Any parts really. Biblical god was a monster, absolute piece of shit character. Then Jesus came and said he's going to follow his dad's orders with a sword. Jesus is just as bad, there is no old/vs new testament trash, all hateful.
3 of the 10 commandments were selfish, and there was room in the rules to put don't eat shelfish or wear mixed fabrics, but no mention of don't own fucking people.
The Bible is pretty fallible when looking at it objectively IMO. But the nail in the coffin was contrasting what the Bible asks of us vs what Christianity does. The tyrannical cheeto is as close to the antichrist as we've seen and they're all gaga for him as an example. But I've been disillusioned since Obama's first election. The terrible and false things "the church" and soon to be former church friends said about him was next level bullshit. Yet when I highlighted that the Bible clearly says the worst relationship we have with man is our relationship with Christ landed in def ears.
"The impenitent sometimes excuse themselves by saying of professed Christians, "I am as good as they are. They are no more self-denying, sober, or circumspect and their conduct then I am. They love pleasure and self-indulgence as well as I do." Thus they make the faults of others an excuse for their own neglect of duty. But the sins and defects of others do not excuse anyone; for the Lord has not given us an erring human pattern. The spotless Son of God has been given as our example, and those who complain of the wrong course of professed Christians are the ones who should show better lives and nobler examples. If they have so high a conception of what a Christian should be, is not their own sin so much the greater? They know what is right, and yet refuse to do it."
it's better to say things in 6 words instead of 100+ (I didn't count)
Just saying
And I disagree with that argument. It's like saying a critique can't be a critique unless he or she can do better, which is bullshit. And the premise that being disillusioned with a group means I must think higher of myself is a step too far.
I was taught and fully believed that it was the literal and inerrant word of God, guided by his hand and infallible... so yes, finding errors in it was a disturbing. The authors or it's age shouldn't matter if they're being guided by an all knowing and all powerful being. It wasn't until much later that I found out how much of it is suspected forgery. Probably could have saved a couple years of agony there
The bible reads like any other religious text. It is impossible for all religions to be true, but it is possible for them all to be false. With no strong evidence proving the bible to be true, there is no reason to accept it over any other religion.
I understand the reaction. The Bible is sold by a lot of churches as “the word of God”, and if it's the case, God is a lying asshole. But nowhere in the Bible it is written that the Bible is the word of God; according to the Bible the word of God is Jesus-Christ so… it may not be the right approach according to the Bible itself.
I love the Bible, I read it (almost) every day, I use it as a guide in my material and spiritual lives, I studied the story of its interpretation in the university, I even thought about making that my speciality. Yet I don't understand how someone could believe in biblical inerrancy. It's very clearly a human work, written by error-prone normal humans. I believe that God spoke to its redactors, but it's still a human work. And ours is (according to me) to listen to the voice of God through the human form; and that's why we have the Church, as it's not something one can do alone.
Though I don't do church anymore, either they worship the current incarnation of the antichrist or they're lead by weak leaders who aren't willing or capable to do what it takes to be a great leader in my experience.
We tried a few liberal / LGBTQ lead churches and I just couldn't continue to participate. My wife kept going longer than I did but she hasn't gone in a few years.
I used to, because my parents did and I went to church and all that.
But then I started to actually think about it.
Now I don't believe in anything supernatural.
There are parts of nature we don't understand (yet) but I don't think there's any 'higher power' that created the universe, and especially not earth or humankind specifically.
I don’t have a religion, but consider myself to be “religiously neutral.” Either smart men from all over are running the same scam — or there are common bits of wisdom in most religions and there may be something to that. Either way, I ultimately believe in Humanism, I suppose. That humans are inherently good, or want to be, and/or enough actually are.
I do not believe in anything original myself. It’s all academic to me.
or there are common bits of wisdom in most religions and there may be something to that.
The entire point of religion is to make important rules followed.
When a food is banned, it's because that food was killing people when the rules were written. Abrahamic religions don't like sex that doesn't make babies, because they all start as persecuted cults by the main branches and the fastest way to grow is to have kids born into it.
It's obviously all outdated, but it boils down to how you'd convince a kid not to do something when you can't watch them 24/7: follow the rules or Santa will find out.
Like there's always jokes about Jewish Sabbath, but honesty that was just the equivalent to modern union mandated lunch breaks. The only way to guarantee a day off back in the day, was to explicitly outlaw doing anything. Pretty much all anyone in the household could do was just relax and hang out together.
Like I said, it's all way outdated. But every time you try something new suddenly the ATF starts hanging around...
Shellfish allergy is a big deal, And prior to refrigeration it wasn't a common food unless right near da beach.
So people could not try it till they were adults, and just keel over on the spot. But since shellfish allergy is weirdly genetic, the populations most at risk for it now, are the ones who spent centuries avoiding it. Because everyone else kept losing at least some of the people who were allergic
The scam of hedonist-denying self-restraint, says the Western man. The scam of purpose and belonging beyond the scope of the party, says the anti-religious commie.
Exactly what I think. Otherwise, I just attempt to follow the Scriptures (both to the left and right of Matthew), with exceptions due to geographic restrictions, political power restrictions, or divine decrees of course.
I do not really know. I was not raised in a practicing family, and my country is very secular.
Philosophically, I'm agnostic. I'm not convinced either by arguments for or against the existence of God. I think a being which could exist outside time and space is not approachable by our reason.
But I can't stay neutral, the question is too important. And I feel the presence of God in my life. This feeling came first, and when I tried to understand it, I went to the culturally nearest place of worship, and it was Protestantism, and I felt at home. I read the Bible, not as a theology manual, but as the story of people who try to understand the presence of God; sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong, but their quest is mine, and theirs inspires mine.
I feel the same way reading the Bible. Even as early as Genesis I was like damn Abraham I already don't understand why you tried to pimp out your sister-wife ONCE so why did you KEEP DOING IT? Somebody recently commented that they find the Bible boring and I was like you need to find a modern translation because if you can even vaguely understand what's actually going on that shit is WILD. Turns out humans have always been crazy AF and personally I actually find that kinda comforting. Makes a lot of modern shit seem less unmanageable. Another great example is the whole Onan thing. It's wild that somebody decided to make it about masturbation when if you really get down to it it's a story about a dude who thinks he's being slick by obeying the letter of the current law to (literally) screw his widowed sister in law out of her rightful property and THAT story is TIMELESS.
I believe in God and His judgement because I just do. There's something instead of nothing, and nothing takes considerably less effort than something to exist (no need to argue this, nor any way to do so, hehe), and for me the idea of a Creator makes entire sense and completes the puzzle. I believe in His judgement probably because of that inner morality and desire for truth and justice everyone has but many deny and avoid. Finally, I do because it makes me happy, and helps me tame the animal and just be overall a person I'm proud of being, one that walks his talk and is at peace with himself and others.
Of course, none of this just came to me, or at least not as well defined and convincingly spoken, this is all thanks to the words of the prophets and the word of God as encapsulated in the Qur'an. Jesus always made sense to me even as an atheist kid (I just thought he was a pretty clever and kindhearted dude, not, you know, "God made flesh" or whatever people believe in), Solomon should make sense to any adult with enough working neurons, Muhammad's message is basically just a reiteration and perfection of it all, a little bow that ties all of monotheism up. 👍
Please read Ecclesiastes, written by Solomon, (son of David, king of Jerusalem), one of the wisest men in recorded history and the OG panicking existentialist!
Cutting out philosophical arguments, prophecies and "no way this is a coincidence" types of stuff (which, yeah, there's a lot of those), it's a combination of
We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth. But is it not sufficient concerning your Lord that He is, over all things, a Witness?
