Okay ATHEISTS <rolls sleaves>

Where did the god concept originate?

That's a very good question, and there are many interesting theories. Here's my favorite:

In our very first experiences as humans, we are entirely helpless and ignorant. As our brains/minds develop, one of the first things we notice is that directly above us there is a large entity (most commonly a parent) which seems to be all-powerful. It brings us food, warmth and happiness when we request it's attention. Everything comes from this initially inexplicable force from up above us.

I think these earliest life experiences may well have been the initial conditioning which has allowed for ongoing (while differing VASTLY in detail) beliefs in omnipotent magical creature(s).

If this theory is sound, the pre-existing reference which led to belief in god(s), would be a parental figure (our literal creator, a loving provider, potentially judgmental/punishing, "Our Father" one might say).

As to my closing wishes, I consider my five year old son immature and in many ways unknowledgable, and I desire peace and love for him above and beyond all of my other wishes. While some people certainly disagree, I do NOT equate what I perceive as ignorance with a lack of ethics. I don't think of you as an enemy even in the remotest sense. Additionally, I'm not suggesting that I perceive you as GENERALLY ignorant. I'm specifically considering matters of theological debate.

I myself am quite ignorant of aeronautics (among many other things). I don't think this marks me as unlovable, or deserving of violent wishes.

Peacelove,
Aldousage

 

Where did the concept of DIRECTION IN THIS UNIVERSE originate.?
[Beyond sun worship and catholicism]
Observation of this universe by rational minds.
Not

Or do you think dioxyribonucleic acids are a product of random chance.
In only 14 billion years no less .. maybe in 200 billion. If the dice fell right.

For the 1st 5 billion years hydrogen just 'sat there' with a few exceptions,
HE 1523-0901 being one. Nothing more complex than hydrogen came to be untill the 1st stars 'died'.
So we are at 10 billion. Our sun is second gen 3.5 billion after 1st gen.
We exist now at ~14.5 billion from genesis
HOW. with only two cycles of stellar evolution could life come to be
unless it WAS DESIGNED TO.
Parents do not meander into the realm of stellar evolution and objective laws that allow anti entropic systems within a degrading thermodynamic entropic background.
Nor do they qualify as totems of wisdom in such maters as biologic chemistry or quantum uncertainty. All factors in the great mystery of
"why you are able to ask questions when most of the universe is still in a rude state of assembly."

LOL. force up above you. Speak for yourself, boy.
I have never considered direction in this universe as 'above me'
Reason states.. All rational minds are equal.. there is no other perspective.

HAHAhAhHHAhhAAAA ..wow. It's been some time since i talked with a truely arrogant bastard.
'generally'...LOL
Ah,, FRENCH canadian.. that explains it.. the french always were
pretenteous. Only we germans can make them obey.

hehehehee


Occam

 

I don't think that just because something is unlikely, that must mean God did it. It seems like you're just looking to find your conclusion there without even thinking of it's logicality.
Life is immensely unlikely to develop, but there's a hell of a lot of planets in the universe. Many of those suitable will take the '200 billion years' you pull out of the air. But to get an average, you have numbers either side.

 

Two seconds, I'll just find the Richard Dawkins quote I used today...
'It is highly improbable for all factors to come together to create human life, but this shows life is valuable.The watchmaker (William Paleys analogy for design [look it up]) has foresight, natural selection does not.'

I am unashamedly a Dawkins convert, and I rather think that says a lot. I was actually using that quote to argue against the teleological argument in philosophy this morning and I've certainly got plenty more!!

 

WTF?

...

Okay... If your gonna go toe to toe with a non believer it's gonn a take a lil more then that.

I recommend Eastern Philosophy I responded well to it when I was agnostic.

 

Excellent logic... well worth the read I'm not sure where you stand in the debate... but nice logic

 

god = consciousness = point of reference

 

Point of Reference = ?

Care to Elaborate please?



I THINK I know what u mean...

 

trip lsd and it will be abundantly clear

but basically, everything in reality has a point of reference, namely through language - that is to say, everything is described through comparison. we see things the way we do because of our consciousness. i consider our existence itself to be "god." god isn't a being persay, god is ALL beings.

 

Agreed all that is. U sure it's just the LSD your on... sounds like you've met some Yogi's one of your trips and I aint talking about the bear with his side kick booboo either

 

hahahaheehehooo
i will admit that my trips are strongly affected by my reality, and i haven't taken LSD in almost a year now yet my spiritual journey which began pre- psychedelics continues post-psychedelics..

 

Wow some great comments. A special big hug though to the I'm religious but your stupid chick. Thanks for the support! Now run home before your acid gets cold.

 

It would appear that the purpose of this post is to express discontent in being judged yet it is filled with sarcasm and does the same...?

 

that's ok, i'm content knowing that all i personally did was come here to voice an opinion.
portalguy, i am certainly a spiritual person, and i believe that we are all a part of something greater. i prefer not to be called religious, though, if you please. i'm not a fan of organized religion.
i'm offended that you obviously didn't look at/understand anything i said; you just immediately christened me an acid head and baptized me in slander. do you really think i came here to personally attack you? i agree with a lot of what you're saying! i suppose you wouldn't like to know anything else about me and my spiritual journey, would you? even though you come across as a bitter asshole who could, quite frankly, take a page out of my book.
as for the acid, i'll stay here as long as i like, thanks... it's in the freezer, anyway.

