feel gratitude as well as awe. Quite why I see myself as offering that back I'm not sure. I don't really offer it to anything in the belief that there's some kind of entity involved. This might sound a bit odd but I think that when I feel something I rarely internalise it but let it leave me, which probably makes no sense at all, but it's that that I offer. And of course when I write about nature, or make things from what I've found or gathered, or put out bird seed or plant hazels and acorns in pots to grow new trees - those are offerings.

[Enki]

No problem with that at all,  Rhi.  Each to their own and all that

[SusanDoris]

I like to think of all the people throughout the history of homo sapiens sapiens who knew instinctively, or had worked out, that there was no need to thank, defer to,  worship, fear, or sacrifice to any deity. Respect is due to them, I feel! I would also like to be a little bit smug and think that I just might have been one of them if I had been alive then.

However, since there were obviously never enough of them, the attitude of deference and gratitude for life, food, safety, and everything else
Became so completely embedded and  has been so overwhelmingly predominant in religious beliefs, that it is not surprising that it is still so strong today. When I was young, there was no question that God must be thanked, although I am fairly sure I used to question this at times! What a waste of hot air – doing all that praising and thanking! 

The speed of knowledge acquisition, and the move towards a better understanding that the universe came about naturally, that it can be studied, described  and understood, is what all need to be searching for, not some God/god/s for which not one scrap of evidence has ever been produced.

There is still such a very long way to go, but, as an incurable optimist, I believe that the pendulum, which has been stuck for so long at the ’yes-there-must-be-a-God’  end of the arc* has begun its inexorable swing towards the middle and on towards the other end.

•   I’m not sure of the correct vocabulary for pendulum swings, so I googled it, but I’ll post this as is rather than try and express it more precisely. 

[Leonard James]

I like to think of all the people throughout the history of homo sapiens sapiens who knew instinctively, or had worked out, that there was no need to thank, defer to,  worship, fear, or sacrifice to any deity. Respect is due to them, I feel! I would also like to be a little bit smug and think that I just might have been one of them if I had been alive then.

However, since there were obviously never enough of them, the attitude of deference and gratitude for life, food, safety, and everything else
Became so completely embedded and  has been so overwhelmingly predominant in religious beliefs, that it is not surprising that it is still so strong today. When I was young, there was no question that God must be thanked, although I am fairly sure I used to question this at times! What a waste of hot air – doing all that praising and thanking! 

The speed of knowledge acquisition, and the move towards a better understanding that the universe came about naturally, that it can be studied, described  and understood, is what all need to be searching for, not some God/god/s for which not one scrap of evidence has ever been produced.

There is still such a very long way to go, but, as an incurable optimist, I believe that the pendulum, which has been stuck for so long at the ’yes-there-must-be-a-God’  end of the arc* has begun its inexorable swing towards the middle and on towards the other end.

•   I’m not sure of the correct vocabulary for pendulum swings, so I googled it, but I’ll post this as is rather than try and express it more precisely. 

As you would, expect I agree with you entirely, Susan. The last fifty years have seen a bigger move away from such ideas than in the last few centuries, and I think the momentum is growing. Hopefully the younger generation will be less susceptible to the carrot and stick approach, and take their morality from secular humanism.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

As you would, expect I agree with you entirely, Susan. The last fifty years have seen a bigger move away from such ideas than in the last few centuries, and I think the momentum is growing. Hopefully the younger generation will be less susceptible to the carrot and stick approach, and take their morality from secular humanism.

Given the amount of cyberbullying Len the attempt at conveying morality to the next generation has failed dismally. Secular humanism not working Len, that's beside it's appalling attitude to the religious.

[Shaker]

In what way is secular humanism not working?

[Rhiannon]

No problem with that at all,  Rhi.  Each to their own and all that

Indeed. 

I suspect that the fact I find that offering is important is connected to why I am a pantheist. But I don't see any kind of personal God at all and I'm not entirely sure what it is that I'm offering to. But then maybe there doesn't need to be anything beyond it being an expression of my own emotion.

[Alan Burns]

Your God theory, you prove it.

Your request for proof resonates with the story of Doubting Thomas which was read in today's Gospel.

Mere words were not enough for Thomas.  He wanted to see the real thing.

So I feel that mere words on this forum will not convince the doubters - they need to encounter the real thing.

We believers are told that we are Christ's presence on earth, so here is a call to all Christians to show the living God to the world not through mere words, but by living the Gospels and allowing God's love to work through us, so that many may believe.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

Your request for proof resonates with the story of Doubting Thomas which was read in today's Gospel.

Mere words were not enough for Thomas.  He wanted to see the real thing.

So I feel that mere words on this forum will not convince the doubters - they need to encounter the real thing.

We believers are told that we are Christ's presence on earth, so here is a call to all Christians to show the living God to the world not through mere words, but by living the Gospels and allowing God's love to work through us, so that many may believe.

Doubting Thomas got the real deal. Why should we put up with mere Christians? Why can't the big man pop down in person and show us a few miracles?