Animals
Posted on: July 6, 2010 - 6:15pm
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Animals
I was watching some Way of the Master clips and Ray Comfort often brings up that people die because we are sinners. Now this may seem silly, but why do animals have to die? On the subject of animals, I know some bring up that some animals were put here to eat .but why couldn't God just make food like he mde fruit and not make some animals and give them life and some animals even have personalities of their own and animals have to suffer and die at human hands. Why do that to them? I think animals have needs and clearly most have a will to life same as humans.
Just seems cruel to me.
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The only real defining difference between us and animal's is that we know about death. They too know it but I think only as a survival instinct. Of course there are a few other differences but above all, knowledge and understanding of death is defining.
For the record we are animals as well, we just happen to have a more developed brain..well I suppose that's debatable actually. ><
Anyway, I think "spirituality" is a part of how we evolved, a way to deal with death and religions stemmed from this. I don't feel like arguing it so I'll make it clear this is just my opinion.
Theres an onion parody on teaching an ape the he will die btw, might be worth looking up.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
Their explanation is that a sinless universe would be a perfect utopia. Animals would not die. Their would be no disease or carnivores or thorns or poisons.
In that glorious Godly utopia, there would be no homoerotic molestation of bananas:
Kirk Cameron can't even keep a straight face after the 'ease of entry' remark and that lip gesture.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
My guess (and I say "guess" because the Bible does not tell us if animals were originally subject to death) is that animals die because, aside from death, another consequence of original sin was that the paradise God had created for mankind was turned into a cesspool. Now, not only do animals die, but the majority of animals are untamed and cannot cohabit with human beings.
Yea awful good of him to turn his creation into a "cesspool" for something he knew would happen. Such tact and generosity.
Seriously, he planned to have a man, one man to worship him forever? lol I'm excluding eve because the man had to ask for her and she obviously was not planned?
Anyway back to the animals, what I glean from the bible other animals are to be used for our pleasure and sustenance, they have no souls or as another forum persona might say they are simply "meatbags".
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
Before I respond, I want to make some important clarifications. God dwells in eternity. In the realm of eternity, there is no before and there is no after. There is simply the present. In God's eternal now, there are no potentialities. Therefore, it makes no sense to say that God knows what is going to happen because going to necessitates that there is a potentiality not yet fulfilled. There is nothing that God has done. There is only what God does. So, it is important to understand that any language we use regarding what God will do or has done is strictly for convenience, but must not be taken literally.
To answer the question, yes. God created Adam as a responsible adult. God told Adam not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and Adam disobeyed him. God righteously administered the punishment. There was no reason for him to be generous.
He did not plan to have one man to worship him forever. He created Eve so that mankind could be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28).
So, an adult takes an apple from a store. You punish him and his family for the rest of his life, his children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren.................forever. And for good measure you punish all the rest of the people (there were other people, see Genesis) forever. Even though they had nothing to do with Adam and Eve eating an apple. How insane is that? Most people would say that was cruel and unusual punishment. But not christians. Nut cases.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Yea I almost pointed out that he knows all so he knew the apple would be eaten and this would all be set in motion but I don't really care to argue "faith".
I have faith that the unicorn pooped on his head. Unicorn poop is eternal so he is now an eternal poopy head. He cant see feel or smell it, but it's there.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
because of sin and not because of shortening telomeres caused by a lifetime of oxidative stress in a toxic environment is the stupidest, most banal and most self centred position a person can possibly have. It's ideas like this one that convince me christians are not complete human beings and are not brave enough to be.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
What "most people" say is not a good argument for anything.
When Adam sinned, he suffered the consequences. He became subject to physical and spiritual death and was forced to live in a world that was no longer "good". As such, God's sanctifying grace was no longer present in his human nature and this got passed down through the generations.
God does not somehow intervene in a conception and impute a fallen nature upon a child. It is already there due to the nature of our descendents.
Again, God exists in a fully actualized state where everything is realized simultaneously. He is ontologicaly prior to everything else but not temporally prior. To God, he exists, creates the world, witnesses the events in Genesis, fulfills his perfect will and this occurs all in a single instant. It is in this sense that God is omniscient. He does not know what Adam will do, but he knows what Adam is doing because he actively witnesses it, while, at the same time, administering the punishment and witnessing the fulfillment of the purpose for which he created the world.
