haha, for sure.

thanks for the edit =)

you know, when they found marry in a cheeseburger, i wasn't convinced. i mean seriously? who the hell is marry? some virgin god thought was moderatly more attractive than the others? but your right, once the son of god and god himself start emortilizing themself on proccessed bread we had better start listening

Stunningly put, Cayo.

yes, well said. and huzza to you. morality and striving for a better exsistance doesn't stem from religious guilt or piety, it stems from a recognition of all human life as something to be respected equally.

yes this is the kind of god i am assuming when i make this argument. All powerful, all knowing, and everywhere. though with that in mind i guess you could nullify my notion of insignificance because god could eaily consern himself with the screams of even the tiniest germ - being all everything affords you the luxury of not really haveing to prioritize. first two points still stand. third could still stand too depending on how you view creation. Did he create and plan everything? or simply define the rules by which this exsistance will be governed? is he an active player in the game still? or a tinkerer who is waiting to see what his toys can do? considering the elements that make up life (hydrogen oxygen carbon and nitrogen and more) are also the most prominent elements in the universe (in order too hydrogen being number 1, oxygen 2, and all the way down the list), you could argue that our creation was not a specific act of god but rather an emergent property of the rules he has decided will govern this exsistance.

As you've admitted, being those things affords you extreme luxuries, being all-knowing means that it would be quite easy for him to know his place in our minds. Being jealous I think is human caused by wanting so the only reason he could be jealous of us is if he is a sad deity that wants our feelings of power, without any real power-omnipotence. so as of right now I have to admit your first point.

Wanna feel even more insignificant? your talking about matter as we understand it, its estimated that matter as we know it only makes up 6% or what exists. 96% is dark matter. so that 10^11 solar masses isn't even the most predominant "stuff" out there.

Being in that 6% does make feel slightly more special, but that comes off of today's science, where we try to measure and quantify and qualify things that we have no clue about, so I personally can't put stock in that figure.

Edit: dark matter if its 96% and we are 6%....102%?, that aside still it seems as though our perspective is skewed if the majority of substance is "dark matter" and we the minority are regular matter.

right oh, its 4% and note that "today's science" is why your expected average like expectancy is 70+ not 40, how the planet Neptune was mathematically shown to probably exists 30 years before a telescope could see it, and how we could figure out that the errors found in the first data sent by the GPS system where caused by not factoring n relitivity into the equation because yes, they are traveling that fast. Science is inherently an exploration into the unknown, or an exploration into the known untill we show it's still an unknown. But simply because we have show time and time again that the science of the past is wrong, does not mean we cannot take the science of today as a pretty good model. Jsut as an example, newton wasn't right, he had no idea waht the fuck he was talking about, but his equations where good enough to get us to the moon - a good model no?

Interesting, but why did you use Newton? I'm guessing that you used newton because his guess is what we currently agree with. If he turns out wrong then you may know the name of one of the thousands of other respectable scientist that had "wrong" guesses. The past as a whole has generally terrible models unless after time you gather the "winners" and use them in the group of 'science from the past' As you said, Earth not the middle, others such as: more than four elements, heat being a physical substance, alchemy.

And yes I understand the irony of using things we take as true from "today's science" to disprove the past... my point is to show uncertainty

Edit: I think this discussion is going well, you? I'm think more than I usually made to, and for that I thank you.


Second Edit: Today's Science is based off of whats seems to work, not the definite truth...which would require a lot...

I used newton because he is both wrong and right. wrong in the sence that really, thats not how shit works. spped it up a little bit, make it to pig, amke it to small and his rules fall apart. but he is right enough to get us to the moon. So i am stressing uncertainty is something not to disreagarded, but also that modern science and its models are not something to be tossed to the curb with a comment like "today's science, where we try to measure and quantify and qualify things that we have no clue about, so I personally can't put stock in that figure."

Especailly because if you dont use today's science as a solid base you replace your views of the world with intuition. and intuition is very very inacurate most of the time.

i do enjoy this conversation

I was commenting on the 96% dark matter that we think is out to have our math make sense, not on science as a whole. Astronomy is a tricky science, all we have is rules that accurately reflect our world on our tiny scale. (oddly drawing back to Newton, because it derivatives of his equations used to suggest the existence of dark matter, but anyway) For all intensive purpose our experimentally based equations that govern all probably going to be accurate enough for my purposes. As you say we are skeptics, and as a proponent of our insignificance I hope you can follow when I say I do not think that anything we have figured out is really that simply, because it wasn't planned.

I think I'll chose to throw out global warming (if I can remember correctly there was discussion about this on the floor last year). Yes, I believe it's happening and I think that we need to to do something to make sure drastic change in environment won't kill all we come to know. Also, it is very likely that the reason provided for it our accurate. BUT, we have no idea, currently we are whipping around existence in possibly various orbits around many objects, being affecting by everything. There are almost infinitely many things affecting us with which we give no regard. This is the reason to why I disagree with anyone who could not compromise any point. In the end (for me, if you can imagine from my statements) the probability that anything you know is actually right, is zero.

Here is a point I find cant be comprised. There is something. Because to deny anything exists is to do so from the point of an observer, so if nothing else, there is that observer.

And any reasonable person will grant you comprimise if you make the most extream case. Maybe evolution isn't true given this and this and this possibility. But thousands of peer reviewed papers have shown over and over that assuming evolution is true is inline with observations of reality. same goes with global warming, given some extreme ideas yes it might not be true because some cosmic rays might be heating everything up. But 100% of papers released from 1998-2003, according to a study i just read, agree that global warming is happening, its our fault, and we can fix it, and if we dont it will be bad. So whats the point of compromising on that idea when the list of extreme possibilities is endless, but the list of tested reasons for global warming is both approachable and fits all models we can conceive.

Especially in a world where compromise admission of the faults of science has lead extremist to say things like "well evolution is JUST a theory" or "well some experts say global warming isn't real" when non of those experts have ever had a paper peer reviewed and published stating such a point.

Accepting reasonable faults only works in discussions between reasonable people.

"Being in that 6% does make feel slightly more special, but that comes off of today's science, where we try to measure and quantify and qualify things that we have no clue about, so I personally can't put stock in that figure."

As has been noted, we are and must be skeptics, and so we shouldn't put absolute faith in any scientific theory. However, these theories wouldn't exist without good reason, and throwing them out simply because of the inescapable presence of uncertainty is nonconstructive.


The dark matter theory does address a phenomena that occurs at scales way outside of our normal experience, and so it is tempting to say "come on, we don't really know what the hell we're talking about, it's all just positioning to make math work." It is possible that general relativity works really well on a solar system level, but breaks down on an inter-galactic level. This would be unusual, as most field theories that work in a specific range continue to work at lower energies / longer distances and have problems at higher energies / shorter distances, if they have problems at all. However, it is possible that GR is an insufficient model, and that at these uber-large distances we need a modified theory of gravity. Some scientists have worked on just such a model, which is commonly referred to as Modified Newtonian Mechanics, or MOND. There has been mixed success in this approach, and it seems to work more or less for individual clusters, but breaks down for clusters.

More importantly, MOND or any modified theory of gravity must still maintain one key characteristic: gravity has to point in the direction of matter. There has recently been an increasing amount of evidence (such as photographs of gravitational lensing around two colliding galaxies) that gravity does occasionally point towards seemingly "empty" areas of space. Unless we decide to completely redefine gravity such that it points away from matter, the existence of dark matter is the most logical explanation.

I don't necessarily want this to degenerate into a debate on dark matter theory, as none of us are qualified for that. Instead, I hoped to show that ideas don't become theories haphazardly or out of convenience. Alternate gravitational theories exist and are being researched, but given the data that we have right now, dark matter is the most likely solution. In the grand scheme of things, it's not such a strange theory; a large percentage of quantum mechanics makes absolutely no intuitive sense and in fact directly contradicts our classical understanding of the world. And yet, QM is the most precise and accurate predictive tool in science.

P.S. Actually, the current model predicts that 20% of the universe is dark matter, and 75% is dark energy, which permeates the universe and, among other things, is supposedly the cause for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.

Edit /P.P.S. My school actually has a large group of particle / astrophysics theorists and experimentalists, and in fact my department chair is part of the CDMS (Cryogenic Dark Matter Search) research group. Check out cdms.berkeley.edu/ and phys.cwru.edu/faculty/index.php?akerib if you happen to be interested.

I dont know how i missed this until now, but well said and thanks for correcting my numbers.

All hail cthulhu!

Cthulhu for kids!
panikstoybox.com/pd_my_little_cthulhu_8_inch_vinyl.cfm

0thanks =)

Oops I should have read the whole discussion before jumping in. I can't believe you actually mentioned the tiniest germ.

=) its beena good one, but thanks for jumping in!

but couldn't I easily contest that a relationship with an unapproachable creator is different. Especially a creator who gifted you with curiosity creativity and skepticism then left himself outside the realm of understandable contact.

The curiosity aspect is the biggest to me. He gave us alone the power to self actualize and inquire about our own minds and the space around us. then went to far as to make the world both logical and infinitely complex - so we can constantly get more and more accurate information that builds upon itself, but there has always been just that much more to feed our curiosity. Then after creating us this way, allows us to realize both the awesome implications of his existence, and the interesting implications of his lack thereof. Why would he mold us in such a way if he where going to get upset and potentially punish us for straying away from him.

And what if where not getting into trouble? what of the lieks of humanist. people who are generally atheist put promote similar ideals to the great religions - those of goodness, self sacrifice, and nobility of character. is god still sad then?

And actually i dont agree with your last argument anyways. A little self analysis, and even analysis of your relationship can be a good thing. I once talked to this couple who ended alot of their yelling matches by brining up scientific facts about the fight or flight part of the nervous system and how it didn't allow for much reasoning or understanding to occur when its turned on. ect

welcome to the discussion =)

though i do agree too much analysis can be very disheartening and destructive - but i still hold that this relationship with an all powerful creator type is significantly different

That bit about the couple arguing... Radio Lab? Nice. I listened to that one today.

yeah, disclaimer, i don't actually know the couple, but its kind of a convoluted story otherwise. they are real though

"If we're analyzing a person who is present, trying to decide whether or not we're going to relate to them as a person, we are already disrespecting their person hood."

This analogy breaks down very fast. What if your first trying to decide if they're a cardboard cutout, a robot of mans making with a personality we have given it, or an actual person? This all assuming we can first see and feel a physical presence. What if a friend had said, go say hi to my new friend Geof over there - and points to an empty corner of the room that at best as an erie feel about it? It certainly would not disrespect Geof's person-hood to question whether he is invisible or simply doesn't exists. It would only be disrespecting your friends idea's on the existence of Geoff. At this point Geoff is probably used to it and wouldn't mind, but the friend is now the one upset in your disbelief

"And just like that couple, the more we mistreat the significant other, the more threatening they seem because of the mistreatment we feel we have coming in return. It's self-perpetuating."

And in this situation i feel it would be safe to assume god would be the more mature person in the couple and might point out the silliness of the situation. but instead allows us to keep questioning and berating him only to, as i have been told, punish us after it's to late. To hold it against us in the after life. - And no, a book written by fallible men with passages that site eating shell fish as an abomination is not a valid way to end this "fight" with god.

"It's exactly what you say when you storm out of the room in the middle of a conflict in which there's too much at stake."

This is also how i would react to someone trying to convince me little aliens control my every thought, the world rests on the back of a turtle, and the pastafarians are right, a benevolent spaghetti monster created the universe - hence string theory. Your right, to much is at stake - things like reason.

"But God is a person who is not any thing."

And here we get into some interesting questions. Are we now debating god's existence, or his emotional attachment to us. On the existence side of things I had a imaginary friend when i was 5. His name was mike. He wasn't anything but a person. He had no shape, or size or presence. But he was a person, a person who's existence i would defend and justify with fire and passion if even for a second my mom or dad forgot to also assume his existence. But mike being real to me isn't good enough. And for me to have continued to base my life on a person who doesn't exists would, by most accounts, have been silly.

On emotional attachment - again, him being a person may grant him the right to love us, but not the right to have gifted us with the ability to question his existence than to punish us for acting on his gift.

" but you have to remember that he only ever shows his ornery, scary side to a tiny fraction of one minor semitic tribe."

HAHAHAHA! sucks to be the chosen ones huh? sorry, thats not funny... ish

"That's how God relates to most of us, and I think it's because he understands this whole fight or flight thing. He knows how fragile our reasonability and good will are, how easily our animal instincts can override our free will to treat the other person with respect. If we can be threatened by another human who pushes back against us, how much more likely are we to expect to be smashed into a wet spot on the wall if God himself pushes back against us. So God is very gentle. Not diffident, but quiet and patient. Inviting, but not importunate. Always there, always giving us all the space and time in the world."

And this I hope is more true than any idea's on god i have ever heard. A lover in the purest sense of the word. This I could accept. However, intrinsic in this argument is his endless sense of compassion and understanding, which again, leads me to believe he wouldn't care if we believe in him. Or at worst he would prefer it, but more than anything in the world he wants us to be good people leading good lives - which is possible without him, and he would never hold it against us if we where lead astray by his own gifts of consciousness, self awareness, and skepticism.

