Religion – your views

Very inspiring way to continue conversation:
I disagree with your religion (feel offended). Let's talk.

im an atheist

blegh

this probably not the best place to involve record day.... but to hell with it, I'm undecided religously.

Aye not the best place to drop in short visits instead of lengthy healthy convo but hey. More posts right? and keep this post bumped a bit.

And now that Record Day has passed, I'd like to add my personal religion, or rather, prime belief for how I view life.

Everything that is alive is equal. Every human, every mouse, every ant, every microbe - all life is amazing and complex and that we have evolved to be able to communicate with each other but not with the rest as efficiently as we do, does not detract from that. I have the greatest deal of respect for all lifeforms and it pains me, sometimes very literally, to have to sometimes protect myself - my sanity, my safety, my health - by destroying what I believe to be so valuable. There are religions out there that care for these lifeforms: people wear only linnen sacks so as to not harm the creatures that normally inhabit clothing when we take it off; they wear no shoes so to not crush insects underfoot. I like where that custom stems from - a similar respect and love for all life as I have - but I do not agree with it.

The world is a harsh place. It simply is. If you are a microbe, you're gonna have to deal with temperature ranges, acidity, (a lack of) feed... If you're a microscopic insect living in clothes, you're gonna have to deal with the dangers of living there. If you're human, you have to deal with the dangers of being human. That doesn't mean that being extra careful and making the environment safer for fellow lifeforms is bad in any way - but it probably won't help as much as you hope it will. There's only so much one can do.

I have mentioned this before, but it is also my one and only reason that I dislike studying in the field that I do. I'm a microbiologist. We learn about how cells work, what processes take place in them, how cell communities work together, how different single-celled organisms work together to form colonies that sustain themselves to better understand ourselves, multi-cellular organisms... we play with them. And when the practical's over, we kill them. Flush 'em down the drain, cut off their feed, spike their pH-regulators. And it makes me sad. I know there isn't really a good alternative - there's no place for these creatures to go, but it makes me sad nonetheless. It's the one justification I give myself when I have to take care of pests in my household in favour of my own health: I spare the agony of your descendants by killing you before you breed too much. And even that justification makes me cry inside because of how ice cold it is.

Yes. I am sentimental. I love life. I love all life. Every cell is amazing. Every cell deserves a chance. Death is tragic, but unavoidable. Speeding up the point in time where life encounters death is horrendous, but necessary, sometimes.

These are my views. I hope I'm not alone in them.

I'm pretty much on the same page (though I'm sad to say I didn't used to be). Shutting down an organism like that, regardless how simple the organism may be, is a mental heave.

Shrooblord said:

Everything that is alive is equal

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Can you please explain what you mean by equal here?

I'm guessing that was meant more as a reflection on his own personal mindset, not as a statement on reality. Given that we know very little about how exactly consciousness works and that deciding the fate of a conscious being is controversial both when it comes to ethics and to our own sense of empathy, it's a very understandable mindset to have.

Adsolution said:

Given that we know very little about how exactly consciousness works and that deciding the fate of a conscious being is controversial both when it comes to ethics and to our own sense of empathy, it's a very understandable mindset to have.

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Exactly this. We don't know what it means to be concious. We don't know if a fly has any more thoughts than a cat or whether either have any thoughts at all. All I know is that with every lifeform I've ever encountered, observing them and them observing me, I've always felt like there 'was someone there', so to speak. Animals aren't the mindless beings many of us make them out to be. Not even plants are in my opinion - we just haven't noticed how to communicate with them properly yet and don't understand what they have in place for a nervous system (because there definitely are plant community interactions where a group of plants will start warning another group of incoming dangers, for instance).

