On my phone screen there's a line break between the words Executing and Righteous above.
Religion, what's the point?
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran are here to talk about a frustrating 2 points dropped at Crystal Palace. They then discuss the regeneration of Old Trafford. Finally, Nik is joined by special guest Michael Statham from the Football Oranje podcast - who gives us a more in depth look at our EL opposition FC Twente, and then runs through the (many) Dutch connections currently at United.
On my phone screen there's a line break between the words Executing and Righteous above.
Not really relevant but I laughed out loud at this quote:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being said:
I don't know a lot about the Israel/Palestine/Jordan issues, but I did hear on the air this afternoon a local pastor (Macon, GA) preaching how that land belongs to the Jews because the Bible claims it.
Why didn't god give the Jews some better land? New Zealand is nice.
What is the purpose of life? To pass your genes on. The rest is an enjoyable side effect.
Not sure your answer fits the question, or vice versa. Passing your genes on is hardly a purpose, it's simply an effect. It's not as if anyone would care if humans genes weren't passed on. What difference would that make?! I think you're closer to saying that there's no purpose of life at all.
It is an organisms only purpose.
I imagine that humans would care quite a lot if their genes stopped getting passed on all of the sudden. What do you mean nobody would care?
What Wibble's saying is that the question of the meaning of life is not a spiritual one; to most atheists the notion of life having some spiritual purpose, that would were put here for some higher calling, it's just ridiculous.
The question then is largely biological: What is our purpose? To survive, thrive* and propagate. Many devout find such simplicity to be beyond their comprehension; the notion that we exist by some fluke of nature offends them because it it doesn't make them feel special enough - and shit do they like making themselves feel special!
"O, Lord, I accept you into my life! Feed my delusion so that I don't have to face up to the futility of nature any longer! Nature doesn't make me special but I really want to be a special boy!"
It's quite clearly all a load of absolute bollocks. How any half intelligent adult manages to be so dumb as to buy into religion is beyond me; the stupidity of it makes me want to grab people by the throat and be all, "Snap out of it, you fecking Ihni binni dimi diniwiny anitaime, you're a grown man, what are you playing at?!".
*Notice the word 'thrive'. This is where all your pursuit of happiness and whatnot is included. It's a fundamental goal of every species to be 'happy' in their own way; even the plants and that, though entirely emotionless and unconscious, they nevertheless strive through the natural process to thrive - it's this natural desire to thrive both as a species and as individuals which gives rise to feelings of happiness in sentient species such as ourselves. There's nothing spiritual about love basically.
Aye, the driving force behind an organisms existence is survival of itself and of its species
Bizarre coment really.
Imagine if the entire human race were told that they were no longer allowed to have children! No politician will even broach the subject of some kind of population control, and that is just putting a limit on how many children that a person can have. It is taboo in Western countries to even seriously suggest such a thing. Even all the major religions explicitly espouse the propagation of ones genes. The whole human race runs on an obsession with sex, be it overtly or covertly. If you pull your head out of God's ass then it is quite easy to see how our fundamental purpose is a key driving force in almost everything that we do.
No wonder it's dark and gloomy in here. A human's reproduction environment is a little different. Why the need of a sexual partner at all (let alone the pleasure of performing the act) to reproduce? Not having a partner is certainly 'cost effective' to survive. Why have a personality? why..., why... There so many whys.
I would recommend a more holistic view of the world than objectifying it. It's certainly more fun.
I would recommend a more holistic view of the world than objectifying it. It's certainly more fun.
Has no one told you about the birds and the bees yet?
Man, it's not dark and gloomy here at all. Unless you mean the transfer forum.
This thread however, although I do think it went downhill from when Mockney tried to use the old Flight of Dragons trick on Danny1893, still has its moments. I look forward to your every post for instance. You never know what ludicrous string of non sequiturs you'll come up next.
Why we feel pleasure from performing the act of reproduction should be pretty damn obvious.
On the other hand, why someone who apparently created us felt the need to install a sexual drive, and then strictly forbade its utilisation, is a much better question.
