It is wrong, for faith-based belief and self-delusion go hand in hand. For some consequences resulting from self-delusion, read my previous post - in response to Pokerlogist.

That faith can lead to self-deception does not imply that faith cannot lead to truth, so that’s kind of missing the point. The point is, the bulk of humanity finds inherent meaning and inherent purpose in existence, which they attribute to a meaning and purpose giver, or God. That science can’t quantify or objectify that sense of meaning and purpose doesn’t imply inherent meaning and purpose doesn’t exist; just that science can’t objectify and quantify meaning and purpose.

Science can and does objectify meaning and purpose:

Species/collective survival.
All morality (good-bad) and sense of quality (beautiful-ugly) stems from that.

The ‘collective’ species or whatever is just another mask for the socialist mindset. Political ideologies are hardly any concern of science.

If the need/purpose of survival of our species (the collective) coincidentally aligns with a 'socialist mindset' that does not make the scientists who have identified this purpose (via evolutionary biology evidence) - socialists, nor does it make the purpose itself - socialist. What makes them and the purpose socialist, is you.
Scientific results do not have political ideologies or agendas.

This habit of over-categorizing and labeling everything into neat little convenient boxes that compartmentalize the otherwise rigorous and time-consuming process of thinking, can often result in conclusions which are completely detached from reality.

The point is that nobody gives a crap about what our genes want or what’s good for our genes, except as to how we can use such knowledge to our benefit. I just don’t buy into the idea that because science can only say of us that we’re gene vehicles along with a bunch of electro-chemical processes that we’re just gene vehicles with a bunch of electro-chemical processes.

Anyway, are you not arguing that science has determined religious belief is a cancerous impediment to the survival of the species, and consequently needs to be eradicated (for the good of the species)?

That may not be - all we are - and there may be more to "us" that science has just not revealed yet (with the current scientific instruments available), but currently that is the most accurate understanding of 'us' and our purpose. If you want to have 'faith' in the notion that there's more to 'us' and our purpose, then you may do that - but just understand that once you invest belief into that faith - that you are no longer operating under the umbrella of evidence-based knowledge.

It may very well be a cancerous impediment, but we do not conclusively know quite yet. All I can do is present arguments in favor of this hypothesis, and that is exactly what I am doing. The reason I present arguments in favor of this hypothesis is because I do not see enough evidence to indicate that religious belief currently benefits or contributes to society's survival or progress.

While evolutionary factors (as well as social ones such as laws etc) all have the directive of helping "the collective" prosper, I'm not quite comfortable making the jump to assuming that's our purpose. It is logical that such mechanisms are designed to increase our rate of survival, but we also have consciousness -- something which I feel is completely separate from the "purpose" which logically follows from examining the evolutionary process. I think saying that many natural mechanisms are designed such that the collective benefits from them is accurate, but when that becomes "natural mechanisms benefit the collective, therefore our purpose as individual humans is to thrive as a collective" I think you're saying something completely different and don't really think the evidence backs this up.

Surviving and thriving is currently our most fundamental and only purpose.

I agree that there may be a grander purpose, for which we are unaware of yet, or for which science has not tapped into yet, however until (and if) such a time arrives, our purpose currently remains - to collectively survive/thrive.

If you're going to invest your belief into the possibility that there may be a grander purpose for us, then once again - you would be adopting a faith-based belief, for currently we just do not know/have the evidence to back that up.

No it doesnt.

Can you please elaborate?

Some people want to commit suicide so how does that tie in with the purpose of surviving?

Some people dont want to have kids so how does that tie in with the purpose of thriving?

Blitzkreger, you misunderstood his point so completely that I don't know where to start. People committing suicide or choosing not to have kids has got nothing to do - in the slightest - with survival being life's purpose.

okay.

The possibilities really aren't endless. Arguments like alien implantation merely move the problem to another universe. That universe still needed a creater.

To the question, why is the God of Abraham, Isaac, (and Ishmael for the Muslims) and Jacob the true God. The answer, the evidence, lies in his dealings and predictions regarding the future of those peoples.

