I see science as a tool to help us understand how God designed things to work, not to try and prove evolution or other things against Christianity.
After all, how can one deny something if he acknowledges it? To deny means to acknowledge the existence of something, otherwise there would be nothing to deny. But people don't think about it, they only go, "Oh He's not real."
It is a shame.
That's my feeling on it, more or less.
And I completely agree that the Left Behind books are absolute garbage.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I see science as a tool to help us understand how God designed things to work, not to try and prove evolution or other things against Christianity.
After all, how can one deny something if he acknowledges it? To deny means to acknowledge the existence of something, otherwise there would be nothing to deny. But people don't think about it, they only go, "Oh He's not real."
It is a shame.
Which is fundamentally not understanding science.
Science doesn't trust anything fully, and doesn't trust anything at ALL until it's been tested and tested and tested and shown to hold up despite literally thousands of basement-dwelling nerds, most of whom hate each others' guts for really stupid reasons, all trying to poke holes in it. Therefore, the stuff that the nerds-who-hate-each-other DO agree on has got to be really, really correct, or else someone would've poked it full of holes a looooooooooong time ago.
And new evidence is ALWAYS coming in, and the nerds just LOVE new evidence because it gives them a chance to shot down someone else's ideas. Or even their own ideas, which is considered to be REALLY awesome.
Look up phlogiston sometime. Or the Bohr model.
To deny means to acknowledge the existence of something, otherwise there would be nothing to deny.
This is fallacious; To deny the existence of a proposed entity or concept is only to acknowledge the existence of the proposition; To deny the existence of a deity or deities (which is in its simplest form is technically a fallacious argument) is only to acknowledge the proposition that such a being or beings exist, not to acknowledge the actual existence of such beings.
The fundamental flaw in the hypothesis of the existence of a deity or deities is that such a hypothesis is inherently untestable from the human perspective. Any natural phenomenon can be blamed on a deity, and the powers and scope of such beings are generally considered to be incomprehensible to humans; and something MUST be comprehensible to be testable. Since we as humans are incapable of comprehending any potential deity, and have repeatedly found testably natural explanations for all phenomena commonly blamed on deities, the hypothesis of the existence of a deity or deities must logically be discarded out of hand until it is reformulated in a testable manner.
This is NOT to say that deities CANNOT exist, however. The fundamental nature of this logical position is that there MUST be some potential universe in the infinite multiverse wherein a deity or deity testably exists; it is merely that the chance that the universe in which such a being or beings exist is our universe is infinitesimally small, and we do not have the evidence to test the hypothesis at present.
Essentially, god exists in some universe, but not in this one.
Science is a tool to test if we are wrong and help us become "less wrong" through process of elimination. It does not and cannot prove if we are right about something. The existence of a god cannot be tested, so science cannot comment on its validity.
Science is a tool to test if we are wrong, not confirm if we are right, and attempt become "less wrong" through process of elimination. The existence of a god cannot be tested, so science cannot comment on its validity.
Did I get that right?
...
Pretty much.
Science considers the answer to "is there a god" to be no, because that's the null hypothesis.
Science can ONLY comment on the validity of the hypothesis of the existence of a deity to state that the null hypothesis (that there is no such being or beings) MUST be accepted until more evidence comes to light that renders the hypothesis testable, OR the hypothesis is reworked to make it empirically testable.
Science doesn't trust anything fully, and doesn't trust anything at ALL until it's been tested and tested and tested and shown to hold up despite literally thousands of basement-dwelling nerds, most of whom hate each others' guts for really stupid reasons, all trying to poke holes in it. Therefore, the stuff that the nerds-who-hate-each-other DO agree on has got to be really, really correct, or else someone would've poked it full of holes a looooooooooong time ago.
And new evidence is ALWAYS coming in, and the nerds just LOVE new evidence because it gives them a chance to shot down someone else's ideas. Or even their own ideas, which is considered to be REALLY awesome.
Look up phlogiston sometime. Or the Bohr model.
This is fallacious; To deny the existence of a proposed entity or concept is only to acknowledge the existence of the proposition; To deny the existence of a deity or deities (which is in its simplest form is technically a fallacious argument) is only to acknowledge the proposition that such a being or beings exist, not to acknowledge the actual existence of such beings.
The fundamental flaw in the hypothesis of the existence of a deity or deities is that such a hypothesis is inherently untestable from the human perspective. Any natural phenomenon can be blamed on a deity, and the powers and scope of such beings are generally considered to be incomprehensible to humans; and something MUST be comprehensible to be testable. Since we as humans are incapable of comprehending any potential deity, and have repeatedly found testably natural explanations for all phenomena commonly blamed on deities, the hypothesis of the existence of a deity or deities must logically be discarded out of hand until it is reformulated in a testable manner.
