Does God Exist?

[WarpedWiseMan]

I will give you 4 reasons why I believe in "The Force" or "God" or "The All Powerful AI". And then I will cease debating this with people who's simple response and reasoning is "science, bitches!".

1. The Earth - a perfectly sized, perfectly balanced ecosystem to support human life. Consider the temperature swings we encounter, roughly -30 degrees to +120 degrees. If the Earth were any further away from the sun, we would all freeze. Any closer and we would burn up. And our moon is the perfect size and distance from the Earth for its gravitational pull. The moon creates important ocean tides and movement so ocean waters do not stagnate, and yet our massive oceans are restrained from spilling over across the continents.

2. Water - a perfect life sustaining liquid. Perfect boiling and freezing points. Chemically neutral, allowing food, nutrients and minerals and medicine to be perfectly absorbed into the body. 97% of the Earth is oceans, but there is a perfectly balanced mechanism to separate the water from salt and disperse it to enable plant life and human life to thrive.

3. The Human Brain - a perfect balance of auto and controlled responses. Processes more than a million messages a second filtering out the noise and nonsense (these forums) automatically allowing focus on the world around it.

4. The Human Eye - can distinguish among seven million colors. It has automatic focusing and handles an astounding 1.5 million messages simultaneously.

The odds of human life on Earth beginning as an accident or via evolution are astronomical to the point of being almost null. Forming a single DNA strand is extremely more complex than lining up a few DNA strands. And DNA itself is not life. It must exist within a living cell that has ribosomes, plasmids, cytoplasm and all sorts of other stuff. To expect all of this to have occurred on our humble planet within a mere few hundred million years requires a tremendous leap of faith most people (with undamaged brains) would not be prepared to make.

But don't take my word for it. Here's Professor Francis Crick, awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA:

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.

The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (1020)2,000=1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. In terms of complexity, an individual cell is nothing when compared with a system like the mammalian brain. The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibers by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches 1015 or a thousand million million. Numbers in the order of 1015 are of course completely beyond comprehension. Imagine an area about half the size of the USA (one million square miles) covered in a forest of trees containing ten thousand trees per square mile. If each tree contained one hundred thousand leaves the total number of leaves in the forest would be 1015, equivalent to the number of connections in the human brain! Despite the enormity of the number of connections, the ramifying forest of fibers is not a chaotic random tangle but a highly organized network in which a high proportion of the fibers are unique adaptive communication channels following their own specially ordained pathway through the brain. Even if only one hundredth of the connections in the brain were specifically organized, this would still represent a system containing a much greater number of specific connections than in the entire communications network on Earth.

[MagicManICT]

Magic man, not all atheists are blockheaded assholes, just the ones out to piss others off and derail a decent thread.

Hope you're not talking about me, there. This is my first post in this thread, and have been making an effort to avoid posting in it.... (I might have been thinking it, though, or I might not have been. I was at least thinking of Bill Maher when I read WWW's post.)

Now that I'm here, I grew up in a Lutheran home. I've studied a bit of Kabbalah, Buddhism, Druidism and Paganism, and just gone off the deep end with fantasy RP and been back. There's something out there that science just can't explain (yet), but honestly, I haven't found a damn thing that says there's anything of a higher power than man. Even the religious texts I've studied have said that man is god, will become gods, or something along those lines. I've even come to believe that the whole story of Christ coming to Earth as God in Flesh (or however it's put) is just another metaphor for how we can become like the gods we have worshiped in our past.

Or there's the flip side to my thoughts... I have to believe that we are capable of becoming more than what we are or I'd rather just go kill myself, because, we're otherwise just a bunch of barely conscious animals crawling around acting little better than a bunch of unchecked viruses.

[Ignus]

It's a common fallacy to believe that our environment is perfect for us when in fact it is we who are perfect for our environment, a very important distinction. Even Professor Crick is caught up in it. It only takes a moment to realise that it's "only one part in (1020)2,000=1040,000, an outrageously small probability" to get any one combination, not just our particular one. Here's a quote if we're doing that, from the late Douglas Adams:

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"

Also, "It's science bitches!"? Really? Compared to your "It's magic, bitches!"? This level or arguing belongs in the school yard.

[flajek122]

I believe in nordic mytology. Badass fucking big guys, wolves and deamons, bitches,that's it!

[cobaltjones]

I will give you 4 reasons why I believe in "The Force" or "God" or "The All Powerful AI". And then I will cease debating this with people who's simple response and reasoning is "science, bitches!".

1. The Earth - a perfectly sized, perfectly balanced ecosystem to support human life. Consider the temperature swings we encounter, roughly -30 degrees to +120 degrees. If the Earth were any further away from the sun, we would all freeze. Any closer and we would burn up. And our moon is the perfect size and distance from the Earth for its gravitational pull. The moon creates important ocean tides and movement so ocean waters do not stagnate, and yet our massive oceans are restrained from spilling over across the continents.

2. Water - a perfect life sustaining liquid. Perfect boiling and freezing points. Chemically neutral, allowing food, nutrients and minerals and medicine to be perfectly absorbed into the body. 97% of the Earth is oceans, but there is a perfectly balanced mechanism to separate the water from salt and disperse it to enable plant life and human life to thrive.

3. The Human Brain - a perfect balance of auto and controlled responses. Processes more than a million messages a second filtering out the noise and nonsense (these forums) automatically allowing focus on the world around it.

4. The Human Eye - can distinguish among seven million colors. It has automatic focusing and handles an astounding 1.5 million messages simultaneously.

