Human beings Living or Non-Living?

Had to split this into two posts. 10614 characters long

But if the principle of fine tuning is true, then the more complex, orderly, elegant, etc and object is, the more probable it is that it is designed. A god would be VERY complex if it had to fine tune the universe. So, it is very probable that god was fine tuned by god2. And so on. We'd be god -1 and computers would be god -2.

So it only applies to the "physical universe"? You cant use one logic for one thing and another logic for another. Thats equal to suspending logic, (which is what faith in a god is anyway)

OK, you cant get rid of a god like that, but that would result in an infinite regression. You cannot get to creation of human beings that way. Its just like you cannot get to a real number from negative infinity. (assuming that your moving to the right)

The gods upon gods is exactly one (1) of the reasons why i dont believe in god. There are many others.
And no i cant just rest in peace. If i think that something doesnt make sense, then i have to know why it doesnt make sense.

its not exactly truth, i'm sorry for using that word but i should have said truth value. An increased probability of being true.

Religion, if anything acted like authority to enforce morals of those times. A society without religion wouldnt be any less moral (by our standards) than one with religion.

Yeah, it only can be MORE complex right?

Thats true, but its logically plausible and makes sense. And actually memes and evolutionary ethics are interlinked so memes are just an extension of e.e.

If it transformed over the years, then why is it a constant of a moral or philosophical form? And the old and new testaments themselves are result of various parts chosen and ignored from 30-200AD. A lot of credibility there!!.

BUT, hatred is apparently murder in the heart and lust is apparently adultery in the heart, and no i dont accept nor preserve the adultery bit (because of the lust thing).

What about the other four?

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; (Ok, wtf?)

you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, 10but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

No, i dont preserve not follow these. And honestly couldnt care less about someone doing or not doing so.

But they are by no means, moral absolutes, if thats what you mean. And again, because it can enforce the law in a better way (which i dont believe is true) but how does that make it more true? And yes they might have existed for many years but whats the point of appreciating (not to mention following) them in the name of marketing skills?

Religion and morality are independant of each other. Its a very common mistake to merge/interrelate one another.

*counter bashing*

~~

People can FEEL moral and commit crimes. Thats dangerous.

It tells us that empirically, you have a lesser probability to be a prisoner being an atheist than a religious person. Why? There are many reasons. One of them i told you. The other of which (especially in america) is that atheists are generally well educated or economically in a stable position. This removes them from being socially degenerating areas...etc.
I dont know if they are any other reason for that statistic but i dont know.

Yeah, dont believe in statistics and facts. Believe in what your heart tells you right?

It says that you have equal probabilities of being criminal being left or right handed

No, it says that northerners are MORE criminal. We have to use words carefully.

Again, you probably didnt read my post in a statistical way. I didnt stereotype anything. (evidence?)

It was simply a rebuttal to the religion morality point that you brought up.

Many people who've broken the law say the same thing. For them, what they did was in the right intent. For the deeply religious, what everyone did (breaking the ten commandments), is criminal..

In the context of my signature, its a war between israelites and the midianites. A very one sided one.

In the verse that i quoted before, it was if someone else suggests you to try out another religion.

 

All sounds nice until you try to define "freedom", "saving"the earth and "crime". Freedom for one person might meen a lack of it for you. Religion encourages fight for ONE's version of freedom, which might result in another person's death and vice versa. Theyre all subjective concepts. Pretty much any idealogy can be justified depending on what you mean by freedom, crime,etc. So when something says "fight for freedom", its saying "fight for your idealogy", doesnt matter if that idealogy is one of peaceful resolutions (which i would presume is yours), or if its one of a violent revolution, etc.

*goes and burns petrol station, in the name of FREEDOM, SAVING the earth and against crime*

Either way, my point was not to say that religion breeds immorality, it was to say that an average person who would be considered moral, does not draw his/her morals from religion. And i think you agreed with that so lets stop it there.

You believe that an intelligent creator created the universe the way it should be... etc.

