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

[warpus]

There is no scientific proof for existence of God or Gods, but there is also no scientific proof for lack of such.

How would you prove that God doesn't exist? It's an impossible task, and as such not at all equatable to proving that God does exist (which would be possible)

 

[Tani Coyote]

To assume there is evidence for - for example - Law and Morality takes just as much faith.

I'm well-aware. But given that law tends to have benefits over anarchy and chaos, I can see why it's a good idea to keep it.

Morality? Well, I can't think of a logical reason to keep it, sans maybe the fact good alignment has evolutionary benefits - if we work together, we will prosper. If we cannibalise eachother, as evil does, then we won't last.

What does faith bestow?

I'd imagine a sense of hope, but I can get that just by looking at how every tyrannical government has fallen. How evil always does itself in through its own stupidity.

 

[Domen]

Religion also tends to have benefits. For example moral norms (and some legal norms too) tend to be "backed up" by religious norms.

Only religious fanatism is not beneficial.

Morality? Well, I can't think of a logical reason to keep it

One of them - World War 2.

You do realize that many of the horrible things that Nazis did were completely legal - both from the point of view of national law of the III Reich, and from the point of view of international law at that time, which simply did not regulate some crimes - like Genocide, for example. Crime of Genocide was not "invented" in system of positive law until after WW2 - and Nazis were punished for genocides they commited pursuant to rules of "Natural Law" (i.e. morality) only.

How evil always does itself in through its own stupidity.

But how you define "evil" and "tyrannical".

The answer is obvious. But reason why the answer is such - and not something different - is less obvious.

We define "xyz behaviour" as "evil behaviour" because of our sense of morality, which is similar to most people (due to genes ? or due to God ?).

Even psychopats had been proven to recognize what is "good" and what is "bad" - they just don't seem to have stings of remorse. But on "intellectual level" psychopatic criminals recognize what is "good" and "bad" = they "understand" morality (even though they don't feel the need to observe it - usually).

============================

Warpus:

How would you prove that God doesn't exist? It's an impossible task

It only seems impossible considering how still limited are capabilities of modern science.

Proving that God does exist seems impossible from the very same reason.

For example - does the modern science know answers to such questions like "what was before the Big Bang" or "what exactly is Dark Matter and why it is not visible or measurable (yet scientists claim that it "must exist" basing on observations & calculations of gravitation and such things in the Universe)"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

Or one more one - what exactly are the Black Holes? Or another - is our Universe the only one that exist?

Or - what happens with us and our mind (consciousness) when we die (do we "completely, completely" cease to exist - or something else)? Are experiences of people who experienced "clinical death" or barely survived very serious accidents just hallucinations of their dying brains, or something else?

What is consciousness and why it exists? Is consciousness only specific for humans or pigeons & elephants also "realize the fact that they exist"?

Why we age and die (in this world at least)? Yeah, scientists would say: because our DNA (telomeres, etc.) "gets damaged" when cells are dividing.

But is it even possible to stop the aging process and live "here" forever (or until the first serious car accident, etc., at least)?

Etc., etc.

Finally - Why are we so interested in all this? Why do we even talk about such things on internet forums? Shouldn't we just eat and have sex to assure the survival of our species - isn't everything in this universe just about it? What is the evolutional advantage of such discussions?

not at all equatable to proving that God does exist (which would be possible)

How? Only if God was something material.

And possibly only if he / she / it / them (?) was "proper material" - since we still know nearly anything about "the other" matter (= dark matter).

 

[Tani Coyote]

Religion also tends to have benefits. For example moral norms (and some legal norms too) tend to be "backed up" by religious norms.

Only religious fanatism is not beneficial.

How do you defined fanaticism? Is it blowing things up? Or is it imposing one's moral compass on everyone else?

I go with the latter. Soft persecution is just as bad as hard.

One of them - World War 2.

Morality changes depending on who is asked. In one culture, children being used as soldiers is moral. In another, it is not. The only thing that paves the difference is out belief that we are right.

Faith goes beyond God, clearly.

But how you define "evil" and "tyrannical".

I define evil as any act that hurts someone against their will, physically, mentally, or otherwise. It sprouts from a lack of compassion. Where there is compassion, there can be no evil.

We define "xyz behaviour" as "evil behaviour" because of our sense of morality, which is similar to most people (due to genes ? or due to God ?).

