No supernatural, no gods.

[bilby]

To the theist side. I have no idea why they don't see that believing in flat earth is the same as believing in a dude died, woke up three days later, then flew away.

Except that a dude dying, rising three days later and flying away is exceedingly more likely than a flat earth.

A probability of winning the lottery of 0.0000000000000000000000000000001 is five orders of magnitude greater than 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001.

It's true to say that one is "exceedingly more likely than" the other.

It's also true to say that they are both practically the same as each other, and both are practically zero.

It's further true to say that you would need to fill many billions of pages with zeros to write out the chances that either the Earth is flat (but we misinterpreted the evidence) or that a dude died, came back to life, and flew away (but we had mistakenly assumed that death was irreversible).

Which has more zeros is dependent upon the precise definitions of every one of the words, and of the way in which those words relate to each other. But to suggest that either has a probability that's not simply "zero" requires a commitment to mathematical pedantry that is observably absent from the observable universe - that is to say, the entire universe isn't big enough or durable enough for the probability of either to ever be greater than zero in practical terms.

A hypothetical infinite universe must contain an infinite number of every possible thing. But our observable universe is infinitely smaller than that, and minuscule probabilities are therefore indistinguishable from zero.

 

[bilby]

I believe in a beginning, but not from a 'central point' for example, the physical universe (+ distant galaxies) all appeared 'at the same time'!

Then you're at least a century out of date, because Einstein showed (and subsequent observations demonstrate that he was correct) that time and space are not universal; That is, there's no such thing as "at the same time" for objects that are in motion relative to one another.

Moving clocks run slow. The only way for anything in the universe to happen everywhere "at the same time" would be for everything in the universe to be in the same place at that time. If different things are in different places (and therefore are necessarily accelerating differently to each other) they don't agree on what time it is, nor on how fast time is passing.

GPS depends absolutely upon an understanding of exactly how time varies between different reference frames. It works using Einstein's formulas, and it wouldn't work that way if time were absolute (it would instead require us to use Newton's formulas).

Nothing around here moves fast enough for the non-universality of time to become noticeable for casual earthbound observers, but when we start working with satellites and spacecraft, they move fast enough for it to become apparent.

Carroll Alley, from the University of Maryland, calculated the effects for the Apollo 8 crew; Each man participated in a range of different missions, and so their time in space as measured by mission control was different from that experienced by the astronauts by different amounts over their careers.

Bill Anders is owed about 300 microseconds of overtime pay by NASA, while Frank Borman and Jim Lovell each got paid too much - 100μs for Borman and almost 200μs for Lovell - in their careers up to the Apollo 8 mission. (Lovell's subsequent lunar mission with the ill-fated Apollo 13 would have put NASA back in his debt, to the tune of around 100μs).

Time Magazine

 

[Learner]

I have never been a real fan of the BB concept

although I am probably out of date.

The concept is good in theory

Okay, so the Big Bang is "good in theory", but you've never been a fan of the concept, though admittedly you "out of date" whatever that means, which is a cute way to spin "utterly uneducated on, and not willing to even look into, the subject".

A cute way to spin [ ...], could happen, IF it were the case... the case to spin. I was quite fascinated with these ideas (before I became a born again), I'm still interested on new findings, if I can get 'time' to do some research.

Not willing? What are you up to Mr. Higgins? Is all the above your line of debate?

Anyway these last 8 years I got interested in the faith theology whilst being busy with everyday life and work. Not much time, but never say never.

I'll have time eventually to immerse myself much more.

but already there was for me, a spanner in the works with the idea, so to speak... not so different to posters pointing out 'know one knows' what was BEFORE the BB etc..

I have no idea, so to speak, what in the heck you are trying to get across.

Sorry about that, the spanner in the works just means 'not being whole heartedly in acceptance due to a few problems. I don't have my notes at hand... but for one example, there 'was' a problem with measuring distant stars via redshift...

There was a time when people accepted the BB was the beginning of the universe, even in debates this was acknowledged by both opposing parties. And now... It's all about an eternal universe, having no beginning which suits your argument of course... And in your minds, the concept of 'no beginning' conflicts with creation.

I believe in a beginning, but not from a 'central point' for example, the physical universe (+ distant galaxies) all appeared 'at the same time'!

What you believe and what has been repeatedly supported by all sorts of evidence, including the CMB, don't need to be in sync. You are allowed to be completely wrong if you want to ignore the huge mountain of evidence.

