Philosoraptor
Moon
dangling prepositions is something up with which I shall not put
Posts: 145
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Post by Philosoraptor on Mar 14, 2010 20:48:59 GMT -5
Indeed. Intellectual discourse fosters the exchange of knowledge in a way that attacks and bitter argument could never.
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zeromerc
Meteorite
This above all to thine own self be true
Posts: 35
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Post by zeromerc on Mar 15, 2010 15:18:53 GMT -5
Are you religious? No Which religion are you? I don't have a religion I have faith Do you think religion is a necessary part of society? Yes, religion is civilization. Before religion it was only the biggest and the strongest that had a say. religion formed the society that kept the strongest from beating anybody and taking what ever they wanted with out recourse. Why do we have religion? religion is society Or, if you are religious, what purpose does it serve in your life? Faith is what allows me to function in my daily life. A lot of people think faith = religion. I do not believe it does. I think religion is a group of people who get to gether in a building or other setting to tell each other how good they are and why everybody else is not. Faith on the other hand is simply belief in something. As somebody stated (but in diffrent words) gravity is a fact until proven wrong. The world was flat until we figured out it was round. The planets revolved around the earth until we figured out it was the sun. Everybody has faith of one kind or another. Note: I have not studied all of the below religions extensively. I have however asked lots of questions and read up on some. That is to say the info below may not be correct but is information I have recieved from followers or from direct readings. Please feel free to correct in a polite way •Atheists have faith there is no God •Christians, Jews, Catholics, Muslims all have faith there is a God and that their God is the only way to achieve an afterlife. •Buddists have faith that they have as many life times as it takes to achieve nirvana. We all have a faith that we are right. Because if you are a "religious" or not if you are wrong the consenquences are great. A fool once said: "If you cannot prove me wrong then I must be right!" Not sure why but that seems to apply to a lot of topics but especialy religion.
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Philosoraptor
Moon
dangling prepositions is something up with which I shall not put
Posts: 145
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Post by Philosoraptor on Mar 15, 2010 17:45:34 GMT -5
I don't have faith that there is no God any more that I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow in the east. It's not a faith-based conjecture, it's based on logic. I can't be 100% sure the sun will rise tomorrow in the east, but it'd take a lot for me to be convinced that it won't without evidence.
I'm afraid your choice of wording here is incorrect. Even before we found out the earth's shape, it was still very much round. It didn't become round when we decided it was round. In the same vein, the planets have always revolved around the sun. Humans don't decide how the universe works. You may not have been implying these things, but your wording did.
Gravity can't be "proven wrong." Gravity exists absolutely (in our universe, at least.) It's a law of nature. It is a measurable and verifiable part of our universe's physics. It won't suddenly change one day. There's no reason to have "faith" in gravity, it is, like I said, a measurable and verifiable phenomenon.
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Post by Lex on Mar 15, 2010 17:52:10 GMT -5
I don't have faith that there is no God any more that I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow in the east. It's not a faith-based conjecture, it's based on logic. I can't be 100% sure the sun will rise tomorrow in the east, but it'd take a lot for me to be convinced that it won't without evidence. That is a good point, but the analogy fails because you compare it to God - which cannot be proven to exist or not.
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Nakor
Star
Non-Prophet
Posts: 991
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Post by Nakor on Mar 15, 2010 17:53:04 GMT -5
I've addressed this once before, but I think that's misuse of the word faith. At some point we have to draw the line and say something is knowledge rather than faith. I know that I'm at my laptop right now -- I need no faith to know this. There may be some infinitesimal chance that I'm somehow wrong, but worrying about that would be paranoia. If we don't define faith more specifically than that, then everything is based wholly on faith and our entire existences could be a lie -- and then we'd all be nihilists. No, not all knowledge requires faith.
As for atheism, I don't think "faith" in the lack of a god is quite the right word. It's less about believing there isn't one than it is about not believing there is one. Faith is active, while a lack of faith is passive. There is a difference.
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Philosoraptor
Moon
dangling prepositions is something up with which I shall not put
Posts: 145
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Post by Philosoraptor on Mar 15, 2010 17:57:24 GMT -5
There's no need for any intellectual discourse when the eventual answer is "well we can't really know so every belief has an equal chance of being correct."
The burden of evidence is on the party that makes the claim -- extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you're going to claim something that goes against everything we know about the way our universe works, you should at least have the courtesy to provide some shred of verifiable evidence.
