Note that atheism vs. theism is not evolution vs. creation. Belief in a deity does not require belief in creation, and there is actual, direct evidence for evolution, not just the utter lack of evidence for a deity that shows up in the other argument. For example, Wulf is a theist who believes in evolution. I am an atheist who believes in evolution. I think MT is a theist who believes in creation. Of course, these beliefs are connected - creationism implies theism, though belief in evolution does not imply atheism.
Reply to Wulf from page 88, in which I adopt Plan Bold Green Italicized Text in order to slightly shorten the massive textwall:
THEWULFMAN wrote:Darth Crater wrote:I see a contradiction here. Previously, you said that you think humanity is not alone, and that you believe life is abundant in the universe. Why do you think this would not hold true at the scale of deific beings?
Honestly I have no idea(something I think more people need to admit rather than come up with crap reasons and excuses). Fair enough. There's no way to prove anything one way or another so I'm willing to agree with what I was taught. And actually, I've had the idea that my God is actually the same God(s) other religions worship, they just interpret him/her/it differently and worship him/her/it differently. I'm entirely confident God could have gone to other "alien" cultures as well, and he/she/it could be worshiped by dozens of sentient species for all we know right now. I suppose all of that is possible. However, if the deity you worship is not exclusive to Christianity, and you don't believe most of the Christian-specific doctrine, are you in fact a Christian?
Also, I don't know if you saw, but I have the idea in the back of my head that God is a collective consciousness, thus not being a single entity but several as one. Which would explain that away nicely. But again it's just a theory. Then, the question just becomes - why only one collective consciousness? I suppose it's possible only one would take a direct interest in us, though, which would explain it.Darth Crater wrote:-snip-
I pretty much agree with you yes. Our main difference is one of us is an atheist and one isn't. We share most of the same "beliefs" (if you can call looking at reality a "belief") since we draw most of our conclusions from facts. I'd rather have you here than a "straw atheist", I can tell you that much for sure.
What does a soul do, what is it, why do I think we have them, and how can we detect them? All good questions. I don't know. I can only speculate generally. Unless I have subjective evidence. I'm actually surprised you've been so lenient about my subjective evidence, usually people get all over your grill and call bull. Perhaps you're more reasonable than I thought and/or you're just being non-confrontational. Well, that's the thing about subjective experiences. You're the only one who can really judge whether it's valid, and it's not really easy to do that. You can only judge it against objective evidence, and even then our brains are wired to support our own subjective experience over anything else (as we see with countless superstitions, gamblers who think they've found patterns or systems, etc). You seem relatively rational, so if it is contradicted by objective evidence I think you'll accept it eventually. (Or, I could be making up excuses, and just being nonconfrontational because I'm actually talking with someone competent after 30 pages of Homestar. Not really sure.)
- What is it:
Perhaps it is the essence of the electrical and chemical reactions in our brain, and it is simply a metaphor. Perhaps souls are energy, made up of known and/or unknown particles. I'm confident science will prove their existence someday. Well, if you define the soul as a metaphor for the brain's processes, that's perfectly valid, but no longer supports an afterlife or anything outside the physical processes we know about. If souls were made out of anything known to current physics, we should be able to detect them.- What is its purpose:
I don't think souls and our personality are mutually exclusive. I don't think we get our personality from our soul, I think moreover a soul is "simply" a "recording" device for who we are. Our personality if formed from genetics and our surrounding, not our soul. Alright, so it's simply a device that reads and does not write? In order to measure something, you generally have to interact with it, but it could be doing something too weak/obscure for us to measure presently.- What does it do:
I don't think the soul "does" much other than exist within us and continues to exist after we die. I don't know if it has a purpose in life, I just believe it has one after death.- How do we detect them:
How we detect a soul is even harder to try and answer because we don't know what it is exactly. Lol, it's like catch 22. We can't detect it until we know what it is, but we won't know what it is until we detect it. Yes, this is a problem. Normally we detect things first, then try to find and define them. That won't work here, though - if anything, we're doing the opposite. Still, if we can work out what exactly we're looking for we can eventually prove, disprove, or Occam's Razor that particular thing.Perhaps it's a spiritual thing and we can personally feel them through enlightenment. I believe "enlightenment" is the understanding of yourself/your soul completely and thoroughly. Problem - "spiritual" generally means "relating to the soul", and given this your speculation is circular. Likewise, enlightenment as "understanding your soul" being used to understand your soul. Could you redefine these terms?- Why do I believe in them:
I believe they exist because I believe in an afterlife, and more importantly because I've had personal experiences with what you'd crudely call "spirits." Souls are the only explanation for the spirits I've interacted with (if you can call it that. It's been pretty one sided). I've actually recorded a couple EVPs before, although I don't know if I can find any of the audio bites. I still have one on my cell phone but I don't have any way of transferring that to my computer sadly. Oh and as a note, I think most EVPs are crap. It has to be very clear and understandable for me to not claim it's crap. I'm a skeptic at heart.
