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bizarrodrinker
Oct 24, 2006, 1:10 PM
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The burden of proof is not on you; it's on those who believe. The existence of God is not a 50/50 proposition.
Jay
The burden of proof is not on those who believe either. It is on those who are trying to sell you on why you should believe. Most people don't care what you believe in, but will tend to feel sorry for you for "condemning" yourself through lack of faith.
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tradman
Oct 24, 2006, 1:59 PM
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In reply to: The burden of proof is not on those who believe either. It is on those who are trying to sell you on why you should believe. Most people don't care what you believe in, but will tend to feel sorry for you for "condemning" yourself through lack of faith.
You can be told over and over what something is like, but until you do it for yourself, you can't really know for yourself, can you?
Evidence only has small value compared to experience in these matters.
I'm agree that people like that can be irritating, but I prefer not to dwell on people's bad points. Even blondgecko, with whom I frequently disagree, has a strength of conviction and an enthusiasm for his subject that I can't help but admire.
Shouldn't we look for the good in people even when they don't look for it in us?
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robbovius
Oct 24, 2006, 2:30 PM
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In reply to: Shouldn't we look for the good in people even when they don't look for it in us?
...as the essence of unconditional love, yes.
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tradman
Oct 24, 2006, 2:42 PM
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"In the practice of tolerance, the best teacher is your enemy".
Thanks for all the lessons man!
:wink:
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robbovius
Oct 24, 2006, 3:16 PM
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In reply to: "In the practice of tolerance, the best teacher is your enemy". Thanks for all the lessons man! :wink:
As have we both learned. ;-)
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fracture
Oct 24, 2006, 5:09 PM
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In reply to: What I'm basically saying is that experience itself is different than descriptions, beliefs, concepts about and interpretations of experience, matter, et al.
But this is a totally irrelevant claim. No one is really arguing against it.
What you're trying to do is say there's a set of facts relating to some sort of mystical/experiential/spirtual whatever-you-want-to-call-it that are true, but that they can only be known if you learn them by direct personal experience. It's somewhat like when a conspiracy theorist says that anyone who disagrees with him is just part of the conspiracy. It's not a defensible argument---it's just a bunch of hand waving.
In reply to: It might be the experience of being totally present, in, and yet somehow beyond time, or sensing into the infinate and empty nature of Mind, or knowing, for a flash, about the connectedness of things, and so forth.
Meaningless nonsense.
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blondgecko
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Oct 24, 2006, 9:51 PM
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In reply to: In reply to: Change some constants by 1-2 percent and life as we know it would not be possible - all hydrogen would fuse to heavier elements, or no hydrogen would fuse, etc... see here. Some universe would still exist. It might even support some sort of life. Change the cosmological constant, the pressure coming from dark energy or the gravitational constant and its asscoiation with dark matter and you get nothing at all. The universe could begin to start, but would never get past planck time.
Well, it'd be nice to see some reference for that, but I learned long ago not to expect anything like that from you.
Makes no difference, anyway. It's still just an argument from ignorance, and not even a very good one.
An analogy:
Take a standard deck of 52 playing cards. Shuffle them, then deal them out face up, and note the order.
Amazed yet? By your logic, you should be. The odds of you having dealt out the cards in that particular order are approximately 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 to one. You could deal out a billion hands a second for the age of the universe, and still not expect to see that deal again.
And yet, there they are.
Fact is, events with unimaginably small odds happen all the time. That that particular sperm fused with that particular egg to make you? At least a few hundred million to one. To make your parents? Square that. Your grandparents? Power of four. Great grandparents? we're already at somewhere around 1 in 10^66, about the same as the number for the deck of cards above.
See, the odds of any particular event happening only make sense before the fact, if you want one particular event to happen. The odds of something happening are precisely 1.0. We just happen to be that something.
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coloredchalker
Oct 25, 2006, 12:13 AM
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If this book is so good are you willing to send me copy?;) I'm willing to read it.
Surely no one really believes that not believing in God requires no faith. That is a foolish and laughable statement or either a very ignorant and proud statement.
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coloredchalker
Oct 25, 2006, 12:16 AM
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If this book is so good are you willing to send me copy?;) I'm willing to read it.
Surely no one really believes that not believing in God requires no faith. That is a foolish and laughable statement or either a very ignorant and proud statement.
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jt512
Oct 25, 2006, 12:27 AM
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In reply to: Surely no one really believes that not believing in God requires no faith.
It takes the same amount of faith to believe that there is no god as it does to believe that there is no flying spaghetti monster.
Jay
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tradman
Oct 25, 2006, 9:45 AM
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In reply to: Well, it'd be nice to see some reference for that, but I learned long ago not to expect anything like that from you.
