I don't demand that life have a purpose but I find it hard to believe that it would not.
And do you not suppose that could be because humans have doggedly pattern-seeking brains that causes us to see patterns even when patterns don't really exist?
Sometimes our first questions are ill formed. Newton saw an apple fall and wondered why. We ended up with differential calculus because of his simple question why. We do not have to have a well defined hypothesis to start exploring something. Things will get refined over time as knowledge and understanding grows.
When you ask 'what is the purpose of life?', that is begging the question of life already having an existing purpose. If you ask 'does life have a purpose?' there is a danger of the fallacy of equivocation, because the usage of the word purpose could be ambiguous. The latter depends on what you think a purpose is. But we all seem to be able to set our own life purposes, to the degree that we are able, and I think there is no problem asking what an individual has decided is their self-determined life purpose. You could also ask what a person's function is in a particular social context. Then you would be free to answer for yourself, that you see your purpose in terms of the bible and one or more gods. I don't think it is reasonable to make that claim on behalf of all of humanity unless you can demonstrate reasonably that it is true, which I think it isn't.
Having offspring is the very definition of making sure my genes survive.
Yes, although not completely. Because the genes of someone without children are also carried by their siblings, nephews and nieces (and parents). So the survival of those people is also of interest to your genes. And it is in the interests of your genes that all the people who provide services that maintain your health, from food to quite a lot of other things, also survive.
Take a whole species when resources are greatly restricted. The chances of my offspring surviving to reproduce and greatly increased if I don't have to care for your tribe. A species will lay claim to a territory that can support them. This spreads the tribes out. But the tribes come together once a year a so to meet and marry before they disperse into their lands. You invade my land uninvited and I am going to defend that. Evolution is not a gentle process.
Indeed, well put. And those are some of the factors that lead to typical tribe sizes in nomadic tribes. The meeting and marrying part is the prevention of inbreeding.
In my opinion, yes. What they fail to recognize is the difference between religion and God.
Well it really depends on what you mean by a god. My favourite argument against a god is an appeal to aesthetics: the universe appears to be beautiful. A world with an invisible meddler, working undetectably, would not be beautiful because it would be a deception.
While this is very weak syllogistically, I think a god-driven universe is too ugly to be worth exploring, and the universe is too beautiful for that to be credible.
It may never be. I hope that one day it can be.
Well, if you need any literature...
True if and only if you believe that God is constrained by time as we are. I believe that time was created by God during His act of creation. Mr. Hawking's explanation is woefully lacking in any useful information. He is implying that there was nothing and then there was everything. That sounds more like creation than chance.
Stephen Hawking is the
only one providing any useful information in that scenario. You are just speculating based on what you reckon, whereas he is give a fact about the universe, one that forces a god believer then to be a bit more specific. So it has forced you to be more specific about your unsupported speculation. But perhaps you expected Prof. Hawking to give you some insights into the nature of your god. Well, I think he was doing exactly that too.
"Do not test the Lord your God." God does not wish to be tested.
So your god was tested on the question of whether it wanted to be tested, and the result was a no. That's hardly surprising, is it. Aren't you suspicious of humans who would rather not be tested, say when they might be fraudulently claiming social support payments or driving without a license?
But anyway, you have a mystery to maintain, lest a thread come loose and lead to a great unweaving.
I've said this before, knowledge does not save, faith does. If you replace faith with knowledge then salvation is lost.
Well then why would you have even read the scriptures to gain the knowledge that tells you that in the first place? With christianity the logical fallacies are just left to pile up all around.
Jesus will return one day. I have no doubt that is return will not be missed for what it is. As to whom I would have locked up, well, there have been several cult leaders that have lead their followers into death. It would have been good if we could have prevented that.
I guess a widespread cultural belief that is barking mad, when it doesn't materially lead to harm, gives no good reason to lock up its mad adherents. After all, I'm sure after enough picking at what I believe, I could be locked up on the same grounds if that were not the case. But as you point out, there are people who have caused harm by acting on that same belief. So would it be fair then to characterise christianity as a safe activity as long as it's not put into practice as written? You shouldn't leave your family to follow Jesus, for example. You shouldn't love your enemy if that enemy is a foreign state intent on destroying you. You shouldn't put gay people to death by stoning, as recommended by the zealot Paul.
A just God. A God who has said what will happen and stands by what He said. God does not want to change us. He gave us free will. He wants us to return to Him. He will honor your choice if you decline to do so.
I know you, as much as I do, as an intelligent human being. When you write down your doctrine, I'm sorry, but it makes you sound like an idiotic robot. You aren't engaging in any kind of exercise in logical discourse here, it's like you are a different person when you are spouting dogma. Quite striking, and almost frightening. You really do write as if a meme has taken over your rational brain. I'm a bit shocked by the immediacy of it.
Yes, I do. His name is God. He is without beginning and without end.
Right, so that deals with the 'atheists have no uncaused cause' nonsense. It is hypocrisy, and again an equivocation on the question of what the word 'cause' could even mean at the beginning of time, and a begging of the question of whether the concept of an uncaused cause has any necessity at all. It looks to me like a platitude from the time of the philosopher-Archbishops of Canterbury.
But look at what He did. He created a universe that we can understand. He made it work in ways that allow us to manipulate it to our advantage. He created four molecules that have virtually limitless ability to create and modify life. His first act, the Big Bang, was miraculous, and the wonder that that released is staggering.
To Einstein, that's not what a god
did, that's what a god
is:a comprehensible universe. That god of Spinoza already sounds better than a petty god that needs to burn what it made because it doesn't like it. That is an action of a petulant child, not a great ruler.
I'm surprised you took a literary illusion so literally. I do not know exactly what form God's finger took, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. A solar flare at exactly the right moment. A walk across an area with unusual radiation. God can make it happen according the systems He designed.
I took it literally because you are making a claim about how your god achieved something. And now it appears you are not making a claim about a finger, but a claim about divine solar flares or magic radiation. Your attempts are a decent cut above the usual attempts, but you can see why you should be ignored, can't you. You are not saying anything useful, and actually you are really trying to deflect to maintain mystery while trying to pay some lip service to the language and power of science, which destroys mystery. There's a dilemma.
I had to take you literally to demonstrate that no scientists need concern themselves with the claims of christians, and that especially includes creationism, which is an industry dedicated to telling lies to support their god finger hypotheses. Of course, as soon as scientists do the right thing and ignore the religious noise, some creationist will complain that there is discrimination against the possibility of their god, built into the mechanism of science. Actually, science will take on anything that involves unambiguous evidence, and given the success of science and the failure of any religious person ever to provide any unambiguous evidence for any god, you would think that might suggest something about the existence of any gods.
You would not have succeeded. Had Mary said no to God then Jesus's mother would have had a different name but He would been born none the less. God had a plan for salvation and no one man could thwart that plan.
Well, I think I did concede I might be destroyed. But that would highlight the kind of fascist totalitarian regime we are discussing.
I think that He always acts logically according to His plan. I think that we as humans fail to understand His logic.
That really calls into question Genesis 1:27 then.
It is what I have learned from reading scripture.
I have learned a lot from reading scripture too.
Stuart
