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Pope Francis says yes to evolution


Georgy Zhukov

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After shocking the world with his gay U-Turn he pulls yet another one.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/11192802/Pope-Francis-says-Big-Bang-theory-and-evolution-compatible-with-divine-Creator.html

I wonder if anyone has hired an assassin yet? Or maybe they did but the assassin was so humbled he knelt and kissed his ring.

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Cool.

From the article: "The Big Bang - the theory that the universe was born in a cosmic explosion about 13.7 billion years ago and has expanded and evolved since - "doesn't contradict the intervention of a divine Creator, but demands it," the Pope said."

I disagree of course with the "but demands it" part, and the pope doesn't really explain why a god is demanded, either.

As for there being no contradiction between the Big Bang theory and darwinian eviolution and the idea of a divine creator, that is true, but the whole process of using Big Bang to create billions of planetary systems and then after billions of years let one of these develop life (while most are completely lifeless) which will then evolve in a very slow process so that humans eventually come to be, with lots of species going extinct and an immense amount of sufferings for individual organisms, doesn't seem to be the work of a divine being who is good and has humans in focus. It seems more to be the result of completely naturalistic and indifferent processes and that the evolution of humans was just a chance byproduct of this process. I mean, if I was a divine and good creator I would have devised a process that would minimize sufferings for everyone involved and not take such an incredibly slow and winding route to the creation of humans. In fact, I might have just skipped the "creating humans" part altogether. So unless god is a bit inept at engineering and not really such a nice guy after all, I would say that what we know about Big Bang and darwinian evolution strongly suggests there is no god behind it all.

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WHAT??

So did "God" create humans or not? Make up your mind pope!

They are trying so hard to get attendance up they are risking long time people in the church leaving for something more secure to the ideals of the time the bible was written

Edited by gunsguy
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It's so obvious I don't understand what took him so long?

I was watching a movie called "Village of the Damned" which was about a town where everyone fell asleep for an hour or so. 9 months after that day any woman who was young enough to still have children were all pregnant. They all gave birth the same day with the same blonde looking kids. These kids were brilliant and had powers to read your mind and persuade you to do things.

Anyway, my point is that these kids were planted in these women from another world. They traveled in space to find a place to have their children born and rule that world.

Maybe that's what happened with Earth, seeds were just out in space and landed on our planet and from there things grew.

I was raised Catholic, but there were so many questions the nuns would not answer and they would say just believe. But that wasn't a good enough answer for me.

I can honestly believe there was a Jesus, but an all powerful being who created just one planet with life and not any other world? And if so, why now when the world seems to be at it's worse, is He not doing anything to set things right?

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It's so obvious I don't understand what took him so long?

I was watching a movie called "Village of the Damned" which was about a town where everyone fell asleep for an hour or so. 9 months after that day any woman who was young enough to still have children were all pregnant. They all gave birth the same day with the same blonde looking kids. These kids were brilliant and had powers to read your mind and persuade you to do things.

Anyway, my point is that these kids were planted in these women from another world. They traveled in space to find a place to have their children born and rule that world.

Maybe that's what happened with Earth, seeds were just out in space and landed on our planet and from there things grew.

I was raised Catholic, but there were so many questions the nuns would not answer and they would say just believe. But that wasn't a good enough answer for me.

I can honestly believe there was a Jesus, but an all powerful being who created just one planet with life and not any other world? And if so, why now when the world seems to be at it's worse, is He not doing anything to set things right?

insulting_guy.png

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And if so, why now when the world seems to be at it's worse, is He not doing anything to set things right?

First, the world is better than ever. It just doesn't seem so with a media that thrives on scaring people.

