rkbabang

If you are looking for more religious examples (remember I said I wrote a term paper on Zoroastrianism) look at Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism. It was the first monotheistic religion it pre-dated Judaism by as much as a thousand years. Zoroaster preached that there was one god "Ahuramazda" and he had a doctrine of morality (good vs. evil, truth vs. lies, etc) and included the concept of free will. IIRC it is the oldest religion still practiced in the world today. Judaism and Christianity borrowed heavily from it. But I am not going to tell you that Zoroaster invented morality.

There isn't a finite amount of stuff to do. It isn't as if you can say, OK now we have these jobs filled that is it, there is nothing left. Human wants are infinite, thus there will always be more to do. That isn't to say that someone who works 25 years in a factory and loses his job to automation won't be in trouble. At a certain age learning new skills is difficult. And who wants to start over at the bottom in a new industry late in life? Those people will likely remain unemployed, but the next generation will simply learn different skills. This is capitalism's creative destruction and there are always people hurt in the shuffle. It isn't a new phenomenon.

That is just simply untrue. It is a case of jumping in front of the parade and pretending to lead it. All of those traits/values existed before Judaism and Christianity and they will all exist after it (if humans still exist). Please tell me then, exactly, other texts as old as Jewish ones, that discuss these in length. I'm no expert on ancient books, but if you were to dig up the earliest known in dept writings on humans suffering pain, would you conclude that before that book humans did not feel pain? If you were to find the earliest known book discussing murder, would you conclude that no human had committed murder before that time? People think about and write about things because they already exist. That is certainly the case for morals and charity. I find your whole thesis that these things somehow come from religion completely absurd. It is putting the cart before the horse. People are susceptible to religious indoctrination, because religion plays on these social feelings that we already have. You are confusing correlation with causation.

That is just simply untrue. It is a case of jumping in front of the parade and pretending to lead it. All of those traits/values existed before Judaism and Christianity and they will all exist after it (if humans still exist).

Rk, are you absolutely sure? Yes absolutely. :) What I meant is that since we will never know everything there is to know, nothing we do know can ever be considered an absolute. It is subject to change when we acquire additional knowledge. So yes, there are absolutely no absolutes.

