Does God exist?

[LulThyme]

Originally posted by loinburger

Once the shrinking universe reaches a given mass/energy density then it collapses to a singularity and it doesn't really make sense to think of it as anything else at that point, because the laws that govern our universe don't apply in any meaningful sense (as far as we know) to the singularity. I suppose that we could still think of the singularity as "the universe," but even so we'd still be dealing with two entirely different entities -- the "normal universe," and the "singularity universe" -- when we make any statements concerning either. F'rinstance, we could no longer say "the universe is causal," because for all we know the rules governing a singularity are acausal. That's why it doesn't make sense to have both an eternal and expanding universe -- we'd be making the term "universe" pretty meaningless if we equated a singularity to what we're living in.

Thats assuming our most current knowledge of quantum theory is sorta ok.

Although in most discussions that would fine, in one about the existence of God its a bit much no?

[LulThyme]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Continuous contraction doesn't have to be to a single point.

In quantum gravity it would, although thats not totally clear actually.

[Ben Kenobi]

Take a mirror.

Shatter the center, so that you end up with shards.

Each shard has part of the image of God, and part of God, but is not God any more than one shard is the mirror.

Call each of these shards a different name.

Is this not most of the polytheistic pantheons? Shards of one God? Some aspects yet lacking in the whole capacity?

[Giancarlo]

Sorry about the last rather skimmed response.. here goes...

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
You're right. After all that's what adoration, thanksgivings and contrition are all about.

Traditions don't really mean much to me. I'm gay and christian radicals as yourself are only out to get me.

Desparation? No, it's like a walk. I'm walking, and he walks with me, and we talk about how things are going. Sure sometimes it's rough, but othertimes are much more joyful.

It is more joyful being atheist and living truly to oneself. Being christian is living a lie. It is not like walking because one doesn't have to believe it.

Why would we dream up a God that hates sin when we revel in it?

Because you are afraid of death. And "we"? I don't believe in god.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I don't see how it accounts for blatant inconsistancies.

I did not think you so dull...

JM

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Take a mirror.

Shatter the center, so that you end up with shards.

Each shard has part of the image of God, and part of God, but is not God any more than one shard is the mirror.

Call each of these shards a different name.

Is this not most of the polytheistic pantheons? Shards of one God? Some aspects yet lacking in the whole capacity?

No.

The Greek gods, even as a whole, do not in any way resemble the Judeo-Christian god.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Clearly God is part of that universe [of discourse].

Don't be stupid -- that "universe" came into existence when you laid down its definition, and it will cease to exist when you actually stop and take the time to support your ill-founded opinions. It is a universe of discourse -- it didn't exist prior to the discourse, and it will cease to exist after the discourse has concluded.

Philosophical meanings of terms do not.

More bull****. Or do you mean to claim that our term "virtue" is identical to the ancient Greek term "virtue"? That our term "courage" is identical to the ancient Greek term "courage"? That our term "atom" is identical to the ancient Greek term "atom"?

And since there is no explicit scientific definition of universe...

Did you not even bother reading the definition you quoted? Hint: look at the first one.

Continuous contraction doesn't have to be to a single point.

Eventually the contraction will push the density above the Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, resulting in a singularity.

The fallacy, btw, was at your appeal to authority.

Should I have instead followed your lead and shat out whatever definition of "universe" suited my ends? If you're going to try for a cutesy argument from definition, then support the damned definition.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by LulThyme
Thats assuming our most current knowledge of quantum theory is sorta ok.

Doesn't really have so much to do with quantum physics as it does with astrophysics -- we don't really know by what quantum processes a black hole forms, but we do know the stellar processes, namely, a stellar body becomes too dense and collapses into itself.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
You have a very poor memory.

I've been arguing this same point in every single thread about this topic.

Just because you have been consistent doesn't mean your definition isn't strange.

[Jophis]

I believe that God exists but I don't believe in him...

