God


If it was as simplistic as you make out then there wouldn't have been multiple schisms and interpretations within every religion, nor would the world still be overwhelmingly religious
Isn’t that heresy?

The world is massively religious still because its bloody big money and zealots drum it into their children. A lot of 3rd world countries are big believers, which I put down to the lack of education in the systems and heavily religious governments. Pakistan is built on Islam for example.
 
If it was as simplistic as you make out then there wouldn't have been multiple schisms and interpretations within every religion, nor would the world still be overwhelmingly religious

The different schisms and interpretations are because although people on the whole are similar they are still individuals. Christians worship a god who is portrayed as an old white man who had a son who, despite being born in the middle east, is portrayed as a pale skinned 6 foot tall man with blue eyes and reddish brown hair, a sort of proto Barry Gibb. Hindus worship gods who look like them and Africans worship gods who look like them. Individually people worship gods who agree with them on every aspect of life and politics so essentially they construct a god in their own image.
As a kid I thought god sounded like a load of bollocks and when I found my Christmas presents in the airing cupboard I realised that Santa Claus wasn't real and it took me minutes to realise that god wasn't real because adults told me stories that weren't true. I found a dead dog at Clatchy Rock with no eyes and maggots spilling out of its guts and I realised that it used to have a name and people used to love it but now it was just dead meat. And that was what death was; you didn't go anywhere you were just a lump of rotting meat. Anything else is wishful thinking.
 
The different schisms and interpretations are because although people on the whole are similar they are still individuals. Christians worship a god who is portrayed as an old white man who had a son who, despite being born in the middle east, is portrayed as a pale skinned 6 foot tall man with blue eyes and reddish brown hair, a sort of proto Barry Gibb. Hindus worship gods who look like them and Africans worship gods who look like them. Individually people worship gods who agree with them on every aspect of life and politics so essentially they construct a god in their own image.
As a kid I thought god sounded like a load of bollocks and when I found my Christmas presents in the airing cupboard I realised that Santa Claus wasn't real and it took me minutes to realise that god wasn't real because adults told me stories that weren't true. I found a dead dog at Clatchy Rock with no eyes and maggots spilling out of its guts and I realised that it used to have a name and people used to love it but now it was just dead meat. And that was what death was; you didn't go anywhere you were just a lump of rotting meat. Anything else is wishful thinking.
Your first paragraph is bollocks I'm afraid

The * loudest* most media prominent Western Christians might worship that God, but the majority of Christians don't live in the West and don't picture God as white either.

Majority of Africa is Islamic or Christian
 
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But religion gave us a code to go by.
Well that's a very Euro-Centric view of things based on the Abrahamic religions. From what I understand the first religion to be involved in settled communities was Jainism which has been confirmed by archaeological evidence to around 7000 BCE in the Indus Valley. As this was well before the historical records began we can only speculate retrospectively that such "codes" were given but as Jainism is an atheist religion in which there is no god, the codes were probably more in the form of advice on how to live to achieve enlightenment and were probably carried forward from the nomadic Shramana of aesthetics.

The Abrahamic religions may well have provided codes in order to control the population but sin was viewed differently in the Hebrew religion up to the time of Jesus and was seen more as simply wandering away from God and the path of righteousness rather than some moralistic set of laws for society. In fact this moralistic interpretation appears to be more of a Western Christian perspective based around the Roman church established by Paul. In other word Christianity became hijacked by those who used the religion to control the masses.

That's always the problem with these threads, they are dominated by those who main if not only experience is Christianity. Just as I will be classed as a theist because I am talking about theism. It's as if you talk about historical Fascism you must be a Fascist such is the simplistic arguments employed.
 
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Well that's a very Euro-Centric view of things based on the Abrahamic religions. From what I understand the first religion to be involved in settled communities was Jainism which has been confirmed by archaeological evidence to around 7000 BCE in the Indus Valley. As this was well before the historical records began we can only speculate retrospectively that such "codes" were given but as Jainism is an atheist religion in which there is no god, the codes were probably more in the form of advice on how to live to achieve enlightenment and were probably carried forward from the nomadic Shramana of aesthetics.

The Abrahamic religions may well have provided codes in order to control the population but sin was viewed differently in the Hebrew religion up to the time of Jesus and was seen more as simply wandering away from God and the path of righteousness rather than some moralistic set of laws for society. In fact this moralistic interpretation appears to be more of a Western Christian perspective based around the Roman church established by Paul. In other word Christianity became hijacked by those who used the religion to control the masses.