You can't prove a negative. The real, formal argument of atheists isn't really: "We know that no god(s) exists", it's "we don't see good reasons to believe in god(s), we looked at the supposed evidence and arguments in favor and found them lacking". Religious people implicitly agree with this approach because they see no reason to believe in Zeus or Odin or Esege Malan or Kamuy and so they don't, they don't wait for proof that they don't exist. Atheists just go one god further. As I said earlier, if some solid evidence for god(s) came up, I'd be the first one to change my mind. Same with alien abductions or whatever. So far I don't see good evidence, but if that changes, hey, that's fine. I want to be on the side of reality, believe in what's real. Believing in things for no good reason isn't a good thing to me. So far I see a lot of evidence for a mechanistic world, and nothing convincing for one with god(s). If that changes, I'll update. All true. And not only would I need strong evidence that god exists, but I would also need strong evidence that he is good. What makes believers almost universally assume that he is moral? What evidence is this based upon? God is always described by followers as all-powerful. In my experience goodness and morality are not qualities I usually associate with power. All-powerful is more likely to equate to pure-evil. So, for me, proof that god(s) exists would send me on a quest to discover how to fight it, or at the very least hide from it or avoid it. And if all else fails, die fighting it. A couple things, rk, any evidence we have about the existence of God would be denied by most atheists. They have a worldview that everything has a naturalistic explanation. So, if something happens that is related to God happens, it can be dismissed as a natural phenomenon that we simply don't yet understand. I'd imagine that even if God wrote something in the clouds and made things pretty apparent, many (if not most) would still dismiss it. The other thing that I find strange is the consistency in the image of a deity (as far as morality goes or God's character). If we look at different religions, whether Abrahamic or otherwise, many of the core values are the same (not cheating people, sleeping around, killing, etc). One would think, if people are just making stuff up all the time, there would be more deities like the evil ones you mentioned. As an aside, I was watching a video the other day about "junk DNA." For years, materialists assumed that "junk DNA" was just junk, as the name implies. After all, it makes sense: if we are the result of random processes there should be plenty of junk that that doesn't mean much. Scientists now, though, have started to realize that even the "junk dna" is important to our survival. Now, again this doesn't prove a deity, but it does show how one's world view may miss things due to bias. There are certainly some who would never change their world view regardless of evidence, there are always people like that. The easiest examples are in the religious populations who still think the Earth is around 5000 years old. Scientists can be like that too. It can be influenced by refusing to admit long held beliefs can be wrong, or even by politics (i.e. animal fats are bad for you). But in the long run those old stubborn people are replaced by young inquisitive people and science goes where the evidence leads it. This is the main reason that religion will eventually die out all together, in my opinion. Unless of course some evidence for the existence of a god is ever discovered. I just can't without evidence make myself believe in something (like an afterlife) simply because it would be nice to not die, or because it would be great to think that grandma is in a "better place". You mentioned in a previous post that "we all believe what we want to believe". But that is only true with the people of faith. There are all kinds of things that I'd love to believe, but don't. Humanity is still in the process of pulling itself (kicking and screaming) up to being thinking, civilized animals and ridding itself of faith (believing that our own wishful thinking is actually reality just because we want it to be) is just one of those things that will need to go in the process. The universe is what it is. Our beliefs don't change anything about reality, but they can hold us back from progressing (and historically they have). The fact that we didn't understand that "junk DNA" actually did something and later found out that it might, is just the process of adding to our knowledge as more evidence comes in. There is no Church of the DNA which proclaims that junk DNA does nothing because it has been written and any evidence to the contrary is blasphemy. New evidence is found, our knowledge changes or is added to. That is how it is supposed to work. There is no faith, no gospel, no church, no absolutes. Nothing is stated unequivocally and unchanging. Nothing for which there is no evidence can be said to exist. And if there is a theory that would explain something, for which no direct evidence is yet available (such as all the various string theories, or the multiverse theory) they are considered to be highly speculative until an experiment can be thought of which could be explained no other way (i.e. some evidence is found). Rational people don't go around preaching the multiverse theory door to door and trying to get people to have faith in it. If it turns out to be correct great, if not, no one is going to behead anyone over it. God is nothing more than speculation. It is at most (and I'm being generous here) a theory that could explain some gaps in our knowledge. But while god would explain some things it would create more questions and problems than it solves. If evidence is found that supports a creator, then we would now have to ask: Who is he? What is he? Where did he come from? How and why did he create the universe? Has he created others? Is our universe just one experiment in his laboratory? Maybe we have free will because we were created and are being observed, but our creator doesn't really give a rats ass what we do anymore than we would care what rats in our lab experiments do. Evidence of a creator would not be evidence for a god. I find the prospect that we are simply a simulation more likely to be true than that we are created by an all powerful god. The argument goes like this: If intelligent beings ever get to the point when they can harness all of the matter in their solar system/galaxy/universe/etc to perform computations, will they ever run ancestor simulations to increase their knowledge of where they came from? If so they would run many many such simulations. And thus we are more likely to be part of one of those simulations than we are to be the original beings in the process of evolving to that point. So the answer is that either we will never get to the point where we can run many ancestor simulations or we are more likely to be simply a part of one. Maybe the quantum world is just an approximation of the continuous reality of the real universe used by the simulation to save processing power? The point is that we don't know any of the answers to these things. There is no need to have "faith" in any one possible answer, when the real answer is that there is no evidence, so we don't know. And all wishful thinking aside, humans may never know. Not knowing is OK, pretending you know is not.

