Do you believe in God?

[TankAss95]

Not trying to defuse this healthy discussion, but I am going to throw out a crazy and wild idea. Is it possible that the very science that is being used to disprove the existence of God is actually mapping out how God did it?

Exactly what I've been trying to say. God is the author of science.

 

[niky]

"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).

That would work, if the Greeks or pre-Christian Romans knew anything about the Hebrew religion at all. As they did not, and existed solely in a pantheistic culture, Calvin's idea is nothing more than a personal conviction, as he states.

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.

As said two posts above yours, science is a system. A system of thinking, of testing ideas and beliefs and validating them. Nothing more. It's not a religion. It does not require faith. You can apply scientific thought and method to anything that is physically testable.

Science is not philosophy. It will not tell you what you should do with your life, or what your "purpose" is.

The study of the meaning of life and relationships between people and the laws governing these relationships are questions of Philosophy and Ethics (which is also Philosophical in origin), which are not Science, though rational thought can be applied to each.

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:

So why doesn't he? Or more importantly, if God could do as he pleases, even going so far as to violating the laws of nature, why doesn't he do it?

In modern times, it's getting increasingly difficult to canonize saints. Because canonization requires miracles. While a stain on the ceiling in the shape of Jesus can still sometimes pass, all we have left to rely on in most cases is miraculous healings. Which are also dubious, considering the great role the power of the mind plays in healing.

(Of course, if someone should actually regrow a detached limb from a stump...)

"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

You know, quoting from others doesn't help your case as much as you think. The above paragraph doesn't explain anything.

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?

It's more improbable than a version of God who doesn't interfere on a personal level. The concept of God the Omega is difficult to disprove. A God who creates the Universe by whatever means, then lets nature run its own course. But a God the Alpha, one who intervenes on a personal level, would, given the rich and varied tapestry of history, have to have performed many, many contradictory and contrary actions over the course of the centuries. Thus, God the Alpha is either inconsistent or stark raving mad.

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.

Depends on which myth you hold dear. My people believe that man and woman were born from a split bamboo, but so far, DNA testing has proven negative.

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?

Because materialism only believes in the existence of matter and energy that we see. Quantum theory, now several decades old, demonstrates that there is something beyond that, and that in certain instances, reality itself stops being "real". In other words, we now know tha there is more than just matter and energy, though we do not fully understand what it is.

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?

The current state of Science says that we cannot know what happened before the Big Bang.

Liken it to men blindfolded and thrown into a cave with a thick, stone door, thick walls and a vent that lets in fresh air. One might say that the cave is in the midst of a deep ocean. Another might say it's inside a mountain. Another might say it's inside a cosmic egg floating in an empty void.

The scientist will say that the cave is this big and this wide, made of this kind of rock, and it contains air that can be breathed. The air pressure is bearable and the walls are not hot, so it can't be too deep underground. If it is, then there's a ventilation system that freshens the air, though we can't see it or hear it. We can do tests to predict how quickly it regenerates the air by covering the vent. Rocks fall to the floor, and so do people, so there's a law of gravity involved, so it can't be floating in a void. If it is, centrifugal force would be needed to create gravity, but we can test for that by dropping objects from certain heights and seeing if they drift to the side.

The religious man will then ask if this cave is in Spain or China. The scientist would thus reply: "How the hell should I know?" Because there's no way to tell from within the cave.

I've never said that the universe was eternal. Wether nature is eternal is a different matter altogether - one that I reject.

Semantics. Without a Universe, we have no nature.

It's simple logic. It would be impossible for an infinite to let it's own outcome invalidate itself.

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.

Why would infinite probability invalidate itself. If one probability is no probability, then that instance of no probability would occur, without any effect on the rest of probability. In fact, in an infinite set of infinites, the chance of nothing occuring is likely so great as to make it a very large subset of infinity. Stillborn universes.

You are misunderstanding how infinite infinity really is.

Who says that these laws are necessary? Who says that other Universes don't affect on our own or intrude? Some believe that vacuum energy may be energy leaking in from other Universes, and that black holes are leaking energy into other Universes (though Hawking has already shown how black holes conform to the Law of Entropy by interacting with this vacuum energy and slowly evaporating). Some suggest that this leakage of matter and energy from other Universe somehow helps shape our Universal laws. If this leakage is pervasive, then we would exist in a sea of Universes that are roughly similar to our own.

Would this invalidate infinity? No. Would this preclude against the possibility of another sea of Universes existing with a different set of physical laws? No. Would this preclude the possiblity that there is an infinite sea of meta-meta-meta-universes, eacu made up of an infinite number of multiverses made up of an infinite number of Universes and sub-Universes created by probability? No.

And what law would you impose to ensure a Universe collapses into a Big Crunch? We already live in a Universe that seems doomed to expand forever.

This is not to say that there are no laws governing the nature of the medium in which the Universe or even the Multiverse exists. But like men trapped inside a cave, we don't even have the slightest hint of what these are and how they work. Men trapped in a cave cannot hope to observe and study the sun.

I hope I am making the notion of a law-giver more thought.

Keep going. As I've said. I am entirely open to the existence of something beyond, but I cannot pretend to know what it is.

Still researching. 👍
Was the gnostic gospels in any way interlinked with any of the apostles?

You'll have to see for yourself. I don't really know.

Not trying to defuse this healthy discussion, but I am going to throw out a crazy and wild idea. Is it possible that the very science that is being used to disprove the existence of God is actually mapping out how God did it?

It's a popular line of thought amongst scientists. In fact, as mentioned, Einstein and others are believers in one form of God or another, and even in his seminal work: "A Brief History of Time", which some take as being very anti-God, Hawking leaves room for him.

 

[superbike81]

Exactly what I've been trying to say. God is the author of science.

STOP DOING THAT!

You are claiming a religious belief as if it is fact.

I have no problems with your beliefs, but if you are going to make a claim like that you really should precede your statement with "I believe...."

I can say "I am 74" tall" but I cannot say "GT5 is an arcade racer." I can however say "I think GT5 is an arcade racer."

This is the main problem I have with very religious people, they try to push their beliefs as facts. If you cannot prove what you claim than it is not a fact.

 

[CraftyLandShark]

Sorry, I must have read your posts wrong.

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


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?

Two factual issues, first of all - using your numbering.

2. This is an unfalisifiable claim - as anyone in a debate such as this ought to know, you can't prove a negative claim, so you can't use it to form a logical argument. Also, look into a family of particles called leptons. You might find some of their behaviors rather interesting. Nothing can be built from their apparent ability to appear spontaneously yet since we know of nothing else that can, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

5. Again, not exactly true. There is a very reasonable argument to be made for the claim that THIS universe is finite, yes, but when you use the term 'universe' in the context of a discussion about the existence of a god, you really, I think, mean 'existence'. There is no evidence that I am aware of within current theory to support the contention that all of existence is finite.

Flaws of this nature in a system of logic render the conclusion unsupportable without substantial evidence to the contrary to support the huge leaps made.

Now to address your other claim. There is nothing "convenient" you can ascribe to the fact that the universe exists as it is. This is the "fine tuned" argument, which I think, in reviewing the thread, I already saw you discuss. The universe exists as it is. That is indisputable, but beyond that, we can make no evidentiary claims as to WHY things exist as they do. If you accept the multiverse theory, there are any number of (or infinite) universes, all of which developed along their own scheme of physics, which may be vastly different from our own.

My sense is that the nature of the origin of each universe governs what particular particles, elements, and ultimately, what system of physics develop within said universe, but notice that I call this my SENSE. I don't base a system of belief and morality around that sense.

