william_ahk wrote: ↑30 Nov 2022, 23:51
In all honesty, I couldn't fathom how programmers would believe in any religion
When you say "religion"... what do you mean? "Religion" is a very subjective term when used as a non-descriptive noun, so clarification is required. The OP provided context through the survey. But, in general, religion means different things to different people. I associate the term to describe a belief/faith in a Creator (or not), and the attributes and truths we assign to that Creator. One "religion" can assign completely different attributes to their concept of a Creator than another "religion". Some "religions" have no creator.
The OP stated:
"I do not follow any religion and I do not like them because I do not believe religions are a good thing."
I agree that "religion" can be a bad thing. But there is a big difference between "religion" and a belief-in and reverence-for a Creator.
To illustrate:
As programmers, do we feel that a program that accomplishes a meaningful task can write itself? Or does this require an outside source/designer such as yourself to write the program? Can "nothing" create "something/anything"? Because without an external creator, the "something" must create itself. And as far as I know "nothing" can not do or create anything because of it's attribute of being nothing in the first place.
So, is there any evidence of our Creator?
To answer this question, consider the following:
When you see a building, what is the evidence that proves there MUST have been a builder? Is the existence of the building itself, proof enough? Or could the building have assembled itself without the need for an external designer/builder?
When you see a painting, do you automatically conclude that the painting painted itself? Or does the existence of the painting prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that an artist/painter must exist (or existed in the past)? This seems logical whether you can interact with the painter directly or not, or whether the artist placed a signature on the canvas or not.
When you see a book, could that book have written itself? Or does it require an author/writer? A book containing common letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, all organized with grammar, pages, illustrations, charts, a title, etc. Or could the paper, ink, language, randomly assemble themselves in an organized way simply by chance over hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions of years? How long would you say this process would take for just a 10 page book? Keeping in mind that we must start with "nothing" in the beginning. No world, no environment, no time, no physics, no ink, no trees, no language. Could a 10 page book that communicates meaningful information assemble itself from "nothing"? Who/what would the book communicate to?
How much time and effort goes into writing code to build an app or utility that is considered any use at all? Designing, writing, debugging, etc. Does this process take intelligence or could this happen by chance from "nothing" at all? And what about the world that the program is suppose to interact with, and provide a meaningful contribution to? How did that come to exist? Obviously a completely different type of "nothing" to make this happen.
If I told you that I believe that the building created itself, or that the painting painted itself, or the book/program wrote itself, would you agree with me, or strongly disagree? If I told you that there was no creator involved in making my car or my phone, and that I believe that they randomly assembled on their own. Would you question my logic in this conclusion? What proof could you offer to me that these things could not have created themselves without an outside source of intelligence? I also believe that the cool emblem/name on the side of the vehicle/phone also self-assembled itself, which refutes the "proof" of a creator. Would anyone question my intelligence for coming to this conclusion?
What about Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota? If I concluded that these shapes were the result of natural elements/weather such as wind, rain, erosion, lightning, sunlight, radiation, etc., over a long very long period of time, would I have a sound argument? And that the human presidents that they represent are nothing more than the natural evolution of those rocks millions of years later?
So, do you agree that the idea of the building/painting/book/program/car/phone creating themselves or that human presidents evolve from rocks... is outside the boundaries of general human logic?
Can you see that the same logic can be applied to all of what we see and interact with on a daily basis? From the vastness of space in the heavens to the microscopic world that is too small to see, to the energy, engineering, mathematics that hold it all together? I have not even mentioned the existence of non-material things like good, evil, conscience, emotions, morality, justice, etc. If the physical things above that I mentioned could not have randomly create themselves without intelligence from an outside source, how could the much more complex world that they exist in have been created by random non-directed processes created from a source of "nothing" to begin with?
Scientists/Scholars would have you believe that this was accomplished by a random explosion, long ago, and far away. But wait a minute... when was the last time you saw an explosion "create" anything, let alone in an organized manner? Explosions don't create organization, they destroy it. For anyone who disagrees, try placing an explosive in a box with your phone (or anything), and report the results. Will the phone and box reorganize themselves in say one-billion-billion years using the organized "laws-of-nature" created in the explosion of the Big-Bang of long ago? I don't think anyone would need to wait billions of years to know the results. We can use "logic" provided by our Creator here and now to know the conclusion of that experiment, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Before the responses flood in about AI... yes, it is true that AI can create original music, images, videos, literature, characters, defective code, etc... but AI becomes the author/creator of such work, and AI certainly did not create itself. Centuries of intelligence/technologies compounded over time to make AI and these other medias possible.
So, without digging into any "religious beliefs", we should be able to "see" that the evidence of our Creator is all around us.
Of course, our free-will to choose to acknowledge/dismiss our Creator's existence, and the attributes and truths that we assign to Him is another matter, which gives birth to many different "religions".
I understand that there are many objections to the idea of an all powerful Creator, but I don't think these objections have anything to do with lack of evidence. If we search deep within ourselves, we will find that the objection... is to giving up control, and being morally accountable to that Creator. But what we fail to realize is, we are not in control regardless. Control is an illusion, and there is actually a different puppeteer pulling our strings and he cares nothing about us in any way. By rejecting our true Creator, we are willingly accepting the enemy and his control by default. And upon our death, we will be rejected by our Creator that we rejected in life, and be united with the enemy that we embraced instead.
In case anyone wants to know from which perspective this comes... I am a Biblical Christian, not associated with any formal "religion". The Bible is what God says about Himself. "Religion" is what man says, that God says. These two sources can have commonalities, but are usually very different. The source we place our faith in, governs our actions and destiny.
I have much more to say on this subject but will suspend my "contribution" here.
Andy