This does not mean that it is not within God's power to stop Adam from eating from a tree. It does means, though, that God chooses not to interfere with his volition.
Does any of this actually mean, Godchild. If you load one more staggering assertion onto this wagonload the axle will crack.
How lucky there was a jewish temple scribe sitting behind the morality tree to record the state of mind of the almighty in detail.
Pass me the sickbags, someone.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Back to it is okay to torture innocent babies because s/he/it doesn't get off their lazy ass and fix the problems he/she/it caused.
Have you seen AtheistExtremeist's post about who becomes a zealous religious person? Suggest you read it then get your Wellbutrin dose increased. Or Prozac or whatever your anti-anxiety drug of choice is.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Now there's a thought. God/s/dess walking around with cartoon-like thought bubbles so all can see what s/he/it was/is thinking. Oh, forgot, only Godchild can see them.
edit: Godchild really needs his/her meds adjusted.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
It seems to me that this particular thought process argues that God is incapable of understanding the linear time that he, presumably, created. I suppose, from THAT perspective (that since he "does" everything all at once,) it is understandable that humankind WOULD be punished forever for a transgression... That a single person would be sent to the depths of a fiery tortured existence for eternity because he coveted his neighbor's ass. It's because, to GOD, it all happens in an instant!
Since he can see everything that goes on at once, does that not preclude the possibility of "free will" for Adam? Seriously, this "God = free will" argument has to be one of the stupidest assertions I've ever heard. When people start to understand that, the world will be a better place.
Robb
"The general opinion is not always the perfect truth..."
- Giordano Bruno
Let me get back to my main point if I may: Humans die because we are all sinners. Okay, I get that. I understand that. I agree with that. But why do the animals have to die? How are they sinners? I mean, if they lived...the world would get overcrowded clearly, so why make them in the first place? I understand to enjoy their beauty. Okay, fine. But why make so many animals targets for hungry humans? Why not make them where they are not editable?
I believe even if God is real...he is cruel. For MANY reasons, not just the animal issue, but since this is the topic I started, in regards of the animals: He made them clearly to have a sense of fear. Given that so many die by humans, it's cruel that they have to go through so much cruel toture and hell. Couldn't he have just made chicken like he made fruit where it grows on trees or something? I love that we have animals. They make the world more fun. I just wish all animals could be safe and be free to live their lives like everyone else. Also, he had to have known cats and dogs were going to become a popular pet for many humans. Why did he have to give them such a short life span compared to people?
In the past, whenever I questioned God's thinking....the usual response was "Trying to understand how God thinks is like a fish trying to understand how we think."
I dunno. I guess I can buy that. I know I could go on and on about how God did things so I'll just stop there and I guess I'm also done on this thread. I'll let you guys get back to fighting about Adam.
(1) God did not cause original sin. Adam did.
(2) No babies are innocent. They all have the imputed sin of Adam.
(3) The rest of your post consists of personal attacks. If you continue with them, I will assume that you are not actually interested in serious discussion and ignore your posts.
(1) Nowhere is it claimed nor can it be inferred that because God is eternal, he cannot understand our experience of time.
(2) You'll have to define what you mean by "free will" in order for me to address your other point. By "free will", do you mean the act of decision making whereby the decision is made vacuously without anything affecting it? Or do you mean, the act of decision making where a decision is made without any constraint? Or do you mean, the act of decision making where for any decision that is made, one could have decided otherwise? Or do you mean all of the above? Furthermore, you would have to qualify your definition of "free will" with a criteria for blameworthiness or praiseworthiness, since you are arguing that Adam is not blameworthy for his actions.
Truth is there is no arguing with the fact that animals die and they have no real place in this "creation" other than to exist for "mans" pleasure, for a theist anyway.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
Your original sin contention replete with screaming eternal punishment that we somehow deserve on the basis on some assertion you make but do not prove, constitutes a personal attack on our integrity and a latent threat. The rules of this forum are no threats so if you continue to make them I will tell you what I think of you in no uncertain terms. Your doctrine's core is a fallacy from force and if you are too small-minded to understand this point then you are an idiot.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
(1) The scope of this conversation is regarding the internal consistency of the Bible itself. Therefore, whether or not the Bible actually reflects reality or historical events is not a question at this time. Right now, I do not have to prove that God did not cause original sin. I simply have to point out that according to the Christian theology, God did not cause original sin. This is something that I can prove, simply by citing Genesis.
