The Big Bang blows atheism sky high

[John Connor]

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Christian author Eric Metaxas notes, “The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces – gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ nuclear forces – were determined less than one-millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction – by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000 – then no stars could have ever formed at all. Feel free to gulp. … It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row. Really?”

-SNIP-


“I’m not an atheist,” added Einstein. “The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/j...-eventually-catch-gods-word?hl=1&noRedirect=1


What's say you? Are you, the atheist so bold to proclaim that you know the writer of all these books?

 

[Aikouka]

Oh, goodness... this thread is going to go places, and none of them good.

I guess I'll start! FYI, "I don't understand this, therefore God" is pretty shit logic.

 

[thesmokingman]

That quote by Einstein is taken quite out of context iirc.

Oh, goodness... this thread is going to go places, and none of them good.

I guess I'll start! FYI, "I don't understand this, therefore God" is pretty shit logic.

Vat? It's not a stretch is it to create the universe all just so he could create little midget ppl in his image?

 

[sandorski]

Ah, this shit argument again. 99.9% of the Universe doesn't support Life. "Fine Tuned" my ass.

 

[John Connor]

LOL! 3 comments in 8 minutes and I bet no one read the article.

 

[thesmokingman]

LOL! 3 comments in 8 minutes and I bet no one read the article.

It's not worth reading when you realize the letter they quoted from Einstein is so out of context it is fucked up.

Want to know what Einstein thinks?

Still, without Brouwer's suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and whose thinking I have a deep affinity for, have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything "chosen" about them.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/word-god-is-product-of-human-weakness.html

 

[sandorski]

LOL! 3 comments in 8 minutes and I bet no one read the article.

The argument isn't new, just like every other Apologetic.

 

[John Connor]

It's not worth reading when you realize the letter they quoted from Einstein is so out of context it is fucked up.

Want to know what Einstein thinks?



http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/word-god-is-product-of-human-weakness.html

Einstein had previously explored the belief that man could not understand the nature of God. In an interview published in 1930 in G. S. Viereck's book Glimpses of the Great, Einstein, in response to a question about whether or not he defined himself as a pantheist, explained:

Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.[21]​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein#cite_note-21


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein#Agnosticism.2C_deism.2C_and_atheism

​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

 

[thesmokingman]

And you missed the part where he stated in his final letter before his death?

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition.

 

[escrow4]

God only exists as a convenient excuse. Every human likes blaming (or praying to) someone else to blame/fix whatever. Much easier than coming to terms with the fact that you and everyone else will die and none of this will matter. This planet and sun will go eventually and so will any other planet humanity may colonize. Nothing lasts except the excuse.

 

[John Connor]

I don't know. Einstein sure had said some conflicting things. On one hand he's saying God could potentially exist and on the other not so much. Very peculiar person.

 

[thesmokingman]

I don't know. Einstein sure had said some conflicting things. On one hand he's saying God could potentially exist and on the other not so much. Very peculiar person.

No he's not conflicting. He says it right there. You need another quote or something?

 

[John Connor]

God only exists as a convenient excuse. Every human likes blaming (or praying to) someone else to blame/fix whatever. Much easier than coming to terms with the fact that you and everyone else will die and none of this will matter. This planet and sun will go eventually and so will any other planet humanity may colonize. Nothing lasts except the excuse.

Kinda sounds like a sig Ironwing had of me using my quote.


Let me write what I said. LOL If I remember it.

"It's the sun... that one day will burn out. WHO CARES!

But in the grand scheme of things. How many other suns are out there sustaining life in the habitual zone?

 

[John Connor]

No he's not conflicting. He says it right there. You need another quote or something?

I already know your stance from your comments. So I don't need you to prove anything.

 

[thesmokingman]

I already know your stance from your comments. So I don't need you to prove anything.

The letter was bought at auction in May 2008, for £170,000; unsurprisingly, one of the unsuccessful bidders was Richard Dawkins.

Everyone wants his last words but you.