Christians have always struggled with reconciling the fact that we leave in a, at times, horrible world with their idea that it is created by an all-powerful and good god. It's is called the problem of evil. One of the more popular Christian solutions to this paradox is that god created us with "free will" (because otherwise we'd not be proper humans) and thus, when we do bad things it is our fault, not his. I will not go into whether "free will" is a fallacy or not, nor will I point out that a lot of the bad things that happen to innocent humans are not due to other people being "evil", but due to catastrophes like tsunamis, cancer, and deceptingly calm geysirs. But I will say that there are other option for an all-powerful god than to have to choose between either taking away our free will and hence reducing us to biological robots, and to give us a free will which will inevitably be abused by flawed humans to commit evil acts. And the most important alternative is of course to still allow us free will but also give us strong preferences against committing evil things, i.e. god could create us with much stronger conscious which would effectivelly reduce our tendency for immorality. Or he could have devised us so cleverly that we were punished with physical pain every time we misbehaved. Some Christians will then argue that if god creates us with such strong preferences he is effecitively limiting the window of possible actions that are open to us, which in other words is a reduction of our free will. I will argue that we are already born with strong preferences that modulate our behaviour , and therefore that has already been done. We already have a conscious that stops most people from doing bad. Making this conscious stronger wouldn't make a big difference. So the way I see it, Christians have yet to solve the problem of evil, and until they come up with a proper solution the fact that there is suffering and hurt in this world tells us that this world can't possible have been created with an all-powerful god who is good.

Of course, the problem of evil goes away as soon as you understand that humans and our behaviour is shaped NOT by an all-powerful and good god, but by the process of evolution where we have traits that for the most part are adaptions for our species to survive. And volia, things like altrusism, empathy, xenophobia, violence, etc becomes entirely rational behaviours selected for increasing group and indivual survival under various circumstances. It really is that simple.

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And if so, why now when the world seems to be at it's worse, is He not doing anything to set things right?

First, the world is better than ever. It just doesn't seem so with a media that thrives on scaring people.

Christians have always struggled with reconciling the fact that we leave in a, at times, horrible world with their idea that it is created by an all-powerful and good god. It's is called the problem of evil. One of the more popular Christian solutions to this paradox is that god created us with "free will" (because otherwise we'd not be proper humans) and thus, when we do bad things it is our fault, not his. I will not go into whether "free will" is a fallacy or not, nor will I point out that a lot of the bad things that happen to innocent humans are not due to other people being "evil", but due to catastrophes like tsunamis, cancer, and deceptingly calm geysirs. But I will say that there are other option for an all-powerful god than to have to choose between either taking away our free will and hence reducing us to biological robots, and to give us a free will which will inevitably be abused by flawed humans to commit evil acts. And the most important alternative is of course to still allow us free will but also give us strong preferences against committing evil things, i.e. god could create us with much stronger conscious which would effectivelly reduce our tendency for immorality. Or he could have devised us so cleverly that we were punished with physical pain every time we misbehaved. Some Christians will then argue that if god creates us with such strong preferences he is effecitively limiting the window of possible actions that are open to us, which in other words is a reduction of our free will. I will argue that we are already born with strong preferences that modulate our behaviour , and therefore that has already been done. We already have a conscious that stops most people from doing bad. Making this conscious stronger wouldn't make a big difference. So the way I see it, Christians have yet to solve the problem of evil, and until they come up with a proper solution the fact that there is suffering and hurt in this world tells us that this world can't possible have been created with an all-powerful god who is good.

Of course, the problem of evil goes away as soon as you understand that humans and our behaviour is shaped NOT by an all-powerful and good god, but by the process of evolution where we have traits that for the most part are adaptions for our species to survive. And volia, things like altrusism, empathy, xenophobia, violence, etc becomes entirely rational behaviours selected for increasing group and indivual survival under various circumstances. It really is that simple.

There is certainly a problem with that argument, namely, that Christians banned the slave trade whereas Atheists produced the worst regimes in human history.

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And if so, why now when the world seems to be at it's worse, is He not doing anything to set things right?

First, the world is better than ever. It just doesn't seem so with a media that thrives on scaring people.

Christians have always struggled with reconciling the fact that we leave in a, at times, horrible world with their idea that it is created by an all-powerful and good god. It's is called the problem of evil. One of the more popular Christian solutions to this paradox is that god created us with "free will" (because otherwise we'd not be proper humans) and thus, when we do bad things it is our fault, not his. I will not go into whether "free will" is a fallacy or not, nor will I point out that a lot of the bad things that happen to innocent humans are not due to other people being "evil", but due to catastrophes like tsunamis, cancer, and deceptingly calm geysirs. But I will say that there are other option for an all-powerful god than to have to choose between either taking away our free will and hence reducing us to biological robots, and to give us a free will which will inevitably be abused by flawed humans to commit evil acts. And the most important alternative is of course to still allow us free will but also give us strong preferences against committing evil things, i.e. god could create us with much stronger conscious which would effectivelly reduce our tendency for immorality. Or he could have devised us so cleverly that we were punished with physical pain every time we misbehaved. Some Christians will then argue that if god creates us with such strong preferences he is effecitively limiting the window of possible actions that are open to us, which in other words is a reduction of our free will. I will argue that we are already born with strong preferences that modulate our behaviour , and therefore that has already been done. We already have a conscious that stops most people from doing bad. Making this conscious stronger wouldn't make a big difference. So the way I see it, Christians have yet to solve the problem of evil, and until they come up with a proper solution the fact that there is suffering and hurt in this world tells us that this world can't possible have been created with an all-powerful god who is good.

