How can there not be a supreme being some where out in the cosmos?

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From the cold north

Lost, you do not seem to be talking about the existence of god in the least. Just because a few physicists believe in god does certainly not make it irrefutable scientific fact. Stephen Hawking has to spend his entire life in a wheelchair and he is basically paralyzed. Intellectually he is a giant among giants. Emotionally he is no better or worse than the rest of us, maybe even worse off. Belief in god is completely emotional, it has no basis in rationality. Most people feel emotionally empty and try to fill it with an invisible spooky spirit. What my basic message in my last post is that humans are what really matter. When you treat them with the respect and reverence they deserve then you can feel good about yourself. Until then keep believing there is some "white" "male" "American" god out there to protect your interests. Oh yeah, and after you die, you go to heaven, WTF is that. Can you not see how that is meant to control the masses? If all the people knew that their lives were over when they died, then they would rip the power back from those in control. Has any of your scientists proven that a soul exists or that life after death is even possible? No, I did not think so. All we (atheists) are trying to do is to make you deists see that it is irrational and inevitably detrimental to all of mankind. Hope the message does not fall on deaf ears.

And another thing, why do you feel it necessary to ask Messer about his genitals? (or hers, I don't really care?) Are you saying that if Messer is female then Messer's arguements will take on less weight? Or are you just interested in pseudo-homosexual behavior? Most god-believers are very male oriented and patriarchal.

syndalicist you obviously have read nothing i say or you would eliminate the judeo-christian-muslim remarks.

when did i mention heaven or white male god?

and i never said anything about messers genitals.

quit downloading the porn while posting.

i referred to messer as she, and asked messer to prove otherwise, to show that there are some things that just can't be proven right at this moment.

and i refer to hawking, kaku, and barbour as believing in god,

it is to show that the scientists she revers for explanation of things and the affirmation of the non-existance of god most have of the reputable ones do have a belief in god.

it wasn't meant to prove god,

to quote kaku "it's not that scientists lack belief in god, it's that a scientists god is different from a religious one. religions follow a god of miracles, scientists who believe follow a god of order"

some say einstein did prove the existance of the soul, in that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

all the thoughts that make you who you are, from your emotional feelings, to the way you look at the world are electrical impulses in your brain.

although not definitive proof, it does allow the scientific possibility.

sit back for a moment and realize all that is going on right in front of you, between you and the computer monitor,

all that you can't see, hear, taste, smell, or touch.

there's phone conversations passing in front of you.

there's television and radio stations broadcasting right in front of you.

there's magnetic fields being manipulated by what you are doing on your computer.

there's probably some top secret military information passing right under your nose that if you had the proper equipment and decryption would be as plain as the text on your monitor.

what more do you think is going on right under your nose at the moment that even our best scientists have no clue about at the moment?

or do you think we've reached the apex of knowledge and science?

here's an interesting posed by barbour in his book the end of time.

a cat sees a bird and jumps in the air and comes down with him in his mouth.

is the cat and bird at the end the exact same cat and bird from the start?

now really think about this, the answer will startle you until you think about it.

no they are not EXACTLY the same.

cells die off and others are reborn.

whenever you move, or sit still, the person at the end has changed from the person in the beginning, even if only a few seconds have passed because of cells dying and new ones created.

yet you have something that retains your singular identity even though quite possibly none of you remains that was present at birth.

in fact, if at the age of 80 you die, the oldest parts of your body, your bones, are probably at most 25 years old.

yet you retain a singular identity.

that's fucking fascinating.

to me anyways.

That is very interesting. I was confused by why you wanted Messer to prove he was a man. And you did not post anything that would have been a judeo-christian god. That being said, I sill think that a god of order is so inherently different from the monotheistic gods. So, if scientists someday prove the existence of their god of order (which I will highly doubt), then jews, christians, and muslims will feel that this means that god exists. The term god has been defined in vasttly different ways. So much so that it is difficult, if not impossible to talk about god without two people having their messages misinterpreted.

I used to believe in an afterlife after finding out about the law that states that energy can be neither created or destroyed. Well, if energy can't be created, how did we get here? Or to tickle your brain, were we already here? Have you and I and everyone else been here for thousands of years? Well, I don't think so. The closer you get to death the more energy you use up just to stay alive.

Think about it this way: Let's say our energy is like the energy from the sun. And our bodies are like solar cells. The energy and solar cells work together to create electricity and power (i.e., life) Now take away the solar cells, we no longer have life because we have nothing that can change energy into anything usable. I know this is not the most involved analogy, but think about it. And, if there is life after death, then why has not one single human from the billions that have died, come back to earth.

