Originally posted by Master Crimzon
I understand that religion does not contradict science, but still, the advanced branch of quantum physics would insinuate that the basic laws of science are simply ignored when dealing with such high physics. I don't follow religion because I see no reason to; there is no evidence contradicting it, like the 'Matrix' example I supplied, but there is simply not reason to believe in it, at least for me. But if it makes you happy, then who am I to tell you not to follow it?
Dude, there is no basis for Hawking's study. You don't get to choose which laws get ignored and which don't. Now if the scientific community comes out and backs Hawking, then I will have no choice to accept it. Seeing as how every scientific argument I've ever heard discusses the fact that the universe wasn't created out of nothing, I have no inclination to believe Hawking just because he made a statement.
Well, Nazism didn't exactly have anything to do with the lack of religion. Stalin took Marx's beliefs and 're-interpreted' them (I'm trying not to say 'perverted'😉 into a fascistic and totalitarian ideology. Communism as a purely financial ideology, while I personally disagree with it, isn't all that bad.
Of course you'd think it wasn't that bad. It didn't destroy the soviet union, kill 22 million russians, destroy countless lives all because of the government. And Communism was put in place of religion. Nazism was as well. Both had a lack of religion, and both nearly destroyed the world. Now of course religion did have its fair share of destruction(Crusades, Inquisition), but i'm talking about the 19th and 20th centuries.
Alright. Good for them. That being said, though, I do not believe discipline to be a very treasured value.
Which is sad. I firmly believe in discipline, character, and good moral values.
Look at the world today and look at how the world was back then. People like Einstein and Hawking work at a level of science that exists beyond the intelligence and scientific grasp of the people back then. Studies also show rising IQ levels throughout the ages.
Show me studies showing IQ levels rise through the ages. There's no basis for this, especially since IQ wasn't measured back then. And I could give you Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and Egyptians that did things and made inventions 2,000 years ahead of their time. I think we have more technology today and because of that, we rely more on it than people of other generations, that had to use more of their mind. This is why I think my generation wasn't particularly smart, and the new generation of teenagers are basically morons, eating up anything they learn in school, then regurgitating it, playing with their iphones and sitting on the computer, etc.
I don't need to derive my moral standards from an external source. Instead, I believe I'm smart or competent enough to create them myself, based on my form of logic and philosophy (liberalism, atheism, relativism, humanism, whatever). However, I do understand that my moral code is not universal; it's my subjective opinion. I don't need there to be a high being to 'verify' it.
I don't believe humans are capable of forming their own morals and standards because then motive comes into play, and the death and destruction of the past 4,000 years shows us what humans are capable of.
Throughout the course of our extremely long political debate, I've explained, to be the best of my ability, why I think that my ideology, if implemented, will lead to a better world. But I still understand that it is my ideology and not some sort of divine, all-powerful one.
For the same reason I believe religion will make a better world. But both our ideologies have failed, as seen in the Crusades, Inquisition, Nazism, and Communism.
Edit: Just curious, what do you consider 'liberal arts'? Do you mean things like cinema and the like? Because I think the world would be a shitty place without philosophy and intellectua stimulation, which includes the realm of art.
As I mentioned to veneficus, I think philosophy is a meaningless form of mental masturbation, only used by many pseudo intellectuals to compensate for their low self esteem. It has no practical uses in this world. English majors, philosophy majors, etc. While I feel that some classes should be part of the core curriculum, those majors are utterly useless. You can recite to me any ancient philosophy mentioned by Marcus Aurelius, but you're going nowhere with your life when you graduate with those majors. Economics, business, science majors. Those all have their practical uses. I don't need someone to tell me everything is equal and nothing is better than anything else because that philosophy doesn't work in the real world. And that's my main problem. Philosophy deals with utopias.