The odds of human life on Earth beginning as an accident or via evolution are astronomical to the point of being almost null. Forming a single DNA strand is extremely more complex than lining up a few DNA strands. And DNA itself is not life. It must exist within a living cell that has ribosomes, plasmids, cytoplasm and all sorts of other stuff. To expect all of this to have occurred on our humble planet within a mere few hundred million years requires a tremendous leap of faith most people (with undamaged brains) would not be prepared to make.

But don't take my word for it. Here's Professor Francis Crick, awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA:

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.

The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (1020)2,000=1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. In terms of complexity, an individual cell is nothing when compared with a system like the mammalian brain. The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibers by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches 1015 or a thousand million million. Numbers in the order of 1015 are of course completely beyond comprehension. Imagine an area about half the size of the USA (one million square miles) covered in a forest of trees containing ten thousand trees per square mile. If each tree contained one hundred thousand leaves the total number of leaves in the forest would be 1015, equivalent to the number of connections in the human brain! Despite the enormity of the number of connections, the ramifying forest of fibers is not a chaotic random tangle but a highly organized network in which a high proportion of the fibers are unique adaptive communication channels following their own specially ordained pathway through the brain. Even if only one hundredth of the connections in the brain were specifically organized, this would still represent a system containing a much greater number of specific connections than in the entire communications network on Earth.

Your argument breaks down when you consider that the universe is infinitely large and infinitely old. Probability kind of goes out the window at that point.

Believe what you want to believe, but don't try and "explain" the presence of a greater power through facts and statics. That's the exact opposite way to go about it.

[jordancoles]

We need more threads like this, actual thought on the forums is nice. Much better reading material than that one time Popfor watched the Ring and was super duper scared 4realz.

[WarpedWiseMan]

Edit: @cobaltjones

See, there's the rub. I didn't try to explain the presence or truth of anything. I simply explained some of my reasoning based on my education and experiences in this life. You can believe what you want as well, I just gave you a few points on why I believe in Optimus Prime, Lord of the Universe. And dance.

[Kaios]

Here's the truth you guys:

Stargate is based on a true story.

[MagicManICT]

And then I will cease debating this with people who's simple response and reasoning is "science, bitches!".

Typical of both sides of the debate, though. I don't know what or why we exist any more than anyone else. People search for answers where they want to search and ignore the insights of others. The more I hear of it, the more weary I become of the idiocy of man. Should we really give a shit about where we came from and focus more on what we can do today to better our lives? It's one thing to search the stars for phenomena that might explain how to get our asses off this tiny little rock, another to go hunting around for something that is doing nothing but stroking the ego.

1. The Earth - a perfectly sized, perfectly balanced ecosystem to support human life.

And has it always been that way? No. Will it always be that way? No. We're an astronomical figure away from becoming another notch on the universe's bed post tomorrow. Hell, there's even a camp (not well regarded, mind you) that theorizes an impact hit the Earth so hard that it split it and that's how we got the moon. (One bit of evidence I recall is that several of the moon rocks showed signs of forming in a magnetic field equal to Earths, and there is no magnetic field on the moon.) How many other planets are there like this in the Universe? Odds are we not the only ones here. In addition, it's probabilistically likely that sentient life will occur

2. Water - a perfect life sustaining liquid. Perfect boiling and freezing points. Chemically neutral, allowing food, nutrients and minerals and medicine to be perfectly absorbed into the body. 67% of the Earth is oceans, but there is a perfectly balanced mechanism to separate the water from salt and disperse it to enable plant life and human life to thrive.

(editors note: Fixed the typo--earth is about 2/3rds covered in water.) Water is "perfect" because it's where we grew up. There are simple forms of life thriving in all kinds of extreme environments from super-heated water and lava flows, sub-freezing locations, and chemicals that would prove toxic to any water based life form. Also, most medicines aren't delivered by water without modifying it. Finally, the "perfectly balanced" mechanism sure is easy to break for being designed by an all-knowing being.

3. The Human Brain - a perfect balance of auto and controlled responses. Processes more than a million messages a second filtering out the noise and nonsense (these forums) automatically allowing focus on the world around it.

"Balanced" is relative. The fact that it functions makes it balanced on one level, but from a point of accuracy, the scale swings around like a broken pendulum. If our modern day feats of science behaved in the same manner, we'd have given up on the pursuit of science a few centuries ago. More often than not, we fail to filter out the background noise (you're still posting here, right?), hallucinate, and suffer all kinds of vagrancies of thought. But the mind does at least "function" in allowing us to build all these neat toys and attempt to provide a better life for the rest of us.

4. The Human Eye - can distinguish among seven million colors. It has automatic focusing and handles an astounding 1.5 million messages simultaneously.

Compared to the olfactory system, they eye is simplistic. We still don't have systems that can detect all possible odors efficiently. We have not only developed an artificial eye that lets the blind see, but we also have devices that can see things that the eye will never be able to see. (Given a bit more time, we'll have perfected and gone beyond the olfactory system, too. It's getting there.)

Any of us can quote one scientist or another on philosophical statements. That doesn't make the scientist any more correct than Dr. West or some ancient religious text. The fact is that we just don't know and anyone that says otherwise is just blowing smoke up the collective human asshole. All it makes me believe is that we're a bunch of idiots running around trying to prove our own self worth.

[MagicManICT]

Your argument breaks down when you consider that the universe is infinitely large and infinitely old. Probability kind of goes out the window at that point.

Believe what you want to believe, but don't try and "explain" the presence of a greater power through facts and statics. That's the exact opposite way to go about it.

Except the universe isn't infinitely large or infinitely old. Modern scientific theory says there is a definite age, size, and mass to the universe.

Also, I'm of the same opinion. If you want to prove something does or doesn't exist, look towards the rules of inductive logic. After all, those same rules say that all numbers are equal and that the rules of math break down into a chaotic mess.