It’s a very nice letter to Nature. I especially like the last line.
We were perplexed by your Editorial on the work of the Templeton Foundation (‘Templeton’s legacy’ Nature 454, 253-254; 2008). Surely science is about finding material explanations of the world — explanations that can inspire those spooky feelings of awe, wonder and reverence in the hyper-evolved human brain.
Religion, on the other hand, is about humans thinking that awe, wonder and reverence are the clue to understanding a God-built Universe. (The same is true of religion’s poor cousin, ‘spirituality’, which you slip into your Editorial rather as a creationist uses ‘intelligent design’.) There is a fundamental conflict here, one that can never be reconciled until all religions cease making claims about the nature of reality.
The scientific study of religion is indeed full of big questions that need to be addressed, such as why belief in religion is negatively correlated with an acceptance of evolution. One could consider psychological studies of why humans are superstitious and believe impossible things, and comparative sociological studies of religion using materialist explanations of the rise and fall of the world’s belief systems.
Perhaps the Templeton Foundation is thinking of funding such research. The outcome of such work, we predict, will not bring science and religion (or ‘spirituality’) any closer to one another. You suggest that science may bring about “advances in theological thinking”. In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism.
Beautiful!
Wish Nature would allow unfettered access to such letters…
10 points for defining ‘spirituality’
100 points for using it in a sentence that actually means something
In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism.
bra-fucking-vo.
I eagerly await this to be the loud voice, rather than the soft voice, of science.
Excellent! Particularly the well-justified kick at the use of that ultimate weasel-word, “spirituality”.
This kind of logical argument can’t be made too often.
There’s no evidence for any gods, & science thrives on evidence.
A lot of people, maybe even a majority in most countries, seem to need superstitious crap to give their pathetic lives ‘meaning’. Most of them probably don’t have the brains to think for themselves, & those that do are crazy, but in democracies, they count. That’s the worry.
For an alternative view, Paul Campos sez:
So apparently Campos is not committed to believing science.
“In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism.”
’nuff said. bra-fucking-vo is right.
“Advances in theological thinking?” Good grief, what a morbid interplay of senseless words! Religion will not advance anything beneficial to humankind but only retard it. Thinking, rational that is, is so far removed from anything that religion purports to engender that it is a farce in the most extreme. The Templeton Foundation is just the venue for propagating this compatable nonsense, and in the end we will be no more removed from religions insane grasp than if we revert back to the dark ages. I am one who totally divorces himself from anything to do with religion, whether benignly covert or perniciously overt. To be as blunt as I can, screw religion.
The templeton foundations main purpose is to create arguements for the use by atheists in a remarkebly inefficient way.
PS: Pz, you look like a carbon copy of my father. He’s a biologist too. Odd.
I concur: bra-fucking-vo!
“I believe in stupid shit I know isn’t true, and I’m embarrassed to tell you exactly what it is.”
“‘Spirituality’ doesn’t mean squat.”
What do I win?
*pulls out Moderate Concerned Atheist bingo card*
Ok, I’m ready for this comment thread.
Only if the religion isn’t open to learning. Is it really true that science can’t contribute to Unitarian-Universalism’s conception of religion?
I don’t at all doubt that science will always push religions away from the mystical and toward the empirical, that is, away from religion as it has been conceived. But there is nothing that prevents future religion from being something quite different, something far more in tune with reality (and yes, not that far from non-theism). I would assume that sort of outcome was indeed what the Nature editorial (I more or less skimmed it some time back, so I don’t remember the details) was hoping would be produced.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
“In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism.”
Damn. Short and to the point.
I may have finally found the quotation for the tattoo I’ve been looking to get.
The “advances in theological thinking” which come from the scientific method run along two lines:
1.) Blur the distinction between religion and ethics; religion and philosophy; religion and human well-being; religion and community; religion and neurology. Use scientific experiment and investigation to find out something significant or interesting about how humans deal with ethics, philosophy, well-being, community, and neurology, and then claim this says something very important about “religion.”
2.) Blur the definition of God till it becomes vague, incoherent, or a symbolic placeholder for meaning, hope, and feelings of significance, and then make more and more elaborate, impassionated arguments that science can say NOTHING about God — it only illuminates how “He” works. Looking at God as a factual claim in light of the discoveries of modern science is “scientism.” NOMA, NOMA, NOMA.
Not MY definition as such but it bears repeating. Charlie Brooker wrote:
Worth 110 points in itself I think.
I’m confused. What was the context of the letter? I don’t subscribe to Nature and I don’t know what was said about the Templeton Foundation. This letter only gives me vague clues.
If anyone could, please, sum up what this is a reaction too?
I neglected to include a slight change to the last line. I would word it; “In reality, the only contribution that science can make ON THE ASHES of religion is atheism.
I plan to use this the next time I hear creationist retards call magical creation “creation science”, or when they claim intelligent design magic is a scientific idea.
I also plan to use this quote when Christian retards call themselves theistic evolutionists.
I don’t have a problem with Christians who accept evolution, but when they attach the adjective theistic to my favorite branch of science, they need to be told they’re full of shit.
Really, spirituality is a distorted form of sexual fetishism. That said with full respect and reverence to fetishists.
BobC @ 20 Good. How about another version; “In reality, the only contribution that science can make from the shit pile of religion is atheism.”
I’m with Glen D on this one, and as a result I don’t think the Templeton Foundation is necessarily totally worthless. Neuroscientists Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi have recently proposed something called the ‘dynamic core hypothesis’ (in a book called ‘A Universe of Consciousness’) as the fundamental neural correlate of consciousness. The dynamic core is defined in terms of the processes and structural relationships that exist within a network, in particular the network of neurons in the brain. However similar relational properties and process exist in the worldwide network of humans and conceivably this implies the existence of, literally, a ‘higher consciousness.’ This higher consciousness is no god, certainly not omnipotent, but it might well be emotionally appealing to many people who want to belong to something bigger but who know enough to be skeptical of the idiocies of religions as they exist now. For that reason it might be exactly the sort of reconciliation of religion and science the templeton foundation is after…if, as Glen D says, they are willing to consider an evolved religion that seeks emotionally satisfying ‘spiritual’ (whatever that means) truths that are nevertheless, well, true.
Woooooooo Hooooooooo!!!!!
Actually #13, the MCAA agrees with this spirit of this letter. However we feel that we should reiterate that the following progression
Young Earth Creationist -> Old Earth Theistic Evolutionist -> Pro-Science Bibilical Metaphorist -> Atheist Rationalist
does in fact constitute an “advance in theological thinking” at the level of the individual, and should be encouraged by any means possible. We therefore endorse a system of Graduated Response whereby fundamentalists are confronted and exposed, and moderate pro-science believers are engaged with in a mutually respectful dialogue.
The MCAA expresses hope that the Templeton Foundation may play a part in developing this desired background to public debate. However we recognize that this is not its likely purpose or stated intention, and as such we withold our full support.
However we reiterate for the record that the narrative which fails to distinguish between types of believer, and instead holds that “they’re all part of the problem”, has a dangerous tendency to reverse the arrows in the above progression, and so act as a push towards extremism, rather than a lure towards rationalism. This is counterproductive to the interests of all atheists.
The MCAA wishes the best of luck to bingo-players of all beliefs, and none.
the narrative which fails to distinguish between types of believer, and instead holds that “they’re all part of the problem”, has a dangerous tendency to reverse the arrows in the above progression, and so act as a push towards extremism – MCAA@25
Evidence for this claim?
HUZZAH! Good for them.
I’m in with #18, why did they feel the need to send such a letter?
I don’t agree with the sentiment that everything Templeton foundation has done is worthless. For example – given that hundreds of millions of people make decisions based on assumptions about the effect of prayer, it is valuable that someone has studied the effects prayer carefully. It’s important that all of those studies came up negative. (A positive result would have been important as well – but that’s not what happened.) Nonetheless … as far as I know, every study the Templeton foundation has funded has ended up supporting the concluding line of Cobb and Coyne’s letter.
This is mention, not use. 0 points.
No.
Anyone who has studied the generally non-theistic continental philosophy knows that the “spiritual” is readily understood outside of mere gawping at the “wonder of the universe”.
Husserl (not religious) went so far as to say that science began in the spiritual. Perhaps what he calls “spiritual” is not what Coyne (and Cobb) does, but then it is Coyne who is missing the expansiveness of meaning that the word “spiritual” can have.
Arguably, the “spiritual” sense can be an impetus to doing science, although such a scientist must be willing and able to demystify “awe and wonder.”
“Spirituality” does refer to something in the human psyche (not the soul, if anyone might mistake me). It’s a fairly nebulous concept, and it almost certainly has varying degrees of more precisely named mental aspects, but it is not something to be merely denied, as Coyne and Cobb appear to desire.
This is why so many scientists really are not very good at dealing with public concerns. It is one thing to say that science has no place for God, neitherr does it mark off some imaginary realm called the “supernatural” in which people can place their fantasies and suppose that they are meaningful and “real”. It is quite another matter to suggest that science and spirituality are inherently at odds, that there is something fake about one’s “spiritual” sense.
Templeton will have the upper hand in the public imagination as long as they take “spirituality” seriously while prominent atheistic scientists merely dismiss a sizable portion of the manner in which people experience the world. The “spiritual” is nothing except a constellation of brain states, of course, but it is at least that.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
To Basson, #23, it seems the value of believing in something higher, a “Universe of Consciousness”, or whatever, is equivalent to culture. I’d ask them to consider joining a bowling league.
The Christians who call themselves theistic evolutionists are most definitely part of the problem. They are trying to give their sky fairy credit for inventing or using or guiding evolution. That’s just plain dumb. I have zero respect for them. I can almost forgive the creationists because they were born brain-dead, but there’s no excuse for both accepting evolution and trying to stick Mr. God in there somewhere. The science of evolution doesn’t need any religious adjectives like theistic.
As both a scienctists (fisheries oceanographer) and a practicing Christian, I am getting really tired of the artificial line I keep being told I have to draw. It goes like this:
“If you are a Christian, you can’t think rationally, so therefore you can’t contribute to anything, and you CERTAINLY can’t be a scientist. If you are a scientist, you ONLY think rationally, therefore you can’t believe in religion, and you MUST only operate rationally.”
PLEASE people. Humans are not that neatly categorized, any more then sea floor vent communities can be characterized as “life” because they are sulfur based, not carbon based. So I think you all need to take a clooective step back, breathe deeply, and realize that you are, in fact, attacking mnay of your colleagues when you make such statements.
And while I’m at it, let’s dispense with this third grade notion that religion does bad things. People claiming a religious mantle, and MIS-READING the central texts of religion do bad things. True CHristians, for instance, abhor war recognizing that Christ called mankind to live in harmony. True Muslims recognize the rightoueness of both the Jewish and Christian traditions as predecessors to Mohammad. And let’s not forget that most of what we know today as mathematics came from religious Muslims in the library in Alexandria. Sad that they didn’t contribute to the world because they had faith.
I can’t wait till Martin Nowak hears that all of his Templeton-funded research is worthless. Things like, you know:
Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation. Science, 2006.
Evolution of indirect reciprocity. Nature, 2005.
Evolution of cooperation by multilevel selection. PNAS, 2006.
Via Freedom to Coercion: The Emergence of Costly Punishment. Science, 2007.
Active linking in evolutionary games. J. Theor. Biol., 2006.
Evolutionary games on cycles. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B., 2006.
I could go on for several pages, but you get the picture.
#25 is a troll.
There is no such organization as the
Moderate Concerned Atheist Alliance (MCAA)
There are only 3 legitimate atheist groups:
United Atheist Alliance (UAA)
the true atheists
Allied Atheist Alliance (AAA)
a bunch of illogical frauds
Unified Atheist League (UAL)
morons if you ask me
Yes, for a while I also called myself a Christian and also had no problem with science.
That being said, you do realize that those two spheres of thinking are completely different?
They don’t have anything to do with each other, and applying the rules of one to the other is fundamentally destructive.
You can figure out which side lost, for me.
However, you are right that religion doesn’t do bad things. People do bad things. I would say that religion is like guns. What say you?
sigh
oh boy
Queue Heddle.
Because obviously the central texts of a religion would never explicitly instruct people to do bad things.
Mis reading by who’s interpretation?
True Christians© and True Muslims© ?
This is what we mathematicians term “bollocks”. Arab and Persian mathematicians did a lot to keep mathematics alive in the European dark ages, but “most of what we know today as mathematics”? Not by a long chalk. Less than the Ancient Greeks and MUCH less than post enlightenment moderns.
Also the Alexandrian library was gone by (or at) the time of the Islamic conquest of Egypt,
sorry one more bit
I think you’ll find that the vast majority if not all of everyone who comments here would never make the assertion that people of faith can not make contributions to society. What you will find many saying however is that people of faith have a roadblock to pass when dealing with subjects such as science and rational thought.
That’s nice. And no true Scotsman eats vegetarian haggis.
Hypatia, the last Alexandrian mathematician of any note, was murdered by a mob in 415 CE, over two hundred years before the Hegira.
noodles, #35:
I’d also include the Atheist Peoples’ Front and the Peoples’ Front of Atheism, but they’re a bunch of splitters.
And while I’m at it, let’s dispense with this third grade notion that religion does bad things. People claiming a religious mantle, and MIS-READING the central texts of religion do bad things.
I’ve read that same quote from Satanists — it’s just those cwazyyy kids who misunderstand the worship of Lucifer! Has nothing to do with the inherent (and sometimes explicit) implications of those texts.
Hallalujah and pass the bagels!
Beautifully written, and very impressive!
On a somewhat, but not so much related note… I was very proud to learn last night that may 12 year old brother, who is grieving for his cat that just died and has been told my many people trying to comfort him that she’s in ‘cat heaven’, got upset at my mom for telling him this and proclaimed ‘why do you keep saying that? How can you believe that there’s a heaven?’. Wow, I was so proud. As long as that rational thought keeps trickling down I’ll be happy.
RE: “True Christians©”
Actually, if you had a correct understanding of the Gospel and were properly guided by the Spirit you would know that all the “love your neighbor” hippie-stuff is allegory, metaphor, or a reference to the purified world after the end-times. You clearly are not a True Christian.
Phillip H. #33 wrote:
Of course a Christian can think rationally and be a scientist, and vice versa. But a Christian cannot apply the scientific method to examining God.
That is the distinction. You have the theists on the one side insisting that God is nothing at all like an empirical fact claim (it’s more like feelings or ethics), and the atheists on the other side arguing that oh yes it is so an empirical fact claim. If you’re going to be a scientist, you shouldn’t draw arbitrary lines.
And then you have the creationists and New Agers explaining that yes indeed, God is a fact claim, and science shows it’s REAL.
From what I can tell, the Templeton Foundation started out trying to scientifically demonstrate the reality of supernatural or paranormal phenomenon (and undermine materialism), and then shifted to studying the benefits of religion and religious belief — and blurring the distinction between religion and other areas (see s’s post at #34 for examples) — when it looked like that first strategy wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Realistically, this letter is not going to accomplish much, though it’s often fun to vent (I did it with the McCain Campaign).
Still, it’s greatly written and, as most people have been quick to point out, right.
The people who think of “spirituality” in these terms are just going to blather about intolerance when they see this.
Noodles – You forgot to list Freedom From Religion Foundation.
@ noodles & Chiroptera
Don’t forget the Popular Front of Atheists. I can forgive you for overlooking him as he old, skinny and generally sits alone being ignored by passers by.
Hear, hear.
Nice. What about agnosticism, though?
I love that word, because it leads straight to “scientist”… =8-)
Man, have you misunderstood what “sulfur-based” means. :-o
Instead of having the food chain start with photosynthetic organisms, it starts with hydrogen sulfide-eating organisms down there. That’s the whole difference. The organisms down there all belong to groups that are known from elsewhere: there are real crabs, real clams, real polychaetes, real hydrogen sulfide-eating bacteria etc. etc. down there. Carbon-based, as in consisting of amino acids, fats, sugars and so on.
Same for cold seeps, BTW, where methane-eating bacteria are at the base.
Young Earth Creationist -> Old Earth Theistic Evolutionist -> Pro-Science Bibilical Metaphorist -> Atheist Rationalist
I think there is a gap in there, between Biblical Metaphorist and Rationalist, there should be:
Skeptical Agnostic Rationalist
#33 – Phillip – How can you say you are a scientist and a true christian at the same time? Doesn’t your mind warp every time you try to see evidence of Gawd?
You have certainly been able to surprise me.
In other words, it was reduced to making arguments from consequences. Pathetic, that.
“Only contribution science is going to make to religion is atheism”.
To take the human mind with its hard-wired proclivity to transcend the natural universe, to embrace the shadow of the all knowing, to reflect in image and likeness the will and intellect of its Maker and to reduce all of that to an ephemeral piece of protoplasm seeking distractions for a few years but always looking at the finality of the open coffin, is truly pathetic. The pathos is palpable. The theist looks to the beautific vision = the vision of ultimate beauty which must natrually correspond to his limited perception of beauty. No perception of beauty makes sense except as a reflection of the ultimate.
Just happened to see last night the History Channel’s presentation of “jaws”, the history (evolution) of jaws, intestines, lungs, etc. Very often scientists recognized that they had hit a “dead end”. So what do you do when that happens. Well, you go over to the Field Museum in Chicago and find an old fossil that somehow resembles what you need to move forward and guess what; “Eureka” we found it. We have discovered the “transitional” species. What a crock.
The difference between the theist and the evolutionist is this: When the theist runs into an exlanatory block, they say “God did it”, when the evolutionist runs into an explanatory block, they go to the Field Museum.
Besides being a prime example of the No True Scotsman fallacy, there’s another problem with this idea. The central texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam do tell people to do bad things. The Old Testament tells Jews and Christians to stone kids who are disrespectful to their parents. St. Paul was an unmitigated misogynist who taught that women are inferior and primarily culpable for sin and the fall of humanity. The Koran says things like “…slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.”
#33: And while I’m at it, let’s dispense with this third grade notion that religion does bad things.
I have questions for Philip H who said he is both a scientist and a Christian.
What switch do you turn on in your head when you want to think, and turn off when you want to praise Jebus?
Do you believe in heaven? If you do believe in heaven, don’t you think you’re setting a bad example for the Muslim terrorists who use the heaven belief as an excuse to fly airplanes into buildings? Don’t you think you’re indirectly part of the terrorism problem?
Also, if you do believe in heaven, don’t you think your wishful thinking is incredibly childish?
Why do you bother with the “Jebus was a god” idiocy? Don’t you think that’s an insane idea? Do you ever wonder why you’re so gullible?
*girly sigh*
Ahh Jerry. I love that hairy guy.
