Is man 'programmed' to seek a 'god'?

[MantaRevan]

Once again, there is evidence, you just choose to ignore it... that doesn't make it go away.

Tell me sir, which seems more plausible to you? Modern-day science and reasoning, or the words of prophets thousands of years dead? Our crusade to make you look stupid is thousands of times more righteous than your crusade to 'retake the holy land' or in other words, kill the muslims and massacre the Jews while you're at it.

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[Ziggy Stardust]

If you had a choice would you choose life or death? Why?

I'll take my chance with the slings and arrows.

I like outrageous fortune.

 

[warpus]

In a debate such as this ALL religious books have to be ignored, for the simple fact that if you look through all religious books ever written, you can find "evidence" for almost anything. It isn't verifiable, most of it is myth, some of it is parable.. It's just not very reliable as a source of evidence.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Not only that, the methods are not even designed to arrive at truth. Apologetics is the exact opposite of the scientific method, because it starts with an assumption and then tries to build a case from there, rather than trying to challenge the assumption.

 

[timtofly]

Not only that, the methods are not even designed to arrive at truth. Apologetics is the exact opposite of the scientific method, because it starts with an assumption and then tries to build a case from there, rather than trying to challenge the assumption.

If there is no apologetics can there also be no explaining away the Bible with science?

 

[Souron]

My, this thread took off.

I'd like to suggest the following evidence against an afterlife: the brain seems to be responsible for all the complexity of human thought. The simplest piece of evidence for this is that brain damage messes with people's ability to think and perceive the world. However the brain observably dies when a person dies. All the parts are accounted for in the dead tissue. So the entire mechanism of thought and everything that the brain does cannot go to the afterlife. That doesn't exactly rule out something persisting after death, but that something would not be able to think enough to enjoy an afterlife.

As for evidence for: [wiki=Duncan MacDougall (doctor)]Duncan MacDougall[/wiki] claimed to have some. The evidence has not been reproduced, however.

 

[cardgame]

If there is no apologetics can there also be no explaining away the Bible with science?

Uhh... no? Why would you think that?

 

[kochman]

In a debate such as this ALL religious books have to be ignored, for the simple fact that if you look through all religious books ever written, you can find "evidence" for almost anything. It isn't verifiable, most of it is myth, some of it is parable.. It's just not very reliable as a source of evidence.

Well, that certainly helps your opinion, doesn't it?!
Good grief... we can't use the book that it is centered around to discuss it now? If you frame the debate that way, you will always win... period.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Ok, next we'll prove that Middle Earth is real and Illuvatar is the supreme divine creator. We'll use The Silmarillion as a source.

 

[kochman]

Ok, next we'll prove that Middle Earth is real and Illuvatar is the supreme divine creator. We'll use The Silmarillion as a source.

You have nothing better to offer than this crappy response?
If you honestly can't tell the difference, then you are worse off than I had dared to imagine.
It seems more like you just wanted to be insulting here.

Still waiting for a viable missing link explanation... that definitely doesn't include a supreme being that is...
You have that? Or just snarky remarks?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Still waiting for your explanation on time-travelling baby-Jesus.

I was not trying to be insulting, I was showing how you can just as easily find evidence for Illuvatar in the Silmarillion, as you can find evidence for God in the Bible.

 

[peter grimes]

Silmarillion beats Bible even if you throw out every other page!

I'd like to suggest the following evidence against an afterlife: the brain seems to be responsible for all the complexity of human thought.

This is exactly it - if there's an afterlife there must be a physical mechanism or link between the material worlds and... what? Where would you look for this link? By what method would the 'you-ness' of you transport?

Once you get some ideas about that, then you can start to actually look for evidence. But something that someone heard from another guy ~20 centuries ago is not evidence. It's rumor, at best.

If you had a choice would you choose life or death? Why?

Do you mean right now - do I want to live or die right now? I'd choose to live. But I don't see the connection to the discussion at hand.

The only way to know the big bang happened, go back however many billions of years it is supposed to be this time (because that number changes almost as frequently as most people change their bloomers)...

Wrong. One of the principle methods of scientific inquiry (actually, all humans do this, too!) is modelling. Observations are made, ideas are formed about what might account for those observations. Those ideas are theories - models. Then we see what the model predicts. When we check the predictions against new observations we find out how accurate the model is. The model is refined until it accounts for more and more of the obseravtions.

