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In America, 46% of People Hold a Creationist View of Human Origins
An anonymous reader writes "The latest Gallup poll is out, and it finds that 46% of Americans hold the view that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. According to Gallup, the percentage who hold this view has remained unchanged since 1982, when they first started asking the question. Roughly 33% of Americans believe in divinely guided evolution, and 15% believe that humans evolved without any supernatural help."
Thereâ(TM)s a big difference between what people tell pollsters because they think thatâ(TM)s what they *should* say, verses what they actually do or believe. For example most people say they go to church on a regular basis, yet other polls say church attendance is down, and the truth is that most people sleep in on Sunday. Most Americans say they are Christians because they think itâ(TM)s the âoerightâ thing to say, but most probably canâ(TM)t accurately quote a single significant paragraph of the Bible, new or old, nor articulate any significant bible theory. The truth is that most people are basically agnostic.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Who actually answers these polls?
I bet even in 1982 it was mostly old people.
It doesn't have to be either "take the Bible literally" or "science and evolution".
Some are perfectly fine with believing the science and the process of evolution, but also see religion as a framework of stories. Someone once said, "The Bible says what God did; science explains how He did it."
What if you believe in evolution as a divine creation?
Sure it is.
Who created the devine creator?
In fact the idea of a devine creator is 2x as silly, since it requires that the devine creator was created and from nothing.
How does "divinely guided" work?
"Let's see, longer legs, smoother teeth, less fur,....um....fuckit man, let's go Vegas-style tonight: Be There a Random Mutation!"
Table-ized A.I.
Yes. it really is far sillier.
There is no evidence to support the idea of a divine creator. There is a growing body of evidence that the Universe could have been created from nothing (aka a quantum vacuum).
And people still wonder why this country is in such a mess....
A devoted Recursionist, I see
Table-ized A.I.
Not necessarily. I don't think Netanyahu, Hitler, the Pope, Negroes, Presbyterians, Gays, or Albanians are/were dumb either, in an intelligence sense.
They may be ignorant or have a lower rate in tests due to social reasons, but that is not necessarily the same as dumb, as in low intelligence. Uneducated may be cause. BTW, the Pope and Netanyahu are not uneducated, so, they must be stupid, or dumb as you put it.
They are not dumb. They are victims of an virulently infectious and devastating mental illness (faith). They can't really help it and they should not be insulted for it any more than a kid with polio should be insulted about being in a wheel chair.
is bumming me out... I mean, really? Only 15%? Come on people!
The idea of a divine creator is no sillier than the idea of creation from nothing.
I'm tempted to agree with that statement. The problem I have with religious belief systems is when questioning the system is forbidden. A (good) scientist is willing to change his theory to suit his observations. Non-religious types "mock" those who are so attached to what they've been told to believe they can't accept new information.
The nothing that can be defined (as a quantum vacuum) is not the true nothing.
Evolution is not about the origin of matter. Further, we know the process of evolution exists, observed it (in part), and know how it works. We don't know a (different) process that makes creators out of nothing (or simpler stuff).
Table-ized A.I.
You'd think this is actually just the ignorance of 'Dumb Americans.' That isn't so. The reason is evolution is a deal breaker due to the structure of the Christian religion.
Kalinka told me the following.
It doesn't have anything to say about the existence or non-existence of any gods. It is a problem with the way the Mythos of Christianity works in particular.
The Mythos of Christianity absolutely depends on a a literal understanding of Genesis. In Judaism, Genesis can be metaphor, it changes nothing. But the Sacrifice of Jesus is contingent on an event called the fall of man, where Eve and Adam ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, angering Yahweh (God) and damning all Humans to Hell save for a few Jewish Prophets and anyone who accepts Jesus as the Savior.
The fall of man is considered the *Primary Sin* which sends us to Hell. (The main Reason.)
If The Book of Genesis is metaphorical, then Jesus died for nothing because no fall of man ever occurred for Yahweh to have a reason to send us to Hell to begin with. Ergo, Christianity is collapses because Saint Paul was a liar.
This is why Christians have a problem with Evolution and Jews do not.
The real reason that this doctrine that Paul created was put into place was to exclude the Jews from Salvation.
