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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 20, 2009 - 05:50pm PT
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I was never a believer despite the typical Irish catholicism and schools; I knew it was all just a ridiculous charade from the start. The logic behind that view crystalized when I was 11 as some nun kept jabbering on about how "we're made in god's image" and it dawned on me - 'if I'm made in god's image, then god must be a lot like me'. I then realized 'WTF? I wouldn't setup or run the world this way. I mean why good and evil? Why not good and better? Why not apple juice and orange juice instead of apple juice and hemlock juice?', and concluded god really isn't like me and I must not be like him after all. And if the "we're made in god's image" line was bullsh#t, so must the whole crock of it must be as well.
Pretty much right after that it occured to me that when you looked at the history of nations, war, and god's role, it was clear that god was simply a manifestation and projection of man's will, desire, ego, and the ordination of manipulative power rooted in and spawned of fear. I instantly started ditching church and my father finally told me that's fine so long as I found out who said the mass so I'd get it right when I lied to my mother.
I find the whole schtick and instrument of religion repugnant, vile, and frightening almost beyond words. It's clear evidence we have never conquered the fear of the unknown and darkness lingering just outside the cave entrance and likely never will. That the scariest thing to most people is unanswered questions - individuals and societies fear unanswered and unanswerable questions so much they'll invent and / or believe almost any outlandish pap or hallucination to plug those voids.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 20, 2009 - 06:05pm PT
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I've been mulling over some of the things that have been said in this thread about "truth" and how we, as humans, "know" things.
This is the study of epistemology, which has been going on for 2,000 years, and had to do with knowing "things," and as such, involves an evolving set of facts and figures that show us where and how we fit into this world.
I think it's fair to say that this kind of knowing is hooked to our evolving brains.
Now, how does the screaming blue jack-0-lantern and tooth ferry fit into this paradigm, and how might this "knowing" increase our prowess to inveigle girls?
JL
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 20, 2009 - 07:08pm PT
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Epistemology or the study of knowledge that events are not made necessary by causes, but that everything is motivated by its own purpose.
That means there is no chance. There is no question of chance.
Without God nothing can exist.
And the scientist speculates where monkey come from, where man comes from.
Where bone come from.
He does not know. Only speculates where everything comes from by blind faith in the faulty machine the faulty scientist made.
The blind faith scientist puts his faith in his faulty data and presents it as fact.
Rascals ......
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Oct 20, 2009 - 07:38pm PT
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Oct 20, 2009 - 07:39pm PT
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Been catching up on this thread. Some good stuff, despite having to follow WB's tiresome "everybody but me is a mental speculator" schtick (don't you, yourself get tired of writing this crap, Werner?).
I just want to point out one thing - the very tight coupling of science and reason. It may take a scientist or at least a scientific education to really understand well some specific aspect of our world like evolution, but it only takes reason to accept the findings of science and incorporate then into a consistent world view. Above all, evolution is eminently reasonable. It explains a bunch of disparate observations like why we can classify animals at all, why animals and plants are distributed as they are, how to interpret fossils with respect to age of the earth, etc. It fits in well with other observations we should accept from science like the age of the earth being on the order of 5 million years old. When these very reasonable ideas are accepted into a consistent world view, this is reason, To me, religious teachings and the so-called sacred texts are an affront to reason, not science per se.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 20, 2009 - 07:40pm PT
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jstan
climber
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Oct 20, 2009 - 07:40pm PT
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An interesting text on brain evolution:
http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/wm/05.html
Another less interesting site suggests the volume of our brain has not increased significantly in the last 1.7 million years. And our brain weight is about 1.5 kg. while that of the blue whale is about 6kg. The whale clearly has a serious weight problem. As our obesity becomes worse here we will probably begin, like the hippo, to begin to transition back into a water creature. But in our case because of the Big Mac and the Coca Cola company.
A really striking new thing I discovered is that well prior to birth the human brain is without surface folding and is more like that of the “lower” animals. Interesting. More phyllogeny recapitulates ontogeny? Seems unlikely.
Edit:
You are fast cintune. I deleted the question and decided to look into it a little. I posted the wiki stuff too. You can write 100 tons of books on religion but you can get the broadest outlines into your head from a few pages.
As a complement to your discussion of the Ediacaran radiation:
Years ago before the synchrotron had been invented I had read about studies of these sea creatures allowing seafloor deposits of this age to be dated reliably. The elucidation of their structure, as you note, is a major contribution.
So there is not a misperception, I have read recent reports( last 10 years) saying people are coming to believe rudimentary life existed on earth within the first 500 million years. That is hardly time for the rock to cool down after the Mars-like body collision. (A report on solar system research mentions that people, I think for the Mars observer, believes that it takes millions of years for temperatures caused by massive body collisions to dissipate.)
We are on the cusp of really incredible discoveries. Thirty years from now much more will be understood.
