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Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

nytimes.com

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Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#31

Post by milesf »

cortesoft wrote: post #27
milesf wrote: post #16

Do you think it's reasonable that conversations like this are fine on HN, but anytime I bring up Christian thought on the matter I am pressured to "not talk religion"? Wrestling with these top shelf Maslow's questions like "why am I/we here?", "what is the meaning of life" and other big life questions are common among all of us. So why the willingness to conjecture that (we live in a simulation | aliens may have seed…

In order for discussion to have any meaning, the things we claim have to be 'falsifiable'; there has to be SOME observable consequence of a claim being either true or false, even if we aren't able to currently observe it. So, for religious discussions, what can we possibly discuss? Take any religious claim, and when we ask 'What observation could you make that would demonstrate to you that the claim is false?', the a…

"the answer is almost always nothing"

That's just not true. The whole area of Christian Apologetics attempts to answer many of the questions that are raised.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#32

Post by projektir »

phkahler wrote: post #30
projektir wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess part of it is what to do with a religious claim. If you say: "God created us all", that's fair, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to go from there. I can either agree with you or disagree, but I can't really discuss it.

And yet this article points out that these other notions are equivalent to saying god made it. It's OK for elon musk to think we are a simulation created by someone, but not on to say "religion". I found Musk's idea equally stupid for that very reason. May as well say the universe is on a turtles back. But what's that turtle standing on? It's turtles all the way down.

God and simulation to me are fundamentally different, but that may be because I dabbled in religion a lot.

The simulation hypothesis, to me, is not terribly surprising or interesting. Why wouldn't someone be able to create a simulation like ours at some point? I am not following why Musk's belief is stupid? Yeah, obviously there's another layer above, and this doesn't explain that much, but I don't understand the stupid part.

God is something else. For one, not all gods in religions are the same. The Christian God is not a mere simulator. He's everything that ever was (i.e., final level), he's super powerful, and, most importantly, as far as Christianity is concerned everything that God does is right.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#33

Post by charonn0 »

milesf wrote: post #16

Do you think it's reasonable that conversations like this are fine on HN, but anytime I bring up Christian thought on the matter I am pressured to "not talk religion"? Wrestling with these top shelf Maslow's questions like "why am I/we here?", "what is the meaning of life" and other big life questions are common among all of us. So why the willingness to conjecture that (we live in a simulation | aliens may have seed…

Unless you're willing to allow that Christianity is conjecture, "introducing Christian thought" is not a discussion but a sermon.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#34

Post by tn13 »

milesf wrote: post #16

Do you think it's reasonable that conversations like this are fine on HN, but anytime I bring up Christian thought on the matter I am pressured to "not talk religion"? Wrestling with these top shelf Maslow's questions like "why am I/we here?", "what is the meaning of life" and other big life questions are common among all of us. So why the willingness to conjecture that (we live in a simulation | aliens may have seed…

The problem with Christian thought on these matters is that it is mostly a dead end.

Christian creationism is stated as "god revealed it in bible and hence true" and it is not a result of curious human beings questioning themselves and trying to answer those questions and coming up with theories (Like in Buddhism or Hinduism). The problem with this is that you can't really evolve those ideas further refining them and eventually most of us simply find them shallow.

A conversation on HN about this topic can be stretched in million directions many of which can be falsified and people might have an open mind as to pick which idea they want. In case of Christian faithfuls they are supposed to pick what the bible has already stated.

Off topic:

"Buddhist cosmological ideas" .. said the speaker with a short pause. "a disgrace". "They must be thrown out".

Speaker was Dalai Lama speaking in Ashoka Hotel - New Delhi.

