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Hints of Life's Start Found In a Giant Virus
An anonymous reader points out this update on the world's largest virus, discovered in March. Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie were used to finding strange viruses. The married virologists at Aix-Marseille University had made a career of it. But pithovirus, which they discovered in 2013 in a sample of Siberian dirt that had been frozen for more than 30,000 years, was more bizarre than the pair had ever imagined a virus could be. In the world of microbes, viruses are small — notoriously small. Pithovirus is not. The largest virus ever discovered, pithovirus is more massive than even some bacteria. Most viruses copy themselves by hijacking their host's molecular machinery. But pithovirus is much more independent, possessing some replication machinery of its own. Pithovirus's relatively large number of genes also differentiated it from other viruses, which are often genetically simple — the smallest have a mere four genes. Pithovirus has around 500 genes, and some are used for complex tasks such as making proteins and repairing and replicating DNA. "It was so different from what we were taught about viruses," Abergel said. The stunning find, first revealed in March, isn't just expanding scientists' notions of what a virus can be. It is reframing the debate over the origins of life."
science is simple like that.
That is all.
Humans are a virus, or it is what disposed of the dinosaur.
here ya go: It was so different from what we were taught about viruses.....
"It was so big we had to sterilize our lab equipment with a hammer."
How do viruses reproduce without complex lifeforms in which to do so? If it reproduces on its own, I don't think pithovirus can be classified as a virus. Then, in that case, what separates pithovius from the prokaryotes?
So, uh, what were these hints?
It's the only way to be sure
Or not.
All your meme are belong to us!
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I, for one, welcome our new virii overl...oh forget it, this meme is no longer funny.
Especially since the virii have been our overloads all along!
On Dice's Slashdot, Memes laugh at YOU!
the others call him Morris Worm.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Score: +1, Used to be funny
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Nobody else around here lets that kind of thing stop them.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Why does there need to be a creationist explanation?
Do you really understand what creation means? It means something was created and in the case of religious creation, everything was. Why was it created? It's hard to say but nothing here is proof that creation doesn't work. It's just evidence that creation isn't needed to work. It's like a car, you can use a key to start it but you can also hot wire it and start without a key. That doesn't mean the key no longer works- it just may no longer be necessary to work in order to start the car.
In fact, if you follow the religious examples (creationist), god gave man dominion over his creations. He also gave him knowledge. And we know in the new testament, that Jesus says God is still working and so was he. So in essence, you would search and find an understanding that didn't require the need for a God to create anything in order to understand it and have dominion (rule) over it. We also know that God gave us free will and you will either go to God or reject him/her. Nothing prevents anything from being created when a being is above the laws of nature that we are bound by and understand, including our understanding of those creations which may be by design of the creation.
Expecting a supernatural explanation for natural events and understandings is not very scientific.
I for one welcome our new viral overlords.
"Virii" is not the correct plural of virus. see?. Wikipedia is never wrong.
Easy: God created this big virus this way.
Alternative possibilities include:
The deceiver created this one this way after the fact, to confuse us.
The scientists are wrong and have misclassified this discovery.
God continues to create the universe, using evolution as one tool of creation, and this virus is a remnant of that.
Spaghetti Monster don't care.
Maybe at some point we'll regard this thing as being on a continuum from mis-folded proteins to intelligent life such as whales. In the meantime, people will argue about whether or not it's really a virus.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
http://www.scientificamerican....
Expecting a supernatural explanation for natural events and understandings is not very scientific.
I know, hence why trying to use the religion view of creationism isn't realistic.
Satan created viruses to confuse Man about the origin of life, along with fossils, typesetting, and the ideal gas law. The combination of these makes a terrible sound and smell which often induces violent diarrhea that is nicknamed the Devil's Movement or Old Nick's Bowels.
This has been proven by the frequency at which virologists and paleontologists buy anti-diarrhea medication, often at ten times that of the general public. So if you see or smell something funny, it is surely the Devil's work trying to mislead you.
Your meme has already gone viral.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Don't thaw it out! I've seen the the BLOB movie, I know how this turns out...
I'm not sure your sentence parses.
Are you saying creationism is not realistic or not realistic for a scientific understanding? I would agree with the later, there not enough information for the former.
That is all.
Oh, i can do that for them: "poof, it's there, and God did it."
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
"Nobody else around here lets that kind of thing stop them."
He didn't let it stop him either.
In Soviet Russia something something something.
God likes 'em big
Table-ized A.I.
virus overlords. Not virii. "Virii" is not Latin for viruses.
The sample being 30,000 years old doesn't seem significant because it's quite recent relative to the history of life, and even primates. The same kind of virus or a close relative is probably still around and the sample age probably has nothing to do with its size, but rather a happenstance of observation in that we tend to study old things harder than we do current things, and thus notice more.
Table-ized A.I.
If your new overlord was weird and pissed off, this story would have had a Kurt Russell ending.
