No such thing as God.

@iconoclast,

Solace, quote: What I mean is, we don't consciously evolve...

Yes, we do. Humans do. That's exactly what the concept of God is. An evolutiuonary shortcut that boosted human development. But it's run out of validity - and is dragging us down. We need to find the next conceptual boost, and science is it.

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@iconoclast,

Okay, you're the one promoting science here, so please provide me with some scientific evidence that humans consciously evolve. Evolution, by the very term of it, suggests a species wide change.

You're absolutely wrong about the concept of God being an evolutionary change within the species, even, because if that were true every member of the species, including yourself, would believe in God. But you don't, and neither do a good many, and in every instance of history, and prehistory, there were plenty of people who didn't believe in God or any other religious concept. The only way that religious beliefs could possibly, even conceivably, be caused by evolution is if there are two different species of homo sapien walking around on the planet, one that developed a belief in God and one that didn't.

Your message, in and of itself, wasn't an ill conceived one, but you're burying it in this evolutionary basis of religion nonsense. You've perverted the meaning of evolution, and until you can get that right, you don't have much hope of getting the rest right either.

1 Reply

@Solace,

Solace wrote:

Okay, you're the one promoting science here, so please provide me with some scientific evidence that humans consciously evolve. Evolution, by the very term of it, suggests a species wide change.

Humans certainly adapt their behaviors and practices, and this becomes incorporated into culture. Evolution strictly speaking is genetic change over time. But adaptive behaviors CAN affect genetic evolution because it can induce differential survival or fertility of one group over another, it can result in isolated populations with founder effects (i.e. a genetic expansion that comes out of a small genetically nonrepresentative subpopulation), and it can alter mate selection. If you're looking purely at gene frequency changes over time (Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium) one thing you have to assume is infinite populations with random mating. But in the real world populations are finite and mating is NOT random. Ashkenazy Jews (my own personal ethnic group) have higher gene frequencies of a number of genetic diseases than other ethnic groups from the same geographic place (these diseases include Tay-Sachs, Gaucher, Niemann-Pick, Familial Dysautonomia, and others). This is because Jews in eastern and central Europe were more likely to have offspring with other Jews than with their non-Jewish neighbors.

Is this extrinsically imposed by ghettoization? Is this self-imposed because of cultural mores and marital beliefs? It's probably both, but the thing is this is not self-conscious evolution -- it's a genetic side effect of cultural practices and human behavior.

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@Aedes,

In a sense what you're saying could be used to assert that religious beliefs can/have influenced evolution, but I don't see it being used to assert things the other way around. If so then we run into a "chicken and the egg" kind of paradox.

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@Solace,

Solace wrote:

In a sense what you're saying could be used to assert that religious beliefs can/have influenced evolution, but I don't see it being used to assert things the other way around. If so then we run into a "chicken and the egg" kind of paradox.

Hard to avoid. I mean when you break it down all we KNOW is that 1) humans have religion and 2) humans evolve.

As I point out above religion CAN indeed affect evolution, but I very much doubt that this is self-conscious (except in the case of events like the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust, which in both cases were justified on the grounds of 'contamination'). That said I it's far more likely that overall evolution has been inadvertently influenced by religion, which has much less abstract dictates and ends than the modern idea of evolution.

But I also think it's accurate that religious beliefs are a product of our evolution, just as all other abstract thought processes are. The ontogeny of religious belief probably rests in a combination of human inquisitiveness, emotion, and abstract reasoning. Obviously this has to be potentiated by our biological and cognitive capacity to actually have these qualitites!

That said, I don't think it's a simple cycle of religion affecting its own evolution. Other cultural things affect religion much more quickly than evolution will. I mean human evolution doesn't change much on the 5000 year time scale that has seen the development of all extant religions.

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@Aedes,

Quote:

Didymos Thomas, i have explained and explained these ideas to you, and yet you persist in misunderstanding them.

And just the same I have explained my objections to you again and again, yet you do not address them directly. Instead you attribute our disagreement to assumptions you make about my personal views. As far as I can tell I have never on this forum given an account of my own spiritual views.