To point out most effectively my view on life, I always take the example of a rock. Does a rock breathe? Does a rock feel, think or move? Does it procreate? A rock doesn't go by any of the criteria we use to classify something as 'alive', but there's already a problem there. We made those criteria up. We're the ones who decided when to call something alive or not and the fact of the matter is that we don't know exactly when to call something alive or not. Virusses are a good example. They're amazingly complex ... molecules? ... that definitely have their own agenda; they want to invade a host in a very specific way in order to procreate and evolve themselves. They have hinges and mechanisms, membranes and systems and they fly around in the open on their own accord. Yet we call them non-living. This amazes me.

Coming back to the rock, my point of view is that we simply do not know. We can't tell if a rock is alive or not because it's just so different to what we're used to. Maybe it is alive! Maybe it just has such a slow metabolism that it takes literally years to even take one breath. We can't tell! And since I do not know what to call alive and not, what to call concious and not, to judge whether or not something has a 'soul', I treat near to everything equal and treat it like it's just like me. We're all here living out our lives in whatever way we see most fit and some of us try to make the world a better place for others. I just try to give everything the space it needs to live and expect the exact same treatment returned to me.

PS
I always use the rock as a hypothetical - since I'm pretty convinced that rocks are not, in fact, alive, I don't actually treat them like they are... however, it's good to think about; how can you tell that it's not alive? Who's to say it's not so completely different to you and I that it's literally unrecognisable to us as a lifeform? Anyway, enough about rocks. I was talking about life.

The last few posts in this thread are really interesting.

There is really something spectacular about consciousness. Speaking still overall as an atheist (and I know that has no bearing on my argument whatsoever), I often wonder whether the multiverse itself is in some way 'conscious', as it does follow a similar and predictable reproductive system, that seems if nothing else kinda convenient.

Sometimes I wonder whether the notion of 'a creator' is as outlandish as many would make out. Sure, it's my personal opinion that praying to a divine being in a church and expecting results is quite silly, but the environment we are living in, and particularly consciousness itself, is so strange and inexplicable that until we do have answers there's really no way we rule out some kind of creative force beyond science. I personally support everything science has led us all to believe so far, but deep down I also believe there are fundamental questions such as "what exactly created the laws of physics themselves?" that science and technology will never be able to practically answer.

That's not to say that I believe in 'a creator', per se, but to rule out this notion based on the premise that science will one day explain everything , is I think pretty naive and idealistic.

I do not believe science will one day be able to explain everything. Quite the contrary. The more we find out, the more we find we still do not understand. This is one thing that makes science absolutely fantastic: it's an ever-learning field and expierence and (shouldn't) take easy shortcut answers like "that's just how it is" or "we'll never know" for truth. Science is almost organic in itself. It evolves, it betters itself, it grows in a tree-like form across all its subjects and expertises.

As for the entire cosmos being in some way concious, sure. I can totally see that being true. I view planet Earth as being one big organism with all its intricate systems and processes and us its cells, much like our own bacteria and cells (and the foreign ones we welcome or don't welcome in) live inside our own intricate ecosystem and they in turn live inside their own ecosystem of molecules living in their system of interacting nucleii and electrons... however far it goes down like this we do not exactly know yet. However far up it goes, I don't think is easy to find out. Will a bacteria have an existential crisis and figure out it lives in the intestine of a massive human being? I can't tell. Will we have one and figure out the Universe is itself alive? I'd like to compare it as just as likely.

Though I'd welcome the day that we realise something like that. It would just make everything so... perfect. It would make so much sense. But it's beautiful and wonderful regardless of that being so or not.

I'm happy to be alive. I'm happy to be concious and able to discuss this kind of view with you. I hope deeply in my heart that we are not the only ones capable of it. I wish that joy unto everything.

I couldn't find the right scene from the episode where Farnsworth discovers the formula that explains everything in the Universe, but this is close enough:

Hmm, something I've been wondering... would a Christian take more issue with a theistic Wiccan or an atheistic Satanist? Obviously it depends on the person, but I just wonder which might be considered worse between the practice of magic or the adulation of the Devil. Not sure where my own family would lie on it either.

I'm pretty sure most Christians would take more issue with a Satanist, because I don't think most Christians actually have a problem with Harry Potter. Now if you get down to the extremists, I'd say that it depends on the Christian.