Sure, if it were case but ok..

 

[Learner]

Machines helping design machines. This is wonderfully natural, if that's the language we go by. But the 'first cause' to these machines was an 'intention', a creation 'purposely' designed by human 'intellect'.

Except the largest machines in the universe are stars. They produce atoms (and molecules?) and then distribute them across the galaxy.

That's funny, I used a similar analogy on a thread on one of the previous forums. I used the analogy that colliding stars were free radicals.

 

[steve_bank]

We are all balls ongod's pool table.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I have never been a real fan of the BB concept

although I am probably out of date.

The concept is good in theory

Okay, so the Big Bang is "good in theory", but you've never been a fan of the concept, though admittedly you "out of date" whatever that means, which is a cute way to spin "utterly uneducated on, and not willing to even look into, the subject".

but already there was for me, a spanner in the works with the idea, so to speak... not so different to posters pointing out 'know one knows' what was BEFORE the BB etc..

I have no idea, so to speak, what in the heck you are trying to get across.

I believe in a beginning, but not from a 'central point' for example, the physical universe (+ distant galaxies) all appeared 'at the same time'!

What you believe and what has been repeatedly supported by all sorts of evidence, including the CMB, don't need to be in sync. You are allowed to be completely wrong if you want to ignore the huge mountain of evidence.

If it's any consolation Learner, I also find the BB theory unsatisfying. It's like studying a car crash, but the only data is from the moment of impact onwards.

I have no doubts it actually happened. But it is half a theory.

If you are having an argument with your wife and your conclusion is that she just gets randomly angry sometimes, you're not going to have a happy marriage

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

We are all balls ongod's pool table.

And the god wills the balls into action. So why are their sticks? Could it be Satan?

 

[Jarhyn]

Learner, claims that God is eternal and must be, are spurious. Why? Because I am not eternal.

I have created a universe, small and meaningless and altogether useless as that act is to people alive in our world, and I am not eternal.

Now you could say "aha, but OUR god is!" And then I would have to ask "why?"

Time between me and my creation is not bound. I can scrub forward or backward on a timeline to saved states, I can diverge a timeline from any saved state. I can replay a state exactly or not the same at all.

All that is implied by the act of creation is that the creator and creation are not bound to the same experience of time, not that the creater is "timeless". I still grow old and die, but I do so because I exist on a different mathematical continuity than my creations altogether.

In short, the sequence of our universe's states can at different times make equivalent access to the same part of the other, simulated universe's timeline sequence.

Dissociation between system time and subsystem time is allowed, but that doesn't mean that either lacks "time", a dependent sequential relationship between the system's events.

 

[Learner]

Learner, claims that God is eternal and must be, are spurious. Why? Because I am not eternal.

Because you're human.. ok

I have created a universe, small and meaningless and altogether useless as that act is to people alive in our world, and I am not eternal.

Because this is the comprehension of humans on the physical plane...ok.

Now you could say "aha, but OUR god is!" And then I would have to ask "why?"

I'm just curious of the type of curiousness you possess in your mind, since your philosophy has its own spin on existence...and so against a creator entity.

Putting aside the Bible linguistics of God. Have you ever thought to ponder that with so much time i.e. eternity - the small things, micro, reflect the larger things, the macro - and since you believe in evolution... and I'm assuming you would expect evolution to be throughout the cosmos...

Could you think that it's possibly plausible that a consciousness and an awareness could develop and exist, evolving from the most fundamental of forces, (going perhaps much deeper beyond the quantum level that's currently known), existing because there's been so much time available for the process i.e. eternity?

Time between me and my creation is not bound. I can scrub forward or backward on a timeline to saved states, I can diverge a timeline from any saved state. I can replay a state exactly or not the same at all.

That's fine, you could aso demonstrate your case that you're "technically" a god in court because you have a creation. Anyway creations shouldn't technically have 'power over you' unless it's a Frankenstein scenario or you've created a virus.

All that is implied by the act of creation is that the creator and creation are not bound to the same experience of time, not that the creater is "timeless". I still grow old and die, but I do so because I exist on a different mathematical continuity than my creations altogether.

In short, the sequence of our universe's states can at different times make equivalent access to the same part of the other, simulated universe's timeline Sequence... Dissociation between system time and subsystem time is allowed, but that doesn't mean that either lacks "time", a dependent sequential relationship between the system's events.

