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by The Kumari are a number of young girls in Nepal worshipped by Hindu and Buddhist alike as "living goddesses." There a numerous tales as to the historical origin of the Kumari, however, the culture accepts the living goddesses are the embodiment of Durga. Sajani Shakya, a ten year old Kumari, broke tradition by traveling outside Nepal to participate in a British documentary on the living goddess culture. Due to her departure from Nepal, the Bhaktapur Taleju Temple has stripped Sajani of her title, demoting her once again to a normal child as they begin seeking her replacement.
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What words mean by scottb :: NR7 :: on 04 July 2007
I think this story offers a really interesting perspective on theology. So very often disagreements over religious beliefs fall into very strictly dichotomous thinking - the "religious" vs the "non-religious". Especially here in the US, the "Abrahamic" religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) so dominate the culture that people tend to think that all religion is more or less the same.
But here we have goddesses who stop being goddesses after a little while. Not just young Sajani, but all of these girls stop being goddesses - normally it happens after their first menses. This is very obviously a different idea of what deity means than the Abrahamic religions have.
I suspect most westerners reading the linked articles react with a kind of superior "how quaint!", and don't give it much additional thought. It really is worth thinking about what's going on there, though - if you think it's wrong, why so? Don't just dismiss it as "foreign", engage with the idea and see what it really means. "Alien" ideas are a great lens through which to view our own beliefs.
I loved the reactions of the American kids in the linked NPR story about Sajani's visit to the US. The reactions children have to ideas are themselves sometimes very enlightening.
How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by VnutZ :: NR8 :: on 05 July 2007
I suspect most westerners reading the linked articles react with a kind of superior "how quaint!", and don't give it much additional thought.
I think you're close to the mark on that assessment. That opinion will likely never be vocalized of course, because if somebody gave it a moment's though, they would realize its the same as downplaying any religion.
But the polytheist religions of the East have absolutely nothing in common with those of the West. This is where I have my problem with the notion that there must be a god because so many people believe it. True - but so many people also believe in a completely dissimilar system that there's an equal chance that your god/dogma is a complete farce. This is exactly where the so-called Atheist Wager comes into play.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 05 July 2007
there must be a god because so many people believe it
You're right; that's a horrible argument given the track record of "the masses."
Throw in a couple of other words, however, and the argument starts to gain legitimacy - or at least utility. "I believe X because so many people I trust believe X" is a step in the right direction. It isn't a proof, of course, and it assumes the trust is well-placed, but it's nonetheless much different than the unqualified "so many."
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by VnutZ :: NR8 :: on 05 July 2007
"I believe X because so many people I trust believe X" is a step in the right direction. It isn't a proof, of course, and it assumes the trust is well-placed, but it's nonetheless much different than the unqualified "so many."
I don't mean to make light, but that logic would quickly lead to justifying that Jews really ought to be exterminated. Now, you throw in the word "trust" ... while I personally don't trust that dogma or the spin that created it, enough other people certainly do. This applies equally well to racist, homosexuality and religious hatred/oppression.
The conclusion that X is valid should never be justified because Y people believe it. X should only be valid if facts A, B and C are irrefutable.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 05 July 2007
that logic would quickly lead to justifying that Jews really ought to be exterminated
Yes, it could (emphasis on the "c").
I'm not sure why you're protesting this point, though. I didn't defend any and all qualifiers as being sufficient, I only noted such would be a step in the right direction. In other words, when something cannot be known individually, it may make sense to consider the beliefs of others. Determining which "others" are trustworthy and which aren't is, of course, the crucial issue - but to dismiss any and all appeal to outside knowledge as blind mob-following is misleading and inaccurate. (I'm not accusing you of doing so, but that's the point I'm making nonetheless.)
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by VnutZ :: NR8 :: on 05 July 2007
Indeed - fair enough.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by scottb :: NR7 :: on 09 July 2007
I don't entirely buy this line of argument. I don't think it's any better than VnutZ original statement you rejected.
The subject of the "atheist's wager" (or Pascal's, for that matter) isn't a matter of opinion. It's a matter of truth. No matter how much you trust someone, it doesn't change whether they know the truth of the question. In the case of Christianity (and all "faith" religions), your trust in your pastor has absolutely no bearing on whether Jesus existed or any of the relevant questions. This is because he's doing the same thing you are. He's relying on someone else, who's relying on someone else, all the way back for two thousand years.
Such a chain can only be as strong as its weakest link. If even one person misjudged the earlier steps in the chain, the whole thing collapses. And you have no way to even begin to judge the trustworthiness of most of the chain for yourself - they're too far back in time to know personally. The longer the chain, the weaker you have to judge it, regardless of the degree to which you trust the closest link.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 10 July 2007
My point wasn't concerning religious faith, but the common situation in which a decision must be made with incomplete knowledge. In such situations, the thoughts of others can be a useful tool.
The notion I rejected was "X must be true if Y many people believe it" - which is much different than, "X may be worth considering if believed by person A, who is deemed trustworthy based on criteria XYZ."
As I said, this isn't just a matter of religious faith, but concerning your points on that subject, I'm reminded again of the importance of personal revelation.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by scottb :: NR7 :: on 10 July 2007
The notion I rejected was "X must be true if Y many people believe it" - which is much different than, "X may be worth considering if believed by person A, who is deemed trustworthy based on criteria XYZ."
And I emended it to say "X may be worth considering if believed by person A, who is deemed trustworthy based on relevant criteria XYZ."
I'm reminded again of the importance of personal revelation.
Which is just as fraught with problems, if not more so. By definition, you lack objectivity in determining the trustworthiness of the relevant observations.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 10 July 2007
Whether the criteria is relevant or not is beside my point. I wasn't meaning to comment on the quality or relevance of the criteria, but to argue the thought process was potentially useful (as opposed to being categorically misleading, as it seemed VnutZ was claiming).
By definition, you lack objectivity in determining the trustworthiness of the relevant observations.
One lacks pure objectivity, yes, but that's far from being enough to completely invalidate the worth of the experience - especially given the lack of direct comment from a "purely objective" source. Rather, accepting it as not publicly verifiable and then interpreting/studying it within that context seems the best means of dealing with such experiences of which I can think.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by scottb :: NR7 :: on 10 July 2007
One lacks pure objectivity, yes, but that's far from being enough to completely invalidate the worth of the experience - especially given the lack of direct comment from a "purely objective" source.
