Alan McDougall
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Posts posted by Alan McDougall
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I already said different cultures have different sets of morals and rules. Which makes this argument pointless and irrelevant. The fact you picked something like Hitler makes it seems like you are doing this for shock value. Believing I will not answer your argument for fear of prosecution. Hitler was bad for the rest of us but he did in fact deliver prosperity and jobs to Germany. Though it might be arguable that the cost of this was too severe. So one might argue that winning is not worth it unless its done the right way. Which also goes to the argument "Does the means justify the end" or does the "end justify the means". Some people will do anything in search of that one goal and will stop at nothing to get there. Hitler was just one of those people who had one goal in mind and nothing could stop him from getting there at any cost. What he did was really very crooked.
Hitler most definitely did not bring prosperity and jobs to Germany, all he did was leave Germany in ruins ruled by other countries and a humiliating defeat.
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Karma exists and its not a magical thing. If you are rude to everyone you meet eventually people are going to be rude back even the most polite person in the world. How you act gives you a reputation and if your reputation is bad or good id dependent on your behaviour. If you bully that nerd in school and later have to beg them for a job and they remember you they have the means you screw you over. If you are working with equipment that is dangerous and do not follow procedure, do not lock it, do not tie it up, do not put it away correctly you may end up getting yourself or others hurt. If you hurt yourself you are in pain or you die, if you hurt others you might get sued. So that is karma. Karma says what comes around goes around. If you are stupid, irresponsible and rude it will catch up with you. So be a good person before it does. You think those Celebrities that are getting Tickets and partying are not going to pay for it later? It might shorten the life span, get them in an accident and much much worse. Religion says you will suffer it in the after life but its not like your idiocy does not have bad effects here.
That sort of thing does seem to happen in this like, sort of leaning by your mistakes, but it is not karmic justice and has nothing to do with reincarnation.
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As soon as Hitler's mentioned, we must tread very cautiously.
The eggshells creak along the PC tightrope. A careless step could spell doom. Like plunging into the Reichenbach Falls.
I could reply to #9, by suggesting that to demonise Hitler as a twisted psychopathic evil monster, might possibly be an over-simplification.
However I don't want to get arrested and prosecuted.
As soon as Hitler's mentioned, we must tread very cautiously.
The eggshells creak along the PC tightrope. A careless step could spell doom. Like plunging into the Reichenbach Falls.
I could reply to #9, by suggesting that to demonise Hitler as a twisted psychopathic evil monster, might possibly be an over-simplification.
However I don't want to get arrested and prosecuted.
Hitler had a lot of help so both he and his followers were guilty of attempted genocide.
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I take solace in the idea of karma, in terms of ‘what goes around comes around’ which has, for me, been proven time and time again; so when somebody takes advantage of my forgiving nature I find myself amused, rather than angry or outraged; so I guess it depends on how you define karma. As for reincarnation, other than the fact that our atoms are replaced entirely every 2/3 years, I too think its bunk.
None of what you say is true and none of it has been proven time and time again!
Why I reject karma and reincarnation
I believe the religious idea of Karma and Reincarnation are illogical and nonsensical and l list my objections this belief below.
1) Karma is the belief that a person has to live many lives and improve in each until they become an ascended master and finally lose self-awareness into the mindless soup of the cosmic mind.
2) Alternatively, one chooses ones own next life from the spiritual plane in order to learn something in the next. What the heck did Hitler come to learn?
Hitler failed his life lesson. Alternatively, he was the catylist for World War 2, and Japan loosing their emperor, and started America on it's quest to turn every country into a democracy.
3) It is claimed by some variants of this illogical belief that one might have to live sometimes millions of lives before becoming perfect to escape the cycle of birth and rebirth and find enlightenment.
You could have been a fly for many lives, living 20 days before dying. Then evolved. How is this illogical? On the contrary, it supports Darwin's theory of evolution quite will.
4) I believe, however, that we only live once and it is during this life, where we learn our lessons or repeat the mistakes until we have overcome them or die it we dont.
How can we live once? Energy cannot be created or destroyed. If you believe in heaven, then were does all of the energy come from to make all of the new "souls"(if you believe in souls).
5). Karma says that a soul must live many mortal lives to reach perfection. Thus humanity must undergo countless incarnations from bacteria to insect etc, or bad human until one finally becomes an enlightened master.
