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RE: Either way - It's almost too amazing to be true.
April 21, 2014 at 1:25 pm
(This post was last modified: April 21, 2014 at 1:26 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(April 21, 2014 at 1:19 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: I can't make a comment - and it comes back - to whether it proves God or not. I wasn't talking about it proving God or even making his existence more likely. I was just talking about how life is amazing. Saying it's almost too good to be true, is just an expression not to be taken literally.
You should adjust what you would think as amazing in light of best information on the mathematical probability.
Mathematical probability suggests the chance of life arising and evolving to high complexity in the universe is staggeringly high.
Therefore the fact that life is abundant and complex is expected, trivially ordinary an outcome. It would be yokelish to be amazed at that which is so overwhelmingly likely.
If there was no life, then you should be amazed.
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RE: Either way - It's almost too amazing to be true.
April 21, 2014 at 1:25 pm
(April 21, 2014 at 1:23 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: (April 21, 2014 at 1:19 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: I can't make a comment - and it comes back - to whether it proves God or not. I wasn't talking about it proving God or even making his existence more likely. I was just talking about how life is amazing. Saying it's almost too good to be true, is just an expression not to be taken literally.
But the context of your post leaves an implied intent. You posted that life is almost too amazing to be an 'accident' on an atheist forum. How did you expect us to respond?
I never said it's too amazing to be an accident. I said there are natural explanations/theories but it's none the less bewildering and amazing.
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RE: Either way - It's almost too amazing to be true.
April 21, 2014 at 1:25 pm
(April 21, 2014 at 1:24 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: This amazing and wonderful world we live in is incredible and speaks volumes on what a great Creator we have.
An amazing world is not contingent on a creator.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
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RE: Either way - It's almost too amazing to be true.
April 21, 2014 at 1:28 pm
(April 21, 2014 at 1:25 pm)Kitanetos Wrote: (April 21, 2014 at 1:24 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: This amazing and wonderful world we live in is incredible and speaks volumes on what a great Creator we have.
An amazing world is not contingent on a creator.
Amazement speaks more of pitifully provincial outlook and slowness in uptake than genuine improbability of this aspect of reality.
Considering how often and loadly Revs has already spoken of his own pitifully provincial outlook and slowness in uptake, it is getting tiresome to hear its repetition yet again.
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RE: Either way - It's almost too amazing to be true.
April 21, 2014 at 1:29 pm
(April 21, 2014 at 1:25 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: I never said it's too amazing to be an accident. I said there are natural explanations/theories but it's none the less bewildering and amazing.
I agree. You appear (there's that word again!) to have stumbled onto a truism.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Either way - It's almost too amazing to be true.
April 21, 2014 at 1:30 pm
(This post was last modified: April 21, 2014 at 1:31 pm by Cyberman.)
(April 21, 2014 at 1:24 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: This amazing and wonderful world we live in is incredible and speaks volumes on what a great Creator we have.
![[Image: CitationNeeded.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i160.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Ft187%2FSteambum%2FAF%2520Memes%2FCitationNeeded.jpg)
Now demonstrate why you think that "Creator" is your pet god.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Either way - It's almost too amazing to be true.
April 21, 2014 at 1:52 pm
(April 21, 2014 at 1:30 pm)Stimbo Wrote: (April 21, 2014 at 1:24 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: This amazing and wonderful world we live in is incredible and speaks volumes on what a great Creator we have.
Now demonstrate why you think that "Creator" is your pet god.
The line went dead.. u wont get an answer... its a one way conversation. .
Sad... just sad... I had a REV-ALATION
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RE: Either way - It's almost too amazing to be true.
April 21, 2014 at 1:58 pm
Theists of this stripe would make very piss-poor scientists: they never, ever, show their work.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Either way - It's almost too amazing to be true.
April 21, 2014 at 1:58 pm
(April 21, 2014 at 1:05 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Whether God exists or not, life is almost too amazing to be true.
Cells working together to create consciousness. Energy not being able to be destroyed.
Our feelings of value, morality, love, appreciation, praise, and beauty. Our pride. Our intelligence, our development of language.
It's all just too amazing.
Talking about God being so extraordinarily out of probability doesn't seem to make sense to me, when life is like that as well.
Yes these things have natural theories behind them, but it's none the less bewildering and amazing.
why can't god be "natural".
also, "awe" is only one emotion and in of itself not enough to explain why people believe.
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RE: Either way - It's almost too amazing to be true.
April 21, 2014 at 2:22 pm
(April 21, 2014 at 1:05 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Talking about God being so extraordinarily out of probability doesn't seem to make sense to me, when life is like that as well. Perhaps. But the god(s) that humans mostly worship today are supposed to reflect certain qualities that shine through in their handiwork. A magnificent waterfall, or the complex interactions of a hive of honeybees, or the feeling of the sun on your skin on a warm day might make you think there's someone behind those extraordinary things. Rev777 chalks it up to a particular god, for example.
But then we look at the other side of it, and are we left with that same sense of awe? A boa crushing a rabbit to death in its coils? A hawk tearing open a mouse's abdomen with a practiced twitch of it's razor sharp beak? Smallpox? All of these can be amazing in their own way, though they might not cause us a warm and fuzzy sensation (more of a chill deep in the pit of our stomach). Rev777 will probably chalk those things up to something else, of course, without recognizing how it undermines his belief that it's all part of god's grand design.
I think the universe and our biosphere really are amazing. I think that part of that amazement is just our own limited understanding of how things work. I also think it's very selective at times.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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