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Thread ID: 141533	2016-01-03 22:18:00	It is a marvelous world that we live in.	Roscoe (6288)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1413891	2016-01-10 05:49:00	It doesn't mean that he does either! There are more than 2500 gods that are believed in by signficant groups of people throughout the world. The only thing that one can be absolutely certain of is that most, if not all, are figments of the imagination. I lean towards them all being imaginary. It's Interesting to note though, all the religions of the world tell basically the same story, just the names of the characters and the locations are different. It seems that they may be all telling a tale that originated in the same place and time and just became changed around as different religions evolved.	Roscoe (6288)
1413892	2016-01-10 06:20:00	It's Interesting to note though, all the religions of the world tell basically the same story, just the names of the characters and the locations are different. It seems that they may be all telling a tale that originated in the same place and time and just became changed around as different religions evolved. I would tend to disagree, have you personally studied all religions that you know they are telling basically the same story? They tell many and varied stories, all based on the same need some people have for there to be something greater than themselves and for there to be something more after we die. If they have similarities it's because they were all made up by people to fill the same need and we are all inherently quite similar in more ways than we are different. It goes like this - We (the good guys) will be rewarded, you (the evil bad people who refuse to believe what we tell you) are all going to be punished for eternity. Our leaders are right and good and speak for god, everyone who disagrees with them is an evil liar who seeks to destroy all that is right and good with the world. If you can't see that all religions do this and that it's utterly ridiculous and clearly man made then you have a huge blind spot in your logic. Any truly benevolent creator would not care what you believed in or worshipped or indeed require you to magically know which is the right religion to choose. All that should matter is what kind of person you are and how you lived your life. If a good person who spends his life doing good things ends up in hell because he didn't worship the right god then that is no god I can ever get behind, and not a religion I will ever believe is not man made. It stems more from selfishness and a need to feel special than anything holy. As soon as a religions teachings give more importance and power to it's senior members than anyone else and start spouting the "believe our teachings or else" mentality it becomes pretty clear to me they were created by people, and not very nice people. The only god I could buy into is if the universe itself is a concious being and no more concerned about us than we are about our own cells and molecules. We know they exist but we put no thought at all into what they are doing at any given time. The only thing that is everywhere and in all things is the universe itself.	dugimodo (138)
1413893	2016-01-10 07:06:00	Probably why I have that empty space between my ears dug It is a marvelous world we do live in, but it's just the people who stuff it up lurking.	Lurking (218)
1413894	2016-01-10 21:59:00	But the "number of rolls" is truly vast - if you weren't living on the "winning ticket" we wouldn't be having this conversation. The 'odds' of there being a pre-existng, extra-universal sentient being, capable of designing such an intricate and complicated universe (all for us - and, yes, with bone cancer kids...) would be less than it being produced by a set of basic physical principles, iteratively extrapolated over huge timescales? The odds actually go the other way.	Gobe1 (6290)
1413895	2016-01-10 23:36:00	"But the "number of rolls" is truly vast - if you weren't living on the "winning ticket" we wouldn't be having this conversation. The 'odds' of there being a pre-existng, extra-universal sentient being, capable of designing such an intricate and complicated universe (all for us - and, yes, with bone cancer kids...) would be less than it being produced by a set of basic physical principles, iteratively extrapolated over huge timescales?" Beautifully put, thank you fred_fish. Also: 'Isn't it a bit early in the year for a somewhat tired audience to be "iteratively extrapolated over huge timescales" ? I'm not even sure it would be PC, - and this is PCWorld.' Very funny R2x1	zqwerty (97)
1413896	2016-01-11 00:19:00	What about the Goddess’s, Raquel Welsh, Ursula Andress, Brigitte Bardot ………………….? I protest, the thread has become sexist. :D Are you saying you don't like a bit of sex??	Cicero (40)
1413897	2016-01-11 03:03:00	Are you saying you don't like a bit of sex?? Now whatever gave you that idea? :D	B.M. (505)
1413898	2016-01-11 20:09:00	"But the "number of rolls" is truly vast . . . The 'odds' of there being a pre-existing, extra-universal sentient being . . . " Bringing in statistics suggests that things are caused by randomness . But randomness is nothing more than science's "God of the gaps" . You wheel it in when you can't find a proper mechanical explanation of something . Then wheel it out when you do . Scientists' greatest misuse of statistics has to be the argument for life on other planets . Based on a sample of 1, a biased sample chosen by them to suit themselves, and without knowing how life starts, they say that there "probably" is life on other planets! Randomness (as a causal agent rather than a statistical tool) has not been proven to exist in our world . In our everyday world, random-looking things can be explained by chaos theory, which is deterministic . In atomic physics, random-looking things are better explained by the Anthropic Principle . "The past has to be exactly the way it was for the present to be exactly the way it is"	BBCmicro (15761)
1413899	2016-01-11 20:37:00	I don't think the statement that there is "probably" life on other planets relies that heavily on statistics. Certainly it's part of the statement but I think it's reasonable. We start with the knowledge that life is possible and can happen, because we exist. We then use what we know about life here to theorise what conditions are required for it to exist, and because we don't know if other types of life are possible we discount those for the sake of argument. The only use of statistics is to figure out how many places in the known universe could theoretically have those conditions to support life, and we are starting to have enough observational data to make an educated guess at that. The number is huge, no matter how conservatively you try to calculate it. So then based on the knowledge that it can happen and has a huge number of opportunities to happen you are left with the statement that it "probably" has happened elsewhere. To know what that probability is you'd have to go back to statistics but I don't think we have enough data to make a meaningful guess at that other than the already stated "probably" which only implies greater than 50% really. Now trying to figure out the odds of intelligent life is much more tricky, but personally I'd still go with probably. I don't believe we'll ever meet them though, the distances involved are just too vast.	dugimodo (138)
1413900	2016-01-11 23:59:00	[QUOTE=dugimodo;1238359 We start with the knowledge that life is possible and can happen... So then based on the knowledge that it can happen...[/QUOTE] Your use of the word "happen" implies randomness. (happen = happen at random) It's a perfect example of science's "God of the gaps". You don't know how life starts so, well, it must have happened at random. Tsk! For me, one of the reasons for avoiding randomness is that in the Many Worlds theory, each individual world is deterministic. It means our world runs entirely mechanically and there is no need to wheel-in randomness	BBCmicro (15761)
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