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@EtrnlVw
As I have stated before, see the research paper: Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism
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Beliefs profoundly affect people's lives, but their cognitive and neural pathways are poorly understood. Although previous research has identified the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) as critical to representing religious beliefs, the means by which vmPFC enables religious belief is uncertain. We hypothesized that the vmPFC represents diverse religious beliefs and that a vmPFC lesion would be associated with religious fundamentalism, or the narrowing of religious beliefs. To test this prediction, we assessed religious adherence with a widely-used religious fundamentalism scale in a large sample of 119 patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI). If the vmPFC is crucial to modulating diverse personal religious beliefs, we predicted that pTBI patients with lesions to the vmPFC would exhibit greater fundamentalism, and that this would be modulated by cognitive flexibility and trait openness. Instead, we found that participants with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) lesions have fundamentalist beliefs similar to patients with vmPFC lesions and that the effect of a dlPFC lesion on fundamentalism was significantly mediated by decreased cognitive flexibility and openness. These findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on dlPFC functionality.
It is intelligent man that has made life livable, not religious man.
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@aletheakatharos
If atheism is a belief then not collecting stamps is a hobby.
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@Dr.Franklin
Responsible fatherhood only goes so far in a world plagued by institutionalized oppression. For black children, the presence of fathers would not alter racist drug laws, prosecutorial protection of police officers who kill, mass school closures or the poisoning of their water. By focusing on the supposed absence of black fathers, we allow ourselves to pretend this oppression is not real, while also further scapegoating black men for America's societal ills.
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@Stephen
By having smaller hippocampi and prefrontal cortical volumes than an intelligent person?
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@Utanity
“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.” - Albert Einstein 1954
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You have to admit that Trump is the fulfillment of H L Mencken's prediction in 1920. “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
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There is no life on other planets. The chance of a living cell forming from random chemical interactions is 1/10^25.
The number of planets is 10^25.
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@PGA2.0
See the research paper: Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism
Abstract:
Beliefs profoundly affect people's lives, but their cognitive and neural pathways are poorly understood. Although previous research has identified the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) as critical to representing religious beliefs, the means by which vmPFC enables religious belief is uncertain. We hypothesized that the vmPFC represents diverse religious beliefs and that a vmPFC lesion would be associated with religious fundamentalism, or the narrowing of religious beliefs. To test this prediction, we assessed religious adherence with a widely-used religious fundamentalism scale in a large sample of 119 patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI). If the vmPFC is crucial to modulating diverse personal religious beliefs, we predicted that pTBI patients with lesions to the vmPFC would exhibit greater fundamentalism, and that this would be modulated by cognitive flexibility and trait openness. Instead, we found that participants with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) lesions have fundamentalist beliefs similar to patients with vmPFC lesions and that the effect of a dlPFC lesion on fundamentalism was significantly mediated by decreased cognitive flexibility and openness. These findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on dlPFC functionality.
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@oromagi
Yes, see the study, Toward a Neurobiology of Delusions by P.R. Corlett , J.R. Taylor , X.-J. Wangb, P.C. Fletcher , J.H. Krystal
They suggest that delusions result from aberrations in how brain circuits specify hierarchical predictions, and how they compute and
respond to prediction errors. Defects in these fundamental brain mechanisms can vitiate perception,
memory, bodily agency and social learning such that individuals with delusions experience an internal
and external world that healthy individuals would find difficult to comprehend.
The account focuses on a particular parameter, prediction error–the mismatch between
expectation and experience–that provides a computational mechanism common to cortical hierarchies,
fronto-striatal circuits and the amygdala as well as parietal cortices.
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@Tradesecret
Did you know humans and dogs share 84 percent of their DNA? My dog is an Atheist (well, he probably is an agnostic) and he is pretty happy.
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@PGA2.0
Why did God create pediatric cancer? I am sure you will say He did it to display his glory and power. Steve Hawking was confined to a wheel chair and
was an atheist and he enjoyed life. He didn't believe in God and said an idea of an afterlife is "a fairy story."
He said “After my expectations were reduced to zero, every new day became a bonus. And I began to appreciate everything I did have.”
“I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease. But it taught me not to pity myself, because others were worse off and to get on with what I still could do."
“I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease. But it taught me not to pity myself, because others were worse off and to get on with what I still could do."
Remember that he was on The Big Bang Theory a number of times.
