5 Questions for the secular

G

ggazoo

Registered Senior Member
Though the secular view of the world is rationally possible, I don’t think that it make as much sense of the world as the view that God exists. The theory that there is a God who made the world accounts for the evidence we see better than the theory that there is no God (that statement alone requires it’s own thread, which I would be more than happy to start). Those who argue against the existence of God use induction, language, and their cognitive faculties, all of which make far more sense in a universe in which God has created and supports them all by his power.

Based on that, I’d like to impose the following 5 questions to the secularists.


  1. If, as the evolutionary scientists say, what our brains tell us about morality, love, and beauty is not real – if it is merely a set of chemical reactions designed to pass on our genetic code – then so is what their brains tell them about the world. Then why should we trust them?

  2. Many people on here are proponents of strong rationalism, which is nearly impossible to defend, mostly because it can’t live up to it’s own standards. How could you empirically prove that no one should believe something without empirical proof?

  3. Many say that the Bible stunts our growth as a progressive society. How can we use our time’s standard of “progressive” as the plumbline by which we decide which parts of the Bible are valid and which are not?

  4. How could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you claim that none of the religions have?

  5. The last question pertains to altruistic behavior . If we see a total stranger fall into the river we jump in after him, or feel guilty for not doing so. In fact, most people will feel the obligation to do so even if he person in the water is an enemy. How could that trait have come down by a process of natural selection?
 
1 has nothing to do with whether there's a god.
2Let me know if you're building a bridge or high rise so I can stay far away.
3You'd rather use the standards of times & places more violent & less knowledgable?
How could that trait have not come from natural selection and/or nurture/environment? How could that trait have come from an ultraviolent egotistical god bully?
There is no evidence that a god created the world. IF there were enough evidence then WHICH god? And where has it been hiding & why?
IF there were gods that want us to know, it wouldn't be a matter of us debating which view is more sensible. It's not a matter of us being responsible for figuring all this. They are.
 
ggazoo said:
  1. If, as the evolutionary scientists say, what our brains tell us about morality, love, and beauty is not real – if it is merely a set of chemical reactions designed to pass on our genetic code – then so is what their brains tell them about the world. Then why should we trust them?

  2. Many people on here are proponents of strong rationalism, which is nearly impossible to defend, mostly because it can’t live up to it’s own standards. How could you empirically prove that no one should believe something without empirical proof?

  3. Many say that the Bible stunts our growth as a progressive society. How can we use our time’s standard of “progressive” as the plumbline by which we decide which parts of the Bible are valid and which are not?

  4. How could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you claim that none of the religions have?

  5. The last question pertains to altruistic behavior . If we see a total stranger fall into the river we jump in after him, or feel guilty for not doing so. In fact, most people will feel the obligation to do so even if he person in the water is an enemy. How could that trait have come down by a process of natural selection?
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1. Because reality (external to the human mind) agrees with them. That's what truth is, when an idea / notion represented in your mind corresponds to actual reality.

2. The rule of thumb is, that the more fantastic / important a claim is the more evidence-based thinking should be applied. To apply pure evidence-based thinking to absolutely all information isn't realistic.

3. The bible isn't important so why invest the effort?

4. Religion deals with emotional satiation and human relationships. It is unrelated to objective truth.

5. We're a cooperative social species and we have developed mirror neurons that strongly influence how we interact with each other. When we see a person drowning, our mirror neurons place ourselves in that situation and elicit emotion that motivates us to help or feel guilt for being mean (not helping).
 
I was about to say that. I am secular but not an atheist, do you still want me to respond?
 
I don't believe this extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. Evidence is evidence & either something is supported by evidence or it isn't.
There is no evidence for gods. Many of the claims of evidence are just plain silly. Some are as much evidence for some other unproven theory as they are for gods.
(For the trillionth time) If a god had to have created the universe, something had to have created the god. It's turtles allllllllllllll the way.
Again, this allpowerful god hiding itself & requiring us to find it is absurd.
 
