h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was being silly. I don't believe that anyone from the planet earth has ever been abducted by space aliens. They're all a bunch of liars.

Nerd42

You say everything makes sense to you...

Ya, why?

No I thought you posted that...

Ya, I was hoping to stir some interest there

Oh!
It seemed like you were asking someone that.
But anyway...
Does it make sense to you why at least part of 6 billion people cannot accept a "truth" that seems completely plausible as opposed to what they do accept?

Does it make sense to yiou why I asked that when I probably already know the answer and a nice long debatable topic behind it?

oookaaay...

"That's what We want you to think!!!"

And what some people are thinking.
We're getting off topic(???)

"Does it make sense to you why at least part of 6 billion people cannot accept a "truth" that seems completely plausible as opposed to what they do accept?"

Like the truth that There *IS* A God? No, it doesn't make sense to me at all.

Nerd42

I presume that you are talking about the Abrahamic big G, Nerd.

My truth is tha its confusing to know which version to pray to, the jewish, christian or muslim one. I take it your talking about the christian one, not the jewish one, although he is the *same* big G but revealed more about HIM (?) self in the further revelations of the new testament. That brings us on to the continuing revelations of the Latter day saints or mormons are they the truest beleivers?

Why only one big G there are lots of people who beleive in many gods inhabiting the heavens and underworlds?

I can find many people like you who will tell me their big G is real. I can also find many amputees who can feel there missing limb itching or hurting. You like most religious people can offer me no more proof of your truth, than your feelings. Which is the same proof those amputees can.

When you can call me I'll be happy to stand shoulder to shoulder waving the inscnse and quoting the latin. Or is that the wrong kind of christianity?

I agree somewhat and like that comparison to the amputess.
I don't want to "pray" to any of them even so unless the religous peopel could just figure out which one is "real". Even then its not like conformity's my thing.

I'll bet DNA didn't die, he simply hitched one. Remember when it was said that whoever had both the question and the answer had an unbelieveable amount of power? This doesn't seem to be much different.

Before I start being philosophical, I'd like to say two things: 1) I am an atheist, BUT there isn't much I hate worse than anyone trying to tell me what to believe or not believe, so I WILL not be trying to preach my lack of belief to any religious people reading this; and 2) although I am not religious and don't believe in God, I think that religion and belief in God (or gods) has many positive benefits for both individuals and society. I also need to put a disclaimer here: as an atheist, I am going to write this from the point of view that there is no god. If there is a god, then all bets are off and everything I say here is meaningless. If you believe in God, please either don't read this or promise to yourself that you won't get offended by what I say. I can only write what I believe (though I am capable of temporarily assuming the truth of some religion in order to see an issue from that new perspective).

Okay, now for being philosophical: I think that far too many people (atheist, religious, or otherwise) confuse purpose with cause. They place both under the category of "reason". In other words, both can answer the question "Why?" For example: "Why did you throw that ball?" "Because I wanted to hit someone with it." That's a purpose. "Why is that ball over there?" "Because I threw it." That's a cause. Sometimes (often, actually, as far as humans are concerned), the desire for a certain purpose can be the cause. I have a desire to learn stuff, which is my purpose in going to college. But my desire to learn stuff has caused me to work hard throughout high school, so that I could get into a good college. So desire to learn is also the cause of my going to college.

BUT despite the linkage, we still have to recognize that there IS a distinction between cause and purpose. Namely, everything must have a cause, but not everything has a purpose. To quote a line from Mostly Harmless, "Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again." Yes, this is a tautology, but it's also true.

So, basically, the Universe happened. Now, many religions say that there must be a reason for this, and therefore they have many explanations as to God's (or the gods') purpose in creating it. But here's the thing: those religions are equating purpose with reason with cause. So they ask why the Universe is here and conclude that there must have been a purpose, and therefore a purposeful creator. But there doesn't really HAVE to be a purpose, there just has to be a cause, and that could just as easily have been a Big Bang or some other non-religious explanation as some deity with a purpose. Same goes for the creation or evolution of life. Evolution DOES NOT have a purpose, it's just a word for describing the cause of species changing. So, IF we assume the truth of the theory of evolution, then we must realize that there is no ideal that evolution is striving for for humanity, or glorious destiny, or nature's final plan, or anything like that; our future is what we make it and the only purpose we have is whatever purpose we choose for ourselves.

