Ye Religion Thread

[reaper]

He writes that one of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain "how the complex, improbable design in the universe arises", and argues that there are two competing explanations:

A theory involving a designer, that is, postulating a complex being to account for the complexity that we see.
A theory that explains how from simple origins and principles, something more complex can emerge.
This is the basic set-up of his argument against the existence of God, the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit,[15] where he argues that the first attempt is self-refuting, and the second approach is the way forward.[16]

What you quoted wasn't scientific evidence, just a common sense argument.

I've never heard of any evidence to the contrary...

There is plenty of science that is outlying a universe with no need for some sort of meta-verse to start it off.  We will see how these theories develope, right now they seem sketchy at best.  Look at Stephen Hawking's "no boundary proposal".  This theory describes a self contained universe, with no beginning and end - it has and will exist forever.  But the universe is expanding, and according to the "best" calculations, it appears our universe should die of heat death.  So the universe exists forever in a baron state.  If this is the case, we should feel even more "lucky" to be alive.  Or our understanding of the universe is wrong.  I think it shows how little understanding of the universe we have at this point, but we will see.

SUE: To oversimplify your theories hugely, and I hope you'll forgive me for this, Stephen, you once believed, as I understand it, that there was a point of creation, a big bang, but you no longer believe that to be the case. You believe that there was no beginning and there is no end, that the universe is self-contained. Does that mean that there was no act of creation and therefore that there's no place for God?

STEPHEN: Yes, you have oversimplified. I still believe the universe has a beginning in real time, at the big bang. But there's another kind of time, imaginary time, at right angles to real time, in which the universe has no beginning or end. This would mean that the way the universe began would be determined by the laws of physics. One wouldn't have to say that God chose to set the universe going in some arbitrary way that we couldn't understand. It says nothing about whether or not God exists - just that He isn't arbitrary.

i'm sure the catholic church doesn't like that idea, because just one big bang fits in with a creator quite nicely.  but I understand what you are saying, a simple beginning would be simple, and imply we have already have a great understanding of all that is.  I'm glad people are free to believe whatever they want, at least around here.  I am reading his book, although I"m not athiest, I have no problem reading someone else's views.

[reaper]

We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics,
something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in
the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the
biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present
are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently
better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an
intelligent designer.

practically no one invents a god to solve problems of improbability. as I have shown before, believing we are at a pinnacle of understanding doesn't have much scientific basis at best, and is cleary a fundamental stronghold of his argument.  let's just make up probabilities when we don't know anything, and claim these probabilities are much stronger than religious belief??

I like how he used the word hope, it almost makes his beliefs seem similar to religion. the belief that we are on the verge of a simple explanation for everything, basically because somehow evolution of life somehow relates to evolution of the cosmos.

I'm almost done with this book.  since he decided to poke holes in other people's work (something about jotting "teapot" down in a book's margin), I decided to do the same thing with his book.  maybe it will make for an interesting discussion.

[DaHanG]

We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics,
something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in
the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the
biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present
are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently
better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an
intelligent designer.

practically no one invents a god to solve problems of improbability.

It does seem that's exactly what you do, even admitting to believing in a "God of the gaps". I wish it was true that people didn't, simply because any entity capable of creating a universe would require a seemingly infinitely complex range of power and intellect, and therefore be far more improbable than the universe itself.

as I have shown before, believing we are at a pinnacle of understanding doesn't have much scientific basis at best, and is cleary a fundamental stronghold of his argument.

Again, you have quoted the exact opposite of what you are trying to argue against. Your quote consists of admitting we are awaiting a 'Darwin' for the field of physics. You interpret this as Dawkins claiming we're at the 'pinnacle of understanding'.

 

[reaper]

Again, you have quoted the exact opposite of what you are trying to argue against. Your quote consists of admitting we are awaiting a 'Darwin' for the field of physics. You interpret this as Dawkins claiming we're at the 'pinnacle of understanding'.

