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Laborious religious arguments thread


Saxon
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5 hours ago, FlynnCoyote said:

It's almost as if their morality is actually coming from empathy, fancy that.

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me trying to figure out at what point I even implied religion and empathy are mutually exclusive 

 

no shit it comes from empathy, but it still doesn't erase the fact that they believe violent extremism isn't a thing their god(s) or religious text teaches 

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5 minutes ago, willow said:

me trying to figure out at what point I even implied religion and empathy are mutually exclusive 

You didn't. That's exactly what I was saying. People of faith are often still guided by empathy.

6 minutes ago, willow said:

no shit it comes from empathy, but it still doesn't erase the fact that they believe violent extremism isn't a thing their god(s) or religious text teaches 

Which they quite often believe wrongly, preferring to envisage their god as the shining beacon of morality rather than the genocidal war monger that the scripture depicts it as.

Thus supporting my point that we don't actually need religion to form morality. Following?

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14 minutes ago, FlynnCoyote said:

You didn't. That's exactly what I was saying. People of faith are often still guided by empathy.

Yes people of faith still have basic human emotions. They also breath oxygen. I'm glad we could come to these conclusions 

also yes I get what you're saying. Your point? 

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8 hours ago, Xaende said:

Galileo was an admirable man. He stood up to the establishment, including other scientists, for what he knew to be true. The political situation of his day was deeply intertwined with science and religion, so the law came down pretty hard on him. He was not only brilliant, but demonstrated great courage. If I'm not mistaken, he was also a Catholic himself. Just one who happened to know that the planets revolve around the sun, and more important things to do than keep the Pope happy.

I don't condone the use of "God did it" in the manner you describe. I'm merely saying that no matter what is found, someone who believes God is responsible for everything, will still believe in their heart of hearts that "God did it". Not as an answer or an end piece, but the lens through which they look.

The relation of fairies to what most people consider "god" is tenuous at best. You are comparing a mythical entity to the idea that there's some kind of intelligence behind the creation of the universe.

I understand what you're getting at, but none of it is relevant to the actual science. Empirical data should be what matters.

To be honest, Galileo lived in a time when failing to proclaim one's religious belief would have resulted in being burned as a heretic.
Giordo Bruno, another Italian scientist who suggested that there might be life on other planets, was burnt alive because the holy scripture does not make mention of life on other planets.
Looking through a lens distorts one's perception of reality. You didn't intend it, but this analogy is apt.

Of course I chose faeries, this is a 'reductio ad absurdum' argument; I am using the same reasoning that is used to shove god into the picture to show you that we could shove anything we wanted into the picture, even something as silly as faeries. This shows that the reasoning you used was poor.
I agree that empirical data matters, and guess what? No empirical data implies teleology in nature; assuming design by a God isn't supported by empiricism.

 

7 hours ago, willow said:

me trying to figure out at what point I even implied religion and empathy are mutually exclusive 

no shit it comes from empathy, but it still doesn't erase the fact that they believe violent extremism isn't a thing their god(s) or religious text teaches 

You have missed an important argument.

You said you were fine with religion if it made people good.

But you already need to be a good person in order to ignore the evil parts of religious scriptures.

/snip

I think your argument is pretty good.

Normally people expect a claim to be proven before they accept it, but in the case of religion the claim is accepted without proof, and will not be dislodged until it is 'disproven', which it never will be because its believers will always make rationalisations like Xaende was explaining.

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2 hours ago, Saxon said:

 

You have missed an important argument.

You said you were fine with religion if it made people good.

But you already need to be a good person in order to ignore the evil parts of religious scriptures.

Because it's not the message they got from their readings...

To entertain this argument though, obviously being able to recognize that hurting people is bad comes in part from the fact that you are able to experience normal human emotions, but also because it doesn't align with their religious beliefs

my other statement about religion making people good isn't contradictory either. on the one hand, I'm talking about people who are nice because their religion basically says 'be nice to people', which bars groups like  Westboro. 

on the other hand, I'm talking about people who previously may have not been religious, but found strength in it

and it wasn't just about morality or how they treat others either

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34 minutes ago, willow said:

Because it's not the message they got from their readings...

To entertain this argument though, obviously being able to recognize that hurting people is bad comes in part from the fact that you are able to experience normal human emotions, but also because it doesn't align with their religious beliefs

my other statement about religion making people good isn't contradictory either. on the one hand, I'm talking about people who are nice because their religion basically says 'be nice to people', which bars groups like  Westboro. 

on the other hand, I'm talking about people who previously may have not been religious, but found strength in it

and it wasn't just about morality or how they treat others either

I think my overarching message is that, given that we must use reason to figure out what is moral anyway, religion is redundant.

You probably see that rejection of nasty parts of a religion, because they 'don't align with the religious ethos' is quite a big mess; we could pick and choose anything we want by this method, if we didn't rely on outside reasoning to determine which parts are good and which parts are nasty.

Edit: come to think of it, it is confusing that people draw strength of conviction from moral ideas they already hold being included in texts that demand the death of apostates and homosexuals. One would have imagined that this would be cause for uncertainty.

 

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3 hours ago, Saxon said:

To be honest, Galileo lived in a time when failing to proclaim one's religious belief would have resulted in being burned as a heretic.
Giordo Bruno, another Italian scientist who suggested that there might be life on other planets, was burnt alive because the holy scripture does not make mention of life on other planets.
Looking through a lens distorts one's perception of reality. You didn't intend it, but this analogy is apt.