And hat God are we talking about? God with a big G or scandinavian god Odin? I believe in old scandinavian gods (no kiddins ) I don't think the old gods gets any weaker even if the times goes by... There's a little silly girl in me, who believes that the older (and less popular) gods have more time for me, and just me, because there ain't thousands of others, trying to get their attention...

If there is one god, what makes people think there couldn't be others?


(My apologies if nobody understood what I tried to say...)

[Ned]

Originally posted by Jophis
I believe that God exists but I don't believe in him...

And hat God are we talking about? God with a big G or scandinavian god Odin? I believe in old scandinavian gods (no kiddins ) I don't think the old gods gets any weaker even if the times goes by... There's a little silly girl in me, who believes that the older (and less popular) gods have more time for me, and just me, because there ain't thousands of others, trying to get their attention...

If there is one god, what makes people think there couldn't be others?


(My apologies if nobody understood what I tried to say...)

Good question. I do not have an answer.

The search for God for most of us is a search for understanding of the universe. If God does exist, it implies a spiritual realm and perhaps we all do have immortal souls.

I am a person who has no answers, but only questions, questions that may never be answered in my lifetime although we have come a long way to understanding the creation process of the universe.

[Whaleboy]

Wow people here are really going on about this. I won’t answer everything cos I can’t be arsed. However it seems that Ben Kenobi was last attacking my notion of time so that’s as good a place to start as any. I’ll give a summary which explains it further…

In this universe, we have four dimensions; Length, width, depth and time, that we can perceive. If you think about it, everything depends on those dimensions. Time is the interesting one I’ll come onto that in a bit. Using the example I used earlier… that is best understood in terms of what it is not, and how it limits our perception. A body of given weight on a stretched rubber mat will create an indentation on it. Take a marble, and if you roll it in the right location, the right speed, you could get it to “orbit” the bigger weight were it not for friction (a flaw in my example for the most extent).

If you initiate gravitational collapse, that is, the shrinking of the radius of that body, while keeping its mass constant… the pressure on the mat will increase. Keep doing so, the pressure will be so great it’ll pierce the mat and go straight through, hit the ground beneath… kinda like the difference between pushing down on the blunt end, then the sharp end of a tack pin.

We can perceive that perfectly well in our sense, because we can see beyond the mat, our dimensions exceed the limitations of that mat. Imagine then if your plane of existence was solely that mat. You don’t know what’s happened, as far as you are concerned, that hole has opened up something you can’t perceive, it has created an infinity… a black hole were the analogous process repeated in this universe.

The lesson? Infinities are subject to context. We see that all the time in mathematics, nature and even in human terms. Take it to a higher dimension, that infinity becomes finite… that’s even how we solve logical problem… by moving out of context, indeed you could say it is the foundation of logic itself.

A fifth dimension? We certainly could not perceive it since it is infinite to us, being four-dimensional beings. That it would need to exist? Well time is relative in our universe, that is what Einstein covered in special relativity, it is a function of the universe itself. Thinking in terms of “years” and “seconds” regarding a “time” when the universe did not exist is absurd. In order for it to exist however, that context would require a time of its own, above ours, which is the 5th dimension. Time is of course necessary to existence, otherwise in that context (dimensions) its existence would be at once infinite and infinitesimal… meaning that objects would be imperceptible to us for example (hence they are functions in space-time that our consciousnesses interact with).

Now consider a three-dimensional object. Consider a life form living upon it. Now to us, it has no time, hence three-dimensional. No life form could exist below our time as far as we are concerned because it would be a steady state part of that object. That is of course limited to our perception, there is no logical barrier to a three-dimensional realm. We cannot communicate with it however, because communication and consciousness requires time. Imagine trying to communicate with someone whose life to you is at once infinitely long and infinitesimally short. It would be impossible by definition. Similarly for God. If you take God to be 5 dimensional as far as we are concerned (this is necessary objective existence, not my argument but this supposition rests upon the assumption that God exists infinitely for the sake of argument) then he would be unable to communicate with us. In order to interact with this universe, he would be unable to manipulate things in terms of time. Time as we see it is merely a spatial dimensional to him, if he changes that, then Feynman’s “Sum over Histories” concept applies.

