... I'm not going to be able to sleep now ¬_¬

[Pyrmon]

The purpose of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is to show how useless the philosophical arguments in favor of a god existing are. The same arguments could be used for any number of ridiculous beings and none of them are falsifiable.

We are talking about science. Cold, hard facts. The philosophical arguments for/against the existence of a God are a whole other game and should have their own thread.

 

[Helpful Corn]

Tony is using the word "belief" but what he intends is the concept of faith
There could be an invisible unicorn, but only if God put it there is what you christains believe. Those who believe Hawking believe that all of these theories are 100% fact when there has and never will be enough time to conduct an experiment that could make them or anything else definate. Certaintly not whether time is finite or infinite and whether there is a difference. I believe that the universe/existance/reality does make sense, because it should make sense. Believing that it is caused by an anthropomorphic God entity seems awful foolish. Believing that it just popped out of nowhen is equaly foolish. Nothing in this existance is definte, not God, not scientific law. Both are possible, and are certainly not mutualy exclusive. Both contingents are making the same mistake of believing in absolutes.

 

[Osaka]

Science is about proving things with cold hard facts. You can't prove God does not exist with cold hard facts, you may be able to prove how everything in the universe came to be, but you can in no way ever prove Goes doesn't exist. if you are a person of science, you can't go against this fact, that way, being a person of science, you must accept the possibility that God exists. If you don't and deny it, then you are not a person of science, you are just going on belief, which is not any more right or wrong then anyone else.

The End

 

[Blood Fetish]

Science is about proving things with cold hard facts. You can't prove God does not exist with cold hard facts, you may be able to prove how everything in the universe came to be, but you can in no way ever prove Goes doesn't exist. if you are a person of science, you can't go against this fact, that way, being a person of science, you must accept the possibility that God exists. If you don't and deny it, then you are not a person of science, you are just going on belief, which is not any more right or wrong then anyone else.

The End

Argument of false analogy. Fallacy of false equivalence. Etc.

 

[Helpful Corn]

you can't prove that cold hard facts exist without cold hard facts. You can't prove that the earth is round or that round is round.

 

[Magmorph]

The purpose of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is to show how useless the philosophical arguments in favor of a god existing are. The same arguments could be used for any number of ridiculous beings and none of them are falsifiable.

We are talking about science. Cold, hard facts. The philosophical arguments for/against the existence of a God are a whole other game and should have their own thread.

The arguments you made in your previous post are in no way scientific. Where are the facts they are based upon? The god in your argument is interchangeable with the Invisible Pink Unicorn or any infinite number of other beings. Unfalsifiable claims are absolutely worthless to science.

 

[Densetsu]

I used the word "religion" to signify any kind of supernatural, "spiritual" type thinking. Should have clarified that.

nobody can give me proof that it DOESN'T exist..
I wouldn't call myself stubborn.

This isn't how it works. When you make a claim the onus is on you to support it with evidence. Talking about things that are impossible to measure is a pointless endeavor and the exact reason why people view this behavior as stubbornness.

You might want to rephrase that.

You can't measure love and other emotions. You can't measure willpower, motivation and hope. There are countless things that are impossible to measure, but you can't say it's pointless to talk about them. Just because you can't see them or measure them, doesn't mean they don't exist.

Other things that are impossible to measure are one's faith and the indomitable strength of the human spirit. You can't discount these things as pointless. Some people are better and stronger because of their faith. Is that pointless?

Like Toni, I'm not a religious person at all, but I do believe in something. I don't know what that something is, but if the tendency of the universe is to increase its entropy (in other words, fall into chaos and disorder), then why is so much energy created and expended on the upkeep of life? Wouldn't it be easier if we all just ceased to exist?

Until our tiny, insignificant human minds can comprehend what's going on (which will be never--at least, certainly not in our lifetime), I'm not going to be so presumptuous as to argue that my belief is correct and that others who don't agree are wrong/stubborn/blind/ignorant/etc. I would expect the same kind of respect from others in return.

None of us have the answers, not even the brilliant Stephen Hawking. But it is interesting to hear everyone's thoughts. Just thought I'd add my 2 cents to the mix.

 

[namcuong]

thanks for the link about the lecture . I heard about him but never watch his lecture .He is a genius .

 

[Valwin]

Science is about proving things with cold hard facts. You can't prove God does not exist with cold hard facts, you may be able to prove how everything in the universe came to be, but you can in no way ever prove Goes doesn't exist. if you are a person of science, you can't go against this fact, that way, being a person of science, you must accept the possibility that God exists. If you don't and deny it, then you are not a person of science, you are just going on belief, which is not any more right or wrong then anyone else.

The End

just how i cant prove that dragons are not real

 

[Pyrmon]

The purpose of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is to show how useless the philosophical arguments in favor of a god existing are. The same arguments could be used for any number of ridiculous beings and none of them are falsifiable.

