The Glade 4.0

God exists outside the universe, controlling its laws but not subject to them. He is therefore observable only insofar as He wishes to be, and in manners of His choosing. Dawkins, by claiming that the existence of God is scientific, necessarily claims also that God is subject to universal laws, since that is the domain of science. Since God is not, Dawkins is necessarily talking about a hypothetical or strawman God, and then criticizing real religions on that basis.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So when you said serve as examples what you really meant was change the laws to make it criminal to do things we consider immoral.

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Pope says church shouldn't be full of intolerant dicks and actually do what Jesus said.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24166434#
also, this:



You Bishop Tobin. He's talking specifically about people like you.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I really like the guy, and for the first time ever, I'm actually considering getting my future kids baptised

Diamondeye is partially right. Science cannot prove there is no God - the existence of God is not a question for science.

Of course, what he fails to acknowledge is that there is equal credibility to Scientology, Islam, Hinduism, Olympian Greek Polytheism, Norse Polytheism, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, pixies in my garden, and the concept of an entirely solipsist existence as there is to his version of "God." None can be disproven scientifically, that's the beauty of made up religion. You can't disprove it, so you'll sucker people in.

What science can, and has done, is made "god" irrelevant. We now know exactly how it is possible that we exist, and we don't need people inventing invisible sky bullies for it to make sense. "Something from nothing," even the moronic concept of "first cause" has been solved in several ways that are all possible, all of which have mathematical, logical, credible evidence. This leaves a creator-being as simply another conjecture without any substance behind it.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

wait... are you telling me those aren't really pixies in my garden?

those be fightin' words!!

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

Nothing like replying to a 2-month-old post that's in a thread that's been necro'd and not even what the necro was about to demonstrate insecurity.



I don't acknowledge this because it isn't true. All religions are not equally credible since A) credibility is subjective and B) they have varying levels of evidence. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a case in point; it's a false religion explicitly made up for the purpose of question-begging, and therefore is obviously less credible than any alternative. "Sucker people in" is question-begging as well, as is "made-up religion". Saying it over and over doesn't make it true; it just establishes that you're trying to reassure yourself.



Except for the fact that science has accomplished precisely none of this - least of all, the "first cause question". Not only is it anything but moronic, but saying that, then in the next breath claim that there is "mathematical, logical, credible evidence" for a first cause pretty much directly contradicts the idea that it's "moronic". We don't have that anyhow. We have a bunch of scientists claiming to demonstrate things that science cannot demonstrate because they are not observable.

Or, as Stephen Hawking's argument was summed up by Dash: "Right so summing up: First there was nothing, including no time. Then, a universe!

This is scientifically acceptable because the words god or miracle is not used."

Which is essentially what all this nonsense amounts to: People trying to claim science can do things science simply can't do.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

As opposed to a false religion made up to control people, like Christianity? It's all the same bullshit. A religion expressly made up to demonstrate a point, is, in fact, MORE credible than one made up for other purposes, as it perfectly serves its purpose, giving it an objective measure of veracity, where the others are just fairy tales.



Actually, they have accomplished precisely all of that, in various ways, not all of which can be true. And in fact, it's highly possible, even likely, none of them are true, because there are so many other ways we haven't thought of yet. For instance, quantum mechanics already observes "something from nothing" happening every day. Quantum particles spontaneously spring into existence in empty space where nothing was before as a general rule of quantum mechanics. The energy potential of these particles is completely random, though higher energy states become less and less likely, it is entirely possible that a singularity with an energy state equal to the entire universe can suddenly spring into existence. Of course, such energy may rebel at its containment and explode. Alternately, it's highly likely that the universe currently consists of a net nothing. All the elementary particles in existence, if combined, would probably cancel each other out. It's entirely possible that our universe is not "something," but really the division of nothing, much like you can grab +1 and -1, together, out of 0, and not change the mathematical value what you have.

These are just a layman's way of expressing highly complex and tested math that she doesn't entirely understand, and they are just two of several similar ideas. Functioning Math is far more "credible evidence" than a bunch of ancient mythology books.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

To be fair space isn't "empty" even with no matter in it.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Taly, this is such nonsense - we've been over this before. Suggesting that Christianity compares to some nonsense like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or worse, is less credible, requires you to ignore all of the centuries of evidence for the religion. Indeed, you are completely discounting this evidence in the name of science. If you were truly interested in science, you would focus on answering questions based on scientific methodology, or find a way to counter specific religious evidence scientifically. Emphasizing science while suggesting that it proves a negative is absurd; further, ignoring evidence that goes against your chosen theory, while arguing for a scientific approach, is absurd.

Your position is fairly transparent. You are clinging to science and using it to justify your lack of faith. It's ok to be faithless, just don't try to hide behind science to make yourself feel better about it. That's not what science is for.

Appeal to tradition. Centuries of belief does not make it any more credible, or any less nonsense. Anecdotes from ancient dead people are not evidence, at least, no more than any other ancient book of mythology or fairy tales is evidence. There is no empirical or logical evidence for the veracity of any supernatural claims in any religion.