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zeromerc
Meteorite
This above all to thine own self be true
Posts: 35
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Post by zeromerc on Mar 15, 2010 18:15:56 GMT -5
my point is everybody believed (to the point they killed they guy who proved it wrong) that everything revoleved around the earth until we figured out it was the sun instead.
I think this is a point that somebody was trying to make earlier.
Facts are simply faith with evidence. I believe that there is evidence that things were created and did not happen on accident.
What % of the population needs to believe something for it to be fact?
Because if you looked hard enough I am sure you could find somebody who no matter what you tell them does not believe in gravity.
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Nakor
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Post by Nakor on Mar 15, 2010 18:29:47 GMT -5
Whether or not a thing is fact has nothing to do with how many people believe it -- this is called an "Appeal to the Masses," and is a logical fallacy.
Anything that was once based on faith, but then has evidence provided to prove it beyond any reasonable doubt, is thereafter proven knowledge, and requires no further faith to believe in.
That someone else may not believe in gravity has no impact on the fact that gravity requires no faith. For something to be fact doesn't require 100% of humanity to agree with it (as above). Going against the evidence may require faith (and going against such obvious evidence as gravity has without due cause would be fanaticism rather than just faith), but following the evidence to its logical conclusion does not.
Here's Mirriam-Webster's definition of faith:
1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions 2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust 3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs <the Protestant faith>
Specifically it's 2b(1) I want you to look at -- "firm belief in something for which there is no proof". If any sort of belief in anything no matter how obvious was described as "faith" the word would be totally meaningless. I know gravity exists, I need no faith to know that.
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Philosoraptor
Moon
dangling prepositions is something up with which I shall not put
Posts: 145
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Post by Philosoraptor on Mar 15, 2010 21:02:25 GMT -5
If you have some evidence, feel free to present it! I'd like to hear about it, I've never seen such a thing.
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Post by swan on Mar 15, 2010 22:36:02 GMT -5
I tried to make this same argument earlier, and my point was not to disparage science in favour of theism (as I said, I am an atheist), all I was trying to do was point out the uncertainty associated with knowledge. Nothing can be known with any certainty (and I honestly don't believe I need to justify this any further but I will if necessary), but over the last century or so the need for certainty in order for something to be considered "knowledge" or "true" has declined substantially. My point is that while there may be evidence for something, there is no certainty that it is really true or really knowledge. Again, I am not trying to say that science is useless because of this, all I am saying is that assumptions (of any kind) must be made in order for people understand anything.
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zeromerc
Meteorite
This above all to thine own self be true
Posts: 35
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Post by zeromerc on Mar 16, 2010 0:59:22 GMT -5
is evolution a fact?
because of the "missing link" required to make it a fact; evolution is simply faith that is real.
However it is presented as a fact simply because it is considered common belief in the scientific community. A shared "faith" among scientists that the missing link exists causes them to present it as fact. Because rather you believe in evolution or not it is a fact that the missing link has not been found and or validated in a scientific manner.
I want to be very clear here. I am NOT using this example to validate religion or God in anyway. I am of the belief that evolution and God can coexist and are not mutually exclusive
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Nakor
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Post by Nakor on Mar 16, 2010 2:22:02 GMT -5
You're knocking evolution as a mere faith now? :\ Evolution has more than enough evidence backing it to be fact. Yes, nothing can be proven 100%. But if we say that therefore everything requires faith, the word faith becomes meaningless. Faith means belief without proof. Evolution has proof in favour of it -- vastly in favour of it -- and therefore does not require faith. This isn't to say that there isn't an infinitesimal chance that it's wrong. Nor is it to say that we know everything about it, which we certainly don't. But calling it faith is 100% just plain wrong. It is misuse of the word faith, incorrect at best and obfuscation at worst.
Note that I'm not using this as an argument against God either. I am merely trying to point out that the very definition of faith is a belief in things that evidence isn't there to support. There is no evidence to prove that a god exists, therefore thinking a god exists is faith. There is evidence to prove evolution occurred, therefore thinking that evolution occurred is not faith. That's the definition of faith.
Again, really short and simple: If there is evidence proving something beyond reasonable doubt, then believing that thing, by definition, does not require faith.
Please stop abusing the word 'faith'.
And what missing link are you talking about? Evolution has been proven through at least a dozen different fields of study (embryology, comparative anatomy, fossil record, genetics, molecular biology, ERVs, histology, ecology, development, transitional fossils, biogeography, animal behaviour) and every method of study came up with an identical tree of evolution. There's no two ways about it: evolution is fact.