This is NOT to say that deities CANNOT exist, however. The fundamental nature of this logical position is that there MUST be some potential universe in the infinite multiverse wherein a deity or deity testably exists; it is merely that the chance that the universe in which such a being or beings exist is our universe is infinitesimally small, and we do not have the evidence to test the hypothesis at present.
Essentially, god exists in some universe, but not in this one.
I expected such a response based on previous observation of your posts. It's the typical atheist view, nothing more.
I expected such a response based on previous observation of your posts. It's the typical atheist view, nothing more.
Not necessarily. It's just the way scientists (myself included, though I'm just a student) are trained. Our job is to catch ourselves when we (or others) are wrong, and to do that we have to take a very skeptical view of just about everything, which can come across as grating for people who have strong faith--that is to say, have very high confidence in a set of shared ideas.
I expected such a response based on previous observation of your posts. It's the typical atheist view, nothing more.
Not quite. Atheists proper (that arrogant louse Dawkins, for example) presuppose that a deity or deities CANNOT exist in ANY potential universe, which is erroneous since in the infinite multiverse anything that CAN exist (of which anything that humans can imagine is a subset) MUST exist somewhere.
Yes, it's complicated. No, it doesn't sound very different to religious people.
But there IS a difference. Atheism a la Dawkins (or more properly, antitheism) is just as illogical as religion. The best that science can provide us with on this dilemma is the obvious; that a deity or deities MUST exist somewhere, but we CANNOT conclusively determine whether they exist in this universe, therefore we MUST assume that they do not.
Not necessarily. It's just the way scientists (myself included, though I'm just a student) are trained. Our job is to catch ourselves when we (or others) are wrong, and to do that we have to take a very skeptical view of just about everything, which can come across as grating for people who have strong faith--that is to say, have very high confidence in a set of shared ideas.
Science at best as I always say describes how things work, but not ultimately why. I'll never care if we have an equation of everything or whether or not evolution is completely true, there is still never a reason why reality should exist at all. I am one of faith but ironically I do not have a religion or live by any standards other than my own. I find it the best medium that I consider nothing truly impossible but I require at least some evidence when it comes to all things and let nothing surprise me if anything I thought to be a fact gets uprooted.
Everyone in life has a sort of rug under them that they consider to be their perception of reality, and potentially any time, scientist or not, it could get pulled out from under, even me. If I can't trust why reality is even a thing, then I cannot let anything surprise me. But otherwise I act upon what I understand to be driven by the best shaky facts we can get, rather than none at all.
Scientists IMO overreach when they attempt to take their endeavors into philosophical or theological realms, period--so if a scientist tries to claim that "science disproves God," then that is as much of an overreach as it is to claim that science DOES prove His existence. Equating non-falsifiable with nonexistent or "must assume nonexistence" is a fallacy and an overreach. A scientist IMO must assume nothing one way or the other when doing his or her work. If someone wants to believe God does not exist, IMO this should be determined for reasons other than scientific or it misuses a set of intellectual tools not meant to be used in that particular manner. There ARE intellectual tools for theology, mind you, some of which bear a similarity, but it is not the same discipline. I do not believe science can comment on the existence or nonexistence of deity and should not try. Science can inform us as to the measurable processes by which things operate, and the potential consequences of the actions we take. WE must then make the evaluation of what those consequences are worth to us. Science itself cannot pass judgment or provide morals. It can show what path is expedient but not which path is right. That is a matter of our religions, philosophies, and belief systems.
Similarly there is no reason to take science as a threat to religion or attempt to distort it to show things that conform to a literalist interpretation of scripture. From a religious standpoint, if we are to believe that what God has created is truth, and the physical world is His creation by whatever means He used, then is it not foolish to say that the physically measurable and documentable is a lie? I see no reason to object to the age of the universe, to the evolution of life, and so on. If anything the sheer scale of it on both the macro and micro levels (evolutionary, quantum physics, any type of discipline) gives me more reason to be impressed with the Creation as we are finding it to be. Why instead among some science has become a thing of fear rather than a thing of great wonder and joy, I do not understand.
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Not quite. Atheists proper (that arrogant louse Dawkins, for example) presuppose that a deity or deities CANNOT exist in ANY potential universe, which is erroneous since in the infinite multiverse anything that CAN exist (of which anything that humans can imagine is a subset) MUST exist somewhere.
Yes, it's complicated. No, it doesn't sound very different to religious people.
