Creation is the evidence for God. It's not an accident that the universe popped into existence being hardwired to produce intelligence. I don't think you have ever thought this through or made a serious attempt at evaluating the evidence.Did I say sole purpose?When you say the sole purpose of the universe is the creating of intelligent life you are excluding the possibility that the universe has no purpose and just is.Neither of those statements are true. I started my journey by looking at the only two options which exist; God created existence (aka space and time) or existence created itself. So, no. I did not exclude all possibilities but one.No. You just need to stop being subjective and having a preference for an outcome.No, that wouldn't be true. Spirituality is not absence of the material. Spirituality is not worshiping the material. Materialism is the absence of spirituality. In that regard, spirituality offers functional advantages that materialism cannot provide.Of course natural selection confirms that spirituality offers a functional advantage to materialism. If it didn't everyone would be atheist.And yet natural selection confirms that belief in God is functionally superior to materialism.Throughout history every society has overwhelmingly held the belief that man is more than just matter and that there is a higher power than man. From the atheist's vantage point these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS exist because of evolutionary forces. But the reality is that even that argument confirms that these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS offer a functional advantage over materialism. According to natural selection there are two main components; functional advantage and transfer of functional advantage to the next generation. So even natural selection confirms that these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS lead to success. Otherwise, according to natural selection, these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS would have been abandoned long ago. As mankind has gained more and more knowledge of his natural surroundings his desire for spirituality has not diminished. In fact, the more materialistic mankind became the less satisfied mankind became. It's all very logical.Looking at it from an human evolutionary perspective we could say prehistoric man's only purpose was to survive and procreate. Since we are primates we can assume we evolved as social creatures. The culmination of that social evolution is what has made us what we are. We are no longer simply a product of the natural environment and we are more a product of our societies than anything else.
Man has always used gods to explain what they didn't comprehend. As we have understood more and more of our environment we have discarded those gods. The belief in some everlasting spirit is nothing but a manifestation of our fear of death and that we will somehow continue to live on after death.
And I'll grant you that religion did have a societal effect as all measures of control do. When the ruling class can get the masses to think that if they behaved than there would be some reward beyond the misery of their existence then you get an obedient populace and that makes the success of a society more likely not to mention that it enriches the powers that be, including the religious orders which gave those institutions even more power.
So we boil it all down to the biggest of our unanswered questions.
How did we get here and what happens after we die.
We don't really know what caused the inception of the universe and we certainly don't understand anything but a fraction of our universe. And we may never understand it. We as sentient creature that fear death like to think that our consciousness (spirit) that makes us the individuals we are won't simply vanish when we die.
Throughout history every society has overwhelmingly held the belief that man is more than just matter and that there is a higher power than man. From the atheist's vantage point these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS exist because of evolutionary forces. But the reality is that even that argument confirms that these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS offer a functional advantage over materialism. According to natural selection there are two main components; functional advantage and transfer of functional advantage to the next generation. So even natural selection confirms that these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS lead to success. Otherwise, according to natural selection, these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS would have been abandoned long ago. As mankind has gained more and more knowledge of his natural surroundings his desire for spirituality has not diminished. In fact, the more materialistic mankind became the less satisfied mankind became. It's all very logical.Looking at it from an human evolutionary perspective we could say prehistoric man's only purpose was to survive and procreate. Since we are primates we can assume we evolved as social creatures. The culmination of that social evolution is what has made us what we are. We are no longer simply a product of the natural environment and we are more a product of our societies than anything else.
Man has always used gods to explain what they didn't comprehend. As we have understood more and more of our environment we have discarded those gods. The belief in some everlasting spirit is nothing but a manifestation of our fear of death and that we will somehow continue to live on after death.
And I'll grant you that religion did have a societal effect as all measures of control do. When the ruling class can get the masses to think that if they behaved than there would be some reward beyond the misery of their existence then you get an obedient populace and that makes the success of a society more likely not to mention that it enriches the powers that be, including the religious orders which gave those institutions even more power.
So we boil it all down to the biggest of our unanswered questions.
How did we get here and what happens after we die.
We don't really know what caused the inception of the universe and we certainly don't understand anything but a fraction of our universe. And we may never understand it. We as sentient creature that fear death like to think that our consciousness (spirit) that makes us the individuals we are won't simply vanish when we die. So we will continue to speculate the existence of creators and afterlives until we can actually understand them. And since I believe we may be incapable of understanding them due to the physical limitations of our brains then we will always speculate about the mystical as a cause for the physical world we do not understand
No it doesn't.
If that were true then food, air and water would be less important than spirituality. The material is far more important because without there would be no man made concept of the spirit
Throughout history every society has overwhelmingly held the belief that man is more than just matter and that there is a higher power than man. From the atheist's vantage point these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS exist because of evolutionary forces. But the reality is that even that argument confirms that these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS offer a functional advantage over materialism. According to natural selection there are two main components; functional advantage and transfer of functional advantage to the next generation. So even natural selection confirms that these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS lead to success. Otherwise, according to natural selection, these beliefs AND BEHAVIORS would have been abandoned long ago. As mankind has gained more and more knowledge of his natural surroundings his desire for spirituality has not diminished. In fact, the more materialistic mankind became the less satisfied mankind became. It's all very logical.
So once again I see that I need to reorder my Dingtionary
I have no preference. You on the other hand exclude all possibilities but one.
I believe you are subjective because the positions you take are illogical and incongruent. You believe truth is relative yet you make absolute statements. You believe events randomly occur but say you believe in cause and effect. You believe morals instead of humans are subjective. You believe purpose is defined by the misuse of what something was intended to be used for. You believe that intelligence is an accidental outcome instead of the natural evolution of space and time. And you believe that logical truths, scientific truths and mathematical truths were invented rather than discovered.
The fact of the matter is we do not know what happened in the picosecond before the universe came to be so we do not know the cause. You assume there are only 2 options.
I'm pretty sure I said the reason why the universe was created was for us to share in God's existence. The universe being an intelligence creating machine - metaphorically speaking - is a manifestation of that intent.
The definition of reason is a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event. The definition of purpose is the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.
Well we are back to where we started as there is no evidence that a creator exists.