The Improbability of God

[MHz]

You are right, I would much sooner read books that are rational and easier to fathom than your Bible.
roflmao Logic? As of yet, I have not seen any logical reason for believing that products of human imagination are anything else but products of the imagination. As I keep pointing out, if I were to write a book about my philosophy, it sure as hell would be clearer than the Bible.

No matter how clear you tried to make it somebody is going to find it confusing.
Obviously you consider yourself an intelligent person so if you do not understand something that is written down it must be the fault of the author rather than some inner 'defect' of your own. That could be as simple as a question Ge:1 brings up (to a questioning person) not having a 'reasonable answer' until Eze:5. Not that it is intentionally hidden until then, it is just information that is more suited to that later book because of the topic it covers.

 

[L Gilbert]

The difference being Politicians intentionally keep people in the dark, the darkness that surrounds religion is there because nobody is asking any questions (and demanding answers) If people are stupid enough to hand over money to somebody who is telling them to be quiet and quit asking question then they deserve what they get, and it will never be for the better. The same goes for politics, if the people who give them money don't demand an honest Gov then they deserve what they get. (in the case of America it is enabling war-crimes in which the citizens are equally guilty because the Gov is a servant of the public.

I am well aware of why pols prefer to keep people in the dark. Some clergy are the same.
As far as why the universe and we are like we are goes, there are other books that make more sense than the Bible.

When was the last time science had to readjust it views on 'how things work'?

Science doesn't adjust to the imaginary events and hearsay occuring in the Bible, it adjusts to evidence.The difference being that religions usually conform to scientific findings (eventually). Science is not known to conform to Biblical claims.

Over the years I've answered all sorts of 'lists', no matter how fine the explanation (# of verses and passages) when a person's mind is made up it is also closed to any and all explanations. Raping virgins taken captive is one example, nobody wants to consider that when the virginity was taken it also included a marriage ceremony (that is a lifelong commitment) and it never took place before a full month of being taken captive. Years for those who were taken at a very young age.
The common take is that rapes took place during the capture, all that says is how the person who reads and sees it that way would react in a similar situation.

I suppose you have some sort of example (other than my example)in mind.

Nope.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

When was the last time science had to readjust it views on 'how things work'?

Probably some time today, unless the scientists have all taken the weekend off. Its greatest strength is that, unlike religion, it readily adjusts to new information. It has to, its major purpose is to go looking for it. Just look at a few of the major revolutions of the last hundred years or so: quantum mechanics, general relativity, plate tectonics, the genetic code, evolutionary biology, the Big Bang, cosmic inflation, chaos theory, self-organizing complexity, molecular biology, the Cretaceous asteroid impact... And they were all accomplished without anyone even suggesting dissenters deserve to be killed off.

And what are you doing? Trying to make sense of the information in a collection of 2000 to 5000 year old texts on the assumption that their contents and the assumptions of the people who wrote them are unchangeably true and correct and no further data is required. You'll never figure out anything useful that way.

 

[Cannuck]

Is this because you cannot show any probabilities for the existence of gods n gremlins?

That could be one reason. Another could be that it will make no difference if I did. People's minds are made up.

So if you don't care about people's notions, why are you here unless it is to proselytize (as eannasir seems to love doing)?

Again, that could be one reason. Another could be simply to point out that eanassir is not the only one that is proselytizing.

Obviously you are going to continue attempting to direct my intentions so I don't expect to hear any more on that matter.

 

[MHz]

Probably some time today, unless the scientists have all taken the weekend off. Its greatest strength is that, unlike religion, it readily adjusts to new information. It has to, its major purpose is to go looking for it. Just look at a few of the major revolutions of the last hundred years or so: quantum mechanics, general relativity, plate tectonics, the genetic code, evolutionary biology, the Big Bang, cosmic inflation, chaos theory, self-organizing complexity, molecular biology, the Cretaceous asteroid impact... And they were all accomplished without anyone even suggesting dissenters deserve to be killed off.

And what are you doing? Trying to make sense of the information in a collection of 2000 to 5000 year old texts on the assumption that their contents and the assumptions of the people who wrote them are unchangeably true and correct and no further data is required. You'll never figure out anything useful that way.

How many fewer times would it be updated if nobody asked questions?
Even today 'established theories' are not easily given up on even in the face of a more rational answer. The flooding of the scab-lands of America's north-west is an example of a theory that was rejected (at the expense (ruined his career) of the one who first brought it up) but is now the 'common theory'.

The same goes for politics and religion, if nobody is making serious inquires then the 'authorities' can say anything they like. Not trying to single out the RCC but they pretty rewrote the basic Scriptures to make it so confusing nobody could understand it enough to come up with a valid question. How much different would "Churches" be today if many questions were almost mandated? Ask a question before you can enter. How much different would politics be if every member had to anser question for 3-4hrs every day. That also means in both cases the questions and answers were posted so many people could read them.

