Search for Truth...

[mrdarius]

There is almost certainly no God. Without going nearly as deep into it as Dawkins does scientifically, the idea of a conscious supernatural being who is watching over every one of us, testing us, rewarding us, punishing us, selectively answering our prayers, becoming jealous, loving us unconditionally, smiting us, protecting us.... that's absurd. Although no one can disprove the existence of God, what reason does anyone have to believe in this extremely unlikely MYTH as opposed to other more plausible scenarios which are also unproveable but fit better with the things that we observe in life as well as the constantly advancing knowledge and understanding that we gain from science? The God "theory" is the most unreasonable of them all. It may not have always been that way (even as recently as hundreds of years ago)... but now, there is no excuse for reasonable and rational people to be holding on to such an antiquated and uneducated world view.

[Stina]

My Reason tells me that it is highly unlikely that this world was created by sheer coincidence. Wasn't it your Morpheus who said that there is no such thing as a coincidence? Science can tell us how improbable it is that this world would have been created in the first place. Science can tell us how improbable it is that any other livable world has been created anywhere else in this universe. But does Science explain why Love exists? Does science explain why we see beauty in Art, Music, Dance? Does Science explain why Evil exists?

I don't buy lottery tickets and I don't believe this world was created by an enormous series of coincidences.

[mrdarius]

It is not your Reason that tells you such things. You simply would like to believe that there is a God who deliberately created the extremely complex world we live in.

Please don't bring movies or movie characters into our discussion because it's all fictional whether or not what is said is valid. Now, imagine a coke bottle - one of the long neck bottles. It's sitting on the ground. Now, if I have one drop of water to drop, from an airplane, it's highly unlikely that it would land in the bottle. However, if it's raining, it's highly likely that several drops will fall in. Over the long history of the universe, there have been massive numbers of celestial events which create new universes. As impressive as our world is, it's only one possibility of billions. Our physical constants and such happen to work out to sustain life as we know it. It's not so hard to imagine this happening when you realize that billions of other universes have been created FROM other events (similar to the "big bang") that we observe on a daily basis (i.e. collapsing of stars that create black holes) and we assume that a vast majority of those universes do not have the conditions necesary to create and sustain life. However, we have limited abilities to see deep into space. We can only see a very small part of the multiverse that describes the world that our universe exists in.

The almighty creator is the drop of water landing in the bottle from the airplane. It's just EXTREMELY unlikely. The rain analogy fits because surely there is infinitely more water that falls outside of the bottle, however we are not blown away by the fact that some water lands inside. And as it rains more, the bottle may fill up and overflow. Thus, it's feasible to imagine that there IS indeed life out there somewhere. But it's probably much too far away for us to reach or recognize due to space and time (i.e. if we shined a bright light to communicate with distant beings, that light might take 50,000 years to reach them).

Now, in response to your other questions, yes, science does explain why love and beauty and evil exist. They ALL exist due to our heightened consciousness. Love is a chemical process similar to elation, depression, worry, paranoia, etc. We have evolved to conceptualize it and experience it the way that we do because it helps us to reproduce AND work together to protect each other in varying degrees. Our loyalties naturally fall to the family unit, the race, and the species. This is very obviously a physical phenomenon illustrated by the fact that some people don't feel love, or have a concept of beauty, or understand good vs. evil. When examining such people, they are shown to have chemical imbalances or physical deformations of the brain or glanular disfunction.

You do yourself no favors by asking "does science explain ____?". Even if the answer is no, religion does not offer a plausible alternative. Religion just makes up an answer and forces you to accept it without questioning it. It's really just old science that has become more and more insecure with its answers to questions as time has progressed. At a certain point in time, it answered questions that science could not answer. It answered them incorrectly, but no one knew any better. Now that science CAN provide answers to a lot of questions that religion formerly attempted to, religious leaders try to demonize the scientific process... when... science is no more than a quest for answers... JUST LIKE RELIGION. The problem that religion has with science is that technology has shown us too much truth for us to still accept religion AS science. So in order to keep religion alive, science has to be a totally separate thing.

I mean, no offense, but it's actually quite silly. Really, to believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old. Seriously... I'm not just taking that from Dawkins - I've actually had two people try to explain that to me when I was struggling with my Christianity. It's a bunch of hogwash. As much as people are willing to discuss and debate religion, it eventually comes down to this - FAITH. Just trust that although things seem to be completely contradictory and impossible, it's still true. It's only a test. I'm all about faith. Like... have faith in yourself. Faith is about thinking positively... not ignoring reality. To continue to believe things that have been PROVEN false... that's an insult to the reason and intellect that your conscious and loving God gave to you. It's far more likely that evolved creatures, NOT created by a perfect and omniscient God would be flawed enough to fall prey to such manipulation. Bottom line, if there were a God, what kind of shit is he smoking to create a world that disproves his very existence by proving everything he said 2000 to 6000 years ago to be false?

THERE IS NO GOD.