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Author Topic: Atheists  (Read 404480 times)

Neruz

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2295 on: March 15, 2010, 11:54:52 pm »

the universe works in such perfect order that it seems like something has to have designed it.

I assure you, it does not work in perfect order. Not even close.

chaoticag

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2296 on: March 16, 2010, 03:57:42 am »

Well, objects fall, planets revolve routinely, creatures multiply, the moon rises and the sun sets. They think that much is perfect.
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Neruz

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2297 on: March 16, 2010, 04:42:12 am »

Well, objects fall, planets revolve routinely, creatures multiply, the moon rises and the sun sets. They think that much is perfect.

That's because they can't see why things work the way they do. Ask any Physicist and they will tell you that the Universe is insane, untidy and occasionally a complete and total dick just for the hell of it.

You just have to take one look at advanced Physics (or even not very advanced Physics like Quantum Mechanics) to work out that something, somewhere, is seriously fucked up. And even if it's not, even if there's some sort of fundamental truth we're all missing, the universe remains far from perfect.

It's merely adequate.

Starver

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2298 on: March 16, 2010, 04:48:28 am »

Well, objects fall, planets revolve routinely, creatures multiply, the moon rises and the sun sets. They think that much is perfect.
The trouble is that us humans tend to identify short-term order and think it means long-term order.

On cosmological scales, that means everything from an apparent constant night-sky, turning as if on the inside of a shell to looking at planets as if perfect points/spheres of light travelling upon circles (then extending that to perfect circles upon perfect circles upon yet more perfect circles, a practice that could eventually produce even a square path), to apparently eternal oval orbits, etc...  Missing out a few stages of "paradigm shift", most of which occurred with the the intelligentsia and those whose positions required them to account for discrepancies discovered by themselves or pointed out by others.

And current scientific analysis has indicated that the planets in our solar system is indeed stable for a vastly long length of time (with currently observed effects, not counting some stray mass wandering through the system and perturbing/colliding with one or more bodies), so long in fact that the 'first' possible instance of instability we're going to encounter is after the Sun changing size as swallowing up the inner planets, anyway, and that probably leads to some effect to the rest but I don't have information on that at hand.

On shorter lengths of times, there are perceived patterns in the toss of a coin or the spin of the roulette wheel that gamblers swear by (e.g. "10 times on red? ...then it's more likely going to be black next time", by some.  "...still red" for others.  ...though 50/50 chance (ignoring for now the chance of green) in reality).

And the brilliance is that any perceived deviation from the 'perfect path' can always be rationalised.  This can be done in both scientific and non-scientific ways, and looking back upon the history of science indicates many mis-steps along the way (the 'four element' theory of matter, dephlogisticated air, the aforementioned Ptolemeic concept of epicyclic orbits, the homunculus theory of human development, electrical charge and current, the very nature of vision and light, the list goes on) which would tend to indicate that even today's understanding of the universe is unlikely to be perfect and (to some extent at least) going to be invalidated at some point in the future.

And here's another thing about perfection:  You know, there will be a 'perfect predictor algorithm' for any apparent randomness, and there will also be many apparently perfect predictors which might appear to explain the randomness up to a point.  For example, in trying to predict the output of a Pseudo-Random Number Generator, then obviously the perfect predictor would be an identical PRNG working with the same algorithm and seed applied in the same way, but ahead of time.  But out of the almost limitless number of possibilities, there are going to be a small fraction (but still countless) other PRNG configurations of like type or otherwise (including processes including dice rolls and coin tosses, if the outputs can be mapped correctly) that match the first output of the target PRNG, a small fraction (but still countless) of which will also match the second output... and so on.

Obviously the 'exact match' version of the test PRNG will continue ad infinitum to keep pace with the target PRNG, but there are always possible test PRNGs that could have copied (or presaged) the target one for any arbitrary number of cycles.  And yet may or may not have match with the PRNG on the next cycle.

Now, this could seem a million miles away from religion, but the efforts dedicated to performing a rite to guarantee a good crop in the coming season could easily be tied into how well that crop ends up doing.  Similar to "wearing lucky underpants" for a sportsman (or, even more unlinkable to the outcome, a fan).  Any differently-psuedo-random 'perfect' prediction that fails falls by the wayside (or is 'explained' or modified, or the inconsistencies are just plain forgotten about) but there are countless processes that remain in favour.

And, yes, burning a bushel of last years corn in the correct corner of the correct barn and observing the remains could provide a sufficiently correlated indicator as to next year's harvest, for obscure reasons beyond our understanding and in this case probably due to something beyond any current scientific understanding (whether its a deity taking note and causing the correlation or some aspect of solar activity being focussed by an obscure lump of rare ore built into the wall and affecting the combustion process in line with how the solar cycle will fluctuate in the months to come).  And so a short-term order is identified and gone along with.  Even though the long-term order is as yet unproven and merely assumed.

