GOD - IS HE OR AINT HE?

[foofoo]

just a quick poll to see

<FORM METHOD=POST ACTION=\"http://www.server2.love-scent.com/ubbthreads/dopoll.php\"><INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=\"pollname\" VALUE=\"1054685767foofoo\">


IS GOD....GOD?!?
<input type=\"radio\" name=\"option\" value=\"1\" />YES, HAIL THE CREATOR!
<input type=\"radio\" name=\"option\" value=\"2\" />NO, HE\'S A FAKE!
<INPUT TYPE=Submit NAME=Submit VALUE=\"Submit vote\" class=\"buttons\"></form>

[belgareth]

Please define the god we are voting on

[foofoo]

dunno, basically atheism Vs all believers in any god, gods etc

[belgareth]

Well, I am a practicing agnostic, so I don\'t know if any of them do or do not exist. That\'s why the request for a definition, it provides a starting point.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

What\'s next? Wittgenstein?

[MOBLEYC57]

Hi! [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] Anybody got a extra cup\'a holy water? [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

[druid]

your walking through the woods and you stop. to your left is a watch, to your right is a rock. You look at the watch and you think \"Someone has made a fine watch\". Why do you think this? because the watch has gears and sprokets and possibly a battery -- ie it has ORDER. It was built, but before that it was designed. which implies a DESIGNER. Now you look back at the rock, what do you think? what if a primative human (or any animal) looked at the watch? Just because that person (or animal) cannot comprehend the order of that watch doesn\'t not change the fact that it was built and designed or the implication of a designer. so what if you cannot fully comprehend the order of the rock?

[tallmacky]

Hey foo foo these questions are very hard if even likely to be answered. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[seadove]

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Please define the god we are voting on


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Bel: There is only one G-d.

And generally you can\'t define G-d.On the contrary, he has defined you.

But I\'ll help you.Look yourself in the mirror, try to ask yourself \"why?\"

I\'f you\'d know the reason why for example, why do you have eyes? For what reason? Another question: Why the hell are you existing anyway?

Now here\'s your problem: If you know the reason, then there is no G-d, but if you don\'t know the reason, that is, your question as to WHY? Then I\'ll say that there is a Mighty Power up in the sky who has created all of us for reasons that we will never know in our inferior and irrelevant lives.

[belgareth]

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Please define the god we are voting on


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Bel: There is only one G-d.



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Sorry Seadove. Throughout history, man has claimed many gods, the majority prior to the christian one. I see little reason to accept one over the other. Frankly, some of the other gods have been much more acceptable to my personal life\'s philosophy than the christian god.

Of course, it is possible that they are all the same entity. It is equaly possible that life is no more than a coincidence. As I said before, all questions and no answers.

Druid:
Many things can be implied, it does not prove the exsistance of a designer. The entire thought process used to conclude the implication of a designer could easily be faulty and there is no way to check that. No measure to test our reality against.

In short, the acceptance of any supreme being is an act of faith, but so is the denial of the same.

[EXIT63]

<FORM METHOD=POST ACTION=\"http://www.server2.love-scent.com/ubbthreads/dopoll.php\"><INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=\"pollname\" VALUE=\"1054726970EXIT63\">


Do you believe in the Easter Bunny too?
<input type=\"radio\" name=\"option\" value=\"1\" />Yes
<input type=\"radio\" name=\"option\" value=\"2\" />NO
<INPUT TYPE=Submit NAME=Submit VALUE=\"Submit vote\" class=\"buttons\"></form>

[nonscents]

Anyone else see the connection between this thread and Bivonic\'s about using your thoughts to influence others to have sex with you?

[druid]

bel-what proof would you accept?

Most of what we humans have learned about the universe -- points to one thing, that it is ordered. Now do you except me to believe that this order is the result of a random sets of events like the big bang (Scoff) or a creator?

And for all you atheist science buffs out there -- you need to re-evaluate your believe strutuce, because science breaks down at it\'s most fundamental levels without god.

[Whitehall]

The roots of the word \"atheist\" are \"a\" meaning \"not\" and \"theist\" meaning a believer in God.

Personally, I refuse to be defined as what I\'m not so reject the word \"atheist\" as presuming theism is the expected condition.

My personal belief is that our concept and understanding of God has to evolve into something more in tune with our scientific outlook on the universe. Maybe \"GodPlus.\"

It\'s time for our understanding of God to get bigger and broader. The familar idea of monotheism has had merit and has served us well in many areas for thousands of years.

Yet, I feel there is something more...

[belgareth]

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bel-what proof would you accept?


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Druid,

It\'s a philisophical thing, I do not accept anything as proof that is subject to an act of faith. In other words, I believe in very little and question everything. Many things in our world appear to work under a given set of rules. Yet, at some point, those rules break down. There seems to always be an exception to every rule. My question is always why?

Do you believe in a god? Why? Because the universe is so well ordered? It leads you to the conclusion that it must have been created, right? DO you completely reject the possibility that it could have been pure random chance? If you do, then you have closed your mind to learning something. As I said in another post, that is the single biggest failure. People who claim there is no god have done the same thing, they\'ve closed their minds to a new learning experience.

I\'d enjoy being proven wrong but since I hold few convictions, it is difficult to do. I will happily listen to any proof anybody wants to present, but I always will questions every assumption and reject every act of faith.

In all honesty, I would prefer that there is a god and I may find out some day. It\'s kind of disheartening to think that everything we are becomes nothing when we die. What a terrible waste.