I'm afraid I don't have a reference on the web, I got it from a TV programme. It's pretty straightforward though; if the cosmological constant is too small, expansion never dominates over gravity and the new universe collapses after some finite time.
In reply to: Amazed yet? By your logic, you should be.
:lol:
That's funny, but a poor analogy.
If only that one combination of 52 cards and a few select others won me a prize, then yes I'd be amazed if i did win. The flaw in your analogy: not all combinations in the universe produce useful results, in fact only a tiny minority do, which is why it's surprising that the result we do have is one of them.
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rrrADAM
Oct 25, 2006, 10:14 AM
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In reply to: That's funny, but a poor analogy. If only that one combination of 52 cards and a few select others won me a prize, then yes I'd be amazed if i did win. The flaw in your analogy: not all combinations in the universe produce useful results, in fact only a tiny minority do, which is why it's surprising that the result we do have is one of them.
Actually, its a pretty good one, but the problem is that most people cannot grasp the real numbers involved and how large they really are...
The possible combinations of the cards don't even come close to the numbers of stars in just our galaxy alone, let alone the universe. As you even admit, [in regards to: "...combinations in the universe produce useful results...] "...in fact only a tiny minority do..." That "tiny minority" while fractionally small in comparison to the entire universe, it is a HUGE number in total... Meaning there is a HUGE number of "tiny minorities".
An example of how most people are unable to grasp huge numbers, guess off the top of your head how many seconds old you are, then do the math. You will see that a billion is a much larger number than most think, and thats only 10^9.
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blondgecko
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Oct 25, 2006, 11:06 AM
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In reply to: In reply to: That "tiny minority" while fractionally small in comparison to the entire universe, it is a HUGE number in total... Meaning there is a HUGE number of "tiny minorities". Well, not really. In the case of the cosmological constant, as far as I know only 5 values out of infinity are known to work, and only 3 of those don't have very big problems. And only 1 produces the relatively stable system we have in our universe. It's not a proportion, it's a simple number: 5 out of infinity. That's not a huge number.
5 values out of infinity?
:wtf:
Would this be like the answers to logic problems coming out as zero or infinity?
Your certainty is matched only by your ignorance.
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blondgecko
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Oct 25, 2006, 11:25 AM
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In reply to: In reply to: Would this be like the answers to logic problems coming out as zero or infinity? No, not really. The cosmological constant gives rise to 2 spatial kinds (open and closed) of universe, and 5 dynamic types (collapsing, expanding, reverting, bouncing and loitering). These types only arise within a very small set of values. This isn't my certainty by the way, this is just the current thinking on cosmology. I notice you haven't got any evidence to the contrary.
You've missed my point, of course. You're claiming that there's only 5 discrete values that work, when the real numbers are, of course, continuous. If you knew as much as you claim to, you'd know that you don't talk about individual values that work, you talk about ranges.
Still an argument from ignorance (and getting more ignorant by the minute).
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blondgecko
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Oct 25, 2006, 11:29 AM
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In reply to: If this book is so good are you willing to send me copy?;) I'm willing to read it.
You'll have to wait your turn. My copy's earmarked for a few other people first.
In reply to: Surely no one really believes that not believing in God requires no faith. That is a foolish and laughable statement or either a very ignorant and proud statement.
Oh, I don't believe there's no god, nor do I believe there is one. I do believe, however, that to believe that the Christian God doesn't exist requires no faith at all, simply a reasonably thorough study of the Bible.
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tradman
Oct 25, 2006, 11:39 AM
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In reply to: You've missed my point, of course. You're claiming that there's only 5 discrete values that work, when the real numbers are, of course, continuous. If you knew as much as you claim to, you'd know that you don't talk about individual values that work, you talk about ranges.
Well, I clearly know a lot more about this than you. 2 spatial kinds, 5 dynamic types, each of which is the result of a the cosmological constant being within a narrow range of values.
Still no evidence to the contrary I see.
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blondgecko
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Oct 25, 2006, 12:44 PM
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In reply to: In reply to: You've missed my point, of course. You're claiming that there's only 5 discrete values that work, when the real numbers are, of course, continuous. If you knew as much as you claim to, you'd know that you don't talk about individual values that work, you talk about ranges. Well, I clearly know a lot more about this than you. 2 spatial kinds, 5 dynamic types, each of which is the result of a the cosmological constant being within a narrow range of values. Still no evidence to the contrary I see.
Well, at least now I've got you talking about ranges. Hopefully we'll hear no more of this "5 values out of inifinity" weirdness.
There's a reasonably good website about the cosmological constant and its implications for the behaviour of the universe here.
I'm not sure how many ways I can keep putting this: your argument is nothing more than an appeal to ignorance.
We don't know what physical constraints there are on the cosmological constant.
We don't know how many universes exist or have existed.