Imagine actually living for eternity. That means you could never die and be done with it all. Eternity is an unimaginably long time. I do not think you can comprehend what it means to live forever. Also, if there is a god, please explain why he/she/it created so many trillions of stars. We may in the future make it to .000000000001% of these. The rest have dead planets or none at all. The stars are sitting there useless. This shoots a bit of a whole in your god of order theory. Think about the incredible amount of waste it takes to create a trillion useless stars.

The reason why I say belief in a god is emotional is because intellectually we can live without god. But emotionally people have trouble with it.

lostmind,

np. man, that type of stuff REALLY gets on my nerves. im glad that you see it the same way.

bar room, you are one of the rare people whose not afraid to state your beliefs. and i have A LOT of respect for that.

syndalicist, i may have come off kind of rude to you,

i apologize.

but to your point about people not coming back.

some say they've seen ghosts, or can communicate with ghosts; i don't believe it.

my belief is that you now exist outside of what we term "reality"

again it comes down to man's immaturity.

if god would show himself to us, he'd face a rebellion for not satisying everybodies selfish desires.

if the afterlife were proven, how many would forgo this life, i think you'd see suiced rates skyrocket.

mankinds self-centeredness and ego has made him think that he is somehow civilized, but we haven't even learned the simple concept of getting along.

i look at man as entering puberty, the overall the equivalent of a child of about 12 or 13.

i don't think we'll be ready to reasonably handle any of these things like god, or the after life until we're about 40.

and if in 500,000 years we've reached the age of 13,

that means we age one year every 38,462, i don't expect us being able to handle the existance of god or an afterlife for another 1,038,480 years.

supposing we last that long.

think of all we've learned in the last one hundred years, what will we be capable of 1 million years down the road.

think about it, all of us are still children.

I am male Lostmind, just to clear all suspicion.

Now, as to your argument. You are right in saying that there is no way of proving that I am male or female, but one knows from experience that I can't for example be an alien from the planet Mars. And it is equally likely, in purely statistical terms, to assume a 50-50 chance that I am male or female. However, the existence of God is not based on such common sense. There is no previous experience to tell us through either the physical or the psychological that He exists. He is only known to those that have had some sort of monotheistic education and rearing, more so from tradition than actual fact. If you employ your argument lost, in claiming that God exists when there are actually is no concrete and tangible proof of it you could equally affirm I am a Martian who has come to take over the world. There is no evidence to prove that Martians haven't infiltrated into our society, nevertheless experience and logic tells us that that is extremely unlikely. Similarly, they must tell us that a belief in God is unrealistic.

quote:

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Originally posted by lostmind:
in fact, if at the age of 80 you die, the oldest parts of your body, your bones, are probably at most 25 years old.

yet you retain a singular identity.

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Actualy i think your wrong.

when it comes to brain cells, your born with all you'll have, they dont regrow and you can't grow more. Sure, each one grows larger, but they last you all your life.

So, you always have the same brain, not much wonder you retain your singular identity.

Source.

First of jo662, I am pretty sure that there have been studies recently that showed that brain cells can regenerat. It really does not matter when you consider the fact that we use at most 10 percent of our brain. Plus, with stem cells we could grow brain cells, not to mention lung, heart, and liver cells.

Lost, I do not think you have been rude, but the apology is appreciated if just to show respect. Look at it this way, there is SO much suffering in the world. When you stop to actually think about it, it becomes overwhelming. God could (hypothetically) put a stop to this. Wouldn't you stop all suffering if you could? I would too, does that make us more compassionate than god? Think about it for awhile. Messer is right about you not being able to prove he is not a martian. It is like saying, prove unicorns don't exist. You can't, it is impossible. To believe something is different from knowing something. People believe in god, no one knows god. Believing is similar to having faith. Even though there is no concrete evidence or proof, you still persist in believing god exists.

Religion has been used for thousands of years to control people. The New Testament was written 400 A.C.E. by the Romans. Doesn't it seem odd to you that the very same people who persecuted and tortured and killed christians now made it their religion. The pope still lives in Rome. I know you are not christian, I just use this point to emphasize that religion exists for control.

You are probably right, to be honest I haven't looked into it much, I just went by what I have been taught in school and what most of the articals I've read have said.

If you do have any links to articles/research papers could you please post them, because i would be interested in reading them.

btw lostmind, what significance does (Tstarred)2 = T2 - X2 have, sinice you brought it up, i am trying to consider all side of the argument.

i don't believe you messer,

i believe you are a bitch.

you are asking me to accept this purely on faith and because you say so.

