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I guess it's part of a Weltanschauung that many atheists have. Me personally, I don't feel comfortable around people who live their life based on fairytales and thus try to point out errors in other peoples thinking - also, I hope that other people will do the same to me.

There's also the problem that Religion can be used as a tool. Even if it hasn't been abused, every unfounded believe holds the potential to be used to manipulate those that believe in it. The more illogical or unfounded a believe is, the easier it should be to abuse it to control those that believe in it.

Can you explain what quantum tunneling is, Golan?

Please, don't link me to wikipedia, I don't wanna spend the next couple of days trying to make any sense out of 500+ pages of technobabble.
Edited by Bearholder, 12 November 2009 - 20:26.

Oversimplifying things, it is a process through which small particles like electrons "tunnel" through certain media and incurring a loss of amplitude. Something of the sort.

 Bearholder, on 12 Nov 2009, 20:25, said:

It's a bit difficult to find the correct balance between metaphor and actual theory in this one, so let's just try this analogy*:
Imagine you have a Halfpipe and you set a mechanically perfect (no fraction etc.) skateboard into it so that it slides up and down and up and down and so on. In classical mechanics, you can definitely say how far the skateboard can rise up by itself - no higher than the point you initially released it from. In Quantum Mechanics however, there's a "non-zero" (i.e. usually small but still possible) chance that the skateboard rises higher than this point.
Now imagine you'd put two such Halfpipes next to each other. In the classic case, the skateboard will never rise high enough to leave the Halfpipe it started in. Thus, whenever you look at the Halfpipes you expect it to be still in the one you put it in. In Quantum Mechanics however, as there's a chance that the Skateboard rises higher than the walls of the Halfpipe, it can actually pass over the barrier and fall into the second Halfpipe. So in reality, when you look at this situation, you might suddenly find that the skateboard is in the Halfpipe you didn't put it into.

*The skateboard is a particle and the Halfpipe represents the Potential it's in.
Edited by Golan, 12 November 2009 - 21:02.

Huh, sounds wierd.

I'm no physisist, so I'll leave quantum mechanics up to the rest of you (Isn't quantum mechanics one of the less understood parts of physics?) I'm just a boy with far to much imagination for my own good.

Quantum tunnelling is a process by which a particle (usually an electron) is able to traverse an energy barrier by not going OVER it, like classical mechanics, but THROUGH it, despite that this implies the particle doesn't have enough energy to get past the barrier in theory. It stems from a non-zero probability that flows from a very nasty mathematical formula I'll save you from on both sides of the barrier, implying that the particle has crossed the boundary. Suffice to say it'd be like you being able to walk through a wall if the wall is sufficiently thin enough, in layman's terms. The process is used in a number of powerful analytical instruments like a STM (scanning tunnelling microscope).

 Bearholder, on 11 Nov 2009, 9:50, said:

Indeed, God arises from the feeling of a want, the poorest men are the most faithful. But what is God? God is a creation of men that obeys few earthly rules, namely projection and substitution. God is the inverted image of men. Men are limited, mortal, finite and suffering, thus men - always pursuing perfection - create a power with the exact opposite characteristics. I know nothing, God knows everything. I'm finite, God is infinite. I'm mortal, God is immortal. I'm ugly, God is beautiful. I suffer on earth, God is in heaven etc. Voilà, just by turning the own faults inside out, something to idolize...

So far personal belief doesn't concern me as long as it doesn't become a public matter. For me the end of sympathy and tolerance is reached when a person starts to listen to a little voice inside their head and tries to turn it into a divine prophecy, into public affair. The only appreciative audience around said person should wear white coats, a neurosis needs dedicated medication.

 nipthecat, on 15 Nov 2009, 18:58, said:

While it is certainly a logical possibility, there's no more proof for this than there is proof for the existence of a God.

 nipthecat, on 15 Nov 2009, 18:58, said:

I'm just playing devil's advocate here (I don't believe in God), but this isn't really an argument against the existance of a God. It merely provides an explanation as to why certain people are more likely to believe than others.

It all comes down to the person and how they think.
People like me who require a concrete explanation for everything, will normally turn to science as that CAN provide proven explanations for a number of problems. People who don't need a concrete explanation can turn to religion as that offers answers but have no proof behind them.
Personally, i think Science makes much more sense and puts forward points which i could believe are possible. The slow evolution of species through "evolution of the fittest" type makes sense to me and i find that much more believable than being put here by an all powerful being.
However, i admit when you look back far enough both are pretty shakey. If you go with science, you have to believe something was created from nothing (principle of big bang theory i believe) or if you go with religion you go with the god option.

@ Dawkins - Although i am an atheist myself, i don't really agree with him trying to persuade people that their beliefs are wrong. He is just as bad as people forcing religion onto other people.

My 2 cents.

Mike

But why do you feel that it's a contradiction to believe in both science and God (mind you, not one of those lousy modern day religion ones)? I mean, if she really is an omnipotent being and created all that is, then she would have created science as well, no? Or more importantly, would it even make a difference to science whether the world it describes were created by chance or an all powerful being?
After all, let's assume God really exists, then she wouldn't have any problem creating the Big Bang, Quantum Fluctuations and all the other nifty stuff. Seeing that science basically boils down to describing existence, it seems to be irrelevant how existence came to be, other than from the desire to study this as well.

