I'm sick of all people who can never see any proof of God, yet blindly put faith in the science "fact" of evolution. Have you personally proven to yourself, with experiments and the whole nine yards, that evolution is a fact? Probably not. Have you searched for God and tried to live your life in the principles laid out in the Bible? Probably not.
The so called Christians who say that we need to blindly believe there is a God, are ignorant people. Scientist who say that we shouldn't believe in God because they can't prove a physical existence of a God, are ignorant people.
Thinking that God is one controlling everything, purposing everything in our day to day lives, sends us to heaven or hell when we die, and major disasters are his 'will' (like Hurricane Katrina)... is due to a lack of education in the Bible. Yeah I realize people who claim to be Christians actually say that stuff. But someone who doesn't believe in God or know anything the Bible teaches, can claim to be a Christian too. Claiming to be one, doesn't make it so.
Saying the we know everything there is to know about everything, is silly. I'm sure you would agree with that. Science is always changing. They used to say that the Universe would grow and then implode on itself. Now they say that it will expand forever without stopping. Also, there is so much out there that we don't know. And thats just looking to the stars. People when they say there is no proof of God usually don't consider what we see in Nature. Funny to say that some of the greatest and best inventions, AND the best and most advanced technology is all based off what we see in nature. Having an incredibly advanced circulatory system, complex organs (like the brain that we've only been able to skim the surface potential wise, which doesn't make sense if we evolved into humans, why would we have more than a brain than we needed too?) and the thousands upon thousands of different animals, insects, plants, micorganisms, etc. With yet many to still be discovered....all came by accident? So a universe came into existence somehow by accident, that led somehow to the balance and what we call 'laws' (like gravity) perfect for what we know as the universe to take shape, that let to our planet being just the exact distance from the sun, that some how life got started on this planet by accident... that led to complex organisms like you and me as well thousands of different species. Some of which that are in such extreme places to live, its curious how something could learn to live at the lowest point in the ocean, or even move from that point.

POINT BEING: Just because scientist say it is so, does not make it true. Just because religions say it is a certain way, does not make it true.
From my experiences, reading into many other religions, as well as looking into science theory... I've came up with what I have found to be the truth. I have reasons for believing in it. I have many reasons for living by it.
So what I'm saying is that if one is to make a choice such as this, do it out of PERSONAL research and a sincere desire. If you don't really care, then you don't really care...and chances are you'll stick to whatever decision you made before looking into such things. If you want to say you are a certain way, at least have reasons for it because you deeply looked into it.

People don't need to prove that something does not exist. It is impossible to prove the non-existence of something (provided that the thing has no properties that can be physically measured, if it supposedly has measurable properties, then it can be disproved. God luckily enough is invisible, and cannot be physically touched.). It's up to you to prove the existence. Doesn't that last sentence (of the small section of quote I took) read as stupid to even you who wrote it?

There's no DEFINITE proof of evolution, but to the best of the information we've gathered, it is the best conclusion.

Saying that just because you haven’t tried it you can’t reject it is a fallacy. I have this idea that you haven’t tried to live as a Buddhist, Taoist, Raelian or devil worshipper – yet you can reject substantial bits of their teaching. I assume you haven’t tried to be a serial rapist either yet he might not seem like the perfect moral figure to you.



What’s ignorant about not believing something that has not been proven? Even more, why believe something that there are no pieces of scientific evidence for? I’m sure you have heard this one, but if I say that there’s an undetectable kettle pot circling the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto that created life on Earth, you should ask me to prove it not go to the newest temple and buy a little kettle pot to hang around your neck. The point is that there’s no rational reason to believe in the kettle pot, nor in a God – though both have existences that are impossible to prove.



Which is why people understanding science never claim that… (Personally though I feel that it is less ludicrous to believe that 6.6 billion people can achieve omniscience than that one single (for lack of a better word) organism has.)



Why would you want science not to change? To believe that pi actually was a fraction, that the world is flat and so on? Religion has changed drastically too. The Christian god must have had severe hangovers during most of the old testament or he has changed as well. Opposing something just because it changes seems rather dumb to me. Yes, science is changing. Change is in the very nature of science. The more we study something the better can we understand it – and understanding really is the goal here, not a never-changing story, possibly contradicting what we see in reality.



Your point being? The very essence of evolution (something we see in nature…) is that it’s a program of optimization, thus providing more and more brain capacity because it proved advantageous. And if we wanted to fly, what mechanism should we study if not something that actually flies?