One lacks anything resembling objectivity. The best indicator of this is that these "experiences" are invariably in line with one's own personal prejudices. Muslim have Muslim revelations, Mormons have Mormon revelations, Jews have Jewish revelations, Hindus have Hindu revelations, Buddhists have Buddhist revelations.
This further correlates with the fact that artificially stimulating the temporal lobe consistently results in an experience that is normally described in religious terms - and again, always in terms of one's religious predispositions - Muslims see Allah, Christians see Jesus, Jews see Moses.
If this isn't enough to discount any such experience, it shows your completely lack of objectivity.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 10 July 2007
In some cases it's enough, and in some it's not. The evidence you cite is interesting, and should be taken into account when evaluating an experience, but it simply isn't sufficient to explain any and all revelatory experiences. Also, although one cannot obtain pure objectivity when interpreting on one's own experience, lacking public verification, an outsider has even less ability to speak authoritatively on the subject.
I'd like to get further into the revelation discussion, but it's off topic, so I'll hold my tongue.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by scottb :: NR7 :: on 11 July 2007
The evidence you cite is interesting, and should be taken into account when evaluating an experience, but it simply isn't sufficient to explain any and all revelatory experiences.
Actually, it is. Unless you have some tangible, real world evidence, that can be evaluated by a third-party, then self-delusion is entirely sufficient to explain these experiences.
Beyond that, our best current models of physics have no mechanism by which these experiences can occur, self-delusion is the only explanation that's consistent with them. Alternative explanations require at a minimum some hypothesis as to how these models are wrong (or incomplete, or whatever). Merely waving your hands and saying "they're wrong" is irrational.
This no different than Steorn's "free energy" claim. Even though all they directly claim is a way to construct a magnetic field such that traveling a closed loop in it results in a higher energy level than you started with, that claim implies a violation of the conservation laws - in particular, the first law of thermodynamics.
It's hard to convey just how improbable it is that they've produced an observable violation of the first law. It's a consequence of the invariance of physical systems with respect to translation in time. In other words, the fact that we can predict the outcome of an experiment without knowing what time it took place implies the conservation of energy, and thus the first law. Any description of physics that's translation-symmetric with respect to time implies the conservation of energy, and all of the conservation laws have similar associations with fundamental symmetries.
It's wildly beyond irrational for anyone to assert an "open mind" on the subject. The only real question is where the error in Steorn's analysis is, not whether they've actually discovered a "free energy" machine, as they claim.
The same logic applies to every form of revelatory experience I've ever heard. Postulating the existence of a deity that's active in the world - performing miracles, answering prayers, revealing himself to humans - isn't just a claim of an unusual occurrence. It's a claim that the conservation laws are incorrect. It's a claim that vast amounts of very thoroughly tested physics is just mistaken.
So, connecting this back with the current discussion, where's the justification for belief in revelation? The relevant laws of physics are quite easily testable - they're tested experimentally in physics classrooms every year. So which is more likely, that all of physics needs rewritten, or that a revelatory experience that conveniently coincides with claims one is predisposed to believe (through some kind of "chain of trust" that ends at some prior revelation) is mere self-delusion?
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 11 July 2007
self-delusion is entirely sufficient to explain these experiences
Perhaps "sufficient" was the wrong word.
My contention is you cannot pose what is "generally more likely to a third party" (or "sufficient") as what is "positively correct." It's possible everyone who has ever reported receiving a revelation was self-delusional, and I can understand why someone in your position would invoke Occam's razor to accept that explanation. However, this does not justify you to state everyone in any position is categorically wrong to think differently (i.e., to think "revelation" is a more likely explanation).
Postulating the existence of a deity that's active in the world - performing miracles, answering prayers, revealing himself to humans - isn't just a claim of an unusual occurrence. It's a claim that the conservation laws are incorrect. It's a claim that vast amounts of very thoroughly tested physics is just mistaken.
If valid, this would be a much better line of protest (on your part). However, I've seen nothing you've presented or in my own studies which precludes the compatibility of the conservation laws and revelation. Given we both have studied physics, perhaps the issue here is your understanding of revelation.
where's the justification for belief in revelation?
Having experienced it, of course. (We've already had this conversation.)
So which is more likely, that all of physics needs rewritten, or that a revelatory experience ... is mere self-delusion?
I consider this a false dilemma.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by scottb :: NR7 :: on 11 July 2007
I can understand why someone in your position would invoke Occam's razor to accept that explanation.
If you don't know enough about physics to know that raising a multi-day old corpse from the dead violates the second law of thermodynamics, then you could be expected to come to a false conclusion that it's possible. But even that is stretching the notion of "reasonable".
If nothing else, one should recognize that "revelation" is relatively rare and self-delusion quite common, and that the only way to distinguish them is with third-party validation. Without third-party validation, the rational assumption is still self-delusion.
I've seen nothing you've presented or in my own studies which precludes the compatibility of the conservation laws and revelation.
Virtually all of the "miracles" in the bible violate the conservation laws, as does the Mormon belief that the resurrected Jesus appeared to people in the ancient Americas. Positing a causative connection between prayer and healing violates conservation laws. The Catholic Church's doctrine of the transubstantiation violates them. The very ideas of omniscience and omnipotence violate them.
perhaps the issue here is your understanding of revelation.
If you've got some theory on how revelation works without violating the major conservation laws, then whip it out. Quit being mysterious.
Any communication between entities requires some form of physical signalling - an exchange of energy. Between special relativity and quantum mechanics, we have a very precise model of how energy exchange works. There is nothing in this model that allows for the communication that's implicit in revelation.
Having experienced it, of course. (We've already had this conversation.)
We haven't really, because, like now, you always side-step the question. The experience isn't sufficient justification. The justified conclusion is self-delusion.
Religion and conservation laws by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 11 July 2007
raising a multi-day old corpse from the dead violates the second law of thermodynamics
You'll have to explain further (hopefully with more insinuations as to my knowledge of physics and ability to reason).
one should recognize that "revelation" is relatively rare and self-delusion quite common
That depends on how you define revelation.
the only way to distinguish them is with third-party validation
I can see your reasoning behind that, given the nature of self-delusion, but what sort of third-party validation would you suggest?
