I used to think I was an atheist but I've come to believe its just as far fetched to say that the miracle of consciousness arose from random chance mixing of amino acids in pools of water over billions of years as from a deity. More and more I find myself thinking about the cloud of plasma and electrons that was spread across the universe for untold billions of years before congealing down into galaxies and stars...and how the electrical activity in that plasma cloud could have become a unified consciousness...

haaa haaaa haaaa haaa. YES.

i'd like to see you spell better so other people would take some of your statements more seriously, but this one above is brilliant (and funny) and i wanted to point that out.


consciousness is wonderful but not a "miracle", otherwise it would be rare. consciousness is a mirror of the world around it, which then takes on a few emergent properties, and voila, you have "consciousness", but things like photosensitivity start with unicellular organisms. is photosensitivity of an euglena a form of "consciousness"? well, yes it is. it's very primitive but there you have it. it's not supernatural or miraculous though.

don't think of information as something out of this world, but rather, as a 3rd type of matter (the 1st being "matter" proper, the 2nd being energy). structure and organization count for something, but they aren't "out of this world".

information is all over the universe. take a fossil, a print from ancient life forms. is a fossil cool? fuck yes. is it mind-fucking amazing? absolutely. but is it a supernatural "miracle"? not really.

miracles go against the laws of nature, but in nature information has a tendency to cluster and grow and can be transformed into energy (see "szilard's engine"). information ("consciousness") is part of nature just like energy and matter.

--

ps: see also: negentropy

Yeah...obvious typos. Fixed and sorry.

The atheist doesn't know for a fact that there is not a god (damned sure not in the same sense that the believer claims to know for a fact that there is one). Again, we tend to believe there isn't one for the very simple fact that there is no evidence of god, therefor no reason to acknowledge the existence of one. That, and god in the way god is generally described is not very likely. I'd go as far as to say that I'm 99.9 percent sure no god that has ever been decribed to be exist

I know that dumb quote "you still have to have faith to not believe in god"....it doesn't work like that on any level though.

Much easier to embrace the fact that there are things we don't yet understand than to say "god did it".

I still believe in god as most of you know. Yes there are A LOT of fucking idiots out there. God has proven his existence to me in what the results of my life are much more positive with my faith in him. Some may call it a crutch. Call it what you like.

now it's a very fucking quotable post. really, it's fucking great. it's a perfect little verbal bullet.



what you're describing i think is agnosticism, not atheism. agnostics profess their ignorance, whereas atheists are more firmly in the "no god" camp; having said that, the denial of the existence of gods is not so much a faith as a reasonable inference from experience. still, those sorts of inferences are often challenged by shit of this type:




no! that can't exist!



it does require a conviction of sorts to say "that which i don't know, cannot exist", but i wouldn't call it "faith". refer to atheist vs. agnostic position.


it's actually not easier, but it's more honest-- big truths tend to make people develop headaches, mistrust of authority, and all sorts of socially inconvenient attitudes and behaviors, so it's easier to shove all the mysterious dirt under the god carpet.

Agnostics tend to be on the fence, not really sure either way. I'm damned near sure god doesn't exist, just not enough to say "I know for a fact...". I don't trust anyone that claims to know for a fact either way.

Yeah, the whole believing in god thing tends to be convenient for most. It also causes a lot of trouble.

agnosticism is not about being "neutral" in the dispute but rather declaring the dispute a futile one-- "i cannot know". which is what you're doing.

see here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

read up the first couple of paragraphs and you'll see that you fall into the "agnostic atheist" category (so do i for that matter).

For me there is a fence...the fence itself is agnostic (which I agree with that much, often times it is "I cannot know", other times it's "I don't care enough to know"). Above the fence is believing, below is non believing. Of course you're going to have varying degrees of the above/below sections (Some believe with some level of doubt, while others do not believe but still have doubts).

I don't believe, at all. Just being that I have no ammunition to disprove god, it's not fair for me to say "I know for a fact god doesn't exist". I don't get much into the subtitles/etc...the "agnostic atheist" (most atheists as far as I am concerned are this by default...I also feel most believers are really agnostic by default). No one "knows". This is why when it comes to debates, usually the one that "knows" loses. They can never prove their beliefs...never.