Of course, the problem of evil goes away as soon as you understand that humans and our behaviour is shaped NOT by an all-powerful and good god, but by the process of evolution where we have traits that for the most part are adaptions for our species to survive. And volia, things like altrusism, empathy, xenophobia, violence, etc becomes entirely rational behaviours selected for increasing group and indivual survival under various circumstances. It really is that simple.

There is certainly a problem with that argument, namely, that Christians banned the slave trade whereas Atheists produced the worst regimes in human history.

That would only be a problem for my argument if my argument was that atheists have not produced the worst regimes in human history. But that was not my argument at all. If I remember correctly I discussed why Christians have yet to come up with a satisfactory solution to the problem of evil, which neither explicitly or implicitly has any bearing on the comparative wickedness of atheists vs Christians.

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You mentioned all of the problems of humans, xenophobia etc, disappearing if we all started believing ins science. May I just remind you that Nazi Germany was largely atheist yet massacred 5 million jews.

No, I didn't. That was not what I was saying at all. I can't understand how you got that out of what I wrote. Try reading it again and if it still comes out that way to you then I will try to rewrite it.

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And if so, why now when the world seems to be at it's worse, is He not doing anything to set things right?

First, the world is better than ever. It just doesn't seem so with a media that thrives on scaring people.

Christians have always struggled with reconciling the fact that we leave in a, at times, horrible world with their idea that it is created by an all-powerful and good god. It's is called the problem of evil. One of the more popular Christian solutions to this paradox is that god created us with "free will" (because otherwise we'd not be proper humans) and thus, when we do bad things it is our fault, not his. I will not go into whether "free will" is a fallacy or not, nor will I point out that a lot of the bad things that happen to innocent humans are not due to other people being "evil", but due to catastrophes like tsunamis, cancer, and deceptingly calm geysirs. But I will say that there are other option for an all-powerful god than to have to choose between either taking away our free will and hence reducing us to biological robots, and to give us a free will which will inevitably be abused by flawed humans to commit evil acts. And the most important alternative is of course to still allow us free will but also give us strong preferences against committing evil things, i.e. god could create us with much stronger conscious which would effectivelly reduce our tendency for immorality. Or he could have devised us so cleverly that we were punished with physical pain every time we misbehaved. Some Christians will then argue that if god creates us with such strong preferences he is effecitively limiting the window of possible actions that are open to us, which in other words is a reduction of our free will. I will argue that we are already born with strong preferences that modulate our behaviour , and therefore that has already been done. We already have a conscious that stops most people from doing bad. Making this conscious stronger wouldn't make a big difference. So the way I see it, Christians have yet to solve the problem of evil, and until they come up with a proper solution the fact that there is suffering and hurt in this world tells us that this world can't possible have been created with an all-powerful god who is good.

Of course, the problem of evil goes away as soon as you understand that humans and our behaviour is shaped NOT by an all-powerful and good god, but by the process of evolution where we have traits that for the most part are adaptions for our species to survive. And volia, things like altrusism, empathy, xenophobia, violence, etc becomes entirely rational behaviours selected for increasing group and indivual survival under various circumstances. It really is that simple.

There is certainly a problem with that argument, namely, that Christians banned the slave trade whereas Atheists produced the worst regimes in human history.

To be honest, I have a hard time considering Maoist China, Nazi Germany, or Stalin's Russia to have been "atheist." I believe their respective reasoning's for lack of faith was for essentially political reasons, rather than humanitarian or humanistic reasons. In my opinion, it's not true atheism if you take the concept of god, and replace it with a man. Perhaps they meet the very basic definition of atheism (though I know there are a plethora of different types of atheism), but in the sense that we are discussing here, I'm not sure that it's fair to lob Mao, Hitler, and Stalin in with people like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Fry.