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.

There are all sorts of contradictions inherent to a being exhibiting all of the above characteristics, but the last two, I think, are the most salient to a discussion of the idea of God in a modern context.

The idea that no moral law can be had without a 'giver' is rotten on its face, and is one of the primary flaws in one of the biggest pro-faith claims - that you can't be GOOD without GOD. Moral codes arise in societies of sentient beings as the NEED for them arises - creating a city requires compromise, and among those compromises MUST include the prohibition of murder - you can't build a city if you can kill anyone you want at any time. You can't steal - no one can safely live in a close community if they fear sudden and arbitrary arrest of their possessions.

You can see where I'm going with this. This universe existed for a VERY long time WITHOUT moral law, and it was only upon the emergence of thinking societies that these laws arose. I might add that many of the early societies developed the same, or remarkably similar, codes of moral behavior, independently of each other. This obviates any need for a giver, except as a figurehead. Each society tacitly agreed upon its moral code; its leaders didn't do much more than record it as law. I suspect your natural inclination is to claim that each society reached similar conclusions because a god or gods divinely inspired them to do so, but I submit that there's no evidence for this claim, and there's PLENTY of evidence to show that given similar physical circumstances, similar beings will devise similar solutions to problems. It's basic anthropology, really.

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.

All of this is entirely speculative. I must repeat that if you entertain the idea of multiple universes, you abandon any ability to claim that this set of "existence" is finite since we cannot observe it as of yet. For all we know, some condition of this multiuniversal existence (we'll use the quantum name "foam") allows for an infinitely-repeated singularity.

Was the gnostic gospels in any way interlinked with any of the apostles?

Most of them, from my understanding, claim to be the actual gospels of other apostles - the most famous among them, and the only one I know much about, is the Gospel of Thomas.

 

[PeterJB]

Not trying to defuse this healthy discussion, but I am going to throw out a crazy and wild idea. Is it possible that the very science that is being used to disprove the existence of God is actually mapping out how God did it?

That's certainly what I believe. It's explained very well in Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator.

 

[Tesla]

One thought that has commonly crossed my mind. What if God just made that infinitesimal particle that was the Big Bang (theoretically) and set the ball rolling towards expansion, but had nothing to do with it after that? Could that be in line with Christian beliefs that God created us, but only indirectly (getting that expansion started)?

 

[TankAss95]

One thought that has commonly crossed my mind is that if a God exists. What if God just made that infinitesimal particle that was the Big Bang (theoretically) and set the ball rolling towards expansion, but had nothing to do with it after that? Could that be in line with Christian beliefs that God created us, but only indirectly (getting that expansion started)?

That's a deist God.

And btw, I'll get back to my responses above later. 👍

 

[nitrorocks]

There's tons of evidence! All the towns Jesus went to, Bethlehem, Jeursalem, Joppa, etc

 

[TheCracker]

One thought that has commonly crossed my mind. What if God just made that infinitesimal particle that was the Big Bang (theoretically) and set the ball rolling towards expansion, but had nothing to do with it after that? Could that be in line with Christian beliefs that God created us, but only indirectly (getting that expansion started)?

What is it wasn't God, what if it was Superman's natural father, Jor-El who made that particle?

 

[Vince_Fiero]

There's tons of evidence! All the towns Jesus went to, Bethlehem, Jeursalem, Joppa, etc

Missing this one. Jesus is the proof of God? Jesus traveling is the proof of God? Like that: John-Paul II traveling is the proof of God?

There is no issue if you believe that Jesus was the son of God, I believe he was the son of Josef and Maria. That son, Jesus, believed in God. I even believe he was a smart and good man, but there is no evidence, just believe.

 

[nitrorocks]

Missing this one. Jesus is the proof of God? Jesus traveling is the proof of God? Like that: John-Paul II traveling is the proof of God?

There is no issue if you believe that Jesus was the son of God, I believe he was the son of Josef and Maria. That son, Jesus, believed in God. I even believe he was a smart and good man, but there is no evidence, just believe.

Yes I guess there isn't any because that's the whole point of Christianity. Their teaching you to believe and have strong enough faith in god when you never see him. The strongest ones go to heaven. The weak ones go to hell.

 

[dylansan]

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

As CraftyLandShark pointed out, this is flawed. All of this assumes there was nothing before the big bang and there is nothing outside our universe that affects it.

You can't get something from nothing, but you can get something from very bizzare other things, possibly including other universes. niky's explanation is exactly what I think. Our "universe" is probably far from isolated. A lot of what happens in our "universe" can probably be explained by the effects of other universes, or in the case of certain theories, higher dimension strings or membranes. Even the big bang was possibly a result of one of these effects, and as such would not violate the "something from nothing" rule.

Therefore, God is not the only possible eternal explanation. It's quite possible the rest of the universe outside ours is eternal, and capable of creating our reality just by its own interactions.

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?

The singularity is "wound up" from our perspective because it has the greatest order. But the other universes or whatever which caused it to exist may not have been ordered. It may have just been one particularly ordered clump in a multiverse of much less overall order, just like planets are today.

And when I say ordered, I mean in terms of the likelyhood of those molecules occupying that particular space. Again, look into what entropy means on a particle level. It's based on mathematical definitions of order and chaos which depend on specific probabilities. It's actually pretty fascinating.

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.

I don't know why you're looking for an initial and eternal cause. It's much easier to accept that the universe itself is eternal. No creator required.

What makes it easiest for me to accept something rather than nothing is accepting that there is everything rather than nothing, but we are just in a very very small piece of everything.

Also, a lot of your required characteristics are not required at all. I'll go over each one if you'd like.

Scientists' assumptions or beliefs do affect their work, but often it is these assumptions that are the torchlight to our understanding.

Please elaborate. What are some instances where someone assumed something that was unsupported by evidence, which later help them evidence for something else?

If you mean something like assuming there's a law behind some event and then figuring out what that law is, that's not so much making an assumption as making a prediction. You don't have to assume there is a law so much as admit the possibility of one, and then go looking to see if you're right or wrong.

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.

Nothing in one universe would invalidate another. We're talking about physical situations which can be described as the arrangement of particles in a certain area. If one "universe" had different laws of physics, however, it would not share the same physical space as ours, as it's physicality would be completely different. It could, however, interact with us in some way, depending on many factors. The string theory could basically be interpreted as a universe with vastly different laws which interact with our reality to cause things to exist.

Remember that the infinite probability thing means anything that's possible will happen. If something happening would invalidate the universe in some way, it wouldn't be possible, and there wouldn't be a chance of it happening. No problem.

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.

As I said, there's no reason to thing other universes are not interacting with us. After all, we have no way of knowing causes many of the effects in out universe. Gravity may as well be the result of another universe intersecting ours creating forces.

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?

By using those materials? If I didn't have the materials, I couldn't make it.

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.

I don't understand the analogy. How does this address my point that intelligence is a physical characteristic requiring complicated circuitry and a way to use input information to generate and output response?

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

I already have explanations for why science explains. No God necessary. Also, that's not what I'd call "revealing himself". Even if God was a valid explanation for everything, that's hardly revealing it to be true. I'd need to know for sure that it's the only possibly explanation, and so far, it's not even an explanation. One way to prove it would be to send a very specific sign, which could only happen if God himself sent one. I can't even think of what that would require, but I'm sure if God was all the things you said he was, he could whip something up. It would just have to invalidate the idea of our universe being caused by others.

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.

