Response to thread
Bellow is my response to Jordan's 'religion sucks' post made a few days ago.. Thank fucking God I saved it to a text file before I hit 'submit' because LJ complained it was too long, then cleared everything when I hit the back button...
Original thread can be found here
I've been personally anti-religion for a long while now, simply because physics and science seem to have better answers than religion ever has for any question you can ask it... let's try some now....
What happens when you die?
Religion : If you follow all the rules in this book, you'll ascend to a magical world of unbridled pleasures.
Science : You are dead. The processes in your body stop to function, and all synaptic activity ceases to exist. You will stop thinking is what happens when you are dead.
To me, I agree more with physics, and it has a nice philosophical second order effect about it. When you die, you are dead. Whatever you want to do now, DO NOW, because there will be no after life. For everything you didn't do today, there is an infinite amount of time where doing the same is impossible. Religion implies that not living your life to it's fullest is ok, since you'll have an infinite amount of time in heaven to REALLY live it up. Look at the amount of fun in your average atheists life compared to the amount of fun in your average "Religious Nuts" life.. I'd rather have 50 atheist years, than an eternity as the nut.
next question....
Who created the universe?
Religion : God created the universe in 7 days, then made two people who got kicked out of a magical garden then had two sons who.... somehow.... had kids themselves...... somehow......... yup.... two sons BTW.....
Science : The universe, by definition, had no beginning or end, and therefore, never had a creator, and will never have a destructor. We picture things moving linearly along the path of time, but the truth is, time is just one of many dimensions, and to truly understand the nature of the universe, you must observe it's behavior in a number of dimensions higher than time.
A friend of mine once painted me a picture about how the universe is a lot like the surface of a balloon, and we're small, 2 dimensional ants crawling along the surface of the balloon.. There is much more to the universe than we could ever possibly observe, but mathematics allows us to explain the higher dimensions that govern us. I wish I could remember what he said, it was really really good...
Next one...
Do I have free will?
Religion : All of God's creatures are free to act on their own behalf.
Science : No. The chemicals in your brain that make you love, laugh, hate and cry all follow a basic set of rules. Knowing these exact rules, and the exact state of every molecule in your brain at any given time, would allow an observer to predict your actions. If I know that a ball is dropped 40m above the ground, I can predict when it will hit the ground, because I know the rules that govern this ball. Not all the rules are known yet, but it's only a matter of time.... With enough computing power, and enough understanding of these rules, you and your brain and your thoughts and yourself are just a falling ball.
Once again, science gives us the cold harsh truth. If every particle in the universe obeys a set of laws, and your brain is a collection of these particles, and your brain reacts to stimuli from these particles.. well.. hmm... it seems a lot of things that were once mysterious, are all consequences of these particles... understanding 'these particles' seems to be the key to explaining a lot of higher level things built from these particles.... it's technologically not possible now, but so was predicting the arc of a cannon ball a few hundred years ago.....
Is there a God?
Religion : Yes, and he is a man and sent his son to earth to die for all our sins... Ohh, and his son turns water into wine, and he can walk on water.. <>.. either that, or he's a thing that looks like a chick with an elephant head and 10 arms.... well.. in any case, he's all powerful and all knowing, but he's still as emotionally stable as a drunk Italian. He's packin' omnipotent power and might and he'll drown your ass if you look at other God's.. He'll kill your ass if your homosexual... Or just sentence you to an eternity of damnation if you don't follow is text book of rules... in fact, he'll kill your parents in a car crash, just so he got more niggaz to party with in heaven...
Science : No. Everything happens as a result of an action, and in a system with millions of actions and re-actions happening all the time, slight patterns may arise, which could appear to be the works of a conscious being...
Again, religion plays out like a bad comic you'd find on a bus. Science gives the undeniably more accurate, but harsher truth. There is no God. Billy, your dog died because the chemical train inside it's body just got de-railed. Now he's dead, and he ain't going no where else. If we had the technology, we could piece him back together so his chemicals function properly, but not today. Some boy in the future will be that lucky, but not you. Today, and for every other day you're alive, your dog will be dead.
Is DMX the least talented asshole on the planet?
Religion : Yes.
Science : Yes.
Quite possibly the only case where both Science and Religion conclusively, and passionately agree on one answer to a question.
