Fine tuning argument assessed

[Sword of Christ]

Only if we assume there is intention behind all processes.

You don't have to assume it but it's the obvious thing generally throughout history have assumed seeing as this how it looks. Particularly when you have process which develops from simplicity to greater complexity. People in the past didn't know all this but that's an interesting piece of knowledge we now have. This does tie in strongly with the assumption in question, if you can call it an assumption. An assumption makes it sound like it's wrong or not reasonable to consider it.

My main gripe with the 'why' sphere is that it already loads the conclusion in to the premesis, namely that all things/processes necessarily have meaning.

I think it helps to understand the purpose of your own life within the context of a purpose that itself has purpose. Of course that's the central tenant of Christian/Abrahamic faiths it has been from the beginning this is the idea of it. The idea is not necessarily mistaken.

Hopefully you can understand that, just as I see no inherent meaning in weather patterns, rock formations or the occurence of sun spots, so too do I see no inherent meaning for greater cosmological processes

You're not seeing the forest because you're too busy looking at the trees. Still if you want to really look at the individual parts like this you will see that universe is a mathematical framework, physical objects and processes will form themselves into the various shapes and patterns. From the shapes galaxies, weather systems, flowers and even the human body.

such as supernovas, supermassive blackholes

Everything is connected though, if there were no supernovas or supermassive blackholes there would be no galactic planetary formation and we would not exist. Our existence depends on everything else. This isn't non-scientific it's 100% factual and known. It's not just us here isolated on a little planet the rest of the universe having nothing to do with us, we are a part the system.

and indeed even the beginning of the universe. The why for all of these is Asking why assumes sentient agency

God is a sentient agency and God created the universe with a purpose in mind. The purpose is to create ourselves beings of freewill who can then have a loving relationship with God and each other. Though as we have freewill we can do something else with it but the freewill is the important part, we have a certain degree of separation from God as physical beings seeing as God is not physical.

but as we can see from many natural processes on earth there is no actual agency, merely a descriptive process that just is.

The agency only has to make to set the whole thing it's Newtonian motion so it will run itself.

See above, I moved from seeing agency in all things as you do, to realising that many things that religion has claimed agency for (tidal patterns, storms, illness etc) in fact have no agency

The universe runs itself on it's mathematical framework it doesn't mean God didn't create it or that he isn't present within it.

simply naturalistic explanations.

They didn't always exist so something else that did explains those.

As a moderate you appear to ascribe to more or less the same fundamental timescale of events (age of the universe, evolution through natural selection etc) as most of us do

These are all facts we know about but there is nothing here that would conflict with the kind of God Issac Newton believed in.

I just simply go one step further and remove that last instance of proposed agency from the start of the existence question.

You've gone several miles further in the opposite direction to by removing God from the picture and proposing a purposeless/accident universe. You removed the whole grounding for existence itself, the grounding for freewill and the basis of good and evil.

I'm glad we can at least agree on most things though, if i'm not mistaken.

There's no point disagreeing on scientific facts we know that's not open to debate. It's what lays behind them that is the issue.

You must understand we get some very fundamental theists here who insist on young earths, young universes, no evolutionary processes etc.

They have divorced themselves from reason and you have divorced yourself from belief/faith. You're both equally wrong to believe what you believe but on opposite sides.

Still you've evaded my question here, which is what criteria do you use for rejecting the bits that are purely human inference, whilst still retaining the elements from the stories that aren't human inventions and are the divine bits.

The Holy Spirit I guess. If you there's anything in there you don't "feel is right" then you're doing the same thing yourself. Perhaps we have a better understanding of God now than people did back then so we have in some way advanced in our moral understanding. There is a perfect ideal we could advance toward but because we are subject to sin we never will.

If the bible isn't completely the word of god, and only partially, how do you know which bits are which?

It's the historical product of a people who had a special relationship or Covenant with God which is told through their eyes. You just have to understand the context. It would be nice if certain passages weren't in there but they were just human people, no-ones saying they were flawless.

But it doesn't really complement any science or further any understanding.

It's not a scientific book so it shouldn't.

Religion has basically made no in-roads in to any understanding since its inception

Not scientific understanding, understanding of a different kind about something else.

All scientific discoveries have taken place in spite of religion never as a direct result of it.

Bloody hell no, do you know how and from what science originated? This science versus religion business is propaganda not the history of what really happened.

sure, religious people have furthered science

They founded modern science, they're the reason why we have science in the first place.

No later demonstrated facts have been predicted through revelation

We find out scientific facts by observation of data using our rational minds not revelation. Revelation deals with the topic of God and his relationship to man.

at least nothing specific that can defy all belief. If Jesus or Mohammed had crapped out the theory of relativity or explained (albeit briefly) the features of RNA then we'd have some serious shit to contend with

Apparently Mohammed made some revelations that were later found to be scientific or whatever but that's not what revelation is supposed to be for imo.

but instead all we've got is 'God made the first man out of some clay, or a bloody clot, or some dust' and 'salt water can't mix with fresh water'

Molded clay and water is a fair enough poetic description of what we physically are and how we were made.

I don't see how religion gives us a better understanding about anything

It gives you an understanding of God and your relationship to God.

it simply reasserts what it has always asserted, namely the primacy of religious scripture and the correctness of one's religion over any others.

You don't have to entirely reject other religions you can just have minor disagreements over certain points.

But that is too vague. It is conveniently unspecific. If he is everywhere, in all space-time coordinates, that he surely is physical from the outset, else he is nowhere.

Within the physical and beyond the physical, immanent and transcendent, everywhere and nowhere.

If he's thus more of a pantheist unifying energy, he is still operating on the turf of science.

He isn't any kind of energy or physical detectable presence he sustains and contains all of existence and has a relationship to his creatures.

If he is completely unverifiable then we have no evidence for him, and he is simply Carl Sagan's garage dragan and Bertrand Russell's celestial tea pot.

The evidence can't be of that kind given what God is so you will have to use other kinds of evidence, both objective and subjective. You can use logic and deductive reasoning as well.

A hypothesis that attempts to explain everything whilst being unverifiable is just useless at understanding how, and at best irrelevant to understanding why (if there even is a why).

