Do you believe in God?

[Esses]

...so essentially our only real biological purpose is to pass on our seeds. This isn't compulsory though, and I'd generally advise some people against it.

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No, I don't belive in God. But I do belive in Famines extensive amount of knowledge, which I'm enjoying reading.

 

[fitftw]

Here are a few suggestions, if you're having trouble bothering to live.

1) Procreation. We're all animals, so essentially our only real biological purpose is to pass on our seeds. This isn't compulsory though, and I'd generally advise some people against it.

2) Enjoying life. I'd doesn't really matter why we're here. What matters is that we are: our parents have decided to have kids, we're the result. 'You have one life, live it' etc.

3) Use it to help others. You've been given a chance of life. A finite amount of time to spend on the earth. You could use it to make the lives of others more pleasant.

4) Use it to advance humanity. You've been given a chance of life. A finite amount of time to spend on earth. You could use it to do something worthwhile to make the future better for our species.

5) Use it to ask tedious existential questions on a video game forum. You could suggest that with no meaning to life, we may as well all just kill ourselves, since there's nothing better to do. You could say that unless we find out why we're here, then we may as well not bother doing any of the above, since there's no point anyway.

Actually, you can scratch that last one off the list. I see you're already using your life to do that one.

1) You'd be surprised just how many people use this one as their purpose for existence. It's downright scary. Our biological urge is for sex, reproduction is the result. If sex was an urge to procreate, hunger would be an urge to defecate.

2) Should we be doing something just because we can? I'd argue that many people don't enjoy life and deceive themselves into believing they enjoy life. Many are oppressed, either by totalitarian governments or slave labor and such. Enjoying life is made almost impossible for most people due to a handful of people with a power complex.

3) Helping others is more about self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else. It's just a way of helping ourselves by creating a point among the true pointlessness of existence. It's a sanity-keeper.

4) Same as #3 really. Advancing society is more self-fulfilling prophecy.

5) Indeed. If killing ourselves were as easy to go through with as say, taking a shower, I'd suspect there wouldn't be many people alive today.

 

[Exorcet]

5) Indeed. If killing ourselves were as easy to go through with as say, taking a shower, I'd suspect there wouldn't be many people alive today.

Taking a shower is probably harder than killing yourself in this day and age.

 

[dylansan]

If I help others, it's only to make me feel better better about myself. Therefore, I shouldn't help people.

Nope, I don't think I can make that leap.

Also, just because we have the option to seek happiness doesn't mean we should take it.

Hmm.

 

[Grand Prix]

Look at this way: Specimens that couldn't enjoy sex or tasting food probably had less success in passing on their genes. This is not to say every living thing on Earth can enjoy these things, but there isn't exactly anything completely discouraging these activities either. At least, not to the extent that there is no reason to do them whatsoever. If there was, they would probably have a much smaller chance of passing on their genes; hence why we don't see many such examples where eating/reproducing is painful, or otherwise discouraged in some way.


That's besides the point though. The point is that life has whatever purpose you give to it. If you decide not to give it one, and also decide it is not a life worth living, Nature/the Universe doesn't care. Those that refuse to live are removed from the gene pool, and those that want to live, continue living, reproducing and passing down their knowledge for future generations. Funny how that works.


You have one life, might as well live through it. Assuming from lack of evidence of an afterlife, you wouldn't exactly be able to experience the absence of consciousness anyway. So just enjoy life while you are able to.

 

[TheDrummingKING]

Enjoying life is made almost impossible for most people due to a handful of people with a power complex.

I'm sorry what? I enjoy my life quite easily. All I do really is talk to a few people (well text really), and use my computer all day, and that is enough for me to enjoy life.

3) Helping others is more about self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else. It's just a way of helping ourselves by creating a point among the true pointlessness of existence. It's a sanity-keeper.

4) Same as #3 really. Advancing society is more self-fulfilling prophecy.

I don't even know what you are trying to say. Helping others and advancing society for the betterment of mankind (and hopefully all life on earth) are self-fulfilling prophecies? What are you even talking about?

5) Indeed. If killing ourselves were as easy to go through with as say, taking a shower, I'd suspect there wouldn't be many people alive today.

They're at about the same difficulty level. Sorry to disappoint you but I think it is just that people enjoy living.

 

[homeforsummer]

1) You'd be surprised just how many people use this one as their purpose for existence. It's downright scary. Our biological urge is for sex, reproduction is the result. If sex was an urge to procreate, hunger would be an urge to defecate.

Err... no.

Hunger is an urge to keep us from dying. The fact that sex is fun (to varying degrees) is a mechanism that encourages us to do so in order to pass on our seed. Imagine if sex was something you really, really didn't want to do, something people didn't do recreationally even if it wasn't specifically to procreate. I reckon the population would tail off pretty quickly, people only having sex if they really, really felt compelled to pass on their seed.

