Choosing a faith

I don't care if you're rational or not.
I'm not rational all the time. I'm not sure if anyone actually is.I'm just looking for your to be honest. I'm not here to discuss world-politics that I cannot control.
It doesn't interest me, or, at least, it doesn't interest me right now

Do you think that this is the Christian way Phat? WWJD?
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My children and grandchildren will have to look after themselves. They are beyond the age where what I do has much effect on their lives.However, I benefited because of people who came before me. I have a moral obligation to pay it forward. That's why I am concerned about environment issues.

Im concerned about environmental issues too, but quite frankly do not want to suffer in my old age. I know it is selfish, by the way. I dont have kids to be selfless for. And im not doing it for a planet full of kids. Now might be the time for you to start praying for me. I need it.

For starters, He likely wont be too happy with me! Maybe in some of these arguments you guys are right. I dont fully know, anymore. At least not today.

How about the places you can't look? You can't measure and examine people's consciousness for empathy or love of neighbour. You can observe what people do, but you can only observe and then believe what it is that motivates people to do what they do. The original point of this thread was that regardless of whatever name we might give to a desity isn't what matters. What matters is the nature of the deity we worship. The deity that I believe is modelled on a god of love whose nature I discern by understanding Jesus. I contend that there is a good reason to believe that but there is nothing physical to examine or test. I can't know absolutely that what I believe to be true concerning the Christian faith to be the truth but the same holds for everyone else here. If I didn't believe that Jesus' resurrection was historically true I would reject Christianity. If I didn't believe that there was a deity that cared about life on Earth then I would reject theism. Things can be true even though we can't absolutely know that they are true. WE can have #1 as our priority without being able to materially confirm what it is we believe to be true. But first I had to look at what I can know to find the truth concerning the resurrection and then even before that to come to a conclusion concerning basic theism. What knowledge am I rejecting? Obviously things can be truthful without being verifiable. #1 can be the first priority even though it is unverifiable. Atheism is unverifiable. I'll pick one. You talk about the evolution of morality and then claim that this is evidence that there is no external deity. What you have outlined is the same type of evidence as I use when I say that I have the Bible as written evidence and the rise of Christian belief as evidence.OK, lets's say that morality evolved in the way your paper describes. Isn't it reasonable to ask why it evolved at all. It doesn't fit with Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest. It doesn't account for why or even how the first seed of thought that became morality occurred. It doesn't account for the the vast range of human morality we can observe or for the ongoing individual struggles we have with our own moral behaviour. In so many ways atheism raises questions that can't be answered, and much more so than basic theism.

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OK, lets's say that morality evolved in the way your paper describes. Isn't it reasonable to ask why it evolved at all.

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No, it wouldn’t be. Because the answer is there. Pretending that is isn’t is not reasonable.

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It doesn't fit with Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest.

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Oh yes it does. You’ve been told that often enough. You’ve had years to learn about it or discuss it and instead you choose not to, and keep to your wilfully ignorant opinion. And you pretend it’s all about the truth.

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fittest. It doesn't account for why or even how the first seed of thought that became morality occurred.

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I’d disagree with that.

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It doesn't account for the the vast range of human morality we can observe or for the ongoing individual struggles we have with our own moral behaviour.

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And it shouldn’t. That gets into psychology and history, and culture.

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It doesn't account for the the vast range of human morality we can observe or for the ongoing individual struggles we have with our own moral behaviour.

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Not really. Not if you actually care about the truth. The “answers” of theism often aren’t. I’ll take atheism and an honest interest in discovering the truth over the smug self-worship you indulge in any day, I don’t think my conscience would let me have it any other way,

Prayer doesn't do anything, as far as I can tell.

And all studies support that it does nothing.

Smug self worship? Who does this?

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Smug self worship? Who does this?

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GDR was doing it right there.

Look into yourself. You do this all the time. This is not an attack, merely pointing it out. Take it for what it is worth.