I didn't say he was a good teacher. He may have thought he was a good teacher. He may have thought lying was worth it to try and spread what he thought was a good message. But didn't he supposedly have a bunch of kids mauled by bears for making fun of a bald guy? Is that true or is it not? If it isn't, then I don't see how one could assume any of the things Jesus did were necessarily true, including claiming to be the Son of God.

 

[huskeR32]

There's tons of evidence! All the towns Jesus went to, Bethlehem, Jeursalem, Joppa, etc

I'm not sure what you posted this in response to, but it's utter baloney. The existence of towns that were mentioned in stories of Jesus doesn't prove that Jesus actually visited those cities, it just proves that whoever wrote the stories knew the names of some towns. And if you're trying to go further with it, it certainly isn't evidence that he was the son of god. Completely unsubstantiated and unexplained comments like that are really damaging to your argument.

Was the gnostic gospels in any way interlinked with any of the apostles?

Most of them, from my understanding, claim to be the actual gospels of other apostles - the most famous among them, and the only one I know much about, is the Gospel of Thomas.

The Gospel of Thomas is a good one to look at. I think an even more interesting one is the Gospel of Judas: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0406_060406_judas.html

There's many others out there as well, such as the Gospel of Mary. It's not even clear which Mary it was written by, but Mary Magdalene is one obvious candidate. I don't think anything in that Gospel is particularly revelatory or surprising, but I've always been interested in idea that Mary Magdalene was a lot closer to Jesus than the church would want people to believe.

 

[TankAss95]

That would work, if the Greeks or pre-Christian Romans knew anything about the Hebrew religion at all. As they did not, and existed solely in a pantheistic culture, Calvin's idea is nothing more than a personal conviction, as he states.

I thought it was rather polytheism that was mainstream back then in Greece? And they managed to do science after they shoved the certainty they had about multiple Gods out of the way.

As said two posts above yours, science is a system. A system of thinking, of testing ideas and beliefs and validating them. Nothing more. It's not a religion. It does not require faith. You can apply scientific thought and method to anything that is physically testable.

I find the last two sentences incoherent here.
Think of the relationship between mathematics and our understanding of the natural world:

"The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious, and there is no rational explanation for it... it is an article of faith." - Eugene Wigner

"It is hard for me to believe... that such SUPERB theories could have arisen merely by some random natural selection of ideas leaving only the good ones as survivors. The good ones are simply much too good to be the survivors of ideas that have arisen in a random way. There must be, instead, some deep underlying reason for the accord between mathematics and physics." - Sir Roger Penrose FRS

And science itself cannot account for this phenomenon. Why? Because in the words of John Polkinghorne: "Science does not explain the mathematical intelligibility of the physical world, for it is part of science's founding faith that this is so."

Scientists are all men of faith as great thinkers like Einstein saw because they believe that the universe is accessible to the human mind, along with nature being consistent and the connection of mathematics and nature continuing.

Science is not philosophy. It will not tell you what you should do with your life, or what your "purpose" is.

The study of the meaning of life and relationships between people and the laws governing these relationships are questions of Philosophy and Ethics (which is also Philosophical in origin), which are not Science, though rational thought can be applied to each.

And that's the exact reason why science is not all knowledge as I believe Famine said earlier. The statement that "Science is all possible knowledge" is not a statement of science, so therefore doesn't make sense.

So why doesn't he? Or more importantly, if God could do as he pleases, even going so far as to violating the laws of nature, why doesn't he do it?

Well I believe that he has and that he will do so again in the future. Wether if he is doing so right now, well, I don't know the answer to that.

In modern times, it's getting increasingly difficult to canonize saints. Because canonization requires miracles. While a stain on the ceiling in the shape of Jesus can still sometimes pass, all we have left to rely on in most cases is miraculous healings. Which are also dubious, considering the great role the power of the mind plays in healing.

(Of course, if someone should actually regrow a detached limb from a stump...)

I don't believe in faith healing or anything like that. When in pain I pray to God for strength. God doesn't put away the fire, he helps me through it.

You know, quoting from others doesn't help your case as much as you think. The above paragraph doesn't explain anything.

I think it's nice to hear the words of other people, plus the way they often describe things is far more linear than I'd ever manage. I used that quote because I wanted to shed some light over the argument that miracles are against science.

It's more improbable than a version of God who doesn't interfere on a personal level. The concept of God the Omega is difficult to disprove. A God who creates the Universe by whatever means, then lets nature run its own course. But a God the Alpha, one who intervenes on a personal level, would, given the rich and varied tapestry of history, have to have performed many, many contradictory and contrary actions over the course of the centuries. Thus, God the Alpha is either inconsistent or stark raving mad.

And who are you to say that the Biblical God is inconsistent?

Depends on which myth you hold dear. My people believe that man and woman were born from a split bamboo, but so far, DNA testing has proven negative.

I'm an Old Earth Creationist (although I have a middle stance on evolution- I'm not sure. I do believe that mankind is unique from other creatures in many ways as the Biblical doctrine indicates).

Because materialism only believes in the existence of matter and energy that we see. Quantum theory, now several decades old, demonstrates that there is something beyond that, and that in certain instances, reality itself stops being "real". In other words, we now know tha there is more than just matter and energy, though we do not fully understand what it is.

Okay. 👍 Interesting stuff - the more we know about nature the more complicated it gets!

The current state of Science says that we cannot know what happened before the Big Bang.

Liken it to men blindfolded and thrown into a cave with a thick, stone door, thick walls and a vent that lets in fresh air. One might say that the cave is in the midst of a deep ocean. Another might say it's inside a mountain. Another might say it's inside a cosmic egg floating in an empty void.

The scientist will say that the cave is this big and this wide, made of this kind of rock, and it contains air that can be breathed. The air pressure is bearable and the walls are not hot, so it can't be too deep underground. If it is, then there's a ventilation system that freshens the air, though we can't see it or hear it. We can do tests to predict how quickly it regenerates the air by covering the vent. Rocks fall to the floor, and so do people, so there's a law of gravity involved, so it can't be floating in a void. If it is, centrifugal force would be needed to create gravity, but we can test for that by dropping objects from certain heights and seeing if they drift to the side.

The religious man will then ask if this cave is in Spain or China. The scientist would thus reply: "How the hell should I know?" Because there's no way to tell from within the cave.

And the religious person may ask why they are in that situation, why their surroundings are comprehendable and other questions often taken from the information given from the scientist.

Semantics. Without a Universe, we have no nature.

In this discussion I've been using nature to describe everything in the universe. Just incase I am not clear I may have used the word universe while nature would be better and vice-versa.

Why would infinite probability invalidate itself. If one probability is no probability, then that instance of no probability would occur, without any effect on the rest of probability. In fact, in an infinite set of infinites, the chance of nothing occuring is likely so great as to make it a very large subset of infinity. Stillborn universes.

You are misunderstanding how infinite infinity really is.

I was thinking of two sets of infinite - the law of infinite possibility and the law of infinite chance.

...big bang, big crunch, big bang, big crunch, big bang. The new big bang has created a territory that cannot crunch on in itself - it is an eternal universe.

Who says that these laws are necessary? Who says that other Universes don't affect on our own or intrude? Some believe that vacuum energy may be energy leaking in from other Universes, and that black holes are leaking energy into other Universes (though Hawking has already shown how black holes conform to the Law of Entropy by interacting with this vacuum energy and slowly evaporating). Some suggest that this leakage of matter and energy from other Universe somehow helps shape our Universal laws. If this leakage is pervasive, then we would exist in a sea of Universes that are roughly similar to our own.