Sorry, which negative did I suggest science proves? As I stated, the beauty of religious belief, is that so much of it defies logic and remains untouched by it. There is no evidence for or against it, you cannot disprove it. You cannot disprove god, you cannot disprove the supernatural, any more than you can prove it. As such, logically one must treat it the same as any other unfalsifiable, untestable, and unverifiable claim.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

If I wrote that George Washington could fly and shoot lasers out of his butt it would have the same scientific credibility as if I said Jesus could ressurect the dead. Historical evidence shows both likely existed but thats it.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Well, except for the fact that you're just begging the question by claiming its false over and over again, and the idea that someone "made it up to to control people" is silly. That might be sort of true in the case of one particular religion (Islam, seeing as that's pretty much exactly what Mohammed did) but Christianity appeared under utterly different circumstances, and among people that were in no position to control anyone for several centuries afterwards. Moreover, this is about religion, not Christianity specifically.

As for The FSM being more credible - you're demonstrating the subjectivity of credibility. Your argument as to why is silly, and relies on the conclusions you want to be true actually being so. All you're doing is just assuming your own conclusion



Again, all of this happens within the universe and thus within its laws and the limits of our observation. That says nothing whatsoever about what caused the universe itself to come into existence. "Something from nothing" indeed. Where do they come from? We call it "nothing" because we can't observe it. What's causing that? We don't know. We probably never know, because those same laws are what determine our ability to observe. Even "the universe might be a net nothing!" is not an argument; maybe it would be, but also maybe it wouldn't, and even if it would, that isn't presently the case and hasn't been for some 14 billion years, and still doesn't answer why all this has occurred in the process of creating a "net nothing" if, indeed, the universe would ever collapse into itself that way, which, itself, is an open question among scientists.



Sorry, but it isn't because it isn't evidence of what you want it to be evidence of. All it demonstrates is yet more about how this universe works. In fact, it's pretty hilarious that you talk about "something from nothing" and then regard religion (of any stripe) as incredible.

You're just ranting again because you feel if you just call religion "stupid" enough times, somehow that will make it come true and affirm how intelligent and enlightened you are by not believing in it. It can't and won't. It's really just about you not wanting to live that way, and being offended at what you perceive as limitations on how you ****.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If someone started writing either thing out of the blue today, that would be true. If documents from the Revolutionary War existed indicating that General Washington was, indeed, strafing the British with *** lasers, then that would be evidence that he did so, and credible at that. The Revolutionary War is much closer to our time, literacy was generally higher, and the printing press existed, making documents much easier to produce and more likely to be preserved, so we would expect far more such documents than from biblical times. Documentary evidence is how we know what happened in those events, and the scarcity of documents from Biblical times is a product of their chronological remoteness, the fragility of the documents themselves, and the lack of reading and writing ability in general among average people, nor time to engage in such pursuits.

In either case, we aren't concerned with "scientific" evidence, since the question would be "did this happen, or not", not "can we reproduce this effect?" In both cases the effect in question is explicitly supernatural, and science being unable to reproduce it with someone else demonstrates nothing, except circular argument, wherein the supernatural nature of the event is regarded as evidence that it didn't happen, which is then used as part of the claim that there's no evidence of anything supernatural.

It's all just carefully constructed so that evidence is automatically disqualified, and people that don't want to beleive in anything supernatural can pretend that they're being more "scientific" and "rational".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There is increasing evidence that life did not originate on Earth; in fact, a current hypothesis (with empirical and material evidence to support it) suggests that life-on-Earth originated on Mars and traveled here on meteorites and other debris from the Red Planet. That said, I am loosely Christian; I believe. What I believe in, oddly enough, Taly understands. What you guys believe in ...

Well, we need to serious discussion as to what constitutes evidence; what constitutes proof; and what constitutes material evidence supporting your claims.

I can flatly state, "God is." You guys, probably not so much.

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Yes, as a matter of fact there is. Any time you claim "there's no evidence!" you are instantly and automatically wrong and go straight out of the realm of rationality and into simple denial. There is evidence, and you just admitted it - it's anecdotal. It's even more hilarious that you try to use the fact that it's from "Dead people" as if that mattered. People being dead does not make them less credible. You are simply making the "there's no evidence!" claim over and over again trying to make it true by repeating it. It's been repeatedly shown to be false, and your continual denial will not change that.

Furthermore, Arathain didn't appeal to tradition; he said there was "centuries of evidence", not "centuries of belief". In Christianity's case, the evidence was collected over centuries by different people writing different things. They all just happened to eventually be compiled in one book.



Except that there is, in fact, evidence for it. You're just **** out of luck. You cannot dismiss evidence of a claim based on the nature of the claim that it makes.

Your only avenue of rational argument would be to admit "yes, there's some evidence, but I find it very far from convincing" but I think that would just require giving more credit to positions you just viscerally can't stand than you're emotionally capable of.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Diamondeye and Arathain:

Just so I know, who taught your class in "MROIP" at Virginia Tech?

