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| Author |
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| 25 new of 372 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 75 of 372:
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Jun 5 21:05 UTC 2002 |
Re #70: what is the point of creating a fanciful explanation from no
evidence (i.e., gods)? There is no need to "disprove" idle speculation
of that sort based upon no evidence whatsoever. There have in history
been a slew of such speculations (flat earth, the ethereal sphere,
gods, etc). They are just speculations in seek of evidence. Until
there is evidence, there is no reason to give them credence.
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eskarina
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response 76 of 372:
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Jun 5 21:31 UTC 2002 |
Why does the existence of science seem to imply to people that there is no
God? If I can predict the weather, does that mean there is no weather?
And I protest the fact that so far, no one has given me a single definition
of religion, so at the moment it seems like we are all talking about different
things.
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orinoco
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response 77 of 372:
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Jun 5 21:53 UTC 2002 |
(So far in human history, nobody's been able to settle on a single definition
of religion. So it goes.)
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klg
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response 78 of 372:
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Jun 6 00:25 UTC 2002 |
re: "Hypothesis 1: The universe came to being" All on its own?
A scientist was arguing with G-d. The scientist said, "I am as
powerful as You." G-d said, "I made a man out of dust."
The scientist said, "I can do that, too," and started gathering
dust with his hands. G-d exclaimed, "Make your own dust!"
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bru
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response 79 of 372:
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Jun 6 01:40 UTC 2002 |
Okay, what about miracles? Do they or do they not exist? There have been
instances where a scientist has said. "there is no known way for this to have
occured. Yet, here we see that this has occured. How?"
If a woman falls out of an airplane traveling at 300 mph at an altitude of
20,000 feet, what scientific assumption can you make of the instant she hits
the ground? Science says she will hit the ground at x mph and will be killed.
yet we have proven instances where soemone has fallen out of a plane and
survived under just those circumstances. Was it a miracle? Or is there some
failure in science?
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russ
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response 80 of 372:
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Jun 6 01:43 UTC 2002 |
Re #59: Atoms, molecules and even polymers have preferred modes of
assembly. You can radically increase the order of molten silicon
dioxide by cooling it slowly, bleeding the heat (and disorder) off
into the wider environment and allowing a quartz crystal to form.
You can take a very disorderly mixture of water, ammonia, carbon
dioxide and methane and "shake the bag" with electric sparks or
ultraviolet light; you get out "clocks" like amino acids. This isn't
an exercise in statistics or theory, this is laboratory chemistry.
Some of this stuff is highly counter-intuitive, but so's a lot of
thermodynamics - you can't argue against it without denying a lot
of very well-confirmed experimental proofs.
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jmsaul
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response 81 of 372:
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Jun 6 02:08 UTC 2002 |
Re #79: t's all about probabilities. Real-life situations are more
complex than 9th grade physics is, and you'll get a range of
outcomes. Some, like the person surviving, will be very rare --
they aren't the "expected" outcome, because they're so rare, but
they're explainable by science even so.
The other time you'll hear a scientist say that is when they're
observing a phenomenon they don't understand yet. That doesn't
mean it doesn't have a scientific explanation, just that they don't
know the explanation yet.
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rcurl
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response 82 of 372:
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Jun 6 03:23 UTC 2002 |
In regard to "miracles", I think it was Thomas Paine that asked the
observer to consider the relative likelihood that a miracle actually
occurred versus someone lying. (This doesn't prove anything, except that
Paine had a cynical streak.)
Re #76: it is not the existence of science, which is simply observations
and logic working together, that implies that there are no gods. It is the
fanciful invention of gods by people followed by a complete lack of any
evidence supporting the speculation, that implies that there are no gods.
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md
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response 83 of 372:
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Jun 6 11:32 UTC 2002 |
Re the question in #76 -- "Why does the existence of science seem to
imply to people that there is no God?" -- I'm sorry Rane answered that
first. Juvenile anti-religion ranting like his doesn't imply anything
about all atheists, either.