 Golan, on 16 Nov 2009, 18:01, said:

I feel its a contradiction because it would be believing in something i don't believe in. I believe in things when I'm shown evidence that they exist. Therefore believing in something for which there is no proof of its existence would be going against what i stand for.
For the record, this has been brought up earlier but i find the "you can't prove god doesn't exist, therefore he does" argument incredibly irritating. Its not even an argument. Its just a totally uncounterable point which doesn't even prove he DOES exist. If you can't prove he exists, there is just as much chance that he doesn't. How am i supposed to take an argument with no proof what so ever seriously? I just can't do it.

Mike

God is logically impossible. If he were omniscient, he could see the future. However, he would be powerless to act against it, thus he couldn't be omnipotent. However, he couldn't be omniscient because in knowing everything, he would also have to have complete knowledge of himself, leading to an infinite recursive loop, reminiscent of Laplace's Demon. Therefore, he also couldn't be omnipotent would give him the power to be omniscient.
Edited by Dr. Strangelove, 16 November 2009 - 23:42.

That's kind of a 4 dimensional logic though. There's no indication that time is linear or that there is only one time line. Preventing something from happening doesn't necessarily mean to remove it's possibility of happening from the past.

 Mbob61, on 16 Nov 2009, 18:57, said:

Dunno how you could take such an argument seriously. Frankly, it doesn't matter all that much to me because I didn't use it. In fact, I argued multiple times against this false deduction, even though usually from the other POV. I'm not saying "you can't prove god doesn't exist, therefore he does" but instead "you can't prove god doesn't exist, therefore you don't know if She does or doesn't exist". How am i supposed to take an argument with no proof what so ever seriously? I just can't do it.
Honestly, whether you believe in God or not is entirely up to you. However, you classified God and Science as opposing, exclusive choices, thereby de facto denying the possibility of God's existence for every sane person.

 Golan, on 17 Nov 2009, 17:59, said:

Thats an interesting, point religion and science can coexist after all, they don't have to be exclusive. Evolution for example, occurs because of random mutations - if god is omnipotent he could be the one causing those mutations and thus evolution, to happen.

 Ion Cannon!, on 17 Nov 2009, 20:25, said:

Not really, because the whole point of evolution is that a vast amount of time is the driving force for natural selection and in the Bible it's stated that god created everything in a couple of days (even when there weren't any "days" yet).

 Chyros, on 17 Nov 2009, 19:14, said:

Not all christians take that literally though, take my dad, he's very religious, hell he's a vicar, but he doesn't believe god created the earth in a couple of days, because well, he's not stupid.

 Ion Cannon!, on 17 Nov 2009, 21:25, said:

No, of course that's definitely true, but it does require some free thinking and some bending of what's actually written, and that alone means that they are, from a purist perspective, mutually exclusive. It's good of course that people can actually see that some things simply don't fit the times anymore, but still.

 Chyros, on 17 Nov 2009, 21:14, said:

God doesn't have to be as the one described in the Bible. That God is contradictory tbh, and one of the priests at my school told me that some Christians believe the one in the New Testament supplanted the crueler one from the Old Testament. Either way, I like to think the existence of the rules of science and the vast complexity of the universe defines the idea of God itself.

 Chyros, on 17 Nov 2009, 19:14, said:

And as we all know, there's no God beside the Christian one, so obviously if his religion is bull, we can logically deduce that there is no
*fatal sarcasm failure*
*recharging sarcasm capacitors*
*beep**beep**beep*
Edited by Golan, 18 November 2009 - 10:20.

 Golan, on 18 Nov 2009, 12:16, said:

Well Christianity IS the biggest religion in the world so if I'd had to choose a representative, Christianity would be a good one. Second, I don't know enough about creationism in Islam to make a point of it. Third, IIRC all Abrahamic religions consider the Christian god their own god as well.

You're making a fundamental argument though. Taking a representative from a group isn't appropriate if your goal is to deduce something about the whole group. Especially if said representative doesn't represent the group very well.
Edited by Golan, 18 November 2009 - 12:34.

 Golan, on 18 Nov 2009, 13:38, said:

I really don't see how my argument is a dicto secundum at all. I think you seriously misunderstood me. In fact, I wasn't even talking about Christians at all, or any religious people for that matter. Even more in fact, what is wrong with a fundamental argument?

 Chyros, on 18 Nov 2009, 13:06, said:

You were talking 'bout how The Bible[TM] contradicts JRK's notion of Evolution + God = possible when he was specifically not talking about The Old Man. The fallacy is here is how you draw a conclusion from one specific god/religion to deny a general statement.
A fundamental argument isn't wrong, however you attempted to make one (or better to say, contradict one) with a specific, not a fundamental reasoning. Which comes down to, you know, making an invalid generalization...
Edited by Golan, 18 November 2009 - 13:58.

 Chyros, on 18 Nov 2009, 13:14, said:

Creation story is same in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, except the part God doesn't rest at 7. day in Islam