Because something is not intuitive doesn't make it not so. Your personal, or even general, incredulity has no bearing on logical possibilities nor reality. Quantum Mechanics is not, for instance, intuitive in any way.
Religion, what's the point?
- Thread starter TheRedFlag
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To that point, I’ve always found it non-coincidental that organized religion and organized government always show up at around the same time.
I'm afraid your imagination isn't how we determine scientific facts or probability for that matter.
Even your example makes no sense as you turning into a dinosaur is outright impossible and it is quite possible we will fully understand the origins of the universe no matter how much harder it gets the closer you get to the very "beginning".
that would give us evidence of something we could say was "god-like" but it wouldn't be evidence of "god". assume supernatural beings did exist, the first thing you'd say is that "god" is beyond you, too. for example, insofar as anything exists, it does not choose to exist because choosing to exist implies existence prior to existence (implies choosing prior to a state where choosing becomes possible. which is existence). the concept of god people tend to have is one which wills itself and other things into existence. that is a hard one to square even in non-religious terms. there are some good logical arguments about "god", again very abstract use of that term, being a kind of universe-external entity. dovetails with big bang theory a little.
looking for the origins of the universe is akin to looking for something prior to the possibility of that thing's existence. which is why arguments for non-existence, the ones which seem comprehensible, are entirely paradoxical and must deal mostly in logic (like set theory).
Then don't take my imagination for it, but can you do it? Even qualified scientists have talked about humanly it is impossible to get to an origin because there will always be an origin to that origin.
We can never get an answer. Our brain does not even think in those dimensions.
No, it's all just for us.
Literal insanity to believe in any religion given the context.
I don't need an answer. I'm quite happy to believe that we're a quirk of fate. An often amazing one in a vast sea of lifelessness but to me believing that we're special or someone has a plan and rules for us in the context of the vast infinity of space as illustrated in the previous post I quoted is narcissist in the extreme. We're nothing, less than a millionth of an amoeba, yet we live. Is that not enough? Religions came into being before we knew we were an infinitesimally small life-form in a dark corner of the Universe. It's quite literally human exceptionalism and based on the egotistical notion that we must be special because we are self-aware. For anyone wondering why atheists find humour in Religion it's because once the veil is lifted it's quite laughable that anyone could think that a higher power who could create an infinite universe would give us a set of rules and punish or reward us for all eternity based on what occurred, for them, in the tiniest infinitesimally small fraction of the blink of an eye.
The whole thing is completely absurd.
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A start, not outright proof. TBH I think it is a waste of time even trying as the ship has sailed. The chances of there being any supernatural being, much less a god, is virtually zero.
yeah i think proof and religion are not well suited. science will seek to explain religious phenomena via proofs. so hypothetically if we proved the existence of higher order beings as "god-like" we might then explain ghosts and phantoms from a scientific point of view. but religion will still hold those things to be proof of god (without any actual proof, and that's why it's faith-based).
There may be a point beyond we can't "see" to know what came before. I'm thinking before the singularity that started the current expansion. But historically there have always been declarations of limits to knowledge that have been wrong. So we may well get there, at least being able to model what came "before" the big bang e.g. big bang, big crunch cycle or whatever. But you don't fill gaps in knowledge with whatever nonsense you like. You work towards building knowledge upon knowledge.
As for our brains don't be so sure. Not that long ago only 2 or 3 people fully understood Einstein's theory of relativity and now lots of people are well past that level of reasoning and thinking.
Ghosts and phantoms? Once again it falls to a comedian to point out how nonsensical this idea is
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It seems that religion is within our DNA. We have hard time accepting that there is no higher meaning to our existence. I am not religious but as older I am getting the more I see the importance of the religion. In my early 20s I was convinced that religion is root of all evil and major reason for wars, however I think religion was exploited to start/justify wars. Healthy religions brings people and community together.
post removed. but i'm not saying either exist, i'm saying that if we somehow reasoned their existence hypothetically it would have implications for science but religion would probably remain as it is. before Franklin people used to say lightning was an act of god. when Franklin and others demonstrated how it worked in natural scientific reasoning, fewer people claimed lightning for the sphere of god. but many people still do. they'll say you can figure out how it works, but you cannot figure out how it got here. the argument moves from the individual mystery to the meta-mystery, or from token to type. my point was that even in such a scenario you would see the same kind of thing take place ("you've explained how ghosts exist but you cannot explain how or why we're here in the first place").
even if you could explain much of what we do not know, and which some attribute to god, there will always be the meta-frame of existence itself or existence prior to existence which will ensure a religious survival. basically we will always know far less than we think even as we make strides in understanding and you don't need a massive gap for faith-based reasoning to lodge itself.
