POLL: A shared existence?

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I could not make sense of the poll question so I did not answer. I am a strong atheist who accepts that I have free will.

One specific point of Chev's that I DID want to address though:

Conscience(or the brain that performs such function) evolved just as the bacterial flagellum evolved. No great mystery here.

For the same reason that most bipedal humans walk around much the same way. Sure we can walk on our hands or crawl on our knees but unless there is a disability or a performance aspect, this is highly inefficient and our brains are wired for efficiency(not to mention that efficiency promotes survivability).
We do not have one nation of wanton, sporadic murderers running around for the most part because this is not cost effective. You run out of people that form the society and you lack the great motivator of reciprocal altruism which drives societal progress.

[ March 22, 2005, 16:58: Message edited by: RuneQuester ]

 

Hmm. I suppose I'd best go smack my sunday school teacher around a bit for lying to me. Or, I need to smack myself around for not paying more attention. One or the other.

 

How can one love without free-will?

Isn't love when one makes a conscious decision to put the benefit of another in front of your own personal benefit?

If you accept that the point of our existence is so that love exists, then free-will is a requirement.

My next question is...if my above definition of love is accurate (it may not be)...then what sacrifice is God making in loving us?

Was it Jesus? Personally, I highly doubt that if you sequenced Jesus's DNA it would spell D-I-V-I-N-E.

So what is God sacrificing? Is it perhaps His broken heart as we continuously hurt those He loves such as ourselves and others?

 

Love is simply a series of biochemical reactions that allows us to form a strong bond with our partner. You choose a partner whom has attributes favourable to you and vice versa, which increases the liklihood of a stable relationship. This is of course highly beneficial to your offspring.

 

It's not that I don't believe in the name "God". It's that I don't believe in trancendal phenomena. I believe that anything can be explained. If it can't be explained, it probably doesn't exist, FOR ME. If someone would tell YOU that he/she's God, would you acctualy believe him/her just because you believe in God? I think you won't...

Just because it is a lot more probable that HUMANS exist than Jesus existing. I mean, I rather think that you people are humans than dieties...

NO!

Really? How did the bacterial flagellum evolve?

You really think that humans are the perfect creature, don't you?

I say that you rarely chose. It's just purely biochemical. And it's not God's choice!

Dry joke...

What sacrifice? I don't have no proof, so for me, there was no sacrifice. What God? The God that only people wrote about and talk about? No thank you! If I'd want to have some fun (which I may...) I would write some stuff about some diety that I would invent. Big deal! Broken heart of someone imaginary... haha! Trust me, as long as we don't care, he deffinetly won't care!

Anyway, I want you ALL to think about this: RELIGION IS THE MOST WIDELY SPREAD FORM OF MASS MANIPULATION! And not just christianity. Sorry for the caps, people...

 

It's genius I say. Prey on the insecurities of people, make tax-free money, control the masses. Just like politicians!

 

"... I had now considered the passage of the six brightest stars in the sky over the Earth today and it was time to move onto the seventh star.
Rigel the seventh brightest star in the sky, is the brightest star in the Orion constellation. It also has a connection with the most extreme points on the American continent.
Rigel now passes over the most extreme easterly point of the Americas.
With Rigel so aligned in the sky today the seven brightest stars have now defined the following parallels on the Earth's surface:
1. The extreme northerly fingertip of Antarctica.
2. The extreme southerly tip of the Americas.
3. The extreme easterly tip of the Americas.
4. The highest group of mountains in South America.
5. The highest group of mountains in Central America.
6. The highest group of mountains in the Rocky Mountains.
7. Mt St Helens and Mt Adams, sharing the parallel beneath Mt Rainier
Now I have to ask, how is it that these extreme points are so aligned in a chaotic universe? But I am not the first to ask this question.
The largest pyramid in the world is now also found vertically beneath one of these seven. And the Akapana pyramid at Tiahuanaco is found beneath Sirius. And Cahokia is found beneath Vega. So the question has already been written, but the glyphs of the language are enormous and the page for the text is the surface of the Earth itself.
Just as John Mitchell wrote over 30 years ago, "A great scientific instrument lies sprawled over the entire surface of the globe."
Now we can see some of the mechanism, and this "scientific" instrument is very finely tuned indeed.
Before moving on I would like to insert the following anecdote because it helps to verify the case I am making concerning the geometry of the Earth. In this chapter I have spawned the idea that the highest points on the surface of the Earth are geometrically ordered. Such a hypothesis initially sounds totally outrageous. I am well aware of this. But contempt prior to investigation is invariably folly and it is clear that the subject of investigation is freely available on all good relief maps. With this in mind I was surprised late in this research to discover that China is perhaps home to the greatest of all the world's pyramids..."
Extract from a book called The Star Mirror by M. Vidler which was perhaps randomly picked from a bookcase about 20 minutes ago opened at the passage cited. And reminding me of this topic I thought I would share it with you.

 

In sequential steps just like everything else. If you need some helpful links on the details...


HERE is a link to an article posted as a pro-DESIGN site(just so I am not accused of bias), which explains the flagellum's evolution.

And THIS ONE answers specific creationist claims(who tried to hold up the bacterial flagellum as some sort of evidence against evolution for years) concerning the evolution of the flagellum.

No. I don't even know what "perfection" is!? How did you come to THAT conclusion based on what I wrote? I am an atheist and advocate for science/evolution btw. I think you may have assumed I was on the other side(either that or you have no idea what you are raving about!?).

