Religion specifics. Questions about a religion?

[frenchfisher]

Huh? The Big Bang makes perfect sense to me. That's why I don't believe in a literal reading of Genesis. But a Big Bang without a creator is equally nonsensical... that's why I believe God started it, knowing full well the consequences of his actions (=humans, and other sentient lifeforms).

Oh, and as to "conscience": an evolutionary psychologist would tell you that communal behavior can, indeed, be adaptive if the members of a community develop it. If, for instance, you help a guy out, you will expect help in return... so you will both eventually "profit" from your help. That means you'll live longer, which means more time to have babies, or perhaps a better chance that your babies do live to adulthood (the preferred evolutionary "strategy" by humans: only a few offspring with a very high level of care); thus, more evolutionary fitness (your genes will be passed on).

But, I personally believe that consciousness is, indeed, something greater than the vague sense of communal action that we probably got in the course of our evolution.

[formerly known as hf]

Concoiussness has been shown to be nothing other than the make up of our brains.

We may be self aware. but so are some other animals, to different degrees. The whole 'concioussness' as something 'other' is a load of codswallop. We have developed brains, for sure - but we have little more 'free will' than a pig or monkey.

A study I do like to repeat, - which debunks the concioussness argument:

A nuber of people were put in front of a slide show. Their heads wired up for electro-activity detection. They were asked to press a button when they wanted to skip a slide. The slides varied from bring to pleasing to displeasing.

After a selection of slides. The mechanism was changed. Instead of the slides changing when the button was pressed, the slides were changed when the same electrical impulses were detected as those when the slide was being pressed before.

In such instances, the slides were changing before the button was pressed. Not surprising, sure. However, the subjects noted that it was changing before they had "decided" to change the button.

Indicating that what we percieve as 'decision making' - concioussness, free will - what have you. Is done after the decision has been made.
i.e: We are instinctive, subconcious animals like any other creature - we just happen to be complex enough that we somehow percieve our 'decisions' in an abstract form, but still have no more control over our actions than any other animal.


I am a firm believer that the distance between human and animals is so tiny as to be insignificant.


We are not special. We are not something wildly different. We have language - which has allowed us to build complex societies and compund centuries of knowledge. That has not made us fundamentally different to any other living creature.

Religions teach us to be arrogant. They teach us that humans are somehow special. Either in God's image - or further up the reincarnation ladder etc.. This arrogance leads us to deem our actons as above anything else.

We are none of that. We are socially developed, but biologically - fundamentally - animals.

The arrogance of the human race has been our undoing. And religions have only perpetuated that arrogance.

[Pie]

*cough*

who cares, is my main point. my secont point is... religion dosen't breed arrogance, it's SOCIATY that breeds arrogance.

(just look at the quakers, and shakers, and the factory makers. and all of the vagens who did nice things to the animals. And then, if you think about it, all the bad riligiouns out there started when there was major upheaval. wich means that i'm shifting the blame from religion, to the sociaty that the religion is created in. like the mideavle catholic church. was founded in.. the dark ages? what more "social upheavle" do you need than the dark ages?

also, third point, that whole jesus thing... i don't want to get into it, but yea, it proves that the whole "conciousness" and "souls" exist.

I also have a long and confusing philisofical reasoning behind it, but it's not concreat and i'm tired and I don't care.

[Diego]

I am currently an irreligious, cynical, skeptical solipsist.

[Zanthos]

pie.. first of all the medieval catholic church didn't technically exist. what you refer to as that is the roman catholic church, founded in about 33AD when St Peter started baptising people in the wake of Jesus's death. (if my memory serves me correct).