God FAQ

It seems that every time there is a debate over the existence of god, or the need for religion, theists seem to bring up the same (refuted) points over and over. I was thinking there must be some collection of arguments and rebuttals somewhere on the net? Could someone be kind enough to direct me to such a place?

>>78
The most prominent one is probably the 'Big Bounce' talked about in string theory.
This is not an alternative theory to the Big Bang; it is a larger theory that comprises Big Bang. If Big Bounce is correct, Big Bang is also correct.

Also, a) Big Bounce has very little to do with string theory, and b) Big Bounce is almost certainly wrong, since as WMAP has shown, the universe is spatially flat and so will not collapse on itself.

Because of this we cannot know for sure weather our world is bigger than the planck length or smaller.
This is nonsense. There is no absolute scale of larger or smaller in string theory just as there is no preferred frame in relativity. It makes no physical difference which way you choose in calculations; pick one.

To reitterate the point I was making the Big Bang is a theory that explains the observed facts reasonably well based on current well supported scientific theory. A better theory may come along at any moment.
Of course. This happens all the time in science; for example Newton's laws of Gravity were replaced with General Relativity at high energy scales. This doesn't mean Newton was wrong; it just means General Relativity has a larger scope of applicability than Newtonian gravity.

>>76
ITT we fail to recognize reductio ad absurdum arguments when we see them.

>>77
Ah, now I know what you mean. Point.

>>78
Before anything I'm going to say that I did not read the thread, nor do I intend to.
Maybe you should have - if you had, you'd know that you wasted the time to write a big post that isn't directly relevant to the topic at hand.

>>81
Who cares? The point is, I think we can agree that the Big Bang is falsifiable. Yes?

Big Gang Bang vs Big Titty Bounce

>>67
The point was that gods that have a physical effect on the universe are falsifiable, and so can be tested. Gods that don't are irrelevant.

What if their physical effects cannot be proven to be their activity?  If God (randomly or otherwise) chooses to smite your friend with a lightning bolt, you'd never know it was random chance/divine action.  In this case he has a definite physical effect, but we still can't prove/disprove his existance.

>>84
Yes, we can, lots of ways. First off, if God would smite your friend specifically, then given the relatively low number of people who get hit by lightning bolts compared to the number of people who do things generally considered to be morally wrong, he'd have had a pretty good reason to smite your friend. You'd be able to take a survey over a large number of people who get hit by lightning every year and see a pattern in the actions they've been doing to see what pisses off God.

Second, we know what causes lightning; friction in air molecules causes electrostatic buildup in clouds. Pretty soon we'll be getting better and better technologically at detecting where lightning strikes will occur based on things like air density. We'd be able to detect this deity by seeing a sudden impossible shift in air conditions causing a lightning strike to hit a specific person (or simply averaged over many people, we'd see stranger behavior in air conditions when people are hit compared to inanimate objects).

Third, we know how people are made vulnerable to lightning. It's not logical for God to only smite people who go golfing on stormy days, or who stand around in open fields. People usually stay indoors during a storm, and especially in big cities, there's virtually always another target for lightning to strike. I'd have a hard time calling it a deity if it can be thwarted so easily; call me when lightning bolts start shooting through windows to hit child molesters.

God is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe, the galaxy rotation 'problem', and the Pioneer anomaly.

>>85
To summarize:
Paragraph 1: Assumption that this god is logical in who he smites, and that he is not smart enough to do so sparingly enough to avoid detection.
Paragraph 2: Assumption that a god who can control nature would, for some completely insane reason, choose to do something glaringly physically impossible rather than make extremely subtle changes that lead to the same result.
Paragraph 3: Houses get hit by lightning (and start on fire as a result) not infrequently. It happened to my neighbor's house twice in one year.

>>87

Your neighbor sucks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Thunderstorm%2C_Widecombe

So, yes, houses can be attacked by lightning.

As >>87 pointed out, if the act is adequately rare, you can't determine anything.  My original thought experiment consisted of God using lightning to kill your friend once, after which he subsequently never appears again.

We all know how lightning works, but it doesn't prevent God from mucking around with a few moles of electrons.

>>87 >>89
Paragraph 1: Assumption that this god is logical in who he smites, and that he is not smart enough to do so sparingly enough to avoid detection.
Paragraph 2: Assumption that a god who can control nature would, for some completely insane reason, choose to do something glaringly physically impossible rather than make extremely subtle changes that lead to the same result.
As >>87 pointed out, if the act is adequately rare, you can't determine anything.  My original thought experiment consisted of God using lightning to kill your friend once, after which he subsequently never appears again.

All of these are the same ludicrous argument told time and time again: "God works in mysterious ways." The very process of shutting off your brain and submitting to religion.

Why are you thinking of our technology as static, as though we won't be able to improve it? Eventually it's conceivable that we'll be able to predict weather patterns completely; that we'll have a full and complete knowledge of the movement of air so as to predict lightning years in advance. What then? Will God simply stop using lightning to smite us?

Think about how your painfully stupid argument applies to prayer. People pray all the time to heal the sick, thinking they're helping. Scientists have done experiments where they observe, say, a thousand sick people; friends, family, relatives, entire congregations and communities pray for half of those that are sick. The other half go unmentioned. In all cases, there is always found to be no correlation whatsoever with prayer and recovery.

The logical conclusion would be to say that prayer has no effect. Right? Now think about what you're saying. Think about what your argument is here. You're literally saying that God explicitly chose to avoid helping those people for the sole purpose of confounding scientists. He'd have normally helped many of these highly religious people; yet he let many of them suffer and die just to fool a few meddling scholars, doing nothing more than seeking knowledge.

The utter, staggering idiocy of this argument boggles the mind. I can't even fathom how a person can believe such lunacy. If you honestly think this is what your God does, then how on earth can you possibly respect him?

>>90
"Eventually it's conceivable that we'll be able to predict weather patterns completely"
No, it isn't. Learn a little bit about chaos theory and you'll know that given any finite amount of information about the current state of weather, our predictions for the future can (and will) still be wildly inaccurate.

"What then? Will God simply stop using lightning to smite us?"
You are the only one here who seems to think that a hypothetical god could use lightning and only lightning to smite people. Why not house fires? Heart attacks?

"You're literally saying that God explicitly chose to avoid helping those people for the sole purpose of confounding scientists."
You're assuming that god cares about helping people in the exact same way that you do. Anthropomorphization does not justify an argument just because you really really want it to.

"The utter, staggering idiocy of this argument boggles the mind. I can't even fathom how a person can believe such lunacy. If you honestly think this is what your God does, then how on earth can you possibly respect him?"
Where, in my post, did I say I respect god? Or that I believe in him? (Note: I'm the author of >>87) I'm not defending the idea that god does exist, I'm calling you out on your babbling idiocy about a disproof of god.

You guys should try playing oblivion, I havent played it yet but it looks real cool. Its an RPG and it has a huge area to explore so sounds real fun and time consuming. Who knows where to get it cheap?

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

dear op,
i believe this is what you're looking for.

>>93
fail.
>>19

>>94
why read through 92 illogical, slanderous replies? why even read 19 of them? my time is better spent reading the simple, logical rebuttals to the main creationist claims in the list i gave. i'm in no way ashamed of reposting a link to something that fits the op's request perfectly.

>>91
>Learn a little bit about chaos theory and you'll know that given any finite amount of information about the current state of weather, our predictions for the future can (and will) still be wildly inaccurate.

I don't believe this. There is a finite amount of information in the universe.

>>2

PROTIP: Theology is not a real subject.

>>97
rofl

god is gay

just making it an even 100 woooo

I feel the need, the need for weed!

Marijuana MUST be legalized.

SWEET BAYBEE JEEBUS!

[b][u]MP