Zone1 "The more I look at the Universe, the less convinced I am that there is something benevolent going on."

[ding]

Nope.

and now you've lost me.

too bad. could've been interesting

Maybe try reading it in the context of the post it was responding to.

 

[ding]

What is the purpose of a rock? What is it's meaning?

So you can’t seek the answers to those questions concerning yourself until you know the answers for a rock?

Seems disingenuous to me. Is there anything in the universe you know better than you know yourself?

 

[ding]

Life has no real purpose, no meaning.

Based upon what?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

​

“What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?​

"The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth. The atoms that make up the human body are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars, the high mass ones among them went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy. Guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems. Stars with orbiting planets, and those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky and I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up – many people feel small because they’re small and the Universe is big – but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars. There’s a level of connectivity. That’s really what you want in life, you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant you want to feel like you’re a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you. That’s precisely what we are, just by being alive…”

― Neil deGrasse Tyson

He sounded like Kamala there

 

[ding]

If we as a species; are made up of the same stuff as starts are -- are meant to replicate -- are more similar to other animals than not?

Everything is made up of the exact same stuff; the same exact building blocks of sub-atomic particles. That literally began as energy which popped into existence ~14 billion years ago. That stuff was not pre-existing stuff. It was created in an improbable chain reaction of paired particle production. That stuff is implausibly fine tuned to produce intelligence. The laws of nature predestined - even before space and time were created from nothing- that beings that know and create would arise. Those are the facts.

 

[Cougarbear]

"What is the purpose of a rock, of disease? "​

You must be responding to something in your own head -- but okay:

So, now time and space step in for Heaven?

the next is to me, a pathetic way to look at life

I feel really bad for you if this is how you'll live out the rest of your existence here on Earth.

I feel really bad for you if you will not reach your potential evolution during eternal life after this earth. Again, I follow an actual plan laid out by Heavenly Father. Now, what is the purpose of this universe for you? None? Yep!

 

[ding]

"There was a philosopher commenting on Miracles (and I'm going to mangle the quote) but he said something like - Miracles are so unlikely, bordering on Impossible, that if you do encounter something that you cannot explain, not only from your own base of knowledge, but is unexplainable given any base of knowledge yet acquired on Earth, it's more likely that you simply discovered a new law of physics, than that there is a Divine miracle that was performed in front of you."

asked: Do you believe in God, Creator?

"The more I look at the Universe, the less convinced I am that there is something benevolent going on."

"If your concept of a Creator is someone who's all powerful and all good, that's not an uncommon pairing of powers that you might describe to a Creator, all powerful and all good and I look at disasters that afflict Earth and life on Earth; volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, disease, pestilence, congenital birth defects -- you look at this list of ways that life is made miserable on Earth by natural causes, and I just ask - how do you deal with that."

"So philosophers rose up and said, if there is a God God is either not all powerful or not all good."

"I have no problems if as we probe the origins of things we bump up into the bearded man, if that shows up we're good to go okay not a problem there's just no evidence of it, and this is why religions are called faiths collectively, because you believe something in the absence of evidence. That's what it is that's why it's called Faith otherwise we would call all religions evidence, but we don't for exactly that reason, so I I'm I'm given what everyone describes to be the properties that would be expressed by an all powerful being in the gods that they worship I look for that in the universe and I don't find it."




I'm not sure how somebody could attack what Neil is saying here. I can see people of faith disagreeing, using arguments based on beliefs, on individual faith vs science. But I can't see them arguing against what he is saying.

People like are not a threat to people who desire faith over science. I know, because he or people like him have never changed my mind or convinced me that I am in error. They just serve up an informed and coherent set of arguments that speak to what I've come to know.

Often times men overestimate the bad and underestimate the good. Must be human nature, but it is not an objective assessment.

 

[ding]

"There was a philosopher commenting on Miracles (and I'm going to mangle the quote) but he said something like - Miracles are so unlikely, bordering on Impossible, that if you do encounter something that you cannot explain, not only from your own base of knowledge, but is unexplainable given any base of knowledge yet acquired on Earth, it's more likely that you simply discovered a new law of physics, than that there is a Divine miracle that was performed in front of you."

asked: Do you believe in God, Creator?

"The more I look at the Universe, the less convinced I am that there is something benevolent going on."

"...Over three hundred years ago King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher of his day, to give him proof of the existence of miracles. Without a moment's hesitation, Pascal answered,"Why, the Jews, your Majesty-the Jews."

We don't have to speculate what Pascal meant when he gave this answer, because he took the trouble to spell it out. In his masterwork, Pensees, he explained that the fact that the Jewish people had survived until the seventeenth century-the time period in which he lived-was nothing short of a supernatural phenomenon.
Pascal is but one of many scholars and students of Jewish history who have been awed by a story that seems inexplicable by the ordinary rules of logic. When Arnold Toynbee completed his classic ten-volume analysis of the rise and fall of human civilizations, A Study of History, he was troubled by only one seeming refutation of his universal rules governing the inexorable decline of every people on earth. Only the Jews had survived, in defiance of Toynbee's carefully reasoned analysis. So Toynbee proclaimed the Jews nothing more than"a vestigial remnant," a people destined soon to perish..."

