Even still, probably there is no God

I'm pretty sure a hamster I used to have thought I was a god. I outlived him by tens of years and was sad when he expired. And people have only been around on earth for four or five million years or so. Five million years is a tiny slice of time compared to how old this universe is.

What if evolution took place on a similar earth-like planet and produced a species of beings that are just ten thousand years more advanced than us technologically? A million years? 50 million? Would they seem like gods to us by comparison?

Indeed, physicist Fritjof Capra has gone so far as to postulate that there exist vast universes of energies of other frequencies, which not only underlie this one but in a sense are interlocked with it. In this view that dates to at least Paul Dirac, many dimensions of reality exist all around us. Capra suggests that we could be experiencing one, the physical, empirically, another, the psychic, by way of imagination, intuition, and insight. But there may be other dimensions as well which our evolved senses dont allow us to detect.

Given that there are estimated to be 100 billion Earth-like planets just in our galaxy (and there are billions of galaxies), it is almost a certainty that there are millions of planets with life that is unimaginably more advanced than ours.

A book called "Year Million" is a collection of essays by various scientists and other academics and sci-fi writers about what life may be like on our Earth in one million years.  One write speculates that humans, if they survive, will be immortal (with infinitely replacable organic and silicon-based parts) and have an intelligence so incomprehensibly advanced that talking to current humans would be like us trying to communicate with worms.  The book is both fascinating and disturbing.

_______________________________________

Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

Been on vacation for a while (fighting the air travellers environmental guilt)...  Miss reading these threads.

Quoting 2 peoples:

Does it seem like intelligent life is inherantly self-destructive?  Life is incredibly good at living, but beyond that...  The only consistant on Earth seems to be extinction.  If alien lifeforms...advanced alien life forms...have never reached our planet, then we're really down to 2 options.  The universe is far to vast to actually travel, or life manages to kill itself off long before that stage of developement can be reached.

Just to throw it into the discussion...I'm starting to see belief in God(s) as purpose deferral...letting some 'divine' being bring purpose to your life rather than finding your own. Accepting anothers reality and purpose is choosing not to define your own. I see it on a greater scale, watching masses take in other peoples reality...being defined by what they don't do as much as what they do. Maybe that is the intent of God worship, something to give us purpose and rules that span several of our lifetimes.  How many hardships would we have beared without the promise of heaven? Leaves me waiting for a time when humanity is ready to take responsibility for our own direction...our own purpose.  Without God, can we have a common purpose? But the masses like to view themselves as all important...all of evolution and all of creation leading up to their lives, we as the peak of life itself. It's of little wonder how such arrogance can spawn the belief that only an omniscient being is worthy of defining our purpose.

I hate that doomsday clock where it takes all of Earths history and places us in the final 7 minutes of Earths existance...just more evidence of our arrogance, that there is nothing beyond that which we've become.

Leaves me wondering on your Hamster Fidel...is your hamster arrogant enough to think that it's life is so special that only a God could direct it?

Remind:

I subscribe to Holon theory on this...everything on it's own is a whole (or Holon, can use the two words interchangably).  Each whole composes new wholes and each whole is comprised of other wholes.  To understand any single Holon, one must understand all the other wholes that comprise it.  To understand the wholes that comprise it, one must understand the wholes that comprise those wholes...and so on.  Of course, you don't need to fully understand something to make use of it, it just means you must accept the wholes that comprise it without fully understanding them.  Introduces that paradox that you cannot fully understand anything and the understanding you do have based on what you have accepted.  Challenging what you've accepted extends what you understand, but only brings about new acceptances.  Personally, I find knowing that I cannot fully know anything to be of great comfort.

What, we haven't settleld this yet?

Geesh.

Funny, my position all along.  We could all save alot of zeroes and ones in computerland if we all just accepted my wisdom from the get go.

Well, in the fine details we all differ. I'd put it at 99.999, with the 9's repeated to the last decimal point of pi.

But seriously, I think the resources being spent on this bus campaign are missdirected.  A better approach would be an ongoing campaign using Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit", and allow those who might use this information as they will.

A bigger danger to orgainized religion, and it might even encourage better consuming, and better politics.

Well, [chuckling still] there are a lot of interesting points here, and everyone is entitled to their own beliefs.

sometimes i leave the d-link on all day too.

but this isn't really related to the thread.

regarding point #19 it strikes me that this has been an issue for people here, as i recall Doug had one thread on a related theme.

do none of you leave your home computers on all day?

