timetochange wrote:
:: Your comments bring up something that I think is very important to religious people -- the desire to have some sort of "higher purpose" in life. . .
: A higher purpose in life? Of course, but seeking a higher purpose is not limited to religious people. Why are you here, AlanF? Isn't it to do some good to help people see the fallacies of the Watchtower and in your opinion of religion itself? You could easily just go about your life spending all your time on yourself and your family but you sacrifice your time to help others or to expose liars. That is a noble thing and a higher purpose, imo.
I suppose one can call such activities a higher purpose, but as far as I'm concerned such things are no different from what most people do every day -- helping others in whatever way they can or want. I hold a door open for an old man; I help my kids with their homework; I stop to help a woman injured in a car crash. But 95% of people do these things all the time.
Such common things are simply part of human culture, and almost certainly human nature. But we see the same sort of concern for other members of the species in many other species. The evolution of altruism is not a solved problem, but plenty has been written on it. I'll leave it up to you to look into the subject.
: I know that's probably not exactly what you were getting at but I'll respond more directly in minute.
: I believe most people are at heart good and if given the chance would certainly live a life which brought themselves and others some joy, some good.
I agree.
: Of course mankind has a higher purpose than just to reproduce that goes without saying. We have the capacity to do great and wonderful things beyond childbearing. We create in a myriad of ways, we are for all purposes gods on this planet and we have the capacity to enrich or to destroy it.
But none of these things involve anything that I would call "higher purpose". What, exactly, do we "create"? We create useful items and items that satisfy our sense of beauty. Humans have created useful things all through their long history, and the reason for doing so is completely utilitarian -- nothing particularly "high" about that. Where a sense of beauty came from is not known, but then, that's not exactly relevant in a debate about Christian theism versus atheism unless one can explain where God's sense of beauty came from.
: As for the animals, they have been exploited and many are forced to life miserable lives. They too have a nobler purpose than to merely feed us or enrich multi-national corporations.
What is that purpose, in your opinion?
: I believe our great capacity to reason, to love, to have compassion, to produce beauty in art, music and architecture, to grow emotionally and mentally, to be what we are, the most powerful and intelligent beings on earth cannot be explained merely by the process of evolution alone. There is a missing piece, a missing element in all this and I believe that missing factor is a Creator.
The question in my mind is, Why do you believe this? Most Christians are Christians because and only because they were exposed to the teachings and culture of Christianity from the time they were small children. A few converted later in life, but experience bears out that most of these people do so for emotional, not strictly rational reasons. Which type are you? Most people who are raised in a religious environment stick with the religion they were taught as children, and do so not for rational reasons but for the same reasons that all manner of groups, including and especially political groups such as tribes and nations, do so. A person raised as a strict Muslim who in another life might have been raised as a strict Christian would most likely stick with the religion of his childhood for exactly the same reasons -- his beliefs were formed early and he is emotionally unwilling to change them.
Taking a little side jaunt, you answered LtCmd.Lore's question:
:: But what is the true reason for our existence if god DOES exist? ("Be fruitfull, become many and fill the earth" comes to mind... what's the difference.)
: To live a life which puts our mental and physical abilities (which by far surpass all animals on earth) to good use either towards the earth or towards our fellowman. To use our reasoning abilities, to acquire insight about ourselves and why we act as we do. To do good.
While your answer is consistent with your comments to me, your sentiments still don't answer why any of these things constitute some sort of "higher purpose".
: And since I believe that in order to be able to give intelligence this missing element must himself possess intelligence he must then logically also have a purpose just as intelligent human inventors and artistic creators have purpose.
While this is a logical conclusion from your basic belief in a Creator, it doesn't prove anything.
: Though at present God's purpose may not be clearly understood by many
I would call that a gross understatement.
: that does not in itself prove he has no purpose and just as human creators can form an emotional attachment to what they have created and would want it preserved, so too God can have an emotional attachment, a love, for his creation and want it preserved. If we have a higher purpose it is to reach our full potential as our Creator would have us do and wants us to do. God's purpose must logically be one which when reached will justify all the work put into it otherwise his purpose will be out of balance with the end result and illogical. A violation of the natural laws around us.
Once again, this sentimental outpouring illustrates nothing but your own belief system.
: Yes, there is a higher purpose one which reason dictates must exist IF a Creator exists. But that's a big IF for many here, I understand that.
What you've basically said is that you believe there is some higher purpose for mankind that comes from God, but you have no idea what it is.
:: I think that most Christians would answer the question, "What is the purpose of life?" with something like, "To worship, love and honor God." But then, what's the use of that? Other than showing such emotions, such people still do exactly the same thing as people who don't show them do: eat, sleep, reproduce. Can you really give a good answer to the question of why worshiping God is somehow better than just producing children? Please note that to properly answer this, you have to define what you mean by notions like "better".
: I don't think that worshipping God is "better" than producing children. My point was that producing children is the bottom line of evolution
But you're wrong. Altruism is very much a part of evolution by natural selection. There are also many human abilities that scientists are only beginning to understand, much less understand how they came to be. But again, this is no argument for God unless you can tell us how God himself acquired such abilities. I'm sure you understand very well that merely claiming that God always had them is no answer at all, it's just special pleading.
: but the reality is that people have the capacity to do so many beautiful and powerful things beyond simply having children in order to keep the species going. How does the theory of evolution explain that? A belief in a Creator is better able to explain why man is the way he is than evolution. By "better" I mean more complete, less loose ends, simpler, more in tune with logic.
