Evil Goblin Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 Evil Goblin: Buddhism seems to be a whole mess of religion and philosophy, if it can't work out what it is, I'm not going to try. Might be safer to say I'm irreligious so it's included in things I don't believe in.. Rather than me launching into an attempt to clarify things, China and yourself might be interested in getting a copyof an appropriate book, such as Stephen Batchelor's "Buddhism without Beliefs". This will do a far better job than I could do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted July 23, 2012 Author Share Posted July 23, 2012 We have centuries of bollocks with no supporting evidence so I can form the reasoned view that it's all wrong. It's a pity that modern state schools, especially I think on the bible-bashing IOM, have not taught religion from a much more theological and less simplistic perspective. I am an atheist. Fortunately I also know that the religious texts are full of wisdom, metaphor and history. I am certain that there are no gods. But also certain that religion is not "bollocks". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evil Goblin Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 I am certain that there are no gods. But also certain that religion is not "bollocks". Well said, Pongo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 Pongo, what does a religious perspective add that a secular one cannot? My feeling is that there is a lot of bollocks in religion. That layer of bollocks does often overlay useful wisdom and insight but in my opinion it is often at risk of obscuring it rather than enlightening it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quilp Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 I've used this snippet before but feel compelled to post it again. It just about sums-up religion, for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 Now and then however, there is resonance in the scriptures that really hits home with things happening in the here and now. As a quick very recent example, I read about the research into the telomeres of the worms that reproduce asexually being potentially immortal against those that reproduce sexually aging like ourselves. It struck me that there is a strong parallel there with the Garden of Eden story and human sexuality. The original was a bit heavy going but here is a link to a press release if anyone is interested: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2012/february/immortal-worms-defy-ageing.aspx Woolley, I do have to question what insight do you think the author of Genesis had? Do you think it is just a fluke or they really had received some insight which they expressed poorly but which has now been uncovered by modern science. If you do think they did receive a revelation, I am afraid that the reality of the research isn't nearly as close to the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall as you think. The origins of ageing etc are only slowly been uncovered by science but the important part of the the piece you have linked to is the word potentially. These worms still died of disease, starvation, predation and the blows of life. The point is if they were brought low by such slings and bows they tried to always repair themselves totally and completely. That is all the phrase potentially immortal means. But it is even more complicated than that, because they also suffered from genetic mutation, and so were at risk from cancer with mutant cells growing and repairing themselves without limit. These things were inefficient - when you are going to have a finite life due to all the blows life can give you designing yourself to live forever is wasteful, plus doing so without having programmed cell death put you further at risk of uncontrolled cell growth. The result was that DNA which allowed for ageing, programmed cell death, and finite life was fitter than DNA which was potentially immortal, but in reality had less success because it wasted resources over-repairing itself with less protection against uncontrolled mutations. This doesn't fit in with the story of the Fall very well at all. Prior to this evolutionary innovation Death still existed, suffering still existed, but the potentially immortal animals were LESS fit that those that would follow them with cell-death programmed into their DNA. So much for the negative effects of the fall, in this example it is almost reversed - ageing is an advantage, not a curse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted July 23, 2012 Author Share Posted July 23, 2012 Pongo, what does a religious perspective add that a secular one cannot? My feeling is that there is a lot of bollocks in religion. That layer of bollocks does often overlay useful wisdom and insight but in my opinion it is often at risk of obscuring it rather than enlightening it. Long story short ... the better religion is taught, the more likely people are to end up as atheists. Evangelicals hate theology because it deconstructs religion and puts it in perspective. ---- Some secularists and many evangelicals and poorly educated religious literalists often fall for the idea that this sort of thing should be all about morality and other equally tenuous notions .... i.e. as if religion were about training people to behave as good citizens. A theological perspective is about teaching this all from a third party, historical and linguistic perspective - i.e. teaching what people believe, have believed and from where these notions are derived. Where the sayings come from. I do not believe that is about providing