Is There a God?

[Magdlyn]

I don't know what ancient batteries have to do with the existence of gods. But here's one found in Baghdad dated between 200 BCE and 200 CE.

http://corrosion-doctors.org/Batteries/Baghdad-Battery.htm

 

[Dickdomin]

If God doesn't exist then where do we came from? I do believe God do exist since there are a lot unnatural happenings and why are we here, so there is a purpose.

My mother told me she gave birth to me. I was apparently there, but... Maybe stork?

I do not think unnatural happenings explains gods before recently we could not detect atoms, does that make them not exist or our science just primitive.

I work in brain sciences. We have no idea how the brain actually works.

 

[Dickdomin]

Leyden cell

I don't know what ancient batteries have to do with the existence of gods. But here's one found in Baghdad dated between 200 BCE and 200 CE.

http://corrosion-doctors.org/Batteries/Baghdad-Battery.htm

Take a bottle fill with any sort of an acid, but even wine will do
Wrap it in wet paper stand in desert where there is free static electricity.
Hold bottle, reach out and shock the shit out of someone.

That is a battery. Again not rocket science.

I think life can rise the way Nick Lane describes.
Idea that God came down knocked up one chick in the hundreds of thousands of years and in all the places on the globe, sounds like a fucking silly god.
Idea there is no evolution, sounds like a silly god.
Praying has been shown to have an effect, that we cannot tell what is going on, why, is just our science has not gotten up to speed

 

[Magdlyn]

[the] Idea that God came down knocked up one chick in the hundreds of thousands of years and in all the places on the globe, sounds like a fucking silly god.

Rationally, yes. But our brains make up myths. Yahweh and Mary are, by far, not the only god/human reproducing couple. Gods copulating with humans is even in the Old Testament, Genesis 6:

"The sons of Elohim [royal plural for God, El of Babylon] saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose... The Nephilim [mythical creatures] were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of Elohim came in to [had sex with] the daughters of man and they [the human women] bore children to them [the sons of Elohim]."

While there is some fact in post Exilic scripture in the OT, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus are pure myth.

And of course in Greco-Roman myth, gods take the form of a bull and a swan and copulate with human women. One male god gives birth to someone from his forehead, I forget which one...

The mistake you are making, Dick, imo, is getting too wrought up over the myths of Judeo-Christianity. If you do some comparative religion study, and see the patterns, it's not as maddening. And if you take the myths symbolically, not literally, it hurts the head less.

Let's not forget fairy tales, such as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast, and dozens of others. Lots of weird stuff going on in those stories, and we consider them appropriate for children. We don't take them as history! But they do offer life lessons.

Funny how gnostic myths with powerful female characters (both good and evil) turned into "fairy tales" no one takes as fact, whereas the myth of a male god Jesus born of his father god and a human is supposed to be factual, if supernatural! Even a smart man like C S Lewis in the 20th century asserted the historical fact of this coupling, despite its complete unbelievability. He well knew of other god/human coupling in world myth, but asserted, THIS time, it really happened!

So much power and money in the churches depends on the willingness of people to suspend disbelief and assert the factualness of the divine/human coupling, to this day. So they keep preaching it, and congregations keep putting their hard earned money in the basket. Ugh.

 

[kdt26417]

Public service announcement: I am removing myself from the discussion in this thread. This is not a good time for me to try to stay on point and make useful contributions.

Skepticism, and the will to be skeptical, are the two great things that have been missing in these discussions, and they've been treated with condescension, disrespect, and patronization. I am not a child who needs to be lectured on the proper channels belief, and I will not entertain conversations that minimize my own beliefs. Others are welcome to entertain any conversation they want, and to be clear, Dickdomin is the only participant I have a problem with.

What's really absurd is that none of us will ever have the proof that really counts, since once you're dead, you no longer have the ability to recognize any proof. So while I recognize my failure as an individual, I also observe the inexorable absurdity of this discussion as a whole.

Carry on without any further distraction of my input.

 

[Magdlyn]

Well, that's disappointing, Kevin. You could just put him on ignore and carry on ... I wanted your opinion on my views! Darn. I was just having fun.

 

[kdt26417]

@ Magdlyn ... yeah, ignore settings kind of aren't my cup of tea. Refusing to engage has served me well in the past, and I can employ that method now too.

