It doesn't strengthen my belief because it copies humans... it strengthens my belief because it shows me that the universe has order more complex than a computer, and to me, that doesn't happen by accident. Perhaps I misspoke... Pointless may have been a strong word. If there's two people who are really sure of their beliefs, their positions are unlikely to change. That's what I was trying to express. It is good to have an understanding of other viewpoints though... I don't agree with those kinds of people either, especially those who claim to be christian... There is nothing in christian teachings that gives anyone the right to commit acts of violence for any reason other than self defense. And any interpretation that leads a person to that conclusion is flawed. I started to reply to this part, but it's too off topic... expect a PM sir! Looks like we're going back in the ring!
How are stars, Milky Way, trees, human body as a functional unit, all the laws of physics, chemistry, the beuty of nature and finally immensity of the universe NOT to strenghten my belief ? And on what basis do you claim they shouldn't as all of those laws have been here independant of the existance of man who simply discovered them ? These are factional, even pragmatic proofs of God's working, thus I see God's hand in them, thus I am stronger in my faith. My confidence in faith springs exactly from these truths that are independant of man himself.
[MENTION=8010]Phoenix[/MENTION]: [MENTION=51076]Macaberz[/MENTION]: Here we go again! Been waiting for this!
This is a version of the 'God Layer' and I'm afraid it doesn't add anything to understanding the Universe.
I don't know man, it seems to me the guy from the video has hardened his heart and has worked his way away from God, as reason-based as possible, but in the end, face to face to death or whatever, he will always loose for not coming to God. Reason does not run counter to God or his existence, nor does the existence of gay poeple. There's not a single thing that happened that God did not want to happen, including wars, suffering, and a priest who went fishing and who got hit by a lightening from a cloudless sky, as these are to contribute to some greater good which is yet to be discovered. Also the analogy of the jumper forcing himself to jump off a building, well, the suicide rates speak for themselves. I find it easier to believe in God than to jump and if the guy was forced to jump, he would say the same.
The reasons for a strong faith were the subject matter of the comment, not the understanding of the universe.
Also, if anyone has concluded that the discussion is taking a course of an argument stand-off, I'm off the battlefield. I seek truth and truthfulness and don't desire to entertain anyone by yet another dispute for its sake only.
There's nothing that can be said, ultimately, about the existence or non-existence of god from a scientific standpoint. All we can say is that we have no evidence of the existence of god, and we are able to explain the universe around us without resorting to god (and what we can't explain yet, we believe we will ultimately explain without god). That certainly doesn't preclude the existence of god, however, and so it is not an issue resolvable by science.
I would suggest moving any discussion of the existence of God out of the thread... Else we end up with another "Video Game v Writers" discussion. (Yes, I am going to coin that phrase to mean a hijack )
Directly it may not be resolvable by science (although there have been scientists who at the end of their life resolved to believing in God). Indirectly, based on numerous assumptions that make up for the mosaic of faith, it is. Should I assume God has lead the creation of things since the Big Bang, the existence of a bird is an indirect evidence of his existence.
I disagree. That requires a leap of logic not supported by science. It may be that god has played a role that ultimately led to the existence of the bird, but it could just as easily be the result of natural forces at work without a deity. The argument you're making is essentially circular - god created the world (or birds, or whatever), and we know this because the world (or a bird) is evidence of god's existence.
Exactly, although the leap of logic may go forwards or backwards depending on the person. Same as George R.R. Martin who says the existence of any god goes against his logic's grain, so does the non-existence of God go against mine. It is.