He didn't for see the evolution problem. That came along later.
If the Garden of Eden never happened, the fall never happened. then there would be no need for the death of Jesus Christ. Which means that Christianity was wrong all along. Biological evolution collapses a core foundation of Christianity.
They are living embodiments of social Darwinism, just don't tell them that!
A single photon with a frequency of 10^98Hz has enough energy to create all the matter in the universe.
Photons are popping in and out of the quantum soup all the time.
No sig today...
If they ask "Do human beings share a common ancestor with present day apes?" a lot more people say would say yes.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You conservatives keep talking about how great the Constitution is, yet want to ignore the parts you don't like, such as the separation of church and state.
Table-ized A.I.
A man was eating pizza one day when suddenly a guy eating a double cheeseburger approaches him and says, "You know eating pizza will make you fat."
You say that it is silly to believe in an uncreated creator while believing in an uncreated universe/multiverse/etc...
Not that it matters, but your logic is flawed anyway. The definition of a divine creator is an entity that just is and was never created. Since such a creator would have created even time itself, it is nonsensical to ask who created the creator since that would imply that time existed before creation.
In any case, it doesn't matter if you're a theist or atheist; at some point you have to believe in the absurd notion that everything came from an uncreated something.
in other words, 46% of americans are dumb
If by "dumb" you mean "below median intelligence", that's approximately correct.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Gallup and a few others have consistently gotten numbers between 40-48% for this data, but for reasons I don't fully understand, CBS polls on the same issue get slightly higher results. They get routinely in the 50-55% range http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500160_162-965223.html. I'm not sure why this discrepancy exists, but it isn't a single yearly issue and it doesn't seem to be connected to how the questions are phrased, which suggests there's some more subtle issue going on.
The data for both this years Gallup poll and previous years does show some fairly predictable patterns. For example, by most of the previous polls, around 60% of Republicans are Young Earth Creationists while a little under 40% of Democrats are Young Earth Creationists. http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-Democrats-Differ-Creationism.aspx. This should not however be taken as general evidence that Republicans or conservatives are dumb or uneducated. The GSS as part of their regular survey does a set about general science knowledge, and that data suggests that when not asking questions about evolution or age of the Earth, progressives and conservatives look very similar, and there's some evidence that the people with the least science knowledge are self-identified moderates http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/03/the-republican-fluency-with-science/ although exactly what is going on is not clear. http://religionsetspolitics.blogspot.com/2011/04/political-affiliation-and-scientific.html. This is part of a general trend which suggests that moderates in the US are often not very well informed.
Also, while Gallup says that the fraction of people who reject evolution has stayed roughly constant, there's a potentially more interesting trend in the data, over the last 30 years there's been a steady increase in people who say that evolution occurred with God taking no part in the process. http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-Democrats-Differ-Creationism.aspx. Most of that is movement not from the strict creationists but from a reduction in the size of the group that thinks that evolution happened with God guiding it. This may reflect the general decline of the moderately religious, especially so called "mainline Protestants" or it may be due to other effects such as general increases in partisanship.
Slightly less than half the population has below average intelligence.
More telling, religions don't deal with formal proofs and require that you show your work.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
No, it means the +/- 4% poll error is grossly understated. Look, we all know that the selection methodology used to generate the sample size leads to that sort of minimum percentage error. What people don't talk about is what the OP is - the difference between:
a) what people say they do and what they actually do.
b) whether people answer with the dogma of their faith vs. what they actually believe.
Throw in things such as:
a) weak wording in the questions conflating or confusing two ideas: "God created human beings pretty much in their present form within the last 1,000 years or so" or "most closely represents your beliefs".
b) problems with interviewees not understanding the question or not giving a shit
c) inability in the survey to record whether the interviewee has been educated in evolution or basic science classes, let alone not failing them
d) strange slant towards Christianity
And there is no where near a 95% confidence the margin of error is 4% or less.
But the hokey bullshit talking about the results of the survey will continue and well end up with another 2000+ post thread with 90% "LOL, thems are idiots" comments, just like what happened earlier in the week.
In related news, 46% of Americans believe themselves "above average".
