We are nothing, we are created by a biological process.?

Question

We live, and some point our brain ceases to get blood and oxygen, we die, we cease to exist.

Two questions, why is it so hard for religious people to see that this process does not involve a magical all seeing omnipotent being, regardless of what you call him?

I live a good legal clean life with a young family that I love, why do religious people think i am a less moral person than someone similar who lives their lives by a set of ancient parables written by who knows who, thousands of years ago?

Please do not quote the Bible or Quoran at me. I don't think they are the word of God. He doesn't exist, so I don't think he was writing books thousands of years ago.

I studied as a young man with the catholic priesthood in Aberdeen scotland, for a number of years. I know what I am talking about. Then I grew up and took the blinkers from my eyes.

THINK about it!!!

:)

Answer 1

People of religious descent are brainwashed from an early age to believe all the gibberish that comes from the bibel and the church. It's easier for them to continue to believe and follow that crap than to think for themselves and see religion for what it is......a life-sucking scam!!

Answer 2

Let's take a logical approach to your argument:

"We live, and some point our brain ceases to get blood and oxygen, we die, we cease to exist."

Have you or do you know anyone who can report for a fact that this is true? This is not something that is knowable, but rather inferrable. If it's inferrable, it has the possibility of being wrong. Therefore, you can not categorically state it as a truth.

"Two questions, why is it so hard for religious people to see that this process does not involve a magical all seeing omnipotent being, regardless of what you call him?"

You use the term "magical" here inappropriately. And again, you are making an argument based on an inferred statement. In a logic construct, the exact opposite is valid - Why can't humanists see that life requires the presence of a designer?

"I live a good legal clean life with a young family that I love, why do religious people think i am a less moral person than someone similar who lives their lives by a set of ancient parables written by who knows who, thousands of years ago?"

I don't know why the religious people who you know think you are less moral. To say that is how all religious people think about you can not be absolutely ascertained. I am a religious person, but I don't know anything about your morality. Christianity teaches that all are sinners and that all sin is equal. A true christian will realize that this means we are all equally immoral and there are none who are more moral than any other.

"Please do not quote the Bible or Quoran at me. I don't think they are the word of God. He doesn't exist, so I don't think he was writing books thousands of years ago."

I am sorry you have had such difficulties in dealing with christians in the past. I would never dream of quoting the Bible "at" you, but I will from time to time use verse from the Bible to illustrate my points. Since you have requested that I not do that, I won't There is no way for anyone to go out and say with 100% logical certainty that God exists or that God doesn't exist, so a conclusion based on the existence or non-existence of God is fallacious. I will also add that we know that the Bible was not written by God. It was written by 40 different authors over several thousand years. There is certain evidence to indicate that it was inspired and influenced by more than just those mens' minds.

"I studied as a young man with the catholic priesthood in Aberdeen scotland, for a number of years. I know what I am talking about. Then I grew up and took the blinkers from my eyes."

I am sorry you had such a poor teacher. A true teacher would have guided you toward truth, not dogma. There are beliefs in the Catholic Church that contradict what is in scripture (same is true with baptists, methodists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Episcopalians, etc.) A true teacher would have taught you what is true and let you make up your own mind from a position of understanding, not a position of ignorance. You studied - fine. But if your teacher was bad, then you can not state that you "know what you are talking about."

"THINK about it!!!"

I have - for over twenty years. As an engineer and an analyst, I have dissected the arguments on both sides and founf that there is no "both sides." It's a lot of individual sides. That's when I gave up, opened my mind to ALL possibilities, and went searching for truth. Eight years ago, I took my blinders off and stopped letting false logic interfere with my understanding. That's why I believe what I believe today.

Answer 3

You make some good points, but with no proof, why is it so hard for people like you to accept that someone somehow created us, created a biological process, just as i can't prove God was responsible, you can't prove he wasn't.
The Bible and the Koran, are books, and were supposed to be the words of God, but since when could you truest man to do anything right, the translation has been proved many times to be wrong, and mans interpretation of the words written have been done to suit the needs of man, so man can control, brainwash, and make a profit, how else could you get someone to kill for you, but that does not mean it did not start out right, I believe you need to put common sense in to practise when reading the bible.
As you say you studied with a catholic priest well then you will know how incorrect the bible has been translated, no such thing as the Virgin Mary, it was never written, but that's another story.

Faith in God, not man
Love & Peace

Answer 4

Religion gives us a security blanket so we need not fear death.
It gives people solace for injustice - it will all balance out in the end.
It gives us a super parent where ours have let us down.

This belief persists against all reason - the person who tells us he sees God's work everyday in hospital - what about those good people who die hideous, lingering and demeaning deaths everyday in hospital? Or elsewhere, for that matter.

I am happy for those who can believe this stuff, it must be a comfort and I do not criticise providing they are not harming others, but I am with Diogenes on this one.

