What do you think of Dawkins' sentiments?

@emiliya I'll repeat for you:

There is nothing right or wrong but thinking makes it so
WilliamShakespeare
(Hamlet)

Why don't you trust and act upon your own perceptions and judgements?

Think for yourself!

@newjaninev2 I don't think you are paying attention.

@emiliya to what..?

@emiliya
No it isn't. Even the definition you offered refers to evolution.

Spontaneous generation is when life just 'poofs' into existence - creationist-style

@newjaninev2 Abiogenesis is describing a similar event. How do inorganic substances create living organisms?

@emiliya I have already told you this... are you actually reading my comments? You have yet to offer a germane and reasoned response... I suspect you are simply wasting my time.

You seemed to be fixated on lipids, so I explained: "they became protocells only in hindsight. Until then they were simply spherical groupings of lipids. They weren't 'on the way to being' or 'striving to become' cells.

Evolution uses whatever is lying around to reach an unforseen outcome. There's no design... evolution tinkers using odds and ends, and does so without purpose in a process driven by Natural Selection"

You objected to the word 'tinkered'... semantics rather than reasoned argument.

I further commented:
"It is only in hindsight that such lipids would have become part of cell development. Further, they didn't just turn into cells... there would be a myriad of additional contributors and factors across large numbers of gradual changes to all of them"

No response to that

For some inexplicable reason you appear to think that Natural Selection is "magic"

Perhaps a quick explanation will help.

Natural selection is differential rates of genetic replication because of a constantly changing and unpredictable environment.

sex and death (if you have one you need the other)

A constantly changing and unpredictable environment

If you have all three then Natural Selection is inevitable

Natural Selection is the mechanism that drives the process of Evolution... and Evolution is change over time in the frequency and distribution of alleles.

That's it! Nothing more and nothing less... as simple as I can make it without being too simple

@BohemianBabe It is part of life. What kind of world would we live in without suffering? It wouldn't be real. If we want something better amongst all the suffering, we seek God, and we seek his good side.

@emiliya If you think about it, God could have kept the Garden alive and just let Adam and Eve do what they wanted. They wouldn't have been robots and there would be no evil. For the fact that God created that all by having a tantrum about the tree should tell you a lot. It's obvious they wouldn't be robots as God according to you, put in motion everything.

You can also say that having evil around is a convenient scapegoat, if evil wasn't around God would be to blame for natural evil like natural disasters.


Seeking God's good side makes it seem like if you do things or believe hard enough your God will be good to you. But what about children born with cancer? If they sought God, something good should happen but if it doesn't then they're screwed. The only way to seek God in that case is death so basically death cult. Because how else can you know god except to die.

@emiliya Suffering is part of life, but if God is real, then it's part of life because of God. That means he's either evil or insane.

@newjaninev2 The universe thinks we are special too. Apart from God, we are the intelligent life. The universe hasn't killed us yet. We have dominion over our planet, and we even go into space. We know about chemistry and physics. We know about biology. As we can see in this post, we have all these morals and ideas about things. Humans are capable of controlling their destiny more than any other animal. What is more special than us?

@newjaninev2 What else within the universe can come even close to understanding it? Only we can do that, so yes, we ARE special in that regard.

@Bel6EQUJ5
You posted three comments in response to my comment, and you still missed the point. I highlighted it for you here.

@LeopoldBloom If a conscience is beneficial, why do we suffer for it? I have seen that badness brings success. Being good is loss, loss of all things material, possibly more. Prophets were killed for delivering God's message. Jesus' followers had to suffer for being good. A rich man is rich because he hasn't given his money to the poor. This cooperation we talk about is only that. It is one small part of life, a very superficial one.

@emiliya We suffer because the universe doesn't care how we feel about any of this. Conscience isn't beneficial to the individual, it's beneficial to society. A society where individuals don't have a conscience won't survive because its members will take advantage of each other. That may be good for them in the short term, but not for the long-term prosperity of that society because none of the members will trust each other. A society where people cooperate because they don't want to feel shame or guilt for not cooperating will outcompete societies that don't have that feature. So evolution favored development of conscience as it results in more people being born and surviving long enough to reproduce.

Jesus' followers are doing pretty well these days. If you want to see suffering, try being openly atheist in a small town in rural America.

Cooperation is the basis of human society. Society wouldn't exist without it. Religion is just one form of cooperation. Government is another.

@LeopoldBloom I think God is the universe. The universe cares, and it lets us live as we do. If it changed, we would no longer be able to exist. You seem like a moral person who has very moral views and opinions. You don't like Trump, you want abortion for women, you believe Israel's way of defending itself is right. You and I may disagree, but we are both moral for having thoughts and desiring to share them. We were born this way.

“Cooperation is the basis of human society. Society wouldn't exist without it. Religion is just one form of cooperation. Government is another.”

Cooperation is cooperation. It is practical and has nothing to do with morality. Morality is as big and real and fundamental as air.

@AbbySvenz Im reading a book called Sapiens that says exactly that. The creation of fiction and agreed upon constructs is our defining human characteristic

@AbbySvenz “Universe gonna keep on universe-ing well after we’ve gone extinct.”

Do you think this is pertinent to anything you wrote in your comment?

Yes @emiliya

@swirlie There is no thinker.
Thoughts exist but there is no thinker that experiences them.

@Entwistle
If what you're saying were true, then there wouldn't be any thoughts either because thought would be irrelevant and therefore would not exist.