-Quran 41:53
They have taken their rabbis and monks as lords besides Allah and also the Messiah, son of Maryam (Mary), though they were commanded to worship only One God. There is no god except Him. His Glory is far above any partners they ascribe (to Him).
-9:31
And let not those who [greedily] withhold what Allah
has given them of His bounty ever think that it is better for them. Rather, it is worse for them. Their necks will be encircled by what they withheld on the Day of Resurrection. And to Allah belongs the heritage of the heavens and the earth. And Allah, with what you do, is [fully] Acquainted.
-3:180
Of course there's a lot more where that came from, but the point is: We here have a religious text that encourages independent thought and pondering of the world and itself, promises harsh punishment for hoarding wealth and unequivocally condemns priestly institutions. Does that sound like an attempt to gain wealth or power? Exactly. Also this
He [Muhammad] looked displeased and turned (his attention) away, because a blind man came to him (interrupting his discourse). What would make you realise? Perhaps he would purify himself (by your attention),
-80:1-3
is not how a cult leader talks about himself. It's admittedly hard to parse from the translation, but this is a somewhat harsh admonition of Muhammad here. The segment continues until verse 10 if anyone wants continue reading, but the gist of it is "you're ignoring the man seeking guidance and trying to convince those who reject it? That is not how that works. Yes, even if it's a random blind guy."
Lovely post! The Qur'an also says something like "and We spared you from committing injustice, had We not intervened you would've easily faltered" regarding the prophet Muhammad (sorry, can't remember the exact ayat). 👍
I find it funny that there was a time where atheists on the internet were just called edge lords (or still, idk) for not believing in god and voicing that opinion. I remember being like 8 years old and thinking: wow that is stupid, why would anyone believe that. That was pre internet, i didn't have to be influenced by other edge lords and i didn't read any books about it. But somehow it's in certain parts of the world weirder to come to that conclusion than believing in the all mighty super being.
Same. My mother actually sent me to Sunday school and I even did 1st grade at a Catholic School. I too remembering how silly it all seemed even at that age. Luckily the school closed down after that first year or she would have kept sending me there. I always wonder if the indoctrination would have taken if I'd have to keep going year after year.
I want to have an afterlife. I study science, and sometimes I feel like there are things humans won't get in my lifetime. So I like to think that I can continue on learning even after I die.
Because I know exactly what death will be like. So do you. Think back to before you were born, there was nothing. There, that is death. Not much to be afraid of.
I believe there is lots of important knowledge about morality etc. embedded inside religious books. This is why is is worth reading those. Also there is lots of shitty and immoral stuff i try to ignore. Why would I try to implement those.
The other important stuff is active community. A single person can only do so much good. But if you are doing good as a whole local community you can do project far bigger than you could pull off yourself.
So it was easy to decide to keep the religion I was raised in. This is the biggest religion with biggest community.
This is about my religious framework and why I have it. However I distinct between my religion and my personal believes. Personally I am ignostic (with I), so I think we almost never use the same definitions for God, Being, to believe, to exist,... I even hold an opinion, by what most atheists define what God is, most grown up Christians are atheists. And the other way around. I think we hold pretty similar believes but we use different meaning for same words.
I'm an atheist due Roman Catholic grade school. The teachings about religion were crazy.
I also went to Roman Catholic high school and college but religion was very miner. College required four religion type courses but including courses such as ethics and logic.
The closest thing I have to a religion is Buddhism. I practice it. I meditate daily. I read about it. As far as belief goes, though, it doesn't ask you to have faith outside of believing that if you follow the practice you will see the results they say you will. The millennia old texts that it's based on are called Suttas. One of them, the Kalama Sutta, explicitly tells the villagers of Kalama not to believe it just because they are told it is so.
"Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them.
Personally I have seen the results of my meditation in my life. I'm still early on the path, but it seems to be progressing as they say it will. I have developed, through a few years of practice, the ability to focus on the present moment and still my mind to the point that, at least for a short time, thoughts don't arise. I'm fully aware of where I am and what is happening, but my mind is still. It doesn't last for long, but with more practice it will. I'm developing what's called samadhi, a type of concentrated focus where, eventually, nothing interrupts your concentration and you can maintain it as long as you like. I have a ways to go, but it appears to be progressing as expected.
So to answer the question, I believe it because I have experienced it. Many of the parts I haven't yet experienced I suspect are true, though I will only understand and believe them when I do experience them for myself.
I believe it partially, I'm sikh and I think a lot of rules were based on them needing to identify each other or living in times of war, like keeping long hair and a beard, always carrying a kirpan (dull small blade these days used to be a full sized sword til the british forced changes)
Most of the shit is legit just telling you to be a good person because we all come from the same place and goto the same place. Energy, doesn't really have an afterlife, which I hated as a kid. Was so jealous other ppl get afterlifes lol.
I kinda like the concept, like the one omniscient god can't die or really live becaue they can't die, experince pain, or get hurt, so we live and exist to experience life/death, etc. for them. That's why once you stop caring about wordly desires you rejoin god.
Idk it's kinda fun and makes sense, kinda supports my personal belief that we all evolved to eventually become god like beings (not us but descendants millions of years from now)
Like if a god exists, they would set into motion all the events that need to occur for life to exist and eventually humans to evolve, but we aren't the final step or goal. It's like a simulation game where they know what combination of events leads to another god like being existing.
Or the more fun option is that time isn't linear, and whatever god is, is the furthest evolution of the human race and it loops back creating itself in a paradox.
I don't believe in a religion. I am a syncretic pantheist.
"Syncretic" meaning that I don't think any one religion or sect has a monopoly on divine truth, even if they are sincere and productive attempts. Refer to Rumi's Elephant.
"Pantheist" meaning that I think God = Universe. The laws of nature are God's attributes. We are all literally one with God, everything that exists is.
I believe these things because I exhausted basically every other reasonable metaphysical alternative.
It's only one more small step to atheism. By looking at how tortured the language you use is. And realizing that the effect is the same with less steps.
No, actually. This was a step past atheism, which was how I identified for most of my teens and into my 20s. I too went onto message boards to convince religious people they were irrational.
It turns out my younger self, and I suspect you, came to that conclusion by a series of silly misunderstandings and an arbitrarily bounded rationality.
No, the language isn't tortured, no the effect is not the same, no it isn't fewer steps. It's only one more small step from atheism to a coherent metaphysics.
I'm over 60. I've explored many belief systems. Eastern and Western, including panpsychism. I came to believe that reality is what is shown to be real. That inventing additional unseeable and unprovable forces and aspects only complicate my reverence for the "Is". But age and experience are not indicators of truth. I've also learned that much. So I continue to listen and offer guidance to those that may be aided. If I offend, it is unintentional.
I really don't care how you reach your morals. Only that they lead you to respect others (even in their folly) and breed kindness.
As I said, this brand of atheism comes from a place of misunderstanding. If you frame belief in deity as "inventing additional unseeable and unprovable forces and aspects", then I'm afraid you've made some error along the way.
I'm not sure what benefit is provided by the projection of your hangups onto others. I'm not sure how you could construe your comment as inoffensive. I don't see how implying my language was tortured, or my path too long, provides any form of guidance. Perhaps this is a subject where you should spend more time listening than guiding.
The OP was asking for personal reasons for believing what we believe. And that exact reasoning is what brought me out of panpsychism. Just my truth and not a commentary on yours.
Except that it literally was a commentary on me though. If you wanted to tell your own truth you could've made your own comment, but you responded to mine to tell me why your worldview was superior.
Cosmology, mainly. To someone who's barely familiar with Buddhism, it may seem like it's all Buddha's wisdom with some Samsara magic sprinkled on top of it. Really though, it's every bit as bonkers and reflective of the ancient perceptions of the world as any other way of mystical thought.