I'm having a hard time following your posts, LeighT...I don't get the 'leaving computer on at home' point...unless you're making a joke and it flew right over my head...  :)

I do agree with you Spector, or atleast I did.  If all of Earths time was put into the single year, I'd feel it's more likely that we're approaching midnight of March 3rd.  The Earth will continue long without us afterall...how does our doom possibly relate to the end of the timeline on all of Earth?  Associating our end (moving the clock forward a couple minutes due to 'international nuclear proliferation' or whatever the reason) as the end of a timeline on Earth is complete arrogance.  Is there any difference in believing God created everything for us VS believing in an evolutionary path for life destined to create and end in us?

I'm curious what others think on this (I've also posed the question to the brights):
Without God, can humanity have a common purpose?

Follow the white rabbit Fidel, answers will be revealed to you when you're ready for them...but I can only show you the door

I think Noise is conflating and confusing two different memes:

1. The "Doomsday Clock" of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which doesn't purport to represent a measurement of time, but rather "how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction - the figurative midnight", and

2. The popular-science use of a 12-hour clock as a graphic metaphor to make it easier to comprehend geologic time frames and particularly the relative span of human existence therein. This type of clock, unlike the above, does purport to represent measurements of time.

I think both memes are very powerful and very useful as educational tools. I don't understand Noise's problem.

"I was under no illusions that my little guy would ever be good enough to be a circus hamster though. And I never pushed him into it."

I used to be an athiest, and still am if you define God as a person.  But Simone Weil and David Cayley(CBC Ideas) have given me a better definition of `God`that I'm comfortable with and I see the rest as metaphor, often very dangerous. I'm OK with the ads.

This is what I expected would happen.  A silly argument on the sides of busses with silly people.   Who happen to have more money for bus adds than Humanists.   The little bit of the Iron Duke in me would admonish Humanists for picking the wrong battle on the wrong ground here.

All ya gotta do to create athiests is to encourage people to ask their own questions.  Attacking people's religious beliefs head on, and out of the blue just makes them hold on tighter.

And more to it, taking people away from organized religion doesn't mean that people suddenly adopt more reasoned thinking.  In fact, I've met my share of rather rational people who go to church,  and athiests who know little or nothing about reasoned thinking.

I'm not sure I want to even prostlytize on behalf of atheism, agnosticism, or scepticism.  I don't think that works.  What needs to be done is to free people to make their own discoveries-- by first arming them with the skills they need to have this kind of fun.

You all need to watch The Invention of Lying (2009) to understand The Man In The Sky.

Exactly alan....

I LOVE the scene with the pizza boxes!

Actually, I thought the whole movie was quite fun.  I saw it on a plane, but watched it again with the blond guy after I got home.

I 100% agree with you, but millions of Roman Catholics and Protestants (and maybe other faiths) in this country probably outnumber us and are entitled to their opinion as well.

Indeed, Boom Boom, they are quite entitled to their opinion.

However, they are not entitled to be right.

As for the transit ads, I hope they stimulate discussion, as they have done here.

As for Dawkins and his grasp of theology, I have found in my admittedly brief readings of Dawkins that his criticisms of theology are uninformed and amateur, in my opinion.

Why?

If the current amount of evidence (i.e zero) for the existence of god is equal to the amount for the lack of god, why is the burden of proof on the theist side? Why is it not on whichever person claims knowledge of god's existence or lack thereof?

Actually I would say it is much the opposite. God is finite. God is the Alpha and the Omega. It is the human mind that is infinite--in imagination and in possibility. The paradox is the exact reverse: That human minds capable of such an expansive breadth of infinite possibilty actually entertain the finite simplicity of "God" as answer to any question.

You know, it's this kind of ideologically-driven and intellectually bankrupt analysis of social phenomena that exposes the shallowness of much of what passes for atheism these days.  It is simply not the case that suicide attacks are caused by fundamentalism, much less religion. Robert Pape has studied suicide attacks in great detail, and argues that "The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign-over 95 percent of all the incidents-has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw." http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/jul/18/00017/

Pape's research has been out there for quite some time, but New Atheists tend to ignore it, likely because it undermines one of the arguments they use to promote the demonization of religion. Dogmatic ideological movements depend upon a demonized Other: the Other provides the negative contrast that adherents of the ideology use to define their own identities and establish their sense of moral superiority. I suspect that like any other dogmatically held ideology, New Atheism appeals to people not because of its trumpeted "rationality" but rather because it caters to a psychological need.

