Yeah, but don’t you think they exaggerate some of the historical elements even a little? At one point, they used their unrealistically diverse artifact collection (with bobby-dazzlers made from everywhere except China) to promote the idea the ancient Romans discovered Canada (Rome was barely aware of even Iceland).
Let me say it with a quote of Richard Dawkins on the example of the God from the old testament:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Well, I hope you did read The Bible by yourself to make these statements, rather than leaning only on Dawkins, who seems to seek for reasons to be an atheist. I also hope you did understand the context of what is written in Bible, relating to people’s norms, God’s treatment of those norms, history of nations, prophecies, etc. Besides, the same “Old Testament” God had sent His Son to the Earth to save humanity, rendering The New Testament and the doctrine of forgiveness, love, friendship, and being the better human being.
Did God instruct people to hate each other? Did He say “kill, murder, hate everyone, and destroy the world” or something like that? I thought He said the complete opposite. Like, love each other, don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t be envious, etc. What’s so bad about all of it?
Also, we’re talking about God, but you said “Gods”. Why’s that? What do you have against other gods or gods in general?
Absence of evidence is absence of evidence. And let’s be honest here, we are very similar, we both don’t believe that 99,9% of the gods don’t exist. I only have one more god than you which I don’t believe in. You see no evidence for Zeus and Thor existing same as me.
I’m not trying to blame you for not believing or anything like that. We’re just discussing, that’s all. I’m trying to say that various things can exist or not exist, regardless of them being proven or not. Even not being proven, God still can exist. As well as there are various things in the past that were once proven, but didn’t actually exist and later were deemed as mistakes or misunderstandings or some other phenomena.
Yes each of the gods anyone can come up can exist, even those people don’t come up can exist. But as long as there is no evidence for any of them a reasonable stance is to live your life as if none of them exist.
But sadly what people do is not just doing a thought experiment that some hypothetical god could exist, they use the god they came up with to justify all sorts of terrible things.
There’s other lesser fuckery in different breeds, like shepherds having back legs that are too short. If we had been given breeding privileges as a species, we’d have definitely lost them.
Look for dogs that look like dogs, if you have a choice.
Altruistic behavior in social creatures improves the fitness of the group, and has positive evolutionary pressure. Strong, cohesive groups pass on their genes, so actually pretty probable!
On one hand, yes, absolutely; on the other hand, when the chips are down, we seem to choose violence over compassion and cooperation. Given how difficult living likely was in the distant past, I would have guessed that compassion would have died in the crib.
Thank you. I know of it, but haven’t read it. I probably know a very superficial version of the argument, but I might find a full-length description of it more credible. Even so, it seems more fortunate than inevitable to me.
The book explains how genes are only ‘concern’ with their own replication and survival… Of course genes aren’t intelligent and have actual desires, but genes that are beneficial to their own survival and spread are going to be common in the gene pool, not based on the greater organism or the species.
Even with that, it creates a condition where these selfish genes benefit from cooperation… The critters who act altruistically in the right circumstances will benefit and increase the survivability of their genes.
Also what you mentioned about things being tough causing people to betray each other… This is also discussed both from a prisoner’s dilemma (multiple versions of it), and in biology and other game theory examples.
Highly recommended read, and if you do pick it up, I hope you read the latest edition of the book published in 2016, which has extra commentary from the author which is also interesting.
FYI: In this book, Richard Dawkins invented the word meme to rhyme with gene, describing the evolution and spread of ideas… Little did he know, back in the 70’s when he wrote the book, that the word he invented to describe the evolution of ideas would evolve into the memes we know today.
You saying that makes me think you either have never met true compassion or doubted every example of it whenever you did. Either way, it makes me regret your worldview. I hope you meet true compassion someday, the one which you’ll not be able to doubt. Love and peace to you.
What if I’m in my own home minding my own business and an attacker named Enola comes and waltzes right in my door and how do I protect my property then?? Some people smh
But in reality, military aerial drones are much more terrifying. It sounds like a sci-fi dystopia that a billionaire could type your name, press a kill button, and within a few minutes a drone locates and bombs you. But this tech has already existed for over a decade, and is being used by the US in the Middle East and North Africa.
Please love yourself. You are wonderful even beside you doing anything. If you’re feeling guilty, then you should try to do something good to redeem it.
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