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Religion also brings comfort to people. It is no different than someone who gets a cat or hides in books.
I realize this isn't the point of your post, and it's a side question. I am genuinely curious about this though. If religion is Linus' blanket just like pets or habitual, escapist reading, what do you think of religious people (I mean deeply, devoutly religious) who still have pets or read for escape? Do you think that religion serves the same function or a different function with similar effects (calming people, allowing them an alternative reality for a while like reading, etc.). I want to make it clear that I'm not asking sarcastically. Maybe I need to start a new thread. I'm really curious about this. I mean, what role do protheist- or neutral- agnostics or atheists think religion plays in people's lives?
I think you're right about uniting people (for better or worse), but is that the sole purpose? Or is it about calming (meditation/prayer) or escaping reality or something else entirely? Just curious.
I realize this isn't the point of your post, and it's a side question. I am genuinely curious about this though. If religion is Linus' blanket just like pets or habitual, escapist reading, what do you think of religious people (I mean deeply, devoutly religious) who still have pets or read for escape? Do you think that religion serves the same function or a different function with similar effects (calming people, allowing them an alternative reality for a while like reading, etc.). I want to make it clear that I'm not asking sarcastically. Maybe I need to start a new thread. I'm really curious about this. I mean, what role do protheist- or neutral- agnostics or atheists think religion plays in people's lives?
I think you're right about uniting people (for better or worse), but is that the sole purpose? Or is it about calming (meditation/prayer) or escaping reality or something else entirely? Just curious.
I agree it is a good question. I think it does need a thread of its own. I think that in all cases that it gives someone a place to belong. A place to feel welcome. Think of one of the major things they say all the time "God forgives all", with that being said who wouldn't feel welcome? No matter what you have done in your past you are welcome to be a part of this group and start new?!? That's awesome. Tell me how many people can say they have never asked for a fresh start? I know I have several times. Now I know better.
For those that are religious and still escape into books and have companion pets, I think it is a place to feel welcome among their own kind and maybe find some that are like them. Like finds like, get enough people who feel, believe or like the same thing and you will find a group, club, organization, or yes even a religion. This forum is a great example of that, most people on here either have a message they want to share, or want to learn.
if you make a thread about this topic let me know. I think it would be very interesting.
I realize this isn't the point of your post, and it's a side question. I am genuinely curious about this though. If religion is Linus' blanket just like pets or habitual, escapist reading, what do you think of religious people (I mean deeply, devoutly religious) who still have pets or read for escape? Do you think that religion serves the same function or a different function with similar effects (calming people, allowing them an alternative reality for a while like reading, etc.). I want to make it clear that I'm not asking sarcastically. Maybe I need to start a new thread. I'm really curious about this. I mean, what role do protheist- or neutral- agnostics or atheists think religion plays in people's lives?
I think you're right about uniting people (for better or worse), but is that the sole purpose? Or is it about calming (meditation/prayer) or escaping reality or something else entirely? Just curious.
This is a good posting subject. When I talked of religion being 'nonsense' I was talking about whether it stacked up, evidentially as a reasonable thing to believe as true. Whether or not we should believe it, true or not, for the benefits it brings is another question.
By the way. No need to apologize for any demonization. That sort of thing happens all the time. Atheists do it to religion, too, though they can usually give a sort of case for it. The main thing ere is to explain why the accusations about atheism wanting to do all sorts of things aren't right and taking the points on board.
First off, I don't think anyone finds wikipedia a reliable source for accurate info. Second, I have read several papers on it and what they claim as evidence is questionable at best.
What specifically do you find questionable about the evidence discussed in the primary literature - either those listed in the web page I linked to or the ones you found on your own?
Kind of strange you'd respond to my post where I mention that you often make sweeping vague claims that you have to retract with yet another vague sweeping claim that is probably not going to pan out when you have to back it up with specifics.
First off, I don't think anyone finds wikipedia a reliable source for accurate info. Second, I have read several papers on it and what they claim as evidence is questionable at best. I don't doubt the big bang theory, just find it funny how it has questionable evidence, not even empirical and yet you all accept it as the truth. Explain to me how a big bang occurred from nothing? And don't give me that theory on Gravity crap either. Nothing comes from nothing. I need something.
And the whole big bang leading to a random anomaly that spawned life. Give me a break.
Science can't even find their missing link they have been looking for since Darwin. I'm not denying evolution, just some of their theories on it.
You are summarily uninformed. Don't just jump onto the common-man techno-illiterate perspective that Wiki-anything is always and entirely useless. It is exactly as useful and accurate as it's source material, which is almost always reviewable! As well, science will ALWAYS accept that there are many unanswered questions, silly!! No-one has ever claimed that the Big Bang was an absolute, only that the evidence we can now clearly see, and our predictions, seem to reliably ome true. Versus, let's say, the predictions that an Insta-Poofy 6-day Genesis/Creation event would predict.
