Science vs Religion

[Malorn]

Meh.

[Effective]

Originally Posted by Malorn

The pledge and currency says "God" - it doesn't say "Christian God" or "Hebrew God" or "Hindu God (Vishnu)"

It means whatever god you want it to mean.

The United States independence, constitution, and bill of rights is founded upon the notion that we as humans have unalienable rights bestowed by our creator that no government can revoke.

That's why "In God We Trust" and "...under God..." appears in our currency and pledge. It is recognition of that fact that our rights come from a higher power and cannot be deprived.

It is not allegiance to a specific church and therefore is no breach of separation of church and state. It's a tribute to the founding principles of our country, which ignorant douchenozzles want to remove because of their own disdain for religion.

Choose the creator that suits you (or no creator at all) and move on to a real issue.

Holy utter garbage batman

[Warborn]

And yet none of your rights come from any particular god or church but were instead created entirely by men who, far as I can tell, didn't refer to the Bible or whatever in the process. There's a certain irony to the idea of men who were deists/not-terribly-religious penning those words under the impression that the laws they were setting forth were only theirs to give by the grace of God or something.

[Baneblade]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust

[Malorn]

Meh.

[Hamma]

Originally Posted by Quovatis

The constitution and the bill of rights are not founded on any of that crap. Only the declaration of independence has that phrase in there (once), and it was not in the original draft, mind you. Jefferson added it in at the request of others, and more than likely did not mean God. Most of the founding fathers were Deists, not Christian, including Jefferson. The USA is not a Christian nation, as reaffirmed in the treaty of Tripoli.

It was only during the cold war when the USA felt it had to play up the God thing as to not appear communist. Unfortunately, we've been stuck with it since.

Perfectly said.

[Effective]

Originally Posted by Malorn

And courts find it religiously meaningless while athiests continue their crusade. So yah, everything I said above.

Move on to a real issue.

Yes because equality and observing faiths and lack of there of all people is meaningless.

[Malorn]

Meh.

[ItsTheSheppy]

I was visited by Jehova's Witnesses over the weekend. Twice. I apparently made such an impression on the first pair that they brought in a consultant to talk to me for a second pass.

It was a lot of fun. I was a little disappointed that the best they could come up with was "It sure seems unlikely that DNA could spontaneously manifest in the primordial soup; God must have done it." I had to explain that, you know, we've actually synthesized DNA in a laboratory using chemicals and computers and such. We've created life. It's not THAT hard. And while we don't really know how it happened that first time, its important to remember that across trillions of stars per galaxy, in billions and billions of galaxies, it only had to happen once for us to be having the conversation, so it's not that big a leap to imagine that it could have happened on its own.

They didn't really have much to say about that. It was very clear to me that they were not used to having someone present them with educated, reasoned objections. Every time they suggested something, like "Isn't it amazing that the world is perfectly suited for us" and I'd reply that the world is indeed suited to support life, therefor capable of spawning creatures who could be having this conversation, but there was no evidence that it was at all special; it is a big universe after all, and though small the chance, it's clearly happened at least once... they would just stare at me and then move on the next point without even trying to pick at my reasoning. It was like they were hearing it all for the first time and just had no clue how to respond.

They hadn't even heard of the "god of the gaps". I had to explain it to them. It's very sad, how deep in their echo chambers these poor people are.

[Vash02]

I had two little old ladies come to my door. They made the "if we came from monkeys why is there still monkeys?" and "look at the trees!" arguments.
It was so awkward.

[ItsTheSheppy]

If you ever need a handy comeback to the 'why are there still monkeys' argument, just point out that a) we didn't come from chimps, we just share a common ancestor, and b) Americans (largely) came from Europeans... so why is there still a Europe?

[Figment]

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

If you ever need a handy comeback to the 'why are there still monkeys' argument, just point out that a) we didn't come from chimps, we just share a common ancestor, and b) Americans (largely) came from Europeans... so why is there still a Europe?

According to Malorn, Europe does not exist. We can't have a state with citizens living happy lives without gun rights after all.

[ItsTheSheppy]

Originally Posted by Figment

According to Malorn, Europe does not exist. We can't have a state with citizens living happy lives without gun rights after all.

I don't even like Malorn, but I have to say that zinger was weak. Pick your battles, man.

[WildGunsTomcat]

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

It was a lot of fun. I was a little disappointed that the best they could come up with was "It sure seems unlikely that DNA could spontaneously manifest in the primordial soup; God must have done it." I had to explain that, you know, we've actually synthesized DNA in a laboratory using chemicals and computers and such. We've created life. It's not THAT hard.

So....you're saying we've created life?

And we're intelligent creatures yes?

So it takes intelligence to create life yes? It wasn't spontaneous, because humans created life in a lab.

The arrogance that you give off Sheppy is breathtaking. Simply stunning.

[ItsTheSheppy]

Originally Posted by WildGunsTomcat

So....you're saying we've created life?

And we're intelligent creatures yes?

So it takes intelligence to create life yes? It wasn't spontaneous, because humans created life in a lab.

The arrogance that you give off Sheppy is breathtaking. Simply stunning.

Not sure if trolling.

The entire premise of the "god must have created life because life is too complicated to have just happened" argument hinges on the idea that creating life doesn't just take intelligence. It takes a supreme intelligence that could also create a universe, suspend natural laws when necessary, and understand a cosmic truth.

We did it in a laboratory in (if I'm not mistaken) Rhode Island. Or was it New Jersey?

I'll tell you what it isn't: a miracle. It's not even that impressive. It didn't even make front page news. I expect most people won't be impressed until we invent from scratch some kind of 'cool' animal, like a dragon.

There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe that we're aware of. Each galaxy possesses, on average, about a trillion stars. Even within our own galaxy, we've observed, with our primitive technology, numerous planets that exist within "goldilocks" zones capable of supporting life.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that there are one thousand planets per galaxy capable of supporting life. Considering how many we've already found, and considering that galaxies have trillions of stars, that's probably a significantly under-representative figure, but I don't need it to be bigger to make my point.

So a hundred billion galaxies each with a thousand life supporting planets. That's a trillion planets. Let's say the average age of these planets is, oh, five billion years, to again take a lowball estimation.

DNA would have to synthesize only once out of all of those for us to be having this conversation. DNA synthesizes by (again, simplifying considerably) combining certain chemical compounds in just the right mixture and applying energy in just the right amounts. Nothing needs to be invented. All the raw materials are there, they just need the right conditions.

Let's say that the necessary compounds exist on ONE THIRD of the possible planets. That's three hundred and thirty three billion. Now let's say that the chemicals shift around or mix up or get struck my lightning or whatever on average once per year. That gives us 1,665,000,000,000,000,000,000 chances.

That's a big number. A sextillion if I'm not mistaken. (Tee hee. Sextillion.)

The actual number of chances is much higher.

Given that, since the discovery of DNA structure, it took us about fifty (50) years to create it on our own, with our meager technology, it seems fairly likely to me that it would happen. At least once.

And it did! Here we are talking about it.

Now I could be mistaken. My math is probably atrocious, my reasoning flawed. But I can tell you one thing. Having that explained to me by somebody who does understand the nitty gritty science of it is a lot more engaging than being told a magical monkey man living in the sky did it, and by the way he hates gays and is super interested in your life. Your tiny, tiny, short, cosmically meaningless life.

Thinking such a being would give a shit about you or any of us; thinking that the planet was put here for us to enjoy it; thinking that we hold some special supernatural significance in the universe; thinking that such an entity would even LOOK like us or care about what we ate or what our sexual habits were... that's arrogance.

And believing the entity is there at all is delusional.