So everything we do, everything we make, every breath we take is already determined in the grand plan of God? Is that what you are saying? Yes, words can cloud a discussions, they can be an obstacle. But however confusing words may be, they aren't a measurement of truth. Facts exists outside of language. We might use different words but on subject such as gravity, we are bound to arrive at the same conclusion. I disagree on the premise that faith goes beyond logic. I'll take the risk that we will end up fighting over words but faith, by definition, means believing without evidence. Faith is gullibility. Faith is assuming that which you can not prove logically, it has no tangiable presence, it's hardly anything more than a funny feeling. I am happy you don't impose your beliefs on others, I don't either. I don't walk into churches in foreign countries to convert the christians but to marvel at the architecture and to sit in peace and quiet for a moment. Well, to be blunt saying that you are sure that it does fit together is an opinion at this stage. We are once again doomed to stumble over words here because 'fit together' can be interpreted in many ways. If you mean that a solar system 'fits' together, then I'd agree. If you mean that the universe, including us fits together in the sense that its all orchestrated by an all powerful creator, then I'd disagree. I do not believe such a creator exists, I can not disprove his/her existence anymore than you can disprove to me that there isn't a fried turkey bar underneath the surface of Pluto. However I can do the following: 1. I can demonstrate that you are morally superior to the God you believe in. 2. I can demonstrate that the explanations offered by religion for certain phenomena are superseeded by scientific explanations (which, because they are scientific, are demonstrable). 3. I can demonstrate that the character of God, as described in the bible, mismatches his behaviour (if he were to exists) on earth. 4. I can demonstrate that that a practical, literal, application of the teachings of the bible is harmful. 5. I can demonstrate that science works. This is very simple really, as opposed to religious explanations, scientific theories have predictive capabilites. There is probably more I can demonstrate to reinforce the claim that scientific theory > religious faith but I can't come up with many more now. I'd happily divulge into any of the aforementioned claims if you want me to. As GingerCoffee pointed out, this isn't a valid argument. In fact it's a rather nice demonstration of my interpretation problem. All of the universe may look designed to you, but how would you know if it looks designed to a sentient, alien race? We see the universe and strap it into the boundaries of our knowledge. 'The beauty of Nature' argument has one major flaw. If you are going to attribute the awesome machinery of nature to god, then you must also attribute all the horrors of life to that god. You can't cherry pick. You might see a gazelle and be filled with amazement, but little do you know that that gazelle is brutally slaughtered by a tiger the next day. The universe is a very violent and unforgiving place. There are black holes swallowing entire galaxies, there are poisonous gas clouds. Just on earth, hunger, suffering and disease are prevalent. If your god is responsible for the beauty of nature then he is also responsible for all of its horrors. The argument that God wants us to have free will and that this is the reason there is suffering falls flat on its face. There are natural disaster, huriccanes and floods that aren't caused by humans that whipe out a good ten thousand human beings, like you and me, within hours. Yet, your God stands by and watches, this is all part of his plan. If this sounds cruel to you, then I've already demonstrated #1. If you think that someone or something, with the capability to interfere, knowingly ignores suffering is evil, then you are morally superior to your own version of God. If you observe a distant galaxy it may look beautiful from here, but perhaps all that Galaxy contains are utterly inhabitable planets and dying stars, supernova's and other violent, natural phenomena. So you even admit that suffering is part of the plan. Now I want you to wonder what kind of plan would justify all combined human suffering. As for that story of a priest being hit by lightning from a cloudless sky, that's simply not true. I can't disprove it directly, but neither are you capable of directly disproving any kind of miracolous story I make up. The reason I say it's not true is because lightning doesn't strike from a cloudless sky. We know it doesn't. Extraordinary claims like this one require extraordinary evidence. But I am afraid you will just have to believe this man on his word. You know very well that what happened to this priest isn't something that happens naturally. You should be demanding evidence, not just believe him on his word, I think that is naive. You misunderstand. His point was that you can't choose to believe that which you know to be impossible. I can try to think very hard that gravity doesn't work and that God will save me when I jump off a building but I can't choose to believe the absurd. I can't force myself to really, truly believe with 100% certainity that I won't fall. I just can't do it because I experience gravity everyday, it's a fact of life. Suicide rates have absolutely nothing to do with this. His point is that when you walk about to him and tell him that he needs to choose for God and Jesus, that that is equivalent to you asking him to stop believing in gravity. You can't force somebody, not even yourself to believe that people rose from the dead when all your life experience and all science and all our understanding of life point out that this is impossible. We both present arguments and try to counter arguments, so we are cool right?
Yes, I think that's ultimately right. You can't leap from the evidence to the existence of god, nor can you leap from the lack of evidence to the non-existence. For me, personally, I require evidence if I'm going to believe it. Not everyone does. When I was working in research, I worked with a lot of Ph.D. scientists, many of them involved in evolutionary biology, and most of them believed in god. These were smart people, and also very knowledgeable on the science.
I think the matter is related seeing how you and some others (and I don't mean this in a bad way) concluded that this 'Binary code' was evidence for God. You are right that we should get back to the Strings though and keep the discussion more related. Most importantly, the debate so far is very civilized in my opinion so I personally see no reason to terminate it.