So you say everything is improbable? There are two non-exclusive main lines of answering this. Ponder the enormous amount of star systems we have found (and continue to find). Is it entirely unlikely that any of those system (say ours) would turn out to look just like ours? Let’s suppose not and for the sake of argument suppose that at least one such system with a ‘Earth’ exists. Is it entirely unlikely that during 14 billion years of time on this world the one important chemical reaction starts? Perhaps. Then suppose 100 such ‘Earths’ exist, make that 1400 billion years (14*100). Yes, this is speculation but we have no idea of how many earth like systems there are out there.

As for the natural laws, with certain reasoning you can conclude that with slightly different constants the universe would be instable. Instable universes would be recycled until a stable one appears which, by this reasoning, would have to have conditions that are nice enough to us. Anyway, the point is that just because we have perfect conditions here does not mean much. If you roll your dices you’ll eventually get five sixes – but you’ll also get small straights, full houses etc. – the uninhabitable worlds we see around us.

The other line basically agrees that it is improbable, then asks how improbable a deity that had the power to set all this up would be. While God can be used as a shortcut to explain various things around us, how do you explain God? Some say that they can’t accept that “everything has always been here”, yet they have no problems believing that He has and that He created it out of nowhere (or possibly out of a cow and a giant).



If someone says something is so and then proves it, then it bloody well is so. However if someone just makes the claim I normally prefer to be sceptic about it. When asked ‘which do you believe?’ I choose the alternative that has most evidence and logic and least contradictions on its side.



Then I assume you’re against bringing up children into a specific religion/worldview?

I didn't say that flying cars were impossible, nor that AI is impossible. All I said is that technological prognosticators tend to be too optimistic with their timescales. This is true, no?



According to the Church-Turing Thesis, a function is effectively computable (can be computed by an algorithm in a finite number of steps) only if it is Turing computable or recursive (these amount to the same thing). Indeed, but computing a function might take a very long time. It might take longer than we have left before the death of the universe. Simulating the operations of the computer I am using right now would be for all practical purposes impossible using a Turing machine. Computers as we know them might be like Turing machines compared to our brains.

It's kinda improbable if you look at it this way. Yes, science has changed. A lot, because more proof comes up, and some of it is contrary to what we have seen, so we investigate it and come up with a more probable theory. Because about atoms and stuff we just can't see, it is hard to say how it looks and how it will react. Yet all tests that we have done so far encourage the theories that we have now.

About the improbability, science is a good one here too. Because first we thought there was one solar system. There appeared to be trillions. Then we thought there was just one starsystem. It's proven now that there are trillions. So why shouldn't there be more than one universe? And every universe with it's own unique rules of physics. If you look at it that way, that there are trillions of universes, makes it a lot more probable that in one of those universes, the rules are such as we know it today, and such that it makes life possible.

For everything that we have investigated thus far, there was no need to refer to a god. And if we want to make progress in what we know, we must not refer to a God, because that's just evading the fact you DON'T KNOW IT. Just having a label with "God did it" on everything is not going to enrich our understanding of the universe. Or of anything really. What if every scientist in the past has always said that god did it? We wouldn't know a god damn thing about anything. It is usefull in science to not refer to a god, so we can figure it out for ourselves.

The main difference between science and religion (and this is what it all boils down to) is that science ALWAYS leaves room for error. We are NEVER COMPLETELY sure that something is true. Because facts change. A fact is merely something that people agree to be true, example: people used to believe in the geocentric theory, but then Copernicus came around and re-stated what a Greek astronomer had said before and proposed the heliocentric theory. The fact was that the planets and the sun revolved around the Earth but now its a fact that we all revolve around the sun. Religion is based on faith, which we can't technically disprove, and I'm not going to bring up another ridiculous example like "you can't prove that invisible fairies are all around us" because it's unscientific. It can't be tested, and that's simply because it doesn't comply with the scientific method. So you can create entire universes on top of ours and while nobody else can technically disprove it, how mature does that make you look and how mature does thinking and believing in something like that make you?

Agreed. I've never met an intelligent, non-poseur atheist who didn't leave a margin of error, or one who spoke in absolutes, in the realm of his theology (or lack thereof, as it were).

Well, we always have the Drake Equation...

the only actually scientific approach based on fact is agnosticism, but i believe there is more

...which is a nice idea, but since we have no idea on the values of the most variables, it tells us practically nothing.

The Drake Equation is nothing more than speculation itself. Regardless of the arbitrarily (and arguably mostly optimistically) chosen values one could argue about the choice of terms. Anyway, what I said definitely stands since the value of the n_e term is very uncertain.

