Does God exist? (19 Viewers)

[moll.]

Actually that's parochial altruism, something humans do as well.

Ok, so i had no idea what parochial meant.
After googling it, i'm now confused.
What exactly are you referring to?

 

[Kwayera]

Ok, so i had no idea what parochial meant.
After googling it, i'm now confused.
What exactly are you referring to?

If you can, have a read of this paper:

Choi, J. & Bowles, S. (2007) The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War. Science 318: 636-640

Abstract:

Altruism-benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself-and parochialism-hostility toward individuals not of one's own ethnic, racial, or other group-are common human behaviors. The intersection of the two-which we term "parochial altruism"-is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because altruistic or parochial behavior reduces one's payoffs by comparison to what one would gain by eschewing these behaviors. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to success in these conflicts. Our game-theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans, neither parochialism nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.

 

[$hiftyIceQueen]

How many animals do you know that attack each other for the heck of it?
Most of the time their either hunting, attracting a mate or defending territory. The only example i can think of is that certain monkeys attack and kill others for no apparent reason, but every single male monkey of that species does it, so you'd be condemning and entire species (or at least the male part of it) to animal purgatory.

Firstly; the whole 'if they kill someone, they die too' thing doesn't exist. Because in the after life you're supposed to life forever.

Secondly; by hurt i mean like the animals hitting one another, and its a sort of 'pay back thing'.
eg. if i hit you and you dont hit me back, then in the after life you will get to hit me back. Does that make sense?

 

[moll.]

If you can, have a read of this paper:

Choi, J. & Bowles, S. (2007) The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War. Science 318: 636-640

Abstract:

Oh, right.
So your original point was that i was wrong saying that it's for 'no apparent reason' that the monkeys were attacking each other?

 

[Kwayera]

eg. if i hit you and you dont hit me back, then in the after life you will get to hit me back. Does that make sense?

No.

 

[Kwayera]

Oh, right.
So your original point was that i was wrong saying that it's for 'seemingly no reason' that the monkeys were attacking each other?

Pretty much, yeah.

There's always a reason

 

[$hiftyIceQueen]

No.

It's like an 'eye for an eye' . You get punished/rewarded for everything you do.

 

[moll.]

Firstly; the whole 'if they kill someone, they die too' thing doesn't exist. Because in the after life you're supposed to life forever.

What are you talking about here?
I was talking about them going to purgatory/animal hell once they die. Of natural causes or otherwise.
I'm confused.
My brain's fried.

Secondly; by hurt i mean like the animals hitting one another, and its a sort of 'pay back thing'.
eg. if i hit you and you dont hit me back, then in the after life you will get to hit me back. Does that make sense?

Besides the fact that this just sounds like a supernatural version of 'eye-for-an-eye', didn't you say that they have a different set of rules to humans?

 

[DrFunk]

I believe from the evidence in the bible (please don't flame I recognise that this may not be evidence to alot of people) that man was made in God's image, seperating us from the animals. Which in my mind means that heaven is for humans, not animals which according to the bible man is to look after.

Evolution doesn't negate religion, nor does religion negate evolution. May I refer to science being the how and religion providing the why. I do however get very frustrated when many christians take the symbolism out of the bible and take it literally. Mainly in the creation, some take it to mean God created the world in 7 literal days we have today, rather than the much more reasonable explanation it took place in 7 time periods.

 

[HalcyonSky]

I believe from the evidence in the bible (please don't flame I recognise that this may not be evidence to alot of people) that man was made in God's image, seperating us from the animals. Which in my mind means that heaven is for humans, not animals which according to the bible man is to look after.

Evolution doesn't negate religion, nor does religion negate evolution. May I refer to science being the how and religion providing the why. I do however get very frustrated when many christians take the symbolism out of the bible and take it literally. Mainly in the creation, some take it to mean God created the world in 7 literal days we have today, rather than the much more reasonable explanation it took place in 7 time periods.

making troll accounts and posting token religious replies is getting kind of old

 

[nikolas]

We have no good reason to believe a God exists.

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

Firstly; the whole 'if they kill someone, they die too' thing doesn't exist. Because in the after life you're supposed to life forever.

