this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Religions are mostly just popularized conspiracy theories. Believing in God is about as realistic as believing the world is flat.
But it's not about that for many people. For many people, being religious is more about finding strength and peace in that kind of guided spirituality
False peace through a false god
Believe is a powerful thing I would ague even if what you belief is wrong if that belief brings you peace it is not a false peace.
The same thing can be said about most conspiracy theories. People want to believe in aliens because then we aren't alone and they feel more comfortable, for example. The biggest issue I have is it leads them to do things that are un-helpful for the rest of humanity.
But c'mon.... There ARE aliens. Just maybe not here necessarily. But somewhere, there are 100% aliens.
Probably true, but we all know what we're talking about here...
And for some finding religion is about having a reason to invade another country
When you're so brainwashed you replace the word "oil" with "religion"
exactly. dont confuse genuine faith with religious grifters
And explaining what happens when you die. Which by its very definition nobody alive can know
Of course we can. We have means to observe the dying process. There is already a lot of scientific knowledge on that topic.
From the outside, yes. We don't have anything information about the post-death experience.
Because there is no "experience" after death. You just start to rot.
And what scientific evidence has there ever been suggesting that this is the case? We can't even scientifically evaluate whether another living being has any conscious experience.
Hahaha no absolutely not
How come that you refuse this so confidently?
Here just a few works from that wide field:
None of those explain what happens when you die, are you mad? Wtf?
That is a bad comparison IMO. We have piles and piles of hard evidence the Earth is round. Saying the Earth is flat is just factually incorrect at this point.
But the existence of God. I would argue we have no hard evidence of God's existence nor do we have hard evidence that God doesn't exist. As far as science is concerned it is still a theory.
On top of that what makes a god a God there are multiple definitions of a God. If simulation theory is correct and we are all just in a simulation would be people outside of the simulation be our Gods? Or if an extremely advanced civilization existed would they be Gods to us? Or If we as humans advanced enough could we become Gods our self.
We also have a lot of evidence that snakes can't speak, people can't turn plain water into wine, walk on the water and so on.
Claiming something which can neither be proven or disproven is what constitutes a pseudoscience. By that logic I could claim that we are in fact giant pink elefants hopping around on the moon, while imagining our reality as we currently think to perceive it. Since you can't disprove that, I must be right. Or am I not?
No. A scientific theory can be proven or disproven, while the idea of a God, as interpreted in most religions, can not. Thereby constituting a pseudoscience. And thus, it's not a scientific theory.
I suppose in the context of the parent comment the abrahamic God is meant, as interpreted by Christians, Jews and Muslims.
If I am remembering my stories correctly the snake wasn't a normal snake but more of a representation of Satan. And I think god turned the water into wine and walked on water. We aren't talking about an average person. Neither Satan nor God is around to let us do some experiments on.
Yeah fair enough but my point still stands that comparison between god and flat earth is still a bad comparison. Considering the Earth is here right now, and we can experiment on it.
The Abrahamic religions do not have a monopoly on the concept of God. The irrationality of their particular fables, talking snakes and walking on water and all the behavioral quirks they claim God has expressed, has nothing to do with the concept itself.
Let's say I popularized the idea that electricity is really just tiny pixies dancing around, and I came up with all manner of personality traits and stories to go along with them. Let's say millions, billions of people embraced my pixie theory, and it mutated over time into schismatic alternatives with their own traits and stories. Do the ridiculous things now ascribed to electricity, so pervasively that most people picture little pixies when they hear the words, prove that electricity doesn't exist?
Yes. I just made few examples on popular concepts. And I can make similar examples for a lot of other concepts. However, to discuss this further, we need some clear definitions.
This is a form or erroneous attribution. It reminds me of the luminiferous aether of which physicists thought for a long time that it exists until it was disproven. This is a testable hypothesis. Your pixies might even be testable to a certain degree. But beyond a certain point they aren't. Therefore being in the realm of pseudoscience again.
If we observe electricity, of course elctricity exists. But if we don't know its cause, it's important to investigate it. We have to investigate cause and effect instead of just assuming that a higher power plays a role. That's our only way to gain knowledge and separate fantasy from reality.
And currently, religions with their concepts of deities reside in the realm of fantasy.
Good, you've got the gist: a ridiculous claim centered in an observable phenomenon does not invalidate that phenomenon.
Now replace electricity with consciousness, subjective experience itself. We observe consciousness, we are consciousness, of course it exists. It is important to investigate the cause, determine the nature of the phenomenon and consider seriously the possible explanations.
By a due investigation, and serious and rational consideration, what possible explanations do you find for consciousness?
"An emergent phenomenon of the way our biological hardware works" is one possible, entirely rational and most importantly sufficient answer. And even if we did not have an answer, that doesn't mean that there is not an entirely materialistic explanation for the phenomenon, even if we didn't find the answer yet.
Because we have hundreds of thousands of examples of previously unexplained phenomena being sufficiently and completely explained by purely naturalistic, materialistic causes.
On the other hand we have exactly zero previous examples of a phenomenon being sufficiently explained by anything supernatural.
Since we observe consciousness solely bound to the existence of, reliant on the configuration of and changeable through the change of physical properties of physical matter, we can conclude that it is an emergent property that has arisen like other properties emergent from biological matter through the well known, well defined and observable process of evolution.
