RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette

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meatcleaver -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 10:32:02 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: seeksfemslave To those confirmed Atheists: If the profound mystery of conception and childbirth in all its grisly detail, I refer to both stages lol, the finely balanced and !!phantasmogorically !! complex processes that promote and control development of life forms....if the existence of such things does not dent your confidence in the certainty of your disbelief then I think it is you who lack imagination, not believers or Agnostics. If the evidence points to the probablity of there not being a diety then so be it. All the support for a diety is in the imagination. Well the more we understand how the brain works the more we realise it renders the world according to our needs to survive and not our needs to know. Dualism (the sense of the mind being separate from the body) speeds up the brain's processing of information and enables us to recognize danger quicker than it would if we were naturally monist. This sense of the mind being separate from our body appears to have been an evolutionary process. If this is so, the idea of there being life beyond the body is an evolutionary by-product, like the moth flying into a flame, which it does because it usings distance lights (stars) to guide it but can't distinguish between the light of the stars and a flame.

adaddysgirl -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 11:05:23 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: eyesopened laughs when i die and find out i'm wrong about God and life after death what have i lost? How will you even know? lol And it i'm not wrong, what have i lost? Not a thing! [:)] my body belongs to the earth from whence it came, just as my soul belongs to my God (i made that up myself...LOL) DG

popeye1250 -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 11:20:26 AM)
To atheists I would say, create a grain of sand from nothing. I 'm not a big fan of religions having grown up Catholic. I mean with all the many religions and beliefs in the world who's to say which one is "right?" The Catholic Inquisitions and Tomas de Torquamada took all the legitimacy away from the Catholic church for me. That whole thing was simply about maintaining power by the church. All religions are man-made anyway. That's what makes it tough for me to "believe" in religion. But to me there has to be a deity or God otherwise how does one explain the existance of the Universe? Not to get into quantum physics but I don't think that "time" is linear. It may be perceived by humans that way because of our limited experience with it but if you look at nature the perfect shape is a circle. I think it's just a question of how big the circle of time is.

Chaingang -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 12:07:11 PM)
Just to clarify one thing: I am myself an agnostic with atheistic leanings. In the main I doubt the truth of any possible first cause is in the offing so I simply don't worry about it much. That said and all other possibilities being equal, I consider the god hypothesis as first cause to be unlikely in the extreme. In any case, even if all god ever did was set the universe in motion - then "it" is not the kind of god most people would seem to conceive of and worship through various religions. Proof? There is no proof either way. That's the whole point. quote: ORIGINAL: eyesopened i have yet to see any proof of evolution and even today Darwin's Theory remains theory. This is what I find worrying. There is an enormous amount of evidence for the theory of natural selection. I assume you have never studied it because otherwise I cannot fathom such a deeply anti-intellectual position on the subject. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection Again I must ask, do you just not accept physical evidence from the world and universe around you? quote: ORIGINAL: eyesopened i have never heard that those who lean toward Intelligent design have ever claimed the world is no older than 6,000 years old. Please provide evidence that the Theory of Intelligent Design makes such a claim. Why should anyone referencing any of the millions of possible baseless notions that believers come up with have to prove that these baseless ideas exist? I would think the burden is on you to not believe these baseless ideas in the first instance. People believe in all kinds of nonsense that has absolutely no justification from the standpoint of physical evidence - none. That is in fact the problem. seeksfemslave: God of the gaps again, and again, and again... No, science does not provide an end to end explanation to all things. Mainly it starts with the kinds of questions originally posed and recorded by Aristotle and then relies upon something like the Socratic method to probe and investigate any given theory. Questions abound, certainties are few (in truth, there are none - but theories do occasionally stand the long test of time). Just because quantum physics is theoretical doesn't mean that the theory doesn't have uses nor that the properties of the theory cannot be investigated. Perhaps they cannot be investigated at this time to your complete satisfaction. That's just the way it is. All theories are merely provisional until a deeper and better theory is achieved. When you lack an answer for something it seems to me that you want to stuff the idea of god into the resulting gaps or imprecisions of available knowledge, but really all you have is an absence of evidence. Absence of evidence is not a thing, it is nothing at all.

popeye1250 -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 12:15:06 PM)
If time can be "bent" as per Einstein's theory of relativity then in my humble opinion it (time) would have to be circular and not linear. Perhaps it is just impossible to measure infinity in "human" terms.