Ted Nelson, Customer: But why do they put a guarantee on the box?
Tommy: Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That's all it is, isn't it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time.

to Dawkin's comparing god to a flying teacup may seem rational, but to many people (probably billions), god is not about specifics.  the question is, does a god exist or not.  which of course, is not probable, because god is complicated, and somehow evolution relates to the beginning of the cosmos (nice hunch..).  without knowing wtf is up, you have no idea if it's even possible for the universe to just be, so you can't say it's less probable, because a universe that just exists is simplier.  at least not to the point where it's backed by such a strong case.  not to mention you're inventing a billion universes to solve a problem (isn't that the similar to what he complains about?).  and evidence that this universe dies of heath death is creating the problem of chance, such bad chance that people won't accept the anthropic prinicple.

then there is the limits on scope he places, I certainly have an imagination that can conjur up some strange things, that I wouldn't discount (especially with a billion universe).  are we in a simulation? is there a god of us, and then a god of someone else? without the knowledge who knows, you certainly have many possibilities,  as well as a massive amount of time and intellegent life involved.

[quadz]

to Dawkin's comparing god to a flying teacup may seem rational, but to many people (probably billions), god is not about specifics. the question is, does a god exist or not

It seems you may have missed the point?  Dawkins isn't "comparing god to a flying teacup." 

"Russell's teapot, of course, stands for an infinite number of things whose existence is conceivable and cannot be disproved. [...] A philosophical favorite is the invisible, intangible, inaudible unicorn, disproof of which is attempted yearly by the children at Camp Quest. [...] That you cannot prove God's non-existence is accepted and trivial, if only in the sense that we can never absolutely prove the non-existence of anything. What matters is not whether God is disprovable (he isn't) but whether his existence is probable. That is another matter. Some undisprovable things are sensibly judged far less probable than other undisprovable things. There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can neither be proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent."

When I read the above on the plane the other night, my first thought was: Reaper has got to read this.  Because we have been over this same ground so many times on this thread, and every time you seem to retreat to some definition of god that scoots out to just beyond the fringes of our ability to make scientific observations, (like before the big bang), and go, aha! NOW you can't say anything about whether god is likely to exist!

All the while, you seem to ignore the decreasing probabilities that god is needed to explain anything about the universe from the big bang, forward. 

But these are the very probabilities that should not be ignored.  There is less and less reason to invoke the supernatural to explain any event in the last 15 billion years since the big bang.

If we choose to ignore the weight of the mounting evidence that no supernatural meddling was needed to explain the unfoldment of the universe since the big bang, and instead scoot back before the big bang and claim, "nobody knows!", then we have simply reduced our argument to one that is "accepted and trivial."  I.e. we are now entering the Flying Spaghetti Monster and invisible unicorn zone.  But we can only get there by blithely ignoring the implications of the lack of necessity for supernatural involvement for the past 15 billion years.


Regards,

quadz

[reaper]

to Dawkin's comparing god to a flying teacup may seem rational, but to many people (probably billions), god is not about specifics. the question is, does a god exist or not

It seems you may have missed the point?  Dawkins isn't "comparing god to a flying teacup." 

in your quote below, he was not,  and he takes time to disect every possible reason for existance of god, which if he were right, would make god "a flying teacup".  however I think he discounts solid evidence of god, and I have seen him respond when asked "what if you're wrong" by pointing out that all the religions cannot be true - what if you are wrong.  so that is kind of splitting hairs.  basically he discounts all the evidence for god, good for him, not that it matters, but currently he's the minority.  also I could care less about the poor studies on what obviously biased (by the nature of their work) scientists think.  religion can form a strong argument here, does he think this is a good argument?  any way you look at it, x, y and z people believing in god or not, is not a great argument  for either side.

"Russell's teapot, of course, stands for an infinite number of things whose existence is conceivable and cannot be disproved. [...] A philosophical favorite is the invisible, intangible, inaudible unicorn, disproof of which is attempted yearly by the children at Camp Quest. [...] That you cannot prove God's non-existence is accepted and trivial, if only in the sense that we can never absolutely prove the non-existence of anything. What matters is not whether God is disprovable (he isn't) but whether his existence is probable. That is another matter. Some undisprovable things are sensibly judged far less probable than other undisprovable things. There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can neither be proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent."

