Knowing There's No God Vs. Believing There's No God

Why do so many people yell out "Oh my God" when they have an orgasm ?
Could it be a vestigial cellular impulse that is let out at the final moment of procreation in furthering the genes of humanity ?

 

It still is its own gigantic assumption about what does or doesn't happen after you die and without any hard evidence whatsoever.

?

 

The observable hard evidence is that dead bodies are no longer animate and decompose.

 

Probably mostly socialized that way, there are many people who say some pretty obscene things while orgasming as well.

 

Life eternal is a moment , and then you are dead . Die in peace and with wondrous hallucination just prior to nothing . Your
children will feel this of your spirit .

 

Right, but there's plenty of interesting Science regarding NDE's that point to the notion that they are not merely hallucinations. I can post some links if you like.

 

I was talking about Dead not Near Dead.

But I have no doubt the homeostatic processing that brings us our "normal" experience of reality can be significantly disrupted under extremely stressful incidents and/or neurological failure. Having read some NDE experiences, imo many of them do have components that resemble psychedelic experiences, namely DMT and Ketamine like experiences.

 

I yell out "Oh my God!" when I see a spider

 

athiests are not one catigory, but a label applied by people who share one belief, to people who don't share it, or at least one similar.

there are as many shades and variations, even among those who wear the label proudly, as there are among beliefs and believers.

the existence or non-existence of one or more god-like beings is not something there is any means to know with any certainty.

they are neither required nor excluded from existence.
beliefs ABOUT them, that is the part, that can be traced, to persons very much other then a god, having come up with.

it only muddies the water a little, that it is possible, that a person having come up with a belief,
may have been chosen by some god-like being to 'channel' it.

(and i'm pretty sure i've never said "oh my god" during or immediately after an orgasm. lol that one.)
(if that is why, i've never as far as i know, fathered any children, well that's ok too, and another lol for that thought too.)

 

We're a lot more than just a body. Even Hip Forums proves that. You can have an entire identity in digital form. There will never be any hard evidence for God just like you won't find any thoughts if you dissect a human brain. It's apples and oranges.

 

knowing the unknown is unknown is knowing there is nothing to stop there from being anything,
equally it is knowing that whatever unknowns exist, owe nothing to what we tell each other to pretend about them.

i sure wish more people could understand the non-dependence of these two things on each other.

 

Many of the important decisions we make every day are done without "hard evidence". If hard evidence is available, I'll take it; but in many cases, I'm just placing a bet. Besides "hard evidence", I rely on soft evidence, personal experience, and intuition. I've found this a useful approach in making my way in a world of uncertainty.

 

E.O. Wilson, a Pioneer of Evolutionary Biology, Dies at 92
In a New Scientist interview published on January 21, 2015, however, Wilson said that "Religion 'is dragging us down' and must be eliminated 'for the sake of human progress'", and "So I would say that for the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths”. e.o. Wilson

 

knowing that what is not known is not known,
that not being known does not prevent anything from existing,
but that whatever does, owes nothing to what anyone tells anyone else to pretend.

knowing that the most beautiful strangest dreams are just as likely and then some,
then all the negative excuses that people who only ever want everything to be their own one way, can come up with for hating them.

there is absolutely no reason there cannot be gods, or god like beings, who love imagination, and logic, and have no wish to be feared.
humans have come up with beliefs for entirely human reasons, that very likely have nothing to do, with any gods.

its not that we live in a universe that in any way depends upon them, or as far as we know, rather their option to exist, is entirely independent of anything.

 

No one know if there is a God. When most people talk of God they are referring to the Christian God. There are about 3000 religions possibly more and in each people believe their God is the true God. Funny thing is all religious folks are atheists when it come to a different religion than theirs. So they don't believe in 2999 other gods and I don't believe in just one more.

