If science discover the existence of God, it could violate the free-will?

The real issue is that you've never had a profound spiritual experience. Therefore, you don't understand it and you mistake it for mental illness. I am truly sorry for your misfortune that you are lacking something; you are lacking something that gives other people a profound sense of meaning. If I had the choice to have continued spiritual inspiration from God or, alternatively, more intelligence, I would choose the spiritual experiences. They enrich my life far more than just solving calculus problems.

 

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When did I say spiritual experience was mental illness? Oh, right: I didn't.

Transcendence and "spiritual" experiences are totally legitimate. But they're just chemistry in the brain, not our souls connecting to some supernatural realm.

 

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I think that wave-functions are the mathematical description of spirit. I would say that spirit exists as a natural phenomenon (or should I say supernatural). Wave functions are the mathematical description of quantum systems. Why does nature require the use of wave-function solutions if they are not manifestations of nature?

 

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I think you have no reason to believe such a thing. Supernatural explanations for natural phenomena are not explanations at all. You're just shoehorning your religious beliefs into science.

 

OK, explain how the big bang occured out of nothingness. How can a quantum fluctuation occur if space-time does not exist? You can say "I don't know" all day long. But you can't avoid the paradox, the problem of getting a big bang out of nothing. You had something, some kind of a pre-existing universe. If Stephen Hawking was God, then the big bang was a fart that came out of his ass. The distinction between God and a pre-existing universe becomes blurred by our lack of ability to measure it.

 

@ ladicious,

RE: Post 51

I would describe god as everything plus a bit more, so it would be more than worshiping yourself. I'd look into whats called "Law of Attraction" to move forward with this type of beliefs as through daily affirmations you will see some really odd things that are unexplainable.

@ Balerion,

Your knowledge of Sigmund Freud is poor. He was a strong advocate of psychic powers, but as his fame grew he distanced himself from what was considered a "woo" subject in order to preserve his work on psycho analysis. There is an abundance of information on this, and should be easy to verify. The first person in modern times to recognize and record scientific findings on telepathic dreaming was Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud developed several hypotheses about the direct transmission of thought, or telepathy, seeing it as an archaic mode of communication between individuals and possibly a physical process that had become mental at the two ends of the communications sequence.

@ Balerion still,
You suggest that Telepathy (if real) should be demonstrated via the scientific method. This is like asking someone in the year 1000 to prove radio waves existed. There is obviously no tool known to mankind (at the moment) that can measure telepathic thought. If someone had suggested radio waves existed in the year 1000 they would have also been criticized (or burnt at stake).

Imagine you are inventing the radio, but can only get it to work 9 out of 10 times. You would see high probabilities that it is true, but that does not satisfy the replication area of the scientific method. Would that mean radio waves did not exist? YES, IT IS A FAIR COMPARISON, as you cannot prove telepathy does not exist so it is merely opinion guiding your bias. You are letting opinion alter scientific reasoning and that is bad science. On the bright side however you have no ability to burn me at the stake.

It is good you know this for a fact. 1000 years ago you could have said it was a fact radio could not exist, and saved Tesla and Marconi a lot of headaches trying to develop it. It is a good thing you know he outcome of all future scientific pursuits and should write a book and enlighten us. That statement screams ignorance.

I'd rather be "Woo boy", than "Unenlightened skeptic boy", however I will cater to your lower understanding by explaining that there was detailed method on how to send a message to someone here, but it appears this website has deleted many older threads. The idea of it was to send a short message for one hour to someone you visualize and hope to catch them during a dream sequence. Use the term wake up during the message as well so they have a better chance of remembering the message and their dream.

It is very easy. Even Freud can do it. Only an idiot could screw it up. I maintain it only takes 1 hour to try this, but many skeptics would rather spend 1000 hours arguing against it than 1 hour actually trying it. It makes little sense.

If you could read better you might have noticed I said "do it here again", as this means an experiment was arranged as a sciforums demonstration many years ago.
First of all psychic experiments do work better with people whom you know well. I do not expect you to know the requirements of successful psychic experiments as skeptics often do little psychic research and if they did look at an experiment it might be one organized by a skeptic and doomed to fail.

I would like to see a telepathic experiment that has failed. I would think even using strangers you are bound to get above average results on a consistent basis.
However Dream Telepathy, Acquaintance Telepathy, and Animal Telepathy seem to yield very positive results consistently, despite anyones attitude. Skeptics like to pretend results are just luck, but if you do the experiment enough times then luck should weigh in less. This is not the case, and I feel skeptics are moronic for not accepting probabilities.

The online experiment was outlined with a sciforum member from California. He then did not respond to emails and such and then admitted he was only participating to see the experiment fail. I have no need to prove this too myself as if you have seen what i have seen then your skepticism might be non existent, but I understand the skeptic views. It is born from what we are often taught, and many have no reason t look at subjects like telepathy with curiosity. It is sad.

