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[Hanslanda]

In that case, I'll go ahead and say that I'm completely unsure on the whole matter. Science has proof, and also pokes a bunch of holes in the whole god thing, but humans and animals seem to have souls. At least to me. It boils down to the whole faith thing, which I don't like, and then the Problem of Evil, which I also don't like.

So.
Shrug. 

[Reudh]

My view:

I'm atheist. I don't see why a God would exist. If it does and I am proven wrong, then blow me down.

Tim Minchin's "Storm" is a good summation of my current views on religion and pseudoscience. "If it turns out I am wrong, I'll spin on a fucking dime, I'll shout it to the world, and I'll take a compass and carve the words 'Fancy that!' on the side of my cock." (paraphrased, but more or less correct.)

I prefer to be humanist. We humans can have so much more efficacy in helping others than by merely praying. Praying for the starving in Africa/India/Wherever will probably not have an effect; but donating / actually going there to help will.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Science has proof, and also pokes a bunch of holes in the whole god thing, but humans and animals seem to have souls.

Elaborate.

[Hanslanda]

Science has proof, and also pokes a bunch of holes in the whole god thing, but humans and animals seem to have souls.

Elaborate.

Well, you've seen roadkill. How is it that each individual piece of roadkill was once a living breathing animal that had its own quirks and habits and likes and dislikes? Same question for a graveyard of dead humans. How can they all be so different? I'm sure we could go all science with it and say something along the lines of, 'Its all brain chemistry and cell position in the CNS', but I don't think that fully explains it.

[MaximumZero]

And if you wanna throw rocks at God, go for it. It's a potentially reasonable reaction.

Rocks!? Rocks are for cowards! Real men throw punches!

Anyway, I think that there's enough of the brain that we don't understand yet that the brain housing the entirety of the personality, likes, dislikes, quirks, habits and other whatnot that there's no need to invoke a soul.

[kaijyuu]

Science has proof, and also pokes a bunch of holes in the whole god thing,

Few things here:

1) Science has poked holes in specific religions, but not "the whole god thing." Religion isn't just Christianity.
2) This point is rather pedantic rather than supporting any specific argument, but... Science actually has zero of of what you would probably call proof. There is no absolute certainty in science, just "within reasonable doubt." Everything you learn via experimentation could be a fluke. The chances of that can be utterly miniscule (my computer merely running supports many scientific theories to a ridiculous degree), but the possibility always exists. (however, don't trust anyone who uses this as a reason to decry science, because denying inductive reasoning is plain nutty. Like I said, this is a pedantic point)
3) Furthermore, science relies on the philosophy of empiricism. That itself has a really big fucking gaping hole: solipsism. Ever seen the Matrix? What you see, taste, touch, smell, and feel is how you experience the world, but there's nothing saying those experiences aren't a lie. Descartes (the "I think therefore I am" guy) talked a lot about it and could only escape it to his satisfaction through religion.


So all that stuff can be negated by simply taking a different set of assumptions than the assumptions we make concerning empiricism and science. No matter what, you're putting your faith in some unprovable, unsupported assumption. Empiricism is the big one. Inductive reasoning is much, much more reasonable but still inherently never an absolute certainty.

[Kilroy the Grand]

As a former catholic, I'll just say that ignosticism is the cool position. Atheists and agnostics are total lamers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ignosticism or igtheism is the theological position that every other theological position (including agnosticism and atheism) assumes too much about the concept of God and many other theological concepts.

It can be defined as encompassing two related views about the existence of God:

-The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of god can be meaningfully discussed. Furthermore, if that definition is unfalsifiable, the ignostic takes the theological noncognitivist position that the question of the existence of God (per that definition) is meaningless. In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term "God" is considered meaningless.

-The second view is synonymous with theological noncognitivism, and skips the step of first asking "What is meant by 'God'?" before proclaiming the original question "Does God exist?" as meaningless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism

Science has proof, and also pokes a bunch of holes in the whole god thing, but humans and animals seem to have souls.

Elaborate.

Well, you've seen roadkill. How is it that each individual piece of roadkill was once a living breathing animal that had its own quirks and habits and likes and dislikes? Same question for a graveyard of dead humans. How can they all be so different? I'm sure we could go all science with it and say something along the lines of, 'Its all brain chemistry and cell position in the CNS', but I don't think that fully explains it.

There is nothing special that I've found that differentiates humans and animals. I've killed lots of animals, I've seen a lot of animals thrash around as they die, some of them even looked me in the eyes while they bled to death. You're just seeing what you want to see. You see a squirrel that likes acorns more than walnuts, I see a squirrel. We all live and then we die, until you can give me the weight of a soul, or some metric to measure it by I'm going to assume it doesn't exist.