6) One, nevertheless, must start out as a lowly life form such as a cockroach or garden Lilly and finally, after countless millions of years-repeated rebirths or incarnation to finally progress to become human, but sadly it does not stop there..
7) For the life of me how does a bad cockroach or garden Lilly become a "good cockroach or garden Lilly"?
Think outside of the box, from the animals perspective. You just don't want to think
8) This belief if it where not so tragic would be very funny indeed.
How is it tragic?
9). Karma says that if we have a weakness or fault in this life, we must return , to earth, be reborn, again and again in order to overcome our failings in the previous life in the present life, or horrors upon horrors maybe revert back into a cockroach again because we extremely bad in a particular life..
See point about Hitler... Also, what failures have you been through? I bet that you haven't done EVERYTHING in you power to make the earth a better place.
10) Therefore, any suffering we have to endure in this life, be it cancer, aids, all other sicknesses poverty, etc, etc "is our own fault" due to the evil or bad things we did in our past life. This is a cruel belief as many saintly people suffer and die in the most horrific manner. What soul would choose to be a Jew in the Second World War and see their beloved's torn from them in the holocaust and consumed in the ovens of Hitler's death camps? This belief also leads to the idea that the suffering of another person is their own fault, earned from a previously evil life, thus we can overlook them, and step over their suffering bodies if they get in our way on a side walk.
They all had their lessons. Maybe that was their karma for being evil in a past life.
11)The above paragraphs show that Karma is nonsense, how can one be so often be punished so terribly for something they do not even remember from a sinful forgotten past life. In my case I have had to endure a part of my life severely ill. Is this the punishment for something I did in past life, of which I have absolutely no recollection?.
How confused would you be if you remembered all of your hundreds of thousands of carnations. Also, why would life be worth living if you knew what all of your life lessons, and didn't have to think.
12.) Another view favored by spiritualists and modern day channeller's is that between lives we sit in some other dimensions and decide exactly what kind of life we choose be it beggar, rich person or what ever. Therefore, our fate is decided by ourselves, what nonsense.
How is that nonsense? We choose what lesson to learn that life. Anyone who says that you know exactly how your life is going to turn out is stupid, but there is probably one big thing that you have to work out.
13). What then about souls like Hitler, Stalin, Nero and the numerous depraved people on earth at the moment, did they deliberately choose a life of depraved evil and what they could learn by there wicked actions? They will degenerate further and further through each life as they are totally depraved without any redeeming good qualities what so ever. Surely, this type of person deserves judgment and punishment, not escape into karma.
They didn't learn their lesson. When you are born, you are ignorant. Are you saying that Hitler, when he was born, knew he was going to be evil. He had some chooses, took the wrong one, and look what happened.
14). If we look at the out of control world population we see a increase in the total world population, which is already a frightening 7 billion and growing faster and faster by the day. Where are all these people coming from? If karma is true, surely people should be reaching perfection and escaping the cycle of life and the worlds population decreasing. Not so?
No... Energy cannot be created or destroyed. You are saying that there is a finite amount of souls.
15). Again, if karma where true we should be observing just the reverse. With more and more people becoming better and better and finally reaching enlightenment and escaping the relentless birth and rebirth with a subsequent decrease in the world population.
May I say that the amount of trees and animals dying out could have an effect on the increase of world population?
16) Although people are no more evil now than they were in the past (middle age horrors as an example), they are also no better, if we read our daily newspaper or listen to the news on the electronic media.
So what...
17) We just have to read up on the mechanized world wars of the past century and see the awful weapons humanity has developed and continue to develop to kill one another, with more and more sophisticated tools of death, the holocaust being an example of near present day depravity.Where is Karma in all of this?
Read above points
18). Where are all the enlightened masters? There seems to me so few in these latter days. Please could one name just one living true enlightened master for me?
Enlightened masters are the good people. I'd say Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi , and all of the other people who made a huge difference.
19) Persons I would call enlightened masters in present times would be mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and they did definitely not believe in the law of Karma but believed and practiced active love caring and charity nearly all the years of her long life. Forum add others if you want to?
So you just stated some, so why did you say the above.
20). If the law of karma is true, why are we still having more and more conflicts and wars all over the planet, instead of peace?
Read point 15. There are still young souls on this earth
21) What about all this ooh-haa about past life memories some claim to have experienced? I believe that locked up in our genes and encoded within the colossal D.N.A. molecule racial memories could be stored. Perhaps these ghosts of memories could perhaps leak into the conscious mind of some people who then believe they are remembering past lives.