When someone says, as I said somewhere up there, that there is no need
to posit the existence of a god to explain the process that led from
post-Big-Bang chaos to the development of what we call "order" -- suns,
planets, atmospheres, water, life -- that really isn't "the existence
of science implying that there is no God." All it means is that if you
are looking for evidence of God's existence, you need to look somewhere
other than specific physical processes like star-formation and the
evolutionary development of species. You might have some flash of
illumination, but if you don't, others have and some of them have
recorded it for posterity. When someone like Rane mocks your ideas as
fanciful or completely lacking in evidence (he gets so much pleasure
out of it he literally can't stop, so expect it), you should understand
that it is completely beside the point.
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jaklumen
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response 84 of 372:
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Jun 6 11:47 UTC 2002 |
Well, not everyone agrees on the definition of faith, either, so it
does make such things a bit more difficult.
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russ
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response 85 of 372:
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Jun 6 11:55 UTC 2002 |
Re #69: The difference, Paul, is that it would be doubtful if your
set of rules was very useful for anything other than winning that
particular battle. The rules of science have broad utility.
Re #70: Occam's Razor can be stated "Do not multiply entities
needlessly". A scientific theory is a way of describing how the
observations might have come to be; if you postulate an entity
which could have done literally *anything*, you've got a much
bigger (infinite) set of possibilities out of which to explain
the observations than if you postulate the operation of an
impersonal, limited force. This is why we're all but certain
that the motion of planets is due to an inverse-square force of
gravity rather than angels pushing them around, to give just one
example. (Though Velikovsky would no doubt feel otherwise.)
Re #71: Hypothesis 2 also requires that God literally lie about
the origins of creation. Theists should find this discomfiting.
Re #79: People have fallen out of aircraft and survived due to
freak circumstances, such as being slowed by the branches of pine
trees and coming to rest in deep snow on a steep slope. You can
call this a miracle but the phenomenon is accidental, not divine;
we can explain those incidents where we have sufficient information,
and most people in similar circumstances miss having the exact set
of necessary circumstances and wind up dead.
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brighn
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response 86 of 372:
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Jun 6 16:00 UTC 2002 |
Russ put it more blatantly, but the relevant part of Hypothesis #2 that
Theists tend to miss is that, by their view, God didn't just create the
universe, He then *hid.* When I write a story that I particularly like, I show
it to people. I say, "I wrote this." I'm proud of my work. When God created
the universe, He also made it possible for people to doubt His existence by
failing to show up at the coffeehouse every third Tuesday to say Hi to
everyone.
I'm not saying I agree with the application of Occam's Razor to the existence
of Deity, I'm saying that I agree with Rane that the idea that "the simpler
theory is preferred to the more complicated one, if both account for the data
equaaly well" heavily favors atheism. Nothing that's been said so far, from
Jamie's cussing to Bruce and John's theological gymnastics, has contradicted
that.
The bit that comes close is the bit about dust not being created from nowhere,
but that IS covered by Hypothesis #1 (which, I'll note, Rane has failed to
argue with, dispute his typical willingness to argue with me on these topics,
so it must be in the realm of acceptability for him): Dust exists because,
if it did not, then we would not exist in our current nature in order to
observe it. The universe is as it is because if it were anything else, we
would be in a different universe experienceing different things. (This is a
sloppy use of "because," and I hope my sense gets through... the universe is
at it is for a wide array of reasons.)
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eskarina
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response 87 of 372:
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Jun 6 16:20 UTC 2002 |
Why does a miracle have to contradict science? The Jews celebrate Purim as
a miracle, but certainly no scientific laws were defied. How about
forgiveness of sins? Science has nothing to say, its simply not science's
area.
People just notice more if a "scientific law" that the have percieved is
defied in a miracle. But there is some _reason_ that the miracle occured,
it didn't occur outside of reality, or physics. We just call it a miracle
when we didn't expect it to happen. Like David killing Goliath.
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rcurl
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response 88 of 372:
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Jun 6 18:04 UTC 2002 |
Re #83: it is like md to mock other people's ideas, but I would like him
to know that I did not speak mockingly in #82: I was quite sober and
serious. Where did the idea of gods come from? It was thought up by people
as a fancy, to explain what they did not understand, and the complete lack
of evidence for the speculation is documentable - that is, no one has
produced solid reproducible evidence for the existence of gods. Calling
this point "Juvenile anti-religion ranting" is just word bullying.