You can't prove a negative. The real, formal argument of atheists isn't really: "We know that no god(s) exists", it's "we don't see good reasons to believe in god(s), we looked at the supposed evidence and arguments in favor and found them lacking". Religious people implicitly agree with this approach because they see no reason to believe in Zeus or Odin or Esege Malan or Kamuy and so they don't, they don't wait for proof that they don't exist. Atheists just go one god further. As I said earlier, if some solid evidence for god(s) came up, I'd be the first one to change my mind. Same with alien abductions or whatever. So far I don't see good evidence, but if that changes, hey, that's fine. I want to be on the side of reality, believe in what's real. Believing in things for no good reason isn't a good thing to me. So far I see a lot of evidence for a mechanistic world, and nothing convincing for one with god(s). If that changes, I'll update. All true. And not only would I need strong evidence that god exists, but I would also need strong evidence that he is good. What makes believers almost universally assume that he is moral? What evidence is this based upon? God is always described by followers as all-powerful. In my experience goodness and morality are not qualities I usually associate with power. All-powerful is more likely to equate to pure-evil. So, for me, proof that god(s) exists would send me on a quest to discover how to fight it, or at the very least hide from it or avoid it. And if all else fails, die fighting it.

That's awesome! So it is scientifically possible for a God to exist. Now then, we just need to work on what created God. Even if we figure out how to create new life (even non DNA based life) that wouldn't make us gods (omnipotent, omnipresent, and made up of pure moral stuff as Stahleyp things god is). If we someday find evidence that life on Earth was created by some other being(s) that doesn't necessarily make them gods. (Sorry for the reply to an old post, I just came back from a long unplugged vacation. I didn't even know about the BAC settlement or the stuff going on in MO until this morning, so I haven't been reading this topic in a while.)

Exactly Hitler may have been a loner, but the people with the boots on the ground who committed the atrocities were doing it as patriotic members of the fatherland. A loner can't kill millions. For that you need patriotism and government, or faith and religion. School shootings may be the work of loners, but real mass-murder requires groups with devoted members.

I've been patiently monitoring this thread like a Mike Godwin, fascinated by its length despite it being off-topic. But my faith is restored: Godwin's Law is fulfilled. You missed the source, though: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/drugs-and-prostitution/msg183926/#msg183926 Yes Godwin's law was fulfilled, only a few posts earlier. It was an important point to bring up Hitler, because any day now Richard Dawkins is going to start rounding up Jews and loading them onto boxcars. Heil Dawkins!

Believe it or not you are not the first person to call me arrogant, and religion isn't the only topic being discussed in which I've been called arrogant. I tend to sound that way even when I don't mean to. I call it honesty. I do remember thinking those things when I was a child and in my last post I was simply telling the story as I remember it. If it was arrogant, then, well, yes I was an arrogant 10 year old. Yeah, I probably was and still am. I did think that I was smarter than the adults around me at the time. And more than 30 years later I still think that I was correct to believe so. I've never read C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity has been on my ever growing "to-read" list forever, but I've haven't yet acquired a copy. I will get around to reading it eventually. I agree with you about Christopher Hitchens, btw. Even thought I agree with him, he isn't a very good writer. I wouldn't recommend "God is not great" to anyone. I do enjoy reading Dawkins however, I've read all of his books. On this topic, "The God Delusion" was a pretty good summary of the atheist position.

No I am not searching at all anymore. When I was younger, I searched a lot. I was raised in a strict Catholic Portuguese family, we went to church every week, I was an alterboy (never molested), made my confirmation, then pretty much never went to church again except for funerals and weddings. My wife and I even decided not to get married in the church regardless of what our families thought about it. I think I stopped believing in god about the time I stopped believing in Santa. I remember kneeling on the altar serving mass, while the priest was blessing the Eucharist and thinking something along the lines of "Here I am wearing a robe kneeling on an altar while a priest talks about sacrifice, gods, and turning wine into blood and bread into flesh, and we're all going to eat it. How primitive." I would always look out at the congregation and think "These adults are really buying this shit? or are they just pretending to?" I was about 10 years old. As a teenager I read the Bible cover to cover and realized it was just a bunch of old stories that who knew who wrote them or why. I started looking at every other religion from Zoroastrianism (In college I did a 200 page term paper on the history and practice of Zoroastrianism) to Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and even new age religions like The Urantia Book (I spent more than a year reading the Urantia Book even attended a study group once per week), A Course in Miracles, etc. And I realized at some point that they are all the same in that there isn't a shred of real evidence to support anything they claim. Now I don't look for evidence of god(s) any more than I would look for evidence of leprechauns or fairies in my garden. One, because I don't expect to find any. And 2, because it wouldn't make a difference if I did. God doesn't answer any questions, it just moves the questions one level up, as RichardGibbons said it is just turtles all the way down. For example. Why is there something rather than nothing? You could say god made it all, but then why is there a god rather than no god? It is simply a re-statement of why is there something rather than nothing? Why are we here? You could say "god made us", but that answers nothing. Why did god make us? Where did god come from? Why did he create this unbelievably large empty universe to stick us on this little rock? Not only is "god did it" a non-answer answer, but it is one with no evidence to back it up. Where does morality come from? You could say from god who is the embodiment of goodness. But that doesn't answer anything. How do you know what god is, because some old book written 2000+ years ago by superstitious desert tribesmen and sheep herders says so? How did god decide what is good? If god can make those judgments why can't we? It answers nothing. Any time you answer a question or a problem with "because god" it just moves the problem from being simply unknown to being unanswerable by definition. I'd rather have an unknown. By the way that girl sounds like a keeper, but tell her to ditch that financial advisor.

