God is the answer to all your problems

Oh Jesus ######6 Christ! When will this topic be locked already?

MartianRobotGirl wrote:Oh Jesus ######6 Christ! When will this topic be locked already?

There is a bit of problem with the Anti-Psychiatry forum. It seems to have been created as an impromptu way of moving a number of threads that challenged or attacked certain precepts of psychiatry into a kind of leper pit to protect other forums. The consequence of this is that you have a forum that is entirely unmoderated so it contains ruthless ad hominum attacks, horrible misinformation about psychiatric medications and their efficacy and threads that are really out of control by the first or second page.

I'm sure there are many people who would love to discuss how their religious or spirtual beliefs affect their wellbeing and why they are important but, this thread never really makes this possible. It's really unfortunate.

Infinite_Jester wrote:

MartianRobotGirl wrote:Oh Jesus ######6 Christ! When will this topic be locked already?

There is a bit of problem with the Anti-Psychiatry forum. It seems to have been created as an impromptu way of moving a number of threads that challenged or attacked certain precepts of psychiatry into a kind of leper pit to protect other forums. The consequence of this is that you have a forum that is entirely unmoderated so it contains ruthless ad hominum attacks, horrible misinformation about psychiatric medications and their efficacy and threads that are really out of control by the first or second page.

I'm sure there are many people who would love to discuss how their religious or spirtual beliefs affect their wellbeing and why they are important but, this thread never really makes this possible. It's really unfortunate.

Very true. It's sad.

10 - I know God exists. If you disagree, prove otherwise. Oh you say you can't prove God doesn't exist? That's because you know he does!

09 - If God didn't exist why would most of the world believe?, Unstated major premise, Argumentum ad populum

08 - The Ontological Argument; If you can't touch "love" how can it be real?, Descartes’s God‐claim, semantic psychobabble, new age

07 - Believe and live forever in heaven, or don't and suffer eternal damnation, Appeal to the stick, Fearmongering, There are advantages to belonging to a church..., Argumentum ad baculum

06 - Something can't come from nothing, Cosmological Argument, Every effect has a cause, First law of thermodynamics proves God exists

05 - The Bible proves God exists, Begging the question, Circular reasoning, Tautology

04 - I feel the presence of God - I know he's real, Naked assertion

03 - What are the odds of human beings existing?, Anthropic Principle, Existence defies entropy, Humans are too perfect to have been accidentally created, Special pleading.

02 - Better to believe and be right than not believe and be wrong, It doesn't hurt to believe in god and it's a safer bet, False dichotomy.

01 - Teleological argument, Every creation must have a creator., Intelligent Design, argument from complexity, Argument from final consequences, Special pleading, Ad-hoc reasoning.

ChosenOne wrote:10 - I know God exists. If you disagree, prove otherwise. Oh you say you can't prove God doesn't exist? That's because you know he does!

09 - If God didn't exist why would most of the world believe?, Unstated major premise, Argumentum ad populum

08 - The Ontological Argument; If you can't touch "love" how can it be real?, Descartes’s God‐claim, semantic psychobabble, new age

07 - Believe and live forever in heaven, or don't and suffer eternal damnation, Appeal to the stick, Fearmongering, There are advantages to belonging to a church..., Argumentum ad baculum

06 - Something can't come from nothing, Cosmological Argument, Every effect has a cause, First law of thermodynamics proves God exists

05 - The Bible proves God exists, Begging the question, Circular reasoning, Tautology

04 - I feel the presence of God - I know he's real, Naked assertion

03 - What are the odds of human beings existing?, Anthropic Principle, Existence defies entropy, Humans are too perfect to have been accidentally created, Special pleading.

02 - Better to believe and be right than not believe and be wrong, It doesn't hurt to believe in god and it's a safer bet, False dichotomy.

01 - Teleological argument, Every creation must have a creator., Intelligent Design, argument from complexity, Argument from final consequences, Special pleading, Ad-hoc reasoning.

Oh good lawd
Let this thread die already!
Though your points are factually sound, I still find myself wanting to reach through your screen and slap you so hard your teeth slam together.
You're not convincing me, andI'm not convincingyou! SOlet it go already. Neither side is going to successfully convert the other in this threadd!

But you're still responding to him, which just eggs him on. Let it die. I can't even be bothered to read the posts here.

It's not arrogant to demand evidence before accepting outrageous claims as correct.
It's just rational.

Know what's arrogant? To claim some "god" for which there is no evidence of any kind actually exists, then demand everyone in the world accept that unsupportable belief, or face eternal fiery punishment. That's arrogance.



