I’m sorry Mike, I like you but that statement is pure fantasy as well as prejudicial against those unfortunate individuals who are born with severe handicaps and live a life of misery.
Are you going to tell them that God’s Kingdom is within their pain-wracked bodies?
It is not because someone writes that some has said that god exists, that it does.
Plot’s lovers tell us that many things and many people exist when the don’t.
Pagans believed that their gods existed, spoke to them, appeared to human beings.
This proof is as good as yours.
And, in fact men create gods according theirs ideologies and needs. the Christ you believe in is very different from the God of Constantine times, medieval times, and so on.
Religion is not a question of science. It is a question of faith. One cannot prove the existence of god.
I’m going to add this on here, even though it’s a somewhat different direction. It’s 5 months old, so they are talking about Biden, not Kamala. They spend a bunch of time on the October surprise of Hunter Bidens’ laptop, an issue from a previous election. Sam makes some basic points about propaganda and the interviewer pushes back hard on them. I like Sam’s final conclusion, near the end of the whole cast:
If we don’t rely on institutions to provide some level of trustworthy information, then every day we get up, we have to reinvent the history of society. They apply it to conspiracy theories and to the broader human condition of how, no matter how we ingest information, at some level we question everything. If we do that poorly, it can be debilitating, it can cause us to not listen to a doctor that we trust. If we do it well, it can lead to breakthroughs in understanding of whatever science, soft or otherwise, that we are examining.
I see members come here with this problem on a regular basis. One particularly persistent one lately. Most of them have employed a fix, something that gives them solace, like believing something Joe Rogan or Alex Jones said, and they feel better because they are in a group. We haven’t had a religious person come by lately, that’s the hack that people used for centuries. The common denominator is to find someone who isn’t in their group and attack them. No one has a real solution, but if the person being attacked doesn’t win or doesn’t fight back hard enough, they walk away feeling like they won. For a while anyway.
sorry this isn’t addressed to Mike, his remark was too typical of his disingenuous crazy making to waste my time on.
Why isn’t it easier simply to point out,
however many times it needs to be repeated -
that the number one lesson about God and gods is that we create them from with our own living body.
How can we say that?
Because we know that we are evolved animals, and that our consciousness and awareness of the world around comes through your body and its interaction with our world, and it is certainly not broadcast down from God or a cosmic geometry, or whatever.
All the rest of this is pretty near useless talk until those simple fundamentals are grasped and incorporated into our world view. What were we expecting with our obsessive information collecting - overload was inevitable. And to think AI will show us the way is the biggest hoot of all.
And none of that is weird, it’s derived from our ever increasing fundamental earth and biological and evolutionary scientific understandings.
No, the story is that the Holy Bible (the Word of God) was written from direct divine communication with God by people who had “knowledge of God”.
We Atheists question that claim, but the believer is convinced the Bible is the true word that came from “above” by a higher authority than man.
Just like the Alpha Chimp who acted aggressively to that unseen threat in the sky that was throwing fire and water at him and his family.
This belief goes way back and is deeply embedded into our psyche. Think of how many people believe. These are not minor cults, there are billions of believers.
Alright, now we’re finally getting down to brass tacks and the key to understanding my growing contempt for western philosophy that has never managed escape the shackles of religious origins
along with the subconscious conviction that we are above all other creatures and that Earth was put here for our own pleasure - in utter and complete disregard for all of Earth’s other inhabitants and their realities
That is a recognizable fiction that depends on Faith, believing without evidence.
It depends on people remaining wrapped up within one’s mind full of imaginings and completely disregarding that there is physical reality that dictates our lives.
Which is a pretty good description of the past half century’s corporate war of slander and character assassination aimed against scientific learning and understanding.
Atheist is just a word to me, it creates confusion and more misunderstanding because it is so connected to reinforcing the notion that God is central to everything. Either with em or against em.
There is a better way.
That’s why I find it important for me to identify as an Earth Centrist,
because I have been absorbing and learned to appreciate the knowledge gained via the scientific method (a set of rules aimed at eliminated human ego and bias from it’s deliberation and that remains focused on what can be witnessed and touched and studied with objective physical instruments) all my life and it has taught me a great deal about this planet and its inhabitants.
It has also enabled me to see through a great deal of human nonsense. I spent my life time listening to people putting me down because I had this different perspective, outside of the general mindset. It was always me that was the idiot to be insulted and dismissed, yet, yet, now I stand here looking back and if I was the one that was so wrong, why did all the media and philosophical promises turn to such dust and why have we wound up here, at the threshold of a truly dysfunctional collapsing society because most everyone is only concerned with their own petty greedy priories and with casual disregard for everything outside their immediate circle of needs.
“A speck of dust that wanted to be more” What an awesome intervention my mom blessed me with.
I think, no I’m sure, it’s at the core because of how it suddenly changed the entire character of God. Not as an object of worship, but as a inspiration for embracing my life. It put the onus on my life, as a personal duty to myself. Before I even started kindergarten, my insides clearly understood that I wanted to be more, and this revelation of the concept of God to me, was an inspiration - as opposed to the totalitarian browbeater most people love worshipping, or arguing against.
God is pointless to me, Earth and her process created me and I’m at home with that. With God simply being a place holder: I’ll get there, the good lord willing, isn’t a prayer to God, it’s an acknowledgement that every moment is a gift, that can disappear in a moment.
Just as I pray thanks/gratitude to the Universe, not because it’s listening, or that it cares, but simply because I’m so appreciative of having been blessed with this moment.
The imagined God that’s constantly breathing down others’ neck, with its nonstop commands to be worshipped - God is figment we petty humans need for injecting full of our own desires and fears - A product of our individual human minds and not any overbearing anything anywhere out there.
All that God stuff is simply smarter ruthless humans dominating lazier humans who’d rather follow than think for themselves.
Oh but here it gets complicated, and
I didn’t mean to infer that God is nothing.
I mean God is not of our physical world.
God is a potent component of our thoughts, and as “real” to ourselves as we want to make her/him.
And that’s what philosophy should be working on,
Unfortunately philosophy has evolved into a cottage industry dedicated to making money above all else. Keeping the debate alive is more profitable than resolving anything.
Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide.
It’s worth grappling with.
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Atheist is just a word to me, it creates confusion and more misunderstanding because it is so connected to reinforcing the notion that God is central to everything. Either with em or against em.
I am not against anybody’s belief as long as it does not demand that I convert. And therein lies the rub.
That’s why I find it important for me to identify as an Earth Centrist ,
because I have been absorbing and learned to appreciate the knowledge gained via the scientific method (a set of rules aimed at eliminated human ego and bias from it’s deliberation and that remains focused on what can be witnessed and touched and studied with objective physical instruments ) all my life and it has taught me a great deal about this planet and its inhabitants.
I like that concept. Anything that advances a balanced approach of man’s symbiotic relationship with the earth is a good thing, IMO.
All belief systems include a form of stewardship of the Earth, because we are the only species that can and do change our environment to suit our comfort, rather than adapt our lifestyle to the environment via evolution.
But stewardship brings with it a responsibility to maintain a balanced approach, at pain of extinction.
As to an understanding of the nature and fuction of natural Universal phenomena, I believe, based on evidence, that the Universe is a mathematically logical object and all we are able to observe and describe via mathematics confirms this notion.
Mathematics allows us to make accurate predictions of the future, based on physical conditions today.
I appreciate that, and to be sure I wasn’t pointing at you, that was a generality about the word, and I appreciation the second part of your comment.