But there IS a difference. Atheism a la Dawkins (or more properly, antitheism) is just as illogical as religion. The best that science can provide us with on this dilemma is the obvious; that a deity or deities MUST exist somewhere, but we CANNOT conclusively determine whether they exist in this universe, therefore we MUST assume that they do not.
In this universe? What? God, i.e. the Christian God (the definition of a god basically boils down to "anything more powerful than me", so I feel the need to specify), almost certainly exists outside of all possible universes, since He would have created all of them to begin with. I mean, it's pretty clear He exists outside of time as we know it.
I do find atheism rather silly, though, simply because if aliens exist, gods exist. Period. I mean, unless we somehow turn out to be the most powerful civilization in the universe. A sufficiently advanced alien is indistinguishable from a god because a sufficiently advanced alien is a god. Not necessarily the God, but a god. The distinction between the natural and the supernatural is not one that makes sense to me. Q, for example, is a god, from the perspective of humans. The Douwd are also gods from the perspective of humans, but not from the perspective of the Q.
The only real difference I can think of between a SAA and a god is that a SAA uses advanced technology to achieve its goals, whereas a god does it using inherent abilities. But that's really shaky.
Oh, and concerning the testability of God. Beyond philosophical arguments, of course, you can't really test God's existence directly. The closest thing conventional religion has to scientific evidence is indirect, via holy texts. If you can prove their validity through specific points (Christ's resurrection, etc.) (well, by "prove" I mean "support"; you can't really "prove" anything, after all), you can extend that validity to the rest of the document, thus supporting an argument as to the nature of God indirectly. A is trustworthy, and says that B is also trustworthy. B says such-and-such about C. Ergo, we now have data regarding C. Of course, it's really difficult to historically validate or discredit a holy text, because in the case of established religions, the discussion is so politically charged that it's hard to trust anything anyone says.
Regarding the topic at hand: I don't get the single-mindedness of the Harry Potter...opposition-dom. It's completely innocuous, especially compared to something like Star Wars, which supports Eastern mysticism but nobody has a problem with. Or even our very own face-palmingly humanistic Trek. I mean come on. She might as well have named Harry "Joshua Carpenter", or something, with how obvious the parallels were in later books. Also, there's apparently a filmmaker or something named that. Why do I Google random things all the time? Anyway, there's...just...oh, whatever. But it ties into my earlier point. "Magic" in Harry Potter is basically just technology with wands; it's not even close to being in the same category as some sort of attempt (probably a pointless attempt, now that I think about it; who in their right mind calls upon entities that are pretty clearly opposed to humanity, as opposed to ones that have repeatedly aided us?) to summon demons and nonsense.
Being an atheist means that you believe that god doesn't exist. Since god can't be proved or disproved, then all that can be said is that there is a possibility that god might exist or might not exist in this universe. Therefore, atheism and theism both use belief to assert their claims and until god personally reveals their existence to humanity or some scientist comes with incontrovertible proof that god can't exist, then both beliefs are equally valid and invalid. Therefore, the existence of god is quantum mechanical in nature as far as we know. It is just like Schrodinger's experiment. We can't know god exists or doesn't exist until we open up the box. Therefore, god both exists and doesn't exist at the same time as far as our limited understanding is concerned.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,689Community Moderator
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
Scientists IMO overreach when they attempt to take their endeavors into philosophical or theological realms, period--so if a scientist tries to claim that "science disproves God," then that is as much of an overreach as it is to claim that science DOES prove His existence.
This is where I disagree with you; everything else you said basically makes sense.
The second part is absolutely true, but science MUST state that it CANNOT determine the existence of a deity through empirical measurement.
Since the existence of a deity cannot be tested, the null hypothesis (that such a being does not exist) MUST be provisionally accepted.
HOWEVER, any incontrovertible and empirical evidence in favor of the deity hypothesis must necessarily result in the consideration of the deity hypothesis, and most likely the discarding of the null hypothesis.
In this universe? What? God, i.e. the Christian God (the definition of a god basically boils down to "anything more powerful than me", so I feel the need to specify), almost certainly exists outside of all possible universes, since He would have created all of them to begin with. I mean, it's pretty clear He exists outside of time as we know it.
"Universe" here means "Temporal continuity of material existence", not "plane of existence". Basically, the idea that there is nothing beyond the multiverse, which is infinite and composed of finite universes.
Science is fundamentally unequipped to field ANY hypothesis on theological questions other than to state "cannot be determined by known methodologies," and therefore what would be a reasonable procedure for a physical or statistical matter is simply not appropriate for a scientist to even state on the basis of his or her profession. A scientist may state whatever they want theologically on the basis of theological reasoning, personal experience, etc., but not as a scientific professional.
