[quote name='rozz666' timestamp='1311232109' post='4838332']
The burden of proof is on the one making a claim. So unless there's sufficient evidence that there is a creator being, there is not reason to believe there is one.

There is. The physical world exists and has order. Therefore someone made it. YMMV.

You say as if believing and not believing in god were equally valid positions, when they aren't.
[/quote]

They are.

I'll leave the garbage about FSM unanswered.
[/quote]

Sorry mikeman, but you are wrong on both accounts and rozz666 already told you why. If your response is simply "no you're wrong" and you can not demonstrate that you are correct with the support of substantial evidence and reasoned logic, then you don't even have an argument to put forth, but merely a baseless assertion of an unverifiable claim. And therefore no one here should take you seriously until you provide a good defense of your position.



That a physical world exists says nothing but that: it exists. It says nothing about how it got here. There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of different creation stories told by various cultures throughout human civilization and there's nothing that makes any one of them more "special" or more true than the others. Also stating that "since X exists, therefore something must have created it" is an argument from ignorance, not to mention the futility of such logic. If everything that exists has a creator, then you're cursed into falling into an infinite regress. And most people try to get around this flaw by inserting a different flaw into their argument, by saying that their creator had no creator because it existed "outside of space and time" or that it "always existed". Such an argument is a case of special pleading, yet another logical fallacy.

As Carl Sagan once said:

"In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?" [Carl Sagan, Cosmos, page 257]
[/quote]

There is. The physical world exists and has order. Therefore someone made it. YMMV.

How would a world without order look like?
How existence requires creation?

You say as if believing and not believing in god were equally valid positions, when they aren't.

They are.
[/quote]
If you think so, then why is believing in FSM not equaly valid?

I'll leave the garbage about FSM unanswered.

Why?

[quote name='mikeman' timestamp='1311232564' post='4838335']
I'll leave the garbage about FSM unanswered.

Why?
[/quote]

Because the existence of a Creator or not is the attempt to answer who, or what, made the physical universe the way it is. FSM is what? What question does it try to answer? It is stated by several scientists(not necesarily the majority) if some(I think 6) basic constants of physics didn't have the values they do, life would not emerge. See fine-tuned universe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe. It's not hard to imagine; there are countless planets but only on Earth, as far as we know, life exists, because it just happens to have the right conditions. Taking that into cosmological state, why does it happen that the universe has those specific laws and right conditions that allow the emergence of life?

Flying Spaghetti Monster is nothing but a strawman argument. I'm not claiming that I believe in the existance of anything with a definitive shape or form, be it a bearded man in the clouds, or a king sitting on a high throne, or a 6-legged centaurus throwing thunders. I believe someone created the Universe and its Laws, space, time and energy. I don't know its form, so if you want to state that the Creator likes to take the form of a Flying Spaghetti Monster, I have no problem with that. It's just as arbitrary as a gentle bearded man in the sky. I am only interested in what made the universe come into being, not what pictures we use to depict it.

I apologise if my ignorance has caused me to use incorrect terms. For me, knowledge and belief are the same thing. If I believe something, it is because I know it to be true. I call myself an agnostic because I neither know or believe the existence or non-existence of God.

But I am a programmer, not a theologian so I accept my use of terms may well be incorrect. I'm quite happy to accept A Brain in a Vat's point.

So, if not an atheist, what is the term for someone who positively holds the belief that there is no God? I must have dozed off during RE at school.

I disagree, and so does study after study.
[/quote]

Site your sources, please? Note that I'm a firm believer that IQ doesn't tell you anything more than your score on a fraking test designed based on several assumptions. But for the sake of argument, let's see the study and review it, per scientific method. Also, since I'm skeptic about everything, even in the Bible, I did a bit of digging around. Let us hear the professor Helmuth Nyborg himself that did the research(in which, btw, Anglicans scored higher than both atheists and agnostics!). From this article: http://www.guardian....gion-iq-atheism

