JackC

OK, since you didn't like Br0k3en's answers to your questions, maybe mine will be better or maybe not. 1. Why is there so much suffering in the world. Shouldn't it all be peaches and cream? If there was a good god at the helm I would expect that evil would not exist. Since evil does exist we can conclude that either god is not good, god does not care or there is no god (which is conceptually equivalent to an impotent god). 2. What is my reason for being alive? Why am I here? Your parents had sex. 3. What is your reason for being alive? Have you discovered it? How? My parents had sex. Life only has the meaning you attach to it which still gives you plenty of scope. 4. How come I believe in God, see His work all around me, and yet still have doubts? This could take a while. I always got the feeling that religion was bullshit but could never really put my finger on why. It just didn't ring true to my skeptical mind. I spent many a year as an apathetic agnostic before going to university and learning how the world actually works. I'm now a research scientist and I use the analytical skills from this discipline in any and all areas I can since it is proven to work well. When viewed in an analytical way, the whole concept of god just doesn't stand up, it isn't even self-consistent. Why you believe only you can answer. To me, the whole thing is so absurd it's laughable. 5. How come God would let people suffer in hell (or any religion's particular version of it)? See answer #1 6. How can I be free and still obey God's laws? And how come the jews have so many laws??? Laws have to curtail freedoms, that the point of them. Free will and an omniscient god are logically mutually exclusive concepts. This question is actually meaningless with no god, you are only left with mans laws and all scripture was written by man. 7. Doesn't science preclude any god, and if not, how not? Science isn't in the business of precluding god. God plays no part in science by definition. The only relationship they have is that science proves that god is not necessary. 8. What is divine guidance? 8a. What is coincidence rather than answered prayer? How do I know the difference? Can I test it? Almost 70% of the population will experience an halucination at some point during their lives. Some will attribute this to divine intervention, some attribute it to drugs, some will dismiss it altogether and others end up in a padded cell. If it exists only in your mind and you can't verify it against some external and objective source, it's at best a curiosity and of no intrinsic value. If it's an event, then you first have to verify that the mechanism exists that could cause this event. For the god mechanism, no evidence exist (note bronze age mythology is not evidence). Until you can come up with evidence for a cause, your stuck with coincidence. 9. How does God work in my life? How does He know "each hair on my head", and why would He bother? And the obvious answer is... he doesn't. Reality is something that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it. 10. What are Angels, cherubim, and Seraphim? How come I can't see them? Things that don't have a physical form and don't posess anything by which we might identify them, are indistinguishable from their nonexistence. 11. Why does God love me? Meaningless question. Non-extant entities do not love. 12. How can I love more? Love even those who've done me wrong; badly, badly wrong? That's for you to descide but you don't necessarily have to love everything and everyone to be a good person. In fact, people who do are quite creepy. 13. Doesn't forgiveness mean it's o.k. to do it? And if I forgive someone, does that give them permission to do it again, and again? Forgiveness and permission are not the same thing. 14. Why is Mary respected in the Catholic religion, but plays a lesser part in other religions? What about the feminine aspect to judeism and christianity? Different cults often have different doctrines depending on the people who made them up. I doubt you'l like my answers any better than Br0k3n's but at least I tried to give honest answers to honest questions even if you don't beleive me.

You're over-generalizing about religious people. There are probably some like you describe, but I doubt they are in the majority. I agree that it is a generalisation but I think it suits the majority. Religious people think that their relationship with god is special, because to them it is. They don't like it when they don't get shown the respect they think their beliefs deserve. Michelle and Pajarito for instance got all bent out of shape because they thought Br0k3n's questions and answers were mocking, insincere, and trite. They weren't, they were valid questions and answers. You yourself called Br0k3n closed minded, he doesn't seem that way to me, and I do agree that it is important to be open minded but not so open minded that your brains fall out. Are you even open to the possibility that god may not exist? Speedracer called lurch's post bullshit simply because he could concieve of the fact that it is possible to live without any beliefs in the religious sense of the word. Religious people think their beliefs are special; they're not.

You owe me a new irony meter. Mine just exploded. Luckily, my God-O-Meter is still working.

I prefer militant atheist

That's sort of my point. Religion deserves no special treatment just because it's a religion. It should be treated with the same respect as say allegiance to a football club. However, that is a step up from no respect, people tend to stop listening when you show them no respect at all. That's pretty a useless situation if you want to get a point across. Unfortunately, it's virtually impossible for religious folk to accept that their beliefs should get no special treatment since they somehow think their beliefs are indeed "special".