Additionally, unless one is alleging a strict literalist version of theology, the existence or nonexistence of deity has absolutely no impact on scientific findings. Whether or not God created subatomic particles to carry the charges that they each do, those particles will carry the same charges and act the same way regardless, whether it is mere happenstance or they were willed to exist thus. Science will also accurately predict the results of my choosing to shoot various particle types at each other in an accelerator, regardless of how it got to be like that. Similarly--and this is an example of where I differ from fundamentalists--to use a biology example, the same lineage from dinosaurs to birds is obvious whether I believe it occurred by happenstance, or God thought up the idea first before causing it to exist according to what we see of how it occurred.
Belief or nonbelief should have no impact on the research a scientist conducts except in two areas: to determine what is an unethical means of research (which does not necessarily mean "drop the topic," but can mean "find a way to get the answer that does not inflict suffering on living beings"), and determining what is an appropriate use of experimental results. (Knowing how nuclear fusion works does not mean dropping an H-bomb on people is appropriate...and it is religion and philosophy we use to arrive at that conclusion, not the scientific method. All the scientific method does is allow us to determine that the possibility exists and model its potential effects.)
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Science is fundamentally unequipped to field ANY hypothesis on theological questions other than to state "cannot be determined by known methodologies," and therefore what would be a reasonable procedure for a physical or statistical matter is simply not appropriate for a scientist to even state on the basis of his or her profession. A scientist may state whatever they want theologically on the basis of theological reasoning, personal experience, etc., but not as a scientific professional.
Additionally, unless one is alleging a strict literalist version of theology, the existence or nonexistence of deity has absolutely no impact on scientific findings. Whether or not God created subatomic particles to carry the charges that they each do, those particles will carry the same charges and act the same way regardless, whether it is mere happenstance or they were willed to exist thus. Science will also accurately predict the results of my choosing to shoot various particle types at each other in an accelerator, regardless of how it got to be like that. Similarly--and this is an example of where I differ from fundamentalists--to use a biology example, the same lineage from dinosaurs to birds is obvious whether I believe it occurred by happenstance, or God thought up the idea first before causing it to exist according to what we see of how it occurred.
Belief or nonbelief should have no impact on the research a scientist conducts except in two areas: to determine what is an unethical means of research (which does not necessarily mean "drop the topic," but can mean "find a way to get the answer that does not inflict suffering on living beings"), and determining what is an appropriate use of experimental results. (Knowing how nuclear fusion works does not mean dropping an H-bomb on people is appropriate...and it is religion and philosophy we use to arrive at that conclusion, not the scientific method. All the scientific method does is allow us to determine that the possibility exists and model its potential effects.)
I fundamentally agree with this. I'm currently a sort-of-agnostic myself (used to be a Unitarian Universalist, was a Buddhist for a couple of years, considered Jainism because I'm vegetarian and a pacifist but decided against it, was a satanist for a few months before I realized that the other satanists I'd met were bored posers who were playing the stuff up to TRIBBLE off religious people, tried a megachurch in Indiana for exactly one day before I decided it wasn't for me), which from what I can tell puts us pretty far apart on the theological spectrum, but I fundamentally agree with this.
Stating the provisional acceptance of the null hypothesis as a standard for operation IS admitting that you don't know jack and can't tell either way in science.
My personal view of the relationship between Science and Religion is that Science explains How God does things and Religion explains Why God does things. Science is great at explaining how things happen , but is terrible at explaining why things happen while Religion is great at explaining why things happen, but is terrible at explaining how things happen.
Impressive, considering this is the STO forums, this has developed into one of the more intelligent civil discussions I've seen in a while around here! :P
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,689Community Moderator
edited September 2014
Although it made my brain explode... it is a nice change from the norm...
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
Although it made my brain explode... it is a nice change from the norm...
Brain explosives are more fun than actual explosives to me :P I love good intellectual discussions, a shame they are so rare as they are what I love doing as a past time as one who sides neither with atheism or religion, to me every side has it's points but don't own all the points.
Impressive, considering this is the STO forums, this has developed into one of the more intelligent civil discussions I've seen in a while around here! :P
I'm sorry if I am missing out something fun, but as soon as I read "I'm happy that they want to read, but I don't want them to turn into witches", I left...
I see science as a tool to help us understand how God designed things to work, not to try and prove evolution or other things against Christianity.
After all, how can one deny something if he acknowledges it? To deny means to acknowledge the existence of something, otherwise there would be nothing to deny. But people don't think about it, they only go, "Oh He's not real."
It is a shame.
Am I understanding you correctly? Are you stating that my saying that something doesn't exist is actually admiting it exists?
I hope I'm misinterpreting.
