Choosing a faith

I don’t believe that I have said that there isn’t an explanation, or that it can’t be explained. I do contend though that the explanations aren’t scientific. They are observations that altruism has spread, at least in many cases, within various populations. We disagree about whether that has occurred through completely materialistic means, or whether in addition there is a cosmic intelligence that influences the result. It looks the same either way so it comes down to belief. The point I’m trying to make in this thread is that altruistic behaviour comes from cosmic intelligence. Yes, I’m a Christian. I grew up in a middle of the road Christian family and was taken to church however, I grew away from all of that and decide over 20 years later to sort what I believed about it all. Incidentally, my Christianity has evolved considerably the deeper I got into the subject. I guess I’m now sort of a cross between a John Polkinghorne – Rob Bell kind of Christian. CS Lewis and NT Wright among numerous have also influenced my thinking. OK, but none of that precludes the possibility of a god meme influencing our altruistic ideas. The observations would still look the same. I’m really glad you brought that up. I have no problem with that except once again my belief is that there is an external intelligent consciousness that influences that as well. I recently read a book called Where is Love by Hugh Broadent, who was a British vicar very involved in the animal rights movement to the degree he became a vegetarian. (I figure I should be doing the same but so far there is no indication of that happening.) Animals have consciousness and IMHO the god meme touches all consciousness. Also I believe, as Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, that the renewal of our world is for all of creation. That is exactly the point I’ve been trying to make. I believe that we have been given free will which means we have to take the bad with the good. OK, but that still doesn’t preclude the possibility of that supernatural entity continuing to influence us to choose love over hate. Let’s look at Occam’s Razor. You contend that a nearly infinite number of mindless processes essentially by chance has evolved into conscious sentient life. I contend that there is one creative intelligence, not restricted by the one dimension of time as we know it, that alone is responsible for our existence. Which is the simplest explanation.

I pretty much dealt with this in my reply to Tangle which I just finished. I believe that caring does evolve but I also believe that there is an external loving intelligence that is the root behind it and continues to influence us in that direction. However ,I see the evolution of caring as distinct from physical evolution. What is the physical evidence for that other than just the observation that it happened? With Darwin’s evolutionary theory we have all the archeological evidence to go on. I haven’t said that it’s not possible. I can’t show that it’s impossible. Can you show that it’s not possible for there to be an outside influencer? Yes, evolution is an incredible process. I simply contend that when we look at it in whole it gives the appearance of design, which requires a designer. All of the evidence is physical and you presumably, (I could be wrong about this), that there is nothing but the physical. I concept of their being a cosmic intelligence does not present physical evidence. I don’t pretend to know how evolution works. I just accept that it does. We can see physical things happening and changing in a material sense. We can see that societies, families and individuals do impact the ideas and behaviours of others. However, you and others simply keep presenting that as evidence that there is nothing outside of our physical world.
I have had a subscription to Scientific American for years . I have a copy from several years back in which the headline on the cover read: “Hidden Worlds of Dark Matter – An entire universe may be woven silently with our own”. On the front page of the article itself claims that: “A shadow cosmos, woven silently into our own, may have its own rich inner life”.
The article approaches it with scientific evidence, that primarily results from their study on WIMPS. (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles.) The science beyond that went over my head, but there is evidence that there is more than what we are able to perceive with our 5 senses. We perceive the universe as pretty much infinitely large. However, science also tells us that it was once infinitely small. I can’t prove that there is a plan. I do think that the world appears to be designed requiring a designer, that the world is governed by physical laws such as gravity requiring a law giver, that we have beings that understand right and wrong requiring something beyond ourselves etc. Based on those beliefs it seems to me that there most likely is a plan. Maybe there is an answer, and the starting point would be a greater reality than we are able to observe. I remember reading at one point that we are an emergent property of a greater reality.

I agree that moral or loving motivation can be passed along to others. The example again, that I’ve used several times, is the idea of letting someone into traffic ahead of yourself and then they are more likely to do the same thing for someone else. Also, as in this example we don’t really have the opportunity. If we see someone drowning do we jump into try and save them risking our own life? Again, no time to ask. Again, that does not exclude an external toot. I assuming that term as I'm trying to stay away from specific faiths. God implies Christianity or even Judaism. Yes, that is your belief. I agree. The idea of an external loving consciousness is non-scientific but much more philosophical.

What are they? Well obviously I contend that it does. We have a sense of morality and deep down we know that the loving thing to do is the right thing to do, It would make sense that if this intelligence does exist then it should be consistent with that.
The question of where does this intelligence get its morality from is the equivalent question of why is there something instead of nothing. I think I’ll ask that question in the next life. I’m going to go to all the lectures. ???? I think I do understand the alternatives but I only see the alternatives as a partial explanation

