AW! Epistles
Why do You Exist? From Adriana
Abstract
Sunday, 26 June 2005
Mike, I have the following comments on: Where Does God Live? Mike, you will never be able to really understand the world or the universe/s or even who we are. Nothing of the things you say can be proven neither can what Christians say or believe. It is just a matter of faith. Everyone is different and ultimately everyone chooses to believe what they believe. Just look out at nature and everything around you and wonder: why do you exist and can actually wonder about it.
We certainly know what ancient people meant by heaven and it is the same as modern Christians use for it but only metaphorically, they say, lyingly.
We chose to believe what we believe, sure enough, but Christians believe for no good reason, only because they are told to. Others believe things with some cause. That is more sensible. I just replied to someone who thought anything unnatural was not Christian, and because you ask me to consider Nature, perhaps you are the same. Yet this person is happy to write an email to me, an utterly unnatural thing to do. If anything unnatural is not Christian, he and you are not Christians for using unnatural things like computers, telephones, motor cars, medicines, contraceptives, for remaining celibate, going to church to pray to empty space, and so on.
As for Nature itself, I am a great believer in it, because it can be seen all around me and is utterly amazing. Why should I abandon this as a mere artefact and instead belief a figment of some madman’s imagination instead. Nature is divine. That is sufficient for me.
I don’t know what other Christians might believe as wrong, I personally don’t think that anything unnatural is not Christian!! I am a scientist! When I told you to look at nature and wonder why you are here, I meant that is enough to see the “perfection” of nature and everything in the universe including us (our biology, not our personality or feelings) to know that there is something out there making everything possible. But yet, another scientist might say, “everything was done by chance, we are by mere coincidence, we just sort of ‘happen to exist’”. But then, why can we wonder about it? Why do we know that we exist? (Conscience) Surely the monkeys and any other animal in the world ain’t wondering about it! Hey, I am not denying evolution! As a scientist I can’t deny what archaeology shows even though nothing has been 100% proved but if there is something science can’t explain is why we have a conscience and why evil exists.
You say you are a scientist. I do not know what sort of a scientist you are but you do not give the impression of being a good one, whatever it is. On the other hand, you certainly do sound like a Christian because the prime characteristic of them is ignorance. I said to you that I find Nature divine, and cannot see any reason for a hypothetical God to make Nature work. You evidently do. Scientists are people who suggest hypotheses as answers to problems and then make deductions from the hypothesis that can be tested. So far, no Christian has been able to give any convincing test that confirms their hypothetical God. Have you got one yourself? No one who is a scientist should believe what cannot be tested. That is what Christians do. Scientists do not believe what cannot be tested because testing hypotheses is what distinguishes science from superstitions like Christianity.
Moreover, scientists are normally pretty precise in what they say, and know, for example, that archaeology is not the science that deals with fossils. That is palaeontology. Archaeology deals with remains left by humans. Then again, Christians have the illusion that Nature is perfect. Scientists do not. Nature is imperfect. Then you protest that you believe in evolution, yet seem to think that evolution means that everything happens by chance. What happens by chance is the changes that occur to the genome. After that the whole point of evolution is that there is no chance about it. Some animals are superior in any given situation and others are inferior. The superior ones do better, and therefore the ones with the characteristics of the better adapted or superior creatures have more offspring thus gradually dominanting the species until the species changes into a new one. Then you say, surely the monkeys “ain’t” wondering about it. What is sure about it? A scientist would want to know, not just assume. That is what Christians do because they think God has given them all the answers. It so happens that chimpanzees, do seem to wonder about some things. Once they begin wondering, who is to know where it will end?