I fundamentally agree with this. I'm currently a sort-of-agnostic myself (used to be a Unitarian Universalist, was a Buddhist for a couple of years, considered Jainism because I'm vegetarian and a pacifist but decided against it, was a satanist for a few months before I realized that the other satanists I'd met were bored posers who were playing the stuff up to TRIBBLE off religious people, tried a megachurch in Indiana for exactly one day before I decided it wasn't for me), which from what I can tell puts us pretty far apart on the theological spectrum, but I fundamentally agree with this.
Stating the provisional acceptance of the null hypothesis as a standard for operation IS admitting that you don't know jack and can't tell either way in science.
This has been a very interesting and intelligent discussion. While the Star Trek Online forum seems like an unlikely location for such debate, I think it is good for people on both sides of the fence to have this discussion. One thing to consider is that science studies the nature of the way things are. Science cannot prove/disprove the existence of anything supernatural. That is based solely on faith, which I am convinced comes from the God of the Bible.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,689Community Moderator
I'm sorry if I am missing out something fun, but as soon as I read "I'm happy that they want to read, but I don't want them to turn into witches", I left...
Yeeeaaaaa... and I bet Battletech turns people into MechWarriors, Battleship turns people into Navy Sailors, Halo turns people into Spartans, Star Wars turns people into Jedi, and Metroid turns people into female Bounty Hunters in powered armor.
Huh... so does that mean since I read some Star Trek does that mean I'm a Starfleet Officer?
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
Yeeeaaaaa... and I bet Battletech turns people into MechWarriors, Battleship turns people into Navy Sailors, Halo turns people into Spartans, Star Wars turns people into Jedi, and Metroid turns people into female Bounty Hunters in powered armor.
Huh... so does that mean since I read some Star Trek does that mean I'm a Starfleet Officer?
Impressive, considering this is the STO forums, this has developed into one of the more intelligent civil discussions I've seen in a while around here! :P
Most of us are Star Trek fans and Star Trek tries to show how humanity can be if we are tolerant and rational so Star Trek fans should strive to be more tolerant and rational. It is just tragic that the forums are hardly ever like this.
Yeeeaaaaa... and I bet Battletech turns people into MechWarriors, Battleship turns people into Navy Sailors, Halo turns people into Spartans, Star Wars turns people into Jedi, and Metroid turns people into female Bounty Hunters in powered armor.
Huh... so does that mean since I read some Star Trek does that mean I'm a Starfleet Officer?
I don't know, Captain. You tell us. :P
Funnily enough, 'Jedi' has actually become an accepted faith.
In this universe? What? God, i.e. the Christian God (the definition of a god basically boils down to "anything more powerful than me", so I feel the need to specify), almost certainly exists outside of all possible universes, since He would have created all of them to begin with. I mean, it's pretty clear He exists outside of time as we know it.
And this is where science and religion are in complete conflict. Worffan101 actually has an interesting point that I overlooked before, but there is a fundamental difference between an entity that would essentially be a god existing in a certain subset of the multiverse (possibly even the same 'God' existing in several universes at the same time, but that assumes that some portion of the multiverse will be capable of interacting with the rest of itself, which I'll explain below) and a 'master' deity being responsible for the creation of the multiverse itself.
The latter invalidates the whole concept of the multiverse by its very existence, as there would have had to been a seed universe that spawned this mysterious creator of the multiverse, and seeing as the multiverse is essentially everything in existence (both the universes that can and can't interact with other universes, which is something I feel many-worlds theory quite adequately explains), the two concepts are mutually exclusive.
Now, to explain the references to universal interaction:
Many-worlds theory can be summed up as 'Everything that can happen, will happen. Not necessarily in the same universe, but it will happen at every moment and place it could possibly happen at." This is important.
In this system, time travel back into the past necessitates that the traveler, a person from universe 1a at the time t1, travels into a certain moment (t2, which must be prior to t1) in universe 1b. Universes 1a and 1b are indistinguishable from each other until t2, when the traveler leaves universe 1a and moment t1 and appears in universe 1b and moment t2. Going forward in time does not necessitate such complexity, and can be thought of as nothing more than suspended animation (and, perhaps, teleportation) until moment t3 (the future equivalent of t2).
Now, because of many-worlds theory, not all variants of a universe ("1" denotes the universe, and "a" or "b" denote variants of the same universe where at least one particle was not at the same place at a given moment as in another variant) will have invented time travel (or at least not a variant of the technology that allows travel back into the past). Similarly, not all variants of a universe (from now on, I'll refer to these as timelines, it's much simpler) will be on the other end of a temporal incursion into the past. Therefore, not all timelines will be affected by time travel. They will be unaware of the existence of other timelines. They may speculate that they are there, but ultimately, they will have no way of proving this.