Abbsta
You find the answers to life's questions 'why' from Islam? If so that is kind of ironic. At a difficult time in my life I tried to find religion and I looked most closely at Islam. Islam's absolute failure to answer any of my questions 'why', in anything like approaching a satisfactory way is why I do not have any belief in the Abrahamic God. I don't think that there is a gloomy vibe coming from anywhere except your own outlook. It is more of 'A Few Good Men' moment, in that 'you can't handle the truth'.
You find the answers to life's questions 'why' from Islam? If so that is kind of ironic. At a difficult time in my life I tried to find religion and I looked most closely at Islam. Islam's absolute failure to answer any of my questions 'why', in anything like approaching a satisfactory way is why I do not have any belief in the Abrahamic God. I don't think that there is a gloomy vibe coming from anywhere except your own outlook. It is more of 'A Few Good Men' moment, in that 'you can't handle the truth'.
If its this simple why not just say it for those who are less fortunate? Yes I am not as smart as you so please enlighten us. Why does one need pleasure to have a sexual drive? Oh and please remember my earlier question, why does one need a partner at all? it's certainly more 'expensive'.
Thanks.
Not everyone has a sex drive you know, asexuals exist. And not everyone's sex drive is linked to procreation, see homosexuals.
Not to mention the thing which you seem to be missing, orgasms lead to chemicals being released in our brain which make us rather happy, this doesn't just happen when we're fecking, this also happens when we're masturbating.
Of course, as we do feel pleasure from sex, it makes the chances that we procreate higher, so during our evolution, those who felt the most pleasure were seeking the feck the most, and they would have had more offspring, and their offspring more offspring, which leads to the species as a whole eventually having an enjoyable reaction to orgasms.
Do you also want to question why we need to drink, or to eat or to sleep? Survival isn't just linked to the individual you know, survival is also linked to species as a whole, which is one of the main points of evolution.
Why don't you tell us why we feel pleasure fecking? Does it prove something about religion?
Not to mention the thing which you seem to be missing, orgasms lead to chemicals being released in our brain which make us rather happy, this doesn't just happen when we're fecking, this also happens when we're masturbating.
Of course, as we do feel pleasure from sex, it makes the chances that we procreate higher, so during our evolution, those who felt the most pleasure were seeking the feck the most, and they would have had more offspring, and their offspring more offspring, which leads to the species as a whole eventually having an enjoyable reaction to orgasms.
Do you also want to question why we need to drink, or to eat or to sleep? Survival isn't just linked to the individual you know, survival is also linked to species as a whole, which is one of the main points of evolution.
Why don't you tell us why we feel pleasure fecking? Does it prove something about religion?
I'm at a loss as to what your question is supposed to be. You feel pleasure because it was built in by evolution and natural selection as a partly instinctual mechanism which stimulates the species to reproduce, in order to ensure its survival. Nature doesn't work like a sentient creator, it doesn't pick and choose the most convenient and elegant design available, otherwise you wouldn't have to take a dump as often as you do, or have an appendix.
So all your why questions are redundant, and ironically are only really applicable to your god. Because being all powerful he could have really made a reproductive function that didn't need a sexual act or pleasure, instead of handpicking this feature and then strictly forbidding it with threats of eternal torture.
Is there a god?
No there isn’t, I think the universe came into being following the laws of physics just the way everything else has developed by an inevitable process for the last 13 billion years. Whether it was a Higgs field, vacuum energy, quantum or winding energy effect. It was not god that’s for sure.
Do you believe in an afterlife?
No.
We know and can prove that everything about the human mind comes from the brain and brain chemistry. When a part of it dies in a living person they lose that part forever. They are changed by the event, lose memories and change personality. Whatever you think you are it could not survive brain death.
Moral principles.
It is a strange idea that you have to have god to have moral principles. Morality must surely come from reciprocity. It may not be universal but subjective in the sense that say an intelligence developed form cats rather than apes would have a difference morality but it is certainly human wide. We are social animals; we have empathy and can understand the effect of our actions on others. Just as we wouldn’t want harm to come to ourselves or the people we love so we can extrapolate how others feel and draw on that for a code of behaviour.