I can assure you that at least 46% of Americans are "above average" for Americans.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
As an American, I prefer to ignore your statistic for so many of us being creationists, and I am not interested in your so-called evidence that the figure is correct. The number just feels wrong, therefore it must be a lie. My gut tells me there aren't nearly that many creationists around here, because neither I nor the people I know, are anything like that!
Furthermore, I don't understand how many people could be creationists, so that's another argument that not nearly many of them could be.
Finally, your poll is biased and invalid, because .. because .. I want it to be.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
since it requires that the devine creator was created and from nothing.
Not really. Something "outside the universe" cannot be assumed to exist as what we know as "matter" or "energy", nor would it be subject to what we know as "time".
To argue that it would need to be "created from nothing" itself is making all sorts of assumptions.
Its absurd as a Princess Peach saying the Mushroom Kingdom universe must have been spontaneously created from nothing because its 2x as silly to think there is some sort of creator.
In the beginning was very low entropy and a lot of energy. Then it went downhill from there.
If I'm wrong, I loose nothing. If I'm right, you lose everything.
So, you believe in God "just in case"? At least have a backbone about it, that's the worst reason you can have. At least those with *faith* are at about a level 5 of human motivation ("finding a higher purpose"), you haven't even climbed past level 1 ("survival").
We keep trying to put them up for you. But you keep complaining about the Star of David on the capitol lawn and quotes from the Qur'an in the general assembly.
FWIW - there's nothing "undecided" about the other 21%. I might quote several prominant Christians in saying "Our beliefs are the truth, and the only truth. You may disagree with me all you want, but I have read the [Bible|Science Books] and you are simply wrong."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I guess the most interesting thing about this is that America isn't slowly going insane, as one might think. The religious nuts have just gotten louder and more obnoxious in the last several years, making it seem like they're taking over. Doesn't exactly fill me with confidence, but at least my perception that people are abandoning reason left and right in this country is incorrect. That's a good sign. I guess...
I've watched debates on this topic for almost two decades and they never seem to go anywhere. People who believe in supernatural entities tend to justify their beliefs through less logical arguments, and people who do not believe in them have logical reasons to support their view; ergo there's no satisfactory middle ground - there's no common language between believers and non-believers.
This is a case of a belief that'll die with their adherents, as new generations seem to hold less superstitious world-views than their parents. Hallelujah to that.
There is no separation of church and state in the constitution. Rather that the government shall not impose religion or establish a state religion and all people are entitled to practice whatever religion they so choose. Those are two fundamentally different things.
Incase it's hard to understand let's take it right from the page itself.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
Om, nomnomnom...
I can't believe there are 16% of people who do not believe that our evolutionary progress is not guided by His Noodly Appendage. How else can you explain midgets?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Apparently you interpret that very differently than I do.
Table-ized A.I.
46% of the US population rejects the entire foundation of modern life (science), and you wonder why it's news for nerds? It shows exactly how small a space the technologically literate occupy in this world.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
So it is 2x as silly to believe that something (the creator) existed before the creation of the universe but only just silly to believe that something (all matter) existed before the creation of the universe. I is confuse
The who created the divine creator argument is almost as old as the chicken and egg paradox which, if you apply naive logic, shows that chickens and eggs, and other birds for that matter, do not exist, and cannot exist, because the question of which came first has no logical answer.
As for the distant past, the idea that it is illusory is a rational and logical one, and is as plausible as your Linux box being installed from a DVD by a user at a fixed point in its history, vs everything having been compiled from scratch though the C compiler.
The truth is we cannot be sure about our distant origins, and we cannot even be sure that the distant past may even be deduced from evidence. Whether the apparent distant past is virtual or real is one for philiosophers, not everyday people, who just need a workable explanation to get the question answered to their satisfaction. Divine origins do this better than a rough principle (which is all the lay person will grasp from evolution) and to be honest, there is no single person alive who fully appreciates the complexity of evolution, let alone who can use it to explain our origins in terms of it to sufficient detail to rule out other alternatives (as is the case in physics for example.)
