The effects of dark matter on visible matter can be observed and measured. The moment anything even remotely similar for a god is postulated is the moment the two things can be mentioned in the same discussion with any degree of rationality. Until then it's simply sleight of hand.

(March 14, 2017 at 8:31 am)Stimbo Wrote: The effects of dark matter on visible matter can be observed and measured. The moment anything even remotely similar for a god is postulated is the moment the two things can be mentioned in the same discussion with any degree of rationality. Until then it's simply sleight of hand.

Regardless, no amount of gap filling with any god claim of any religion is an explanation. 

One book by Victor Stenger makes this type of point. It is really as simple as knowing while you cannot see wind you can see the effects wind has on the objects around it. In Victor Stenger's book "The New Atheism", he makes this very point. Science does have something to say about god claims. If something has an effect on something else, science can be used to detect even the unseen. Scientific method has a long term ethos of adapting to data, and ethical scientists don't try to mold results to suit their personal desires, but should go where the evidence leads. 

But again, you take his book along with Dawkin's "The God Delusion", you end up seeing what is really going on. There is no god, never was a need for one in reality. You end up accepting that humans make them up as result of flawed perceptions which are really nothing more than a reflection of their own human qualities.

Whatever dark matter has or any unknowns it has right now, do not get filled by inserting any god into a gap. Dark matter gets upheld or revised or scrapped through one process and one process only, scientific method and peer review.

(March 14, 2017 at 8:13 am)Harry Nevis Wrote:

(March 14, 2017 at 12:02 am)Godschild Wrote: How can you have evidence of an unseen thing, if you apply your logic to dark matter you have to extend it to God. I have never claimed l can give an atheist the evidence he/she requires to prove God, the Bible tells us about evidence {which l accept) but non-believers refuse to accept. So how do l differ on dark matter than from you on the Bible.

GC

Because yours is an emotional need and dark matter is a scientific theory.

That makes no sense. Christianity is not an emotional religion it it a personal relationship.

GC

(March 14, 2017 at 11:50 am)Godschild Wrote:

(March 14, 2017 at 8:13 am)Harry Nevis Wrote: Because yours is an emotional need and dark matter is a scientific theory.

That makes no sense. Christianity is not an emotional religion it it a personal relationship.

GC

*Cough*..............*Bullshit*

The bible from the first page to the last is one giant Jerry Springer show full of emotional appeal and emotional blackmail. The bible is one long convoluted soap opera. 

Even your own book God calls himself a "jealous" god.

"personal relationship" is simply your insecure attempt to cling to that book while trying to avoid the history and flaws, both moral and scientific,  in it. Yea sure, cherry picking it works because well, how convenient it magically suits your own desire to want your god to be true. Yea ok, but Muslims and Jews and Hindus also want their God/god/deities have "relationships" with their fictional heros too.

The god of Abraham throughout the entire book acts like an insecure bully and at the end of it tortures everyone who didn't kiss his ass. That is what school yard bullies do, that is what dictators do.

(March 14, 2017 at 11:50 am)Godschild Wrote:

(March 14, 2017 at 8:13 am)Harry Nevis Wrote: Because yours is an emotional need and dark matter is a scientific theory.

That makes no sense. Christianity is not an emotional religion it it a personal relationship.

GC

It makes perfect sense.  You can't see it because rationality has little to do with emotion.  Your religion fills an emotional need, similar to a personal relationship.  You're defenses and assertions are quite like someone describing the same.  The name calling and condescension shows it to be that of a teenager.

When G-C says there is "no evidence" he means he did not read it in his Ancient Goat-Fuckers Manual.

(March 14, 2017 at 12:30 pm)Minimalist Wrote: When G-C says there is "no evidence" he means he did not read it in his Ancient Goat-Fuckers Manual.

Considering what I am having to get used to now in my daily life not having my mom, I needed that. Just glad I didn't have a mouth full of coffee or food when I read this. Please tell us how you really feel.

The existence of dark matter and the existence of God are both hypotheses. The difference is that scientific hypotheses aren't just random ideas some scientist pulled out of his ass to account for yet-to-be-explained phenomena. Dark matter is THE MOST reasonable guess that scientists can make to explain the nature of the Universe's structure.

Occam's razor dictates that "among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected". This is demonstrable and not merely an unsubstantiated presupposition. When you return home from work and see that your living room window is shattered and your television is missing, do you assume demonic possession or a burglary? Hypotheses with the fewest assumptions are derived from preexisting phenomena and data to a greater extent, and hence are always more likely to be true.

