flashleg8 wrote:"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (one of Arthur C. Clarke's "laws" of prediction)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo." --Enoch the Red
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flashleg8 wrote:"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (one of Arthur C. Clarke's "laws" of prediction)
Riao wrote:Nephilim wrote:i would like to respond here, but i'm not sure if this thread actually exists.....Nephilim wrote:bart ehrman: "i'm an agnostic"
steven colbert: "isn't that just an atheist without balls?"
Do you share these thoughts?
OnlyAmbrose wrote:flashleg, I think what he's saying is that since you can't prove what you believe (and yes, you do believe there is no God- don't dance with words and say that you don't believe in anything because it's the same damn thing), then it's faith.
OnlyAmbrose wrote:There are an infinite amount of possibilities as to who or what the supernatural is. I choose one of those infinite possibilities- God as he is portrayed in the Christian faith. You choose just another one of those possibilities- nothing. In a purely statistical sense, you're just as likely to be right or wrong as I am.
OnlyAmbrose wrote:Let's take the ever-famous "Evil Spaghetti Monster" analogy that atheists are so fond of. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, that I believe in said Spaghetti Monster from outer space. My friend, Abdul, doesn't believe in the Spaghetti monster, but believes in the ooze monster from another galaxy. You, on the other hand, don't believe in any monster at all.
There are an infinite amount of monsters I could come up with, and the chances of their existence (statistically) are one in infinite- mathematically, zero. HOWEVER, the existance of a monster in the at all- in any form- is, mathematically, infinite out of infinite- mathematically undefined. Why? Because there are an infinite amount of monsters I could come up with, but there are also an infinite amount of monsters that could possibly exist.
Atheism, on the other hand (or a-monsterism), is merely one of those possibilities. One in infinite. Zero. So we have zero and undefined as the numbers we can work with. You'll have a tough time proving anything with those statistics. As such, you have faith that there is no God, or any monster of any kind.
flashleg8 wrote:The basic flaw in your argument is you are weighting the possibility of each of the possible outcomes being equal. They are not.
flashleg8 wrote:In fact from my point of view they would be No God = 1 all other options = 0.
flashleg8 wrote:Typical for religious people to try and co-opt science to baffle people. Why not be more honest about your faith, like others here, and give the real reason why you believe that descend into pseudo science? I am prepared to accept that some people have experienced something that they can only attribute to the divine that has given them faith. I, personally, have never experienced anything that cannot be explained in a rational way but I can't possibly speak for other people and won't be so condescending to deny what they themselves felt.
flashleg8 wrote:Riao wrote:...as all other beliefs require faith to maintain, including atheism (I can't wait to be challenged on that one!)
Okay, I'll rise to it.
Atheism is not a belief. It is the lack of belief. I don't believe there is no God(s). I have no faith in religion. I don't accept the concept of the supernatural or divine therefore I am an atheist.
All children are atheists until introduced by society to the idea of the supernatural/divine (although I have had interesting debates about this point with both luns and Crazy Anglican who argue quite elegantly to opposite).
flashleg8 wrote:Riao wrote:flashleg8 wrote:Riao wrote:...as all other beliefs require faith to maintain, including atheism (I can't wait to be challenged on that one!)
Okay, I'll rise to it.
Atheism is not a belief. It is the lack of belief. I don't believe there is no God(s). I have no faith in religion. I don't accept the concept of the supernatural or divine therefore I am an atheist.
All children are atheists until introduced by society to the idea of the supernatural/divine (although I have had interesting debates about this point with both luns and Crazy Anglican who argue quite elegantly to opposite).
To me faith is the belief in something that cannot be proven. When you believe something that cannot be proven, then you take it on faith that it is so. There is no way to prove the existence of a supernatural being one way or the other. You take it on faith that supernatural entities do not exist. You take it on faith that the various religions of the world are incorrect.
I see where youāre coming from, but I disagree. The burden of proof should be on the believer to convince the non-believer. I do not accept that there should be a presumption that the supernatural/divine exists and in needs to be disproved. This is not how science/law acts - why should this be a special case?
For a good example of an extension of your argument to the ridiculous, look into the other thread "Pastafarians" where they examine the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Another famous philosophical example of this is Russellās tea pot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Riao wrote:@ flashleg8:
Sorry I have to go to work right now, but I will answer this when I get back.
OnlyAmbrose wrote:
The chances of any one possibility being totally correct are statistically minuscule - zero, in fact.
Riao wrote:
The second point is where this will get interesting. You obviously have a vested belief in science. This is faith too. (For the vast majority of people anyway. For the few scientists actually performing experiments, this may not apply, but for the layman -- most definitely).