DomKen -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 2:11:57 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: eyesopened i have never heard that those who lean toward Intelligent design have ever claimed the world is no older than 6,000 years old. Please provide evidence that the Theory of Intelligent Design makes such a claim. Missed this on my first reading of the thread. Will point blank testimony be leaders of the ID movement in front of the Kansas BoE suffice? Jonathon Wells: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/kansas/kangaroo2.html#p862 Roger DeHart: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/kansas/kangaroo6.html#p2625 Bryan Leonard: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/kansas/kangaroo5.html#p2181 John Sanford: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/kansas/kangaroo4.html#p1810 There are a couple more very young opinions in the witnesses as well but I think this is enough to prove the point. Anyway there really isn't a theory of ID. ID is a political movement aimed at undermining science education in the US public schools as part of a theocratic movement funded by Howard Ahmanson.

Sinergy -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 2:38:12 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: meatcleaver What you are saying is that if someone believes they can walk though a wall then they can. "That (drilling a hole through his head) would have worked if you had not stopped me." Dan Aykroyd, Ghostbusters

Zensee -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 2:38:40 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: eyesopened Do we exist without our ego??? Again, even the universe we can obseve for ourselves is only a picture of how the universe WAS millions of years ago. How do you know the constellation of Orion exists at this very moment? You don't. The perception is reality because there is no other way to relate to the stars in the sky. To know that the star you see may not exist doesn't stop you from seeing it. It can't be proven one way or the other. Hawking explains in his A Brief History of Time, that Einstein's general theory of relativity implies the universe nust have had a beginning, and possibly, an end. Some folks may call the cause of that beginning and end "God" only because a more definitive name for this Force has yet to be discovered by science. Susan of O is absolutely correct in her observation that drilled down to its core, more people are anti-religion than pure atheist. i believe in God as i understand It. i see the color blue in various hues, shades, values and intensities. i cannot make nor should i make others see the same as me. If we cannot trust our direct experience of the universe to inform us about it’s real nature, how could we possibly accept a vague myth about the unknown as authoritative? It just boggles. You are mistaking the name for the thing, the map for the territory. Attaching a label to an unknown does not increase our knowledge about it. Actually the shadow of that label does more to obscure matters than to reveal anything new. Ask a bad question, get a bad answer

Sinergy -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 2:43:14 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Zensee If we cannot trust our direct experience of the universe to inform us about it’s real nature, how could we possibly accept a vague myth about the unknown as authoritative? It just boggles. "What is real? How do you define "real?" If you are talking about what you can see and hear and taste you are simply referring to electrical impulses interpreted by your brain." Morpheus, The Matrix

LadyEllen -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 2:50:52 PM)
"High School Never Ends" (Bowling For Soup) E

Zensee -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 3:07:27 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Sinergy quote: ORIGINAL: Zensee If we cannot trust our direct experience of the universe to inform us about it’s real nature, how could we possibly accept a vague myth about the unknown as authoritative? It just boggles. "What is real? How do you define "real?" If you are talking about what you can see and hear and taste you are simply referring to electrical impulses interpreted by your brain." Morpheus, The Matrix When did you join the dark side? [sm=hewah.gif] My point being that many of the folks here who claim that our shared, direct, measurable observation of phenomena cannot be trusted to describe will claim, unashamedly, that their pure speculations and labeling of the unknown are the best description of reality. They want it both ways - to have their prejudice pseudo-scientifically proved whilst denying the process or legitimacy of science. They want to have their cake, to eat it to food fight with it too. What indeed is real? I cannot say what is ultimately real but I can say that reason is MORE real than superstition. There is no perfect answer, only a best answer at the moment. Deists claim to have the perfect answer. People can believe in deity if it pleases them, just stop trying to make it public policy or insisting it is in any way, science. Z.

aSlavesLife -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 3:10:40 PM)
Oh sweet evil Buddha, not this fight again!

Sinergy -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 3:17:27 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Zensee quote: ORIGINAL: Sinergy quote: ORIGINAL: Zensee If we cannot trust our direct experience of the universe to inform us about it’s real nature, how could we possibly accept a vague myth about the unknown as authoritative? It just boggles. "What is real? How do you define "real?" If you are talking about what you can see and hear and taste you are simply referring to electrical impulses interpreted by your brain." Morpheus, The Matrix When did you join the dark side? My point being that many of the folks here who claim that our shared, direct, measurable observation of phenomena cannot be trusted to describe will claim, unashamedly, that their pure speculations and labeling of the unknown are the best description of reality. They want it both ways - to have their prejudice pseudo-scientifically proved whilst denying the process or legitimacy of science. They want to have their cake, to eat it to food fight with it too. What indeed is real? I cannot say what is ultimately real but I can say that reason is MORE real than superstition. There is no perfect answer, only a best answer at the moment. Deists claim to have the perfect answer. People can believe in deity if it pleases them, just stop trying to make it public policy or insisting it is in any way, science. Z. I am not disagreeing with anything you said, Zensee. There was a poster (or two) who seem to be bashing science because it is not specifically "reality" due to it changing over time. You might have made the point that the scientific method involves coming up with a hypothesis, figuring out a way to test it, and seeing how well your test goes towards proving the hypothesis. This is spot on. Quantum mechanics cannot be reconciled with gravity. Does this mean that quantum mechanics is wrong? No. Does it mean gravity is wrong? No. Not completely understood, perhaps, but I would not use the term wrong. As things become understood in greater detail, our understanding of the unknown becomes greater. Which is not to say that there is no God. We dont really understand him either. The main difference that I see is that fundamentalist pentacostals want to shove ID down everybodies throats and demand we kowtow to the party line. Scientists just want to figure out a better mousetrap. The ones who bash Darwin just kill me. If there is no such thing as natural selection, why are we one or two antibiotics away from an unkillable staph bacteria? How does HIV change over time? We can go into the laboratory and study these changes in a matter of ours or days. It is almost as if the ID people think that human beings are exempt from life's processes. I find it simply fascinating that life can exist in a mind that small. Sinergy