Now, even for people who do understand the distinction between cause and purpose, the idea of existing without some final purpose makes many people very uncomfortable. (They equate lack of outside purpose with the idea that our lives are meaningless. I think this is mistaken; our lives have plenty of meaning, but only to ourselves and other humans. There's nothing wrong with that. But anyway, that's not the point of this paragraph.) So that's another reason (cause) for the prevalence of religious ideas of a God who has a plan for humanity.

Okay, that's my philosophical idea for the day, and as I'm running out of things to add to it, I'll stop now.

As an atheist too I agree with msot if not all of that.
YOu may be interested in the meaning of life thread. We're not talking abotu anything right now but we were... F55607?thread=215069

Religion is because peopel want ot knwo stuff. They want to know the purpose and/or cause for everything. So years ago, back when science knew far less than it does now, they were wondering about stuff. They needed a way to explain everything. So they come up with this idea that made everything make sense, and thats called religion. It really happened a lot too, in places that were completely separate. But, now, today, the real problem is that they've mostly stayed strong with these beliefs. What *should* have happened is that when the knowledge was there, the religous explanation is replaced by the truth. The "truth" replaced by a truer truth. Gradualyl religino would change into what we call science. And religion and science would be one, science wuld be the religion. But that didn't happen.
Now we can't explain everything. But someday we probably will almost know everything. And thats when religion shoukld be completely gone. You can say that a God created the universe at the very beginning and then everything afterwards happened for itself and that would be perfectly fine, until we know something that is more accurate.

Now, the problem is religion is still strong. What I think the world really needs to do is somehow to skip over from this line of science-religion to the one we should be on. Which can hardly possibly eve happen.
Science should be a religion, and religionshould be a science. A compeltely true, accurate, and proven science.

Evolutino certainly isn't a thing. Its a concept. Its the concept that describes something that, over time, changes itself to better accomplish things, and by doing these things better, the newly created thing can become more numerous. Thus increasing the overall capabilities, slowly. This of course requires reproduction, thats the thign that makes this all possible.
Anyway.
I think the reason that religion is still around is "the idea of existing without some final purpose makes many people very uncomfortable." and that they don't want to feel insignificant. They want to feel important. Well what can I say but scr*w them? They aren't, they don't, and there's really nothing in real life they can do about it. I mean this in the nicest possible way of course. Sure our lives have meaning to us, they're the only lives we've got. We don't get a second chance. But of course our lives realyl are neurological models, and our realities consist solely of electricity, so... All hail electrons!

I like that--"all hail electrons!" I'm going to write that down.

Fantastic posting, MuseSusan.

Sue. You put your case in an interesting way. However, you give away too much to the opposition; in this case me!





But it follows from this that the Big Bang must have a cause! And whatever caused that must have a cause. This is an impossible infinite regress which can only be stopped by changing 'everything must have a cause' to 'everything that has a beginning must have a cause'. Something without a beginning must have started off the whole causal chain.

All physical events have beginnings. However, God is eternal (which means 'outside time' not 'everlasting'). So God has no beginning and the 'God theory' is the only one which can put a stop to the infinite regress you started!

toxx

Good point. I forgot about the "must have a beginning" part.

But I believe there are some scientists who believe the universe is expanding, but that it will eventually slow down, stop, and shrink back down, until it reaches the minimum radius, at which point it will expand again, making this an infinite cycle with no beginning. Therefore, there wouldn't need to be an ultimate cause that started this cycle.

Now you're going to quote Whats-his-name's Knife (or whatever the name of the theory is, I can't remember, someone fill this in please!) and say that the simplest explanation is usually more likely, and that God is a simpler explanation than an infinite cycle of Big Bangs. (Of course, for all we know the guys in Hitchhiker could be right and the universe was actually sneezed out of the left nostril of the Great Green Arkleseizure. I'm just illustrating that there are plenty of ways we can't even think of for the universe to have started.)

Anyway, nice post.