Ye Religion Thread

[metaL]

You should also take into account what you actually mean by  "perfect".
If we happened to breath hydrogen sulfide instead of oxygen, our atmosphere would be poisonous to us.
You only see our world as perfect, because you are the result of millions of years of adaptations that made creatures more adept at surviving on this planet.

good point.

 

yes indeed, a good point that further supports my claim! the fact that our air is 79% nitrogen, roughly 19-20% oxygen, and a minimal amount of argon, helium, etc.  INSTEAD of some poisionous gas just makes the "chances" athiests talk about even more improbable.

but im sorry, i do not feel that i am the result of "millions of years of adaptations".

what sort of biology have you been studying?

if by millions he meant only 2 than i would agree.  i just do not believe homo sapiens evolved from the earliest of monkeys, sorry.  and just to humor you, i've studied mainly anatomy, physiology, structure and evolution of vertebrates, and animal behavior for the most part, among other subjects. 

[reaper]

it's only a valid concept if you can identify what existed prior to that "one big bang" that started our universe.

valid concept? to who?

You pretty much have to support the cold-death theory of the end of the universe in order to agree with the "one big bang" theory..

? how much evidence is there for a multi-verse.  how much for scientific law that supports multiple big bangs - yet alone evidence to explain how and why and the deepest levels (which is what the whole idea of god does).

if by millions he meant only 2 than i would agree.  i just do not believe homo sapiens evolved from the earliest of monkeys, sorry.  and just to humor you, i've studied mainly anatomy, physiology, structure and evolution of vertebrates, and animal behavior for the most part, among other subjects.

evolution has so much evidence supporting it, and it's not a theory of chance.  the same as an earth like this being likely to form, considering there a trillions of planets that formed.  there were millions of opportunities for mutations, and "better" mutations were more likely to propagate.  evolution explains how things happened, all the way down to single cell life.

[Whirlingdervish]

it's only a valid concept if you can identify what existed prior to that "one big bang" that started our universe.

valid concept? to who?

to anyone who requires actual evidence based on observation. (for example.. scientists)

if by millions he meant only 2 than i would agree. i just do not believe homo sapiens evolved from the earliest of monkeys, sorry. and just to humor you, i've studied mainly anatomy, physiology, structure and evolution of vertebrates, and animal behavior for the most part, among other subjects.

why does everyone assume that because we are 98% genetically similar to apes, we must have evolved from a monkey? That's such a baseless assumption that it's almost ridiculous.

Why would it be so hard to believe that 2 beings that have nearly the same DNA might have come from a common ancestor? Why does this ancestor always have to be a monkey when were talking about humans?

Couldn't modern apes have evolved from a creature that was neither ape nor man, just as humans did?

People don't assume that all snake species were created individually and that they didn't evolve from a reptilian ancestor.
We even have fairly solid evidence that they, in fact, did evolve from a reptile. One with legs at that!
Saying they evolved from a lizard isn't accurate either. Modern lizards probably came from the same reptilian species that snakes did.


It seems you may have skipped the whole part of biology dealing with reproductive mutation, and the incredible similarities between all vertebrate embryos...

[reaper]

to anyone who requires actual evidence based on observation. (for example.. scientists)

there's many reasons why you would hypothesis there could only be one big bang, belief in god would be only one.  reasons for one big bang, of course there are many.  i'm not going to get into this, because it's not the point i'm making.

scientists have to a lot of things without observable evidence, especially when you are talking about  theoretical physics.

[quadz]

Stephen Hawking, what a total random a-hole!

yeah, the same guy who speaks as if global warming exists (to the extent it causes problems). if this guy says something, it doesn't mean it's right.

I haven't researched Hawking's position on global warming.

[Whirlingdervish]

to anyone who requires actual evidence based on observation. (for example.. scientists)

there's many reasons why you would hypothesis there could only be one big bang, belief in god would be only one. reasons for one big bang, of course there are many. i'm not going to get into this, because it's not the point i'm making.

scientists have to a lot of things without observable evidence, especially when you are talking about theoretical physics.

yes and no.


In order to prove conclusively that the universe is the product of one big bang and that it never had one prior to that, would require us to have observations that are impossible to get.

To assume that the universe has been repeatedly having big bangs, and then slowly contracting back into a super dense mass of particles, just takes a bit of extrapolation and observation of how the things that currently make up the universe work over time.