 

I love my bro shak, but i have to go with shsnanana on this one. I still havent seen any reason for me to step in and support/discredit any statements. You guys are doing that quite effectively. A damn good discussion. Keep going.

 

yes i do accept this argument for the argument sake.

this particular idea only 'seems' to apply to physical universe because we only know of physical universe, we dont know what God is, if we dont know what He is then i dont see why should this particular idea be valid with God as well . .he might be something entirely different ..
the only example i can think of is the quantum world here, we see laws of physics and logic every where around us and hence we say these laws are universal .. but wait! .. does this logic hold up when we go down to quantum level? no it doesnt . .at quantum level everything changes and we find ourselves dealing with something completely different . no logic no physics no implications do us good ... that might be true for God as well . .science and logic might fail when it comes God . .who knows! thas what i am saying

if something is true here . .it certainly doesnt need to be true via logic for God as well .. thats maybe because my idea of God is somewhat different from yours and hence my approach to this matter is being influenced by that .. ditto for you.

but ok agreed, you used the word very probable and thats the right thing to do ... cuz if you cant say what God is and what isnt then i cant say no God isnt like that .. or He is like taht ... we are in the same boat ..

the problem is mate, that to answer these question you need a tiny bit of help from faith .. i know i know i am just giving you a reason to come back at me but thats what it is ..faith . .when God says i am alone ... i take his word for that .. and i know that makes me a blind follower from a logical point of view but thats how it is .. i dont what he is and where he is but i know that he is there .. (the indirect perception PM).. so if i believe in him then i have to believe what he says there is no way for me to verify anything .. and perhaps i cant! .. if you are creating something the first rule is to make it inferior to yourself so sometime down the line it doesnt come back to trouble you .. thats what logic says . .and thats what i think is the problem with us . .we are just inferior when it comes to God.

*gets ready for some serious ass whopping from shs*

infinite regression toward gods right? what if the starting point is not God? starting point is us . we ..right here .. do a regression then .. does it contain genesis?
and negative infinity? .. err .. negative infinity is valid when you are approaching zero, i think we have agreed, that God remains in the equation infinitely so thats not negative infinity .. thats a repetitive regression as you said

unless i can definitely prove that the idea of fine tunning does not apply to God, till then i cant answer your question of God upon God, and just as you cant prove that idea of fine tunning apply to God, i cant do otherwise . .so i call this stalemate .. your call.

yes now we are talking ...

i dont really want to stick my neck out here, isnt this exactly what we observe? i find the poeple who actually believe in religion as it is, (not talking of extremisits who are just misguided) to be very peaceful, we have this are in london called golders green (waleed if you are reading please confirm) where there is majority of jews, maybe 98% density, and that is the most peaceful area of london ever!! my cousin who is in uni, prefers to live amongst them cuz for her that is a safe area she can go running at midnight without fearing an attack .. < lol and you cant do that in london after hours, the honest christians excel in morals more than one can imagine, in mecca, whenever it is time for prayers, people go to mosque and leave their shops open! thats true you can verify this, they dont lock their shops cuz they know no one will steal anything when the shop is left open without guard for prayers.. and no one does ..
but ofcourse when you religion corrupts your mind, it can prove to be the most destructive of .. and sorry, but i dont find religion at fault here, i find people and thier interpretations at guilt.

logically plausible but to some extent, i agree with e.e, but memeism is kinda dodgy, the transfer of cultural information/ideas/values is down to observation and learning ability of humans themselves most probably, the genetical transfer, though possible, is slightly less probable ..

very good question!

i find that the bits that layout morals and ethics have not been changed completely, cuz you just cant, if bible says respect your neighbour, no one in his right mind will change it to kill your neighbour, so the basic set of morals and values have remained pretty much the same with a little or no change, its when it comes to political views that we see extensive adulteration, kings, saints and popes of different era altered political verses for their own good, if thye wanted certain people dead, they would declare them to be criminals in the eyes of god, if they wanted more power, they glorified themselves in 'holy text', if something came in their way, they removed it from the book altogether ...
so there have been changes, but to very particular topics and those shouldnt really make bible any less useful tool for general morals and ethics

yes the other four, this is supposed to be a religious text right? and you are bound to find the 'other four' .. so no surprises .. but lets seee ..