What is the purpose of life?
We were not created to serve any role but can find our own roles as individuals, to fill that need. We may even have a higher collective purpose as a species which we could discover later. For example creating an artificial intelligent life. I think just as we became self aware accidentally through our brains growing as a competitive advantage much like a Giraffes’ neck. Self awareness was a threshold we crossed. So as we develop ever more complex computational devices so it is inevitable that we will create a self aware intelligence.
It might be looking back from an objective point of view the most important thing we do is create a godlike immortal higher intelligence which spreads throughout the universe and dwarfs our other achievements.
No there isn’t, I think the universe came into being following the laws of physics just the way everything else has developed by an inevitable process for the last 13 billion years. Whether it was a Higgs field, vacuum energy, quantum or winding energy effect. It was not god that’s for sure.
Do you believe in an afterlife?
No.
We know and can prove that everything about the human mind comes from the brain and brain chemistry. When a part of it dies in a living person they lose that part forever. They are changed by the event, lose memories and change personality. Whatever you think you are it could not survive brain death.
Moral principles.
It is a strange idea that you have to have god to have moral principles. Morality must surely come from reciprocity. It may not be universal but subjective in the sense that say an intelligence developed form cats rather than apes would have a difference morality but it is certainly human wide. We are social animals; we have empathy and can understand the effect of our actions on others. Just as we wouldn’t want harm to come to ourselves or the people we love so we can extrapolate how others feel and draw on that for a code of behaviour.
What is the purpose of life?
We were not created to serve any role but can find our own roles as individuals, to fill that need. We may even have a higher collective purpose as a species which we could discover later. For example creating an artificial intelligent life. I think just as we became self aware accidentally through our brains growing as a competitive advantage much like a Giraffes’ neck. Self awareness was a threshold we crossed. So as we develop ever more complex computational devices so it is inevitable that we will create a self aware intelligence.
It might be looking back from an objective point of view the most important thing we do is create a godlike immortal higher intelligence which spreads throughout the universe and dwarfs our other achievements.
I hope that you are still searching and haven't given up and I genuinely mean that. It is vitally important to maintain some level of humility.
Why is it ironic? People have different questions and sometimes the same questions with different intensity/depth depending on their intellect and the state of their hearts. Sometimes answers come in different forms/places/times. I could point you to many examples where people find 'answers' but every journey is personal. Internal honesty (which includes humility) is paramount to unlocking doors. I don't know how you approached it but your theme (searching at a difficult time) is common to all of us - myself included. Anger is most certainly a detriment to finding peace.
I think your last sentence works both ways. One may find religion restrictive at first glance especially if one comes from a culture where 'blind faith' is encouraged more than rationale.
It's incredible. You think the whole fecking universe was designed with you in mind. You think that by following a set of propitiations you'll get to a special place, and recieve a special reward whilst the rest of us are heading for the rocks. You think god cares for you and what you do. You think your morals are superior, you think you have more 'internal honesty', and the list goes on and on.
But yeah, the word is 'humility'.
But yeah, the word is 'humility'.
I am not still looking for God. It is an exercise in futility. I could only subscribe to an Abrahamic religion if I started to lie to myself or tried to mould the religion into my own little interpretation. Both routes, to me, would mean the surrendering of personal integrity. I have reconciled my personal problems without the help of 'God'. I can't really see how you can be rational, if you have been brought up in a secular society and non religious family, whilst converting to an Abrahamic religion. In my troubled time, when I looked in the mirror, I knew that adopting such a religion would be me clutching at straws because I was afraid.
A universe which contains parasites, no less. If god was taking an architecture course, he'd fecking fail it.
Built in by evolution, which one? why does one need pleasure? Our DNA should've said... When it is time, find a mate, shag and go. One of the functions of our genitals at the basic (and crucial) level is reproduction. Feeling some form of pleasure (be it sensual or chemicals in the brain) is unnecessary whilst mating.
So, why did your god make us feel pleasure then?
