Riedquat Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 I don't know, I think there can be a lot of joy in having close family and friends, or beautiful music, or delicious food, or overcoming personal challenges even if the why of it all is a matter of baffled wonder.The things that give me joy are decreasing, the things that upset me are increasing (especially when surrounded by people who seem to think that they make the world better). When it comes to god even if there was one there's no sign now because he's given up and wandered off somewhere else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Allegro Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 What I was getting at, is the "nature of God" There is a God in some sense. But God is not a bloke wearing flowing robes stood on a cloud. That's just a picture drawn to explain it to children. The idea that God is somehow omni-present, watching us, and/or that we "report to Him" in some way - thinking Christianty here - has always seemed ludicrous to me. Though it cannot be disproved, that "everything exists" cannot be extrapolated to mean that it was done so with a particular intent, implying sentience. Muslims must think Allah is furious with them given how many people were killed the other day. Was that His Will, or, was that just an.. accident? My question is whether God is sentient, or whether God was and is The Big Bang followed by inflation, e.g. a scientifically explainable process. Which you could, if so inclined, choose to call "God". It still works. This is my view also. We know there is a force that creates and sustains the universe, as the hymn puts it, the 'eternal ruler of the ceaseless round/Of circling planets, singing on their way.' Or as Dylan Thomas put it, 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower'. I don't think even Dawkins could argue with that. That is what I would call 'God,' or as Bishop John Robinson put it, 'the ground of our being'. Whether this force somehow has personality in a similar (but infinitely greater) way to humans, is another matter. It seems unlikely to me, and when the belief in it becomes very anthropomorphic, it can become positively harmful, especially when people start thinking they can propitiate that force with prayer, rituals etc. I think of Jesus as the archetypal human, the One most able to align himself with that force, with a few others (Buddha, Socrates perhaps) coming close. All the stuff about being the 'son of God' is a kind of superstitious way of understanding this concept. So I'm content to look at it all in awe and wonder, draw from it what strength and wisdom I can, and leave the rest unexplained. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPin Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 The "Church of Pin" leaves everything unexplained, especially the fillings of the sandwiches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happy_renting Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 The "Church of Pin" when established, will have a big sign across the front door, "Bring your own wisdom, as there is none in here, and just THINK". That will keep out the orthodox. Also "leave guns outside"! I have some factory-second doormats with "Please Wipe Your Feat" if you are interested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XswampyX Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 So the best argument for a god that we can get to is that because there is no evidence for his existence whatsoever, then you can't disprove that he exists.... That's it? Really. You can't disprove you didn't murder my sister because there is no evidence that you did murder her. Guilty m'lord! What's in the box? What box, you just made that box up, out of nothing! To believe god pinched space and created the big bang and with it time with the thought of creating the earth and man is just plain ridiculous. To arrange all those hydrogen atoms into stars that would explode to create other stars and explode to create other stars etc etc till we get to creating earth and the people on it. Well I don't know what to say. I know he's god, but really and he's managed to do all this, without any evidence that he exists at all (ie by not doing anything, ever). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPin Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 I have some factory-second doormats with "Please Wipe Your Feat" if you are interested. I'm sorry I recommended the "local prunting farm"! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gigantic Purple Slug Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 Some hugely interesting projects on the go at the moment as to how we understand the universe around us. Interpretation of the results of Planck are ongoing. Then there are the results of AMS which is still acquiring data. LHC is on its next experimental campaign after a huge upgrade and will probably post results by the end of the year. Advanced LIGO has started up, and the JWST is due for launch in 2018. The next generation of huge ground based telescopes are currently taking shape, and will be with us by 2025. ALMA is now operational. There's a ton of other stuff on the go as well. The next 10-20 years are going to provide some amazing discoveries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debtlessmanc Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 The idea that agnostics are undecided about God and have not made their mind up is a straw man created by the likes of Dawkins to justify their atheism. A true agnostic is someone