Jacob (Israel) became a multitude of people and nations. His descendands (celto anglo saxons) became the dominant world players and published his testimony for the world. The throne of David (British throne) still stands as promised 2 Samuel 7:10- 7:18. Jacobs brother Esau (Jews) is/are still a major factor in the world as well.

Prophecy and History testify. Here is a good source to get acquainted with that info - http://www.jahtruth.net/

If they suicide before reproducing/spreading their genes, then there won't be any children/future generations who also have predispositions for depression or suicide. AND. Even if they suicide after reproducing, they clearly won't be able to reproduce any more and will thus be unable to further spread their deadly predispositions/genes. It all ties in with the purpose of - 'the species/collective surviving into the future'. Eventually the DNA coding that predisposes people to depression/suicide will be weeded out of the gene pool entirely (unless it serves a purpose that ties in with collective survival somehow, but I doubt that it does).

Same logic as above. If they don't want to have kids, that means they die before reproducing - hence are unable to further spread their predispositions for not wanting reproduce/have kids.

It's a very slow process of DNA encryption/deletion, but in the span of time that earth's been here, its understandable.

If physics concluded that the fundamental building block of physical reality is the jellybean, I wouldn’t conclude I’m a vessel for jellybeans. At the end of the day, I don’t need science to tell me who I am, the meaning of life or anything of the sort. Nor do I need to have faith in the brute fact of my own beingness. Further, I don’t see my beingness as something that’s objectifiable or quantifiable to begin with, so I don’t see science as ever having any import into the issue.

In terms of propagation of the species, from what I’ve seen the scientific evidence points in favor of religion. It seems abundantly clear from the evidence that religious people replicate at a higher rate than the non-religious.

Another issue is since man evolved from lower animals and it’s evident that lower species don’t believe in God, the conclusion to be drawn is that a lack of belief in a deity was probably the natural state for very early humans and quite possibly has been selected out-of-existence in favor of a predisposition to believe.

I don't necessarily believe we have some "hidden, grand purpose" which we haven't discovered yet. As I said, I just don't see the evidence that our purpose is to survive and thrive as a collective. Natural mechanisms certainly do lend themselves to this, but I don't see how that applies to our purpose as individuals one way or the other.

That's fine. If you think that humans are somehow 'special' in the grand scheme of things or that there's some sort of collective consciousness residing outside of time and space, I'm not going to bash on your faith-based notion. However, just don't forget that when earth's entire history is placed on a 12 hour clock, **** sapiens have only been around for 2 seconds of that clock. We may not even live beyond another second, or even beyond the time-frame that the dinosaurs managed.

All that science has done, is show us that - no, we are not special - and the only thing we can/must do is survive, just like any other species of life. From your tone, it seems like you may be having troubles accepting this, and that's understandable.

Yes, you are right here. It has been selected for evolutionarily, but that does not mean that it currently facilitates survival. It's much like our appendix. It was useful for our evolution, but it no longer serves a primary purpose, and has become a vestigial structure instead. A vestigial structure is a structure that has lost all or most of its original function through the process of evolution. Our bloody history shows us that in the modern age religion does not facilitate survival at all, and that behind every war, it has a fundamental influence and adds significant fuel. Just look at the dark ages or the crusades, where significant scientific and intellectual developments were at the lowest of all time due to the overwhelming power of religious domination. If religion was absent, we may even be living on other planets by now, who knows...

Here, for some added humour and spice to the thread, I've added 2 pictures to illustrate:



If our purpose is not to survive/thrive then can you do something for me please? Can you not eat food for 2 weeks for me? Can you do that for me?

It does not make sense to say - 'natural mechanisms certainly lend themselves to this'. They don't 'lend themselves to this', they originate from this very purpose. It sounds to me like you may need to read up a little on evolutionary biology if you don't see any evidence of survival being our prime directive.

You're backing this evidence up with - a religious website? that on the home page says: CONGRATULATIONS - You've just landed on the most ground-breaking and informative site on the Net - that's right, with a capital N. I highlighted 'the most' above because I didn't know that there were various levels of ground-breaking....

You can't be serious? Do you have any evidence that what you've stated above has been documented scientifically or even verified scientifically? Preferably a scientific journal? Some sort of credible, non-biased, non-childlish, verification of this?

