Has it ever occured to anyone that, over the course of history, humans often come to the conclusion that anything that cannot be explained at the moment is automatically considered to be supernatural? For example, the Greeks. They had a god for just about anything that they could not explain with their means of science or technology at the time. How else could they explain the torrent of fire and molten lava that spwes out of a volcano? By claiming that Hephasteus is simply working in his forge of course.
But fast forward to today. And we know that isn't the case. The advent of computers, automobiles, airplanes, etc etc etc, would simply astound the Ancient Greeks. They would consider us gods. They would be unable to speak out of pure awe.
And since science is never ending in the sense that, with each question answered, more questions are formed... we still do not have a logical explanation for God. That being that supposedly judges us from afar, and moves through us all.
Think about it though... what if we just haven't reached the technological threshold to explain it yet?
It could be possible, that "God" is nothing more than a wave that interacts with our matter. Influencing our decisions with maybe electrical impulses or something similar. Religion is making "god" more important than it really is. With the advent of more powerful technology, we may be able to see what it is that moves through us all. More than likely, it is just another force of nature. It justs exists. It is there, always has been. But it is not a being, it is not something to worship... it is just not something we can understand. YET.
Basically, what I am trying to say is, we humans have proven over time that with the advent of better technology we can understand the ways of nature around us. So what's to stop us from unlocking the secrets of the universe? As well as explaining what "god" really is? We just can't comprehend it yet... but we will in time I think. Just like we did with volcanoes, oceans, telephones, airplanes, etc etc etc.
Religion is powerful in many ways no doubt. It helps certain people get through rough times, and to them, it explains the way things are as well giving them a code of ethics that they can follow. But religion is also on a way ticket to being obsolete. If science can bridge the gap between the two, what now?
Now just so everyone knows, I am not trying to attack anyones beliefs, I am merely wondering outloud if the above could be the case. I would also like to hear what other people have to say. Please be open-minded, and rational.
I will explain in better detail some ideas that I have heard as well some of my own if a great dialogue can be established.
To those who argue for the existence of deities due to the fact that there are things that are unexplainable by our current-day knowledge, how is this any different than people during the Middle Ages blaming famines and diseases on witches and spells? Those things were unexplainable by the people of that time, but it did not prove the existence of supernatural forces, any more than the unexplainable things of our time proves the existence of deities.
That argument was not valid in 1011, and neither is it in 2011.
Sentient species taste better...
We already know there are supernatural forces. There are properties in other universes and dimensions that we are not capable of perceiving or understanding within our own. They would not be "natural" here so they would be supernatural--were they to have any effect on "our side".
So science already allows for the possibility--we just don't know "naturally" yet with any certainty what a true supernatural event that affected our own universe might be or what it might look like.
I vote for The Lost Room.
..ain't no Sunshine when he's gone.
So you are making the same point as I, yet felt the need to laugh at my argument. Odd.
can't speak for Karen but if I recollect correctly you stated that choosing an abortion was a whim, sort of like deciding to wear the blue tie instead of the red one. She was pointing out (at least to me) that choosing to have an abortion was a serious decision to make.
However lightly you wish to make of a woman's choice to have an abortion, I don't think it is done lightly by a woman, and being a man, I don't necessairly get it but will always support a woman's right to chose.
Good Lord [religious reference]....again I'm agreeing totally with gmc2......
Must be something in the water........
must be...
That's exactly what I was trying to say. Thank you.
On free will,
Lula posts: Quoting lulapilgrim, reply 586We know and prove the fact of free will by direct consciousness, just as we know our own identity. We are aware tgat we can freely guide our own thoughts, selecting if we choose the least attractive. We are aware that when 2 alternative courses of action lie before us we can freely deliberate upon their respective merits, reflecting, examinining and inquiring the reasons for each side. We are conscious that our final choice is free. We can buy a Toyota or a Ford car. We can choose vanilla or chocolate ice cream. We can take "X" street or "Y" street to get to a destination. We can tell the truth or tell a lie.
k10w3 posts: Quoting k10w3, reply 590Just because choices are available, does not mean I have free will.
You are missing the forest for the trees.
Please read my 586 comment again. Free will is a gift of God when we are created. Free will goes to our consciousness, and becasue we have free will, we make choices freely with it.
Quoting k10w3, reply 589Free will presumes I have external (supernatural) knowledge, outside of anything I had experienced or have access to, as to what the proper BEST choice would be in any of those situations. Instead I can only make what I assume is the correct choice, based on what I have experienced so far in my life, how I happen to be feeling physically at that moment, and what presents itself to me in my environment.
