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.

Comments

Hahaha

[trackstr777]

Scientists being required as part of the proof to earn the payout that God exists? Damn, bookies sure do know how to make it a safe bet.

Re:Hahaha

[aaron alderman]

Who do you trust to remain objective, the scientists or the priests?

Re:Hahaha

[AuMatar]

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.

Re:Hahaha

[aaron alderman]

Which god? What exactly is a god, what are it's properties?

Paddy Power is just looking for one with omnipresence.

Would this be outside the realm of science?

Re:Hahaha

[Hojima]

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.

Re:Hahaha

[purpledinoz]

God cannot be proved or disproved scientifically. What repeatable experiment would prove the existence of God? Maybe dropping babies off a cliff to see if God intervenes?

Re:Hahaha

[c6gunner]

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.

Uh ... what?

They certainly CAN prove that God exists ... if he really does. It would be a rather simple matter. A big bearded guy in a white robe would come strolling into the main research lab of the LHC, wave his hand in the air, and atomize 99% of the scientists in the room. The remaining 1% would then say "Eureka! We have evidence of God's existence!", and then the Paddy Power people would expediently relocate to Mexico as armed mobs stormed their offices.

It's the other bit of your proposition that's rather difficult to handle. Disproving the existence of God is still possible, in theory. Unfortunately, in practice, you can never totally disprove an irrational belief because those who hold it can always change the details in order to get around the evidence. That's why, over time, we've gone from a Pantheon of Gods who controlled pretty much every event in our lives, to a single God who seems to never do much of anything. Over the last few millenia we've chipped away at God's domain until almost nothing remains, and yet at every step of the way the "faithful" of the world have simply modified their definition of God, and then carried on inanely insisting that their current definition is 100% true.

So no, we can't "prove" that God doesn't exist for the same reason that you'll never convince some people that Homeopathy is garbage, or that Psychics are a bunch of jackals and scam-artists. However, for all practical purposes, we've been disproving his/her/their existence for centuries. You just have to be open-minded enough to actually look at the evidence.

Re:Hahaha

[JosKarith]

Even worse, if you manage to prove that God exists then the fact you have proof will preclude having faith. Since deities exist on faith God will cease to exist in a puff of logic.

Re:Hahaha

[Artifakt]

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.

Re:Hahaha

[mashiyach]

The mere fact that I have my conscious experiences proves that they are real.

My will is free, at least how far I can tell from my own experience. This means that the algoritms implementing my mind either:
1) implement free will
2) make me believe that I have free will

The rest of you discussion is bullshit because it deals with potential properties of a deity, properties which are irrelevant for the discussion.

Re:Hahaha

[AlecC]

Praying to God for something physically impossible, and then for it to happen. If the sun stopped in the sky if, and only if, the Pope and 100,000 people prayed for it, that would be pretty convincing. A God who existed, and intervened regularly, would be easy to prove. It is the non-existence of God that cannot be prove: there can always be some chink of the Universe where you have not looked.

Re:Hahaha

[emjay88]

Algorithms can't "implent free will". If an algorithm were given identical inputs, it would produce the same output every time.*

Likewise, your mind (which you correctly state is running an algorthm of some kind) will always react the same way if given identical inputs. If you could model the universe exactly as it exists at a particular point in time to infinite precision (and avoiding quantum effects of observing sub atomic particles etc), you could predict the future with 100% accuracy, provided you knew the laws of mathematics (and thus, physics, chemistry etc).

* Identical inputs includes the state of random number generators, time of execution and all other factors that effect the execution of said algorithm.

Re:Hahaha

[Yvanhoe]

Wait a minute... The summary seems to imply that this is a pun about the Higg boson. Why they call it God is beyond my understanding but most Englishmen are as well too.

Re:Hahaha

[harry666t]

I'd mod you +1, agree wholeheartedly

Maybe except "Honor, Respect, and Loyalty" - I actually think that our "mission" is simply to learn to love each other, but otherwise you just summed up my whole philosophy in a couple of statements.

Re:Hahaha

[Candid88]

"Science can't prove that god exists, or that it doesn't exist."

It only can't prove god doesn't exist because proving a negative is extremely difficult. It's like trying to prove Superman or the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist.

Re:Hahaha

[Lachlan Hunt]

AlecC wrote:

"Praying to God for something physically impossible, and then for it to happen. If the sun stopped in the sky if, and only if, the Pope and 100,000 people prayed for it, that would be pretty convincing."

If the sun appeared to stop in the sky, then that would mean that the earth slowed its rotation so that 1 day is equal to 1 year. Much like the way that the same side of the moon always faces the earth, the same side of the earth would always face the sun. Hypothetically, that could happen if we made one side of earth significantly heavier than the other, and then given enough time, it would become gravitationally locked on that side.

That wouldn't prove the existence of god; but this may prove that I have too much time on my hands to work this out.

Re:Hahaha

[digitig]

I'm not sure what would count as "omnipresence" -- some writers, particularly those with Buddhist leanings, seem to regard the laws of nature as their God, and scientists assume them to "exist" everywhere (but couldn't possibly prove it, so Paddy Powers money is safe).

In terms of more western views of God, what could such a proof comprise? Scientists will make observations and will use Occam's razor to form a candidate hypothesis, then attempt to falsify that hypothesis. Even if scientists /hypothesize/ God (which I think it's Richard Dawkins points out, scientists won't do because the Western notion of God is more complex than any finite hypothesis, so Occam's razor will always steer them to some other hypothesis) then that is will never be a /proof/ of God, it will merely be a hypothesis that is not yet falsified.

Re:Hahaha

[destroyer661]

Over the last few millenia we've chipped away at God's domain until almost nothing remains,

While I do slightly agree with you, this 'chipping' was started in large parts even before Christianity began. Philosophers in ~5-600 B.C. thought lots about whether gods domain was truly eternal, truly immortal, truly pure and good, etc. You should read some Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Pythagoras as well. I can't say these gentlemen invented what you're eluding to, but they surely did much to make skepticism and the 'usefulness' of god's presence in the general population a large topic. Sure, they were still religious in some sense, but more like most people in North America are religious today. Aristotle, for sure, was focused more on what we might call individual spirituality where God is attributed to something in the individual (e.g. what the mind perceives god to be for them) rather than being the centerpiece of a weekly gathering which demands money, or a god which commands his 'subjects'.

Re:Hahaha

[Kokuyo]

Oh sure, make us choose between the devil and Beelzebub...

Re:Hahaha

[Ihmhi]

Aw crap guys, Slashdot is getting existential. To arms, men! Ready the super soakers!

Re:Hahaha

[WillyDavidK]

Amen!

Re:Hahaha

[Capt James McCarthy]

Which god? What exactly is a god, what are it's properties?

Paddy Power is just looking for one with omnipresence.

 

The god in my pants. And yes, it does have omnipresense.

Re:Hahaha

[OneSmartFellow]

Except your mind isn't implemented by algorithms, rather your mind concocts (and sometimes implements)algorithms. It may be completely random activity which self-constructs through feedback. Read your Hofstadter, please.

Re:Hahaha

[Fred_A]

The goal of our relative universe is to build character that can be used in the spiritual realm outside of this universe, such as Honor, Respect, and Loyalty, and not things like coding and driving a car, which obviously lack a use in a spiritual non-physical existence.

Mod +1, follower of Crom.

Re:Hahaha

[blueg3]

To the extent you can find the mass of blue.

Re:Hahaha

[jeremyp]

Your example is not proof that God exists. How do we know that this beardy man in a white robe is not merely a psychotic alien with a destructor ray?

Re:Hahaha

[Andr T.]

>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.

For me, as an agnostic, it's pretty obvious you can't prove that no God exists; The only thing you can 'try' to prove is the existence of one specific God. I do understand what you're saying and your point is valid, but the people that point this paradox are generally arguing about the Christian God, which is our most known deity.

>It's logically quite possible that one or more of these things could exist without the others existing at all.

Not all of them. Like you said, if God is morally perfect He can't be all-powerful. If He's powerfull he can't be morally perfect. This pretty much cuts out most of our known Western religions.

I think we can discuss every type of God we want, with every type of power we want to give Him, but I don't see a point. It seems pretty straightforward to me that is ridiculous that an all-powerful God waits in an afterworld to judge my actions. I have my ethics, I try to make things right. So, still, if He's watching, ok, no problem. But... why bother?

Re:Hahaha

[bestiarosa]

2) is more possible.

Experiments have showed that what is commonly referred as "will" comes second to and is consequence to other unconscious stimuli from the brain. "Free will" might just be a last resort against these unconscious stimuli from becoming action.

Just see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will#Neuroscience

Re:Hahaha

[Sporkus]

Well, it's a safe bet as long as the wager isn't held in escrow. =P

Re:Hahaha

[paragon1]

Neither, they can both be extremely zealous or extremely rational.

Of course, since humans like to deal in extremes, it's very fashionable these days to claim that all scientists are 100% rational logic machines and all priests are 100% rabid zealots.

And I'm not sure we'll be able to prove God's existence to skeptics any time soon. There are some things beyond our ape brains. Maybe once they evolve for another couple million years or so.

Oh wait, I mean, in a few days. Evolution is a lie perpetuated by science! *thumps Bible*

Re:Hahaha

[Pheonix28]

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.

Re:Hahaha

[c6gunner]

While I do slightly agree with you, this 'chipping' was started in large parts even before Christianity began.

Um, yes, that would be why I said "Over the last few millenia". You know ... "few millenia" ... as in "several thousand years"?

Re:Hahaha

[PinkyDead]

I like what you have to say - but for one fatal flaw (Mwhahahaha etc.). God might appear, then to complete the proof the remaining 1% would be required to challenge him to prove that he is omnipotent - and therefore = God.

Then He be screwed - because hopefully one of the scientists will have the good sense to challenge him with an omnipotence paradox, at which point he'll admit he's not god and move to Finland.

Re:Hahaha

[Reality Master 101]

Some dude showing up and doing something that violates the laws of physics would be pretty convincing. Say, by making a large amount of mass stop instantaneously in zero time, or making light go twice as fast as 'e', something on that order. Or beam me to heaven and watch Him manipulate the world on his Universe-Controller would be pretty cool.

Re:Hahaha

[mrdogi]

Neither. Both can be extremely jealous of their own ideas/world view.

Re:Hahaha

[Actually, I do RTFA]

They certainly CAN prove that God exists ... if he really does. It would be a rather simple matter. A big bearded guy in a white robe would come strolling into the main research lab of the LHC, wave his hand in the air, and atomize 99% of the scientists in the room

Well, that's a poor proof. As others have said, it's not reproducible. It's also not divine. What you would need him to do is impossible, largely because "sufficent technology is indistinguishable ffrom science". And some would always claim he as an alien.

Also, your statement is unfairly composed. It should have said "if the Almighty existed, and wanted to make his presence known, but only to a small group of people who would have seen a miracle and thus go forth and spread the word of the Almighty's existence, like in the past, doing so to the LHC would be possible.

And, while I think it would be possible to prove the existence of the Almighty scientifically (uncovering, let's say, architectual remains of some number of miracles.; discovery that Carbon-14 used to decay x times faster; proof that the earth ceased rotating for 12 hours). However, how would it disprove the Almighty's existence?

Re:Hahaha

[kabocox]

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?

I change my mind all the time on the matter of god. I raised Christain, or atleast dragged to Baptist churchs, so that's the first religion that got the chance to imprint on me. I do believe in god/gods watching everything in the universe.

I'm very mixed on the active god thing. I was raised to pray about social problems that are totally out of my hands or that I'm having a difficult problem with... This has personally worked very well when I've done it. So I believe something slightly powerful can attempt to fullfill very limiited requests.

I believe in souls. I'm not sure that I'd want science to ever actually prove that they exist. I'm of various opinions on what'd happen to a soul after the death of a body You've got a limited set of choices, it vanishes/dies, a ghost effect is attached to an area/object for a limited time then dies off or released after some event, it gets put back into the nearest material body with no respect for its past life, it gets put into a body with some judgement call on its behavior in its previous life, it gets sentenced for a limited time to stay with others of the same type and be punished/rewarded in the manner that they chose/build for themselves, and then their is the really fun one everyone it sent to the same exact after life and we all get what we want regardless on our actions in our past life.

As long as it's not the first two options, I'll be happy. I'd really like it to be something of the last to options though.
Again I don't really want science to prove/disprove this feeling that I've got about the after life.

Re:Hahaha

[baKanale]

...and atomize 99% of the scientists in the room.

Am I the only one who thought how much it would suck if there were any fewer than 100 scientists in that room?

Re:Hahaha

[mdwh2]

And your evidence for these numbers plucked out of thin air?

I see no reason to believe that atheists in these discussions are more likely to have not "researched" the matter than theists in these discussions. Indeed, I see many recycled arguments put forward by theists who think they're original clever arguments they've just come up with (e.g., Pascal's Wager).

And what do you mean by research anyway? Do I need to perform research into unicorns before I can say that unicorns don't exist?

Re:Hahaha

[domatic]

Clark's Third Law states that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." If the psychotic alien is super advanced enough then he might as well be a god. But this all rides on context. The psycho alien may be nothing more than a disgruntled bookkeeper in his own existence.

I do propose one test for this that will work in many but not all circumstances. If it is possible for us to learn how the alien can do the things that he does then he becomes less godlike in our eyes. Many indigenous cultures who first encounter more technologically advanced cultures take them as godlike but this never lasts very long.

Re:Hahaha

[bentcd]

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.

Uh ... what?

They certainly CAN prove that God exists ... if he really does.

Science cannot prove anything at all. Science is not about providing proofs (this would essentially be an impossible task in anything but purely mathematical fields) but about formulating increasingly useful theories that cover our observations and predict future events with some accuracy.

Science cannot even prove that a lead weight dropped somewhere on Earth will fall towards the center of the planet - science can only /observe/ that this tends to happen. Indeed, science cannot even prove that Earth itself exists but it can provide a lot of excellent theories about how things would work there in the case that it /does/ exist.

Re:Hahaha

[budgenator]

Science could prove that God exists, it would take an experiment where an experimental universe had a Created God and it would be compared to our universe, if they were the same then God exists, if they were different than only our created God would exist and there would still be a God. The other way is either unworkable or impossible because it would involve creating without God for comparison; most definitions of God involve the quality omnipresence and he would contaminate our control universe. Of course if he told us he would not contaminate our control universe it would not only make the experiment scientific but unnecessary.

Re:Hahaha

[cparker15]

Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

Proof enough for me!

Re:Hahaha

[swillden]

Like you said, if God is morally perfect He can't be all-powerful. If He's powerful he can't be morally perfect

.

That's not what the GP said. He said that the attributes of moral perfection and omnipotence can be separated, not that they must be.

There's no logical contradiction between moral perfection and omnipotence. An omnipotent but morally perfect being might choose not to prevent some terrible event not because he can't stop it, or because he doesn't want to, but because some higher moral imperative takes precedence.

As one example, when people see murders and other atrocities, they may say "If there was a god, and he was good and powerful, he would have stopped that". But if non-interference with free will is a very high moral priority, then stopping the atrocity, or even just removing the opportunity for the atrocity, would be more wrong than allowing it. This becomes particularly easy to see if you allow for the existence of an afterlife.

In general, since in any reasonable moral system there is tension between the requirements of multiple moral values, there is always a possibility that a moral, omniscient and omnipotent god may allow what we think is terrible, but is less evil than not allowing the event, because of some issue of which we are not aware.

There is no logical contradiction between moral perfection and omniscience and omnipotence.

Re:Hahaha

[HappyEngineer]

There are things in my head which I have never uttered aloud. If anyone can tell me what those things are then they are one of the following:
- a very good guesser
- an alien with technology which uses nanobots to walk through my mind and read my thoughts
- an omniscient being (and I don't see how a being can be omniscient without being a God who can look directly at all values in the RAM of the universe).
- a time traveller who tortured me in the future to get that information and then travelled back in time to make a point about religion on slashdot.

It wouldn't be proof, but it'd narrow the field of candidates as to what the being is. A few other tests (like proving omnicient power by altering universal constants) would narrow the field further.

Re:Hahaha

[Andr T.]

As one example, when people see murders and other atrocities, they may say "If there was a god, and he was good and powerful, he would have stopped that". But if non-interference with free will is a very high moral priority, then stopping the atrocity, or even just removing the opportunity for the atrocity, would be more wrong than allowing it.

I think it goes way deeper than you said. If you have a morally perfect God, how could he *imagine* evil in the first place? You can get free will and choices without being evil. I won't go deep into this here, but there's a plenty of places where you can find information about what I'm talking about. This one is very good.

And, as Carl Sagan and others before him already told, if God is immortal and we're mortal, then he's definitely cruel. The fear of dying is so terrible that it guides most part of human philosophy and religion.

Re:Hahaha

[Andr T.]

Just some other thing. Even if you have your reasons and you don't agree with this, I think it's really good think about this type of question. This kind of conversation should be encouraged, even if nobody changes his opinion. If both parts are gentle and sincere, both will exit the conversation better than they arrived. That's why I always liked Sagan and never liked Dawkins.

Re:Hahaha

[porpnorber]

Fascinating, but backwards! Surely if a guy in white robes wanders into a lab, a scientist will go, "Oh! There is a guy in white robes in my lab!" If the guy goes on to atomize most of the scientists, they will mostly go "<atomize>," while one or two may go, "Cool! I have to figure out how to build one of those."

But if God walks into your lab, where are you? He's invisible which poses certain problems with noticing His presence. More importantly, He's omnipotent, which means that any attempt to detect Him will result in your instruments saying whatever He wants them to say, rather than what they do according to their function. They could say "I'm not here!" They could say "I'm here!" They could say "I'm a chunk of Wensleydale!"

The reason that the existence of God (the entity that a religious person might mean by this term, rather than the character conjoured up by someone lampooning them) cannot be proven is that even if He chooses to manifest Himself, it invalidates all your experiments.

Interestingly enough, there is at least some chance that you'll be able to test this yourself. People not infrequently have visions. Some of them return to a normal state of consciousness going, "Wow! I met GOD!" Others go "Wow, what a weird dream. Too much Wensleydale for me." There's no criterion to choose when the data are suspect.

Meanwhile, the reason you can't prove that God doesn't exist is that he might be hiding.

Here's a technical analogy. How can a program prove the existence (or any other property) of an operating system? Only if the O/S permits an observation can the observation take place. But whatever result you get, you can still say, "Hm, maybe it's like that anyhow, maybe there's not an operating system, maybe it's just a machine."

At the end of the day, all machines are virtual, and anything you can prove exists is not the God that serious people who happen to believe in God are talking about.

Re:Hahaha

[wastedlife]

So by your math, there are about 160,000 atheists on slashdot. Now lets flip the coin:

I'd say that 95% of the theist people on slashdot (which seems to be a lot) have never researched the matter, more than looking on the internet for "proof" of there being a God. of the 5% who have, 95% of those have probably never looked any farther than 1 book, that tries to prove 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 God, try actually knowing what you're talking about.

Re:Hahaha

[TheLostSamurai]

First, as another poster stated, you just made those numbers up. Second, don't presume to know what others believe just because they happen to disagree with you.

I don't need to try and disprove God, because the idea of trying to disprove God is completely nonsensical. As evidenced by the many differing opinions on God, God can not and will not ever be defined. The concept of God is such that no mere mortal will ever be able to fully understand God, and with out a clear definition of what something is, you can not argue whether or not it exists.

And for the record, I am not an Atheist, nor do I fit into any other convenient category people would like to place me in to make themselves feel more comfortable.

Re:Hahaha

[jc42]

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.

Uh ... what?

They certainly CAN prove that God exists ... if he really does.

Actualy, no. As any number of people (notably Karl Popper) have pointed out, scientific methods don't actually prove anything. Science use methods of disproof.