Well, I for one welcome our new meme overlords, and would like to remind them that as a /. poster with excellent karma, I can be helpful in modding up posts for their spreading into new sugar-powered minds.
You keep saying "We Know..." about something Jesus is purported to have said, or that "We know that God gave us free will..." as if these are facts. I don't know anything about any Gods at all, because I've never been given any evidence that any God exists. The Bible, or any other religious writing is just something written a long time ago (usually) by some religious people, so can't be counted as evidence for anything.
"...so can't be counted as evidence for anything."
The same can be said for any writing, on any topic, including, say, physics--no matter how vetted scientifically it may be. The first issue is validating the content of the book at hand, and if it passes that, then it absolutely would provide evidence as to the facts of reality.
Some would say that the persistent examples of prophecy fulfillment, absurdly improbable even after tossing out 99% of them for proposable reasons such as hypothetical "intentional fulfillment," or just tossing them out for no rational reason at all (as you just did wholesale), would still not alter this.
The specifics of the prophecies I won't state here, they are easily google-able and stating them in a non-abstract way would invoke and endless stream of me being trolled. So I'll simply point out your epistemological reasoning is wholly invalid and irrational.
I think I'll need some clarification of your term "supernatural" here.
If I designed reality such that I had a universal "back door" to manipulate anything of a physical nature at will, and took the added step that my actions would be utterly untraceable due to an apparent, but unprovable, nature of persistent randomness within my "interface," precisely as I might do if I were as intelligent and capable as a god, and precisely as quantum physics actually is... would that "supernatural" for your discussion purposes?
...therefore, what we've been taught by priests for thousands of years must be the ultimate truth!
Your username gives such credibility to your statements.
Mod +1
"Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie were used to finding strange viruses..."
Is this the modern version of, "It was a dark and stormy night..." ?
Table-ized A.I.
They immediately recognized the organism’s viruslike shape — imagine a 20-sided die, with each face a hexagon
I'm having a hard time fitting together 20 hexagonal faces. OTOH, the herpes virus is shaped like a regular icosahedron.
::ahem:: Translation: Blah blah blah. God did it, that's why. God can do anything. We don't need to understand why, but he gave us understanding so we could understand that we're not supposed to understand the knowdedge he allegedly gave us.
Astounded at the hairy beard-like structures, a shiny bald pate-like structure in the dorsal region and the astonishing presence of a purple-and-white T-shirt on the virus, I shortly thereafter realized I wasn't looking at a picture of the virus but of it's discoverer, Eugene Koonin.
Somebody give that guy a razor blade.
Yes and no. In the strict sense, there will be exceptions but yes, being able to act without regard to the laws of nature that the appearant world is bound by would qualify as supernatural.
Evidently, God failed in giving you reading comprehension and you lack the ability to underdtand simple concepts. Your take on my statement is completely opposite of what was said.
Lol.. stop trying to be funny.
We do know that religion (some anyways) holds those principles to be true. The "we know" statemment was clearly qualified by "if we follow the religious examples". Your personal knowlegde of a god or validity of a religious doctrine is completely unimportant to the context. The context is of what people who do belive could understand- not whether they were accurate or not or even convincing.
Please follow along.
> It's just evidence that creation isn't needed to work.
Guys, we are discussing an hypothetical guy residing outside of, and creator of, TIME itself.
You, and all the others, make NO SENSE because you imagine creation IN TIME vs. evolution IN TIME, instead of creation OF Time, the universe, with all its peculiarities like emergent life vs. a patch to introduce life (which seems bad programming style itself, and probably not what the genesis and similar books meant, at all).
If you make a tiny effort and watch things from the POV of a hypothetical god who stands beyond the concept of time, there is no problem in creating a universe with free will agents and knowing how it's going to end up, or in creating an evolving universe that ends up exactly the way you do, or in creating a universe whose time extends indefinitely in both directions and so on.
Face it, creation and evolution are orthogonal issues, just as who and why are orthogonal questions. Those who prefer to pit science against religion, just founded the religion of science and I applaud them on their proliferation effort.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I, for one, welcome our new virii overl...oh forget it, this meme is no longer funny.
Virii? Nitpicking, I know, but that particular abuse of the language makes me cringe, it really does, because it is so bizarrely and emphatically wrong on far too many levels.
Even if 'virus' had been the singular form of a latin word, the plural would not have been 'virii', with double 'i' at the end. 'Viri', possibly, but 'virii' would have to come from 'Virius', a personal name - check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
Finally, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...:
Etymology
The word is from the Latin virus referring to poison and other noxious substances, first used in English in 1392.[10] Virulent, from Latin virulentus (poisonous), dates to 1400.[11] A meaning of "agent that causes infectious disease" is first recorded in 1728,[10] before the discovery of viruses by Dmitri Ivanovsky in 1892. The English plural is viruses, whereas the Latin word is a mass noun, which has no classically attested plural. The adjective viral dates to 1948.[12] The term virion (plural virions), which dates from 1959,[13] is also used to refer to a single, stable infective viral particle that is released from the cell and is fully capable of infecting other cells of the same type.[14]
IMO, since 'virus' is a modernism - an old word used in a completely new way - it is reasonable to treat it grammatically as a modern word: one virus, multiple viruses, just like 'one bus, several buses' ('bus' from 'omnibus', but let's not go there). Apart from that, you would use a a nominative singular here: '... our virus overlords ...'