(2) Stating that there are consequences to our privation of sanctifying grace is no more a threat than saying that we will get electrocuted if we go swimming during a thunderstorm.
(3) The sentence "If you continue to make threats, I will tell you what I think of you in no uncertain terms" is itself a threat and therefore, you have violated very rules of the forum that you've cited.
(4) Where is the fallacy in Christian doctrine?
is that while electrocution is a verifiable consequence of human involvement with conductive electrical paths and a scientific fact, being tortured for eternity by a god the jews invented is an assertion based on no proof whatsoever.
Telling you what I think of you for threatening us is scarier that telling you you will be tormented eternally on the basis of my personal cognitive bias? You are joking. This latter is your position and you aren't even brave enough to admit it.
If you have a single shred of proof outside the assertions of the bible, that we will actually be cast into hell, and that we deserve to be cast into hell, then provide it right now. If not, admit you are perpetuating a threat.
A logical fallacy from force is where you tell some one to believe your stupid argument or you will punch them in the face. In the case of the christian doctrine, this fallacy is the the threat of hell - believe our unprovable doctrine or be burned forever.
This is a fallacy from force concocted by priests who had no better proofs to offer. Are we really expected to believe that this often repeated threat is a best-case argument from a loving god?
Go away, Godchild.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
projections Zeeb. I think if there is a loving god, the treatment of animals, the positioning of animals as no more than a usable resource, is cruel. To my mind, the situation on earth only makes sense with no god. In any case, we depend on the ecosystems that support us and you would think that as these ecosystems collapse we will be either forced to re-consider our treatment of our fellow organic passengers, or join them in mass extinction.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
(1) Whether or not a claim is justified based on the evidence has nothing to do with whether or not it constitutes a threat. You said that the idea of eternal punishment in Christianity is a threat and if you are going to be consistent, then you will have to acknowledge that if this is a threat, then any conditional statement regarding negative consequences for one's choices is also a threat.
(2) Whether or not claim is scary has nothing to do with whether or not it constitutes a threat. You said that threats were against the rules and then threatened me. You did not stipulate that only scary threats are against the rules.
(3) Again, the degree to which the Bible actually reflects reality is irrelevant. The OP was challenging the internal consistency of the Bible and I answered.
(4) A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning. It requires a set of premises and a conclusion which does not follow from the premises. What are the premises and what is my conclusion which does not follow from the premises?
(5) The existence of God is not proven by force. It is proven by appealing to the metaphysical aspects of reality from which you can infer that an infinite being must exist (i.e. principle of sufficient reason, principle of causality, axioms of logic/mathematics, moral principles, etc.) The validity of Christianity is proven by the historical evidence for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus (i.e. the empty tomb, the conversion of Paul, the Christian martyrs, the fulfillment of the prophecies in the OT, etc.) I'm not going to get into this right now. Feel free to start a new thread and we can discuss it there.
(6) Your grammar is atrocious. How old are you?
It isn't an attack, it is a statement of fact. Those people most zealous in their religion are highly likely to also be more anxious than the rest of the population and less secure feeling in their every day lives. I'm feeling good - babies are born innocent, not sinful - god/s/dess leaves me alone and I leave him/her/it/them alone - and I feel confident and happy in my relationships family and friends.
edit: No drugs for me.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Telling me that I am on medication is not based on any factual study that you've done. It is your vain attempt at a witticism and it has failed miserably. You are not at all witty or clever, so stop trying.
The statement "babies are born innocent" is an assertion, based on your presupposition that the Bible is false. If I am born with an innate propensity to do evil, then I am not innocent, even if I have not done anything. Evil exists in your character, not in your works.
Plenty of people feel confident and happy in their relationships with their family and friends. Even Charles Manson did. What are you getting at?
First, if god/s/dess existed, s/he/it/they could do lots of things. But it is very obvious s/he/it/they don't do squat.
There is no purpose to our lives or to animal lives. We all evolved together and depend on each other. The prey animal depends on the predator - otherwise we would be up to our butts in starving rabbits. Grasses depend on being grazed - but not overgrazed - for reducing weeds, aerating the soil, and strengthening roots by reducing flower and seed production. And so on. We can't get away from the fact that humans depend on our environment and some critters in our environment depend on us.
