Bill Maher - "Ground Zero" Mosque and other issues.

[ConstipatedVigilante]

There is no other explanation for our existence besides there being God. None. Science can't explain it. And the best odds they come up with is next to impossible. Everything necessary to support life in total perfection is on this rock. Even the damn solar system is aligned in such a way that even perfect gravity is here. The sun and moon are perfect distances away to support life here on this rock. The design is just to perfect to be an accident. You may be in the right to criticize religion, but to dismiss the idea of the possibility of there being God is just foolish.

You haven't studied any branch of science, have you? Do you have any idea how big our galaxy is, let alone the universe? It's so big that something like our solar system is likely to exist somewhere, and we know for a fact that planets like ours exist elsewhere too, and thus life is likely present in other parts of the universe.

In short, your entire view of existence centers on yourself. Believe it or not, your existence may be just an accident in nature. If that's really too hard for you to believe, then you may as well keep clinging to your book that was written when everyone KNEW the earth was flat, hell lay on the other side, and the sun revolved around us.

 

[PJABBER]

I'm afraid you don't understand what an atheist actually is. An atheist isn't necessarily one who "knows the universe and/or life was not created by God." That is a common straw man put forward by theists. While some atheists may assert that they "know" this or that, the basis of atheism is non-belief in something not proven. I explained quite adequately in my example above regarding the flying spaghetti monster. It doesn't really matter what it is we are talking about actually, whether it is God, time machines, or flying spaghetti monsters. There is no rational basis to believe in anything which is not proven.

The only difference between this and the agnostic is that the agnostic says, "there is no evidence either way so I'm not sure." Frankly, it's more a difference in semantics than anything else.

Atheists who go beyond the basic assertion of non-belief based on a lack of evidence are claiming that they can prove the negative, i.e. the non-existence of God. They are then taking on a burden of proof for themselves, and they may be practicing some sort of faith. By that isn't definitional atheism. It's simply an additional road that some atheists travel and if they open themselves up to criticism for doing so, that is their problem.

- wolf

Actually I do know the difference which is why I took the pains describe them if somewhat inadequately.

The definition you provide is called agnostic atheism. These people do not believe in divinity but they also do not positively claim that divinity does not exist.

The greater understanding of atheism is a positive affirmation that no deity exists. And you are right, they assume the burden of a standard of proof at the same level as a theist and equally one that they cannot achieve. Without proof it becomes the core reliance on faith rather than knowledge that I believe Classy refers to.

The origin of life on this Earth is far from determined and it may be that both creationism and evolution have insight into what might have happened - perhaps the planet was seeded/colonized by aliens millions of years ago, as is often speculated in science fiction novels, and the original life forms mutated and evolved in adapting to this changeable environment.

We see evidence of evolution but we have no insight as to what caused life to be here in the first place. The shakiest part of evolutionary thought is in the earliest period that can be discerned and is further complicated by the possibility that life has come, been almost destroyed by natural phenomenon and has re-established and re-evolved over and over again.

Maybe at some point we will have more definitive knowledge but for now all we can do is wonder at the grandeur and the symmetry of the universe which exists no matter at what scale we choose to examine it. Maybe not a final proof of a divine maker but certainly a speculation.

 

[OCGuy]

And what do you believe? You are big on criticizing everyone else, but to cowardly to say what you believe.

What does what I believe have to do with what you believe? Why do you have to attack my beliefs to prop up yours?

Your rational is childish. The Greeks would assign Gods to things they didn't understand as well, until it could later be explained.

Because you do not have the ability to debate, this is my last response to you.

 

[HumblePie]

There is no other explanation for our existence besides there being God. None. Science can't explain it. And the best odds they come up with is next to impossible. Everything necessary to support life in total perfection is on this rock. Even the damn solar system is aligned in such a way that even perfect gravity is here. The sun and moon are perfect distances away to support life here on this rock. The design is just to perfect to be an accident. You may be in the right to criticize religion, but to dismiss the idea of the possibility of there being God is just foolish.

This is where you are wrong. Signs of extra terrestrial life HAVE been found. I'm not talking about little green men, or even any higher life forms yet. Considering how big the universe is, it may take awhile. But fossilized bacteria remains have been found from soil samples from Mars for example. The only problem is because the remains are fossilized, there is debate about it because some people want to claim that since no actual DNA or tissue is present, that it is a natural formation of the rock under electron magnification. Also, the spectrum of conditions that can contain life has been MAJORLY broadened in the last few decades since things like living bacteria have been discovered alive and well in active volcanoes where it was once previously thought to toxic and way to hot to support life.