I don't think memories have ANYTHING to do with genes. You should read up on your science.
22) Another fact that, has been proven, is that forgotten childhood memories that are remembered in the case of trauma or under hypnoses ad mistaken as a memory of a previous life.
Theres always the what if's. For all we know, the people could be making it up. Along with the Bible and everything else.
23). My personal search for an explanation has shown not one indisputable past life memory in anyone. All could be explained rationally.
This isn't going anywhere.
24.) My own personal view on Karma and past life regression is that I hope this awful concept is not true. Who wants to live earthly mortal repeatedly, go to school again, get sick, fight in a war, die in a terrible way, watch those you love die again?
I think the Christian view of hell is pretty bad too.
25) Anyway, 99.99991 of people just like me have no memories of past lives, and I believe those that say they have memories are either deluded or lying.
....
26) In addition, if I lived in the past and have no recollection of that life, the person I was then is truly dead.
If you can play with words that way, then yes.
27.) I believe I exist now because years ago my beloved parents decided (Not me) to make love. I am sure I did not choose this life and am positive it is the only life I have ever had. What comes after, if anything remains an enigma to me and to everyone else on earth?
Yes... This is were we get into cloning, and everything else. Does the person who is cloned still have a soul?
28.) I therefore reject the concept of karma as a potentially cruel false belief and nonsense to any logically rationally thinking person.
Humans have something called faith, or whatever. I will reject your heaven,as you reject my reincarnation. Thus, life is a lot more interesting.
Joshua
Cant you do a better job of debating, why do you mix up your statement with mine, it is confusing, put your comments below my statements , not inside them?
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Why I reject karma and reincarnation
I believe the religious idea of Karma and Reincarnation are illogical and nonsensical and l list my objections this belief below.
1) Karma is the belief that a person has to live many lives and improve in each until they become an ascended master and finally lose self-awareness into the mindless soup of the cosmic mind.
2) Alternatively, one chooses ones own next life from the spiritual plane in order to learn something in the next. What the heck did Hitler come to learn?
3) It is claimed by some variants of this illogical belief that one might have to live sometimes millions of lives before becoming perfect to escape the cycle of birth and rebirth and find enlightenment.
to
4) I believe, however, that we only live once and it is during this life, where we learn our lessons or repeat the mistakes until we have overcome them or die it we dont.
5). Karma says that a soul must live many mortal lives to reach perfection. Thus humanity must undergo countless incarnations from bacteria to insect etc, or bad human until one finally becomes an enlightened master.
6) One, nevertheless, must start out as a lowly life form such as a cockroach or garden Lilly and finally, after countless millions of years-repeated rebirths or incarnation to finally progress to become human, but sadly it does not stop there..
7) For the life of me how does a bad cockroach or garden Lilly become a "good cockroach or garden Lilly"?
8) This belief if it where not so tragic would be very funny indeed.
9). Karma says that if we have a weakness or fault in this life, we must return , to earth, be reborn, again and again in order to overcome our failings in the previous life in the present life, or horrors upon horrors maybe revert back into a cockroach again because we extremely bad in a particular life..
10) Therefore, any suffering we have to endure in this life, be it cancer, aids, all other sicknesses poverty, etc, etc "is our own fault" due to the evil or bad things we did in our past life. This is a cruel belief as many saintly people suffer and die in the most horrific manner. What soul would choose to be a Jew in the Second World War and see their beloved's torn from them in the holocaust and consumed in the ovens of Hitler's death camps? This belief also leads to the idea that the suffering of another person is their own fault, earned from a previously evil life, thus we can overlook them, and step over their suffering bodies if they get in our way on a side walk.
11)The above paragraphs show that Karma is nonsense, how can one be so often be punished so terribly for something they do not even remember from a sinful forgotten past life. In my case I have had to endure a part of my life severely ill. Is this the punishment for something I did in past life, of which I have absolutely no recollection?.12.) Another view favored by spiritualists and modern day channeller's is that between lives we sit in some other dimensions and decide exactly what kind of life we choose be it beggar, rich person or what ever. Therefore, our fate is decided by ourselves, what nonsense.
13). What then about souls like Hitler, Stalin, Nero and the numerous depraved people on earth at the moment, did they deliberately choose a life of depraved evil and what they could learn by there wicked actions? They will degenerate further and further through each life as they are totally depraved without any redeeming good qualities what so ever. Surely, this type of person deserves judgment and punishment, not escape into karma.
