FLRW

A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness. Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge.

This is the Truth, The average across a large number of historical studies suggests that in the past around one-quarter of infants died in their first year of life and around half of all children died before they reached the end of puberty. Humans couldn't believe we lived in such a poorly designed world so they invented the concept of a loving God that would give their dead children eternal life. Intelligent people now realize this ( Einstein: “The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses. Hawking: — "It's my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.") It is intelligent man that has made life livable and in a thousand years there will be no organized religions and no Jim Jones's.

Researchers at the Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan,  devised an experimental box with two compartments divided by a transparent partition. On one side of the box, a rat was forced to swim in a pool of water, which it strongly disliked. Although not at risk of drowning—the animal could cling to a ledge—it did have to tread water for up to 5 minutes. The only way the rodent could escape its watery predicament was if a second rat—sitting safe and dry on a platform—pushed open a small round door separating the two sides, letting it climb onto dry land. Within a few days, the high-and-dry rats were regularly aiding their soaking companions by opening the door, the team reports  in Animal Cognition. They did not open the door when the pool was dry, confirming that the rats were helping in response to others’ distress, rather than because they wanted company, Mason says. Rats that had previously been immersed learned how to save their cagemates much more quickly than those who had never been soaked, suggesting that empathy drove their behavior, she adds. “Not only does the rat recognize distress, but he is even more moved to act because he remembers being in that situation.”

People differ from rats in many ways, but the study supports a growing body of evidence that there’s an evolutionary basis for helpful behavior, independent of culture or upbringing, . “Humans are not helping purely because mom taught us to help,” she says. “In part—and to what degree remains to be seen—we help because it’s in our biology.” says the key researcher.

Bye Don

The anonymous author of the Bible’s Gospel of John and 1 John, 2 John and 3 John is described in those texts as an eyewitness to the life of Jesus. Historically, researchers studying the works have not found evidence of the author’s identity or the existence of the community the author seems to address in his works.
In a paper published in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament, UNC-Chapel Hill religious studies Assistant Professor Hugo Mendez explains for the first time that the texts were likely written by multiple authors falsely claiming to be a single person close to Jesus. Mendez’s findings also call into question the existence of the so-called “Johannine community.”

"There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ... Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God". Imagine if Moses had a smart phone. Now that would be evidence.

I can see how mass murderers get their morality from God.

However, you must not let any living thing survive among the cities of these people the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. You must completely destroy them – the Hethite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite …. (Deut. 20:16-18)

Dogs, like Christians, hold to moral views that originate somewhere, the way they view the world and universe. Morality is a part of their worldview. They do not see moral values coming from an ultimate being. They try to make themselves that being in question. If there is no ultimate, necessary being, the point of reference is then self preservation and kindness. This is why they don't kill other dog's puppies.

 The Bible is a collection of honorable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.  Oh, I didn't say that, Albert Einstein did.

Why did God create 10 sextillion stars in the Universe? Wouldn't a 1000 have been enough?

Look up Cassini spacecraft images taken about five months after Saturn's August 2009 equinox. The novel illumination geometry during equinox causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright and cast shadows across the rings. Images with this novel illumination are only attainable during the few months before and after Saturn's equinox, which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. Before and after equinox, Cassini's cameras spotted not only the predictable shadows of some of Saturn's moons , but also the shadows of newly revealed vertical structures in the rings themselves. 

Christians overall remain a large majority in the U.S., at nearly 70 percent of Americans. However, white Christians, once predominant in the country’s religious life, now comprise only 43 percent of the population, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, a polling organization based in Washington. Four decades ago, about eight in 10 Americans were white Christians.

"God is Dead" is a widely quoted statement made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche used the phrase to express his idea that the Enlightenment had eliminated the possibility of the existence of God. If God is alive, how come he doesn't go on the Jim Bakker Show and speak to the world from a burning bush?

This is from an interview with  Dr Trilok Chand, respiratory medicine specialist at Burjeel Hospital Abu Dhabi, and Dr Arun Arya, head of pulmonology and internal medicine at NMC Royal Hospital, Khalifa City

The coronavirus drifts through the air in microscopic droplets.

