do you ever think there could be some sort of 'higher force'

Mark Hamill

toiletduck wrote: »

This thread just makes me think of The Last Question

Love that story. The Last Answer (scroll down ~20%) is also very good.

Mark Hamill

Malty_T wrote: »

tl;dr

Read it, its well worth it.

Malty_T wrote: »

Is there an answer to the question. Wot's the question anyway?:p

The question:

How do you reverse entropy?

The answer:

Not telling :P, (would lose impact if I just posted the end anyway)

PoleStar

While I do not belive there is some higher force, what I do find often amusing is the argument that stems from "What created the big bang"

"Is there some higher force"

People that put forward this argument seem to assume that this advanced intelligence (which they apply a mystical term and reverence to and call it god)
who is in possession of technology and knowledge far in advance of our own, would care in the slightest whether or not the little beings that inhabit his experiment worship him/her in their lives which relatively to him/her would be the equivalent to us watching algae frow on a murkey pond.

Liveit

It is simply a fact that nobody knows whether there is a god or not.
All we can rely on is belief, belief that there is or that there is not a god.
This lack of knowledge could be a test from god or it simply could be true that there is no god.
What would be the test in believing in a god if it was a common fact?
There is no-one alive that should tell another that there is/ is not a god. They can inform them of both sides, but should not try to make their mind up in any way.
Again, nobody knows whether god is real or not.

Ickle Magoo

Liveit wrote: »

It is simply a fact that nobody knows whether there is a god or not.
All we can rely on is belief, belief that there is or that there is not a god.
This lack of knowledge could be a test from god or it simply could be true that there is no god.
What would be the test in believing in a god if it was a common fact?
There is no-one alive that should tell another that there is/ is not a god. They can inform them of both sides, but should not try to make their mind up in any way.
Again, nobody knows whether god is real or not.

That could be said about faeries, or spaghetti monsters or tea pots or anything else you care to mention that has no proof of existence - that doesn't mean people won't make an informed judgment over likelihood of existence...

EDIT: It's also got nothing to do with a belief that there is no God, it's a lack of belief in a God - without any evidence the default position is that there is nothing to have a belief in, rather than a chosen rejection of one or other positions.

Daftendirekt

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Love that story. The Last Answer (scroll down ~20%) is also very good.

That was great. Thanks for the link.

Flamed Diving

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

*Everything Malty just said, but in a much more condesending tone.

Everything Genghiz Cohen said, but while holding you in a headlock and furiously rubbing your crown with my knuckles.

UR Wrong

Mark Hamill wrote: »

This is a strawman with really poor contradictory reasoning.
Firstly the universe didn't come from "nothing", it came from a initial hot, dense, state. When the big bang happened (essentially and expansion of said state), time and space where created, and so therefore the initial state was not necessarily subject to the laws of space time as we know them (ie what "caused" the expansion didn't necessarily have to happen "before" it as the terms "cause" and "before" are time dependent).
Secondly, even if the universe came from "nothing", that couldn't point to some eternal being causing it, because then the universe would not actually have come from "nothing", it would have come from that being. Basically you have set up a false premise and tried to prove it with a conclusion that contradicts it.

Wow thats quite condescending, probably want to check the theory out first before u don ur professors hat. Big Bang theorists do generally take it that our universe came from 'nothing'; its expansion(ie big bang), and hence time and space, is a different argument.

Turtwig

UR Wrong wrote: »

Wow thats quite condescending, probably want to check the theory out first before u don ur professors hat. Big Bang theorists do generally take it that our universe came from 'nothing'; its expansion(ie big bang), and hence time and space, is a different argument.

Nope they don't.

the idea that the big bang was “small”
is misleading. The totality of space could be infi nite. Shrink an
infi nite space by an arbitrary amount, and it is still infi nite.

Nothing is just used to refer to something as infinitesimally tiny, but it is still something.

UR Wrong

Malty_T wrote: »

Nope they don't.

You are here: Science >> Big Bang Theory

Big Bang Theory - The Premise
The Big Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. Discoveries in astronomy and physics have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that our universe did in fact have a beginning. Prior to that moment there was nothing; during and after that moment there was something: our universe. The big bang theory is an effort to explain what happened during and after that moment.


from http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

Turtwig

UR Wrong wrote: »

You are here: Science >> Big Bang Theory

Big Bang Theory - The Premise
The Big Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. Discoveries in astronomy and physics have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that our universe did in fact have a beginning. Prior to that moment there was nothing; during and after that moment there was something: our universe. The big bang theory is an effort to explain what happened during and after that moment.


from http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

Jebus!
DUDE THAT'S A CREATIONIST WEBSITE!!!!