The idea is that you make up explanations ("hypotheses") of things that you and others have observed. Then you think up ways to test those hypotheses. The tests almost always either say that a given hypothesis is wrong (i.e., it predicted a different outcome of the test), or it's inconclusive.

After enough testing, you tend to find that you've disproved most of the hypotheses. The ones left standing eventually graduate to being called "theories". But you still keep trying to debunk them.

Nowhere in this is there ever anything that qualifies as "proof". A scientific theory is merely an explanation that has passed a lot of tests, so it seems the best theory at the moment.

It's fairly well understood among scientists that someone who talk about "scientific proof" isn't a scientist. They may be a journalist, or a mathematician, or theologian, or a bookie, but they don't understand scientific methodology, so they're not a scientist.

And, of course, this is also a tentative conclusion. They could be a (not very good) scientist who doesn't really understand the theoretical foundations of their field. You can test this by challenging them to develop and test explanations of things.

Re:Hahaha

[Hojima]

The reason I brought up free will is because many religions hinge on this concept. They say that the choices you make decide your fate in the afterlife, however, wouldn't it be a sham if you did not actually have control over this situation? That's where the "free" in free will actually comes from. If you were destines to sin and go to hell since your birth, would you not have been created with the full knowledge that you would only suffer? That's where determinism comes into play. If you say there is an algorithm that implements "free" will, could that algorithm not be used to influence your every action? If your actions are predetermines and you can never escape them, then you may have a will, however that will is not "free". All your actions are solely based on outside stimulus (or lack thereof).

Re:Hahaha

[swillden]

If you have a morally perfect God, how could he *imagine* evil in the first place?

If god cannot imagine evil, how can he have any sense of morality and how, therefore, can he possibly be morally perfect? For morality to have meaning, immorality must exist, and be understood.

You can get free will and choices without being evil.

Not if the key element of and rationale for free will is to allow choice between good and evil.

I won't go deep into this here, but there's a plenty of places where you can find information about what I'm talking about. This one is very good.

It's mildly interesting to see formal logic more rigorously applied to the question than is usual, but based on my (incomplete) reading, that text supports my point. I didn't go into to 3.3 "Indirect Inductive Versions of the Evidential Argument from Evil", but the conclusion of 3.2 is, quite properly, that the inductive step between statements 8 and 9 cannot be justified. The section is just a longer, more-detailed version of my argument that "there is always a possibility that a moral, omniscient and omnipotent god may allow what we think is terrible, but is less evil than not allowing the event, because of some issue of which we are not aware."

Re:Hahaha

[Surt]

Assuming that there are no random processes in the physical universe, which isn't known. Does a radioactive atom have an internal state that defines when it will decay, or does that decay simply happen randomly? We really don't know.

Re:Hahaha

[Surt]

You can't even prove causality there, since its not repeatable.

Well, he's god, so he can unatomize the scientists and repeat the experiment to your heart's content.

Re:Hahaha

[johnlcallaway]

It's far more likely that the concepts of soul, gods, life after death, and the rest are made up by insecure humans to explain things they don't understand and the reason you can't define or prove them is because they are nothing more than philosophical word games.

Like trying to define love or hate. Do they exist, or are the concepts of love and hate merely manifestations of real physical and possibly instinctual processes that we like to romanticize and philosophize over because we can't accept the basic premise that we are, at the core, animals that are governed more by the chemical reactions in our bodies that anything resembling a soul.

Re:Hahaha

[LlamaDragon]

That's silly, everyone knows aliens don't exist.

Re:Hahaha

[c6gunner]

Then He be screwed - because hopefully one of the scientists will have the good sense to challenge him with an omnipotence paradox, at which point he'll admit he's not god and move to Finland.

Yes, well, I wasbeing slightly facetious with my original comment ;)

To be fair, though, being able to violate paradoxes wouldn't be a test criteria for an omnipotent being. Paradoxes like the one you propose are an invention of the human mind - they can never exist because the two conditions you're naming are mutually exclusive.

However, while it might not be reasonable to expect even an omnipotent being to be able to break paradoxes, such paradoxes DO prove that Christianity is wrong. The ideas that "God has a plan" and "God gave you free will" are two mutually exclusive propositions, yet Christians will regularly tell you that both are true. Ergo, since Christianity requires the belief in two contradictory conditions, it's bullshit :) I'm sure such examples exist in other religions too - I'm just not as familiar with them as I am with our Westernized bible-thumpers.

Anyway, that's way too long of a reply in response to what I'm sure was a joke, so I'll end it here :) Thanks for the chuckle.

Re:Hahaha

[c6gunner]

Actualy, no. As any number of people (notably Karl Popper) have pointed out, scientific methods don't actually prove anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Congratulations on being able to re-phrase what at least 5 others have already said. I ignored their comments because I figured they were either screwing around, or were simply being overly-pedantic. I feel the same about your response, but I figured I better answer at least one of you lot.

Look, I'm quite familiar with how science works, thank you. I know full well that, technically speaking, science doesn't "prove" anything. I know that all scientific models are open to challenge at all times, and are never accepted as being 100% correct.

HOWEVER.

This is exactly the kind of wording which causes Creationists to claim that "Evolution is just a theory" or that "science can't prove evolution".

There's a massive difference between the scientific meaning of the words "proof", "evidence, and "theory", and the layman's definition of those same words.

When I say that I have a theory about why Creationists are so stupid, I don't mean that I have a physical model which I have tested through controlled experimentation, and had published in scientific journals - what I really mean is that I have an untested hypothesis. I could use that phrase instead, but that's not how real people speak.

Similarly, in a court of law I can prove that somebody committed a crime, or I can prove to you that it's raining outside, or I can prove that airline travel is perfectly safe. But the word "prove" in those sentences it completely unrelated to the scientific meaning of the term.

It all depends on context. How we're using the words is just as important as what words we're using.

Re:Hahaha

[bunbuntheminilop]

Which ever one that isn't betting on themselves, obviously.

Re:Hahaha

[Roger W Moore]

Who do you trust to remain objective, the scientists or the priests?

It depends on whether the scientists have been down to the bookies recently...

Re:Hahaha

[jeremiahbell]

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.

Re:Hahaha

[jeremiahbell]

I do not, however, believe that people who have studied the concept of "God" less than me are NOT able to rationally conclude there is no God.

That is what I meant to say.

Re:Hahaha

[genner]

Neither.

Both parties have too much invested in their bias.

Re:Hahaha

[AuMatar]

How do you know a time traveler or alien can't change universal constants as well? I mean Q did it. Just because something has an ability that's impossible to humans doesn't make it a god. I can't reproduce asexually, but I'm not about to start worshiping sponges.

That's why you can't prove that god exists. Although as I said, you can't prove the opposite either.

Re:Hahaha

[tabrnaker]

What a joyless world it must be trapped inside one's head.

Have you never really witnessed the kindness of a stranger? The smile of a baby?

God is experienced, you must partake in the world to witness god, you must be whole and complete.

Re:Hahaha

[tsm_sf]

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. QED" "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Yes, it's all been said and done before...

Re:Hahaha

[NeutronCowboy]

Considering your UID, I'd argue that you haven't been around long enough (on slashdot or otherwise) to make any kind of assumptions about who posts on slashdot.

Re:Hahaha

[geekoid]

Give the an effect, and then it can be tested.

There ahve been numerous studies on prayer, that have pretty mush proved it does nothing.

You are correct, it is a perfectly safe set of adds.

Re:Hahaha

[geekoid]

As someone who has study the bible and it's history, no not that Sunday school crap, actual scholarly research and talked to many experts and read historical papers of previous experts, I can say that the bible is mostly allagory.

There is no God.

It is up to the person making the claim to offer proof. Since there is no proof, there is no God.
When you can offer proof, then we can start to discuss if there is a God.

DO you believe pink monkeeys come out of your nose while your asleep and dance a hula around your bed? What if me and 11 of my friends all wrote stories that it happened? what if that book was kept for thousands of years?

OF course not, the idea is ridiculous on the surface. Now if I made you behave a certain way becasue other people believed it was true, would that be ethically right?
Would you believe then? No.

You would need proof. Until such time you would consider it a fanciful piece of fiction.

Finally, I can say "There is no evidence of God's existence'

Re:Hahaha

[James McGuigan]

Slartybartfast never really wanted to be god... he just happened to end up with the role.

Re:Hahaha

[geekoid]

You have it wrong.

It's not the job of everyone to 'disprove' it is the job of the person making such a claim to offer proof.

You should not believe because there is no proof.
Just like you shouldn't believe gnomes dance in your kitchen while you sleep.

Re:Hahaha

[geekoid]

Neither of those prove God's existence at all.
Being nice, and experiencing joy is human nature, not God.

Re:Hahaha

[geekoid]

It is a poor debater that picks apart the analogy at the expense of the point.

Re:Hahaha

[arminw]

....Thus we are unable to prove....

Depending on your definition of proof, you are right we cannot really prove anything. Even in a court of law nothing is ever proved, such as guilt or innocence. The judge and jury weigh the evidence presented by each side, including the testimony and credibility of witnesses and then decide which evidence to believe. In the same way there is certain evidence for and against belief in God. When it really comes down to it, we do nothing on the sure knowledge, but only on belief in what we think is true.

Re:Hahaha

[arminw]

....The fear of dying is so terrible that it guides most part of human philosophy and religion.....

Would that not depend on what else God might have revealed about death? Even on the human plane, none of us can know another person, unless that person reveals him or herself to us. We just had an election where someone named Obama was elected for President. The general population only knows a very limited amount about this man. Only his relatives and intimate friends with whom he personally attracts would know what he has revealed to them about himself.

If this is true of human, how much more is this true or that God who's entirely other than we are? The only way we could know more, as if God chooses to reveal more of himself. There exists a written communication in the form of 66 books penned by 40 writers over a period of about 2500 years, which claims to have been authored by the transcendent Creator God of the universe.

Even if you do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind. Much of it depicts human history written down before it ever took place. Some of this history, written in advance, is taking place right before our very eyes in our time.

For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented in 1439 by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed? Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects, by far, than any other? Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? There are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.

In the King James Version of the Old Testament, the phrase "saith the LORD" occurs 802 times, according to my computer search program. Did God really say those things or are these 802 lies? In Genesis alone, the phrase "God said" occurs 28 times.

I believe that that the God that exists is a communicating God who has given us truth, not exhaustive truth, but enough truth to know and understand what He wants us to know and then orient our lives by. One of these truths is that death is not the end of existence, but only a change of location. The is why anyone who truly believes what God has communicated and done through Jesus no longer fears death. All religious founders EXCEPT Jesus are very much dead and don't even lay claim to having conquered death on our behalf, let alone actually done it.

Re:Hahaha

[Pheonix28]

Just because I didn't register until lately,does not mean I haven't been on slashdot. I've been reading slashdot for years, I just recently registered though. Not everyone on slashdot cares to post comments. I can read the news all I want without ever being registered. As for the math, I clearly said in my comment that the math was wrong.

Re:Hahaha

[HappyEngineer]

The problem here is that people rarely define "God" before trying to prove its existence. If we used "God" in the way that they used it in ancient Greece then any being capable of that level of power really is a god. Proving that one has great power is not hard.

The difference between a god and God would presumably have something to do with whether or not they were the one who created the universe. I agree that there probably isn't a way to prove that.

In short, whether or not a being can be proven to be God is entirely dependant on what the prerequisites for being God are.

Of course, if one uses "God" to refer to the god of a specific human religion then that one is easy. All those religions were pretty obviously made up by ancient people either as a method of control over an uneducated populace or out of craziness. So, the answer to "Is that being the god of religion X." will always be "no".

Re:Hahaha

[arminw]

....A few other tests...

In the end, believing is a matter of choice, of wanting to or not. Someone who does not want to believe, will not believe, no matter how many tests he might make. Would the ability to instantly quiet a fierce storm be sufficient evidence? How about being able to walk on water? Would someone who can feed 5000 men plus women and children by multiplying bread and fish be an adequate test? How about the biggest one of all, raising the dead and shortly thereafter getting cruelly murdered and then rising from the dead himself? Jesus Christ did all these and more. He claimed to be God come to earth as a human, living in a mortal body as you and I do. If someone came to you and made a claim to deity, what evidence would it take for you to accept the claim as truth?

Re:Hahaha

[HappyEngineer]

If I actually saw those things in person then I would believe that something was going on worthy of exploration. As it stands all I see are unreliable words in a book written by a bunch of crazies from thousands of years ago.

I see no reason whatsoever to believe that any of those things happened. I do not believe he walked on water or turned water into wine or came back from the dead or flew up into the sky.

I believe that a charismatic guy like David Koresh honestly believed he was the son of god and went around preaching peace and love.

I believe that others decided that his story needed to be buffed up a bit so they added all the miracle nonsense. When Jesus was murdered they invented the story about being brought back from the dead. Of course, he had to ascend into heaven in the story because otherwise people would ask where the heck Jesus was hanging out if he was still alive.

Seriously, the bible has more holes in it then the Mormon Joseph Smith stories. Yet you decide to accept them rather than honoring the truly good person who Jesus probably was. He may have been a good man, but he was not the son of god.

Re:Hahaha

[PinkyDead]

To be fair, though, being able to violate paradoxes wouldn't be a test criteria for an omnipotent being.

Oh no, I completely disagree with that. The concept of an omnipotent being is also an invention of the human mind, and it is this logically impossible concept that opens the door for the impossible paradoxes in the first place - therefore all I'm doing is fighting fire with fire.

And anyway if you won't let me away with that then I shall be forced to get my god-smoter of infinite power which I keep in the cupboard under the stairs and use it to sort out the remaining 1% as well as any wannabe deities loitering in the vicinity.

Re:Hahaha

[sglines]

If only our bankers were as smart as your average bookie.

Re:Hahaha

[c6gunner]

Oh no, I completely disagree with that. The concept of an omnipotent being is also an invention of the human mind, and it is this logically impossible concept that opens the door for the impossible paradoxes in the first place - therefore all I'm doing is fighting fire with fire.

Cute :)

You're just screwing around with definitions of course. It's akin to taking a waterproof garment, blasting it with a high pressure water jet, and then pointing at the remnants and saying "see, it wasn't waterproof!". Many words can be twisted that way. It's a bit dishonest though, even if it can be quite humorous.

And your second paragraph acknowledges that, so I thank you for being honest :)

Re:Hahaha

[mashiyach]

I don't think it necessarily need to be seen with such philosophical depth.

Most likely the universe from some aspect is a determinstic system, however this doesn't imply that anyone/anything can actually determine the outcome.

When I speak about free will I refer to a system which is capable of "sin" so to say, that is a system which is not prewired to follow certain rules. Consider that you build an expert system, and for every resolution being made you have to care for certain axioms not to be broken. A system with free will, from my perspective, just lacks these fundamental axioms.

I have made an example here (an alter ego) http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=456866&cid=22452670

Re:Hahaha

[Hojima]

There's so much information that I want to argue with you, however I have much to publish before I can get into much depth. What I will say though is that people have a discrete nature that can be "controlled" so to speak. You see, "mind control" has actually existed for quite some time now. The zombie like "mind control" that Hollywood portrays is actually body control, for controlling the mind is actually a matter of influencing a person based on his behavior (politicians do it regularly). Proof of this concept lies in Nazi Germany, and the surge of people suddenly acting against what you would expect to be the normal behavior of a human being. While people have a choice in what they do, that choice is based solely on outside influences and past experiences. If you leave a infant in solitary confinement with only nutrients to survive (sadly an extreme case of this situation has occurred), then that child will become a vegetable, or at best be reduced to the status of an animal. And a vegetable more or less has no will, not even a will of which to live. So human beings are actually "built up" from there experiences and the way that they are built up from the "nurture" aspect is the "nature" aspect. You may say that people lack fundamental axioms, but in fact the experiences of a human being develops or destroys these axioms on a regular basis.

Re:Hahaha

[novemberstorm]

It would be nice to finally agree to separate science and religion. As a Christian and a scientist I accept that these fields should be separate unless you really want to discuss philosophy. Saying you can prove or disprove the existence of God using the profoundly limited nature of the brain must really insult God. Anyway, the Catholic Church discovered may years ago that using religion to suppress science was a monumental disaster. So, let not those professing a "no God theory" make the same blind mistake of using science to suppress religion while bemoaning religion's role of suppressing science throughout our history. Unless they really want to prove the theory that "history always repeats itself".

Independent verification

[retech]

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?

Re:Independent verification

[the_womble]

Worse than that:

• Either there is no God, so there will be no proof of his existence, or
• God has chosen not to prove his existence in a public way, and is therefore extremely unlikely to permit a proof over the course of the next year.

In other words a theist and an atheist would expect this bet to be a pretty sure loser. Who is making these bets?

Aha

[Barradrewda]

So this is what deus ex machina means.

A particle?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Surely God would be something a bit bigger than a particle.

Re:A particle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you see Empire Strikes Back? Size matters not!

Re:A particle?

[chord.wav]

Well, they say God is in every one of us... What size did you expect him to be exactly?

Re:A particle?

[dkleinsc]

No, he could be as small as he wanted to be. And don't call me Shirley.

No wonder...

[Skiron]

...bookies are rich. Remember odds go in as more people bet on it (i.e. more money bet on it), so there are some real deluded people out there betting on this.

I'm confused.

[CyberBill]

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!!

Re:I'm confused.

[aaron alderman]

According to Paddy Power:

Scientific proof must emerge by 31st Dec 2009, to confirm his omnipresence in order for bets to be deemed winners.

4 to 1 that there is a God

500 to 1 Russell Brand is God...

Crazy Irish...

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are clearly confused. As per recent scientific theory God is a being comprised entirely of Higgs Boson, though his corporeal manifestations often are comprised of starch, marinara, and meat. If the Higgs Boson can be proven, then we may finally be able to start studying the ability of this "God Particle" to transmogrify into an Italian dish comprised of noodles, tomato sauce, and beef.

Re:I'm confused.

[Koiu Lpoi]

In short, people are betting that the finding of the Higgs Boson will prove the existence of God. In other words, Paddy Power will shell out a lot of money if somebody can prove god to them, and their odds moved to 1/4 because the Higgs Boson is called the "God Particle". While it's good to know that the public has no idea what this really means, this is so incredibly inane it doesn't even deserve to be on Idle.

Re:I'm confused.

[andersa]

What he said. The bet has nothing to do with whether they find the Higgs particle or not.

Re:I'm confused.

[gsslay]

this is so incredibly inane it doesn't even deserve to be on Idle.

Are you new around here? It's exactly inane enough to be on idle.

All this proves is that Paddy Power know how to use science to pull a publicity stunt.

Re:I'm confused.

[denzacar]

Next Archbishop of Westminster?
Bono 500 - 1

Who will be next Pope?
Bono (Ireland) 1000 - 1

 
So like... If it turns out that Bono is God that should be about at least 2000 - 1.

I'd bet a couple of quid on that.

Re:I'm confused.

[wisty]

Mod parent up, for RTFA, and finding that God must be found by 31st Dec 2009. Note to self, take stake. Either side is better odds than anything on Wall Street!

Re:I'm confused.

[Koiu Lpoi]

Are you new around here?

Lower UID than you, and I lost my first account...

It's exactly inane enough to be on idle.

If Idle is a place to put stories not worthy of even commenting on, then yes, you're right.

Re:I'm confused.

[jeremyp]

"publicity stunt". I think the correct phrase is "confidence trick".

There should be a law to prevent bookmakers from accepting bets on events where they already know the result. There will be no scientific proof of God by the end of 2009 or even 20009.

Re:I'm confused.

[ZeroExistenZ]

There should be a law to prevent bookmakers from accepting bets on events where they already know the result. There will be no scientific proof of God by the end of 2009 or even 20009.

