Choosing a faith

You have cognitive issues.--Percy

Of course we do: the archeological record of evolution.Evolution changes things - physical things, mental things, all parts of living things.
There is not a single part of living things that's "immune" to evolution. All parts of living things evolve and change.For you to say "caring could not evolve" is, well, laughable in the face of the evidence.
You're free to have your opinion, but I don't think there's much further we can go if you insist something cannot be, when clearly it can. All the evidence of evolution is evidence that supports a materialistic process can initiate that property. Why wouldn't it be? The evolutionary process where anything about living creatures can change as time and generations pile up.
This is a fact.
If you think there's something that's blocking "the ability to care" from evolving - it's up to you to show why it's impossible. When all the evidence clearly shows it is entirely possible.At one point "breathing" was not possible - no living creature on the planet breathed air.
Now - breathing certainly is possible.At one point "legs" didn't exist.
Now - legs exist.At one point "brains" didn't exist (thinking - at all, about anything didn't exist.)
Now - brains exist and thinking exists.At one point thinking existed, but "abstract thinking" did not exist.
Now - abstract thinking exists.At one point "fear" didn't exist.
Now - fear exists.At one point "anger" didn't exist.
Now - anger exists.At one point "caring" didn't exist.
Now - caring exists.At one point "love" didn't exist.
Now - love exists.All done through evolution - the change in species over time.
There is nothing preventing any of this, and the evidence shows that it has all occurred naturally due to evolution.
People have scoured the planet looking for any other source of evidence for this sort of thing - and none has every been found except for evolution. And evolution explains everything we see. There is nothing we see that tells us "wow - evolution couldn't possibly do that!" There used to be... until we learned more and more and more... and now we understand how evolution did all the things we thought it couldn't. And now - we know that it's responsible for all changes to living creatures as they are not exact copies from their ancestors.The following two statements are equally justified by evidence in Science:"I understand how gravity keeps things falling down and pulled to the centre of the Earth. But I don't understand how the Sun's gravity pulls on Earth enough for Earth to orbit the Sun. The Sun is just so far away and doesn't look that big in the sky. There's no way the Earth orbits the Sun due to gravity alone.""I understand how evolution creates different kinds of beaks in finches in the Galapagos islands. But I don't understand how evolution can change things enough to create "caring" when it didn't exist before. Caring is just such a mental aspect and seems so much more intricate than physical properties like beaks. There's no way that "caring" came about due to evolution alone."In fact... there is more scientific evidence and confidence behind the Theory of Evolution that there is for the Theory of Gravity. That is... we know there are more areas about gravity where "our current understanding does not fill the gaps" then we have gaps in our knowledge for evolution.Your personal unawareness (due to whatever reasons) doesn't make a difference to the progress that Science has made (and continues to make.) I don't know if sacrificing our own resources to help Africa helps us individually survive. But I do know that this is irrelevant to how evolution works "raw" or otherwise.What makes you think that sacrificing resources to help others requires a "survival" evolutionary reason?The only way this requires a survival-evolutionary-reason is if it was the only way we survived. Since it's clearly not - then it's doesn't require such a reason. This could simply be a by-product of some-other trait that is required for survival. Or it could be "just a by-product" not attached to anything else at all.We exist now - which means we survived - which means "we've done things that have helped us survive."
-this does not mean that all things we do must help us survive
-this does not mean that evolution only makes changes that are going to help us surviveI think you're very confused about how evolution works. Because there's no reason for there to be a plan.
And because we look a lot more like "just a by-product" in this universe than we do as "part of a plan."
If there's a plan - the plan is to make stars. I don't know. I know "how" we're able to: evolution. But why? I don't know.
Maybe there is no answer to this question, and looking for an answer is foolish and immature.
Maybe there's an answer but we just don't know it (possibly "yet.")
Maybe... it's just a happy (for us... perhaps not so happy for all the things humans have caused to go extinct...) by-product. That's all.
And that's fascinating.
I mean, it's makes us all a hell of a lot more "special" than if a God made us - that's for sure.

Edited by Stile, : Grammars

My point for all this was to show that "having a moral or loving motivation" can come from a mundane, or "materialistic" (if you prefer) environment.If we want "positive outcomes" and put our motivation into "attempting to get the most positive outcomes... as defined by the ones affected by those outcomes" then this is a mundane way to create a "loving motivation" or to "follow Love." No inner conscience telling us what's Right/Wrong is necessary - we just ask those we are going to affect. And if we can't ask, we guess, and be humble enough to allow those who are affected to correct our assumptions for future situations. I'm really lost on what you're referring to as the "so called consciousness" - God?My point is that there is no "so called consciousness".
My descriptions show that there's no need - it's all internal to us anyway.
It's quite possible that someone goes through this process without understand that they're actually doing each step... just as you agreed with my description after I wrote it all out. And then, such a person may ascribe certain aspects of this process to some sort of "so called consciousness" - but that isn't proof of anything other than "not all humans are interested in the details of morality" and "humans are very creative and imaginative."

