"Agnostic"

[Mulefoot]

The balance of probability that a human can describe an unknowable being to another human is zero. Same probability that my dog can explain humans to the cats.

Without knowing what "god" is, it can never be proven. Gun to your head, magic tricks, loaves and fishes, doesn't matter. Unless you have an example of this god, it cannot be known whether any performance by any being is indeed from the almighty.

"Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?"

 

[Mithrae]

The balance of probability that a human can describe an unknowable being to another human is zero. Same probability that my dog can explain humans to the cats.

You are claiming to know something about god - that it is completely "unknowable." Where did you acquire this knowledge?

Without knowing what "god" is, it can never be proven. Gun to your head, magic tricks, loaves and fishes, doesn't matter. Unless you have an example of this god, it cannot be known whether any performance by any being is indeed from the almighty.

Sounds like it would be in about the same basket as dark matter and dark energy in that case. You'd better tell the scientists that they have to stop positing explanations for observed phenomena.

 

[Mithrae]

More gaslighting. Get back to me when you want to discuss the issue, per se, without the apparent need for constant generalized insult towards atheists.

One might say the same about your constant generalized insults towards theists and agnostics. The victimhood routine seems to be a trend from the top down in America lately

 

[watsup]

One might say the same about your constant generalized insults towards theists and agnostics. The victimhood routine seems to be a trend from the top down in America lately

See post #223.

 

[Mithrae]

See post #223.

The last point of actual debate or rational discussion in our exchange was post #200, after which you've pretty much just been saying "nuh uh" and playing the victim when I point out the lack of intellectual content in that

So who fine-tuned God?

It's clear that our universe is a highly complex system. As I've highlighted a number of times before, there are only two observed mechanisms which explain the development of highly complex systems from simple antecedents: Biological evolution based on enduring selection from genetic variation, and conscious thought based on enduring selection from 'memetic' variation. The highly complex and unchanging omni-god of traditional Christianity fails the parsimony test as any kind of explanation for our complex reality: But extrapolating from our certainty that consciousness is real to the likelihood that reality is conscious also provides a plausible potential answer to some other enduring mysteries we face; it opens up the possibility of an observation-derived simple-to-complex mechanism that applies to reality as a whole, ironically essentially mirroring parts of Hume's "infant deity" rhetoric.

 

[watsup]

The last point of actual debate or rational discussion in our exchange was post #200, after which you've pretty much just been saying "nuh uh" and playing the victim when I point out the lack of intellectual content in that

See post #223.

 

[Michael Cole]

You are claiming to know something about god - that it is completely "unknowable."

no i did not.

Where did you acquire this knowledge?


Sounds like it would be in about the same basket as dark matter and dark energy in that case. You'd better tell the scientists that they have to stop positing explanations for observed phenomena.

weird reply. i make no claims of knowledge. your post makes no sense

 

[Mithrae]

no i did not.

You said:
"The balance of probability that a human can describe an unknowable being to another human is zero. Same probability that my dog can explain humans to the cats. Without knowing what "god" is, it can never be proven."
Zero probability that a human can know god = 100% probability or absolute certainty that humans cannot know god.

But okay people misspeak sometimes, nothing wrong with that. Where did you get the opinion that god is completely unknowable?

weird reply. i make no claims of knowledge. your post makes no sense

It's fairly simple really. You said:
"Without knowing what "god" is, it can never be proven. Gun to your head, magic tricks, loaves and fishes, doesn't matter. Unless you have an example of this god, it cannot be known whether any performance by any being is indeed from the almighty."

We don't know and don't have an example of what dark matter or dark energy or dozens of other contemporary scientific hypotheses are: We infer their possible existence precisely because of observed phenomena in need of explanations, much like miracles. But rather than evaluating our current state of information and holding out hope for future enquiry, your approach (in the case of god) seems to be simply throwing up your hands and giving up in despair. I'm just wondering whether this is a special pleading attitude towards theism specifically, or would you say something similar to cosmologists, theoretical physicists and the like?

 

[AConcernedCitizen]

It's clear that our universe is a highly complex system. As I've highlighted a number of times before, there are only two observed mechanisms which explain the development of highly complex systems from simple antecedents: Biological evolution based on enduring selection from genetic variation, and conscious thought based on enduring selection from 'memetic' variation.

Just about all complex systems developed from four relatively simple antecedents.

