Do you believe in a supernatural creator, God or gods of any sort?

[Robert Tulip]

why is there matter at all? I'm guessing you have an answer, (a simple one hopefully)

No, I don't have an answer to the why question, but I am certain that matter exists. All observation is consistent with and dependent on the existence of matter, so we should assume it exists. The existence of matter is an unprovable axiom, a logical foundation of correct thought.

Venturing into allegory and speculation, we find that 'turtles all the way down'is the reductio ad absurdum of asking why the universe exists. Actually, the turtle Kurma is a myth based on accurate observation of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which sits at the south ecliptic pole, the point around which everything in the solar system appears to rotate over the long term.

[Penelope]

Robert said:

There is no question that spiritual feeling is real, and it is often a good and comforting thing, of much solace to the lonely and distressed. But that does not mean God is real. Other than the sort of neo-Buddhist atheist God which you believe in Penelope, it is all just imaginary friends.

Well, I am not lonely or distressed (although, sometimes I feel distressed about the World situation. What sane person wouldn't?)
Neo-Buddhist? Neo means New, does it not? Buddhism is older than Christianity and the 'idea' of Brahma is Hindu which predates Buddhism. I don't know how you can dub it 'imaginary friends' - mocking - what, I know you once believed yourself.

So, you have outgrown it......and don't need that belief system any more. Unfair to patronise those who do, Robert.

I know that no one is going to agree with me on here, but it doesn't matter, there is no need to seek converts. However, I do feel it necessary to state my case and defend the rights of those who wish to live life at a deeper level. Or maybe it's just that I'm not clever enough to understand the physics, so I explain life to myself as intelligently as I can..... I believe that the worst thing we can do is just accept what other people say it is, or indeed, is not, about. That is where all the trouble began in the first place.

[johnson1010]

Lawrence Krause has some good talks about how to get something from nothing.

You can find them on youtube, and also i believe he's got a book by the same title, or maybe subtitle.

What it basically boils down to is that the standard model of physics says that "nothing" is unstable. if you have no space, then "eventually" space will spontaneously be generated, and space generates particles as seen around the edges of black holes, and particles are matter.

I don't know all the ins and outs, nor am i buying this 100%, but it's a lead.

We don't know for certain and it is only right to admit that. Otherwise we would be in the same boat as the religious who assert something they don't know with un-founded confidence.

Complexity comes late in the universe. Thinking things like us weren't around before there were microbes. Microbes weren't around before there was chemistry. Chemistry wasn't around before there were heavy elements. heavy elements weren't around before super-nova stars. super-nova stars didn't go off until they'd exhausted their hydrogen supply. stars couldn't form before the hydrogen clouds had time to collapse into balls due to gravitational attraction. gravitational attraction couldn't overcome the momentum of matter until the universe began to cool. The universe couldn't begin to cool until the space inside it expanded enough to allow the heat to disperse over a wider area. space couldn't expand rapidly until the fracturing of the forces which released huge amounts of energy to cause the expansion. we don't know why the forces fractured. we don't know where the singularity came from.

But the further back you go, the more simple and homogenous things are. God is complex. the most complex thing there could be, according to the religious. how does putting the most complex thing that there could be at the beginning of a series of incremental steps from simplicity to complexity make sense?

[Penelope]

johnson wrote:

But the further back you go, the more simple and homogenous things are. God is complex. the most complex thing there could be, according to the religious. how does putting the most complex thing that there could be at the beginning of a series of incremental steps from simplicity to complexity make sense?

What an excellent post. Thankyou johnson. You have helped me picture things from your point of view.

The only way I can give you my point of view is to say that, to me, your thinking is linear and progressive. My thinking is intuitive, and not linear - more like an opening out (thousand petalled lotus??). So, it isn't about incremental steps, logic and rationale, for me, although I can appreciate and admire that way of comprehending 'the how'. My stance, and I can't help it, so don't bollock me, is about 'the why'. 'The Why' has always been there - it doesn't go forward or backwards, it isn't incremental - it is just about humanity, philosophy, I suppose. Some of us have this compulsion to find a 'why' to our existence. I don't honestly give a toss about 'how'. Can't help it, that's how I am.

[Robert Tulip]

Neo-Buddhist? Neo means New, does it not? Buddhism is older than Christianity and the 'idea' of Brahma is Hindu which predates Buddhism.

'Neo', apart from the neo-Christ figure in The Matrix, means that an old idea is transformed to make it relevant today. So we have neoconservatism, neoliberalism and neocommunism. None of these simply accept the original ideas, but draw from them to construct a contemporary ideology.

I don't know how you can dub it 'imaginary friends' - mocking - what, I know you once believed yourself.

I have always been an atheist, although I have also been interested in how God is a useful, although distorted, way to describe the existence of natural purpose and meaning in the universe. The idea of the supernatural is pure magical imagination, a psychological projection that seeks to explain observations that are beyond current scientific ability to understand. In principle, everything is consistent. What pantheists such as Einstein and Jung did was look at big ideas such as eternity and infinity and call them God, as a way of describing the natural reality, not positing a separate supernatural reality.

So, you have outgrown it......and don't need that belief system any more. Unfair to patronise those who do, Robert.

Mockery of believers is justified in view of their pervasive, incoherent and unethical use of false religious claims as a political ideology. Evidence is the highest good.

