When 95% of the universe is a complete mystery to us we call "Dark Matter/Energy" according to scientists?
http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/
"What Is Dark Energy?
More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn't be called "normal" matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe."

What if the word "God" is just a symbol we humans use to relate to that eternal mystery that makes up the vast majority of the universe?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/17/2015 11:33PM by koriwhore.

I'm quite certain there are thousands of deities, and a few saviors as they live quite comfortably where they have always been; in the minds of people who believe in them.

Clearly, there is more unknown than known.I'm amazed at what we have learned just in my long life time.

To presume we know all the answers is absurd, of course.

it's the "god is whatever we want it to be" argument.

What leads anyone to think that the What We Don't Understand has a personality? And can think? and can care about us?

so they anthropomorphize it, by calling it 'God' and hoping it's benevolent.
People live in fear of death. They can't accept the reality that once life is over, it's over, time to get recycled into worm shit, so they make up fairy tales about surviving death.

“An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no God.” Carl Sagan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJXQZALNFrc

How big are your problems again??

I have yet to see, experience, read about, know anything that makes me think, not believe but think, god(s) exist. I'm cool with that.

If you were dead you wouldn't be able to type, unless you're a robot.

Might as well act like there's a superior being watching your actions; who knows how many times I was up to something stupid and didn't know my dad was watching the whole time...!

To claim me certain there is not god is to misrepresent my and many other atheists' point of view.

If anyone wants to claim there is a god, it is up to them to show evidence of God.

Even though we do not fully understand dark matter, there is evidence that something exist that we call dark matter. Their is no evidence that would lead to the conclusion that dark matter could be thought of as a god.

Thus there is no reason to believe in God.

For me it comes down to one of three things:
1) God doesn't exist.
2) God exists but does not interfere on our behalf. In other words, it is as if he is not there, so why worship it or assume it exists?
3) God exists, but chooses not to reveal himself to some, but does to others. This god would be undeserving of my worship. And as I am not one of the lucky few he revealed himself to, why should I assume he exists?

Basically it comes down to I can't know for certain, but if god does exist, then it is a lousy god. Besides, you can't really deem anything a 'god' that isn't a conscious being/force. Calling an unconscious force/material a god is simply meaningless. What you are proposing is equivalent to saying that god is gravity. At that point we should go back to the Greek gods.

"God" isn't a 'he'.
I don't think that the pantheist god of Einstein and Eastern Religions, which is not a personal 'God', is meaningless.
Like Sagan said, "Yes I believe in God, if by the word, God, you mean the embodiment of the immutable laws that govern the universe."

And I think that an impersonal god is a worthless god, just as I stated above. Besides, using the male pronoun is a convention. The Jews themselves believe in a disembodied god who is both male and female, yet call it a 'he'.

doesn't make the concept of an impersonal 'god' meaningless to the Buddhists, Taoists, Confuscists, Shintos, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Native Americans, all of whom worship an impersonal god, only they usually call it something like, tao, or great spirit.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2015 01:04AM by koriwhore.

I didn't say that I can't see the meaning in an impersonal god. I said that such a god is worthless to me. Big difference between them. I don't care whether you or anyone else believes in such a god, who could exist for all I know. For me, that god has absolutely no sway in my life. Also, while I respect every person's right to believe in whatever they want, I don't have any respect for WHAT they believe (at least in regards to religious beliefs). This holds true for your argument as well. I understand your argument, and I think you have the right to argue it, I just think that your argument is wrong.
Now why don't you just run along and go bother the other posters on this thread.

Dark matter= god of the gaps

Every other day I read "Dark Matter/Energy might not exist"
The only reason we think it exists is because our math would be off by 95% if it didn't exist. We just made up a fudge factor to explain why the universe is apparently expanding exponentially, yet we don't get torn atom from atom.

koriwhore Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Every other day I read "Dark Matter/Energy might
> not exist"
> The only reason we think it exists is because our
> math would be off by 95% if it didn't exist. We
> just made up a fudge factor to explain why the
> universe is apparently expanding exponentially,
> yet we don't get torn atom from atom.

Completely false. Your own OP shows what you just wrote is incorrect. I suggest you read your own postings -- and if these things interest you, then go spend some time learning facts about them, rather than endlessly demonstrating that all you did was read a few quick popular summaries, and get nearly everything about them wrong.

Ghawd is the law that runs the Bell Shaped Curve. This is why few long putts go in the hole. And a few perfect drives wind up as lost balls.

How can anyone be so certain their concept of "God" is anywhere close to whatever deity might exist (if one exists)?

Good question, Mr. Mutt (said with all respect).

Tiny beings grasping at certainty in the face of the Great Deep, Ambha. Unfathomable mystery...

"God" can't just mean whatever you want it to mean.

If you want it to mean something other than "a superior supernatural being with magical powers", then why not come up with a different word for it?

Who gets to define the word "God"?
Webster? If that's the limit of your definition I'd say that's pretty narrow minded definition.
What's wrong with Einstein's definition?
What's wrong with Sagan's definition or the Dalai Lama's?

You can't. However, you can be certain that Mormonism is clueless about the nature of God.

Without God, then saying "Goddammit" would be the same as saying "Nothingdammit" or "Zerodammit" or "Zippodammit".

It's just not the same without God.

I think it's handy to believe in God at those moments when you need for Him to damn someone or something at your behest, on your behalf.

You don't even need to hold the Priesthood to have God damn stuff for you.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2015 05:06AM by beyondashadow.

`

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm dark enegy cern donuts.............

hot crispy toroids dipped in dark energy, yuuummmmmm...

You seem to be saying that anything that doesn't have a concrete explanation is "god"... This is not going to work because the more we learn the smaller your god gets.

