I guess I'm happier to say "I don't know, but one day I might find out." than "Because God." As you say, there's a lot out there that we can't explain, but I fail to see any reason to put them all in a big bucket and allocate them to some cosmic intelligence that made things that way. I can't remember where it came from, but I remember something of a parable about a puddle in a pothole suddenly gaining sentience and being amazed at how well the ground underneath it contoured around its own form, how amazing it was that the sky above let more rain in to let it grow, and could come to no other conclusion that the pothole had been built specifically to house it.
That is interesting to me, because in the case of the Cambrian explosion, you had these long complex thoughts painting your perceived reality of truth. For me, all of it seemed very believable as well. You are using a lot of evidence to move these thoughts forward.
However, the same can be done for an intelligent causal agent. One can look at the evidence and see that the universe clearly had a starting point, therefore it must have had a cause to that starting point. You can piece things together in identical fashion as you did in your previous post.
And yet, one is "smart" and the other is "dumb". It's curious to me.
I can't say I really understand what you see in terms of difference between the two.
Also, if you walk into a murder scene, where somebody has been killed, look out. Often the person that gives the first explanation gets credence. You see that effect in hollywood all the time in the movies. All you have to do is point at someone and say "They did it" and people will begin heavily considering. In much the same way, if people draw in a scene of the universe, and everyone is silent on the topic, the first person saying something like "something or someone caused this" might get a lot of attention paid to it.
I'm not saying that the first explanation is true by any means.
But I am saying, if you can't come up with any explanation, or even a viable one, more than likely you may lose out to someone that can.
People's minds are sponges or vacuums. They always seek information. If you leave them empty, something will enter in.
This is why I am often amused at people the despise Christianity. They have obviously lived such wonderful lives and have yet to learn the lesson "Things can always be worse."
If you were to remove Christianity from America, ooOooo you just wait. I would love to see what would fill its place. Believe me things can always be much much worse.
When people begin to be tossed off of buildings for being "different," it will be too late to go back. Then all of a sudden those Christians start looking really really great.
Christianity is a shield that protects this country from things that are much worse.
Atheism, as a worldview, is not strong enough to combat things like Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, and many of the other worldviews. It is woefully underpowered, as the numbers represent. We were super lucky to get Christianity.
I really don't go in for debating Theism or Athiesm, or holding up the likes of Dawkins as some authority on What I Don't Believe. There is a church around Athiesm in itself which I also find somewhat amusing, and I also think stems from an amount of insecurity - a need to don a label to tell the world what you think. I don't particularly care. I don't think there's any sort of God out there. If there is, it's certainly not something that I've ever seen have an actual impact on anything (beyond things done "in His name", which has been a lot, of both good and bad), and so I'm pretty comfortable to say is effectively irrelevant.
I feel this is a highly consistent position, in lines with your own authentic thinking.
I respect the consistency in your position a great deal.
It's wonderful to see. So refreshing from the usual flip-flopping that people do.
I'm yet to see any sort of actual evidence for intelligent design. I've seen a lot of supposition, a lot of misunderstanding, and a lot of cherry picking, but never anything that made me say "well yup, it must have been that way." Then there's also the uncomfortable part of it that comes in with some of the less savoury aspects of life and existence... parasites and creatures with behaviours and survival mechanisms that really make you wonder what sort of mind would have deliberately created them that way.
Do you believe a painting to be evidence that a painter exists?
If no, why not?
If yes, why so?
Have you ever seen a painting and thought, "it's likely that no form of intelligence created this"? If so, were you a fool for doing that?
Have you ever seen a painting and thought, "this was created by something intelligent"? If so, were you a fool for doing so?
Oh, don't get me wrong - I quite enjoyed that at the time and it's not something I look back on with any sort of negativity or distaste. Neither of my parents were particularly religious, and although the church was "there", it's a Church of England one which is pretty light on the Eternal Damnation and a bit more focused on a nice cup of tea and perhaps a bit of a bake sale. Very tame stuff, and the ministers there were genuinely nice people. Same with the bit of exposure to Catholics I've had as well (Mum's side of the family, but very very lapsed
). The people involved, particularly at the ground level, are generally wonderful. The institutions that build around them can be problematic.
Wow, that sounds really great. You were lucky. I've heard many horror stories.
Churches seem to be quite hit or miss as it would seem.
I wonder if mosques are the same? Someone chime in?