One of the abiogensis theories for life on earth (not to confuse with evolution as soooo many religious whackos do) is that some form of floating space bacteria came to Earth so many billion of years of ago and eventually everything evolved from that. That is because there have been strains of bacteria found to be completely radiation intolerant and do survive in space once brought up there. There are other abiogenesis theories out there, and many of them have merits of thought, but none of them are taken as fact by anyone who follows science.

So your assumption that life on earth is the ONLY place it can be formed and that all life must be confined to how our planet environment is setup is ignorant and wrong.

 

[classy]

I, the Omnipotent Creator who Created everything 5 minutes ago including your Memories, command you to worship me and forsake your false god. PS: Also send $49.99

Whats your paypal

 

[classy]

So your assumption that life on earth is the ONLY place it can be formed and that all life must be confined to how our planet environment is setup is ignorant and wrong.

There is zero credible evidence life as we know it exists or existed anywhere except here, on this rock. Your whole entire post is based on theory and belief we can't be alone because the universe is too big. Well I got bad news for you, we are alone .

 

[Mr. Lennon]

There is zero credible evidence life as we know it exists or existed anywhere except here, on this rock. Your whole entire post is based on theory and belief we can't be alone because the universe is too big. Well I got bad news for you, we are alone .

What proof do you have that makes you certain that we are alone?

Edit: For fuck sakes, does the fact that comets carry water and other gases found here on Earth make you wonder at all?

 

[sandorski]

There is zero credible evidence life as we know it exists or existed anywhere except here, on this rock. Your whole entire post is based on theory and belief we can't be alone because the universe is too big. Well I got bad news for you, we are alone .

We *might* be alone, but many planets around other stars are being discovered as we discuss this.

 

[jackschmittusa]

I love the "Earth is perfect for us" argument.

The Earth was not created to sustain what we are today. We are what we are today because we evolved in this environment.

 

[HumblePie]

There is zero credible evidence life as we know it exists or existed anywhere except here, on this rock. Your whole entire post is based on theory and belief we can't be alone because the universe is too big. Well I got bad news for you, we are alone .

Do yourself a favor and look up what a cryosampler is. The fact it was used to find bacteria living 41km up above the surface of the planet means that all life is not confined to this rock. How it got up there is anyone's guess at this point, but the fact remains that bacteria and parts of bacteria are floating around in space.

And fossilized remains found are not "theory" and "belief" as they are something that are factual pieces of evidence found.

 

[classy]

What proof do you have that makes you certain that we are alone?

Edit: For fuck sakes, does the fact that comets carry water and other gases found here on Earth make you wonder at all?

Has there been any contact from anywhere, NO. Life my good man, there is no credible proof that there is life of any kind anywhere else besides here. That is my point in this whole argument. Atheists and religous people have the same faith. But they each believe in something that can't be proven definitively right or wrong. Each has got religion, they just have different gods.

 

[classy]

Do yourself a favor and look up what a cryosampler is. The fact it was used to find bacteria living 41km up above the surface of the planet means that all life is not confined to this rock. How it got up there is anyone's guess at this point, but the fact remains that bacteria and parts of bacteria are floating around in space.

And fossilized remains found are not "theory" and "belief" as they are something that are factual pieces of evidence found.

Well if all this is true as you say, answer me this. Why didn't any of those bacteria evolve like we did? If we evolved from some dumb animal, how come all these bacteria didn't evolve? But its anyone's guess right? Now come on, evangelize your enlightenment.

 

[HumblePie]

Has there been any contact from anywhere, NO. Life my good man, there is no credible proof that there is life of any kind anywhere else besides here. That is my point in this whole argument. Atheists and religous people have the same faith. But they each believe in something that can't be proven definitively right or wrong. Each has got religion, they just have different gods.

I just proved you wrong. You are a moron. Are you not satisfied until E.T. calls you personally on your cell phone or something? Signs of life HAVE been found outside the confines of our planet. They are real, and they can be looked at and verified. Planets that are similar enough to ours that may contain life have been found. But you know how far away those planets are? I'll let you on another clue, it may take awhile before anyone from this planet makes it out to another similar planet to check for further signs of extraterrestrial life.

