Obesity, skiny, tall, short, unibrow, hairy, flat figure

[A-Man]

Someone Else (Click to View)

That is just a random guess, and about as good as somewhere in the belt of saturn, the center of the earth or another planet or perhaps he is in my attic. The thing is whatever guesswork anyone comes up with is about as useful and worthy of being believed as saying that there is a dragon in my garage.

And what will your dragon serve to explain? It was indeed a random guess, but it is to prove that the possibility exists.

Because God is complete speculation, with literally zero actual evidence.

Really? I am pretty sure you've heard of "Schrodinger's Cat" thought experiment. That experiment has direct implications which suggests that there exists an observer who (needs to) observes our quantum mechanical world.  

Things that previously needed a god to explain how they worked (how did we come into existence? (evolution)

Has holes. The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy can only increase; meaning, things can only proceed in a direction which increases the randomness and the disorder of the system. This can be countered by the anthropic principle, but it should still make you doubt what you know on the topic. I personally am convinced with evolution as an explaining theory so far, but know that this doesn't disprove the existence of a creator. For such a thing like Evolution to happen, the singularity that marked the beginning of time needed to have extremely accurate configuration for our universe to work. Lighting a match just means you lighted a match, but it also means you are the one responsible for the fire it causes when it comes into contact with the petrol.

Universe popped into existence/was always there vs. God popped into existence/was always there and made the universe pop into existence.

But why are you assuming the concept of time applies on where God is at all? The universe is made of space-time fabric; therefore it can not have always existed.

"Why not?" is a question someone asks in order to move the burden of proof away from themself.

You're right, but there isn't any proof of God's existence. God is a good theory though (or more strictly, hypothesis).

No. For one thing an actual hypothesis needs to be somewhat well defined (which God is not), so you can actually test it, and see whether or not it holds up in reality.

While what you said does stand true by definition, a lot of theories like the string theory pertained the name "theory" way before it was actually tested just last year. Hawking radiation hasn't been tested or observed either. And now that I think about it, was Evolution tested?

Thirdly the ideas are usually not actually very creative, as they are usually based on our current understanding of reality (as in previously well established theories)

How can you say that the general and the special theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, were all theories (hypotheses) which were considered incomprehensible and eccentric when first proposed. Quantum Mechanics almost rebooted Physics.

as opposed to thousand year old books. When other scientists do look at others' hypotheses it is generally because it accommodates our current understanding of the world in a nice manner, that seems plausible, and surely it is possible that something which seems very implausible (like string theory) turns out to be a subject worthy of study, but it takes time for it to be recognized as such.

A "nice manner"? "plausible"? It was usually went a scientist went against being plausible that they discovered something revolutionary.

Speaking of wormholes:
Has any actual wormhole ever been sighted? Do we have any actual evidence of them? Or are they simply something which our current understanding of the universe does not seem to forbid, and MAY help explain certain phenomena?

Sight has long been rendered unreliable for scientific explanations. I assume you're implying that God can't help explaining a phenomena? If so, I hope I have given an answer above.

Marko (Click to View)

ls.. Does God at the end of the wormhole has any evidence that is theory based on? That was what i was trying to say,... It's pure guessing and nothing else. Based on nothing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

Progress is made by scientists who were willing to disagree with God if necessary. Eratosthenes was almost killed by believers after stating 100% truth that Earth is round object. Do we need that kind of persons?

Galileo was persecuted too because of such beliefs, but that's not the point now. You don't need to deny the existence of a God to not follow a religion.

Let me complete my words. We can't progress to our full potential as long as we have believers.
Just look at how many wars happened just because of different religions. People killed each other because their stupid and misleading beliefs. How many wars are still there because of different beliefs ?
Religion is huge problem in our society, huge.

As in WW1-2? It's true that religion (aka Islam) has been referenced as the cause of all the problems recently. But you're missing the point still. This has nothing to do with whether you believe in the possibility of the existence of a God or not.

No wonder any aliens haven't already visited us. We are primitive beings, kill each others, same race, because of something someone wrote down in bible thasaunds years ago which is total nonsense. Whole our history is nonsense. So many killed people for nothing.

Well, :\.

Theory based on our logic we can prove atm here on the earth, not theory behind our beliefs and possibilities. See the difference? It's huge.

Hawking radiation, an important theorized (or hypothesized .. argh) property of blackholes couldn't be tested. They're still both possibilities.

