The Future of Religion

[Voyager]

[QUOTE=Belrix]

8. Creation does not need a deity for explanation. Adding one makes the process more complex than it does simplify it.

Creation via random interaction is very difficult. Demonstration: Take a dozen or so Legos and make a simple airplane. Take the airplane apart and drop the pieces in a Tupperware container & seal it. You may now roll, shake, bobble, & do whatever to bang those pieces together. Let me know when you get that airplane reassembled. Next, put a million pieces of four colors in a big box & start shaking. Let me know when you get a DNA molecule assembled.

And so on.

[/quote]

Give me a break. Legos do not naturally combine. Legos do not replicate themselves. Chemical processes do not work by random interaction.

Do you believe self-replicating molecules exist? Do you think it possible that one could arise from natural chemical interactions in the primitive earth, given an entire ocean of possibilities and maybe a billion years of experiments? If so, you agree that godless abiogenesis is possible.

I can’t believe anyone has the chutzpah to bring up the 747 in a junkyard analogy in GD. Oy.

I’ll give you a science question:

Last I checked, physicists have traced the origin of the universe backwards to about 1x10[sup]-34[/sup] seconds from zero point. In 20 more years, we may have the -37[sup]th[/sup] power. Doesn’t matter. They’ll never find the zero point, IMO, because it exists outside of the laws of physics.

Not necessarily. It is outside our event horizon, and the laws of physics (or at least the values of parameters) may be different, but it is not necessarily true the singularity is outside the laws of physics.

Where did the “egg”, the proto-matter come from? Collapsed from a previous universe? Where did that universe come from? Physicists abhor an infinity of universes - infinities don’t fit well with science. Something from nothing? Physics doesn’t like that either, conservation of matter & energy & all that. Beekman used the phrase “everything goes someplace” to explain this. Everything had to come from someplace, too, in a godless universe.

Anyone who thinks there was an egg of proto-matter needs to read up on the latest theories of the Big Bang. Unless somehow you think “proto-matter” is energy. Matter is just frozen energy. As for where it came from, if the net energy in the universe is zero, which might be the case, then it didn’t have to come from anywhere. No conservation laws are violated.
Infinities don’t work well in equations, but time going forward is infinite. But at any point you don’t have an infinity of time, just an uncountably large amount of time from the origin. Same with universes.

Now, by believing in god you abandon all this stuff and must believe god isn’t governed by any rules, is infinite, and is uncaused, which most believers object to in the universe.

There is also the minor problem that this argument is just as good as justifying Odin, Zeus, or the god of some other planet in our or another Galaxy. That Western religions got the story so wrong is a good argument against them.

[Belrix]

Why? What evidence do you have that this is so?

I am saying that spirit cannot be measured with a volt-meter. Those who say that God cannot exist because it’s basically against the rules of physics are using the wrong tool for measurement.
How do you know god permits free will? What evidence do you have?

So you had to reply to my posting or did you choose to?

Why?

First, ‘Evil’ is relative. There are situations where killing, something normally regarded as evil, can be seen as good. It just depends how you define the terms, ie: evil/good for who?

Second, are we reproductively selecting against evil? If not, then evolution is not going to enter into it.

*I am saying that what we call evil is the result of human choices. Choices imply free will. When the twin towers were destroyed, it was an action that was the result of human choices. Those people who spout the platitudes that it somehow was the will of God don’t understand that God does not force his will upon us. We can choose to do what he would want of us or choose differently. Choice is the ultimate double-edged sword.

Humanists would, and do, argue that Man is inherently good and it’s secular society that makes us twist against nature and do evil things. Maslov, pts 7 & 8 The American Humanist Association’s definition of humanism says that humanism (which believes in the inherent goodness of man) leads to “the greater good of humanity” (from their definition of “humanism”). Therefore, if being good betters humanity, then evil acts must select against humanity. I think it’s safe to say that evil is anti-evolutionary by this set of beliefs.*

[Belrix]

Give me a break. Legos do not naturally combine. Legos do not replicate themselves. Chemical processes do not work by random interaction.

The idea is that basic materials are combined by some sort of natural event (sludge on rocks or hydrocarbons on steam vents or whatever) to form more complex shapes. Legos have a sides with an affinity for connection and mulitiple but limited ways in which they’ll connect. It’s a fast and dirty analogy but still kind of accurate, I think

Do you believe self-replicating molecules exist? Do you think it possible that one could arise from natural chemical interactions in the primitive earth, given an entire ocean of possibilities and maybe a billion years of experiments? If so, you agree that godless abiogenesis is possible.

Sure, molecules exist. Please tell me how we get from them to consciousness.

I can’t believe anyone has the chutzpah to bring up the 747 in a junkyard analogy in GD. Oy.

