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go-B
climber
In God We Trust
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Their is only one Lord and savior and that is Jesus, and I need him too!
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go-B
climber
Proverbs 26:12
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Sep 10, 2010 - 10:20am PT
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Matthew 18:10, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. 12 What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? 13 And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. 14 So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Sep 10, 2010 - 10:27pm PT
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Once again, Deepak Chopra proved himself simultaneously (1) an astute money making guru and (2) a complete pinhead regarding science and how the world works (whether according to science or truly) on Larry King Live. Catch it at 9:00p, see for yourself. Friggin' embarassing he is.
For those keeping a list - perhaps, Largo, Jan - you can now add Hawkins and Mlodinow as (causal) determinists, mechanists, who have manned up, taken the sharp end, led, and come public. Still waiting for the other girly scientists, engineers and technologists out there to come forth, they know who they are.
Also, very childesque treatment of "free will" too, always the perrenial accompaniment to cause n effect, mechanistic mechanics, etc. in public discourse - worth watching for that. Or maybe not.
Peace out.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Sep 10, 2010 - 10:31pm PT
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FINALLY, the atheists have their own billboard.
And right smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, Oklahoma!
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go-B
climber
Jude:24
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Sep 12, 2010 - 01:38am PT
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"Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil - it has no point."
-author unknown
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Jennie
Trad climber
Elk Creek, Idaho
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Sep 12, 2010 - 04:59am PT
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Like the primevel Big Bang, Stephen Hawking has created a blast out of nothing. Surely his publisher is ecstatic.
In his latest book, our tiny Earth's master of the universe says, "Because there are laws such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself out of nothing. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going."
A revolutionary statement? Hardly. It's not original, it's not definite, and even if absolute it would be no threat to confirmed faith.
Mr Hawking may have forsaken the tentative, conditional speech of his middle years for a more absolute dialectic opinion...but in his well known book, A Brief History of Time, he held essentialy the same views. He just wasn't bold enough to reference God by name.
Others have held like opinion and written or spoken similar words. Is his position reasonable? I think it's reasonable...It is a reasonable analysis and interpretation from INCOMPLETE evidence. However, there is surely more evidence to be discovered and other explanations that have yet to be examined and scrutinized.
Mr Hawking doesn't deserve excess credit for uttering old concepts...neither should anyone assume he has special authority to expound on or detemine, for us, the existence of God. Similarly, individuals who feel that proven scientific evidence or claims must be false or their whole belief system will crumble do not have true faith.
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 12, 2010 - 11:00am PT
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go-B -- "Their is only one ..."
Actually the spelling is correct. The wrong word was used and it really doesn't matter except to an envious snake like you pate.
You're just a loser, leg humper and stupid stalker to feed your out of control huge ego. Your posts have really nothing to do with the actual subject matter. They are really all about YOU!
An envious snake and attention whore to the extreme.
Your constant incessant need to post stupid retarded attacks everywhere on this forum show your out of control false pride.
This reflects your inner being as the true worthless piece of sh'it you really are with no life.
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go-B
climber
Psalm 34:8
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Sep 12, 2010 - 05:24pm PT
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The spelling is correct if you personalize your faith!
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jstan
climber
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Sep 12, 2010 - 05:26pm PT
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Criticizing Hawking for not having complete data acts only to trivialize. For my own part I have seen no evidence that any god has ever done something on earth. Does this prove the negative that no god exists? Of course not. But the absence of any objective data means the question has no practical value on earth.
Now people who follow some train of thought allowing them to do more "good" for others while they are here than they might otherwise do, is good. But that good has no bearing on the correctness of what ever train of thought they are following.
Hawking would, I think, have been more effective had he explained his thought more completely, and had left the conclusion to the reader. There is evidence neither for the existence of a god or the nonexistence. And we are in the process of discovering physical models that now can fully explain the creation of the universe. No god needed. Hawking might have then explained Occam's Razor, advice which has successfully guided us for a very long time. When constructing a model to explain physical phenomena, any model that needs to posit the existence of something a competing explanation does not require - is probably not the correct explanation.
We don't need a god to exist to create the universe so the existence of a god is, once more, irrelevant.
Do I argue believers should all cease to believe? No.
I advance only this. The good you do on earth does prove that you exist.
Your existence is actually relevant in the real world and is provable.
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
La Mancha
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Sep 12, 2010 - 05:41pm PT
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^^^
Well said! Really should be the end of the thread...
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Sep 12, 2010 - 07:54pm PT
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Sep 12, 2010 - 08:27pm PT
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re: (1) reason (2) reasonable vs. unreasonable (3) "proving" God
OMG. This thread hasn't advanced any. Naive, shallow, as ever.