this refers to the children of israel, they had setteled in egypt and then were enslaved by the pharoah, moses was appointed by god to save the children of isreal and deliver them to the promised land .. (fairytale to you i am sure)
that he did and hence .. out of egypt and house of slavery

very much in accord with a religious text.

alright alright ... you can do that! no problem .. i am not here to change your views so there is no need to get so jumpy.

ofcourse they arent moral absolutes, but atleast they are something! .. where did you get your morals from? e.e? meme? observation? common sense? does your morals and ethics have anything common with mine?
where did i get my morals from? .. 1) part form religion 2) part from e.e and part from observation and common sense ..
so religion is not the final word when it comes to morals .. religion is just a tool that can be employed to spread morals and ethics, and it has proven to be useful over the years you just cannot deny that .. atleast i dont see how

religion and morality are two different things just like ketchup and mustard .. they can be used on their own but when used together ..compliment each other.

 

agreed .. but how to blame religion for that? ... blame interpretation ..

90% of world population believe in god ... less than 1% in prison
and this tells me less than a fraction of 'god lovers' are in jail as opposed to atheists.. and i have a far bigger set of people than american atheists.. i.e close to 6,000,000,000 .

again, if you are in majority, you are bound to excel in every field, be it good or bad, to use that as a benchmark and judge the majority by association ... errr

if you look at the statistics i gave

.. umm .. in a prison .. if their are less than 10% atheists .. that says atheists and relatively peaceful people.

if in the same prison .. less than 10% of the people are left handed . .that says you have equal probability of being a criminal?

if in the prison 90% of criminals are 'religious people' .. then it says religious people are more criminals ..

if in the same prison 90% of criminals are right handed .. then it says you have equal equal probabilty of being a criminal?

statistics say .. in the world .. 85% to 90% of people are righties and 10% to 15% are lefties ..

when it comes to religious statistics .. 90% of religious people in prison says religion advocates crime, BUT 90% of righties in prison says no, the same doesnt apply us anymore. /you-know-what

but was unjust, if you think about it.

then its no longer wrong to kill when you are at war .. logic, morals, ethics and religion.
but yes keeping girls is a no no .. icant speak for the book of numebrs . .but ican speak for islam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_war_in_Islam
^ hope you'll find that islamic teachings are completely opposite to what you have quoted in your signature, .. do read the last paragraph of 'prisoner of war'

and perhaps you would like to change your signature now?

 

so now that you have been so fair, would you blame religion for something that you've accepted is very subjective?

some people mght actually do something like this .. its a shame really .. but i aint defending them so stop being sarcastic

umm .. no shs, sorry mate, i think its not fair to say that and average person 'does not' draw morals from religion, i accept the religion isnt the sole source for morality, but nonetheless it does play its part and an average person (read me) does draw morals from religion .. to some extent.

lol and that makes you fall asleep 3 times in a row, may i ask the reason for getting so personal?

 

@shsnawada: The Anthropic principle is a very nice way to put things in perspective. There are infinite other universes, but it's this universe being as it is that allows us to observe it.

Every religion has inhumanity attached to it. This is because of interpretation. So I guess you could say that logic hasn't exactly played a great part in the evolution of faith. This is because some people would rather believe that a greater control exists than lay their life to chance. However this doesn't mean that they are intellectually lesser. Moral values are society driven more than they are religiously. It doesn't imply that the people who follow the religion don't apply some logical reasoning before they carry out any action potentially deemable as antisocial.

 

Sorry, but thats like trying to say the area of north america is always inaccurate due to the uncertainty principle. And when these small quantum forces add up to a middle world interpretation, so the logic still works. Take Feynmann's multiple history theories. At first sight they're a direct contradiction to newtons laws of motion, but they still make sense to the sum (integral)of paths for larger objects.