There is no point in cherry-picking in an attempt to discredit dark matter as a hypothesis, because by doing that you are no step closer to an alternative explanation.

(March 14, 2017 at 1:08 am)Nonpareil Wrote:

(March 14, 2017 at 12:02 am)Godschild Wrote: How can you have evidence of an unseen thing

If someone standing beside me is suddenly shot, I don't have to find the shooter to know that there is a gun involved.

The shooter, gun and bullet all are seeable, touchable matter that effect the outcome, dark matter has none of their qualities if it did we would have proof of it's existence. Dark matter is a plug in so the big bang can continue to be a money maker for science.

(March 14, 2017 at 12:02 am)Godschild Wrote: if you apply your logic to dark matter you have to extend it to God.

Nonpareil Wrote:No, Godschild. Dark matter has evidence supporting it. Gods do not.

I have evidence God exists, so much so that I have no doubt of His existence. You keep telling me that dark matter has evidence, is that all you got.

(March 14, 2017 at 12:02 am)Godschild Wrote: I have never claimed l can give an atheist the evidence he/she requires to prove God, the Bible tells us about evidence {which l accept) but non-believers refuse to accept.

Nonpareil Wrote:Because the Bible is not evidence. Point blank, period. There is and can be no arguing on this point.

The Bible has been used to discover many places lost to time and is still used today in that manner. That is evidence whether you think so or not. The Bible pointed to a black pharaoh of Egypt long before we knew there was. The Egyptians had wiped their history clean of this as they have many things. Egypt's history is not nearly as reliable as once thought and now the dating of the dynasties has come under fire. The Bible has be much more reliable.

Nonpareil Wrote:when you start claiming to have actual evidence, you're going to have to start presenting some.

This is something you have ignored in this thread, that's the problem with philosophical speech it tends to lack evidence.

GC

(March 14, 2017 at 11:05 pm)Godschild Wrote:

(March 14, 2017 at 1:08 am)Nonpareil Wrote: If someone standing beside me is suddenly shot, I don't have to find the shooter to know that there is a gun involved.

The shooter, gun and bullet all are seeable, touchable matter  that effect the outcome, dark matter has none of their qualities if it did we would have proof of it's existence.

It is at this point that I really have to pause the discussion and ask what you think the phrase "dark matter" means, and what you think our understanding of it is.

In brief, and very much simplified: our current understanding of gravity indicates that galaxies should behave in a certain way, assuming that mass is distributed throughout their structures as we would expect it to be. However, when we look at some galaxies, we see them behaving differently, which indicates one of two possibilities: either our understanding of gravity is completely wrong, or there is more matter in those galaxies than we can see. Since our understanding of gravity seems to work pretty well, all things considered, it doesn't look like the first is a real possibility, so we look at the second - there's more matter there, but we can't see it with our current limited tools - as the operational one, and the one worth the most investigation.

We call this stuff that we can't see "dark matter".

This is why I used the example of a person getting shot indicating the presence of a shooter. It wasn't an inaccurate analogy. When someone is shot, we can look at the wound and see the bullet. We know what fires bullets - guns - and so we can safely conclude that this person was shot by a gun.

In the same way, when we look at these galaxies and see them behaving as though there is a large gravitational force acting on them, we know that what causes gravitational forces is mass, and thus conclude that there must be some mass there, even though we can't directly see it.

Now, is it possible that our understanding of gravity is completely wrong? I would personally say that the chances of that are so low as to be effectively nil, but for the sake of this discussion, we can say that yes, it is a technical possibility. In the same way, it is technically possible that, if someone standing next to you was shot, there was, in fact, no shooter, but instead a freak spark of electricity or whatever set off an unprecedented magnetic storm, or whatever, and simply threw the bullet into the man's chest.

So yes. The theories concerning dark matter could be overturned at some point in the future. They are not yet one hundred percent established as fact. But they are still evidence-based, and are rational conclusions when working with the data that we have available. Belief in God is not evidence-based.

The comparison remains invalid.

(March 14, 2017 at 11:05 pm)Godschild Wrote: I have evidence God exists

No, you don't.

(March 14, 2017 at 11:05 pm)Godschild Wrote: The Bible has been used to discover many places lost to time and is still used today in that manner. That is evidence whether you think so or not.

No, it's not. Even if all of this were true - and it isn't, but I don't care to get into the discussion, because it is once again irrelevant - it would not in any way make the Bible evidence for the existence of a deity.