Thru observation and experimentation scientists have theorized fairly conclusively (nothing's certain) that:

If a system has finite energy in it, it can't keep expanding forever.
Eventually gravity will overcome the force of expansion and the system will contract.

this trend can be observed thoughout the known universe from the growth and death of galaxies all the way down to atomic behavior.


There's no need to exist before the universe did to make observations for this theory to be probable.
You don't have to make as many assumptions that can never be proven by experimentation...

Thus the multiple big-bang theory survives Occam's Razor pretty admirably by comparison to the single big bang theory.

Occam's Razor paraphrased by wikipedia:
when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, this principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest hypothetical entities.

[reaper]

You've never responded to my questions about how any theist can possibly believe there could be only one Big Bang.

What's God going to do when this Universe ends?  Twiddle His thumbs?  Seriously...

i don't understand this line of questioning, god can do what he wants, how he wants.  if he created the universe, lets assume he has some power.  how this relates to one big bang, or not, is beyond comprehension

and Hawking discovered, not only does God play dice, he even hides them where we can't see them.

this would be a big argument for a god, especially if there is only one big bang

I haven't researched Hawking's position on global warming.  However, unless he's getting senile, I'm willing to bet any case he's making for it is based on data from scientific research.  He may or may not be right, but I presume he is taking a position based on scientifically sound evidence.

neither have i; however i watched a snipet where he speaks about global warming (where it effects us) as fact.  no, this claim is not based on good scientific grounds

[reaper]

Thus the multiple big-bang theory survives Occam's Razor pretty admirably by comparison to the single big bang theory.

sure keep smoking that shit,  and you can violate principles fairly often.  rigging up things like you mentioned above doesn't matter. a principle is not a law. at times during the discovery of relativity, you could say newtons laws were more simple.  none of this matters regarding multiple big bangs, or one big bang, we don't know enough information yet

[Whirlingdervish]

yes we do have enough information!


we have recorded evidence that the universe is expanding thru astronomy and the results of tests where we compared the changing values of the spectrum of light from stars at a distance, over time, to determine the rate that they are moving away from us.

we can experiment on small closed systems to make observations of how energy is transferred and moved throughout a given amount of matter when it is acted on by gravity..

we know what atoms look like and how they behave on a subatomic level...

we have recorded evidence of the background radiation that was released by the big bang so we know something expanded rapidly and energetically...

primordial black holes anyone?

gamma rays without recordable causes?

we're even pretty damned sure that gravity exists!


All it takes to transform these bits of generally accepted scientific knowledge into a workable theory is a bit of math and some experimentation and a little inspiration. No dope required.

[reaper]

i'm not going to debate this. however  i think i understand the concepts well enough to determine you don't have enough information to make a valid comparison.

[Whirlingdervish]

how so?

If you can explain to me what happens to the universe after it stops expanding, then I'll drop this.
until then, it's the multiple big bang theory FTW!

[metaL]

fuck the big bang.

You've never responded to my questions about how any theist can possibly believe there could be only one Big Bang.

What's God going to do when this Universe ends?  Twiddle His thumbs?  Seriously...

lmao.

[Whirlingdervish]

yes indeed, a good point that further supports my claim! the fact that our air is 79% nitrogen, roughly 19-20% oxygen, and a minimal amount of argon, helium, etc. INSTEAD of some poisionous gas just makes the "chances" athiests talk about even more improbable.

Oxygen IS a heavily corrosive "poisonous" gas.
And we breath it.

Single celled life that lived millions of years before us was capable of
committing cellular respiration with other poisonous gases due to the composition of the atmosphere then..
like hydrogen sulfide.

this is why it's poisonous to us:
Our cells evolved from those one celled creatures.
Oxygen can be effectively replaced in our own cellular respiratory functions by Hydrogen Sulfide.
It binds to the same things. Those very same one celled creatures are the only reason we can survive today
They evolved to breathe our atmosphere as it changed, and without them no other life on earth would have been possible.

Life didn't start out breathing the same air we have today.

[reaper]

If you can explain to me what happens to the universe after it stops expanding, then I'll drop this.

no idea.  god could interfere and stop it from expanding

[quadz]

You've never responded to my questions about how any theist can possibly believe there could be only one Big Bang.
What's God going to do when this Universe ends?