The question is wether this is eternal or finite. An eternal universe may very well be the ultimate reality other than God, but if there was a beginning then God is a very serious candidate.

Would this invalidate infinity? No. Would this preclude against the possibility of another sea of Universes existing with a different set of physical laws? No. Would this preclude the possiblity that there is an infinite sea of meta-meta-meta-universes, eacu made up of an infinite number of multiverses made up of an infinite number of Universes and sub-Universes created by probability? No.

And one asks why the universes are in such harmony, and how they manage to each no violate eachother.

And what law would you impose to ensure a Universe collapses into a Big Crunch? We already live in a Universe that seems doomed to expand forever.

No law, rather a limit to the general laws of gravity.

This is not to say that there are no laws governing the nature of the medium in which the Universe or even the Multiverse exists. But like men trapped inside a cave, we don't even have the slightest hint of what these are and how they work. Men trapped in a cave cannot hope to observe and study the sun.

The men eventually realise that they are in very precise conditions in the cave allowing for their own existence and how they both have a peculiar ability to perform mathematics that they can use to study their surroundings with. Plus they both realise that they both have common instincts of morality.

Keep going. As I've said. I am entirely open to the existence of something beyond, but I cannot pretend to know what it is.

I'd love to keep going but I have been complained considerably in this thread for not having sufficient knowledge.

It's a popular line of thought amongst scientists. In fact, as mentioned, Einstein and others are believers in one form of God or another, and even in his seminal work: "A Brief History of Time", which some take as being very anti-God, Hawking leaves room for him.

Hawking doesn't leave room for the atheist at all IMO, he just gives a more detailed view of the Big bang model - pushes God back a few steps further into the cause/effect mountain if you like.

As CraftyLandShark pointed out, this is flawed. All of this assumes there was nothing before the big bang and there is nothing outside our universe that affects it.

An explanation of undetectable universes is an extreme violation of the Occam's Razor principle IMO.

"Let us recognise these speculations for what they are. They are not physics, but in the strictest sense metaphysics. There is no purely scientific reason to believe in an ensemble of universes. By comparison these other worlds are unknowable by us. A possible explanation of equal intellectual respectability - and to my mind greater economy and elegance - would be that this one world is the way it is, because it is the creation of the will of a creator who purposes that it should be so." - John Polkinghorne

"To postulate a trillion-trillion other universes, rather than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the hight of irrationality." - Richord Swinburne (Philosopher)

You can't get something from nothing, but you can get something from very bizzare other things, possibly including other universes. niky's explanation is exactly what I think. Our "universe" is probably far from isolated. A lot of what happens in our "universe" can probably be explained by the effects of other universes, or in the case of certain theories, higher dimension strings or membranes. Even the big bang was possibly a result of one of these effects, and as such would not violate the "something from nothing" rule.

And such a hypothesis is highly subjective.

Therefore, God is not the only possible eternal explanation. It's quite possible the rest of the universe outside ours is eternal, and capable of creating our reality just by its own interactions.

Much things are possible, but it's to what makes more sense - and I find one explanation extremely more probable than any other I've come across.

The singularity is "wound up" from our perspective because it has the greatest order. But the other universes or whatever which caused it to exist may not have been ordered. It may have just been one particularly ordered clump in a multiverse of much less overall order, just like planets are today.

And from our perspective the universe is very fine tuned for the possibility of life.
For life to exist on earth an abundant supply of carbon is needed. From what I've gathered, Carbon is formed either by combining three helium nuclei, or by combining the nuclei of helium and beryllium. For this to happen, the nuclear ground state energy levels have to be fine-tuned with respect to each other. This phenomenon is called 'resonance'. If the variation were more than 1 percent either way, the universe could not contain life.

Theoretical physicist Paul Davies said that if the ratio of the nuclear strong force to the electromagnetic field had been different by 1 part in 10^16, no stars would have been formed.

It is argued that an alteration in the ratio of the expansion and contraction forces by as little as 1 part in 10^55 at the Planck time (just 10^-43 seconds after the origin of the universe) would have led ether to too rapid an expansion of the universe with no galaxies forming or too slow an expansion with consequence rapid collapse.

I could go on.

And you said previously that there's no point talking about fine tuning because if the universe wasn't suitable we wouldn't be here. Fair enough but as philosopher John Leslie points out: "that sounds like arguing that if you faced a firing squad with fifty guns trained on you, you should not be surprised to find that you were alive after they had fired. After all, that is the only outcome you could possibly have observed - if one bullet had hit you, you would be dead. However, you might still feel that there is something which very much needs explanation; namely why did they all miss? Was it by deliberate design? For there is no inconsistency in not being surprised that you do not observe that you are dead, and being surprised to observe that you are still alive."

And when I say ordered, I mean in terms of the likelyhood of those molecules occupying that particular space. Again, look into what entropy means on a particle level. It's based on mathematical definitions of order and chaos which depend on specific probabilities. It's actually pretty fascinating.I don't know why you're looking for an initial and eternal cause. It's much easier to accept that the universe itself is eternal. No creator required.

The laws of entropy itself turn out to be miraculously fine-tuned.

What makes it easiest for me to accept something rather than nothing is accepting that there is everything rather than nothing, but we are just in a very very small piece of everything.

Because if there is everything for eternity, I find it hard to understand why it should be there. It must in itself require further meaning.

Also, a lot of your required characteristics are not required at all. I'll go over each one if you'd like.

And it is that characteristics that I am defending in this argument.

Please elaborate. What are some instances where someone assumed something that was unsupported by evidence, which later help them evidence for something else?

As I said above, the astronomer with the finite universe assumption.
And you have no evidence that the laws of nature will continue. Prove to me that the sun will rise tomorrow. By accepting that the sun will rise tomorrow (which is faith) I can continue with progressing my knowledge and understanding.

If you mean something like assuming there's a law behind some event and then figuring out what that law is, that's not so much making an assumption as making a prediction. You don't have to assume there is a law so much as admit the possibility of one, and then go looking to see if you're right or wrong.Nothing in one universe would invalidate another. We're talking about physical situations which can be described as the arrangement of particles in a certain area. If one "universe" had different laws of physics, however, it would not share the same physical space as ours, as it's physicality would be completely different. It could, however, interact with us in some way, depending on many factors. The string theory could basically be interpreted as a universe with vastly different laws which interact with our reality to cause things to exist.

And such reactions could annihilate other territories. If they do not they must either have other laws of nature of be divided.

Remember that the infinite probability thing means anything that's possible will happen. If something happening would invalidate the universe in some way, it wouldn't be possible, and there wouldn't be a chance of it happening. No problem.

Absolutely true! That's what I've been trying to explain. But that inability must in itself have an explanation or underlying law to enforce it which requires further explanation.

As I said, there's no reason to thing other universes are not interacting with us. After all, we have no way of knowing causes many of the effects in out universe. Gravity may as well be the result of another universe intersecting ours creating forces.

And yet everything is constant, huh?

By using those materials? If I didn't have the materials, I couldn't make it.I don't understand the analogy. How does this address my point that intelligence is a physical characteristic requiring complicated circuitry and a way to use input information to generate and output response?

I was explaining that we don't really create anything.
And my belief is that God is the absolute reality, he is not physical but spiritual. He is unbounded by the normal laws of nature that we observe and live by every day.

