Longest Thread Ever

[babe]

Nice video.

And that was my original point. How can you love someone "where there is absolutely nothing in it for you to do so"? For example, if you travel to a foreign country and you see someone on the street needing water/food/money. Do you help that person? You're never going to see him/her EVER AGAIN. So the new revolutionist idea you were referring to in fostering "the community" for your own benefit is thrown out the door.

So why help that person? If the concept of God is not in the mind, and you're purely a living, breathing human being trying to survive, helping that person does absolutely nothing. You can say you're helping that person out of guilt or moral responsibility - but then there must be a "moral giver" who had built that into us as human (animals don't do this kind of thing).

I'm actually seeing your question here, but it's requiring me to actually think it through. No I don't just have a really flip pat answer. In fact, in thinking about your question today I've been thinking I'm actually an atheist in some particulars. Not made of any single thread of belief, more of a woven product of different beliefs. I'm popping off a lot on the theme of belief systems being politically harnessed to some statist utopian dream of how everyone should be molded according to some elite thinkers' specifications, but the fact is I see how people can follow different systems of logic or faith.. . . .. and most of the time I'd prefer to make the effort to study people as they appear or present themselves to be, hoping it's a sincere manifestation of human intelligence rather than a merely cliched conformity to some societal "expectations".

I generally see problems with religions when they get harnessed to some state purpose just as much as I might see problems with some other belief system being enforced and regulated by state authority. But as for individual convictions or statements of belief, I find different beliefs interesting and thought-provoking.

 

[Dr. Jones]

This thread is great...
In large part..
Due to to babe.

 

[babe]

Nice video.

And that was my original point. How can you love someone "where there is absolutely nothing in it for you to do so"? For example, if you travel to a foreign country and you see someone on the street needing water/food/money. Do you help that person? You're never going to see him/her EVER AGAIN. So the new revolutionist idea you were referring to in fostering "the community" for your own benefit is thrown out the door.

So why help that person? If the concept of God is not in the mind, and you're purely a living, breathing human being trying to survive, helping that person does absolutely nothing. You can say you're helping that person out of guilt or moral responsibility - but then there must be a "moral giver" who had built that into us as human (animals don't do this kind of thing).

OK, I'm circling your question like some buzzard waiting for the old cow to expire I guess. well, more of a vigil waiting for an actual idea to land.


I could pursue this question through several levels of organization in nature. .. . and every level I penetrate still presents the legitimate rudiments of rational people being able to choose to see it the way they want.

"what is love?" has been explored across the ages by poets, philosophers and scientists alike and seems safely settled in the realm of art for ages to come.

"what is God?", or Who? is another for the ages.

"what is humanity, or will, or choice, or logic, or reason, or science. . . . fact or evidence. . . . . what is conscience and consciousness. . . .or "intelligence". . . .

you've got a really big question here.

 

[babe]

traditional evolutionary theory has been pretty solidly formulated in the English system of thought, something like Newtonian physics. . . . purely mechanical in it's principles and effects. An infinite array of little physical atoms dispersed throughout the universe, supposedly arriving on the surface of the earth on some absolutely pre-determined course of cause and effect, yielding to no influence whatsoever other than what we have agreed constitutes the physics of existence. Forming a sea similarly devoid of "extraneous" inputs we might call "intelligence" , "design" , "purpose", or any other similarly well-known human capacity for effecting results in the physical world which would not have happened without a plan, an understanding of things and an expertise in "creating" things of our design. . . . .

Well, scientists don't argue about Man's capacity to do stuff on purpose; The idea of God is essentially an extrapolation from man having such powers to theorize there may be a God who can do even more stuff...... but. . . . we just can't allow this discussion in our public affairs anymore because somebody has made some rule saying it's just not permissible on the public dollar, in the public square, or in the public schools.

It's OK to discuss the law of gravity, say. . . . which in fact has some mysteries not yet answered, and dogmatically present it in some simplistic fashion. .. . which we know fails at very great distances for example, and treat it as a matter of required belief for graduation from college, though. OK to extrapolate what we see at close quarters to the rest of the universe as a matter of belief in indisputable physical reality, so far as "gravity" goes. . . .. but not OK for man to extrapolate from his own known and familiar nature to suppose a greater Creator "out there" somewhere/somehow.

still, I am a sort of atheist who can compartmentalize "science in 4D" as a convenient language for addressing and solving problems in the the 4D realm of common experience. I don't really expect to find "God" meddling in these things ordinarily and presume in fact that anyone who will do the same thing with physical stuff and time can get the same results. And still a religious believer who just "knows" there is a God in a human image, with all the human attributes I assume to be developed to some admirable and unfathomable point. . .. .. a sort of being I could in some infinite span of time, with some persistence on the right principles, make my own attributes as any child can grow to be like his/her father/mother.

 

[babe]

The Faithful Proposition of Evolutionary Process

well, except for the applied conclusions sometimes deemed inescapable and contrary to Biblical faith, I actually accept evolutionary processes observable and demonstrable withing the science of earth history(as explored with scientific tools and thought), biological science, and chemistry/physics/math.