That is, of course, a cynical POV.  I hasten to add that the theistic PRNG could actually match the actual PRNG of the universe and be perfect.  If I believed in a non-deterministic universe, though, I wouldn't give much for its chances.  (And, as I do, I'm think I'm as bound to believe/not believe what I do/do not anyway, regardless.  And similarly for all you lot. :))
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G-Flex

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2299 on: March 16, 2010, 04:52:42 am »

Well, objects fall, planets revolve routinely, creatures multiply, the moon rises and the sun sets. They think that much is perfect.

Those things are "perfect" in the sense that you can basically say they happen based on extremely high-level abstractions.

Take creatures multiplying, for instance. Look at how genetics actually works and it seems very far from "perfect"; it's really convoluted and weird, all sorts of tiny meat-machines inside you with several different systems and controls just so it sort-of-works-most-of-the-time. Basically, shitty computers made out of meat that barely function and have had countless eons just to get into a state where it works okay.

And hell, that's working under completely normal elementary chemistry and physics, for the most part, which are themselves really high-level abstractions of extremely spookier things.


Really, any "the world is so perfect" argument boils down to "the world has reproducible and consistent laws" which in turn boils down to "causality exists".
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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2300 on: March 16, 2010, 07:39:03 am »

Ask any Physicist and they will tell you that the Universe is insane, untidy and occasionally a complete and total dick just for the hell of it.

As a physicist, I resent that. I'll admit that the grand unified field theories aren't really my field, but what I have seen of it, and from what I've learnt speaking to those who do, elegant really is a better descriptor. Our understanding may be clunky, but the universe itself works perfectly.
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Andir

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2301 on: March 16, 2010, 07:46:39 am »

Well, objects fall, planets revolve routinely, creatures multiply, the moon rises and the sun sets. They think that much is perfect.
If it were perfect, PI would be 3 and not 3.141592...

If the universe were perfect, the Earth would be a factor of 10 in diameter, Earth wouldn't be egg shaped, stars would never supernova and meteors would never stray into Earth's orbit.  It's nowhere near "perfect."
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Siquo

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2302 on: March 16, 2010, 07:55:21 am »

Yay, Semantics  ;D

What is "perfect" then? Why is a circle more or less perfect than an irregular oval?
I'll give you an analogous form of perfection then: fractals. They can be very irregular and weirdly shaped, but if you zoom in, they still are. Turtles all the way up and down, and at no point does it get boring. That is the universe we live in, and it seems pretty cool, if not perfect, to me :)

Also, I see a lot of people stress the word "evidence". Evidence is so overrated, not to mention also subject to semantics, and a vague term at best. Using the scientific form of evidence in the process of showing a God exists is just scientism.
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Andir

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2303 on: March 16, 2010, 08:55:22 am »

Using the scientific form of evidence in the process of showing a God exists is just scientism.
And using religion to prove that God exists is just "faithism."  What's your point?  There's no evidence (there's that word again...) that there is some creator at all, either because they don't want us to know they exist or they don't.  If they don't want us to know, why dedicate all your life to them?  If they don't exist, then you haven't wasted your life.  If they do want us to know, they'll prove it right here and right now and the world will know.

Nothing's happening here, btw.
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"Having faith" that the bridge will not fall, implies that the bridge itself isn't that trustworthy. It's not that different from "I pray that the bridge will hold my weight."

Starver

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2304 on: March 16, 2010, 09:56:28 am »

If it were perfect, PI would be 3 and not 3.141592...
Arguable.  Why is '3' more perfect than the value of π currently envisaged?  And, if it is (for some reason) surely '4' is even more perfect, as being equal to 2+2, 2*2, 2^2, etc...  (Wasn't there a US state that tried to make Pi==4?)  Anyway, the original reply was supposed to be about:

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If the universe were perfect, the Earth would be a factor of 10 in diameter,
Factor of 10 whats?  (And, BTW, I already assume you mean that it's x*(10^n), rather than 2 or 5 units...)  It really could be, you know.  Just like one Astronomical Unit is the (nominal) distance from the Earth to the Sun, define a Planetary Unit as the diameter of Earth.  Et voila Earth is exactly one PU in diameter.

And, besides, the metre was apparently designed to represent one... ten millionth..? of the distance from the equator to the pole.  Interestingly, should that measurement have been correct, that could have matched with your idea of the perfectly spherical Earth (ignoring any topological variation) and my 'perfect Pi' of 4, then the circumference of 4* ten million metres would relate quite nicely to ten million metres of diameter, unless I've made schoolboy error.  Right? :)

(As it is, last time I checked the diameter perpendicular to the equator is indeed very near what was apparently thought when defining the metre, within about 8 km I think, and the equatorial value somewhere around 75 km more than it would be if a perfect sphere.  And while the radius/diameter values don't come out very neat, the volume of the Earth is very close to a 'factor of 10' value.)

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stars would never supernova
That would be 'interesting'.  Or rather it wouldn't.  We'd never have anything more than dead hunks of cold dead star left, and all the 'interesting' elements would have to stay sat inside their formative solar foundries and would never get blasted into space in order to form 2nd/3rd generation suns with elements beyond lithium in their proto-planetary systems in order to create anything like a recognisable[1] form of life which could question the universe or think "oh, wow, isn't the Universe so perfect!" in its own water-in-a-puddle manner.

