Human Race and Earth Endangered by New Strain

[table1349]

Here you are, religion and science living side by side in perfect harmony. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

And finally remember...........

 

[bribrius]

Pascal s Wager

Two main objections are often raised to Pascal's Wager.

(1) To believe in God simply for the payoff is the wrong motive for belief. Such self-serving individuals would not properly serve the Deity.

(2) In order to be sure of a payoff, an individual would not know which God or gods to believe in to cover the conditions of the wager. Would the Wager also hold for Zeus, Odin, or Mithra? One would have to believe in all gods to be sure, but if there were only one God in fact, then this strategy would defeat itself.

That would be for the individual to decide. Personally, i don't follow a particular religion and most often avoid them. If i were wagering, i would suggest there is one, that has been called many names amongst many people. Much a attempted explanation for the human condition and existence, or natural events. Each giving their personal twist to it in their adaptive religion. In fact it is the human titles, doctrines i separate from it as fallibility. Then i just nolonger concern myself. The largest objective to pascals wager may be the assumption of eternal life. Personally, i am pretty content with just accepting the unknown and with the plausibility of being recycled through the ground. So no pay off needed.

As Pascal asked, "What if you're wrong?"

What if there IS one god and that god DOES insist that you believe in him alone and follow his rules to the letter as set forth by one particular sect OR you will suffer throughout eternity to come?

What good then does believing your false religion and your false god do you, in terms of Pascal's Wager, since you brought it up?

Aren't you scared you might be wrong?

I start from the premise that men created religions.
I sort through the religions to find any elements of potential truth they may have.
I end with the result of the only common being a creator. Albeit much wisdom can be found across many doctrines.
I look to science, and its failed attempts to explain something eternally existing, something that came from nothing. Which tells me something must have always existed, in order to a creation to occur. It doesn't matter how far you go back, even before the big bang. Something came from nothing, something existed eternally. Dawkins claimed the universe is eternal, do you believe that? Where did it come from? where did it start? I find it much easier to believe in a eternal creator than to believe the universe and its elements magically derived from a big bang, with no explanation for where the elements from the big bang came from. There is always a beginning, before the beginning must be a eternal.
What good does it do me? To me it is acceptance of a truth, something beyond my understanding that must exist and always existed. I could just say there is no eternal being, but that would be closer to lying to myself. Am i scared of being right or wrong? No. I am more scared of not having the humility and being to egotistical to admit something existed eternally beyond my scope of reason.

 

[unpopular]

I start from the premise that men created religions.

 

[Buckster]

Pascal s Wager

Two main objections are often raised to Pascal's Wager.

(1) To believe in God simply for the payoff is the wrong motive for belief. Such self-serving individuals would not properly serve the Deity.

(2) In order to be sure of a payoff, an individual would not know which God or gods to believe in to cover the conditions of the wager. Would the Wager also hold for Zeus, Odin, or Mithra? One would have to believe in all gods to be sure, but if there were only one God in fact, then this strategy would defeat itself.

That would be for the individual to decide. Personally, i don't follow a particular religion and most often avoid them. If i were wagering, i would suggest there is one, that has been called many names amongst many people. Much a attempted explanation for the human condition and existence, or natural events. Each giving their personal twist to it in their adaptive religion. In fact it is the human titles, doctrines i separate from it as fallibility. Then i just nolonger concern myself. The largest objective to pascals wager may be the assumption of eternal life. Personally, i am pretty content with just accepting the unknown and with the plausibility of being recycled through the ground. So no pay off needed.

As Pascal asked, "What if you're wrong?"

What if there IS one god and that god DOES insist that you believe in him alone and follow his rules to the letter as set forth by one particular sect OR you will suffer throughout eternity to come?

What good then does believing your false religion and your false god do you, in terms of Pascal's Wager, since you brought it up?

Aren't you scared you might be wrong?