As for teachings, I honestly didn't go to deep into that, but I visited a local temple and the way a monk told about them made me feel I visited some sort of lnternet life coach with some mystical stuff on top.
made me feel I visited some sort of lnternet life coach with some mystical stuff on top.
There's another kind that probably prefers a local language, and would feel very much like a Christian priest. It fills the same basic social roles in some places.
Kind of like how there's actual shamans, and then the kind that tells white people what they want to hear before feeding them mushrooms. The West never stopped loving a wise noble savage.
I believe in the Goddess of Luck because, hopefully not sounding too cocky, she's been kind to me. I've told people about her before and they think I'm slightly insane, but then as they hang out with me they start to thank her on thier own luck because they see how she speaks in crazy ways.
All you have to do is thank her when luck is on your side and you'll see the difference.
I think for some people the scale of God simply doesn't compute, which is why old man with big beard image persists. Look at the size of our galaxy, and the size of the universe as a whole. If any being was the creator of such a vast and complex universe as ours, that being would be to us like we are to a "Hello world" script.
The analogy is flawed, but that is what we are saying if we believe in a being capable of creating our universe, defining its laws and bending them to create us. We could not truly begin to comprehend such a being, and largely we are left to our own. However, if you believe, then this being does care about us in some way. And it has shown us this through inspiring humans to share its path for our improvement.
That is the reason I believe in the teachings of the Christ. The path of loving your enemies, of caring for everyone as one would your own family, forgiveness, that is the path to a better world, revealed to us through a man and his story. I am unable to fully live up to such ideals, but like Data says, the struggle yields its own rewards. Those who take such ideas to heart are worthy in the eyes of the creator, because if all people were such, there would be little suffering in our world. We have the means to reduce our suffering, but we choose not to. God could, remove it for us, but then we will not become the free and good beings we are meant to be.
You don't need God to have such ideals as the Christ demonstrated, but I find such ideas so much better than any of the alternatives, that I suspect they have divine origin. And even if they don't, if I follow them, then I will contribute to making the world better regardless. God could take away my struggle and suffering, but that would leave me still flawed and unable to improve, and so it would be for all humanity as well.
(feel free to take that as a challenge if you think you've got the answer).
Muslim here and sure (I've wanted to try this for a while now): The criteria for the first pillar are arbitrary. What's being proposed is that a good creator wouldn't allow their creation to suffer, or—taking it a step further—wouldn't create a world where suffering is even possible. However, that would require human (or, really, lite in general) not to exist; give humans free will and suffering will happen. You could argue then that the act of creating humans was evil, which would be logically consistent, and in that case my answer is: I'll drop (your conception of) the first pillar. God knows about suffering and is capable of stopping it but tolerates it for one purpose or another.
I'm much more familiar with the Christian version which presents god as perfect in an absolute sense.
Islam does too, but with less emphasis on the idea of benevolence. Most relevantly, Islam states that life is a test by God and therefore suffering is an inherent part of it, which is kind of my framework here (though I don't assume that in my argument below).
Step on a Lego > hurts > not evil. Stick a knife in someone or like commit genocide > very clearly evil.
My point is that that's logically inconsistent. A genocide killing thousands of people and an earthquake or famine killing thousands of people both leave thousands of people dead. Hell, even letting people die at all is suffering. Back to our postulates, pillar 2 states "his will is our reality." When you get down to it, the only kind of world that would not run afoul of the Epicurean paradox would be a no-scarcity paradise with only 100% happy thoughts, and at that point we'd be looking at robots (or I suppose angels, if there's a material difference), not humans. Worse, when you get down to it in such a world people would either lose the ability to even conceive of evil, or be prevented from committing it by an external force. Imagine if at the mall you always had an angel making you return your shopping cart, now multiply that by ten thousand times. Essentially we're looking at a world of lobotomized robots, which to me doesn't sound all that appealing.
is god not capable of creating free will without evil?
It might be possible in some outlandish alternate universe, but restricting the discussion to things we can conceive of, evil is baked into the concept of free will. As I argued above, take away the capacity to commit evil and you remove almost the whole breadth of human emotion and activity, by definition running afoul of free will. Perhaps most importantly, though
a god that's aware of evil and has the power to stop it, but chooses not to, is himself some degree of evil.
at the core of this is the assumption that suffering is ontologically evil. This is very egotistical, but it also betrays a fundamental instability in the whole thing: Without objective morality (which immediately follows from the lack of belief in a creator), how can there be good and evil? This application of the Epicurean paradox assumes that evil can exist independent of a higher authority able to determine good and evil, so it's a case of circular reasoning more than anything else. The Epicurean paradox can only be used to reject complete benevolence (which, well yes), not complete goodness.
My religion is fundamentally based on the idea of gay catgirl supremacy and worship. Service to the catgirls may come in the form of headpats and sacrifices are accepted in the form of baked juicy chicken :3
I believe in Pantheism. I'm not sure if its really a religion or more of a philosophy but in the end it makes the most sense to me. It doesn't have a fancy book or any rules to follow. Nothing really changes by believing in it either. Its just nice and it makes sense to me.
Religion is a scam. Anyone with critical thinking can see that BUT if you understand that and choose to follow because it makes you feel better it's ok!
Is it though? By following it you legitimize it and others, who have not yet realised it, will fall for it.
Why not just come to terms with the fact that, most likely, our existence is a cosmic coincidence and once we're dead that's it?
A scam requires someone to make money (or some other benefit) off someone else. That's the case with modern Christianity, sure, but generalizing that to all religion comes with a hefty [citation needed].
I believe in intelligent design because the theory of evolution boils down to: if you left your room messy for 1 billion years, when you came back it would be the Taj Mahal.
The real fundamental root cause of my belief in God comes from personal experiences.
What? So first of, it really doesn't. You don't understand evolution if you think that's what it is, but that's beside the point.
You believe that a supernatural sky being made a mud man and a rib woman, who were tricked by a talking snake into eating magic no no fruit. Then 4 thousand years later, a zombie came and made everyone drink it's blood and eat it's body in order to get into the good magic sky place.
It's real easy to dumb down peoples beliefs and make them sound stupid, especially if you misrepresent them.
The question was why do you believe in YOUR beliefs. It was not an invitation to be a superior asshole.
As I said, personal experience. I'm not sure how I was insulting anyone else's beliefs. That's literally why I believe in intelligent design: I believe that evolution is mathematically impossible.
If you think that the theory of evolution puts forth the any argument like Taj Mahal coming from a messy room, then you don't understand the theory of evolution.
It is insulting because it downplays the theory to the point of "to believe this would be absurd and stupid" which obviously has implications for its believers.
Imagine an atheist stated: "I am an atheist because intelligent design boils down to: if you leave your room empty for 6000 years, a magic fairy will appear and create the Taj Mahal". Can you see how this is not only just an outright false statement, but also making a mockery of those who believe?
Realizing that the root cause is just because you want it to be true is fine, commendable even. Just don't try to justify it post hoc with sciency-sounding arguments.
I understand that the sun gives low entropy energy to earth, and pockets of entropy can decrease as long as the whole system increases. However, my room exists on earth, so I still think it is an adequate analogy.
More seriously, I would like to see a mathematical treatment of the probability of biologically detrimental mutations vs. beneficial or neutral mutations.
Most mutations are neutral. Nachman and Crowell estimate around 3 deleterious mutations out of 175 per generation in humans (2000). Of those that have significant effect, most are harmful, but the fraction which are beneficial is higher than usually though. An experiment with E. coli found that about 1 in 150 newly arising mutations and 1 in 10 functional mutations are beneficial (Perfeito et al. 2007).
