yeah, its great when the religious whackaloons try making you live to the tune of their invisible friend. THAT'S the problem.
One thing that always twists my nips is the comments on news sites following a tragic story (like a highway accident ). Comment after comment with little more to say than "sending prayers to the family" or "our lord and savour will get you through this". Now I wouldn't dream of taking that as an opportunity to attack religion, not when the family or friends of victims might be reading it, but seriously, fuck... Pretty sure if there was some bearded dude in sandals, he couldn't possibly be any further away from events like Sandy Hook, and if not, then what a cunt.
I freely admit I don't have the science bona fides
You know what, that is fair and I respect you owning that. One thing that is great about this modern world is that we can learn all kinds of things about our universe without having to be physicists. My problem with modern atheism is that so few adherents to that ideology are equipped with the information necessary to truly know what they're standing for -- atheism is an incredibly bold position to take, and one that flies directly in the face of the 'scientific method' so many atheists hold dear.
Posted by splumer If I claim there is a china teapot orbiting Jupiter this very moment, there is no reason to believe that that is true unless I provide some evidence.
i disagree with the analogy. all varieties of religion, from animism to monotheism to polytheism all started with epistemology and in some cases even empiricism -- seeing an enormously complex world and having no answer as to how it could exist. belief in a supernatural entity is an altogether natural and understandable belief arising from the default human experience. how can any self-aware, generally sapient organism without sophisticated technological aids look at the world around them and not assume creation by a vastly more powerful agent? this was a conclusion arrived at by virtually every culture on earth. the human perspective is naturally and necessarily based on causal determinism, and having not witnessed the formation of the universe early humans very reasonably imagined a cause and effect whereby the world was the effect of a supernatural cause.
it is therefore also understandable that religion continues to thrive despite progress in what i'll simply term "science". the Big Bang is a great model, but does nothing to disprove a god and to the religious could simply be the mechanism by which the creator acted (though as time goes on the BB theory is facing some testing/observation stresses and may one day collapse). our inability to describe what happened prior to the Big Bang is one of the biggest holes in modern atheism (the model itself does NOT extend to whatever happened before it or it loses internal consistency and collapses), and the same determinism that many atheists apply to their worldview and use to bolster their framework of beliefs, collapses when a credible theory simply doesn't exist to model what happened before the Big Bang, and even earlier before the appearance of the reality we exist in.
if the universe and reality are eternal, they defy everything we know about the system of rules under which our universe operates. by all definitions, an eternal universe is categorically supernatural and unreasonable for an atheist to believe in.
if the universe and reality are not eternal, how did they come to be? what event triggered them? "nothing" lacks the properties and information whereby "something" can be generated. if an event spawned the universe, the information existed prior to the event and gave it its potential. and prior to that, something must have organized the information.
if the universe is simply one of infinite number, and we happen to exist in one where the jumble shook out to create physics and matter and energy that support life and we appeared over time through pure chance, randomness, and mutation -- seriously bro? is that scientific? it is philosophical, entirely, and has almost nothing to do with science.
these fundamental internal inconsistencies in the theory of pure atheism is why so many scientists are moving towards agnosticism, deism or even monotheism as a set of consistent-with-their-profession beliefs.
[some VERY abstract theories are being spun out by quantum theorists that attempt to answer some of these questions. they are VERY theoretical and are not worth discussing because they are so entirely outside our ability to observe/test/replicate that they are symbolically and logically indistinguishable from religion.]
Posted by splumer I take it you are also familiar with Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation for how everything in the universe works is that there are no supernatural agencies of any sort
I disagree with your application of this rule, as its usefulness in science is to help contrast between two or more theories which are each evidence-based. It is not credibly used in a discussion of the existence of supernatural entities, in any journal or institution I am aware of. I also disagree with your conclusion, "that it is simpler for the universe to exist without supernatural agencies". For the reasons I described in my section prior to this one, it requires an enormous amount of mental gymnastics to conjure up a universe where reality came to be spontaneously -- or an eternal universe that simply just 'is' without the need to recognize it as supernatural -- or an infinite number of universes, that "somehow" "because".
