To be fair no religion has made God pleased enough to reveal himself. So in terms of science how can we make God happy enough to reveal himself?

I guess the first thing would be what is God like? How did his existence begin? Did it begin? How would he be if he were a human? Did we all come from him? If so, then we can take a global census on each persons morality to see if he is more hot, or more cold. If he is hot then we can assume to make him happy we would have to be kind and fair to one another.

Can we here on Sciforums establish a scientific religion of God?

Please don't involve science in your deliberations, most concepts of God cannot be falsified. There is no evidence of a God, and plenty of evidence that certain Gods are very probably untrue. Since you don't know God's nature, you can't know what would please him. He could be a sociopath and enjoy it when you murder people. He could not care about people at all and favors deep sea diatoms. There is simply no way to tell.

Please don't involve science in your deliberations, most concepts of God cannot be falsified. There is no evidence of a God, and plenty of evidence that certain Gods are very probably untrue. Since you don't know God's nature, you can't know what would please him. He could be a sociopath and enjoy it when you murder people. He could not care about people at all and favors deep sea diatoms. There is simply no way to tell.

Use common sense. What is the norm of mankind?

That's just an appeal to common mythologies. I'm sure people like Deepak Chopra will indulge in such things, but I don't find any connection there to anything real. What's the norm for mankind may have nothing to do with God.

Ok. Then theres two common ideas of God. A. all powerful creator, or B. a supreme being. If its A then he is most likely good being that he created us in his image. If its B then odds are he would be like us somehow.

I don't see how those follow from your premises.

Ok. Then theres two common ideas of God. A. all powerful creator, or B. a supreme being. If its A then he is most likely good being that he created us in his image. If its B then odds are he would be like us somehow.


brilliant!!
spider, do try to keep up

/snort

To be fair no religion has made God pleased enough to reveal himself. So in terms of science how can we make God happy enough to reveal himself?

I guess the first thing would be what is God like? How did his existence begin? Did it begin? How would he be if he were a human? Did we all come from him? If so, then we can take a global census on each persons morality to see if he is more hot, or more cold. If he is hot then we can assume to make him happy we would have to be kind and fair to one another.

Can we here on Sciforums establish a scientific religion of God?

God is myth. Religion is superstition. That's a scientific appraisal of religion. The rest of what you posted makes no sense.

Joan Osborne - One Of Us (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CRkpBGQzU)

Cool tune, Xotica. Finally some centering to these manic threads. :p

God is myth. Religion is superstition. That's a scientific appraisal of religion. The rest of what you posted makes no sense.

Whats wrong with trying to come up with a religion that moves humans forward? If we can't come up with one, then we all tried...

Whats wrong with trying to come up with a religion that moves humans forward? If we can't come up with one, then we all tried...

What's wrong with a government that is elected by everyone to move us forward? That way everyone votes on who we want to represent us and what we all would think is "forward" not just a few who want to tell us which way to go. By insuring that everyone can vote, we insure that not just one person or one ideology can lead us but a consensus is needed by everyone as to which direction is better for us.

whats wrong with rethinking both religion AND government?

they both have screwed everything up..

What's wrong with a government that is elected by everyone to move us forward? That way everyone votes on who we want to represent us and what we all would think is "forward" not just a few who want to tell us which way to go. By insuring that everyone can vote, we insure that not just one person or one ideology can lead us but a consensus is needed by everyone as to which direction is better for us.

A lot of people don't vote. A lot of people who do vote don't really know. That is corrupt. You should have to pass a test on morality, and mental apt to get a vote.

whats wrong with rethinking both religion AND government?

they both have screwed everything up..

So have many individuals.

The Official Religion of Sciforums?

Most likely it's scientism.


To be fair no religion has made God pleased enough to reveal himself.

That assumes that there is something corresponding to the word 'God', that this hypothetical entity possesses psychological states like pleasure, and that its knowability by people like us is a function of whether it's pleased or not.


So in terms of science how can we make God happy enough to reveal himself?

We're already begging so many questions, we might as well add one more. I have no idea what might please this hypothetical God, assuming that it can be pleased at all.


I guess the first thing would be what is God like? How did his existence begin? Did it begin?

How could a human being possibly know?


How would he be if he were a human?

Supposedly there's only one God. Human beings develop their personalities and psychologies socially, by interacting with others of their kind. For God, there's no others of its kind. So God can't possibly be a "person" or have a psychology anything like our own.

If God exists, then it would presumably be a super space-alien of some kind, utterly inhuman.


Can we here on Sciforums establish a scientific religion of God?

I can't imagine any way for us to do that.

