Summations Only

I've got a couple of questions for you...but first I wanted to introduce everyone on the Forum to one of the podcasts that I listen to. Ask Science MikeHe is not a Biblical Creationist, but he is/was a strong Christian. He is rather liberal, and he is articulate enough that I am starting to enjoy listening to him.Now for my questions:You are a quantum physics guy and you likely value science and evidence before you would consider belief. Do you agree with Tangle, who claims that religion is on its way out and that rational people will soon realize that scientific thought (or philosophical maths) is basically the best way to learn more about our overall purpose, destiny, and discovery of the universe(multiverse?) in which we reside...on a dust speck suspended in a sunbeam? Ive been trying to argue with these guys here at EvC forever about my beliefs and why I believe the way I do and, thankfully, they never agree with or encourage me to continue on my present path.Do you agree with their basic point that religion and the stories surrounding it are entirely made up or do you allow for the slim possibility that there is something unexplaineed beyond our current understanding?Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

Difficult questions! I don't think I'll provide very satisfactory answers. I'll stay with the quantum physics side. As for the sociological question of whether religion will last. I simply don't know. In response to quantum theory Bohr remained a committed atheist, Heisenberg became more deeply Catholic, Pauli delved into Jungian idealism and metaphysics and Schrodinger started to believe in Vedic philosophical views.
So I don't really know if physics say will definitely lead people away from religious views.I think it's fairly clear from quantum theory that there's something beyond the scientific/physical, and you'll see this discussed fairly soberly in works by Bernard d'Espagnat or Jeffrey Bub for example. Bub has a nice phrase that quantum theory is clearly "non-representational", i.e. it doesn't discuss what the world is actually like. To paraphrase Bohr it's about what you can "say and do" not about what "is".However it seems, as pointed out by Oppenheimer a few times, that quantum theory simply tells you what the metaphysics is not with little guidance as to what it is. So hard to know where to go from there. d'Espagnat's books sketch out a few options, but once you accept that you have no solid grasp on metahpysics accepting any of them is just belief as such.Some say (e.g. Jeffrey Bub) that a far reaching agnosticism is called for. I don't just mean about God vs no God, but about metaphysics in general. Hard to know.

Hi Phat What do we really understand Phat?Science can not tell us how the universe began to exist.
Science can not tell us how life began to exist.
Science can not tell us the purpose for our existence.
Neither can math as it is a product of mankind.Scientist have come up will all kind of opinions how things happened after they began to exist.But with billions of dollars spent and countless hours of pondering by millions of people there is only "we don't know" as the answer.Religious books are the only books that tell us how the universe began to exist, how life began to exist, and the purpose for us existing.God Bless,

Just a bit tricky to work out which God and which book. I randomly picked this one to believe in from the letter H in the 138 pages of Wiki's creator gods. Huracan (/hr’k’n, hr’kn/; Spanish: Huracn; Mayan languages: Hunraqan, "one legged"), often referred to as U Kux Kaj, the "Heart of Sky",[2] is a Kiche Maya god of wind, storm, fire and one of the creator deities who participated in all three attempts at creating humanity.[3]He also caused the Great Flood after the second generation of humans angered the gods. He supposedly lived in the windy mists above the floodwaters and repeatedly invoked "earth" until land came up from the seas.His name, understood as 'One-Leg', suggests god K of Postclassic and Classic Maya iconography, a deity of lightning with one human leg,[4] and one leg shaped like a serpent. God K is commonly referred to as Bolon Tzacab and Kawiil or Kauil. The name may ultimately derive from huracan, a Carib word,[5] and the source of the words hurricane and orcan (European windstorm).Related deities are Tohil in Kiche mythology, Bolon Tzacab in Yucatec mythology, Cocijo in Zapotec mythology, and Tezcatlipoca in Aztec mythology.Category:Creator gods - Wikipedia

Odd why you would pick one so culturally distant from your upbringing! Here lemme see that link!
Category:Creator gods - Wikipedia

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Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically,[g] although the quest for the historical Jesus has yielded some uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the Bible reflects the historical Jesus, as the only records of Jesus' life are contained in the four Gospels.Jesus was a Galilean Jew,who was baptized by John the Baptist and began his own ministry. He preached orally and was often referred to as "rabbi". Jesus debated with fellow Jews on how to best follow God, engaged in healings, taught in parables and gathered followers. He was arrested and tried by the Jewish authorities, turned over to the Roman government, and crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect.After his death, his followers believed he rose from the dead, and the community they formed eventually became the early Church.