Virtually all of the "miracles" in the bible violate the conservation laws, as does the Mormon belief that the resurrected Jesus appeared to people in the ancient Americas. Positing a causative connection between prayer and healing violates conservation laws. The very ideas of omniscience and omnipotence violate them.
Having removed the concept of transubstantiation so we can concentrate on concepts I actually accept, I don't see how any of these ideas must violate conservation laws. I admit there are many common understandings of them which might, but they do not violate the laws by their very nature. Maybe you can pick your strongest case and we can explore it further? Remember, however, we're not looking for any interpretation of the listed items which would violate conservation laws, but a case in which the violation occurs no matter the interpretation (within reason).
Any communication between entities requires some form of physical signalling - an exchange of energy. Between special relativity and quantum mechanics, we have a very precise model of how energy exchange works. There is nothing in this model that allows for the communication that's implicit in revelation.
I don't follow you for two reasons: 1) What is it "implicit in revelation" which prevents it from being covered by special relativity and quantum mechanics? 2) How can one be sure special relativity and quantum mechanics describe all existence?
The experience isn't sufficient justification. The justified conclusion is self-delusion.
Are you saying the justified conclusion for me to make is I am self-deluded? In other words, because the experience cannot be proved publicly, I should assume I made it up? How is that a better solution than to accept and investigate the possibility I made it up?
RE: Religion and conservation laws by scottb :: NR7 :: on 11 July 2007
You'll have to explain further (hopefully with more insinuations as to my knowledge of physics and ability to reason).
The "you" in "if you don't know enough about physics" was intended as an abstraction, not you specifically. But if the shoe fits.
You call your own ability to reason into question when you claim it's more reasonable to believe your revelatory experiences were "real" instead of self-delusion.
In any case, when you take a dead body and put it in a cave with a rock in front for a couple of days, it rots. Even under ideal conditions. As a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy in that system takes a fairly big jump upward - dissipating through the local environment in the form of chemically generated heat. Without blood circulating oxygen, the cells become damaged. Among the most sensitive of these are the brain cells.
Yet when Lazarus is called from his tomb in front of many witnesses, all of this entropy is reversed. It's not a shambling, rotting, brain-dead zombie that comes out, but a perfectly restored Lazarus. To all evidence, this event violates the laws of thermodynamics.
Maybe you can pick your strongest case and we can explore it further?
Probably the easiest case to describe is against omniscience. Omniscience implies knowledge of all events in the entire universe, both past and future. But QM indicates that this becomes impossible almost immediately after the Planck epoch.
During the Planck epoch, the total entropy of the universe was quite low - but the maximum entropy of the universe was similarly low. In the Hartle-Hawking model, which is among the simplest, they're identical. During the inflationary epoch, the size of the universe expanded greatly, thus hugely increasing the total possible entropy, but the actual entropy remains near its original value (though always increasing).
Information is the negative of entropy - that is, it's the difference between the total entropy and the actual entropy. The information available to an entity prior to the inflationary period would then be quite small - but it doesn't take much to achieve omniscience at that point. However, that same entity has almost no information about the state of the universe after the inflationary epoch, except what it can obtain by observation.
But most of the universe is out of causal contact with itself after the inflationary epoch - information at one "end" of the universe isn't observable at the "other end", because they're farther apart than light can have traveled in the entire age of the universe.
Therefore no entity that existed at the end of the Planck epoch can possibly be omniscient without violating causality, which is connected to the speed of light, which connected in a fundamental way with the conservation of momentum.
1) What is it "implicit in revelation" which prevents it from being covered by special relativity and quantum mechanics?
As far as I can tell, it represents communication across a distance with no detectable carrier signal. It's non-causal.
2) How can one be sure special relativity and quantum mechanics describe all existence?
Right now, there's no experimental evidence that it doesn't describe. Any alternative theory must include special relativity and quantum mechanics as sub-theory, in the same way that relativity includes Newtonian relativity as a sub-theory.
The point of any theory is to describe the data in as parsimonious a manner as possible. QM and special relativity are extremely parsimonious explanations, yet they accurately describe every experiment and provide predictions for new experiments that have been repeatedly validated.
It's virtually certain that they don't describe all of existence. However, that part of existence that they fail to describe is almost certainly very very small. And almost certainly not relevant to ordinary human experience, in the same way that special and general relativity aren't relevant.
In a way, that's kind of the whole point of where this thread is taking us. Aristotle thought that the natural state of motion was rest, and that it took a force to keep an object moving. Galileo and Newton corrected that and showed that it was constant-speed movement that was the natural state and it took force to accelerate the object. But very little has changed since then.
The equations of relativity are most naturally expressed in units where velocity is represented as a fraction of the speed of light - in other words, where c = 1. But if you were to use those units in computing the trajectory of a bullet fired from a moving airplane, the values for velocity would all be incredibly tiny numbers. So tiny that the difference between the answer you got using Newton's "incorrect" formula and Einstein's "correct" formula would be impractical to measure. The error introduced by using the "wrong" formula would be totally swamped by the errors that come from just measuring the velocities in the first place.
The idea that physics has been wrong before and could turn out to still be wrong is a cherished one among believers of all stripes - religious, new age, whatever. But the real fact is that it hasn't been very far wrong - in a very real sense it hasn't been wrong at all. Since Galileo, physics has only gotten more precise - it hasn't really changed direction.
Are you saying the justified conclusion for me to make is I am self-deluded? In other words, because the experience cannot be proved publicly, I should assume I made it up?
Yes. You should assume that the most likely explanation is the best one. The most likely explanation is that your experience wasn't what it appeared to be.
By all means, it's reasonable to look for concrete explanations as to why you perceived what you thought you did, but with no verifiable evidence but the experience itself, the only logically justified conclusion is that you were mistaken about what you thought happened.
RE: Religion and conservation laws by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 13 July 2007
Your discussion of Lazarus is speculative. You don't (and can't) know enough about what actually happened in the situation to make the conclusions you do. So, you've made assumptions that corner you into something impossible (e.g., there's no way to preserve or repair the cells of a person in such a way as to enable them to live again after being dead for four days). This is why I specified: "we're not looking for any interpretation of the listed items which would violate conservation laws, but a case in which the violation occurs no matter the interpretation (within reason)."
I'm fairly sure your response to this protest will be something like, "there's no two ways about it; this is what they Bible says." The fact remains, however, there are hundreds (thousands? millions?) of unanswered questions about the process. The verses in the Bible weren't written for scientific inquiry; they don't provide even 1/1,000 of what you'd need to analyze the situation.