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@PGA2.0
Proponents of "Creation Science", who hold to the belief that the planet Earth is only about 6,000 years old, preach that the vast sedimentary deposits of the Earth's crust were deposited during Noah's flood and that all the fossils found within that strata are the result of creatures that died during that flood. The Scriptures, the Earth's geology, and a little reasoning and common sense expose the fallacy of that false belief system. If these mountains existed before Noah's flood (which the Bible says they did), and these mountains were formed from uplifted sediments containing fossils (go climb a mountain and see them with your own eyes), then the creatures that these fossils came from all died sometime long BEFORE the great flood.
In the Appalachian mountain range, you can see deep road cuts exposing repeating sequences of coal, sandstone, siltstone, shale, coal again, shale, etc. The presence of neat, multiple seams of coal in the sequence indicates periods of time when the surface of the land was above sea level, allowing vegetation to flourish, die, and accumulate.
According to the Bible, Noah's flood only lasted one year; therefore, it is impossible for these strata to have been formed by a single global flood event. These formations are orderly and well differentiated, which is uncharacteristic of deposits left by rapid flooding and deposition. In many locations these sequences, which originally formed in a horizontal position, are now tilted at various angles; some are now vertical and others have been found to be turned upside down. The tectonic processes to accomplish this require millions of years. You can be sure it occurred long before Noah's days, not during a one-year flood.
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@PGA2.0
Science says a world wide flood never happened. Let’s say Noah’s Flood really did happen. Using naïve mathematics at the level of junior high school, it is possible to account for the present population of the world, because mathematically the population would grow exponentially. However, this is only true with naïve mathematics.
Proper mathematical calculations would have to make allowance for infant deaths (notice how in the Bible, no one ever dies in infancy), deaths from misadventure or disease (the Bible: ditto), plagues and pandemics that obliterate entire populations, famines and wars. Proper mathematical calculations would would also allow for adjustment at those intervals when we have good estimates of the world’s population, and then extrapolate for a higher or lower rate of increase to the next check point rather than assuming a constant growth rate.
We can start, not with a single family just over four thousand years ago, but with one million people thirty thousand years ago. Population growth was slow for thousands of years, sometimes going backwards because of famine or epidemics. It was only with improvements in agricultural productivity and, eventually, medical science, that populations actually began to grow quickly.
Proper mathematical calculations would have to make allowance for infant deaths (notice how in the Bible, no one ever dies in infancy), deaths from misadventure or disease (the Bible: ditto), plagues and pandemics that obliterate entire populations, famines and wars. Proper mathematical calculations would would also allow for adjustment at those intervals when we have good estimates of the world’s population, and then extrapolate for a higher or lower rate of increase to the next check point rather than assuming a constant growth rate.
We can start, not with a single family just over four thousand years ago, but with one million people thirty thousand years ago. Population growth was slow for thousands of years, sometimes going backwards because of famine or epidemics. It was only with improvements in agricultural productivity and, eventually, medical science, that populations actually began to grow quickly.
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@PGA2.0
a revealed Being who is omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, immutable, eternal
The universe is 13.6 billions years old. If we use a day (24 hrs) as a comparison, the life of a human (90 years) is .0006 seconds. It looks like God doesn't have much time for humans.
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@Tradesecret
God is not really an explanation, only a non-explanation. It is impossible to gain information from non-information so God as an explanation is a dead end. When we have said that the reason for something is that 'god did it that way' there is no way to understand it any further. We just shrug our shoulders and accept things as they are. To explain the unknown by god is only to explain how it happened, not why. If we are to investigate the world and build our views of life from the world, we cannot assume a god. Because adding god as an explanation leaves as many, if not more questions than it explains, god has to be removed if we are serious in investigating the world.
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@zedvictor4
Thanks, I will solve it when I am done with my shift at the Large Hadron Collider.
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@HistoryBuff
God is OK with abortion. About 1/3 to 1/2 of all pregnancies end in miscarriage before a woman misses a menstrual period or even knows she is pregnant. About 10 to 20% of women who know they are pregnant will miscarry. A miscarriage is most likely to occur within the first 3 months of pregnancy, before 20 weeks' gestation.
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@EtrnlVw
The universe is constructed through a succession of random processes, processes that are not associated with intelligence or agency.
A team of astronomers is making a bold prediction: In 2022, give or take a year, a pair of stars will merge and explode, becoming one of the brightest objects in the sky for a short period. It’s notoriously hard to predict when such stellar catastrophes will occur, but this binary pair is engaged in a well-documented dance of death that will inevitably come to a head in the next few years, they say.
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@oromagi
People who believe in conspiracy theories are, in part, the result of a functional impairment (lesions) in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. This is
all due to God's lack of quality control.
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@ethang5
The people looking at the human bodies and saying it is apparent that there are many flaws have not been able to make a single cell. Not even one.