Consider the statement: "a persons religious beliefs should be respected". Why? If someone believed that Israel should be wiped off the map, I wouldn't be expected to respect or tollerate that. If someone believed that space aliens were reading their mind by brain rays from venus, I wouldn't be expected to respect that. What is so special about religion that we must respect it no matter how absurd it is? If someone thinks you'd have to be nuts to buy into particular belief, why can't they call it as they see it? Which reminds me of a quote: "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." -H. L. Mencken

Well, Nature is a top tier scientific peer reviewed journal, godandscience.org is a christian apologetics website. I know which I would tend to believe. Well Spinoza's God is the natural world and has no personality. I think you'd have to go a long way to find someone who doesn't believe in the natural word. So, me as an atheist can still believe in spinoza's god, maybe not in the same way Spinoza imagined it but as a belief in the natural world. I think Spinoza's god is vastly different from the Abrahamic (and many of the non-abrahamic) god(s). It is important to make this distinction. Firtly, scientist do not work to prove god doesn't exist. God is just not part of science by definition, which is why ID should not be taught in science class. Every sane person should beleive in the natural world (or spinozas god if you prefer) because there is a universe full of evidence that the universe exists. Other gods are very different - no evidence. Since science is built on evidence, (non-spinoza type) religious scientists seem to ba an oxymoron to me. That doesn't excite me one bit. Glad to be of service, it was done as a parody of creationist "lists of scientists" who doubt evolution. Project Steve has a longer and more distinguished list of scientists than the creationists and they're all named Steve. It just goes to prove that not all lists are worth a bean. Then there would be some questions that could never be answered. The correct response would then be "I don't know" not "godidit" That's a reference to quantum theory which has a random element to it. Certain aspects of quantum events can't be predicted deterministically, only statistically. The quotes you presented are not about god except as a euphemism for the universe. You're right though, it is fascinating. When Laplace published his theory of the formation of the Solar System, Napoleon Bonaparte asked him where God fit into his theory. Laplace replied, "Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis.". Nothing has changed since then, in the words of Steven Hawking, this doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary. If I want to know what mechanism is responsible for the spin-dependent hyperfine interactions in positive-parity non-strange excited baryons and I just posit god as an explianation, what good does that do? How can I test the god mechanism? What predictions can I make from it? I fail to see how god actually explains anything at all. Unless you can say god has property X, symmetry Y and behaves acording to rule Z, all you've really said is I haven't got a clue how this works, it must be magic. That seems like a most unsatisfying answer to me. A cop out if you will. Yep. Maybe they are. All the stuff is out there but it's up to you to look for it. Science is supposed to be objective based on fact, theory, testing, experimenting. Religion has to be based on dogma and scripture which can never be questioned or tested. Both angles are represented. Unfortunately, science from christian apologetic websites, isn't really science and that is annoying. Maybe not you but I wish people would criticise science for what it is, not what it isn't. Nope, you lost me here. That's also one of my big problems with religion, I just can't make head nor tail of it.

Fair point. It's easy for both sides to claim Einstein believed or not because he sort of did both. Spinoza's god is a fair bit different from the abrahamic god though. And they are getting fewer according to research published in Nature. Perhaps your wording is not quite what you meant? Quotes like the ones in your link always remind me of Project Steve That maybe true, in the sense that there are plenty of problems still to be fully understood by science which is good because I'd be out of a job if there weren't. For the most part though, the fundamentals are relatively well understood even if some of the theories don't quite tie up. But with regards to god, an all powerful being the messes with the fabric of the universe from time to time, you think they'd have spotted something. That was my point. Plus if god did mess with the universe from time to time, science would be stuffed since you'd never be able to predict anything. Well this is my pet subject I suppose since I have a PhD in quantum field theory. I don't know of any part that says particles are sentient so I can't provide a link for you. My best guess is that some amature philosopher jumped to that conclusion and it gets perpetuated because it fits certain agendas. As regards reading matter, you have to be careful with pop science books, many don't get the point across well at all. I'm not a big fan of Hawkin's "A Brief History of Time" for instance and "The Emperors New Mind" by Roger Penrose is awful. Feymnan's "QED: the srange theory of light and matter" on the other hand is much much better. In fact anything by Feynman is worth reading. But if you really want to know then you'll need to do the maths. I know it sound arrogant, but there really is no substitute. Hey, that's just the way I read it in the dictionary. But we can agree to disagree here. To me the omnipotent, omnipressent, omniscient god is an orthogonal concept and like the square circle, cannot exist by definition. In order to get over the logical inconsitencies you need to start redefining his properties into something altogether less god like. I just don't buy it.

