Proof that the whole 'god' thing is baloney!!

[max_tranmere]

Interesting comments there. It is a very philosophical arguement and those things go on forever. There is no conclusion to such an argurment. One thing I am pretty sure on however is that if we were as knowledgeable 2,000 years ago as we are now, mankind wouldn't have invented god. It was done to fill in the gaps in our understanding. As things were less understood then they 'explained' it away by saying those things must be down to some higher being. The more mankind has understood things as the centuries have gone on the less things have been put down to a 'god' ever since. Hence why there are less believers now that there have ever been.

[jj]

I think you take my mild comment 'not unreasonable' a little
too far; it was a poor choice of word. 'Understandable' would
have been better, yes.
Systems of thought are also subject to a sort of evolution- I'm
always wary of sneering too much at bleeding, and leeches, and
the obsession of Mediaeval medicine with Galen, from my rationalist
pedestal.

[jj]

But they have much lower [more realistic?] expectations.
Good thing/bad thing, I don't know.

[jj]

max_tranmere wrote:
> Hence why there are
> less believers now that there have ever been.

I'm not sure that's supported by statistics. My impression is that
the Third World seems almost entirely subscribed to one religion
or another, and they outnumber those in the technocracies by
about 50 to 1.

[max_tranmere]

jj, the third world is not as advanced as the western world (obviously). Many can not read or write and have very limited understanding on lots of issues. So god is there as that apparently explains the bits many of them dont understand.

I know Afghanistan is not part of the third world as such, but this will give you an idea of how we shouldnt take if for granted that everywhere else is as up on things as the Europeans and the Americans: after the 9/11 attacks on New York, when the USA was considering going in to Afghanistan, I remember it being mentioned on the BBC news that many of the people in the rural areas of that country had never even heard of America, George Bush, or the World Trade Centre towers that had just been knocked down. Some people's of this world are on a very differnt wavelength to those in the West.

[Sam Slater]

I guess no matter what level your culture is at, there is always hope and expectations of more. We might see that just learning to read is a lesser expectation of getting a degree in philosophy but to them it's just as prestigious.

I think that in our culture more worth is placed on possessions and the constant need for more. We are in a world where we're not just judged on knowledge or ability, but our possessions too. We are stressed out about what possessions we don't have, and what the possessions we do have says about us.

For instance, a wise man in ancient Greece was someone people flocked to see. He was admired and revered. Today, that wise man is looked upon as weird if he hasn't got a widescreen tv and a decent car. If you spoke to people in the pub about him there'd be more said about him not owning a tv than about how much he knows about life. Everyone at least recognises my example I'm sure.

But, a constant craving for possessions is what keeps capitalism going, and that's the way we seem to want it, no matter how unhappy we become.

[jj]

I think a lot of us are uncomfortable with 'aspirational' [or acquisitive]
'culture'. It seems to be built-in that the more we have, the more
we want, whether it's consumer-goods, sex or 'freedom'.
It's interesting [but not that surprising] also that many in the
former Communist nations look back on the old regime with a degree
of nostalgia- for every one that went to a labour-camp there were
10 who did more or less OK, grateful for the certainties provided by
totalitarianism.

[Jacques]

Proof is not 'if we accept', that is an assumption. Proof is quantifiable, if we accept is a theory and as we know every theory needs quantifiable evidence to be proved.

Science gave us theory and the boffins gave us quantifiable evidence. That is what science does.


Nobody ever believed that the Earth was flat - that myth comes from Andrew Dickson White's The Warfare of Science with Theology.


Democracy was born in the 5th century BCE in Athens, so 2500 years ago they seem to have got it right.

Your theory has no basis of proof.

[mrchapel]

Apart from some scientists who speculate that the universe is such a complex place that it couldn`t have all happened by coincidence therefore there must be an intelligence or guiding force behind it

[Sam Slater]

Lol. Yeah, I probably did, jj. Sorry!

For fear of arguing with myself you had a point actually. If -as I believe after thinking about it- reason is dictated by knowledge I suppose you could argue that they could reasonably assume electromagnetism -for instance- was the work of some 'body' with a conscience and motive. Unreasonable to us but reasonable to them, to an extent.

So you were right if the subject of reasonable was the ancients but wrong if the subject was us.

We've sorted it!