I start from the premise that men created religions.
I sort through the religions to find any elements of potential truth they may have.
I end with the result of the only common being a creator. Albeit much wisdom can be found across many doctrines.
I look to science, and its failed attempts to explain something eternally existing, something that came from nothing. Which tells me something must have always existed, in order to a creation to occur. It doesn't matter how far you go back, even before the big bang. Something came from nothing, something existed eternally. Dawkins claimed the universe is eternal, do you believe that? Where did it come from? where did it start? I find it much easier to believe in a eternal creator than to believe the universe and its elements magically derived from a big bang, with no explanation for where the elements from the big bang came from. There is always a beginning, before the beginning must be a eternal.
What good does it do me? To me it is acceptance of a truth, something beyond my understanding that must exist and always existed. I could just say there is no eternal being, but that would be closer to lying to myself. Am i scared of being right or wrong? No. I am more scared of not having the humility and being to egotistical to admit something existed eternally beyond my scope of reason.

1. You didn't watch the video lecture I provided, or you would have the answers as to how a universe comes from nothing without a deity.

2. You just threw Pascal's Wager out the window with your attempt to avoid my actual questions, as predicted. So why'd you bring it up in the first place?

 

[bribrius]

Pascal s Wager

Two main objections are often raised to Pascal's Wager.

(1) To believe in God simply for the payoff is the wrong motive for belief. Such self-serving individuals would not properly serve the Deity.

(2) In order to be sure of a payoff, an individual would not know which God or gods to believe in to cover the conditions of the wager. Would the Wager also hold for Zeus, Odin, or Mithra? One would have to believe in all gods to be sure, but if there were only one God in fact, then this strategy would defeat itself.

That would be for the individual to decide. Personally, i don't follow a particular religion and most often avoid them. If i were wagering, i would suggest there is one, that has been called many names amongst many people. Much a attempted explanation for the human condition and existence, or natural events. Each giving their personal twist to it in their adaptive religion. In fact it is the human titles, doctrines i separate from it as fallibility. Then i just nolonger concern myself. The largest objective to pascals wager may be the assumption of eternal life. Personally, i am pretty content with just accepting the unknown and with the plausibility of being recycled through the ground. So no pay off needed.

As Pascal asked, "What if you're wrong?"

What if there IS one god and that god DOES insist that you believe in him alone and follow his rules to the letter as set forth by one particular sect OR you will suffer throughout eternity to come?

What good then does believing your false religion and your false god do you, in terms of Pascal's Wager, since you brought it up?

Aren't you scared you might be wrong?

I start from the premise that men created religions.
I sort through the religions to find any elements of potential truth they may have.
I end with the result of the only common being a creator. Albeit much wisdom can be found across many doctrines.
I look to science, and its failed attempts to explain something eternally existing, something that came from nothing. Which tells me something must have always existed, in order to a creation to occur. It doesn't matter how far you go back, even before the big bang. Something came from nothing, something existed eternally. Dawkins claimed the universe is eternal, do you believe that? Where did it come from? where did it start? I find it much easier to believe in a eternal creator than to believe the universe and its elements magically derived from a big bang, with no explanation for where the elements from the big bang came from. There is always a beginning, before the beginning must be a eternal.
What good does it do me? To me it is acceptance of a truth, something beyond my understanding that must exist and always existed. I could just say there is no eternal being, but that would be closer to lying to myself. Am i scared of being right or wrong? No. I am more scared of not having the humility and being to egotistical to admit something existed eternally beyond my scope of reason.

1. You didn't watch the video lecture I provided, or you would have the answers as to how a universe comes from nothing without a deity.

2. You just threw Pascal's Wager out the window with your attempt to avoid my actual questions, as predicted. So why'd you bring it up in the first place?

I skimmed through it, about a half hour. Much like many other videos, it fails. I have watched many a video. If there is a certain few minutes in there you would like to point me toward, i may take the time to look at it further. For me it starts with "in the beginning there was NOTHING" Now if they can explain that, they might have my attention. Until then it is just more people trying to hypothesize what they do not know.
Why did i bring up pascals theory? More for you than me. I am at peace, you seemed more concerned than I. Since you said you had cancer (are you soon to be dying?) it might give you a moment of further contemplation. As a minister once told me (interesting thought even if one doesn't believe in their religion)
"If i am right then i have the benefits of being right. If i am wrong, then i still lived my life and have lost nothing. If you are wrong. what have you lost?"
Perhaps whatever answers you seek, you might look for within yourself. I am probably not one to debate with, as i am much more a fatalist, agnostic, perhaps a deist. You know, more studious of religion than a follower of one. I can assure you we all end up dead. Beyond that we all make our own decisions. I tend to look at atheists as about the same level as hard core fundies though. Just two opposing sides of the same coin. You might as well consider atheism its own religion,.

