Hacker News Reader

Comment by djkrudy | Hacker News Reader

noir_lord, if you're happy, then great. Just don't dig too far into your existentialism or in my opinion you'll end up disappointed and confused with the circularity of the reasoning. I hope sometime you say to yourself "No, really, what is the actual point??? If the answer is REALLY nothing but random fluctuations in the space time continuum then I don't understand why we don't just all slit our wrists together. But life goes on, and mass suicide hasn't happened, which I find inconsistant with your line of reasoning. That said, I'm sure OP appreciates your input "Everything is meaningless, you should feel lost and helpless cause it's the truth!"

View on HN

I look at it the other way, I find it reassuring that the universe doesn't give a shit about us, I'd find the various Gods posited over the years a lot more frightening if they actually existed.

In that sense I'm happier in a universe without a higher power, I also get to appreciate all the beauty there is in the universe for a brief period of time and that to me is enough in and off itself.

I think a lot of the reason people believe in religion is fear of nothingingness or an inability to accept that in the grand scheme of things they simply don't matter, basically it's a substitute for having to face death.

The way I look at that is I didn't exist before 1980 and that didn't hurt.. and I fully expect to not exist sometime between now and 2060, the universe was around before me and will be around after me and that's pleasing, given the spectacular chain of events that had to happen in sequence over billions of years for me to have existed at all how could I not.

In 1668 Francesco Redi disproved the theory that flies spontaneously generated from rotting meat, a theory originally proposed by Aristotle. Since that time, popular science has just shifted that theory farther and farther away from the common era. When carefully and objectively observed, rotting meat does not emit maggots, but since nobody around to observe meat, matter, molecules or atoms billions of years ago... we can just squint at the farthest reaches of the timeline and infer from the fuzziness that life must have spontaneously generated...right? God is very scary and mean when he is misunderstood, we can agree on that. You speak of beauty as an objective(even if relative) truth but deny the concept of objective truths. You have an innate respect for continuation and survival, but deny the order and purpose necessary to create and sustain that framework. I'm sure you'd profess Newton's laws of motion, but you deny them in your lack of theory of existence. I'm not trying to be demeaning, I'm trying to leave no room for anything but a yes or no answer in your mind. If you don't want to break it down to that, then cheers to a good life my friend.

God isn't scary since he doesn't exist, The things people who believe in God do are scary but then the things people who don't believe in God do are also scary - or to be blunt I fear the People who believe in a God a lot more than the God they believe in since I have evidence for the former.

There is no evidence of God in any of the ways that any of the religious texts describe (and not in any way they don't describe but that's a different subject), that we don't understand the process behind something doesn't mean we just insert "God did it" and stop questioning, your central argument is what is called the "God of the Gaps" argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps and it's notable that over the last millenia those gaps get smaller and more distant in both time and space - we are a long way from angry Gods every time it Thunders and Scarab beetles pushing the Sun across the sky in some ways and apparently no further than we ever where in others, now it's possible there might be things we can never know (there is no reason to presuppose that we can learn everything there is to be learned) but that still doesn't mean we can just insert "Because God" or to put it another way, your claim that God created life has exactly as much merit as my contention that a purple stuffed elephant called Terrence did it since after all it's not on Atheists to prove God doesn't exist, it's on the Religious to prove that he does.

Now this entire debate is pointless since your faith in God requires no evidence (if there was evidence it wouldn't be faith) and my refusal to believe in God (or Gods) is because there is no evidence (or to paraphrase one of my heroes - "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence") so we reach a natural stopping point in this debate...unless you have empirical proof for the existence of God?.

I gave up these arguments since none of the two will change his mind ever.

Probably wise!

Ah, no. I must have not made myself clear somewhere. God of the gaps philosophy is mirrored by modern science as a sort of "Nothingness blob of the gaps". Its the same type of thing though: If we haven't figured out how it works, then its some random nothingness blob that happened to...even though that is not how it behaves naturally...blah blah blah (Like flies on meat). Basically just listen for when NDeT almost lets his words hum out of his mouth, he's trying to dramatize his words so you get caught up in the majesty of the things he's describing instead of questioning them. So if God of the gaps is so bad, its comical that Nothingness blob of the gaps passes your rigorous critical analysis. I believe in the Bible , not "God of the gaps" or the "Nothingness blob"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com