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The Only Way to Escape Hell


Ben Masada

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Don't ask me to explain the mind of God, because I can't. All I can tell you, is that He loves you more than you can imagine!! So much so, that He wants to give you more than you could possibly ask or imagine, but you would rather turn Him down. Why should He give you anything when you hate Him so??? He created you and gave you life!! I also believe that its no accident that you are having this conversation with me.

Let me tell you: I spent alot of years of my life running from God, even though I knew He was there all the time. I went thru alot of needless, self inflicted pain and suffering because I refused to trust Him. When I finally did decide to trust Him, He changed me from the inside out! I am no longer who I used to be. My whole personality, and outlook on life changed, and God gave me the desires of my heart! He also changed some of those desires, and I no longer want the things that were destroying me.

I know how you feel about not wanting to surrender to the Lord, because I have been there. But I can tell you, it was the best thing I ever did in my life!!! :)

Don't ask me to explain the mind of God, because I can't. All I can tell you, is that He loves you more than you can imagine!! So much so, that He wants to give you more than you could possibly ask or imagine, but you would rather turn Him down. Why should He give you anything when you hate Him so??? He created you and gave you life!! I also believe that its no accident that you are having this conversation with me.

Let me tell you: I spent alot of years of my life running from God, even though I knew He was there all the time. I went thru alot of needless, self inflicted pain and suffering because I refused to trust Him. When I finally did decide to trust Him, He changed me from the inside out! I am no longer who I used to be. My whole personality, and outlook on life changed, and God gave me the desires of my heart! He also changed some of those desires, and I no longer want the things that were destroying me.

I know how you feel about not wanting to surrender to the Lord, because I have been there. But I can tell you, it was the best thing I ever did in my life!!! :)

Problem is, I dislike God like I dislike a bad character on a TV show. I don't hate the character or anything, that would be silly, because they aren't real. You're solid in your Christian faith, that's alright, but you must realize I'm solid in my atheistic views. I don't doubt, I know there isn't a God, just as must as you think there is one. I am a happy, self-fulfilled woman, I've used my own personality, my own strength to quit things 'that were destroying me' as you say, all without the power of faith or religion. I don't need the new opiate of religion to replace an old one. Because you were dejected without faith, found reason in it, does not make others like yourself. Congrats on it being the best thing in your life, because for you, it is, I feel sorry that you consider every other actual experience below it, but that's your world view, and I have mine. Just in my world view, I don't think you're going to be tortured just for not sharing it when you die.

Edited by Hasina
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Precisely. And those amino acids didn't have much of a chance of aggregating into anything meaningful until the arrival of oceans; which of course wasn't for many millions more years, by which time the planet had effectively cooled. As I understand it, that is. I could always be mistaken on a few details; it isn't my field of expertise.

First of all, yes you are right, the explosion of life on this planet started with the arrival of the oceans when the earth cooled. .. But before this, the amino acids mixed and the first signs of life occurred with bacteria and single cell organisms.

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bull****. Name one credible scientist who claims a creator/designer. You've been lied to son. Science has wholesale rejected the idiotic notion of creationism/intelligent design.

lozaleibou has just had his science license revoked.

There is absolutely no serious scientific research (biology, geology, ecology, astronomy, astrophysics and many other fields) conducted that isn't based on the theory of evolution or an ancient universe. The handful of so-called Scientific Creationists have been doing absolutely no independent research whatsoever. They stand on the side lines trying to debunk the valid research of real scientists and promoting themselves as "real" scientists who are modern Galileos being persecuted for telling the truth.

Their rabid fan base is poorly educated and understands very little about science (they constantly confuse it with the products of science like technology) and a few even believe that these self-proclaimed scientists are the only ones doing "real science" these days. Yes, there are people who are so out of touch with the real world that they are blissfully unaware of the incredible work that heathen scientists are doing these days.

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Yes, isn't that something? You'd think you would have caught on to the irony of your statements by now, but evidently not... As if I'm surprised. And you can say I'm amoral all you like, but the fact is you know nothing about me at all, and clearly make no effort to correct that situation, instead simply spewing nonsensical straw-men at me.

I have previously said that meat, as a source of protein, is a highly beneficial sustenance item; I did not say that it is 100% necessary for survival. No, my moral code doesn't tell me that eating plants and fungi is wrong; the Golden Rule does, however (would I want to be killed and eaten? No), and that was my entire point in referring to all this in the first place. The Golden Rule is a very good one, to an extent, but at some point, namely, the point of survival, the Golden Rule cannot be steadfastly observed, given that eventually it will be entirely necessary to kill another organism in order to eat it.

