Does a God Exist?

[Roadhawg]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

I intend to.

[NazzerDawk]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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?!