Yazata is out

To be fair no religion has made God pleased enough to reveal himself. So in terms of science how can we make God happy enough to reveal himself?The Abrahamists (the only religionists about whose beliefs and customs most of us Westerners know very much) believe that God does not show himself because he wants us to believe in him on the basis of faith rather than evidence.
I guess the first thing would be what is God like? How did his existence begin? Did it begin?Indeed. This is the fatal flaw in all belief systems predicated on divine creation of the universe. The universe, by definition includes "everything that exists." The god described by all religions that I have any understanding of at all is said to have created the universe. Yet this god clearly exists or he would not be able to perform these magnificent feats. And if he exists, also by definition he is part of the universe.

So the creation myth fails to be believable (or even comprehensible) by one of the bonehead rules of Logic 101A: The Fallacy Of Recursion. Nothing can create itself, because before it comes into existence it's not there to do any creating. Duh!
God is myth. Religion is superstition. That's a scientific appraisal of religion.Very accurately and succinctly stated. Science is based on evidence. Religion is based on feelings, hunches, stories told by our parents which they got from their parents, and (according to Jung, with his language updated) instincts.
Whats wrong with trying to come up with a religion that moves humans forward? If we can't come up with one, then we all tried...People have been trying to do that since the Stone Age. Some faith-based belief systems appear to move the species forward, such as Hinduism (perhaps; they haven't always been peace-and-love hippies) and Rastfarianism (it's too new to judge). But the monotheistic religions of Abraham that now dominate the world do just the opposite. By condensing the rich pantheon of the traditional religions into a pathetic one-dimensional scale of good vs. evil, they lose sight of the fact that all religions are based on the same universal archetypes (Jung's term for an image, ritual, idea, legend, etc. that is found in all societies in all eras). So each increasingly large body of followers loses its bond to the followers of the other monotheistic religions, which is why we appear to be headed for a nuclear holy war among Christians, Muslims and Jews, all of whom claim to worship the same god and believe in most of the same prophets.

If monotheism is the ultimate form of religion, then there's no possible way that it can ever move people forward. The next crusade, jihad, inquisition or world war is always just one or two generations ahead of us.

The members of each sect think they're just a little bit better than all the other people, so it's their right and duty to show us where we went wrong and rebuild our societies more righteously, at the expense of the loss of our own laws and customs. Even during peacetime they look down on us. During turmoil they positively hate us. And what makes this system suck so bad is that we automatically feel the same way about them because of the way they treat us.
Most likely it's scientism.Nope. The fundamental premise that underlies all science and which has been tested exhaustively for 500 years is that the natural universe is a closed system whose behavior can be predicted by theories derived logically from empirical observation of its present and past behavior.

The fundamental premise of all religions is that an invisible, illogical supernatural universe exists, from which fantastic creatures and unbelievable forces perturb the behavior of the natural universe at irregular intervals, usually whimsically and often petulantly.

There is no way that these two premises can be combined into a single belief system.

Scientists who claim to believe in gods, angels and prophets who rise from the dead are simply practicing cognitive dissonance.
Supposedly there's only one God.Obviously you've spent your life in a modern Western or Middle Eastern country where almost the entire population are members of one of the monotheistic Abrahamic religions. In the not-so-distant past (classical Rome, Greece and Egypt, for example), polytheism was the standard belief system. The Jews were the first well-known group to embrace monotheism, and so far it hasn't worked to their advantage. Today there are still traditional religions in Africa. I don't know as much about the other parts of the world where people still live in the Paleolithic or Neolithic Era, but many of the Native Americans had multiple gods before the Christian occupation and slaughter. Perhaps one of our Australian or Kiwi members can tell us about the religions of their native peoples.

http://intepid.com/res/577.jpg

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=flying%20spaghetti%20monster&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CGoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.venganza.org%2F&ei=m3OkT_KXK8O2twf-laXiBA&usg=AFQjCNEU4dqm4sEmKuGr2o3Sqk06WWphfQ

The universe, by definition includes "everything that exists." The god described by all religions that I have any understanding of at all is said to have created the universe. Yet this god clearly exists or he would not be able to perform these magnificent feats. And if he exists, also by definition he is part of the universe.

do you count multiverses as 'the' universe?
M theory and such...


The fundamental premise of all religions is that an invisible, illogical supernatural universe exists, from which fantastic creatures and unbelievable forces perturb the behavior of the natural universe at irregular intervals, usually whimsically and often petulantly.
M theory states that in the other universes the laws of physics are different than our own, IOW everything we know may not apply to the other universes..

the official religion of sciforums is:
if i can see it, touch it,smell it,taste it,hear it...it exists..
otherwise all bets are off..

What if there is a consciousness to the universe which maybe evolved together that is greater than our own who thought Himself into existence with the idea of self, and other?

do you count multiverses as 'the' universe?I count multiverses as pure speculation. Last time I checked, there was no evidence to support the hypothesis.

