Where are we? How'd we get here? What platform do we exist upon?

I am in Rochester NY.
I drove here.
I do not exist on a platform so much as on the chair upon which I perch.

We can't know for sure.

I wanted an atheist's point of view on these questions. I was being serious. Doesn't our mere existence call for some greater entity? If not, please explain our origins.

Originally posted by Kendor:
"Where are we?"
In a plane of existence. Is it the only one? Don't know. How could we tell if it isn't? We've evolved to have the sense-organs we need to try to survive and reproduce here. That's why Kendor's eyes will turn first to (a) the body of a nubile young lady walking toward or away from him, but less if walking sideways past him, in preference to (b) a blackboard on which is written a mathmatical formula, no matter how intriguing the latter may be in its implications.

How'd we get here? We either evolved here or the primordial ancestral germ was drifting through space, having been blown off its own home planet and become a space-castaway, until blwn here by the solar wind or even attracted by earth's gravity, and continued its evolution here;

What platform do we exist upon?
Quite a limited one, determined by our limited awareness. We have only the sense organs we need to survive. We have only the central nervous system that can be packed into our skulls, nothing in excess, we can't afford bigger, better brains.

We're bright enough to manipulate our environment for our comfort and pleasure, but we're not wise enough to sustain our biosphere. We keep attacking it viciously, in order to eke from it just a little more individual status and power. We support leaders who have the same goal.

And about 85% of us believe strange fantasies about our divine destiny, which is to escape from our platform, and become magical and all-powerful and eternal. Instead of just the large, smelly, fairly long-lived mammals that we actually are. And to do that, they are prepared to destroy us and our biosphere too. In fact, they consider that outcome to be devoutly desirable.

So we'll never learn what we have the potential to become.

Oh well.

We had our shot, and we blew it.

Even our tendency to have these fantasies serve an evolutionary purpose. They justify continuing to exist, and keep on truckin', in a platform that can be cruel and demanding, and sometimes cause us to want to just give up.

But those with the fantasy-gene had a slight edge; they tried harder and longer, and endured more. That's all it takes to produce more offspring.

But other platforms exist. And there is likely at least one in which the Bonobos won out, instead of the chimps.

Oh yeah, sorry, 'explain our origins'.

Sorry, can't do that. Not mentally equipped. Not enough room in the brain-box for the hardware necessary for the task.

I've decided the universe must have always existed. The 'big bang' was just an event. Of all the wild, mystical explanations I like the Hindu cosmology/cosmogony best.

How could it always exist? Isn't that impossible? Well, if not, who created it? But if a creator created it, who created the creator? Since an uncreated thing is impossible.

Mankind is the animal that's always looking for reasons.

quote:

Doesn't our mere existence call for some greater entity?

I'm too old and tired to keep trying to explain my peculiar beliefs. I see nothing wrong with Bab's version.

But your question implies that the existence of a creator/god/entity is logically undeniable, why don't you furnish the rest of us with your argument. Perhaps we too can be saved!!

quote:

Originally posted by Kendor:
I wanted an atheist's point of view on these questions. I was being serious.[/i] I was, too. This is where I am and how I got here. More specifically, my father's sperm and my mother's egg had a date some 27 years ago that eventually lead to me.

[i]Doesn't our mere existence call for some greater entity? If not, please explain our origins.

I don't think that it does. My mere existence calls for parents to have birthed me and parents that birthed them, and so on, but I don't see any evidence of its being directed or guided by a greater or lesser entity.

Not being a scientist, I am not going to explain our origins, but there are any number of books on evolution where you can find the answers. I particularly like Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee."

Snubbed again: looking only for atheists' answers, and claiming to be serious no less. Anyway, so that I may orient myself on earth, how did you arrive at the 85% theists statistic, babthrower?

Canadian Angus-Reid poll taken in the mid-1990's found that about 14% of Canadians are Atheists; that would total over 4 million Atheists, circa 2002.

I guess some countries would have more, for example communist countries. The U.S. has many fewer than Canada, percentage-wise. Africa has the least of all, with less than 1% calling themselves atheist.

I'm wondering what is the question behind the question, Kendor? Is it something like, "How can a human being exist, and think, and make moral judgments if he/she has not a soul?" Or "How can anyone think that the universe is eternal? Only a spiritual entity could be eternal."

Or even "Why does anything exist?"

The question behind the question is 'how can anyone logically conclude (athiests) that there is nothing beyond our reality?'

While I'm not religious in the least bit, I can't see how our universe could exist without something from which it could spawn from, or somewhere for it to exist. There has got to be an energy or something, (God), that we just can't comprehend. I can comprehend the thought of no God, but it just doesn't sit well, logically.

Oh, my goodness Aunt Matilda, how on earth do you go, logically, from

* There is no reality behind the typical anthropomorphism with which we clothe the mysteries of our existence,

and

* There is nothing beyond our reality?

quote:

There has got to be an energy or something, (God), that we just can't comprehend.

