Evolution or God

adidan said:
I understand religions that have gods that relate to the earth, weather events, stars and so on a lot more as they evolved from actual physical realities people could experience.
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This is something I've always said. I can understand the basis on this sort of thing and that's why I guess Britain was historically a pagan country. But the rest of the stuff, honestly no different to being based on the books of the Lord of the Rings for me.
 
RobDogDog said:
The evolution of something like the senses blows my mind. There are things to see, so an eye evolves. There are sound waves, so lets evolve something to hear. It does make me wonder what else (if anything) we're missing because we don't have the senses to perceive it. Was it a case of we needed to perceive something or that the something needed to be perceived?

What the hell is going on with my brain on this Monday morning :D?!
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It was a case of:

The ability to perceive of the thing existed in some individual organisms due to individual variations. Perception of the thing conferred an advantage to those individuals in terms of breeding (either directly or by improving survival chances). Some degree of chance, e.g. it wasn't one specific individual organism that died before breeding anyway.

It's not a straight leap from nothing to whatever exists now, though. For examples, eyes evolved from simpler, less effective eyes and those evolved from photosensitive patches, not themselves eyes. Simple patch - can detect light, which is of some use in survival. Curved patch - can detect direction of light, more useful in survival. Simple eye - can detect crude images, more useful in survival. Etc.

There's no need in evolution because need implies a purpose. Evolution is just about what breeds most successfully. There's no point, no purpose, no goal, no reason. Sensory organs didn't evolve to perceive something any more than raindrops on a window run downwards in order to reach the bottom of the pane. It's just a process.

EDIT: We now know about quite a few of the things we were missing because we don't have the senses to perceive it, thanks to technology. We can't see EM radiation with frequencies outside of the narrow range our eyes can detect and which we call visible light, but now we have equipment that can detect it. Same for other frequencies of sound and the same general idea for various other things (e.g. the existence of atoms and subatomic particles). The outer limit of perception for humans now is determined by technology and intellect (someone has to think of the possibility of the thing to be perceived), not biology.
 
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I grew up in a religious family and used to attend church every Saturday until I was maybe 13 or 14 and given the choice if I wanted to continue going. It wasn't really for me so I decided to stop going. I had far too much interest in dinosaurs and their time-periods that religion just didn't make sense to me. I went through a 'rebellious' atheist period where I believed everyone who believed in religion was an idiot and would love to shout 'there is no god' rather antagonistically.

Fast forward a few years and a bit of travelling around the world, meeting people of different backgrounds and faiths and I realise I'm much more agnostic than atheist. I now have an interest and curiosity in religion and I like talking about what religion means to people and visiting religious sites (more to appreciate the cultural history rather than of any significance to myself). If it comes to picking a side, even though I'm not religious I will always side with someone who is religious vs siding with someone who is being a preachy know it all atheist. People who try and preach their views, both Atheist and Theists, on to others are the worst of the worst.

I've no issue at all with people following a faith as long as it's not detrimentally affecting others. I believe it should be kept completely separate from politics or when it comes to law making but I do also believe people should have the ability to follow their chosen faith without being ridiculed and harassed for it. My mum actually asked me recently if I would mind if she took our daughter to Church when she got a bit older and I have no issue with that... I'll probably enjoy the child free few hours.

I'm probably going to butcher this but it was a comment I saw many years ago and it always stayed with me...

What if religion X was actually 70% correct, but 30% wrong, and it turns out that there is nothing in the universe more offensive to a god than intelligent creatures that presume their religion is 100% correct? A Wise god may prefer a non-believer using intelligence to continue to pursue answers, as opposed to sheep following man-made spiritual myths like they were an universal truth
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The polytheism religions I find more reasonable.

Where there are many gods, they aren't all this "be good to everyone" it's more, "we want to be entertained".

We all know, playing a civilization game there's only so long before you need to start a war. It's too boring otherwise.

And there's always going to be people who trap that sim in the pool by removing the ladder.


We don't care about individual ants. I'd assume a god/gods of all the universe is similar.

Also. Takes a whole team to create a video game. So probably a fair few gods out there
 
Ryan-3 said:
This is something I've always said. I can understand the basis on this sort of thing and that's why I guess Britain was historically a pagan country. But the rest of the stuff, honestly no different to being based on the books of the Lord of the Rings for me.
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I don't think it's fundamentally different. One version assigns a different god to different things that can't be explained and the other version assigns the same god to all of those things, but the underlying idea seems to be the same to me. Or it can be, anyway. I think it depends on the extent to which the believers assign an entity to each thing, as opposed to some supernatural force that's not really an entity. The spirit of the wind, as opposed to <insert name here>, the god of the wind, with a personality and a mind and wants and wishes and thus possibly open to being swayed by humans with rituals and worship and suchlike.

