SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: koan who wrote (554358)3/10/2010 8:48:35 PM
From: Tenchusatsu  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1580594
 
Koan, > That is not proof. What is the proof?

Most of them will cite personal experiences. That includes me.

You're in the minority here. The burden of proof is on you. Prove to people that they're deluding themselves.

By the way, they're not slaves and they're not cannibals. That by itself destroys a key assumption you used to justify your atheism ...

Tenchusatsu



To: koan who wrote (554358)3/10/2010 9:08:06 PM
From: Brumar89  Respond to of 1580594
 
As for the proof koan is calling for, you have to consider circumstantial evidence like:

The design of the universe such that life can exist - aka "fine-tuning". Discover magazine says it can be accounted for either by an intelligent creator or a "multiverse" ie really an infinityverse. Which is easier to believe?

Science's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: the Multiverse Theory

Our universe is perfectly tailored for life. That may be the work of God or the result of our universe being one of many.
......
But everything here, right down to the photons lighting the scene after an eight-minute jaunt from the sun, bears witness to an extraordinary fact about the universe: Its basic properties are uncannily suited for life. Tweak the laws of physics in just about any way and—in this universe, anyway—life as we know it would not exist.

Consider just two possible changes. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If those protons were just 0.2 percent more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and would decay into simpler particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist; neither would we. If gravity were slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. A beefed-up gravitational force would compress stars more tightly, making them smaller, hotter, and denser. Rather than surviving for billions of years, stars would burn through their fuel in a few million years, sputtering out long before life had a chance to evolve. There are many such examples of the universe’s life-friendly properties—so many, in fact, that physicists can’t dismiss them all as mere accidents.

“We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible,” Linde says.
.....
Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multi­verse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life.

The idea is controversial. Critics say it doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory because the existence of other universes cannot be proved or disproved. Advocates argue that, like it or not, the multiverse may well be the only viable non­religious explanation for what is often called the “fine-tuning problem”—the baffling observation that the laws of the universe seem custom-tailored to favor the emergence of life.
.....

discovermagazine.com

Then there's that whole idea of life's software not only writing itself but creating its own "language" to encode information ..... all by accident with no purpose behind it. Yeah, thats likely.