Now go troll somewhere else.

 

[HumblePie]

Well if all this is true as you say, answer me this. Why didn't any of those bacteria evolve like we did? If we evolved from some dumb animal, how come all these bacteria didn't evolve? But its anyone's guess right? Now come on, evangelize your enlightenment.

Bacteria DO EVOLVE!!! Holy shit dude. You are asking science to demonstrate a single cell organism evolving into a cat for example that you can watch the process yourself? This is something that took BILLIONS of years to accomplish and you want it done here and now for you?

For fuck's sake, people like you will keep their heads up their asses until they see a monkey give birth to a toaster.

 

[CallMeJoe]

The entire earth and solar system are proof God exist. You live in a perfectly designed world and solar system that even the most staunch evolution believers admit the probability of this being an accident run 1 in a number almost infinite.
- classy

If the existence of the universe requires a Creator God, where did that Creator come from? Was He the product of a Big Bang, or does His existence require the existence of yet another prior Creator God?

 

[PJABBER]

For fuck's sake, people like you will keep their heads up their asses until they see a monkey give birth to a toaster.

LOL! Pics?

 

[Grooveriding]

I challenge any of the self-deferential atheist here to create a single atom out of nothing. Too hard? How about if you make a single life form out of nothing, that should be a lot easier. Still no takers?

The limitation we all have, no matter what you believe or don't, is in understanding creation. Something coming from nothing, or something else. Until you get that right everything else is just speculation on inexact observation.

The most valuable thing in this entire thread is above.

 

[sandorski]

The most valuable thing in this entire thread is above.

for the lols?

 

[HumblePie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhmjnYKlVnM&feature=related

 

[ShawnD1]

I agree with Bill Maher at least 90% of the time, but I still think he's a douche. He just isn't funny. The material is there and he has good points, but his delivery is terrible. I was watching Religulous and I couldn't even finish the damn thing because I was so pissed off with the way he comes off as a self-important wise and beautiful woman. He's talking to people who genuinely want to talk about god or share beliefs in a civil way, and it resorts to him insulting the people right to their face.
Shows like the Daily Show or Colbert are funny because the guys on those shows ask stupid questions then allow the person to answer them and say stupid things. Maher doesn't let people speak. As soon as they start saying something he disagrees with, he'll interrupt them or get into a shouting match. He really is just as bad as Bill O'Reilly. Being right doesn't make you less of a wise and beautiful woman.

If the existence of the universe requires a Creator God, where did that Creator come from? Was He the product of a Big Bang, or does His existence require the existence of yet another prior Creator God?

Sorry brah. Law of thermodynamics. You can't create something from nothing. The only way it can exist now is if it always existed.

Do yourself a favor and look up what a cryosampler is. The fact it was used to find bacteria living 41km up above the surface of the planet means that all life is not confined to this rock. How it got up there is anyone's guess at this point, but the fact remains that bacteria and parts of bacteria are floating around in space.

A generally accepted idea (I won't say theory) is that organic systems naturally form on their own and they just happen to form in proportions that correspond to the most abundant atoms. The most abundant reactive atoms in the universe are hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in that order. Humans are made of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in that order. If a basic system or component of a living system were to assemble itself from random junk laying around, one would expect it to use atoms in ratios proportional to what is available, and that's exactly what we see.

IMO, people looking for planets similar to our own need to think outside the box. We see carbon-water based life on earth because this planet has a huge amount of carbon and water and lots of time for systems to build up in. It was more than 100 years ago that someone first suggested the possibility of silicon based life on other planets. This is because silicon is resilient against heat, so silicon based life might be possible on very hot planets. Similarly, lots of people ruled out life on ice planets because there's no liquid water. What about ammonia? Ammonia is strangely similar to water. It kills humans, but ammonia does everything that water does, and it can remain a liquid at extremely low temperatures. It might allow life to happen on cold planets.

We could probably find life or something similar to life on Venus if we had the chance to land there and collect stuff. It's a rock planet like earth, it has an atmosphere, it's a very active planet with volcanoes and rain (acid), so it seems like a great candidate to find something. Unfortunately we can't test that right now because it's too hot.

