The self illusion and the selfish gene

LucyJr said:
C.S. Lewis wrotte a book called "The abolition of Man", in which he makes a case that if evolution would be the main intellectual worldview of a society, in that respective society man and mankind will be abolished in dust. He has some incredible strong arguments, and some of his 'prophecies' already are fulfilled.
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He also believed in theistic evolution and that Adam was a neanderthal, not saying he was wrong, not saying that he wasn't brilliant or even that he didn't make good points in the abolition of man, Just that he thought Adam was a cave man and that we ascend to heaven and recieve our heavenly bodies that we'd be like Adam(cavemen).
 
Evolution and creationism are not mutually exclusive IMHO.
I come from an extremely religious family and attended Christian schools growing up where we were taught that evolution was evil and that we should get up and leave if it is taught in class.

This made it extremely stressful for me in college as I majored in biology. I love the study of life: anatomy, physiology, molecular and cell biology are fascinating to me.

I didn't take a class on evolution until my masters program, when I took speciation. We read Darwin's Origin of the Species and a text on speciation. I had a lot of trouble reconciling this with my beliefs- it really stressed me out. I ended up in the instructor's office one afternoon on a particularly bad day.

Long story short- turns out he was highly religious. We discussed the creation story in the bible vs. scientific evolution. He explained his views to me which I thought were great and used with students who later came to me with the same issues. Thinking about the origins of the biblical creation story- this was an oral tradition in the Jewish culture until it was finally written down. It may have been written through divine inspiration- who knows. Taking that as truth, say God speaks to whomever is writing it down. I would assume that whatever is written down would have to be filtered through the mind of the human. This human is not going to understand DNA, genetic drift, etc. He would write down what he is able to understand, which would be God created all life.

Thinking of it this way, isn't it interesting that the order of creations in Genesis is the same as the progression if development seen in evolutionary studies- plants first, then fish, birds, and humans last? I don't think the bible is meant to be a science text and exact description of exactly how life came into existence. On the first "day", God created... How long is a "day"? I don't know that this should be taken literally.

I have a lot of respect for religion and peoples' faith. I never tried to force evolution as the origin of everything on people in classes I taught. I did try to make sure people at least understood microevolution: antibiotic resistance, etc. I think that is a very important concept.

In years of reading scientific studies, debates, etc. I have never come across any evidence against evolution that was plausible. In my personal research it has always made sense with my results. I personally think it is the most plausible explanation- that is not completely ruling out theistic evolution, though.

I suppose I would describe myself as agnostic now. I have a lot of trouble with the religion I grew up in being the "right" one. Why is mine the correct one? In Christianity, who is right? Should I be Catholic? Protestant? What kind of Protestant? Mormon? Pentecostal? All insist theirs is the right way. What about Islam? Judaism? For that matter, what about multitheistic religions, or animism? So many questions. I have no answers.

Evolution, in the other hand makes total sense to me. Again, I have never heard evidence against it that was plausible. I have looked, too- I was fiercely defensive of my religious views at one point.

I suppose the point of this long comment was I by no means think you can't be very religious and still believe in evolution. I know a lot of people with that view and I think their reasoning is sound. I have a lot of respect for them. It is really irritating to me that the two views are so often portrayed as "enemies". I haven't read either of the books in the subject, I'm not a fan of either author. Anyway, carry on. :)
 
LucyJr said:
Evolution can be the work of God. But my problem is not with theistic evolution, but with simple evolution, left by itself, thousands of years, and miracles happen. The way I see things, evolution is a story for big childrens (aka adults).
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Firstly…it isn’t thousands of years but MILLIONS of years in most cases Lucy…sometimes hundreds of millions of years…there is a huge difference there.
LucyJr said:
I disagree with you. I think there are litlle if none evidences for evolution, you say there are...one of us is wrong then.
As for God, this is different, because God can not be seen, tested into some kind of laboratory, and evidenced somehow in a concrete way.
But there are arguments for the existence of a God. Its like the sun...by Him, God, we can see and make sense of existence and all things...whithout Him, absurd and non-sense is written on everything.
Well then, the burden of proof absolutely falls to you then…if you cannot give me any proof of God then how do you propose that you prove his existence other than relying on faith-based assumptions?
As for evolution, the evidence is there…from fossil records until now…of course, you and other Christian theists have issue with such records because it goes against the age of the earth as described in the Bible…Christians often argue that carbon dating is a flawed science when all they are doing is really creating a non-issue into an issue.

I don't have problems with theistic evolution. I think God could use such a mechanism. But still I don't think He ever used.

I rather think that IS how God created mankind..we can agree to disagree on that.
This in respect to theistic evolution?


