Mr. O
Meteorite
Posts: 39
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Post by Mr. O on Aug 7, 2010 8:19:03 GMT -5
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Post by qooqǝɯɐƃ on Aug 7, 2010 8:41:50 GMT -5
I may come across as a dick, sorry, but I'm not trying to offend anyone.
It's always fun to debate religion and the creation of the universe. But it gets redundant. In my opinion to believe in any theistic religion you have to be absolutely mindless. Religions are stories created from times when people couldn't explain how the world worked or how it was created.
Today for the most part we can explain how our world works so no one holds to the old beliefs (well 99% of us don't). But we can't quite explain how our universe was created, so there's still that major belief that God, or an omnipotent being created everything. I don't think we'll ever be able to prove what created the universe, or what happened before the Big Bang so it's legitimate to be Agnostic, Atheist, Deistic or Spiritual in our day and age, but to believe in a religion -- a 1000+ year old story -- is completely absurd! (But that's just my clear-headed opinion...)
However, Deism and the belief that something started the Big Bang, is just another way of trying to make sense of something so complicated. Since we can't understand creating something from nothing then believing that a Being created everything is much easier for us to understand. But by moving everything back a step and crediting a Higher Being for the creation of the universe you now have to explain how this Being was created, because what was around before him? But that's simple in comparison, just use your imagination - it's magic, it's all powerful.. it created itself... And besides by giving the credit of creation to a Higher Being you just take away from the mystery and the wonder of it all.
So imo, and I'm really just coming to this conclusion, Atheism is the only[i/] reasonable way of understanding the universe and it's creation.
EDIT: Got my definition of Agnostic confused with Deist. Soooo yea... changed that.
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Post by IMAGINARYphilosophy on Aug 7, 2010 18:01:32 GMT -5
Mr. Sinner, I fully expect that any discussion between us will end in a foregone stalemate; however, in the interest of academic exercise I will engage you further. That said, as a matter of principle, I must ask that you evaluate your position and supporting arguments to a greater degree to avoid fallacy and self-contradiction, as I will demonstrate below. And what is your proof that none of these things are accidents? Let us first define the term "accident". By context I take it you mean to define it as "that which occurs by chance". However, even this definition is problematic as it requires a secondary definition of "chance". As best I can glean, your argument is predicated on "chance" being defined as either "a lack of predictability" or "a statistical unlikelihood". Thus I derive the following definition that I will argue against: Accident is defined as "an unpredictable occurrence or that which occurs despite being statistically unlikely".That being determined, I will continue to your next point and then expound on my original premise that these phenomena are not "accidents". To the degree that it is redundant to attempt to predict an event that has already occurred, this is true. However, it is germane to the topic at hand insofar as we are able to discuss the likelihood of such events occurring without divine intervention or divine origin. This is where I draw attention to the apparent contradiction in your arguments. You have claimed previously, and reference subsequently, that you believe in a divine origin (a Creator) of our Universe because the likelihood of the Universe such as it is and life as we know it coming into existence without one is, by your own estimation, "downright unbelievable". To then argue as you have in this post that it is "worthless" or "irrelevant" to calculate the probability of these events occurring without divine origin or intervention is flatly self-contradictory. Either you accept an estimate probability or you do not. You cannot have it both ways. That said, I believe it is important to the topic at hand to discuss the probability of the Universe such as it is and life as we know it coming into existence without a divine origin. First, let us deal with life. "Life" is a term used to signify that which we determine to be living. In order for a thing to be considered "living" it must meet certain scientific criteria. The most basic form of life we are aware of on this planet is the unicellular organism (such as a bacterium or protozoan). The unicellular organism is a collection of complex chemical compounds that function in a manner consistent with our definition of life. These complex chemical compounds are comprised of simpler chemical compounds. And these simpler chemical compounds are comprised of base chemicals common to this planet. Experiments on the Theory of Abiogenesis, most famously the Miller-Urey experiment, have proven the possibility of organic matter arising spontaneously from inorganic matter. In other words, we know that is is possible for common base chemicals to spontaneously combine into the simpler chemical compounds found in life forms on this planet. Given adequate time, it is not unreasonable to believe that these simpler compounds could form complex chemical compounds, and that these complex chemical compounds could begin to interact in a way we would consider to be "living". While the likelihood of this process occurring from base inorganic material to simple unicellular life, and thence to to complex multicellular life like we observe on this planet, is very small, one must take into account the vastness of the Universe which our planet inhabits. We are currently aware of 70 sextillion (that's 10^21 or a one followed by twenty-one zeroes) stars observable from our planet. This represents only a portion of the entire Universe. While it is statistically unlikely that any one star chosen at random will have a planet orbiting it that possesses complex life, the overwhelming pool of stars to pick from shifts the probability greatly in favor that at least one planet, somewhere in the entirety of the Universe will contain complex life. I have no