I don't know about "has got to be", but I'm with you on the "can't comprehend", Kendor. Of course there could be other dimensions, entities, spiritualities or whatever that we can't sense or comprehend. Humans have limited conceptual and sensory abilities. There could be 'something' that started it all.

Where theists and atheists part company, maybe, is that so many theists claim that they do comprehend this 'something' and know exactly what he/she/it wants and plans for us - these wants and plans often turning out to include banal stuff about food preparation, or arbitrary taboos on sex and the like.

I'll stick with my first answer - 'we can't know for sure'.

NNN is awash with wishy.

I am a hard atheist. I know there is no god.

quote:

There has got to be an energy or something, (God), that we just can't comprehend.

There is. You’re living in it. You’re looking at it. You’re part of it. You don’t understand it. Neither do I. Get over it.

We are just rather clever little mammals who imagine that if something is incomprehensible, it must be vast and supernatural.

But it took us three million years of evolution before we made a machine that allowed us to discover that there were tiny living things, even in clear stream water, that are invisible to our naked eyes.

And the notion scared us so badly that our religious leaders suppressed the knowledge until they could figure out how to answer the question, “But they’re not mentioned in Genesis!”

And it took us another three hundred years to figure out that some of these things were what cause many of the diseases which previously we had attributed to some god’s anger.

So why on earth would we be able to have knowledge of cosmic beginnings and the ‘purpose’ (a human notion) for our existence?

The origin of the English word god, from my favorite dictionary, the Oxford Universal, is “what is invoked” and “what is worshiped by sacrifice”. A later but still pagan definition was “a superhuman person who is worshiped as having power over nature and the fortunes of mankind”. The post-pagan definition is given as “The One object of supreme adoration; the Creator and Ruler of the Universe”.

But ask yourself this. If you were a being who created the universe, why on earth would you design the ugly, bald-skinned, slow-running, weak-backed, badly-armed with tooth and claw, nasty-tempered, chimp-like human as the pinnacle of your creative power?

And more absurd than that, why would you need or depend on its prayers, praise or love? And why would you care what its lusting, greedy, lying little mind preoccupied itself with? Don’t you see that you demean the very god you pretend to adore when you even suggest that we are the best this force can do?

But I am an atheist who knows there is no reality behind any religion’s notion of god. Still I can go out and look at the stars, or look at the sea and think of its mysteries, and be completely, wonderously, joyously blown away by it all. Why does anything exist? We don’t know. We can’t know. We don’t need to know.

And when I die, the only thing that will bug me is that I’ll never be able to know more.

Kendor, you are questioning, in the humanist tradition, deep mysteries of our existence for which no answers are immediately available. Nonetheless to sweep everything under the rug by saying simply, "God must be responsible," is no answer at all.

I happen to be reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (I'm about halfway through). He says, on page 109:

quote:

The whole argument turns on the familiar question "Who made God?", which most thinking people discover for themselves. A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. God presents an infinite regress form which he cannot help us to escape. This argument...is very very improbably indeed.

Dawkins also quotes Woody Allen: "If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an under-achiever."

There are mysteries we can't (yet) comprehend. So what? We are complex creatures living in a complex world. We already have a scientific (i.e., naturalistic) general explanation for all of this existence, once you accept the central mystery of the Big Bang from which everything sprang. Occam's Razor demands that there is nothing in the universe more complex than ourselves.

The argument that god must exist to explain what we cannot understand is known as "god of the gaps." Dawkins again, page 125:

quote:

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. What worries thoughtful theologians...is that gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide. What worries scientists is something else. It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests...Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a different reason: it gives them something to do.

Unlike all other creatures, man creates. Is it any wonder that people invented god in man's image -- as the ultimate creator?

Professor: When you stoop to the lowly comment that people invented god in man's image, it is time to throw away Dawkins and pick up tsaeb's book.

babthrower: When you die, remember to yell that you knew tsaeb, and when all the angels start laughing loudly at you, you will know that you have arrived at the truth which you were told here but rejected.

quote:

Originally posted by babthrower:
I know there is no god.

No, you don't. You even admit it further in your post.

quote:

Originally posted by babthrower:
"Why does anything exist? We don’t know. We can’t know."

And when I use the word "God", I'm not implying that it is something we are to worship. For once I agree with NNN's post.

Yes, Kendor, I do know there is no reality behind the various human notions of god as defined in a good dictionary. That's why I troubled to copy the definition. To avoid quibbles.

Other notions of god, such as energy, electricity, 'the force', etc., are just quibbles on the word 'god'. Otherwise I would phone my electricity provider and say "Please send a repair man out. My god is off."

I said, "Why does anything exist? We don’t know. We can’t know."

That's true. And notice I said "we". That includes you and me both, babe.

And I didn't say "Do we know anything exists?"

I said " Why does anything exist?"

Because I do know something exists, and that something is 'thinking'. To quote Frank, and one earlier wise man.

Your post reads like an oriental software manual. You seem unfamiliar with the English language.