Sure, but then even if theists doesn not give any evidence, that doesn't mean God does not exist, in lack of any arguments or evidences. "Absence of evidences is not evidence for absence". Nevertheless, the atheist could give some arguments against God.


I think the Bible is the best proof. I can give you some lower quality arguments and proofs if you want tough.
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God is by far NOT the simplest solution to the problem. Of course Occam’s Razor isn’t true in all circumstances, but when you are dealing with something where proof is lacking then this is the first logical step to be made. One should first assume that simple is more often than not, the truth on the subject. It is far easier to assume that organisms on the Earth mutated in response to their environment over the course of millions of years in order to survive than for an omnipotent, omniscient, being whom created the universe, has no beginning and no end. We have seen simple organisms already mutate and change within our lifetime Lucy…take our use of antibiotics, or rather our OVERUSE of antibiotics…the response for the bacteria has been to develop a resistance and an eventual immunity to the antibiotic being used.
It would only make sense that in larger organisms such mutations would take longer to develop and would be less immediately recognizable than microbes.
I’m sorry Lucy…but the Bible is no proof of God when we are talking about “proof”…there are historically documentable events that took place in the Bible, but the proof that there was a “God” there, and not just exaggerated “stories" is nil and absent.

(for those who are just reading this, Lucy and I are having a theoretical debate…I do actually believe in God…so don’t jump all over me…lol)
 
@LucyJr
If you want to argue on a less tangible level, because there is no tangible proof that you can present, we can take it here -

Let us start with the “Problem of Evil”.
It basically states that a deity whom is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent, could not co-exist with evil as it is contradictory in itself to the point of impossibility.
God’s act of creation and God’s act of judgement as the same thing…God’s condemnation of evil is expressed through his created world, and through his creation of humans.
God’s view of evil must be good and true, because God’s judgment is perfect and therefore must be good. The theory that our sin is because of our misuse of our gift of “free will” is also incompatible with such a deity because God is said to have foreknowledge of all things. Being positioned against evil, just having the knowledge of future events would take away our ability and capacity to have “free will”.


  • If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists, then evil does not.
  • There is evil in the world.
  • Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God does not exist.


Or we can conclude -



  • God exists.
  • God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.
  • An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils.
  • An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence.
  • An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.
  • A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil.
  • If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, then no evil exists.



A version by William L. Rowe:

  1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
  2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
  3. (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.

Another by Paul Draper:

  1. Gratuitous evils exist.
  2. The hypothesis of indifference, i.e., that if there are supernatural beings they are indifferent to gratuitous evils, is a better explanation for (1) than theism.
  3. Therefore, evidence prefers that no god, as commonly understood by theists, exists

I’ll leave you with that for right now…this and the above post should provide enough debating material for a while…lol.
 
Skarekrow said:
@LucyJr
If you want to argue on a less tangible level, because there is no tangible proof that you can present, we can take it here -

Let us start with the “Problem of Evil”.
It basically states that a deity whom is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent, could not co-exist with evil as it is contradictory in itself to the point of impossibility.
God’s act of creation and God’s act of judgement as the same thing…God’s condemnation of evil is expressed through his created world, and through his creation of humans.
God’s view of evil must be good and true, because God’s judgment is perfect and therefore must be good. The theory that our sin is because of our misuse of our gift of “free will” is also incompatible with such a deity because God is said to have foreknowledge of all things. Being positioned against evil, just having the knowledge of future events would take away our ability and capacity to have “free will”.


  • If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists, then evil does not.
  • There is evil in the world.
  • Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God does not exist.


Or we can conclude -



  • God exists.
  • God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.
  • An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils.
  • An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence.
  • An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.
  • A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil.
  • If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, then no evil exists.



A version by William L. Rowe:

  1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
  2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
  3. (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.

Another by Paul Draper:

  1. Gratuitous evils exist.
  2. The hypothesis of indifference, i.e., that if there are supernatural beings they are indifferent to gratuitous evils, is a better explanation for (1) than theism.
  3. Therefore, evidence prefers that no god, as commonly understood by theists, exists

I’ll leave you with that for right now…this and the above post should provide enough debating material for a while…lol.
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I'd going to point out that Having knowledge of events and controlling events are two different things.

On top of that the Problem of Evil lacks other fundamental understandings of the Christian God, primarily that all of the man inflicted evils and natural evils are already being accounted for and being corrected with the understanding that this world i not our home nor is it our life, the problems of famine, fire and destruction are being made right by creating for us a new home that has none of these problems, the man inflicted evils are being accounted for at Judgement where men will either be repentant and allowed into this new home or they'll face a proper sentencing for their actions. In this way God is allowed to give man free will and agency which are deemed good and still answer the problem of Evil.
 