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Philosoraptor
Moon
dangling prepositions is something up with which I shall not put
Posts: 145
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Post by Philosoraptor on Mar 16, 2010 5:45:40 GMT -5
There's really no such thing as a "missing link" in terms of species-to-species transitional fossils. We have an impressive number of transitional fossils, some of which document incredibly bizarre transitions very smoothly (for example, the shift from the land-dwelling ancestors of the whale to modern whales and dolphins.) The problem with opponents of evolution is that every time a transitional fossil is discovered, it opens up two more theoretical places for "missing links" to be.
"Oh! Well, where's the missing link between Ambulocetus and Basilosaurus?? Where's the missing link between Basilosaurus and the modern whale?? huh? gotcha!!"
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zeromerc
Meteorite
This above all to thine own self be true
Posts: 35
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Post by zeromerc on Mar 16, 2010 9:21:34 GMT -5
adaptation is fact.
The ability of a single species of bird to have more curve appear in its beak so that it can break nuts easier because it lives in an area that is heavily populated with nuts is adaptation.
evolution, as i understand it, is the ability for one species of animal to become another animal entirely over time. One example would the primate becoming a man.
This is a topic for another thread really. Even though its often related... sorry to bring it up here.
As far as the theory of intelligent design, or evidence that there is a supreme being out there that set everthing into motion.
I just find it very hard to believe that this world was one gigantic accident.
I can see things over time happening to create certian things. To me this has a similar probability to a person putting their hand up in the air with a baseball glove and somebody hitting a ball with a bat directly into it. It could happen. But for this to happen not once but for an entire season of baseball, and even not just for one team but for the entire american league. The possibility of this happening becomes so minimal its almost non existant.
Now apply that to what had to happen to the earth for all of this to accidentaly happen over billions of years. The possibility continues to shrink.
So I ask if that once you recieve enough evidence for something to become fact at what point dose the probabilty of something happening become so minimal that it no longer makes sense to believe it.
I dont know how old the earth is. I believe there could be an intelligent designer and the earth still be billions of years old as I stated before.
Why is it so hard for people to believe there is a God? I dont think it takes blind faith at all. In fact I would think as complex as things are that the very earth itself points to the fact that there is in fact something or someone to believe that at the very least set it all in motion.
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Nakor
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Non-Prophet
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Post by Nakor on Mar 16, 2010 12:20:13 GMT -5
I'm not arguing the point of a God though. I don't think the evidence points at one existing, and I do think that this world being caused by natural phenomena makes more sense than a God (it makes history a lot easier to explain off at least), but that's not my point. I am also not arguing that all of the universe's creation and our evolution and so forth could not have been started off by a god.
I am simply saying there is no doubt that evolution occurred. Whatever else you may believe, evolution is a fact.
Basically the two go hand in hand. Adaptation is, in fact, an evolutionary process. And over the course of hundreds of small changes, a species eventually becomes so changed that it's more accurate to refer to it as a new species. The path between the two is shown by transitional fossils, by endogenous retroviruses, by the fossil record, by genetics, and all the other things I mentioned before.
Careful with your odds there. The universe is incredibly vast. Science actually predicts its very likely that we are not the only life in the universe. Now, given that life forming somewhere was very likely, and life formed, that alone is no surprise. But you say to narrow it down because of where it formed -- what were the odds it would happen on Earth. The fact is, however, no matter where life started, that life would be there. We're here, because that's where life formed. Had life formed elsewhere, that life would be there. The location has no effect on the odds when you consider the whole universe at once; all life will be formed on a planet where it was formed, so only the odds of it forming at all within the universe need be considered when determining whether an unlikely thing happened. It would have been less likely for no life to have formed anywhere.
As an example, consider a baseball practice. A man hits the ball and it lands on a particular point in the field. The odds of the ball hitting that exact point might be less than 1/1000000. However, the ball had to hit somewhere, and it hit there. Just because the ball happened to hit there doesn't mean someone intended it to hit that particular spot. Similarly with the beginning of life, odds were in favour of it randomly happening somewhere -- that somewhere turned out to be here. And scientists figure the odds are still high it has happened somewhere else in the universe too.
To believe it as conclusive fact, greater than 99.99%. Anything less likely can be suspected as true, but should be further tested to verify the veracity of the information. Evolution, for the record, is already well past those odds.
Note that evidence for God always seems to be different in nature. Like your example -- "things are so amazingly complex that there must be a god." This presumes that things would not be complex in the absence of a god. I don't think that can be said with certainty. In fact, I'd venture to say that things would be quite complex either way. And an sound argument can not be made on such uncertain premises.