Omniscience implies knowledge of all events in the entire universe, both past and future.
This definition of omniscience isn't universally accepted. Specifically, as we've discussed previously, I don't believe the future acts of free agents exist to be known. You also make assumptions about nothing being able to travel faster than the speed of light, which I don't think you can do. Neither of these issues seem sufficient to prove the incompatibility of the omniscience required of diety and conservation laws.
it represents communication across a distance with no detectable carrier signal
You mean detectable using existing technology? Or detectable at all, ever? I agree with the former, but not the latter - leaving revelation completely acceptable within the bounds of conservation laws.
How can one be sure special relativity and quantum mechanics describe all existence
I don't think you answered this question in a sufficient manner to support the idea that it excludes the existence of revelation, but our conversation about the nature of revelation is the key issue here, so I suggest we defer.
You should assume that the most likely explanation is the best one.
I am.
The most likely explanation is that your experience wasn't what it appeared to be.
As I've explained before, you aren't able to make such a claim. Your chain of thought is:
My issue is with #2, and without it, your whole argument breaks down.
the only logically justified conclusion is that you were mistaken about what you thought happened.
What logic, exactly, would lead me to that conclusion?
RE: Religion and conservation laws by scottb :: NR7 :: on 13 July 2007
This is why I specified: "we're not looking for any interpretation of the listed items which would violate conservation laws, but a case in which the violation occurs no matter the interpretation (within reason)."
Of course, that "within reason" is the rub. You'll accept any wild hypothesis as "within reason". If he was dead, then he was rotting. If that was reversed, then it would have required a fair amount of energy expenditure - which would likely manifest as a very notable drop in ambient temperature. Since nothing of the sort is mentioned, this rules out a huge number of interpretations.
But it still leaves the fundamental problem - it's not my side that needs to explain the extraordinary event. I've pointed out how a wide range of obvious interpretations of events violates the conservation laws. It's your side that needs to offer a suggestion as to how it could have happened without the violation, and do so in a manner that's more credible than the alternate hypothesis, which is that the whole story is apocryphal.
Omniscience implies knowledge of all events in the entire universe, both past and future.
This definition of omniscience isn't universally accepted.
The accepted definitions aren't far from this. Wikipedia offers a distinction between "total omniscience", which it gives as "actually knowing everything that can be known" and "inherent omniscience", which it gives as "the ability to know anything that one chooses to know and can be known.
But the argument I outlined says that essentially nothing about the future can be known beyond a few microseconds after the Planck epoch, and only probabilistically during that period. So backing down from my definition to the level of "what can be known" doesn't really help the argument.
You also make assumptions about nothing being able to travel faster than the speed of light, which I don't think you can do.
The "universal speed limit" of c isn't something that derives from observation. It's a mathematical result that derives from the symmetry of space-time. No subluminal particle can be accelerated even to the speed of light, much less beyond. Some physicists hypothesize particles, such as tachyons, that are always traveling faster than light and cannot go slower, but even assuming they could interact with subluminal matter (e.g., you) they still can't violate causality - information cannot propagate faster than light, either.
I'm not assuming that nothing can travel faster than light - it's proven.
You mean detectable using existing technology? Or detectable at all, ever? I agree with the former, but not the latter - leaving revelation completely acceptable within the bounds of conservation laws.
Still wrong. There may be forms of energy we don't know about - for example, we know very little about the properties of so called "dark energy" - but we do know about everything that can interact with matter. One of the known properties of dark energy is that it doesn't interact with matter.
Stop trying the Jedi mind trick - waving your hands and saying "this is not the violation you're looking for" doesn't change the facts. QM and general relativity say no such signal is possible. You now bear the burden of showing how it could be possible - and again, it's got to be more credible than they alternative hypothesis, that revelation is just self-delusion (or sometimes outright fraud).
Or, alternatively, you could put forward a hypothesis as to a better model. One that explains all the phenomena that QM and GR explain, together with your hypothetical "revelation energy", or whatever. That takes a lot of validation, so just stating the hypothesis isn't enough, but it's better than the handwaving.
You should assume that the most likely explanation is the best one.
I am.
It is not logically possible that "revelation" is a more likely explanation than "self-delusion". Just on the face of it, self-delusion happens far more often. Unless you have some better way of testing than just bald-faced assertions, self-delusion is a more likely explanation. Get over it.
Your chain of thought is:
My issue is with #2, and without it, your whole argument breaks down.
Nope. You've got the argument wrong. But I can see how - the question of revelation being more likely than self-delusion doesn't originate in this thread about conservation laws.
The specific argument is:
Don't read anything negative into the term "delusion". I just can't think of a more convenient word. I intend for it to cover the same sort of errors that one makes in optical illusions. There's nothing wrong with seeing the black spots in the grid illusion, but insisting on the actual presence of black spots is illogical.
Or, in a different context, your sensory data tells you that the Sun goes around the Earth. The actual content of the experience is consistent with the alternative hypothesis that the Earth goes around the Sun, but there are emotional and biological factors that predispose you towards assuming the wrong conclusion. The same is true with your revelatory experience.
The National Academy of Science issued a booklet on evolution a few years ago that said, "Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral." But the evidence says otherwise. In a survey involving about a quarter of their entire membership, only 7% said they believe in a "personal god". 72.2% expressed "personal disbelief", and 20.8% expressed "doubt or agnosticism". Less than 8% of them believe in and form of life after death. These are the most prestigious scientists in the country.
If you understand a lot of science, it's not impossible to still believe in very abstract ideas of deity - deism or pan(en)theism - but not active, personal gods. Why do you think that top scientists so overwhelmingly reject the idea?
RE: Religion and conservation laws by Brandon :: NR9 :: on 16 July 2007
It's your side that needs to offer a suggestion as to how it could have happened without the violation
I don't see why this is necessary, seeing I'm simply looking to show you can't prove it to be logically imperative my beliefs contradict the laws of conservation.
Additionally, as I said before, sufficient information is not available to analyze specific situations. Concerning your thoughts on a drop in ambient temperature, for example, who is to say there wasn't such a drop? And who is to say the "system" involved isn't a much larger scale, thus changing the boundaries over which conservation must be analyzed?
backing down from my definition to the level of "what can be known" doesn't really help the argument.
