God Vs. Science

@Allan, Yes. No. I think you're on your own.

edited 25th Mar '11 10:09:29 AM by Yej

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

That's how I got to where I am today, actually.

Good for you. No-one else cares.

I care. It's a relevant observation. I nearly went that route after college, but I decided that I'd rather be an honest agnostic than a fake Christian.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

^ Agreed. Don't pretend to be something you're not.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

There's also the "choose the right god" problem to consider. You might end up being beaten with a club for being a smartarse.

But all gods love atheists because they don't pick favorites.

edited 25th Mar '11 11:36:08 AM by Usht

The thing about making witty signature lines is that it first needs to actually be witty.

One huge problem with Pascal's Wager is that it relies on the assumption that if a god exists, what it wants is to be believed in. But why should we assume that? Why should we assume anything about what a strictly hypothetical deity wants? The Wager is self-defeating. If you believe in God*

"just in case" God exists and wants to be believed in, then why shouldn't I be an atheist "just in case" God exists and wants not to be believed in?

Because most gods that profess to exist have also allegedly told people that they want to be worshiped.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Well gee, we really wouldn't know about gods who didn't want to be known, now would we?

With that, we've gone circular.

The thing about making witty signature lines is that it first needs to actually be witty.

No, that's what humans have said various gods want. Remember, Pascal's Wager is speaking purely hypothetically: we have no actual evidence of a god, but we'd better believe in one just in case it exists behind the scenes and will torture us forever if we don't believe. Well, two can play at that game—we'd better not believe in any gods just in case one exists behind the scenes who will torture us forever if we do believe. You get nowhere with that.

This, full stop. At best, we can explain any deity as being an Nth dimensional being living outside of the time-space continuum. Suffice it to say, a 3rd dimensional brain is going to have a field day trying to figure out the will of God, even if He talks to us directly.

I keep hearing my friends saying that they'll ask God this, or talk to God, or listen to Him, and 10 times out of 10, they get a "clear answer" that's usually in the positive of what they were going to do in the first place. Maybe God actually is that spot on, but I always thought that if God talked to a human and/or commanded them to do something, they'd, at the very least, get out of bed and rearrange their sock drawer instead doing what they did everyday beforehand. And here I thought an Nth dimensional being poking its head into our dimension and saying, "DO THIS" would inspire a bit more get-up-and-go. Silly me.

/rant

Back to the topic at hand though, I've seen this same chain letter before, as one of my Christian buddies thought it empowering. Sadly, every argument, from both sides, is horrible, especially the kid's. Cold is the absence of heat? Sure, but that also means that, following that same train of thought, that heat is the absence of cold. Good job fictional avatar of modern day Christianity, I certainly feel empowered by your lack of understanding of the language you've agreed to speak.

Thus "profess to exist" and "allegedly told".

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

No, cold is certainly the absence of heat. Temperature is the macroscopic form of the average kinetic energy of the particles a system is composed of. you can't have less than zero energy. The part where the argument really breaks down is extending the analogy to evil being the absence of good. If anything, good is the absence of evil. Peace is the absence of war. Health is the absence of illness. Villains Act, Heroes React.

edited 25th Mar '11 12:19:52 PM by Elfive

The whole "Evil is the opposite of good/absence of God" is just a way of browbeating us mere mortals for not being divine. So the philosophy goes, since God is infinitely good, and infinity minus any finite number is still infinity, any human, no matter how good compared to other humans, is still infinitely less good than God and thus infinitely evil and hellbound unless God graciously lets them off the hook. It only makes sense if you don't bother to supply a definition for good and evil in the first place, or if you go with the circular definition of "Good is whatever God is."

Eh, correlation does not equal causation? Evil and good are rather vague concepts, so you can't really define one being the derivative of the other.

Erm, just because you're less than infinite good doesn't mean you're not good. If we're doing this on a scale, I can by 2847 units of good while God is still infinitely good, but I'll still be good.

edited 25th Mar '11 12:28:16 PM by Usht

The thing about making witty signature lines is that it first needs to actually be witty.

Not really.

Kill all math nerds

Well, you can define one as being the derivative of the other, just not both being derivative of the other.

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

Let me try that again, you can't define one to be the definite derivative of the other since they're concepts. Otherwise we're heading into chicken and egg territory.

The thing about making witty signature lines is that it first needs to actually be witty.

The ideas the fictional Christian is trying to convey are dualities(this or that). He's choosing favoritism to "explain" his views on the world, which essentially come about to looking at the positives of the world and downplaying the negatives. That's fine and good, as I do that myself, but that doesn't necessitate the existence of God.

As far as dualities are concerned, both are right in nearly every instance. One defines the other, as they thereby become dependant on each other for definition (i.e. cold and heat. We wouldn't know what cold is without heat to counter-define it. I understand that we can still measure kinetic movement between particles to measure temperature, but in order to define "heat", we'd need to define "cold" as well, and vice versa.).

The problem with dualities isn't practice, but language, which this kid clearly fails at (excluding logic, but it's clear this kid isn't the brightest crayon in the box).

Fried and fried. How I like my chicken and eggs, that is.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

It just comes down to Christians like this being threatened by science, and feeling inadequate because they start feeling that their faith isn't enough, they need proof that God really exists. And then they start up these pseudo-scientific explanations in order to show those evil atheists the error in their ways.

I like to call this the "Bill O'Reilly: you can't explain tides" effect.

This chain letter (and, by extension, this argument) is utterly pointless. You can't prove the existence or the nonexistence of God. Full stop.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

I wouldn't be quick to say that — most of my social growth over the last eight years or so has been from pretending to be more confident than I really am until I started adapting that way. "Don't put on a mask you don't intend to wear" might be better.

Because an hour a week with a close-knit social group is such a tremendous waste of time compared to sitting on TV Tropes fora

edited 25th Mar '11 4:58:47 PM by Pykrete

What if you don't know who you are?

Kill all math nerds