Well the prophecies given many 1,000's of years ago are still just as valid today as they were back then. If 'x' number of people are said to be killed that is how many will be killed, no more, no less. (given that this might not be the end of the story of what happens to them)
And yes it is a complete story all by itself, name one other book that can have 100,000 people read it and every interpretation is slightly different. After some discussion a more common understanding should be quite apparent.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

Probably some time today, unless the scientists have all taken the weekend off. Its greatest strength is that, unlike religion, it readily adjusts to new information.

Quite right, Dexter, the greatest strength of science is that scientists readily admit themselves to be fallible, admit it when they get things wrong (and they many times do). Indeed, that is how science advances. Thus the theory of ‘phlogiston’, or of ‘ether’, was proved wrong. Einstein proved Newton wrong, and gave us the Theory of Relativity.

Religion on the other hand, is never wrong, the priests, preachers (or the Imam or Mullah, let us not neglect Islam here) are supposed to be infallible, since they preach the word of God, which is unchanging.

But that is the only reason why science advances. When a new theory is proposed and evidence in its favour becomes overwhelming, the scientific community admits it was wrong and embraces the new theory.

Until that is, still another theory supersedes the current theory. That is why a theory cannot be proved beyond any doubt, it can only be disproved (one contrary instance will disprove it). That is why in scientific journals when the author reports evidence in support of a theory; he never says ‘this evidence proves such and such theory’. The language always is ‘this evidence is not inconsistent with such and such theory’.

To me, the greatest strength of science is that it is never 100% sure; it is ready to change in the face of mounting evidence. Religion never does that. The believers know that they are right, anybody who disagrees with them is the spawn of the Devil and that is that.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

Incidentally, for anybody who is interested in getting a better understanding of the Bible, I strongly recommend the book on Bible by Isaac Asimov. He has written a critique of the Bible from secular, or Atheist perspective, and a lot of what he said made sense to me (e.g. he thinks that the story of Garden of Eden alludes to the time period when human society changed form hunter gatherer to farming society).

 

[MHz]

Quite right, Dexter, the greatest strength of science is that scientists readily admit themselves to be fallible, admit it when they get things wrong (and they many times do).

8O no wonder there is no link to that comment, LOL

 

[MHz]

he thinks that the story of Garden of Eden alludes to the time period when human society changed form hunter gatherer to farming society).

Well he got that part wrong, if anything they were simply gatherers before the fall (hungry reach up grab some fruit, hungry reach down grab a handful of herbs), after the fall they did have take up hunting (and being hunted) and farming (because thistles grew where fruitful trees once stood) to survive.

 

[eanassir]

The Quran includes many proofs and evidences​

I refer to the glorious Quran which includes many proofs and evidences against the atheism, the enthusiasm, the idolatry and the associating others with God Almighty.

This is according to the Quran 4: 174​

يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ قَدْ جَاءكُم بُرْهَانٌ مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ وَأَنزَلْنَا إِلَيْكُمْ نُورًا مُّبِينًا​

The explanation:
(O men, there has [now come to you the Quran as] a proof from your Lord;
We have sent down to you [the Quran as] an elucidating light.)

When atheists wrangle they refer to some books of their teachers (who in fact are some followers of Satan).

While on my part, I wrangle with the proofs derived from the glorious Quran, which includes many proofs and evidences against the atheism and the associating of others with God the Creator.

universeandquran.t35.com
man-after-death.t35.com
quranandhebrewbible.t35.com ​

 

[Dexter Sinister]

8O no wonder there is no link to that comment, LOL

Why would you expect a link? That's common knowledge, at least among people who understand even the rudiments of how science works. Would you expect me to provide a link supporting a claim that the sun will rise tomorrow morning?

Even today 'established theories' are not easily given up on even in the face of a more rational answer.

That's not really true, or at best is a major oversimplification. Established theories aren't easily surrendered simply because they have a weight of evidence and success behind them. If they're to be supplanted, the evidence and analyses have to be pretty compelling, and that takes time to accumulate. If it really does provide "a more rational answer," as you put it, it'll eventually be accepted, as your own example of the scablands shows, and it's hardly fair to say it ruined Dr. Bretz' career. He was sharply criticized, essentially because he didn't have all the information necessary to make his case thoroughly, but he didn't lose his job or get drummed out of the fraternity of geologists. Once the source of the floodwater was clearly identified, and geologists' understanding of glaciation improved significantly over the same time period, the battle was over. Ultimately he was honoured with the Penrose Medal (a bit late, at age 90-something, after he'd outlived all his critics) for generating one of the great ideas of modern geology. Can hardly call that a ruin.

