Prayers or doctors...

Natasha Whittam wrote:

Hipster_Nebula wrote:charity work has got nothing to do with religion.

Sorry if you genuinely believe in "god" (i assume the christian one) but your comments on this thread were extremely glib so i assumed you were taking the piss.

I do my charity work for the church, so it has everything to do with religion. I help young people through tough times and mentor them to go on to make the best of their lives. Could you imagine anyone better than me to shape the next generation?

For the record I believe in God and go to church but I don't agree with everything the church says and does, far from it.

With all this going on, I was just wondering if you are also getting involved in the Preston Passion, this year?

Hipster_Nebula wrote:

Keegan wrote:

Banks of the Croal wrote:I've tried to believe in God, but it's so complex, if you just look at the bad things that happen, World Wide, Wars, Famine, Drought and Natural disasters.

Then on a more personal level, Illness, Death and Misfortune....

Why is it that all the bad things in the world are proof that God does not exist but all the good things are not proof that he does?

well that would be cherrypicking wouldn't it.

again i don't claim that God isn't real, i just say it's very unlikely, considering there is absolutely no evidence. But I'm not arrogant enough to completely rule it out.

It's the religious who have that mindset of I'm right you're wrong. My attitude is I might be right, but please provide me with some evidence that shows i might be wrong.

Why is my statement 'cherrypicking' and BotC's isn't?

It is, but they're both as illogical as each other when you consider the astounding lack of evidence.

you still haven't presented me with the evidence for me to have a look at, I'm genuinely interested to read it. And i mean that.

largehat wrote:You're as likely to find a plausible explanation in The Lord of the Rings as you are in the Bible. They're all stories written hundreds of million years after the event.

You forgot science books which were written after a similar length of time. You speak to scientific discoveries which have been made, but you were not a part of each and every scientific process of discovery. Therefore, at some point you have accepted something that was told to you, as fact. Clearly you are far more learned than I am, and my IQ test may have elicited a giggle or two, but not everything can be calculated. The delight in hearing your newborn speak its first word, hearing birds sing, a cool breeze on a summers' day, the tightening in your chest when you think your team is going to score, the euphoria when they do... all these things to me speak of far more than calculable science.

Assuming this has turned into a serious debate rather than some kind of wind up competition I am too dumb to spot ...

There is no proof of the existence of God but people don't believe in God because they have seen some kind of logical proof. They believe because their brains are constructed in such a way that belief seems right. There appear to be sound evolutionary reasons for this. Nevertheless I personally am an atheist and the only religious people I have a problem with are the fanatics who seem to impose their particular warped views on everybody else.

wanderlust wrote:
Ok then. Prior to the Big Bang we know that subatomic particles and quarks existed. What force caused their creation from nothing?

What I don't understand is how religious people's strongest argument for a creator is "well where did we all come from then if it was not designed?" but then they refuse to look back and say "who created God?"

If your entire disproof of non believers rests on that then you absolutely must apply the same logic to your own belief. You cannot just stop looking once you get back to "God made stuff" and class that as the starting point. All that proves is your own willingness to believe and nothing more. There is no sound reasoning that says we should stop there and not ask who created God.

I am not trying to wind-up anybody - neither am I trying to impose my beliefs on anybody. I hope I have not come across as either. That is an entirely good point, jayjay - beliefs by and large are based on an intangible element combined with a tangible one. A case in point is the Rastafari religion. They believe that Haile Selassi is God. They have taken the intangible concept of a supreme being and combined it with a tangible person. I just did a quick google of "child born with 4 arms" and I'm mostly finding stories of children like this being born in India - where they worship "Gods" who have several arms/legs etc. A child born in England in this state would at best elicit a "WTF!!!", a few photos to sell copies of "The Sun" & "The Mirror" and an appointment for surgery. My point here if you have managed to read all of the above is this: You believe that there is no God unless presented with tangible evidence otherwise, while I believe in God and do not require tangible proof of His existence. Are we not both believers with differing points of view?

Keegan wrote:

largehat wrote:You're as likely to find a plausible explanation in The Lord of the Rings as you are in the Bible. They're all stories written hundreds of million years after the event.

You forgot science books which were written after a similar length of time. You speak to scientific discoveries which have been made, but you were not a part of each and every scientific process of discovery. Therefore, at some point you have accepted something that was told to you, as fact. Clearly you are far more learned than I am, and my IQ test may have elicited a giggle or two, but not everything can be calculated. The delight in hearing your newborn speak its first word, hearing birds sing, a cool breeze on a summers' day, the tightening in your chest when you think your team is going to score, the euphoria when they do... all these things to me speak of far more than calculable science.

I think you might be confusing me with someone else in this thread, Keegan.

I haven't said anything about science or scientific discoveries.

My opinion of the creation of the universe is that it is beyond the limit of human understanding.

The big bang is the current prevailing theory of course, and it is more plausible than any of those which I have seen iterated in a religious context. You're right in supposing that only a very small percentage of the world's population actually understand the mechanics of the big bang theory, and the rest repeat something which has been explained to them, at one level or another. This is not completely dissimilar to the oral traditions of Christianity. Nobody alive met Jesus, or knows anybody who did. I believe it is likely Jesus existed as an historical figure but whether or not he was the son of God, I am much less inclined to believe this.

But then there are people in this thread asking what created or caused the big bang and the answer is beyond human knowledge and understanding. I'm more content with the honesty of that position than claiming knowledge of an omnipotent being. I simply don't know where matter came from, and if there was a time before matter existed.

Beauty is a human construct; nothing is inherently beautiful.

