Soldato
Death and taxes are the absolutes of the universe.What we do know is entropy wins
Evolution or God
- Thread starter Steven Rimmington
- Start date
Once you consider that simulated universes are possible the probability that you live within a real universe becomes unlikely. Think of what we have accomplished technologically within the lifetime of our species then consider the technological reach within millions and billions of years. If another entity can simulate a universe we could be somebodies show and tell elementary project. They would then be our creator or God, I suppose.
Caporegime
We could be Rick's battery charger
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Suspended
The Bible has been interpreted non-literally since ancient times. The New Testament itself often interprets the Old Testament allegorically rather than literally. Hermeneutics is not an excercise in cherry-picking, it's an exercise in consistent exegesis.
The Bible contains contradictions because it's an imperfect text compiled over thousands of years. It's not inerrant.
That was an ancient code of law for the Hebrew people, and they lived by it.
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Associate
Forty two. That was worked out a while ago now. Of course the Golgafrinchans messed up finding out what the question is.
Plus
Seriously? That's what we're meant to be calculating, if it wasn't for all the useless marketing people.
But there actually is no spoon.
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
- Posts
- 7,615
well if nothing else you managed to write a single sentence with 2 words in which i had to google..... so that was good going.
however, i get interpretation can change over time however the bible is pretty black and white on some issues.... and personally no god i could ever respect would support some of the stuff in the bible, regardless of if ancient or not.
therefore either God is an asshat OR the bible (and other texts.... but the bible is the only one i have read so it would be unfair to comment on others) was written as a way to people to keep in line and not the word of god at all..... and as such imo cant be trusted.
and yes i think ignoring certain parts whilst doubling down on others i think IS cherry picking.
Note again, am not talking about parts which could be open to interpretation or the evolution of language....
I can fully see how people can be spiratual and believe in something greater than ourselves (honestly looking at the state of the world today, greater than ourselves is a pretty low bar) but a belief in any religion? i will take science over that - even accepting that science does not have all the answers..... but i do believe the answers ARE there... its just they may be beyond our intelligence (or my intelligence in any case)
A slight side tact - there's a school of thinking of consciousness affects things at a quantum level.
Penrose gave the thought experiment:
* Imagine an earth identical to earth, millions of lightyears away, but had no life. Except all its weather and conditions sat in super position.
* Earth sent a probe with a camera to take a photo and relay to earth
* The probe arrives, takes a photo and send it to earth
* At the precise moment that the human views the image, the weather on the far planet changes to a fixed state instantly.
What always makes me think is - if there is something better, why do we think that it's a diety that creates it? What if something better than a diety created betterness exists?
It becomes almost a divide by zero or divide by infinity - if that is the case then it's argued that a diety existed/made the universe.. so I continue to ask the question, what created the diety ... and which point it usually results in a "it exists" or a frowning on asking the awkward question.
Now the Roman deities all arose from shagfests, mainly out of boredom, originally from chaos. However chaos is a state of existence.. "it exists".
So in reality this teaches us a number of things:
* Everthing dies
* Tax exists (Worship/offerings/national monetary tender)
* Shagfests are great to relieve boredom
Penrose gave the thought experiment:
* Imagine an earth identical to earth, millions of lightyears away, but had no life. Except all its weather and conditions sat in super position.
* Earth sent a probe with a camera to take a photo and relay to earth
* The probe arrives, takes a photo and send it to earth
* At the precise moment that the human views the image, the weather on the far planet changes to a fixed state instantly.
What always makes me think is - if there is something better, why do we think that it's a diety that creates it? What if something better than a diety created betterness exists?
It becomes almost a divide by zero or divide by infinity - if that is the case then it's argued that a diety existed/made the universe.. so I continue to ask the question, what created the diety ... and which point it usually results in a "it exists" or a frowning on asking the awkward question.
Now the Roman deities all arose from shagfests, mainly out of boredom, originally from chaos. However chaos is a state of existence.. "it exists".
So in reality this teaches us a number of things:
* Everthing dies
* Tax exists (Worship/offerings/national monetary tender)
* Shagfests are great to relieve boredom
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Tricky one. Firm agnostic here.
I believe evolution describes all the life on earth well, and I believe it to be true for them. However I don’t think it fully explains humans.
