EricPH wrote: ↑December 4th, 2022, 4:16 pm
Sy Borg wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2022, 7:50 pm
If you are genuinely interested in the subject rather than just playing the old theist game of superficially trying to use science against itself, you will take in the content of this video. It's excellent, probably better postulating how abiogenesis came about than anything else I'm come across:
What does science/evolution inspire or encourage you to do?
Belief in God has given me a profound sense of peace; when I was diagnosed with the same cancer that killed our friend.
My mum went into a coma and was rushed to hospital, her breathing was a horrible gurgling sound. The doctors said there was nothing they could do for her, she had days to live. A priest came and prayed for her, her breathing relaxed and she lived another eleven years.
Belief in God has taught me to forgive, This has been a profound journey towards finding peace.
I have been a volunteer Street Pastor for nearly fifteen years, faith and trust in God has helped me find peace whilst being in the middle of angry drunken violence at three in the morning. Faith in God helps me to search for the good in all people, even in dark and testing times.
Faith in God gives me reasons to be thankful.
Faith in God gives me hope in a greater good life after death.
What more could I gain; if I gave up faith and trust in God?
Yes yes, we are all aware that you committed philosophical suicide long ago, abandoning reason for a warm and safe placebo. I choose not to take the easy way out of life, preferring to face the absurdity of being a creature that seeks meaning in an uncaring universe rather that hiding behind a veil of sweet lies.
Whatever, this thread is not about the benefits of positive thinking or the placebo effect. It's very clear that the God meme has been efficacious in terms of survival and fecundity, hence its continued existence. But the question is not about whether societal customs and belief systems are efficacious, but whether they are ontic or subjective. ALL evidence points to the latter, and strongly.
It's ironic that theists, who claim not to be materialists, are dismissive of the subjective realm, and thus refuse the idea that their deity exists in human brains - brains inherited from thousands of ancestors who all believed in agency lying behind natural phenomena. This way of perceiving the world has proved to be so efficacious that the world is now overpopulated with humans, endangering all other sophisticated animals.
Essentially, religion acts as a means of blocking out large amounts of reality so as to focus on human complexities. Religions and customs act as mental filters that further reduce information already filtered by the senses. By contrast, in science and philosophy, the aim is to perceive ever more of reality rather than block it out. The perception is done for its own sake, rather than being akin to theistic goal-seeking.
Very broadly (noting that there are always exceptions) science is about worship of the universe while religion is about the worship of humanity, ie. deities posited as superhumans. Science seeks to engage, understand and preserve the non-human, while theists see the non-human as mere props in the important business of human affairs to be exploited and destroyed as they see fit.