It's more a context of purpose than an explanation. There isn't a scientific explanation on offer for anything there, we have science for that.

To have so many human characteristics simply suggests to me that he is made in man's image

We're made in his image, but we're corrupted by sin while God is entirely Holy. Being made in Gods image we're still essentially good though.

If something is maximally perfect then it surely doesn't require a purpose or a need

He just likes to have loving relationship with other beings yourself included.

else it is incomplete and still seeking fullfillment.

There's no point being a power of supreme love if you have no-one to share it with. This has to be expressed in a relationship with a community of beings. So that is why the universe/we exist.

Then the energy beam should be projected from one coordinate to another.

If God is omnipresent he wouldn't need to project anything anywhere as he would already be in the location in question.

It should be measurable.

You can measure the physical effect if there is any but if the cause of effect is beyond the physical it wouldn't be possible for us to explain why it's happening. You would just have something odd that happened and remains forever unexplained. Odd things do happen, much of it may be explainable in the naturalistic sense but there's no way to know.

Even if not, the cellular regeneration of the bone should be observable and recordable, pending further enquiry.

It would just be a medical mystery if the cause lays beyond the natural physical world we can observe. And there are medical mysteries like this.

Yeah many people have claimed jedi powers over the centuries. Mother Theresa etc, virtually none of them have ever opted to demonstrate their powers for testing, usually with the old "vulgar display of power" excuse, yet they will freely flaunt these powers to the converted (apparently) such as miracle healing etc.

It doesn't mean such things have never happened or don't still happen to people though for the most part I think it will be a little more subtle that more extreme end of the scale example.

Surely, to convince the sceptics, it would be better to subject miracle powers to rigorous testing so that these things that 'science can't explain'

There is the field of Noetics which researches this though at best if there's anything beyond the physic at work they will only attain data that is interesting but inconclusive. If it's a natural occurring effect then it will just be incorporated into standard scientific knowledge.

can blow science out of the water.

Science doesn't need to be blown out of the water but it can be advanced with new knowledge. We probably only know 0.0000000001% of what we could know about the universe.

If on the other hand they can't be measured by science, and are thus unvarifiable, then how do you know anything is happening at all?

We can only measure what lays within our own physical sphere as that's all can physically perceive with the senses we have.

Science requires a keenly open mind, we must accept at every step that our hypothesis is completely wrong, the history of electromagnetism is a great example of individuals accepting that they were completely mistaken with their initial hypothesese (sp?). Science declares from the outset quite clearly what would prove a theory wrong, religion conceeds no such weakness, it is eternally correct yet eternally unverifiable.

They are two different subjects, though there is some small amount of overlap but all you end up with is something unusual no-one can really explain and there is plenty of that.

I thought you said he was everywhere.

Absolutely he will be right where you're sitting now for instance. There is nothing there to see though.

Until he started raising zombies, then zombifying himself, and doing all the other miracles. If only those things could be performed now, in the presence of video recorders and measuring equipment.

There's no way to know whether that equipment could have captured the event in question or exactly what the event specifically entailed and how people experienced it. But there was some kind of experience a group of people had and this is part of the revelation, an understanding of God.

Again, he's got all the answers but we can't verify him

Science can't be used to prove the existence of God. Therefore you have little to no conflict. It's a matter of faith/belief and always will be till the end of time.

And thus unverifable. Sorry to keep coming back to this, but you say there's no evidence for him cus we can't test him, but then there is scripture which is a form of evidence (for you). A social science is still a science (think Psychology, Sociology etc). You're still claiming there is some form of evidence, albeit historical written evidence rather than demonstratable energy at work.

Science has it's scope based on the limits of human physical perception and God lays beyond this scope being beyond the physical.

Again, if he's not detectable or mesurable, then how do we know he's there

By various other means that have nothing specifically to do with science though science can be used as an argument in favour of Gods existence. It does demonstrate a rational comprehensible universe.

and how can we be forgiven for concluding that he is no mroe likely than Carl Sagan's garage dragon or Bertrand's celestial teapot?

Bertrands celestial strawman if a teapot is an object in space and time and provides no context or answers to anything.

Well, christianity wasn't the first monotheistic religion, and given the vast numbers of primitive human populations (we're talking small tribal units at the dawn of man) it's entirely possible that even a minority of them had some form of monotheistic view of the world, they simply didn't produce anything that survived the test of time.

You could say the Bible/Torah was a correction to a later error that crept into the primordial belief in the "Great Spirit" or whatever it was called when civilization developed, that being idolatry the worship of things that isn't God.

Ironically, most jesus fans worship pieces of carved wood and stone to this day

That's just iconography, basically it's something that looks kind of cool and makes you feel all Christian/religious and shit not something you worship.

A history of a people, albeit with wild claims (such as prophets living to 300 years old and people parting the ways) are surely truly indications of the beliefs and imaginations of primitive peoples in the abscence of better information about their surroundings?

Most of the prophets lived to around 120 which is scientifically known to be the maximum extent of the human lifespan, certainly beyond the average particularly of the time though. Perhaps God maintained them in health for as long as they were required. The 900 year old lifespans are probably going to be mythological/not literal so fair enough.

A history book doesn't automatically prove divine origin. Many individuals profoundly changed their communities, some of them claimed to have special powers and others didn't. What criteria am I supposed to use to chose Jesus as the right one and save myself a life of eternal torture in hell?

Hell is a voluntary separation from God rather than an eternal torture/punishment. Jesus parable of Lazarus and the rich man is a good interpretation of it though he uses fairly symbolic language. To achieve a full separation I think you will have develop a certain amount evil, selfishness, hatred and so on. This you will experience forever.

You seem like a nice guy, and i'm happy you acknowledged the massive role assigned to faith here. I just don't understand what criteria thinking people are supposed to use to conclude that a desert book is way more special than others, particularly when you admit yourself that none of it can be proven (and thus non of it constitutes evidence of itself).