As I said to Narg, you should believe in souls before believing in an afterlife, not the other way around. I could be wrong, but it feels to me that you think of "souls" simply as the things required for an afterlife. If you did not believe there was an afterlife, would you still believe souls existed?
Now, we get to those subjective experiences. If these "spirits" exist, we must be able to interact with or observe them (and you claim you've done so). In what ways specifically do they affect the world? Why has scientific testing not verified them acting in these ways? How specifically did you manage to observe them, and can I replicate it?
There's so much we don't understand that I'm keeping an open mind on this one. Like I've said, I'm confident science will prove it someday.
Even though the bible says otherwise(like I give a damn at this point), I'm open to the idea that animals have souls as well.
Maybe souls don't actually exist at all and we were told that to make sense of things we couldn't understand at the time(we don't understand the brain fully now). I believe Jesus rose from the dead, after being so for 3 days. At that point he should have been unable to bring back to life. Of course, Commander Shepard was brought back to life after suffocating to death, freezing, burning up on reentry, and then impacting ice and rock at 240 KPH. :P But she's mothermkaying Commander Shepard.
She also had future space armor, had her brain frozen (good for preservation), got injected with Reaper nanomagic, and might not have been a perfect recreation anyway. Also, fictional, not that anyone cares. Rising after three days, though - that's a strong claim. The body would be completely nonfunctional after that time unless decomposition was suspended and the damage reversed. What causes you to believe that this did happen? Just the accounts in the Bible, or someplace more reliable? It implies much more direct interventionism than you seem to believe happens anywhere else.
In all seriousness though, I don't have all the answers. I wish I did, and I have plenty of things to ask god when I get the time. One thing I won't ask him that he/she/it probably gets a lot is "Why don't you use your superpowers to save the world from its problems?"
I know the answer to that, and I don't want God helping us(and he/she/it doesn't). Whether we were created by him/her/it or not, we'll survive or die because we as a species did so. If an asteroid comes to destroy the world, I don't want him to put his hand in front of Terra so save it. It's our world, we need to protect it ourselves. If he/she/it did save us, I'd feel like we don't deserve to survive because we didn't do it ourselves.
I disagree completely. If someone - anyone - had the power to save a planet of humans, but did not, they would have a lot to answer for. In your specific example, I absolutely would want a deity to intervene. Of course, you seem to view death as a great deal less final than I do, but surely not everyone who would be killed in this fashion would prefer the hypothetical afterlife. If God took a poll, and only saved the humans who wanted to be saved? Sure, I'd be alright with that. Nothing less.
Here's a general statement of a sentiment my good friend Marth and I share. The purpose of religion is to be happy, and love others. Religion brings people happiness and peace, this is partially why I believe in God. The problem here is that you edge close to believing because you want to believe. Believing in an afterlife, or that prayer helps people, can make you happy. It can also make you wrong, and there can be consequences for you and for others. However, nothing at all is wrong with being happy or loving others. I'm not sure you need religion to do it, but if religion makes you happy without affecting others, it's not necessary for you to stop believing.Oh, and if you're not happy and you're filled with hate, you're doing it wrong. I'm looking at you Westboro Baptist Church. Absolutely.
Finally, a couple of questions:
Pepsi, where do you stand on theism, and on creationism? Do you have anything to say about souls that hasn't been covered already?
Wulf, do you have Mass Effect 3 for the PC? If so, we could do multiplayer sometime.
er and energy are really the same thing but in different forms. The rest of the video talks about the type of universe we live in (flat), its future (continual expansion), and other related concepts.