Slashdot Mirror
LHC Forces Bookmaker To Lower Odds On the Existence of God
A UK bookmaker has lowered the odds on proving that god exists to just 4-1 to coincide with the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider. The chance that physicists might discover the elusive sub-atomic object called the "God particle" has forced the odds lower. Initially the odds that proof would be found of God's existence were 20-1, and they lengthened to 33-1 when the multi-billion pound atom smasher was shut down temporarily because of a magnetic failure. A spokesman for Paddy Power said, "The atheists' planned advertising campaign seems to have renewed the debate in pubs and around office water-coolers as to whether there is a God and we've seen some of that being transferred into bets. However we advise anyone still not sure of God's existence to maybe hedge their bets for now, just in case." He added that confirmation of God's existence would have to be verified by scientists and given by an independent authority before any payouts were made. Everyone getting a payout is encouraged to tithe at least ten percent.
So, if there were a god and we were part of the creation an independent verification would have to come from outside this existence.
Bizarro perhaps?
Who do you trust to remain objective, the scientists or the priests?
This article is jibberish. The 'God Particle', aka the Higgs Boson has nothing to do with whether God or Gods exist. Is this 'bet' that people are placing a bet on the Higgs Boson, or are they actually betting on whether a God exists?? I am very confused, but probably less confused than the person who wrote the article!!
-Bill
Science can't prove that god exists, or that it doesn't exist. So it's a perfectly safe bet- it can never be won.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
- "Barrack Obama. He believes and that's good enough for me."
Anyone can say "I believe". What comes out of their mouth, however, and what they actually believe, are two different matters entirely. Note: this is not a comment directed at Barrack Obama specifically, but the blind sheep like our Anonymous Coward friend here who is willing to place trust in an unknown entity rather than their own self. Oh, wait ... I see.
Peace,
Andy.
Paddy Power is just looking for one with omnipresence.
Would this be outside the realm of science?
God do I hate that thing being trudged out for every idiotic theism "debate". It's basically a combination of a tautology (requires a non-zero probability of God's existence) and a few preposterous assumptions (voluntarism, the notion that "wagering for God" does not affect your life, the "other gods" complaint, which can result in infinite "misery" for a "for" wager, etc).
It's cute enough as a philosophical experiment, but the typical layman interpretation of it is just plain idiotic.
sic transit gloria mundi
You can't prove that the very existence that your consciousness experiences is real, so how can you even start with god? And even if you prove that god is real, I'm pretty sure that any specific religion, that has been warped and twisted to meet someone's needs/wants, would suddenly be right. How much farther would you have to go to make sure he does/doesn't addresses himself as Allah, and wants you to beat women if they read? And going even further, how can you prove that there is such a thing as free will? Randomness doesn't cut it, because randomness is described as something that has no defined mechanism for its outcome, so there's is no telling whether a "random event" is just a mechanism that we are unable to measure properly (and thus unable to predict), but is still a well-defined mechanism that could even occur in a separate dimension/universe. Thus we are unable to prove even randomness (not to mention that randomness doesn't even mean you have a "free" will, it just means you have an unpredictable will). I'm sorry to burst so many bubbles, but we really can't even begin to answer these profound questions without the fundamentals, so please stop getting ahead of yourselves.
Help fight spam
Most people when they talk about God have it all wrapped up with other issues, like the survival of consciousness after death, eternal reward or punishment, omnescience and omnipotence, and many others. They even have very specific definitions of those concepts in mind. For example, if they don't like the concept of God, they often assume that God, if 'He" exists, must know everything, even where knowing certain things simultaneously supposedly creates a paradox. They then point to that paradox as proof God doesn't exist. It becomes a definition problem - Is it still fair to call something God if it only knows as much as can be known, and there are things which simply can't be known? Should we refuse to call something God if it can't make a four sided triangle?
Ideas such as the soul, supernatural phenomena, gods, life after death, heaven, enlightenment, miracles, worship, omnipotence and so on, aren't monolithic. It's logically quite possible that one or more of these things could exist without the others existing at all. Whether you would want to define a being that was morally perfect, but didn't have unlimited power, as God, is a philosophical choice. (as is the reverse, a being that is morally flawed but has unlimited power). Linking all sorts of concepts together, and not defining some of those concepts, lets people engage in circular reasoning. That doesn't mean nobody has ever done better - plenty of people, both in various religions and in the great philosophies, have gone to great efforts to define terms, and avoid at least the most obvious errors.