Christianity is the only religion to offer grace over saving yourself through good works. So it would seem like the best deal overall. Plus most revelations tend to be centred on one man while the experience people had with Christ was a shared revelation in a community. So the more people you have the merrier it cuts down on the possibility of someone making up some bull for self gain. Also Jesus didn't really gain any status or power while he was alive as most religious founders tend to gain so that seems more genuine/impressive, he's no Joesph Smith.

But nothing in the bible can't be thought up and described by any of us here. Someone had to do it first, obviously, and indeed the Greeks and the Hindus applied many of the same attributes to a potential deity that the christians and jews did. Again, it's really not that unique.

It wouldn't be unique if it's true so there's your outside source confirmation.

Human reason is easily capable of conceptualising vague and unverifiable ideas such as 'eternity' and 'present everywhere'. It's precisely that they are so vague that leads me to conclude that these ideas truly did originate in human minds alone.

The human minds perception of God/reality.

Yeah it's got some nice bits, worthy of admiration. But some of the moral lessons (particularly in the OT) are truly abhorrent and are certainly not worthy of respect imho (inherited sin, giving your daughter up for gang bang rape sessions etc).

Those bits were a problem for early Christians right from the start but it is a product of an ancient culture as well as a revelation from God so everything will be packed together in there. You're not saying "It was right for them at the time" you think it was wrong in general so you're not a relativist as you ought to be as an atheist.

If he's not a thing then he's just another word for the universe; it is the sum-total of all things. If he is in any way seperate and unique (ie he stands out from other things) then he is surely a thing. If he is so far beyond the universe that indeed the universe is not the sum-total of all things, then there is another medium greater than the universe that god (and our universe) is contained within, and god is still a thing within something else. Otherwise, god cannot interact with the universe if it is not a thing that can be isolated and defined.

He contains the sum totality of existence and he is also infinitely and eternally beyond it as the Creator of the sum totality of existence.

it could all just be chance

No-ones saying it couldn't be. It would be fairly extraordinary if it was. though.

Again, if its unverifable you can hardly blame people for rejecting it, yet we're still expected to burn in hell for utterly refusing god's word.

You won't burn in hell for eternity you're just missing out on something/being wrong as far as I'm concerned. You don't seem to be filled with pure hate.

Chance is fine by me. God is anything but straightforward as far as i'm concerned, he is infinitely complex and requires some serious explaining, ideally by way of evidential support.

It's seems pretty straight forward enough, you have the Creator who is eternal/infinite and the creation and Gods creatures within it. The cause and the effect the object and the purpose. It ties together into a neat package. Nothing at all complicated about this it's very easy to understand.

It was precisely my introduction to the realm of science that led me away from religious education.

Some of the greatest scientific minds in history were religious/theists so by rights it shouldn't be an issue.

Since working in pathology labs for years I came to fully appreciate the importance of weighting up evidence. A book from the desert, in your own words, can't be proven or disproven. It's unverifable, and thus not much help for furthering understanding.

You made some kind of connection between that and a faith in God though no such connection exists.

[Angrboda]

Since working in pathology labs for years I came to fully appreciate the importance of weighting up evidence. A book from the desert, in your own words, can't be proven or disproven. It's unverifable, and thus not much help for furthering understanding.

You made some kind of connection between that and a faith in God though no such connection exists.

Oh? Pray tell where did you get your notion of God from, if it's in no way connected to the bible?

[JuliaL]

They have divorced themselves from reason and you have divorced yourself from belief/faith. You're both equally wrong to believe what you believe but on opposite sides.

Regarding most of your conversation....tldr...skimmed.
Your reliance on faith as infallible is unwarranted. Why have faith in faith? Why are you convinced that your feelings are valid, that there is something undetectable out there? Thinking you could withstand the actions of a cartesian demon is arrogant. The chief effect of such a demon is to cloud one's mind.
Are you perhaps a Sy-ten-Brut-what's-his-name presuppositionalist?
Have you been touched by an all powerful, all knowing entity or by a cosmic prankster? Even if it said it was AP and AK, why would you believe it? Were you forced by the all powerful part? For that matter, how would it know it was all knowing. If it didn't know, how did it tell you?

[Minimalist]

It has demonstrated that disease and sickness isn't caused by demons or entering the body and various other things like that but that's really just pre-science folk superstition rather than religion proper.

Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed.
"Luke" 11:14

So how come jesus wasted so much of his time driving out demons? Didn't he know better than the pre-science superstitious folk? Some god.

[EvolutionKills]

Only if we assume there is intention behind all processes.

You don't have to assume it but it's the obvious thing generally throughout history have assumed seeing as this how it looks. Particularly when you have process which develops from simplicity to greater complexity. People in the past didn't know all this but that's an interesting piece of knowledge we now have. This does tie in strongly with the assumption in question, if you can call it an assumption. An assumption makes it sound like it's wrong or not reasonable to consider it.

We observe complexity emerging in nature without intelligence, just arising as the outcome of the accumulation of natural processes. Very complex and highly ordered stars emerge from collapsing and condensing clouds of hydrogen atom. When water freezes and forms ice crystals, water molecules align into organized patterns and structures. We don't need ice-cube fairies or gods to explain nature, it's just very complex chemistry and physics.

My main gripe with the 'why' sphere is that it already loads the conclusion in to the premesis, namely that all things/processes necessarily have meaning.

I think it helps to understand the purpose of your own life within the context of a purpose that itself has purpose. Of course that's the central tenant of Christian/Abrahamic faiths it has been from the beginning this is the idea of it. The idea is not necessarily mistaken.

Many of us desire a sense of purpose. That doesn't mean however that it's evidence for your particular god concept. Some people seek their purpose internally, others seek it outside themselves. Some can handle seeking and assigning purpose to themselves, other want or need it handed to them. I think it's a folly to rely on an unknown externality. There are also shades of the infinite regress, where if you think you can only get your purpose from god, what gave god purpose?

Hopefully you can understand that, just as I see no inherent meaning in weather patterns, rock formations or the occurence of sun spots, so too do I see no inherent meaning for greater cosmological processes

You're not seeing the forest because you're too busy looking at the trees. Still if you want to really look at the individual parts like this you will see that universe is a mathematical framework, physical objects and processes will form themselves into the various shapes and patterns. From the shapes galaxies, weather systems, flowers and even the human body.