It’s a moldy argument, granted, but it still demonstrates a basic belief that life as we know it is too complex to have occurred without outside interaction.

Not necessarily. It is outside our event horizon, and the laws of physics (or at least the values of parameters) may be different, but it is not necessarily true the singularity is outside the laws of physics.

Anyone who thinks there was an egg of proto-matter needs to read up on the latest theories of the Big Bang. Unless somehow you think “proto-matter” is energy. Matter is just frozen energy. As for where it came from, if the net energy in the universe is zero, which might be the case, then it didn’t have to come from anywhere. No conservation laws are violated.

*Proto-matter is what I’m calling the melange of stuff that was there before the explosion… that formed all the electrons and quarks and play-doh that makes up all the stuff filling the universe. Yes, I know about Mass/energy duality.

There’s still a cause and effect problem. The universe has always been here, one day enough energy piled up on one side and formed the nucleus that was the big bang? If there’s a zero point from which we stretch infinitely forward, then what was a t=-1? *

Infinities don’t work well in equations, but time going forward is infinite. But at any point you don’t have an infinity of time, just an uncountably large amount of time from the origin. Same with universes.

An effect without a cause? A beginning without something preceding it? This is allowed in the theological argument but not in the physics-only argument.

Now, by believing in god you abandon all this stuff and must believe god isn’t governed by any rules, is infinite, and is uncaused, which most believers object to in the universe.

I believe in the consistency of God. If I look out with the Hubble telescope and see a universe that’s 4.7 billion years old, then it’s 4.7 billion years old. DNA isn’t mentioned in the bible but I believe I’ve got some. I believe that science & physics reveal the mechanisms of God. I don’t believe in a trickster God who’s put old dinosaurs in the ground to fool us and I don’t believe that I was literally formed from mud. I believe that the six-days creation story in Genesis is parable and the lessons to be learned from it are theological, not scientific.

There is also the minor problem that this argument is just as good as justifying Odin, Zeus, or the god of some other planet in our or another Galaxy. That Western religions got the story so wrong is a good argument against them.

*Sure - it justifies other gods besides Big-G, Christian God. We “of the book” may be wrong as to who’s on top of the god heap. If Zeus exists and not Yahweh, then it still puts your argument on its ass. My point is that the universe & life cannot exist without the influence of an external conscious force.

One point to be derived from our argument is that you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist and I can’t prove that he does. We don’t have enough science, yet, to remove the gray areas we’re arguing over. I believe that we’ll never increase our knowledge of physics & other sciencey stuff to the point that we’ll completely remove God from the universe. I don’t think you can make God vanish in a puff of logic (and get run over at the next zebra crossing).

Since this thread is about the future of religion, I think it’s clear that I believe that there will always be room for belief in a conscious, external, God and religion will always be around to demonstrate that belief.*

[MrDibble]

[QUOTE=Belrix]
Your argument suggests that God is inherent in the properties of the universe and must, therefore, be a product of those interactions.
[/QUOTE]

It does no such thing. In fact, by drawing a distinction between the properties ascribed to god and those ascribed to the Universe, it does exactly the opposite. I am, in fact, in answering the fallacy that you can’t prove a negative, assuming for the sake of argument that god is as usually defined by his proponents - a supernatural being outside the laws of the universe. Not that that’s something I believe is at all possible, definitionally, but I like playing make-believe games as much as the next LARPer.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
The existence of evil, is, IMO proof that God exists. God permits evil acts to be done because he permits free will.
[/QUOTE]
This doesn’t counter the example of “natural evil”. Nor does it support an omnibenevolent god, as is usually supposed to be the case with the Judeo-Christian god.
[QUOTE=Belrix]
Free will gives you the choice to do things that are against the will of God. Him allowing it does not mean he likes it.
[/QUOTE]
So either he’s not omnipotent or he’s not omnibenevolent.* Like I said*, an omnimax god is not compatible with evil.
[QUOTE=Belrix]
If we’re just evolutionary cause-and-effect state machines, and cooperation & love & compassion are benefitial for all of society, wouldn’t the ability to do evil be slowly bred away?
[/QUOTE]
Who on Earth has offered any support for the statement I’ve bolded? Many, many, many evil people succeed at life, die old and happy surrounded by grandkids, Evolution’s work done. While it’s true altruism is a successful life strategy some of the time or in some situations, all I know about Game Theory and selection says that there are times being a bastard is the most successful strategy of all.

