Questions to God.

[Isaac]

Perhaps we need to take responsibility for our own actions and not pass them off to some make-believe diety(ies) - good or evil. It is just childish.
Carl Sagan response

I like that train of thought

 

[Mike Krailo]

Perhaps we need to take responsibility for our own actions and not pass them off to some make-believe diety(ies) - good or evil. It is just childish.
Carl Sagan response

I'll ask him for you. Is there such a thing as good and evil?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

From an anthropological viewpoint, "evil" is needlessly causing harm to another person (or creature).

The "arguing point" in that statement is, of course, to define "need."

 

[Isaac]

From an anthropological viewpoint, "evil" is needlessly causing harm to another person (or creature).

The "arguing point" in that statement is, of course, to define "need."

And harm, and cause. It's pretty open..

 

[Isaac]

I'll ask him for you. Is there such a thing as good and evil?

There's for God, and against God. Or obedience to God, or disobedience to God, or his presence versus his absence.

Something like that?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

There's for God, and against God. Or obedience to God, or disobedience to God, or his presence versus his absence.

Something like that?

Which ONLY works if God exists. Not quite a circular definition, but at least an indirect circular reference.

 

[GaP42]

I'll ask him for you. Is there such a thing as good and evil?

Who is he?
Re good and evil - in your man-made constructed view (from your prior proclamations of faith) I expect you want me to say no, and that for you these only exist because "morals" come from some fictitious omnipresent/ omnipotent character that has arisen in the common culture of a group of people. However, from my point of view good and evil arise through the adoption of principles/morals that support the success/cohesion of society. In that sense it is relative, between and within culture (lots of variations). Some things are regarded generally as evil - against the moral code of the society in which it happens - eg killing people, murder, random killing of innocent people/babies, deliberate starvation of a population (consider the current situation) ... that is not the code of any one faith/society. Then there is borderline stuff. Buddhists are vegetarian, they consider deliberate killing or harming animals and immoral. However that is not the case for most people/societies. And then there is self-promotion maxims issued by those who claim to be in receipt of the special knowledge - worship no other god before me - and use those claims to uphold their worldly positions. Hardly a moral position but fairly common amongst the worshipers. Christopher Hitchens offered some improvements on that (in)famous list of 10 I believe. Again, good and evil is often not either/or - be an adult, thinking person

 

[The_Doc_Man]

And harm, and cause. It's pretty open..

Actually, your point is valid. I have NEVER figured out how my step-daughter's same-sex marriage harms another person. Unless, perhaps, it causes extreme cognitive dissonance to realize you have been force-fed anti-gay religious dogma for most of your life and now you face evidence that there is a flaw in some part of the dogma.

That leads to the question of finding the fault in the belief system. Is the fault that there IS actually a god but that ALL Judeo-Christians have made up what that god REALLY is like? In other words, it is organized religion that is totally wrong, and they are projecting their own narrow beliefs on something that isn't so "narrow-minded"?

 

[Isaac]

Just the fact that each gender, all participants, trace back to a single person suggests a Creator to me. I'm not saying it's dispositive of the issue, just that to me, it's the first thing that seems to make the most sense.

If man kind had been created solely from evolution, I would think there would have been a gazillion little Man's that started things out - not one.

I won't argue about whether individuals' same sex marriages has an overall impact on society, as we've been down the road so many times and I respect your position which obviously aint changin' anytime soon, nor is mine I believe But I will repeat my olive branch of sorts, which is to say that I am not one of those people who think homosexuality is a specially great sin compared to all other sins. If I believe that Person X's active homosexuality is a sin, then I EQUALLY think that me staying angry at my spouse is a sin, or not forgiving my Dad, or lusting after my neighbor's wife, etc. (Although I'm not too sorely tempted as my neighbor's wife isn't good looking - )

There are a variety of 'victimless' events which are still seen as having an impact on society at large. Wait, I just said I wasn't going to debate that point. Sorry. (See, I'm a talker by heart, I can barely stop myself)

But yeah I think we agree on how difficult it would be and is to define good and evil. Humans often agree in the most egregious cases, but it's all the rest that's up for grabs.

The most important thing is I believe in the afterlife since I believe in an eternal, interested Creator so hopefully that belief can inspire me to behave myself on earth.

 

[GaP42]

Just the fact that each gender, all participants, trace back to a single person suggests a Creator to me. I'm not saying it's dispositive of the issue, just that to me, it's the first thing that seems to make the most sense.

"trace back to a single person" - so this is the infallible words that you cannot move past? Human origins do not trace back to a single person or pair, that is not how species arise in the THEORY of evolution. (emphasis for your benefit - this is not the common mis-interpretation of the word "theory"). And BTW that extends to all species. A set of traits in an isolated population must arise and accumulate over time that are subject to selection pressures for them to persist (survive) and be passed on from one generation to the next that leads to reproductive isolation from other similar populations.

