Topic: Health and Religion - page 131. (Read 210900 times)

And I have countered that the moral system provided by religion is decisively superior to the ‘built-in' primitive kin-based and reciprocity-based system. Furthermore I have supported my claim with data specifically:

1)   The data that those who reject religion appear to suffer from reduced health, happiness and fertility as outlined in the opening post.
And
2)   The research supporting the claim that religion is a critical and perhaps primary mechanism for overcoming our species-specific upper limit to group size which is set by purely cognitive constraints.

You have countered that you do not find the data convincing based on your personal research and observations.
You have also countered with the theory that religion may override our 'built-in' moral system at the local social group level resulting in inferior outcomes as the 'built-in' system is presumably optimized for such situations.

Both of your claims are logical but unpersuasive. You have provided no empiric data to support your theory that religion leads to inferior outcomes at the local level. The the data I provided on health and happiness appears to refute this claim. Furthermore I have no way to measure or evaluate your unpublished personal research.

Have we drilled down to the core of our differences?

I thinks it's pretty clear that I don't think it's an ideal, just that it works better generally than for some of those who need religion for moral guidance.

The study authors comments on the matter.


In a way the findings make a certain amount of sense. If a a moral code is the functional equivalent of (Do not do bad things but if you do... "come here for your big group hug"...its is all good no worries) it may lack some function as an adequate deterrent against immoral and unhealthy behavior. The SCIENCE paper above is a good one and presents both the strengths and the limitations in the data. You cited one example of these limitations above but there are others also you will find later on. The totality of the review, however, supports my thesis.


From your comments it appears you continue to believe that our 'built-in' primitive kin-based and reciprocity-based altruism which is likely genetic is somehow an ideal. This runs counter to the vast majority of scientific thought as noted in the quote above. If you want to make this case you need to present a stronger argument then "There is plenty (of unspecified) reasons to think that it is functional" or the entirely unsupported "only religions people need moral guidance".

I started looking at that paper and got distracted by another from the same authors:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110420112334.htm



Ugh! In order to behave well, theists need to believe they will be punished? This again relates to our initial point of discussion, that some people primed for religion are those that need guidance -- and the threat of violence -- in order to act altruistically.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/02/27/in-rare-move-germany-fines-atheist-e500-for-violating-blasphemy-law

This is a deep topic and requires us to compare the prosociality of the religious versus that the non-religious.

There was a nice review article in SCIENCE on this by Ara Norezayna and Azim Shariff titled The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality. I have linked to the PDF below.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/52d7f47fe4b0c692d7426966/t/531e37c0e4b089910ebb95f3/1394489280903/the-origin-and-evolution-of-religious-prosociality.pdf

It was some very smart scientists who recognized the scientific laws that prove God exists, to be the laws that they are. In their day almost everyone understood that God existed. They didn't think that they had to put the laws together for people so that people would understand.

Devolution in the atheists of today has caused them to ignore the science that was obvious to the scientists of the past who pointed out the basic scientific laws that prove that God exists.

Where do you guys make up these ideas about Atheists?

Atheists are free to believe in aliens all they want, it's Christians who say Earth is God's favorite creation, and that humans are his special creatures...

Atheism is also not the non-belief of a creator, it is the rejection of your definition of the creator... As far as I am concerned... some god(s) might exist, but it is most definitely not the Christian god, nor is it the Muslim god, nor the Hindu gods, nor the Greek or Roman or Egyptian gods (do you see a pattern yet?)

How can you reject Allah, Thor, Zeus and Horus, yet claim to know with absolute certainty that Jesus was a god?

Atheism is the non belief of a creator of the universe ,that nothing exists beyond this earth apart from us humans and everything else that inhabits this earth. I completely disagree anything of this. Atheism is more dangerous than poison.

Just because you don't understand that God is eternal, doesn't make it not so. If God has cause and effect within Himself, He simply is self causing and self affecting. Period. Laws of this "terrarium" universe that He made don't affect Him, just like the laws inside your terrarium don't affect you.

You jokers would rather remain retarded than look at the truth and accept it.

not to mention his cause and effect proof.  Except he made an exception for God as something that does not require a primal cause, invalidating his whole premise that every effect has to have a cause.

In all three "proofs" that he posted, he first assumed there is a God and then tried to fit his twisted understanding of science (and English language) to explain to himself that it makes sense for God to exist.
His God is a God of the Gaps.

None of it of course has anything to do with science.

It is very tempting to look at the universe and say: "shit, this thing is awesome, how the heck could this whole thing came about by itself, it must have been created, designed by something..."  Well, that is where you roll up your sleeves and go to work as a scientist, not cop out and say: "Yup, God did it".