If you take one of those factory farm chickens and turn them loose, they will die in less than 10 weeks. The particular cross is meant to put on meat very quickly and the body actually outgrows the heart. They can't breed naturally, either. Other varieties of chicken would do just fine loose - as long as the good brooders learn to nest where the coyotes can't get them. (We raised chickens for awhile - Barred Rocks for eggs and Cornish Cross for meat.)
Dogs and people depend on each other in many ways. Humans have had dog companions for over 10,000 years. Most dogs could not survive on their own. We do rescue and I can tell you that a stray dog is not having fun out there past the first week or two of running around. After that, they have injuries, parasites, disease, and are darn near starved to death. Many of them are lousy hunters.
Cats are a more recent addition to the family and there is a lot of debate whether they are truly domesticated. I think so - we once lived near a little old lady and she would feed the stray cats. Which meant more kittens. Which meant more dead kittens who died from parasites and disease. The alley behind her house was pretty bad some days. She didn't hoard them or let them inside, she just fed them.
To domesticate an animal, there are certain criteria that need to be met, not all animals can be domesticated. The animal has to be willing to be handled by humans, not fight too much between themselves, easy to feed and hardy for the area, tolerant of crowding, and not particularly territorial. This is for initial domestication, some species we now breed have lost some of these early traits. For example, some heritage cattle breeds are much easier to handle than others now raised for meat.
To sum up, many domesticated animals can not survive without humans. This does not mean I am an advocate for factory farming of animals. When possible, I try to buy local from responsible small producers. It isn't always possible. I try to buy organic dairy products. You have to be nice to your cattle if you want to produce milk without hormones and other stuff. I really don't believe in the "man is to have dominion over all the animals".
I am not vegan or vegetarian. There are both on the forum. And they are probably right that we can all cut back on how much meat we eat.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
You do realize that most everyone on an atheist site will think this, right? You need to prove the bible is true before you assert truth in what it says.
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I think cats are very domesticated. I've had them my whole life and they are not wild at all. Not any wilder then dog's I've had. I think cats and dogs are like people in a way. Some wild, some not.
In the non-God world, animals make total sense and I am glad we have them.
In the God world, doesn't make much sense other then that it's cruel the way animals are treated.
One of the reasons why I am a big Bill Maher fan besides being a fellow agnostic-atheist, he also loves and supports the rights for animals as do I. If I ever become super rich, one of the things I've said for years is I'd write a big fat check for some animal rights group. Maybe PETA. They are a group that can get things done. lol. I could never join them because I eat chicken. That's the only animal I'd have trouble giving up cause I really love chicken. lol. I love cow meat as well, but I still have respect for PETA.....
Anytime people tell me about animals being mistreated, I usually laugh and tell them to call PETA. Seriously. They have a bad rep, but they can get shit done. That's why I can't help but laugh when I mention PETA. Some folks think they are crazy, but at least you know anyone who mistreats animals is bound for a major ass-kicking.
I've actually called PETA before to let them know about stuff. They react very quickly and are ready to hurt some people. Not REALLY hurt people mind you, but hurt them legally and are totally prepared and willing.
....Really, I am glad people like that exist. Not just in the rights of animals, but in other subjects too. These people do the dirty work most of us are too scared to do.
RRS is a perfect example of the subject of God. They not only kick ass, but they kick ass HARD....and don't give a shit what anyone thinks.
NOTE: I realize comparing RRS to PETA may piss people off so I should add that I don't mean they are like them as far as the WAY they kick ass, but the results are usually exactly the same and the victims of those ass-kicking are sore for a while.
Homework time!
Guns, Germs & Steel by Jarred Diamond - both as book and DVD.
The Botany of Desire: a Plant's Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan - also as book or DVD.
Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison - there are a lot of follow on books and ideas. He discusses how to be self-sufficient in your agriculture, home design, and so on. If I remember, a lot of this book was about living in deserts in Australia. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
The Variation of Plants and Animals Under Domestication by Charles Darwin - for a classic.
Search "domestication" at Amazon. Lots of titles, most I haven't read. I think I will put a couple of them on hold at the library. What fun and thanks for making me look it up.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
The bible and its teachers actively promote the threat of hell as a motivation to believe in god and as a punishment if we don't. Even jesus does it. Those who reject the father will be cast into a lake of fire. You've read Mark, right? My telling you off for perpetuating this threat of eternal torment by repeating the wages-of-sin-is-death Eden myth does not constitute an active or actual threat. But you believe we will be tormented eternally and in your mind believe we deserve it because in your ladybird book Adam ate a magic pomegranate. In repeating and clearly believing these unprovable and horrifically violent assertions you are perpetuating god's threat to torture us for not loving him. And you believe these events will really and justifiably take place. Your position is morally untenable.