 

I respect E.O. Wilson as one of the world's leading experts on ants and a brilliant evolutionary biologist who founded sociobiology. However, his opinions on religion and human progress are questionable. Scientifically minded folks have been expecting or calling for the demise of religion for a long time. In western Europe, their expectations have to a large extent been realized. In the U.S., not so much, although the "nones" seem to be picking up steam in the Pew research surveys. Ecologists have warned us that before taking bold actions to bring about change, we should look at the environmental impacts, since actions taken with the support of single-minded scientists can sometimes have disastrous consequences. Religion is a complex, multi-functional phenomenon, serving multiple needs at different levels of society. For individuals, it is a way of handling existential anxieties, cognitive mapping, and behavioral conditioning. For societies, it's become a mainstay of morality that not everybody might get along without, and a means of social control. For political leaders and ruling classes, it's a useful tool of legitimacy. For me, it's the primary source of meaning in life. God is, among other things, the summation of human idealism, and something humans have been willing to die for.

E.O. Wilson wrote a book (2014) entitled The Meaning of Human Existence ,in which he demonstrated he was largely clueless about the subject. It's a good book in some respects, and one that i've quoted a lot, but it doesn't begin to live up to the title. Basically he regards the meaning of human existence as whatever has been the course of our evolution: "Social intelligence, enhanced by natural selection for social action." That doesn't quite cut it in giving a sense of meaning to our lives, in the sense psychotherapist Victor Frankl identified as the most basic human psychological need and desire, Man's Search for Meaning (1946). Some ridicule religion for providing "canned meaning' and dismiss it as a crutch. For the great majority, of average intellect and education, however, formulating alternatives can be too demanding, and we're easily led into the blind alleys of wealth, status, power, and sensual indulgence. In sum, before we try to chip away at religion, we should.do an environmental impact statement to estimate the consequences of taking away what many of us, like me, consider to be the most importent thing in our lives. I'd agree that religion can be a mind crippling disease, and considering how readily fundamentalist forms of it become sources of terrorism and a base for demagogues like Trump, Wilson's claim may have some substance. But these people won't go quietly. When push comes to shove, intellectuals and atheists are likely to be outgunned. I favor promotion of progressive forms of religion as alternatives to "toxic faith syndrome". .

 

"Knowing"there is a god and "knowing" there is no god is rather presumptuous,IMO. However, the former potentially pays much more than the latter.

 

Another question is what draws people to a religion? Now I know the simple answer is “well, my daddy was a Catholic, so....”
In actuality people don’t need a religion to believe in a god. Native Americans never had a religion until it was forced upon them.
This brings to mind the need for preachers. Why are they necessary? Ooh, I know. Someone has to receive the tithing.

 

I suspect that for the vast majority of believers, that's a large part of it. But this is reinforced by other needs as well, such as making sense of reality and coping with existential anxieties. People often give as their reason for believing that it seems to explain the integrated complexity of the universe. And for others, it's a way of coping with existential anxieties (Why was I born? Why am I living? What do I get? What am I giving?) Is there meaning to my existence. In ancient agrarian societies, where daily life was dangerous and people depended on nature for the crops and surviveal, believing in gods gave them a sense of control to get them through the day. With the Axial Age and after, concerns shifted to the hereafter.

That depends on what we understand as"religion", but I think anthropologists would disagree. Many modern-day scholars in the field of comparative religion use a cluster approach, defining religion as a having some or more of the following elements: creed, code, cultus (rituals), and community. Durkheim's classic study of religion stressed its importance as a social experiences. As for Native Americans, of which I am one, we had a variety of traditional religions, all of which were strong on ritual (for my people, keeping the sacred flame and the Green Corn festival.for the Lakota, the sun dance, etc. Shamanism and tribal elders performed functions which today are carried out by clergy. For many, concepts of the deity were more panendeistic than theistic: Wakan tanka (Great Mystery), Gitche Manitou (Great Spirit), Orenda (Invisible Power), etc.And we worshiped the sun and celestial bodies and the spirits that inhabited virtually every natural object and animal. Of course, with modernization, religion like other things became bureaucratized, with the pathologies that term entails.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think what you are saying is that some people can’t handle life so they rely on religion as a crutch.

I think we are talking semantics. We’re not all Native Americans more spiritual than anything else?
I could get into this big time, but it’s a topic for another thread.
By the way, have always respected what you have to say.