Our own inner faith is what causes it. Atheists can have just as strong a moral code as theists. They believe in forces; theists believe in personas.

 

[Kyriakos]

Maybe we all have well-rounded educations (of which i must be the one having the poorest it would seem) so we can discuss the issue in many facets of it, from consciousness, to genes, to morality, to a god to atheism and agnosticism. But i would feel a lot more confident if the topic was placed on a basis we all can agree upon, and have something serious to contribute to.
In other words i should admit that i know little of the specific functions of genes, for i am approaching such issues always from the theoretical and cognitive perspective of my university studies, and related readings. I feel better producing philosophical arguments, rather than biological ones.
That said i have to note that the thoughts i have made on the subject of psyche and brain tend to be summed in the conclusion that the mental phenomena seem to be the same as the physical phenomena in the body, translated in cognitive and conscious from the first person perspective terms. If i see a pack of wolves coming towards me, it is natural that i can feel horror. That horror is largely an instinctive reaction to the idea that i am in grave danger. But careful: the feeling of horror is at the same time distinct from its supposed external stimulus; it is a mental phenomenon by itself, which can be triggered if i am in a safe environment too, by means of imagination*.
This seems to me to lead to the conclusion, or the guess, that the mental phenomena are distinct from the external data in very significant ways, perhaps they even do not correspond to them in the strictest of sense. If A is a state that is noted to take place when X=5, but then is reported in an experiment to also take place when X=3, we clearly have no set equation of X that produces A. Maybe it is a simple factor of X still, but maybe it is a vastly more complicated equation.

Edit: So, much like powers in Physics, it seems our mental worlds do not really ever come into actual 'contact' with the external world, but develop understandings of it instead. In greek the main term for "understand" is antilambanomai, which means literally "to take something in place of something (else) ". This seems not to be a chance etymology, since truly our consciousness, as in the example i provided, takes something quite distinctive from the data in the outer world.

*I recall Flaubert claiming that when he was writing the passages in his novel Madame Bovary about poisoning, he could feel as if having been poisoned; the power of imagination, and the mind, is very great and can replace external stimuli.

 

[warpus]

It only seems impossible considering how still limited are capabilities of modern science.

No, it's impossible because it's often impossible to prove a negative. It pretty much is always impossible unless the subject in question is defined precisely, which God never is.

How would you go about proving that God doesn't exist? It's impossible.. Just try thinking up a scenario, you just won't be able to do it..

Can you prove that the bigfoot doesn't exist? That is impossible to prove also, even though bigfoot is somewhat defined..

 

[Souron]

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.

We don't fully understand how the mind works, but that doesn't mean we don't know anything. Neuroscience is a legitimate field. And it seems that it works entirely through electromagnetism; no other force are necessary to explain it. And since brain activity cease at death... so must the mind.

As for the complexity leading to anything like "transform to something else", there's nothing special about complexity. It's hard to define complexity in a way with hard boundaries, much less attribute mystical properties to it.

Why stop at life? Why did the Big Bang suddenly decide to happen? Where did all that energy come from? The alternating Big Bang/Big Crunch theory explains a lot, but ultimately, there was a beginning.

That's not true: there does not need to be a beginning. The bible may say that God created the world, but many religions say that the world existed in some form or another since eternity. Also, depending on how you interpret the Bible, it could be said that God, and therefore the world (since God is a real being) existed since eternity too. Essentially there are three possibilities: the universe had a beginning; the universe had no beginning, but is non monotonic; and the universe is cyclical. Now, Given the evidence for the Big Bang, In an objective way having a beginning is the simplest model, because it doesn't require any explanation of how an event like the big bang would come to be.

The scale of the universe is mind-boggling. It's hard to fathom the idea that such a complex, intriguing creation has been created entirely by a set of forces, rather than some sort of sentient actor. That, I feel, is ultimately where the choice of religiosity is made - one decides whether the universe's complexity requires a deity, or if it does not.

But in realizing that this is the source of one's inclination to believe in the divine, shouldn't one try to objectively test the claim that complexity require an actor. Because there is evidence against it. An example is evolutionary algorithms.

There is no scientific proof for existence of God or Gods, but there is also no scientific proof for lack of such.

Yes, but gods could not be part of any scientific model, because they are inherently not minimalistic. Not unless a there was evidence of a god interacting on a personal level.

