Choosing a faith

I doubt that there is any such thing as a cosmic intelligence. The closest we get to that is with thoughtful people working together. The cooperative enterprise of science does pretty well. But the creationists reject them. I agree with your criticism of the church. However, I stopped believing in the resurrection long ago. Apart from that, I do think yours makes for a better outlook on life that what typically comes from the churches.

Some background. I dropped out of Christianity almost 60 years ago. And, at that time, I pretty much decided that I didn't want to get involved in religion. I don't need to know the reasons for your belief. You are entitled to believe as you wish. I think I did indicate that I disagree with the idea of a cosmic intelligence. But I'm not saying you are wrong. I only say that I disagree. But perhaps we have few common interests so there might not be much to discuss.Continuing with a response to Message 27: There, I can agree. I take the view that all life is intelligent. Yes, a mouse is more intelligent than a tree, but there even some intelligence in the tree.I can agree that there is something intelligent about evolution. But that comes from distributed intelligence -- a little in each organism -- rather than intelligence concentrated in a single mind. You might be looking at "fitness" too narrowly. There's a notion of "inclusive fitness" which counts what you contribute to the population as a whole.

I don't have a problem with that. But there is a problem if you write it down and expect others to follow the God that you want when that might not be the God that they want.If you make up the God that you want, then best to keep it to yourself.

Right and wrong are human concepts. They are invented by humans.I'm not sure what that has to do with "totally materialistic world". But then I'm not a materialist so maybe I don't understand "totally materialistic world".

We see people making it up. Does existence exist?

I see them put up one-way signs on a street. That defines the right way.In such a case, it is not a "belief or faith" issue. It is a social convention.

You are inventing your own God.Actually, this is very common. Most Christians claim they worship the Christian God. But they argue and disagree about the details of that God's character. That's because they have invented their own God, but agreed to say that it is the Christian God.Why not just take life as it comes, and without inventing your own God? Yes, there are aspects of our experience that we cannot completely explain. But we can get along without needing everything to be explained. We can celebrate the gaps in our knowledge, because they provide an opportunity for future discovery and learning.

This is just making feeble excuses for God. All standards that we know about, are human standards. No God was involved.

What does "mindless" actually mean?When we use our minds, a lot of what we are doing is simulating experiences in our thoughts and running trial and error tests on those simulations.Evolution is itself a trial and error system. It isn't a simulation, but it is real time trial and error. It should not be surprising that evolution can do what minds do. And it can sometimes do it better.You are trying to impose your ideas from human thought. Have you considered that nature may have different ways of doing something analogous?

This is the dumbest of creationist arguments, although it is one that is much repeated.No, it isn't all chance. Whether there is a mind or intelligence involved depends on what you mean by "mind" and what you mean by "intelligence". Somehow the doubters of evolution are unwilling to ever give useful definitions.Yes, there is intelligence behind the processes, because evolution itself is intelligent.Every biological organism has a tiny bit of intelligence which it uses is choosing its behavior.No, I don't see any reason to believe that there is a single intelligent agent behind it all. Rather, what we have is a distributed intelligence that comes from the little bit of intelligence in each organism.Yes, humans are individual intelligent agents. But when you look at human intelligence, you begin to notice that this is also a distributed intelligence, arising from a little bit of intelligence in each neuron.Biological systems are engaged in trial and error testing. "Survival of the fittest" amounts to the survival of the results of successful testing. Natural selection amounts to the collecting and concentrating of the successes and elimination of the errors. To me, this seems very intelligent, though it is a different from of intelligence from what we normally see with human activity.

I'm agnostic on the question of whether there is a god. To put that in perspective, I'm also agnostic on the question of whether there are leprechauns or gremlins.Actions speak louder than words. The actions of Christians belie their claims of belief.Take an example. The Trumpian Christians believe that their God wanted Trump to win the 2020 election. They also believe that their God is omnipotent and could have affected how voters chose to vote. And they believe that their God is omnipotent and omniscient so could not be affected by attempts at fraudulent voting. And yet they believe that the result of the election was fraudulent.They also believe that there God is omnipotent, yet they stormed the capitol on Jan 6th because they didn't expect God to do the job for them.There's a whole bunch of confusion and incompatibility there.

Many of them have been quite open about it.

When you study the nature of your God, you will really be studying your own nature.

May I recommend a book. Why I Left, Why I Stayed: Conversations on Christianity Between an Evangelical Father and His Humanist SonTony Campolo is an Evangelical Christian, somewhat on the liberal side. You will probably see him as having views somewhat like yours.Bart Campolo is his son. He was a Christian, but he left Christianity. He is still very much a humanist.The book has alternating chapters by the two of them and where they disagree.Bart has been through the kind of issues that concern you. He has thought a lot about them. He still considers himself to be religious, but in the sense of natural religion. He now sees the natural world as all that there is.I don't know whether he will persuade you. But I think you will find that he challenges you. So give it a try.I still have the book on my Kindle, and can discuss it if you want to start a thread about it.

LOL.I am not a fan of Richard Carrier.I do respect Tim O'Neill.(We may be drifting off-topic).