I already have explanations for why science explains. No God necessary. Also, that's not what I'd call "revealing himself". Even if God was a valid explanation for everything, that's hardly revealing it to be true. I'd need to know for sure that it's the only possibly explanation, and so far, it's not even an explanation. One way to prove it would be to send a very specific sign, which could only happen if God himself sent one. I can't even think of what that would require, but I'm sure if God was all the things you said he was, he could whip something up. It would just have to invalidate the idea of our universe being caused by others.

His Creation, His Word, His Son.

And explain why mathematics can be used to understand the natural world, as I have brought forward above in my response to niky.

I didn't say he was a good teacher. He may have thought he was a good teacher. He may have thought lying was worth it to try and spread what he thought was a good message. But didn't he supposedly have a bunch of kids mauled by bears for making fun of a bald guy? Is that true or is it not? If it isn't, then I don't see how one could assume any of the things Jesus did were necessarily true, including claiming to be the Son of God.

There is strong evidence that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. And I'm not sure if that is true or not, if you have any info please share. 👍

 

[Dennisch]

I bet you weigh a lot less now that is on the server?

 

[superbike81]

Wasting so much time with stuff that most of us won't even read because it's TOO MUCH.

 

[TankAss95]

Wasting so much time with stuff that most of us won't even read because it's TOO MUCH.

I am not concerned with those who do not wish to read my posts. I am having a discussion between members on specific topics.

I do not have to adjust my posts to your or anyone else's specifications except for the admins.

 

[Exorcet]

Yes I guess there isn't any because that's the whole point of Christianity. Their teaching you to believe and have strong enough faith in god when you never see him. The strongest ones go to heaven. The weak ones go to hell.

That's the problem. If this is how religion works, then basically everyone who chooses the right answer (no proof, no belief) gets punished. This does not seem like a fair God.

Scientists are all men of faith as great thinkers like Einstein saw because they believe that the universe is accessible to the human mind, along with nature being consistent and the connection of mathematics and nature continuing.

This is [still] blatantly untrue. There is no faith in the human ability to understand the universe, only the observation of the successful application of knowledge gained through science.

Well I believe that he has and that he will do so again in the future. Wether if he is doing so right now, well, I don't know the answer to that.

Why? Why is it OK to not know why God is doing what he does, but it's not OK to not know where the universe came from? You keep implying repeatedly, over and over, that when science does not know, it is showing weakness. Now religion does not know, but of course you accept this without a second thought.

I don't believe in faith healing or anything like that. When in pain I pray to God for strength. God doesn't put away the fire, he helps me through it.

Or maybe you just get up and do something about the fire instead of kneeling in front of it. I used to pray quite a bit, my family sometimes needed it. But nothing got done until someone (who was not a god) actually went and did something. This continued after a stopped praying and believing. So either God never answered, or one prayer gets you on his good side for the rest of time.

And who are you to say that the Biblical God is inconsistent?

A literate human being.

And the religious person may ask why they are in that situation, why their surroundings are comprehendable and other questions often taken from the information given from the scientist.

Can he answer those questions correctly?

I was thinking of two sets of infinite - the law of infinite possibility and the law of infinite chance.

...big bang, big crunch, big bang, big crunch, big bang. The new big bang has created a territory that cannot crunch on in itself - it is an eternal universe.

To be quite honest I don't think you understand what you're talking about. Or, maybe I'm just not following.

Infinite universe does not stop at this one universe banging and crunching forever. It encompasses every single possible arrange of outcomes at every single moment in time. Universes can potentially diverge from each other before they even exist (if they even had a beginning).

All we know is, the universe as it is now is something with a history that we can trace back to nearly the beginning. What happened even further back, we don't know.

but if there was a beginning then God is a very serious candidate.

This is untrue, because there is no evidence. The only way God can be a serious candidate is if there is evidence supporting his existence. Without evidence:

but if there was a beginning then cookies is a very serious candidate.

but if there was a beginning then unicorns is a very serious candidate.

but if there was a beginning then my shoe is a very serious candidate.

but if there was a beginning then Dunkin Donuts is a very serious candidate...

The men eventually realise that they are in very precise conditions in the cave allowing for their own existence and how they both have a peculiar ability to perform mathematics that they can use to study their surroundings with. Plus they both realise that they both have common instincts of morality.

Which would tell them that the cave supports life, math works, and that individual humans think in similar ways.

A quote

"To postulate a trillion-trillion other universes, rather than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the hight of irrationality... until one realizes that the trillion-trillion universes make more sense." - Exorcet of GTP

Much things are possible, but it's to what makes more sense

Precisely.

And from our perspective the universe is very fine tuned for the possibility of life.
For life to exist on earth an abundant supply of carbon is needed. From what I've gathered, Carbon is formed either by combining three helium nuclei, or by combining the nuclei of helium and beryllium. For this to happen, the nuclear ground state energy levels have to be fine-tuned with respect to each other. This phenomenon is called 'resonance'. If the variation were more than 1 percent either way, the universe could not contain life.

Theoretical physicist Paul Davies said that if the ratio of the nuclear strong force to the electromagnetic field had been different by 1 part in 10^16, no stars would have been formed.

It is argued that an alteration in the ratio of the expansion and contraction forces by as little as 1 part in 10^55 at the Planck time (just 10^-43 seconds after the origin of the universe) would have led ether to too rapid an expansion of the universe with no galaxies forming or too slow an expansion with consequence rapid collapse.

I could go on.

You could go on, but it would not further your point. All you're doing is showing that this universe supports life, but we all knew that. Why does it support life?

In a set of infinite universes, if a universe that supports life is possible, it will exist.

I just proposed an explanation that does not involve God, and is not lacking in evidence compared to God.

The universe is not proof of God.

And you said previously that there's no point talking about fine tuning because if the universe wasn't suitable we wouldn't be here. Fair enough but as philosopher John Leslie points out: "that sounds like arguing that if you faced a firing squad with fifty guns trained on you, you should not be surprised to find that you were alive after they had fired. After all, that is the only outcome you could possibly have observed - if one bullet had hit you, you would be dead. However, you might still feel that there is something which very much needs explanation; namely why did they all miss? Was it by deliberate design? For there is no inconsistency in not being surprised that you do not observe that you are dead, and being surprised to observe that you are still alive."

Doesn't really make sense unless we invoke the quantum suicide thought experiment posted a while ago. One option that is unlikely, is you surviving. The other is your ability to observe ending due to death, and you never feel surprised (or maybe you do because you wake up as a ghost).

Either way, the issue of bullets hitting or missing is not very closely related to the ineffective method of trying to justify the idea of God just because we're here to talk about it.

The laws of entropy itself turn out to be miraculously fine-tuned.

To ensure that we all die.

As I said above, the astronomer with the finite universe assumption.
And you have no evidence that the laws of nature will continue. Prove to me that the sun will rise tomorrow. By accepting that the sun will rise tomorrow (which is faith) I can continue with progressing my knowledge and understanding.

This is again incorrect. The Sun is likely to rise tomorrow because the solar system is quite stable, and the motion of our planet is well understood. It is not guaranteed to rise tomorrow because the LHC is still going and it might eat us all.

I was explaining that we don't really create anything.
And my belief is that God is the absolute reality, he is not physical but spiritual. He is unbounded by the normal laws of nature that we observe and live by every day.

Wouldn't the law (or lack of a law) that allows such a being to exist require further explanation?

And explain why mathematics can be used to understand the natural world, as I have brought forward above in my response to niky.

Because abstract concepts can be represented by symbols on paper, or vibrations in the air.

If math is supposed to be God's sign of proof, he's doing a terrible job.

 

[superbike81]

I am not concerned with those who do not wish to read my posts. I am having a discussion between members on specific topics.