I know that no one is going to agree with me on here, but it doesn't matter, there is no need to seek converts. However, I do feel it necessary to state my case and defend the rights of those who wish to live life at a deeper level. Or maybe it's just that I'm not clever enough to understand the physics, so I explain life to myself as intelligently as I can..... I believe that the worst thing we can do is just accept what other people say it is, or indeed, is not, about. That is where all the trouble began in the first place.

Believing in God is not living life at a deeper level. God is an illusion. Only when the illusion is understood as allegory for natural observation do we start to live at a deeper level.

Digging yourself into a hole is not living at a deeper level. It may seem to be, but those with genuine religious depth understand that the popular stories simplify and distort a complex natural truth, and that the popular entification of the symbols has to be discarded to get to the real meaning.

[Penelope]

Robert:

Mockery of believers is justified in view of their pervasive, incoherent and unethical use of false religious claims as a political ideology. Evidence is the highest good.

Mockery of anyone is surely not justified. Most believers have their own reasons for accepting and settling for what they were brought up to believe, or for devising their own philosophy. The Hindus treat the cow as a sacred animal and have many, many interesting and exciting 'gods' - but they ultimately only believe in one God, just various aspects and manifestations of the One. Reading 'The Upanishads' is an enlightening experience, whatever your faith. The Bhagavad Gita is treated as allegory, but has a lot to teach us about compassion. (Well, I'm claiming this, because the parts I have read seem to be about compassion.) In truth, I haven't read all of it, although I like the pictures.

Robert:

Digging yourself into a hole is not living at a deeper level. It may seem to be, but those with genuine religious depth understand that the popular stories simplify and distort a complex natural truth, and that the popular entification of the symbols has to be discarded to get to the real meaning.

I know about the use of metaphore!

Well, obviously, I have no genuine religious depth. There was I, thinking I was living life at a less superficial level because I was searching for meaning and all the time I was digging myself into a hole!! You've hurt my feelings, but I forgive you. LOL. How annoying is that?

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, 'Science takes things apart to see how they work, and religion puts things together to see what they mean'. Maybe, for some of us, the natural truth is so complex that we need the stories to render it knowable.

Any stories, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, even Christian. Any dream will do, as the song says.

[Robert Tulip]

Mockery of anyone is surely not justified.

Mockery can be a legitimate method to pop the balloon of pomposity that surrounds religious belief. Many believers are hypocrites, claiming that their views are based on evidence when this is not the case, and claiming that their belief provides a sound basis for ethics when in fact their traditions are on balance morally harmful.

There was I, thinking I was living life at a less superficial level because I was searching for meaning and all the time I was digging myself into a hole!!

Searching for meaning is a very different thing from dogmatically claiming the existence of entities that are actually invented through fantasy.

You've hurt my feelings, but I forgive you. LOL. How annoying is that?

You shouldn't feel hurt, as believing in God is not the same as searching for meaning. If you start from the premise that there is an imaginary entity whose nature is in conflict with scientific knowledge, you are going to dig yourself into a hole, not find any real meaning.

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, 'Science takes things apart to see how they work, and religion puts things together to see what they mean'. Maybe, for some of us, the natural truth is so complex that we need the stories to render it knowable. Any stories, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, even Christian. Any dream will do, as the song says.

Joseph's technicolour dream hardly 'puts things together'. Not any dream will do. Hitler and Stalin had dreams, but they were crazy and evil. Stories do not render natural truth knowable. They may be a hint towards knowledge, but taken on face value they are distortions. What renders truth knowable is rigorous logic based on evidence. I can put the pieces of a watch together, but it won't run. Religion puts things together not to see what they mean but to exercise social control. Your Mr Sacks erects a false dichotomy between science and religion, since any religion that is incompatible with scientific knowledge is empirically false.

Living Life at a Deeper Level.gif (133.38 KiB) Viewed 4593 times

[Penelope]

Robert:

Hitler and Stalin had dreams, but they were crazy and evil.

The dream of creating a master race is quite scientific really. Destroy the humans carrying the imperfect genes and 'voila' a perfect master race. An abominable idea, but quite scientific. So, science needs to be balanced with irrational love and human kindness.

Robert, I do appreciate your taking the time to discuss this with me, but let's face it, greater minds than ours have had the same discussion over centuries. I just can't help concluding that science and religion should not be mutually exclusive. One needs the other to enable balanced thinking, because being a human being is quite a dilemma. To me it is about how we should 'be'......just be. For that, we need to develop a soundly based philosophy. OK, not attempting to pigeon-hole and categorise a 'God' personality, but knowing that we need to feed and nurture our spiritual selves as well as our intellectual, scientific selves. I am thinking about the line, 'Give us this day our daily bread', as meaning both physical food but also spiritual nourishment. Is it hungering and thirsting after righteousness? That sounds terribly pompous, but I think that's what I do.

[ant]

Robert wrote;

"God is an illusion"

And so is any meaning you've added to your life without god, Robert.

Although you can play to your atheist/agnostic audience that although the universe is indifferent, has no purpose other than what it is materially, you and yours cheer wildly that each of you can nonetheless add meaning to your lives.

You've magically turned an objective universe into a subjective life
But you're really just lying to yourself, right?

No man really loves his wife and children beyond the purpose of simply using his wife as a gene propegater, and his children as extensions of his genes for the purpose of improving them. There's no deeper purpose here. To say otherwise is to deny your true nature - you're just a piece of meat with an imagination.

IPhone trouble

[ant]

Yorky,

I can agree with most of your comments about the definitional problem with the name "god."

Einstein believed in other sources of knowledge.
You don't?
I know I'm appealing to authority by throwing out that name here, but still..,