 

[dwell]

Maher is the quintessentially whiny liberal. When he went as far as to call the terrorists courageous and our military cowards he should have been extradited to Abu Ghraib (the Saddam Hussein era Abu Ghraib).

 

[Daedalus685]

I challenge any of the self-deferential atheist here to create a single atom out of nothing. Too hard? How about if you make a single life form out of nothing, that should be a lot easier. Still no takers?

The limitation we all have, no matter what you believe or don't, is in understanding creation. Something coming from nothing, or something else. Until you get that right everything else is just speculation on inexact observation.

This week I created no fewer than 17 electrons out of 'nothing', I say 17 as those were the only interactions I happened to detect.. I expect several thousand more than that existed. At the tevatron protons are created with some regularity.

Just because YOU do not understand something does not mean it is not how things are. Bacteria have been created from raw materials already... No, no one has taken a beaker and exposed it to energy and ended up with life. But how would one be expected to reproduce a process that took millions to billions of years in a lab? Evolution of an indevidual bacteria from raw materials is the same principal as complex life from that bacteria. Certain collections of molecules are more likely to survive, and thus continue on and change into something even more likely to survive. It is not so miss understood as you seem to think. The exact mechanism may not be known in perfect detail, but we went to the moon without understanding gravity to perfect detail. There is no part of science that is understood to perfect detail.

I consider myself an atheist... But I accept perfectly that it is "possible" an intelligence directed the creation of the universe.. I just find it profoundly unlikely and needlessly complicated. I do not believe this intelligence has any active role in the current universe. I am not agnostic simple becasue I am unsure as noone can be sure about anything.

 

[zsdersw]

The greater misdeed on this issue is when each side asserts explicitly the impossibility of the other.

I'm entirely agnostic.

classy, for someone who rightly states the similarities between atheism and theism, you sure do get it wrong when you commit the misdeed I stated above with your "there's no other explanation than God" and "life cannot exist elsewhere" statements. Allow me to address them both below:

1.) There are always more explanations to the origin of life. All of them are theories.

2.) Just because E.T. hasn't knocked on your door or because, in your lifetime, you haven't witnessed or heard about anything evolving into a higher form of life doesn't mean those things are impossible.

 

[Atreus21]

Who says it's rational?

Let's take a hypothetical here. If I assert the existence of oh, say, a flying spaghetti monster, you're probably going to demand proof that such a thing exists before you accept it, right? And if I fail to produce that evidence, your non-belief in the flying spaghetti monster is rational, because logically, one who asserts the existence of a thing must produce evidence of the existence of said thing.

- wolf

Rational can go both ways.

Important to the beginning of any argument about God's existence is the admission that it's difficult to objectively prove anything. It's difficult to prove, beyond anyone's capacity to deny, my own existence.

We're not arguing in favor of just a flying spaghetti monster, we're arguing in favor of a flying spaghetti monster which is the ultimate origin of all things. I'm simply arguing that there is some intelligent force which created and ordered the universe and all reality. That doesn't seem to me to be so dogmatic nor irrational an assumption.

 

[Daedalus685]

I'm simply arguing that there is some intelligent force which created and ordered the universe and all reality. That doesn't seem to me to be so dogmatic nor irrational an assumption.

It is not inherently irrational as it is a rather great unknown. However, I don't think that it is necessarily worth stating that things one does not know could be one of many possibilities, or none. It seems needlessly complicated to state an intelligence directed all things I do not understand in the face of things simply being. I find it odd that many folks have no problem with a creating force simply 'being' yet when confronted with the idea that the universe may indeed be infinite and just 'exist' it is somehow distasteful.

One is free to believe what they will about great unknowns. It is refreshing that many have different opinions on it. However, I draw a clear distinction between this is disregarding actual fact (such as the time scale of the universe, or the evolution of life) in order to preserve ones misguided beliefs.

I could be wrong about the creation of the universe being entirely natural (the recent futurism episode did a good job of outlining this principal) or my belif that the "universe" as we know it is finite but its higher structure infinite, but I am almost certain that back to a few seconds after the 'big bang' started our description of the universe is both very accurate and explained exceedingly well by natural (perhaps random) phenomena. So simply because other places where intelligent intervention was required have had their explanations replaced by physics, the current gaps will eventually be filled in a similar manner. I am more comfortable saying that I do not know but it is likely natural and this seems simpler than trying to account for the creation of a creator, thus more logical.