That aside, I truly appreciate the views that you posted.

Re: your post about fairy tales and gods mating with mortals ... sat well with me. Sometimes I think humans have an irrational fetish for believing in supernatural bunk. We just look and look and look until we find some supernatural evidence we think is up to our superior standards. And gods forbid science should ever fall short of answering all questions, because then that proves that our precious fairy tales are true.

Why is it so hard for people to accept that we live in a world that just is? with its mundane lack of closure. So humans "sat around" for a few hundred thousand years going "duh." So what? After four billion years of evolution, what the hell do a few hundred thousand years matter? and what's with this obsession with skin slips and great floods? Sounds to me like a need to feel more important than other people because one has this special knowledge that everyone else needs. Why as humans can't we let go of that disingenuous specialness and just admit that ordinary scientists are smarter than we are?

I think the reason is that we are all (often secretly) so terrified of our mortality that we'll do anything to convince ourselves that we'll still somehow be around after our bodies start rotting in the grave. Since life is so short, I find it a shame that we can't just make the most of what few moments we have while we're alive on this Earth.

Re: your link to the ancient battery article ... was very interesting to me and a realistic representation of what "advanced" technology really looked like in ancient times. Ancient humans figured out how to do many things we can't explain. The building of Stonehenge was a mystery for a long time until some guy in Michigan figured out how to do it in his backyard. The answers to unanswered questions aren't necessarily the confirmation of all these damned fairy tales and duplicitous promises of an afterlife.

One of my favorite TV shows is the X Files. But I don't have to take such cool storytelling literally in order to like and appreciate it. Human imagination is inspiring enough to suffice by itself.

 

[Magdlyn]

Kevin, so what if DD is a conspiracy theorist and has all these wacky ideas? That's his gig, he's not doing it to insult you. You don't have to write paragraph after paragraph addressing everyone of his silly theories and shooting them down. He's an old man with a lot of time on his hands, and he spouts a lot of shit.

Right, don't take storytelling seriously. Go with hard scientific data. You lived with having Mormonism shoved down your throat for a long time.

Maybe that is why you are so sensitive to DD's "preaching," but look, he's not a Mormon apostle and your parents aren't forcing you to listen and obey him. You don't need to engage him in any way. Me, I just address one or two topics that pertain to my own particular interests and spiritual bent. I don't think aliens built the Pyramids. I am into Biblical historical criticism and comparative religion and I know a thing or two about views on gods through the ages. I am not gonna go off on silly tangents about palmistry or triple penetration or my wife's soul coming into my body.

DD may be smart, but he's also crazy. Thin line between genius and madness after all.

 

[kdt26417]

Re:

"That's his gig, he's not doing it to insult you."

You're right; the insult was quite accidental. But it crossed a hard boundary for me. When I start getting cranky in my posts, that's when I know I need to make a major adjustment. I don't want to be responsible for detracting in any way from the value of this thread.

Re:

"You don't have to write paragraph after paragraph addressing everyone of his silly theories and shooting them down."

Amen. I'm going to stop doing that.

Re:

"Right, don't take storytelling seriously. Go with hard scientific data. You lived with having Mormonism shoved down your throat for a long time."

After the agonizing transformation my knowledge about Joseph Smith Jr. (and others) underwent, I would never again believe one word of woo woo doctrine. I don't even care how much supposed "proof" is behind it. It takes a well-grounded scientist to supply a real commitment to discovering the truth.

It saddens me to have to be selective about who and what I respond to, but at least I know I gave it my best shot before adding the selectivity. This has been an amazingly bad week for me in general, but that doesn't matter. I need to follow posting policies that will see me through the bad weeks as well as the good.

So I won't abandon this thread, I'll just be a little more careful not to jump down rabbit holes in the future.

Carry on, all.

 

[Magdlyn]

No one is asking you to believe anything on this thread. I think DD has experienced things.... that's his experience. And he also has ideas and theories. Even though he's a pita, I don't think he gives a shit what you believe.

Glad you're moving on.

What do you think about my idea that human brains love to make up myths? Especially when on hallucinogens? It is quite common to "see god" and have life changing experiences that make your life better, feeling a Oneness with All, all nature, all humans, all the cosmos.