Click it it is still there. Not sure why it shows up as removed. Is there a tldr for your ghost story? No chance I'm arsed hypotheticalling about ghosts, sorry. God and religion are bad enough. What about fairies and elves?
you've missed the point entirely. tl;dr i'm explaining the difference between science and religion the context of faith and reason.
Ok I went back and read it. I've clearly missed your point but I'm still but sure I get what you're saying.
Are you saying no matter what advances there are in science we will still have religious people? If so, well obviously, because they're indoctrinated before the age of reason and it's tied into the fabric of their lives and the support structures within their communities. Science doesn't really come into it.
more or less. still not sure about indoctrination before age of reason being a prerequisite as many in this thread seem to have become religious or found belief in god in their adult years. others seem to have gone the other direction. i think there's at least two aspects to it. one is the social function which you point out. another is the epistemic crisis, or gap problem. like the difference between a religious person and a theologian. the theologian is more logician than religious zealot, these days anyway, at least the university kind, who often views god in very abstract logical terms.
I would say that all sounds very protestant.
You could also say the same about all those other other aspects of human existence that contribute towards a person's identity, like: nationality, sexuality, culture, gender, race, ethnicity and so on. People don't exist in the abstract however.
In direct answer to your question though - people would still search for answers and many would arrive at the transcendent. It's human nature. In other words it would still exist in some form or another. And to borrow from Chesterton...if people choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.
I’d say folks like me and folks who arrived at religion as an adult are in the minority. Most religious folks were born and raised into a religion and never leave it.
Last I checked, people were born with those attributes and didn't choose to believe in it, as opposed to religion. Which is why there is an argument of removing religion from society as a defining attribute for anyone's identity, as it's disposable.
yeah that's a fair point. the majority will be as you say born and raised.
I think the question itself is illogical without a set definition of “origin” or at least with how you’re inferring “origin” in thr above post. The science might get to a point where it has full understanding of the big bang, and then the origin of the big bang, lets say A. Then you can again ask what is the origin of A, how did A come about. The science may again understand that the origin of A is B. But then again you might ask how did B come about, and so on and so forth. This “how” question about the origin can go to infinitum without a set definition.
With this sort of infinitely recursive “how” questioning, we can say no one can ever have understanding of anything ever.
Catechism: existsI would say that all sounds very protestant.
To borrow from Russell…
“Belief in eternal hell fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override Their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell.”
My son has had nothing to do with religion and views the notion of a god no more believable than ghosts or mythical beings. Without indoctrination it isn't believable.
Schools here do have regular religion "lessons" run by non-teachers. You have the option to opt your kid out in which case they go to the library to catch up on homework etc. We always did this but one day they accidentally forced him to go. After 10 minutes someone said that god created everything and he (quite sincerely) asked "so who created god?" which went down like a lead balloon.
I should have put the full Dara O'Briain quote I used above as it speaks to the god of the gaps that always circles they
“Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.”
After all, as Dawkins points out, theists are all atheists regarding all but their own god(s) with atheists just going one god further.
“Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.”
After all, as Dawkins points out, theists are all atheists regarding all but their own god(s) with atheists just going one god further.
I would tend to agree. The reactions of people indoctrinated in one faith to the sincerely held beliefs of people indoctrinated in a different one make me believe that.
Ex)
[person who believes a man walked on water and resurrected from the dead] “That Buddhist reincarnation stuff sounds silly”
The only reason it sounds silly is because they weren’t indoctrinated into it. Had they been, a guy walking on water and raising from the dead would sound silly.
I also wonder how you can explain the particular god you believe in being hugely correlated with the place and religion in which you were raised?
Oh that’s one I always enjoy talking about with students when I teach world religions.
“But coach, why do they believe in Allah???”
— well, because they were born in Saudi Arabia so that’s likely what their parents believed. You said you’re a Christian, so why do you believe in Yahweh?
“Who?”
— Okay, [sigh]… look at the board…
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a conversation like that with a student where they ask me “how can they believe something that silly?” and I’m like, “well, did it occur to you that they might think the same about what you believe?”
You know that head turn thing a dog does when it’s confused? I usually get that look from them
Indoctrination of the young isn’t just a Protestant thing.
Bertrand’s quote = religious people can believe anything or nothing, too. Just depends on what someone tells them to think.
It certainly isn’t. However, your use of the term ‘indoctrination’ implies some mass Soviet or North Korean style re-education program, which, it goes without saying, is hardly true.