I think the summary rather overstates the case. This virus, if a virus it is, doesn't so much hint at the origins of life as it puts a new perspective on the origins of viruses. The origin of life probably lies much further back in time than the emergence of viruses, certainly if viruses are 'degenerated' life-forms, evolved from cellular life.
Seen in this light, this new virus could be a primitive virus; but it rather begs the question whether 'virus' is actually a well-defined, mono-phyletic group. It seems quite reasonable to think that viruses have evolved many times during evolution. Firstly, although life is said to have begun when certain things came together and formed cells, there must have been a period when life or proto-life was more like a diffuse soup of components that would be part of cellular life, and while some of these combined to become cells, others may have become viruses. They may have evolved again at a slightly later stage from plasmids, pieces of genetic material that move between cells (or plasmids may have evolved as an extreme form of viruses, who knows?), and they may have arisen once more from bacteria or similar.
Mod parent up, he is spot on. The english plural is viruses and that's it.
The word virus has no attested plural form in latin. One could argue that if the word had a plural form, it would be "vira", though, since it's neutral.
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/fa...
"...so can't be counted as evidence for anything."
The same can be said for any writing, on any topic, including, say, physics--no matter how vetted scientifically it may be.
You can dismiss physics stuff as "something old people wrote long ago" - sure. But there is a difference. Physics does not demand that you believe. They say "if you find this dubious - put it to the test yourself! Maybe you get convinced then - or maybe you actually correct us on some points." Religions don't have this. You can of course claim to be a new prophet, but that usually splits the religion into those who follow you and those who don't. Often, one side is small and die out. Sometimes, a new sect forms.
Most of physics is easily tested by individuals or small groups. There are very few things that need cern-sized organizations.
I, for one, welcome our new virii overl...oh forget it, this meme is no longer funny.
Especially since the virii have been our overloads all along!
Speaking on behalf of many dead Romans, the proper plural for virus is "viruses". Latin's plural forms are much less simple than English ones.
But I'm fighting a losing pedantic battle here. The "virii" spelling went viral long ago.
But if a thing exists outside of time, it can't have actions, it can't have causal relations, it can't create. By definition, if it is outside of time, it cannot change, either itself or anything else, it has not ability for "then".
So how does it create time?
Satan put it in the ground to make us doubt God. (Or some other shit along those lines)
# touch universe # chmod +rwx universe #
Just a quick question - if God created everything, what/who created God? And please, no turtles all the way down.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
A little fix: God didn't give human knowledge. In fact, Adam took the knowledge by biting the apple. And God freaked out and banned Adam from Heaven.
The context is of what people who do belive could understand
People who 'believe' in this context are incapable of understanding. They already have their opinion given to them from their beliefs.
You keep saying "We Know..." about something Jesus is purported to have said, or that "We know that God gave us free will..." as if these are facts. I don't know anything about any Gods at all, because I've never been given any evidence that any God exists. The Bible, or any other religious writing is just something written a long time ago (usually) by some religious people, so can't be counted as evidence for anything.
NOBODY expects the Atheist Inquisition!
This comment now stands moderated at 'Redundant'. Which is just about perfect. I wish there was a way to make sure it stays that way :)
(Yes, that was more or less a joke)
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
"Religions don't have this."
Oh, of course they do. They provide a definite means of testing. Asking the relevant entity. Have you tested it? That is doesn't have the same methodology as whatever goalpost-shifting criterion you will come up with to make sure to exclude it, actually doesn't matter at all.
If it makes the issue any clearer, though, try contrasting with a book on history specifically. Have you tested ancient Greek or Roman historian's claims, when their writings have been broadly accurate and plausible? 20'th century historians, for that matter? You've recreated history under lab conditions? In reality, the only differentiation there is between these and the bible is your bias.
"Physics does not demand that you believe."
Of course it does. You must give plausibility to all the Interpretations of QM, and you must for all practical purposes believe one of them to be true--that belief being utterly without proof or even any differentiating evidence.
You mean just like you? Seriously, thats the most short sided stupid thing anyone could have said given the context.
You do not get to ignore reality in order to impose your own.
Why is that ssme answer that is used to explain the mass for the explosion in the big bang not sufficient to explain a god's existance?
I'll go one better and give you an answer thst ypu cannot refute. We don't know.
I'm offended by that, you insensitive clod.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
No, God did give msn knowlege. Before Adam tasted the apple, God brought all the animals and stuff before him snd told him to name them. He had quite a bit of knowlege before the apple came into play.
Then merged to become life as we know it. This is a hypothesis proposed by some science scientists like Robert Hazen.