I've said it before, but the thing about being an atheist is that only the ignorant expect me to be able to offer answers. I don't have to prove a negative. It's those that have to prove a positive that run into problems. Problems usually meaning people like me that enjoy going out of my way to call them out on bullshit. Some say this is rude...I try, when possible, to be nice about it. I feel it's necessary.

A kid wants answers to some of life's more complex questions...I can honestly say "I don't know".

Taken the kid might be more inquisitive than the typical believer....the believer might run into problems explaining his beliefs.

I'll never have to answer some utter bullshit like "Is it possible for a man to live in the belly of a whale" or "can snakes really talk"? Of course, the answer to this is "no".

If I'm asked if I believe in god it's simply "no". When asked can I prove god doesn't exist it's also "no". I believe he doesn't, that's all I have to say.

Big difference between "knowing" and "believing"....for the faithful, however, these two words almost always mean the same exact thing. At least, that's the way they present their "beliefs".

Exactly. As far as I'm concerned... saying you're an "agnostic atheist" is just a more specific way of saying you're an atheist. They aren't mutually exclusive. Atheism is merely not believing that a god exists. Evidently... the concept isn't the same as believing that the existence of a god is impossible.

So what are you waiting for, a personal experience one way or the other? I am quite curious what would be the defining factors for the definitive answer in the atheistic direction. I agree with of all y'all that God can not be proven, but I'm a psychedelic, existentially we realistically can never prove ANYTHING actually exists in any kind of way in 100% absolutes, perception makes reality entirely subjective. That being said, I am well versed in the kinds of affirmative religious experiences, but I've never really thought about it philosophically as to what is the convincing 100% argument against any kind of deities or spiritual entities beyond physical perception.

The thing is, even if we produced watertight scientific evidence for how the universe was begun that had nothing to do with any of the gods that have ever been believed in, the religious would still claim that their God was behind that as well.

I know exactly what is needed to disprove my position - independent verifiable scientific evidence that your God exists - but the Godly will never be satisfied with any explaination that doenst confirm what they already believe. That makes their position weaker.

QFT

Honestly, I'm not really waiting on anything. I don't feel as if I need answers to these sort of questions to have a better/more meaningful life. Not knowing what happens after I die (as an atheist I don't think anything happens) isn't something that usually bothers me all that much, nor does it have any effect on the way I think I should live my life. Not knowing every detail as to why or how I am here doesn't bother me, either.

And you are right. Nothing can ever truly be "proven". This is why science tends to stay away from the word "fact". We can be pretty certain, but never truly know anything for a fact. Evolution is still only a theory (one I hope most accept)...but at least it's a theory that can be tested. There is evidence in which can be examined. Why are we encouraged to get a new flu shot each year? The virus evolves. Why do our skeletons look different than that of our ancestors? God hasn't really left us anything to examine. Of course we can say "god is everywhere", but there is nothing as obvious as his signature in the clouds.

Now...what would it take for me to believe in god without any doubt? Hard to say. An actual conversation with him (the sort in which I can hear him talking back and don't have to rely on faith that he'll respond in some small/abstract/highly questionable way). I really can't answer this question, honestly.

But in attempt of answering your question (at least, what I think you are trying to ask)...I can't really answer this, either. At least, not far beyond saying most of the things in which I've been taught about god often seem completely bogus to me. I can't see god being the sort of being that decisively interacts with us on any level. I can't see a self aware/single entity god. I could possibly buy into the "we and everything around us is part of god", and that "when we die we all go on to some sort of collective conciousness ie nature" <( unaware of ourselves after death as individual entities)...but even this I don't belive. Just, there is no reason for me to believe in god. I know I keep saying that, but that's the best response I can come up with. There is not a shred of evidence that tells me some sort of god "obviously exists". There is very, very little that tells me a god might even exist.

One of many reasons religion is an awful thing.

I am going to take the believers standpoint on this one know matter what horrid incarnations of religion you have all encountered on this board. I do take the viewpoint that I have to surrender some of my personal liberty for the benefit of someone else is an essential tenant of Religion. So yeah, of course it sucks. That is a big throwdown.