I think you are the crackpot though. Shame. For the sake of trying for 1 whole hour skeptics would rather remain blind.

Freud used to communicate with his loved ones.

Harold Sherman conversed with a man out of reach in the Arctic circle verified by many Doctors, Lawyers, and officiants with notes and such prior to real communications, and they were very accurate.

Rupert Sheldrake has done experiments with pets where owners go out and return at random times with strange vehicles returning them, etc., and has evidence animals are telepathic.

Only a moron would not want to try this based on evidence, as a few successful events could alter your perspective on life, and it only takes 1 hour. I would also say it is sad there are so many who actually doubt this.

Occam s razor says the simplest explanation (fewest assumptions) as to why most of the world believes in telepathy is because it is real.

@ Balerion still,
You can give the OPINION that telepathy does not exist. You have no factual evidence for this claim. Claiming lack of evidence it exists is highly unscientific, and would have eliminated almost all of todays science long before it was discovered, as I demonstrated for you with the radio analogy.

Opinion is not science no matter how smart YOU THINK YOU ARE. If you have some self inflated smugness regarding your "backup" on a science forum that is to be somewhat expected but does not alter the fact your opinion is a minority view, and I think it is sad. I feel bad for you. Good luck with your "OPINIONS".

 

I admit, I'm not fully up on my Freud, but I had never heard that he was an advocate of the nuttier side of the mind. Jung was a crackpot, but I didn't know the same to be true of Freud.

Then he had some woo in him after all. At least he was smart enough to avoid it so as not to discredit himself or his work. Of course, he recorded no such scientific findings. There are no scientific finding that show telepathic dreaming is real. You said yourself that it cannot be detected through the scientific method (which is BS, because if it were a physical phenomenon, it absolutely could be) and every attempt to demonstrate such powers has come up empty.

Oh come off it. No one's asking you to invent a Psychometer to measure the "waves" as they go back and forth between people. All anyone's asking you to do is show that that any of this stuff actually happens. Every time there's an objective, scientific test, you cranks come up empty. And you'll always have some excuse for why it never seems to work when people are looking, like "you didn't believe enough," or some similar nonsense (because psychic abilities are Tinkerbell, obviously).

If these powers were real, there would be no problem in demonstrating them in a setting where even people who don't believe in them would see it.

For one, getting a radio to work 9 out of 10 times would most definitely satisfy the "replication area" of the scientific method (which I'm slowly discovering you actually know nothing about) because that one time it didn't work could be chalked up to equipment failure or some other kind of issue. Of course, your idiotic notion of psychic superpowers has never been shown to work even once, let alone nine times out of ten, so stop trying to draw parallels. Unless that once was the one time you tried it in a controlled environment with objective observers and it didn't work, and the nine other times it was you and your crank buddies convincing yourselves you all had superpowers.

It's nowhere near a fair comparison, regardless of how many times you childishly put it in ALL-CAPS. Radio waves exist, and can be demonstrated to exist. Psychic abilities, which should require nothing more than two objective participants and some people watching them, has never once been demonstrated to exist. Also, one can't make radio waves go away simply by hoping that they don't exist. The fact that psychic abilities are vulnerable to wish-thinking should tell you something about the probabilities of their existence.

If you've been reduced to "you can't disprove it," then you've already lost. I can't disprove that gravity isn't the product of an alien fart. I can't disprove that I'm not living in the Matrix right now. All I can go by is what information is available to me, and all of that information--all of it, literally every shred of it--says that your psychic superpowers don't exist.

:roflmao:

Riiight, because that was ever on the agenda. Typical martyr attitude prevalent in all woos.

So I'm supposed to allow for the "high probability" that psychic powers exist because there was a time before we knew radio waves existed? That's your argument?

Oh, don't worry--you are.

Unenlightened? So does that mean by contrast you are enlightened? How convenient. And how bloody typical of the woo.

Ah, so the detailed version of this experiment--which is so vital to your understanding and acceptance of the phenomenon--existed only in an old thread that is magically no longer here. How convenient. You took no notes on this very important experiment, have written no papers on it, can't even bloody remember the details of it.

How convenient.

Also, if this is how one communicates through telepathy, it is completely testable. You simply need two sleeping people in a controlled environment.

That also debunks your previous dream. There's no way this woman took the time to telepathically send you a message while she was waving her arms about and screaming for help. So I wonder where this dream came from?

Oh, right, your imagination.

That's going up as my signature. "Even Freud can do it." I've literally never heard a more ridiculous statement in my life.

Then do it. Send me a message.

