RE: Enlightened rants...
November 7, 2017 at 9:28 am
(This post was last modified: November 7, 2017 at 11:07 am by pocaracas.)
(November 7, 2017 at 7:27 am)AtlasS33 Wrote:(November 7, 2017 at 5:55 am)pocaracas Wrote: Really?
Hmmm.... so, why resign yourself to some belief in an unknowable thing instead of sticking purely with the known things and trying to find out what we can about the Universe we live in?... and, if possible, whatever lies beyond the Universe...
Until it is actually knowable, withholding belief seems to me to be most intellectually honest position.
Tell me, concerning that reward you expect... why would you expect to be rewarded merely for blindly believing what others told you about that god?
Do you think a hypothetical god that made mankind into the thinking reasoning intelligent beings that we are would be happy if we just mindlessly followed what some people wrote or said about it?
So many facts in this life are believed in and taken for granted, without anybody actually seeing them.
Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Air, Gravity...etc. The list extends; but the point is that if something's effect is undeniable, one tends to believe it's there.
The known things I mentioned are not restricted to the seen things.
And I'm not advocating a purely solipsist view of the world... just one that makes practical sense.
(November 7, 2017 at 7:27 am)AtlasS33 Wrote: Science call it "cause and effect". That gives birth to the "argument from design" which I, and so many other theists believe in.
To some, the effects are an deniable reference to a cause.
Yeah... but... the argument from design proposes a designer, a conscious entity responsible for designing what we call Nature.
The cause and effect from Science only considers causes and effects we can measure. If we can't measure, science can make educated guesses, but they only become accepted when they actually get measured. No need to hold beliefs in the guesses, but it makes the proponents feel good.
Until recently, scientists were hunting for the Higgs Boson. The theory required its existence. The measurements were not providing it. A few years ago, after a costly upgrade to the LHC, it was found. The theory turned out to be correct.
Had the boson not been found, much of the known particle physics had to be reviewed. As it turned out, the edifice stands. No need to believe that the particle exists, it has been shown to exist and the description of how to achieve the same result can be found in the literature.
The designer has been believed in for ages... still hasn't been found and shown to exist. When should we just give up and say it's not there?
(November 7, 2017 at 7:27 am)AtlasS33 Wrote: I believe what Mohammed said about that cause being "God".
You don't. But does that give you the right to discuss something that you didn't read? that makes you quite biased. it's a matter of perspective when you think about it; on the most basic of levels: there is a design. Some say it's created, some say it's not. I say it's created. Case closed.
If some people say one thing and others say a different thing, then none of you know what you're talking about. Case pretty much not closed.
I'm not here to discuss things written in books. I'm here to discuss ideas. You are alluding to the God idea, as the designer of this Universe.
At its most fundamental core, that is what a monotheist god is, right?
An entity from beyond our Universe, from beyond our space-time, which designed and built our Universe.
From the scientific point of view, that is a hypothesis that, if we can somehow measure things beyond our Universe, should be available for scrutiny. What does "beyond our Universe" mean, however... is a question for others...
From present day (and past) perspective, however, the question must be: how would anyone that lived far before the telescope was invented have come to possess any information about what lies beyond the Universe?
You may answer this question with some "spiritual connection" to that entity.... but that then raises the other question of "how".
I may tentatively answer that question with a pre-existing belief within a population that has a propensity to accept the divine as an explanation..... which makes us ask, from where did such propensity come? And one can also tentatively respond with the inability to understand many of the natural events all around the early nomadic humans, but equipped with an inquiring mind, they came up with an out-of-view explanation... which grew... grew into being so important that communities would stay together around that concept, as it gave them hope for their future.... and whoever doubted the concept, was shunned from those communities, drastically diminishing their chances of survival and breeding, weeding out the doubting genes and enhancing the believing genes. Brain complexity and plasticity meant that such weeding out was slow.... too slow... eventually science came into the picture and the few who doubted felt vindicated in some of the new discoveries... and now.... now, doubting is not such a bad thing anymore, for most communities in Europe, at least.
I'm not going to say I firmly believe things happened how I tentatively outlined, but I can tell you that, based on the world I observe, based on the world I see represented by my fellow scientists, this tentative outline is, at least, plausible. It requires nothing more than what we already have available in the Natural world.
The extra entity that you believe in is not required... it appears as a relic from our ignorant past... so, from my point of view, why keep it around?
Sure, it's good to know about all the mythology that human kind has believed in, and, if someday it turns out that one of those mythologies was not so far from the mark, we'll give it its due credit, but for now, the requirement of belief is what draws me away from said belief.