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Christian doctrines include the beliefs that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin named Mary, performed miracles, founded the Christian Church, died by crucifixion as a sacrifice to achieve atonement for sin, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven, from where he will return.

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Commonly, Christians believe Jesus enables people to be reconciled to God. The Nicene Creed asserts that Jesus will judge the living and the dead either before or after their bodily resurrection, an event tied to the Second Coming of Jesus in Christian eschatology. The great majority of Christians worship Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son, the second of three persons of the Trinity. A small minority of Christian denominations reject Trinitarianism, wholly or partly, as non-scriptural. The birth of Jesus is celebrated annually on December 25 as Christmas. His crucifixion is honored on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. The widely used calendar era "AD", from the Latin anno Domini ("year of the Lord"), and the equivalent alternative "CE", are based on the approximate birthdate of Jesus.

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This one appears far less mythological and more plausible than many of the rest. Still, I'm sure you see them all the same. Oh well....that's on you I guess. Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

I did say it was random.It wouldn't have been random for those born into the culture that held the belief though. They believed it because that's what they were taught. Exactly like you. Only to you Phat, to the Myan your Jesus would be a false god.Billions of people currently believe in Shiva as the creation god, just as much as you believe in yours and just as much by chance of birth. Shiva (/iv’/; Sanskrit: [], IAST: iva, ISO: iva, About this soundlisten (helpinfo), lit. 'the auspicious one'), also known as Mahadeva (lit. 'the great god'),[9][10][11] is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. He is the supreme being within Shaivism, one of the major traditions within contemporary Hinduism.[12][13]Shiva is known as "The Destroyer" within the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity that includes Brahma and Vishnu.[1][14] In Shaivism tradition, Shiva is one of the supreme beings who creates, protects and transforms the universe.[9][10][11] In the Shaktism tradition, the Goddess, or Devi, is described as one of the supreme, yet Shiva is revered along with Vishnu and Brahma. A goddess is stated to be the energy and creative power (Shakti) of each, with Parvati (Sati) the equal complementary partner of Shiva.[15][16] He is one of the five equivalent deities in Panchayatana puja of the Smarta tradition of Hinduism.[12]

I understand your relativistic outlook on beliefs. Let me ask you this. If there is a GOD, Creator of all seen and unseen, what makes you think He(She,It) is relative to the individual...sort of like a cosmic chameleon? Is it so implausible to believe that of all the Gods in the catalogue, one is likely to actually exist? Or would you, like jar, say that there is no way that we humans could find out?And if so....why you in all honesty can remain an atheist. Because if you honestly dont know, I have no problem with your lack of belief. On the other hand, regardless of the fact that my chosen God is relative to the culture I grew up in, could He not be the One among many? Is that impossible? If you say that it is, we have nothing more to talk about, and I have no need to go shopping for a different God.I never choose God based on cultural availability. It just so happened that God picked me. And I have no problem with the fact that He never picked you. Your day will come if you let it. Does that statement sound arrogant?

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I understand your relativistic outlook on beliefs

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It isn’t really relativistic. It just acknowledges that there are different opinions and no objective way to choose between them.For instance, in Message 292 you say that Jesus is a more plausible creator god, but nothing you quote supports that claim.