-- Fri Dec 09, 2011 7:41 am --

I still find myself wanting to reach through your screen and slap you so hard your teeth slam together

I actually do that in my mind when I am frustrated about something (physical violence). If it helps you to return to a rational mental state, then give it a try ! You have nothing to lose at all

ladyswan wrote:But you're still responding to him, which just eggs him on. Let it die. I can't even be bothered to read the posts here.

Eggs him on. You make it sound like this issue is not worthy of debating, or otherwise talking about. In which case, it's simple ..unsubscribe from this post.

However this thread exists, and I am new here, and interested in this subject.... reality.

So thank you for the warm welcome

P.s, intersting read below

1.Language and Evolutionary Psychology.

About half a million years ago the human brain had become large enough to formulate religious and philosophical ideas. The expansion of the neocortex, that part of the brain involved in processing those higher order cognitive functions such as, self consciousness, language and emotions, is also responsible for the level of social complexity of human beings as a species. Language as a tool for the exchange of evermore complex cultural ideas and information developed hand in hand with culture. Religion requires a system of symbolic communication such as language or writing, to be transmitted from one individual to another, “human religious thought and moral sense clearly rest on a cognitive linguistic base”. (P. Lieberman)“If religion had to await the evolution of modern, articulate language, then it would have emerged shortly before 50,000 years ago.” (N Wade)

There is general agreement among cognitive scientists that religion is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved early in human history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. The two main schools of thought hold that either religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage, or that religion is an evolutionary by-product of other mental adaptation. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, believed that religion was an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words that religion evolved as by product of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons.

Such mechanisms may include the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm (agent detection), the ability to come up with causal narratives for natural events (etiology), and the ability to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions (theory of mind). These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity of life, etc.

2.Morality and group living.

Dr. Frans de Waal and Barbara King both view human morality as having grown out of primate sociality. Though morality may be a unique human trait, many social animals, such as primates, dolphins and whales, have been known to exhibit pre-moral sentiments.
De Waal contends that all social animals have had to restrain or alter their behaviour for group living to be worthwhile. Pre-moral sentiments evolved in primate societies as a method of restraining individual selfishness and building more cooperative groups. For any social species, the benefits of being part of an altruistic group should outweigh the benefits of individualism.

Based on the size of extant hunter-gatherer societies, recent Palaeolithic hominids lived in bands of a few hundred individuals. As community size increased over the course of human evolution, greater enforcement to achieve group cohesion would have been required. Morality may have evolved in these bands of 100 to 200 people as a means of social control, conflict resolution and group solidarity. According to Dr. de Waal, human morality has two extra levels of sophistication that are not found in primate societies. Humans enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. Humans also apply a degree of judgement and reason not otherwise seen in the animal kingdom.

Psychologist Matt J. Rossano argues that religion emerged after morality and built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of individual behaviour to include supernatural agents. By including ever-watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups. The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival.

ChosenOne wrote:These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity of life, etc.

i wonder if these adaptations allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind observations that are not merely not readily explained but fully unexplainable. e.g. a talking & burning bush

perhaps a religion will spring up when humans witness the miraculous, you know like the dead rising or the sea parting. it seems that only modern man actively resists the belief in diety, seeking to replace it with science. although i guess there have been doubting thomases from the beginning.

pick your poison, cain.

marycarterpaint wrote:

ChosenOne wrote:These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity of life, etc.

i wonder if these adaptations allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind observations that are not merely not readily explained but fully unexplainable. e.g. a talking & burning bush

perhaps a religion will spring up when humans witness the miraculous, you know like the dead rising or the sea parting. it seems that only modern man actively resists the belief in diety, seeking to replace it with science. although i guess there have been doubting thomases from the beginning.

pick your poison, cain.

When was the last time you saw "the dead rising or the sea parting"? What's to resist? Science has liberated the people who once called themselves Christians (including myself) to new levels of understanding that renders the whole belief and religious path as futile and out dated.

Any one can take scientific doctrines and expand on them, challenge them, or overturn them. What is left is only the best of the best. Hopefully based on observation, and critical thinking.

We have ground rules for what is acceptable. These ground rules, are built and tested similar to how the data they provide are built.

As such, at the end of the day, when we discover, or propose a new idea we can 'check' with all the rules, and analyze it in many ways to determine if it is 'real' or appears to be 'real' or plausible.

Each time one of these laws, or rules is overwritten we're closer to the truth.

We've come far enough to know with almost no doubt that Evolution and Natural selection can and do explain our varied species.

We have come to know very well that the 'big bang' is most probably correct, and does a 'bang up job' of explaining the apparent start of our universe.

There are many questions left. How did the 1st life being, where, what conditions, etc. There are many questions left in the cosmos. What triggered the big bang, how common are they, will we ever see another universe, etc.

Accepting the tireless work of men is what we do. But we don't except it blindly... There are rules of engagement, tests that can be preformed before we accept them as describing reality.