14). If we look at the out of control world population we see a increase in the total world population, which is already a frightening 7 billion and growing faster and faster by the day. Where are all these people coming from? If karma is true, surely people should be reaching perfection and escaping the cycle of life and the worlds population decreasing. Not so?
15). Again, if karma where true we should be observing just the reverse. With more and more people becoming better and better and finally reaching enlightenment and escaping the relentless birth and rebirth with a subsequent decrease in the world population.
16) Although people are no more evil now than they were in the past (middle age horrors as an example), they are also no better, if we read our daily newspaper or listen to the news on the electronic media.17) We just have to read up on the mechanized world wars of the past century and see the awful weapons humanity has developed and continue to develop to kill one another, with more and more sophisticated tools of death, the holocaust being an example of near present day depravity.Where is Karma in all of this?
18). Where are all the enlightened masters? There seems to me so few in these latter days. Please could one name just one living true enlightened master for me?
19) Persons I would call enlightened masters in present times would be mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and they did definitely not believe in the law of Karma but believed and practiced active love caring and charity nearly all the years of her long life. Forum add others if you want to?
20). If the law of karma is true, why are we still having more and more conflicts and wars all over the planet, instead of peace?
21) What about all this ooh-haa about past life memories some claim to have experienced? I believe that locked up in our genes and encoded within the colossal D.N.A. molecule racial memories could be stored. Perhaps these ghosts of memories could perhaps leak into the conscious mind of some people who then believe they are remembering past lives.
22) Another fact that, has been proven, is that forgotten childhood memories that are remembered in the case of trauma or under hypnoses ad mistaken as a memory of a previous life.
23). My personal search for an explanation has shown not one indisputable past life memory in anyone. All could be explained rationally.
24.) My own personal view on Karma and past life regression is that I hope this awful concept is not true. Who wants to live earthly mortal repeatedly, go to school again, get sick, fight in a war, die in a terrible way, watch those you love die again?
25) Anyway, 99.99991 of people just like me have no memories of past lives, and I believe those that say they have memories are either deluded or lying.
26) In addition, if I lived in the past and have no recollection of that life, the person I was then is truly dead.
27.) I believe I exist now because years ago my beloved parents decided (Not me) to make love. I am sure I did not choose this life and am positive it is the only life I have ever had. What comes after, if anything remains an enigma to me and to everyone else on earth?
28.) I therefore reject the concept of karma as a potentially cruel false belief and nonsense to any logically rationally thinking person.
Alan McDougall©Copyright Alan Grant McDougall 2013
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Alan and Phi reject the idea of God as "the worst kind of psychopath" I chime in with that, but -
What if God really is that way - a frightening crazed Being, who subjects us to everlasting torment in hell, unless we worship Him.
Most people throughout history seem to have suspected that God is like that. Thus He needs to be constantly placated, and appeased.
By sacrificies in ancient times. Nowadays, by constant worshipping and praising in Churches every Sunday. Or even five times a day.
If He doesn't get enough attention and ego-boosting, He strikes us with His wrath!
Read my post again carefully neiither did Phi or I did not reject the "idea of god as the worst kind of psychopath" I said the exclusive fundamentalists do that and put the rest of us in hell!
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Of course not! If there is a rule it can be broken. Of course most people will follow these basic rules of ethics but some people simply do not care. We have people who have committed incest, had relations with animals and all other sort of morally questionable acts. We have free will and so the answer is no. Just because most people might be against it does not mean everyone is going to follow this rule. As well as that with every culture is a different set of moral codes. So what might be considered bad to some might be considered alright to others. An example would be in some places in India eating a cow is bad but in the US no one cares and eat mostly cow, pig and chicken. Pig is another thing that is considered unclean and bad too eat in other cultures such as jewdiusm. In fact most animals aside from people are not really bothered by the concept of incest either. So there is no such thing unbreakable moral boundaries and there will never be such a thing.
Hitlers ideology/hatred, led the attempt of genocide against the Jewish people did he really think he was doing the right and moral thing, that most of humanity though of as the act of a psychopathic monster. Could he be really thought of as an evil monster , if in his twisted mind he was doing the right thing?
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"Flat" vs "spherical" is not a comparison being made. This is not a discussion of whether the universe is spherical or pancake-shaped. As I said earlier, "flat" refers to the underlying geometry, i.e it can be described with Euclidean geometry. A sphere can be described with Euclidean geometry. So our universe can be both spherical and flat.