I'm betting for 20010!

Re:I'm confused.

[carambola5]

I'm not sure if this was tongue-in-cheek, but in Leon Lederman's book, "The God Particle," he explains the etymology of the titular boson. He claims that he nicknamed the Higgs Boson as the "God Particle" because his publishers would not let him title his book "The Goddamn Particle," due to the elusiveness of such.

Re:I'm confused.

[Dr. Tom]

Oh, so the Flying Spaghetti Monster is really a Higgs Boson. No wonder they are so difficult to detect.

Re:I'm confused.

[kalirion]

I'm sorry, but if I bet $$ that the existence of God cannot be proven by science, I will not accept that I lost just because someone decided to call the Higgs Boson "The God Particle" and it stuck.

Re:I'm confused.

[EVil Lawyer]

There are markets for betting on the Boson alone. Right now the betting is at 48% that it will be confirmed by 2011. See: http://www.intrade.com/index.jsp?request_operation=trade&request_type=action&selConID=622297 [intrade.com]

But then, proof that a proof is proof ...

[foobsr]

... seems rather hard within the realm of an empirical science.

At least, that was the case in pre-modern times.

CC.

while i'm glad

[circletimessquare]

the LHC has captured the public's imagination, calling the elusive particle in question the "god particle" is obviously just a flowery turn of phrase

unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon your point of view, it has apparently devolved/ evolved into a powerful public relations gimmick

personally, i feel that you want the general public engaged in science, any way you can, even if that involves purposeful misconceptions or blowing things out of proportion. sometimes you need cheap gimmicks to captures people's attentions, and really, what's wrong with that? who cares how you get them in the door, as long as they get in the door

get the general public interested and engaged in scientific questions which aren't even remotely tangentially related to their lives, because for every 10 people who get the wrong idea, and start making bets on silly things like proving the existence of god, as if that could ever be actually settled with a science experiment, there is an eleventh person, perhaps a 13 year old kid, who's imagination is sparked by wonder at the larger concepts in play

sometimes its hard to tell the difference between a misconceived turn of the phrase and a genuine attempt at drawing a larger and deeper inference and connection in a subject matter. who am i, or any of us, to throw cold water on the idea of a god particle? isn't discovering the deeper mechanisms of how our natural world works poetically or literally akin to touching the mind of god, whatever the poetic idea of the "the mind of god" might mean to you, atheist, or religious?

so let the god particle be particle physics' new public relations ambassador. and for those of you who are so literal as to be mediocre: don't poo poo the god particle. milk it for all it is worth. beacuse that 13 year old kid might be the next niels bohr

Re:while i'm glad

[rdnetto]

who cares how you get them in the door, as long as they get in the door

and stay in the door.

Re:while i'm glad

[aaron alderman]

Would the anti-higgs boson be the Devil Particle?

Re:while i'm glad

[QuantumG]

I can't believe that it's been 10 years and you still post with no capital letters. :)

Re:while i'm glad

[Bunderfeld]

personally, i feel that you want the general public engaged in science, any way you can, even if that involves purposeful misconceptions or blowing things out of proportion.

Don't we have enough of this with people stating that the THEORY of Evolution is both FACT and THEORY?

Re:while i'm glad

[HadouKen24]

Only if you're Zoroastrian.

Re:while i'm glad

[db32]

Yeah...it is a damned shame that the public can't grasp the difference between the word "theory" as it is used in every day language and what "Scientific Theory" actually means...

Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena. --National Acadamy of Sciences

Though...unless I am misreading your post...you sound like one of the tools that doesn't understand what a scientific theory is. So hopefully the definition I provided will help you.

Re:while i'm glad

[cparker15]

Except for LHC, apparently.

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[six025]

- "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.

Pascal's Wager

[glwtta]

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.

Re:Pascal's Wager

[Idiomatick]

I believe the devil secretly killed god and took over the holy land (unholy land). And now he tortures all the catholics that pass away. Of course allowing all the atheists to go free. I call it the fuck you pascal wager. In my philosophy class i was the only one to notice the horrible fault in logic, it was depressing (only 1 person in the class was even religious anyways). Also this was touched on in the southpark movie:
.

Hell Director: Hello, newcomers and welcome. Can everybody hear me? Hello?

[taps microphone]

Hell Director: Can everybody... ok. Um, I am the Hell Director. Uh, it looks like we have 8,615 of you newbies today. And for those of you who were little confused: uh, you are dead; and this is Hell. So abbandon all hope and yadda-yadda-yadda. Uh, we are now going to start the orientation PROcess which will last about...

Protestant: Hey, wait a minute. I shouldn't be here, I was a totally strick and devout Protestant. I thought we went to heaven.

Hell Director: Yes, well, I'm afraid you are wrong.

Soldier: I was a practicing Jehovah's Witness.

Hell Director: Uh, you picked the wrong religion as well.

Man from Crowd: Well who was right? Who gets in to Heaven?

Hell Director: I'm afraid it was the Mormons. Yes, the Mormons were the correct answer.

The Damned: Awwww...

Re:Pascal's Wager

[Artifakt]

Pascal was one of the very early researchers into probability, and his wager was set up as a model probabilistic situation simple enough to be studied, in a field that was just beginning. When Pascal created it, phrases such as "non-zero probability" didn't exist yet, and wouldn't until people had reasoned about Pascal's wager, and thousands of other word problems, enough to see a need for such phrases. It's thus not very applicable to the real world, just a tool for teaching some very basic parts of probability math.
        Imagine a very early problem in dynamics, where you have to ignore friction, and nobody has yet figured out how you can have signed terms for velocity, and there's no calculus yet so you can't create a formula for acceleration from what little you do know about the velocity. Pascal's Wager is like that.

Re:Pascal's Wager

[expat.iain]

Looks like a rip-off of Rowan Atkinson's Welcome to Hell sketch.

Re:Pascal's Wager

[Lord Ender]

we advise anyone still not sure of God's existence to maybe hedge their bets for now, just in case.

But this man's interpretation is brilliant! He actually found a way to directly profit off of Pascal's Wager. He is my new hero.

Re:Pascal's Wager

[nine-times]

I believe the devil secretly killed god and took over the holy land (unholy land). And now he tortures all the catholics that pass away. Of course allowing all the atheists to go free. I call it the fuck you pascal wager. In my philosophy class i was the only one to notice the horrible fault in logic, it was depressing (only 1 person in the class was even religious anyways).

Which horrible fault in logic? I'm not a fan of pascal's wager or anything, I'm just unsure what you're referring to.

Re:Pascal's Wager

[E 99]

I don't get it. Pascal didn't believe of the silliness of "picking the right religion."

Re:Pascal's Wager

[glwtta]

It's thus not very applicable to the real world, just a tool for teaching some very basic parts of probability math.

Oh sure, you understand that, I understand that, but it's the people who think of it as a clever theological argument that are annoying.

It's just one of those things that seems to have entered public awareness without any actual understanding of it's original intent. Kind of like how so many people believe that Schrödinger meant to argue that the cat in the box actually is in a superimposed state (that one gets on my tits quite a bit, too).

UK?

[stereoroid]

You'd think the "Paddy" in the name would be a giveaway - it might be a stereorotype, but it's something. Either that or the head office in Dublin... it's like 1916 never happened, and I'm not even Irish myself. Oh well, what else to expect from a bunch of Americans who think Scotland is in England. 8)

Re:UK?

[ChrisMP1]

Oh well, what else to expect from a bunch of Americans who think Scotland is in England.

You're giving us too much credit. Most people I know wouldn't even be able to tell me where they think Scotland is.

It's next to China, right?

Re:UK?

[mooreti1]

Wait....Scotland's not in England? Dammit!

Re:UK?

[LSD-OBS]

Depends on whether you ask an Englishman or a Scotsman

33/1 ? 4/1 ?

[aepervius]

Those are might high odds for such an elusive creature as gods.... I wonder how much they put E.T. existing for example.

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[c6gunner]

Blind faith is the antithesis of being a nerd.

Nonsense. Most of the members here have never seen any evidence of real, live females, yet they believe in them through faith alone. You know what they say - everyone needs something to believe in :)

At the sports book,

[mbstone]

The over/under on the Higgs boson's mass is +147 GeV.

How I wish Paddypower was a betting exhange...

[PinkyDead]

...instead of a straight up bookie.

Scientific proof must emerge by 31st Dec 2009, to confirm his omnipresence in order for bets to be deemed winners.

I would sell my house and bet it all against this, that would be the easiest 25% sucker money ever.

Re:How I wish Paddypower was a betting exhange...

[EVil Lawyer]

I think you can bet on the fact that if this was a betting exchange, the odds would be NOWHERE NEAR what they are now. It would be way less than 1% on god existing, and the trading fees would eat up all of your profits.

Re:For the love of God!

[totally bogus dude]

The Slashdot administration hereby promises to "get rid of Idle" as soon as the existence of God is empirically proven or disproven by Science.

-- TBD, self-appointed ambassador for the administrators of /.

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[Idiomatick]

To be fair we can using genetics/biology, a vast array of history, logic and obviously quantum physics to prove with a high degree of accuracy that women do in fact exist. And rest easy, no theoretical math was used at all (that stuff keeps me up at night ... i shouldnt be on at 4am but i had a nightmare about number theory).

God _can_ be proven if it exists

[KiloByte]

Uhm, wrong. If a god exists and does something -- ie, not necessarily omnipotent but with any potency at all -- his existence can be found out. You cannot prove only god's inexistence, or, the presence of a god who set up the universe in motion but doesn't touch it anymore. That type of a god can matter as he can just silently wait outside for souls who leave the universe, but there's absolutely no way to find out he does exist.

Our inability to prove the existence of a meddling god doesn't mean he does not exist, but it's enough for me to not bet my whole life on such an unlikely thing. A hiding god -- hey, come on -- that's so much against scriptures of mainstream religions that there's no reason to even bother.

Betting on God = Fail?

[Grr, Arg!]

Is betting on the existence of God just a fail/fail?

Assuming God doesn't exist and therefore it isn't proven, you fail.

But if somehow it is proven then it would be a cataclysmic event in this universes history and this event would have huge consequences, or maybe just one. Assuming God exists we must consider how his existence fits in with us at present. It's based around choice and thus belief. Because God cannot be proven (at present) to exist or not exist we we have belief rather than knowledge of his existence. To satisfy that belief we must choose to have faith. Take away that factor and the universe asplodes! Or rather the events that are promised in the Bible will come to pass - the second coming and judgement day. How will the winner of a bet on God respond to this? "Hey God, I'm rich! I just gambled on you!" This poses 2 rather large problems: 1. Gambling is a Sin. 2. "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" - The Bible. Therefore:

Assuming God does exist and it is proven, you fail.

Unlucky!

Re:Betting on God = Fail?

[WaZiX]

wow, that made no sense at all... Are you the author of the article?

Re:Betting on God = Fail?

[Timberwolf0122]

Yes but as Eddy Izzard prophesied the rich did go forth and purchased giant blenders and squirted the liquid camels through th eye of the needle in very fine jets.

A UK bookmaker?!?

[stronger]

Paddy Power is an Irish company you insensitive clod! The one I had chance to work for as web developer - I would surely know if they were from UK.

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[digitalchinky]

No, it's not faith, we have pictures! :-) Lots of pictures. Mmmm boobies.

I read that...

[ciderVisor]

The Authority is not the Creator.

Proving God sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

These fields are "capable of doing anything that's possible" since they actually DO anything that happens (if you push someone down the stairs, these fields are the "thing" that actually create the force on your victims body causing him to start to fall). And they are omnipresent, omnipotent and eternal.

So that bet would be won by just looking up in a physics book, and pointing out that such structures exist.

You can't prove that there is or is not an omnipresent omnipotent entity that can choose whether to act or not : the basic demand of an experiment would be that it would have to be repeateable. Since presumably this entity would tire of those experiments and would stop responding, any experiment that "proves" the existence of God would stop doing so after a while. When God parted the sea in the exodus, that could be said to prove his existence, however, the next day there is no proof left, and anybody could correctly claim that there is no proof God exists.

This is an unsolveable problem : let's assume some idiots' dream comes true today : Jesus comes down from heaven, beats the crap out of every existing army by waiving his hand, throws all muslims and all other unsavory individuals into hell, and builds a final country where he is king and everything is happy.

Would that prove the existence of God ? Well no. There are problems :

• it's not repeateable (it's the end of the world, you just ain't going to do it twice)
• it doesn't "prove" omnipotence, just proves this guy is very, very, very powerfull
• it doesn't "prove" omnipresence, after all how would you know if he missed a terrorist somewhere that realizes that after what happened to his fellow muslims, he'd best stay quiet

Since that would not be accepted as proof, what exactly do you suggest WOULD prove (and be repeateable) that God exists ?

The problem is that the basis of religious dogma, namely that there are eternal, unchangeable and unchallengeable laws that must be obeyed, or dire consequences will follow, is a basic assumption of science. Without that as a given, not a single experiment would be doable, nor would it prove anything.

But you can disprove specific religions :

• islam clearly states that you can't fire an arrow in the direction of mecca. Well I suggest you test just how stupid this is. BTW : this is not like the "contradictions" in the bible, it's not part of a story, islam clearly, directly and plainly states that you can't fire an arrow in the direction of mecca. It states the "arrow would refuse to fly". Since there is nothing symbolic in that sentence or any sentence around it, it's just a plain claim. Or you could check islam's inheritance laws, and notice that they don't add up. Quran 4:11 and 12 clearly specify how to divide the inheritance of a dead man, and in many cases you have to divide 9/7th of the inheritance over the children (and wive(s)). Since that's impossible, and is a direct law, it is wrong.*
• 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.

• The problem of doing this with the bible is that it hardly makes any direct claim at all. Sure it claims that allowing murder will have dire

Re:Proving God sucks

[Kokuyo]

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?

Re:Proving God sucks

[PopeRatzo]

But you can disprove specific religions :

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.

Re:Proving God sucks

[mh1997]

Would that prove the existence of God ? Well no. There are problems :

it's not repeateable (it's the end of the world, you just ain't going to do it twice)

it doesn't "prove" omnipotence, just proves this guy is very, very, very powerfull

it doesn't "prove" omnipresence, after all how would you know if he missed a terrorist somewhere that realizes that after what happened to his fellow muslims, he'd best stay quiet

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.

Re:Proving God sucks

[bestiarosa]

"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."

---
I don't know almost anything about Islam, but I consider myself a Buddhist and I like to study its philosophy. I've never heard any authority claiming that the world exists only as a part of people's mind. Of course claiming that 'it is not possible for people to cause accidents due to "not knowing" something' goes against what is phenomenally evident so no Buddhist authority would ever claim it.

Maybe you have misunderstood some point of the Buddhist philosophy. I sincerely hope you can soon reach understanding of it.

Re:Proving God sucks

[hoogamaphone]

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):

1. Life as we know it ultimately is or leads to suffering in one way or another.
2. Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or people that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness.
3. Suffering ends when craving ends, when one is freed from desire. This is achieved by eliminating all delusion, thereby reaching a liberated state of Enlightenment.
4. Reaching this liberated state is achieved by following the path laid out by the Buddha.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Iron Sun]

Given there has already been rebuttal on the Buddhism claim, I'm calling shenanigans on the "arrow towards Mecca" bit. If that was true, Google would be full of references to it, but there's nothing even close. Also,the inheritance bit does sum properly, as the various clauses are conditional, not additive. Was this a windup?

Re:Proving God sucks

[TheUz]

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.

There is suffering.
It has a beginning.
It has an end.
There is nirvana.
http://www.serve.com/cmtan/Dhammapada/
Pretty easy to check indeed. Well, except for the "end of suffering bit" ... I'll get back to you on that. = ) The parallels betwixt eastern philosophy and subatomic particle physics are legion. Check out "The Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra, for a primer.
Acceptable proof would be observing God, of course. I find flowers to be acceptable proof. They don't have to be pretty to humans to serve their function as plant sex organs ...
Flowers are something extra.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Mr2cents]

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.

Re:Proving God sucks

[mdwh2]

One with omnipresence would be easy to prove. ... If you only need a "mechanical" God, the bet is won already.

That's backwards logic - just because God has omnipresence as a property, doesn't mean that anything that's omnipresent counts as god.

Unless you redefine God to mean "anything that's omnipresence". Yes, you are right that this is a common theist tactic, but all it is is wordplay, and nothing to do with the meaning of the word that's almost always used by the theist who makes the argument, not to mention billions of people on the planet. It's "proof by redefinition". I might as well say "God looks like an old man with a beard" - it would clearly be ludicrous to say that therefore an old man with a beard was God!

(This is a variation of the obviously flawed argument "God is Love, Love exists, therefore God exists"...)

Definitions of God fall into one of three categories:
* Made up definitions that have little in common with the actual god that people believe in.
* Vague unfalsifiable claims ("God created the Universe, and he made everything happen the way we see it").
* Claims which are falsifiable, and usually have been falsified (many of the claims of various religions).

Re:Proving God sucks

[jefu]

I've heard your claims about the quran and the vedas before - do you have any reliable sources?

Re:Proving God sucks

[gardyloo]

One with omnipresence would be easy to prove.

      Perhaps, but only if that omnipresence had gradients or fluctuations of some sort. After all, an omnipresent potential of any magnitude can simply be negated by a gauge transformation, because they lead to fields of magnitude zero.

Re:Proving God sucks

[IrquiM]

Who cares? It's not we that have to prove it, it's the ones making the claim that needs to do that!

Disproving a claim set forth to be unprovable, is actually just plain stupid, and not worth the effort.

Re:Proving God sucks

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

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.

Re:Proving God sucks

[renoX]

>Science is based on faith that the laws of nature are omnipresent and universal

No, not faith: this is an assumption yes, but there are experience which are done to check this assumption.

Very different from faith..

Re:Proving God sucks

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

*ahem* our definition of the word "omnipotent" is problematic. Would you consider someone who can do anything, anything at all, as long as it does not violate mathematics ? (e.g. the person behind the keyboard of the computer that runs the simulation we call "universe" would have exactly that power).

The problem is more with our definition of the word "omnipotent" than with whether God can or cannot do anything. No God cannot make a stone so heavy he can't lift it, because that's a paradox. Does that really place any limit on his power ? Not in any meaningful sense of the word ... A being that can't create paradoxes could still be perfectly capable of changing a frog into a princess ... Or destroying the world ... or whatever ...

Evidence for God is problematic because the concept of God is "too large". If everything is created by God, anything, anything at all, is proof of his existence, so that kinda sucks. And as the AC parent post explains, any miracle that you'd accept as "proof" would quickly fade into history and be denied.

If God is anything like the laws of physics (and everybody claims that is so) you can tell him to fuck off all you want, but you'll just get hurt. The sad thing is, that statement might be correct even if there is no God. (read : "Religion is not about God" for an illustration of that point)

And I'm sorry to say that there's a lot of stuff in this world that you "would not bow to", and that's going to be forced on you. Things like the laws of physics, human nature, religion, law, and what might be called "historical baggage" ... and I'm sorry to say you'll get fucked badly if you indeed do refuse to bow. None of those negotiate with you, and yet force themselves on you. Suck it up.

--
Say Obama, where's my 5000$ ?

Re:Proving God sucks

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

You might mention what Buddhism *does* believe is the structure of the world, if you wanted to make a believeable point.

Re:Proving God sucks

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

So eliminating "delusion" is eliminating all your posessions, like food, even the mere desire for possessions, like the desire to eat ? That's easy. Heck, the banking collapse might make us all Buddhist.

That can only work (and lead to survival) if sollipsism is true ... because ... ahem ... won't that kill anyone who actually tries to do it ? Anyone freed from desire to eat obviously dies. I'd like to state that dieing from hunger is not any way to "end suffering". Just wondering ...

