The End of the Universe

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Originally Posted by Moira

mohaughn I'm not disagreeing with that, except to say that we have something dolphins and other animals don't, ie soul, conscience, call it what you like. We have the desire to question our very existence.

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What proof do you have that dolphins don't question their own existence? How do you know that elephants are not aware of death and understand what death is in terms of their own life? There are better arguments that animals understand the world around them and their own existence much better than humans do. Research shows that both dolphins and elephants are capable of rationalizing the difference between alive and dead. Maybe the animals are smart enough not to dwell on things that you can't control and just live in the moment and enjoy life for what it presents to you. I'd gladly give up the ability to think about my existence if it meant that I could fully live every moment completely in the moment. There is no logical argument that supports this concept of humans having a soul. It is a purely theological idea that is supported by faith alone. You can't base half of your argument on logic and then try to use faith to support the rest of the argument. Do it all with logic.

I'm sure everybody has experienced or heard a story about a family pet that was sick. At some point that animal made it clear to the owners that it was time for the animal to be let go. I think it is foolish to automatically think that animals are not aware of what is going on in the world around them just because they cannot verbalize it to us. Again, your belief is a very egotistical human view that is only there to put humans in the "better" category than everything else. We have to be better because we are egotistical. No different than a group of white kids excluding a black kid from a game of ball just because they see a difference.

That has been common, hasn't it? "My (and other's) mere faith is evidence that something is true." Or more specifically "I believe so strongly, therefore God must exist to have directly or indirectly inspired these feelings. (Therefore I believe all the stronger than before.)"

It's just circular reasoning. "God must exist, because people believe in him, and they believe in him because he exists, or else they wouldn't, and nobody would believe God exists, because he wouldn't."

Evidence suggests Heaven's Gate members were pretty damn full of faith to commit (voluntary?) mass suicide. Does that mean that they were really picked up by Jesus in a spaceship?

i realize that

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"I believe so strongly, therefore God must exist to have directly or indirectly inspired these feelings. (Therefore I believe all the stronger than before.)"

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is the arguments of many theists/Christians, but it isnt my argument, and any person who is truly a Christian doesn't believe that way, whether thats their argument or not, thats a different story. let me explain...

i believe what i believe about God because ive seen what He's done in my life and how He's affected it, from personal experience, things that happened in my life that are simply supernatural. sure others would see them and may be able to interpret it differently, but the preponderance of evidence (look at me im spewing law terms now) suggests to me a God who is good, loving and personal. anyone else who is truly a Christian would say the same. a key requirement of being a Christian is recognizing God through his Creation. Once you recognize He is God your natural human reaction will be to recognize that you are not God and have not lived the way He wants you to and submit and offer your life to Him. I could go on but the important part there was that we do not believe because we believe, but we believe cause He's shown us himself through this world and our own experiences. Ill refrain from the predestination argument because it's a whole nother can of worms and would cause another 10 pages of forums at least :).

as far as the Heaven's Gate argument, there is a difference between faith and blind trust. faith is as shown above based on some evidence, but obviously cannot be definitively proven

by the way, thank you for your clarification as well, your arguments now make sense and are pretty logical. i noticed some of those flaws with irreducibly complex machines, but i wanted to see what you thought, i like the way you put it better than the way i presented it to some friends (we play devil's advocate with each other). Thats pretty cool about Behe too, i read some of his stuff in Case for a Creator.

i wish i had more time to post tonight and put out more ideas but i have a huge essay to write tomorrow that i need to research so have fun with out me :)

This is going to annoy a lot of people. Let me state i do not care. This is my opinion and while i believe it to be the correct one you are going to take it as such. I think ORGANIZED religion is evil and represents every thing wrong in this world. Through out the ages organized religion has been all about death, money, and power. It simply just uses the bible to archive its goals. Go look at the inter workings of any church and you will see this. As for death if you racked up the amount of deaths racked up in the name of god and religion vs the amount of deaths racked up because people like me don't believe in the concept of a god your going to find that religion is responsible for 1000's more many times over. The whole concept that god said to the Israelites that hey you can have the land of caina but you have to kill every one in it because i promised it to you... If god existed or was so great why didn't he just have every one living there move out? Instead he perpetuated years of blood shed thats still going on... Doest seem right if you ask me.
Hell i don't believe in the bible or religion, I was baptized catholic and raised methodist finally to be confirmed methodist . Now i am a devote atheist / agnostic depending on my mood. Yet i still read the bible why you may ask? Know they enemy. If you want to count how many evils were done in the name of god go read the old testament. Most Christians well say oh well hes not like that any more he sent us Christ. Look you sit there and tell me the book is the word of god yet you don't believe in half of it? Thats bull **** religion inst something you can pick and choose its either all or nothing. Religions people are no better then people that are not religions. Rather I feel that they need to feel a part of something. Thats fine go join a boys and girls club or 4H group. Religion is just a method of controlling the masses and consolidating the power in a few. Go find me a poor religious leader in America you know one of the house hold names?
Hell we all hate Microsoft yet bill gates has done more with his money for the good of the world then most churches combined. With the rise of the information age religion has no more place in this world. Here are two of my favorite quotes.