Posted by splumer For anything supernatural to exist (including ghosts, psychic phenomena, etc.) the known laws of nature have to be suspended, or simply be wrong.
I completely agree, which is why I find the atheist explanation of the universe almost wholly absurd. Atheists cherry pick religion for being based on the supernatural, without recognizing that their own belief system requires instead a universe which is itself supernatural.
Posted by splumer May I ask in which scientific field you work?
I am a behavioral scientist with no physical science credentials of any kind. I do have two advanced degrees, neither in the hard sciences. I routinely participate in the design, implementation and review of scientific studies designed to the strictest standards and subjected to peer review. All I know about these topics is what I read, or what I discuss with colleagues in other fields, same as any internet armchair expert. I am pompous but the facts are on my side.
In Conclusion:
Look. I am not saying that any religion on earth got it right, and i find religion incredibly dangerous and foolish in many cases. there's nothing i hate more than religious fundamentalists whose extremism harms others.
i also find religion beautiful and admirable in many cases, and find those whose religion is wonderful and enlightened.
i am also not saying god exists or that any supernatural agency exists.
I am saying, we do not know enough. the consensus of scientists from relevant fields is, we don't know enough and we likely never will. we have an incredibly narrow perspective, and can not even be sure reality and the many mechanisms that potentiate action and events in this reality are limited to the physical phenomena we can observe. there could be actions and events occurring all around us that are simply outside our current ability to observe, measure and test, and that are inconsistent with our understanding of reality. atheists are as incredibly arrogant in insisting that their ridiculously bold conclusions about reality based on a laughably limited perspective is accurate, as the religious are in their own. at least the religious claim to get this knowledge from somewhere better than the perspective of a freshly evolved organism to-this-point confined to a single planet and photonic-based line of sight to the rest of existence.
TLDR:
Q: "HOW DID IT ALL START"
A1: "IT DIDN'T" A2: "WE DON'T KNOW"
Freedom breeds war; and Peace, slavery. So it shall be forevermore: Men who love freedom buy it with their lives, and lovers of peace with their freedom.
One thing that always twists my nips is the comments on news sites following a tragic story (like a highway accident ). Comment after comment with little more to say than "sending prayers to the family" or "our lord and savour will get you through this".
I too find those comments repulsive.
Freedom breeds war; and Peace, slavery. So it shall be forevermore: Men who love freedom buy it with their lives, and lovers of peace with their freedom.
it is therefore also understandable that religion continues to thrive despite progress in what i'll simply term "science". the Big Bang is a great model, but does nothing to disprove a god and to the religious could simply be the mechanism by which the creator acted (though as time goes on the BB theory is facing some testing/observation stresses and may one day collapse). our inability to describe what happened prior to the Big Bang is one of the biggest holes in modern atheism (the model itself does NOT extend to whatever happened before it or it loses internal consistency and collapses),
Like I said, I'm no scientist, but I do have an interest in astrophysics and cosmology, and I am a merit badge counselor for astronomy. The Big Bang isn't facing any serious challenges that I am aware of, and hasn't been since the '60s. It's the generally accepted theory, according to a theoretical physicist I know at work (I work at a university). Also, according to most theorists, there was no "prior" to the BB. Lawrence Krauss' new book A Universe From Nothing (now out in paperback!) explains it quite well.
Science doesn't disprove god(s) because that isn't science's job. The existence of god(s) is inherently untestable, and so science doesn't bother.
all varieties of religion, from animism to monotheism to polytheism all started with epistemology and in some cases even empiricism -- seeing an enormously complex world and having no answer as to how it could exist.
A better analogy might be this: if my son all of a sudden had a seizure, were it 1000 years ago, I might have thought it was demons. Had I decided to sacrifice my dog at the moment his seizure ended, I might have concluded that my dog sacrifice caused the gods to cast out his demons. It didn't have to be a dog sacrifice, though. It could have been any action I took. You're probably familiar with Michael Shermer. In his book Why People Believe Weird Things, he offers the false positive scenario. If my African ancestors were walking through the tall grass, and heard a rustling sound, it might be a predator. If they reacted defensively, and it turned out to be the wind, no harm done. A false positive. If they didn't do anything, and it turned out to be a lion, I might not be here. A false negative. Continued survival depends on false positives. (And true positives, of course) Extrapolating to religion, if I pray for something, and it comes true, my behavior is reinforced. If I pray for something and don't get it, well, the gods weren't happy that I looked at another woman or did something else they didn't like.