My view on past lives is: So what? Who cares? If it is true and I lived before then that person that I was before is dead now, because all of his memories and thoughts are gone. If I come back again and I don't remember this life, then this person who I am now will be dead. Also, as you point out, there is no way to explain the growing population or how we evolved from ape-like creatures to be human, did the soul or whatever the essence of person-hood which comes back evolve too?. Or how an animal with one unique genetic code could be the same animal born later with another unique genetic code. It makes about as much sense as any other mystical belief.

And you do it again :( . Quantum mechanics suggests nothing about humans being 'spiritually connected' or about 'a sense of belonging'. Let me repeat that: absolutely nothing! QM is just a set of formulae describing the behavior of very small particles / waves. All the other stuff: you made that up. Arguments like these really make me cringe. In fact, I would not even call the above an argument. It's just gibberish. Please note again that I didn't state that QM invalidates your arguments. I just said that it doesn't validate them. Do you understand the difference? It's like we're talking about soft drinks and you try to prove that Coke is superior to Pepsi because of .... the Pythagorean theorem. A^2 + B^2 = C^2 ergo Coca Cola tastes better. You bring up a completely unrelated subject that serves no point in the discussion, except for trying to convince people (yourself?) by sounding very intellectual. Unfortunately that is a strategy successfully employed by priests and charlatans all over the world. And again, you totally avoid any mention of your research on theism. ;) Doesn't QM suggest that everything in the universe is interconnected? A simple yes or no will suffice. I have another question for you guys. What would make you believe in a deity? I've heard that "well, if he wrote in giant letters in the sky, that would do it." I'm looking for something a bit more subtle than a straight smack in the face. The same thing that would make me believe in anything. Some concrete repeatable evidence. Let's assume for the sake of argument that there is a god. If there is a god and if he is what the faithful claim that he is, then he certainly could prove to everyone that he exists anytime he wishes, but he obviously is choosing not to. He sure doesn't want to provide any concrete undeniable evidence for his existence, therefore I can only conclude that he either doesn't want us to believe in him or doesn't care either way. I will respect his wishes to remain a mystery and not believe in him. There is nothing that anyone could say to me, no anecdote anyone could tell me, or any words in some old book anyone could show me that would convince me.

My theory of why we feel guilt would predict that those who don't "belong" to a group, or feel alienated from society, would therefore not feel guilt or would feel less of it. It's not "immoral" if you aren't violating a social rule -- you don't have any if you are not a part of society. You know they exist, but you don't feel bound to them from a moral standpoint -- you won't be guilty of betraying a group to which you don't belong. After all, if it's really the emotional embodiment of social pain, then you won't experience it if you don't belong to any social group that has a rule you are violating. Let's say I wanted to get an 18 year old kid to kill another person. I'd probably recruit him to a camp where I'd limit his interactions with outside society. Within this camp, we would have a bunch of rules about how it's okay to kill the enemy in defense of yada yada yada. We would haze him to tear him down and make him desperate to join our group -- then we would build him up and let him into the group. He now feels close to his new group, so close they are his "band of brothers". Now, he will feel guilty if he violates the rules of our group. Like if he tries to run away from the group, he will feel guilty. So we can tell him to strafe a bunch of people on the ground from a gunship, and he'll actually do it! People he doesn't even know. It's amazing. He does all of this because he can't violate the rules of the group he now belongs to. Amazing, he'll actually feel guilty about running away from orders to commit murder. Surprising? Not really, it's been done before to control soldiers. I agree completely with your theory. We are no different from other pack animals in that regard right down to our males fighting with one another from time to time for dominance. And your example of the mandatory public school "camps" instilling a feeling of "patriotism" to get children ready to join the military and kill the 'terrorists" when they are 18 is excellent.

