Can an atheist experience 'the spiritual'.

[Fist and Faith]

It's wild, which is half the fun. But not totally wild, and getting less so all the time.
For instance, we can make a rough guestimate on the number of earth-like planets. In a decade or so, probably a damn accurate estimate.
There are a lot of unknown variables...but many aren't completely unknown. And the evidence trend lately is toward life being more common, not less.

How do you mean this? If we have not yet found life elsewhere, how can there be a trend toward it being more common? Do you mean the elements and conditions that allow life here are being found elsewhere more frequently?

I'd be willing to bet that within 20-30 years, we will know for sure if life besides ourselves CAN exist...we may not survive long enough to know for sure if it DOES. The universe is has some size to it, and time can go on a bit.

Well, we know for sure life besides ourselves CAN exist. We're not aware of any laws of nature that prevent our situation from happening elsewhere. Stars like ours can exist elsewhere. Planets like ours can exist elsewhere.

[michaelm]

Lets start with life - Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, used analogies to try to convey the immensity of the problem.

Well he may have made an attempt, but being a mathematician doesn't qualify you to understand the fields in which studies of the origins of life are investigated.

Also remember that Fred Hoyle is primarily known for disagreeing with conventional science and having many of this alternate theories disproven. Not exactly the kind of person whose theories are cited to prove points.

Also, if I remember correctly, Hoyle made those statements to support his theory that life had originated from comets bringing the material to Earth and was deliberately trying to diminish the possibility of life originating on Earth.

[Vraith]

It's wild, which is half the fun. But not totally wild, and getting less so all the time.
For instance, we can make a rough guestimate on the number of earth-like planets. In a decade or so, probably a damn accurate estimate.
There are a lot of unknown variables...but many aren't completely unknown. And the evidence trend lately is toward life being more common, not less.

How do you mean this? If we have not yet found life elsewhere, how can there be a trend toward it being more common? Do you mean the elements and conditions that allow life here are being found elsewhere more frequently?

I'd be willing to bet that within 20-30 years, we will know for sure if life besides ourselves CAN exist...we may not survive long enough to know for sure if it DOES. The universe is has some size to it, and time can go on a bit.

Well, we know for sure life besides ourselves CAN exist. We're not aware of any laws of nature that prevent our situation from happening elsewhere. Stars like ours can exist elsewhere. Planets like ours can exist elsewhere.

On the first, I mean it a number of ways. But the primary ones are that:
The known range of conditions that life can exist under is much wider than once thought. And the range of circumstances under which life-precursors can form is broader than once thought.
And exoplanet discoveries indicate that earth-like situations are more probable than many [but not all] folk used to assume when making these kinds of calculations.

On the second...but don't many argue that it can't? Because it is so rare/complicated it can only happen once, or requires god? By "can" I meant that there will be enough evidence to make it statistically probable instead of statistically improbable.

[Orlion]

You said that much better than I would have, but yeah, you are absolutely correct. Since are are talking unknown variables, its all just wild speculation.

What's really funny with Hoyle is, believing in the steady state Universe (which exists eternally without beginning or end) probability to explain how "impossible" life is is pretty meaningless. When there is an infinite amount of time in a Universe and the Universal resources are replenishing themselves at the rate they are being used, even the most unlikely scenario will occur... and it will occur an infinite amount of times! At that point, it's not a question of will it happen and how often but if it is even possible.

Hoyle, like many incredibly gifted smart people, was a mixture of profound insight and utter foolishness. After all, Newton was very much involved in alchemy.

Not sure you meant that sentence the way it came out.

Anyway, no, there is no "will occur". An infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters ("Is that what you had in the olden days, daddy?") forever will not definitely type Shakespeare's plays. There is the possibility that none of them will ever type the letter E. Or maybe they'll all type nothing but the letter E. Or anything else we can come up with. Infinite opportunity does not mean every possibility will come about.

The monkeys are not a possibility really, because we've never observed them typing a Shakespeare play. We have observed that life can exist.

So we know (reasonably anyway) that boundary conditions in the universe will not really allow a printing press to explode and allow all the letters to fall in such a way as to reproduce the Oxford dictionary. That's silly poppycock designed to make something stupid will ignoring the foundations and applications of probability.

But if we know that for everyone 100,000 cats born 1 ends up with rare markings, we can reasonably assume that, all things being equal, if we have an infinite number of cats breeding, the rare marked ones will occur... and they will occur an infinite number of times though at a 1/100,000 ratio.

That was part of my point with the Steady State Universe idea, which would hold that there would be a sort of "all things being equal" since in a SSU, the universe is not allowed to follow the Entropy path to its logical conclusion: if one thing becomes more chaotic, another thing will become more organized.

That does not happen, though. All things are not equal. Cats will mutate at an increasing rate the more they breed which will affect things and cause the rare markings to become, possibly, more common or even non-existent.

