God steals your $10

[nelson01]

I think they have a disclaimer which makes them not responsible for Acts of God.

[grantek]

I don't think God is closed-source (see the argument on DNA), I think He's just obfuscated, like the nv driver.

Actually, if God can't be described by science, and the universe is all that can be described by science, doesn't that make God more akin to something like DRM? ie. Something that affects the way you use your content and can punish you arbitrarily... so God may be GPL2-compliant, but the universe has a bit of Tivo-isation happening :/

[zhark]

Atheists are those who don't believe in God, so not everyone (I suppose you just assumed there's no God). However your faith must be really strong You don't base on anything, science isn't helpfull either, because it can't in any way proof God doesn't exist.

Well, the point still stands, if I were christian I still wouldn't believe in ~99% of the available Gods out there. Atheists make that an even 100.

Regarding evidence, I'm looking at it the other way round, I don't need evidence to not believe in something (yahweh, allah, klendathu, the flying spaghetti monster, the existence of black holes), I need evidence to believe. I "believe" in the scientific method (it's proven to work!), which after all is one major reason we are living in a modern post-industrialist society and not the dark ages. I need proof before I want to accept the existence of a higher beeing, and believe it or not, but there are absolutely *no* solid proof of a supreme beeing, thereby requiring blind *faith*.
Religion wants us to take the most important questions on faith! Is that really how one want's to live, to just take for granted that what you are beeing told is the whole and full truth.
Science uncovers mystery after mystery previously thought to be in the domain of god, the evidence are right there, well documented, for everybody to look at and to dispute.
While religion wants us to not question His work and doesn't encourage us to look deeper to find real understanding and meaning of the world.

[MartjeB]

Yes, zhark. I agree.

More and more Gods are taken out by science (Zeus the thundergod, anyone?). The christian God is just very vaguely described, so science can't negate it.

Same thing the other way around; Christians can't prove Gods existence.

[kraftman]

Same thing the other way around; Christians can't prove Gods existence.

There's probability to proof this, but there's no probability to proof He doesn't exist.

@Zhark

When comes to science it's limited only to our nature and our limited view of the world. Imagine, even aliens can be something we're not able to notice. Years ago people looked in the sky and they believed God is there. Right now, we're trying (or we just started to dream about it) to 'look' into other dimensions.

As I mentioned before 'we' have proofs, but those proofs are sometimes only personal. You can read about many miracles, for example La Salette etc. However masons don't sleep and they lie

[MartjeB]

As I mentioned before 'we' have proofs, but those proofs are sometimes only personal.

So it's no proof..

[kraftman]

So it's no proof..

For me it is, for you it probably wouldn't To be this proof for you, you'll have to be on my place.

[lordmozilla]

I guess the whole thing revolves around faith...

Here's to maybe finding mine. After all the problem with being an atheist is that theres no point in anything... So believing in something - even if false must give you a nice sense of belief.

Being an atheist you start questioning stuff. I mean why do we reproduce? Whats the point in the whole surviving thing just for the hell of it? Since I enjoy reproducing so much with as many females as possible (which is what hormones tell us to do...) why don't i just do it and not bother with the whole relationship thing?

So i can understand why they made these gods so that we would continue to reproduce and hence survive. Why well, you'd have to ask the people who invented the whole god idea. Lets be honest - christianity was invented by a roman emperor for crowd control...

I'm not saying god doesnt exist. I'm just saying if he does then the roman emperor is just a very insightfull man. Now as for other gods well maybe they have more proof but christianity is laughable... I mean look at the latest bible they found which is well uhm different....

[Darkfire Fox]

Competing Worldviews

I need evidence to believe. I "believe" in the scientific method (it's proven to work!), which after all is one major reason we are living in a modern post-industrialist society and not the dark ages. I need proof before I want to accept the existence of a higher beeing, and believe it or not, but there are absolutely *no* solid proof of a supreme beeing, thereby requiring blind *faith*.

Dear Zhark, I appreciate you taking the time to explain your position; allow me to explain mine.

The problem in this debate is not "Science versus Religion". I'm sorry, but that axiom is not valid and needs to be discarded. Let's examine what science is and is not.