The problem with the bubble model, again, is that you have different parts of the universe being created at different times. This needs to match up with experimental observation, so you need some sort of specific prediction, something you can measure, that would confirm this. What is it?
If this is a question about the big bang model and the current state of cosmology, I would suggest you learn the answers to these and other questions before critiquing the theory, and suggesting new models. No, we are not expanding into some other medium. There is no "outside" to the universe.
Seriously?
The paradigms are on par? Why, exactly? because you say so? Can I go out and read about the champagne bubble model of the universe in science articles and textbooks, because it is on par with the big bang?
You don't need any predictions? Why, exactly? Because you say so? You have some secret authority to skirt the protocols of science?
It's a fact (and an exact one at that)? Why, exactly? Because you say so?
Again: seriously?
You quoted
"If this is a question about the big bang model and the current state of cosmology, I would suggest you learn the answers to these and other questions before critiquing the theory, and suggesting new models. No, we are not expanding into some other medium. There is no "outside" to the universe."
I was not critiquing the Big Bang theory, you misunderstood what I was saying, it is the best theory at present?
However, your statement that there is no "outside" is not factual "no one knows whether there is an outside or not", that is the only factual statement we can make at this time, with any surety!
What lies beyond the edge of the observable universe?http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/what-lies-beyond-the-edge-of-the-observable-universe/
Roughly 13.75 billion years ago, our universe came into existence. Very shortly thereafter, primordial light started shooting across the cosmos and spreading throughout the early universe. At this juncture, the universe itself was also expanding. The inflation of the universe slowed after the first initial burst, but since then, the rate of expansion has been steadily increasing due to the influence of dark energy.
Essentially, since its inception, the cosmos has been growing at an ever increasing rate. Cosmologists estimate that the oldest photons that we can observe have traveled a distance of 45 billion light years since the big bang. That means that our observable universe is some 90 billion light years wide (give or take a few light years). These 90 billion light years contain all of the quarks, quasars, stars, planets, nebulae, black holes…and everything else that we could possibly observe. But the observable universe only contains the light that has had time to reach us. A lot more universe exists beyond what we are able to observe.
That’s a lot of universe that we are missing. So, what *exactly* are we missing? What lies beyond the edge of what we can’t see? Since we can’t see it or measure it, we don’t know what lies beyond the bounds of the observable universe. However, we have several theories regarding what exists in the great unknown…
Despite its strangeness, this first theory is one of the easiest to digest. Astronomers think space outside of the observable universe might be an infinite expanse of what we see in the cosmos around us distributed pretty much the same as it is in the observable universe
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can u please tell the seventh please please please
7.) You can't take pictures using wooden legs. You'll need a camera.
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The big bang theory goes further than this, though. It predicts that all of the matter/energy was created at once, which is consistent with observation. Not that new galaxies pop into existence later.
If your contention is that the material was there but the galaxies merely formed later, I suspect you have a lot of work ahead of you coming up with a model showing why it should happen in such a progression.
Now all you need is evidence that this is so.
We know our universe exists and most believe it had a beginning , namely the Big Bang and its expansion is accelerating, if this acceleration in the rate of expansion of the universe continues,it must reach a point beyond exponential and accelerate/expand at an infinite rate? This would mean our universe would become infinitely large and the debate whether it is flat or spherical, becomes a moot point that no longer matters.
Does our universe float in some other medium and expand into it?
Is it expanding into said medium?
Could that medium be an infinitely large totally empty void?
Or could our universe be "everything" expanding? (Nothing else existing only our universe)
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This is just a humorous post not to be taken seriously,, If it needs to be moved please dear moderator move it to the appropriate sub-forum
Alan McDougall
The Mighty Cockroach
Humans have walked on the moon, made atomic weapons and conquered many awful diseases and overcome all sorts of evil, but sadly!
Alas! the mightily cockroach continues to reign over all it surveys, in spite of all of humanity best efforts, over thousands of years, to eliminate these little hideous, monstrous little beasties from our domains.At night we switch on the kitchen light and what do we see to our unspeakable horror and disgust? Thousands of cockroaches running wild, defiling our food, and eating everything is sight, with their filthy diseased little mouths.
You can put him the vacuum of outer space, or subject him to microwaves that would kill a human in a flash. You can starve the little monster until only ten or so remain, they will hide out, and eat each other to survive until there is only one male and female left to breed a billion new babies in the dark of your sanctuary and especially your kitchen.Cut off his head and he just carries on unaware of his doom until hunger and thirst kill him in a week our so, thus for a while he became a "Zombie "The living Dead" unlike any other sentient being.
