Lobstrosity

This notion is simply due to emotion. It is completely false. Death is natural. That's why all life on this earth dies. More than being natural, however, death is required if there is to be life on this earth. You claim to believe in evolution, so hopefully this explanation won't be lost on you.

Ask yourself this: what function does evolution serve? Why not just have a population of organisms that lives forever but never reproduces. They can exist in steady-state being happy for all eternity. Why bother with reproduction and death in the first place?

Now, if we were guaranteed that our environment was going to be unchanging--a constant througout all time--then yes, death would be pointless. Sadly, the environment changes all the time. We have ice ages, extended periods of drought, famine. Wind patterns change, ocean currents drift, continental shelves move. Organisms are genetically designed to fill one particular niche. If their environment changes and their primary food source vanishes, they're screwed. Or alternatively, if a new predator arrives that they don't know how to evade, they're screwed. Evolution is the key to avoiding wholesale extinction. It allows a population to adapt to environmental variations over several generations, thereby keeping up with their changing environment.

Without evolution, an ice age would wipe out virtually all life on earth. So, we need evolution if species are to survive climactic changes. For evolution we need reproduction. For reproduction, however, we need death. Without death you get massive overpopulation which will deplete all resources in a very short amount of time. Such a population would experience either wholesale extinction or cycles of massive growth followed by massive decline. Evolution will have a hard time working if 90% of your offspring die of starvation and other lack of resources brought about by the species itself. Species evolved to die so as to pave the way for future generations. By evolving death, life found a way to stave off complete extinction.

There is actually evidence that our life spans are pre-programmed into our DNA in the form of telomeres. These are caps we have on our chromosomes and each time our DNA replicates the caps get shorter. Evidence suggests that such shortening might be responsible for what we call aging.

Radorth

Quite true. The question is, where do they come from? Even skeptics argue that we can do good out of selfishness, yet evil persists and even prospers. Why?

Some attribute the source partly to supersticious religious inventions, and assert that when we get rid of those, all will be well. Marx thought so and it seemed a good and untested idea in 1900- not so after a complete and truly disgusting 76 year field test. This to me is just wishful thinking, and there is not a whit of historical experience to back up the theory.

It is true that there are mostly atheist countries, like France and Australia which appear to have many "good" people, yet who can say their value did not come from Christian teaching? The native Americans got a raw deal from the English, but they were pretty sold on rape and murder themselves when the Puritans showed up. Perhaps we think the French would have treated them better. I doubt it. There is a surprisingly predictable relationship between evil acts and unfettered power. We can call it the way of evolution and the universe, but I think it is an accountablility and internal restraint issue. Next to the forces of moral teaching, and the ineffable virtues of love, grace and humility, evolution has no power at all.

In his People of the Lie, written before his Christian conversion, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck talks about how he and his colleages have tried to sweep the idea of pure evil under the enlightened rug and tells why he finally could not. Helen suggested he was a "liberal" Christian, but he is more of an enigma. I think he picked it because he spoke of the healing power of repentance and grace even before he was a Christian. In any case he saw a couple of (Catholic I believe) excorcisms and (when combined with his extraordinary and probative case studies) the evidence convinced him.

This does not answer where evil comes from very well, but to simply assert it does not exist and will go away when religion does, the skeptic is excercising considerable blind faith IMO, and probably grew up in a nice neigborhood.

Rad

Luiseach

My own thoughts on the issue of 'evil' go something like this: we perceive some events as 'evil' because they do not please us in some way.

With natural 'evils,' such as disease, death, natural disasters, and so on, we judge them to be 'evil' because they interfere with our health, well-being, happiness, or insurance premiums. A volcanic eruption, for instance, is neither here nor there, unless it affects us or our interests negatively.

Moral 'evil' can be viewed in much the same way. We decide an act is 'evil' when it undermines the health, well-being, happiness, safety, freedom, life, rights, etc. of certain living things.