[ITR_champion]

[QUOTE=Leaffan]
Inspired by this thread on persons confronting atheism, I wondered: could organized religion become a thing of the past? I’m not talking about 10 years, or 100 years, but what are the hopes for organized religion say, 1000 years from now? I’m basing my (atheist-slanted) question upon the fact that we still have no proof to-date. So after an unbelievably increasing number of years, in a growing technological global society, when will the paradigm shift?)
[/QUOTE]

Jesus Christ promised that His Word would endure. For more than nineteen centuries, numerous people have predicted that Christianity would die out. Thus far, the prediction made by Jesus has been the correct one.

[MrDibble]

[QUOTE=Belrix]

The idea is that basic materials are combined by some sort of natural event (sludge on rocks or hydrocarbons on steam vents or whatever) to form more complex shapes. Legos have a sides with an affinity for connection and mulitiple but limited ways in which they’ll connect. It’s a fast and dirty analogy but still kind of accurate, I think
[/QUOTE]
Lego doesn’t spontaneously attract other bricks or form bonds without outside action. Molecules can do this. Add energy into the mix and things get even wackier.

And “Legos” is an abomination. It’s Lego, singular, always.
[QUOTE=Belrix]

Sure, molecules exist. Please tell me how we get from them to consciousness.

Evolution

It’s a moldy argument, granted, but it still demonstrates a basic belief that life as we know it is too complex to have occurred without outside interaction.

What measure of complexity are you using, please?

*Proto-matter is what I’m calling the melange of stuff that was there before the explosion… that formed all the electrons and quarks and play-doh that makes up all the stuff filling the universe. Yes, I know about Mass/energy duality.

There’s still a cause and effect problem. The universe has always been here, one day enough energy piled up on one side and formed the nucleus that was the big bang? If there’s a zero point from which we stretch infinitely forward, then what was a t=-1? *

“before the explosion”, “one side” and “t=-1” are meaningless terms when it comes to the Big Bang. They are not just wrong, but really meaningless. And the Universe need not have always been here. Why do you think it is the case.

An effect without a cause? A beginning without something preceding it? This is allowed in the theological argument but not in the physics-only argument.

Not this goh suh again. Uncaused effects are very, very common in modern physics. Have you never heard of virtual particles ?

I believe in the consistency of God.

Would this be the omnibenevolent god? The omnipotent one? The omniscient one? What god exactly are you talking about?

*One point to be derived from our argument is that you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist and I can’t prove that he does.

Can too.

We don’t have enough science, yet, to remove the gray areas we’re arguing over. I believe that we’ll never increase our knowledge of physics & other sciencey stuff to the point that we’ll completely remove God from the universe.

It helps if you have knowledge of the current state of physics before you assert that so blithely.

[Belrix]

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
This doesn’t counter the example of “natural evil”.
[/quote]
Humanist belief says that man is inherently good (See my Maslow link above).

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
Nor does it support an omnibenevolent god, as is usually supposed to be the case with the Judeo-Christian god. So either he’s not omnipotent or he’s not omnibenevolent.* Like I said*, an omnimax god is not compatible with evil.Who on Earth has offered any support for the statement I’ve bolded?
[/quote]
Omnimax sounds like a brand of stereo

Omnibenevolence: Wanting the best for your creation & forcing it on them (denying free will) are two different things. I have children and I want them to make all the right choices, all the choices that coincide with my view of what is right. I cannot make them make those choices. Could God? Yes. Does he? No - otherwise there’d be no choice.

Omnipotence: Being able to impose his will does not mean he does. Free will requires that he waits for us to find him, not be turned into programmed robots.

Humanism says we are just cause-and-effect, complicated state machines. We are our own proof that a Turing machine is possible. Humanism suggests that being human is defined by acting human since there’s nothing beyond cause and effect, stimulus and response. A machine that passes the Turing test is then, by definition, human.

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
Many, many, many evil people succeed at life, die old and happy surrounded by grandkids, Evolution’s work done. While it’s true altruism is a successful life strategy some of the time or in some situations, all I know about Game Theory and selection says that there are times being a bastard is the most successful strategy of all.
[/QUOTE]
See my justification above that humanist philosophy suggests that evil acts are anti-evolutionary. I don’t agree with that argument, I’m just saying it’s inferred by humanism. Personally I think that the ability to do evil things, to choose against the will of God, is inherent in man’s nature and we make those choices all the time.

I’m saying that if humanism says that good is innate & evolutionary more successful for all of humanity, and it’s obvious that evil people do prosper, then humanism is, to a point, disproved. Otherwise we’d all be slowly getting bioloically, inately, better & better while evil is slowly bred away.

[MrDibble]

[QUOTE=Belrix]

The idea is that basic materials are combined by some sort of natural event (sludge on rocks or hydrocarbons on steam vents or whatever) to form more complex shapes. Legos have a sides with an affinity for connection and mulitiple but limited ways in which they’ll connect. It’s a fast and dirty analogy but still kind of accurate, I think
[/QUOTE]
Lego doesn’t spontaneously attract other bricks or form bonds without outside action. Molecules can do this. Add energy into the mix and things get even wackier.