It would also lead to the evident conclusion "the only good buddhist (as in follows buddhism) is a dead one (died from starvation)" ...

--
Hey Barack ... where's my 5000$ ?

Re:Proving God sucks

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I have read enough of those "eastern religions versus 'particle physics'" books to know one thing :

they suck on the particle physics, getting basic things wrong (usually hugely failing why newtonian physics, the ones we're confronted with on a daily basis, DO provide a most excellent approximation. The first thing they do is throwing out newtonian physics, because they directly contradict their other points, usually focussing on "free" energy or other such bullshit)

They ALSO suck on the part of describing the eastern philosophy accurately. Mostly because it doesn't fit. They for example focus on parts that have recently changed, failing to mention that little fact. Or they add stuff to it.

They're no better than Harun Yahya's "atlas of creation", or all the "perpetuum mobile" books.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Raffaello]

Okay I've merely disproven the truth of the quran. After all it contains direct statements that contradict mathematical truth.

You claim that doing so is different from disproving islam. ALL muslims would obviously disagree (and probably kill you and me for it, after all that is what said quran demands they do).

 
 

All literalist, fundamentalist muslims would disagree, but believe it or not, there are modern, progressive, non-literalist, non-fundamentalist muslims, just as there are Catholics who know that evolution is true etc.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Mr. Slippery]

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.

Uh, no. The hole exists in the subjective world of the person who falls into it, as soon as they discover it. That subjective world exists only in that persons mind.

Whether an "objective" world exists or not is irrelevant to the core teachings of Buddhism, which are concerned with the nature and relief of human suffering. If the hole is on a holodeck, or if the whole thing is some Matrix-style illusion, doesn't matter: the relevant question is, what you you do now that you're having this experience of being at the bottom of the hole with a broken ankle?

Of course some stupid ideas have been glommed on to the various schools over the years, but the essence of Buddhism is that 1) suffering exists, 2) suffering is caused by the mental activity we call "desire" or "attachment", 3) a solution to suffering exists, and 4) the solution is the cultivation of a lifestyle and mental habits that reduce desire and attachment-thinking. (More here, if you're interested in my take on it.)

This is not something that can be disproved by digging a hole and watching to see if people fall in.

The problem of doing this with the bible is that it hardly makes any direct claim at all.

It makes plenty. Your apology for the contradictions as "over-analyzed" is curious indeed; given the significance of the book to many in the Western world, of course it's been analyzed a lot. Doesn't change the contradictions. Like "No man hath seen God at any time" in John 1:18, and "And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." in Exodus 33:11. Things like that blow the doors off of Biblical inerrancy.

Of course, not all Christians believe in Biblical inerrancy. Nor do all Muslims belief that the Qur'an is a literal document.

Re:Proving God sucks

[gwait]

In fact with science it is a requirement to always check the assumptions, be a skeptic and never accept any bit of information on faith.

This is why it is so powerful a tool for investigating and understanding the universe.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Raffaello]

You also need to consider that "omnipotent" means something very different when you're not talking about a personal God. If God is immanent (i.e., "divinity is inseparably present in all things"), but not a "person" then "omnipotent" simply means "God is capable of doing everything that happens." But since God is everything that is, this merely amounts to saying, "the Universe does everything that happens."

 
 

The confusion arises when people foolishly think of God as a person, like an old man with a long beard sitting on a cloud who then "does everything" like some sort of aerial puppeteer.

Re:Proving God sucks

[wiremind]

>You make the mistake of thinking that by "disproving" some bit of dogma or scripture that you disprove "certain religions".

He makes no mistake, disproving one thing _is_ enough, to disprove the whole religion.

I'm biased to a christian education, so i'm not speaking for all religions, only christianity.

Christianity claims the bible is Infallible:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness - 2 timothy 3:16

No prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. - 2 Peter 1:21

Yet, the bible if full of prophesies that didn't come true. So God messed up, or he intentionally misinformed us.

So if God inspired All Scripture, and we can find faults in scripture, then we can find fault in God, and if we can find fault in God, then he's not what he claims to be, thus we basically disprove the whole religion.

(i never throught i'd post a religion view on slashdot and have a chance of not getting modded flame-bait )

Re:Proving God sucks

[Raffaello]

Your parent appears to be confusing the Buddhist notion that everything we experience (note italics) we experience because of mind, with the (rather silly) notion that this implies some sort of omniscience.

 

Buddhism holds that all things, i.e., all conceptions, all ideas, are creations of the mind and have no reality themselves, not that the physical universe is somehow created ex-nihilo by an individual human mind.

 

This is the same as noting that all entity demarcations, all supposedly fixed boundaries are arbitrary conceptual inventions, and that in reality, there is not nor can be any fixed demarcation of one "thing" from another. For example, human beings cannot survive much below atmospheric pressure - they simply blow out. In what sense then can it really be said that a human being ends at her skin? Even in space she ceases to be a human being unless surrounded by atmospheric pressure? So musn't the real conception of a human being include a surrounding layer of atmospheric pressure? Doesn't this atmospheric pressure as a practical matter for the overwhelming number of people who have ever lived, mean a planet with a certain mass and a certain atmosphere? Is this planet part of the correct conception of a human being too?

 

The point here is not to redefine what "human being" means, but rather to understand that all such conceptions, categories, things, are more or less arbitrary inventions of the mind, and that reality is much more interdependent and continuous than our (largely verbal) conceptualizations would have it.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Raffaello]

Anyone freed from desire to eat obviously dies.

 

Freeing oneself from desire also applies recursively in Buddhism. One also frees oneself from the desire to be without desire. This is why, when asked what one should do to be a Buddhist, the master Lin-chi said "Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you're tired go and lie down."

Re:Proving God sucks

[nine-times]

Right, God always has the *ultimate* dodge available to him: if an omnipotent and omniscient deity doesn't want proof of him to exist, then any attempt to prove him will, by definition, fail. Even if it's by some miraculous direct intervention by said deity.

Re:Proving God sucks

[arminw]

....But you can disprove specific religions.....

You can't really prove anything in the absolute sense, but only consider whether the evidence you have is sufficient to BELIEVE that evidence. In a sense, everything in life is based on belief, not sure knowledge or proof. When you go to bed at night you don't know for sure that you will wake up in the morning, but you hope and believe that you will. Furthermore, most of what you believe is not something you experience first-hand, but things that you were told by others. Anybody who tells you anything is in effect a witness, just as witness in a court of law. One of the major criteria for whether a witness is believed, is the integrity and credibility of that person. Even in things that you experience or think you're experiencing, you are relying on your senses. There is plenty of evidence that our senses are not always reliable.

Humans have the tendency to attribute anything they cannot explain or understand to what we have labeled "supernatural". I believe that it is impossible for us to tell what we have labeled "supernatural" from sufficiently advanced technology. We spend large amounts of money on things like the SETI project, to try to discover whether we are alone or not in this great big universe. If a visitor from the other side of our galaxy, from the edge of the universe, or even from another universe were to come here, what would it take to convince us that this was really true? If such a visitor demonstrated the ability to instantly control the weather, to walk on water, to multiply bread & fish, make wine out of plain water and demonstrate power over even death itself, would we believe him? If such a visitor demonstrated complete independence from the constraints of time and space, claiming to be God, what would our reaction be? I believe that the transcendent Creator God visited us here on this little third rock from the Sun almost 2000 years ago and is known by the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

Re:Proving God sucks

[cp.tar]

Religion was designed? They must have been using MS Paint.

Nope.

They used MS FrontPage.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Surt]

If evil is the absence of god, it can exist only where he doesn't, disproving omnipresence.

Re:Proving God sucks

[sgt scrub]

Every so called law of nature is mankinds attempt to put the things mankind perceives into understandable terms.

Every so called religion is mankind's attempt to put the things mankind perceives into understandable terms.

How equatable.

Re:Proving God sucks

[ShatteredArm]

and in many cases you have to divide 9/7th of the inheritance over the children (and wive(s)).

It would seem our federal government and the Federal Reserve have been taking lessons in Islam...

Re:Proving God sucks

[Surt]

There's no actual way to prove solipsism wrong. If that were possible, it would have been done by now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

Re:Proving God sucks

[hoogamaphone]

Good point. I should have used the word assumption, rather than faith.

Re:Proving God sucks

[johnlcallaway]

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.

Re:Proving God sucks

[interploy]

Ignorance is a poor choice to refute validity.

As limited as the currently accepted theory of gravity may be, those limitations will not preclude you from death by jumping off the top of a skyscraper. Humans may not have a complete grasp of even one force of nature, but that which is known is quite real. Perception has nothing to do with it. If someone convinces himself that gravity doesn't exist, he will not suddenly become exempt to the forces of gravity. You don't see babies floating around or doing things outside the realms of physics because they have no concept of them.

Ideas like the earth being flat and the earth being the center of the solar system were scientific theories that could be and have been affected and changed by perception. Gravity exists despite our perception, and has been reliably measured and quantified time and again from earth to the farthest reaches thus far measured in space. Even if we discover additional properties of gravity or any other force, it will not preclude what is known now.

We refer to gravity as a theory because, as you say, we have not seen the entire universe and therefore cannot know every property it may have. But, it is also a Law, because it exists outside of perception, and no change in perception will cause gravity to simply not exist.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Draconius42]

So by inversing the polarity of the deflector shields, we can kill god?

Re:Proving God sucks

[johnlcallaway]

Heat and light are things, good is an opinion. What is 'good' to one person can be 'evil' to another. Heat and light are always heat and light. Your argument needs to be improved.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Bob-taro]

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.

I have 2 responses to that sort of "argument":

1. 1) What if God is not omnipotent? There could be a "most powerful" being powerful enough to have created the universe that is not actually omnipotent, but (as an engineer would say) "powerful enough for all pratical purposes".
2. 2) The question doesn't even make sense in the first place. What the heck would it mean for God to create a rock that he couldn't lift? What would it even mean for God (usually considered a spirit) to "lift" a rock like, say, the Earth. You're just saying omnipotence is impossible because omnipotence can't exceed it's own limits in some way. Is infinity impossible because it can't be bigger than itself? IMO, any mathematician who uses this argument for the non-existence of God whilst believing what they do about infinity is being hypocritical.

Re:Proving God sucks

[brizzadizza]

Like blowing too much air into a balloon!!!

Re:Proving God sucks

[Kuukai]

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.

I don't think you quite understand the scientific method. It does rely on undue faith in reason, memory, and the senses, but I'm pretty sure a good scientific model can expand to entail the conditions you describe.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Windows_NT]

I heard when you die, your soul goes to a garage in buffalo ...

Re:Proving God sucks

[hoogamaphone]

"In fact with science it is a requirement to always check the assumptions, be a skeptic and never accept any bit of information on faith.

This is why it is so powerful a tool for investigating and understanding the universe."

I agree with you completely. What I was trying to get at in my post was that when it comes down to it, you can never prove any theory with science; you can only disprove it. Anyone can gather strong evidence in support of a theory, but all it takes is one counterexample to prove the theory wrong.

Re:Proving God sucks

[arminw]

....to always check the assumptions, be a skeptic and never accept any bit of information on faith...

The problem is that rock-bottom assumptions cannot be objectively checked. We assume that the laws and constants of physics have not changed over time, but there is no way we can check this. We assume that our senses are telling us a reliable picture of reality, but there is no way we can really know. In short, there is no way to prove anything. All we can do is weigh the evidence and then either believe or disbelieve what we think the evidence is telling us. For some people there is sufficient evidence to allow them to believe in God and for others that same evidence is insufficient and so they refuse to believe.

Re:Proving God sucks

[tabrnaker]

Maybe the infant died of sepsis because the humans dirtied the sh!t out of the place?

Freewill and all that you know? People bitch god out all the time, they never seem to realize Humans are the cause behind all the atrocities AND the good things in the world. The more we grow out of ignorance and sin/excess, the more we take responsibility for our actions as individuals, communities, nations, people of earth, the more our planet will begin to resemble heaven on earth.

God allows stuff to happen just like we allow our children to fall as they attempt their first step. Eventually, us humans will get it and learn to walk.

Not saying i believe in the existence of a god, just playing devil's advocate :). God isn't required to explain the hell and misery most people live in, nor for creating a heaven on earth.

Re:Proving God sucks

[tabrnaker]

Sure there's a proven way to communicate with god.

It's called energy. We are beings made of energy yet we often forget and believe we're animals fashioned of flesh and blood.

God is the playing field, the quantum soup. Communicating with god is just remembering you're a drop of soup.

Re:Proving God sucks

[tabrnaker]

Eliminating delusion has nothing to do with the doing away of possessions.

Imagine that every object around you is constantly broadcasting a litany of associations, memories, interactions that you have had together. For some people it is easier to get the peace and quiet they need to meditate by getting rid of all those broadcasting sources. Paradoxically, those that require getting rid of their possessions are the ones who are so attached to them that they can't think straight with them around! Eventually, balance is learned.

With food, losing the desire to eat does not change the fact that the body does require nourishment. What is 'lost' is the association that pleasure comes from sensations derived from food. One can in fact still enjoy the sensations of eating, without having the desire to eat.

In this way, i think of lots of christians, buddhists, and scientists, as afraid to go out into the rain. They build little islands of protection, little safe havens from which they don't go out and confront reality.

Re:Proving God sucks

[tabrnaker]

You're assuming that both passages are referring to the same being.

Why do we assume that the ancients were idiots and used different 'names of god' on a poetic whim? Perhaps they used different terms because they were speaking of different entities or facets of entities?

Re:Proving God sucks

[renoX]

Not true: for a short period of time, you can repeat the experiments, so that's not a 'rock bottom' assertion.

For longest period of time, that's harder but you can look at the universe as we're seeing the past, and the proof is for example the 'expansion hypothesis': current scientist in fact think that a certain time the universe had an accelerated expansion as it explains certain parameters of the universe that we observe: so scientists *don't* assume that laws of physics haven't changed with time.

> For some people there is sufficient evidence to allow them to believe in God

Uh? I don't see why you're talking about religion now: we were discussing about Science, those 'evidence' which allow them to believe in gods are not scientific at all..

Re:Proving God sucks

[pixie.pt]

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.

Hardly it would be the case, it's not because you fall that you prove weather people know or not the entire world

Re:Proving God sucks

[E 99]

Since that would not be accepted as proof, what exactly do you suggest WOULD prove (and be repeateable) that God exists ?

The strongest proofs possible for anything are the proofs that are directly and internally perceived, followed by things directly deducible from those. Anything that makes use of the physical senses is reliant on an added layer of interpretation and is therefore susceptible to illusion and resulting fallacy. For example, with "I think therefore I am," "I think" is directly perceived, and "I am is deduced from it." Similarly the fundamentals of logic and mathematics are a common direct perception of the (sane) human mind, and all of mathematics is deduced from those fundamentals. (It remains a problem for some people that there is nothing prior from which we can deduce the fundamentals of mathematics.)

For some people, things such as "God is present with me" and "God is good" is perceived as directly as "I think" is perceived by others. For them, things perceived by means of the physical senses are things that are to be reconciled with the former things, which constitute stronger proofs. Of course, those who don't share those perceptions, discount them in others, maybe even claiming they are not proofs at all. For still others, they elevate impressions from the senses, or even societal norms of thought, as if they were proofs, and even deny things that they can directly perceive, such as "I think," calling thought an illusion.

Re:Proving God sucks

[eleuthero]

Have you considered the possibility that the prophecies not fulfilled are not yet fulfilled?

Re:Proving God sucks

[Mr. Slippery]

You're assuming that both passages are referring to the same being.

That is one of the core belief of monotheism. There are, of course, those who hold that Judaism has some polytheism hidden down inside there, but you won't get far with most Christians if you try to claim that "Jehovah", "God", and "the Lord" are not all the same deity. After all, "I am the Lord thy God," not "I am the Lord, one of thy gods."

Why do we assume that the ancients were idiots and used different 'names of god' on a poetic whim? Perhaps they used different terms because they were speaking of different entities or facets of entities?

I don't know how the original passage in Hebrew works, but here there's no "names", just titles. There's nothing idiotic or poetic about having different titles for the same person, real or fictional.

If I say at one time "I've never met the President of the United States", but I later say "I once met the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. armed forces", I'm either lying, mistaken, or had an interesting meeting between the two statements. (Or a major change in the Constitution occurred.)

Re:Proving God sucks

[Dread_ed]

It is not necessary to move the rock when you are omnipotent. You can just move the whole universe around it or make an ant specifically designed to move the rock for you.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Dread_ed]

Evil is acting in a manner that is inconsistent with the character of God, not the absence of God.

Similarly, evil is not a thing, but a potential. As long as God's character exists the potential for acting contrary to it exists. Claiming that God created evil is like claiming that light makes darkness. As for creating evil, the onus of its creation is on the entity who practices it.

Re:Proving God sucks

[mdwh2]

I'm sure there's more versions than that definition, but yes, that would be the second of my categories.

That's in my opinion what belief (in Christianity) means.

Well, that and the whole "Jesus is the son of God, who came from a virgin birth, and rose from the dead" bit.

Miracles don't exist for science, even if observed, they will be rejected.

Not at all. Science is all about observation. The problem is that religions make claims that cannot or have not been observed, or have been disproven. What is your definition of a miracle? In science, laws are descriptive, not prescriptive - if a law is observed to be violated, then the law is incorrect. The problem is that religions make claims that the laws do not hold, despite vast amounts of evidence to the contrary.

Re:Proving God sucks

[bestiarosa]

I completely agree with your analysis.

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.

In no occasion Buddha said that reality is created by the mind.

What is believe is that parent mistook the Buddhist concept that of karmic retribution where no bad consequences arise unless there is intention to harm with the concept of Solipsism. Of course, Solipsism has nothing to do with (mainstream) Buddhism.

Peace.

Re:Proving God sucks

[bestiarosa]

Honestly, I don't think Buddhism deals with this.

Buddhism is just 4 things, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths

1) Realising that suffering exists;
2) Realising there is an origin to suffering;
3) Realising there is a cessation of suffering;
4) Realising there is a path to the extinguisment of all suffering.

There is no explanation on how things have come to be the way they are. Buddha never dealt with such things. Buddhism is just meant to be a tool to extinguish suffering.

Does your screwdriver tell you how your computer was built? No: it's only a means of disassembling it.

I hope this made things clearer for you.

Re:Proving God sucks

[bestiarosa]

Another intersting wikipedia link is as follows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_evolution

Re:Proving God sucks

[xzm]

God may only be just an ordinary person in HIS own universe, but is omnipotent in OUR universe. Let's say I created a virtual universe running inside a computer with virtual beings in it (think NPCs in an RPG game). That makes me the creator of this virtual universe and makes me the God of those virtual beings. They are argueing all day if the god can create a rock so heavy that he can not lift it. Of course I can create a rock as heavy as I want in the virtual universe. But in my own universe, nope... So if there's a god, he may just be an ordinary being in his own universe.

Re:Proving God sucks

[gwait]

Actually the scientists don't assume that the laws and constants have always been the same, but that's sort of beside your point.

In theory yes, you would be right, you could all be a complete figment of my imagination etc etc, or that all the physics mankind has worked out is a cruel joke by the supreme being and tomorrow we wake up to a land full of purple dinosaurs.

Till then, so far, my world seems to be a fairly consistent place, and acts as if it follows a rational set of laws that humans are slowly discovering.

I agree I do have faith that this will continue and that the "reality" being documented by the scientific method is for all practical purposes the "one true reality", and that those other "realities" described by the world's religion are inaccurate at best, and a complete fabrication designed to hold power over the gullible at worst.