Given these two points, arguing about the probability of our particular value occurring is utterly ridiculous.
We. Don't. Know.
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tradman
Oct 25, 2006, 12:53 PM
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Hmm, the "aliens did it" defence, eh?
The idea that what we think we know could be wrong due to special circumstances you can't and won't explain, therefore there's doubt, therefore we can assert nothing.
Nope, sorry.
You'll have to do a bit better than, "because I say so" to dismiss this entire branch of science as inconsequential.
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jt512
Oct 25, 2006, 5:29 PM
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In reply to: Oh, I don't believe there's no god, nor do I believe there is one. I do believe, however, that to believe that the Christian God doesn't exist requires no faith at all, simply a reasonably thorough study of the Bible.
Why do you think it is even a serious enough proposition to require a study of the Bible?
Jay
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coloredchalker
Oct 25, 2006, 6:02 PM
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see below VVVVVV
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coloredchalker
Oct 25, 2006, 6:07 PM
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In reply to: You'll have to wait your turn. My copy's earmarked for a few other people first. In reply to: Surely no one really believes that not believing in God requires no faith. That is a foolish and laughable statement or either a very ignorant and proud statement. Oh, I don't believe there's no god, nor do I believe there is one. I do believe, however, that to believe that the Christian God doesn't exist requires no faith at all, simply a reasonably thorough study of the Bible.
I'll wait my turn...
My only point in this is that faith is never going end, or die or even disappear because everyone is having faith that they are right.
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vivalargo
Oct 25, 2006, 7:04 PM
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In reply to: In reply to: What I'm basically saying is that experience itself is different than descriptions, beliefs, concepts about and interpretations of experience, matter, et al. But this is a totally irrelevant claim. No one is really arguing against it. What you're trying to do is say there's a set of facts relating to some sort of mystical/experiential/spirtual whatever-you-want-to-call-it that are true, but that they can only be known if you learn them by direct personal experience. It's somewhat like when a conspiracy theorist says that anyone who disagrees with him is just part of the conspiracy. It's not a defensible argument---it's just a bunch of hand waving. In reply to: It might be the experience of being totally present, in, and yet somehow beyond time, or sensing into the infinate and empty nature of Mind, or knowing, for a flash, about the connectedness of things, and so forth. Meaningless nonsense.
Easy there, Tex. You're falling into the trap of believing that just because something tumbles out of your mouth ("meaningless nonsense") it is necessarily true or even credible. What have you just said? You've basically said that the examples I gave are experiences you have not had, hence, to you, they are meaningless. You loose your way when you try and universalize your experience to be selfsame as everyone, ergo, whoever has had such experiences has, in fact, experienced "meaningless nonsense." Not so, hombre. Not even close.
As human beings, direct experience has always been, and will always be, our principal mode of "knowing." No matter how good a map I provided you of your wife or boyfriend, no matter how good a topo I gave you of El Cap, you would only know a few details about both, and your "knowing" would never be remotely complete till you had directe experience of same. Your idea of epistomology (knowing) favors qantative breakdowns of things over directly encountering the thing itself--and some in your camp would go so far as to say the only real knowing is achieved through the derivitive details, meaning you'd rather read the guidebook than climb the crack, so to speak, because the real "knowing" rests not in the actual climbing, but in the guidebook descriptions, and that facts based on the experience of climbing the crack are "meaningless nonesense" since they cannot be "proven," replicated in a lab, et al. This, of course, is the pure bosh, and is not how even you live your actual (not imagined) life.
In short, the only way that you'll ever "know" anything about things spiritual is through the same process that you first came to know water or air or rock or your girlfriend or boyfriend--through direct experience. This knowing is not a matter of offering a "defensible argument," which is a scientific protocol. The mistake you and many others make is to put a fundamentalist faith on scientific protocols as being the only way we humans can know anything, when in our daily lives, we use direct experience as our main method of collecting data and information. Lastly,
I suspect that your description of "facts" is also a fundamantalist one meaing a fact is and can only be a measurement, and that everything that you cannot measure is "meaningless nonesense." The simple fact is you'd have to be fluent with everything you cannot measure before you'd actually know that, and a mindset that will not inquire into same is one guaranteed to never know--a closed loop, in other words. The shame is you're putting restrictions on your experience that are the result of cognitive prohibitions, and are not accurate representatiolns of reality whatsoever.
JL
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blondgecko
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Oct 25, 2006, 9:33 PM
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In reply to: Hmm, the "aliens did it" defence, eh? The idea that what we think we know could be wrong due to special circumstances you can't and won't explain, therefore there's doubt, therefore we can assert nothing. Nope, sorry. You'll have to do a bit better than, "because I say so" to dismiss this entire branch of science as inconsequential.
:wtf:
Have you been drinking?
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