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Ok, so this MAY get trolled out of hand.....BUT
Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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Stas B. said:

When they say that God is omnipotent, clearly they mean that he can do everything... except for what he can't do

If you want a concise definition when it is used in a theological context, it would be something like "the ability to do anything within one's nature or desire." If your desires are restricted by your ability, then you aren't omnipotent.

You can get your panties up in a bunch about it, but it's a pretty simple concept.

There's no need to project your meaning onto Christians. Somebody as perfect as you ought to be able to poke holes in the concept while not trying to purposely misrepresent what they believe.

Stas B.
Member #9,615
March 2008

the ability to do anything within one's nature

It is one's nature that defines one's limitations. By your definition, I'm omnipotent. When a theist says that god is omnipotent, they're simply wasting air and producing meaningless sounds. "God is omnipotent" gives you absolutely no information about god's actual abilities. You could say that god's omnipotence is bounded by the laws of logic, but all that tells you with certainity is what god can't do. ::)

SiegeLord
Member #7,827
October 2006
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It's always funny to see Physics majors try to apply mathematical beauty to Biology and fail utterly once they realize how utterly messy it is :P.

One example of how utterly badly "designed" our bodies are that I learned recently is the recurrent laryngeal nerve. This thing descends down from the brain to the heart, then loops around the aorta and goes back up before innervating the laryngeal muscles (muscles that allow you to speak normally). This detour is perhaps a few inches in humans, but is a few feet in animals like giraffes :P.

If we were designed by god, then god is like a noob who as his first programming project decided to make a MMORPG, stuck with it but created a source repository of such ungodly spagettiness that it's a miracle it works at all.

"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow."-Ecclesiastes 1:18
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Trezker
Member #1,739
December 2001
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If the world was perfect, the housefly wouldn't exist.
We wouldn't occasionally bite the insides of our mouths.
We wouldn't have a little intestine left over from evolution that has no other purpose than to randomly try to kill you.

Also, the world would be no fun to live in if it was perfect.

Gnamra
Member #12,503
January 2011
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If the world was perfect it would differ from person to person and deity to deity.

If a deity made the universe and it is perfect in its eyes, then the universe itself is proof that deity is evil by our definition of evil. The definition of evil may differ from person to person as well.

I guess a better way to say it is if a deity created the universe and it was perfect in its eyes. That deity is responsible for everything in existence.

I don't believe that, but I'm pretty sure that the Bible says God created the universe, and everything that is bad is a result of him either not being able to or not willing to fix that is bad. Why aren't Christians pissed off at him, he's a massive douche.

weapon_S
Member #7,859
October 2006
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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I've argued with theists a few times where they'd point to the puffy white clouds in the sky and say how beautiful they were, it was by design. I'd point out that innumerable associations with such weather and enjoyable outings had created that impression, and there was no such association with storm clouds, was there? And if the sky was lime green, and the clouds were blood red, the same associations would hold (providing the theist had grown up going to picnics etc. with such a sky visible).

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Dizzy Egg said:

So, on to the point. I've been an Atheist from a VERY young age, me and 80% of the kids from our village went to an Atheist primary school, because it was the only one in the village.

That's funny. I know religious schools of various description (which means you study the standard curriculum and whatever religion-specific background and holy books and you may have things like starting the day with a prayer) and I know of secular schools where you get none of the religion-specific stuff (and you get a mix of backgrounds). Perhaps you meant secular?

Quote:

Is this a common stage for Atheists studying 'how it all works'

No.

Quote:

or am I just smoking too much too often?

Can't say, but I would think it has nothing to do with anything.

Quote:

I'm still an Atheist, but the more I study now into the depths of 'how it all works' (as such) the more I become conflicted! The sheer mathematical beauty of it all constantly steers me away from 'random events' to 'engineered perfection'.

It really is quite wondrous to see how some of the mathematics works out, how simple and elegant fundamental physical laws can be when expressed in term of mathematical functions (the relativistic version of Maxwell's equations is one of my personal favourites, especially when compared to the incredible mess of their 3-D Newtonian formulation). But to see "engineered perfection", I think, is to overinterpret what you see. For one thing, if you get down to the details of it, physical laws are not actually as neat and tidy as they appear. For another, if someone engineered the laws of the universe, then by induction the question becomes where the engineer comes from and what laws govern him/her/it (I know, not if you're religious, but this is from trying to answer whether someone created the universe from data; yes, it's a valid scientific question).

By the way - when it comes to that question, whether someone designed and created the universe, the intellectually most honest position is agnosticism: we simply have no data one way or the other. You can perhaps rule out creators with certain properties (or specific concrete examples), but not the general concept. Einstein for instance was an agnostic when it comes to the concept of a creator-god, but firmly rejected the idea of a personal god.

SiegeLord said:

It's always funny to see Physics majors try to apply mathematical beauty to Biology and fail utterly once they realize how utterly messy it is :P.

Anyone who knows a jot about biology and still thinks it's all meticulously and specifically designed by an intelligent being is an idiot. Of course, the easiest way to make an eco-system is to create multiple instances of a generic creature, each slightly different, and Monte-Carlo the whole thing by just letting it run for a while and search its own equilibria. Which is basically what we have anyway.