It's 5 in the morning now, and I'm going to sleep.. I hope this thread isn't dead, I'd love to see your responses..
Original thread can be found here
I've been personally anti-religion for a long while now, simply because physics and science seem to have better answers than religion ever has for any question you can ask it... let's try some now....
What happens when you die?
Religion : If you follow all the rules in this book, you'll ascend to a magical world of unbridled pleasures.
Science : You are dead. The processes in your body stop to function, and all synaptic activity ceases to exist. You will stop thinking is what happens when you are dead.
To me, I agree more with physics, and it has a nice philosophical second order effect about it. When you die, you are dead. Whatever you want to do now, DO NOW, because there will be no after life. For everything you didn't do today, there is an infinite amount of time where doing the same is impossible. Religion implies that not living your life to it's fullest is ok, since you'll have an infinite amount of time in heaven to REALLY live it up. Look at the amount of fun in your average atheists life compared to the amount of fun in your average "Religious Nuts" life.. I'd rather have 50 atheist years, than an eternity as the nut.
next question....
Who created the universe?
Religion : God created the universe in 7 days, then made two people who got kicked out of a magical garden then had two sons who.... somehow.... had kids themselves...... somehow......... yup.... two sons BTW.....
Science : The universe, by definition, had no beginning or end, and therefore, never had a creator, and will never have a destructor. We picture things moving linearly along the path of time, but the truth is, time is just one of many dimensions, and to truly understand the nature of the universe, you must observe it's behavior in a number of dimensions higher than time.
A friend of mine once painted me a picture about how the universe is a lot like the surface of a balloon, and we're small, 2 dimensional ants crawling along the surface of the balloon.. There is much more to the universe than we could ever possibly observe, but mathematics allows us to explain the higher dimensions that govern us. I wish I could remember what he said, it was really really good...
Next one...
Do I have free will?
Religion : All of God's creatures are free to act on their own behalf.
Science : No. The chemicals in your brain that make you love, laugh, hate and cry all follow a basic set of rules. Knowing these exact rules, and the exact state of every molecule in your brain at any given time, would allow an observer to predict your actions. If I know that a ball is dropped 40m above the ground, I can predict when it will hit the ground, because I know the rules that govern this ball. Not all the rules are known yet, but it's only a matter of time.... With enough computing power, and enough understanding of these rules, you and your brain and your thoughts and yourself are just a falling ball.
Once again, science gives us the cold harsh truth. If every particle in the universe obeys a set of laws, and your brain is a collection of these particles, and your brain reacts to stimuli from these particles.. well.. hmm... it seems a lot of things that were once mysterious, are all consequences of these particles... understanding 'these particles' seems to be the key to explaining a lot of higher level things built from these particles.... it's technologically not possible now, but so was predicting the arc of a cannon ball a few hundred years ago.....
Is there a God?
Religion : Yes, and he is a man and sent his son to earth to die for all our sins... Ohh, and his son turns water into wine, and he can walk on water.. <>.. either that, or he's a thing that looks like a chick with an elephant head and 10 arms.... well.. in any case, he's all powerful and all knowing, but he's still as emotionally stable as a drunk Italian. He's packin' omnipotent power and might and he'll drown your ass if you look at other God's.. He'll kill your ass if your homosexual... Or just sentence you to an eternity of damnation if you don't follow is text book of rules... in fact, he'll kill your parents in a car crash, just so he got more niggaz to party with in heaven...
Science : No. Everything happens as a result of an action, and in a system with millions of actions and re-actions happening all the time, slight patterns may arise, which could appear to be the works of a conscious being...
Again, religion plays out like a bad comic you'd find on a bus. Science gives the undeniably more accurate, but harsher truth. There is no God. Billy, your dog died because the chemical train inside it's body just got de-railed. Now he's dead, and he ain't going no where else. If we had the technology, we could piece him back together so his chemicals function properly, but not today. Some boy in the future will be that lucky, but not you. Today, and for every other day you're alive, your dog will be dead.
Is DMX the least talented asshole on the planet?
Religion : Yes.
Science : Yes.
Quite possibly the only case where both Science and Religion conclusively, and passionately agree on one answer to a question.
It's 5 in the morning now, and I'm going to sleep.. I hope this thread isn't dead, I'd love to see your responses..