There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

As I said, co-operation within species and between species aid survival.

For example...

Within species.
- Pre-humans likely lived in small groups similar to how primates live today and almost certainly exhibited kinship altruism, where they helped or even sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the kin group. However in a modern society where we do not live in small groups of relatives, this principle could have 'misfired', meaning we apply this to non-relatives. Alternatively, we could have just evolved the principle of co-operation, realising that it leads to a better society and thus great chances of survival. Most likely both of these principles are in play in modern humans.

- Vampire bats. From Wikipedia: ”A potential example of reciprocal altruism is blood-sharing in the vampire bat, in which bats feed regurgitated blood to those who have not collected much blood themselves knowing that they themselves may someday benefit from this same donation; cheaters are remembered by the colony and ousted from this collaboration”
Read more about it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/mammals/explore/altruism.shtml
"But why should one bat share with another? Bats within a colony are not necessarily relatives, and so there seems to be no reason why they should be so charitable. Needless to say, there is a good reason."

- Chimpanzees, bonobos and other primates have shown clear co-operation and altruism.

Cross-species altruism.
- ”Though much altruism in nature is kin-directed, not all is: there are also many examples of animals behaving altruistically towards non-relatives, and indeed towards members of other species. Kin selection theory cannot help us understand these behaviours. The theory of reciprocal altruism, developed by Trivers (1971), is one attempt to explain the evolution of altruism among non-kin. The basic idea is straightforward: it may benefit an animal to behave altruistically towards another, if there is an expectation of the favour being returned in the future. (‘If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours’.) The cost to the animal of behaving altruistically is offset by the likelihood of this return benefit, permitting the behaviour to evolve by natural selection. For obvious reasons, this evolutionary mechanism is termed ‘reciprocal altruism’.

For reciprocal altruism to work, there is no need for the two individuals to be relatives, nor even to be members of the same species. However, it is necessary that individuals should interact with each more than once, and have the ability to recognize other individuals with whom they have interacted in the past.[1] If individuals interact only once in their lifetimes and never meet again, there is obviously no possibility of return benefit, so there is nothing to be gained by behaving altruistically. However, if individuals encounter each other frequently, and are capable of identifying and punishing ‘cheaters’ who have refused to behave altruistically in the past, then reciprocal altruism can evolve. A non-altruistic cheater will have a lower fitness than an altruist because, although he does not incur the cost of behaving altruistically himself, he forfeits the return benefits too -- others will not behave altruistically towards him in the future. This evolutionary mechanism is most likely to work where animals live in relatively small groups, increasing the likelihood of multiple encounters and making cheating harder to get away with.

The concept of reciprocal altruism is closely related to the Tit-for-Tat strategy in the well-known ‘Prisoner's Dilemma’ game from game theory. In this game, players interact in pairs and may adopt one of two possible strategies: cooperate (C) or defect (D). The payoffs to each player, which in this context can be thought of as increments of reproductive fitness, depend not only their own strategy but also on their opponent's. Payoff values are shown in the matrix below. (The actual numbers used in the payoff matrix are not important; it is only the inequalities that matter.)”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

- For a real life example of this take the honey guide bird and the honey badger. The badger cannot find the honey, and the bird cannot break into the hive. So, the bird leads the badger to the honey, the badger breaks in, and they share the honey. They help non-relatives, indeed, different species entirely, because they both end up in a greater position after: receiving half of the rewards rather than none.

 

I'm not a social darwinist myself but it seems to me that you can very easily formulate arguments for helping others from an evolutionary standpoint.

Modern medicine allows many disabled people to work, which benefits everyone; therefore, we have an incentive to help the disabled. An educated population will greatly enlarge the pool of skilled workers in all trades and professions, which will help everyone in society; therefore, we have an incentive to provide education to the masses.

 

People with even the 'worst' impairments make massive contributions, look at Prof Steven Hawkins.

Also one of my tutors at university was born with a degenerative eye problem...he’s a lecturer, has written many books and is/was a part of the disability movement.

These people help with our ‘evolution’ more than 99% of the ‘able’ bodied people.

