Poll: religon: a 7 point scale

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anNIALLator

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Jul 24, 2008
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Don't try to make it sound like the dark age christian church supported science. That's bullshit. Yes, bladeofdarkness is right. We win through Occam's Razor because we do not assume the use of magic.
 

Zombie_Fish

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Mar 20, 2009
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You know, I got bored of this argument a long time ago.

Truth is, we will never know whether or not a god exists, and I actually said earlier on that I don't care and was initially just commenting on the fact that bladeofdarkness was comparing God to creatures known to be fictional, thus coming to the assumption that God himself is fictional, when it's not known whether or not he is. That was the generalisation that I was against, nothing more.
 

bladeofdarkness

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Aug 6, 2009
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Zombie_Fish said:
You know, I got bored of this argument a long time ago.

Truth is, we will never know whether or not a god exists, and I actually said earlier on that I don't care and was initially just commenting on the fact that bladeofdarkness was comparing God to creatures known to be fictional, thus coming to the assumption that God himself is fictional, when it's not known whether or not he is. That was the generalisation that I was against, nothing more.
but then its not like someone once discovered that zeus and posidon or dragons arent real
and yet you'd be hard pressed to find someone who'd still try and claim that they are
mostly because the fact that they havent been disproved, doesnt strike anyone as a particularly good reason to believe in them
 

Shoqiyqa

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Mar 31, 2009
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Zombie_Fish said:
What are the chances of a universe getting created by coincidence?
Multiply that by the chances of Earth being created by coincidence, and then the chances of evolution occuring and the human species becoming the dominant race by coincidence, and what would be the larger probability?
Clearly you didn't read this last time. I'll try again.

The probability that the universe exists is 1. It does.

The question of evolution applies not to this one planet but to all planets, moons, asteroids, comets and other bodies in the cosmos with parts consistently at any temperature between about 100K and 400K and possibly a few others. Given that
It is estimated that there are as many as 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe, but we aren't able to see all of them yet as our telescopes are not big enough. This number is interesting because it is similar in magnitude to the number of stars estimated to be in our Galaxy.
... we get ( 2 x 10 ^ 11 ) ^ 2 aka 4 x 10 ^ 44 or 4E44 stars if this galaxy is typical. Even if we arbitrarily assume that only one star in a hundred has any oribtal body capable of hosting life and the odds against any one such system developing life forms in a million years are an American trillion to one against, that's odds of 1E12 against for each million years for each of 4E42 star systems where it might happen. Over 12 to 14 billion years [http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_age.html] or even over just 4 billion to give plenty of time for planetary formation ...

Well, I don't think I have a calculator that can give you the actual numbers, so let's switch to dice.

Rolling 1d20 once, the odds of getting a 20 are 20 to one against. The odds of not getting a 20 are 19 to 20 so the probability of not getting that 20 is ( 1 - 1 / 20 ) = 0.95.

If you roll two, the probability of getting both twenties is (1/20)^2 but the probability of not getting at least one 20 is ( 19 / 20 ) ^ 2 = 0.9025.

With three dice, it's 0.857375.

With ten dice it's 0.59873694.

With twenty, 20d20, it's 0.358486, so almost two-thirds of rolls of 20d20 should produce at least one 20.

With 100d20, the probability of not getting at least one 20 is 0.0059205. We've gone past 99% at 1E2 rolls of the die.

For 10,000 rolls aka 1E4 rolls, it's 1.7E-223. That's 5.8E222 to one in favour of getting at least one 20.

Twenty-sided a bit too likely for you? Let's have if ( RND(10000) == 10000 ) as our test. Probabilities of not getting at least one 10,000 on a fair 10,000-sided die:

1 throw : 0.9999
2 throws: 0.9998
4 throws: 0.9996
8 throws: 0.9992
16 throws: 0.9984
32 throws: 0.9968
4096 throws: 0.6639
1048576 throws: 2.875E-46
2097152 throws: 8.266E-92

At 2^20 throws, just over 1E6 throws, we're down to 3.5E45 to one against not seeing at least one of any given result. At 2^40, it's 1.2E91 to one against.

