He does suck at quantum mechanics, and if you are defending his statement you are just as misinformed. fortunately you didn't try to use big words you read about on wikipedia. I have nothing against him, we are both gun nuts.
If you think that believing in something without evidence is logical, then there's no point in carrying this any further. That creates a gap between you and I that cannot be bridged.
I’ll see if I can spare you feelings here, but no promises. You don’t know what you’re talking about, at all. Please find your grade 9 science text and look up “indirect evidence.” It’s used all the time in science. How do we know* electrons exist? By your logic, because no one has directly seen them, there is no evidence they exist. Do you see how silly that kind of logic is? We know that electrons exist because we see evidence of what they do. This is called indirect evidence. Likewise, with the question of the existence of God, we can prove** that a god or gods exists by looking for indirect evidence. One obvious way to do this is to look at the number of people who believe a god or gods exist. There will be reasons for their beliefs, and the most likely reason is that the belief is founded on something real. That is indirect evidence. *By "know" I mean that we have good reason to believe they exist. **By "proof" I’m not talking about 100% certainty. I’m talking about building up a body of evidence that suggests that this is likely true.
Do we really have to go over this again? You obviously find that a lot of people talking about this God character is sufficient evidence for you to believe it. Good for you, for the rest of us (and for everybody in that 9th grade science classroom), not so much.
I'd be willing to bet this co-worker of yours can't even articulate why he is an atheist. The atheists I know tend to be thoughtful and extremely articulate but I am well aware of the knee-jerk atheists who have not really put much thought into why they believe what they do (for the record, many of them go on to be angry, ignorant theists later on so maybe they are just angry, ignorant by nature). To me, they are as bad as the aggressive, religious folks who can't give a decent, coherent explanation of why they are religious. Two sides of the same coin. People in this thread have basically told some of us atheists "shut up and mind your own business" and I don't agree with that. If things were as simple as one belief vs. another I could understand. I don't care what someone's faith is or what they want to believe in as long as it doesn't hurt others. The reason this subject comes up and will continue to do so is because a significant portion on the religious side of the argument is attempting to rewrite our government, our history and what our children learn in school with a decidedly religious spin. That's why atheists/agnostics/skeptics/theists need to continue to talk about this out in the open. If we don't our kids' kids won't even realize there ever was a debate.
More to the point, it is not evidence at all. He has taken a valid scientific criteria (indirect evidence) and contorted it horribly. Probably intentionally.
I agree that that doesn't have to be the reason. I'm only saying that it's the most likely reason. I don't know why the concept of god would exist if a god or gods didn't exist, however. What would be the point? From a survival of the fittest standpoint people devote a lot of time and resources to faith and religion. If there was nothing to it then you would expect that those people would fall behind and that people who didn't spend that kind of time and money on their religions would get ahead, but that doesn't seem to be the case. People do, in general and over the long term, seem to benefit from their faith.
Everything without evidence is illogical to you? I hope you're not a scientist or responsible for coming up with new, novel ideas. Was the idea that the sun revolved around the earth illogical before we could prove it? Was the idea that the earth was round illogical before we could prove it?
I asked you to explain, so I have no problem. A quantum, as I understand it is a single discrete unit - the smallest unit possible. So a quantum of quantum time or several quanta of quantum time makes perfect sense to me. Like saying I'm climbing a single rung of a ladder that is broken up into many rungs. If that is the sum of your problem with what I said, I don't feel particularly concerned. That particular verbiage was chosen because I don't know what the word is to describe a unit of planck time.
Thinking that evidence makes things logical has nothing to do with my curiosity or desire to explore ideas.
That is the definition of Planck time. Or 1 Plank time. a quantum of something is not 1 of something. the statement you made is nonsensical. I was able to smell the BS in a "quantum of a second"
Dictionary.com [rquoter] quan·tum –noun 1. quantity or amount: the least quantum of evidence. 2. a particular amount. 3. a share or portion. 4. a large quantity; bulk. 5. Physics. a.the smallest quantity of radiant energy, equal to Planck's constant times the frequency of the associated radiation. b.the fundamental unit of a quantized physical magnitude, as angular momentum. [/rquoter]