For both natural and moral forms of 'evil,' then, the role of the self-aware judging being (i.e. us lot) is essential.

An interesting question to bring up.

emotional

Three Ways there are towards the Mystery of the Cosmos: The Materialistic, The Gnostic and the Christian.

The Materialistic Way says: matter is all, nature is all, evolution builds all, and death is the fate of all. The materialistic way squares up with the evidence, and is likely to be Real and True. Good and evil are human perceptions, and the truth is an indifferent cosmos. Death is the end of everything. My greatest fear.

The Gnostic Way says: our souls are trapped inside bodies which obstruct them. Our purpose is to spiritually evolve, until we reach Union with the Godhead - "ye will be like gods...". The Gnostic way is the way of magick and mystery and other things that I, as a sceptic, have no belief in.

The Christian Way says: the world was created good, and fell into evil because of Adam's sin. Good can be restored only through faith in the Sacrifice - Jesus Christ. All who have faith in Him will be called into eternal life, and all who do not - into torment everlasting. Thus this way is a system of divine bribe and blackmail unto mankind. I will not be bribed or blackmailed. Also, the Christian way rests upon the truth of six-day, young-earth creation by God, as described in Genesis, and the evidence is against that.

The Materialistic Way is the Way of Rationality and Evidence. The Gnostic Way is the Way of Experiental Knowledge of God. The Christian Way is the Way of Faith in the Sacrifice. I fear the Materialistic Way (because of the promise of death everlasting), I disbelieve in the Gnostic Way, and I feel revulsion towards the Christian Way.

I'll probably stay a materialist. That's what I believe in, what has the most chance of being The Truth. However, I can't hide my attraction to various aspects of Gnosticism and Christianity.

Materialism is The Truth - this I know, yet I am still confused. And very depressed and fearful of the message of final death. If death is the end of all, then life is pointless. I disbelieve in gods, yet I keep wishing they existed. I believe in materialism, yet I keep wishing it may be untrue after all.

Luiseach

Hmmm...I don't see how the fact of my own mortality means that my life is 'meaningless'....I don't see the connection between the two.

Would you mind explaining further?

Lobstrosity

I don't think there's a universal "point" of life, but you can easily make up your own. For example, you could take the view that the point of life is to make an impact while you are here and leave your mark in the memories you inspire in others. If you raise a child, you will influence that child. A piece of who you are is left in them (both cognitively and genetically, if you care about that sort of thing) and will be passed onto his children. If you have friends, you will impact the course of their lives, what they experience, and who they are as a person. This will have a ripple effect. You can add to the wealth of human knowledge that will be passed down from generation to generation. You can just take pleasure in making people happy. You can simply enjoy your time here. Do you need any more point than that? We're no more special in the grand scheme of things than the mosquitos we crush for annoying us, but that doesn't mean we can't still enjoy the lives we have (or work towards having a life we can enjoy). I understand your fear of death. I fear death, too. I do not fear it because it's an unknown or because I'm worried about suffering, I fear it because of the detrimental impact I know it will have on my loved ones. I fear it because it will mean some of my dreams will go forever unfulfilled. That's a sad thought to me. It's tempting to try to escape that fear by just irrationally latching onto some con that promises happiness. It's appealing to think our dead relatives are watching us right now and we will be joining them eventually to live in pure bliss. However, as rational beings, we must fight the urge to suspend logic and reason. Santa is fun to believe in, too, but at some point our parents tell us we need to grow up. Well, the same thing applies to Heaven and Hell.

Radorth

Only one verse, an interpolation in Mark, actually says such, and even it does not preclude after-death salvation.

Paul says otherwise in Romans. It is quite apparent to me that all children are saved, believing or not. We constantly hear this assertion, but it applies only to those so mentally corrupt and self-righteous as to be like a religious Pharisee. The "men of Ninevah" and the "queen of the South" (clearly not believers at the time of death) rise in judgement against those who saw Jesus in the flesh and still failed to believe. They heard and accepted the Gospel later, obviously. Jesus will preach his Gospel in hell, as he in fact did, and still some will reject it apparently. God could really care less about technicalities, or how he acquires a real servant.