Although we dont see pre-life metabolic fossils, some viruses could be pre-life reproductive fossils.
There's a number of different hypotheses for how the big bang got started, but it's tricky to figure out the maths/effects so that we can figure out what fits all our available data. (You can't really explain the existence of a god as there's nothing to measure and no meaningful experiments that can be refuted).
If you don't know what created the creator and yet believe that she exists, then why do you need a creator?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
"The same can be said for any writing, on any topic, including, say, physics--no matter how vetted scientifically it may be. The first issue is validating the content of the book at hand, and if it passes that, then it absolutely would provide evidence as to the facts of reality."
Horseshit.
Physics (and math and biology and other hard sciences) make assertions regarding the way the world works ('hypotheses').
Hypotheses are by definition testable propositions.
If the evidence supports the hypothesis, great. If not, new hypothesis and more testing until there's a model that supports observed phenomena.
Goddidit is not a testable propositoin.
There's no way to frame a hypothesis that would test for a being that exists but is allegedly non-material, non-corporeal, and non-temporal. I mean, yes, platonic ideas exist, but we don't say that the platonic sphere actually has agency in the material world. The Goddidit argument basically asks us to suspend disbelieve because JEEBUS (or deity of choice). And there's no other way to frame a creationtard argument, because by definition creation is performed by non-temporal, non-corporeal, immaterial being who leaves no detectable traces of its existence.
" That is doesn't have the same methodology as whatever goalpost-shifting criterion you will come up with to make sure to exclude it, actually doesn't matter at all."
ah, I see....requesting actual testable evidence, something that can be repeated, is goalpost-shifting.
Whereas the small silent voice within (or whatever other revelatory-claim crap you're touting) is superior.
"Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication-- after that it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it can not be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to ME, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him." [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]
You do not get to ignore reality in order to impose your own.
You are correct, I don't.
Religious people do though.
Let's see, a person who starts with a clean slate and thinks and questions can come to an understanding about something. (I'll give you the point that that understanding could be wrong.)
But a person who was brought up to believe something on faith just because their parents told them to believe it, or that they read it in a holy book doesn't really understand. Why would they, they never had to think about it, it may as well be a fact to them. They have been told, and they believe.
Religious teachings maintain that God was not created by anything. God is where the buck stops. God is the foundation upon which all the turtles rest.
More philosophically-inclined theologians explain it a bit differently, however. To grossly oversimplify and munge:
The "ground of being" is a philosophical concept that both atheists and theists can agree on. It represents the foundation from which all of existence springs. The nature of this ground is highly debated, but the educated all presume that it exists. For example, a physicalist might say that the ground of being is the basic laws of physics, or perhaps the most elementary of the particles upon which this force acts, or perhaps the space (or higgs field or whatever) in which all this happens. That's the bottom. A philosophical idealist, on the other hand, would insist that awareness itself is the bottom, and all matter is a side-effect of that (no need to defend that here, just giving an example).
To many theists, "God" is simply a personification of the ground of being. We give it a name and think of it as a person because it is convenient for us to do so, and because that is the most natural mode of orientation that the human mind understands. Such theists recognize that many religious statements about God go way too far in this anthropomorphism; though they serve to simplify for the benefit of those who are not philosophers, they sometimes imply things about reality that aren't really consistent with the foundations of their religious thought. But those details are generally not interesting to the population at large, so they aren't shouted from the pulpit (they are found in books that are freely available but largely unread by anyone but the clergy).
The true foundational difference between an atheist and a theist can be summarized thus: does the ground of being care? An atheist says no. A theist says yes. All details beyond this point are needlessly belabored.
So the question "what created the ground of being" doesn't make any more sense than "in what field does the higgs field dwell?" Its a play on words born from a misunderstanding of the concept. The question "who created God" makes sense only when we forget that God isn't actually a person, but rather, another way of thinking of the ground of being.
Meh, why am I typing all this? Nobody cares.
Every explaination either becomes turtles all the way down or ends with an i don't know.
Now, i'm not sure a creator is "needed". But it is part of the religion so we got one. Religion doesn't typically search for something to believe, it is told.
That's a much shorter explanation that the other reply that I got. However, yours makes much more sense.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
And the exact same thing happens with science. Most people do not posess the knowlege,, skill, resources, or time to verify everything science says. They have to take the word for it from some authoritive figure. It is no differnt. The more true something is, the more it might be repeated and hence we are on par with religion again.
Okay. That's a definition of God that I've never encountered. It doesn't fit well with all the religious stories that tell of an angry vengeful God that sends plagues and demands worship etc.
If God is a shorthand for the ground of being, then why do so many people go to war about which is the correct one and how you should worship him/her/it?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
While it is true that most people must take science on faith (due to their personal inability to verify the claims), the key difference is:
1) The scientists making the claims have access to particle colliers, arrays of telescopes, etc., with which they CAN AND DO objectively recreate the claims being made.