Of course I chose faeries, this is a 'reductio ad absurdum' argument; I am using the same reasoning that is used to shove god into the picture to show you that we could shove anything we wanted into the picture, even something as silly as faeries. This shows that the reasoning you used was poor.
I agree that empirical data matters, and guess what? No empirical data implies teleology in nature; assuming design by a God isn't supported by empiricism.

My mention of the lens was intentional, and my reasoning is sound. Be mindful of your own lens.

Science is a field which can bring together the religious and irreligious alike. People don't need to be lock-step in their personal beliefs in order to use and benefit from the scientific method. One doesn't need to be an atheist or a theist order to contribute. Insisting that they do hurts the cause.

People like Galileo were penalized because those in charge insisted on ideological purity. This is a recurring theme within powerful human social structures. Whether religious or irreligious, the underlying mechanism is the same.

 

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13 minutes ago, Xaende said:

My mention of the lens was intentional, and my reasoning is sound. Be mindful of your own lens.

Science is a field which can bring together the religious and irreligious alike. People don't need to be lock-step in their personal beliefs in order to use and benefit from the scientific method. One doesn't need to be an atheist or a theist order to contribute. Insisting that they do hurts the cause.

People like Galileo were penalized because those in charge insisted on ideological purity. This is a recurring theme within powerful human social structures. Whether religious or irreligious, the underlying mechanism is the same.

 

What is my lens Xaende? Is not trying to introduce mythical figures into science a bias now?

Obviously lots of scientists all through out history have believed in different religions and many of them held their own personal delusions; one of the Geophysicists I know is a conspiracy theorist.

Viewing reality through those lenses isn't made any more desirable by that though; when you're seeking the answer to scientific questions then trying to distort the picture so that room can be made for god, or for any other privately held conviction, is going to compromise the end result.

I think we saw that compromise when U-235 posted; he didn't want to accept that biology doesn't exhibit any evidence of teleology, because his belief that God is responsible for biology requires evolution to be teleological.

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1 hour ago, Saxon said:

I think my overarching message is that, given that we must use reason to figure out what is moral anyway, religion is redundant.

You probably see that rejection of nasty parts of a religion, because they 'don't align with the religious ethos' is quite a big mess; we could pick and choose anything we want by this method, if we didn't rely on outside reasoning to determine which parts are good and which parts are nasty.

Edit: come to think of it, it is confusing that people draw strength of conviction from moral ideas they already hold being included in texts that demand the death of apostates and homosexuals. One would have imagined that this would be cause for uncertainty.

 

It's okay, you can say the Bible 

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39 minutes ago, Saxon said:

Am thinking of the Qur'an, to be honest, but you're right that the same passages occur in the Old Testament.

This would be where the problem lies I guess. My statements weren't specific to any one, or group of religions. Just the concept of religion as a moral or spiritual guide 

If anything, I was probably thinking about Buddhism when I first posted ^_^

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5 hours ago, Saxon said:

Giordo Bruno, another Italian scientist who suggested that there might be life on other planets, was burnt alive because the holy scripture does not make mention of life on other planets.
Looking through a lens distorts one's perception of reality. You didn't intend it, but this analogy is apt.
 

 

His story is popularly framed that way, but the Vatican didn't have an official position on a plurality of inhabited worlds at that time (still doesn't). They did have a position on monks trying to convince other teachers to abandon their faith, which ultimately caused him to lose his position. 

Have a link: http://www.setileague.org/editor/brunoalt.htm

 

You probably see that rejection of nasty parts of a religion, because they 'don't align with the religious ethos' is quite a big mess; we could pick and choose anything we want by this method, if we didn't rely on outside reasoning to determine which parts are good and which parts are nasty.

 

I see that line of thinking quite a bit, actually. Religion isn't a book and religious people do think, that's a major point with not thinking being condemned. Citing parts of a book to support ideas you would have anyway doesn't get you very far, and while that practice may be common it isn't religious. 

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27 minutes ago, Jtrekkie said:

 

His story is popularly framed that way, but the Vatican didn't have an official position on a plurality of inhabited worlds at that time (still doesn't). They did have a position on monks trying to convince other teachers to abandon their faith, which ultimately caused him to lose his position. 

Have a link: http://www.setileague.org/editor/brunoalt.htm

 

I see that line of thinking quite a bit, actually. Religion isn't a book and religious people do think, that's a major point with not thinking being condemned. Citing parts of a book to support ideas you would have anyway doesn't get you very far, and while that practice may be common it isn't religious. 

Rather misses the important point, which is that people were burned alive for heresy at that time. Hence when people trot out the names of renaissance scientists and declare that they are examples of religion working with science, they should be aware that a figurative gun was placed at their heads by the church. 
I will note to mention that pantheistic theology was the likely reason for Giordo's sentence in future though.

Citing doctrines to support positions is a religious behaviour. You're dangerously close to a no-true-scot argument; I feel we're very near claims that any negative behaviours caused by religious motivation 'don't represent the true religion' or some other such apologist argument.

28 minutes ago, willow said:

This would be where the problem lies I guess. My statements weren't specific to any one, or group of religions. Just the concept of religion as a moral or spiritual guide 

If anything, I was probably thinking about Buddhism when I first posted ^_^

Given that all popular religions are based around antique scripts and records, we can probably generalise the discussion to all religions.

I think westerners have a very naive assessment of eastern religions like Buddhism anyway, and are often seemingly unaware that Buddhist teachings have frequently been used to justify violence through history and it still goes on today in locations like Burma. So Buddhism is not that dissimilar to the religions of conquest we are more familiar with in the western world.

