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Post by Sarge on Aug 12, 2022 18:06:28 GMT
Science studies the physical world, not the metaphysical, which is why I prefer to keep them well separate. They're asking different questions and searching for different answers, and when you mix the two, you usually end up missing the point of both. The problem with this argument is once again it is a double standard, applying restrictions to science but not religion. You can see what I mean by reversing the statement to: Religion studies the metaphysical world, not the physical... But religion makes statements about the natural world, so it is trespassing on both while science is expected to remain in the physical. As I've said many times, once religion enters the natural world it is free game for science and that is one of the reasons why faith and science are incompatible.
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Post by general313 on Aug 12, 2022 18:21:35 GMT
Belief in God is a matter of faith rather than evidence. Even those that do make scientific or logical arguments for God generally believe already and are just seeking to rationalise that belief. I think that's a mistake - accepting that belief is faith-driven rather than evidential or rational allows for more tolerance of other beliefs and non-beliefs. It also acknowledges the primarily emotional nature of theism - believing in God is completely different on an emotional level from belief in, say, dark matter. People think that only because there is no evidence for God, but it's certainly conceivable that there could be. For example, if Jesus started repeatedly flying around in public places with many eyewitnesses, and came down for a landing and allowed himself to be interviewed, it would then no longer be necessary to make the bolded assertion. That would count as evidence and would likely cause many skeptics to change their mind. My example may seem like a stretch, but it's not so different from some of the stories in some of the New Testament Gospels. Many people of faith would be quite happy to find evidence rather than faith alone. Shroud of Turin comes to mind. Not encouraging the faithful to seek evidence is wise though, and perhaps an admission that it's unlikely that God will reveal himself today like he supposedly did in the old days.
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Post by mystery on Aug 12, 2022 18:55:18 GMT
Science studies the physical world, not the metaphysical, which is why I prefer to keep them well separate. They're asking different questions and searching for different answers, and when you mix the two, you usually end up missing the point of both. The problem with this argument is once again it is a double standard, applying restrictions to science but not religion. You can see what I mean by reversing the statement to: Religion studies the metaphysical world, not the physical... But religion makes statements about the natural world, so it is trespassing on both while science is expected to remain in the physical. As I've said many times, once religion enters the natural world it is free game for science and that is one of the reasons why faith and science are incompatible. Actually, I think religion should stay out of science, too. Otherwise, you get all sorts of nonsense like Young Earth Creationism, or "Christian Science", and it's just a disaster. I have both a rational, scientific side, and an intuitive, spiritual side, and I see no conflict in that. They're just different ways of perceiving the world, like the difference between math and poetry, and I can easily switch between the two. But I usually don't try to science my spirituality, or religionize my science. I don't "cross the streams", so to speak, and I'm very comfortable with the unknown. The mystery of life is what makes it beautiful, so I don't need everything to be explained.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Aug 12, 2022 19:30:27 GMT
That would count as evidence and would likely cause many skeptics to change their mind. But would that be of any value? The faithful believing because God means something to them is a very different prospect from a skeptic who only believes in God because they were overwhelmed by evidence. But that mindset is frowned upon in the Gospels - Thomas is criticised for wanting to see and feel Jesus' wounds before he will believe in the resurrection.
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Post by general313 on Aug 12, 2022 20:31:20 GMT
That would count as evidence and would likely cause many skeptics to change their mind. 1. But would that be of any value? The faithful believing because God means something to them is a very different prospect from a skeptic who only believes in God because they were overwhelmed by evidence. 2. But that mindset is frowned upon in the Gospels - Thomas is criticised for wanting to see and feel Jesus' wounds before he will believe in the resurrection. 1. Sure, if God revealed his designs and plans more explicitly it could cut down on sectarian strife. 2. I'm no Biblical expert but I think the Gospels are inconsistent on that. It seems to me there's a bit of showmanship in Jesus' miracle of changing water into wine.
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Post by rizdek on Aug 12, 2022 21:29:45 GMT
If an idea is not testable, repeatable, observable and falsifiable, it is not considered scientific. www.allaboutscience.org/scientific-method.htmJust to establish what is involved in proof, according to science, for eventual reference in discussions here. Natural laws can be proven (gravity, thermodynamics, etc.) The existence of a god cannot be proven by the scientific method. One can 'believe', 'believe that they know' and speculate all they want to, but if subjected to scientific method, it cannot be proven. But I think the existence of god can be tested. It's just that theists don't seem to like the outcome of those tests.
