Does God exist?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
It says (if you can already prove God is unnecessary to explain the universe) that you should not hypothesise God - but it doesn't say "therefore there is no God".

It is not a method of proof, only of simplification. And since science thus far hasn't come up with an irrefutable substitute for God, the tendency would be for the physics-bending Big Bang to fall to the razor, rather than one simple ineffable entity.

You've misunderstood it. As far as science is concerned, the Big Bang is necessary to the universe - it's God that's right out of the blue and unnecessary. Now, science makes a number of assumptions that I won't detail here (as they aren't really relevent), but since religion makes the same assumptions, the arguments have no weight in this case.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
But Occam doesn't prove they don't.

But there's no reason NOT to say so, and it's stupid and useless to come up with them in the first place. Otherwise, we'd be spending all day talking about things that we couldn't prove exist.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
But there's no reason NOT to say so, and it's stupid and useless to come up with them in the first place. Otherwise, we'd be spending all day talking about things that we couldn't prove exist.

Clearly it wasn't stupid or useless in this particular instance, as the idea of a god survived for so long. Nevertheless, if you constantly refuse to accept the definition of 'proof' then I can't be arsed to argue.

[Whaleboy]

Why is it absurd? It is a good question. If everything that moves, must first have a mover, then eventually you come to the point, where you have an infinite regress of causation. If this is so, and we know that the universe is not infinite, then this is an absurd conclusion.

No, this is a case of ad infinitum. Consider a metre rule. I can divide it into centimetres, millimetres, nanometres, micrometers, etc, and I can continue to do so theoretically as an infinite regress. Causality chains operate on the same principle.

Or something. Aquinas has only postulated another source for a First Mover. What form this first mover may take requires further information.

Would you claim there to be a first mover beyond God, higher up a causal chain?

Just because we cannot know infinity does not put infinity out of reach of God. Essentially, you have added a rationale for the third characteristic of God.

No, this isn’t a case of “here be dragons”. Infinity is a necessary logical barrier, that is to say, on your logical continuum, you will never reach infinity. As I often say, a graph of 1-10 has no conception of 11, as far as it is concerned, it is infinity. Now I am prepared to accept that at infinity, there may be a God, indeed, uncertainty principle taken as objective to infinity in that context (since you are adding dimensions to reach infinity) however it would be unknowable… just as that graph cannot know 11, and thus can’t distinguish between 11 and 2390790234.

Aquinas first argued for God's omnipotence, in being the First Mover. Then he argued for his Eternal existance, as there could not have been a time before him. You and Russell have provided the rational for God's omniscience, as he would require knowledge of infinity in order to create the necessary conditions to produce the universe.

God would need to be omnipotent and omniscient, that is of infinite power and knowledge. That however would prevent him from interacting with the universe, just as it is impossible for us to conceive of a two-dimensional life form in our four-dimensional universe. Indeed we could not know him.

No, I ask you to try that again. It's not clear to me that anything comes into being without thinking of it's cause.

A posteriori. There is no a priori reason why something may not exist with no cause.

I think that existence is a property, but then I am also a objectivist. Regardless of whether we feel, things exist, the universe is not contigent upon us for it's existence, nor is our existence determined by subjective assessements.

I see cards falling. Objectivity of course fails to respond to much basic epistemology, including Descartes cogito postulate so you’ll have to defend it further I think.

Yes, but this does not change the fact that Ahab still is a character in a book. Your opinion may change, but his existence does not.

You miss the point. If I somehow magic him into existence, his existence certainly has changed.

Interesting. I find that as an objectivist, only those things that transcend our perceptions can really constitute universal qualities. They are, in a sense, more real than we.

Accordingly you have no problem with that aspect of the ontological argument no?

Many of these functions of the universe seem to be constructed in such a way that chance cannot provide an adequate explanation. One adjunct to the design argument comes from the weak anthropic principle, which examines the significance of our physical constants.

But fails to account for their case a priori which is needed in such a deductive argument.

This puts you in the same position as a savage looking at a watch washing up in shore. Which is, by the way, a very old analogy.

No, rather the second hand in the watch.

Hold on. Now, don't the similarities between the savage and ourselves speak to the truth of the analogy? Do we not recognise the peculiar regularities and structure of the universe as similar to the precise movements of the watch?

While Newton might have agreed, that is refuted by basic relativity, it depends upon objectifiable temporal laws which are fallacious. Effectively, each person experiences a different universe.

The key word being 'eventually'.

It is a higher-than-infinitesimal probability, thus merely finite time is required, as far as all questions of probability arise.

The sheer implausibility of just one of the components of the universe forming in such a way as to assist life, is vastly outside of the time period.

Do you have any idea how probability works? If you toss a die 6 times, you need not necessarily find 1,2,3,4,5,6 separately. There is merely a 1/6 chance of you getting a given number. Similarly, regardless of the time required, there is a certain probability of the universe’s existence. That probability is defunct because it does exist. Sufficient reason principle.

Your point doesn't prove one thing or another. So entropy causes everything to decay, and scientists, and theists alike understand that people are an increase to the disorder in the universe, even as they try to order things.

Umm, the argument for design advocating the increase in order in the universe.

unless we start to see highly ordered systems that are very unlikely to have formed

Bang.

Not really. All Hawking theorised is that a virtual particle may be able to come into being all by itself. Such a particle, and given the rarity of such an occurance does not fit with what we know of the big bang.

It fits precisely with what we know of the big bang when you consider relativity and each point of the universe operating on a slightly different time from the other.

So it may be possible for particles to pop out of nothing, but the likelihood is so rare as to be useless.