You are missing the point. When you came up with some theory, you are the one who should prove it affirmative, not me who should deny it by proofs because it's impossible. Let me ask you something?
I believe Batman really exsists.. now prove me i am wrong? You can't because that's not how it works.

I was merely stating a possibility. Neither what I said nor what you said proves anything really.

STM1992 (Click to View)

I think you are still being confused about the meaning of the word "theory".

Yes, you're right.

When you speculate an idea to explain something, it starts off as a hypothesis - this is what most confused people mean when they say 'theory'.

A hypothesis becomes a scientific theory/law(law & theory are interchangeable in this case) when the idea is thoroughly tested and has been consistently proven to be accurate. Conflicting ideas and competition drive progress, but an idea that doesn't have practical applications isn't very valuable. Because a theory is proven to be accurate and thus has practical applications, it has value and the reason why you get a Nobel prize for disproving it.

I see. But these naming rules haven't been followed really. The idea of God does have many implications actually, like why did God do this? It can also serves for an explanation to what was deduced from Schrodiger's Cat thought experiment; an observer needs to observe the universe for its "wave function", or to be more clear, ,the super position in which one of many possible events haven't been determined, to collapse into set determined events.

Merely saying "God did it" only begs the question of who God is and how he did it, and it would be ignorant to dismiss those concerns as some variant of "God is unknowable" since that is exactly the kind of attitude that silences conflicting ideas and competition that you said drives progress.

I agree. That should not be acceptable.

I'm not saying that our current theories are infallible, but I'm saying that they are our best models for what we know about the world around us and certainly more useful than the flimsy equivalent of "god/magic".

I think it is equally arrogant to claim to know for a fact that gods don't exist. I'm open to the idea that gods exist, but I've yet to hear anything beyond weak or unprovable propositions. There's the idea that maybe I should believe in god just in case, but which one? Not to mention I find a lot of religious teachings to be toxic or even contradictory. So rather than try to believe in a virtually unprovable/unknowable being, I would rather treasure the life I already know and live as though divine beings don't exist.

It's you who gets to pick your way of live, and I respect that. I can help you narrow the "Which" one by linking you to Occam's Razor. It basically says that when faced with theories, you should stick to what proposes the least number of assumptions. Only 1 God is enough to be the cause of the universe.

Edit:
@Bashscrazy: Useful finding! Thanks.

[STM1993]

Things that previously needed a god to explain how they worked (how did we come into existence? (evolution)

...
And now that I think about it, was Evolution tested?

Forgot to address this. Evolution doesn't explain the origin of life, but rather how one form of life passes on to the next. In fact there could be multiple origins as far as I'm concerned. I would assume Someone Else was referring to "we" being modern humans having diverged from our ape cousins against the idea that modern humans were created just like that.

Yes, evolution has been tested. I'll try to explain as simply as possible:

1. Creatures pass on their genetic traits to their offspring. If you paint a red bird blue, his children will still be red, not blue.
   
2. Creatures must produce viable offspring. You can cross a tiger and a lion, but the resulting hybrid creature, while incredibly strong, is unable to bear children(not viable); its the end of the line. The fittest(most adapted to their present surrounding) survive only because they live long enough to mate while the unfit die before they can mate.
   
3. Suppose a type of bird that is always either red or blue. I neuter all red birds but leave blue birds alone. Because the red birds cannot reproduce and thus cannot pass on their red genes, the number of red birds will decrease or outright go extinct. The red birds don't necessarily have to be neutered by me, it could very well just have been that birds prefer blue over red and so blue birds mate more than red birds, or the red birds isolate themselves from the blue birds by living in some other part of the world.
   
4. To further illustrate the above red/blue bird example, this table shows the concept of dominant & recessive alleles. Suppose the red alleles are dominant(B) and blue alleles are recessive(b) - it'd mean that out of 4 possible combinations, only the combination where the child bird receives both recessive alleles(bb) will end up being blue. That means there won't be any carriers(Bb or bB) of the red gene, and by neutering all red birds, I've ensured that these birds will only ever be blue; red birds will go extinct.
   
5. Incidentally the table also accounts for a population trend, in my example there should be 3 red birds for every 1 blue bird (1 full red, 2 carrier red, 1 full blue).
   
6. Mutations, because sometimes the genes aren't copied correctly or are altered/damaged along the way. Most of these mutations don't do anything or are very subtle changes, and even then it only matters if these mutations get passed on to kids.
   