 

Religious messages can sometimes strike below the belt.
They're designed to make people doubt themselves with the "what if you're wrong - imagine the consequences!!" approach.
I think this "There's probably no God so just enjoy your life" is the perfect counter and I think it's a very fitting response to the Alpha Course posters being placed around.
To be fair, the Alpha Course posters try to appeal to curiosity rather than fear.
That said, the course does teach eternal damnation for those not saved.

That Stephen Green seems to be a major tool.
The words "People don't want to be preached at" coming from him?
Saying "Relax and enjoy your life" is his idea of preaching?


And Topher, it took some finding this time but I managed to find a single line of yours that I disagree with!
(That said, my disagreement is probably just with your wording - I'm half expecting you to reply with something like "That's pretty much what I was trying to say")

I think our goals are much more complex than survival.
I think that people forget that evolution is merely description of what has happened.
I think that humans are the only ones complex enough to conceptualise "survival" and thereby aim for it.
The rest of the animal kingdom has more basic aims like satisfy hunger or get laid.

I watched Wildcats the other day and my mum pointed out how despite these leopards being an endangered species, they seems more interested in lazing around rather than getting to work raising a population.
None of them 'aim' for survival, it's that those with aims that cause them to survive do so, and those without such aims fail to survive.
It might be that the "aims" that these wildcats evolved to have are no longer sufficient for their species to survive.
They don't have a "goal to survive", they just have goals and if they result in survival then they will still be with us in a 100 years or so.

"Survival" merely determined which animals with which aims are still around today.
I'm not saying that we don't aim to survive - I think we all do.
But I think it would be a major mistake to assume that to be a priority aim over all others.
I'll agree that our aims generally result in our survival - otherwise we wouldn't be around today - evolution seems to support this result.
But to say that we have a direct aim to survive takes a further step which isn't justified.

 

I don't mean we conceptualise and then consciously aim for survival. I mean the instinct for survival is part of our nature. Of course, us humans can and do conceptualise and consciously aim for survival, but it isn't necessary for my point.

Societies function because of our instinct to survive. What makes us survive, such as co-operation, is what makes societies function.

It explains why it happened.

Right.
And why do they want to satisfy hunger? To survive.
Why do they want to get laid? To further their genes. i.e. to survive.
It's all about survival.

I'd contend that these "basic aims" of the animal kingdom are pretty much the same "aims" of humans.

 

if human basic aims are survival, why are we the only species to take our own lives?

 

we arent actually

Alot of species 'give up', which could be understood as taking their own life. There is no way of determining if an animal TRULY commits suicide (as they cant talk about their pain/emotion) but we can find clues as to why they have died.

Dogs not eating/drinking after their master dies.
Rats giving up after not being able to find their cheese in the maze.
Lions found dead next to their hunting partners from dehydration/starvation.
Some animals have even been found to jump from heights after losing a friend/master.

But can we really know if this is suicide? Perhaps its a version of "learned helplessness" where they think that no matter what they do, they can't survive, so they just give up.

I dunno.

BTW- An example of learned helplessness:

When presented with food, a dog salivates. Pavlov discovered that when presenting a dog with food, and ringing a bell at the same time, the dog still salivates. After doing this for a period of time, just the sound of the bell makes the dog salivate.

Now, in another experiment, instead of bell=food, the experimenter made a bell=a small shock. The idea was that after a while, the sound of the bell would make the dog run away or freak out. They put this dog into a small box, separated by a small wall in the middle that the dog could see over. When they again rang the bell, the dog just laid there, unmoving. The dog learned to be helpless from its conditioning.

sorry for the long post

 

I did say I was probably attacking your wording rather than what you actually believed, that said I still disagreed with this bit.