Why not? If it can be known, then how can it violate conservation laws?
I'm not assuming that nothing can travel faster than light - it's proven.
... except for maybe the tachyons you just mentioned?
In any case, I think rather than getting deep into the physics part of this as a separate issue, will you lay out how this affects whether or not my beliefs violate conservation laws? Are you saying if nothing can travel faster than light, it's impossible for a being to know everything going on?
There may be forms of energy we don't know about - for example, we know very little about the properties of so called "dark energy" - but we do know about everything that can interact with matter. One of the known properties of dark energy is that it doesn't interact with matter.
I think what we don't know about the energy forms of which we're aware, as well as the possibility of there being energy forms of which we aren't aware, is enough to leave open the possibility of revelation not violating conservation laws.
4. From #2 and #3, both revelation and delusion explain the facts equally well.
I don't think this follows from the premises. Which option explains the facts better depends on the facts.
Less than 8% of them believe in and form of life after death. These are the most prestigious scientists in the country.
I don't see the relevance of this line of thought.
Why do you think that top scientists so overwhelmingly reject the idea?
Lack of evidence.
RE: Religion and conservation laws by scottb :: NR7 :: on 16 July 2007
I don't see why this is necessary, seeing I'm simply looking to show you can't prove it to be logically imperative my beliefs contradict the laws of conservation.
Because I've already shown how "reasonable" interpretations of the relevant concepts violate the laws. There is no reasonable interpretation of the data that doesn't violate the laws. The only reasonable explanation remaining, the one that doesn't violate the laws is that we're dealing with fiction.
... except for maybe the tachyons you just mentioned?
The tachyons are kind of complicated - first, they're pure hypothesis, and no experiment has shown they exist. Nor has any experiment conclusively shown they don't. They're not a necessary part of any theory, just something that could be described by some particle models.
But, as I said, it doesn't matter - even if they do exist, they wouldn't be a suitable way to transfer information in such a way that violates causality. Information is bound up in causality - information traveling faster than the speed of light violates causality. The tachyons cannot be used to transfer information faster than light.
Are you saying if nothing can travel faster than light, it's impossible for a being to know everything going on?
Yes. The randomness inherent in quantum transactions implies that you cannot predict the future, even with perfect information, beyond an incredibly short horizon - definitely shorter than a millisecond. But perfect information isn't available anyway, because of the increase in total possible entropy associated with the inflationary period. Therefore, in order to "know everything going on", one must be able to observe everything. But the universe isn't small enough for that - parts of the universe are sufficiently far away from others that information would take longer than the total age of the universe to travel from one point to the other.
I think what we don't know about the energy forms of which we're aware, as well as the possibility of there being energy forms of which we aren't aware, is enough to leave open the possibility of revelation not violating conservation laws.
What makes you think there's anything we don't know about energy?
You're just doing the hand-waving thing again. Trying to hide in "we don't know what we don't know". It's pseudo-intellectual bullshit.
Science in general, and physics in particular, are about building models of reality. As I've said, the model we currently have - quantum mechanics and general relativity - models the universe to an incredibly precise level. What's still missing from the theory is some aspects of its behavior at extremely high energy levels - levels that have not occurred naturally since very shortly after the big bang.
The model covers everything that's been observed to happen in the interaction between matter and energy. Moreover, the model is structured so as to make predictions that can be tested. Very many such predictions have been extracted and tested and observed to conform to the model.
There's no room in the model for any new kinds of energy suitable for carrying the information claimed by revelation. And none of the existing kinds of energy are suitable either.
I don't think this follows from the premises. Which option explains the facts better depends on the facts.
Nope. You admitted that the facts are not amenable to third-party validation. Therefore "delusion" explains the facts 100% perfectly. No other explanation can possibly fit the facts better - at best they can be an equally good fit.
I don't see the relevance of this line of thought.
No. You just don't want to admit its relevance.
We're not talking about something that's a matter of individual opinion, here, like whether chocolate is better than vanilla. We're talking about the nature of the real world, and that's exactly what science studies. A scientists knowledge of the world makes their judgement about such facts more reliable than a layman's.
The US population widely believes in the existence of a personal god, but the preeminent scientists in the US do not. I therefore conclude that the reason they don't is because such a belief is inconsistent with what they know as scientists.
This is true not just of that particular group. I've given the stats before - disbelief in gods correlates very well with knowledge.
Lack of evidence.
Absurd. If anyone has the relevant evidence, it's these people. It's hardly as if the non-scientists are more likely to have the evidence.
RE: Religion and conservation laws by wyldeling :: NR6 :: on 19 July 2007
As a point of note, I'm not directly joining this debate, as I'm of the opinion that you two are slugging it out just fine without my interference. However, I would like to correct/expand upon things you've said in preceding comments.
In a way, that's kind of the whole point of where this thread is taking us. Aristotle thought that the natural state of motion was rest, and that it took a force to keep an object moving. Galileo and Newton corrected that and showed that it was constant-speed movement that was the natural state and it took force to accelerate the object.
When you take friction into account, Aristotle's observations are essentially correct, in that every slows down to rest. However, as you pointed out, this isn't completely correct. You state that "constant-speed movement" is more fundamental, but it is more correct to state that it is a state of constant velocity (actually momentum, but p = m v). This is because changing the direction of motion requires effort, just like changing how fast something is travelling requires effort. (Newton's first law) So, a vectorial description of motion is more appropriate, as it can incorporate the concepts of direction along with magnitude.
But very little has changed since then.
In some sense that is true, Newton's laws are still valid at the scales most of us operate in every day, as you point out in the parent comment. But, QM and relativity (both special and general) radically altered our view of the universe. While they both reduce to Newtonian mechanics under the right conditions, they show that the world is not the clock-work place the Victorians believed.
The "universal speed limit" of c isn't something that derives from observation. It's a mathematical result that derives from the symmetry of space-time. No subluminal particle can be accelerated even to the speed of light, much less beyond.
Yes and no. When Einstein came up with special relativity (SR), it was known that light's apparent speed does not change with the speed of the observer, and the corrections needed to get E&M to come out right we're already known in the form of the Lorentz transformation. The leap was that this observation applied to all speeds (second postulate) and that this implied that the Lorentz transformation was the correct way of describing all of motion, which has now been thoroughly tested. So, yes it is a consequence of symmetry that the speed of light is an asymptotic barrier to our speeds, but the observations came first. What relativity does not answer, is why is the speed of light ~2.97*108 m/s, and not some other value?