If we agree that the world is a solid and real place, I argue that the scientific method is a far more reliable way to describe and advance our understanding of our universe, and no one is expected to accept scientific theories on faith, unlike in the world's religions where questioning the faith is frowned on, and can get you killed in some circumstances.

 

Re:Proving God sucks

[laddiebuck]

Sorry for being obtuse here, but that just looks like a subset of Stoicism to me. I mean what you just described will be found in a few paragraphs of Marcus Aurelius. What's with *all the rest of it*, the shaved heads and the yoga and all that? Marcus Aurelius didn't proscribe anything; his is a useful, simple, understandable, practical philosophy. Buddhism is not that, yet your four main beliefs would produce something like that.

Re:Proving God sucks

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Actually since science has "accepted" a few things people just aren't willing to accept, atheists don't go "out into the rain" either :

1) the basic algorithm of life is to multiply with errors, then kill off everything except the best specimens (except the top-10 so to speak). Periods of exponential growth end with either massacres of huge die-offs. This is normal, and has been part of accepted theory for over a century now. This is obviously the real problem people have with evolution. If it applies to humans, it means lots of people are going to die at some point.
2) science, even mathematics, will never have the answers to all questions. Worse, we're getting close to proving that a lot of quite interesting questions are independant of scientific theories, but ARE true or false (meaning you cannot scientifically deduct their truth or falsehood, but they are either true or false in the real world). We do know that there are infinitely such problems, we don't know how "essential" they are. Any scientific theory will have this problem, always.
3) science, while it's formation is not dogmatic per se, it is dogmatic for it is describing a world which is quite dogmatic. Dogmatism is the main problem the world has with religious ideas, but science has proven that religion is right in getting that principle correct : the world is dogmatic. The truth is absolute (even if determining the actual truth may be impossible, it's still absolute), unyielding and totally non-negotiable (which is a big problem when combined with point 1 : it means that at some point massacres and huge die-offs will restart. Many people claim they will restart before the population of the world doubles again, which means they will restart within 30 years).
4) Even if much of religious dogma has been "disproven", not all of it has, some of it has been proven. In fact, many religious truths, for example that forcing the "golden rule" onto people, and indoctrinating it into children, is advantageous to society (in fact unless someone finds a way to refute Nash it may become accepted theory that any society that doesn't do this is doomed to extinction). This is not what most people expected from science.

Atheists have stopped being "realists" a long time ago. Mainly due to point 1 being

Re:Proving God sucks

[megrims]

Closed-mindedness is an ugly thing when coming from both theists and atheists.

The origin of our universe cannot be observed and therefore cannot be explained from any perspective, especially a scientific one, but we're a long way from not needing attempts to explain it.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Ctrl-Alt-Del]

Don't forget that this is Slashdot, and therefore naturally biased against the spiritual. Luke 16:31, from the story of Lazarus and the rich man, shows us that some people will never believe, even if they see the dead resurrected. As the general thrust of this whole thread goes, proving the existence of God in a scientific way is essentially impossible, perhaps even harder than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of the heavens :-) For the spiritual, this is the point at which proof ends and faith begins. For the faithless, well, sorry, that's as far as you can go.

Hence the suggestion that you "hedge your bets"... After all, isn't it better to believe and be proved wrong when you die, then not to believe, and be proved wrong when you die?

Re:Proving God sucks

[hoogamaphone]

Buddhism is a lot more than that. I just quoted the "Four Noble Truths" of Buddhism. I'm far from an expert on either Buddhism or Stoicism, but from what I've read (on Wikipedia) the two are quite different from each other. The only similarities that I can see after a cursory glance are that both teach self-control and discipline, although with somewhat different goals in mind.

Re:Proving God sucks

[__aailob1448]

Thanks for amalgamating muslims and terrorists!

Please keep spreading bigotry and FUD on /. for great justice!

Stupid douchy cocksucker.

Re:Proving God sucks

[wiremind]

Unfortunately, their are prophecies are about the outcomes of specific military battles, outcomes that didnt come true.

Re:Proving God sucks

[arminw]

....and acts as if it follows a rational set of laws that humans are slowly discovering....

Has the thought ever occurred to you that if there is a set of rational laws in the universe, there might be a rational lawgiver? We know that human laws don't just happen, but are made by (mostly) rational human beings. We just elected or reelected a bunch of them. Why then should the natural laws which you call rational not also be because of rational processes of thought by a transcendent rational being, God. If there is such a rational transcendent being, who created everything including us, not want to communicate with another rational being he created?

If another human being came to you, claiming to be God, what evidence would you ask for to substantiate such a claim so you would believe that this person was indeed God in human form?

A big problem with the scientific method is that it is only applicable to the present. To determine the truth of history, we have to rely on witnesses, human or archaeological. The most definitive witnesses of history are written records that have come down to us. There is no way to prove by the scientific method that Aristotle Jesus Christ or George Washington were ever alive on planet Earth. The scientific method cannot be used to determine the truth of a matter recorded by a witness from the past. If you are on the jury of a court proceeding, nothing is ever proved to you, but you have to believe the evidence presented, including the testimony of witnesses. You may question the credibility of the witnesses of written history, but it should be uniformly applied principles to guide you, not emotion. The Bible certainly passes all tests of credibility and truth that is normally applied to all historic writings.

Re:Proving God sucks

[TheUz]

None of the books I've read have thrown out Newtonian physics, and are fairly accurate in representing eastern philosophy. If nothing else, I am sure we can agree that physicists are people who meditate on the nature of reality (whatever that means.) Maybe I've just been lucky in the books I have selected, but I find no mention of free energy. Just direct comparisons ... between the things Terence Gray and Neil Bohrs have to say about what is real, for instance.

Re:Proving God sucks

[johnlcallaway]

Closed minded?? I don't think coming to a conclusion is being closed minded. Closed minded is ignoring scientific data because it interferes with a belief structure.

If the religious community can ever provide data beyond philosophical arguments, I'll listen. But every argument ever given about the existence of a god has always been word games, circular logic, or 'I can't explain it, therefore it must be god' type arguments. 'Of course there's a god, the Bible says so'.

Witness the arguments about evolution. 'It seems to be that an intelligence is behind it, therefore a god must have done it'. 'The probabilities are too high for this to work, so a god must have done it'.

A lack of understanding of statistics or scientific methods does not make a counter argument valid.

Re:Proving God sucks

[Tack]

Hence the suggestion that you "hedge your bets"... After all, isn't it better to believe and be proved wrong when you die, then not to believe, and be proved wrong when you die?

All right, Blaise, which god should I believe in?

Re:Proving God sucks

[gwait]

Absolutely I've thought about that, it is one reason that many scientifically minded believe in a supreme being (not me), BUT the god that the Old and New Testament describe are hardly rational. In fact, I find it specifically difficult that the genocidal God of the Old Testament is the same as described in the New. More likely the Old Testament was rolled in to Christianity as a marketing ploy to entice the traditionalists to join the new.

For me, for lack of a more appropriate term, I'm an agnostic - which I define as being interested in such issues, but undecided. There may well be some supreme being behind the universe we see, but I have seen no evidence that convinces me either way. I've read both the Old and New Testament, in no way do I agree that it passes any level of credibility either as a description of our universe or even as a reasonably accurate history lesson. It was written by humans with many different known and unknown agendas - maintain control of the Roman Empire being #1 on the list.

Even the date of the Birth of Christ was moved to line up with the winter solstice. Not the least bit accurate, but since the adherents are never allowed to question, it is good enough for the faithful.

The Christian Bible and the Old Testament while historically significant no more describe the universe to me than Dawkin's tales of flying spaghetti monsters does. I utterly reject creationism and the fake psuedoscience of "intelligent design" as pure fantasy that we're expected to accept on faith by people who want power over my life.

Don't get me started on the "Parting of the Red Sea" nonsense (my god is So Tough, he even parted the red sea! Whoa, dude, that's so cool! Count me a believer!)

Even the core tenement of Christianity (which few Christians seem to adhere to) of "turn the other cheek" to me is such an obvious mind control technique that King James had inserted into his version of the New Testament to keep his serfs meek and mild, making them far easier to control and exploit.

The very thought that "one must be good" else you "go to hell and burn for eternity" is such a crock. If a person is only behaving because of a fear of hell, that hardly qualifies as Actually Being a Good Person. Being good and decent comes from within, not from some absurd fear of red devils with pitchforks.

I can completely understand why so many religious people "just don't get science" when they hold up the bible as an example of "Truth".

In short, if there is a god or gods or what have you, I seriously doubt any religion on the planet is one iota close to the truth of it.

I find it sheer arrogance that the world's religions claim to have the answer to life the universe and everything when their answers were concocted by people with less understanding of the world as a modern five year old.

You are right, if a/the supreme being exists and confronts me, I would dismiss it/him/her out of hand and assume any supernatural special effects were due to clever technology or someone slipping me some acid. Guess I'd probably burn in hell, depending on said being's mood at the time.

All scientific theory IS grey, it is the world's religions who claim black and white.. Except perhaps Buddhism.

Whoa, channeling Dawkins again!

Peace be with you.

Re:Proving God sucks

[arminw]

....You are right, if a/the supreme being exists and confronts me, I would dismiss it/him/her out of hand and assume any supernatural special effects were due to clever technology or someone slipping me some acid....

A person with an attitude such as yours, should not call himself an agnostic, but an atheist, and ignorant atheist at that. Jesus makes it quite clear that belief is an act of the will. You make it clear that you do not believe in God because you have decided in your sovereign will not to and there could be no evidence whatsoever that could change your mind.

Even though you have firmly decided in your mind to disbelieve in God, especially the God of the Bible, you might still be open to a thought experiment.

Assume for a moment, that there is a God, a heaven and hell. Assume that this God has all the attributes of a perfect human being, one that has never done anything that you or most people would consider "evil". In addition, assume that this God has the ability, because he is the creator of all, to impose his will on his creation, which includes you and I. In fact, assume that YOU were this god and wamt to decide on what basis a human being could become a member of your intimate family. In short, you have to come up with a basis upon which to decide whether a person should go to heaven or hell. Since you are good, your overriding desire would be to give every individual human being alive today or that has ever lived on this planet an equal chance.

What characteristics, behaviors or abilities of any individual human being would you apply in order to decide whether to send a person to hell or accept them into your house forever. Would you apply intelligence? Athletic ability? Would an eligible person have to be highly "moral" by whatever definition you gave to that term? Would there even be a deciding factor, or would you simply accept everyone into your house to live with you forever?

Re:Proving God sucks

[megrims]

There's a reason why the religious community will never provide anything other than philosophical arguments; I'll attempt to explain it:

The problem is that "religion" and "science" deal with different matters. The first attempts to explain the origins of "what is", the second attempts to observe "what is". Their fields of scope never cross unless someone applies one or the other to an unsuited situation (re: X is impossible, therefore god).

Scientific data never actually interferes with theories about the origins of our universe because being unable to observe this, it is unable to comment. The scientific process works entirely in the now. We can make projections based on what we've observed, but we certainly cannot disprove or prove anything.

Interconnections aside, religion can be understood much like we understand history. There's annecdotal evidence to support it; plenty of people believe it; there's even bits and pieces that readily submit to experimental observation. However, if you want to pull out any conclusions, you need to act on faith.

And if your annecdotal evidence is first-hand, and survives the various tests of reason, why should you not believe?

Note: I am not suggesting that the theology of your average social Christian (the horror story) is sound or reasonable, just that rejecting the ideas that the Christian has improperly digested on the basis that they are unsound or unreasonable is a little premature.

Re:Proving God sucks

[gwait]

Just because I chose not to believe in your god doesn't make me an atheist. I don't know if there is a god or not (therefore agnostic), and unless I wake up somewhere else after dying I suspect I'll never know. This doesn't mean I'll give up trying. If there is a creator, I believe the Scientific method is the best way to understand him/her/it. The real physical universe is far more beautiful and magical and complex than anything described by the world's religions. If you want a religious goal for humanity it would be to study and learn the works of the creator.
By "works" I mean the physical universe around us, not some 2000 year old propaganda put out by Romans to enslave their uneducated populace.

Accepting a 2000 year old fairy tail on faith - without question - is truly ignorant.

What would I do if I were in the position of a true creator of all the universe? I have no idea, since such a being would be completely alien to my experience.

Why would such a being even be aware of these tiny little creatures in a remote part of a galaxy in a universe that is filled with billions of galaxies, that may indeed go on forever? Thing of a colony of bacteria sitting on the bottom of the ocean about to be engulfed by a renewed lava outflow as you sit on your couch. How would you decide which of these bacteria you should save in your petri dish?

It's a fairly irrelevant question from a human perspective, but since a true supreme being would have to be so much more than human, it is impossible for a human to "know the mind of God".

Re:Proving God sucks

[arminw]

...but since a true supreme being would have to be so much more than human, it is impossible for a human to "know the mind of God"....

You are most definitely right about that. We cannot know the mind of God. However, is that not true also of the human mind? How can you know the mind of your significant other or wife or any other human being unless that other person chooses to reveal it to you. Once another person chooses to reveal what is in their mind to you, you have to decide whether to believe them are not.

Even if you do not accept the Bible as God's revelation of some of His mind to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book. Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Much of it depicts human history written down before it ever took place. For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed? Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects than any other? Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? There are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.

(...Why would such a being even be aware of these tiny little creatures in a remote part of a galaxy in a universe that is filled with billions of galaxies...)

You are right, indeed why should God care about us human ants crawling around on this third rock from the Sun? However, to me that is the very reason why I believe his revelation in the Bible. There we are informed that this awesome transcendent God, existing outside of the limits of time and space, telling us that he cared enough to confine himself to a human body, becoming mortal. He came here in the person of Jesus Christ, to invite anyone who wishes, to share in his eternal existence with him in his presence forever. You can, as I have accept the invitation by faith or reject it. There is no way that either you or I or any human being can figure this out logically. It can only be believed or not.

Re:Proving God sucks

[gwait]

There lies the crux. You believe the Bible is from the mind of your god, and I believe it is from the minds of humans, and there is no evidence at all that it contains one single word from the mind of a supreme being, and do not believe in the supernatural events it describes.

We simply must agree to disagree, and move on.

Re:Proving God sucks

[arminw]

....We simply must agree to disagree, and move on....

I suppose that you are right about that for now. After you draw your last breath and I draw mine, we will learn who was right and who was wrong. I personally believe that I have made a safer bet than you.

Re:Proving God sucks

[d_54321]

Could that second bullet point about Buddhism be rephrased as follows?:
"Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures, such as certain sense of existence or selfhood. Thus if you think you exist or have a self, then you are causing yourself pain."

 

If so, then I have a problem with Buddhism. (Namely, I rather like the idea that I exist, and I don't believe giving up my sense of self is the best way to end my suffering; or if it is, then ending my suffering is not such a great idea.)
Else, please explain the difference (besides me chopping out the other examples of worldly pleasures).

 

Also, I take issue with this wording:
"Science is based on faith that the laws of nature are omnipresent and universal"
Science is based on trust that the laws of nature are omnipresent and universal.
Trust is that which is accepted based on evidence. Faith is that which is accepted without evidence.

Re:Proving God sucks

[hoogamaphone]

Could that second bullet point about Buddhism be rephrased as follows?: "Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures, such as certain sense of existence or selfhood. Thus if you think you exist or have a self, then you are causing yourself pain."

If so, then I have a problem with Buddhism. (Namely, I rather like the idea that I exist, and I don't believe giving up my sense of self is the best way to end my suffering; or if it is, then ending my suffering is not such a great idea.) Else, please explain the difference (besides me chopping out the other examples of worldly pleasures).

No they are different statements. First of all pain and suffering are different concepts entirely. While it is true that pain can sometimes cause suffering, this is not always the case. Secondly, Buddhists believe that everything that exists is in a constant state of flux (this belief is called impermanence) which is one reason why clinging to worldly possessions causes suffering; they are impermanent, and eventually they will be lost. The concept of self implies something that is permanent and unchanging. If you read carefully, the second bullet point says that clinging to a certain sense of existence causes suffering. Here's what wikipedia says on the subject:

Anatta (PÄli) or anÄtman (Sanskrit) refers to the notion of "not-self". In Indian philosophy, the concept of a self is called Ätman (that is, "soul" or metaphysical self), which refers to an unchanging, permanent essence conceived by virtue of existence. This concept and the related concept of Brahman, the Vedantic monistic ideal, which was regarded as an ultimate Ätman for all beings, were indispensable for mainstream Indian metaphysics, logic, and science; for all apparent things there had to be an underlying and persistent reality, akin to a Platonic form. Buddhists reject all these concepts of Ätman, emphasizing not permanence, but changeability. Therefore all concepts of a substantial personal self are incorrect, and formed in the realm of ignorance. In the Nikayas, anatta is not meant as a metaphysical assertion, but as an approach for gaining release from suffering. In fact, the Buddha rejected both of the metaphysical assertions "I have a self" and "I have no self" as ontological views that bind one to suffering.[53] By analyzing the constantly changing physical and mental constituents ("skandhas") of a person (or object), the practitioner comes to the conlusion, that neither the respective parts, nor the person as a whole comprise a self.

Note here that the Buddha rejected both statements "I have a self" and "I have no self".

One example of how clinging to your sense of self might cause you suffering is the following: You will die one day, and your "sense of self" will end; thus, as you cling vainly to your sense of self, you will be suffering. This is only one example, and I'm sure it's not the best, but I'm sure that you can think of another.

I respect the fact that Buddhism might not be right for you. In my original post, I was not trying to push Buddhism on anyone, or assert that it's correct in all aspects. I was merely trying to correct another poster's mistake. I encourage you to read more about Buddhism and educate yourself about its beliefs and practices, if only to be able to know exactly what it is you are rejecting. Wikipedia is a good start.

Also, I take issue with this wording: "Science is based on faith that the laws of nature are omnipresent and universal" Science is based on trust that the laws of nature are omnipresent and universal. Trust is that which is accepted based on evidence. Faith is that which is accepted without evidence.

I agree with you 100%. As I said to someone else, I shouldn't have used the word 'faith'. 'Trust' is a much better word to use there.

Re:Proving God sucks

[d_54321]

Thank you for clarifying. I did grab a Buddhism book a few weeks back; haven't gotten around to reading it yet- need to finish with my Satre & Rand books first.

Re:God is a proper name.

[radja]

God's not a name, it's a profession or a kind of creature. for christians it's the only one, and since they can't mention his name, his profession is capitalised. what if it turns out that Zeus, Hera and Poseidon exist? in that case, god should not be capitalised.

Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

Of course you can prove that god doesn't exist.

Dead bodies don't rise from the dead.

People can't walk on top of water without cheating.

No one can ascend to the heavens without cheating by using technology.

Omniscience isn't possible given the speed of "c".

The same goes for omnipresence and omnipotence.

Omnipotence also violates the second law of thermodynamics.

The list goes on and on and on. So many scientific theories and laws of mother nature provide direct testable evidence that no gods are possible in objective reality.

It doesn't even take accurate scientific theories to prove god doesn't exist. Newton's Laws work just fine... Einstein just puts the nail in gods coffin.

Remember valid scientific theories tell you as much about what is possible as they tell you about what is NOT possible.

Newton proves that it's not possible for a human being to jump from the Earth to the Moon without the aid of technology.

Face it, god is a belief stricken faith based delusional myth that has gripped and stolen the lives of a huge portion of humanity.

It's easy to see what happens after death: we rot and are eaten by bugs and scavengers or we are consumed by fire on Earth. No magical ride to the pearly gates. No utopia awaits. Not even blackness for once your bio-electro-chemical brain functions and cell functions cease you're dead and can no longer perceive nada. No magical "soul" that leaves your body... just a cessation of the biological processes that provide you with the illusion that you are you. In fact you are many billions of cooperating cells that simply stop.

Delusional fantasies of an afterlife for each of us after our deaths only provide comfort against the harsh realities of nature.

