Intelligent people have 'unnatural' preferences, page 4

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander

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Do you also reject things for which we have no solid evidence when science presents them? And mind you, I am not a traditionally religious person myself. So, I am not defending the Big Three in any way.

Hm, If I'm honest I'd have to put it this way, which may come across as rather simplistic probably due to my lack of education -

I was once presented with the case for the creation of life on earth the planets and the stars in space that was called the heavens.

The case that was presented to me as fact, and the evidence for this was alleged to be found in hearsay and ancient scriptures based upon hearsay.

When I investigated the so called evidence I found nothing but inaccuracies contradictions and lies no evidence for this creator ie the judeo christian creator. So where did this notion of a creator come from ?

Did a man wake up one morning, look about himself asking where did this come from and then suddenly exclaim ah ! God did it ?

Well it would seem that that is what is being presented by the creationists just that, a god did it something or someone must have just done it because it just happens to look as though someone or something did.

Now the only evidence of anyone actually seeing or communicating with this something has been the hearsay and hearsay scriptures. We can look at these scriptures now (in the western world) and try and find the source for this creator being. We can follow it back into the past right back to egypt and Sumer etc where we find many of these creators but no actual evidence just none tangible hearsay.

So we are still left with it looks on the face of things that someone did it so it must have been a god, this one or that one how else could it all have come about ?

Frankly that's not good enough.

However I can turn to science and ask it, how did all this come to be and it can provide answers in most cases visible tangible answers and describe a step by step process.

What is important here (to me at least) is that this process (describing life on earth) does not need a god in fact much of the evidence presented by science makes the god that most humans speak of a complete incompetent.

So far as cosmological evolution goes I freely admit that my education limits my level of understanding but science will take me as far as I can go in that direction.

It would seem that science is prodding at the big bang, but every step of the way has observed no god needed or found here.

I'm reasonably comfortable with this, but if this god wants to have a chat with me and put me straight on a few things that's fine with me.

If we just looked at a spiders web and marveled how wonderful it is and waled away happy in the knowledge that god did it. We would still be living in caves.

If in a thousand years time some boffin in a space suit found a bearded man with a big G on his name tag sitting on an asteroid, in the far reaches of the universe, the first thing he would would be to take a blood sample.


Up to the age of about eight, at xmas my kids where happy enough to say hey Santa did it, then they started looking. It's simply not good enough to let them live a lie for fear of disappointment.

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic

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Its certainly your right to believe what you want to. However, your way of choosing what to believe in doesnt make any more logical sense than being a religious dogmatist.

Lack of evidence is just that......lack of evidence. It isnt grounds for a positive belief that something does not exist. If my neighbor comes over and kills me, but leaves no evidence that it was he, it does not mean that my neighbor definitively was NOT my killer. It just means that there is no evidence it was him.

If you want to get VERY technical, we have no evidence FOR the cause of anything that is definitive beyond any possible doubt.

en.wikipedia.org...

Logically, no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can confirm a scientific theory, but a single counterexample is logically decisive: it shows the theory, from which the implication is derived, to be false. The term "falsifiable" does not mean something is false; rather, that if it is false, then this can be shown by observation or experiment. Popper's account of the logical asymmetry between verification and falsifiability lies at the heart of his philosophy of science.

In plainer English, you can prove something is not a cause, example,

Hypothesis; Playing Mozart makes glasses of water turn to ice.

Test; Play Mozart in proximity to a glass of water.

Result; The water in the glass does not freeze.

Conclusion; Playing Mozart to a glass of water will not cause it to freeze.

However, you cant prove what does cause water to freeze simply because there could always be "hidden variables." While there is a correlation between water freezing and temperature, we can not for certain know that there is not a water freezing invisible fairy that always accompanies cold temperatures, that is the real cause of water freezing.

After all, we knew for sure that stress caused ulcers until we found out it did not. H. Pylori is now considered the main cause. Perhaps someday that will change too. Someone who really loves science has to hold "facts" loosely in their mind, and consider them operational things, not scripture. Most of what we "knew for sure" a couple hundred years ago is now the subject of derision. We have no logical reason to believe that what we know now will not in a couple of hundred years be equally laughable.

