Why do you believe in the evolution theory? (2)

[JacksBratt]

Why do I need an afterlife, to live a good life while I am alive?

The time you spend alive on this earth is such a tiny tiny insignificant amount of your existence in relation to eternity.

Hell could be as simple as living in a room by yourself that smelt a bit like fish.
Or, walking a road with a stone in your shoe, forever.

Eternity is a concept that makes even the simplest annoyance a hell of it's own.

 

[lewiscalledhimmaster]

<edit>

If not, what awaits you and everyone else when their heart beats its last?

Death.

And death means what to you? That you cease to exist?

(i)

Most likely. But you can be an atheist and believe in an afterlife, they aren't mutually exclusive. I used to believe in ghosts.

(ii)

Probably.

(iii)

Yes.

There is the small matter of (a) "consciousness" and (b) Near Death Experiences, as well as (c) the resurrection of Jesus.
The latter (b + c) have been defended by Dr. Gary Habermas*, who wrote his doctoral thesis on the (c) resurrection of Jesus.



* List of Publications : http://www.garyhabermas.com/publications.htm

Edit:
As I'm well aware that (c) cannot be discussed on this forum* and (b) is speculative bordering on supernatural**, I'd like to toss the pebble of (a) "consciousness" into the mix: http://www.theguardian.com/science/consciousness

'....Reading Oliver Burkeman (The I in mind, 21 January) I was surprised to discover that many scientists deny there&#8217;s such a thing as consciousness. They should read Mary Midgley&#8217;s Are You an Illusion?, I thought. I liked Philip Goff&#8217;s response (Letters, 29 January), but now I wonder, why do academics interested in consciousness seemingly ignore David Bohm, of whom Einstein spoke as his intellectual successor? Bohm was a 20th-century American physicist who lived and worked in England. The Dalai Lama considered Bohm to be one of his scientific gurus, writing that Bohm was interested in consciousness because of its implications with regard to the theories of quantum physics. ....' (*)
(*) Perhaps this might be a good primer: Missing links in the consciousness debate - The Gaurdian : 29 January, 2015.