Remember what I told you about looking for vain, irrelevant excuses? Your not scientific at all. You merely appeal to emotional b.s.

My point was if you follow the trail of the Israelites, you'll find the testimony. That site has alot of good hidden history that you won't find often. Also, if you wan't more sources, it will give you ideas where to start.

Yeah, I doubt will come to terms on that.

I doubt you’ll find many modern historians who’d agree with your take on things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ag...n_academic_use
Other misconceptions such as: "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages", "the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", and "the medieval Christian church suppressed the growth of natural philosophy", are all cited by Ronald Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, although they are not supported by current historical research.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western...zation#History
Much of the basis of the post-Roman cultural world had been set before the fall of the Empire, mainly through the integrating and reshaping of Roman ideas through Christian thought. The Greek and Roman paganism had been completely replaced by Christianity around the 4th and 5th centuries, since it became the official State religion following the baptism of emperor Constantine I. Roman Catholic Christianity and the Nicene Creed served as a unifying force in Western Europe, and in some respects replaced or competed with the secular authorities. Art and literature, law, education, and politics were preserved in the teachings of the Church, in an environment that, otherwise, would have probably seen their loss.

As far as atrocities go, sure religion deserves its share of the blame. But, what I consider to be the greatest atrocities in the history of human civilization occurred last century as a result of some people placing the collective good above the individual’s well-being and liberty.

Are you actually trying to argue that the Christian dark ages weren't 'dark'? and that they were equal in intellectual and scientific inquiry as for instance - the Age of Enlightenment? or even the engineering breakthroughs of Ancient Rome? or the philosophy of Ancient Greece more than a 1000 years before that? It was the darkest period of human history in terms of thought (since our ancestors left Africa). They burned thousands of books and literature on scientific advancement in the pursuit of spreading their 'One, True God'.

As the Christians closed Pagan temples and the Pagan academies so too they destroyed or at least dispersed their libraries. Public libraries, once the Empire was administered by Christians, had their Pagan books progressively replaced by Christian books. Even as early as 235 AD Christians, like Sextus Julius Africanus, were in powerful and influential positions in Rome. Africanus, a Christian scholar, was put in charge of the public library founded by the Emperor Severus on a site near the Pantheon. Knowing the subsequent history of the Christians’ bigotry with their missionary zeal for foisting their One True God on to everyone else in the world, it is interesting to wonder what influential people like Julius Africanus got up to even before Christianity triumphed.

Official archives contained state reports and these too were purged of any sources which were not favourable to Christianity, once the Christians took control. This is why the official reports of Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius, the Acta Pilati, disappeared. It showed that Jesus was a Jewish rebel, a member of the gang of Galilaeans founded by Judas of Galilee when Jesus was a youth. Pagan private libraries were dispersed when the Pagan aristocracy were impoverished by the Christians.

Their fathers having destroyed ancient culture, Christians today have the gall to claim that it was the Christians who preserved it! These modern Christians are so unprincipled as to quote the Nestorians as an example of how Christians treasured classical learning. Truthfully they banished Nestorius to Egypt as a dangerous heretic. He declared the Virgin Mary was not the mother of God because, although God was the father, she had borne Jesus as a human.

Christians, liberal as they never were had the Nestorian Christians driven from Syria by the Emperor Zeno, the Isaurian, around 485 AD. They fled to Persia and Nestorianism was effectively destroyed in the West. At Nisibis, however, Nestorians built a centre of Greek culture including a library of the classics. They attracted scholars from Greece, including some of the Pagan school of Athens closed by Justinian in 529 AD.

Fortunately, the despised Nestorians were able to preserve some Pagan culture and pass it on to the Moslem Arabs when they conquered the area in building up the mighty Moslem Empire. Many Pagan classics were translated into Arabic whence they eventually were recovered in the West at the Renaissance.

So, yes, Nestorian Christians did help to preserve classical culture but it was through no good intent on the part of orthodox Christians who hated the Nestorians as much as Pagans and sought to destroy them both. To claim credit because their plans did not work out as they expected is typical Christian trickery.

