Does God exist?

[modest]

Originally Posted by nutronjon

It goes with an understanding of monad, dyad, triad, etc. so I really think there is a lot of reasoning with this point of view.

The problem, nutronjon, with this kind of mysticism... Well, let me quote you from another thread first...

Originally Posted by nutronjon

Why attack Deepak Chopra? What is his wrong?

Now, the problem is that these mystics and this mysticism don't produce science - they only "use" the science that others can create using the scientific method. Chopra "uses" quantum mechanics and other mystics whom you quote use science as a grab-bag of concepts to shape into whatever it is they're selling. But, when it comes to discovering the science and doing the science - where are they?

As you are a fan of mysticism let me put this in a language you'll take to better:

等着兔子跑过来撞死在树桩上。

These mystics are "waiting for the rabbit to hit the stump."

Other scientists (real scientists) are out hunting the rabbit or farming the field. They are capable of discovering the useful things that mystics then claim as their own. But, when it comes to killing the rabbit, all the mystic is able to do is wait by the stump.

That's my problem with pseudoscience. I understand if it isn't a problem you share. To each his own. But, It shouldn't escape notice that no one expects Deepak Chopra to advance the field of QM.

If the tree is so prosperous - where the hell is the fruit?

-modest

[freeztar]

I inadvertently ran across this article and it seems very pertinent to the topic. It's a Time magazine article entitled "Darwin's God". I haven't finished reading it yet, but so far it is quite good. It could potentially add some interesting discussion to this thread.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/ma...olution.t.html

Atran, who is 55, is an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, with joint appointments at the University of Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. His research interests include cognitive science and evolutionary biology, and sometimes he presents students with a wooden box that he pretends is an African relic. “If you have negative sentiments toward religion,” he tells them, “the box will destroy whatever you put inside it.” Many of his students say they doubt the existence of God, but in this demonstration they act as if they believe in something. Put your pencil into the magic box, he tells them, and the nonbelievers do so blithely. Put in your driver’s license, he says, and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells them to put in their hands, few will.

If they don’t believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?

Atran first conducted the magic-box demonstration in the 1980s, when he was at Cambridge University studying the nature of religious belief. He had received a doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University and, in the course of his fieldwork, saw evidence of religion everywhere he looked — at archaeological digs in Israel, among the Mayans in Guatemala, in artifact drawers at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Atran is Darwinian in his approach, which means he tries to explain behavior by how it might once have solved problems of survival and reproduction for our early ancestors. But it was not clear to him what evolutionary problems might have been solved by religious belief. Religion seemed to use up physical and mental resources without an obvious benefit for survival. Why, he wondered, was religion so pervasive, when it was something that seemed so costly from an evolutionary point of view?

The magic-box demonstration helped set Atran on a career studying why humans might have evolved to be religious, something few people were doing back in the ’80s. Today, the effort has gained momentum, as scientists search for an evolutionary explanation for why belief in God exists — not whether God exists, which is a matter for philosophers and theologians, but why the belief does.

[InfiniteNow]

Starts about 2 minutes in. Worth the watch.

There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain: Materialist Explanations for the Mind and Religious Belief

There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain - PZ Myers -...

There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain - PZ Myers -...

[Galapagos]

Watching the evo/bio explanations for religious behavior emerge is quite strange, and it always has me wondering how the religious are going to reconcile presupposition as this information becomes more well known.
Religion a figment of human imagination - being-human - 28 April 2008 - New Scientist

Religion a figment of human imagination
Andy Coghlan

Humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination.

That's the argument of anthropologist Maurice Bloch of the London School of Economics. Bloch challenges the popular notion that religion evolved and spread because it promoted social bonding, as has been argued by some anthropologists.

Instead, he argues that first, we had to evolve the necessary brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't physically exist, and the possibility that people somehow live on after they've died.

Once we'd done that, we had access to a form of social interaction unavailable to any other creatures on the planet. Uniquely, humans could use what Bloch calls the "transcendental social" to unify with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead. The transcendental social also allows humans to follow the idealised codes of conduct associated with religion.

"What the transcendental social requires is the ability to live very largely in the imagination," Bloch writes.

"One can be a member of a transcendental group, or a nation, even though one never comes in contact with the other members of it," says Bloch. Moreover, the composition of such groups, "whether they are clans or nations, may equally include the living and the dead."

Modern-day religions still embrace this idea of communities bound with the living and the dead, such as the Christian notion of followers being "one body with Christ", or the Islamic "Ummah" uniting Muslims.

[goku]

Originally Posted by modest

Did you read post 151? Did you see it printed in black and white in THE holy bible God abhors people right down to his very soul. He hates them and he'll kill them and desecrate their carcass. That's what it says.

Your response in post 153 looked like you got that.

If you think that's wrong then just say so. If you don't believe every part of the bible is right then just say so. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

-modest

he abhors sinfull, evil people. the place you are refurring to in the Bible was talking about people that made idols before God, like buda.

[goku]

Originally Posted by nutronjon

Why is prison suppose to be punishment? What good do you expect to come from that?

What is your understanding of laws? What is your understanding of human nature?

because man only learns through pain, as someone said.
it is human nature to sin, i don't know how to explain this to you but i'll try.
if you have children, notice how there is no need for you to TEACH them to do wrong. ex; hit each other, run with scissors. the need is to teach them right.

[goku]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

~Epicurus

do you wish Him to start with you?

[goku]

i just put the mouse arrow on the red boxes and it said "goku is infamous around these parts"

Matthew 5:11
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by goku

i just put the mouse arrow on the red boxes and it said "goku is infamous around these parts"

Yes, but since your boxes are red, it's not the good kind of infamous.

[nutronjon]

Originally Posted by modest

The problem, nutronjon, with this kind of mysticism... Well, let me quote you from another thread first...



Now, the problem is that these mystics and this mysticism don't produce science - they only "use" the science that others can create using the scientific method. Chopra "uses" quantum mechanics and other mystics whom you quote use science as a grab-bag of concepts to shape into whatever it is they're selling. But, when it comes to discovering the science and doing the science - where are they?

As you are a fan of mysticism let me put this in a language you'll take to better:

等着兔子跑过来撞死在树桩上。

These mystics are "waiting for the rabbit to hit the stump."

Other scientists (real scientists) are out hunting the rabbit or farming the field. They are capable of discovering the useful things that mystics then claim as their own. But, when it comes to killing the rabbit, all the mystic is able to do is wait by the stump.

That's my problem with pseudoscience. I understand if it isn't a problem you share. To each his own. But, It shouldn't escape notice that no one expects Deepak Chopra to advance the field of QM.

If the tree is so prosperous - where the hell is the fruit?

-modest

Chopra is a medical doctor with a Hindu back ground. Fritjof Capra has written several books discussing the similarities between Eastern philosophy and modern physics. He has done research in high-energy physics at several European and American universities. Isaac Asimov is a well known scince writer and endorsed Rudy Rucker's book "Mind Tools". Rudy Rucker himself, is a professor of Computer Science.

Michael S. Schneider is an educator. He has a Bachlor of Science degree in Mathematics from the Polytechnic Institute of Brookly and a Master's degree in Math Education from the University of Florida. He writes of the ancient Greek concepts that are the foundation of our sciences.

Do you have any more question?