Einstein's God

Most Christians try to misquote and misinterpret Einsten's God. Their logic usually goes like this: "Einstein, who is one of the most intelligent person of our time, believed in God. Therefore, God exists and atheists are wrong. Checkmate atheists!"

Really? Did Albert Einstein really believed in a personal God? Did he really believed in theism? Unfortunately, the answer to these two questions is NO. No, Albert Einstein did not believe in a personal God. Yeah, he believed in a god but not a personal god. He believed in Spinoza's God. And there's really big difference between the theist's god and Spinoza's God. And even if Einstein or any other famous and intelligent scientist or person believed in a God, that does not mean that we can already conclude that God exist. It simply does not follow and it is a very weak way of proving God's existence.

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." -Albert Einstein

Anti condom nuts

Anti condom nuts in our country strikes again. One of them says "We have to admit that using condoms is equal to legalizing free sex." What the?! Maybe he meant something?

Anyways, I can't really understand why they, specifically the CBCP, cherish and care more their doctrines rather than the negative realities our poor country face (like poverty/corruption). They and some of its followers claim that the Church are just "guiding" our country to the right "moral" path but they are not really. Some of these primitive thinking priests believes that an ideal family would be a family with 5-7 children, they think that contraceptives/RHB is worse than corruption, the Vatican compared it to the Holocaust, Papa Ratzi said that condoms spreads AIDS, in Brazil they excommunicated a rape victim, her parents, and the doctor who decided to abort while they take no action to the rapist, they (CBCP) condemns our health department for giving free condoms and educating our fellow countrymen, and just recently the quote above. The CBCP have already done and said a lot of stupid and ignorant things against contraceptives and RHB. They already exerted a lot of effort and resources fighting and condemning the RHB while the majority in country suffer hunger, poverty, and corruption to name a few. Instead of spending their resources on stopping a bill that could help and educate us more about sex and health reproduction, they should spend their resources on things that could really improve the ugly situation our fellow countrymen face.

I am not saying though that all priests in our country are "primitive" thinking, there are also those (some Jesuits) who are very in tact with reality. And I really admire these priests (or this one in particular) for knowing what is really best (and not best) for our country. I hope that these CBCP priests will evolve like that of the Jesuits.

Ressurrection

Hi. It has been a very long time since I write something here. I stopped blogging for some reasons but now I "think" I miss blogging. I am really reconsidering blogging again. Hopefully something will pop out in my mind. Or if nothing pops, I guess I'll tell some stories just for the sake of writing something.

Google: Now Serving Cowardliness

Reason Enough?

You can have your own truths but you cannot have your own facts.

Someone gave me this link and said that the six reasons in that link shows that God exists. I want to reply because some of the content of the link shows some misconceptions (or maybe lies?) regarding some issues. And most importantly, I want to speak my mind regarding this topic. So here's my reply and my reasons as to why that six reasons are not enough reasons to show that your brand of God exist. (so many "reasons" there)

1. Does God exist? The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today.

The complexity of life can be explained by Evolution by Natural Selection (More about evolution here http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/main_issues.htm) Now as to the universe, the universe do not show any design. Design implies purpose. Look at the trillion of stars (most of them bigger than our stars), the lifeless planets, the vast empty space, asteroids, comets. What do you think are the purpose of these? Again, design implies purpose.

As to the fine tuning of the earth, if the earth were a little further or closer from the sun, there would still be life. But not the kind of life we have today. Remember that we evolved within the universe and its parameters. Even if one law, say gravity, is taken or absent there can still be life.

2. Does God exist? The universe had a start - what caused it?

Scientists, cosmologists, and physicists are not really certain as to what really happened before the Big Bang. Yes, time and space started almost 14 billion years ago but we cannot really explain what happened before it. We simply do not have data to conclude/say beyond reasonable doubt that the universe had a beginning or that it is eternal. It could be eternal one way or the other or it could be otherwise.

Now, even if i'll warrant that cause, there is still no point to give that cause the attributes of your Theist God (all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, and other all-something). A cause of the universe do not show that that cause is all-knowing or all-good. That cause could be anything. It could be aliens or some energy or another universe (multiverses). The cause could be anything.