The harmful mutations do not survive long, and the beneficial mutations survive much longer, so when you consider only surviving mutations, most are beneficial.
First, I want to thank you for having this discussion with me. I've been wanting to discuss these ideas with someone for some time.
As to the referenced article, a couple of points stand out to me:
The first paper cited by Nachman and Crowell compares pseudogenes between humans and chimpanzees assuming that one evolved from the other over a known period of time. Rejecting the assumption that humans did not evolve from chimps would render this sort of evaluation inaccurate.
The last sentence of the first point, that harmful mutations do not survive long, is not supported by any literature on the page, and I believe it to be wishful thinking. There are many examples of human genetic diseases that do not decrease the reproductive capacity of those carrying them, which to me would imply, again without literature support, that those mutations would accumulate over time in a population.
I would also disagree with the 5th point, where any beneficial mutation disproves young earth creationism. Young earth creationists must believe in a much higher rate of so-called micro evolution, since all the variation we see on earth must have taken place in the last 6 thousand years or less.
If a mutation doesn't decrease the reproductive capacity of the carrier, then it's not harmful. If it's harmful, then it will affect the reproductive capacity. That's just how it's defined in this context.
Sorry, it took me a little while to go through the Boyko paper. It's super statistics heavy. What I'm reading from there is that 27.3–29.0% of mutations are neutral, 30-42% are moderately deleterious, all the rest are highly deleterious or lethal. The statistics indicate that 10-20% of mutations have been fixed by positive selection (again assuming a common ancestor with chimpanzees). Deleterious, as you mentioned, specifically means harmful to reproduction. So in this context, diseases like Huntinginton's, hemophilia, familial ALS, sickle cell, Lynch syndrome would be considered "neutral". These statistics are mostly derived from Americans of African decent, as the clustered rate of mutation in Americans of European decent was too high to model well.
The Jonsson paper had a similar average rate of mutation of order 10^-8 per base pair as the other paper we looked at, which translates to about 3 per generation.
So what I don't understand, and maybe you can help me, is that in the extreme case of 20% of mutations being avoided by positive selection, there's still 7% of mutations with potentially horrific consequences. This is already excluding the over 70% of mutations that decrease reproductive fitness. What evolutionary pressure is there to keep "neutral" genetic diseases from accumulating in a population over time? How can "beneficial" mutations outweigh this burden? Mathematically, it seems to me that macro evolution is impossible. Am I missing something?
No worries, I can also be slow to respond. There's a few things at play here:
Neutral mutations can become beneficial later on. It's not just about the genes, it's also about the environment. Even deleterious mutations can become beneficial, like sickle cell disease likely being selected for due to its protection against malaria.
Following from that, deleterious/neutral/beneficial are pretty loose categories, and it's not even really correct to think of them as categories. It's more about how beneficial it is. Sickle cell disease is bad, but better than dying of malaria.
Beneficial mutations can be really beneficial. Once somebody has them, they can spread like wildfire through the population. One example is the ability to digest lactose as an adult. It's "worth" lots of "failures" to get that mutation (using those terms loosely and without value judgement). An analogy might help here, think about it kind of like this slime mold searching for food. The tips have a lot of churn and waste, but the food it finds is worth doing all that work. You can think of the beneficial mutations as the branches that are kept.
(Note that evolution isn't directed by "something", even as simple as a slime mold, it's a description of a physical process, like gravity, so the analogy is loose)
We've seen beneficial mutations happen in person, and shows another example of how useful beneficial mutations can be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment. The E. coli evolved the ability to digest a new substance they couldn't before. The experiment also touches on neutral mutations sticking around.
The distinction you're drawing between micro evolution and macro evolution relies on an assumption that either there are different kinds that are inherently distinct, or some sort of "system" that prevents micro evolution from progressing into macro evolution. For the prior, I've never seen a defense of that that doesn't rely on the supernatural, and for the latter, what happens when the system itself changes due to evolution?
In my personal experience, the strongest argument against any radical move away from the current general scientific worldview consensus is that everything generally fits together. Sure, the estimated age of the universe might be adjusted slightly from 13.7B to 13.8B years, or the Jurassic might actually be estimated slightly wrong. But across all evidence we have, the current scientific understanding across a diverse range of disciplines is approximately correct. Nobody is counting tree rings and saying "Wait a minute, these show the Earth is 6,000 years old!". Nobody is dating rocks and saying "Hold on, this dates as twice as old as the universe!". Note that you'll find claims of things like fossilized tracks of humans walking next to dinosaurs, but those don't pan out
Except the room is entire Earth, it's filled to the brim with most elements of the Periodic table, and constantly receives hundreds of terawatts of energy. Oh, and it actually took several billion years, not one, to come from this to Taj Mahal.
Modern science has shown ways in which many of the organic molecules could be spontaneously formed out of basic elements under conditions observable on early Earth. We're also about to bridge synthesis of organic molecules and synthetic biology.
Intelligent design, on its end, gets stuck with several big questions, like the fact our design is actually very bad, just workable, and the fact we share not only visual properties, but most of our DNA with other animals - particularly other primates.
Not here to alter your beliefs - you do you - but setting the record straight.
Conditions of early Earth are often complicated to recreate, and it takes a lot of simultaneous reactions going just right to make it work - but Earth had billions of years, and we don't have such a luxury. Still, we are very close, and we already created a lot of biomolecules out of basic blocks like water, carbon dioxide, and ammonia.
Humans have plenty of faults in their design - why do we have reproductive organs, which need to be kept clean, right next or combined with exhaust (urethra/rectum)? Why do we have two legs and vertical organization of the body that adds huge gravitational stress? Why do we have pelvis shaped in a way that makes birthing more painful and complicated? Why people with uterus have bloody and painful periods? Why do we have so many vulnerable spots on the body where they should clearly be reinforced? etc. etc.
We also have plenty of rudimentary organs we don't need anymore, that are either just sitting there for no intelligent reason at all, or are actively causing trouble for us (like appendix or wisdom teeth).
This all doesn't fall into the line of intelligent design, unless divine creatures just enjoy crafting us at random and see how we survive anyway.
Sure, they could still do that, they may engineer us in a very odd and imperfect way, they could make our DNA similar to other animals to make us guess if we actually descent from them instead, etc. But this involves so much jumping through the hoops we may as well cut it off with Occam's razor. Evolutionary theory offers clear sequence of how we got where we are, it shows clear relation of all living organisms and the ways they develop into what we know today. So, it wins.
I've read through the Bible cover to cover three times. Amplified, NIV, and New King James with a copy of Strongs.
I'm an atheist now.
What made you an atheist?
I think they are saying reading those books are the reason.
Any part in particular?
Any parts really. Biblical god was a monster, absolute piece of shit character. Then Jesus came and said he's going to follow his dad's orders with a sword. Jesus is just as bad, there is no old/vs new testament trash, all hateful.
3 of the 10 commandments were selfish, and there was room in the rules to put don't eat shelfish or wear mixed fabrics, but no mention of don't own fucking people.
Dying for us is shit behavior?
Lmao. If you honestly believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. Santa has a timeshare nearby.
The Bible literally gives instructions on how to own slaves. And how to beat your women. And how to marry off your raped daughters to the rapist.
Just the idea of it is enough
The Bible is pretty fallible when looking at it objectively IMO. But the nail in the coffin was contrasting what the Bible asks of us vs what Christianity does. The tyrannical cheeto is as close to the antichrist as we've seen and they're all gaga for him as an example. But I've been disillusioned since Obama's first election. The terrible and false things "the church" and soon to be former church friends said about him was next level bullshit. Yet when I highlighted that the Bible clearly says the worst relationship we have with man is our relationship with Christ landed in def ears.