Loving or serving others even when it involve personal cost and without personal benefit. It isn’t so much about doing, as it is about caring for others even beyond at times how we care for ourselves. What we do flows from that. It might or it might not. I have been trying to stay away from my Christian beliefs and argue my point strictly from a theistic POV. I’ll take a short break from that.For centuries Christians churches, (and other faiths as well), have been focused on getting to heaven, or to get in good with whatever deity, when we die.
This is consistent with what most religions have been about all along. Usually as we can see in both the OT and the Gospels this was the case in the 1st century world.
Then they were looking for a Jewish messiah to come and lead them militarily against their enemies, namely the Romans. They wanted a warrior god. It was about getting a deity to serve us instead of the other way around.
Jesus turned this around, (even thought the disciples didn’t get it until later), by coming as a revolutionary but as a proponent of non-violent revolution. The point was about finding a way to benefit the self or a particular group, be it nation or faith. If you look at it objectively the notion of getting to heaven by becoming a Christian is once again trying to manipulate God so that you will benefit in the next life.Within the Christian church there was also the problem that The Bible was being understood in the context of the current time and culture, essentially ignoring the fact that Jesus communed with and taught 1st century Jews of which He was one.
The to end to the problems a couple of centuries ago many Christian churches, primarily in North America began to essentially focus on an inerrant Bible instead of on Jesus, essentially making a false idol out of the Bible.I read a lot of theological books by a variety of Christian scholars and it really appears to me that the church is going through a period of reformation.
This is a very long answer to a short question but I just want to be reasonably clear that I’m not that far from the mainstream, (particularly within Anglcanism)
I’ll try to highlight the points of what I see changing.1/ The focus of getting to heaven is changing in two ways. It isn’t about heaven so much but about the renewal of this world and God’s dimension, (heaven if you want), and our dimension becoming one. This of course gets away from the view that this world doesn’t matter as God will destroy it anyway and whisk us away somewhere else. As a result caring for all of this creation including the planet itself matters. Now the focus is much more on us serving God as opposed to getting Him to serve us. The next life will take care of itself and we can leave that to God.2/There is now an emphasis on reading the books of the Bible in the context of their own time and culture and also getting away from the idea that God dictated it.3/With the discovery of the dead sea scrolls as well as other discoveries of ancient tests and along with the internet, scholars now are better at translating the Bible and understanding it.4/ The realization that Jesus did talk about the world to come, but much of what has been taken as being about end times was really about His argument against violent revolution. Tis would include all of that stuff about the so-called raptureThe bottom line is the Christian church is changing. My views have been changing along the same lines, and I think are roughly consistent with what I’ve talked about in this thread.

I'm really tied up today. I don't have much time to devote to EvC.I copy from the emails and paste them into word. Then copy the post when I'm finished onto EvC.
Thanks Percy

I just didn't want to use a term that was specific to Christianity which would be Holy Spirit.

But it is the same for the atheistic position. It is claimed that that altruism, along with everything else has a completely mindless root. I don’t disagree that people can be nudged towards altruism by others. That doesn’t at all preclude that the first cause for altruism is an external intelligence.
If I am right about there being a god meme, then we do unconsciously here from a deity.

As far as this discussion is concerned then yes. As I have said more than once in this thread, it isn’t about which god we choose but about the nature of the deity we choose. Personally, I believe in the Christian God whose nature was embodied in Jesus but that isn’t the point. Well, a deistic creator is simply one who kicked the whole thing off and then departed the scene. Always a possibility I suppose. As far as the universe being infinite is concerned I agree, but also apparently the universe was once infinitely small. [qs=Tangle] If you invoke an intelligent creator to explain the complexity of life, the universe and everything, you make something necessarily more complex. Hence Occam slices it away.
He can do that because he knows that every other process ever discovered in our universe occurs naturally. There have been no godlike interventions. Also, since the enlightenment, at every point where god was required by religious to step in and explain something science proved it wrong, geocentrism, immutability of species, age of earth etc.
And in any case, the causeless cause is no answer to anything. It leaves the question unanswered.
Look at it this way. If someone from 300 years ago were to be transported into today and came upon a factory with only robots producing widgets which was being remotely controlled, it would appear that the robots are responsible for widgets. He wouldn’t know that the robots were designed by humans or even that there was human input into their functioning. (you could also look at AI as an example.)

I’d like to apologize in that I am getting so many posts to respond to I don’t have to respond properly to all that you posted and I’m not at all sure I have anything to add. I did however read and thought about your entire post. I maybe will try one other way of looking at itI honestly don’t think I have anything to add that I haven’t already said. I can’t accept the belief that intelligence and morality can evolve from mindless origins. I can accept that evolution started from an intelligent creator without need for further involvement leaving only natural processes.I want to use a quote from “The Silver Chair” by CS Lewis. Puddleglum is stuck in the underworld and which is ruled over by a witch. She keeps trying to convince that there is no world of Narnia and this is the only world there is.I don’t want to leave the impression that I am in any way accepting the non-existence of God, however I think that it is an example of how faith should be held. It is a heart issue where we are called to love truth, beauty, kindness, mercy, forgiveness etc. without any consideration of personal benefit.Here is Puddleglum”
“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.”

Quick question. Have I resolved the program with my last couple of posts? I started copying from the web site rather than the emails onto word.

I'm guessing that the spell went from problem to program.

That is an explanation of how we see it happening by observation which I have no problem with. It doesn't explain why it happens nor does it negate other inputs. We all agree that a child brought up in a loving home is more likely to be a loving parent from a home where he/she was abused. Maybe, but we have to remember that we live in the 4 dimensional world that we perceive. We have 1 dimension of time even though I have read that in the mathematical world time is symmetrical and can go backwards. Maybe in another dimension time might be different and maybe without entropy. More than a tad esoteric but i's one way of considering it.However I agree that the question is unanswerable.

But that is assuming that the one way to find truth is through the scientific method. It also assumes a materialistic world.I believe that the philosophical method can give us truth as well. For example, and this is hardly original with me, we see a kettle boiling on the stove. Science can tell us how the water came to be boiling but the non-scientific explanation is because Taq put the kettle on the stove to make coffee. Both explanations are true. One explanation is scientific and the other isn't.

It is the equivalent to the antitheist position of "god of the gaps'. An example would be when a theist inserts the idea of a god being responsible for abiogenesis that would be a god of the gaps. I an antitheist says that there is a scientific explanation that just hasn't been discovered yet then that is science of the gaps. Beats me. I can't think of any. Of course it isn't wrong. Maybe science can come up with a scientific explanation of how abiogenesis occurred but it still wouldn't explain why it happened.Even if science can repeat abiogenesis and get life from raw material it only demonstrates that it took intelligence to make it happen.