@swirlie It is true. There is no 'i' no 'me' that experiences the thoughts.
The idea of an 'i' experiencing the thoughts is just another thought.
Thoughts like all things are dependently originated.

@emiliya Whatever has given you that impression?

I have already said "We are left to make, and stand by, our individual judgements, and to be aware that there will always be those who differ."

There is no absolute good and there is no absolute evil... they are simplistic fictions taught to children and as adults we progress beyond them... which is just one of many reasons the adult world can become complicated.

@newjaninev2 What is guiding those “individual judgements”?

@emiliya self-interest

@calicuz We get this desire from our creator, God.

@Picklebobble2 What human physical problems are you talking about? Do not all humans have them at some point?

@emiliya As an example (and i stress, example) the human foible of 'depression'.

A massive industry of endless 'therapies' is available IF you have the desire and money to cater to them. In western cultures.

So does that mean people NOT in western cultures are somehow exempt from getting depression ?

If so, how do those in the 'underdeveloped world' address their depression ? Where such 'therapies' are unheard of.

What makes a 'westerner' more prone to the multitude of cancers out there ?
Are women in the African nations just as at risk of breast cancers ?
If the answer is no, there's your 'selfish gene'

@Picklebobble2 People in the underdeveloped world can't afford to be depressed, and they have fewer reasons to be depressed. They have families to think about. There are fewer distractions and practical matters to deal with. They also most often have sunshine and higher levels of vitamin D. Their moods are better due to the release of serotonin in the brain, which gets produced when we consume the amino acid tryptophan or when the sunlight hits the eyes and stimulates the retina.

Another good treatment or prevention for depression is physical activity, which westerners do not get enough of.

“What makes a 'westerner' more prone to the multitude of cancers out there ? Are women in the African nations just as at risk of breast cancers ?
If the answer is no, there's your 'selfish gene.”

“Selfish genes” are interested in continuation. Why would they cause cancer? In the same way Africans may suffer depression less, environment and lifestyle are why they tend to have fewer cases of cancer.

@jshm2 Yep,he's skint and lives in a cardboard box on the streets!!

@SparkleLeaf “Why would one area be subject to earthquakes, another to hurricanes, while another is a virtually uninhabitable desert, yet another infested with piranha, and other places do not have these problems?”

The planet is diverse. That is how God made it. If it were less diverse, it would be less joyful and less habitable. It is important that his creations have freedom and variety. God wanted there to be warmth and cold, brightness and darkness, night and day, mountains and deserts, sea and land, and all kinds of colors and creatures.

“Where is the morality in the geographic accident of ones birth determining what "evil" will befall them?”

Where is the morality in not giving us the chance to know evil? Is it moral to only live in a world of goodness? This would make God no different to the fascists who want to stop you from listening to a viewpoint they don't like. If God censored evil, he would not be a moral good, and we would not be moral people. He is moral and we are moral. Morality is flawed, and it is complex. We are supposed to be willing to sacrifice ourselves. We would not be able to follow in the ways of Jesus without trouble and strife.

“Look at how in different types of insect species the individual insects will sacrifice themselves to protect the colony. They are not capable of making a moral judgement, of believing what they are doing is "good."”

The best judgements are those made using our instincts. Instinct comes from God.

@emiliya way to make assumptions about how a fictional entity would create the universe

@uikakarotuevegeta Do you care to elaborate?

@TheOneyouwerewarnedabout This is about Dawkins, not Darwin.

@Nitedoc

if i hear the name richard dawkins. i assume hes going to talk about evolution and i tune out :)

Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941, Nairobi, Kenya) is a British evolutionary biologist, ethologist, and popular-science writer

@TheOneyouwerewarnedabout Okay. I didn't realize you were familiar with Dawkins. Just trying to give you a heads up. A lot of people are not familiar with Richard Dawkins. I always thought he was full of himself.

@NativePortlander1970 What about it?

@NativePortlander1970 “They exist alright, BUT, who gets to define them, the religions that instruct how slaves are to be treated and allows young virgin girls to become spoils of war, or a government that still refuses to acknowledge centuries of genocide against the Indigenous Peoples it conquored and subjugated.”

What does religion have to do with God? Why does our perception matter? What I know is there are things going on around me and that people are at odds with one another. Why does Dawkins write books if we are nothing? Why would he argue with a theist if he is not a moral being with a conscience? A conscience is more than feeling bad if you do something wrong. We have will and a desire to do what is right. It may not be what is right for others, but it is right for us, and we often think it is right for others. The Zionists in Israel think it is right to defeat their enemies and rule the region. The anti Zionists think it is right to stop the Israelis and save the Palestinians. Why is that? When we are monsters, we are at our most human. A monster can have the most acute senses, of what hurts and doesn't hurt. It all comes down to right and wrong and right and wrong. Is it right, or is it wrong? Where did we get that from? God, who is the universe and more. Dawkins is trying to tell us there is nothing when he has spent his career trying to prove something. Why would there be anything to prove in a world of nothing?

@emiliya So, ranting against Zionism, hmmm?

@emiliya Actually no, he didn't. What he actually claimed, and which has been confirmed via observation, is that gravity warps spacetime. Time dilation, which is clearly what you have in mind here, occurs as we approach lightspeed.

@swirlie time is a real part of the universe as proven by Einstein's theory of relativity. just because the measurements for time is man made doesn't mean time itself is a fabrication. did you miss physics class or you a religious nut?

@swirlie yeah I'm gonna need some proof beyond a reasonable doubt for string theory to be valid