My Preachy moment

Logos. Scientific Probabilites, evolution Vs entropy.

I read a book called "The philosophical Scientist" By Richard Foster.

In it he tries to explain the Universe it the Conception or Birth and Eventual Death.

Mathematically he tries to describe it's ability to have Evolution Be the over writing Conclusion to all that exists and then bring supporting facts of current model of the Universe and time to have all supported life and it's ability to bring about a higher order of Mammalian population and the Differences between Mice and Men.

His description deserves both refutation and review that one could just simply believe in Evolution over creationism. Both are indeed a complex issue and in my mind are polar opposites. Without something in the middle ? this will be a continuing question in everyones mind for a long time I don't think it will ever be answerable. However, to me, there seems to be a certain order to the Universe and in my mind does conclude to an Engineer or Architect in this case he calls it Logos.

And to say that the Universe is not a Mathematical Model and that chaos rains supreme seems to be absurd. The Universe is to Complex and that it could be so simply written away so we as creatures can conclude it. Everyone wants an answerer to the question and are teased to deviation to acquire it . For Man to simply accept that it is un-answerable (At this moment) is equally absurd to the Human Condition.

Say what you will but some Scientist are shunned out of work and are in fear of disclosing the very thing that (Mike) is saying. They dare not even utter a word in open forum without being labeled or losing their positions. In fact I am surprised that this forum has not thrown down some condemnation for his questioning.

kv

We're of differing minds then killivolt, because I don't find total chaos absurd in the slightest, I take some slight comfort from it in a sort of macabre way. My viewpoint on reality as a whole is a seething cauldron of events one right after the other each moment having more questions than can be answered and every moment instantly moving on into the next forever and ever. Evolving cosmology theories hint that there may not just be one big bang, but infinite numbers of them across dimensions and distances that make everything in our known universe as insignificant as we are to our planet as a whole. But I kind of like that. It's sort of a combination of big bang and steady state theories all rolled into one, a tangled rats nest that you can view from any angle and never get the same view twice, but at the same time thinking like that sometimes tugs at my sanity as well.

I would be the first to defend anyone's beliefs here regardless of what they were so long as they don't break my basic moral rules, which are pretty much do you best not to physically harm people/creatures and be tolerant of viewpoints other than your own as long as they don't force you to do anything you find objectionable. Aside from that you could worship mole rats and dance naked under the full moon for all I care, but if you invite me to a service, I'd request loin cloths please! =)
Continuous questioning of one's own beliefs and open mindedness to others will get you a long way in understanding other people, and who knows, something good might rub off. A good sense of humor is a must as well!

Sorry about that, apparently I'm in rant mode =)

Sceadwian said:

We're of differing minds then killivolt,

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Not Completely

But I kind of like that. It's sort of a combination of big bang and steady state theories all rolled into one, a tangled rats nest that you can view from any angle and never get the same view twice, but at the same time thinking like that sometimes tugs at my sanity as well.

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I would think that this is (probably) close to what I'm thinking, no one individual can arrive at the answerer. And the answer is so far removed from the human conception that we (Humans) will have to further our knowledge to a level of understand that eclipses sound reason.

A good sense of humor is a must as well!

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And this is a must without it we are doomed.

Sorry about that, apparently I'm in rant mode =)

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You have been forgiven. (absolum completum) say three hail and brimstones.

Then throw yourself into a volcano to proove your loyalty to the fire God.

kv

Disappointing to see so many mystics on here. You guys believe in witchcraft and ESP, too?

Tough subject.
Many nations and many learned has divided because of this subject.
Sceadwian said something key...
"which are pretty much do you best not to physically harm people/creatures and be tolerant of viewpoints other than your own"
I think evolution does not care for this statement, it's "evolution" of the fittest. The strongest gene survives while the weakest die out.
The Christian bible on the other hand teaches this thing Sceadwian stated. If you look at the ten commandments in the old testament, this statement is in just about every commandment - forgive me, I do not know the whole lot off by hand, thus the "just about every".
Furthermore, the teachings of Jesus in the new testament - yes I've studied a few of these, is also about this one thing.
I would remove the "physically" from Sceadwian's statement - no harm is better, but damn, that is hard. Sometimes I would say something to my wife, and afterwards just know, I have done wrong towards her. Funny enough, the only way to get it out the way again is to go and say I'm sorry and ask "forgiveness:. But wait, that is another quality from the bible, but not found in evolution.
So if I'm a creature of evolution, why do I care about not hurting others, or accepting the views of others, isn't evolution about "evolution" of the fittest.
evolution would mean I need to evolve myself as much as humanly/creaturely possible during my lifetime, no matter what the cost, otherwise I will fade away.
I think creation and evolution plays equal parts, but a brilliant engineer must have had a hand in me being here.