What does the evidence show Phat?Evidence, not belief; what does the evidence show Phat?Let's look at the Bible as evidence. What we find is that there is no "One God" to be found; the God found in Genesis 1 is entirely different from and mutually exclusive to the God in Genesis 2&3 and the God in Exodus is entirely different than the God in Genesis 18:16-33.Is it plausible to conclude that the God of Genesis 1 actually exists while the gods of Genesis 2&3 and Genesis 18 and Exodus do not? Is it plausible to conclude that all of them exist or is it more plausible to conclude that none of them exist and that they are all the creations of the authors and story tellers?Is there ANY plausible reason to conclude that any one of the thousands of gods that humans describe is actually the one that does exist or is it more plausible to conclude that none of them exist and that they are all the creations of the authors and story tellers? That statement just sound silly like the kid on the playground insisting that Santa really did send him a letter. It's not even up to the standards of Tommy Smothers; "Yeah? But mother always liked you best!"

For me as a Christian, the plausibility began with Jesus Christ. I don't believe (or see any convincing evidence) that there were several "Jesus characters" observed in my own personal reading of scripture though I do conclude(based on listening to the Bible History book) that there have been several Jesus characters described by historians within the ever-changing Christian faith.It has been my personal experience that I began a transformative process upon asking Jesus into my heart and that this change was abrupt and notable, continuing all the way from 1993 until today.I have never confessed belief in any "God character" nor have I felt the effect of ongoing transformation due to it. I have experienced this with public confession of Jesus Christ.I realize that my experience is and was personal and subjective and in no way refutes your question except to say that in my belief, Jesus is plausibly unique.

Why is Ganesh not also plausibly unique?Why is Coyote not equally plausibly unique?Need I continue?

Were I to wander into a pet shop and peruse the many fine dogs on display, they all may appear plausibly unique until one of them chooses me before I choose it. At that point, only one of the fine animals is plausibly unique to me.Ganesh never chose me.
Coyote never chose me.
need I continue?Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

Obviously you don't, it's not relative, it's just a fact that humans believe in thousands of different gods. And each thinks he's got the right one. But getting the right one only depends on chance. That's not what I think. What I think is the simply and easily demonstrable fact that people believe the god they're taught about in their cultures. That silly, the only conclusion you can draw from people believing in thousands of invisible beings that are all different is that they're all equally deluded.

As long as you are posting silly stuff there is not much point is there?There is zero evidence that you were chosen by any god any more than a Hindu was chosen by Ganesh.The idea that you were chosen is another of your creations.You walked into a Pet Store that only sold one very particular pet. There was no choosing involved, there was only the one critter there.Edited by jar, : No reason given.

Despite your statement of faith your religious books DO NOT tell us how the universe began. They are fairy tales recording the wishful thinking of the tribal strongman priests from a long gone dead society. Each of the ancient creation stories in those ancient religious books involve different characters wielding different majik which is the tell-tale sign of a bogus set of myths. Despite your statement of faith your religious books DO NOT tell us how life began. They are fairy tales recording the wishful thinking of the tribal strongman priests from a long gone dead society. Each of the ancient creation stories in those ancient religious books involve different characters wielding different majik which is the tell-tale sign of a bogus set of myths. What makes you think there is one? Personal incredulity? Your religious myths again? Again, different tenets of different priests answering the same question with different characters and different majik. All known to be bogus in the reality of this universe. Hard physical evidence of the BS majik being bogus in reality. What kind of sham thought process separates the tool from the work? If you are concerned about the use of the math, that is what peer review is all about. You have a errant view of this. The math is NOT the answer. The science is. Oh you poor blind man. You think we've learned nothing these past 300 years? Your stodgy mind still stuck in the last millennia?Science is not religion. Unlike you priests, we don't go make up stories because they make us feel superior. Existence? Reality? Your priests know nothing but their own desires.We have learned a hell of a lot about this universe, all the materials, energies, processes and more. Hundreds of years and billions of dollars has taught us a reality of existence that you and your priests cannot abide. Just because we don't know EVERYTHING does not negate the fact that science knows considerably more about the reality of this universe than all/any covey of priests.Instead, you and your priests, in ecclesiastical tantrums, declare without evidence and issue blanket statements that reality is wrong and that unseen majik, unknowable ghosts and incomprehensible mystery rule the world.We have the hard physical evidence for the scientific reality of existence. You have your priests and their myths. Reality, as our well known present science can establish, trumps your unseen, unknowable, incomprehensible BS majik. You have nothing.