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Author Topic:   Christianity is Morally Bankrupt
Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2321 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


Message 217 of 652 (695240)
04-04-2013 1:12 AM
Reply to: Message 215 by GDR
04-03-2013 6:47 PM


Re: It's important
Hi GDR.
GDR writes:
Of course we haven't found anything in our understanding of natural stuff that requires an intelligent agent. We study cell structure. We study DNA etc but we don't know why they came into existence. We only study natural stuff. The atheistic POV is that they just happened. These incredibly complex cells somehow just poofed out of nowhere without pre-existing thought behind them, and then they evolved into creatures with the intelligence to study them. Frankly I can't begin to have enough faith to believe that.
The first big problem here is that you are raising the "why" question. That's the question that no one - nobody - can answer with any kind of accuracy, reliability, or honest certainty. No deist, no theist, no atheist can truthfully assert that they know how to answer that question. We have no stable, confirmable basis for testing the relative merits of potential answers - indeed, given the vastness of the reality in which we have emerged, and the current limits of our cognition, I honestly doubt that we have the capacity to conceive of any answer that would be coherent.
Hence, atheists don't raise the "why" question. Whenever "why" shows up in scientific research, it's always a paraphrase of "what" or "how" - for example, when a scientist asks, "Why do we see this particular life form with this particular set of attributes?", he or she is really asking, "What are the natural conditions that caused this set of attributes to arise and succeed as a life form?", i.e. "How did this actually come about?", or possibly "What sort of impact will this set of attributes have on the environment where this life form resides?", i.e. "How will it affect the ongoing existence of this life form and of those that it has contact with?"
As for the "atheistic POV" being "they just happened" - no, that is a serious misunderstanding on your part - I'd go so far as to call it a demeaning mischaracterization. For any given phenomenon that we seek to understand, there are causative factors. These factors operate within the scope of natural, observable events and conditions. We would like to comprehend these factors to the extent that we can see them as behaving in ways that are consistent and predictable.
To the extent that we have not yet reached that level of comprehension for a given phenomenon, we are continuing to tease things apart, zoom in, zoom out, change our angle of perspective, whatever we can think of to find a way for the thing to make consistent sense. When that sort of comprehension is too far beyond our ability, we leave it (for now) under the heading of "random" - but the whole point of the enterprise is to reduce the range of things we view as "random."
As for things "poofing out of nowhere" - I would have expected better from you, GDR. You should know quite well that it is the theistic POV that relies on things being "poofed out of nowhere" (creatio ex nihilo is the official "term of art" among theologians). The atheistic view is that, so long as we're talking about any measurable point in time after t=0, everything we know of has come from something else that we can know of, based on confirmable evidence. We can't really talk about what there was exactly at (let alone before) t=0; we don't (yet) have the cognitive ability, let alone the vocabulary or syntax, to speak of that.
It seems to me that your "lack of faith" for "believing" in a purely natural, non-intentional explanation for life, is either a lack of comprehension about the scale of the statistics at play in these matters (lots of people do have a problem with grasping the relationship between "millions", "billions", "trillions", etc), or else a sense of feeling insulted because something has punctured your bubble of innate narcissism ("My life too valuable to be a mere coincidence!").
Science may find a chemical way of starting some form of life, but that will only be further evidence that it took intelligence to make it happen.
No. What you've given us here is a case of equivocation: you are using "intelligence" to refer to two very different things, and it doesn't work for one of them.
There is no "intelligence" involved in the movement of electrons from an anode to a cathode; whether it's the chaotic flood in a lightning bolt or the carefully orchestrated dance through a silicon chip, the electrons do not, in themselves, evince intelligence. Likewise, there is no "intelligence" involved in the (electro)chemical reactions that form and drive living cells. It's physics and chemistry, operating in ways that (we expect) can be understood in roughly mechanical terms.
Intelligence is an emergent property whose occurrence can, in a real sense, be predicted, once the relevant rules of physics, chemistry, etc, are adequately understood. It's a very long chain of causation to be followed, from mere elements to molecules to self-replicating proteins to cells to organisms to central nervous systems to awareness to self-consciousness to doing experiments. But it can be done, and it's not a matter of faith.
One way to look at intelligence is that it is the ability to conceive, understand, and utilize chains of causation. The atheist POV is that these chains exist whether or not there is any intelligence around to appreciate them. We now have the observable fact that intelligence has come into existence, and is learning about and making use of these chains. It's too soon to come up with anything beyond wild guesses as to "why" this is happening, but we can at least continue to improve our understanding of it in terms of "what" and "how". That should suffice.
For that matter, why aren't cells continuing to be formed from lifeless matter?
That's a very good question. Science should definitely not forget to keep asking that, and looking for the relevant evidence. It may be that the "one occurrence" to which we can all trace our ancestry was not unique; but having succeeded so spectacularly, this one instance may have ruled out (e.g. consumed, disabled or otherwise thwarted) other distinct occurrences on this planet.
(I put scare-quotes on "one occurrence" because I don't know for certain whether there might have been a multitude of "related co-occurrences" - i.e. conditions that led to many thousands or even millions of similarly self-replicating units kicking into action "independently" within a relatively short time frame.)
Edited by Otto Tellick, : (minor grammar repair)
Edited by Otto Tellick, : (yet another grammar repair)
Edited by Otto Tellick, : (third time's a charm - surely no more repair is needed by now)