Religion is truth to the every man, False to the wise and use full to the Ruler.

The Only difference between Religion and a cult is the size of their real estate and tax exempt status.

Scott Adams said it best when commenting on that Atheist were more acceptable in the world today.
He says to ask a Christan man if he would rather live next to a Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terrorist attack Or an Atheist that may or may not help you set up your wireless network.

Iv said my piece let me remind you that this is a computer security forum. Go find something to secure or set up an un pached version of windows and play with metasploit. If you want to discuss god and religion go find a religious forum. Ok im done and off my soap box. Feel free to flame away.

Speaking in a logical sense, the universe is the defintian of infinity. No matter how far you explorer it, you can always go further. I can only beleive that anyone that feels that the big bang theory is real has to be able to show me the center of the universe, not the the center of some part of it. But the dead center of it, bet it isn't earth. This same logic can be used to prove alien life. Since the universe goes on forever, you can only prove it does not exist in the known universe, but you can ALWAYs explorer further. Thus since you can not prove what exists in the unknown universe then, somewhere, there is life. We probly will never cross paths.

Stuff that in the collection plate.

"Atferlife" is just a term we use in our time and space orientated world. You could describe our existence as having no beginning and no end, but if you mean *this* existence then death is the end and birth is the beginning.

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Why are mammal's retinas "backwards" in our eyes?

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I have absolutely no idea! I'll ask my sister who's an optician next time I see her :p

I'm sorry if I wasn't very clear with "random chaos theory". What I meant was the idea that everything has simply happened by chance, which a lot of people believe is the case.

You can use the dragon idea in any way you see fit ... I don't get your point here. I think it's an excellent story in fact because anything that encourages people to open up their minds to think and be receptive to "alternative ideas" is fantastic. The saddest thing I find is the number of people who are so bogged down by the materialistic drudgery in their lives that they never even question the ritualistic, traditionalist values they live by.

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Originally Posted by Moira

What I meant was the idea that everything has simply happened by chance, which a lot of people believe is the case.

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But then you're not talking about evolution.

Evolution is not "directed", and nor is it "random". A snowflake does not form "at random". It has aspects of randomness, but very simple underlying principles ("ice crystals make this lattice pattern") cause a complex result. The snowflake was not "designed", nobody said "I want it to look this way, with little flakes here and here". But it also isn't entirely by chance, because it has a symmetrical structure. The basic idea is that simple rules and a source of random change can combine into a wide range of complex results, with nobody directing the situation or making nudges here or there, and that therefore complex results in general do not require a director or designer. Emergent behavior.

You can consider biological species as really just sets of compatible patterns which repeat and change (and merge and split) over time, just as your own physical body is a pattern that largely persists even as every molecule is replaced every X years, or how an ocean wave keeps moving even though it doesn't carry the water with it.

Just like with waves, some changes to a pattern can make the thing collapse, and the pattern falls apart. Other changes can make the pattern stronger, or faster moving, or better at starting smaller repeating patterns. Bad changes mean patterns that stop repeating and touching off little ripply copies. Good ones mean more (different) copies. Ones which aren't clearly good or bad just mean different patterns.

Just because we only see the really cool patterns doesn't mean that they arose "totally by chance". And we wouldn't call the system anywhere near perfect if we could see how many bazillions of bad patterns once existed but never persisted.

TheX1le, I replied in a New Thread for the "organized religion" bit--I feared it would send this thread too far off the original topic.

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Originally Posted by shatteredsoul

Speaking in a logical sense, the universe is the defintian of infinity. No matter how far you explorer it, you can always go further. I can only beleive that anyone that feels that the big bang theory is real has to be able to show me the center of the universe, not the the center of some part of it. But the dead center of it, bet it isn't earth. This same logic can be used to prove alien life. Since the universe goes on forever, you can only prove it does not exist in the known universe, but you can ALWAYs explorer further. Thus since you can not prove what exists in the unknown universe then, somewhere, there is life. We probly will never cross paths.

Stuff that in the collection plate.

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Actually.. In a logical sense what you are saying is not the case at all. You do not know for a fact that the universe is infinite. So you can't use the universe as a way of defining infinite. We believe that the universe is infinite, and if you can travel on in the universe forever it meets the rules to be what we define as infinite. As we do not know what the far reaches of the universe look like and can only hypothesize about it you can't use it as the definition...

The universe being infinite is a theory, not a law. You can generate several good logical arguments for the universe being or not being infinite, but you can't use the universe being infinite as a fact to support an argument against the big bang.

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Originally Posted by TheX1le

This is going to annoy a lot of people.

Iv said my piece let me remind you that this is a computer security forum.

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It's the offtopic section of a computer security forum and you've contributed. In fact you've more or less ensured the discussion continues, so why are you then complaining it's out of place?