So show me. They don't delete old threads. I'd love to know how this "experiment" turned out.

Ah, again, how convenient. So when you necessarily fail in sending me a message, you can always claim it's because you don't know me well enough. Because that makes any fucking sense whatsoever.

Or it's because there's no such thing as "successful psychic experiments." I mean, how would I even doom one to fail? I know you said you got strung along by some fella who hoped you would fail; are you saying that's all it takes? Can we try that with radio waves, then? Can we try to make radio waves fail by wishing it so?

Crank.

Interesting how the requirements for successful readings are about the same as for cold readings, no? Also worth noting is how she claims that psychic abilities don't work in controlled settings, and that when nobody's looking, her success rate is tremendous. Typical, standard bullshitterism. I'm sure you'll cook up a similar excuse as to why your so-called abilities never stand up to testing.

Why should luck weigh in less? If the amount of successful readings (or what have you) are consistent with random chance, why should it matter how many times it has occurred? I mean, I could guess the middle names of everyone who has ever lived in your family if given enough chances; does that mean I'm psychic? Or does it mean that by random chance I was bound to get it right sometimes?

What's funny is that it's actually you who is not accepting probabilities. If your psychic gets one detail out of five correct, that's random chance. You want that to be proof of the theory, but that's not what statistical probability says.

I'd be willing to do the experiment.

Of course you do. You've run out of anything useful to say, so now you're try to turn my comments around on me. Sadly, you're nowhere near clever enough for such a tactic.

As I've said several times, let's see the experiment.

Do you have evidence that he did?

I call BS. The only thing I can find on these "experiments" is a jointly-published book called "Thoughts Through Space." Of course, the man he communicated with was not just some random schlub, but a True Believer and a man who told colleagues that Urantia was his new religion. In other words, it was a couple of woos who did a "test" and wrote a book about it. I don't see any peer-reviewed articles on the experiment. I wonder why? It's sort of like how these 9/11 Truther cranks always have these "amazing discoveries" regarding the chemical composition of the debris from Ground Zero, yet only ever publish their findings in vanity presses. It's almost as if they're not really scientists and researches, but hucksters trying to make a buck. GASP!

Uh huh. Or he doesn't, and you're a crank for believing anything anyone claims about this crap so long as it jibes with your preconceptions. Tell me, what are some of these evidences? I'm guessing you don't even know them. Yet you believe anyway.

Crank.

People doubt it because it's BS that has never been demonstrated successfully. You really need to turn the rage back on yourself and your "powers" for not showing up when the lights are on. But, again, that would require introspection and integrity, two things you are obviously devoid of.

We have a new winner for "Worst Sentence in the History of Sciforums."

If you're trying to say that most people believe in telepathy (a claim I'd love to see qualified in some way) because it's true and this is demonstrated by Occam's Razor, you're really in need of some help. The simplest explanation for the belief of people in ESP and the like is that people will believe anything. People also believe in God, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, visiting aliens, ghosts, chupacabaras, 9/11 was an inside job, etc.. The explanation that requires more assumption is that any of that bullshit is true. It requires us to believe that in spite of the multitude of tests showing failure, that there is some hidden quality to this phenomenon that prevents it from being objectively testable--and yet, according to cranks like you, entirely testable so long as you're in your PJs and everyone agrees that this whole thing is awesome and omgletsdoitrightnow!

For one, you have demonstrated nothing but your profound ignorance. Two, lack of evidence is important when the evidence should be there. Of course, there is also a tremendous amount of evidence against it, such as an abundance of failed tests. There has never been a successful scientific test of such phenomena. Why not? Chances are, because it doesn't exist.

But you'll never let the evidence against it shake your religious belief, because that's not how cranks like you operate.

 

I'm sure a physicist would be able to give a better answer than I on this, so I'll leave it for them. However, I will say that even if the answer is "I don't know," it does not therefore mean that you are free to interject God. It does not necessitate God, in other words. It's just a question we don't have a definitive answer to.

 

Here is an analysis that opens new possibilities.

The second law states that the entropy of the universe needs to increase. An increase in entropy causes the amount of useable energy to lower.

For example, we start with two different gases in separate containers. Next, we open the valves and allow them to mix until they form a uniform gas mixture. This mixing is driven by increasing entropy. Originally, there is a free energy potential in the two separated gases. Once the two gases mix this potential energy is conserved, but is no longer useable, since the mixed gases will not want to separate into two, spontaneously. This would have entropy going the wrong way.

The net effect is, as the entropy of the universe increases, it removes potential energy such that the amount of useable energy in the universe falls. The energy is conserved within the entropy, but no longer useable. We can use a machine to separate the two gases, to prove energy is conserved but it will take more energy that we gain back. In the limit, if the entropy of the universe has to aways net increase, the universe will eventually become cold and dead, with all its energy conserved within entropy.

