snotrag: pray tell how you would calculate these odds when you do not know the possible mechanisms? I work with statistics every day and i must admit i have no clue.
A Paradox for JWs and other religious people
by NutFlush 15 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Snotrag
bohm
I agree, its impossible to calculate with any degree of precision. If you just take a hydrogen atom the simpleist atom and try to figure out what it is made of you have all kinds of theory about all kinds of particles but you still have an atom. The question is how did this atom appear spontainiusly from nothing. What are the odds? but now you have untold trillions of atoms of hydrogen as well as all the other elements in their quantities as they exist and somehow they manage to form together randomly to have matter. Then you have forces tha come from nowhere make things bind, gravity, time, magnetism that come into existence from nowhere. The one, matter, has nothing to do with the other ,force, yet they find a way to act together and all of a sudden you have stars, then from somewhwhere the elements come together to have planets and of course this all happened at random. What has gravity got to do with heat. What are the odds? Yet it is here, by observation it all appears to exist around us. Now after all these physical things just happen and the forces that came from nowhere act upon the matter and you get life. Absolutly none of the things that appeared from nowhere have life in themselves yet life appeared. What are the odds that these things just happened?
there are so many components that come into play that are part of existence that to have each one all appear in one place at one time cannot be random. the odds are too long.
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Terry
Social stability comes from a baseline_________________________a norm_______________a consistency_____and agreement.
Going along to get along.
In older agrarian communities the survival of the entire community depended on holding fast to practices that did not deviate from the "norm" because crops had to be planted at exactly-the-right-time and harvest had to be done at-exactly-the-right-time or everybody starved.
To disagree, dissent or "innovate" was to risk all.
Rituals and traditions are a way of everybody doing the same thing in order to bond and demonstrate the constancy of the group.
Altruism has been promoted in society so that the expendable individual will willingly conform to the needs of the many by going so far as to die on behalf of the group.
The clash of nations requires the sacrifice of individuals on behalf of the group.
Now why did I say all the above?
Because, there is nothing extraordinary either about ACCEPTING THE BELIEFS of the larger group (family, tribe, society) without dissent................ OR.............. about willingness to sacrifice on behalf of the group's interest...
we should not be surprised a MYTH incorporating those two features would pass from generation to generation WITHOUT QUESTION.
SURVIVAL is about conformity in groups. FAITH stems from trust of the authority (the greater power) of the group.
BELIEF is a survival mechanism and demonstrates loyalty to that which purports to support that survival.
It is rare in human history for any nation or large group to support the RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS OVER THE SURVIVAL OF THE GROUP from which the individual emerges!
In America the struggle has been between the knee-jerk impulse of Authority to stifle free expression (criticism or dissent) and to protect and preserve the individual from the tyranny of the group at large.
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startingover
Nutflush, great thread! It's a paradox I doubt will draw many believers in to comment. Although Snowbird never ceases to amaze me. I would like to see her comments just for the entertainment.
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bohm
snotrag: I made a long response my wireless just ate. DAMMIT. Well, the long and the short is that in order to calculate the odds, you need to know the mechanisms, otherwise we are just arguing from our own ignorance ('i dont understand how rare earth metal X came around, therefore God must have put it there'). Secondly, where it all came from - the laws, the matter and spacetime, that is indeed a mystery. But i dont see endowing the mechanism that caused it to be with intentions make the explanation more plausible.
Well we are getting bit off-topic, but i would like to reply at more length in another thread.
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teel
Let me butt in the statistics discussion too. Snotrag, have you considered that our universe may not be the only one, and it may not have been the first? There's a theory about "pulsing" universe - big bang / big crash ad infinitum. That would invalidate just about any statistics based proof.