Does finding life on another planet disprove religion?

Castiel said:
It is a commonly used way of demeaning someone's belief as you know full well. Added to your use of negative language and your posts in the previous thread it is a valid conclusion.



I have not attacked you personally, only your opinion and motivations and objectivity which is what happens in a debate. Like I said, if you wish to debate on a more objective level then I will alter my opinion accordingly.

My opinion on your motivations in no way backs up your belief that believers whose faith is questioned would always resort to such things either, as I hold no faith whatsoever....I am ignostic.

I repeat:

If you wish to debate theology on a more reasoned and informed level then I will duly alter my opinion, however I do not wish to indulge in constant refutation of common fallacies and sweeping commentaries designed to demean whichever religion is being discussed. There have been too many threads over the past week already.
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I am more than happy to discuss/debate theocratic views, providing reasoned and debate are the operative words.

Surprisingly, I don't find trying to demean someone as remotely rewarding.
I actually find I can learn more about others and their beliefs by constructive argument and discussion rather than attacking them.
Obviously I am somewhat entrenched in my current views/beliefs or lack of them, just as those who have an undying blind faith also become entrenched but I am willing, through debate and valid evidence to be convinced otherwise of my views as being misguided.

If you'd care to discuss my Fairy theory analogy alongside any religious faith and belief in a god in an unemotive and reasoned way rather than simply seeing it as demeaning to faith believers, then I would be happy to do so!
 
lttlejoe said:
I am more than happy to discuss/debate theocratic views, providing reasoned and debate are the operative words.

Surprisingly, I don't find trying to demean someone as remotely rewarding.
I actually find I can learn more about others and their beliefs by constructive argument and discussion rather than attacking them.
Obviously I am somewhat entrenched in my current views/beliefs or lack of them, just as those who have an undying blind faith also become entrenched but I am willing, through debate and valid evidence to be convinced otherwise of my views as being misguided.
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That is a good post Lttlejoe, and a reasonable position to take. I hope you can see however why I came to the conclusions I did, given your previous vehemence in your position.

If the above is an indication of your intent, then consider my opinion of your motivations duly changed.:)


lttlejoe said:
if you'd care to discuss my Fairy theory analogy alongside any religious faith and belief in a god in an unemotive and reasoned way rather than simply seeing it as demeaning to faith believers, then I would be happy to do so!
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I do feel that I did discuss this in an reasoned way, my initial post in reply was reasoned and informative.

lttlejoe said:
How about I replace the "god created everything dogmatic religious concept" with a theory that gods don't exist and that it was fairies which created the universe and life as we essentially know it?

Using the same defence mechanism that religions use to defend their teachings, there is no tangible evidence to disprove that fairies didn't create the universe and therefore the Fairy theory has equal provenance to that of any religious belief or teachings!
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Unless you have over 2000 years of supporting theological and philosophical literature, treatises, and interpretation, your idea that God can be defined as the Daoine Sidhe doesn't have equal provenance, especially as they had their own Goddess Danu and were considered Godlings themselves anyway.

So all you are really doing is substituting one interpretation of God for another more ancient one.

Also it doesn't address religions such as Hinduism, Taoism and many folk and pagan religions that have pantheist views rather than anthropomorphic creator viewpoints.

lttlejoe said:
This is the problem with all religions or beliefs in the supernatural...they never address any proof issues with anything other than ever-evolving doctrine to answer critics or questioners of their beliefs!
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Only from a purely materialist science-centric perspective. Philosophical questions require philosophical answers.

Anyway I and others like Rainmaker have addressed these questions in what seems to a dozen threads over the past week, you may wish to review some of them before submitting another conjecture. It would save the repetition.
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I don't really know what to add.
 
chaosdestro0 said:
Castiel, what do you think about the two different types of definition of atheism
I just came across this


Do you think this semantic argument holds any weight?You say that you are ignostic, but with that definition could you not be described as atheist?
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Atheism has traditionally been the explicit or implicit denial/refutation of a god (sometimes called strong and weak atheism respectively) for the reason of etymology given by Castiel. The definition there is a more recent interpretation, usually used by atheists who are trying to bolster their number by including pretty much everyone who isn't a stated theist. There's possibly some merit there in that definitions of words can change over time but I tend to think that the original definition is clear and unambiguous enough to stand as is.
 
Hey Castiel,

I must admit after our other discussion in SC with Rainmaker, I've been thinking quite a lot about what was said and why.

