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davik · 01-29-2004, 01:19 AM

An interesting post, I'll have to start frequenting the philosophy board more... I'll start by saying that I'm a pretty hardcore atheist (to put things in perspective); I won't believe in a god until he/she/it shakes my hand and violates a law of physics for me. That being said, from a scientific basis every religion I have ever heard of is wrong, as every one of them has been disproven by science at some point in their history and has had to re-write a belief (think geo-centric views of the catholic church pre-gallileo). Now, religions being wrong doesn't imply the non-existence of god in the least, just says that no one on this planet has a truly correct view of god (save possibly the clock-maker theory, but that certainly isn't a religion). The way I see it if you trace religion and science back far enough they both end up with something that has to be taken on faith; in religion you have to accept that god existed and nothing came before. For science, you have to accept that the big bang happened, and nothing came before; sure, there are wild theories as to pre-big bang, but eventually in any theory, god or otherwise, you have to assume that there was an effect without a cause. This is the reason that spirituality by itself typically doesn't bother me; it's just the other equally plausible starting assumption. Religion on the other hand, seldom fails to piss me off.

As far as the improbabilities of sentient life evolving, you have to take in to account the sheer size of the universe. The human mind can't comprehend the numbers that represent how many stars there are in all the galaxies of the universe, but it comes out to something like a million stars for every grain of sand on this planet. Out of all of those it's almost impossible for life to have NOT evolved somewhere, and you can't really be around to question the probability unless you're in the spot where it did evolve :P Anyway, my 4 cents (hey, inflation's a bitch)

01-29-2004, 01:19 AM	#12 (permalink)
davik Irradiation for fun and profit Location: Controlled access area	An interesting post, I'll have to start frequenting the philosophy board more... I'll start by saying that I'm a pretty hardcore atheist (to put things in perspective); I won't believe in a god until he/she/it shakes my hand and violates a law of physics for me. That being said, from a scientific basis every religion I have ever heard of is wrong, as every one of them has been disproven by science at some point in their history and has had to re-write a belief (think geo-centric views of the catholic church pre-gallileo). Now, religions being wrong doesn't imply the non-existence of god in the least, just says that no one on this planet has a truly correct view of god (save possibly the clock-maker theory, but that certainly isn't a religion). The way I see it if you trace religion and science back far enough they both end up with something that has to be taken on faith; in religion you have to accept that god existed and nothing came before. For science, you have to accept that the big bang happened, and nothing came before; sure, there are wild theories as to pre-big bang, but eventually in any theory, god or otherwise, you have to assume that there was an effect without a cause. This is the reason that spirituality by itself typically doesn't bother me; it's just the other equally plausible starting assumption. Religion on the other hand, seldom fails to piss me off. As far as the improbabilities of sentient life evolving, you have to take in to account the sheer size of the universe. The human mind can't comprehend the numbers that represent how many stars there are in all the galaxies of the universe, but it comes out to something like a million stars for every grain of sand on this planet. Out of all of those it's almost impossible for life to have NOT evolved somewhere, and you can't really be around to question the probability unless you're in the spot where it did evolve :P Anyway, my 4 cents (hey, inflation's a bitch) __________________ "Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." -- Mark Twain Last edited by davik; 01-29-2004 at 01:22 AM..