Theism vs. Atheism ... will it ever be settled?

Atavachron wrote: you should spend a few months in another country.. "Mail? We don't need no stinking mail."

Textbook wrote: A little side question: Is belief in religion (or specifically belief in miracles perhaps) equivalent to belief in magic? To explain what I mean, let's take the miracle of the loaves and fishes. If we take the story as true, do the believers think there was some sort of process which obeyed physics whereby particles were transmuted into food stuff (science) or did it simply just happen (magic)? I think we have to go for magic because if you have an omnipotent god it would seem to follow that the laws of physics don't apply to him but perhaps others disagree.

Good question. While I may not be particularly religious, I absolutely believe in magic. However, I think that "magic" is just a term for things that happen which science does not yet understand. Something my appear to violate what we understand to be the laws of physics, but in reality our understanding of science is merely incomplete. In this sense there is no such thing as the "supernatural." Everything is natural, we just don't fully grasp nature.

At least that's my theory.

A book in the Barnes and Noble discount area told me majick was real. It came with focus stones. Science never gave me focus stones, the dick.

BaldJean wrote: Tony R wrote: I'm with Mike. The Baldies are being ridiculously childish with this pursuit. To me it's borderline harassment, though Mike has not complained. If we are playing at looking up definitions then today's homework for the Baldies is to look up "boorish" in the dictionary. Mike applied Occam's razor to a situation where it cannot be applied. so it is only natural for us to assume that he has misunderstood the principle. this is not boorish at all

You still haven't mentioned which situation you're referring to, have you? You always do that ... and in that condescending tone, too. I would be stupid if I took that bait.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: BaldJean wrote: Tony R wrote: I'm with Mike. The Baldies are being ridiculously childish with this pursuit. To me it's borderline harassment, though Mike has not complained. If we are playing at looking up definitions then today's homework for the Baldies is to look up "boorish" in the dictionary. Mike applied Occam's razor to a situation where it cannot be applied. so it is only natural for us to assume that he has misunderstood the principle. this is not boorish at all You still haven't mentioned which situation you're referring to, have you? You always do that ... and in that condescending tone, too. I would be stupid if I took that bait.

you know pretty well I referred to the big bang

the big bang is a singularityin time-space. this means that all the laws of the universe as we know them were invalid for the moment of the big bang. do you honestly claim that throwing all physical laws overboard to have an explanation for the creation of the universe falls under the principel of Occam's razor ? and is not such a throwing overboard simply equivalent to saying that a deity created the universe? if a God created the universe then that was a similar singular act. that''s why saying "God created the universe" and "the univeerse was started by the big bang" are totally equivalent proposals

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ Who says that physical laws have to be thrown overboard? In fact the theory of the big bang depends on the universality of the physical laws.

Mike, the big bang is a singularity. do you know what that means? it means it is an extreme exemption..in the moment of the big bang all laws of physics as we know them were non-existent.
and, by the way, it is a hypothesis, not a theory

^ Agreed ... the Big Bang is not something that happened at the beginning ... it is still happening.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ Agreed ... the Big Bang is not something that happened at the beginning ... it is still happening.

This is making for some engrossing viewing Mike

Mr ProgFreak wrote: BaldFriede finally shed some more light on the matter. I am quite sure though that I never used Occam's Razor to prove the Big Bang theory. Background radiation and cosmological red shift do that just fine, so we don't need to assess any likelyhoods here. But we could still apply the principle and say that there's no need to assume divine intervention, when we already have a workable theory of how it happened, which doesn't need such unlikely additional factors. As far as the laws of physics are concerned: Maybe we'll need to refine them, just like the theory of relativity was a refinement of the Newtonian laws.

Mike, even years after the discovery of the red shift and the 3° Kelvin radiation scientists still hotly debated several cosmological models; it is by no means as clear as you put it.. one  has to be aware that the big bang is as much a rabbit pulled out of the hat as anything else, which is all we ever wanted to point out. the state the world was in at the moment the big bang happened. is "undefined", which is rather mystic. scientists have worked their way as close as a fewmoments towards that big bang, but what state the world was in before it happened is very mysterious; any speculation is as good as the other. I am not a mathematician, but Friede is, and she says that the statements "Let there be light",, if you allow me to use this phrase for a creation by God, and "There was a big bang" are absolutely equivalent., and I trust her on that; I know she is a brilliaint mathematician.
by the way, looking back on the past it can be shown that applying the principle of Occam's razor sometimes led to wrong results. sometimes the complicated explanation is the right one. Occam's razor is a good guide, but not one that can be blindly trusted


Edited by BaldJean - July 21 2010 at 10:16