JStein, At the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna, I have a glimmer of hope that this letter will accomplish something, if only to draw a line in the sand to denote the limits of what can pass for scientific inquiry in the professional sphere. Science is withstanding woo-woo attacks from all sides, not only from creationists and their ilk but from a whole passel of other denier-types with a few pseudoscientific spokes(wo)men out front to try and sneak their ‘alternative way of knowing’ into the realm of mainstream science. IMHO, the science/reason side has been too diplomatic and, dare I say, complacent about this, dismissing the alternaloons as an insignificant minority and expecting the public to judge their shoddy science on its merits rather than on its packaging. As a result, the woo has gained alarming ground on us. I think more gauntlets need to be thrown down, more stands need to be taken, more noise needs to be made, because we all have a stake in protecting the meaning of scientific integrity and clearly delineating what doesn’t make the cut. Trying to get this message to the Nature reading segment of the population is a necessary first step in what will undoubtedly a protracted counteroffensive against the rampant bullshit that plagues us.
Seems to me that christians concerned about the next world might not worry that much about evolution, they might just thank you for revealing the glory of creation, and go on their way. Intelligent design looks more like a grab for temporal power, one more in a dreary continuum of power grabs.
NOMA, NOMA, NOMA.
Fails, Fails, Fails.
…as anything other than chewing gum in a radiator hole.
Science should never lead to atheism, the question of God is entirely irrelevant to the process. The problem arises when people attrbute certain events to God, rather than processes. That way when the event is explained naturally, God becomes obsolete.
Max Verret @ #55
No. An accurate statement would be when a theist runs into an explanatory block, s/he thows up his/her hands and proclaims, “I cannot possibly explain this, therefore it must be evidence of the intervention of the creator!” I hope I need not point out how this is both an extraordinary cop-out and an act of spectacular egocentrism (“If I can’t explain it, surely nobody else can!”). When a rationalist – in this case an evolutionist – finds himself or herself facing the same hurdle, s/he will investigate further and try to find more evidence for that will lead to a testable explanation grounded in reality.
“If you are a Christian, you can’t think rationally, so therefore you can’t contribute to anything, and you CERTAINLY can’t be a scientist.
if you’re really tired of hearing that, why do you keep saying it to yourself.
certainly nobody on Pharyngula says that.
show me ANYWHERE PZ for example has ever said that.
what you have there, sir, is a very nice strawman.
suggest you put the match to it.
@ Philip H #33
Science tries to represent landscapes in veridical maps.
Religion makes up maps without regard for landscapes.
Mutually exclusive pursuits, no?
Danio @ #58
Hell yeah!!!
Oh, and I wish I could type. I may have to start appending KoT to my name, just as the Rev does…
Max Verret #55 wrote:
“Pathetic?” Or do you mean it’s not “satisfying” enough for you?
The human mind has a natural egocentric tendency to see itself as the point, purpose, focus, and basis of the entire cosmos. Considering this fact and then leaping to the conclusion that this must be because the human mind really IS the point, purpose, focus, and basis of the entire cosmos looks as if someone isn’t being very objective.
Kel #61 wrote:
Ah, I see. The problem arises when someone makes any claim at all about God other than “it’s behind everything in a way that can’t be examined or thought about too hard.” This rescues God from science and reason by the clever strategy of making it vacuous and “irrelevant to (any) process.” But it looks nice on the mantelpiece.
All this talk about science and religion is very interesting, but I want to know the answer to the big question: is Jerry Coyne related to Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips?
J. D.
Sometimes in places like Kansas, or the Mojave desert, one is not distracted by the razzle-dazzle of nature that seems to fascinate and occupy so many, but to the point, last night flat-on-my-back on the desert sand and staring straight up, I attempted to visualize what exactly is taking place above (and all around) my head. I suppose because I have two sensors in my skull that react to photons, the conundrum of “wave-particle” light got me to thinking. And forgive me for my most un-astronomy-like description of what my mind began to imagine. First off, I’ve always been puzzled by the description of emptiness in space, the “vacuum” in space, the vast nothingness between the floating stuff here and there. And darkness? We look up into the night sky and between the twinkling stars we think we view blackness, emptiness. But wait! It is all an illusion! Because the two light sensors in my head are my point-of-view, I cannot conclude that the dark places are really dark. For every star sends its wave-particle photons out, out in “every direction” and the “light” of each star is like a “continuously expanding” sphere, ever growing larger, a luminous sphere that continues to grow! And “behind” each expanding sphere is another, and another, and infinite anothers (so long as the star’s thermonuclear fusion continues). And me, a single “point-of-view” can travel anywhere in the universe and “catch” some photons from that star. That star’s photons (and every other star) are everywhere! Think of a zillion stars, each sending outward an infinitely expanding sphere, and these spheres of photons covering the universe, and nowhere dwells a place where photons are not whizzing by — so light is everywhere! Human eyes, telescopes, are all single points-of-views. So they catch only an infinitely small “piece of the ever expanding sphere” of starlight. If that star is 10 light-years away, then if someone dwelled 10 light-years on the other side of that star, or 20 light-years from me, that being would also be catching photons from that exact same star. And a zillion beings in a zillion different places in the universe would all catch photons from that exact same star. So, last night for the first time I imagined that the darkness of space is just a grand illusion, and the sky is ablaze with light, light everywhere. My mind told me so, even when my eyes tell me not.
Pretty much sums it up there Sastra. In that sense, it should not be possible for science to push people towards atheism by finding naturalistic causes.
But in reality, how many people have a purely transcendental view of God? Most of them at one stage have one defining factor that “God did it”, where science and religion intersect. In practice, yes science becomes very atheistic because of a believers attribution of God to certain events that to them show the necessity for belief.
At one point or another, a theist will show where they view God’s place in reality. A deistic worldview, though still absurd at least doesn’t have the problem of resolving an absence of evidence with a need for explanation on the complexity of reality. A pantheistic view seems even more self-contained in reality, though again an absurd notion.
The point is that science operates without any regard to any belief, and thus should only tread on the toes of beliefs that have no credence in the first place.
TCRI # 65
I’ve mentioned to the Rev that he should bestow lesser titles upon us who are less than perfect typists. He doesn’t seem to want to take the trouble.
“However we reiterate for the record that the narrative which fails to distinguish between types of believer, and instead holds that “they’re all part of the problem”, has a dangerous tendency to reverse the arrows in the above progression, and so act as a push towards extremism, rather than a lure towards rationalism. This is counterproductive to the interests of all atheists.”
I await your examples of people who went from being a “Pro-science Biblical Metaphorist” to being a Young Earth Creationist just to spite us Mean New Militant Angry Don Imus Atheists.
Chimp @62
“Investigate”? “grounded in reality”? If you go to the Field Museum to investigate, you can ground almost anything you want. A dilemma looking for a fossil. A sure fire “AHA” experience.
Philip H @ 33 The overwhelming reality is that all you have expressed is totally unnecessary for you to live a normal life without the needless baggage religion imposes. Many of us have gone through the same process and finally discovered and realized that you can do everything you do now, but without the crutch of religion. Why is this so difficult to comprehend? Your life is not going to change or end, you will still be able to brush your teeth, sing, swim, watch a movie and do all the other things you do now without an imaginary vengeful god to smite you down. You are deluding yourself needlessly in thinking that an imaginary being that was created by the human mind has any bearing on your life and direction. Why is it that we can live without this crutch and you cannot? Our minds are free of this mental vise and yet your mind is beset with it. Can’t you see and understand that if we can do it, why aren’t you able to do the same and give up the idea of gods who made everything. The human brain gave birth to all religions, and yet animals have brains also but do not entertain these silly and unprovable notions of a supreme creator. We are a higher animal because of our advanced brains which evolution has fashioned over millions of years. There is no mystery here, neither should there be any in contriving to understand it all. Sure you can do science, but science without religion is that more of honest and rational science, free from unnecessary baggage.
Sasta @ 66
“It isn’t satisfying enough for you”.
You’re right it isn’t and fortunately it doesn’t have to be.
“A natural egocentric tendency to see itself as the point, purpose, focus and basis of the entire cosmos”? That is the definition of narcissism. It is probably the only option open for an atheist. The theist sees God as the point, purpose, focus and basis for the entire cosmos
Max Verret @ 55 Your comment is pathetic and one to expect of a rabid religionist. Sure, we can hold fossil bones in our hands for they represent the evidence of a once living animal. You cannot hold your imaginary god in your hand because it never existed but only in your unsound mind. I would rather have a bone in the hand than an imaginary ghost in my head. Let’s see your imaginary god. Get it to come down and wipe this site with us. You have as much chance in producing your imaginary god as I have in walking to the Andromeda Galaxy.
I would rather have a bone in the hand than an imaginary ghost in my head.
~or~
I’d rather have this bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
If you go to the Field Museum to investigate, you can ground almost anything you want.
sure sign Max chose poorly.
pst: Max, lobotomies are irreversible you know.
Max Verret @ 74
Then your god is a narcissist. Looking at the Christian god, with all of the myriad dogmas commonly associated therewith, I think Sastra’s point is valid: the Bible claims that Yahweh made man in its image; most Christians I know of firmly believe this. Most Christians I know also firmly believe that Jebus sacrificed himself specifically for them. Yet you claim that the theist is the not the narcissistic one?
/Signed.
Ichthyic @ 76 If Max had a parietal lobotomy he would end up lopsided.
Max Verret wrote:
You misunderstand what I mean by “egocentric.” Not egotism, but the confusion of self with what is outside the self, so that we merge the importance we give our human-like mind into material reality, and attribute personal meaning and intention to everything. As you put it yourself, in religion man is seen as the “image and likeness (of) the will and intellect of its Maker.” And, vice versa. God being the point, purpose, focus, and basis for the entire cosmos is simply making PERSONHOOD the point, purpose, focus, and basis of the entire cosmos — instead of it being a contingent and unnecessary happenstance.
Atheists do not think of human beings as the “focus” of the universe: it has no focus or inherent meaning, no hierarchy of “higher” and “lower.” We create and find our meanings. We are special only to ourselves — not special as a matter of objective fact.
Max Verret @55
Lame, stupid, and not even wrong.
Theists only offer the “God did it” explanation. That’s all they ever say. You mumble your ancient words out of fear that one day you will die. All reason is abdicated. You surrender to dogma. You’re oppressed and don’t even realize it.
Evolutionists look at evidence. If there is no evidence, they keep searching, exploring and THINKING. The blood of science is rational thought. If new evidence comes in that clearly refutes previous models, out go the old models.
And yes – a natural history museum is a wonderful place, chock full of real evidence and 150 years of tremendous discovery.
Where’s the theistic evidence? Oh yeh, there isn’t any. It’s all about “faith”. Just swallow your Kool Aid like a good little cretin so your masters can control you.
How pathetic.
Ichthyic @ 76 If Max had a parietal lobotomy he would end up lopsided.
which direction would he be most likely to fall in?
BTW, I was referring to 150 years since Darwin in #81.
Congratulations, you’ve discovered Olbers’ paradox.
Ichthyic @ 82
Inward, toward dementia.
Since God does not communicate, theists are reduced to putting their own incoherent conceptions about God as the point of the entire cosmos, which reduces to worshiping what they think of as God, which reduces to worshiping their own thoughts, which reduces to worshiping themselves, yet pretending at the same time that they’re not.
Thus, all religion is actually hypocritical narcissism.
Inward, toward dementia.
continuously?
would that mean he would end up forming some kind of singularity?
“As a young boy, I dreamed of being a
baseballrationalist, buttonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward,
and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.”
To Max Verret @74
“That is the definition of narcissism. It is probably the only option open for an atheist. The theist sees God as the point, purpose, focus and basis for the entire cosmos”
Yep, that’s me all right. Wake up in the morning, stare at myself in the mirror for an hour, go to work, screw everyone and everything there over to further my career & get more money, come home, eat babies. Just like every other fucking atheist in the entire Thor-damned world.
Keep your pathetic generalizations to yourself please. I am quite capable of recognizing that I am NOT the center of this or any other universe and am quite happy with that state of affairs. I find it rather easy to love and aid my family and fellow man/woman with out the magic sky fairy to tell me how. In fact, I’m pretty sure I do it a damned sight better than you do.
So piss off…
Phillip – I don’t believe that you could have actually read the bible or studied church history and come away with the idea that christians abhor war or violence. The bible is quite simply one of the most vile piles of blood soaked dung on the planet.
The great scholar Hector Avalos has published this hope – “One day, the Bible might even be viewed as one of the curiosities of a tragic bibliolatrous age, when dependence on a text brought untold misery and stood as an obstacle to human progress.”
Avalos’s book Fighting Words is all about the violence. Hard slogging for me, but with an education of a scientist you should be able to read it easily. I am currently struggling through his book The End of Biblical Studies, if you care about the truth of the depth of the swindle you are currently caught up in I urge you to read his books.
(sorry for the length of this post)
Ichthyic @ 87 He would forever remain at the event horizon, with no place to go, forever waiting for his god in an infinite state of dementia. Even the Black Hole would reject him.
#35 Someone else also watches South Park, that’s a strange episode, it’s got Dawkins in. i prefer the randomness of family Guy but i watch both.
Ichthyic, building on #87:
Inward, continuously, faster and faster, passing the event horizon of the singularity, into the black hole of dementia, never to return.
Thor-damned world – HA! I’m SO stealing that. ;)
Ichthyic @87:
Well, he’s got the “dense” part down…
Holback @79
“Parietal lobotomy”? Well, I guess when the issues get too complicated for you, you can always denigrate the messenger – old ploy – seldom works.
Sasta @80
“We merge the importance we give our human-like mind into material reality”. “Instead of it being a contingent and unnecessary happenstance”.
That is got to be one of the most flagrant pieces of psychobabble that I’ve ever heard.
Anthro @81
“Lame, stupid and not even wrong”
I can’t begin to imagine what that means.
“The blood of science is rational thoght”. Of course, that is one of man’s participatory attributes. The source of rationality is God.
“Out goes the old model”. That’s right and last night as I watched the History Channel, they were throwing old models out right and left.
No.
It isn’t.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
Simp. @89
Sorry to have upset you so much. I’m sure you’re a fine upstanding fellow. My post was not aimed toward you personally so there’s no need to go up the wall on this.
God = magic. Magic is the source of rationality?
Aw, is Sastra too smart for you?
Dumbed down, it means that your religion is make-believe, but it’s make-believe that you make-believe is not make-believe, because it has so much emotional weight; it is so important to you, your ego, that you can’t even begin to think that it’s not make-believe. Perhaps because if you ever admitted to yourself that it is all make-believe, then you would also have to admit to yourself that you’ve been lied to, and have been lying to yourself, all this time.
God @ 97
Max: The source of rationality is God
God: No, it isn’t
Max: Prove it
That is got to be one of the most flagrant pieces of psychobabble that I’ve ever heard.
translation:
“I don’t get it, but I’m sure I don’t like what you said, so don’t explain it to me.”
LOL
you’re emitting a big x-ray burst, there, Maxie.
*looks hard*
nope nothing of interest left to address.
Damn bloody good letter and a great new one-liner at the end, but WHERE and WHAT is the context? Somebody else asked that and I scrolled thru the whole list of responses and found nothing about the context of this letter. What is it in response to?
Stephanurus
Max: Prove it
and…
burden shifting. You were the one who made the positive claim, remember?
max, you are an utter waste of time.
Max, you want proof God, also known as magic, is not the source of rationality?
Since Mr. God is your invisible friend, isn’t you who has to prove any claims you make about it?
religion as a ‘method of enquiry’ has told us precisely NOTHING about nature and im not sure it actually tells us anythng about anything, well certainly nothing above and beyond any fictional writings over time.
Oh ye of little faith. Is not MY word sufficient unto those who simply believe?
religion as a ‘method of enquiry’ has told us precisely NOTHING about
natureanything.sorry, felt that needed a bit more generality.
…and conciseness (to make up for the fact that you essentially said the same thing in the next sentence).
:P
Owl @101
“Your religion is make believe but its make believe that you make believe is not make believe – you can’t begin to think its not make believe because if you admit its make believe you would have to admit you’ve been lied to.
Is that a redundancy or a tautology?
Max,
You claim your post was “not about me”. Well, you said, quoting again:
I (and most others here) are atheists. It sure looks like it’s about me (and all of them). If you don’t want people to get pissed off, don’t use those tired old generalizations.
“Religion is make-believe” is a tautological redundancy.
Bob @106
It was only a simple request. You don’t have to get bent out of shape about it.
Max Verret #74:
Max, God is just another world for magic. Don’t you think magic is a childish idiotic idea?
Let me fix your quote for you:
IDIOTS see MAGIC as the point, purpose, focus and basis for the entire cosmos.
Max Verrety @ 96
I wonder if you realize what you are saying without recourse to blatant ridicule. You said in post # 96:
“That has got to be one of the most flagrant pieces of psychobabble I’ve ever heard.” What in the name of reason is religion but just a mass of incoherent psychobabble? To you and your confederate irrationals psychobabble is not a term to be applied to religion as it free of all taint of insanity, both in thought and deed. Your imaginary god is just one huge miasma of insane psychobabble whether you believe or accept or not. You only have to bring down your god to appear before us and I will begin my walk to the great Andromeda Galaxy. I give you my word. How’s that? Is it a bargain? No show, no walk to Andromeda.
Max Verret #114:
Max, when somebody asks you a simple question, why don’t you just answer it instead of accusing them of becoming bent out of shape.
Here’s my question again: Since Mr. God is your invisible friend, isn’t you who has to prove any claims you make about it?
The context for the letter is at the Nature web page itself:
It’s an editorial speaking favorably about the Templeton Foundation.
This paragraph might help clarify:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templeton_Foundation#Debate_within_the_scientific_community
Does anyone have material explanations of why the universe’s laws are the way the are, or why it even has “existence” (supposing we can really explain what that means in non-mathematical terms) at all, not to be confused by any honest competent thinker with using laws as “givens” to simply explain what happens once the stuff is already there?
Cobb and Coyne show their philosophical sub-literacy just like PZ and many commenters. Just as food for thought: Victor Stenger, also a strenuous atheist, argues that there must be innumerable universes of varied physical properties because there would have to be some special logical principle to pick out one possible universe and not others (as ironically, I too argue.) He likes this mostly because then he doesn’t have to worry about why “this universes’s” properties are special for life. It is ironic though, how multiple universes are not something we can find or travel to, and yet many scientists and philosophers enjoy indulging in such speculations, or that ~ “all mathematical structures exist as real as this one” – physicist Max Tegmark. Well, are Cobb and Coyne going to rag on multiverses too, or just be like most hypocrites whose main concern is not principle, but whose ox is being gored?
I second BobC in 117.
Max, you make claims of the existence of a supernatural being. In our daily lives, we expect proof of things. We have to show store receipts to prove we purchased something when we try to return it. Courts demand proof before they can convict someone of a crime. We demand second and third opinions from doctors when faced with a diagnosis, to make sure the evidence is consistent. We are asked for proof of previous employment, of graduation from college, of marriage. The list goes on and one.
