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Author Topic: Atheism 3.0
Date Posted: 10/22/09 4:20pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
Why do you think that, if the universe was created by one being, that being has to be omnipotent? One doesn't logically follow the other.

 
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Date Posted: 10/22/09 4:23pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
One would have to be omnipotent in order to wield enough power to create an entire universe, with billions and billions of stars and galaxies.

 

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Date Posted: 10/22/09 4:30pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
The fact that a guy can make a universe, doesn't mean he can read your mind.

 
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Date Posted: 10/22/09 4:52pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
Well, maybe he can just read the minutia. wink

 

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Date Posted: 10/22/09 4:53pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
Or boil an egg.

 

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Date Posted: 10/22/09 6:34pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi posted:
One would have to be omnipotent in order to wield enough power to create an entire universe, with billions and billions of stars and galaxies.



Or perhaps it's just a natural thing? We really don't know much about the origins of the universe, so it would be unfair to say something that's based on no real evidence. All that we do know is that the universe is big and that it is expanding in size from what it once was.

 
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 Date Posted: 10/22/09 7:00pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi posted:
One would have to be omnipotent in order to wield enough power to create an entire universe, with billions and billions of stars and galaxies.

No, one need only be powerful enough to create a universe. That is not necessarily the same as "all powerful."

It's a little like the old joke: if you're being chased by a bear, you don't have to run faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy.

You don't have to be ALL powerful to create a universe, just MORE powerful than a being that can't.

 

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Date Posted: 10/22/09 7:29pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
Okay, there are very simple ways for an omnipotent being to prove his power. It doesn't require something outrageously extreme, like blowing up a planet. Here is something that would convince me that God exists:

Create two people with the same fingerprints.

Yes, I mean exactly that. Two people with the same fingerprints. That's enough proof for me.

 
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Date Posted: 10/22/09 8:35pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi posted:
One would have to be omnipotent in order to wield enough power to create an entire universe, with billions and billions of stars and galaxies.

That's a faulty "if, then" reasoning. What logic do you base that on?
Darth_Yuthura posted:
Okay, there are very simple ways for an omnipotent being to prove his power. It doesn't require something outrageously extreme, like blowing up a planet. Here is something that would convince me that God exists:

Create two people with the same fingerprints.

Yes, I mean exactly that. Two people with the same fingerprints. That's enough proof for me.
Why? Just because two people with the same fingerprints are nearly impossible to find doesn't mean God exists. This is another faulty "if, then" reasoning. If something has no explanation yet, then it has no explanation. It is erroneous to make the logical leap to supernaturalism. You can't just make **** up because something unlikely that has no explanation happens.

 

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Date Posted: 10/22/09 10:42pm Subject: Atheism 3.0 - Date Edited: 10/22/09 10:51pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Darth_Yuthura
Lord_Vivec posted:
Why? Just because two people with the same fingerprints are nearly impossible to find doesn't mean God exists.


It's not 'nearly' impossible. Of the >6 billion people, each are unique and impossible to duplicate. They are not determined by DNA, but it is a characteristic that's randomly determined. Identical twins, cloning, genetic engineering... none can reproduce the same effect, no matter how many times you try.

Lord_Vivec posted:
This is another faulty "if, then" reasoning. If something has no explanation yet, then it has no explanation. It is erroneous to make the logical leap to supernaturalism. You can't just make **** up because something unlikely that has no explanation happens.


This was meant in regards to being able to arrange an impossibly complex random pattern perfectly. That's not possible... which would be the proof I would seek.

That's also assuming that there's nothing wrong with the DNA. If you could duplicate someone's fingerprints, then I'd assume that person's genetic traits were altered so fingerprints were consistent.

 
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Date Posted: 10/23/09 4:03am Subject: Atheism 3.0
Brain drain in the atheism thread!

Lady_Sami, that was the worst comeback ever.

Yuthure, it is nearly impossible. Means it's possible. There is nothing practical in the way, except a lot of patience.

 
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 Date Posted: 10/23/09 8:17am Subject: Atheism 3.0 - Date Edited: 10/23/09 8:34am (2 edits total) Edited By: DorkmanScott
Darth_Yuthura posted:
Identical twins, cloning, genetic engineering... none can reproduce the same effect, no matter how many times you try.

Exactly how large is your sample size of genetically engineered and/or cloned human beings? Because unless you know something the rest of us don't, I'm pretty sure it's zero. Which means you can't honestly say that it's impossible "no matter how many times you try," since nobody has tried it yet.

Darth_Yuthura posted:
This was meant in regards to being able to arrange an impossibly complex random pattern perfectly.

Fingerprints aren't "impossibly complex." They're just "very complex." An impossibly complex fingerprint is one that can't exist, because by definition it is impossible. Fingerprints exist, therefore they are not impossible.

Darth_Yuthura posted:
That's not possible... which would be the proof I would seek.

What about if two people won the lottery with the same numbers? Is that proof of God's existence? Because it's basically the same thing.

For two people to have the same set of fingerprints is incredibly unlikely, I'll give you that. But to say outright that it is impossible, therefore God, is simply another form of God of the Gaps. If it is a randomly-generated pattern, then it is nearly impossible, and certainly implausible, that two people would have the same pattern but not completely impossible -- it's never happened before, but that doesn't mean it absolutely never could.

Now, if a person's fingerprints were mystically altered to match someone else's fingerprints, then you might have something worth looking at more closely, but a single event of that kind isn't enough to conclude that it was the workings of a deity, much less determine whose (if any) deity it was.

If, on the other hand, a pattern of such implausibilities began to emerge centered around a particular religion -- if, for example, the fingerprints of all Christians suddenly became the same, AND Christians had a statistically significant lower rate of infectious disease than the rest of the population, AND they were able to predict future events with accuracy greater than you'd get by chance -- then it would be reasonable to think that there's something to it.

For my part, I would have more reason to believe if there were a demonstrably supernatural occurrence related to some deity. For example, if a particular religion had only a single copy of their "holy book," untranslated direct from the Source, and yet everyone who made a pilgrimage to read the book found that it was written in their native language and addressed specifically to them. For an all-powerful creator God this would be a mere parlor trick, but it would be repeatable and something that every person could confirm for themselves, while being a uniquely anomalous event that singled out a particular belief system as having more evidence for their claim than the others.

Of course, the easiest way to go about it would be if God would just appear and go "Hey, here I am," like every religion says theirs used to do. But even then, from a properly skeptical perspective all you can do is say that an intelligent non-human being has demonstrated his existence, and demonstrated (presumably) that he wields supernatural powers in a way that no human being has ever been known to do. This doesn't necessarily mean that every claim he makes, such as having created the universe, would be true. Perhaps there is a more powerful being that did that, and he's just trying to take the credit. (According to the Christian religion, for example, such a being revealing himself is as likely to be the Devil as God.)

 

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Date Posted: 10/23/09 8:26am Subject: Atheism 3.0
Like Louis Wu did in Ringworld.

 
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 Date Posted: 10/23/09 8:32am Subject: Atheism 3.0 - Date Edited: 10/23/09 9:23am (1 edits total) Edited By: DorkmanScott
Right -- in fact, I shouldn't have even said "non-human." For all we would know, it might be a person from the future using technology too advanced for us to recognize as such, like that Clarke quote.

EDIT: In other news, here's a potent example of religion as child abuse.

 

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Date Posted: 10/23/09 10:03am Subject: Atheism 3.0
Ah yes, the classic "I don't know what the **** is going on, so I'll say God did it." And thousands of people are falling for it..

 

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