Morality Without God

Byrnzie

hostis wrote:

as soon as ANYONE starts quoting from wikipedia, I'm out.

That old and worn chestnut.


I could just as easily have quoted the dictionary definition to make my point...unless that's also beneath you?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/god
God (ɡɒd) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide]

— n
1. theol the sole Supreme Being, eternal, spiritual, and transcendent, who is the Creator and ruler of all and is infinite in all attributes; the object of worship in monotheistic religions

Byrnzie

pandora wrote:

You are a very hostile person Brynzie calling my heartfelt sincere words bullshit

I didn't. I said I can smell bullshit from a long way off.

pandora wrote:

very telling... not only is the door closed it is nailed shut without a window

shame on you...really

You have no idea what my ideas about this World are.

pandora wrote:

If you think of God as crutch so be it ... I prefer a friend
and I would even rather have a crutch than have a bolted closed door
because I will let love and acceptance in.

I prefer realistic notions about the World and about humanity than 'Live and love and let live' because I fail to see how such a notion can be applied to the World in any sort of meaningful way. It sounds like a cop-out to me. I'd rather engage with the World and try and confront corruption and suffering than simply say 'Live and love and let live'.
But each to their own.

pandora

hostis wrote:

Pandora. love ya! x

Byrnzie

pandora wrote:

You are a very hostile person Brynzie

This comment falls far short in summing me up.

I can be pretty...abrasive...when discussing serious topics because I take such things seriously. That's all.

Usually I'm the complete opposite of serious.

So it goes.

pandora

Byrnzie wrote:

pandora wrote:

You are a very hostile person Brynzie

This comment falls far short in summing me up.

I can be pretty...abrasive...when discussing serious topics because I take such things seriously. That's all.

Usually I'm the complete opposite of serious.

So it goes.

abrasive hurts though ... why it is called that

we all take things serious

I take things to heart, that is how I am made.

Blockhead

Byrnzie wrote:

pandora wrote:

You are a very hostile person Brynzie

This comment falls far short in summing me up.

I can be pretty...abrasive...when discussing serious topics because I take such things seriously. That's all.

Usually I'm the complete opposite of serious.

So it goes.

Yet you have not been able to convey anything that actually makes you look educated on the topic of biology/science...
You sound like a typical athiest that thinks its cool. This thread could have ended at page 1 if you were educated.

Byrnzie

Blockhead wrote:

Yet you have not been able to convey anything that actually makes you look educated on the topic of biology/science...

Maybe that's because I had no intention to convey anything on the topic of biology or science, genius!

Blockhead wrote:

You sound like a typical athiest that thinks its cool. This thread could have ended at page 1 if you were educated.

Wow! You really got me there. An uneducated 'typical athiest that thinks it's cool'. Yep, that's me in a nutshell.

What's the matter? Did you not manage to convert anyone into supporting the death penalty in the other thread?

Jeanwah

I don't think Byrnzie is being hostile here Pandora, he's simply questioning why you believe. You need to step outside the emotional state and try and answer him objectively to get him to understand your "God" position. I think that's fair.

pandora

Jeanwah wrote:

I don't think Byrnzie is being hostile here Pandora, he's simply questioning why you believe. You need to step outside the emotional state and try and answer him objectively to get him to understand your "God" position. I think that's fair.

Jean did you read the posts? Wow.. go back..
he's been very unkind and called my words bullshit
take a bit of time please before you say someone is treating another fairly
when it was clear he was not.

Jeanwah

pandora wrote:

Jeanwah wrote:

I don't think Byrnzie is being hostile here Pandora, he's simply questioning why you believe. You need to step outside the emotional state and try and answer him objectively to get him to understand your "God" position. I think that's fair.

Jean did you read the posts? Wow.. go back..
he's been very unkind and called my words bullshit
take a bit of time please before you say someone is treating another fairly
when it was clear he was not.

He's challenging your beliefs, and you aren't really answering effectively. I understand your POV too here, but...

pandora

Jeanwah wrote:

pandora wrote:

Jeanwah wrote:

I don't think Byrnzie is being hostile here Pandora, he's simply questioning why you believe. You need to step outside the emotional state and try and answer him objectively to get him to understand your "God" position. I think that's fair.

Jean did you read the posts? Wow.. go back..
he's been very unkind and called my words bullshit
take a bit of time please before you say someone is treating another fairly
when it was clear he was not.

He's challenging your beliefs, and you aren't really answering effectively. I understand your POV too here, but...

Jean you just said about people taking for granted what you have learned not to because of what you have experienced ... this in the other thread.

I quoted my beliefs... no one is going to understand God from what I say
or what you say or even what religion says

They must experience God for themselves. You must ask to talk to God and then you will learn.
You must intune to your emotional intelligence and one can not do that with a door bolted shut.

Not sure how much clearer I can be.

Open the door not to religion but to God.

Godfather.

when blood is spilt the wild will feed with out hunger,morality without God.


Godfather.

chadwick

you people are a riot
you make me laugh

Godfather.

chadwick wrote:

you people are a riot
you make me laugh

but that's why you like us

Godfather.

chadwick

Godfather. wrote:

chadwick wrote:

you people are a riot
you make me laugh

but that's why you like us

Godfather.

good times

chadwick.

pandora

I'm happy, I made a new friend today.

He cares not that I am a believer.

I care not that he is an atheist.

We understood...

and it felt really good

catefrances

pandora wrote:

...
The next time you ask someone to explain who or what God is remember you will have to experience Him yourself to understand what and who He is.
....

i asked questions and you didnt answer.