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Oct 20, 2009 - 07:51pm PT
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I have proof there is God, because if He didn't create us perfect there could be no sin because we never knew anything else, so there could be no wrong? But if we ever feel guilty for anything it proves there is sin and that we need forgiveness!
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Oct 20, 2009 - 07:54pm PT
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But if we ever feel guilty for anything it proves there is sin and that we need forgiveness!
Impeccable logic. Why didn't I think of that?
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 20, 2009 - 07:58pm PT
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The wiki religion timeline is pure mental speculations.
More guesses
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Oct 20, 2009 - 08:02pm PT
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Breaking news:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/first-complex-animals/
A series of fossils unearthed in southwestern China has revealed the origins of complex life in unprecedented detail, and pushed its beginning back by at least 40 million years.
The specimens come from the Doushantuo formation, a layer of sediments deposited about 590 million years ago, just before the Ediacaran period’s primordial fauna gave way to the kaleidoscopically complex creatures of the Cambrian explosion.
During the Ediacaran, even the most structurally complicated animals had flat bodies with simple symmetry, like living quilts or mattresses. It was only during the Cambrian that animals developed what’s known as bilateral symmetry — a distinct front and back, top and bottom.
The Doushantuo fossils date to the cusp of this transition, and are so finely preserved that scientists can distinguish the structures of individual cells. The latest fossils, described Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, aren’t even fully formed animals, but embryos.
Using synchrotron radiation microtomography — a microscopy technique that combines thousands of of X-rays taken from different angles — researchers reconstructed the embryos in three-dimensional detail. They found that the embryos were bilaterally symmetrical, and were organized so differently that they belonged to two distinct taxonomic groups. For those groups to be so different, bilateral symmetry must have been around for a while. Some scientists have suspected as much, but without such solid evidence.
“These bilaterians had already diverged into distantly related groups at least 40 million years before the Cambrian radiation,” wrote the researchers. “The last common ancestor of the bilaterians lived much earlier than is usually thought.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 20, 2009 - 08:11pm PT
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Still wasting time with their bones.
Evolution from animal to man is incomplete because the theory does not present the reverse condition, namely evolution from man to animal.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Oct 20, 2009 - 08:14pm PT
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[insert Locker joke here]
[and here]
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jstan
climber
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Oct 20, 2009 - 08:15pm PT
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_religion
The above summary article is limited to the Abrahamic, Indian, Dharmic, and Taoistic religions of the last 3000 years or so. Ancient prehistoric and even the Helenistic polytheisms are missing. As is the secret polytheism recently discovered to exist in Rome after it had been driven underground by the dominant theism.
Ignorant as I am, the above was excellent reading. You look at the part of the earth occupied by followers of the Abrahamic religions and because these peoples all follow the same precepts there ought to be no war there. The Indian religions might be thought to be at war with us( that is the union of the Christian and Muslim tribes) but how to explain Mahatma Gandhi whose ideas came right out of the Abrahamic texts. There really should not be any serious disagreement.
How to explain the discord that we see? This is a huge question.
If we take the teachings of the existing religions seriously we cannot explain what we see in the world.
There seems an immense disconnect.
If the texts are not being followed, why not?
If they are not being followed what are the texts actually being followed?
If no texts are being followed, why is anyone discussing religion?
Their actual teachings are being ignored on the ground.
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scarcollector
climber
CO
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Oct 20, 2009 - 08:19pm PT
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God bless those Ediacaran bilaterians, and bless all of their little bilaterian children, or tadpoles, or whatever kind of young'uns they had.
Werner - I can't find God without chance. Without chance don't we have predestination? Predetermination?
Why try?
Photons don't seem predetermined though. Einstein couldn't figure it out; neither has anyone else. They just seem random.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 20, 2009 - 08:22pm PT
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Naah, Werner will rescue you, physically if not spiritually and philosophically. Using skills, equipment and experience very firmly founded in the material world.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 20, 2009 - 08:28pm PT
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"...while that of the blue whale is about 6kg."
Dolphins and many whales have had essentially the same brain for 30 million years, we've had ours for about 50,000 years and in the ball park of this size for 500,000 years. In the past I've worked on cetacean language analysis and have always suspected a lot of their brain power was devoted to sophisticated signal processing. They were and are perfectly adapted for their environment save for there defenselessness in the face of mankind. Left to their own devices the world would be essentially unchanged for the next 30 million years if it were not for our species having evolved so rapidly. Given our rapacious impact on the planet I suspect an equalibrium correction in the overall ecosphere will return the cetaceans to a more peaceful existence sooner rather than later despite pleas to any man's god.
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jstan
climber
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Oct 20, 2009 - 08:41pm PT
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Gobee:
Hate to tell you but we are not perfect. Look at my earlier post about our ear structure.
Let me ask a question. Suppose you saw something that really looks to be true but which causes you to doubt other things you "believe." Would you still be able to cope?
Or would you just say screw everything and go climbing?
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Oct 20, 2009 - 09:05pm PT
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We were expelled from Eden, hence sin!
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