 

When I read the above on the plane the other night, my first thought was: Reaper has got to read this.  Because we have been over this same ground so many times on this thread, and every time you seem to retreat to some definition of god that scoots out to just beyond the fringes of our ability to make scientific observations, (like before the big bang), and go, aha! NOW you can't say anything about whether god is likely to exist!



But these are the very probabilities that should not be ignored.  There is less and less reason to invoke the supernatural to explain any event in the last 15 billion years since the big bang.

If we choose to ignore the weight of the mouting evidence that no supernatural meddling was needed to explain the unfoldment of the universe since the big bang, and instead scoot back before the big bang and claim, "nobody knows!", then we have simply reduced our argument to one that is "accepted and trivial."  I.e. we are now entering the Flying Spaghetti Monster and invisible unicorn zone.  But we can only get there by blithely ignoring the implications of the lack of necessity for supernatural involvement for the past 15 billion years.

yes the book is good, but It makes me think he'd be a bad reporter, so much bias and lack of perspective in his book.  yet he's not writing a news column, so I'll cut him some slack, although, I've been writing down where I think he should of elaborated, and what points I think he missed.

just because we can describe evolution from macro-molecules, does not make it a even remotely  complete explanation of how life came about.  although you could pose the question "does god need to interfere with the universe after the big bang?" , and it seems probable the answer is no.  the catholic church _Likes_ the big bang, and this is why - what science has discovered so far has not interfered with their belief.  and in their own minds, only added to it (yes mine too).  although I am not a christian, I believe a christian type god is probable.  something else could of been revealed, but the big bang was revelead, and if there is a creator, that's how the universe should appear at the start.

I have never looked to god for an answer to lighting, or evolution of life,  I was on board with evolution from a young age, I believe god to be probable, if science shows something, personally I take that into account.

[quadz]

he takes time to disect every possible reason for existance of god, which if he were right, would make god "a flying teacup".

I don't understand what you're driving at.  Even if we were able to shoot down every possible reason extraterrestrial life might exist, it wouldn't make extraterrestrial life into flying teacups.  I don't understand why you are saying doing the same for god would make god "a flying teacup."  I don't know what that means.

I think he discounts solid evidence of god

Such as?

[reaper]

I don't understand what you're driving at.  Even if we were able to shoot down every possible reason extraterrestrial life might exist, it wouldn't make extraterrestrial life into flying teacups.  I don't understand why you are saying doing the same for god would make god "a flying teacup."  I don't know what that means.

I suppose that's true

I think he discounts solid evidence of god


Such as?

life itself, the perfection of the world, a purpose of the universe, etc.  god solves the problem of chance at the start of the big bang.  god already exists, and that is the truth, so  introducing god is not creating new problems (at least none that I am very concerened with).  I haven't written a book on "evidence for god existenance", but I'm sure it would be hard to put into words.  belief in god is ingrained in people, it would seem to me the burden of proof would be on anyone saying god doesn't exist, to provide some sort of alternative explanation.  but that doesn't matter to me either, to me god is very likely, and that's just that..until there is good reason to believe otherwise.

one interesting thing that can be done is to take god out of text, and realize the same message could be potrayed without the use of god.  arguments could be formed for god, if you replaced Dawkin's ideas of morals without god, with a god.

I like the example of the riot in Montreal, .. I can't remember the specifics.

I feel if people truly didn't believe in god (i suspect many say they don't believe in god, but still fear god), things would be qutie different, and not for the better.

 

[DaHanG]

I think he discounts solid evidence of god


Such as?

life itself

Everything except the spark of the bacterium-like life 4 billion years ago is explained through our modern understanding of the theory of evolution, which is an extremely economical, elegant, simple theory where apparently no supernatural intervention is required.

the perfection of the world

A completely private interpretation of 'perfect' in this context is not evidence.

a purpose of the universe

Who says there's a [deliberate, conscious] purpose?

god solves the problem of chance at the start of the big bang.

Lets explain chance away by introducing an even more complex entity to account for it, which is therefore even more statistically improbable.

 

belief in god is ingrained in people, it would seem to me the burden of proof would be on anyone saying god doesn't exist, to provide some sort of alternative explanation.

So because many people have personal convictions on something, that particular something is assumed to be true?