Not at all. Belief in a Creator merely puts the question of the origin of man's abilities back one step. It puts it in the realm of "we don't know", because the real answer about where God got his abilities is, "we don't know". So those you call "evolutionists" and Christians are in the same boat.
: Some feel to honor God they should go to church or preach the Gospel etc., that's all fine but I believe all one needs to do to honor and worship God is to do right by his fellow and by the earth.
But simply doing those things is, I think most agree, something that any decent person ought to do. I try to do them, and I'm a strong agnostic. I certainly don't believe in the Christian God. I have no need for any god to tell me that these are good things to do.
Many Christians pose a question similar to yours: "How can you act morally without God to give you moral standards?" The idea seems to be that, without belief in God, people must be fundamentally amoral and so have no incentive not to commit all manner of atrocities. The converse question, though, is a real stumper and shows why that question is self-defeating: "Are you telling me that without God to tell you not to commit all manner of actrocities, you would?" It's a stumper because answering Yes or No gets them into hot water. "Yes" means that they know they're a scumbag; "No" means that their question is bogus.
The last several weeks saw a couple of Fundamentalists trying to argue along these lines. One poster, Perry, posed a challenge something like this: "What prevents you atheists from torturing and killing babies for fun if you thought it would be of advantage to you?" I turned it around on him and asked something like this: "If your God told you that torturing and killing babies for fun pleased him and that he wanted you to do it, would you?" Perry had the good sense not to answer, but the other poster, Vinny, eventually answered Yes. He actually explained that, even though he wouldn't like it, he would torture babies if God told him to. But he refused to deal with my complete question: "Would you torture babies for fun?" He really couldn't answer in the affirmative, since to do so would mean that he'd have to convince himself, against his nature, that such torture was "fun". This is the sort of conundrum that insisting that God must be the source of human morality creates.
: If the day should come when a man's future hopes for life depended on his knowing God then God would make himself known to him.
I suppose, then, that people like me might have some hope.
: For now it is not, for now all we are are fellow travelers trying to make sense of things. To me, the symbiosis, beauty, majesty and complexity and simplicity of life on earth leads to the conclusion that we are not alone, to me this makes sense.
That's fine, but such sentiments are no good to people who want to live their lives based on actual evidence. Really, the only things you've given as evidence in favor of belief in God are your sentiments.
Now I want to add my two cents to your reply to LtCmd.Lore:
: To live a life which puts our mental and physical abilities (which by far surpass all animals on earth) to good use either towards the earth or towards our fellowman. To use our reasoning abilities, to acquire insight about ourselves and why we act as we do. To do good. Evolution has nothing to do with these things, the doing of good is not necessary to the survival of the species on the contrary to give a young life for an old man or woman who are no longer able to reproduce or to help an infant born with a genetic defect are actions which do not serve the bottom line purpose of evolution: the survival of the species and/or the fittest. Mankind does not fit the evolutionary model, we act in ways that are contrary to the very process many claim gave rise to life on earth. Not good. ;)
This shows that you have no understanding whatsoever of evolution. Unfortunately, I think that your exposure to evolution has been almost exclusively through the writings of Christian apologists who themselves either have no understanding, or even deliberately misrepresent what they do know.
But I've been there. Having grown up as a JW, until I really looked into the subject for myself, almost everything I "knew" came from Watchtower publications. As I learned more, I found out how grossly misled I had been.
A quick primer for you: Strictly speaking, evolution has nothing to do with the origins of the universe or the origin of life. Evolution has only to do with how life, once it existed, changed over time. The fact that you lump all these things together shows that you have not studied the subject sufficiently to know what you're talking about. Given that, the evolution of life is extremely well documented in the fossil record. Contrary to what creationists of various stripes claim, there exist hundreds of examples of transitional forms. This evolution of forms of life is shown, not just in the pattern of evolution shown in the fossil record, but its timing. In the beginning, there were microscopic life forms. About 640 million years ago, there appeared macroscopic life with soft bodies. A hundred million years later there began to appear a profusion of macroscopic forms with hard bodies (the so-called "Cambrian explosion" which actually lasted about 30 million years, nearly half the time from the extinction of the dinosaurs to our time). The fossil record documents the evolution of these into various new forms, right through our day.
The above brief sketch is as well documented as anything in science can be. Arguing against it puts you into the camp of the irrational Fundamentalists. What a Christian can rationally argue is whether this evolution was caused by God. But we'll leave that for another post.
As for your comments above, once again, do some research on how altruism and evolution fit together. You'll get some surprises.
: Ironically, a scientist can one day tout the factualness of evolution and the next promote the development of a vaccine for bird flu, yet evolution would require that no vaccine be given in order that only those who have the strongest immune system go on to produce a population resistant to bird flu. When it comes to belief in evolution most scientists in the medical field have faith but no works. They in fact work against their evolutionary beliefs. Their actions are more in line with the doing of good from a moral standpoint and not their evolutionary theory. But what role does morality play in the evolution of the fittest?
In social species such as humans, monkeys, some birds and lots of others, altruism is observed. Morality doesn't play any part in the altruism of non-hominids, so far as we know, and how much our cultural notions of morality play a part in hominid morality is not very well known. So for you to make statements as if you really know is simply a product of your culture -- a Christian one.
AlanF