Actually you're wrong stranger. If a god had to have created the universe, and time began with our universe, then time might not have applied to anything prior and therefore chronological order is unnecessary. You're assuming time existed before the universe.
 
ggazoo said:
  1. If, as the evolutionary scientists say, what our brains tell us about morality, love, and beauty is not real – if it is merely a set of chemical reactions designed to pass on our genetic code – then so is what their brains tell them about the world. Then why should we trust them?
  2. The last question pertains to altruistic behavior . If we see a total stranger fall into the river we jump in after him, or feel guilty for not doing so. In fact, most people will feel the obligation to do so even if he person in the water is an enemy. How could that trait have come down by a process of natural selection?
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My opinion is that a creator God could have used the process of natural selection and/or evolution to further its own means, but that doen't mean that evolution/natural selection was the ONLY tool in God's toy box.
 
Norsefire said:
Actually you're wrong stranger. If a god had to have created the universe, and time began with our universe, then time might not have applied to anything prior and therefore chronological order is unnecessary. You're assuming time existed before the universe.
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Correct.
 
As long as anything exists or has existed there is/was time. Feels silly to say this but even if there wasn't time, that still misses the point. Time has nothing to do with it.
 
StrangerInAStrangeLa said:
As long as anything exists or has existed there is/was time. Feels silly to say this but even if there wasn't time, that still misses the point. Time has nothing to do with it.
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Yes, it does. And you don't know what it was like before the universe so you can't assume anything.
 
Norsefire said:
Actually you're wrong stranger. If a god had to have created the universe, and time began with our universe, then time might not have applied to anything prior and therefore chronological order is unnecessary. You're assuming time existed before the universe.
Click to expand...
have you seen this one yet:

Draygombs paradox

Without Time God didn't have enough Time to decide to create Time.

God is defined as The Conscious First Cause -
The First Cause is That which caused Time.
Consciousness is that which lets one make a decision.
A Decision is the action of changing ones mind from undecided to decided.
Time is the measure of change.

Premises:

Something which is caused can't be required by that which causes it.

Conclusions:

Time is required for Change.
A Decision is a Change.
Decisions require Time.
Consciousness can't let one make a decision without Time.
Consciousness requires Time.
God is Conscious.
God requires Time.
God can't be the cause of Time if God requires Time.
God isn't the cause of Time.
God isn't The First Cause.
If God isn't The Conscious First Cause then God doesn't exist.
God doesn't exist.
---------------------
what do you think?
 
ggazoo said:
[*]The last question pertains to altruistic behavior . If we see a total stranger fall into the river we jump in after him, or feel guilty for not doing so. In fact, most people will feel the obligation to do so even if he person in the water is an enemy. How could that trait have come down by a process of natural selection?
[/LIST]
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None of your questions interested me enough to post a response, but this one..

When will you get over this? I'm pretty sure I and others have given you plausible reasons for this that don't depict invisible sky daddies.

How many people would dive into the river to save their own child?

How many people would dive into the river to save another persons child?

How many people would dive into the river to save a stranger?

How many people would dive into the river to save an enemy?

I am pretty sure that the percentage for the above 4 scenarios would decline from top to bottom. It's a lie to say that people would jump into a river to save an enemy the same amount of times as we would for our own child.

Nevertheless, we evolved to be largely cooperative species, and once upon a time we may not have encountered enemies often, and most of the people around us were included in our social network. So today, in large cities were just about everyone is a stranger, the overwhelming response to be altruistic will prevail. Even though the notion is that people from smaller towns will be more friendly and altruistic than those living in populated areas, altruism to a lesser degree persists in cities.
 
I don't need to know what it was like "before the universe" to know As long as anything exists or has existed there is/was time. It's obvious. Nothing can exist without time.
Regardless of time, any question as to the origin of the universe must also be applied to gods.
 
StrangerInAStrangeLa said:
I don't believe this extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. Evidence is evidence & either something is supported by evidence or it isn't.
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Well sure, evidence is evidence. But if I told you that I had a stapler on my desk and showed you a picture of my desk with a stapler on it, that could reasonably be enough evidence for you to believe my claim. If I claim to have a space alien's head on my desk and show you a picture of my desk with what appears to be an alien's severed head sitting on it, you would probably want more evidence before you believed it. Both claims are supported by exactly the same amount of evidence, but since one is more extraordinary, it requires more evidence to be convincing.