Nothing wrong with that. There are biological reasons to avoid incest. I don't see how that applies to a pantheon. Ever hear of David, the adulterer and one of God's best buddies? Ever hear of Solomon, with his 700 wives and 300 cocubines? That's somewhere in the neighborhood of adultery, isn't it? Ever hear of Abraham? (Genesis 22) Nothing wrong with that. *shrug* Other than consent, what's the problem? (And we don't ask for consent when we eat the animals either.) I'd be interested in seeing how that probability is calculated. Of course it is.And it's also morally wrong for Him to let his buddies go scot free for the same behavior. Nothing hypocritical about it. "Sinners" is a concept made up by an arbitrary and hypocritical God. But the "chosen ones" were neither innocent nor pure. That's practically the theme of the whole Bible. Yes. Thank you for shooting yourself in the foot so we don't have to do it. So make some. Go ahead and tell us how Hitler had to punish the Jews for polluting Aryan society. Consider the corollary question: Would you be justified in destroying every man, woman and child in that city? See Abraham (Genesis 22).You've done a fine job of showing what idiots your apologists are.

And you can't know Jesus by rejecting everything the Bible says about Him.

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Rule 4. Points should be supported with evidence and reasoned argumentation. Address rebuttals through the introduction of additional evidence or by enlarging upon the argument. Do not repeat previous points without further elaboration. Avoid bare assertions.

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That doesn't let faith topics off the hook. You need reasoned arguments, not just loud proclamations. Don't say proof.

Hi Phat
That statement is contrary to my reason for starting this thread. I had looked at a thread on this forum and was troubled by the ideas expressed in the thread about choosing which god to follow.My point was that God as we call him reaches out to everyone, regardless if you are Muslim, Jew, Christian, atheist and then added that even Hitler loved his dog. (I was not claiming that Hitler was an atheist. I doubt he ever thought about any deity.)I used the term "cosmic intelligence" simply so that it would apply to everyone.For that matter even when we look at Jesus we have seen many different understandings of what God is telling us through Jesus. It ranges from so-called holy wars to absolute pacifism.I contend that the scriptural message is reasonably clear. Having faith in God or Jesus is not about giving intellectual assent to any particular doctrine but about giving heart assent to loving sacrificially. That is where our faith should lie.

I don’t believe that I have said that there isn’t an explanation, or that it can’t be explained. I do contend though that the explanations aren’t scientific. They are observations that altruism has spread, at least in many cases, within various populations. We disagree about whether that has occurred through completely materialistic means, or whether in addition there is a cosmic intelligence that influences the result. It looks the same either way so it comes down to belief. The point I’m trying to make in this thread is that altruistic behaviour comes from cosmic intelligence. Yes, I’m a Christian. I grew up in a middle of the road Christian family and was taken to church however, I grew away from all of that and decide over 20 years later to sort what I believed about it all. Incidentally, my Christianity has evolved considerably the deeper I got into the subject. I guess I’m now sort of a cross between a John Polkinghorne – Rob Bell kind of Christian. CS Lewis and NT Wright among numerous have also influenced my thinking. OK, but none of that precludes the possibility of a god meme influencing our altruistic ideas. The observations would still look the same. I’m really glad you brought that up. I have no problem with that except once again my belief is that there is an external intelligent consciousness that influences that as well. I recently read a book called Where is Love by Hugh Broadent, who was a British vicar very involved in the animal rights movement to the degree he became a vegetarian. (I figure I should be doing the same but so far there is no indication of that happening.) Animals have consciousness and IMHO the god meme touches all consciousness. Also I believe, as Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, that the renewal of our world is for all of creation. That is exactly the point I’ve been trying to make. I believe that we have been given free will which means we have to take the bad with the good. OK, but that still doesn’t preclude the possibility of that supernatural entity continuing to influence us to choose love over hate. Let’s look at Occam’s Razor. You contend that a nearly infinite number of mindless processes essentially by chance has evolved into conscious sentient life. I contend that there is one creative intelligence, not restricted by the one dimension of time as we know it, that alone is responsible for our existence. Which is the simplest explanation.

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I don’t believe that I have said that there isn’t an explanation, or that it can’t be explained. I do contend though that the explanations aren’t scientific.

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There are certainly scientific elements there, even if you discount the cultural factors.

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The point I’m trying to make in this thread is that altruistic behaviour comes from cosmic intelligence

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And where does this cosmic intelligence get it’s morality from? Or doesn’t it have one?Regardless, I think we would want rather better evidence than your refusal to understand the alternatives.

