Does God require a creator?

[Left Coast]

You misunderstand. There is no change at all from the perspective of the whole space-time manifold. Change happens as you track along a timelike path through it. Change also happens along spacelike paths. The difference between time and space is just geometry.

You're right, I don't understand that.

Spacetime is space and time. So by definition, spacetime is following along a spatial and temporal path. It is the path.

 

[PureX]

What does that even mean? How do you trust an unknown?

By imagining what you hope it to be, and acting on that hope. Faith is trusing in what we hope to be so, when we can't know it to be so.

Where did probability come into this?

People that claim they do not engage in acts of faith base that claim on the fact that they act on probability instead of hope. But this is false, since probability does not negate the fact of our not knowing what the outcome will be. So we still have to act on the hope that our determined probability will turn out to have correctly predicted the result. It;s still faith. It's just faith in our established probabilities.

No idea what you're even trying to say here. You appear to be answering a post I didn't write.

Perhaps you;re trying so hard not to recognize the logic being presented that you're succeeding.

First, forget religion. I'm not talking about that kind of faith. And you're a bit too inclined to fly into a blind auto-defend mode when confronted with religious faith. I'm simply talking about the fact that we humans have to trust in the unknowable outcomes of our chosen course of action no matter what that course of action is based on: hope, whim, experience, divine revelation, reasoned probability, or whatever.

 

[ratiocinator]

I'm simply talking about the fact that we humans have to trust in the unknowable outcomes of our chosen course of action no matter what that course of action is based on: hope, whim, experience, divine revelation, reasoned probability, or whatever.

So you'd gone off on a complete tangent to the preceding conversation about the basis for existence and the nature of science. No wonder I was confused.

We make choices based on all sorts of things, including experience, the available information and so on, not knowing the outcome. I wouldn't call that faith at all. Hope that things will turn out well, I suppose but faith? No.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

The refutation was simply pointing out the actual evidence for the supposed assumptions. Checking the evidence is science.

Yeah, and checking how evidence works as evidence is skepticism. I learned that many years ago from a scientist. How do you know that you know and not just saying you know.
I don't do philosophy in the end. I am a skeptic. So how do you know, that you know?

 

[nPeace]

Does God require a creator?.

Good question.
If God answers 'No', how would we disprove that?

If God does not require a creator, then does that logically imply that the universe does not either?

If the universe does not require a creator, then the universe is the beginning and end - infinite.
What that would mean, is that the universe exists as is, with nothing outside itself.
That's not our understanding of the universe.

Something can come out of nothing.

How can that be?
If there is nothing, how can there come something?
God did not come from nothing, but always was. So, there was always somthing - God.

If one assumes that something can't come out of nothing, and this is a reasoning for their belief in God, then don't they have to question where God came from?

If that's their reasoning for God, but God did not come to be. God always was, and is.
There has never been a case where there was nothing... then there was something.

"God exists outside of time"
Time is relative... right? In the original Planet of the Apes (spoiler alert) them astronauts time traveled due to their speed and time's relativity, right? So, if time isn't concrete and static throughout the universe, I guess it's reasonable to assume a deity could be outside of time.

"God exists outside of existence." maybe?

I dunno

God is existence.
I tried to give a simple explaination of this before.

Say you have a circle, and nothing exists outside the circle. The only things that can exist, would be in that circle... Of course, the circle is.
The circle can expand. There are no boundaries. There are no limits to that circle.
However, the circle remains a circle, even if its diameter expands a zillion times.
The circle however, cannot become a square, a triangle... It cannot change its 'nature' It is 'constant'. It remains the same - never changing.

That's my simple way of explaining it.

 

[PearlSeeker]

The ole watchmaker 'theory'.

Problem is if you see a watch in the woods, it's clear everyone knows already all to well that watches are made and by whom. No speculation required, albiet one might wonder who lost it.

Point is we also know where AI comes from.

Yes, we are in a different position. We don't design/program universes and life in them... So we don't know. It's just a speculation. We see life and intelligent self-conscious beings in the middle of nowhere. It makes me wonder.

Are we in a position to know that we are just a product of chance - a "cosmic fart"? This requires speculation too.

 

[ratiocinator]

What that would mean, is that the universe exists as is, with nothing outside itself.
That's not our understanding of the universe.

Whose understanding, exactly? That the universe exists as is, with nothing outside itself, is perfectly consistent with what we know from science.

 

[PureX]

So you'd gone off on a complete tangent to the preceding conversation about the basis for existence and the nature of science. No wonder I was confused.

We make choices based on all sorts of things, including experience, the available information and so on, not knowing the outcome. I wouldn't call that faith at all. Hope that things will turn out well, I suppose but faith? No.

Faith is not just hope, but the decision to act on that hope. Faith is hope in action. It is choosing to trust in a process (course of action) even when you don't know what the outcome of the process will be. This is, in fact, one of the definitions of faith. Many atheists are just so triggered by the word's other definition (religious belief) that they refuse to acknowledge that it has any other meaning.

As to science, it too, is an expression of faith, but in relation to the physical realm, only, and with some built in skepticism. It's action predicated on a theory without knowing that such action will produce the theory's predicted results.

 

[ratiocinator]

Faith is not just hope, but the decision to act on that hope. Faith is hope in action. It is choosing to trust in a process (course of action) even when you don't know what the outcome of the process will be. This is, in fact, one of the definitions of faith. Many atheists are just so triggered by the word's other definition (religious belief) that they refuse to acknowledge that it has any other meaning.

There is a reasonable sense of the word faith but I still don't recognise this as a description as how I live life. I make the best choices I can with the information at hand and then see what happens. It's really only in specific circumstances that I may be hoping for some particular outcome, and even then I don't trust that it will happen.

