Far from their bests but relevant...

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I'd love to Mikeman, but there's utterly no point. All zealots ever do is look for cracks in arguments and shout "case not proven", and then utterly fail to see the irony of that. Like the crap above about intelligent design and the big bang being not quite explained yet, so therefore God did it. For fucks sake.

Despite my somewhat unsublte stance, I'm really not just trying to troll for the sake of it. I want someone, without using the word "belief" or "faith" to prove to me there's a God. And like I said at the start, prove to me that God exists and I'll kneel alongside you. Or even forget absolute proof - I'll settle for a fairly compelling bit of circumstantial evidence. Anything at all really.

I mean, ok. Big Bang. Better people than I can't understand it. That means it's not understood yet. So that's where the speculation should end either way. If you want to claim that God did it, then fine - just don't piss on me and tell me it's raining.

I was addressing the usual zealotry btw, not you personally. I know you didn't set out to prove or disprove anything and you freel admit that you believe in God because it seems right to do that. And who am I to say you can't. What annoys me is people claiming that because science doesn't yet have all the answers, religion provides them. It provides no answers at all. Where in the bible, the quran or whatever does it say when and how the big bang happened? Surely we're not going with the old testament version, so which?

'krez' said:

After realizing that (IMHO) gods and such are the ridiculous imaginings of primitive people before our species discovered science…

…but I find it irritating that some people like to belittle those that believe in God with "you don't know much about science and you're just using religion because you're stupid".

Sorry, that's not how I meant it, I was referring to ages ago whenever religion first was invented.

And it seemed to me that, with your post, you shit on theists publicly, am I wrong?
Again, sorry, no I don't. I just call it like I see it, and occasionally still fail to get the wording right.

@Cygnus_X: Religious people do not have a monopoly on morality, and it is insulting to imply that only through supernatural means can a human know that child rape is bad.

@Cygnus_X: Religious people do not have a monopoly on morality, and it is insulting to imply that only through supernatural means can a human know that child rape is bad.

It's not only insulting, it's also very, very frightening to know that there are people out there who would be amoral if they weren't afraid of the supernatural.

So, if time was "stopped" at the "centre of the big bang", how did it get...unstuck? Generally this sort of thing makes little sense to me. The "Big bang" implies action, change. Thus implies the flow of time.

I think the 'flow' of time is a misleading idea. We already know that at relativistic speeds, the idea breaks down somewhat. The universe does not work like game worlds do - it does not consist of an initial state that has been repeatedly iterated at a fixed framerate. That's a reasonable approximation of bits of it on small scales - just as Newtonian dynamics is a reasonable approximation of general relativity at low velocities and under low gravity - but it's not a good way of thinking about things at the whole-universe level.

It's possible for us to consider a state of the universe (well, it isn't really, but bear with me here), and to then work out the state(s) that could follow it according to causality. It's also possible for us to work out the state(s) that could precede it according to causality. If we keep following that precedes relationship, then we get increasingly close to what we'd call 'the beginning' of the universe - but it's an asymptotic limit. The same is true of space: we know that space is expanding, and if we trace that backwards, then we know that at the beginning of the universe all matter and energy must have occupied the same point in space (the only point in space) - but the laws of physics don't permit all that matter to exist in the same place either. Just as time 'stopping,' space reaching a 'single point' is an asymptotic limit.

I think the same thing happens at the outer edges of space, too, btw. The actual implication of 'space is finite' is: there is a limit to how far away we can put two things from each other. This limit is also asymptotic, in that you could keep pushing them further and further apart, and you'll always get an increase, but it becomes infinitesimally small. (The actual position of the asymptotic limit is moving outwards over time, because space is expanding - but if you push your two things apart at a higher velocity than the universe's rate of expansion, you'd still see the asymptotic effect).

You should read about the Anthropic Principle.

A question...I understand the Anthropic Principle quite naturally when it is about planets- that is, there are possibly millions of planets even only in our galaxy, and life on Earth exists simply because of statistics; we know there are many planets, in one of them it simply happened. I understand it as far as the universe goes, if I can phrase it correctly, that is, we observe life simply because in this particular time the universe cas home to a point where life can be created. I don't understand it as far as the general picture of the laws of physics goes; as far as we know, there is only one universe and one set of laws(if those laws are changing during the lifetime since the big bang, they are just special cases of a more general law; in any case, there are physical laws). So why are the physical laws the way they are and allow emergence of more complex forms(hydrogen,carbon,oxygen,stars,planets,life forms and so on). We can imagine uncountable sets of laws where no order would emerge, ever. What is the answer to this?

The idea that's made the most sense to me is: Those uncountable sets of laws comprise the multi-multiverse: the set of all multiverses, each one with slightly different laws of physics. Then you apply the anthropic principle as usual: if we were in a different multiverse, one that didn't permit life, then we wouldn't be around to notice it.