 

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2 hours ago, Xaende said:

Science is a field which can bring together the religious and irreligious alike. People don't need to be lock-step in their personal beliefs in order to use and benefit from the scientific method. One doesn't need to be an atheist or a theist order to contribute. Insisting that they do hurts the cause.

This is true, but it doesn't change the fact that the very core principles of faith and the scientific method are utterly incompatible. It is perfectly feasible to be on one side and see the merits of the other, but when faced with the fundamentals of both sides of the argument, it really becomes important to make a choice. The nature of almost every religion requires belief without evidence, a principle that opposes the scientific method in every way. 

More and more I find that theists' common view of God is becoming less as depicted in the scripture and more what they personally envisage it to be. If I had to guess I would attribute this to scientific discoveries making a wider understanding of the cosmic scale more commonplace, as well as the humanist principles of the secular governments they live under. The need to preserve belief in God has turned it into something that fits with their understanding of science and morality, rather that the complete opposite as is actually written.

Yet at the same time, others are just as willing to warp these beliefs for their own gain or to push selfish agendas. Once again, my point is that religion does good that can be done without it, and provides a catalyst for bad that would otherwise have no justification to fall back on. We don't need it. Too few people understand. They're happy to be asked what they believe, less so to really be asked why.

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23 minutes ago, Saxon said:

Given that all popular religions are based around antique scripts and records, we can probably generalise the discussion to all religions.

I think westerners have a very naive assessment of eastern religions like Buddhism anyway, and are often seemingly unaware that Buddhist teachings have frequently been used to justify violence through history and it still goes on today in locations like Burma. So Buddhism is not that dissimilar to the religions of conquest we are more familiar with in the western world.

 

This is true, though for what it's worth, I think most people turn to it generally for the spirituality aspect

also for the idea that rather than going to some eternal afterlife, you're reincarnated until you've achieved ultimate enlightenment 

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5 minutes ago, willow said:

This is true, though for what it's worth, I think most people turn to it generally for the spirituality aspect

also for the idea that rather than going to some eternal afterlife, you're reincarnated until you've achieved ultimate enlightenment 

Given that we're now discussing faux-spiritual westerners who assume far-out eastern wiseman identities, I think we have probably lost contact with whatever original discussion we were having.

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I find just as much issue with people who assume that the whole of a thing is evil because humans use it for evil as I do with people who refuse to acknowledge and refuse the problems and evils within a thing they hold dear, tbh.

Every single philosophy, religion, or creed invented by mankind has been used to justify violence and hatred. A thousand years from now, if the only creeds around are atheistic ones, they'll be used to justify violence because humans always find a way to be cunts to each other, barring some manner of genetic re-tweaking that overrides our tribal natures.

Its a fundamental part of human nature to create organized power structures and then to abuse those power structures to gain more power, resources, and influence, and the more power a given structure has, the more likely it is either going to be in the control of sociopaths, or create them simply by the position existing and someone taking the reigns of it.

I, personally, look to things for spiritual comforts, as I am supremely uncomfortable with the idea of oblivion after having to watch my mother die from cancer, and rituals and hymns (regardless of the faith, since I'm kind of in the middle of choosing atm) help calm me down and let me focus.

tl;dr: Humans always find ways to be dicks, regardless of the means, and I like to light poems on fire innawoods when I'm stressed and soak up nature.

Edited by LadyRadarEars
Just woke up and kind of stream of consciousnessed, sorry.
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2 hours ago, Saxon said:

Citing doctrines to support positions is a religious behaviour. You're dangerously close to a no-true-scot argument; I feel we're very near claims that any negative behaviours caused by religious motivation 'don't represent the true religion' or some other such apologist argument.

Thanks. 

It is a behavior of the religious, but not religion itself. It's also abehavior used in every methodical research, and not unique.

The true Scott's argument is easily overused and is only applicable to individuals or arbitrary groups anyway. For example, saying that Arfwedson wasn't a true scientist because he discovered lithium only after swinging a black cat by the tail 13 times over his calcinator* is idiotic, because scientists have been known for all kinds of absurdities and none of them have anything to do with science. Saying this endeavor was unscientific (since he failed to write that down or try again with a dog) is correct, because "scientific" has its own definition. The same works with religion, philosophy, politics, &c.

 

 

* He did not.

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1 hour ago, LadyRadarEars said:

/snips/

I am not certain that we are consigned to always be at the mercy of horrible and nefarious power structures; the relatively free cultures we are lucky enough to live in in the West today are much nicer than religiously dominated counterparts and historical cultures which placed emphasis on state ideologies.

Provided that we don't have to live in a culture that demands we believe in an ideology and must accept it without any discussion, I think we can be hopeful.

Anyway, thus far we have only really been discussing religion as a tool to achieve social aims or personal comforts and what the other implications might be, such as potentially compromising one's understanding of scientific questions. These of course have little to do with the question of whether there is any truth to religion.
A religion could bring great comfort to somebody and make them a very nice person but still be completely fabricated.

As I mentioned in another thread I sometimes attend religious observances because I enjoy them from a cultural perspective. I just don't believe any of it is real.

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9 hours ago, Saxon said:

I am not certain that we are consigned to always be at the mercy of horrible and nefarious power structures; the relatively free cultures we are lucky enough to live in in the West today are much nicer than religiously dominated counterparts and historical cultures which placed emphasis on state ideologies.

Provided that we don't have to live in a culture that demands we believe in an ideology and must accept it without any discussion, I think we can be hopeful.