Those who believe that science can do more than offer a theory that fits the evidence do not understand the philosophical foundations of science or the limitations of inductive methods. Sooner or later on your philosophical and metaphysical travels, you will find, as I did, that you have to make a leap of blind faith. One cannot reason around this, and ignorance and scientifistic hand-waving do not provide an alternative, though they may be convincing to some.
Some of a religious persuasion have the arrogance to believe that they hold Divine Truth in their hands; too many followers of science are treating the scientific pronunciations of the day in the same way, and this is a tragic, as is the ignorance of the antireligious of the scientists, mathematicians and other rational people who see no problem with a religious faith. Think things through before making pronouncements on the silliness of someone who believes other than you do, or else appear silly yourself.
John_Chalisque
It's actually less prevalent in non-English languages-- some of them use the equivalent of 'American' for 'resident of the Americas' and a more specific word for 'resident of the United States'. That said, 'America' and 'American' in English have referred to the United States since before 1800 (see English sources on impressment of American sailors during the Napoleonic Wars), and anyone complaining about 'American' while speaking English is being pedantic or trying to score cheap anti-American karma.
"It's turtles all the way down."
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
How long have you got? B^>
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
If only 100% people believed the truth that we share a common ancestor with a certain species of primate, then we'd all be on IPv6 and have cold fusion generators eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels!
Not that it matters, but your logic is flawed anyway. The definition of a divine creator is an entity that just is and was never created. Since such a creator would have created even time itself, it is nonsensical to ask who created the creator since that would imply that time existed before creation.
I think the problem is in the inability of religious people to come to terms with the fact that adding a "creator" into the equation only complicates things, it doesn't simplify them. Arguing against the notion of the relatively simple entity that was the primordial universe just springing up into existence, with the idea that universe was created by another entity "just existing", only much more complex, capable of human-like mental processes combined with vast knowledge and abilities, seems somewhat redundant and ridiculous to me. Ultimately, you are facing an even more difficult question.
Ezekiel 23:20
No, eggs predate chickens. Dinosaurs which lead to chickens laid eggs.
I personally don't hold the truth on the origin of the universe, anyone who claims otherwise should be mocked.
It's creators all the way down!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
This is a logical fallacy, one heavily promoted by Carl Sagan among other atheists, but still just plain wrong. Science doesn't hold that everything must have an origin. If it did, the Steady State theory of Cosmology would have never been seriously considered and the Big Bang would have won out automattically before anyone ever actually gathered evidence. Instead of giving Penzias and Wilson a Nobel, we would have just yawned. The real issue is, for the particular way we think the universe works now, it has a first moment of creation. That doesn't mean the alternate theory wasn't scientific.
Further, most people who believe in God specifically believe He is eternal and has no first moment of creation, so if your proof was actually logical, all you would have proved is that the kind of God most people don't believe in cannot exist. That's about like proving that people are wrong to believe in four sided triangles. Who actually does? But, hey, this is slashdot, where you can get a +5 insightful for devastating a straw man.
Who is John Cabal?
particular demographic dependent on the intended outcome of the pollster
You don't need malice to explain the suspected discrepancy in this case. You've got a random sample of 1000 people, but it's not random. It's 1000 people who have landline phones. Who are home during the day. Who aren't on the no call list. Who don't have caller ID and/or are eager to answer opinion polls. That is a narrow group becoming narrower every day.
Evolutionists reject what is essentially the Prime Directive of Biology: Life cannot come from nonlife.
It is not that we reject science. We don't think that macro-evolution has been experimentally proven. We expect that when someone makes a statement of science, that it have actually been tested using the methods of science.
"If God had intended us to walk he would not have invented roller skates." -- Willy Wonka
He's paraphrasing Pascal's wager, and Pascal was one of the first people thinking logically about probability. Pascal wanted an example of how you should treat situations where one outcome was infinitely better or worse than all the others. Even though Pascal was religious, no one is really sure if he came up with the argument to try and convert people, or just as an example of the kind of situation where infinity was part of probability calculation. Hopefully, people don't change their beliefs because of Pascal's Wager anymore, if anyone really did.