It is not exactly clear in what form all the energy of the universe is conserved within entropy, especially if the universe is dead and cold so there is no energy for randomness; nothing is moving in a cold dead universe in a way that can express all that conserved energy.

There is plenty of conserved energy, but in an unusable form that has to be consistent with cold dead conditions. It is no longer useable in this universe, but nevertheless has to exist due to energy conservation. It would need to be separate from matter, since matter has no means to express the amount of energy that would need to be conserved.

I like to keep my options open.

 

Saying that God started the Big Bang is not a solution, but a comfortable place for the religious to stop inquiring further. A scientist saying we don't know yet just means that, we don't know yet, but there's plenty of theories out there, and as we progress in measuring and observing we learn new things all the time. So which is being more honest?

We may never actually know. It might be impossible from our vantage point to see any evidence of what might occurred to start this universe. But not looking and accepting mythology for a final answer is not good enough for some of us. If it helps you and your belief system to not look more, and you're okay with that, then that's great. Don't expect others to consider that good enough.

 

Things like dark matter and dark energy have never been proven in the lab, but have become almost science dogma, where we all pretend it is a done deal via faith. Science has it own mythology. I don't see an disclaimer, for the sake of honesty that says; this has never been proven to be real. It was needed because the existing theory has a big hole without it.

These appear to be examples of modern mythology, but where human get to pretend to be gods. Poof! let there by dark matter. Or poof!, let there be strings and more dimensions than we really need, so we can do more poofs!

I was trained as a chemical engineer which means I was grounded in the preponderance of the direct hard data. I feel uncomfortable when areas of science poof things into existence without lab proof. How does that different from a myth? It fills in a hole.

 

How do you know?
What if they know something that you don't know?

 

There's no reason to believe that they do. They've provided no greater insights, no greater truths.

 

1) maybe you're making an assumption that a non-believer isn't familiar with religion.
2) maybe even going further, to suggest that the higher up in religious organizations are keeping things from the rest of us. Conspiracy much?
3) "they know something", like what?
4) religion likes to be the answer first, the Truth. It's never about questioning reality. When things get too obvious, some religions change enough to allow reality in so it doesn't become extinct. They don't call it apologetics for nothing.
5) finally, how is saying God is the answer really an answer? In the past this answer to other things has been replaced by scientific knowledge of the real world. Why should we expect that to be the answer to anything else?

 

I don't mean to speak for Wynn, but I think her basic assumption is that those who "know God" have some deeper insight through their faith. Not necessarily something in the texts or preached to them, but innate when one accepts God. It's no less a ridiculous assumption, but I think that's what she's getting at.

 

If they indeed know something that you don't know - then you just don't know that they know better.

Your certainty of yourself is awesome.

No. I'm simply speaking from skepticism for the sake of consistency, to cover all bases.

 

They might also secretly have the power to fly. I mean, it's such a ridiculous proposition that they're privy to some cosmic secret that it's not worth considering. If it's true, then let's hear what it is so we can judge for ourselves.

You say that, but you're the most stubborn, pig-headed person here. You already have all the answers, you've never admitted you didn't know something or that you were wrong. That said, thanks for calling me awesome.

Fair enough. So then Rhaedas' questions stand.

 

I don't know what it is, or if it is all.

For the sake of consistency though, we must assume there may be. Unless, of course, we are to assume ourselves (you?) to be omniscient.

You mean, I have failed to bow to your self-appointed superiority?

No, I didn't call you awesome. I said "Your certainty of yourself is awesome."
Big difference.

No, it's why they don't.

He seems to be assuming that I am defending religion. I am not. I am just being consistent, covering all bases.

 

I don't see how religion's answers should get the same acceptance as science. The point was that saying "God is the cause, period", is as good or better than "we don't know yet, but we're looking", and I totally disagree. I say that God being the answer is a dead end to any more questions. That's simply how religion works.

 

No we don't. You're creating a false dichotomy. I don't have to accept that they may be onto something just because I'm not omniscient. I don't have to be open to everything. When presented with some data, then we can talk, but I'm not going to be so open minded that my brain falls out, ya dig?

This is another one of your tacks. Whenever people call you out on your rigidity, you turn it around and say you're simply not bowing to others' superiority. In reality, it's you who thinks they're superior. You have your notions, and you will not hear otherwise.

I know, and since the actual comment was so fucking absurd that it doesn't warrant a response, I will choose to believe that you called me awesome instead.

So, again, thanks!

If you can't defend the position, you're not covering the bases. A ballplayer has to be able to catch the ball when thrown to him, otherwise he's just standing there. If you're just throwing out random "what if's" without any intellectual background, then your words are just wind.