Barnabas said:
I'd going to point out that Having knowledge of events and controlling events are two different things.

On top of that the Problem of Evil lacks other fundamental understandings of the Christian God, primarily that all of the man inflicted evils and natural evils are already being accounted for and being corrected with the understanding that this world i not our home nor is it our life, the problems of famine, fire and destruction are being made right by creating for us a new home that has none of these problems, the man inflicted evils are being accounted for at Judgement where men will either be repentant and allowed into this new home or they'll face a proper sentencing for their actions. In this way God is allowed to give man free will and agency which are deemed good and still answer the problem of Evil.
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I disagree…if you adhere to mankind creating sin (evil), which would take away from God having Omnipotent power, then you cannot also say that mankind has true “free will” because that would also imply that God has preemptively picked us out for heaven or hell because he is aligned against “evil” and knew that we would sin. Now, if you say that God created evil along with everything else, that would make more sense, that would truly give mankind “free will”, but the problem still arises that God knows what our actions will be in the future, negating true “free will” once again.
 
Skarekrow said:
I disagree…if you adhere to mankind creating sin (evil), which would take away from God having Omnipotent power, then you cannot also say that mankind has true “free will” because that would also imply that God has preemptively picked us out for heaven or hell because he is aligned against “evil” and knew that we would sin. Now, if you say that God created evil along with everything else, that would make more sense, that would truly give mankind “free will”, but the problem still arises that God knows what our actions will be in the future, negating true “free will” once again.
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That makes me wonder.

While playing Riichi there are many times when I know what tiles an opponent needs, so I don't discard them if I have them, making it so they can't win off me.

This often means that I also don't win because avoiding discarding their tile often means taking apart my hand to discard safe tiles. But the important thing is to make it so they don't win from me because if they do, I have to pay all the points. If everybody in the game uses this strategy it often results in a draw.

Is this outcome destiny or not? Opponents are free to build their hand but in some way I'm taking away some of their choices that I know they need to make.

This works inversely too because also in more rare cases I can build a hand that would appear to somebody else like I need one kind of tile to win, but actually I need a different tile and if I play it right, the tile I need will be what everyone would think is the safe tile and therefore they will discard it to me and I win off them.
 
sprinkles said:
That makes me wonder.

While playing Riichi there are many times when I know what tiles an opponent needs, so I don't discard them if I have them, making it so they can't win off me.

This often means that I also don't win because avoiding discarding their tile often means taking apart my hand to discard safe tiles. But the important thing is to make it so they don't win from me because if they do, I have to pay all the points. If everybody in the game uses this strategy it often results in a draw.

Is this outcome destiny or not? Opponents are free to build their hand but in some way I'm taking away some of their choices that I know they need to make.

This works inversely too because also in more rare cases I can build a hand that would appear to somebody else like I need one kind of tile to win, but actually I need a different tile and if I play it right, the tile I need will be what everyone would think is the safe tile and therefore they will discard it to me and I win off them.
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In a way it is similar…if we were talking about God and our ‘free will’ to do whatever we want and He were playing His hand like you play your hand in the game…one couldn’t truly say we have ‘free will’. If our choices are limited…if some of our choices are purposefully hidden from us then one could conclude that we don’t have true free will…only the limited choices presented to us. It’s like saying you can choose to have anything you want for dinner, but you are limited to whatever you have in the fridge…lol. You don’t truly have a choice of ‘anything’ you want.
If we are limited in the choices that God presents to us then you could say that all the choices are actually God’s choices, not our own…thereby negating us actually ‘sinning’. If some of the choices God allows us to have are considered ‘evil’, then who is to blame for such a choice?
 
Skarekrow said:
@LucyJr
If you want to argue on a less tangible level, because there is no tangible proof that you can present, we can take it here -

Let us start with the “Problem of Evil”.
It basically states that a deity whom is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent, could not co-exist with evil as it is contradictory in itself to the point of impossibility.
God’s act of creation and God’s act of judgement as the same thing…God’s condemnation of evil is expressed through his created world, and through his creation of humans.
God’s view of evil must be good and true, because God’s judgment is perfect and therefore must be good. The theory that our sin is because of our misuse of our gift of “free will” is also incompatible with such a deity because God is said to have foreknowledge of all things. Being positioned against evil, just having the knowledge of future events would take away our ability and capacity to have “free will”.


  • If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists, then evil does not.
  • There is evil in the world.
  • Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God does not exist.
Click to expand...


