If you do notice in my first post, I mentioned that religion does indeed cause less suffering in a lot of cases, not in the types we're saying, but in the belief in life after death and that when people are ill it comforts them. It was only few extreme cases where I stated the belief in god caused more suffering, I was never arguing that as a whole it does cause suffering, just stating it can in few cases.
Does God cause suffering??
- Thread starter icysniper
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If you do notice in my first post, I mentioned that religion does indeed cause less suffering in a lot of cases, not in the types we're saying, but in the belief in life after death and that when people are ill it comforts them. It was only few extreme cases where I stated the belief in god caused more suffering, I was never arguing that as a whole it does cause suffering, just stating it can in few cases.
However, the fossil record throws this into the realms of fiction.
I don't think even Stindl would have extrapolated it to this extent!
Simply because it's not credible when taken literally that's all. I understand the concepts in the stories and presentations in the Bible, I do not however take them to be literal representations of what happened.
Put bluntly, if it walks like a duck, quacks, and tastes great on a Friday night, chances are it's not a Bus.
Just to be clear, it's fine to believe it's literal, if that's where your faith takes you. Personally, for me something needs to be credible, reasonable, and be founded on currently known or extrapolated science. Religious story telling normally fails a big chunk of those tests.
Do people believe every bit in the Bible? What about the Tower of Babel then as a way to describe the sudden evolution of language? True? Funnily enough they have found a potential site for the parting of the red sea for example... Personally I'm inclined to think there's probably a basis for truth in quite a few of the stories in the Bible, however I doubt they'd be applied as literal.
Anyways, off to shout at the TV & Gordon Brown.
Put bluntly, if it walks like a duck, quacks, and tastes great on a Friday night, chances are it's not a Bus.
Just to be clear, it's fine to believe it's literal, if that's where your faith takes you. Personally, for me something needs to be credible, reasonable, and be founded on currently known or extrapolated science. Religious story telling normally fails a big chunk of those tests.
Do people believe every bit in the Bible? What about the Tower of Babel then as a way to describe the sudden evolution of language? True? Funnily enough they have found a potential site for the parting of the red sea for example... Personally I'm inclined to think there's probably a basis for truth in quite a few of the stories in the Bible, however I doubt they'd be applied as literal.
Anyways, off to shout at the TV & Gordon Brown.
So would you also agree then that there is a case then that religion may indeed be causing less suffering across a whole population just focusing on such criteria.
This really is the problem here - without the benefit of hindsight to all these actions - even if there was a god we would not be able to judge the beneficence vs non-maleficence of things until after the event and in full knowledge. I.E Only god could really answer this question.
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Slightly off-topic here. I love it how Adam & Eve are not credible, yet in the next thread...
...people are talking about knighting Stephen Hawking, the guy who recently said the universe was created by the collision of multiverses (alternate dimensions?), and that hostile space aliens would be coming to wipe us all out
If that doesn't make you chuckle, nothing will
Slightly off-topic here. I love it how Adam & Eve are not credible, yet in the next thread...
...people are talking about knighting Stephen Hawking, the guy who recently said the universe was created by the collision of multiverses (alternate dimensions?), and that hostile space aliens would be coming to wipe us all out
If that doesn't make you chuckle, nothing will
Maybe because the evidence is impartial on those but very much against Adam and Eve? That's my guess anyway.
Ok, so this is the crux of what we're debating then. I'm not that well versed on these grounds so i'm going to try and go through as much of the process as i can in this post.
If we accept that a person is the sum of mind and body (add whatever 'soul' you want in there), then we learn about the world around us through our perceptions or, perhaps as a more rigorous process, observations. These observations then derive knowledge.
Now, in terms of the logic of it, we take the reliability of observation as an axiom. To do otherwise undermines everything we 'know' about the world around us. Now at this point i'm not saying that observation is entire. In other words I'm not saying that our observation is the be-all and end-all of existence, because quite simply I don't know.
Onto the science bit. We use scientific methods saying "this is what we observe, and when you show me something better then we can improve upon the theory". Now yes this is the process I alluded to in my response earlier, but I would argue that science was not 'designed' per-se. Rather science is a product of this concept of 'knowledge through observation'. We communicate our observations and use them to construct and refine our theories about the world around us.
Now you're saying that maybe there's a god which cannot be proven to exist by scientific methods. And therefore what you're telling me is that god cannot be observed.
This is quite important so let's take a moment to clarify the point. I know something because of my observation. Thus I cannot know something without observation.
Now let's take some examples from religion.
Islam: The prophet Muhammad is given the 'true' word by a direct projection of Allah himself in a cave. This great power almost kills him.
Christianity: The virgin mary gives birth to the son of god who performs miracles and is resurrected.
These are all supposedly events which formed the basis of each faith. Actually these aren't very useful examples, so let's go on to something more interesting:
"God created the world and all of its creatures in 7 days"
I'm not going to labour the argument because it's dull and can be found pretty much anywhere. But ok, so this book, this supposed communication of knowledge (which I should stress is here being asserted rather than justified) is telling me one thing, but what we observe in the world around us directly contradicts this. We have directly observable evidence far to the contrary.
Believers who try to defend this perform this brutal hypocrisy by suggesting that their 'evidence' (i.e. the Bible) is correct, while dismissing what people have and continue to observe every single day.