Now Kurt Godel, who was probably a better mathematician than Pascal, had three great proofs. The second is famous for showing, as just one interpretation, how Provability in a formal system is different than Truth, and people often say that proof alone revolutionised the 20th century in the same way as Einstein. Godel's third proof is a demonstration of the existence of God, using Modal Logic. It avoids the glitches in Pascal's proof. Anyone who passed a good college course in Symbolic Logic can spend about a year studying some of the detailed areas of Modal Logic, really just picking up all the notation basics and such, and then follow Godel's proof and come to their opwn conclusion. I don't recommend bothering, as once you don't need faith to know there is a God anymore, you just need yet more faith to believe that Heaven is not just a place for six or seven old guys who were very good at math, and nobody else.
Who is John Cabal?
So, who's working on a faith vaccine?
We have one, it's called 'critical thinking'.
No.
The minister who believes all gays should be jailed believes that because his faith in his religion demands that he condemn homosexuality.
Where do your morals come from?
Do they have an objective rational basis?
Or do you believe them because someone or something you are not permitted to question told you to believe them?
Morality dictated by authority is not moral. It is just as likely to be abhorrent as it is to be good. It is arbitrary. It is the exact same thing if it causes you to believe as the minister you mention, or to respect your parents, to not eat pork, to not kill, or blow up airplanes.
My morality is a superior morality. It is formed from an objective rational basis. Justice, liberty and equality are not well served by irrational thought based on the crumbling edifice of religions built on a mountain of skulls.
Why do I say that faith is a mental illness? Because it is. It behaves exactly like a virus The mechanism of infection takes over the mental machinery of the host and modifies it to ensure that it propagates throughout the population, just as an organic virus infects a cell and takes over its genetic machinery to propagate itself. The faithful are strongly compelled to spread their faith to others.
Faith itself is belief in the absence of reason, belief in the face of contradiction. It makes it easier for someone to believe in things that are objectively and morally wrong. And these sometimes malevolent and violent memes follow in the wake of faith like secondary infections follow the compromised immune system of an HIV victim. These memes con often not be separated from the basis of faith and they form a complementary complex that further spreads the infection (often by eliminating the uninfected or those infected by a competing vector by violent force).
I used to be very religious. I was a fundamentalist christian once. The more I learned about God, the happier I became to realize that he was nothing more the dark specter of a fevered mind.
That is why the bible says 'without beginning and without end' because where there is no time there is no beginning or end.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
No problem. You supply the funding, and I'll have it done in approximately four billion years.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In any case, it doesn't matter if you're a theist or atheist; at some point you have to believe in the absurd notion that everything came from an uncreated something.
Actually, it's closer to "we don't know enough to answer that question...yet." Maybe a Sky Wizard did it. Maybe the universe is cyclical, maybe it's the result of n-dimensional experimentation, who knows? Maybe through investigation we can find out how the Universe was created and be able to build our own Universes. Sitting back and saying "God did it, He's ending the world this weekend, no need to plan for the future!" does a dis-service to everything that's ever existed on this little rock.
As to how much how I was created affects my daily life, that's irrelevant. We might exist because of random chance, or by the whim of a creator, or if I'm an avatar in an MMORPG, or any of a million possibilities, each more ridiculous and miraculous than the last.
What we do know is that we think we exist, and that we are the only sentient species we have encountered. What we have to do is stop eating pie and masturbating and get on with making our planet and our species better than it is.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
particular demographic dependent on the intended outcome of the pollster
You don't need malice to explain the suspected discrepancy in this case. You've got a random sample of 1000 people, but it's not random. It's 1000 people who have landline phones. Who are home during the day. Who aren't on the no call list. Who don't have caller ID and/or are eager to answer opinion polls. That is a narrow group becoming narrower every day.
FTFA:
So, not quite as stupid a methodology as only calling stay-at-home moms, but stupid nonetheless.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The separation of church and state is thoroughly implied by those phrases:
1. "respecting an establishment of religion" means that no religious viewpoint or organization can claim a privileged place in government. In other words, church stays out of state.
2. "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" means that government can't decide what religious viewpoints are acceptable. In other words, state stays out of church.
Many American Christians want their religious viewpoints to be established at least semi-officially, and the more extreme want to ban other religions (basically things that aren't Christianity or Judaism) from the United States.
