God

[FCAWarrior]

Is anyone here a christian?

[mibn2cweus]

 Hey alphamale, guess again. Something tells me this could go on for a long long time, not that it hasn't already! Fortunately (knock on wood) so far it seems to be pretty much isolated to one topic, (not that in different circumstances it couldn�t be an important one).

 I have never met Jesus and although I�m told he hasn�t been around for many, many, many, etc., years, I have no desire to meet him.  Although there are many people I�ve never met for whom I have great respect, from what I�ve heard about Jesus, he is not one of them. 
 For one thing I don�t believe in sacrifice, not that dying on a temporary basis qualifies.  I don�t accept the �morality� of giving up something for which there is not compensation. 
 I choose only to deal with those who seek mutual benefit.  I have no desire for any other kind of relationship with anyone.  Even if the currency of exchange is simply the joy of helping someone who properly shows their appreciation for my help, I don�t consider this a sacrifice in the least.
 I believe in reality.  This is the realm from which all things that are possible are possible.  Because of reality I can live, think, and feel what I feel when I do something which makes this world a better place to live.

 Enough of that.  I think I might have something worthwhile to say in defense of good science.

[mibn2cweus]

Intelligent Design �Theory?�
Being Considered for
Science Curriculum

 Seems every time science significantly improve our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in religionist find it necessary to attribute this new knowledge to their make believe cohort �God�, typically after damning the scientist for daring to reveal �His secrets� or for exposing the absurdity of their beliefs.
 Maybe they are right to boohoo the teaching of evolution in the public school system.  Perhaps students would be better served being taught how to discern reality from fantasy, fact from fiction, and truth from lies.  Until they have learned to evaluate their beliefs and validate their knowledge they won�t be able to make rational choices anyway.
 There is nothing impressive about reality apart from an ability to appreciate some aspect of it, it simply is.  What is impressive is our unique ability to understand what it is, how it works, and the way we use this knowledge to improve the quality of our lives.

[blinkyblinky]

FCA: I think this is the one world we will ever inhabit, and the fundamental feeling in the back of my mind is that we are destroying it. A christian has a fundamental feeling in the back of his or her mind that God is behind the scenes taking care of everything, punishing the bad guys and sending you lot to heaven. Who is going to really take care of this world - the one who has that anxiety or the one who has that nice cosy feeling?

Incidentally, I said that God is punishing the bad guys. According to you, the bad guys are the atheists (because they don't accept the Christian doctrine), Hindus (because they don't accept the Christian doctrine), Muslims (because they don't accept the Christian doctrine), Taoists (because they don't accept the Christian doctrine), Buddhists (because they don't accept the Christian doctrine), etc etc etc. And I thought the bad guys were the murderers, rapists, paedophiles, thieves.... (I know what you will say - It's in that book, so it must be true, because someone told you that that book is the word of God) (and you believed them....)

[blinkyblinky]

Mib2: This is going off topic but are you one of these people who asks "What is there left for science to discover?" Do you really think that the bit of sponge in the top half of your head is capable of understanding reality? I see things like this: children are incapable of understanding reality, and adult humans are slightly less incapable. If you look at a colony of ants, they presumaby have their own structure of reality. They probably don't have concepts of morality, objective v subjective, beauty, etc etc, but they have some kind of way of conceiving the world. We are the same - we have our own way of understanding reality, of relating to it, but what the relation is between that and reality itself we don't know, because we cannot step outside our brains and touch that thing we call reality. Our way of understanding is no more valid than the ants'. In fact, maybe the ants have a much closer connection to the feeling of the real world than we do, where we are cushioned from it by our departmentalising concepts, our worries and anxieties, our highly developed social values etc etc, they may have a more direct unintellectualised experience of it. The laws of physics are very useful for making us more comfortable as you say, but they don't change our hard-wired conception of the world, the way our brain presents the world to itself. That's why I think that science, like religion, only scratches the surface of the world, and that the world is 1% known and 99% mystery.

[FCAWarrior]

Okay, I have a question that has been asked many times but not yet answered.Who do you think created you and how.

[FCAWarrior]

Those people aren't bad people. Sure, we wish that everyone was a christian, but God's not going to punish you for not trusting in him until the judgement day when he decides whether yo ugo to heaven or hell. He loves you and isn't going to punish you unless it's necessary.

There will always be things that we will not understand. the Bible tells us that. God likes the fact that we want to learn, but there's some things that are better not to know.

Also, I wanted to ask you what you think about miracle stories on tv. You see the stories about how the first person ever completely recovered from a brain tumor. When I see that, I think oh, that's got to be a God thing.