It's really quite difficult though to show that you have a more rational answer, the standards are high and you have to be very careful and very thorough. There's politics and ego in science of course, as there is in any human enterprise, and sometimes people get hurt by it, but science will eventually get it right.

 

[eanassir]

An important difference between the atheist and the believer in God alone​

This is concerning the reward: the believer: the monotheist hope for a reward from his Lord Most Gracious, while for the atheist he is hopeless: he despaired of God's mercy and grace.

The atheist is like one going into darkness: without reward, without hope of anything following his death; he claims that he believes there is nothing following death, but he cannot prove it, and he deems he will be a dust and nothing else.

So what hope has this defective-minded? The atheist here is like the drunken who tries to forget about his problems by indulging in his drunkenness, while this is only a deceptive thing and his problems will not be solved by his drunkenness.

The believer has a Master Who is Most Gracious and Most Merciful; while the atheist is like a sheep without shepherd and going astray here and there; and he has confidence at nothing until he be a prey to the wolf the Devil), whom he claims not existing.

This is in the Quran 47: 11​

ذَلِكَ بِأَنَّ اللَّهَ مَوْلَى الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَأَنَّ الْكَافِرِينَ لَا مَوْلَى لَهُمْ​

The explanation:
(That is because God is the Protecting Master of the believers and that the unbelievers have no Protecting Master.)

​

man-after-death.t35.com

 

[Dexter Sinister]

I wrangle with the proofs derived from the glorious Quran, which includes many proofs and evidences against the atheism and the associating of others with God the Creator.

They're not proofs or evidence, they're just unsubstantiated claims. Your standards of evidence and analysis are very low. All you need, and in fact pretty much all you ever use except when you're citing that ignorant Al Hilly who got all his data from the same source you do, is one sentence from your little guidebook and that's good enough for you. Arguments from authority are losers, especially when the authority is about 1400 years dead and knew nothing about modern science and ethics and philosophy and critical thinking. Your method consists of not much more than insisting you're right because one little book you really admire says so. You won't win any arguments around here that way.

 

[eanassir]

The greatest evils facing the world today​

Some atheists here said: that the greatest evils facing the world today are religion, money and politics, and they may add many other evils like poverty, ignorance, diseases like AIDS and cancers …etc.

In fact, there are two categories of beliefs:
1- The pure monotheism and exclusive devotion to God alone.
2- And the atheism, idolatry, enthusiasm and associating others with God.

So the true religion is not every religion, and the devotion is not any devotion.

The true original religion of God pertaining to God alone without associate, without son or daughter, without any patron – this in fact is God's religion that He commanded man to follow according to the First Commandment which is the most important of all commandments that God is One without associate.

universeandquran.t35.com/#First_Commandment

All other religions and the deviation of any religion from this base line of worshipping God alone without associate; all other religions are evil and are refused and will lead to complete loss in the afterlife.

So the trick of atheists is that they mix all religions in one category, and speak in a comparative way and say: the religion is evil; while in fact the true religion of God alone is not any evil; on the contrary it will lead to prosperity and good conduct and success in this World and the next afterlife.

The evil in reality is every association with God, in addition to the most worse: the atheism which will lead to every evil and the corruption of the individual and the community.

As God – be glorified – said in the Quran 11: 24​

مَثَلُ الْفَرِيقَيْنِ كَالأَعْمَى وَالأَصَمِّ وَالْبَصِيرِ وَالسَّمِيعِ هَلْ يَسْتَوِيَانِ مَثَلاً أَفَلاَ تَذَكَّرُونَ​

The explanation:
(The likeness of the two parties [: unbelievers and believers] is as the man blind and deaf, and the man who sees and hears; are they equal in likeness?
Will you [people] not be admonished?)
​

 

[Dexter Sinister]

So what hope has this defective-minded?

I keep hoping you'll just go away, I don't find you contribute anything of value here. You're just proselytizing for Islam, and I don't see anyone being interested. To people who challenge you, you are consistently insulting and harshly judgmental, and you hide behind the presumed authority of your scriptures as justification. You feel entitled to label me, and others who think as I do, as defective-minded, when all we're trying to do is come to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of things than you are. You've given up thinking, the Quran is the final source of all knowledge and value. Really, in some small degree I hope you're right about a few things, because then there's a chance I might see you in Hell, and if I do, I'll laugh uproariously at you and kick your sorry butt into the nearest pile of manure.

 

[Spade]

The god checker. A Who's Who of 2850 gods.
Godchecker.com - Your Guide To The Gods. Mythology with a twist!

 

[MHz]

Devotion to God plays out in your day-to-day life. It defines how you deal with others you encounter. Proper labeling is important. If I say I am a Christian yet I rob from people all the time then I am not a Christian.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Devotion to God plays out in your day-to-day life. It defines how you deal with others you encounter.