How I feel comes from G K Chesterton’s book ‘The Everlasting Man’. Trying to be as succinct as I can. With evolution, you look at a bird or a dog or a worm or a plant. And you ask “why is its beak that shape?” And then you look at its environment and you see there was an abundance of a certain type of food. And then that beak shape is good for getting at that food stuff. So it’s obvious to see birds with a beak that shape would have an advantage. Over a long time, that beak shape wins out through evolution. Makes sense.
There is one issue though, in that it’s not the classic ‘experiment’. We don’t isolate 2 groups of birds, put them in identical environments, change one variable: the food in their environment. Observe them for 1000 years, and watch how evolution changes their morphology. No - with evolution, we have the result and we try to backtrack to guess “what caused them to end up this way”, some things are obvious, some less obvious.
On to humans: Some of the earliest evidence of humanity we have is cave drawings. And so we can reasonably say that art (all forms) has always been associated with humanity. So using the method we use for other animals… what is the logical reason for humans to evolve a proclivity for art? Think of the theoretical lab experiment, I mentioned earlier with birds. If you took 2 groups of primeapes, what variable would you have to change for one group to develop art? And the other not? Would they ever?
To me there is no obvious reason for art. And if you abstract what art is. It is the ability to perceive beauty, and not just sexual beauty. The evolutionary benefit to perceive sexual beauty is obvious. What is the evolutionary benefit to perceive a painting, music, architecture, other animals, the sky etc etc. as beautiful. At its core, art is an expression of beauty, and consumption of art is the act of enjoying beauty.
I can’t think of any logical reason, or environmental scenario where evolving the ability to perceive art would ‘win out’ vs another gene mutation. As well I don’t know of any other form of life which has the ability to express and consume non-sexual beauty.
I acknowledge that the leap isn’t to then say ‘aha that proves god!’. It doesn’t it just makes me skeptical to say evolution fully explains humanity. And so I am open to the idea that we are created by something else.
Also I find it tiring that a lot of the arguments which try to ‘shut down’ religion are issues with corruption. E.g. paedos in the RC church. There’s two separate things here. The ethereal and the corporeal. Christianity, conveniently for itself, allows people to have free will. So of course there will be evil people. That tarnishes and discredits the corporeal but it does nothing to discredit the ethereal, the divine. If it exists. People in high places who profess religion being evil does not disprove their gods.
I believe evolution describes all the life on earth well, and I believe it to be true for them. However I don’t think it fully explains humans.
How I feel comes from G K Chesterton’s book ‘The Everlasting Man’. Trying to be as succinct as I can. With evolution, you look at a bird or a dog or a worm or a plant. And you ask “why is its beak that shape?” And then you look at its environment and you see there was an abundance of a certain type of food. And then that beak shape is good for getting at that food stuff. So it’s obvious to see birds with a beak that shape would have an advantage. Over a long time, that beak shape wins out through evolution. Makes sense.
There is one issue though, in that it’s not the classic ‘experiment’. We don’t isolate 2 groups of birds, put them in identical environments, change one variable: the food in their environment. Observe them for 1000 years, and watch how evolution changes their morphology. No - with evolution, we have the result and we try to backtrack to guess “what caused them to end up this way”, some things are obvious, some less obvious.
On to humans: Some of the earliest evidence of humanity we have is cave drawings. And so we can reasonably say that art (all forms) has always been associated with humanity. So using the method we use for other animals… what is the logical reason for humans to evolve a proclivity for art? Think of the theoretical lab experiment, I mentioned earlier with birds. If you took 2 groups of primeapes, what variable would you have to change for one group to develop art? And the other not? Would they ever?
To me there is no obvious reason for art. And if you abstract what art is. It is the ability to perceive beauty, and not just sexual beauty. The evolutionary benefit to perceive sexual beauty is obvious. What is the evolutionary benefit to perceive a painting, music, architecture, other animals, the sky etc etc. as beautiful. At its core, art is an expression of beauty, and consumption of art is the act of enjoying beauty.
I can’t think of any logical reason, or environmental scenario where evolving the ability to perceive art would ‘win out’ vs another gene mutation. As well I don’t know of any other form of life which has the ability to express and consume non-sexual beauty.
I acknowledge that the leap isn’t to then say ‘aha that proves god!’. It doesn’t it just makes me skeptical to say evolution fully explains humanity. And so I am open to the idea that we are created by something else.