Spacetime is curved.
Particles with an electric charge interact with each other through electromagnetic fields.
Quarks are confined into hadrons through the strong force.
Radioactive decay occurs through the weak force.

The entire universe is pretty much procedurally developed from those four mechanisms.

Aside from all the obvious observed examples of simplicity to complexity, such as weather patterns being more complex than the relatively simple transfer of heat from which weather patterns develop, it is just common sense that highly complex systems develop from simpler preceding systems.

Any time you have a simple system that encounters any kind of contingent interaction, the system will become more complex by appending that conditional branch to the existing simple system.

 

[Revelation]

Just about all complex systems developed from four relatively simple antecedents.

Spacetime is curved.
Particles with an electric charge interact with each other through electromagnetic fields.
Quarks are confined into hadrons through the strong force.
Radioactive decay occurs through the weak force.

thanks Concerned. do you have an article that explains the meaning of all of this? seems like a basic i need to pay attention to and invest some time profitably.

The entire universe is pretty much procedurally developed from those four mechanisms.

Aside from all the obvious observed examples of simplicity to complexity, such as weather patterns being more complex than the relatively simple transfer of heat from which weather patterns develop, it is just common sense that highly complex systems develop from simpler preceding systems.

Any time you have a simple system that encounters any kind of contingent interaction, the system will become more complex by appending that conditional branch to the existing simple system.

 

[AConcernedCitizen]

thanks Concerned. do you have an article that explains the meaning of all of this? seems like a basic i need to pay attention to and invest some time profitably.

Here you go:

The Four Fundamental Forces.

 

[Mithrae]

Just about all complex systems developed from four relatively simple antecedents.

Spacetime is curved.
Particles with an electric charge interact with each other through electromagnetic fields.
Quarks are confined into hadrons through the strong force.
Radioactive decay occurs through the weak force.

The entire universe is pretty much procedurally developed from those four mechanisms.

No, it's really not that simple at all.

First and most blindingly obviously, the four fundamental forces themselves would do nothing without having matter to act upon: Physicists currently recognize no fewer than 17 elementary particles; 6 types quarks known as up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm (up and down quarks combining in triplets to form protons and neutrons), 6 types of leptons including 'familiar' electrons and exotic neutrinos, and 5 bosons one of which is a 'force carrier' for electromagnetism, one for the strong force, two for the weak force, and one which allows other elementary particles to have mass but is not an explanation or force carrier for gravity. Those 17 elementary particles can be distinguished or characterized by properties such as their mass, spin, electrical charge and 'colour' charge; additionally each of the 12 fermions (quarks and leptons) has a corresponding antimatter anti-particle.

• "Some physicists consider it to be ad hoc and inelegant, requiring 19 numerical constants whose values are unrelated and arbitrary.[65] Although the Standard Model, as it now stands, can explain why neutrinos have masses, the specifics of neutrino mass are still unclear. It is believed that explaining neutrino mass will require an additional 7 or 8 constants, which are also arbitrary parameters.[66]"

Of course the biggest limitation of the standard model of particle physics is that it doesn't account for the fourth fundamental force at all. You've imprecisely suggested that the spacetime of our universe is curved - as far as we can tell it's actually flat, as if even that were a simple concept! - but the force of gravity refers more specifically to the 'local' curvature of spacetime by objects with mass as described by the general theory of relativity. We haven't yet worked out how (or if) relativity and particle/quantum mechanics can be reconciled.

Secondly, as if all of that were not... um... "simple" enough so far, that all pretty much accounts for only about 5% of the estimated mass-energy of the observable universe! "In the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, the mass–energy content of the universe is 5% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter, and 68.2% a form of energy known as dark energy.[7][8][9][10]" Those 17 elementary particles with all their numerical constants covered by the standard model of particle physics do not describe or account for the far larger calculated mass of 'dark matter'; and for all its own weirdness and mathematical complexity general relativity does not inherently account for the even greater mass-energy of 'dark energy' (although from what I gather a 'cosmological constant' candidate for dark energy can be independently incorporated into general relativity).

Thirdly, while all of the above outlines our most fundamental understanding and parameterization of the current observable universe, there's still at least two aspects of its development which they don't cover or explain: The widely-hypothesized period of cosmic inflation during which the early universe expanded faster than the speed of light, a mind-boggling concept but widely regarded as necessary to explain the structure of our observable universe, and of course the big bang itself.

