some more personal replies:
@soulscar:
originally posted by soulscar
I find it hard to understand that sheer coincidence should have created such biochemical miracles like advanced lifeforms are - "advanced" including anything more complex than the most simple bacteria.
of all opinions expressed on this thread, i find yours is the one i can relate closest to. i usually doubt the 'sheer coincidence theory', too, but in the end i don't think that it tells us that much about god's existence anyway.
here the dichotomy seems to be between
chaotic and
preordained, where the latter implies a will and therefore someone to own that will. however, this is an over-simplification of (for lack of a better word) celestial mechanics. for instance, wouldn't it be possible for god to impose sheer coincidence, if he wishes so? of course it would, because it's in god's definition that he does have the powers to do everything and nothing at the same time. so he might as well be the one who called himself out in the first place and decided that creation had to go with the flow of randomness. that wouldn't make him less godly.
on the other hand, if we accept that chaos itself is not proof of god's non-existence, we have to somewhat relate to the concept that order doesn't really prove otherwise.
up to a point, i second misanthrope's opinion that order is
perceived by human kind more than it is anything else. the realization of the one turn of events we experience impresses upon us the feeling that this turn of events is somewhat peculiar and
organized.
however, no matter how small the chances were for something more complex than bacteria to pop up, this is
the only world/possibility/pattern we have seen. and for us - the observers - to actually stop to think 'hey, how clever, that trilobytes idea!', just
that pattern and no one else had to be taken.
so it is likely that, speaking in metaphors, down another corridor of sheer coincidence, something else entirely is thinking right now how unique and peculiar is the turn of events that led it to think just that. it is indeed unique and peculiar, but the order it's not the cause, rather the effect of such uniqueness.
originally posted by soulscar
But I still believe that most Christian values absolutely make sense as a code of social behaviour, ie as far as they are the basis of European ethical values.
i do agree, although i'm not sure about
most. it is a product of senseless distortion that induces some non-christian ppl to deny such values as a whole - often only in their speech - without taking into consideration that some of them just stem from common sense and peaceful living, and this is why they were created in the first place, with or without god above.
i find extremely narrow-minded to question the love-your-neighbour principle on the basis of pretense of conflicting ideologies.
originally posted by soulscar
Perhaps religion is just the outcome of man's ability to foresee his own death?
i think most animals can have mental projections of their (moment of) death. of course they
might have religious beliefs too, but supposing they don't, i think what really drives mankind towards religion is the ability of man to think
i. to cut a long story short, in my opinion self-conscience is exclusive to humans (on this planet, as far as we know) and it's linked to our intuitions about what lies beyond life and the meaning of it all, in the way that questions that might impress order over randomness become very important in a mind that knows to be a mind with reasoning skills.
rahvin.
