Debate: is god true?
Side: no ,god is not true

"Okay, some animals have morals, I'll give you that. I had already disproved myself a few hours after writing my previous argument, and have been thinking how stupid I was since."Don't be too hard on yourself, many people don't believe in animal morality, including many highly intelligent scientists. It was only relatively recently in the grand scheme of things that the majority could even accept the we are animals, and it is taking quite some time and a lot of research to convince people that there are virtually no human behaviors that do not have some equivalent in the animal kingdom. It is quite natural, though unfortunate, for humans to view ourselves as being above everything in nature. "you appear to be of the opinion that the only advantageous attributes of humanity are our minds and our morals."The key sentences of my argument were: "Now we are pretty smart, but even the smartest person would be hard-pressed to survive in the wild on their own, and would make a good target for large predators. It is in the group that humanity’s salvation laid."Although I do argue that morality is thoroughly intertwined with our social lifestyle, the emphasis here was on our group nature. And I did kind of gloss over our intellect, but I do actually give it heavy importance. I will go into a bit more detail about these factors later.You do bring up some outstanding points about our physicality making us good predators, so I will back off on that. But what about as prey? Most large predators (even some bear species on flat land) can outrun us for bursts. These bursts are important for the predator because we don't get the advantage of endurance if we get overrun in this case. We get eaten. Also, bipedal running on an uneven terrain isn't very graceful compared to quadrupedal motion, which all mammalian predators aside from primates use. It is much easier to stumble or trip when you are built vertically like we are. Now let's assume a person did get away from a mountain lion. That cat can smell us from miles away (partially because of that sweating situation you were praising earlier), but we can't smell them coming up behind us. And swimming and our other aquatic skills? Alligators, piranha schools and sharks have us beat there quite nicely. I'll grant you that our physical attributes may be more impressive than I implied, and of course thumbs are a huge advantage. But can you honestly imagine humanity being this widely spread and populous without working in groups and being sentient? About intelligence, various comments that you made:"and we have the knowledge to figure out what areas to aim for, when and how to dodge, and what objects we can use for defense or attack...learned to sharpen sticks on stones and made bows and sling-shots from sticks and rubber bands. when we grew older, we carved wooden swords and daggers, among other things, we even made a trebuchet...Humans can build things, work their way out of problems, and use tools"These are all indicative of our high capacity for reasoning and memory. It is potentially very time-consuming to learn these skills, which is one reason why society gets increasingly more advanced the more we specialize. Which brings me back to the group nature: "We do not require other humans for any reason but emotionally."Not so. Most of our strength that you refer to has been greatly enhanced by group activity, as have our morals and intelligence. You increase your chances of catching prey or gathering vegetation if you do it in a group. You also increase your yields if you use tools, and your tools get better the more sophisticated they are. But more sophisticated tools take time to make. If you allow a few people in your group to make or repair tools while the others go out hunting, you give them more time to hunt (and give them the tools to do so more effectively), thus increasing overall yields and allowing you to have bigger groups, which allows you to bring in more resources, fashion even more sophisticated tools, get more efficient at surviving, get bigger groups ad infintum (at least until the resources run out.) Then there is specialization. One of the most important maxims of economics is that there are gains to trade. At its most basic level, this can explained by the fact that people have different skill sets. Let's say you and I are stranded on an island together, and the only sources of food are coconuts and fish. Let's say you are better at climbing trees to get coconuts, while I am better at catching fish. Individually, we both spend time fending for ourselves, and we are both fishing and getting coconuts, but we are only just getting enough to survive, and our health is starting to deteriorate. Then you approach me, and offer a trade: I spend my whole day fishing instead of spending part of it getting coconuts, which is I am just not very good at. And you spend your whole day getting coconuts, which is quicker and easier for you than fishing. At dinner time, we trade. As a pair we are bringing in more food by focusing on our specialized skill sets than either of us could as individuals. Even if you are better at both activities than I am, if I am better at fishing than I am hunting, my comparative advantage would mean that we both gain from the trade more than working alone. And if you have a bigger group, you get a bigger variety of skill sets and comparative advantages, and everyone gets more time to do what they are good at, thus increasing the strength of the group. Also, groups allow specific people to take care of children while the rest work for the group. And