A Manual For Creating Atheists

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Did you understand what I just posted?

reply to post by tothetenthpower


Exactly.

Also consider (lets use Christianity): Noah was tasked to save the animals and build the arc. He saved life as we know it for the land creatures, yet not a single animal other than humans pay any homage to this. You do not see ducks forming up on Sunday to quack prayers, you do not see baboons breaking bread with their neighbors, you could argue Preying Mantis pray, but they only really prey

If all of "gods" creatures were created then why do they get a free pass?

God gave humans a powerful brains, so that would be simply thankful for it?

If indeed a "creator" exists, it doesn't not sit around pondering our thanks or sins.

This is why i remain agnostic, unless science eventually explains everything i will remain so.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

(quote) Everything is made in just the right way, even the latest science has shown that the Higgs Boson while it upholds the standard model of physics, demonstrates a selection bias in favor of life or fine tuning, in the extreme, a "problem" for which the strong anthropic principal or the multiverse cannot offer any "consolation" (to a bias opposed to God), for reasons that I don't have the time to go into right now. (quote)

Can we have links for this? I want to be sure you're not just taking interpretive liberties here.

Originally posted by squiz

Decades of confounding experiments have physicists considering a startling possibility: The universe might not make sense.
...
However, in order for the Higgs boson to make sense with the mass (or equivalent energy) it was determined to have, the LHC needed to find a swarm of other particles, too. None turned up.
...
With the discovery of only one particle, the LHC experiments deepened a profound problem in physics that had been brewing for decades. Modern equations seem to capture reality with breathtaking accuracy, correctly predicting the values of many constants of nature and the existence of particles like the Higgs. Yet a few constants — including the mass of the Higgs boson — are exponentially different from what these trusted laws indicate they should be, in ways that would rule out any chance of life, unless the universe is shaped by inexplicable fine-tunings and cancellations.
...
The LHC will resume smashing protons in 2015 in a last-ditch search for answers. But in papers, talks and interviews, Arkani-Hamed and many other top physicists are already confronting the possibility that the universe might be unnatural.
...
Physicists reason that if the universe is unnatural, with extremely unlikely fundamental constants that make life possible, then an enormous number of universes must exist for our improbable case to have been realized. Otherwise, why should we be so lucky? Unnaturalness would give a huge lift to the multiverse hypothesis, which holds that our universe is one bubble in an infinite and inaccessible foam.
...
The energy built into the vacuum of space (known as vacuum energy, dark energy or the cosmological constant) is a baffling trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times smaller than what is calculated to be its natural, albeit self-destructive, value. No theory exists about what could naturally fix this gargantuan disparity. But it’s clear that the cosmological constant has to be enormously fine-tuned to prevent the universe from rapidly exploding or collapsing to a point. It has to be fine-tuned in order for life to have a chance.
...
Now, physicists say, the unnaturalness of the Higgs makes the unnaturalness of the cosmological constant more significant.

www.simonsfoundation.org...

Notice the escape clause to extend the probabilty argument?

"then an enormous number of universes must exist for our improbable case to have been realized. Otherwise, why should we be so lucky?"

Why else indeed, never mind that big fat elephant in the room. (end quote by squiz - quoting removed to allow text)

reply to post by NewAgeMan


So you're saying that a checks-and-balance system cannot develop autonomously from nonsentient matter?

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Interesting. What about animals that bury their dead? Maybe in a few hundred thousands of years they will be just like us. Weird thought really, hard to imagine an elephant for example lol.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

Did you understand what I just posted?

I thought I did, why?

Hey I'm old sometimes the ole brain misfires.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Your response wasn't clear on exactly what you were addressing. There was a number of ways to interpret your post. I'm not the sort of person who assumes where it is necessary to ask questions, and this is just such a place.

reply to post by Biigs

You do not see ducks forming up on Sunday to quack prayers,

Are you sure?


“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

“Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith!