We are talking about science. Cold, hard facts. The philosophical arguments for/against the existence of a God are a whole other game and should have their own thread.

The arguments you made in your previous post are in no way scientific. Where are the facts they are based upon? The god in your argument is interchangeable with the Invisible Pink Unicorn or any infinite number of other beings. Unfalsifiable claims are absolutely worthless to science.

I based it's characteristics on religious scriptures. Since we are discussing the existence of a god-like being and the only description of such is found in scriptures, I would say it's good enough for the sake of the argument. And I used the characteristics of the invisible pink unicorn I was given, in that it was pink, invisible, a unicorn and right next to me. Due to differences in the characteristics, the God here and the pink unicorn are not interchangeable. Unless you suddenly added that the invisible pink unicorn existed outside our universe, in which case I would agree it might exist (as I already did), tough it seems unlikely it would have physical form. And how is my reasoning unscientific? I compared the characteristics of two hypothetical beings to know scientific theories to see if it was possible for any of them to exist. It turns out it is.

Science is about proving things with cold hard facts. You can't prove God does not exist with cold hard facts, you may be able to prove how everything in the universe came to be, but you can in no way ever prove Goes doesn't exist. if you are a person of science, you can't go against this fact, that way, being a person of science, you must accept the possibility that God exists. If you don't and deny it, then you are not a person of science, you are just going on belief, which is not any more right or wrong then anyone else.

The End

just how i cant prove that dragons are not real

On our planet or generally?
On our planet: No fossil record and there aren't any cases of someone seeing one. Unless they lied dormant in some lava near the center of the Earth, we would have spotted at least one. And when you count in issues as food and such, it becomes even less probable.
Generally: Dragon-like creatures could exist on other life-bearing planets.

 

[Blood Fetish]

None of us have the answers, not even the brilliant Stephen Hawking.

Religion exists (in part) to provide simple answers to things we do not yet understand. Natural selection and evolution put a nail in the creation myth. Before that, people "believed" that humans were made by a god, because it was an easy answer to a difficult question. You will notice the same pattern in this thread and in real life.

It should be noted, with regard to your comment on entropy, that virtually no energy is being used on the creation and maintenance of life. The universe is so vast, and so old, that the existence of life on Earth is less than a drop in an ocean. I understand what you were trying to get at, but you need to expand your scope by thousands of orders of magnitude.

Until our tiny, insignificant human minds can comprehend what's going on (which will be never--at least, certainly not in our lifetime), I'm not going to be so presumptuous as to argue that my belief is correct and that others who don't agree are wrong/stubborn/blind/ignorant/etc.

Again, I understand what you are getting at here. Like the Genesis myth, people have attributed countless things that they do not understand to a supernatural being. Time and time again as our understanding of the world grows these beliefs are proven wrong. How many times do we need to falsely believe in a magical being before we start looking for more natural answers? At best these people are simply neutral, at worst they are actively standing in the way of scientific progress to the detriment of all mankind.

 

[Densetsu]

None of us have the answers, not even the brilliant Stephen Hawking.

Religion exists (in part) to provide simple answers to things we do not yet understand. Natural selection and evolution put a nail in the creation myth. Before that, people "believed" that humans were made by a god, because it was an easy answer to a difficult question. You will notice the same pattern in this thread and in real life.

It should be noted, with regard to your comment on entropy, that virtually no energy is being used on the creation and maintenance of life. The universe is so vast, and so old, that the existence of life on Earth is less than a drop in an ocean. I understand what you were trying to get at, but you need to expand your scope by thousands of orders of magnitude.

I wasn't just talking about Earth, but also about the possibility of life on other planets in other solar systems and galaxies. Every star is a potential solar system with planets that have the potential for life. Even if I were to be conservative and say that only one in a billion stars (or one star in every billion galaxies, for that matter) have life-sustaining planets revolving around them, my scope would still be expanded by countless orders of magnitude, and not just thousands.

 

[Blood Fetish]

I wasn't just talking about Earth, but also about the possibility of life on other planets in other solar systems and galaxies. Every star is a potential solar system with planets that have the potential for life. Even if I were to be conservative and say that only one in a billion stars (or one star in every billion galaxies, for that matter) have life-sustaining planets revolving around them, my scope would still be expanded by countless orders of magnitude, and not just thousands.

It sounds like we are both in agreement then. The existence of life in such an infinitesimally small part of the universe does not in any way mean that entropy has been thwarted by a higher power.

 

[Bobbyloujo]

*snip*

Exactly what I didn't feel like typing out. Thank you.

 

[R4Liam]

This is slightly off topic (thanks to people forming the usual debate about religion) but I am more interesting in discovering new things than this age old debate so I found this cool video:

http://vimeo.com/10904153

 

[Bobbyloujo]

This is slightly off topic (thanks to people forming the usual debate about religion) but I am more interesting in discovering new things than this age old debate so I found this cool video:

Ninja combo-breaker

Anyway, video looks interesting. I'll watch it later.