Please open Webster's Unabridged Dictionary of the American Language (or equivalent for your language). Look up "Science". What was the original meaning for the word science? It meant knowledge. In a more modern sense, science would be the logical, systematic pursuit of knowledge. This is the essence of the Scientific Method: ask a question, do some research, design an experiment with a predictive hypothesis, draw a conclusion from said experiment that either supports or refutes your hypothesis' prediction, and then report your results to the world. As you might expect, operational science can only operate in the present. It can make predictions about the future, but cannot make predictions about the past, because the past is unrepeatable. Unless someone else can repeat your experiment, your results are worthless.

Let's examine everyone's favorite TV controversy: evolution. Before I begin, I need to clarify something important. Evolution has TWO primary definitions.

The first simply means "change". Natural selection, genetic drift, adaptive radiation, and speciation all represent simple changes in a population's DNA, and these phenomena are indisputably supported by empirical evidence. In other words, these are FACT. No intelligent creationist will argue these phenomena don't exist. This definition is sometimes called "horizontal evolution" or "micro-evolution". The Scientific Method supports this definition of evolution.

The second definition of evolution represents something radically different. Sometimes called "vertical evolution" or "macro-evolution", this definition represents the upward transformation from simple organisms to complex organisms over millions of years. You see, here we have a problem. No scientist has ever observed an event spanning millions of years. No experiment can actually emulate macro-evolution accurately (sorry, computer programs don't cut it).

To make matters worse, the is no natural mechanism that increases genetic information in the wild. Natural selection, as its name suggests, can do nothing except select against undesirable phenotypes in a given population, thereby deleting the underlying genotypes from the gene pool. Mutations -- the only possible source for new information -- are no help either. There are only two types of mutations: neutral or bad. Due to the Law of Entropy, the vast majority of mutations are biologically corruptive. Our cells are in a constant state of war against entropy, and our cellular machinery often fails to catch every mutation to our DNA. (ask a cancer patient what he or she thinks about mutations)

Of course, there are indeed instances where a mutation can be beneficial. In parts of the world plagued with malaria, a human possessing a heterozygous mutation for sickle-cell anemia actually has a selective advantage against an otherwise "normal" human. You see, the malarial plasmodia infecting the person's red blood cells are automatically destroyed when those red blood cells spontaneously implode. Sickle-cell anemia is the result of a biologically corruptive mutation. But, in that particular environment, a "bad" mutation can produce a selectively "good" effect.

Let's have a thought experiment. Consider a hypothetical winged beetle on a hypothetical windy island. The population is kept low because most beetles are blown out to sea while flying and drown. Now imagine one beetle has a mutation that removes her wings, forcing her to trod along the ground. Coincidentally, all her offspring also hatch without wings. You now have a booming population of wingless beetles that have adapted to a new environment, new food supply, and new predators. In essence, we now have a new "species" of beetle.

But hang on, if the loss of a physical trait is described as "evolution in action", how did those beetles actually acquire those wings and learn to fly in the first place? The information necessary to encode fully functional wings, the information necessary to encode fully functional muscles and tendons, the information necessary to encode all the proper neurological connections, AND the information necessary to program that beetle's little brain for proper insectoid flight MUST be present and selectively adventageous all at the same time, through each and every step of that beetle's supposed evolution from a lower life form. I'm sorry, but that's less likely than a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and assembling a fully functional, fueled, painted, ready-to-fly Boeing 747.

We have a problem, folks. The problem is worldview. The problem is not Science versus Religion, but rather Religion versus Religion. This is likely going to offend 99% of the Phoronix userbase, but Secularism is not science. Secularism is a religion. Without any basis in the Scientific Method, the secular worldview is just another worldview. I'm sorry, but there is no escaping it. Secularism provides a philosophical framework upon which macro-evolutionary biology, plate tectonics geology, and big bang cosmology can be built upon. You see, every single "evidence" for macro-evolution or its siblings is already interpreted through the secular framework.

Take the fossil record, for example. Empirically speaking, a fossil is just a bone or other object buried in sedimentary rock. One fossil in one layer of rock will likely have other fossils in other layers directly above it or below it. How do we interpret the layered fossils? If you believe in Uniformitarianism -- the belief that the past can only be interpreted through mechanisms operating in the present -- then you would likely come to the conclusion that the fossils in "lower" strata are significantly older than fossils in "higher" strata. But someone with a different starting assumption can see the exact same empirical data and come to a totally different conclusion.