This seems wrong to me.
When it comes to eating or sleeping there is no further why.
They just aim for it with no deeper target behind it.
They're not 'trying' to survive at all, survival is just a criteria for them to still be alive to have these aims.
Like I gave the example of the Leopards nearing extinction, they'd raise young like their natural aims directed them, but if they were aiming to survive then they'd raise more. They need more young to survive as they are an endangered species.
Instead, they are happy to spend more time sleeping and lazing around.
Another point is that if you made them infertile or even impotent, they don't lose the will to live even though their 'aim' of survival, the objective which behind all their actions supposedly lie, has been foiled.
Animals who have been surgically neutered (and didn't feel the pain) don't even noticed the difference.
There's just some aims that used to occur to them that don't any more.

Survival is too complex/abstract for non-human psychology.
I think that only humans are complex enough to make survival an aim and even then most of us have higher priorities we care about, and we don't always care whether

I disagree.
Different animals have evolved through different situations.
Therefore different "aims" were beneficial and today's surviving creatures were selected accordingly.
e.g. Humans usually need social acceptance while Cats tend to prefer their own company except when mating or raising young.

 

"theres probably no god"

Big softy atheists! sounds more like a bunch of tentative agnostics!!

lol!

 

You're still misunderstanding what I am saying.

I am NOT taking about a conscious effort to survive. I am NOT talking about survival as an aim. I am not saying they consciously aim to do things which help them survive. I'm talking about instinct. Through natural selection, their instincts lead them to behave in a way which aids survival. That is basic evolution. Natural selection selects those traits which aids survival, because in evolutionary term, survival is our 'goal', survival is all that matters.

No. You're thinking of a survival as a conscious human-based concept. I'm talking about survival from an evolutionary perspective. Survival from an evolutionary perspective applies to cockroaches as much as it applies to humans. Of course what makes each individual animal/species more likely to survive is contingent on all sorts of things, but that is irrelevant to the wider issue of survival itself, which applies to all equally.

 

If you're talking from an evolutionary stand point then probably best to drop the words 'aim' and 'goal' altogether.
These words imply a normativity that's just out of place in the purely descriptive context of scientific theory.

 

Hence the scare quotes when I used the terms.

 

Fair enough. I can't argue with the scare quotes!!

 

Here in the U.S. there are now advertisements on buses in Washington D.C. that say, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness sake." Alongside a person in a santa suit.

I don't understand aetheists motivation.

 

I can't speak for all atheists but part of my motivation is generally that I don't want the unfounded and primitive bed-time stories of others to dictate how I live my life or get me killed.
I'd also like my point of view as respected as the religious view point currently is.
It's not too much to ask.

 

QFT

 

I'd also like our children brought up and educated so as to have a reasonable stab at becoming intelligent, rational and open minded people unwilling to accept the answer "God did it!" to ANY question.
Children taught HOW to think rather than WHAT to think.
Children presented with our best understanding of the universe based on evidence and experiment and then given the time and space to decide for themselves before early childhood brainwashing can take an effect.
So we can end once and for all the ridiculous situation where children are taught the ancient emnities of their parents before they even have the reasoning faculties to understand that Santa is not real
I'd like woo-woo of all kinds debunked, derided and eventually discarded so that the generation that follows doesn't fall prey to the same charlatans, scams, faith healers, exorcists and all round stupidity and gullibility that this generation does.

Again...I don't think that's too much to ask.

 

Unfortunately, I don't find anything in this discussion that speaks to an improvement of the quality of life for the general Human population. What I think I am hearing is the same old "turf wars" among people who believe differently and want to be recognized as "right".

Here in the US, the majority of Americans believe in the existence of God. I daresay that, also, most American resent being told how to establish and maintain a relationship with that God regardless of who is doing the talking. I find it telling that instead of grabbing on to the portion of the message that encourages people to enjoy what blessings life provides and to "do the right thing" when the opportunity presents itself, people with religious affiliations chose to rant about the more esoteric (and less provable) part of the message. Perhaps it is good to remember that religions are essentially "spirtuality-themed businesses" and that what is really being discussed is what power group is holding on to what market share. I doubt seriously that most religions see believers as anything more than revenue. FWIW.

Best Wishes,

Bruce

 

For that particular add? I believe it's to make people who may feel isolated around Christmas aware that there are others who also do not believe or are skeptical about the existence of God.

 

Spending all of one's time thinking about god only lures one farther from the Path.