The culmination of entirely natural processes, nothing supernatural is needed to explain any of those examples.

such as supernovas, supermassive blackholes

Everything is connected though, if there were no supernovas or supermassive blackholes there would be no galactic planetary formation and we would not exist. Our existence depends on everything else. This isn't non-scientific it's 100% factual and known. It's not just us here isolated on a little planet the rest of the universe having nothing to do with us, we are a part the system.

A system that doesn't require the supernatural to understand and explain, it is an unnecessary assumption.

and indeed even the beginning of the universe. The why for all of these is Asking why assumes sentient agency

God is a sentient agency and God created the universe with a purpose in mind. The purpose is to create ourselves beings of freewill who can then have a loving relationship with God and each other. Though as we have freewill we can do something else with it but the freewill is the important part, we have a certain degree of separation from God as physical beings seeing as God is not physical.

Evidence? That entire post is empty assertion presented as fact, as if merely making the assertion is all that was needed. I could take that statement, replace every instance of the word God with Xenu, and there's nothing you could present to falsify my claim, to say that you had any more claim to truth and reality. That's how empty and vapid your pseudo-explanation is.

but as we can see from many natural processes on earth there is no actual agency, merely a descriptive process that just is.

The agency only has to make to set the whole thing it's Newtonian motion so it will run itself.

Unnecessary assumption. Have you heard of Occam's Razor?

See above, I moved from seeing agency in all things as you do, to realising that many things that religion has claimed agency for (tidal patterns, storms, illness etc) in fact have no agency

The universe runs itself on it's mathematical framework it doesn't mean God didn't create it or that he isn't present within it.

It does however mean that there is no good reason to think that there is an intelligence behind this framework, let alone your specific version of Yahweh. You are making assumptions without evidence, then attempting to use the nature of your claims unfalsifiability as evidence; instead of realizing it as the abject special pleading that it is.

simply naturalistic explanations.

They didn't always exist so something else that did explains those.

Nature simply is. Our explanations are just our own extrapolations to attempt to explain how we observe nature reacting and operating, the illusion of framework is all man-made. Just because we have equations to explain how gravity works, doesn't mean we're all living inside a universe simulator programmed by your god (or any god for that matter). You are letting your cognitive bias run rampant.

As a moderate you appear to ascribe to more or less the same fundamental timescale of events (age of the universe, evolution through natural selection etc) as most of us do

These are all facts we know about but there is nothing here that would conflict with the kind of God Issac Newton believed in.

Newton was also an Alchemist, and lived in an age before evolutionary theory, atomic theory, and modern cosmology. One has to wonder if as brilliant a man as he would still be a deist if he had access to our evidence.

I just simply go one step further and remove that last instance of proposed agency from the start of the existence question.

You've gone several miles further in the opposite direction to by removing God from the picture and proposing a purposeless/accident universe. You removed the whole grounding for existence itself, the grounding for freewill and the basis of good and evil.

Oh get off your high horse you pretentious asshole. We do not need a god to explain morality; it is another product of evolution, much like our empathy and imaginations. You just can't be honest enough to accept not knowing an answer, and just run around inserting your god to 'explain' everything you don't understand. You're just another sad sack of Argument from Ignorance.

I'm glad we can at least agree on most things though, if i'm not mistaken.

There's no point disagreeing on scientific facts we know that's not open to debate. It's what lays behind them that is the issue.

What lays beyond them, for which you have no evidence, but proceed to talk about and make declaration as if you actually had any knowledge about them. You're complete lack of shame from blatantly lying and passing off empty assertions as knowledge, is very telling of your lack of intellectual honesty.

You must understand we get some very fundamental theists here who insist on young earths, young universes, no evolutionary processes etc.

They have divorced themselves from reason and you have divorced yourself from belief/faith. You're both equally wrong to believe what you believe but on opposite sides.

Says the man positing something for which there is no evidence. Glass houses and all that...

Still you've evaded my question here, which is what criteria do you use for rejecting the bits that are purely human inference, whilst still retaining the elements from the stories that aren't human inventions and are the divine bits.

The Holy Spirit I guess. If you there's anything in there you don't "feel is right" then you're doing the same thing yourself. Perhaps we have a better understanding of God now than people did back then so we have in some way advanced in our moral understanding. There is a perfect ideal we could advance toward but because we are subject to sin we never will.

Personal subjective interpretation of hearsay, what Christians have already been doing for thousands of years. No thanks.

If the bible isn't completely the word of god, and only partially, how do you know which bits are which?

It's the historical product of a people who had a special relationship or Covenant with God which is told through their eyes. You just have to understand the context. It would be nice if certain passages weren't in there but they were just human people, no-ones saying they were flawless.

That very context show the stories to be mythic. The Jewish patriarchs most likely never existed, Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. Your God started off as a Yahweh Sabbaoth, the Lord of Hosts (armies), a Canaanite god of war with jurisdiction over the lands of Judea and was one of the sons of El Elyoin/El Shaddai. There is a clear progression from literary and archaeological evidence that the stories were edited, and a evolutionary plot can be mapped from pagan polytheism through monolatrist polytheism and ultimately to monotheism.

Context indeed.

But it doesn't really complement any science or further any understanding.

It's not a scientific book so it shouldn't.

So why are you using it as the basis to make unsupported claims on the nature of reality? You are stepping overtly into the realms of science, and fumbling about quite profusely as you do so.

Religion has basically made no in-roads in to any understanding since its inception

Not scientific understanding, understanding of a different kind about something else.

Knowledge and understanding, without evidence to support it, is not knowledge or understanding. It's just bias, it's hunches, it's empty assertions; it's nothing that we can use to expand our understanding of anything. Because it's an illusion, it hides our ignorance behind a smokescreen of non-answers, it makes those with a psychological 'need' to know fell better by hiding their abject ignorance from themselves.

All scientific discoveries have taken place in spite of religion never as a direct result of it.

Bloody hell no, do you know how and from what science originated? This science versus religion business is propaganda not the history of what really happened.