[peter]

I also read Dawkin's The God Delusion, and oddly it's effect on me was almost the exact opposit of that which the Author said he intended [ie that by the time of finishing the book the reader would no longer believe in God] in the preface. Dawkins continually used the failure of the Bible stories to be verified as actual events as being proof of the 'non-existance of God'. This seemed to be the major thrust of his argument through much of the book - and yes, perhaps it does undermine the existance of that particular God [though I do have my doubts even on this]. But to assume the 'Deist' position to always be one of 'retreat' away from the uncomfortable fact of the problem of regarding the scripture as of divine origin [in terms of it's clear failure to describe the world as it 'really is', it's contradictions etc] is to fail to grasp that it is quite possible to approach this position from 'the other side' [ie to never have had any scriptural basis for the growing belief that something as wonderful as existance demands explanation, and that the hand of a Creator can be seen around us in the glory of the world we have been granted the privelige of being custodians of].

Yes, we one-day will have entierly done away with the place for that hand in our explanations of how things came to be, but the butterly will still remain a more wonderous thing than the sum of it's parts.

[Vraith]

done away with the place for that hand in our explanations of how things came to be, but the butterly will still remain a more wonderous thing than the sum of it's parts.

Of course it will...and I'll leave out all the things I might say on why that is/will be the case. Hardly any are topical.
BUT---you've done something [as I read it] that bugs me pretty often. It seems to imply that the explanations harm the wonder. That the absence of a "hand" makes the beauty less.
I don't think that is true. Explaining enhances the aesthetics, IMO.
I let milkweed grow in my yard...though it's a weed, and aggressively tries to take over everything...cuz of Monarchs [which may soon not be a thing]. They're gorgeous. [Mantises, also beautiful, one of my favorite critters, seem to like either the milkweed or maybe tasty Monarch's or babies, cuz I get a lot of them, too].
You know what else is awesome? The flow and turbulence of the air when they're in flight...which can only be seen in maths and with specialized labs and gear...and shares much with "The Starry Night"...and a bit with "The Persistence of Memory," too.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

I also read Dawkin's The God Delusion, and oddly it's effect on me was almost the exact opposit of that which the Author said he intended [ie that by the time of finishing the book the reader would no longer believe in God] in the preface. Dawkins continually used the failure of the Bible stories to be verified as actual events as being proof of the 'non-existance of God'. This seemed to be the major thrust of his argument through much of the book - and yes, perhaps it does undermine the existance of that particular God [though I do have my doubts even on this]. But to assume the 'Deist' position to always be one of 'retreat' away from the uncomfortable fact of the problem of regarding the scripture as of divine origin [in terms of it's clear failure to describe the world as it 'really is', it's contradictions etc] is to fail to grasp that it is quite possible to approach this position from 'the other side' [ie to never have had any scriptural basis for the growing belief that something as wonderful as existance demands explanation, and that the hand of a Creator can be seen around us in the glory of the world we have been granted the privelige of being custodians of].

Yes, we one-day will have entierly done away with the place for that hand in our explanations of how things came to be, but the butterly will still remain a more wonderous thing than the sum of it's parts.

Perhaps God wants his existence to be non verifiable.

"The Babel fish," said The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
"'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
"'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his bestselling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God.
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

[SoulBiter]

The monkeys are not a possibility really, because we've never observed them typing a Shakespeare play. We have observed that life can exist.

So we know (reasonably anyway) that boundary conditions in the universe will not really allow a printing press to explode and allow all the letters to fall in such a way as to reproduce the Oxford dictionary. That's silly poppycock designed to make something stupid will ignoring the foundations and applications of probability.

Thats the thing with math. Even outside of what is reasonable, someone can postulate the odds using math. The odds may be extreme (like 10 to the 57880th power) or need extreme scientific notation to even solve for. Yet it is possible to note the odds.

So even though its highly or extremely improbable, that doesnt mean that its impossible.

[Vraith]

Thats the think with math. Even outside of what is reasonable, someone can postulate the odds using math. The odds may be extreme (like 10 to the 57880th power) or need extreme scientific notation to even solve for. Yet it is possible to note the odds.

So even though its highly or extremely improbable, that doesnt mean that its impossible.

That's the OTHER things with maths---it makes things "possible" that really are not possible. And, I suspect, makes things seem unlikely that are common.
It can't even agree with itself.
It is coherent, logical, and necessary by definition, that some things that only have 1 chance in infinity of happening will happen infinitely many times.
[heh...and therefore, anything that has odds of 2 in infinity will happen twice as infinitely many times]

And I won't even get into the things that are, mathematically, guaranteed and necessary, yet have never once...and never CAN...actually happen.

[Fist and Faith]

Get into those things!!!

[peter]

Nice one Doc!

