I wasn't trying to say that M-theory is just as unprovable. I'm saying that M-theory is very hypothetical. Nothing major has been proven yet but as you said we are still waiting to see what happens. I just thinks its funny that you would use such a abstract version (just a mathematical model no less) of science to defend your 'no god' views.
But a theory or hypothesis that has not been properly tested yet is not the same as one that has been around for a couple of thousand years and has been shown to be wanting.
True but String theory was not a coherent idea either
Why do you say that? String theories were "theories of everything". That there was more than one didn't make them incoherent or internally inconsistent. M-theory is a coherent explanation, whereas the idea of god isn't even logically consistent.
My understanding is that M-theory does in fact deal with events outside our universe. I wonder what other events that lay outside our universe. To me this gives more possibility to the god question.
M-theory allows us to conceive of other brane universes. How exactly do you think this makes god more possible?
However, why does god have to be needed in order to exist? Just curious.
The point is not that just because god is not absolutely necessary that means he can't exist, it is that in the absence of obvious evidence or argument FOR god, saying that god could still exist anyway is no argument at all. God is then an unnecessary complication. Unnecessary complications should be discarded.
But try to keep in mind that I can not base my final decision on what science comes up with. Indirect mathematical observations aren't very convincing to me.
Do you believe in anything undetectable to the naked eye?
Right, which would make us gods (creators of a universe and maybe eventually even life. It's far fetched and abstract but if we could theoretical be gods then who's to say that we aren't a product of the same scenario? Of course even then I highly doubt we will create life out of thin air.
Goes back to the issue of first-cause. Our universe could well be the product of a high-energy experiment in another universe, but it's not a first-cause creator explanation.
That would be the first cause. The first cause of our universe and our existence.
But not the other universe wherein the origin of ours lay.
Who's to say that our synthetic universe would be an exact copy of an original universe?
It probably wouldn't be.
Simply false. I am not the least bit religious. You are more religious than me. That's not an insult.
Religion. noun. Belief in or worship of a god or gods. Religious. Adjective. -of or relating to religion; pious, devout, following the rules of a religion or form of worship closely.
Care to try that one again?
No I am suggesting that you called my parents that. (sigh) ... I'm going to let this go because people denying the obvious tends to really piss me off and I don't want to get into another name calling match with you. You win.
Only if I were referring to your parents specifically, which is in fact nowhere in my remark. I said I had no experience of being raised by religious fuckwits.
You seem to think they were though, or how could you believe I was referring to them?
No, that is an over generalization of what I was saying.
I'm not sure what you were saying except that you think the idea of life starting via natural chemical reactions as unlikely an idea as god.
(sigh)
*grunt*
Who says there has to be a point? When I was a kid I asked my pastor what the point of everything was and he said that he couldn't answer that question. So I asked him, what if all of this is just Gods little science experiment and it's just a big game to him. My pastor replied that that may indeed be the case but it still wouldn't change anything. But from my perspective now I suspect that nothing has any real meaning and why should it?
I think you've missed the point. I'm not asking what the point of everything is, just what reason would there be to believe in god if there is no argument or need for god? (See above)
No, god wouldn't have used science. Science is a limited man made process which was created to observe and test things that man can not comprehend and understand without it. If god used natural processes to create thing then he used his own self to create. If god created everything then everything is a by-product of god.
Sorry, I meant the laws of the universe (ie, science), which was my point - religionists want to have it both ways: if science can't explain it, that's evidence for god. If science can explain it, that's just because god made it so. As I said above, have-your-cake-and-eat-it arguments.
It's not that I want to believe in god, I want to believe in god just as bad as I want to believe in M-theory.
That's an odd way of looking at it. I see M-theory as competing with, say, Loop Quantum Gravity etc, not with god. And as far as religionists are concerned, either god and science live side by side and ne'er the twain shall meet, or god just created everything, including the laws of science, or they just don't believe in stuff they don't like (evolution, for example). It's a funny thing that so many believers jump on the "big bang" and believe that because it says the universe (so they think) had a beginning (and thus a need for a creator by their reasoning) but not in evolution...
