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[Siquo]

Einstein said "God does not play dice". As it stands now, most phycisists agree that indeed, he does. Newton also had great ideas, and later in life, some enormously false ones. Aristoteles (although technically not a scientist as Dreiche pointed out), dito. But that's ok, it's Science! It filters out the ideas that do not match from the ones that do, and having your ideas rejected does not make you a lesser man. Not to science at least.

[Areyar]

Why would it be a good thing to read this whole thread? it is meaningless anyhow.

Only the last few pages are relevant to the current discussion.
And, as far as I can tell the current discussion is about trying to unconfuse Siquo,
who is lobbying for ... confusion?

S, why are threads on Atheism always so attractive to non-atheists?
I don't think atheists are equally attracted to threads called "Revelation!" or "Faith"...

[Siquo]

Au contraire, you bet they are... That's why most of those topics are closed now

Meaninglessness is a good thing. It means () that you can give meaning to it. Make the meaning-giving a conscious process, instead of unconsciously interpreting information. Be aware that any time you read information of any type, you are already giving it meaning. Take the information: "A camel is thirsty". Discarding it as nonsense, accepting it as truth or fact, saying that it's ridiculous or bullshit or irrelevant or the word of God Himself or useful is all giving meaning to otherwise meaningless information.

Confusion is good, because certainty is a stand-still. As someone earlier said about science, nothing is set in concrete and it's supposed to be that way. Though I'm not 100% sure about that either.

[MrWiggles]

I would peek in a religious thread if its in a public forum. I wouldn't comment on it much unless I had a question, though I would interject if they were claiming things of subjective nature as objective. Like prayer does anything.

And Einstein was speaking in a flowery manner. Anytime Einstein used god, he used it to mean universe. Einstein was closer to a pantheist, possibly an atheist.

The universe is however, not terribly random.

[Areyar]

no, confusion is evil.
uncertainty is the word you seek, I hope, it is nothing to do with being confused.
One can be confused and at the same time very certain of various things.
As a person can be uncertain about things, but very clear minded.
Confusion is a state of mind unconductive to clear reasoning IMO.
Confusion leads to taking wrong decisions. I don't want to be confused with someone else in a hospital.

[RAM]

According to my understanding it is currently not feasible to prove that there are no otherwise poorly defined entities that possess the ability to defeat any attempt to interact with them. It may well be possible to disprove specific mythologies based upon internal inconsistencies, though this is largely irrelevant to atheism, as atheism addresses all possible mythologies. So it seems to me that the question as to whether or not god exists is irrelevant, so what is a more useful question?

I would suggest: Should I follow a religion?

Lets take some assumptions:

God is powerful. Absolute power is not necessary, I would accept the Ancient Greek scenario of various gods serving as patrons to different aspects of the world and there are, undoubtedly, many other variations that would suffice. But lets say that the subject of the religion will be powerful enough to control the conditions of human life, either in an immediate physical sense or in an abstract spiritual sense, and that humans cannot compete with its decisions.

Humans can control themselves. If human decisions are forced or otherwise inconsequential then it really doesn't matter...

Worshipping god is important. Without this one religion doesn't really have any value.

Humans do not possess any reliable evidence of god. I am not aware of any, if anyone here is then that would save a great deal of time and effort...

[Siquo]

reliable evidence

There you go, the hole in the wall. You have none at all. Unless you define it to be. Where your definition is nothing more or less than someone elses definition that there must be a God. So you're back at square 1. Do not pass Go.

As for the other assumptions: 1. Doesn't need to be. Buddha was merely wise. 2. That goes without saying 3. No, it's not. Worship is not prevalent amongst all religions. A lot, but not most, and it certainly isn't the basis for the value of a religion.

@Areyar: In that case I mixed up confusion with uncertainty, and I meant uncertainty, because by your definition, most of humanity is confused. "Clear minded" is a state of mind unattainable by most humans. Actual reasoning needs constant conscious monitoring, where you constantly need to assess if you didn't by accident assume something, or put in unverified previous knowledge, if your reasoning wasn't altered just ever so slightly by your current emotion, etc.

@MrWiggles: The universe as we understand it now, is VERY random. It just evens out nicely due to statistics. For instance, at any point (ANY point and ANY time, where point is probably as small as planck-space), two particles may appear out of nowhere, only to disappear again by interacting by the two particles from the point right next to them. How do we know? Zero-point energy and black-hole radiation that skew the symmetry. It's very random indeed.