I think when the Christianity accepts that sort of openness it will be possible to value Christian notions of cosmology and creationism much better.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#35

Post by milesf »

projektir wrote: post #22
milesf wrote: post #16

Do you think it's reasonable that conversations like this are fine on HN, but anytime I bring up Christian thought on the matter I am pressured to "not talk religion"? Wrestling with these top shelf Maslow's questions like "why am I/we here?", "what is the meaning of life" and other big life questions are common among all of us. So why the willingness to conjecture that (we live in a simulation | aliens may have seed…

I guess part of it is what to do with a religious claim. If you say: "God created us all", that's fair, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to go from there. I can either agree with you or disagree, but I can't really discuss it.

Every community I have been a part of (church, family, techs, software development, Ruby Programming, etc) have been multifaceted. I will only talk about my camp, Evangelical Christians, because that's what I know.

When I was a new Christian back in 1990 I was a bit baffled by the anti-intellectualism I witness among my friends at a local Pentecostal church. I found a sufficient answer in the book "Fit Bodies Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don't Think and What to Do About It".

So I think it's fair to say many people have had the experience of talking to people of faith who know what they believe, but they don't know why they believe it. I'll give you that.

But consider this: Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Princeton are all Universities that started off as Christian seminaries. Their roots are founded in the idea that academics and reasoning are inherently noble pursuits.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#36

Post by milesf »

projektir wrote: post #32
phkahler wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet this article points out that these other notions are equivalent to saying god made it. It's OK for elon musk to think we are a simulation created by someone, but not on to say "religion". I found Musk's idea equally stupid for that very reason. May as well say the universe is on a turtles back. But what's that turtle standing on? It's turtles all the way down.

God and simulation to me are fundamentally different, but that may be because I dabbled in religion a lot. The simulation hypothesis, to me, is not terribly surprising or interesting. Why wouldn't someone be able to create a simulation like ours at some point? I am not following why Musk's belief is stupid? Yeah, obviously there's another layer above, and this doesn't explain that much, but I don't understand the stu…

Uh, yeah, that's a pretty good summary: God is, by definition in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, the standard of good.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#37

Post by skc »

Cyph0n wrote: post #13
DougN7 wrote: post #2

I've always thought the 'living in a simulation' scenario and creationism are pretty much the same thing, if the person that started the simulation felt some sort of rules ought to be followed (for the longevity of the simulation, or whatever reason they might have). That doesn't seem like a stretch - we do that with the Sim games, and we're hardly brilliant.

In essence, they are the same thing, but Darwinists won't admit this because "religion". Heck, just bringing up the thought got you downvoted.

> but Darwinists won't admit this because "religion".

I don't see how that follows. "Religion" doesn't just make the claim that there is a creator and leaves it at that. In fact I'd have more respect for religion if it did.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#38

Post by projektir »

socmag wrote: post #25

Well duh. Yes I realize that comment seems "trite" What is it that the genome is doing. Look around and see how it is expressing itself. I'm not a huge fan of Dawkins recently after he went a bit nuts on the whole atheism thing. Not because of the atheism thing but because it distracted him from what he was really about. The genome is expressing itself, and it is way more than selfish. That thing is regression analys…

I would say that the genome is not getting to be truly selfish here, rather, it's just a tool of evolution, and evolution as a whole is the one with the purpose, but I don't know if it has enough forward-vision to create a specific entity as much as go for higher complexity whether it's through one complex being or a complex network of simple beings.

There's a lot of odd downvoting in this thread...

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#39

Post by posterboy »

milesf wrote: post #16

Do you think it's reasonable that conversations like this are fine on HN, but anytime I bring up Christian thought on the matter I am pressured to "not talk religion"? Wrestling with these top shelf Maslow's questions like "why am I/we here?", "what is the meaning of life" and other big life questions are common among all of us. So why the willingness to conjecture that (we live in a simulation | aliens may have seed…

No, it's not reasonable, the article isn't very relevant at all.

Re: Can Evolution Have a ‘Higher Purpose’?

#40

Post by goldesel »

Mckenna shares thoughts on the nature of time, novetly, consciousness and how we are rapidly evolving technologically as a species at a rate thosands of times faster than any living organism through the power of our imagination, creativity and inventions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnjsoBF5Ay0
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