View Full Version : Does a God Exist?



NazzerDawk
09-29-2011, 12:21 PM
This is my favorite discussion topic in the world. I have done a lot of it and covered just about every facet of it at some time or another.

Let me start with making the statement that I am an atheist. Now lots of people have differing ideas about what the word "atheist" means, so I will state that it is simply the position of not being a theist. This includes anyone who does not accept the claim that a god exists (which is subtly different from the acceptance of the claim that no god or gods exist) Simply put, anything that is not "theism" is "not theism", ie "Atheism".

And lets also clarify which gods I am talking about. You can probably find a pacific islander that will point to a totem pole and say "This is my god". Well I can certainly accept that the totem pole exists, it's just his claims of it's weather-controlling powers that I don't buy into. The Roman Senate once declared that Julius Caesar was a god: I think he existed, so I believe in his existence.

I'm specifically talking about any intelligent entity that is declared a supreme being and that is given credit for either the creation or continued governance of natural processes.

It is not acceptable to argue that "God is love" and point out that if I believe love exists (I do) then I believe god exists. The same goes for claims that "god is just the universe", because we already have a word for the universe: it's "universe". We also have a word for love already: Love.

So, here's the topic starter: Present your arguments about why a god must exist. I will engage with you on your arguments, and either present a counter argument, present ways to improve your arguments, or both.

NOTE: This is not a thread about disproving gods. Gods by definition are often unfalsifieable by definition, so a disproof may be improper or impracticable, and likely impossible. It is not the duty of a person to defend non-belief of a positive claim.

Roadhawg
09-29-2011, 12:43 PM
It sounds more like you want to argue if there is a God or not but I may be wrong. I don't know if there is a supreme being up in the sky and I'm not sure there isn't either. Faith is belief that there is a higher being without having proof. I believe there is air but I can't see it. Personally I think that if humans are the best the universe can do we're all in a lot of trouble.

MDot
09-29-2011, 12:51 PM
This is gonna get ugly.

CuatrodeMayo
09-29-2011, 12:56 PM
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/i_like_were_this_thread_is_going_7172.jpg

NazzerDawk
09-29-2011, 01:40 PM
Belief is faith that there is a higher being without having proof. I believe there is air but I can't see it.

This is not a valid comparison. We became aware of the existence of air because we feel it, and we can use it. We KNOW it exists because it can be confirmed.

The important thing is that if we were to go out to test the claim that "air exists", we could conceivably find out upon investigation that this is not the case. This principle, the quality of being potentially disprovable, is called "falsifiability". Without this quality, without being able to tell the difference between whether a claim is true or untrue, we are unjustified in accepting.


And this doesn't have to get ugly. I don't claim that atheists are smarter than theists, or that theism equates to brain damage or something. It's simply a matter of adjusting standards for accepting a given claim.

Dustin
09-29-2011, 03:06 PM
I'd like to believe in a god but there is simply no proof of one.

RadicalModerate
09-29-2011, 03:15 PM
There is no doubt in my mind that ["a" "G-d"] exists.
I believe in the existence of [G-d].
I also have faith in [G-d] which is what gives "life" to that belief.

(Unfortunately, I also believe that MDot's prognostication, above, is probably correct.)

MDot
09-29-2011, 03:19 PM
It's a very debatable subject that we will never come to a conclusion on or ever agree on. I personally believe in God but I've also never questioned it. But I don't look down on people who don't believe in God cause we all have our own beliefs and everyone is equal IMO even if we don't see eye to eye. I can't explain to you why I believe in God or why you don't, I just go about my day regularly and live it, I don't really sit back and wonder is there a God or if he's been proven or not cause as Roadhawg mentioned it's a matter of faith cause I've never seen God but I still believe in him and I guess it's just easy for me to accept.

RadicalModerate
09-29-2011, 03:22 PM
Probably the least ugly comment on the topic that will be made on this thread.
I salute you, Sir. (Or Madame.)

(What is that old saying about why some people spend so much time battling against something that they don't believe exists? . . .)

HewenttoJared
09-29-2011, 03:24 PM
I believe a creator of some kind is likely to exist for a couple of reasons.

The first is the nature of reality. There are a fairly large and growing number of fundamental principles that govern the behavior of energy/matter. Take gravity, for example. If we start at the moment of the big bang and tweak it just 1 or 2% you get either a re-crushing of all that exists or a spread so wide that nothing beyond a hydrogen atom is able to form. We know how uniform the explosion of time and space was, so we know that the tiniest of forces slowing down or speeding up the expansion would be disastrous for us(or any other level of organization beyond 1 proton being orbited by one electron). Obviously you can get as complicated as you want with it but it remains true. If I tweak any one of the fundamental forces operating inside the atom I get a reality which no longer hosts atoms that prefer 4 bonds. And then I get....no life. Realistically you probably wouldn't get planets either but no life is a more powerful example to me.

The universe could be constructed in an infinite number of other ways which all lead to no levels of organization beyond hydrogen. We inhabit one that contains hydrogen that was spread widely enough that it didn't re-collapse and nonuniform enough to begin collapsing into a pattern of density. Those congregations of matter were made of hydrogen atoms governed by laws in precisely the right way that they could collapse into stars that churned out light and heat and all other kinds of radiation. These stars built the hydrogen into hundreds of other types of molecules that are eventually blown all across existence by supernovae and eventually form nebulae. These nebulas form stars with rocky planets and atmospheres that can support liquid water and allow the formation and buildup of organic molecules that interact with each other in incredible ways. Some of them even make copies of themselves. The ones that do begin changing over time into ever-increasingly complex forms. And now the descendants of one of those molecules, being inhabited by billions of other descendants of the same molecules, is typing this post. Every step along that path could be stopped dead by tweaking any of the fundamental forces to even the tiniest degree.