Did religions fund some scientists? Yes, and they were also patrons of the arts and music. There have been plenty of times where they were in control of most of the economic resources and capitol. But religion has never supported a key element of science, and that has been free inquiry; because it is the antithesis of religious dogma. This is why they funded work on epicycles, but put Galileo on trial. Here's the problem, Galileo was right and epicycles were completely wrong; and if certain religions had their way an Earth centered cosmology would still be taught as divine truth (and some still do). When given the option, religion choose ignorance and dogma over evidence and free inquiry, because their power is built upon ignorance and dogma.

Never forget that religions also operate as a means of political power and societal control.

sure, religious people have furthered science

They founded modern science, they're the reason why we have science in the first place.

BULLSHIT.

"Perhaps, indeed, had Christianity collapsed and a fanatically religious Neoplatonism produced a universal Church in the 4th century and thereafter for a thousand years, it, too, would have failed to encourage any significant scientific thinking. In which case I would be saying the same thing I am now: religion, whether Neoplatonic or Christian or Spaghettimonsterish, is bad for science and always will be, so long as it has any power to undermine or impede freethought, and insofar as it will (and it will) always generate antiscientific enclaves whom we will forever have to battle just to maintain the status of scientific knowledge and values. This is how it was. This is how it is. And until religion is gone, this is how it will always be."
-Richard Carrier, a PhD in the history of science. Full article below, careful as it is quite a read.

http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2006/...anity.html

No later demonstrated facts have been predicted through revelation

We find out scientific facts by observation of data using our rational minds not revelation. Revelation deals with the topic of God and his relationship to man.

Revelation is, as far as all evidence is concerned, no different than a divine-flavored hallucination; being entirely unverifiable and subjective. There is nothing you can do to distinguish what someone might have genuinely experienced, from what they think they experienced, or what others may simply claim to have experienced. Therein lies the problem. There is no basis here to actually learn anything, to gain actual knowledge; the best we can do is record what people think they felt. It is not evidence in and of itself for anything objective.

at least nothing specific that can defy all belief. If Jesus or Mohammed had crapped out the theory of relativity or explained (albeit briefly) the features of RNA then we'd have some serious shit to contend with

Apparently Mohammed made some revelations that were later found to be scientific or whatever but that's not what revelation is supposed to be for imo.

Right, because heaven forbid we have solid and precise predictions that can be tested to verify the accuracy of the supposed revelation. Nope, revelation must always remain vague and wishy-washy, open solely to personal interpretation and kept forever out of the reach of science, lest science kills it.

but instead all we've got is 'God made the first man out of some clay, or a bloody clot, or some dust' and 'salt water can't mix with fresh water'

Molded clay and water is a fair enough poetic description of what we physically are and how we were made.

Bullshit. Please explain, and with verifiable evidence (so we know you're not just making shit up) exactly how a god created us, then use that to defend and make a case for an accurate analogy with throwing clay.

I don't see how religion gives us a better understanding about anything

It gives you an understanding of God and your relationship to God.

No, it does not. Does religion supply evidence for god? No. It supplies empty assertions, hearsay, and unverifiable subjective experiences. There is no evidence yet, so you cannot claim to have any knowledge; because knowledge is built upon evidence.

Claims made to knowledge without evidence are nothing more than empty assertions, and can simply be dismissed as such.

it simply reasserts what it has always asserted, namely the primacy of religious scripture and the correctness of one's religion over any others.

You don't have to entirely reject other religions you can just have minor disagreements over certain points.

You're all just fighting over the colors of the emperor's invisible clothes...

But that is too vague. It is conveniently unspecific. If he is everywhere, in all space-time coordinates, that he surely is physical from the outset, else he is nowhere.

Within the physical and beyond the physical, immanent and transcendent, everywhere and nowhere.

Woo-woo babble, means nothing in any real sense, and nothing in there is supported by any evidence. You sound just like Deepak Chopra and every other new age spiritualist trying to sell psychic healing crystals, meridian cleansing, and fortune telling...

If he's thus more of a pantheist unifying energy, he is still operating on the turf of science.

He isn't any kind of energy or physical detectable presence he sustains and contains all of existence and has a relationship to his creatures.

If he at all interacts with reality and nature, then he is within the realms of testable science. Also keep in mind that we have zero evidence to support the assertion that anything can exist outside of nature and physical reality. But that's par for the course, as there is no evidence to support what the nature of god is either.

As far as I can tell, god's nature is an ever shifting goal post that is always just ahead of the relentless march of science. This speaks to god's man-made origins as a human concept and simulacrum, not vice versa.

If he is completely unverifiable then we have no evidence for him, and he is simply Carl Sagan's garage dragan and Bertrand Russell's celestial tea pot.

The evidence can't be of that kind given what God is so you will have to use other kinds of evidence, both objective and subjective. You can use logic and deductive reasoning as well.

Evidence determines the nature of truth and reality, not logic or deductive reasoning; both of which are at odds with things we have evidence for such as quantum locality.

Making more claims on the nature of your god without any evidence to support those claims? Please do stop lying, it's getting rather tedious.

A hypothesis that attempts to explain everything whilst being unverifiable is just useless at understanding how, and at best irrelevant to understanding why (if there even is a why).

It's more a context of purpose than an explanation. There isn't a scientific explanation on offer for anything there, we have science for that.

So in other words, just more personal subjective bullshit.

To have so many human characteristics simply suggests to me that he is made in man's image

We're made in his image, but we're corrupted by sin while God is entirely Holy. Being made in Gods image we're still essentially good though.

Oh yes, please do tell what need or use a god has for two forward focusing eye with a fixed focal length that are only good for perceiving the visible light spectrum?

What does god need with sex organs? Does he only have one set or the other, or both?

What does your god need with the digestive and respiratory system unless it too needs to extract nutrients from ingested materials and to operate with an internal metabolism that requires the exchange of oxygen to break down sugars.

