The Atheist Thread (Long Time Coming)

Oh Bob, follow the news a little better and figure out who this friend of the Pope is. You know the Resurrection happened as well as the Pope. You know it is the only explination for Christianity. Give us a break.

You really need to get past your belief that deep down, people believe the same things that you do.

Quote: FrGamble

Oh Bob, follow the news a little better and figure out who this friend of the Pope is.

Save me the trouble and just
tell me. It doesn't matter if
they were friends since 3rd
grade and they talk once
a week and the pope really
said it. You wouldn't believe
he did because the resurrection
is the entirety of your religion,
without it you have nothing.

Quote: Dalex64

You really need to get past your belief that deep down, people believe the same things that you do.

He'll never understand there are
7 billion people all creating their
own realities, and millions of them
are Xtions creating a different
Xtion reality than the one he's
been taught. He feels it's his
job to force his reality as the
only true reality on them.

Fred Hoyle [1915-2001] was an interesting atheist.

He was an English astronomer who held onto the steady state theory of the Universe. Apparently his belief in atheism - he was someone who made a point about his being an atheist - influenced his preference for this theory, which he never gave up on.

There are two hard-to-explain-away pieces of evidence for the Big Bang, the prevailing theory today that Hoyle unintentionally actually gave name to. One is the background microwave radiation, thought to have come from the BB, and the radio telescope evidence that the universe early on used to be much denser, as it would be expected to be with a BB origin. Lastly, the steady state theory is much more 'pure theory only' that is only supported by not contradicting general properties of the Universe, and I think we can say it has few adherents today.

Some of his other ideas are interesting. In particular, he was a promoter of the Panspermia theory that life originated elsewhere and on Earth it was 'seeded' by organisms already containing DNA. This admittedly appeals due to the seemingly quite improbable development on Earth from scratch. He invited us to "compare the random emergence of even the simplest cell without panspermia to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein" .

He also found the Theory of Evolution hard to swallow in its entirety, postulating that there was panspermian intervention that came along [from comets I think] to 'help' evolution along.

It's hard to believe he didn't think his atheism was challenged at all by some of his thinking, but I gather he didn't. As an irony, however, today he finds himself quoted by anti-evolution literature that advocates Intelligent Design as an alternative to that theory; of course, much of that sort of thing comes from religious objection. And I have to chuckle at the use of the word sperm in Panspermia, as a mischievous person can connect that, as an exclusively male thing, with "God the Father". How delicious!

Quote: odiousgambit

Fred Hoyle [1915-2001] was an interesting atheist.

He was an English astronomer who held onto the steady state theory

Wow, you wrote that long post
and never once said what the
steady state theory is. Lets not
explain the Big Rip theory or
the Big Crunch theory either.

All we know for sure is we can
only see to the observable end
of the universe for now, we have
no idea if it's finite or infinite.
Other clues point to infinite
and trillions of galaxies that
never end.

Quote: odiousgambit

He invited us to "compare the random emergence of even the simplest cell without panspermia to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein" .

Very well could be nothing more than my own projection, but I find these comments to be the height of ignorance.

Forget entirely the false equivalency of a designed machine v natural being, mechanical connection v chemical reactions and all that nonsense. My beef is always with scale. I wonder if it's just me (hence projection) or if no one else understand that to understand this is completely impossible.

There's memes trending today about wealth inequality that demonstrate it pretty well, IMO. "The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is roughly a billion dollars". Or, "A million seconds ago was eleven days prior. A billion seconds ago was 1988." Trying to comprehend even something as familiar as a million is damn near boggling, though, I'd argue, possible. Every single NFL game today, take the attendance and put them all in one field. That's a million people. I've been to Ralph Wilson, I can multiply that by 12. That's a million. That's not too hard.

Beyond that, I call bulls#$%. A million dollars in $100 bills stands 43" tall. A billion stands one and one half kilometers, some 3,500 FEET. Can one really comprehend the scale? A trillion stands 678 motherfranklin MILES. A walk to the end of a million wouldn't get me from behind my table. A walk to a billion would take me almost into town. A walk to a trillion and I'd be AT YOUR FRONT DOOR, OG!

Now try to apply the "random construction" argument to the scale of f#$%ing eternity. There are an estimated 100 to 200 BILLION galaxies in our observable universe. And that's just what we can see so far. In each, there's an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars. Using the low estimates, we're already into the septillions, some 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different Sols. We get into a bit of young science with this next, but it's believed that each star should have 5 - 10 different planets around it. That's, again using the lowest of estimates, 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different planets. Moons? We have reason to believe life can form on them, too. I don't reckon they're large enough for us to have a read on our neighboring systems, but our own has 198 different ones.

So... we have 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 known planets and moons using the lowest estimates for all, some 10 OCTILLION, and every single second for the last 14,400,000,000 years, there have been innumerable, uncountable, unfathomable amount of "experiments" via myriad natural forces under conditions and with materials that run the gamut of physical possibility.

And this guy reduces it to a tornado in a junkyard.

Quote: Face

ow try to apply the "random construction" argument to the scale of f#$%ing eternity. There are an estimated 100 to 200 BILLION galaxies.

That's been upped considerably to 2
trillion galaxies, and more. It probably
is an infinite number. The more we
learn, the less we know. So we wash
our hands of it and blame it all on
some imaginary god, like that's a
solution to anything. Like we're still
ignorant nomads wandering in the
desert, eating with our right hand
because use our left to wipe our
asses.

I think giving necessary complexity to produce life only the 14 billion life of the Universe is a bit unfair.

Even if the complexity is estimated to take 3 times the life of the Universe, that's still a 33% chance it will occur during our one universe. Not unreasonable we got a lucky roll. And not an improbable one until you get into higher numbers of Universes time.

As we know, odds don't produce their results evenly. Of course, we could have not got the roll, but we wouldn't be here to talk about it.

That he's likely wrong about a lot of things is what everybody is saying. Nonetheless an interesting guy, and we need people who don't go along with the trend in any field, including scientific ones. He certainly knew how to stick to his guns.