Live your life to the fullest. Live your life minimizing the harm you do to others - preferably no harm to others. Don't support others who would harm others.

What is your purpose in life? Other than survival life has whatever purpose and meaning that you choose for it, even if it's a delusional fantasy. It's just better - in my humble opinion - to live one's life closer to objective reality than living it with delusional belief stricken delusions that stifle one's thinking requiring one to suspend critical thinking just because on hopes that the universe will spare each of us our own personal universal cold death.

Peace.

Oh, and if you want to have your "faith" - aka stupidity - in magic then fine be stupid and believe all you want in magical invisible non-existent mythological super beings all you want, just don't make anyone else join your death cult.

Remember to kill god if you see him for he has a large list of crimes against humanity stacked up.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[mcvos]

Of course you can prove that god doesn't exist.

Dead bodies don't rise from the dead.

People can't walk on top of water without cheating.

How exactly do you plan to prove that? You can only prove that the bodies you've examined don't rise from the dead, or that most/normal people can't walk on water. This doesn't prove in any way that God doesn't exist. Only that the laws of physics seem to apply most of the time.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[Dunbal]

Remember to kill god if you see him for he has a large list of crimes against humanity stacked up.

      That was funny :)

      Being an atheist, I share your view. Having been clinically dead for a few minutes due to a heart attack a few years back, I kept getting into arguments with the religious about my lack of a "near death experience". It was in fact like a switch. Didn't perceive anything at all, until I started perceiving again after being reanimated. Of course these nutcases even dare to tell me I am "remembering it wrong" because it doesn't fit their ridiculous fantasies. Yeah, I'm wrong.

Now I just avoid them. They are idiots, they cannot be salvaged, and frankly I want nothing to do with them. Life's too short and I have other things to do with my limited time.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[paragon1]

If an ant demanded you explain your existence to it or it would not believe in you, what would be your response?

By the way, "laws" of science are apparent laws from our singular perspective. It isn't reasonable to assume a supreme being would be subject to them.

I thought you atheists were supposed to be the open minded ones? You passionate ones are just as bad as the priests that encourage "jihads" and "crusades" for the sake of their gods.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[darkstar949]

Wasting my mod points to say this, but since these arguments always seem to pop up in these types of discussions, here goes.

Omniscience isn't possible given the speed of "c".
The same goes for omnipresence and omnipotence.
Omnipotence also violates the second law of thermodynamics.
The list goes on and on and on. So many scientific theories and laws of mother nature provide direct testable evidence that no gods are possible in objective reality.

These arguments against any sort of higher being such as a god are flawed since they assume that such a being is required to play by the same rules as the rest of us. Without getting into theology you can counter this with an example of a programmer and a simulation. For the programmer, it is possible to write a simulation in such a way that the inhabits of the simulation are unaware that they are in a simulation and subject to the rules of the simulation; think of something along the lines of Conway's Game of Life. Since the programmer is outside of the simulation it is possible for them to see everything that is going on in the simulation and assuming that they are intelligent enough to know the fine details of the simulation they can even predict the long term outcomes (omniscience). Likewise, depending upon on how their view into the simulation is designed, they can even see everything that is going on (omnipresence). Being able to do multiple things at once is a bit trickier, but since they wrote the simulation, there is no rule against them using agents that they control to interact with the simulation. From the perspective of someone with in the simulation, these agents would all appear to be the same entity.

Anyways, this likely isn't the best counter example, but I'm just trying to point out the fact that the existence of a god or gods cannot be disproven solely by the application of our own understanding of the laws of nature.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[FatAlb3rt]

I find it incredibly ironic that in an article about the LHC - in which we're trying to push the bounds of our understanding of science - you take our current understanding as proof that God doesn't exist. Then you take it a step further and denounce faith as stupidity.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[Tony Hoyle]

Even funnier is the original story had *nothing* to do with the LHC, and was linked to a campaign by Richard Dawkins.

http://www.gamingalerts.co.uk/news/industry-news/Bookies-hold-bets-on-whether-God-exists3699.html

Quote:
"efore the controversial "Their probably is no God" Bus campaign designed by Richard Dawkins, odds on a God existing were a decent 33-1. However now the campaign has resulted in the odds being cut to only 4-1."

The LHC angle is a uniquely slashdot take one it.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[Surt]

Dead bodies don't rise from the dead.

Well, not often, depending on your definition of 'dead'. Of course if you define dead as the point at which bodies stop rising, you have a nice logical circle.

People can't walk on top of water without cheating.
No one can ascend to the heavens without cheating by using technology.

Again, define anything they do as cheating, and it becomes a nice logical circle.

Omniscience isn't possible given the speed of "c".
The same goes for omnipresence and omnipotence.

Assuming god plays by that rule, and exists inside of the known universe

Omnipotence also violates the second law of thermodynamics.

Again, what's the point of being omnipotent if you have to obey the physical laws of the universe?

There is no way to prove god exists or doesn't. It's just not a testable hypothesis.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[E 99]

Of course you can prove that god doesn't exist.

Dead bodies don't rise from the dead.

People can't walk on top of water without cheating.

No one can ascend to the heavens without cheating by using technology.

Uh, you do realize that just stating those things don't constitute proof, right? You'll find that the New Testament documents those things happening. You can say it's all lies. But it's silly to say you've proven it by never having seen those things happen.

Omniscience isn't possible given the speed of "c".

The same goes for omnipresence and omnipotence.

Omnipotence also violates the second law of thermodynamics.

The list goes on and on and on. So many scientific theories and laws of mother nature provide direct testable evidence that no gods are possible in objective reality.

You may need to recheck your scientific theories. Not one of them comes close to including the scope of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, or any other concept of God. Scientific theories pertain to the natural world -- space, time, and the things within it. Wherever the concept of God is, (or the concept of Tao which is similar) it is a concept of that which transcends time and space, yet is present within it. There is no area of scientific investigation that has touched on these things or is capable of doing so.

Newton proves that it's not possible for a human being to jump from the Earth to the Moon without the aid of technology.

...uh, I guess you could say that he correctly theorized the amount of impulse that would be required to propel someone there, less atmospheric effects. Not sure what that has to do with God. Maybe you're thinking of Revelation, in which John saw a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet, and think that Newton disproves this! That would certainly be news to Newton! Maybe you need to take Visions 101.

You seem to claim a certain of knowledge of the non-existence of the soul; and a certainty that life and consciousness, and thus the afterlife is an illusion. Where does your certainty come from? It seems like you are the one engaging in a faith-based delusion of imagined knowledge.

You even express anger at a God that you claim to be certain doesn't exist. Somewhere, a psychotherapist is salivating at the idea of getting you on the couch.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

It's called applying critical thinking to actually think it through.

Any dead body that has passed cell death, brain death and organ death can't rise from the dead as processes have stopped and won't start again, brain death has occured and won't start again, organ death has occured and they won't start again, and cell death has occurred and all your trillions of cells won't ever start again. They turn to goo and information is lost forever.

It's only your hope that there is a god that keeps your pathetic attempts to claim there is one alive.

Science crushes the mythologies and the very notion of a god in so many ways that it's not possible for any gods to exist. Not even those elected gods.

Sorry to be the one telling you the harsh news about existence. Get used to it for it's all we got and no delusional fantasies will save you. You might be happier with reality. Check it out sometime.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

I'm glad that you lived to tell us what you didn't experience.

As one bio-electro-chemical-information-processing-system to another, make it a great life!

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

Any "higher being" as you put it would be required to play by some rules of some sort of physics otherwise said being could not exist. Oh wait, the religious nut jobs do in fact claim he (god) is immaterial and thus doesn't exist! They actually do say that their god doesn't exist! Kinda funny when you think about their round about logic.

There is no outside of the universe for the universe includes all that exists! Doh!

Yes, you can prove that you are NOT living in a simulation now. Think about it and test your thinking against that harshest of mistresses, Objective Reality for Mother Nature always is the final judge and more often than not overrules our pathetic ability to think.

It's so easy to believe rather than think. That is the major problem that people have, the inability to distinguish when they are believing something as opposed to when they are actually thinking rationally beyond belief and that those thoughts have any correlation to objective reality in any way.

It's not enough for your thoughts to be cogent, they must be cogent and connected to the actual objective reality that exists us into being.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

I don't see the irony you speak of, please clarify if you can. Thanks.

We will never find any gods by pushing the bounds of our understanding of objective reality since the results we have so far are conclusive that no such mythical beings are possible in objective reality. Nature is the final judge not us. She has shown her cards. All further science will do is confirm this till the end of the human race.

Science of course is worthwhile for us to pursue as it can improve our lives and might one day save us as a species to live another day.

Faith has no place in science. Of course I mean to say that the vile belief stricken delusional faith of mythical gods and associated dogma have no place in science or even modern life.

Faith is stupid because it makes people stupid. They believe BY FAITH that Jesus rose from the dead after his body was brain dead, organ dead and many of his organ systems had already begun to decay. There were no emergency paramedics or emergency room doctors to zap his heart back alive within the limited few minutes of his "heart stopping" to revive him. Yet they believe that after three days of rotting he magically came back to life. It's stupid. Anyone with any knowledge of hunting or biology or farming or life can easily see that the story of Jesus coming back to life is just that, a bed time story for kids that is no different than the story of Santa Claus. That is why faith is stupid. It blinds you from using your actual brain to separate the mind poo thoughts like jesus from those thoughts of real life that could actually make a difference in your life.

I have no faith in science. If I did I'd make a bad scientist!

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

>There is no way to prove god exists or doesn't. It's just not a testable hypothesis.

You are deeply mistaken. You can use the existing and well tested laws of science and mother nature to prove without any doubts that no gods could even possibly exist - inside or outside of our universe!

*(There is no outside of the universe thus it's all the same).

By death I mean the point of no return given the standards of modern medicine. Since Jesus was supposedly saved by magical means (fairy tales) it's sort of moot anyhow since faith based nut jobs ignore science anyhow just like you are doing.

Science proves what can be and it also proves what can't be.

You can't magically get out more energy than you put in.

You can't rise from the dead after organ, brain and cell death. Not in objective reality.

Only in fantasies and stories can people rise from the dead. It's when you take those stories and believe they are true based upon faith that you become delusional and disconnected from objective reality.

The only afterlife we have is if anyone we know remembers us after we have died and the bugs get to eat our corpses. Yum. Enjoy your life while you have it.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

>Uh, you do realize that just stating those things don't constitute proof, right? You'll find that the New Testament documents those things happening. You can say it's all lies. But it's silly to say you've proven it by never having seen those things happen.

No it's not silly at all since it's the application of what we do know about how the world/universe works, given our even basic levels of science.

For example, bodies rot. Three days rot (even considering primitive embalming type processes even if they were applied) would have made a mess of the man named Jesus's (if he existed at all) body. A putrid stinky rotting mess. Bugs. Bacteria gone wild and partying like there is no tomorrow! Ick.

Dead bodies rot and decay. Fact of life. Get used to it. No story book fairy tale (the bible) will ever be able to override these facts of life with incantations of meaningless words hoping that you'll fall for their con job.

Mother Nature (not that she exists as a living being) trumps and destroys your myths.

Science regularly relies up on proving the negative by ruling it out with the well known and well tested laws of mother nature. Objective Reality is a bitch. Get used to it.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

>Not one of them comes close to including the scope of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, or any other concept of God.

In fact many laws of science (really nature) prove that no being - no nothing - can be or could ever be omniscient, omnipotent or omnipresent. The very fact that there is a speed limit, c, in the universe proves this beyond any shadow of any doubts.

Certainly of knowledge that there is no afterlife and that the mythical soul doesn't exist come from learning about Nature, Laws of Nature, biology, chemistry, physics, information science, and much more. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out.

Go to a farm and ask the farmer to kill a chicken in front of you for you to take home. Take it home and put it into a pot. Now let it sit there for three days and you'll see why Jesus couldn't have resurrected. It's called testable science that you can do yourself.

Fill a bath tub with water after removing everything else from the tub. Step into it when the water is at least a few inches deep. No one will ever be able to walk on the surface of that water! Unless it's ice but that's cheating now isn't it. Proof that Jesus didn't and couldn't have walked on water proven ever single time you step into or out of your bath or a swimming pool or a lake or a river or an ocean!

Only stupid fools believe in magical super beings - since the evidence proves that magical super beings are just that, mythical fantasies (and seriously dangerous myths in the hands of unethical nut jobs who kill real actual living people in the name of their nonexistent and immaterial gods).

>You even express anger at a God that you claim to be certain doesn't exist. Somewhere, a psychotherapist is salivating at the idea of getting you on the couch.

As for any anger about god that is directed at what does actually exist, the vile and evil (as in doing harm) people who perpetuate the notion of a god existing. It's people who believe or have faith in god that are the ones out there doing a great deal of harm in their mythical savior's name. I'm angry at them (including those in my own family). I have no need of any psychotherapist for this health anger. Yes, healthy anger for it is yet another defense against the mind destroyers like yourself who promote ignorance over knowledge and dogmatic stupidity over observation.

Believe your faith based nonsense as you wish. I prefer objective reality as it is not as I want it to be.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[darkstar949]

Any "higher being" as you put it would be required to play by some rules of some sort of physics otherwise said being could not exist. Oh wait, the religious nut jobs do in fact claim he (god) is immaterial and thus doesn't exist! They actually do say that their god doesn't exist! Kinda funny when you think about their round about logic.

I regret to say it, but I think you might have missed the point of my argument as I was merely trying to provide an example of how science isn't necessarily suitable to solve a philosophical argument. Additionally, as you note, a higher being would be subject to the rules of some sort of physics; but, the point of my argument was that the higher being would not necessarily be subject to the same physics that we would be subject to.

There is no outside of the universe for the universe includes all that exists! Doh!

Yes, you can prove that you are NOT living in a simulation now. Think about it and test your thinking against that harshest of mistresses, Objective Reality for Mother Nature always is the final judge and more often than not overrules our pathetic ability to think.

It's so easy to believe rather than think. That is the major problem that people have, the inability to distinguish when they are believing something as opposed to when they are actually thinking rationally beyond belief and that those thoughts have any correlation to objective reality in any way.

I disagree with your assessment that you can conclusively prove that you aren't living in a simulation, this is a subject that tends to enjoy debate in philosophy and Wikiepdia has a good jumping off spot for it in their Simulated Reality article. However, even if you are living in a simulated reality, the better question is always going to be along the lines of "If you are, what impact would it have?" If it were to be proven right now that this is all a simulation, outside of the questions of "Who, how, and why?" what impact would it have; likely, not much as you would still be subject to all of the rules of the simulation and life would still go on as it has for as long as you have known it to be going on.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[Surt]

If you or science can prove that god/gods do not exist, there are book publishing deals waiting to make you quite rich. Very smart people have thought about this for a long time. There is no way to prove it.

We don't know if there is an 'outside' to the observable universe (there almost certainly is, but we're not quite there yet scientifically). Of course, to some definition, that larger thing in which 'our' universe exists could be called the universe, but among scientists is more typically known as the multiverse for purposes of differentiation.

An entity which most religious believers would accept as god might exist in the multiverse, we don't know. Most skeptics would of course not accept such an entity as God, even if that entity created 'our' universe.

And of course you can get out more energy than you put in, else the universe does not exist.

People have come back from the dead from both heart and brain death. You have to draw the death line surprisingly far out to make sure that no one comes back from it.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

I missed nothing. This has nothing to do with philosophy. It has to do with simple facts of nature. Proven facts of nature. Proven laws of nature. It is these laws that inform us about the rest.

Any higher being wouldn't be able to interfere in our universe since the laws of nature in our universe would prevent that. Can't violate c. Sorry.

Also since our universe is defined as all that is it would include any higher beings within it!

You can postulate all you want about some mythical higher beings. They will always be just that, mythical and not so higher being since they exist only within your limited brain.

It matters not whether or not you agree or disagree with me and in fact my opinion and clarity or lack of clarity in how I explain things all matters not for Objective Reality is the way it is and isn't the way it isn't. Objective Reality is the final judge. Get out into Nature and TEST IT against your silly theories. When you have actual evidence then come and say hey look this evidence and this falsifiable theory demonstrate X. Until then you're just spewing mind poo whether that mind poo is bad science or good (yet evil and vile) religion.

Clearly our universe is NOT a simulation. Given the known laws of physics it's not possible for it to be a simulation. Quantum Physics prevents it. I know that's not very easy to get but it's the case.

Saying that you are in a simulation is no different than saying that there is a mythical higher being called god, for would not those running the simulation be gods?

Again you can postulate anything you want. However, Objective Reality in all her harshness rules in the end as the final judge of what is real and what is not real. And it does so without any consciousness nor intelligence.

It's only silly science fiction fans and religious nuts who believe that we are living in a simulation or a god based reality.

Sure I enjoy science fiction and fantasy and entertainment as the next person does, but I clearly delineate the two. Objective Reality is what is real and that's where I live.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

>If you or science can prove that god/gods do not exist, there are book publishing deals waiting to make you quite rich. Very smart people have thought about this for a long time. There is no way to prove it.

Yes, there is a way to prove it. It's called science which rules things in and rules things out. Gods are ruled out. Why do you think they tortured all those heretic scientists all those centuries? They didn't want the actual truth about objective reality getting out.

Yes, and those very smart people have been wrong!

I am working on a book. There already are books that describe proofs, very good ones, that gods can't exist. They were also written by very smart people - much smarter in fact since they distinguish objective reality from fantasy in thought. It's just that you can't get it.

Yes, by deduction we do know there is more than the observable universe. I wasn't talking about the observable universe I was talking about the ENTIRE universe!

There is no evidence of a multiverse nor of other universes. It's mind poo thinking as they are just theories without evidence and although that's better than mythical beliefs about non-existent immaterial gods it's not that much better. (Theorists have a tough time with 'show it to me').

>An entity which most religious believers would accept as god might exist in the multiverse, we don't know.

Yes we do know. We know by deduction from the current well known and well tested laws of nature. Objective Reality permits no gods within or without of our universe.

It's just you that want a god. Why do you want a god? To save you from your personal death? If so you are pathetic. Live your life NOW! It's all you get.

>People have come back from the dead from both heart and brain death. You have to draw the death line surprisingly far out to make sure that no one comes back from it.

No one has come back from cellular death nor brain death. Sure some have come back from a stopped heart but that's not really heart death from which no one has ever recovered.

You seem like a nice person but you've got a lot to learn about science and objective reality. I suggest that you ditch your bible and pick up ten or fifty books and classes on critical thinking and do some learning and most importantly some belief deprogramming! Learn to separate the mind poo that your brain is having you think and type from the real good stuff, actual critical thinking that reflects objective reality to a very high degree. Also keep in mind that the vast majority of ideas about the nature of objective reality have been proven WRONG!

Re:Universal Cold Death

[darkstar949]

I missed nothing. This has nothing to do with philosophy. It has to do with simple facts of nature. Proven facts of nature. Proven laws of nature. It is these laws that inform us about the rest.

Sorry if I confused you, but I was talking philosophy since my original comment several levels up.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

You didn't confuse me at all. There simply isn't much need for philosophy when the facts of Nature are quite clear to us now, clear enough at any rate to eliminate all possibilities of any gods existing in objective reality.

>These arguments against any sort of higher being such as a god are flawed since they assume that such a being is required to play by the same rules as the rest of us.

You can spew forth all you want about philosophy however you are clearly one who forgets to test your philosophy against the rigors of Objective Reality. Almost all of philosophy doesn't map to Objective Reality at all and is thus simply mind poo. It's important to be able to distinguish when that is the case.

Nature prevents any "being" or "entity" from NOT being bound by the Laws of Nature. So it's not an "assumption" it's a necessary requirement of Objective Reality that all play by the same rules. Actually there simply isn't an alternative. If you think there is then jump to the moon to prove it!