The fundamental premise is wrong for believing in a magical all-powerful god of wishful thinking. And that is symptomatic of the wrong-headed logic: believe something and manufacture "facts" to support it, ignore anything that does not, whereas the approach should be to put forward a proposition/belief, consider, gather relevant facts (experiment/test/observe) to see if that proposition can be maintained. Trouble is in this space of the existence of a deity, the proposition put forward is untestable: often the words unknowable, all-powerful, all-knowing are used - so there are no observations that can be made that cannot be "explained" by invoking those powers (there is always wriggle-room, get of jail free card, the god of the gaps). When such a proposition is put forward and can't be tested, the most sensible position is to reject it as completely unnecessary and useless, because you cannot tell the difference of whether the proposition is real or not.

 

[Cotswold]

By the way, where is Colin from Essex these days?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

By the way, where is Colin from Essex these days?

Col's last post was April 2, 2025, in which he apologized for being a pain and said he would work on his garden for a while. Since then, nothing. The discussion became heated in the "Trump Administration Predictions" thread, with Pat Hartman and ColinEssex getting into one of their running disputes. That last post was in that thread.

@ColinEssex - if you are checking in from time to time and happen to see this, let us know your status.

 

[Isaac]

"trace back to a single person" - so this is the infallible words that you cannot move past? Human origins do not trace back to a single person or pair

Except they DO.

And it's not infallible words, just one more piece of evidence in a long list.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Except they DO.

And it's not infallible words, just one more piece of evidence in a long list.

Except that the single person wasn't Homo sapiens sapiens and was female but wasn't named Eve.

 

[Isaac]

Except that the single person wasn't Homo sapiens sapiens and was female but wasn't named Eve.

Each gender can trace to a single person for that gender.

And if the person we can trace our DNA to wasn't homo sapiens, that's even more miraculous. You are just getting in deeper

 

[Mike Krailo]

Let's ask Grok a few questions, shall we.

 

[Isaac]

Re: Gaza

Imagine an army captured the city of Philadelphia, fenced it in, closed its waterfront and opened just a few gates for supply trucks. Now imagine the army bombed Philadelphia’s hospitals, razed land used to grow food, barred fishing and closed those gates to all but an intermittent trickle of aid. If you saw news footage of children dying of malnutrition and read U.N. warnings of mass starvation, would you doubt those reports? If the military blocking the food trucks was using U.S. public money to buy weapons, would you question the need to stop the flow of arms and demand that the military let aid in?

 

[Mike Krailo]

That is becoming a dire situation over there.

 

[GaP42]

Except they DO.

And it's not infallible words, just one more piece of evidence in a long list.

Well, that was convincing. The bar is set high for evidence.

And if the person we can trace our DNA to wasn't homo sapiens, that's even more miraculous.

And there we are - lets wave our hands in the air and say it must be some being that operates beyond any logic. So while DNA exists in every living thing and the DNA of homo sapiens is distinct from the DNA of other living things, that makes it a "miracle" and if it is traced back to other species it is even more miraculous!

BTW: Referring to a mitochondrial eve:
1. Mitochondrial DNA is not the DNA that relates to the passing of genes that control gender or the great majority of human characteristics (Mitochondrial DNA is only associated with the energy-production organelle present in cells). It does not point to the ultimate female line - only to the female line from which that element arose.
2. This doesn't mean she was the first woman of our species, or that she lived in isolation, but rather that her mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is the only mtDNA lineage that has survived and is present in all living humans today.

Similarly for the origin of the current Y chromosome in males - it points to a population in which that Y chromosome change (actually a whole series of changes as multiple genes are involved) conferred some advantage to the survival and reproductive success of those who inherited those genes such that it became common in the population. When that occurred is unlikely to be simultaneous with mtDNA appearing in human ancestry. Not that mtDNA is the ultimate female DNA line anyway.

 

[Isaac]

Well, that was convincing. The bar is set high for evidence.


And there we are - lets wave our hands in the air and say it must be some being that operates beyond any logic. So while DNA exists in every living thing and the DNA of homo sapiens is distinct from the DNA of other living things, that makes it a "miracle" and if it is traced back to other species it is even more miraculous!

BTW: Referring to a mitochondrial eve:
1. Mitochondrial DNA is not the DNA that relates to the passing of genes that control gender or the great majority of human characteristics (Mitochondrial DNA is only associated with the energy-production organelle present in cells). It does not point to the ultimate female line - only to the female line from which that element arose.
2. This doesn't mean she was the first woman of our species, or that she lived in isolation, but rather that her mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is the only mtDNA lineage that has survived and is present in all living humans today.

Similarly for the origin of the current Y chromosome in males - it points to a population in which that Y chromosome change (actually a whole series of changes as multiple genes are involved) conferred some advantage to the survival and reproductive success of those who inherited those genes such that it became common in the population. When that occurred is unlikely to be simultaneous with mtDNA appearing in human ancestry. Not that mtDNA is the ultimate female DNA line anyway.

I think you're missing the basic "many to one" point being made. There's nothing miraculous about it being traced back to "another species".
Simply put, if evolution were true, we wouldn't all trace back directly to one person, it makes no sense. It makes a lot of sense if that person was created though, or those 2 people.

And actually the bar is set pretty low for evidence, since none of us were there or can personally have knowledge based on that - we just know a whole lot of something came from nothing at some point along the way. You keep worshipipng your Nothing, I won't stop you