who openly admits that we don't know, and as such is honest in this regard. Someone who hasn't made their mind up what to believe is undecided, not agnostic. Back to the box. Its closed, No one knows what is in it. An agnostic is not someone who says, 'I am undecided what is in the box'. He is someone who says, 'i am decided, and we do not, and cannot known what is in the box'. An atheist believes there is nothing in the box, despite no data being available on the content of the box, and it is therefore a belief, not an observation or anything to do with knowledge. b*****s you are imposing your view of what is agnostic on to those who describe themselve as that, have you spoken to them all? like many, if asked i identify as "atheist", not because i view the non existance of god as provable (it clearly is not) but rather because i side with the view that a natural non humanistic cause for the universe as more likely. as a human being if you walk in a room and see something that is complex (eg a watch) your first thought is about the purpose of it, this a natural human- evolved, response to the world we see. this logic evolved in the pleistocene as "purpose" was a relevant concept in the small hunterer/gatherer bands we moved in. The evolution of animals has no purpose but it is not a random process, in fact it is the total opposite of that. This is the concept that people find hardest to understand when we apply the logic of "purpose" to what science tells us is 4 billion years of evolution our instinct misfires wildly and creates a god in our minds are their mysteries at the root of the universe? as einstein pointed out, of course there are. but our evolved conscienceness is not connected to a super mind, that is a form of paranoia. sorry to tell you this but you are suffering a mental illness. more accurately your mind is not fit to dispassionately examine the biggest questions. When you die your ego will be annihilated without ever appeciating the unknowing, uncaring reality of the universe. its tough yes, bit it is what awaits us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Allegro Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 So the best argument for a god that we can get to is that because there is no evidence for his existence whatsoever, then you can't disprove that he exists.... That's it? Really. You can't disprove you didn't murder my sister because there is no evidence that you did murder her. Guilty m'lord! What's in the box? What box, you just made that box up, out of nothing! To believe god pinched space and created the big bang and with it time with the thought of creating the earth and man is just plain ridiculous. To arrange all those hydrogen atoms into stars that would explode to create other stars and explode to create other stars etc etc till we get to creating earth and the people on it. Well I don't know what to say. I know he's god, but really and he's managed to do all this, without any evidence that he exists at all (ie by not doing anything, ever). If you're talking about the sort of metaphysical God of the middle ages, then yes, there's no evidence for him, and perhaps its best that that conception of God has largely faded away in western thought (though its alive and well with some of our more...ahem...'recent visitors' I suspect). That conception of God - as shown in Michaelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel painting - was always something of a false idol anyway. I think it is still possible to believe in God, as a philosophical construct; the sum of our highest thoughts and conception; who 'exists' for example, in the purest form such as mathematics. What is a straight line, or a curve, for example? They don't exist in reality, but they still have meaning and purpose. Obviously this has very little to do with praying for recovery from an illness, or for rain, or for victory over one's enemies, or all the usual things that God has been roped in to over the course of human history. Perhaps it's more of a philosophical than a religious view, but it is has been a fairly common one in higher religious thought since at least the time of Spinoza in the seventeenth century. It's probably caught on more in America, with denominations like the Unitarians and the New Thought movement. It's probably a bit too airy-fairy for most British people, who have abandoned it in favour of outright atheism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Allegro Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 Some hugely interesting projects on the go at the moment as to how we understand the universe around us. Interpretation of the results of Planck are ongoing. Then there are the results of AMS which is still acquiring data. LHC is on its next experimental campaign after a huge upgrade and will probably post results by the end of the year. Advanced LIGO has started up, and the JWST is due for launch in 2018. The next generation of huge ground based telescopes are currently taking shape, and will be with us by 2025. ALMA is now operational. There's a ton of other stuff on the go as well. The next 10-20 years are going to provide some amazing discoveries. Providing I can work out what all those acronyms mean! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scepticus Posted September 30, 2015 Author Share Posted September 30, 2015 Wow, I come back to check on my little off topic thread after a day or so and its at six pages! Plenty of far clever people than me have believed in God for good reason. I would never be arrogant enough to claim God did not exist. This is true. Some of the cleverest engineers I work with who all have a thorough understanding of and appreciation of science (obviously they apply it day to day as well) are committed Christians. Even atheists like me need a belief system. I have one, of my own devising which is based on my understanding of science and cherry picking theories that seem to work nicely together but ultimately its still faith based until proved otherwise. However I'm not wedded to it and could imagine changing my mind. But then religious types do that too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scepticus Posted September 30, 2015 Author Share Posted September 30, 2015 A point about space travel - its not relevant to the point of the OP. Who cares whether we can get there or not? Surely it makes a difference if we know for sure that there is alien life of any kind on our cosmic backyard? Surely it must impact on our global culture and self-image? And that's in addition to whatever we might learn about ourselves from studying it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XswampyX Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 It's very interesting and could have huge implications for people of a religious nature. It won't disprove the existence of God, but make all his books total tripe. That was my 1st answer. Yes have your God if you must, but all his books are tripe. That's what I said! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XswampyX Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 A point about space travel - its not relevant to the point of the OP. Who cares whether we can get there or not? Surely it makes a difference if we know for sure that there is alien life of any kind on our cosmic backyard? Surely it must impact on our global culture and self-image? And that's in addition to whatever we might learn about ourselves from studying it. No, that's wrong. The point IS we can't get there.... but still care what's out there. That IS the point. We ponder not because it matters but because we can and are able to. I have a strange feeling that all this "search for life" is just BP getting the tax payer to pay for their off world exploration... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scepticus Posted September 30, 2015 Author Share Posted September 30, 2015 I have a strange feeling that all this "search for life" is just BP getting the tax payer to pay for their off world exploration... British Unobtanium. Imagine the prospectus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bendy Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 Is it just me who gets (not very) riled at scientific theory/fact? I was reading an article on the bbc (sorry) that says for life to exist, there must be liquid water. Why? Is it impossible that life couldn't spring from a rock? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riedquat Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 Is it just me who gets (not very) riled at scientific theory/fact? I was reading an article on the bbc (sorry) that says for life to exist, there must be liquid water. Why? Is it impossible that life couldn't spring from a rock?Read a bit further (in general, not whatever article you read) and there's some speculation about other forms of life but there's no point in going down the "anything we can imagine might be possible" path. All life as we know it requires water, all life as we could possibly conceive it needs some form of solvent, start going too much beyond that and you're into "anything is possible" territory which means you can't get anywhere.At present there's plenty of evidence that life needs water to exist and none to say that it can exist without it, so water is a very good thing to look for if you want to find life. None of that rules out minds being changed if the evidence appears but whilst there's lots we don't know it's not true to say that we don't know anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bendy Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 Read a bit further (in general, not whatever article you read) and there's some speculation about other forms of life but there's no point in going down the "anything we can imagine might be possible" path. All life as we know it requires water, all life as we could possibly conceive it needs some form of solvent, start going too much beyond that and you're into "anything is possible" territory which means you can't get anywhere. At present there's plenty of evidence that life needs water to exist and none to say that it can exist without it, so water is a very good thing to look for if you want to find life. None of that rules out minds being changed if the evidence appears but whilst there's lots we don't know it's not true to say that we don't know anything. True - I guess me not being part of a NASA or similar project means it's easy too question all/any of the theory/fact. If it was my neck on the line as to why I'd wasted £30bn looking for rockmen on the sun I might think we should probably look for water first! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gigantic Purple Slug Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 True - I guess me not being part of a NASA or similar project means it's easy too question all/any of the theory/fact. If it was my neck on the line as to why I'd wasted £30bn looking for rockmen on the sun I might think we should probably look for water first! Scientists have different roles. Some work on established foundations. Others work to re-define or investigate the very foundations that a lot of science is based on. Even something like maths (which most people consider the purest science) is based on ground rules called axioms. The choice of the axioms can lead to very different outcomes. Some mathematicians spend their lives pondering the choice of axioms. Others just accept them as truth and work on from there. Both approaches lead to useful outcomes. The entire definition of life is questionable. Look here : http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-viruses-alive-2004/ If we managed to replicate human level intelligence in a PC, would the PC be alive, and if so, is water necessary for its existence ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turned Out Nice Again Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 Scientists have different roles. Some work on established foundations. Others work to re-define or investigate the very foundations that a lot of science is based on. Even something like maths (which most people consider the purest science) is based on ground rules called axioms. The choice of the axioms can lead to very different outcomes. Some mathematicians spend their lives pondering the choice of axioms. Others just accept them as truth and work on from there. Both approaches lead to useful outcomes. The entire definition of life is questionable. Look here : http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-viruses-alive-2004/ If we managed to replicate human level intelligence in a PC, would the PC be alive, and if so, is water necessary for its existence ? Where do you get the idea that intelligence is a precondition for life? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riedquat Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 Where do you get the idea that intelligence is a precondition for life? I don't think he does, rather he's raising the question "If something is intelligent is it alive?" A computer might be able to replicate the behaviour of a very simple lifeform, and the general concensus would probably be that the computer isn't alive, but it possibly gets more complicated and harder to say "no" if it's intelligent. It all raises lots of interesting (entirely hypothetical at present) questions. For example if a computer could be treated as alive and intelligent presumably the same hardware could run the same sort of software we've been using for ages now and not be alive - so then is the computer alive, or is it just the software that is? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XswampyX Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 Who's to say we aren't software running on our computer brains. Are we alive? If the brains alive but the software isn't running..... Nasa can’t send one of its rovers to check out the newly-discovered Mars water for fear of dropping off aliens of its own, the agency has said. Scientists announced yesterday that they had found evidence of liquid water on the planet, a discovery that raises the chances of it supporting alien life. But we can’t send robots to check because we could drop off our own microbes, they have pointed out. Doh! Source :- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mars-water-why-nasa-can-t-just-send-a-rover-to-check-if-there-are-aliens-in-the-red-planet-s-brine-a6672156.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bendy Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 Who's to say we aren't software running on our computer brains. Are we alive? If the brains alive but the software isn't running..... Doh! Source :- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mars-water-why-nasa-can-t-just-send-a-rover-to-check-if-there-are-aliens-in-the-red-planet-s-brine-a6672156.html Can't they give the rover a good dose of bleach first (or everclear grain alcohol!) Interesting the hardward/software concept - I recall a book by Peter James (Host) where he 'uploads' his brain/memory into a computer. Was a while back but from my hazy recollection when he does it he has someone with him, then something happens so it gets interrupted. Years later on, someone turns the machine on and he thinks he is still in the 'uploading unit' and asks his accomplice to stop messing around - the people who turned the machine on just think it is some elaborate computer software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riedquat Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 Can't they give the rover a good dose of bleach first (or everclear grain alcohol!)They can but it's difficult and expensive (some bacteria are very resilient) - how much of a risk do you want to take? You need to ensure every single bit of every single component is completely sterile, not just scrub the outside. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hail the Tripod Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 To be honest the chances of life are so rare that it is extremely unlikely we'll ever be able to travel far enough to meet it, or they us. Ever. Indeed, it is far more likely that we'll end up meeting our relatives evolved from the various bits of junk we've put out into space. Given life seems to have appeared on Earth pretty much immediately it became supportable in its current form, rather than sitting barren for tens of billions of years until "the magic" happened, why would you assume it's so unlikely elsewhere? I would be quite surprised if we don't find evidence of very simple life on (at least) Mars and Europa. Whether it evolved independently will be the big puzzle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.