Re:Universal Cold Death

[darkstar949]

There simply isn't much need for philosophy when the facts of Nature are quite clear to us now, clear enough at any rate to eliminate all possibilities of any gods existing in objective reality.

Alright, I'm not sure if you are trying to have a serious discussion, if you are trolling right now, or if we are talking in two separate directions. Sorry if that offends you, but I've never really encountered anyone that says that philosophy is not needed anymore due to the laws of nature being understood. Too many fields, such as ethics, use philosophy as a base upon which to start working. Also, going back to the original comment of mine, the whole thing was a gedankenexperiment as an example in which a higher deity would not be subject to the laws of nature as we know them to be. Gedankenexperiment's, by their very nature, do not have to be able to test their claims.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

I am only interested in serious discussions.

I'm saying that you don't need much of any philosophy to determine that gods can't exist in objective reality given the well known and existing laws of nature.

I'm not saying that philosophy doesn't have it's place. The problem with philosophy is that few people don't test it against objective reality thus they'll (or you'll) believe just about any mind poo that comes around.

Everything within our universe is subject to the laws of nature!

Point in fact, your mythical god concepts are subject to the laws of nature as you compute them in your brain. That's also the only place they exist.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[mcvos]

It's called applying critical thinking to actually think it through.

Any dead body that has passed cell death, brain death and organ death can't rise from the dead as processes have stopped and won't start again, brain death has occured and won't start again, organ death has occured and they won't start again, and cell death has occurred and all your trillions of cells won't ever start again. They turn to goo and information is lost forever.

What does that have to do with a proof of the non-existence of God? All it proves is that according to the laws of physics a dead body can't come alive. It says nothing whatsoever about the existence of a God, who, if he has created the universe, has to be above the laws of physics anyway.

Clinging to the laws of physics won't help you when you're trying to prove or disprove God.

It's only your hope that there is a god that keeps your pathetic attempts to claim there is one alive.

I'm not claiming anything here. I'm just pointing out your logical fallacy. Presumably a pathetic attempt caused by your hope that there is no God. But hope doesn't prove a thing. You need logic and critical thinking.

Your wishful thinking and blind hope that what you know is all there is, won't help you with deeper philosophical issues like this. Your excessively lame proof of the non-existence of God might be good enough for people with a medieval mindset, but once you're capable of thinking in layered levels of reality, it's cute and funny, but just not very relevant.

All you've proven is that, assuming the laws of physics are universal in our level of reality (and they do seem to work quite nicely), a God as described in the bible can't exist in this reality. But it says nothing about what might exist "outside" our universe. Of course you probably believe there is nothing outside this universe, but then you've got a proof that's based on assumption and belief. Not unreasonable assumption and belief, but it's hardly a proof. It's wishful thinking.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[Surt]

I'm afraid it's you who isn't up on current science. Plenty of people have been saved from heart death, and a few from brain death.

There is good evidence for the 10-dimensional multi-verse. It's not proven one way or the other for sure, but at this point the evidence favors the 10-dimensional universe.

Good luck, keep learning.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

Yes, I understand that your concept of god that you desire so much with all of your heart and faith is a super being that can do anything. Yes, you can call me an atheist if you wish. You're one to with regards to all the other gods you don't believe in by the way. Of course your god can do anything, that's how the con men of the church get you to hand over your money each week. Of course you can't follow rational logic, you are delusionally faith stricken with the whacked out notion that your concept of god is real. Sure, it's real to you and others but that's as far as it goes in objective reality. Mother Nature smacks down your god every time.

Please swat me like a bug god. Oh please. Nope, still here.

So you can have your imaginary super god all you want. Wishing god to be won't make it so. Science is a harsh mistress with a 14 inch strap on and doesn't care what any of us think or what we want or desire. Nature is what it is and isn't what it isn't.

If you actually take the time to learn some science and reread what I've written and ask cogent questions you might actually comprehend what I'm talking about. It takes critical thinking rather than faith though. Giving up faith and beliefs are the toughest of things for most humans in our all too brief existence.

May you enjoy your time alive for it's all you get. Peace. Get real.

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

Yes you can use science to disprove things with 100% certainty.

It's 100% certain that you can't jump to the surface of the moon from the Earth without the aid of any technology. Newton provides this proof.

The speed of "c" prevents any and all gods from existing. Period.

Thinking that god can "do anything" is simply magical wish fulfillment drivel on your part.

It's 100% certain that Jesus didn't rise from the dead, walk on water, ascend to the heavens or be the son of god. As we saw one can't jump to the moon let alone to the heavens (space); besides what would he have done to breath without air in space? If he rose from the dead he'd be a zombie jesus! But since dead bodies don't come back to life after the point of no return (just a minute or ten) it's certain that he didn't. If people actually saw him walking around later on it's just proof that he was a con man magician and not the son of god doing actual witch craft instead of lying to people. No being can be omniscient when it takes time for information to travel from one place in the universe to another - from hear to Mars takes at best 20 minutes or so.

Your fantasy god requires that facts of life and proven facts of nature be rejected at every turn. The rejection of rationality by embracing faith based delusional beliefs seals your fate and doom as a person disconnected from reality.

I have sympathy for your plight but won't offer you a safe refuge since I stand for human beings being responsible for their beliefs and actions in the world.

Deprogram your faith and beliefs. Come back to objective reality and embrace life for real!

Re:Universal Cold Death

[itsybitsy]

>YOU CANNOT DISPROVE GOD.

It's up to you to prove your god exists since you are the one making the extraordinary claims that such a supernatural being exists. Since you've not been able to do this (nor has anyone in many thousands of years) that should lead you to question if what you believe in is simply hokum (aka nonsense) just based upon the lack of evidence for gods.

"Rather than adapt to evidence many of us it seems remain trapped in ways of thinking inherited from our primitive ancestors." - Richard Dawkins.

There is a tremendous pile of evidence that there is no god. It's stacked up high and there for all to see, except of course if you close your mind off with the silly incorrect notion that you can't prove a negative.

The evidence from biology is that dead bodies can't rise from the dead once they are past the point of no return at the moment of death, or if you're lucky enough to have a doctor or someone to save you a couple of minutes after death. This is a fact of life that you can't dispute without resorting to magical incantations.

It is at the point of saying that "Jesus (and Lazarus and that whole town) rose from the dead due to the magic of miracles" that you take your leap of delusional faith and loose your connection with the actual objective reality within which we live our lives. It is at the point where you reject the facts of life, facts that you can verify yourself, that you disconnect from sanity.

The rich men's answer

[SmallFurryCreature]

Buy a bigger needle. Money solves a LOT of problems.

Well true..

[The Creator]

I don't wield much authority around here.

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[wisty]

Why are you on /. honestly? Blind faith is the antithesis of being a nerd. Aside from trolling is there any purpose at all for you to be here?

You don't participate in many of the programming threads, do you?

Why shorten the odds

[sleeponthemic]

If I were a bookmaker, and the existence of god was one of my "events" I'd be providing million to one odds.

And I'm not saying that is as a non-believer, I'm saying this because if existence of god was proven, the world would change instantly. Due to the fact it would be the rapture - money would be irrevelant

The resulting negligence of destroying a company would be forgiven, anyway. Muahaha

Re:God is a proper name.

[vistic]

Do you think non-Christians also need to capitalize pronouns in reference to God (the Christian one)? I always see them refer to 'Him' rather than simply 'him'. It's not just us atheists who may be breaking syntax rules to make a point, k?

What day is it today?

[bihoy]

I didn't think that it was April 1st but now I am uncertain.

Proof of an Omnipotent God?

[TFGeditor]

Publicly heal an amputee and I will believe.

Two billion euro turnover - five grand book

[Myrddin Wyllt]

Paddy Power's annual turnover is in the region of two billion euros; they have a huge internet presence and a healthy telephone business; they run 248 betting shops including 187 in Ireland, where gambling is virtually a religion and religion is actually taken seriously.

After two months trading, they have taken only five thousand pounds on this book. They take more than that in five minutes for a low-grade dog race on a wet Wednesday afternoon.

This is just a publicity stunt by a bookmaker known for this sort of thing.

Douglas adams view:

[jools33]

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Re:Douglas adams view:

[otis wildflower]

The fact that the HHG film pussed out on this is probably what kills it deadest to me. That and the gay Marvin outfit, the TV series' was far better (though Alan Rickman was a suitable substitute, although he tends more towards the annoyed than depressed)..

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You seem to be unfamiliar with the scientific method. Perhaps I haven't seen any evidence yet, but my private anatomical research (not published yet) strongly suggests their existence. Right now I am building a Large Hard-on Collider to prove this theory.

Ireland isn't part of the UK

[easter1916]

I know it's tough to remember but Ireland isn't part of the UK, at least 85% of the island is not. Paddy Power is an Irish bookmakers with UK operations.

eye of the beholder

[3seas]

two things either are or they are not: Consciousness and Existence. And neither can exist without the other.

Where did God come from?

he came from the splitting of the absence of anything at all, when teh emptiness became aware of itself and split giving us the whit boards of consciousness and existence.

Whats the purpose?

Simple survival, the religion of survival.

Everyone knows it too.

As god, how dod you know you exist and are not vanishing away into where you came from, if you are all that exist?

expansion, growth change....

And you would do thing to help insure growth and expansion, such as create life that will evolve and help growth and expansion, ie becoming knowledgeable as to how to crate a universe and doing so.

So now you know what you purpose is.

Will the LHC find the god particle?

no, as doing so will contradict the the conscious minds ability to create new things on its forever search for the knowing the existence of god.

And then there is kaballa, becoming one with the creator.

shrug...
 

Re:eye of the beholder

[rcastro0]

>Where did God come from?

Assuming he exists...

Re:eye of the beholder

[geekoid]

"two things either are or they are not: Consciousness and Existence. And neither can exist without the other."

This is patently false.

"Will the LHC find the god particle?"
clearly you ahve no idea what you are talking about.

Tough call

[nucleartool]

Put a bet on God existing - smighted for gambling. Or. Don't gamble on Gods existence - smighted for being an non-believer. Gah

I can imagine the scene

[Rik Sweeney]

Scientist 1: Turn on the LHC!

* Click... Whirrrrr *

Scientist 2: It's on

* Foooooooom! *

Scientist 1: What the? God?!

God: Yes, it is I

Scientist 1: But, what are you doing here?

God: I'm here to collect my winnings. I put down a $1m with Paddy Power that I don't exist.

Scientist 2: So you made $4m?

God: No, I've made $33m because I placed my wager when they lengthened the odds.

Both Scientists: Wow!

God: Yes, that's why I'm God.

Other thing

[Andr T.]

>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.

This sounds like circular reasoning to me.

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[Markrian]

Are you implying most here have seen evidence of real, dead females? Yikes.

Neither

[jellomizer]

I think you are confusing scientists with atheists. Scientists are not interesting in proving the existence of god or not.
A god being a being of infinite intelligence and power. Would be near impossible to prove or disprove. I don't see how finding the God Particle will prove or Disproove God. Because there is always a question beyond hat of how and why. So we find it. It seems to be the controling force in the universe but how did it get here, is it made up of more basic parts...
There are a Lot of Athiests out there claiming that they are so much smarter then everyone else, however they know just as little about the universe then everyone else. And jumps to the same irrational ideas that makes them feel better.

Re:Neither

[mdwh2]

I think you are confusing scientists with atheists. Scientists are not interesting in proving the existence of god or not.

Nor are most atheists. (And indeed, my experience is that theists are more likely to try to prove God's existence, than atheists are to prove his non-existence.)

There are a Lot of Athiests out there claiming that they are so much smarter then everyone else, however they know just as little about the universe then everyone else. And jumps to the same irrational ideas that makes them feel better.

There are? And what irrational ideas? Let's have sourced statements rather than the same old anti-atheist stereotyping - I see far more of that, than I do of this alleged behaviour.

Re:Neither

[jellomizer]

You must remember when ever you are on a side you always assume your side is more moderate then the other. While the truth is usually that your side can be just as radical as the other side, it is just your personal ego that gets in the way of seeing this.

I am a by trade a scientist (a Computer Scientist bust a scientist none the less) I am fairly well recognized as fairly bright for my field, I am not a super star, but people have learned to trust my judgment. However nearly every person who I met who was an atheist who learns that I am a practicing catholic will often ask me, I just can't believe that you are a catholic, you are too smart to be one. Then more often then not will try disprove every section of the bible. Which I take as a Literary truth not a Literal truth.

THis isn't the old anti-atheist stereotyping I have met a lot of athiest and many of them are good and decent people. However they fall for the same trapping that religious people fall under as well. A closed minded view of the world is one. Just as some religious people get defensive about any detail of their faith. Many atheist will get defensive and angry at the idea that there could be a God, discredit any logical explanation why they could be, even though their argument against one is just as weak.

Re:Neither

[mdwh2]

You must remember when ever you are on a side you always assume your side is more moderate then the other.

Well, this goes for you too.

However nearly every person who I met who was an atheist who learns that I am a practicing catholic will often ask me, I just can't believe that you are a catholic, you are too smart to be one. Then more often then not will try disprove every section of the bible. Which I take as a Literary truth not a Literal truth.

But now you've switched the argument from disproving God, to disproving Catholicism. Catholicism and the Bible make specific claims, and it is a lot more plausible to try to disprove them. This is nothing to do with your original statement of "A god being a being of infinite intelligence and power. Would be near impossible to prove or disprove."

And to respond to your "I don't see how finding the God Particle will prove or Disproove God." - I don't see any atheists claiming that. Anyone who thinks that the God particle has anything to do with God is completely wrong. I don't know where this misunderstanding came from, and I don't really care if they happen to be an atheist or theist - they're an idiot, either way.

Many atheist will get defensive and angry at the idea that there could be a God, discredit any logical explanation why they could be

I'd do neither - but I've never heard a religious argument that is logical.

even though their argument against one is just as weak

Is the argument against the existence of Thor just as weak as the argument in favour? What about the argument against the existence of a teapot orbiting Mars? Or of invisible unicorns? Or that we're all made of jelly?

Do you believe in all of these things, because the argument against them is "just as weak"?

Anyhow, this is all beside the point - regarding the idea that atheists spend their time disproving God whilst scientists don't, I disagree. In practice, I would say that atheist scientists are no more likely to try to disprove God than theist scientists try to prove God; and I would say the same holds for non-scientists too.

Re:God is a proper name.

[LordLucless]

Actually, that was Jews. They were determined to keep the "not taking the Lord's name in vain" bit, so whenever God's name was rendered in text, they replaced it with a series of symbols known as the divine tetragrammaton. In modern English Bible's, it's rendered as LORD in small caps, so you can distinguish it from the ordinary english use of the word lord. Yahweh, Jehovah, God, these are all different ways of assigning some name to that abstract placeholder that nobody really knows what to do with anymore - none are, as far as we know, the "actual" name of God. You get much the same thing in literature sometimes. Say a story about a nasty aunt, who only ever refers to the protagonist as "boy". You'll often find that the word Boy becomes capitalized, showing that it represents a proper noun, and emphasizing the depersonalizing nature of that mode of address, etc. It's not unheard of.

Re:Hahaha..But..

[Anonymous Coward]

Vaporising people is not evidence of a deity.

How would God go about proving to a scientist that He had created the universe... and why would He bother.

How bookmaking works ...

[tgd]

I'm guessing most people on here have no idea how a bookmaker figures out the odds on a bet. Its not how most people think.

If a bookmaker gives 2:1 odds that, say, the Red Sox will beat the Yankees, he is NOT saying he believes (in any form) that the Yankees are more likely to win. The reason you get two dollars back for every one is not because its twice as likely the Yankees will win, but rather the bookmaker has twice the money coming in betting for the Yankees. That may translate indirectly to odds being based on the likelihood of something happening, but its indirect because its purely about money in versus money out for each side of a bet.

So lowering the odds in bets that God exists doesn't mean the bookmaker thinks there is a God or thinks its any more likely, it just means that he's found more people willing to take that bet, pretty much on faith.

(It still amazes me, back on this direct subject, how misrepresented the term "God Particle" is in the media -- they completely gloss over the fact that it was a term meant to mock theists, not support them)

Why Won't God Heal Amputees ?

[ciderVisor]

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

Re:Headline: "Scientists Prove the Existence of Go

[ciderVisor]

When the headline reads, "Scientists Prove the Existence of God," only scientists will read the article.

Unless the headline's on a Slashdot article, in which case, only scientists will read the summary, and only scientists will jump straight to the comments.

Article is Ambigious

[BountyX]

Which god? Your god, his god, her god? Zeus? if its Zeus, I think we've already disproved his existence so what does that make the proabability now? If your talking about that one religion where a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree, then that is a very specific God that can be put through the scientific method and with time will turn into yet another mythologoy. Wikipedia seems to think so Christian Mythology. The funny thing is I can't find a Islam Mythology...

I find this rather amusing

[Chalnoth]

Come on, the LHC prove God? How exactly would it do that? Do people somehow think that a probability of producing some particle X has anything to say one way or another whether or not a god exists? What about particle Y? Or when you slam atoms together instead of protons? The fact remains that no god concept has anything to say one way or another on these questions. I find it rather absurd that anybody would consider the LHC to have anything to say here. As for whether or not a god can be proven, of course, that depends entirely upon the god. If you provide a specific definition that is testable, then it can be tested for. The problem is that most people who believe in one god or another refuse to do this. They stick only to words and phrases which are, by their very construction, completely untestable. I'm talking here about things like, "God is love," or, "God created the Universe." You just can't test these things. Sometimes, of course, they make very specific predictions, such as, "God heals as a response to prayer," or, "God will cause the world to end in 1922," which, once tested, invariably come out to be false. One wonders why they continue to believe that the existence of a deity is even reasonably likely.

Re:I find this rather amusing

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Come on, the LHC prove God? How exactly would it do that? Do people somehow think that a probability of producing some particle X has anything to say one way or another whether or not a god exists? What about particle Y? Or when you slam atoms together instead of protons? The fact remains that no god concept has anything to say one way or another on these questions. I find it rather absurd that anybody would consider the LHC to have anything to say here. As for whether or not a god can be proven, of course, that depends entirely upon the god. If you provide a specific definition that is testable, then it can be tested for. The problem is that most people who believe in one god or another refuse to do this. They stick only to words and phrases which are, by their very construction, completely untestable. I'm talking here about things like, "God is love," or, "God created the Universe." You just can't test these things. Sometimes, of course, they make very specific predictions, such as, "God heals as a response to prayer," or, "God will cause the world to end in 1922," which, once tested, invariably come out to be false. One wonders why they continue to believe that the existence of a deity is even reasonably likely.

God is a another name for the Higgs Boson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson

Re:I find this rather amusing

[Fujisawa Sensei]

That's just a horrific, horrific name. I mean, I somewhat understand why the name, "The God Particle," was coined, because physicists kept looking and looking and not finding anything (for over thirty years), but no. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with what lay people think about when they think about God.

I suppose you would prefer to call it the Goatse Particle?

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[Unique2]

It may not be faith but if you keep doing it you will go blind!

Babelfish?

[stdcallsign]

I thought it was already argued successfully that Babelfish proved the existence of god.

Nothing good will come from this...

[pdboddy]

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.

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. :D

Re:Nothing good will come from this...

[geekoid]

"...what does it matter?"

It matters becasue people die from this crazy belief.

G-d d-mn particle

[DavidHumus]

The story is that the "God particle" is a shortened version of the original description: http://solapanel.org/article/comments/god_in_a_particle/ .

The "big rock" paradox is nonsense

[Nerdposeur]

"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.

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.