 

[unpopular]

First of all, I think Pascal's proposition is more benificial to point out the absurdity of the Christian concept of salvation. I have no idea if Pascal meant this as tongue-and-cheek (by most accounts, no) but I certainly take it that way.

Second, I think it's better to think of the big bang as "in the beginning there was no thing" not "nothing". There was energy, and according to both Einstein and Newton energy and matter are essentially one in the same.

There are questions about the big bang, of course, such as what triggered it and what is outside of it - what are we expanding into? How did the energy inside the singularity come to be compressed in the first place - shouldn't there be something of greater energy that held the singularity in from outside until the moment that it gave up? And if it were a true singularity, would the energy that contained it likewise need to be infinite?

What I don't really understand about all this is why the big bang must be a specific point in time. We cannot observe the big bang - matter was too dense beyond about 13M years after for our telescopes to look through - so how do we know that the universe hasn't always been expanding? How do you know that stuff isn't being ejected from the center of the universe now? Why do we assume that the universe "started" in the first place?

 

[bribrius]

First of all, I think Pascal's proposition is more benificial to point out the absurdity of the Christian concept of salvation. I have no idea if Pascal meant this as tongue-and-cheek (by most accounts, no) but I certainly take it that way.

Second, I think it's better to think of the big bang as "in the beginning there was no thing" not "nothing". There was energy, and according to both Einstein and Newton energy and matter are essentially one in the same.

There are questions about the big bang, of course, such as what triggered it and what is outside of it - what are we expanding into? How did the energy inside the singularity come to be compressed in the first place - shouldn't there be something of greater energy that held the singularity in from outside until the moment that it gave up? And if it were a true singularity, would the energy that contained it likewise need to be infinite?

What I don't really understand about all this is why the big bang must be a specific point in time. We cannot observe the big bang - matter was too dense beyond about 13M years after for our telescopes to look through - so how do we know that the universe hasn't always been expanding? How do you know that stuff isn't being ejected from the center of the universe now? Why do we assume that the universe "started" in the first place?

sounds very much like omega point theory/logos
Omega Point - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

logos you can still separate from the christian foundation and logos/word (the word in the beginning was the word) for a approach of "through which all things are made" separate of the christian/judaism religion.
logos in and of itself is a interest concept to contemplate. While repeated in the bible logos/the word has ramifications beyond the judaism text.

 

[unpopular]

What if the energy that compresses the singularity is exchanged into the universe, essentially turning itself inside out?

 

[Designer]

Here's where the rubber meets the road: No scientist says, "I claim that "X" is true. I have no proof, no evidence, nothing to support it, not even a mathematical equation. I just pulled it out of my butt last night after too much heroin and pizza. If you cannot disprove what I've just now claimed, you must accept it."

Actually, yes, this is going on right now.

In deference to TPF's policy against politically charged posts, I will not elaborate.

 

[pgriz]

The universe may in fact be eternal, but we may not be able to understand this anymore than a ant can understand orbital physics. When scientists try to determine why certain constants have the values that they do, they often come to the conclusion that the specific properties are rather arbitrary. However, these values are tuned in such a way that they make matter possible, and for us to be able to exist. Some see in this the hand of God. Others hypothesize that the "big bang" that created our universe is actually a bubble in a much larger space, where spontaneous generation of universes is an on-going process, with each created universe having a arbitrary set of basic properties. In most of those universes, the physical laws are different from ours, and in most life as we understand it would not be possible. So the fact that WE exist may be a cosmic coincidence where all the physical properties coalesced to values which would allow life as we know it. Personally, I have a hard time understanding how multiple universes could exist, but then my intellect has a hard time understanding time as the fourth dimension. Yet physicists have conceptualized universes with many more dimensions than four, and if that is in fact possible, then it's quite possible that the other dimensions are connected to the ones we perceive in ways that our minds cannot understand (yet). Sorry, Buckster, haven't yet watched your posted lecture. Planning to do that while I'm resting my tired body after doing some yard work which I'm going to start in a few minutes. It may have already answered some of the questions I'm asking.

