richard dawkins wants to arrest the pope

[lenko]

wait what. i wasn't talking about people in this thread imposing their ideas onto others, i was referring to the kind of people who try to get the teaching of evolution banned from schools or making gay marriage illegal and etc

oh ok. just came out of the blue is all

this thread isnt gay at all IMO its very interesting to see what everyones different opinions are on these sorts of things - plus it's not like its a hurf durp lerpa derpa atheist vs. christian thread

despite rtil and taylor both being atheist for example, even they are disagreeing on quite a few subjects

[creamcorn]

we were going good right?

[Orangebeef]

Random Image From http://phanpy.org

[Mew_User]

alright thank you bamyasi and wasim for proving that you are really cool and above our conversation now can you stop posting unfunny shit

Okay

[tmk]

ingredients for a religion thread:

2+ users engaging in debate
20+ smug users that are above discussing religion on the internet posting to point out said fact

[Mew_User]

Welcome to my friend's list, tmk.

[Jeinu]

yeah i like how this thread's goin so far, doesn't seem at all gay to me.

there are two things i want to point out right now from reading this thread:

the first argument i heard briefly mentioned about seeing a house or something that must have been built by someone or stood there for all eternity, must have a creator. this argument (which is much more commonly used as something like "if you see a watch, you know there's a watch maker. same with mankind/creation" is pretty bogus because you're comparing two completely different things. one is something that is contructed out of nonliving materials. the other is organic, it can reproduce and evolve over time. you just can't compare these two in an analogy because they have completely different properties. and the "there can't be something coming from nothing". that's not what most scientists assert to be true. and besides, previous to the big bang, while everything was existing in that one-point dimension/singularity, the reality before could have had a completely different set of laws that would allow that to happen. we don't know it all yet but we're getting there.

the second is the thought that mankind have morals and are above animals. we're not. i think a lot of people assume we must be some great species chosen to become caretakers of the world and explore space idk stuff like that. the thing that differs us from animals is that we have an extremely complex social structure and language. the most common morals that we have are simple basics like, don't kill each other, don't take each other's stuff, etc. why? because we have evolved to live in this communal structure, our brains are hardwired to get along. it is in the community's, the species', the individual's best interest to get along. we've evolved so that as individual's we are not very able to survive on our own; it is in our numbers that we've grown to be the clever mammals that we are.

[lenko]

what's always stumped me is if there was a 'beginning', what came before that beginning exactly

or in relation to the Christian argument, if God is the creator then what created God? if he just 'popped' into existence, then where did existence itself come from?

idk guys maybe some wanker really IS sat up there and laughing at us trying to figure out the mystery of his little puzzle

[ansel]

in the end, even christians admit there is, at the root of it all, an ineffable mystery
whether you think the universe has always been there or god has always been there, no one will ever know how it all began
atheism sort of eliminates the middleman

[Daveb0t]

so should we arrest the pope y/n

[creamcorn]

yeah i like how this thread's goin so far, doesn't seem at all gay to me.

there are two things i want to point out right now from reading this thread:

the first argument i heard briefly mentioned about seeing a house or something that must have been built by someone or stood there for all eternity, must have a creator. this argument (which is much more commonly used as something like "if you see a watch, you know there's a watch maker. same with mankind/creation" is pretty bogus because you're comparing two completely different things. one is something that is contructed out of nonliving materials. the other is organic, it can reproduce and evolve over time. you just can't compare these two in an analogy because they have completely different properties. and the "there can't be something coming from nothing". that's not what most scientists assert to be true. and besides, previous to the big bang, while everything was existing in that one-point dimension/singularity, the reality before could have had a completely different set of laws that would allow that to happen. we don't know it all yet but we're getting there.

the second is the thought that mankind have morals and are above animals. we're not. i think a lot of people assume we must be some great species chosen to become caretakers of the world and explore space idk stuff like that. the thing that differs us from animals is that we have an extremely complex social structure and language. the most common morals that we have are simple basics like, don't kill each other, don't take each other's stuff, etc. why? because we have evolved to live in this communal structure, our brains are hardwired to get along. it is in the community's, the species', the individual's best interest to get along. we've evolved so that as individual's we are not very able to survive on our own; it is in our numbers that we've grown to be the clever mammals that we are.