I'm not assuming that nothing can travel faster than light - it's proven.
You are correct, but in a statistical sense. All of the evidence, we have suggests that this is absolutely the correct interpretation of how the world works. And, as the single most tested theory, SR can be said to have been proven. But, the scientist in me, cannot make that statement unequivocally, as an alternative may exist that describes reality better. And, to be perfectly clear, such a proof cannot be mathematical in orgin, it must be derived from the data. Math is used to analyse the data, but ultimately it is the data that is the ultimate and final arbiter of what is and is not reality. (Hence, the problems with string theory.)
we do know about everything that can interact with matter.
Nope. From all of our observations (prior to dark energy), we have evidence of only 4 types of interactions: strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational. Assuming that the universe works the same at every point, it is a reasonable conclusion that only these types of interactions exist. But, like I said before, this is only proven indirectly. Do I think there is anything more, not really. But, "dark energy" indicates that we don't know everything.
One of the known properties of dark energy is that it doesn't interact with matter.
Reference? As this statement does not make sense to me. How can matter be repelled at large distances, and not interact with what is causing the repulsion?
You now bear the burden of showing how it could be possible - and again, it's got to be more credible than they alternative hypothesis, that revelation is just self-delusion (or sometimes outright fraud).
I believe the statement you are looking for is, "Extraordinary claims, require extraordinary proof."
RE: Religion and conservation laws by scottb :: NR7 :: on 19 July 2007
So, a vectorial description of motion is more appropriate, as it can incorporate the concepts of direction along with magnitude.
Very definitely. I was trying to keep it simple.
Frankly, I think the distinction between "speed" and "velocity" is something of an anachronism, held over from pre-Galilean days.
So, yes it is a consequence of symmetry that the speed of light is an asymptotic barrier to our speeds, but the observations came first.
Observations always come before theory. But in this case, the theory has obsoleted a large class of observations. In particular, I'm talking about Noether's theorem that to every differentiable symmetry generated by local actions, there corresponds a conserved current.
Without the assumption that the universe has the relevant symmetries - those of spatial translation and rotation, and time translation - it becomes essentially impossible to have physics as a discipline. The symmetries aren't really more than the assumption that physical "laws" are possible - statements about the world that are applicable beyond just here and now.
The spatial symmetries mean that the laws are the same in your lab as in my lab. The time symmetries mean that the laws are the same in your lab as in Newton's lab. But the spatial symmetries guarantee the existence of a conserved quantity equivalent to momentum. And the time symmetries guarantee the existence of a conserved quantity equivalent to energy.
So, while we originally came to the conclusion that momentum and energy are conserved quantities through observation, Noether showed that it wasn't possible for those quantities not to be conserved without the entire science losing much of its meaning.
You are correct, but in a statistical sense.
I'm not quite clear on what you mean by that. If you mean that it's statistically unlikely that any experiment will show subluminal entities moving faster than c, then I think that statement is too weak. I'll explain why in a moment.
And, as the single most tested theory, SR can be said to have been proven. But, the scientist in me, cannot make that statement unequivocally, as an alternative may exist that describes reality better.
Nor did I intend to imply otherwise. However, I am certain that any alternative will give SR as a limiting case in much the same way that SR gives Newton's laws in a limiting case. Whether by projecting away extra dimensions, or taking a limit as curvature tends towards zero, or whatever. The SR laws aren't going away.
And, to be perfectly clear, such a proof cannot be mathematical in orgin, it must be derived from the data. Math is used to analyse the data, but ultimately it is the data that is the ultimate and final arbiter of what is and is not reality.
Yes and no. The theory has to match the data, but, as with Noether's theorem, we can discover that some of the the degrees of freedom we thought were present were in fact illusions.
The Lorentz equations don't arise by curve fitting data. They're a mathematical consequence of the isotropy of space. You can split SR into two key assumptions. One is the constancy of the speed of light, and the other is the "principle of relativity" - that physical laws appear the same to any inertial observer. That "principle of relativity" is, mathematically, isotropy.
If you discard the first assumption (the constancy of the speed of light), and keep nothing more than the isotropy assumption, you can derive the Lorentz transform up to a constant. If you recognize that the constant cannot be zero (which gives Galilean/Newtonian-style relativity, and given the many experiments that show circumstances where they do not hold, it clearly cannot be zero) then the derivation guarantees that there is exists a speed that is invariant with respect to the frame of reference.
Now, I haven't got references that get you from there to the fact that the invariant speed is necessarily c, but I fully expect that to be true - it's got to at least be close, just from observed evidence. And if it's just some value close to, but not exactly c, then I expect that we'd still find that the role c usually plays in discussions of causality and information propagation - the very things I'm looking for in this discussion - are instead played by whatever the actual invariant speed is.
But, like I said before, this is only proven indirectly.
Well, I think you can make stronger statements than that. There's no way we're going to find a new kind of energy that acts with any kind of significant force at ordinary human scales.
Sure - we might find some new force that operates at extremely high energies. That's kind of the point of building every more high-energy particle accelerators. In fact, we expect to see the Higgs boson in the next few years when the LHC goes online.
So you might feel the need to "hedge" on the statement, but to be relevant to the discussion, such new energies have to be meaningful on a human scale - ordinary temperatures, energies, distances, times - if they're going to serve as a communications vehicle for revelation. In that context, I don't feel any need to hedge. We know about those energies.
Reference? As this statement does not make sense to me. How can matter be repelled at large distances, and not interact with what is causing the repulsion?
The dark energy is a gravitational energy, which acts directly on space itself. It doesn't repel matter - it makes the space between the matter larger.
I suppose it's probably an overstatement to say it doesn't interact at all with matter. But any such interaction is known to be incredibly weak. This is why dark energy is mostly hypothetical - measuring it is beyond our current engineering capabilities. For a reference, the Wikipedia article gives some pointers.
And again, I only brought up dark energy to dismiss it as a possible carrier for revelatory communication. Dark energy uniformly fills space - it doesn't have the fluctuations necessary to carry information.
I believe the statement you are looking for is, "Extraordinary claims, require extraordinary proof."
Yes, but I'm not actually looking for proof of an extraordinary claim here. I'm really denouncing the "science doesn't know everything" handwaving that goes with religious belief.