If science and logic fail in god, they have equal probabilities of failing for the flying pink elephant, the celestial teapot and an infinite other phenomenon. If you want to give equal weight to all of these infinite phenomenon, due to an absolute lack of evidence, you have a probability 0 for any single one being true.

Doesnt need to be true via logic for the flying pink elephant (FPE). Why i'm invoking FPE is that its one of infinite phenomenon that could exist if you suspend logic in the name of transcending logic

Maybe. Honestly, if god means an superioir intelligence who knows everything that goes on in this universe, then i have a more than 0 probability of that. (Due to quantum suicide, multiverse theories and the laws of probability)

Please define god for me.

Faith= Reason without evidence

Illogical proposition?

Hhaahahahahahah.... Indirect perception is the use of telescopes (indirect vision, but still, vision) and logically extrapolating it. There's no evidence that what youre experiencing is a god, nor are there any logical extrapolations.

How can you have faith that it is God of the muslim (or abrahamic in general) as opposed to Zeus, Vishnu, Ra, etc (Write (2) if you want me to add more on that)? Most of us are atheists about most of the gods that ever existed in the human minds. Some of us just go one god further.

Same with FPE. Were too inferior. The number of possibilites that you bring by saying that is infinite. ANYTHING can be "superior", no reason to pick god, chuck norris, etc

No, my religion tells me to be peaceful :televangelist:

Yes, thats why simple beginnings are more probable than complex beginnings (which is what fine tuning implies)

No, you didnt get the point. My point was that you cannot get to a finite point (lets say the big bang) from an infinte beginning. A beginning that lies an negative infinity seconds.

That was my assumption based on my opinion that it is more likely that inductive logic is true than not.

The fact that you call the extremists are miguided and that the extremists think that youre indoctrinated is a telling.

What is the economic position of them? (jews are rich i suppose). Not just that, but european jews have a high percentage of disbelievers in a personal god (like Einstein), but i dont want to venture too far into that.

I'm sorry but she wouldnt like it (and probably wont be alive) if those people lived by the old testament (in the new one she would be alive, but just badly abused many times). My point is NOT that religious people are more immoral. It is that ALL people draw their ethics NOT from religion (except maybe Jains). The fact that we can agree that many verses in both of these are immoral proves us that.

Imagine the fate if someone did. (one of the reasons) And yes, religious gatherings can be the epitomes of (what one would consider) altruism (not always, eg: child sacrifices, stoning people, etc).

Firstly, ambiguity in religious texts and sayings is the criminal here imo. But i honestly think that the most religious (not most ethical) christian would stone his wife if he knew that she wasnt a virgin. YOU (with the human morals, independant of religion) draw the line between extremism and reasonable beliefs.

NO, its NOT genetic transfer. They behave like genes but arent genes themselves. Think of a religion for example; the kid is brought up to think that it is of a certain religion (even though it doesnt have any clue on the cosmos and our role), gullably accepts it, and self propagates the idea that its religion is the best.

No, it says love your neighbour as long as he doesnt:
Work on the sabbath
Doesnt seduce you to serve other gods
Many other stoning excuses that i havent heard.

Not quite, telereligious programmes pick and choose nice verses and ignore the violence in the name of "the overriding message" which is what youre saying, but imo thats just being plain dishonest.

Again, the dishonesty. "general morals" dont invoke a god and religion wont make their ethics any different.

Yes, god the omnipotent real estate agent. Lets just kill palestinians in the name of god shall we?

Again, no truth value, just a control freak religion, discourages critical thinking (a better meme)

Yes, thats why were in agreement that there are nice and nasty verses in the old testament. Religion does not give me ANY part of my morals.

Firstly, if you even derive a part of your morals from religion, then you should be accepting of ALL the verses of the Quran. Atleast one verse that struck me as immoral was 4:34. It canNOT be that you can say some verses are nice and some verses are bad if you believe in your religious texts by the slightest bit.