The study begins with two sets of a priori assumptions. First, [intelligent] people have a brain based biological capacity for solving complex problems, and for acting rationally when confronted with fundamental questions about existence, human nature, underlying causes, or the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". Second, [unintelligent] people lack this protection and are therefore unfairly ordained to live in a pre-rational world based on poorly validated evidence and little accumulated insight. They accordingly often ?nd themselves in cognitively, emotionally, or morally challenging situations and have to use plan B, that is, to call upon easily comprehensible religious authoritative guidance and to submit more or less uncritically to culturally given stereotyped rituals. Frustration with their life may also make them seek redemption or faith in an after life.High-IQ people are able to curb magical, supernatural thinking and tend to deal with the uncertainties of life on a rational-critical-empirical basis, and to become prosperous servants of society, whereas low-IQ people easily become trapped in religious magical thinking, in addition to achieving, earning and serving less well.
[/quote]

Those are not results derived from the study, they are a priori assumptions! Nice! Woe, uneducated, stupid, religious and poor! But wait it gets more interesting:

The ultimate causal level presumes that geographically separated peoples were subjected to different evolutionary pressures over extended time-periods. Those living under the hardest of evolutionary pressures, in cold or arctic areas, were gradually and over many generations selected for enhanced g (for details of the Climate Theory, see Lynn, 2006; Rushton, 2000). They had to replace ancient pre-rational supernatural beliefs with more effective rational approaches in order to survive under the harsh conditions given. People living in warm or tropical areas enjoyed in general more relaxed selective conditions, and low g individuals were not severely punished, as their survival was not seriously compromised by uncritical reference to ancient supernatural thinking, irrational beliefs in souls, invisible worlds, Gods, forces, angels, devils, hell, or holy spirits. A contemporary belief that supernatural forces control behavior, feelings and thinking is accordingly seen as a reminiscence of pre-historic animism and magical thinking.
[/quote]

Nyborg has also published papers on the difference on IQ between male and female, which he found to be on average about 8 points.

For further reading, please check out some of the work of Nyborg's associate in those studies,Richard Lynn, having to do with race differences in intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia....in_Intelligence

Because the existence of a Creator or not is the attempt to answer who, or what, made the physical universe the way it is. FSM is what? What question does it try to answer? It is stated by several scientists(not necesarily the majority) if some(I think 6) basic constants of physics didn't have the values they do, life would not emerge. See fine-tuned universe: http://en.wikipedia....-tuned_Universe. It's not hard to imagine; there are countless planets but only on Earth, as far as we know, life exists, because it just happens to have the right conditions. Taking that into cosmological state, why does it happen that the universe has those specific laws and right conditions that allow the emergence of life?

The problem is it doesn't attempt to answer anything; by invoking a creator you attempt to side step the issue by saying 'god did it, don't ask why or how because we can't understand him'. This is not an explaination, it is just hand waving and at that hand waving which then brings up the quesiton of 'ok, so how did a creator come into existance?' which is answered by yet more hand waving ('always existed', 'oh, exists outside space-time') and a side stepping of the issue again.

This is not explaining; this is fairy tales.

It would be much like if, when asked by a child, what makes the thunder and lightning during a storm you answered with 'god does it'. That is not an explaination. Now, at one point when humans didn't understand the processes involved it was considered an explaination, but these days if you tried to pass off that kind of thinking to a child then anyone over hearing it would react with horror at worst, distain at best, and the child in question would later suffer when in school he brought up such a thing and would promptly be laughted at by any child who knows the real reason.

During the 'early days' of humanities existance this would be a reoccuring pattern; encounter unknown thing, ascribe it to a 'god' or 'demon', cower in fear until technology allows us to understand it.

At one point planets and stars we consisdered gods and heroes; we know better. At one point illness was ascribed to the work of the devil or demons; we know better. At one point the earth was considered to be the centre of the universe; we now know that it exists in an ultimately unremarkable location.

And every time technology answers one question religion moves the goal posts or moves on to the next big question. The existance of the universe and ascribing it to a creator is nothing more than this; something which, when the concept of a creator was invented, was beyond our ability to understand and thus ascribed to a bigger more powerful being.

Fortunately, like every other thing religion 'explained' before, there are people there are people working to understand the REAL why rather than answering it with hand waving and mumblings about an 'all powerful' being. Without those people, those willing to question, well if we still existed at all then we'd probably still be living in caves, scared of fire and wondering why the demons have seen fit to make our arms go this smell green colour...