It's when you order people to "believe" what you've experienced, orrrr, what you've made up (*cough*Joseph Smith con man *cough*) that we get into trouble.

 

[kdt26417]

I think that too often we forget that we actually live in our brains. Every movement in every part of our body originates in our brain. Our eyes are just lenses and nerve endings; it's our brain that does the actual seeing. Same goes for our ears; our brain does the actual hearing. And our sense of touch is realized inside our brain too -- not on the surface of our skin.

Considering our brain is the tool that creates "real" sights, sounds, and sensations, it shouldn't be hard to believe that our brain can also create hallucinations that look, sound, and feel 100% real. If we can tell something's not real, it's only because our brain gives us that information. If it doesn't give us that information, then we don't know that it's not real.

Furthermore, there's nothing stopping our brain from (accidentally) creating false memories -- so that we feel 100% sure that this or that happened, when in reality it didn't happen; our brain just created a "memory" of it.

Anyone who's watched the old classic, "Blade Runner," will probably easily recall what it's like to have false memories. Recall if you will the secretary (Rachael, played by Sean Young) who thought she was a real (organic) human -- only to find out that she was a replicant.

The movie depicted her emotional struggle after she realized this truth. There was a scene when she was playing the piano, and she told the main character (Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford) that she remembered taking piano lessons as a little girl -- which was impossible, since as a replicant she would have been artificially created just a few years ago. The memories had been installed in her artificial brain specifically so that she would believe she was a real (organic) human.

False memories. They can be installed into a replicant's brain, and guess what: They can occur in the human brain too. So that's another kind of hallucination that can take place inside the brain.

I don't think there's anything wrong with experiencing hallucinations, and I don't mind if someone wants to partake of the magic mushrooms ... as long as we're honest with ourselves about our brain's ability to make the unreal seem completely real. Instead of saying, "Well I saw it," or, "I experienced it," so, "Therefore, it must have happened." Before I draw that conclusion, I think I should carefully consider the likelihood of what I thought I saw or experienced. If it defies science and reason, then I'll bet that it was a hallucination.

I wouldn't presume to pretend I could make such guesses perfectly, but it does put the word "proof" into perspective. Hallucinations can help us learn important life lessons, and that's great. But they can also make us believe in fiction, and that can lead to problems.

I think the human brain is amazingly imaginative. Just think of the weird shit we dream up while we're asleep! It's not a surprise that many myths have been invented by humans throughout the ages. To say nothing of relatively modern mythology such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Even when we (okay most of us) know that LotR is a work of fiction, we love to hear, read, and see it. We get so caught up in the story that sometimes we forget it isn't really happening. That's the power the human brain has.

I rely on science to determine what's real and what isn't, but I still enjoy lots of stuff that has little if anything to do with science. Art and music. It doesn't have to be real to convey powerful thoughts and feelings, don't you agree?

 

[YouAreHere]

Leaders then began to spread propaganda-- pro-pagan-da, about its great, true, universal (catholic in Greek) religion. Then to encourage the "pagans" to become Christians, yes, they made some beloved pagan deities into saints (St Bridget of Ireland was based on Brigid, a powerful goddess), some deities into "devils," like the Horned and horny God into Satan, and built their churches on sites of sacred pagan ritual, holy grottoes, lakes, mountains. Many cathedrals dedicated to Our Lady (Mary Virgin or Magdalene) were built on sites that were originally shrines to Isis or other goddesses. And of course the Christian holidays Christmas and Easter are congruent with the winter solstice (Saturnalia) and spring equinox, (Ostara/Estre, a goddess at her fertile, estrus time).

There's a piece of me that would LOVE to see your deconstruction of Kirk Cameron's new Christmas movie.

 

[kdt26417]

From the article, Kirk Cameron isn't sounding too much like a man of great depth. Just my perception.

To me it sounds like the movie will be a feel-good piece to reassure Christian zealots that they aren't supporting paganism by doing all the Christmas traditions.

I guess if you stretch the obvious far enough you can make any Christmas tradition look Biblical. The key point is that the Christmas of today didn't just spring out of the ground when Jesus was born. It gradually evolved over 2000 years. With such slow evolution one has to expect paganism to be part of the process. After all, Christianity only spread throughout Europe after pagan people had been basically forced to adopt Christianity.

