why does this forum care so much about religion

[vhawk01]

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Is our existence pointless and random without God? Yeah, I think it is.

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Without intention, it is per se, you don't have to 'think' that it is. If you fling a 6 deck shoe of cards out a 10 story window, and on the ground you see that 40 or 50 cards have, by outrageous chance, formed a little house of cards, does that house of cards have any purpose or a point?

The mystery to me is - where they hell did the cards come from? Will we ever know for certain?

I think most people have some kind of feeling, or 'sense' that existence is not pointless. What ever this 'feeling' is, it has manifested itself through the eons as 'faith' in something 'behind' existence, informing existence. Of course humans being what they are, imperfect, have used this faith, like fire, to varying degrees of both good and bad ends.

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Humans may very well have this "sense," whatever it is. I just have no reason why you'd think that means anything. Humans have a sense that objects moving towards them are dangerous until proven otherwise. This is a survival mechanism, and it is often wrong. Humans have a sense that those blotchy eraser marks on the chalkboard kind of look like a man's face. This is because facial recognition, as part of our general pattern recognition, is very important. But the eraser marks are NOT a face. IOW, human beings have a whole lot of senses that are just adaptations, general rules of thumb that are often wrong but that solve certain types of problems.

It takes very little imagination to think of reasons we might all have a sense that we are fundamentally important in the universe.

[BuddyQ]

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Is our existence pointless and random without God? Yeah, I think it is.

[/ QUOTE ]

Without intention, it is per se, you don't have to 'think' that it is. If you fling a 6 deck shoe of cards out a 10 story window, and on the ground you see that 40 or 50 cards have, by outrageous chance, formed a little house of cards, does that house of cards have any purpose or a point?

The mystery to me is - where they hell did the cards come from? Will we ever know for certain?

I think most people have some kind of feeling, or 'sense' that existence is not pointless. What ever this 'feeling' is, it has manifested itself through the eons as 'faith' in something 'behind' existence, informing existence. Of course humans being what they are, imperfect, have used this faith, like fire, to varying degrees of both good and bad ends.

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Humans may very well have this "sense," whatever it is. I just have no reason why you'd think that means anything. Humans have a sense that objects moving towards them are dangerous until proven otherwise. This is a survival mechanism, and it is often wrong. Humans have a sense that those blotchy eraser marks on the chalkboard kind of look like a man's face. This is because facial recognition, as part of our general pattern recognition, is very important. But the eraser marks are NOT a face. IOW, human beings have a whole lot of senses that are just adaptations, general rules of thumb that are often wrong but that solve certain types of problems.

It takes very little imagination to think of reasons we might all have a sense that we are fundamentally important in the universe.

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I don't recall stating that I thought it 'meant' something. However, while I'm also inclined to think that it is probably just adaptation with regard to evolutionary biology, I'm not prepared to say I'm certain of it.

[tpir]

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The forum cares so much about religion because it is logical to believe that this universe and life on our planet cannot simply pop into existence without a cause.

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So you conjure up an entity that either *can* pop into existence without cause or simply has always existed "outside of space and time"...or whatever the line is.

This might seem logical, and it's a soothing explanation for lots of people, but in reality it asks many more questions than it answers. And this is all assuming we overlook the appeal to credulity you started with. Maybe life can come to exist through random natural processes that do not have "cause".

Either way, calling this entity you made up God is not fair since He inherits lots of bonus properties that a super-powerful universe-creating entity would not necessarily have.

[hexag1]

we care so much because its the oldest philosophical debate.
reason vs unreason
knowledge vs faith
we care so much because its on everyones mind, thrust into the foreground by geopolitical events.