For the sake of getting some straight answers from you non-believers, let's assume there really IS no God. Why is the world in such a mess? Now, you can't blame believers of any religion. Remember, according to you there IS no God. Why, in all these millions of years, haven't we evolved into a more compassionate people? Please, use NO reference to God or religions.
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Just because there is no God, it doesn't mean there are no religious people. Also, are you claiming that the world is such a mess because there is a god? He's doing a piss-poor job, then.
It's not that there is no God. It's that people think there is a God and that they're god's dick is bigger then everyone else's dick. I fail to see why just because there is no god that has to mean there are no religious people. Because there is no god, only people who think there is.
But alright fine secular reasons why the world is a mess: mankind's shortsightedness is the first reason. We usually do shit that's bad for us in the long run without thinking it through. The reason why we haven't evolved to be more compassionate is because assholes breed more, so we have more assholes then nice or smart people. Then there's greed. And intolerance. Both of which exist because at one point they were evolutionary survival mechanisms.
The world is in such a mess because humans have a desperate desire to survive at the expense of others who are not part of their individual groups. We are compassionate, by nature, but, at the same time, we are also selfish, heartless, backstabbing bastards with a penchant for bloodshed. Much like your God (Ooops..guess I broke your little rule, huh?).
societies seem to do best when MOST people are compassionate, but there will always be room for some few to take advantage of their fellows.
as societies advance in size and scope, and we know fewer and fewer of our neighbors, "in groups" are formed within society that are hostile toward one another in the same way that tribes or family groups of native people may display hostility to outsiders or rivals.
in fact, if you look at troops of apes or monkeys, they display the same behavior.
"Why is the world in such a mess? Now, you can't blame believers of any religion. "
Why not, if they caused the mess they should be blamed.
I blame you and your belief in your imaginary god.
Osiris wrote:
"Then there's greed. And intolerance. Both of which exist because at one point they were evolutionary survival mechanisms."
Maybe. But I'm reluctant to say so: it's that sort of sloppy extrapolation that tarnishes the ToE.
If there is no God then there is no reason to believe the world should be any better than it is. The only reason we need is that humans are cruel and unusual.
However, if there IS a God, then he owes you an explanation of how an all powerful, all loving, and all knowing being could allow this to happen.
Compassion isn't in our dna. Your biological goal in life is to get laid as many times as you can and put off dying for as long as possible.
And yes, we actually can blame believers of religions, because it's dicks like you who blindly start wars in the name of your imaginary friend.
We have evolved into more compassionate people and the world isn't in such a mess. Advanced nations no longer allow slavery. Most, except for the US, don't allow the death penalty. Women can vote, hold property, divorce abusive husbands and collect support from them, parents have to support their children, send them to school and can't use them as free labor. Dreaded diseases have been brought under control by medicine, people live longer, keep their teeth through dental care and work only half the hours they did only two hundred years ago. Locking a criminal up in a 300 year old house and forcing him to live like the average farmer of 1700 would be considered "cruel and unusual punishment".
@475335
You're in a room. There's a bunch of people in a room adjacent to you with a bomb in it. The bomb won't hurt you, but if you want to save these people, you'll have to press a button that will cause 10,000 volts of electricity to course through your entire body, giving you a very painful death. What do you do?
Now obviously, this is a very extreme example, but why wouldn't you press the button. If you chose to press the button; why would this situation pose a problem for you?
This is because you want to survive. Aside from a few altruistic people and those who risk their lives to save others on a daily basis, i.e. policemen, firemen, it is in our genetic code to worry more for our own survival than for the survival of others. It doesn't sound kind, but like it or not, it's what we're wired for.
Munchiez wrote:
"...it is in our genetic code to worry more for our own survival than for the survival of others. It doesn't sound kind, but like it or not, it's what we're wired for."
Evidence, please? Otherwise, what you say, which may or may not be true, is merely rhetoric, not unlike the Fundies.
To attribute meaning to physical phenomena (in this case evolutionary processes) is a fallacy: the theory of evolution doesn't have any meaning, but functions (quite well) only as an explanatory model with predictive power for certain events. To see evolution as anything more than this is to cast it into an ideological mold. (Why don't we wax rhetorical about General Relativity or Quantum Theory?)
I suggest you read "The Origin of Life" by John Maynard Smith--it's slightly technical, but I think it's worth the time.
wow reading that thread... or at least part of it, was really annoying. I think he was trying to say, hypothetically, if there were no religions, no gods, no beliefs at all, ever, on what could one blame the current* state of the world.
Scarcity. The overwhelming majority of people don't have time for much compassion: they're doing whatever it takes to keep a roof over their families' heads and enough food in their stomachs.
There's also a small percentage of people who own most of the available resources on the planet. They didn't get there through compassion, but by being ruthless pricks.
Yet, there are some people who are truly compassionate and give of their time to make people's lives a little less miserable. Few of them seem to be of the fundamentalist x-ian, Republican-voting type.
I will also say scarcity, particularly scarcity of life. It is fear of death that causes people to try to win more life at the expense of others, even to the point of creating competitions that make no sense to give themselves more ways to "win." Religion is one such competition: it exacerbates scarcity (by creating new scarce resources like "holy land" to fight over or arbitrary divisions that make it harder to share for the sake of self-righteousness) it is responsible for the world's evils.