Not that I care whether people celebrate Christmas today, or how they celebrate it, or what motivates their celebration. Christmas for me has become a great big yawn. It doesn't do anything for me. Not to say I begrudge others' enjoyment of it, just to say I personally no longer care for it.

"Save" Christmas, throw Christmas to the pagan gods, either outcome is equally interesting to me. Worth a "Huh," but that's about it.

 

[kdt26417]

Heh. You know what would be fun would be if someone made a movie "proving" that all our Halloween traditions are also Biblical-Christian in origin. Woo hoo! "Jesus says trick or treat!" Put Christ back in Halloween, that's what I say.

 

[Magdlyn]

There's a piece of me that would LOVE to see your deconstruction of Kirk Cameron's new Christmas movie.

Ha. Not much to go on in that article. I wonder how he tied in a fir tree to Jesus' birth? Tree from Eden? Did Adam and Eve eat a pine cone? Or was the cross made of wood from Germany? lol


Kevin, I will get back to you later. Kinda busy right now. I hope today is going better for you.

 

[kdt26417]

Re:

"Did Adam and Eve eat a pine cone?"

LOLOL ... yup, that's the ticket.

"Mmmm. Crunchy yet woody."

In other news: Today is going right shitty ... which is an improvement.

 

[YouAreHere]

Heh. You know what would be fun would be if someone made a movie "proving" that all our Halloween traditions are also Biblical-Christian in origin. Woo hoo! "Jesus says trick or treat!" Put Christ back in Halloween, that's what I say.

I put the "Christ!" in Halloween when I get those guys jumping out of the bushes with fake blood-stained machetes (at least, I hope they're fake). A little bit of pee, too.

 

[YouAreHere]

From the article, Kirk Cameron isn't sounding too much like a man of great depth. Just my perception.

To me it sounds like the movie will be a feel-good piece to reassure Christian zealots that they aren't supporting paganism by doing all the Christmas traditions.

Or just flat-out denial, which I think is bizarre, since I think the fir tree tradition is even MENTIONED in the Bible somewhere as a Pagan custom that shouldn't be adopted or somesuch. (Gonna have to look that one up later)

I'm sure it's a feel-good piece... I'm torn between actually watching it somewhere because it looks just SO GOOFY (my GOD, that poster!), and thinking that my eyes and brain will spontaneously revolt and leave the room.

Edited to add: I'm now feeling a twinge nostalgic for all the "Rock music is EVIL" videos made in the '80s... I think my friend had one that said Journey was satanic, due to the use of the scarab in their imagery. I may have to try to dig that up on YouTube.

 

[kdt26417]

RUSH = Raised Under Satan's Hand
KISS = Knights In Satan's Service

Right?

In Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust," the backmasking "clearly" tells us to "start to smoke marijuana." Which is curious, since backmasking is such a spiritually powerful tool. Why waste it on marijuana? Why not, "Inject yourself with LSD?" or better yet, "Start to lick Satan's hairy balls."

The silliest thing about all the rock anti-hype is that rock musicians are entertainers and performers. The only reason they wear freaky makeup and "act all Satanic" onstage is because that's what sells tickets and makes money. To them, it's just a job. Clock-in, clock-out.

---

"Oh Christ! I think I just peed myself a little. Happy Halloween to you too, jerks! I'll be praying for you, big-time."

 

[YouAreHere]

RUSH = Raised Under Satan's Hand
KISS = Knights In Satan's Service

Right?

Indeed... Because acronyms always have multiple meanings. ADIDAS = "All day I dream about sex," doncha know?

The silliest thing about all the rock anti-hype is that rock musicians are entertainers and performers. The only reason they wear freaky makeup and "act all Satanic" onstage is because that's what sells tickets and makes money. To them, it's just a job. Clock-in, clock-out.

Or it just gets over the top and they're making fun of it, which is also quite a bit of fun.

"Oh Christ! I think I just peed myself a little. Happy Halloween to you too, jerks! I'll be praying for you, big-time."

Luckily, I haven't had to explain finding a Jack Chick tract in my kids' Halloween candy.

In related news, I can't wait for Kirk Cameron to explain bunnies and eggs for Easter.