My perception is that people mean something more than "a low probability
event" when they use the term miracle. I observe many low probability
events but cannot imagine them being "miracles", probably because of the
implication of a "miraculous cause" for the event. The causes of low
probability events can be no different in kind from high probability
events, just fewer in number ("ways"). David and Goliath is just a story,
but illustrates this with an example of a smaller weaker person slaying a
bigger stronger person. I believe the story said he did it with a sling.
Today, it would be with a gun. Would anyone call it a miracle today if a
small weak person shot a big strong bully?
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vmskid
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response 89 of 372:
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Jun 6 18:16 UTC 2002 |
rane, what exactly would you consider 'evidence" of god's supposed existence?
Since you are keen on evidence, I would be curious to know what, if any,
evidence you would consider in favour of deism. BTW, you are wrong saying that
science does not ise any basic axioms. To start with, it assumes that the
world is logically understandable by the human mind, when it is entirely
possible that humans create a measure of this order to make the world more
understadable. When you get right down to it, we'd be hard pressed to prove
that we actually exist, but I don't doubt that i do.
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brighn
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response 90 of 372:
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Jun 6 18:22 UTC 2002 |
I believe the first paragraph of #88. especially the first two lines, is the
overeducated equivalent of, "I'm rubber and you're glue!" ;}
Calling Gods a fanciful invention of the ignorant is word-bullying, too. Pot,
meet kettle.
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rcurl
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response 91 of 372:
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Jun 6 18:31 UTC 2002 |
I did not use the term "ignorant", although it is true that gods were
invented in a period of poor understanding of natural processes.
"Ignorance" is usually a relative term, within a context of what is
known and what some don't know of that body of knowledge. Back when
people had only a small body of knowledge, the problem was more lack
of information than ignorance of the information that was known.
I am not familiar with "..rubber..glue..". What does it mean?
How are gods different from other fanciful inventions, like Peter Pan?
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brighn
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response 92 of 372:
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Jun 6 19:36 UTC 2002 |
The whole thing is, "I'm rubber and you're glue, what you say bounces off me
and sticks to you." The even more childish variant is, "I know you are but
what am I?" either is heard on elementary schoolgrounds in response to an
insult. E.g.:
Lil Mikey: "You're so mean, Curlie!"
Lil Curlie: "I know you are but what am I?"
Around middle school, the phrases are replaced with the slightly more mature,
"Stop talking to yourself." and then the mockly-sympathetic, "You really
shouldn't be so hard on yourself."
The Gods are different than Peter Pan because people who read stories about
Peter Pan don't really believe he exists.
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md
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response 93 of 372:
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Jun 6 19:52 UTC 2002 |
Re 88: "the fanciful invention of gods by people followed by a complete
lack of any evidence" does sound juvenile. Can't you hear that? Just
a little? Oh well. <shrug>
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vmskid
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response 94 of 372:
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Jun 6 19:56 UTC 2002 |
Re 91: People don't have a much better base of knowledge now. they still rely
on faith. How many of us actually test all of the theories that we accept en
masse by the high priests of science? I know I don't. And i decided long ago
that if quantum mechanics can be true, then all bets are off. ;)
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drew
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response 95 of 372:
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Jun 6 19:57 UTC 2002 |
ISTR hearing that there exist primative cultures that have no concept of any
gods. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
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eskarina
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response 96 of 372:
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Jun 6 20:11 UTC 2002 |
So Rane, what is a miracle?
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vmskid
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response 97 of 372:
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Jun 6 20:15 UTC 2002 |
An atheist being mistaken about something?
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oval
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response 98 of 372:
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Jun 6 20:27 UTC 2002 |
the world and life are choas. science and religion are evil conspiracies of
the illuminati.
<hands grex a golden apple with a "k" on it and runs away>
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vmskid
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response 99 of 372:
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Jun 6 20:27 UTC 2002 |
HAIL ERIS!!!
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