Quote:

perhaps this is because your idea of man as a creation of god is under attack, and thus you refuse to think in other terms. This may be the source of your misunderstanding of everything i say.

Misunderstanding is one thing, but what causes you to ignore my objections? Perhaps if I am misunderstanding you, you could respond to my statements so as to explain why said statements do not hold water. Telling me that I'm just too close minded to understand you really isn't productive.

Quote:

can you, just for a moment, entertain the idea that man is an evolutionary being.

Entertain? I embrace the notion that man changes over time, that his society changes - everything changes.

Quote:

then you cannot fail to understand the idea of conceptual development. it's in this context that the archetype occurred, but then developed as it was applied and re-applied through time, and by different peoples.

Right, the only problem is that I have addressed the shortcomings of your suggested archetype. Reasserting the truth of your claims does not help anyone understand them.

The archetype relies on a duality, which not all notions of God fit. The archetype is an oversimplification and therefore not representative of god-notions actually worshiped by man. For these reasons criticism of the archetype in question is useless if you intend to criticize the belief in God.

Quote:

i am not critsizing the archetype. it was an important idea - allowing man to form societies by acting as an objective authority for law. but it has passed it's sell-by date. we now have better explanation for our existence, and thus a better objective authority for law.

That's exactly the problem - your archetype was never the explanation for our existence. The archetype is an over simplification of a variety of explanations for our existence.

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@Didymos Thomas,

Then you will probably adapt well to survival in the new environment. But seriously, important point. Might I refer you to the answer I gave to Ruthless Logic on the question of equality? This has been widely misunderstood. The emphasis must be placed on environmental sustainability.
The global government will require a monopoly on the legitimate use of force - and so will not allow guns to be manufactured or owned other than by the global government. You don't have a right just because you think you have a right - and so there is no removal of your rights requiring justification.

Iconoclast- Increasingly your rhetoric has revealed patterns of claims based on the appeals of hyper-vigilance towards your grandiose conjectures and auspicious oversight abilities. Your claim for equality is just a manifestation conjured from your over-indulgence in idealism, which is simply you way of reconciling the unsettlement you experience by viewing the indifferent feedback you receive from your ruthless, yet beautifully engineered natural world. I simply challenge you to find ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE in our dynamic natural world that reflects the static quality of equality. Our world is based on the tension of survivability, and all the uncertainty that encompasses the human position within this Reality. I submit to you, a world based on equality, is a dead world (ironically, it produces the self-fulfilling prophecy you fear most).Without an empirically measurable example to indicate process credibility, your self-indulgent claim of equality will be systematically relegated to the ash-heap of problematic ideals.

On the topic of legitimate use of force ( kinda sounds like elitism, better yet, Divine Direction), the natural diversification of individual self preservation (right to bear arms) serves as the best deterrent to the completely predictable corruption of absolute power. Your propensity to advocate for global consensus is indicative of your flawed concepts that dismiss the inherent function of self-interest, while allowing you to over-indulge in your own prescribe self-interest, by virtue of a position within or advocating for, the elite enlighten global government (p.s. you will never escape the accusation of self-interest, that is why it is best to allow access to everyone).

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@Ruthless Logic,

The YUXI Problem.

Suppose there's a being, (i) belonging to a species, (u) headed for extinction because (u) believes in, and acts on the basis of x, rather than y.
(i) knows x to be the cause of the impending demise of (u). (i) knows y to be more valid than x. (i) believes that acting in accord with y would allow (u) to continue to exist.
(i) has tried to make (u) understand y - but to no avail.
What should (i) do?

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@iconoclast,

iconoclast wrote:

What should (i) do?

Easy -- (i) should discuss it with others on a philosophy forum.

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@iconoclast,

iconoclast wrote:

(i) knows x to be the cause of the impending demise of (u). (i) knows y to be more valid than x. (i) believes that acting in accord with y would allow (u) to continue to exist.