It seems to me there is no explicit logical necessity between:

[*]If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists and this:

[*]then evil does not.

So, I think there are some implicit assumptions there, some hidden assumptions that are made. Can you think of them and name them?

Probably the assumption that are made are the following:

1.If God is all-powerful, then He can create any world that He wants.

2.If God is all-loving, then He would prefer a world without suffering.

Or it could be this assumption:
[*]An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.

This is the logical version of the argument against God with what is called "the problem of evil".
And the answer to these assumptions is this:

a. There is no proven logical inconsistency between God and evil.
b. It can be proved that God and evil are consistent.

I will return back to this. Now let's take this:

The theory that our sin is because of our misuse of our gift of “free will” is also incompatible with such a deity because God is said to have foreknowledge of all things. Being positioned against evil, just having the knowledge of future events would take away our ability and capacity to have “free will”.
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This is not true. The foreknoledge of God doesn not contradict the act of free will.

Foreknowledge != Foreordination

What does this mean?

1. God's Foreknowledge is chronologically prior to the event.
2. The event is logically prior to God's Foreknowledge.

The event does not happen because God foreknows it, but God foreknows it because the event will happen.
Because God knows something will hapen, this doesn not mean the event will happen because God foreknows it.

The analogy that is often given is "foreshadowing". When a person is comming after a corner, before the person will come, one could see the shadow of that person, and one foreknows that person is about to come around the corner. But the shaddow doesn't determine the person, is the person who determines and whitholds the shadow. Foreknowledge is like the foreshadow of future events. The shadow doesn't determine the reality of the events, is the reality who determines the shadowing of events.

God's foreknowledge is like a infailable barometer of the future. The future can happen as free agents want it to happen, but nothing excapes this infailable barometer which is the Foreknowledge of God.

Given this, we can assume the followings:
1.If E would not to occur, God would not have foreknow E. But E does occur, and so God does foreknows it.
2.If God would not have Foreknowledge, E will occur the same.
 
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Barnabas said:
I'd going to point out that Having knowledge of events and controlling events are two different things.

On top of that the Problem of Evil lacks other fundamental understandings of the Christian God, primarily that all of the man inflicted evils and natural evils are already being accounted for and being corrected with the understanding that this world i not our home nor is it our life, the problems of famine, fire and destruction are being made right by creating for us a new home that has none of these problems, the man inflicted evils are being accounted for at Judgement where men will either be repentant and allowed into this new home or they'll face a proper sentencing for their actions. In this way God is allowed to give man free will and agency which are deemed good and still answer the problem of Evil.
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If you know evil is going to happen then how could you call yourself opposed to evil if you allow it to happen and only recompense well after the fact?

Let's take a godless micro universe where 42 kinds of evil will happen. All 42 evils will definitely happen.
Now let's put a god who hates evil in that universe, and knows that all 42 kinds of evil will happen, but doesn't prevent anything. All 42 evils still definitely happen.
Then this god complains about all 42 evils that happen. Whose fault is it?

It'd be like a police force that never fights crime. You could have robbers cleaning out your house and you call the police and say "These people are stealing all my shit! Help!" and the police say "We know. We know everything." meanwhile these guys continue to trundle every last possession of yours out into their van, set your house on fire, and then drive away.

Then some 50 years later or whatever, after the same has happened with dozens of other houses, the police finally have their judgement day and nab up all the crooks and say "YOU WERE BAD, GO TO JAIL."

I mean wtf?
 
[MENTION=5045]Skarekrow[/MENTION]
You gave a argument against God with respect to the problem of evil. I think its you to have on the shoulder the burden of proof here, with regard to the explication and argumentation of premises. Normaly i'm not interested in this, but I'm curious to know how would you argumentate the arguements you gave, especialy these premises:

If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists, then evil does not.

and this one...

An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.
 
sprinkles said:
If you know evil is going to happen then how could you call yourself opposed to evil if you allow it to happen and only recompense well after the fact?

Let's take a godless micro universe where 42 kinds of evil will happen. All 42 evils will definitely happen.
Now let's put a god who hates evil in that universe, and knows that all 42 kinds of evil will happen, but doesn't prevent anything. All 42 evils still definitely happen.
Then this god complains about all 42 evils that happen. Whose fault is it?

It'd be like a police force that never fights crime. You could have robbers cleaning out your house and you call the police and say "These people are stealing all my shit! Help!" and the police say "We know. We know everything." meanwhile these guys continue to trundle every last possession of yours out into their van, set your house on fire, and then drive away.