That's always the problem with these threads, they are dominated by those who main if not only experience is Christianity. Just as I will be classed as a theist because I am talking about theism. It's as if you talk about historical Fascism you must be a Fascist such is the simplistic arguments employed.
Thanks for that
 
This will offend someone…….usually like this: “the woke brigade have conjured this up to make things politically correct”
 
Be careful not to mix up The Theory of Evolution (via Natural Selection) with any answer to where life came from.

Evolution is very well understood and there are mountains of evidence, of several different types, to support it. It explains the diversity of species on the planet.

It does not provide, and does not attempt to provide, an answer to where life first came from and how it started.

Believers think that their god (insert name depending on their religion) created life.
Scientists don't have an answer to that question yet but they are working on it. If scientists had answers to every question there would be no need for scientists.
Good thread Kent but Darwin's Theory is around 150 years old now and he knew nothing about epigenetics and horizontal gene transfer. It's like Newton's theories compared to Einstein's and indeed we now know more about quantum physics. I'm still waiting for a physicist to explain wave function collapse of the quantum field that resulted in the reality we call the universe. Let's face it, everything we observe is a neurological construct.
There certainly more to evolution that random mutations driving the survival of the fittest and natural selection.
 
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Good thread Kent but Darwin's Theory is around 150 years old now and he knew nothing about epigenetics and horizontal gene transfer. It's like Newton's theories compared to Einstein's and indeed we now know more about quantum physics. I'm still waiting for a physicist to explain wave function collapse of the quantum field that resulted in the reality we call the universe. Let's face it, everything we observe is a neurological construct.
I'm not entirely sure what point you are making. Evolution was well known before Darwin, it was the mechanism that Darwin worked out. Since his time we have had further evidence pile up to support it such as molecular biology, fossil record, resistance to antibiotics in bacteria and studies of embryo development. This has only strengthened the "theory". Predictions are made and are always proved correct.

Yet the believers have a problem with it because it contradicts their Bronze Age account of the diversity of species - i.e. God made them all as is. These people really should know better. They're not all moronic. All it would take for them to destroy the theory would to find a mammal fossil in the wrong strata. That's all.... but they haven't been able to.

Strange also that they don't have a problem with our understanding of electricity or gravity. You don't see that many happy clappers sticking their fingers in the sockets or walking out of windows to disprove those theories.
 
People need to understand this whole god and devil thing was just an ancient way of laws, basically to let people know there would be consequences and rewards for your behaviour.

Now the mass majority know what’s deemed good and bad in civilisation so no need for the imaginary people in clouds.

I agree, except for the fact that basic morals aren't taught at home now.
 
I'm not entirely sure what point you are making. Evolution was well known before Darwin, it was the mechanism that Darwin worked out. Since his time we have had further evidence pile up to support it such as molecular biology, fossil record, resistance to antibiotics in bacteria and studies of embryo development. This has only strengthened the "theory". Predictions are made and are always proved correct.

Yet the believers have a problem with it because it contradicts their Bronze Age account of the diversity of species - i.e. God made them all as is. These people really should know better. They're not all moronic. All it would take for them to destroy the theory would to find a mammal fossil in the wrong strata. That's all.... but they haven't been able to.

Strange also that they don't have a problem with our understanding of electricity or gravity. You don't see that many happy clappers sticking their fingers in the sockets or walking out of windows to disprove those theories.
I'm not rejecting the theory of evolution. The neurological construct we call reality is based on fitness for survival. We don't observe reality directly, we observe the interface with reality. Yet what is causing wave function collapse of the quantum field is not known.
What is not known is what is causing the apparent common observations that we all share. Why are we not all sitting in our own bubble of wave function collapse of the quantum field unable to communicate shared experience.
The universe was not created byan external god and it did not come from absolute nothing so what cause the universe to self-activate?
Self actualisation may be a better term.
 
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Your first paragraph is bollocks I'm afraid

The * loudest* most media prominent Western Christians might worship that God, but the majority of Christians don't live in the West and don't picture God as white either.

Majority of Africa is Islamic or Christian

Calling my first paragraph bollocks doesn't explain why it is bollocks and is in essence a cop out.

For your second paragraph I don't believe you and if you want me to believe you, you will need to substantiate it.

