Religions

[Vampyr]

Originally Posted by Professor S

Jesus asked people to be charitable with their own wealth, to CHOOSE to give to others. He never asked them to take from A to give to B, and Republicans are far more charitable than Democrats.

Back on topic: Now that the discussion has degraded into calling believers "stupid", I'll jump in.

It is a current statistical impossibility that life spontaneously originated on it's own. Those that choose not to believe in God have tried to answer this by presenting theories such as "planet seeding by aliens" (who created the aliens?) to "we just don't know yet, but it wasn't God".

Now either of these may be true, but there is no evidence for either of them. They are guesses. Statements made out of belief, and not fact. Feel free to choose your religion, atheistic or theistic, but no one should pretend that they know more or are smarter than anyone else simply because they choose to not believe in the "spaghetti monster". You simply choose to believe in something else, but in the end, it's just faith... same as the most devout Baptist.

No, it's really, really not the same. I don't believe in anything. I don't pretend to know the origin of life, but I think I remember reading back in high school about how scientists had conducted experiments using electricity in a box with similar atmospheric conditions to Earth, and small microorganisms formed.

If that's true, then isn't it extraordinarily more probable that life got it's start that way, as opposed to some all-powerful, omniscient being that no one has even a shred of evidence of willing life into existence?

And even if that isn't true and I'm remembering incorrectly, it doesn't change the fact that all religions were created by man, for man. They are a guess, but have no basis in fact. Science does. That is the difference. One is from someone's imagination, the other based on observations.

If one religion or another does turn out to be right, I'll eat my hat, because they just won the cosmic lottery in a most epic fashion.


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EDIT: Sorry Teuth, didn't see your post. Looks like I was remembering right.

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by Vampyr

If that's true, then isn't it extraordinarily more probable that life got it's start that way, as opposed to some all-powerful, omniscient being that no one has even a shred of evidence of willing life into existence?

In terms of probabilities, I believe both come out to about nil. Note: Spontaneous creation of life is not absolute zero, but the chances are so remote it is considered a virtual impossibility. I believe the probability is 1 chance in 10 to the power of 390. To give some context, there is a far greater chance of observing every known atom in the universe than of life spontaneously erupting. (since you can't statistically measure the God equation I'll give Him an absolute zero). The best part of all of this? The most common argument against the probability dismissal is that the creation of true life is NOT RANDOM. So, the defense of abiogenesis is order, or one might say, design?

So we are left with the point of my post: You pick your belief, and I'll pick mine. But one zero doesn't get to be obnoxiously condescending to another zero. They are equal in terms of probability.