I only quoted you to include Science books as having been written hundreds of million years after the event.
The rest is pretty general in the context of the thread. I should have been more specific. Halle Berry is inherently beautiful, by the way.

Keegan wrote:Halle Berry is inherently beautiful, by the way.

If aliens came from the planet Bongo tomorrow, they probably wouldn't be able to tell much difference between Halle Berry and Susan Boyle.

If you were able to put Halle Berry and Susan Boyle in a cage and parade them in front of polar bears, crocodiles and chimpanzees, and ask them if one of the creatures in the cage was beautiful, you'd encounter similar ambivalence.

Nothing is inherently beautiful.

Admittedly, I don't speak from the perspective of polar bears, crocodiles and chimpanzees. If I am in their company, I sincerely hope either they are in a cage, or I am. I am interested in your statement, however, that nothing is inherently beautiful. Would you care to elaborate?

Keegan wrote:I am interested in your statement, however, that nothing is inherently beautiful. Would you care to elaborate?

I believe that all things have physical or energetic properties.

You mention an example of a 'beautiful' looking woman in Halle Berry. But every aspect of her appearance has a mechanical explanation. We have been conditioned through evolutionary insticts - which are driven solely by the need to survive - to appreciate certain physical qualities as "attractive" or "beautiful", and by the processes of socialisation it in unacceptable not to conform with this.

But Halle Berry is a mammal of the same species as us. She is no more inherently beautiful than a hippo wading in shit or a fly defecating on a starving child. Any instincts you have that Halle Berry is beautiful are driven by nature's urges that you must procreate with an "attractive" mate, and Halle Berry is only considered an "attractive" specimen in our species because you grew up and live in a world where you were and are told and conditioned that certain physical qualities mark attractiveness; looking, sounding, smelling, feeling and tasting a certain way.

In George Orwell's novel, 'Nineteen Eighty Four', the protagonist, Winston Smith, stands in a window with his illicit lover, Julia, looking down upon an old, fat woman in a courtyard below, pegging out washing and singing a nonsensical song to herself. He says to Julia, "she's beautiful". Julia replies, "She must be a metre across the hips", to which Winston replies, "That is her style of beauty."

Up until a hundred years ago high art was only accessible to the rich. You had to be able to afford to go to for example the Louvre in Paris to see the actual Mona Lisa.

In the 1920s Walter Benjamin wrote an essay called "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". It was about how with the evolution of cheap printing and photography, decent quality copies of paintings, famous statues and so on, could be made and seen by even the poorest person. This was true.

Now, even a pauper could have 'the Mona Lisa experience'. But do you imagine that 200 years prior to this poor people had no concept of beauty? They simply ascribed beauty to different things within their grasp and in the fabric of their every day world.

The Mona Lisa did not raise the bar of beauty, the perception of which is entirely constructed relative to animal instincts and the prevailing society and culture which influences us all.

How does that explain my selecting Halle Berry as against a younger, more voluptuous Beyonce with even more developed child-bearing hips? I know that subconsciously, men are conditioned to look for features in a potential mate such as the afore-mentioned child-bearing hips, nice tits to breast-feed them (and us!) with, etc. I am even aware of the good Walter Benjamin's work. I suspect, however, that the key to your previous post is the word "inherent". Halle's beauty to me is a combination of several things which I have been socially conditioned to find attractive, but with regards to a potential mate with a view to procreation, she would not be anywhere near my first choice. I would, however, treat her to five vigorous minutes of my valuable time.

Keegan wrote:How does that explain my selecting Halle Berry as against a younger, more voluptuous Beyonce with even more developed child-bearing hips? [...] I am even aware of the good Walter Benjamin's work. I suspect, however, that the key to your previous post is the word "inherent". Halle's beauty to me is a combination of several things which I have been socially conditioned to find attractive, but with regards to a potential mate with a view to procreation, she would not be anywhere near my first choice. I would, however, treat her to five vigorous minutes of my valuable time.

You haven't identified Halle Berry as an exclusive mate; she is not the only member of the species that you find attractive. But you mentioned her as an example of beauty, so I dealt with that example.

Homosexual men might also find Halle Berry to be beautiful but not see her as a potential mate, because they are homosexual. But they are still far more likely to consider Halle Berry beautiful than Susan Boyle, maybe in their case it is more due to the effects of socialisation than instinct.

Inherent beauty does not exist though IMO. Even when you find something pleasurable to look at such as a sunset or the ocean, there are instinctive or social reasons. Lets face it, you would meet the disapproval of other members of your species if you proclaimed beauty in an unflushed turd or tampon, but there are interesting reasons why they won't flush, just as there are interesting reasons for sunsets and tides and the vanishing point on the horizon and so on.

You make good points, and it is refreshing to debate a topic without descending to insults and low blows. I'm interested to know, however - what exactly is your problem with Susan Boyle?

Keegan wrote:I'm interested to know, however - what exactly is your problem with Susan Boyle?

This.

Other than me, who is your ideal woman LH?

Natasha Whittam wrote:Other than me, who is your ideal woman LH?

A blind, deaf masochist.

Religion has nothing to do with god and god has nothing to do with religion.

Keegan wrote:You believe that there is no God unless presented with tangible evidence otherwise, while I believe in God and do not require tangible proof of His existence. Are we not both believers with differing points of view?

No. To not believe in something is not a belief in that sense of the word.

If I said there is a tea pot orbiting pluto you would call me crackers. But what if I believed it but could not show you any evidence for my belief. Would you class yourself as being a believer with a differing point of view to mine? No.