So it seems to me that the odds of anything existing(at least in this reality) are incredibly tiny if the moment of physical law creation was a truly random event. And the odds of something like me existing are orders of magnitude smaller than the odds of anything at all existing.

venture
09-29-2011, 03:27 PM
MDot made the best comment possible. Can we lock the thread and get away from this one now? It is quiet now, but its bound to get ugly. Not to mention, why is someone who is brand new to the site starting these random threads that are overly/obviously controversial? Also notice that someone else who did something similar has faded away. Something doesn't smell right...and the troll-dar is beeping louder and louder.

On the topic though for me. My beliefs are my personal beliefs. I'm not going to push them on anyone on this forum or in real life. They are my own and don't need to be shared. I could easily dance out and say Yes or No to the question, but what would it accomplish? Nothing. I'm not here to sway people to change their beliefs on my account. Nor am I here to contribute to the development of a public debate on such things.

IOW, mind your own business. :-P

MikeOKC
09-29-2011, 03:37 PM
What Venture said ^^^^^^^^^^

RadicalModerate
09-29-2011, 03:45 PM
Amen.

(Except to recommend a book titled, "The Fingerprint of God" by Hugh Ross to Bro. H.t.Jared. For the semi-scientific spin regarding "reasons to believe".... Lot's of cosmology instead of chemistry and fossil stuff in there. =)

NazzerDawk
09-29-2011, 03:55 PM
MDot made the best comment possible. Can we lock the thread and get away from this one now? It is quiet now, but its bound to get ugly. Not to mention, why is someone who is brand new to the site starting these random threads that are overly/obviously controversial? Also notice that someone else who did something similar has faded away. Something doesn't smell right...and the troll-dar is beeping louder and louder.


I want to address this one first: I am not trolling. I do not want anyone to get upset and if any comments get ugly I will deal with them with civility (On either side of the debate).

I joined here because I like to discuss religion and I have never gotten the chance to discuss the subject with a larger cross-section of Oklahomans. That was why I created my previous thread asking what everyone's religion is so that I could know if this debate could genuinely gain traction: too often these threads end up with just one side ganging up on the other. I don't want that, I want an even exchange of ideas. Please do not lock the thread unless it does get ugly: if it does, or if it becomes too big, I will likely hold an open "opponent selection" to possibly have a one-on-one discussion with another willing participant.


On the topic though for me. My beliefs are my personal beliefs. I'm not going to push them on anyone on this forum or in real life. They are my own and don't need to be shared. I could easily dance out and say Yes or No to the question, but what would it accomplish? Nothing. I'm not here to sway people to change their beliefs on my account. Nor am I here to contribute to the development of a public debate on such things.

IOW, mind your own business. :-P
I am making this thread for people who want to engage in the discussion. I am glad you aren't going to push them, but I don't see anything bad in pushing what you think is right. I wouldn't complain if you were pushing what you believe :P. I don't complain when someone tries to convince me of what they believe.

If you don't want to be in the discussion, just don't join.

I am being as kind and careful as possible, please don't push this thread down just because you think it will inevitably turn ugly, I find that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy more often than not.
I will be addressing other posts shortly.

RadicalModerate
09-29-2011, 04:09 PM
Why do I feel the sudden urge to connect NazzerDawk with that BibleNameDudestartingwithJ who was all into what some might view as long-winded arguments about Creationism vs. Evolution?

And when I say "connect" I mean it in the Kind sense of the word involving pen pals and tea and crumpets and monk's robes and candles that lead naturally to "just how many angels CAN dance on the head of a pin?"

A mystery that still remains to this day.

(Count this as a vote for The Venture79 Suggestion.
Without in any way declaring a "war on free speech etc." =)

dmoor82
09-29-2011, 04:12 PM
I believe there is a higher power that is responsible for everything we see,touch,smell, etc......This is a touchy subject because everyone thinks their right and the other person to be wrong,but in all honesty do Humans really know WTH is going on?I think not!

MikeOKC
09-29-2011, 04:30 PM
Why do I feel the sudden urge to connect NazzerDawk with that BibleNameDudestartingwithJ who was all into what some might view as long-winded arguments about Creationism vs. Evolution?

And when I say "connect" I mean it in the Kind sense of the word involving pen pals and tea and crumpets and monk's robes and candles that lead naturally to "just how many angels CAN dance on the head of a pin?"

A mystery that still remains to this day.

(Count this as a vote for The Venture79 Suggestion.
Without in any way declaring a "war on free speech etc." =)

I don't know, but I feel that same "connection" between many of those posting in that music thread with YouTube videos.

dankrutka
09-29-2011, 05:10 PM
One of the by products of the Renaissance, the scientific revolution, and Descartes is that people feel the need to "prove" God's existence. There was a time when faith and logical forms of knowledge co-existed without people questioning whether there was contradiction. Now people try to logically "prove" issues of faith. That's where things like evolution arguments emanate. Anyway, my point is, it's great to share and learn about each others beliefs, but, in the end, no one will logically prove anything about God's existence because it's a matter of faith, not logic.

NazzerDawk
09-29-2011, 05:42 PM
I believe a creator of some kind is likely to exist for a couple of reasons.