I think we are a more compassionate people. Centuries ago people got the death penalty for minor offenses, slavery was accepted, human sacrifice was practiced, women were property and genocide just showed how great you were.
There is no hope for you. Your brain is evidently so saturated with religious mania that you cannot differentiate between a god and the religious structure built around it.
If god didn't exist, the world would look exactly the way it does now. And we'd be fully entitled to blame the religious maniacs for derailing attempts to build a more rational, peaceful world; a religion whose god does not exist cannot survive in a fully rational context, and so avoids rationality as much as possible and becomes dangerously insane, along with its adherents.
History shows and continues to show that religion and politics are the two major stumbling blocks to regional or world piece. If religion was out 1000 years ago there'd be a lot more peace and cooperation in this world.
way to take the answer out of play just as you ask the question....almost as if you DO know the answer
Assuming there is no God doesn't get rid of the self-righteous dickheads who believe that there are, and that their particular God or Gods are the only one and speaks only to them. Jesus was a very good role model of a kind and gentle, loving all-encompassing God. Instead fundie Christians pick to follow Paul, a bigoted, mean-spirited, woman-hating prig and insult and attack their fellow man with arrogance and self-righteousness. Now if you wish to live in a fantasy world and remove religion completely off the table, the answer would become marxist philosophy, that everything is economic and everyone always wants more, even if it means taking someone else'.
Because people tend to be tribal and mark differences in many different ways--most prominently by deep and intense faith in imaginary beings that reward and punish.
We're weird like that.
P.S.: You want a more civilized and compassionate world? Get you and your friends to join the humanist movement--we're sadly outnumbered by fundies!
It's fairly simple why we have no evolved to be perfectly compassionate and peaceful, it simply is not an evolutionary stable strategy. In an environment where everyone is altruistic and good it only makes it easier for a "cheater" to come in and exploit the other member's altruism. It is because of this that we're all somewhat capable of being cheaters and recognizing cheaters yet also have the capacity for altruism.
Human motivations are universal:
Sex. Hunger. Fear of the unknown.
Greed, lust, paranoia.
The more "successful" human strains developed overblown antagonistic egos and the weaponry to back them.
It's amazing though, the excuses some people use for their bad behavior.
Great debate technique, Wayne. Learned it in the school toilet, didn't you?
You realize, of course, you just admitted that your god has made a mess of the world. Good for you. Tell me again why you're a believer.
Short list as to why the world is in such a mess: greed, bickering over imaginary boundary lines on map, ideology, the believe that one group is more right than the other, and self-righteousness.
Copy of my reply to Wayne:
(I just can't help the SNL reference) Wayne, you ignorant slut, if there is no god then the mess of the world makes perfect sense. There is no controlling supernatural force to make us agree on all thing. Therefore we all have our own viewpoints. Some (we'll just call them the ignorant sluts) chose to think that they are favored by some supernatural being. Because these ignorant sluts believe this, they spend huge amounts of energy trying to prove themselves right. If you confront these ignorant sluts with actual evidence, they become violent, thus causing most of the problems in this world.
Because evil people are willing to use underhanded and cruel methods to get ahead while good people aren't, therefore evil people do tend to come out on top more often, simply because they can't be bothered to play by the same rules as everyone else. That's why the vast majority of people with power are dicks, and end up ruining things for everyone else.
What the Hell?
"Let's assume there is no God...why is the world such a mess?"
Because there's no all-powerful being cracking down on people, the world should be a utopia. With God, it should be flawed. Does this make sense anywhere but the mind of Wayne?
Ok, let's assume there _is_ a single good, loving, all powerful god.
Now, you explain why the world is in a sad shape. Without resorting to sin, the devil, demons, human asshattery, etc. (Remember, the god we're assuming here is all powerful, and good. Kinda like the christian one...)
Okay, let's assume there IS a God.
THEN tell me why the world is in such a mess!
EDIT: Dang it, Razark beat me to it by ONE POST!
Game theory answers to questions like this.
It's often beneficial to be compassionate, but not always, so some people are more compassionate, others less, and many have different amounts of compassion in different situations.
Now, you can't blame believers of any religion. Remember, according to you there IS no God
Wait, what? There is no God, but that doesn't mean deists aren't at fault.
The argument doesn't quite work that way.
If there's no God, than religious people, in their DELUSIONS, are messing up the world.
Now, you can't blame believers of any religion. Remember, according to you there IS no God.
Oooh, oooh, oooh, I know the answer. It's "People like you", isn't it?
One of his later posts:
He doesn't even know what an atheist is.
"Please, use NO reference to God or religions"
No references to gods or religions, eh?
OK. The world is not in such a mess that rational people couldn't solve. Rational people are perfectly willing to accommodate the growth of human civilization, as said civilization can be considered an organic entity on a rational level.
There are irrational people however who refuse growth and cling desperately to notions that were long ago found to be flawed. These irrational people have undue influence in matters they are not qualified to address.
Indeed, these irrational people specifically target for destruction those trends in society which have evolved to assist healthy communities in their growth. They have become tribal in their insularity, self-righteously cruel to any stranger, and ultimately a barrier to growth.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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