Neutrinos are one of the mroe spectacular things that was a prediction of a model. But at the time, there was no way to test to see if they really existed. Fast forward a few years, and lo and behold they do exist! That model is the same one that is used in the Big Bang theory.

It's inaccurate to say that the only way to know something is to go back and see for yourself. At least on the scale of big things like this. If you want to know what time The Venerable Bede first coughed on the last Thursday of his life, well, Yes - you'll have to go back and see

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Silmarillion beats Bible even if you throw out every other page!

Originally Posted by Souron

I 'ed

 

[kochman]

Still waiting for your explanation on time-travelling baby-Jesus.

I was not trying to be insulting, I was showing how you can just as easily find evidence for Illuvatar in the Silmarillion, as you can find evidence for God in the Bible.

Ummm... sorry, what archeological evidence has been found regarding the Silmarillon? That was insulting.

You're getting wrapped about the hinges about an event from 2,000 years ago which is very minor... yet you swear by the guesswork of events that NO ONE has accounted for regarding the Big Bang that happened over 6 billion years ago (is that the number scientists are using today? Or did it change... AGAIN?)...
That isn't very consistent.

Wrong. One of the principle methods of scientific inquiry (actually, all humans do this, too!) is modelling. Observations are made, ideas are formed about what might account for those observations. Those ideas are theories - models. Then we see what the model predicts. When we check the predictions against new observations we find out how accurate the model is. The model is refined until it accounts for more and more of the obseravtions.

Not wrong, it is theory, nothing more. There is not one solid piece of evidence.
Personally, I think a big bang type event took place, at the hands of the maker, whom I refer to as God... I don't find them at all incompatible.
However, I acknowledge, unlike many atheists, that Big Bang is theory, and it could have gone down entirely differently. It's called, not being arrogant and treating theory as fact. Science has, after all, proved itself wrong, many, many, many times... has it not?

It's inaccurate to say that the only way to know something is to go back and see for yourself. At least on the scale of big things like this. If you want to know what time The Venerable Bede first coughed on the last Thursday of his life, well, Yes - you'll have to go back and see

How is that inaccurate? You guys have more faith in something no one saw, based on hypothesis and SWAGs, than the Bible, which has tons of verification from tons of people who witnessed the events... you choose to ignore it because you say this person wasn't an eye witness (because an eye witness is infallible?), or there is a slight contradiction here or there, etc...

There are tons of contradictions in the Big Bang theory as well... it takes faith to accept it, and again, is not incompatible with God. To me, it demands a God to make the missing link real, and before that to have started the entire Big Bang to begin with...
You guys have no viable explanations beyond that for those two events.

 

[kochman]

edit: you were right previously though. We have been down this road before. I remember the same irritation as last time when people easily dismiss mountains of evidence on one side, but see an empty tomb as evidence that whoever was in there must have been resurrected. As if that's a logical conclusion to make. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but an empty tomb is evidence of a missing body, Period. An empty tomb is not evidence of an event of resurrection, nor does it provide a timeline in which this supposed resurrection took place.

I had missed this entire thing...
Let me address.

Tomb was guarded by Roman sentries... Roman sentries would have fought anyone coming from the outside to open the tomb... punishable by death.

The stone was moved, the inhabitant walked out, and was seen walking by hundreds after the fact... including a massive speech.

It's more than an empty tomb, it's a self-emptying tomb.


Anyhow, this thread does answer the question it asked...
Is man programmed to seek a god.

No, because were he, we wouldn't have those who deny it until they are blue in the face... Therefore, we can conclude, some people have experienced things and have a nature/way that is more receptive to such supernatural things, which I notice all the time in my life regarding a lot of things (not just religion).

The question is... why doesn't everyone have it, if some have it?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Ummm... sorry, what archeological evidence has been found regarding the Silmarillon? That was insulting.

Right, so we agree that we need archeological evidence. We don't just need the Bible, it needs to be backed up by archaeological evidence.

That was my point all along. You can't just use the Bible. Using the Bible without archaeological evidence is not evidence at all.

You're getting wrapped about the hinges about an event from 2,000 years ago which is very minor...

You mean Jesus only travelled 10 years in time? Yeah, no big deal.

yet you swear by the guesswork of events that NO ONE has accounted for regarding the Big Bang that happened over 6 billion years ago (is that the number scientists are using today? Or did it change... AGAIN?)...
That isn't very consistent.