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Anything that is "subjective" is utterly irrelevant to this discussion. By admitting credibility is subjective, you have admitted that your reason for believing in one religion over another is entirely unsubstantiated by any type of evidence.



This betrays a great lack of understanding of the physics here...




Actually, the point here, is it's quite likely that the universe as it exists today, and since its inception, has always been a "net nothing." The fact that the nothing has been spread out to many +s and -s across a large area does not mean that when taken as a whole, it doesn't add up to nothing. It doesn't need to collapse. If you owe a dollar, and have a dollar in assets, your net worth is nothing, even if you maintain the same net worth and debt in perpetuity.

Also, the question "why" (italicized by me above) and any question that relies on it basically needs to be stricken. A "reason" or "purpose" answers the question of "why", and that is something, that in our experience, only certain high functioning consciousness is capable of manufacturing. Existence, nor nonexistence, requires no reason or purpose. What, where, when, how -- those are valid. Why presupposes the need for reason or purpose, and that need doesn't exist in nature outside of our perceptions.


It is exactly evidence of what I said it is: It is evidence that we don't need a God to exist in order for the universe our ourselves to be here. A god may exist, but even with our limited knowledge, we have now proven that God does not need to exist. It's entirely possible for our universe to exist exactly as it is without a God. Perhaps your accurately, paraphrasing Physicist Lawrence Krauss, "Not only have we proven that life and the universe could theoretically exist without a god, but we've proven that if life and the universe could exist without a god, it would exactly resemble the universe and life that we actually do see around us."

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

That is no more evidence than Grimm's Fairy Tales are evidence in the existence of the fantastical creatures within. There is absolutely nothing credible about any of your beliefs. You believe in fairy tales and monsters and goblins and unicorns. Because they're all equal to "God." You are basically a gullible sap, you and all religious people, assigning some value to unsubstantiated fantastical claims. You've been suckered in, and you'll fight about it to the last without letup, because you're ultimately no different than the morons who blow themselves up for 72 virgins or who tortured and murdered people for believing in the wrong version of their invisible friend. The religious are hopeless until they regain the value of rational thought and apply it uniformly across their beliefs.

And being Dead does in fact make them less credible, as there's no possible cross-examination. It makes the evidence nothing more than long-distant hearsay, repeated from person-to-person in a several millennia long game of multi-lingual telephone.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Wrong. My subjective evaluation of the evidence leads me to believe that the evidence for Christianity is credible.


No, actually it does not. What it demonstrates is that I'm not the one going out and doing a little layman reading on quantum physics, then trying to lecture people on it.




The point here is that you are just going off onto this irrelevancy as if it meant anything. So what if the universe's energy state is a "net nothing"?



"Why" doesn't necessarily relate to purpose; it's also a way of saying "what caused this?" "Why is the sky blue?" doesn't inquire what the purpose of the blueness is; it inquires what causes the blueness.

Furthermore, no, the question doesn't need to be stricken at all.



No, actually it's not evidence of that at all. It's evidence that A) things appear from nothing within the universe and B) that people are therefore trying to extend it to the universe itself and whatever laws and principles it exists under.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You're just begging the question some more.



Ok, since you just want this to go to name calling, fine.

No, I'm not a gullible sap. You, however, are a middle aged computer specialist who thinks because she reads some **** on Wikipedia and did good in high school, that this makes her a well-educated, scientifically minded individual. Furthermore, you're an insecure fool who basically has decided she doesn't believe in anything because it might impact how she chooses to ****, and because she still has adolescent "you can't tell me what to do!" authority issues.

Your arguments are based entirely around assuming the conclusion you want, and endlessly recriminating against religious ideas you don't like, calling people and ideas "morons/moronic" and jsut hoping that if you say it enough times it will come true. All you're doing here is trying to piss people off by making idiotic claims like "you're just like people who blow themselves up!" Yes, clearly defending ideas Taly disagrees with is the same as being a suicide bomber. This is what any religious discussion with you eventually devloves into, though, you just talking over and over and over and over and over and over about how stupid and irrational religious people supposedly are as if the weight of your repetition meant anything. All you're really demonstrating is that you basically don't deserve to be taken seriously on any topic relating to religion, because for you it's really just about the fact that you can't stand it. The only people that need to regain the value of rational thought are you, and the rest of the nonbelieving idiots out there that just can't admit it has nothing to do with science, rationality, or logic, it has to do with you don't want to believe it - and that goes for every scientist out there thinking he's the arbitrator of "does God exist" when he can't possibly begin to address that question.



This is complete nonsense. You pretty much just called into question any and all study of history. We don't "cross examine" people in historical study.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't disagree with this. However, there is more evidence for Christianity than the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Scientific evidence, no, but evidence yes. The other was admittedly made up on the spot. This does not mean they have equal credibility. Such comparisons are absurd.

Anyone can flatly state anything they want. There is no value in this.