Respiratory infections can be transmitted through droplets of different sizes: when the droplet particles are >5-10 μm in diameter they are referred to as respiratory droplets, and when then are <5μm in diameter, they are referred to as droplet nuclei.  According to current evidence, COVID-19 virus is primarily transmitted between people through respiratory droplets and contact routes. There is  a 1.5% contagion probability between a COVID-19 carrier and a non-carrier both wearing masks

Speaking to reporters in Baltimore in 2016, following the 138th conference for the National Guard Association of the United States, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee revealed that he is a member of a growing population known generally as flat earth truthers.
“I fly a lot, and I mean a lot. No one flies more than me. Listen, I own a jet. I own a 757, beautiful plane, it’s the best plane! If the world were round, believe me, I would know!”

The future of nuclear energy is the development of commercial fusion reactors. In southern France, 35 nations are collaborating to build the world's largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars.

“The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.” - Albert Einstein 1954

All life on Earth evolved from a single-celled organism that lived roughly 3.5 billion years ago, a new study by  Douglas L. Theobald seems to confirm. The study supports the widely held "universal common ancestor" theory first proposed by Charles Darwin more than 150 years ago.

How we come to develop the cognitive capacities for belief and doubt has been an enduring focus of psychological and philosophical inquiry. Recently, these processes have begun to be studied from a neuroscience perspective, and there have been efforts to map out the neural bases for belief and doubt. For example, neuroimaging studies have shown that tasks involving evaluation and doubting of beliefs activate the prefrontal cortex, among other brain regions.  This has lead to the development of the False Tagging Theory (FTT), a neuroanatomically-based theoretical model of the belief and doubt process . In brief, the FTT asserts that 1) the process of belief occurs in two stages, mental representation and assessment; 2) all ideas that are represented are initially believed, but a secondary psychological analysis (assessment) can produce disbelief (or doubt) 3) the mental representation of the idea, which is initially believed or regarded as true, must be “tagged” to indicate false value, producing doubt . 4) the prefrontal cortex is necessary for the “false tag” in the assessment component of belief; and 5) “false tags” are affective in nature, akin to the central tenets of  the “somatic marker hypothesis.” The FTT predicts that focal damage to the prefrontal cortex should result in a “doubt deficit,” accompanied by a vulnerability to believe inaccurate information. There is already some evidence in accord with this hypothesis, including the findings that prefrontal patients 1) often have a general personality trait that is overconfident, boastful, grandiose, obstinate, and egocentric ( Trump?) , indicating a lack of normative doubt; 2) are more gullible toward disreputable characters and 3) are more vulnerable to deceptive advertising . A “doubt deficit” or a disruption in the false tagging mechanism may also explain other cognitive deficits and abnormal behaviors in prefrontal patients, such as perseveration, confabulation, and distractibility.

Around 350 BC, the great Aristotle declared that the Earth was a sphere (based on observations he made about which constellations you could see in the sky as you travelled further and further away from the equator) and during the next hundred years or so, Aristarchus and Eratosthenes actually measured the size of the Earth!

This sounds like a design flaw.  A baby has been born with no arms or legs because of a rare condition which affects just a few families worldwide.
RJ Wilson's mother Jasmine Self, 24, was five months pregnant when an ultrasound scan revealed her little one's limbs were not developing. 
The four-month-old suffers from tetra-amelia syndrome – defined as the absence of all four limbs, as well as severe malformations of the face, heart, nervous system, skeleton and genitals. 

If you carefully observe the dialogue between Lucy (Australopithecus) and God in the Garden, you will understand that dominion of the earth was given to her and her posterity - us - to use wisely and effectively, or not. 

Remember that every taxpayer owes $217,612 on the US Debt.

Actually, the death rate of children under 15 was 50 percent until intelligent man got the death rate down to 5 percent in the 1900's.

It was parents that saw 1/2 of their children die that created religion. Search for Mortality rates of  children over the last two millennia.

Remember Sheldon Cooper's  Prehistoric Ape to Monkey to Man to Robot Evolution T-Shirt on the Big Bang Theory?

I am not religious, but I give The God Delusion 5.0 out of 5 stars. This book is for objective minds! Dawkins has written one of the best books I have ever read. I say this because he presents dense, but more importantly, unbiased objective arguments throughout the entire book.

I believed in Santa who was my standard of gift giving. He first chose me to  wrap Christmas gifts. Then, in watching the Miracle on 34th Street's  message, I came to believe. My standard does not originate from or in myself. It is the revelation of Someone else who is logically necessary for receiving Xmas gifts . Then I turned 7.

You are correct. From Wikipedia, The term "son of God" is used in the Hebrew Bible as another way of referring to humans with special relationships with God. In Exodus, the nation of Israel is called God's "Firstborn son". In Psalms, David is called "son of God", even commanded to proclaim that he is God's "begotten son" on the day he was made king. Solomon is also called "son of God". Angels, just and pious men, and the kings of Israel are all called "sons of God."