Science does know a hell of a lot. And much of what we can confidently say we know directly denies the possibility of the wild claims that form the basis of much religious belief. Handwaving all of that on the grounds that "science doesn't know everything" in order to retain one's belief in the nonsense claims is just intellectual dishonesty.
We don't know everything, but what we do know is enough to disparage most theistic claims. None of this affects most deist claims or most pan(en)theist claims, but it does affect claims of a "personal" god.
RE: Religion and conservation laws by wyldeling :: NR6 :: on 20 July 2007
Observations always come before theory. But in this case, the theory has obsoleted a large class of observations.
I would say it explains a large class of observations, but they do not become obsolete just because they are explained. One ongoing aspect of experimental physics is looking for places where such conservation laws are seeemingly violated, as this implies that there is more going on than we have observed.
You are correct, but in a statistical sense.
If you mean that it's statistically unlikely that any experiment will show subluminal entities moving faster than c, then I think that statement is too weak.
All experimentation is statistical in nature, and hence our explanations for why things happen as they do can only be proven in a statistical sense. On one level the statement is pretty weak, I agree. But, SR and GR have hundreds of thousands of points of observational data, and they all say the same thing: both SR and GR are sufficient descriptions of the world (and QM also). So, to a very high level of confidence (probably aprroaching 6 sigma, or nearly so), SR and GR are correct. And, that is the strongest statement that can be made, unequivocally. Just because something works one way for x number of times, does not mean it will work that way on try x + 1, even if x is very large. As x gets larger, the probability that something different will occur get smaller, but never goes to zero. We assume that consistent observations indicate some underlying physical low, like gravity.
In some sense this brings us back to the poll, as it exposes the fundamental assumption of science: that reality is composed of things outside of ourselves, with rules all of its own, and through consistent observation we can enumerate those rules allowing us to better affect the world around us. But, there is no way to prove that what we are observing is actually there, and that are observations are correct. We can only demonstrate consistency.
However, I am certain that any alternative will give SR as a limiting case in much the same way that SR gives Newton's laws in a limiting case. ...
There's no way we're going to find a new kind of energy that acts with any kind of significant force at ordinary human scales. ...
I agree. I think it is is proven sufficiently well enough that I can operate in that framework comfortably. (Well, almost. I hate SR. I've never been good at it.) My point was pedantic in nature; more intended to address what I saw as a more fundamental problem. I know people who see the mathematics as being more important than reality, and not just a abstraction allowing us to understand reality. For instance, I had a friend who stated that he once he has a model, he just needs to fit reality to it.
In the case of the Lorentz transformations, experiment suggests that reality possesses certain symmetries that imply that there is an upper limit to how fast a particle may travel, i.e. it seems to be Lorentz invariant. So, we can use the Lorentz transformations to make predictions about how reality is supposed to behave, but reality is merely described by them. But, it exists seperate from them. Maybe I was reading to deeply into what you were saying, but I've encountered this problem with a lot of people who are very mathematically inclined, so I was trying to head it off at the pass.
Now, I haven't got references that get you from there to the fact that the invariant speed is necessarily c, but I fully expect that to be true - it's got to at least be close, just from observed evidence.
I was just pointing out a flaw in our current understanding of the universe, as c, like a number of other constants, cannot currently be predicted by any theory. They are strictly observational.
I believe the statement you are looking for is, "Extraordinary claims, require extraordinary proof."
Yes, but I'm not actually looking for proof of an extraordinary claim here.
I beg to differ, but you are in some way. You are arguing that under known physical laws some theistic claims do not work, and are challenging Brandon to either accept that this is so, or provide some counter argument that is still consistent with those laws.
RE: Religion and conservation laws by scottb :: NR7 :: on 20 July 2007
I would say it explains a large class of observations, but they do not become obsolete just because they are explained.
In this case, I think they do. Though one could argue it's more a matter of semantics than anything else.
Here, we have two sets of observations - observations that the universe appears to exhibit certain symmetries, and observations that the universe appears to conserve certain quantities. What Emmy Noether realized was that the former set implies the latter in a mathematical sense - having observed the symmetries, the conservation laws were a mathematically necessary consequence.
This is different from the usual theory building in science. Taking a set of "before interaction" measurements of momentum together with a set of "after interaction" measurements of momentum, a physicist can hypothesize a "conservation of momentum" theory that offers to explain the relationship between one and the other. That theory is still a physical theory - one that rests on the observations.
In both cases, you have two sets of data (A, and B), and a relationship between them. In the case of a conservation theory relating "before" and "after" measurements, the conservation theory is acting as an additional logical hypothesis: CT ⊦ A → B. You have to assume the conservation law to go from the "before" observations to the "after". But with Noether's theorem, one set observations are the hypotheses that you use to reason to the second: A ⊦ B.
Just because something works one way for x number of times, does not mean it will work that way on try x + 1, even if x is very large.
But that's not the argument I'm making here.
This paper, that I referenced before, starts from one assumption: the "principle of relativity". This is nothing more than the statement that physical laws are everywhere the same. But if that weren't true, it seems unlikely we could form any physical laws at all.
From that starting point, and without introducing any new physical assumptions, the paper goes on to show that the general form of any coordinate transformation has to be the Lorentz transformation - at least, up to some constant factor. The dimensions of the constant require that it be "inverse velocity squared".
So the argument is basically that, if we can formulate universal physical laws at all, then there exists a distinguished velocity that's invariant in all inertial reference frames.
The author of the paper comments that this fact doesn't seem to be widely known in the physics community, which almost invariably derives the Lorentz transform for SR by starting from the assumption that c is a distinguished velocity. But the math is still the math. The existence of a distinguished velocity is implied by the very character of physical laws.
I was just pointing out a flaw in our current understanding of the universe, as c, like a number of other constants, cannot currently be predicted by any theory. They are strictly observational.
Things are slightly more subtle than this, too. Today, the speed of light is defined to be 299,792,458 m/s. If we were to find an experiment that more precisely determined the speed, it's the length of the meter that would change, not the speed of light.
But what you say is true of other constants - the fine structure constant, the masses of the fundamental particles, the cosmological constant. As I understand it, there are twenty five dimensionless physical constants in the Standard Model, all of which are observed (measured), rather than predicted from theory.
