Does God Exist?

I guess it's crazy for me to keep coming into this thread hoping there's been some resolution.

 

You mean we really might find the answer here?

 

To guerillabedlam: I guess there are some aspects of religion, but it's mainly how you relate and relationships with others in daily life.

To BlackBillBlake: Ethics lacks a relationship with God.

 

HA!

http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/cavalier/80130/part1/sect3/Aquinas.html

 

In reality there is no "best intent" in "science", in of itself it is not bad or evil but the problem comes with mankind decisions on how to use his "science".

Most would agree that there have been many great "scientific" discoveries that, by the way they have used, have turned out to be not such a great idea.

God or no, it has been said that mankind's "scientific" maturity has outstripped his emotional maturity to use that "science" wisely.

 

That thread would be called, god exists or god does not exist. This thread, does god exist, leaves us to question and discuss so I would say that particular hope is misplaced.

 

Is mankind responsible for malaria? No it is not but for the massive damage it does, mankind is responsible. Here is an article from wikipedia:

Prevention
An Anopheles stephensi mosquito shortly after obtaining blood from a human (the droplet of blood is expelled as a surplus). This mosquito is a vector of malaria, and mosquito control is an effective way of reducing its incidence.
Methods used to prevent malaria include medications, mosquito elimination and the prevention of bites. There is no vaccine for malaria. The presence of malaria in an area requires a combination of high human population density, high anopheles mosquito population density and high rates of transmission from humans to mosquitoes and from mosquitoes to humans. If any of these is lowered sufficiently, the parasite will eventually disappear from that area, as happened in North America, Europe and parts of the Middle East. However, unless the parasite is eliminated from the whole world, it could become re-established if conditions revert to a combination that favours the parasite's reproduction. Furthermore, the cost per person of eliminating anopheles mosquitoes rises with decreasing population density, making it economically unfeasible in some areas.
Prevention of malaria may be more cost-effective than treatment of the disease in the long run, but the initial costs required are out of reach of many of the world's poorest people. There is a wide difference in the costs of control (i.e. maintenance of low endemicity) and elimination programs between countries. For example, in China—whose government in 2010 announced a strategy to pursue malaria elimination in the Chinese provinces—the required investment is a small proportion of public expenditure on health. In contrast, a similar program in Tanzania would cost an estimated one-fifth of the public health budget.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria

 

Ethics and morality are human systems of concerns about right and wrong conduct. Nothing to do with god beyond the fact that we claim these concerns as a matter to be determined authoritatively through rules or stings of conscience or whatever. It is moralizing or the attempt to lord over. I don't think those issues have any deep philosophical meaning as the sorting out of right and wrong conduct never ends. However you can only be as you are and you can recognize yourself.

 

That's a bit of a sweeping statement. Many religious people would claim religion is the source of their ethics.

But ethics can and does exist independently of religion.

 

I find congruence in science and religion at the point of observation. Religion apprehends relationship to subjective experience and science the objective world. Religion is esoteric or relating to the inner world of a person. Science is exoteric relating to the outer world we share.

Introspection provides a kind of bifurcated attention wherein our observational scientist or inquisitor examines the contents of ones own mind and emotions. You can hear yourself speak as an unobserved observer.

 

I totally agree ethics is independent of religion. But when there's no people around. It's either just you or you and God.

 

mi·rac·u·lous

məˈrakyələs/

adjective

1. 
   
   
   
   occurring through divine or supernatural intervention, or manifesting such power.
   
   
   
   Miraculous refers to something that apparently contravenes known laws governing the universe:
   
   
   
   
   It is really a problem when we use the term miraculous in the way as the above definitions. The miraculous and natural scientific explanations are not compatible. Now perhaps some scientists use the term miraculous in a loosey goosey way or scientists who have a religious affiliation choose to use the term miraculous for phenomena that seems beyond their comprehension but they are not really compatible.
   
   
   This is not nitpicking semantics in my estimation either. We often call common, ordinary, easily explainable phenomena such as childbirth and winning sporting contests 'miracles' but I think most Christians who believe in the miracles of Jesus beyond metaphor and allegory would conclude that the 'miracles' of Jesus are of a different variety than the 'miracles' of the aforementioned examples.
   
   
   

 

Agreed. Science is just a gathering term. I've been arguing the same earlier in other threads

Only some scientific inventions. Not science as a whole And even some of those dangerous scientific discoveries (nuclear power for example) can have very positive uses. But I think this is evidently a good example of science where we have to really watch it

 

Ok, glad I brought it up then. I guess I picked the wrong word, maybe wondrous was more suitable.

 

There's also me and my environment, me and nature.

 

And that nicely illustrates the need for religion and ethics. The "biological imperative" is a blind, mindless force in nature which induces us to reproduce and spread our genes before we die. As Dawkins puts it, "we are survival machines--robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes." (The Selfish Gene) From a Darwinian standpoint, the path of evolution is not "progress", only change. Thus the development of conscious beings who can debate the existence of God on internet forums is a fluke, and if it hadn't happened, there'd be something else. No big deal. If doin' what comes naturally is the most meaningful existence to you, go for it! Personally, I think there's more to life than that. Humans are unique in nature in having the ability to thwart nature's call (often at our peril), to practice monogamy and celibacy, to "cast our seed upon the ground", to prevent and terminate pregnancies, etc., and we have the ability to make choices about these things, Even Dawkins acknowledges that the evolution of cultural memes is where the action is in human development. That part of the study of evolution has been relegated to the "soft" sciences: psychology, sociology, and history, and to the humanities which deals with the "why" questions. Interestingly, O.W. Wilson, the distinguished Harvard evolutionary biologist (and atheist), thinks that the humanities are critically important to our future. In the next few decades, he says, advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics will present new ethical challenges concerning the extent to which we want to re-engineer ourselves or become subservient to our robots. He says: "Now we are talking about a problem best solved within the humanities and one more reason the humanities are all-important" (emphasis mine). He devotes a chapter to "The All Importance of the Humanities", and concludes his book with the sentence: "If the heuristic and analytical power of science can be joined with the introspective creativity of the humanities, human existence will rise to an infinitely more productive and interesting meaning." I meant "meaningful" in this latter sense.
(P.S, I should acknowledge that Wilson's view about religion sound like a composite of yours, Relaxx's and Mr. Writer's. Just shows that distinguished thinkers are fallible.)

 

Biological Imperative may explain why we have religion and ethics but a biological imperative does not illustrate a need for religion and ethics. The fact you quote atheists to explain aspects of the biological imperative makes it seem rather contradictory in the way you frame your assertion.

 

I thought it was interesting that the definition that was provided said: "Miraculous refers to something that apparently contravenes known laws governing the universe".

Personally I have never thought of Miracles as being outside the the laws governing the universe. God just knows the the laws that govern the universe better than we do and thus can do things that, at least to us, apparently contravene the laws governing the universe.

 

How do you acquire this apparent insider information?

 

Our chances are better in this thread than in others.

To say it's misplaced is to say that you understand the mind of God. If I were God I would choose this time and place on this forum to reveal my existence. It's as good a time as any, right? Or should we face the facts and admit we're really not ready for such a revelation as a species?