We make sense as creatures that have evolved and adapted to our environment, not as the simple copy-paste job of a non-physical transcendent being. It might be different if we were uniquely immortal, or never required food, or made out of a rarer element like Boron (and not the most common elements in the universe), or if all of our features did not exist paralleled and surpassed (with the notable exception of our intelligence) by other animals such as a Gorilla's strength or a Hawk's eyes. Don't even get me started on all the examples of stupid design to be found in nature, let alone us specifically. It's indicative of blind natural forces at play, with no reason at all to think that any of it is goal oriented or directed by an outside intelligence.

If something is maximally perfect then it surely doesn't require a purpose or a need

He just likes to have loving relationship with other beings yourself included.

Love is a desire, a need. Desires are caused by deficiencies, or a lack of something; a desire for companionship is a response to a feeling of lacking sufficient companionship. So a 'perfect' being would have no flaws or deficiencies, and thus would have nothing to cause it to desire anything; let alone having an entirely voyeuristic and obfuscated relationship with one particular species of primates (lucky us) floating around an insignificant star in a remote arm of an obscure spiral galaxy, just one of billions of other galaxies within the observable universe.

You really have no clue just how tellingly narcissistic that very idea is, do you?

else it is incomplete and still seeking fullfillment.

There's no point being a power of supreme love if you have no-one to share it with. This has to be expressed in a relationship with a community of beings. So that is why the universe/we exist.

If he really loved us, he could have made us all immortal and impervious to harm and immune to any needs. We could have existed for eternity, expanding our knowledge and being forever a part of a larger community. Imagine a world where there was no need to fight over any resources, because none of us had to deal with physical needs? Your god, as you assert, has both the power and the desire to have done at least this much when designing a universe for us. The fact that this is not even close to the universe that we observe should give you great pause, and cause you to reevaluate your clearly flawed premises; because the conclusion we would draw from them simply does not match reality.

Then the energy beam should be projected from one coordinate to another.

If God is omnipresent he wouldn't need to project anything anywhere as he would already be in the location in question.

If your god is omnipresent, then he has to exist in the physical world, the natural world; at all places and all times. If you god exists outside of it and only occasionally intervenes in nature (however in the flying fuck that works), then he cannot by definition be everywhere; because he is only occasionally in nature to interact with it. Your god cannot be both omnipresent and outside of nature, it is nonsensical on it's own terms.

It should be measurable.

You can measure the physical effect if there is any but if the cause of effect is beyond the physical it wouldn't be possible for us to explain why it's happening. You would just have something odd that happened and remains forever unexplained. Odd things do happen, much of it may be explainable in the naturalistic sense but there's no way to know.

If we can't explain it, if we don't have any evidence, then we don't know it. If we don't know it, what in the fuck makes you think you have it figure out? And without any evidence, why should anyone else take anything you say seriously?

Fint for the slow: They shouldn't.

Even if not, the cellular regeneration of the bone should be observable and recordable, pending further enquiry.

It would just be a medical mystery if the cause lays beyond the natural physical world we can observe. And there are medical mysteries like this.

Amputees? Nothing that has ever happened under observable controlled conditions in the western world, all we have are unverifiable stories from less educated and more credulous parts of the world. And you're right, even if we did observe it, outside of any additional evidence or information; there would be nothing to tie this particular 'miracle' to your Yahweh over any other supernatural 'entity' (take your pick from the thousands of other gods, demigods, angels, aliens, spirits, etc).

Yeah many people have claimed jedi powers over the centuries. Mother Theresa etc, virtually none of them have ever opted to demonstrate their powers for testing, usually with the old "vulgar display of power" excuse, yet they will freely flaunt these powers to the converted (apparently) such as miracle healing etc.

It doesn't mean such things have never happened or don't still happen to people though for the most part I think it will be a little more subtle that more extreme end of the scale example.

So all we have is no evidence that it has ever happened, and plenty of examples of frauds throughout history. In light of these stupefying odds, you still think it's plausible? Your brain really is running on premium grade credulity, isn't it? Seriously you show a frightening lack aptitude in evaluating evidence, the understanding of probability, and you show a severe lack of even attempted objectivity.

Surely, to convince the sceptics, it would be better to subject miracle powers to rigorous testing so that these things that 'science can't explain'

There is the field of Noetics which researches this though at best if there's anything beyond the physic at work they will only attain data that is interesting but inconclusive. If it's a natural occurring effect then it will just be incorporated into standard scientific knowledge.

A lot of it suffers from flawed methodology, a dearth of any peer-reviewed work or accreditation, and being in many cases nothing more than new-age spiritualism in lab coats. IONS is like the Discovery Institute, but for hippies and bored housewives interested in meditation and pyrokinesis over 'intelligent design'.

can blow science out of the water.

Science doesn't need to be blown out of the water but it can be advanced with new knowledge. We probably only know 0.0000000001% of what we could know about the universe.

But the only way we can know it, to verify that we actually know something as a fact, is with evidence. Evidence is precisely what you have yet to present for any of your assertions regarding your god concept, it's nature, and many other claims on the nature of reality. You 'know', in a phrase, less than nothing.

If on the other hand they can't be measured by science, and are thus unvarifiable, then how do you know anything is happening at all?

We can only measure what lays within our own physical sphere as that's all can physically perceive with the senses we have.

Right, so why are you making claims on the nature of things you claim to exist outside perceptible reality? How do you know anything about them if they're outside perceptible reality? Simple answer? You don't know, and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop lying about it.

Science requires a keenly open mind, we must accept at every step that our hypothesis is completely wrong, the history of electromagnetism is a great example of individuals accepting that they were completely mistaken with their initial hypothesese (sp?). Science declares from the outset quite clearly what would prove a theory wrong, religion conceeds no such weakness, it is eternally correct yet eternally unverifiable.

They are two different subjects, though there is some small amount of overlap but all you end up with is something unusual no-one can really explain and there is plenty of that.

But science deals with and helps to explain reality. All you are doing is making shit up that conveniently falls outside of reality and for which you have no evidence or any reason at all to believe in; at all, full stop.

I thought you said he was everywhere.

Absolutely he will be right where you're sitting now for instance. There is nothing there to see though.

Without evidence, how do you know that? You simply don't know, and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop lying about it.

Until he started raising zombies, then zombifying himself, and doing all the other miracles. If only those things could be performed now, in the presence of video recorders and measuring equipment.