Someone may want to come to the rescue argue that radiometric dating "proves" uniformitarianism and billions-of-years. Let's examine that. First, we need to know how radiometric dating operates. Since the rates of radioactive decay are presumed to be constant, we can supposedly measure the "age" of a fossil or igneous rock by measuring and comparing the quantities of the "parent" materials with the "daughter" materials. It sounds simple enough, but radiometric dating is riddled with arbitrary assumptions. First, you have to know the exact quantities of parent/daughter material the fossil or rock started out with. Second, you have to know that there was positively no parent/daughter material leeched out or contaminated into the fossil or rock during the course of its existence. There are other assumptions involved, but those are the most significant.

Fun fact: dinosaur bones, or any other fossil presumed to be more than one million years old are never carbon-dated. Why? Carbon-14 has a half life of about 5000 years. After about 500 000 years, Carbon-14 is completely undetectable. A dinosaur bone "should" give an "infinite" age under carbon-dating. But no one ever carbon-dated Sue the T-rex, or any other dino bone for that matter. Why is that? I guarantee you that if a dinosaur bone was ever carbon-dated, it would give an age of only a few thousand years. Good luck finding an evolutionist who will do the procedure, though.

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My entire point here is to debunk the myth that Secularism somehow enjoys a privileged position over Christianity or any other religion. Macroevolution, plate tectonics, and the big bang are requirements of Secularism, but are not requirements for understanding operational science (the simple pursuit of knowledge).

As you might imagine, I become slightly irritated when some evolutionist on TV or some scientific journal dismisses me as a "moron", "imbecile", "idiot", or launches some other insult because I don't subscribe to a Secularist viewpoint.

As a Seventh-Day Adventist Christian, I stand firmly on the Bible for my worldview, and I'm man enough not to ridicule someone who subscribes to a different view of the universe's history. As a Christian I believe all viewpoints about God and our universal past can and should be tolerated -- whether monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, or atheistic. So which worldview, if any at all, is the "correct" one?

I'm not attacking anyone here on Phoronix. I think most of us are mature enough not to "devolve" into petty trolls who fling insults and profanity when their worldview is questioned (at least, I sincerely hope that). I'm sorry I used evolution as my main exibit, but it was all I could think of on short notice.

This is my last post in this thread, so if anyone wants to interview me on this subject, please PM me.

Now please excuse me, I need to go hide under a rock until further notice.
(And pray I don't get ban-hammered)

[bridgman]

I'm going to disagree with a couple of points... and one of them is your "Fun Fact", so you probably have to keep posting

Secularism is defined in a number of different ways, but the general idea is separating *government* from religion, not *denying* religious beliefs. There may be an interpretation of the word which includes actively denying the existence of a higher power but I haven't run into that yet.

Dinosaur bones have been carbon dated many times; the problem is how to interpret the results. General consensus seems to be that carbon-14 dating is useful to 50,000 years or so... maybe 100,000 but you're getting deep in the noise.

In general the proportion of carbon-14 remaining in dinosaur bones has been negligible, but that could be because of their age or because the living material was generally replaced during the fossilization process. In some cases the carbon dating process has indicated a much lesser age, typically 15,000-20,000 years, but again this just results in more debate about whether that came from background radiation, contamination, or whether there really were dinosaurs stomping around that recently.

I don't see any conflict between science and religion personally, if you are willing to accept that religious faith is a doozy of a hypothesis, which has not yet been proven but which also has never been *disproven* and is therefore perfectly reasonable even for the purely scientific mind. Our modern world runs on technology and applied science which was largely developed based on unproven hypotheses; sometimes the proof comes later, sometimes it doesn't.

I agree completely with your comment that the problem is Religion vs Religion, but I probably don't use the words the same way. We have multiple religions being practiced in the world today, some of which are generally compatible with other religions and some which seem to be defined in a mutually exclusive way, depending on whose translation you believe. It would be nice if the original tenets for the major religions had all been written in the same language

Secularism is more about being free to follow your religious beliefs but not free to use the power of government to *impose* your beliefs on others. The danger is going too far the other way and using the power of government to *deny* religious beliefs, which is probably even worse.