2) Should we be doing something just because we can?

Yes. It's better than being able to than squandering it because you're a miserable bastard, at any rate.

3) Helping others is more about self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else. It's just a way of helping ourselves by creating a point among the true pointlessness of existence. It's a sanity-keeper.

Alternatively, those who aren't needlessly negative about everything like to help others unconditionally.

4) Same as #3 really. Advancing society is more self-fulfilling prophecy.

Same as my answer to #3 really.

5) Indeed. If killing ourselves were as easy to go through with as say, taking a shower, I'd suspect there wouldn't be many people alive today.

Same as my answer to #2 really.

 

[Denur]

@fitftw

Thank you, thank you for sharing your miserable view on life. It gave me the opportunity to reflect on my own life and the result is me sitting here with a big smile on my face.

Yes, I have a wonderful life, with my family, friends, colleagues. My work, my hobbies, the life behind me and what's still to come.

Thank you again. 👍

 

[Touring Mars]

Science is a religion.

Go away and don't come back until you understand what science actually is and how it operates.

 

[fitftw]

"Nothing comes from nothing" - LUCRETIUS : The Nature of Things, 1st century B.C.

"Why is there something instead of nothing?" - Martin Heidegger

"An anti-metaphysical positivist response would dissolve the question as meaningless, and hence implicitly suggest that any feeling of awe here is irrational and inappropriate. Heidegger, on the other hand, claims that philosophy itself is at stake:

To philosophize is to ask "Why are there essents rather than nothing?" Really to ask this question signifies: a daring attempt to fathom this unfathomable question by disclosing what it summons us to ask, to push our questioning to the very end. Where such an attempt occurs there is philosophy."

"Even if it is impossible to supply an answer, the fact that we respond to it means that something, however odd or inexplicable, has been understood. As long as we feel something about this issue, there must be a serious problem of explanation or a profound mystery which exercises the mind. If the question arouses nothing at all, no awe, no anxiety, no bewilderment or surprise, then we must hold a kind of positivist position which claims that the question is a piece of nonsense, and thus denies that any feeling of wonder at the existence of the world is needed."

"I believe that there are only two conditions under which the question might conceivably fail to be awesome to one who considers it seriously. Firstly, if someone were to believe that the question is meaningless, then feelings of wonder or awe would be inappropriate. Secondly, if someone were to believe that no explanation is required for the existence of the world, then they might fail to have any feelings of significance about the "why" question. This position could be adopted if one believed that it was necessarily true that something exists. In response to this, I will argue that there are reasons to be perplexed or awed even if one holds that it is necessarily true that something exists."

Read more: http://www.hedweb.com/witherall/existence.htm

"If we could ever come fully to understand the properties of what fundamentally exists, and unravel its causal history, or perhaps show how space-time emerged from something more primitive, then we might have a better chance of coming to understand why it - or indeed anything - exists too."

Read more: http://www.hedweb.com/nihilism/nihilfil.htm

"How can we know why something is (or should be) a certain way if we don't know why there is anything at all?"
- Robert Nozick

 

[niky]

Oh lordy. He's discovered existential nihilism.

 

[Famine]

I like that he's quoted other people - some of whom were philsophers - rather than coming up with some of his own philosophy.

And still missed the point that discovering "why" isn't part of science. Or explained why "why" is important. Or supported his statement that those who don't care about "why" are ego-driven and usually evil. Or stated which frelling God he's talking about.

Perhaps if we ask him to continue ramming his fingers in his metaphorical ears and make repeated false suggestions he might do the opposite and answer the questions asked and support the arguments rebuffed...

 

[MatskiMonk]

Personally I only trust philosophers called Bruce, or New Bruce. But not Michael, that just gets confusing.

I have nothing on Topic to contribute, sorry.

 

[fitftw]

Look Famine, I don't care about God. Pick any God you want, and that's the one I was talking about.

It's kind of hard to come up with your own philosophy when several millenia worth of philosophies have been shared with the world. There is not much else we can say about it that would be new or exciting to anybody.

Why anything exists is important only if you feel awed by the question. If you don't, which it is obvious you don't, then obviously it is not important to you.

 

[niky]

Who says we don't care about the "why?"

 

[Famine]

Look Famine, I don't care about God. Pick any God you want, and that's the one I was talking about.

I don't want any of them.

You were positing lack of knowledge (your own, in this instance) as a plausible reason for the existence of a deity. Since it's your idea, you should probably be aware of which deity with which properties can fill the gap you'd invented.

It's kind of hard to come up with your own philosophy when several millenia worth of philosophies have been shared with the world. There is not much else we can say about it that would be new or exciting to anybody.

If you don't invent anything, you can't call yourself an inventor. If you don't ski anywhere, you can't call yourself a skier. If you don't philosophise, you can't call yourself a philsopher. Repeating back others' philosophy is just reading.