:awe:

 

[John Connor]

What is regarded as a treasure to some, may not be to me. But I digress. I'd rather have his brain. Even though he specifically did not want that to happen.

 

[sportage]

Well, what is GOD?
People imagine a human form with super powers.
One could call lightening a God, maybe.
Or the force of a storm a God. Maybe.

People believe God is human-like and man is in his image.
But consider animals, insects, vs man.
They too can create life thru reproduction, and they too can conform to their environment, and they too have intelligences that suits their needs.
No, they don't have TV or WiFi, but why would a fly need WiFi?
Or the ability to design and manufacture a car?
And why would a cat ever want to go to the moon?

Mankind's ability has the potential to destroy its own environment. I don't see that as so intelligent vs a bug or an elephant having intelligence.

More so than a God, maybe man evolved like the bugs or other creatures, we were meant to be cavemen equal in intelligence of other animals on earth.
Then, maybe some alien force mated with mankind and the result was something between a caveman and a farm animal.

As far as the big bang goes, who knows the limits of space and whats out there?
Maybe there are tri=billions of such environments separated by unlimited space in-between.
And maybe our big bang was just a fluke.
Maybe there have been unlimited big bangs, uncountable big bangs, and this big bang we exist within just one in an unlimited number of big bangs.
And the odds of one in an unlimited amount of big bangs creating life, just the odds of the fluke.
In short, who knows and why should we even assume we do know or could ever know?

Maybe the odds of the entire solar system being wiped out by a massive meteor or swallowed up and crushed by a developing black hole slowly moving its way towards our little corner of the galaxy are better than we can imagine.
And that shoots this god theory all to hell.
Maybe we are just a fluke, and its only a matter of time.

 

[John Connor]

And maybe our big bang was just a fluke.

"...tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row."

 

[Schmide]

"...tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row."

Or placing a banana in ones hand.

 

[Hugh Jass]

Shit thread is shit.

 

[PowerEngineer]

LOL! 3 comments in 8 minutes and I bet no one read the article.

Any "article" that cites its first biblical verse in the fourth sentence isn't really worth finishing unless you are really interested in seeing believers try to twist science to prove god's existence (which is just as foolish as non-believers trying to use science to prove that god - of any description - does not exist)

I don't know. Einstein sure had said some conflicting things. On one hand he's saying God could potentially exist and on the other not so much. Very peculiar person.

Well, then I guess in your view all agnostics are very peculiar people. That's okay because we agnostics find it just as peculiar (or maybe just foolish) that anyone can claim that any kind of god must certainly exist.

P.S. - OP may want to look into multiverse theories.

 

[DaveSimmons]

This improbability argument was just as silly when used by creationists to try to say that humans "must have been" intelligently designed because the probability of us evolving exactly this way is so low.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Improbable_things_happen

And no, it wasn't worth bothering to read the religious tract opinion piece.

 

[flexy]

It may well be that THIS universe is "impossible", or at least those things that came about, including ourselves, our minds, are "extremely, extremely unlikely" and require an almost impossible amount of imagination what fine-tuning was required.

Yet, this is irrelevant when you look at current cosmological models, quantum theory, theory of multiple/infinite universes.

The idea there are (almost) infinite universes that constantly "bud" from other universes. So yes, obviously we are in the one universe where everything happened to turn out right....but there can be billions of other universes.

In some, life didn't come about. In some, matter didn't come about. In some, life might have come about but is silicone based etc...the multiverse theory is more plausible to me than having to accept the idea that

* ONE universe just happened to "come about" from a quantum fluctuation 13.7B years ago. Nonsense. If one fluctuation happened and gave birth to a universe, this is not a unique event. It probably happened and happens all the time.

 

[StrangerGuy]

This improbability argument was just as silly when used by creationists to try to say that humans "must have been" intelligently designed because the probability of us evolving exactly this way is so low.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Improbable_things_happen

And no, it wasn't worth bothering to read the religious tract opinion piece.

This reminds me of the joke of whether there is a parallel universe where no parallel universes exist.

 

[SagaLore]

What is the fine tuning necessary for God to come into existence?