Additional Audio/Read:
Why can't the world's greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness? - Oliver Burkeman ( transcript : http://www.theguardian.com/science/...ds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness )

~~~
* http://www.christianforums.com/f70/
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology

 

[bhsmte]

The time you spend alive on this earth is such a tiny tiny insignificant amount of your existence in relation to eternity.

All the more reason, to be motivated to make it a good life, with meaning.

 

[bhsmte]

That's the confidence I want to have when I close my eyes for the last time.

Hey, if you can manufacture your own confidence, knock yourself out.

 

[lewiscalledhimmaster]

All the more reason, to be motivated to make it a good life, with meaning.

Absolutely. Yet the way by which such goodness and meaning is acquired, is in the words of Kerry Livgren: 'so elusive'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLxv8kXNteo

 

[bhsmte]

Absolutely. Yet the way by which such goodness and meaning is acquired, is in the words of Kerry Livgren: 'so elusive'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLxv8kXNteo

Kerry may think it is elusive, but that is one man's opinion.

 

[lewiscalledhimmaster]

Kerry may think it is elusive, but that is one man's opinion.

Don't you think that the quest for acquiring goodness and meaning can be quite elusive?

 

[bhsmte]

Don't you think that the quest for acquiring goodness and meaning can be quite elusive?

As with anything in life, it is all relative to the individual.

One person may have a difficult time finding meaning in their life, while another has relatively little trouble finding and holding onto this meaning.

All depends on what makes the person tick.

 

[Saricharity]

I have thought a lot about this in the night...lucky me has caught a stomach bug ugh.
I prayed a lot as well...I have often wondered why so many people are here who are not Christians. This forum is called Christian forums. I do not know the answer but I can speculate. Of course my speculations may be wrong as well.
I often wonder how many people lose faith by spending too much time here. (Which is probably a sad reality.).
However, if one person ...JUST ONE is given hope and seeks out God and is saved then it is worth it.
I don't like to get in senseless debates on this forum. I used to try to earnestly convince others of what is True. I have come to realize that it a useless pursuit. I have grown up in a Christian home and I have seen miracles...unbelievable ones...things I have seen with my own eyes...I could tell you stories and you wouldn't even believe me.
God is real. His Word is alive. There is a heaven. There is a hell. Life on this earth is short...each one of us have been created with a purpose.
My heart truely aches.
My purpose is to reach out to as many people as I can. I want people who meet me to see the sunshine and the hope I have. I want them to ask me...what gives you such hope? How do you live in this world with all its pain? What give you your hope and happiness? Why do you smile through your tears? I strive to be different. To be kind.
I strive to be like Jesus. I fail miserably everyday but I get up, dust myself off and keep trying.
My faith is strong, my hope is eternal.
I once heard it said...if a Christian is wrong, he will cease to exist and it won't matter. He would have lived a purposeful life and a life with honour. If an unbeliever is wrong, he will live forever regretting he didn't listen. Who has more to lose?
I would rather live my life in faith.

 

[Davian]

Born once, die twice.

Born twice, die once.

Gibberish. Care to explain?

 

[Davian]

That's the confidence I want to have when I close my eyes for the last time.

On what would you base that confidence?

 

[Loudmouth]

Indeed, we can see the nested hierarchy more clearly if we disregard evolution. Why? To illustrate, if we invoke Darwinian evolution we would have to say the nesting goes like this:
FISH are the common ancestors of humans, birds, and frogs. Ergo birds nest within fish, and so do humans, and so do frogs.

Fish, humans, birds, and frogs all nest within the vertebrate clade. They are all still vertebrates.

Are you going to believe Theobald&#8217;s Markov chains that you are a fish or are you going to believe you&#8217;re a human and not a fish?

"Fish" is a paraphyletic term. Cladistics and the nested hierarchy use monophyletic terms which would be "vertebrate" in this instance.

Monophyletic, Polyphyletic, & Paraphyletc Taxa

However, it is nice that you are taking an interest in systematics. One of the first lessons is learning the terms monophyly, paraphyly, and polyphyly. Good luck on your new adventure.

Further, intelligent agents create nested hierarchies, not only out of necessity but out of their sense of aesthetics. In the world of classical music there are somewhat well defined music forms: sonatas, minuets, concertos, symphonies, operas, variations, nocturnes, preludes, etudes, rhapsodies, etc. These forms create nested hierarchies and have little to do with Markov chains.

It seems quite easy to find violations of nesting for classical music. For example, the characteristic "C major" is spread throughout each group with no nesting. We can say the same of time signature. A sonata and symphony can be in C major, while two sonatas are in C major and D minor, as one example. There is no way that keys and time signatures fall into any objective phylogeny, and these are the two major characteristics of all music in all categories.

For example, what is the common ancestor of vertebrates and invertebrates?

I guess you never heard of protists, or "Eukaryotes"? The Eukaryote clade includes both vertebrates and invertebrates.

http://tolweb.org/Eukaryotes/3

Perhaps you would prefer Metazoa?

http://tolweb.org/Animals/2374

 

[Loudmouth]

Thank you for giving the devil his due. In all actuality, Satan is the "great deceiver". He will tell you just enough truth to make you swallow his lie hook, line and sinker.

A perfect description of what you have been doing in these threads. For example, you have often used out of context quotes from Darwin to argue that Darwin believed just the opposite of what he truly believed.

 

[Davian]

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

There is the small matter of (a) "consciousness" and (b) Near Death Experiences, as well as (c) the resurrection of Jesus.
The latter (b + c) have been defended by Dr. Gary Habermas*, who wrote his doctoral thesis on the (c) resurrection of Jesus.



* List of Publications : Publications of Dr. Gary R. Habermas - Online Resource for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Edit:
As I'm well aware that (c) cannot be discussed on this forum*

Sure it can, but religious opinion is not science.

and (b) is speculative bordering on supernatural**,

I have no idea what you mean by 'supernatural', but "near death" is not "death".

I'd like to toss the pebble of (a) "consciousness" into the mix: Consciousness | Science | The Guardian

'....Reading Oliver Burkeman (The I in mind, 21 January) I was surprised to discover that many scientists deny there&#8217;s such a thing as consciousness. They should read Mary Midgley&#8217;s Are You an Illusion?, I thought. I liked Philip Goff&#8217;s response (Letters, 29 January), but now I wonder, why do academics interested in consciousness seemingly ignore David Bohm, of whom Einstein spoke as his intellectual successor? Bohm was a 20th-century American physicist who lived and worked in England. The Dalai Lama considered Bohm to be one of his scientific gurus, writing that Bohm was interested in consciousness because of its implications with regard to the theories of quantum physics. ....' (*)
(*) Perhaps this might be a good primer: Missing links in the consciousness debate - The Gaurdian : 29 January, 2015.

Chalmers "hard problem": "why can't neuroscience explain my philosophical presuppositions?"

Additional Audio/Read:
Why can't the world's greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness? - Oliver Burkeman ( transcript : Why can?t the world?s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness? | Oliver Burkeman | Science | The Guardian )

~~~
* http://www.christianforums.com/f70/
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology

 

[Davian]