That's not to say that in context it didn't make sense for early people to assume that gods had caused the weather or made the 'verse. My point was, and is, that as our understanding of the universe grows, our need for gods to explain its origins and function diminishes. I honestly can't think of a single thing science can't explain that is explained by a god, including the origin of the universe.
“We are not going to have the kind of cooperation we need if everyone insists on their own narrow version of reality. … the great divide in the world today … is between people who have the courage to listen and those who are convinced that they already know it all.”
Posted by splumer The Big Bang isn't facing any serious challenges that I am aware of, and hasn't been since the '60s. It's the generally accepted theory, according to a theoretical physicist I know at work (I work at a university).
It is the generally accepted theory, and as I said it is currently facing stresses due to its incompleteness. There are a number of inconsistencies and if these grow instead of shrink as the model is developed further, it will face yet more stresses. Your awareness of this has nothing to do with whether or not it is happening. In all likelihood it is simply incomplete and further refinement will prove it out -- but this isn't the important thing for us to discuss and I'm just getting this out of the way before more serious business.
Posted by splumer Also, according to most theorists, there was no "prior" to the BB. Lawrence Krauss' new book A Universe From Nothing (now out in paperback!) explains it quite well.
Eww. Oh splumer, you hung yourself here buddy and it's ugly You are fatally wrong that most theorists think there is no "prior" to the big bang. One of the biggest critiques of Krauss' book is how misleading the title is (the title was meant to sell copies and draw in mass-market readers). In fact, he articulates a fairly sophisticated quantum theory that necessitates all kind of "prior". Did you actually read it? It's controversial and Kruass' peers did all kinds of grumbling about how the book did a poor job explaining itself and doesn't even remotely answer the questions the title implies.
Hawking, Krauss, Turok, don't say there was no "prior", they say the prior is not testable, observable, falsifiable, and believe that the prior was somehow a quantum state. They've essentially raised the flag of "we don't know" as it is entirely outside their ability to model and so they stick to what they can interact with empirically. Hawking says in his [old but still highly relevant] lecture "Beginning of Time": "Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there's no way one could measure what happened at them."
Hawking's honesty is sobering, and important, and has characterized investigations into this since the 90's. If you properly understand what these great minds are saying, they are saying "we really don't know because we can't model it".
Think about this for a second, as an independent free thinker. If Hawking and Krauss are suggesting that time began at the big bang, and there is no "prior" in the physical sense as there was no time, how close exactly are we to the supernatural? Information and quantum laws existing in a time-less, mass-less, space-less, energy-less void? An event occurring (outside time of course) that then triggered the big bang?
These models take a hell of a lot of faith. Modern theorists don't have an easy job, but they're doing their best.
Posted by splumer Science doesn't disprove god(s) because that isn't science's job. The existence of god(s) is inherently untestable, and so science doesn't bother.
I agree. So are you saying that any discussion on these boards of the existence / non-existence of a supernatural agent must now necessarily be 100% philosophical and/or logical in character? I'm fine with that. However it brings us to the classic impasse where neither side can prove or disprove the other with logics.
Posted by splumer My point was, and is, that as our understanding of the universe grows, our need for gods to explain its origins and function diminishes. I honestly can't think of a single thing science can't explain that is explained by a god, including the origin of the universe.
I agree and also disagree. I agree that as our understanding grows, the list of things needing a supernatural agent to explain shrinks. I disagree though that there is not a single thing science can't explain that is explained by a god, and I proved myself earlier in this post.
Semantically let me be clear. As a coherent space-time phenomena, the genesis of this universe cannot be wholly explained by science and leading theorists admit this. The best/latest theory involves a quantum state that triggered the big bang, with no model to suggest how the quantum state came to be as it is categorically not observable, testable, measurable, falsifiable, etc.
