dylansan
I made no such claim. I explained that plants follow the golden ratio because that's the best way for them to get sunlight, and showed that it's entirely possible for them to grow that way by basic processes. How you interpreted that as claiming life requires the golden ratio is beyond me.
What's probably true is that plants evolved with that ratio because they survived better than ones that didn't, although some without the ratio survived well anyway. Because of the geometric nature of the Golden ratio, it's not hard to imagine that all instances of it in nature may be due to geometric processes, such as that oil experiment. But to think life wouldn't exist without it is baseless. Especially since life exists that doesn't have that ratio.
Sorry, I must have read your posts wrong.
dylansan
So these are the four options you see for the universe's existence? The answer is likely to be 2), from what I can calculate. 3) is by definition unlikely, 1) has been shown to be false essentially by scientists who calculated that life could exist with many different values for the laws of physics. And 4) begs the question of how the intelligent force was created.
And the alternate explanations just leave me with more questions than answers.
Here's my argument for the first cause:
1. Something exists
2. You don't get something from nothing
3. Therefore, something necessary and eternal exists
4. The only two options are an eternal universe or an eternal Creator
5. Science has disproved the concept of an eternal universe
6. Therefore, an eternal Creator exists
dylansan
Who says they were created from chaos? The big bang started as an incredibly ordered situation. By that I mean, in all of space, the particles in the big bang were relatively close together, rather than spread evenly throughout space. Read up on entropy and what it means on a particle level.
So the wristwatch was wound-up without any mind behind it?
Hasn't it puzzled you how the laws of nature that governed the big bang just broke past the barriers of time and were conveniently ordered so that we have the precise range of materials and conditions we live in today? It has puzzled me anyway.
For the first cause, the singularity must have been ordered as you have said. Why?
dylansan
I should add that it's also important for you to defend your explanation from evidence against it, though I know you have been. For example, I'm still not sure how you can claim God requires no creator but the universe does.
Time is the measurement between reactions (isn't it?). First I would like to answer your question by saying that in my mind we (or anything else) shouldn't really be here! I have discussed before with you that it's amazing that there is something rather than nothing, and you agreed!
So accepting this, we try to understand why there is something rather than nothing. After some heavy thinking I accepted something eternal and infinite for the first cause. Why God? Well maybe after describing what God must be like it would give you an idea (backward thinking
):
" He must be supernatural in nature (as He created time and space).
" He must be powerful (incredibly).
" He must be eternal (self-existent, because there is no infinite regress of causes).
" He must be omnipresent (He created space and is not limited by it).
" He must be timeless and changeless (He created time).
" He must be immaterial because He transcends space/physical.
" He must be personal (the impersonal can't create personality).
" He must be necessary as everything else depends on Him.
" He must be infinite and singular as you cannot have two infinites.
" He must be diverse yet have unity as unity and diversity exist in nature.
" He must be intelligent (supremely). Only cognitive being can produce cognitive being.
" He must be purposeful as He deliberately created everything.
" He must be moral (no moral law can be had without a giver).
" He must be caring (or no moral laws would have been given).
And remember: understanding isn't necessarily comprehending.
dylansan
It's the same with Newton's laws versus Einstein's relativity. The problem is that for most of the speeds we deal with, Newton's laws work fine, but in the bounding cases, they are insufficient. Depending on what the astronomer was studying, it may have been reasonable to assume the universe was finite to make the calculations easier, but for someone studying the origin of the universe, or figuring the deeper mysteries, it's an important question that has great affect on the answers.
Scientists' assumptions or beliefs do affect their work, but often it is these assumptions that are the torchlight to our understanding.
dylansan
Yep, no discrepancy there. That is perfectly reasonable as far as I'm concerned, although it is quite incredible.
Sure - but we will never know if the universe is infinite or not, and if it is, it must have an underlying law of nature to stop itself from invalidating (as I have explained above). The mind boggles.
dylansan
Maybe there is an underlying law for everything that occupies the same "space" as our universe. i.e. anything that could potentially be reached by us given enough time. There's also the chance of other dimensions which are required to be separate from ours, because their laws conflict with ours. We may never know about those, or they may interact in some bizzare way.
