Freedomain Radio

reventropy:

I'm not re-writing the definition of God by saying God created our universe and that is all he did.

 

 

everett:

It seems to me that all of these proposed Gods either exist only in some inaccessible, hypothetical realm that we have no evidence for, or they have self-contradictory properties, in the same way as a square circle.  The only place I know of, where any thing that has these qualities could exist, is in the IMAGINATION.

Well..  The first part.  "It seems to me that all of these proposed Gods either exist only in some inaccessible, hypothetical realm that we have no evidence for..."  So my point is that they can exist hypothetically but the evidence for God's existence is no better than the evidence against it.    When I say God here I mean a creater.   I've seen enough to be quite sure there is no personal interventionist God but the suggestion that some "being", say,  started the big bang is not something that can be presently agued away.  If such a thing did occur then it's possible that God still exists in some form or another.  The other options are that there was nothing followed by a spontaneous something or that there was always something.  Either way, if there is/was a god I'm convinced there was something before that.

...and gods created the universe, and elves created gods, and unicorns created elves, and square circles created unicorns, and angels created square circles, and so on to infinity...

I feel more informed already.

reventropy:

Well..  The first part.  "It seems to me that all of these proposed Gods either exist only in some inaccessible, hypothetical realm that we have no evidence for..."  So my point is that they can exist hypothetically but the evidence for God's existence is no better than the evidence against it.

You haven't addressed how you distinguish things that can exist hypothetically, and for which there is no evidence, from things which are imaginary.  My point is: without evidence, ANYTHING can exist hypothetically!  To say something exists hypothetically means nothing at all!

For an example, why don't you check out the wikipedia article on the Invisible Pink Unicorn:

"Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them."

Would you agree that the Invisible Pink Unicorn fits into the same category as god with respect to its knowability and proveability?  Yes? Then can't you see that there is an infinite set of similar things which can't be known not to exist?  And that that set is identical to the category we call IMAGINARY?

If you were to ask me to imagine a hypothetical character in a Tolken novel I might come up with a unicorn.  If you were to ask me to imagine a creative force in the universe I might come up with something resembling an intelligent creator.  To answer your question Everett, in the absence of knowability and provability I lean toward probability.  I assign about 50% to the anthropic principle and around 50% goes the other way (depending on how things are going).  Thank you for sticking with me on this.  Stef, I assume if you really thought this discussion were about pink unicorns and square circles then surely you wouldn't waste your valuable time making such a trite comment.  As for what I think you were really commenting on, I believe it's totally irresponsible to think that any God can or will intervene or fix anything in any way so I don't subscribe to this view. What I think that the people in the discussion are really concerned with is religion and the damage caused by basing decisions on faith.  What I see is a lot of energy being misdirected at attacking a rational point of view because of some suggestions that may accompany it.

reventropy:

in the absence of knowability and provability I lean toward probability.  I assign about 50% to the anthropic principle and around 50% goes the other way (depending on how things are going

I don't see how you can claim this is a rational point of view, and that is also why I don't think there's any point in continuing this discussion.

So in other words I assign an equal chance to the possibility that the universe was created or that it just sprung into existence all by itself.  It's a coin toss.  Would it be more rational to assign a 100% probability to it springing into existence on its own?  This is your "rational" stance?  I've heard all the arguments and I'm pretty sure I'm not missing anything.  The world is a scary place when you discover you can't rationalize everything into a probability of 1.

Science is not a coin toss.

Let's pretend I'm building an airplane. Now, I don't know for absolute certain that it's not invisible pixie dust that lifts the plane off the ground, but any time spent searching for pixie dust is wasted. If I want to build a working airplane, I need to figure out how to make it fly with the ingredients that actually exist. Not the ingredients I wish exist, not the ingredients I think exist, not the ingredients that might exist. The same rules apply when solving any problem, whether it's building an airplane, creating a free society, or understanding the true nature of the universe.

In other words, you don't get the correct answers to life's questions by giving a 50-50 chance to evidence vs superstition.

Why should I believe there is even the remotest chance that a god exists? How does that help with anything? There is not only no evidence that a god exists, but there is absolutely no reason for a god to exist. What's the point?

Quantum Physics is a coin toss and a huge part of science is probability.  What you are referring to is engineering.  The evidence for the existence of a god can be argued ad infinitum right along side evidence to the contrary.   I agree that there is no reason for a god to exist and that there is no point.  I take this one step further and argue that there is also no reason for god not to exist and that it doesn't matter either way.

The fact that quantum physics allows for certain effects to be uncaused does not equal "anything can happen and there is a 50/50 percent chance that square circles might exist".

What are the chances that's what it would equal? Let me guess... 50/50?

Har har har.

Obviously square cirlces cannot exist, but logically disproving the self-contradictory judeo-christian god is not the the same as disproving a creator of the universe. If a scientist created a universe in a lab, and designed that universe to have certain characteristics, such as certain physical constants for the purpose of creating black holes or supporting life or for some other reason, then that scientist would be the creator for that universe. In a sense, she would be the god of that universe, although far from omnipotent or even able to interact with it beyong creating it. If you don't want to call such a hypothetical creator a "god," then I guess you can consider me an atheist, but "deist" seems a better fit to me.

Having said that, I am a weak deist, an agnostic, and I fully concede that my belief is not knowledge. The fine-tuned universe observation (as I understand it) and the irreducable complexity issue only indicates a probabiIityof a creator that is not blind chance.  It isn't possible for us to gain absolute knowledge through empirical observation, because we are not omnicient.There is no way to know if any truth holds in all times and in all places, unless we can observe all places at all times.

Absolute knowlege can ONLY be attained through logic. Logic has to hold at all times and in every instance because otherwise it is not logic. By applying logic, we can know that there must be absolute truth because both the statements "there is no absolute truth"  and "ther IS absolute truth" are absolute statements, but the former is self-contractory (like a square circle). So we can know that there either is a creator or that there isn't one, but not which of those two statements is correct. We DO know that there is not both a creator and no creator. In that sense, we are all agnostics and we are merely arguing over probabilities.

I am a fellow agnostic, but I reject your argument.  Empirical evidence is neither needed or relevant to evaluating the truth or falsity of a logical statement such as "self-contradictory entities cannot exist." Logic is not validated by observation. It is validated or falsified  by aherence to or divergence from the rules of logic. 

At the risk of descending into the death spiral of semantics, I will claim that self-contradictory entities CANNOT exist by definition.  Either a=b or a/=b.  A cannot both equal and not equal b. The JudeoIslamoChristian god cannot exist without distorting language beyond all meaning. Theodicy  disproves a perfectly good AND omnipotent god with the existence of evil. Also, it is self-cantradictory to have a perfectly just AND merciful god, without merely defining away the contradiction.

bearded spock:

Obviously square cirlces cannot exist, but logically disproving the self-contradictory judeo-christian god is not the the same as disproving a creator of the universe. If a scientist created a universe in a lab, and designed that universe to have certain characteristics, such as certain physical constants for the purpose of creating black holes or supporting life or for some other reason, then that scientist would be the creator for that universe. In a sense, she would be the god of that universe, although far from omnipotent or even able to interact with it beyong creating it. If you don't want to call such a hypothetical creator a "god," then I guess you can consider me an atheist, but "deist" seems a better fit to me.

Also, life-permitting physical constants are to expect if everything happened naturally. If we observed constants that didn't permit life, it would be time to incorporate a bunch of gods (even a bad engineer can produce stuff that hold in hostile conditions), but this is not the case. 

If one is that lazy as to recede to an undetectable creator that does not need an explanation and exists "by necessity" it is by Occhams razor more legitimate to argue that the universe itself exists by necessity. If the universe didn't exist, we would not be here to notice it. Since we in fact are here to notice it, the universe exists by necessity.    

Having said that, I am a weak deist, an agnostic, and I fully concede that my belief is not knowledge. The fine-tuned universe observation (as I understand it) and the irreducable complexity issue only indicates a probabiIityof a creator that is not blind chance.  It isn't possible for us to gain absolute knowledge through empirical observation, because we are not omnicient.There is no way to know if any truth holds in all times and in all places, unless we can observe all places at all times.

In what way would "fine-tuning" be evidence for a creator? With creationist logic, complexity can only come from even greater complexity.

Is this some kind of cut-and paste response? I haven't been a creationist for a decade. I accept evolution and old earth theory.I don't even accept guided evolution. If life was intended, it was because the life-supporting characteristics were "baked in" when the universe originated.

life in the Universe can only occur when certain universal physical constants lie within a very narrow range. Fine tuning is evidence of design because of this requirement.  The antropic principle infers that the conditions have to be met (or we wouldn't be here to wonder about the range requirements), but the fact that the range is so narrow makes it hard to accept that the one universe in existence would be a life-supporting one.  If we has discovered that the required range was wider, it would be more likely that  the characteristics of our universe emerged by blind chance.

Multiple universes do not provide an escape hatch. There is no more evidence for them that there is for a creator. If there is other universes, then a being or beings from that universe could have created this one, just as we may someday be able to create others.

As for Irreducible complexity, I refer you to Anthony Flew, who communicates the argument better than I can in his book There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. 

You seem from my perspective to be arguing against a position that I do not hold. The deist god is so alien to the biblical God that there is logically no  way that it is or could be the same entity. Indeed the deist god bears little if any similarity to any of the gods of anitquity. No miracles, no angels, no afterlife, no communication at all except for nature itself. No evidence of omnipotence or perfect benevolence or omnicience.

Are you absolutely sure?

The deist god may be like math or logic. Neither math nor logic have material reality, yet they exist and help to explain material reality. The difference is that I KNOW that math and logic exist, but I do not know that god or anything else exists except myself. I could be a brain in a jar.

There is a possibility that our subtle different uses of words are the only or biggest difference between our positions. I am not formally trained in philosophy, so I may be using slightly different definitions than professionals in the field use.