God and football

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It's healthy to question the things we are taught.

I'm a spiritual person but I'm also a big science geek. (love a bit of string theory)
I believe in a collective consciousness and I believe our existence shapes the universe around us. So I guess I believe in something that could be called 'God' but is not exactly the Christian definition.


No good has ever come out of organised religion that couldn't be gained by some simple enlightened self interest. Endless rivers of blood are spilled needlessly in the name of one god or another, only growing deeper as time wears on.

This is where I'm coming from too <ok>
 
It always seems to me more of an act of faith to not believe in God. Until the most fundamental question is answered scientifically (the one scientists dismiss because they can't answer it) then God seems the logical explanation.

Why? It only creates a whole heap of other, currently unanswerable questions.
There's no faith required at all to not believe in any gods.
 
And what do you mean with enough understanding of the Universe? If you mean beginnings of the Universe I'll agree, if you mean anything besides that I'd say we have a vast understanding of the universe. Much of that knowledge is immaterial to everyday lives, and much of what might be discovered in the future will similarly be immaterial to our everyday lives. That is because most of the natural phenomena that puzzled people a couple hundreds of years ago are understood now.



Let's suppose some mysterious/unexpected wildfires occur in an unusual region. Am i choosing not to believe that dragons caused these wildfires, or... I've never had any reason to even consider that dragons might have caused it?

I suppose here too because I have not searched every cave/den on Earth I do not have sufficient knowledge to claim the improbability of dragons existing?

I meant beginning but actually we understand very little more of the Universe in general. We might be able to see and understand phenomena in the far distance(and past) but there's questions we don't even know yet to be explained.

I'd prefer it if you don't use such flippant examples too. We have explored the vast majority of the surface of this planet and found no evidence, past or present of dragons, that you have not checked every cave personally is irrelevent. Besides, everyone knows dragons don't have the opposable thumbs to use matches so it couldn't be them. Our understanding of the wider Universe is miniscule and this is why it is foolish to attempt to understand the probability of god(s).
 
We know more about the surface of the moon than the depths of the oceans, but that's a side note.

What takes more faith:
That something sponteneously appeared from nothing, before which there was no matter, no time, no space.
That something has always existed.

Personally I think they both take about the same amount.
 
And what's to say that the universe hasn't always existed?
The Big Bang theory doesn't suggest that everything came from nothing, by the way.
 
Our understanding of the wider Universe is miniscule and this is why it is foolish to attempt to understand the probability of god(s).

For everything we have learned though we have never had to put a deity in the equation. So at the very least from experience there is no reason (and definitely no utility) to contemplate the possibility of a deity for the questions that aren't answered, or questions we don't yet even know we'd want answered.

With the exception of the "beginning" I don't think most believers find support for god in these informational black holes you mention. They find support in things much closer to home, things that have already been quite thoroughly explained by science.
 
We know more about the surface of the moon than the depths of the oceans, but that's a side note.

What takes more faith:
That something sponteneously appeared from nothing, before which there was no matter, no time, no space.
That something has always existed.

Personally I think they both take about the same amount.

Objective reality doesn't need to be comprehensible by a human mind though, does it?

My take is, as a species we should never stop seeking knowledge, understand as much as we can understand and continue to make falsifiable hypotheses for things we do not understand, and keep the unfalsifiable hypotheses (e.g. god) which accomplish nothing to ourselves.
 
For everything we have learned though we have never had to put a deity in the equation. So at the very least from experience there is no reason (and definitely no utility) to contemplate the possibility of a deity for the questions that aren't answered, or questions we don't yet even know we'd want answered.

With the exception of the "beginning" I don't think most believers find support for god in these informational black holes you mention. They find support in things much closer to home, things that have already been quite thoroughly explained by science.

This all sprung from you stating that it is unlikely that there is a god. Disputing that point with you is not equal to me giving the reasons for my beliefs.
 
If Noah took 2 of each animal onto a big boat, why didn't they eat him/each other?!

and did it include woodpeckers, woodworms etc?!
 
It's healthy to question the things we are taught.

This is it in a nutshell really.

Whilst we are always at the pinnacle of our knowledge, we still don't have the full picture.


Every framework that attempts to explain the nature of the cosmos is simply another faith system.

It's important to understand that you cannot ever be totally objective, because we are always immersed in our own subjective experience of the world.

We are as much bound by the same mystery that we are trying to unravel.
 
This is it in a nutshell really.

Whilst we are always at the pinnacle of our knowledge, we still don't have the full picture.


Every framework that attempts to explain the nature of the cosmos is simply another faith system.

It's important to understand that you cannot ever be totally objective, because we are always immersed in our own subjective experience of the world.

We are as much bound by the same mystery that we are trying to unravel.

Hmmm. There is an interesting side to you after all.
 
Every framework that attempts to explain the nature of the cosmos is simply another faith system.

Not a very honest analysis, in my opinion.
It's like saying that every club in the league is just another team.
It may be true, but there are some that I'd much rather be putting my money on.

Science is self-correcting and attempts to be correct as often as possible.
Faith isn't and doesn't.
 
Not a very honest analysis, in my opinion.
It's like saying that every club in the league is just another team.
It may be true, but there are some that I'd much rather be putting my money on.

Science is self-correcting and attempts to be correct as often as possible.
Faith isn't and doesn't.

I'm a big fan of science as it attempts to disprove it's own theories in order to test their validity.

But ultimately it is just another belief system. You can never be wholly objective as you are always embedded in the experience of what you are trying to objectively observe. We can never observe our cosmos from the outside as we are in it and therefore subject to it.
 
I'm a big fan of science as it attempts to disprove it's own theories in order to test their validity.

But ultimately it is just another belief system. You can never be wholly objective as you are always embedded in the experience of what you are trying to objectively observe. We can never observe our cosmos from the outside as we are in it and therefore subject to it.
Does this mean that Cym & you aren't wholly objective in your moderation?

Say it ain't so...:emoticon-0106-cryin

:p