Evidence for the Creator: Angst

The denial is strong in this one...
Now it is your turn, through science, to convince me that the origin, persistence and popularity of religion is due to superstition.

 

Angst is not evidence of God. Angst is an emotion created by the human brain.

The idea that either God did it or nothing did it is a fallacy, i.e., I don't know, therefore God.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Didit_fallacy

 

The problem being...?

Well duh.

Well it ain't like you've offered anything with any merit, let's face it.

Not being in the business of second guessing the Creator of the Universe, I leave that to luminaries like yourself.

 

Still can't stop getting everything assbackwards?

The ONUS remains on YOU alone to PROVE your DEBUNKED BASELESS allegation that "religion provides an evolutionary advantage" since YOU were the one who made it.

Your latest attempt to do so effectively wiped out your credibility as far as that goes so I can see why you are now DESPERATE to change the focus.

However it is readily apparant that it is YOU that is in denial about religion but that is NOT my problem.

Get back to me when you are willing to admit that there is NOTHING that supports your absurd allegation but until you can do that there is no point in wasting my time butting my head against theist cognitive dissonance.

Have a nice day!

 

Uh... you are the one that made the baseless allegation that as yet has refused to back up with any evidence.

 

What problem?

So as a parent if you could save your child from death would you?

I haven't had to resort to insults have I?

Oh well I tried.......

 

Kindly refrain from PROJECTING your own FAILURES onto others.

This is YOUR baseless allegation;

You have FAILED to back it up with any shred of CREDIBLE EVIDENCE as PROVEN by your posts in this thread.

Sad!

 

If there's no problem, your comment was pointless.

We've been over this.

So is such dissemblance as you've resorted to supposed to be more rhetorically credible than insolence?

 

You disagree with my opinion, which is fine, and that opinion is religion is based on its evolutionary advantage; your's, religion is based on superstition. I merely asked you the same thing you asked me and no response.
Hmmm

 

If you can't keep up with your own post

No you've avoided it

As I said.

 

The premise being nonsense, you did well not to bother with a conclusion.

No, you've avoided my answer, which was perfectly straightforward.

 

Wrong!

I completely DEBUNKED your fallacious allegation about religion having an "evolutionary advantage".

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/superstition

Explain how believing that your imaginary deity "created" the universe is NOT a superstition?

Explain how believing that your imaginary deity "created" Adam and Eve is NOT a superstition?

Explain how believing that your imaginary deity will "punish" nonbelievers is NOT a superstition?

Explain how believing that there is a heaven and a hell is NOT a superstition?

Explain how believing that there is an "afterlife" is NOT a superstition?

Explain how believing that "your soul must be saved" is NOT a superstition?

Explain how believing that you will be "rewarded in the afterlife" is NOT a superstition?

Explain how believing in "miracles" is NOT a superstition?

Given that abjectly FAILED to support your absurd belief that "religion has an evolutionary advantage" I am not expecting anything of substance in response.

 

See #85

 

There are important aspects of meaning and purpose that science can't address. The use of religion & philosophy to help fill that void is subject to fanciful mental meandering and deviation from sensible logic. Commitment to faith can extend into indiscriminate blanket acceptance of presumptions that seem innocently satisfying but are subliminally unsound. The process is further exacerbated by indiscriminate acceptance of scriptural tenets.

There is a serious need to sort out the more sensible premises from the wealth of unworkable or contradictory tenets, including any that are incompatible with the general understanding of reality. Traditional religious practices and standards do not offer a clear path of achievement in this direction, with the possible exception of Buddhism.

The Religion & Philosophy forum is the appropriate place to air these concerns. Your "waste my time" is a determined effort to undermine fallacious perceptions. My disagreement with your approach is that total nullification leaves no room for constructive replacement within this domain in which abstract content is unavoidable.

 

As others have stated, the entire universe is made from energy and consciousness. Substance is mostly empty space, and the false vacuum of empty space is rife with tansient energy and virtual particles popping in and out of existence. The subjective origin of solid substance leads one to conclude that this world is a construct, a product of intelligent manipulation of energy.

Rearranging E = M x C squared or E = MCC yields E - MCC = 0. Therefore M has a negative polarity with respect to E. Hence M is opposite (opposing) E, IOW evil. This world of matter is the real hell.

 

My degree is Chemistry - and I have often pondered the smallness of small as well - put the distance between the nucleus of an atom relative to the electron in relative terms .. its like having a golf ball for the nucleus in your neighbors yard - and you are the electron - mostly empty space is what is in between. Then when you go deeper - there is more empty space.

Not so sure I am convinced that the solid structure leads to that conclusion - but - I do agree that there is a method to the madness. That a thought can make "the solid" respond - is something very strange - spooky action at a distance.

Sure one can claim that the brain forms an electrical pattern which sends a signal to your finger - making it move - and be correct but - how did this happen to begin with.. how did a pattern from a thought figure out how to manipulate matter what is the force here - that bridges the gap between the material and the immaterial .. we are proof that this is real ... how it happened ??? that is the question.

Now our abilities are restricted to our physical bodies - which somehow - maintain some kind of physical boundary between the other mostly empty space surrounding it.

If one was able to manipulate outside that physical boundary - through force of will - that would be my definition of Godlike powers....

 

Another analogy touted is with a nucleus the size of an orange in New Jersey, the nearest electron is in Chicago.