Any element of structure you can identify in the multi-multiverse - say, for example, the list of variables that each multiverse assigns differently - can then be further dissolved into the multi-multi-multiverse, and so on.

It's extremely problematic to talk about such things 'existing' though, because it's no longer clear what 'exist' even really means in that context.

I haven't actually read all 7 pages but i read half.

I'd like to clear something up.

"I think therefor I am" was a quote said by the famous philosopher: Renee Descartes. (Spelling might be off).
He went into a house for years, reject that all was real except for god. (He WAS a man of christian faith.)

One of the most famous arguments he came up with was, "I think therefor I am"

All this means is, I as myself and no one else, can infact think, therefor I myself Exist. The problem is you cannot prove that any other thing thinks. Therefor you have no proof that anything else infact exists. (except for god of course.)

All this argument is saying from a philosophical stand point is that I (who ever you may be) exist. it has nothing to do with god, he took into account that god already existed when he came up with this argument.

Now. There have been many attempts on both sides to prove or disprove the existence of a god. And the fact of the matter is: It is not possible. If god exists he does not exist in our dimension or else he would obviously be seen by us humans. And since we cannot see to higher dimensions it is impossible to prove or disprove.

It all comes down to what you as a person believe in. Theres no winning or losing this argument, it will last as long as time.

Religion is not the fear of anything, it is simply to try to explain the unexplainable..

I personally believe in god because what do you have to lose? Nothing. You don't have to be perfect to be a christian man. You just have to believe. I live my life, when i do something wrong I ask for forgiveness, I live the best I can and I lose nothing, and I might even gain enternal happiness who knows.

I don't get why atheists are atheists. You have nothing to lose by believing. and if you are wrong, you have everything to lose. Plus theres a study that shows People of faith are actually happier in their lives than atheists.. But now i'm rambling on. Hope this.. helps/touches/whatevers you !

I don't get why atheists are atheists. You have nothing to lose by believing.

You have three things to lose by believing:

1. A lot of time and effort. If you're purely theistic, rather than religious, then the time thing might not be so true for you, but it takes more effort to think something than to not think it. There are some people for whom believing in a god takes less effort than the alternative, but those people have a deeper problem: they need to learn that it's OK not to be able to explain something (yet).
2. The drive to answer the great unanswered questions of the world. Why try and figure out what the best way is to live, or how the universe works, if you think you've already got the answer (in one convenient God-shaped bundle).
3. Intellectual consistency. If you believe in God, why don't you believe in fairies, or homeopathy?

"I follow religion because it makes me feel good" is a perfectly reasonable standpoint. If religionists stopped there I'd be a happy man too. It's all the pseudo-science that often follows behind it that I take exception to.

Edit: Superpig's point 3) explains perfectly why I broke my silence on this topic for once. Anything said by someone who believes in something that doesn't come with even a shadow of evidence is therefore to be taken with a pinch of salt. Even when on non-religious subjects, because you don't know if there opinion on say the environment has any basis in fact whatsoever or is just a matter of "faith".

Well, almost an edit!

'SteveDeFacto' said:

The internet is for[font="Verdana, sans-serif"] all intents and purposes infinite. There is more information right now on the internet than you could ever read in a life time and it is expanding at a faster rate than you can read.

No, it's about 3 petabytes data. Most of it porn and spam. Most information is the same repeated thousands times over.

It really is nothing compared to knowledge and information that has been, is, and will be carried out by traditional means; vision, books,speech,music,direct contact, etc etc.

I love the internet, but please, every new shiny toy we find we make it as the best thing since sliced bread.

Btw, you have "infinite resources of data" and you still haven't figured out that many,many people that believe in God don't believe in a "magic man in the sky"?

Seriously, "magic man in the sky"? Wtf? Where is that man? Does he have a beard? Is he really in the sky? Which direction? Can he slalom through the satellites? Can the lice in his head be factored into prime numbers? Does he watch "The Apprentice"? Seriously? That's your best shot? You're picking the stupidest of all the stupid versions of religion so you can have an easy target? "Magic man in the sky"? No. Just. No.

I also love it how an atheist uses phrases as "embrace the truth". Seriously? Last time I was an atheist, we didn't really consider ourselves to hold any kind of absolute "truth"…You'd make a very good tele-evangelist, should you consider to change careers, honestly.

"THERE IS NO GOD! I READ IT ON THE INTERNET!"

Even if there was only one terabyte of unique and informative text on the internet you would never be able to read it all in an entire life time... If you don't believe in a magic man in the sky then what do you believe in? Do you believe that the earth rides on the back of a giant turtle or perhaps you believe in ghost and spirits? Oh I know you're a Satan worshiper, right?! I suppose that means you believe in the magic man in the ground!