[Dondarion]

Couldn't resist logging back in to post this one from “The Little Blue Book”, 2014 Advent edition.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

“Bill Wilson”

On this day, 80 years ago, an alcoholic named Bill Wilson was admitted to a New York hospital. He had just celebrated his 39th birthday. Alone in his room he cried out, “I’ll do anything, anything at all!”. He described what happened next:

“Suddenly, my room blazed with an indescribably white light…Then, seen in my mind’s eye, there was a mountain. I stood upon its summit, where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. In great, clean strength, it blew right through me. Then came the blazing thought, ‘You are a free man.’
I became acutely conscious of a Presence which seemed like a sea of living spirit, I lay on the shores of a new world."

Wilson said that after this experience, he never again doubted the existence of God. And he never took another drink.

Bill Wilson is the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

[Vraith]

Couldn't resist logging back in to post this one...[V-edit]...
Bill Wilson is the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Couldn't resist posting...good for him. Seriously. Anyone who wins a battle with something...especially something self-destructive...whatever "power" they credit for the success...deserves props.

OTOH...AA ain't all that, and according to evidence ain't much of anything.
It MAY recruit believers, it doesn't heal alcoholics.

[[and...I'd be interested, I wonder if anyone has looked at it...what relationship does it have with OTHER "faith" stuff? I mean...prayer seems to help at least SOME people survive cancer. But it doesn't make an difference whether you pray to God, Allah, the Kami, or the "medication" you're getting that is a placebo...
Is there an AA where those all 'count' as a higher power?]]

Look---I kinda/sorta "believe" in Ch'i.
Cuz I've done things with it [not many, but a few little things everywhere all the time, and not a single one "miraculous" or even close to it, especially compared to some of the claims about it].
The point being: if it "works," no matter WHAT mutually exclusive "faith" your following, THEN: there is a whole bunch of crap you don't understand...and lack of understanding is NOT the same as "it is magic/god/supernatural."
And, if you think it IS magic/god/supernatural, you are excluding knowledge, murdering progress, preventing truth and enlightenment.

I'll be blunt:
Every single person who says the Earth is young, that Evolution is a lie of the Devil, that Genesis [God makes Adam and Eve, literally, as people, in a "garden"] is TRUE is a threat to human life. A threat, to and in, the body and the soul and the mind.
It doesn't JUST apply to Christians, either...they aren't the only ones who do such things, not all interpret things that way. Christianity is just the most powerful at the moment. [folk can argue that by number of followers, and make a reasonable case...but they can't argue it in reality. Almost all the people with massive stockpiles of nukes and every other tool of mass destruction...and just as, if not more, important, the resources to churn out such weapons at will, are "Christian." Including the Russians.

[Orlion]

*Pulls on leash*

Down, boy!

[Vraith]

*Pulls on leash*

Down, boy!

[[Vraith sits]].

[Avatar]

Has anybody defined "the spiritual?"

--A

[peter]

[adj. 1. relating to the spirit or soul and not to physical nature or matter; intangible.]

V. - In no way do I suggest the 'absence of the hand' reduces the 'wonder' of the butterfly, but how does the atheist account for the 1 + 1 = 5 aspect.

Another question. How does an atheist give thanks?

[Wildling]

[adj. 1. relating to the spirit or soul and not to physical nature or matter; intangible.]

V. - In no way do I suggest the 'absence of the hand' reduces the 'wonder' of the butterfly, but how does the atheist account for the 1 + 1 = 5 aspect.

The what? I'm not sure what you mean.

[Orlion]

[adj. 1. relating to the spirit or soul and not to physical nature or matter; intangible.]

V. - In no way do I suggest the 'absence of the hand' reduces the 'wonder' of the butterfly, but how does the atheist account for the 1 + 1 = 5 aspect.

The what? I'm not sure what you mean.

I concur!

Also, I give thanks by saying thanks (sometimes in Spanish, other times in Russian) to the person or object deserving of the thanks.

Example: Thank you, car, for not being a piece of junk today *rolls eyes and plays canned laughter in head*

If there is no object to give thanks, than a simple "huh" sometimes followed by a "well, that is fortuitous!" suffices.

Any invoking of gods or demons is reserved exclusively for cursing dumb ass drivers on the road. Good drivers are blessed with a wish that they enjoy an abundance of Coca-Cola.

[peter]

[adj. 1. relating to the spirit or soul and not to physical nature or matter; intangible.]

V. - In no way do I suggest the 'absence of the hand' reduces the 'wonder' of the butterfly, but how does the atheist account for the 1 + 1 = 5 aspect.

The what? I'm not sure what you mean.

Sorry Wilding - it refers to a post I made earlier where I said that the wonder of the butterfly was greater than the sum of it's parts.

But Orlion - there are also non-trivial things, that over the course of a life we all have reason to give thanks for. Very serious things in fact - the type of things that can make a supplicant of a man whether he choose it or not, because he dare not leave a stone unturned..