Atheists - a question

[ribozyme]

Ah, its been a gamut of education, heavily in the sciences of psychology, biology(mostly human anatomy, physiology, and neurology), and the history and culture of other people such as ancient Asian Mythology. Kind of a holistic humanity study. I also did minor studies in anthropology and philosophy (both of which I want to delve into more heavily in the near future)

Largely I have been interested in molecular biology and biochemistry. Instead of looking at the macroscopic level, I want to understand the phenomenon of life at the molecular level, as this approach not only describes human life, but it potentially allows us to explain some of the characteristics that all organisms share.

I want to understand the greater scheme of things and in order to provide an answer to this, I want to know what life is, and I want to know what makes life life. Also, I am interested in the origin of life, and I am interested in how it happened. I believe finding an answer, I will discover the meaning of life.

Indeed religions offer an explanation for this phenomenon, and unfortunately, scientific inquiry failed to provide a satisfactory answer to the question of the origin of life. The origin of life is the origin of Darwinian evolution. Of course, Darwinian evolution requires some form of heredity, and to my knowledge, I do not know any prebiotic way to generate any hereditary polymer (nucleic acids holds this role in contemporary biochemistry). And such a hereditary polymer as to undergo faithful replication or else it cannot pass on its hereditary material to its progeny as it lost the properties that allowed it to replicate.

I will define life as a self-sustaining chemical system that undergoes Darwinian evolution. Oh wait, I just commited plagiarism; that is how Gerald Joyce defines life. I find that explanation the best explanation of the phenomenon of life.

Although I do not know how life originated, but if we accepted life as a Darwinian system, it leaves little room for teleology.

You mentioned free will in your post… I think reductionism is an excellent methodology to describe the world at the molecular level, but I do one can apply reductionism when studying psychology: see this

 

[Aleii]

What makes you think God is a human invention? Do you think God is an invention? Explain please.

well, if you were referring to me,

I feel more strongly as the days go by that Christianity (along with the rest of the world’s religions) is a human invention. Whether or not a God exists is unclear to me, as there are millions of possibilities for who/what God might be and God’s level of involvement in things. There is no one all encompassing definition of God that humanity would agree on. Therefore I am open to the possibility that there may be a God out there, but am skeptical of that.

I do feel that religion is a human invention. In general, religion serves many functions, especially for early humans:
-creates answers for the unknown, satiating man’s curiosity.
-calms or gives fear
-(usually) helps create basic societal order and stability by giving a set of rules or premises by which the general public should follow. (i.e. saying thou shalt not kill is a rule that is beneficial if the general public tries to follow it. It also gives reason for people to be content in their life, offers motivation to work hard, be a productive member of society and not create trouble, even if their life is terrible compared to their neighbor. (offer up your sufferings, the poor shall be rich, the rich shall be poor, justice will be had in the next life, etc) )
-brings people/communities together, creates entertainment, stories to pass down, traditions, etc.

So in summary, mankind needs to invent God to be able to cope with the unknown and control its people. You’d be hard pressed to find a group of individuals without myths/spirituality. And some of these myths date thousands of years before the birth of Jesus.

Religion is a good tool to create and maintain stable societies, helping control the people. But do you believe Zeus was a human invention? Do you believe Asian mythology to be a human invention? How about the myths of ancient Japan? Or the rituals of the Native Americans for things like rain? How about the use of drugs in rituals to create visions - were these created by gods as a method for their people to interact with them, or did some human stumble upon the mind-altering substances and think they were talking to a higher power, thus creating the ritual? If you feel that many other religions were created by humans, then you have to critically look at all religions to look for any proof that they weren’t created by humans.

Other religions, that many/most people have dismissed as human inventions, have very similar aspects to Christianity. (Studying other religions was the biggest eye opener for me that Christianity may be wrong.)

I’ve seen other people on these boards say that the writers of that time simply borrowed from the current culture, such as calling Mary the names given to Isis, and depicting Mother Mary and Infant Jesus as Isis and Horus were. I’m not saying this isn’t possible or plausible, it just seems like any religion, including Christianity has a lot to defend against. Seems like some of the defenses are grasping at straws, people seeing what they want to see, twisting things around until it appears to defend Christianity. No, these numerous similarities alone should not be used to discount a religion, but should not be dismissed either.

