Religious belief

[Elok]

Well then, good news: so far as anyone can determine, the whole thing is imploding.  Membership has stalled, the old guard are starting to leave, and at this point most of their activities revolve around shaking everybody down for ever-larger donations to use for big fancy buildings (to use as evidence that the CoS is actually thriving).

[Unorthodox]

The research I did indicates that purchase of LeVey's books is a requirement to belong to the Church of Satan.

This would, ironically perhaps, be against Satanism.  Not saying you're wrong, mind you. 

[Elok]

Forming an organized religion to glorify individualism to the point of repudiating altruism seems pretty ironic whether they make you buy the books or not.

[Buster's Uncle]

Let's have an anarchists club!  I'll be president, you guys be the bylaws committee.  -We'll need a sergeant-at-arms...

[Dio]

Let's have an anarchists club!  I'll be president, you guys be the bylaws committee.  -We'll need a sergeant-at-arms...

Unfortuntately, anarchism rarely persists because an individual or group tends to try and seize some form of power.

[Buster's Uncle]

It's true!  But I'll fight you!  WE HAVE RULES AGAINST THAT!

[Buster's Uncle]

I miss this thread; if no one ever has anything to say on the subject again, I can still point at this thoughtful conversation among a wide variety of world-views with pride in its peacefulness...

[binTravkin]

To summarize OP.
"A bunch of people whose views are not compatible with religion as such (because religion is about believing and science is about doubting/questioning), have found something that they can't (yet) explain, therefore God must exist."

Been there, done that. Perhaps a hundred of times.
Each time scientists discover traces of something they can't (immediately) explain, religious people have used this as a "proof" God exists.
Only to be disappointed some years later.
Yet, this is the normal process in science - discover clues while perfecting theory N, just to realize N is imperfect and N+1 is needed, then go on to research & develop N+1.

[Buster's Uncle]

God of the Gaps, Bertrand Russell called it.

In Mart's defense, quantum effects -specifically things like the Observer Effect- appear to show more promise towards ... something unexplainable by ration means than previous gaps like being unable to explain the orbit of Mercury through purely Newtonian orbital mechanics...

[binTravkin]

Some people think somewhere there ahead there is a "limit of human perception", i.e. concepts too complex for humans to understand (but not related to mysticism/Supreme Being/etc).
Realistically thinking, if such a limit existed, it would not be a boolean value.
We would progressively move towards it with each next step being more difficult.
Could explain "more promise to be unexplainable".

[Buster's Uncle]

Stuff I said on the first page of the thread; the observer effect -and I admit this is a stretch, but not a huge one- could be a handy reality-altering tool for 'God' put there for just that reason, and entanglement would be handy for speed of effects (for the BIG miracles?) spreading instantaneously, against the macro-laws.

Have you ever read Contact by Carl Sagan?  There's an important bit in the novel about the Creator leaving clues in the laws of the universe -specifically the value of Pi having embedded messages, in the novel, but the aliens said there were more.  The observer effect could be interpreted as God's joke on physicists - or "Hello; I AM"- or both...

I'm basically just saying the strangeness of quantum physics appears to me to be an entirely different order of 'we don't understand yet' than previous gaps one could name, being almost like they're set up to contradict the possibility of rational explanation.  Lori can probably articulate this better than I, this being a interest of his that he's studied extensively.

I'm an agnostic, personally, and this is just speculation.

[Buster's Uncle]

...To be clear, I'm thinking about the photon slit experiment when I talk about the observer effect being almost like they're set up to contradict the possibility of rational explanation.  Why would the laws of the universe care if I was watching?...

[thedarkestcolors]

For me things change depending on my current level of consent with the world surrounding me & to a lesser extent on how long ago I last had some insane luck. If things flow along nicely, no dark clouds anywhere to be seen, no religious thought would pass my mind.
If its more like drifting in the ocean during a thunderstorm, huge dark waves rolling in and all you got is that little wooden board that does no good keeping you above the water and the hail is pounding on your head so you're not even sure above the water is the place to be, then its time for made up little prayer rituals directed nowhere in particular (but with the strong believe that they are received by someone/something).
I guess that somewhat fits under the agnostic terms and conditions, with a touch of deism.
Nucleus & electrons, sun and planets this might just go on and on.. so I guess what we call the universe is just part of the liver of a wild boar hunted by some giant religious fanatic. So ultimately it was created by some mother boar banging father boar big time.

[Lorizael]

...To be clear, I'm thinking about the photon slit experiment when I talk about the observer effect being almost like they're set up to contradict the possibility of rational explanation.  Why would the laws of the universe care if I was watching?...

I don't think the double slit experiment (or anything similar in QM) relies on an observer. There are interpretations that explicitly remove an observer from the explanation (many-worlds, decoherence), but the other possibility that exists perfectly well in a Copenhagen-ish interpretation is just that we only ever see nature when it is being observed, essentially tautologically. That doesn't mean observation is important.

There's a Heisenberg quote that makes this point well: "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

[binTravkin]

Thedarkest, guess how western civilization started?
When some greeks in Ionia refused to succumb to this urge of mysticism and instead started thinking what is actually going on.
From there the philosophy tradition and the rest is history.