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 215 by GDR, posted 04-03-2013 6:47 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 220 by GDR, posted 04-04-2013 2:48 AM Otto Tellick has not replied

  
Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2321 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


Message 219 of 652 (695245)
04-04-2013 2:04 AM
Reply to: Message 216 by GDR
04-03-2013 7:12 PM


Re: it's all about knowledge and honesty.
GDR writes:
Actually, to a large degree the other primary religions in the world agree on most stuff until you start getting into extremism. For example just take The Golden Rule that we were talking about.
Agreed. The things that are held in common by the great majority of religions past and present form a significant body of positive evidence, supporting the proposition that all these religions have arisen through human innovation to address natural issues that are common to the human condition.
Collaboration is crucial to our survival. Religions that don't foster that behavior will have a low likelihood of success. Forms of social organization must accommodate the special needs involved in raising children. Religions that ignore or defy these needs won't get very far. Other issues can be mentioned, but these are two big ones.
Various societies and religions will differ in terms of how they implement the things that need to be done - in particular, the amount of quid pro quo and indulgence toward individual differences/preferences (to get willing cooperation) vs. the amount of forceful coercion (to get unquestioning obedience). It's always a complex set of factors to balance - being too strict can be just as bad a failure as being too lenient.
But the one striking commonality that stands out, whenever religion is invoked to address these common needs, is that religion provides a means for externalizing the source of authority that demands collaboration: the overwhelming preponderance of evidence shows us that those who bestow rewards on the voluntary collaborators, and those who enforce coercion on the reluctant, do so in the name of mysterious entities that never actually speak or appear to the living (only to long-dead characters described in old stories, or in the "dreams" and "visions" of a select few), yet are said to wield superior power over everyone in the group.
That's where we've been as a species for all these millennia. But now - starting as recently as the Hellenic period, we are finding the wherewithal to see these patterns for what they are. We can see, in terms of real-world evidence, why collaboration is essential to our existence, and we can see the various methods that work, and the ones that don't, when it comes to tweaking social structures to optimize collaboration, child rearing, and so on. And we can tell when someone is making stuff up, as opposed to saying something true. Science is becoming a bigger part of that. It's long overdue.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 216 by GDR, posted 04-03-2013 7:12 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 224 by GDR, posted 04-04-2013 7:29 PM Otto Tellick has replied

  
Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2321 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


(1)
Message 231 of 652 (695504)
04-06-2013 6:05 AM
Reply to: Message 224 by GDR
04-04-2013 7:29 PM


Re: it's all about knowledge and honesty.
GDR writes:
Otto Tellick writes:
The things that are held in common by the great majority of religions ... [support] the proposition that all these religions have arisen through human innovation to address natural issues that are common to the human condition.
I agree that it is a valid argument but I contend that it is just as valid to suggest that it is true because of God working through the hearts, minds and imaginations of the human creatures He created.
The problem with your contention is that, if there is really exactly one God to account for this commonality, then this God's ability to "work through the hearts [etc] of the human creatures he created" shows a remarkable - and I would say irreconcilable - degree of variability and inconsistency. {AbE: To clarify: the people presumably affected by this intervention don't even agree on the attributes, identity, or quantity of the supernatural being(s) exerting this influence.} (The underlying premises required for monotheism would preclude viewing this as incompetence or malice; I guess "mystery" is the only available term to describe the situation in a theistic view.)
You want to attribute the commonality of basic human "virtues" to intervention and "personal" involvement from a specific, singular, all-powerful, creator God. But faced with the reality that most people on the planet don't actually accept or believe in the specific God you're trying to describe - or at least will be inclined to deny many of the particular claims you make regarding this God - you have to assert that "they don't know God", or possibly are "rebelling against God", even while you acknowledge that many of them are effectively no different from you in terms of virtuousness.
That strikes me as a very difficult case to sustain.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : (added bracketed comment, hoping to clarify)
Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 224 by GDR, posted 04-04-2013 7:29 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 232 by GDR, posted 04-06-2013 12:29 PM Otto Tellick has not replied

  
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