If we go ahead and include 'Intelligent' design under the rubric of something that god does, then for certain it could be tested and observed. For example, if while many witnesses watched a bird of one species laid and hatched an egg that produced a totally new heretofore NEVER described or seen kind of bird...that wold be pretty good evidence of some sort of 'Intelligence' monkeying around with bird types and producing a new bird as we watched. And if it happened time and time again, that would be the 'repeatability.' The same could apply to lots of different life forms...brand new life forms just appearing before our eyes would be pretty good evidence that something OTHER THAN natural selection was at work producing new animal types.
Now...it might not be falsifiable because the proponent could just claim the 'intelligent designer' was deciding not to design.
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Post by rizdek on Aug 13, 2022 0:26:04 GMT
That would count as evidence and would likely cause many skeptics to change their mind. But would that be of any value? The faithful believing because God means something to them is a very different prospect from a skeptic who only believes in God because they were overwhelmed by evidence. But that mindset is frowned upon in the Gospels - Thomas is criticised for wanting to see and feel Jesus' wounds before he will believe in the resurrection. Maybe it's just me....but what's the problem with convincing evidence? In almost every other walk of life, the 'buyer' expects some evidence...some showing that what they've bought (into) is something real and not a hoax.
Do you think belief is the most important thing?
Seems to me 'believing' is just one part of the whole process as I understand it. Per the Bible, even the demons believe, so simple belief is academic, right?
What's important would seem to me to be whether someone followed the teaching/morals of God...right? And wouldn't the most effective way be to first make it clear what/who God is, then make it really clear what morals one should adopt. THEN, people could exercise their free will if such exists and decide if they wanted to follow God or follow their own desires. As it is....one is susceptible to the whims of man as to what God is and what God expects. There are Muslims and THEIR beliefs about what's right and wrong and best I can tell, their diligence in following THEIR God would put many Christians to shame. Then there's Judaism...and it's specific beliefs about what's right. Then there's a whole smorgasbord of Christianities each with their specific rituals/beliefs/dos and don't/rights and wrong. Then there's a whole slew of other religions current and past, and each with its own mandates. How's a person expected to know what to do even if they DID come to some realization there might be some sort of supreme being?
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Post by Admin on Aug 13, 2022 7:52:55 GMT
- String theory. - Infinite regress. - Pop theory. - Alternate/infinite/multi universes. All supernatural claims. None ruled out. No, they're not supernatural claims. Then neither is God.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Aug 13, 2022 16:21:32 GMT
Maybe it's just me....but what's the problem with convincing evidence? In almost every other walk of life, the 'buyer' expects some evidence...some showing that what they've bought (into) is something real and not a hoax. I think you've touched on the heart of the matter - faith in God is not like any other walk of life. If you try to change it so it is, it becomes of a fundamentally different character and something is lost in the process. Belief in God is an existential matter - deciding that, all evidence to the contrary, there is something in the universe that cares about you. It seems to be a genuinely uplifting experience for those who have faith, regardless of whether their faith is misplaced or not. You reckon so? I disagree. First, many of the morals taught by various religions are universal anyway. Most religions have variants of the Golden Rule and many non-religious folk follow it anyway. Where religions do get a bit more individual and prescriptive, most believers pick and choose what morals to hold and the ones they don't agree with are explained away. Take something like homosexuality - the homophobes look to the scriptures to support their homophobia while those who think homophobia is wrong come up with ways to explain that their scripture of choice doesn't actually condemn homosexuality. Or to look specifically at Christianity, there are few more blatant rulings Jesus gave than denouncing divorce as a practice, yet how many Christians think divorce is absolutely fine? On a related point, it seems like we have a pre-existing idea of what is moral and then use that to determine whether God is good rather than being blank slates. Obviously there's a bit of a dialectic to proceedings - many of us are raised with morals before we actually think about them, but as we mature, we reject ones we no longer agree with. And many religions don't put primacy on morality - they put it on belief itself. In Christianity for example, one is saved by accepting Jesus as their saviour - doing good works is either supplementary to that or not important at all. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the path to Enlightenment is contemplation of the universe, not doing good deeds, which again are just a supplement to that. Finally, even if God did reveal itself unambiguously, we'd still have to decide whether we wanted to follow his moral dictats or not. It doesn't really solve anything unless the only reason to be good is to get reward/ avoid punishment. And if that is the only reason then morality and faith are purely cynical exercises, devoid of beauty.