2) The religious leaders making religious claims have nothing more than dusty old books, with which they CANNOT AND DO NOT recreate the miracles that the books claim, nor do they objectively demonstrate the existence of God.
So, humans that are alive and working TODAY can demonstrate the claims of science, whereas no living breathing human can demonstrate the claims of religion.
This is why the religious always harp on "faith" (abusing it to mean "belief without evidence" which isn't actually the gist of its greek meaning, but that is another matter). Religious beliefs require a category of faith that science does not (even if the distinction is largely lost on the greater percentage of the population).
What makes this a virus and not a bacteria, or something never found before? If it is so very different from a virus? I simply don't know here and I am asking for a dumbed down explanation as I am very ignorant on the subject.
I'm surprised someone even ready my post, let alone responded. I don't often get responses, even when I bother to sign in. I will try to do your question justice.
The short: the "angry and vengeful god" is mostly just fundamentalism, which is of relatively recent origin, and which dominates the media. Study Christian history (the really REALLY old stuff, like Origin, Gregory of Nyssa, the Gnostic heresies, etc) and you will see a *very* different conception of God (did you know that much of the early christian church believed that everyone, even evil non-believers, eventually went to heaven?). There is a whole lot to say here, if you are truly interested maybe start with the documentary "Hellbound?," follow up on the authors interviewed, and see just how deep this rabbit-hole really goes.
The long: There are several separate factors at work that combine to produce the religious behavior you mention:
1. Politics. Religious ideas (however philosophical or mythological they may be) have the power to motivate people (for better or for worse). Anything that can do this will be abused by politicians (whether they be fallible believers or atheists misrepresenting themselves as believers). This will include using political force to inject into the doctrines/scriptures stipulations which have no foundation in the mystical origins of the faith, but that serve to further political ends. This will also include justifying war on religious grounds. A long history of this will cause political artifacts to accumulate in any old religion, thus making it difficult to separate the "wheat from the chaff" of beliefs, as it were.
2. Education. Today's great religions were all born during a time when most people could not read, let alone engage in philosophical dialogue. People sure could have visions, however, and face terrible anxiety, and seek answers that would set their hearts at rest. In this environment, a common story emerges as the beginning-point of all the worlds great religions. The pattern is as follows:
a) The right person in the right time experiences a deep and profound mystical revelation (this happened to Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, etc.).
b) the mystic acts and teaches, gaining a following of fellow mystics.
c) something in what they offer really gets the attention of everyone they encounter, causing the religion to spread rapidly, among multiple classes of people.
d) the religion forms into a multi-tiered hierarchy, with a well-educated (and usually wealthy) elite at the top, and a huge foundation of uneducated masses at the bottom.
e) in this environment, it is simply *impossible* to deliver the full revelation to the masses...their minds are not educated enough to understand it, and they don't have the time of day to engage in the necessary mystical exercises to realize the vision themselves. So, instead, the elites at the top cook up analogies and myths that attempt to capture a more simplified translation of the essence of the revelation. Something the masses *can* understand, and can run with, even if not very accurate, is the only available option.
f) as time marches on, the elites preserve their foundational knowledge among one another, even as the masses roll on with their necessarily flawed variant.
g) as it became trendy for everyone to be literate, many people who can now read and think independently took the watered-down and highly-politicized versions of their doctrines and ran with them, adding their own thoughts, thus producing the endless stream of offshoots and denominations, most of which are arguing about petty details that are entirely secondary to the essence (and origins) of their faith.
The writings of the early mystics, inasmuch is they have been preserved, are still available for reading by modern-day religious practioners. Plenty of such practioners are too fixated on the watered-down and politically-poisoned versions of their faith to be interested. The few who are
I, for one, welcome our new virii overl...oh forget it, this meme is no longer funny.
Virii? Nitpicking, I know, but that particular abuse of the language makes me cringe, it really does, because it is so bizarrely and emphatically wrong on far too many levels.
[...]
just like 'one bus, several buses' ('bus' from 'omnibus', but let's not go there). Apart from that, you would use a a nominative singular here: '... our virus overlords ...'
Buses? Nitpicking, I know, but that particular abuse of the language makes me cringe, it really does, because it is so bizarrely and emphatically wrong on far too many levels.
The correct plural of bus is bi. (Unless you're talking about the London double-decker variety, in which case it's bii.)
Never?
It's pretty spot-on to what a lot of enlightenment thinkers and Einstein conceived as "God".
A lot of brilliant people have noticed that anthropomorphized religion is entirely illogical from the ground up, yet still felt that nature was too great and inexplicably law-bound to arise from the ground state alone.
I don't personally follow their line of thinking, and I'm not sure they would anymore either with the breadth of human cosmological knowledge, but I have always found that particular concept of a God as elegant and attractive.
Other nitpick: aside from the wrong plural, it was in a place that doesn't take a plural. "Our new virus overlords" is grammatically correct, if trite. Compare "our new viruses overlords".
