Lying - now on the banned list!

Bro Deal

Don't hold your breath on this one. The believers here have been promising evidence of god for a while but so far they have delivered bupkis.

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"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

Bro Deal

More like actual cranks.

A better location might be http://www.creationmuseum.org Gotta love those exhibits that show dinosoars and man living together, like Fred Flinstone. Here's a great report that describes it: http://crazytalk.typepad.com/bluegr...t_the_crea.html

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"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

Bob Ross

No one's challenging whether or not believers love their deity of choice; the challenge is to prove whether or not that deity exists and/or was the creator of the universe. I can easily prove my mother exists and, more importantly, anyone else who wants to confirm her existence can apply a wide variety of accepted methodologies and prove it for themselves. That's the basic tenet of scientific proof: others must be able to independently verify the results of your experiment before your conclusions will even be considered seriously. Feel free to verify my Mom's existence, I'm sure she'd be happy to participate.

Likewise, you're welcome to love your Mom, or your god, and I don't know anyone who would have a beef with that. It's only when you try to claim that love cannot be "proven" therefore the loved one must exist that I -- along with any other rational person with even the slightest sense of logic -- has to call Bullshit.



Right, exactly: all of us can "prove" it. That's a prerequisite for any proof, that the same results be accessible to anyone attempting to confirm the experiment.


None of those conclusions stood up to the experiments of others. They could not be independently verified.

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Originally Posted by Don Quijote
You have an attitude that rubs me very bad, I do not like you, and I also wish you to banish from my thread.

Bob Ross

Just thought I'd add some more titles to the Suggested Reading List, books that also address Evidence and that are also "very well written" by well-respected authorities in their field:

The God Delusion ~ Richard Dawkins
God Is Not Great ~ Christopher Hitchens
The End Of Faith ~ Sam Harris
Letter To A Christian Nation ~ Sam Harris
Breaking the Spell ~ Daniel Dennet
Misquoting Jesus ~ Bart D. Ehrman
Kingdom Coming ~ Michael Goldberg
The End of Days ~ Gershom Gorenberg
Freethinkers ~ Susan Jacoby
Extrodinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds ~ Charles Mackay
Why I Am Not Christian ~ Bertrand Russell
God, the Devil and Darwin ~ Niall Shanks
Atheism: The Case Against God ~ George H. Smith

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Originally Posted by Don Quijote
You have an attitude that rubs me very bad, I do not like you, and I also wish you to banish from my thread.

azul_fahrrad

You miss the point. Prove your love's existance. Your existance is proof of your existance. Here is the point spelled out, you love your mom. You can't prove your love but many can experience the effects of that love. You can not prove gravity but you can experience the effects of gravity. Gravity is still technically a theory.

To assert that if you can't prove it, it doesn't exist is foolish and ignorant.
To believe that we can explain life, the universe and everything is even more foolish.

No scientist worth his weight in manure would make such a claim.



Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the "scientific method"



True in the mordern world but at one point they were all claims accepted as fact by "scientist". Perhaps you should learn a little more about the topics and points before you engage in the conversation.

Bob Ross

Guess you weren't paying attention in school that day. It's trivial to prove that gravity exists. I can do it. You can do it. Anybody on earth can do it...and they'll all wind up with the same results. They might not all come up with the same conclusion to explain those results -- ever see The Onion's article on "Intelligent Falling"? -- but the results will be consistently predictable regardless of who performs the experiment.

I have. What part of "observable", "empirical" or "measurable" don't you understand? What definition of "evidence" are *you* subscribing to?


I am perfectly comfortable with my level of familiarity with the topics; I am confident that my familiarity is more than adequate to point out the flaws in your argument as presented in this thread. Moreover, I am satisfied that, while certainly not as eloquent as the great writers, philosophers, and scientists who have waxed on this topic for ages, I have presented my side of the argument sufficiently such that you have been rendered incapable of responding to my points, and thus are forced to counter with weak attempts to disparage my knowledge.

In short, you can't argue so you insult. Your god must be very disappointed in you.

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Originally Posted by Don Quijote
You have an attitude that rubs me very bad, I do not like you, and I also wish you to banish from my thread.

azul_fahrrad

I have not insulted you, only pointed out that you have missed the point. You have presented nothing that qualifies as observable, empirical or measureable.

Bob Ross

Nor have any of the folks who claim that god exists or that the universe was created by an omnipotent intelligent designer. If there were a creator there'd be tons of evidence that was observable, empirical or measureable...and not just to believers but to skeptics as well.

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Originally Posted by Don Quijote
You have an attitude that rubs me very bad, I do not like you, and I also wish you to banish from my thread.

alienator

Yes, gravitational theory is still "theory." Any proof of gravity is only empirical and not experimental. However the necessary requirements to do the experiment are known, i.e.. you need to impart an energy equivalent to the total energy in our solar system to make a graviton visible. There are experiments set up in several places that are designed to detect gravitational waves, but they've had no success yet.

