About creation.

"CATHOLICS take it literally."
Hikaru: wrong

 

"Beware the man of one book"

[Saint Thomas Aquinas]

 

How so?

I haven't ever met a Catholic that didn't believe in the Bible literally. I suppose I'm basing my statement on that.

 

My family is catholic, I can tell you my parents don't take the bible literally
Now you have an example...

 

Well there ya go! =)

 

sure, everyone would love to be in fantasy land... but i just think everone should cut the crap and wake up to reality... im sure there are enough clues out there for 'you' to see reason THERE AINT NO GOD, AND THERE NEVER WAS!!!

 

Popper

"Absence of proof is not proof of absence". [crichton]

When you have been everywhere in the universe,
then, come back here and show your absence of proof.

Or are you just a reactionary?
Someone says there is a god. So you say there isnt.

Occam

 

sure you can go on and belive in god...


but its all around us, the truth... i just watched an animal documentary all about evolution of Jaws and the way they kill... and soo on... iv seen alot of documentaries, just imagine how ridiculous it would sound if they said god has slowly realised his initial designes of jaws werent very successfull, so he decided to slowly make them different without anyone knowing...
trully, religion is there for some people. ok. but the truth is all around us...

its like, can you imagine lions beliving and study a "god" to try and get into "heaven", NO. we live to survive, and breed.
Humans are just animals the same as lions or ducks, or cows... so us beliving in this stuff is as silly as trying to imagine some ducks and cows trying to belive in this stuff.. no difference. your an animal... nothin special. ok
its just humans, who have created these beliefs...
try and look at it on a larger scale...

 

like occam said, we don't KNOW what there is or isn't. but we can observe that the speculations of organized belief, in their finer detail are a bit of a long shot. really any finely detailed expectations about the nontangable, are (long shots), simple because the possibilities approach infinity, while the number of beliefs, and the most popular of those don't really differ all that greately, are finite in number.

that's for the accuracy of the spceulations of belief. the likelyhood of something, if not many somethings, nontangable, if not neccessarily all powerful or any of that, are considerably greater.

it would be hard for me to put a number on that probability but i do know what i have experienced not only feeling but how things tend somehow to work out in accordance with that feeling.

this and not the mumbo jumbo of organized belief of any flavour, is what convinces me there is something.

the probabilities on the other hand, along with my own experiencing of it, convince me that beliefs as we know them, and certainly the most popular and dominant of them, maybe just don't have it quit on.

popper, you've watched documentarys. i've lived out in the woods.
this is the difference between a cat and a picture of a cat.

i'm not saying a picture can't be accurate, but it still ain't a cat.
neither for that matter, are documentarys guaranteed to be rigourously accurate. especialy when they are ment to entertain, as they generaly are.

=^^=
.../\...

 

Popper

Occam is an agnostic ..Not a theist or an atheist.
And does not disagree with the essence what u say above.
And agrees with themnax in his comments

He asks you, to ask yourself, how evolution does what it does.
Well it would be a product of all the laws of reality working together
would it not? U know, entropy, planks consant, newtonian motion,
quantum mechanics and many many more.

That such a number of laws can exist in such ballance as to result
in a observed universe of massive complexity, life and self aware beings
that can question those very laws.
Is not something occam considers a mater of random chance.

Occam gives no credance to creationism.. he believes the bang
happened 14 billion+ years back[a result of a much deeper history]
and everything has evolved according to the natural laws from that point.

Occam gives high probabillity to the idea that those natural laws in their
ballance are a product of direction.
That is the sum total of occams definition of what most call god. Direction.
And it is not a knowing, but a belief.

Those that say they know the form, motives, wishes and plans of
god of their choice simply dance to others tunes [religions]
cause they dont have one of their own.

Occam

 

Evolution doesn't contradict the potentiality of a " God " to be
I repeat that here... but it doesn't seem to have much impact on in the US debates

 

Spirit

Please clarify..
If you mean.. does evolution rule out a god?
Then as occam has said. Not at all.
They are not contradictory.