I've always thought that the Drake equation is a nice tool to use when giving a boldly optimistic lecture on something hypothetical. It's not really based on observations, it's just a sort of categorization for different levels of resemblance a planet might have to our Earth. It's mostly philosophical, but perhaps it gives an idea of the requirements needed for life, in a form that's easy to explain.

As an actual equation it's pretty much useless and will probably remain that way for the rest of my lifetime. Perhaps we'll know more one day.

Here's what I think about christiannity, religion and science:

I don't believe in any god and never will. Just the Bible, Coran and the holy books are proof to me. Why? Because it was written by men and they all talk about the same god and have so much elements of other older religions which are mainly taken from astrology. The three kings, Mary, the resurrection of christ and all. Everything is based on concepts created by man. At the beginning of humanity, there were no concepts; men didn't exist, the sun, religion, the word itself, anything. Everything just was and still is. There was no good and evil and still is. God wanted made us create all our accomplishments

Nature is some kind of other proof to me. Everything lives in harmony with everything and interacts, some complete whole. I believe life, is not an error or a miracle, I think life is just... life, it happened because of several factors and events that came in certain order due to the reaction of nature with certain elements. I think life may also stop because of some other events. Just look at our solar system, Earth is the only planet with life because certain things made it so. The 'dead' planets still are nature and have their own things happening on them.

The complexity of life and nature is another proof for me and inventing god is also a proof to me. The term god and the religions was of course invented by man. In a time when pretty much everyone believed in god. Now there's more and more people who doesn't believe and some are like okay I don't believe in these religions but why wouldn't be any god who created all that? But for me it's just pushing the problem. 'If' there was any god, how did it (it would be beyond anything human or the comprehensible, I'm not personificating here) came here, was 'born', created? (and any other words of the kind you can find) He was always here and 'decided' to create a super-complex universe with 0,0001% of life? With a planet on some distant solar system turning around some sun with a moon turning around it, among some other planet? God is almost never interested in life and prefer to play chess with planets? And that brings me to another thing, if god created the universe, we all know it works on it's own, so what god is 'doing' (if it can do anything) creating other types of universes working on different laws? So if we need to have a god to create such a complex universe, why don't we need something else to explain god? That's a point I find pretty absurd in explaining the universe with god. Why can't the universe or nature be it's own 'god'? Well it wouldn't be omnipotent, omnipresent and... I don't remember the last but you get my point. Why does it need to have a creator that doesn't explain a bit?

Scientists try to explain everything and I follow them, religious try to explain only with god which is a conprehensible and comforting concept, but I think we just can't explain the big 'how' like the big bang theory, it's just way beyond us.

I totally agree with you Corimgul. You make me think that I dind't talk that there might be other planets like earth or other organisms that live totally differently, well actually I believe in that. Universe is said to be infinite and is all about probability, as thin as they can be, so there ought to be some other place.

For me, it comes down to this:

Clearly, agnosticism is the only reasonable way to go scientifically speaking. However, atheism is the more reasonable of the two sides of faith for this reason:
God is inherently unprovable scientifically.
Atheism has reasonable and concievable scientific theories (and some psychological, sociological and anthropological evidence) that humans have created the idea of god.

Unless people can prove that humans created god, then this discussion is pointless and will never get anywhere.

Please explain why this is so clear.

I don't think it will ever work as a "functional" equation since part of it requires knowledge of numbers we really cannot know. We'd have to be an omnipotent being to make it work--but then, ironically, as an all-knowing eternal being, we wouldn't even need it.

Please explain how you can be scientifically certain whether god exists or doesn't exist.
As far as I know, there is no provable explanation at all, and there definitely isn't one in this thread.

Because it is an unfalsifiable metaphysical claim. We should never believe something without reasonable evidence.

The idea of god was created by men, as much as scientology so we can't disprove either that an alien genocide never happened. The only difference is that scientology hasn't existed for thousands of years. And it's damn normal to stop believing in something that is thousands of years old and which was created only for a certrain group, why do you think Jesus was jew and that the idian goddesses doesn't look like egyptians? It's only myths created by people to try to explain life on Earth. And they all ended studying the stars to make their religions.

Don't try to bring back the agnostic vs. athiest argument. It's like a holy war without the holies.

What has that to do with agnosticism?

He said that it was the most scientific, which I'm disagreeing with.