Anyway, thus far we have only really been discussing religion as a tool to achieve social aims or personal comforts and what the other implications might be, such as potentially compromising one's understanding of scientific questions. These of course have little to do with the question of whether there is any truth to religion.
A religion could bring great comfort to somebody and make them a very nice person but still be completely fabricated.

As I mentioned in another thread I sometimes attend religious observances because I enjoy them from a cultural perspective. I just don't believe any of it is real.

Good for you, your beliefs are yours, etc and whatnot.

I'm not here for the 'prove realness' conversation as that's a boring one that only leads to people screaming at each other and diehard atheists being over-smug about being 'right' about their personal beliefs of religionists, and diehard followers of [insert faith here] being over-evangelical about being 'right' about their personal beliefs about atheists. Outside of the eventual scientific discovery of what caused our universe to come into being beyond information gleaned about its immediate birth pangs and events following, attempting to argue the 'truth' of religion is just an excuse for atheists to pound on and on and on an 'acceptable target' and for [christians usually, sometimes muslims] to get their book-thumping and evangelical venting on, again, an acceptable target.

And by definition its often impossible to 'prove' something that requires faith, and most faithful who aren't pants-on-head tend to view scientific discoveries as more proof that their beliefs are correct, anyway.

10 hours ago, WolfNightV4X1 said:

Now taking applications forThe Church of The Toad of Light

300x300.jpg

 

I'm partial to the CHURCH OF OPTIMUS PRIME, OUR TWENTY-FOURTH RISEN SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE, myself.

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6 hours ago, LadyRadarEars said:

/snips/

Frankly so many religious claims about the nature of our cosmos have already been shown wrong that any inference of a spiritual presence in the Universe is usually only ever made on emotional grounds because a lot of people cannot stand the notion that death is finality- and at this point I'm going to issue a trigger warning that you might be upset by the rest of the post and may not wish to read it.

 

Putting aside the obvious, that emotional needs don't determine the nature of the cosmos, I still find this position confusing. If people want to believe in an afterlife, why is it necessary that there should be a God anyway?

If there was a God, there still might be no afterlife. We could entertain the possibility that a super-intelligent race of Aliens created our universe accidentally in a particle accelerator, or that the entire cosmos is a simulation, for instance. We have just as much grounds to attribute the existence of our reality to those explanations as we do to human mythologies.

 

 

It is ironic that people who think their beliefs are 'unprovable', given that they require faith to suspend doubt, think that scientific discoveries only lend more evidence to bolster their belief- because that's a contradiction. They think they have proven something that they themselves claim is inherently beyond proof- they are having their cake and eating it.
If science did produce evidence that lent credence to any spiritual position, then they would not need to rely on faith to maintain belief.
 

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5 hours ago, Saxon said:

Frankly so many religious claims about the nature of our cosmos have already been shown wrong that any inference of a spiritual presence in the Universe is usually only ever made on emotional grounds because a lot of people cannot stand the notion that death is finality- and at this point I'm going to issue a trigger warning that you might be upset by the rest of the post and may not wish to read it.

  Reveal hidden contents

Putting aside the obvious, that emotional needs don't determine the nature of the cosmos, I still find this position confusing. If people want to believe in an afterlife, why is it necessary that there should be a God anyway?

If there was a God, there still might be no afterlife. We could entertain the possibility that a super-intelligent race of Aliens created our universe accidentally in a particle accelerator, or that the entire cosmos is a simulation, for instance. We have just as much grounds to attribute the existence of our reality to those explanations as we do to human mythologies.

 

 

It is ironic that people who think their beliefs are 'unprovable', given that they require faith to suspend doubt, think that scientific discoveries only lend more evidence to bolster their belief- because that's a contradiction. They think they have proven something that they themselves claim is inherently beyond proof- they are having their cake and eating it.
If science did produce evidence that lent credence to any spiritual position, then they would not need to rely on faith to maintain belief.
 

>Trigger warning

You assume I am like thin-skinned babby from tumblr, comrade. Do not insult my intelligence by assuming I am going to be offended because you believe differently than I do, I'm not a SJW :V
Among the more 'intellectual' religious, even without the emotional argument, they simply shrug and point to science, and go 'something cannot come from nothing' and sit there and be smug with themselves.

And tbh, again, unless we figure out how something did come from nothing, that will always fall in their favor. There is no question, until the ultimate answer is found, there will always be an ambiguity about the universe and its creation (or multiverse, because again we aren't sure yet) and therefore spirituality will always find a niche somewhere in the human psyche to answer those questions we cannot yet answer with science.

As to the other bit, that's not really how faith works. Its not about suspension of belief (and many who think themselves faithful but actually aren't think it is), it is about trust. So they trust that, even if the fallible records of mankind (which most religions are made from) are wrong, that the message contained was written with grains of truth hidden inside of it. Because true faith is about trust, and not disbelieving something that proves ancient sand-people documents wrong, they simply shrug and go 'well man is fallible, it is to be expected' and remove from their personal canon what is no longer logical, but keep the bits they consider to be of importance or the 'core' set (in most religions this being the deity being the creator entity, some manner of afterlife or salvation or reincarnation, and the set of moral ethics most religions tend to espouse.)

And, in fact, some sects, like the baha'i faith, outright state that the purpose of humanity is to further science in addition to helping each other, and they will shift their canons accordingly when a new scientific discovery has been proven.

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Just for those who didn't know, physicists do have a mathematical proof that the universe beginning from nothing is entirely possible.

