Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study

[Dagman]

All the Hindu deities plus the ancient world Gods Egyptian, Greek and Roman their combined effort could not give your existence meaning or value.

If you think that insulting me instead of addressing my posts is going to dissuade me you are sadly mistaken.

 

[GuestFellow]

Well there are many reasons and they have evolved with time, but essentially it comes down to humans needing to give our existence meaning.

Well all humans desire some sort of meaning to their existence.

 

[جوري]

I am not sure why you guys deigned to write a reply to this troll?

 

[Dirt 101]

'...part of human nature.'

Every candle, potentially, has from within itself the ability to dispell darkness.

From those constituent elements from which it is made... inherently and potentially, the ability to dispell darkness,
both for itself and whatever is nearby.

But this can only happen if and when the candle is lit from another burning candle. An electric, battery-powered candle can't do it. Paper matches? A cigarette lighter? Well... this is an analogy, after all.

Two or three or a boxful of unlit candles are as useless as... you name it.

One lit candle... I'm sure, would feel much better having purpose in it's life; providing and performing service with the only
gift it's life can give, which is light, illumination, removing the darkness... which is no small thing, after all.

 

[IAmZamzam]

Trumble, your exact words were, "The only difference is in the degree of sophistication and realization of those concepts, which is an 'evolutionary' process - but one of history and culture, not of natural selection." I replied that the last time I checked history and culture did not make people naturally predisposed to anything whatsoever. That you accuse me of egotistically misunderstanding your exact words when the very subject you were responding to in the first place is over BABIES BEING BORN WITH AN INHERENT PREDISPOSITION ALREADY IN THEM, not due to anything history and culture might have brought them, is an irony so tremendous it would be offensive were it not so funny. Or maybe it's the other way around.

Let me guess: you're going to try to redefine what you said as some kind of unrealistic scenario in which history and culture put the ideas in people's heads at birth via evolution, even though you quite deliberately put the word evolution in quotation marks before. Am I somewhere in the ballpark?

This will probably be the last argument I ever let myself get into on this board. It's just too aggravating. Posting here (or virtually anywhere) is like regularly going to social activities where most every day someone ropes you into playing chess with them and every single person there plays exactly the same game, move for move, or otherwise is equally predictable. I have a lower tolerance for repetition and changelessness than I should already; if I keep this up it's going to drive me to insanity.

 

[Trumble]

Trumble, your exact words were, "The only difference is in the degree of sophistication and realization of those concepts, which is an 'evolutionary' process - but one of history and culture, not of natural selection."

They were indeed.

I replied that the last time I checked history and culture did not make people naturally predisposed to anything whatsoever.

So you did (do you 'check' that often?). That reply was irrelevant as I made no such claim, as I explained in my last. To me the distinction between inherent predispositions and the products of such predispositions in thought and behaviour is crystal clear, I really can't see where you are trying to go.

That you accuse me of egotistically misunderstanding your exact words when the very subject you were responding to in the first place is over BABIES BEING BORN WITH AN INHERENT PREDISPOSITION ALREADY IN THEM, not due to anything history and culture might have brought them, is an irony so tremendous it would be offensive were it not so funny. Or maybe it's the other way around.

Can you 'egotistically misunderstand' something? No, I accused you of being unwilling to accept you had made a simple mistake and it seems the situation has not changed. The rest of that is plain gibberish, caps or no. I was expanding the discussion simply to make the point that the inherent predisposition in question was NOT that of 'belief in God', as the title states. Belief in God is one possible manifestation of such an inherent predisposition, not the only one.

An inherent predisposition might as well not exist if not manifested in some form or other. Indeed it's arguable such a thing cannot exist at all without such a manifestation - ontologically speaking what sort of thing is an 'inherent predisposition'?

Let me guess: you're going to try to redefine what you said as some kind of unrealistic scenario in which history and culture put the ideas in people's heads at birth via evolution, even though you quite deliberately put the word evolution in quotation marks before. Am I somewhere in the ballpark?

No. You aren't even in the right city. At least credit me with being about to post something that actually makes sense even if you are struggling to understand the issues being discussed. 'History and culture put ideas in people's heads at birth via evolution'. Er, what? Complete nonsense, as you are perfectly well aware.

Just as with any other sort of inherent predisposition (if we are assuming a Jungian type model of such things) what there is at birth is essentially a form of processing machinery. It can only process data it receives after birth, obviously - assuming purely for the sake of argument that conciousness starts at that time, anyway. It is not a belief in itself; sensory data goes in one end and the belief or beliefs come out the other.

This will probably be the last argument I ever let myself get into on this board. It's just too aggravating. Posting here (or virtually anywhere) is like regularly going to social activities where most every day someone ropes you into playing chess with them and every single person there plays exactly the same game, move for move, or otherwise is equally predictable. I have a lower tolerance for repetition and changelessness than I should already; if I keep this up it's going to drive me to insanity.

Your call. May I humbly suggest, though, you might consider the possibility that you yourself are as responsible for your frustrations as anyone else? The only common denominator in the arguments you find so irritating is, after all, yourself.

 

[IAmZamzam]

As a matter of fact, Trumble, I am, at least in all practical respects, the only person responsible for my frustrations. What you have interpreted elsewhere as me "running off and sulking" at a predictable outcome you thought I somehow didn't see coming was just me running out of what little patience I had left--the time and thread could just as easily have been any other at that point--and if it has caused me to be unfair to you or anyone else then I'm sorry. Message boards, I feel, will be the death of me if I continue getting into the same arguments thirty times each per year. I honestly don't even know how anyone with a lot more patience than myself can endure them. That's why I've hardly been discussing theology at all outside of direct dawah lately, and I'm gradually learning to stop entirely, and as you can see I'm already starting to get less crabby for it. Had I continued I'm sure that in another month I would have easily given vale's lily a run for her money, as she herself has predicted before.

As for discussion of inherent dispositions I don't think the very idea of a thread on anything that isn't about people's current actions as adults now was a good idea in the first place and neither you nor I should have even bothered to participate. I'm resurrecting the thread (I can just hear Pygoscelis's typically literal-minded wisecracking now) to say in a place where it seems the most appropriate that you won't have to worry about me being so short with you anymore. It's so much more peaceful staying out of all that s-word. One final word: I suggest that you do the same, because frankly you are at times every bit as bad as I can get. It could do you good to quit.