The arrogance it must take to say that you know something about the Bible, and I don't, given you haven't the slightest notion of who I am in the first place, is really staggering. Yes, I refer to Jesus as a carpenter, but only because that is what Christians, as well as the Bible (well, in most translations) claim. I could care less if he really was one; I could care less if actually existed at all. I am not claiming to know anything about either of these things, only what the Bible, and Christianity, has to say about it. That was all I was referring to. And it's really absurd that you've misunderstood that... it isn't hard to understand.

I've already explained all that. It's not moral evasion, it's recognizing an inherent flaw in the notion of the Golden Rule (namely, again, that eventually, to survive, we must all do something to another living organism that we wouldn't like done to us; i.e., kill and eat it); it's not evasion of anything, it's just being realistic. And no, a moral code needn't be intrinsically moral; tell me, is it moral to kill homosexuals, or not? And who says so, regardless of the answer? And why should I take that person seriously? Morals cannot be inherent, they can only be inferred or constructed based on the outcome of any given action. (e.g., you kill my son, and as a result, he is dead, and his friends and family are left mourning his passing. These are each unpleasant experiences, which yield virtually no benefits to anyone involved, ergo, it is a negative, or "bad" action.)

You can say that as many times as you like. That doesn't make it any less vacuous than it was the last time.

When I referred to "quality of life", I was not referring to standard of living; I was simply referring to a sense benefit or loss (i.e., I would be happy if someone gave me a gift, therefore, I would treat their act of giving as a positive action, enhancing my quality of life, if only slightly; on the converse, if someone kicks me in the stomach, I experience pain, and I don't like pain, hence, I would deem the act of kicking in the stomach to be a negative action).

And yes, a wealthy person buying up plots of land which might be better used for housing the poor and neglected could be deemed a negative action towards the poor, but it might also be seen as a neutral action. In any case, I think it is self-evident that if a wealthy person bought plots of land and of the goodness of their heart built homes for the poor, that would be a highly beneficial action; would you not agree?

Again, I was not referring to standard of living, but quality of life. And I would not see any killing, apart from, again, the necessary killing of food sources, to be beneficial on all sides. You seem to neglect the fact that, when weighing ethical value, one must take into account all parties which are affected by any given action. For instance, let's take the colonizing Americans appearing on the shores of Plymouth, and they eventually wipe out the Native American settlements in the area; this might be taken as beneficial for the colonists, but it would be decidedly harmful (obviously) for the natives, and thus, the scenario might be deemed "rather bad" (this is because, though there was some small benefit on the part of the colonists, the collective values of the high number of very negative acts, i.e., deaths, will thusly outweigh what benefit was had; this is accentuated by the fact that only one among the involved parties experienced this benefit, thus rendering the small positive gain even less significant altogether).

I never said one should weigh the pros and cons of being moral, only of the Golden Rule, which, as I've explained, is a very good idea, but is inapplicable in some scenarios, and thus cannot qualify as a be-all-end-all of ethics. The Golden Rule can, and should, however, be used as often as possible, of course. It is, after all, a very good idea; but I would see it more as a "Golden Guideline". It's a very good way to measure the qualitative ethical value of any given scenario, but it cannot be a hard-and-fast rule if it can be rendered inapplicable in certain situations.

Are you an employed biologist? I don't say anything about you that you don't already incriminate yourself with the words you write here. You say things and then deny them after saying them. First you say your morality is the Golden Rule then you say one should weigh the pros and cons of following it. Now you're lying that you never said one has to weigh the pros and cons of it when that's a direct quote. Whether it's somehow "inapplicable" as you keep evasively claiming without any example to show for it, or not does not have anything to do with a "moral code" which it does not.

Morals are principles and they are not violated because you're greedy, selfish, callous, lazy, evil, or confused. Your personal morality butts heads with other peoples' morality especially when they're meat that you bizarrely claim you have to eat to survive and laughably think that has anything to do with morality. The Golden Rule is a moral code, a consistent principle that has survived for thousands of years and not by accident. You're just pulling nonsense out your own rear and weaksauce attempting to impose it on me as universal fact and it's not even honest. You need to make some correct statements to base your conclusions on and you can't even get that far. If killing is wrong and you knew that the moment you plopped out the womb as you claim you did, then slicing the throats of animals is wrong and you're a chronic violator of your own morality.