"The impenitent sometimes excuse themselves by saying of professed Christians, "I am as good as they are. They are no more self-denying, sober, or circumspect and their conduct then I am. They love pleasure and self-indulgence as well as I do." Thus they make the faults of others an excuse for their own neglect of duty. But the sins and defects of others do not excuse anyone; for the Lord has not given us an erring human pattern. The spotless Son of God has been given as our example, and those who complain of the wrong course of professed Christians are the ones who should show better lives and nobler examples. If they have so high a conception of what a Christian should be, is not their own sin so much the greater? They know what is right, and yet refuse to do it."
Translation: Judge not shall you be judged
it's better to say things in 6 words instead of 100+ (I didn't count)
Just saying
And I disagree with that argument. It's like saying a critique can't be a critique unless he or she can do better, which is bullshit. And the premise that being disillusioned with a group means I must think higher of myself is a step too far.
No, it's saying that our example is Christ Himself, not hypocritical human beings.
... Reading comprehension is hard....
Thank you!
And that I agree with.
Not op, but for me it was the fact that the supposedly ineffable word of God turned out to be pretty effible
It wasn't the first step towards losing faith, or even the last, but it was pretty troubling to a young me
It bothered you that a document written over thousands of years by dozens of authors didn't agree in every imaginable way?
I was taught and fully believed that it was the literal and inerrant word of God, guided by his hand and infallible... so yes, finding errors in it was a disturbing. The authors or it's age shouldn't matter if they're being guided by an all knowing and all powerful being. It wasn't until much later that I found out how much of it is suspected forgery. Probably could have saved a couple years of agony there
Most denominations don't believe that it was written directly by God, but by inspired authors.
Not the one I was brought up in, and "most" is a stretch. I will grant you "some" but the majority believe it is the literal word of God
The bible reads like any other religious text. It is impossible for all religions to be true, but it is possible for them all to be false. With no strong evidence proving the bible to be true, there is no reason to accept it over any other religion.
I understand the reaction. The Bible is sold by a lot of churches as “the word of God”, and if it's the case, God is a lying asshole. But nowhere in the Bible it is written that the Bible is the word of God; according to the Bible the word of God is Jesus-Christ so… it may not be the right approach according to the Bible itself.
I love the Bible, I read it (almost) every day, I use it as a guide in my material and spiritual lives, I studied the story of its interpretation in the university, I even thought about making that my speciality. Yet I don't understand how someone could believe in biblical inerrancy. It's very clearly a human work, written by error-prone normal humans. I believe that God spoke to its redactors, but it's still a human work. And ours is (according to me) to listen to the voice of God through the human form; and that's why we have the Church, as it's not something one can do alone.
I like your view.
Though I don't do church anymore, either they worship the current incarnation of the antichrist or they're lead by weak leaders who aren't willing or capable to do what it takes to be a great leader in my experience.
We tried a few liberal / LGBTQ lead churches and I just couldn't continue to participate. My wife kept going longer than I did but she hasn't gone in a few years.
I used to, because my parents did and I went to church and all that.
But then I started to actually think about it.
Now I don't believe in anything supernatural.
There are parts of nature we don't understand (yet) but I don't think there's any 'higher power' that created the universe, and especially not earth or humankind specifically.
Because I've personally met Jesus Christ. He's a 10,000 year old former cave man.
They don't make films like they used to!
What a movie!
Starring both the Candyman and The Greatest American Hero!
Oh, hey, I've seen this one.
I don’t have a religion, but consider myself to be “religiously neutral.” Either smart men from all over are running the same scam — or there are common bits of wisdom in most religions and there may be something to that. Either way, I ultimately believe in Humanism, I suppose. That humans are inherently good, or want to be, and/or enough actually are.
I do not believe in anything original myself. It’s all academic to me.
The entire point of religion is to make important rules followed.
When a food is banned, it's because that food was killing people when the rules were written. Abrahamic religions don't like sex that doesn't make babies, because they all start as persecuted cults by the main branches and the fastest way to grow is to have kids born into it.
It's obviously all outdated, but it boils down to how you'd convince a kid not to do something when you can't watch them 24/7: follow the rules or Santa will find out.
Like there's always jokes about Jewish Sabbath, but honesty that was just the equivalent to modern union mandated lunch breaks. The only way to guarantee a day off back in the day, was to explicitly outlaw doing anything. Pretty much all anyone in the household could do was just relax and hang out together.
Like I said, it's all way outdated. But every time you try something new suddenly the ATF starts hanging around...
"'Cause, in those days, a pork chop could kill ya!" - Chris Rock
The really weird one is shellfish.
Shellfish allergy is a big deal, And prior to refrigeration it wasn't a common food unless right near da beach.
So people could not try it till they were adults, and just keel over on the spot. But since shellfish allergy is weirdly genetic, the populations most at risk for it now, are the ones who spent centuries avoiding it. Because everyone else kept losing at least some of the people who were allergic
Or C: There was an original scam that not so original humans copied over and over through the years.
"Religion is true to the poor, false to the rich, and useful to the powerful."
The scam of hedonist-denying self-restraint, says the Western man. The scam of purpose and belonging beyond the scope of the party, says the anti-religious commie.
Exactly what I think. Otherwise, I just attempt to follow the Scriptures (both to the left and right of Matthew), with exceptions due to geographic restrictions, political power restrictions, or divine decrees of course.
I have personally experienced librarians and they have helped me when in need.
My religion isn’t really based on belief, just practice. And I do the practices because they make me feel better and more connected.
I do not really know. I was not raised in a practicing family, and my country is very secular.
Philosophically, I'm agnostic. I'm not convinced either by arguments for or against the existence of God. I think a being which could exist outside time and space is not approachable by our reason.
But I can't stay neutral, the question is too important. And I feel the presence of God in my life. This feeling came first, and when I tried to understand it, I went to the culturally nearest place of worship, and it was Protestantism, and I felt at home. I read the Bible, not as a theology manual, but as the story of people who try to understand the presence of God; sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong, but their quest is mine, and theirs inspires mine.
I feel the same way reading the Bible. Even as early as Genesis I was like damn Abraham I already don't understand why you tried to pimp out your sister-wife ONCE so why did you KEEP DOING IT? Somebody recently commented that they find the Bible boring and I was like you need to find a modern translation because if you can even vaguely understand what's actually going on that shit is WILD. Turns out humans have always been crazy AF and personally I actually find that kinda comforting. Makes a lot of modern shit seem less unmanageable. Another great example is the whole Onan thing. It's wild that somebody decided to make it about masturbation when if you really get down to it it's a story about a dude who thinks he's being slick by obeying the letter of the current law to (literally) screw his widowed sister in law out of her rightful property and THAT story is TIMELESS.
I believe in God and His judgement because I just do. There's something instead of nothing, and nothing takes considerably less effort than something to exist (no need to argue this, nor any way to do so, hehe), and for me the idea of a Creator makes entire sense and completes the puzzle. I believe in His judgement probably because of that inner morality and desire for truth and justice everyone has but many deny and avoid. Finally, I do because it makes me happy, and helps me tame the animal and just be overall a person I'm proud of being, one that walks his talk and is at peace with himself and others.
Of course, none of this just came to me, or at least not as well defined and convincingly spoken, this is all thanks to the words of the prophets and the word of God as encapsulated in the Qur'an. Jesus always made sense to me even as an atheist kid (I just thought he was a pretty clever and kindhearted dude, not, you know, "God made flesh" or whatever people believe in), Solomon should make sense to any adult with enough working neurons, Muhammad's message is basically just a reiteration and perfection of it all, a little bow that ties all of monotheism up. 👍
I disagree with everything you've said, but upvoted because you answered the question.