I probably ought to clarify what I said... Yes, my initial reaction to hearing someone is religious is an unconscious -rep. A mild one, but it's there, I can't deny that. I usually get over it, especially if I can see where they're coming from in that. If it winds up giving me the impression that that belief comes from a closed mind, it'll stick - and that's probably where the actual annoyance comes from, so I suspect that in that respect at least we're not really all that different.
I actually react quite positively to hearing someone is an Atheist, as I used to be one a long number of years and I find their ideas to be different, interesting, and exciting. I often learn a lot from interacting with them too.
It's the nasty ones that can't refrain from asserting their worldview and leaving others in peace, and after baiting them into an argument just insult them constantly, talk super loudly, constantly interrupt, and resort to 100% mockery and humiliation that I have a distaste for.
I've seen some straight up nasty religious people too. They attempt to provoke people to anger as strongly as they can. So full of disgusting pride. Then, after treating people as poorly as they can, they say that they "did it in love." Imagine that...
That "man made" element is pervasive throughout it. The Catholics have all those surrounds of the Confessional, of Original Sin and Communion and the idolatry of Mary which is just nowhere to be seen in there, CoE is a happy excuse for divorce, and the modern Evangelicals and "Prosperity Theology" which flies utterly in the face of what's actually in the Bible in the first place, and it's pretty plainly obviously that it largely comes down to trying to find some combination that works. But then you start throwing in the Apocrypha, and realise that work we know as The Bible has been edited and rewritten since it originated (which apparently has all also been part of that Intelligent Design - shaped by the unseen hand of God), and it's all laughable.
...and it still comes down to a story in which the hero is actually a bit of a bastard.
(and with that essay done, I'm off too)
I agree very much so on the man-made religion discussion.
However, it's only the English translations that have been edited and destroyed.
The original manuscripts of the bible have somehow remained intact.
The dead sea scrolls showed us that the book of Isaiah has held up over thousands of years with not even one letter or jot in error. Crazy that...
If you want to know what they were reading in 900 B.C., you can look at that now today in 2020. The greek septuigant has also been proven to hold up for nearly 2000 years now. The only question is whether or not you believe the original source material that began popping up in the first century is legit or not.
However, the English translations you will look at, have indeed had quite colorful translations on them in my opinion. This is where the religion of man plays a sinister roll.
What people do is come in and change and tweak the meanings of words. Words that are so archaic that nobody knows the meaning of anymore like "arsenokoites" just get chalked up as being "homosexual" or "pimp" or "slave-seller" or I don't even know. But there are so many archaic words that they don't know the meanings of that they translated colorfully. There is another word that they don't know the meaning of that can be loosly translated as "effeminate" that they have had very creative leisure on. Many of these old words literally nobody today actually knows what they mean, it's just guesswork.
Think if 2000 years ago you read the word "salty" in a book. Would you really be able to figure it out that it means "bitter from losing a video game?" Yeah, good luck with that. So much educated guesswork there.
There's lots of other stuff like that too.
They will change the word "desire" that is a purely neutral word to be "lust" which has obvious negative nuance. They pretty much do as they like with the bible. It's horrible.
That being said, if you want to learn ancient greek, you can read the new testament as it was written roughly 1,980 years ago.
Overall most of it is translated pretty good, but when you get into key controversial passages, they are often tweaked when read in English.
For example, the whole "woman should be silent" thing. That word silent doesn't mean quite what people think. There are two words for silence in greek, one meaning the absence of sound, another meaning something along the lines of "mild-tempered" or "good listener", mimicking the relationship of a student going along with its teacher. People, not knowing anything about language, read that passage and immediately freak out. The telephone game is always a blast.
Some verses are dropped entirely. Some are added depending on the bible. There is controversy with the king james bible as well, despite it being one of the most widely used and accepted ones.
I could go on and on about it, but I suppose most of it is fine as a translation. If you read it in English, you would get a general accurate impression of what is written in the bible, minus here and there. If you had the motivation to look at the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, you would certainly know what the bible was saying for the most part.
The meanings of words are sooooo deathly important to conveying accurate meaning however. One subtle twist turns something good into something really really bad mega fast. That's the issue with books and knowledge. This happens with vocal communication too with voice tones.
You can say "You have a wonderful smile" but if you say it in the wrong way, it gets real uncomfortable really fast doesn't it?