Similarly, an ancient document saying "A guy named Pontius supervised a work crew that built a bridge across this river in 25 AD" could reasonably be considered enough evidence to believe that a guy named Pontius did indeed probably supervise the construction of a bridge. But if the document said "A guy names Pontius used his magic powers to conjure a bridge across the river out of thin air in 25 AD," well, that's probably not going to be enough evidence to convince me that Pontius actually had magic powers.
 
ggazoo said:
Though the secular view of the world is rationally possible, I don’t think that it make as much sense of the world as the view that God exists. The theory that there is a God who made the world accounts for the evidence we see better than the theory that there is no God (that statement alone requires it’s own thread, which I would be more than happy to start). Those who argue against the existence of God use induction, language, and their cognitive faculties, all of which make far more sense in a universe in which God has created and supports them all by his power.

Based on that, I’d like to impose the following 5 questions to the secularists.


  1. If, as the evolutionary scientists say, what our brains tell us about morality, love, and beauty is not real – if it is merely a set of chemical reactions designed to pass on our genetic code – then so is what their brains tell them about the world. Then why should we trust them?

  2. Many people on here are proponents of strong rationalism, which is nearly impossible to defend, mostly because it can’t live up to it’s own standards. How could you empirically prove that no one should believe something without empirical proof?

  3. Many say that the Bible stunts our growth as a progressive society. How can we use our time’s standard of “progressive” as the plumbline by which we decide which parts of the Bible are valid and which are not?

  4. How could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you claim that none of the religions have?

  5. The last question pertains to altruistic behavior . If we see a total stranger fall into the river we jump in after him, or feel guilty for not doing so. In fact, most people will feel the obligation to do so even if he person in the water is an enemy. How could that trait have come down by a process of natural selection?
Click to expand...

1. Nobody ever said your emotions aren't real, they've just pointed out that there is no magical origin for them.

2. Belief is highly subjective. As many theists prove on a daily basis, belief appears to have very little to do with empirical evidence. At least at this stage of humanity's evolution.

3. Perhaps a better question should be...how is it that theists expect us to usefully apply many of the tenets of an ancient and non-contextual tome such as the bible in our progressive time?

4. Because no two distinct religions agree on their truths.

5. Dawkins explained an interesting theory about this in one of his books...and it seemed logical. In short, tribal behaviours way back when encouraged "altruistic" behaviour of a sort, except that the favours were expected to be returned. Hence beginning a humanitarian deed became automatic. As our own morals evolved, we began to note the value of committing to altruism without expecting returns.

(I also like KennyJC's answer to #5, where he points out the distinction that people will make that decision dependant on the identity of the drowning person)
 
ggazoo said:
The last question pertains to altruistic behavior . If we see a total stranger fall into the river we jump in after him, or feel guilty for not doing so. In fact, most people will feel the obligation to do so even if he person in the water is an enemy. How could that trait have come down by a process of natural selection?
Click to expand...
Here's an idea regarding this: just me rambling, but it seems to be a reasonable idea, i think:

Ever see how monkeys and apes clean each other, picking bugs etc off each other, and this is then reciprocated?
Even some fish have evolved to act in synergy with others, cleaning larger fish in return for some protection from other predators as well as for food.

So we have animals that seem to "help" each other out, and get something in return.

Not altruistic, but let's start there anyway.

We then move into the domain of a society. Survival is an instinct, and in a society, the survival of that society benefits the individuals within. Animals (not just humans) have noted that groups are stronger than individuals - mutually beneficial.
So it becomes natural to help the society, and in return the society helps you. It becomes the vehicle by which the give and take is moved one step from direct give/take between two people, to a more interconnectedness: you give to one, who gives to someone else, who gives back to you etc.

From the outside it might look as though one person giving without return is altruistic, but the society gives. Some might give more than take, some take more than give... but it all balances - and one never knows when they'll be on one side of the scale or another.

Anyhoo - just a thought :)
 
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