12-12-2004 00:37									#151
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quote: Originally posted by Kuciwalker That's nonsense, because you can't have a singularity outside of space-time. A singularity is defined in terms of the shape of space-time. At that point, space-time existed, it was just infinitely curved.

Gravitational theory predicts that under the extreme conditions that prevailed in the early universe, space and time may have been so distorted that there existed a boundary at which the distortion of space-time was infinite, and therefore through which space and time cannot have continued.

Ergo, no "time before" the singularity, as the singularity was the boundary of time.

	12-12-2004 00:39									#152
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quote: Originally posted by Immortal Wombat Travelling through time hasn't been proven to violate any laws of physics. It's just practically impossible.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/time-travel.htm

	12-12-2004 00:42									#153
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The state of the game is roughly thus:

Metaphysics in the traditional sense is largely dead, and has been since the scientific revolution.

Post Hume, and after the discrediting of Kantian transcendental idealism and its offshoots, the a priori has largely been reduced to conceptual matters, which do not make any substantive claims about anything other than language and its uses.

If we assume with Quine, that there is no a priori then we don't even have that (or we have some watered-down pragmatist version of it).

That leaves us with empirical arguments for God's existence, which have all failed. The Intelligent Design argument is simply the latest version of an argument that was debunked 300 years ago.

We are left with justification by faith, which is fine for some people, but removes the question of God's existence from the province of reason.

The history of both philosophy and science since the Enlightenment has pointed in one direction, and that is the removal of religion from rational discourse. Brave attempts have been made to rescue it, but they have all been cases of rowing against the current.

What form do religious statements make?

Are they empirical? Then they fail.

Are they a priori? Then they are at best tautologies that can yield no positive information about the world.

Are they neither? In which case they are either meaningless, or we are all pragmatists, which is not something that religious people should favour.

	12-12-2004 00:42									#154
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Sum over histories

	12-12-2004 00:43									#155
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quote: Originally posted by Kuciwalker Where'd you get that they sprung from the BB? The BB was a particular configuration of the universe, under which different laws might have applied (in general - classical theory breaks down at singularities, but it's wrong anyway), but that doesn't mean it changed the laws.

This makes no sense. In order for what you're saying here to be true, there would have to some immutable laws outside of the singularity. This isn't the case, according to theory, as everything--the universe--was contained by the singularity.

You seem to be arguing as if the singularity was floating in space. That's not what BB theory says--it says that space itself was a product of the BB.

	12-12-2004 00:44									#156
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Agathon:

Of course again bringing Wittgenstein into it, science and religion, reason and faith are not oppositional, as long as you're not trying to do the same thing with both. As I've always said, faith is inversely proportional to reason in a given context.

	12-12-2004 00:46									#157
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It depends on your understanding of Wittgenstein. For most religious people, statements asserting God's existence are understood as the same as statements asserting the existence of medium-sized physical objects.

Wittgenstein is often taken as a license to assert anything, by assigning it its own language game. I doubt that was Wittgenstein's intent, even though he was a very religious person.

	12-12-2004 00:53									#158
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quote: Originally posted by Kuciwalker Bones certainly count as evidence.

Thet don't count as experience with the creature the bone came from.

ACK!

	12-12-2004 00:57									#159
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quote: Originally posted by Tuberski Thet don't count as experience with the creature the bone came from. ACK!

Sure they do. You're just narrowing "experience" too much.

Fossils give us ample evidence, beyond the scope of doubt, that there were dinosaurs roaming the earth millions of years ago. They also tell us tons of information about what those creatures were like, what they ate, how they lived, etc.

That is indeed "experiencing" the creature, if vicariously. Regardless, the point was that we have evidence such creatures existed. We do not have such evidence for a deity.

	12-12-2004 03:46									#160
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Molly -

quote: Such as? Revelation doesn't require evidence or fact, just faith. The kind of evidence, standard of proofs and thinking that is required to establish, say continental drift as fact, isn't necessary or desirable when it comes to proving items of faith such as transsubstantiation or the existence of any god.

Ancient scriptures and artifacts. And that was my point, faith requires little or no evidence. But how many atheists have really looked for evidence rather than dismissing "God" out of a faith in the stupidity of our ancient ancestors?

UR -

quote: Is the notion of god less silly than elves dancing on electrons, an invisible purple with pink polka dot unicorn, or an unseen, noncorporeal dog that follows you around?

Yes, more than 90% of the people who've lived believe in God. That tells me further investigation is required. What did ancient peoples say about "God" and can we detect knowledge from these ancient peoples they should not have had. That to me would be compelling evidence for a "God(s)" in contact with ancient peoples. After all, the belief that God was a source of knowledge for ancient peoples may be the clue to finding God. For example, and just an example, the Greek symbol for the god of medicine is the cadacus (?), 2 entwined serpents which bears a striking resemblance to the DNA strand.

	12-12-2004 06:34									#161
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Yes and the same people you talk about, thought that an object needed a constant force to keep a constant speed, that the planets were in tightly packed sphere around the Earth and that was the enlightened ones.

