News Flash: God is Dead

July 24th, 2007, 09:53 PM

So Cdns have forgot about the Scientific Revolution, there is no god because there is no evidence of god-stuff, we are a speck at the end of the universe somewhere. Bunch of guys scrabbling around the desert making up weird rules.

July 24th, 2007, 09:57 PM

Isn't Toronto the centre of the universe?

July 24th, 2007, 10:04 PM

Only during rateings week

July 24th, 2007, 10:18 PM

.......

July 24th, 2007, 11:00 PM

So, you deny the very existence of the metaphysical in any sense......which is nonsense.

July 25th, 2007, 01:32 AM

No no no, God is dead because God is a human creation. The very notion of God is a concept which varies across cultures and surely species. If/when you wake up to the fact that humans created the idea of God, then the whole mystique of religion dies. It is not lack of evidence that killed God, it was the intellectual wakening of "the rabble" that were subjugated to the churches that killed God.

One of my favorite quotes on the issue comes from Douglas Adams: "God created man in his own image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment."

July 25th, 2007, 06:55 AM

With all of our great discoveries and contributions to our world in science, medicine, art, music, literature, and general evolutionary progression.... we still cannot connect with our reasons for life.

I have strange beliefs regarding a deity but in the alternate, I find it necessary and grounding to believe there is a reason and purpose and an intelligent life-form behind all of this....

For the non-believers, please come up with a rational substitution. waiting....waiting....waiting....sigh

July 25th, 2007, 07:23 AM

How did you come to the conclusion that there must be a "reason"?

There is the "logic" of material interaction, and that "logic" is only a basic attempt by sentient beings to "make-sense-of" events and phenomena. That an electron and atomic structure provide a "logical" picture of the universe is merely something that gives some beings comfort in predictability.

Gravity exists electromagnetism exists, lots of things exist that if you had lived two thousand years ago you may have thought were spirits and god-presence in your experience of "being"....

Because you find some reason some meaning some "purpose" proceeding from a belief in 'god' or some "intelligence" doesn't mean that you've found anything at all. Because you don't find a 'god' or an "intelligence" pushing and pulling the levers behind a green curtain....doesn't mean anything at all.

You live until you die.

While you're alive you have opportunities you don't have when you're dead. You have the opportunity to reach out to another being like yourself, a being that through their greater commonality and similar experience of their life in comparison to your's lends "meaning" to your life....and theirs.

If that's not enough, I don't know what you need.

If our "logic" is right and it did take billions of years for spatial phenomena and life itself to emerge from the cosmos, is it reasonable, is it "logical" to presume intentionality on a level that exists outside that "logic"?

If in the lifetime of a "living creature", sentience suggests or it may be somehow inferred that purpose and meaning underscore and give something to "existence", if we take away all the temples and writings and raise a child without input or encouragement to "believe", would there be those temples and writings that we embrace as messages, as symbols directing our thinking to some only vaguely described "end"?

Celebrate the process. We are "pleased" by warm apple pie with a slice of cheddar or a scoop of ice cream.... Pleasant feeling arise within us when a certain person looks our way or touches us....

A flower can be beautiful and a fire can be beautiful. We throw flowers at weddings and decorate tombs with flowers. We build fire to keep warm and we build fire to kill the "enemy".....

Mankind is greater than the sum of his parts because the equation is never over.

July 25th, 2007, 07:57 AM

Good Morning Mikey

You have given my word 'reason' more import than necessary.

If we cannot enjoy what we have and understand there is a cause or design making it happen - it fits in with our need for organized thought in our brain and our emotional life.

That is my opinion - not law (either religious or secular) - but simply is my own personal coda. Without reason - rational organization of some kind - even purpose as lowly as it may be in the grand scheme of what we recognize as our place in space....I could not handle spontaneous chaos.

I believe we are more important than relegating ourselves to an accident of the planets and new life growth. If we were not to know or seek understanding, we would not have been given intellect....
developing intellect.

July 25th, 2007, 08:03 AM

Reflect on your tag-line Curio.

July 25th, 2007, 08:09 AM

Mikey - I don't have a Conviction about this - only my current opinion which has changed many times from ardent religious devotee to all the spectrum included in non-believer. I'm still looking for answers. The fact I do not have a Conviction is why I continually hope to find answers.

July 25th, 2007, 08:15 AM

And will the love of your husband or your son vanish when you find that "answer"?

If some "answer" exists that satisfactorily "proves" your destiny is pre-determined that your perspectives on everything that's important to you are predicated on a whim, a falsehood or a lie, does that mean your love and your life was a lie, a falsehood and a sham?

Be careful of the questions you ask, you may not like the answer.

Perhaps that "reason" was satisfied long ago. Pehaps it was as simple a thing as your extra weight on a bus or a boat that balanced some cosmic equation....

Does that mean that everything after some arbitrary point in existence has no meaning?

There's plenty of love in the world Curio....I'll give you mine but keep on gathering....

July 25th, 2007, 10:15 AM

I don't find such belief grounding at all. I find it self denying. Belief in some intelligent, supreme creator means that I am merely some cog in a machine. I have no purpose but the purpose that creator gave me.

Meanwhile, atheism is life affirming. My life is a beautiful and unique thing, and I can do with it what I like. I get to make my own purpose, decide where my life goes.

Saying nothing and doing your own beautiful thing is the rational substitute for magic and superstition. If you really want some hocus pocus I can show you how quantum gravity can create a universe out of nothing.

July 25th, 2007, 10:17 AM

News Flash: Believing or not believing in something does not make it true or un-true.

To say God is dead, one must define exactly what God is... There are so many different conceptions of God it's necessary to define 'God' before making any sort of statements on the subject.

If my definition of God is 'EVERYTHING' than surely I cannot say that God is dead. God IS, simply.

July 25th, 2007, 10:56 AM

God isn't dead.

He was talking to me yesterday.

July 25th, 2007, 11:03 AM

As a teenager the thought of cave people (lol) creating their first fire or tool i examined them as such. Remember 2001 the cave guy breaking bones with the bone....Ok so as these people are now thinking and start to create things it is only natural that they start to question who made everything?

July 26th, 2007, 01:07 AM

What Nietzsche meant when he said "God is dead," is that the masses were beginning to realize that God was nothing more than an idea. It is a metaphor which is meant to say, "God is now an outdated or useless concept," because through the renaissance people could answer all the questions that needed answers in other ways. To say that God is everything is tautological, and so just as useless by Nietzsche's view, therefore just as dead.

July 26th, 2007, 06:24 AM

Awesome! I've gotta see this. We have the quantum gravity but with can we use for the nothing?

Say Doc, you got a minute?