The first is the nature of reality. There are a fairly large and growing number of fundamental principles that govern the behavior of energy/matter. Take gravity, for example. If we start at the moment of the big bang and tweak it just 1 or 2% you get either a re-crushing of all that exists or a spread so wide that nothing beyond a hydrogen atom is able to form. We know how uniform the explosion of time and space was, so we know that the tiniest of forces slowing down or speeding up the expansion would be disastrous for us(or any other level of organization beyond 1 proton being orbited by one electron). Obviously you can get as complicated as you want with it but it remains true. If I tweak any one of the fundamental forces operating inside the atom I get a reality which no longer hosts atoms that prefer 4 bonds. And then I get....no life. Realistically you probably wouldn't get planets either but no life is a more powerful example to me.

The universe could be constructed in an infinite number of other ways which all lead to no levels of organization beyond hydrogen. We inhabit one that contains hydrogen that was spread widely enough that it didn't re-collapse and nonuniform enough to begin collapsing into a pattern of density. Those congregations of matter were made of hydrogen atoms governed by laws in precisely the right way that they could collapse into stars that churned out light and heat and all other kinds of radiation. These stars built the hydrogen into hundreds of other types of molecules that are eventually blown all across existence by supernovae and eventually form nebulae. These nebulas form stars with rocky planets and atmospheres that can support liquid water and allow the formation and buildup of organic molecules that interact with each other in incredible ways. Some of them even make copies of themselves. The ones that do begin changing over time into ever-increasingly complex forms. And now the descendants of one of those molecules, being inhabited by billions of other descendants of the same molecules, is typing this post. Every step along that path could be stopped dead by tweaking any of the fundamental forces to even the tiniest degree.

So it seems to me that the odds of anything existing(at least in this reality) are incredibly tiny if the moment of physical law creation was a truly random event. And the odds of something like me existing are orders of magnitude smaller than the odds of anything at all existing.



This statement brings to mind a little thought experiment: imagine a person who has never played poker in their life. They are given the rules, and dealt their first hand... and they get a royal flush on their very first hand. The probability of this occurring is 1/2,598,960. Pretty awesome. Incredibly lucky. Well, there is NO WAY this can happen, right? No one would ever bet on this.

Now lets rerun this situation. Instead of getting a royal flush, of which there are 4 combinations, lets say that the person instead got 5 other lower cards that aren't in a contiguous order. The odds of getting this specific hand are EXACTLY THE SAME as the odds of the Royal Flush. But no one cheers. Maybe he is even a bit down. Why? Because the rules of Poker place artificial significance on that particular set of cards. We can reconstruct the rules of poker to value low hands and suddenly a royal flush becomes less valuable.

Looking at the current configuration of the laws of the universe and concluding that it is significant is awfully anthropocentric. Obviously if the universe was configured in a way that did not support life, then we wouldn't be there to cheer.



This argument ignores two things: first, it ignores the nature of probability. You know how we say "the chances of x occurring are one in x"? That only actually applies to repetition or prediction. The fact is that every configuration of anything carries with it a certain level of probability, and identifying that an improbable configuration exists currently says nothing about how it got there: it's if an improbable event, then that level of probability describes whether you are gonna get it looking forward. Conveniently, we only know of one universe. And it's unlikelihood may be extreme, but this could very well be the only one that has life. We could be one of a great many universes, and if so, we could be that one in 2 quadrillion.

Second, it assumes something it can't know: that this is the only configuration of the 4 "forces" that can spawn life. Of course making gravity stronger can probably still allow for life: Gravity isn't even a factor on the quantum level because it's so dang weak. In fact the very fact that it is unbelievably weak makes us cautious about declaring anything about it with confidence. Why is this one so disproportionately weak? Maybe there are universes that have other kinds of forces, like maybe one that repulses stronger than gravity pulls?


This argument relies on an appeal to probability that really isn't there. After that, it relies on the general ignorance of humanity: we don't know the answer to question X, but that doesn't mean we can accept just anything. When we don't know, the answer is not "lets speculate and conclude on what sounds best", the answer is "we don't know and need to continue investigating until we do".




Why do I feel the sudden urge to connect NazzerDawk with that BibleNameDudestartingwithJ who was all into what some might view as long-winded arguments about Creationism vs. Evolution?

And when I say "connect" I mean it in the Kind sense of the word involving pen pals and tea and crumpets and monk's robes and candles that lead naturally to "just how many angels CAN dance on the head of a pin?"

A mystery that still remains to this day.

(Count this as a vote for The Venture79 Suggestion.
Without in any way declaring a "war on free speech etc." =)

This thread's existence may hang on your believing me when I say that I am not a "socket" account of this other guy, so please tell me any way that I can avoid this conclusion. I can give links to other message boards that I have an account on, as well as my blog and YouTube account.

(This is like the Salem Witch Trials: if you are accused of being a sock, there's nothing you can do to avoid the conclusion being positive XD
Not whining or claiming persecution, just noting the similarity and humor there. This is the case any time someone is accused of being a sock.)

RadicalModerate
09-29-2011, 07:02 PM
As all previous--and apparently kinda rational--appeals to bringing this particular thread to a close have gone unheeded (ref. posts, from regulars, above) . . .

All I can contribute, in closing, is something along these lines:

i think, therefore i am
(no old "Moody Blues" Youtube clip/riffs on that particular cultural cliché permitted =). . .
[G-d] Thought so two.
and then . . .

Probably i am just a "Roamin' Catholic" . . .

HewenttoJared
09-29-2011, 07:10 PM
Gravity not a factor on the quantum level? Ehh, methinks you should rethink that statement.