Nope. Just a plan to solve an otherwise insoluable dilemma.

Millions of genuine Christians disagree. I never once took the story as literal, and it had no effect on my faith or experience at all. The story is a rich source of insight, nothing more.

Rad

Starboy

Luiseach, hope you don't mind if I but in.

Emotional, I think I understand where you are coming from.

1) Meaning is something that a being holds.
2) For my life to have meaning someone that exists after my death would have to know of my life and hold it to be meaningful.
3) If everyone who knew of me were dead then my life would no longer hold meaning to anyone.
4) If there were an infinite being that cared for every person alive or dead then everyone’s life would have meaning.

By expressing your concern for continued and by implication infinite continuance of "meaning" of your life you are implying the need for an infinite lived being to posses that meaning.

All of this begs a question. Why do we want our lives to be meaningful? I think it is part of our social behavior combined with our ability to think about the future. I think that as social creatures it is important for us to be aware and have concern of others opinions of us. It affects our niche in the social pecking order. Because we desire to maintain or improve our pecking order into the future of our lives, it then becomes important for us to "make something of ourselves." We then take it a step further and try to "make something of ourselves" after death. We are creatures that for evolutionary reasons do not like the idea of dying so we use our imaginations to come up with a circumstance where the meaning of our life does not die with us or with others. It is a useful drive from an evolutionary point of view. It will have the effect of making us invest in our children and grandchildren and in our social group. When we completely rely in continuing the meaning of our life solely in the mind of this imagined being, then it is evolution gone amuck, and our imagination now works against our species.

This brings us back to desiring our life to have meaning. We do it because it is part of our natural behavior. When you combine it with our ability to imagine the future many of us solve this problem by imagining an infinite being that cares about the meaning of our lives. But that same intellect that allows us to imagine the future and conceive of an infinite being also allows us to explore existence. There is no trace of such a being. There are some things that only exist in our imaginations.

Emotional, get over it. At some point in the future your life will be meaningless.

Starboy

emotional

All I want, and have wanted since the age of eight, is this: to triumph over death.

I argue that, by virtue of death, an individual man's achievements amount to nothing at all. If the individual is to reach a point where he will no longer know, no longer perceive anything he has wrought - and that is what final death clearly implies - then life is indeed pointless. If Mozart can no longer hear his music, then his life has really been pointless. He can't even know that other people are enjoying his music! What good is all that for?

Evil is real. Quite real. We all knew, at the wake of the 9/11 attacks, that it was an evil deed. From nature's viewpoint the terrorists just did a reconfiguration of molecules, but we humans know it was evil. Good and evil really do exist. There are absolutes.

When I was eight years old I learnt about the fact of death. Learning this had the most devastating effect on my life thenceforth. The knowledge that we are all walking on the conveyor belt towards nothingness has brought me sleepless nights, and inward screaming of "NOOOOO! IT CAN'T BE TRUE! IT'S TOO BAD TO BE TRUE!". I could never, ever accept death as a natural fact of life. For me, death has always been an evil intruder into an otherwise perfect world. A disease that needs to be cured.

I've done my fair share of sampling atheism/materialism and, logical and rational though it may be, I'm not, definitely not, satisfied with it. To hell with the evidence; now is the time come to find the cure for evil, including death, which is evil.

The existential, metaphysical questions are too important to be glossed over. I've tried to ignore them but I haven't succeeded. Wherever I go, trying to live peacefully, death and evil stare me in the face. There must be a solution.

Lobstrosity

There is. Give up all rational thought and repeat to yourself over and over again "Heaven is real." Eventually you'll be at peace in blissful ignorance. It sounds like you're halfway there already--you have the need to believe in the fanciful, you just have to act on it.