So where is YOUR proof of your invisible friend?
We don’t see him. We don’t smell him. He sends no emails or certified mail. He doesn’t write his name on the sky in huge letter using stars.
I challenge you to simply answer this question in one clear sentence, without resorting to circular reasoning or strawmen. I dare you.
Max Verret@89The theist sees God as the point, purpose, focus and basis for the entire cosmos
What God(s)? Where? Whose God(s)?
The theist accepts religious teaching without any supporting evidence. Then the theist moves to non-theist space, like this blog, and denounces all those who insist that imaginary beings are imaginary.
Then the theist is surprised, and slightly hurt, that non-theists react to being denounced, and behave as if the non-theists are irrational.
Max Verret, if you have any thing real to say, please say it. If you wish to talk about God, fine, but don’t quote scripture unless you can also show that the scripture is more than ancient rantings.
If you can demonstrate any reason at all to believe in the supernatural, then do it. Most atheists either start off that way (no reason not to), or shake off their religion when they realize that not only is there no evidence, but that the priests/preachers/whatever have been saying things that are untrue.
If you hold truth as a value, and you research the historical and scientific evidence for Christianity, then your belief will start to unravel before your very eyes. People who remain Christians either do not care about truth, or are ignorant about their own religion as well as the world around them.
Christians who come to an atheist blog to denigrate atheists are not welcome, although a decent discussion would not go astray. Do not imagine that atheists are ignorant of religion – most have a better grasp than you. They just don’t believe that unsupported fiction is worthy of worship. Atheists aren’t running away from your God; he’s not there to run away from.
Owl @86
“Since God does not communicate”.
Of course He communicates. He communicates through the events of our lives. He communicates through the unfolding of history. That is the “voice of God”. Take your hands off your ears and open your eyes. Look at the expanding universe and the magnificant cosmos, look at the evolution of the natural world. If that’s not the voice of God then what is it?
Oh look Holbach, isn’t it cute? It’s trying to show you it’s teeth.
Stop it Max. Whipping out your invisible friend in mixed company is vulgar. It offends those of us riding our high horse sidesaddle.
AnthropicOne, do you and like-minded appreciate the idea of having a “conceptual argument” for something? What is this fetish of simple-minded raw empiricism anyway? For example, whether anyone here is sick of hearing about “modal realism” from me or not, can you at least appreciate the argument? Are you saying, you have abstraction, or is it – like I think – really just a matter of whose ox is being gored, such that if you saw an argument you liked about why “multiple universes” should exist you’d like it and be persuaded just fine – even though multiple universes are, well, physicists’ imaginary friends aren’t they?
But my regards to any honest, consistent, true practical and non-posturing empiricists.
#122 translated: If that’s not the voice of MAGIC then what is it?
Here’s the editorial to which Cobb and Coyne are replying:
When a wealthy individual seeks to leave a legacy through scientific philanthropy, researchers usually greet such generosity enthusiastically. But the death of investment mogul John Templeton marks an unusual, and notable, exception. At the time of his passing last week, Templeton had poured some US$1.5 billion into the John Templeton Foundation, which funds research at the intersection of science and spirituality. Critics have maintained that the foundation needlessly conflates science and faith, with some calling for an outright boycott of Templeton funding.
Templeton was a deeply spiritual, albeit unorthodox, individual (see page 290). He lived a life firmly rooted in the Christian traditions of modesty and charity. Yet he was also a great admirer of science, the undogmatic practice of which he believed led to intellectual humility. His love of science and his God led him to form his foundation in 1987 on the basis that a mutual dialogue might enrich the understanding of both.
This publication would turn away from religion in seeking explanations for how the world works, and believes that science is likely to go further in explaining human moral impulses than some religious people will welcome. Thus it shares a degree of suspicion with many in the scientific community at any attempt by religiously driven organizations to fund science. A chief concern is that the influential Templeton Foundation might be seeking to inject religion into the scientific world. And it is easy to understand that concern given the political activism of many American fundamentalists and their efforts to promote ideas such as intelligent design, which posits a divine hand in evolution. The foundation’s most vigorous critics accuse it of attempting to lace science with spiritualism.
That claim is somewhat ironic, as Templeton himself seemed to have just the opposite in mind. He believed institutional religion to be antiquated, and hoped a dialogue with researchers might bring about advances in theological thinking. The foundation’s substantial funding of science and religion departments around the world is directed towards those ends. Theologians have also used foundation money to develop and promote arguments that reconcile some of the apparent contradictions between science and religion. For those many scientists with a faith, promoting the compatibility of science with faith is a prudent and even necessary goal. Strict atheists may deplore such activities, but they can happily ignore them too.
The foundation’s scientific agenda addresses ‘big questions’, which has sometimes resulted in work that many researchers regard as scientifically marginal. One field popular with the foundation is positive psychology, which seeks to gauge the effects of positive thinking on patients, and which critics argue has yielded little. Also heavily supported are cosmological studies into the existence of multiple universes — a notion frequently criticized for lying at the edge of falsifiability. The concern is that such research has been unduly elevated by the foundation’s backing. But whatever one thinks of positive psychology and the like, the foundation’s support has not taken anything away from conventional funding. And in the field of cosmology at least, it has arguably yielded some new and interesting ideas.
The foundation’s management now falls chiefly to Templeton’s son, John M. Templeton Jr, whose Christian beliefs are reportedly much more conventional than his father’s. A critical scrutiny of the foundation’s scientific influence continues to be warranted, and no scientific organization should accept sums of money so large that its mission could be perceived as being swayed by religious or spiritual considerations. But critics’ total opposition to the Templeton Foundation’s unusual mix of science and spirituality is unwarranted.
Simp @112
My post said it was not aimed at you PERSONALLY. I didn’t say anything about the COLLECTIVE.
Below is the editorial in Nature about Templeton that the OP is responding to:
Very simple, Neil B. The reason that this universe appears to be remarkably well suited for life is…
drumroll please…
because this is where life began.
It’s just that simple. If the laws had been different, life would be different. And we would then say that “this is the best of all possible worlds.”
It always amazes me when theists claim that this universe is somehow “special for life”. The vast majority of *this* planet will kill any creature not adapted to that environment. Fish on land do not live very long. Air-breathers cannot survive on the ocean floor. Nothing lives in the vacuum of space. What part of this is “special”? Life has adapted to the niche it has carved out, (that is the part that bugs the theist, BTW.) and claims that this muddy pond is “special for life” because my butt fits into it so nicely.
PZ beat me to it!
Earth to Max:
The natural universe that you describe is real, and awesome, but how long have you been hearing voices?
echidna @121 could not have been more eloquent.
So max, what do you do in #122, but retreat into empty statements (again). Let’s look at this in detail:
“Of course He communicates. He communicates through the events of our lives.”
– What events? Be specific please. What events are explainable by a deity and not b other means?
“Look at the expanding universe and the magnificent cosmos”
– OK. It’s expanding. How is this communication from a deity. Explain it specifically. Do you always conclude “god did it” when faced with something that’s initially puzzling?
“…look at the evolution of the natural world.”
– Um, that’s what PZ and folks here do. It’s called evolution by natural selection. No gods needed. What part of this don’t you understand?
“If that’s not the voice of God then what is it?”
– It’s nature. It’s the universe. I can see nature. I can see the universe. How are you interpreting this as a communication from a deity?
So then how would one best describe the ’emotion’ our top cosmologists are ‘feeling’ when theorizing on String ‘Theology’? It is un-testable as a theory. It is the current best-description of the sub-quantum world after all.
I am not fishing for a theistic response.
Holback @116
“Bring down your God to appear before us”
No. He has given you the Law and the Prophets. If you do not believe them, you would not beleive one who came back from the dead.
I think that’s a paraphrase of some Biblical text.
AnthropicOne@132,
Thank-you.*blush*
The theist sees God as the point, purpose, focus and basis for the entire cosmos
Right, and God *just happens* to look like a big human in the sky. A white male, no less. And he just happens to like the same things the theist does, and thinks the same things are pretty or boring or funny-looking, etc. etc. He even roots for the same football team. (That’s AMERICAN football, you heathen! God only blesses America.) What a coincidence!
No. He has given you the Law and the Prophets. If you do not believe them, you would not beleive one who came back from the dead.
You know Max, there’s a big difference between not taking on faith that a certain ancient text was inspired by a deity, and not accepting that deity as real when it appears right before your eyes (and hopefully video camera).
I find it telling that you claim the evidence for your god is all around us, but when pressed, you insist that we wouldn’t believe you even if you showed us.
“Thou shalt not test the Lord” indeed.
Max Verret @ 122
Seriously, are you insane or is this the best your stricken mind can puke forth? If you only knew what you sounded like to rational minds you woudn’t be so free with gobs of demented crap. Good grief man, get a grip on that head of yours and give it a good swift twist to make sure that it is tight. Your brain surely is not tight, as it is swilling around in a pool of dementia with no bottom. You almost sound worse than Dan and he is surely in your league if not in your class. Were you born this way, or did you have relgious insanity forced fed to you while still in diapers? Come on, you are an adult now and time to slough off childish fantasies. Or could it be that you really are demented and therefore not aware of you condition? You know, brain surgery can be very effective in excising that diseased part of your brain that deals with imaginary dementia. Your imaginary god is not going to help you so do the next thing and submit to brain reorganization. It’s almost working on Dan, but the effects have just not registered yet, and he will either go completely bonkers or morph into another Einstein. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I know it’s not your fault that there is no god, but don’t exacerbate the damn situation by making believe there is because it just isn’t so. I’m putting my walk to the Andromeda Galaxy on hold until you come to your senses. Really, I am a nice guy, just out to help the religious afflicted who are impervious to logic to come to their senses and get that insane crap out of their skulls before it rots them into uselessness and insanity. Yours in reason, Holbach.
Sigh.
You, again. Didn’t we already go over this? The short answer is “parsimony”.
And the long answer… well, once again:
Any explanation for the universe that includes God — that is, a powerful entity that can create and manipulate universes that has intelligence, awareness, desires, knowledge, the ability to analyze and the ability to plan — also requires an explanation of how that entity came to exist in the first place, and why that entity does not appear to interact with the universe on any detectable level.
Since the “multiple universes” hypotheses do not posit the existence of an additional entity, and thus do not require any additional explanation for such a type of entity, they are simpler, and thus preferable to all hypotheses that posit intelligent entities.
So unless some new evidence has turned up since the last time you argued this…
No. He has given you the Law and the Prophets.
meh, I’m bored of waiting.
bring on the golden calf!
LanceR, you should peruse “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle” by John D. Barrow, Frank J. Tipler, John A. Wheeler (Foreword). You will see that the important thing is not which planet etc. (yes I get your point about that) but things like the fine structure constant, with a logically ugly but very convenient value for us of about 1/137. I don’t think much of things like that being blown off as a so what, or burying it inside of hypocritically unempirical notions like numerous universes with various constants (like fighting crime with more criminals, if you think such things should be “meaningless” or whatever.)
Max Verret said:
He has given you the Law and the Prophets. If you do not believe them, you would not beleive(sic) one who came back from the dead.
I think that’s a paraphrase of some Biblical text.
I will say it again:
Max Verret, if you have any thing real to say, please say it. If you wish to talk about God, fine, but don’t quote scripture unless you can also show that the scripture is more than ancient rantings.
There are many holy writings from the distant past. How is one distinguishable from another?
That is the “voice of God”
I think you need some new hearing aids.
Owlmirror, your idea is fairly reasonable in itself but remember that it still violates the principle of falsifiability. So that’s a consistency/hypocrisy problem for some people. But I do appreciate the better tone I see around here about such high-level debate.
(yes I get your point about that)
not if you can follow it up with this:
… but things like the fine structure constant, with a logically ugly but very convenient value for us of about 1/137
no, you really don’t get his point, at all.
Anthrop @120
One sentence:
If you can look at majesty of the universe, the magnificance of the expanding cosmos, and the evolution of the natural order and not see a God, then I don’t know what anyone could do to help you.Where did it all come from? “From the singularity”. Yes and where did the singularity come from? If you tell me it was there from all time, then I will tell you that you have found your God. If you tell me it was created, I’m going to ask you who created it. Nothing comes from nothing. Something simple has to BE and that is your God.
high-level debate
*snicker*
Ichthyic – so what is his point? If you/he mean, we wouldn’t be here “to say so” if alpha was very different, sure – but then we just wouldn’t be here, that wouldn’t keep the stuff from being around anyway. Please don’t confuse whether we could be here to talk about whatever with whether some world could just exist without us, and why isn’t that what existed.
No, it’s not. That’s make-believe.
When you communicate to someone, do you speak clearly, and in a language they can understand? Or do you just stand there and assume that they can infer what you have to say, with all of the various nuances of meaning clearly explained, simply from your presence and your silence?
With God, we don’t even have a physical presence. All we have is… silence.
Your rant contains its own answer: It’s the expanding universe and the magnificent cosmos, the evolution of the natural world, not the voice of God.
God is not necessary to explain any of it or its existence, so it is not God’s voice.
QED.
@Neil B
Given that we don’t know how this universe came into existence, or why its universal constants have the values they do, wouldn’t the logical thing to do be to continue studying the problem until a solution backed by evidence is is discovered, rather than hypothesizing multiple universes or invisible deities without any evidence to confirm either?
(If I’ve misunderstood you as arguing from the theist perspective, then please accept my apologies.)
Hey Max,
Humour me. Define if you will, the term “burden of proof”. I’m curious to see what you have to say about it.
If you/he mean, we wouldn’t be here “to say so” if alpha was very different, sure
not exactly.
focus on the “we” part, and try again.
I think you can do it.
Yeah, now I think about it, I think that’s the same response you gave last time, too. Sigh.
Dude, we know there’s a falsifiability problem when we get to extremes of cosmology and physics. But we can least limit our hypotheses to the most parsimonious.
Well, there went the sangria & lime slice right out my nose. Thor-damn it at #134.
“No”. There’s your answer Holbach, I know you’re just gonna love those prophets and the law. Ha! Ha!
We got a Best in Show Troll in Max.
No gawd for you! It’s gonna take me days to quit laughing over that post. HAW!
Max @ 134
Are you back from the dead? Did your phony god let you come back or what is all just a passing nightmare? At least I can say in your defence that you are alive, unlike your imaginary god that never existed. Come on, doesn’t it piss you off that you cannot make your god come down and beat the crap out of us sane people? I know I’d be pissed if I was a god and heard this kind of talk from creatures I didn’t make, dragging my non-existence through the shit sewers. Pray as hard as you can and make it happen. Heck, I’m itching for that walk to Andromeda Galaxy, but I’m being detained because you won’t cough up your god so that I can get going. I promise you that I will honor my part if you honor yours with the appearance of your imaginary god. Wow, a chance to walk around Andromeda, twice the diameter of our own Milky Way Galaxy with two hundred billion stars that the universe created without any imaginary help? Damn it, I demand you have your god appear so that I can take that walk!
Yes and where did the singularity come from? If you tell me it was there from all time, then I will tell you that you have found your God. If you tell me it was created, I’m going to ask you who created it. Nothing comes from nothing. Something simple has to BE and that is your God.
Pardon me for saying so, but a hyper-compressed point of time and space makes for a pretty poor deity. It certainly doesn’t communicate, and I’m at a loss as to why you’d assign it a gender.
Oh wait, I get it now!
You’re suggesting that something else came before the big bang, and created it. Not only that, but you’re suggesting that such a thing has definable, human like characteristics.
While you’re looking up “burden of proof” for Dagger, could you please also look up “anthropomorphism” and “Occam’s Razor”?
Ah, there’s your problem. First of all, if “nothing comes from nothing”, then God has a problem too: God cannot have come from nothing, so God cannot exist.
Second of all, “something simple” that “just exists” is not necessarily God, and most certainly is not necessarily the God of the Bible.
And finally, something can indeed come from nothing according to modern cosmological and physical understanding. It’s just that so far as we know, it is indeed “something simple” that can come from that “nothing” (subatomic particles and/or energy), not a complex and intelligent entity.
Neil B. #119 wrote:
Is your question even answerable? I mean, once you start asking for “ultimate” reasons, is there any logical termination point where the ‘why this and not something else‘ question can’t fit behind? From our perspective, we’re either lucky that the physical laws of the universe just happened to be the way they are — or we’re lucky that God existed, and just happened to be the way it is. But WHY? And ‘why’ after that? And again after that.
Both situations are only “lucky” in a very narrow and subjective sense. Arguments for God from Fine Tuning always seem to jump too hastily into the technical middle of the argument, the constants and parameters, tossing off the premise that we’re important, special, and therefore in need of explanation as if this were an objective fact of the universe, true from every position. That we’re special and important isn’t a derived conclusion so much as a repeat of the initial premise.
I’ve never understood the assumption that the normal, natural, expected way for things to be is to be nothing at all. I’m not sure that “nothing” is even coherent, and it’s certainly different from 100% of our experience. Even on the assumption that everything is equally likely, there would be an infinite number of hypothetical ways for something to exist, and exactly one and only one way for there to be ‘nothing.’ Infinity to one is pretty good odds.
What if there is nothing cosmically “special” about us after all, because reality doesn’t have preferences. The fact then that we’re here is no more a sign that the universe was waiting for us than the fact that you’re here is a sign that your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather thought hard about what you would be named.
The difference between the theist and the evolutionist is this: When the theist runs into an exlanatory block, they say “God did it”,
I take it that this is supposed to be a good thing.
when the evolutionist runs into an explanatory block, they go to the Field Museum.
Still don’t know what an evolutionist is. Whatever they are, I guess they’re not theists! Thanks for trolling though. Bye.
Anthrop @132
You say I am inclined to claim “God did it”.
You say “Nature did it”.
I have an eternal God. Are you saying that you have an eternal nature?
Does that really make any sense to you. Just think of it – eternal nature? Does that not strike you as a contradiction?
Neil, you’re just being obtuse. The whole point is:
1. If the physical laws were different, we would be asking the same question under different laws. “Daddy, why is the sky green?”
2. Remember parsimony? There is no need to postulate alternate universes. This one is complex enough. There is no (That’s zero, nit, nil, swabo, not a single shred) evidence of alternate universes outside of random “what if” games when writers and physicists get drunk or high.
3. Even granting the existence of other universes, the very nature of any possible “continuum” would completely preclude and prevent ANY evidence whatsoever.
So, in the case of this discussion, alternate universes are completely irrelevant. As they were the last time you brought this up. And the time before that. And the time before that. And the time before that. Ad nauseum.
Seriously. It’s a fascinating idea to blue-sky about, but your use of it here (and in previous posts) reveals your true aim: to promote a theistic hypothesis at the expense of parsimony. Give up, already. It’s gotten boring.
