Aluminum Foil Hat Time! Conspiracy Theories?

It was off-season farmers and hired Egyptian labourers, not slaves, and certainly not a couple thousand Jews.

Hmm interesting page. But some of you got my question mixed up, I'm not asking who built them, I'm asking how!

How did you guys manage this discussion without a deletion or closure of thread. I am in shock. lol

Let me add something to the discussion then.

For atheists arguing against religion is very easy, hell I believe in God, I can just as easily breakdown all the various flaws with religion.

However, the concept of God isn't a simple as you make it out to be.

Is the universe deterministic or is it truly random?
This is the question that begins this argument. Because before any religions were created, man came to an invertible conclusion of a God.

Why? The universe has laws, cause and effect laws. For every action there is a reaction. And the reaction continues on effecting various variables in a particular system. A domino effect. Chaos theory states that you cannot fully predict an outcome in the universe because of the countless factors that can effect that system.

So because of this observable law, man concluded that the universe its self must have a cause. Some force that has manufactured it to function within these limits. Man concluded a source, a point before the domino effect, the force that lines up the dominoes and pushes them. And that force he calls God.

For atheists, that force doesn't exist. There is no source, if there is then it isn't an intelligent one. For atheists the universe is truly random. Now I will explain the difference between random and true randomness. Random usually means unpredictable, because we as humans are limited in understanding. If we cannot predict an outcome we call it random. A coin flip is random, however if we had sufficient knowledge in regards to the force applied, the angle in lands on the ground, and various mathematical variables we could predictable the outcome of a coin flip. Randomness as we know it is based on human ignorance.

True randomness is unpredictable because it doesn't associate with any laws. If a chair appears in an empty room when no other force has caused it to appear there. This event breaks multiple universal laws, but it is truly random. So atheists have to apply this true randomness theory to the big bang theory. As an event that happened without cause or reason, yet somehow brought about a systemically organize product that runs on deterministic laws.

This is contradictory, true randomness cannot coexist with determinism. Trust me, if the universe was random and deterministic at the same time, we wouldn't be having this conversion.

I don't mean to offend you or anyone, but I'm really surprised to hear this from a believer of god. I do not believe in "random," and random is only "created" by ignorance to certain variables. You can calculate dice rolls and coin flips knowing enough factors and a random number generator is seeded from the CPUs internal clock. For this reason, I can not believe in free will, because nothing has shown to me that a brain is outside cause and effect.

I do not like the word random in terms of something happening without a cause, but it becomes ok to use when something happened from an unknown or unknowable cause. "Randomness" can exist with a deterministic view point if you talk about it this way. "True randomness," as you term it, can not be proven to exist or not exist. How can we prove something violates cause and effect if cause and effect is all we have to prove things with?

You're getting it wrong, again.

Atheism is a disbelief in god. That's it. It's not a belief in something else. An atheist can have any number of beliefs about how the universe works, or none at all -- that's their luxury.

Not believing in god because there's actually no evidence for god doesn't mean an atheist must then subscribe to 50 other contrary beliefs. It only means that they don't believe in god because there's no evidence.

As for how the universe works, WE DON'T KNOW YET. There are ideas, there are even really good ideas, but it's perfectly alright -- it's perfectly sane to not know something, even when it seems as important as that.

You don't believe in god, so you MUST believe in X is every different flavour of wrong. Stop doing that. You believe in god so you MUST be fine with slavery and you MUST hate gays. See how it works?

I find that, "You believe in god so you MUST be stupid" is often a correct hypothesis upon getting to know someone!

Tonight my grandfather's friend stopped over and eventually a conversation lead to dragging me into it asking my beliefs on an all powerful/knowing/etc spiritaul energy. I replied on my lack of belief in such. Subtle (at first) insults were tossed my way, I simply explained my side then my cousin asks if she is able to explain her own side. Her reply?
"I don't have to, I won't be the one burning in hell". Good talk.
This isn't against theist peoples at all, but damnnnnn what a bitch.

Just want to say I know it isn't as awe inspiring to everyone else but Petra blows my mind more than the great pyramids.

That's the thing though randomness is a word we use to explain something we cannot grasp because of our lack of knowledge. True Randomness doesn't exist in a deterministic universe because if the beginning is random then the outcome is random. And if this is constantly happening, there is no reality to grasp, study or observe because every variable is subject to change at any random time. The only thing that can ever be called truly random is human thought.

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I know what atheism is. So you mean to tell me your mind offers no alternate satisfactory explanation? In other words you believe in nothing. I know an infant believes in nothing. Interesting, how can a grown man's mind possibly let you pull that off? The human mind that is constantly jumping from annoying thought to annoying thought never resting, some how gives you=nothing. I am very much not convinced.

I believe in waiting until there's a decent explanation. Until then there are plenty of valid ideas, some of which I've explored, and which I enjoy, and others I don't. But I'm mature enough to realize that I'll probably never know, and that it doesn't matter anyway. It's fodder for philosophy lectures, not something I live my life by.

I respect that. I definitely feel you shouldn't be tied down to any kind of belief system. Whatever makes you happy or suits the lifestyle you want to lead is always better.

I just argue against the notion that theistic beliefs are illogical or irrational.

Why would you do that. The very definition of faith precludes logic and rationality. That's what it is to be faithful: the believe things despite having no evidence, or even contrary evidence. There are bible passages about it and everything.

etc.

It's supposed to be admirable in most religions.

Your first assumption is that theology is limited to traditional religion. I am not a christian, in fact I don't affiliate myself with any religious doctrine.

Your second assumption is that theists base their belief in God on a leap of faith. If you read my giant post above you would see the rationale behind theistic belief. It's based on observation and through logical dedication they come to the conclusions they do.

That's straight-up bullshit and you know it. Unless you're shifting goalposts and we randomly started talking about deists mid-way through a conversation about religion, which I know I was never talking about.

KingAce, every time you talk about science or math, kittens cry.

Having trouble wrapping my mind around the idea of an inverse conclusion.

This is not what reaction means. Reaction is the opposite action on the acting agent. When I push on you, you are simultaneously pushing back on me. What you are talking about is just action.

I'm not sure how not believing that God is the cause of the universe leads to believing that everything is random.

As for the contradiction you seem to think exists regarding the big bang, before the big bang, the laws of nature could not possibly hold, and we can't know anything about what the laws were. It makes absolutely no sense to say that the big bang contradicts the laws of nature, because the laws of nature did not exist yet.

Everything after the big bang, however, was governed by the laws of nature and there is no real evidence to suggest that anything but nature has ruled since. Believing that everything is governed by the laws of nature hardly seems like believing that everything is random.

Secondly, your conception of random is wrong. A coin flip is not quite random in the sense that the coin's motion is quite determined by the conditions that were set as it was flipped. If you want, you can say that the coin flip is still random in a quantum framework, but with a 99.9999999999... percent chance of behaving in a classical manner, and this randomness truly is random as far as we can tell.

But that aside, it is not impossible to imagine a truly fair coin that has a 50% chance of landing heads or tails, and we talk a lot about these theoretical coins. But note what's going on here. The coin has a truly random distribution between two states. Just because the result is random doesn't mean that you entertain the idea that the coin turns into a unicorn. You only entertain the possibilities within the domain of the distribution you are given.

Not like any of this really matters. By all means believe in your God, just leave pseudo-science out of the argument. Not only does it not help prove something that is not really in the realm of reason, but it just makes you look dumb.

Didn't read thread, but my washing machine is haunted. Discuss.