Of course, if the universe were absolutely perfect, then there'd be no turbulence, altered densities, structural features or anything from which any kind of life might originate.  Boundaries create features (and vice-versa) and a homogeneously perfect universe wouldn't have either.  Glory of God (or equivalent Creator) or not, there'd be no-one to appreciate what a nice job the cosmic plasterer did of creating a perfectly flat wall, as it were.


[1] To us, of course.  Nothing to say that there wouldn't be something else that in turn wouldn't recognise us as something viable...

[edited for imperfections in markup, etc]
« Last Edit: March 16, 2010, 09:58:51 am by Starver »
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Andir

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2305 on: March 16, 2010, 10:57:49 am »

And, besides, the metre was apparently designed to represent one... ten millionth..? of the distance from the equator to the pole.  Interestingly, should that measurement have been correct, that could have matched with your idea of the perfectly spherical Earth (ignoring any topological variation) and my 'perfect Pi' of 4, then the circumference of 4* ten million metres would relate quite nicely to ten million metres of diameter, unless I've made schoolboy error.  Right? :)
That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that the Earth actually changes shape over time, it's neither perfectly round nor perfectly stable.

I think may argument falls more in line with a "human" view of perfection.  In the perfect world, we would not be subject to being exterminated when our sun decides to call it quits.  Even more so if you think we are the only intelligent life in this universe.  If you use the universal god viewpoint, we are even more meaningless in terms of significance, so the idea that God has any care of our lives is even less believable once you leave our galaxy.  God would be more concerned with keeping the order of space and time than he would be dealing with atomic particles on an insignificant planet we call Earth or some other species called home.  IE: When you blow your nose, do you care if there might be a living organism in that before throwing it away?  Any creator that's not omnipotent would care the same.  If God were omnipotent, that's another argument altogether which has been thoroughly debated to be an arguably ignorant god who wouldn't care what you do anyway.

And PI is a ratio of units of circumference to units of diameter (and radius).  It doesn't matter if you are using meters, imperial, astronomical or fictitious measurement.  PI is always 3.14... to an indeterminate amount.  Since nobody has found the exact value, I'd say it's fairly "imperfect" at this point in time.
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"Having faith" that the bridge will not fall, implies that the bridge itself isn't that trustworthy. It's not that different from "I pray that the bridge will hold my weight."

Sergius

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2306 on: March 16, 2010, 11:02:56 am »

Well, objects fall, planets revolve routinely, creatures multiply, the moon rises and the sun sets. They think that much is perfect.

If objects floated, planets jumped up and down, creatures divided, added and substracted, the moon dived and the sun un-set, they'd still think it's "perfect" because that's the way those things would be "supposed" to work. I mean, planets jump, like planets ought to do! Designed!

What's so perfect about the universe? Beaches are beach-shaped? Stars are shiny instead of dark and cold? Chocolate tastes chocolatey?

Acceleration equals speed multiplied by time? Is that perfect? What would be un-perfect then? What would acceleration be in a non-perfect universe? If you can't answer that for any of the other stuff, then there's nothing "perfect" about the universe, except that it resembles an universe extremely well.

« Last Edit: March 16, 2010, 11:09:16 am by Sergius »
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Starver

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2307 on: March 16, 2010, 11:48:03 am »

That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that the Earth actually changes shape over time, it's neither perfectly round nor perfectly stable.
Never said it was, I was just embracing the OP's ideas of perfection...

Quote
And PI is a ratio of units of circumference to units of diameter (and radius).  It doesn't matter if you are using meters, imperial, astronomical or fictitious measurement.  PI is always 3.14... to an indeterminate amount.  Since nobody has found the exact value, I'd say it's fairly "imperfect" at this point in time.
Indeed, it's dimensionless.  And (non-Euclidean geometry aside) should be completely constant.  I mentioned "make it any value/unit you like" for only w.r.t. the diameter of Earth, but backtracked to include the ridiculous value of Pi because the maths of that weird variation looked worth pointing out.

I do tend to get this feeling that I don't make myself clear, again and again.  :-[

(I also do like the other Para you put in that post, but have nothing to add about it other than this useless comment.)
« Last Edit: March 16, 2010, 11:53:07 am by Starver »
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Andir

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2308 on: March 16, 2010, 11:53:36 am »

[Excellent points /]
I agree with this statement.  It even invalidates my whole argument because PI resembling PI, Earth being round or egg shaped doesn't make it perfect. ;)
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"Having faith" that the bridge will not fall, implies that the bridge itself isn't that trustworthy. It's not that different from "I pray that the bridge will hold my weight."

dreiche2

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Re: Atheists
« Reply #2309 on: March 16, 2010, 12:38:00 pm »

Also, I see a lot of people stress the word "evidence". Evidence is so overrated, not to mention also subject to semantics, and a vague term at best. Using the scientific form of evidence in the process of showing a God exists is just scientism.

I have a question: Say someone follows a religion the holy document of which says that, say, homosexuals need to be killed. Assuming you disagree with that homosexuals should be killed, how would you try to convince this person to refrain from killing?
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