I'll tell you what's ****, ****ing relatives sending

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Originally Posted by Monty92

Nope. Justice, compassion and love are all driven by our evolutionary instinct. How they manifest is of course socially and culturally constructed but the instincts are innate.

And there is absolutely no need to believe in anything supernatural for anyone to live their lives according to these innate instincts.

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Well, of course everything is here for evolutionary reasons, but it doesn't mean that they don't require belief to function. I am diputing your claim that credulity, or credulousness as you had it, is a bug. It's not a bug it's a feature.

As an aside - we don't even directly experience the universe at all. Our senses are instruments which take readings of light, sound, temperature etc, and our brain takes these readings and constructs a hallucination based on the data, which we believe to be the real thing. Nobody knows what colour 'red' really is.

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Originally Posted by Burney

Man invented god in order to elevate the status of man. The whole purpose is to suggest that - uniquely among the creatures of the earth - man is simply too special just to die and turn to yuck, so must therefore have a special place in the heart of the creator that entails us - guess what? - surviving death in some form.
it's not hard to see how it works. We invent stories to explain the things we don't understand and which frighten us. And, since death is the ultimate unknowable, terrifying mystery, we invent gods to give it meaning and take the edge off it. It's all a perfectly rational response in a sense - nothing to do with any instinct other than fear.

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To be fair, my cat *is* going to heaven when he finally succumbs to the Good Aids

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Originally Posted by Monty92

The collorary of this point of view is that it's only our innate desire to pursue meaning where there is none that stops us from becoming nihilists. After all, if there is no greater truth, and if existence is meaningless, what is the point in being a kind, good, ethical person?

The point is that being a kind, good, ethical person is beneficial to us from an evolutionary perspective, and our instincts to be kind, good and ethical can very well come solely from these instincts, without any belief in anything greater.

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Also, human beings aren't very good at nihilism. It's an uncomfortable way of carrying on for anyone but a psychopath.

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Originally Posted by Monty92

The collorary of this point of view is that it's only our innate desire to pursue meaning where there is none that stops us from becoming nihilists. After all, if there is no greater truth, and if existence is meaningless, what is the point in being a kind, good, ethical person?

The point is that being a kind, good, ethical person is beneficial to us from an evolutionary perspective, and our instincts to be kind, good and ethical can very well come solely from these instincts, without any belief in anything greater.

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I'm assuming you mean 'corollary'. :-)

I think the two are tightly related. As man evolved and his intellect improved he naturally, you could say instinctively, became more curious. This curiosity led to him searching for explanations, this led to religion, religion led to common sets of beliefs and to some extent therefore communities, communities led to the further exchange of ideas and beliefs and this increased the pace of cultural evolution etc etc etc.

It's difficult to break out the correlations and dependencies, impossible I would say even. But the pursuit of ideas and beliefs is as much an 'instinct' as anything you listed, I think. And religion cannot be easily disconnected from the instincts you refer to.

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Originally Posted by Ash

Well, of course everything is here for evolutionary reasons, but it doesn't mean that they don't require belief to function. I am diputing your claim that credulity, or credulousness as you had it, is a bug. It's not a bug it's a feature.

As an aside - we don't even directly experience the universe at all. Our senses are instruments which take readings of light, sound, temperature etc, and our brain takes these readings and constructs a hallucination based on the data, which we believe to be the real thing. Nobody knows what colour 'red' really is.

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He's as black as your boot, imo.

Oh, I see what you mean. Sorry :homer:

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Originally Posted by Monty92

To be fair, my cat *is* going to heaven when he finally succumbs to the Good Aids

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Nope. No animals in heaven. Which, when you think about it is utterly fûcking ridiculous. Essentially it suggests God would go to all the trouble of creating beautiful, complex creatures like the higher mammals and then go "Yeah, they look great, but fûck 'em. I'm going to spend all eternity worrying about this slow, weak, ugly ape instead." It makes no sense and suggests yet again that if God did exist, he would be a frighteningly capricious bÃ*stard with a frankly alarming lack of impulse control.

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Originally Posted by Monty92

The collorary of this point of view is that it's only our innate desire to pursue meaning where there is none that stops us from becoming nihilists. After all, if there is no greater truth, and if existence is meaningless, what is the point in being a kind, good, ethical person?

The point is that being a kind, good, ethical person is beneficial to us from an evolutionary perspective, and our instincts to be kind, good and ethical can very well come solely from these instincts, without any belief in anything greater.

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Is that so. Well then, your mum is beneficial to us from an evolutionary perspective.

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Originally Posted by Burney

Nope. No animals in heaven. Which, when you think about it is utterly fûcking ridiculous. Essentially it suggests God would go to all the trouble of creating beautiful, complex creatures like the higher mammals and then go "Yeah, they look great, but fûck 'em. I'm going to spend all eternity worrying about this slow, weak, ugly ape instead." It makes no sense and suggests yet again that if God did exist, he would be a frighteningly capricious bÃ*stard with a frankly alarming lack of impulse control.

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With apologies, this is possibly the worst parcel of shÃ*te ever to be posted on the internet. You should read something and educate yourself before you run off at the mouth and embarrass yourself, k?

Attachment 387

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Originally Posted by Sir C

With apologies, this is possibly the worst parcel of shÃ*te ever to be posted on the internet. You should read something and educate yourself before you run off at the mouth and embarrass yourself, k?

Attachment 387

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But I've had loads of cats. Are they all going to rock up at the Rainbow Bridge? That will be awkward as they'll probably all start fighting.

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Originally Posted by Sir C

With apologies, this is possibly the worst parcel of shÃ*te ever to be posted on the internet. You should read something and educate yourself before you run off at the mouth and embarrass yourself, k?

Attachment 387

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Hear. Hear.