My coursework was all in evolutionary bio, so I understand perfectly well the difference between one outcome being basically statistically impossible yet still happening and one income just being incredibly unlikely. If you tweak gravity you do get some very predictable results. Reality is like a deck of cards with an infinite number of wrong answers and only one correct one for gravity, which must be drawn together with the correct one from the strong and weak force decks(again, with an infinite number of wrong cards. And all the other decks must also be chosen correctly from an infinite number of wrong answers. And with dark matter as we currently understand it, we only had one shot.

Too high? No expansion, no nothing. Just nothing, forever.
Too low? Energy/matter is distributed too far apart to coalesce into anything bigger than an atom.



Is there a scenario where other forces might adjust and make a new gravity constant still result in complexity? Possibly, but again the match between them has to be absolutely perfect. For that one new gravity constant there is only one weak nuclear force constant that will result in anything other than nothing.


And another quick note on your comment about higher gravity still allowing life: The effects of slightly higher or slightly lower gravity on the big bang are pretty easy to see. It's not an appeal to ignorance, at all.

Caboose
09-29-2011, 09:28 PM
I don't know and neither does anyone else.

/Thread

dankrutka
09-29-2011, 10:54 PM
Not sure why everyone is freaking out to close this thread. On the whole it's simply consisted of respectful dialogue.

HewenttoJared
09-30-2011, 06:44 AM
i don't know and neither does anyone else.

/thread

true

NazzerDawk
09-30-2011, 06:48 AM
Gravity not a factor on the quantum level? Ehh, methinks you should rethink that statement.

My coursework was all in evolutionary bio, so I understand perfectly well the difference between one outcome being basically statistically impossible yet still happening and one income just being incredibly unlikely.

Sorry, statistical impossibilities don't exist when referring to a single roll of the die. If you understand this, then why is this the basis of your argument? This is why I used the poker analogy.

I think you might have missed what I meant with the poker analogy, so here it is: The universe started in a finite state and continues to expand FINITELY. It might expand INTO an infinite void, but spacetime itself is finite. And this universe must exist in some given configuration: every atom, every bit of energy, must exist at one place or another. If we reroll the dice and get a universe with the same amount of "everything", then whatever configuration that universe exists in is EQUALLY AS IMPROBABLE as our current one.


If you tweak gravity you do get some very predictable results. Reality is like a deck of cards with an infinite number of wrong answers and only one correct one for gravity, which must be drawn together with the correct one from the strong and weak force decks(again, with an infinite number of wrong cards. And all the other decks must also be chosen correctly from an infinite number of wrong answers. And with dark matter as we currently understand it, we only had one shot.

Too high? No expansion, no nothing. Just nothing, forever.
Too low? Energy/matter is distributed too far apart to coalesce into anything bigger than an atom.

You are really exaggerating how drastically changing gravity would effect these systems. You try to sell this as if we are talking about an absolute perfect balance, but in reality our configuration would allow for an actual window of gravitational adjustments. Gravity is an ABSURDLY weak force, so some fairly minor changes would still result in the contraction or expansion we see at the point of the big bang. We would just see the various effects to lesser degrees, they wouldn't go away altogether. It's like the rubber sheet analogy: if we get a perfect and frictionless sheet of thick but springy rubber, put a round weight in the center, and then toss a bunch of ball bearings around it at various angles and speeds, one might stay in a perfect orbit, rolling around the center of the weight. Well, weaken gravity (make the rubber a bit less easy to compress) and we would simply see a different ball bearing stay in orbit. You wouldn't get OUR universe, but you'd still get A universe. The same thing goes if you were to have a bigger sheet and were to get a whole dang lot of ball bearings and "explode" them outwards from the center: you have a window of "springyness" (or gravity strength) that would result in the grouping of ball bearings. They would be different, but no less existent.

This is like when people appeal to Earth's location in the "Goldilocks zone" around the sun (Not too hot, not too cold), stating that if we were just a few inches/meters/miles away/closer, we would be too cold/hot to sustain life, when in fact the Goldilocks zone is a pretty wide band. In fact, Mars is IN the Goldilocks zone for a particular atmosphere type, it just didn't have Earth's protective magnetic fields so it's atmosphere was basically blasted away. Our Goldilocks zone is between 0.725 and 3.0 astronomical units. Seems small when you put it that way, but a single AU is 149,597,870 Kilometers. That's pretty big. Even if we narrow it down to a mere 100,000 miles, that's hardly a "perfect place".



Is there a scenario where other forces might adjust and make a new gravity constant still result in complexity? Possibly, but again the match between them has to be absolutely perfect. For that one new gravity constant there is only one weak nuclear force constant that will result in anything other than nothing.


And another quick note on your comment about higher gravity still allowing life: The effects of slightly higher or slightly lower gravity on the big bang are pretty easy to see. It's not an appeal to ignorance, at all.

No, the appeal to ignorance is "I don't know why we have an improbable universe instead of a boring hydrogen-filled one, therefore God." There was a reason I used the poker analogy: The unlikelihood of something NEVER EVER EVER equals "impossible", no matter how high I grant you the improbability. ESPECIALLY not when talking about universes, because universes aren't governed by probability, they are governed by physics and, by extension, chemistry.


If that isn't your syllogism, please correct me. It's just the only argument you presented and so it's all I had to go on.


I don't know and neither does anyone else.

/Thread

Leave the thread then. We want to discuss, there's no reason you have to tell us that we can't discuss.

Roadhawg
09-30-2011, 07:10 AM
Why do I feel the sudden urge to connect NazzerDawk with that BibleNameDudestartingwithJ who was all into what some might view as long-winded arguments about Creationism vs. Evolution?

And when I say "connect" I mean it in the Kind sense of the word involving pen pals and tea and crumpets and monk's robes and candles that lead naturally to "just how many angels CAN dance on the head of a pin?"