The macroscopic nature of gravity, though, has been vetted experimentally. Calculated perturbations in the orbit of Mercury match exactly the precession measured in Mercury's perihelion. The apparent bending of light in a strong gravitational field has been measured and the result conforms to what the General Theory of Relativity predicts. The retardation of time in strong gravitational fields has been measured and verifies the values predicted by the General Theory of Relativity. As such, the warping of the space-time fabric is proven to be real; therefore, again, gravity is proven to be real and to function as predicted on a large scale.

All that remains to be proven about gravity is how it functions on the quantum level, i.e. what "particle" or medium moderates gravity and what is the nature of that particle or medium.

You display, as do all of the "divine intervention" crowd, a fundamental misunderstanding of what a "theory" is. A theory is not a physical law. A theory does have empirical support, but until it is experimentally proven and the results are vetted independently by other scientists, it is not physical law.

FWIW, the same amount of proof of a particular divine being exists as does the proof that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists. By your own standards, you cannot disprove the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.



You clearly do not understand how the Scientific Method works. I suggest you actually look up the definition. Anyone is free to hypothesize and theorize. That is evidenced in the "theories" that you just presented. However, the proper use of Scientific Method proved those "theories" incorrect. Thus, Scientific Method worked again.

And again you misinterpret things badly. Planets are now properly defined. Who cares if you don't like the definition. The fact is that prior 2006 definition of what a planet is by the International Astronomical Union, there was NO accepted definition for a planet. Planets were, prior to the definition, defined willy nilly. If you actually expended the effort to understand what you're talking about, you'd find that there are in fact many objects in our solar system that are larger than Pluto that were defined as things other than planets. Just because people had/have an emotional bond with Pluto doesn't/didn't make it a planet.

As for proof of a supreme deity, there is absolutely no way to prove it. In fact, it never appears in any equations describing any physical process. There is no combination, linear or otherwise, of time, spatial dimensions, mass--the fundamental units from which all others can be described--that would indicate the presence or existence of a supreme being. THAT is a fact that cannot be disputed scientifically.

Physical proof has to be a product of Scientific Method, else it isn't proof. As for the lists of suggested readings that others have supplied, there is no physical proof in those readings. Lay people and scientists can theorize all they want about God: that doesn't make it something that can be proven. The readings all display a personal bias or a fundamental misuse of Scientific Method.

No one--well, at least not me--is disputing anyone's faith. That can't be disputed. And having faith is not something that someone need be ashamed of. Likewise, however, misapplying science and perverting Scientific Method do not provide a factual foundation for faith.

alienator

Excellent point. Credible scientists do not claim that physical law disproves the existence of any "god." Credible scientists know that physical laws cannot and do not address such things. This is another point on which Intelligent Design is smashed and pulverised against the rocks.

Scientists don't have to provide anything "that qualifies as observable, empirical or measureable" to disprove the existence of a god or gods, because they know that science does not address that and that it cannot be addressed with physical laws or accepted theories. Again, this is another point that you and your crowd, Azul, just refuse to understand.

azul_fahrrad

Go out this afternoon and watch the sunset and tell me that you don't see proof.

To see all of existance and understand it's complexity and say 'there is no proof' is the same as to say that, long ago where the city of Paris is now, there was a large deposit of iron. There was a sudden, massive explosion and from that explosion the Eifel tower was created.

Bob Ross

BZZZZT! I'm sorry, thank you for playing, next contestant please.

There's nothing about a sunset, or Paris, or Paris In The Sunset, that requires one to suspend disbelief and accept the existence of a supreme being. These objects and/or phenomena are perfectly ordinary happenings well within the realm of the physical universe, obeying its laws, and conforming to its limitations.

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Originally Posted by Don Quijote
You have an attitude that rubs me very bad, I do not like you, and I also wish you to banish from my thread.

alienator

When I see a sunset, I see proof that the Earth does indeed revolve on an axis; that it does indeed orbit the Sun; and that we do, indeed, have an atmosphere.



This is a completely asinine statement. You consider that proof? If so, then you don't understand science at all. I hope you're not a teacher. And your "Paris" comment is completely stupid and devoid of any basis in reality. You clearly don't understand the time scale over which the Universe evolved, our planet evolved, and Man evolved and the physical processes that drove these evolutions. In fact, you have yet to display any grasp of science at all. All you've shown, now with your Paris allusion, is how ridiculous your "proofs" are in terms of science.

nns1400

No, it's not a better location. You just posted a link to a site that is in opposition to the site I posted. You are trying to cast everyone who believes in God as being to the same extreme of the creation museum people.

How is Hugh Ross, at www.reasons.org a crank?

What are you, some kind of Nazi?

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This stuff is just crap...Hitchy