There's no way to know whether that equipment could have captured the event in question or exactly what the event specifically entailed and how people experienced it. But there was some kind of experience a group of people had and this is part of the revelation, an understanding of God.

Simpler answer: the claims made in the Gospels are all fictitious exaggerations. It's not that 500 people didn't see a risen Jesus and instead experienced something that you would consider a revelation from god; the 500 witnesses simply never existed outside of the author's imagination. Barring any addition evidence (which you have yet to provide at all), this is the most probable explanation.

Again, he's got all the answers but we can't verify him

Science can't be used to prove the existence of God. Therefore you have little to no conflict. It's a matter of faith/belief and always will be till the end of time.

This is why 'faith' is synonymous with 'gullibility'.

And thus unverifable. Sorry to keep coming back to this, but you say there's no evidence for him cus we can't test him, but then there is scripture which is a form of evidence (for you). A social science is still a science (think Psychology, Sociology etc). You're still claiming there is some form of evidence, albeit historical written evidence rather than demonstratable energy at work.

Science has it's scope based on the limits of human physical perception and God lays beyond this scope being beyond the physical.

But if it lays beyond our limits, then you too cannot know of anything that exists beyond them (including anything your god). So I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop lying about it.

Again, if he's not detectable or mesurable, then how do we know he's there

By various other means that have nothing specifically to do with science though science can be used as an argument in favour of Gods existence. It does demonstrate a rational comprehensible universe.

Translation: Subjective woo-woo bullshit that allows him to continuously move the goal post and never give a testable, falsifiable answer; lest science come along and demonstrably show his sadly ignorant ass up for what it is. Nothing more than a shill with nothing better than 'god of the gaps' reasoning to rest his entire belief structure on. He is essentially worshiping his own ignorance at this point, it's all very sad.

and how can we be forgiven for concluding that he is no mroe likely than Carl Sagan's garage dragon or Bertrand's celestial teapot?

Bertrands celestial strawman if a teapot is an object in space and time and provides no context or answers to anything.

Bertrand Russel's China Teapot answers just as much as your god does, we simply do not have thousands of years and myths built around people claiming to have spoken with the China Teapot, or to operate on it's behalf, or with the divine sanction of the will of the China Teapot. That's all you god has over the China Teapot, the myths of men.

Well, christianity wasn't the first monotheistic religion, and given the vast numbers of primitive human populations (we're talking small tribal units at the dawn of man) it's entirely possible that even a minority of them had some form of monotheistic view of the world, they simply didn't produce anything that survived the test of time.

You could say the Bible/Torah was a correction to a later error that crept into the primordial belief in the "Great Spirit" or whatever it was called when civilization developed, that being idolatry the worship of things that isn't God.

No dice, you do not get to co-opt all of human history and culture in pre-Biblical times by fiat alone. The prevalence of a wide variety of such belief arising across the globe, most of which contradict with each other despite their similarities; leads to the conclusion that we're not all sensitive to some unified piece of outside reality, but rather all subject to similar psychological pressures. We seem to be hardwired to desire to understand things, to be uncomfortable when we do not. We evolved to be very smart and paranoid apes, and our imagination is both one of our greatest strengths and weaknesses.Gods and religions are simply the last remnants of our earliest attempt to explain the world around us, during a time when we didn't know anything; but were in possession of imaginations that lacked that same limitation. There is a reason why we all have a penchant for anthropocentrism, is it any wonder why most of the god concepts out there are just exaggerated people?

Ironically, most jesus fans worship pieces of carved wood and stone to this day

That's just iconography, basically it's something that looks kind of cool and makes you feel all Christian/religious and shit not something you worship.

Right, and the Golden Calf was somehow more than something that made the Jews "feel all religious and shit"?

A history of a people, albeit with wild claims (such as prophets living to 300 years old and people parting the ways) are surely truly indications of the beliefs and imaginations of primitive peoples in the abscence of better information about their surroundings?

Most of the prophets lived to around 120 which is scientifically known to be the maximum extent of the human lifespan, certainly beyond the average particularly of the time though. Perhaps God maintained them in health for as long as they were required. The 900 year old lifespans are probably going to be mythological/not literal so fair enough.

Some species of flatworms can endlessly regenerate their chromosome's telomeres, thus making them biologically immortal (although environmental effects and disease can still take their toll). This means that it is possible to do within genetic coding, it's only a matter of time and effort before we'll be able to either slow down human telomere loss (dramatically increasing our lifespans) or stop it altogether (effectively making us biologically immortal from aging).

A history book doesn't automatically prove divine origin. Many individuals profoundly changed their communities, some of them claimed to have special powers and others didn't. What criteria am I supposed to use to chose Jesus as the right one and save myself a life of eternal torture in hell?

Hell is a voluntary separation from God rather than an eternal torture/punishment. Jesus parable of Lazarus and the rich man is a good interpretation of it though he uses fairly symbolic language. To achieve a full separation I think you will have develop a certain amount evil, selfishness, hatred and so on. This you will experience forever.

If it is possible to be separated from your god, then he is by definition not omnipresent; as it is possible to be somewhere where your god is not. Also, an eternal punishment for finite crimes (even the worst any human could ever do is still finite), is the very definition of injustice. Just putting it out there; justice is enacting a punishment that fits the crime, mercy is enacting a punishment of lesser severity than the crime warranted, and injustice is enacting a greater punishment than is warranted by the crime. So once again, an infinite punishment for finite crimes is by definition the antithesis of justice and the epitome of injustice.

You seem like a nice guy, and i'm happy you acknowledged the massive role assigned to faith here. I just don't understand what criteria thinking people are supposed to use to conclude that a desert book is way more special than others, particularly when you admit yourself that none of it can be proven (and thus non of it constitutes evidence of itself).

Christianity is the only religion to offer grace over saving yourself through good works. So it would seem like the best deal overall. Plus most revelations tend to be centred on one man while the experience people had with Christ was a shared revelation in a community. So the more people you have the merrier it cuts down on the possibility of someone making up some bull for self gain. Also Jesus didn't really gain any status or power while he was alive as most religious founders tend to gain so that seems more genuine/impressive, he's no Joesph Smith.