That is because the number of atoms in a single cell is equal to 100 trillion or 100000000000000 atoms in 1 cell.
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@zedvictor4
Is this the approach? Lateral thinking puzzles are strange situations in which you are given a little information and then have to find the explanation. They are solved through a dialogue between the quizmaster who sets the puzzle and the solver or solvers who try to figure out the answer. The puzzles as stated generally do not contain sufficient information for the solver to uncover the solution. So a key part of the process is the asking of questions. The questions can receive one of only three possible answers – yes, no or irrelevant.
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@zedvictor4
And also, due to God's poor design, scientists have found that damage in a certain part of the brain is linked to an increase in religious fundamentalism.
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@fauxlaw
A fact is a perception of reality.
You are confusing fact with belief. It was the belief in geocentrism that was wrong. You might be interested that scientists have found that damage in a certain part of the brain is linked to an increase in religious fundamentalism.
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@fauxlaw
Your statement "Now, there's a slight hitch in what we've said so far, and that's quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics states that, on a very, very tiny scale and for very, very, very short lengths of time, energy can be spontaneously be created and destroyed. Kind of like boiling water, where bubbles spontaneously appear and burst, energy - in the form of particles - can spontaneously appear from the void of spacetime, exist for a tremendously short amount of time, and disappear again." validates my point. The boiling water part is meaningless and is just meant to be used to illustrate an imaginary vision.
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@amandragon01
This is why God should speak to the people from a burning bush on the Jim Bakker show.
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@EtrnlVw
Yes, I agree that all babies are agnostics. It will take many years before they have the reasoning ability to become atheists.
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@fauxlaw
It's an interesting thing that Darwin was a Christian when he wrote Origin of Species. He became an agnostic later in life
because of the damage the loss of his daughter at a young age did to his belief in a loving God.
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Isn't the 8.7 million species presently on Earth proof of no God and no world wide flood?
How did Noah get the Pygmy three-toed sloth on his Arc?
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@Utanity
You can't see god because he burned himself up in the burning bush talking to Moses.
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@ebuc
Yes, quantum mechanics states that, on a very, very tiny scale and for very, very, very short lengths of time, energy can be spontaneously be created and destroyed.
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@PressF4Respect
Does the real world show evidence of wise, omniscient design? To be plausible, an argument must take all the facts into account. The scientific study of biology shows us that existing species have serious flaws, belying claims of a beneficent creator. Intelligent design spokesmen ignore vestigial organs, anatomical inefficiency, destructive mutation, the sheer wastefulness of natural processes, and the findings of molecular genetics. The constant interplay of random mutations honed by selection pressures during evolution produces many instances of poor design.
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@fauxlaw
Memory is not like a DVR that can play back the past on a screen in your mind.
Oh, but they are. In fact, every recall of a memory creates a new neural path for it, strengthening the memory. Then there 's a process called the "objective correlative." That utterly refutes your comment that
During memory recall, there is a replaying of neural activity that was originally generated in the brain during a specific event. This echoes the brain’s perception of that specific event which is NOT COMPLETELY IDENTICAL TO THAT EVENT. In this way, the brain remembers the information and details of the event. Memory recall is not just pulling things from the storage of memories, rather it is a process of creativity in which the relevant information is gathered from the scattered, jigsaw puzzle-like information in the brain.
So you want to use objective correlative, the term coined around 1840 by painter and poet Washington Allston?
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@Checkmate
If you look for "hell" in the Bible, you're in for a long, fruitless search for facts, definitions and explanations. Why? Because the Hebrew prophets never mentioned a place where human beings would writhe in eternal torment, gnashing their teeth forever. Nor did the Hebrew prophets ever mention even the slightest possibility of suffering after death. Isn't that extremely odd, if there really is a hell and God wanted us to know how to avoid it? The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) mentions a place called Sheol, but the Hebrew word Sheol clearly means "the grave" or "the abode of all the dead, good and bad." The same is true in the New Testament, where the Greek word Hades also clearly means "the grave" or "the abode of all the dead, good and bad." Nor does Gehenna mean "hell" . So "hell" is not a biblical teaching at all, but a harrowing mistranslation now being used by charlatans to brainwash believers into forking over their hard-earned money while obeying commandments they never bothered to observe themselves. (It seems hell hath no fury like a hypocritical moralist out to control other people's behavior.) Unfortunately, the innocents who suffer most from this hellish dogma are highly impressionable young children who trust their parents, pastors, youth directors and Sunday School teachers to guide them to the truth ... when the simple, honest truth is that there is no "hell" in the Bible!