I would say that it also feels good when an unknown remains unanswered and mysterious. Mysterious is exciting. Such as: what was before the "Big Bang"?

In the spirit of simplicity, the standard scientific answer is there is no such thing. That may not be an intuitive answer, though.

 

[Tani Coyote]

That's not true: there does not need to be a beginning. The bible may say that God created the world, but many religions say that the world existed in some form or another since eternity. Also, depending on how you interpret the Bible, it could be said that God, and therefore the world (since God is a real being) existed since eternity too. Essentially there are three possibilities: the universe had a beginning; the universe had no beginning, but is non monotonic; and the universe is cyclical. Now, Given the evidence for the Big Bang, In an objective way having a beginning is the simplest model,

Given the nature of time, that doesn't click with me. As cyclical as things are, they eventually began somewhere, and from there, the cycle began.

In all probability, the Big Bang came first, then a Crunch, then a Bang, etc. etc. Or we could be the first incarnation of the universe. Who knows.

But it doesn't make sense to me for there to NOT have been a start of this process. Which I imagine was the beginning of time itself as much as space.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I would say that it also feels good when an unknown remains unanswered and mysterious. Mysterious is exciting. Such as: what was before the "Big Bang"?

Does it have to be that specific unknown though?

I agree that unknowns are interesting and mysterious, but about every answer yields new and different unknowns. Variety is the spice of life. Lets say we discover that a Great Carnival caused the Big Bang, what caused the Great Carnival? What was before the Great Carnival? The more answers we get the more angles it gives us to discover. If we'd never had found out that Galaxies were travelling away from each other, we'd not have had the questions: What caused them to? Was there a point of origin? What happened before that point of origin?

If our curiosity is never answered I feel we might lose it. If there is no reward of answers at the end of a scientific search, we'd stop searching. I fear we even might gain an attitude of: what's the point? Progress is vital for it discovers new and exciting unknowns. We just discovered the speed of light might not be an unbreakable barrier. Wheeeee!

 

[Tani Coyote]

Why go across time?

Just think about this.

Where does the universe end? How can it possibly stretch into infinity?

Assuming there's a white void beyond it, where does THAT end?!

A classic question to give one a headache.

 

[Souron]

Given the nature of time, that doesn't click with me. As cyclical as things are, they eventually began somewhere, and from there, the cycle began.

In all probability, the Big Bang came first, then a Crunch, then a Bang, etc. etc. Or we could be the first incarnation of the universe. Who knows.

But it doesn't make sense to me for there to NOT have been a start of this process. Which I imagine was the beginning of time itself as much as space.

To site a specific example Hinduism posits that there was not beginning (though there was a beginning to the present dream).

Many people in my experience are the opposite of you. To them the idea that time had a beginning is strange.

So I suggest opening your mind and entertaining this possibility of a universe that always existed.

To quote my favorite book series:

The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the third age by some, an Age yet to come, an age long pass, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning

As an aside, the Big crunch has pretty much been ruled out as a popular hypothesis. The universe looks like it'll keep expanding forever.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Why go across time?

One of many options

Just think about this.

Where does the universe end? How can it possibly stretch into infinity?

Assuming there's a white void beyond it, where does THAT end?!

A classic question to give one a headache.

You want a headache. Why can't it stretch to infinity?

And if you think about an infinite Universe, it must mean there are an infinite number of yous and mes. And an infinite number of yous and mes that are not exactly yous and mes. Like there is an infinite number of mes who read your post and decided not to reply to it. Infinity is where the headache goes supernova.

I once saw a documentary which calculated based on the number of atoms in the universe where the closest other version of you is if the Universe is infinite. Big number, can't recall it. But it's mental to think about it.

 

[peter grimes]

How did we go from inanimate (rock/gas/etc) to animate?
Where is the missing link? What was it?
I've asked you this several times now, and gotten no realistic answer whatsoever from you...
I'll go ahead and assume it's because you have none, just like science has none.

Thanks for playing! Have a nice thread.

Did you not read my response??

It's in post #167.

And it's true that we're likely to never know the specific path or location or moment that life started on earth. But right now we have NO REASON to believe that it required supernatural intervention. The same holds true for the origin of the universe. You're correct to say that we can't eliminate divine intervention as a possibility, but there's also no reason whatsoever to invoke divine intervention.

