Atheists, what do you think about this?

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ruveyn
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08 Jul 2010, 3:52 pm

jc6chan wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

The earth is slowing in its rotation due to the friction of the tides. This is causing the moon to recede (conservation of angular momentum). The moon goes an inch further out each year.

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This is happening so slowly that throughout human existence, the moon has always appeared to have almost the same size as the sun.

Yes, during the time humans have been around. Much earlier we didn't have a moon, we had a Nightmare. The Moon started out just a little further out than Roche's Limit, about 70,000 miles and has receded since. The Earth's day used to be about six or seven hours long, but the tidal friction has slowed it down by a factor of four. Eventually the earth and moon will be in a tidal lock, circling a common center of gravity, face to face. Humans will be long gone by then.

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08 Jul 2010, 3:57 pm

When god made the world he sat down with some paper & pencil to figure it out.

Eclipse in various locations of the earth If = y being the sun and x being the moon and z being the earth and a = distance and b= location anc c being the variable then
y2 x5b-(z-88) + (c4 -a-2) = (a5 + b667 * x 8y) - ( (a/x) / (z* b * .......ah, to hell with it I'll just put'm here.

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jc6chan
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08 Jul 2010, 4:43 pm

Hmm...I've been reading the posts made here...sorry, doesn't sound convincing. I wanted to understand the way athiests think. I don't really see any strong arguments here. I respect athiests for their views but I just don't get it. :roll:

Awesomelyglorious
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08 Jul 2010, 4:57 pm

jc6chan wrote:

Umm.... I don't see a strong argument on your side.

How about this, can you present the argument for your side in terms of a syllogism? I just don't see the missing premise(s) between "The moon is approximately the same size to the eye in the sky as the sun" and "therefore God exists". A syllogism on your part would give both sides more structure.

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08 Jul 2010, 5:00 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

jc6chan wrote:

I don't need to explain anything. Everyone knows very well that by random chance, it is most likely that two things are not going to be perceived as the same size or similar size especially when the two objects are of different size and different distance. Also keep in mind that aside from the stars that look like dots, the sun and the moon are all we got for large sizes in the sky. A really small sample. The smaller the sample, the least likely. Clouds don't count. They vary in size.

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08 Jul 2010, 5:17 pm

jc6chan wrote:

Ok, but there is still no reason why this unlikely occurrence suggests the existence of God, which was one of Orwell's comments:

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I don't understand how you imagine the relative perceived sizes of the sun and moon are theologically significant.

I merely want you to bridge that gap. Why is this theologically significant?

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08 Jul 2010, 5:20 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

I merely want you to bridge that gap. Why is this theologically significant?

Because it suggests the work of a Creator. I want you to bridge the gap of why yelling "coincidence" is the answer to everything.

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08 Jul 2010, 5:24 pm

jc6chan wrote:

Because it suggests the work of a Creator.

Non sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow"), in formal logic, is an argument in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises. In a non sequitur, the conclusion can be either true or false, but the argument is fallacious because there is a disconnection between the premise and the conclusion. All formal fallacies are special cases of non sequitur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29

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08 Jul 2010, 5:27 pm

jc6chan wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

I merely want you to bridge that gap. Why is this theologically significant?

Because it suggests the work of a Creator. I want you to bridge the gap of why yelling "coincidence" is the answer to everything.

Why does it suggest the work of a creator? Why would a creator want this to happen?

"Coincidences" are our term for rare non-teleological occurrences where two or more things go together in a manner that is strange. Given the lack of apparent teleology, and the fact that you identified that this is strange, it was labeled a coincidence. This isn't an explanation, but a description.

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08 Jul 2010, 5:31 pm

jc6chan wrote:

Are athiests able to explain this aside from coincidence? The sun and moon have a huge difference in terms of distance from the earth. The range of possibilities that they would appear to be very different in size is vast.

well, atheists don't need to explain this, as the same size illusion is actually meaningless, and is the same with experiencing a solar eclipse, but I get that an eclipse can make few Christians (creationists for that matter) believe that that is a manifestation of God's power, which I heard from them with these events, but they don't have that same reaction when they cover the sun with their thumbs.

It seems to me that not only you are proposing that God must exist because of this, but it seems that you may be favoring a concept of a designer because of your position against natural selection and that your view seems to be such as "the sun and the moon appear equal in size, therefore someone must have designed".

Quote:

keep in mind that aside from the stars that look like dots, the sun and the moon are all we got for large sizes in the sky.

And what is the revelance of this to anything? Does an apparent stationary earth and apparent larger size than the sun is also of great significance?

I mean, I believe we are getting this problem with the appeal of the human naked eye perception of celestial objects, as it would be like saying that the apparent geocentric system proves God, Intelligent Design or anything.

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08 Jul 2010, 6:46 pm

jc6chan wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

jc6chan wrote:

Probability fail. By random chance it is equally likely that they are perceived as the same size as any other specific combination of sizes. That's like saying if you roll a dice and get a '2', it suggests that there is a higher power because it is more likely to get something other than 2 (i.e. 1 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6) then a 2.

you_are_what_you_is
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08 Jul 2010, 7:14 pm

It's a strange kind of God that spends his time giving us nice eclipses every couple of decades rather than doing things like, say, curing cancer, or preventing starvation.

Also:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNiTsYCkyI8[/youtube]

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saintetienne
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09 Jul 2010, 2:32 am

you_are_what_you_is wrote:

It's a strange kind of God that spends his time giving us nice eclipses every couple of decades rather than doing things like, say, curing cancer, or preventing starvation

people not dying would be a very very bad thing, yet it something humans aspire to...

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09 Jul 2010, 3:20 am

saintetienne wrote:

you_are_what_you_is wrote:

It's a strange kind of God that spends his time giving us nice eclipses every couple of decades rather than doing things like, say, curing cancer, or preventing starvation

people not dying would be a very very bad thing, yet it something humans aspire to...

It's not really much of a survival characteristic to want to die.

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09 Jul 2010, 7:29 am

jc6chan wrote:

Did you view the clip I posted, in it he explains your concerns quite capably. I suggest you have a look.

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DentArthurDent
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09 Jul 2010, 8:11 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

1) The similarity isn't as miraculous as it seems, as Dent shows, given that there is a lot of variance in moon sizes.

.

You appear to be giving me far too much credit, not my work I am sorry to say.

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