OF course they had direct contact with the Gods.
Everything was God.
Magnets?
Gods
Lightning?
Gods
Weather ?
Gods

I am by no mean saying that science has proven the non-existence of god by reducing these phenomens to these causes, but I firmly believe that many people who did believe in God historically, would not, if they lived in our time where we have much simpler explanations for many things then they did...

	12-12-2004 06:46									#162
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quote: Originally posted by Lul Thyme . . .where we have much simpler explanations for many things. . .

There are no simple explanations for anything in this complicated universe.

	12-12-2004 15:20									#163
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quote: Ancient scriptures and artifacts. And that was my point, faith requires little or no evidence. But how many atheists have really looked for evidence rather than dismissing "God" out of a faith in the stupidity of our ancient ancestors?

Empirical evidence by definition is accounted for under the PSR, as for conceptual evidence, that's precisely what atheist philosophers have been doing for centuries . Again, faith and reason do different things, thus they are not absolutely oppositional, as long as religion isn't trying to explain things scientifically, science can't touch it, and likely faith in science, which is why you'll never catch me saying "I believe in evolution", because belief =| knowledge.

quote: Yes, more than 90% of the people who've lived believe in God. That tells me further investigation is required. What did ancient peoples say about "God" and can we detect knowledge from these ancient peoples they should not have had. That to me would be compelling evidence for a "God(s)" in contact with ancient peoples

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...anguage=printer

There is also the innate knowledge of God argument, which was dealt with nicely by Jill Paton Walsh's novel, "Knowledge of Angels" (one of my favourites). Needless to say, faith, anthropologically speaking is attributable to the relative youth of the human species, as well as our genome, and the reconciliation of our superior intelligence and an attempt to understand the world around us, so for most of our history religion was advanced science, now it is obsolete, though faith is something completely different to science and cannot be used to solve scientific problems.

quote: 2 entwined serpents which bears a striking resemblance to the DNA strand.

The double-helix is one of the most common Fibonacci forms in nature, for good structural reasons (i.e., lots of length in a small volume).

quote: There are no simple explanations for anything in this complicated universe.

Actually there are, again read my argument on the PSR. Instead of taking the universe as a whole, break it down into it's constitutent parts, be they contexts, dimensions and their subsequent events, you'd see contingents and actuality, actuality indeed denying the contingent, in effect, the universe at that level really isn't that surprising, irrespective of the resultant complexity.

quote: I am by no mean saying that science has proven the non-existence of god by reducing these phenomens to these causes, but I firmly believe that many people who did believe in God historically, would not, if they lived in our time where we have much simpler explanations for many things then they did...

Well said . Wherever there are holes in our knowledge/science, people will always use that to provide evidence for God's scientific existence which is of course fallacious. God does not empirically exist, accordingly you cannot find empirical evidence for his existence that I cannot rip to shreds, but that's ok because the place for faith is not the universe or the textbook, but the subjective heart and mind of the individual, it cannot be communicated.

	12-12-2004 18:28									#164
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To sum it all up: God is a blast.

	12-12-2004 19:08									#165
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quote: I doubt VJ has met most atheists.

All which I've met in both RL and Internet fit the description somehow.

quote: Indeed. VJ's comment was as asinine as someone asserting that most "Christians" are x, y, z.

Hey, I know it's a strawman. It's just that I've met quite a lot of atheists in my lifetime.

quote: No belief in god != no ethics.

It actually seems that no morale ==> no belief in god.

	12-12-2004 19:32									#166
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quote: Originally posted by Berzerker Ancient scriptures and artifacts. And that was my point, faith requires little or no evidence. But how many atheists have really looked for evidence rather than dismissing "God" ?

What evidence are you suggesting is acceptable as unambiguous 'proof' of god?

A body?

A fossil?

A supernatural post-it saying:

"I made the universe, when the heat death occurs could someone turn off the light?"


Hint- when people talk to their god(s) it's called praying.

When they hear god(s) it's called schizophrenia.

	12-12-2004 19:46									#167
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quote: It actually seems that no morale ==> no belief in god.

Say again?

quote: Wittgenstein is often taken as a license to assert anything, by assigning it its own language game. I doubt that was Wittgenstein's intent, even though he was a very religious person.

True, though the way I read it, he addresses that to some extent in "On Certainty", to a lesser extent in "Philosophical Investigations". I want to steal his numbering system!

	12-12-2004 21:31									#168
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What does that have to do with what I was saying?

The fact that our approximations fail horribly at a singularity doesn't mean that there actually aren't any scientific laws that apply.

quote: For it to be infinitely curved you need to look at it from the point of view of this space-time, which described as infinitely curved is absurd! A singularity is not dependent upon our time, merely a dimensional set internally finite.

...

Infinite curvature means that it's an infinitely small hypersphere.

	12-12-2004 21:39									#169
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quote: Originally posted by Mr. Nice Guy There are no simple explanations for anything in this complicated universe.

You mean like "God made it"?

	12-12-2004 23:29									#170
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quote: The fact that our approximations fail horribly at a singularity doesn't mean that there actually aren't any scientific laws that apply.

quote: Infinite curvature means that it's an infinitely small hypersphere.