Sounds like (i) has an inflated view of his/her knowledge.

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@iconoclast,

iconoclast, you've still done nothing to prove that belief in God is causing the human race to go extinct. All you have is a theory, and a poorly founded one at that. Other than saying the same thing over and over, just in a somewhat different manner each time, you've said nothing new for a good many posts. My advice is to leave it alone unless and until you get something fresh.

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@iconoclast,

iconoclast wrote:

There are, as you say, values that cannot be scientifically justified within these ideas - the survival of the human species for example, is a value with no ultimate scientific justification.

That's all I was saying. So aren't you simply substituting your subjective ideologies for someone else's? I'm not saying you shouldn't or can't, my only point is that those ideologies do not have the authority of being called "scientific".

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@de Silentio,

Hmm... went back to refresh a bit on the this discussion, a good one with a lot of valid points. Doesn't seem like any of it is difficult to understand.

Looks like God brought us into evolution and based not on my book experience, I see that we evolve continually in all that we do. Mankind is an ever evolving life force that changes hourly. Evolution, not the argumentative semantics of the word or the perception of what it means to others, simply means change and evolving. Everything around us evolves how are we supposed to say different? We can argue where it evolved from and guess on how humans evolved but does it really make all that much difference in how we evolve into tomorrow?

God, would seem to me like it is and only will be what we perceive it to be. This explains why God is different to so many people and God has different meanings to each personal autonomously. Some of us walk around in doubt, while others follow the doctrines of another man. There's really a God if we believe there to be... isn't there? It's what we believe God to be that makes the difference? However, in all we argue and all we discuss about who, why, what, where... etc., it is still man who has created computers, it's man who flew the first airplane, it's man who stepped on the moon, it's man who is participating in the creation of mans' world. So no matter what, history shows us one thing, man reaps what he sows. History has taught us that peace is much more productive than war and Love more productive than hate.

God hasn't show his face since Adam and Eve, (according to man) and he certainly had nothing to do with what man has and continue to creates... or does he? Man wrote the books, man created the ideology, man creates the peace and man creates the hate. Nature responds in balance to what mankind takes out of balance. God is what one believes God to be. Right, wrong or indifferent, we are only creating the idea of God yet everyday we create.

Is there really no such thing as God? Doesn't that all depend on how you choose to look at it? No matter what happens in the past, isn't the only thing we can control is our perceptions and actions in the future? Is God in control of that or are we?

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@Justin,

I normally wouldn't post in a thread of this size as I'm too lazy to read every post, hopwever, i'm tempted to anyway so....
It seems irrational to prove or disprove belief in a being which is beyond our physical universe and understanding by definition. It is almost like proving logic through logic only even more absurd as it tries to apply logical thought to an unknowable object whith unknown properties that is by definition beyond human limitation, which is essentially nonsensical to consider but still unprovable.
As far as your thesis is concerned(that god is causing mankind to go extinct), you have to define what is harmful and what is not to claim that this manner of belief is such, and waht is harmful and what is not harmful is contingent upon what direction we want to go in. Even the extinction of mankind being 'bad' is presumed and this must be dissected
To say it flat out, you can't prove it. You would have to answer every single question in philosophy.

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@iconoclast,

There's no such thing as me either.

Sorry for that rushed and sadly lacking comment - had to nip out!

This sounds to me like the age old "theres no such thing as me" comment. If you asked a child "do you exist?" you'd most likely get the simple answer "yes". Does it make you wonder why that answer isn't enough?

It seems the nature of science is to break things into their component parts, label each one of them and all the forces that act on them, then declare the thing being studied as a net effect.

In simple terms, you may study the parts of the engine, catalogue the forces at work on each part, but you still have an engine. I've not seen an arguament against consciousness yet. I've seen lots of attempts to identify the parts or forces at work. If the combined sum of the forces can't be described as consciousness, the question should be changed to "what do we mean by consciousness"?

In the same manner, to label god as non existant would be pointless if the nature of god was not first defined.

