TheLightWithin
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Intriguing. Say more about this.
Does God really exist?
- Thread starter abdolhosseini
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Aupmanyav
Be your own guru.
I have never read of any western atheist like Richard Dawkins except Bertrand Russell in a small book of about 10 essays. My atheism is solely Hindu and Buddhist. So whether Dawkins accepts it or not does not affect me.
Show me some evidence, only then I would accept the possibility.
Kalama (or Kesamutti) Sutta:
"Thus, the Buddha named ten specific sources whose knowledge should not be immediately viewed as truthful without further investigation to avoid fallacies:
- Oral history
- Tradition
- News sources
- Scriptures or other official texts
- Suppositional reasoning
- Philosophical dogmatism
- Common sense
- One's own opinions
- Experts
- Authorities or one's own teacher"
Kesamutti Sutta - Wikipedia
I do not need to show you any evidence. You have stated that "there is no possibility of any gods". I say that god/s are a logical possibility.
Can you prove otherwise?
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru.
I do not go by possibilities, one is that the world is controlled by FSM.
I go by evidence, just a little, if you please.
I will not insist that you ask God to appear before me.
I go by evidence, just a little, if you please.
I will not insist that you ask God to appear before me.
..then, why did you say that "there is no possibility of any gods"?
talib-al-kalim
Well-Known Member
Wasn't this writing once new, then oral tradition, then became a scripture?I have never read of any western atheist like Richard Dawkins except Bertrand Russell in a small book of about 10 essays. My atheism is solely Hindu and Buddhist. So whether Dawkins accepts it or not does not affect me.
Show me some evidence, only then I would accept the possibility.
Kalama (or Kesamutti) Sutta:
"Thus, the Buddha named ten specific sources whose knowledge should not be immediately viewed as truthful without further investigation to avoid fallacies:
- Oral history
- Tradition
- News sources
- Scriptures or other official texts
- Suppositional reasoning
- Philosophical dogmatism
- Common sense
- One's own opinions
- Experts
- Authorities or one's own teacher"
Kesamutti Sutta - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
What word was translated to "Experts" and what were those people?
One must ask how literally the Buddha expected such advice to be followed? Even with modern publications and online resources, several subjects on this list could be a lifetimes work.
In general, though, I believe it to be good advice. It would seem that the Buddha realised that to find evidence you have to look at possibilities.
TheLightWithin
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I have never read of any western atheist like Richard Dawkins except Bertrand Russell in a small book of about 10 essays. My atheism is solely Hindu and Buddhist. So whether Dawkins accepts it or not does not affect me.
Show me some evidence, only then I would accept the possibility.
Kalama (or Kesamutti) Sutta:
"Thus, the Buddha named ten specific sources whose knowledge should not be immediately viewed as truthful without further investigation to avoid fallacies:
- Oral history
- Tradition
- News sources
- Scriptures or other official texts
- Suppositional reasoning
- Philosophical dogmatism
- Common sense
- One's own opinions
- Experts
- Authorities or one's own teacher"
Kesamutti Sutta - Wikipedia
This list basically rules out listening to anything.
Now to me it makes sense to say it more like this "Take everything with a grain of salt, even this list, because there could be counter evidence" That would seem fine.
Nobody is ever going to be able to exhaustively research everything though, and if you try, the sources you find may simply be other examples of everything on that list.
Maybe it would make even more sense to say "Everything on this list has examples of multiple opposing arguments, therefore don't take any of them as the last word" or something like that.
Do you mean evidence that life popped into existence from non life. If you have any real evidence for this, there is $10 million prize money waiting for you.
Evolution 2.0 Prize: Unprecedented $10 Million Offered To Replicate Cellular Evolution
TheLightWithin
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I'm not sure that's quite the argument made from evolution. It's more about development. It has to do with abiogenesis and molecules forming that become more complex and replicate.
I know researchers base their ideas from evidence. It is not my area of expertise, far from it, so I do not know how they would deliver evidence to the people behind that link you posted.
I am going to make an assumption here, forgive me if I have it wrong, but I'm going to make the assumption, based partly in memory of I think I have seen your posts before, but that maybe you favor literal books of Genesis creationism over evolution or something in your own beliefs, and you look at something like this and say see, those evolutionists are so silly, they are offered $10million dollars but they CANT GET IT because they are SO WRONG or THEY REALLY HAVE NO PROOF of something like that.
(not withstanding that there are theistic evolutionists who believe in God, realize evolution is real, and just recognize that all the cellular chemistry involved is just how God did things)
Why don't creationists collect the prize themselves however? I mean isn't creation ex nihilo more or less that?
Where is their evidence? Why don't they submit it and collect the prize?
Forgive me if I misunderstand your position, I may well have, I apologize in advance if I have.