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Let’s look at Occam’s Razor. You contend that a nearly infinite number of mindless processes essentially by chance has evolved into conscious sentient life. I contend that there is one creative intelligence, not restricted by the one dimension of time as we know it, that alone is responsible for our existence. Which is the simplest explanation

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The “nearly infinite” is something you made up in an attempt to rig the argument. In reality, by Occam’s Razor known natural processes should be preferred over any number of assumed entities.

Again, please, "loving sacrificially", what is that?And "giving heart assent to loving sacrificially" means to do what?And I don't follow the doctrine part. If one agrees with whatever this "heart assent" line means, is that not assenting intellectually to a very specific position?That whole sentence seems at odds with the usual pronouncements of the priests who insist faith is to make the deity the center of action and worship. You seem to take that away.Salvation by faith or works? Are you starting your own cult?

I pretty much dealt with this in my reply to Tangle which I just finished. I believe that caring does evolve but I also believe that there is an external loving intelligence that is the root behind it and continues to influence us in that direction. However ,I see the evolution of caring as distinct from physical evolution. What is the physical evidence for that other than just the observation that it happened? With Darwin’s evolutionary theory we have all the archeological evidence to go on. I haven’t said that it’s not possible. I can’t show that it’s impossible. Can you show that it’s not possible for there to be an outside influencer? Yes, evolution is an incredible process. I simply contend that when we look at it in whole it gives the appearance of design, which requires a designer. All of the evidence is physical and you presumably, (I could be wrong about this), that there is nothing but the physical. I concept of their being a cosmic intelligence does not present physical evidence. I don’t pretend to know how evolution works. I just accept that it does. We can see physical things happening and changing in a material sense. We can see that societies, families and individuals do impact the ideas and behaviours of others. However, you and others simply keep presenting that as evidence that there is nothing outside of our physical world.
I have had a subscription to Scientific American for years . I have a copy from several years back in which the headline on the cover read: “Hidden Worlds of Dark Matter – An entire universe may be woven silently with our own”. On the front page of the article itself claims that: “A shadow cosmos, woven silently into our own, may have its own rich inner life”.
The article approaches it with scientific evidence, that primarily results from their study on WIMPS. (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles.) The science beyond that went over my head, but there is evidence that there is more than what we are able to perceive with our 5 senses. We perceive the universe as pretty much infinitely large. However, science also tells us that it was once infinitely small. I can’t prove that there is a plan. I do think that the world appears to be designed requiring a designer, that the world is governed by physical laws such as gravity requiring a law giver, that we have beings that understand right and wrong requiring something beyond ourselves etc. Based on those beliefs it seems to me that there most likely is a plan. Maybe there is an answer, and the starting point would be a greater reality than we are able to observe. I remember reading at one point that we are an emergent property of a greater reality.

I would describe these more as bald assertions instead of points.What exactly are we supposed to say? A person says they believe X, Y, and Z. Ok, good on ya. Now what? Either you choose to believe the assertions made by a religion or you don't. I don't see any path that leads to these assertions, just a blunt acceptance that they are true.What we are seeing is humans telling other humans what God wants. We don't hear from God himself, or any other gods, deities, or supernatural entities. We just hear other people. What to do with this?

So your entire argument comes down to this To get this far you've accepted evolution and discarded Christianity as the necessary answer, yes? Any god will do but you have a preference for yours?So we have Deism. A god that created everything billions of years ago and created a program to make people from base chemicals over a few billions of years, on a single planet amongst unknown trillions of others. Gosh we're special, but it does seem like a waste of an infinite universe doesn't it?Well ok, no one can prove that wrong, it's just that there's no evidence for it. We're an awful long way from a god that intervenes in everyday life, but we're past that specific theism now. If you invoke an intelligent creator to explain the complexity of life, the universe and everything, you make something necessarily more complex. Hence Occam slices it away.He can do that because he knows that every other process ever discovered in our universe occurs naturally. There have been no godlike interventions. Also, since the enlightenment, at every point where god was required by religious to step in and explain something science proved it wrong, geocentrism, immutability of species, age of earth etc.And in any case, the causeless cause is no answer to anything. It leaves the question unanswered.

I agree that moral or loving motivation can be passed along to others. The example again, that I’ve used several times, is the idea of letting someone into traffic ahead of yourself and then they are more likely to do the same thing for someone else. Also, as in this example we don’t really have the opportunity. If we see someone drowning do we jump into try and save them risking our own life? Again, no time to ask. Again, that does not exclude an external toot. I assuming that term as I'm trying to stay away from specific faiths. God implies Christianity or even Judaism. Yes, that is your belief. I agree. The idea of an external loving consciousness is non-scientific but much more philosophical.

