In a Nut Shell

Humans are irrelevant.
Freewill is a conciet invented by the fearful
YOU are an accident and an INSIGNIFACANT piece of the puzzle
GOD is a burned match in an ashtray

Got a problem with any of that?

You got nothing

Admit you irrelavance and move on.

 

Pretty scattered gecko. Free will is why anything exists.. for without it reality is a toaster oven. a machine to do nothing but make heat.

And btw god does not smoke.
:} unless he is the one true god.

Roo

Admit YOUR irrelavance and move on. I have places to be a nd people to meet and very few hours left to 'sleep'

 

Imperfection is why anything exists. Universe can not hold singularity because nothing is perfect. This is why there is no such thing as nothing and God can't possibly exist.

The universe will cycle violently for eternity formatting all information. This is irrelevant because your conscious now is your only relevance.

Life is a ride not a destination. Don't reject the ride because it's all you have, THERE IS NO DESTINATION! This is your nut shell.

 

Nope. Universe pretty much destined to end.

 

I have a different nut shell.

 

I have a sea urchin shell.

 

humans are relevant [in that we exist, and can change things around us - i can light a match and place it in an ashtray]

fate is a conceit invented by the fearful [whether or not i light the match is my decision and what happens to it afterward is an accident]

i am indeed an accident, but since that accident happened, i am no longer insignificant to my corner of the puzzle [did the match die in the ashtray or fall out and land on an oily rag?]

god is either lesser or greater than a burned match in an ashtray, a thing which can be perceived and possibly even understood [unlike god]

 

The universe may end as it began.. with a bang [or a whimper]

But reality cannot end. it is and always has been and will be.

Reality cannot end. where would it go... 'kansas'? It IS all there is.
Oh you say.. then there would be nothing... but you see you cannot fit 'nothing' in your head' its too big. It is infinite..
'No reality' is a logical and conceptual impossibility

One of the few absolutes

"i reason therefore i exist."
"And thus a reality IS to allow that" <1st amendum>

 

relevance is relative.

 

Geck o

 

I need do nothing

 

Prove it.

How do you know?

On that I agree, but would add "It's only my speculative opinion.".

 

I don't need to prove that nothing = prefect = zero, that is a fact.

I do not need to prove imperfection accommodates evolution, this is also a fact.

I do not 'know' but I simply accept the high probability that this is the most likely condition of the universe.

There are no other options that make any sense. Rip a split second from eternity and eternity falls apart Either this does not exist or heaven and God do not exist, the universe can not accommodate both realities when one claims to be perfect and the other relies on imperfection.

Go to 6:56
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSHpKkelE5c"]YouTube - Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking - The Story Of Everything - 2 of 9

 

I'm afraid that won't fly, even mathematically. Zero is "perfect" only in the negative sense that it contains no flaws, but it also has no apparent virtues. Most of us would think of such an underachiever as a total loser, which we ordinarily don't consider perfect. As for God, some religions consider such a being perfect, but the Gods of ancient times were not so regarded, and Yahweh, as portrayed in the Old Testament, from an admittedly fallible human perspective, might seem to some to have more than His share of quirks. People may have called Him perfect for fear that if they didn't, He might go berserk and smite them and their progeny.

If you mean that in order for evolution to occur there must be something to evolve, I agree it's a fact, although a trivial one. But I don't recall it being even in issue.

How did you go about calculating that "probability"?

I share Darwin's opinion that our conclusions on such matters are comparable to those of a dog contemplating the theories of Newton.

 

There are no partial charges. Infinity is not a measurement. There is no entity named nonexistence.

 

Okiefreak,
Nothing, Perfection and God are all concepts that only exist in our minds. The idea of God certainly associates itself with the idea of perfection or at least an unobtainable greatness beyond this world.

All observable empirical knowledge of this universe found so far points to an imperfect, automatic, evolutionary universe that cycles energy. The ring on my finger contains heavy metals from a supernova solar system that existed billions of years before our solar system. Billions of years from now heavy particles from our solar system will collect on the planets of a new star. These are the cycles of an imperfect universe where the fantasies of God and perfection do not fit in even the smallest of probabilities. ALL evidence points away from God and theists must sensor their world just to maintain their beliefs. Like how you twisted Zero to mean what YOU wanted it to mean instead of my meaning.

 

no evidence points away from a creative force.

observable knowledge is based on extremely limited observations and interpretations.

the christian definition of this force is obviously a fable, but that is neither here nor there.

 

What, we don't have all the pieces to this jigsaw puzzle so it must be a Rubik's Cube. Yeah, that makes sense! There is NO evidence to fit a God or creator theory. I suppose you also believe that bacterial flagellum is irreducible.

 

There is evidence of inheritance and we are not free to determine what that inheritance is, only to indulge it.

