T.G.G. Moogly
Traditional Atheist
It's definitely bullshit but it's easy bullshit, it doesn't require a lot of big words or any effort, and can satisfy a brain that is incapable of understanding otherwise. Plus you have a big sky buddy to be your friend all the time, except that it might screw with you anytime because of the magic garden episode.These six ideas are not exhaustive; Nor are they equally plausible. 1, 2 and 3 are all pretty parsimonious. 4, 5, and 6 all rely on the assumed existence of unexplained and un-evidenced entities for which there is no explanation as to why they remain undiscovered. 5 and 6 rely on the existence of intelligence without biology, which is something we can reasonably infer to be impossible - intelligence has only been observed in highly complex biological systems, that require very specific arrangements of mass-energy. Such complex arrangements can develop from pre-existing matter and energy over long periods of time by the action of natural selection, but their spontaneous existence without any such evolution is extraordinarily unlikely; their spontaneous existence from nothing at all is even less plausible, and the claim that this occurred is an extraordinary claim, for which we would need very strong evidence indeed, if we are to accept it. Supporters of this idea do not, however, provide strong evidence. They instead declare that evidence of any kind is not needed, and that belief in the absence of evidence is somehow virtuous. That, not to put too fine a point on it, is bullshit. And that they don't take the same approach to the hundreds of equally extraordinary, but different and incompatible, truth claims subscribed to by other religious claimants strongly suggests that they know it.
I'm still waiting to learn how the universe loses energy. Vanishing gravitons have been theoretically discussed but that would only mean the universe is more than we can immediately sense, with more dimensions, etc., not that any energy was lost.
It's kinda cool to think of all energy as motion. Things never stop moving, the motion just takes up less and less space, which lends itself nicely to an oscillating universe. Of course, we don't know what "space" actually is, only that there is no such thing as empty space, except provincially.