Religion

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

No you can’t because you’re talking absolute horeshit.

I genuinely haven’t met a young Earth creationist in the wild before. I thought you crazies were just a myth. It’s scary you’re allowed out by yourselves in 2021 and get a vote.

Even The Church disowns you guys.

I've actually met one in the flesh. Told me I wasn't capable of critical thinking.

 

[andyhinch]

No you can’t because you’re talking absolute horeshit.

I genuinely haven’t met a young Earth creationist in the wild before. I thought you crazies were just a myth. It’s scary you’re allowed out by yourselves in 2021 and get a vote.

Even The Church disowns you guys.

It could just be as massive clarkie, I really hope it is.

 

[mccity]

I've watched this so many times

 

[SWP's back]

I love that.

 

[BlueMoonAcrossThePond]

 

[Elbow beards]

That sums it up for me, we are just an insignificant crumb in the grand scheme of things. 2000 years ago, because we didn't have the knowledge, we put ourselves on a grand pedistal and invented God's and monsters to make sense of it all. Unfortunately some people just can't get past that yet.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Okay. I can go with that. But how do those logical laws relate to the existence of suffering in this world?

For example, some babies are born with epidermolysis bullosa, a genetic skin disease that causes blistering all over the body, so that the baby cannot be held, or even lie on its back without pain. It seems odd to think that there is some kind of cosmic purpose to this illness that is grounded in the laws of logic.

As the philosopher James Rachels has pointed out in one of his publications, “The problem is that the world contains vastly more evil than is necessary for an appreciation of the good. If, say, only half the number of people died every year of cancer, that would be plenty to motivate the appreciation of health. And because we already have cancer to contend with, we don’t really need epidermolysis bullosa, much less AIDS, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, diphtheria, Ebola, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and bubonic plague.”

Rachels continues:

‘The need to develop moral character might explain why there must be some evil in the world, but there is far more evil than is necessary for such a purpose: there is stunning, overpowering evil that crushes the life out of people. If we already have AIDS, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida, do we need Ebola as well? If the people of Guatemala are poor and hungry, do they need an earthquake on top of it?’…’The amount of evil in the world could be reduced by two-thirds and there would still be more than we could handle.’

More recently, Stephen Law has argued that the notion that this world is the creation of an evil God who deliberately subjects us to a process of character destruction over the course of our lives is every bit as plausible as the more traditional, theistic assertion that God permits suffering to build character. Such an evil God might, for example, allow us to have children to love so as to cause us to worry agonizingly about them.

This evil God also provides us with healthy young bodies so that we can slowly be deprived of that health and vitality over the course of our lives. By giving us something wonderful for a while, and then gradually taking it away, an evil God can make us suffer even more than if we had never had it in the first place. Law’s point is to undermine the reasonableness of traditional theodicies that attempt to explain why God permits evil and suffering on a vast scale.

As far as I am concerned, your God of logic is the worst kind of sadist, nothing less than a homicidal maniac.

You mention bacteria and viruses there, and we’re living through a viral pandemic now…

The first life on Earth were microorganisms and everything that evolved from that first life is simply an evolutionary reaction to allow microorganisms to replicate and spread. Just like insects and birds are an evolutionary reaction to help spread pollen and allow plants to reproduce and spread; all multicellular life has evolved to provide that for microorganisms. And pathogens are part of that microorgasmic life.

That’s all life on Earth is. There’s nothing more complicated and no greater meaning than that. Homosapiens are simply one of many short term evolutionary reactions to help house, carry, increase the number, and spread microorganisms.

Humans will be extinct one day but microorganisms won’t be. Just like there were once no mammals and we evolved from previous incarnations of life, there will be a type of animal that we can’t even imagine yet that evolves and has its golden age… but they too will simply be carriers and spreaders of microorganisms.

Religions and faith in them can also be thought of as evolutionary reactions to allow the continuation of microorganisms. Gods, creation, and all other things that come with religious faiths are just fictions made up in the minds of this fairly intelligent and imaginative species called homosapiens. Fictions that serve a purpose in helping bring humans together because religions have always congregated communities together at a place of worship. Religions have served their purpose in protecting the species as well, and helped the species grow and succeed. But all with the larger evolutionary pattern going on that allows microorganisms to succeed.

With the increase in modern civilisations creating metropolises and mega-cities, together with the increase in information and communication technology, humans don’t really need any other functions like religion to bring them together anymore. We already come together in large numbers to share our ideas without the need for religion to be the thing that ties communities together. Eventually religions will just die out from human thought as they’re not needed to help homosapiens succeed as a species anymore.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

There is intrinsically no good/bad nor is there any right/wrong, they're just human constructs; and that, in a nutshell is why all religions were created.

It’s one of the oldest things in humanistic thought.

Night v Day, Light v Dark, Summer v Winter, Warmth v Cold, Right v Wrong, Good v Evil, Gods v Demons…

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

Eventually religions will just die out from human thought as they’re not needed to help homosapiens succeed as a species anymore.

That’s kind of the Star Trek scenario. From memory, I think Gene Roddenberry deliberately made the Starship Enterprise a religion-free zone (no chapels, mosques etc.).

I reckon religion will still be with us right to the end, though (assuming that the human race isn’t going to be around for that much longer).

Right now, secularisation is patchy.

 

[SWP's back]

That’s kind of the Star Trek scenario. From memory, I think Gene Roddenberry deliberately made the Starship Enterprise a religion-free zone (no chapels, mosques etc.).

I reckon religion will still be with us right to the end, though (assuming that the human race isn’t going to be around for that much longer).

Right now, secularisation is patchy.

Depends if we ever sort out education worldwide. As education level increases across a population, religious belief decreases with a near 1 to 1 ratio.