Posted on 03/10/2014 6:58:19 AM PDT by Heartlander
To state without question that there isn't a God requires that major assumptions are made. Such as knowing everything about everything in a very concrete sense. As we know from modern science, this is impossible. Even what we observe from our senses are misrepresentations of reality. Even the reality that we create by using math and through experimentation to describe Physics is bizarre and extremely abstract and very counter intuitive.
Anyway...
I believe that there might be an emotional and irrational component to an Atheist such as that person might have been hurt by religion at some point and resent religion and faith. For example who is the big atheist in CA who is divorced and lost the custody battle for their daughter and his ex-wife wanted to raise their daughter as a Christian. That is really the issue: he has lost control of his daughter's life and resents everything about his ex-wife. So he calls on lawyers and uses an interpretation of the 1st amendment to get even with his wife.
Anyway, it would make more sense if a non-believer scientist was agnostic. That would be logical.
Scientist are all about logic. If it can't be proven by theory and experimentation, that it can't be accepted as fact. How about the opposite: if it cannot NOT be proven does that still mean that it might still exist? An agnostic and a true scientist would say yes.
I like the infinite monkey theorem to explain my beliefs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
If nature were completely random, then it would take an astronomical amount of time, longer than the existence of the universe, for the “random” sequence of events that produced us to happen. Without a guiding force helping select right path, we wouldn't exist. What is that guiding force?
There are probably millions maybe billions of “random” events that had to happen all in sequence, at the right time, for us to exist.
1. The position of the Earth wrt the Sun.
2. The moon.
3. Water on our planet.
4. The position of our solar system within the milkyway.
5. Jupiter and Saturn in our solar system.
6. Our Sun, size and current time clock. Too soon, or too late and we wouldn't exist.
7. The right mix of elements on Earth.
8. An atmosphere that both protects us and provides us with 02 and CO2 for plants.
10. The right mix of O2 and other gasses.
11. Our magnetic field which protects us from the sun's radiation.
....
1,000,001. The destruction of the dinosaurs.
1,000,002. millions of random genetic mutations with only a few that might be successful. Successful means surviving or not dying off. Failure means some mutation that hinders the being versus helps.
1,000,003. Hunter gatherers forming coops and social groups allowing for spare time to contemplate, develop math and science.
1,000,004. Writing and reading and verbal communication.
1,000,005. etc etc.
Finally, the end result is a thinking being who can question existence.
The truth is that religion has been both positive and negative. But I believe that the negatives are result of man trying to interpret faith and maybe even exploiting it for personal benefit. It is mankind that has changed and manipulated the original Word but this doesn’t change the original Word.
The Word is like Plato’s Chair. It exists perfectly somewhere and our interpretation of it is only an “inferior copy” with many flaws.
You mean you have a problem with the concept of 27 dimensions? ;-) The problem with a postulation such as that is that Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem says you need to use 28 dimensions to prove the existence of the first 27. Not on my “worry list” for today.
Worried. Me neither. If it is more than my fingers and toes then it is unimportant. My most immediate concern is work, food, family.
Just like the small ant on an ant hill mindlessly moving that tiny crumb from the sidewalk to the den; day after day after day.
A lot of my work is in risk mangement. If you have a risk (programmatic, technical, etc.), but have not identified the true root cause, you will spend your time and money solving the wrong problem. The classic way to address that aspect of the problem is to keep asking “Why?”. Physicists stop asking that question at a certain point and shrug their shoulders because that is where faith has to kick in. If we were given explicit answers to all of our questions, there would be no need for faith. I’m not saying that is an easy path to take. I’m saying it becomes a necessary step. Sorry for collapsing a major topic into just a few sentences.
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