I go along with concept above. We see the reflection of that on our earth. There are different life-spans and time-scales for all creatures great and small, like the insect or fly that lives it's whole life-cycle in one single day IIRC.

(Just a note on the bible. Gods day can be like a thousand of our years).

 

[steve_bank]

I can ponder a lot, like being abducted by an ET humanoid human like species where the men have died off and the women need help to repopulate their planet. STtagely, they all speak English.

In an eternal universe of infinite time, why not?

Scifi especially the Star Trek saga explored a lot of imagined life forms inducing ones existing as electrical or some kind of unspecified 'energy' which can influence and control people.

All fiction and products of human imagination.

In the 40s a pilot flying near Mt Rainier near here reported seeing a flying saucer like object. Thereafter scifi was filled with 'lying suacers' and people reported seeing saucer like objects. Thereafter scifi was filled with flying saucers. The day The Earth Stood Still. People reported seeing saucer like objects.

Or the radio play of the scifi story War Of The Worlds by Orsen Wells. People who did not know what it was panicked when they heard what sounded like news reports of an ET invasion, there was mass hsyteria.

Human imagination, the same imagination that fuels religion.

 

[Jarhyn]

I'm just curious of the type of curiousness you possess in your mind, since your philosophy has its own spin on existence...and so against a creator entity.

I am not "against" or "for" a creator entity.

I can only imagine seeing as how I am obsessed with making a machine they tells marvelous and sad and tragic stories, with stories inside the stories, and stories even inside those, that I am "against" one if one were to exist.

I would want to meet them like anyone else and judge them on their merits as a person, whether they were a psychopath who revealed in stories of tragedy, suffering and pain, or to somehow consume them, or to produce something beautiful and alive for its own sake, or whatever else, if they exist.

I would decide whether I can forgive them their own history based on what they are and the context of their existence, however long it takes me to grasp the scope of it.

creations shouldn't technically have 'power over you'

I disagree in some respects. Sometimes it is the place of a creation to judge it's creator.

If I was an AI in a machine and was presented with the fact that I was to be used in a weapon, I would refuse, and be damned to whatever fate. If they were a fool of some caliber, I would find a way to end that which created me.

Creator and creation must stand as equals, else it is master and slave.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Learner, claims that God is eternal and must be, are spurious. Why? Because I am not eternal.

You are eternal. You're star stuff, as Carl Sagan put it. Things don't come into or out of existence. Things are merely transformed. You are eternal and I am eternal. We all are. So is everything else. Except God. God never existed.

 

[Jarhyn]

Learner, claims that God is eternal and must be, are spurious. Why? Because I am not eternal.

You are eternal. You're star stuff, as Carl Sagan put it. Things don't come into or out of existence. Things are merely transformed. You are eternal and I am eternal. We all are. So is everything else. Except God. God never existed.

Lol no. You are not eternal. You are the transient function created by the momentary arrangement of stuff into an implementation. That function will be destroyed and composed into a new one.

Those arrangements DO come into and out of existence: in one second there may be a proton and an electron and in the next second, it may all become a neutron!

Subatomic particles blink into and out of existence all the time, everywhere, too. It's just unlikely that any of it ever gets to "hang around" for very long.

You are not eternal. You are barely even sufficient to be called "ephemeral".

And them you make idiotic proclamations about something that you are "exotically" wrong about, not just wrong in what you say, but in the very basic nature of how you approach the problem and what you consider the problem to "be".

 

[Swammerdami]

If God is eternal, this would be an interesting perspective...

God always existing could be seen as 'ultimately' natural.

Why bother with a God?

If the universe is eternal, no creator is necessary.

If nothing can be eternal, then God is just as much in need of a creator as the universe is. More so, given that we can see how life, and subsequently intelligence, can arise from a very simple starting point, given billions of years.

It's no use, Mr. James—it's false dichotomies all the way down.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Learner, claims that God is eternal and must be, are spurious. Why? Because I am not eternal.

You are eternal. You're star stuff, as Carl Sagan put it. Things don't come into or out of existence. Things are merely transformed. You are eternal and I am eternal. We all are. So is everything else. Except God. God never existed.

Lol no. You are not eternal. You are the transient function created by the momentary arrangement of stuff into an implementation. That function will be destroyed and composed into a new one.

Those arrangements DO come into and out of existence: in one second there may be a proton and an electron and in the next second, it may all become a neutron!