Here's theology #999: They say the continents of the world were made by a sword. They say the old Gods dipped a cold blade into the endless water and when they pulled it out, seven perfect drops fell back into the water. Those drops became the continents of Earth.
Now some say that theology #999 CANNOT be "proved" (in other words, shown by argument) to be fictitious or at best metaphorical or mythological. These people are mistaken.
Likewise, it IS "reasonably" shown (proved) or "reasonably" argued that gods and theologies (esp those of the ancient Mediterrean or ancient Mesopotamia) were fictitious.
Stop surrendering your reason in order to be the nice guy who doesn't hurt peoples' feelings. We pay an enormous cost for surrendering our reason. This cost is paid long into the future, across generations, and it is paid across cultures everywhere.
.....
21st Century Vantage Point BABA says...
(1) Challenge yourselves: Distinguish between (a) mathematically "proving" something and (b) reasonably "proving" something.
(2) Don't fiddle - in other words, don't let the pursuit of the mathematical proof (100.00000%) get in the way of the reasonable proof (95-99.9%) - while America, Rome to Afghanistan and the world burn.
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scarface
Trad climber
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Sep 12, 2010 - 08:49pm PT
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Pate = High Fructose Corn Spirit
Just saying.
SF
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Sep 12, 2010 - 08:58pm PT
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A post to the naive irreligious people...
Stop falling for the traditional trappings of yesterday's religions and theologies. They set you up with them, you take the bait, you all practically trip over each other in a rush to spring them.
Here it is straight up- You don't have to mathematically prove it. You only have to reasonably prove it. Take into account, take into your thinking, the human factor (to which a great body of evidence applies). Do that and, on that basis, Aphrodite and Zeus (uh, throw in Poseidon, too) are "reasonably" shown (proved) to be fictitious, otherwise mythic. Agree? (Hope so, otherwise you're a joker or 21st century nutjob.) If you agree with this "starter" step, then extend to God Jehovah / God Jesus. Voila. Done.
Stop shooting (a) yourself and (b) your own team (of like-minded "freesprites") in the foot by siding with the religious who say it cannot be shown (proven) or argued. When you do this, they love it, they eat it up. -Unless your goal is actually to endlessly argue this archaic superstition. -Which for some apparently it is.
Marduk is "reasonably" shown (proved) to be fictitious. By the same lines, so is the God of Moses (aka the God of Abraham aka Jehovah aka God Jesus).
It's time "God" was relegated at best to a simple personification of fate or destiny or history (cf: Grim Reaper re: death) or as a synonym for Mother Nature. -e.g., "I thank God everyday I wasn't born in Afghanistan." "There but for the grace of the Gods go I."
.....
My suggestion to the supernaturalists who suckle the teat of the Abrahamic super-religion: Strive for some maturity of thought (a) on this thread, (b) in regard to those natural forces of physics and chemistry and on up to ecology, environment and weather that control, shape, leverage our lives. Quit embracing the same ol' horse n buggy if not roman chariot theology that your animal-skinned forebears did. Take some pride in updating your mental software.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Sep 12, 2010 - 09:08pm PT
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"naive irreligious people"
High fruit loop..."judge ye not..."
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 11:24pm PT
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Just checked back in after months.... no improvement on this thread yet. But the humor value has increased slightly:
HFCS says: "Strive for some maturity (a) on this thread...."
HA, HA, HAAAAAAAAAAA
HA
HAAAAA
Coming from the most immature nutjob on the taco, that's rich!!!!
HA!
Well, wait, maybe the honor should go to Pate.... I'm torn... it's a real toss-up. Oh well, back to your regular programming.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Sep 12, 2010 - 11:27pm PT
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You also called Carl Sagan a nutjob once upon a time, so I'll be headed to bed tonight honored by your description of me.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Sep 12, 2010 - 11:41pm PT
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jstan
climber
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Sep 12, 2010 - 11:53pm PT
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I'll be so bold/naive as to take Fructose on.
I'm not talking to the believers. They are going to do what they do. As shall I.
I am trying to talk to those who question. So that our reasoning is as solid as possible.
If I say it is a fact there is no god, I can be challenged successfully. It is not possible to prove a negative. This is the weakest position one can take, not the strongest.
If I say there is no data showing a god, any god, has ever done anything on earth, when challenged I merely ask for the data. There is none. It places the burden of proof on the ascerting party. The burden of proof will be dropped
When dealing with superstition providing an opportunity for people to reinforce their beliefs through argument strengthens those beliefs.
It is a win when scriptures reappear. They were the only reinforcement available.
Pavlov.
You would have us make grand claims, equivalent to those that adroit children are able discount when being addressed by cape wearers. This is strength?
We have been so abused in this country we no longer are able to distinguish the difference between strength and the perception of strength. Even persons at the highest levels have had massive failures on this account.
They are not one and the same.
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hashbro
Trad climber
Mental Physics........
