The "something can't come from nothing" argument

[1robin]

The opinion of a single physicist, quoted on an Intelligent Design website, is insufficient to demonstrate your claim. What else can you offer?

I do not have time for this stuff. It is not the opinion of one physicist. I gave only one articulation of what is the most dominant modern cosmological model in recent times. I only gave his because, supplying the other 2 people who worked on the BGVT would be redundant. It is no different than if you had claimed that the BBT was only Lamaitre's idea or that evolution was only the opinion of the CATHOLIC MONK who first proposed it.

I see a lot of assertions, but as of yet no actual evidence.

When you start referring to official definitions as assertions I start hearing the fat lady warming up.

Wrong and wrong. Firstly, the experiences you attribute to being experiences of God are not necessarily experiences of God - they can be explained by any number of social or cognitive phenomena. No demonstrable experience of God exists. Secondly, we can directly observe the potential effect of multiple Universes by observing subatomic particles in quantum states, and their ability to exist in multiple states simultaneously. One theory proposed to explain this phenomena is the multiple Universe theory. So, it can be said, that every time we observe an particle existing in a quantum superstate, we are directly observing multiple Universes. At least, we can say that with just as much (if not more) certainty that you can say that a claimed experience of God is an actual experience of God. If that is so, then I see no reason that we cannot attribute the observation of quantum phenomena to the existence of multiple Universes. If you can cut out any other potential explanations, so can we.

There is zero possibility you could even know you were right even if you were. You cannot possibly expect me to believe that you have the capacity to know whether God can be experienced or not. That is arrogance on a scale that even I could not have predicted. I did not say there were no pathetic and invalid counter arguments used to explain away what is inconvenient. I said there is the potentiality that people can experience God, unlike what I compared it to. No it cannot be said you are seeing another universe. Actually let me restate that, you can say it, you cannot show the statement means anything what so ever. It is the nature of the God concept that experience may potentially exist necessarily. It is not in the nature of quantum physics that experiencing it is to experience another universe. Currently there is no reason to think hat even if other universe exist that there will ever be evidence for them. To suggest otherwise is just pure fantasy. Not to mention that quantum physics is in it's infancy and no one is sure what an observation of it actually means. I think there are 10 theories which any evidence can fit into which no one anywhere knows which one it belongs in and half are mutually exclusive to they other half. When a laymen claims that they know no one can experience God or what quantum theory is true (much less means) it just makes me tired.

An unevidenced claim is still unevidenced, regardless of how many people claim it. Reality is not dependent on the popular vote.

Evidence is defined as data which the inclusion of makes the hypothesis more likely. So claims to experience by themselves are evidence, not to mention the radically changed lives (both current and historical) the experience is consistent with, etc...... No naturalistic explanation can even begin to compete with the Gospels on that experience. It's an act of desperation to even suggest otherwise.

Where?

The same place that the writers of entire library's on the subject found it. History, textual integrity, philosophy, prophecy, etc.... I can see I am wasting my time but here is a little more than you can write off by some arbitrary means if you wish:

The noted scholar, Professor Edwin Gordon Selwyn, says: "The fact that Christ rose from the dead on the third day in full continuity of body and soul - that fact seems as secure as historical evidence can make it."

Many impartial students who have approached the resurrection of Chris with a judicial spirit have been compelled by the weight of the evidence to belief in the resurrection as a fact of history. An example may be taken from a letter written by Sir Edward Clarke, K. C. to the Rev. E. L. Macassey: "As a lawyer I have made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the first Easter Day. To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling. Inference follows on evidence, and a truthful witness is always artless and disdains effect. The Gospel evidence for the resurrection is of this class, and as a lawyer I accept it unreservedly as the testimony of truthful men to facts they were able to substantiate."

"To one's amazement, though no department of Columbia University in this generation has been noted for its defense of the Christian faith, nor for praise offered to Jesus of Nazareth, yet its great Encyclopedia, the most important single volume of an encyclopedic nature in the English world, says, without apology, 'The Gospels do not leave Jesus in His grave. On the first day of the week some of the women going to the tomb found it opened, and the body of Jesus gone. An angel at the tomb told them that He had risen from the dead. Soon they saw Him and talked with Him, and His disciples met Him, and many others as well.' "

Professor Thomas Arnold, cited by Wilbur Smith, was for 14 years the famous headmaster of Rugby, author of a famous three-volume History of Rome, appointed to the char of Modern History at Oxford, and certainly a man well acquainted with the value of evidence in determining historical facts. This great scholar said: "The evidence for our LORD's life and death and resurrection may be, and often has been, shown to be satisfactory; it is good according to the common rules for distinguishing good evidence from bad. Thousands and tens of thousands of persons have gone through it piece by piece, as carefully as every judge summing up on a most important cause. I have myself done it many times over, not to persuade others but to satisfy myself. I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which GOD hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead."
Evidence That Demands a Verdict - Ch. 10 p. 2

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

And yet you consider "experiences" of God to be factual without any recourse to any other potential explanation?

I never said I consider all claims to experience as factual. In fact I reject many off hand. I said the weight of numbers in this case is so overwhelming as to suggest there is some truth behind them that defies completely a naturalistic explanation. Combine that with the fact I myself have the experience, plus people I know to be trustworthy have as well, and I have studied that particular issue more than any other in theology, and I have more than enough justification in believing that God exists and at least some portion of personal experience claims are true. Your position on the other hand requires that they ALL MUST be false. Hopeless.

Garbage.