Thanks for the positive interaction. 👍
Plus real honesty and good intentions.
username checks out
Hi! 😅👋
hi yourself there, buddy.
Do not want to find out if your username checks out.
Could you expand (or link to something that expands) on the Solomon thing?
Please read Ecclesiastes, written by Solomon, (son of David, king of Jerusalem), one of the wisest men in recorded history and the OG panicking existentialist!
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ecclesiastes+1&version=NIV
It's a short read, I promise. 👍
I just have a deeply rooted appreciation for pasta.
His noodliness, Ramen!
The sun is real.
How can you definitively prove it, though?
Take a look at it, it'll prove to you it's real.
Could be an illusion, or a lamp somewhere in the sky, or a simulation
You didn't take a look did you?
I did, and saw it. I also saw optical illusions. So?
With Solipsism.
Unless you are the Sun (in which case, cute~), it doesn't seem to help
My point is that if universal personal experience doesn't prove something, you may be in the philosophical weeds.
It doesn't take philosophical weeds to consider the possibility of Sun being just a lamp in the sky, or people around you not being real
The sun can be a large lamp. That's still real.
Is it the Sun as we know it, though? And how can we be sure the lamp is actually there, and not simulation/imagination/trick of our eyes or brain?
Cutting out philosophical arguments, prophecies and "no way this is a coincidence" types of stuff (which, yeah, there's a lot of those), it's a combination of
-Quran 41:53
-9:31
-3:180
Of course there's a lot more where that came from, but the point is: We here have a religious text that encourages independent thought and pondering of the world and itself, promises harsh punishment for hoarding wealth and unequivocally condemns priestly institutions. Does that sound like an attempt to gain wealth or power? Exactly. Also this
-80:1-3
is not how a cult leader talks about himself. It's admittedly hard to parse from the translation, but this is a somewhat harsh admonition of Muhammad here. The segment continues until verse 10 if anyone wants continue reading, but the gist of it is "you're ignoring the man seeking guidance and trying to convince those who reject it? That is not how that works. Yes, even if it's a random blind guy."
Lovely post! The Qur'an also says something like "and We spared you from committing injustice, had We not intervened you would've easily faltered" regarding the prophet Muhammad (sorry, can't remember the exact ayat). 👍
ITT: Atheists
So predictable...
I rejected christianity sometime as an early teen.
I don't remember my full reasoning but I did not like the idea of getting up early Sunday morning to do the church stuff.
It never got replaced by anything.
I find it funny that there was a time where atheists on the internet were just called edge lords (or still, idk) for not believing in god and voicing that opinion. I remember being like 8 years old and thinking: wow that is stupid, why would anyone believe that. That was pre internet, i didn't have to be influenced by other edge lords and i didn't read any books about it. But somehow it's in certain parts of the world weirder to come to that conclusion than believing in the all mighty super being.
During that time period it wasn't so much being an atheist that made someone an edge lord, but in how they went about communicating that to others.
Same. My mother actually sent me to Sunday school and I even did 1st grade at a Catholic School. I too remembering how silly it all seemed even at that age. Luckily the school closed down after that first year or she would have kept sending me there. I always wonder if the indoctrination would have taken if I'd have to keep going year after year.
You sacrifice for me, I sustain you. I sacrifice for you, you sustain me.
I believe this because nature is hungry, but expected to sustain life.
Because I can at least see spaghetti without DMT.
Since we all have DMT in our brain already you are wrong heretic
I want to have an afterlife. I study science, and sometimes I feel like there are things humans won't get in my lifetime. So I like to think that I can continue on learning even after I die.
Because I know exactly what death will be like. So do you. Think back to before you were born, there was nothing. There, that is death. Not much to be afraid of.
because the book said itself was real
Yeah sorry, there's nothing.
But we should behave towards each other as we'd like to be treated. Otherwise it doesn't work.
Now, there's this unsolved issue of people harming all of us...
I believe there is lots of important knowledge about morality etc. embedded inside religious books. This is why is is worth reading those. Also there is lots of shitty and immoral stuff i try to ignore. Why would I try to implement those.
The other important stuff is active community. A single person can only do so much good. But if you are doing good as a whole local community you can do project far bigger than you could pull off yourself.
So it was easy to decide to keep the religion I was raised in. This is the biggest religion with biggest community.
This is about my religious framework and why I have it. However I distinct between my religion and my personal believes. Personally I am ignostic (with I), so I think we almost never use the same definitions for God, Being, to believe, to exist,... I even hold an opinion, by what most atheists define what God is, most grown up Christians are atheists. And the other way around. I think we hold pretty similar believes but we use different meaning for same words.
I'm an atheist due Roman Catholic grade school. The teachings about religion were crazy.
I also went to Roman Catholic high school and college but religion was very miner. College required four religion type courses but including courses such as ethics and logic.
I'm an atheist bcs I don't have a wild imagination.
The closest thing I have to a religion is Buddhism. I practice it. I meditate daily. I read about it. As far as belief goes, though, it doesn't ask you to have faith outside of believing that if you follow the practice you will see the results they say you will. The millennia old texts that it's based on are called Suttas. One of them, the Kalama Sutta, explicitly tells the villagers of Kalama not to believe it just because they are told it is so.
Personally I have seen the results of my meditation in my life. I'm still early on the path, but it seems to be progressing as they say it will. I have developed, through a few years of practice, the ability to focus on the present moment and still my mind to the point that, at least for a short time, thoughts don't arise. I'm fully aware of where I am and what is happening, but my mind is still. It doesn't last for long, but with more practice it will. I'm developing what's called samadhi, a type of concentrated focus where, eventually, nothing interrupts your concentration and you can maintain it as long as you like. I have a ways to go, but it appears to be progressing as expected.
So to answer the question, I believe it because I have experienced it. Many of the parts I haven't yet experienced I suspect are true, though I will only understand and believe them when I do experience them for myself.
I don't
I believe it partially, I'm sikh and I think a lot of rules were based on them needing to identify each other or living in times of war, like keeping long hair and a beard, always carrying a kirpan (dull small blade these days used to be a full sized sword til the british forced changes)
Most of the shit is legit just telling you to be a good person because we all come from the same place and goto the same place. Energy, doesn't really have an afterlife, which I hated as a kid. Was so jealous other ppl get afterlifes lol.
I kinda like the concept, like the one omniscient god can't die or really live becaue they can't die, experince pain, or get hurt, so we live and exist to experience life/death, etc. for them. That's why once you stop caring about wordly desires you rejoin god.
Idk it's kinda fun and makes sense, kinda supports my personal belief that we all evolved to eventually become god like beings (not us but descendants millions of years from now)
Like if a god exists, they would set into motion all the events that need to occur for life to exist and eventually humans to evolve, but we aren't the final step or goal. It's like a simulation game where they know what combination of events leads to another god like being existing.
Or the more fun option is that time isn't linear, and whatever god is, is the furthest evolution of the human race and it loops back creating itself in a paradox.
I don't believe in a religion. I am a syncretic pantheist.
"Syncretic" meaning that I don't think any one religion or sect has a monopoly on divine truth, even if they are sincere and productive attempts. Refer to Rumi's Elephant.
"Pantheist" meaning that I think God = Universe. The laws of nature are God's attributes. We are all literally one with God, everything that exists is.
I believe these things because I exhausted basically every other reasonable metaphysical alternative.
Isn’t this Universal Unitarianism?
More or less, depends on how you wanna define UU.
It's only one more small step to atheism. By looking at how tortured the language you use is. And realizing that the effect is the same with less steps.
