I used to quite dislike Maher because he came across as smarmy, but I've warmed up to him recently. I enjoy his show these days, and religulous was excellent.

I saw it, it was quite funny and it made me a 100% non-believer... I was already at 99% so it didn't take much at that point.

I went to see it with a female friend who didn't laugh AT ALL through the entire thing. She isn't religous either. I think she just doesn't have a sense of humor. I think she might've laughed once but it was one of those stifled laughs where you cover your mouth with your hand.

Definitely no sense of humour.

And I'm 99.9 to the power of infinity % non-believer. In that the idea of there being a god is ridiculous, but the idea that I can know anything is 100% true is even more ridiculous.

Interesting!  I should see this movie!

PS:  I also dislike Maher.

Maher is indeed a smarmy assclown but I'm currently downloading it due to your recommendation.

Quick question.  If Mary spanked Jesus as a child, did he turn the other cheek?

I hate Maher for a long time, then when I got HBO I ended up watching an episode of Real Time, and decided that I still didn't like him, but despite that I agreed with 80% of what he says.  Now I kind of even like him a bit, sort of like that asshole uncle that you hated as a kid but that grew on you as you got older.  He takes a lot of cheap shots, but at least he's funny about it.

I don't agree with him about religion, but I really want to see Religulous just to see him make fun of christians.

I'm 99%er too.

But, the one thing that I have a hard time wrapping my mind around, is the big bang. I can't believe that everything came from absolutely nothing, in some finite event, billions of years ago. What was here before the big bang? I mean I just can't get that there was nothing before everything. Maybe some supreme being that is infinite, created the big bang. Maybe he wanted a new hobby, and created a universe to tend to and watch it evolve on it's own. 

I'm 99%er too.

But, the one thing that I have a hard time wrapping my mind around, is the big bang. I can't believe that everything came from absolutely nothing, in some finite event, billions of years ago. What was here before the big bang? I mean I just can't get that there was nothing before everything. Maybe some supreme being that is infinite, created the big bang. Maybe he wanted a new hobby, and created a universe to tend to and watch it evolve on it's own. 

I'm a fan of Ekpyrotic Theory, but it sitill basically leaves the same logic-holes that you're talking about.

Basically it says that there are these three-dimensional electromagnetic (I think?) branes that ebb and flow like sheets in the wind, because they both have constantly-changing charges across their surface.  Once in every few hundred billion years or so, these branes interact, or touch, and the resulting cascade of heat/energy creates a universe.

Ekpyrotic theory states that the universe is not "exploding" like a big bang, but that the objects in the universe are moving away from each other through time/space, giving the illusion that there is a center to the universe and that it is expanding.

But still you have the problem of:  Where did the branes come from?  What caused the undulating charges across their surfaces?  If there's charge, there's energy, and if there's energy, something - at some point - set it in motion.

And well, it just gets wacky from there.

But still you have the problem of:  Where did the branes come from?  What caused the undulating charges across their surfaces?  If there's charge, there's energy, and if there's energy, something - at some point - set it in motion.

And well, it just gets wacky from there.

The 'Brane Bang created the 'Branes and their charge is just an illusion. See, the 'Brane Bang is really nothing more than the interaction of two Meta'Branes drifting across each other. The Meta'Branes are taught with gravity and this creates the illusion of an undulating charge in the 'Branes.

I think it was an ok movie as long as you're not taking it seriously.  Putting together somewhat serious ranting with a bunch of scam interviews doesn't really cut it as a proper documentary in my book, but it made for funny viewing.  And surprisingly, Bill Maher comes out of it looking like much less of a dick than the guys at the forefront of the atheist thing, like Sam Harris & Richard Dawkins.

I'm way more interested in mysticism than in religion.

I do like what Tolstoy said about religion quite a bit - especially that line about it being how one defines the relationship between the finite and the infinite.  I think organized religion really offers little more than an easy answer to that question, which can provide comfort if you're not going to spend a lot of time considering it. 