I feel as though you're intelligent and well-read enough to have known that what you were posting above was misleading and disingenuous, at best.

 

[watsup]

I feel as though you're intelligent and well-read enough to have known that what you were posting above was misleading and disingenuous, at best.

Why this constant need for gaslighting? Why can't you just debate the topic without playing king of the hill? What's the problem here?

 

[Mithrae]

Why this constant need for gaslighting? Why can't you just debate the topic without playing king of the hill? What's the problem here?

If you really want to go there, then if anything "gaslighting" is what @AConcernedCitizen was doing; providing a false or misleading impression of reality in an attempt to make others question their own perspectives. If I'm a big ol' meanie for pointing that out, then I guess I'm a meanie

I understand that there are folk here who might not automatically think of questions like "What do those fundamental forces act on?" or have cosmic inflation cross their minds when thinking about the development of the entire universe, but I respect ACC enough to think that at the very least those (and likely dark matter and dark energy also) should have been blindingly obvious points for him to consider. There are others here that I wouldn't have said the same thing to

 

[watsup]

If you really want to go there, then if anything "gaslighting" is what @AConcernedCitizen was doing; providing a false or misleading impression of reality in an attempt to make others question their own perspectives. If I'm a big ol' meanie for pointing that out, then I guess I'm a meanie

I understand that there are folk here who might not automatically think of questions like "What do those fundamental forces act on?" or have cosmic inflation cross their minds when thinking about the development of the entire universe, but I respect ACC enough to think that at the very least those (and likely dark matter and dark energy also) should have been blindingly obvious points for him to consider. There are others here that I wouldn't have said the same thing to

Now you're lying. I just read the post from CC to which you responded, and it was directly on topic without a single bit of gaslighting. What exactly is the problem that you feel the need to do so on practically every post that you make. You do know that it is not a reflection on the person that you are trying to gaslight, but rather a reflection on your unwilligness or inability to stay directly on topic. Quite frankly, gaslighting is a very juvenile chat tactice and does indeed reflect very poorly on those who feel the need to do so constantly.

 

[Mithrae]

Now you're lying. I just read the post from CC to which you responded, and it was directly on topic without a single bit of gaslighting. What exactly is the problem that you feel the need to do so on practically every post that you make. You do know that it is not a reflection on the person that you are trying to gaslight, but rather a reflection on your unwilligness or inability to stay directly on topic. Quite frankly, gaslighting is a very juvenile chat tactice and does indeed reflect very poorly on those who feel the need to do so constantly.

Rather than responding to the 99% of my post in which I replied extensively to ACC's erroneous claim, you've decided to make two posts in a row (so far) which are utterly off-topic and fixated exclusively on my character as a person Naturally I'm a little flattered to be the object of such intense fascination.

 

[watsup]

Rather than responding to the 99% of my post in which I replied extensively to ACC's erroneous claim, you've decided to make two posts in a row (so far) which are utterly off-topic and fixated exclusively on my character as a person Naturally I'm a little flattered to be the object of such intense fascination.

You accused CC of gaslighting. That was a lie. I have read his posts for a very long time and I can’t think of a single one that ever went off topic and into personal insult of any kind. Unlike you, who can’t seem to make even a single post without doing so, the lame excuse-making of your last two posts notwithstanding.

 

[Mithrae]

You accused CC of gaslighting. That was a lie. I have read his posts for a very long time and I can’t think of a single one that ever went off topic and into personal insult of any kind. Unlike you, who can’t seem to make even a single post without doing so, the lame excuse-making of your last two posts notwithstanding.

Each person has their own style of discussion of course: Some folk are all seriousness and impersonal civility, some like me enjoy in-depth discussions of the topic at hand with occasional petty asides and point-scoring as a bit of a guilty pleasure to liven things up a little, some like ACC are here primarily for entertainment and rank serious discussion as a distant third place at best (and it's quite impressive of ACC that while there are times that it shows such as this, they're really not all that common), and some folk such as you frequently devote post after post after post to fixating exclusively on personal comments and insults (generally while declaring, apparently without irony or self-awareness, that personal comments and insults are simply awful and totally unacceptable).

 

[AConcernedCitizen]

No, it's really not that simple at all.

First and most blindingly obviously, the four fundamental forces themselves would do nothing without having matter to act upon: Physicists currently recognize no fewer than 17 elementary particles

17? Wow. Yeah. If it's 17, then that is definitely more complex than the entire universe. I stand corrected.