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/a-mathematical-proof-that-the-universe-could-have-formed-spontaneously-from-nothing-ed7ed0f304a3#.wx3t87kvl

So those "intellectual" theists typically only do just enough research to support their beliefs and then stop asking further questions like "maybe I should investigate the alternatives to this theory?"

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22 minutes ago, LadyRadarEars said:

/snip/

I've always been confused that religious people claim 'something cannot come from nothing' implies the existence of a god, because this may as well simply imply that the Universe is eternal.
I think a more likely answer, however, is that time and causality are convoluted at the moment of the big bang, and probably do not form nice narratives that are intuitive to humans.
I'm not sure why religious people think that, even if they could show the universe was created, that this would mean the creator was still alive, knew that humanity existed, cared about humans' moral choices or provides an afterlife for dead humans.

The 'God of the gaps' who fills unanswered questions in Science such as 'was their anything before the big bang?' has previously inhabited the following gaps:

-How did man originate?
-How did the Earth form?
-Why do the planets not fall out of the sky?
-How did the solar system form?

At this point a pattern should have become apparent which shows how silly filling gaps in our knowledge with supernatural beings is.

Just for those who didn't know, physicists do have a mathematical proof that the universe beginning from nothing is entirely possible.

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/a-mathematical-proof-that-the-universe-could-have-formed-spontaneously-from-nothing-ed7ed0f304a3#.wx3t87kvl

So those "intellectual" theists typically only do just enough research to support their beliefs and then stop asking further questions like "maybe I should investigate the alternatives to this theory?"

I also regard the claim 'you can't have creation from nothing' as suspicious. I think this claim is made because people are looking for a way to imply the existence of a god, rather than because anybody thinks they have a reasonable description of the nature of causality in the very early cosmos and have good reason to believe that implies the existence of creators.

 


 

 

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24 minutes ago, Saxon said:

I also regard the claim 'you can't have creation from nothing' as suspicious. I think this claim is made because people are looking for a way to imply the existence of a god, rather than because anybody thinks they have a reasonable description of the nature of causality in the very early cosmos and have good reason to believe that implies the existence of creators.

 


 

 

This all traces back to the primal instinct that we still have today. People fear and reject what they do not understand, so they create false ideologies instead as an attempt to cope due to ignorance and absence of knowledge on the subject.

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5 minutes ago, Shiro said:

This all traces back to the primal instinct that we still have today. People fear and reject what they do not understand, so they create false ideologies instead as an attempt to cope due to ignorance and absence of knowledge on the subject.

The phrase 'Volcano gods' probably sums that up quite well, ha.

As a matter of interest, the god of Abraham is probably a volcano god, because when Moses meets god on mount Sinai to receive commandments he sees god, and he is described as a column of torrid fire and smoke at the top of the mountain, who causes earthquakes and lightning.
Remind you of anything else you know?

BN-IA980_0423vo_J_20150423092230.jpg
So I am guessing that Moses wasn't on mount Sinai, but had actually climbed up a volcano.

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Reading this I have noticed a huge irony. In that the science of man is being placed on a pedestal just like those who place their faith on a pedestal. The science of man is your religion, really. Everybody worships something, and I mean everyone. Whether its an organized religion, a cult, money, fame, power, science. Ive seen people on this forum claim they don't have a religion but man, the way some people have talked about the things I listed, you do.

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4 hours ago, Saxon said:

I've always been confused that religious people claim 'something cannot come from nothing' implies the existence of a god, because this may as well simply imply that the Universe is eternal.
I think a more likely answer, however, is that time and causality are convoluted at the moment of the big bang, and probably do not form nice narratives that are intuitive to humans.
I'm not sure why religious people think that, even if they could show the universe was created, that this would mean the creator was still alive, knew that humanity existed, cared about humans' moral choices or provides an afterlife for dead humans.

The 'God of the gaps' who fills unanswered questions in Science such as 'was their anything before the big bang?' has previously inhabited the following gaps:

-How did man originate?
-How did the Earth form?
-Why do the planets not fall out of the sky?
-How did the solar system form?

At this point a pattern should have become apparent which shows how silly filling gaps in our knowledge with supernatural beings is.

I also regard the claim 'you can't have creation from nothing' as suspicious. I think this claim is made because people are looking for a way to imply the existence of a god, rather than because anybody thinks they have a reasonable description of the nature of causality in the very early cosmos and have good reason to believe that implies the existence of creators.

 


 

 

And yet even an 'eternal universe' has a beginning somewhere, and non-intuitive, hard to understand concepts that can only be explained by scientists shrugging and going 'maybe' are just as silly to the layman as the idea of religion is to you :V

Also the god of Moses was a 'volcano god' in most likelyhood, given the original 'jewish' god was also known as El-Shaddai or Saboath, and had the portfolio 'god of armies' and 'lord of the mountain' before he supplanted the rest of their original pagan deities, taking the place of the mesopotamian 'great god El' (differentieted from just 'el' which was their word for 'god', El capital E being in the same position as Zeus or Odin as father of the gods.)

If you're done patting yourself on the back with Flynn and Shiro though, I would like a better understanding on why you think its 'suspicious' given some scientists today wonder if we're in a simulation or if our universe was even the first one, as I can't wrap my head around the concept of 'oblivion to stuff' without there something causing it.

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57 minutes ago, Rukh Whitefang said:

Reading this I have noticed a huge irony. In that the science of man is being placed on a pedestal just like those who place their faith on a pedestal. The science of man is your religion, really. Everybody worships something, and I mean everyone. Whether its an organized religion, a cult, money, fame, power, science. Ive seen people on this forum claim they don't have a religion but man, the way some people have talked about the things I listed, you do.

