The origin of everything

Or perhaps one could just open Webster's and find the definition there?

Oh, I wouldn't say that. There are plenty of things out there that people (intellectuals or anybody else) can't explain. That's why we have scientists and explorers and such.

You need to think more of the poetry of the universe.

Haiku.

There's no need to be "careful" about leaving "god stuff" out of any explanation, since there has never been an explanation that needed "god stuff." Not once.

Why not try to evaluate the "god stuff" of an explanation for how anything in this physical universe works? For example:

1. Perform the same experiment or procedure multiple times, half of them with and the other half without adding "god stuff."

2. Compare the results of both batches for patterns looking for any evidence of statistically significant difference between their results:
   1. First, note that there will always be some variation in experimental results ("noise"), so we need to employ statistical analysis on multiple performances of that experiment to detect a meaningful difference ("signal"). Such a detection of "signal" would be a statistically significant difference.

      And for non-scientists and non-engineers here: a basic task in experiments and tests is to determine whether something you find is statistically significant, basically winnowing the kernels of "signal" from the mountains of chaff "noise".

   2. If there is a statistically significant difference then that would indicate that that "god stuff" had an effect.

   3. If there is no statistically significant difference then that would indicate that that "god stuff" had no effect.
      
   
   
3. Conduct that experiment multiple times, preferably with multiple independent teams, for more data to feed your statistical analysis. Also branch out by applying this test to other experiments/procedures/tests.

4. A variation would be to take an experiment that was constructed to include "god stuff" from the beginning, then remove that "god stuff" and see if that new lack of "god stuff" affects the results in any way.
   

In the end, I predict that you will find that including "god stuff" does nothing signficant: adding "god stuff" or omitting "god stuff" has no effect.

Mathematically, we are working with some function (f()) which does not include any "god stuff" and to which we can add some "god stuff" (g()):

y = f(x₁,x₂,x₃, ... x_n)

y₁ = f(x₁,x₂,x₃, ... x_n) + g()

y₁ == y

Therefore: g() == zero -- AKA NULL

Adding "god stuff" or leaving it out has no effect. Starting your car has no difference whether you say certain prayers or not, whether you are Protestant, "true Christian", Muslim, Catholic, Mormon, Hindu, Buddhist, pagan, atheist, whatever. In TOS Spock was once given the line: "A difference which makes no difference is no difference." Science and the Universe works the same and completely independent of our religious beliefs.

Though an interesting side-effect is that those who insist that "god stuff" must be added to science et al. are effectively demonstrating that "god stuff" is insignificant and basically zero, such that adding or deleting it has exactly the same effect: none whatsoever.

Thus they prove that God is meaningless. Apologist, meet petard; now hoist!

Edited by dwise1, : slight notational cleanup

Edited by dwise1, : Changed "removing 'god stuff'" to "omitting", since that's the actual issue: Do we add "God" to science et al. or continue to not include such extraneous and superfluous "factors"?

Phat writes: Its an easy persona to sustain if you are, in fact, God.

How would you know that?

Phat writes: It is (a) difficult if not impossible persona to duplicate or counterfeit.

On the contrary, thousands of false gods have fooled millions of people.

Gods only exist when someone believes they exist and they cease to exist when anyone does not believe they exist.

Phat writes: The real irony around here will be when the group of secular humanist intellectuals are confronted with events that cannot be explained.

The secular humanist intellectuals have a far better record of explanations than the religionists.

I'll point out again that you're saying, "There are some events that cannot be explained - so here's the explanation."

You can't have it both ways. If something "cannot be explained", then your god story can't explain it either.

The Real God writes: You need to think more of the poetry of the universe.

There once was a God named Jehovah,
Made a universe like a Bulova.
It ran six thousand years
but it ended in tears
'Cause the whole damn thing went supernova.

Poe-try.

TRG

It's not natural
to think the
supernatural
is natural

If god dude isn't going to defend his OP or even contribute constructively shouldn't this be shut down? I realize pickings are slim, but one thing this forum has is standards.
The science side has definitively and overwhelmingly won the debate. There seems to be no more the anti-science crowd can present.

Look at the date the OP was left. Yeah, he got me too. Message 26

Poe-try.

POE try this. POE try that.

Lol. Got me.

AZPaul3 writes: Yeah, he got me too.

Yup, got me too

Albeit I was in the other direction.
I thought it was awesome and fun that we were promoting such a topic "for real"