The possession of reason or intelligence cannot be without free will. Granted, a reasoning faculty which can apprehend finite things under different aspects, free will follows. For example, take the acquiring of another man's money may be considered as a moral evil of obtaining it by theft, or as yielding one's own goods in exchange for the sake of possessing cash.The object itself allows a man to concentrate upon one aspect or another, proposing motives to himself for a good or an evil choice.
Speaking of motives,
From Maher, Psychology 395,
Free will is the capability of self-determination; it is "that property in virtue of which a rational agent, when all the conditions required elicit a volition are present, can either put forth or abstain from that volition."
Free will is not "motiveless volition". It does not imply choice without motive, but rather chioce between motives. And it's not true we always act on the strongest motive, for many resist temptations time and time again.
Quoting k10w3, reply 589Essentially what I am saying is that if someone makes a choice I don't think is moral, I can judge that person, but if I WERE that person; if I had their biological make up and all the experiences they ever had, and the access to the things they had access to, I would make that same decision.
And this is primarily why you cannot see the forest for the trees when it comes to free will. While you may sincerely think that of yourself (and I don't want to make any of this personal), this is simply not true in general. We are not robots.
Becasue we can understand why people make immoral choices, and even given the same circumstances, doesn't mean we would necessarily make those same choices.
Committing the moral evil (sin) of theft as noted above is a prime example.
Quoting k10w3, reply 589The Biblical God asks us to know what He supposedly knows in order to make the right choice--but the Bible tells us we can never know everything that God knows, so we are put in a catch 22 situation, where we have to make the right choice without the faculties to do so. If a person happens to be born in a pagan country or a country where the Biblical faiths are not predominant, how can they make the correct Biblical choice? They've never experienced the knowledge necessary to make the right choice, they don't have the proper environment to make the right choice; they don't have the correct history to have access to the right choice. Contra-causal free will DEMANDS that we know what the right choice is, like it's beamed down into our brains giving us access to information outside of the natural world, and that's just not factual.
Re: the highlighted...no, no, no, no.....here's why.
As to the first part: The Biblical God asks us to know what He supposedly knows
Just to be clear, Almighty God is All-Knowing and there is no way He would ever ask us to know what He knows. God has Infinite Knowledge and Intelligence and we, His creatures, have finite knowledge and intelligence. The perfect fullness of knowledge is possible only in the heavenly vision of God.
Now why does Almighty God want us to know His truth? Because God wills all men to be saved...for our ultimate everlasting Happiness in Heaven.
Having said that, in order that we might make the right choices, Almighty God did give us a way to know, (love and serve) Him and what He wants for us..
First God gave us His Old Testament prophets and written Revelation which all point to Christ Who is the Way, Truth and Life.
The fullest revelation of those things of God which man is intended to know has been made as far as this life goes. It has been given by Jesus the Christ. And while no one has understood the full depths of the truth revealed by Christ, we progress nonetheless, in the knowledge of His teachings. The fullness of Christ's truth is contained in the Catholic Church which has been teaching His truth for over 2000 years and will continue to do so until the end of the world.
So there is no catch 22 as you say. In 33AD, the Church was commissioned by Christ to teach His truths to all nations of the world and she is presently doing that.Christ promised that the end of the world would come only after Christ's truths had been preached to the whole world. St.Matt. 24:14.
So again, God created us in His Image and likeness in that our immortal soul represents a spark of God. He gifted us with free will. He has given us commands of which we can freely choose either to side with Him or against Him. We are to be His sons, but only if we want to be. It is only after our death that we can receive our inheritance depending on how we took the test of life which is our probation time.
Through their free will people accept or reject God and Jesus Christ and His teachings. We are the masters of our own destiny. God wants all of us, but many of us don't want Him and He respects our free will choice.
God has set everlasting life and death before us. And in Deuteronomy He tells us to choose life.
why is it that some people seem to forget that god didn't write the bible.
Some of us didn't forget, we just don't believe in a single omnipotent, omniscient deity. That crowd includes the quasi-religious atheists, plus various neo-pagans, animists, Buddhists, polytheists, Zoroastrians, and so forth.
I'm not missing anything, Lula. I'm just basing my worldview on science rather than ancient myth (not that for many, that ancient myth isn't a LIVING ancient myth).
Studies in neuroscience lately have shown that the brain makes decisions prior to the person being conscious of those decision. See this article in Wired: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision This is just a drop in the bucket of the other discoveries in neuroscience that point to the idea that free will does not exist. I'm not going to list them all here, because it's a waste of my time and effort. For you, your chosen worldview works. It's lucky for you that you weren't born in the Amazon rain forest to some primitive tribe that believes in an alternate cosmology than the one that you were born into, or according to your present worldview, you would be lost, (which kind of proves my point about the free will not existing, because "environment" and "history" has shaped your decision to take that path--had you been born in a different environment, and had a different history than the one you had, you would not have been able to make the free choice you think you made).