Max
And another thing; just because you capitalize that phony word “god” doesn’t bring it into existence. Doesn’t this piss you off, that an atheist is relegating your imaginary god to the ash heap of nothingness? Here’s another reason to get your god to come down and beat the crap out of me, and yet you cannot do it. Hey, make believe it’s your big brother and it is coming down to defend you, it’s little brother, against the bullying atheist. “What’s the problem little brother? Big brother, this atheist here says you don’t exist and I want you to kick the crap out of him.” Er, better wait till he comes back from the Andromeda Galaxy walk and then I’ll give him what-for”
Dammit!
There went the rest of my sangria, and I have to change my magical underpants.
“You know, brain surgery can be very effective…”
And the strawman goes down for the count! Amazing! What a skillful use of verbal cunning to knock down a stuffed argument!
Does anyone have a recipe for stuffed argument under glass?
Eternal nature, eternal god, they are both eternal bullsh*t. Why do you insist on “eternal”?
That funny coming from you Max. You’re the one who invokes magic for everything you don’t understand. If anyone needs help it’s you and the other everything-is-magic weirdos.
By the way your “He has given you the Law and the Prophets” is pure stupidity. You sound like a brain-dead fundy.
Cheese @136
No. No white male. Man made in the image and likeness of God references man’s limited participation in intellect and will which in God exist in perfection.
I hope this clarifies your confusion.
He has? <looks around frantically> Ummm… I think I lost them.
@Max, #166
What?
Bro. Bartleby: Don’t….Bogart that joint, my friend…
Max Verret: Your comment at 72 does not make the point you think it does.
Also: If your life has meaning because of God, where does God look to find meaning for His existence?
Max Verret @160 said:
Anthrop @132
You say I am inclined to claim “God did it”.
You say “Nature did it”.
No, AnthropicOne says “It is”. It is not necessary for someone/thing to have done it.
I have an eternal God. Are you saying that you have an eternal nature?
Does that really make any sense to you. Just think of it – eternal nature? Does that not strike you as a contradiction?
So you make up straw-man arguments, say someone else said them, and then say they sound silly?
For crying out loud, stop it.
If the eternal god you speak of were to exist (no evidence available for it to be anything but a hypothetical), how are you informed of the nature of the god? How do you distinguish truth from non-truth among the different ancient writings and beliefs?
If you could answer these questions well, then you could probably convert a number of people on this blog.
I have thrown the gauntlet.
Max;
I have to get up early tomorrow and it’s 12 Am here in the East, so I’ll have to sign off. Leave me a nice juicy comment for the morning, one that I can relly chew and sloush around. That is if you have not gone insane in the interim. Yours in Reason (note the capital “R”?), Holbach.
Max #160 wrote:
The problem is that the word “nature” — like the word “universe” — has several meanings. It can refer to this particular configuration of matter, energy, and time arrow which we are familiar with. OR, it can refer to everything: all of reality; existence; being; the total sum of all that has ever existed in every form and time; the whole shebang. There’s no contradiction saying this is “eternal” — it’s built into the definition.
Heck, if there’s a God it’s included in the larger whole.
Of course even the word “eternal” comes with nuances, time being as complicated and mysterious as it is. I think that one of the big stumbling blocks with positing “God” as some kind of ‘eternal person’ is that personhood is intimately tied up with the familiar world of earthly human experience, and is sadly out of place when talking theoretical physics and the extreme limits of cosmology.
God isn’t really an explanation. We get creation from a creation source. We get life from a life source. We get love from a love force. We get reason from a reason source. We get mind from a mind force. Morals come from a moral source. Meaning comes from a force of meaning. Beauty comes out of a source of beauty. Those aren’t answers; those are rearranged questions.
Max – I have an eternal god.
OK, trot the old boy out. Surely you must be proud of his eternalness.
I used to be a god soaked ass just like you Max. In fact, I’ll bet I’m a better god soaked ass than you. My well filled blouse is covered in medals for scripture knowledge.
Ya know what Max, if you actually study it – you’ll figure out – it’s bullshit.
God doesn’t show up for the game. He never saves anyone. You are a fool.
Holback @138
Thank you for your interest and concern over my well being. It was the Christian, er, pardon me, the humanistic thing to do. Your lengthy post comes across as the musing of a fellow who’s trying really hard to convnce himself that he really doesn’t believe.
Oh! And Max goes straight for the “Atheists Really Do Believe In God” argument! Wow! That’s original!!
Your lengthy post comes across as the musing of a fellow who’s trying really hard to convince himself that he really doesn’t believe.
Right Max. You wish normal people have to try hard to not believe in your idiotic fantasy world.
Well, Max is studiously ignoring my posts. I assume that he cannot answer them.
Owl @
“God is not necessary to explain any of it”
Not unless you think its been there for all eternity and the Law of Necessity refutes that.
So God is not necessary? – Prove it
Max,
I have an eternal Invisible Pink Unicorn, so I know how you feel. People don’t believe me either when I tell them about Him.
But what can you do about those that simply refuse to believe?
Dude, we know there’s a falsifiability problem when we get to extremes of cosmology and physics. But we can least limit our hypotheses to the most parsimonious.
don’t be so stiff.
we can cram god into any gap we choose!
:P
the Law of Necessity
wasn’t that from one of Aquinas’ long refuted arguments from hundreds of years back?
you need to read some new books, and get that hearing aid replaced, and…
oh fuckit.
just go on and implode, would ya, so we can find out if you will in fact become a singularity.
thanks, ever so much.
Musings of a fellow trying really hard to convince himself he doesn’t believe…
Holy Eris, you really do need brain surgery.
Max Verret (@178) wrote,
It slices, it dices, it…
Lance at 164
“Why do you insist on eternal”?
Because otherwise I would have to embarass you by asking you to explain when did it start?
I’m proposing a hypothesis:
Theists refuse to open their minds because they think their imaginary sky fairy is listening and will judge them. In some ways it’s like grandstanding in front of the boss. Something like this:
“See. I’m loyal. I’m towing the company line. So please save my ass from the flames of hell”.
I’ll bet this is where Max fits. Very stereotypical theo-cretin. In other words, Max, boobie, you have no balls for true intellectual engagement. The only reason we persist in bantering with you is because it exposes you for what you are. But on a serious level, I feel sorry for you that you’re so deluded.
The link given in my previous post should’ve been:
It slices, it dices, it…
Not unless you think its been there for all eternity and the Law of Necessity refutes that.
So God is not necessary? – Prove it
Easy, there is no god. Remember, necessary cannot be denied without ending in a contradiction. I just denied that God is not needed to explain the universe or reality. You may not agree with me, but that doesn’t mean it’s a contradiction. Thanks for playing. :)
echidna @177
You are correct my friend. He’ll never answer our questions logically and directly. He’ll keep speaking in riddles and vague Chopra-esque mumblings.
This is typical of religiots.
Because otherwise I would have to embarass you by asking you to explain when did it start?
and you would consider:
“we don’t exactly know”
as problematic, wouldn’t you. Well, obviously since you think it would somehow “embarass” someone to admit that we don’t have exact dates.
OTOH, I seem to recall there being a good deal of evidence suggesting an approximate date of about 13.73 billion years (give or take a few dozen million years or so).
go implode, would you please?
Bob @ 165
“Invoking Magic for anything you don’t understand”
I do understand it Bob. I don’t claim magic. I have an eternal God within whose nature it is to create. Otherwise I would be like you – stuck with eternal nature which is incomprehensible.
#178 translated: So MAGIC is not necessary? – Prove it.
For every problem Max has an answer: my invisible friend did it, and if anyone doesn’t like my childish solution prove me wrong. Of course Max provides no evidence for his magical sky fairy. Typical brain-dead theist.
Max, instead of invoking the magic man for everything you don’t understand, why don’t you try saying “I don’t know” or “This is a research opportunity”. Nobody ever solved a problem by invoking magic.
Otherwise I would be like you – stuck with eternal nature which is incomprehensible.
where did any of us say anything about incomprehensibility on our end?
In fact, as time goes by, the incomprehensible thing becomes the idea that so many rely on crutches to walk when they are perfectly capable of disposing of them.
Yes, even you, Max, have two good legs to walk on.
you really don’t need your imaginary friend to carry you.
try it and see.
It’s so easy Max, even an ass like you can do it.
Have your god rearrange the stars to say something like – Hi! I’m here, love – god. Or put the moon behind Jupiter. How about raising every ones grandpa from the grave?
Your idiot prophet answer has absolutely nothing to do with anyone, any thing, or any time.
As a dog returneth to it’s vomit, so doth a fool to his folly.
Fool.
stuck with eternal nature which is incomprehensible.
Not at all. Why is it that humans should be able to comprehend nature? Who knows what happened before the first Plank time? The universe could have been created, it certainly could have been created by a quantuum vacuum fluctation or something similar as we measure them all the time and the universe was very small. Also, it’s possible that the universe is a repeating cycle of big bangs and big crunches that just is. There are many other possibilities too. The arrogant thing would be to declare that because we don’t understand how the universe began, let’s postulate a consciousness that is the same as ours, but of a higher or perfect grade, and say it did it. That’s begging the question. We need to do research, not just accept a solution that seems most pleasing to our ignorance and limited understanding.
I have an eternal God within whose nature it is to create.
Unsupported assertion ahoy!
“In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism.”
That’s because religion is supersttion and not true.
Assume for the argument that God exists, and interacted with our world. Then the result of his interactions might be observable, and science could also relate to it.
But as it is, there seems to be absolutely no observations consistent with the “theory” that there is a god. And therefore the quote above is true.
I don’t claim magic. I have an eternal God within whose nature it is to create.
You mean magically create.
Like most people who invoke Mr. God, you refuse to admit it’s nothing more than an imaginary magician.
Max, your god’s abracadabra magic has no evidence, and no idea could be more childish.
Your other problem is your dishonesty. Why don’t you admit every god ever invented is nothing more than a fairy who performs magic tricks.
Max, seriously, Dude. You’ve been spanked. You’re out of your league. Military Grade Stupid like yours belongs at Uncommon Descent, or perhaps at the house of worship of your choice.
Just because *you* don’t understand, does not make it “incomprehensible”. Your ignorance is not evidence.
Echid @170
“How are you informed about the nature of God”
Look at nature and the nature of man. What is the good, the true and the beautiful there. These are participatory attributes which man and nature share in limitation with their God in whom these attributes exist in perfection.
If you can look at majesty of the universe, the magnificance of the expanding cosmos, and the evolution of the natural order and not see a God, then I don’t know what anyone could do to help you.
I find it amusing that you “see a god” in things that have only become known to mankind through science.
Quite off-topic, and most here may have seen it already, but here’s a fun one-act play starring Ray Comfort: http://www.silentdave.net/?p=42
anthropicOne@188,
Thanks, friend, I was beginning to feel like I was talking to the wind. From the way that Max rudely avoided gentle and direct questions, I suspect he is sincere, and is afraid that the foundations of his belief will crumble if he questions them.
Max, your belief is unfounded. If you can show otherwise, you will win many converts.
What is the good, the true and the beautiful there So, you decide what is good and true and beautiful, then attribute it to God? I wonder if it’s parasites and virus? Probably not. But these are as necessary as those more cute organisms.
You’re dangerously close to committing the pathetic fallacy (look it up) that Jesus committed when he attributed human needs to flowers and birds…..
Look at nature and the nature of man. What is the good, the true and the beautiful there. These are participatory attributes which man and nature share in limitation with their God in whom these attributes exist in perfection.
Leaving out that you’ve provided no reason at all for why we should believe anything in your previous paragraph to be true, why are only the good attributes representative of your deity? Why not the bad ones as well? If your god is the creator of all that is, then isn’t he responsible for malaria, cancer, Harlequin fetus syndrome, hurricanes, and everything else chaotic and destructive?
I have an eternal god within whose nature it is to create.
No, Max you don’t.
I have a uterus within that can create life if sperm are added to my egg and it implants.
You are such an idiot. What was the last thing your god created?
I’ll help you with the answer Max – woman. Long time ago huh.
Fool.
You are all wrong that atheism is the only contribution science can make towards religion. You are also all profoundly wrong that spirituality is worse then religion. Let me explain.
Spiritual practice (like doing meditation) is merely a technology that alters the nervous system, which at it’s best has all the features of science, like testable hypothesis and validation by a community of peers. Some sects of buddhism are remarkably consistent in their ability to generate changes we can find in brain scans. Most spiritual practice gets disconnected from truth when people confuse the beliefs that lead to the neurological changes as true, rather then just useful or possibly true.
Science can contribute to religion in a better way then just “atheism” by explaining religion a system of control over spirituality, spirituality as a stunted proto-science of internal conscious experience, and consciousness as a function of self reference and feedback in the higher levels of the neocortex. Any theory of the brain must be able to explain the religious experiences of different people. By understanding how varying spiritual experiences correlate with, among other things, psychedelic neurochemistry, inhibitory effects in the amygdala, and mirror neurons, we can construct a better model of the brain. We need to take spirituality seriously, as a neurological phenomena, to understand our brain.
Once we understand our brain in this light, we can map out in much more precise detail how religion represses and controls the variety of spiritual experiences. If spiritual experiences correlate with neurological phenomena, and religion exists mainly to control and ration people’s spiritual experiences, a better, neurologically based understanding of spirituality will give us a very clear understandings of the precise mechanisms by which religion continues to poison the minds of so many people.
Usefulness, not truth, is the measure of the value of spiritual practice. If doing buddhist meditations is useful (because it strengthens their ability to hold their attention on something and direct it, which we can see on brain scans), it doesn’t much matter if it’s true or not. Remember, in science and life, we use a bunch of things that are useful but not true. Like with newtonian mechanics, or in scientific hypothesis making, or pretending you didn’t hear your parents having sex.
Taking spirituality seriously, not as literally true, but as a toolkit to alter the brains output by changing it’s input, will be what will allow us to break religions grip on the minds of so many people. Reconciling science and religion is bullshit. But, reconciling spirituality and science (by taking spiritual traditions as useful data rather then exclusively noise, skimming the cream off the top, understanding the experiences of consciousness change in spiritual practice in terms of the neural correlates of the feedback and self reference in the neocortex, and plugging this into science) will offer the best chance to finally kill religion and all the stupid behavior that goes along with it.
“Here is a schematic of precisely how the common features in spiritual practices at the core of all religions alter neurology, how religion exploits people’s ignorance about their brains to use these levers to control them, and a scientifically valid program on how to use this same knowledge of your brain to consciously create a reality you want to live in, as an alternative to living with political and social distortions of a misinterpretation of some confused hippy dudes spiritual experience 2,000 years ago which in destroying the planet in it’s embrace of radical idiocy.” is better then just “atheism” as a scientific contribution to the problem of religion.
PJ O’Rourke had this to say:
Pretty good article found via Arts and Letters Daily: On God
*snip*
Reconciling science and religion is bullshit.
*snip*
ahh, so much better.
I don’t know why you guys are bothering with Max, honestly. A lot of great points and constant refutation to his utterly insane claims (which I guess would fly in a church.)
However, it’s painfully obvious he’s a troll, or just severely mentally deranged. He’s trotting out every refuted, insane and cliche’ statement that I’m surprised he hasn’t brought up Pascal’s Wager yet.
He’s a lost cause, there’s no shame just admitting he should be on medication, or shouldn’t have been home schooled and let it go.
Sasta @172
“Its built into the definition”
The definition of what?
“We get creation from a creation source”. Now that’s really magic. A meaning source? A beauty source? You’ve got a whole bunch of gods there. I think all of these attributes exist in perfection in one self-sustaining unified entity and are perceived by us in limitation since we are not self-sustaining unified entities. We are particular created entities.
I’m late to the party. But this letter deserves a standing ovation.
You’ve got a whole bunch of gods there
no…
you’ve simply inserted a whole bunch of personal assumptions there.
go and fucking implode already.
I’m tired of waiting.
Max, go suck on a lemon.
Max @ 210
Why?
I think all of these attributes exist in perfection in one self-sustaining unified entity and are perceived by us in limitation since we are not self-sustaining unified entities.
I sense a disturbance in the metaphysical force as if Plato’s Forms had been blended into one metaphysical kludge.
Patricia at 173
“God never saves anyone”
You’re right about that.
By exercising our free choice to choose the good, true and beautiful, we save ourselves; If we make bad choices, we perish all on our own.
I’d like to join in the well-deserved applause for this letter.
I think what’s so hilarious about the idea of “advances in theological thinking” is that the godbotherers worship the very ancientness, mustiness, and inability to cope with change that underlies their outdated worldview. Any “advance” would, by definition, be bad!
anthropicOne@188,
Thanks, friend, I was beginning to feel like I was talking to the wind. From the way that Max rudely avoided gentle and direct questions, I suspect he is sincere, and is afraid that the foundations of his belief will crumble if he questions them.
Max, your belief is unfounded. If you can show otherwise, you will win many converts. But you have not even begun to do that.
By exercising our free choice to choose the good, true and beautiful, we save ourselves; If we make bad choices, we perish all on our own.
This is interesting. Define free choice? Is there any choice you’ve ever made that wasn’t decided by you? If not, then all your choices are the result of your personality, environment, current beliefs, upbringing, genetic dispositions, etc. Thus you were never free to make those choices, though they are yours.
Here’s your dilema: 1) All of us make causally describable choices and Free will is just a feeling we have or 2) we somehow chose things that we have no say in and thus, like a madman are not responsible for those choices and cannot be punished for them……
You just keep being stupid Max.
There IS no gawd. There is absolutely no proof anywhere in the world, or – what the hell – outer space, of a gawd.
You idiot, all you have is the bible. It’s bullshit.
The whole thing is a lie Max.
Who are you trying to ‘save’? No one here believes it. Invisible friends are lunacy. Go bray your stupidity somewhere else. Fool.
Icht @181
I take it you don’t care much for medieval metaphysics.
#216:
After reading #216 I’m now sure Max Verret is a wacko and a waste of time. Apparently he has a childish belief in heaven. Only the most gullible brain-dead cowards believe in life after death.
Over 275 years ago, Jean Meslier spelled out a cogent explanation of the vacuity underlying the word “spirituality” as used by the religious:
From the excellent Superstition in All Ages: Common Sense (1732). Although afflicted with a Roman Catholic priesthood for 30 years, Meslier enjoyed a complete and joyous remission before his death.
But it sounds so good. I know, let’s attach it to a pile of bullshit so that the shit sounds good too.
By exercising our free choice to choose the good, true and beautiful, we save ourselves; If we make bad choices, we perish all on our own.
Or sometimes we’re wiped out by floods, natural disasters, lightning strikes, disease, or even falling space junk.
Please, inform me again how your god is a good and just god?
And you are proud that you do care?
Antropt @185
“Sky fairy”
“Grandstanding”
“Save my ass”
“Hell fire”
“Theo-Cretin”
“Boobie”
“No balls for an intellectual debate”
Are you serious?