The impossible population dynamics, the lack of genetic diversity such a folly would have created, the odd problems of other contemporaneous cultures who did not experience nor document any such desert-bound tribulations. Seems the bible's localized authors had a very limited world-view, huh? Hey! I know! Let's go talk to the far more advanced Chinese & Japanese historians of the day (who, also oddly, did not EVER document any global inundation flood! What nonsense, and yet.... we willingly feed it to our kids? Great! No wonder America ranks second from the bottom on a list of 40 countries as regards their scientific and skeptical thinking abilities!)
Now then, to your so-called points: There is no Missing Link ,as in a half-cat, half-dog, the cat having thoughtfully given birth to the dog overnight. What incessant tripe, and purposefully dismissive and willfully misguided and ignorant to boot. BTW, you and I are The Missing Link, since we measurably continue to evolve (defined as continuous changes in our DNA genome, en-route to acumulated changes and the resulting outwards phenotypical changes... oh well.). We're measurably different than our predecessors were 150 - 250 years go. Go figure, huh?
We do, in fact, have a growing continuum of fossil forms that we're uncovering on a relentless basis, and we do also now find that pretty reliable & predicted (!!!) transition in DNA genomic information. Studies that you so baselessly refer to as "inconclusive" are in fact now-scientifically ancient studies based on physical measurements, bone shapes, etc, that were simply based on comparative anatomy and skeletal forms. Not so any more, even though that method did provide some sketchy basics. Especially since the basic "theory" has proven, in fact, to be true, via DN and other co-related data & studies.
Now that we're often able to pull the DNA of some of these artifacts, all the unenlightened mystical mumbo-jumbo versions fall by the wayside. That demonstrable and irrefutable lineage also predicts (remember that critical word; it's a key element in the Scientific Method...) what we should find next, and to date, that's exactly what's happened.
NOTE to junior scientists and scientific demonizers alike: The science of Evolution does not mandate that this aging earth should provide, for our pleasure, all nicely toe-tagged and labelled, an exact presentation of each species expansion. However, we're not idiots; when you see, let's say, a 1969 BMW 1600ti (I owned one), and then jump forward to, oh let's say, a 2009 BMW coupe, do you think we might be able to find some absolute family identities, like, for instance this on each model...
BMW 1600 ti - Motor des Rallye-Werkswagens von Helmut Bein | Flickr - Photo Sharing! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernd-loos-fotografien/5076228664/ - broken link)
And so on... Family resemblances, plus those little key indicators, like patent numbers plastered all over the place, etc. Actually, a good lineup of an organism's DNA map is far more unambiguous and non-refutable (if you accept normal common sense and statistics, and so forth...) than anything we might find in the auto industry. But you get the point. It's not some "guessy-wishy" THEORY thing (your use of that old, scientifically illiterate excuse is also telling. Surely you know better... Hmmm... perhaps not.).
PS: since you mention credible links, do go look up "Matriarchal mitochondrial tracing", and then... (OMG) read it with an open mind. No, wait... I'll do it for you: no excuses now! Yah only HazTahReedzIt!
(provides a case history for us looking back with complete accuracy; sorry!)
4) The following description pretty much sums it up...
"The results of the study also suggest that humanity was once comprised of a relatively small number of individuals (as few as 2,000, according to another study cited by the researchers). This was suggested because there are very few matrilineal lineages present today that split during the first 100,000 years of our species’ history, likely because they they died out or never developed in the first place.
If there had been many more individuals alive at that time (with descendants alive today), scientists would expect to see more different types of lineages in Africa. This is what happened during the second 100,000 years of human history, with as many as 40 different matrilines at the time that humans left Africa to spread to the remainder of the world.
As many of us know now, there is a multitude of current matrilines because of our enormous population explosion in the past few thousand years. Note, however, that this hypothesis may change if researchers suddenly discover large amounts of new matrilines present in Africa which split from the main line in the first 100,000 years."
I could go on with many MANY more actual, peer-reviewed, accurate and reproducible links. In all of them, the logic and conclusions are inescapable, unless one is stubbornly, arrogantly intransigent. And suffering from a terminal case of Selective Beliefs of Convenience™.
BTW, raison, "science" is not an all-knowing entity; it's a Tool. Get it right, why don't you?
Summary: Evolution is a fact, even if God designed it to be so. t's irrefutable, provable in any modern genetics lab, is easily seen via DNA lineage maps in the field or museum artifacts, and is overwhelmingly evident whether we're looking at slime molds, crickets, rats, apes or (gulp!)man!
So you tell atheists to pick a new term for our intellectual position, and then you complain when someone comes up with another term you don't like? Since when it is your decision?
Most atheists I know thought the whole idea to start relabeling ourselves as "brights" was pretty stupid, but I also don't think we have any obligation to satisfy you.
As an alternative, take a look at what NonStampCollector says:
Good. I'll be armed and waiting for them with other patriots to "refresh the tree of liberty".
what a horrible image, linking pagan blood cults to secular ideas such as liberty is unfoundedly unsound. Liberty isnt some monster that feeds on blood sacrafises. its far more complicated than that and it would do everyone good to educate themselves on the real aspects, functions, methods, etc of liberty instead of the oversimplified gun corporation ones.