And “Legos” is an abomination. It’s Lego, singular, always.
[QUOTE=Belrix]

Sure, molecules exist. Please tell me how we get from them to consciousness.

[/QUOTE]
Evolution

It’s a moldy argument, granted, but it still demonstrates a basic belief that life as we know it is too complex to have occurred without outside interaction.

What measure of complexity are you using, please?

*Proto-matter is what I’m calling the melange of stuff that was there before the explosion… that formed all the electrons and quarks and play-doh that makes up all the stuff filling the universe. Yes, I know about Mass/energy duality.

There’s still a cause and effect problem. The universe has always been here, one day enough energy piled up on one side and formed the nucleus that was the big bang? If there’s a zero point from which we stretch infinitely forward, then what was a t=-1? *

“before the explosion”, “one side” and “t=-1” are meaningless terms when it comes to the Big Bang. They are not just wrong, but really meaningless. And the Universe need not have always been here. Why do you think it is the case.

An effect without a cause? A beginning without something preceding it? This is allowed in the theological argument but not in the physics-only argument.

Not this goh suh again. Uncaused effects are very, very common in modern physics. Have you never heard of virtual particles ?

I believe in the consistency of God.

Would this be the omnibenevolent god? The omnipotent one? The omniscient one? What god exactly are you talking about?

*One point to be derived from our argument is that you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist and I can’t prove that he does.

Can too.

We don’t have enough science, yet, to remove the gray areas we’re arguing over. I believe that we’ll never increase our knowledge of physics & other sciencey stuff to the point that we’ll completely remove God from the universe.

It helps if you have knowledge of the current state of physics before you assert that so blithely.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=Belrix]
4) The invention of deities by man is fully explainable, via the expansion of fairy tales and pure conmanship by the leading classes.

*Which came first?

Using religion to control the masses is a time-honored misuse of faith.*
[/quote]
People making things up, of course. It had to be so, because there’s no evidence at all for gods of any kind.

And you can’t “misuse” faith, and more than you can misuse bribery. You don’t corrupt faith; it IS corruption.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
5) Similarly, ritualisation and superstition of things by mankind are fully explainable given that we are extravagant pattern matching machines.

That doesn’t mean that every rationalization is, in fact, wrong. IMO, it’s a correct conclusion to a rational analysis that a deity is involved.
[/quote]
Well, you are wrong; there’s no evidence for that at all. And no, a bunch of contradictory claims by believers isn’t evidence of gods, just evidence that they have no clue what they are talking about.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
There’s a long-held belief that science pushes out God. I’d argue that science can demonstrate the complex machinery of God. Intelligent people are on both sides of the God issue. If a majority of intelligensia thinks God doesn’t exist, that doesn’t make it right. Once a majority of intelligent people believed in spontaneous generation, geocentric solar systems, & only four elements. You cannot vote on the nature of reality.
[/quote]
Which is why the fact that so many people like religion doesn’t mean it’s true. ALL the evidence is against God. And while there may be “Intelligent people are on both sides of the God issue”, there are more on the unbelieving side, because the “God” side is foolish. It makes NO sense at all.

And yes, science DOES push out religion and visa versa; they are fundamentally hostile to each other by nature. Religion is about insanity and ignorance; science about rationality and knowledge.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
Prayer, similarly, does not appear to have any effect.

*Many Christians believe that prayers are answered.
[/quote]
Well, they are wrong.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
8) Creation does not need a deity for explanation. Adding one makes the process more complex than it does simplify it.

*Creation via random interaction is very difficult.
[/quote]
Not when you use large enough numbers. And where did God come from ? As said, saying “God did it” doen’t explain anything, just pushes it back a step - a step we aren’t supposed to think about or question. This is an example of how religion is the enemy of thought, of understanding.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
I’ll ask another question - do you have free will? If you met me today, could you choose to shake my hand? Could I force you to shake my hand if you didn’t want to? If you’re just a complex state machine, I could construct a scenario in which you had no choice, couldn’t I?*
[/QUOTE]
Do you have any evidence that free will is even possible ? No, I don’t believe in free will, because the concept is incoherent.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
If we’re just evolutionary cause-and-effect state machines, and cooperation & love & compassion are benefitial for all of society, wouldn’t the ability to do evil be slowly bred away?
[/QUOTE]
Poor cooperation has been “bred away”; or to be more accurate never had a chance to establish itself as the norm. That’s how and why humans cooperate so well; a tribe of cooperators do better than a tribe of sociopaths, to such a degree that the sociopaths can only exist as parasites in the larger society. “Evil” exists still because sometimes it IS beneficial to the genes, which are what matter in evolution, not society.