A voice completely indiscernable from, well, not a voice. But hey, maybe Maxie does know something.
What was God trying to communicate when he broke the zip on my boot yesterday? Or is it bigger stuff? Was God maybe trying to tell me not to go to China when he let loose a few earthquakes, train crashes, plagues and riots straight after I’d booked my holiday?
If God really is trying to communicate, he’s flunking Intro Communications 101 as spectacularly as this guy.
I have often wondered what this nugget of wisdom says about all the infants in the world who were lovingly provided by their god with progressive leukemia.
Maybe Max can explain? The Christians I know all change the subject or suddenly remember a meeting they have to rush off to.
Max at #216 – I rest my case.
He is a total idiot.
What I took as side splitting comedy on Holbach’s post … “You know, brain surgery can be very effective…”
turns out to be good advice.
Max needs brain surgery.
Brian @ 187
You say: God does not exist
You DENY: That God is NOT needed to explain the universe
So, the God that does not exist is needed to explain the universe
You say: That’s not a contradiction
I think you’re giving me a headache
@208
Let me explain a little more. We already have a good model that suggests the reasons for dogmatic thinking. Your thinking brain might feature a common prediction making algorithm. When people think dogmatically, they censor out the content that does not fit with their (necessarily obsolete and incomplete) set of predictions, in the exact same way you reduced everything I said that was not already in your worldview to noise.
The problem with spirituality is that it’s religious, not scientific, people who are mostly the ones doing it. Spirituality can be reduced to breathing, relaxing, and systematically exercising various parts of your mental function in various contexts. I can construct exercises with no superstitious or unscientific content that would have the same effect on your mentation. As a scientist, you should be able to consciously believe only 99%, 75%, 25% of your worldview, at times, because that ability will be conductive to better hypothesis making. When religious types do it, we get, well, religion, and it’s associated evils. But when scientists do it, we get more imaginative hypothesis making, which, on balance is a good thing. Science, after all, shows that more instability in repetitive information propagation through evolutionary contexts results in faster evolution. This should apply to science. Go take a yoga class and try, just for an hour, to believe whatever the teacher says that grates with your worldview. Then do that at a baptist church. Then go back to being a scientist. If you can’t do that without mental resistance, you’re as dogmatic as a catholic with just a different body of dogma, and it’s based on the same neurological mechanism that keeps religion in control of power.
God never saves anyone.
You’re right about that.
Christ on a frackin cracker! You admit I am right? You idiot. I had little respect for you before – but now I have none. Fool.
Icht @189
“Evidence that it started 13.73 billion years ago”. I hope you didn’t get that from the Field Museum. At any rate, HOW did it start 13.73 billion years ago. I think I know how it did but I’m pretty sure you don’t have a clue.
Time for me to toddle off to bed.
I’m not going to waste any sleep over the stupidity of Max Verret or Dan.
Good night sweethearts & Meatball!
Right Max, it started magically. Everything is magic, right Max?
Can’t solve a scientific problem? Don’t bother researching it, Max knows the answer. His fairy said some magic words and poof, problem solved.
Bob @191
The problem with saying “I don’t Know” Bob is that its a lie. I do know and I have shared that knowledge with you. So, now you know.
Max @ 234
“HOW did it start 13.73 billion years ago. I think I know how it did but I’m pretty sure you don’t have a clue.”
We don’t know and you don’t either. But here’s the big difference. You are convinced that you know, and therein lies your delusion.
Please, lets not go down the tired old path of infinite regress. *yawn*
The only thing I learned today from you Max is that you’re an idiot. Nothing personal. You’re not the only hopelessly stupid god-soaked moron on this planet.
I think I know how it did but I’m pretty sure you don’t have a clue.
oh noes, I better go check the “field museum” and find out.
you really did have a lobotomy, I’ve been forced to conclude.
implode already, damn you.
I second Bobc @239. Right on the money.
Off to bed I go. Hopefully, I won’t have nightmares of delusional trolls…
I take it you don’t care much for medieval metaphysics.
nope, that’s YOUR “field museum”, apparently.
ok, that’s enough, if you aren’t going to entertain us by imploding, you’re far too boring to continue baiting.
Patricia @193
“Put a moon behind Jupiter – Write in the sky with stars”
Would you really believe in a God who engaged in those kinds of circus stunts. “Show me some signs and wonders, multiply some loaves and fishes, walk on a pond of water, cure a blind man and cast out demons into pigs and I’ll believe in you, God”.
You can’t be serious.
Marcus @200
“Things known to mankind only through science”
Do you think these “things” came into being only when science discovered them or do you think they could possibly been there before science discovered them.
Well, since I’m the night owl around here Max, you’ll be so kind as to tell me your hypothesis, the method by which you study the mechanisms effects and any predictions this hypothesis can make. Most importantly, and pay attention to this now, you’ll be so kind as to tell me how you would be proved wrong.
Otherwise, I have as much reason to listen to you as I have to listen to the man on the Magnificent Mile with the sandwich board and megaphone who decries the evils of the Russian’s working with space aliens.
Max Verret:
Max Verret, apparently, wouldn’t believe in a god who provided evidence. Somehow I am not surprised.
Patricia at 205
He is creating as we speak. The universe is expanding creating space. There is no space until the expanding universe creates it according to the Devine Plan
If you don’t mind, I think I’ll pass on your uterus.
Who is? And before you answer “god”, I’ll refine the question to “Who’s god?”
How can you be so sure that it isn’t simply chaos doing the expanding? Or Aristotle’s Prime Mover, caring not a wit for this world? You speak as if you know something. But many other people speak with such certainty and their answers contradict yours. So who am I to believe Max? I’d just as soon ignore you all until you show me something I can test.
Have anything alone those lines?
according to the Devine Plan
would that be the Ned Devine’s plan?
http://www.nileguide.com/destination/boston/nightlife/ned-devine%27s/355337
looking forward to a Wobbler myself.
Hey, Jeff, ever been there?
The problem with saying “I do know”, Max, is that it’s a lie. You don’t know because no one knows. You have no “knowledge” to share, so save your ancient superstitions for Sunday school (after all, the whole point of Sunday school is to indoctrinate defenseless, impressionable kids into Christ Club.) Most adults see right through religious bullshit because we’ve heard it countless times before. It never gets any more credible through repetition.
So, now you know.
If you don’t mind, I think I’ll pass on your “Devine [sic] Plan”…
Max Verret,
you have been arguing in the last hours using mainly this :
# COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, a.k.a. FIRST CAUSE ARGUMENT (I)
(1) If I say something must have a cause, it has a cause.
(2) I say the universe must have a cause.
(3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
(4) Therefore, God exists.
and this :
# ARGUMENT FROM BEAUTY, a.k.a. DESIGN/TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (II)
(1) Isn’t that baby/sunset/flower/tree beautiful?
(2) Only God could have made them so beautiful.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
oh,and this :
ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES (I)
(1) My aunt had cancer.
(2) The doctors gave her all these horrible treatments.
(3) My aunt prayed to God and now she doesn’t have cancer.
(4) Therefore, God exists.
and probably this:
ARGUMENT FROM FEAR
(1) If there is no God then we’re all going to not exist after we die.
(2) I’m afraid of that. (3) Therefore, God exists.
to try and convince us of your god.
Its getting tiring,and you might have figured out by now that we have heard all your “arguments” before,there are lists of them like the one of which im quoting here,and you do not have said anything we hadnt heard yet.
The Divine Plan. Mr. God must have given Max a copy of it. How else could he be so certain of everything he says? Of course he is just describing the childish fantasy world he lives in.
What amazes me about Christians and other religious wackos is first they invent a god, then they invent countless other ridiculous beliefs about their god. They pretend they are 100% certain about every wild claim they make.
There is nothing more powerful than religious indoctrination. If the victim doesn’t recover from their child abuse they grow up to be like Max, willing to believe any supernatural insanity and never willing to question it.
Sadly, I fear Max has gone to bed. And every question posed after his having had left will be conveniently forgotten. Tomorrow or the next day or the next day he’ll reappear, as if this whole thread never existed, and begin anew. Derailing worth while conversations and posing nonsense questions akin to “what’s further north than the north pole?, while making statements attesting certainty in the tooth fairy. All without the need to provide testable evidence for his claims.
But enough with the positive spin on things…
“Would you really believe in a God who engaged in those kinds of circus stunts.”
It’s funny, Max, but many of your co-religionists insist that third-hand anecdotes of such “circus stunts” are all the evidence we should need to fall to our feet and worship.
Perhaps there’s an opportunity for common ground here. Max, will you agree that the biblical accounts of miracles are wrong, and that those who base their faith on them are deluded?
Now that is an awesome question. If only it would get answered…
Is religion delusional? Of course. Is it stupid? Well, if by stupid we mean maladaptive, then…
Robert Sapolsky:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/march7/sapolskysr-030707.html
“… religiosity in and of itself is good for your health in some ways, although less than some of its advocates would have you believe. It infuriates me, because I’m an atheist, so it makes me absolutely crazy, but it makes perfect sense. If you have come up with a system that not only tells you why things are but is capped off with certain knowledge that some thing or things respond preferentially to you, you’re filling a whole lot of pieces there–gaining some predictability, attribution, social support and control over the scariest realms of our lives.”
There is no such thing as your make-believe “Law of Necessity”.
QED5
Well, if by stupid we mean maladaptive, then…
no, we don’t.
so your quote of Sapolsky, while interesting, is irrelevant.
ignorance can always be shown to be adaptive, whatever the organizational form utilized (in this case religion) used to maintain it.
that doesn’t mean it’s not fucking stupid.
hell, murder can be adaptive at times, too.
You say: God does not exist I say there’s no reason to suppose that any god exists. Not quite what you claim
You DENY: That God is NOT needed to explain the universe An error, I typed that at work. I affirm (not deny) that no god is required to explain the universe on current evidence and using logic.
Max Verret @ 134:
Don’t worry, Max. As you probably know, the Bible’s writers (whoever he/she/it/they were) have given you the ultimate get-out clause with Deuteronomy 6:16:
…which references an incident in Exodus 17:1-7 where the Israelites, short of water after a long journey through the desert and in mutinous mood, demanded proof of God’s existence (oh, and some water please!). By sheer coincidence, the same chapter also states that God amply demonstrated his existence by making a rock produce water when Moses hit it with his stick. I’m sure James Randi* would have something pertinent to say about such shenanigans… but I’ve certainly got something to say about any ideology whose main text explicitly states that questioning its veracity is intrinsically wrong.
Anyway, we don’t need to see your God him/her/itself – simply evidence of an effect without a cause in this otherwise ordered universe, demonstrating temporary suspension of a physical law which has otherwise been shown extensively to hold true, which would indicate that some entity outside our universe is able to reach in and make arbitrary adjustments. After that we can discuss whether the entity is God, Allah, Brahman, Buddha or Stephen Fry.
* and his foundation’s wonderful, marvellous, inspiring new president }:-)
LanceR, you should peruse “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle” by John D. Barrow, Frank J. Tipler, John A. Wheeler (forward) – Neil B.
LanceR, don’t waste your time, it’s crap. As philosophers, these guys are pretty good physicists. In the first place, the claims that all the constants have to be just so for life to exist are only that, claims: if they were different, life, in the sense of entities subject to natural selection, might have emerged in quite different ways – there was a recent brief piece in <>New Scientist on this – I can find the exact reference if anyone’s interested. In the second place, let’s concede all the deist could want. Suppose there’s only one universe, the values of the key constants were set at the Big Bang and could have been different, and ours are the only settings that would have led to life. It still has no added explanatory value to hypothesise that “Goddidit”. Either it’s an extraordinarily unlikely chance that the constants just happened to be set right for life to emerge by some unthinking process, or it’s an extraordinarily unlikely chance that a god pre-existed that wanted to create a universe with life in it. The first explains as much as the second, and is still the simpler hypothesis. Only if, for example, the digits of pi, or of the ratio between the masses of the electron and proton, turn out to encode, say, the Pentateuch or the Bhagavad Gita, would the “Goddidit” hypothesis have explanatory value.
Neil B at 119:
No. Not yet. But “We don’t know” does not imply “God”.
TomK at 206 and 232; I have experimented with “spirituality” in the sense that you mean it; I’m sure you would agree that it involves nothing “supernatural”!
Michael X at 248
At last! I’ve been waiting for those words to appear on Pharyngula for weeks…
Posted by: Michael X
Sadly, I fear Max has gone to bed.
Ohh goody, tag team trolls
And every question posed after his having had left will be conveniently forgotten.
It seems those questions are posed often enough, it hardly matters which broken record they come from. They cause a great optic strain from the collective eye-rolling.
Not THAT again
We have the universe. You have your say-so.
A thought for you: Could the universe cease to exist?
No, it doesn’t.
Why could you have an (universe-less?) eternal God, anymore than you could have an eternal, godless universe?
No reason at all.
If “it” “didn’t” “exist”, no-one “would” “be” “here” to ask that question.
“Does that really make any sense to you. Just think of it – eternal nature? Does that not strike you as a contradiction?”
Why does that make less sense than eternal god? Why is that less of a contradiction than an eternal god?
I do not expect the universe to necessarily “make sense” to me if by “make sense” you mean “match other things that I can intuit.” The heliocentric theory doesn’t “make sense” because it is “obvious” that the sun goes around the earth, right? Quantum electrodynamics doesn’t “make sense” because it contradicts intuition and “common sense” notions of how the world works, but it damned well seems to match up with experimental results, to more decimal places than my “common sense” does.
How self-centered of you to insist that the universe must match what you _want_ it to match. I always get the feeling with religious folks that they insist so hard on the existence of deities and suchlike because they are inadequately equipped, emotionally, to deal with a universe that lacks them. Their emotional makeup needs a mommydaddy that lasts forever. It is not coincidental, as Weston LaBarre has so brilliantly pointed out, that the gods we create resemble our parents.
There’s a reason why people like Max come here.
They know they aren’t going to change any minds or convert anyone, they say so themselves.
They come here because of their insecurity. Deep down they know its all bullshit, and they’re scared to death by that. They need to bolster their “faith,” so they come here and argue, and as long as they can successfully ignore the rational responses to their irrational claims and questions, they go away satisfied.
Their delusion has held, it has withstood challenge – not through winning an argument, but by successfully dodging it.
People like Max come here to test and strengthen their blinkers.
Great letter! Read it at Nature and then went here, figuring there must be some discussion about it :-)
Just this morning I was reminded how much religion is to people like sunlight is to flies: No matter how much it would help them to turn their backs, they can’t help but bump their heads into the glass.
craig@268,
Isn’t it also that they think their “witnessing” (or more accurately, witlessing) is getting them brownie points with God? This is taken to the extreme by trolls like Psalm Pilot, who just cut and paste reams of biblical text. Max is a little more controlled, but not much, since much of what he spews has no claim whatever to be argument – it’s just the Christard equivalent of “Allahu Akbar!”.
Max
Nothing said nothing to me about your imaginary god not existing. I cannot get any more negative than that. You exist because here you are, trying not to prove that your imaginary thing does not exist. All this is still more sensible than what you have been powerless to prove to us.
Max Verret: Very often scientists recognized that they had hit a “dead end”. So what do you do when that happens. Well, you go over to the Field Museum in Chicago and find an old fossil that somehow resembles what you need to move forward and guess what; “Eureka” we found it.
And it’s amazing that they can find such a fossil, yes? It’s not as if they find fossils that have some chance resemblance; scientists actually have some fairly narrow ideas of what the fossils should look like — and then these fossils are found! Fossils that need not exist if evolution weren’t an accurate description, but do exist in reality.
Me, I think the conclusion is obvious.
Tom K #206 wrote:
I agree with what you’ve written here, and suspect that Cobb and Coyne would also agree. You’re defining “spirituality” in a different way than they are. It’s a very vague term with a lot of different meanings, so there is bound to be confusion.
I also think that this sort of objective study of mystical forms of consciousness requires at least a functional working assumption of atheism, so that the “truth claims” can be included into the neurology and psychology, and not treated as factual conclusions. Feelings “as if” we’re one with the universe doesn’t tell us that the universe is a Huge Consciousness. But it tells us other important things.
Atheism isn’t the only contribution science can make to religion: as you point out, it’s actually the jumping off point for the real interesting stuff.
Man made in the image and likeness of God references man’s limited participation in intellect and will which in God exist in perfection.
I hope this clarifies your confusion.
Yeah, clear as mud. *smirk* I’ve seen fundies claim that God made the platypus all funny-looking because he has a sense of humor. That’s right, God’s sense of humor is just as lame as the fundies’. And sunsets and flowers exist because God thinks they’re pretty. And God hates fags just like some fundies do. I’ve heard religious fanatics claim that the creator of the universe – you know, that thingy with billions of galaxies, each of which contains billions of stars – personally intervened in the world, probably suspending a few laws of physics (but in such a way that nobody noticed), just to answer their prayer for a nice dry day for their church picnic or something like that.
I don’t think there is anything confusing about it – religious people of a certain type impose their own values, tastes, personal desires and petty little prejudices on the universe. That is why gods are created in the image of people, not vice versa.
“They come here because of their insecurity. Deep down they know its all bullshit, and they’re scared to death by that.”
Well, yes. It’s essentially cowardice & an inability to grok personal responsibility (morality _must_ be imposed from without by an endlessly-noble sky Santa, or life just wouldn’t be worth living).
The other “irony” is that if a sound proof of their unprovable assertions COULD be constructed and offered, they would likely ignore it, since faith is “beyond reason.”
So, I guess, what’s the point of arguing with them? Faith is by definition beyond argument (argument being a logical process), although people like Aquinas have tried to do an end-run around this and prove the existence of god anyway.
Max #210:
If “the Universe” is defined as “Reality: all that does, did, and will exist in every form,” then it’s eternal. It may, or may not, include God. This makes God, with its attributes of personhood, contingent.
I think you missed my point. Explaining everything in our experience by saying that “all of these attributes exist in perfection in one self-sustaining unified entity,” means that you’re not really explaining anything. You’re not breaking down what mind is, or what we mean by beauty. You’re not figuring out how things developed, or how they work. You’re just invoking it all as a pre-existing condition, incomprehensible little black boxes bundled together. That’s not explanation.
As I’m using the term, “magic” comes down to the belief that Thought is a thing outside or above the material which has real force and power, and it can create and bend reality to its desire. This means that God works by using magic. I’m not sure what you would mean by “magic.”
If you assume a priori that there is a Maker, then yes.
Why do you make such an assumption?
1) Why?
2) Who says everything must make sense to you? You can’t tell me relativity and quantum physics make sense to you, for example…
Indeed. We have transitional series. It’s rarely a single species.
But, dude, that’s a TV show.
It was staged. It was set up in the way the filmmakers thought would look most dramatic.
Did you really believe that’s how scientists really behave?