What's the difference between quality of life and standard of living that has anything errant to do with your comments? They're interchangeable. There you go again repeating your claim that you have to eat meat to survive. Again, no you don't. I've given you your diet to improve your health and honor your alleged "moral code" to boot and you aren't rhetorically interested in that for a second. You get others to do your killing for you because your "moral code" tells you that it's wrong when you do it. With moral evasion like that, it's a stack of conveniences you're laying on of so much killing and so much death that got you where you are now, there is no morality at all in playing your hedge word games on God knows what good killing is from bad. It was all good for the ones doing the killing. Wake up.

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And yes, a wealthy person buying up plots of land which might be better used for housing the poor and neglected could be deemed a negative action towards the poor, but it might also be seen as a neutral action. In any case, I think it is self-evident that if a wealthy person bought plots of land and of the goodness of their heart built homes for the poor, that would be a highly beneficial action; would you not agree?

Beneficial to benevolence. Of course I would agree, that's why I brought it up because it highlights how what you said is wrong. It doesn't improve the "standard of living" or the "quality of life" of the person who built those homes. It wasn't necessary for survival. He didn't magically know to do this from birth. Every statement you've made on this topic trying to pull off as "morality" fails the acid test as this example demonstrates. Dying for what you believe in is the ultimate consistency which parallels the essence of morality. You don't believe that "killing is wrong" and you didn't know that from birth either.

Morality is universal and it is taught. It's not something you're born with and it's not every man for himself Your amoral clusterfudge of personal preference masquerading as a "moral code" has nothing to do with morality.

I have previously said that meat, as a source of protein, is a highly beneficial sustenance item; I did not say that it is 100% necessary for survival. No, my moral code doesn't tell me that eating plants and fungi is wrong; the Golden Rule does, however (would I want to be killed and eaten? No), and that was my entire point in referring to all this in the first place. The Golden Rule is a very good one, to an extent, but at some point, namely, the point of survival, the Golden Rule cannot be steadfastly observed, given that eventually it will be entirely necessary to kill another organism in order to eat it.

No that's not what you said. You said repeatedly that eating meat is necessary thus it's necessary to violate your own professed "moral code". Why even have a "moral code" if you can't even follow it? It's moral evasion every way we slice your cake. You're a Biologist and you're asking me if plants and fungi would want something? I'm sorry but I don't imbue plants with the properties of Animalia, but I do apply morality to animals. Human beings are animals if you're interested in being biologically consistent. We're all up in rage when a puppy gets thrown off a cliff or a cat gets abused. Cows and pigs, we can slice them up twelve ways to Sunday and kill millions of them a year in death mills and nobody bats an eye. That's not morality, that's selfish incidence. An animal that was endearing to us came into our lives and we happened to love him and so we imbue that animal with human-like qualities as an extension of ourselves. The cow carcass hanging off the cable you're going to eat in a few days that you don't have to eat while you preach to me how wrong killing is didn't have that opportunity but the biological fact is, all animals are emotional, they all feel pain, they are all capable of loving and being loved.

You can prefer to eat dogs for breakfast and worship cows, and it's not any less or more moral than what someone else prefers to do across another ocean. Your only claim to morality is that "killing is wrong" and you've violated that enough to not have any morality left. You ride down the road paved for you by the blood of others and the killing they did and you don't even fathom how convenient and selfish that position is when you wind up confusing morality with quality of life.

Unless your throat gets sliced and your carcass cleaned so someone else can eat the pork off your bones (in some made up scenario when such a thing was necessary for someone else's "quality of life") then you're not putting your own "moral code" to the test. It is a moral evasion and an amoral FAIL not to even begin to grasp a sense of morality beyond what you're selfishly interested in or what you're killing for reasons that are now only quasi-necessary to survive.

Edited by Yamato
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First of all, yes you are right, the explosion of life on this planet started with the arrival of the oceans when the earth cooled. .. But before this, the amino acids mixed and the first signs of life occurred with bacteria and single cell organisms.

Well, yes, but I had been under the impression that those were in an oceanic biome as well... Either way... I could be wrong. It's not my field.

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Well, yes, but I had been under the impression that those were in an oceanic biome as well... Either way... I could be wrong. It's not my field.

Yes, they were there when the oceans were present...but they were also there before the oceans...

EDIT to fix grammar

Edited by Beckys_Mom
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Are you an employed biologist? I don't say anything about you that you don't already incriminate yourself with the words you write here. You say things and then deny them after saying them. First you say your morality is the Golden Rule then you say one should weigh the pros and cons of following it. Now you're lying that you never said one has to weigh the pros and cons of it when that's a direct quote. Whether it's somehow "inapplicable" as you keep evasively claiming without any example to show for it, or not does not have anything to do with a "moral code" which it does not.