 

@Ik: The fact that all the piramids are aligned with the stars and that the peaks of the world are bla bla bla and that everything is so perfectly alighned could mean that something intentionately created all of it after a preety good plan. But not necesarely. Maybe they were aliens. Maybe they were humans, maybe the same humans or maybe other humans. I never said that this is a chaotic universe. I always thought that there was an initial spark (not necesarely the 'big bang') that started everything. But maybe the universe itself has no beggining or end. Anyway, the thing is that the universe (infinite or not) is a whole lot larger than our imagination can even dare to grasp. With all things possible, the only thing that I can do is enjoy my life, both exotericaly and esotericaly. Life is a chalenge and I intend to take it! And one more thing. I am not an atheist because I do believe in a superior force, but I am totaly against the phisical part of religion (ie: the church and the pope). When I said that religion is the most widely spread form of mass maniplation, I was not kiding, Tassadar of the Protoss.

 

Somehow I've completely lost the understanding of what this thread is all about. Has this perhaps turned into the Random Babbling of AoDA? I recognize the words you people use, but somehow they don't make sense when I throw them all together...


[It started off as a question of free-will, but, like many threads, it's mutated a bit.] - dmc

[ March 31, 2005, 17:49: Message edited by: dmc ]

 

[Offensive, off-topic content removed - why don't we just let the moderators moderate, hmm?] - dmc

[ March 31, 2005, 17:45: Message edited by: dmc ]

 

Thanks mate, that did help!

 

Gotta go with #2, with the proviso that our human autonomy was given to us by God. We can choose to work with God to improve the world or not, however we wish.

I've only recently begun studying and serious introspection into how I feel about God, but so far the naturalistic God posited by Moredecai Kaplan fits closest with the current state of my ever-evolving spirituality.

@Ik: The first thing I thought upon reading your excerpt was that if you go to the right place in Norway you'll find the name "Slartibartfast" carved into one of the fjords.

 

There's some serious design flaws then. We can choke to death. WTF?! Who would put the windpipe so close to the oesophagus? Heart disease. Of all the arteries/vein/capillaries in the whole body, it is the ones in the heart that get clogged. Veins in the legs - leading to haemorrhoids, emboli, etc. Wisdom teeth. Female pelvis too small making births difficult. Our spines are notoriously poorly designed. Hip and knee joints. Appendix. All that congenital junk in our DNA that shows up every now and then as "handicapped" phenotypes. The Almighty One really needs to go back to the drawing board!

 

Good point Tassadar!

 

yes I belive it is huge, but I calculated, the known universe, in miles, I can imagine it, it may not be correct, but I can certainly try!

free will.

to all-

my belief is this, evolution and creation. the entity (I didn't want to say god, its to related to christianity) started with the begining thing (atom or something was considered the beginning thing right?, or was it the elements that swirled around or created something, not sure) but the entity created that "thing" (well first it created the enviroment it would dwell in) then it wanted to see what it would evolve into, probably helping it along the way to its own specific designs and better designs.(or heres a wild idea, we could be the first expierement or the 1000th expierement, or he could've just started the "first spark" thing and didn't help at all. (I didn't want to enforce my "religion" on you, I actually just want to see if anyone else has something of an opinon like that.)

then once the "basic" design was in, it let it evolve and create its own moral codes maybe hinting at what it should be or give us humans an idea. and just let us live and have free will, I don't even want to try to take a stab at the whole if jesus was god and did he sacrifice etc...

I dunno but what I do know is(my opinion) that something bigger has to have created everything, wanted to give some living things free will, and give "inner" strength to humans(to help ouselves) but he probably helps us along the way. sort of like a tutor or something, or like umm obi one kanobi sort of like, but he doesn't speak to us, its more on a worldly basis, like big events or even small events that change the world some way, or even to a single person, justI dunno its hard to explain but I also think everything that happens has a reason, fate and free will maybe? hmmm this is confusing me. I guess I still don't have a single belief yet because my mind keeps spitting out things I am remebering from the previous posts and things I thought long ago but I am trying to proccess the above information, the stuff I know, the stuff I belive, I guess what I think is to big to type out so basically:

something has to have created the first spark, something gave us free will, maybe with fate intertwined? maybe not fate but just something to improve life?, something watches over us, but we have freedom...

grr really I dunno its hard just to talk let alone type (way easier to talk my mind goes 10000 mph and my finger can't keep up with all the new information coming form the archives of my brain.), I think its just too big for us and I think I should just live life, the way we think we should live it, and know that something bigger has o be out there.

I sort of belive in the chaos theory too. I'm really torn between all sorts of things, besides I'm pretty young and its still hard for me to understand all these big words! also I think its hard for me to type out what I feel, easier to say and think, its hard to lay it out into an organized form, let alone typing it!

I dunno I'm tired and sick with a high fever, lemme take a stab at it when my thoughts are together and its during the day!

 

@Yoyoyo':


Your argument relies on teh presupposition that all existent things MUST be "created" in order to exist(at some point anyway. That is to say that you are expressing the idea that if we go back far enough, at some point we will find a willful "designer"/creator).

The obvious counter to this is to ask who created God then? And who created God's creator? ad infinitum.

We have no need of a "creator". There is nothing in the universe that requires a creator to explain. Physics seem to indicate infinite regress(that is that something has always preceded something else in an infinite chain of causes going back forever).

 

weird, but how did that chain come to exist??

most sense makes it to be a loop... not infintum but something creating itself over and over agian through a loop maybe?

but what created the loop?

we will probably never know, unless there is a creator. could it be that the creator just *existed*? if not a creator could it be that nothing exists at all?

knowing how some stuff cae to be is interesting an' all but its more interesting about what happened in the VERY beginning

 

If the creator just "existed", then the same logic could apply to the universe. It has "existed" all this time.

 

But... has time itself always existed?


Now dawg, just messin' with ya!