Know matter what. Eye be leave.

Honestly, from what I've experienced, people use it as a means to have a meaning in life. Some people are lost, and I think they're just creating a safe haven in their minds with an idea of God, and what his "will" is. For example my mother, she is the most religous person I know. Attends church, goes to a church group, prays teh rosary almost daily, she's HxC catholic. I once tried to explain my views as an agnostic and she was offended....terribly. I mean I guess you would call her a slave to the church. She follows virtually everything...but the happiness that I've seen flow out of her because of religion is beautiful. To have such devotion to her life and the church is something to be somewhat jealous of, because she has found her meaning in life. She has hope in her life because of Religion. So..now my question is not if you want to rob another human being of his/her right to believe in a higher power, but instead if you want to rob a human from his/her right to a meaning in life.


Does it really matter if God exists?

This.

j/k :cool:
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to ann ashtray again.

Never has the clash between my independent mind and my desire for social harmony been crystallized like in The Breakfast Club. I dont really mean that sentence of course, im being completely disingenuous, but if any of you question my disingenuousness I will launch a global war against you in the name of my own sense of irony.

So you believe unicellular organisms are self aware and capable of thought? That's what I mean by consciousness, not some biochemical reaction triggered by outside stimulus.

Maybe God is a cup of Orange juice.

youre preaching from the pulp-it....

*shoots self*

Why does the little spider try to run from me when I go to kill it? Does it have awareness or is it just reacting to instincts?

if you see for example another animal, an elephant and he has a note where it sez there is a life after this life

do you believe that animal?

i personally don't care what language or talk comes out of an animal
the human world is a difficult thing because of all people that want to upload you their brain
and then there is no more freedom

what i see is that when life is born is that here in europe
there is a pushed up school system that disturbes the sleeprythm of childeren
remember their brains are growing and need this sleep

then maybe a religion is pushed down on the person
who can dictate the person how to live and who to love or get married with

so all is pushed up drilled into the brain
is that good for childeren?

aren't you then experimenting with another life then yours?

you people can't leave people alone
i believe that nature grows best when you leave it alone

don't found the human specie is alive and awake

i see it as a medieval spell from witches that have piosond their minds

Instinct is evolved. The best example is the fact that loads of people are afraid of Spiders, Snakes and Rats despite never having encountered a poisonous one in their lives.

Or it could simply be that human culture has ingrained this apprehension from birth, and we mimic what we see adults doing from the state of our subconscious absorption of these behaviors that were modeled to us by example. Instinct is a myth, animals have culture and teach their young. The only instinct is fight or flight, everything else is a matter of individual intelligence and an agency and capacity to learn.


Evolution is a theory, its better to try to base ontological interpretations from the realm of observed fact, and nurture is easily observable phenom, where as nature is speculative because it is naturally beyond the scope and magnitude of our limited perspective

Its a cross-cultural phenomena, you see similar reactions from people in different parts of the world whether theyve encountered those species or not because fear of these things is innate in our brains.

Evolution is not a theory, it is a fact. If youre not past this point then you have little of value to add to any conversation about human psychology.

If you feel that way then (A) you have a very shallow understanding of science and (B) you are disregarding what would otherwise be a rather interesting conversation.


To be sure, I agree with several aspects of the theory of Evolution, but I would never be so naive as to call even such well thought out theories fact in any concrete sense. Looking at fossils or DNA and constructing wonderful fables is classic humanity, we have always done this from all the fables we have constructed around all of our observations, but Aesop didn't try to pretend his stories were as factual as the Dawkins crowd has lately. At least I have the balls to accept my beliefs as a matter of faith, where as these fool themselves into forgetting their theories as much a matter of faith as anything else.

again, when you equate Aesop's fables with scientifically verifiable facts, theres just no point even trying with you. I refer you to my point about there never being enough evidence that will change the religious mindset.

edit: for anyone who's interested a rudimentary google search threw up this article from 10 years ago, and ive read several others on the subject in the years since, so if you're of a mind, the neccessary info about evolutionary psychology is out there

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...nakefears.html

no, unicellular organisms are capable of some basic cybernetic circuitry is all. in fact life itself is a cybernetic phenomenon. information is physical, not metaphysical. add a few billion years of complexity and you get self-awareness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

if you think your consciousness is not a biochemical reaction triggered by outside stimulus, try solitary confinement and watch your "miraculousness" melt.

there is no ghost in the machine. there's only the machine. it's a beautiful machine but it's natural, not supernatural.

http://www.stroke.org/site/PageServer?pagename=EFFECT

"A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim."