Morals are principles and they are not violated because you're greedy, selfish, callous, lazy, evil, or confused. Your personal morality butts heads with other peoples' morality especially when they're meat that you bizarrely claim you have to eat to survive and laughably think that has anything to do with morality. The Golden Rule is a moral code, a consistent principle that has survived for thousands of years and not by accident. You're just pulling nonsense out your own rear and weaksauce attempting to impose it on me as universal fact and it's not even honest. You need to make some correct statements to base your conclusions on and you can't even get that far. If killing is wrong and you knew that the moment you plopped out the womb as you claim you did, then slicing the throats of animals is wrong and you're a chronic violator of your own morality.

What's the difference between quality of life and standard of living that has anything errant to do with your comments? They're interchangeable. There you go again repeating your claim that you have to eat meat to survive. Again, no you don't. I've given you your diet to improve your health and honor your alleged "moral code" to boot and you aren't rhetorically interested in that for a second. You get others to do your killing for you because your "moral code" tells you that it's wrong when you do it. With moral evasion like that, it's a stack of conveniences you're laying on of so much killing and so much death that got you where you are now, there is no morality at all in playing your hedge word games on God knows what good killing is from bad. It was all good for the ones doing the killing. Wake up.

I have noted, numerous times, that one must eat other organisms to survive. Would you disagree? And yes, organisms includes plants and fungi. I do not refer to only animal meat. But what's the use... you have your own distorted view of me, and there's obviously no way for me to alter that view, regrettably. All I can say now (since I've explained my position time and again and yet you still manage to misrepresent and straw-man it), is that your view of me is false. I can only say that much, given you obviously don't care if I clarify; you have your own view, unchanging, and that's fine. But I do consider it slander, personal slander, and thus know that I will consider the possibility of reporting your ad hominem conduct to a moderator. But that's not important. Either way...

Yes, eating to survive does have to do with morality, as I've said. The Golden Rule states that it is best to treat all others the way you wish to be treated; this extends to all organisms, not simply people. Ergo, to kill and eat another organism, as necessary as it ultimately is, is a violation of this principle (unless you'd sincerely like to be killed and eaten... unlikely). That was my entire point, and you couldn't even keep on track to grasp that much. It's very simple. Why do you insist on twisting it, over and over? It's tiresome. And useless.

Yes, incidentally, I am an employed biologist. That's not relevant to our conversation. And nor is our conversation relevant to the overarching topic of this thread, hence, I propose we drop it. It's futile; you have your beliefs, which are at odds with mine. Where does that leave us? I propose we drop this argument, either way...

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Yes, they were there when the oceans were present...but they were also there before the oceans...

EDIT to fix grammar

Fair enough. Thank you very much for the update.

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I have noted, numerous times, that one must eat other organisms to survive. Would you disagree? And yes, organisms includes plants and fungi. I do not refer to only animal meat. But what's the use... you have your own distorted view of me, and there's obviously no way for me to alter that view, regrettably. All I can say now (since I've explained my position time and again and yet you still manage to misrepresent and straw-man it), is that your view of me is false. I can only say that much, given you obviously don't care if I clarify; you have your own view, unchanging, and that's fine. But I do consider it slander, personal slander, and thus know that I will consider the possibility of reporting your ad hominem conduct to a moderator. But that's not important. Either way...

Yes, eating to survive does have to do with morality, as I've said. The Golden Rule states that it is best to treat all others the way you wish to be treated; this extends to all organisms, not simply people. Ergo, to kill and eat another organism, as necessary as it ultimately is, is a violation of this principle (unless you'd sincerely like to be killed and eaten... unlikely). That was my entire point, and you couldn't even keep on track to grasp that much. It's very simple. Why do you insist on twisting it, over and over? It's tiresome. And useless.

Yes, incidentally, I am an employed biologist. That's not relevant to our conversation. And nor is our conversation relevant to the overarching topic of this thread, hence, I propose we drop it. It's futile; you have your beliefs, which are at odds with mine. Where does that leave us? I propose we drop this argument, either way...

What you have to eat has nothing to do with morality. Why can't you understand that? If you're all I have to eat, it isn't "moral" for me to eat you. Why can't you understand your own moral evasion? You just can't eat your own cooking and understand how you FAIL at this.

Your claims of being a Biologist are shocking when you're trying to imbue fungi with animal emotions in your desperate attempt to defend your amorality as "moral code". No, the Golden Rule doesn't apply to all organisms which have no brains, have no self awareness, have no nervous systems, have no intelligence, and have no idea whether they're alive or dead. Where did you get this latest ridiculous notion from?

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Fair enough. Thank you very much for the update.