The problem I find with that though, is that one would assume that the laws of one territory is increasing - what's to stop it from invading other territories? Unless territories are divided somehow, but then these dividers need their own laws, and territories cannot overrun the dividers.
dylansan
God is not the only infinite option though. Many things are created through mindless processes. I still find the characteristic of intelligence to require to much extra explanation to fit. Can you define exactly how God's intelligence works? Would it not require something like neurons in a brain or some other way of dealing with information? Intelligence is a complicated thing, but as far as I'm concerned it requires natural laws to function.
From what we have observed, nothing can be created from nothing. Imagine a school chair and how simple an object it is yet how complex it is to make. We have:
The rubber soles on it's legs.
Stainless steel legs
Plastic body
Now, try to create that! Where would you go to? What would you use? How would you construct?
After you have finished your project, you realise you haven't really created anything - you have made an object using previously existing materials.
Now try to make a car.
dylansan
To you maybe, but no God has revealed himself to me.
Perhaps you can see but are not looking. I'm not trying to offend you, but try to reflect on what you have learned in life. I would like to share this quote I found amazing:
"I am not postulating a 'God of the gaps', a god merely to explain the things that science has not yet explained. I am postulating a God to explain why science explains; I do not deny that science explains, but I do postulate God to explain why science explains." - Richard Swinburne
dylansan
Alright, but even if he did he could still be a lunatic or a liar.
I accept that, but if you think so then you can't say he was a good teacher: a good teacher wouldn't lie (not about being the Son of God anyway!).
And for what benefit? I wouldn't lie like that if I acted like that. This man gave up his life teaching and defending truth.
niky
I've already pointed out rationalism and Confucian thought as proof for the belief in ethical absolutes without a God. It would be too long and complicated to go into the origins of science here, but the tradition of science and critical thought did not originate within a monotheistic culture. Instead, it started with the Greeks, who sought to understand the Universe by process of rational thought alone. There's an entire book's worth of discussion there that is way beyond the scope of this thread.
"As I try to discern the origin of that conviction, I seem to find it in a basic notion discovered 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, and enunciated first in the Western world by the ancient Hebrews: namely that the universe is governed by a God, and is not the product of the whims of many gods, each governing his own province according to his own laws. This monotheistic view seems to be the historical foundation for modern science.' - Melvin Calvin, Nobel Prizewinner in biochemistry
The Greeks certainly were in many ways the first to do science in anything like the way we understand it today, the implication of what Melvin Calvin is saying above is that the actual view of the universe that was of greatest help to science was the Hebrew view that the universe is created and upheld by God (and that view was very much older than the worldview of the Greeks).
But define 'science', I suppose I need to get a final understanding of what science actually is before I can continue to discuss about it. I can't find a clear, consistent definition of it anywhere.
niky
We don't have to disprove him. The onus is on the believer to prove his theory. On that count, with the lack of material evidence for a God who is claimed to have material manifestations in the past (Burning bush, burning pillar, walls of Jericho, sun stays still in the sky, etcetera) at least indicates that that particular version of God is not as likely as some others.
Says who? Miracles do not go against science - they are just a violation to the regular laws of nature. If a God created and upheld the universe, he could add or subtract matter/energy as he pleased at any given time:
"If God annihilates or creates or defects a unit of matter, He has created a new situation at that point. Immediately all nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born." - C. S. Lewis
How does that make the Christian God more improbable than a deist God? Surely if a being created the universe it would be conscious of it's current affairs?
niky
Again, i reiterate: I do not believe that there is no "Ultimate Source" which could be construed as "God". I just don't believe in pretending I know what that "Ultimate Source" is.
And that's fine - but I do, and I don't pretend. See my argument, mark me as a madman - whatever: there is more behind the myth.
niky
Why are we still talking then? We've already stated that science and atheism are not the same thing as materialism. And that the theory of materialism is contradicted by science. Naturalism is another thing altogether.