So, IMHO, there is absolutely nothing illogical about keeping the mind open enough to make no judgment on the possibility of either God or Orange People Eaters.

reply to post by Benji1999

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In my opinion, it doesn't seem to right to rule anything out with the current knowledge we have.

Indeed I suppose nothing can be ruled out, we can't rule out panspermia but no doubt creationist would immediately the source of this as "god did it".

If science then found the source of panspermia creationists would immediately label that as "god did it"

I will go on and on, science will keep looking when it finds something creationist will say it was god.

If science eventually met a man that owned up to creating it all, creationists would try and kill him.

This thread needs some humor so here's a real idiot scientist for a laugh

reply to post by blujay

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I believe I am a mature soul but not an old soul. My question is how many reincarnations does a soul get? What happens to the soul when it can go no further? Does it just become some other form or does it keep reincarnating. Are animals reincanations of older souls?
Can souls reincarninate onto other planets?

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander

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Lack of evidence is just that......lack of evidence. It isnt grounds for a positive belief that something does not exist. If my neighbor comes over and kills me, but leaves no evidence that it was he, it does not mean that my neighbor definitively was NOT my killer.

But the fact that there are no other houses in your town and that your dog has a firearms permit puts meat on the bones.

I'm off to bed

Originally posted by moocowman


The case that was presented to me as fact, and the evidence for this was alleged to be found in hearsay and ancient scriptures based upon hearsay.

I know it is going to sound like I am being difficult, but I promise, I am not. In Epistemology, en.wikipedia.org... we have to really examine what it is to know something, or think we know something. And, in regard to your statement about hearsay, virtually everything you know is hearsay. Only that which you have personally experienced is not. In fact, one of the reasons some had trouble accepting that the Earth was not flat was because their own experience told them that it was. Hearsay can be true, (but not always) and personal experience can be misleading (but not always.)

Again, I hear the "no evidence for" argument, and perhaps I have addressed that in the post before this one. But, in regard to the inaccuracies and contradictions, I think you are referring to the Bible and scriptures when you say that. However, were I to write a book on particle physics, which I know virtually nothing about, it would be filled with inaccuracies and contradictions. What the inaccuracies and contradictions in that book would not say is that all particle physics is rubbish. It would say something about the author, not the subject itself.

There are many, many descriptions of God. Not only the Abrahamic highly anthropomorphized one. There are many tales of creation, not only one. It always strikes me as significant that those who claim to be atheist, usually only refute one specific God, or story about God. Some of the mystical versions of "God" and "Creation" come amazingly close to being primative attempts at describing a Singularity becoming a Multiplicity. Which, interestingly enough is pretty much the Big Bang theory.

Focusing only on the Abrahamic God, almost, (as I see it) seems as if there must be some underlying belief in that system. If not, why not examine other theories of God first before writing the whole thing off as ridiculous. Yet very few self proclaimed Atheists do. They base their disbelief on the stories in one book about one God, and one God only...............as if it were the only possible God. Odd, that.

reply to post by Benji1999

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But just to make clear I am referring to not ruling out anything in regards to the origins of the universe

Neither am I but if I need to make a decision I'll go for the greater evidence, the evidence in relation to leading up to the big bang is mounting and does not require a god, as for before the big bang then time will tell.

The evidence for the god has not been presented, well apart from ancient scriptures an hearsay.

If someone presents a case for fairies creating the universe then the evidenced must be weighed but first you have to prove the fairies are real just like god.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander

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Focusing only on the Abrahamic God, almost, (as I see it) seems as if there must be some underlying belief in that system.

It would appear that the underlying beliefs in relation to this particular god have morphed from gods Egypt and Sumer and could also be an amalgam of Pharaohs as they were gods on earth.

These gods (or god depending on how you want to look at it) are described in terms of other beings coming to earth from the stars so we could easily replace god with ET.

But there again they could just have easily been giving the objects in the sky names and personalities.

What we then have is a scenario where humans should be worshiping ET and looking at the world in wonderment claiming ET did it.

Science is responding with we'll keep looking see what we find, hey what the hell we may find ET did it but ET hasn't shown up yet so we won't assume he did it.

I really do have to go to bed now

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