Well the macro is the micro eh...and I was not speaking of God, so please do NOT infer that I was. In fact, in the next paragraph I call God an illusion.

I was speaking of the unknowable infinite. And the human mind may be infinite, but humans cannot grasp it, in all its expanse.

I think stars had to explode a very long time ago in order for the right stuff to be produced under the right conditions. Therefore, we are all star dust. And we all return to dust at some point.

Not to mention offensive to all of the threads about how those buildings were really destroyed.

The problem with staunchly religious critical thinking is that the people engaging in it tend to fritter away an inordinate amount of time explaining to those who would listen, the rationale for the millstone about their neck. And you'd have to sympathize with the boredom of the listeners as well when the conclusions for each topic are the same, no matter which creative approach is employed.

You're probably right. This is but the latest in a long series of examinations originating from the bowels of the Pentagon dealing with the phenomena of suicide bombers who have forsaken Christian beliefs for inexplicable murderous rage. Not specifically mentioned mind you, but implied.

Not that it would have anything to do with dispelling the notion of cultural or religiously inspired clashes.  We're only dealing with a few unreasonable dead end folks after all.  It's ok to bomb the fuck out of the godless.

I think you just made that sweeping generalization up out of your head because that is what you think religious people are like. I have heard enough non-religious speakers (or at least people speaking about nothing to do with religion at all) who could clear a room faster than a bomb.

Aside from the fact that accusing someone of being boring or pedantic isn't the same as saying he or she can't think critically, I have read and heard plenty of opinions that are pretty solid even though they come from a religious person.

Not too long ago I posted Paul Martin's address to parliament in which he said quite simply that despite his strong Roman Catholic faith he supported marriage equality because it was in accordance with our laws and the best thing for all Canadians. There are plenty of people intelligent enough to make that distinction.

If you want to work to end the tyranny of religion be my guest. I am just saying that you are wasting your time if all you do is build straw figures that don't represent what is going on in the real world. That is just as imaginary as the evangelicals' creationism.

Caissa, are you kidding me? Knock it off.

Speak for yourself. I'm comtemplating infinity even while respondingi to you. Hence a typo.

:D

There is a slight difference between "contemplating" infinite and knowing infinite...

Simple logic says if we were close to knowing, or being,  what is infinite, we would not be having issues with our planet and over consumption thereof, eh... ;)

Perhaps we might not even have bodies, or we could make them up as we wanted, one for every occasion, or second of the day.

US feds have very little evidence that any of the alleged 19 hijackers were fundamentalist Muslims. Several of them had special US entry visas arranged for them by CIA officials and had been coming and going from the USA since the 1980s and 90s. This "pious Muslim-hijackers" story is a fairy tale designed by US hawks to spread fear and loathing among the general public. Cold war ended, and they needed a replacement enemy for the red menace. We are supposed to learn to fear and hate a different enemy all over again for the sake of an economy that is largely based on war and all manner of weapons sales to fend off yet another "unseen enemy" Yes, it is totally Islamophobic. That's the point. Fear and hatred is worth well over half a trillion dollars a year for about 8000 US Military contractors. Fear and hatred is their bread and butter and gravy, too. 9/11 was their year zero - a mere marketing ploy for their bullshit war on terror, which is really the same war on democracy they've been waging since the 1950s. Better duck and cover, because bin Laden and his bogeymen are hiding under our beds ready to force-feed us the Koran.

In any case, I'd like to point out that not all atheists are rabidly anti-religion.  Though we are a little embarrassed by the ones who are.

Good think we tend not to buy into sweeping generalisations about 'sides'.

I think there are far more good people doing good things for a religious reason or in a religious context than there are bad people doing bad things for a religious reason or in a religious context. We just hear more about the bad ones because they are more news-worthy.

Man bites dog stuff.

Man bites dog stuff eh? How about pope ratface and his idiotic proclamations regarding the evils of condom use? How many millions more have to die from STDs because of his dogmatic stupidity? How about the religion on the sleeve duo of Bush and Obama, complimenting each other through successive twin policies of moral depravity, the sort that comes from promises of delivering 'freedom and security' around the world no matter how many people have to die in the process? How about the religiously inspired tyranny of oppression against hundreds of thousands of same sex couples in the US? These instances, which are but a few among religion's many ruinous effects , are more newsworthy due to the sheer number of people who are forced to suffer and die under it's boot heal.