 

There is abundant "evidence" to fit a God or creator theory. There may be differences of opinion concerning what constitutes "evidence" or its sufficiency. Most administrative decisions like the siting of nuclear power plants and hazardous waste disposal sites, the BP cleanup, etc., are based on the "substantial evidence " rule--enough evidence to convince a reasonable person to take action, even though there may be other evidence weighing against such a move. Evidence is anything that has the potential to persuade decision makers to accept a proposition or a course of action. That would include observable physical facts and eyewitness testimony. Of course we consider some forms of evidence to be more reliable than others. Direct (eyewitness) testimony is preferred in courts to circumstantial evidence based on inferences from physical facts, although people have been given death sentences on the basis of purely circumstantial evidence. The theory of evolution is based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence, since nobody was around to observe the changes in species taking place. As for direct evidence, rules of admissibility reflect judgments that some eyewitness testimony is more reliable than others. Restrictions on the use of hearsay evidence reflect judgments that it's less reliable than testimony by people who actually observed the events themselves rather than heard it through the grapevine. The Bible is largely a collection of hearsay evidence (apart from the writings of Paul, who reported his own experiences). There is also the problem of witness credibility. Our only way to resolve these problems is to subject the evidence to rigorous tests, whether in the laboratory or the courtroom. Sometimes those tests are not available, because the matter is considered to be non-testable according to accepted procedures and protocols, or non-justiciable in a court case. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (not to mention Peter, Paul, and Mary) aren't available for cross-examination. Then we have a decision to make. Do we accept evidence gathered by less rigorous methods or suspend judgment?

If a giant glowing winged being appeared to you in the privacy of your bedroom, identified himself as the Archangel Gabriel, and told you God has chosen you to spread His word on Hip Forums, is that evidence? We ordinarily rely on the evidence of our senses, although we're aware that sometimes people hallucinate. Suppose you call in your wife to corroborate, and she asks "who's that giant glowing winged figure talking to you in your bedroom. She might be hallucinating, too, but it would still be evidence. Lots of people claim to have had these experiences. Lots of people claim to have been abducted by aliens. Are they crazy? I think so, but I wouldn't claim to be able to prove it, nor would I say that their testimony isn't evidence. If enough people reported similar experiences, I'd begin to wonder if they shouldn't be taken seriously.

Science is the gold standard for reliable knowledge, and is very good at what it is designed to do: avoiding "type one errors" (accepting evidence that is false). Yet by insisting on too much rigor, we increase the risk of type 2 errors (rejecting evidence that is true). You may have heard of the MIT Rasumussen study reflecting state of the art thinking in the 1970s about the probability of a reactor meltdown at a nuclear power plant (comparable to a large city being struck by a meteor). Yet after Three Mile Island, the conclusions were re-evalutated, and the probablities greatly increased. The Three Mile Island accident illustrates a kind of decision-making situation called the Zero-infinity problem--the problem of what to do when the probability of an adverse result seems low, but the severity of the result is catastrophic. Pascal explored the implications in his so-called "proof" of God. What is the rational course of action in these cases?

Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: the Power of Thinking Without Thinking illustrates how intuitive processes that scientists would reject as unreliable can sometimes lead to conclusions that are superior to those derived from more scientific methods. Science admittedly has a proven track record of success in certain areas, but it confines itself to certain kinds of questions susceptible to rigorous empirical testing and lend themselves to measurable results. Science rejects a priori the possibility of the supernatural; this doesn't mean that science has disproved the supernatural; it simply means that they assume the explanation to the phenomenon they study is natural.

As for the "evidence" of God, we have eyewitness reports of people's religious experiences, which we would do well to scrutinize closely. One reason I believe in God is that I think I've have these experiences, although they could be alternatively explained naturalistically. There would be advantages to doing so, since they then could be reconciled with the larger body of knowledge gained through science. But there are also reasons why, intuitively, I'm not convinced they're "nothing but" that. Just as "soft atheists" don't deny God's existence but just don't believe in it, "soft " Christians, don't claim to be able to prove God to everyone's satisfaction, but just believe in Him on the basis of personal judgment based on available evidence.

We also have the phenomenon of "fine tuning" or the anthropic principle which Dawkins considers to be the most serious challenge atheists have to contend with (ignoring the Ray Comfort-Kirk Cameron banana argument). The main naturalistic alternatives are the multi-verse or string theory, which seem to be as devoid of empirical proof as the God hypothesis. James Spitzer's New Proofs for the Existence of God and Paul Davies' The Mind of God and the Goldilocks Hypothesis illustrate how scientists could consider the existing cosmological facts to be evidence, if not proof, of God. At least it is hard to argue, as you have attempted to do, that rational educated humans could not hold that point of view.

For a reply to Hawking, see Spitzer,The Curious Metaphysics of Dr. Stephen Hawking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1cy3iCrxic"]YouTube - The Curious Metaphysics of Dr. Stephen Hawking