Oh and evolution is not headed anywhere - to say so is to miss the point. It is an ongoing process and frequently doubles back on itself e.g. the number of times cat species have evolved, become overspecialised and died out, only to re-evolve. This type of thinking that demands that everything has a purpose, a design, an ultimate perfection towards which everything is developing and is a product of theism. Evolution is merely a biological response to changing circumstances - which is why you can find such oddities as fishing owls. Totally the wrong shape for a bird which dives for fish, but it is there because it survives and has adapted.

Answer 5

You are right in that you can be moral without exactly following what the religious scriptures tell to.
But your claim that we are nothing but biochemical processes is absolutely false. Why after all these specific physical/biochemical laws exist? You may be believing in evolution. Where the evolution is headed? They say it is for survival. This is a pseudo-reason. (It is ridiculous and religious belief itself.) Why survival? The chain of questions goes on. Any new answer create only new questions mapping back to the same problem - why that is so?

You may not need to care about the purpose of universe, you can just live happy and moral. That is you may remain ignorant of what is existence. But this does not remove the basic question.

Faith is the only answer to this and I cannot convince it to you through logic.

Answer 6

It is interesting, I am definitely not christian, I'm more atheist than anything I just have a quandary about energy, I learnt in science when I was as school that you cannot create or destroy energy, so what happens to the energy of the living beings when we die? that's what I wonder, and whether our consciousness has anything to do with that energy.

I think some people need a god to believe in, to give them hope, to make them not feel alone in this occasionally lonely world. To make them feel better than other people, so they can call others that don't believe in their god unmoral/immoral and put them down. In history organised religion has looked to me like a way of controlling the masses, if as a king you make the peasants believe that a 'god' will strike you down if you do certain things you will then have more control over them, as there are so many things that in the past couldn't be explained away (rain thunderstorms etc) and they needed to explain it somehow.

I've read up on a lot of religions and to me they are all basically trying to put across the same thing, they seem to be taken by different people in different ways and the way people put it into practise in their lives compared to what is actually written confuses me.

Some religeons seem to worship aspects of nature, which I kind of like, as I am amazed by nature everyday. The biological processes, the beauty of it, its amazing! But i dont need to put a face on it as its already there all around me.

Answer 7

We are indeed biological beings, evolved from a biological process, but that is indeed really something. Consider the magnificent vastness and age of our cosmos, how the elements that were forged in ancient stars (3 helium fused into 1 carbon for instance), which later bonded into nucleotides on a small blue world, eventually led to sentient beings which can contemplate the cosmos that gave them existence. This is not "nothing." This is a wonderful something.

Other than your use of the word "nothing," I agree with you whole heartedly.

And to the writer above, it is presumptuous to regard atheists as people who do not see the beauty and joy of a life lived with passion, love, honesty, charity and courage. All of this can be happily achieved without resorting to imaginary supernatural beings.

Answer 8

You are right, I am in the same boat as you, just opposite. I am tired of scientist trying to explain why we are here on earth or god for that fact. As you say it isn't magical, it is just what it is. As for your good legal clean life, I am religious and I don't feel that you are less moral than I, however I am not one of the "religious people" that you say lives there lives by a set of ancient parables. Parables are stories, like a old wives tail, I know that what I believe in goes much deeper, and is more special to me than a book of fables.
And you say that you studied as a young man a religion and so you know what you are talking about, so my question to you is, what about that other young men that you studied with that still believe in god, are they liars, or just lying to themselves. How about me, I believe in God, he isn't just a higher power to me however, he is my friend. I would hate to think that because one man doesn't believe in him, that I live my life in a lie. And finally, the last thing that I have to say to you is, you are upset because you feel that religious people think you less moral than them and whatsoever, well then sense when did two wrongs make a right? You just wrote an entire statement on judgments to religious people. And to top it off you stereo=typed us all. I am none of thee above. And now you just met your first religious person who did not judge you.

Answer 9

Wow.... and why might you think of that a 4000 year previous e book might have something approximately relativity in it? the element it is exciting even although is that Genesis a million certainly might nicely be considered to consider the huge Bang, abiogenesis, Pangea, and evolution. I even have defined this many cases so i'm unlikely to do it lower back, yet that may not undesirable for a 4000 year previous text fabric, fairly while the human authors might desire to have certainly no concept of even a form of issues.

Answer 10

there may be a fair number of people who consider atheists to be less holy, but really, i think a lot of atheists are just paranoid in that sense. most atheists are ex christians who find x number of faults with this or that, and so they quit. somewhere in there, i think a lot of them get the idea that their christian peers think highly negatively of them.

the real christians understand that your choice is your choice and that by living a moral life, you're still a good person. there are just a few self-rightous individuals who like to cause a ruckus that make non-believers feel like theyr being called a lesser person.

i dont think the christians like calling it "magic", but i dont think too many ppl are in the business of appeasing the majority anyways :P

Answer 11

We are the end result of a 3.5 billion year chain of incredibly successful organisms every single one of which survived long enough to reproduce. That is hardly nothing!

And when will dishonest morons stop claiming that Natural Selection equates to random chance. The two could not be more dissimilar.