Iowa city council debates proper time in meeting agenda to “undo the curse that was just put on our city.”
An Iowa man has kicked off controversy over religious freedom in the small town of Ottumwa, Iowa by opening a city council meeting with a prayer to Satan, which then kicked off a debate about the proper time in the meeting agenda to undo the “curse.”
Satan? I do not believe in Satan, leprechauns, pixies, ghosts, werewolves, jujus, angels, Tooth Faeries, Odin, Thor, Zeus, Ra, Brahma, Athena, Hera, Poseidon, Yahweh, Allah, or the Trinity, demons, devils, Astrology, the Tarot, Satan. For the same reason in every case: there is not the tiniest shred of 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐨𝐟 empirical, 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥, 𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥, 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 any 𝐆𝐨𝐝 and the burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe. Even given no evidence for specific gods, we could make a case for some unspecified “intelligent designer” or “prime mover” or begetter of “something rather than nothing”? By far the most appealing version of this argument is the biological one - living things do present a powerful illusion of design. But that is the very version that Darwin destroyed. Any theist who appeals to “design” of living creatures simply betrays his ignorance of biology. Go away and read a book. And any theist who appeals to biblical “evidence” betrays ignorance of biblical scholarship. The burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe. Even given no evidence for specific gods, could 'his ignorance of modern scholarship. Go away and read another book. As for the cosmological argument, whose God goes under names such as Prime Mover or First cause, again no evidence. Because physicists are closing in, with spell-binding results. Even if there remain unanswered questions - where do the fundamental laws and constants of physics come from? Obviously, it cannot help to postulate a designer whose existence poses bigger questions than he purports to solve. If science fails, our best hope is to build a better science. The answer will lie neither in theology nor - its exact equivalent - reading tea leaves. In any case, it is a fatuously illogical jump from deistic Unmoved Mover to Christian Trinity, with the Son being tortured and murdered because the Father, for all his omniscience and omnipotence, could not think of a better way to forgive “sin”. Equally unconvincing are those who believe because it comforts them (why should truth be consoling?) or because it “feels right”. The wife of a former UK prime minister may stand for the” feels right” brigade. She based her belief on “an understanding of something that her head cannot explain but my heart knows to be true.” She aspired to become a judge! My’lud, I cannot provide the evidence you require. My head cannot explain why, but my heart knows it to be true. Why is religion immune to the critical standards we apply not just in our courts of law, but in every other life?”
Richard Dawkins
Is this an LLM account?
Or else a Dawkins quote as it says it is, same difference.
No evidence for the Prime Mover? Something had to start the ball rolling somewhere. Was the ball always rolling? That makes no sense based on the life/death, on/off, one/zero life we see all around us.
Fun fact about space-time: there is no time “before” time. The human words like always, before, and other bullshit we see around us are only make sense in our world at our scale, and that’s infinitesimally small part of the reality that we even know about, and who even knows what we didn’t discover yet. There are sets of very complicated mathematics to try to make sense of that stuff, but we don’t have a way to talk about it using our everyday terminology.
I call Occam’s Razor…in it’s simplest form, if something moves, then time exists. I’m no theoretical physicist so I may be wrong.
In order for something to move something need to exist, and we’re very iffy on the concept of things existing “before” or “during” singularity.
Ah…the old “cogito ergo sum” vs. “esse est percipi” philosophies. If that is the standard then the best I can agree with is that time, may or may not, exist.
No, not really. Not at all. It’s quite new theory of relativity interpretation, that is by now established quite thoroughly, that time is relative and significant enough masses, speeds, or energies effect not only space but time. So it’s not “I wonder how shadow tastes” philosophical pondering, it’s quite hard and mindbending “Here’s math that is so thorough and precise, it allows us to predict and then detect ripples of fabric of the universe that a dying star sextilions of kilometers away made a billion years ago. According to this math, if you move quickly enough you will be younger than your grandchildren, and if all the mass of the universe is squished together and converted to energy, actual time doesn’t actually flows”.
The universe is weird. Quantum foam literally allows creation from vacuum energy. We obviously don’t have the definitive answer but there’s no need to invent a concept when we can save a step instead of having the complication of who made the prime mover.
The “prime mover” is a false solution, since it claims something out of the universe was always there and made it exists. So that the universe don’t need to have always been here… But if something was always here, there is no reason to suspect it is a weird entity that defy all the rules we know. It could be that the universe was always here.
Also, as we have no clue of the rules applying out of the universe, we can not really explain its begining (nor even know if it has a begining).
so right. I mean its like saying the prime mover was just always around but he was created by god-god and then god-god-god made him and so on.
I get it. There is no knowing. It’s turtles all the way down.
We didn’t start the fire It was always burning since the world’s been turning