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Opinions on God?


dordle-loddle

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54 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Only if one decides a pigsty only produces shit.

I like this - it's profound...   a pigsty does produce a lot of shit, mud and piss...  but it also produces bacon and piggy sex.

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  I did not intend my initial response to be so misunderstood. It seems that epigrammatic posts are a problem. In spite of how poorly it was received I did ask questions for clarification which were ignored.

 

   Returning to the subject as requested and trying to make my response clearer to readers:

 

   The universe does not need a god to exist and function. If there are parallel universes then all possible strengths and ratios of the fundamental forces of the universe could have manifested with most of those combinations failing to produce a viable universe. So our universe existing is not an example of any anthropomorphic principal but rather a potential indicator of an infinite number of parallel universes (even if most failed due to unbalanced forces).

   During our evolution there was no natural selection against false positives when determining agency of such things as a branch moving – if a possible predator or prey for any early humans, it would be better to be ready for it. So seeing agency where none exists – giving rise to superstition – is built into our DNA. From that superstition came belief in ancestor spirits then anthropomorphic elements then polytheistic religions followed by monotheistic religions.

   During my own battle against my built-in superstition, I have come to realize there is evidence (like childhood cancer and the concept of Hell) that a benevolent rational god can not exist. I have yet to find evidence against the existence of a malevolent deity.

   Facts have been a great comfort in dealing with my built-in superstition as well as other personal issues. So when I am faced with a series of events that no human has a part of which could suggest in influence of a (malevolent) deity, my understanding of statistics* and other facts helps me resist such foolishness and gives me comfort.

* For example, a 1 in a million (per year) occurrence will happen to over 7 thousand people on average this year (based on the current population).

Edited by Damateur
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On ‎30‎-‎7‎-‎2017 at 10:49 AM, dordle-loddle said:

Do you believe in God? Why?

No. I think many or maybe most people believe in the God of the gaps (although most of them will probably deny this). They see(or invent) all the unanswered questions in science  which makes people think God is the answer. There is always a place for God. If we somehow proof abiogenesis and have sufficient evidence concerning the origin of matter then you can still  believe God made abiogenesis possible and created whatever formed matter. There is always a place for God...you don't have to deny any science to believe in God.

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On ‎7‎/‎30‎/‎2017 at 4:57 AM, beecee said:

The universe from 10-43 seconds, post BB, and all we see can be explained reasonably and  and logically without any need for any deity.

God or any deity appears superfluous.

 

beecee,

There is a 10-43 second gap there, per Itoeo's thought.  How do you explain that?  That is, if you don't believe in a particular anthropomorphic god, posited by a particular religion, then with what do you fill that 10-43 seconds?

Regards, TAR

I do not believe in made up stuff, but I do believe in reality, the universe, life on Earth, and death.  Things come and go, but there is consistently something from which things come from, and to which they return.  That is, there is life after death, even if it is not Grandma's life, or eventually my life, that continues, somebody's life does continue.  This overarching reality that I am of and in, has to be capable of consciousness  because here I am being conscious of people being conscious of me.  The place does stuff, complicated, immense, incredibly long-lived, tiny and numerous, beautiful stuff, with or without my help and with or without my noticing, and with or without the help or noticing of every and all humans that ever walked the place.  That which is left, when you subtract every human that ever existed, from the Universe, is God.

12 hours ago, Damateur said:

  

   The universe does not need a god to exist and function. If there are parallel universes then all possible strengths and ratios of the fundamental forces of the universe could have manifested with most of those combinations failing to produce a viable universe. So our universe existing is not an example of any anthropomorphic principal but rather a potential indicator of an infinite number of parallel universes (even if most failed due to unbalanced forces).

  

* For example, a 1 in a million (per year) occurrence will happen to over 7 thousand people on average this year (based on the current population).

Damateur,

Within whose consciousness would these failed universes manifest.  That is, what would be the criteria used to label one universe viable and another not viable, and who would make the judgement?

Regards, TAR

 

Edited by tar
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I really believe in an event or a creator or god , because there is so much matter in this empty space .All of it has to come from some strange event .Maybe its more complex than a big bang .