So far I can't fully believe in either because both are too abstract to even fully grasp.
M-theory isn't really any more difficult to conceptualise than relativity. Just imagine a big folded up balloon. Whereas god is impossible to conceptualise. It's impossible to conceive of a nonphysical, sentient, entity that has no discernible or describable existence but is all-powerful. It's like trying to imagine a square circle. It's just a nonsense that can't be real.
I'd rather believe in the tooth fairy than god because at least the tooth fairy gives away free money.
Materialist pig! What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul?
Well I suppose it's a bit like science then. We come up with String theory then realize it's unprovable so we change it up a bit, keep what we like about it and look for the same answers in a different hiding place, this one being parallel universes.
Are you trying to bait me? Yes, some scientific hypotheses fail in their testable predictions (or through further observational evidence later) and are modified in order to explain the observed evidence.i Not the same thing at all - the complete opposite, in fact.
I don't buy it.
"God does not throw dice!"
Just because science can't find a cause now doesn't mean it isn't there.
Missed the point. It's not that science can't find a cause, it's that QM says there isn't one. Different thing.
It's almost impossible for me to believe that quantum fluctuations are acausal.
"God does not throw dice!"
If cause and effect are decoupled then there need not be a "first cause" in context to god.
Exactly. Go to the head of the class.
God just exists without a cause for no good reason or perhaps god makes things happen but we can't detect god so therefore it appears as if things just happen for no reason.
Or not... It's not that god exists without cause but that there's no reason to insert god as a cause if the universe is acausal.
Without cause and effect everything breaks down.
Yes. Physics as we understand it would break down because such effects would overwhelm everything. QM acting on the Planck scale with quantum fluctuations that live and die without their effect (usually) being noticed on the larger scale is one thing, but in the Big Bang they would rule what happened at the beginning of the universe. That's why we have no complete proven theory of quantum gravity right now and can't say what happened in the first 10^-33s of the universe.
See the no-boundary proposal again.
Saying things just happen without cause is lazy and unbelievable.
"God does not throw dice!"
That is possible. Why don't you explain what you meant so we don't have to do this dance again.
I think we just have. Haven't we?
First of all I thought you were asking me which one is not a bad guess so I wasn't trying to disagree with you, I was trying to play the devils advocate for geothermal vent theory for the sake of this discussion.
You said, "What is not the answer? The RNA hypothesis? Clay as a catalyst? Metabolism first? Cell vesicle first? Warm pools? Geothermal vents?"
And I said that geothermal vents are the most plausible of the bunch. I was not disagreeing with you at all. I was answering a question.
BEFORE that, you numpty, you said it was a bad guess. What was? I was just throwing some of the ideas I knew about into the ring, but you said it was BEFORE this. I wanted to know what you thought was a "bad guess". And I guess we've answered the question: You don't know, so we can safely say you don't know what you're talking about, and are thus not qualified to offer an opinion of any worth on the matter.
Well I thought we had gotten past the fact that I don't really accept things that are unprovable as of now.
But QM has been proved. Very much so.
QM tells us that sometimes there is no cause and effect which contradicts everything we've been told by science in the past.
It moves, even so. QM does contradict both intuition and classical physics, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
You didn't explain properly, you just threw more stuff into your rant to complicate things and when asked to explain you won't. Forgive me for being skeptical.
I've discussed abiogenesis at length on this board before. I feel no reason to do so again. But ignorance is not reason for scepticism. "I don't understand it so I don't believe it" is not much of an argument.
Unless science is just unable to explain it yet
Case in point. Science has not fully explained it YET but that's no reason to therefore insert god as an answer. The point was that assuming there is a natural explanation (and there is no reason to believe there is not, as it has not been shown to be impossible ) then there is no reason to suspect the hand of god seeding the petri dish.
No you have taken this completely out of context. Maybe you should go back and refresh your memory.