[/s]

Of course the biggest limitation of the standard model of particle physics is that it doesn't account for the fourth fundamental force at all. You've imprecisely suggested that the spacetime of our universe is curved - as far as we can tell it's actually flat, as if even that were a simple concept! - but the force of gravity refers more specifically to the 'local' curvature of spacetime by objects with mass as described by the general theory of relativity. We haven't yet worked out how (or if) relativity and particle/quantum mechanics can be reconciled.

However complex you want to claim that gravity is, it will always be less complex than gravity + all of the gravitational interactions in the universe that develop therefrom.

This idea that everything develops from more complex to less complex except for the two exceptions of biological life and consciousness is just bonkers. On the balance, it is much more common for things to naturally become more complex as they develop rather than less. Helium is more complex than the hydrogen it gets built from. Gold is more complex yet. Gravity acts on hydrogen to form into stars, which build the hydrogen into helium and then eventually supernova to form gold. We are moving from less complex to more complex the whole time. However complex gravity itself is, it is still less complex than the process of a star's lifecycle, since it is included in the process of a star's lifecycle.

Thirdly, while all of the above outlines our most fundamental understanding and parameterization of the current observable universe, there's still at least two aspects of its development which they don't cover or explain: The widely-hypothesized period of cosmic inflation during which the early universe expanded faster than the speed of light, a mind-boggling concept but widely regarded as necessary to explain the structure of our observable universe, and of course the big bang itself.

How exactly is that supposed to demonstrate that biological life and consciousness are the only observed cases of things developing from simple to complex?

I feel as though you're intelligent and well-read enough to have known that what you were posting above was misleading and disingenuous, at best.

I don't think it is misleading or disingenuous at all. However complex you may consider the fundamental forces themselves, every system that develops from the four fundamental forces is more complex still, because it includes the fundamental forces. Complexity is added along the development process.

The basic process of heat transfer, however complex you may consider it, is not nearly as complex as the entire scope of thermodynamics occurring in the entire universe. The process of heat transfer develops into countless variations of emerging complexity, such as weather patterns.

You can easily calculate the amount of heat transferred in a simple heat transfer with Q = mcΔT. Calculating the effect of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil on the weather in Texas a decade later is a much more complex and challenging calculation. The relatively simple process of heat transfer develops into greater complexity.

 

[Mithrae]

17? Wow. Yeah. If it's 17, then that is definitely more complex than the entire universe. I stand corrected.

You stated that
"Just about all complex systems developed from four relatively simple antecedents....
The entire universe is pretty much procedurally developed from those four mechanisms."

That's not some kind of tangent or throwaway line, it was the main and repeated thrust of your response... and yet the actual number of currently-identified antecedents and mechanisms is not four or eight within a reasonable margin of error: It's more like twenty to account for just the 5% of estimated mass-energy that 'ordinary' matter provides, as I showed and referenced. Whatever else they might have to say on the topic, an honest person might acknowledge that their comments were wildly and obviously misleading rather than getting all snarky about it

This idea that everything develops from more complex to less complex except for the two exceptions of biological life and consciousness is just bonkers. On the balance, it is much more common for things to naturally become more complex as they develop rather than less. Helium is more complex than the hydrogen it gets built from.

I didn't say that everything else develops from more complex to less complex; I referred to the development of "highly complex systems" from simple antecedents, which of course is quite vague, but I imagine most people would intuitively understand that "add more protons, neutrons and electrons" would not exactly qualify as becoming "highly complex" compared to the antecedent.

This is not exclusively my argument incidentally, it was suggested to me by Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. From a 2013 forum post of mine when I initially read it:

Richard Dawkins... points out that whereas evolution comprehensively details and explains a long series of incremental increases in complexity or 'design' from simple origins, like the height increases in a crane's load from a grounded base, Creationism or Intelligent Design simply appeal to a fantastic skyhook which lifts our incredulous load with no apparent foundation or explanation of its own.

However he also notes four remaining points of potential incredulity where the evolutionary crane or the gradual slope of Mount Improbable may still be unsatisfactory as a complete explanation:
> The origin of consciousness
> The origin of eukaryotic cells
> The origin of life
> The origin of our 'finely-tuned' universal constants....


