crofty can you please break this article and main points down for the average individuals to understand, i found this article and thought of you, thought you might be interested in this topic too.
i don't fully understand it, can you please help us, you are our "resident expert" on this topic!
will you please break it down for us as to what it means and how it affects us brains?
How can atheist say somebody who cannot be subjected to physical senses does not exist while trusting only their PHYSICAL senses?
- abiather
I don't know of any prominent atheist who holds this view. How do YOU know a God wouldn't be subject to the physical senses?
crofty can you please break this article and main points down for the average individuals to understand, i found this article and thought of you, thought you might be interested in this topic too.
i don't fully understand it, can you please help us, you are our "resident expert" on this topic!
will you please break it down for us as to what it means and how it affects us brains?
Alright abiather, as you seem so extraordinarily confident in your position I'll offer you a simple challenge. If you were the man you describe - a man who senses do not work - how would you tell the difference between standing next to an atheist and standing next to no one?
If you senses didn't work, how could you possibly make ANY claims about the world around you?
first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed but changed from one form to another.
how does that fit in with god and the big bang to you?
does it make one make more sense then the other to you?
Please correct my thinking but what is being taught (so that dummies like myself can understand) is that the universe is a/ the product of a reaction, one of the elements of the reaction is energy and the energy was neutralized in the resulting universe.
- Fisherman
I have absolutely no idea where you're getting that idea from. The big bang is the furthest back we can see. We don't know if there was a "before the big bang" because all the evidence seems to indicate that time started WITH the big bang. And, as causality is necessarily temporal - it makes no sense to have prior "causes".
If this is hard to follow let me give you some basic cognitive tools. Things which "exist" are embedded in spacetime and are, in principle, measurable. Things that don't exist, are not. Something that "exists" for zero seconds - or that is fundamentally undetectable - are identical to things that don't exist.
We can't claim that God exists and then turn around and say, "He's undetectable and exists outside of space/time." That is, by its very definition, non-existence. And, when you talk about "invisible qualities", that's EXACTLY what you're doing. You are putting him in the same category as leprechauns and fairies. If you have no way of detecting something there is no way to know it is real.
One other point, the "dynamics of the formation of the universe" (i.e. physics) are descriptive. Not proscriptive. They are mathematical tools that describe how energy and space/time interact. They are abstractions we use to quantify our universe. But they don't exist as an intrinsic part of the universe.
A lot of people have a hard time understanding this so I'll give a simple analogy. The laws of the universe are like the top speed of your car. It is a property of the physical limitations of your engine and gearing system. We could describe this speed as a law - the Law of Fisherman's Top Car Speed.
Whereas the speed limit - how fast you should go - is a prescriptive law. It is determined by a body of individuals about how fast you should go. Not how fast you can go.
The laws individuals prescribe can be broken. Even so called "God's Laws" can be broken - because they too are prescriptive. However, physical laws CANNOT be broken. Because they are not prescribed.
first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed but changed from one form to another.
how does that fit in with god and the big bang to you?
does it make one make more sense then the other to you?
something doesn't come from nothing no matter what we think right?
To the contrary. Within our own universe we see something from nothing all the time. Quantum fluctuations - positive and negative energy popping in and out of existence - happen all the time. Check out the Casimir effect, it's pretty cool: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-casimir-effec/
There have been many attempts to model truly nothing - zero energy and space/time - and it turns out "nothing" is highly unstable. From nothing you get something. It's an extremely nuanced and counter-intuitive topic. Check out this video if your interested in a full answer to your question:
guess where i am?
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i've posted this dunig the watchtower study at the hall using a mobile phone and a pocket pc - only a few strange looks from the people sat near.. i'll be glad when its time to go home - its' as boring as ever !
Guess it won't be too long now before we get something in the KM about not bringing pc's into the hall!
- Frenchy
Hahahahaha, oh Frenchy, if only you knew. Now you get in trouble if you don't bring your "pc" with you.
Though, it looks like Simon might have been the first to post on here from the KH.
guess where i am?
