Papal Visit to the UK

[Sir Og]

i broadly agree with this, and you've put it better than i could. my questions were in response to mike h's assertion that every question can be answered by (hard) science. JM and i have posed some questions which we believe cannot be answered in this way, and obviously, there are many more besides.

we use the word love to describe many things, or rather our feelings towards many different things, and so of course, the question "what is love" is a necessary and interesting one. people can say that it's only about chemistry, but this ignores the fact that humans do not consider the question in this way, and not, as cort says, because it's too hard to do so, but because such thinking would not help the person in a situation arising from love. therefore we require, and indeed have, other ways of looking at it, and so when we talk about love (or the approximation of our feelings that we call love), we need to examine these other ways.

People think of love the way they do because it makes sence to simplify such a complex issue. Let's assume that you know all the chemistry involved in love and you go into a situation arising from love.
In order to analyse your situation you will need to make ton of measurements and do an insane number of calculations to solve scientifically you situation and that is not practical. That is why people use this simplified aggregate concept of love and work with it.

To give an analogy when you cut your bred you don't need to know how exactly the atoms on the surface of the blade interact with the bread atoms and do calculations of the forces that you need to apply to cut a loaf.

[Sava]

Everyone knows that within 5 bn years a gas cloud became a human... give it another 5 and a human will become a god, sufficiently different from a human as a gas cloud is. As 10 bn years passed already on possibly infinite amount of places, as humans are, god is too... Who is god is open to discussion, but that there is one, is by far the most reasonable assumption.

This assumes that there is a linear progression, of sorts, from gas cloud to human to God (everything in between is just flyover country).

I don't think we're all that different from say, the dinosaurs. They were complex life forms that dominated the planet until they suffered extinction. AFAIK, they didn't experience any evolution to a higher form of existence. Why should it be assumed that we would? We're going to die just like they did. We just don't know how.

And speaking of not knowing, that's also the answer to the God question. It's not reasonable to assume there's a God. It's only reasonable to assume we don't know because the reality is... we don't know! The only thing we can do is imagine. And relying on our imaginations to form conclusions is not reasonable. It's what children do.

[dannubis]

[BeBMan]

I think we should just stop here and insult eachother

[MikeH]

I disagree, you w*nker!

[Sava]

What letter did you censor there?

Is he someone that winks a lot?

I don't get it.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

This assumes that there is a linear progression, of sorts, from gas cloud to human to God (everything in between is just flyover country).

I don't think we're all that different from say, the dinosaurs. They were complex life forms that dominated the planet until they suffered extinction. AFAIK, they didn't experience any evolution to a higher form of existence. Why should it be assumed that we would? We're going to die just like they did. We just don't know how.

And speaking of not knowing, that's also the answer to the God question. It's not reasonable to assume there's a God. It's only reasonable to assume we don't know because the reality is... we don't know! The only thing we can do is imagine. And relying on our imaginations to form conclusions is not reasonable. It's what children do.

You have one point in the continuumm which matters, and that is us... Very different from base atoms, I am sure you will agree. Given infinite number of tries (either in space or time) that life goes further is inevitable. What is the end of that line - I am sure it would qualify as God for any religion. Linearity does not matter... if anything the number of near failures (mass extintions) in the earths past, and further progression to us (not to mention life without sun at the bottom of the oceans) - can only reassure you that life is pretty resilient in this universe from the evidence which is readily available.

So on one side, you have the knowledge about the universe, and about the world at present, pointing out to plenty of time and opportunity for life to develop to us and beyond. In addition you have enormous volume of circumstential evidence for "higher" beings of some sort or another present on Earth throughout human history, including today.

On the other side you have "I cannot test God scientifically", and I have not seen him personally (for sure those who have, or at least think they did - they are very religious right now, and dismissed by the "mainstream") - hello - as an ant cannot exacly summon humans by will, neither can you summon God. There are other ways to look for him however and many different religions will advise you on the "how", but using materialistic excuses for "pink unicorns" is just simplistic reasoning, that's all.

[MikeH]

What letter did you censor there?

Is he someone that winks a lot?

I don't get it.

Ask Ming.