7. Which brings me to the concept of descent with modification. Using the birds example, even if I let completely dominant(BB) red birds mate, their child would still end up a little different from their parents. Suppose a child is always different from his parent by 1%. Is it a stretch to suggest that at some point, after maybe 100 generations in my example, the 100th generation bird is completely different from his 1st generation ancestor, to the point that if the 100th generation bird were to mate with the original bird, they wouldn't produce viable children? That's how we get many different species.
   

These ideas can be applied to many things, including explaining the emergence of drug resistant bacteria, overfishing leading to fish being smaller compared to many years ago, fossil records that support the concept of descent with modification, useless traits in our bodies like our appendix and useless DNA, domesticated silver foxes and dogs actually diverged from ancestral wolves. I remember coming across an article about some creatures(lizards I think) that were left alone in an isolated area and scientists coming back a few decades later to find that the original type of creatures are no longer there but instead finding a new species very similar to the original.

So yes, evolution has been tested and in fact stands as one of the strongest theories we have in the scientific community, even better established than gravity.

I think it is equally arrogant to claim to know for a fact that gods don't exist. I'm open to the idea that gods exist, but I've yet to hear anything beyond weak or unprovable propositions. There's the idea that maybe I should believe in god just in case, but which one? Not to mention I find a lot of religious teachings to be toxic or even contradictory. So rather than try to believe in a virtually unprovable/unknowable being, I would rather treasure the life I already know and live as though divine beings don't exist.

It's you who gets to pick your way of live, and I respect that. I can help you narrow the "Which" one by linking you to Occam's Razor. It basically says that when faced with theories, you should stick to what proposes the least number of assumptions. Only 1 God is enough to be the cause of the universe.

My problem is more with the various doctrines attempting to describe god(s). If a scripture has mistakes/contradictions or can be overwritten, then its not infallible like followers claim and thus becomes unreliable. If the scripture is said to be metaphorical, then which texts can be taken metaphorically and which ones can be taken literally - and as a result spawn so many ambiguous interpretations and thus religious denominations? I'm forced to take the one with least assumptions etc as you said, in this case assuming its all literal and go with that interpretation. And of course, I still often find mistakes in scripture going by this route.

It is also common nowadays to believe that god(s) are omnipotent and all-good (if you look at a lot of old myths, gods are often portrayed as jackasses with their own limited dominions who are born from something else). Problem is, a truly all-good God would not allow injustice or unnecessary suffering, yet that is what I see around me in the world today. I can only conclude that this God isn't good at all, or he is nowhere near as powerful as he is claimed to be. At best, god is more like a team of developers making a video game world, and then moving on to new projects after its done while the characters in the video game are none the wiser.

At the end of the day, even if the question about God is answered, is there anything we can do with the knowledge? If there's really nothing we can do with the knowledge, then we shouldn't worry about it. We should live our lives pragmatically, and in this case treating life as a limited one-time gift and that god is irrelevant is most pragmatic option.

[Marko]

How can you compare black hole theories with God?
Black holes theories are well known because it's based on the same laws of physics. Scientists also created dumb hole (black hole for sound) and they can see how sound acts.

Even tho we will probably never come close to any of black holes we know exactly how they
act outside, only thing which is still mystery is what is inside of black hole, is it maybe space ripped from such a high density so there is a wormhole or something else.. that would be theory? Black holes from outside are almost a fact

couldn't be said for God at all... he is totaly and only imagination of humans. Only thing we have as a proof of God are our historical creations, nothing else.

[Rhino.Freak]

so you are okay with comforting yourself that you will live infinitely in heavens after you die or you would rather know real truth of life, real purpose, our goals as humans?
I refuse to lie to myself, no matter how crappy and pointless life seems at the moments, i face the truth because that only matters. When we have already got chance to live let's use it to its full potential.

Lol no, I never said that and neither do I believe in that.
The point what I was trying to make was better explained by STM.
You are STILL confusing between God and Religion. When I say "there might be a creator, we don't know" I don't say "whatever is written in abc booK about them is true and I believe it".
Where did you get the idea of heavens from my post?
The point is, we can't prove OR deny the existance of someone who created this universe.

[A-Man]

Forgot to address this. Evolution doesn't explain the origin of life, but rather how one form of life passes on to the next. In fact there could be multiple origins as far as I'm concerned. I would assume Someone Else was referring to "we" being modern humans having diverged from our ape cousins against the idea that modern humans were created just like that.