It's like when we see any other phenomenon - say, a cloud changing shape. We can't definitively show that Zephyrus wasn't playing around with the ice molecules just then; neither do we need to assume that a god was shaping the cloud.

 

[Birdjaguar]

How did we go from inanimate (rock/gas/etc) to animate?
Where is the missing link? What was it?
I've asked you this several times now, and gotten no realistic answer whatsoever from you...
I'll go ahead and assume it's because you have none, just like science has none.

I think the best place to look for the transition from non life to life is in retroviruses and viruses. Of course that would also call for looking at the origins of viruses and retroviruses from their precursors.

It only seems impossible considering how still limited are capabilities of modern science.

Proving that God does exist seems impossible from the very same reason.

How? Only if God was something material.

And possibly only if he / she / it / them (?) was "proper material" - since we still know nearly anything about "the other" matter (= dark matter).

And it seems that it works entirely through electromagnetism (EM); no other force are necessary to explain it. And since brain activity cease at death... so must the mind.

Since, as Souron noted, humans are entirely dependent upon the electromagnetic spectrum (EM) for all sensory observation, to be "seen" god would have to be active through that force. If god is not active through EM, then we would never be able to directly "know" of him/it.

As yet I do not think that we have found if/how dark mater and dark energy show up in EM, but they are postulated because we cannot explain what we think our EM readings of the universe tell us without adding them into the equation. They "balance the equation".

If for example someone proved tat Hubble was wrong and the universe was not expanding, then DM and DE might just go away.

 

[MantaRevan]

Well in order to find out, we need to decide if Infinity is possible or not. How can time be infinite? That seems inconceivable, yet I suspect that it is.

 

[Souron]

Dark energy deals with expansion. Dark matter explains the volume and rotation speed of galaxies.

 

[Winner]

But we are (exist) because our genes are (exist). We are determined by our genes. We evolved from other organisms because genes of those organisms - starting from simplest bacteria - evolved, mutated and changed. Thus how can you say that God does not exist and at the same say that genes are not everything, that human behaviour, reasoning, imagination, etc. - are more complex than just genes and are determined by something more than just genes.

Then - tell me please - WHAT else determines this. How is this "something else" called, if you don't call it "God"?

I called you Mr. Non-Sequitur because this is the most common ass-backwards argument that religious people make in pretty much any debate about religious matters.

See the analogy I made. Hardware doesn't determine the software. It can only dictate what kind of software will the computer be able to run and how well will it perform.

Real life example: I have two twin brothers - they're identical twins, so their DNA is the same. If the idiotic notion that genes 100% determine things like behaviour and personality, they should be psychologically indistinguishable from each other, especially since they grew up in the same environment, attended the same schools, share friends, etc. But it's not the case. They have different personalities, different interests, different ways of talking, different tastes in music, and so on and so forth.

Which means that whenever you turn on systems as complex as the human brain and let them run continuously for years, each will develop in unpredictable and unique ways, despite the shared "hardware" basis.

And you need no "God" or "Gods" to explain that.

Then not only God has to be considered as "false", but also plenty of other things, which are commonly recognized as "true".

For example morality and law. Because there is no evidence that we should observe morality, other than our own considerations.

Morality isn't a true-false proposition, so stop mixing apples and oranges and don't muddy the water.

This is not a perfect comparison.

In world of computers you can install same or similar software on two PCs consisting of different kinds of hardware.

In real life you can't force a bacteria (who has different genes = different software) to look and work / behave (= have same hardware) like human.

So genes actually are closer to "software" (if we have to stick to this unfortunate comparison), but determine also "hardware".

Nice way to completely miss the point of my analogy. Well, I already clarified it in my reply above, so here I'll just say that what I mean by "software" is the accumulated information our brain stores, accesses, and reacts upon. That's not determined by our genes, absolutely not. It's acquired throughout our lives.

What genes can do is for example make us lose temper quicker, due to some chemical imbalances in our brains that are indeed determined by our "hardware". But genes can't make us do specific things, like murder someone. We are intelligent beings who make their own choices, and unlike most other animals we are capable of controlling our instinctive urges thanks to the power of our rational minds.

Genes are no excuse for religion, is the bottom line.

 

[Domen]

In one culture, children being used as soldiers is moral. In another, it is not.

Rather not. For example:

I don't think children being used as soldiers is or ever was moral in Polish culture. Yet children-soldiers were used in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

See the analogy I made. Hardware doesn't determine the software.