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@zedvictor4
Like I said before, the number is 1 and after it would be 6 5 20.
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@fauxlaw
Are you going to deny your memories are facts?
First, there is the assumption that our identity is located in our memories, which are presumed to be permanently recorded in the brain: if they could be copied and pasted into a computer or duplicated and implanted into a resurrected body or soul, we would be restored. But that is not how memory works. Memory is not like a DVR that can play back the past on a screen in your mind. Memory is a continually edited and fluid process that utterly depends on the neurons in your brain being functional. It is true that when you go to sleep and wake up the next morning or go under anesthesia for surgery and come back hours later, your memories return, as they do even after so-called profound hypothermia and circulatory arrest. Under this procedure, a patient's brain is cooled to as low as 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which causes electrical activity in neurons to stop—suggesting that long-term memories are stored statically. But that cannot happen if your brain dies. That is why CPR has to be done so soon after a heart attack or drowning—because if the brain is starved of oxygen-rich blood, the neurons die, along with the memories stored therein.
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The Hebrew Bible depicts Heaven as a place that is inaccessible to humans. Although some prophets are occasionally granted temporary visionary access to heaven, such as in 1 Kings 22:19–23, they hear only God's deliberations concerning the Earth and learn nothing of what Heaven is like. There is almost no mention in the Hebrew Bible of Heaven as a possible afterlife destination for human beings, who are instead described as "resting" in Sheol, which is a place of darkness to which the dead go.
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@Intelligence_06
He probably will reply, know it's knot.
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@zedvictor4
It is 1.
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@Checkmate
I think this validates your opinion. With regard to punishment by God, Einstein stated, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees."
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@PGA2.0
Chance is a possibility of something happening.
In 1954, Einstein said : "About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church. [...] As long as I can remember, I have resented mass indoctrination. I do not believe in the fear of life, in the fear of death, in blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking but by immutable laws."
Also with regard to God, Einstein stated, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." "A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees."
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@Utanity
Prof Richard Lynn said a survey of fellows of the Royal Society - Britain's science academy - found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God.
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@RoderickSpode
When I was 12 my Aunt and Uncle, who were very religious, had a 7 year old son who got leukemia. After treatment at a Mayo clinic in Wisconsin he died. That confirmed my view of the myth of a loving God.
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Dogs and cats are two very different species and they see each other as potential prey. But this doesn't mean that they can't get along. In fact, many households have proven that dogs and cats can become best friends. So they have morals even though they are atheists.
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@TheUnderdog
If the Roman Catholic teaching of Peter being assigned as the first Pope in Matthew 16 was true, then the rest of the New Testament would clearly support this fact. But what we have instead is the complete opposite. None of the other apostles recognized Peter as the leader, and they all pointed to Christ Jesus as that "rock" upon which the church was to be built. So no, Peter was NOT the first "pope" or leader of the Christian church. But Simon Magus, the leader of the Pagan Church at that time fits perfectly as being the one who brought Paganism and Christianity together, which resulted in the Roman Catholic Church.
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@Checkmate
In the scientific journal Intelligence, Prof Richard Lynn said a survey of fellows of the Royal Society - Britain's science academy - found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God at a time when nearly 70 per cent of Britons described themselves as having a faith.
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@PGA2.0
So, somehow organic molecules happen from inorganic matter
Methane, water, hydrogen, and ammonia, these were the prominent elements that made up the early earth, and are thought to be one of the key requirements for abiogenesis. The Miller-Urey experiment reduced a controlled environment to these exclusive ingredients, then shot electric sparks through the mixture. The experiment is hailed for its results as it produced amino acids and other “organic” compounds. This essentially proved that in the right conditions, by chance alone, the building blocks for proteins could come into existence. While this experiment did not create life, it took a very unique set of environmental requirements and proved that components of life could naturally occur.
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@Utanity
Your Afterlife will be the same as your Beforelife.
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@PGA2.0
It is from the Book of Numbers which is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible,
and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. In Numbers 5 the woman has to drink a concoction
that is part water, part dry earth taken from the floor of the sanctuary, and
part an inky residue from a parchment inscribed with a curse. The imprecation
is to the effect that if she is guilty of adultery her belly will swell and her thigh
will rot, referring, almost certainly, to her uterus and genital area. By and large,
critics and translators assume that she is pregnant and that
the effect of the curse is to cause a miscarriage in the guilty. Num 5:28 is explicitly
about the innocent: “She shall be free, and retain seed,” that is, her conscience
being clear, she will carry her child to term.
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@Utanity
Don't forget Deuteronomy 20:16-18, 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 ….
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