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Since gods do not exist, what do you believe is out there

I agree that only hard science will find answers, but there is always room for philosophy.

Philosophy is a guess, not a way to discover reality. Some of Philosophy, especially the pre-Christian one of the ancient Greeks, is to be admired for its intelligence and amazing insight of reality.

Philosophy since the invention of Christianity has been completely and utterly useless and wrong. Some of the pre-20th Century philosophers are smart enough to dislodge religious faith from the concept of reality, but not all of them did.

We know now more about reality that any pre-20th Century person did. We can now call all pre-20th Century philosophy false, if not possibly interesting.
 
Philosophy is a guess, not a way to discover reality. Some of Philosophy, especially the pre-Christian one of the ancient Greeks, is to be admired for its intelligence and amazing insight of reality.

Philosophy since the invention of Christianity has been completely and utterly useless and wrong. Some of the pre-20th Century philosophers are smart enough to dislodge religious faith from the concept of reality, but not all of them did.

We know now more about reality that any pre-20th Century person did. We can now call all pre-20th Century philosophy false, if not possibly interesting.
Oh, I agree. Pretty much everything we thought we new before new, high-powered microscopes and telescopes is out the window. I was talking about modern philosophy. The stuff Steven Hawking delves into these days.
 
The stuff Steven Hawking delves into these days.

Hawking is making reasonable predictions, not wild guesses. What are you having a problem with, regarding his predictions?
 
Hawking is making reasonable predictions, not wild guesses. What are you having a problem with, regarding his predictions?

Nothing. That's why I said modern physics requires some philosophy. All the guys discussing the multiverse and string theory employ it. Hawking's singularity falls in the philosophical realm too.
 
Philosophy is a guess, not a way to discover reality. Some of Philosophy, especially the pre-Christian one of the ancient Greeks, is to be admired for its intelligence and amazing insight of reality.

Philosophy since the invention of Christianity has been completely and utterly useless and wrong. Some of the pre-20th Century philosophers are smart enough to dislodge religious faith from the concept of reality, but not all of them did.

We know now more about reality that any pre-20th Century person did. We can now call all pre-20th Century philosophy false, if not possibly interesting.

phi·los·o·phy/fəˈläsəfē/
noun
the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.

Philosophy isn't set in stone. Philosophy is not a guess, it is a study of reality. As reality is revealed, philosophy becomes more accurate.
 
Philosophy isn't set in stone. Philosophy is not a guess, it is a study of reality. As reality is revealed, philosophy becomes more accurate.

Who said anything about set in stone?

I said that since we now know so much more about reality in the 21st Century, then all pre-21st Century philosophers are wrong because they were not aware of the reality we are aware now.

We can admire some of them for their intellect and their sincere effort to comprehend reality, but they were all wrong -- none of them ever knew what Quantum Physics knows and has shown about reality.

Pre 21st Century philosophers are only of academic interest... none of them had any idea what reality is. Ancient Greek philosophers and Pre-Socratics are excluded -- they are on a different level of comparison.
 
"Since gods do not exist, what do you believe is out there"

nature, the laws of physics, the absence of chaos or, to put it another way - god. Isn't it just a matter of definition?
 
So, if you asked me, the universe is teeming with life...

I find that pretty hard to believe.

From everything that we know, in all the universe, life has only arisen once.

Even here on Earth, where we know life can arise (because it happened, obviously) it's only happened once.

Everything that lives, everything that has ever lived, traces it's phylogenetic tree back to our last universal common ancestor which lived some 3.8 billion years ago.

In all those 3.8 billion years, a vast period during which we know the Earth has been hospitable to life, there has never been another instance, that we know of, at which point some other tree of life has taken root.

If it's only happened once here, where we know it can happen, I think it's pretty presumptuous, and requires and enormous amount of faith, tantamount to religious faith, to propose that it must have happened elsewhere, much less that it has happened so frequently that the universe must be "teeming" with life.
 
I find that pretty hard to believe.

From everything that we know, in all the universe, life has only arisen once.

Even here on Earth, where we know life can arise (because it happened, obviously) it's only happened once.

Everything that lives, everything that has ever lived, traces it's phylogenetic tree back to our last universal common ancestor which lived some 3.8 billion years ago.

In all those 3.8 billion years, a vast period during which we know the Earth has been hospitable to life, there has never been another instance, that we know of, at which point some other tree of life has taken root.

If it's only happened once here, where we know it can happen, I think it's pretty presumptuous, and requires and enormous amount of faith, tantamount to religious faith, to propose that it must have happened elsewhere, much less that it has happened so frequently that the universe must be "teeming" with life.

I'm of the belief that life originated about 10 Billion years ago and the life we see here simply arrived by hitching a ride on a frozen rock. But...

Let's look at your argument a little closer. Life began here 3.8 billion years ago. That is just about the time when the earth cooled enough for life to stand a chance of surviving. Isn't that amazing? It tells me that life takes root at the instant it has a chance. I do not think that is a coincidence.
 
Many big mysteries remain.

For sure. The only way to unravel or understand them is by Science -- by using reason and logic, not unsubstantiated claims of supernatural or divine cause of reality.

It is more important to reject unsubstantiated claims than to claim complete comprehension of Scientific knowledge.
 
For sure. The only way to unravel or understand them is by Science -- by using reason and logic, not unsubstantiated claims of supernatural or divine cause of reality.

It is more important to reject unsubstantiated claims than to claim complete comprehension of Scientific knowledge.

I get a lot of heat for rejecting the gods. It's probably because I go one step further than most atheists by saying I know the gods man has defined to date do not exist.

Substantiating this claim is simple. I point to any one of the many absurd claims people make about their given god, basically saying, "If X about this god is known to be false, then we can entirely dismiss the existence of this god." No one seems to like that logic.
 
I get a lot of heat for rejecting the gods. It's probably because I go one step further than most atheists by saying I know the gods man has defined to date do not exist.

Substantiating this claim is simple. I point to any one of the many absurd claims people make about their given god, basically saying, "If X about this god is known to be false, then we can entirely dismiss the existence of this god." No one seems to like that logic.

Welcome to the club of mental absurdity. The problem is that people need an emotional justification and they --- wrongly --- have attached it to imaginary and unreal context, which is what religion is.

Reality is more important than a random human's emotional drivel.
 
"Since gods do not exist, what do you believe is out there"

nature, the laws of physics, the absence of chaos or, to put it another way - god. Isn't it just a matter of definition?

I do not believe we can play games with the word "god" by letting it basically be a catchall name for anything unknown. So, you ask me, "Since gods do not exist, what do you believe is out there."

Simple answer is. I do not know, but I do know that the gods man has defined to date are not out there.
 
[...] but I do know that the gods man has defined to date are not out there.

+1... I have to make this more than 5 characters... so... +1+1+1+1
 
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