In general: Often logic is produced to "prove" that an omnipotent God is impossible. But if you are omnipotent, you could wipe any of your thousand arses with logic at any time. So there

[G-Flex]

Einstein said "God does not play dice". As it stands now, most phycisists agree that indeed, he does.

Eh, this depends on what you mean by that, and what your interpretation of quantum mechanics is. The main issue is that on a small enough scale, even things which might be inherently deterministic might as well not be to us, because we simply can't observe them properly (uncertainty principle). So it's not necessary that God plays dice with the universe, per se, but that there are some things we just can't figure out to an infinite degree of precision.

[Neruz]

Einstein said "God does not play dice". As it stands now, most phycisists agree that indeed, he does.

Eh, this depends on what you mean by that, and what your interpretation of quantum mechanics is. The main issue is that on a small enough scale, even things which might be inherently deterministic might as well not be to us, because we simply can't observe them properly (uncertainty principle). So it's not necessary that God plays dice with the universe, per se, but that there are some things we just can't figure out to an infinite degree of precision.

Well by definition, God is omniscient, which means he knows both where a particle is and where it is going at the same time, something which Humans can't know due to limitations in, well, reality. This also means God knows which way the atom will spin when it's measured.

Going by the definition of omniscient, God doesn't technically play dice, because he knows what all the answers will be. So, more accurately, God does play dice, but he cheats.

In general: Often logic is produced to "prove" that an omnipotent God is impossible. But if you are omnipotent, you could wipe any of your thousand arses with logic at any time. So there

This makes even less sense than the rest of your last few posts Siquo, and considering you're prancing around saying individuals get to define what 'reliable evidence' is and that meaninglessness is a good thing, that is saying something spectacular.

[Siquo]

Poor Neruz, so certain of his sense

Also, the Einstein quote of "god and dice" wasn't about God at all, it was about the universe and real randomness. As was stated before by others here.

[Siquo]

to an infinite degree of precision.

All true, but the above implies it's just about the 1 millionth significant number, which is not so.
When a certain single isotope decays is random. And unpredictable, to a degree that is not even close to what we'd call precision. Could be now, or in a week, or in 10,000 years, or never.

[Neruz]

Poor Neruz, so certain of his sense

Also, the Einstein quote of "god and dice" wasn't about God at all, it was about the universe and real randomness. As was stated before by others here.

And what i mean is that technically he's right; if you know everything, then in theory you should be able to predict everything. The catch is that you can't know everything, it's flat out impossible. So while technically 'god doesn't roll dice', for all practical purposes it's close enough.


Also, if i can't trust my senses, i can't trust anything and might as well just shoot myself. Except if i can't trust my senses i can't be sure that i actually just shot myself.

[Areyar]

@Areyar: In that case I mixed up confusion with uncertainty, and I meant uncertainty, because by your definition, most of humanity is confused. "Clear minded" is a state of mind unattainable by most humans. Actual reasoning needs constant conscious monitoring, where you constantly need to assess if you didn't by accident assume something, or put in unverified previous knowledge, if your reasoning wasn't altered just ever so slightly by your current emotion, etc.

alas, such is the sorry state of humanity. *sigh*
We can only struggle to avoid absorbing nonsense and fight those that spread it.
Fight the delusions that feed confusion! *waves pitchfork*

[Areyar]

to an infinite degree of precision.

All true, but the above implies it's just about the 1 millionth significant number, which is not so.
When a certain single isotope decays is random. And unpredictable, to a degree that is not even close to what we'd call precision. Could be now, or in a week, or in 10,000 years, or never.

Omnipotence implies that time is an illusion. Because if time is an illusion (it could be, who knows.), then an omnipotent being WOULD know where and when each subatomic boson is going to be at any point in time, because the deity would know the entirety of universal time. (This would also imply that time is finite, by the way)
You earlier claimed that all reality is a Godhead's fantasy, who purposely imposes limitation on its own knowledge. These limitations would render himself a different entity altogether, more like the Demiurge of Gnosis than the God of Omnipotence.
This demiurge was a solution to the paradox of the existence of an omnipotent benevolent god vs the existence of evil: the God that acts in the world is actually fallible, deluded and evil.
The atheist solution is that gods don't exist and what we consider evil is just human egotism or bad luck in the case of natural disasters.

uh...got derailed there.
My point; omnipotence and randomness are mutually exclusive.

[Andir]

My point; omnipotence and randomness are mutually exclusive.

My point is that omnipotence is pretty much mutually exclusive to everything else.  With omnipotence, nothing else can exist but omnipotence.