You know in some Native American cultures the only prayer they have is the prayer of Thanksgiving.

reply to post by TKDRL


There's a number of ways to interpret that, all of which are unnecessary until future developments lend further context to such behavior.

Now that Athiesm has churches, leaders and a variety of codeces (is that even a word? who cares, i like the sound of it so it is now); i eagerly await the first schism in it's ranks and the inevitable disagreements over who is right and what makes a real, proper, genuine athiest. Not some half-arsed athiest you understand. One with a capital "A", and a proper set of testicles.

Possibly even a intra-humanist war; and burnings, persecutions and all that good stuff that we love so much about other religions.

reply to post by skalla


Atheism, by its grammatical components, literally means "without theism", or "without a god". Beyond that, atheism means nothing. There are thousands of different kinds of atheism that can exist. The only requirement is that you not believe in a god, or should a god be proven to exist, you live without a god.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

Your response wasn't clear on exactly what you were addressing. There was a number of ways to interpret your post. I'm not the sort of person who assumes where it is necessary to ask questions, and this is just such a place.

In this day and age I think we especially need to have one-anothers backs when it comes to persecution, let's not persecute one-another, live and let live.

It doesn't bother me that my husband is atheist, but if he had an agenda I don't think we would get along.

I really don't care that people are atheist, and I don't want to change you.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

So you're saying that a checks-and-balance system cannot develop autonomously from nonsentient matter?

Not from nothing that can anticipate this from a first/last cause (looks around), no. "checks-and-balance system" that's quite the stretch you'd have to do better than that. Try the infinite universes combined with the strong anthropic principal, give that a go and you just might have an argument, although I think I can show how such a concept is absurd.

Edit to add:

“There are frustrating theoretical problems in quantum field theory that demand solutions, but the string theory ‘landscape’ of 10/500 solutions does not make sense to me. Neither does the multiverse concept OR the anthropic principle,”

“New discoveries tend to be intuitive, just on the borderline of believability. Later, they become obvious.”

~ David J. Gross, Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

reply to post by NewAgeMan

Not from nothing that can anticipate this from a first/last cause (looks around), no. "checks-and-balance system" that's quite the stretch you'd have to do better than that. Try the infinite universes combined with the strong anthropic principal, give that a go and you just might have an argument, although I think I can show how such a concept is absurd.

You've tried and failed and will no doubt try again. I await the day you impress me with your hastily compiled and poorly correlated Google vomit.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


remember this?

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

Yes, but they would have had to have been hard at work 4.5 billion years ago, and capable of also building the solar system and thus the galaxy by extension..

As to that graphic, it's to show the geometrical relationship between the diameter of the moon in relation to the earth, c'mon you can see that right?

That doesn't conclusively prove a GOD did it though. You are saying, "Look, I found something interesting!" and then jumping straight to your own conclusions without giving it due process. How about letting smarter people analyze it? I'm fairly certain you don't have the education to accurately assess the implications of the data you've just shown us.

Here's an analysis albeit from a different perspective (re: downward causation) from a smarter person..

The God Theory

"The God Theory" by Bernard Haisch
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249274834&sr=8-1

Haisch is an astrophysicist whose professional positions include Staff Scientist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Deputy Director for the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. His work has led to close involvement with NASA; he is the author of over 130 scientific papers; and was the Scientific Editor of the Astrophysical Journal for nine years, as well as the editor in chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

an excerpt

If you think of white light as a metaphor of infinite, formless potential, the colors on a slide or frame of film become a structured reality grounded in the polarity that comes about through intelligent subtraction from that absolute formless potential. It results from the limitation of the unlimited. I contend that this metaphor provides a comprehensible theory for the creation of a manifest reality (our universe) from the selective limitation of infinite potential (God)...