A mystery that still remains to this day.

(Count this as a vote for The Venture79 Suggestion.
Without in any way declaring a "war on free speech etc." =)

I saw the connection too.....

USG'60
09-30-2011, 07:34 AM
Except they are on opposite sides. Instead of Hewie fighting with both of them why don't we invite Joshua back and turn the two young pit bulls on each other. The rest of us could just watch, clap and throw pennies. But if Joshua doesn't come back to protect heaven from an atheist then I suggest that Naz search for our llast outing into this quagmire, read the whole thread and pickup from there.

NazzerDawk
09-30-2011, 08:06 AM
The way I see it, this discussion is going to turn into a quagmire just because so many people are posting just to say it will turn badly.

If need be, I can establish a one-on-one discussion with another member on here instead, and we can treat other posters as periphery. The fact is that as long as we are addressing points, the discussion won't get ugly.

USG'60
09-30-2011, 08:26 AM
I'm all for that, but i really would like to see you and Joshua have the one on one. He finally left in exasperation as I told him he would after his first valiant effort to have the kind of discussion you are wanting. You haven't even met the really pitbulls yet. I'll be quiet now and see if things can really remain civil as it would be a breathe of fresh air. As Lady Bird would say, "continuin' right along." :-)

TaoMaas
09-30-2011, 09:00 AM
Not sure why everyone is freaking out to close this thread. On the whole it's simply consisted of respectful dialogue.

I agree. The potential for a thread to turn ugly is not the same as a thread that has actually turned ugly. The jury is still out on this one, IMHO.

HewenttoJared
09-30-2011, 09:45 AM
Except they are on opposite sides. Instead of Hewie fighting with both of them why don't we invite Joshua back and turn the two young pit bulls on each other. The rest of us could just watch, clap and throw pennies. But if Joshua doesn't come back to protect heaven from an atheist then I suggest that Naz search for our llast outing into this quagmire, read the whole thread and pickup from there.

I don't want this guy arguing with Joshie. He won't learn much.

USG'60
09-30-2011, 10:01 AM
I don't want this guy arguing with Joshie. He won't learn much.

Hmm, I'm unclear as to which one won't learn from which one. :-/ I still think it would be entertaining.

HewenttoJared
09-30-2011, 10:15 AM
You're misunderstanding my point about gravity. When the big bang occurred a force blew all of the energy/matter outward from a single point. Gravity instantly began slowing their progression. If gravity was weaker they would expand indefinitely(this is not conjecture, look at what dark matter/energy does). If that gravity was the slightest bit stronger then everything that exists would re-collapse back to that infinitely small point. Either way, there is no room for complexity in those alternate realities. No conglomerations of mass, no galaxies, no nebulae, no stars, no planets, and certainly no rocky planets. No nothing...

And I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt and say that it is a range, however small. That doesn't have any effect on the argument. There are still infinitely more options for a gravity that is either too weak or too strong and lead to no higher order.

Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word impossible. What I meant was statistically infinitely small. In evolution there are events in that category happening all the time, but they are not really like a deck of cards, and neither is the probability of gravity being in the range that results in complexity. For life the odds of any single organism developing are infinitely small(while the odds of something evolving are pretty much 100%). For a gravity constant the odds of complexity existing are still infinitely small, but all of the other possibilities represent an infinitely large number of answers that are wrong, not just different(they lead to nothing). The odds of an existence with nothing are basically 100% even if we're just talking about new gravity constants. The odds of something evolving are the same, basically 100%. The deck of cards argument serves a good purpose in repelling the nonsense of YEC's and their ilk, but it is an extremely poor analogy for the big bang and universal constants. In life, there are no wrong hands. In physics, there are.

I understand perfectly well how a goldilocks zone works. But in a solar system you have a finite distance to choose from and accretion disks that filled up the whole zone at one point. Gravity has infinite options for its constant(again, with an infinite number resulting in nothingness), while the distances between planets and stars do not. Poor analogy is poor.

And I'm not suggesting that we should ever allow goddidit to worm its way into our thinking about the nature of reality. Far from it, actually. We should repel any attempts to use God as a scientific explanation ravenously and without mercy to people's feelings or desires. Science has given us too much(often by usurping real appeals to ignorance) to ever allow that to happen again. I'm not saying this is proof of god, only a suggestion that something may have wanted this universe to have something in it.

Also, "universes aren't governed by probability"???? What exactly is that supposed to mean? Thats nonsense. Probability governs everything. Chemistry is a function of probability. Atomic decay, radicals, resonance structures, temperature. All of it is probabilities. Everything around you all the time is probabilities emerging from subatomic and atomic and chemical and biological chaos. I have no idea what you meant by that, but you should not say it again.

HewenttoJared
09-30-2011, 10:17 AM
Hmm, I'm unclear as to which one won't learn from which one. :-/ I still think it would be entertaining.

Both. Mostly because one of those participants doesn't have the desire to learn and the other has very little of merit to say. It would probably be entertaining, but just like you don't want prune on your side I would prefer to have theists like Josh steer clear when I'm outing myself as a believer. : )

NazzerDawk
09-30-2011, 01:10 PM
And I'm not suggesting that we should ever allow goddidit to worm its way into our thinking about the nature of reality. Far from it, actually. We should repel any attempts to use God as a scientific explanation ravenously and without mercy to people's feelings or desires. Science has given us too much(often by usurping real appeals to ignorance) to ever allow that to happen again. I'm not saying this is proof of god, only a suggestion that something may have wanted this universe to have something in it.