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And the exact same thing happens with science. Most people do not posess the knowlege,, skill, resources, or time to verify everything science says. They have to take the word for it from some authoritive figure. It is no differnt. The more true something is, the more it might be repeated and hence we are on par with religion again.
The difference is that science can be proven over and over again, even if it was a skill learned by someone else. Religion can't. There is no proof. Zero zip. That is why it is "faith". You just believe that it exist without any proven proof and will never be able to. Where there is plenty of proof that the Bible (and other religious texts) where nothing but written by humans over time. So please stop comparing your God believes to science, because you just showing how ignorant you really are in the end.
Religions often say nothing that is falsifiable, and in that case can't disagree with science. Lots of religious people (probably most) are happy to believe things about the world we exist in when given the evidence.
Look up the Nicene Creed and try to disprove any part of it. None of it is actually falsifiable, which means it's completely compatible with science.
Religious belief also depends on experience. Scientifically, we know some things about these experiences, but there's no scientific way to tell if they're artifacts of evolution in the human brain or actual divine perception.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"But I'm fighting a losing pedantic battle here."
There is no other kind of pedantic battle. Pedantry is the realm of people who cannot deal with change.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but this is relevant:
Some people have not accepted their fear. They are afraid of death (as we all are), and they attempt to overcome this fear through beliefs about the afterlife. In order for this mental device to work, their beliefs must be unarguably correct. Since such beliefs are impossible to attain (all beliefs might be wrong, and hence are arguably incorrect), they compensate for this through violent dogmatism. Anything that might show them that their beliefs might be wrong is a threat, so they attack it.
Many, many people remain in this state. Their fear drives them to violate the spirit of their own faith, to the detriment of their fellow man. A quote I once read on this: "95% of Christians give the rest of us a bad name." This applies to other religions as well. The popularity of this state hides the jewel of authentic spirituality under a cloak of human pettiness.
Authentic spiritual work gives someone a different means of dealing with this fear. The mental device is emotional and mystical, rather than intellectual. The sense of dwelling in the divine presence cures the fear without supplying any specific facts about what happens next. The practitioner can simply accept that death is mysterious, and not need specifics about it, because they simply trust in God to ensure that the greatest good is achieved. Properly applied, these practices make people more loving of their fellow man. Such people do not go to war over differences of belief, nor do they panic when new learning challenges their old beliefs.
Authentic mystics tend to be well-received by those they meet (think Mother Teresa). They never ask for veneration (it literally has no value to them), but people venerate them anyway (because of their inspirational power). Not-so-authentic mystics (think sociopaths like Robert Tilton) are envious of this veneration and want it for themselves. So they pretend. And they succeed. They not only pander to the fears they are supposed to be curing, they actually cook up doctrines that reinforce those fears in order to keep people hooked. They drink in the fame and have no qualms whatsoever about sending their victims off to kill anyone who would attempt to dethrone them. These are the people you have to thank for the evils of mainstream Christianity, and the petty, shallow, and evil God it worships.
The big problem I have with this is the "ground of being" idea. In one case you're describing it as laws of physics, and that's not really "the foundation from which all of existence springs". It's more of a description of what things do when there are things. Unless future physics takes a turn I really don't expect, it won't explain why there is a Universe (anthropic principles are not laws of physics). It isn't clear to me that "why is there a Universe?" is actually a real question instead of a confusion of ideas.
This doesn't seem to me at all similar to even a basic idea of God, even a very mechanistic version. I don't see that it's worth applying the same name to the concepts.
Moreover, it's perfectly possible to come up with something that really resembles most ideas of God that isn't a ground of being. To give one, suppose that God is the Universe (Sundays are my days to be a solipsist, and solipsism is logically equivalent to pantheism). In that case, the laws of physics and the laws of mysticism run the Universe, and neither may say why anything exists.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
To my mind, it sounds closer to a description of the Tao than what I traditionally think of as God (although I'm an atheist, so my thoughts on God are not really a benchmark). The big problem is that God is such a charged word that carries a lot of baggage with it.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
While I generally agree with your pattern, I disagree with (e).
A religion begins with the guy with the revelation, as you say. These revelations can partly, but not completely, passed on to other people. Therefore, we have the real holy person, and a circle of other people directly affected. At this point, there's no real point in hierarchy, aside from the prophet/follower one. Then the guy with the revelation dies, and leaves a legacy based on what he or she said, as well as followers who carry part of the mystical vision. The religion either dies out fast or it forms into something structured, and then a hierarchy. So far, we agree.
I claim, however, that the elite don't actually have that revelation, since it can't be passed that far. They have the records of the original guy and followers, and some of them have their own revelations that are similar to the original guy's one. Not all of these are going to make it into the elite, who will generally be selected politically. There are no mystical exercises to a revelation that significant. The foundation of knowledge, which can be passed along, is not the revelation. (In fact, it's likely to have picked up all sorts of extraneous stuff over time, as the revelation guy didn't talk just about the revelation.) Therefore, it's immaterial whether the masses have the ability to understand a revelation, since there's nobody there to give them one.
