Good ol' Z the romantic. Now if only you'd get over your Naruto obsession
Don't worry, Naruto's alright.
@MsBlack: You seem to think of God as some sort of humanistic being. God is, for all you know, an abstract, ethereal
idea, or something else weird and wonderful.
The parents may not be right to tell Little Timmy to kill his sister because they created them both, because the parents did not create them both, all they did was start a natural biological process, that they are inclined to do due to natural survival instincts. However, we must go further into ethical theory. Who says murder is wrong? The law. Why does the law say so. Because no one wants to be killed. However, what if someone wants to kill? Who are we to judge them based on what they wish to do? If Mr Y and Mrs X wish for Timmy to kill his little sister because they sustain them both, then it is legally wrong, and morally wrong for me because my parents told me so, my teachers told me so, and because my God told me so. But if I was born without guilt, and I live without guilt or fear of punishment from a higher being, then why should I hesitate to kill someone out of my own enjoyment? Because the persons family will be sad? What do I care about their family. And that is where your idea of fixed morality in the absence of a higher rule maker enters the town of fail.
@Zeality: You are forgetting many of the evils religion extinguished. Although Islam progressively became stricter in Arabia to gain more followers (for example, banning alcohol before prayer to banning it outright), one of the first things it did do was to ban the tradition of killing infant girls by burying them alive.
@Krispin: This carries on from what I was saying about Islam. Just as you said about reason developing in religion, this was definetely present in Islam. The first words spoken to Muhammad (apparently, non-Muslims obviously believed he made it up) was Read! - in the name of your Lord. He in fact got this message while dwelling in a cave pondering the universe. His followers were told to look at the world before accepting Islam. This was not the blind faith present today.
And Z doesn't really sound too much like a Nietzchian. The first thing I think about when I hear Nietzche is his disgusting notion of power over the weak and might is right. He is more like his opposite, Kant.
EDIT@MsBlack: I respect your opinion, and although I oppose your philosophical stance, I probably respect it more than those of the Atheists, Christians and even many Muslims I know of. I agree that if religion had never existed, it may of been a better world, but it would only work if God had never existed and if the world would of continued on in the same way. Or something.
EDIT@FaustWolf: Book of Leviticus = Old Testament. Jesus = New Testament. Also, I'm pretty sure your God expects homosexuals to accept being put to death.
EDIT@Kebrel: Why can we not comprehend God? Why? Can you comprehend a colour that you have never seen? Could you comprehend sound if you were born deaf, comprehend sight if blind? Could you comprehend innocence if all you see was sin? Just like that, you can not comprehend God, because God has made sure that he can not be comprehended. If we could comprehend, we would challenge. If we could see, we would outright believe. Comprehending God in the normal sense would require seeing with our eyes, an inherent human quality. If you told me there was a fire in my house, I would not believe that strongly til I saw it, and even then, I would not completely believe it til I
feel it. What God wants you to do is beyond that, believe so much that you feel as though you can see God, and that god is as close to you as, quote, "your jugular vein". And although an atheist would laugh at the proposition to believe without seeing, or feeling physically, as I often do (I have no yet reached this level of...enlightenment, and I feel as though I never will), it is something people sometimes achieve. But even so, we can not comprehend God.
You bring up gravity, you call it an invisible force.
Force. That's the key word. We know of it because we can feel it, and because we can see the effect it has on distant objects. We see that the moon orbits around the Earth, and we the Sun. We wonder why. And we will always wonder why, because gravity, although proven, has not been yet proven as to why it works. Correct be if I'm wrong, but gravity is the bend in space-time, right? Space-time itself is quite a farfetched idea (albeit one I believe in), and being bent is on a whole another level.
You bring up bees, and although they are quite a brilliant species, they are not that special. Many other insects follow their social pattern, like ants. It's another way of survival. They are small creatures, so they need to work as a society to advance. But not all bees work in communals, some work alone. But unlike God, bees are working for survival, and any method will do. There is no point comparing a creature that has weak flesh to one that has none at all. There is no point comparing creatures that are slaves to each other to one that has no master.
You bring up bacteria, and...what can I say? They grow, the multiply, they grow, they multiply. Just like human beings, although they of course do it on a whole different level, and without the whole intelligence thing. They are made up of the same thing that we are made of, so it is not so difficult to figure out how they grow. They are semi-animate objects, basically living machines. Starfish have no brain, and yet they still live. But it still isn't very hard to figure how they do it. Now the virus, there is something to wonder about.
And I too enjoy these discussions - it's the only reason I decided to come back.