He just shrugs off all of mankind's best weapons and continues bright eyed and bushy tailed, happy in his urgent task of spreading disease, sorrow and death, amongst poor long suffering humanity.
Just when we think we have victory over them, we are always wrong, because the depraved evil little monsters are making love in the dark recesses of our cupboards, like no human could, even in our kitchen cupboards and electric wall sockets.
Each moment in time, a billion, billion roach babies are hatched, much to our disgust and these minute, little depraved, reprobate, monsters are never satisfied. Because their desire and ultimate goal is nothing less than the complete destruction and illumination of mankind from planet earth, by means of their weapons of mass destruction, namely; filthy mouths, feet and huck! bodily fluids, which emanate out of their disgusting little bodies all over our disinfected cupboards, making them toxic to touch.They have been doing this for millions of years, and our end is near, unless we wake up and fight back .
So the eternal war between light and dark , cockroach and man continues on and on into the eternal future that has no end until one or the other finally becomes an extinct species of planet earth.It is not too late!!.
Take hands all humanity we must eliminate this awful threat before it eliminates us
By Alan McDougall 7/11/20130 -
This might be stupid to say, but what if the universe is really expanding more than the speed of light. If it is going faster than the speed of light, and nothing travels faster than light, then we wouldn't be able to observe the expansion, therefor calling space infinite. That's just want I thing. I can't imagine something infinite. But then, if space isn't infinite, then what is holding space, or the multiverse?
Very confusing subject...
Some cosmologist , indeed think the universe will go on expanding, forever!
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For me, that part was just another piece of evidence that mounted up to a preponderance. This god is perfect but creates imperfection (and would then curse it for being so), and deceives its followers by making the universe appear to be billions of years old but entreats them to follow its Word to the letter (which calculates that the universe is mere thousands of years old). When you start interpreting the Bible literally you run into hundreds of contractions as well. Fundamentalism creates more questions and answers nothing.
I allow for that small possibility I may be wrong about gods overall, but I'm as certain as I'll ever be that fundamentalism is wrong in all its aspects. Quite frankly, if the Abrahamic god required a fundamental approach to worshiping it, I think it would change my character so much that if I were a god, I'd reject me for being such a hypocrite.
I have often wondered if I could improve on creation, with the assumption that a god created our universe, with special emphasis to life on our particular planet.
Why do we we have to kill our fellow creatures to get energy to carry on living? Is eat or be eaten the best idea that a god of infinite intelligence could come up with, after an eternity of thinking? I would, if I were to have his assumed attributes, come up with a way of life getting all its energy directly from the sun without hurting or killing other life form, I am not talking about plant photosynthesizes, but a sort of solar electric skin that absorbs sufficient energy directly from the sun to sustain life?
Maybe this could be a reason for rejecting creation to the work of an intelligence god, thus making evolution a much better answer to how we got to exist in the way we now do after billions of years.
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Why I detest fundamentalist exclusive religious dogma or any exclusive cultist belief
Note! not all religions are exclusive or judgmental
I detest the cultic or religious organization who have a judgmental belief and unspeakably gall to suggest that unless, joined them for life adhered totally to their belief and lived exactly in the ways demanded by them , followed their teaching to the letter all the days of your life. God was going to burn you in unspeakable everlasting eternal punishment in hell. If this understanding of theirs were correct it makes god out to be the worst kind of psychopath, punishing fallible a person, for a finite transgression, with the most terrible infinite punishment.
Most fundamentalist Christians , believe the above chapter to be true
To sum it up you get an:-
"Infinite" punishment for a "finite" sin or crime against god
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I think other animals show empathy, but we are probably the only ones to worry about our species. At the same time, while most of us do have empathy for certain individuals or groups, we also can have zero empathy for huge groups of people.
Psychopaths are a problem, but it is normal people that carry out genocide.
Normal people would never commit genocide!, it the group or crowd that reduces a otherwise normal individual into a psychopathic beast, we see this in soccer hooliganism. I once asked my psychology professor, what made people follow despots blindly like they did with Hitler? He said it was his screaming oratory, combined with the loud noise of the huge crowds, whose shouting, eliminated individual thought, and reduced normal logically thinking people, down to the level of idiots, and convinced them to die for a cause that they knew nothing about.