Well, since you brought it up ..... Warning, don't read my post if science supporting atheism bothers you. Spoiler That's not true, science can resolve the god question. Science can determine the fictional nature of gods if one asks the right question: 'what best explains god beliefs, real gods or fictional human inventions?' People tend to focus on science not being able to prove gods don't exist. You can always come up with the Deist God that started everything and now doesn't interact with the Universe. Besides the obvious that few people define their gods as not doing anything, the main problem with defining a god as undetectable is, with no interaction, there's no way for people to be aware of such a god. But back to what science can say about gods not existing. There is overwhelming evidence gods are human fictional creations. Most theists recognize fictional gods, they just don't recognize the gods they believe in are fictional. But there is no evidence any gods ever existed, only evidence fictional gods existed. In the scientific process you follow the evidence to the conclusion, you don't try to fit the evidence to a foregone conclusion. All the evidence points to gods being fiction, no evidence supports the conclusion real gods exist. Another principle in the scientific process is, science doesn't 'prove' conclusions, it applies the best explanation for the evidence. But that doesn't stop us from operating under the premise there are some things that can be called scientific fact. It's just practical to do so. It's a fact the Earth is a sphere. Technically, science still allows for the possibility some evidence could be found in the future that might make us need to reassess that scientific 'fact'. An easier example is noting people believed the Earth's crust was solid. That would have been a scientific fact for quite a long time that is no longer a fact. But it was fine to operate on the premise it was a fact the crust did not move at the time the evidence supported that conclusion. So back to the overwhelming evidence. Once you've seen enough trees, you can recognize a new species of tree. Once you've seen enough genomes, you don't need to test every organism to know that organism has a genome. And once you've seen enough god myths, you don't need to test every one of them, past, present, and future, to draw a scientific conclusion that all gods are mythical human inventions. We can even see that hypothesis was tested with the Cargo Cults that were observed in recent historical times and the real time invention of a god myth was observed and well documented. I see the thread progressed while I was composing my thread.
[MENTION=53143]GingerCoffee[/MENTION] - none of that is, ultimately, proof of the non-existence of god. Science cannot, of course, prove that god doesn't exist. You can argue likelihood and weight of evidence, etc., but ultimately you can't get to a firm resolution. Further, depending on your conception of god, you might not expect evidence of god, even if god exists. For example, if you were essentially a deist, who believed that god created everything with an initial spark back at the start of the universe and then stood back and let events unfold from there, you'd expect the universe to look as it does, and the scientific evidence for and against god to look exactly as it does, despite the existence of god. There is a point beyond which science cannot (and in my opinion does not intend to) answer these questions for people.
On the very same premise I have arrived at the conclusion that Christian religion and God presented by Christianity is fundamentally different to any other religion. About human's tendency or inclination to god-thinking, I take that for no reason why to assume the Christian God was created by man.
And circular arguments are a logical fallacy, ie. they make no sense and are only a reflection of subjective beliefs rather than objective truths. I'm an agnostic, as are most people I know who weren't raised in the religion. I might be wrong, but I noticed that the most radical atheists (those who are as sure there isn't a God, as fundamentalist Christians are sure that there is) were raised in religious families and got extremely disillusioned with the church. When I listen to some passionate atheists, like Dawkins, I'm also hearing a scared little kid. It's that emotional for them, proving that "God doesn't exist". I don't know whether God exists, but I have my own ideas. I'm comfortable with the idea of intelligent design, whatever that intelligence may be. God could be love and mathematics, as Archbishop of Canterbury said in a debate with Richard Dawkins (excellent stuff). Who knows?
I have to agree with what Steerpike has said. Science can't provide definite proof that God doesn't exist. This is kind of off-topic, but I think we should be asking ourselves whether God is necessary for our understanding of science. The laws of physics and the way we describe them, for example, don't depend on the existence of a God-like entity.
But you miss a key point, science doesn't seek to prove anything. Why should there be an exception when it comes to following evidence to the conclusion for god beliefs? We don't make that exception for anything else in scientific discovery. You said, "There's nothing that can be said, ultimately, about the existence or non-existence of god from a scientific standpoint." And I described how science does indeed have something to say about the "non-existence of god from a scientific standpoint." It's a paradigm shift that I don't expect everyone to immediately, or even eventually, make.