Lets stop right here, because the issue of whether the universe could function is quite irrelevant to the real meat of this discussion, and we will certainly not make progress toward the point if we continue on about it. (I'm not trying to avoid your points regarding our discussion on the universe's configuration, I'm just trying to focus on the topic of the thread.) Let me grant you for a moment that ours is the ONLY configuration of universes that could ever work to form some kind of thinking life, so that we can get to the center of this topic.




So, here we are, with your statement that something COULD HAVE wanted the universe's current configuration. This seems to be your claim. Well, I don't claim that a god is impossible, just unsupported in evidence, so we aren't justified in accepting that one exists. So... we are in agreement on this point. Something could have wanted the universe to exist. Something that could have influenced it. But should we ACCEPT THIS AS TRUE? This is the question this all boils down to: when do we accept a claim as true? I think that the only time to do so is when the claim A) has explanatory power and B) is potentially falsifiable. How do you falsify the claim that "Something intelligent manipulated the starting conditions of the universe"? And what does this do to further our understanding of the universe? After all, we really can't say anything at all about the universe before one Planck time unit after the big bang. Before that, even the math breaks down. So the proper state for us, no matter how uncomfortable it may be, is "We just don't know".


Both. Mostly because one of those participants doesn't have the desire to learn and the other has very little of merit to say. It would probably be entertaining, but just like you don't want prune on your side I would prefer to have theists like Josh steer clear when I'm outing myself as a believer. : )
Come now. I wouldn't be making a thread for the sole purpose of being challenged if I wasn't wanting to learn. Please don't conclude that I don't want to learn just because I disagree with you. I don't want the discussion to suffer because someone is misunderstanding my intent.

USG'60
09-30-2011, 01:16 PM
Both. Mostly because one of those participants doesn't have the desire to learn and the other has very little of merit to say. It would probably be entertaining, but just like you don't want prune on your side I would prefer to have theists like Josh steer clear when I'm outing myself as a believer. : )

Gotcha. ;-) Carry on, but be nice, Hewie.

HewenttoJared
09-30-2011, 02:09 PM
Of course we don't accept it as TRUE. I started out by claiming that I thought it seemed likely, not that god definitely existed in a way I could demonstrate to you. It does nothing to further our understanding of the universe at all and I'm not suggesting that it even should. Quite the opposite actually. The strongest conclusion from this argument seems to me to be "it seems unlikely that our current universe came to be without something consciously structuring it in such a way that complexity exists".

I was referring to the other party in my other post. It was worded incorrectly. The Josh he was referring to is both the one that will not learn and has very little of value to say. I do not know you at all, so I have no idea if you are either/neither. I do know that you made a really bizarre comment about probability though.

HewenttoJared
09-30-2011, 02:10 PM
Gotcha. ;-) Carry on, but be nice, Hewie.

I intend to.

NazzerDawk
09-30-2011, 03:06 PM
Of course we don't accept it as TRUE. I started out by claiming that I thought it seemed likely, not that god definitely existed in a way I could demonstrate to you. It does nothing to further our understanding of the universe at all and I'm not suggesting that it even should. Quite the opposite actually. The strongest conclusion from this argument seems to me to be "it seems unlikely that our current universe came to be without something consciously structuring it in such a way that complexity exists".

Let me correct that: it seems unlikely that our specific current universe came to be".

Again, the universe has to exist in a configuration, and it could easily be the case that there are an infinite number of alternate universes. And if ours wasn't the one that had life, another one would. We are the ones observing this universe, so it of course seems fortuitous that we exist. Otherwise some OTHER life forms would be existing to think "Gee, this universe was unlikely". And even if ours is the only one, yes it could easily just not have life, but then we wouldn't be here to ponder that. It's all just anthropocentric thinking.

You want to append "without something consciously structuring it in such a way that complexity exists", but the problem is we can equally as easily append "Without a system of natural selection applying to the reproduction of universes, in such a way that singularities are dropped off from existing universes to form new ones with properties that serve as imperfect copies of the parent universe's properties". That works just as well, and it doesn't even require invoking a new kind of entity that we don't even know of. It may even be better than a God, and we may possibly conceive of a way to falsify it. The thing is, until we have a way to say anything about what is required for universes to form that support life, we aren't justified accepting things that aren't supported. I love the "natural selection of universes" idea (I first remember it being mentioned by Richard Dawkins though it may be older than that) but I don't presently accept it: it seems more likely than an intelligence as it proposes nothing new and it seems intuitive that a singularity like the Big Bang might be the result of a singularity formed inside another universe, and that it would retain some of the properties of the previous universe, and it doesn't proposition anything unheard of in cosmology, unlike a being with a really anthropomorphic property like "intelligence".


And when I say "accept as true", this is not the same as "accept with absolute certainty". I accept the proposition that the atmosphere has nitrogen in it as "true", but I don't assert absolute certainty. Just to be clear.


I was referring to the other party in my other post. It was worded incorrectly. The Josh he was referring to is both the one that will not learn and has very little of value to say. I do not know you at all, so I have no idea if you are either/neither. I do know that you made a really bizarre comment about probability though.
No worries.

I do feel I need to defend my statement regarding probability, though. If we were to, hypothetically, take note of the positions of everything in the universe in the span of a single Planck time, and fast forward to 3 seconds later, then just about everything that happened in that intervening time happens not at random, but based on specific principles, those of physics and, again by extension chemistry. We can PREDICT the next state of the universe.

The universe doesn't roll a die to determine whether a ball impacting another ball results in a given reaction. So no, the universe is governed by PREDICTABLE PRINCIPLES for the most part, NOT probability. The more you know about a system, the less useful statistics become. You don't bet on a racehorse based on it's number of wins if you know everything that will transpire.

