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Lostkitten3 -> RE: Is Atheism a religion? (9/16/2009 8:30:14 PM)
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Aswad,
I knew I meant that science couldn't prove god. I was sure that is what I said. Did we argue the same point then? I tend to skip over much of yours, so I'm not sure. It sounded initially like you did not agree. But I found my original and to me, it still says that Knowledge is proved by scientific method, not miracles or patterns in nature.
It is still my opinion that people need religion who are less mature. My kids don't need or have a god to behave well. They were taught the golden rule. as pretty much every prophet has taught. SImple, and no gods necessary.
Ok, I found it :
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Knowledge is something that can be proved scientifically, over and over again, by anyone following the same procedures.
Given that most people's belief in god is via miracles, these would be anomalies that happen once in a blue moon, and no one (at the time) can explain why, so they call it something greater than themselves i.e. god.
I once saw a show that said the proof of god is the patterns we see in the world, that they can't explain, like ripples in the sand, or concentric circles in dirt, but realistically, it is far easier to make a pattern, by humans and any other thing in nature than it is to be random. Many artists work many many years to try to create truly random pieces. I think Pollack got the closest, not that anyone understands his work outside the Art world.
Honestly, to say that proof of god is in patterns then to say proof of god is in anomalies, is to say god exists because there is existence...which is pretty silly. And proves nothing.
God is a story earlier humans made up to explain things like floods and death. We should have outgrown it by now.
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
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ORIGINAL: Lostkitten3
al-Aswad, I don't see worshipping people for their supposed talents as god worship.
Nowadays, it's not all that common. Used to be, though.
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Your speech reminded me of down the rabbit hole. I get that I exist in many realms at once, with infinite possibilities, until I make a choice and appear in this reality, right now, but that has very little to do with god and more with physics.
Not so much in many realms. Though valid, that's not what I was getting at.
More like on many levels of abstraction. That is what I was getting at. Consider.
Up and down quarks on one level, baryons on the next, then atoms, then molecules, then organelles and such, then cells, then organs etc, then an organism, and on the final level, which is the one your mind interacts with, we have the person. Consider, then, that human social networks organize in the same way as a neural network: in a small-world topology, with folding. Consider further that a human exchanges messages with other humans, initiating processes in their minds by way of these messages, with many of these processes being subconscious, and many being stateful. I wouldn't want to go through all the details (too much to type, even for me), but in short, it would be as valid to call a particular human-based "neural" network the central nervous system of one or more gods. And back in the days of the Old Testament, there would be a single, distinct unit that would be composed exclusively of the minds of those people, which might be posited to be the same unit that was explicit about keeping those people seperate from the minds in the area... self preservation.
Analyzing a higher order of existence than the one we are aware of, though, is difficult at best... ineffability.
I'm just saying that you're making an artificial distinction that the people who follow early-stage religions probably don't make. Insofar as any god interacts with this world, that is physics, because it is impossible for two systems to interact without being causally related in both directions. Whether we are aware of all the physics there is to know, however, is a different matter. It is also an irrelevant matter, as the majority of gods throughout the ages have had their principal role in actually interacting with their followers, not in causing miracles. If you were a god, it is unlikely that there would be any motive for you to exert miraculous powers in this world on a frequent basis, regardless of how you felt about its inhabitants. Synchronicity? Sure thing. Earthquakes, plagues, floods, splitting the sea, and so forth? Not usually, no.
To anyone who isn't just looking for someone whose superiority they can acknowledge and bow to in worship without causing dissonance, they derive harm from excessive intervention and benefit from inspiration, comfort and so forth, as well as the occasional synchronicity event, not a shitload of things that just mess up the world. Any god that admits free will must allow humans to act, and most of what we want in this world depends on other people's wills. And any god that wants us to learn and evolve, must allow this world to remain causal and temporally unidirectional with a small random element. Hence, there isn't much that any god that cares about humans can do to help without harming us in the long term. Give a man a fish and all that...
If someone is just looking to submit to in worship, adoration and unrequited love, I'll make room in my closet. If they're just looking for miracles, then it's on the top shelf in the handouts cupboard, right next to the free lunch. Those gods we should view in a positive light, are the ones that are flesh and the ones that are the silent movers that teach enduring lessons and only occasionally lend a small hand by arranging coincidences just so (yes, I'm aware of the statistical mechanics side to this, and you are just as aware that aggregation is an irreversible transform that precludes the argument you probably want to make, though it takes too long to explain the fallacy that would be implicit if it isn't obvious).
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ANd what I said (I thought) was that god cannot be proved with Scientific Method. That patterns and miracles are not proof of god. Perhaps I miswrote?
Pretty sure you miswrote, since that's exactly what I was arguing, too.
Health,
al-Aswad.
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