The issue I take with religion has a lot more to do with it being used as a power structure to manipulate human opinion to serve the interests of the people who deem themselves our rulers.

more rationally, however, there is evidence from supercollider work and deep space research that something CAN come from nothing.  In fact, it's theorized (but not proven empirically, since we cannot observe at this scale yet) that millions and millions of particles spring into existence every second, only to be annihiliated by the antiparticle partner that was created at the same time.

Maybe it's just turtles, all the way down, in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs.

I'm afraid I'm convinced that religions are all false, but that said, I find religion as a concept deeply fascinating. It's thousands of years of piled up memes. It's the cultural equivalent of a vast and glorious junk-yard. Religion is where all of our best metaphors and symbols come from. It's a thing we do that has no rational explanation. Also it's something that regardless of the culture we all participate in independently. In other words, if you took a fresh batch of babies and isolated them - made a Moon colony or something else science fictiony - they would inevitably come up with a religion and it would mean everything to them. And we care deeply about it - we fight wars over religion. It seems to me an evolutionary shortcoming, but I'm clearly missing something. It can't be a negative if it hasn't weeded itself out by now. Why do we need to believe in fictional realities? Fascinating stuff.

As far as the Maher film, I considered watching it but I've seen so many lucid disproofs of religion that I agree with wholeheartedly to care anymore. I'm not the one that needs more proof. I don't need to watch yet another back-patting film to feel secure in my understanding. I started getting this way after the Michael Moore films. Typically it's just a bunch of cheap shots at obvious lunatics and we end where we began. These films are kind of zero-sum gains. I'd frankly rather learn what the opposition has to say for itself. I'm pretty keen on seeing Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I like to be angry.

TLDR science vs religion rant in microprint:
On the topic of science versus religion, I've put a lot of thought to it and I think it all boils down to fundamental problems with our means of communication. The language itself is poorly designed. The problem is that when a mystic speaks of believing something he means something vastly different from when a scientist says he believes something. the word "belief" is the village whore. It means everything from "having blind and groundless faith in" to "rigorous logic based understanding of." I've tried to employ the term "understand" in my own lexicon to avoid this issue. Thus the mystic "believes that" and the scientist "understands that." But I can see that from the other perspective this is just propaganda. The problem is that we don't have a succinct way of expressing the history behind the contention. There is no "in-a-word" way to explain how a person has come to accept something as being so. This problem with the language we communicate with leads the religious to incorrectly think that their beliefs are in as much conformity with reality as the scientist's beliefs and on the other hand it leads scientists to incorrectly think that by proper refutation they can correct the misconceptions of the religious. It's a pointless exercise. The common language that both the religious and the scientific use is the root of this murky problem. We are in need of a linguistic remedy.

I haven't seen the movie but it sounds interesting.

I think many people get caught up in wanting to believe that the universe was a conscious creation and that it had to be created for us or that we as organisms were actually planned ahead of time to be made in the image of the creator. Humans are greedy like that. There is no logic that can support this idea. To fall back to the old moss on/under a bridge analogy that I posted about many years ago there is nothing to suggest that humans aren't simply a basically random mutation with no value whatsoever to the function of the universe. In fact as with most aggressive organisms we will likely find a way to muck it up and will have to be dealt with.

Viewing humans as a patch of moss on a bridge no matter how smart we think we are our perceptions are limited by our faculties and the scope of what we are capable of perceiving from our limited vantage point.   We can investigate the metal and paint in our local area, even possibly detect vibrations coming from some unknown source and form some conclusions about our "universe" but we can have no concept whatsoever about things that can't be perceived by us at all, such as the cars and trucks passing on the other side.

So since we can't directly perceive the cars we can never form a valid theory of how the bridge came into being, what it's purpose really is our our purpose (other than surviving and growing) for being there.

And the question of whether the universe is a conscious creation or spontaneously erupted from nothing is not a question that we can ever answer. Like looking into mirrors on facing walls the question echo's on and on through infinity. If created then who created the creators, if spontaneously evolved then where did the energy come from to start with. That question will always haunt us but I think the concept of the classic "God" creator creating the universe and hand crafting man in his image as christianity portrays can safely be put to rest. Modern crristianity is nothing more than a political ploy.