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Sep 13, 2010 - 12:40am PT
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129528196
Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?
Jesse Bering's mother died of cancer on a Sunday, in her own bed, at 9 o'clock at night. Bering and his siblings closed her door and went downstairs, hoping they might somehow get some sleep.
It was a long, hard night, but around 7 a.m., something happened: The wind chimes outside his mother's window started to chime.
Bering remembers waking to the tinkle of these bells, a small but distinct sound in an otherwise silent house. And he remembers thinking that those bells carried a very specific message.
"It seemed to me ... that she was somehow telling us that she had made it to the other side. You know, cleared customs in heaven," Bering says.
The thought surprised him. Bering was a confirmed atheist. He did not believe in any kind of supernatural anything. He prided himself on being a scientist, a psychologist who believed only in the measurable material world. But, he says, he simply couldn't help himself.
"My mind went there. It leapt there," Bering says. "And from a psychological perspective, this was really interesting to me. Because I didn't believe it on the one hand, but on the other hand I experienced it."
Why is it, Bering wondered, that even a determined skeptic could not stop himself from perceiving the supernatural? It really bothered him.
It was a very good question, he decided, to take up in his lab.
God, Through The Lens Of Evolution
For decades, the intellectual descendants of Darwin have pored over ancient bones and bits of fossils, trying to piece together how fish evolved into man, theorizing about the evolutionary advantage conferred by each physical change. And over the past 10 years, a small group of academics have begun to look at religion in the same way: they've started to look at God and the supernatural through the lens of evolution.
Whether it's a dead ancestor or God, whatever supernatural agent it is, if you think they're watching you, your behavior is going to be affected.
 Jesse Bering, psychologist, Queens University, Belfast
In the history of the world, every culture in every location at every point in time has developed some supernatural belief system. And when a human behavior is so universal, scientists often argue that it must be an evolutionary adaptation along the lines of standing upright. That is, something so helpful that the people who had it thrived, and the people who didn't slowly died out until we were all left with the trait. But what could be the evolutionary advantage of believing in God?
Bering is one of the academics who are trying to figure that out. In the years since his mother's death, Bering has done experiments in his lab at Queens University, Belfast, in an attempt to understand how belief in the supernatural might have conferred some advantage and made us into the species we are today.
In one experiment, children between the ages of 5 and 9 were shown to a room and told to throw a Velcro ball at a Velcro dartboard. They were told that if they were able to hit the bull's-eye, they'd get a special prize. But this particular game had an unusual set of rules: The children were told that they had to throw from behind, they weren't allowed to throw the ball while facing the dartboard, and they had to use their nondominant hand — rules that basically made it impossible for any of the children to win the game unless they cheated.
The children in the study were divided into three groups. The first group was left alone and told to play the game as best they could. The second were told the same, with one difference — the children in the second group were told that there was someone special who was going to watch them. The experimenters showed the kids a picture of a very pretty woman — a character that Bering had made up whose name was Princess Alice.
Princess Alice, the kids were told, had a magical power: Alice could make herself invisible. Then the children were shown a chair and were told that Alice was sitting in the chair and that Alice would watch them play the game after the researcher left. The third group of kids was told to play the game, but the researcher sat with them and simply never left the room at all.
The question that Bering sought to answer was this: Which group of children was least likely to cheat?
The children in the first group — the completely unsupervised kids — by far cheated the most. But what was surprising was the behavior of the second group.
The children who were under the impression that Princess Alice was in the room with them were just as likely to refrain from cheating as those children who were actually in the room with a physical real-life human being. A similar study Bering did with adults showed the same thing — that they were dramatically less likely to cheat when they thought they were being observed by a supernatural presence.
Deities From Around The World
A Change In Behavior
Bering has a credo, a truth he says he's learned after years of studying this stuff.
"I've always said that I don't believe in God, but I don't really believe in atheists either," Bering says. "Everybody experiences the illusion that God — or some type of supernatural agent — is watching them or is concerned about what they do in their sort of private everyday moral lives."
These supernatural agents, Bering adds, might have very different names. What some call God, others call Karma. There are literally thousands of names, but according to Bering they all have the same effect.
"Whether it's a dead ancestor or God, whatever supernatural agent it is, if you think they're watching you, your behavior is going to be affected," he says.
In fact, Bering says that believing that supernatural beings are watching you is so basic to being human that even committed atheists regularly have moments where their minds turn in a supernatural direction, as his did in the wake of his mother's death.
"They experience it but they reject it," Bering says. "Sort of override or stomp on their immediate intuition. But that's not to say that they don't experience it. We all have the same basic brain. And our brains have evolved to work in a particular way."
Through the lens of evolution, a belief in God serves a very important purpose: Religious belief set us on the path to modern life by stopping cheaters and promoting the social good.