Yet you claim it to refute determinism, without understand how determinism would cover for it in the ad infinitum context.

So if there is a 1 in 10^6900 chance of forming life randomly, then you have a question as to how this can happen when you only have

10^79 atoms in the universe.

That’s completely meaningless. There are 32 chess pieces on a board and more possible combinations/games than my mind can conceive. Take a structuralist view of analysing one outcome by its premises potential outcomes.

As previously said, the chance of it happening is irrelevant, the fact is that the universe is here in its present “form”. What are the odds that out of 300 million sperm and tens of thousands of eggs, that I would be conceived, and that I would have had my experiences up to today that have made me the individual I am? And yet, I am that individual, down to such chance, consisting of such benign deterministic steps.

That's a whole another question. Assuming there is a God, what would he be like?

That's where we can use people like Anselm.

But the whole point of what I said there was that to a subjectivist, it takes a different form, yet holding in that context the internally consistent definition.

Has this thing, which is a part of you, always been a part of you?

That’s something I am unable to determine, since it is a property of my conscious now at this moment. Consider Husserl’s view of the time consciousness being a function of “now”.

I view those who have no beliefs and no passion about their beliefs to be pretty boring, and not as interesting as others (and generally don't take very much time for them).

Why? It’s fine to have opinions in my view I just don’t fall in love with them, instead I love myself (allegedly) and friends and family. Why does that make me uninteresting when I do have opinions? It’s the difference between art and science to oneself.

Yes it is.

Why would we expect these complex chemicals to form?

Proteins aren't that simple.

That means nothing about the simplicity of their formation however. You don’t seem to be addressing the point of sufficient reason, nor deterministic causality (predetermination, as much as I hate that words connotations).

Which is why we should accept the skeptics who do not believe in God, and who try to disprove the theists.

Burden of proof. Proposition of God. Burden of proof is upon that proposition. If not, default to the state before that proposition, no God.

Why don't you just drop the semblence of objectivity supposedly harnessed exclusively by the skeptics, and get down to more substantive matters?

Yet you do not challenge him?

Some would argue we have a hunger for God. It's not so much that he helps us understand certain things, but that he is there.

A little like rape and cannibalism? I agree that we do have a desire to explain things but that needn’t make the idea of God anything more than Neolithic scientific theory, like the geocentric universe.

Remember that joke about the scientists and the historian and the philosopher climbing up the mountain of truth, only to find the theologians sitting up at the top, wondering why it took everyone so long to join them?

But who’s?

Nor is that reason to reject God. One would expect to lack understanding even with God.

Reject is the wrong term. Suppose you ask me what the Earth is. I say it is a large dinner plate suspended upon the back of the eternal snail carcass. I offer no evidence, or at least none that cannot be easily refuted a priori. There is no reason to accept it.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Clearly it wasn't stupid or useless in this particular instance, as the idea of a god survived for so long.

Non sequiter.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
No, this is a case of ad infinitum. Consider a metre rule. I can divide it into centimetres, millimetres, nanometres, micrometers, etc, and I can continue to do so theoretically as an infinite regress. Causality chains operate on the same principle.

Nay. You can have a first cause. However, demanding a "prime mover" god requires that you accept demands for a creator of that god, ad infinitum. However, you can just say "well, the universe has always been here. No cause needed."

[Whaleboy]

However, demanding a "prime mover" god requires that you accept demands for a creator of that god, ad infinitum

That's pretty much what i'm saying. The infinity problem works vertically as well as horizontally, according to my first post, allowing for a universe of finite time.

[Kuciwalker]

Except if you don't make the demand in the first place, you don't need an infinite number of causes

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Non sequiter.

Memetics. But it wasn't really the point anyway.

[Whaleboy]

Except if you don't make the demand in the first place, you don't need an infinite number of causes

True, but you can clearly afford to.

[Urban Ranger]

The Cosmological Argument is relatively easy to refute.

First of all, a theologian can choose one of the following:

E: There are uncaused events
E': There are no uncaused events

However, even if he chooses E, there is no good reason to posit that God is the only uncaused event. IOW, if God can be an uncaused event, why can't this universe?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Trajanus
The logics of their explanations are completely bollox then.

It's bollocks

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
So if there is a 1 in 10^6900 chance of forming life randomly, then you have a question as to how this can happen when you only have

10^79 atoms in the universe.


http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/hoyle.htm

Probability doesn't lie. The only problem is, if you use nonsense assumptions, you get nonsense results. This is generally referred to as "garbage in, garbage out," or GIGO for short.

That's why the article you linked to didn't get published in, say, Nature or Science.

[Ramo]

Found a reference for the journal:

"
The Biochemist
Essential for life scientists

* Interesting
* Interactive
* Innovative

Biochemist e-volution

General Editor: Richard Reece (Manchester)

This lively and eclectic magazine for all life scientists appears six times a year. Its quirky style and astute selection of serious and humorous articles ensures that the magazine's appeal is by no means restricted to that of the avid biochemist.

Specially commissioned articles from leading scientists bring a popular science perspective direct to you! Forthcoming themes include: RNAi, Money in Science, Extremophiles, Biosystems and Mathematical Modelling, Renascence of Mitochondria, Prions & Protein factors, Imaging live cells and Model organisms.

Plus, there's all the latest on science policy and education, book reviews, meeting reports, science history, computing updates, careers information, citation classics and equipment news."

Popular science. It's not a real, peer-reviewed scientific journal.

http://www.portlandpress.com/pcs/journals/journal.cfm?product=BIO

[Whaleboy]

You're sorely mistaken if you think I'm paying for that!