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I think I understand what DieselDaisy got wrong. He (?) thought I was saying that "evil would go away" as soon as we embrace knowledge about the world. What I was saying, though, is that THE PROBLEM of evil, aka the Christian paradox where you have to align an unkind world with a kind creator, will go away as soon as you realize that the world isn't created by a god at all, but through a completely naturalistic process that is indifferent to the suffering of animals and humans.

As to his (?) point about atheists being less moral than Christians, by pointing to crimes down by people who didn't believe in god, I think that is a bit farfecthed. Religion can be driver for good behaviour. Atheism, defined as mere lack of religions beliefs, can never. So in that sense religious people may have one additional reason (in addition to our inherent moral, laws, etc) to be good people. But religion may also be a driver for bad behaviour. Atheism can never. So the only way to empirically compare atheists and tehists in terms of morality, would have to add all the bad and all the good things they have done, per capita. That is impossible. There are other non-perfect ways too, like comparing crime rates in countries with differing populations of atheists (to see which countries are "better"), or look at percentages of atheists in prisons compared to the percentage outside of prison (to see if atheists are overrepresented). Again, these are not good methods but I believe that by doing this you would conclude that there is nothing that suggest that theism actually lead to more moral behaviour compared to atheism.

Persoanally, as an atheist, I have no problems seeing right from wrong. I am born with compassion and empathy. It is encoded in my genes. And I have been raised to strenghten these qualities and to weaken bad behaviour (which is also encoded in my genes, like anger, violence, revenge, xenophobia). I pass this on by talking to my own children about why these things are important, why we need compassion and love in a society that is often remorselessly rigid and indifferent, and I trust that they, too, regardless of whether they end up as theists or atheists, will be good people who do good things. I really don't need a fear of god or a command from god to do right, and honestly, I am a little scared of people who does. Of people who think the only reason they do good things is because they are being told to do so by some supernatural creator. Of people who honestly believe they are bad people and that the only thing that separates them from being wicked is their faith and their belief in gods. And who look upon atheist me as some monster that is only held in check from succumbing to the beast inside by whatever laws that exist in the country where I live.

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I think I understand what DieselDaisy got wrong. He (?) thought I was saying that "evil would go away" as soon as we embrace knowledge about the world. What I was saying, though, is that THE PROBLEM of evil, aka the Christian paradox where you have to align an unkind world with a kind creator, will go away as soon as you realize that the world isn't created by a god at all, but through a completely naturalistic process that is indifferent to the suffering of animals and humans.

As to his (?) point about atheists being less moral than Christians, by pointing to crimes down by people who didn't believe in god, I think that is a bit farfecthed. Religion can be driver for good behaviour. Atheism, defined as mere lack of religions beliefs, can never. So in that sense religious people may have one additional reason (in addition to our inherent moral, laws, etc) to be good people. But religion may also be a driver for bad behaviour. Atheism can never. So the only way to empirically compare atheists and tehists in terms of morality, would have to add all the bad and all the good things they have done, per capita. That is impossible. There are other non-perfect ways too, like comparing crime rates in countries with differing populations of atheists (to see which countries are "better"), or look at percentages of atheists in prisons compared to the percentage outside of prison (to see if atheists are overrepresented). Again, these are not good methods but I believe that by doing this you would conclude that there is nothing that suggest that theism actually lead to more moral behaviour compared to atheism.

Persoanally, as an atheist, I have no problems seeing right from wrong. I am born with compassion and empathy. It is encoded in my genes. And I have been raised to strenghten these qualities and to weaken bad behaviour (which is also encoded in my genes, like anger, violence, revenge, xenophobia). I pass this on by talking to my own children about why these things are important, why we need compassion and love in a society that is often remorselessly rigid and indifferent, and I trust that they, too, regardless of whether they end up as theists or atheists, will be good people who do good things. I really don't need a fear of god or a command from god to do right, and honestly, I am a little scared of people who does. Of people who think the only reason they do good things is because they are being told to do so by some supernatural creator. Of people who honestly believe they are bad people and that the only thing that separates them from being wicked is their faith and their belief in gods. And who look upon atheist me as some monster that is only held in check from succumbing to the beast inside by whatever laws that exist in the country where I live.

I don't think Theists do good things because of reward from God, they are just stating that God, in his goodness, does that shit per se. In fact, Christianity don't go a bundle for people who do good for the sake on reward of self-aggrandisement, look at Job.