Whilst I'm happy with my own conclusion (Atheist), I must admit that you've made me very curious about some of the work by philosophers you mentioned, to the point that once i've finished my current nightmare study schedule, I'm going to take the time to go through some of their works, so you definitely made your mark ;)

On topic @ op:

I'd say that if we discovered intelligent life on another planet, life with cognitive thought I think it'd be highly likely they'd have their own religions or belief in a deity of some sort to some degree.
It might be something we wouldn't even recognise as being a religion or deity, or they might all be crowded around a gigantic lizard-man statue chanting rhythmically.

I wouldn't say any of this would prove or disprove religion, it would simply prove that other beings capable of 'thought' can come to the same sort of conclusions as some of our beliefs.

You might discover another planet almost identical to earth, where they have humans, worship Jesus or similar and have the bible or other scripture. This would prove that other humans elsewhere do exactly the same as us, although i'd say that its extremely unlikely such a place exists - but it might.
 
V-Spec said:
Hey Castiel,

I must admit after our other discussion in SC with Rainmaker, I've been thinking quite a lot about what was said and why.

Whilst I'm happy with my own conclusion (Atheist), I must admit that you've made me very curious about some of the work by philosophers you mentioned, to the point that once i've finished my current nightmare study schedule, I'm going to take the time to go through some of their works, so you definitely made your mark ;)
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That is very gratifying to hear V-Spec. Some of the philosophers have atheist positions themselves and I am sure you will learn a lot and at the same time come to understand your own position more.

V-Spec said:
On topic @ op:

I'd say that if we discovered intelligent life on another planet, life with cognitive thought I think it'd be highly likely they'd have their own religions or belief in a deity of some sort to some degree.
It might be something we wouldn't even recognise as being a religion or deity, or they might all be crowded around a gigantic lizard-man statue chanting rhythmically.

I wouldn't say any of this would prove or disprove religion, it would simply prove that other beings capable of 'thought' can come to the same sort of conclusions as some of our beliefs.

You might discover another planet almost identical to earth, where they have humans, worship Jesus or similar and have the bible or other scripture. This would prove that other humans elsewhere do exactly the same as us, although i'd say that its extremely unlikely such a place exists - but it might.
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It may be that Life itself is subject to certain laws and rules and that all intelligent life capable of creating technological civilizations will indeed resemble own.

We only have a single example of Evolution to follow, but it may be that evolution works in such a way that technologically advanced intelligent beings are always human in nature and appearance.
 
Castiel said:
We only have a single example of Evolution to follow, but it may be that evolution works in such a way that technologically advanced intelligent beings are always human in nature and appearance.
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Indeed,

It could be that every planet has it's 'primates' and they always become the first or only creatures which lead into human development and the human being itself.

Or on planet 'X' you might end up with another kind of creature that leads into a more advanced form, but I think there might be certain rules for sentience that you could find everywhere - in terms of physical makeup and construction.

Look at hands and fingers - if you want to be able to build complex things they're perfect, so I think it'd be less likely that an advanced race would be a pile of tentacles or something with a beak and huge claws - as it annoyingly depicted in almost all hollywood sci-fi movies lol.

I guess the possibilities are endless, for me one of the saddest thoughts is that theres life out there that defies the imagination and it'll most likely never be discovered or realised for sure.
 
common sense disproves religion.

it doesn't disprove god, thats a philosophical point that cannot by definition be proved/disproved. but religion, thats obviously a a man made concept, born from the insecurities and ego of man - an idea that changes constantly with times, fashions, political events and personal feelings. religion is an idea that has never remained constant or consistent throughout history, even within an individuals time frame. ironically the fact that people have 'faith' in a religion proves it cannot be true, because if it was true then it would be self evident and blind faith would not be needed. as there is no self evident 'true' religion, and only one ideal can be the real truth (and every bodies idea differs, even within the same religion) then statistically speaking it is almost gurenteed that everything you believe about god, in the absence of evidence, must be incorrect. it is only the arrogance of man that makes people think otherwise and that they somehow know the mind of god, or the answers to the secrets of the universe/reality.
all religions must therefore be logically false - but its much harder to accept the unknown rather than a comfortable (false) known.
as for the existence of god, however, you can debate it but will never know the answer.

but then i'm sure some people might disagree ;)
 
chaosdestro0 said:
Yes it does
This episode pretty much sums up my position. It would be interesting to know what you think.
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I'd take a certain amount of exception to the idea that you need to provide evidence for your belief - if it's a personal faith then why should you have to trouble yourself in the slightest about whether other people also believe in the same things you do? If I'm going to believe in whatever I want then provided I'm not harming others with my beliefs then why should someone else feel the have the right to tell me I'm wrong unless I can convince them of the veracity of my belief? If you're going to tell other people that what you believe is correct then yes, I'd agree that some convincing proof would certainly be handy.