Do yo really think interrogating claims with tests and evidence is comparable to worshiping ancient texts?

I think we are in tenuous territory when you are unable to see the difference between modern life saving surgical methods and exorcisms.

55 minutes ago, LadyRadarEars said:

And yet even an 'eternal universe' has a beginning somewhere, and non-intuitive, hard to understand concepts that can only be explained by scientists shrugging and going 'maybe' are just as silly to the layman as the idea of religion is to you :V

Also the god of Moses was a 'volcano god' in most likelyhood, given the original 'jewish' god was also known as El-Shaddai or Saboath, and had the portfolio 'god of armies' and 'lord of the mountain' before he supplanted the rest of their original pagan deities, taking the place of the mesopotamian 'great god El' (differentieted from just 'el' which was their word for 'god', El capital E being in the same position as Zeus or Odin as father of the gods.)

If you're done patting yourself on the back with Flynn and Shiro though, I would like a better understanding on why you think its 'suspicious' given some scientists today wonder if we're in a simulation or if our universe was even the first one, as I can't wrap my head around the concept of 'oblivion to stuff' without there something causing it.

Okay, so you find religious arguments about 'it has to begin with something [god]' just as silly as I do then?

I regard the claim 'something cannot come from nothing' as suspect, because it requires causality and macroscopic concepts of conservation  that we know do not apply at the quantum scale, which is the scale we're interested in when we discuss the early universe.

Most people are unable to wrap their head around normal quantum mechanics, which is the physics that underlies our current universe, so I don't know why most people would expect the universe's origins to be intuitive and easy to understand from a human perspective; you need to be a maths genius to answer these questions properly. 

A more fundamental problem, I suppose, is that if the universe 'can't come from nothing' and we have to infer a god (I don't know why a creator needs to be a god; that's an unqualified assumption) then that creator also 'can't come from nothing'.
Religious people might say 'ah, but the creator is eternal', but why bother with creation in the first place then? You make fewer assumptions if you assume that the Universe is eternal, rather than assuming that it was created by an eternal god.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Saxon said:

Okay, so you find religious arguments about 'it has to begin with something [god]' just as silly as I do then?

I regard the claim 'something cannot come from nothing' as suspect, because it requires causality and macroscopic concepts of conservation  that we know do not apply at the quantum scale, which is the scale we're interested in when we discuss the early universe.

Most people are unable to wrap their head around normal quantum mechanics, which is the physics that underlies our current universe, so I don't know why most people would expect the universe's origins to be intuitive and easy to understand from a human perspective; you need to be a maths genius to answer these questions properly. 

A more fundamental problem, I suppose, is that if the universe 'can't come from nothing' and we have to infer a god (I don't know why a creator needs to be a god; that's an unqualified assumption) then that creator also 'can't come from nothing'.
Religious people might say 'ah, but the creator is eternal', but why bother with creation in the first place then? You make fewer assumptions if you assume that the Universe is eternal, rather than assuming that it was created by an eternal god.

And yet assuming the universe is eternal is also making a lot, it could easily also be a finite sequential one from a multitude of many before (and possibly after), and anything capable of creating on such a scale fits the definition of 'god' rather handily, as such an entity, computer, or being would be to us as we are to ants, or far greater. That and our universe doesn't as yet appear to be very 'eternal' given three very popular hypotheses/theories concern how it is most likely to end depending on how strong gravity is versus the force of the big bang and various other variables.

As to 'why bother with creation' that is much like asking a scientist why he's simulating something on a computer, to be honest (and if that's the ultimate truth, I ask the dear User to please not delete us in order to make room for more porn, buy an external hard drive kthx.) Unless you are asking 'why bother with creation myths' in which case I would have to ask you to elaborate, are you asking 'why religions hold that it is created', or 'why believe the universe is created.'

And it still doesn't really answer my question, although it helps a little. So if the universe arose from complex quantum stuff... Where'd that come from then? After you answer that, I would like to note that given neither of us appear to be capable of conceding this particular point, perhaps we could go onto another point to debate on, as otherwise we will be trapped in a feedback loop of 'why vs why not' for both of our 'cases', as it were, and that would get rather boring fast.

 

As an aside, the passive aggressive attempts at baiting me have stopped being amusing, please stop doing it unless you desire me to respond in kind, and turn this from a so-far civil discourse into a madhouse.

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5 hours ago, Rukh Whitefang said:

Reading this I have noticed a huge irony. In that the science of man is being placed on a pedestal just like those who place their faith on a pedestal. The science of man is your religion, really. Everybody worships something, and I mean everyone. Whether its an organized religion, a cult, money, fame, power, science. Ive seen people on this forum claim they don't have a religion but man, the way some people have talked about the things I listed, you do.

The science of man is malleable and requires, and demands, change in order to progress. Most religions, and yours in particular, demand that we accept answers devised in a time before women were considered people and everyone thought the earth was flat beneath a dome.

So sure, they may both be on high pedestals but only one has earned the right to be up there. =3

 

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35 minutes ago, FlynnCoyote said:

The science of man is malleable and requires, and demands, change in order to progress. Most religions, and yours in particular, demand that we accept answers devised in a time before women were considered people and everyone thought the earth was flat beneath a dome.

So sure, they may both be on high pedestals but only one has earned the right to be up there. =3

 

Your radical rationalism also comes from period of history when women and non-whites had no rights. 

