10th March 2003, 12:15 AM
You know, DJ, reading your whole posts would be a lot easier if I could actually understand most of what you are trying to say... but you are so confusing a lot...
Look... I'm not just refuting the points you people have made... its more a general statement...
Here is one thing Weltall said: That the universe's complexity and the complexity, uniqueness, and rise of the human race are too incredible to be cooincidences. I cannnot possibly dissagree any more strongly with that concept.
How did the universe come to exist? We don't know... there are lots of theories, but we really don't know the truth. Not yet... though in the future we probably will get pretty close. Somehow, there formed a mass of energy that exploded in the Big Bang... and after it cooled the stars and galaxies formed. Obviously at this point we don't know teh details, but we get teh gneeral idea... and I'm absolutley sure that when we do learn more it won't be some magical force that created the univese. Magic is, like most any religious belief, created in the absence of known facts... gods fit that definition perfectly. Oh, and as for life, its called a cooincidence... we don't know the exact circumstances of how life on earth came to exist yet, and haven't explored other solar systems so we have no basis to say if its frequent or not in nature (except for those Martian microbes they found)... but still it happened here in a series of happy cooincidences and accidents. Unlike the other planets in the solar system Earth was right for life... I wonder how many other planets out there are. Given that we haven't exactly explored them anything beyond that is a complete guess... we really don't know.
But I'd be very, very surprised if its that rare... for lower lifeforms anyway...
It is a good question to ask "Why are people religious?" As I said, I don't know why it is so pervasive in human culture... seemingly every culture either has gods or could have gods if they weren't surpressed. That is a interesting fact... and one I can't really explain. It does seem that if it was just ancient peoples explaining stuff it wouldn't be that common... so maybe it is something in the human pysche or something added to the collective conciousness by early exposure to religion or something... I really don't know. It is odd, though... its not odd that it survives in the modern world -- once established, belief is really hard to stop so obviously it survives -- but in the past? Who knows...
Searching for eternity? That's a good idea... people definitely want to survive and continue on... all animals do, of course, but because we are smarter than the other animals we can express it in more ways... for most species it just means having children. For us it seems to result in people seeking the impossible -- immortality... and it certainly makes sense why people would want to believe that a immortal future awaits them, for pretty obvious reasons... its comforting and reasuring... and in some cases (depending on the person's beliefs) can lead to someone either absolving themselves of their wrongs by saying "God wanted me to" or by saying that there is no such thing as free will and God controls all our futures from before we are born... somewhat comforting ideas, i with no factual basis. And its a very convienient (and sometimes actually believed) out for people wanting an excuse for why they did something...
Look... I'm not just refuting the points you people have made... its more a general statement...
Here is one thing Weltall said: That the universe's complexity and the complexity, uniqueness, and rise of the human race are too incredible to be cooincidences. I cannnot possibly dissagree any more strongly with that concept.
How did the universe come to exist? We don't know... there are lots of theories, but we really don't know the truth. Not yet... though in the future we probably will get pretty close. Somehow, there formed a mass of energy that exploded in the Big Bang... and after it cooled the stars and galaxies formed. Obviously at this point we don't know teh details, but we get teh gneeral idea... and I'm absolutley sure that when we do learn more it won't be some magical force that created the univese. Magic is, like most any religious belief, created in the absence of known facts... gods fit that definition perfectly. Oh, and as for life, its called a cooincidence... we don't know the exact circumstances of how life on earth came to exist yet, and haven't explored other solar systems so we have no basis to say if its frequent or not in nature (except for those Martian microbes they found)... but still it happened here in a series of happy cooincidences and accidents. Unlike the other planets in the solar system Earth was right for life... I wonder how many other planets out there are. Given that we haven't exactly explored them anything beyond that is a complete guess... we really don't know.
But I'd be very, very surprised if its that rare... for lower lifeforms anyway...
It is a good question to ask "Why are people religious?" As I said, I don't know why it is so pervasive in human culture... seemingly every culture either has gods or could have gods if they weren't surpressed. That is a interesting fact... and one I can't really explain. It does seem that if it was just ancient peoples explaining stuff it wouldn't be that common... so maybe it is something in the human pysche or something added to the collective conciousness by early exposure to religion or something... I really don't know. It is odd, though... its not odd that it survives in the modern world -- once established, belief is really hard to stop so obviously it survives -- but in the past? Who knows...
Searching for eternity? That's a good idea... people definitely want to survive and continue on... all animals do, of course, but because we are smarter than the other animals we can express it in more ways... for most species it just means having children. For us it seems to result in people seeking the impossible -- immortality... and it certainly makes sense why people would want to believe that a immortal future awaits them, for pretty obvious reasons... its comforting and reasuring... and in some cases (depending on the person's beliefs) can lead to someone either absolving themselves of their wrongs by saying "God wanted me to" or by saying that there is no such thing as free will and God controls all our futures from before we are born... somewhat comforting ideas, i with no factual basis. And its a very convienient (and sometimes actually believed) out for people wanting an excuse for why they did something...
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