Would you be an atheist if science and reason wasn't supportive of atheism?

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

And you just proved mine.

Rationality is very rare to find among atheists.

We need to inculcate children against growing up with this kind of irrationality underpinning their atheism.

WE The unified and united marching monolithic block of non individual! ATHEISTS!!!!

damn! you might not ba a stooge but maybe just a fashist

If you don't know how to read an article and find a cited study, you need not expect your opinion to be taken seriously by me.

[Something completely different]

As I think Albert Camus said about Vichy:

"C'est le ridicule d'une personne qui pousse la responsabilité de ses erreurs sur les autres"

This is the redicoulusness of the person who pushes his failures onto others.

[Voltron]

For science to be against atheism it would've found verifiable evidence for god.

So I for one would accept the existence of said "god".

As to whether I would worship this entity, that's another thing.

I used to think this.

But I think most sophisticated Christian philosophers and academics posit a new probabilistic avenue for science supporting God.

It boils down to comparing probabilities. What's the probability the universe, the earth- the world we live in came about due to unguided naturalistic processes, versus with the existence of God.

What this argument does is show that considering only unguided processes (evolution, natural selection, etc), universes that support life are just mindbogglingly unlikely to come out in such a way as to actually be sustainable for any long period of time, LET ALONE long enough to sustain life of any kind, LET ALONE life as complex as human life.

In fact, this has become something of a mainstay in Cosmology (study of the universe), being called "the anthropic principle". Anthro = human.

I had to look this up, but Roger Penrose calculates that the odds of the initial conditions of the universe coming about in such a way is 1 in 10^10^123.

10^10 is 10 billion, by the way.

This doesn't support god.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

I used to think this.

But I think most sophisticated Christian philosophers and academics posit a new probabilistic avenue for science supporting God.

It boils down to comparing probabilities. What's the probability the universe, the earth- the world we live in came about due to unguided naturalistic processes, versus with the existence of God.

What this argument does is show that considering only unguided processes (evolution, natural selection, etc), universes that support life are just mindbogglingly unlikely to come out in such a way as to actually be sustainable for any long period of time, LET ALONE long enough to sustain life of any kind, LET ALONE life as complex as human life.

In fact, this has become something of a mainstay in Cosmology (study of the universe), being called "the anthropic principle". Anthro = human.

I had to look this up, but Roger Penrose calculates that the odds of the initial conditions of the universe coming about in such a way is 1 in 10^10^123.

10^10 is 10 billion, by the way.

This doesn't support god.

It doesn't "support" the idea of a God. It simply makes the idea of the universe coming about without a God terribly implausible verging on impossible.

Therefore allowing for a rational basis to conclude that it's much more likely that a God exists.

This argument is not easy to refute, but I have some possible answers to it.

---

As I think Albert Camus said about Vichy:

"C'est le ridicule d'une personne qui pousse la responsabilité de ses erreurs sur les autres"

As I say about you:

"When Fritz makes a mistake, he appeals to a foreign language to try and confuse his way out of his own mess."

Thanks for playing. Good day.

[Something completely different]

give me your source!!!!


If the only thing you can provide is the disingenious non scientific rants of an inhibited angy feminist and from a catholic newsagency.

You cannot make a case that can withhold the storm of factual evaluation.

[Zen Badger]

It doesn't "support" the idea of a God. It simply makes the idea of the universe coming about without a God terribly implausible verging on impossible.

Therefore allowing for a rational basis to conclude that it's much more likely that a God exists.

This argument is not easy to refute, but I have some possible answers to it.

This is what is known as a "hypothesis".

When you actually have some evidence to back it up it will be a "theory".

[Voltron]

This doesn't support god.

It doesn't "support" the idea of a God. It simply makes the idea of the universe coming about without a God terribly implausible verging on impossible.

Therefore allowing for a rational basis to conclude that it's much more likely that a God exists.

This argument is not easy to refute, but I have some possible answers to it.

The way that you put it, this entire idea is based on trying to explain the universe by injecting a designer into the equation. Something is highly unlikely and we can't explain it, so god must have done it, right?

What are your answers to it?

[Angrboda]

As Victor Stenger quite rightly points out, if you want to know which of two events is more probable, you have to know the probability for both events, otherwise it's just an argument from incredulity. I'd like to see your calculations for the probability of the existence of God. Please show your work.


I'm seriously impressed, Vinny. This isn't your usual batch of warmed over arguments from ignorance and arguments from incredulity. By claiming that a lack of reasoned debate on this forum indicates a lack of reasoning in the debaters, you've gone above and beyond the call of duty and given us an argument from silence. Wow! Did it cost extra for the twirly hubcaps?

[Gilgamesh]

I wouldn't be an atheist if there was evidence to support a god claim and I believed it.

'Dat simple.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

give me your source!!!!

If the only thing you can provide is the disingenious non scientific rants of an inhibited angy feminist and from a catholic newsagency.

You cannot make a case that can withhold the storm of factual evaluation.

I'm not your babysitter.

Go look in the thread. I provided plenty of sources.

It doesn't "support" the idea of a God. It simply makes the idea of the universe coming about without a God terribly implausible verging on impossible.

Therefore allowing for a rational basis to conclude that it's much more likely that a God exists.

This argument is not easy to refute, but I have some possible answers to it.

This is what is known as a "hypothesis".

When you actually have some evidence to back it up it will be a "theory".

No, it's not merely a hypothesis, it's a fact.

It doesn't "support" the idea of a God. It simply makes the idea of the universe coming about without a God terribly implausible verging on impossible.

Therefore allowing for a rational basis to conclude that it's much more likely that a God exists.

This argument is not easy to refute, but I have some possible answers to it.

The way that you put it, this entire idea is based on trying to explain the universe by injecting a designer into the equation. Something is highly unlikely and we can't explain it, so god must have done it, right?

What are your answers to it?

It could be that they are just trying to inject a designer into the equation.

But it's full-on impossibru to explain the universe without a designer. 10^10^123 is just one component of the magic fine-tuning equation. There are between 12-20 other variables that are fine-tuned such that if you change the variable by one in one-billionth of a part, the universe ceases to exist. For example the electromagnetic force, which needs to be at precisely the right level in order for atoms to exist without imploding on themselves.

Add all the numbers up and it's so large you give up trying to count the zeroes. In fact, one illustration said it best:

Imagine a tornado, flailing junk around. Now imagine when the tornado dies, you see the randomly flung junk just happened to fall against each other in such a way as to create a 747. Imagine the odds of that. Now imagine the entire earth covered in tornadoes like that, and every single one of them creates a 747. Now imagine the entire universe stopped expanding, and instead was filled from top to bottom with tornadoes, and every single one, without exception just happened to create a 747.

The odds of the entire universe full of tornadoes creating 747s is not enough to account for the improbability of the universe coming about in such a way as to give rise to life.



Incidentally, this is why the multiverse hypothesis is so popular. If you have 10^10^10^10 gazillion universes, there's bound to be one random universe that gets all the properties right like this, right?

But we have no evidence for a multiverse...

That's one answer. And there's another answer which is sort of a deistic answer. Ie, there was a great intelligence that guided the universe into existence and that's that. It's just enough to take us over the hump of fine-tuning. Einstein believed in this kind of a God.

But I'm reading more about the multiverse. Intriguing stuff.