Then some 50 years later or whatever, after the same has happened with dozens of other houses, the police finally have their judgement day and nab up all the crooks and say "YOU WERE BAD, GO TO JAIL."

I mean wtf?


If you're Just, prosecute right away or not at all
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Ok, then let's start asking what kind of measurements need to be taken for those forty two evils to be prevented and whether it's acceptable morally.

Let's use your robber as an example would it be ok for God to physically Lobotomize these criminals knowing what wrong they were going to commit, how about just manipulating there environment so that every time they tried to stray out of bounds that they were pulled back in. That sounds nice doesn't it, they go to rob a house but wal-mart is magically out of ski-masks and their tires on the van blew out all at once while they were shopping.

Cool people protected, but God is a righteous God and simply stopping robbers won't be enough to satisfy his sense of Justice. So the next time that you intentionally or not skip out on one of his hundreds of laws there's something just their to stop you. Want to get some ribs for dinner, sorry porks a no no and now Sunny's is all sold out for the night, start thinking about that attractive red head at work and all of a sudden memories of grandma's funeral pop up.


I know it sounds silly, but think about it, your asking God to take away your basic ability to make wrong choices. It's like being given a multiple choice math test with only five questions that are all 1+1= and answers a-d are all 2 then at the end of the test the teacher tells you how smart you are. It's not an accomplishment if your not allowed to pick, more importantly imagine if this applied to every law in the old testament right down to the dietary and sanitation laws. Shoot look at it if it was just the ten commandments, God would be manipulating you into loving him.



But let's go beyond that, Back in Genesis one God creates.. well creation, he among all of creation is Adam, who is described as being built in the image of God. At the end of the creation account God looks over everything he's built and said it was "Very Good." Part of being Created in God's image means Adam has both a freewill and agency among creation God declares this to be very good, is it right for God to take away something that is very good to stop something that is evil? I'd wager no.
 
[MENTION=1848]Barnabas[/MENTION]

No I'm not asking God to do any of that.

What I'm saying is either do something about it now or don't complain later. But it is portrayed that God does nothing and also complains, or judges, later.

Either or, not both.
 
sprinkles said:
@Barnabas

No I'm not asking God to do any of that.

What I'm saying is either do something about it now or don't complain later. But it is portrayed that God does nothing and also complains, or judges, later.

Either or, not both.
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That's the thing though, he already did something about it, that's what the Gospel is about it. It's redemption, punishment and recompense all mixed into one event.
 
Barnabas said:
That's the thing though, he already did something about it, that's what the Gospel is about it. It's redemption, punishment and recompense all mixed into one event.
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Well yes. That's what it says.

But some around here would have you believe otherwise, and that is what I'm getting at, if you know what I mean.
 
sprinkles said:
Well yes. That's what it says.

But some around here would have you believe otherwise, and that is what I'm getting at, if you know what I mean.
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Well don't take my word for it I'm a false prophet don't you know.
 
LucyJr said:
@Skarekrow
You gave a argument against God with respect to the problem of evil. I think its you to have on the shoulder the burden of proof here, with regard to the explication and argumentation of premises. Normaly i'm not interested in this, but I'm curious to know how would you argumentate the arguements you gave, especialy these premises:

If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists, then evil does not.

and this one...

An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.
Click to expand...
Firstly, I think people are missing the point that God created Evil…the tree was called “The Tree of Knowledge and Evil”. Adam and Eve didn’t create the tree in Eden did they? So to say that “sin” or “evil” is a creation of man and that God is disappointed because of it is kind of silly.
IMO, God created “evil” along with “good”, just as he did light and dark. You cannot have one without the other. We were meant to sin on this earth…certainly God knew that there wouldn’t be one single person who didn’t commit one sin or another.
But if you take away the idea of God creating “evil” then it makes no logical sense….it doesn’t make sense in any way.
Even IF God didn’t create sin, it would make him unjust for punishing us for sinning when he knew that we would sin…everyone would.
And if God cannot see a clear picture of all future events and only shadows, then He is certainly not omnipotent and omniscient as the Bible would ascribe Him.
I am actually winning your argument for you Lucy…(since I believe in God anyhow…lol), but in order to understand good, you must understand evil….to appreciate love, you have to know hate.
This would be the most logical conclusion for “the problem of evil” Lucy, but it also goes against what most churches teach…and, it would make God unjust for punishing us or sending anyone to Hell.
 
The OP has put forward a great question... I would define illusions as trickery or deception. Hense, why I try stay away from these things all together. I will address the question properly when I have more time.

As for selfishness someone once told me at a young age that selfishness is the nature of people and it stuck by me and the principles that I derived from that sentence haven't failed me yet.
 
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