Unfortunately 90% or more of the discussions on places such as Slashdot will be between people who haven't ever read anything by the people who have done better, and who think their latest point has never been proposed by anyone else before.
Who is John Cabal?
Erm, I really don't have time to read it all but...
"The laws of nature are omnipresent and eternal."
Where did you hear that fairytale? There is no such thing as laws of nature. Every so called law of nature is mankinds attempt to put the things mankind perceives into understandable terms. But all we have are theories. And as long as we haven't seen all there is to see of nature and the universe, they remain just theories.
Just because every time someone let go of a ball it dropped towards the earth doesn't mean this has suddenly become a law. Ever think that perhaps our perception of gravity is rather limited?
You make the mistake of thinking that by "disproving" some bit of dogma or scripture that you disprove "certain religions".
Religion was designed to defy proof or disproof. If you ask why a perfect God would cause a newborn infant to die of sepsis, you are told "He works in mysterious ways" or "His ways are not our ways". It's the ultimate dodge.
"The existence of God" has no objective validity, and is therefore meaningless.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually the problem with proving God exists or does not exist with science is that you need to compare something created by God to something not created by God, examine the difference, and the difference will be God.
If God exists, all things are created by God, and there is no difference between the two objects. If God does not exist, neither object was created by God and there is no difference between the two objects.
Either way, you have no observable difference between the two objects.
Interesting post, and you bring up some really good discussion points.
"One with omnipresence would be easy to prove. What would be accepted as proof of God ? There are more than enough structures in space that are omnipresent ... The gravity field of, well, anything, is by definition omnipresent (even though it's not so at every last moment in time, it's just everywhere any human will ever go, or even any photon that will ever touch a human). The laws of nature are omnipresent and eternal. Force carrying particle fields are omnipresent and eternal, ... If you only need a "mechanical" God, the bet is won already."
One needs to be very careful when saying "prove" or any conjugation of the word. Unfortunately the main problem - one that many people, even scientists, ignore - is called the problem of induction (you can learn about it in any Philosophy 101 class), which says that one cannot prove something based on prior experiences (i.e. it's possible that you're prior experiences can lead you to the wrong conclusion). If you forget about the problem of induction, you may be a turkey (Every day, the turkey gets fed by the farmer, and grows to believe that the farmer is a good guy and is looking out for the turkey's best interest. Then one day, right around Thanksgiving ...). Science is based on faith that the laws of nature are omnipresent and universal (they might be), because if they aren't then science fails. It is possible that the laws of nature change on a nonlinear/discontinuous function that appears to be constant on the limited timescale of human existence, but changes dramatically -or even slightly - sometime in the future. It is also possible that if there is an omnipotent god, that He(she/it) might decide to change the laws of nature just to fuck with us.
There is a lot more I could say about the problem of induction, but entire books have been written on the subject, and I'm spent. So on to a new topic.
On Buddhism you say:
"you can check buddhism : since the world only exists as part of the mind of people, it is not possible for people to cause accidents due to "not knowing" something, since they know about the entire world. So dig a hold in the sidewalk, camouflage it, and if someone falls into it you're sure buddhism is wrong."
You are confusing buddhism with solipsism: the view that the existence of anything external to your own mind is questionable, at best. So, yes you can easily prove solipsism wrong.
Buddhists don't really believe in a god; in fact, there are many Buddhists who are practicing members of other religions as well. The four main beliefs of Buddhism are the following (from Wikipedia):
I'd say that 95% of the athiests on slashdot (which seems to be a lot) have never researched the matter, more than looking on the internet for "proof" of there not being a God. of the 5% who have, 95% of those have probably never looked any farther than 1 book, that tries to disprove God in some sense. Of the 5% who have, 95% of those haven't researched the other side of the story. That leaves umm... maybe 20 people who have actually studied enough to make a rational decision. Now I know that my math is off, but the point is, before you try and say that there is not God, try actually knowing what you're talking about.
Omnipotence is problematic. The famous example is "Is it possible for an omnipotent creature to create a rock so heavy that he can not lift it?". Both answers would mean he's not omnipotent. So that makes all such religions look.. well.. PLAIN STUPID.
Really, even if there was a God, and there's about as much evidence supporting that as there is of the existance of the unicorn, I would not bow to him. In fact, I would tell him to fuck off, and leave me alone. Really, I would hate to spend my life worshipping some narcistic prick. Please, just get over it.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I'm an agnostic. When God (or whatever name he, she or it wishes to go by) comes down here and does something to prove his/her/its existence, then I'll believe in God. Until that point, or until I die, I'll simply acknowledge that God's existence is neither proven or disproven, but possible.