I do not have to adjust my posts to your or anyone else's specifications except for the admins.

All I'm saying is if you figure out a way to compact your posts you will reach a much wider audience.

 

[niky]

I thought it was rather polytheism that was mainstream back then in Greece? And they managed to do science after they shoved the certainty they had about multiple Gods out of the way.

My gaffe. Yes, the technical term is Polytheism. The Greeks had their Pantheon of gods for every occassion, and their head god wasn't even a Creator God, just one who overthrew an older set of gods. This is what the Greeks had and what they passed on to the Romans. So, no, they didn't shove the gods out of the way. It's just that the scientists weren't much bothered by religious considerations.

I find the last two sentences incoherent here.

Nothing incoherent about saying that anything you can test does not require faith. If I can test 2+2=4 by putting two sticks and two sticks together and counting them out to four, then I am confident the answer is four... I don't have faith that the answer is four. Is that clearer?

Think of the relationship between mathematics and our understanding of the natural world:

"The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious, and there is no rational explanation for it... it is an article of faith." - Eugene Wigner

Again, opinion. Doesn't help your cause any, and says nothing about God.

"It is hard for me to believe... that such SUPERB theories could have arisen merely by some random natural selection of ideas leaving only the good ones as survivors. The good ones are simply much too good to be the survivors of ideas that have arisen in a random way. There must be, instead, some deep underlying reason for the accord between mathematics and physics." - Sir Roger Penrose FRS

Still opinion. Still says nothing about God.

And science itself cannot account for this phenomenon. Why? Because in the words of John Polkinghorne: "Science does not explain the mathematical intelligibility of the physical world, for it is part of science's founding faith that this is so."

Still opinion. Still says... wait, have I said that already? Matter of semantics. When he says faith, he really means: We have tested this and tested this and tested this and tested this, and there is no way that we can make two and two equal five. And yet, thanks to quantum theory and chaos theory, we're starting to see the world become less and less comprehensible through mathematics.

Scientists are all men of faith as great thinkers like Einstein saw because they believe that the universe is accessible to the human mind, along with nature being consistent and the connection of mathematics and nature continuing.

Citation needed. Prove that all scientists are men of faith. Because I know quite a few who are not.

And that's the exact reason why science is not all knowledge as I believe Famine said earlier. The statement that "Science is all possible knowledge" is not a statement of science, so therefore doesn't make sense.

Science covers knowledge of all that exists. Philosophy covers knowledge of the immaterial and abstract (except for the abstract of Mathematics). The origin of the Universe is not an immaterial study.

Well I believe that he has and that he will do so again in the future. Wether if he is doing so right now, well, I don't know the answer to that.

And belief without proof is what? Precisely. Faith.

I think it's nice to hear the words of other people, plus the way they often describe things is far more linear than I'd ever manage. I used that quote because I wanted to shed some light over the argument that miracles are against science.

Except it doesn't. Lewis says that immaculate conception, except for the fact that a fertilized zygote mysteriously appears where there was none, doesn't defy the laws of nature. It doesn't explain how the fertilized zygote gets there. Whether implanted via wormhole, or spontaneously generated from the vacuum.

It's like saying:

"Except for the fact that there's an elephant balanced on the head of a pin, there's nothing out of the ordinary in this room."

And who are you to say that the Biblical God is inconsistent?

Uh... the Bible says so? This is a God who condoned the genocide of Israel's enemies in the Old Testament then preaches love and understanding towards the Gentiles in the New. Who condoned the stoning of adulterers in the old and preached against them in the new. Punishes the wicked in Sodom and Gommorah yet does nothing to Solomon when he starts sinning similarly. I don't need to say anything, really. The Bible says it all. Which is why you either accept the Old Testament as allegorical or you have to put up with the inconsistencies.

I'm an Old Earth Creationist (although I have a middle stance on evolution- I'm not sure. I do believe that mankind is unique from other creatures in many ways as the Biblical doctrine indicates).

There you go. You have already considered that part of the Bible is myth.

And the religious person may ask why they are in that situation, why their surroundings are comprehendable and other questions often taken from the information given from the scientist.

To which the scientist may reply: Let's see who we have here, what our connections are, and what possible reason there could be for putting us in here. But that is beyond the point. A scientist will not be able to answer absolute philosophical questions of "why" with science. Science is never about why. It's about how. But if the "how" question answers the "why", then they consider it answered.

The new big bang has created a territory that cannot crunch on in itself - it is an eternal universe.

Eternal means no beginning. If there is a beginning, it is not eternal, it is merely infinite. But mind you, only infinite given the way we measure time. If time is an illusion of entropy, then the Universe can be eternal, and we are merely living along an illusory a time loop that makes it seem not so.

The question is wether this is eternal or finite. An eternal universe may very well be the ultimate reality other than God, but if there was a beginning then God is a very serious candidate.

Again: Why? Why does an unthinking cosmos need a thinking creator? What makes an anthropomorphic, humanistic God any better a candidate than anything else? To say that an anthropomorphic God is the ultimate cause is the ultimate hubris.

And one asks why the universes are in such harmony, and how they manage to each no violate eachother.

The theory is that they are so similar precisely because they violate each other, as we've explained... either through vacuum energy, strings or membranes. But as to why they physically do not impinge on each other's space, it's simply because there is no physical space outside the Universe.

That's a question that's as pointless as asking: "What is the Universe expanding into?" Because it's expanding into nothing. Outside of the physical space of the Universe that's expanding, there is no physical space.

The exclusivity of this physical space means that you can have an infinite number of physical spaces co-existing that will never, ever meet. Or if they do, they're not meeting in this Universe. Not so far as we can see, yet.

Think of the Universes as an infinitely tall stack of paper sheets in a room with finite floor space but infinite head room. Would you ask how the sheets can fit? No, because it's obvious that two dimensional objects can "stack" in a three dimensional space. Who's to say that eleven-dimensional Universes can't stack in a twelve-dimensional space?

No law, rather a limit to the general laws of gravity.

And why? Why should the Universe end the way you feel it should? We've already gotten past the idea (in science) of a Big Crunch. At least for the forseeable future. If the data disagrees with the theory, then the theory must be adjusted to the data (if possible) or discarded. The steady-state (eternal) and cyclical Universes are at the moment, not as probable as the Big Bang - Big Whimper one.

The men eventually realise that they are in very precise conditions in the cave allowing for their own existence and how they both have a peculiar ability to perform mathematics that they can use to study their surroundings with. Plus they both realise that they both have common instincts of morality.

Unless one of them is a latent serial killer, who has no inherent sense of right or wrong. Just throwing that out there. And they still have no hope of studying the sun.

I'd love to keep going but I have been complained considerably in this thread for not having sufficient knowledge.

Then pick up a few books and learn the science. It's good for you. And then start studying mythology, and other religions. That's good for you as well.

Hawking doesn't leave room for the atheist at all IMO, he just gives a more detailed view of the Big bang model - pushes God back a few steps further into the cause/effect mountain if you like.

He doesn't state that there is or isn't a God. He leaves it all open to argument because he's on the fence. Which the theists don't like.

An explanation of undetectable universes is an extreme violation of the Occam's Razor principle IMO.

---

"To postulate a trillion-trillion other universes, rather than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the hight of irrationality." - Richord Swinburne (Philosopher)

Occam's Razor demands the simplest answer. An omnipotent and omniscient entity who has the power to create Universes isn't simple. It just sounds simple because we can sum it up in one word, but it isn't. And it isn't a final answer, either, because that raises the question of how that being came to be and how he came to have that power. To say that one untestable hypothesis that doesn't explain the data in any way is more probable than another untestable hypothesis might explain the data given further testing is a fallacy.