Why anything exists is important only if you feel awed by the question. If you don't, which it is obvious you don't, then obviously it is not important to you.

So you've waded in to call science worthless, to call science a religion, to call the aspiritual "ego-driven" and usually evil and to piss in the face of several decades of theoretical and particle physics to say they don't know anything about the Big Bang because you haven't made their discoveries available to yourself...

... in order to tell us the earth-shattering point that something that might be important to some people might be important to some people if it's important to them?


Well thank the stars you dropped by.

 

[fitftw]

"It is absolutely impossible for a subject to see or have insight into something while leaving itself out of the picture, so impossible that knowing and being are the most opposite of all spheres."

"Fear is the mother of morality."

-Nietzsche

Don't tell me that nihilism/existentialism have no business in a Godly debate. It is the essence of such a debate, for knowing WHY there should be a debate at all is essential to having one. Otherwise, all debates are meaningless. Is God knowable? No. Is the origin of existence knowable? No. So a debate about it is utterly pointless, and that's all I've been trying to prove. For 495 pages, everyone has gone around in circles, accomplishing nothing.

 

[Scaff]

"It is absolutely impossible for a subject to see or have insight into something while leaving itself out of the picture, so impossible that knowing and being are the most opposite of all spheres."

"Fear is the mother of morality."

-Nietzsche

Just stumbled across a little Nietzsche have we. Have fun with that but please be aware that simply because it fits your life view doesn't mean its either correct or that you can then imprint it onto others.

Don't tell me that nihilism/existentialism have no business in a Godly debate.

I don't think that what you were being told. You claimed to be a philosopher, simply quoting them doesn't make you one was the point. Nor does you well its hard because others have done it before, didn't stop your current quote-crush from doing it.

It is the essence of such a debate, for knowing WHY there should be a debate at all is essential to having one. Otherwise, all debates are meaningless.

Hold on a second. You are the one that baseless stated that science was a religion, that science was pointless because it doesn't answer the 'why'. That doesn't mean the why question is pointless, just that science isn't the tool for the job, that still doesn't make science pointless (and should you disagree then please turn off all your electrical devices now).

Is God knowable? No. Is the origin of existence knowable?

Why are they not knowable?
If God(s) exist(s) then they can be proven, ditto for the origin of the universe.

No. So a debate about it is utterly pointless, and that's all I've been trying to prove. For 495 pages, everyone has gone around in circles, accomplishing nothing.

If its pointless to you (please once again stop imprinting your own issues onto others) then feel free to leave it - you've already threatened to do so once).

 

[niky]

Existential Nihilism is the lowest form of navel-gazing, rejecting everything, including itself.

In other words, it disproves nothing. Because if you assert your own argument is meaningless, you're not going to win a debate.

And if the debate is meaningless, why bother with it?

Clearly, it means something to you, otherwise you wouldn't exert the effort to tap away at your keyboard.

This is the biggest failing of Existential Nihilists. That they actually get up in the morning, go to the bathroom to take a dump, write out long, depressing dissertations on the meaninglessness of life and wander around looking for people to infect with their worldview means that they don't actually believe their own philosophy. They have a cause, and this gives their life meaning... however meaningless it is.

 

[Famine]

Man who uses internet (developed at CERN) to say we don't know anything about the Big Bang (large chunks of which discovered at CERN) and that science is "worthless" tries to define what's valid discussion in a thread about science and religion.

Excellent.

 

[orimarc]

Don't you just love the smell of irony in the morning?

 

[Callum B]

Not this amount though, it's starting to choke me.

 

[fitftw]

I would not want to, nor should I ever have to die for anyone's beliefs, and also...

"I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong." - Bertrand Russell

If energy was always in existence, then it would reason that energy created itself.

Wherever energy came from, that is where God could have come from. The quantum fields with random fluctuations. How did those fields exist? Is it an impossibility that there could truly have been nothing at some point in "time?" Has that been disproved, or merely debated?

And if something ridiculous like the Big Bang could happen, is it possible that our universe could have a reverse Big Bang at any moment and contract itself?

 

[arora]

"I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong." - Bertrand Russell

What is the source of this quote? I've read quite a bit of his works and never seen it. I thought maybe it was from his lecture "Why I Am Not A Christian" but nope.

 

[fitftw]

What is the source of this quote? I've read quite a bit of his works and never seen it. I thought maybe it was from his lecture "Why I Am Not A Christian" but nope.

I can't remember where I came across it originally, and Google isn't much help besides leading me to quotation sites and not actual works of literature.

 

[homeforsummer]

I would not want to, nor should I ever have to die for anyone's beliefs, and also...

What on earth relevance to the conversation does this have? You now appear to be plucking irrelevant points clean out of the air.

And if something ridiculous like the Big Bang could happen...