And “free will” isn’t an explanation for why we don’t commit/do commit evil, because the concept of free will makes no sense. You might as well say it’s due to forxsnagles.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
I am saying that spirit cannot be measured with a volt-meter.
[/QUOTE]
Because it’s imaginary. Provide some evidence otherwise.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
I am saying that what we call evil is the result of human choices. Choices imply free will.
[/QUOTE]
No, they don’t. A simple computer program can make choices; that doesn’t mean that it has free will. The difference is that we understand it enough not to fool ourselves otherwise.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
The idea is that basic materials are combined by some sort of natural event (sludge on rocks or hydrocarbons on steam vents or whatever) to form more complex shapes. Legos have a sides with an affinity for connection and mulitiple but limited ways in which they’ll connect. It’s a fast and dirty analogy but still kind of accurate, I think
[/quote]
But Legos aren’t designed for self assembly; such toys exist. Put a completed toy and a bunch of parts in a bag, shake the bag vigorously, and when you open the bag there will be two toys. The molecules that make up life are molecules that happen to be good at self assembly; that’s WHY they are what makes up life.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
Sure, molecules exist. Please tell me how we get from them to consciousness.
[/QUOTE]
An obscure concept called evolution.

[QUOTE=Belrix]
My point is that the universe & life cannot exist without the influence of an external conscious force.
[/QUOTE]
Prove it. And while your at it, why can God exist without such an external force ? And if HE can, why not the universe ?

[Captain_Lance_Murdoch]

First, humanity has to survive. 1,000 years is a long time in a world with ever more devastating weapons. No humans = no religion.

Atheists are a small percentage of the population, but the numbers are ever growing. What percentage of people were atheists in, say 1500? Scientific advances have discredited the formerly unassailable assertions of sacred texts and the churches keep losing members little by little. Of course, that doesn’t mean new sacred texts can’t be created for new faiths that are better adapted to the modern world. So I think religion, in some form, is here to stay, but I think it will gradually become less and less important.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=Belrix]
I’m saying that if humanism says that good is innate & evolutionary more successful for all of humanity, and it’s obvious that evil people do prosper, then humanism is, to a point, disproved. Otherwise we’d all be slowly getting bioloically, inately, better & better while evil is slowly bred away.
[/QUOTE]
And to a large degree, we have. Not that it matters; “humanism”, as you define it is hardly the only alternative to your particular version of theism. You seem to be sidling towards the “humanity is all evil so we need religion” excuse for religion, with the implied slam that atheists are all monsters. Which I’m reasonably sure you believe, whether you choose to admit it or not.

MrDibble, despite being an atheist and thus the tool of the Devil, I’m going to tell you that blank posts like your one above are caused by errors with quote tags. In fact, if you try to quote your own blank post, you’ll see what you typed.

[MrDibble]

[QUOTE=Belrix]
Humanist belief says that man is inherently good.
[/QUOTE]
Really? And anyway, what does that have to do with* natural* evil (like disease and earthquakes, in case you had no clue what I was talking about, as seems the case)?
[QUOTE=Belrix]

Omnimax sounds like a brand of stereo
[/QUOTE]
It’s fairly common terminology in discussing this philosophical issue. The alternative of listing them all gets tedious really quickly.
[QUOTE=Belrix]

Omnibenevolence: Wanting the best for your creation & forcing it on them (denying free will) are two different things.
[/QUOTE]
It’s god. It doesn’t have to “force” anything. It can make it always have been so. Or else it’s not omnipotent.

I have children and I want them to make all the right choices, all the choices that coincide with my view of what is right. I cannot make them make those choices. Could God? Yes. Does he? No - otherwise there’d be no choice.

It’s god. It can make us so we choose the right thing because we want to. Or it’s not omnipotent.

Omnipotence: Being able to impose his will does not mean he does. Free will requires that he waits for us to find him, not be turned into programmed robots.

Why? And what about the suffering in the meantime? And the suffering of the innocent?

Humanism says we are just cause-and-effect, complicated state machines.

Humanism says no such thing. That’s your gloss on what Humanism says, but I challenge anyone to find anything approaching that in the Amsterdam Declaration or the American Humanist Manifesto.

We are our own proof that a Turing machine is possible. Humanism suggests that being human is defined by acting human since there’s nothing beyond cause and effect, stimulus and response.

There’s more to acting human than being a Turing Machine ( or else the Voight-Kampff test would be useless)

A machine that passes the Turing test is then, by definition, human.