You are most welcome .I have a 7 year old daughter, who at present is learning the basics of physics ( at home ) so I wind up getting a refresher course..She wants to be an astronaut or a doctor... Sometimes she corrects me..( usually in ref to planets) .It's funny at times..

Edited by Beckys_Mom
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And yes, a wealthy person buying up plots of land which might be better used for housing the poor and neglected could be deemed a negative action towards the poor, but it might also be seen as a neutral action. In any case, I think it is self-evident that if a wealthy person bought plots of land and of the goodness of their heart built homes for the poor, that would be a highly beneficial action; would you not agree?

Beneficial to benevolence. Of course I would agree, that's why I brought it up because it highlights how what you said is wrong. It doesn't improve the "standard of living" or the "quality of life" of the person who built those homes. It wasn't necessary for survival. He didn't magically know to do this from birth. Every statement you've made on this topic in front of me trying to pull off as "morality" fails the acid test of this example. Dying for what you believe in is the ultimate consistency which parallels the essence of morality. Morality is universal and it is taught. It's not something you're born with and it's not every man for himself Your amoral clusterfudge of personal preference masquerading as a "moral code" has nothing to do with morality.

It doesn't have to improve the quality of life of the actor, necessarily; the benefit which was granted to those who were affected by the act (the poor) is more than enough to tip the scale toward the positive end of the spectrum, very heavily. Morality, I'll say, is not a universal standard (i.e., is it breaking the Golden Rule to torture a masochist?). There are always situations which pose ethical conundrums. Overall though, morality is, in essence, a system which ought be based on the outcomes of actions; in other words, as I've said, the ethical value of an act may be weighed based on the total sum of its results (and the perceived sense of benefit or harm which is associated with said results). This is part of the elasticity of ethics, in that everyone perceives things subjectively, and any given person might have a different perception of benefit/harm than any other person. And thus, they would have a different perception of what would be ethically-acceptable/unacceptable to them (e.g., the masochist example; a masochist might perceive pain as a positive thing, whereas most others perceive it as negative). This only demonstrates the non-universality of morals. Likely, not to your satisfaction, of course (given too that you will no-doubt twist what I've just said into something completely different...)... but nonetheless.

I have previously said that meat, as a source of protein, is a highly beneficial sustenance item; I did not say that it is 100% necessary for survival. No, my moral code doesn't tell me that eating plants and fungi is wrong; the Golden Rule does, however (would I want to be killed and eaten? No), and that was my entire point in referring to all this in the first place. The Golden Rule is a very good one, to an extent, but at some point, namely, the point of survival, the Golden Rule cannot be steadfastly observed, given that eventually it will be entirely necessary to kill another organism in order to eat it.

No that's not what you said. You said repeatedly that eating meat is necessary thus it's necessary to violate your own professed "moral code". Why even have a "moral code" if you can't even follow it? It's moral evasion every way we slice your cake. You're a Biologist and you're asking me if plants and fungi would want something? I'm sorry but I don't imbue plants with the properties of Animalia, but I do apply morality to animals. Human beings are animals if you're interested in being biologically consistent. We're all up in rage when a puppy gets thrown off a cliff or a cat gets abused. Cows and pigs, we can slice them up twelve ways to Sunday and kill millions of them a year in death mills and nobody bats an eye. That's not morality, that's selfish incidence. An animal that was endearing to us came into our lives and we happened to love him and so we imbue that animal with human-like qualities as an extension of ourselves. The cow carcass hanging off the cable you're going to eat in a few days that you don't have to eat while you preach to me how wrong killing is didn't have that opportunity but the biological fact is, all animals are emotional, they all feel pain, they are all capable of loving and being loved.

Emotionality and intelligence in animals is (hopefully) obvious to all of us here. That's irrelevant to the aspect of the Golden Rule concept which I was discussing. It matters not whether a plant or a fungus would "want" any given thing; the essence of the Golden Rule is, as we all know: would I want that done to me? A plant or fungus needn't want anything; but we do want certain things, and to be killed and eaten are (for most of us) not among them. Ergo, if you don't want to be killed and eaten, regardless of whether the organism in question is capable of expressing or harbouring such ideas, it would nonetheless be, at the very least, hypocritical of the Golden Rule's principle to kill and eat any other organism. That has been my entire point. That you've been missing it entirely for these past several pages isn't my concern.

You can prefer to eat dogs for breakfast and worship cows, and it's not any less or more moral than what someone else prefers to do across another ocean. Your only claim to morality is that "killing is wrong" and you've violated that enough to not have any morality left. You ride down the road paved for you by the blood of others and the killing they did and you don't even fathom how convenient and selfish that position is when you wind up confusing morality with quality of life.

