Hehhehheh, cosmic message for Dani - What else could it stand for?

The cosmos moves in mysterious ways.

tl;dr

You Can't Always Get What You Want. (But if you try, sometimes, you get what you need.)

I hear ya, JB. Those long 3:00 am's of the soul suck. Think I'm in for one tonight myself.

I agree with sexobon. He (sexobon) was just being an attention whore at JBK's expense. Sexobon may have a clever vocabulary and a certain sort of wit he shares in common with bullies everywhere. But it was sexobon who acted the part of the troll that he accuses JBK of being.

I believe that JBK is sincere in his effort to convert even one of us heathens and thus spare that individual the wrath of the god JBK believes in. It's actually pretty altruistic on his part, although I still feel that JBK would be better received and get a better discussion if he cruised on over to the Internet Infidels Forums.

As has been mentioned, I too feel the irony is that "god" is not a term that I can use to describe or define that which is the spirit of the universe. And "spirit of the universe" is just my short hand for how I think of a Greater Intelligence which infuses all sentient beings everywhere. I am "god." You are "god." The cats and the dogs and the mice and the rats are "god." We all inter-be. We all have the power to act like the angels or take on the role of the devil. And I use the terms "angels" and "devil" metaphorically here because I don't believe there actually are such things until they are called into power by individual human beings. Think Mother Theresa versus Adolf Hitler.

When it comes to a spiritual path - NOT a religous one - Buddhism works for me. When asked if there was a "god" or not, the Buddha replied, "God exists and god does not exist. If you spend your time trying to understand about the possibility of god and setting forth doctrine, you are straying from the true path - the eight fold noble path which leads to the end of suffering.

I doubt if JBK would be pleased with this comparison, but I actually view him as someone very similiar to a Buddhist who has taken the Bodisattva Vow. One who does this vows to never attain perfect enlightenment and thus go to Nirvana where suffering ceases to exist. Instead, the person - usually called a "stream entrant," vows to return life time after life time to this world until all sentient beings have attained enlightenment at long last and all suffering is at end.

This is an act of deep compassion for one's fellows just as JBK is concerned about the unbelievers here on the Cellar. I think JBK is doing the best he can despite great difficulties. It is easy to mock, but far harder to attain understanding.

:eek:

Ha! I had forgotten about that...

To understand the Casimir Effect, one first has to understand something about a vacuum in space as it is viewed in quantum field theory. Far from being empty, modern physics assumes that a vacuum is full of fluctuating electromagnetic waves that can never be completely eliminated, like an ocean with waves that are always present and can never be stopped. These waves come in all possible wavelengths, and their presence implies that empty space contains a certain amount of energy--an energy that we can't tap, but that is always there. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-casimir-effec)

What interests me is that the smartest, most intelligent and brightest of our society today will readily accept the idea that empty space may indeed be filled with an infinite amount of energy, of all wavelengths..like an ocean of waves that can never be stopped, an energy that we can't tap but is always there...and instantly rebel at the idea that God exists.

Could it be that they reject the idea of god as it has been handed down from primitive desert dwellers but may be open to a less pre-packaged god. One which fills the needs of a modern mind?

There's an idea, God should have a sockpuppet. But what to call it?

Well, I guess it's time I owned up, eh? ;)

slang used to speak for God here. :)

If scientists claimed that the energy was intelligent and didn't want people to masturbate, I'd be skeptical.

I am not a Christian, Muslim, Nor a Jew, I claim to know nothing of the desert dwellers and their religious practices and how they tell people not to masturbate. I prefer to leave discussion of religion out of discussion about God. I'm not a religious man, so it seems only fair. I can't talk about something I know nothing about, nor participate in.

Masturbate all you wish, I'm not hanging about to tell anyone what God would have them do.

That's another reason a scientist might have trouble accepting a god. It's a word without any particular meaning, and whenever a silly but commonly accepted aspect of it is brought up, one can just say "I'm not talking about THAT kind of god!"

That's sort of the whole point this thread was created for.

Well said that cheerful monkey.

The problem for scientists is that religion has so often opposed progress in science this forces people into camps based on their training and individual wiring/ brain functioning. Joe's God could be amenable to science but once groups start defining "him" we're putting structures in place that will lead to conflict. In religion there is value placed in faith, believing what their is no evidence for. I've heard very intelligent people defend that. They get something from that cognitive dissonance and believe society gains something from it as well. I'm open to the idea of God but I'm not able to construct one sufficiently durable.

In religion, faith in God is a sacred cow.

Wait, what? ;)

If you want to say that there's some "force" "out there" just hanging around, go right ahead. But if you claim that it's all-powerful, has a personality, and wants to be worshipped, I call bullshit.