4E42 star systems, every million years for 4 billion years? 1.6E46 throws of the die? Probability of getting one-in-a-trillion in that many throws:

1 - ( ( 1 - 0.000000001 ) ^ 16,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 )

...

Yeah, kind of close to one.

As for Earth and humans as so on, "the probability of life evolving on this planet even if it does evolve somewhere" is ONE!

(Yes, mathematically, 1! = 1 = 1^a = a^0 and so on.)

"This planet" is identified by the person saying it, so unless the person in question is from another planet or talking about another planet, the planet in question is pretty much stuck with being the one on which that person evolved. The same applies to humans. Given that something aware enough to ask the question has evolved, the probability of life having evolved into that something is one.
 

Shoqiyqa

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Zombie_Fish said:
This is an all mighty being we're talking about here, it can probably do whatever it wants, no matter what the physics behind it are. Why does it need to follow to the laws and restraints of the universe if it controls the whole thing?
Ah-hah! I was wondering how long it would take you to make it clear that you were starting from the assumption that an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, eternal and conscious being exists.

You just did.

What you're saying is: "Assuming God as described in my Bible exists and has all the powers my Bible says He has, all the things it says He did are well within His power."

Mm-hm.

Assuming for the time being that this world and its people and history are all a strange dream being had by a pink-and-blue cat with eight legs and four ears that is snoozing on a diamond-studded sofa in the sunlight while her well-trained pet green bear goes for more salmon on a planet that rotates to the west and has three moons, then the Earth can't have been created in seven days because the cat's only been dreaming about it for a few seconds ... and tidal current charts are very complicated.
 

RiffRaff

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May 5, 2009
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Nickolai77 said:
Lusty said:
RiffRaff said:
I won't try converting you, but assuming there's either a Christian God or nothing, mathematically speaking you really should believe in God. Look-up Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's wager doesn't really work though does it? Mainly because it assumes belief is a choice. I can't 'make' myself, or anyone else for that matter, believe or not beleive in anything. Logic can't defeat faith.
I would also point out that pascals wager does not take other religions into account, nor does it provide a "good" reason to believe in God.- If you only believe in God because its a safer bet in case he does not exist, would your faith mean anything??
Choose to believe in God (regardless of how hard that may be). Then follow all the "rules," start going to Church, discuss with others, act as a Christian (WWJD?), see what happens. Some people choose to believe first and faith follows, others faith comes first. I'm guessing if you did all those things with an open mind, your faith would begin to mean something.
 

anNIALLator

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Jul 24, 2008
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RiffRaff said:
Nickolai77 said:
Lusty said:
RiffRaff said:
I won't try converting you, but assuming there's either a Christian God or nothing, mathematically speaking you really should believe in God. Look-up Pascal's Wager.
Pascal's wager doesn't really work though does it? Mainly because it assumes belief is a choice. I can't 'make' myself, or anyone else for that matter, believe or not beleive in anything. Logic can't defeat faith.
I would also point out that pascals wager does not take other religions into account, nor does it provide a "good" reason to believe in God.- If you only believe in God because its a safer bet in case he does not exist, would your faith mean anything??
Choose to believe in God (regardless of how hard that may be). Then follow all the "rules," start going to Church, discuss with others, act as a Christian (WWJD?), see what happens. Some people choose to believe first and faith follows, others faith comes first. I'm guessing if you did all those things with an open mind, your faith would begin to mean something.
But do you really think that your chosen deity would value fake belief over honest skepticism?
 

RiffRaff

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May 5, 2009
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I'm saying you can have both. If you are a skeptic, but at least give the other side a try for a while, the fake belief may turn into a real belief and your skepticism may subside. In fact, no better place to talk about skepticism than in a discussion with a priest/pastor/reverend/etc.

This doesn't work for everybody but it does happen for some.