Psychopaths are much, much more than a problem , they are a mistake of evolution, if we were all to turn into psychopaths tomorrow, the human race would quickly become extinct.
Am I correct in believing that you are asking whether there is some act that is so evil, so unethical, that no one would ever do it?
Then I'd say the answer is: No, not for any act that it is within the power of enough people to accomplish.
I think you are right, sadly human depravity has no boundaries. Most people would agree universally that rape or murder of a little innocent child or baby, is right at the top of the scale of human evil and would have very stringent laws against this horrible crime.
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r they right????
Only 7 is wrong good effort
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You are right you simply can't box Christians into one generalized belief system, most Christians, at least the ones that can think further than the tip of their noses accept evolution, with a few reservations, example evolution happens while God looks on because the world is his sort of ant farm, meaning he has concern for it development ants safety, Their any many scientist who believe in God, but believe in Physics etc also. To many God is simply a great mathematician , I like that idea myself been a theist.
Alan McDougall, on 14 Jan 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:
This is the only way I could find to go back and correct my embarrassing errors in the post above, the South African time zone if very different to the USA and sometimes I am up late and don't check carefully what I have written.
You are right you simply can't box Christians into one generalized belief system, most Christians, at least the ones that can think further than the tip of their noses accept evolution, with a few reservations, example evolution happens while God looks on because the world is his sort of ant farm, meaning he has concern for it development ants safety, Their any many scientist who believe in God, but believe in Physics etc also. To many God is simply a great mathematician , I like that idea myself been a theist.
Bible literalism is most definitely not just confined to the USA it is rampant in Africa for example, my best friends who are very intelligent quickly get stupid, when I try to convince them the universe could not possible have been created in just 6 literal days or get them away from the ridiculous belief that the earth is only 6 thousand years old, it is like trying to have a logical debate with a lamp post.
God could not brake (Break) his own rules, because if he were to do that it would lead to a cosmic disaster. Mathematical rules are immutable.
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hell and heaven doesn't exist they are just superstition
and why did he need to explain it????
Don't you have a sense of humor?
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Dude..its very simple, ive TRIED imitating the person conciously, but i notice that I cant do it as accurately than when it comes unconciously out of me!! Also, I KNOW im not doing it conciously because ALL my concious focus is focusede on SEEING the image of the person in my mind, and I would KNOW if I even moved a finger conciously! Why would I wnat to decieve myself? I tell you, everything that 'fows out' of me happens automatically! ill do, now, a celeb imprssion, post it here.
Also, MIMICRY is different; mimics CONSCIOUSLY imitate! THEy are the ones behind the differing positions of their muscles! I dont!
Your spelling needs some serious practice! If English is not you home language, then it is excusable.
We are all still waiting for your video which you said would prove your claim!
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Maybe they can. Depends on the nature of our existence.
Maybe! is a huge generalization?
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I'm not an expert in the philosophy of morality, but I'm sure I read once about instinctive or base morality, which are traits that appear to be shared across people of different or no religious affiliation, ethnicities, etc., and form part of the social glue that has kept us working together in a cooperative fashion throughout the ages. IIRC, it's mostly in reference to things such as murder and theft.
A quick Google search gave back this wiki article, which is more or less what I recall having read about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_morality
I read the article and Darwin suggests that sympathy, is ingrained into us by evolution as a sort of survival tool. Other animals do also exercise altruism to an extent, I have seen that especially in elephants On the other hand our closest relative the chimpanzee is very selfish and does like to share with others of his species if they can avoid it..
I think what separates humans from apes and other higher animals, is our ability to emphasize with others of our kind, walk in their shoes so to speak. Psychopaths lack this survival aspect, and we see the result of zero empathy towards others, in the depravity of despots like Hitler.
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One of the strangest objects in the solar system may get its first close-up in the coming years.
A team of scientists is mapping out a mission to the huge metallic asteroid Psyche, which is thought to be the exposed iron core of a battered and stripped protoplanet. The proposed mission would reveal insights about planet formation processes and the early days of the solar system, its designers say, and would also afford the first-ever good look at an odd class of celestial objects.
"This is the first metal world humankind will have ever seen," team member Lindy Elkins-Tanton, director of the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, told SPACE.com last month at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting in San Francisco. "I think this is an opportunity to do some fundamental science that hasn't been done before
Interesting as always!
