Polytheish vs. Monotheism , Capitalism vs. Communism

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
Well, you must admit speculation about gods is much more interesting (if no more useful) than about pink unicorns.

If so, so what?

The thing is, when you look back to the beginning of the universe, talking about the universe springing into being with no catalyst from anywhere starts to look a lot like the mystical stuff in most religions.
If there was a catalyst, it could have been quite literally anything, but you might as well call it a god. Of course, then you are left with the question of where did the catalyst come from, but that is far from proving it cannot have existed (not that I'm saying it did exist).

Speculate all you want. Postulating a creator doesn't solve any problems wrt to cosmology, and thus has no interest to cosmology as a science.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
Well, you must admit speculation about gods is much more interesting (if no more useful) than about pink unicorns.

If so, so what?

The thing is, when you look back to the beginning of the universe, talking about the universe springing into being with no catalyst from anywhere starts to look a lot like the mystical stuff in most religions.
If there was a catalyst, it could have been quite literally anything, but you might as well call it a god. Of course, then you are left with the question of where did the catalyst come from, but that is far from proving it cannot have existed (not that I'm saying it did exist).

Speculate all you want. Postulating a creator doesn't solve any problems wrt to cosmology, and thus has no interest to cosmology as a science.

I have no problem with people who simply don't care if there was anything before the universe, seems a perfectly reasonable viewpoint given it is very unlikely to effect them. I only have a problem with people who say, for no clear reason, "God exists.", "God does not exist.", or the worst and most common, "God exists, here is really long list of of all the things He had to tinker with after creating the universe."

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
But you have switched the questions. The questions were "Do you believe in god?", "Do you believe the coin landed heads or tails?".

No, I did not switch questions. I pointed out that latter question is by no means a parallel to the first one, then I suggested one that would work better.

First, for a fair, ideal coin, the chances for either side coming up is 50%. This is not the case for any "god" you may have in mind.

Second, you can always find out whether the coin is heads or tails after making your guess. Not so with god.

Third, your question is about an attribute of an existing object, while my is about whether an entity exists or not. You may think this distinction is moot, however, this happens to be one of the fatal flaws of the Ontological Argument.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
Well, you must admit speculation about gods is much more interesting (if no more useful) than about pink unicorns.

Why?

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
The thing is, when you look back to the beginning of the universe, talking about the universe springing into being with no catalyst from anywhere starts to look a lot like the mystical stuff in most religions.

If you asserted that a god caused this universe to come into existence, the logical question will then be, "Who created your god?"

As it was pointed out umpteen times before, we draw a line somewhere. The only difference between us atheists and theists is we draw the line between natural and supernatural.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
Well, you must admit speculation about gods is much more interesting (if no more useful) than about pink unicorns.

Only inasmuch as there are actually idiots people who care for some reason.

Were there not religionists, no one would even conceive of it.

[Colonâ„¢]

bah nm

[quantum_mechani]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


No, I did not switch questions. I pointed out that latter question is by no means a parallel to the first one, then I suggested one that would work better.

First, for a fair, ideal coin, the chances for either side coming up is 50%. This is not the case for any "god" you may have in mind.

Second, you can always find out whether the coin is heads or tails after making your guess. Not so with god.

Third, your question is about an attribute of an existing object, while my is about whether an entity exists or not. You may think this distinction is moot, however, this happens to be one of the fatal flaws of the Ontological Argument.

If you have no information about something, and there are two options for it's status, what chances would you suggest besides 50/50?

Being able to check if your guess is correct is not relevant to making the guess in the first place.

If you would rather use the question about the existence of the coin, feel free.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
If you asserted that a god caused this universe to come into existence, the logical question will then be, "Who created your god?"

Maybe you should have finished reading my post.

I pointed out that having a catalyst does not really solve anything as far as the origin of everything. But it boils down to this: Can you prove that there was nothing that influenced the creation of the universe? And as I would likewise ask theists: Can you prove that the universe was influenced by something? As we have no evidence about anything prior to the universe, making assumptions about it seems wishful thinking.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Only inasmuch as there are actually people who care for some reason.

Were there not religionists, no one would even conceive of it.

I agree, in theory, it should really not matter. But there is something about humans that they cannot resist thinking about their origins, and by extension, the universe's.

[Kuciwalker]

If you have no information about something, and there are two options for it's status, what chances would you suggest besides 50/50?

You obviously have no understanding of statistics. You can't have a probability when you have ZERO information.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

If you have no information about something, and there are two options for it's status, what chances would you suggest besides 50/50?

You obviously have no understanding of statistics. You can't have a probability when you have ZERO information.

Exactly. Probability may have been the wrong word for it, but the point I was getting at was that you cannot draw conclusions with no information.

[tinyp3nis]

When will you realize that tossing a coin scenario is a lot of information, unlike many others?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
If you have no information about something, and there are two options for it's status, what chances would you suggest besides 50/50?

What is this something?

Is this a supernatural being similar to the Judeo-Christianity YHWH or is this an ordinary coin? I am not sure if you can call the former "something" either, since it is most likely "nothing."

Lets consider the famous Pascal's Wager. If you don't know what it is, click on the link for some info. The objections to it are many, the one that has to do with what you wrote is as follows.

Pascal assumed if there is a god, it has to be the Christian YHWH. Thus, he assigned a 50% chance to such a god's existence, and went from there. However, this is far from the truth. There are many religions in this world, some still exist, many vanished. Suppose there are 99 different religions. So your chance of getting it right falls to 1% - 1 out of 100 (99 religions plus atheism, making it a nice 100). Or is this so?

Consider that, for each religion, you can either accept it or reject it. IOW, you can either choose to believe this religion or not. Applying your logic here, we assign a 50% chance to each. Now do this for every one of them. We end up having atheism on one side with a 50% chance, and the rest of the 99 religions sharing the other 50%.

You may say, "Well, even if there's a 0.0001% chance of getting it right, I rather believe so I can be in heaven instead of hell."

Again, this is not so simple. Many religions, including Christianity, forbids you from believing in another god. So getting it wrong here is just as bad as rejecting all of them.

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
Being able to check if your guess is correct is not relevant to making the guess in the first place.

Why would you bother to guess if you can't find out the answer?

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
If you would rather use the question about the existence of the coin, feel free.

Okay. I am waiting.

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
But it boils down to this: Can you prove that there was nothing that influenced the creation of the universe?

Please - don't make a baseless assertion and ask the other side to disprove it.

Can you show that there are no dancing elves on electrons?

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
As we have no evidence about anything prior to the universe, making assumptions about it seems wishful thinking.

Since we don't have evidence of anything, logic dictates that we choose the position of there's nothing.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


I was joking, Moll

.

As indeed was I- note the reference to the Real World MTV Soviet Union- where Lenin, Beria, Stalin, Kollontai, Osip Mandelshtam, Molotov and Tukachevsky are left to fend for themsleves in a designer dacha in Sukhumi....

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by quantum_mechani


@molly and che:

I assume you are talking about the almost certainly fictional (though entertaining) gods most people seem to think of with prophets, smiting, and generally having to step and muck about with the universe constantly.

As opposed to the 'non-fictional' gods coming to a high street promotional appearance near us any time soon, I suppose ?

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Az
That's not what he said, Molly - He said that no matter what you do, you have to indoctrinate a child with a moral code.

Exactly.
Sorry, molly, You've been arguing with statesments I haven't made.
Nothing new

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Heresson


Exactly.
Sorry, molly, You've been arguing with statesments I haven't made.
Nothing new

You can't follow the logic of your own posts .

Definitely nothing new under the sun there.