Mallic

1 hour ago, swansont said:

You still haven't said what exactly you mean "by accident"

Markus has summarized the issues with certain meanings of that phrase.

I mean 2 atoms just "happen" to collide with each other creating the big bang that just "happened" to have the exact elements needed for life, on top of us just happening to be sentient....I think this issue i have probably has a lot more to do with reductionism then anything else. Just this idea of taking this vast universe we live in, and bring it down to the most mundane level possible. It's dehumanizing among other things.

Oh and just so we're clear downvoting isn't gonna deter me, I'm simply trying to get a second opinion. Why am i saying this? Because i can already tell there are some here who clearly view me as an uneducated idiot.

13 hours ago, swansont said:

(emphasis added)

You need to define what this means. Without that, there's no point to having a discussion.

However, regardless, the probability of this universe existing is 1.

Sigh Forum limit, Alright so my main reason isn't to argue about there being a creator but more how illogical the idea that we just came into existence with the exact conditions to allow life to form by accident. Though I'm starting to realize this mindset is likely adopted more by nihilistic people who think the world we live in is absolute garbage anyway.

I'm just trying to get answers from actual scientists as opposed to people who use science as a front to justify their resentment of religious people.

2 minutes ago, iNow said:

Start then by defining soul. Explain to us how it can be measured. Once done, please do the same for the term reincarnation. Perhaps then a productive dialog can be had, but not before. 

Tell me about it. Have you seen our elected officials lately? Just think... tens of millions of people did the electing. Sad. 

Maybe we could do that if parapsychology wasn't de-funded to hell and back, but again I'm convinced quantum mechanics holds the key.

Eh i'm still convinced trump is the lesser of 2 evils seriously the democratic party has gone absolutely off the deep end.

7 minutes ago, iNow said:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.. 

Uh...the claim that the earth was round was extraordinary. The theory of relativity was extraordinary. And lets not forget quantum mechanics. Seriously You are kinda taking a lot of this for granted, to the point where I'm starting to think many are just shut off to the idea of souls and reincarnation being a thing, just because of its association with religion and nothing else.

Quote

This is unfortunately just another straw man. Science is our best currently available method of obtaining accurate answers, but only an idiot would argue that it’s already provided all answers.

Then we must live in a world full of idiots, cause there is a crap ton of people who believe exactly that. To the point where you would actually be sad...
In fact I actually had someone cut all ties with me because i called him out in his veneration of science, believing it will bring us to some sort of golden age of humanity. When i told him that science should be treated as a tool and not much more then that, he called me a quack and blocked me.

And I suppose i should clarify, the stance is usually science has provided all the answers and is now just filling in the details, or it eventually will provide all the answers and we just don't know it yet. (But it's gonna involve strict materialism, that much we are absolutely 100% sure of)

1 minute ago, iNow said:

We are all biased. We all make mistakes. Our brains are easily tricked.

It is only proper to seek ways to eliminate that noise from the signal and maximize our chances of accurately modeling the cosmos around and within us. Anecdotes can’t do that. Evidence methodically obtained can help.

Only a deluded fool would argue otherwise. 

I don't know....at a certain point you have to trust that what you see is the truth don't you? I refer back to the reincarnation work of dr Ian stevenson. If you were to say that like 10 people saw something they shouldn't have and can prove it was something else that's one thing.

But this guy took 3000+ kids from all over the world,who claimed they were some other people in a past life and were able to pinpoint certain things despite never seeing them before, and had information that only the person in question knew.(Without being prodded or jeered into claiming something I might add)I mean even if it is all anecdotal,  you can't really say that all 3k kids were deluded and didn't know what they were talking about can you? There comes a certain point where being a skeptic turns into denial.....OH I just remembered another study that came out just recently.

https://phe.rockefeller.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Stoeckle-Thaler-Final-reduced.pdf

I haven't had time to read the whole thing, but in a nutshell apparently the study concluded that 9 out of 10 species on the planet came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago....in other words roughly the same time. It was so startling that david thaler said and I quote "This conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could." In a world where it feels like scientists are claiming to have all the answers, theories like this that can potentially turn everything we know on its head is exciting to me.

1 minute ago, iNow said:

https://www.scienceforums.net/forum/23-psychiatry-and-psychology/

Oh ok....um would it be appropriate to move my question there?

Sigh....alright. So i just joined this forum mostly because i wanted answers, and this place doesn't have a psychology category but since what i wanna know is based heavily on the religion vs science thing I figured i might as well put it here. Feel free to move it wherever its appropriate....now where to start?

I guess the easiest place to start is to point out my religious affiliation, and let me just say right now....I do not consider myself a christian not even close. In fact I don't consider myself aligned with any of the abrehemic religions. Instead i borrowed most of my philosophy from Daoism, Hinduism, Buddhism and paganism. Basically I believe in balance of body, mind and spirit, self improvement and the concept that all living things possess a soul.(That should give you a good idea which angle i'm coming from with this) This of course led me to have an interest in Parapsychology, Quantum mechanics and Panpsychism.

And as you can probably guess, all of them are considered pseudo scientific woo by strict materialists despite the fact that panpsychism is actually gaining academic credibility, as it fills in the gaps that materialism can't answer(Even more to the dismay of strict materialists considering panpsychism is basically a rebranding of animism) And if you're thinking none of those have shown proof, well actually they have it's just the proof isn't good enough. Because apparently anecdotal evidence is all but useless ,because normal humans aren't intelligent enough to understand what they saw and are just deluded fools, despite the fact that there have been studies to support various things such as Dr Ian Stevensons Theory of reincarnation, which people will insist is a hoax despite no one being able to disprove it yet.

The point i'm trying to make is it feels like there's this mindset that If you are an atheist your IQ goes up by like 30 points and anyone who is religious or spiritual is automatically inferior to you and should be treated as such. Which brings us to scientific materialism. This idea that everything is made purely of matter and all other prospects are impossible just doesn't make sense to me. Even from a scientific standpoint this just seems illogical and frankly depressing. Like when asked what made the universe we get the big bang theory. Fine. But how it came to be, you get some very interesting answers. My favorite is richard dawkins famous quote stating that we and the universe we live in are some "Happy little accident". An accident like we were the result of a drunk night at a bar or something. I mean the chances of the universe we living being purely by accident are so astronomically low, that in my opinion to even suggest such a thing is an insult to science. And yet there are plenty"Wannabe smart guys" who just lap it all up. Which in turn leads people to believe that when we die we simply cease to exist, despite the fact that....well lets take a basic law. It's impossible to create something out of nothing right? Very basic law of everything. Which means the reverse should be true as well. Something can't become nothing, and that includes consciousness. Which makes the very idea feel like something an edgy teenager would say.

Anyway...point what is it? What i want to know is....is this mindset prevalent in the scientific community and if not, then why does it seem to common among those who detests religious people to the point where they go one step further and deny spirituality as a whole? It almost seems spiteful really.

Sorry if this was long, but I've had A LOT on my mind. In fact I'm pretty sure i didn't get everything down.