Zensee -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 4:02:15 PM)
Praise be to The Force that we haven't lost you then, Sinergy. And thanks for the opportunity to clarify my statement. Reality is a tricky term. I prefer, best description at present, but that lacks some poetry in comparison to the R word.

untamedshysub -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 4:32:36 PM)
the interesting thing about the links is this every article is someones opinion and no two can agree. all written things are biased because its written from one person view. I belive in God and I repect other peoples right to believe in whatever or not. I am not a ninja christian, I am a cussing christian , I am a submissive, I think gay men make great girlfriends, I dont love or even like everyone , and I do not feel the need to defend my belief anymore than I feel the need to defend being a submissive. God does not need me to do that , he gave us all free will , my faith is not something I can put on or take off based on what someone else says or feels its as much a part of me as being a submissive and that is all that matters to me.

Sinergy -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 4:33:12 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Zensee Praise be to The Force that we haven't lost you then, Sinergy. And thanks for the opportunity to clarify my statement. Reality is a tricky term. I prefer, best description at present, but that lacks some poetry in comparison to the R word. If you are worried about poetry and the R word, perhaps you should use the W word instead. What is weawity? How do you define Weaw? - Morpheus Fudd Sinergy

Zensee -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 4:36:36 PM)
Seeks – we do experience Electro Magnetism directly, it is called sight. Your arguments are based on flawed understanding of phenomena and the science which is used to describe them. Rule – Don’t be lazy. Many of us take the time to repeat and reiterate our previous posts or to bring pertinent ideas from other threads. Making others responsible for collecting and dissecting your disjointed ramblings, in order to construct from them an argument you seem incapable of making yourself, is not solipsism, it’s just sloppy. If you are really a solipsist, stop blaming your creation.

Zensee -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 4:38:06 PM)
Woger that, Sinewgy!

Rule -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 6:04:33 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Zensee Rule – Don’t be lazy. Many of us take the time to repeat and reiterate our previous posts or to bring pertinent ideas from other threads. In that other thread I defined the Divine as being outside our universe and affecting events in our universe in an acausal way. Both these characteristics preclude the use of objective evidence to demonstrate their existence. Yet this is precisely what mc requires: a faulty line of reasoning. quote: ORIGINAL: meatcleaver I read the other thread but never noticed any objective evidence to prove what you described as the divine to exist anywhere but in your head. mc is apparently struggling to grasp the concept that the universe has an "outside". Let me put it this way by analogy: to exist, a wave requires a medium. The universe exists. What is its medium? Though the universe is part of the Divine, by definition the Divine is not part of the universe. It simply does not work that way: from the point of view of the ball you cannot both be the ball and the person that kicks the ball. By definition only that which is part of the universe exists, as only that we can directly experience. By definition then also the Divine, being "outside" our universe, does not exist, but "exist". This distinction enables a freedom of choice: one may either choose to believe in the Divine, or disbelieve in the Divine. We may even change our choice. The universe would be the poorer for it if we did not have that choice. Some in our universe may be a god and thus divine, but he or she by my definition cannot be the Divine that is outside our universe. Discussions like these are always wrought with difficulties and confusion, because most people have no idea what they are talking about and to make matters even worse cling to their myopic religious indoctrination when they do talk about it. Note that in my posts I strenuously try to avoid using the ill-defined term "God" and instead use the word Divine as defined accurately by my definition.

Zensee -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/10/2007 10:51:22 PM)
So Rule, what you seem to be saying is, the reason we can't see evidence of The Devine here is because he's in the universe next door playing this one with some kind of trans-dimensional remote. And this differs from "he's everywhere but you can't see him" in exactly what substantive way? Z.

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