No, it’s a human-like sentient being, that’s all. Certainly the test itself doesn’t claim to be a test for humanity, only for intelligence. What did Turing say? (My bolding)
[QUOTE=Turing]
If a machine acts as intelligently as a human being, then it is as intelligent as a human being.
[/QUOTE]
Nothing there about being a human being.

See my justification above that humanist philosophy suggests that evil acts are anti-evolutionary.

Again, I’d say Humanist philosophy as a whole says no such thing. What it does generally say is that co-operation and good acts are beneficial for the humanity as a whole. That’s *not the same *as what you’re saying.

I don’t agree with that argument, I’m just saying it’s inferred by humanism.

I think you’re reading way too much into Humanism’s advocating a “wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was nice” ethic.

I’m saying that if humanism says that good is innate & evolutionary more successful for all of humanity, and it’s obvious that evil people do prosper, then humanism is, to a point, disproved.

Good thing Humanism doesn’t say that, then.

Otherwise we’d all be slowly getting bioloically, inately, better & better while evil is slowly bred away.

This a) supposes that evil is entirely genetic
b) even if it was, couldn’t arise many times independently
amongst other problems with the biology of it, I’m sure.

[MrDibble]

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]

MrDibble, despite being an atheist and thus the tool of the Devil, I’m going to tell you that blank posts like your one above are caused by errors with quote tags. In fact, if you try to quote your own blank post, you’ll see what you typed.
[/QUOTE]

I know - I missed the edit window on it afterwards. Teach me to click “submit” and then watch a whole Dresden Dolls vid on youtube before rechecking the thread… :rolleyes:

[Merijeek]

[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
See…I don’t get this. How could religion make a person feel safe if they just suffered a cataclysmic event? Isn’t that proof that their belief in an all-powerful and caring god is errant?
[/QUOTE]

“It’ll all be better in the next life”.

Kind of like when my daughter wants a popsicle, and I don’t want to have an argument, but I also don’t want to give her one. “We’ll have a popsicle after nap time.”

Of course, she’s gotten to the age when she’ll wake up from her nap and say, “Daddy, popsicle after nap”.

Not a lot of people are jumping back from the afterlife to demand their popsicle, however.

-Joe

[MrDibble]

[QUOTE=Merijeek]

Not a lot of people are jumping back from the afterlife to demand their popsicle, however.
[/QUOTE]

I think lekatt would beg to differ…

[Merijeek]

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
I think lekatt would beg to differ…
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, well, I’m not giving him a popsicle either.

-Joe

ETA: And for those with a taste in less-than-useless trivia, “popsicle” isn’t in Firefox’s spellchecker.

[Belrix]

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And you can’t “misuse” faith, and more than you can misuse bribery. You don’t corrupt faith; it IS corruption.
[/quote]
Angry much?

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Well, you are wrong; there’s no evidence for that at all. And no, a bunch of contradictory claims by believers isn’t evidence of gods, just evidence that they have no clue what they are talking about.
[/quote]
Thus it is proved, it seems. You got a bit of froth on the corner of your mouth there…

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Which is why the fact that so many people like religion doesn’t mean it’s true. ALL the evidence is against God. And while there may be “Intelligent people are on both sides of the God issue”, there are more on the unbelieving side, because the “God” side is foolish. It makes NO sense at all.
[/quote]
It makes no sense given your definition of the rules, I’ll grant you that. We have different sets of rules as I’ve already said. And “so many people” on either side of the argument doesn’t matter. Like I said earlier, you can’t vote on the nature of reality

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And yes, science DOES push out religion and visa versa; they are fundamentally hostile to each other by nature. Religion is about insanity and ignorance; science about rationality and knowledge.
[/quote]
I have an IQ of 140 and an college degree in engineering. I’m pretty rational as a rule and I don’t think I’m insane. You seem to be of the variety or atheist that if God appeared to you in a thundering cloud, called your name, branded a big “G” on your forehead, and turned your left arm into a snake, you’d still find a way to rationalize it away.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Well, they are wrong.
[/quote]
Yeah - thought I had that right. You seem angry. That’s OK - you don’t have a choice about that, do you?

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Not when you use large enough numbers. And where did God come from ? As said, saying “God did it” doen’t explain anything, just pushes it back a step - a step we aren’t supposed to think about or question. This is an example of how religion is the enemy of thought, of understanding.

Do you have any evidence that free will is even possible ? No, I don’t believe in free will, because the concept is incoherent.
[/quote]
The next time you make a choice, let me know then. If you had no choice, then you had no free will. If you had a choice between “a” and “b” and chose “a”, then you exercised free will.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And “free will” isn’t an explanation for why we don’t commit/do commit evil, because the concept of free will makes no sense. You might as well say it’s due to forxsnagles.
[/quote]
By your rules, if somebody murders your mother, you’d have to let them go. If they didn’t have a choice in the matter, if they only responded to stimulus & response, then they’re no more responsible than if they were a bear that killed her in the woods. When you remove free will from the equation - then nobody is responsible for their actions.