Cosmo

My take...
Man created God in his image. This is why the God referred to in the Bible has human traits and can be kind of a dick at times.
The same goes for all of the ancient gods created by Man. Zeus, Odin and the other kings of the lesser gods are all made of human form and emotion. God, as a term, is used to explain away those things that occur in nature, that Man cannot explain.
Example: God does not take away your friend... if your friend dies in a boating accident. Your friend died because he was in a boating accident. God didn't kill him. When he is gone... he isn't in a better place... he isn't in Hell. We really don't know where he is... if he is except the fact that he is no longer here.
These were the same concepts that drove ancient Man to create God. Neolithic Man didn't know how the Sun worked... therefore, God must be involved. Same with natural occurances such as death, weather, stars and Earth.
...
Does this mean God does not exist?
No. It means that maybe Man just didn't get it right.
What makes men from 5,000 years ago closer to God than us in 2011? Why did God speak so clearly to them and doesn't say anything to us, today? Why do we live our modern lives based upon writings of stories that first appeared by Neolithic man? Why do we kill in God's name?
Answer, because Man created God in his image.
...
Personally... I believe God is nature. Nature is life... with life comes living and dying. We all know we are going to die. I am going to die as well as everyone here on this board and their kids and grandkids. That's just the nature of life.
With that knowledge in hand... we may better serve ourselves by just living life... the way God intended.

Byrnzie

Cosmo wrote:

My take...
Man created God in his image. This is why the God referred to in the Bible has human traits and can be kind of a dick at times.
The same goes for all of the ancient gods created by Man. Zeus, Odin and the other kings of the lesser gods are all made of human form and emotion. God, as a term, is used to explain away those things that occur in nature, that Man cannot explain.
Example: God does not take away your friend... if your friend dies in a boating accident. Your friend died because he was in a boating accident. God didn't kill him. When he is gone... he isn't in a better place... he isn't in Hell. We really don't know where he is... if he is except the fact that he is no longer here.
These were the same concepts that drove ancient Man to create God. Neolithic Man didn't know how the Sun worked... therefore, God must be involved. Same with natural occurances such as death, weather, stars and Earth.
...
Does this mean God does not exist?
No. It means that maybe Man just didn't get it right.
What makes men from 5,000 years ago closer to God than us in 2011? Why did God speak so clearly to them and doesn't say anything to us, today? Why do we live our modern lives based upon writings of stories that first appeared by Neolithic man? Why do we kill in God's name?
Answer, because Man created God in his image.

Here's a book that may be up your street Cosmo:

http://www.julianjaynes.org/bicameralmind.php

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

by Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes

Houghton Mifflin/Mariner Books (1976, 2000)


"When Julian Jaynes...speculates that until late in the second millennium B.C. men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis through all the corroborative evidence..."
- John Updike, in The New Yorker


"This book and this man's ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century. It renders whole shelves of books obsolete."
- William Harrington, in Columbus Dispatch


"Having just finished The Origin of Consciousness, I myself feel something like Keats' Cortez staring at the Pacific, or at least like the early reviewers of Darwin or Freud. I'm not quite sure what to make of this new territory; but its expanse lies before me and I am startled by its power."
- Edward Profitt, in Commonweal


"He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior."
- Raymond Headlee, in American Journal of Psychiatry


"The bold hypothesis of the bicameral mind is an intellectual shock to the reader, but whether or not he ultimately accepts it he is forced to entertain it as a possibility. Even if he marshals arguments against it he has to think about matters he has never thought of before, or, if he has thought of them, he must think about them in contexts and relationships that are strikingly new."
- Ernest R. Hilgard, Professor of Psychology, Stanford University


"The weight of original thought in it is so great that it makes me uneasy for the author's well-being: the human mind is not built to support such a burden."
- D.C. Stove, in Encounter



At the heart of this book is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but is a learned process brought into being out of an earlier hallucinatory mentality by cataclysm and catastrophe only 3000 years ago and still developing. The implications of this new scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion - and indeed, our future. In the words of one reviewer, it is "a humbling text, the kind that reminds most of us who make our livings through thinking, how much thinking there is left to do."

* * *

Presents a theory of the bicameral mind which holds that ancient peoples could not "think" as we do today and were therefore "unconscious," a result of the domination of the right hemisphere; only catastrophe forced mankind to "learn" consciousness, a product of human history and culture and one that issues from the brain's left hemisphere. Three forms of human awareness, the bicameral or god-run man; the modern or problem-solving man; and contemporary forms of throwbacks to bicamerality (e.g., religious frenzy, hypnotism, and schizophrenia) are examined in terms of the physiology of the brain and how it applies to human psychology, culture, and history.

* * *

"O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet is nothing at all - what is it?
And where did it come from?
And why?"
- excerpt from the Introduction to The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Cosmo

Brynzie...
Thanx, I'll check it out.
I think about my cats. They don't understand, but they are in conscience state in the world that they know of. For all i know, they think of me as something of a miracle worker. I produce food from a tin can... therefore, to them, I must be able to create cat food out of thin air.
...
I'm not saying we are cats... cats are cats. I'm saying that humans tend to revert to the god concepts when those things that are unknown are presented. God didn't bring in Katrina... that was Nature at work using the basic principles of Earth sciences. It becomes a tragedy when humans are brought into the fray. That is when God is dragged in.
In my mind, God is Nature and part of our nature is a quest for knowledge... truth. Maybe, the more we know about how Nature works... the truth on how and why things are... the closer to God we'll become. And maybe we'll find out He is not that sometimes spiteful, petty old Man our 5,000 year old texts made Him out to be.