Though it wouldn’t be all that bad. Have I overlooked anything? Have I overlooked any data? Have I overlooked any evidence against my pet hypothesis? Going to the Field Museum can certainly help. “God did it”, on the other hand, amounts to giving up.
What’s your point?
This is a parody, right?
Evidence, please.
No, not really — so far. But we’re working on it.
Now let’s see if religion fares better. Why are the laws of nature the way they are, and why does the universe exist? Because God wanted it that way. And why did God want it that way? Why does God even exist in the first place?
And how would you even begin to work on answering these questions?!?
BTW, you might like the hypothesis of Cosmological Natural Selection. While apparently not the best explanation for the observations, it’s at least falsifiable.
Well, what could it be? Perhaps an expanding universe, a magnificent* cosmos, and the evolution of the natural world, respectively?
Why should there any “someone” be behind that?
* Pronounced with “-sent”, not with “-kant”. Therefore spelled with c. This works even if you pronounce e and a the same.
Lithic Principle, you little narcissist. The very same “fine-tuned” values that are required to allow the existence of life are required to allow the existence of rocks, for example, and they greatly help in allowing the existence of black holes. People who believe in the anthropic principle are ignorant, willfully or not.
Where did the singularity or near-singularity come from? Perhaps it was just a quantum fluctuation. You know what I’m talking about?
But if it wasn’t, if it was always there… wait. What do you mean by “always”? Time is a property of the universe.
But, OK, fine, let’s grant your point fully, just for the sake of the argument. Let’s assume the singularity was always there, then, at some point in eternity (note the contradiction in terms), time began, and the Big Bang happened. How does that turn the singularity into a god? It’s not omniscient, -potent, or -benevolent. It’s not scient or volent at all, if I may make these words up, because it’s not conscious. It’s not a person. And its potency is nothing but to expand. It’s just the interior of a black hole, sort of an elementary particle. Would you really call that a god?
Bingo. Sastra wins the thread.
You misunderstand. Sastra laid all those sentences into your mouth, in wording that makes clear how meaningless she (rightly) thinks the word “God” is. She should have put them between quotation marks.
Why?
You bet. Did you believe scientists are automatically polite? That’s a fallacy.
If you were wrong, how would you know?
SOmething that struck me in these discussions is that it generally focuses on religion as imagined by Christians, and to a lesser extent Jews and Muslims.
But what about, say, the Navajo (Dine)? I don’t speak fluent Navajo, but I’m told there’s no equivalent word for “religion.” Yet plainly they have one. I haven’t heard of too many issues with them doing science, or using it, except when anthropologists and archeologists were behaving in ways that were frankly pretty awful. (i.e. if I were an anthropologist, how many of you would let me steal and dissect your grandma’s body without telling you? Not many).
Maybe I’m getting into Sapir-Whorf hypothesis territory.
Also, Buddhism doesn’t really have gods in the western sense either. There’s real, empirical evidence that some kinds of buddhist practice can do real things at a neurological level, so that says to me that the concept of religion in a Buddhist culture and in a Western one are likely to be very different. It may not fir so well in the religious-people-are-idiots meme that is so common on this thread.
After all, Japan is a technological society, a literate one, and one that produces no shortage of scientists in all fields. If you were to ask about religious affiliation there I bet you’d get answers similar to a lot of other places, event he US (last time I checked their religiosity fell somewhere between the US and Europe).
But questions like teaching evolution in biology are non-issues there, as is religion in politics. (I asked someone years ago if it was a problem to talk about evolution in biology classes, and he looked at me like I was nuts to ask). Now, I do speak a certain amount of Japanese, but there is every possibility that I am missing some major political issue there. But to my knowledge there’s no equivalent of an evangelical movement of Shintoists or Buddhists the way there is here in the US.
And yet every house built has a ritual done to cleanse it of evil spirits, and even modern buildings have little masks in the eaves to ward them off. And not having an ancestor shrine someplace is seen as a bit gauche (though this is less true in more modern apartments for space reasons and allowances are made if it’s not your family home).
That says to me that they look at it in a less dogmatic and binary way than Americans do.
Interesting jesse, but those benefits you speak of are attainable without the religion. They are not dependent on belief in a religion. Now I don’t know the actual efficacy of meditation (I’m assuming that is what you are referring to) but assuming it is physically measurably beneficial, I know people who meditate and claim benefit from it, but are in no way religious. And beyond that, those benefits do not stand in stark contrast to advancement in science. Religion as practiced by Christians or Muslims claim benefits beyond the natural world (heaven, grace etc…). These benefits go against dealing with the natural, physical world.
When the supernatural as put forward by religion stands as one of the possible choices a scientist has when doing research, that automatically is detrimental. To repeat this which is said here far to frequently when dealing with this subject, when one of the answers you come to is “God did it” you stop all scientific inquiry. It is a wall that can not be climbed and one that need not be climbed if you accept that answer.
“At the time of his passing last week, Templeton had poured some US$1.5 billion into the John Templeton Foundation, which funds research at the intersection of science and spirituality.”
Think of the good uses this money could have been put to!
What a fucking waste.
All that his money is doing is making the world a little more comfortable for a lot more fucking morons.
Jesse #278:
Non-western religions may not always come into the same kinds of direct conflicts with scientific discoveries that Western religions do, but they’re not really more ‘consistent’ with science, nor do they harmonize. From what I can tell, eastern religions tend to regard the material world as illusion, with real knowledge and understanding of the universe coming from a mystical merging of the self with the entire Cosmos (or shedding the ego to do the same.)
Taken seriously, that sort of mindset is not conducive to being effected by evidence, argument, or the critical opinions of other people. I think it has the potential then to be just as dogmatic as any other kind of religion, and cause as much harm.
Michael X:
Exactly right. In this respect, Max == Kenny. I chased Kenny for weeks trying to get an answer to one simple question. One. I never got it. But we got the same inane postings over, and over, and over, until he was (mercifully) banned.
Shall we start a pool? I say September 13th.
Jesse,
You undoubtedly know more than I do about it, but I’m sceptical that Japanese religion is as harmless as you imply. Shintoism was and is closely linked to extreme Japanese nationalism, and the profound xenophobia many have noted in Japanese society. There is at least one very sinister Japanese Buddhist sect, the Soka Gakkai, a typical authoritarian, brainwashing, money-grabbing cult. Then there was Aum Shinriko: if they hadn’t, fortunately, been pretty incompetent, they could have killed thousands.
To argue about the ‘benefits’ of religious practice is impossible, too. If a sick patient is “prayed for” and revives, it’s obvious that prayer worked; if the same patient gets worse and dies, well, “god had other plans.”
How does one argue with that?
Well correlation does not imply causation to start.
The difference between the theist and the evolutionist is this: When the theist runs into an exlanatory block, they say “God did it”, when the evolutionist runs into an explanatory block, they go to the Field Museum.
The difference is that the Field Museum actually exists.
He’s already done it (at least) once:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/poll_need_pharyngulizin.php
Jesse, as a matter of fact, the eastern religions are just as contradictory to science as western religions. And all of them just as dogmatic. There may be more liberal people practicing them, and that’s why they seem less dogmatic. But if you think religions such as Buddhism is somehow inherently more open to science, you are grossly mistaken. And contrary to popular believe, Buddhism has historically been used by the ruling class to subjugate their subjects.
I’m late (back) to the party here, but I couldn’t resist. Any other Aqua Teen watchers out there? This line of reasoning always reminds me of the Orbanauticas scene:
Oglethorpe: We shall ask the mighty Orbnauticas. *Disco ball descends and starts spinning* Orbnauticas, we seek wisdom. To what evil purpose shall we put our slave to use? *Long pause as disco ball spins*
Emory: Maybe he’s sleeping.
Oglethorpe: DO NOT INSULT ORBNAUTICAS OR YOU SHALL BE DAMNED FOREVER TO THE FORBIDDEN ZONE!
…Shake: Then why isn’t he saying jack crap?
Emory: Yeah man, how come?
Oglethorpe: Because silence is his wisdom.
The western world is having a love affair with eastern religions, just as the Chinese appear to be having a love affair with Christianity.
The grass is always greener…
Awesome post!
@ Sastra, 273 (& Tom, #206)
“Atheism isn’t the only contribution science can make to religion: as you point out, it’s actually the jumping off point for the real interesting stuff.”
While I agree with both of you that science (or neuroscience, or sociology or psychology, or some combination of those fields and likely more) can provide a rational explanation of religion, I think you’re making Cobb & Coyne’s point for them.
If the goal is to try & research religion & find objective explanations for the phenomenons normally associated with religion, & if as research progresses these phenomenons are discovered to have material, non-supernatural, rational reasons behind them, then the logical conclusion is not that there is an invisible sky pixie forever hiding itself from our instruments.
It is that there are no gods, religions are man made constructions and have measurable, materialistic by products. So, science ultimately can contribute only atheism to theology.
At least that’s how I read that closing statement, anyways.
@#199
Max! Look out for the Eurythpro…
That’s gonna leave a mark.
Well, duh. There used to be no English word for “religion” either, that’s why it’s borrowed from Latin.
How stupid of me not to and so on.
Well, maybe we’ll eventually reach the point where most people’s religion won’t be determined by birth.
Max @ 199
No matter how many insane religious sappy pukings you throw at us, it will still not bring your imaginary god into existence. When will you comprehend that your god does not exist but only in your religion sapped brain? You will go to your grave without bringing your god down for us to see. Never mind the oft-quoted crap about disbelief and appearance to the doubtful. There is no doubt that you are irrational with hundreds of million of others, sappy with their insane delusion of something that does not exist. Under ideal conditions, you would be declared mad and remanded to an asylum for the religiously insane. It’s a wonder you are still roaming about and puking your insane platitudes and feigning at sanity.
Way back @151 I asked Max to explain “burden of proof.”
Pyroclasm @156 expanded on the request and additionally asked him/her (could be Maxine) to explain “anthropomorphic” and “Occam’s Razor.”
I’m hurt that Max skipped right over us. Then he seems to have disappeared without saying goodnight. I’m not surprised though, since I don’t think the lights were on before he started posting anyway.
@273 & 292
I completely think atheism is true. I completely agree with you that atheism is the springboard for this project. I do not think spirituality does anything supernatural, but I also don’t think the information from spiritual practitioners is worthless. I think there is some faint signal in that noise and tuning into the signal is essential to understand neurology, human history, and how religion still controls people. I don’t think the signal in the noise is from what spiritual practitioners say being true, but from it being able to teach us more about neurology. I think a lot of scientists cut themselves off from this useful information by dismissing all parts of spirituality as bullshit, instead of just 95% of it.
Science can offer more then atheism by offering better, scientifically grounded ways to get at the same neurological states that irrational religions create.
@281
“From what I can tell, eastern religions tend to regard the material world as illusion, with real knowledge and understanding of the universe coming from a mystical merging of the self with the entire Cosmos (or shedding the ego to do the same.)”
From what I can tell, both quantum physics and neurology tend to regard the material world as illusion, with real knowledge and understanding coming from a merging of the (ultimately illusory) self with the entire cosmos. In neurology, this is because your experience of the world (including your feeling of being you) is inside your head and anything you experience includes your sensory input and pattern-finding in such a way that everything is driven by environmental input. In quantum physics, this is because anything you say must include a description of the instrument you used to do the measuring, and one such instrument is the nervous system.
How about, instead of “regard the material world as illusion, with real knowledge and understanding of the universe coming from a mystical merging of the self with the entire Cosmos” meaning anything mystical, reading it as a report of the neurological experience of having your neocortex go from making top down and lateral predictions that cause your perception, to solely experiencing your sensory input, without additional levels of prediction feedback or filtering? “shedding the ego” becomes the neurological state of not making the predictions in the neocortex that feed back into your sense of self and cause you to relate objects in your perception to your body. Then, take eastern spiritual practice as a set of useful exercises to achieve this neurological state, without making additional claims as to the truth of the ideas the exercises are predicated on.
Phineas #292 wrote:
I agree.
It’s like this:
1.) Bad narrow-minded atheist scientist dismissing spirituality:
“Spiritual practices like meditation and mystical experience are only technologies which alter the nervous system and brain. They don’t tell us anything about the cosmos; they simply tell us about ourselves. They may be useful on the personal level, as a means to improve psychological health, but that’s it. Mysticism is otherwise worthless.
2.) Good open-minded atheist scientist valuing spirituality:
“Spiritual practices like meditation and mystical experience are these wonderful technologies which alter the nervous system and brain. They don’t tell us anything about the cosmos; they do better and tell us about ourselves. They’re really useful on the personal level, as a means to improve our psychological health, which is great! Mysticism is definitely worthwhile.”
Tom K #297 wrote:
From what I can tell, this is not a very good description of what quantum and neurology posit about the material world. At best, it’s muddy and misleading, and seems to confuse the subjective with the objective. There is a real physical world out there, distinct from our experience of it, and unaltered by our thoughts.
By inhibiting blood flow to the primitive part of the brain which differentiates self from non-self, however, you can lose the feeling that there is any distinction. One experiences a sense of boundlessness, of egoless thought without content, and deep significance. It feels AS IF you have “merged with the cosmos.”
I think that if you say that yes, if you feel AS IF you’re spread across the universe and know all its secrets then this means that from your point of view, you really are and do — and then go on to leave out that part about the subjective point of view and simply call it “merging with the cosmos” — you’re going to be misunderstood.
Or maybe I do misunderstand you. I don’t know.
Tom K (#297):
Sastra (#299),
It’s not. It’s a painful trivialization of the science. You can’t go from “the human brain is not a closed system” and “measurements depend in part on the state of the measuring apparatus” to “the material world is an illusion”.
Tom K (#297):
Acid is quicker.
That’s one of the stupider anthropomorphic arguments being made by the God bots. Can you prove that? Seriously? That without these EXACT properties, life could not originate?
If the weak force was a little weaker, would that preclude life? If so, why? If photons were less energetic, would that preclude life? If so, why? If the strong force were stronger, would that preclude life, and if so, why?
Can you actually put on proof of your grandiose, narcissistic claim? Especially in light of the evidence that surrounds us. For example, we have bacteria that can eat nylon. That can live in cold, methane infested waters in the deep ocean. That can live in thermal vents that would cook you to death in must minutes.
And that’s just on our planet. Never mind in space, right now, we know for a fact we can get organic molecules:
The laws were written by men, for men, in the name of a God nobody ever saw or talked to (and for the record we cribbed from Hammurabi’s code and other laws in surrounding areas). The prophets were mostly rabble rousers and/or crazy.
And, for the record, your understanding of the history of Christianity is so shallow you couldn’t even begin to hold a debate on the origins and meaning of the Bible.
You don’t even know what happened to Judaism in the 7th Century BCE. And that event is what gave you the Monothesitic Judaism with Pagan Overlay you call Christianity.
Why the dastardly little toad. Here he had me all defeated with my words rearranged into his godly miracles, and he didn’t stick around to watch me cry.
TomK (#297):
Firstly, it’s unclear what you mean by “self”. In this context, I’d normally take it to mean a self-aware subject, which in your case and mine happens to be a biological organism of the species Homo sapiens. And as far as I can see, the best way of merging a organism with the cosmos is to vaporise it and scatter the molecules in space.
Secondly, assuming that a self is something that can be “merged” with the entire cosmos, precisely how does this grant knowledge or understanding? And more importantly, to whom? If the self is illusory, and has furthermore been merged into everything else (with the implication that it is no longer anything distinct), then there is no longer any identifiable subject to whom to ascribe knowledge or understanding. In which case, merging the self with the cosmos would seem to positively preclude the possibility of knowledge/understanding.
Sept 13th huh Kseniya? I think Max will stay till at least October. If I lose, I’ll buy you a beer at one of the gatherings my schedule never lets me attend.
@Nick Gotts and gdlcmst:
I don’t doubt that taken literally Buddhism might run into problems, nor do I think it’s any more consistent with science. I was just noting that in the modern world, Japan doesn’t seem to have the same kind of religion/science conflict we take for granted in the U.S. I mean, as an American it’s weird because it just isn’t there,.
Yeah, there are whacky Buddhist sects, Aum Shinrikyo being one. And Buddhist societies can be very authoritarian — but it doesn’t seem to me that religiosity and authoritarianism necessarily correlate. Authoritarianism takes root for many, complicated reasons. And it isn’t like there’s a huge chunk of the Japanese electorate that demands religious observance from their leaders.
No, what got me was that most Japanese would completely agree that the Aum cult was a bunch of nuts. There’s no Japanese politician I have heard of who would defend them (unlike in the US where some Congressmen would defend, for example, the FLDS). It’s like they treat religion as one part of their lives and it doesn’t seem to interfere much with anything else. Again I ask, why the hell are we arguing teaching real biology in the classroom and it’s a non-issue everywhere in Asia? That says to me there’s something else going on and religiosity all by itself isn’t the determinant.
Now granted, the polls always ask about self-described religiosity, a bit of a slippery concept right there.
Moses, I am basing what I say about “viability for life” on various investigations that researches have done, such as those collected (and with their own contribution) in the Tipler and Barrow book, works by Paul Davies, and others. It wasn’t just something I put together in my own head, did you think that? Sure, those people may be wrong and it isn’t easy to “study” such a subject based on models about the presumed results of different constants, but at least its an actual attempt to scope out the question. The least I could expect from you, is to be literate enough to know what’s been written, how they did it, etc, instead of just presuming from the top of your head (?) about what you hear.
BTW, Ichthyic, I now appreciate you guys’ point: “We” wouldn’t be here, but maybe a different type of life. But the thinkers ref’d above already took that into account as best they could, and I thought the latest thinking was anti-Saganistic about how easily life can form etc.
Second, I’ve heard a lot about “parsimony” in this and other threads and I just have to question why we should be so confident in this principle (ironically put forth by a Medieval philosopher)? Is it something we know about reality – that simpler concepts are more likely to be true, and not just “preferable” to “our” sensibilities? How could we know such a thing, which seems like a “logical principle” but is thus revealed to instead be a very general sort of material-fact claim about the way things are likely to be? Has it been properly vetted to see how many exceptions, if any, in the form of more complex suppositions turn out to be true, how even to best and rightly define “simple” etc? Maybe, but I have doubts and you can’t just throw around conceptual claims anymore than “X exists” claims. Also, if you say “Well it’s a recommendation for how to proceed for practical purposes” etc. I have some sympathy, but then it really isn’t telling me what’s most likely to be true – and that is my main interest.
Third, I think we all are too presumptive about the use of “exist” or not as a well-understood Über-predicate that we can throw around with abandon. Just look e.g. at “virtual particles” and wonder “whether they really exist” – If they weren’t in some odd twilight state, they wouldn’t need that special term (virtual electrons don’t differ from “real ones” the way that muons differ from pions, etc.) And then there’s the “wave function” and etc. Food for thought.