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14 hours ago, LadyRadarEars said:

And yet assuming the universe is eternal is also making a lot, it could easily also be a finite sequential one from a multitude of many before (and possibly after), and anything capable of creating on such a scale fits the definition of 'god' rather handily, as such an entity, computer, or being would be to us as we are to ants, or far greater. That and our universe doesn't as yet appear to be very 'eternal' given three very popular hypotheses/theories concern how it is most likely to end depending on how strong gravity is versus the force of the big bang and various other variables.

As to 'why bother with creation' that is much like asking a scientist why he's simulating something on a computer, to be honest (and if that's the ultimate truth, I ask the dear User to please not delete us in order to make room for more porn, buy an external hard drive kthx.) Unless you are asking 'why bother with creation myths' in which case I would have to ask you to elaborate, are you asking 'why religions hold that it is created', or 'why believe the universe is created.'

And it still doesn't really answer my question, although it helps a little. So if the universe arose from complex quantum stuff... Where'd that come from then? After you answer that, I would like to note that given neither of us appear to be capable of conceding this particular point, perhaps we could go onto another point to debate on, as otherwise we will be trapped in a feedback loop of 'why vs why not' for both of our 'cases', as it were, and that would get rather boring fast.

 

As an aside, the passive aggressive attempts at baiting me have stopped being amusing, please stop doing it unless you desire me to respond in kind, and turn this from a so-far civil discourse into a madhouse.

Compare the statements 'the universe is eternal' and 'the universe is finite, and created by a god who is eternal', the first has only 1 unknown assumption, whereas the second has 3 unknown assumptions.
Occam's razor favours the hypothesis with the fewest unqualified assumptions. Hence creation is an unnecessary assumption, so why bother with it?

I am concerned that you may have become convinced that scientists actually think our universe is a simulation. This is definitely not a consensus view in science- it's an interesting science fiction scenario that I brought up, in order to show you that arguments for 'creation ex nihilo' could be used to argue for a large variety of bizarre origin narratives, not just gods. 

Regrettably I think you're still following a god of the gaps argument, because you seem to think that, unless a 22 year old Geology Major can explain cosmogenic quantum mechanics to you on the internet, using absolutely none of the relevant mathematics, that it is justifiable to fill this gap in your knowledge with mythological figures. :\

 

 

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14 hours ago, Rukh Whitefang said:

Reading this I have noticed a huge irony. In that the science of man is being placed on a pedestal just like those who place their faith on a pedestal. The science of man is your religion, really.

@FlynnCoyote is correct. Science works because it is open to change and continuous peer review, and because it is bound by the scientific method which requires such things as experimental reproducibility, as well as stable logical theories.

If religion were open to the same process of peer review, periodic refinement, experimentation and logical argument, then most of them would collapse overnight, just like phrenology, tabula rasa, phlogiston theory and spontaneous generation.

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A true scientist (i.e. some mythic ideal) is happy when their theory is conclusively overturned, because it means they have learned something new. Naturally there are plenty of cases where this is not the case due to human pride and stubbornness, but there again there are instances where a scientist convinced of the truth of a new contradictory theory has leapt up and enthusiastically encouraged a former opponent.

The progress of science is like people having a spirited argument over a restaurant bill.
The progress of religion is like people wearing noise-cancelling headphones shouting opinions at each other.

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9 hours ago, Vitaly said:

Your radical rationalism also comes from period of history when women and non-whites had no rights. 

You think that scientific reasoning is a radical ideology?

I think that scientific reasoning is inherently amoral; a scientist might develop a means of fixing nitrogen to make fertiliser that prevents global famines and saves millions from starvation, or they might design a new and awful chemical weapon like mustard gas.
These two achievements actually both belong to the same scientist, Fritz Haber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber

 

 

 

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15 hours ago, Saxon said:

I think that scientific reasoning is inherently amoral; a scientist might develop a means of fixing nitrogen to make fertiliser that prevents global famines and saves millions from starvation, or they might design a new and awful chemical weapon like mustard gas.

That fertilizer also caused the world population to grow to even more unsustainable levels though so perhaps it's a matter of perspective.

15 hours ago, Saxon said:

These two achievements actually both belong to the same scientist, Fritz Haber

The Fritz giveth and the Fritz taketh away.

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26 minutes ago, Faust said:

Thought for the day:

"Satan" is essentially ancient Hebrew for "Enemy"
Jesus said "Love thy enemy"
Conclusion: all Christians should love Satan.

So really this whole time Jesus was just saying "That guy. He's got this shit all figured out. Go listen to him."

You have opened my eyes all over again, Faust. O,O

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4 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

That fertilizer also caused the world population to grow to even more unsustainable levels though so perhaps it's a matter of perspective.

The Fritz giveth and the Fritz taketh away.

It is a matter of perspective. I remember back in the good old days though, when Clerics like Malthus used to claim that famine and disease was 'God's divine form of population control'.
Like...people were starving and dying horrible deaths, and the clergy was proclaiming that their suffering was divinely justified.

Malthus's essays actually went on to inspire Charles Darwin to come up with his explanation of evolution by natural selection.
(It might surprise some users to know that the evolution of life was already widely known about and even accepted by the church before Charles Darwin- the reasons that Charles Darwin's explanation for it didn't actually get widely accepted until the 1940's is actually rather nuanced, and in large part was delayed because Mendel, an Austro-Hungarian monk who discovered modern genetics, didn't publish his results for a long time because he was worried that he'd proven that genesis didn't happen.)