Religion is learned, right? Everything Christians know about their faith they have been taught by priests, nuns, pastors, etc. and also have read in books. Faith comes from these teachings. Well the question is how do you know about the science that you speak of? Other than perhaps the childish experiments in school (light refractions, radio wave experiments, mathematical formulas) the rest of what most people know about science comes from being told in school and reading in books. So we are told for instance that the atom exists, and if you split it open a tremendous amount of energy is released. How do you really know this is true? No one has ever seen an atom! The closest you can get to looking at one is through an electron microscope, but then you are not really seeing it, any more than an ultra-sound truly lets you see a gestating fetus. You see an image that is supposedly an atom.
And I for one haven't even seen an electron microscope. I'm told that they exist and what they do. You choose to believe in it or not. But the teaching of this and the expectation that you will believe it, I contend, is no different from the same expectations coming from religious leaders in churches. Both teachings come from books and through oral lessons. It's the same.
Personally I hold that certainly one is more likely true than the other, but who am I to really say who is right or wrong. I haven't seen any more proof in science than I have in any religion. If you hold that you believe in scientific theories, that is no less of a faith than believing in a religion.
flashleg8 wrote:@Riao Point 1: I disagree, it takes faith to believe in something that is not seen. I don't believe it takes faith to believe that something doesn't exist that cannot be seen. This is the lack of faith.
Why do you all insist that a negative must be equal to a positive? Take Matter and Void for example. Matter (air, earth etc) exists and so does Void (space). No Matter exists in a void. It is the lack of Matter that creates the void. Is the Void Matter? Of course not, it is the lack of Matter!
and Point 2:Riao wrote:
The second point is where this will get interesting. You obviously have a vested belief in science. This is faith too. (For the vast majority of people anyway. For the few scientists actually performing experiments, this may not apply, but for the layman -- most definitely).
Religion is learned, right? Everything Christians know about their faith they have been taught by priests, nuns, pastors, etc. and also have read in books. Faith comes from these teachings. Well the question is how do you know about the science that you speak of? Other than perhaps the childish experiments in school (light refractions, radio wave experiments, mathematical formulas) the rest of what most people know about science comes from being told in school and reading in books. So we are told for instance that the atom exists, and if you split it open a tremendous amount of energy is released. How do you really know this is true? No one has ever seen an atom! The closest you can get to looking at one is through an electron microscope, but then you are not really seeing it, any more than an ultra-sound truly lets you see a gestating fetus. You see an image that is supposedly an atom.
And I for one haven't even seen an electron microscope. I'm told that they exist and what they do. You choose to believe in it or not. But the teaching of this and the expectation that you will believe it, I contend, is no different from the same expectations coming from religious leaders in churches. Both teachings come from books and through oral lessons. It's the same.
Personally I hold that certainly one is more likely true than the other, but who am I to really say who is right or wrong. I haven't seen any more proof in science than I have in any religion. If you hold that you believe in scientific theories, that is no less of a faith than believing in a religion.
First of all I am a scientist (of sorts) and I have studied science based subjects all my student and working life. The problem with people arguing against science is really one of misunderstanding I find. What is science? It is not the technology, the laws, the theories. It is the scientific method. Science is a way of gaining knowledge through observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses. The knowledge must be based on observable phenomena and capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions. Scientific evidence should be treated in exactly the same way as evidence brought before a legal court. It must be tested for validity, repeatable and stand up to stringent tests.
The main thrust of your argument is perhaps condensed to "if I haven't seen how can I know its true" and "they taught me it how can I know what they say is true".
For the first part: All this evidence is reproducible (or it would not be accepted by the scientific community), you can either do it yourself - or see another do it (it may be expensive, difficult but it is possible). I seriously doubt any religion in the world can demonstrate a single miracle on demand. Or in fact any divine/supernatural act.
For part two: I don't know what level of education you have in science so I won't guess, but at higher levels of study in any science, the pupil is often presented with the evidence (the observable results) and is able to work through the proof (both mathematical and empirical) to prove the accepted idea to themselves. It is possible to mathematically prove certain laws of physics. All this takes a high understanding of the subject and so it is often not worthwhile to go into such strenuous detail for high school lessons.
Go down tomorrow to your local Uni and tell them you don't believe there is such thing as an electron microscope - I'm sure they'll be happy to prove you wrong
It's basically logic- atheism is one possibility, however large that possibility may be, out of an infinite amount of other possibilities. The chances of any one possibility being totally correct are statistically minuscule - zero, in fact. Which is why from a statistical standpoint, agnosticism actually makes a whole lot of sense.