No, I don't believe I have. You're just making disparaging remarks about science for the sake of trying to justify your scepticism of science.
I'm just a guy who thinks there could be a god but don't have any religious beliefs.
Yes, but why? I don't understand why god should get the benefit of the (lack of) doubt without being able to make a case for belief. Agnosticism is only justified if there is a reasonable reason to sit on the fence, but in the case of god, absence of evidence really is evidence of absence:
In all likelihood, if god were to exist, there would be good objective evidence for this existence.
There is no good objective evidence for god's existence.
Therefore in all likelihood god does not exist.
And saying that people have a tendency to believe in god justifies your separating god from teapots and fairies and pink fucking uniforms is disingenuous since your vague deistic (or even pantheistic) deity is not the same as the god(s) most people believe or have believed in. Beliefs in either a personal god or a pantheon don't support your special case for bend-over-backwards agnosticism.
I agree with fighting against stupidity being taught to our kids so after you take out Creationism will you please do something about all the lies they teach our kids in history class?
Which ones, specifically? I could rant on for ages about the myths and lies in the USA about the colonisation of the Americas, the War of Insurrection (sorry, Independence) and the 1812 go-around. But maybe you had something else in mind?
You just had to do it huh? Couldn't leave the Buster thing go? Listen I called him a silly bitch because he attacked me
He made a crack about Velikovsky which, let's face it, you walked into. Requisition a sense of humour, man.
We've called each other worse.
Yes, that's true, but I don't give a fuck.
Buster should keep his mouth shut and he won't get verbally bitch slapped.
Pot, meet kettle.
Actually yes, I would love to see those things. I will buy a ticket to the U.K. and pay for a room we can set up a lab in if you can show me these things. How does next weekend sound?
You want me to create a supernova in a lab? Hooooooooo-kaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy....
Why are you talking to them? I'm right here. I said "you people" as in 'message board' atheists. I wasn't arguing anything about atheist just making an observation.
What's the defining feature of a message board atheist, WC? You know I was an atheist before I was on the internet, right?
I don't know what position I am advocating. Why are labels so important to you?
Because you have an annoying habit of refusing to define your position so that you can chop and change it at a whim.
That's not true. There are plenty of ufo cases that are genuinely interesting and worth looking at.
I never said there weren't.
I have spent year(sic) looking at this crap and I have to say that I pretty much gave up
Been there, done that.
because while I know for a fact that something is flying around up there
There are things that are seen and not identified. UFOs exist by definition. UFO doesn't mean "alien spaceship" though.
it is impossible to determine what it is or who it is.
Some can be identified. There are weird clouds, ball lightning, planets, planes, helicopters, UAVs, satellites, weather balloons, meteors, fakes and mirages among others.
I'm just waiting for the government to come out and tell us these objects are theirs, that would confirm my suspicions.
Some of them certainly will have been. People have been secretly testing flying machines since at least the time of the Montgolfier brothers.
I've told you that science is not the end all.
And you support this assertion with what evidence?
Sure why not, gravity does right? I was thinking more along the lines of god being outside the universes. Even if god was confined to a universe (ignoring the first cause argument for a moment) according to M-theory with the universes merging anything is possible.
"(ignoring the first cause argument for a moment)"
"Like we have already discussed at length, god must be the first cause. "
Because while science is the best thing we've come up with to explain things it is limited to what we already understand.
Rubbish. Science is a tool for gaining knowledge and understanding.
Things change, things get proven wrong. How can you believe in anything?
You do sound like a typical religionist. Of course scientific understanding changes, but for the most part it has been busy overturning the "truths" of religion. But then of course you don't believe in "religion"
Do you believe that Einstein really thought of reality as an illusion literally or is that quote (I assume you know what quote I'm speaking of) in context to something else entirely?
I know the quote, but without context and first defining what is meant by illusion and reality (and finding out if the quote is a) real rather than just attributed spuriously b) was written in English or translated from German) then it's not really possible to say what he meant.
Here's another one where mentions reality:
I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God.
-- Albert Einstein, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
