h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just because we don't know *how* everything was created doesn't mean we need to turn to the same foolish explanation we've been using for eons to deal with unknown phenomena. History is riddled with such beliefs falling to dust when the light of scientific inquiry is shed on them. We look at the people who lived in those times and scoff at their ignorance, but the fact is that people who come after us will do the same. After another 100 years of study, we may finally be able to put the entire God thing to rest.

"There is also the question of why there is anything at all. Quantum physics says that matter can be spontaneously generated out of nothing, but it only lasts for a Planck time interval (10 to the -43rd second). Obviously, the universe has been around for longer than Planck time, so all that matter could not have been spontaneously created naturally." - This is already a revolution in the way we think... just a few years ago, "Nothing comes from nothing" was seen as an immutable truth. The fact that matter can be generated at all is profound.

"odds against the formation of all the necessary proteins for life are 1 in 10 to the 40,000th." - I don't quite follow you on this one, because most life forms have differing protein requirements. Are you talking about ALL the proteins used by the millions of different forms of life on this planet? Primitive cellular life would have required just one or two, and then as life became more complicated, it generated new protein chains.

"balance between centripetal force and gravitational force in galaxies -- an improper balance would lead to the galaxy either dissipating or crashing in on itself" - First of all, we can't be entirely sure that this isn't happening, since we have rather limited observational powers over distant galaxies, and we lack perspective for our own. What capability we DO have has been around for less than an eyeblink of time in the universe. I would advise against hasty generalizations based limited data. And if it the forces do exist in perfect balance, well, gravity is yet another force of which we know nearly nothing.

Basically, what I'm saying is that in spite of our massive leaps in knowledge over the past century, we still know astonishingly little, and those leaps of knowledge have only begun since people began to put aside all that God stuff and say, "maybe there's a logical explanation for all of this." And as far as evolution, that too is a young science, and we know little about it as well. But even from the miniscule percentage of life that manages to become a fossil that man can discover, the evidence is quite compelling. What the science lacks is catalyst, but I'm sure it will be revealed in due time. Meanwhile, let's understand that we understand almost nothing, except that embracing superstitions did very little to advance our knowledge base.

You readily admit that we know squat about the universe, but you refuse to consider that God might be part of what we don't know. There is nothing illogical about the concept of God. If we really know so little, how is it that you are so certain that God cannot possibly exist?

By the way, the scientific revolution of past centuries was hardly an atheistic movement. Practically every branch of science was founded by a highly religious man. Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, John Dalton, Michael Faraday, James Joule, Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Leibnitz, Gregor Mendel, and Blaise Pascal (to name a few) were all at least religious and most of them were devout Christians. They didn't see God as superstition, but they still managed to make some pretty good scientific leaps. Albert Einstein himself was hesitant to refuse to consider the possibility of God. God is not incompatible with science, especially when you consider that (assuming He exists) science simply studies what He has made.

It is the Christian concept of God that I find rediculous, but beyond that, if the odds against this universe forming itself are unbelievable, then the odds of a creature powerful enough to create it coming into being on its own are laughable. To argue that things came from a lower state and evolved to a higher state is at least plausible.

"were all at least religious and most of them were devout Christians" - Wrong. Although I cannot say so authorititatively on all of them, the bulk of your examples are either Humanists or Hermetics. Hermeticism, or Alchemy, is a weird religion that promotes science, because through it one can come to know what they call God. Their definition of that term is much different from the xtian one. Nearly all the great thinkers of the Renaissance through the 1700's were Hermetics, including da Vinci, Descartes, and especially Newton. The rise of this secret cult was the primary motivation for the Renaissance.

I'm inclined to agree with Dr Smith. However, i can't help but to play Devil's Advocate for a moment. Smith, all the points raised in your previous post fall under the Weak Anthropic Principle, which says "If the universe appears to buck the odds in favor of human existence, that is because if it had not, we would not be here to study the odds." or, in other words, "The universe wasn't designed for us, we were evolved to fit the needs of the universe."

Both positions are equally tenable, and un-provable. I personally don't like the weak anthropic principle because it is..., well... weak.

Albert Einstein remained true to his judaic faith throughout his life, though his faith waxed and waned over the years. (Though he was offered presidency over the newly formed Sovreign Jewish Nation of Israel) This is a man who once professed interest in learning the thoughts of God. Actually, that's a popular sentiment among physicists, who make up the most semantic branch of scince. Think of it this way: for roughly a million years, we have believed in a God, or gods of some sort. The half life of the average scientific theory is 1 year. Or better yet, think of it this way: If there is no God, then random chance has one hell of a sense of irony.

You lot are once again trying to prove/disprove God through science. And it's not going to work.

