In answer to: How do you know you are right?

For God to exist, she must be internally consistent. As the "metaphysical engineers" at Philosophers Net report:

 

Huzzah

Sythe 1 point
christianity ZERO

 

Religion in my eyes is not to follow a set of rules, but to explore the boundrys of life - and ultimately choose what YOU belive in.

 

To prove something, you must have proof to support every claim you make.
Religion has nothing then a few mere books, and secondary evidence that has been passed for 100s of years.
For all you know, they could have written by sadistic people with nothing else to do.

And atheism rejects theism, not claiming it to be false.
So as long as the claims you make have 100% perfect proof, you are right.

 

i absolutely agree

 

excally

 

This is replying to a post made a long time ago, however, i see it necessary that i will be shunned by my beliefs here.

Sythe, you claim that the universe came to be before the creation of anything. How can this be true, it's like saying that the egg came before the chicken, because that would mean the creator(chicken) was created by the universe(egg)? Also, it's like saying that, as mentioned before, the spear created the warrior, and the chisel created the craftsmen.

Now onto another point I've been wanting to make. Atheism is a belief, just like Christianity, Jewism, Islams and others are all religions. Therefore, the burden of proof cannot be put onto the believer, as we are all believers in our own religion. Since atheism can be put as a belief in the physical rationality between man and nature, why must the Jesuit or the Hindu carry the burden of proof? And, since science has proven science wrong, is science not contradictory to itself, or a paradoxal belief? Did we not used to believe, through rational thought, that the sun orbited around earth, or that the earth orbited around the sun? They were scientifically(rationally) explained by the science "of the day", and disproved scientifically by scientists years later. Therefore, you have rationally disproved rationality, in itself a paradox.
Now, what say you?

 

god? he could be real but you need proof....

 

Yourmaster10, I was thinking you were gonna say something intelligent...until you said "Jewism" and "Islams" --> please refrain from theological debates until you actually know what the religions are CALLED [in English].

Anyways, here's my two cents: why was theistic religion created in the first place? To find a spiritual escape from the sins of reality. It's perfectly rational to assume that spirituality can be on a separate spectrum than physical existence. Can you prove either one? No, but we can debate its rationality. Can there be a totally separate, entirely MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL, form of existence? I don't see why not.

 

Spirituality, if completely separate from the material plane, has zero impact upon it. It would not be possible to have souls/spirits, for to have them inhabit our bodies, they would need to interact to some degree.

 

Ouch. So what about "life after death?" Honestly, I don't see the purpose of this debate - why can't people just believe what they want and leave it at that? Can people's opinions TRULY be wrong? Despite what Sythe so valiantly argues in the first post of this thread, SPIRITUALITY is obviously not 100% rational. I am no theological expert, I've never studied why people choose to devote their lives to religions or anything like that, but all I'm saying is if people want to believe something that doesn't harm you, why not just let them - without questioning their values? When it gets dicey is when what they believe actually DOES harm you, such as the concept of jihad [or anyways, some extremist interpretations of it]. Why can't I believe that God oversees my actions? [not saying I do, but why couldn't I?]

 

Life after death is possible - but if it involves some sort of soul/spirit, then that should be empirically testable.

People believe irrational things, and then try to foist them upon others. This is why they're always being debated.

 

So you're saying that everything that exists needs to be proven? Nothing can be assumed? What about postulates? It is practically impossible to prove the existence, OR THE NONEXISTENCE of God based on rationality, simply because of the nature of it all. But here's what i'm proposing:

How come Earth is lucky enough to be the only known body in a (I really have no clue the number, but it's something HUGE, not relatively but...) area of the universe that is able to sustain life? Is it sheer cosmological luck? Because I forget where the research paper was, but it was talking about the cosmological constant and it was explaining the odds of a planet being suitable for life. But I'm sure if you wikipedia'd cosmological constant, you could get some interesting stuff.

 

You know what they say about assuming...

Anthropic principle.

