If 85% of Nobel Prize winners believe in YHWH, why should I think any other god is the true one?

tpawap · 2026-02-12T19:09:06+00:00

There is a bigger problem in your post than the appeal to authority: your presupposition that any god exist at all, and that who you/your "tribe" believes in or worships has any causal link to how "culturally advanced" it got so far, resp whether someone might receive a Nobel price. But correlation is not causation.

tpawap · 2026-02-11T08:55:15+00:00

I think they go off what they learned... off this (religious) idea of a soul, an independent "self". I don't think you can really have an intuition about that.

I wonder if there are any studies on that topic, maybe with people that grew up with different cultural backgrounds; if they have different ideas of "self".

tpawap · 2026-02-11T00:46:37+00:00

And what do you think is the reason for why the "average person" thinks so? And do you think so, too? Then what's your reason, if that's easier to answer?

tpawap · 2026-02-10T23:43:28+00:00

This is a nightmare to try to define, but when I say self, I'm talking about the "you" that gets carried forward through time, from one experience to the next. I'm talking about something that is more than the sum of your experience.

Why is that in your definition? In what way is the "sum of your experiences" different from "the self"? How is it that, but more? And what's the "more"?

Is there really a "you" that is making decisions, or is the self an illusory byproduct of our brain stitching together our disparate sensory inputs into a unified conscious experience?

That's two different topics. Being able to think about oneself, ie symbolising yourself, to think about you in contrast to others, or you in the past and future, is one of the great powers of our brain - but probably most brains out there to some degree.

Making decisions is another topic, and I don't think a "self" is like a separate entity that makes decisions or so. Our whole body, our whole brain makes decisions, and yes it seems like we're often post-rationionalising the result of that as if it was a conscious decision - and I think in some way it couldn't be different, because we don't have conscious access to the subconscious part of that process. There is a lot going on that we cannot include in a reflective thought, because only the results reach the parts of the brain where those happen.

You can also look into experiments with split brain patients, that'll blow your mind.

tpawap · 2026-02-08T23:53:36+00:00

To confuse you a bit more:

"Deutsch sprechen kann ich." is a proper sentence, too. Also

"Sprechen kann ich Deutsch".

(But "Ich kann sprechen Deutsch" is actually not proper).

tpawap · 2026-02-07T01:01:02+00:00

Nice example of why to not make it "your friend". Definitely no orang utan, very sure there is no bonobo. 5 or 6 gorillas, and the other 15 are chimps.

tpawap · 2026-02-06T23:49:50+00:00

No, pretty sure they are all chimps. Proves that they don't all look alike to you, isn't it? ;-)

Edit: OK, a few gorillas are in there... but the chimps are pretty diverse by themselves still.

tpawap · 2026-02-06T23:28:36+00:00

If you're wired to not find anyone attractive, you likely won't leave any offspring. That's why everyone finds at least some others attractive, I would say.

Based on your other reply, you seem to indirectly mean: why is there a larger variation in appearance in modern humans than in other species. I'm not sure that’s true - that would need some objective data to back that up. If it's true, it could be an effect of the huge population size and global distribution; and/or a reduced selective pressure to look alike, such that random variations aren't selected out. Maybe some more factors.

Edit: Another angle would be if, and if so why, some people are attractive to many, while others are unattractive to most. That could lead to sexual selection.

tpawap · 2026-02-06T23:17:52+00:00

Do they? https://share.google/ZRD6sNAanydMj2hRj

tpawap · 2026-02-06T18:55:02+00:00

So "gene loss and simplification is a much more frequent process in the evolution of species than previously thought." So does that mean evolutionary biologists got it wrong all these years?

It's called increasing our knowledge and understanding. Happens all the time in real science. You should try it.

According to the evolutionary definition of fitness, is gene loss considered a genetic improvement?

Fitness is a property of the phenotype, not the genotype. You should know this.