Logic in conversation is not a string of closed loops. Your original assertion was that because of Adam's sinful actions, we die. In presenting this never-proven argument you are perpetuating a fallacy from force, on the basis of no other proof than your desire to believe it, whether you are prepared to admit this or not. Godchild, please provide me with verifiable proof of anything that was ever proven by 'appealing to the metaphysical aspects of reality'. All the other imaginary proofs you include have been mauled endlessly here and none are found to stand up to sensible scrutiny. Starting a thread to discuss them would be futility.
In relation to my grammar, I use upper case on the basis of merit. As for the rest of it, you seem to be managing quite nicely. Thanks for making the additional effort in comprehension.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Saying babies are born with an innate propensity to 'do evil' is an assertion based on no proof whatsoever other than your presupposition the bible is true. And there's something about your use of the words 'not innocent' here. What door does this leave open, Godchild? Death? Eternal torment? Do divulge.
Trouble for you is, no human myth book has ever been proven true and you will have to work hard to show us that yours is much more than a sprawling collection of myths and jewish history amplified by the ancient formulae of almost all religions. A man god comes to save the world. There's prophecy, healing, rising from the dead, ascending to heaven, born of a virgin, coming again at the end of the world and all the rest of it. This rubbish is repeated endlessly through myth and popular culture from Sumer to the legend of Beowulf. Every silly hero of modern times, from Superman and Flash Gordon to Neo and Iron Man is a re-run of these sad, adolescent dream-wishes.
I've read the bible about 5 times, possibly more, taking partial bible studies into account. If you are going to make pronouncements on the mystical origin of morality that include the words 'babies' and 'not innocent', I think it behoves on you to make the effort to read some Kohlberg. Perhaps you'll find it culturally enlightening.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Have you ever visited an elementary school playground?
Do you have to teach your child to misbehave in order for him or her to misbehave?
It means that we are born under separation from God. As a result, we are condemned under God's law and become subject to his judgment. Your life here on Earth is your opportunity to bridge the gap between you and your creator, but if you die in your sins, then you are eternally separated from him.
You will have to work hard to justify the inevitable presuppositions of your atheism, which is (1) everything came from nothing, (2) morality is subjective, (3) logic and mathematics are human inventions, (4) human beings evolved from rocks, (5) our lives are objectively worthless, (6) the universe became finely tuned as a result of some cosmic gamble, (7) the majority of people in his world, including PhDs, are wrong about the existence of a deity, and much more.
Well aren't you a biblical scholar. Forget guys like Bahnsen, Van Til, Sproul, Aquinas, Anselm, Augustine, etc. We have Atheistextremist.
1. See quantum physics.
2. It's called history. Slaves ring a bell?
3. I haven't seen anything else using them.
4. Not how it works.
5. Not sure how worth can be objective, ever.
6. Finely-tuned? You know what dark matter and dark energy are? Because right now we don't know anything about them, and they make up the majority of the energy in the universe. If you know, please inform physicists immediately. Otherwise, realize that you think only a minority of the known universe is fine-tuned, without any knowledge of the majority of it.
7. Appeal to popularity. Logical fallacy. Flat earth theory was popular once too, wasn't it?
EDIT: That was certainly hard work.
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Human-animals are aberrant, disgusting entities...
Nice. I will add to 4)
If man was made from dirt (according to Genesis), why do we still have dirt?
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
I'm going to assume your flat out repetition of the "birth under separation from god and subject to his judgment" spiel endorses all my earlier points - that you believe the god your religion's forbears invented means to murder and/or torture us and you are ok
with this and happy to peddle this violent threat as true despite the fact it's unproven. I'm glad we could clear that up.
Kids are kids. The messing about and horseplay of children does not constitute 'evil' the punishment for which is death and eternal immolation. Standing in the corner with their nose against the wall for about ten minutes is usually enough. Who made the
ancient jewish priests the touchstone of human morality for all time? And who declared that the highest level of moral behaviour humanly imaginable was attainable and even desirable on this earth? That it was a universal constant?