As for 'the tuned universe' theory... well, it is just that 'a theory', a thought experiment and one which meshes nicely still with the idea that this isn't the only universe to ever have existed. I only skimmed the article as I'm at work but I've some passing familuarity with it; it only looks like something set the universe up correctly if you consider that either a) this is the only unverise to have existed and/or b) that the universe was 'created' for humans to adapt to in our current state.

Consideration (a) doesn't hold if you consider a reality where by this is one of a series of universes to have happened one after each other. In which case feedback from one to the other got to the point where the 'constants' allows for us to evolve into. (This might also explain the lack of uniformity in the CMB of the universe; if one is seeding another there is a chance this feedback would result in a

Consideration (b) ignores the realities of evolution and how life would come about. If the physical constants were different then life would be different or not exist; the former allows for the questioning of the state of the universe and the latter naturally unquestionining.

The idea that there are 'countless planets but only one earth' is an egotistical take on human existance. As already noted there is nothing 'special' about the place of our solar system in the universe and given how mind bogglingly big the galaxy is, never mind the universe, it is more than likely that there are other life carrying planets out there. We haven't detected them yet simply because our technology isn't good enough yet (but its getting better with every passing year), however at the same time we have found evidence which points to the idea that simple life could have existed on Mars in the distant past and we've also discovered organic carbon inside metorites carried to earth.

The fact we haven't detected life yet does not disprove it's existance; much like not knowing that bacteria existed didn't stop them from doing so and making us sick.

I very much doubt you'd find a scientist alive who would say 'we know all the answers!'; science is a constant quest to find out more after all. However, at the same time, just because we don't have the answers now doesn't magic the hand waving any more 'right' either.

On a different subject, it's ridiculous that you people are arguing about the correlation between IQ and religion by using anecdotal evidence.

Then maybe you shouldn't have brought it up.

[quote name='Machaira' timestamp='1311113263' post='4837655']
And yet there are a bunch of people with IQs high enough to qualify for Mensa (myself included) that are Christians. Imagine that.

Is this a joke? If you actually had an IQ as high as you claim I think the chances are pretty high that you'd realize how stupid it is to imply that your anecdotal evidence has any bearing on the subject. It doesn't matter if you know the smartest person in the world and she happens to be a Christian. It's irrelevant. I guess high IQs don't make up for ignorance of basic statistics.
[/quote]

And I think it's ridiculous that you even brought it up in the first place. It has no bearing on the subject. You could have just ignored the post you replied to since it had already been stated that discussions like this are allowed in and the purposed of the Lounge. Instead of posting the person back to the post that stated this you chose to offer up irrelevant information that had no bearing on the issue and, given the fact that probably the majority here do not fit the group you mentioned, seemed like a sad trolling attempt.

...stuff...

I don't claim that I have "answered" the problem of existence, I merely believe, personally, in a Creator. That is all. Other than that, I acknolwedge that the only correct, scientific answer to "how the universe came into being" is "we don't know". There is a fine difference here, but it exists, between what I scientifically know, and what I believe. Just like you believe(and I, too) that it's "more than likely" that life exists in other planets, despite that we never have detected life on another planet. Or about the many-universes theory, something it is likely we will never answer either. In many cases, you just use common sense and intuition to fill the gaps. It's inevitable. In any case, you just can't rule out the possibility of a Creator. There's nothing 'irrational' about it, if nothing else, that creator is the very embodiment of the Rational Mind.

Finally, this video is one of the best explanations I've ever come across that explains the use of logic, reasoning, and faith when it comes to evaluating claims. I highly recommend that everyone check it out, regardless of your position.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=5wV_REEdvxo

And, just like most, the person who made the video has flawed logic in that he isolates specific qualities of God to try to prove his point that, when taken by themselves, seem contradictory. It's kind of ironic.

Because people use it as an excuse to tell others what they should do (condoms, abortion, gay marriage).
Because it has held back the advancement of the human race for millennia (Galileo, evolution, stem cell research).
Because there have been countless, needless deaths over it (the crusades, the holocaust, 9/11).

These things are not isolated to religion. People do stupid things for any number of reasons, or even no reason at all (insanity?).