:D
Chances are, the only time we'll find out for certain is when we die. We'll wake up in heaven, hell, purgatory or whatever realm the dead go to, or... we won't. At that point, what does it matter?
Thing is, if I had a bit of spare cash to make it worthwhile, I'd place a bet on God's existence.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
This is a silly argument. The response of C.S. Lewis was that omnipotence does not mean "ability to do things that are inherently impossible." A square circle is a non-thing, therefore even an omnipotent God cannot make it. Nonsense doesn't become sense just because you insert the words 'God can'.
If something is logically possible, an omnipotent God could do it. And we may guess incorrectly about what's possible. But what you're doing is knocking down straw men. The God you're disproving is the one of childish belief.
Actually it's a basic assumption of science. Let's put it like this : I accept that you don't believe in science, and you stop using things that were built with that science. Your clothes, your car, your computer, ... you all quit those and I will no accept this statement. After all it's merely an "assumption" that your cell phone can even work, so why have it at all ?
If you don't stop using the accomplishments of science, however, you're a hypocrite for not accepting it's assumptions as true.
Despite the fact that I'll have mine soon, I like to think that you don't actually need a physics degree to be able to discern between pure rubbish and actual fact. The name "god-particle" has been utterly abused and misused here and in many casual discussions of particle physics and the LHC. "God particle" is a real misnomer, and the existence of the particle (it's the higgs boson) has nothing to do with theology. We've conjectured that there's a particle which is responsible for conferring the property of mass on matter, it's called the higgs boson and we're trying to find it. That's it!
Religion was designed by humans, and is fallible.
The universe does not need a god to exist, nothing that happens in the universe required a god to make it happen, and nothing that I do requires a god to tell me whether or not it is good or bad. Saying 'I don't understand this, therefore therefore a god did it' is not a valid argument. It's like saying 'I don't know what made those lights in the sky, therefore it's an alien spacecraft'. No it doesn't, all it means is you don't know.
I find it quite humorous that religious people cannot accept that on a billions of worlds for billions of years, that a certain type of randomness caused life to arise. (Any life, btw, not this specific one. Using statistics to show this life is highly unlikely is an improper use of statistics. And it's not totally random chance, creationists claiming this have never bothered to study evolution theory and understand it.) But they are willing to believe in an all knowing, all seeing entity that has created this entire universe of unimaginable size, stuck us in a non-descript corner that is completely insignificant, all by ourselves, and is interested in our daily activities and our souls. Yet this same all-knowing, all-powerful entity can't come up with a decent communication skill to prove that it exists so we stop killing ourselves over which is the right belief. It either doesn't exist, or doesn't care. Or our belief is irrelevant. Which means it is irrelevant.
Once it was shown there was no need for the 'ether' to support radio waves, ether no longer existed. It wasn't necessary to prove ether didn't exist, only to show there was no need for it, and the non-existence of ether made more sense.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I spent years of my life, mostly from fifteen onwards, in a very intense study of God, morality, and I spent my time to the best of my ability trying to improve myself to help lead others to God. While trying to find these "proofs" of God I concluded there was no God. Having lost my faith at twenty it came with no little trauma. I do not, however, believe that people who have studied the concept of "God" less than me are able to rationally conclude there is no God.
I would not say that someone who only has a cursory understanding of Greek myths is not rationally able to dismiss them as false. You do not have to be an expert in on bullshit to know when you smell it. I dismissed the Greek myths because there is no evidence, I dismiss fairies because there is no evidence, I dismiss spirits, ghosts, etc. because there is no evidence.
When I was finally able to start at zero and try to see God in the real world, without religious texts, with only the natural world to guide me, I saw no evidence. I must dismiss ancient religions for their lack of evidence, and so I dismiss "God" for the same. The people who dismiss God without being experts in the debate are not wrong. They are simply doing the same thing you do when you dismiss the thousands of deities you know little or nothing about.
If you want to hold everyone to this standard of having actually studied it in depth before dismissing it, then I suggest you dedicate the rest of your life to studies the tens of thousands of deities there are, and after this intense study which will consume your entire life, then you can rant about how atheist haven't done enough to study your god.
"Where have all the good people gone?" - Jack Johnson
"There is no such thing as laws of nature. Every so called law of nature is mankinds attempt to put the things mankind perceives into understandable terms."
Just because our efforts to codify the laws of nature are not yet perfect does not mean that there are no laws of nature. If we follow your logic then nothing exists because all we observe is just our senses turning what they perceive into understandable terms.