The Miracle of Jewish History | History News Network

 

[ding]

"The more I look at the Universe, the less convinced I am that there is something benevolent going on."

The Jews did not see God as tyrannical. They found meaning in suffering. Unlike the premise of this thread.

"From the eighth to the sixth centuries B. C., during which Israel and Judah tottered before the aggressive power of Syria, Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon, the prophets found meaning in their predicament by seeing it as God's way of underscoring the demand for righteousness. God was using Israel's enemies against her. The experience of defeat and exile was teaching the Jews the true worth of freedom. Another lesson was that those who remain faithful in adversity will be vindicated. Stated abstractly, the deepest meaning the Jews found in their Exile was the meaning of vicarious suffering: meaning that enters lives that are willing to endure pain that others might be spared it. "the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.""

07 Judaism

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Whatever set these people off...

It's sort of pathetic. Look at the thread. How it starts out. What is addressing and look how those people jump in and down the drain it goes.

Sad, pathetic, creepy, and weird.

 

[Hawkins]

It only shows that he is fundamentally brainwashed, he's even against simple logic.

If God is evidenced, while there's a covenant between God and men saying that men need faith to be saved, then how can men be saved?!

This Neil needs to answer the above question first before he speaks.

More complicatedly, he is brainwashed to think that humans rely on evidence to get to a truth. It's a very seem-to-be-scientifically-logical but fallacy. Humans don't rely on evidence to get to truth. Do you have the evidence that Biden had the majority vote in 2020 before you call him a presisdent? You don't, and you don't need to, and you actually CAN'T! This Neil doesn't live in our reality!

 

[ding]

Whatever set these people off...

It's sort of pathetic. Look at the thread. How it starts out. What is addressing and look how those people jump in and down the drain it goes.

Sad, pathetic, creepy, and weird.

What are you yammering about? Put on your big boy panties for crying out loud.

Tell me about your time at Harvard and MIT.

 

[zaangalewa]

"The more I look at the Universe, the less convinced I am that there is something benevolent going on."

What's the same as to say: "The more I look at me, the less convinced I am that there is something benevolent going on."

But how comes that [a part of] the universe is able to say so?

 

[Kilroy2]

Is it divine intervention that keeps it going or is it just luck combined with the ability to adapt to the environment (Intelligence) and the ability to procreate like rabbits (which passes along data to the next generation) ?

arguments can be made on both sides.

Enjoy it while you can as the answer will be revealed at some point.

 

[zaangalewa]

Is it divine intervention that keeps it going or is it just luck combined with the ability to adapt to the environment (Intelligence) and the ability to procreate like rabbits (which passes along data to the next generation) ?

arguments can be made on both sides.

Enjoy it while you can as the answer will be revealed at some point.

Only to make this clear: The absurde discussion "evolution vs creation" is a typical [neverending] discussion of native English speakers and specially an US-American naive discussion. Very most people in the world - nearly all Christians for example (except some very strange sectarians) see not any problem to combine the really scientific theory of evolution with god's creation. Creation and evolution are in general totally different things. Example: Creation is able to create evolution. But evolution is not able to evolve creation. So how makes "evolution" that anything is existing at all without "creation" (=The whole is more than the sum of its parts).

It's by the way better at all not "to believe" in evolution before to believe in Darwinistic racism. Most people who speak in the name of Darwinism have extremely stupid and dangerous ideas which have not really something to do with evolution. Example: The first time it was spoken from "survival of the fittest" was in the 5th edition of Darwins "origin of the specieses". This idea came from the philosopher Spencer. All editions before had been only absurde scrap. But even this idea is wrong - or better to say: is not fully true. It survives just simple what survives. Example: Human beings with a blue skin or with feathers instead of hairs would survive - even if a blue skin would be totally superflous and feathers would not be better than hair. It survives everything what fits - and also everything what is superflous as long as an organism has enough energy to produce and to near superfluous biological stuctures. Deer antlers for example. If something exists then we are able to use it. Deer antlers for rivalry battles for example. But deer antlers are not used for a fight in case of survival. A deer is boxing.



I was by the way astonished that I was automatically on the side of the deer when I saw this video the first time - and not on the side of the human being who is a member of my own species. I guess this has to do with a feeling for unwritten inborn natural rights (=god given rights). Also a deer has rights.

 

[Votto]

My simple question is, how are we earthlings so lucky to survive w/o being blown to bits by an asteroid or any of the millions of things that can go wrong and destroy the entire earth in no time flat?

That's according to the science that DeGrasse subscribes to that is.

How are we this lucky?

Why are we this lucky?

Because the earth is not the 13th planet

Duh!

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.