I am definitely going to agree that quantum events are extremely strange and quite possibly random, but keep in mind that the reason that we cannot determine causes for such events is not necessarily because they don't have causes, but because in practice we have no way to detect such causes. It, like all of science, is a work in progress with few real final conclusions. And in the end, these fluctuations have little impact on the physics at play in the day-to-day movements of bodies. Newtonian Physics are still quite accurate at the macro level, and only have issues when approaching relativistic speeds and quantum levels.


I wonder, are you a computer programmer at all? Do you have even a little experience programming simulations? That might help.

USG'60
09-30-2011, 03:34 PM
OK, could you two start using terms we laypersons can understand. Also I think you are bogged down in minutia just trying to set the stage. Move on or you will lose the old audience. :-P :-D

HewenttoJared
09-30-2011, 04:32 PM
Reality will always have to be described in terms of probabilities by us. I agree that if you had an absolute grasp on reality then no more randomness would exist(it's one of my central arguments about the nature of god and allele change). If that's all you meant by that then I agree with your original statement but I don't see how it was relevant to the discussion of probabilities of different values for the law of gravity existing. If your argument is that the constants were a function of what came before I'll agree. But it doesn't change the point. Those constants(specifically gravity, because it's the easiest to grasp mentally), however they were formed, still seem to be built in order for something to exist.


It COULD be the case that infinite other universes exist.
It COULD be the case that a creator exists.
It COULD be the case that invisible dancing rhinestoned rhinos built the pyramids by mind-controlling Egyptians.

The only difference in those three is that I have reason to suspect one might possibly be true. The other two are merely possible and explain nothing. And my only gripe about your first argument there is that we actually CAN say something about which kind of universe allows life to exist. We can say for any range of other constants, gravity must be within a specific range. My explanation says something about why that mix exists here. Yours does not, though I freely admit we should keep looking at the whole thing. More later, I'm moving this week and so busy.....

Stew
09-30-2011, 05:02 PM
What I don't get is when people say the universe is too complex to just have happened on it's own so therefore there has to be a creator. Okay, then I would assume the creator would at the very least of equal complexity as the creation. The complexity argument would beg the question, 'who created the creator?'. And then who created the creators creator... And so on.

I can't say there is or isn't a god/creator because I simply don't know but the complexity argument seems logically flawed.

MikeOKC
09-30-2011, 05:22 PM
Reality will always have to be described in terms of probabilities by us. I agree that if you had an absolute grasp on reality then no more randomness would exist(it's one of my central arguments about the nature of god and allele change). If that's all you meant by that then I agree with your original statement but I don't see how it was relevant to the discussion of probabilities of different values for the law of gravity existing. If your argument is that the constants were a function of what came before I'll agree. But it doesn't change the point. Those constants(specifically gravity, because it's the easiest to grasp mentally), however they were formed, still seem to be built in order for something to exist.


It COULD be the case that infinite other universes exist.
It COULD be the case that a creator exists.
It COULD be the case that invisible dancing rhinestoned rhinos built the pyramids by mind-controlling Egyptians.

The only difference in those three is that I have reason to suspect one might possibly be true. The other two are merely possible and explain nothing. And my only gripe about your first argument there is that we actually CAN say something about which kind of universe allows life to exist. We can say for any range of other constants, gravity must be within a specific range. My explanation says something about why that mix exists here. Yours does not, though I freely admit we should keep looking at the whole thing. More later, I'm moving this week and so busy.....

I like this. The funny thing is that in the list of "coulds" if the first one is right, the third one probably is too (somewhere).

NazzerDawk
09-30-2011, 06:08 PM
Reality will always have to be described in terms of probabilities by us. I agree that if you had an absolute grasp on reality then no more randomness would exist(it's one of my central arguments about the nature of god and allele change). If that's all you meant by that then I agree with your original statement but I don't see how it was relevant to the discussion of probabilities of different values for the law of gravity existing. If your argument is that the constants were a function of what came before I'll agree. But it doesn't change the point. Those constants(specifically gravity, because it's the easiest to grasp mentally), however they were formed, still seem to be built in order for something to exist.

This is something you are asserting but not actually demonstrating. However they were formed, they seem to be built in a way that allows something to exist, this does not mean that it was build in order for something to exist. You can't get from A to B here. You are making this jump but not explaining how it is made.


It COULD be the case that infinite other universes exist.
It COULD be the case that a creator exists.
It COULD be the case that invisible dancing rhinestoned rhinos built the pyramids by mind-controlling Egyptians.

The only difference in those three is that I have reason to suspect one might possibly be true. The other two are merely possible and explain nothing. And my only gripe about your first argument there is that we actually CAN say something about which kind of universe allows life to exist. We can say for any range of other constants, gravity must be within a specific range. My explanation says something about why that mix exists here. Yours does not, though I freely admit we should keep looking at the whole thing. More later, I'm moving this week and so busy.....
Yours explains a mystery with another mystery. You are saying "The universe appears to be designed, there must have been a designer". Well, a designer sounds to me like something that requires a designer, and we don't know that cosmic designers exist. We know that universes exist, and the math involved in singularities predicts that a singularity could create a big-bang event. So.... How is an intelligence a better explanation? It is proposing an entire new entity, one that itself needs an explanation.