Yes, evolution has been tested. I'll try to explain as simply as possible:

1. Creatures pass on their genetic traits to their offspring. If you paint a red bird blue, his children will still be red, not blue.
   
2. Creatures must produce viable offspring. You can cross a tiger and a lion, but the resulting hybrid creature, while incredibly strong, is unable to bear children(not viable); its the end of the line. The fittest(most adapted to their present surrounding) survive only because they live long enough to mate while the unfit die before they can mate.
   
3. Suppose a type of bird that is always either red or blue. I neuter all red birds but leave blue birds alone. Because the red birds cannot reproduce and thus cannot pass on their red genes, the number of red birds will decrease or outright go extinct. The red birds don't necessarily have to be neutered by me, it could very well just have been that birds prefer blue over red and so blue birds mate more than red birds, or the red birds isolate themselves from the blue birds by living in some other part of the world.
   
4. To further illustrate the above red/blue bird example, this table shows the concept of dominant & recessive alleles. Suppose the red alleles are dominant(B) and blue alleles are recessive(b) - it'd mean that out of 4 possible combinations, only the combination where the child bird receives both recessive alleles(bb) will end up being blue. That means there won't be any carriers(Bb or bB) of the red gene, and by neutering all red birds, I've ensured that these birds will only ever be blue; red birds will go extinct.
   
5. Incidentally the table also accounts for a population trend, in my example there should be 3 red birds for every 1 blue bird (1 full red, 2 carrier red, 1 full blue).
   
6. Mutations, because sometimes the genes aren't copied correctly or are altered/damaged along the way. Most of these mutations don't do anything or are very subtle changes, and even then it only matters if these mutations get passed on to kids.
   
7. Which brings me to the concept of descent with modification. Using the birds example, even if I let completely dominant(BB) red birds mate, their child would still end up a little different from their parents. Suppose a child is always different from his parent by 1%. Is it a stretch to suggest that at some point, after maybe 100 generations in my example, the 100th generation bird is completely different from his 1st generation ancestor, to the point that if the 100th generation bird were to mate with the original bird, they wouldn't produce viable children? That's how we get many different species.
   

These ideas can be applied to many things, including explaining the emergence of drug resistant bacteria, overfishing leading to fish being smaller compared to many years ago, fossil records that support the concept of descent with modification, useless traits in our bodies like our appendix and useless DNA, domesticated silver foxes and dogs actually diverged from ancestral wolves. I remember coming across an article about some creatures(lizards I think) that were left alone in an isolated area and scientists coming back a few decades later to find that the original type of creatures are no longer there but instead finding a new species very similar to the original.

Yes, we did study that in the biology class in high school. Please know that I am not saying evolution is wrong as a concept, in fact, as you've mentioned, micro-evolution can be tested and provide with results immediately. Allow me to stress on 2 important points:

-First, evolution can't be directly tested to see whether this phenomenon was really responsible for development of life on Earth. Intuitively, one can just stick to the 2nd law of thermodynamics and get over with it; You can't keep shuffling cards and expect them to keep sorting themselves out, but they will just increase in disorder. Except in rare cases, for a short amount of time, things can happen when the cards will randomly start to sort themselves out. For that, scientists followed another not-so-direct approach to prove the concept of evolution, and that is by testing it on micro-organisms where changes can happen fast enough. But that is still not decisive, as even Physics itself can change in the duration of millions of years.
Also, evolution doesn't help explaining aesthetics at all - most notably the beautiful feathers of a peacock.
Therefore, you conclude that the singularity at the beginning of time MUST have contained very sensitive information and configuration that allowed life to develop as is; regardless whether the God created that singularity or not.

-Second, even if evolution is true (and it probably is, but I can't allow myself to put a 100% on that), that doesn't disprove God as a creator. One can say God created the singularity with its sensitive configurations for life to be self-driven like that.

So yes, evolution has been tested and in fact stands as one of the strongest theories we have in the scientific community, even better established than gravity.

Gravity, as we know it, is a fact that you can't deny. But the explanation behind it is not as strong as you think it is. So if we speak on how well the explanations fit into reality, then you're right.