I have thought a lot about this in the night...lucky me has caught a stomach bug ugh.
I prayed a lot as well...I have often wondered why so many people are here who are not Christians. This forum is called Christian forums. I do not know the answer but I can speculate. Of course my speculations may be wrong as well.
I often wonder how many people lose faith by spending too much time here. (Which is probably a sad reality.).
However, if one person ...JUST ONE is given hope and seeks out God and is saved then it is worth it.
I don't like to get in senseless debates on this forum. I used to try to earnestly convince others of what is True. I have come to realize that it a useless pursuit. I have grown up in a Christian home and I have seen miracles...unbelievable ones...things I have seen with my own eyes...I could tell you stories and you wouldn't even believe me.
God is real. His Word is alive. There is a heaven. There is a hell. Life on this earth is short...each one of us have been created with a purpose.
My heart truely aches.
My purpose is to reach out to as many people as I can. I want people who meet me to see the sunshine and the hope I have. I want them to ask me...what gives you such hope? How do you live in this world with all its pain? What give you your hope and happiness? Why do you smile through your tears? I strive to be different. To be kind.
I strive to be like Jesus. I fail miserably everyday but I get up, dust myself off and keep trying.
My faith is strong, my hope is eternal.
I once heard it said...if a Christian is wrong, he will cease to exist and it won't matter. He would have lived a purposeful life and a life with honour. If an unbeliever is wrong, he will live forever regretting he didn't listen. Who has more to lose?
I would rather live my life in faith.

Somewhere in my life, I picked up this desire to believe in as few wrong things as possible.

 

[lewiscalledhimmaster]

<edit> How do you live in this world with all its pain? What give you your hope and happiness? <edit>

Great questions!

<edit>
I once heard it said...if a Christian is wrong, he will cease to exist and it won't matter. He would have lived a purposeful life and a life with honour. If an unbeliever is wrong, he will live forever regretting he didn't listen. Who has more to lose?
I would rather live my life in faith.

Blaise Pascal had some really great things to say.

 

[lewiscalledhimmaster]

<edit> not science.

Of course.

I have no idea what you mean by 'supernatural', but "near death" is not "death".

NDE* is as close as we'll get to someone appearing to die, but then reviving. It's however generally viewed by scientists as a pseudoscience. (refer, my prior links)

I think that "Consciousness" is a far more interesting subject -- perhaps I shall make it a subject of a future thread.

~~~
* What Christians Should Think About Near-Death Experiences: Radio interview with Dr. Gary Habermas. (audio)

 

[Davian]

I have thought a lot about this in the night...lucky me has caught a stomach bug ugh.
I prayed a lot as well...I have often wondered why so many people are here who are not Christians. This forum is called Christian forums. I do not know the answer but I can speculate. Of course my speculations may be wrong as well.
I often wonder how many people lose faith by spending too much time here. (Which is probably a sad reality.).

Or, it is simply reality.

However, if one person ...JUST ONE is given hope and seeks out God and is saved then it is worth it.
I don't like to get in senseless debates on this forum. I used to try to earnestly convince others of what is True.

By "True", you mean, your religious opinion. I was just discussing that with lewiscalledhimmaster.

I have come to realize that it a useless pursuit. I have grown up in a Christian home and I have seen miracles...unbelievable ones...things I have seen with my own eyes...I could tell you stories and you wouldn't even believe me.

Not if all you have are stories.

God is real. His Word is alive. There is a heaven. There is a hell. Life on this earth is short...each one of us have been created with a purpose.

What is that "purpose"?

My heart truely aches.
My purpose is to reach out to as many people as I can. I want people who meet me to see the sunshine and the hope I have. I want them to ask me...what gives you such hope? How do you live in this world with all its pain? What give you your hope and happiness?

My wife, children, family.

Why do you smile through your tears?

No tears here.

I strive to be different. To be kind.
I strive to be like Jesus. I fail miserably everyday but I get up, dust myself off and keep trying.
My faith is strong, my hope is eternal.
I once heard it said...if a Christian is wrong, he will cease to exist and it won't matter. He would have lived a purposeful life and a life with honour. If an unbeliever is wrong, he will live forever regretting he didn't listen. Who has more to lose?
I would rather live my life in faith.

Religion as a comfort blanket. Fine, if that is what you need. Be sure not to poke any holes in it, or tug on any loose threads.

 

[lewiscalledhimmaster]

<edit>I was just discussing that with lewiscalledhimmaster.

You weren't. You assume that it is personal opinion, it is simply not within the realm of scientific methodology.
Discussing the validity of sacred texts, the content of sacred texts and the evidence presented in them and secular texts, involve other disciplines.

 

[lewiscalledhimmaster]

Religion as a comfort blanket.