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Post by gadreel on Aug 15, 2022 2:58:44 GMT
That is the watchmaker argument, and it's flawed for a number of reasons. Mostly, in the way you are presenting it, it's flaw is that there was not just one random event that made the universe what it was, there was a series of events, some let to dead ends, some worked out and slowly but surely we ended up where we are, a better analogy would be if you took your laundry and one day found out a shirt came ot folded in half, so you forced that fold to remain (staples??) and then did the laundry again, two years later a pair of jeans is folded in half, so you staple them too, by the time you are 10 million years old, you have a pile of folded (and stapled) laundry. Just to be clear I choose to interpret the universe as if it was intelligently created, but at the end of the day there is no proof (or even good evidence) either way. In fairness to McDemuth, I think that is how infinite probabilities work although it assumes an infinite universe. In an infinite universe, eventually, the laundry will come out folded. I believe you are both right but using different examples. Your example would apply to evolution, or coin flips. It boils down to in an infinite universe, anything that can happen, does. And I believe infinite in this context is never-ending, not always was. Back in my college days, I was having beers with a physics student and asked something like, what if the universe is nothing but probabilities. What if there is a chance that when you toss a ball in the air it doesn't come down, but the chance is so small that it never happens. He laughed and said that maybe I'm right but how do you prove it. We didn't know what we didn't know. My problem with his post that he uses the argument against science, but not against theism. He asked atheists/agnostics to keep an open mind but his own is closed. You could argue that in an infinite universe, god is eventually created but it creates a burden of proof that it's possible for a god to exist. Second problem is if you are asserting that god created the universe, god has to come first. So now you have an infinite god or one that popped into existence which is what you are arguing against in the first place. The creator becomes an unnecessary complexity and its turtles all the way down. There is no rational argument for a creator. Hmm, interesting, the analogy I normally hear is 'like expecting a tornado to whip through a scrap yard and produce a working jumbo jet" which is pretty clearly a single time event, but even as a 'over the long term' event, the whole point is that the slow 'progress' to get to where we are today is less about random events and more about natural laws that build upon each other. Yeah except religion actually covers that, well at least abrahamic ones do. God is Ain Soph Ur, that which is unknowable. All you have to have is a god that creates the universe (which actually theologically means our material existence) from out side the universe. We cannot know anything about that god, only their effect on the universe, so while god might not be created in our universe, it could just as easily have been created in it's universe, there is no way of knowing.
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Post by Sarge on Aug 15, 2022 6:01:17 GMT
In fairness to McDemuth, I think that is how infinite probabilities work although it assumes an infinite universe. In an infinite universe, eventually, the laundry will come out folded. I believe you are both right but using different examples. Your example would apply to evolution, or coin flips. It boils down to in an infinite universe, anything that can happen, does. And I believe infinite in this context is never-ending, not always was. Back in my college days, I was having beers with a physics student and asked something like, what if the universe is nothing but probabilities. What if there is a chance that when you toss a ball in the air it doesn't come down, but the chance is so small that it never happens. He laughed and said that maybe I'm right but how do you prove it. We didn't know what we didn't know. My problem with his post that he uses the argument against science, but not against theism. He asked atheists/agnostics to keep an open mind but his own is closed. You could argue that in an infinite universe, god is eventually created but it creates a burden of proof that it's possible for a god to exist. Second problem is if you are asserting that god created the universe, god has to come first. So now you have an infinite god or one that popped into existence which is what you are arguing against in the first place. The creator becomes an unnecessary complexity and its turtles all the way down. There is no rational argument for a creator. 1) Hmm, interesting, the analogy I normally hear is 'like expecting a tornado to whip through a scrap yard and produce a working jumbo jet" which is pretty clearly a single time event, but even as a 'over the long term' event, the whole point is that the slow 'progress' to get to where we are today is less about random events and more about natural laws that build upon each other. 2) Yeah except religion actually covers that, well at least abrahamic ones do. God is Ain Soph Ur, that which is unknowable. All you have to have is a god that creates the universe (which actually theologically means our material existence) from out side the universe. We cannot know anything about that god, only their effect on the universe, so while god might not be created in our universe, it could just as easily have been created in it's universe, there is no way of knowing. 1) Yes, there are definitely events where an orderly outcome is such a small probability that it will not happen but with the universe, we are looking at infinite probabilities. There could have been a trillion universes before ours that didn't work, or didn't produce life, but we are the one that eventually did. Like the old example of infinite monkeys and typewriters recreating Shakespeare. 2) We come back to my point about religion asserting things in the physical world. You can't know that a god produced the universe unless that god tells you. And the Old Testament makes it clear that Yahweh intruded on everyday life. So we do have a way of knowing if there is a religion.
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Post by Admin on Aug 15, 2022 9:14:22 GMT
Second problem is if you are asserting that god created the universe, god has to come first. So now you have an infinite god or one that popped into existence which is what you are arguing against in the first place. The creator becomes an unnecessary complexity and its turtles all the way down. There is no rational argument for a creator. Theists don't argue against an infinite god. And it's only turtles all the way down with an infinitely regressive universe.
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Post by gadreel on Aug 15, 2022 17:30:50 GMT
1) Hmm, interesting, the analogy I normally hear is 'like expecting a tornado to whip through a scrap yard and produce a working jumbo jet" which is pretty clearly a single time event, but even as a 'over the long term' event, the whole point is that the slow 'progress' to get to where we are today is less about random events and more about natural laws that build upon each other. 2) Yeah except religion actually covers that, well at least abrahamic ones do. God is Ain Soph Ur, that which is unknowable. All you have to have is a god that creates the universe (which actually theologically means our material existence) from out side the universe. We cannot know anything about that god, only their effect on the universe, so while god might not be created in our universe, it could just as easily have been created in it's universe, there is no way of knowing. 1) Yes, there are definitely events where an orderly outcome is such a small probability that it will not happen but with the universe, we are looking at infinite probabilities. There could have been a trillion universes before ours that didn't work, or didn't produce life, but we are the one that eventually did. Like the old example of infinite monkeys and typewriters recreating Shakespeare. 2) We come back to my point about religion asserting things in the physical world. You can't know that a god produced the universe unless that god tells you. And the Old Testament makes it clear that Yahweh intruded on everyday life. So we do have a way of knowing if there is a religion. I actually think we are thinking very similar things in this regard, yes it is conceivable that this world (or universe, whatever granularity ) you want to use, happened in a completely random and unprecedented way, as you say it is an infinite (insert granularity here), having said that, this is really only an observation (in my opinion) on the creation of the universe, we can see that the evolution of the universe that led us to this point is governed by known laws, and is not random, at least not in the sense that a tornado in a scrap yard is. I mean that could just be mans (my) requirement to see order where there is none, I just dont buy that the end result is just a matter of pure chance, maybe the start point is (I read an argument that the big bang should (who knows how we know what it should do) produce equal amounts of matter and antimatter and so would have destroyed itself, but for some reason OUR big bang was different, that is the sort of randomness I would accept) I think that the laws in place are pretty obvious though and so the randomness argument falls down there.
Yeah the old testament is strange I mean it clearly refers to God in the natural world sense, God rains destruction down and blesses people left right and center, and yet at the same time the Jews metaphysically still described God as ain soph ur, there is a bit of a paradox there, having said that there is paradox throughout religion, solving the paradox is often used spiritually to advance. I think it is also worth noting that the disparity of the books in the bible means that it is often hard to reconcile one against the other, look at the differences in just the four gospels let alone the rest of the books.
I agree you cannot know if a God produced the universe, which is why I phrase my belief as I choose to believe the universe was created.
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Post by Sarge on Aug 16, 2022 0:24:46 GMT
Second problem is if you are asserting that god created the universe, god has to come first. So now you have an infinite god or one that popped into existence which is what you are arguing against in the first place. The creator becomes an unnecessary complexity and its turtles all the way down. There is no rational argument for a creator. Theists don't argue against an infinite god. And it's only turtles all the way down with an infinitely regressive universe. It's the popping into existence part that theists argue against. I probably could have worded it better.
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Post by Sarge on Aug 16, 2022 0:37:04 GMT
1) Yes, there are definitely events where an orderly outcome is such a small probability that it will not happen but with the universe, we are looking at infinite probabilities. There could have been a trillion universes before ours that didn't work, or didn't produce life, but we are the one that eventually did. Like the old example of infinite monkeys and typewriters recreating Shakespeare. 2) We come back to my point about religion asserting things in the physical world. You can't know that a god produced the universe unless that god tells you. And the Old Testament makes it clear that Yahweh intruded on everyday life. So we do have a way of knowing if there is a religion. I actually think we are thinking very similar things in this regard, yes it is conceivable that this world (or universe, whatever granularity ) you want to use, happened in a completely random and unprecedented way, as you say it is an infinite (insert granularity here), having said that, this is really only an observation (in my opinion) on the creation of the universe, we can see that the evolution of the universe that led us to this point is governed by known laws, and is not random, at least not in the sense that a tornado in a scrap yard is. I mean that could just be mans (my) requirement to see order where there is none, I just dont buy that the end result is just a matter of pure chance, maybe the start point is (I read an argument that the big bang should (who knows how we know what it should do) produce equal amounts of matter and antimatter and so would have destroyed itself, but for some reason OUR big bang was different, that is the sort of randomness I would accept) I think that the laws in place are pretty obvious though and so the randomness argument falls down there. This is an interesting point to explore because a few years ago I would have agreed 100% and now I don't know. During the pandemic I spent a lot of time watching physics lectures. The math is still beyond me but I wanted to at least grasp the concepts and what I've learned is that we know a lot and the more we know the more questions we have. I believe we are still in a Newtonian universe, in a manner of speaking, which is to say we have figured out enough mathematics to make accurate predictions, but our underlying understanding of the universe is still in its infancy. Newton invented calculus to explain gravity and it was so close we can use it to send a space probe to rendezvous with Pluto a decade hence, but Einstein came along and said, wrong! Well, I think we are still wrong. I believe the mysterious "dark matter and energy" are mathematical cheats to explain a gap in knowledge. What I know for certain is that the universe we perceive with our senses is not reality, but a good enough proximation that we can exist.
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Post by Admin on Aug 16, 2022 1:02:28 GMT
Theists don't argue against an infinite god. And it's only turtles all the way down with an infinitely regressive universe. It's the popping into existence part that theists argue against. I probably could have worded it better. It isn't just theists that argue against that. A theist would say God has always existed. An atheist would say the universe has always existed. But very few of either would say that things just pop into existence from nothing, by nothing, and with no cause for no reason. Peter Kreeft puts it like this: And Lawrence Krauss puts it like this:
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Post by Sarge on Aug 16, 2022 1:57:42 GMT
It's the popping into existence part that theists argue against. I probably could have worded it better. It isn't just theists that argue against that. A theist would say God has always existed. An atheist would say the universe has always existed. But very few of either would say that things just pop into existence from nothing, by nothing, and with no cause for no reason. Peter Kreeft puts it like this: And Lawrence Krauss puts it like this: Philosophy is the study of argument, not a search for truth. Philosphers are people who ask questions that seem deep but are generally meaningless, as an excuse to not get a real job. I've heard physicists suggest "the universe" includes more than we can ever know and that our Big Bang may only be one small part of it but that's highly speculative and not supported by evidence. I've listened to Krauss speak but I'm not arguing that anything is possible, I'm arguing that the universe popped into existence from nothing. The statement by Krauss could be used as a reply to quantum entanglement, string theory, or double slit light experiments, but I doubt Krauss would deny those. Even though a theist might argue against the universe popping into existence, that's also their argument, that god snapped his fingers and brought the universe into existence. So either way the universe came from nothing.
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Post by Admin on Aug 16, 2022 3:25:35 GMT
It isn't just theists that argue against that. A theist would say God has always existed. An atheist would say the universe has always existed. But very few of either would say that things just pop into existence from nothing, by nothing, and with no cause for no reason. Peter Kreeft puts it like this: And Lawrence Krauss puts it like this: Philosophy is the study of argument, not a search for truth. Philosphers are people who ask questions that seem deep but are generally meaningless, as an excuse to not get a real job. I've heard physicists suggest "the universe" includes more than we can ever know and that our Big Bang may only be one small part of it but that's highly speculative and not supported by evidence. I've listened to Krauss speak but I'm not arguing that anything is possible, I'm arguing that the universe popped into existence from nothing. The statement by Krauss could be used as a reply to quantum entanglement, string theory, or double slit light experiments, but I doubt Krauss would deny those. Even though a theist might argue against the universe popping into existence, that's also their argument, that god snapped his fingers and brought the universe into existence. So either way the universe came from nothing. It's not just a matter of something from nothing; it's also a matter of something happening without a cause. If X brought the universe into existence - even from nothing - then X would be the cause of the universe's existence.
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Post by Winter_King on Aug 16, 2022 8:53:03 GMT
No, they're not supernatural claims. Then neither is God. I guess it's possible that God is a natural being just like the rest of us but he's usually defined as something supernatural.
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Post by Admin on Aug 16, 2022 9:27:02 GMT
I guess it's possible that God is a natural being just like the rest of us but he's usually defined as something supernatural. Maybe theists should do what scientists do and just change the laws to fit.
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