 

[The_Traveler]

The universe may in fact be eternal, but we may not be able to understand this anymore than a ant can understand orbital physics

I think this is a great sentence.
As a (former) scientist, I can live with ambiguity while trying to pin down certainty.
It has always been my opinion that it is people who are afraid of the ambiguity of the real world that find and cling to the certainty of the definite belief.

 

[pgriz]

What if the energy that compresses the singularity is exchanged into the universe, essentially turning itself inside out?

The problem is that we may be not asking the right questions, or seeing the question from the right perspective. If we perceive only four dimensions, and yet "space" is actually a higher-order structure, then the particles and energies in those other dimensions may have an effect on the dimensions we perceive, but would be otherwise invisible to us. The so-called dark matter may in fact give us an opening into that. The grand unification theory which tries to reconcile gravity/relativity with quantum effects may also reach into the higher-order dimensions to get things to play nice together.

 

[The_Traveler]

It is much easier and more comforting to assume that some benevolent force is watching over us rather than to contemplate that we may be rather stupid, albeit complex, organisms that are just muddling around in our little part of reality.

It is empowering and, in my opinion, rather pretentious to think that any one of us has actually some pull with this benevolent force.

One look at the "pillars of creation" , a structure with arms that are 4 light years long and that was destroyed 1000 years ago, should make any 'believer' wonder really about his importance in this cosmos. Persisting in belief after seeing this photograph is really a defense mechanism.

 

[Fred Berg]

It's all gone a little religious, hasn't it? It wasn't my intention to steer things in that direction.

The article claims that there are people who are resistant to facts and that scientists are puzzled by this phenomenon.

It seems that many people are starting to become indifferent to science, perhaps some are turning away from it because it worries them or they feel it is no longer some sort of quest for knowledge which will serve and benefit all, but rather that it has become a tool of multi-national companies and is used more and more to make as much profit for them without much or any consideration of the consequences.

When people can ignite their tap water, or see good arable land being used to produce eco-fuel instead of food crops although the prices in the markets are high and there are people starving in the world, or when they find out that their cornflakes contain chromosomes from fish, well it's hardly surprising.

Also, a certain apathy might well be expected when billions of USD are invested in projects such as the LHC, or in going to the Moon (and soon enough Mars) and yet ordinary working people can't even afford to go to a dentist and many millions in the world have no access to fresh drinking water and receive little or no education.

Science is perhaps its own worst enemy in this case as it appears to have lost touch with the reality of the world and would seem to be concerning itself more and more with high and mighty concerns (in and of themselves very noble, certainly) but losing touch with the grassroots. Religion (and I refer here to the christian churches in Germany in particular because although I personally am not a religious person these are what I read about in my newspaper, etc., ) has quite similar problems.

 

[Fred Berg]

My point was, and is, that there is little to choose between science and religion: they work in much the same way, as do their followers. Besides, they are not mutually exclusive and both serve a purpose in society. Religion needs miracles and science needs theories. You pays your money and you takes your choice, either way you'll be sixpence none the wiser.

Let's test that theory.

Say you order two large pizzas with everything to satisfy the hunger of several friends who dropped in unexpectedly. Twenty minutes later there's a knock at the door and there's a guy standing there with his vinyl bag that keeps the pizzas warm for the delivery.

He pulls the first box out and hands it to you. You can feel the heft and the warmth and smell the pizza inside it. You turn and hand it to someone else, and they rush off to open the box so the guests can start digging in.

The guy pulls out the second box and hands it to you. It feels unusually lightweight, like an empty box - there's no heft to it. It's not warm, and smells like an empty box instead of a pizza with everything. Curious, you open it up and see no pizza. It looks JUST LIKE an empty box.

The guy at the door says, "That's fifteen bucks apiece, so your total is thirty bucks."

You say, "but I only got one pizza, not two. This box is empty." and you show him the box. He says, "No, there's a pizza in there. You just can't see it because it's an invisible, weightless pizza. Just trust me and take my word for it - it's there."

Are they really the same? Are they really equal? Are you really going to say that the one with no actual evidence of a real pizza is the same as the one that you and your guests can actually see, feel, smell and taste?

Do you "pays your money" or not?

You know what they say: Man cannot live by pizza alone.