ERECTILE_DEATH Posted:

I’m not reading this thread because I’m sure it’s full of leftist bull**** propaganda. But am I really supposed to believe that humans just came about on this planet by chance? That life simply “evolved” here randomly?

Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll take my God and be over here in the corner when you folks come to your senses.

(I’ll pretend you aren’t trolling.)

Really? Which God is yours?

And why do you automatically bumume I’m trolling? Is it that odd to see an openly religious person on the internet?

Pagans are technically furry though, aren’t they?

ERECTILE_DEATH Posted:

And why do you automatically bumume I’m trolling? Is it that odd to see an openly religious person on the internet?

It would be that odd for YOU to be an openly religious person on the internet.

ERECTILE_DEATH Posted:

I’m not reading this thread because I’m sure it’s full of leftist bull**** propaganda. But am I really supposed to believe that humans just came about on this planet by chance? That life simply “evolved” here randomly?

Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll take my God and be over here in the corner when you folks come to your senses.

Religion & evolution are not automatically exclusive. Many people (including myself) believe in Theistic Evolution.

And evolution is never ‘random’, either. Otherwise, we’d see birds with gills.

Sergeant Cid Posted:

And evolution is never ‘random’, either. Otherwise, we’d see birds with gills.

While evolution isn’t random, mutation (the force behind it) is if you are taking a non-theistic view. As for birds with gills, one could say that a lack of survivability and therefore inability to reproduce is the reason that we don’t see such things. One only needs to look at some of the random mutations in human fetuses and infants to know that any mutation under the sun is at least theoretically possible.

The nerd o powa Posted:

Abrahamic religions (that includes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) isn’t the only religion that is connected to creationism many other religion. Hinduism is one religion that believe in creationism.

I am agnostic I am not sure what to believe.

We currently don’t know did we or other organism evolve, but can forumwarz evolve?

We know that we have evolved. It happens (provably) with every child born.

NeoVid Posted:

I ran into one creationist who had the (actually pretty interesting) idea that the world was created a few thousand years ago, but God created it billions of years old.

There’s a damn good science fiction story in that idea, but the problem with actually thinking in those terms is basically… well, how do we know we’re not all brains in jars being given false sensory input?

You mean this of course? The evil genius/demon skepticism I don’t see as a logical next step though, by making the claim that everything could have been made at any point including with people who are mid thought though kind of hurts God in my opinion.

If he gave us free will yet created ANYONE middle aged mid thought, are the actions of that man prior to this creation to weigh on his soul? To claim free will when we were created mid stride is fairly ridiculous or at very least unfair to those who were and were given entire lives and personalities without any chance to shape themselves.

I personally do not believe in either free will or consciousness in the first place nor am I a religious man, but I do find that theory to be an interesting one.

It’s not so much the logical conclusion of such an argument, but it’s a possibility that’s left open by it – if god could have created a world with the clock already set to the year several billion, then he could equally well have created a world with the clock already set to 5 minutes ago and we’d never know the difference. But of course, “and we’d never know the difference” makes it completely untestable, unverifiable and unfalsifiable, so there’s no good reason to believe such a thing except as after the fact justification for another unsupported belief.

Blatant special pleading really – first they say the world is 6000 years old, then we provide the evidence that it looks much much older, so they claim it was created 6000 years ago with billions of years of history already in place.

Dunatis Posted:

I personally do not believe in either free will or consciousness in the first place nor am I a religious man, but I do find that theory to be an interesting one.

Not believing in free will I can understand; I tend to hover back and forward between thinking it’s a very persistent illusion or liking the materalist justification of free will better. But not believing in consciousness… how are you defining it that you don’t invalidate that claim for yourself every time you wake up?

[Altfail, hai guys this is man-man, you’d probably have guessed but just removing all doubt]

Orifice Posted:

Not believing in free will I can understand; I tend to hover back and forward between thinking it’s a very persistent illusion or liking the materalist justification of free will better. But not believing in consciousness… how are you defining it that you don’t invalidate that claim for yourself every time you wake up?

The lack of free will comes from the materialist “Everything about a person is material” that there is no spirit or soul behind the body. Then if we know the current state of everything as well as it’s momentum/how it works, we can predict the next state. Quantum physics isn’t advanced enough yet to determine with 100% accuracy the location of an electron yet, but if that is where the unpredictability of free will comes in, then everything made of electrons would have it. Personally I think we’ll figure it out eventually and that the human body is simply too complex to predict 100% either.

The self works much in the same way. If there is no soul or immaterial spirit which remains unchanging behind the scenes, then the self would have to be material. At the same time however if would have to remain unchanging enough to be worth defining as a self yet every aspect of a personality can be changed with enough damage to certain parts of the brain. The only thing that can be said to always be shared is the history which can be forgotten or altered in memory. Can you claim to be the same person you were 20 years ago? 10? 5? Where is the line drawn? If no real line CAN be drawn then the line and distinction is entirely arbitrary and a self refers only to a location in space/time at any instant. It’s very useful when trying to speak or refer to distinct physical entities but has no metaphysical truth to it.

If there is no self, then what would a consciousness perceive? At best a single moment in space/time where multiple senses collide inside a living creature. This would have no effect on the creature and would not be limited to any one “individual” either which would go against the standard meaning of a consciousness which is what I don’t really believe in.

Given how we define individuals and that our bodies are comprised of so many other living things right down to individual cells, it doesn’t even always make sense to bumume that life is occurring on the scale of humans and animals. We could be as planets to the bacteria in our bodies and our planets and systems could be the atoms of a larger being. Just as we cannot live without our living constituents, the planet cannot be said to be alive without the life on it, nor can an organ be alive without life in the cells.

I won’t claim to be absolutely right, and saying “I woke up this morning” doesn’t invalidate everything I said simply because our language is set up around the idea of selves and individual consciousness which greatly affects how an individual is perceived. Those who speak multiple languages fluently can tell you how words or entire concepts mean something completely different when translated, or that some ideas cannot be translated at all.

On top of this I’m really bad at expressing my thoughts in words and my time spent as a loner leads to a lot of idiosyncrasies so I mostly hope that the previous rant makes any sense at all Log in to see images!

UnlimitedTyyppi Posted:

I find it general hard to believe in god for the simple idea that if there in fact existed a being powerful enough to great a universe, or even to control evolution and whatnot, I don´t see why it would give a rats bum about us. Given the size of the universe the earth is so small and young I doubt it would not even have noticed us yet. and if we were created the “for what” still remains.

I started thinking about that as a kid, about what I’d do if I were a God. I came to the conclusion that at best, I would enter a body and live a bit among my creations for my own amusement. Given the idea that we were made in God’s image that has at least a little validity depending on what that phrase meant in ancient Hebrew or Aramaic.

As for a meaning of life, purpose would have to be determined by either the creator of a thing (God) or the one who uses it (us). A table is meant to support things in front of us, but if it’s nailed up against a window to keep out the encroaching zombies then its purpose is as a barricade. Now if God is Omnipotent and Omniscient, He would know how we’d act when set free and if He made us for a purpose we will fulfill it, otherwise He made a mistake. If He gave us free will and wanted us to use it, then He wanted us to choose our own purpose. Finally if there is no God/maker, then the best we can do is make our own purpose in life. Although we all have the “choice” to live for others according to their machinations as well.