But we needn't be so culturally-blinkered in our thinking as to assume that this makes all theistic hypotheses of the skyhook variety. And in fact Richard Dawkins himself inadvertently acknowledges this very fact: Natural selective pressure on self-replicating structures is the only known physical 'crane' or process by which complexity or apparent design increases over time. But in his criticism of religion Dawkins carefully and explicitly illustrates an analogue to genes' variation-with-adaption in the case of thoughts, or memes.

As one blogger quotes the book directly (see for more context),
"We really need Darwin’s powerful crane to account for the diversity of life on Earth and especially the powerful illusion of design. . . . Natural selection works because it is a cumulative one-way street to improvement. It needs some luck to get it started, and the ‘billions of planets’ anthropic principle grants it that luck. Maybe a few later gaps in the evolutionary story also need major infusions of luck, with anthropic justification."

One might say that "apparent design" would have been a more precise way of phrasing my earlier comments than "highly complex systems," but either way it's clear that Dawkin's professional scientific assessment was not "oh, this sort of thing happens all the time, everything gets more complex, we don't need any special mechanism or evidence to explain it!" Quite the opposite, Dawkins evidently recognized that the complexity/apparent design of our 'finely-tuned' universe is a puzzle in want of a clearer explanation, and speculatively invokes a kind of cosmic evolution to do so; endless universes spawning from black holes leading to a kind of 'selection' in favour of black-hole producing universes, which our universal constants are purportedly quite good at.

My point is simply that a form of idealism/pantheism, using the most obvious and effective simple-to-complex mechanism of enduring selection from varying thoughts (even if we suppose that other less impressive mechanisms have occurred under the scope of our universe's patterns of behaviour) stands out as currently the best and most reasonable way of speculatively explaining our puzzling universe.

 

[watsup]

My point is simply that a form of idealism/pantheism, using the most obvious and effective simple-to-complex mechanism of enduring selection from varying thoughts (even if we suppose that other less impressive mechanisms have occurred under the scope of our universe's patterns of behaviour) stands out as currently the best and most reasonable way of speculatively explaining our puzzling universe.

Change “best and most reasonable” in the sentence above to “same old superstitions as every god supporter ever” and you might have a point. You are just constructing your own god myths, like Gozaburo is doing elsewhere.

 

[AConcernedCitizen]

You stated that
"Just about all complex systems developed from four relatively simple antecedents....
The entire universe is pretty much procedurally developed from those four mechanisms."

Which highly complex systems developed independently of the four fundamental forces?

That's not some kind of tangent or throwaway line, it was the main and repeated thrust of your response...

It was one example of the natural progression from simple to complex. Another example I gave was the progression from simple transfer of heat to weather patterns.

The main thrust of my response was that biological evolution and consciousness are far from the only examples of increasing complexity in the universe.

and yet the actual number of currently-identified antecedents and mechanisms is not four or eight within a reasonable margin of error: It's more like twenty

By all indications, the only thing being acted upon is an underlying quantum field. The elementary particles are various configurations of excitation of this underlying quantum field through the four fundamental forces, and represent yet another example of emerging complexity from simpler antecedants.

At any rate, in evaluating the complexity of a system, it is the ruleset that matters. If the rule is "every turn, move each piece forward," then it doesn't matter whether you have three pieces on the board or 3 trillion. It doesn't matter whether they are all the same piece, or whether some pieces are knights, some are pawns, and some are rooks. If the game only has one rule, then it is a relatively simple game compared to a game with more rules.

The fundamental forces provide the ruleset for the overwhelming bulk of observed interactions.

to account for just the 5% of estimated mass-energy that 'ordinary' matter provides, as I showed and referenced.

The fundamental forces account for >99% of observed complex interactions, which is the metric under consideration here.

Whatever else they might have to say on the topic, an honest person might acknowledge that their comments were wildly and obviously misleading rather than getting all snarky about it

When do I ever miss an opportunity to be snarky?

I didn't say that everything else develops from more complex to less complex; I referred to the development of "highly complex systems" from simple antecedents, which of course is quite vague, but I imagine most people would intuitively understand that "add more protons, neutrons and electrons" would not exactly qualify as becoming "highly complex" compared to the antecedent.

If "most people" think the process of transforming hydrogen into gold isn't highly complex, then I suspect it is because "most people" haven't really given it much thought. This is the holy grail of alchemy we are talking about here.