Assuming that there are an infinite number of universes carrying out an infinite number of possibilities, then each universe will be unique, and some will be able to support life, and some won't. But noone will ever live to see a universe with no life-support capabilities. Thus, the chance that any percievable universe can support life is 1, because unless a universe can support life noone will be around to see it. I don't see what's so wild about those odds. God could have created those universes, but maybe they just became, by themselves. And I don't see how today's science can offer anything to prove a hypothesis that God exists.

Well I can see that I'm a little out of my depth here but I would like to say one thing and to ask another.
Firstly-My faith has wavered over my life.The times when it is strong I have a feeling of wellbeing and oneness
with the universe.The times,such as now,when I have very little faith I tend to be depressed and quite off balance.
I don't know much about Physics.What I know is how I'm doing mentally,emotionally and so on.
So dear smart ones-Is it better to be ignorant yet faithful and have a good feeling in my soul or to
be searching for answers and have an overwhelming sense of doom?

In my opinion, faith should always be striving to be more and more knowledgeable. Blind faith is almost always bad. I seek answers to such questions as these because I have faith that God has answers to them. Always search for answers. I know that God has never disappointed me when I have. In fact, my faith is usually bolstered by what I find.

Back to what Cutlery just said: You're assuming that there are an infinite number of universes, which is a pretty major assumption considering that there is no evidence whatsoever to support it (or even suggest that it might be the case). There are at least indicators and arguments that God could exist. At the very least, multiple universes are no more reasonable than God.

Perhaps "Battlefield Earth" is indeed proof in the non-existance of God.

Sorry for the non sequiter, but I'm forcibly stopping myself from gouging my eyes out with a spork. It was BAD. Very, very BAD. If this is the end result of John Travolta's secret plan to infiltrate the Church of Scientology in order to destroy any vestiges of respectability they might have had, then he has succeeded admirably, and should be appluaded, then shot.

Ye God! It's like being kicked in the crotch repeatedly for five hours. Eventually, you'd expect the pain to go away, but then the next kick comes and

WHAM!

It's as bad as ever. An, much liked being kicked in the crotch, I've been pissing blood for the past three hours.

My lord, why hast thou forsaken me?!

I'm not trying to say multiple universes is anything more than a belief. But then neither is God.

Look at it this way: the only reason we think that the chances of us being are astronomical is because we actually _have_ come into being. If we hadn't, we wouldn't be able to ponder it.

Besides, even if it was a million to one chance of us being alive, it doesn't show that God exists. Million to one chances can still happen. Look at lottery winners.

On a world with a population of six billion people, a million to one chance comes through roughly every 2.5 minutes.

Here, however, we're talking about a billion billion billion billion billion trillion to one chance. Or are we? Scientifically speaking, without another universe for comparison, we have exactly squat to calculate odds with.

On a sidenote, scientists believe in lots of things they have no proof in: Tachyons, missing mass (What's the simplest explanation for missing matter? Somebody stole it...), proton decay, gravitons, kugelblitzes, superstrings, cosmic eggs, nth dimensional quantum topography, quantal DNA (God, I love quantal DNA!), white holes, spinors, twistors, shadow space, supersymmetry and symmetry breaking, extiction level events, retardions... hell, most of the universe! Expecially electrons. They take pride in discovering the nonexistance of electrons.

Physics has gotten too philosophic in the last few decades.

If the chance for life is one in a billion, and there are a nearly infinite number of planets orbiting an incalculable number of stars, then the chance for life occurs once every hour and a half.

Like I said, the odds are irrelevant. We know it can happen, we've seen it.

But we cannot possibly know whether a god or gods caused it to happen, or whether it just became.

> "you would get bored of it very quickly"

Hmm, surely if you were omnipotent you could make yourself unbored equally quickly?

> "Must God be both omnipotent and omniscient?"

Well, if some entity is not omniscience, then it is not omnipotent, by definition. Omni-potence implies being all-powerful, and it would be missing the power to be omniscient....

http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/arguments.html#einstein - gives a good explanation of Einstein's religious beliefs...

to quote from Einstein himself...
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated.
I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me
which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our
science can reveal it."

doesn't sound "true to his judaic faith" to me...

Man you are good!

So funny and soooo on the spot! ;=>

Hilarious!

"what happens when an unstoppable force meets and immovable object?"

Would it not be the obvious answer: Nothing at all!

Two equals nothing.

One can not move, the other can not stop. Zero plus zero is nothing!

If you plan to read "Walking on Glass" by Iain Banks, don't read any further....


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The unstoppable force stops, the immovable object moves. Remember we are talking paradoxes here.

Hm.....very interesting........need to compute this...........

Re: Colonel Sellers and Matter Creatin in Planck Time

actually, as I understand it, the length of time you can create matter for depends on it's energy (inc. energy of mass). The smaller the amount of energy, the longer it can be created for.

Which means, if it so happened that the positive energy of the mass of the universe just happened to be balanced by the negative energy of the gravitational fields, then the net energy would be zero, and the universe could just be one *huge* quantum fluctuation.

Whether this is true is anyone's guess, of course.