This is where a particle, in this case in five-dimensions to us, takes every possible path to go from A to B. In temporal terms, the straight path is reality. If you go back in time and change something (as you inevitably will) you make a straight path curved, and you will carry on in that reality, to you the path will appear straight, whereas to the original universe it is curved. It still exists but not to you. In other words, if I went back in time and killed my grandfather, my mother would still exist in my old world-time, in my new world-time she would never be born, nor would I, but I would still be trapped in that time.

What that means for time travel is that it inevitably will involve five-dimensions, but for us regarding God, a similar thing is at work. If God somehow changes the universe, time as a spatial dimension, then he has made a previously curved path straight. We, living in the straight-path universe always (since to us it is always a straight path) we would not notice any change, it would simply have always been there, a factor in the universe as old as time (4d) itself. Communication would be impossible by those means. So even if a God did exist in 5D, it would be impossible for him to interact with this universe let alone us in the objective sense. Remember of course that God is finite in his own context and thus is subject to the same limitations of perceptions as we are, but only in 5D. Needless to say, if god is anything more than 5d, we could not exist to him, just as a two-dimensional object cannot exist to us. Of course, such is the nature of the relationship between time and space that it would be impossible for one to traverse from one into the other, seeing as how such would entail existence and thus an objective time to that context.

Now I had already mentioned most of this in various responses but that seemed to be overlooked by certain people

Some specifics I’ve weeded out…

Why would causality work that way, that to give the limit to infinity produces a finite number?

I assume you’re familiar with the infinity sets? A limit for infinites view or a limit to contextual finite?

And this is one of the places we use Anselm. If such a mover was seen to be higher up the causal chain, then we would call that mover God.

Yet you seem to be contradicting Anselm’s vertical causality.

Unknowable in it's entirety, which I do concede, but not totally unknowable. We can tell God made manifest in our own world.

If you take God to be infinite you must thus conclude as I have shown that God would have been unable to communicate with the world, let alone act in its creation, changes or existence. I’d like to see how you can show that “god made manifest in our own world” however.

What if he chose to take on our form? If he is omnipotent, then he should also be able to take on our form so that we can interact with him, or to manipulate objects in our realm so that we can see him.

If he is omnipotent then he would be unable to traverse into four-dimensions and become finite in that regard. I feel I’ve been clear on this point so you should stop asserting your profundities and start addressing the argument at hand.

But that doesn't prevent other modes of communication.

You do know how communication works? Tell me, how would one communicate with someone whose existence to you is at once infinite and infinitesimal?

I disagree. I think that it is reasonable to say that all things other than God, a priori, must have a cause to come into being.

You continue to avoid addressing the principle of sufficient reason, which refutes that statement nicely.

True. Part of what we know of God, comes from ourself. But part, and the part that we are discussing right now, comes from our outside experiences.

A little ad hoc? Please clarify.

They may perceive things differently, but that does not mean they cannot come to the same conclusions given the same evidence. If this were so, that everyone effectively experiences their own universe, than scientific inquiry would be impossible.

Hardly, it still operates on the same principle. A variable that changes need not destroy a theory that accounts for that variability. Also, there is the question of “for all intents and purposes” which science happily fits within. You will note however that your argument would only hold if it implied that there were a different set of dimensions for each of us in this universe. I hold that is not true, but it is a property of time that it is relative. Are you trying to suggest that there is one system of logic which is irrefutable and essentially perfect? Are you attempting to suggest that it lies on your desk with a picture of a dead guy nailed to a tree on the front?

I'd appreciate it if you gave me some credit. I don't think you're an idiot. Another analogy is someone drawing 5 royal flushes straight of the deck in a row. It's possible that such an occurance would happen through chance, but you are more likely to accuse your opponent of cheating rather than accepting the possibility of chance.