If we can't know anything about them - what makes you think God exists, and is specifically confined there? Is that even still a God? Don't need to. You can measure and examine their actions. What? Why?
Why can't you just ask the people what motivates them?Most will say "because I love them..."
Some will say "because God says I should" and if you ask them if God is love... they usually say yes as well. I contend that this "good" reason is only good because it makes you feel better.
It is not a "good" reason if you want to identify truth - because it involves a lot of processes that we know are very, very bad at identifying truth, and usually wrong. Absolutely.
The difference is - I acknowledge this and admit that when I'm looking for truth I cannot hold onto past ideas, no matter how much I want them to be true, and must "look for truth" in a way that best helps identify that truth. I will not let any previous ideas, no matter how much I like them, get in the way of identifying truth - whatever that truth may be.But you seem to want to cling to "Jesus' resurrection is a historical fact" no matter how much doubt is cast upon that claim and no matter what evidence is found in the future. You seem to only want to "find truth if it aligns with Jesus' resurrection as a historical fact." And, while doing this, you also want to claim that you're actually "looking for truth" even though you're putting limitations on what "truth" you will accept - regardless of how true it actually is. The 8 million and 2 million papers of knowledge showing you that society and morality evolved naturally. Not really.
I talk about evolution of morality and then claim that this is evidence that morality evolved naturally.
I also talk about us never finding any evidence of an external deity, after searching everywhere and anywhere for one, and that this is evidence that there is no external deity.The two also support each other... but the evidence for each one is not dependent on the other.If God was shown to exist tomorrow - it would still be obvious that morality evolved naturally.
If morality was shown to have non-natural origins tomorrow - this wouldn't show that God exists. Are you saying that 2 million peer-reviewed papers following our best-known-method of identifying truth are "the same type of evidence" as the Bible.. which is shown to have many internal contradictions, many embellishments of the truth, many flat-out-wrong-and-never-actually-occurred claims to history and is never corrected for it's many, many errors?That's, well, really silly. Good question.
A few possible answers:
-it provides a survival advantage
-it is a side-effect or emergent-property of increased intelligence (which provides a survival advantage), and may not provide any advantage at all on it's own It definitely does.
It's a simple concept - you'd rather hang out with friends than with enemies, and "hanging-out together" makes you stronger/more-likely-to-survive than being alone.The fittest (those who group together and help each other) survive and the unfit (those who remain alone) are killed... usually by those larger groups. Like all things that evolved - mutations in DNA replication during the process of having children.
-increased intelligence occurred, and provided a significant survival advantage
-increasing intelligence is selected for as it provides more and more of a survival advantage
-at some point, intelligence increases so much that "the first seed of thought that became morality occurred" and continued to evolve You know we don't all have the same arms, right?
I can't lift anything near what weight-lifters can. The human frame comes in all shapes and sizes... even though we all have "arms"... some are bigger/stronger, others are faster/nimbler.Same with intelligence and morality.
We all have brains. But not all brains function exactly the same.
Some will have a greater leaning for morality, others will not. Almost all will have slightly different "leanings" in different moral directions, regardless of how "great" that leaning is.This is another simple concept: different strokes for different folks. Atheism doesn't attempt to answer any of these questions.However, these questions can all be answered very easily without invoking God. This is the knowledge that is contained in the 2 million papers you're not accepting, that are based on our best-known-method for identifying truth and not "a bunch of erroneous stories written down some 2000 years ago."It won't go away, no matter how many times you re-ask the same questions over and over and over and get the same, fully-evidenced-answers repeated to you over and over and over.I'm not sure what you think is going on here... but we're not having a discussion like "what is the source of dark matter?" where neither of us has knowledge to back up our claims. We're having a discussion like "how do airplanes fly?" where one of us knows how airplanes fly and the other has never seen a plane and doesn't believe they even exist. I'll show you explanations of airplanes over and over and over again... and you seem to just keep falling back to "but I don't get it... so it can't work!" Which is... only half right.It hasn't been hundreds of years, but it has been "years" that we've known how things like society and morality have naturally (entirely, fully naturally) evolved and do not require the intervention of any external deity. (You'll notice that most of those linked papers are from the 2000's and even the 2010's...) Just like airplanes. You can either accept it or not - it doesn't really matter, and doesn't make it go away.This is the problem with attempting to hide God in pockets of "unknown" knowledge. When that knowledge comes around and becomes known... you have to adjust your reasoning or become identified as someone who "fights against knowledge/facts."

Jesus is impersonal to most. He only makes an impression on a small minority. The only way to the Father is by the way, the truth and the light. The way is by following the commandments, principally by loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. I, for one, constantly counsel you NOT to throw the book away. Thinking you have the final answer is a trap. Of course you couldn't possibly know that.

False dichotomy. It is possible to believe AND think - both at the same time, even.Thinking, and following the evidence (which is NOT "vague", by the way) protects us from some of the stupid ideas that you claim to believe. It isn't very often that marriages are "merely cast aside". It's funny how "True believers" consider themselves "skeptical" of good evidence. Their "reasonable doubt' is definitely UNreasonable.They fervently believe the defendant is innocent because, "He's a good boy. He wouldn't do that," yet they have "reasonable doubts" about the video of the good boy committing the crime. Atheists don't care about moving you. Thanks for the compliment. Jesus was an emotionally passionate humanist too. There's no need to "masquerade". Nobody gives a flying fuck about your beliefs.