If science hasn't found it, it's probably a fair bet that it doesn't exist. Personally, I find an almost endless source of wonder in science. The only sense of wonder I get from God on the other hand is what the hell were they thinking when they came up with this crap? As I undertand it, neither Einstein nor Hawking believed in god. It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. -- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930 What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary. [Stephen W. Hawking, Der Spiegel, 1989] According to Christianity, faith doesn?t mean you don?t reason. It means you ground your reasoning on the trustworthiness of God. But the very concept of god doesn't even make logical sense so baseing anything on it is absurd. In my book, believing in that is about a blind as it gets. To know requires proof. To believe requires evidence. To have faith requires neither. You say faith is not blind, I can't see that there is any other kind. This is the sort of thing that gets repeated by appologists and bears no resemblance to fact. Quantum particles do not "behave as the viewer expects them to", their behaviour is very well understood and does not need the god hypothesis to explain. If god actually did exist, I wish he'd fix it so people better understood their subject matter before verbalising it. To this scientist, god is such an incoherent concept it has no meaning at all. I can't search the entire universe looking for a square circle, but I'm 100% sure they don't exist.

You're right, software availability and support for other formats is a problem. That's still one of the reasons I continue using windows. It's easier to find good quality windows software than linux software evn though some linux apps are really good. I also think the linux/UNIX plaform is better suited to doing some of the number crunching/coding I need to do and have traditionally done on UNIX workstations. Many of the good linux apps also have windows versions and if not you can always use use Cygwin which is a unix emulator for windows. Setting it up is a major headache but you almost get the best of both worlds in one box. As far as security issues go, linux can be better if it is well sorted but windows can be made relatively secure with the right firewall/filtering software. Good enough for most users anyway.

Hmmm... take the universe, it's big, complicated and difficult to understand. I know, lets say it was caused by a bigger, more complicated, completely incomrehensible being for which there is no evidence. That explaination sucks.

It's funny but all I got from the book of job was god shafted a loyal man for a bet. I mean the devil might be a bastard but at least he's an honest bastard. But anyway, I think it's every sane persons duty to question god and its motives. If we didn't, we'd still be thinking the earth was flat, stoning adulterers and gays, burning witches and having the annual summer crusade. I means it's all in there, if you take it literally and don't ask too many questions. Plus blasphemy is a victimless crime.

Pajarito, I'll say it again just so it's clear, pretty please, with sugar on top, STOP GETTING YOUR SCIENCE(FICTION) FROM CEATIONIST WEBSITES AND START READING THE REAL THING!!! To make that list work, you not only have to misinterpret the science it uses but also redefine big chunks the English language. I really worries me that people actually take this stuff seriously.

That is where I disagree. You disagree with "plenty" or "evidence"? How much more evidence do you want? Can you provide any evidence at all for creation? According to your 2000 year old book. There is no way you can check the truth of this hearsay, not even in principle. With evolution you can at least check the available facts to see if they fit with the theory, virtually all scientists think they do. At least there is evidence for evolution, there isn't for creation. The points in the bible that can be checked are found to be false; the main point (God) isn't even a coherent concept. Science definately trumps superstition, more often than not it proves superstition to be complete gibberish. If you think science supports and validates the bible, you should stop getting your science(fiction) from creationist websites and start reading the real thing. I somehow doubt that you will do that though.