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To a wife of an aboriginal, it is both moral and ethical to eat the brain of her dead husband to keep his essence within herself
To me killing a bird gives would be heart breaking and if I were to do it I would have a guilty conscience for killing an innocent creature and I feel it would violate my subjectively sense of what I think is moral (I have never killed a bird).
What I am aiming at here is to find by debate if there is an innate ingrained universal morality, which no human will step over?.
Is there a bar that no one will step over, or is it constantly being raised or lowered due to circumstances of the day?
These differencing in morals and perceptions of morals might account for most of the troubled history down the annals of human history and suffering.Please add your thoughts!
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I don't feel good. ~ Luther Burbank
I see black light.
~~ Victor Hugo, writer, d. May 22, 1885
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Why I reject karma and reincarnation, as illogical and nonsensical
in Religion
Posted · Edited by Alan McDougall
Reincarnation is false, entropy is a one way street.
Well said!
http://everythingelseatheism.blogspot.com/2009/02/problems-with-reincarnation.html The Problems With Reincarnation
So I've been wanting to debunk reincarnation for awhile, especially after one of my housemates admitted to me that she believed in it. There's so many things wrong with reincarnation that I feel it's one of the more puzzling beliefs out there.
First of all, to accept reincarnation, you have to accept dualism. After all, it is the soul that survives and merely changes bodies when the current host dies. I've already done two whole posts on all the problems with dualism. If there is no soul, then there can be no reincarnation. I am reminded of the Ship of Theseus paradox in which a ship's parts are slowly but completely replaced; is it a new ship or the old ship? However, in this example, a wooden fence is build on the opposite side of the globe at the same time that a wooden ship has rotted, and with reincarnation the new fence is the dead ship. Returning to living creatures, reincarnation claims that a new baby that doesn't have the same biological materials, don't have any of the same memories, doesn't have any sort of viable link to an old lady recently deceased from a heart attack, is indeed that old lady. It's patently absurd.
But let's assume that the soul does exist and inhabits a new body when the old one dies. Why does the soul forget its past experiences? What would make the soul's memories stop when the old body dies? Why would the self - the presumed soul - not be able to remember? Is the soul not the ultimate self? Why would a new body limit the self's ability to conjure its own memories? And for those who claim that déjà-vu or whatever is repressed past memories, I might ask what the mechanism is for memories to be blocked or let through. If they are blocked, how are they getting through? Why can't they all get through?
And if your old memories are lost forever, then what is the point of being reincarnated? The point of reincarnation is to extend life, but if you can't retain memories or lessons or knowledge from those past lives, how exactly have you extended your life? It's not much better than saying you achieve immortality by living on in the hearts and minds of your friends. I want to live forever by living forever. I don't want some memory or trace of me living on.
Now for the practical problems of reincarnation. (We'll just deal with humans for right now). Where were all the souls before the earth existed? Where will they go when the earth is destroyed? Will they continue to exist and be sentient, to interact in soul-land? Then why come into bodies at all? And then what if the ratio of bodies-to-souls is off, say more souls than bodies? Do the souls just hang out in soul-land waiting for a new body to inhabit? Or what if there are more bodies than souls? Are new souls born? Or are there some people who are just automatons - functioning robots without souls at all? Could we tell the automatons apart from the real people?
Now let's deal with animals, if you accept trans-special reincarnation. Clearly some animals have different sorts of mental functioning abilities. We can reason better, rats can discern smells better, bats can hear better. Different animals can see in different colors, very much a mental process of the mind. How does the soul make up for these things? When we get transferred to a chicken, do we lose our ability to reason? When we are transferred out of a wolf, do we lose the knowledge of how to hunt? Are our souls restricted in what they can express on their host? And then of course, what's the cutoff point of creatures imbued with souls? Do rats have souls? Bees? Roaches? Bacteria? Viruses? Replicating proteins like Mad Cow? Even if you restrict reincarnation to just humans; at what point in the human evolutionary chain was the first soul imbued?
Now how about the idea that the creature you get to inhabit depends on how good you were in your past life. Who keeps track? Who is the great record-keeper that sends you to your new body? What criteria is used? Is it objective - could it be objective? Does it make mistakes? How does it force our souls into the hosts? Could the soul refuse? And you have to wonder; is your fate graded on a curve? What if everyone in one generation acts perfectly and kindly and loving to everyone? Surely the less desirable bodies are still being born and need to be inhabited. Would a couple of hugs be the difference between a hawk and a slug?
Nice questions I like them Alan