Christians also pretend their own scholars linked the wisdom of Antiquity and the Middle Ages. They cite Boethius (d 524 AD) who wrote commentaries on Greek and Latin philosophers. He translated two of Aristotle’s treatises on logic into Latin, and was the resident scholar in the Ostrogoth kingdom.

Note the contradiction. Christians blame the destruction of classic culture on the barbarian invasions not on Christianity, but here they quote the resident scholar of a barbarian kingdom as a protector of classic works. They blame the barbarians for book burning then seek kudos because Christian scholars in the barbarians’ court preserve Pagan texts. Curious that, like the Nestorians, the Arians had been declared as heretical and were persecuted as much as the Pagans.

Another servant of the king of the Ostrogoths was Cassiodorus (d 583 AD). In about 537 AD he founded a monastic order to study and copy Pagan literature which he brought from Africa when necessary. Christians want us to believe that barbarians destroyed books then employed Christians to replace them. The truth is that the Catholic church was barbaric but the Arian barbarians were relatively civilised. The Church destroyed Pagan books but some Arian barbarians tried to preserve them.

When they could not destroy the books, the Christians suppressed the information by declaring it heretical or blasphemous. A few examples will show it, and hint at what has been lost by Christian bigotry. Thales and Anaximander thought stars were suns with planets at immense distances from us. Lucretius implied the uniform acceleration of falling bodies—not rediscovered until Galileo did it—and that space was infinite and with an infinite number of worlds in it. In 1600, Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake as a heretic for saying the same sort of thing. Sextus Empiricus says Democritus had his atomic theory from Moscus the Phœnician. But in Moscus’s idea, the atoms were not utterly indivisible, and so was closer to modern atomic theory—under some conditions they could divide. Pythagoras is thought to have known the inverse square law of attraction. Copernicus, Galileo and Newton all acknowledged the debt they oweed to the discoveries and conjectures of the pre-Christian philosophers and scientists. They were able to express this debt because the Dark Ages shutters were being prized open after a thousand years of darkness.

Even into the late Middle Ages, the Christians did not cease to destroy anything that they considered alien. They lit pyres of Jewish books after the pope had anathematized the Talmud because it portrayed Jesus as a common criminal. Around 1500 the Spanish Inquisition burned huge numbers of Jewish and Arabic books. Because these events are documented with some pride by the Christian chroniclers of the time, there is no way the Christian apologists can deny them. Nevertheless, it does not suggest to them that perhaps it was simply the continuation of Christian tradition. Christians in Roman times felt just the same way about Pagans as they felt about the Jews and Muslims in the Middle Ages. They taught false doctrine—doctrine not approved by the church as the representative of the One True God—and so their works should be destroyed as the work of the Devil.

Nor did this attitude cease with the Renaissance and the gradual rediscovery of learning, and the discovery of the New World. The Church found itself new targets to abuse. Bishop Diego de Landa (Relacion de la cosas de Yucatan) wrote in 1565 AD: We found, in the possession of the Mayas, a large number of books written in these letters of theirs and, as they contained nothing in which there was not some superstition and devil’s lies, we burnt them all, at which they felt wondrous sorrow and were aggrieved. The sweet enlightened Christian bishop could not understand why a conquered people should be aggrieved when their cultural heritage was consigned to the flames. It is symbolic of the sheer barbarity of the Church even into modern times.

Like I said, most modern historians reject the atheist spin. The thing is no one’s claiming Christendom was utopia, but you can’t conclude it would have been better or even if what we think of as Western Civilization would have ever come about sans Christianity.

It's not a 'spin'. There you go again with your 'political/hidden agendas'. Seems to me like you're paranoid that the - atheists have some sort of 'socialist/hidden agenda' or something...

It's simply looking at the evidence. Whether you conclude it's spin or not is irrelevant. There's many reasons why they termed it the DARK AGES, and I provided you with plenty in my previous post. If you choose to believe that they really weren't - the dark ages - then good on you, but the majority of historians as well as the scientific community strongly disagrees with you - hence "the dark ages".

Now. Which historians precisely reject the 'atheist spin'? despite the fact that there is no 'atheist spin'.....