Not exactly sure what you're talking about now... I do think that killing is wrong, but based on the fact that it is the supreme expression of the negative/harmful end of the ethical spectrum. If I wouldn't like to be killed, then it would be wrong of me to kill. Simple. That killing for survival is a necessity of heterotrophic existence is where we find that the Golden Rule simply cannot be applied in all situations; even situations as fundamental as basic survival.

Unless your throat gets sliced and your carcass cleaned so someone else can eat the pork off your bones (in some made up scenario when such a thing was necessary for someone else's "quality of life") then you're not putting your own "moral code" to the test. It is a moral evasion and an amoral FAIL not to even begin to grasp a sense of morality beyond what you're selfishly interested in or what you're killing for reasons that are now only quasi-necessary to survive.

Again, I'm genuinely at a loss to determine what was going through your head when you wrote these paragraphs... They appear to be coherent in syntax, and grammar, and yet I can find no relevant information being conveyed therein. What you insist on referring to as "moral evasion" is no such thing; if you insist on labeling it, it would in all probability be more accurately dubbed a form of "moral subjectivity". Given most of us have at least similar perceptions of what we consider beneficial or harmful, ethical values are largely solid; however, due to the subjectivity of our perceptions, these "solid" ethics do tend to break down a bit. I am not an advocate of amoralism or moral evasion; only moral realisticism. If one cannot be realistic for a moment, and realize that the Golden Rule does indeed lose its seeming universality when it comes to matters of simple survival, then there isn't much point in this conversation. Well, as I've said, I don't see much point in this conversation in the first place... It's off-topic.

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What you have to eat has nothing to do with morality. Why can't you understand that? If you're all I have to eat, it isn't "moral" for me to eat you. Why can't you understand your own moral evasion? You just can't eat your own cooking and understand how you FAIL at this.

Your claims of being a Biologist are shocking when you're trying to imbue fungi with animal emotions in your desperate attempt to defend your amorality as "moral code". No, the Golden Rule doesn't apply to all organisms which have no brains, have no self awareness, have no nervous systems, have no intelligence, and have no idea whether they're alive or dead. Where did you get this latest ridiculous notion from?

Please read the words that I say, and when you respond, represent them as I said them. I never tried to imbue plants or fungi with animal emotions; I referred only to the subjective hypocrisy of an animal which doesn't wish to be killed and eaten, killing and eating another organism. I stated this very clearly; how on Earth you managed to distort it, once again, is simply beyond me. I have never referred to organisms without consciousness practicing the Golden Rule; only the implications of conscious beings who do practice the Golden Rule violating its basic principle in regards to the consumption of other organisms. That was all I've said. And yes, I do think that eating has to do with morality. As I've explained, the Golden Rule, which you claim to be universal, ceases its universality when confronted with the conundrum of survival and heterotrophism. That's been my entire point thus far...

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Off topic discussion thats sole purpose appears to be to stir up others, comes dangerously close to violating UM rules regarding flame baiting.

Stay on topic and leave the personal stuff out of the discussion.

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Problem is, I dislike God like I dislike a bad character on a TV show. I don't hate the character or anything, that would be silly, because they aren't real. You're solid in your Christian faith, that's alright, but you must realize I'm solid in my atheistic views. I don't doubt, I know there isn't a God, just as must as you think there is one. I am a happy, self-fulfilled woman, I've used my own personality, my own strength to quit things 'that were destroying me' as you say, all without the power of faith or religion. I don't need the new opiate of religion to replace an old one. Because you were dejected without faith, found reason in it, does not make others like yourself. Congrats on it being the best thing in your life, because for you, it is, I feel sorry that you consider every other actual experience below it, but that's your world view, and I have mine. Just in my world view, I don't think you're going to be tortured just for not sharing it when you die.

So just as I asked Arbitran: If there isn't a God, who created this world? The majority of the scientific world says that there has to be a grand designer. Wouldn't it take more faith to believe that we all came from a bubble in the goo, than to believe that we have a Creator? Just look at the intricacies of the human eye, for instance. Do you think that all came about just by chance?

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So just as I asked Arbitran: If there isn't a God, who created this world? The majority of the scientific world says that there has to be a grand designer. Wouldn't it take more faith to believe that we all came from a bubble in the goo, than to believe that we have a Creator? Just look at the intricacies of the human eye, for instance. Do you think that all came about just by chance?

No, the scientific world has wholesale rejected creationism/intelligent design, as I've said. You've been lied to, I'm afraid.

Nobody created this world. And the origin of the eye is a very well-understood process.