Quantum mechanics is so weird to me , because atoms with no strings attached to it floating , revolving like a cloud or something like that is so strange .

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2 hours ago, tar said:

beecee,

There is a 10-43 second gap there, per Itoeo's thought.  How do you explain that?  That is, if you don't believe in a particular anthropomorphic god, posited by a particular religion, then with what do you fill that 10-43 seconds?

Regards, TAR

And a thousand years ago, we were unable to explain weather systems on Earth, what made the Sun shine, what the stars were, how the solar system came to be, and much much more. In the intervening time we have pushed the need for any deity back to that t+10-43 seconds: That's called scientific advancement and progress...but obviously we still have a way to go to explain other phenomena, which some speculative scientific ideas ideas exist for anyway, and of course also the non scientific idea of a deity. So why pray tell, do you see it as reasonable to slot in some god? That's similar in many ways to gullible, impressionable people that see  a UFO [emphasis on the U for unidentified] and immediatley invoke Aliens or ET's. 

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On 7/30/2017 at 5:43 AM, EdEarl said:

I have seen no evidence of God or any god. If I prayed for something that couldn't be, like fix a broken glass, and it was repaired, that would be evidence. However, none of my prayers have ever been acknowledged. Thus, I'm skeptical, and the world goes on with bad men killing babies. I don't pray for such things; does anyone. If that's the work of god, screw him.

I would say that there is a plethora of evidence for God, though yes, we cannot prove (the existence of) God in an empirical manner. Consider Christianity, which proclaims the death and resurrection of the person of Jesus Christ. He is believed to be fully man and fully God, born into a Jewish family over 2,000 years ago. Even though we can't run an experiment to reproduce his resurrection, we can still investigate the person of Jesus because it is a historical event. Similarly, we don't discount the Roman Empire and say, Tiberius, on the account that we cannot reproduce any part of it. 

To learn about Christianity (I can't speak for other worldviews), one must go to the source: Jesus Christ. Learn about the character of God through him, rather than through the happenings of the broken world we live in.

God, if one believes in Him, is not a genie in a lamp who grants wishes on a whim.

You mentioned that none of your prayers have been acknowledged. Can you share some of them?

On 8/7/2017 at 5:43 PM, Moontanman said:

The only thing I know of about god, if there is one, he/she ignores everyone equally.. 

Why do you say so?

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5 minutes ago, CaptainT said:

I would say that there is a plethora of evidence for God, though yes, we cannot prove (the existence of) God in an empirical manner.

Not really true in this day and age. Most of what you personally may see as a plethora of evidence for god, can be explained by science: Even prior to t+10-43 seconds, we have educated scientific speculation.

Quote

To learn about Christianity (I can't speak for other worldviews), one must go to the source: Jesus Christ. Learn about the character of God through him, rather than through the happenings of the broken world we live in.

Jesus may have existed as a person, but any so called evidence of him being god is really non existent...perhaps he was a magician similar to Merlin. Hear say and accounts of aspects of history do get blown out of proportion...people can also be delusional and imagine something that does not or did not exist. Some supposed first hand observations of UFO's for example, even though these incidents happened relatively recently and not 2000 years ago.

 

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11 minutes ago, CaptainT said:

I would say that there is a plethora of evidence for God, though yes, we cannot prove (the existence of) God in an empirical manner. Consider Christianity, which proclaims the death and resurrection of the person of Jesus Christ. He is believed to be fully man and fully God, born into a Jewish family over 2,000 years ago. Even though we can't run an experiment to reproduce his resurrection, we can still investigate the person of Jesus because it is a historical event. Similarly, we don't discount the Roman Empire and say, Tiberius, on the account that we cannot reproduce any part of it. 

You are incorrect we have no writings about Jesus that were contemporary, the first time he is mentioned is nothing more than his name and the first writings were decades after the death of Jesus and some cases centuries. 

The Romans keep quite good records yet Jesus was never mentioned, no record of a crucifixion, no record of hours of darkness, no record of an earthquake even close to the that time and certainly no record of the dead waking and walking the streets of Jerusalem.  You say he is believed to be both god and man.. so what, belief is not knowledge.

