Dirtside's Journal: Oh yeah? Prove it!

From all the evidence I can find, religions in general seem to be a manifestation of man's desire for there to be answers to The Big Questions. Actual evidence for the supernatural claims religions make is completely lacking.

If someone comes to me and claims that God exists, my response is, "Prove it." It's the same response I'd give if someone came to me and said that space aliens were implanting chips in people's brains, or if someone said that increasing the number of miles of freeways in Los Angeles County would decrease traffic congestion, or if someone said that pyramid power can help you blah blah mystical-energy-cakes etc. I see no reason to believe things that have no evidence.

You know what evidence is? Arguments like, "But who else could have created all this beauty?" (while gesturing at a grand mountain vista, for example) are not evidence. Arguments like, "Well, we don't know what created the universe, so it must be God!" are not evidence. With that logic, you can claim that anything you don't yet have an answer for to be caused by anything you like. Evidence is quantifiable and physical; it can be scanned, detected, and analyzed. I can do repeatable, falsifiable tests on the theory of universal gravitation; I can do such tests on thermodynamic theory, hydrodynamic theory, mathematical theory, biological theory... but not, it seems, religion. And yet people want me to take as fact the idea that God exists. Come on.

Re:Can't think of a good subject

[Dirtside]

We have to come from something or someone that is "higher up" than us.
It's the second law of thermodynamics.

Please explain this in more detail. I think I understand what you're getting at, but I want to make sure before I debate it.

And it's not like your going to waste your whole life on it, at least with Christianity.

No, I'll just be wasting part of my life. I'd rather waste none of my life, if I can help it. :)

And even if there is no proof, most religions are based on faith, thus there is no need for proof.

If a system has no need for proof of its validity (in other words, if it assumes its conclusions without evidence), then in my view, there is no need for the system, as it contributes nothing useful.

Re:Can't think of a good subject

[Dirtside]

I don't think I can explain it any further. We must come from something more orderly than us.

Why must we come from something more orderly? And what constitutes "order" in this context? Number of cells in the body? Total amount of DNA in a cellular nucleus? Percentage of noncoding introns in the DNA? You're not going to get very far in any kind of useful dialogue if the entirety of your position is, "It just is." What am I supposed to do? Just take your statement on faith? If that's the case, then why don't you just take mine on faith?

Regardless, the Second Law of Thermodynamics says nothing about "order" or "disorder." One phrasing is, "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." "Entropy" measures the amount of unusable energy in a system; it sometimes (but not always) corresponds to intuitive notions of order and disorder.

Put another way, the Second Law says that in a closed system (a system from which energy cannot enter or leave), the total amount of entropy in the system will always increase, if it changes at all. The Earth is not a closed system; we have a gigantic energy emitter (the Sun) flooding us with enormous amounts of usable energy. The Earth-Sun system is not closed, either; we're part of a galaxy. The only "closed system" in reality is the universe itself, and even that's debated.

I think that our evolution is actually more of a degrading process.

Degrading in what sense? In other words, what manner of measurement are you using that our current state (Homo sapiens sapiens) is "degraded" from an earlier state (e.g. Homo habilis, Homo erectus, etc.)?

Takes about a minute. You won't go to hell just because you don't attend church, if you believe in Jesus (at least in Christianity).

So it's just that easy? I just say I believe in Jesus, and that's it? Well, not quite... I can't just say it, I actually have to believe it. But I try not to believe things that I don't have any evidence for. So if I'm going to believe it, I'm going to need evidence that it's true. (Whatever "it" is defined to be, e.g. that if you accept Jesus into your heart you'll go to heaven, etc. One problem with people saying, "Just believe it" is that "it" is often very imprecisely defined. Asking for clarification tends to lead to contradictions.)

Good point. I am not really the person to defend religion anyway. Some pastor would be better at that.

I've had a fair amount of experience with it; it turns out they're not really very good at it either. More or less by their very nature, arguments about religion tend to come down to assuming the existence of God.

I just attend a private church-school. Its amazing how bad of an impression you can get from their books. They try to prove God by telling you about scientist believed in God, like Newton, or Maxwell.

I'm glad to see that you're able to recognize at least some forms of faulty logic when you come across them. Here's a handy guide to many of the most common logical fallacies, a majority of which are often used to support the idea that God exists: http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html [infidels.org]

At any rate, I figured that defending God would get me some points when I get to Heaven.

I believe that the general depiction of the Christian God is that the attitude of trying to suck up to God generally gets you in more trouble than it saves you. :)

If I get enough, I might be able to go back to Earth as an angel and terrorize my enemies. :-)

Well, at least your heart's in the right place. :) If you want to continue this discussion off of Slashdot, my email address is [e-mail].

Re:Can't think of a good subject

[Thing 1]

Hi Dirtside/Matt,

I have some musing on God, which are reflected by the following. I have added you to my Friends list so if you reply to this I think I'll see it. If not there's always [e-mail].

Damn, the site I posted it to appears to be down so I can't cut-and-paste. I need to reboot now, so I'll post this and reply to it when the other site comes back up.

Sorry I'm not more useful but it's fairly big. Has to do with quantum effects and nanotechnology, but I can fairly convincingly pro

Re:Can't think of a good subject

[Thing 1]

OK it's back up. Below are my thoughts.

Believing in a being more powerful than us, composed of us, is not "primitive." It is, in my mind at least, enlightened.

Think of us as cells. There are 10-100 trillion cells [yahoo.com] in the human body. Each cell, if it had consciousness, could be thinking, "I'm an individual. There is no Thing 1!"

And it wouldn't matter to me whether my cells believed in me or not, as long as they were acting to further my interests. As soon as one or more turn cancerous (and I notice

Faith and proof.

[Jherico]

It all depends on what axioms you're starting off with. Theists can no more prove god's existence than you can prove you're made of atoms. What's compelling about science as opposed to theology is how everything fits together as part of a pattern that makes more sense than most religions.

Re:Faith and proof.

[Dirtside]

I think that you can more prove that you're made of atoms than that God exists. You can never completely prove it, of course, but the axioms are different. To prove God's existence, your axiom is that God exists. To prove that you're made of atoms, your axioms are that matter exists and that our perceptions are reliable. You can build on those axioms (via experimentation) to get to the point where you can say, "I am made of atoms." With the God axiom, however, the conclusion is the premise, and there are no experiments you can perform.