My problem is more with the various doctrines attempting to describe god(s). If a scripture has mistakes/contradictions or can be overwritten, then its not infallible like followers claim and thus becomes unreliable. If the scripture is said to be metaphorical, then which texts can be taken metaphorically and which ones can be taken literally - and as a result spawn so many ambiguous interpretations and thus religious denominations? I'm forced to take the one with least assumptions etc as you said, in this case assuming its all literal and go with that interpretation. And of course, I still often find mistakes in scripture going by this route.

I don't currently have the time to watch your video, but I shall do that later. But have you really considered looking into at least the most common of them directly from a straight point of view and seeing for yourself?

It is also common nowadays to believe that god(s) are omnipotent and all-good (if you look at a lot of old myths, gods are often portrayed as jackasses with their own limited dominions who are born from something else). Problem is, a truly all-good God would not allow injustice or unnecessary suffering, yet that is what I see around me in the world today. I can only conclude that this God isn't good at all, or he is nowhere near as powerful as he is claimed to be. At best, god is more like a team of developers making a video game world, and then moving on to new projects after its done while the characters in the video game are none the wiser.

I'd like you to widen your field of perspective a little a bit. You can not assume anything about God (not even how he came to existence) because "where" (quotes because the concept of space might not even exist "there") he exists should not necessarily have the same rules in our universe. Likewise, you can't just assume God thinks, feels or anything of that sort, unless this was somehow told by none but Himself. What we know is that God could've caused the universe to work according to set of rules He puts up, and if that's the case, we're the players.

At the end of the day, even if the question about God is answered, is there anything we can do with the knowledge? If there's really nothing we can do with the knowledge, then we shouldn't worry about it. We should live our lives pragmatically, and in this case treating life as a limited one-time gift and that god is irrelevant is most pragmatic option.

Of course not. God's existence complies with Quantum Mechanics; that we all needed to be observed to exist. God's existence can serve as the explanation for "what was there" before the universe (our universe can't have always existed because it happens to have what is known as a "thermodynamical arrow time" as one of its properties). Plus, the fact that God exists can make many important implications, especially if a religion's teachings turns out to be true. The definition of the word "pragmatically" can also change from a person to another depending on whether he believes in a religion's teachings or not.

[Gespenst]

Dudes, this topic was created for non scientific purposes but for something like tolerance, personal taste and stuff + opinions about the topic.
Now you turned it into galactic god space empire topic.
Why don't you guys just create a new topic and move your every post overthere.

[A-Man]

I am very sorry lol. I have reported it yesterday since I felt it would go all messy, but no action has been taken from a moderator yet.

[Marko]

Second, even if evolution is true (and it probably is, but I can't allow myself to put a 100% on that), that doesn't disprove God as a creator. One can say God created the singularity with its sensitive configurations for life to be self-driven like that.

You are still with that disaproving thing. Science start from zero scratch, it doesn't start with assumptions that God exists (just because someone wrot that down in bible) and that you have to disaprove if it doesn't.
There are no single sign of a creator that created everything we know and just adding theory of "God" raises more questions than answers, such us, "who created him/her/its, where is it from?" "why would it create world in first place?" There is no fact on which God theory could be based on, it's pure guessing and "easiest" solution for our human brains to think of atm. And whole theory was brought by ignorant humans thousands years ago.

I believe universe is just one of myriad universes in multiverse and it's 11th dimension "sponge" ball that constantly grows. Also that sponge ball could be bent in any possible way so that any dot in universe can be connected with any other dot in the same universe (wormholes). There is no need for some living creature beyond us who controls everything. it's stupid assumtpion.

[Rhino.Freak]

I believe universe is just one of myriad universes in multiverse and it's 11th dimension "sponge" ball that constantly grows. Also that sponge ball could be bent in any possible way so that any dot in universe can be connected with any other dot in the same universe (wormholes). There is no need for some living creature beyond us who controls everything. it's stupid assumtpion.

1. No one claimed that it had to be a LIVING creaturE.
2. Your assumption of universe is also quite random dont you think?

On a closely related topic though, what do you guys think about "consciousness" ?
As quoted by A-MAN multiple times here about the Schrodinger's Experiment, we need a conscious observer to have any event occur at all and have a definite outcome.
Consciousness is fascinating.

[Marko]

It's not random. I formed my beliefs from watching sceintific movies, videos, documentaries.. not by something someone wrote in some book thausands of years ago. So no, it's not random at all. I share same opinion as some scientists

I am also intersting what you think about consciousness.