Nephilim wrote:about the verbal vitriol that often accompanies religion/atheism: it doesn't seem much different than many other subjects. people get very angry about lots of things. politics, sex, race, football, etc.
flashleg8 wrote:Once again I must question your application of statistics to this problem. At the risk of repeating myself, you are weighing each possible option equally when their probable outcome is not. For example toss a coin: one option is that the coin will come down heads, one is that it will come down tails: but there are other options; the coin may come down on its side, not come down at all or even magically change into a flower on the way down. In fact the options are infinite! Do you really argue that all these options have equal weighting? If so the chances of the coin coming down heads is...well "statistically minuscule - zero, in fact"! Hmm, put that one to the test and come back with the result, I'm interested to see what the result will be(!).
OnlyAmbrose wrote:If you tossed a coin for all of eternity, and given an endless amount of trials, then yes- I have no doubt that it would eventually turn into a flower on the way down. In the words of Isaac Asimov, when you are dealing with the infinite, "Anything can happen... anything MUST happen..." Yet at the same time the chances of one specific thing happening are absolutely nil, because given an infinite amount of trials, an infinite amount of different things will occur, which means that statistically the chances of any one thing occurring are zero.
OnlyAmbrose wrote:
If you tossed a coin for all of eternity, and given an endless amount of trials, then yes- I have no doubt that it would eventually turn into a flower on the way down. In the words of Isaac Asimov, when you are dealing with the infinite, "Anything can happen... anything MUST happen..." Yet at the same time the chances of one specific thing happening are absolutely nil, because given an infinite amount of trials, an infinite amount of different things will occur, which means that statistically the chances of any one thing occurring are zero.
WalrusesRN wrote:OnlyAmbrose wrote:
If you tossed a coin for all of eternity, and given an endless amount of trials, then yes- I have no doubt that it would eventually turn into a flower on the way down. In the words of Isaac Asimov, when you are dealing with the infinite, "Anything can happen... anything MUST happen..." Yet at the same time the chances of one specific thing happening are absolutely nil, because given an infinite amount of trials, an infinite amount of different things will occur, which means that statistically the chances of any one thing occurring are zero.
I don't really follow your logic. There are an infinite number of possibilities of what I could do tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that the chance of me eating is zero. The chance can't be zero because if there is zero% chance of something happening, it can't happen, and there are things that happen. For instance, I will eat tomorrow. The chances of any one thing happening cannot be zero because at least one thing will happen. If I am missing something please explain it, because this just seems ridiculous to me.
Riao wrote:OnlyAmbrose will most likely give you an answer, but here's mine:
There isn't an infinite number of things that you could possibly do tomorrow. You are limited in what you can do. Moreover, you are driven to eat, therefore you will most likely eat. In the infinite possibilities of reality, there is no drive, and the possibilities are not limited. Given an infinite number of possibilities, the probability of a single theory being true is virtually zero.
WalrusesRN wrote:Riao wrote:OnlyAmbrose will most likely give you an answer, but here's mine:
There isn't an infinite number of things that you could possibly do tomorrow. You are limited in what you can do. Moreover, you are driven to eat, therefore you will most likely eat. In the infinite possibilities of reality, there is no drive, and the possibilities are not limited. Given an infinite number of possibilities, the probability of a single theory being true is virtually zero.
Okay, so say I had said what HAPPENS tomorrow, instead of what I do. By the way, VIRTUALLY, is a word that can't be left out of that. Virtually zero and zero are practically opposites, the way existance and nonexistance are opposites.
Riao wrote:I say virtually only because I think that there does have to be a single truth. So that truth is one in an infinite number of possibilities. And saying what happens tomorrow is extremely vague. If you mean "on this earth," then there is a finite number of possibilities. But statistically the guess will be wrong. Otherwise I wouldn't be having this conversation and instead enjoying my lottery winnings.
WalrusesRN wrote:OnlyAmbrose wrote:
If you tossed a coin for all of eternity, and given an endless amount of trials, then yes- I have no doubt that it would eventually turn into a flower on the way down. In the words of Isaac Asimov, when you are dealing with the infinite, "Anything can happen... anything MUST happen..." Yet at the same time the chances of one specific thing happening are absolutely nil, because given an infinite amount of trials, an infinite amount of different things will occur, which means that statistically the chances of any one thing occurring are zero.
I don't really follow your logic. There are an infinite number of possibilities of what I could do tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that the chance of me eating is zero. The chance can't be zero because if there is zero% chance of something happening, it can't happen, and there are things that happen. For instance, I will eat tomorrow. The chances of any one thing happening cannot be zero because at least one thing will happen. If I am missing something please explain it, because this just seems ridiculous to me.
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