Well... there are things that define how I deal with others I encounter, but they have nothing to do with devotion to god, because I have no devotion to god and don't even think he exists. They have first to do with respect and concern and interest and caring, perfectly predictable and useful behaviours in social creatures like humans. They have second to do with the faded old Victorian virtues, to which I am firmly committed, things like honesty and loyalty and duty and honour and dignity. I've been told by priests and pastors--people who certainly ought to know, if anyone does--that these values are evidence of god working within me whether I believe in him or not. I really have no idea how to respond to that argument. On one level I find it insulting, because it says I am incapable of arriving at these virtues on my own. And on another level I find it amusing: how can something that doesn't exist affect me?

And speaking of honesty, that's exactly the kind of ambivalence that draws me into discussions like this one. I have absolutely no faith in the religious sense, I find it completely incoherent and incomprehensible, but there was a time when I did, and if a life in science has taught me anything of lasting value, it's that you must never forget that you might be wrong.

 

[MHz]

Why would you expect a link? That's common knowledge, at least among people who understand even the rudiments of how science works. Would you expect me to provide a link supporting a claim that the sun will rise tomorrow morning?

I wasn't expecting one, that is why the lol was there.

That's not really true, or at best is a major oversimplification. Established theories aren't easily surrendered simply because they have a weight of evidence and success behind them. If they're to be supplanted, the evidence and analyses have to be pretty compelling, and that takes time to accumulate. If it really does provide "a more rational answer," as you put it, it'll eventually be accepted, as your own example of the scablands shows, and it's hardly fair to say it ruined Dr. Bretz' career. He was sharply criticized, essentially because he didn't have all the information necessary to make his case thoroughly, but he didn't lose his job or get drummed out of the fraternity of geologists. Once the source of the floodwater was clearly identified, and geologists' understanding of glaciation improved significantly over the same time period, the battle was over. Ultimately he was honoured with the Penrose Medal (a bit late, at age 90-something, after he'd outlived all his critics) for generating one of the great ideas of modern geology. Can hardly call that a ruin.

Forty years is not a short time either. The accredited elite or the unknown upstart, who was invited places and who got well funded. How many years could he have been a teacher who earns a nice easy living.
In the middle ages he would have been killed, I knew about floods that large when we dug an 11,000 year old bison out from under 10ft of pure gravel. Think anybody believed me when I explained how some sand-dunes ended up on the wrong side of the river valley.

It's really quite difficult though to show that you have a more rational answer, the standards are high and you have to be very careful and very thorough. There's politics and ego in science of course, as there is in any human enterprise, and sometimes people get hurt by it, but science will eventually get it right.

Nobody said it would be a one-page report. Say I have it right and you have it wrong, but you just can't see it today. 20 years down the road you have a similar conversation and you get a flash that brings you around to have a change of mind. Somebody added that one extra little bit of info that I didn't present, that tipped the scales.

The story about Dr. Bertz takes a course that is similar to my false story.
There was never anything wrong with his first presentation, the missing data was a pretext. Accepting his view means the current one has to be trashed, along with a reputation if the one that presented it is still alive. The accepted view was erosion over a long period of time, people fought to keep that view intact. The acting was pretty dramatic on the show I saw. It did affect that 40 years, if his correct theory had been accepted he would have been richer in those years.

If they got the side effects wrong in some new medicine and 50 years down the road they admit to getting 'reports' a long time ago but they dismissed them because they came from an unknown upstart. That word eventually doesn't increase my confidence on what they say today.

 

[eanassir]

The drunkard atheist speaks about the probability​

He speaks about the probability of mere chance in forming the eye, the wing or the complex structure of the chromosome.

And many have followed his words, and did not ask themselves how is that, and how could this be any reasonable or logical?

I wonder:

Where is your science, the "non-sense" and logic? How could you follow such a drunkard, when he said such funny words:

particularly about the probability of the formation of the eye with all its layers and complexity, and the suitability of the eye of each creature to its requirements. Or about the formation of the wing by mere chance!

In addition to the formation of a female partner for the male: similar to him and different in some points; so that the reproduction of the kind will continue?

As in the Quran 30: 21​

وَمِنْ آيَاتِهِ أَنْ خَلَقَ لَكُم مِّنْ أَنفُسِكُمْ أَزْوَاجًا لِّتَسْكُنُوا إِلَيْهَا وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَكُم مَّوَدَّةً وَرَحْمَةً إِنَّ فِي ذَلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِّقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ​

The explanation:
(And of His signs is this: [that] He has created for you, of yourselves [likeness], wives in whom you may repose, and has made between you [mutual] affection and mercy. Surely, in that are [indicative] signs to a people who contemplate.)

Can you tell me in mathematical figures what such probability is, of the formation of the eye or the wing or the complex chromosomes by mere chance?

Is this probability 1 in 1000 or or 1 in 1000 000 or more or less!?
​