I' sorry but i dont see how or why, we have instincts which guide us in the case of morality anyway. And where that doesnt work, we have thought, which can do the trick.

religion and morality are two different things just like ketchup and mustard .. they can be used on their own but when used together ..compliment each other.[/QUOTE]

 

I don't want to take anything away from a superb discussion, but:

The uncertainity principle has non-negligible values only for very small masses/velocities or very accurate positions. Quantum science is still a vague picture, there are many theories and there will be many more. IMO the string theory's demise was an example of the drawbacks of science. Just because certain phenomena fit in when explained using a certain logic does not mean that the logic is correct.

 

No, the subjectiveness of things like freedom, etc causes this.

You got it totally wrong. Its the OTHER WAY ROUND! 99.6% of the american prison population believes in god. 85-90% of the american population believes in god. So god lovers love crime aswell. Either way there are more variables than religion (socio economic positions), so i realize (and did realize it in the first post) that this is a weak arguement. So i'm going to skip it. I apparently misunderstood your left right handed thing aswell.

No, i still believe that religion an morality are seperate. And that people (including you) draw their morality from ee., instinct, common sense, the golden rule etc. They might have feelings that god is behind them with these morals but, it has nothing to do with their basic morality, imo.

THe fact that most jews and christians agree that its a no no, means that NONE of their morals are derived from the Old testament. What about stoning of adulterers?

Sounds good, but i didnt read "the other side" of it, so i'll have to wait until this summer. And no i'm not going to change my signature

and perhaps you would like to change your signature now?[/QUOTE]

 

Precisely my point.

String theoy's demise? When was that? As far as i know, its on the rise and a good candidate for the ToE.

 

Yes, it encourages these actions instead of aknowledging that these are subjective issues.

THats the point, your not defending them but i could come to a reasonable conclusion to do that if i read your "fight for justice" stuff.

Again, if you say that there are bad verses in a certain text (i'm talking about judeo-christianity here) and you think that they are good verses in a certain text, then you have automatically discarded that text as source of morals. And the fact that most of the morals preceed the judeo christian religion makes me conclude that they draw their morals from somewhere else and that they think that they get support from god (god is with me feeling).

I repeat, i dont think that religious people are (more) immoral. I think that the more you follow the old and new testament, the more probable it is that you live a barbaric, 1st century life where raping war victims and stoning children who talk back (and many other reason)

Length of my posts. Not personal. Writing this is enjoyable and sadist at the same time imo. Anyway, i recommend you to look up quantum suicide and the multiverse theories.

 

I can't remember where I read it but I'm pretty sure I did.

 

alright .. i think its out of my hands now, i've got a very limited knowledge and i have tried to defend what i believe for as long as possible, but now either i dont understand where you are coming from, or giving very basic and irrelevant answers to your questions ..
it was a very interesting discussion to the point i understood .. but now i've read your post twice without understanding a single word ... and honestly i cant afford to do dictionary search thrice a line ..

you win shs.

'So god lovers love crime aswell'

 

Please see this video from 13:00 till about 18 minutes.

I think he has some good points, especially with the diamonds

@shak: Writing "you win" is better than writing 2500 words per post i suppose. Even i felt that way in the last but one post.

edit: Here aswell difference between wanting to believe something (faith) and then adjusting the facts accordingly.

edit2: Morals

 

^ yeah i guess, it was getting far too lengthy and honestly i was finding it hard to reply properly with such limited time that i have these days, especially now that we have started replying to each and every line ...

i think i'll start this discussion again when i am free .. so its not over yet, still alot to talk about ..

 

Now, this thread is a LOLlipoperia ↓↓↓↓!↓↓ ↓↓↓

 

Bah, why didn't I read all this before





EDIT:

@shs

+100000000000000 to most of the things u said

 

One of the better threads ,this.




Try reading it when drunk.Either you WILL get it or you WONT.