Secondly; by hurt i mean like the animals hitting one another, and its a sort of 'pay back thing'.
eg. if i hit you and you dont hit me back, then in the after life you will get to hit me back. Does that make sense?

Lol Lennox natural justice argument that is concocted out of humans throwing a tantrum to the degree of "BUT THAT'S NOT FAIR!"

 

[KFunk]

Evolution doesn't negate religion, nor does religion negate evolution. May I refer to science being the how and religion providing the why. I do however get very frustrated when many christians take the symbolism out of the bible and take it literally. Mainly in the creation, some take it to mean God created the world in 7 literal days we have today, rather than the much more reasonable explanation it took place in 7 time periods.

What if the only valid questions are 'how' questions?

(In fact, to assume the validity of certain types of 'why' questions, e.g. those which seek a human brand of purpose in the universe, could be seen as question begging to some extent.)

 

[katie tully]

Well here is a valid how question.

How can we sit here and say that there are punishments for evil or bad animals, and for the good animals they get to frollic in the clouds.

I wonder if Bambi's mum went to animal heaven.

See this is my whole problem with the heaven thing. People don't want to accept that maybe we're just on this earth because we are, and that after death there is nothing. I asked the animal question, because I was interested to see whether people just said 'yeh animals go to that big zoo in the sky'. If they said no, I'd like to know why it's possible to believe that there is nothing more for animals when they die, but there is for us.

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

hey i got this website that you should all check out
its a movie and goes for 2 hours but its so worth watching
if you are really religious, um, dont watch it.
i dont agree with everything they say, but it really raises some issues
let me know what you think

there is supposed to be this second one called end game, but i havent seen it yet.


http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

... Oh for fuck's sake.

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

I believe in evolution but i dont believe humans and apes share a common ancestor for reasons which i cant be fucked writing up. Establishing the origin of a species is near fucking impossible.

I swear too much.

Cool how do you account for the frigging incredibly similar DNA? Like 99%?

 

[Darnie]

Cool how do you account for the frigging incredibly similar DNA? Like 99%?

lol. convergent evolution?
j/k

 

[city.sk]

Troll?
Please say yes. Because your understanding of evolution and cosmology is dismal at best.
But let's give a brief counter-argument:
There are millions of stars in the sky, and probably many more that we don't know about in far off galaxies. If we use our solar system as a rough guide, there would be tens or hundreds of millions orbiting bodies around these stars. So even were the chances of our planet being in the "Goldilocks" zone (the area with perfect heat and radiation levels for life) and being of large enough size and mass about 1 in a million, that would leaves several score of planets that are inhabitable.
In short: It's nothing to do with coincidence, it's simply inevitability.

And i don't even know why i bother anymore to be honest.

rofl. you think you are smart than Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton? let me give you some example about what they said about god.
“This most beautiful system [The Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” - isaac newton
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the god" - albert einstein
please, by using your little knowledge cannot find god, blind leads the blinds. sigh

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

rofl. you think you are smart than Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton? let me give you some example about what they said about god.
“This most beautiful system [The Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” - isaac newton
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the god" - albert einstein
please, by using your little knowledge cannot find god, blind leads the blinds. sigh

Way to quote mine and misrepresent Einstein.

Argument from AUTHORITY WOO. "They were good at Maths and Science thus their opinion on Religion is valid, too"

Idiot.

EDIT: Was Newton also right about Alchemy?

 

[inasero]

Well here is a valid how question.

How can we sit here and say that there are punishments for evil or bad animals, and for the good animals they get to frollic in the clouds.

I wonder if Bambi's mum went to animal heaven.

See this is my whole problem with the heaven thing. People don't want to accept that maybe we're just on this earth because we are, and that after death there is nothing. I asked the animal question, because I was interested to see whether people just said 'yeh animals go to that big zoo in the sky'. If they said no, I'd like to know why it's possible to believe that there is nothing more for animals when they die, but there is for us.

Well nobody can say definitively that there's "nothing more", but from a Christian perspective we believe that the Human species were created distinct from animals with the capacity for thinking and moral choices, in God's "image".

However it's open to speculation as the Bible doesn't really say much about it, so it's just one of the things where we'll have to wait to find out.