It’s nice because it removes all morality from life and you don’t have to worry about doing any wrongs. When there’s no choice, there’s nothing inherently wrong. You can point at your mother (the murdered one) and shout, “You made me this way!!” and then you can publish your manifesto on forced eugenics.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
A simple computer program can make choices; that doesn’t mean that it has free will. The difference is that we understand it enough not to fool ourselves otherwise.
[/quote]
I specified a Turing machine - by it’s nature that’s not a simple computer program. If a machine can be built that can act human, I’d argue, by your rules, that it is human. If there’s no soul, if there’s no free will, then you’re just a machine. A complex, argumentative, frothing-at-the-mouth machine, but just a machine.

Any machine that can mimic the responses of a human must, therefore, also be granted status as human. This seems very limiting for the biological humans (as supposed to the silicon ones).

It seems strange that I support your unique humanity better than you do when I’m the uneducated, deceived one.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
But Legos aren’t designed for self assembly; such toys exist. Put a completed toy and a bunch of parts in a bag, shake the bag vigorously, and when you open the bag there will be two toys. The molecules that make up life are molecules that happen to be good at self assembly; that’s WHY they are what makes up life.
[/quote]

Huh? Umm - who made that first toy, then. There’s a circle of snakes eating their own tails here… Change my example to a Mr. Potato Head, with everythings designed to be assembled and the task gets no easier. Besides if life was so easy to generate, why aren’t new species just cropping up all the time? If molecules self-assemble, shouldn’t there be an ongoing, continuous creation? Rather there seems to be a time of creation and a divergence from that. It’s a “tree” of evolution, not a “carpet” of one.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
An obscure concept called evolution.
[/quote]
Yeah - God designed a pretty good process there, didn’t he?

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Prove it. And while your at it, why can God exist without such an external force ? And if HE can, why not the universe ?
[/QUOTE]
My theology allows God to exist without a creator. Proving it to your rules isn’t possible.

Yelling louder doesn’t strengthen your argument. My soul is unique & not measurable, it’s a shame that you think yours isn’t.

As far as your aforementioned virtual particles, they seem to be the result & method by which non-virtual particles interact. They don’t seem to be spontaneously generating without reason. Other particles that seemed to be generated from nothing (the photon pairs) in that article were being triggered by physical things (like black holes). All this still has the cause & effect thing going for them.

Question: Suppose you have an identical twin. He’s born with the same DNA as you, all the same genetic machinery. You’re separated at birth and placed into two identical houses. You don’t know it (sort of like Jim Carrey in “The Truman Show”) but your lives are scripted. Every day, at the same time, the same things happen to you. You get your diapers changed at the same time, you get fed at the same time. Your “parents” are sets of identical twins so they look the same, too.

At what point do you become the same person? Did you start out as the same person at the moment of birth and then diverge? If you filmed every response to every stimulus, would you both react in the same way or are you, in fact, different than your brother? Unique even?

Since you aren’t a sub-atomic particle and brain responses are chemical not nuclear, you might have to keep quantum mechanics out of your answer.

My point here is that I believe that we are greater than the sum of our biology.

I’m going to take a break from this all now - I have to do what they pay me to do.

[Voyager]

[QUOTE=Belrix]
Give me a break. Legos do not naturally combine. Legos do not replicate themselves. Chemical processes do not work by random interaction.

The idea is that basic materials are combined by some sort of natural event (sludge on rocks or hydrocarbons on steam vents or whatever) to form more complex shapes. Legos have a sides with an affinity for connection and mulitiple but limited ways in which they’ll connect. It’s a fast and dirty analogy but still kind of accurate, I think

[/quote]

With heat, especially, molecules break their bonds and recombine into other molecules. It’s not like that doesn’t happen today - like in your body. Didn’t you ever do a chemistry lab? egos don’t. Ever own those little magnet squares that you cut out of a big sheet? Mix them together and they automatically form strings of magnets. If you had rings with two magnetic nodes (or 4) and mixed them up you’d get really interesting shapes. But not self-replicating.

Do you believe self-replicating molecules exist? Do you think it possible that one could arise from natural chemical interactions in the primitive earth, given an entire ocean of possibilities and maybe a billion years of experiments? If so, you agree that godless abiogenesis is possible.

Sure, molecules exist. Please tell me how we get from them to consciousness.

Zoom, there go the goalposts! We were talking about life, not consciousness. Do you then accept that we can get right upto man without divine intervention. (That would be a start.)