Just look at the link you provided and follow the other links it leads to for more nuanced information.
I looked at your link. I don't know if their motive is to somehow prove or disprove evolution once and for all or anything like that, maybe it is, but I think they are looking for something more specific they think they can apply to AI And other things.
According to the article, what they are offering the prize for is specifically this:
CHICAGO, Jan. 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- An incentive prize ten times the size of the Nobel – believed to be the largest single award ever in basic science – is being offered to the person or team solving the largest mystery in history: how genetic code inside cells got there, and how cells intentionally self-organize, communicate, then purposely adapt.
That is from the link you offer above. (Evolution 2.0 Prize: Unprecedented $10 Million Offered To Replicate Cellular Evolution)
In that article it offers another link Evolution 2.0 a quote from there
The new international competition is intended to speed breakthroughs around the still unknown process of cell communication that organizers predict can turn off cancer, allow robots to think for themselves and even create new plant life to combat climate change.
The Evolution 2.0 Prize is designed by Chicago engineer-turned-marketer-turned-business consultant Perry Marshall and his A-list team of partners. They include top genetic experts from Harvard and Oxford, plus a diverse group of investors from private banking, healthcare and biotechnology, software, real estate, publishing and more.
Their question seems to be pretty technical and something more specific and addressing current problems like medical treatments than a question like "how life popped from nothing"
That article from the last link offers another link
Evolution 2.0 AI & Origin of Life Challenge, $10M Prize | HeroX
Where did life and the genetic code come from? Can the answer build superior AI? The #1 mystery in science now has a $10 million prize.
www.herox.com
Now THERE they are at least starting out their intro by framing this more as the broader question of the origins of life... however, read on. The link directly above contains the specific guidelines for submission of the solution to the highly specific question of encoding and communication between cells. If you read through the article at the herox.com link you will see more what question specifically they are asking, what they are looking for in terms of evidence for their prize, and what their requirements are for making a submission.
Ultimately they are framing it as an information question, they actually are transparent about that early on.
But I do not think they are trying in any way to create a situation that bolsters an anti-evolution argument just because someone has not yet claimed their prize. I think, my impression from reading, is that they take for granted that evolution is reality like most scientists do, AND they want to understand more about the mechanics of how things occur on a cellular level so they can imitate and utilize for things like AI. They mention that in their paragraphs.
Here's another link that puts some of their wish list in a nutshell and has links on it. Some of those links are the same I already put in this post
The Evolution 2.0 Prize
EVOLUTION 2.0 $10 MILLION PRIZE WHAT IT IS: Code is essential for replication and for life. Code is needed for cells to have instructions to build
evo2.org
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otherbrother
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My comment before this ( in response to this —
2. and 3. may not be wrong, but 1. certainly is not all right. There are moments in life when we have a legitimate, non-sick, need to summon up support when and where it seems absent or lean. A view of the deep zone (or other areas) of hidden resources is sometimes aided by personification. —
(my reply) got a surprised emoji face, probably because I admitted that points 1 and 2 have more merit than we faith practitioners would like to think.
But my MAIN POINT in regards to (mistaken, incorrect) point 3, was that if one believes there is a potential to gather up hidden resources from reality, via intuition or “noesis (sp?)”, then THAT seems like a “God” (or G!d?) Function which justifies personification in order to facilitate it. If “God” is useful, why not be happy with an operational definition of “God?” God is what we pray to and get inspired by and access previously unknown means of adaptation.
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The bottom line seems to be, could evolution happen by natural causes, or does it need God? If God created life, there would probably be no natural causes, ?God just created life.
I truthfully believe the variety and complexity of life we see today, needs God.
The skeletal system is possibly one of the most complex mechanical machines known to man. It is just a bunch of levers connected together for movement. The best robotic engineers in the world struggle to replicate our body movements. They are getting closer, but every past and future advancement will be the result of intelligent design.
The only way engineers can replicate bilateral symmetry, is to set up a row of machines to make left hands. It is then easy to make more left hands. If engineers then want right hands, they would have to make new drawings, and reset all the machines. Making mirror image hands requires intentional design.Robotic engineers have designs they can copy, we have had basic engineering skills for thousands of years. The real advancement in robotic engineering is thanks to supercomputers. Engineers might use a few thousand components to make a robot. Imagine having to do a far more advanced job with thirty trillion cells and no blueprint to work from. Our bodies work from infancy to adulthood, engineers could not even begin to do this.
How would this be possible without God?
We modeled early cranes and steam.shovels after skeletal systems, until we discovered hydraulics from I guess God made spiders.
It still seems to me the laziest answer is an all powerful, all knowing, invisible being did it all...well easiest a swer us humans can find to stop everyone from.thinking about it.
