Tell me which wheel you re-invented (which argumen...

2007-08-05T18:33:00.000-04:00

Tell me which wheel you re-invented (which argument) and we'll continue from there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God

PS Consider this:

a) No one understands your writing because others are too stupid to comprehend it (which you repeatedly claim).

b) Your writing is not as sound and concise as you think it to be.

In short, it is very easy to illustrate why the no...

2007-08-05T11:25:00.000-04:00

In short, it is very easy to illustrate why the notion of God is so improbable as to be impossible, and simply outright impossible in most regards. "God" is simply an ambiguous label for the "unknown", and I also illustrated in-depth why it was a ridiculous notion.

Perhaps you should go read and try paying attention. Obviously you didn't comprehend what I wrote or you wouldn't be making "arguments" that I already rendered moot.

Not to mention the whole idea of science further relegating "God" to the increasingly smaller realm of the unknown in and of itself is another proof of the superiority of science over the absolutely unprovable and utterly devoid of evidence belief in God.

To imply that they are even remotely on equal ground in terms of plausibility is outright stupidity on your part.

Agnosticism is simply being too ignorant and/or stupid to understand that fact.

So again, go back and read what I wrote and try paying attention this time. Your argument is moot. (I get a little miffed when people try to argue against something I wrote when it's obvious that they either didn't even read what I wrote, or were too stupid to comprehend it.)

This is on Shoosh too but I figured the more resp...

2007-08-04T23:10:00.000-04:00

This is on Shoosh too but I figured the more responses and critics the better.

There is no reason why God, like the universe, can’t have existed forever. If the universe has not existed forever (has some start date) then why can’t God be the creator of that universe? “There is no requirement for a God,” yes, but there also is no reason why there cannot be a God.

If the universe has some start point then that starting point, or what caused it, would be considered God. It may or may not have “intelligence,” but the religious assume that it does and they call him God. Since we don’t scientifically know the origins of our universe we really can’t say either way (at least for the time being, but we may never know).

Our scope of knowledge in the creation of the universe is minimal, at best. There are many “theories” but very little scientifically indisputable support to back them. This is much different than our knowledge regarding electricity and magnetism where we have significantly more reproducible experiments to back their claims. Therefore making assertions that God can or can’t exist either through logic or our current, limited scientific knowledge about the beginnings of the universe is far too bold of a claim.

You are correct when you say religious people use God to fill the gaps that science has not. However, you repeatedly claim certain “gaps” have been filled in by stating weak scientific theories, such as the Big-Bang, as indisputable evidence when these theories are in-fact questionable and far from being the “gap” fillers you claim. Coincidentally, most religious text and guidelines are written in such abstract terms that can accommodate most, if not all, scientific discovery (some better than others). For example, some religious scholars argue that the Earth can only be about 6000 years old by using Genesis. Perhaps they are right, and God made everything look like it was billions of years old and he hid dinosaur bones and Neanderthals in the ground just to confuse the hell out of us. That seems a tad-bit outrageous. A more reasonable and much simpler explanation (thank you Occam’s razor) is that the Earth is much older than 6000 years old. Luckily for the religious scholars, Genesis never explicitly states how old the earth is. This is one of the perks of well written religious texts, ambiguity. Which leads me to my next point, how can anyone prove God’s existence?

The only evidence available of Gods existence is witness accounts. The overall problem is that if a God does exist, how would you ever prove it? There is no scientific test for a God. There is no way to prove if God visited someone or did something. He doesn’t leave behind a toll-free number or a business card. Maybe he caused a flood, maybe it was natural phenomenon. Perhaps God has visited people--perhaps the people claiming to have been visited by God were lying, mentally ill, dreaming, or on drugs. As it stands the only proof of God is the people that claim to be visited by him or witnessed his acts.

What is important to realize is if you believe “witness accounts” of God then you can begin fleshing out God’s personality, mentality, and motivations from his actions. This is why there are so many different religions. Every religion has different witness encounters with God. Every religion varies on which encounters they believe and which ones are more important than others. However, just because a certain religion is found to have a verifiably wrong encounter with God, does not mean their entire religious beliefs are wrong (though it should cast some doubts). This is the same for science, just because one scientist falsifies or fails on work relating to stem-cell research, does not mean that all stem-cell research is entirely fraudulent and useless.

With this said, belief in God and belief in religion are two different things. Belief in religion requires a belief in God, but a belief in God does not require a belief in a particular religion. Thus, you can be entirely scientific and believe in God, you just have no idea about his “personality” and motivations, unless you believe in a religion’s witness encounters or have had your own encounter. (Kant and Hume have some very good things to say regarding this subject: http://www.philosophy.ucdavis.edu/e...023/kantLEC.HTM)

Atheism, however, means you believe that God does not exist. It has nothing to do of why you believe God doesn’t exist. It is complete denial of the possibility of any God, or God-like entity. Science has not filled in all the gaps of knowledge so to say that there is no possibility that God exists is just as outrageous as saying that you are certain he does exist.

Agnostic is more of the grey area in between religious and atheist. Simply put, Agnostics “don’t know yet and may never know” They see evidence both ways but due to a lack of knowledge withhold jumping to conclusions by not claiming certainty one way or another. In, other words, “the only thing I know for sure is that I don’t know…at least for the moment.” (I would claim that many atheists are more agnostic than they think they are) So can’t we use science to prove God doesn’t exist?

One thing you must understand about science is that it is based on experimentation. Therefore, the only way scientific findings are ever irrefutable is if you perform the experiment an infinite amount of times. A good example is flipping a coin.

If I flip a coin 1 million times it should land on heads approximately half the time. However, I could flip the coin 1 million times and it always lands on heads, I would then conclude that this coin will always land on heads no matter how many times I flip it.

Though this problem seems trivial by deductive reasoning, imagine this same experiment occurring in a black-box environment. For example, instead of flipping a coin yourself, someone else flips a coin and places it in a box. You open the box and write down what side of the coin is up. You don’t see the man flip the coin. All you know is that there is a coin in the box and you must write down what side of the coin is up. By this process you could very well conclude that the coin in the box will always be “heads.” This is the problem with experimentation; it is limited by the scope of knowledge of an experiment as well as the number of trials. What scientists do to avoid such a problem is to make the assumptions from previous experiments and try to understand the system as a whole, while at the same time, understanding the possibility of error that accompanies such assumptions. Overall, scientific discovery is a slow process, but it is getting faster by the day. But new discoveries often turn previously known “truths” upside down. Remember it was scientifically believed that many things were impossible: traveling around the world, breaking the sound barrier, traveling to space and the moon.

The only thing we know without a shadow of a doubt is that “I think therefore I am,” but we can make assumptions based on experimentation to move cautiously past such limitations. Hence, if you walk outside and toss an apple into the air, through experience, you know it is probably going to fall back to the ground. BUT we must always remember when we are making assumptions (especially when dealing with unknown and uncharted scientific areas such as space and time) so we do not claim certainty (i.e God cannot possible exist) when such clear uncertainty exists.

Comments on PHREADOM: A meta-post on Atheism, Agnosticism and Faith.

Tell me which wheel you re-invented (which argumen...

In short, it is very easy to illustrate why the no...

This is on Shoosh too but I figured the more resp...