Edited by Lennie Godber
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I don't think Theists do good things because of reward from God, they are just stating that God, in his goodness, does that shit per se. In fact, Christianity don't go a bundle for people who do good for the sake on reward of self-aggrandisement, look at Job.

I think we'd be hard pressed to find one single reason why Christians do good things, and for most of them, like for I guess everyone else, I think it is a combination of reasons, primarily being driven by the same virtues as everyone else: their own ingrained, gene-encoded morality. What I was talking about was the idea that without god there can be no good behaviour, and that as a result atheists must be depraved monsters. And this idea is quite wide-spread among some Christians. In fact, atheists in the USA are more shunned than gays and HIV positives because of our perceived lack of morality.

Edited by SoulMonster
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http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/religion-god-atheists-seen-threat-moral-values-90606/


Atheists Seen as a Threat to Moral Values

By Tom Jacobs • September 15, 2014 • 8:00 AM

New research attempts to pinpoint why non-believers are widely disliked and distrusted.

Halloween is coming, so here’s a tip for those of you who have yet to decide on a costume. If you really want to scare people, dress up as Richard Dawkins. Or Sam Harris.

Or just tell them you’re an atheist.

Confirming and expanding upon previous research, a newly published paper reports that, in the minds of many, atheists are deeply threatening. Specifically, they are seen as posing a danger to the value systems that unite us.

The fact that their belief systems defy the national consensus, along with “negative cultural stereotypes of atheists as cynical,” leads to the assumption that “atheists are unlikely to follow important group-based value norms” such as reciprocity and trust, according to a research team led by Skidmore College psychologist Corey Cook.
Atheists produced more “feelings of moral disgust” than other “groups also perceived to threaten values—Muslims, gay men, and people with HIV.”

“The perception of threat alone is enough to drive intergroup enmity,” the researchers note, “even if atheists as a minority group do not have the political power or raw numbers to institute cultural changes in value systems.”

Cook and his colleagues describe two experiments, one of which featured 100 undergraduates at a large public university in the southeastern U.S. Seventy-three percent of participants were affiliated with a Christian church.

They were randomly assigned to read one of two news stories designed to appear as if they ran in the college newspaper. One was about a proposed expansion to the dental school. The other was about “moral decline among college students.” It reported that “traditional values such as loyalty and fidelity are less important than in previous years,” adding that today’s students lie and cheat more frequently than their predecessors.

After completing a filler task, participants reported how tense and anxious they felt when thinking about groups of people who are frequently stigmatized: college students, gay men, HIV-infected students, and atheists. They were also asked to indicate, on a one-to-six scale, “whether they would be willing to vote for an atheist presidential candidate, support a local business run by atheists, and whether they believed the U.S. Supreme Court should include atheists.”

Participants who read the neutral essay felt less anxiety when thinking about atheists than they did when considering the other feared groups. But for those who read the “moral threat” story, the level of anxiety provoked by pondering atheists shot up, to the point where it basically equaled the tension elicited by thinking about the other feared groups.

In addition, those who had read about the looming “moral threat” expressed more willingness to discriminate against atheists in the various contexts described above.

In another experiment, atheists produced more “feelings of moral disgust” than other “groups also perceived to threaten values—Muslims, gay men, and people with HIV.” Participants in this experiment (131 undergraduates) also expressed more willingness to discriminate against atheists than against member of the other groups.
Related Story

Americans Intuitively Judge Atheists as Immoral

Cook and his colleagues have a pretty good idea why the anti-atheist prejudice they documented is so pervasive.

“Atheists are stereotyped to be (among other things) cynical, skeptical, and nonconformist,” they write. “Individuals perceived to endorse conflicting values, or who fail to openly endorse group values, could threaten to undermine performance and success of the group as a whole by failing to adhere to group norms.”

“Although acceptance and egalitarianism are endorsed as traditional American values,” they add, “perceptions of violations to personal and group values are often seen as justification for hostile attitudes and subsequent discrimination. Such justification is reflected in the unwillingness to accept atheists as an everyday part of American society.”

So it appears atheists have a huge perception problem: People widely assume that if they reject the notion of God, they also reject essential ethical values. Although they don’t represent all atheists, it would clearly help if humanists, with their vision of a moral society that does not require otherworldly guidance or punishment, could raise their profile.

Fuck it, we are even more threathening than those muslims!

Edited by SoulMonster
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