I can see that your bias is clouding your Judgment,
But then you don’t. You bring up how non-believers are at war with Christianity, but you don’t want to talk about how Christians discriminate against non-Christians. I talk about evidence and reasoning, you talk about conversions. It seems like you do want to talk about historical crap if it supports your point of view. If I try to talk about religion, you only want to talk about the good things it has done, or is doing for you. That’s a one way conversation, that’s you saying what you like.
Lol
Lausten I think the reason we are at this point in the convo is because you mentioned your one-way conversions of believers turning atheists.
But if you want to talk about history then sure. It’s gonna be a short convo though because it will go like this:
- Many wars are done in name of religion. All true. Check.
- Many religions Christianity included have committed atrocities . All true. Check.
Now what? Lol
Yes, I’ll give Anil Seth credit for that, and I also want to make it clear, I agree Anil’s work is to be taken seriously.
I don’t at all place him near the category Donald Hoffman has earned for himself, and I hope nothing I’ve written gives that impression
I fear the TED format may have biased me, had I listened to him giving student lectures first I’d have probably formed a better first opinion.
Well, . . .
you could start with responding to the statement that “God’s are created from within our human psyche, not from out there on high.” - along with considering its implications.
All right sure.
First of all I recognize that it is a possibility and I have no problem with it. If we knew for sure then we wouldn’t believe in God.
The reason God seems the most reasonable conclusion for me is the mystery of existence as well as many miraculous events in history.
In another topic we are discussing re-incarnations. That’s an example of a mysterious force to me (aka God) which tells me that materialism is not all there is.
It is perfectly reasonable to look for meaning. This is an important foundation for the human psyche.
But it is accepted science that the Universe is a stochastic object in toto (chaos theory), but deterministic in function.
What is stochastic vs deterministic?
A deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system. A stochastic system has a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted precisely.
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Yes this is great and I accept this theory.
My questions go beyond this in asking Why it is like it is - because I see a hint of design here.
Your position probably doesn’t even allow to ask this question.
You took that out of context. I know that people become Christians at any and all phases of life. Christians love telling those stories about being “saved”. It would be silly to think I didn’t know about that.
I’m glad you agree that wars have happened in the name of religion. It’s a complicated relationship of how government and religion work together. It’s different from what you are doing, dismissing me, dismissing evidence, then saying you want to discuss.
My position is to always ask questions. We need to move forward, to do the best with what we have, but always be open to new data, the next discovery.
My position doesn’t allow for a leap from “you can’t prove that with 100% certainty” to “therefore my speculation is worth believing”. Speculation is good, possibility is fine, but a theory with no data is not something you can base anything else on.
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On the contrary , eli1, most of the universe is patterned and looks like it is designed.
But these patterns are self-organized in accordance with the natural laws of attraction and repulsion via mathematical relational values and functions.
This is the very foundation from which the universe has evolved into its current state and pattern. This mechanism is described in Chaos Theory, for primal chaotic state of the universe, such as existed in the beginning of this universe, right after the initial Inflationary Epoch.
Chaos theory
Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization.[2]
The butterfly effect, an underlying principle of chaos, describes how a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state (meaning that there is sensitive dependence on initial conditions).[3] A metaphor for this behavior is that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.[4]
And then that tornado is considered an act of God (as named in insurance policies)
But it was really an act of a butterfly!! Does this explanation sound reasonable?
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Absolutely and I’ve read about this “butterfly effect”.
I’m not asking about this though, I’m asking about How did the universe came into existence.
Are you allowed to ask that question from your perspective?
Absolutely and entirely justifiable. The short answer is “we don’t know”.
But that is not sufficient cause for assuming a supernatural creator Agency.
First, it happened some 13,77 billion years ago and it is difficult to look back that far into the past.
But there are several hypotheses how the universe came into existence.
All of them have big question marks, but I’m sorry to say that the ID hypothesis (biblical explanation) seems to be the most problematic as it assumes the existence of something before there was anything. That is an a priori contradiction.
Moreover the assumption of an Intelligent and Motivated Designer Agency is scientifically inconceivable. Where did the Mind come from?
We know that on earth the mind is an emergent excellence of data processing by the brain from data transmitted by the senses and cells all throughout the body.
It is an incredible feat of evolutionary processes but it had 4,543 billion years to gradually develop greater complexity and intelligence.
But one thing has been firmly established and that is, all life on earth started with a single Chemical event. And from all available data it appears that the universe itself began as an expanding singularity (the BB).
It is therefore entirely reasonable to assume that the universe began with a single Energetic event. There is even a hypothesis that spacetime has fractal properties.
Have a look at Causal Dynamical Triangulation (CDT)
Causal dynamical triangulation (abbreviated as CDT) theorized by Renate Loll, Jan Ambjørn and Jerzy Jurkiewicz, is an approach to quantum gravity that like loop quantum gravity is background independent.
This means that it does not assume any pre-existing arena (dimensional space), but rather attempts to show how the spacetime fabric itself evolves.
There is evidence [1] that at large scales CDT approximates the familiar 4-dimensional spacetime, but shows spacetime to be 2-dimensional near the Planck scale, and reveals a fractal structure on slices of constant time. These interesting results agree with the findings of Lauscher and Reuter, who use an approach called Quantum Einstein Gravity, and with other recent theoretical work.
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Thank you.
This line of reasoning is perfectly fine and logical and I’ve heard it before.
“I don’t know” is the true answer at the moment and that’s fine from the perspective of someone who is observation-based on their approach.