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No, the scientific world has wholesale rejected creationism/intelligent design, as I've said. You've been lied to, I'm afraid.

Nobody created this world. And the origin of the eye is a very well-understood process.

Ah yes, there it is again. Your generalities in your vast human understanding, which you will probably deny you said, at a later time. :unsure2:

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Ah yes, there it is again. Your generalities in your vast human understanding, which you will probably deny you said, at a later time. :unsure2:

Not really sure what you're trying to say... could you speak a bit more descriptively?

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So just as I asked Arbitran: If there isn't a God, who created this world? The majority of the scientific world says that there has to be a grand designer. Wouldn't it take more faith to believe that we all came from a bubble in the goo, than to believe that we have a Creator? Just look at the intricacies of the human eye, for instance. Do you think that all came about just by chance?

No one created it. The majority of the scientific world doesn't believe that, it's been hashed over so many times in other topics I don't really need to say it again. It takes no faith to believe we 'came from a bubble of goo' as you so unsatisfactorily generalize. The origin of life is still a murky one in the scientific world, there are hypothesis, but no scientist has the hubris to say 'this is it, this is where life came from'. As for the origins of the Universe, I have no say, I've read about it and I agree, there's no way of knowing, but will this make me throw myself into an ancient text for comfort? No.

And yes, I believe we're all here by chance. I know for a fact that I am here by chance, just in my immediate family.

As for the eye? Here ya go, but I'm sure you'll dismiss it as hokeypokey 'science' (hisshiss):

http://upload.wikime...e_evolution.svg

Edited by Hasina
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No, the scientific world has wholesale rejected creationism/intelligent design, as I've said. You've been lied to, I'm afraid.

Nobody created this world. And the origin of the eye is a very well-understood process.

To be fair, someone who rejects a possible explanation of something they have no clue about themselves,, besides educated guesses, doesn't give their stance any credence, despite the non-related advances the "scientific world" has made.

Something did create this world, because it exists. What is the question. You, Arbitran, seem to have placed a body to the creator, which doesn't necessarily have to exist, theoretically (theory being all that exists in this subject altogether).

And it seems you both have completely missed lozal's point about the eye. He, you both, I, and everyone else know that the entire process has been studied, documented, and taught for a long, long time. The masterful intricacy of the setup of these seemingly random grouping of parts and processes is what lozaleibou was referring to, not that it is not understood how it works. You could say the same thing about many, many things that exist in the world. From the microscopic world all the way up to deep space in the universe, and everything in-between. It's all so sublimely methodical, fine-tuned, and balanced in its makeup. So many supposedly random, "by chance" things all co-existing in this world, it boggles the mind if you were to really think about it all in one sitting.

Did some"body" create that? Who knows? Certainly not Arbitran or Hasina, unless they are holding out on some information all of the rest of us are in the dark about. A God who was written about in a big book by a bunch of men, and sent his son to die for our sins, to come again one day to take us to Heaven? I really doubt it. But what else could have created all of this? We do not know. So I don't understand how some can so securely teach others how a creator simply does not exist. Help me out.

Edited by _Only
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My core point was that it needn't have all been created. Of course it came about; came into existence. But ultimately, that's just simple physics and chemistry, up until biology kicks into gear of course, when my specialty of evolution took root as the fundamental principle which diversified and brought the organisms we see into existence. I wouldn't say it's terribly methodical either. Sure, it all functions rather well, but deep down the notion of some unseen intelligence behind it just doesn't stack up to observations. An intelligent designer wouldn't have inserted the appendix, a useless vestige of an organ, which is incidentally prone to rupturing and causing severe harm to its owner. An intelligent designer, though he might have made an eye that works, wouldn't have inserted the massive blind spot which exists in the human eye, wouldn't have inserted all of our cones and rods backwards, and certainly wouldn't have gone about designing another creature, the human botfly, which has a nasty tendency of burrowing into human (and other primate) eyes to lay its eggs. An intelligent designer whose purpose was to create life might have done better if they hadn't chosen to put it all on small, infinitesimal rocks in the middle of otherwise uninhabitable space; and on top of that, given that they seem to like humans so much (given I'm talking of course about religious creationistic ideas), it would have been a bit more intelligent if they hadn't made the majority of the surface of that small rocky ball in space inhospitable desert and treacherous ocean.

In any case, true, I don't know where the universe came from; any more than anyone else. And yes, cynically speaking, science could be said to be an "educated guess". But, ultimately, that's really all we have, isn't it? There is no way to know anything 100%. The purpose of the scientific method is to determine what is real, how reality works, where it came from, etc. And it has so far done a staggeringly-good job at getting those answers. Will it ever be 100% sure about it all? No. It simply can't.