a religious perspective - rather it is about providing a perspective on religion. Ideally you end up knowing about this against an historical and science background. Not as something to believe. Eg - I guess that you were probably taught Latin at school. And about the Roman / Greek gods. Simultaneously you were probably learning about the Roman empire in history. You could picture it on a timeline on the wall back to zero AD. Slightly to the right the invasion of the British Isles and the dark ages. Way way way off to the left, the dinosaurs - but not confusing because a theological approach to religion had taught you that Genesis and much of the early bible is metaphor - although you also knew from your ancient history lessons that some of the things referenced are believed to be historical. What a great way of learning how metaphor works and how myth sits alongside history. And you were not confused by the cruelty of the old testament god because you know that what people believed gradually evolved. I could go on ... the point is that all of this stuff is part of our cultural and historical evolution. It's important that people understand and learn about religion in an intelligent way because that is the only way to deconstruct and understand it. Without that bigger-picture sense of it as an evolution people come to these ideas without context. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quilp Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 Spot on Pongo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolley Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 Chinahand: Thank you for the comprehensive deconstruction. I appreciate what you are saying but I was only drawing the resonance from the study I read and it made me think. I was not trying to claim a scientific insight for Genesis. I find it honestly difficult to pinpoint whether at that precise moment I saw an insight in Genesis or whether I saw a remarkable fluke. I accept that this may not resonate at all with others. It was just a quite profound moment for me when I looked at the two things in parallel. Pongo: Very true. And religious leaders throughout history don't like being told truths that go against their own view of the world, of god and themselves, a pertinent example being the persecution of the astronomers in the middle ages. As secular education has grown, so the established religions have looked more and more ridiculous in some of their teachings. In spite of that, I do have an uneasy feeling that in throwing out the bath water of the religious establishment many observers - including on this thread - also eject the baby in refusing to accept the possibility of intelligent design of the universe by lumping everything together as "nonsense". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted July 23, 2012 Author Share Posted July 23, 2012 Intelligent design ? Oh no ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 "... the posibility of intelligent design of the universe ..." Now that, Woolley, is one loaded term. You've couched things quite broadly, but this thread is about evolution - do you feel that life on this planet has been intelligently designed? All in one go? Or was it designed, left to go a bit, tweaked again, left again to do its thing, tweaked once more - a flagellum here, a soul there - and finally left to do its Darwinian thing in all the nature, red in tooth and claw, we see around us today? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolley Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 Well at the risk of repeating myself yet again, we just don't know enough to judge. Why get hung up on things that we are never going to know the answer to? Scientific investigation is brilliant but it will only take us so far. There is much that I believe we will never understand. Why is the possibility of intelligent design "oh dear" time? It is just a possibility. I would not presume to present it as a fact. I don't know anymore than anyone else does. I don't exclude any possibility. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 I think this link from Prof Larry Moran's blog Sandwalk pretty well sums up the problems of invisible intelligent designers (and evil aliens). http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2012/05/problem-with-philosophy-elliot-sober.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted July 23, 2012 Author Share Posted July 23, 2012 I don't exclude any possibility. Leprechauns ? Fairies ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slim Posted July 24, 2012 Share Posted July 24, 2012 Well at the risk of repeating myself yet again, we just don't know enough to judge. Why get hung up on things that we are never going to know the answer to? Scientific investigation is brilliant but it will only take us so far. There is much that I believe we will never understand. Why is the possibility of intelligent design "oh dear" time? It is just a possibility. I would not presume to present it as a fact. I don't know anymore than anyone else does. I don't exclude any possibility. We do know many answers though, and you seem to be ignoring all of them. China asked some important questions about the limits of your beliefs. You seem to be dismissing the origins of our race as mysterious and unknown, when much of it's history is well known. There's a large disconnect between what we know and the bollocks that most religions teach. It'd be good if you could focus on this point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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