[foofoo]

you should read my post on page 4 of the EVOLUTION-DARWINISM thread

[**DONOTDELETE**]

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Hi! [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] Anybody got a extra cup\'a holy water? [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

Damn, Mobley, what are you, livin\' out of a cardboard box? You got nary hide nor hair of a thing to eat or drink -- you wandering around like John the Baptist livin\' on locusts and honey or what is your story exactly?

[koolking1]

Hey Mob, stop by my Mom\'s place. I wanna know why I\'m eating Shrimp Etoufee? Does anyone know????

[belgareth]

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Hey Mob, stop by my Mom\'s place. I wanna know why I\'m eating Shrimp Etoufee? Does anyone know????

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Because crawfish aren\'t in season?

[Hungry]

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Most of what we humans have learned about the universe -- points to one thing, that it is ordered.

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Druid,

Read up on Ilya Prigogine. He received a Nobel Peace Prize in Chemistry in 1977 for \"The Theory of Dissipative Structures\", which describes how so-called \"open systems\" can reorganise themselves into higher levels of order when subjected to stress. Basically, the theory explains how the universe can order itself.

It doesn\'t quite explain evolution, but then neither does the theory of evolution. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]


Hungry

[fizzymcgee]

The universe can order itself....any system can, it\'s just very improbable. One idea recently discussed in my cosmology class(very basic cosmo, mind you) is that of an arrow of time. From the way i understood it, time is pretty much defined by the irreversible events in the universe. However, these events are only irreversible because of their high improbability to be reversed, such as a system moving towards low entropy without increasing entropy somewhere else. So basically we would see the \"beginning of time\" as the point in which a highly improbable event, such as the universe ordering itself to an enormous degree, ceased to occur and things began to once again tend toward their statistically natural progression. What this means is that the universe began in order and tends toward disorder because that is basically how time is defined.

My teacher gave some interesting examples. If your pen, as you were trying to write, picked up its ink off the paper rather than leave it on, how would you feel about the evolution of time? Such a thing is NOT impossible, just highly improbable. If your memories spontaneously disappeared (we even got into a brief discussion about the movie memento), how would you know which way time was going? If all events were totally reversible, the universe would not really evolve in any way that time could have meaning.

I may not have explained this well and i certainly can\'t say I understand it all that well, but I thought it might be interesting to share. I thought it was really interesting to think about time being defined in this way.

[Whitehall]

\"Consilience\" by E. O. Wilson.

I\'m just on chapter 3 but he tackles the Enlightenment and how science has had to confront religon and where \"reason\" failed to meet humanity\'s needs.

Wilson wrote \"Sociobiology\" and deserves the Nobel Prize himself, IMHO.

[druid]

so somehow the universe makes order from disorder?(i have heard about this before) well most of science would have you believe that it is impossible. sounds like an act of god to me.

[Andy]

So why doesn\'t the universe make order from the disorder in my paperwork ? [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[fizzymcgee]

it\'s all in statistical mechanics....it\'s exactly why ice makes your drink cold and not the other way around. it\'s not impossible, just VERY highly improbable. I think quantum mechanics works in a similar way...everything is based on probabilities. Nothing is impossible, the universe is governed by probabilities that are so extreme that they SEEM definite.

[Hungry]

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so somehow the universe makes order from disorder?(i have heard about this before) well most of science would have you believe that it is impossible. sounds like an act of god to me.

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Druid, maybe you should read up on the theory before you comment on it?

Hmmm.


Hungry

[Hungry]

Fizzy,

You\'re talking about closed systems. Open systems are *very* different.

I wasn\'t going to go into it, but ... here\'s a very simplistic summary:

Open systems actively disperse entropy, maintaining their level of order rather than doing what the rest of the universe is doing and moving towards greater entropy. That means, of course, that it increases the entropy around itself. The most interesting thing though, if the system is stressed enough, it\'ll reach a point where it\'ll do one of two things. It\'ll either break down, or it\'ll reorganise itself at a higher level of order so that it can handle it. This is why, although the universe itself is moving towards greater entropy, individual systems (like people, plants etc) are evolving towards higher levels of order.

My crappy explanation does a huge injustice to the theory, so if you\'re actually interested you should do some research on it.


Hungry

[fizzymcgee]

ah! i keep writing posts and my computer keeps dying!

anyways...lets try this again. Hungry, you were talking about how local entropy can decrease...things can become ordered but it comes at a cost of global disorder. I was simply trying to show that you can let time be defined by the progression of global entropy. Then the question of how the universe became ordered is irrelevent.

I\'ll write more later when my computer is being nice to me [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Hungry]

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Hungry, you were talking about how local entropy can decrease...things can become ordered but it comes at a cost of global disorder. I was simply trying to show that you can let time be defined by the progression of global entropy.

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Yes, I agree with this, but ...


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Then the question of how the universe became ordered is irrelevent.

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I don\'t agree with this. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Well, I do, but ...

Although the universe as a whole is becoming more disordered, there\'s no reason why a system cannot become inceasing more ordered almost indefinitely. Can you define the concept of \"maximum order\"? I can\'t. Soooo, what does it mean? Hard to say, but the more highly ordered a system becomes, the greater its capacity to dissipate entropy, and so the greater it\'s impact on the universe. The greater its impact on the universe, the more relevent it becomes. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Of course, in the end you\'re right. Everything dies, including our universe. The disorder will eventually overwhelm any system. Nothing can maintain itself forever.

Bummer. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]


Hungry

[fizzymcgee]

i agree with what you\'re saying but that doesn\'t really come into the point i\'m making. My point is why ask how the universe began at such low entropy (to perhaps give evidence of divine intervention) when the universe on it\'s own can only increase in entropy as time passes. The response is time only passes as entropy increases. It can be no other way.

sorry, but i think we\'re talking about two slightly different things. i love these discussions though [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]