Note that this is not the same concern as voting as one's religion dictates: If a Catholic wants to vote against those who supported government paying for contraception, no legal problem with that. But that's different from saying "Everyone's going to stand respectfully while Father Michaels recites the Lord's Prayer" at a public school graduation.
I am officially gone from
The atheistic point of view means you know there isn't a God.
I'm sorry, but that isn't true. Atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Dan Dennett, Sam Harris, A. C. Greyling - all have quite clearly said that they can't rule out the possibility that some kind of god exists.
Can you name any well-known, modern atheist (other than P. Z. Myers) who is completely certain that all gods are impossible?
Evolutionists reject what is essentially the Prime Directive of Biology: Life cannot come from nonlife.
Science is finding it increasingly difficult to draw the line between life and non-life. Viruses have just DNA replication ability without anything else needed for life. They borrow these from others. People were arguing whether viruses are alive or not. Now prions are basically chemicals (mis folded amino acids) with replication ability without DNA, not even the single stranded version of DNA called RNA. In fact there is a such a gradual chain of things linking life with non-life, it is not impossible to construct a sequence of events where life could emerge from non-life.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
you need to shut-up and quit mocking them. The idea of a divine creator is no sillier than the idea of creation from nothing.
Well perhaps it is not the answer to the question "Did creation come from nothing" that is silly; perhaps it is the question itself.
There are certainly other questions we could ask that clearly presuppose ordering events in impossible ways. What's colder than absolute zero? What's north of the North Pole? What has a higher elevation than directly overhead? What happens when you shrink a balloon to less than zero volume?
Asking whether creation came from nothing presupposes our notion of time and space can be extended before the Big Bang. It assumes that time is a fixed, universal measurement framework in which events can be unambiguously placed. But we already know that time is not like that. Special relativity has been pretty well corroborated by now. If time isn't a universal dimension but a set of paths along which events occur, it is no more repugnant to reason for those paths to lead back to a point than it is for them to go back endlessly.
This problem of trying to extend our understanding back before the beginning of the universe is not resolved by assuming a pre-existing God. Did anything happen before "the moment of creation"? If so, then the moment of creation is just an arbitrary point in time. So what was God up to in the eternity before that? If there is no beginning to time, there is no reason for God to perform the act of creation when he did. He had an eternity to work his way up to it. Possibly He has done this an infinite number of times, in which case time is as Eastern religions often conceive it: circular. Note that this conception of God doing things in an eternity before creation is no longer really transcendent. God may not be part of creation, but he is part of "existence" and does things because conditions in existence him cause him to, just like you or I put on a coat when it's cold. This version of God is not so different than you or I, just longer lived and more complex.
On the other hand, let's suppose God has the transcendent role religion assigns him, that he is indeed the First Cause. That means things didn't happen before the moment of creation. That brings us back to the same situation we have with the Big Bang. Does it make sense to talk about time in which events don't occur? Event he ticking of a clock is an event; a beat of the pulse; the vibration of an atom.
Perhaps it would be best to think of the beginning of the universe not as a limit to the Universe per se, but a limit to any kind of extrapolation from experience. The laws of physics as we know them came into being in first 10^-12 seconds. As we go back further to the Planck Epoch before 10^-43, intuition begins to break down. And as we push further back in that 10^-43 seconds, there will come a point earlier than which we can't even extend our deductive frameworks. Let's say the earliest event we can discern by deduction occurs at 10^-X. In the time between 0 and 10^-X our understanding completely breaks down. That tiny sliver of time is for all purposes an eternity, since we can't put any definite limit on events that occur in it.
I have often wondered whether intelligent life (obviously not as we know it) might have existed in the epoch of the Universe, only living on a vastly faster time scale. To that life our epoch of the Universe would look like the future heat death of the Universe does to us.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yahweh, the god of the bible is who they believe did this.
Not Shiva.
Not some random god.
They may wave hands a bit on "Allah" but the fact is most christians beliefs are exclusive of islamic beliefs. The islamics will go to hell or purgatory. The christians will go to a lower level of heaven (at best) or hell.