I like the late George Carlin's slant on this

"But when you think about it, religion has never really had a big problem with murder. More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason. All you have to do is look at Northern Ireland, Cashmire, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the World Trade Center to see how seriously the religious folks take thou shalt not kill. The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable. It depends on who's doin the killin' and who's gettin' killed."

Mike2545.

You make a strong point in case there.
Interesting enough, I think all religions have been on the receiving end there as well.
Face it, humans are idiots, no matter what they believe.

If you have any questions about religion i recommend Richard Dawkins excellent book 'the god delusion'.
Theres a great quote in it, although i forget who said it, but basically someone is before god and being judged like your women and their reply is simply i didnt believe in god because there was not enough evidence.
Surely any omnipotent being would respect someone who has applied science and reason to the question of god as opposed to a person who blindy believes in the indoctrination they have been subjected to since birth

duffy said:

Disappointing to see so many mystics on here. You guys believe in witchcraft and ESP, too?

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I hope I didn't come off as one of those. While I'd be willing to consider evidence of some sort of "God entity" should any become available (which doesn't seem too likely at the moment), I have to say that I'm a pretty dyed-in-the-wool empiricist. i.e. "Show me, don't tell me".


Torben

True, Mike2545. Belief in a god and an afterlife seems to make other people's lives pretty cheap to those "believers". They seem to figure that when they kill you, you go somewhere else, and it's not the end of everything. Makes it that much easier for them to pull the trigger.

George Carlin on the Ten Commandments

Here is the whole thing (edited of course)
from "Complaints and Grievances" (HBO special)

Here is my problem with the ten commandments- why exactly are there 10?

You simply do not need ten. The list of ten commandments was artificially and deliberately inflated to get it up to ten. Here's what happened:

About 5,000 years ago a bunch of religious and political hustlers got together to try to figure out how to control people and keep them in line. They knew people were basically stupid and would believe anything they were told, so they announced that God had given them some commandments, up on a mountain, when no one was around.

Well let me ask you this- when they were making this stuff up, why did they pick 10? Why not 9 or 11? I'll tell you why- because 10 sound official. Ten sounds important! Ten is the basis for the decimal system, it's a decade, it's a psychologically satisfying number (the top ten, the ten most wanted, the ten best dressed). So having ten commandments was really a marketing decision! It is clearly a bullstuff list. It's a political document artificially inflated to sell better. I will now show you how you can reduce the number of commandments and come up with a list that's a little more workable and logical. I am going to use the Roman Catholic version because those were the ones I was taught as a little boy.

Let's start with the first three:

I AM THE LORD THY GOD THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME

THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN

THOU SHALT KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH

Right off the bat the first three are pure bullstuff. Sabbath day? Lord's name? strange gods? Spooky language! Designed to scare and control primitive people. In no way does superstitious nonsense like this apply to the lives of intelligent civilized humans in the 21st century. So now we're down to 7. Next:

HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER

Obedience, respect for authority. Just another name for controlling people. The truth is that obedience and respect shouldn't be automatic. They should be earned and based on the parent's performance. Some parents deserve respect, but most of them don't, period. You're down to six.

Now in the interest of logic, something religion is very uncomfortable with, we're going to jump around the list a little bit.

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL

THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS

Stealing and lying. Well actually, these two both prohibit the same kind of behavior- dishonesty. So you don't really need two you combine them and call the commandment "thou shalt not be dishonest". And suddenly you're down to 5.

And as long as we're combining I have two others that belong together:

THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTRY

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE

Once again, these two prohibit the same type of behavior. In this case it is marital infidelity. The difference is- coveting takes place in the mind. But I don't think you should outlaw fantasizing about someone else's wife because what is a guy gonna think about when he's waxing his carrot? But, marital infidelity is a good idea so we're gonna keep this one and call it "thou shalt not be unfaithful". And suddenly we're down to four.

But when you think about it, honesty and infidelity are really part of the same overall value so, in truth, you could combine the two honesty commandments with the two fidelity commandments and give them simpler language, positive language instead of negative language and call the whole thing "thou shalt always be honest and faithful" and we're down to 3.