Extending this to encompass travel between universes (as opposed to timelines, the origin and destination need not be identical at ANY point in time), some universes will invent trans-universal travel, and make use of it, but not all of the timelines of those universes will be affected by this. They, too, will be capable of speculating as to the existence of other universes (and timelines!), but will be incapable of proving it. Of course, there is a subset that will develop time travel without developing trans-universal travel. The opposite may also apply. It's impossible to imagine all the possible combinations, but...
Edit: I feel it necessary to note that while it is possible that no universe will ever develop the ability to interact with another universe (or develop the ability to travel backwards through time), it seems to be highly unlikely, hence my inaccurate usage of the word 'will' where I should have used 'may'. Furthermore, I haven't explained all the possible ways universes could interact with each other, partly because I couldn't remember all of my previous thoughts on the matter, and partly because my head was spinning just trying to write this in a coherent fashion.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Comments
That's my feeling on it, more or less.
And I completely agree that the Left Behind books are absolute garbage.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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Which is fundamentally not understanding science.
Science doesn't trust anything fully, and doesn't trust anything at ALL until it's been tested and tested and tested and shown to hold up despite literally thousands of basement-dwelling nerds, most of whom hate each others' guts for really stupid reasons, all trying to poke holes in it. Therefore, the stuff that the nerds-who-hate-each-other DO agree on has got to be really, really correct, or else someone would've poked it full of holes a looooooooooong time ago.
And new evidence is ALWAYS coming in, and the nerds just LOVE new evidence because it gives them a chance to shot down someone else's ideas. Or even their own ideas, which is considered to be REALLY awesome.
Look up phlogiston sometime. Or the Bohr model. This is fallacious; To deny the existence of a proposed entity or concept is only to acknowledge the existence of the proposition; To deny the existence of a deity or deities (which is in its simplest form is technically a fallacious argument) is only to acknowledge the proposition that such a being or beings exist, not to acknowledge the actual existence of such beings.
The fundamental flaw in the hypothesis of the existence of a deity or deities is that such a hypothesis is inherently untestable from the human perspective. Any natural phenomenon can be blamed on a deity, and the powers and scope of such beings are generally considered to be incomprehensible to humans; and something MUST be comprehensible to be testable. Since we as humans are incapable of comprehending any potential deity, and have repeatedly found testably natural explanations for all phenomena commonly blamed on deities, the hypothesis of the existence of a deity or deities must logically be discarded out of hand until it is reformulated in a testable manner.
This is NOT to say that deities CANNOT exist, however. The fundamental nature of this logical position is that there MUST be some potential universe in the infinite multiverse wherein a deity or deity testably exists; it is merely that the chance that the universe in which such a being or beings exist is our universe is infinitesimally small, and we do not have the evidence to test the hypothesis at present.
Essentially, god exists in some universe, but not in this one.
Science is a tool to test if we are wrong and help us become "less wrong" through process of elimination. It does not and cannot prove if we are right about something. The existence of a god cannot be tested, so science cannot comment on its validity.
Did I get that right?
...
Pretty much.
Science considers the answer to "is there a god" to be no, because that's the null hypothesis.
Science can ONLY comment on the validity of the hypothesis of the existence of a deity to state that the null hypothesis (that there is no such being or beings) MUST be accepted until more evidence comes to light that renders the hypothesis testable, OR the hypothesis is reworked to make it empirically testable.
Not quite. Atheists proper (that arrogant louse Dawkins, for example) presuppose that a deity or deities CANNOT exist in ANY potential universe, which is erroneous since in the infinite multiverse anything that CAN exist (of which anything that humans can imagine is a subset) MUST exist somewhere.
Yes, it's complicated. No, it doesn't sound very different to religious people.
But there IS a difference. Atheism a la Dawkins (or more properly, antitheism) is just as illogical as religion. The best that science can provide us with on this dilemma is the obvious; that a deity or deities MUST exist somewhere, but we CANNOT conclusively determine whether they exist in this universe, therefore we MUST assume that they do not.
This + 10^^^^^^^
Everyone in life has a sort of rug under them that they consider to be their perception of reality, and potentially any time, scientist or not, it could get pulled out from under, even me. If I can't trust why reality is even a thing, then I cannot let anything surprise me. But otherwise I act upon what I understand to be driven by the best shaky facts we can get, rather than none at all.