Applying these wonderful scientific ideas to dismantle a religion held dear by nomads and sheepherders in the deserts of the middle east thousands of years ago is just laughable. What would it mean to you if some camel-driver three thousand years ago deduced the science of atomic structure and quantum mechanics and applied these things in the range from viral particles to the universal wonders of black holes and quasars? Would you dismiss it as some freak visit to the dusty desert encampment by some advanced space travelers, who were purposed to teach the shepherd a new language and a thousand new principles of science???? How would the shepherd even be interested? The sheep need watching.

So, no it's just not a reasonable or sensible effort to displace the faith of shepherds because we know better now. We have gotten our precepts of logic and our methods of thought from these precedents.

One of the chief problems with evolutionary process theory lies in the time frame we are constrained to in this earth. . . . around five hundred million years since this place began laying a fossil record of life.

Why are we assuming we are a closed system? That nothing arrived here from elsewhere int he universe? No spore embedded in a fragment of a world oh say five billion years older than ours?? Yah. . . . . not science to speculate. I get that.

If we are indeed not alone in this Universe, we would then be forced to consider some other things like this. A spaceship landing on the Mall in Washington, DC would revolutionize all our secure assumptions. . . . ..

 

[babe]

The question presented above relates to the emotional biochemistry of love and altruism. Well, humans love some stuff, some people, and some ideals. Physical Scientists researching such "love" will be discussing stuff like oxytocin.... no not oxycotin, oxytocin. Guys have to give thanks to the biochemistry of women in regard to oxytocin. It's how women decide to allow babes to nurse, and men to make love. But there is a further biochemistry of emotions that is as yet not fully understood in rational terms.

A really good biochemist/philosopher could write a book on it, and reduce it all to Newtonian determinism and attribute it all to the wonders of the Big Bang going off in just the right manner to cause some fortuitous stuff to happen on little planet earth in a mere ten billion years' space of time.

I recognize that the determined atheist can make this case.

 

[babe]

The modern trend in Evolutionary Process is recognizing more and more complexity in the process than elementary biochemistry. Some Russian Scientists like Vernadsky have beein observing phenomena for a century which point to some kind of "life force" working on the elements from the rocks to all the little wonders of life, causing things to fortuitously come together in just the right ways, with measureable energy fluxes. You don't need to think necessarily that this is the "Hand of God". You can call it the Noosphere, and you can formulate the equations in rigorous mathematical terms. You can hypothesis it is the Universal Law of Conservation of Entropy. . . .. when something rolls downhill somewhere in the Universe, something will roll uphill somewhere else. . . . every increase in randomness that occurs in one part of the Universe causes somewhere else an increase in order. . . . something like that.

 

[babe]

We know of symbiotic relations throughout the observable biosphere. We have yeast on our skin that ordinarily is beneficial, and only become a pathology when some normal factors of health are lost somehow. We have bacterial wonders in our guts. . .. a significant mass in fact, essential to our good nutrition and in general to our health and well-being.

I see birds sitting on cow's back pecking at the gnats, flies, worms, or whatever is in the cowhide. . . ..

We also see complex organized simple life forms, like ants, who do wonders in their social order. The communicate, perhaps chemically, but it's still "communication", and lay out trails to the good food sources. Do ants love one another? we just don't want to imagine it that way.

How much of our altruism and do-gooder reactions is reinforced with complex psychology based on chemical mediators that "feel good" or create the sensation of "love". My wife says chocolate makes her feel "loved".

I imagine, when we've written a thousand books of "community" action impacting the evolutionary process, an good determined atheist can still reasonably find it's all just Newtonian mechanics somehow.

 

[The Midnight]

Nobody really believes in God. Maybe we have some abbreviated concepts, something like a vague intimation of some infinite expanse beyond our seeing. . . . but when it comes right down to it we just don't know what we don't know. . . . and all of our efforts to fill in the blanks with some stick-figure projections of what we do understanding. . . . I'm pretty sure it all fall short of actual comprehension, or specific belief in what God actually is. Some of us try. That's about all we can really claim.

I'm actually seeing your question here, but it's requiring me to actually think it through. No I don't just have a really flip pat answer. In fact, in thinking about your question today I've been thinking I'm actually an atheist in some particulars. Not made of any single thread of belief, more of a woven product of different beliefs. I'm popping off a lot on the theme of belief systems being politically harnessed to some statist utopian dream of how everyone should be molded according to some elite thinkers' specifications, but the fact is I see how people can follow different systems of logic or faith.. . . .. and most of the time I'd prefer to make the effort to study people as they appear or present themselves to be, hoping it's a sincere manifestation of human intelligence rather than a merely cliched conformity to some societal "expectations".

I generally see problems with religions when they get harnessed to some state purpose just as much as I might see problems with some other belief system being enforced and regulated by state authority. But as for individual convictions or statements of belief, I find different beliefs interesting and thought-provoking.