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They willfully ignore mountains of hard facts which they could observe themselves directly in order to maintain this belief. Even tho the conclusion from that is that Yahweh for some unknown reason decided to create all kinds of false evidence of an older earth and to create dna patterns which are very similar to apes.
---
There is a huge gap from "a god created the universe" to "the god of the bible created the universe and wants us to worship it, ordered hebrew tribes to slaughter men, women, "suckling babies", and old people, ordered them to not mix two types of cloth, and had a few dozen kids attacked by bears for mocking elijah. Killed 99% of humans at least once- perhaps twice, and then repeatedly engaged in infanticide and genocide.
Sure-- an unknown god may have created the universe-- but that doesn't mean it is yahweh.
Most Theists disbelieve every god but one. Atheists just beleive in one less god than theists.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This contains a pronouncement of truth "The truth is that we cannot...." which isn't really true, and/or terms (such as "distant past", "virtual", and "real" are so poorly understood or undefined that the pronouncement fails to communicate something which actually is true.
Also, the egg did, in fact, precede the chicken, (as another poster pointed out, there were animals that laid eggs, and one of them laid the egg of the first chicken).
The statement about people "who believe science can offer more than a theory" appears to capitalize on misunderstanding of the scientific method, as if a "theory" were a "hypothesis". This statement (and the rest of the post) also appears to completely discount empirical evidence, (without which, oddly enough, "faithful" people could not learn or develop "divine" explanations.)
Coincidentally 46% is also the amount of Americans without education.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
How do you get any sort of equivalence between
all X should be jailed
and GP's original statement of:
They can't really help it and they should not be insulted for it
I'm guessing it has something to do with that compartmentalization that your sig suggests you exhibit.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
God created the universe last Tuesday and any memories of earlier times were also created at that point.
Prove me wrong.
> The idea of a divine creator is no sillier than the idea of creation from nothing.
That's because the notion of the creation of the universe is senseless.
Science: time is a coordinate inside the universe or inside a local (suitably defined) part of the universe. Thus a time is a measurable (in principle) part of the internals of the universe.
The notion of the universe is therefore outside of time. What do we know about the universe? We just know that it is. There's no (before, after) pair of times concerning its change in existence. That would require an outside-of-the-universe containing time.
Confusion about this could appear from e.g., "what if there's something before the big bang", say. But we can include any such potential extras now or in the future inside the definition of 'the universe', i.e. keep the meaning universal.
The underlying confusion about creation comes from applying everyday thinking about time to the wider situation, as if time is outside the universe. We don't think of spatial coordinates outside the universe. But experience of time is different, because internally, at a local spot in the universe there is a past and future.
There IS a question to answer: why does anything exist? However, the answer is not that it was created, in any usual sense of that term. And redefining 'created' would simply be an attempt to adjust the brain, not solve the problem.
Godel's proof fails to prove the existence of God.
1) It begins by re-defining God to mean something quite different (and containing far fewer attributes) than the common meaning. Even if such a thing can be proven to exist, what has been proven to exist is not "God." This is the logical fallacy of ignoratio elenchi"
2) The premise "necessary existence is a positive property" is not an a priori truth, but an interesting equivocation. It translates to "something that actually exists is morally superior to something that is merely imaginary," which might make sense to some people but is ultimately based on opinion rather than logical necessity.
3) As Hume astutely pointed out, it is impossible to demonstrate the existence of any concrete thing from purely a priori truths. This includes God. To summarize: a priori truths can only be proven if their opposite necessarily implies a contradiction. Any concrete thing that exists could also not-exist without there being a contradiction. So, to prove that a real thing exists one must include at least one relevant a posteriori premise in the argument.
Fun fact: Godel was an atheist, and delayed the publication of this "proof" for fear that people might think he believed in God.
When I have the extraordinary supernatural ability to self determine what I do, how I think, etc...
Sounds like wishful thinking to me. How do you know that this "ability" is not an illusion caused by our way of perceiving things?
Actually it sounds like rational thinking - if you don't possess the capability of self determination then you cannot even influence your own behavior, including your belief, and all further action becomes pointless. In the face of such a proposition the only logical reaction is to assume that you do in fact possess self determination. Either you are right, or you have no choice in the matter and the question is irrelevant.