Could there be an alternative explanation? Yes!
Is the god-hypothesis in any way an explanation for consciousness? No! In fact it would raise more questions. It is neither sufficient, nor rational. What it is, is a god-of-the-gaps argument, another turtle on the way down.
Examples?
Basically every great and complex work ant colonies are capable of is an emergent property of simple rules that are simple instinct in simple creatures, yet the interplay of lots of individuals following these simple rules begets complex behavior. This is the easiest to grasp example imho.
Flocking birds, schooling fish, hell we can write computer programs where complex behavior emerges from simple rules, Conway’s Game of Life is the best example for how simple the rules can be and how complex the emergent systems.
But emergence is everywhere, the cells of your lungs don't breathe, but they arrange themselves in a way and are embedded in a system that can exist because lung-cells do arrange the way they do.
Life itself is an emergent property, the atoms that constitute us themselves aren't alive, they don't run, breathe or think, all of those are emergent properties from the right collection and arrangement of atoms into molecules into cells into a multicellular organism.
Thinking is no different than running, it is something that happens through the complex interplay of matter but transcends the single building blocks.
A single ant can't be a colony, a single cell can't breathe or run and a single neuron can't think, but if you bring them together in the right amount and arrangement, new properties emerge.
And most importantly, if you disturb that arrangement, if you destroy some of that constituting matter or rearrange it, the emergent properties change or vanish. That it can simply stop to emerge is imho the best prove that it is an emergent property.
Emergence is actually a considerable personal interest of mine, so this is a fun topic for me, and your position is one I used to hold. There's a basic problem with this line of thinking though.
Emergent patterns and behavior are observed, only. The emergent property isn't composed of any substance, it is a mathematical construct. That is to say, the higher order organization of ant colonies and bird flocks do not in and of themselves experience qualia. They certainly might look like it from the outside, but that's the entire point of emergence: this "substance" is an illusion, there is no subjective experience associated with the ant colony or the bird flock. Each individual has it, but the collective itself only looks like it does.
Consciousness is made of some "substance". The experience itself is made out of "I am", whatever that is. So if you're being intellectually honest, and follow the logic fully, you come to one of two conclusions :
The logical conclusion of this line of thinking is that it's more likely than not that the entire universe has an emergent consciousness.
The logical conclusion of that line of thinking is that there is a panpsychic field permeating the universe.
I'm very explicitly not saying that there's literally a giant bearded man who lives in the clouds who got into a fight with a talking snake. All of that is a combination of metaphors to explain abstract concepts to bronze age shepherds, translation errors, and bad faith actors trying to secure power for themselves.
What I am saying is that a thorough persistence in the rational exploration of the phenomenon of subjectivity leads one to a universe-spanning consciousness of one nature or another, and that attempts to describe it with human language evoke descriptions consistent with pretty much every major cultures core concept of God before the power-hungry priests started telling people that the universal consciousness will punish them for being naughty.
Personally I'm in the panpsychist camp. I don't know how much physics you've taken, but the modern view basically treats everything as the interaction of fields.
I agree with the first sentence, seriously disagree with the second. The shape of the Earth is a testable hypothesis, we have the technology to just go look.
As you go down the rabbit hole of consciousness and existence itself, with a purely rational and materialist mindset, the most reasonable and conservative hypotheses approach the descriptions of deity. Certainly the more specific claims of various religions are as you described, conspiracy theories, but the entire concept? Wholesale dismissal of the generalized God hypothesis strikes me as evidence of rationality applied incompletely, arbitrarily cut short.
Here's one of them there conspiracy theorists I was talking about.
Here's one of those who arbitrarily stops using rationality I was talking about. What is consciousness made of?
Nuerons, and the small electrical signals that pass between them. Also religion and there being a god are two different things. The Bible can be easily disproven just like flat earth.
Notice the top comment compared belief in god specifically to flat earth theory, hence the structure of my response.
As to your hypothesis, I didn't ask about brain activity, I asked about consciousness itself, the subjective experience. It's still very much an open question.
Oh yeah I forgot the good old adage that everything that can't be clearly explained must be a God's work.
What a superb example of hypocrisy. Bro agrees with you, explains, however, that scientifically speaking your analogy is incorrect, and then you proceed to go against precisely the science you were idolizing earlier.
I am an atheist. My mother is Catholic. She is Catholic, because sometimes she needs mental comfort. Religion can be very therapeutic, a community and someone/-thing to prey to are things that comfort most humans. Note, my mother does not believe what it says in the Bible word-for-word, she believes in metaphors. Don't be a jack-ass to these people, they have not harmed you. Be a jack-ass to the people who start spouting entitled crap and try to murder people.
His believe that science points towards a diety is of conspiracy level bullshit to me sure maybe there is some chance but its not overwhelmingly true. If there is a god it likely does not follow the fables written in any religious text.
It's an opinion he has based on no or misguided facts just like many conspiracy theories. Yes there is a key difference in that you can disprove that the earth is flat but there are other conspiracies that are not easily disproven similar to how it's hard to disprove the existence of a god, I put them into the same box, they and I am assuming you don't put them in the same box. Sure I could have probably made a larger explanation but I was probably busy in the moment or otherwise didn't feel like it.
Conscience is not limited to Humans, Humans are not special. Why would that ever point to there being a god?