Some of the polytheistic religions were more closely a reflection of the culture that created them, which is something I find interesting. The ancient Greek religion, for example, was a very close reflection of ancient Greek cultures of the time. Essentially another Greek city-state inhabited by immortal Greeks with some superhuman powers. Their gods were very human and the society of their gods was very Greek.
 
I think that religion had a place when we had no other explanation for the world around us. But as we have evolved, developed science and progressed, we can explain a lot of what we once attributed to a god.

We obviously don't know everything. Whether a god created the actual universe or there was some other natural event to create it, we will probably never know. How or where the universe was created can't be explained simply by saying it was a god, because where or how was that god created? It's as unanswerable as something natural creating it. Neither position can be explained or makes sense.

But I don't see evidence for a god yet and therefore I will go with a scientific explanation until I see some convincing evidence.
 
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something daft already!! said:
No, that's not important at all. In fact it is better to ridicule said people. Point and laugh, etc. Well, educate any way.
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How do you know your position is right and they are wrong? Both of you are starting from a position of belief until we definitively prove how the universe was created.

What benefit is there in ridiculing someone's belief? Do you really think ridiculing them is the best way to convince them that you are right?
 
Just had a thought. If there hadn't been religion, would we have developed a morality about not killing, stealing etc...? I know people still do it, and do it "in the name of religion" but for most people, day to day living, people tend to be nice to one another, pay for stuff, don't steal, don't just kill randomly...

I wonder if as a society or as a world even who all have different religions and morals we generally tend to follow the same values.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
As an Atheist that is an awful thing to say but expected from some on here.
How exactly do you educate a person with belief?
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Hades said:
How do you know your position is right and they are wrong? Both of you are starting from a position of belief until we definitively prove how the universe was created.

What benefit is there in ridiculing someone's belief? Do you really think ridiculing them is the best way to convince them that you are right?
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It's cause it's cool to be 'woke' and liberated from the shackles of religion.

I don't believe in religion but I do believe that those who wish to follow a faith should be allowed to do so without being ridiculed. Everyone has different methods for coping with the trials that life throws us. For some, they turn to a nice cold beer or glass of wine at the end of a day, others may exercise their body and some find inner peace through religion and faith. Life is hard enough as it is, mocking someone because they believe something different from you is just infantile.

I can't remember what the film was, maybe it was Contact, but in that I'm sure Jodie Fosters character says something silly like "How can you prove what love is?". You can't. We all know what love is as it's feeling within us but we can't exactly measure it or get a scientific explanation of it other than a feeling we mostly all understand. That's mostly why I've gone from being flat out atheist to being agnostic.

People can believe in whatever they want as long as it brings them comfort and that it doesn't negatively affect others. If you know someone gets comfort from X and then you go on a mocking tirade against them just for arguments sake, you're a bit of a dick.
 
You assume that God is not the creation of man to explain the things we do not understand.

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I consider myself agnostic, people are free to believe what they want but I believe that should be so long as they do force that upon others or cause harm.

The reason I do believe in God, despite many attempts by a now ordained family friend to convince me otherwise, is that why would God create this world and demand worship and all still allow the terrible suffering. That is the act of cruel God. The usual response is we were given free will and He has a plan beyond our understanding.

So if we have free will, we do not need to worship this God and they would expect this, as they are all knowing. So it would be part of the plan, yet all the suffering occurs and people still choose to worship a cruel God. No thanks but I could be wrong, it happens surprisingly often.

The other options being, there is a Creator. They made everything and went on their merry way job done, or like most of what happens in life it was sheer random chance.
 
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Steven Rimmington said:
I want to try and understand what made us go down a different path?
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People were stupid and looked for answer to what seemed like impossible things, too hard for stupid brains to understand. Imagine 2000 years ago how stupid people were. Not to say anything was wrong with them, how could they understand how water got into the sky, where the sun went at night, what you'll find when you swim over the oceans, what the sparkly things in the sky are, how rubbing 2 things together could make a spark.

People were understandably stupid and God was the simple answer to complex questions.

On top of that, it also created a very important fear in humans and push towards them doing good not just for good sake but because God is watching etc. It taught morals at a time it was needed.

Nowadays I pity those who live a life that leads them to believe in God. I'm just grateful that generally the world is moving away from religion and one day it'll be gone
 
Freefaller said:
Just had a thought. If there hadn't been religion, would we have developed a morality about not killing, stealing etc...? I know people still do it, and do it "in the name of religion" but for most people, day to day living, people tend to be nice to one another, pay for stuff, don't steal, don't just kill randomly...

I wonder if as a society or as a world even who all have different religions and morals we generally tend to follow the same values.
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100%
There has got to be tribes who didn't invent a religion but came up with a morality code for how they all got on.
We see this all the time on Attenborough with animals and how they conduct themselves in groups.
 
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