Re:The "big rock" paradox is nonsense

[Nerdposeur]

By the way, I think it does stand to reason that if there is a being who can create matter and energy from nothing, including all the laws that govern them and time itself, that being would not be limited by the laws of the physical universe any more than you are limited by the conditional statements in the programs you write.

Re:The "big rock" paradox is nonsense

[tabdelgawad]

What's 'inherently impossible' about either outcome of creating the 'big rock'? I can either 'create' a rock that's too heavy for me to lift, or my lifting abilities exceed my 'heavy rock creation' abilities. Both outcomes are perfectly possible - there are no logical contradictions.

What the paradox likely demonstrates is that the concept of 'omnipotence' as we typically understand the word is internally inconsistent.

Re:The "big rock" paradox is nonsense

[Real1tyCzech]

It's logically possible to turn Bread into Fish?

Uh-huh..

Okay, how about making a rock so heavy, you cannot lift it...and then making yourself strong enough to lift it.

Hmmm....

BTW: I think you are all full of shit. :)

Re:The "big rock" paradox is nonsense

[johnlcallaway]

So I guess creating the universe out of nothing is not logically possible, so never happened. Either argument shows an omnipotent being is not possible.

Re:The "big rock" paradox is nonsense

[vux984]

What's 'inherently impossible' about either outcome...

It boils down to comparing two infinitely large integers. The heaviest rock he could 'make' vis the heaviest rock he could 'lift'.

There is no limit to either, and its meaningless to compare them to see which is bigger.

What the paradox likely demonstrates is that the concept of 'omnipotence' as we typically understand the word is internally inconsistent.

Its not a paradox at all. Its just mathematical nonsense. We might as well be asking whether God can find a integer so great that even he can't find one that is greater.

Re:The "big rock" paradox is nonsense

[vux984]

That's just being silly. It should be -obvious- that constructing some taxicab geometry with different properties has no bearing on the discussion except to be annoying.

Show me a square circle in standard euclidean geometry then.

And don't try and get fancy by claiming that in taxicab english the word square means round, or that in taxicab slashdot its opposite day and I asked you to provide a NOT square circle...etc ad nauseum...

Re:The "big rock" paradox is nonsense

[Nerdposeur]

It's logically possible to turn Bread into Fish?

Why not? If you could rearrange the particles, you could turn anything into anything.

If you're talking about a being who had the idea for atoms in the first place, and created them by mere force of will, yes, I think bread into fish is a trivial problem for such a being.

Re:The "big rock" paradox is nonsense

[et764]

Doesn't saying an omnipotent god can do anything that's logically possible mean that said omnipotent god is only as powerful as logic, at best? Instead, an omnipotent god must first create the rules of logic, and then choose to follow them.

It's sort of like a chess board. You might imagine the rooks arguing with each other about whether the chess player could move a rock diagonally. They might claim that's nonsense, since it's inherently impossible for rooks to move diagonally. Clearly we can physically move them diagonally, but we choose to follow the rules of chess when playing because the game wouldn't be much fun otherwise.

Re:The "big rock" paradox is nonsense

[Samah]

A square circle is a non-thing, therefore even an omnipotent God cannot make it.

Obviously you've never heard of a squircle!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squircle

God and Science

[jandersen]

I think it borders on idiotic the way some try to ram God up everybody's backside at the fall of a hat; and calling the Higgs boson the "God particle" isn't a very good idea either. This is science, right? It deals with what can be measured using the scientific method - nothing more and nothing less. God only becomes a subject worthy of scientific discourse if and when he/she/it can be measured or otherwise dealt with using the scientific method. And that, everybody, really is the end of this debate.

As for the Higgs boson - my intuition tells me that it doesn't exist, so that's what my money is on. I just don't think we will find it - but to tell the truth, I don't mind if we do find it. Because what we as scientists really hope for is to find out whether our theories are good or not; I hope we don't find it, because that opens up for much more exciting research.

But back to the God thing; there are two things that strike me in the current debate. First, when Dawkins is so anti-religious, I think what it actually is about, is religious people; because somehow they - that is, the loudest of them - are perniciously boneheaded, and in the end one just gets so sick of having to deal with that kind of non-subject. Just take this thing about ID: one wonders how many times scientists have explained and clarified what science is and why ID has nothing to do with it - but it's like water on a goose. So what's the use of trying? The world would be better without that kind of people.

The other thing is, what is it really those people believe in? Is it God, the almighty and all-knowing, who created the world and us with it? Or is it the Bible? And if so, which version? - quite apart from the fact that it isn't self-consistent, so you can't believe all of the Bible anyway without performing some acrobatic mind-tricks. The God we always hear about is supposed to be good and truthful - so why would he create a world where things are laid out so that it looks exactly as if the world is about 13 billion years old and life has evolved as Darwin described it; and then write a Bible that tells us it was all done in less than a week? It just doesn't add up.

And you know what? It is not because we should close our eyes and out minds and "have faith". As far as I can see, if you have faith in God, then you will trust him not to be a deceitful creature with a twisted mind, who has set traps everywhere; then your common sense is enough to let you see the truth, and if your common sense tell you that the Bible is a load of cobblers, then it is because the Bible is a load of cobblers. Your faith should give you the strength to turn away from the liers that feed on you, even if those liers turn out to be the whole congregation that you feel comfortable with.

But then of course, I am only an atheist, or agnostic if you like; and that is my position on the matter.

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[foniksonik]

Ah but maybe those tests were manufactured just to keep you believing.... In fact some group of illuminati could have created all of that just to keep nerds under control, through the belief that females exist, and that if they work hard enough they will eventually see one.

a miracle

[fermion]

Pretty much to prove that god exists, we would need a recurring phenomenon that violates all our existing physical models, and is not explained after long effort with new models. For instance, if there compelling evidence that parts of the universe genuinely violated the laws of thermodynamics, then we might be miracle territory. Proving a particle predicted by the standard model simply indicates that if god exists, the laws originally created are not changing at human time scale, so are no different than no god at all. Maybe.

Re:a miracle

[cjb658]

Even if we did "prove" God exists, there would still be people who don't believe, just like even though we have "proven" evolution, there are still people who don't believe it.

It is our duty as scientists to question the accepted version of the truth.

So Einstein was wrong?

[FiloEleven]

> whether there is a God and we've seen some of that being transferred into bets.
I thought that God didn't play dice with the universe. Now you're telling me that God is in the dice?

Use The Force

[revxul]

The God Particle...?

ummm... forcon? jedon? sithon? Come on, help me out here.

The bookie will definitely win

[ShadowWraith]

For if god is proven, there will be no need for faith, and in a puff of logic, god will disappear. This bookie obviously read Douglas Adams.

Answer using the tools at hand

[aperion]

Answer the question using math.

F = ma
an immovable object has infinite mass, m = âz, a = F/âz => a = 0 regardless of F
an irresistible force is F = âz, , a = âz/m => a = âz regardless of m

But F = âz and m = âz, a = âz/âz => a is indeterminate, ie we have no tools to answer this question.
in case things aren't displayed properly, âz is the infinity symbol

Even further though the question only really applies to our world, and thus cannot apply to God, simply because if God does exist, is not part of our world.

Once you seriously start to think about that question you do realize how stupid it is, I mean, immovable to whom? Us? to be immovable to use it would have to have an infinite mass, and unless it had infinite density it would take up infinite space. If it didn't take up infinite space, it would have infinite density, it would be infinitely small, and IIRC would have infinite gravitational pull. Infinite gravitational pull which would cause the entire universe to collapse on this infinitely small item.

Still the question can be expanded to "if X is omnipotent, can X do something they can't do." Problem is we can only come up with situations that we comprehend, that are bound to the world we know. If a being was truly omnipotent, it would be beyond our comprehension. so all in all, the question is a stupid one.

you didn't need to write that

[circletimessquare]

i saw someone else write what you just wrote before you, and they wrote it better ;-P

all joking aside, someone else having figured something out before you did is not an automatic reason not to have a debate. at the very least, its a mind exercise that trains the mind to make the next leap into the unknown

no one has answered every question, and for those questions that remain open in our time, those of us who will answer them authoritatively will have trained their minds by reliving debates which are already settled and closed

no one approaches a subject matter cold and can speak authoritatively on it. those who can speak authoritatively on any subject meanwhile have spent years debating and wrestling with issues that previous great minds have closed the book on. you have to inhabit a subject matter in order to know what you are talking about. and you inhabit a subject matter by reliving, for yourself, all of the closed debates

Alright I just can't take it anymore

[FibreOptix]

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!

Obligatory: FSM

[aqk]

So. What are the odds against the existence of the FSM? (Flying Spaghetti Monster)
-

And why has no one yet invoked him / her / it in this discussion?
(sigh) Must it ALWAYS be me?
-

  Surely, proof that those noodly appendages will eternally remain hidden from us!

.

Matter?

[istartedi]

Matter? Your God needs matter? What for?

The "big rock" paradox is nonsense... or is it?

[hrimhari]

And here I was thinking that "God" would be the creator of logic and therefore not bound it its creation and able to do "impossible" things. Silly me...

Why would this prove or disprove any god's exist

[freedomseven]

Even if we figure out and learn to use all of the abilities and resources of God. It does not prove or disprove God's existence. Giving a monkey a paint brush does not make him Da Vinci.

Laws of Nature do exist

[Roger W Moore]

"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.

Bad Science

[Roger W Moore]

"The universe does not need a god to exist"

Scientifically speaking to know this you would need to know the cause of the Big Bang. If so then please enlighten us all with evidence to back you up, if not then your conclusion is flawed.

Re:Bad Science

[johnlcallaway]

Just because I can't explain the beginning of the universe, it does not mean that it required a god to do it.

There are many theories about the beginning of the universe. While none of them are proven, or may ever be, none of them require a god to do it.

Re:Bad Science

[Roger W Moore]

Just because I can't explain the beginning of the universe, it does not mean that it required a god to do it.

That's true. However this is a different statement to saying the the universe does not need god in order to exist - it might. Scientifically speaking we simply do not know because we don't know what caused the Big Bang.

There are many theories about the beginning of the universe. While none of them are proven, or may ever be, none of them require a god to do it.

Careful. There is only one scientific theory about the beginning of the Universe and it is called the Big Bang. At least after about 10^{-12}s it has be proven to be correct, at least beyond any reasonable scientific doubt. However, as to the cause of the Big Bang science is completely silent...other than for the odd wild speculation which are arguably on no firmer footing that religious creation stories and these generally do require god.

Why just one "god"?

[flajann]

What ticks me off is everything someone refers to "God", some basic yet unsupported assumptions are made:

1. There is just one
2. That is is gendered
3. That it is "all powerful", whatever that is supposed to mean.
4. That it is "everywhere", whatever that is supposed to mean.
5. That it is supposed to love humans on such a tiny speck of a planet in some unremarkable niche of the Universe
6. That it is "humanoid.

Amazing how so many assumptions are implicitly made for something that has not only never been observed, but has never even had any objective reason to suggest the possibility of existence.

This is just plain silly. Just as silly as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Babel fish

[Roger W Moore]

"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"

Actually I think Douglas Adams had the right idea. If you could find something naturally produced by the universe that was so incredibly unlikely to have occurred by normal processes (even given the vast number of worlds which may sustain life) then that would be some step towards evidence....so start looking for that Babel fish!

What is God? Are we asking the right question?

[w0mprat]

Or more accurately: What is [undefined]?

You can't answer a question that itself doesn't compute.

Considering the difficulty of the question, it's simple to say God is what we don't know. This is because if we create an arbitrary definition of god to pose as our hypothesis we find that it is one of many infinite possible definitions. Therefore the odds that any definition of god is true are infinite to 1. Considering what we know of the universe so far through scientific rigor tells us nothing specific, neither proves nor disproves any of our hypotheses. We have no idea of the odds of weather we're looking at the product of creation, a complete accident, a facet of a much larger multi-verse, or whatever the unimaginable variations of possibility. We're a product of our environment, making observations about this environment, entirely subjectively, and with no absolute frame of reference.

All conjecture regarding God seems to only validly exist in the cloud of probability that exists beyond that which is identified and categorized by observation, since anything within the sphere of human knowledge tells us sweet bloody nothing. So the more we know, the more the probability wave collapses and God ceases to exist.

Crap, did I just kill religion?

What about proving that we exist at all?

[serutan]

A while ago I read on Slashdot that given enough time, a technological civilization will eventually figure out how to create complex, completely realistic simulations of worlds and universes. We are on the verge of being able to do that ourselves. In a sufficiently complex simulation, the creatures living inside the virtual universe will also attain that ability. The simulated universes would greatly outnumber the real ones, which means that our own universe is far more likely to be a simulation than to be real. I wonder what odds the bookmakers would give on that?

even god cannot prove that he exists

[kwikrick]

he can't even make us all believe that he exists :-)

Seriously, nobody can prove the existence of God (or ones own existence, or anything else), without first very clearly defining what it means 'to exist' and what 'God' is exactly. And then only if other people accept your definitions, that is, if they find them believable, can you prove anything to them. So proving is a matter of believing after all, only after applying rigorous logic. If I don't want to believe in God, you can never prove his existence to me, because I will not accept your definitions. Vice versa, If someone wants to believe in God, they can always find definitions that will make it logically true.

So, if God were to appear in front of me saying, "I am God, I exist" I could simply say, "No you don't, you're a figment of my imagination." or "No you're not, you're just someone pretending to be God". And then he'd smite me to hell, of course.

Re:Hahah

[tabrnaker]

'God has a plan' and 'God gave you free will' are not mutually exclusive.

God set the rules for the universe,i.e., every action has a consequence, and gave you freewill to do as you wish. Perhaps his plan is to develop a moral being that has freewill. Maybe all it takes for us to become god-like is to choose to always do what is best for all humans, including oneself. Our ignorance and selfishness as humans is definitely largely responsible for the hell that most people live in today, in the past, hopefully not in the future.

Re:Headline: "Scientists Prove the Existence of Go

[eleuthero]

Are we scientists or technician? isn't there a difference?

Re:Why would this prove or disprove any god's exis

[eleuthero]

But giving a monkey a paint brush would, in all likelihood prove the existence of a paint brush factory. And you noted "abilities" as well--how did that monkey learn how to paint like da Vinci?

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[sussotheclown]

I live in Australia! When the turn on the internet filter, how am I supposed to find out about women then? All I will have is my faith!

Futurama

[huckamania]

God: "Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket."

Bender: "Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money!"

God: "Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing. When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

Re:Why would this prove or disprove any god's exis

[freedomseven]

Fair enough but what I meant by abilities is that if our technology provided us with all of the abilities that God is purported to have, the discovery of that the abilities exist would not in and of itself prove or disprove the existence of God. Nor would the discovery of that technology diminish the accomplishments of a God that should he/she/it be confirmed to exist. In fact, just because we discover a viable mechanism for accomplishing all of the feats that any of the gods that are purported to exist have accomplished, does not mean that we have found the mechanism that those gods actually used. My comment about the monkey simply means that having tools or abilities, knowing how to use them and knowing how to use them well are all unrelated concepts.

E.T.

[Kris Thalamus]

Your example is not proof that God exists. How do we know that this beardy man in a white robe is not merely a psychotic alien with a destructor ray?

The two aren't mutually exclusive. Any intelligent god that wasn't born on earth would be, by definition, an extraterrestrial intelligence. An extraterrestrial intelligence could be considered a god if it had godlike powers.

Re:Don't believe, just ask

[Idiomatick]

A guy i used to work with changed the compile button to 'please god' :D

Scratch that, Reverse it

[jackspenn]

I would argue because of what I call the Matrix Theory, science cannot disprove the existence of an outside entity (i.e. a creator/God). If science can explain that everything follows the physical laws of the universe from the start of time through the end of time does that mean Gods doesn't exist? No, it just means if there is a God who created the universe they work in it using the laws they set up (which, would make sense). But if on the other hand science determines there are points were universal laws breakdown that points to some outside initiator. So then science may in theory be able to prove God by disproving the alternatives. So the interesting thing is that science while unable to disprove God (Matrix theory) even if it demostrates our world conforms to explainable and scietific laws (however, God could be working within those laws), there is the possiblity that if those laws do not always hold and sometimes break or have broken, well then that gets really interesting. It tickles your noodle and it seems at most one should be agnostic if one intends to claim they are logical, objective and/or rational.

Re:Universal Cold Death - correction

[itsybitsy]

I'm not saying that philosophy doesn't have it's place. The problem with philosophy is that few people test it against objective reality thus they'll (or you'll) believe just about any mind poo that comes around.

Stupidity

[Digital End]

The stupidity is rampant...

#1 - Science
Science is the study of the natural world, and by definition is not in any way capable or concerned with understanding the supernatural (If there is such a thing). Philosophy is a bigger risk to the idea of supernatural things then science is.

#2 - The God Partical
This isn't "God" or his tiny fingers... this is the Higgs-Boson. The stupid nickname came from the fact that finding the thing is a pain in the ass. Scientists looked for it for a long time, and it's an elusive little bastard. Due to this, they started simply refering to it as "That god damn partical". Later when a book was written on the subject, it was refered to as the God Particle... obviously not forseeing the rampant hyper-religious nonsense which would follow

#3 - Evidence of God
If you are religious, you'd better hope like hell they don't prove it anyway... read your bible. With evidence, there is no faith, without faith it is impossible to please god, without a happy god you're going to burn.

If you're not religious, then what do you care about this sillyness? History is blanketed in people claiming to prove god exsists, or that certain things we don't understand are the work of god... and as the flashlight of knowledge keeps pushing into the shadows, we're proven right again and again. From proving thunderstorms aren't gods at war, to proving our own evolution. It's enough to be right, no need to drag them through the mud about it.

#4 - Focus
People are losing focus of what we are actually acheiving with the LHC with this nonsense. Stop and take it in, we've created this massive machine which is capable of pushing a partical up to the light barrier and shoving it harder still. We can force nature's hand converting speed to mass. I mean hell, just making a vacume that is miles around is increadible! Don't seek to belittle the efforts of many of our best minds by dragging this pathetic 'athiest vs thiesm' bullshit into their work.

Re:just not relevant

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

These can and sometimes do occur, but natural selection operates on atomic "blocks", making it a "streaming" process at the level of the gene (the "atoms" in the transformation). Either a gene reproduces before it is destroyed by its environment, or it doesn't; there is some debate about the whether larger "block sizes" are special cases of this or not (group selection, etc.), but there is no doubt that selection units extend to individuals (organisms). "Darwinism" is natural selection operating at the level of the organism, and this specificity illustrates how general the process of selection (natural or man-made) really is, and how much the modern understanding of evolution transcends "mere" Darwinian selection.

This is only true as long as the economy (the food base) keeps growing constantly at at least 1-2% per year, and is furthermore dependant on "restraint" in the species. If the economy grows 1 year at 10% instead of 1, and the number of children goes x10 as a response to that (like rabbits do), disasters happen.

Once that stops, evolution switches to "block" extinctions. That this is true invalidates most of your evolution claims (that don't even deny mass die-offs).

Worse, mere number instability (wildly varying birthrates, not actual ecological problems) are responsible for some extinctions. Species can die out merely for "growing too fast".

This is philosophical realism; a more rigorous way of stating it is to say that "There may, in principle, exist truths which cannot, in principle, be ascertained."

No it is known as "Godel's incompliteness theorem", and is fact. Not philosophy. It's worse than fact : it doesn't just apply in our universe, but in every possible universe. Those truths that are independant of science, but nevertheless true or false, are called "Godel sentences". They form a "double infinite" class (there isn't just infinitely many godel sentences, but you can always find a godel sentence "between" any two others)

Obviously that this is a proven mathematical fact, and not a theory changes all your other claims. It's not a "theory" that science is "incomplete", and will always remain so.

Science has a LOT more confidence in it's own incompleteness than it has in the correctness of evolution theory.