Well, I suppose you've done little research on theistic arguments since avoided the topic. Further, I fail to see why quantum mechanics invalidates my argument. For instance, if God created everything and if we really are all connected (as quantum mechanics suggests), it fits quite well as to why we have all of these emotions, a sense of needing to belong, etc. Keep in mind I never came out an mentioned a particular deity as the one to follow. It's more of a philosophical topic at the core. What I'm saying is that's okay to put people in a less than ideal position (like the doctor topic from before) if you get proper credit for it). You get more money, patients are happy (though they would have been happier with Drug A) and the hospital is happy (more revenue) - if God doesn't exist. Again, it's one evolutionary instinct vs another - they are both on the same playing field. If God does, exist, it's not okay (you're being selfish and virtually every religion preaches against that). I think most of us agree, though, that the first doctor Ted, really is the better of the two. rk, I think we can both agree that Munger has a better understanding of Buffett's potential than any of us do. Those values most of us like about Buffet..guess what, he grew up in a pretty religious home. Where do most of us learn values? From home. And really, you don't think Buffett would have more than $58 billion or so if he ran a hedge fund over the past 40+ years (and didn't give to charity)? No I really don't think Buffett would have more than $58 Billion if he ran a hedge fund. Maybe $Billions, but I don't think he would ever have been among the richest 2-3 men on Earth. There are other CEOs that have reached close to his wealth and Bill Gates has exceeded it, what other hedge fund manager has even came close? I don't see the evidence that it is possible, he wouldn't have the insurance float to compound. But that is straying way off topic. You know, there is one point I will give you. If it is possible to gain from doing something immoral and you know for certain that you can get away with it and overcome your guilt, than you are correct there is no big guy in the sky that will punish you for doing it. Life isn't perfect and it isn't fair and it can't be made to be so. I'm not sure why this bothers some people who want to put everything in the god-box and call it solved. We all play the hands we're dealt and do the best we can and then we die. That's it. Creating some imaginary being in our heads doesn't really solve anything nor does it change anything. Look at the crime statistics people still do immoral things, they always will.

rk, I don't know about that. I think Munger himself said that Buffett would have been worth many, many billions more if he didn't have Berkshire and instead went the hedge fund route. Munger isn't always correct. The fact that the richest few men on the planet all own large portions of public companies and are not hedge fund managers makes me doubt that theory. Anyway even if it is true, being a hedge fund manager does not make you immoral and his reputation could have also have helped him in that endeavor as well. My point was that contrary to what many believe being an immoral crook and a jerk doesn't give you a long term advantage in life. Yes, morality is just something evolution put into our brains to help us survive, yes we can ignore those instincts if we wish, but that doesn't mean we are better off if we do. You keep asking why you shouldn't ignore your moral instincts to make yourself better off, I'm saying that if you do ignore your moral instincts for some short term gain you will not be better off which is why most people don't ignore them.

Wow, there's been a lot of posts since I've last been here. I just read through them all. One thing I think stahleyp is missing is that some people do have no empathy and feel no guilt, but they aren't necessarily better off than we suckers who do. Humans are social animals, the group is important for our survival. You might get away with screwing people over now and again, but for the most part you are going to give yourself a reputation of someone who can not be trusted and someone who others do not want to deal with. Maybe you feel no guilt and sleep with every woman you meet, but your wife is going to divorce you and take half of your assets. Maybe you screw over your customers, but you will shortly be without customers. Maybe you never go out of your way to help your neighbors, but when you need help you will be out of luck. Etc, etc, etc.... One of the most important assets a person has is his reputation. Yes, Warren Buffet is talented (and probably a little lucky), but his reputation also plays a large role in his success. Contrast this with, say Sardar Biglari, who may be also be talented, but will have a much more difficult time achieving massive wealth because of his reputation. Our ingrained sense of 'morality' may be just evolution's way to get us to 'want' to do what is in our long term best interest, as well as what is in the best interest of the group as a whole. Just as we have nerve endings so that our brain can cause us misery to prevent us from sticking our hands in the fire (how long would a human born without the ability to feel pain survive?), we have morals to prevent us from isolating ourselves from other humans.