As to science, it too, is an expression of faith, but in relation to the physical realm, only, and with some built in skepticism. It's action predicated on a theory without knowing that such action will produce the theory's predicted results.

And this is even further from the truth. Science doesn't trust any theory until it has been thoroughly tested.

 

[Audie]

So you'd gone off on a complete tangent to the preceding conversation about the basis for existence and the nature of science. No wonder I was confused.

We make choices based on all sorts of things, including experience, the available information and so on, not knowing the outcome. I wouldn't call that faith at all. Hope that things will turn out well, I suppose but faith? No.

Equivocation games with the word " faith"
are so tiresome.
But it's the only way religionists can make
their blind faith look not merely
sensible, but supremely so.

 

[PureX]

There is a reasonable sense of the word faith but I still don't recognise this as a description as how I live life. I make the best choices I can with the information at hand and then see what happens. It's really only in specific circumstances that I may be hoping for some particular outcome, and even then I don't trust that it will happen.

Every time you drive your car you are engaging in an act of faith. Because there is no way for you to know that the other drivers will obey the traffic laws as you will. But you trust in the reasoned probability that they will, because they have in the past most of the time. And so you act on that trust and hope for a positive result.

We all do these kinds of things all the time. Applying knowledge of the past to our expectations of the future is an act of faith. And we do it all the time because we have to. Some of these instances require very little faith; like acting on the assumption that gravity will remain in effect on Earth, tomorrow. But we still can't actually know this to be so even though we can conclude from the past that it is very, very likely. Other actions require a great deal of faith; like buying a lotto ticket or praying for some miracle. But most of our actions land somewhere in between. Yet they still are actions based on trust and hope, as opposed to knowing the outcome. And that is called 'faith'.

We humans cannot function without it.

And this is even further from the truth. Science doesn't trust any theory until it has been thoroughly tested.

Science trusts it's theories enough to bother testing them. Science does not just invest and test theories at random. But skepticism is built into the scientific process. So no theory is ever fully accepted as truth.

 

[ratiocinator]

Every time you drive your car you are engaging in an act of faith...
...

We are now so removed from where this started that it's become irrelevant.

Remember that you jumped in after Mikkel had been talking about the supposed assumptions that science made and I pointed out that we had actual evidence for them and that it wasn't therefore "a leap of faith".

Now you're on about 'faith' in an all but trivial way of reasonable expectation based on evidence. It's an utterly different sense of the word than just making unjustified, unevidenced assumptions.

What's the point other that to try to force the word 'faith' into normal, rational life in an attempt to excuse the blind faith of religion....?

 

[PureX]

We are now so removed from where this started that it's become irrelevant.

Remember that you jumped in after Mikkel had been talking about the supposed assumptions that science made and I pointed out that we had actual evidence for them and that it wasn't therefore "a leap of faith".

Yes, and I have explained why we are all still choosing to engage in that "leap of faith", ... even the scientists. But apparently you don't want to acknowledge this, and you have no actual rebuttal for it, so now you're trying to claim that it's irrelevant.

Now you're on about 'faith' in an all but trivial way of reasonable expectation based on evidence. It's an utterly different sense of the word than just making unjustified, unevidenced assumptions.

It's one of the definitions of the word "faith". The one not directly tied to religion, but instead tied to the fact that we humans cannot know the future. And the one therefor that applies to us all, to varying degrees, all the time.

What's the point other that to try to force the word 'faith' into normal, rational life in an attempt to excuse the blind faith of religion....?

The point is that "evidence" does not eliminate the need for faith. Which is why choosing faith in the idea of God is not as illogical as you are trying to make it out to be.

Also, the idea of God is not "unevidenced". That's a silly bias on the part of people who think they are in charge of what is and is not evidence.

 

[ratiocinator]

Yes, and I have explained why we are all still choosing that to engage in that "leap of faith", even scientists.

a leap of faith: an act of believing something that is not easily believed.
Leap of faith: A leap of faith, in its most commonly used meaning, is the act of believing in or accepting something not on the basis of reason.

You are blatantly trying to conflate two entirely different senses of the word 'faith'. You cannot compare an assumption adopted without evidence (which is what I was countering at the start of this) or faith without reasoning or evidence, with faith in the sense of trust on the basis of solid evidence. That's is just a silly game with words.

 

[muhammad_isa]

a leap of faith: an act of believing something that is not easily believed.
Leap of faith: A leap of faith, in its most commonly used meaning, is the act of believing in or accepting something not on the basis of reason.

Word game..

Faith might be blind .. but it can also be based on reason.

 

[ratiocinator]

Faith might be blind .. but it can also be based on reason.

How?

 

[ratiocinator]

I must admit I get genuinely puzzled by this sort of conversation. What's the point? Yes, I have a certain levels of confidence in certain things based on experience or evidence, and yes, I guess you could stretch the the word 'faith' to cover that, but why? It's not like my confidence is going to become anything like religious faith, so why do so many religious people try to say "well you have faith too". It seems a little defensive. If you have faith in a different sense to people without religion, why not just own it?

 

[muhammad_isa]

How?

Do you think that a serious person goes "eeny meeni mini mo" and picks a creed?

 

[Subduction Zone]

What the heck is "outside of existence" supposed to mean?

It is a handy catch phrase that one can use when pointing out that the other side does not have all of the answer, so therefore they must be wrong. Never mind that that is not any sort of answer itself.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Word game..

Faith might be blind .. but it can also be based on reason.

It may be. I have never seen any examples. I definitely have not seen that coming from you. "Faith" is the excuse that people use when they have no evidence, no reason to believe. If a person has evidence they tend to go to that first.