And by this I’m not saying Jesus didn’t exist, as I can see the real probability of him being a person, but that fundamental ‘truths’ of the Bible, to me, probably didn’t happen. I feel like there is really little to support the Bible as the actual inspired word of God. The Bible, as I write a couple paragraphs down in the next post, can not to me be considered a definitive work in and of itself with no other proof.

I feel like I’m looking at a bunch of people’s different versions of Santa Claus. Why do I have to pick one version as the “truth” when really Santa does not currently exist? There’s tons of children’s stories about him which state he is real, tons of pictures, tons of statues, tons of children believing, but that does not make him real. Parents have kept the myth of Santa alive and flourishing; its possible that elders/prophets/kings/etc kept the idea of Christianity alive and flourishing.

I don’t believe I chose agnosticism/weak atheism, but fell into it by default because I chose to study Christianity and the world. I can’t force my mind to believe Christianity, although I’ve tried. I just don’t see the evidence to support it.

 

[Aleii]

I may be able to answer your question better rather than rambling scripture to you and overwhelm you since it would be foreign to you. I am interested in hearing your views first. A little at time can make all the difference. Thanks. I look forward to hearing from you.

Concerning the Bible, I posted a few posts back that I grew up a Catholic, went to Catholic school, retreats, and had a decent Christian teaching. I am not unfamiliar with the Bible/scripture. However, many religions have their own text in which they draw from. By using the Bible to say that God exists, you are stating that you believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. However, this is not something which I agree with. There first needs to be evidence that the Bible is the inspired word of God which should be the primary text used, and not other “holy” books such as the Qur’an. I can write a book myself and in it write how Joe is the savior, and inside the book place a lot of stories which give “evidence” that Joe is the savior and that we should worship Joe every 20th hour, but that doesn’t make the book true in the first place. Therefore, using the Bible to prove the Bible is true does not really hold weight with me. There are many ancient stories written in ancient texts. That doesn’t make them any more than stories.

To me this all points to the belief that there is no true religion on earth. There might be a highly uninvolved God, but not a religion.

The problem is that - as with anything - it’s not that simple.

Yes, my post was very summative and a little oversimplistic. I do recognize that it is more. I should have written “inspired word of God” or something to that fact so that it wasn’t misleading. What I was trying to get across was that the Catholic faith believes they are the authority on religion/God, and I disagree. I believe that answers the next portion of your post that I am leaving out as well.

I’d also strongly question the claim that religion ‘Explains that which can’t otherwise be explained (yet, scientifically.)’ I hear this one tossed around a lot - but I have yet to hear a real satisfactory explanation of how Christianity acted as a placeholder for science. Yes, natural curiosities were often attributed to God (or, on a lower, more folk level, the generally supernatural) - but so too were things that people understood the inner workings of. Everything was considered to have had God as its ultimate source - and to most Christians, the belief holds. Discovering the mechanistic workings of the human immune system didn’t step on religion’s turf - neither did discovering the big bang or black holes (In the former case, some would argue the opposite occurred.)

I am saying that the general faith/religious (clumping Christianity in with others here for brevity) community has historically attributed much to God since the early days of man which was eventually attributed to science. Anything that was unknown was fair game, like lightning and rain. Things like mental illness/epilepsy, bad or good luck, natural disasters, bodily health, etc have been attributed to God for long periods of time. This is a plausible reason that religion/god is “invented”, to deal with the unknown, and that since science is enabling us to understand so much of what was solely attributed to God in the past, that that trend is likely to continue with things like evolution and the origins of the Milky Way, and beyond, to challenge ID. I won’t get into the earth is round/flat or age of the earth controversy. I’m not saying God is only used to explain the unknown if that is what you took from my post.

 

[Aleii]

Largely I have been interested in molecular biology and biochemistry. Instead of looking at the macroscopic level, I want to understand the phenomenon of life at the molecular level, as this approach not only describes human life, but it potentially allows us to explain some of the characteristics that all organisms share.