I'm not sure what you are thanking me for, but you are welcome. I'm glad you found a way to manage you're problems. I read somewhere that a disproportional number of very successful people have had serious issues to overcome in their lives such as death of a parent when they were children or mental disorders, or learning disabilities, etc. These things may seriously inhibit most of the people who suffer with them from reaching their potential, but for that 1 in x case it is why they are successful. There is some truth to the old saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Oh yeah, and happy birthday!

I freely admitted that I don't understand it. Yet, your actions have consequences which effect other people regardless of what happens to be going on inside your head. Maybe someone who has been tormented by voices in their head for years can't be blamed for killing 5 people at a park on a Sunday afternoon, but that doesn't mean it should be considered acceptable. The fact is any culture which considers suicide a socially acceptable way to deal with depression has more suicide than other cultures. If you disagree with that, you should look into the issue a little more. You don't have to like it, but its true regardless of how that makes you feel. Yes, because killing people is totally an appropriate analogue to suffering with severe depression. Nowhere did I say that suicide is, or should be, socially acceptable. My point is that people who don't suffer from it have no idea how it feels, yet continually, as you've done, make assertions that convey a superior understanding. My only response is to look at the messages from both his wife and daughter. Nowhere do you see them claiming selfishness, just profound sadness. To me that shows a deeper understanding of the subject at hand. Rkabang, I am trying to be as gentle as possible. You obviously have no experience with depression or mental health issues. Maybe you should just cease and desist at this point. Now that is funny. I'd be shocked if there is anyone here with more experience. But I will stop here, because I am angering people.

As a matter of fact I hope I remember this thread when the 2014 suicide statistics come out, because I wouldn't be at all surprised to see an uptick in suicides directly following this high profile suicide where a much loved celebrity is getting all of this sympathy and understanding in the aftermath.

I freely admitted that I don't understand it. Yet, your actions have consequences which effect other people regardless of what happens to be going on inside your head. Maybe someone who has been tormented by voices in their head for years can't be blamed for killing 5 people at a park on a Sunday afternoon, but that doesn't mean it should be considered acceptable. The fact is any culture which considers suicide a socially acceptable way to deal with depression has more suicide than other cultures. If you disagree with that, you should look into the issue a little more. You don't have to like it, but its true regardless of how that makes you feel.

I agree, with a lot of what you are saying. In my view we have such a short precious amount of time in this life, the fact that some people want to shorten it for themselves even further is not even something I can imagine. And it is extremely hard to have empathy for someone when you can not put yourself in their shoes easily. That said, it is something that is done for personal reasons without much regard for how it is going to effect those who love you, so it is by definition a selfish act. Maybe an understandable one, but a selfish one, none the less. Like I said, it is just sad for everyone involved. Also it is absolutely a good thing to attach a social stigma to suicide. If you look at suicide statistics by country there is nothing that correlates 1 to 1 with high suicide rates, not gun ownership, not wealth, nothing. Why is the suicide rate so high in Japan? It is a cultural phenomenon. Anything you can do to make it culturally unacceptable can only save lives.

This is kind of how I feel as well. Not only the message he sent to others, but like anyone who does this, it is a selfish act completely disregarding the effect it will have on those who are closest to him and care most about him. Even thought the suicide rate isn't as high in the US as it is in some other countries, there are now more suicide deaths than traffic deaths in this country, it is just sad all around.

I think it would be a very good thing. I would love to see all those people doing something more beneficial to the civilization. I think this is a case of the broken window fallacy. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window Exactly. I'd much rather see them doing something constructive rather than destructive. Hell, paying them to dig ditches and fill them back in again, wouldn't be constructive, but at least it wouldn't be destructive, so it would be an improvement.