I draw meaning and purpose in life from my understanding of science. I don't believe in a personal god of any kind. There is no evidence whatsoever, and there is no reason for me to believe in any particular god outside of evidence either. I don't need to play make believe with some "big man in the sky" who controls the universe, looks after me if I follow some arcane set of rules, and punishes me if I have sex with someone.
There is plenty meaning to be found in the real world - the world that we can see, touch, smell, and understand. This world that is the same for everyone; the same conclusions can be drawn independently by everyone. I'm sorry if this sounds as though I'm insulting you through your point of view. But to tell you the truth, I feel insulted whenever someone claims that there is no meaning of life without God. So yeah, I guess we just have different ways of looking at the world, right?

Quantum mechanics does not say that. QM is a bit subtle... there's all the business about stuff only having certain properties when they are measured, but there is more too it than people usually talk about. Particular always have all of there properties of the time. They can have some quantum state, which is precise in all that it says. The problem is that the stuff we like to observe, the stuff we like to measure... it doesn't - - well.. lets just say that it depends on what we measure first. Stuff that seems independent, like position and momentum, turns out not to be independent, and so by measuring one, we stuff up the other. It's not that they didn't have the properties in the first place, it's just that those properties are fundamentally in a kind of conflict.
Look I find this difficult to explain this without reverting to technical mumbo jumbo... The point is that just that I don't think your #4 is really true. Maybe Evert or someone will say a bit more about this to anyone who is interested.

(note, the world could be "a simulation", but I don't think QM is evidence of this)

This would make perfect sense if things were stagnant or the speed of light was relative, but neither of these are true as far as I know. How could something that happened 13.7Gyrs ago be just reaching us now if at the time of the event we were not 13.7Glys away but only an immeasurably small distance? As soon The Big Bang occurred, light emitted which would hold a picture of the event should have immediately passed all galaxies in the universe as they were all starting at the same point and moving slower than light. I can't see how it matters that the all were expanding away from each other simultaneously, as that would not slow down light in the least.

I don't feel this has been sufficiently explained at all. I apologize if I am being just being a dolt.

There is a question that religious people tend to avoid answering: what is the meaning of saving your soul and going to paradise?.

Christianity has not told us a great deal about what happens in paradise. You get to live in peace for ever, but that's all we know. Does that mean that we stop being curious? we stop being creative?

And even if we can live our after life like this life, excluding the misery, what is the point of that?

I think QM says exactly that. Quantum uncertainty is another thing, I am talking about the collapse of the wave function.

It seems like the universe is not rendered (i.e. remains a probability) until observed.

Of course, this might be an illusion, and QM may go away if we can observe particles from other dimensions. And then perhaps we can find what binds particles together in quantum entanglement.

@Matthew. Youre argument that god has always existed is weird. I mean, lets say that 'god' would really exist. I think that if he would exist, then he would be a being that lives in another dimension. But that doesent mean that he wouldnt have to be created...

Its really meaningless talking about it really. As we will never know. Well, you already do, I guess. You have faith. I wont have that untill I die and see the man myself. ( IF I see him ) And kick him in the groin because of the mess hes left Earth to become!

I totally agree with bamccaig here. We are animals. Why we live? To SURVIVE! Many people just dont see this. We put ourselfs above animals. The basic goal of life is still to reproduce and insure the survival of the species.

Oh no. There is no god. Let me get a rope and finish it all.

Maybe Cristhians refuse to admit there is not GOD because they dont want to admit that there is nothing after death. Except complet voidness. They cant live whitout guidance from a big man with a long beard and sandals.

I pictured Marvin. In the end of So Long, And Thanks for the Fish.

"Science" is commonly taken to be "what scientists do" and explains things correctly. Actually, the scientific method simply says that you come up with a theory to fit the facts, and see if it can predict what happens next.

You can check on the claimed period of pendulums, or chemical reactions, and a host of other things, what's hard is to build yourself a telescope big enough to grab a spectrum from a galaxy a couple billion light years away.

People don't have time to check on even the simple things (such as pendulums) so they have to take some stuff on faith.

And science has the advantage that whoever can prove a theory wrong gains fame and fortune.

Mathematics is "just a theory", but who's going to argue that 2 + 2 != 4?

The big bang is controversial, but it's much more likely to be modified as our knowledge grows instead of being thrown out entirely. Einsteins theories didn't make classical physics entirely wrong, but modified them slightly.

That's rubbish. Human's evolution has come to its end. Evolution is the only mechanism that can give us mind reading (besides Allegro 5). And there's nothing in the environment that would demand it, making evolution develop it for us. And when scientists say that we only use a fraction of our brains, they probably mean they understand only a fraction of our brain activity. Again, there is a reason why evolution gave us this big brains.

I think some famous pseudoscientist did say this, but it was based on incomplete data. For instance, computer vision systems are pointing out just how much unexpected computation is required to recognize, say, a childs toy top.

Kind of like the guy who "proved" steamships would never cross the Atlantic, but he based his calculations on wood fuel, not coal.

That was the point.

So, there is, to you, a real difference between the existence of something that has no interaction with anything at all and the same thing not existing? What does the distinction consist of?

Well, to me it looks like you're saying the things right but without grasping their full meaning. For instance,

No!
Why? Because light takes 13.7Gyr to cross those 13.7Gly. That's the very definition of what a lightyear means. And this is so because the speed of light is finite and the same for all observers.

Tune your radio to 160.2 GHz.

Because the universe expands. Try asking the question backwards: how long has light travelled that reaches us now from a point that is 13.7Glyr distant? Answer: 13.7Gyr, or the age of the universe.

The universe expands with the speed of light, that's why. Well, and there were no galaxies to begin with anyway, but that's orthogonal to the point. Note though, cosmology in the very early universe is very uncertain and speculative.

Not at all. No one said this is easy, or even well understood. That's why some of the brightest people in the world are working on this and trying to understand it. I wouldn't claim to understand all the intricacies myself. It's hard.

It doesn't, but if it works for you, fine. What is meant by "the collapse of a wavefunction" is very ill defined. It's not clear. There was a recent popular article in New Scientist on the topic. Very speculative, but interesting too.

Anyway, time to get packing.

I will. When working in the group, 2+2=1.

(My apologies to anyone who is more familiar with group theory than I if I made a mistake. It has been two years since my last course, though I am taking another one this semester.)

Edit: The formula tags need to generate transparently colored images. Either that or it's a case of IE not obeying it...

Why do people like to say that atheists have faith in something? How does it require faith to not have faith in something?

I just don't get it. Does it make you uncomfortable or something?

To draw a parallel between science and religion, which makes it easier to explain how the difference between the two is largely moot.