So I gathered. Yet I do not grasp the nature of the criticism. Agnosticism is defined by lack of belief, not by belief in an 'unfalsifiable metaphysical claim.'

i dont understand why so many of you hold science in such high regard. i may be wrong but im pretty sure they are still having a hard time proving whether light travels in particles or waves. so how could they possibly prove or disprove god(s)?

Bad example, it moves in both forms. We've observed it.

exactly my point, it moves in either form depending on the instrument used to do the measurement.

It isn't dependent on the instrument. Light moves in particles called photons that behave in a wave pattern.

id suggest a little more research.

I'd suggest the same to you.

This is a highbrow forum. Short, content-devoid posts that include poor formatting to boot, are unwelcome.

Well I Apologize,

My Point was that science is still based on assumption of old theories and human perception. While much more logical than many religious doctrines it still has its falsities.

I'd say you misunderstand the nature of science. It is based on empirical evidence, quantification, and rigorous controls against alternative explanations. You're right that individual scientists or theories are often wrong, but science is a self-correcting process. If researchers make mistakes or misinterpret data, others can override their conclusions by repeating the experiments and offering a more plausible explanation--especially if they have independent experiments confirming it. Over long spans of time, theories are only retained if they are compatible with the ever-expanding boundaries of science in other fields. For example, creationism was thought to be a good theory until it became incompatible with observations and had to invoke zounds of ad hoc explanations that had little warrant. Evolution, on the other hand, is an incredibly powerful theory because it has achieved consilience with phylogeny/systematics, genetics, molecular biology, paleontology, geology, and various other fields. Darwin opened a gate to a gigantic field of theoretical and experimental research, and there is no scientific data that conflicts with the basic principles of evolutionary theory.

...not really. It's central to quantum physics that the wave-particle duality applies to light. In fact it applies to other matter as well, including neutrons - a fact which has been used in neutron diffraction. Point is, science can't really tell that light is X or Y when it in fact is a bit of both. (There are even more surprising dualities in string theory.)

Wasn't my intention. Just stating my personal stance on the matter, and I think it's pretty obvious from the title that was the original intention of the thread.



Seems pretty clear to me: we shouldn't believe in anything without reasonable evidence. It also seems to me that there is no truly reasonable evidence pointing either direction and therefore we should not believe anything specific in this case... which is agnosticism.

What about weak atheists, the ones whose stance is "I can't say 100% that God doesn't exist, but I'm pretty damn sure"? Their argument is the same one that refutes Pascal's Wager: there could be an all-powerful creator, but there could be any number of other things that could have also created the universe, and it doesn't make sense to pick just one (God) unless there is evidence for it.

Very well said. I find it unnecessary to rebuke that guy now.



Actually, there is what can be called evidence in favor of a godless universe. While not exactly proof (meaning that it doesn't guarantee it), it does, along with logic, force the prospect of any gods into a very narrow gap. One so small that it is best to say that god does not exist, even if in reality that means, the probability of gods existing is negligable.

There is no way we know as much as 5% of the knowledge in the world as a specie, let alone a forum.

Sometimes, but I don't have a definite opinion. I think that it's incorrect to be generally optimistic or pessimistic about technology because it's basically unpredictable.



According to the Church-Turing Thesis, a function is effectively computable (can be computed by an algorithm in a finite number of steps) only if it is Turing computable or recursive (these amount to the same thing). Indeed, but computing a function might take a very long time. It might take longer than we have left before the death of the universe. Simulating the operations of the computer I am using right now would be for all practical purposes impossible using a Turing machine. Computers as we know them might be like Turing machines compared to our brains.[/quote]

I'm not saying it has to be done on a Turing machine, I'm saying it's a possible task for a computer. A computer can run software that has consciousness and which functions like a brain, but since it's virtual it could be easily modified and accelerated. I think you could call that inorganic too, tho.

By the way - we consider ourselves a model of intelligence. It's no wonder that for a machine to be intelligent it has to mimic us.

In essence, weak atheism, or even weak theism would still be in the realm of agnosticism. I'm fine with leaning towards one side or the other (I'm pretty clearly more towards the atheistic side because there are more viable scientific theories about the idea of a god ), but an absolutist stance on anything in the matter is fairly silly, if you ask me. Anyways, I don't want to get particularly deep into this conversation. I was just stating my thoughts on the matter and that how the only true way to get a definite stance on the matter is to prove that humans created the idea of god (which there is good evidence for) and that wouldn't even necessarily disprove the existence of god.

How do you know? It's an empirical question. There's obviously no such computer at the present time. It seems hopelessly optimistic (or pessimistic, depending on perspective) to presume that it's possible to build one.