hard statistical data to confirm this, but in the face of such overwhelming possibility, I believe that the probability of some planet in the Universe possessing complex life such as we know on this planet is greater than 100%. That is to say, it would be statistically impossible for complex life to not exists in this Universe, and statistically likely that it exists on multiple planets. This is in no way predicated on the existence of a divine Creator. It is merely the nature of our Universe. Now I expect you would argue that there is a work-around for your position whereby the divine Creator crafted the Universe to have this nature, thus insuring the creation of life. While this cannot be directly refuted, as there is no way for us to look back beyond the event horizon at the point of the big bang to see what if anything came before our physical Universe, there is an alternative explanation that again relies on probability. If one accepts the cyclical Universe model (wherein the Universe expands via Big Bang, collapses into a singularity, then expands via a new Big Bang in an infinite cycle) or the Multiverse model, then there are incalculable number of Universes, providing a statistical pool large enough to insure that at least one Universe produced in these systems will be the one we currently are present in. At our current level of scientific and technological development, there is no hard evidence to determine the likelihood that any of these possibilities is correct. To that extent, I will say you have every right to claim you believe that our Universe was crafted by a divine Creator, but I refute any assertion that you have evidence to support such a claim. I have never made this claim. To the best of our scientific understanding, the Universe originated as a singularity. What created the singularity is unknowable. These two statements have nothing to do with each other. I can say these phenomena are not accidents (nor were they chance) because they are neither unpredictable nor are they statistically unlikely.
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Post by Ryan on Aug 8, 2010 1:15:25 GMT -5
It is useless to calculate the odds of an event occurring after the event has occurred, which means calculating the probability of life occurring is useless. So, while you have cited that the odds of life occurring on a given planet are indeed small, and that the number of planets is so much greater that the statistical probability of life occurring is greater than 100% - this is useless.
My original point was to say two things really. The first relates to life; .4% of the universe's entirety is stars and planets. even less of that is life, so the fact that we experience life every day is nothing short of unbelievable, unpredictable, and statistically unlikely - despite having a uselessly calculated statistic probability of over 100%. Thus, life is indeed quite the accident. The second point is, no matter what we know or how much we ever know, there is no timeline before the big bang. So the big bang is unpredictable and statistically unlikely - and for all intensive purpose, classifiable as an accident. So yeah - the fact that this world and universe exists is accidental - and as such - quite attributable to a deity.
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Post by IMAGINARYphilosophy on Aug 8, 2010 2:00:02 GMT -5
My original point was to say two things really. The first relates to life; .4% of the universe's entirety is stars and planets. even less of that is life, so the fact that we experience life every day is nothing short of unbelievable, unpredictable, and statistically unlikely - despite having a uselessly calculated statistic probability of over 100%. Thus, life is indeed quite the accident. The cognitive dissonance with which your brain operates is mind-boggling. This makes no sense at all. I think your argument is collapsing in on itself.
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Mr. O
Meteorite
Posts: 39
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Post by Mr. O on Aug 8, 2010 10:48:49 GMT -5
Improbable != Accidental.
The likelihood of my going into the kitchen and stabbing myself repeatedly in the hand with a knife is improbable given the current situation. However, if I were to go do it, I would not be doing it accidentally.
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Post by IMAGINARYphilosophy on Aug 8, 2010 16:53:10 GMT -5
I stumbled upon this on YouTube today and I think it sums up the stupidity of the "it's all so unlikely, God must have done it" argument. Kenneth Miller Refutes Creationist Probability Arguments: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B1g_DObYIc
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Post by Lyserg Zeroz on Aug 8, 2010 19:53:43 GMT -5
Ryan, if you are saying that life is/was improbable (and therefore "unbelievable, unpredictable, and statistically unlikely") Then you are wrong. But I think that life, as probable as it is, is still super mega awesome ;D.
Once we had the universe life was kind of a given (and mayebe still an accident, in the sense that it was not part of a plan). The problem is that the universe may not have been so probable. To be honest, I don't hold any belief in respect to "how was the universe created?". If there was a deity then it wasn't an accident, it was its doing. If there wasn't a deity, then maybe it was an accident (in the sense of a non-planned event). Maybe matter always existed in an endless loop of Big-Bangs and Big-Crunches (although I've heard that a Big-Rip is also very likely to happen), or maybe the Big-Bang singularity just formed by mere chance (I've heard about how it could have happened, but in all honesty I can't remember and even if I could I wouldn't fully understand it).
What I'm trying to say is: We cannot know (yet) the likelihood of matter appearing, since we don't know how it could have happened (we have theories and hypothesis, but we still don't really know), and like we really don't know everything that there is to know about the subject, to attribute the creation of the universe to a deity, merely because it seems unlikely (or impossible), is not right. And once we have the singularity that made the Big-Bang, and once this singularity exploded and created stars and stuff, life was undoubtedly very, very probable.