I agree with looking at molecular biology. That is where my interest in neurology came in. There is still much yet to discover.

I want to understand the greater scheme of things and in order to provide an answer to this, I want to know what life is, and I want to know what makes life life. Also, I am interested in the origin of life, and I am interested in how it happened. I believe finding an answer, I will discover the meaning of life.

I agree! I think that by understanding life we can understand what, if any, meaning comes with it.

Indeed religions offer an explanation for this phenomenon, and unfortunately, scientific inquiry failed to provide a satisfactory answer to the question of the origin of life. The origin of life is the origin of Darwinian evolution. Of course, Darwinian evolution requires some form of heredity, and to my knowledge, I do not know any prebiotic way to generate any hereditary polymer (nucleic acids holds this role in contemporary biochemistry). And such a hereditary polymer as to undergo faithful replication or else it cannot pass on its hereditary material to its progeny as it lost the properties that allowed it to replicate.

I will define life as a self-sustaining chemical system that undergoes Darwinian evolution. Oh wait, I just commited plagiarism; that is how Gerald Joyce defines life. I find that explanation the best explanation of the phenomenon of life.

Although I do not know how life originated, but if we accepted life as a Darwinian system, it leaves little room for teleology.

We move ever closer to the answer with each passing day. I can’t accept that since something is amazing to me, that means that God had to do it, as is the answer some give.

You mentioned free will in your post… I think reductionism is an excellent methodology to describe the world at the molecular level, but I do one can apply reductionism when studying psychology: see this

Interesting link, however, the realm of psychology is vast, and that was not the type of “psychology” I delved into. Cognitive psychology, psychology of learning and memory, Laboratories in creating scientifically rigorous experiments and statistics was what I focused on. Each course/book presented statistically valid studies and their results (for example, showing how erroneous memory is, how false memories can be created how performance changes with different factors applied, etc(its been years since I got that degree but there was a lot more research - fascinating stuff how predictable people are, and how easily manipulated they can be), not unbacked interpretations. I will definitely be looking into some good books on free will in the near future. Any suggestions?

 

[Nullasalus]

I am saying that the general faith/religious (clumping Christianity in with others here for brevity) community has historically attributed much to God since the early days of man which was eventually attributed to science. Anything that was unknown was fair game, like lightning and rain. Things like mental illness/epilepsy, bad or good luck, natural disasters, bodily health, etc have been attributed to God for long periods of time. This is a plausible reason that religion/god is “invented”, to deal with the unknown, and that since science is enabling us to understand so much of what was solely attributed to God in the past, that that trend is likely to continue with things like evolution and the origins of the Milky Way, and beyond, to challenge ID. I won’t get into the earth is round/flat or age of the earth controversy. I’m not saying God is only used to explain the unknown if that is what you took from my post.

I do see what you’re saying - but I still think that this is incorrect. All things that were known were attributed to God as well. It wasn’t as if people categorized things as ‘from God’ and ‘from science’, and progressively over the centuries things moved from the former pile to the latter. I would absolutely agree that people in general ascribed supernatural explanations to that which they didn’t understand. I’d also say that Christianity/Judaism in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, were notable as being faiths that were largely unconcerned with offering supernatural explanations for the unknown. There are certainly aspects to the faith which could be called supernatural (transubstantiation), as well as there being a lot of christian folklore (‘If my son is a priest, I go right to heaven no matter what I do’), but surprisingly little of the faith-in-comparison concerns itself with explaining unknown phenomena.

So, to be clear - I’m saying that ‘explaining the unknown’ hasn’t even been the primary concern with God in the Catholic church, or even a close second. I’d also argue - though you didn’t get into this - that ‘supernatural’ is a pretty meaningless word that’s been abused to mean ‘anything that is impossible’.

As an aside, for those interested in cognitive science and free will, you may be interested in checking out Henry Stapp’s writings (just google ‘henry stapp files’) - he’s a respected physicist with a pretty interesting take on conscious experience.