The question presented above relates to the emotional biochemistry of love and altruism. Well, humans love some stuff, some people, and some ideals. Physical Scientists researching such "love" will be discussing stuff like oxytocin.... no not oxycotin, oxytocin. Guys have to give thanks to the biochemistry of women in regard to oxytocin. It's how women decide to allow babes to nurse, and men to make love. But there is a further biochemistry of emotions that is as yet not fully understood in rational terms.

A really good biochemist/philosopher could write a book on it, and reduce it all to Newtonian determinism and attribute it all to the wonders of the Big Bang going off in just the right manner to cause some fortuitous stuff to happen on little planet earth in a mere ten billion years' space of time.

I recognize that the determined atheist can make this case.

Lots of stuff to digest there, so I'm just pulling out stuff that interests me and I can relate to from my own experience. I'm no philosopher nor am I a scientist, I'm probably as average a person as they come intellectually.

In relation to your statement that nobody really believes in God: I used to be an atheist as well. But now that I've come to faith, I've realized that most people who are atheist didn't really make a decision to become an atheist. They are atheists by default so to speak. As an example, somebody who's a Buddhist would never question the creation of human, earth, or the universe. They would simply putting it down to merely "A question that is not worth answering".

I'm of a firm believer that, within this realm of material universe, something cannot come from nothing. Therefore the fact that this universe exists, something outside this realm must created it. I believe this pretty strongly actually.

On to the question of life on earth. As far as I know, nobody has ever been able to explain why life exists on earth. The information contained inside a DNA is extremely complex. Some say it sprung out from the chemical reactions of the different elements when earth was being formed (lighting in a pond analogy is often used). But to this day, no scientist has been able to re-create the complex DNA or cells from those elements we know existed at earth's creation.

The famous Richard Dawkins admitted that the best possible explanation for the existence of DNA on earth is that an "alien" placed it here some time ago. But if you believe that, then let me ask you this question "Who created the DNA and cells of those aliens in the first place?"

 

[babe]

I sorta think people who want to believe in God are always gonna have to just make that choice.. . . .and hopefully make that choice out of simple love for a barely perceptible Father.

I don't think they are much different from people who want to believe in reason, fact, science, learning, logic. . . . lots of people in religions do in fact have reasons for their choice.

I think the pure atheist who is devoid of personal motive for developing leverages on the machinery of governance is not much different either. A choice to emphasize the intellectual powers over the emotional or fervent faith types of responses in life. When you chased the rabbit of reason to it's fartherest limits, you will if you consider it, realize there's just a lot we don't know yet, even about "science". And devotees of this thought religions do get emotional fluxes of biochemistry giving them joy and love for others somehow.

But I really think. . . . I could say I know. . . . that there are some things beyond our knowing in the present world. . . . and other worlds we belong to as well. And while in some fashion I know God is real, and that I will be going "home" when I die, I consider my knowledge partial, in fact skimpy. I do not fully know "God" and probably some logical atheists if they chose to look at some kinds of evidence, would know "God" as well as I do.

God gave me a gift of life. I give Him my gift of love. I don't want to be bartering with little chips of fact, I just want to love with all my heart.

 

[babe]

Lots of stuff to digest there, so I'm just pulling out stuff that interests me and I can relate to from my own experience. I'm no philosopher nor am I a scientist, I'm probably as average a person as they come intellectually.

In relation to your statement that nobody really believes in God: I used to be an atheist as well. But now that I've come to faith, I've realized that most people who are atheist didn't really make a decision to become an atheist. They are atheists by default so to speak. As an example, somebody who's a Buddhist would never question the creation of human, earth, or the universe. They would simply putting it down to merely "A question that is not worth answering".

I'm of a firm believer that, within this realm of material universe, something cannot come from nothing. Therefore the fact that this universe exists, something outside this realm must created it. I believe this pretty strongly actually.

On to the question of life on earth. As far as I know, nobody has ever been able to explain why life exists on earth. The information contained inside a DNA is extremely complex. Some say it sprung out from the chemical reactions of the different elements when earth was being formed (lighting in a pond analogy is often used). But to this day, no scientist has been able to re-create the complex DNA or cells from those elements we know existed at earth's creation.

The famous Richard Dawkins admitted that the best possible explanation for the existence of DNA on earth is that an "alien" placed it here some time ago. But if you believe that, then let me ask you this question "Who created the DNA and cells of those aliens in the first place?"

I like this statement a lot.

People have to work with the tools they have to make their choices in life. I don't think my idea of a "loving Father" requires us to be good astro-physicists/biochemists. I think He is looking for a free-will offering from our hearts, and I think He fully understands the general position of people who just don't know Him. . . . . . yet.

He loved me ere I knew Him, and all my love is to Him. . . . .

 

[Stifle Tower]

I called "The Smell-Good Plumbers" outta LA. For $99 they will clean out any clogged pipe. They show up on time, and they smell good. I love KFI.

Wish you hadn't done that. I know of a much better company. Those other guys may smell good, but you still run the risk of getting unwanted crack exposure.