If our perception of consciousness is the combined effect of these forces at work, and the greater whole was referred to as god, by what logical arguament could the greater whole not be capable of consciousness when each of the smaller parts (us) each has a perception of it?

1 Reply

@simon phil,

simon wrote:

Sorry for that rushed and sadly lacking comment - had to nip out!

This sounds to me like the age old "theres no such thing as me" comment. If you asked a child "do you exist?" you'd most likely get the simple answer "yes". Does it make you wonder why that answer isn't enough?

It seems the nature of science is to break things into their component parts, label each one of them and all the forces that act on them, then declare the thing being studied as a net effect.

In simple terms, you may study the parts of the engine, catalogue the forces at work on each part, but you still have an engine. I've not seen an arguament against consciousness yet. I've seen lots of attempts to identify the parts or forces at work. If the combined sum of the forces can't be described as consciousness, the question should be changed to "what do we mean by consciousness"?

In the same manner, to label god as non existant would be pointless if the nature of god was not first defined.

If our perception of consciousness is the combined effect of these forces at work, and the greater whole was referred to as god, by what logical arguament could the greater whole not be capable of consciousness when each of the smaller parts (us) each has a perception of it?

Simon,

:)Consciousness is reaction, in its elemental development as well as in its more complex developments. Traditional science is about reductionism, try cybernetics and/or systems theory/ systems science, the science of wholeness, it will expand your philosophy in new ways.

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@boagie,

Will do

) I'm a DBA by trade so the tecchie bits are more up my street. The "Philosophy" I've taken more interest in my spare time. Typical scenario. Young kid gets bullied. Young kid wonders why, how everything works, what everything is, how it all fits together, what the purpose of everything is etc etc..

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@simon phil,

simon wrote:

Will do ) I'm a DBA by trade so the tecchie bits are more up my street. The "Philosophy" I've taken more interest in my spare time. Typical scenario. Young kid gets bullied. Young kid wonders why, how everything works, what everything is, how it all fits together, what the purpose of everything is etc etc..

Simon,

Your in the right place, that is what philosophy is all about, WONDER!! Very Happy

1 Reply

@boagie,

Dear All, Sorry about the absence. Will have broadband at home soon. Further to YUXI:

One might think that if y were areasonable solution to the problems caused by x - (i) would be listened to, or (u) would arrive at these conclusions some other way. However, x is a rationale unto itself, rather than a rationale unto reality, and this undermines (u)'s ability to order real world priorities. Circumstance and disposition have allowed (i) to see beyond the rationale of x - while the majority remain tied into this rationale by the ongoing negotiation of social, political and economic activities in these terms.
That the impending extinction of the species is not held to be a non-contingent priority demonstrates the psychosis induced by belief in x, and this constitutes the problem. The psychosis lies in the apparent justification of x by action and thought in terms of x, whereas (i) has been able to view x from the outside and see that while internally coherent, x externalizes large parts of reality. These externalized realities, mounting for generations, now threaten the very existence of the species. However, (u) is unable to recognize these threats, less yet address them, for they lie outside the conceptual framework of x.

I think this addresses some of the points raised. I just wanted to take the time to thank solace for the advice:

'iconoclast, you've still done nothing to prove that belief in God is causing the human race to go extinct. All you have is a theory, and a poorly founded one at that. Other than saying the same thing over and over, just in a somewhat different manner each time, you've said nothing new for a good many posts. My advice is to leave it alone unless and until you get something fresh.'

Did you know this is a philosophy site? We're still debating issues discussed by the Greeks over two thousand years ago. In comparison this is something fresh - afterall, humankind hasn't been threatened with extinction before the present era. Every previous generation has been able to have kids and raise them in the knowledge that while they themselves may die, thier children carry thier genetic and intellectual legacy onward. But not us - not unless we get this right. Am i boring you?

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@iconoclast,

No, icono, you weren't boring me. Sorry for being terse before, but since you were saying pretty much the same thing each time you posted it started to feel like a rant. Not that the extinction of the species isn't worth ranting about.

1 Reply

No such thing as God.

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