For someone with your incredibly low understanding of the Big Bang, I'm not surprised you find it ridiculous. However, that doesn't mean it is ridiculous.

...is it possible that our universe could have a reverse Big Bang at any moment and contract itself?

Partly yes, no, and partly no.

Partly yes, because one theory for the end of the universe is described as the "Big Crunch", where the universe's expansion stops, before reversing due to the gravity of all the mass contained within. Matter would continue accelerating towards other matter until it was crushed together in something resembling the pre-Big Bang singularity.

No, because it couldn't happen "at any moment".

Partly no, because it's also one of the less plausible theories for the end of the universe. The as-yet undiscovered force of dark energy appears to be stronger than that of the combined gravitational force of visible matter and dark matter, so it's unlikely that the universe will begin to contract. The eventual complete dispersion of matter is known as the "heat death of the universe" theory.

I suggest you read up on this, and the big crunch theory, and do some proper reading on the big bang. It'll serve you much better in this discussion than reading up on pointless quotes.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I suggest you read up on this, and the big crunch theory, and do some proper reading on the big bang. It'll serve you much better in this discussion than reading up on pointless quotes.

Not disagreeing with you HFS, but this brings me on to a point I've been mulling over.

What does the beginning or end of time and the universe have to do with Humans really? We weren't there at the beginning, and we won't be there at the end. Humans are to the universe as a snow flake is to Antarctica.

It strikes me that discussions about religion usually go off on this Universe tangent. Despite the fact that I find Physics hugely interesting, and studied it for 3 years at college, when it comes to questions of God, I always find myself asking questions about the 'human spirit' or 'soul'. What actually is the bio-electrical and bio-chemical reason behind 'a belief' in the first place.

Personally I don't think we'll find a meaningful answer about God my looking towards the edges of deep space, I think we're better off looking deep within our own brains.

.. some people might need to take of the tinfoil hats first though.

I've a hypothesis that proper actual religiousness (the kind that people find on their own, rather than those who have it programmed into them as they grow up) is related to our DNA... this probably isn't a new idea, but I've never googled it so... who knows.

 

[Famine]

What does the beginning or end of time and the universe have to do with Humans really? We weren't there at the beginning, and we won't be there at the end. Humans are to the universe as a snow flake is to Antarctica.

Humans are a unique species.

We are, to the best of our knowledge, the only species ever to inhabit this rock that can manipulate it to our own ends - to change our environment to suit us - rather than being shaped by it. The case of asserting that we are the only species to do this is strong.

Not only that, but we are, to the best of our knowledge, the only species ever to leave this rock and put ourselves down on others. Our spoor can be seen on myriad other worlds - some much smaller than others - and our tracks can be seen on a rock so far away that an average member of our species even 500 years ago couldn't walk the same distance in his lifetime.

Combine these two things together and we become a species capable of manipulating not only our direct environment, but larger and larger remote environments. We are, to the best of our knowledge, the only species ever to inhabit this universe that can manipulate it to our own ends. However, the case of asserting that we are the only species to do this is incredibly weak because our knowledge of other species in the universe is nonexistant - so we're just the only ones of which we are aware.


This leads itself to an interesting conclusion. If we are a species that can manipulate the universe to suit us, we become a species that is wholly capable of existing so long as the universe does. In fact we may well become a species that is wholly capable of sustaining a universe for us to exist in. We're on that path, it just remains to be seen how we walk it.

Understanding the initial conditions of the Big Bang are crucial to our knowledge of how to do this. It's just physics - and the more and more we learn of really big physics and really small physics, the more capable we become at manipulating it. Asteroid about to slam into the planet - it's just physics. Sun about to explode - it's just physics. Planet very far away - it's just physics. Universe about to reach entropy - it's just physics.


So the beginning of time and the universe are really important to us in order to get us to the end of time and the universe (and beyond) - and we might become important to the universe as a result.

 

[homeforsummer]

Personally I don't think we'll find a meaningful answer about God my looking towards the edges of deep space, I think we're better off looking deep within our own brains.

I agree.

I've maintained in the past that the concept of god is essentially all in our heads. I don't see why it should be any less meaningful as a result - if it makes people want to be better people, then I'm all for it. I don't need to believe in an imaginary being to be a good person myself, but others are welcome to it.

However, for that reason, I also find it ridiculous that people try and justify god's existence by trying to pick apart human knowledge and science. Doing so certainly doesn't further humanity, neither in terms of knowledge or in terms of being a good person.

It shouldn't for example, make you want to help other people any less, knowing that god didn't create the universe. Equally, knowing the science of how the universe was created shouldn't make you want to help other people any less either.

 

[CodeRedR51]

I also find it ridiculous that people try and justify god's existence by trying to pick apart human knowledge and science. Doing so certainly doesn't further humanity, neither in terms of knowledge or in terms of being a good person.

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