 

ps. i never said i'm religious but you're stupid. you're mixing two people up.

 

people would probably be more kindly disposed towards christians

if they would just leave us the fuck alone

[the gods want you to leave them alone too]

 

That's simply not true.

Accusing those who espouse reason and science of employing "faith" is disingenuous.

Faith is the belief in something for which there exists no evidence. It is the antithesis of science.

Science is not a belief or a set of beliefs. It is a process for learning about the world we inhabit. It relies on evidence, not faith. It involves observation about a phenomenon, forming a hypothesis about cause and effect concerning that phenonmenon, designing an experiment to test the hypothesis, gathering data in the course of performing the experiment, analyzing the data, comparing the data to those predicted by the hypothesis, and revising the hypothesis to account for the empirical data, or discarding it if necessary and trying a new hypothesis. Repeat ad nauseam, always revising and building upon your previously gained knowledge through the scientific method.

Reason is the process by which we deduce certain facts from others using logic.

Persons who employ the scientific method to gain knowledge and reason to draw conclusions about the world do not rely on faith in order to do so. We do rely on some basic axioms, as anyone employing any world view must do. First, most scientists follow some form of naturalism as a philosophy, which is similar to old school materialism. We take as axiomatic that all that exists is part of our natural world, and that everything in it follows certain fundamental natural laws. In other words, there is no supernatural, no deus ex machina. Second, we rely on our own senses or perceptions for input into our cognitive brains, and we have to trust our senses to be reliable. We know our senses are not infallible, so good science requires that we must take that into account when analyzing data we gather through experimentation. Finally, we accept as axiomatic that there exists an objective world outside our own minds, and that the world we experience is not simply some elaborate dream in our own heads. Otherwise, we would each be solipsists, and being one of those is hardly a pragmatic approach to living.

Anyway, you get the idea. Science and reason do not rely on faith.

 

LMAO...

Namaste my sister well said!

Religions Divide.

If I have understood the basic premises of God it's that we are one beautiful creation ... all that is ... it's really one entity...

If you wanna get anywhere you gotta go beyond relgion and see the big picture. Stop following the leader and BE the leader

HUGS

 

No. It came from the Big Bang and from entropy. It also possibly comes from dark energy.

DNA is not the product of random chance in the way you mean. Molecules do not simply arrange themselves randomly over and over until presto! -- you have DNA. Molecules form from atoms, which form from even more fundamental particles and forces acting upon them. Atoms can be arranged in only certain ways, and molecules are formed by pairings, which can also occur in only certain particular ways. These are properties of the atoms and the particles which form them and the forces which act upon them. Over enough trials, given enough time, with the basic building blocks of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon, it is inevitable that DNA molecules would evolve eventually.

13.7 billion years is plenty of time for that to happen. In fact, it happened on our planet about 9-10 billion years after our universe began. DNA first appeared on earth about 4 billion years ago, when our planet was only about 500 million years old.

Not so. The latest data from WMAP suggests that the first objects which were ionized formed about only 200 million years after the Big Bang. They could have been supermassive black holes, or even an early generation of stars, or perhaps something else. Something ionized gaseous clouds around that time, but we just don't know yet what it was.

WMAP of course measures the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), which is the red-shifted high energy radiation emitted from the superhot hydrogen cloud which formed about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Ionized gas scatters the CMB and causes it to be polarized.

As for nothing more complex than hydrogen being formed until stars died, well, that's just not the case. Active stars burn hydrogen as their fuel, of course, and they fuse it into helium. Helium, as the second lightest element, is more complex than hydrogen. Thus, active stars contain at least both hydrogen and helium. Once they burn up their hydrogen fuel, if they are massive enough, they fuse the helium into carbon until all the helium is used up, and if the star is an "ordinary" one, it will become a white dwarf and dim. A more massive star will continue to fuse into heavier elements, with carbon fusing into oxygen, then neon, silicon, sulfur, and finally iron. It will eventually collapse under its own gravity and die in a supernovae, and fuse heavier elements and eject them into space. All the elements in our solar system came from such a supernovae. The remaining core of the star will be a neutron star.

If it is even more massive, the star will die by collapsing into itself so much that it becomes infinitely dense and forms a black hole, from whose gravity nothing can escape.

Not so. Our sun is almost certainly more than a second generation star. Not all stars have the same lifespan. Generally, the more massive the star, the shorter its life span. Very massive stars, say of about 20 solar masses, can exhaust their fuel and die and become black holes in as little as 10 million years. Thus, there were almost certainly lots and lots of generations of stars before our sun coalesced.

Again, it's not two cycles of stellar evolution. To answer your question, it's by lots of trial and error, by the constraints of the fundamental laws of physics, including the constraints of chemistry, and generations and generations of opportunities for experimentation and improvement by incorporating the accumulation of previous experiments that "worked." You don't have to toss out everything each time and start over from scratch. In fact, evolution by means of natural selection produces complexity and diversity by building on what's been tried and has worked before. It isn't evolution by chance. It works by accumulation over many generations.

You are mistating the effects of entropy by assuming the earth is a closed system. It isn't. The sun adds energy to the earth daily, allowing it to be regarded as an open system to which entropy does not apply.

The universe itself, on the other hand, is a closed system to which entropy does apply, as far as we can tell or ever know.