We don’t know what consciousness is, let alone how it developed. That doesn’t leave much of a fossil record. All I do know is that my dog is a lot smarter than my old rabbit who was smarter than my hamster, who was smarter then my turtle. And I’m smarter than all of them - well, maybe not the dog sometimes.

I can’t believe anyone has the chutzpah to bring up the 747 in a junkyard analogy in GD. Oy.

It’s a moldy argument, granted, but it still demonstrates a basic belief that life as we know it is too complex to have occurred without outside interaction.

And a totally bogus one. Read “Climbing Mount Improbable” and “The Blind Watchmaker.” We know very well how complexity increases and how organisms become more adapted to their environment. There is little blind chance involved.

There’s still a cause and effect problem. The universe has always been here, one day enough energy piled up on one side and formed the nucleus that was the big bang? If there’s a zero point from which we stretch infinitely forward, then what was a t=-1? *

What’s north of the north pole? Asking what time it was before the beginning of time is nonsensical. I guess you didn’t understand my point about the total of energy being 0. And we’ve had many threads about how cause and effect don’t work at the quantum level. Some people don’t believe that, and are still looking for the little demon to give things a push. Pointless to go over it again.

Infinities don’t work well in equations, but time going forward is infinite. But at any point you don’t have an infinity of time, just an uncountably large amount of time from the origin. Same with universes.

An effect without a cause? A beginning without something preceding it? This is allowed in the theological argument but not in the physics-only argument.

Which only indicates you don’t understand non-Newtonian physics. What books on evolution and cosmology have you read? Why do you think physics in the microworld must make sense to those of us raised in the macroworld?

There is also the minor problem that this argument is just as good as justifying Odin, Zeus, or the god of some other planet in our or another Galaxy. That Western religions got the story so wrong is a good argument against them.

*Sure - it justifies other gods besides Big-G, Christian God. We “of the book” may be wrong as to who’s on top of the god heap. If Zeus exists and not Yahweh, then it still puts your argument on its ass. My point is that the universe & life cannot exist without the influence of an external conscious force.

One point to be derived from our argument is that you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist and I can’t prove that he does. We don’t have enough science, yet, to remove the gray areas we’re arguing over. I believe that we’ll never increase our knowledge of physics & other sciencey stuff to the point that we’ll completely remove God from the universe. I don’t think you can make God vanish in a puff of logic (and get run over at the next zebra crossing).

Since this thread is about the future of religion, I think it’s clear that I believe that there will always be room for belief in a conscious, external, God and religion will always be around to demonstrate that belief.*

Good. so your creator need not be omnipotent, omniscient, nor even particularly competent. As far as you can tell, our universe was created by some grad student in some other universe, who set the parameters and launched it - though I don’t know how he’d get graded, being that we’re on the other side of a singularity from him. Very uplifting!

You are right that there will always be room for a god, but there is always room for people who believe the sun goes around the earth also. All I can hope for in the future is that all religions lose their unjustified certainty, and take up their place with science as opposed to against it. The Dalai Lama said that if Buddhism and science conflict, Buddhism will have to change. If that becomes a universal tenet of religion, we’ll be in good shape. I’m not holding my breath.

[Belrix]

I’ll make a quick post - since I’m on hold listening to generic jazz.

Concerning “Natural Evil” - I’ve never heard the term before used like that. My answer:

Two turtles are talking, one says to the other, “When I get to heaven I’m going to ask God why he didn’t do more to stop suffering.”

“Really?”, says the other, “I"m worried he’ll ask me the same thing.”

Other than that, my answer to the OP is back up there - this discussion is really hijacking the thread. I’ll guess we’ll have to agree to disagree and settle the argument in about, umm, 50 years if I’m lucky.

[MrDibble]

[QUOTE=Belrix]

As far as your aforementioned virtual particles, they seem to be the result & method by which non-virtual particles interact. They don’t seem to be spontaneously generating without reason.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think you’re using “reason” in the same way I do. The interactions we observe between non-virtual particles are a result of virtual particles, not, as you seem to be implying, a force that pulls such particles out of the ether. You have cause and effect mixed.
[QUOTE=Belrix]
Other particles that seemed to be generated from nothing (the photon pairs) in that article were being triggered by physical things (like black holes). All this still has the cause & effect thing going for them.
[/QUOTE]

Did you actually read the article? The black hole (in the case of Hawking Radiation) is not the cause of the particle/anti-particle pair appearing, only of one half of the pair continuing to exist. The actual particle/antiparticle pair arises out of spontaneous vacuum fluctuations, the same ones that occur elsewhere throughout the universe. It’s only at event horizon that one half of the pair gets swallowed up before annihilation can occur.