This is not exclusively my argument incidentally, it was suggested to me by Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion.

Did Dawkins actually say "natural selective pressure on self-replicating structures is the only known physical 'crane' or process by which complexity or apparent design increases over time?" That looks like your own spin to me, but if Dawkins said it, I'll argue with him as well if he decides to participate in the thread. There are plenty of other examples of complexity increasing over time.

As one blogger quotes the book directly (see for more context),
"We really need Darwin’s powerful crane to account for the diversity of life on Earth and especially the powerful illusion of design. . . .

What this blogger calls the "powerful illusion of design" doesn't need anything other than confirmation bias to account for it.

One might say that "apparent design" would have been a more precise way of phrasing my earlier comments than "highly complex systems," but either way it's clear that Dawkin's professional scientific assessment was not "oh, this sort of thing happens all the time, everything gets more complex, we don't need any special mechanism or evidence to explain it!"

Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist. Naturally, he is interested in the specific mechanisms of developing complexity in biological evolution. I don't see where he claimed that is the only instance of developing complexity for a physical process in the universe though.

 

[Mithrae]

Which highly complex systems developed independently of the four fundamental forces?

The whole universe; the big bang, the entire mass-energy of the universe, relativistic spacetime, the cosmic inflationary period and dozens of 'finely-tuned' universal constants including those underpinning the bosons which carry three of the forces and permit the mass which curves spacetime.

It was one example of the natural progression from simple to complex. Another example I gave was the progression from simple transfer of heat to weather patterns.

The main thrust of my response was that biological evolution and consciousness are far from the only examples of increasing complexity in the universe.

Which as I've pointed out was a strawman. My error, such as it was, was trying to avoid the anthropocentric or teleological bias inherent in the word "design" while still conveying a fairly obvious point in a simple manner. There is simply no reasonable comparison between gold or weather patterns and the systems produced by evolution and conscious thought. The former have effectual component parts with little variation, just a handful of if not uniform component types; and if they were significantly altered, a fraction or even half of their component parts removed, we'd still be left with a coherent (albeit different) whole producing similar or at least comparable effects to the original whole - a category 2 storm rather than category 4, say, or zirconium rather than gold. If you remove half the components of the International Space Station you're not left with a smaller station or a different kind of machine, you're left with floating junk and dead astronauts; it's a machine consisting of millions if not billions of component parts, most of which have essential contributions towards the effect of the whole. Meanwhile even the simplest bacterium is considered comparable to if not more complex than technological marvels like the ISS or a nuclear submarine!

If all humans died tomorrow and everything we've put in space disappeared, an alien race colonizing our planet ten thousand or likely even ten million years from now would eventually discover some of our artifacts and their thought would not be "Well, complexity develops all the time so these were probably just produced naturally": They would know with certainty that the artifacts were produced by a process of conscious thought. While still for now less complex than those produced by biological evolution, the products of conscious thought have been developed far more quickly, mere thousands of years rather than billions, and may eventually surpass the former... and nothing else inside our known universe comes even remotely close to these two. You could certainly quibble that my phrasing wasn't the best, but it was and still is disingenuous to pretend that your 'counterexamples' are in any way comparable.

Of course we could spend days debating whether your examples are really cases of 'increasing complexity' at all, but what would be the point? The only real question is whether our 'finely-tuned' universe itself as a whole falls somewhere in that same ballpark of what I loosely dubbed "highly complex" things, or is simple enough to not warrant a similar kind of explanation. As I noted, Richard Dawkins (and others) seemed to recognize that there's a real puzzle there and in The God Delusion invoked a kind of "cosmic evolution" variation on a multiverse hypothesis as an explanation, which at least in philosophical terms is a credible attempt: But given that we have no evidence for the existence of non-conscious stuff at all, a kind of "cosmic consciousness" hypothesis of a growing, evolving deity would obviously have at least as much merit right out the gate (with various other advantages in explanatory scope and parsimony following on).

 

[rahl]

There is no such thing as an agnostic. You either believe a god exists, or you lack belief a god exists.

 

[Revelation]

There is no such thing as an agnostic. You either believe a god exists, or you lack belief a god exists.

good point rahl; i believe the atheists to certainly be fake around here.

so now it is the Agnostic's turn; in all probability they are Fake also.

all we have left are Believers, and Rebels who are mad at God.


of course God enters the picture and will decide what to do with all of these fakes....