Atheism is a very wide term - atheists each have their own word views, like theists. Materialism and Naturalism are two of those. Sorry but why is materialism contradicted by science?
niky
Science only fails where it predicts it will fail. Science tells us that it cannot tell us what happened before the beginning. The reasons why after this.
I'm not sure what you mean at that first statement. How can science predict it's own failure: isn't that not a failure in itself?
niky
An eternal existence for the Universe has been rejected. Not an eternal existence for the medium in which the Universe exists.
It's a good thing nobody claims the Universe is eternal, eh? Except the theists who think it is?
I've never said that the universe was eternal. Wether nature is eternal is a different matter altogether - one that I reject.
niky
No it doesn't. You're the only one here clamoring for restrictions.
It's simple logic. It would be impossible for an infinite to let it's own outcome invalidate itself.
niky
You: If there are other Universes, there must be a set of laws that are constant throughout the other Universes.
Science: We know we have laws governing this Universe. We do not know why they are constant over wide areas of space, but we have proof that they do not apply at the quantum level, within black holes, and at the Big Bang. Thus we know that there are instances where those "laws" do not apply. We have no evidence that they are the same outside the Universe or in other Universes. We have no proof that there is anything outside the Universe, in the first place.
Your seriously missing the point. Think of the big picture. Either the 'universes' are divided so they cannot interfere with each other, or they are all interlinked with restrictions. The point I was making was that multiple universes must have an underlying set of laws between them, demanding more explanation.
A reoccurring universe (big bang, big crunch, big bang, ad infinitium) must have a law which does not allow a outcome to stop itself from 'crunching' or collapsing into another singularity as it would break the rule of the infinite cycle.
Multiple universes must have a law or divider to stop one universe from invalidating another's territory - leading to a collapse.
niky
It's a matter of preference. Even if there were a meta-Universal law, there is no requirement for there to be a law-giver. That's just a matter of semantics.
I hope I am making the notion of a law-giver more thought.
niky
Here's one:
http://gnosis.org/welcome.html
That contains links to a whole lot of other material. Please read it with an open mind. This covers a lot of stuff that was not chosen for inclusion in the New Testament.
EDIT: Please note that an open mind doesn't mean you have to believe in Gnostic teachings, but rather, it's an invitation to evaluate its relation to Orthodox Christianity. I cite this source only because it contains links to the Dead Sea Scrolls and other sources of ancient Christian and proto-Christian texts that are not found or referenced by more Orthodox Christian sects (Catholics, Protestants et al).
Still researching. 👍
Was the gnostic gospels in any way interlinked with any of the apostles?
huskeR32
I'm going to be completely honest and say that I have no idea what you mean by "naturalism." I've never heard of it until you started using it in this thread, and I've never quite followed what you even mean when you use the word. Sorry that I can't properly debate this term with you.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)
huskeR32
I'm sorry, but coming from you, I find this very ironic and amusing. You constantly use the word "science" as if it's a single, unifying, all-encompassing explanation for a non-theist view of how the world works. Science isn't a thing, it's a method for finding truth.
Yeah I apologise I haven't been great with my posts. I will try to improve.
huskeR32
I can certainly differentiate between religions. But for the point I was making, it doesn't matter - all religions fail when it comes to questions of origin. For you to latch on to that one semantic detail and try to use it to invalidate my statement - it makes it seem like you're trying to get away from an argument you know you can't win.
So your asking the 'Who created the creator' question? Perhaps this post has made thing a little more clear (above). And I'm not sure why you think I'm avoiding an argument, the only reason I would think of doing such a thing is if I didn't think I knew enough about the subject.
I'm not blind - I can see the argument from both sides.
huskeR32
But I'll play along. Instead of "So does religion," I guess we can substitute this:
"So does Christianity." - Now, with that lame semantic obstacle out of the way, feel free to address the legitimate point that was already there to begin with.
If this post hasn't answered your question, ask me it again and I'll get back to you.
I outlined the basic derivation of faith in my last post. 
