Well of COURSE the Examiner is running this BS. Just look at who owns it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Anschutz#Political_and_Christian_activism
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Doesnât matter how many 9âs you add to that percentage: itâs still out of infinity, so thereâs still an infinite chance of life.
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The universe doesnât necessarily have infinite mass, and the kind of life the universe is supposedly âfine tunedâ for requires mass. I should probably ad a bunch more 9s.
If I have a glass of liquid that is 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999âŚ% poison it would be ridiculous to opine on how finely tuned the contents of that glass are for life.
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Youâre not thinking like an astrophysicist.
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I dare say I am not, though I donât see you claiming that the universe has infinite mass.
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It is excruciating obvious in cases like this that a person came to a conclusion they were dead set on adopting and then put their rational brain to the task of finding a justification, like a White House lawyer set to make legal arguments in favour of extrajudicial executions.
Exactly. But rather than even having the guts to invent his own, he went with the Abrahamic God, which is laughable. It drives me nuts because I also have a god-shaped hole in my psyche, and I am also smart enough to make up a very clever argument to convince myself that there is something to fill it, but I know that itâs just bullshit and Iâm only motivated to do that by the wiring of my stupid meat-brain-that-is-all-Iâve-got. Fuck this guy for feeling contented.
Oh seriously, he has a masters in mathematics? The way the article was hyping him (and he hypes himself on his website) I thought he had more than one PhD or something. A masters in math and a law degree. My money just went from brilliant person who convinced themselves of something stupid to just a plain old idiot.*
* Plain old idiot not meant to preclude IQ in the top 1 or 2%.
I think this position doesnât work because definitions follow meaning, not the other way around. Go back two thousand years and you could argue the same thing about heat (and in fact philosophers did, leading them to the absurd conclusion that there was no such thing as heat). Weâve been grasping at somethiing we couldnât put our finger on called âheatâ for a long, long time, and quite recently in human history we put a pretty good definition around it (though one that will undoubtedly be obliterated by some future paradigm shift).
People have been grasping at God for a long time. Maybe they are grasping at something that is actually out there, or maybe itâs just nonsense. But just like actual heat was nothing that could have even been comprehended by the ancient philosophers saying there was no heat, an actual âGodâ would almost certainly be something we donât currently have the concepts or language to understand. Thus, asking for a definition is fine if you simply donât wish to participate in the discussion, but you canât pretend there needs to be a definition to have a discussion - if there did weâd never learn anything.
Iâm probably the only person here who finds the idea of a God-ometer plausible.
I can answer this in a few ways.
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Weâre alive and conscious, so life and consciousness are possible.
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We have no reason to believe the laws of physics even could be different. Maybe those universal constants arenât constants, but as far as I know, we no one has shown that yet.
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We have no basis to believe that variations in the laws of physics would result in life being impossible. Our brains can be simulated with sufficient computing power by any Turing complete machine. Turing complete is an absurdly low bar. Something that thinks the same way you do could live in Conwayâs Life game. We fundamentally have no idea what the universe would be like if the laws of physics were different, but if there are even two dimensions of space and the ability for things to, on average, exist or not exist at a location ,then life can exist in it.
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People donât think of a proper time scale for this because there is not time scale for the universe coming into being. Time is part of the universe. The creation of our universe wasnât the result of billions of years or trillions of years of random combination, there were no years. The probability of our universe coming into being could be zero and that would still not making it impossible for it to come into being. We donât understand what the no-universe condition is like, and we cannot apply any mathematical reasoning to it. (If anything is âGodâ my money would be the condition of there nothing being anything)
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Reply number 1 sounded pretty facetious, didnât it? Whatâs the thread that links 2, 3, and 4? Itâs that the argument hinges on being at imagining the scope of possible unknown unknowns. The fact that life exists is all the proof we need that life can exist. The kind of speculation Ell is doing is saying, âWow, I really canât see a way we could have come to be in this universe, therefore there must be something magical going on.â Itâs either unreal arrogance or a frantic god-shaped hole in his head hitting the panic button to compartmentalize his thinking.
The improper Bayesian analysis is one thing, but Iâm a lot more latched onto the failure to understand that even an event with probabilty zero is possible, and given a state of timelessness we have no reason not to think that everything possible will happen. The seemingly most likely alternative is that nothing at all will happen, and even though Cogito Ergo Sum is a flawed argument for me existing, it seems a pretty compelling argument that something has happened or is happening.
Since we are we are necessarily in a universe in which life occurred, the probability of us finding ourselves in a life-universe is irrelevant. Instead, the relevant probability is the probability of there ever being any universe with life. And that ever doesnât mean âat any timeâ since time is part of the universe. My best guess it that means that we are discussing the probability of it even being possible for life to be given all possible configurations of matter, energy, time, space and possibly infinite other things/forces that we arenât aware of. Anyone who guesses that probability is low is making some incredible assumptions with no evidence.
