God, Quasars, and Coin Flips

[southerndog]

i really like the original post.

[Shandrax]

[ QUOTE ]
If there is a personal God who cares about human beings in a way he doesn't care about giraffes, and if that God is omnipotent in a way that means he can choose to obey or disobey the laws of physics at his whim, then why are there quasars and why has nobody ever achieved 40 consecutive passes at the dice table?

The point is that God is only relevant if he has the ability to, and sometimes chooses to, break the known laws of physics and probability. If he doesn't, he is the God of deism, which even Not Ready says is equivalent to atheism.

If God can make a universe out of jelly beans and have it behave as he wishes, why is EVERYTHING behaving as if he NEVER interjects himself? It is understandable that he doesn't interfere with humans thoughts so as to give them free will. It might even be understandable that he doen't perform modern day miracles so that irrefutable proof of him doesn't take the place of faith. But why bother with complex physical phenomenon a billion light years away that can be explained well by modern day physics but was totally unknown to people even 100 years ago. And why be constrained by the laws of probability such that rare events, when examined, seem to happen almost exactly as often as predicted? Quasars and the non occurrence of four Royal Flushes in a row are NOT needed to test peoples faith, as opposed to the non healing of amputees would be.

In other words, quasars and true probabilities are consistent with no God, or a disinterested God, or a non omnipotent God. They are not consistent with a God who is particularly interested in humans even if you postulate that he is going out of his way to make his existence less than perfectly obvious (because he wouldn't be obvious even if there were no quasars or if he did occasionally allow the quadrillion to one shot).

[/ QUOTE ]

It depends on the perspective. You seem to assume that God did not interfere with the Universe after it started to exist (at the end). But what about the theory that God already did interfere with eternity by designing the Universe the way it is (in the beginning) and just decided to remain passive for a few minutes to have a drink at the bar which are something like 10000000 years in our timeframe?

[fanmail]

"Are you aware that the sun may in fact revolve around the earth? Seriously. The main reason we think it doesn't is the motion of the other planets. But there is (I think) some convoluted but logical theories that explain all these planetary movements that are actually consistent with the Earth being the center of the solar system."

In an infinite universe all points are the center.

[carlo]

[ QUOTE ]
Are you aware that the sun may in fact revolve around the earth? Seriously. The main reason we think it doesn't is the motion of the other planets. But there is (I think) some convoluted but logical theories that explain all these planetary movements that are actually consistent with the Earth being the center of the solar system."

In an infinite universe all points are the center.


[/ QUOTE ]

The Ptolemaic approach to the heavens which was prior to the Copernican system perceived the Cosmos with the Earth as the center. The ancient approaches saw the world QUALITATIVELY and so to really uinderstand this approach one would have to sense the heavenly qualities of the sun, planets, moon and the stars. Man stands on the Earth and sees the Cosmos relative to the Earth qualitatively. It was definitely a different experience than that of our present intellectual consciousness. The Heliocentric approach of today was not unknown to the ancients but "they had a different axe to grind".

Looking at the matter intellectually one could continue to hold the earth as the center of our solar system. The pattern of movements vis a vis the earth of the sun and planets would be interesting to see. One would probably see an abstracted Ptolemaic Cosmos.

An interesting perception is that the sun travels through the cosmos and the rotation of the earth is more like a Lemniscate(figure of eight-read-not spherical) relative to the sun as the earth is continually "catching up" to the sun and in this progress defines the perigee and apogee extensions.

I await a Borodog on this. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[IcemanDan]

DS, I feel for you here. I think you made a pretty good point in your OP.

The problem is that people who believe in God probably don't believe for logical reasons. They believe because they were raised to believe. Their parents made them go to church, synogogue, etc. Maybe they got brainwashed later in life. Who knows. The point is, no one goes out searching for God, finds indisputable scientific evidence that God exists, and then chooses to start believing. So a logical argument that God doesn't exist probably isn't going to sway them.

Maybe if their house burns down or someone close to them passes away they will stop believing.

I personally don't believe in God, but it doesn't really bother me anymore that other people do. Besides, forcing other people to accept your beliefs is for the religious folk, not the apathetic ones. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember learning in science class that you can't fully prove that something doesn't exist.


PS Did it annoy you when Jerry Yang thanked God for completing his inside straight on the river to win the WSOP main event?

[carlo]

[ QUOTE ]
An interesting perception is that the sun travels through the cosmos and the ROTATION of the earth is more like a Lemniscate(figure of eight-read-not spherical) relative to the sun as the earth is continually "catching up" to the sun and in this progress defines the perigee and apogee extensions.


[/ QUOTE ]

Correction-"orbit" not "rotation".

[jogger08152]

[ QUOTE ]
You missed my point. Which is that the God you postulate can achieve those same ends without exploding supernovas a billion light years away and without adhering stictly to the laws of probability.

[/ QUOTE ]
Did someone show that the universe strictly adheres to the laws of probability and I missed it? Or are you simply assuming this is true based on the incredibly small sampling of all probabilities you've personally tested or read about having been tested?