[mibn2cweus]

Hi blinkyblinky, Finally, a question worthy of an answer!
 Knowledge is not a given, it must be gained through a step-by-step process that is neither perfect nor complete.  This process is continuously evolving and occasionally improving as we search ever deeper for the truth.  You may be asking, �What is this truth we are seeking and how do we arrive at it?�  For me it is the reality that is out there as opposed to what we believe it to be.  To say knowledge can not be validated is to say it does not exist which makes this statement a contradiction.  Obtaining knowledge is the validation of facts.  It is to ask, �is this true and if so why�, or in the case of knowledge itself, �how?�  The answer to these questions is not just important, it is crucial.   Knowledge is the defining characteristic of our species as it is the means of our survival.  What we believe to be true dictates our choices and determines our actions and if it is incorrect we suffer as a consequence.  Knowledge will always be limited in scope.  This is inescapable due to the means necessary to obtain it.  Those who seek a shortcut to omniscience can only end up completely lost.
 How do we grasp reality?  Bit by bit and piece by piece.  Fortunately we have a method to integrate our perceptions which allows us to process it in a way which is astronomically superior to the ants and yet maintains the perceptual data�s integrity.  This is the function of concepts.  I will try to scratch the surface of this latter.  I hope I�ve given you something to think about in the meantime.

[mibn2cweus]

This is to answer the question, �Who created me and how?� 
Given my limited experience in this world and my limited intellect I will venture to guess my parents had something to do with it.  As to the how, I would hope some sex education along with some studies in biology would help to answer this question.

[mibn2cweus]

Miracles:  I would attribute this anti-concept to our need for understanding in the absence of a complete knowledge of the causal mechanisms which make an event possible or an inaccurate portrayal of the event itself.  This might be due to a malicious hiding of details of the event to purposely mislead someone to believe something that isn�t true or self-deception in an attempt to support one�s preconceptions about reality. 
 Knowledge isn�t always forthcoming and sometimes patience and tenacity are required to arrive at the truth.  The first guess is not always, if not rarely, correct.

[FCAWarrior]

Who created your parents, grandparents and so on. where did it all start?

[mibn2cweus]

 To the best of my knowledge and recollection I have never made acquaintance with any of my grandparents.  Perhaps this would have helped me to understand my parents and even myself better.   As the science of genetics improves, understanding its� role in defining who we are improves as well.  However my knowledge of these things is very limited at best.  From an early age my focus has been directed toward understanding what my own contribution to the way I am could be and should be. 
 I have not studied the theory of evolution a great deal but I am fascinated by its� ability to explain how I came to be (in the physical sense).  I regret I have little to offer in this area; however I think that if you have a genuine interest and desire, in time, your knowledge and understanding of this will improve proportionately.

[mibn2cweus]

A little aside:

There have been a lot of beliefs posted in this section.  Here's one of mine.  I will not try to support it at this time but I hope you will find it interesting none-the-less.

I believe consciousness is reality looking at itself and that if you turn your back on reality you are turning your back on yourself.

I don't presently have proof of this and I welcome comments and speculation you may have about this.

[SuperPigeon]

I like your belief, if thats the right way of putting it. However, I still have a question. If you turn your back on reality aren't you becoming insane or having a nervous breakdown or something like that. If you turn your back on reality and dismiss it you believe you can do as you please and enter a state of unconcious conciousness where you usually become a psycopath. So, do you agree?

[mibn2cweus]

 This is pretty much a spontaneous thought that just sort of floated up into my conscious mind while analyzing some of the other answers that have been posted here and seeing if I had anything worthwhile to offer in response.  It�s kind of like when you wake up in the middle of the night with a thought you think might be really profound so you write it down and then the next morning when you wake up and read it you have no idea what it means.  This is where I now find myself, wondering whether I should have posted it.  Never-the-less I�ll have a go at it.
 I think it�s really amazing that we find ourselves here in this corner of the universe with an ability to make some deductions on how it all came to be and how it all works.  It�s as if in the vastness of the universe it makes sense that something somewhere would arise with the ability to have some appreciation for its existence.  I know this doesn�t make much sense but it�s a thought that comes to mind every so often. 
 The universe could not have been created because this would require an intelligence existing prior to the prerequisite life-form/consciousness/mind sequence.  In other words you can�t bake a cake before you have the ingredients, a recipe and the oven to bake it in.  It has taken millions of years here on this Earth for us to acquire the ability to think and to reason to the point where we can begin to understand reality.  It would be a shame to loose all this due to the mindless actions of a few irrational people.
 Not all mental illness is volitional but apart from this, if I understand you correctly, yes, I agree.