How would you describe yourself, Candy? I don't recall.



Unrelated: Richard Dawkins is a very nice person that receives way too much hate.

Hmm. Having asked my family they're more inclined to take religious issue with the Wiccan, since the atheist is only 'paying lipservice' while the witch, no matter how well meaning, is trying to dabble in the occult. So I guess it's what side of the global liberal-conservative coin you fall on.

Me, I'm not Christian anymore, though I do believe in a Big Thingy. So... theistic agnostic I suppose. I end up calling myself 'schmiritual' since my main social groups are either very New Agey or the complete opposite, neither of which I can agree with

I find it interesting how many people share that viewpoint, 'theistic agnosticism' as you call it. Almost all of my friends in real life feel this way (except for one, who, within the last year or so has sided with atheism), wherein they believe in a creator, but that's it, they don't know any more than that. What I find so interesting about it is that they don't really believe in it for a sense of comfort or purpose, they believe in it either because, in the case of the Doldrums friend, they can't fully comprehend how evolution/natural selection works (Q: "The trees are too beautiful to have just evolved like this" A: "Look at them for what they are, beauty is subjective, we find them beautiful because they're an essential part of our world, we need them, they provide us with oxygen, the the most fundamental element necessary for our survival. We find them beautiful for the same reason we find members of the opposite sex to be beautiful, or why we find food tasty) or simply 'because' - they feel the need to provide answers where there are none currently, despite understanding everything science has taught us, right down to the notion of spacetime's beginnings at the Big Bang. I personally can't bring myself to think that way, it seems counter-intuitive and far too conditional, and as such I'm an atheist.

Hmm, not sure if I'd fall in either of those camps honestly. My Big Thingy isn't necessarily a creator, nor does it really provide 'answers'. As a concept it's a placeholder while, at the same time, having its own value. To be more specific, I see god as a guarantor of existence, the mind within which everything is percieved... but I'm also pretty casual about whether it exists or not. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a god/spiritual dimension to reality, nor would I be surprised if there was. I doubt I'll ever know and I don't really mind if it ends up just a projection of my sense of self onto my environment (which I think is probably the root of belief in deity amongst our species). Most theistic agnostics I know are in a similar place.

I don't really see what science has to do with the belief in a god, really, unless by 'god' you specifically mean the Judaeo-Christian one with all associated dogma taken into account - far from the only conception of deity amongst humans, let alone any other sapient species we might encounter. Science is a process, and our discoveries using it barely scrape the barrel by virtue of the universe being fucking huge. The human experience is limited, the transhuman's experience will also be limited, the next step after that will also be limited by virtue of it not being everything that is. Unless you're a solipsist, but eh.

Of course we don't have all the answers, and I don't see why that should necessarily have much bearing on spirituality.

Jewish Candy said:

I don't really see what science has to do with the belief in a god

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They're not really related, they only are in the sense that anything supernatural, by definition of the word, fails to pass through the scientific method. For a person like myself who lives through the means of being objective at every turn possible, pairing science (objectivity) with spirituality (subjectivity as if it were objectivity, a truth held only for oneself) seems conditional and therefore nothing more than an abstract sketch drawn on the corner of the canvas that contains our scientific tree of knowledge (no irony intended, I didn't notice that pun until after I wrote it) that attempts to, well...

Jewish Candy said:

My Big Thingy isn't necessarily a creator, nor does it really provide 'answers'. As a concept it's a placeholder

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Isn't the definition of a 'placeholder' in this context something which provides answers while we wait for the official ones? Not as an affirmation that these placeholders are correct, simply as a mental construct you may follow for whatever reason you feel suited? If that's the case, I guess you could say that in our 'hierarchy of knowledge' (there we go) I don't personally feel any need to draw on areas of the canvas we haven't yet branched out towards, even on some background layer that will be covered up by actual information when it arrives. I find the unknown too beautiful to be patronised in that way, and the only thing I find more beautiful than the unknown is knowledge.