I WANT PROOF NOT PARABLES.

you know what i believe messer,

i believe you don't even exist.

i believe you are a defiant exile pseudo-persona brought about as a pulpit for him on which to speak about and propagate his fascists ideals.

and statistically speaking there is 50-50 chance god does exist.

he either exists, or he doesn't exist, sounds pretty 50-50 to me.

you know why the hell am i even talking to non-existant being.

defiant the jokes over, messer can dissipate into the aether now.

syndalicst the question i put forth to you is this,

what would man learn if everything was done for him?

would we not turn into slaves if our problems were solved for us instead of by us?

could you truly appreciate what it means to be happy, if you have never known what it is like to be sad?

no i would not stop the suffering in the world,

not even my own.

it's made me who i am, and i'm damn happy with myself.

it's like i told my mother at my grandmother's funeral the other day, embrace your sorrow, without it you would not know joy.

The illogicality of the theist.

Why to believe Messer is male, while still denying god:

You know both males and females exist(and hermaphrodites, but lets not get into that) That narrows it down to a 50% chance that Messer is male.
Next, why would Messer pretend to be male. I can find no plausible motives.
Finally, it doesn't matter either way. His arguments still exist, and are of equal value. We know he exists in some form, even if it is just his posts. God however, we lack reason to believe exists in any form.
Oh yeah, I just came up with a greater argument! Messer, in the form of his postings, is a fictional male character based on whoever posts his messages if there is a difference between them, and so must be male!
So, it is logical that Messer is male.

Finally someone who understands my reasoning. That was what I meant to say. Whereas you have tangible evidence of my existence, there is nothing discernable that proves that God exists.

Your concious of your existence. Howd that happen?

"The illogicality of the theist."

no counter?

would you do everything for your children so you learn nothing.

"Whereas you have tangible evidence of my existence,"

what is my tangible evidence that you are not an anti-persona of someone like defiant exile which he uses as a sort of medium to put forth his ideas?

please enlighten me to your "tangible" evidence.

and venefrigus you are right, there is 50% chance messer is male, and a 50% chance messer is female.

there is also a 50%chance god exists, and 50% chance he doesn't exist.

jo, sorry i didn't see your question right away.

it's a really interesting formula when you break down it's meaning and significance.

the theory is embedded in general relativity, and although einstein discovered it, he did not even understand it's implications.

while trying to prove general relativity, einstein used two clocks and noticed the one that was farther away showed a slower time then the one nearby.

a physicist by the name of minkowski, wanted a formula for this phenomena and came up with (Tstarred)2 = T2 - X2.

this is a distance formula.

it shows that we all agree on the measurements of space-like seperation and time-like seperation of the same two events made by observers at any speed.

it also shows that we will all disagree about the results of the seperate measurements, but we will all find the same value for the square of the time-like seperation MINUS the square of the space-like seperation.

it will always be equal to the square of the time-like seperation called proper time.

so we can say this is a way of measuring distance with time.

which should point out another interesting anomaly. you'll notice it is the inverse of pythagora's theorem.

H2 = A2 + B2.

a quote from the end of time by julian barbour.

"Almost everything mysterious and exciting about special relativity arises from the enigmatic minus sign in the space-time 'distance'. It causes the 'skewing' of both axes of the starred frame of the starred twins in figure 25(book graphic), and leads to the single most startling prediction-that it is possible, IN A REAL SENSE, to travel into the future, or at least into the future of someone else, since the future as such is not uniquely defined in special relativity. What we call space and time simply result from the way observers choose to 'paint coordinate systems' on space-time, which is the true reality"

kind of a hint at destiny isn't it? should time exist.

if time does not exist, then you everything you feel is a lie.

many-worlds people will tell me now that eliminates destiny because all paths are possible.

but let's use the superstring theory to put that to a rest.

sure higher dimensions represent your personal wave function which is a culmination of all possibilities.

but even higher dimensions hold self-consistency in which only one path was really taken.

from kaku's hyperspace,

"In principle, if we know the S-matrix, we know everything about particlee interactions and how they scatter. In this approach, how particles bump into one another is everything; the individual particle is nothing. S-matrix theory said that the self-consistency of the scattering matrix and SELF-CONSISTENCY ALONE, was sufficient to determine the S-matrix. Thus fundamental particles and fields were banished forever from the Eden of S-matrix theory. In the final analysis, only the S-matrix has any physical meaning."

eden is kaku's own words.

elegent, simplistic, and all intertwined within each other.

perfection at it's best, nothing chaotic about it.

suppose evolution is true(a form of evolution is at least),

perhaps soullace all those factors i speak about that just so happen to be, no matter the mathematical improbability, and the very vegas defintion of a "long shot",

all occurred, because they HAD to.