The truth is: People feel uncomfortable with data that is uncomfortable. Every step we take in science has pushed God further and further back in the chain of events that led up to Us. Any pronouncement that "this cannot be" or "it is not logical that this is so, compared to the idea that God did it" is simply the person saying: "This is the limit of my understand, so I'm just going to stamp 'God did it' right here so I don't have to think about it further."

We've come full circle back to maps with "here there be dragons" on them. And while those maps are pretty to look at, they don't tell us everything we need to know.

 

[dylansan]

An explanation of undetectable universes is an extreme violation of the Occam's Razor principle IMO.

Your argument was that God was the only possible option because the universe could not be eternal. That's simply not true.

"Let us recognise these speculations for what they are. They are not physics, but in the strictest sense metaphysics. There is no purely scientific reason to believe in an ensemble of universes. By comparison these other worlds are unknowable by us. A possible explanation of equal intellectual respectability - and to my mind greater economy and elegance - would be that this one world is the way it is, because it is the creation of the will of a creator who purposes that it should be so." - John Polkinghorne

"To postulate a trillion-trillion other universes, rather than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the hight of irrationality." - Richord Swinburne (Philosopher)

These people are making the same assumption. That the idea of God somehow explains everything more clearly than the infinite universe concept. That's completely subjective, and I'd definitely disagree.

The idea that everything exists infinitely not only explains why we are here but also why not anything else - because all that other stuff does exist.

And once again, an intelligent being is much more complicated and hard to explain than the idea that the universe and mulitverses are just following simple laws of nature. and interacting with each other.

And such a hypothesis is highly subjective.

Well, yeah. It's just another explanation for our existence. It's not supposed to prove there can't be God, it just shows that God is not the only logical option. That's the whole point I'm trying to make.

Much things are possible, but it's to what makes more sense - and I find one explanation extremely more probable than any other I've come across.

ditto...

And from our perspective the universe is very fine tuned for the possibility of life.
For life to exist on earth an abundant supply of carbon is needed. From what I've gathered, Carbon is formed either by combining three helium nuclei, or by combining the nuclei of helium and beryllium. For this to happen, the nuclear ground state energy levels have to be fine-tuned with respect to each other. This phenomenon is called 'resonance'. If the variation were more than 1 percent either way, the universe could not contain life.

No no no no no no no NO! Assuming life can only exist with carbon is like the worse assumption you can make on this subject. We only know carbon life because it's what we evolved from. There's no reason to think life can't come from other things. If the laws of physics prevented atoms from assembling, life could possibly be made from something else.

And once again with the fine tuning argument. There's no reason life has to exist. We only observe this as a life sustaining universe because we are in it. If it weren't, it wouldn't be observed. The fact that there is life is only evidence that life can exist in it, nothing else. So please stop using that argument.

Theoretical physicist Paul Davies said that if the ratio of the nuclear strong force to the electromagnetic field had been different by 1 part in 10^16, no stars would have been formed.

It is argued that an alteration in the ratio of the expansion and contraction forces by as little as 1 part in 10^55 at the Planck time (just 10^-43 seconds after the origin of the universe) would have led ether to too rapid an expansion of the universe with no galaxies forming or too slow an expansion with consequence rapid collapse.

I could go on.

I'd like to know more than one person's opinion on the subject.

And you said previously that there's no point talking about fine tuning because if the universe wasn't suitable we wouldn't be here. Fair enough but as philosopher John Leslie points out: "that sounds like arguing that if you faced a firing squad with fifty guns trained on you, you should not be surprised to find that you were alive after they had fired. After all, that is the only outcome you could possibly have observed - if one bullet had hit you, you would be dead. However, you might still feel that there is something which very much needs explanation; namely why did they all miss? Was it by deliberate design? For there is no inconsistency in not being surprised that you do not observe that you are dead, and being surprised to observe that you are still alive."

First, are you implying I made a fine tuning argument? Because all I did was point out why the singularity is not an example of fine tuning.

Second, that argument assumes you know exactly how many gunmen there are. Aka, how likely was a universe with life? How many chances were there? And if we find we were extremely lucky, what does that prove? It's quite possible many other universes were not so lucky to support life, and we are just one survivor in a line of 100 dead ones. Something that wouldn't actually be so surprising, nor would it require divine intervention.

The laws of entropy itself turn out to be miraculously fine-tuned.

What? How? In what way? What the heck research led you to that?

Because if there is everything for eternity, I find it hard to understand why it should be there. It must in itself require further meaning.

It doesn't require anything of the sort.

And it is that characteristics that I am defending in this argument.

Ok, I'm waiting.

As I said above, the astronomer with the finite universe assumption.
And you have no evidence that the laws of nature will continue. Prove to me that the sun will rise tomorrow. By accepting that the sun will rise tomorrow (which is faith) I can continue with progressing my knowledge and understanding.

Luckily I never claimed the sun would rise tomorrow.

Here's how it works. I live my life knowing that, odds are, the sun will rise tomorrow. If it didn't, I would be surprised, but I would not be proven wrong about anything in any respect. I don't pretend I have no idea if the sun will rise, but I also don't pretend I know for 100% certainty (which would be faith).

And such reactions could annihilate other territories. If they do not they must either have other laws of nature of be divided.

Maybe they could annihilate other territories? Who says they do not? Just because ours is intact doesn't mean they all are.

Absolutely true! That's what I've been trying to explain. But that inability must in itself have an explanation or underlying law to enforce it which requires further explanation.

Not so much a law as just the basic logic that things which cannot happen do not.

And yet everything is constant, huh?

The physical forces we know could in fact be entirely due to the intersection of some other dimension with our own.They're constant because the things that define mass could be what causes the intersection (or another result) and therefore results in the force. As far as I know that's part of the premise of string theory, that intersections are specifically the particles of our universe, and the invisible forces between separated particles are actually connected in the strings.

I was explaining that we don't really create anything.
And my belief is that God is the absolute reality, he is not physical but spiritual. He is unbounded by the normal laws of nature that we observe and live by every day.

Does that not require much more explanation of how he can cause things in our universe if he is not physical?

His Creation, His Word, His Son.

And I have yet so see evidence that any of those things are indeed his.

And explain why mathematics can be used to understand the natural world, as I have brought forward above in my response to niky.

Because mathematics seems to hold true in our universe. It's a tool we developed essentially just to be able to count things, and then extrapolated a bunch of stuff from that to make it easier. If I had two coconuts, and you had two coconuts, we know because of what we have observed about the universe that the total number of coconuts only depends on how many each of us has, not any any other factors like our altitude or velocity. If that were not true, we would have developed a different kind of math to make sense of it.

In short, math works because we made it work with what we had. If it didn't we wouldn't have created it.

There is strong evidence that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. And I'm not sure if that is true or not, if you have any info please share. 👍

I misremembered the passage slightly. Really it was just the lord in general: 2 Kings 2:23-25.

Really I don't see the point in arguing about Jesus' intentions or relations.Whether he existed or not is irrelevant to whether God exists.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Ugh. I was going around town today, trying to get some casual work as a teacher. I went to one school, called the Christian Heritage, where they asked me to sign a declaration of faith. Now, I'm not a Christian. I've never been one - I haven't even been baptised. Naturally, I couldn't sign the document. More to the point, I wouldn't. The whole thing felt dangerously close to discrimination; I can't work there unless I walk, talk, think and act like them. The look on the receptionist's face when I said "I'm not a Christian" told me everything that I needed to know: that she thought I was a horrible person.