Short version:
1. Evolution is 100% real. There is a ridiculous amount of evidence for it. Anyone who believes evolution did not happen is a fool, ignoring the facts. Same with the Earth being billions of years old. 2. Life was actually incredibly likely to happen somewhere. Scientists even theorize it's likely to have happened somewhere else in the universe. 3. I have no beef with people who believe God started off the universe, intending for evolution to occur. I just don't believe that myself, as nothing that has ever occurred requires a god to explain.
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zeromerc
Meteorite
This above all to thine own self be true
Posts: 35
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Post by zeromerc on Mar 16, 2010 13:16:15 GMT -5
If I eluded to the fact that I thought earth was the only place life existed I apoligize, and seeing in that light I guess I did. So, my bad. I was using earth as an example because well I live here and no where else. So you would say the intricate nature in which just the human body works and moves does not cause you to think their must have been some kind of designer? This is excluding the rest of the universe and or possible universes where life may or may not exist. I think your point that it could have happend more than once does more for what I was saying. When it comes to probablilty... to use your example. You are correct the ball had to land somewhere. But for the ball to land in that spot and then another one to land right on top of it the very next ball and perfectly balance on top to create a two ball tower would be amazing. now if that happend till it got up to a 1,000 ball tower I feel you are getting close to the complexity of the world... that is how I see it.
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Nakor
Star
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Posts: 991
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Post by Nakor on Mar 16, 2010 15:50:47 GMT -5
Indeed. There's science that explains how it came to be, how beneficial mutations stayed, and detrimental mutations -- or rather the creatures with them -- perished. Moreover, there are a lot of things about our design that are not very well done if some grand creator had done it; a lot of redundancies are left over from the evolutionary process. I don't really see how that compares to our world. Life started only once, it didn't start hundreds of times over on the same planet. Evolution isn't a single straight path, like A became B became C. Everything started off at one point and branched off, slowly over time, in hundreds of directions. The picture on this page is an example of how one particular form of life branched off into several varieties. It's more like A became B, C, D, E and F. Then B became G, H... etc. And then over the eons we wound up with the incredible number of species that we have in the world today. So it really isn't 1000 baseballs landing on one spot. It's just one -- one place life started. Evolution took over from there which branched off all the various species. (Or is that not what you were talking about?) Oh, and I didn't think you were alluding to Earth having the only life in the universe; I only meant it as an example of how the odds of life forming (in at least one place in the universe) were high.
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Post by zAkAtAk on Mar 16, 2010 20:10:55 GMT -5
Hey! This thread is actually getting interesting to read.
Good job guys!
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Post by Lex on Mar 17, 2010 15:59:21 GMT -5
zeromercThough I do have faith in a God of some sort, I have to point out the holes in your reasoning for believing so. You're implying that all of this that has happened was accidental, but it's not the case. Coincidental is a proper term for it. Have you ever heard of the infinite monkey theory? It says that if one were to have an infinite amount of monkeys on an infinite amount of typewriters, there would be an infinite amount of monkeys that have replicated the complete works of Shakespeare without error out of simple key bashing. When we deal with infinites, literally anything can happen. To add onto that, there is the theory of the multiverse, which states that anything that could have happened, has happened in an alternate timeline. So the 'chance' argument falls apart, because in our own timeline branches that our universe follows, everything that happens has a reasoning behind it, because everything else has happened or is already happening simultaneously in an alternate universe.
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zeromerc
Meteorite
This above all to thine own self be true
Posts: 35
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Post by zeromerc on Mar 17, 2010 16:53:39 GMT -5
So your rational is the "infinate probabilty" theory? are you really Douglas Adams in disguise?? 1) This is a theory at best 2) There is also a theory that William Shakespeare was the stage name for Sir Francis Bacon (not that that applys in any way really) 3) The way the entire world works does not really lend itself to coincidence. If you leave nature alone everything works... The predators only kill the right number of animials that are food. There is a harmonious balance that is to intricate to happen by chance. To me this is like saying if you dismantled the effile tower and had a huge crane pick up all the peices and drop it enough times in the same spot eventually we would have the effile tower back. Really? You beleive that? You think their are facts to support this? The whole "we were created in God's image" thing that makes us thinkers and shapers is what causes issues. We are by nature curious beings. We poke stuff just because we can (both physicaly and figuratively). We have the ability to create something out of a pile of stuff that until we had the vision to form nothing into something. Maybe God is just a super advanced "person" and we are an experiment. I just dont see us poofing into existance. The probability of being struck by lightniing twice is once in 360billion! I can only imagine the probability of all of the diffrent species being created even over time. I dont even know how to begin to caculate that...
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