Well, the one thing we can all agree on is that Douglas Ellâs argument sounds really, really stupid.
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Michael Shermer wrote a very good book about why people believe batshit crazy stuff. Especially the highly educated.
http://www.michaelshermer.com/weird-things/
Shermer postulates that PhDâs and scientists develop skills in how to defend their position irregardless of its merit. This makes it very difficult for them to admit a personal idea is wrong but also arms them with the means of sounding sane when supporting a position.
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Oh, no doubt⌠I just think people can get really worked up about the god question, on both sides of it, and in my agnostic laziness, itâs just not something I care to argue about. As long as people arenât expecting me to follow their faith or trying to impose it on society writ large, I donât particularly care.
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Something I think Shermer is prone to when it comes to his libertarian ideology.
(Though, I think Chris Mooney, whoâs article Iâve cited, also has issuesâŚ)
Its still a decent book and a great primer of skeptical thinking. Its kind of ironic that Shermer himself becomes an example of what he describes in it.
The worst thing about these âscientific proofs of Godâ is the dishonest way it addresses how their own proponents believe.
Nobody in the history of the world has ever adopted a religious view because it is supported by evidence and rational arguments. They believe because they have faith. Faith by definition is the belief in the absence of evidence and rational arguments.
These bullshit âproofs of Godâ are a denial of their personal faith. A way to try to browbeat people into belief because they lack the confidence in faith to be convincing. Moreover, such people will never under any circumstances accept rational arguments and evidence against belief in God. So they donât really trust the methods they demonstrate either. More dishonesty.
Unless one is willing to accept proof that God does not exist, then one cannot honestly provide evidence he does.
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I liked it ok when I read it, but I think How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn is a much better book on skeptical thinking. Unfortunately, it is subject to outrageous text book-level pricing. $55 is a very steep price for a softcover book on critical thinking, even for a good one.
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Yeah, I get worked up about it. As I said somewhere in my giant screed above, itâs because I do care. I donât care about atheism, I care that there is a God and I canât stop caring about that, even though there isnât one. I fortunately have pills for that, but they canât overcome the rage of seeing some idiot go off about how there must be a God because he canât get over how bananas taste. I get mad because Iâm jealous of other peopleâs ability to believe things.
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I donât think thatâs accurate, at least in the Judeo-Christian view. The god described in the Bible doesnât show any great reluctance to provide evidence for his existence and sometimes talks directly to people or acts in undeniable ways. Itâs often suggested that gods that donât do this are worthless. Faith is more like acting in a faithful way without knowing the result and showing that you are putting your faith in God to act. This is one of the big failings of fundamentalists - they are willing to make falsifiable statements rather than sticking to an unbiblical god who stays just outside the borders of scientific knowledge. Theyâre wrong, but I can respect them for jumping in with both feet.
There are pills for that, too. 
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That was then, and only to a select few. But, even then, the bible says in Hebrews 11 that "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. " In John 20, Jesus allows Doubting Thomas proof, but offers "Then Jesus told him, âBecause you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.â
There is no need for faith if there is evidence. And, indeed, Christianity holds faith in high esteem, and virtue is higher for those hold their faith not not only without evidence, but in the face of contradictory evidence, as with Job, who faith in Godâs goodness was tested with evidence to the contrary.
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In other words, this meme, this block of information parasiting on human minds, evolved a self-defense self-affirming mechanism.
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Hebrews 11 is talking about people who did things without proof that God would come through for them - looking forward to a future that could only happen if he did what he had promised them, even though that future was highly improbable or impossible under normal conditions. Itâs all about acting in a way that shows their belief that God exists ( and rewards people who seek him, even though they didnât have the physical evidence or fulfilment of what they were hoping for. This doesnât require Godâs existence to be a fundamentally impossible to provide evidence for. In the same way, Thomas didnât doubt Jesusâ or Godâs existence; it was Jesusâ resurrection that he didnât believe (and therefore his existence in the sense of his character as more than a mere human, and Godâs existence as a deity who is able to meet his promises even when they seem impossible).
This is my point - faith is generally in aspects of Godâs character rather than his bare existence, and people often showed their faith after being addressed directly by God.
Belief that the Bible is an accurate representation of God in of itself is one based entirely on faith. One has little to no evidence that such stories are much besides mythical text. The overwhelming majority of claims of Biblical accuracy are assumed rather than demonstrated. There is no evidence of God doing anything to prove his existence outside the Bible. It is faith which gives such stories credence.
Faith is also belief in something but lacking a rational way to support it. Fundamentalists are so unable to accept ideas outside of their own, that it makes them publicly deny faith, even though privately they value it. The appeal of Fundamentalism is less the strength of belief as it is the feeling of superiority over others as being âspiritually privilegedâ. âWe are going to heaven, you will too if you do as I say. If you donât, expect bad thingsâ.
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