But the god worshipers -as they have been taught- are committed to a massive global catastrophe in which in their belief all nonbelievers, heretics and evil doers will be wiped from the face of the earth allowing a glorious 1000 years of peace for "the chosen people" under the rule of one government of religion by religion and for religion. This is a very real threat that many powerful human forces are actively working to accomplish and marks religion as dangerous and in fact marks it as the very incarnation of the great evil, the threat of which it uses to mobilize it's followers.

And the saddest part of that scenario is that even after the great war those who embody the leadership of religion will most likely be simply using it the same way it has been used all along, to control the people with no real serious belief other than lip service on their part.  They will use it, they will use the people, and they will have absolute power over them.

Yeah I know, shut up already. ~sigh~

 

And the question of whether the universe is a conscious creation or spontaneously erupted from nothing is not a question that we can ever answer.

I tend to trust statistical "certainties." The fact that we're discussing something admittedly unknowable is proof to me that we have nothing to discuss at all. Religion is a patch for the vague misgivings which underlie our daily existence. Humans are forever searching for the answer to the "Why?" of it all. I suggest there is no answer. I also suggest that this is nothing to be alarmed about or ashamed of. I frankly find it comforting that my existence is not perpetual. I wouldn't want to live forever. How breathtakingly boring, and what an ironically trapping/imprisoning thought - that we can't ever be finished with life.

Occam's razor suggests that entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. We have the choice of believing in a world of physical realities such as we are familiar with or we can multiply matters beyond all necessity and believe in the supernatural world of fantasy and magic required to support the existence of our favorite deity. Occam's razor is an aphorism that succinctly combines the concepts of simplicity and statistical certainty. There's just too much of reality that we have to give up on to believe in a creator.

TLDR science vs religion rant in microprint:
On the topic of science versus religion, I've put a lot of thought to it and I think it all boils down to fundamental problems with our means of communication. The language itself is poorly designed. The problem is that when a mystic speaks of believing something he means something vastly different from when a scientist says he believes something. the word "belief" is the village whore. It means everything from "having blind and groundless faith in" to "rigorous logic based understanding of." I've tried to employ the term "understand" in my own lexicon to avoid this issue. Thus the mystic "believes that" and the scientist "understands that." But I can see that from the other perspective this is just propaganda. The problem is that we don't have a succinct way of expressing the history behind the contention. There is no "in-a-word" way to explain how a person has come to accept something as being so. This problem with the language we communicate with leads the religious to incorrectly think that their beliefs are in as much conformity with reality as the scientist's beliefs and on the other hand it leads scientists to incorrectly think that by proper refutation they can correct the misconceptions of the religious. It's a pointless exercise. The common language that both the religious and the scientific use is the root of this murky problem. We are in need of a linguistic remedy.

I agree completely with your tiny rant.  It's one of the issues I've also thought about many times.  I hate the word "Believe".  I don't "Believe" anything, I just have a hell of a lot of weird theories.

I suggest there is no answer.

Prove it.

The burden of proof lies on the one asserting the matter. I'm asserting nothing.

Pffft.  So we're going to quibble over assertions versus suggestions, eh?

That's almost as pointless as arguing about religion!!

Ugh. The reason there is no answer to "Why?" is because nature alone being indifferent, a reason "why" implies some unnecessarily multiplicatory supernatural force. I hate to repeat myself but you ask me to prove it...

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Your turn. Prove your god exists.

Who needs to worry about objective reality when the orgy of destruction I have prayed for my entire life is just around the corner!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/18/perfect-storm-john-beddington-energy-food-climate

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

The counter-argument most often used when faced with the Occam's Razor argument is one of irreducible complexity.

Your turn. Prove your god exists.

The counter-statement most often used when faced with the show-me-your-god statement is one of requisite faith without proof.

Cmon, Doormie!  Much like J with bagman, you're not showing me anything I haven't seen on the internet already!
I'm not getting into this conversation until you come with something new and interesting. 