[lemon10]

Science has proof, and also pokes a bunch of holes in the whole god thing, but humans and animals seem to have souls.

Elaborate.

Well, you've seen roadkill. How is it that each individual piece of roadkill was once a living breathing animal that had its own quirks and habits and likes and dislikes? Same question for a graveyard of dead humans. How can they all be so different? I'm sure we could go all science with it and say something along the lines of, 'Its all brain chemistry and cell position in the CNS', but I don't think that fully explains it.

Do you think every living thing has a soul? Do plants? Does it require a brain?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Well, you've seen roadkill. How is it that each individual piece of roadkill was once a living breathing animal that had its own quirks and habits and likes and dislikes? Same question for a graveyard of dead humans. How can they all be so different?

Variance in preference, resultant from variance in phenotype, resultant from variance in genotype, resultant from naturally selected random mutation. And they aren't that different. Most members of a species act in similar manners, especially the non-human species.

I'm sure we could go all science with it and say something along the lines of, 'Its all brain chemistry and cell position in the CNS', but I don't think that fully explains it.

Allow me to tell you the tale of Phineas Gage. Phineas was a railroad foreman, a favored and efficient one. One day, dear Phineas ended up having his skull impaled by a tamping iron, destroying his left frontal lobe.

Despite this, Phineas survived his injury, but there were consequences. He became prone to unjustified anger and impatience, and was no longer efficient at his job or favored by his fellows. Many of them described him as having become a different person.

Why? Because the mind is a projection created by the brain, and if the brain is damaged, the mind is damaged to fit. There's nothing supernatural about any of it.

[RedWarrior0]

My personal beliefs stem from Catholicism with some induction/deduction because I don't feel like reading the CCC. Some of these are personal, some are from priests/religion classes, and I don't necessarily know which is which.

1. A lot of the Bible is symbolism.
2. Hell (for lack of a word with fewer connotations) is a choice to be separated from God. There may be "wailing and gnashing of teeth" but that does not imply torture. Hell is simply the state of complete lack of love (in the agape sense (i.e. I respect that you are a person with your own free will, etc.))
3. Purgatory, penance, and a life of righteousness do not so much mean earning your way into heaven as affirming it as a choice.
4. Life and dignity of the human person is foremost in how people should treat others. And that leads to this: "If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." (1 John 4:20) That particular book of the Bible has some nice gems that pretty much amount to "Believing in God does not excuse you from anything."
5. Believing in God does not excuse you from anything. Except perhaps the draft, sometimes.
6 (less spiritual). Jesus was totally a pacifist communist.

[MrWiggles]

I'm a human secularist with a scientific skeptical outlook.

[Hanslanda]

Mind = Blown. Twice.

About the plants thing. Life is the soul. Lives do not have souls. Plant cells undergo the processes we typically associate with being 'alive' such as dying, so I would consider them to have souls. And perhaps I mispoke earlier. It isn't necessarily that souls are the reason everyone's unique. That was poor example on my part, because I wasn't sure how to explain what I meant by 'have souls'.
Sigh. I can't adequately explain my thoughts on this, I'm not good enough at explaining myself. :/ I'm not prepared for this discussion guys. I'm going to sit it out after this to avoid getting too stressed out and possibly morphing into a troll.

[MaximumZero]

3) Furthermore, science relies on the philosophy of empiricism. That itself has a really big fucking gaping hole: solipsism. Ever seen the Matrix? What you see, taste, touch, smell, and feel is how you experience the world, but there's nothing saying those experiences aren't a lie. Descartes (the "I think therefore I am" guy) talked a lot about it and could only escape it to his satisfaction through religion.

There's a problem with this approach, though. Even if we are in some fictional reality, all evidence points to this reality being the only one. Thus far, there has been nothing that is testable/repeatable/verifiable that suggests that there is some sort of outside controlling force working on this reality. Science can only follow the evidence as far as it goes, and there is no evidence that goes outside the universe that we happen to be in. As far as anything outside the universe is concerned, either it cannot affect us in any meaningful way that we can detect, or it doesn't exist. Sure, we may be a computer simulation, but does that really affect you if we are?

[MrWiggles]

You also can't undervalue or undermine the fact that science works. Even if the reality we perceive is fundamentally wrong, our understanding of this wrong reality has proven to provide a lot of nifty applications and benefits.

[kaijyuu]

I'm not prepared for this discussion guys. I'm going to sit it out after this to avoid getting too stressed out and possibly morphing into a troll.

It's cool. Think and come back if you so desire Thinking is good.