You appear to believe that missionary work doesn't receive it's proper due, that we don't lionize as much as it deserves those instances where the religious wade in with all of their superiority amongst the sinners to do the work of Jesus. After all, didn't he hang out with the lepers and Samaritans? They're all about carrying on his good work you see.  The work of ministry and colonization.

No, that is not what I meant. Are you familiar with the phrase "man bites dog" and how it applies to the media industry?

Oh I think that usury is part of it, Pants. Usury is now what capitalism is all about. But oil and resource wars are another aspect of their  same general plans for world domination. It's not unfolding according to plan quite like they wanted it to though. It's becoming a multi-polar world and military expansion will cost them much more than an arm and leg over the long run.

Pants, is this an example of dogs turning on one another? I think that in just the last few years certain news media like the CBC and BBC and New York City based newspapers have decided that they can no longer afford to ignore the official 9/11 whitewash. Not if they want to continue appealing to thinking people with what they report on.

Practicing your stand up are you?

Fairies in the garden eh?  I thought the mulch had an odd hue to it last time around. 

Two reasons:

1. The Catholic Church is an unparalleled anti-human institution - but people who identify as Catholics are just people.

2. People of all faiths - and of no faith - practice social solidarity. You think some people start out as Catholics, and come to the conclusion that their faith requires them to be nice charitable people? I think it's perfectly obvious that Catholics who do good things do so in spite of - not because of - their membership in the Church. Otherwise, you'd have to provide separate explanations for the charitable impulses of Jews and Muslims and Methodists and atheists.

So, in short: Catholics, good; Catholic Church, no good. As a scientific explanation of observable phenomena, it works.

Well, the attitude toward abortion of the shooters more closely resembles the Church's teachings than the attitude of the bakers.

You should use elementary rules of deductive logic, you know. "Some Catholics are progressive and moral and self-sacrificing" does not imply that "Some people are motivated by Catholicism to be progressive and moral and self-sacrificing". Not even if they self-analyze that way.

I know alcoholics that are selfless activists in the trade union movement, the peace movement, the anti-poverty movement, the women's movement... What conclusions would you draw about alcoholism? That the glow of mood alteration has provided them with a vision of a humane world?

But babble does promote the official US meme that "pious" Islamists perpetrated 9/11. If you look it up, committing mass murder and suicide in the same day is actually considered a deal breaker between Allah and the pious Muslim.

And why would Mohammed Atta leave behind his last will and testament, Koran etc if he knew he was going to suicicde himself in the process of murdering so many innocent people? Why did Atta's passport turn up unscathed not far from the WTC buildings?

Why was the FBI able to finger all 19 amateur hijackers' identities that same morning? - and then several of them report to newz media that they are alive and well? The truth is that they still can't produce the goods on a number of the alleged pious Muslim hijackers who apparently enjoyed partying with strippers at US Mil-servicemen hangouts, and boozing it up in the weeks leading up to 9/11.

And, why would "pious Muslim" suicide pilots need to steal anyone's identity? Why not just apply for a passport like everyone else, or even ask their CIA contacts to rubberstamp their US entry visas as was routinely done during Al-CIA'da's anticommunist jihad in the 1980s and 90s?

Why steal the identities of other Saudi nationals if they really planned to cover their tracks before floating off to heavenly bliss as the FBI claims? Why not steal the identities of Jordanians or even, say, Greeks? Why charge like bulls on credit cards for everything from pizza to alchohol if they intended on covering their tracks? Did they anticipate a fair trial and out of jail in six months for pious Muslim behaviour if the plan to commit mass murder and suicide ultimately failed?

Was identity theft required to cover their tracks after they were dead and gone -  ferreted off to heaven like so many Al-CIA'da leaders and Taliban were airlifted to safety on Rumsfeld-Musharraf's a-okay in protecting them from threat of Northern Alliance attack in 2001?

Why would Mohamed Atta, if he was a pious Muslim, take flight sim training at a pilot school at Opa Locka, the hub of no less than SIX US military training bases? Smell something off at this point? That's okay because very many people have problems with the official 9/11 narrative as a prelude highly profitable liquid war for many reasons.

Why would ISI General Ahmad need to wire $100,000 dollars to Atta if, as the 9/11 Cover-up Commission stated, that it was all done by relatively poor people on shoestring budget? What did Pakistan's army inteligence chief have to do with the master plan of pious Islamists to score one for the proles back home, or, score one for Allah - that deity they dreamed of being with for eternity, but only after covering their earthly tracks to 9/11 infamy with stolen passports. Okay, so they were extreme amateurs who didn't consider all these sordid  details before absolutely dominating NORAD airspace for nearly two hours on 9/11.