But that's still kind of my point - we can describe virtually all of observable reality in terms of twenty five numbers. That shows just how weak the "science doesn't know everything" argument is.
I beg to differ, but you are in some way.
Semantics. Brandon doesn't seem to recognize that his claims are even extraordinary. He appears to be confident that he knows what he knows and that science will one day vindicate his claims.
I'm saying that the way science has evolved up until now doesn't bear that out. New theories don't so much supercede old ones so much as refine them.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by scottb :: NR7 :: on 05 July 2007
To put a little different spin on this than VnutZ did, let me also point out that one of the indicators of whether the trust is well-placed ought to be whether the candidate is really in a position to have real knowledge on the issue.
When you're facing a medical decision, you trust doctors you barely know much more than your best friend who has no medical training.
When the question is "what the gods want", it might be useful to consult a clergyman - they spend their time trying to figure that out. But if the question is "do the gods exist", they're a waste of time. They assume it to be true and work from there. You're better off asking a physicist - their lives are about studying the nature of reality.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by scottb :: NR7 :: on 05 July 2007
Actually, that also points up one of the major issues with Pascal's Wager, on which the Atheist Wager is based.
Pascal's Wager is basically an application of game theory. It's of some historical interest because it predates the whole idea of game theory by more than a century, if I remember correctly. But now that there's a proper theory to analyze it, it's pretty easy to see where the flaw in the logic is.
At each step of the game, you have to lay out all the choices, not just some of them. Pascal identifies the choices as simple belief or disbelief. But there are literally thousands of variations on the "belief" theme out there, all of which are mutually incompatible: belief in one implies disbelief in all of the others.
Realizing that, the question is no longer a simple one - the player has completely inadequate information on which to base the decision, which really only leaves chance as an option. At that point, Pascal's Wager becomes essentially indistinguishable from the Atheist Wager, formulated the way you did.
However, game theory gives us ways to still evaluate this revised game and decide the "optimal" strategy. There's a cost associated with each "belief" choice during life, representing the sacrifices one makes for such belief (tithing, time spent in worship, etc.) - typically the "atheist" choice is normalized to represent the zero cost. Then, there's the cost after death - if you chose a correct "belief" option, this is a very high negative cost (meaning, it's a good thing), while an incorrect "belief" is a very high cost (hell, damnation, whatever), and a correct "atheist" choice is zero (nothingness).
The only two distinct strategies available are: "atheist" or "belief" (in some randomly chosen religion). Any given strategy has a very low probability, p, of being "correct", but we can compute an "expected cost" for each strategy.
Assigning some variables, let p be the probability that "atheist" is the correct choice. Let q be the conditional probability of the chosen religion being the correct choice, given that atheist is the wrong choice. Let H be the value of the heavenly reward for making a correct "belief" choice (this is a negative number, as positive numbers represent costs), let D be the cost of damnation, let W be the cost of worship.
The atheist strategy has value zero if correct, and costs D if incorrect, so the expectation in choosing atheism is D(1-p). Any given belief strategy has a cost of W+H if correct, a cost of W+D if another belief was correct, and a cost of W if atheism is correct. The expectation is Wp + (1-p)(q(W+H) + (1-q)(W+D)), which simplifies to W + Hq(1-p) + D(1-p)(1-q) with a little algebra.
So, atheism is the better choice (has lower expected cost) iff:
In other words, if:
The magnitude of human emotional response (our assessment of how good pleasure is or how bad pain is) is roughly logarithmic with the magnitude of the stimulus, and since heaven and hell both represent large-magnitude stimuli, our valuation of them varies with their logarithms, which tends to reduce the difference as the stimuli get larger. So on that assumption, the specific values of the variables with capital letters grow logarithmically.
The left-hand side of the equation gets limited by q - which is inversely proportional to the number of belief options, which we've suggested is at least as small as 10-3. The D-H term is a large number - H is a large benefit (negative number) and D is a large cost (positive number), so the result is large - but remember they grow logarithmically, so they have to be truly enormous to overcome the q term for even relatively modest values of W.
This isn't a complete analysis, though. There's the possibility that none of the world's belief systems are correct, and all choices in the analysis result in damnation, in which case we have to introduce another small probability measure and include an almost infinite number of possibilities for the "right" choice. In the long run, this increases the probability of damnation - roughly equivalent to an infinitely tiny q. So the more belief options there are available, the better atheism looks.
Another point is that, in practice, the cost of worship, W, isn't uniform across all belief choices - it's much easier to be a Unitarian Universalist than to be an Orthodox Jew or a Sufi Dervish, for example. Some belief systems may even have a negative cost of worship - Wicca looks pretty fun, what with the ritual sex and all.
Which all basically comes down to a mathematical justification for your statement that "so many people also believe in a completely dissimilar system that there's an equal chance that your god/dogma is a complete farce."
I have a copy of The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, an interesting book that gives a lot of technical, theoretical information about atheism and how it relates to other world religions. One of the interesting statistics they have is that atheism correlates positively with intelligence and education - academia and science are the bastions of atheism. Before I read it, I had assumed that to be true, but I assumed that there would also be a positive correlation with hard science vs soft science. I figured it would be the physicists and mathematicians who were the most atheist, but that's not how it turns out. It's the anthropologists who are the huge standouts - the survey indicated that 65% of the anthropologists (among the faculties of large American universities) answered "none" to the question, "What is your present religion?" Compare this to only 33% among physicists or mathematicians.
Apparently, the more you get a chance to look at other peoples' religions, the more obvious it becomes that the one you grew up with is just as much a human invention. You can give a pretty solid proof, using only undergraduate level physics, that the gods described by virtually all major religions are overwhelmingly unlikely, but it seems that seeing is still believing - or rather, disbelieving.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by Anonymous :: NR0 :: on 10 July 2007
Apparently, the more you get a chance to look at other peoples' religions, the more obvious it becomes that the one you grew up with is just as much a human invention.
Or, as a Christian, you view other religions for what they are; constructs of Lucifer/Satan that are designed so that he has souls to be in torment with him when Christ has His final victory. Those who follow Satan are doomed to the same torment he is for all eternity.
RE: How Quaint and a revisit of the Atheist Wager by scottb :: NR7 :: on 10 July 2007
Or, as a Christian, you view other religions for what they are; constructs of Lucifer/Satan that are designed so that he has souls to be in torment with him when Christ has His final victory. Those who follow Sat