You're so out of your depth here.

Are you sure you want to continue discussing this or do you want some time to read up on the stuff you're dismissing without ever having looked into it?

Typical. Dismissing a large volume of evidence, but very quick to accept nonsense like prophecies as rock-solid.

Tomb was guarded by Roman sentries... Roman sentries would have fought anyone coming from the outside to open the tomb... punishable by death.

The stone was moved, the inhabitant walked out, and was seen walking by hundreds after the fact... including a massive speech.

It's more than an empty tomb, it's a self-emptying tomb.

There's some really odd stories in the Silmarillion as well.

Proof!

 

[Kyriakos]

So i guess we arrive at what was always the issue, namely if the psyche=body (for it is not only the brain) or not.

I would not have a problem with this tautology, if it could be presented just why man is as complicated if he is just another basic brute from nature's viewpoint, or even some freak accident.

Mind you, if i really wanted to type something implausible, i could say that the mind is so complicated that, like a star, upon its death energy is bound to transform to something else But for the time being i will contend that even if the mind (and rest of the body) = man, then it seems that nature either did not compute anything correctly (man is known to be the sole creature that can commit suicide, for example) or that it might have had some other plan too. Remember Alpha Centauri

To get back on topic: when i was still a student of philosophy i had thought a great deal about the brain-psyche issue. But it seems to me that it is hard enough to speak of the brain's functions as something that actually belongs to us, in the sense that we control them. It seems that the vast majority of what is going on in the brain is either not conscious, or is partly conscious. If you think of it you might even argue that our own thoughts are not exactly ours, since we appear to be the person steering the wheel in this boat, but the rest of the boat, although by name it belongs to us, is an utterly different substance. Likewise our thoughts come and go like clouds on a stormy day, and clouds were a strange spectacle from men of old ages who could not say what they were. Likewise we are primitives in relation to self-reflection and how the brain works.
So it would seem that, partly at least, we should not speak so adamantly about a mechanism (the body-brain) that we have yet to know in any real, deep manner.

 

[Ajidica]

Tomb was guarded by Roman sentries... Roman sentries would have fought anyone coming from the outside to open the tomb... punishable by death.

The mention of Roman sentries is only in one book in the Bible, Matthew, I think.

It's more than an empty tomb, it's a self-emptying tomb.

So the tomb of a Jewish noble caused the ressurection, not Jesus' divine-human-not quite sure status?

The question is... why doesn't everyone have it, if some have it?

Because adding God to the universe as a requirement for its existence adds far more problems then it solves?

 

[kochman]

Right, so we agree that we need archeological evidence. We don't just need the Bible, it needs to be backed up by archaeological evidence.

That was my point all along. You can't just use the Bible. Using the Bible without archaeological evidence is not evidence at all.

And, we have that evidence.

You mean Jesus only travelled 10 years in time? Yeah, no big deal.
You're so out of your depth here.

Do you really have to be insulting all the time? This is not the first time you have been very insulting to me, insinuating that I am stupid and you are a genius. I don't appreciate it, and ask you to stop it. Were you in person, you probably wouldn't be such a prick when talking to someone.
Now, to address your point... Exact timelines from 2,000 AD... "Most scholars agree" Jesus was born in 4 BC... well, for a long time, most scholars agreed it was 0 AD... doesn't really matter.
His birthday is not the issue. His resurrection, that He prophesized is.

Anyhow, if you were a typical Judean at the time, and you were told there was a census going on, run by the Romans, you would assume it was probably ordered by the leaders... and it would be easy to assume Augustus ordered it. The Gospel was written as early as 70 AD (Mark), and that allows for some messing up exact dates, details, etc...
It's not the minutia that matters, it's the major brush strokes.


Still waiting for the missing link pal?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

No indeed, contradicting evidence doesn't really matter, just brush it aside.

And you accused me of copping out. Sweet

Is this the "missing link" issue you are constantly hammering about?

The latest scientific theory I have heard for how we went from inanimate objects (rocks, gas, etc) to animate (animals)... since there is absolutely no good scientific evidence to show how... an asteroid from some far off system delivered life...
This is painful, because it still doesn't answer the question of where the missing link came into existence (whether it originated on earth or not).

Because it's not what non-scientists usually mean when they talk about the missing link.