Regardless though: the universe could have a creator without that creator having personally and specifically have had a hand in how life works; that could just be a side-effect.

Specter Phoenix
Member #1,425
July 2001
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Um, biology is far from perfect. In fact its all about imperfect. It's how evolution works. Even random mutations play a fair roll in it.

Wouldn't my wife and son disability (FSH Muscular Dystrophy) and everyone with genetic disabilities like ALS be proof of your point?

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Wouldn't my wife and son disability (FSH Muscular Dystrophy) and everyone with genetic disabilities like ALS be proof of your point?

Would seem so.

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raynebc
Member #11,908
May 2010

bamccaig said:

If there had to have been a "creator" then there had to have also been a creator of the creator, ad infinitum.

I'm not really a religious person myself, but this argument would have to apply to other possibilities such as the big bang theory. If there was a catalyst that initiated the creation of the universe, what created the catalyst? Was there simply nothing at all in existence until all of a sudden, spontaneously, there was?

Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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raynebc said:

Was there simply nothing at all in existence until all of a sudden, spontaneously, there was?

I think most of the ideas are that it's cyclical, but "between" big bangs time and space have no meaning. If you object that this makes it "infinite", it doesn't bother me, but most people have a hard time believing infinity. On the gripping hand, Xians believing that sinners get burnt in lava for an infinite time for not giving god his upvotes is OK.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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raynebc said:

I'm not really a religious person myself, but this argument would have to apply to other possibilities such as the big bang theory. If there was a catalyst that initiated the creation of the universe, what created the catalyst? Was there simply nothing at all in existence until all of a sudden, spontaneously, there was?

Sure. The nice thing about science is it doesn't stop looking for answers. New information is integrated into the current understanding, even if it completely reverses years, decades, or centuries of theory. Its just that we can't currently look back farther than just after the big bang, so there's no real direct evidence as of yet, that there was something before the big bang, and if so, what it was. There are plenty of hypotheses that try and guess at how things were during and before inflation, but they are all currently just guesses (although educated guesses).

Or at least that's how I understand it.

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Thomas Fjellstrom - [website] - [email] - [Allegro Wiki] - [Allegro TODO]
"If you can't think of a better solution, don't try to make a better solution." -- weapon_S
"The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree" -- https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/592870205409353730

23yrold3yrold
Member #1,134
March 2001
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If you object that this makes it "infinite", it doesn't bother me, but most people have a hard time believing infinity.

It's less of an objection and more of a counter-objection. Who's the creator's creator? Well, what's the origin's origin? Unless you have a double-standard, either both or neither should bother you. :)

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Step 1. Build it.
Step 2. Pray.

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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raynebc said:

I'm not really a religious person myself, but this argument would have to apply to other possibilities such as the big bang theory. If there was a catalyst that initiated the creation of the universe, what created the catalyst? Was there simply nothing at all in existence until all of a sudden, spontaneously, there was?

It's not so much that a[n infinite] loop is unreasonable. It's that it doesn't make sense according to any practiced religion that I am aware of for there to suddenly be multiple omnipotent beings, let alone for an omnipotent being to create an omnipotent being to create an omnipotent being to create an omnipotent being [ad infinitum] ... to create humans. :-/ The OP basically justifies his doubt based on a subjective beauty. One could spill paint on a canvas and somebody somewhere would find it creative and intelligent. Even creations that we make (or do, etc.) are sometimes complete accidents (whether we admit it or not).

I personally envision a single universe with energy inside of it that obeys physical laws that leads to a cycle of compression that at some point leads to a rapid expansion, formation of simple chemical elements (composed of compressed energy), formation of stars, the formation of complex elements, planets, blah blah blah, then eventually the energy gets decomposed and recirculated into another big bang. Not all that unlike our own life cycle, I suppose.

Why? Fuck if I know. It's not my job to study it (though, I guess I wish it was), and I wouldn't be surprised if existing knowledge already contracts this, but I'm quite confident saying that no reliable evidence for a deity behind the curtain has ever been found. If you create a man behind the curtain then you have to include the possibility that he too has a man behind a curtain, ad infinitum. Effectively, religious beliefs substitute unknowns with "magic", which accomplishes nothing ... until people exploit the faith of others in this "magic" for their own gain. I'd much rather say "maybe" or "I don't know".

Dizzy Egg said:

I've been an Atheist from a VERY young age, me and 80% of the kids from our village went to an Atheist primary school, because it was the only one in the village.