And see my comment on this analogy. It is totally wrong.

If anything, while making such analogies, you should identify genes with software - not with hardware.

Nice way to completely miss the point of my analogy.

I deliberately missed the point of your analogy, because I cannot accept that this point is correct.

IMO it is totally wrong. Genes cannot be compared to hardware in this analogy. In this analogy, they can only be compared to software!

Real life example: I have two twin brothers - they're identical twins, so their DNA is the same. If the idiotic notion that genes 100% determine things like behaviour and personality, they should be psychologically indistinguishable from each other, especially since they grew up in the same environment, attended the same schools, share friends, etc. But it's not the case. They have different personalities, different interests, different ways of talking, different tastes in music, and so on and so forth.

No. You didn't fully understand of what I wrote.

That genes determine someone's behaviour doesn't mean that identic genes means identic behaviour - even under same circumstances (which is impossible because circumstances are never exactly 100% the same for two different persons).

Genes determine only a set of possible behaviour in different situations. In most of situations there are plenty - possibly thousands or millions - of possible schemes of behaviour. Genes "programm" us in such a way, that we choose from those options in every case. Of course our behaviour is directly determined by our minds. We are "homo sapiens" - we think. But our schemes of thinking - the way how we think - is determined by genes.

Thus indirectly our behaviour is also determined by genes.

I mean by "software" is the accumulated information our brain stores, accesses, and reacts upon. That's not determined by our genes, absolutely not. It's acquired throughout our lives.

Oh man... This proves that you completely missed my point.

The way our brain accumulates information, accesses & reacts upon it - the way our brain acquires information - is determined by genes!

Thus maybe even comparing genes to software is wrong.

Genes should be compared specifically to operational system - like Windows 7 - not to any random, optional software.

Software is anything we "install" during our life - and we have some influence on it (our environment, family etc. - also has).

But operational system are our genes - and we cannot change operational system. It determines what kinds of software and hardware we can install. Of course we have wide choice, as there are many types of various software & hardware compatible with our system - but this choice is limited, since not all software & hardware is compatible with our operational system (i.e. with our genes). Thus - in the end - as I already wrote, genes determine us.

But genes can't make us do specific things, like murder someone.

Completely untrue. For example psychopathy is a condition of human mind / human brain, that is largely determined by genes.

It has been proven by criminologists that genes have more significant influence on psychopathy than environmental factors (such as upbringing).

In general - not only psychopathy, but most kinds of propensities to commit crimes - are partially determined by genes.

Of course not only by genes, also for example by factors such as testosterone level during fetal life or accidents resulting in brain damage, etc.

But statistics seem to prove that genes have even bigger influence on propensity to crimes, than environmental factors (such as upbringing, family, school, etc.).

Of course the latter factors also cannot be ignored - but in general genes are responsible for higher or lower risk of becoming a criminal by a certain person. Just like genetic factors are responsible for higher or lower risk of developing cancer by a certain person. In this last case healthy or not healthy lifestyle, or proper medical care, can only dimnish or even more increase the effects of a genetical inclination of a person to develop cancer.

In a similar way proper or pathological upbringing / family can only dimnish or even more increase the risk of a person to become criminal.

There were researches conducted on 4 groups of cases of adoption (history of adopted boys was analyzed) - 1st group were children who were born in biological families with criminal past (their fathers, sometimes also grandfathers, were criminals) and adopted also by families with criminal past. The 2nd group were children born in biological families with criminal past, but they were adopted by normal families and raised by them since their infancy. The 3rd group were children born in biological families which had nothing to do with criminality, but were adopted and raised by pathological, criminal families. Finally the 4th group were children from biological families without criminal past and adopted and raised also by normal families, with no criminal past.

The results were as followed:

Percentage of sons (adopted boys) who entered into conflict with law when they grew up:

4th group - 13,5%
3rd group - 14,7%
2nd group - 20%
1st group - 24,5%

It shows that both genetical and environmental factors influence the risk of becoming criminal - but genetical factors are more important.

Another research conducted in Denmark on a statistical sample consisting of 5483 examples of adopted boys also showed that among children adopted from biological families in which fathers were criminals, percentage of boys who commited crimes when they grew up was significantly higher than among children who came from biological families with no criminal past. Among that second group percent of children who commited crimes when they grew up was only 5%, while among the group of children from biological families with criminal past it was much more.

