What is 'The Meaning of God' about?
As aetheist, I find it increasingly frustrating that so much of our society is influenced by superstitious nonsense. 'The Meaning of God' ultimately is intended to be my rebuttal for all those who clam there is a deity, and that worshipping, or even believing in them is important.
The Meaning of God is also primarily aimed at the Abrahamic God of the Old Testament, the Apocrapha and the New Testament... I suppose technically this god is also the same as 'Allah' of the Islamic religion.
Ultimately it's irrelevant, Meaning of God could be a Zues or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, why do people feel the need to have a deity? I think it's because the fact that we live relatively short lives then die can seem very bleak. Most animals aren't concerned about their existance, our self awareness has caused us to create gods, to creater and to seek a meaning of god.
Personally I think we should be at a stage where we can move on from this though. Is mankinds search for a meaning of god holding us back? Personally I think so.
Throughout history religion has held science back, religiion is all about old texts and following tradition - science is all about discovering new things and improving our understanding of the natural world.
Meaning of God is partly inspired by some reading I've undertaken, the Science of the Discworld Books, and Richard Dawkins 'The God Delusion' mainly. These books offer a very convincing argument that there is no god. Much of religion through the ages has been about wealth, control and power.
How many people searching for a meaning of god would have been so staunch in their belief if they'd lived a few centuries ago and were being tortured by the Spanish Inquisition?
Thursday, 12 January 2012
Monday, 19 September 2011
What is God?
What is God?
First of all, do I care? I am an aetheist, a devout aetheist. However that doesn't mean I can't marvel at creation. I can even marvel at the strength religious people gain from their religions - but I think this is something which comes from within - an inner god if you will.
Were we created? Yes, I suppose we were - I like to think of it more as forged though, forged in the fire of an inhospitable world. The Earth for most of it's life has been an inhospitable place. Life as far as we can tell began on Earth around 4 billion years ago, between then and now we have had numerous mass extinctions. When there's a mass extinction there tends to be a great explosion of diversity - the most notable of which happened around 560 million years ago and was known as the Cambrian Explosion. Of course Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian long pre-date the dinosaurs. The other famous mass extinction was the suggested impact which occurred at the KT Boundary and wiped out the dinosaurs (The KT Bounday is the Cretaceous, Tertiary boudary, named KT because in German, Cretaceous is spelled with a K).
There have been many more.
Its difficult to say exactly why we evolved, evolution is an incredibly complex area of science, which in order to understand fully - you have to have in depth knowledge of various disciplines. Geology, biology, paleantology, eco-systems and more...
Current evidence suggests that humans closest relative is the Pan Paniscus or Bonobo Ape. Our scientific name as a species is currently Homo Sapiens, and our closest relatives are Pan Paniscus and Pan Troglodytes - or the chimpanzee. People ask - why are these still around if we evolved from them? Well the fact is we didn't - we just shared a common ancestor. Actually Homo Sapiens is the only surviving species of the branch which diverged from the common ancestor around 6 million years ago. We've found evidence of other branches such as Australopithecus, or the more famous Homo Erectus.
The fact is the idea of a tree of life which is often printed in books and magazines is a flawed vision. Really we should think of it as more of a forest of life, whereby may trees didn't grow very tall at all, branches broke off - trees died.
For some time there was confusion as to how the Ediacara biota, or soft bodied large organisms of the Ediacaran period evolved into the diverse hard shelled creatures of the Cambrian Explosion, and eventually true Tripoblasts. However at a later date Ediacaran soft bodied fossils were later found and dated post Cambrian Explosion, meaning they were probably a seperate group of species which died out because of competition from the newly evolved species of the Cambrian Explosion.
All our fossil records are incomplete, fossilisation is incredibly rare. Given the vast number of Tyranosaurus that must have lived, and the fact that the creature is so iconic in the human perception of dinosaurs that any indication that a skeleton has been found evokes an urgent recovery process... It's remarkable that less than 30 specimens have been found to date. Before the popularisation of dinosaurs by Jurassic Park this number was significantly less, less than 10.
I still think we have enough evidence, to conclude that in the light of all the current evidence of evolution speciation and gene mutation, against the evidence of their being an intelligient creator - evolution wins hands down.
At best God is the human created anthropomorhic personification of the amazing processes that nature perfoms on it's own.
First of all, do I care? I am an aetheist, a devout aetheist. However that doesn't mean I can't marvel at creation. I can even marvel at the strength religious people gain from their religions - but I think this is something which comes from within - an inner god if you will.
Were we created? Yes, I suppose we were - I like to think of it more as forged though, forged in the fire of an inhospitable world. The Earth for most of it's life has been an inhospitable place. Life as far as we can tell began on Earth around 4 billion years ago, between then and now we have had numerous mass extinctions. When there's a mass extinction there tends to be a great explosion of diversity - the most notable of which happened around 560 million years ago and was known as the Cambrian Explosion. Of course Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian long pre-date the dinosaurs. The other famous mass extinction was the suggested impact which occurred at the KT Boundary and wiped out the dinosaurs (The KT Bounday is the Cretaceous, Tertiary boudary, named KT because in German, Cretaceous is spelled with a K).
There have been many more.
Its difficult to say exactly why we evolved, evolution is an incredibly complex area of science, which in order to understand fully - you have to have in depth knowledge of various disciplines. Geology, biology, paleantology, eco-systems and more...
Current evidence suggests that humans closest relative is the Pan Paniscus or Bonobo Ape. Our scientific name as a species is currently Homo Sapiens, and our closest relatives are Pan Paniscus and Pan Troglodytes - or the chimpanzee. People ask - why are these still around if we evolved from them? Well the fact is we didn't - we just shared a common ancestor. Actually Homo Sapiens is the only surviving species of the branch which diverged from the common ancestor around 6 million years ago. We've found evidence of other branches such as Australopithecus, or the more famous Homo Erectus.
The fact is the idea of a tree of life which is often printed in books and magazines is a flawed vision. Really we should think of it as more of a forest of life, whereby may trees didn't grow very tall at all, branches broke off - trees died.
For some time there was confusion as to how the Ediacara biota, or soft bodied large organisms of the Ediacaran period evolved into the diverse hard shelled creatures of the Cambrian Explosion, and eventually true Tripoblasts. However at a later date Ediacaran soft bodied fossils were later found and dated post Cambrian Explosion, meaning they were probably a seperate group of species which died out because of competition from the newly evolved species of the Cambrian Explosion.
All our fossil records are incomplete, fossilisation is incredibly rare. Given the vast number of Tyranosaurus that must have lived, and the fact that the creature is so iconic in the human perception of dinosaurs that any indication that a skeleton has been found evokes an urgent recovery process... It's remarkable that less than 30 specimens have been found to date. Before the popularisation of dinosaurs by Jurassic Park this number was significantly less, less than 10.
I still think we have enough evidence, to conclude that in the light of all the current evidence of evolution speciation and gene mutation, against the evidence of their being an intelligient creator - evolution wins hands down.
At best God is the human created anthropomorhic personification of the amazing processes that nature perfoms on it's own.
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