But, you say, that's not your point right? I'm talking about showing that one instance of religious belief is, for all intents and purposes, wrong. You're telling me that i can't disprove 'god' through observational process. Now, I would love to attack this directly, but quite simply I can't. The reason? I don't know what 'god' is.
If you want, and I'm assuming from your posts that you're more sensible than this, you can go ahead and post some kind of definition of 'god', but it's simply not going to be useful. So let me try to make some blanket statements.
Do I accept that there may exist life in the universe (and by that I refer to existence in general) which transcends ourselves? Sure. No self-respecting scientist would argue definitely that our existence is the only possible way life can form.
Do I therefore accept that one of the "gods" that religions allude to might exist? Yes, of course. I think it's extremely unlikely, but I dont know. It would be stupid for me to say otherwise.
Are there limits to human perception? Hmm..tough, and this I think is really your point of contention. The human ability to perceive has evolved enormously over millenia, through technology and modelling. Even today we're pushing the boundaries of our ability to perceive the world, and the 'best' explanations regarding the origins and processes of our universe are being tried and tested. But is there a limit? Quite simply, I don't know. I said this at the top of this post and..well i'm saying it again.
But ultimately, in this thread we are talking about religions founded upon knowledge that is supposedly observable. If it weren't then those beliefs couldnt exist. Assume Islam is true. If Muhammad could not observe Allah's powerful presence, then Islam could never have existed. Thus god must be observable. The old testament tells us that god told Abraham to kill Isaac. Thus god must be observable.
All of these traditions are based around our interaction with some sort of deity(ies), thus there is observation. Hence god can be observed, assuming he/she/it exists.
I am often hesitant to use the word 'science', because it seems to conjure some sense of conflict regarding 'religion vs science' when it really shouldnt. The fact that the Bible and Qu'ran exist implies that if true, then whatever God we refer to must be observable. Thus must be provable.
I'm not sure how well this argument holds overall, and I think I already see a few potential holes, but I would be intrigued by your response. I also havent read this other thread on the topic yet, so..dunno if this has all already been covered and shown to be false
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Aye. Believe it or not science is pretty close to proving the multiverse. All theory points that way.
Also the idea of space aliens coming to get us etc. it's simple thought projection. He was making the comparison of what the Brits did to people in India and Aus - assume the natives were lesser beings because of their relative lack of civilisation.
The presence of life outside of our planet is simple maths conjecture really - extrapolated science based on fact. I don't see why that's so bizarre.
Now, if you'd have suggested A&E were aliens and they'd somehow mated with an ape, maybe you'd have been on to something
Also the idea of space aliens coming to get us etc. it's simple thought projection. He was making the comparison of what the Brits did to people in India and Aus - assume the natives were lesser beings because of their relative lack of civilisation.
The presence of life outside of our planet is simple maths conjecture really - extrapolated science based on fact. I don't see why that's so bizarre.
Now, if you'd have suggested A&E were aliens and they'd somehow mated with an ape, maybe you'd have been on to something
The 'must be observable' argument no longer stands up to scrutiny, although I do understand your point.
In fact if you look at quantum events and quantum mechanics the mere act of looking stops what you're looking for happening. Go figure
In fact if you look at quantum events and quantum mechanics the mere act of looking stops what you're looking for happening. Go figure
Would be interested to know when that happened
In fact if you look at quantum events and quantum mechanics the mere act of looking stops what you're looking for happening. Go figure
But quantum mechanics is itself a mathematical model which still explains observations. The concept of superposition, having more than one state, is used as one axiom to form this great theory. But if we can test for it, and therefore have evidence to support it (which..we do
), then we observe it in action.OK, it's my turn to say "I'll believe it when I see it!" then
Although it might be prudent to clarify what exactly you mean by a multiverse?
The parallel multiverse, one would assume. The serial multiverse is beginning to look extremely unlikely, given that our own universe is continuing to expand, and the speed at which it's expanding is also increasing. The parallel multiverse is often visualised by likening it to a clump of bubbles, in a bath. Lots of tiny bubbles joined together. I accept that visualisation at the discretion of those whom know more about it than myself.
With regard to the likeliness of the theory of the parallel multiverse becoming scientific fact, I'll leave that to Mac.
The way I see it... If God DOES exist he's a 14 year old girl with a copy of the entire Sims universe
We have free will to an extent, but when we use it, bad crap happens. God sees bad crap happening and thinks it'd be funny to make more bad crap happen.
We have free will to an extent, but when we use it, bad crap happens. God sees bad crap happening and thinks it'd be funny to make more bad crap happen.
they don't brainwash anyone at school with re, re in school is good. It may reduce the amount or arrogant retards who are totaly against religion.
All they teach at school is what diffrent people think and belife as well as their respective customs.
I agree with the later part of your post but I definately dont agree with the first part. I can't stand religion for personal reasons but I do understand why people have such beliefs. If your friends are religious for example, RE is a good lesson to sit in even if you hate it, simply so you can learn more about your friends. Its a rubbish example I know but I suppose it teachers tolerance to those that would otherwise not have it.
Soldato
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I don't follow this whole idea that god does not exist because bad things happen.
If god did correct all these bad things, then what would be the point of our existence?
Also, remember that god isn't your average mortal being - good and evil simply do not apply to him.
If god did correct all these bad things, then what would be the point of our existence?
Also, remember that god isn't your average mortal being - good and evil simply do not apply to him.
No pain no gain!