If there exists an absolute realm that consists of infinite potential out of which a created realm of polarity emerges, is there any sensible reason not to call this "God"? Or to put it frankly, if the absolute is not God, what is it? For our purposes here, I will identify the Absolute with God. More precisely I will call the Absolute the Godhead. Applying this new terminology to the optics analogy, we can conclude that our physical universe comes about when the Godhead selectively limits itself, taking on the role of Creator and manifesting a realm of space and time and, within that realm, filtering out some of its own infinite potential...

Viewed this way, the process of creation is the exact opposite of making something out of nothing. It is, on the contrary, a filtering process that makes something out of everything. Creation is not capricious or random addition; it is intelligent and selective subtraction. The implications of this are profound.

If the Absolute is the Godhead, and if creation is the process by which the Godhead filters out parts of its own infinite potential to manifest a physical reality that supports experience, then the stuff that is left over, the residue of this process, is our physical universe, and ourselves included. We are nothing less than a part of that Godhead - quite literally.

Evidence - points to the Earth-Moon-Sun configuration.

Decades of confounding experiments have physicists considering a startling possibility: The universe might not make sense.
...
However, in order for the Higgs boson to make sense with the mass (or equivalent energy) it was determined to have, the LHC needed to find a swarm of other particles, too. None turned up.
...
With the discovery of only one particle, the LHC experiments deepened a profound problem in physics that had been brewing for decades. Modern equations seem to capture reality with breathtaking accuracy, correctly predicting the values of many constants of nature and the existence of particles like the Higgs. Yet a few constants — including the mass of the Higgs boson — are exponentially different from what these trusted laws indicate they should be, in ways that would rule out any chance of life, unless the universe is shaped by "inexplicable" fine-tunings and cancellations.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


That excerpt was a lot of highly unprofessional mumbo jumbo that amounts to practically nothing in terms of falsifiable hypothesis. In other words, it looks good until you peel back the golden wrapper to reveal the turd.

For our purposes here, I will identify the Absolute with God. More precisely I will call the Absolute the Godhead. Applying this new terminology to the optics analogy, we can conclude that our physical universe comes about when the Godhead selectively limits itself, taking on the role of Creator and manifesting a realm of space and time and, within that realm, filtering out some of its own infinite potential...

Please point out the science to me. Where is the science in this explanation? Where is the tested hypothesis and the grounded examination? I don't see it anywhere. Let's try again.

If you think of white light as a metaphor of infinite, formless potential, the colors on a slide or frame of film become a structured reality grounded in the polarity that comes about through intelligent subtraction from that absolute formless potential. It results from the limitation of the unlimited. I contend that this metaphor provides a comprehensible theory for the creation of a manifest reality (our universe) from the selective limitation of infinite potential (God)...

More of the same. When you break down the words and their definitions, what you get is a whole lot of ways to say nothing more or less than perfect and unadulterated malarky. Bologna. Trash. Garbage. Illiterate and incomprehensible attempts to turn the metaphysical into a legitimate scientific investigation without using professionally established tools or techniques.

It sounds good if you close your eyes. But the moment you open them again, the illusion vanishes. And if this is all you have for me, I'm done with this conversation. You're an alright person, NAM, but I'm not in the market for your horse crap.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


It is just so hard to wrap your mind around, ya know?

Is there eternity, infinity?

WE just cannot comprehend something that always was and always will be,chicken/egg,

It is the theory of possibilities, that is a new one ya know?

WE are here, maybe we aren't.

reply to post by AfterInfinity

It sounds good if you close your eyes. But the moment you open them again, the illusion vanishes.

Illusion, now there's a word, you are nothing more than an illusion to me at this moment.

What do you do for fun?

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Ironically, this. In addition to other stuff that has nothing to do with this topic.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Same equations Haisch was working with in relation to the ZPF (zero point field) spit out (derived) the equation F=ma (force = mass X acceleration).

Brilliant Disguise: Light, Matter and the Zero-Point Field

Edit add: This isn't just for you. Some will find it of interest and not "horse crap".