No, actually. This was a step past atheism, which was how I identified for most of my teens and into my 20s. I too went onto message boards to convince religious people they were irrational.
It turns out my younger self, and I suspect you, came to that conclusion by a series of silly misunderstandings and an arbitrarily bounded rationality.
No, the language isn't tortured, no the effect is not the same, no it isn't fewer steps. It's only one more small step from atheism to a coherent metaphysics.
Good on you. I'm happy that you're happy.
I'm over 60. I've explored many belief systems. Eastern and Western, including panpsychism. I came to believe that reality is what is shown to be real. That inventing additional unseeable and unprovable forces and aspects only complicate my reverence for the "Is". But age and experience are not indicators of truth. I've also learned that much. So I continue to listen and offer guidance to those that may be aided. If I offend, it is unintentional.
I really don't care how you reach your morals. Only that they lead you to respect others (even in their folly) and breed kindness.
Namaste.
As I said, this brand of atheism comes from a place of misunderstanding. If you frame belief in deity as "inventing additional unseeable and unprovable forces and aspects", then I'm afraid you've made some error along the way.
I'm not sure what benefit is provided by the projection of your hangups onto others. I'm not sure how you could construe your comment as inoffensive. I don't see how implying my language was tortured, or my path too long, provides any form of guidance. Perhaps this is a subject where you should spend more time listening than guiding.
The OP was asking for personal reasons for believing what we believe. And that exact reasoning is what brought me out of panpsychism. Just my truth and not a commentary on yours.
Except that it literally was a commentary on me though. If you wanted to tell your own truth you could've made your own comment, but you responded to mine to tell me why your worldview was superior.
What’s the term for not knowing for sure if there’s a god or not and not giving a fuck about it either way?
Agnostic
Apatheism
Santa's elves don't make toys, Chinese children do.
I don't. Not Buddhist anymore
Buddhism looked appealing to me until I actually looked into it (I come from a Western culture)
What didn't you like?
Cosmology, mainly. To someone who's barely familiar with Buddhism, it may seem like it's all Buddha's wisdom with some Samsara magic sprinkled on top of it. Really though, it's every bit as bonkers and reflective of the ancient perceptions of the world as any other way of mystical thought.
As for teachings, I honestly didn't go to deep into that, but I visited a local temple and the way a monk told about them made me feel I visited some sort of lnternet life coach with some mystical stuff on top.
There's another kind that probably prefers a local language, and would feel very much like a Christian priest. It fills the same basic social roles in some places.
Kind of like how there's actual shamans, and then the kind that tells white people what they want to hear before feeding them mushrooms. The West never stopped loving a wise noble savage.
True
I was born a SubGenius just like all other SubGenii. I must have Slack!
Praise "Bob"
I believe in the Goddess of Luck because, hopefully not sounding too cocky, she's been kind to me. I've told people about her before and they think I'm slightly insane, but then as they hang out with me they start to thank her on thier own luck because they see how she speaks in crazy ways.
All you have to do is thank her when luck is on your side and you'll see the difference.
beautiful
I think for some people the scale of God simply doesn't compute, which is why old man with big beard image persists. Look at the size of our galaxy, and the size of the universe as a whole. If any being was the creator of such a vast and complex universe as ours, that being would be to us like we are to a "Hello world" script.
The analogy is flawed, but that is what we are saying if we believe in a being capable of creating our universe, defining its laws and bending them to create us. We could not truly begin to comprehend such a being, and largely we are left to our own. However, if you believe, then this being does care about us in some way. And it has shown us this through inspiring humans to share its path for our improvement.
That is the reason I believe in the teachings of the Christ. The path of loving your enemies, of caring for everyone as one would your own family, forgiveness, that is the path to a better world, revealed to us through a man and his story. I am unable to fully live up to such ideals, but like Data says, the struggle yields its own rewards. Those who take such ideas to heart are worthy in the eyes of the creator, because if all people were such, there would be little suffering in our world. We have the means to reduce our suffering, but we choose not to. God could, remove it for us, but then we will not become the free and good beings we are meant to be.
You don't need God to have such ideals as the Christ demonstrated, but I find such ideas so much better than any of the alternatives, that I suspect they have divine origin. And even if they don't, if I follow them, then I will contribute to making the world better regardless. God could take away my struggle and suffering, but that would leave me still flawed and unable to improve, and so it would be for all humanity as well.
Muslim here and sure (I've wanted to try this for a while now): The criteria for the first pillar are arbitrary. What's being proposed is that a good creator wouldn't allow their creation to suffer, or—taking it a step further—wouldn't create a world where suffering is even possible. However, that would require human (or, really, lite in general) not to exist; give humans free will and suffering will happen. You could argue then that the act of creating humans was evil, which would be logically consistent, and in that case my answer is: I'll drop (your conception of) the first pillar. God knows about suffering and is capable of stopping it but tolerates it for one purpose or another.
Islam does too, but with less emphasis on the idea of benevolence. Most relevantly, Islam states that life is a test by God and therefore suffering is an inherent part of it, which is kind of my framework here (though I don't assume that in my argument below).
My point is that that's logically inconsistent. A genocide killing thousands of people and an earthquake or famine killing thousands of people both leave thousands of people dead. Hell, even letting people die at all is suffering. Back to our postulates, pillar 2 states "his will is our reality." When you get down to it, the only kind of world that would not run afoul of the Epicurean paradox would be a no-scarcity paradise with only 100% happy thoughts, and at that point we'd be looking at robots (or I suppose angels, if there's a material difference), not humans. Worse, when you get down to it in such a world people would either lose the ability to even conceive of evil, or be prevented from committing it by an external force. Imagine if at the mall you always had an angel making you return your shopping cart, now multiply that by ten thousand times. Essentially we're looking at a world of lobotomized robots, which to me doesn't sound all that appealing.
It might be possible in some outlandish alternate universe, but restricting the discussion to things we can conceive of, evil is baked into the concept of free will. As I argued above, take away the capacity to commit evil and you remove almost the whole breadth of human emotion and activity, by definition running afoul of free will. Perhaps most importantly, though
at the core of this is the assumption that suffering is ontologically evil. This is very egotistical, but it also betrays a fundamental instability in the whole thing: Without objective morality (which immediately follows from the lack of belief in a creator), how can there be good and evil? This application of the Epicurean paradox assumes that evil can exist independent of a higher authority able to determine good and evil, so it's a case of circular reasoning more than anything else. The Epicurean paradox can only be used to reject complete benevolence (which, well yes), not complete goodness.
Because someone has to; otherwise it wouldn't be a religion.
I'm an atheist but I think Zoroastrianism is cool.
My religion is fundamentally based on the idea of gay catgirl supremacy and worship. Service to the catgirls may come in the form of headpats and sacrifices are accepted in the form of baked juicy chicken :3
I believe in Pantheism. I'm not sure if its really a religion or more of a philosophy but in the end it makes the most sense to me. It doesn't have a fancy book or any rules to follow. Nothing really changes by believing in it either. Its just nice and it makes sense to me.
Religion is a scam. Anyone with critical thinking can see that BUT if you understand that and choose to follow because it makes you feel better it's ok!
Is it though? By following it you legitimize it and others, who have not yet realised it, will fall for it. Why not just come to terms with the fact that, most likely, our existence is a cosmic coincidence and once we're dead that's it?
A scam requires someone to make money (or some other benefit) off someone else. That's the case with modern Christianity, sure, but generalizing that to all religion comes with a hefty [citation needed].
every religion has slaves they just have different names
Um... [Citation needed]?
I believe in intelligent design because the theory of evolution boils down to: if you left your room messy for 1 billion years, when you came back it would be the Taj Mahal.
