Piffle.
There is a vast weight of experiment to back up the bulk of our current scientific understanding of the universe. Millions and millions of hours of work by the greatest minds in the world. And almost every shred of it points to religions being full of shite.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 16:16, archived)

You're better at this than I am
I'll leave you to it
( Cap'n Tallbeard, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 16:20, archived)

Ah yes, I don't disagree that science explains the universe or whatever domain you want to extend it to (e.g. the Bulk) but it doesn't specifically rule out things existing outside of it.
It simply makes no predictions about those things.
( Sygiinu, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 16:22, archived)

To quote Lee Smolin:
"It makes no sense to talk about things 'outside the Universe'. The Universe is defined as being all that there is."
Although I expect that's what you mean by 'the Bulk'. How can something outside our lightcone affect us?
( Cap'n Tallbeard, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 16:25, archived)

The bulk is a prediction of some Brane theories.
Those theories though like all scientific things only operate in their specified domain, and make no prediction of what happens outside of that domain.
( Sygiinu, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 16:28, archived)

Tired sophistry.
You're just pushing out the boundaries until there's a realm where the fantasy might exist. The religions are quite clear (if generally full of internal contradiction) about how the universe works and what role the magic beings play in it. They're all quite clear and all quite wrong. All of that stuff can be easily disproved.

Inventing something else that hasn't been disproved yet is just playing a game. It's the equivalent of saying "yeah? well ... it's my ball so I say that wasn't a goal because I've just invented this new rule ..."

Well I'm not seven years old and I can afford to buy my own ball so I'm not playing.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 16:26, archived)

Again, you're arguing a subtly different point there, and now trying to justify it with false analogies.
I'm simply saying that all things have a domain in which they operate.
( Sygiinu, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 16:31, archived)

I'm arguing precisely what I was arguing at the beginning.
There's nothing subtle about it: the supernatural claims of religions are all demonstrably nonsense. End of argument.

If you would like to change the argument to "can we invent a domain in which fluffy woolly definitions of fantasy beings might exist" then you are perfectly welcome.

I won't be joining in though. Because it is meaningless and immensely dull and the last resort of a dying philosophy.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 16:43, archived)

If you said that they aren't provable, then I might have agreed with you (unless I was just arguing for the sake of it)
but that something that makes predictions within a finite domain, can make predictions outside of it's specified domain (which is the case, unless you add the rider that our hypothetical 'believer' believe that God only operates within the realms of known science), to demonstrate that something is nonsense or not, is not self consistent.

You simply need to change your "demonstrably nonsense" to "can't be proven" so something similar, and you'd be logically consistent.
( Sygiinu, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 16:53, archived)

You're just going around in circles.
My argument is simple: God does not exist and can be proven not to exist. And I've said several times that I'm not interested in a tedious semantic dick-waving competition. It's dull and utterly irrelevant.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 17:03, archived)

So you want to discuss philosophy but you're not interested in logic?
Because that's what you're saying.
( Sygiinu, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 17:05, archived)

agreed.
though the "how, when, where and what" questions science answers still leaves the "why" to religion for the most part.
( evilstevie misses the Orange Place of late, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 16:25, archived)