I on the other hand start with “I believe a God created all of this’ and then I start looking for “evidence” of this God in human history.
Why do I do this? Because it makes sense when you look at the details such as fine-tuning and it also makes sense when you look at historical evidence of Christ . It also makes a lot of sense when we factor a lot of paranormal stuff happening in history.
Finally it makes sense when we ask about consciousness itself and concepts like morality, meaning, hope and human worthiness.
[quote=“eli1, post:134, topic:7913”]
Because it makes sense when you look at the details such as fine-tuning
Yes I know “finetuning” is often mentioned as proof of ID, but that argument does not hold.
Actually, the reverse is true. Life is fine-tuned to it’s local environment. It is one of the functions of evolution.
This perspective is supported by the incredible variety of living organisms and the variety of conditions they can tolerate.
In the 1980s and 1990s, biologists found that microbial life has great flexibility for surviving in extreme environments—niches that are acidic, extraordinarily hot or within irregular air pressure for example—that would be completely inhospitable to complex organisms. Some scientists even concluded that life may have begun on Earth in hydrothermal vents far under the ocean’s surface.[4]
Let’s begin with Extremophiles
An extremophile (from Latin extremus meaning “extreme” and Greek philiā (φιλία) meaning “love”) is an organism that is able to live (or in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e. environment that make survival challenging such as due to extreme temperature, radiation, salinity, or pH level.[1]
These organisms are ecologically dominant in the evolutionary history of the planet. Dating back to more than 40 million years ago, extremophiles have continued to thrive in the most extreme conditions, making them one of the most abundant lifeforms.[2]
One of the most indestructible creatures is the “WaterBear” (Tardigrade). You can shoot it out of a gun and it’ll pick itself up and away from that annoyance. It can survive in space!
and it also makes sense when you look at historical evidence of Christ .
I believe that the historical evidence of Christ is that he was human and NOT conceived by immaculate conception (virgin). If Mary did not have sexual relations with a male human, Jesus would not have been male and would have been a clone of Mary. It takes male sperm to conceive a male child!
That argument is also addressed in this link;
Extremophiles are in a sense antitheological and a cure for life-worshipping mysticism, another nail in the coffin that proclaims living things to be divinely created because they couldn’t possibly derive from natural processes. They also expand the possible playing field within which life initially evolved.
Given that organisms can succeed in extreme environments, they might have first developed in them as well. It was long presumed, for example, that life must have originated in some sort of warm, shallow, benevolent puddle that offered the kind of comfortable incubator that such a delicate flower would require. This might indeed have been the case. But the existence of thermophiles thriving in superheated, hydrothermal deep ocean vents, along with the discovery of numerous other extremophiles, raises the prospect that perhaps aliveness first emerged in what we – sunny children of what is, for us, a relatively easy, superficially life-friendly environment – until recently considered impossible conditions.
Boil them, freeze them, dry them, drown them, expose them to radiation – tardigrades just shrink
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Thank you for all of this and I am aware of it, especially the tardy grades.
Ask me next time if I’m aware of a subject so you don’t waste your time explaining it.
I’m talking about the fine tuning of the universe.
Consider this.
Does Nothingness create a demand for Something? Can Nothing evolve into Something?
What condition does the law of “Necessity and Sufficiency” require to generate a spontaneous event?
Absolutely !
In the science-based reality that we live in, we know, we verify and we are “pretty damn sure” that you don’t get something from nothing.
So when someone who believes all that says “something can come from nothing” it’s a contradiction and an abandonment of their position.
What makes you believe that fine tuning requires a motivated sentient Agency?
And why are you rejecting the notion that in a universe with a near infinite variety of conditions some planets are suitable for the emergence of life.
Have you considered that there is no necessity for fine-tuning at all, but only raw violent supernovae to create the necessary elements suitable for the formation of biochemicals that can evolve into living organisms?
Did you know that biochemicals already are formed in deep-space cosmic clouds?
I really recommend that you watch this excellent lecture by Robert Hazen about the 50/50 odds of life evolving given enough chemistry and time for evolution of dynamic organic patterns (life).
Our bodies are made of stardust from exploding stars. No fine tuning there, just an endless creative process of energy forming matter and matter forming energy.
Did you know that the earth alone has performed 2 trillion, quadrillion, quadrillion, quadrillion chemical experiments all by itself during its lifetime?
And as demonstrated there is no fine-tuning necessary. Living organisms are able to tune to prevailing conditions and that is called “evolution”.
Where life is impossible, there is no life. Where life is possible, there emerges life.
“Fine-tuning” is a false argument. In fact, a fine-tuned universe would only yield a single form of life instead of the incredible variety of adaptation to all demands of the different environments.
My friend, the fine running that I’m discussing are the “brute force” facts of the fundamental rules of the universe. This is the first step. This is many steps before we are talking about life “adapting to its environment”.
Cosmic Constants
(1) Gravitational force constant (large scale attractive force, holds people on planets, and holds planets, stars, and galaxies together)—too weak, and planets and stars cannot form; too strong, and stars burn up too quickly.
(2) Electromagnetic force constant (small scale attractive and repulsive force, holds atoms electrons and atomic nuclei together)—If it were much stronger or weaker, we wouldn’t have stable chemical bonds.
(3) Strong nuclear force constant (small-scale attractive force, holds nuclei of atoms together, which otherwise repulse each other because of the electromagnetic force)—if it were weaker, the universe would have far fewer stable chemical elements, eliminating several that are essential to life.
(4) Weak nuclear force constant (governs radioactive decay)—if it were much stronger or weaker, life-essential stars could not form.