 

11 minutes ago, CaptainT said:

To learn about Christianity (I can't speak for other worldviews), one must go to the source: Jesus Christ. Learn about the character of God through him, rather than through the happenings of the broken world we live in.

The character of god? You mean the monomaniacal monster that demanded genocide? The one that allowed sex slaves of young virgins as spoils of war? The one who sent bears to kill children because they called his prophet baldy? The one who not only allows slavery but details how you must go about it? The one is described in a book that is 100% wrong about anything it asserts that can be tested?  The one who says he creates both good and evil? 

http://biblehub.com/isaiah/45-7.htm

 

11 minutes ago, CaptainT said:

God, if one believes in Him, is not a genie in a lamp who grants wishes on a whim.

A genie in lamp could be proven to exist.

11 minutes ago, CaptainT said:

You mentioned that none of your prayers have been acknowledged. Can you share some of them?

There is no evidence anyones prayers are answered any better than sheer chance. 

 

11 minutes ago, CaptainT said:

Why do you say so?

Because god allows good and bad to happen to everyone, good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. No evidence whatsoever for a god or gods. 

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3 hours ago, EdEarl said:

Prayers for anything that cannot occur naturally.

Like for instance?  Anything that would occur following a prayer would by definition be something that would happen naturally as unnatural things simply can't happen.

The question would then be, can you petition the lord with prayer, to which one might say no, and another might say yes.

Or one could perhaps posit, that one can communicate with nature and ask it for assistance, and protect it and commune with it, to where you plant a seed and water it and protect the plant from wind and rain and animal and the said plant/nature provides you with sustenance in the way of seed or fruit or leaf, or wood for fire or shelter or weapon.

I am thinking that nature is very much our friend, as we have evolved along with nature to exist in great number on this Earth.  I think we are no better than, no smarter than, no stronger or larger or more important than nature.  To posit that god is an anthropomorphic thing, a human thing with mind and hands and sexual parts and such, is what has no evidence.  But that the world is greater than us, and that we owe our existence to it, is undeniable.  So when someone says there is no evidence that god exists, one can only be referring to an anthropomorphic god that cannot rationally and naturally exist.  But this is not the  God that people believe in.  People, some people believe in a God that cannot exist, cannot have a place to be, or any physical characteristics that can be beheld by a person in the waking world.  These people are rightly considered delusional.  But others, don't know what God would look like or think like or act like, and just attribute all thing that are to this being.  No magic, no dogma, no stories of turtles or hawks or frogs or stars birthing demigods, or anything that could be falsified.  No science can touch a figurative god.  Can't find it, or kill it, or prove it exists or does not exist.  Except the universe existing, proves that the universe exists, and no thought or knowledge can make the universe go away. No thought or knowledge or act of man can put even the slightest dent in the cosmos.  It is grand, it is immense, we are subordinate to it.  Most of the characteristics a god must have are possessed by the universe.  God, in my estimation is our personification of objective reality.  Done so that we can converse with objective reality.  Call it prayer if you would, but it is only prayer if you think objective reality is listening.

I think objective reality is listening.  I am an atheist.  So I don't believe in God per se.  The god of the bible is too filled with human emotion to be real.  Humans evolved on this planet and God would not be constrained to breathing oxygen, having babies and needing to eat, sleep, drink, play, hunt, solve problems and make judgements about the world, like humans have to.  Would not have hands and feet and arms and a brain and such, because those thing are just needed to survive on the Earth, and would have no use in another place, that could be conceived of as god's residence...but there was this time I was thinking about how people ask God to prove himself to them by showing another shooting star or some thing that would happen naturally anyway.  I was thinking about how this one guy posting here should ask god to do something really unlikely and tell the board what he was going to ask, before he asked, so we could all witness the rare thing happening on his request...when I noticed I was shoveling 6 inches of snow off my driveway, in the middle of October, in New Jersey, as I mused, I looked up in the sky, and said "Funny guy, funny."

Regards, TAR

Edited by tar
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10 hours ago, tar said:

Like for instance?  Anything that would occur following a prayer would by definition be something that would happen naturally as unnatural things simply can't happen.