I'm ashamed that I missed this before. What did the other 20% do? :o

weapon_S
Member #7,859
October 2006
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The question how something can originate from nothing is very interesting IMHO. There's also the question whether there was nothing to begin with.
In the spirit of McCaig's story, here's how I (roughly) picture the universe originated:
There was one string(?) with an infinitesimal difference to its neighbour. To the universe zero and infinitesimal are equal in this particular case. But the difference couldn't exist without a neighbour. So the neighbour existed too, but you can't spawn a string without emitting particle X etc. And this went on for some time to even out this 'mathematical' discrepancy. Then the universe ended.

bamccaig said:

It's that it doesn't make sense according to any practiced religion that I am aware of for there to suddenly be multiple omnipotent beings, let alone for an omnipotent being to create an omnipotent being to create an omnipotent being to create an omnipotent being [ad infinitum] ... to create humans

Older religions often have family-trees. And often it is not the first oldest deity that creates the earth/universe. Maybe that is related to family honour, or maybe our ancestors just remembered the creation of the universe better ;P

Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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weapon_S said:

Older religions often have family-trees. And often it is not the first oldest deity that creates the earth/universe. Maybe that is related to family honour, or maybe our ancestors just remembered the creation of the universe better ;P

Are you referring to how the story of Genesis bears a remarkable resemblance to earlier Phoenician myths or what?

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

Timorg
Member #2,028
March 2002

Science created the concept of god, and when we stop worrying about him, a situation will eventually arise that he will be needed again, and he will be recreated to suit that purpose.

The Last Question - Isaac Asimov

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Neil Walker
Member #210
April 2000
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if you went to a school teaching atheism rather than abstaining from religious teaching isn't that then a religion which means you aren't a non-believer but a believer?

Neil.
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Joachim Arting
Member #13,584
September 2011

Just wanna drop a comment on the "there can't be an infinite regress of creators" discussion

As someone said, there can't have been an infinite regress of creations, it just doesn't make sense, especially within a religious context.

First off: In order to recognize that an explanation is the best, you don't have to have an explanation of the explanation. If that was the case, science would be destroyed.

Imagine a lightning bolt that strikes your house and starts a fire. You are justified in believing that the lightning bolt was responsible for putting your house on fire, without having to explain where the lightning bolt came from.

To clarify, you don't need to explain how God came to exist in order to believe God is the best explanation of the cause of the universe.

Secondly: Christians, Jews and Muslims believes God is necessary in his existence and a maximally great being, meaning there is nothing greater than God: If God had a creator, that would be God. The very nature of God is that he is un-caused, timeless, changeless etc.

I just wanted to point out that this argument is not valid to use against the existence of a God

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"Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is." - Blaise Pascal

Trezker
Member #1,739
December 2001
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My current preferred belief is that there is a consciousness and nothing else. There is no need for a physical universe, it's all just imagined by this consciousness.

Nothing has ever been created, just like dreams are not created. Everything we experience is only thoughts. I also think nature is such a mess because before we started thinking that everything had to make sense we just imagined stuff into existence.

In this theory, all the mythical creatures and gods may very well have actually "existed", but then we started thinking scientifically and those scary things were so hard to explain logically that we suppressed those ideas out of existence.

The pure consciousness does not consist of any matter or energy. It needs no creator because it isn't a thing and it hasn't created anything, it's just dreaming. It may or may not be self conscious, I believe it is not.

Alianix
Member #10,518
December 2008
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Why don't you calculate the probability that taking into account the known size of the universe the atoms in your body would come together to form the living organism that is you, then you will be closer to the answer...I'm pretty much an agnostic when it comes to these questions, and went to school for physics as well but I don't think most people understand what science really is and tend to ask the wrong questions, especially when it comes to physics, math or biology. Science is not here to explain why we are here or why it is beautiful, is there a god etc, these questions are very personal ones. The mathematical description for me is beautiful for example the Lagrangian formulation of mechanics or the calculus of variations. When I was younger I often mystified and even hopefully suspected something extraordinary behind some formulas but I became more and more disillusioned as I understood more of the science...The beauty lies in the art, the art of describing the world in a graceful way even in math. It's like a painting by Van Gogh, it is not the real thing, but it captures it "perfectly".

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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First off: In order to recognize that an explanation is the best, you don't have to have an explanation of the explanation. If that was the case, science would be destroyed.

Bullcrap :P science is all about explaining things. Even its own explanations. Invariably, we get shit wrong. Or at the very least, incomplete. So more information, and more explanations are needed. It's just how science works.

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"If you can't think of a better solution, don't try to make a better solution." -- weapon_S
"The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree" -- https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/592870205409353730

SiegeLord
Member #7,827
October 2006
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First off: In order to recognize that an explanation is the best, you don't have to have an explanation of the explanation. If that was the case, science would be destroyed.

Imagine a lightning bolt that strikes your house and starts a fire. You are justified in believing that the lightning bolt was responsible for putting your house on fire, without having to explain where the lightning bolt came from.

This is absolutely true. Science would be at a standstill if every explanation had to be consistent all the way to the beginning of the universe. But...

Quote:

To clarify, you don't need to explain how God came to exist in order to believe God is the worst explanation of the cause of the universe.

...this is the better way of continuing that sentiment :P. The "what created god" is a very stupid argument against god given that there are so many many more good ones that don't require delving into that issue.

"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow."-Ecclesiastes 1:18
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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SiegeLord said:

The "what created god" is a very stupid argument against god given that there are so many many more good ones that don't require delving into that issue.

I'd say this argument is more like a rebuttal to "where did the primordial atom come from?" question.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.



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