Also: ? You can't have accidental universe AND deity at the same time D= If a deity exists and created the universe, then it wasn't an accident (that, or I am misunderstanding the meaning that you give to "accident"), unless the deity created a bunch of matter and said "Well, let's see what happens with this".
More to the point of the thread: Which one 0.0? Please explain what you mean with "God" and "is a load of bullcrap" (yeah, explain the entire title xD). There are some gods that are loads of bullcrap. But the idea itself is pretty convinient, it makes explaining the universe so much easier (of course, once someone has accepted that a deity exists, someone may want to explain the deity, and that is not so easy to explain), the problem is what we, as humanity, have done with that idea. If a deity/god exists, then It isn't a load of bullcrap either, since, you know, it created the universe and all those crazy things. But I don't think we really need to believe in a god, even if it exists, so in that sense, it might be a load of bullcrap.
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Nakor
Star
Non-Prophet
Posts: 991
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Post by Nakor on Aug 8, 2010 20:49:43 GMT -5
It can be valuable to look at the odds of things that have happened happening when if you include caveats about how those odds might have been affected by unknowns. For example, the odds of human life appearing on this planet without intervention of a deity can be an important number if you're trying to find proof that a deity was necessary in their creation. Had those odds been low, then the number would serve as good reason for further investigation into the possibility of a deity performing that creation.
That said, the odds were not low (they were very, very close to 1, so close in fact that scientists speculate there are probably other planets -- albeit not within or even near our current ability to detect -- that have life), they were in fact very high. This shows that a deity was probably unnecessary to explain the existence of life.
Now in this case the odds don't show us anything particularly useful; they add no new information. Instead they just add a minor confirmation to what we already understand. But to say that calculating the odds of a certain event happening without outside interference is always useless overlooks some possibilities. For example, a man dies of a heart attack. Calculating the odds of him dying from a heart attack is pointless (it's 1 now that we know it happened), but calculating the odds of him having a heart attack due to natural causes could be very handy -- if it turns out he was somehow poisoned.
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Mr. O
Meteorite
Posts: 39
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Post by Mr. O on Aug 9, 2010 7:40:37 GMT -5
It think it's pretty obvious that whenever someone uses "God" as a personal pronoun, instead of the general noun of "god", that person is referring to the Abrahamic God. The Judeo/Christian/Muslim deity that is generally the only entity to be referenced consistently as "God". Some may disagree that "Allah" is Abrahamic, but those people don't realize that "Allah" just means "God".
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Post by _nderscore on Aug 9, 2010 7:56:38 GMT -5
I didn't know that this many people on this forum didn't believe in God. I'll pray for you guys.
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Post by low on Aug 9, 2010 9:38:26 GMT -5
I didn't know that this many people on this forum didn't believe in God. I'll pray for you guys. I appreciate it. We'll make sure you have up to date medical technology in exchange for your kind concern.
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Post by krzych32 on Aug 9, 2010 10:02:39 GMT -5
I didn't know that this many people on this forum didn't believe in God. I'll pray for you guys. I appreciate it. We'll make sure you have up to date medical technology in exchange for your kind concern. Because only atheists can build on scientific knowledge.
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Post by Benyamin on Aug 9, 2010 11:48:26 GMT -5
I didn't know that this many people on this forum didn't believe in God. I'll pray for you guys. I appreciate it. We'll make sure you have up to date medical technology in exchange for your kind concern.
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Post by Lex on Aug 9, 2010 14:02:39 GMT -5
I appreciate it. We'll make sure you have up to date medical technology in exchange for your kind concern. Because only atheists can build on scientific knowledge. While I do agree with your sarcasm, I must also play a bit of devil's advocate here: _nderscore was demonstrating that not believing in God (or his brand of God) was a bad thing -- which, it is not.
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Post by low on Aug 9, 2010 14:57:20 GMT -5
Think of my statement as "it works a lot better than praying" and maybe it will make more sense.
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Post by feeblepizza on Aug 12, 2010 8:48:38 GMT -5
One question: can you prove it?
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Post by Lyserg Zeroz on Aug 12, 2010 17:12:26 GMT -5
^Can you prove what 0.0?
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Post by holin on Aug 14, 2010 16:20:05 GMT -5
Isaac Newton, perhaps most famous for his 3 laws of science, was a Christian. it's more if you look or not instead of of what you believe in.
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olatnip
Moon
Jonathan Rodriguez on skype :D
Posts: 118
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Post by olatnip on Aug 14, 2010 16:24:20 GMT -5
i have been a christian for my whole life but i recently realized i barely know anything about christianity but i must say to you that you are wrong even if you believe in the big bang first before that particle came into existence something must have existed before it to create it
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