Darwin vs Deity

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Randy · #51 Unread post by **Randy** » Wed May 25, 2005 7:12 am

It is tough to form an objective opinion when you are force fed Dogma from every direction.

#52 Unread post by **Sev** » Wed May 25, 2005 1:05 pm

Telesque wrote:
Sevulturus wrote: Everyone wants to believe that they are better then those around them in some way. We may not admit it, even to ourselves, but it's the truth. We all strive to be better at something, we all search for something that makes us standout from the rest. And we're hurt when we find out that we aren't, that we're just another person. That is why people who believe in God are so willing to discount others claims of having spoken to God.
I'll give you this, to a certain extent. But, people tend to generalize and say 'everyone' without seeing outside their own culture. There's a very good number. I think it's quite the nature of man to have the urge to be better, or have nicer things, but that beyond that, it can be controlled, or extinguished.

Think of it like.. people who take a vow (or just choose) celebacy. It's not like the urge isn't ever there, but it's controlled and in time even broken. It's not the most common thing, I suppose, but you don't have to be a buddhist monk to do it.

So I'm generalizing from a single example... everyone does that.

At least, I do.

Telesque · #53 Unread post by **Telesque** » Wed May 25, 2005 1:29 pm

Sevulturus wrote:
Telesque wrote:
Sevulturus wrote: Everyone wants to believe that they are better then those around them in some way. We may not admit it, even to ourselves, but it's the truth. We all strive to be better at something, we all search for something that makes us standout from the rest. And we're hurt when we find out that we aren't, that we're just another person. That is why people who believe in God are so willing to discount others claims of having spoken to God.
I'll give you this, to a certain extent. But, people tend to generalize and say 'everyone' without seeing outside their own culture. There's a very good number. I think it's quite the nature of man to have the urge to be better, or have nicer things, but that beyond that, it can be controlled, or extinguished.

Think of it like.. people who take a vow (or just choose) celebacy. It's not like the urge isn't ever there, but it's controlled and in time even broken. It's not the most common thing, I suppose, but you don't have to be a buddhist monk to do it.
So I'm generalizing from a single example... everyone does that.

At least, I do.

I'm not a big fan of generalizations.

BuzZz · #54 Unread post by **BuzZz** » Wed May 25, 2005 8:11 pm

Telesque wrote: I'm not a big fan of generalizations.....

....generally speaking.

#55 Unread post by **sv-wolf** » Sat May 28, 2005 11:14 am

I was brought up a Catholic, but can never remember taking it very seriously. At 13, a priest started shouting at me in the confessional because I couldn't remember how many Sunday masses I had missed. So I walked out and never went back. I didn't miss it. Many years later, I heard he had lost his own faith and had left the churchy. At 19, I began to call myself an atheist.

The God Hypothesis has never seemed to me to make any sense at all. There can be no purely logical arguments for believing in God, and revealed religions base their elaborate belief systems on the contents of books which are generally confused - as you would expect from the writings of ancient peoples trying to make sense of their place in the world. Personally, I wouldn't want to base my life on anything as self-contradictory as the bible.

But as I see it, people need myths and metaphors of one kind or another to live by. Some people make meanings out of the myths of religion, some from the myths of science, some from politics and some from their family and culture. I've got not problem with myths. People need them. But I do have a problem with the power structures that keep them going.

When it comes down to it, creationism and evolution are just ideas - mental models of how we think we got here. They just exist in people's heads. The bible account of the creation is self-contradictory and illogical, but it serves a purpose for some people. Evolution has a formidable amount of evidence piled up to support it, even though, as I can tell, it is not conclusive. But it is still a myth, an image in people's minds.

What I have never been able to process is that those who hold to both creationism and evolution seem to believe that the authority for their beliefs come from outside themselves. Christians seem to believe that their faith comes from God, evolutionists, that their belief comes from something called scientific evidence. It seems to me that whatever we believe, we believe on our own authority, whether we have consciously chosen it or just accepted it without question from the culture that surrounds us.

Telesque · #56 Unread post by **Telesque** » Sat May 28, 2005 2:53 pm

sv-wolf wrote:It seems to me that whatever we believe, we believe on our own authority, whether we have consciously chosen it or just accepted it without question from the culture that surrounds us.

I won't get into back-and-forth stuff about what's right, wrong, contradictory, self-explanatory, etc, but I did like this ^ part- It applies to so many things.

Anyone who hasn't borne down on a scrutinous, intensive study of either how any religious text, or any scientific data works is more or less making a choice about which seems more or less logical to their belief system.

IMO, at least.

Edit: Made a change because of auto-editing. Used a respectable term, of which a stand-alone portion was apparently offensive enough to trigger the auto-edit/curse filter.