Perception can change the behavior of photons, as in the double slit experiment, but when light is not assuming its waveform pattern of energy, it presents as photon particles but still with no mass. Electrons have mass and also are subject to entanglement. They emit or absorb photons of energy when they move lower or higher respectively in orbital levels. DNA is also said to give off photons. An amoeba moves by pulling strings within its protoplasm, utilizing energy driven by ATP -> ADP. There has to be a clue to the mysteries in all this, but I don't see it.

The mental-physical link in muscle movement directed by intention is indeed a mystery. Yet some diehard atheistic scientists are bent on trying to show that the mind is entirely contained within the physical brain.

There is somewhat of an extension beyond physical ability if one considers the phenomena of remote viewing and poltergeist activity to be legitimate.

The fact that we are not granted such capacity is commensurate with the relatively low status of human beings at our level of development. The implication is that we are kindergarten beings with the potential of gods in the making.

 

When anyone makes a fallacious allegation that they cannot substantiate when called upon to do so in a debate forum that effectively NULLIFIES their allegation.

That is how it works regardless of the topic.

Having an abstract DISCUSSION where ONLY opinions are presented is another matter entirely. Everyone is entitled to their OPINION no matter how ludicrous it might be.

Those that take religious texts to be METAPHORICAL are using the underlying concepts of morality as a means to establish a basis for how we as a society should behave towards one another.

But those that take religious texts to be LITERAL are attempting to nefariously CORRUPT the EDUCATION of our children and replace FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE with their baseless SUPERSTITIOUS drivel.

An example of that is the disingenuous attempt to ERRONEOUSLY allege that there is an "evolutionary advantage" to religion. Evolution is factually substantiated by data from multiple scientific disciplines that corroborate each other. Nowhere has there been any data that establishes that religion has played any role whatsoever in our evolution.

Therefore calling out the FALLACIOUS allegation is right and proper because theist DISINFORMATION is being used to SUBVERT education. And that in turn ends up HARMING our society as a whole because we become a laughingstock nation where nonsensical theist superstitions are treated as having equal value to scientific facts.

The problem with YOUR approach is that it is lending CREDENCE to the theist falsehoods and thereby aiding and abetting the UNDERMINING of our EDUCATION system.

That is unacceptable because all you need to do is look at what is happening right now in our country.

People are literally DYING because of theist Science Denialism.

This is no longer a matter of an abstract discussion when it means that people are needlessly dying because of the willful ignorance of those that take their religious superstitions LITERALLY.

 

Thank you for establishing that I was 100% accurate when I predicted that there would be nothing of any substance in your response.

 

You have no evidence that angst is merely a human construct, you just assert it. How? Why?

Angst is much deeper than an emotional feeling, though many people have been greatly affected by angst, in their emotional well being. It is a cause of emotional distress, and has no naturalistic explanation. Why is it even there? It does not aid our survival, and serves no purpose. It causes grief, confusion, emotional pain, and is a distraction from the quest for survival.

And the DICHOTOMY of either 'Goddidit!', or 'Nuthindidit!' is not a fallacy. Those 2 possibilities are the only options for our origins. It is a fallacy to dismiss them with no argument or logical rebuttal, though.

My premise and arguments are simple:

1. Angst has no naturalistic explanation.
2. No other creatures display angst over abstract concepts like eternity, the soul, origins, and infinity.
3. The presence of angst, of a longing, sense, or draw to the abstract and mystical is evidence that something (or Someone), has placed this sense there, for whatever reason.
4. This 'something or Someone', humans have defined as 'God' for millennia.
5. The 'source' for angst can only be one of 2 possibilities: 'Goddidit or Nuthindidit'.
6. If 'Nuthindidit!', then how? Why? What natural process could have embedded this bizarre sense of the abstract, mysticism, and a feeling of destiny?
7. Lacking any plausible naturalistic explanation, the POSSIBILITY that angst was embedded by our Creator, for some purpose, is a logical conclusion. It is, in fact, the only logical conclusion.

It is not empirical, or conclusive evidence, but it is evidence for the Creator. Taken together with everything else, the possibility of the Creator looms large before us, and should not be discounted by thinking persons.

I will leave with these quotes from Sartre, that define and describe the presence of Angst very well:

“I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in… but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.”

“Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”

“Anything, ANYTHING, would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.”

“Man is a useless passion.”

 

Still pushing your DEBUNKED drivel?

Plenty of scientific studies have identified angst and anxiety in dogs, rodents and chimpanzees and they have even discovered PTSD among elephants.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0001-37652007000100012

https://www.nature.com/articles/433807a

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0019855

Two novel genomic regions associated with fearfulness in dogs overlap human neuropsychiatric loci.

The effects of fear and anxiety on health and lifespan in pet dogs

The scientific data provides a NATURALISTIC EXPLANATION that is not only exists in other animals AND that that there is a GENETIC MATCH UP between ourselves and other animal species for this condition.

Science DENIALISM on your part does not alter the FACTS one iota.

Perhaps a better topic to explore would be WHY do some theists suffer so much ANGST because they have NO EVIDENCE of their imaginary "creator"?

 

Equivocation and definitional deflections do not address the topic.

Angst is not 'fear and anxiety!', though it does produce that, and there is overlap.

Anthropomorphic projection does not explain human angst, either, nor does outrage, ad hom, and indignation express reason.

“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.” Sartre

 

Science DENIALISM on your part still does not alter the FACTS one iota.

 

Ad hom deflections are not a 'scientific rebuttal!'

Definitional deflections denotes desperation.

 

Then I recommend that you Cease & Desist from doing any of the above in future.