So you just happen to like their particular brand of personal, subjective, unverifiable woo-woo; not very compelling. Seriously, you don't know shit about the polytheistic pagan origins of you religious text, or any history behind the authorship of the Gospels. Do yourself a favor and read...

A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong.

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) & Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are both by Bart Ehrman.

Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth by Burton Mack.

Gospel Fictions by Randal Helms.

Not the Impossible Faith by Richard Carrier.

But nothing in the bible can't be thought up and described by any of us here. Someone had to do it first, obviously, and indeed the Greeks and the Hindus applied many of the same attributes to a potential deity that the christians and jews did. Again, it's really not that unique.

It wouldn't be unique if it's true so there's your outside source confirmation.

Except, if it was true then all religions would work towards convergence like science does. Instead we see the exact opposite, religion is filled with divergence. If there really was some truth to be know, some unified entity that holy men the world over where all channeling or tapping into at some level; then as they gained more information from it then it should bring them closer into alignment with each other. We do not see this. It would be different if you could ask any Christian, any Buddhist, any Hindi, any Muslim, and if asked about abortion, they'd all give you the exact same answer with the exact same justification. That would be astounding and indicative of some unified information that they were all accessing. This is however precisely what we do not see.

Human reason is easily capable of conceptualising vague and unverifiable ideas such as 'eternity' and 'present everywhere'. It's precisely that they are so vague that leads me to conclude that these ideas truly did originate in human minds alone.

The human minds perception of God/reality.

Evidence? Why am I even asking at this point...

Yeah it's got some nice bits, worthy of admiration. But some of the moral lessons (particularly in the OT) are truly abhorrent and are certainly not worthy of respect imho (inherited sin, giving your daughter up for gang bang rape sessions etc).

Those bits were a problem for early Christians right from the start but it is a product of an ancient culture as well as a revelation from God so everything will be packed together in there. You're not saying "It was right for them at the time" you think it was wrong in general so you're not a relativist as you ought to be as an atheist.

Yes, thank you for declaring that all atheist should be relativist, you pompous presumptuous fucktard. Once again, a god is not needed to explain human morality nor is it neede as a framework to determine morality. There are completely secular moral systems out there, that depending on the criteria used (such as human suffering) come out much farther ahead than any religiously based moral system.

If he's not a thing then he's just another word for the universe; it is the sum-total of all things. If he is in any way seperate and unique (ie he stands out from other things) then he is surely a thing. If he is so far beyond the universe that indeed the universe is not the sum-total of all things, then there is another medium greater than the universe that god (and our universe) is contained within, and god is still a thing within something else. Otherwise, god cannot interact with the universe if it is not a thing that can be isolated and defined.

He contains the sum totality of existence and he is also infinitely and eternally beyond it as the Creator of the sum totality of existence.

Self contradictory woo-woo bullshit, and as per usual, sans any evidence in support of this pile of defecated word salad.

it could all just be chance

No-ones saying it couldn't be. It would be fairly extraordinary if it was. though.

It would be beyond extraordinary if your god-concept had anything to do with anything, outside of human imagination.

Again, if its unverifable you can hardly blame people for rejecting it, yet we're still expected to burn in hell for utterly refusing god's word.

You won't burn in hell for eternity you're just missing out on something/being wrong as far as I'm concerned. You don't seem to be filled with pure hate.

Once again, this is just your particular, personal, subjective interpretation of your religious texts. There is not Christianity, there are only Christianities; including many who would burn you at the stake for your unorthodox views on your god's (supposed) nature.

Chance is fine by me. God is anything but straightforward as far as i'm concerned, he is infinitely complex and requires some serious explaining, ideally by way of evidential support.

It's seems pretty straight forward enough, you have the Creator who is eternal/infinite and the creation and Gods creatures within it. The cause and the effect the object and the purpose. It ties together into a neat package. Nothing at all complicated about this it's very easy to understand.

No. All you've done is create an explanation that explains nothing, and dodges the infinite regress by definitional fiat. It's is nothing but special pleading, and sans evidence, it's all just so much presuppositional bullshit. Just claims made without evidence and in defiance of logic, which can just as easily be dismissed without evidence.

It's very easy to 'understand' if you don't try at all to see the monumental problems with your non-answer.

It was precisely my introduction to the realm of science that led me away from religious education.

Some of the greatest scientific minds in history were religious/theists so by rights it shouldn't be an issue.

The vast majority of them never had access to anywhere near the amount of scientific information we have available to us; so take your argument from authority and shove it.

Since working in pathology labs for years I came to fully appreciate the importance of weighting up evidence. A book from the desert, in your own words, can't be proven or disproven. It's unverifable, and thus not much help for furthering understanding.

You made some kind of connection between that and a faith in God though no such connection exists.

For fuck's sake. Please for the love of your non-existent god, be a Poe; you cannot be that fucking stupid.

[WesOlsen]

Saved me a fair bit of typing there. Ta

[Chas]

There is precisely no evidence that the laws of physics could be any different than they are. To call them "fine tuned" is speculative, at best.

[Mothonis]

You didn't answer the question. Had the parameters been changed, would god have been unable to create life?

Not human life as you require a fine tuned universe for it but he could make other kinds of being in some other layer existence like say the celestial hierarchy of angels.



Christ at the centre there.

fixed

[Minimalist]

Not human life as you require a fine tuned universe for it

Thus we now know that you know fuckall about the universe, too.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Everything is connected though, if there were no supernovas or supermassive blackholes there would be no galactic planetary formation and we would not exist. Our existence depends on everything else. This isn't non-scientific it's 100% factual and known. It's not just us here isolated on a little planet the rest of the universe having nothing to do with us, we are a part the system.

Even the guy who invented the idea of black holes says that they might just be a figment of his imagination. In that regard he's no different than the first guy who came up with the idea of a magical god creature. No one has ever seen evidence of either one.

---

Considering the sheer number of planets within the billions of galaxies in our vision how does the conditions on them billions of light years distance from us affect our environment on Earth?

And since modern man has only existed for a micro-second when did the universe become fined-tuned for our existence?