if you get particularly ill in the wild, it is very hard to do what you need to survive, unless you have someone around to take care of you. At this point you might be thinking "well, what about non-social species, they do just fine!" But they have different advantages and requirements. The simpler the life form, the easier and shorter gestation is, and the quicker the creatures can reach maturity. But humans take a long time to gestate (and women get quite vulnerable during the later stages of pregnancy. Imagine a pregnant woman in the wild on her own.) Most creatures can more or less take care of themselves after a year or two, but human children are just starting to walk in that period, and have a long way to go before they are able to fend for themselves. We also reproduce at a much lower rate than most non-social species. Some insects and fish produce thousands of offspring at a time. With those numbers, no parental care is required to ensure that at least a few will survive. But getting one human born takes 3/4ths a year, and miscarriages were common in the early days, so it was quite important that those that were born were well taken care of, and this process takes many years. So here is where we get to your point about the evolution of morals. They probably evolved simultaneously with so many other aspects of our nature, and a sort of back-and-forth went on that continually enhanced all of the participating traits. For instance, our species' ancestors didn't take as long to gestate or grow to maturity as we do. But those who took care of their young had better chances of the young growing up and having their own kids. So we got a little more wiggle room. It became safer to take longer to grow up. So this allowed increasing complexity within species, which would increase gestation time. Increased complexity would also increase the time to maturity, so the pre-existing parental skills would become more important, and would eventually be better off forming life mating bonds. Families would initially defend their territory, but from time to time some families would be less territorial than others, and start living close enough together to interact. As they got less aggressive and more intelligent, they would start working together. The groups would get larger and more complex, and morality (which probably started evolving in a very basic sense due to the necessity of parental care and life-partner bonds) could start becoming more complex and would help foster even more effective relationships. Simultaneous evolution of traits is very common.So why doesn't this happen more often? Like thumbs and wings, we take what we are given, and those traits that work well for us get promoted. Also remember that we are talking about tiny little incremental steps. A creature might be willing to let an intruder just an inch closer than anyone else but would otherwise defend themselves. So being .1% more moral should not pose a significant disadvantage, and if the other members of the population pick it up too, then it can start to grow. Also, different environments, niches within environments, and other life forms in the ecosystem create a very complex web of cause-and-effect that favor different traits at different times and places. Look at big cats. Almost all of them are solitary, coming together only to mate and raise cubs, then going their separate way. Most species can get away with this because cats are arguably the most efficient hunters on land, and many hunt prey that is either smaller than they are or is fairly safe. Lions are the key exception. They hunt very large and dangerous critters like elephants and giraffes (talk about legs that can kick! Giraffes have been seen decapitating lions, although it is very rare.) So lions benefit from hunting in groups. If a team of lionesses take down one bull elephant, the whole pride is good for days. Okay I got off-topic there, but that is my response to your statement about the evolution of morals within the minority. In a nut shell, many different things evolved more or less concurrently, and helped push each other up. And some species just didn't need it for an advantage, as they had different traits that helped, so if morality attempted to evolve in them, it would get stamped out as you suggest. It is dependent on a huge, complex set of constantly changing factors. Its tough to wrap the brain around, but you are very intelligent, just think on it a while and you should find it to make sense. "Going on that there is the possibility that there was asexual reproduction at the time, and genetic variation was based on mutation. Or there was non-social sexual reproduction, like flowers...or something."Wow, you must have been tired to bring in asexual creatures (too simple for such complex behaviors) and plants (no behaviors at all)! I kid :)But non-social reproduction is a good point, and I think i addressed it pretty well above. Corroborating this thought process is the fact the moral behaviors discussed are almost exclusively found in social creatures. Also, it tends to be most common in mammals (although more intelligent birds, such as the Corvidae family, do exhibit similar behaviors.) It is likely that the very first ancestors of moral behavior first emerged with the earliest ancestors of mammals or even earlier. Thus there would be a greater chance of mammals inheriting it than other branches of life. "Then again, perhaps a species needs social nature to develop morals, and social nature is overrated. Perhaps minor social nature must be developed before morals and morals must be developed before major social