Finally, while I do present some arguments for “God” (which I simply define as “the necessary being” that fundamentally must exist, (I give it initials “NB” just like me, ;-) ), that isn’t all I care about. I have many irons in the fire, about lots of issues such as hypocrisy among believers in multiple universes, framing of issues, opposition to logical positivism aside from “what’s real” etc. I also find multiple universes inherently fascinating, especially the weird concept of m****l r*****m and other weird games with ultimate abstract thought. Please, must everyone have such one-track minds (the big “G” ?-in the room)?
there was a recent brief piece in >New Scientist on this – I can find the exact reference if anyone’s interested.
*raises hand*
always interested in adding to my library.
BTW, Ichthyic, I now appreciate you guys’ point: “We” wouldn’t be here, but maybe a different type of life.
there’s hope for you yet.
But the thinkers ref’d above already took that into account as best they could
now for the next step:
they failed, miserably.
which is why Wheeler’s book is the only common reference utilized by cosmological IDers (that’s you, in case you weren’t aware).
We’ve had this debate with MANY people before, most notably heddle (just search on that name on Pharyngula, and you’ll see the many times the exact same claims have been addressed).
bottom line, all of the work in that book you cite presumes there is a NEED to “explain” why the universe is “ordered just so”, when in reality, the reason for the question itself can be simply attributed as a natural human tendency to apply pattern to everything.
kind of the way apophenia explains Jung’s entire synchronicity “theory”.
http://www.skepdic.com/apophenia.html
when we know everything there is to know about how the universe works, and can actually analyze all interrelationships, THEN it might be interesting to look at whether or not a particular arrangement is more or less improbable than any other, and whether that has meaning for anything beyond a footnote.
It’s a pointless exercise otherwise, no more useful than the attempts to apply quantum physics to philosophy.
I had to make another hit against this prevalent misunderstanding:
Posted by: secularguy | August 28, 2008 6:57 AM
, or why it even has “existence”
If “it” “didn’t” “exist”, no-one “would” “be” “here” to ask that question.
~~~
I don’t know why anyone thinks that explaining things can be made a circular argument from our being here to ask why. The question is, why are things the way they are, first, before any consequences. If it turns out one way there’s someone to ask why, if it turns out another way there isn’t – so what? That doesn’t tell us why it was the first outcome in the case that it was. Even militant atheist and anesthesia-feigning (but pretending not to), pretend great philosopher (in the same sense as Ayn Rand) Dan Dennett was on the ball and honest enough to acknowledge that point.
Ichthyic, you have not presented or referenced to a well-thought rebuttal to Tipler/Barrow/Davies etc but just a brazen empty claim “they failed miserably” (uh, just exactly how are you rating their rather elaborate sortings of various outcomes etc?) and your breezy speculation on how psychological quirks just might lead to certain conclusions – and the aforementioned folks spent a lot of time sorting out the various regions of possible spaces resulting from varying constants, etc – do you really think I should be even a little bit impressed with such a flimsy counter? BTW, note what I said about “one-track minds” above.
Neil B #307 wrote:
Neither. Reality is often more complicated than we think it is, and often less elegant.
My understanding of parsimony/Occam’s razor is that it’s a principle designed to keep us in check, and remain in areas where we can be checked on. The more you multiply unnecessary angels, the further and further you get from any chance that you can be proved wrong.
Sorry, I badly fumbled the wording of the reply to secularguy, below is better:
I don’t know why anyone thinks that explaining things can be made a circular argument from our being here to ask why. The question is, why are things the way they are, first, before any consequences. If the universe is say, one way to be, it turns out in consequence that there’s someone to ask why. If the universe had been various different ways to be instead, then the result would be no one there to ask questions – so what? That doesn’t tell us why the universe/s is such a way as to facilitate entities to ask such questions. Why couldn’t it have been a dead universe instead? [“]Even[“] Dan Dennett was on the ball and honest enough to acknowledge that point.
Sastra, thanks for the interesting answer and angle on OR. Sure, that might be a good overall policy but it shouldn’t be treated like a known “law” to seem to prove or nearly prove points with, like it was a law of physics or set theory logic that had to be true. Indeed, the universe is often more complex than we expected, so that’s one reason I am not impressed with people telling me I shouldn’t believe X because “a more parsimonious explanation would be Y” etc. BTW I fully respect the notion and practice of not believing in what we can’t find etc., I just have a more adventurous speculative streak and wish most people here weren’t so touchy and single-minded about it (like Victorians about sex, or somesuch.)
The having my cake and eating it too argument:
Of course, I like the MAJeff reduction: “I’m a rational – but… blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…”
@ Sastra, # 298:
I would hope both scientists would say “the study of mysticism is definitely worthwhile, and with it we may find a way to get people the potentially beneficial aspects without the woo.”
I’m not certain the first scientist is as “bad” as your analogy might make him out to be. Just change “mysticism” to “astrology,” & the good scientist seems way to credulous.
Sigh. Somehow the fine-tuning proponents always miss the larger question: What would facilitate entities capable of fine-tuning universes?
NeilB (#307):
What hypocrisy? No-one pretends that multiverse hypotheses are anything but speculative, and in any case not all practitioners of science (or of the philosophy of science) are wedded to the kind of naive falsificationism that you seem to assume is the hallmark of science. If we’re going to be all Popperian, then remember that Popper allowed that some unfalsifiable ideas (in the form of metaphysical research programmes) were a legitimate part of science. Whether or not the multiverse idea is (or can be made into) such a programme is of course a separate question, but there’s more to science than falsification alone.
Ichthyic@308:
Michael Brooks “In the multiverse… stars burn black” New Scientist 2 August 2008, p.10.
Brooks reports on work by Fred Adams of the U. of Michigan, to be published in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. Adams tried modeling universes with various values of 3 constants, including alpha, the fine-structure constant, and found that in about 1/4 of cases, stars or something similar and long-lived enough to possibly support life formed. specifically, alpha could be changed by a factor of 100 and stars still formed in some cases.
Also online:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19926673.900-is-our-universe-finetuned-for-life.html
I think the problem with that is that in order for life of any sort to arise, in addition to needing stars, it is also necessary for there to be chemistry; that is, for there to be chemical elements at least as heavy as carbon. That means that there needs to be stars that not just fuse hydrogen, but keep on fusing until at least carbon is formed, and then blow up.
But maybe Fred Adams takes that into account. I haven’t seen the original paper.
Hm. Browsing through Arxiv, I note the following:
“Stars In Other Universes: Stellar structure with different fundamental constants” Authors: Fred C. Adams
http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3697
“Is Our Universe Natural?” Authors: Sean M. Carroll
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0512148
Windy, others: Presumably there’s *something* that is fundamental and doesn’t need “facilitating”, or else we’d never have anything at all. But many philosophers, just put “religion” aside, just think that particular worlds with their various furniture and peculiarities don’t fit the bill (as a very abstract argument.) Especially important, it is very logically peculiar for any one such possibility to be reified and not others; I suppose either someone can appreciate that, or they can’t. So maybe indeed there is a big mess of multiverses, since just one won’t do as Stenger correctly supposes.
As for whether some ultimate Being/Ground would need “facilitation” given that universes do, I don’t imagine something with parts that have their own rules of action like machinery. After all, what runs machinery? I think it is machinery that needs laws and not laws (or contingencies of existence) that need machinery. But of course we have no idea, I just like the intellectual adventure of wondering about it.
BTW the latest studies about varying constants are very interesting but I have to wonder how they could find such different conclusions from the earlier thinkers. REM that Tipler/Barrow looked at a lot of different interconnected properties.
As for hypocrisy about multiple universes, it’s out there and around here. Many e.g. say, if God exists He/She/It can’t “matter”/is a non question (as PZ sometimes says) mostly because there’s no (?) interaction/evidence etc. But, there isn’t interaction or actual evidence AFAWK with other universes either but plenty find it a fascinating and awe-inspiring notion, hence why not “the fundamental being” as a diverting speculation (that’s all I ask) as well?
I suppose either someone can appreciate that, or they can’t. – Neil B.
Translation: I don’t have any actual argument for this.
Tipler and Barrow were writing in 1986; they would not have been able to run the kinds of simulation Adams reportedly has. One might also ask – to what interesting research has their work led, in more than 20 years?
Neil, you’re welcome to speculate about anything you like – but do you have to go on boring the rest of us with it?
The letter is good, but don’t miss the short story of the back page of nature. The twist in the last line is excellent.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7208/full/4541150a.html
(Unfortunately behind a paywall)
Yet what you are then arguing for is therefore not an intelligent entity going by anything we know of — because what we know of intelligence is that it is an emergent phenomenon of an extremely complex assemblage of many, many parts, all following rules of action, which we are slowly piecing together at various levels of the various sub-components, and which arose as the complex result of those rules interacting over billions of years…
Or to put it another way, not only do you not have evidence that your hypothetical “ultimate Being” exists, you don’t even have an explanation of how it can exist, even as an idea.
You hypothesis is completely incoherent.
Exactly: the proper way to hypothesize is to suggest that which might be the fundamental laws, not posit additional “machinery”. Except your “ultimate Being” can only make sense as additional machinery!
Only if by “adventure” you mean “masturbation”…
Erm… no, quantum physics doesn’t. Not even slightly. And neurology regards the brain as matter and not as an illusion either…
One word: Europe. Hey, even Canada and Australia qualify.
Again: Europe.
Over here, the only creationists are Jehovah’s Witnesses (all three of them), and a similarly small number of Muslim immigrants.
No.
But where else would you start? At the maximally munificent hypothesis?
I’m serious.
Huh? Virtual particles exist, period. They only need to disappear the same way they appeared, and their average time of existence depends on their mass. They are the forces of nature (at least the electromagnetic, weak and strong ones).
Not so much. It’s more like… food for math. Reality being stranger than fiction and all.
But does anything really need to exist?
Who says it couldn’t have been?
The difference between a philosopher and a physicist is that the philosopher hasn’t got a lab.
The philosopher can only sit around helplessly and think. If he’s wrong, he’ll never find out, unless there’s a mistake in his logic.
Apparently our buddies at Uncommon Descent are claiming this post is violating copyright:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/pz-myers-copyright-infringement/
Apparently our buddies at Uncommon Descent are claiming this post is violating copyright:
what a bunch of fucking babies.
emotionally and intellectually stunted, babies.
Nick:
is this the right article:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19926673.900-in-the-multiverse-stars-burn-black.html
looks right.
If so, thanks. added to my collection.
Only if by “adventure” you mean “masturbation”…
LOL
doesn’t that kind of masturbation end up growing hair on your brain instead of your palms?
;)
Science can aid many religions that have faulty ancient teachings about health, cosmology, etc, which were based on ancient beliefs, bring them more up to date.
Secondly science can prove the necessity of a God by proving that matter cannot self organize into the complexity found in the natural world due to physical and mathematical constraints. For example the origin of life. Science can prove that the first cell cannot have come into existence without a highly sophisticated intelligent organizational mechanism. Also the many physical constants in our universe discovered by science show the need of a sophisticated intelligent organizational mechanism.
Also science can show that the way our memory functions demands a sophisticated intelligent organizational mechanism – see Memory and intelligence
Of course if you don’t want to accept the truth bad enough you will always find ways to delude yourself.
Vishnu,
You’re an idiot. Recent research on abiogenesis was discussed here at length recently, showing what progress has been made in that area, and of course the way our memory functions demands a sophisticated intelligent organizational mechanism – it’s usually known as “the brain”. But maybe you haven’t got one?
Ummm… No. Science cannot “prove that the first cell cannot have come into existence without a highly sophisticated intelligent organizational mechanism”. Science cannot even suggest such a result unless every single possible chemical combination is tried…
More importantly, science is well on its way to showing that the first cell could indeed have come into existence “without a highly sophisticated intelligent organizational mechanism”.
Sheesh.
No. They show no such thing.
Actually, all current scientific understanding of the brain demonstrates that it evolved over time from simpler complexes of nerve cells in simpler organisms. It cannot be that the existence of the brain demands a pre-existing “sophisticated intelligent organizational mechanism” in order for it to have come into existence, because that would be self-contradicting.
So, a thirsty gang of thieves approaches the Russian Tea Room from the rear. They hiss toward the Maitre’d from the shadows, “Psst… Boss, over here.”
“Yes, may I help you?”
The lead thief slips the waiter a $50 bill, “We’re dying for some Oolong, but there’s a price on our ‘eads. Fancy you might sneak a couple o’cuppas to us out ‘ere, like on the down low, on the QT?”
“Hmmmm….Yes, I believe I might be able to ‘spirit you all a tea’.”
100 points? :-)
Science and religion are both traditions with their own peculiar strengths and weaknesses.
Science can answer for most of what happened after the First Cause acted, but not before. Religious belief can speak to what happened before the First Cause acted, but cannot answer most of the questions that science can ask of what exists afterward. Revelation and observation by necessity (definition?) operate in two different spheres.
What we are really arguing about is when those two speheres interact in history and are known to one another. The gulf is incommensurable for the most part. So why are we so amazed that there is so much strife over the question?
Religious belief can speak to what happened before the First Cause acted
the religious can’t even agree on what a “first cause” is, let alone speak about it with any credibility whatsoever.
fail.
Revelation
fail.
observation by necessity
meaningless.
So why are we so amazed that there is so much strife over the question?
what question, and who is amazed?
fail.
*sigh*
Tom@297
“I completely think atheism is true”
If you reject all religious belief systems as false that leaves you with only the residual beleif system of atheism. However that does not make atheism true.
I sure you see the logic here, although I must say that to this day I have never seen a valid syllogism on this blog.
Remember the subject of the major premise has to be universal; the predicate of the minor premise has to agree with the the subject of the major premise:
All men are males
John is a man
ergo,
John is a male
I will not be albe to engage you in a disputation for fear that I will be diagnosed as having “chronic trollism” and get “expelled” from this very entertaining blog.
Max @ 339
All religion is imaginary insanity
Max is religious
ergo,
Max is insane
Holback at 340
Yet another invalid syllogism.
The syllogism would have to be:
All religions are false (invalid major premise because
the predicate in not included
in the subject)e.g. men=male
Max is a religion (invalid – Max is a person not
a religion
ergo
Max is false (invalid conclusion due to
invalid major and minor
permises)
Keep at it you might get it one day.
All intelligent entities have physical forms.
God does not have a physical form.
Therefore God is not a real intelligent entity.
All intelligent entities speak for themselves using the language of those they speak to, if they know it.
God does not speak for himself in any human language.
Therefore God is not an intelligent entity that can speak any human language.
All people who think that silence is exactly the same thing as speech are insane.
Religious people think that silence is exactly the same thing as speech.
Therefore all religious people are insane.
Syllogismatic!
Max Verret, I won’t weigh in on the validity of Holbach’s syllogisms. But when you write:
The difference between the theist and the evolutionist is this: When the theist runs into an exlanatory block, they say “God did it”, when the evolutionist runs into an explanatory block, they go to the Field Museum.
I gotta tell ya, that statement reeks. I’m a theist, but I don’t necessarily conclude ‘God did it’ when I run into an explanatory block. In fact, where natural phenomena are concerned, I typically assume that there’s a natural cause. So that claim ain’t, as they say, necessarily true of all theists. It’s just a prejudicial statement.
Further, as an enthusiastic Darwinian, I’m more than a little irritated by the suggestion that all of us automatically attempt to shoehorn every finding into our preconceptions. New findings often demand new approaches. We change our minds all the time. Implying otherwise plays into the hands of the relativist poseurs over at the Discovery Institute. You wouldn’t be a Fellow, would ya?
SH
from #328:”Apparently our buddies at Uncommon Descent are claiming this post is violating copyright”
Clicked on link. Question: What is the deal with Dave Scot and manboobs?
And Pharyngulawatch? Really? That is just sad.
Scott @ 343
“I got to tell you that statement reeks”
It sure does, but the reason you didn’t get the sarcasm is probably because you havn’t been following the thread.
Atheist frequently note that when theists come across a problem for which there is no ready solution, they claim “God did it”. I agree with you the problem may be following the dictates and laws of the natural order. Example: When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, many people, including some prominent clergymen, claimed that God was punishing N.O. because it is a “sin city”. Now, any reasonable person knows that that was a very explainable meterological event. But that doesn’t stop people from saying “God did it”.
Michael X the Soothsayer:
“Sadly, I fear Max has gone to bed. And every question posed after his having had left will be conveniently forgotten. Tomorrow or the next day or the next day he’ll reappear, as if this whole thread never existed, and begin anew.”
He is kinda late though.
Max @ #346
Thanks for the clarification. As you said, I wasn’t following the thread closely enough to get the sarcasm. But you know, the DI has Fellows like Berlinski whose views are weird enough that they might’ve made the very same comment, and meant it. I regret confusing your attempt at humor with their twisted take on science.
And he’s ignoring my splendidly syllogistic syllogisms.
Perhaps he’s asking God for a way to de-syllogise them.
I do my best Ray. Though I have to say, the Ides of March have never come through for me. It almost makes me want to give up soothsaying altogether.
Though Ray, I’ll add, that you seem to be reading a part of the thread that Max has missed. That part where he was asked to provide evidence for why I should take his beliefs about the cosmos and its beginnings over those of others who claim equal certainty.
I could only hope that Max would be so kind as to answer such a simple, meek question.
I could of course give my prediction of what he’ll do, but…
Max @ 341
Wasn’t it obvious to you and Scott that I had suspended the rules of syllogism to make it blatant that I was being sarcastic to your post at 341? Rules of logic can and will be suspended when that very logic is used to give credence to the illogic of religion in no matter what form is used to present it as legitimate fact. Religion is not logical as has been demonstrated throughout the ages, and whenever forms of explanations are used to declare it as such, then it is necessary and correct to denigrate it in any suspension of accepted rules of form.
Ichthyic@330.
That’s the one.
Neil B (#322):
Are we discussing the question “Why is there anything at all?” or the question “Why are there the particular things that there are?” Because you don’t always seem to distinguish between them very clearly, which isn’t exactly helpful.
Well, quite apart from anything else, it would be even more logically peculiar if all possibilities were realised – in the same universe. You can’t have a universe in which it is true that dogs exist and in which it is simultaneously true that dogs do not exist. A universe is a historical entity, and many of the propositions which are true of it are shaped by historical contingencies as it develops over time. For alternate possibilities like “contains dogs” or “does not contain dogs”, only one of these can be true of a given universe, and the question of why one possibility is realised (and the other isn’t) is more than adequately explained by local factors internal to that universe. You don’t need to posit a mysterious external Facilitator selecting between doggy and non-doggy possible universes.
Just musing out loud here, but …
Your ultimate being (hereafter UB), as far as I understand it, essentially “selects” between possible worlds, somehow determining which of them is the actual one. Is that correct?