What is contradictory is
That a real god created reality
before a reality existed for a real god to exist in.
and
That god created 'the observable universe' [a part of reality only]
some several thousands of years back.
And created it to look like it evolved to the thing he created
in it,reasoning minds.

Occam

 

ofcourse, everthing would make much more sense if we just though that we were a little science experiment in a little dish of some "kids", and "out there" they all new perfectly well what "reality" was... somthing we cant comprhehend... so maybe we should just stop trying... for now anyway...

 

Just somthing i had written a a fair while ago::::


a theory that i keep thinkin up is this: right now when you talk and read this, your in a game. back in the "real world", people had invented games, nerochemistery had gone along way in this world. the games were primitive at first. then became realer and realer. until they had to take the next step up in gaming. nerological scientists were able to alter ones perception of time and awareness. incorporating this nerological discovery into video games, Was the next, and most likely last step up in video game history. games had been developed to produce a life time of experiences and consciouessnes awareness in a video game world itself, while in "the real world", the experience of around "80 years" only takes a few hours or less. you, me , anyone reading this, is playing the game. now you ask, memory. well, you thought you guys were right to play this new game that came out called "Earth". unlike other games, this particular game you and me are playing right now, had a warning. and was rated highly(R). the warning reads , "welcome to "Earth", playing Earth requires a 512terbit internet connection, allowing you (the player) to communicate and interact with ALL OTHERS playing "Earth". your memory of "THE REAL WORLD" will be blocked upon initiating a game of Earth. this creates a realistic gaming world, where you can start a new life and learn and experience things like never before. this is groundbreaking technology, folks. if you do not accept the agreement, than FACT you can NOT play.
religion introduced by the game developers after having some complications with a small number of people, who started to remember the "real world". religion was a good idea, it stoped the players from constantly searching and scanning there memories for information on the truth(which strangley isnt there, but this is hard to recognise without our memories.). religion was a great "Patch" for Earth. it put the players off the truth, well most of them. now im not sure, but maybe to win the game you must , not just learn the truth. but realise the truth.
i coud write a 5000 word assignment on this, in a way i wish i could. but i dont have time, and i myself are just scraping the surface of the infinite possibilities. my imagination of the possible truths limited to what i am, and this world. all i know is boxes, and clocks, fruit and televisions... the truth could be so far away from this that , we humans are forever searching....
then when you die, you wake up. and your "Real world" memories are returned to you as well as having a lifetime of experience behind you, and all it took was a few hours.
the steady slow timeline of human evolution, is now being sped up tenfold.
where a computer game could be a revolutanary thing. change the history and speed of the evolution of the mind.
this sudden burst of super inteligent, highly experienced, humans starts the beggining of some of the worlds most sophisticated technologies, previously thought IMpossible.
who would have thought that the greatest technology ever produced by man, was a computer game.
crime down, bullying down, within a couple months of the release of "Earth", the human behaviour had changed more than any other time in history. happyness and self saticfaction up, generousity and helpfullnes to others, all up.
this radical change in humans is all thanks to Earth. cause you see, each time you play Earth, your character is randomly generated. through sevral sessions of Earth, the user will will have been beatiful, ugly, fat, etc. its through these different perceptions, that has taught humans to no longer be mean, or selfish, Etc.
Who would have thought world peace would be the direct result of one of the the worlds biggest technology breakthroughs ever conceived,

 

Occam suggests a re-write

Religion was introduced by the a small number of people who were dissatisfied with their position in the game and created a new subreality based on the words of those same players. a fantasy within a virtual reality.
Religion was a good idea..it allowed players with no skills but lying to grab and hold great power in the game,
a ballance to the players with martial skills or skills of intellect.

Occam

 

Hey Occam

You are right, but

Religion takes also the role of helping humans when considering death
May it be a fear or something else,
How these inspirations are answered and used by any institution may have vary a lot during history.
Even in the earliest tribes, do you consider they were all liars?
We just need a reason to be, to give sense to death is giving sense to life, it makes people live, sometimes it is even not really clear to them. Because we do not often face death from close.
I bet death threat was much more feared long time before us.