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39 minutes ago, Saxon said:

It is a matter of perspective. I remember back in the good old days though, when Clerics like Malthus used to claim that famine and disease was 'God's divine form of population control'.
Like...people were starving and dying horrible deaths, and the clergy was proclaiming that their suffering was divinely justified.

Odd, I thought he was a scientist for some reason >> (though to be fair his entry says he was a cleric & a scholar so better than nothing).

 

42 minutes ago, Saxon said:

Malthus's essays actually went on to inspire Charles Darwin to come up with his explanation of evolution by natural selection.
(It might surprise some users to know that the evolution of life was already widely known about and even accepted by the church before Charles Darwin- the reasons that Charles Darwin's explanation for it didn't actually get widely accepted until the 1940's is actually rather nuanced, and in large part was delayed because Mendel, an Austro-Hungarian monk who discovered modern genetics, didn't publish his results for a long time because he was worried that he'd proven that genesis didn't happen.)

The more you know ;)

It's interesting that now some Christian groups don't like the idea of evolution.

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38 minutes ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

Odd, I thought he was a scientist for some reason >> (though to be fair his entry says he was a cleric & a scholar so better than nothing).

 

The more you know ;)

It's interesting that now some Christian groups don't like the idea of evolution.

A lot of religious people reject biological evolution on the grounds that it implies the Earth is old and that there was never a garden of Eden, hence no original sin and no requirement for a savior,  but by 1858, when Darwin and Wallace published, the clergy had already accepted that the Earth was many millions of years old.

Interestingly, while Darwin was an agnostic and an abolitionist, Fisher, the mathematician who provided the 'slam dunk' rigorous proof of Darwin's ideas, was a Christian, a racist and a proponent of Eugenics. O_o
I think this just goes to show that, even genius scientists can hold whacky and wildly different private beliefs.

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On 12/20/2016 at 8:19 AM, Saxon said:

Compare the statements 'the universe is eternal' and 'the universe is finite, and created by a god who is eternal', the first has only 1 unknown assumption, whereas the second has 3 unknown assumptions.
Occam's razor favours the hypothesis with the fewest unqualified assumptions. Hence creation is an unnecessary assumption, so why bother with it?

I am concerned that you may have become convinced that scientists actually think our universe is a simulation. This is definitely not a consensus view in science- it's an interesting science fiction scenario that I brought up, in order to show you that arguments for 'creation ex nihilo' could be used to argue for a large variety of bizarre origin narratives, not just gods. 

Regrettably I think you're still following a god of the gaps argument, because you seem to think that, unless a 22 year old Geology Major can explain cosmogenic quantum mechanics to you on the internet, using absolutely none of the relevant mathematics, that it is justifiable to fill this gap in your knowledge with mythological figures. :\

 

Two point five seconds. 2.5. The first four results on google for the subject were all articles you could have linked. In the time it took for you to write that last paragraph, you could have went to 'let me google that for you', gotten the link back, linked it here and followed up with a smug emoticon, and I still would have given you a like and conceded the point on the matter. Two point five seconds of you taking this at least minimally seriously, instead of trying to push fundie-christian anger-buttons on the godless agnostic.

Two-and-a-half seconds and less effort than it takes to take off one's shoes, that's all you needed to do to 'win' the argument and get me to concede the point, (completely bypassing what I was next going to say about 'infinity' and how the possible heat death of the universe puts a bit of a stop to the 'eternal' nature, barring certain hypotheses on the shape of the cosmos and the nature of gravity supplanting others).

Instead you spent it writing a self-superior, passive-aggressive and thinly disguised ad hominem in an attempt to bait me, for the third time in a row, into getting into an emotional state so you could have a verbal punching bag.

Dog forbid I come into a thread with 'argument' in the title and expect to have the one's wanting a devil's advocate present actually treat me as a peer, if an uneducated and admittedly not as intelligent one, instead of complete automatic dismissal as an idiot hick for the sheer gall of not being on your side.

And don't try and wave it off as a difference in tone that could be explained away by different nationalities, I've enough british friends to know the differences between one simply bantering with me and one deliberately talking down to me in order to goad a reaction out of me, and you've definitely been doing the latter, whether consciously or subconsciously.

If you wanted to use your wit to beat down on those you view as lesser than you, there are more productive and entertaining means of doing it, to be honest. I would suggest flyting, as it is both historically significant to both of our ancestors, and difficult enough to do that it requires a keen mind, especially when attempting it in shakespearean english.

tl;dr: It took me less time to google a 'winning' lecture for you than it usually takes me to bring up furry porn bookmarks, flyte me m8 1v1 I swear on me mum.

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2 hours ago, LadyRadarEars said:

 

snip

Okay so you've read up on cosmogony and you've decided that you agree with my perspective.
I'm glad we've arrived at a common understanding, although I kind of feel like we have been talking cross-purposes because my argument wasn't about astronomy; I've just been trying to argue two points.

-Not knowing the answer to a question is not a good reason to use God as an explanation.
-The argument 'something cannot come from nothing' does not imply the existence of Gods.

I think these two points would be correct even if we didn't know anything about astronomy. Imagine you knew nothing about this subject and you can still arrive at these two points with reason alone; do you think that's reasonable?
 

Anyway, regarding the rest of your post, I'm not trying to bait you or press your 'angry buttons' and I don't regard you as a 'hick' (I didn't even know your nationality; for all I knew you could have come from France or Japan). Could you stop accusing me of thinking all these horrible things about you, because, rest assured, I don't.

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