It certainly can't be the idea that those who feel pleasure will reproduce more, have more offspring and be more successful at spreading their genes. Evolution is clearly bollocks, eh?
I'm gobsmacked at your inability to understand this. What do you mean 'should have said'? 
Your last sentence is what I am on about. People have different routes/strengths. You may were expecting God at an emotional or intellectual level and 'found nothing' and because you have found your solution/answer by yourself you'd think god is irrelevant. I think you may have missed something.
I am not pushing for anything and I'm not expecting an answer, but please let me ask you this, in what form were you expecting God's answer? and if He did, how would you know is from Him instead of a psychological effect born out of desperation/grief etc.?
I'm gobsmacked at your inability to understand this. What do you mean 'should have said'?
Programmed/eveovled to do...whatever language you want to use. The process should have been the cheapest possible in order to survive.
http://discovermagazine.com/1992/jun/evolutionofthebi59#.UeLOrEFQEj4
Orgasms are a cheap way for a species to survive.
Not that evolution is about 'cheapest' way to survive, it's about being the fittest for an environment to survive. Having orgasms and fecking a lot means you reproduce more and spread your seed better.
I don't think you even realise what the process is supposed to be.
You may have fallen prey to one of the most common misconceptions about evolution and natural selection, which is that it produces organisms that are perfectly suited to their environments.
Because reproduction by taking material from two sources enhances the species, when reproduction takes place by mitosis you end up with identical clones of each other, complete with identical faults. Combining the material from two sources enables the ability to replace "broken" elements from one source with a working version from the other source. This ability is key in ensuring the survival of a complex species in a changing environment.
Not to be a nitpick, but being 'fit enough' is more accurate. Will probably help him clear up his confusion better as well.
By fittest I meant in relation to the rest of your species, though if he needs a simplification of the process, here's an example of why orgasms and lust help survival: if there are 10 males and 10 females in a herd and one male is really horny and enjoys fecking with the other 9 being content with a shag a year, the horny fecks all the females constantly and has offspring with them all, the other 9, with their one shag a year will have less offspring than the horny one, his offspring will be more like him than the other 9 and with this perpetuating itself, the genes of the one will prevail throughout the herd and the entire herd will eventually be horny, will have orgasms and feck all the time.
Which is not to say that what you wrote about greedy alpha males is not true. It's just that it isn't a necessary pattern.
That makes sense, it's not catchy enough for a prime time documentary on BBC1 though is it?
I was not expecting divine revelations. I was looking for something to give me meaning and purpose in my life. I was trying to make sense of life and the situation that I was in at that time. I did not have any expectations as to how an 'answer' would appear. I thought Islam to be the most interesting religion as it is, at least, more historically credible than Christianity. I was massively disappointed with what I found. I don't know what I was expecting really but I was lost at the time. I was confronted with supernatural stories, the fuzziest logic, a rejection of evolution, awful and reaching analogies and prejudice. I met some very nice Muslims but Islam didn't resonate on any other level with me. I found the whole thing very unsatisfactory.
The resolutions of my problems came quite a long time after the Islam episode.
Maybe, what I am trying to understand (or maybe I am going too far down to molecular level) is why as species we need partners to mate with in order to reproduce? i.e at what point was it necessary to have a fe/male? Couldn't we survive as a single sex species? why is the idea/sensation of pleasure is available when ultimately is not important (it is a luxury, I think)?
First I think this is a huge misconception about Islam and evolution. I can introduce you to devout Muslims who specialise in evolution at Oxford University. Most people when they hear a verse like.. we made man from clay. They would have an image from the movie ghost. It is a process of thinking and it get's more complex further down the line. I don't know what books you read or even if you read the Quran but I would like to know where you found some logic to be fuzzy.
I agree. My problem is why does the other source have to be opposite (different gender) to what I am in order for me (my species) to continue? In addition to having 'pleasure' whilst having such interactions.
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Why is an appendix 'available' when ultimately it is not important? Evolution is not a linear process in which species always progress from worse to better and end up being perfect in every way.
That's what you'd expect from a non guided process.