If the religion actually has political power, it pretty well ensures that lots of the elite do not really believe the religion, but use it as a way to gain power. It also encourages religious schisms for political reasons. Nationalism wasn't really important as an ideology until fairly recently, so a group that wanted independence would often coalesce around a sufficiently different branch of the religion, which would be labeled a heresy by the people whose power was threatened.
In Christianity, people still go to the source material in translation. Most of what we've got on Jesus comes from the four Gospels in the New Testament, which were written well after his death (there's other fragments out there about him old enough to be similar source material, but not much). Lots of people read them who I'd classify as "ardently stuck in the petty intellectual framework that their parents give them". About the only way to get closer is to learn the appropriate version of Greek, and I don't think that is going to be that much of an improvement over a good translation.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I agree 100%. Einstein didn't prefer to use the word God when describing nature and its laws, it was simply an analogous concept that he felt fit. The baggage really mostly comes from the anthropomorphized Judaic derivative works. The word has been and is used by some still in a way more in line with eastern religions, like you pointed out, which as I said, I find a romantic and appealing viewpoint, even though I'm a pretty staunch atheist.
Though, that said, Einstein was far closer to an atheist by the above poster's definition, since he most definitely viewed "God"/The Universe/Laws of Physics as entirely uncaring; probably as a result of his functional logic state machine in his brain.
Perhaps an atheistic naturalist deist?
No, the exact thing does not happen in science. I'd agree most people do not posses the knowledge, and I'd even say that not a single person knows everything we (people) know about the universe and how it works. BUT.. The thing I love about science.. if you postulate something is X, you must prove it is so. Not only that, but other scientists and I happy to try and prove you wrong. And this is how science progresses. I have faith... err.. i have empirical evidence that shows, just because I don't know the details of a particular branch of science, that when something is shown to be true... there are others in that field trying to disprove it.
Now, tell me how religion and religious people reacts to someone disproving or challenging it.
Do not dare tell me that trusting science is no different than trusting a religious authority.
To the masses, there is no difference. Even to you, there is likely no difference for the most part. People claim they talk to God all the time, they say God told them to do something. God telling several people to do something is little different to someone who doesn't posess the knowlege,, skill, resources, or time to verify everything science says. It's just more people in robes (lab coats) telling them something is true.
Sigh.. The high school science teacher (preacher) does not have to prove anything- just dictate from the book. The students (parishioners) have to learn it and accept it in order to get a passing grade and graduate. It all revolves around trusting that what someone else says is true. How is this no different?
And no, the scientific method doesn't make any difference to those who have no ability to check it. You are basically saying that because others will also say it is true, you will believe it to be true. But then we are bombarded with articles about scientific journals printing improper materials and groups of people conspiring to taint peer review. But you trust is it all true. NASA has basically lost the magical incantations to build a Saturn V rocket and yet you can prove it wrong.
Yes, some people, somewhere, might end up with enough knowledge and resources to test something. People also claim to be told to do things by God, to see miracles, that their success is because of a God. For the vast majority of people, there is no difference in mental process. You have faith in science, people have faith in religion, some people have both because they are both tools and used for different purposes.
Since there is no difference for the majority of people, that point is moot.
For the minority who can demonstrate the claims of science, the difference is huge. And here is the kicker: those people are walking the earth today, doing science at this very moment.
The miracle workers are not walking the earth today. They all left thousands of years ago. So, nobody, nowhere, can *ever* demonstrate a miracle. But somebody, somewhere can demonstrate a scientific fact *right now*.
That difference is huge. People are doing science today. No people are doing miracles today. Therefore science is more credible than religion.
Listen, I understand how you feel threatened by what I said. I understand how you badly want it not to be true. But we are not talking about those who can do the science, the entire premise was those who cannot. It doesn't matter who is here and not right now, those people will only be able to trust what you say is true.
As for miracles, try doing a google search for modern miracles and see what doesn't happen any more. People are still claiming they happen.
I'm sure there is a huge difference when you ignore the parts you do not agree with. Like this sections started out though, you don't get to ignore reality and impose your own. You do not have to believe miracles happen but you do have to acknowledge that others do. Your premise is lot on reality.
Lol
Your premise seems to be each and every person has their own reality, where anything they choose to believe is true. Choose between different religions, versions of religions, pick and choose line by line from a holy book which parts you want to believe. Day by day you could change and pick any reality you desired you just have to believe and have faith, it's useless.How would anything ever get done?
Science at least can try to group peoples realities together into a consistent framework, we can choose to live together in a collective reality and do useful things.
Which reality is better?
And no, the scientific method doesn't make any difference to those who have no ability to check it.
I don't have to have the ability to check something myself, to have the understanding that it can be checked .
Now we are back to the beginning, some people can have understanding and others can have faith/belief and it's unusual to have both.
In general, you can't define anything outside your own level of existence and be sure it makes any sense.
Your objection depends on how our concept of creation behaves in our concept of time, makes no sense too.
