Indeed so be it, but I still don't think most genuinely put their faith or find meaning in that deity and are doing it mostly out of protest and spite. See the above quotes Merc with a mouth.
Don't lump art, philosophy and introspection with spirituality. Religion always tries to do that: take the best of humanity and say it's one of theirs.
Well I'm not "religion" first of all, I'm just me. Second of all, I'm not claiming those things are unique to religion or even exclusive to it, but they all are methods by which religion and spirituality are experienced and contextualized I write stories with themes I've internalized from prayer and meditation. I research thinkers to try and better grasp the nature of my soul. I spend hours at a time pondering and self-examining on what my beliefs are and the possible nature of the Divine. Third of all, part of the reason I believe in humanity as a whole is because of my faith. That everyone has potential for goodness and greatness. I was taught that the best way to exalt God is to exalt your fellow man, and vice versa. Lastly I just want to make it clear that I'm not saying this is anything more than a calm, respectful rebuttal. I'm not trying to convert you or insist I have all the answers and know beyond the shadow of a doubt my beliefs are objective fact. Just making that clear. The last thing I want is a shouting match.
So what? Religion is experienced and contextualized by cutting the little snips of foreskin off babies. Dispensing with spirituality does not mean dispensing with art, philosophy or introspection. I mostly gaze at my navel and write poetry about it, but whatever floats your boat I guess. No shouting match, you're simply wrong. Folks have experienced all of those without resorting to blaming something as diffuse as 'spirituality.'
First of all, where does "blame" come in? Second of all, you're right, but people have also experienced those things with spirituality. Indeed some of us first undertook introspection or such because we asked ourselves questions of faith and considered our actions. Just speaking from my experience. Lastly, I don't think you are wrong for not being spiritual or religious. I have a hunch we aren't quite clear on what exactly the other is trying to say. Tell me, from what position are you arguing, what point are you trying to articulate to me?
Indeed. I have no idea why anyone would take an obvious parody / stunt even semi seriously. Just take it for what it is and see the humour. Now let's talk about Jedi's, much more interesting and I could definitely get spiritual over the force. Come on now, that's proper
I've said before but I don't think they accept evolution by natural selection as much as they pretend. The important bit isn't the word evolution but the words natural selection. In other words the results are not pre-ordained, steered, guided or moving towards some sort of goal (besides gene survival). Which means the emergence of a species called homo sapiens is just a happy accident with no special meaning or significance. Which I don't think is something the catholic church accepts (even though it's a by-product of following the actual process of evolution by natural selection). I think what is accepted by the catholic church is something more like "evolution by supernatural prodding, where needed, to create the special humans".
Indeed. My best friend and I both swap philosophical about the Jedi and Sith as valid ways to live ones life and foster spirituality. Of course we are both otherwise religious anyway so following and meditating on what George Lucas said was "a synthesis of all religions. That you are accepting the belief that things in the universe are not random," is not too much of a stretch.
Not by what I was taught, just speaking as someone raised Catholic. We could never have happened given the wrong combination of circumstance or maybe some other form of sentient life would have arisen in our place. Homo sapien was not pre-ordained, and I say that as a practicing Catholic. “When we read about creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so. He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment.” ~Pope Francis Granted he does mention God "created human beings" but his point is that He didn't just reach down and "zap" us into existence fully formed. Where the belief comes in is that now that humans ARE here and we are capable of reason and free will, we have a responsibility to something greater and to our fellow man.
So what did he do? Were we formed by evolution or god? You can't accept both. Anyone that can say "god created human beings" has categorically not accepted evolution by natural selection. If you fully accept evolution by natural selection you have to also accept that humans were created by an autonomous process of mutation and differential reproduction. Where is god in that process? What part did he play?