As a extra-space-time phenomena called "reality", populated by information that is time-less, mass-less, energy-less, space-less, and is more or less the engine driving quantum mechanics, we can't possibly hope to model except philosophically what it is and how it works. Nevertheless theorists believe it exists.
You can almost say they believe in the supernatural. Something supremely powerful that exists outside their ability to interact with empirically.
Shit.
[edited: god these long posts].
[last edit 1/4/2013 7:21 PM by Aleksandar - edited 1 times] Freedom breeds war; and Peace, slavery. So it shall be forevermore: Men who love freedom buy it with their lives, and lovers of peace with their freedom.
Posted by Aleksandar certainly there's some mental illness going around in that cult.
Cult-a supernatural belief system founded somewhat recently with a small following Religion-A supernatural belief system founded a while back with a larger following
mutantMandias may cause dizziness, sexual nightmares, and sleep crime. ++++ mutantMandias has to return some videotapes ++++ Do not taunt mutantMandias
mutantMandias is something more than human, more than a computer. mutantMandias is a murderously intelligent, sensually self-programmed, non-being
“We are not going to have the kind of cooperation we need if everyone insists on their own narrow version of reality. … the great divide in the world today … is between people who have the courage to listen and those who are convinced that they already know it all.”
I am saying, we do not know enough. the consensus of scientists from relevant fields is, we don't know enough and we likely never will. we have an incredibly narrow perspective, and can not even be sure reality and the many mechanisms that potentiate action and events in this reality are limited to the physical phenomena we can observe. there could be actions and events occurring all around us that are simply outside our current ability to observe, measure and test, and that are inconsistent with our understanding of reality. atheists are as incredibly arrogant in insisting that their ridiculously bold conclusions about reality based on a laughably limited perspective is accurate, as the religious are in their own. at least the religious claim to get this knowledge from somewhere better than the perspective of a freshly evolved organism to-this-point confined to a single planet and photonic-based line of sight to the rest
+1 (behavioral scientists do it best)
Occam's razor is just that-- a crude heuristic, not a scientific conclusion.
Further, science is grossly misrepresented when the public latches on and concludes, "scientists cannot find evidence, therefore it doesn't exist." The inability to generate evidence (for/against a higher force/god) means just that; nothing more and nothing less.
[last edit 7/8/2013 5:19 AM by jukebox fuckup - edited 2 times] “Civilization today reminds me of an ape with a blowtorch playing in a room full of dynamite."
And the FLDS didn't even have the balls to pick a date, so they didn't get a party like the Mayans & Harold did.
(A side note- a couple people in this thread implied, after some name calling directed at the FLDS church, that we were being mean to them and that they were not hurting anyone. I find it a bit stunning that anyone can say this with a straight face. Do a bit of reading on Mormonism in general and fundamentalist Mormonism in particular then get back to me on that. I might recommend "God's Brothel", "Under the Banner of Heaven", and "The Complete Heretics Guide to Western Religion Vol 1-The Mormons". I will also remind you that this specific group still takes orders from their Prophet, even though he is in a jail cell for raping children (besides the ones he married), raping children (the ones he married), and helping other men rape children (by arranging their marriages). His sect marries persons to other immediate family members (though not as rampantly as the Kingston polygamous group), and he is being sued by the trustee for the FLDS collective for doing a bit of flock fleecing. Add in the ejecting of young males from less favored families (less competition for girls), the women almost all being on welfare as "single mothers", and a rampant culture of sexual abuse of children. This is not a harmless group.)
Ethics
The Big Bang isn't facing any serious challenges that I am aware of, and hasn't been since the '60s. It's the generally accepted theory, according to a theoretical physicist I know at work (I work at a university). Also, according to most theorists, there was no "prior" to the BB. Lawrence Krauss' new book A Universe From Nothing (now out in paperback!) explains it quite well.
You are fatally wrong that most theorists think there is no "prior" to the big bang. One of the biggest critiques of Krauss' book is how misleading the title is (the title was meant to sell copies and draw in mass-market readers). In fact, he articulates a fairly sophisticated quantum theory that necessitates all kind of "prior". Did you actually read it? It's controversial and Kruass' peers did all kinds of grumbling about how the book did a poor job explaining itself and doesn't even remotely answer the questions the title implies. 