But if we go with the term - as I understand it schools in the US with a religious ethos of some kind tend to perform better than their secular state counterparts. And that’s something which is certainly the case on this side of the Atlantic, demonstrating perhaps that this kind of ‘indoctrination’ is very beneficial.
What you’ve described is something that I’ve had no experience of. I’ve never in my life had a family member or any so-called religious person telling me what to think, and I attended a Catholic school.
I don't have any religious faith and was never able to believe in anything supernatural, but i do respect and understand that people who believe in God find themselves in a state of perplexity and this is not fundamentally different to what happens to me.
Our brains didn't evolve to grasp so many complex concepts. And because of our our relation with objects surrounding us, we tend to think that zero and nothingness is the same thing. But if there was nothing and a first particle was created, it would be one particle. If another one was created, it would be two particles. The idea of those numbers existed on a platonic way, even before anything was created. Maybe you're not calling it one and two, it doesn't need to be named, but we can"t erase numbers out of existence, no matter if something exiist, or if there is nothing.
Now lets think about it:
Q: can a universe be created out of nothing?
Standard Answer: yes, all the mass(energy) is positive(unless there is some unknowm form of negative mass), gravity is negative, the sum of the two is zero, then you need zero energy to create an universe and it doesn't demand any explanation for its existence.
Q: is this really out of nothing?
Honest answer: no, we need the laws of Physics to exist in the first place. This isn't "nothing", its a lot of stuff.
Q: Are the laws of Physics eternal?
A: It might be the case.
Its honest to say this is unsatisfactory. even if the wave function of the entire multiverse is eternal, why something would exist instead of nothing? And How any rational eternal being could explain to itself its own existence?
We are becoming cynical and want to avoid ultimate questions. And we pretend the history we tell to ourselves is the whole of reality, because we fear the god of the gaps. But we don't know.
Our brains didn't evolve to grasp so many complex concepts. And because of our our relation with objects surrounding us, we tend to think that zero and nothingness is the same thing. But if there was nothing and a first particle was created, it would be one particle. If another one was created, it would be two particles. The idea of those numbers existed on a platonic way, even before anything was created. Maybe you're not calling it one and two, it doesn't need to be named, but we can"t erase numbers out of existence, no matter if something exiist, or if there is nothing.
Now lets think about it:
Q: can a universe be created out of nothing?
Standard Answer: yes, all the mass(energy) is positive(unless there is some unknowm form of negative mass), gravity is negative, the sum of the two is zero, then you need zero energy to create an universe and it doesn't demand any explanation for its existence.
Q: is this really out of nothing?
Honest answer: no, we need the laws of Physics to exist in the first place. This isn't "nothing", its a lot of stuff.
Q: Are the laws of Physics eternal?
A: It might be the case.
Its honest to say this is unsatisfactory. even if the wave function of the entire multiverse is eternal, why something would exist instead of nothing? And How any rational eternal being could explain to itself its own existence?
We are becoming cynical and want to avoid ultimate questions. And we pretend the history we tell to ourselves is the whole of reality, because we fear the god of the gaps. But we don't know.
I don’t care what word makes you feel less icky to use, but that’s what it is. You take children and tell them this all powerful deity exists and you constantly reinforce it and their brains form around that belief. It becomes part of who they are.
You’ve got no clue what you’re talking about here. The better performance “on this side of the Atlantic” has to do with them being private schools that charge high tuition and have selective admissions for their students, while us lowly public schools take any and all. It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with religious indoctrination.Sure you haven’t. I guess the existence of catechism and sermons and holy texts and holidays are all just a fever dream of mine.
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Testing your faith mate. God wants to know if you still love her even with the existence of all that would lead you to doubt whether she cares about you
That's what it is in the mind of Carolina Red, and his fellow travellers on this thread perhaps.
And if there is a kind of mass indoctrination of kids going on in America, I'd say the most recognisable one to non-Americans is the flag waving 'America's the greatest country in the world' type culture that seems quite rampant over there.
I'm not an expert on the education system in England but as far as I'm aware the majority of so-called faith schools in England are state funded, not private, and are routinely among the best performing state schools. And in NI, the catholic educational sector (that of the formerly downtrodden minority) outperforms every other sector, and the lower educational attainment that affects many young protestant kids is familiar discussion point in the media here. There are only 16 fee paying schools in NI too, all which cater primarily for the unionist/protestant community.
I haven't, and I'm not religious.
Wait...you were a bible thumping catholic?
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That’s great. I happily await your proof that this performance is due to religious indoctrination.
Okay. I just don’t believe you.
I have to be a Catholic to know about things that Catholics do?
Kids are doing good in maths and science because they were told to believe that Jesus the son of god is real.