It still seems to me the laziest answer is an all powerful, all knowing, invisible being did it all...well easiest a swer us humans can find to stop everyone from.thinking about it.
TheLightWithin
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I don't understand the question.
I'm not an atheist, but my reasons for that are only tangentially related to the argument from design.
All we really know for sure is that our bodies do exist and function in complex ways, and that our species has existed for a long time, but that other life forms existed before we did, for a very, very, very long time.
There are theories about the hows and whys.
Systems developed and survived and reproduced because they worked well enough to continue to survive and reproduce, and ever more complex systems developed and if they survived well enough to put more of their genes into the future, those genes built the next generation. And so on.
It is perfectly plausible to posit a conscious deliberate intelligence designing all this. Why not, right?
It is also plausible to challenge or deny that claim for lack of more clear cut demonstrable evidence.
It is also plausible to acknowledge that very little is known about a first cause.
Just because it feels hard to imagine a complex system designing itself without help from intelligence above, doesn't mean anything in terms of conclusive evidence one way or the other.
It is okay to admit we don't know.
Humanity has had some amazing inventions, we went into space; but we could not make a robotic version of ourselves. The skeletal system is only a bunch of levers connected together for movements, yet it seems more complex than space travel.
What tools did blind nature have four billion years ago, if life miraculously popped into existence from non life? There was wind and tides to move chemicals around, temperature change, lightning, sunlight. These tools do not seem to be a sufficient explanation for the variety and complexity of life we see today. My 2c.
Could we make an infant size robot, that would grow in size to an adult size robot. And with all the parts working at every stage of growth. When it becomes adult size, could it replicate itself and make another robot? A robot might have a few thousand parts, our bodies apparently have around thirty trillion cells, and work better than any robot.
We say this might be impossible to do with our technology, but we accept blind nature could do this without any help. Technology will improve, but only with intelligent design.
Well, let me tell you a story..
As previously stated, my father was in the Royal Navy, and I had the privilege to live in
Hong Kong for a few years (8-11 years old). I met many US sailors at the naval base, as I used
to frequent a swimming pool there (for sailors and their families).
..but that is by-the-by..
Somehow, my thoughts seemed more philosophical in that climate .. I can understand the
spiritual thinking of India as opposed to Northern Europe, for example.
I often meditated, wondering why things were as they are .. why I woke up .. why the world
went tumbling on .. to where? for why?
I came to the conclusion that all that is CANNOT be a coincidence.
Well, what is a coincidence? One could write a book just on that.
Am I talking gibberish?
Perhaps I have typed enough..
otherbrother
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Based on the way physical things act, according to quantum scientists and theorists, at the subatomic level, it appears that physically deep reality is much more convergent, overlapping, interconnected, etc.than on the surface where we and other “classical objects” dwell and make mental pictures of “reality.” In ways, modern physics discoveries seem analogous to angels flying about and carrying messages/information, and at times nudging surface reality into different directions than expected.
So if deep reality really is highly interactive, and human minds can somehow interact with it like they do with surface reality, why not access some of that to use in our daily lives? Go to the “basement” of the house of overall reality (by means of prayer or other deep meditative states, or even via that quantum entangled phenomena we call love) and pop up in any room of the house above, sending information and/or subtle energy.
I ain't an evolutionary scientist....but as I understand it comditions for life became available over your 4 billion years ago an life started with a one called organism somewhere in the next 700,000 years your complexity of life today took the next 3 billion years after that. We homosapians showed up 2-300,000 years ago...it took us till 4000 years ago to learn how to write down our stories...98% of our existence....
So in the past glimmer of time we have made up or divided a number of stories about creation starting with God's dragging the sun across the sky with chariots, each continents communities developed their own stories...which they like and prefer like Ford or Chevy owners arguing whose car or truck is better. Then we flash forward till about 400 years ago when scientists started upsetting the theological apple cart with factual discoveries about nature, space, and using imperial evidence, provable repeatable test situations to actually prove a theory.
Lastly a hundred and fifty years ago we get Daewin flipping the lerverbial tables. So yeah our current understandings are relatively new upstarts poking holes in old conjecture. Tis only the beginning of the process and these little David's have barely started learning how to use or the power of their scientific slings against the various big entrenched thoughts of the Goliaths of faith and belief.
otherbrother
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Epistemological philosopher Ken Wilber, admonishes NOT to conflate physical depth with psychologically “deep” thoughts and states. But if the conflation happens to work in terms of helping increase useful faith, why not “go there?” Perhaps God gave us some low hanging fruit to work with and grace our existence. It certainly fits with the “fountain flowing deep and wide” that is mentioned at various points in historical Christian thought. Why not tap into the Fountain? Maybe THAT is faith in action, a process of bringing deep stuff to the surface in order to get good works done.