Similarly there is no reason to take science as a threat to religion or attempt to distort it to show things that conform to a literalist interpretation of scripture. From a religious standpoint, if we are to believe that what God has created is truth, and the physical world is His creation by whatever means He used, then is it not foolish to say that the physically measurable and documentable is a lie? I see no reason to object to the age of the universe, to the evolution of life, and so on. If anything the sheer scale of it on both the macro and micro levels (evolutionary, quantum physics, any type of discipline) gives me more reason to be impressed with the Creation as we are finding it to be. Why instead among some science has become a thing of fear rather than a thing of great wonder and joy, I do not understand.
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In this universe? What? God, i.e. the Christian God (the definition of a god basically boils down to "anything more powerful than me", so I feel the need to specify), almost certainly exists outside of all possible universes, since He would have created all of them to begin with. I mean, it's pretty clear He exists outside of time as we know it.
I do find atheism rather silly, though, simply because if aliens exist, gods exist. Period. I mean, unless we somehow turn out to be the most powerful civilization in the universe. A sufficiently advanced alien is indistinguishable from a god because a sufficiently advanced alien is a god. Not necessarily the God, but a god. The distinction between the natural and the supernatural is not one that makes sense to me. Q, for example, is a god, from the perspective of humans. The Douwd are also gods from the perspective of humans, but not from the perspective of the Q.
The only real difference I can think of between a SAA and a god is that a SAA uses advanced technology to achieve its goals, whereas a god does it using inherent abilities. But that's really shaky.
Oh, and concerning the testability of God. Beyond philosophical arguments, of course, you can't really test God's existence directly. The closest thing conventional religion has to scientific evidence is indirect, via holy texts. If you can prove their validity through specific points (Christ's resurrection, etc.) (well, by "prove" I mean "support"; you can't really "prove" anything, after all), you can extend that validity to the rest of the document, thus supporting an argument as to the nature of God indirectly. A is trustworthy, and says that B is also trustworthy. B says such-and-such about C. Ergo, we now have data regarding C. Of course, it's really difficult to historically validate or discredit a holy text, because in the case of established religions, the discussion is so politically charged that it's hard to trust anything anyone says.
Regarding the topic at hand: I don't get the single-mindedness of the Harry Potter...opposition-dom. It's completely innocuous, especially compared to something like Star Wars, which supports Eastern mysticism but nobody has a problem with. Or even our very own face-palmingly humanistic Trek. I mean come on. She might as well have named Harry "Joshua Carpenter", or something, with how obvious the parallels were in later books. Also, there's apparently a filmmaker or something named that. Why do I Google random things all the time? Anyway, there's...just...oh, whatever. But it ties into my earlier point. "Magic" in Harry Potter is basically just technology with wands; it's not even close to being in the same category as some sort of attempt (probably a pointless attempt, now that I think about it; who in their right mind calls upon entities that are pretty clearly opposed to humanity, as opposed to ones that have repeatedly aided us?) to summon demons and nonsense.
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The second part is absolutely true, but science MUST state that it CANNOT determine the existence of a deity through empirical measurement.
Since the existence of a deity cannot be tested, the null hypothesis (that such a being does not exist) MUST be provisionally accepted.
HOWEVER, any incontrovertible and empirical evidence in favor of the deity hypothesis must necessarily result in the consideration of the deity hypothesis, and most likely the discarding of the null hypothesis.
"Universe" here means "Temporal continuity of material existence", not "plane of existence". Basically, the idea that there is nothing beyond the multiverse, which is infinite and composed of finite universes.
You're thinking of it more in D&D terms.
Additionally, unless one is alleging a strict literalist version of theology, the existence or nonexistence of deity has absolutely no impact on scientific findings. Whether or not God created subatomic particles to carry the charges that they each do, those particles will carry the same charges and act the same way regardless, whether it is mere happenstance or they were willed to exist thus. Science will also accurately predict the results of my choosing to shoot various particle types at each other in an accelerator, regardless of how it got to be like that. Similarly--and this is an example of where I differ from fundamentalists--to use a biology example, the same lineage from dinosaurs to birds is obvious whether I believe it occurred by happenstance, or God thought up the idea first before causing it to exist according to what we see of how it occurred.
Belief or nonbelief should have no impact on the research a scientist conducts except in two areas: to determine what is an unethical means of research (which does not necessarily mean "drop the topic," but can mean "find a way to get the answer that does not inflict suffering on living beings"), and determining what is an appropriate use of experimental results. (Knowing how nuclear fusion works does not mean dropping an H-bomb on people is appropriate...and it is religion and philosophy we use to arrive at that conclusion, not the scientific method. All the scientific method does is allow us to determine that the possibility exists and model its potential effects.)