I'm afraid I don't follow. Are you suggesting that because you can't imagine the evolutionary path leading to the formation of an eagle's eye that a supernatural being created it out of the clay of the earth? I think that a far more parsimonious treatment of the matter would lead you to question the strength of your imagination concerning the realm of physical nature. The argument of irreducible complexity is nothing short of a declaration that because you don't know something it is unknowable. How monstrously arrogant we humans can be.

Faith without proof is all well and good, but one wonders for whom it is requisite? If blind belief is a requisite for the existence of the deity then surely we've entered a tautological hall of mirrors. Really I don't expect a proof that your favorite deity exists. There is no proof I would find acceptable just as arguments from a logical perspective would have no effect on those adopting your line of argument. We're speaking orthogonally to one another. I'm speaking about understanding in a natural context and you're speaking of understanding in a supernatural context. It's a failure of the language we're using. I would argue that my meaning is more relevant as physical reality is natural and only the fantastic is supernatural. This is another parsimony-premised argument, but I really fail to see how the suggestion that something is irreducibly complex would make me agree to throw up my hands and embrace dogma. In fact, I can readily assure you it wouldn't.

Your turn. Prove your god exists.

The Double Slit Experiment.

I rest my case.

Exactly. God has two slits. How can anyone compete with that.

>>The Double Slit Experiment.<<

Excellent insight and a reminder of why I frequent this media.
Haven't thought about that in quite a while.

My god rides a skateboard.

I'm afraid I don't follow. Are you suggesting that because you can't imagine the evolutionary path leading to the formation of an eagle's eye that a supernatural being created it out of the clay of the earth? I think that a far more parsimonious treatment of the matter would lead you to question the strength of your imagination concerning the realm of physical nature. The argument of irreducible complexity is nothing short of a declaration that because you don't know something it is unknowable. How monstrously arrogant we humans can be.

Faith without proof is all well and good, but one wonders for whom it is requisite? If blind belief is a requisite for the existence of the deity then surely we've entered a tautological hall of mirrors. Really I don't expect a proof that your favorite deity exists. There is no proof I would find acceptable just as arguments from a logical perspective would have no effect on those adopting your line of argument. We're speaking orthogonally to one another. I'm speaking about understanding in a natural context and you're speaking of understanding in a supernatural context. It's a failure of the language we're using. I would argue that my meaning is more relevant as physical reality is natural and only the fantastic is supernatural. This is another parsimony-premised argument, but I really fail to see how the suggestion that something is irreducibly complex would make me agree to throw up my hands and embrace dogma. In fact, I can readily assure you it wouldn't.

You've framed my point extremely well.

Your belief that there is no diety is just as valid as someone else's belief that there IS a diety, since Occam's Razor for you is Irreducibly Complex for the other.

Thus, arguing about religion at any time is meaningless, because the people involved in the argument will rarely be moved by the other's argument.

Except that since their belief in a deity rests on their own proof-defying dogma and my "belief" rests on repeatable experimentation, mine is a higher order belief.
Religion requires that the inductee be informed by a human.
Science requires only that a human be curious about his surroundings.

I would disagree that the two "beliefs" are equivalently valid and that Occam's razor is the same as an argument of irreducible complexity. Occam's razor might serve as the starting point for the Irreducible Complexity people, but they then violate it.
Where an irreligious Occam disciple reasons thus: "I cannot understand how this could have come about therefore I must be ignorant,"
a religious Occam's razor applier reasons: "I cannot understand how this could have come about therefore I know it must have come from outside of nature."
Taking the step out of nature is no small thing. It conflicts fundamentally with the concept of parsimony.

I would also disagree that arguments surrounding religion are meaningless - but only to the extent that the two come into conflict with each other. I think it is quite important to strenuously resist the political machinations of the fundamentalists who seek to excise scientific concepts they disapprove of from the school curriculum. I also think it's important to limit the corrupting influence that the equal-footing presentation of their dogma with scientific conclusions has on children who don't know any better. The number of people who believe that the jury is still out on evolution is appalling. But as far as trying to convince a zealot to accept logic or to convince a scientist to embrace fantasy, I agree neither one will have any impact on the other.

Exactly. God has two slits. How can anyone compete with that.

Haha I don't know how much of that was joke but just for anyone who's never heard of it:
The double Slit Experiment