Guilty people protest their innocence all the time. I would imagine that lying is to be expected in a court of law, from at least one person. The one who doesn't want to be removed from society will do what ever they can to avoid that result. Some of them may even get away with it.
Pete - You keep repating the same mantra over and over again "there is no god". And yet you can offer no evidence what-so-ever to back up that assertion. I'm not even saying that I believe in god, I'm just asking why you cannot accept that there is the tiniest, most amazingly remote posibility that god does exist. The fact that you choose not to believe it does not make it impossible. Are you so arrogant that you believe that the human mind can comprehend everything in the universe? Surely someone as inteligent and educated as you cannot believe something so patently absurd ? You belittle religion because you believe that it is based on myths and legends ( and, to be honest, I actually agree with you on that ) but you cling despertely to your own belief that there is no god, despite the fact that you CANNOT prove it... Can you not see the irony of that ?
I wasn't arguing for "God" I was merely suggesting that the function of the "God" of religious myth is the same as that attempted by scientific enquiry: to interpret the universe in a manner explicable to human understanding. We require things to have a beginning, a middle and an end; or if you like a past a present and a future. If "God" is unacceptable because something had to create God then something had to write the laws of physics. If God just is than why should not the laws of physics just be? Why have a big bang? It sounds remarkably similar to the Let There Be Light theory. Maybe its because we need one. We are finite so we need a beginning. And when we cannot find one we invent one. And reinvent it over and over.
Maybe he is uncomfortable with talk of God because he believes that he has the job already. There shall be no other God but Pete, all-seeing, all-knowing, whose word is law. He even has his special font to differentiate himself from common mortals. He certainly gets tetchy with unbelievers but unable to smite them, like the Midianites as one man with the rod that is in his hand, and consign them to eternal fire he has to make do with insulting them with a keyboard. However there is salvation. With a click of a mouse he can be cast into outer darkness and the world will not end, all things shall be made new and peace shall reign on the forum.
Quantum entanglement appears to break the laws of physics as we know them with instantaneous action at a distance, the act of observing one of a pair of quantum entangled electrons instantaneously fixes the other, irrespective of where it is in the universe. This is real Alice in Wonderland stuff.
We, (i guess you mean the human race as a whole) did not invent the big bang, we discovered it. Measurements, tests, experiments of every concievable kind have been unable to break the theory. Science does not know what happened prior to this and says so.While continuing to look for answers i should add. Organised religion on the other hand was invented by man, to explain the world as it was understood at the time. I have no issue with that view of the world. The problem only arose when our collective knowledge made the need for a supernatural benevolent uncle redundant. Those that cling to the notion in the face of overwhelming, conciencious,principled work are a mystery to me. Believe what you like but dont try to convince others that its as valid an idea as science.
sixteen pages and still going very entertaining fellas - sod the jokes, this is much more interesting
Being able to prove that most organised religion is largely superstitious mumbo-jumbo created by humans to subjegate other humans does not, in itself disprove the existance of god. It merely proves that religion is largely nonsense, and that's all... OK... So here's my question, and then I'll let it go... Simple one really, any intelligent educated person should be able to explain. Ice; why does it float? And I don't mean the actual physics of it floating, I'm sure that Pete can explain that. But here's the thing - ice is a solid. It is water in its solid form. And solids (pretty much all solids as far as I know) contract as they get colder. Therefore, according to all observable and predictable scientific rules ice should do that too - and therefore it should sink. The colder it becomes, the denser it should become and therefore the more it should sink. But it doesn't. It expands - and it floats. Now, putting aside the scientific explanation of why that happens - what purpose does it serve? And this is wher it gets interesting. Life on earth began in the oceans - even Pete will admit that. BUT - if water behaved like pretty much eveything else does all water would freeze from the bottom up, not the top down - anything living in the water, instead of being trapped below, but basically protected by, the layer of ice that forms at the surface would instead be forced higher and higher into an increasingly hostile environment and would ultimately perish as the water below turned to ice and they were trapped above it. So, if water behaved like every thing, life as we know it could not exist. Given the fact that one substance behaves totally contrary to the laws of physics that apply to everything else - and given that life is able to exist because of that one great anomaly - doesn't that lead you to at least think that there is the smallest, most remote posibility, that there is a power greater than the human mind at work in the universe? And that power might, possibly, be what some people think of as "god"?
Or alternatively, just refer to Al Murray's theory about bacon sandwiches - the ultimate proof that god exists. And just to show that god has a sense of humour, his "chosen people" aren't allowed them...
Simply put, ice is less dense than the water that surrounds it, under normal pressures and within a temperature range that is familiar to human beings. Because ice is less dense than the water surrounding it, it displaces a smaller volume of water than the ice takes up, thus it floats. I'm not sure what you mean when you say water contracts as it freezes. Under normal conditions, it expands slightly - thus for a given mass of H2O, ice takes up more space than water. Water itself is at its densest at 4deg C.
I think he knows all that, what he is asking is why? Why is water the only compound that behaves this way? when water is the single most important element for the creation of life. That's how I see his post anyway :Meh:.
I'm not. I don't believe and I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. You misunderstand me. I'm trying to suggest, probably not very well, that science and theism (not religion) are perhaps more convergent than divergent. Ancient man, without the benefit of current understanding was nevertheless able to perceive that there was order and authority in the universe. In his ignorance he attributed this phenomena to a sentient being and gave that being human characteristics. He created God in the image of man but sold the idea the other way round. And from that mythologising comes religion. But his suspicion that there existed a creative force and an universal authority, a writer of rules, a keeper of order is being proven correct by the science of physics. This force doesn't have robes and a beard it comes in the form of mathematical formulae but its there, its observable and measurable. Is just the baggage we hang on the concept that changes.
Water doesn't behave differently to the laws of physics, it behaves differently to your understanding of the laws of physics.
It's a fair point. I mean, there is no explanation as yet for the laws of physics. It has been postulated that in different universes the constants could all be different and these universes would be completely different. But we ended up in this one. One of the scientific steps forward in the last decades has been to show how very complex structures evolve as a result of extremely simple processes. If you repeat them enough, you end up with enormous complexity. And so it is with the constants. There seem to be a few basic numbers in the universe which determine how it is. Some people like to say that this is evidence of God, but if it weren't so, then we wouldn't be here to debate his existence, so that argument doesn't really get you anywhere.
gliddofglood..you may find this an interesting read if you've not already. Written by my old school friend who sent me a copy before being release. Certainly opens the mind. US eBook: Roy Murphy: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
A scientist who suggests that there was a "First Cause", some form of unknowable entity or "force", which was responsible for creating the conditions that led to the universe we live in ... well, that's like a cartographer creating a map with areas that say "Beyond Here Be Dragons" ... or a runner from the 1920's saying that a sub-4 minute mile is an impossibility ... or Ducati owner saying that there can never be a better motorcycle than the 916/999/1098/1199 etc. It's a sign of giving up, a declaration that there is no desire to go beyond a certain point. In other words, it's bloody foolish and completely limiting. And wrong. Oh, except for the 999 - there will never be a better motorcycle than that