If an Islamic school requested its staff members to sign a declaration of faith, the school would accused of being insular and isolationist and unwilling to adopt Australian values. But when a Christian school does it, they supposedly making sure that their employees are of sound character. It's a double standard, and to add insult to injury, religion has nothing to do with education. I will not be a better teacher or a worse one if I'm a Christian, but that's the deciding factor in the application process.

 

[Pako]

Ugh. I was going around town today, trying to get some casual work as a teacher. I went to one school, called the Christian Heritage, where they asked me to sign a declaration of faith. Now, I'm not a Christian. I've never been one - I haven't even been baptised. Naturally, I couldn't sign the document. More to the point, I wouldn't. The whole thing felt dangerously close to discrimination; I can't work there unless I walk, talk, think and act like them. The look on the receptionist's face when I said "I'm not a Christian" told me everything that I needed to know: that she thought I was a horrible person.

If an Islamic school requested its staff members to sign a declaration of faith, the school would accused of being insular and isolationist and unwilling to adopt Australian values. But when a Christian school does it, they supposedly making sure that their employees are of sound character. It's a double standard, and to add insult to injury, religion has nothing to do with education. I will not be a better teacher or a worse one if I'm a Christian, but that's the deciding factor in the application process.

Sounds like a private school where parents are paying money for a education with Christian foundations and doctrine?

No offence to you and your choice of faith or lack there of, but if I was paying for my child to be taught in a Christian school, I would expect their teachers to be Christian and to help teach and nurture Christian values and foundations along with their education.

 

[niky]

Lucky you they do it at the outset. I know of some people who were ousted from their positions because they were merely Christian and not the exact, correct stripe of Christian (Roman Catholic).

-

@Pako: A school being Christian doesn't preclude it from using non-Christian teachers. Example is the one I've just mentioned... they won't allow non Catholic top-level administrators, but the staff is composed of Catholics, Christians and Muslims. Outside of values class, whether a person is religious or not doesn't really matter at all to the workings of the school.

 

[Pako]

Lucky you they do it at the outset. I know of some people who were ousted from their positions because they were merely Christian and not the exact, correct stripe of Christian (Roman Catholic).

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@Pako: A school being Christian doesn't preclude it from using non-Christian teachers. Example is the one I've just mentioned... they won't allow non Catholic top-level administrators, but the staff is composed of Catholics, Christians and Muslims. Outside of values class, whether a person is religious or not doesn't really matter at all to the workings of the school.

I guess it would depend on the school and how the classes were structured. Clearly Christian Heritage felt that their teachers needed to share the same belief system as the belief system of the school making it a job requirement.

Kind of like that guy wanting a job a Hooters. Well....the guy just wasn't properly equipped for the job.

If I go to Hooters, I don't think I'm going there to have my Hot Wings served by Jim the waiter....just saying.

 

[niky]

Hooters is criminal. They should be forced to give jobs to women who aren't double-D cup.

-

Whooo... got dizzy there a minute... did I just say something stupid?

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Sounds like a private school where parents are paying money for a education with Christian foundations and doctrine?

I could possibly understand that - but I know this school takes students who are not of the same denomination.

if I was paying for my child to be taught in a Christian school, I would expect their teachers to be Christian and to help teach and nurture Christian values and foundations along with their education.

I went to a Catholic school for eleven of my thirteen years of schooling. I'm aware that Catholics are not the same as Christians, but I was still brought up by the same values.

I really have two issues with this - firstly, that if an Islamic school did this, it would create controversy here, but when a Christian school does it, it's perfectly acceptable. Islamic parents would want their children taught with Muslim values and foundations alongside their education. Christian parents would want their children taught with Christian values and foundations alongside their education. There is essentially no difference in what they are asking for, but one is allowed to do it and one is not allowed to (though I do admit that I cannot find any instance of Islamic schools asking for a declaration of faith, or any controversy that has come of it).

My second issue is that my faith does not make me a better teacher. But here I am, faced with a thirty-page document where I have to give extensive answers about all manner of subjects, ranging from my conversion to Christianity to the place of teaching the theory of evolution in schools. Now, I'm an English teacher. Evolution isn't part of what I cover. There is nothing related to faith that is a part of my subject curriculum. I'd simply be teaching the mechanics of grammar, the various forms and features of genre, and so on.

Let me put it to you this way: you're a parent with children in a Christian school that requires all staff members to sign a declaration of faith. The school scores quite well in literacy, but students' numeracy needs improvement. There is an open position for a maths teacher, and there are two candidates. One is an excellent teacher, with plenty of experience, glowing references, and excellent results in improving numeracy among students - but they are not a Christian. The second candidate has equal experience to the first, but is only a passable teacher and no results in improving numeracy - but unlike the first candidate, they are a Christian. Who do you think should get the job? The non-denominational teacher who is exactly what the school needs, or the devoted Christian who will make no discernable impact in the students' education.

Now, that's an extreme example, I admit. I certainly don't think I'm a phenomenal teacher - I'm only a graduate teacher with forty-seven days' experience to my name. That alone is enough for schools to reject my application. I have plenty to learn about actual teaching. But if I'm suitably qualified for a position, how is it anything but discrimination to reject my application on the basis of my faith alone? And why is it acceptable for a Christian school to be able to do it, but not for another denominational school to do it?

 

[Pako]

But if I'm suitably qualified for a position, how is it anything but discrimination to reject my application on the basis of my faith alone? And why is it acceptable for a Christian school to be able to do it, but not for another denominational school to do it?

Oh, don't get me wrong. I totally understand what you are saying, and think that good teachers are hard to come by and any school that would pass up the credentials of a qualified teacher would be doing an injustice to the students. I also see that what you see as qualified (in this case) is not enough.

So, in my English class in high school we went over Greek Mythology. I have heard other's on this forum, and even in this very thread (might have been the Creation vs. Evolution) say that Christianity is like Greek Mythology or the spaghetti monster in the sky. Even in English class I can see where it would be hard, especially if there were Christian based curriculum, to teach it with honesty and conviction if you were not a Christian yourself.

I certainly don't know Christian Heritage, and am certainly making several quantum assumptions about your personal situation and by no means take light in how you feel.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Even in English class I can see where it would be hard, especially if there were Christian based curriculum, to teach it with honesty and conviction if you were not a Christian yourself.

They don't have a differentiated curriculum. They get some choice in exactly what is taught - for example, their year twelve students will do Witness or Strictly Ballroom as their film unit - but that's as far as it goes.

Still, it's no great loss. There are a dozen high schools in my region, and three of them were interested in having me as a casual teacher. I was just very annoyed that a school has the right to require prospective staff members to sign a declaration of faith, and that a refusal to sign is enough for them to disqualify you, even when it has nothing to do with actual teaching and regardless of how qualified you actually are. It's discrimination, and then they dress it up as "We want to ensure that our students are taught Christian values". I also know that if an Islamic school did it, the Christians would be the first ones to cry foul over it.

And it probably doesn't help that I think a person's faith is his or her most private business. I would sooner discuss details of my sex life with the school than I would my faith.

 

[CraftyLandShark]

For Tankass:

I'm still curious as to how you can claim that moral law requires a law-giver, which you call God. This may seem to be one small tenet of your argument, but in my experience speaking with other atheists and agnostics, it's a VERY important point of contention when you consider the inevitable claim that usually follows such a position - that a proper moral code comes only from God.