Calling dark matter and energy "god" is exactly the same as me saying, "I don't know what's around the corner, god must be there" When I turn the corner and see nothing there, I either have to move god to hiding around the next corner constantly playing hide and seek or change my definition of god to something meaningless, like, "Oh, he's always been around the corner, he's the air, after all no one can live without air, so god is air."

You want to believe that "nature" is god... Go ahead, no one here is stopping you. What's annoying is when you keep trying to tell other people what they should or shouldn't believe, or worse, trying to tell other people what they do or don't believe based on your definition of "atheist" and then trying to act all superior while doing it. Everyone here has been through that before, and frankly, it's a little old.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2015 11:00AM by Finally Free!.

koriwhore Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When 95% of the universe is a complete mystery to
> us we call "Dark Matter/Energy" according to
> scientists?
> http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/w
> hat-is-dark-energy/

Well, at least you stopped using "96%."
However, it's not a "complete mystery." The hyperbole doesn't help your case.


> "What Is Dark Energy?
> More is unknown than is known. We know how much
> dark energy there is because we know how it
> affects the Universe's expansion. Other than that,
> it is a complete mystery.

Once again, the "complete mystery" hyperbole is unnecessary and rather silly.

> What if the word "God" is just a symbol we humans
> use to relate to that eternal mystery that makes
> up the vast majority of the universe?

The vast majority of claims using the word "god" are not that at all. Have you read any of those claims? What point does it serve to "redefine" the word "god" to mean "anything we don't know?" How about just calling stuff we don't know stuff we don't know, rather than giving it a word label that has been used tens of thousands of times to mean something else completely different? Oh, and since the universe isn't "eternal," neither is the "mystery." There's that hyperbole again.

I'm not "certain there's no god." I just point out that there's no evidence there IS such a thing, so there's no reason to "believe" such a thing exists. Even your distorted use of the term, which is nothing but an argument from ignorance.

Dark matter isn't "god." Dark energy isn't "god." The universe isn't "god." They're dark matter, dark energy, and the universe. We have perfectly good words for describing them. There's no need to tack "god" on top of those.

I doubt you know more about Dark Matter/Energy than NASA scientists, who said exactly what I'm saying, Dark Matter/Energy is a complete mystery to us, but it's an important mystery, since it makes up "about 95%" of the universe, by their calculations.
But let's quibble over a fraction of 1%?
That solves all the mystery of the universe!
"Eternal" is relative, meaning it's always been a mystery, still is and still will be once the last race of humans goes the way of the past 14 species of humans.

koriwhore Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I doubt you know more about Dark Matter/Energy
> than NASA scientists, who said exactly what I'm
> saying, Dark Matter/Energy is a complete mystery
> to us

I never claimed to. However, they don't say "complete mystery." YOU do. I've pointed out numerous times that if they were "complete mysteries," we wouldn't be talking about them at all, but you continue to miss the point and use needless hyperbole.

> But let's quibble over a fraction of 1%?

Accuracy matters.

> That solves all the mystery of the universe!

And there's the worthless hyperbole again.

> "Eternal" is relative, meaning it's always been a
> mystery...

No, it's not. And since the universe is only about 13.8 billion years old, it hasn't always been a mystery -- at most it's been a mystery for 13.8 billion years. Words have meanings.



> still is and still will be once the last
> race of humans goes the way of the past 14 species
> of humans.

So you can predict the future, too?
Hint: no, you can't. So that claim is more worthless hyperbole.

Things we don't know are things we don't know. They're not "god."

No one can be certain because no one can prove or disprove God exists.

Other than what we know from observation.

Einstein based his belief in God purely by observation of the universe. Everything is infinitely connected, and a perfect order to everything in the universe.

Now science is exploring the possibility of multiple universes; parallel universes if you will.

And it isn't beyond the realm of possibility that clones of ourselves exist elsewhere, on other planets, living parallel lives to our own. Science is finding more pieces to the riddle of existence, but has a very long way to go!

We are still a primitive civilization, given all we know. It's known that information itself is doubling and tripling every 2-3 days. Considering that the doubling of knowledge used to take 100-150 years or more in recent history, that is phenomenol in itself.

There is so much more we don't know; we're still in an embryonic stage of development as earthlings.

For what we know now, it simply doesn't matter if there is a god.

There is no clear evidence of involvement by anything divine or supernatural.

There is no clear evidence of an afterlife. And this is actually the biggie. If there is no afterlife, the existence of god doesn't matter to us as humans now. The great benefits claimed for God are to come in an afterlife, an afterlife that is doubtful at best.

If you want to claim God exists, get busy proving the afterlife. Because if there is no afterlife, God's claimed blessings are meaningless.


On a different tact, labeling the unknown as God is not constructive. This creates the God of the Gaps concept and you're left with an ever dwindling concept that means less and less until s/he disappears. What kind of God is that?

Or God as a mental crutch? Why is self-deceit a fruitful path for living your life when we can and do know better?

These arguments are weak and in the end, self-defeating.

Maybe I've just created strawmen of your arguments, let me know.

I don't know there is. I don't know there isn't. All I know is this:
I feel like I'm part of something bigger than I am. I feel like some part of me is eternal. And I feel like we are all connected in ways beyond the ken of science (yet). I think that feeling is what leads us to come up with the idea of a god. But if "god" is just this connected, peaceful feeling, and we are all part of the "something greater"-- then in a way we are all "god," just as a drop or a wave is part of the sea.

So what is a "feeling"? I believe it is one of your own thoughts accompanied by your own emotional response to that thought.

I don't know there is no God. I don't believe we have a loving father type God that sent us here just to condemn most of us and never see us again. As a parent, that very idea seems insane, and no parent, God or not, would require that their children worship them, complete certain initiations, etc...

There might be some kind of God. In what form, I don't know, and I don't really care.