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR"S GOODS

This one is just plain fricken' stupid. Coveting your neighbor's goods is what keeps the economy going! Your neighbor gets a vibrator that plays "o come o ye faithful", and you want one too! Coveting creates jobs, so leave it alone. You throw out coveting and you're down to 2 now- the big honesty and fidelity commandment and the one we haven't talked about yet:

THOU SHALT NOT KILL

Murder. But when you think about it, religion has never really had a big problem with murder. More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason. All you have to do is look at Northern Ireland, Cashmire, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the World Trade Center to see how seriously the religious folks take thou shalt not kill. The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable. It depends on who's doin the killin' and who's gettin' killed. So, with all of this in mind, I give you my revised list of the two commandments:

Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie.

&

Thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than you.

Two is all you need; Moses could have carried them down the hill in his fricken pocket. I wouldn't mind those folks in Alabama posting them on the courthouse wall, as long as they provided one additional commandment:

Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.

Actually arrie the 'try not to harm anyone' is primarily directed at other human beings which is an inherent survival trait in almost all species. Dominance fights in most species are almost never fatal. Basic game theory, survival of the group is often survival of the individual at least in social creatures and humans are VERY social. Respect for the lives of other creatures is a basic concept to not screw with your natural world so much that you pull out the keystone and cause the whole house of cards to fall down on your head by like over hunting your own food sources. So I think you're way off base on what you're sayng arrie. I'm also not talking about religion, just my peresonal beliefs, which I don't particularly consider religious as I'm constantly refineing them as the years go by.

As far the human race as a whole goes there are no rules for it, war or religion built in to the human brain. It's a breakdown of system complexity. Humans are basically meant to be in small tribal groups, the cities and societies we have formed now days break all the old rules and completely different psychological rules apply, most of which are at BEST poorly understood, our brain's just haven't adapted to the added complexity of our population and social densities.

mike2545 said:

I like the late George Carlin's slant on this

"But when you think about it, religion has never really had a big problem with murder. More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason. All you have to do is look at Northern Ireland, Cashmire, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the World Trade Center to see how seriously the religious folks take thou shalt not kill. The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable. It depends on who's doin the killin' and who's gettin' killed."

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This is not factually true. Atheists are the big killers...Mao and Stalin top the list with a combined kill count of possibly 150,000,000-300,000,000...depending on whose count you believe, but even the low number is staggering. Religeous conflicts don't even begin to compare with communist purges.

Careful now...are you comparing that with all the religous conflicts that ever happened? Either way, it's not good to paint things with such a wide brush or the same thing might be said of things like skin colour or anything else.

I will say though that as far as religous things are concerned, good or bad, they both tend to be around for a very long time.

dknguyen said:

Careful now...are you comparing that with all the religous conflicts that ever happened?

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Yes, the population of the Earth has only recently been large enough for over achievers like Mao and Stalin to do their worst. Speaking even in relative terms their purges, adjusted for inflation so to speak, would still make even the bloodiest religious conflicts look small.

Screwcrow, can you tally the deaths from religions vs atheistic viewpoints for the last, oh I dunno, say 15 thousand years? If you can't then your remarks are at best inflammatory, with no logical reasoning. Right wing atheism is the exact same mind set as right wing religion, just different words, the effective 'us vs them' is still the same no matter what you call it.

Religion is BIG business

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You have that right. And thats why I quit and now just try to do my best. You hear things like the mark of beast. And the 666
Added this up.
1. Six days I made the earth "key word 6"
2. Six days you can work then it's my day the sabbath "key word 6"
3. Six years than you take one off for me "key word 6"
You added that up and you can see that it is 666. Now it's not so much the number as it is
what your doing seven days a week. Every church in the US is trying to get your money
now who is the Beast. Oh and there doing it seven days a week.

Sceadwian said:

........................... Right wing atheism is the exact same mind set as right wing religion, just different words, the effective 'us vs them' is still the same no matter what you call it.

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I have never read anything as stupid as what you posted.

Umm would you care to elaborate on that ScareCrow? If you're right I'd be the first to admit it, but you need to provide reasoning. Calling me stupid in a post with no justification or reasoning is just.. well nonsensical. Next comes the momma jokes =)

ScareCrow said:

I have never read anything as stupid as what you posted.

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Extremist athiesm is no better than extremist religion.