nature. I don;t know, and this makes this argument quite difficult."You're on to something here. I can see why your argument was getting more difficult. Despite your tiredness, you were channeling some very good thoughts in this post, which is why I tried to explain everything about this subject thoroughly and encouraged you to think on it more. Now on to the other topics."It would be wrong to make a girl who loves you think that you love her back not for your own sake but because she deserves to be loved truly and you cannot give her that, so she would be unhappy with you."Either way she was going to be unhappy. But, as you suggest, I did the right thing. So why should I feel guilt about taking the more moral act if, as you suggest, guilt arises when we act immorally? The reason I felt guilty was that although I was not attracted to her romantically, I did like her a lot and valued her friendship. I didn't like seeing her hurt, even though I knew I did the right the thing, and I was nervous that she would stop hanging out with me (which did end up happening.) More or less, my guilt was pretty much selfish. Is selfishness moral? And I don't see morality as being about making other people happy. Its about not doing things that make their lives harder, and more importantly, fostering the strength of the group. Happiness may be a secondary result of this, but its not the goal. If you do not kill someone who wasn't expecting you to kill them in the first place, you are not generating happiness. "As for miracles, there are plenty of miracles. Look up people with "Blessed" in front of their names, rather than "saint." I will do more research on this later, as I am running out of time (complicated lab tomorrow, need good sleep.) However, I must say that yes people needed more miracles in the past. They also wanted them more. Combine a desire to be happier, a standard belief in mythology and lack of knowledge of the natural world, and you can see miracles everywhere. As I said in my previous post, confirmation bias is potentially a huge problem with the assignment and investigation of miracles. "But God is not evil. He did not create evil."This is a common argument, but valid here I think: If God has the power to destroy evil but does not, than he is arguably evil himself. If I have the ability to save a child's life, but do not, what would you say of me? "A murderer's children do not inherit the actual murders of their father, but they inherit the mentality that allowed for the murders..."Mentality does not guarantee that they will commit crimes or be evil. Children of alcoholics often grow up to be alcoholics themselves, but the correlation is not 100%.I know a few people who were raised in alcoholic environments that refuse to touch alcohol for that very reason. I would agree with you that we all have the potential to be evil, but most of us aren't. Why would God give us morality to limit our evilness if he was already going to call us sinners no matter what. I still consider this concept to be one of the biggest flaws in Christianity. Frankly, I see the concept itself as being arguably immoral. "Anyways, so, Jesus. You say that he did not claim to be God. You are wrong. It was Jewish authorities who arrested Jesus for claiming to be the Son of God, by his own words. Jesus did not correct his followers, as John the Baptist did, when they told him that they thought he was the Messiah. There is also the question of why Mary went along with it, even naming him "Jesus." If she was originally lying, she would cease to do so if she had any compassion for her son, for he suffered for it."And the Romans crucified him for claiming to be God (ostensibly.) The Romans and the Jews could have made false accusations against him, or were responding to rumors. Mary could have been wrong. The Bible could have left out times when he did correct people, the faithful who wrote the New Testament years later could have exaggerated or omitted many things. As could the Nicene Creed, whose participants are known to have left out 7 books of the new testament and a dozen from the OT and voted on controversial issues, including Christ's divinity. "No one can convince themself of their own lie unless they are insane."Not if they don't realize it is a lie. There are countless cases of people who testify in court about things that never happened, but after lie detector tests and psychological examination it becomes clear that they honestly believed what they testified. Emotional bias is particularly good at manufacturing understandings and even memories that are not true. Especially in times of stress. Also, insanity comes in many forms, and not all of them are extreme or easily noticeable. Other mental disorders, such as bipolar disorder are pretty noticeable and can appear to be mild insanity to others, but aren't really. Personally, I don't think any of this was the case with Jesus, but it is actually a viable possibility. "Religious people will not lie about their religion or scientific evidence, as a truly religious person would truly believe that what they speak is the truth, and what is also the truth cannot disprove the truth."Kent Hovind did. He might not be "truly religious" by your definition, but he claims to be, and the people who believe in him say he is. I also still argue that Jonathon Wells, from the video you linked, had to be lying because you can't get a PhD in biology without learning about some of the key details he messed up. "All Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe in the same God." But not Jesus' divinity. And many Muslims believe that Christians are