If you did a 3D holographic presentation to Jesus and his disciples, you would be considered a God or a Holy Spirit

To a certain degree I agree with this quote as there more more followers of a religion no matter what it is and  not to believe is by choice which depends on the facts faced. Yes, atheism is poison on most of the cases I have experienced.

Yes, just like your "universe complexity law", and nearly everything you post.

Atheists haven't heard it the way I explain it.

Atheists need to be saved, and baby atheists need to be shown that they are getting themselves into something that is stupid, and potential atheists need to be warned about the atheism stupidity they are looking at.

Besides, it is so much fun flaunting the fact that atheists are wrong, right in their faces, knowing that it disturbs the heck out of them, when they can't find the answers, to oppose the fact that God exists. Glory to God.

 

Why do you care so much about Atheists?  Are you jealous of us or something?

Why are you here?  Just to troll?  You won't convince us of anything... we've read the bible, we've heard it all before... we've spent weeks trying to educate you, but you are too delusional to accept reality... you insist on making up your own definition for everything... a definition that nobody accepts (making it yet another delusion)

This is the exact point. Let's say for a moment that I am wrong about the scientific proof for the existence of God. That out of the way, have atheists proven that God doesn't exist? Has anyone proven that God doesn't exist? No, to both questions.

So, when you have atheists stating (in some cases) no-God as a fact, they are setting themselves up as the authority on the subject. And an authority on the subject of the existence of God when it is not known for a fact that He does not exist, means that these atheists are actually setting themselves up as gods (or at least potential gods) to even think like this. They are contradicting themselves when they do this. They are being gods who are stating that God does not exist. They are acting the exact part that they are contradicting.

And, of course, if they only believe that God doesn't exist... that is, if they admit that they aren't certain that God doesn't exist... then they are weak atheists, or are not atheists at all. In either case, if they say they are atheists when they only believe it, they have a religion going for themselves.

So what? The truth, that's what. Who cares what they believe? Who cares if they have a religion or not? They do! And it's about time that atheists realize that they are not being truthful with themselves if they say that God absolutely does not exist when they don't know it for a fact, or when they say that they don't have a religion going when they suggest that God-existence might possibly be the reality.



Yet, on a much smaller scale, what might an insect in a terrarium think if he could think a little? Or what might a fish in a fishbowl think if he could think a little?

People can think. And people know scientifically and technically that, everything operates by cause and effect... or action and reaction as Newton calls it. Cause and effect are in the actions of everything that we can determine about anything that we know of in the universe. In fact, a scientist is a greater scientist if he can figure out the hidden cause behind something that exists. And we almost can't conceive of the idea of something happening without something else causing it to happen.

When we combine this thinking with countless trillions of cause and effect actions that exist all around us, we see the tremendous complexity involved in everything. This electron bumps that one, to cause some tiny change in things. Some photon of light is absorbed by a group of molecules to add heat energy to them. It is all tremendously complex cause and effect. But all the tiny changes make a combined effect that we can see and understand at times. However, we are so limited in our abilities, that we can barely measure only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the cause and effect actions that happen all around us.

And, it is all breaking down. How is it all breaking down? The answer is entropy. Every cause and effect action is dispersing and diffusing things a little. Every little diffusion is equalizing materials and energies throughout all space, and maybe time. "Things" are gradually becoming less complex.

This is the big step... understanding that these things show a Great Intelligence behind the whole universe. This Intelligence has been sitting right in front of our noses for a long time. But we haven't seen It, or we have ignored It if we had chance to see. Perhaps if we wake up to the fact of Its existence, then we might be able to consider the whys and hows of our simple lives on earth.

Of course atheists are going to explain what they are and are not according to some predefined dogma. The fact that they do this shows that atheism is a religion without having to use even the dictionary.

But it may be the other way around, depending on who is using arbitrary counting objects ( whatever is meant by that) for whatever they are using them for.

It's on an individual can see a certain perspective. As an atheist who grew up from religious neighborhood, they would just block your perspective and give what they want you to believe.

Moloch you are of course correct that my quoted statement above on certainty would only apply to Gnostic Atheist or "Strong Atheism"
 
Perhaps we should define some terms. Let's look at wikipedia and the atheism wiki.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism


http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Atheist_vs_Agnostic


It's is not my intent to belittle or insult atheists. Indeed for the last 18+ years from my youth when I rejected theism until very recently (about a month ago) I myself would have fallen into the category of agnostic atheists or weak atheism. I recognized the need for a replacement moral code and had adopted Utilitarianism which sounds great in theory but I can tell you from experience its not very functional. My own view is that atheist are by and large highly articulate, responsible and intelligent people who have followed logic into a blind alley. I believe I have demonstrated that logic can also take a different path.

Theism does not require the abandonment of logic and reason. Intellect does not demand you wall yourself off from faith. The choice of belief is not of intellect but of character.