That's precisely what I was saying!

http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/...t/learread.html

EDIT: With reference to infinity, a concept you evidently don't understand.

	13-12-2004 00:01									#171
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Uh, AFAIK your post didn't even make grammatical sense. Let's look at it again:

quote: For it to be infinitely curved you need to look at it from the point of view of this space-time, which described as infinitely curved is absurd!

WTF is this supposed to mean? We have to look at it from "this" space-time, which it is absurd to describe as infinitely curved. NO DUH. That's pretty obvious. Spacetime may very well have been smaller before, though.

quote: A singularity is not dependent upon our time, merely a dimensional set internally finite.

This is just random words strung together, as far as I can tell.

	13-12-2004 03:46									#172
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quote: WTF is this supposed to mean? We have to look at it from "this" space-time, which it is absurd to describe as infinitely curved. NO DUH. That's pretty obvious. Spacetime may very well have been smaller before, though.

Yes but you seem to be approaching it by saying that infinitesimal = smaller, whereas infinitesimal =| smaller. (The latter term of course being relative ). My point was that from the point of view of this space-time, it is not infinitely curved, however that need not be the case externally, indeed, another infinitesimal dimensional set may well be finitely curved internally though externally we view it differently. Of course, the consequence from our own point of view, if you take it back to internally infinitesimal, as you are saying, is that this space-time began at the big bang. Pwned.

quote: This is just random words strung together, as far as I can tell.

The key point there being "as far as I can tell" .

	13-12-2004 03:51									#173
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quote: Yes but you seem to be approaching it by saying that infinitesimal = smaller, whereas infinitesimal =| smaller. (The latter term of course being relative ). My point was that from the point of view of this space-time, it is not infinitely curved, however that need not be the case externally, indeed, another infinitesimal dimensional set may well be finitely curved internally though externally we view it differently. Of course, the consequence from our own point of view, if you take it back to internally infinitesimal, as you are saying, is that this space-time began at the big bang. Pwned.

Space-time isn't in another space-time. You measure the curvature by measuring the angles and side lengths of triangles. You're babbling incoherently.

	13-12-2004 04:02									#174
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Perhaps this was already covered in the six pages I'm too lazy to read, but what is this Atheist Philosopher "Leading" in? Book sales, or some sort of poll? How do you measure it? If it's just prominence, then Sun Myung Moon qualifies as a "leading religious figure," but it's not like he's got credibility...

	13-12-2004 04:26									#175
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quote: Originally posted by Asher British. Philosopher. God.

Canadian

Puffs

	13-12-2004 05:03									#176
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon No. Religion is a mild form of mental illness, as is conservatism. They are quite similar, which explains how they are often found in the same individuals.

Perhaps there is a religion/conservatism gene!

Then they can all be cured!!

	13-12-2004 06:24									#177
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quote: Originally posted by Elok Perhaps this was already covered in the six pages I'm too lazy to read, but what is this Atheist Philosopher "Leading" in? Book sales, or some sort of poll? How do you measure it? If it's just prominence, then Sun Myung Moon qualifies as a "leading religious figure," but it's not like he's got credibility...

there was in fact some discussion about this on the second page or so, but to expect such sense by the sixth page is madness!!!

	13-12-2004 08:29									#178
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quote: What evidence are you suggesting is acceptable as unambiguous 'proof' of god?

Look at my thread on Saturn and Pluto.

quote: Hint- when people talk to their god(s) it's called praying. When they hear god(s) it's called schizophrenia.

Then schizophrenics created civilisation. They did alot of talking to and about God and their belief in god(s) is why most of the world believes in god(s) now. So if you want proof that God exists, read what those earlier peoples wrote about God. That is the illogic of atheism, it discounts god without a serious investigation and does so by picking apart the easily refutable beliefs of religious nuts or the power hungry employing religion.

	13-12-2004 09:04									#179
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quote: That is the illogic of atheism, it discounts god without a serious investigation and does so by picking apart the easily refutable beliefs of religious nuts or the power hungry employing religion.

But isn't the onus of proof on those who wish to prove something that is not empircally obvious? I may believe there is a higher being, but I don't think it can be proven in any way. Simply because people in the past believed it isn't proof to me.

	13-12-2004 10:09									#180
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@ Imran

quote: Originally posted by Berzerker Yes, more than 90% of the people who've lived believe in God. That tells me further investigation is required.

Did you count the Chinese, the Hindus, whole mess of people who lived and died in South America and Africa, etc?

So how did you come up with the 90% figure?

Besides, the same argument can be applied to interesting ideas such as Spontaneous Generation and Phlogistons.

quote: Originally posted by Berzerker What did ancient peoples say about "God" and can we detect knowledge from these ancient peoples they should not have had. That to me would be compelling evidence for a "God(s)" in contact with ancient peoples.

Even if it is shown that ancient peoples had knowledge beyond their abilities it did not indicate there were a god.

quote: Originally posted by Berzerker After all, the belief that God was a source of knowledge for ancient peoples may be the clue to finding God.

The contradictions of various myths and legends effectively rule out anything "real" behind them. For example, the Greeks had it that Prometheus gave fire to man, but the Chinese had it that it was a man who discovered fire.