Why would the human brain have evolved to work in that way?
For Bering, and some of his friends, the answer to that question has everything to do with what he discovered in his lab — the way the kids and adults stopped cheating as soon as they thought a supernatural being might be watching them. Through the lens of evolution then, a belief in God serves a very important purpose: Religious belief set us on the path to modern life by stopping cheaters and promoting the social good.
God And Social Cooperation
Dominic Johnson is a professor at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom and another one of the leaders in this field. And to Johnson, before you can understand the role religion and the supernatural might have played in making us the people we are today, you really have to appreciate just how improbable our modern lives are.
Today we live in a world where perfect strangers are incredibly nice to each other on a regular basis. All day long, strangers open doors for each other, repair each other's bodies and cars and washing machines. They swap money for food and food for money. In short: they cooperate.
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This cooperation makes all kinds of things possible, of course. Because we can cooperate, we can build sophisticated machines and create whole cities — communities that require huge amounts of coordination. We can do things that no individual or small group could do.
The question is: How did we get to be so cooperative? For academics like Johnson, this is a profound puzzle.
"Explaining cooperation is a huge cottage industry," Johnson says. "It dominates the pages of top journals in science and economics and psychology. You would think that it was very simple, but in fact from a scientific academic point of view, it just often doesn't make sense."
It doesn't make sense because there's often tension between the interests of the group and the interests of the individual. Johnson gives an example. Recently he was on the subway in New York and as he was going through the turnstile a little child ran in with him and got through the barrier. He got onto the subway without ever paying.
Everywhere you look around the world, you find examples of people altering their behavior because of concerns for supernatural consequences of their actions. They don't do things that they consider bad because they think they'll be punished for it.
Dominic Johnson, professor, University of Edinburgh
"Now we only have the Metro if everyone pays," Johnson says. "But there's an advantage for everyone if they don't have to pay themselves."
And what's true of the subway is true of everything.
Why fight in a war, risk your own death, if someone else will fight it for you? Why pay taxes? Why reduce your carbon footprint?
These all have clear costs, and from an individual perspective, you and your offspring are much more likely to thrive if you don't get killed in a war or pay your taxes — if you behave like the child in the subway.
The problem is that even a relatively small number of people who choose to behave like the child can affect the functioning of the whole.
"Even a few cheats undermine cooperation," Johnson says, because once people realize that they are paying for the same thing others are enjoying free, they become less willing to cooperate.
Punishment And Deterrents: Enforcing God's Law
Today, if you cheat — if you decide to pass on paying Uncle Sam or if you steal a car — there are systems in place that will track you down and punish you. And this threat of punishment keeps you on the straight and narrow. But imagine if you lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.
"We know that punishment is very effective at promoting cooperation," Johnson says. "The problem is: Who punished in the past before we had police and courts and law and government? There wasn't anyone formally to carry out the punishment"
In those early human communities when someone did something wrong, someone else in the small human group would have to punish them. But as Johnson points out, punishing itself is often dangerous because the person being punished probably won't like it.
"That person has a family; that person has a memory and is going to develop a grudge," Johnson says. "So there are going to be potentially quite disruptive consequences of people taking the law into their own hands."
On the other hand, Johnson says, if there are Gods or a God who must be obeyed, these strains are reduced. After all, the punisher isn't a vigilante; he's simply enforcing God's law.
"You have a very nice situation," Johnson says. "There are no reprisals against punishers. And the other nice thing about supernatural agents is that they are often omniscient and omnipresent."
If God is everywhere and sees everything, people curb their selfish impulses even when there's no one around. Because with God, there is no escape. "God knows what you did," Johnson says, "and God is going to punish you for it and that's an incredibly powerful deterrent. If you do it again, he's going to know and he is going to tally up your good deals and bad deeds and you will suffer the consequences for it either in this life or in an afterlife."
Differing Views
So the argument goes that as our human ancestors spread around the world in bands, keeping together for food and protection, groups with a religious belief system survived better because they worked better together.
We are their descendants. And Johnson says their belief in the supernatural is still very much with us.
"Everywhere you look around the world, you find examples of people altering their behavior because of concerns for supernatural consequences of their actions. They don't do things that they consider bad because they think they'll be punished for it."
Of course there are plenty of criticisms of these ideas. For example one premise of this argument is that religious belief is beneficial because it helped us to cooperate. But a small group of academics argue that religious beliefs have ultimately been more harmful than helpful, because those religious beliefs inspire people to go to war.
And then there are the people who say that cooperation doesn't come from God — that cooperation evolved from our need to take care of family or show potential mates that we were a good choice. The theories are endless.
Unfortunately it's not possible now to rewind the movie, so to speak, and see what actually happened. So these speculations will remain just that: speculations.
As unknowable — ultimately — as God himself.
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