My childish god delusion was forged by fundamentalist Christian preachers as all powerful and all knowing. The one who created the Heavens and the Earth in seven days, a documented supernatural act. It should be trivial for that God to put a rocket into orbit without firing its motor.

 

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EdEarl,

I take your point, but if a rocket was put into orbit by some magnetic method, like the high power projectile firings that are already technically possible, right when you conceived of your impossible request...would you then believe in God?

Launch loop

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Jump to: navigation, search
450px-LaunchLoop.svg.png
 
Launch loop (not to scale). The red marked line is the moving loop itself, blue lines are stationary cables.

A launch loop or Lofstrom loop is a proposed system for launching objects into space orbit using a moving cable-like system situated inside a sheath attached to the Earth at two ends and suspended above the atmosphere in the middle. The design concept was published by Keith Lofstrom and describes an active structure maglev cable transport system that would be around 2,000 km (1,240 mi) long and maintained at an altitude of up to 80 km (50 mi). A launch loop would be held up at this altitude by the momentum of a belt that circulates around the structure. This circulation, in effect, transfers the weight of the structure onto a pair of magnetic bearings, one at each end, which support it.

Launch loops are intended to achieve non-rocket spacelaunch of vehicles weighing 5 metric tons by electromagnetically accelerating them so that they are projected into Earth orbit or even beyond. This would be achieved by the flat part of the cable which forms an acceleration track above the atmosphere.[1]

The system is designed to be suitable for launching humans for space tourism, space exploration and space colonization, and provides a relatively low 3g acceleration.[2

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58 minutes ago, tar said:

EdEarl,

I take your point, but if a rocket was put into orbit by some magnetic method, like the high power projectile firings that are already technically possible, right when you conceived of your impossible request...would you then believe in God?

Launch loop

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Jump to: navigation, search
450px-LaunchLoop.svg.png
 
Launch loop (not to scale). The red marked line is the moving loop itself, blue lines are stationary cables.

A launch loop or Lofstrom loop is a proposed system for launching objects into space orbit using a moving cable-like system situated inside a sheath attached to the Earth at two ends and suspended above the atmosphere in the middle. The design concept was published by Keith Lofstrom and describes an active structure maglev cable transport system that would be around 2,000 km (1,240 mi) long and maintained at an altitude of up to 80 km (50 mi). A launch loop would be held up at this altitude by the momentum of a belt that circulates around the structure. This circulation, in effect, transfers the weight of the structure onto a pair of magnetic bearings, one at each end, which support it.

Launch loops are intended to achieve non-rocket spacelaunch of vehicles weighing 5 metric tons by electromagnetically accelerating them so that they are projected into Earth orbit or even beyond. This would be achieved by the flat part of the cable which forms an acceleration track above the atmosphere.[1]

The system is designed to be suitable for launching humans for space tourism, space exploration and space colonization, and provides a relatively low 3g acceleration.[2

How do you get to this from my statement, "Prayers for anything that cannot occur naturally. " You asked, "for instance?" I gave the rocket example. This question is nonsense in context.

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1 hour ago, tar said:

EdEarl,

I take your point, but if a rocket was put into orbit by some magnetic method, like the high power projectile firings that are already technically possible, right when you conceived of your impossible request...would you then believe in God?

An object put in orbit by "some magnetic method, like the high power projectile firings" is not a rocket. 

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3 hours ago, Area54 said:

An object put in orbit by "some magnetic method, like the high power projectile firings" is not a rocket. 

Maybe, but satellites typically have some kind of thruster to maintain orbit and maneuver; others have engines for interplanetary travel. There's a lot of orbiting junk without a rocket engine that would be better in the ocean. Launching junk into orbit magnetically (or otherwise) doesn't make much sense.

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EdEarl,

Well perhaps we need to know whether something a human being does is natural.

It is important to me, to consider everything a human being does, a thing that is naturally possible, within the capabilities of the universe.

Important distinction, because if you figure a human's actions and thoughts are outside of nature, I would have to ask why.  On what grounds do you put human thought and technology outside of nature?

Regards,  TAR

I am staying within my worldview, to consider myself part of other people's objective reality.  Thus if you pray for rain, and I seed the clouds above your head, and rain falls...objective reality answered your prayer.

 

Edited by tar
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