The real fundamental root cause of my belief in God comes from personal experiences.
What? So first of, it really doesn't. You don't understand evolution if you think that's what it is, but that's beside the point.
You believe that a supernatural sky being made a mud man and a rib woman, who were tricked by a talking snake into eating magic no no fruit. Then 4 thousand years later, a zombie came and made everyone drink it's blood and eat it's body in order to get into the good magic sky place.
It's real easy to dumb down peoples beliefs and make them sound stupid, especially if you misrepresent them.
The question was why do you believe in YOUR beliefs. It was not an invitation to be a superior asshole.
As I said, personal experience. I'm not sure how I was insulting anyone else's beliefs. That's literally why I believe in intelligent design: I believe that evolution is mathematically impossible.
If you think that the theory of evolution puts forth the any argument like Taj Mahal coming from a messy room, then you don't understand the theory of evolution.
Evolution does not "boil down" to that.
It is insulting because it downplays the theory to the point of "to believe this would be absurd and stupid" which obviously has implications for its believers.
Imagine an atheist stated: "I am an atheist because intelligent design boils down to: if you leave your room empty for 6000 years, a magic fairy will appear and create the Taj Mahal". Can you see how this is not only just an outright false statement, but also making a mockery of those who believe?
Not really. I don't find that statement insulting at all. That is what Creationism boils down to.
You are correct and don't deserve the down votes.
The analogy to a messy room fails. I recommend you read this (and the rest of the archive, it's great stuff):
https://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF001.html
Of note is "The Earth is not a closed system"
Realizing that the root cause is just because you want it to be true is fine, commendable even. Just don't try to justify it post hoc with sciency-sounding arguments.
I understand that the sun gives low entropy energy to earth, and pockets of entropy can decrease as long as the whole system increases. However, my room exists on earth, so I still think it is an adequate analogy.
More seriously, I would like to see a mathematical treatment of the probability of biologically detrimental mutations vs. beneficial or neutral mutations.
That treatment has been done. From the same page:
https://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB101.html
First, I want to thank you for having this discussion with me. I've been wanting to discuss these ideas with someone for some time.
As to the referenced article, a couple of points stand out to me:
Sorry, it took me a little while to go through the Boyko paper. It's super statistics heavy. What I'm reading from there is that 27.3–29.0% of mutations are neutral, 30-42% are moderately deleterious, all the rest are highly deleterious or lethal. The statistics indicate that 10-20% of mutations have been fixed by positive selection (again assuming a common ancestor with chimpanzees). Deleterious, as you mentioned, specifically means harmful to reproduction. So in this context, diseases like Huntinginton's, hemophilia, familial ALS, sickle cell, Lynch syndrome would be considered "neutral". These statistics are mostly derived from Americans of African decent, as the clustered rate of mutation in Americans of European decent was too high to model well.
The Jonsson paper had a similar average rate of mutation of order 10^-8 per base pair as the other paper we looked at, which translates to about 3 per generation.
So what I don't understand, and maybe you can help me, is that in the extreme case of 20% of mutations being avoided by positive selection, there's still 7% of mutations with potentially horrific consequences. This is already excluding the over 70% of mutations that decrease reproductive fitness. What evolutionary pressure is there to keep "neutral" genetic diseases from accumulating in a population over time? How can "beneficial" mutations outweigh this burden? Mathematically, it seems to me that macro evolution is impossible. Am I missing something?
No worries, I can also be slow to respond. There's a few things at play here:
Neutral mutations can become beneficial later on. It's not just about the genes, it's also about the environment. Even deleterious mutations can become beneficial, like sickle cell disease likely being selected for due to its protection against malaria.
Following from that, deleterious/neutral/beneficial are pretty loose categories, and it's not even really correct to think of them as categories. It's more about how beneficial it is. Sickle cell disease is bad, but better than dying of malaria.
Beneficial mutations can be really beneficial. Once somebody has them, they can spread like wildfire through the population. One example is the ability to digest lactose as an adult. It's "worth" lots of "failures" to get that mutation (using those terms loosely and without value judgement). An analogy might help here, think about it kind of like this slime mold searching for food. The tips have a lot of churn and waste, but the food it finds is worth doing all that work. You can think of the beneficial mutations as the branches that are kept.
(Note that evolution isn't directed by "something", even as simple as a slime mold, it's a description of a physical process, like gravity, so the analogy is loose)
We've seen beneficial mutations happen in person, and shows another example of how useful beneficial mutations can be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment. The E. coli evolved the ability to digest a new substance they couldn't before. The experiment also touches on neutral mutations sticking around.
The distinction you're drawing between micro evolution and macro evolution relies on an assumption that either there are different kinds that are inherently distinct, or some sort of "system" that prevents micro evolution from progressing into macro evolution. For the prior, I've never seen a defense of that that doesn't rely on the supernatural, and for the latter, what happens when the system itself changes due to evolution?
In my personal experience, the strongest argument against any radical move away from the current general scientific worldview consensus is that everything generally fits together. Sure, the estimated age of the universe might be adjusted slightly from 13.7B to 13.8B years, or the Jurassic might actually be estimated slightly wrong. But across all evidence we have, the current scientific understanding across a diverse range of disciplines is approximately correct. Nobody is counting tree rings and saying "Wait a minute, these show the Earth is 6,000 years old!". Nobody is dating rocks and saying "Hold on, this dates as twice as old as the universe!". Note that you'll find claims of things like fossilized tracks of humans walking next to dinosaurs, but those don't pan out
Also, The God Delusion.
Except the room is entire Earth, it's filled to the brim with most elements of the Periodic table, and constantly receives hundreds of terawatts of energy. Oh, and it actually took several billion years, not one, to come from this to Taj Mahal.
Modern science has shown ways in which many of the organic molecules could be spontaneously formed out of basic elements under conditions observable on early Earth. We're also about to bridge synthesis of organic molecules and synthetic biology.
Intelligent design, on its end, gets stuck with several big questions, like the fact our design is actually very bad, just workable, and the fact we share not only visual properties, but most of our DNA with other animals - particularly other primates.
Not here to alter your beliefs - you do you - but setting the record straight.
So the record is, we've never been able to achieve synthetic biology under the most ideal laboratory circumstances?
What do you mean by bad design?
Just because we share DNA with other animals doesn't mean it wasn't by design.
Conditions of early Earth are often complicated to recreate, and it takes a lot of simultaneous reactions going just right to make it work - but Earth had billions of years, and we don't have such a luxury. Still, we are very close, and we already created a lot of biomolecules out of basic blocks like water, carbon dioxide, and ammonia.
Humans have plenty of faults in their design - why do we have reproductive organs, which need to be kept clean, right next or combined with exhaust (urethra/rectum)? Why do we have two legs and vertical organization of the body that adds huge gravitational stress? Why do we have pelvis shaped in a way that makes birthing more painful and complicated? Why people with uterus have bloody and painful periods? Why do we have so many vulnerable spots on the body where they should clearly be reinforced? etc. etc.
We also have plenty of rudimentary organs we don't need anymore, that are either just sitting there for no intelligent reason at all, or are actively causing trouble for us (like appendix or wisdom teeth).
This all doesn't fall into the line of intelligent design, unless divine creatures just enjoy crafting us at random and see how we survive anyway.
Sure, they could still do that, they may engineer us in a very odd and imperfect way, they could make our DNA similar to other animals to make us guess if we actually descent from them instead, etc. But this involves so much jumping through the hoops we may as well cut it off with Occam's razor. Evolutionary theory offers clear sequence of how we got where we are, it shows clear relation of all living organisms and the ways they develop into what we know today. So, it wins.