 

[zndkw1n]

fuck religion, religion is for neocons like bush to justify invading other nations.

[|iR|Focalor]

fuck religion, religion is for neocons like bush to justify invading other nations.

ONE OF THESE:


GET ONE!!!!

[reaper]

I think he discounts solid evidence of god


Such as?


life itself

Everything except the spark of the bacterium-like life 4 billion years ago is explained through our modern understanding of the theory of evolution, which is an extremely economical, elegant, simple theory where apparently no supernatural intervention is required.

The theory of evolution doesn't explain  how and why the molecules, necessary for life to form, exist.  And there is no solid theory based on fact, that remotely explains how the molecules needed for life are around, in the form life needs, or how they exist at all.   If you feel life, as we know it, is probable based on the theory of evolution, then explaning complex molecules  should _at least_ be considered half the story (my guess is it's only a sliver of life's explanation).  These molecules (althought not alive) are the building blocks of life,  and therefore their explanation is of great importance to a theory of how life came about.  

Based on the theory of evolution, life could theoretically be simulated  as an adaptive computer virus, and the building blocks to create this virus, are surely as important if we are to judge the strength of this theory.

the purpose of the universe is an important question to ask imo, although Dawnin's completely ignores it, perhaps because science cannot test such a quesion.

[|iR|Focalor]

Evolution...

As basically an atheist, there are many people like me who believe that evolution is fact. I'm not so sure. Of course there is medical research which proves that viruses and diseases can morph into drug resistant strains. Our own bodies are capable of similar change through the immune system. But laying aside all the mountains of evidence provided which would prove or disprove the theory of evolution, I can only look objectively at one thing. It is theorized that man evolved from ape. If survival of the fittest is absolutely true, why are there plenty of other primates existing today? I would think they would have all been the WEAKER species and would have died off long ago.

It seems to me that debating such things is rather pointless anyway. What is to be gained from the knowledge of our origins? The disproving of divine creationism? What will be changed here and now by it's discovery? All of the research and time spent on arguing this debate would be more productive if directed at other avenues. This is why I never really debate religion with people. There is not, nor will there ever be, a sufficient amount of bedrock factual evidence to support the dogma of the majority of the religions out there. Most of them are based upon "faith", which conveniently denies the practitioner any tangible evidence to evaluate the validity of it's dogma.

[reaper]

It seems to me that debating such things is rather pointless anyway. What is to be gained from the knowledge of our origins? The disproving of divine creationism? What will be changed here and now by it's discovery?

cool shows on the discovery channel?

seriously though, for one, we can better understand the enemy.

[quadz]

As basically an atheist, there are many people like me who believe that evolution is fact. I'm not so sure. Of course there is medical research which proves that viruses and diseases can morph into drug resistant strains. Our own bodies are capable of similar change through the immune system. But laying aside all the mountains of evidence provided which would prove or disprove the theory of evolution, I can only look objectively at one thing. It is theorized that man evolved from ape. If survival of the fittest is absolutely true, why are there plenty of other primates existing today? I would think they would have all been the WEAKER species and would have died off long ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

One nice thing about being an athiest, is it's actually fun to learn more about the science, without having to worry about one's faith being shaken.

It seems to me that debating such things is rather pointless anyway.

I suspect most posting here in this thread are doing so for fun.  Personally, as a side-effect of researching my posts here, i've learned more about such diverse topics as black holes, and cellular reproduction.

So for me, it's fun - plus I sometimes learn stuff.

What is to be gained from the knowledge of our origins? The disproving of divine creationism? What will be changed here and now by it's discovery?

Myself, I think it's fucking awesome that people can't get away with telling us anymore that the sun revolves around the earth, or that the earth is only 6,000 years old, etc.

But there are also practical applications.  In order to learn more about our origins, science has to continue expanding the frontiers of knowledge along many fronts.  General relativity is used in GPS systems.  I think quantum field theory is used these days in microprocessor design.  Learning more about our genetic makeup will lead to cures for more diseases.

In general, I'd say advances in cosmology and biology could broadly be viewed as expanding our knowledge about our origins.

Personally I'm all for it. 


Regards,

quadz