Does anyone actually believe in God or are they just afraid...
- Thread starter Joe
- Start date
Jem - it appears to me that even if the universe is finely tuned - it is really only fined tuned for life as we know it right now, and right at this place in time....(lets just say human life.)
Previously in the universe it was not possible for us to exist here, and in the future we might not exist again as conditions change and we are unable to adapt. We also might or might not be able to exist in other parts of the universe at various times.
Hence the fine tuning appears to be that of one on a time line that at some stage given the right conditions life will probably come about, but it will also be extinguished as a result of the ever changing universe.
Now I know the odds of things happening might be slim, and the universe pretty much shows those odds to be correct....there is not much life out there that we know of at present.
In other words the universe is not really fine tuned for life at all....we are an aberration. I mean there certainly could have been a creator, we might be living in a giant computer simulation of some sort. SO I get it when you say it makes sense that there is certainly a chance that its all the work of some creator.
I still dont get why we as humans think it was all done specifically for us.
It probably pretty much simply boils down to this as you say in one of you posts - "To posit the existence of a Creator requires only reason. To posit the existence of a good God requires faith."
Hence you can believe in a creator, and still not believe in a God.
thanks - without the headbanging dogma from anyside and abuse these things can be interesting.
Previously in the universe it was not possible for us to exist here, and in the future we might not exist again as conditions change and we are unable to adapt. We also might or might not be able to exist in other parts of the universe at various times.
Hence the fine tuning appears to be that of one on a time line that at some stage given the right conditions life will probably come about, but it will also be extinguished as a result of the ever changing universe.
Now I know the odds of things happening might be slim, and the universe pretty much shows those odds to be correct....there is not much life out there that we know of at present.
In other words the universe is not really fine tuned for life at all....we are an aberration. I mean there certainly could have been a creator, we might be living in a giant computer simulation of some sort. SO I get it when you say it makes sense that there is certainly a chance that its all the work of some creator.
I still dont get why we as humans think it was all done specifically for us.
It probably pretty much simply boils down to this as you say in one of you posts - "To posit the existence of a Creator requires only reason. To posit the existence of a good God requires faith."
Hence you can believe in a creator, and still not believe in a God.
thanks - without the headbanging dogma from anyside and abuse these things can be interesting.
Atheists comprised an estimated 2.01%, and non-religious a further 9.66% of the world population, according to The World Factbook in 2010. In East Asia, atheists and the irreligious are the majority. Outside of East Asia and some European countries atheist or non-believer percentages are typically in the single digits. According to one study, the number of atheists is on the rise across the world, with religiosity generally declining. On the other hand, a global study done by Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary has concluded that atheism is on a global decline due to continuing steady increases in religiosity in China, which harbors the majority of atheists and non-religious people, and Eastern Europe which has had significant changes in religiosity after the fall of communism...
to those who say you can't calculate odds without the parameters being known..
your argument is the worst kind of argument, you are making assumptions which you not only have not researched... your assumptions are wrong.
1. you are making moron arguments without knowing the parameters yourselves.
I can tell you that... smolin, hawking, penrose, susskind and the vast majority of other scientists do know enough parameters to make their probability calculations and they frequently set up on the conservative side. For instance science knows how finely tuned the cosmological constant is.
Stu's argument is really disgusting... because I have cited him to penrose's book and provided quotes on the subject right here.
your argument is the worst kind of argument, you are making assumptions which you not only have not researched... your assumptions are wrong.
1. you are making moron arguments without knowing the parameters yourselves.
I can tell you that... smolin, hawking, penrose, susskind and the vast majority of other scientists do know enough parameters to make their probability calculations and they frequently set up on the conservative side. For instance science knows how finely tuned the cosmological constant is.
Stu's argument is really disgusting... because I have cited him to penrose's book and provided quotes on the subject right here.
Jem, Susskind is saying just the opposite of what you think he is saying. He is making a statistical case, merely a conjecture, for the existence of physical laws that "seem" special in an unexpected way; hence for the existence of life in the Universe. You have heard only what you want to hear and misconstrued his remarks to offer support for that silly concept known to Christians as "intelligent design".
Susskind himself is an atheist. He'd be a most unlikely source of support for the Christian concept of "Intelligent Design".
Susskind himself is an atheist. He'd be a most unlikely source of support for the Christian concept of "Intelligent Design".
For the record, Einstein was an atheist.
Albert Einstein's religious views have been studied extensively. He said he believed in the "pantheistic" God of Baruch Spinoza, but not in a personal god, a belief he criticized. He also called himself an agnostic, while disassociating himself from the label atheist, preferring, he said, "an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."...
...According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein was more inclined to denigrate disbelievers than the faithful. Einstein said in correspondence, "The fanatical atheists...are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures whoâin their grudge against the traditional 'opium of the people'âcannot bear the music of the spheres." Although he did not believe in a personal God, he indicated that he would never seek to combat such belief because "such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook."...