You ignored the fact that Hindus believe in gods which look like them. If you want to believe in a delusion taught you by your parents because of a fear of death and not existing, go ahead. My mam , dad and sister are dead and I am a realist and know they don't exist any more and I will never see them again except in my memory.
I'm still waiting for a physicist to explain wave function collapse of the quantum field that resulted in the reality we call the universe.
Assuming a physicist took time out to explain those things to your total satisfaction how would it change your attitude to the title of this thread ?
 
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Calling my first paragraph bollocks doesn't explain why it is bollocks and is in essence a cop out.

For your second paragraph I don't believe you and if you want me to believe you, you will need to substantiate it.

You ignored the fact that Hindus believe in gods which look like them. If you want to believe in a delusion taught you by your parents because of a fear of death and not existing, go ahead. My mam , dad and sister are dead and I am a realist and know they don't exist any more and I will never see them again except in my memory.

Assuming a physicist took time out to explain those things to your total satisfaction how would it change your attitude to the title of this thread ?
I doubt if any physicist currently could except to prattle on about the multiverse for which there is as much evidence as for an external creator god and I believe in neither, so what's your point?
 
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I doubt if any physicist currently could except to prattle on about the multiverse for which there is as much evidence as an external creator god so what's your point?

Well if you ask for a physicist to explain something to you which you think can't be explained then you are being disingenuous. There's no evidence whatsoever for an external creator god and nobody has to put up evidence for an alternative explanation. The answer so far is that we don't know how or why the Universe in its current form started.
 
Well if you ask for a physicist to explain something to you which you think can't be explained then you are being disingenuous. There's no evidence whatsoever for an external creator god and nobody has to put up evidence for an alternative explanation. The answer so far is that we don't know how or why the Universe in its current form started.
There is nothing wrong with pondering the nature of reality. Nothing wrong with raising questions. That's how we come to ask questions about whether there can be an external creator god.

Everything needed for reality is contained within reality. It must be or reality would collapse. Everything needed for the universe is contained within the universe or the universe would collapse. So it's not logical to claim that reality is dependent on something outside of reality and if that something did exist then it would be part of reality anyway. So there can be no external creator god.

What we do know is that the universe is fundamentally a quantum field. It is bristling with virtual particles and their opposites coming in and out of existence all the time, quantum foam. Time and space are emergent aspects rather than fundamental aspects of the ground state. It could not have been absolute nothing before the universe as we observe it emerged as absolute nothing would have absolutely no potentialities. Those potentialities were unbounded and infinite but a single reality emerged and the other potentialities collapsed.

Therefore the universe self actualised. That reality is info-cognitive and can be described in the language of mathematics.

These questions are relevant and certainly more so that claiming evolution disproves the possibility of an external creator god.
It's just as ingenious by your reckoning to asking someone who believes in god to prove that existence when you don't believe they can anyway or are only atheists allowed to ask such questions?
 
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There is nothing wrong with pondering the nature of reality. Nothing wrong with raising questions. That's how we come to ask questions about whether there can be an external creator god.

Everything needed for reality is contained within reality. It must be or reality would collapse. Everything needed for the universe is contained within the universe or the universe would collapse. So it's not logical to claim that reality is dependent on something outside of reality and if that something did exist then it would be part of reality anyway. So there can be no external creator god.

What we do know is that the universe is fundamentally a quantum field. It is bristling with virtual particles and their opposites coming in and out of existence all the time, quantum foam. Time and space are emergent aspects rather than fundamental aspects of the ground state. It could not have been absolute nothing before the universe as we observe it emerged as absolute nothing would have absolutely no potentialities. Those potentialities were unbounded and infinite but a single reality emerged and the other potentialities collapsed.

Therefore the universe self actualised. That reality is info-cognitive and can be described in the language of mathematics.

These questions are relevant and certainly more so that claiming evolution disproves the possibility of an external creator god.

As usual you post an overly verbose post complete with references to quantum foam and quantum fluctuations. I don't think you actually know what these things are and I certainly don't.
If you ever talk like an actual person instead of hiding behind these terms I will listen to you.
 
As usual you post an overly verbose post complete with references to quantum foam and quantum fluctuations. I don't think you actually know what these things are and I certainly don't.
If you ever talk like an actual person instead of hiding behind these terms I will listen to you.
If you can't follow the logic that's your problem. What you don't like is a detailed explanation of that logic.
 

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