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[QUOTE=Mr Feeny]Why would Isaac newton's opinion on religion matter? Or Einstein? They could be physics geniuses but they're entitled to their own view on ontology. And others might not agree.[/QUOTE]
"People who quote Einstein, think they are special snowflakes." Albert Einstein
[QUOTE=StephHamann]"People who quote Einstein, think they are special snowflakes." Albert Einstein[/QUOTE]
:oldlol:
[QUOTE=StephHamann]"People who quote Einstein, think they are special snowflakes." Albert Einstein[/QUOTE]
He's surely the person with the most falsely-attributed quotes ever.
You either have to believe the universe in its simplist form always existed, and eventually developed into what it is today after an unfathomable amount of time passed. Or that an all powerful, knowing god just always existed.
The former sounds more likely.
From where I sit...
God is like Santa Claus. That's not really a bad thing.
It serves two purposes:
A) It teaches morals. It makes bad kids be good. 'If you aren't good, you get a lump of coal for Christmas' = 'If you aren't good, you are going to Hell'. It teaches people how to behave, how to help one another. Basically Jesus in the Bible is everything that every being on Earth should strive to be like: caring, loving, helping, forgiving. We all know if Jesus was real today, he'd be taken advantage of 100 times over and probably die alone, homeless in the gutter. Someone like him would be swindled out of all his money. He'd probably be made fun of, maybe even called a demon spawn by some. Turn the other cheek? He'd have the life beaten out of him after he got robbed and carjacked.
B) It gives people hope. Your life sucks? Oh well, you've got heaven. Lost your job, and house, and car, and wife? It's cool, when you go to heaven, none of that will matter? You're fat and ugly? No worries, everyone looks the same in heaven. It's a morale booster. Not to say that everyone who believes in God is poor and needs hope, but it gives people an 'end goal' to strive for, making them be better people.
I don't buy into it. You are what you are. You have one life, and when this life ends, your game is over. Over. One day, you and I and everyone we will ever know will be dead, and that's okay because that's how life works, and the world will go on.
It's just accepting that fact, for many, is difficult.
[QUOTE=Lebowsky]He's surely the person with the most falsely-attributed quotes ever.[/QUOTE]
That is probably true, but he was definitely a very spiritual theist.
[QUOTE=Mr Feeny]Max Planck preceded quantum mechanics and wouldn't have had a clue what he's talking about when it comes to subatomic particles. Planck was clueless about wave particle duality and the quantization of electromagnetic waves' energy levels.
He was.a genius at his time and his constant is immensely important in the world of physics but this is a terrible quote to present. [B]Max planck couldn't teach Niels Bhor, W. Heisenberg, Max Born or Albert Einstein the first thing about quarks, leptons, bosons or quantum mechanics[/B].[/QUOTE]
The bolded is simply not relevant to anything I quoted--an updated categorisation of particles has nothing to do with the quote, and it is very strange for you to think that it does. Why are you talking about quarks? These were not even theorised until the 1960s, when all those men you mentioned were already dead (or close to it). Max Planck was the father of quantum theory--and Planck's constant is central to the quantum mechanics you seem to think had nothing to do with him; Einstein's photoelectric effect couldn't exist without Planck, nor would Bohr's structure of the atom, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle--Planck is the father that ties all these great innovators together, so it is downright idiotic to dismiss what he has to say because other people have developed his ideas further (that is science, durr).
The man is absolutely seminal in the areas you say he is "clueless" about. I can only assume that you don't know what you're talking about.
[QUOTE=Mr Feeny]Why would Isaac newton's opinion on religion matter? Or Einstein? They could be physics geniuses but they're entitled to their own view on ontology. And others might not agree.[/QUOTE]
You have a rather narrow interpretation of what physics is. Why wouldn't we want the religious opinions of people who have delved deeper into the conundrum of existence and the examination of reality, and how it can be understood, than almost anyone else?
They are almost the most qualified people there could possible be: they spend their entire lives studying the essence of reality, searching for patterns, and that makes them worth listening to. It doesn't make them infallible, but then no-one said they were.
[QUOTE=Mr Feeny]Why would Isaac newton's opinion on religion matter? Or Einstein? They could be physics geniuses but they're entitled to their own view on ontology. And others might not agree.[/QUOTE]
The most innovative thinkers throughout history all believed in God. Hold this L atheist, atleast you got Bill Maher though XD
[i]On average, people who do not believe in God have a smaller p[COLOR="Black"]e[/COLOR]nis than people who do [/i]
[QUOTE=Dresta]
Morality (i.e. [I]what[/I] we consider good and bad) is a product of culture and thus fundamentally, of religion; our moral-sense (i.e. [I]that[/I] we intrinsically discriminate between good and bad) is innate, a part of being a member of the human species. .[/QUOTE]
Religious morality differs between good and evil, not good and bad. You are totally wrong on this.
[QUOTE=~primetime~]yes
everyone is on the spectrum...those who couldn't care less or give it no thought at all would be agnostic[/QUOTE]
100% of people are agnostic.
[QUOTE=K Xerxes]Sex is an example. Other examples include what we eat or drink and what clothes we wear.[/QUOTE]
That only applies to Jews.
[QUOTE=StephHamann]"People who quote Einstein, think they are special snowflakes." Albert Einstein[/QUOTE]
"People who believe they know better than Einstein, Newton, Darwin and Marcus Aurelius are morons."
-Steven Hawking
[QUOTE=StephHamann]Religious morality differs between good and evil, not good and bad. You are totally wrong on this.[/QUOTE]
Bad and evil are almost synonymous in the way I was using them (though bad can also mean other things--it is a broadly defined word): you are being pedantic. I simply used the word "bad" because the word "evil" has religious connotations in the minds of most, and is used differently to how it was a hundred years ago (more scarcely). Evil is generally a refined or extreme form of badness--you speak as if I used an entirely different concept (this might be a language problem, I dunno).
I've read everything Nietzsche ever published btw, most of it more than once, and his argument does not contradict the point I was making in the slightest (it is in fact, one of his major theses). That part you quoted is Nietzsche's argument about established morality in a nutshell.
[QUOTE=~primetime~]I don't think a higher power has to be some perfect all knowing force that treats everyone as equal and fairly.
If we humans created self aware AI within a virtual 3D world, then that AI would think of us as "God". We are not perfect, and we wouldn't care to treat our AI creation fairly.
Our God(s) may be no different...maybe they created this 3D reality and separated the galaxies to study us in different environments. They may not care to treat us as equals and they may be flawed greatly .[/QUOTE]
I think the answer to God, the Universe, our purpose, etc. lies in your response.
If we humans can create life, whether real life or artificial life, then it's not too far-fetched of an idea that we were created as well.