Soulja boy

gonnaplayrugby wrote: »

with the whole how did something(the universe) form from nothing? as incredible as it sounds we would have to assume that some sort of being which exists outside of time put the wheels in motion.

thats the only thing that leads me to believe there might be a 'god'

the strong, the weak, the electromagnetic and the gravitational, there are your forces.
Nearly everything that exists is caused by something else changing.
We are probably a side effect of something else bigger then us (maybe two universes brushing up against each other in the night). Its highly unlikely that any conscious decision went into forming us.

Dades

Malty_T wrote: »

DUDE THAT'S A CREATIONIST WEBSITE!!!![/SIZE]

Urk :eek:

UR Wrong = FAIL

Peddle your crazy someplace else, buddy. :pac:

Flamed Diving

UR Wrong wrote: »

You are here: Science >> Big Bang Theory

Big Bang Theory - The Premise
The Big Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. Discoveries in astronomy and physics have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that our universe did in fact have a beginning. Prior to that moment there was nothing; during and after that moment there was something: our universe. The big bang theory is an effort to explain what happened during and after that moment.


from http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

Darwin didn't invent the evolutionary worldview. He simply brought something new to the old philosophy: a plausible mechanism called "natural selection." In his Origin of Species, Darwin proposed natural selection as the mechanism by which all life could have descended from a common ancestor (Darwin defined evolution as "descent with modification"). However, today we know that natural selection is a deficient mechanism, even in light of genetic mutation. In fact, with the tremendous advances we've made in molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics over the past fifty years, Darwin's theory has become "a theory in crisis."

http://www.allaboutscience.org/charles-darwin.htm

Theology is ultimately concerned with ontology -- to whom, or to what, does the universe owe its existence? Questions relating to ontology, therefore, are not matters of scientific enquiry. The scientific methodology presupposes uniformity in the fundamental physical laws and constants. It can thus not answer questions pertaining to their origin without reasoning in a circle.

http://www.allaboutscience.org/science.htm

Ape to Man -- The Chasm Furthermore, as the corpus of hominid fossil specimens continues to grow, it has become increasingly evident that there is an unbridgeable chasm between hominids and humans in both composition and culture. Moreover, homologous structures (similar structures on different species) do not provide sufficient proof of genealogical relationships—common descent is simply an evolutionary assumption used to explain the similarities.

To assume that hominids and humans are closely related because both can walk upright is tantamount to saying hummingbirds and helicopters are closely related because both can fly. Indeed, the distance between an ape, who cannot read or write, and a descendant of Adam, who can compose a musical masterpiece or send a man to the moon, is the distance of infinity.

http://www.allaboutscience.org/ape-to-man.htm

Liveit

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

That could be said about faeries, or spaghetti monsters or tea pots or anything else you care to mention that has no proof of existence - that doesn't mean people won't make an informed judgment over likelihood of existence...

EDIT: It's also got nothing to do with a belief that there is no God, it's a lack of belief in a God - without any evidence the default position is that there is nothing to have a belief in, rather than a chosen rejection of one or other positions.

What is your point. That was a very un-specific post

Dades

Liveit wrote: »

What is your point. That was a very un-specific post

Ickle Magoo's post very clearly addressed what you said in yours.

Just because something cannot be "known" to exist or not doesn't mean the possibility it might has be entertained. There would need to be some evidence to suggest that 'thing' existed for that to be a logical thing to do.

Liveit

Dades wrote: »

Ickle Magoo's post very clearly addressed what you said in yours.

Just because something cannot be "known" to exist or not doesn't mean the possibility it might has be entertained. There would need to be some evidence to suggest that 'thing' existed for that to be a logical thing to do.

Of course it has to be looked at. What comes after this life affects us all so we should at least try to search for an answer.
If you mean 'entertained' as in 'believed in' and you think it is not a logical thing to do(to believe with no evidence), you are looking at religion in a scientific way, a way in which religion differs from the most other things, as in it should not be judged with logic, in my view.

King Mob

Liveit wrote: »

Of course it has to be looked at. What comes after this life affects us all so we should at least try to search for an answer.
If you mean 'entertained' as in 'believed in' and you think it is not a logical thing to do(to believe with no evidence), you are looking at religion in a scientific way, a way in which religion differs from the most other things, as in it should not be judged with logic, in my view.

So how can it be judged if not by logic?

Does this mean any random nonsense I make up in my head can be excluded from logical and critical analysis if I just declare it "religion"?

Flamed Diving

King Mob wrote: »

So how can it be judged if not by logic?

Does this mean any random nonsense I make up in my head can be excluded from logical and critical analysis if I just declare it "religion"?

Yes, under his definition anything goes.