I am not a biblical scholar but I have read the bible - a lot. My father is a preacher, my mother a missionary, my brother a preacher, my brother-in-law a preacher. I grew up in church and this gives me serious grounding. You can not have read any secular texts
on the development of morals. If you are going to grandstand about morality then I think you should read some. I have read the bible and you should study human moral development with an open mind.
1: Everything did not come from nothing. We have no evidence that once there was nothing. We still don't know what the universe is constructed of. Please define nothing in a measurable and coherent way.
2: Morality is a learned behaviour that children inherit from parents, siblings and society. It's cultural and it evolves. There is no evidence whatever for a supernatural origin of morality. Please provide one if you disagree.
3: Logic and mathematics are human inventions. There are universal constants including time and gravity but logic and mathematics have no power over them.
4: All life evolved from the elements blown out from exploding stars. Every element known to man - and the number continues to rise - was produced inside stars. You, monkey boy, are a star man. The rock/life thing is a straw man.
5: Our lives are profoundly meaningful and conscious existence in this universe produces a sense of justifiable awe which is not proof of a deity. Human relationships with our friends and family provide all the meaning we have. This meaning is identical to that of
the theist. Human feelings and experiences are essentially similar. Only the labels vary.
6: The universe is not finely tuned. It's not tuned at all. As for a cosmic gamble, we don't know enough about the universe, and cannot know enough about what is outside it, to say we know this and retain intellectual integrity.
7: The majority of people in the world do believe in god and they believe because they are not brave enough to admit the truth. That like all other life, we are finite. That we do not truly know the truth of universal origins. That our spiritual cognitive short-cuts
are an internal snow job to assuage fear.
7a: All those scholars you mention represent an appeal to authority. None of them proved god existed. In the sliver of the universe we know a little of, we see no proof of any god.
Now, we are clearly not going to agree, Godchild. But in my mind, disbelief is the purest and bravest human position available. I will not believe under threat. I will not believe because we do not know. I will not believe because scholars from a long time ago took circuitous metaphysical and logical routes to try to prove something for which they were unable to find verifiable and consistently measurable objective proofs. There's nothing immoral about this position. There's nothing in it but personal honesty.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I've also seen kids not misbehave... so...
How can you be separate from an omnipresent being?
1. Everything came from nothing? Energy cannot be created or destroyed therefore it always existed (in some form).
2. To suggest that a god is needed for morality is to suggest that moral are useless. If morals are useful they can be derived from their usefulness.
3. Birds and apes are capable of counting. (probably others don't remember off the top of my head)
4. Is a strawman. Evolution is not abiogenesis.
5. How does objectivity make it not less/more worthy?
6. There are billions of stars in our galaxy and there are billions of galaxies in the universe. That is a lot of tickets to gamble with. The earth is not fine tuned to us we (living evolving things) fine tune ourselves via evolution to fit our environment.
7. Appeal to majority (a fallacy).
Sounds made up...
Agnostic Atheist
No, I am not angry at your imaginary friends or enemies.
Right, but that was not my question. Do you have to teach a kid to misbehave?
I'm talking about spiritual separation. Separation from God means that you do not share in his fellowship, i.e. he has no personal relationship with you, and that you are not in receipt of his sanctifying grace.
Cosmic afterglow, galaxy seeds, Hubble telescopes, and the entropic principle have proven that matter/energy are not eternal.
You are also severely confused about the second law of thermodynamics. It does not state that matter and energy are eternal. It states that the sum total of matter/energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. In other words, we cannot add or subtract from what is already there. This does not mean that matter/energy cannot have a beginning or an end, just that the total amount is fixed.
Morals are not dictated by usefulness. They are ends in themselves (see Kant).
Ask a bird what 6 multiplied by 4 equals and tell me what answer you get.
Feel free to correct the Biology textbooks being passed around in schools.
???
"Objective" means real. I do not understand the question.
I'm not talking about the Earth. I'm talking about the mass of elementary particles, the gravitation pull, the speed of light, etc. All of the physical constants, if slightly modified, would nullify the being of the universe.
It does not prove anything, but it is true that majority of people believe in some sort of deity. Why is that the case?