3. Does God exist? The universe operates by uniform laws of nature. Why does it?

We know these laws because people (Einstein and other scientists) name and identify these laws. And not because god or some deity gave it to us. But why does these laws exist? We (including you) do not know. All we know is that we can identify natural laws, observe them in action, and use them to explain and predict natural phenomena. Saying that God gave us these laws simply because we can't think of any answer shows a god of the gaps (argument from ignorance).

4. Does God exist? The DNA code informs, programs a cell's behavior.

Argument from ignorance.

Information is not meaning and does not, per se, imply any special structure or function. Any arrangement implies information; the information is how the arrangement is described. If a new arrangement occurs, whether spontaneously or from the outside, new information is assembled in the process. (Claim CF003)

Also natural outside influences (like Sun, or something from the earth's interior) can also help assemble these information.

5. Does God exist? We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him.

Which god are your referring to? Allah? Hindu gods? Zues? Thor? Which god from these list and this?

Every culture have its own god, heaven, hell, and religious claims. You claim that your god 'pursues' you while other also claim that their god also pursues them. Does that mean that your god and other's god simultaneously exist? This is by far one of the weakest argument.

6. Does God exist? Unlike any other revelation of God, Jesus Christ is the clearest, most specific picture of God revealing himself to us.

I beg to disagree. Your evidence that JC exist are the Gospels. Unfortunately, these gospels (and others that were not included in your Bible) contradict each other BIG TIME. Also these gospels (at least 4) were written long after JC died (at least 60 years after) and that some of them were only passed through by mouth (since some of them were illiterate). The point is that your evidence, the Bible, is just a hearsay upon hearsay.

Further, using the Bible as an evidence to prove God exist would result to circular reasoning which is related to begging the question.

All in all, the six reasons given were not really enough to prove that god (or your God) exist. Also, no offense, but the reasons were really outdated and old (and tiring). There are much better arguments (out there that I know) for god's existence than that six. These were already debunked by so many times.

...And that is why I don't believe in your God.

Proving a Negative

I always thought that proving a negative is impossible. I just learned and read that it is not. It would be difficult though to prove a negative because one must have omniscience to do so. But "proving" in proving a negative does not necessarily mean proving beyond reasonable doubt or a mathematical proof. One must only need reasons or evidence (or maybe the burden of proof) to prove a negative and not necessarily a proof beyond reasonable doubt. There are two (plus one below) ways in which one can prove the nonexistence of something. One is to prove that it cannot exist because it leads to a contradiction (incompatible properties argument) and the other is by carefully looking and seeing (empirical evidence).

Incompatible properties arguments attempt to show a logical contradiction in the concept in question. It shows that an entity (or something) cannot exist because of a certain contradiction. A good example of this is the properties of the Christian God/Theism. One can prove that this god does not exist by showing contradictions in some of its properties. For example, Omniscience and Free Will. A being/entity cannot be omniscient and at the same time free (acquires free will). It shows that that entity can't simply exist because of the two contradictory properties. Another example is the Transcendence and Omnipresence properties of the theist god. The incompatible properties argument can also show that two objects cannot logically exist simultaneously. For example, the god of Islam cannot co-exist with the God of Christians.

Another way to prove a negative is by carefully looking and seeing. The idea is that if a thing exists, one must be able to detect its existence directly or indirectly (not directly observable but the object causes effects which are directly observable). For example, suppose a friend of mine claims that there is a dog in my room but when I went to my room I found no dog. Since I found no dog, then I can conclude that there was no dog in my room. This same method allows us to know that things such as unicorns, Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot do not exist. Of course one could argue in my example above that that dog may have left when I arrived in my room. But based on the lack of proof/evidence that there was a really dog and that based on the limits of my understanding of anything (I could be mistaken on what I saw) I still proved a negative in such a case. Again, proof here is not the same as mathematical proof.

Lastly, another good way (found also here) to know that a person is justified in believing that a thing, say X, does not exist if all of the conditions below are met:

1. the area where evidence would appear, if there were any, has been comprehensively examined, and
2. all of the available evidence that X exists is inadequate, and
3. X is the sort of entity that, if X exists, then it would show.
   

So all in all, based on the three ways above one can really prove a negative or that prove that there is no god or Santa Claus or Loch Ness Monster or a planet between Earth and Venus.

Funny and Confusing

I am You? You are Me?