I don't have a problem with you believing whatever you'd like.
But this sort of idea is a discussion-ender for me.
If you don't want to deal with reality - what the evidence is telling us - then I'm not going to be able to say anything on a simple forum that will ever convince you otherwise.What you're saying is equivalent to:"I do believe rocks crumble from mountains and some end up underwater but I also believe that there is an external intelligence that is the root behind rocks being underwater and it continues to influence rocks in that direction."That, as well, is something that I cannot argue with. Over 160 years of archeological evidence.
Even more, really... but at least that last 160 years (since Darwin) has been focused in the more-correct direction.
I can't explain this to you in a forum post.All I can say is that all this evidence shows that evolution occurs, it affects living things and it affects all aspects of living things.Consider gravity - you've likely heard about Dark Matter and Dark Energy? These are aspects of gravity that currently have us stumped. We know they have "something" to do with gravity, but they don't fit "well" within our current understanding. This doesn't mean Newton's Theory or Einsteins Theory is wrong... it means there's more to learn, and once we learn it a bunch of other "kind of strange" areas of the Theory of Gravity will fall into place.Now consider evolution - there is no more Dark Matter or Dark Energy in The Theory of Evolution. There used to be areas like this... but we figured them out and grew the theory accordingly. Which is why Darwin's theory is only a pale shadow of the one we use today.If you type "mechanisms of biological evolution" into Google Scholar... you don't get 10 articles or 1000. There are over 4 million hits to this. Understand all that, and I'm sure you'll see. But I don't understand all that. I'm sure that no single person on the planet is an expert in all of it.Here's the basic concept:

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Mechanisms of evolution

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Key points:

• When a population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for a gene, it is not evolving, and allele frequencies will stay the same across generations.
• There are five basic Hardy-Weinberg assumptions: no mutation, random mating, no gene flow, infinite population size, and no selection.
• If the assumptions are not met for a gene, the population may evolve for that gene (the gene's allele frequencies may change).
• Mechanisms of evolution correspond to violations of different Hardy-Weinberg assumptions. They are: mutation, non-random mating, gene flow, finite population size (genetic drift), and natural selection.

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Do you understand what's going on there? It's easier to say when evolution is not happening than it is to list all the ways it can happen.All the ways evolution can happen are listed by identifying when "evolution is not happening because we don't see this".
And these are only categories of the ways evolution can happen. There's no room to list them all here.
But, each and every single one of them, with their evidence, is written about, studied, and understood within those 4 million scholarly hits.People dedicate their entire lives to studying and being-an-expert in a small fraction of those papers.
At some point, either you trust the self-correcting and corruption-protecting ways of science to be correct... or you can start to believe in conspiracy theories. It's up to you.
Remember... USA has scientists. Europe has scientists. China has scientists. Japan, Australia, Iran, Turkey.... Probably every country on the planet. All with differing religious beliefs, politics and family values. Yet they all agree on science. If that's not a reason to trust in science... I don't know what is. Can you show that it's not possible for there to be an outside influencer moving rocks underwater?
Of course not - buy why would anyone have any reason to do this, if we understand how rocks get underwater so well? (Plate tectonics, volcanic eruptions, other geological mechanics...)Why would anyone have any reason to suggest there's an outside influencer acting on biological evolution when we understand evolution so well?I'll tell you what, though: If you ever do find evidence that suggests an outside influencer exists, or is even needed... there's a Nobel prize in it for you and you'll become the most famous scientist of them all!
-this goes for evolution, rocks-being-underwater, and all other aspects of reality as wellSimply put, this point exists - but has no persuasive power.
Just like considering Santa Claus puts rocks underwater has no persuasive power. Sure - can't disprove it... but with what we know there's no need to suggest it. I think you're maybe using the wrong word. But science deals with the non-physical all the time.
Types of forcesPlease note the two main categories "Contact" and "Action-at-a-Distance"
Those listed in the Action-at-a-Distance are non-physical forces. That is, they do not contact things. They affect physical objects, but the forces themselves are non-contact... non-physical. Science has been dealing with things outside our physical world (Gravity, Magnetism...) for centuries.
Science is well aware that things exist outside the physical world.Science doesn't care if something is physical or not. It only cares is there's evidence to show that it actually exists. That's all. Only a tiny amount of extremist-atheists would limit themselves to thinking that "the physical is all there is!" When, clearly, it is not.Scientists have also known that we have more than 5 senses for a long time. There's no consensus yet... but scientists have evidence-based arguments for humans having between 22 and 33 senses.Perhaps it is not science that is stuck on a single idea and refusing to move into uncharted territory as new information comes to light?

Edited by Stile, : Heh... forgot the words "no more" in "Now consider evolution - there is no more Dark Matter or Dark Energy"... and it made reading that area very confusing. So I added in the words.