[Sava]

Ask Ming.

Does he wink a lot?

[MikeH]

Not any more.

[Sava]

You have one point in the continuumm which matters, and that is us... Very different from base atoms, I am sure you will agree.

I don't understand why you create a "continuum", place humanity on it, and assign some sort of mystical moral value to us relative to atomic particles. It's very difficult to follow anything you say past this first part of your reasoning. Explain why you are creating this subjective scale, what it means, and how it is relevant.

The idea is rather silly.

You assertion that "life is resilient" is proven false by the fact that life is so relatively uncommon (as far as we know). The surface and sub-surface of our planet support life. But over 99% of the mass in our solar system is in the sun. For your assumption to be anymore close to reasonable, we'd have to discover a form of life capable of living in the sun. Otherwise, life is little more than pond scum growing on the surface of planets... planets, using our sun as an example of one planetary cycle, that get consumed by the very stars that give them life when they turn into red giants.

Human life, by the Earth's metric, is short and insignificant. Life on Earth, by the sun's metric, is short and insignificant. The sun's life, by the galaxy's metric, is short and insignificant.

Are you starting to notice a pattern?

And if you do believe in God. You can't ignore the fact that this is the universe He created for you to observe. These are the lessons He created for you to learn. It's a staggering level of insignificance that nobody can comprehend.

[Sava]

Not any more.

I heard there are pills you can take for that.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

I don't understand why you create a "continuum", place humanity on it, and assign some sort of mystical moral value to us relative to atomic particles. It's very difficult to follow anything you say past this first part of your reasoning. Explain why you are creating this subjective scale, what it means, and how it is relevant.

The idea is rather silly.

You assertion that "life is resilient" is proven false by the fact that life is so relatively uncommon (as far as we know). The surface and sub-surface of our planet support life. But over 99% of the mass in our solar system is in the sun. For your assumption to be anymore close to reasonable, we'd have to discover a form of life capable of living in the sun. Otherwise, life is little more than pond scum growing on the surface of planets... planets, using our sun as an example of one planetary cycle, that get consumed by the very stars that give them life when they turn into red giants.

Human life, by the Earth's metric, is short and insignificant. Life on Earth, by the sun's metric, is short and insignificant. The sun's life, by the galaxy's metric, is short and insignificant.

Are you starting to notice a pattern?

And if you do believe in God. You can't ignore the fact that this is the universe He created for you to observe. These are the lessons He created for you to learn. It's a staggering level of insignificance that nobody can comprehend.

In short:

Human life exists, and there is possibly an infinite number of places with similar conditions where it can be repeated in the given time (think sun-like star formation all over the universe - very average star). If you have one chance turned out to be true and have an infinite number of tries, that chance becomes a certainy. As you have us, for sure you can have God too, just add extra time to the equation.

Gas + 5bn years = human - we have this already.

Human + 5bn years = god - we do not have the "empirical" evidence for the "god" bit, but we have a ton of circumstatnial one, and also we have very good reasons why we cannot prove him empirically.

Case closed

Short and insignifcant human life in comparison to suns life is irrelevant.

[MOBIUS]

Jesus H. Christ, Zeus on a bike!

You God delusionists really need to get grip!

You're asking the people that support science in this thread to make ever increasingly microscopically defined adjustments to their already completely reasonable arguments because they're at odds with your fantastical notions. However, at no point whatsoever do you ever come even minutely close to proving that whatever made up stuff you believe in even exists...

I mean, what you delusionists believe in is so preposterous that none of you can even decide on what he/she/it/they looks like, what he/she/it/they is called. For ****s sake, there's literally thousands of religions, from those that number just a few, right up to those encompassing millions, complete with a douchey leering paedo figurehead - and each one insists that if you don't believe them and only them - then you're off to whichever hell and damnation some wonk dreamed up to scare people into staying loyal...

Do you God delusionists have any idea how utterly stupid believing in religion makes you look when you then ask someone to define the science in love in the most infinitesimal degree cos you don't 'believe' what they're saying...!?

OMG, it absolutely beggars belief!!!

[OneFootInTheGrave]

very convincing argument