Now let us consider your last two points. Until 500 years ago, no one had ever thought there might be the continent now called America. A little over 100 years ago, the idea of flight was considered an idle dream. 50 years ago, landing on the moon was a boaster’s fancy. Less than that number of years ago, transplanting major organs like hearts and lungs was thought impossible. I give you this list because you Christians, but not scientists, think science ought to be able to answer all questions as if it were a revelation that came just as soon as you thought of the question. Scientific discovery is a process, and it is gradually finding answers to the questions. Christians cannot help but to try to find gaps for their God, and science has consistently closed up the gaps as it answered the questions. Scientists know this. Christians do not. Science is tackling the question of consciousness, and will come up with the answer when the preliminary investigations have been completed. As for evil, this is not a question that science addresses, but it is a classic question for Christians. Christians have failed to answer it in 2000 years, but they expect science to have the answer ready at the least prod. You are not a scientist but you are a typical Christian of the quite unthoughtful type.
Anyway going back to your comments:
“We certainly know what ancient people meant by heaven and it is the same as modern Christians use for it but only metaphorically, they say, lyingly.”
How can you be sure that they are lying?
You can be sure that a Christian is lying because that is what they do as a matter of habit. In this particular instance, they retain all of the illusions and expressions of the ancient people who thought gods lived in the sky, and there is no seam between the usage then and now. So, when Christians claim they now use old expressions that place God in the sky metaphorically, it is evident the metaphor excuse is to cover up their embarrassment at the truth that they are using ancient concepts that science shows are wrong.
“We chose to believe what we believe, sure enough, but Christians believe for no good reason, only because they are told to. Others believe things with some cause. That is more sensible.”
Can you tell me who are the sensible ones that believe things with some cause? What is the cause? What do they believe? When you say that Christians believe for no good reason you are wrong. I don’t know what sort of Christians you have met but the ones I know do have a reason to believe they don’t do it just because they are told to! We are not as simple as that! I had so many questions before I believed more questions than you can ever imagine or even have. The ones that don’t believe do so for no good reason! Just because they can’t see/feel anything with their eyes!!…
Well, you are easily led, as Christians are. The sensible ones who do not believe without a cause are, nowadays, most westerners, who have become less gullible and more sophisticated than Christians are. Science has had a role in it, I hope, in teaching young people not to do what Christians have always done—believe without any good reason. You ask what is the cause. The answer is whatever the cause is. I believe we live in an atmosphere of gas for a battery of good reasons from being able to feel it on my face, to suffocating if I put my head in a plastic bag.
Why do Christians believe in their religion? Because they are told that a 2000 year old book is the word of God. There is no test of this. They are told it and are expected to accept the truth of it. Mostly they are told it as children, when they have not the critical faculties needed to question this nonsense, and once indoctrinated into it, they find it difficult to get out of it. Some others have a psychological need for a figmentary father figure to discipline them. Providing they keep on the right side of their imaginary father, they feel able to do anything they like, however obnoxious. President Bush evidently is one of these types, and probably PM Blair too. Psychology is not a good reason to do anything. If it proves beneficial in some cses, there are as many if not more when it is disastrous. The Yorkshire Ripper bashed in women’s heads with a pein hammer because he was told by God to do it. Bush and Blair were told by God to bomb shit out of defenceless Arab civilians. The God of the Christians seems not to be the one they think it is, but they are so beguiled, they simply cannot see it.
Im glad you love nature and think it’s amazing. What I don’t understand is how you cannot wonder why it exist and it’s the way it is, even us! Can you create life out of inert materials?
No I cannot, but then I cannot speak French either. Nature has had at least 13 billion years, and perhaps eternity, and the whole of the universe, visible and invisible, to try to make life in. That we are here talking about it shows that Nature succeeded. Why would a scientist want to propose that a God had made everything in Nature? God is a superfluous device that explains nothing, merely deflecting attention from Nature to Him. We are no better off in believing that God did it, than that Nature did, rather we are worse off. We are worse off because we have invented this superfluous being. It is contrary to Ockham’s razor, as you should know as both scientist and believer, and leaves us wondering how God came about. Then we have to try to answer a question about the origins of an entity for which we have no evidence at all. What is scientific about that?
Look, I don’t know who you are or how old but I think you should find out why some people say what they say and believe what they believe before launching a website saying that everything is a lie! Even though you have no proof of what you are saying! I think YOUR best answer for that question in your website “Where does God live” is “I don’t know”. Don’t you think?
I think your best answer to all of these questions is to read what is on the website that you criticize. Scientists normally try to establish some facts before the begin to criticize anything, unless they are spokesmen for some paymaster. That is what you are. What it means is that you are a liar when you claim scientific credentials in the a context where your criteria are not at all scientific or even logical. You prove you have read nothing in a large website when you ask your final question.
Sorry, do you actually believe in God? [can be seen as a stupid question but probably has an interesting answer]
Scientists beyond schooldays, do not expect to be spoon fed answers. Christians do. Scientists expect to find them themselves. Why not try it? The main page indices you will find at the end of this email, if you have forgotten where you started from.
Talking about this subject by email requires a lot of free time in front of a computer which I don’t have. Science can prove what can be seen (and not everything) but not what cannot be seen. I recommend you to read about Astronomy, Cosmology, Quantum Mechanics, quantum physics and the biology of a cell and the human being, the complexity of a cell and of life itself, it seems as if you don’t think about it much. Many of these subjects favorite to scientists cannot be proven as yet and may never be proven, they just do what you say, formulate theories which some of them can be proven but many of them can’t and only exist in mathematics. They fall in the same cathegory as the people who believe in God. IT JUST CAN’T BE PROVEN THAT ONE THING OR ANOTHER IS WRONG OR DOES NOT EXIST. What triggered the Big Bang to happen? Scientists say that before the Big Bang there was nothing, si if that’s true then what made the Big bang happen?
Mike, I know you don’t know anything or have any proof of the things you say, you just as I said “make a lot of noise” & you trust a lot on what other people say or think and that’s wrong because every head is a world. Yes many horrible things in the past were done in the name of A god, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were actually made or done because God wanted to do it or make them happen, it just doesn’t work that way, unfornately many people think that what they are thinking was because God told them to do it. What a non-sense. I don’t agree with that at all.
I know I won’t make you think differently and I don’t care either, at the end of the day that is your life. What is wrong is launching a website that anyone of any age can read and get confused for the rest of his/her life. It would be much better for that person to realise or get his/ her facts together in base of what they read. That’s why I think it would be much better if you put in the beginning of your page: “in my opinion” or “many people think/agree that”. The belief in God is something very personal, as I told you before in my last email: It’s better to say either “In my opinion this and that” or just simply “I don’t know”. Believe me, you will be more respected.
If you do not have time to correspond then why did you start it? I suggested to you last time that you read the pages I have written, and then you might learn something, though I doubt it. If you tried, you will find pages about most of the subjects you mention, and you will also find some long discussions with other people with similarly ignorant views to yours, so you can get the answers from that correspondence to the questions you ask. Not that you want any answers. You are too conditioned into your false beliefs, and too content to lie yourself into heaven, or so you imagine.
If you find time for correspondence, and do a bit of homework first by reading some of the things you raise on the pages I have written, then I should be glad to continue to speak with you.
Yes, you are right, I don’t want any of your answers, they are all basically YOURS and because of that, with no depth or evidence. I just wanted to make you respect the beliefs of other people. That’s all…
As you say, what I have written on the pages is mine. It can be no one else’s if I wrote it. And maybe you are right to say it is shallow and unsupported. But you have to show that to be the case. It is not sufficient just to assert it, especially when these writings have enough extent, if not depth, to cover a large number of KBs of memory. You are welcome to criticize them, if you can, but so far all you have shown you can do is make unsupported assertions. Give me some significant examples of a criticism of Christianity on the pages where I have not given any evidence.
Of course, if my answers are as you say and have no depth or evidence, then you are right not to believe anything in them, and they would not deserve your respect.
Now just think about that for a moment.
Why should I or anyone else believe or even respect what has no depth or evidence? Try applying it to Christianity. There is no evidence for it, and there can be no depth in something that is believed without any evidence. It is believed purely on authority—someone else’s say so. It is like a chain letter that says it will bring you bad luck if you do not send it on to twenty of your friends, but if you do, it will bring you good luck. It is a scam.