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I fundamentally agree with this. I'm currently a sort-of-agnostic myself (used to be a Unitarian Universalist, was a Buddhist for a couple of years, considered Jainism because I'm vegetarian and a pacifist but decided against it, was a satanist for a few months before I realized that the other satanists I'd met were bored posers who were playing the stuff up to TRIBBLE off religious people, tried a megachurch in Indiana for exactly one day before I decided it wasn't for me), which from what I can tell puts us pretty far apart on the theological spectrum, but I fundamentally agree with this.
Stating the provisional acceptance of the null hypothesis as a standard for operation IS admitting that you don't know jack and can't tell either way in science.
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Brain explosives are more fun than actual explosives to me :P I love good intellectual discussions, a shame they are so rare as they are what I love doing as a past time as one who sides neither with atheism or religion, to me every side has it's points but don't own all the points.
Night, all!
I'm sorry if I am missing out something fun, but as soon as I read "I'm happy that they want to read, but I don't want them to turn into witches", I left...
Am I understanding you correctly? Are you stating that my saying that something doesn't exist is actually admiting it exists?
I hope I'm misinterpreting.
What were you expecting a satanist to be?
Yeeeaaaaa... and I bet Battletech turns people into MechWarriors, Battleship turns people into Navy Sailors, Halo turns people into Spartans, Star Wars turns people into Jedi, and Metroid turns people into female Bounty Hunters in powered armor.
Huh... so does that mean since I read some Star Trek does that mean I'm a Starfleet Officer?
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Parents reply:
"You can be anything you want to be!!!!"
:P
Most of us are Star Trek fans and Star Trek tries to show how humanity can be if we are tolerant and rational so Star Trek fans should strive to be more tolerant and rational. It is just tragic that the forums are hardly ever like this.
I don't know, Captain. You tell us. :P
Funnily enough, 'Jedi' has actually become an accepted faith.
I kid you not.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
I think it's pronounced buddhist
:P
And this is where science and religion are in complete conflict. Worffan101 actually has an interesting point that I overlooked before, but there is a fundamental difference between an entity that would essentially be a god existing in a certain subset of the multiverse (possibly even the same 'God' existing in several universes at the same time, but that assumes that some portion of the multiverse will be capable of interacting with the rest of itself, which I'll explain below) and a 'master' deity being responsible for the creation of the multiverse itself.
The latter invalidates the whole concept of the multiverse by its very existence, as there would have had to been a seed universe that spawned this mysterious creator of the multiverse, and seeing as the multiverse is essentially everything in existence (both the universes that can and can't interact with other universes, which is something I feel many-worlds theory quite adequately explains), the two concepts are mutually exclusive.
Now, to explain the references to universal interaction:
Many-worlds theory can be summed up as 'Everything that can happen, will happen. Not necessarily in the same universe, but it will happen at every moment and place it could possibly happen at." This is important.
In this system, time travel back into the past necessitates that the traveler, a person from universe 1a at the time t1, travels into a certain moment (t2, which must be prior to t1) in universe 1b. Universes 1a and 1b are indistinguishable from each other until t2, when the traveler leaves universe 1a and moment t1 and appears in universe 1b and moment t2. Going forward in time does not necessitate such complexity, and can be thought of as nothing more than suspended animation (and, perhaps, teleportation) until moment t3 (the future equivalent of t2).
Now, because of many-worlds theory, not all variants of a universe ("1" denotes the universe, and "a" or "b" denote variants of the same universe where at least one particle was not at the same place at a given moment as in another variant) will have invented time travel (or at least not a variant of the technology that allows travel back into the past). Similarly, not all variants of a universe (from now on, I'll refer to these as timelines, it's much simpler) will be on the other end of a temporal incursion into the past. Therefore, not all timelines will be affected by time travel. They will be unaware of the existence of other timelines. They may speculate that they are there, but ultimately, they will have no way of proving this.
Extending this to encompass travel between universes (as opposed to timelines, the origin and destination need not be identical at ANY point in time), some universes will invent trans-universal travel, and make use of it, but not all of the timelines of those universes will be affected by this. They, too, will be capable of speculating as to the existence of other universes (and timelines!), but will be incapable of proving it. Of course, there is a subset that will develop time travel without developing trans-universal travel. The opposite may also apply. It's impossible to imagine all the possible combinations, but...
Edit: I feel it necessary to note that while it is possible that no universe will ever develop the ability to interact with another universe (or develop the ability to travel backwards through time), it seems to be highly unlikely, hence my inaccurate usage of the word 'will' where I should have used 'may'. Furthermore, I haven't explained all the possible ways universes could interact with each other, partly because I couldn't remember all of my previous thoughts on the matter, and partly because my head was spinning just trying to write this in a coherent fashion.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.