Nonetheless, unlike religion, it does not claim to falsify the basic premises of science. So, unlike religion, it is not antiscience.

I count multiverses as pure speculation. Last time I checked, there was no evidence to support the hypothesis.

Nonetheless, unlike religion, it does not claim to falsify the basic premises of science. So, unlike religion, it is not antiscience.

What is that premise? As far as time travel... idk

What is that premise?The fundamental premise that is the basis of the scientific method and therefore underlies all science:
The natural universe is a closed system [using the layman's definition of that term, not the physicist's], whose behavior can be predicted by theories derived logically from empirical observation of its past and present behavior.Religion is antiscience because its basis is the hypothesis that an invisible, illogical supernatural universe exists, from which fantastic creatures and incredible forces emerge on random occasions, to perturb the behavior of the natural universe; and because this hypothesis is offered without evidence of any kind, merely the occasional tortilla (out of billions) with a scorch mark that is said to resemble the face of a person who lived in Biblical times, of whom no portraits exist against which to compare it.

Because this hypothesis claims to falsify the scientific method (which has been tested exhaustively for half a millennium and never come close to falsification) and therefore falsify science itself, it clearly qualifies as an extraordinary assertion.

At this point the Rule of Laplace is automatically invoked:
Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before anyone is obliged to treat them with respect.This rule is fundamental to science, because without it the extremely finite resources of science would be quickly dissipated in formally testing and disproving every bit of crackpottery that is brought to the doors of the academy.

This is why I consistently treat all religion with aggressive disrespect and contempt. Science is under siege.

To be fair no religion has made God pleased enough to reveal himself. So in terms of science how can we make God happy enough to reveal himself?

I guess the first thing would be what is God like? How did his existence begin? Did it begin? How would he be if he were a human? Did we all come from him? If so, then we can take a global census on each persons morality to see if he is more hot, or more cold. If he is hot then we can assume to make him happy we would have to be kind and fair to one another.

Can we here on Sciforums establish a scientific religion of God?Sounds like a good question to me. However, I doubt it would be possible in this forum as everyone seems to be dealing more in philosophy than in science.

I would approach it this way: from a realistic atheistic perspective, look at religions as being believed because they serve some vital function rather than because they are "true." What could that function be? The logical answer is that a common belief system enables people to feel a sense of community and unity that is essential in agreeing on how to solve common problems.

But what happens when the religious bond becomes old and divided---divided because it has grown old. It can no longer serve its function. The advance of human knowledge has left it behind. The monotheistic religions replaced the polytheistic ones, and now it is time for a non-theistic one to replace the monotheistic ones. We need an advanced new belief system or ideology capable of doing that. None that we have now has shown itself able to do that.

The logical answer is that a common belief system enables people to feel a sense of community and unity that is essential in agreeing on how to solve common problems.And we have secular means of this now, and on a global scale. There is no need for such archaic versions of religion.
The new "religion" - if that is to be the name for it - is to be found in the telecommunication systems... our ritual of logging on, of tweeting, of blogging.
For some this is as religious as football, or possibly more so.

In my view religion has no place in Sciforums, other than as a topic of discussion.

And we have secular means of this now, and on a global scale. There is no need for such archaic versions of religion.
The new "religion" - if that is to be the name for it - is to be found in the telecommunication systems... our ritual of logging on, of tweeting, of blogging.
For some this is as religious as football, or possibly more so.

In my view religion has no place in Sciforums, other than as a topic of discussion.
In my view, you are simply dismissing a subject dealing with human dependence upon ideological systems that goes back as far as about 70,000 years ago. It is a view that the social sciences have no position in science because they are subjective but then giving in and expressing that subjectivity itself. Even as an atheist, I have to accept that ideological systems shape such societies as Islam, the Christian West, the Marxist block, etc. and that we could not function without what unity of belief they provide, what sense of community and enough unity of belief to be able to solve common problems.

In these times, we depend upon Secular Humanism to provide a common way of thinking which we try to impose on the whole world so we can solve common world problems. I don't see tweeting, blogging and telecommunication systems solving them. What are they doing now but failing to impose our secular system well enough to solve common world problems, ones such as global warming, terrorism, obesity/hunger, nuclear proliferation, diminishing world resources and over-population? If secular humanism cannot unite the world well enough to deal effectively with them, we need a better system with which to do it. . .

Brough,
http://civilization-overview.com

What if there is a consciousness to the universe which maybe evolved together that is greater than our own who thought Himself into existence with the idea of self, and other?
This seems to be a metaphysics representation of the Bible. Would this "Consciousness" be able to alter natural cause and effect? If so, it is a form of theism, if not it is a deism form.

Brough
http://civilization-overview.com