Pious Muslim hijacker surprisingly unfamiliar with own religion according to suicide note Robert Fisk 2001

We often accept the absurd emanating from the US like so much dumb-dumb trade deal signed by corrupt politicians in Ottawa and Washington. But this is the kind of logic surrounding certain events our neighbors next door in the US have embroiled themselves with since the end of cold war. Gore Vidal says that hawks were in a lather of panic when the Sovets stabbed th MIIC in the back by ceding the cold war to the west. They needed a new and credible enemy, so they created one with Al-CIA'da.

So he's essentially saying that there could be advanced species somewhere out there in the abyss who are highly evolved. They would seem to be god-like to us by comparison. Interesting. One of Arthur C. Clarke's three laws states something similar, that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic as far as we are concerned here on the blue dot.

I guess it's possible, but the FBI and 9/11 Commish still have a number of loose ends on a number of their claims concerning the hijackers. According to Swiss historian, Dr. Daniele Ganser, the facts concerning Egyptian Mohammed Atta have been turned upside down since 2001:

This generally corroborates the statements made by Sibel Edmonds wrt an entire organizational layer of Al-Qaeda that has operated from within the US for a number of years toward the end of the cold war when the CIA was waging anticommunist jihad against the Sovs in Afghanistan. The 9/11 Commission neglected to mention quite a lot about Atta as well as Ali Mohamed, Al-Qaeda's hijacking specialist who also has ties to the US Military, FBI and CIA. They've since tried to say A.M. was a double agent working for the FBI, but he's disappeared and probably in the states today living somwhere under FBI witness protection and new identity. The FBI-CIA are very good at insulating key witnesses from the press and public scrutiny. Important evidence they say implicates the people they've tortured confessions from will never see the light of day due to state secrets privilege and for reasons of "national security."

The Muslims of Bosnia, for example,  were said to be mostly Europeanized and religiously moderate prior to the CIA-Saudis radicalization of Bosnian Muslims of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Even a cursory glance at the modern history of genocide will demonstrate that religion is not at all necessary for those particular philosophical gymnastics.

I think that sometimes religion is used as a political spring board for ulterior motives, absolutely. When tea partiers in the states refer to their president as Hussein Obamimam and try to smear him with the label,  Obama "the socialist", there are people in the deep south and not so far south who take notice.  Those are the people who are pushing hard for Sarah Palin or another right wing politico between now and next election. US politics became a lesson in insanity many years ago.

But all of that mumbo jumbo about Obama the imam and murderous Islam and anti-socialist rhetoric is not really aimed at Canadians, although I think we do have our own special people here in this country for sure. I will admit to knowing Canadians who aren't far removed from this kind of a mind set and are highly vulnerable to the propaganda spilling over the border for a long time. Canadians, I think, are renowned for our general smarts and ability to think for ourselves. Is there a similar dumbing down of Canadians happening though? Do some of us really believe that militant Islam and socialism represent threats to our freedom? What do Canadians believe?

Well I don't think religion flies people into buildings. It's an absurd and unnecessary comment to post on the side of a bus. And so is, "Science flies people to the moon" a ridiculous statement when we think about it. US conservatives had no intention of flying to the moon or investing much in the way of science and education until Sputnik was launched in the 1950s. Threat of an alternative to oligarchy and laissez-faire capitalism is what got them moving. It could be said that socialism inspires political conservatives to invest heavily in state socialism in order to prove that socialism doesn't work. They have worked hard at making the world safe for hypocrisy for a long time.

The message behind 'Religion flies people into buildings' tends to support the idea of an invisible enemy and religiously inspired jihad agsinst civilized society. Terrorism is the new red menace, if only indirectly as an underlying message. And even though conventional weapons and armies are said to be ineffective in preventing terrorism and notoriously invisible enemies, warmongering plutocrats continue to spend wildly on all things military since the end of cold war. We are lied to constantly.

See....

s/he doesn't exist. Nothing happened at all!

Perhaps.  We don't know, and won't know for a long time after religion is left behind.   Because in terms of genocide, religion surely laid the groundwork for the perpetrators.

Religion-- all of them-- require at some point for the adherent to stop asking questions, to stop looking and wondering why, or how.

Nothing good can come of that.