 All studies to date of global volcanic carbon dioxide emissions indicate that present-day sub aerial and submarine volcanoes release less than a percent of the carbon dioxide released currently by human activities. It has been proposed that intense volcanic release of carbon dioxide in the deep geologic past did cause global warming, and possibly some mass extinctions.

Nice poem you did in the Poetry Forum. There are a lot of people thinking like you.

See, There’s No Such Thing As Free Will by Stephen Cave of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science.

Doesn't a stupid person think that a loving God created pediatric cancer?  Atheists and agnostics do not behave less morally than religious believers, even if their virtuous acts are mediated by different principles. They often have as strong and sound a sense of right and wrong as anyone, including involvement in movements to abolish slavery and contribute to relief efforts associated with human suffering. The converse is also true: religion has led people to commit a long litany of horrendous crimes, from God’s command to Moses to slaughter the Midianites, men, women, boys and non-virginal girls, through the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Thirty Years War, innumerable conflicts between Sunni and Shiite Moslems, and terrorists who blow themselves up in the confident belief that they are going straight to paradise.

 People that believe in a loving God are stupid. it is intelligent man that has made life livable.

Einstein is smart.

'The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

My cats and dogs are atheists and they seem pretty happy. They seem pretty moral to each other also.

Between 1990 and 2016, the world lost 502,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers) of forest, according to the World Bank.

Suppose you build a plastic sphere and in that sphere you put a CO2 generator and a CO2 absorber. You initially set them so that the generator and absorber flows are of equal value. Now you turn up the generator and slow down the absorber. What is going to happen to the CO2 concentration?

The Kantian concept to treat someone "as an end" is quite complex.  Check out Robert Audi's book  Means, Ends, and Persons: The Meaning and Psychological Dimensions of Kant's Humanity Formula. The book has eight chapters divided into two parts. The first part is given over to an analysis of treating persons merely as a means, the second to treating them as ends.

The word "end" in this phrase has the same meaning as in the phrase "means to an end". The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. The fact that we are human has value in itself.

Kant does offer alternative formulations of the categorical imperative, one of which appears to provide more substantial guidance than the formulation considered thus far. This formulation is: “So act that you treat humanity in your own person and in the person of everyone else always at the same time as an end and never merely as means.” The connection between this formulation and the first one is not entirely clear, but the idea seems to be that, in choosing for oneself, one treats oneself as an end; if, therefore, in accordance with the principle of universal law, one must choose so that all could choose similarly, one must treat everyone else as an end as well. Even if this is valid, however, the application of the principle raises further questions. What is it to treat someone merely as a means? Using a person as a slave is an obvious example; Kant, like Bentham, was making a stand against this kind of inequality while it still flourished as an institution in some parts of the world. But to condemn slavery one needs only to give equal weight to the interests of slaves, as utilitarians such as Bentham explicitly did. One may wonder, then, whether Kant’s principle offers any advantage over utilitarianism. Modern Kantians hold that it does, because they interpret it as denying the legitimacy of sacrificing the rights of one human being in order to benefit others.

If you believe in a kind loving God and your child dies of pediatric cancer, what are you left with?

Albert Einstein:  “The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.”

Stephen Hawking:  “Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation,” he said. “What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t. I’m an atheist.”

Remember that the reason the USA has Trump is that it ranks 32nd in IQ in the world.

Schopenhauer declared that the true basis of morality is compassion or sympathy. The morality of an action can be judged in accordance with Kant's distinction of treating a person as an end not as a mere means. By drawing the distinction between egoism and unselfishness, Kant correctly described the criterion of morality. For Schopenhauer, this was the only merit of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals.

Remember that there were 19 million miscarriages last year also. Doesn't god know anything about quality control? Why did god use atoms and 10 sextillion suns to create one planet that life would finally form on?

An example of  God's moral purity and holiness, 5.4 million children under the age of 5 died in 2019.

In string theory, each quantum particle is replaced by a 1D string of vibrating energy whose length is the Planck length. As the string moves, it traces width, and thus becomes 2D, a worldsheet. As a string vibrates and moves within the 6D Calabi-Yau space, the string becomes a quantum particle.

Look up Two-dimensional String Theory.  String theory in two-dimensional spacetime illuminates two main threads of recent development in string theory: