Preacher On Science

dassercha
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Preacher On Science

Yeah, so this preacher on tv the other day went on & on about how scientist have discovered that even a change in the universe proportional to say the mass of a dime would destroy all we know -- that is how balanced and intricate our world is. That is to say, there is a creator. I'm so ignorant on scientific matter, please, scientists out there, your input. I've thought about this alot in last few days.


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What does it even mean to

What does it even mean to make "a change in the universe proportional to say the mass of a dime"? Sounds like a bunch of nonsense to keep ignorant people even more ignorant.

Do you, or more importantly did the preacher, have sources on this?


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He makes an assumption which

He makes an assumption which i don't know is a good assumption to make. That the universe could be different then it is. We do not know if this is true.


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I don't know how anyone can

I don't know how anyone can point to a rock and say it's proof of god, which is effectively what the preacher did.

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dassercha
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Thanks for the responses.

Thanks for the responses. Memory's a little fuzzy on all details he gave now, 2 weeks or so later, but he was bascially quoting and refering to  scientists like Antony Flew who, now, 21st Century, you know, with new discoveries and whatnot (string theory and such? i dunno), have questioned their atheistic beliefs and now surmise, "well, there must be something behind all this." Again, I'm paraphrasing yadayada, but you get the point. 

As for MY personal beliefs, again NOT bred in science by any means...yeah, life seems way to intricate for this to have *ALL* just "sorta come about." But there's a lot my lil' finite mind cant begin to comprehend...  Smiling 

 

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I'll also say that I

I'll also say that I recently go into this argument with some theist I met. This argument is called the "fine-tuning argument". For one, it begs the question ,which is what I meant to say above. For two  it says that the utilmate goal of the universe is life and that the universe was "created" for life.  So the main problem is who says life didn't just evolve in this universe because of it being the way it is. Instead of the universe being the way it is allowed life to evolve? 


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Hugh Ross promotes this

Hugh Ross promotes this nonsense. I don't know if he started it or just defends it:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/designun.html 

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Seneca


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Its all God of the Gaps.

Its all God of the Gaps. Scientists dont know how the constants were picked, or if they were picked at all. But they dont need to look into it, because we know that "MAGIC MAN DONE IT!"
God of the gaps is the worlds bigest cop out. I'm not sure so I'll say God did it. Well woop-te-do, if all people had always done that then we would have no tecnology! And im glad we do have tecnology, otherwise I wouldn't have survived to the age of 10 minutes!
Theists should stop attemting to retard science and just shut up! I am a (almost) passive atheist untill they attempt to screw with science (or polotics, or tell people in AIDs riden counctrys that condoms are evil, or....etc) but when they cross that line (those lines) I turn into a very militant atheist! Hence why since I started paying attention to what religion is doing, I have been very active in my atheism.

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I would almost as soon believe with the old and ignorant cosmogonists, that fossil shells had never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells now living on the sea-shore. - Charles Darwin


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It's a matter of

It's a matter of perception.  He's playing a game. If god created the universe...and created us as his most cherished creation...why, then would 99.9999999 percent of the universe and about 72% of the earth, be not only inhospitable to humans but downright lethal?  That, to me is not the sign of a loving creator.  But you don't even have to look that far to realize how much bullshit this ID/Creation issue is...just  look at genetic defects....it's right there.... what fucked up design, I say.

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dassercha wrote: Yeah, so

dassercha wrote:
Yeah, so this preacher on tv the other day went on & on about how scientist have discovered that even a change in the universe proportional to say the mass of a dime would destroy all we know -- that is how balanced and intricate our world is. That is to say, there is a creator. I'm so ignorant on scientific matter, please, scientists out there, your input. I've thought about this alot in last few days.

 

Magical elephants might rain from the sky. Fortunately, god makes sure this does not happen. Ergo, since it never rains elephants, god exists.

 

Yes, that is how bad his argument is. 

His conclusion is a non sequitur! He imagines that there must be some magical substratum to reality to 'ensure' that no extra mass pops out of nowhere to 'toss things out of balance'... i.e. he's imagining that, somehow, the universe wants to create magical matter, and that someone even more magical has to do an infinite amount of ledger checking to keep things straight.

But physics laws themselves are what 'keeps things in balance'.. in other words, there's no need to keep in balance in the first place..... things simply are as they are! There's no "intricate balance' that needs be maintained. 



     "The materialist thesis is simply: that's all there is to the world. Once we figure out the correct formal structure, patterns, boundary conditions, and interpretation, we have obtained a complete description of reality. (Of course we don't yet have the final answers as to what such a description is, but a materialist believes such a description does exist.) In particular, we should emphasize that there is no place in this view for common philosophical concepts such as... ''purpose.'' From the perspective of modern science, events don't have purposes; they simply conform to the laws of nature. In particular, there is no need to invoke any mechanism to ''sustain'' a physical system or to keep it going; it would require an additional layer of complexity for a system to cease following its patterns than for it to simply continue to do so. Believing otherwise is a relic of a certain metaphysical way of thinking; these notions are useful in an informal way for human beings, but are not a part of the rigorous scientific description of the world. Of course scientists do talk about ''causality,'' but this is a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions; it is a derived concept, not a fundamental one. If we know the state of a system at one time, and the laws governing its dynamics, we can calculate the state of the system at some later time....   According to the materialist worldview, then, structures and patterns are all there are --- we don't need any ancillary notions."

Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists - Sean M. Carroll, University of Chicago

 

"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'


dassercha
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Thanks folks for the

Thanks folks for the responses. I will take this all in and ponder it all carefully. Most appreciative of the informed comments...

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