====================================

And when it comes to twins - which you mentioned.

There is for example that story of Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe - identical twins adopted by different families:

http://lornareiko.wordpress.com/200...o-were-separated-at-birth-what-are-they-like/

Despite them being adopted by different families, their "CVs" are pretty similar.

 

[peter grimes]

As yet I do not think that we have found if/how dark mater and dark energy show up in EM, but they are postulated because we cannot explain what we think our EM readings of the universe tell us without adding them into the equation. They "balance the equation".

If for example someone proved tat Hubble was wrong and the universe was not expanding, then DM and DE might just go away.

I don't think this is right. I'm pretty sure Dark Matter doesn't interact with ordinary matter except through gravity. It is invisible to electromagnetic fields (electro-weak as well?). This is one of the reasons it's proving so difficult to detect. We're not sure where to look exactly, and even in the places we think to look, it's hard to detect. Dark Matter isn't postulated as the result of odd EM readings - it's postulated because of the observed motion of galaxies and galaxy clusters. There is too much mass to be accounted for by only luminous matter.

Dark Energy is unrelated to Dark Matter, at least this seems to be the case so far. It was, indeed, inserted as a variable in one of Einstein's equations because they didn't make sense to him otherwise (or something like that )

If we were to realize tomorrow that distant galaxies aren't speeding away from us, Dark Energy may indeed go away. But Dark Matter is here to stay - there are independent lines of evidence that point to its existence. None of them, as far as I know, have to do with the expansion of the universe.

===============================

If our curiosity is never answered I feel we might lose it. If there is no reward of answers at the end of a scientific search, we'd stop searching. I fear we even might gain an attitude of: what's the point? Progress is vital for it discovers new and exciting unknowns. We just discovered the speed of light might not be an unbreakable barrier. Wheeeee!

This touches on one something that blew my mind when I first heard about it:
Earth's atmosphere is mostly transparent, and we're lucky that it is.

Seems unimportant, but it's not. Imagine if the cloud cover was enough to prevent us from seeing the sun - like an overcast day all the time, day and night. There'd be enough energy for photosynthesis (albeit not as much as we enjoy now), but we wouldn't be able to see the stars or the moon or the sun. Just think for a moment about all the things humans have done that were inspired by looking up: No Astronomy, No Sky Gods, No Astrophysics, No Spectral Analysis, No dreams of travelling to the moon....

Curiosity is precious, and we're lucky to have a transparent atmosphere.

 

[Domen]

In the spirit of simplicity, the standard scientific answer is there is no such thing. That may not be an intuitive answer, though.

But that answer does not satisfy anyone's curiosity and is not scientific at all - even though produced by scientists - as it is not backed up by any proofs.

Why should there be "nothing at all" before the Big Bang? So what caused the Big Bang?

Every effect must have its cause and there is no effect without a cause...

The conclusion about the existence of so called "dark matter" was also derived by scientists from this principle (as they observed effects, but couldn't find the cause - so they assumed the existence of something else, called it "dark matter" - and counted that it might be even as much as 83% of the whole Universe - while "normal matter", "known-to-us matter", that is visible, measurable and touchable - is probably only 23%...).

Morality changes depending on who is asked.

Only in some relatively insignificant aspects (which all can be reduced to just one aspect: should we apply morality only to "us" or also to "them").

But general principles are the same for centuries.

BTW - it sounds like you talking about "weather" ("...depending on who is asked..."), while me talking about "climate" (broader perspective)...

Genes are no excuse for religion, is the bottom line.

First of all excuse is - by definition - something to justify things which are "bad".

And - since religion is not anything "bad" (only radicals and fanatics among atheists think so) - there is no need to find excuses for it.

Religion is a way of life pretty similar to atheism, or to any other way of life.

OTOH, religious fanaticism is something bad (no matter if Muslim or Christian - every religion has some fanatics). Similarly bad is also atheistic fanaticism (and there are also many fanatics among atheists - kind of atheism in which these people believe resembles / shows many similarities to religious cults).

==================================

How do you defined fanaticism? Is it blowing things up? Or is it imposing one's moral compass on everyone else?

I go with the latter. Soft persecution is just as bad as hard.

Probably both of the propositions you made.

Imposing one's compass on everyone else is also intolerance. And intolerance is usually part of fanaticism - not just religious.