No such thing as God.

[iconoclast]

sol,

The bit about shooting rats at the dump was supposed to be the funny part! Forgive me if you count yourself amidst the uninspired - but i wouldn't have placed you among thier number. Despite your faith in the benefits of snakehandling you are awake intellectually - unlike Meteo's friends who's hightest aspirations are fellatio related.

But that's beside the point; the point is, as Zeth and Meteo ask, how do we get people to listen to sound advice at least on those issues that we all agree with? (ie: enviromental, political, economic, etc...)

Forgive me, for while i'm sure your concern about the environment is 100% geniuine, if hedged by unfounded belief in the immortality of the soul, the thing is, looking at this as an epistemological issue is always going to jar uncomfortably against the tennets of your sect.

But it must be discussed in these terms - for the root and common cause of the energy crisis, climate change, overpopulation and environmental degradation is action in the course of ideological rationale. It's only by accepting a scientifically valid conception of humankind and the reality we inhabit can all the issues we need to address be internalized to the discussion. Otherwise we get tangled up in the conceptual bindweed of religion, keep falling over national borders and with all the resources we need right there in frount of us, are unable to find two pennies to rub together.

[Solace]

Snakehandling? Ouch, that's a low blow. And there are no tennets of my sect, as I have no sect. Like you, I am cronie-less. :-p

I'm also able to seperate ideology from epistomology. This doesn't mean that I dismiss ideology altogether from my mind, only that I agree it's no way to run a government.

[iconoclast]

Solace,

I respect your desire to make sense of it all in terms of something larger than yourself - but i don't agree that one has to bend reason around some unfathomable idea in order to do so. For me, there's no meaning or purpose unless the species has a future. This is the real bigger picture. Applying the wonders of technology on the basis of thier scientifically concieved merits, rather than for profit or national security, we could overcome the problems we face now and go on to make a paradise of this world. And if we don't it's all going to come crashing down around our ears - you know that don't you?

[Solace]

I agree entirely. In fact, I'm not someone who believes that I should give any consideration to what I do in this life for what it might mean spiritually. The very notion assaults my sense of what God is. If God exists, he doesn't need me to do anything for him, neither to prove he exists nor to prove my faith. If there is a world to come and I can't even manage the world I'm living in now, then there's no place for me in the next either. So my thoughts and goals, my aspirations, are for this life. The next, should it exist, will take care of itself.

I'm by no means advocating that we, as a society, should strive for any spiritual, idealogical, or religious goal. We should do exactly what you're saying, apply the wonders of technology and every other scientifically conceived merit to overcome the problems we face as a species and improve our world. To do so doesn't require that I give up my faith, it simply requires that I see that there is more to me than just my faith, that my reason and intellect are powerful tools that I would be a blind fool to willingly ignore.

I am not so eagerly awaiting the next world that I am willing to sacrifice this one. In fact there are some very worthy things about this world that makes me very much enjoy being a part of it. But many of those things are those that are endangered by the wanton and waste of a degraded society that teaches us such perversions as, "God wants you to be rich." This has become the norm of religious dogma, and I understand entirely when a decent, kind individual hears it and wants to barf at the very mention of God. But just because people lie about God doesn't mean he doesn't exist. Nor does it mean that because I believe he does, whether he does or not, that I am going to listen to the foolishness being shovelled by the collective compost heap that is religion and not to sound, scientific advice of persons like yourself.

My apologies to those here who are religious. But as you can see religious doctrine has done a lot of damage to the very image that it claims to be promoting. Religion has turned off and away the greatest minds throughout history. The very people that we should be looking to to lead us to improve society becomes society's rejects, because religion said, "No, Galileo, the world is flat." And it still refuses to open its eyes today, saying things like, "Putting on a condom is a sin," so AIDS runs rampant throughout Africa and your own missionaries there try desperately to help the dying, all the while scratching their heads and unable to understand why so many people have the disease. It's not that hard to figure out. I likened religion to a compost heap, because the most that religion can hope for is to make something good grow, but right now ya just stink.

[edwardelrich]

Isn't it funny how we can prove we exist. But we still ponder the existence of a deity that holds our origin. There are many
explanations for the creation of earth and the origin of man.
The big bang, for instance is said to have created the universe
how can we prove it happened and if so what did it come from?

[iconoclast]

Solace,

Honestly, I don't know that God doesn't exist, but i don't think so. I've arrived at this conclusion after a great deal of soul searching and research - but it's an opinion based on the overwhelming likelyhood that the idea originated with man - for reasons already stated, and because of the supernatural characterization, and that it's too nice - too easy.

I understnd why people want to believe it and i'd say good luck to them if i didn't truly believe, again for good reasons, that it undermines humankind at a very fundamental level. We are the knowing animal - that's what's special about us, and scientific method honours us - it's who we are doing what we are best at.

Religion on the other hand, plays upon our shortcomings as a knowing animal - by inviting, inducing, indoctinating us to believe that which we cannot. It hasn't always been so - as i've said, religion has provided meaning and purpose through a long dark history, but since the emergence of rational knowledge, it's become ever more false, spooky and dysfunctional.

It's a shame that the Church of Rome chose to establish the Inquisition, to jail Galileo, burn books and persecute intellectuals, not merely because it held up intellectual progress for half a millenia but because it set religious doctrine in stone and caused this awful situation we're in now where our fondest hopes and instituions, founded on religious grounds are on the opposite side of an abyss to science.

They had options - there's no reason why hope rather than faith couldn't have been centralized to religious worship. I hope God exists - i don't believe it, but then why should i? Because the Church requires my faith that they can bend my reason and own my soul. They preach humility but know only hubris - pride, and perfidy before the fall.

'Son of Adam. You have eaten of the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Now swallow.'

[Didymos Thomas]

Honestly, I don't know that God doesn't exist, but i don't think so. I've arrived at this conclusion after a great deal of soul searching and research - but it's an opinion based on the overwhelming likelyhood that the idea originated with man - for reasons already stated, and because of the supernatural characterization, and that it's too nice - too easy.

The idea of a car originated with man, but cars exist. The idea tree originated with man, yet trees exist.

[iconoclast]

HI DT, I'm glad you're here - else we would have no-one defending people's right to be as backward as they like! Cars i believe in - but not Christine. Trees though - we couldn't possibly have invented trees. We could, possibly have invented God. Indeed, if we entertain the idea, just for a moment, it seems to explain a lot. Open your mind just a fraction and give it a go.

[iconoclast]

Ed, That's laugh-out-loud funny. (i)

[edwardelrich]

It's true that man could have invented god ,But there are somethings
man didn't invent like trees. God could be one of them but he could not be.
Were always lookin for reasons that he doesn't exist why? idk. Maybe
to deny the morals that god sets maybe because were so scientfically
explained for so many other things. Yet we still don't even know our origin
or the origin of the universe.