From http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html New species have arisen in historical times. For example: A new species of mosquito, the molestus form isolated in London's Underground, has speciated from Culex pipiens (Byrne and Nichols 1999; Nuttall 1998). Helacyton gartleri is the HeLa cell culture, which evolved from a human cervical carcinoma in 1951. The culture grows indefinitely and has become widespread (Van Valen and Maiorana 1991). Several new species of plants have arisen via polyploidy (when the chromosome count multiplies by two or more) (de Wet 1971). One example is Primula kewensis (Newton and Pellew 1929). Incipient speciation, where two subspecies interbreed rarely or with only little success, is common. Here are just a few examples: Rhagoletis pomonella, the apple maggot fly, is undergoing sympatric speciation. Its native host in North America is Hawthorn (Crataegus spp.), but in the mid-1800s, a new population formed on introduced domestic apples (Malus pumila). The two races are kept partially isolated by natural selection (Filchak et al. 2000). The mosquito Anopheles gambiae shows incipient speciation between its populations in northwestern and southeastern Africa (Fanello et al. 2003; Lehmann et al. 2003). Silverside fish show incipient speciation between marine and estuarine populations (Beheregaray and Sunnucks 2001). Ring species show the process of speciation in action. In ring species, the species is distributed more or less in a line, such as around the base of a mountain range. Each population is able to breed with its neighboring population, but the populations at the two ends are not able to interbreed. (In a true ring species, those two end populations are adjacent to each other, completing the ring.) Examples of ring species are the salamander Ensatina, with seven different subspecies on the west coast of the United States. They form a ring around California's central valley. At the south end, adjacent subspecies klauberi and eschscholtzi do not interbreed (Brown n.d.; Wake 1997). greenish warblers (Phylloscopus trochiloides), around the Himalayas. Their behavioral and genetic characteristics change gradually, starting from central Siberia, extending around the Himalayas, and back again, so two forms of the songbird coexist but do not interbreed in that part of their range (Irwin et al. 2001; Whitehouse 2001). the deer mouse (Peromyces maniculatus), with over fifty subspecies in North America. many species of birds, including Parus major and P. minor, Halcyon chloris, Zosterops, Lalage, Pernis, the Larus argentatus group, and Phylloscopus trochiloides (Mayr 1942, 182-183). the American bee Hoplitis (Alcidamea) producta (Mayr 1963, 510). the subterranean mole rat, Spalax ehrenbergi (Nevo 1999). Evidence of speciation occurs in the form of organisms that exist only in environments that did not exist a few hundreds or thousands of years ago. For example: In several Canadian lakes, which originated in the last 10,000 years following the last ice age, stickleback fish have diversified into separate species for shallow and deep water (Schilthuizen 2001, 146-151). Cichlids in Lake Malawi and Lake Victoria have diversified into hundreds of species. Parts of Lake Malawi which originated in the nineteenth century have species indigenous to those parts (Schilthuizen 2001, 166-176). A Mimulus species adapted for soils high in copper exists only on the tailings of a copper mine that did not exist before 1859 (Macnair 1989). There is further evidence that speciation can be caused by infection with a symbiont. A Wolbachia bacterium infects and causes postmating reproductive isolation between the wasps Nasonia vitripennis and N. giraulti (Bordenstein and Werren 1997).

That still doesn't mean Goddidit. There's plenty of evidence for evolution but you say it isn't enough, yet you are quite happy with the idea of creation even though there is precisely zero evidence for that. Pajarito, this is a serious question and I'd appreciate it if you could take the time to answer. Is there any evidence, even in principle, that would make you change your mind?

Even if there was some decent science in that cut-n-paste article, they well and truly fucked it up with the line "Homo sapiens does indeed stand alone, created in the image and likeness of God". The authors argument is basically 1. Here's two fossils, A and B. 2. Fossil A looks different to fossil B 3. God exists Horseshit. Anyway here's Fred Spoor on Talk-Origin referring to Marvin Lubenow 1992 book "Bones of Contention" which are two of the authors your article references. Keep up the good work disclosing the creationists' nonsense. I am very much aware that any arguments and disagreements in scientific debates between palaeoanthropologists will be taken out of context and used by creationists to suggest that they have science and actual evidence on their side. Once we get into further debate about the status and implications of Kenyanthropus platyops, I am sure they will (ab)use that too.... http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/invalidtaxon.html And here's an article explaining why John Woodmorappe's article "Standing (and Walking) Alone" (the one you produced) is horsehooey. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_canals.html

Acording to what I've read, Chick has produced a list that doesn't conform to scientific thinking. He's basically made up a list using fragments of fact and shot that down. Classic straw man stuff. Critique the science by all means, but there's no point in shooting down fiction. Here's some links to rebuttals of Chick list: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/bigdaddy.html http://www.punkerslut.com/critiques/chick/bigdaddy.html http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Big_Daddy%3F http://www.whiterose.org/dr.elmo/blog/archives/001781.html In case you don't like any of those, you can go straight to the horses mouth by using this IIDB thread which contains hundreds of absracts from Science and Nature papers on the subject of evolution. http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=124611

The problem I have with religion is when they start distorting facts, use circular reasoning and not understanding the concept of "evidence". Take this post for instance. This was just ripped off from a cartoon and is being passed off as fact. It's basically a rebuttal of what some christians think evolution science is. The topics listed don't even conform to the real science, it's basically just a made up list designed to make evolution look stupid. People who can't be bothered to check might read that and think it's based on fact when it isn't. I don't know if this tactic is based in ingorance of the science or is a devious plot designed to futher the agenda. Either way the gibberish that flows out in the name of religion is flabbergasting and deserves criticism. Of course this applies to many walks of life (the media is particularly guilty of this) all of which need challenging.