"Evolution" should try to stick to proving evolutionary theories not disprove some supernatural position. But anyway. The point about that is that even though we can't identify or assume some kind of separate agent or agency - natural or otherwise. That's not enough to say: "the results are not pre-ordained, steered, guided or moving towards some sort of goal (besides gene survival)." Pre ordained is loaded, but let's ignore that, we know what you're getting at. Pre determined or simply determined can suffice. What decides we move toward gene survival by the way - or is that just a happy accident too I suppose ? Convenient that. I would like to read something substantive that somehow shows pure randomness over a level of determinism as the basis of the universe; If we are to believe we are just a "happy accident", or whether we were always on the cards from the moment the Universe popped into existence from absolute nothing - if in fact that is what happened. It's more of a blend to my understanding. After all no one or thing or mechanism we know is feeding in new information, axioms, energy. Perhaps there are mechanisms built in that "shuffle the pack" somewhat, but that's just speculative on my part as I accept some level of randomness (Free will for example). Once this Universe was set in motion there can only be so much randomness within the system. The rest is a matter of probability. And some things, maybe everything at some point turns to 100%. It's all about exactly how much information you have to work on and make predictions. If you're saying something is random, you're just not privy to enough information in your closed system - it's hidden from your eyes. Like I can't see through to the other side of the card at the top of the deck. It's like dice or a pack of cards. You can shuffle them, and you can't predict exactly which numbers will pop up next. But the number the next number is there; pre determined by the last shuffle. But they are still a closed system and sooner or later you know the double six will come or the blackjack and you can start to work out probabilities for those things happening. And as you follow the outcomes the more predictable it can become (card counting for example). If we simplify it more to a coin Toss of 50/50. We know there's a 50% chance that the next flip could be head or tails. But we know for a 100% certainty it will be one of those. If we had 100% information regards starting position, force and trajectory regards the flip we could predict and know the outcome of the next flip. But how do we predict the amount of force ? Then I suppose we have to ask ourselves in that instance is the Universe behaving more like a machine or like a person with free will that can change it's mind according to how it feels today. It's feeling a bit tired today so will only use 50% force to flip the coin? Us coming to be is just a hand the Universe always had to play somewhere, sometime perhaps. And to be honest I'm not even sure how random that somewhere and sometime is. It's pattern that is really running through the Universe, rather than some pure randomness. I think I am pretty confident I can back up that picture pretty well if need be. For patterns to emerge as they do, you need built in rules (axioms). I understand that Thermodynamics can put a pretty big spanner in the works when it comes to ideas of natural selection and it's connection to randomness. Although that's not an area I am up on. Maybe you can help me pinpoint how much of this is nonsense or not. http://progettocosmo.altervista.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=85 I need to ask what is it, for you exactly, that convinces you natural selection is predicated and dictated by some sort of pure randomness over patterns that are for the most part pre determined by axioms built in to the system (universe)? But hey look, I am assuming the Universe is a closed system, but for all I know it might not be. Interfering Spaghetti monsters and all that..
Putting those systems of autonomous processes in place. When God (supposedly) set the cogs in motion, you and I sitting here was not a pre-destined outcome. If the dinosaurs never went extinct or if cro magnons were killed off, nothing would circumvent natural selection to make humans rise. God is simply patient and knew that intelligence is an advantageous trait for almost any species. Smarter creatures know what to avoid and what's relatively safe, so they end up reproducing more than a less intelligent creature who ends up dead. So intelligent, self-aware life, on some planet at some point in time, would arise. It's like the Infinite Monkey Theorem, only the "monkey" in this case is the universe at large but the Shakespeare part would actually be quite fitting in this specific example.
That is what it does do. However there are ramifications to that work above an beyond that IMHO if you want to really think through it to a logical conclusion. Evolution doesn't disprove some supernatural position. It just happily proceeds without one (hence why it's subtitled "natural selection" and not "supernatural selection"). At a push you can insert a god to create the initial spark of life as that is still undecided but there's no god responsible directly for creating humans. It winds me up no end when religious people co-opt the work done on the theory of natural selection and say "yeah that's how my god chose to make humans". Nah. If that's what a person thinks then they need to put the work in to prove that theory. Don't get me wrong...natural selection is not a random process. Just the results are. If god used evolution to specifically create humans then you have to accept he sent a massive meteor to wipe out the dinosaurs first.
Actually quick address, would all of this be "off topic" at all? I mean at this point it's once again become the tired old "religion vs. science" false dichotomy argument rather than asking or pondering the original question or even turning the argument back on "are Christianity, Hinduism, Wicca, etc. 'true' religions?" If the digression is permissible, fine, but I did have to wonder.
Completely, %100, agreed. To answer your question or rather to address that supposition, I certainly don't dismiss the possibility He sent the meteor but I don't think that's what happened. The dinosaurs would have carried on, no great flood or anything to give rise to Adam and Eve. Just simply, no us.
This suggests that you believe your god is "hands off" - which surely is against the concept of a loving god who made you in his image?
Exactly. Especially as evolution by natural selection is such a harsh and cruel process built on the failure and death of millions of organisms.