If so, then I see a possible problem. In order to be said to exist, a UB would have to exist in some possible world – indeed, it would have to exist in all possible worlds, given that its existence cannot be a logically contingent fact. Now, if an empty world is possible (i.e., a world in which nothing exists), the UB cannot (by definition) exist in such a world. Consequently, either (a) an empty world is impossible, or (b) the UB’s existence is logically contingent after all (because the empty world is a possible world and so the UB does not exist in all possible worlds after all).
If (a), then it is logically necessary that something or other exists, and so there is no need to posit a UB to explain why there is anything at all. If (b), then the UB cannot be used to explain why there is something rather than nothing, because its own existence is contingent on there being something rather than nothing. So if your UB is also meant to answer the question “Why is there anything at all?”, then it seems to be a non-starter.
Setting that aside and moving on to the idea of “selecting” between possible worlds. If we accept modal realism, then the UB is again made redundant, because we have already accepted that all possible worlds are realised, and the whole point of positing a UB is to explain why this world is realised rather than any other. If we reject modal realism, then the UB only really exists in this world, the actual one. Its existence in all other possible worlds is merely a counter-factual matter (i.e., if some other set of possibilities had been realised, it would still be the case that the UB exists). But now it becomes totally mysterious how the UB “selects” between possibilities. After all, it has no influence in other possible worlds because those worlds haven’t been realised. The only intelligible way (as far as I can see) of speaking of it as “selecting” possibilities is for it to be an agent of historical contingency (just like us, in fact), its actions determining whether P is true rather than Not-P as the history of the world unfolds. But this sounds more like the interventionist deity of traditional theism, rather than the post-theist Ground-of-all-Being entity you seem to be aiming for.
Of course, one could argue that in order to select between them, a UB must somehow exist not within possible worlds but outside them. But this seems tantamount to saying that it does not exist at all.
A minor (otherwise the excellent commenters David M., Sastra, Nick Gotts, et al would have already mentioned it)(if somebody did, sorry, but here we go again) additional thought, following up on Max Verret’s comment about the case for his God being all around us: It seems to me that the very size and complexity of this billion-galaxied universe is a point in favor of the materialistic, rather than supernatural, explanation for the existence of our sort of life.
Yes, there are a huge number of improbable lucky coin tosses involved to get from individual atoms to a more or less sentient biped like ourselves. It might well take trillions of planets over billions of years – but that is exactly the sort of universe we find ourselves in.
But for the cosmology of the Christian God, why is all that necessary? Why not just one, flat Earth, covered by a hemispherical dome, with some simple lights floating around it? Isn’t that pretty much what the ancients had in mind when they said the heavens declare, yada, yada, yada?
(“The stage is too big for the play.”~Richard Feynman)
Vishnu (#332):
Unfortunately, science doesn’t prove the latter, and even if it did it, would fall way short of proving the former. At most, it would suggest was that there was some organising force or principle distinct from matter, but it would not show that this force or principle in any way resembled a deity.
You also seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that science works on the Sherlock Holmes principle – that once you have eliminated all other possibilities whatever remains must be the truth. But science doesn’t work that way – it works by proposing hypotheses to explain how or why things happen, deducing predictions about what we would expect to observe if the hypothesis were true, and then testing the hypothesis by seeing if our observations bear out the predictions. Furthermore, there is no limit in principle to number of possible hypotheses that might explain a given phenomenon, so that even if you were able to disprove all but one of your existing hypotheses, that alone would not be sufficient to show that the remaining one was true – there might still be other hypotheses that you haven’t thought of yet.
Consequently, science can’t “prove” the necessity of a God simply by a process of elimination. Rather, in order for science to provide any positive support for the existence of God, the latter claim would have to be stated as a well-formed hypothesis with specific testable implications – which it ain’t.
To put it another way, even if you’re reduced to one remaining hypothesis, that hypothesis gains no support from science until it stands up to testing on its own merits.
Max Verret (#341):
A proposition like “all religions are false” can’t be valid or invalid, since it is not an inference. Only inferences can be valid or invalid. The fact that the predicate is not included in the subject merely means that it is a synthetic statement rather than an analytic one. But being a synthetic statement does not invalidate it as a perfectly legitimate premise in a syllogism.
Jim V @ 355
Well stated Jim, and we all can concur that this is the most realistic explanation for it all, but it is lost on max et al who will never extricate their brains from the irrational pox of religion. I am an Astronomy lover, and when I ponder the workings of the Universe, there is not one iota of a non existing god that enters into my thoughts or words. The Universe is just too massive and wonderful to consider that nonsense. I have a fascination for the great Andromeda Galaxy which is twice the size of our Milky Way Galaxy, and contains 200 BILLION STARS, not to mention the addition of planets, moons, comets, asteroids, and the WHOLE SHEBANG! This just mind blowing and fascinates me to no end! I sometimes ponder if we were to reach Andromeda, calculate the position of our solar system here and then extrapolate it to that position on a like arm of Andromeda and see if there is a planet like Earth in that relative position. Can you imagine if this had transpired and the evolvement occurred? My head would burst over the phenomena of it all! All encompassing Universe, formed by natural events that it has no knowledge of or need of supernatural forces! As much as I love Astronomy, it is a frustrating science, for we will never travel to Andromeda or any other glaxy. We should have been walking around and exploring Mars by now if it were not for all the diverting crap here on earth. I’ll have to be content with robotic exploration of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons and a possible return to our own moon. Can you imagine a helicopter ride over the VALLES MARINERIS and OLYMPUS MONS on Mars, and a hot seat over the surface of Jupiter’s IO? This is reality, not the insane crap of religious make believe!
@339
“If you reject all religious belief systems as false that leaves you with only the residual beleif system of atheism. However that does not make atheism true.”
Atheism is not a belief system. My belief in that no belief system is even possibly true. Therefore, since all religions are belief systems, they are not even possibly true. Therefore I think atheism is true. I don’t think it’s a system of belief, I think it’s a system of not believing things.
I just thought of something from last night…
Max Verret @#346:
Way up @#122, you wrote: “He communicates through the events of our lives. He communicates through the unfolding of history. That is the “voice of God”. ”
Isn’t a violent hurricane that drowns and destroys an “event of our lives”?
So which is it? Are natural disasters the “voice of God” as much as anything else, or are they natural events with natural causes?
Of course, the ones who claim that Katrina was a punishment sent by God are just as hypocritical as you; they rarely say that the tornadoes that wreak havoc on the Bible Belt are punishments for sin. Although I think Fred Phelps is an exception to that; he would say that every bad thing that happens is a punishment from God for sin. Yet I think even he might reject that bad things that happen in his own life are a punishment from God.
For most theists, it’s all about the good being from God, and the terrible… is just natural, or from the Devil. And God just somehow isn’t responsible for nature when disasters happen, or for the Devil’s wickedness.
SPECIAL PLEADING IS …
?♥??SPECIAL??♥?
Better yet: For centuries, philosophers believed that a first cause was a logical necessity. But 100 years ago science proved them wrong. Radioactive decay, for example, happens only because it can happen; nothing triggers it.
Doubly and triply so.
How stupid of me not to and so on.
Oh no. There are already billions of known galaxies. Your numbers are too small by something like ten orders of magnitude. At least.
Well, it does: to test and disprove a hypothesis is to eliminate one possibility. Except that — as you explain later in the same paragraph — this approach always fails because we never know when we’ve exhausted all possibilities! That’s why science cannot prove, only disprove.
Iain 357
Of course, there is no inference of the predicate in the subject.
So, what is going to happen is instead of a conclusion you are going to end up with an invalid premise as a conclusion.
Well, or not. I somehow read “stars” instead of “years”. If you assume 1000 inhabitable planets per galaxy, you are much closer…
Tom at 359
“My BELIEF is that no belief system is ever possibly true.
“I don’t think (BELIEVE) atheism is a belief system.
Therefore atheism is true.
No, Tom, If atheism is a belief system as you suggest, then it is false. If it is not a belief system than it can be either true or false.
OWL @360
By ALLOWING Katrina to happen God may very well be taking that meterological event to communicate his Divine will. Of course a belief in God would affirm His capabilities to deter it from happening. This borders on a question of theodicy – why does evil occur in a world created by an All Good God.
you are going to end up with an invalid premise as a conclusion.
…and Max should know.
The story of the three parallel observers by Jonathan Whereat
A couple went out for dinner.
It was a beautiful night in a beautiful place.
There was beautiful music and wonderful food.
The atmosphere was peaceful and full of joy.
The couple ate the food and shared a drink.
They spoke of life and the things they liked about it,
They spoke of what they liked in each other,
They spoke of their hopes and their concerns.
They left that dinner and they remember it well. It was a good night.
In the first observer’s universe she could see every thing.
She could analyze everything that she could see.
She took the temperature of the air and the water, of the meal and the drinks.
She measured and calculated the wave length of the lights and the sounds.
She extracted the molecules of the meal and could describe every ingredient.
She was able to tell the structure of all the materials that were present that night.
The clothes they wore, the tablecloth the metals, the plastics the class and the ceramics, the organic elements and the lifecycles they had lived, the inorganic elements and their properties. There was not one thing that this observer had not analyzed.
When they had finished observing they gave the couple a report on why they had enjoyed the night based on all of these elements and the couple were interested to learn so much about it but they still felt that the observer had missed the most important thing.
The first observer was perplexed that the couple thought that she had missed something.
In the second observer’s universe he could see all that the first observe could see
And not only told the couple what they had seen and what the evening was made up of. Yet this observer was not content to hear the couple say that there was something more, he insisted that there were only these elements! and that anything else was only their imagination. Their imagination was deluding them, and they were fools if they thought there was something more. The couple continued to say “we felt more, we know there is more! We accept that what you describe is beyond our ability to fully appreciate; but we are convinced that there was more than just the sum of the parts.” The observer became angry and began to belittle them and attack their ignorance of the world they lived in. The couple became confused, one of them started to side with the observer and began to debate with the other and soon what felt like something special began to feel like an unhappy event. The couple still see each other but something is missing from there friendship now. ……..The observer sensed victory.
In the third observer’s universe she could see all that the couple enjoyed, could analyze everything that first and second observes could see. But what this observer could also sense was that the couple gained something from all of those elements and enjoyed the physics and the chemistry to the point that a new universe was created that was not physics and chemistry but was the progeny of the whole event. They were aware of the interplay, the rhythm, the combined ‘energy’ the unity of the whole and they felt more than part of it, they were both in it, and of it, and loved it, and felt the love of it, but they had no word for it. This observer sat back and rejoiced in her heart that the knowledge of all the elements present was only the beginning of understanding and wisdom not the end of it.
Which observer are you?
Will you ever be the couple?
Or would you rather that the couple never went out to dinner at all?
God is love and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them. 1 John 4:16b
Jonathon Whereat, #367
Wow, you took used quite a few words to write what is, essentially, nothing at all – a sickly mishmash of strawmen and false dichotomies that adds exactly zero to the dialogue and falls down for many of the same reasons the other apologists’ and religious sophists’ arguments do.
Epic fail.
In other words, God is too … ♪♥✩⁓SPECIAL⁓✩♥♪ … to do anything nasty like deliberately use his Voice to say “DROWN”? God just allows this sort of thing to happen?
Oho, sounds like you’re now agreeing with those who say it was a punishment?
After all, if it wasn’t a punishment, it was just random bad stuff happening. God has no problem with death and suffering occurring as the result of random bad stuff?
Or even his alleged capability to at least tell people that it’s going to happen, and why it’s going to happen, without ambiguity. You know, clear communication?
But noooo, God can’t be bothered to speak clearly about what natural disasters are going to occur, or whether natural events reflect his will or not, ever.
Because God DOES NOT COMMUNICATE AT ALL, EVER.
And wrestling with theodicy is less of a hassle than just admitting that the universe simply operates according to natural rules, with no God necessary in the first place?
To paraphrase a line from Lewis Black (OH NO A JEW!!)
Well then your God is a Prick.
Iain Walker #354: thanks for the great treatment of the “Ultimate being” argument. I’ll just add one comment to this statement from Neil B:
..I don’t imagine something with parts that have their own rules of action like machinery.
How does the UB compare different possibilities, and select the universe in which life is more likely, if it doesn’t have “parts”? Where does it process the information? (Compare with the argument that Maxwell’s demon needs to process information to do its task and thus gets no “free lunch”.)
http://www.forumammo.com/cpg/albums/userpics/10071/picard-no-facepalm.jpg
“In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism.”
Well, that tells us a lot about the presuppositions of the writers, but nothing true about science.
Jonathan Whereat,
Why are you such a twerp?
That’s why science cannot prove, only disprove. – David Marjanović, OM
Wrong! Disproving P automatically proves ~P. Whenever science disproves, it also proves. Science (unlike mathematics) cannot prove a universal generalisation.
why does evil occur in a world created by an All Good God. – Max Verret
The answer is, of course, that it doesn’t. If we take “A” to stand for the proposition “This world was created by an all good and omnipotent [my addition] god” (we don’t need the capitals, Max, really we don’t); and “B” to stand for the proposition “There is evil in this world”, then we get the following interesting argument:
(1) A -> ~B. (premise)
(2) B. (premise, based on direct observation)
(3) ~A (1,2, modus tollens).
The whole of “theodicy” is a desperate search for ways of trying to show that (1) may not be true. It has been a complete failure. I understand “Christian Science” is an attempt to deny (2). At university I took philosophy of religion with a rather nice chap called Michael Ireland, an unorthodox Christian who IIRC dropped the “and omnipotent” – but few Christians are willing to take that step.
Max Verret (#362):
Sigh. The terms “valid” or invalid” apply only to inferences, i.e., arguments from which a conclusion is claimed to follow from the premises. A statement that is not an inference hence cannot be valid or invalid. The statement “All religions are false” is not an inference – it is the ascription of a predicate to all members of a set. It may be true or false (or if badly formed, no truth value at all), but not valid or invalid.
And I have no idea where you get the idea that the inclusion or otherwise of the predicate in the subject of a statement has anything to do with its truth, “validity” or appropriateness in a syllogistic argument.
By way of counter-example, the classic syllogism:
All men are mortal (major premise: synthetic statement)
Socrates is a man (minor premise: synthetic statement)
Therefore: Socrates is mortal (conclusion: synthetic statement)
The syllogism is valid (again, it’s the inference that is valid/invalid, not the statements that make it up), and both premises and conclusion are statements in which the predicate is not included in the subject.
By ALLOWING Katrina to happen God may very well be taking that meterological event to communicate his Divine will.
He may very well be, or he may very well not be. There is no way to know, is there? What is being communicated here? The fact that Shit Happens and no amount of praying will change it?
Some people refer to religious belief as a crutch. I see it more as a shellac. You take the ordinary events of life and paint a Godly gloss over them. It doesn’t matter what happens or doesn’t happen, you can always come up with a way to call it God’s will and make it sound like a good thing.
Jonathan Whereat (#367):
One of the ones you missed out: i.e., the one who
(a) includes the couple in the physical analysis, and
(b) analyses them at the level of interacting systems as well as that of the components,
and so is able to give the couple a complete explanation of why they enjoyed the evening, instead of fobbing them off with an uninformative partial analysis (Observers One and Two) or an uninformative partial analysis combined with equally uninformative warm fuzzy waffling (Observer Three).
Ah, nothing beats the New Testament for vague and empty platitudes.
windy (#371):
Thank you. Whether Neil will actually read and respond to it remains to be seen, though. I seem to have this problem whereby I post my most substantial (well, longest, anyway) comments in a thread after the person I’m replying to has abandoned it and moved on …
Just when I think it’s safe to go back into the commenting waters again …
One could argue that one was only suggesting the universe contains at least the requisite number of planets for our sort of life to have developed at least once (and maybe enough more for it to have developed more than once, one hopes) – but the fact remains, one chose brevity over precision (as also when one forgot to list Owlmirror and Iain Walker before the et al).
Great comment about radioactive decay! I’ve added it to a list of great comments I’ve been compiling, the final half-dozen being from this thread (with attribution).
@ Screechy Monkey #71
I was trying to turn the phrase “Mean New Militant Angry Don Imus Atheists” into an acronym DAMIAN but it doesn’t quite come off. Curse you Don Imus ;¬D
@Reginald Selkirk #7
Campos seems to be suffering from classic projection syndrome. When he says;
he’s very wrong. There’s no mystery and no reverence to science, or scientists. There are precise meanings that are open to question. Mystery and reverence deny meaning and deny the right to question. woo-woo fascism of the worst kind.
Ditto
Shorter Selkirk: – Debase yourself before the almighty fuhrer.
Re Glen D #30
I don’t entirely disagree but would insist as in my previous comment that such a term is open to question and can indeed be given precise meaning. In the scientific context, the ‘spirit’ would be that with which we think scientifically. And there’s the point. If we neglect to think scientifically, we debase out ‘spirit’ and end up with that religion / spirituality bullshit.
PS – I don’t trust tinyurls.
As for the templetons:
I think they are a source of funding for research on the principle that money is best in hands other than theirs. Sad, though, that scientists need to grovel to them. Even worse if they censor critical results.
Further to my comment #384 on Glen D:
I think it is a false compartmentalism between psyche and “soul” that Philip H @ 33 is labouring under.
Re Bro Bartleby #68 also Owlmirror #84 and David Marjanović, OM #277
Very nice. It’s also good to try it with Feynmann diagrams:
See, you are at A and what you are looking at is at B. The tilde are the photons from it to you. It doesn’t matter if B is this screen in front of your face or a distant galaxy 100 Mly away, the space-time interval between A and B is zero. That’s how we touch the stars, Bro.
Wow, that ASCII thing was a bugger, even to get it that good :-/
Re Owlmirror #98
Thank you for the wiki link. I followed it to the Time Cube page. I’d heard the Pauli story but had no idea there was such a thing as a Gene Ray in this world. Is this what the tinfoil hats are to protect against?
Re Neil B #150 and earlier;
No, silly. If the conditions were different, we would also be different in a way that suited those conditions as well as these conditions suit us. There’s no point in arguing about conditions that wouldn’t permit intelligent life. THAT’s what the anthropic principle means.
Sorry if this was answered in subsequent posts, I’ll read them all in good time.
Hm. How far did he go, I wonder? That is, if God is not omnipotent, how powerful did he think that God actually is? As powerful as a human being? Less than that?
If you’re going to posit an eternal (near-)omniscient and (near-)omnibenevolent being, the only amount of power that would be consistent with God’s eternal silence and inaction would be for God to have almost no power at all.
I think it would also be possible to posit an entity that might be consistent with observed reality if it were (near-)omniscient and (near-)omnipotent, but had almost no benevolence whatsoever.
Re bernard quatermass #275 and others with the same question;
What they don’t realise is that for every hardcore nutjob who won’t listen to reason, there’re a hundred other readers who will, and will see that religion all is just nasty bullshit. It is for these people that the (to use Icthyic’s phrase @181) long refuted fallacies need to be answered.
Think of it as outreach, dude.