worshiping a false concept, a misinterpretation, of God. If there is one God, and if humans can know what his nature is, than any human with that ability, anywhere in the world, should be able to find the same God, and use the same processes to do so. Yet one's beliefs are heavily influenced by the time and place they grew up in. And individual religions splinter into so many factions that it is hard for an outsider to identify which one has the best interpretation. "Christians were arrested and killed, facing many hideous deaths, having to practice their religion in secret."And Jews have been continuously persecuted and vilified almost without reprieve, for thousands of years. Yet their faith still persists. The communist Chinese did some of the most horrendous things atheists have ever done the the religious, yet Buddhists and Bon practitioners still exist in Tibet. Faith is interesting. Sometimes you feel like you need it to get over hardships, but sometimes you get persecuted because of it. You call it a test of faith, and so you keep your faith. It is a self perpetuating cycle. "Why have their been more religious than non-religious at any point in all history of intelligent life on earth?"I explained this in an earlier response. Faith emerged to satiate our curiosity when we didn't know much, and allow us to focus on more pressing issues. And why have the numbers of atheists been increasing over the past few hundred years? Why is it that the more we know about the world, the more religions disappear? "Why do we feel a desire for a happiness which we have never felt, and can never feel on earth?"I'm not sure what you are talking about. The closest thing in my life that I can think of to that is my imagination. Imagination is very useful for inventing new things and solving problems. Imagination can also create Gods to help us feel like we have purpose that we don't otherwise have evidence for. "Why did life not die out as soon as it appeared?"Well, this is hard to answer without knowing more about the origins of life. However, as I explained in an earlier response, a basic principle in abiogenesis shows a step-by-step process to get the ball rolling: Formation of organic molecules, fusion of them into macromolecules, fusion of macromolecules into self-replicating protobionts, and some energy to maintain the replication process. All of these things are relatively simple and cover the big things that life would need to get started. Also, all of these ingredients are possible around undersea volcanoes and steam vents. Now these protobionts aren't alive. We can make them fairly easily, but cannot yet create true life (although I hear that an experiment currently undergoing peer review has just changed all that. This might be a rumor.) So obviously we don't quite know all of the characteristics. We can't say that it is irreducible complexity because all of the defining traits that we know about actually could get started piece by piece by naturalistic processes. There are only a scant few pieces of the puzzle remaining. "Why do we never see life appear from non-living stuff?"A) We know that life as we know it could not appear out of the blue. First life would be extremely simple, single-celled and microscopic. Not easy to discover unless you have a microscope trained on every square micrometer of the Earth. B) If abiogenesis theories have any merit, and I believe they do, than undersea volcanoes and steam vents are the best place to find new life. But we can't actually get very close to the majority of these volcanoes, especially on the deep sea where there pressure and heat would destroy any of the delicate sensor equipment we would need to find life. It is possible life is being created right now. But archea live in these areas, and they might well be gobbling up any new life that ventures far enough away from the volcanoes for us to see.C) Even if new life is not being formed, the conditions found now are far different than they were 4 billion years ago. Those conditions may have been more favorable then than now (especially the complete lack of predators until around the Cambrian."no one can scientifically explain the universe's actual beginning."A couple hundred years ago no scientist could explain (or at least prove) why illness happens. They usually cited supernatural forces. Now we know that viruses, bacterias, fungi and genetic disorders are responsible for pretty much any illness. Around the same time, we couldn't explain why things fall down. Throughout much of human history we didn't even ask that question. Just because scientists can't answer a question now does not mean that they should stop asking the question. But the religions stopped asking centuries ago. "All rules come from intelligence. Therefore, did not the laws of the universe come from intelligence?"There is a vast difference between rules (state-created laws or curfews for your children as example) and scientific laws and forces, which we use our intelligence to describe, not create. Things are organized, as far as we can tell, because there is no other way for it to be. This was impossible to conceive of thousands of years ago when the big religions were created, but becomes more obvious the more we investigate. "I told you that my analogy was not perfect, obviously it is not exactly on, but did you understand my meaning?"I understand what you were trying to say, but if God is omni-everything, no analogy based on human perception could ever compare to the reality of what he would be. I respect your passion and approach to writing, though. Wow...that took a long time. Good night.