Forget dying, why do animals feel pain? And you can remove the pain inflicted on them by humans and other animals from the equation and still you have an overwhelmingly staggering amount of pain going around. Animals don't just die peacefully in their sleep. Disease is painful. And in some cases, the animals don't die from the disease they die from the pain. Pain so excruciating that it's fatal. What's the necessity of that? What kind of god sets up a system where one mistake made by one being (or in the case of Genesis, two) affects EVERYTHING? Not only are all humans affected but all life. Not only this planet but the whole universe is degrading because of one action committed by what can only be described as a child. Who leaves the fate of EVERYTHING in the hands of a child? Is the Christian god insane? Is he mentally deficient? Or is he just a sadist? Because he certainly isn't all powerful, all knowing and all good. An equivalent would be if someone built a hydrogen bomb then gave the detonation switch to a toddler and told him not to push the button knowing full well someone else was going to come in right behind him and tell the kid he'd get mounds of candy if he pushed it. We wouldn't blame the toddler for blowing up the bomb, we'd blame the idiot who put that kind of power into the hands of a creature incapable of wielding it. Or even knowing that it had that power. If Genesis were true (which of course it isn't, it's a fairy tale, and it reads that way), then Adam and Eve are nothing more than patsies used by a sadistic nutter. Or two sadistic nutters if you want to include the serpent.
The whole thing breaks down on so many levels.
Rill
I don't have to teach them not to misbehave either. I must however teach them what is expected of them in society. Without that knowledge and without the social contract misbehaving is irrelevant. Our brains allow us to pass on useful traits to otherwise uninformed individuals. We don't tell people not to do something simply because we thinks its wrong, we have logical and rational reasons to do things that would otherwise be harmful to the social group. Only in the context of society does misbehaving have any meaning.
You know if someone didn't want to be associated with me and I had to power to not torment them, I would. Or do you not believe in hell?
If the total amount is fixed when was it ever 0?
If you cannot add to "from nothing" or subject "from nothing' and there is something? when was there nothing?
The Universe had a beginning, that says nothing about where the energy that created the universe was prior to its expansion.
"They are ends in themselves" - Really show me one moral that isn't useful that is somehow needed. Kant sounds like he doesn't understand how being in a society is useful to survival.
Here is one for apes showing planning for future events and counting http://beforeitsnews.com/news/43/152/Apes_Show_Imagination,_Ability_to_Count_and_Plan_for_the_Future.html
You are new asking if a bird can understand English and the concept of multiplication, not simply mathematics. Here is one on language, quantities, and telling the difference between one type of object and 2.
http://www.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/article/S0168-1591%2806%2900105-5/abstract
Feel free to open a Biology textbook and see how wrong you are. Or in the very least link me to the textbook that talks about rocks evolving into people.
My feeling for my friends and family are subjective, so they are not real? Does that mean they are worthless? Value in and of itself is subjective so.. not really sure where the where it being objective makes it any more/less worth anything.
This simply isn't true. Please provide you scientific source for this. Anyway "Life as we know it" might not exist. In a universe with different constant a "life as we don't know it" could exist asking the same exact question as you. It is irrelevant because we are a product of what are universe can create. This is like a glass looking at the water it contains and saying the water fits perfectly inside it so water must have been made for the glass.
Irrelevant still a fallacy. But at one time the majority of the people thought the world was flat... Why was that the case? Ignorance.
Sounds made up...
Agnostic Atheist
No, I am not angry at your imaginary friends or enemies.
Why? As in... how?
We have been burying our dead for at least 130 millenia. In nearly all regional cultures today, burial has some sort of spiritual significance. Ancestor worship is older than theism itself and a form of mourning intended to maintain reverence for and support dead family in the supposed afterlife.
Spirituality may well have been a socialization mechanism and social disciplining tool of human ancestors before there were even humans... giving me reason to believe that evolution may have kept this behavior intact over dozens of thousands of generations... until we became evolved to develop a belief in the divine naturally.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
I do not feel like debating with you. No offense, but you come off as rather boring. I'll just focus on this because I find your responses mildly amusing:
It was never "0" because positing that it is would be saying, "Matter/Energy exists and has a quantity of 0", which is unintelligible. "0" cannot be predicated of anything. It is like saying that something possesses the property of non-existence.
There was never nothing. God always exists.
It was not anywhere prior to the expansion because (1) there is no "prior" without the universe and (2) there is no "where" without the universe. Space and time are dimensions of the universe. Without the universe, you have nowhere to place energy and there is no time that you can place it.
Matter and energy require space and time in order to exist. Space and time do not exist without the universe.