.
i've posted this dunig the watchtower study at the hall using a mobile phone and a pocket pc - only a few strange looks from the people sat near.. i'll be glad when its time to go home - its' as boring as ever !
Guess it won't be too long now before we get something in the KM about not bringing pc's into the hall!
- Frenchy
Hahahahaha, oh Frenchy, if only you knew. Now you get in trouble if you don't bring your "pc" with you.
Though, it looks like Simon might have been the first to post on here from the KH.
first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed but changed from one form to another.
how does that fit in with god and the big bang to you?
does it make one make more sense then the other to you?
Wow Prologos, way to completely pull that out of your a$$. There is equal amounts of positive and negative energy in our universe. A pound of butter minus a pound of butter does NOT equal two. It equals zero. Here's something light to read on the topic: http://www.livescience.com/33129-total-energy-universe-zero.html
If you want something a little more in depth I recomend this lecture by Krauss (starts at 12:50):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwzbU0bGOdc
To the question EndofMysteries raised, the First Law of Thermodynamics only address' energy changing from one state to another state. It says nothing about the origins or "creation" of that energy.
More to the point, just because things in the universe follow certain laws doesn't mean the universe as a whole must follow those laws. The property of parts of a system don't always behave in the same way the entire system does. For example, just because airplane seats can't fly doesn't mean airplanes can't fly. Just because all sheep in the flock have a mother - it doesn't mean that the flock must then have a mother. For more on this, please see Fallacy of Composition.
crofty can you please break this article and main points down for the average individuals to understand, i found this article and thought of you, thought you might be interested in this topic too.
i don't fully understand it, can you please help us, you are our "resident expert" on this topic!
will you please break it down for us as to what it means and how it affects us brains?
It's just a sensationalist attention grabbing headline and nothing more. Even if the conclusions from the data were true - that 38% of agnostics were believers - it still doesn't get you anywhere near "atheist might not exist". However, the far larger crime is that this article is blatantly committing the fallacy of false equivocation. An "atheist" is someone who lacks a belief in God. You can be an atheist and still be "spiritual". You can be an atheist and still believe in predetermination. You can be an atheist and still believe in the supernatural. None of these are exclusive propositions to atheism.
In regards to "INTERNAL MONOLOGUES" they author is merely describing decoupled cognition. This has nothing to do with a belief in God or in the supernatural. It's a process of meta awareness that allows us to bounce our ideas off of an imagined third party. Most of the time people imagine what dad or mom would say or someone whose opinion they respect.
As for "EVOLUTIONARY PURPOSES" Sam Harris has written on this extensively about the importance of ritual and special words for special occasions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLKNvBdUtZY
I think mostly what is happening with this article is they are addressing the "nones" (people who don't belong to a religion) as though they are agnostics. This simple isn't the case. The majority of nones have a belief in God. It truly is just a poorly written article all the way around.
Here's a much more informed article upon the topic: http://www.religionnews.com/2014/03/13/none-atheist-christian-evangelical-pew/
not too much reporting on this story but several known news agencies if you google it.
this titanium metal orb, the size of a human hair was found and having bio matter oozing out of it.
there is a pic on some of the sites.
Pretty cool story. And not a hoax at all. Both the people mentioned in the article, Chandra Wickramasinghe and Milton Wainwright, are real scientists who are working to try and prove their hypothesis of panspermia using the scientific method (unlike most the idiots on the History Channel).
That said, it has NOT been confirmed that this is organic material nor that it is of alien origin. The standard of evidence for proving the existence of alien life is going to be very high. I personally am going to withhold judgment until they publish a peer reviewed scientific paper on their findings. And even then, I will continue to be highly skeptical until a group of outside researchers is able to look at the material and reach similar conclusions.
All my caveats aside, it would be awesome if we find out this is actually alien life! SETI and NASA would surely get a huge bump in their funding.
some years ago (the year when i got baptized), i was at a district convention (or whatever they call them these days) with my best friend.
he had a part in one of those acting parts at the convention (i have no idea the term jw's use for them in english).
anyway, we were both seeing through the bullshit of the borg but weren't aware at the time of this forum or other "apostate" groups, nor of the full extent of the perversity of this religion.