What I have a bit of a hard time grasping is how spirituality or any kind of belief cannot inherently be projecting some kind of a solution, if even only temporary, if that's what you're saying.

Adsolution said:

They're not really related, they only are in the sense that anything supernatural, by definition of the word, fails to pass through the scientific method. For a person like myself who lives through the means of being objective at every turn possible, pairing science (objectivity) with spirituality (subjectivity as if it were objectivity, a truth held only for oneself) seems conditional and therefore nothing more than an abstract sketch drawn on the corner of the canvas that contains our scientific tree of knowledge (no irony intended, I didn't notice that pun until after I wrote it) that attempts to, well...

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Science ultimately is also subjectivity treated as objectivity - we are the ones compartmentalising and interpreting our environment, after all, and certain of us are trusted and trained to compartmentalise and interpret deeper levels of it - and it is no the lesser for this, though I appreciate the difference you are trying to highlight. Again, I think the clash of 'Science vs Religion' is a cultural thing and arose through the emphasis our religious authorities started to put on faith over the scientific method. Their intersection or lack of differs from place to place and time to time.

Adsolution said:

Isn't the definition of a 'placeholder' in this context something which provides answers while we wait for the official ones? Not as an affirmation that these placeholders are correct, simply as a mental construct you may follow for whatever reason you feel suited? If that's the case, I guess you could say that in our 'hierarchy of knowledge' (there we go) I don't personally feel any need to draw on areas of the canvas we haven't yet branched out towards, even on some background layer that will be covered up by actual information when it arrives. I find the unknown too beautiful to be patronised in that way, and the only thing I find more beautiful than the unknown is knowledge.

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I don't follow that a placeholder provides answers until the real ones come along, rather that it 'saves space' for them (though it's quite possible I'm misinterpreting what you mean by answers). Once it becomes contrary to evidence it can fuck off, and until then its ambiguity is a blessing and a satisfaction. The full sentence I wrote was:

As a concept it's a placeholder while, at the same time, having its own value.

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And I suppose I don't see using a word to describe something, or considering one of the possibilities that something could be, or finding a certain possibility satisfying, to be patronising to an inanimate concept like The Unknown. It shall have to speak for itself :wink: But joaks aside I ain't here to judge how you approach reality.

Didn't really expect to end up debating, silly me posting in the religion thread ops2:

Thinking about it, I may technically be better called an atheist in that I'm not too bothered about the existence of god or not, but that's not common usage.

Jewish Candy said:

Science ultimately is also subjectivity treated as objectivity - we are the ones compartmentalising and interpreting our environment, after all, and certain of us are trusted and trained to compartmentalise and interpret deeper levels of it - and it is no the lesser for this, though I appreciate the difference you are trying to highlight. Again, I think the clash of 'Science vs Religion' is a cultural thing and arose through the emphasis our religious authorities started to put on faith over the scientific method. Their intersection or lack of differs from place to place and time to time.

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Aye. In one way, you could say that those who accept the scientific method and what has been 'proven' through it are siding with the most seemingly accurate and flawless method we've since to date come up with (by far), which would probably be the most logical thing to do when seeking the truth.

Jewish Candy said:

I don't follow that a placeholder provides answers until the real ones come along, rather that it 'saves space' for them (though it's quite possible I'm misinterpreting what you mean by answers).

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By an answer, I mean anything that provides 'something' where there is nothing aside from a question.

Jewish Candy said:

Thinking about it, I may technically be better called an atheist in that I'm not too bothered about the existence of god or not, but that's not common usage.

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Realistically, whether you're a theist or an atheist, agnosticism is widespread among skeptics of both kinds, as it describes the ability to embrace or not to embrace the belief whilst knowing that there is no proof one way or the other. If someone believes in any kind of spirituality I wouldn't call them an atheist, as atheism moreorless rejects all that which is not proven by the scientific method as being scientific fact.