Also I find it tiring that a lot of the arguments which try to ‘shut down’ religion are issues with corruption. E.g. paedos in the RC church. There’s two separate things here. The ethereal and the corporeal. Christianity, conveniently for itself, allows people to have free will. So of course there will be evil people. That tarnishes and discredits the corporeal but it does nothing to discredit the ethereal, the divine. If it exists. People in high places who profess religion being evil does not disprove their gods.
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There's a great book "Inside the Neolithic Mind" which basically looks at the belief structures in the world. What is interesting is that it relates a large number of symbols that appear to be common to come from a state of mind caused by stimulus removal or drugs in early cultures. The common architecture of the brain, when given stimulants or devoid of stimulation results in the same forms of images however the resulting interpretation is a little different, the imagery recorded in those geographically spread locations is very similar/identical. Spirals, etc.
Top factoid 10/10 I love a that makes perfect sense.
the beauty of science is it is prepared to change based on the data we have to hand.... as we get more data (and by we i mean people more intelligent than myself) then current theories will evolve.
the big bang i personally am comfortable accepting... we have telescopes that can see so far back that support the theory, and that theory was made before we could see that far back, so it would appear to substantiate.
however....... as to what happened before then, i have absolutely no idea. (I quite liked how Red Dwarf explained it in the episode Backwards, but that may not have had the most scientific research done on it
that said..... what is God? because to contradict everything i said........ if god is some higher being with powers so incredible that we cant fathom, much like if you give me a lighter or some matches i may be a god as far as a stone age Neanderthal was concerned.
well....... i guess it isnt beyond the realms of possiblity that billions of years ago some incredibly powerful being which to all intents and purpose would be a God in most definitions of one, saw our planet and decided it had the potential to support life, and so seeded it with some single cellular organisms to see what would happen.
at that high a level then god and science can happily coexist. (ie our universe is some sort of cosmic petri dish)
Also there's an assumption that a diety existed then and exists now. Just there's infinite possibilities including that it started something then died off.
The concern I have with mandates is - given X that Y remains true indefinitely as if the universe, before and after is fully determinant based on linear logic.
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
- Posts
- 7,615
This thread reminds me of the following quote !
"given that God is infinite, and that the Universe is also infinite...........................would you like a toasted teacake?"
big bang , most theories end up being flawed at some point. einsteins theories have been proved wrong recently too. its just calculated guesses until we can actually understand what is reality. god is the other side of the coin with no real answer too. just hope.
things just evolved. we evolve. path of least resistance. 2 outcomes. its that simple. humans are just here to advance the next gen from before. which is our life goal. you should be better than the person before you in some way to add something to the human race evolving.
things just evolved. we evolve. path of least resistance. 2 outcomes. its that simple. humans are just here to advance the next gen from before. which is our life goal. you should be better than the person before you in some way to add something to the human race evolving.
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Is art in this case not an alternative to language? Or even writing, essentially recording knowledge. I can very much see an advantage to be able to share knowledge like that.
Soldato
Oh there is a spoon, how do you think I ate the question?
there is theories that the burning bush was actually weed. i wouldn't be surprised if half of the religious stuff is from while people were off their **** . would make sense. natural substances have been used since time began. imagine how much bs is actually took as gospel just passed along from these sessions.
I wouldn’t say it’s an alternative, although sometimes recorded knowledge can be art.
But I would assert that not all art is intended to be a means of communication or to instruct others. Some art, to me, at least is spiritual and divine. Makes me feel good. Other animals don’t need that.
To me the defining thing that makes us human, is our ability to express and consume non-sexual beauty. To me it is the exclusive special thing we have above all other animals, it is completely profound in nature. More so than our intelligence, all life has intelligence we just have a lot of it. Beauty though… all evidence says that it is exclusive to us.
Caporegime
Doesn't art, music etc all stem from humans living in group safety and abundance, not all of us having to spend 24/7 just existing, finding food, shelter, etc etc. community blah blah.
No other primates have reached that level yet/will ever. My goldfish isn't ever going to start painting cubist artwork.
As for what drove/drives people to create art and music isn't that an urge to become known in the tribe and compete for sexual partners, commanding the asphetic appreciation of potential allies/partners.
I'm sure theres a few savants that had synesthesia or alike.
It is fascinating really
No other primates have reached that level yet/will ever. My goldfish isn't ever going to start painting cubist artwork.
As for what drove/drives people to create art and music isn't that an urge to become known in the tribe and compete for sexual partners, commanding the asphetic appreciation of potential allies/partners.
I'm sure theres a few savants that had synesthesia or alike.
It is fascinating really