Nope never. Thanks for the reminder though ;)

He had presence at the time. "dont sit there, mike is sitting there" but at the same time, you didnt crush mike if you sat where he was sitting, nor did you displace him. He was loosely human shaped and his size varied with what was most convenient for the moment (like interpretations of the bible?). And I am sure through all kinds of arguments of how humanity is a construct of the mind you could say he was a person. But he is not a person. He is not real, my mom and dad should not have to base their life around mikes existence beyond to humor me for a short while. They should not lose their right to sit somewhere because a non-someone is already there. They should need to waste food making an extra sandwich for mike. At the time it might have been worth it to see me happy, but had it kept up untill now the amount of waste involved would have been ridiculous, and I would be in a mental institution. Wanting something to be real really really bad doen't make it real, nor does it make it so everyone else has to respect that you think it's real.

And my defense was full of jealousy and anger, things I tend to assume an all powerful all knowing all loving creater of everything is and should be above and beyond.

I do agree that mike was not real in the way you insisted your parents act as if he was - and that to have continued to insist in that way would have been wrong. But mike was a real something. Let's be scientific about him. Did he talk to you? Did he do things? Did he ever change your mind about anything that you can remember? Did he, maybe, have an effect on who you were as a person, and the development of your take on 'wanting something to be real really really bad (that almost sounds like one 'real' fighting against another)?' Did your parents ultimately insist that mike go away, like my parents did when they made my stuffed dog bob disappear?

Could it have turned out differently? What if you had kept on interacting with mike, while modifying your theory of his nature to account for things like his being able to occupy the same chair as a parent? Have you ever seen the movie 'Harvey,' starring James Stewart?

I think what I'm getting at in the edit above and in general is that we always bring a set of assumptions into any encounter. It's a good thing when we realize this, a better thing when we question and doubt those assumptions, and better yet when we see that whichever assumption we change or discard, there are others, receeding back into unintelligibility, behind it. But the best thing is when we experience something outside our sphere of assumptions - something that seems impossible and irrational from inside their closed totality. That is what makes us more than animals or calculating machines. In the case of God, instead of debating a recieved interpretation, let's experience him for ourselves if we can, if we dare, if he is willing. Along with our assumptions, doubts, and speculations, we have a hope. Let's not let that hope be decided without seeking its fulfillment, dangerous as that may be.

To experience god is to assume he exits, putting him well with-in our pre-assumed set of realities. And theories and assumptions of god so too fall into a state of unintelligibility. Also peoples assumptions of god tend to create a smaller ring of totality in which people live from my experience.

Also that's just it. it's dangerous. Not in an exciting skydiving or getting married kind of way. But in a give a select few to speak their beliefs with a divine authority type of scarrynes.

And thing is, we have to question and debate our received interpretations. why? because its an ineducable state. Thats right. A lab defined a religious experience as an overwhelming sense of oneness with everything. I feel this is an accurate description, as it is the most common phrase used by people who say they have had a religious experience. Of course it doesn't cover every religious experience, but is certainly one kind. It has been found that a very specific chemical under the right conditions can repeatedly induce a "religious experience." This is not sad, or depressing, or disheartening, it is fascinating and really forces us to question who we are, what we are, and why we are. questions that i feel "god" isn't a good enough answer too.

And what of a hope of better and truer understanding? god gives us a feeling of understanding, but no real ground to walk on. As a favorite author of mine once said -

"No shaman's spell or fast upon a sacred mountain can summon the electromagnetic spectrum. Prophets of the great religions were kept unaware of its existence, not because of a secretive god but because they lacked the hard-won knowledge of physics"
-E.O. Wilson

Understanding comes from a relentless pursuit of truth, not blind submissions to the will of something we don't even know exists.

Science is scary. And scary in that exciting way. Whats around that corner? under that? inside that? it gets boring when the answer is god god god. Why are we self aware? oh its a gift from god? why is water so useful for so many things? oh god designed it to be that way.... ect

No i want answers that lead to more questions. God is an answer that doesn't let you keep asking why.

why? god. done

why? because of this and that.
well, why this and that?
good question. Go find out.

Hey, somehow I missed getting notified that you had responded - sorry for the delay.

"To experience God is to assume he exists." I don't think that's right. Frankly, I think you are assuming he doesn't, and that assumption is not letting you keep on asking why. It's forcing you to live in a smaller totality of experience.

What I'm saying is that to experience God, you have to open yourself to the possibility that he does exist, just like a scientist proposes a hypothesis in order to test it. That's part of how you "go find out," if that's what you want to do.

There are plenty of people on both sides of the 'does God exist' question who are ineducable on the subject. I think that's because of the emotions that go with the awesome implications involved in either answer. What such people have to say, especially if they happen to be brilliant scientists, does create a considerable distraction. Most of us have had some very unpleasant experiences of being harangued.

I don't think that tells us much, one way or the other, about God, though. Or maybe it is useful if it helps us to be mindful of how our desires and emotions affect the way we think about God, and respond to what could be real evidence of him in our lives.