In any case, the "masterful intricacy" is a matter of opinion. Sure, the eye looks rather complex, and in many ways it is, but ultimately it is simply a collection of proteins and chemical compounds which have been organized into a complex state through very simply biological, chemical, and physical principles. And, again, I certainly wouldn't deem it "masterful"; mastery would tend to imply the lack of any fault, and that certainly cannot be said of our backward, myopia-prone, botfly-attracting eyes.

If you are suggesting though, as I hope you are, frankly, that the "creator" could be the laws of nature, then so be it, I believe in a creator, along with all of science. But it's when semantics like that are brought into play that makes me reject creationism all the more. "Creator" implies some intelligent or creative entity; which certainly doesn't sound like simple laws of nature, given that the laws are autonomous and unconscious. No, I'm afraid that there wasn't a creator. And if that means that the universe came about by "chance" or by "accident", then so be it, but it's a plain fact, and in any case, I don't see it that way at all. I don't necessarily see the universe as having come about by "accident", per se, but simply as the result of the simple laws which the universe enforces upon the objects within it. Is this "accidental" in nature? I don't think so; not necessarily. An accident implies sheer chance; the laws of nature are the antithesis of chance. But was there a creative, conscious entity behind it all? Well, the possibility is always there, but the odds are so monumentally against the idea that really absolutely every scrap of knowledge we have about the universe would have to be shown categorically false for it to even have much of a fighting chance. And given that the odds of that happening are almost equally infinitesimal, I must quintessentially place my bet on science. All in...

Edited by Arbitran
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So just as I asked Arbitran: If there isn't a God, who created this world? The majority of the scientific world says that there has to be a grand designer.

As Arbitran says this is simply not true. Scientists whose careers have been in geology, biology, astronomy, archaeology and several other fields have entirely rejected Creationism as an explanation for the evidence they uncover.

This is because everything they've discovered has mundane explanations. They have not discovered anything that would require a miracle to explain which would be evidence of a higher power. The more we learned about Earth and the universe, the more we realized that everything could be explained without the need of someone or something creating or causing it.

Wouldn't it take more faith to believe that we all came from a bubble in the goo, than to believe that we have a Creator?

I have seen goo. I have not seen anything that remotely resembles God or any other supernatural creature.

Also, we don't know everything about what "goo" created life. There are some good theories but we don't know for sure and can't know for sure. And yes, science can proceed without answering this question.

Just look at the intricacies of the human eye, for instance. Do you think that all came about just by chance?

You misunderstand evolution. It's not by chance. Creatures with better eyes tend to survive and pass this quality onto their offspring. Repeat a thousand times and you'll have creatures with eyes that appear to have been designed but are actually the result of countless generations of natural section. We humans don't live very long so we have difficulty understanding changes that take millions of years to happen.

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To be fair, someone who rejects a possible explanation of something they have no clue about themselves,, besides educated guesses, doesn't give their stance any credence, despite the non-related advances the "scientific world" has made.

The problem you fall into is that you must reject some explanations because the number of explanations are only limited by the human imagination.

So someone thinks "God" created the universe. Someone else thinks their "Jupiter" created it, this phony "God". Another person thinks powerful aliens from another dimension created it. Someone thinks the universe has always existed so the concept of creation doesn't apply to it. Another person thinks the universe doesn't exist at all and is a collective hallucination by mankind. Someone else believes that the universe we see is false and we are nothing but brains in a giant experiment...

...see, it goes on and on. To pick the most likely one, you have to evaluate the evidence and the evidence strongly refutes that the universe was created by a series of miracles. In fact some could argue that the multidimensional aliens and brains-in-a-vat make more sense from what we've seen.

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I just find the whole 'well it's too perfect to not have been created' a silly argument. Why the heck do I have to expel an egg from my body every month? Why do we have a blind spot in our vision? Why can't I pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time? There's too much subtly wrong with the universe then there is 'perfect' things. It's well suited for life, but it's no bloody picnic.

Edited by Hasina
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I just find the whole 'well it's too perfect to not have been created' a silly argument. Why the heck do I have to expel an egg from my body every month? Why do we have a blind spot in our vision? Why can't I pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time? There's too much subtly wrong with the universe then there is 'perfect' things. It's well suited for life, but it's no bloody picnic.

Why have most of the people in my department had to have their infected appendixes removed some time in their lives? Maybe it's an anomaly but eight out of fourteen have and three have in the past two years!

If it's God's form of layoffs, that would explain why unemployment is so high. Modern medicine is keeping too many people in the job market.

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