Say that only 1% of the universe is capable of supporting life. Any life that emerges must obviously be in that 1%, and will probably consider itself supremely lucky. Is it lucky? Not really, for all life is absolutely required to be in that tiny oasis to even begin.

 

Meh, it's more like 10^(-140) odds of a body in space to support life, but that further proves your point I guess. And while that point is one I obviously can't dispute as it is a FACT, I can add a perspective to it. Since all life has to be contained in that tiny fragment of the universe, and even smaller are the odds that on this life-containing body a lifeform capable of such extreme forms of thought as we are emerges...

Also, how do we know that we're the most highly developed creature out there? We really don't - what if somewhere, they were able to prove an interaction with God. And what about miracles?

And it's still lucky that tiny oasis even exists in the first place. For it is not necessary for it to exist.


______________

But aren't you making a few assumptions yourself? Based primarily on the principle that it was sheer luck that we exist? There's no rational explanation for WHY Earth, in the galaxy milky way, in this tiny remote sector of the universe, is there? But yet we assume that there is, or rather choose not to think about it. And why? Some people may argue that it's God's divine intervention.

This is quite interesting, since neither of us are actual firm believers, we're kinda just having an intellectual debate. [Actually, you're being intellectual and I'm sorta getting bumraped but...]

 

Whoops, double.

 

Who came up with that number?

What empirically validated miracles are there?

You're right, it is not. And if it didn't, we wouldn't be here to think about it.

It's not really "sheer luck". It's very hard to imagine Earth's nonexistence, given the 100 billion or so galaxies out there.

Those who would argue that are using the argument from ignorance.

 

Various sources differ - one even came up with 1/10^282, but here are the sources I used:
http://www.geocities.com/worldview_3/etlifeprobability.html Dr. R. Totten
http://www.reasons.org/resources/ap.../200404_probabilities_for_life_on_earth.shtml --> Dr. Hugh Ross

Miracles are a matter of faith, and it is perfectly rational for a Jew like me to believe, potentially, that Moses communicated with God through a burning bush, parted the Red Sea, caused the 10 plagues, etc.

But we are, and as the great philosopher Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." So, let's examine it shall we?

Meh, some dudes are loco enough to say that there are only likely only 2.4 stars in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE capable of supporting a human-like lifeform. Where they got their info, I'm not sure - but I'm sure you could find out by reading their external links. And even still - is it not sheer luck that humans developed to the point they are at today? Isn't natural selection a miracle in it of itself, in a way?

I'm gonna go to sleep soon, maybe only a few more back-and-forths. It's nice to finally be able to have an intellectual debate

 

Hey, look, they're spouting pages of numbers. They must be legitimate!

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The distance between galaxies is absolutely massive, even in clusters. Collisions are quite rare, and I would be extremely skeptical of his claim that only 90% of all galaxies in the universe have every single possibility of life eliminated.

Again, it's a bit far-fetched to say that not a single planet escapes the 90% purge.


Also, how is he evaluating these numbers? Where is the justification that only 10% of galaxies would not be ruled out by this?

This is actually false. The heavy elements that he talks about are stored primarily in the center of the star during its life, and do not actually explode outwards until the stars death.


I'm going to assume that, given the "science" put forth in this link, the rest of his claims are probably not worth looking over.


Also, where are his backed-up credentials? Why is this on a geocities website? Is it possible that this is another mad creationist hack?

Faith is not a rational way of knowing truths - only reason and evidence are. It does not belong in Something for All.

How do you know that those things actually happened?

Natural selection really isn't an improbable event. It has a pressure favoring it - the pressure of the environment.

Lol, true.

 

Haha, I actually kinda lol'ed IRL after that one. I've never studied astronomy in any detail at all, but as Hugh Ross does have a PhD from the University of Toronto in Astronomy, and also did research at Caltech, meh I guess I kind of trusted him. But still, not his entire theory is based on the concepts you proved to be untrue - surely *some* of the numbers must be accurate haha.

Because they must have - it is rationally implied that they did, for there is no other plausible way for the FACTUAL events that happened after the exodus to occur without them. I think? Idk. Failblog.org.