You are summarily uninformed. Don't just jump onto the common-man techno-illiterate perspective that Wiki-anything is always and entirely useless. It is exactly as useful and accurate as it's source material, which is almost always reviewable! As well, science will ALWAYS accept that there are many unanswered questions, silly!! No-one has ever claimed that the Big Bang was an absolute, only that the evidence we can now clearly see, and our predictions, seem to reliably ome true. Versus, let's say, the predictions that an Insta-Poofy 6-day Genesis/Creation event would predict.
The impossible population dynamics, the lack of genetic diversity such a folly would have created, the odd problems of other contemporaneous cultures who did not experience nor document any such desert-bound tribulations. Seems the bible's localized authors had a very limited world-view, huh? Hey! I know! Let's go talk to the far more advanced Chinese & Japanese historians of the day (who, also oddly, did not EVER document any global inundation flood! What nonsense, and yet.... we willingly feed it to our kids? Great! No wonder America ranks second from the bottom on a list of 40 countries as regards their scientific and skeptical thinking abilities!)
Now then, to your so-called points: There is no Missing Link ,as in a half-cat, half-dog, the cat having thoughtfully given birth to the dog overnight. What incessant tripe, and purposefully dismissive and willfully misguided and ignorant to boot. BTW, you and I are The Missing Link, since we measurably continue to evolve (defined as continuous changes in our DNA genome, en-route to acumulated changes and the resulting outwards phenotypical changes... oh well.). We're measurably different than our predecessors were 150 - 250 years go. Go figure, huh?
We do, in fact, have a growing continuum of fossil forms that we're uncovering on a relentless basis, and we do also now find that pretty reliable & predicted (!!!) transition in DNA genomic information. Studies that you so baselessly refer to as "inconclusive" are in fact now-scientifically ancient studies based on physical measurements, bone shapes, etc, that were simply based on comparative anatomy and skeletal forms. Not so any more, even though that method did provide some sketchy basics. Especially since the basic "theory" has proven, in fact, to be true, via DN and other co-related data & studies.
Now that we're often able to pull the DNA of some of these artifacts, all the unenlightened mystical mumbo-jumbo versions fall by the wayside. That demonstrable and irrefutable lineage also predicts (remember that critical word; it's a key element in the Scientific Method...) what we should find next, and to date, that's exactly what's happened.
NOTE to junior scientists and scientific demonizers alike: The science of Evolution does not mandate that this aging earth should provide, for our pleasure, all nicely toe-tagged and labelled, an exact presentation of each species expansion. However, we're not idiots; when you see, let's say, a 1969 BMW 1600ti (I owned one), and then jump forward to, oh let's say, a 2009 BMW coupe, do you think we might be able to find some absolute family identities, like, for instance this on each model...
BMW 1600 ti - Motor des Rallye-Werkswagens von Helmut Bein | Flickr - Photo Sharing! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernd-loos-fotografien/5076228664/ - broken link)
And so on... Family resemblances, plus those little key indicators, like patent numbers plastered all over the place, etc. Actually, a good lineup of an organism's DNA map is far more unambiguous and non-refutable (if you accept normal common sense and statistics, and so forth...) than anything we might find in the auto industry. But you get the point. It's not some "guessy-wishy" THEORY thing (your use of that old, scientifically illiterate excuse is also telling. Surely you know better... Hmmm... perhaps not.).
PS: since you mention credible links, do go look up "Matriarchal mitochondrial tracing", and then... (OMG) read it with an open mind. No, wait... I'll do it for you: no excuses now! Yah only HazTahReedzIt!
(provides a case history for us looking back with complete accuracy; sorry!)
4) The following description pretty much sums it up...
"The results of the study also suggest that humanity was once comprised of a relatively small number of individuals (as few as 2,000, according to another study cited by the researchers). This was suggested because there are very few matrilineal lineages present today that split during the first 100,000 years of our species’ history, likely because they they died out or never developed in the first place.
If there had been many more individuals alive at that time (with descendants alive today), scientists would expect to see more different types of lineages in Africa. This is what happened during the second 100,000 years of human history, with as many as 40 different matrilines at the time that humans left Africa to spread to the remainder of the world.
As many of us know now, there is a multitude of current matrilines because of our enormous population explosion in the past few thousand years. Note, however, that this hypothesis may change if researchers suddenly discover large amounts of new matrilines present in Africa which split from the main line in the first 100,000 years."
I could go on with many MANY more actual, peer-reviewed, accurate and reproducible links. In all of them, the logic and conclusions are inescapable, unless one is stubbornly, arrogantly intransigent. And suffering from a terminal case of Selective Beliefs of Convenience™.
BTW, raison, "science" is not an all-knowing entity; it's a Tool. Get it right, why don't you?
Summary: Evolution is a fact, even if God designed it to be so. t's irrefutable, provable in any modern genetics lab, is easily seen via DNA lineage maps in the field or museum artifacts, and is overwhelmingly evident whether we're looking at slime molds, crickets, rats, apes or (gulp!)man!
Very good post my friend.
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