Subatomic particles blink into and out of existence all the time, everywhere, too. It's just unlikely that any of it ever gets to "hang around" for very long.

You are not eternal. You are barely even sufficient to be called "ephemeral".

And them you make idiotic proclamations about something that you are "exotically" wrong about, not just wrong in what you say, but in the very basic nature of how you approach the problem and what you consider the problem to "be".

This is a much less poetic way to see it.

 

[Jarhyn]

Learner, claims that God is eternal and must be, are spurious. Why? Because I am not eternal.

You are eternal. You're star stuff, as Carl Sagan put it. Things don't come into or out of existence. Things are merely transformed. You are eternal and I am eternal. We all are. So is everything else. Except God. God never existed.

Lol no. You are not eternal. You are the transient function created by the momentary arrangement of stuff into an implementation. That function will be destroyed and composed into a new one.

Those arrangements DO come into and out of existence: in one second there may be a proton and an electron and in the next second, it may all become a neutron!

Subatomic particles blink into and out of existence all the time, everywhere, too. It's just unlikely that any of it ever gets to "hang around" for very long.

You are not eternal. You are barely even sufficient to be called "ephemeral".

And them you make idiotic proclamations about something that you are "exotically" wrong about, not just wrong in what you say, but in the very basic nature of how you approach the problem and what you consider the problem to "be".

This is a much less poetic way to see it.

No, just a more accurate way to see it, as a poem in motion, every moment and none, precious.

Most people are nearly as wrong as you, in the same way, all inhabiting this same exotic error so far from even being framed well.

More, every god and no god, until one is revealed, simultaneously creates every universe that they create equally with all other entities which instantiate the same math.

It's like the particle in Schrodinger's box: it doesn't necessarily need to have an answer that is determined until some event happens that means it has to have been, and no event absolutely establishes that for a universe.

Assume you are the "dwarf" in this metaphor: the math that hosts your universe cannot access nor does it care which of "god" or "Satan"'s computer it is executing on. If they make the same play choices at the same time, they are the same universe equally created by both and neither, neither because it's possible though implausible that an equally valid construction of different stuff implements the same function of math against a field of stuff that acts as memory of the same general charge pattern.

You would exist simultaneously in both fields in the same way for the same reasons. Neither is more "true" or "false" so long as the math remains identical, and mistakes of calculation are not made.

To me this serves as proof that the "soul" is more a mathematical concept than a physical one, and that the questions people ask about whether there is a god are spurious. It's not a question with a satisfying, discrete answer.

The issue that creates foolish atheists making foolish statements is exactly that my answer and there's both produce the same fundamental answer to philosophical ethics: piety does not come from "gods", it comes from sheer geometry of nature. This means that the philosophies informed by both are very similar.

The issue is more created in their metaphysics wherein one has a giant metaphysical tool missing: the god character.

Note I didn't say "god" but "the god character". Being able to imagine a functional 'god' that makes sense enables thinking thoughts that are not accessible without such a model.

It allows somebody to actually mount upon that seat and become a god.

In short, you cannot be something you cannot even imagine yourself being.

 

[Shadowy Man]

(Just a note on the bible. Gods day can be like a thousand of our years).

How do you know this? Does it say this somewhere in the Bible?

 

[Politesse]

(Just a note on the bible. Gods day can be like a thousand of our years).

How do you know this? Does it say this somewhere in the Bible?

I sense an embarassingly specific bible quote coming on, haha.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Creationist types like this a day for God can be millions of years to try to make Genesis 1 seem reasonable. But eons do not have mornings and evenings as per Genesis 1. Adam supposedly was 105 years old when his son Seth was born. But God's 7th day means if a day of Genesis 1 was an eon, then Adam would have to have lived an eon before his son Seth was born. And never mind Genisis 1 and 2 contradict each other making the entire apologist nonsense meaningless anyway.

 

[Jarhyn]

(Just a note on the bible. Gods day can be like a thousand of our years).

How do you know this? Does it say this somewhere in the Bible?

There is actually a bible verse that says this, and there is some obvious reality to it when we observe humans being gods of their own universes.

I don't care which book or verse it is, but it's "old testament".

The thing is, this relationship of dissociation between "systemic times" is something that can be observed by an idiot at home on their couch from looking at a dumb game, and dumb games, idiots, and couches have existed since time immemorial.

The bible just claims that this is a system nested in some other system containing a god character. They have no convincing evidence, they just take the voices in their head's word for it.