well first what if i say that the universe and all living things are made out of molecules, like a watch is made out of cogs, those are both inanimate right?
and scientists may eventually discover how the universe was created (what happened before the big bang, or how was that other universe with the different set of laws created etc.) but i dont know if theyll discover who created it or if there was someone behind it

and lastly, why wouldnt the humans be the caretakers of the world? we know how to get along with eachother better than animals with our morals as you said, were smarter than them and more intelligent as you said. in fact were already the caretakers of the world, we are the greater species. the world is in our hands now and we decide whatll happen to it and we can either fuck it up or keep it clean and our intelligence and morals has led to that responsibility of being the caretakers

[trent bortknob]

the second is the thought that mankind have morals and are above animals. we're not.

IF this were true, then we would have to give animals the same rights as people. that would mean we couldn't kill insects, cows, chickens, etc. killing a cow would be comparable to killing an adult human because there would be no difference between them on a moral standpoint

if you do the reverse of that, where we CAN kill cows, that means we can kill humans and eat them and it doesnt matter because nobody has any rights and i dont believe that either

animals ARE less than us in my opinion. animals don't have consciousness (when i say that, i mean that they aren't conscious of their existence. an animal doesn't ask what the meaning of life is. an animal can't even grasp the concept of being alive), they also don't have morals. an animal makes decisions purely on pain and pleasure it feels because of an action. animals don't have free will and they don't have any substantial cognitive abilities

it's not ok to be inhumane to animals but it is ok to kill them and eat them in my opinion

humans DO have morals, and i believe that morals are specific to humans because of our cognitive ability. we have emotional reactions to actions and occurences, just like any animal (except our emotions are more developed too), BUT THEN we can analyze our emotional reactions with our rational thought. since we're all the same species, i would argue we all have the same emotional reactions, but some people aren't rational/well-educated so they don't have good morals. i think this explains what happens in the congo with people who rape tons of women with no remorse; they're just not educated or intelligent people so they can't rationalize they responses. they see a woman they want to fuck and they'll rape them without thinking about the fact that they're hurting another person.

that's how it seems to me at least

[lenko]

i honestly think morals etc. are just a byproduct of our higher intelligence

i think humans ARE animals, we're just probably the first to actually ask questions

[emanhattan]

if God is the creator then what created God?

he was not created, he is all that there was,is and will be. that is the mistery behind god.

Supossedly god did not give us a mind complex enough to understand him, but not only as a supernatural entity, hell hes not even a "being", god does not "live" like us humans and animals do.

Any asumptions about god, both from the christian and atheist side, are nothing but that, assumptions.

also some people like the argument of afterlife "eternity sounds too boring" or "doesnt god get bored,etc" esentially, he cant get bored, you would have to be alive in order to be bored.

btw i agree with jeinu, I think the mentality of people that believe humans are superior to animals in any way is selfish and arrogant and causes things like bullfighs and zoos too exist

sorry that went a bit off topic

[trent bortknob]

yeah i agree with eman. i dont believe in god but if there IS a god, he lives on an alternate plane of existence than we do, where there is not time. there\\\'s not an end or a beginning either. and if god exists and is all powerful and he got bored he could just make the boredom go away. so yeah those are kind of irrelevant arguments i think

if there IS time where god exists then we\\\'re fucked because we don\\\'t have free will (this is assuming he exists which he doesnt)

[rtil]

god is in such a convenient position that we are just far too inferior to understand anything about him, so we can't ask any questions about him or his intentions cuz there's just no point! certainly works to a monotheistic religions advantage doesnt it?

by the way, there was no "beginning" or anything before the big bang. scientists don't know everything about the universe, but they do know that matter as it exists in the universe is seperate from the concept of time

[trent bortknob]

yeah quantum physics are some fucked up shit which give us endless plausible explanations to explain that the big bang just happened with no trigger

[creamcorn]

so time and matter were created at the same time?

[rtil]

matter was never created

time is a concept

[Shida]

I can't wait for the LHC to finally work at its intended energy level, it might shed a bit more light on the properties of early universe. I don't think we could ever know what comes before the universe, before this concept of time began. I just like to think it's a tiny, but super-massively dense particle that is so unstable that quantum mechanics dictates that it has to decay into what we now know as the universe. The only problem with it though, is working out why the expansion of the early universe, when mapped out, has a bottleneck shape.