But, if we abandon all hope to conclude anything strong, let's go one level of recursion deep: imagine a conway's game of life. what's time for one entity inside it? time is the succession of frames. That succession of frame is independent of our time. It does not matter that some time is needed to compute frames, because that's something that is completely irrelevant to the inside of the game.
Now, your question translated one level deeper in the context of conway's game of life is: how many frames it took to create the game itself? You see it doesn't make any sense. Of course in this context you say "but see, time is needed nonetheless". And I reply, yes, it's a feature of the game itself to resemble some of our concepts. It doesn't prove something like that is necessary in the hypothetical domain of a god that transcends time.
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Compiler error line 1: "what/who", "created", are undefined concepts in the scope you are using them. You don't do that with code, why should you be able to do in philosophical reasonings?
First you define "creation" in the context of the domain of the hypothetical god (hint, you can't tell nothing about ANYTHING in it at all since you cannot experience it and if you could you couldn't prove you did not even to yourself).
Then you define "who" in the context of the domain of the hypothetical god, (hint above applies, plus, no space means "who" can't be identified, that is, told apart the rest).
Religions have it easy. "god told me that... " can mean that a concept, which is potentially incomprehensible in its own domain, gets translated in ours like...
As demigod of a 2d simulation I could say that a cube is like a square. Now it's up to the simulation to believe me or not, truth won't ever be reachable from the inside.
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In absence of gravity, of course, you take two turtles, put one against the other. They will attract each other. Now put all other turtles on these two. Now it's turtles all the way down. So you typed all this when "turtles all the way down" is a completely acceptable answer to parent post.
A god created god ad infinitum, with optional looping, why not? because doesn't fit our infinitesimal brain? That's not a valid objection. A valid objection is that this requires the concept of creation to be valid in all iteration of such a model. But it's not a definitive objection, from our point of view we are unable to make one.
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Um, just for the sake of discourse.. it's not just in the case of "religious creation" that everything was created...
I mean, when two hydrogen atoms fuse into a helium atom in the core of a start, the helium atom is "created" by nuclear fusion. It doesn't necessitate the involvement of some spooky incompetant invisible father figure in the clouds entering into the picture at all.
The creation of any new thing doesn't explicitly require the presence of consciousness.. just a process by which some form of transformation can occur. Even a self-ordering system kind has to "Create" the order we will eventually see in it.
My premise is nothing of the sort. It has nothing to do with individual reality but how reality is presented and accepted. No one said anything about anything being true or not, that is beyond anything I was conveying. The point is that it all boils down to someone claiming to have authority saying something and people either accepting it as true or not. This is because just like those people (who happen to be the vast majority) who cannot do the science for whatever reason, most will never talk to god or be presented with any significant evidence of a God.
Now, you coming out and saying trust me, I can do all this to prove it is still someone saying trust me, trust this that proves it. You say but all these other people say it to, but look at all the churches saying the same things too. People listening will still have no option but to trust you or not just like with religion or science fiction.
Note, I put science fiction out there not because science is fiction but because I wanted to show that people will believe science fiction just the same as real science and/or religion.
This entire religion verses science is a bunch of bullshit anyways. They are tools and used for different things. Less than 99 percent of either will ever conflict with each other and of what will, it has so little of an impact on most people it is insignificant.
My premise is nothing of the sort. It has nothing to do with individual reality but how reality is presented and accepted. No one said anything about anything being true or not, that is beyond anything I was conveying. The point is that it all boils down to someone claiming to have authority saying something and people either accepting it as true or not.
Which is prety much what I said in the beginning that you said was stupid and short-sighted. People who just 'believe' don't understand.
This is because just like those people (who happen to be the vast majority) who cannot do the science for whatever reason, most will never talk to god or be presented with any significant evidence of a God.
The key difference here is that there are still people who can do science, and many many more who can understand science even if they cannot 'do' it themselves.There are no people/evidence/examples from the other side.
Now, you coming out and saying trust me, I can do all this to prove it is still someone saying trust me, trust this that proves it. You say but all these other people say it to, but look at all the churches saying the same things too. People listening will still have no option but to trust you or not just like with religion or science fiction.
They are saying, trust me this is how it works and this is how you can check it's true. Others are saying trust me because I'm good at reading the bible, ignore the other people who read it differently. If there is disagreement in science what happens? more data more tests try to figure out who is right. If there is disagreement in religion what happens? Now you have 2 religions instead of one, and they are both 'right'. Which is more useful to trust?
This entire religion verses science is a bunch of bullshit anyways. They are tools and used for different things. Less than 99 percent of either will ever conflict with each other and of what will, it has so little of an impact on most people it is insignificant.
Tell that to the Catholics who cant wear condoms, or people who can't use/get other forms of birth control, not for scientific reasons but because God wants more babies.
Probably 99% of the benefits of religions could be achieved in a scientific way without the need for a God, but I can't see them giving him up any-time soon.
Sorry thought I was logged in.