Religion plays also a great role in how a group identity may be born, or given the birth to (which makes a difference)
It brings people closer. When you fear about such a thing that death is, you need to be with the living ones, may it be to communicate about death or not.
I recently a paper about football/soccer (actually any other sports), and definitly some pararells could be made in what happens to be rituals that makes us feel alive, and give us reasons to be so.

The first gods humans have concieved were at the scale of the tribe, let say 30 individuals. All the about spiritual beliefs and all rituals to makes us live and die belonged in the hearth of the 'followers' was building their group identity.
Any objects one of these guy wear to bring him 'luck' can be considered the same, when dedicated to the same 'luck bringer' by more than one individual.
I don't think those gods were initially supposed to have any moral or ethics. If it matters

Occam dam it I have a question!
What happened first?
Something that is real or reality itself?

LOL
(Uuups it makes 2, doesn't it look like what came first the egg or the chick story?)

Peace

 

I'm an atheist but I do respect religion a lot, as I try to understand it, I'm even interested in pursuing theological studies later in life.

The problem with some people is that they take the bible litteraly. An easy example is the 7 day creation, I don't that it should be taken litteraly, but symbolicaly. Why 7? 7 is the number of perfection and god is perfect. It is oubvious that the people who composed this part did not know the actual time, belief in a 7day creation is the most suitable for them.
And whoever said that catholics take the bible litteraly that is not true. I know many catholics who do believe that the 7 day creation is symbolic. And actualy, catholics are further from the bible IMO, they stick more to their dogmas than following the bible.

I believe that religion is human created, obiously to answer fundamental questions but also out of fear, fear of the unknown and what is going on in the world, nature, etc. A thunder/lightening is a scary thing, even animals get scared sometimes, it is natural for primitive humans to see the force of it, that something big must cause it.

It's late now, so I'm not sure if whatever I wrote is fluent.

 

Spirit

Quite right, occam was being very simplistic in his rewrite. Religion has
had many many sad episodes. But has also been of great help to billions and to understanding/knowledge held by humanity.

To answer your question. 'what happened first?'

If reality is eternal then there was no first.
=============
Infinite in duration means just that, 'without beginning or end'
Many might ask how that is possible..occam asks how anyone
would think it not. To occam it is far harder conceptualising
an absolute absence of reality..nothing exists
[then reality just popped into being or was created
by a god that just popped into being, or is god eternal]
no space no distance no mater no energy no time and not even a darkness for it all not to exist in.
FAR harder to conceptualise than mere eternity. We are real and
at least we have present reality to project back or forward from.
Absolute non existance of ANYTHING simply slips away before the mind
can begin to grasp it..
=============
Thus the end of your question 'something that is real or reality itself'
is rendered meaningless

Occam

Ps.. the answer to the chicken/egg one is 'reptile egg'

 

My theory is that the god that created the universe is not the same as the god/gods who created us, i posted a topic about this called "the real gods" check it out.

my point is, we have a god who created us here on earth, but then the god who is the unfathomable, this is why answering such questions on reality is so hard.

Picture reality being drawn on a multi-dimensional piece of paper. Once that circle is drawn, it creates reality, a forever spiraling dimenson. This is why pi, is infinite and never ending, because the circle is repeating itself over and over again on the same track, slightly changing but always maintaining the same shape. Inside this dimension we have lesser gods, those which have harnassed the power of light and inter-stellar space and time travel. These are the gods which have created us.

Like I said, please refer to my post "The Real God" if you would like to further this discussion.

 

Well Occam,
To a reality to be (infinite or not, doesn't matter) you need a real SOMETHING to be
If nothing is real, there is no reality

As you defined reality, as everyhing that is real.
I agree with you
And I think I tricked you, and hope you see how

You wrote: What is contradictory: That a real god created reality
before a reality existed for a real god to exist in.

I just tell you can not say this is contradictory, it is not. If you do, you are making assumptions. You can not seperate the two things you want to seperate. Just my opinion of course