When existentially you fail to understand that science is merely a fable communicated through the medium of advanced technology it is you who is there no trying with ;)

Again, y'all seem to mistake me for disagreeing with science, not at all, but I am just honest enough to accept science for exactly what it is, a matter of faith in scholasticism and technology, but faith none-the-less..

"science is merely a fable communicated through the medium of advanced technology"

No amount of tasty burgers will ever give that sentence meaning. I do concede that you are honest and sincere, but in arguement a serious person shouldnt take that as a compliment.

If your life depended on whether we chose a scientific approach to the problem or a religious one, i reckon you would be screaming for the scientific method as much as I. You sneer at the methodology whilst reaping its rewards.

Im annoyed with myself for having engaged the subject to be honest, its such a waste of my time typing this stuff out AGAIN. Your mind cant be changed, its a sad indictment of the fact I have nothing better to do if im honest.

Funny I was thinking the same thing :(

I am being quite serious, albeit a bit too philosophical for y'all, where is Glice when I need him? Y'all need to pick up some more Joseph Campbell and get over yourselves. Science is just a new religion, I see that, many others do as well, and so I don't see any conflict between science and my own personal faith because both are merely reflections and manifestations of the same thing, faith, a belief and assumption in things beyond the scale of existential proof. If you honestly think that science is "proven" you are sincerely a man of more devout faith than myself, and that is saying something.

Again, I fully accept science, and I very much enjoy it as well, but y'all are the folks who seem to think that faith and science are mutually exclusive rather then mutually reflecting. Maybe when you fully mature beyond the need to "prove anything to anyone" one day you'll finally see the depth of what I am talking about.

Glice was succeeding in not replying to this thread again. Especially as I've no new insights (or insults) particularly.

Without necessarily wanting to endorse a narrativistic approach to the scientific method I'm always interested in what science represents to a person more than what they think they think about it. Science is a very broad thing and can look at the same object in several ways for various reasons. A right-wing economist will say [x], a sociologist [y], a sewage expert [z] (etc) - it'll be the same object (and that object can be in ontplogical space if you like) but numerous perspectives on that object (and objects aren't necessarily objects as in bricks and tennis rackets as well - remember that, it's important).

I only mention this because it's kind of interesting that there's a complex set of tensions between some orientations towards science and some orientations towards faith. I can understand that some people negate (monotheistic, and mostly Christian) theologies because of the onus of proof doesn't lie with science (Ikara). That's fine. The problem I find is that a lot of those theologies then start talking bollocks. I don't necessarily think that spirituality belongs to an aesthetic category, but I think (philosophically) people would find it a lot easier to deal with religion if it weren't so... massive, scary, politically influential, conservative, controlling. In conversation, I tend to find it more useful to define my faith in aesthetic terms (or apophatic terms) rather than going over the proofs argument - the proofs will simply never exist within the narrativising remits of the scientific method (see also: homeopathy, art in general). The being or un-being of God and religion is immaterial to the difference or complete lack thereof that it brings to the individual. The antagonism that allegedly exists on both sides (there aren't two sides - there are fewer, or many more) is at best chimerical, or at worst to do with an individual's given anxieties.

I'm bored of writing now.

Im afraid you cant just swap the word "religion" with the word "science" and think you have made a point. This is why its pointless trying, youre happy to just misuse words to suit your own end, you love science! But its just as valid as Aesop's fables. Good for you.

And I just hope you posess enough self-awareness to see how inconceivably patronising that last paragraph is. Id prefer if you insulted me directly rather than through implication, but a girl cant have everything in this world of fancy words and fancy men.