Phi for All

Your ideal kind of life has no concept of pain and suffering? How would that work? The way life is now, we understand that pain and suffering are part of living, and because we know the concept, we know we should strive to lessen their effects on ourselves and those around us. We're still not great at it, but we've been getting steadily better at many parts of our societies.

A common perspective wrt god(s) is that they're like the ultimate parent, while we're mere infants. What children think is "good for living" is often at odds with their parents, because the parents have more knowledge and experience, and the kids don't always understand. Mother/Father knows best, right? Does your god have a problem because it doesn't want you to eat candy for breakfast? Did your god make a mistake by not doing your homework for you? Is the world imperfect because god says you shouldn't run with sharp scissors? I don't believe in god(s) the way you do, so the objections I have to your idea are with your reasoning. You assign a time frame in which your god must accomplish something you recognize as godly progress, list the things you don't like and assume your god made a mistake, and then acknowledge that your god gave you reason for a purpose. Most theists I know assume their god is perfect, and we're supposed to use the reason it gave us to figure out its purpose, which is mysterious but ultimately the exact thing mankind needs. And if we experience pain and suffering along the way, it's to make us stronger or teach us lessons or encourage us to make things better. That last sentence doesn't need any god(s), btw.

Historically, it hasn't been effective to ban perception-altering substances. It makes people want them even more, it seems. And most people who use alcohol and drugs aren't addicted. Iirc, in the US alcohol addiction disorders affect about 1 in 12 for men, and 1 in 25 for women. Most people can use these substances without being a threat to their society, so perhaps addiction should be the focus rather than the substances themselves? Prohibition in the US would seem to suggest this, since the booze still flowed but made drinking even more dangerous by creating a black market for it. My latest solution for everything is early and regular childhood mental health checks paid for by universal healthcare programs.

What if you aren't getting the point of your god? You assume your god is mistaken or has a problem, but what if you simply don't understand the point this god is trying to make?

https://acrm.org/rehabilitation-medicine/how-the-brain-is-affected-by-art/#:~:text=There is increasing evidence in,also occur by experiencing art. I think we look at the world in ways limited by our own imaginations, and art is an attempt by the artist to show you a part of life in a way you haven't perceived it before.

OK, you sit here. But this looks more comfortable, and it evokes a lot of emotion as well. For me, art is in the imaginative details. It's not a universal thing, no single piece of artwork is going to be perceived the same way by all. Art grips the individual and attempts to point out a perspective, and we can appreciate that or not.

MrOrlock has been banned as a sockpuppet of Lucious, Aethelwulf, graviphoton, TrappedLight, Tom Vose, Tsadi, Dubbelosix and probably others. They should all take an algebra class.

! Moderator Note When you're banned from here, you don't get to keep re-joining with different versions of your garbage under different usernames. It might be different if you listened to feedback, but you don't, so you waste the time of everyone who takes the time to help. Please stay away.

I think you assume too much. Why is 4B years too much time? Why assume your creator didn't get it right the first time? Why assume it's all about making first and then correcting mistakes? If you really believe in an all-powerful god(s), why wouldn't you assume you just don't understand what they really want from the universe? Why are you assuming this god behaves the way you think it should?

Unusual has nothing to do with it. Evolution would be selecting traits that make a person successful enough to mate, so the assumption is that perception that extends beyond the accepted senses would do so. It could be argued that certain sensitivities might not make one more attractive, but in general I'd say being able to do things most people can't is a net benefit.

Grinding metal against stone is very hard on the metal. The stone scratches and gouges the steel, tearing parts of it away and leaving it thinner and weighing less. But if it's done just right, you're left with a knife blade that can be used to cut with skillful precision, a useful tool that you an accomplish things with. The grinder is a hard life for the metal, but it's just what the knife needs. I see no evidence of god(s), but even I can see why one wouldn't make everything perfect to begin with.

Evolution, mostly. Such an ability would have spread in the population over time, at least to an extent where it would have a testable effect. Same thing for sensitivity to specters and ghosts, or other paranormal/supernatural abilities. If they make you more successful at living until you procreate, eventually we'd be able to measure it.

Exactly. So I'm prone to assuming there's a natural explanation for spooky experiences. I've always thought it would be awesome to discover that some things folks consider supernatural (ESP, telekinesis, precognition, etc) turn out to have a scientific basis, but I find myself the most skeptical when someone claims to have evidence of such. I'm the same way with aliens from another planet; I know there could be other intelligent creatures in our galaxy, but I reject most of what makes some folks think we're being visited currently.

I've told this here before, but I had an experience when I was about 8-10 years old. I'd gone to bed, and woke up when I heard something tapping. My window was open, and my brain identified the sound as a woman in heels walking up to our front door. I waited for the footsteps to stop and the doorbell to ring, but they just kept clicking, as if she was pacing beneath my window. I got out of bed and pulled the curtain back to look down and it stopped, and there was nobody there. I went back to bed, and a few minutes later it started up again. Lather, rinse, repeat a few times, exactly the same way. I couldn't figure it out. Eventually I gave up on the idea of it being someone outside, and I think that made me listen more closely. I saw that the wind from my open window was moving the curtains, which made the plastic curtain pull knock against the wall. When I pulled the curtains aside to look down, it moved the plastic pull away from the wall and stopped the clicking. I do remember how convinced I was at the time that the sound was a woman walking in heels on a concrete sidewalk, but when I figured out what it really was, it didn't sound anywhere close. It sounded exactly like a curtain pull clicking against the wall.

! Moderator Note This is the last time I'm going to explain this to you. If someone questions the rationality of your statements, they're NOT making it personal. We attack ideas here to make them stronger. What we DO NOT allow here is to attack people. You need to STOP attacking people and focus on the ideas they're presenting. If you insult people like this again, you'll be banned. You should understand the difference by now.

I reject this completely. I think what a person believes matters a LOT. I know humans are wired to look for simple patterns, but much of what we believe requires a greater level of sophistication and clarity. Statements like this miss the mark, and keep us from delving deeper.

Exactly.

Are you suggesting this as evidence that God hates dinosaurs and loves mothers?

But it's not a personal belief, it's a LACK of belief, so I object to being lumped in with those who believe ("like most theists do"). And I think the rest of the problem I have with atheism being compatible with religion has more to do with my definition of "religion".

So I can be an atheist while practicing a non-theistic religion? I always defined at least part of my own atheism as a rejection of practiced religious beliefs.

In which areas do they NOT exclude each another?

It's a mistake to say "there's no end of material to feed on" when the material has a limit ("light years across"). As beecee says, what dictates the size of a star is its mass, or the dust and gases it accumulates as it forms.

In science, "take into account" means analyzing the evidence. You can remain neutral (null hypothesis) while waiting for such evidence to be presented, but I really don't see how you can consider the possibility of god(s) without any. You don't have to claim god(s) don't exist if you just ignore them until they do something observably god-like.

Evolution is changes in allele frequency within a population over time. It would be your children and their children that continue to evolve.

Is there anything you can post here that doesn't require watching a video or linking offsite? A brief summary of your concept would be much appreciated.