I've gone around and around on this issue (religion) on the Stardock forums, and I've made enemies that I regret making. Basically my feeling now is that I don't believe in a deity--but I can't prove it (no one an prove a negative), so IF there is an god, such as the one in the Bible, and it's His/Her will that I take a certain path, than that deity will be strong enough to bring me to Him/Her and I'll end up there. (In other words, if it's God's will that I be saved, than I will be saved--if not, than there isn't anything I could have done to change where I am headed, anyway). In the meantime, I'm going to do my best to be the best human being I can be within my own capacity because, to me, it makes sense to be kind to others simply because they are part of my environment and when we're all happy, things run smoothly.
Just to be clear....once it's accepted there is an 'Almighty God' then maybe.
Pretty difficult being 'clear' when so much of one's clarity is through presumption....
If only she did...then there'd be some evidence of her existing....
A past Governor General in Oz was a great football fan. He wagged a Jewish Sabbath to go watch his favourite footy team play. When he was asked "was that a good idea?" he replied "it's too soon to tell".
gmc2 posts: Quoting gmc2, reply 570Most religious people are good people. I thinks it's important to point that out. Whether I believe in god or not is immaterial, what I don't believe in is religion......
Whether or not one believes in God is critical to his final destiny... and true religion plays a vital role in attaining that destiny.
What's man's destiny? It's to go to God because man comes from God and belongs entirely to God. God created us for a purpose, to know, love and serve Him in this world to be happy with Him forever in the next.
Since we are God's creatures, we have certain duties towards God which we must fulfill.
Well, there are many different kinds of religions out there in the world. There is, however, but one holy religion (one holy Faith) revealed by Christ and that means all the rest are false. And it is this religion only that teaches us the fullness of truth of what our duties towards God are.
It is by Christ's religion that we know love and serve God as He commands us and by which we fulfill the end for which we were made and so our soul is saved.
Religion is a virtue by which we give to God the love, honor and worship due to Him alone as our Creator, Master and Supreme Lord.
It is by Christ's religion that we must first, believe all the truths revealed by God, learn about God and His perfections, learn about His great love for us, learn what is right and what is wrong, learn what God commands us to do, and learn about the future home He has prepared for us.
And second, we must practice religion, that is carry out our lives by fulfilling what we have learned of our duties towards God. Our chief business of life, the business which God commands us to attend to, is to go to God and this depends on our practice of religion.
Spending our lives gaining mere knowledge will avail us of nothing. The devil has knowledge but he has no religion.
Ah...the presumptuous arrogance of the truly religious....
"There is, however, but one holy religion (one holy Faith) revealed by (Flying Spaghetti Monster/Pink Unicorn/Tyler Durden/Big Bird/Gargamel) and that means all the rest are false."
Trust in the word of the Kitty Who Pretends To Be Fierce. Even if a Greater Power gives you Kibble Every Day, You are still Free to Catch Your Own Helpless Birdies and Stupid Lizards.
What GW said.
Hah! The Kzinti at last give some respect to the Gerontocracy.
Respect as always, then we eat you. It's only natural...
I'm done, as I dont want to derail the thread, but nice to see people from the hey-days of the Metaverse.
oh, I'm sorry folks, I got to ask, and what religion would that be, oh mighty troll.
I expect it is the one which led to the Crusades and enforced enlightenment on the greater majority of the yet-to-be-civilized world.
You know, the one we have to thank for wars and oppression in general....
Clearly a violation of the 6th, 8th, and 10th commandments as written in the christian handbook, aka, bible. It amuses me how they can't even follow their own rules but expect everyone else to conform to them, lest they be murdered by someone who does believe in them, on behalf of their ever loving God who supposedly loves all of his creations equally.
Doesn't amuse me....bores me to tears.
Hypocrisy - another word for Religion....
I've always wondered why, if God is all-knowing, did he agree to spare the people of Sodom and Gomorrah if ten righteous people can be found within it. He knows full well that ten people won't be found, so what is the point? Is it just a test? Is he having a laugh at Lot/Abraham's expense?
And while we're on the subject of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot is saved, so we assume he is righteous. Yet he offers his two virgin daughters to the inhabitants rather than have them 'know' the two guests/angels who are with him. That doesn't seem very righteous to me. Additionally, there's a part in 'Slaughterhouse Five' by Kurt Vonnegut, where he's talking about Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt for looking back, and he says that he feels what she did was very human. I'm inclined to agree. After all, how often do you see a city being destroyed by God? Does he do it any more spectacularly than mere mortals could? I think regardless of being told not to look back, my interest would be piqued. Indeed, my interest may be piqued simply because I was told not to look.
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