Fuck me Paj, the best you can do is plagarise a Jack Chick cartoon!!???!! http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp http://www.kent-hovind.com/chick/daddy.htm I really think you should get your bullshit-o-meter recalibrated.

Trying to understand the early universe and what was before the universe are two different questions. I thought you would know that, I see I was wrong. What evidence do you have for the existence of an entity that started the universe and how do you get over the problem of infinite regression? Please note: the superstitions of a bunch of Bronze age nomads is not evidence. Look up the Casimir effect. Why? Look up the Casimir effect. Just because you cannot get your head around it, does not make it wrong. Take dpdx~h for example. Possibly the most misused equation in the history of science. You will have heard of it but most people don't understand it or know where it came from, but it's still right. But you talk of logic, how logical is it to assume that god sent himself to sacrifice himself to himself to appease his own anger at his own creation so he wouldn't have to send his creation to a place of hellfire and damnation which he created? "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". ~ Philip K. Dick

I don't think he does. Take the first thing on his list for example: 1. Time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves. How can you prove this? Asking what lit the fuse to start the Big Bang is not a question science can answer since what was before the beggining of time is a meaningless question. If as you suggest, he knows exactly what science can and can't do, then he's deliberatelly misrepresenting the facts and that's pretty low. You can't prove that fiction is fact. His version of the science doesn't match what's published in the literature. Proving the truth of stuff we already know to be false is impossible. First, big bang cosmology and stellar evolution is a totally different set of subjects to Natural Selection. Be sure you don't get them all mixed up because it looks like you have. For a good overview of evolutionary biology and natural selection I'd suggest you read The Blind Watchmaker. In my opinion though, pop science is often guilty of leading the reader astray. If you don't actually do the science, just reading the coffee table version will often mean you get the wrong end of the stick. Regarding the fossil record, missing links are found on a semi-regular basis. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0413_060413_evolution.html Just because we haven't got the complete set of monkeys-to-men playing cards, doesn't mean the theory is scrap. From my perspective (and the scientific establishement) the whole Big Bang through Primordial Soup through RNA World Hypothesis through biological evolution and natural selection over billions of years is quite plausible, even probable and is backed up by mountains of evidence. Godidit has no such virtue. You're right in as much as I have faith that most scientists have done their work correctly and that the peer review process is fair and self-correcting. However if I wanted to, I could take every single scientific theory and trace it back all the way back through first principles, re-do all the experiments and check if I really thought it was correct. This would probably take many centuries for one person to complete and I'm way to lazy for that so I won't bother. Now how do I do that with God? I can't go back in time and poke Jesus a bit, I can't do an experiment to test Gods properties, I can't check one single thing. At least I can check to see if my scientific faith is warranted if I want to, you can't test yours for shit. There's the bit that's blind. 'Cept we don't share the same definition of faith now do we?

That's just it. There is no "rock-solid" proof yet people worship it like a religion. If there was, however, he'd have to pay up. You'd win if you took it to court. It's a contract. "Dr Dino" has set the bar to far out of reality, it is impossible to win his prize. In Hovind's words: When I use the word evolution, I am not referring to the minor variations found in all of the various life forms (microevolution). I am referring to the general theory of evolution which believes these five major events took place without God: 1. Time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves. 2. Planets and stars formed from space dust. 3. Matter created life by itself. 4. Early life-forms learned to reproduce themselves. 5. Major changes occurred between these diverse life forms (i.e., fish changed to amphibians, amphibians changed to reptiles, and reptiles changed to birds or mammals). You can't win because Hovind doesn't even understand the science he's trying to debunk. He might as well be asking for proof that Captain Kirk really did have Klingons on the starboard bow. It would make as much sense. And this red herring of worshiping science like a religion is bullshit of the same ilk as the macro-evolution fallacy. The irony of religious folk talking about proof and then pulling this one out of the hat if just amazing. It would be hilarious if it wasn't for that fact that kids have to grow up with this gibberish.

It's not a real offer. Read the small print.

So let me get this straight, god sends non-believers to hell, right?