My statement still holds true: you can't get from "Our universe is improbable" to "A designer must have made it so that we can exist. "

It's like Douglas Adam's Puddle, that looked at the hole it was in and said "Look at this hole, it fits me so perfectly that it just MUST have been made for me". Well no, the universe is a hostile darn place and we are on a tiny speck of dust that can harbor fleeting instances of life that have only been able to think for .00001% of its existence and might very well be gone before that number reaches .00002. Oh, but it was designed just for life to exist.



Let me ask you a question. What does a universe look like that got lucky and had our configuration by chance?

And what does a universe look like that was made by an intelligence to have our configuration?

If a universe in which your claim is true is EXACTLY IDENTICAL to one in which it is not, then it holds no explanatory power. And it holds even less power because it leaves an open end: who made the designer? What are the chances that a designer just HAPPENED to exist? That's astronomically improbable, possibly even impossible to quantify.

HewenttoJared
09-30-2011, 07:09 PM
I didn't use the word must. That would be over the top.

If a designer exists, it is 100% beyond the realm of testability. I'm not suggesting otherwise.

I'm not claiming that the universe was designed so that we would exist(though this would be a consequence of an omnipotent creator), I'm claiming that it seems likely that the universe was created in a way that something would exist. It has nothing to do with humanity at this stage of my argument.

HewenttoJared
09-30-2011, 07:11 PM
What I don't get is when people say the universe is too complex to just have happened on it's own so therefore there has to be a creator. Okay, then I would assume the creator would at the very least of equal complexity as the creation. The complexity argument would beg the question, 'who created the creator?'. And then who created the creators creator... And so on.

I can't say there is or isn't a god/creator because I simply don't know but the complexity argument seems logically flawed.

Most arguments from complexity are pretty flawed and ignore the incredible power of natural selection.

Caboose
10-01-2011, 10:15 AM
Leave the thread then. We want to discuss, there's no reason you have to tell us that we can't discuss.

No one said you cant discuss. I was just cutting to the chase. It doesn't matter if your discussion goes on for 1 page or 11 billion pages, the only honest conclusion is that you don't know and neither does anyone else.

NazzerDawk
10-01-2011, 04:49 PM
I didn't use the word must. That would be over the top.

If a designer exists, it is 100% beyond the realm of testability. I'm not suggesting otherwise.

I'm not claiming that the universe was designed so that we would exist(though this would be a consequence of an omnipotent creator), I'm claiming that it seems likely that the universe was created in a way that something would exist. It has nothing to do with humanity at this stage of my argument.

Okay, so, something coming about one way being unlikely doesn't make your explanation more likely. Explain to me what makes a creator being responsible more likely than a system of natural selection in reproducing universes?


No one said you cant discuss. I was just cutting to the chase. It doesn't matter if your discussion goes on for 1 page or 11 billion pages, the only honest conclusion is that you don't know and neither does anyone else.

Well this thread is about discussing beliefs regarding it. I agree that no one has the ability to know this, but that does not mean that discussion is pointless, after all, we aren't discussing "do you KNOW if gods exist", we're discussing "do you THINK that gods exist".

What is important is that people are being challenged on their conceptions and (hopefully) adjusting them to fit reality as needed. It's not like discussing religion never changes anyone's minds, and many people I know, including myself, have had their minds changed due to debates like this one. Coming in and saying "I don't know and neither do you, /thread" is not just rude, it's arrogant.

WilliamTell
10-01-2011, 04:58 PM
Does god exist?

I once heard a quote, maybe it was in a movie, I'm not exactly sure where but its always stuck with me through out the years. Two people were having a conversation about god existing, 1 guy said he didn't and the other person replied back....

I would be too afraid to keep living if i didn't believe in God.


That's how I feel. It may mean nothing to you, which is fine, but for some reason its always stuck with me.

Thunder
10-01-2011, 05:43 PM
This is gonna get ugly.

Its already ugly. I don't have a firm belief if such being exist or not. Its hard considering how my life turned out to be. If he exists, why was he so mean in the bible? If he don't exist, then why do people believe the bible is not just another greatest novel? Did he make me? Or did my parents did? What the hell?!

HewenttoJared
10-02-2011, 03:41 AM
Okay, so, something coming about one way being unlikely doesn't make your explanation more likely. Explain to me what makes a creator being responsible more likely than a system of natural selection in reproducing universes?

Natural selection requires randomly attributing a lot of characteristics to the universe that I don't think are reasonable. As far as we know there is no system of inherited and altered characteristics and, most importantly, no criteria for success. In order for natural selection to occur we must envision a system of inter-related realities(not dimensions, those are all part of this reality) pushing and pulling against each other in some sort of struggle for survival. In the event that there were an infinite number of universes where time, space and all of the laws contained therein were competing for limited "space" would there be a winner? Whoever won would probably cause all other realities to cease to exist. And the winner just happens to be the one out of infinite choices that leads to biology existing? I doubt it. Even the existence of realities separate from the one our big bang produced is pure conjecture at this point. The idea that universes compete and reproduce and evolve is right now every bit as fictitious as the idea of rolls of toilet paper competing and evolving(they do, but only through the conscious will of greater beings).

Now as far why it seems more likely that something willed us to be(as opposed to infinite, separate universes existing) that requires a large amount of reading. How familiar are you with the New and Old Testament? The Gita? The Koran? Any of the prophecies of The Buddha? If I'm talking to someone who is going to have to google Surahs then I doubt my argument can really make much headway beyond this point. Unfortunately, like most subjects, you have to either trust the people who are well-read or you have to become well-read. Apathy and ignorance rarely generate insight.(that last sentence was for you, Caboose)

Caboose
10-02-2011, 07:53 AM
Coming in and saying "I don't know and neither do you, /thread" is not just appropriate, it's accurate.


Fixed it for you.