It's also probably worth defining what the person you are discussing with would view as acceptable evidence - people who believe in a religion may advance evidence that convinces them of the existence of their god but others will say they've not discharged the burden of proof upon them. It's possible to set such a high burden of proof that very few things can be proved as absolute fact even without going to the philosophical position that nothing exists but what I directly experience - I'm not necessarily saying that is the case in all such debates but it's a distinct possibility that nothing could be advanced which would satisfy disbelievers.
 
vonhelmet said:
The Bible includes an allegorical account of God creating the world. Nothing more.
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Being allegorical does not mean that it can be wrong in the order of things


But if you think that it is OK to be so far out when being allegorical ... the the rest of the bible is also allegorical, as are the 10 commandments meaning it is OK to kill people
 
aardvark said:
common sense disproves religion.

it doesn't disprove god, thats a philosophical point that cannot by definition be proved/disproved. but religion, thats obviously a a man made concept, born from the insecurities and ego of man - an idea that changes constantly with times, fashions, political events and personal feelings. religion is an idea that has never remained constant or consistent throughout history, even within an individuals time frame. ironically the fact that people have 'faith' in a religion proves it cannot be true, because if it was true then it would be self evident and blind faith would not be needed. as there is no self evident 'true' religion, and only one ideal can be the real truth (and every bodies idea differs, even within the same religion) then statistically speaking it is almost gurenteed that everything you believe about god, in the absence of evidence, must be incorrect. it is only the arrogance of man that makes people think otherwise and that they somehow know the mind of god, or the answers to the secrets of the universe/reality.
all religions must therefore be logically false - but its much harder to accept the unknown rather than a comfortable (false) known.
as for the existence of god, however, you can debate it but will never know the answer.

but then i'm sure some people might disagree ;)
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I'm really not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, all you're saying is that the potential existence of God is separate from the existence of religion (I'd agree), but on the other hand you're saying that by its nature anyone who follows, participates in, or affiliates with a religion is basically wrong. Not sure I can accept that one.

Religion IS a man-made concept based on 'divine principles', yes. Or put another way, it's a collective of people attempting to use a framework to further understand, and experience, the divine. However whereas you say that common sense 'disproves' religion, any followers would assert that they receive 'evidence' of its validity through their practice of it.

It's hard to address your points without further, clearer, information as to your position. But you basically seem to be saying that since religion addresses the divine, and is changeable/adaptable (I'd worry if it wasn't) then it's somehow logically disproven because of that. In which case, I do disagree.

rypt said:
Christianity tells us that birds came before land animals

We know for a fact that birds evolved from land animals
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This again? You've had almost twelve hours and all you could do was repeat a couple of lines of your old post?... ;) Castiel answered this last night.
 
Maybe religion is the control structure that some people need to stay in check.

Don't think they will admit they found life to the masses anyway, people apparently would go crazy of the unknown.
 
Vibein said:
Maybe religion is the control structure that some people need to stay in check.
.
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My view is that most humans have evolved to need something to believe in. But there's always a few exceptions, just like adrenaline junkies are the exception, but thought they where needed to be the pioneers.
Some believe in religion, some believe in spiritually but have no religion, some believe in science and use it out side of the correct context. They all have the same belief in something unprovable and rationalise it in their own way. I really do think most of population are Born with a need for a belief.
 
Exactly what kind of God are we talking about here :p

Even though I'm from a religious background I still side with the reasoning proposed in I met God the other day - It might sound weird but it's a fair and logical approach to God IMO and every day that passes with men killing innocent people in the name of God I grow more fonder of the concept given in the above piece of fictional writing.

That's not to say I will suddenly shun religion or something, of course not! People have their faiths and I would still like to follow these traditions but religion (at least mine in the way I was brought up) tells you to make your faith a personal one, ask questions, find your own answers and gain better understanding so that's my outlook on this kind of process anyway.
 
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