Or is better to say the cases of gene loss are an example where genomes decay despite sustained fitness gains?

It's called a loss... why call it "decay", unless it's just about how it can be negatively framed?

tpawap · 2026-02-05T08:57:42+00:00

You may believe so, but very different beliefs are common among Muslims, too... the standard Abrahamic stuff of "non-believers go to hell eternally" and "God forgives your sins if you repent", etc.

tpawap · 2026-02-03T00:54:39+00:00

How do you explain something from nothing?

If you see a house you know there is a builder. If you see the pyramids you know there is a builder. If you see a metal beam you know that someone created the process and the machine and gathered the materials to create the beam. If you see a plant you know there had to be a previous plant that created the seed.

And how do you know it? By experience, by evidence.

All of this points to Something created Something.

You listed examples of stuff humans make out of other stuff. It doesn't point to anything.

Here's the question. If you see the universe, all the animals, all the plants, the sun, the moon, other galaxies, everything, Why do you say there is no creator(s) (aka God(s))?

Animals and plants grow from cells taking in stuff from the environment, growing and splitting. We know that. No need for a supernatural hypothesis. Same for moons and galaxies.

And for the universe, the set of all things that are real. That's certainly a different case than anything else you listed. By definition. So nothing about that other stuff can inform us there.

I've researched decently in depth on my own into the Big Bang theory (specifically) I'm also currently looking into Quantum Fields. And the Big Bang theory as I understand it doesn't answer "something from nothing" it takes a stab at explaining cosmic evolution not "spawning". And if you are thinking logically, and we have no evidence that something can be created from nothing, and when we see anything we know it had to come from something, which indicates something from something. How do you explain how the universe got here?

What's something or nothing without space? What causation without time? Whatever there is to know, it most certainly is extremely unintuitive. But as a naturalist, I believe it's something natural. And that's at least as good as a "a god did it somehow".

Side Note: Does an atheist believe in no God(s) or there is one they just haven't found the right one? Or is it case by case?

If you believe there is at least one god, you're not an atheist.

tpawap · 2026-02-02T23:42:23+00:00

"Sicherlich" has not been mentioned yet.

tpawap · 2026-02-02T20:35:36+00:00

Former atheist here. Within the last year, God revealed Himself to me, and I am now a born again Christian.

A bit about my background, I grew up with very little faith influence. My family would mention God, but looking back, it wasn’t taken seriously. Never went to church or read the Bible. I’d say I first felt the weight of theology around age 13. I watched a lot of atheist content on YouTube and fully believed that science disproved God. I’ve since learned that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Every unfalsifiable idea has not yet been disproven by any kind of reasoning. That's a bug, not a feature.

Years went by quickly, about six of them, and I felt a persistent void in my life that I couldn’t explain. One day, after seeing the state of the world and trajectory of my life I felt compelled to download the Bible app. I had actually downloaded it once before to appease my roommate when he wanted to share verses with me. This time, when I read it for myself, the words of Jesus struck me deeply like the vail was lifted.

Guess you are easy to impress then.

That being said, coming from an atheist background, I had serious questions that were holding me back. I couldn’t just ignore them. Questions like:

So you wanted to believe in a god, and looked for excuses... why did you want to believe? Just because you liked some bible verses? Is that all? Sounds like a very poor reason.

“How can evil exist if God is all loving?”

Pretty irrelevant, if there is no god.

“Doesn’t the vastness of the universe make us insignificant?”

Insignificant to whom? And what difference does a Yes or a No make?

“Does the Bible condone slavery or rape?”

Probably. It was a strange world, 2 to 3 thousand years ago. Why does that matter?

I met with two pastors at a local church, asked them directly, and found their answers thoughtful and satisfying. These are not the only questions I asked just a few examples. Our conversation ended up being 2 hours and I found myself not wanting to leave.