As for the divine watchmaker, I think what throws a lot of people is that they see an intelligent design, and presume it implies an intelligent designer. They haven't accepted that, while mindless, evolution is actually an incredibly brilliant designer that harnesses blind chaos in the service of the most effective design technique possible in the face of an incomprehensibly vast and complicated system: trial and error.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
and where did the quantum soup come from?
Spiritual people. There is something absolutely amazing about life and death. One minute a person is there and then suddenly, all that remains is a husk. Yes, I understand fully the mechanics of the process, right down to the baryons. That doesn't change the fact that in my experience, something profound and ineffable has vanished from my perception, my grasp, and has left the world that I can comprehend.
None of this is an excuse for willful ignorance and stupid, stubborn, hubris. No matter how hard I believe, the world will not stop. If it did, the thin skin of the planet would tear free from the mantle and continents would slide over one another. Life on the planet would evaporate in a magmatic cataclism that would make the eruption of Mt. St. Helens look like a popcorn fart in a hurricane. If there is a creator, I'm guessing she doesn't go around suspending physics to mess with the creation. Just a guess (having created a few virtual worlds of my own, I'm supposing we're well past the beta.) Our world is chock full of mythologies. Its a human penchant to come up with stories to explain what we don't understand. Its also a penchant to attempt to describe nature and observe its inner workings. Folks who have at an early age divorced themselves from reality are missing something. We live in a truly remarkable universe. Even more disconcerting is that some people who choose to ignore reality seem to treat reality as though it bends to their opinions. The harsh conservative element in our government seems to have faith that a government that gives all its money away to the wealthy and takes no taxes can work and its people (at least the ones that matter) can thrive. This is the danger of faith based thinking, policy, society. The belief is more important than the fact, and those who have faith in driving straight on a crooked road endanger themselves and all others on the road.
A wise person surrenders to reality that which is real, and leaves that which untestable, unexplainable, or just humanly ineffable to faith. In these people I have no problem, I find myself among them. I simply know where to draw the line, and as our science improves, so the line moves.
Guardian:
Science News
I'm checking this out; thanks for the referral.
As it stands, I only have a brief history of time spent researching the subject.
You say I can't "just exist" and need a creator too?
If this world was somehow created, like your virtual world, then either that creator's world "just exists", or it was created in turn. At some point you either have a world which was not created, or you have a cycle or infinite series of worlds, each creating the next. In the former case, there is no evidence to suggest that we are not in that original, uncreated universe; in the latter, there is no uncreated creator.
If you can postulate a world where it is possible for things to "just exist" without being created, then our universe can be one of those things which "just exists". That is a far simpler answer than claiming that there must be an all-powerful creator who "just exists" and who, in turn, created the universe.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The answer "we don't know yet" is perfectly acceptable and much preferred to "you don't know so it was [$DEITY]!"
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Well we do also have a little evidence that the universe exists. The point is you can't say that everything must have a creator, including the universe, and then make an exception for your creator but denying making an exception for the universe.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
(unrelated note, PiCraft sounds neat! I may check it out soon. :)
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
and where did the quantum soup come from?
Satan?
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
In any case, it doesn't matter if you're a theist or atheist; at some point you have to believe in the absurd notion that everything came from an uncreated something.
Wrong. You don't have to believe that. You can simply acknowledge that there are some things we might never know, and leave it at that. That's honest. That's the simple truth. It's a gap in our knowledge now and possibly forever.
Just because there is a gap doesn't mean get to fill that gap with whatever fairy tale makes you feel good.
False.
Agnostic means that you don't believe it's possible to know. Atheist means you hold no belief.
ORDER in all things? Like why you have nipples?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories
What's wrong? You can't project what seems like common sense to you onto the universe. It's even possible that the human mind cannot conceive of what the universe is actually like and any models we build will be flawed.
Just because there's a gap in our knowledge, even one that may be permanent, that doesn't mean you can fill that gap with God. Such arguments even have a name because they're ubiquitous and known fallacies. They're called God IN the Gaps arguments. Look it up.