But Joe's challenge is why, a few years back, I had to admit I was agnostic rather than atheist.

There is no doubt in my mind that all religious texts are the superstitious bullshit of a backwards people trying vainly to describe their world. As Penn Jillette says, reading the bible is the easiest way to become an atheist. But just because those guys in the desert got it wrong, doesn't mean that there's some form* that kicked this all into motion. That, I have no way of knowing; and so the answer has to be I Don't Know and not only that but I Will Never Know.

So, even though I will only believe in things that are directly observable and provable, doesn't mean I can say there is definitely no God, whatever that word might represent.

The fact that the universe is pretty much incomprehensible is not an argument for OR against a God.



*The superstitious people wanted that form to be semi-human, to have human shape, human thinking. We all want our God to be describable in human terms. It may not be.

You can be both. Most atheists* are agnostic. If an omnipotent being wanted to hide, it could. But just because it's theoretically possible doesn't mean it's worth believing.

*ETA: I suspect that many theists are, as well.
Do you believe? Atheist or Theist
Can you be 100% certain? Agnostic or Gnostic

A mystery wrapped in an enigma.
 

What God is depends on what your definition of "is" is.

It doesn't even have to be omnipotent, just smart enough to fool us very thoroughly.

By the same argument, I'm equally agnostic on gnomes.

I'd say it's only as powerful, has personality and wants to be worshiped just about as much as the collection of about $100.00 worth chemicals typing on these keyboards. Actually this force may have more personality.

The difference between the two propositions though, is this: the idea that God exists isn't based on any observable or measurable phenomena. That is to say, every observable phenomena which we have been able to measure has offered a non-deity explanation. The unseeable energy that so many people are prepared to believe in wasn't just posited as an idea, it was arrived at through the use of mathematics, and observations of other, observable phenomena reacting to or being affected by 'something' unseen. More importantly, their findings could be replicated by others using the same methods.

And yes, there are gaps left to be filled. But why would my mind not rebel at the notion of God? 'God' has been offered time and again as the answer to the great questions, but nobody as yet has been able to find any real sign of the existence of 'God', either in terms of measurable and observable phenomena, or in terms of unobservable but mathematically theorised effects on same.

Everytime we go a little further in, God gets pushed a little further out. And still people say: ahhh, but...you can't say he doesn't exist. He can't be found, and his effect on the world cannot be measured, or even inferred (in scientific terms) from other natural phenomena. Time and again, our greatest scientists and most creative minds dig a little deeper and time and again the explanation is not God. We go further in and deeper down, we go further out and bigger scale, and it is never God we find.

I don't trust the words of priests, or holy books, or spiritually inclined people on this matter, because their 'methods' are suspect. I don't trust the feeling of 'there must be something there' and I don't trust the feeling of 'someone watching over me'.

I do trust, broadly, the scientific method to increase our understanding of our world and universe. I trust them to occasionally get it wrong, or misread the evidence. I also trust them to revisit and revise and I trust each new generation of scientists approaching a problem to go further.

Why would my mind 'rebel' at the idea of something I cannot see, but which can be shown through mathematics (as much as anything the building blocks of existence) and observation of phenomena in repeatable formulas as possible or probable?

Why would my mind not rebel at something which cannot be seen, proved, theorised beyond the simple feeling of 'something must be behind it all' and yet is broadly accepted as truth by vast numbers of people, simply because other people who also felt sure there must be something behind it all said so thousands of years ago. Why would my mind not rebel at a work of fantasy masquerading as fact?

What's the quote about one man's science being another man's magic?

Science has been able to explain (not prove) almost everything since the big bang. If you want to say that god is what created matter/energy, and caused the big bang, you'll get no argument from me. Beyond that, I'll argue.

Because sooner or later we'll kick the football?

Dunno

But I do know that we've come a long way, but we are still pretty stupid. And our egotism keeps getting in the way when we describe the universe -- and probably when we describe this God thing, too. We are handcuffed by our concept of what we thought God would be: a better, smarter version of ourselves, most of the time, which now seems ridiculous.

I think as human beings we understand the world in terms of social relationships and agency. 'God' is our way of imposing social relationships and agency onto the universe.

This. If one is sufficiently humble about what we can and cannot know, then God and science converge on being synonymous. But the egomaniacal twats take up both far ends of the spectrum--one ends up with a bearded-man-God who wants to tell everybody what to do, and the other can't help but masturbate to the certainty that we are so much better and smarter than our animal instincts.

Thank you clod, I agree.

Atheists are convinced that this life is the only shot they have at expressing themselves which is why they make such long posts. :p: