Argument for god

Debate Room
21

Also, just because we don’t understand something doesn’t mean that we must automatically resort to God.

Syphillis and bubonic plague were not well understood 250 years ago . . . and everybody believed that these diseases were punishment from God.

Now, we inject someone with penicillin or streptomycin, and these diseases go away.

It follows that just because we don’t understand something now doesn’t mean that we won’t understand it in the future, and we shouldn’t automatically invoke God simply because we’re unhappy that we don’t know everything.

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22

I have always been nervous and uncomfortable when people try to use God to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.

As an example of my point, consider lightning, and the belief (in many cultures) that it comes from God. In the Bible, there are over 20 mentions of lightning being from God, and the Romans had Jupiter (Zeus to the Greeks) use lightning bolts as his personal weapon.

Even in the movie “The Godfather,” Don Corleone says: “If a bolt of lightning comes out of the sky and strikes Michael dead, I will blame people in this room.”

So, Benjamin Franklin met a lot of resistance when he campaigned for lightning rods to be placed on church steeples, as the steeple (being the highest point in town) was often struck by lightning, and bell-ringers were often killed.

My next point is that this belief in lightning being an instrument of God was so powerful that the Italian military decided that the Brescia church was the safest place to store all the gunpowder . . . almost 90 metric tonnes of it.

The people of the town were so pious, that God would never strike the church with lightning.

Well . . . I’m sure you can imagine what happened.

The steeple was struck by lightning, there was a fire, and the resulting explosion killed approximately 2,000 people and destroyed about 20% of the town . . . although I would argue (if I was a religious man) that these pious people missed reading the part of the Bible where Jesus says “It is written that thou shall not tempt the Lord your God” while the Devil was tempting him in the desert . . . but I digress.

I’m sure that someone in disagreement with me would say that this happened over 200 years ago and things are different now . . . but this isn’t true.

Religious organizations are–even now–trying to make PReP (a medicine that prevents someone from contracting HIV) illegal. This is because people who need such meds are violating God’s laws.

I really, really fucking hate organized religion.

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23

No, you have identified a reference point. At so-and-so time this occurred. One cannot point at that instant of time and proclaim “There, this is when everything was created.”

You have asserted the universe had a beginning. Please provide proof.

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24

Still waiting I see…

25

I think Cog took care of this debate while it was in its crib. Our theist guest’s argument was so bad that it died & then it rolled over & died again.

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26

Still amazed that a direct question challenging a bald-ass assertion invokes the cone of silence.

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27

Ah, what’s the line from the song?..oh yeah… ”silence is golden but my eyes still see”…

28

I do not, but lets see what you’ve got.

Unevidenced assumption, this can only really apply to things we understand, and they ALL occur within the temporal state of the physical universe, and are ALL natural causes, never once have we objectively evidenced or understood any supernatural cause.

Without time? How can something begin when time itself didn’t exist? This is not mere semantics either, as you can’t simply assume you understand something using terms that are wholly inadequate to describe it. This claim also assumes the universe didn’t exist in some other form before the one we currently observe, so Occam’s razor is going to go blunt at this rate.

What caused this cause? You see you don’t get to assume a rule, then disregard it, or wave objections away with unevidenced assumptions about the “cause” you have chosen to imagine exists. NB We note here that all the flaws notwithstanding, this doesn’t get you any epistemologically closer to Jesus or Allah than it does to Thor, or the Easter bunny.

So firstly this is a begging the question fallacy, and secondly it negates the need for the universe to have a cause, and it could simply have existed in some as yet unknown form.

Meaningless word salad, and the begging the question fallacies are lining up in tandem.

Oh dear, this is using yet another begging the question fallacy to create a circular reasoning fallacy.

Prior
adjective

  1. existing or coming before in time, order, or importance.

So you’re claiming something that transcends time, came at a time before time existed? I’m laughing aloud at such nonsense now sorry. Scratch that, why the fuck am I sorry?

Oh we’re just going to assume this then, well why the fuck not add one more unevidenced assumption, the laughter is getting louder now.

…and breathe…

I doubt it, but you could try reading this post, Googling a basic explanation of the big bang theory, and Googling begging the question, circular reasoning, and false dichotomy, and argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies, just for a start. The thing is littered with facile assumptions, that might have seemed profound millennia ago, but are inexcusable now.

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29

Oh look, someone has resurrected the Kalam Cosmological Bollocks.

Strap yourself in, you’re in for a hard ride.

Welcome to …

The anti-Kalam argument :smiley:

[1] Everything in the universe that has been observed to begin to exist, has had a cause arising from testable natural processes;

[2] The observations in [1] above have always involved transformation of existing material entities by existing material processes;

[3] The universe has been observed to begin to exist in its current form, courtesy of relevant data;

[4] Therefore the universe was brought into existence by testable natural processes, acting upon relevant prior entities and transforming them.

No cartoon magic man from a goat herder mythology needed. Game Over.

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30

This is a keeper!..

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31

  1. All current data supports the idea of a universe beginning to exist with a cause arising from testable natural processes stated above.

  2. Therefore, we can say with the highest degree of certainty, supported by all the evidence, the universe came into existence by natural processes, acting upon relevant prior entities and transforming them.

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32

I think you’ll find I got there first :slight_smile:

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33

That’s not scientifically proven, but go on.

No, all one can say for sure i believe is that at the big bang or T=0, space time as we know it, begun to exist.
Who knows what could be before that?

Even if it did, you could claim God did it…
Tin Man could claim it was an AI space hopper.
Old man could claim it was a purple donkey.
I could claim it was the legend that is David Lo Pan!

Just saying, well God did it… is just… well, lazy!

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34

There is a possibility that The Universe has always existed.

I believe (and have argued) that the Law of Conservation of mass/energy, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics are both functions of probability. I also argue that the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum is also a function of probability.

So . . . if the Universe has existed for an infinite amount of time in the past, then there is a 100% chance that the mass and energy has shuffled itself into a state of minimum entropy, which we call the Big Bang.

My claim is no different than stating that if I randomly shuffle a quadrillion decks of cards together and randomly deal poker hands for an infinite amount of time . . . then there are an infinite number of times when I’ll deal a quadrillion royal flushes in a row . . . regardless of how astronomically low the odds are that I could deal a quadrillion royal flushes in a row from a quadrillion decks of cards shuffled at random.

This is how I believe that The Universe recycles itself if it has existed for an infinite amount of time into the past.

35

Actually, from a symmetry point of view, this is the result of Noether’s theorem, which says that every differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces has a corresponding conservation law. That is, if you have a transformation of some kind, and the laws of physics are preserved, then you have a conservation law. Examples: If the laws of physics are invariant over translations in time, you have conservation of energy; if they are invariant over translations in space, you have conservation of linear momentum; and if they are invariant to rotations in space, you have conservation of angular momentum.

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36

I stopped reading there as I had no idea what you were on about. But great. I think I get it.

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37

OK, I’ll try again. If the laws of physics are the same

  • at different times T1 and T2 (invariant in time), this means that you have conservation of energy.
  • at different positions X1 and X2 (invariant to translation in space), this means that you have conservation of linear momentum.
  • if you rotate the system in space (invariant to rotations in space), this means that you have conservation of angular momentum.

This is all according to Noether’s theorem.

38

Yeah, man… Like, groooooovy, dude… AI Space Hoppers are, like, tooootally cool, bro. :sunglasses: I, like, even heard that, you know, like, they even created god, maaan… (donkey laugh)… I mean, like, how awesome is THAT, dude?.. (long toke)… :dash::dash::dash:

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39

As for what I mean by the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of angular momentum being a function of probability, please examine the below diagram:

image
image1286×1000 283 KB

The spring is a pull spring between the jar and the floor of this box.

The air molecules are hitting the inner surfaces of the jar at random.

If the air molecules are hitting the inner surfaces of the jar at random, then there is a very, very small–but non zero–chance that almost all of the air molecules will only hit the underside of the jar lid.

If we wait long enough (probably longer than the lifespan of the Universe), then this will happen.

When this does happen, the jar will fly upward against the resistance of the spring, and stick to the box ceiling because of the Velcro.

So, this raises several questions: There is now potential energy in the pull spring, so where did this energy come from?

My answer is that this thought experiment demonstrates that what we perceive as the 1st law of thermodynamics is a function of probability.

Further, I can just as easily argue that the jar flying upward and sticking to the velcro is a violation of the law of conservation of angular momentum.

Also, there is now less entropy inside the box than before.

So . . . I can claim that it isn’t possible (by this thought experiment) to violate one law of thermodynamics without violation both of them (and the law of conservation of angular momentum) at the same time.

I feel that this has implications when discussing the Big Bang in an eternal Universe, because if we “wait” (assuming that we can keep track of time if entropy is at a maximum) long enough after the heat death of the Universe, then everything will–by chance—shuffle itself into a state of minimum entropy . . . and this statistical anomally is what we interpret as the Big Bang.

My issue is that this idea does not explain dark matter and it doesn’t explain inflation.

If this random reshuffling is all there is to it, then I would expect the Universe to expand symetrically and steadily in all directions . . . yet inflation seems (if I interpret the idea correctly) to require that the expansion stops, and then starts again.

So, I believe I can defend the idea that the Big Bang happened as a statistical fluke that is 100% likely to occur in an infinite amount of time . . . but I have nothing to say about the mechanics of cosmic expansion or dark matter.

If my thought experiment with the jar is correct, then the smaller the jar . . . the greater the odds of seeing it fly upward against the spring.

So, what if the jar is truly microscopic?

In Brownian Motion, we see pollen grains dancing around at random in a drop of water because the sides of the pollen grain are being hit by drastically different numbers of water molecules at the same time.

If I attached a tiny bungee cord to the pollen grain (like a ball and chain), Brownian motion could cause the mass of the pollen grain to pull against the elastic resistance of the bungee cord, and we have the same thing as my thought experiment with the jar in the sealed box . . . but just on a smaller scale.

40

Angular momentum has to do with rotational movement. This is linear movement. Thus, you are talking about linear momentum.

The gas molecules will bounce off the lid, bounce back to the bottom, and thereby contribute to momentum the other way, negating (some of) the upward momentum of the jar. In addition, the upward movement of the jar will make the air molecules hit the bottom harder, further reversing the upward momentum. The momentum of the system as a whole (box, spring, jar, air) will not change. Only the internal arrangement will change.

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