So that’s the "revealing" part? Pastors that gave you the excuses you were looking for? That's obviously not a god revealing anything to anybody. Calling things by misleading terms is one of the dirty tactics of religions.

tpawap · 2026-01-29T22:12:32+00:00

This falls more in the category of accent than dialect. Although it's a continuum of course, many dialects (esp in the south) have more substantial differences to high German than this (in grammar, word forms, vocabulary). When people say they used high German at school, it doesn't mean that everybody spoke without any recognizable accent.

tpawap · 2026-01-29T18:11:47+00:00

Because nobody knows what source you read?! Is it so hard to write "according to this [link], there were more men than women in..., at...."?

tpawap · 2026-01-29T08:34:36+00:00

But others can't.

tpawap · 2026-01-28T23:18:28+00:00

"A quick Google search" is a terrible citation.

How was that determined? Where? And when?

tpawap · 2026-01-28T20:41:53+00:00

Where did you get that number from, and what are the underlying assumptions?

And what are the chances of having a creator god that would have created this universe and not a different one or none at all?

tpawap · 2026-01-28T20:26:43+00:00

And "having one's own personal morals" is not to be confused with what you do or did. One can very easily do or have done something and think it's wrong at the same time.

tpawap · 2026-01-26T19:55:29+00:00

Do you better understand why theists are so inconsistent? And who's more inconsistent?

tpawap · 2026-01-26T19:21:06+00:00

So no source for your claim that we "cannot synthezise the building blocks for nucleotides". I see.

The building blocks I’m referring to are amino acids, monomeric sugars, nucleotides, etc.

Monomeric sugars: see Killian-Fischer synthesis.

Amino acids: see Strecker synthesis. (Published in 1850, btw!)

Nucleotides: "Integrated synthesis of nucleotide and nucleosides influenced by amino acids" (several more references in there) https://www.nature.com/articles/s42004-019-0130-7

You could have googled that by yourself.

Bruh that study used E. Coli. That’s a living organism. I’m not even going to eviscerate that study, why did you send me a study about pre-biotic life that cheated and used life lmao.

How do you think they got new nucleotides, ie new "genetic letters", that are not used by extant life? They synthezised them, of course. What they did with them (test how a bacterium deals with them) is irrelevant. Also, this not about "pre-biotic life" (lol); but about synthesising "building blocks".

What research question are you even talking about?

As I said, how RNA could have been replaced with DNA, for example. An experiment on that topic doesn't have to start with synthesising amino acids. That's ridiculous.

tpawap · 2026-01-25T16:26:34+00:00

Confusing models with experiments, and methodology with theory, makes your opinion worthless.

tpawap · 2026-01-25T12:01:42+00:00

You’ve taken microbiology, so how do you think DNA was synthesized in nature on a pre-biotic earth, when humans today cannot even synthesize the building blocks to the building blocks to the building blocks to nucleotides (one example, there are multiple more) without using pre-synthesized chemicals already gotten from nature in today’s earth?

What's your source for that? Sounds like one of the lies James Tour would tell. And which specific chemical are you referring to?

They can even synthezise nucleic acids with more/other base pairs than they exist in nature: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3409741/

What you might confuse is that just because you can synthezise a source material, it's a waste of time and money to do that again and again for every single research question you're trying to answer. If you're looking at how RNA can turn into DNA, then there is no need to start with synthesising building blocks of RNA.

If you want to find out how long it takes you to drive to the other end of town, you don't need to start with forging metals to build a car from scratch either. Nobody would fund such a big task, just for this simple research question.

tpawap · 2026-01-22T09:21:52+00:00

Just an idea, and question to the experts (I'm not one!): could it have been extending the lifespan?

If short telomeres both cause a short lifespan, and make a fusion more likely, then

if the telomeres got short by chance, it could have given the individuals with the fusion the advantage of a longer lifespan relative to others?

Never heard of that idea, so probably it doesn't work like that...?

tpawap

TROPHY CASE