With all due respect, I get the impression of a desperate debater attempting to baton down the hatches and hold at all costs, in the face of better arguments, instead of being rational and conceding. I don’t think you’re an idiot, I just think that your debating technique is primitive and oblique in its self-assuredness and I’m not afraid to let you know it. Now, in your example, it would only hold if humanity were of a different view, they could see a “time” before the universe and the universe as it is now, a throw of the dice and it ended up like this (having bet money on the existence of humanity). Of course, that’s not the case from our point of view, this is the basis for the principle of sufficient reason. From the point of view of the 5 royal flushes, such an event was deterministic. That of course fails to account for the idea of chaotic attractors that you haven’t adequately addressed yet.

Okay, that statement I'm not familiar with in the argument for design, that attribute any violations of entropy.

Umm, it’s pretty much the basis for that argument!!

So why would this one virtual particle constitute the total available mass of the universe?

Remember, conservation of mass-energy still applies.

In four-dimensions, not five, from a four-dimensional context. You look at the so-called virtual particle from a very internalised manner which is affecting your view. It’s mass is an external position, only knowable in five-dimensions, internally, sufficient reason applies.

Because your attempt to save determinism makes no sense. The small probability, unless you start tinkering with other things, does not account for what we see in the big bang, or in the universe as a whole, unless you give yourself an infinite universe or use one of the dodges I posted before.

Attempt to save determinism? You’re attempting to plug a desperate form of objectivism without addressing the attacks that we have made upon it, nor adequately countering the defences of determinism in this case.

So you are a different person than you were yesterday, or another moment ago?

Then that's problematic for many other reasons. You could not be held responsible for a crime that "you" did not commit.

Within myself, I am the same person, hence I still have that same responsibility. Nonetheless, assuming that problems exist, their existence does not make their cause not so and fails to refute the argument. Reductio ad absurdium in this case would only work in a sociological debate, which I am not going to let this turn into.

I always have the burden.

I'm not going to play burden games.

You wouldn’t have to if you were prepared to operate within the critical rules of a debate, whereby you have to adequately support yourself instead of issuing profundities in an attempt to look clever and convert the heathens.

I do believe that the logical arguments for God provide a much better explanation for the universe, and many of the things that we see in the universe.

Then humour me, please explain, point by point, or in a logic map (premise1+premise2=conclusion) your argument.

There is much truth evident in this.

Do elaborate.

Seems to me you are trying to make a "God-in-the box."

It doesn't work that way Whaleboy.

That is exactly what it boils down to. I have provided reason for that, the ball is now in your court to show me otherwise.

However, all of that aside, it would seem pertinent now that I ask you to clarify, explain, and qualify your argument for God’s existence, in an attempt to make you seem less oblique here. You never know, you might even get some concurrence!

[Ben Kenobi]

Traditions don't really mean much to me. I'm gay and christian radicals as yourself are only out to get me.

The point is that the reasons for prayer go well beyond asking for stuff. That's all.

It is more joyful being atheist and living truly to oneself. Being christian is living a lie. It is not like walking because one doesn't have to believe it.

Why is it a lie to be a Christian and truthful to be an Atheist? I do believe in these things, just as much I'm sure as you reject them as an atheist.

Because you are afraid of death. And "we"? I don't believe in god.

Right. I'm afraid of dying, so I believe? Not really. I believe because I believe it to be the truth, that Christ died and rose again.

[Ben Kenobi]

The Greek gods, even as a whole, do not in any way resemble the Judeo-Christian god.

Stop trying to piece the mirror back together.

Are there not individual characteristics attributed to these gods that are collectively held by God?

Look beyond the dross, the pictures, and look at the characteristics given to them.

You have a god for all occassions, for love, for wisdom, for might, for war, for the heavens.

God is all of these things to Christians.

[Ben Kenobi]

If there is one god, what makes people think there couldn't be others?

For the same reason as Anselm. Does it make sense to call something God, if there are beings above them? So you are left with two possibilities, a pantheon of equal gods, or with one God.

Then you have Occam who states that it is more probable to have one cause rather than a multiplicity of causes, and so, it should be more probable to have one God rather than many.