At this point your credibility with me as at such a low standard that personal commentary with not even a hint or an attempt at justifying has zero relevance.

This paragraph is just a massive collection of nonsense. I never said it was possible for anything to come from nothing, and it's ridiculous to assert that evolution is a counter argument to God's existence - it isn't. God could exist regardless of whether evolution is true or not. What I said was a very simple fact: evolution only requires that a Universe exists - not that the Universe have a very specific origin.

Yet we have something where once we had nothing (or that is the best conclusion of science at this time). I guess you do not feel the need to have an explanation for it. Fine, I already knew that you did not before I asked the question.

Again, no. You cannot possibly assert that unless you can identify exactly every single form that life could ever possibly take. Can you empirically demonstrate that?

Again, it is not my claim but secular sciences. I am not a cosmologists or a biologist, I do not pretend to have the background to establish truths in those two areas on my own (unlike you do with the quantum). I am only conveying what I have found to be most consistent with modern scientific understanding. It is not an apologetic conclusion, it is not a church doctrine, it is however the conclusion of the secular scientist's of which I have given a tiny fraction of their reasons for stating it.

These are assertions you simply cannot support. You're just re-stating your opinion, not addressing my argument. My argument is how can you possibly know that there are only very specific conditions under which life can form, if we are currently unaware of every possible form that life can take? We are currently incapable of assessing whether or not life could form under entirely different conditions to earth - or even entirely different laws in an entirely different Universe - so it is groundless to assert that life can only arise given a very specific set of conditions. All you are doing is looking at the life that developed on earth and asserting that the conditions in which it arose must be the conditions under which life forms. In other words, you're asserting that the specific kind of life we see on earth is the only kind of life that could even potentially exist. You have to demonstrate that this is so before you can make any assertions whatsoever about the likelihood of life forming under any conditions.

Yet again not one point I made is my own. They are all widely acknowledged scientific conclusions. Now if your merely holding out hope they are wrong I have no problem with it but you cannot makes claims about the quantum and deny claims about genetic parameters. You must be consistent.

Once again, you are just re-stating your claim. You're not actually addressing my argument. How can you possibly claim to know the conditions under which ANY KIND OF LIFE can potentially form?

Quote any statement where I said any of those claims came from anything I know. I said that is what I have heard and read countless people who are qualified to know (if anyone is) state, not me.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I am NOT talking about life here on earth. I am talking about a universe that will have any structure whatever to have life evolve at all.

Again, you can't possibly know what specific conditions life could potentially evolve under so you have no basis on which to assert that. We know of one - exactly one - instance of a specific form of life developing under specific conditions on a specific planet. From that, how can you possibly extrapolate all potential forms of life developing under all potential conditions on any potential planet? You cannot.

In these lists of data I have provided I may have over looked one that only applied to life on earth but the rest apply to life of any kind being possible at all. The argument is not mine, the data was not mine. It is not the product of the Church nor of any apologist, it is straight from secular geniuses like Penrose or Hawking. At least 95% of what I have stated has been about getting any universe that could allow life to exist at all, but that was being too easy on you as it was. You need to get something (of any kind) to begin with before we even get to the former step. AS another of secular sciences geniuses so rightly asked. Why is there anything instead of nothing?

A very good question, but it is one that you nor I are likely to answer in our lifetimes. With the question of life, however, the question of apparent fine-tuning seems a simple one to answer: our particular tiny speck of the Universe appears to be conducive to life forming because life arose and adapted to those conditions. Not the other way around.

I most certainly can because I have experience it myself. On what basis am I to trust my five senses if I cannot trust experience it's self?

I have direct experience of Wiccan magick.

I have since concluded that what I experienced was not actually magick, but a form of profound delusion and temporary mania.

You're fallible. Even your senses can be wrong, and even your logic and reason. That is why evidence, rationality and reason are so important - because they go beyond mere experience to the objective truth. People "experience" all kinds of things every day. It's irrelevant to reality. Your delusion is no more compelling than any other until you can demonstrate it to be so.

I also did not say billions have experienced it. I said there are billions of claims to having experienced it. When 1 out of 3 people claim o have experienced X and you deny them all but concede dark matter which no one has experienced knowingly then your operating under these double standards again.

I'm not going to explain that again. Comparing something that is deduced to exist from direct observation to something that is untestable, unobservable and can be attributed to almost anything is not an apt comparison.

I am not trying to justify a scientific hypothesis. Unlike you I do not equal science with truth, even though you do not live by that motto most of he time your self. Truth can come in many unscientific forms. Scientism is a narrow and short sided view of reality that IMO is boring and would suck all the majesty out of life, and that no one actually lives their lives as if it was true anyway. It is only a rhetorical tactic that is unsustainable.

Science is a methodology used to observe and understand the way the Universe functions. Like it or not, "scientism" is to thank for almost every single comfort you take for granted every day of your life. It is demonstrably, by a HUGE margin, the most reliable and effective means we have for understanding the Universe and putting that knowledge to practical use for the benefit of humanity. Religion (nor any other methodology, ideology or philosophy) never comes anywhere close to having the objective, observable impact on improving the lives of millions and our understanding of the Universe as science does. Science isn't infallible. It's just BY FAR the best method we have to understand reality. To deny that would be insane.

If you can arbitrarily write off Penrose, Hawking, or Leibniz on what basis is science involved in your thinking at all?

I've already explained my argument.

I can simply deny what I find inconvenient if I desired. Does not make for a persuasive or interesting debate though.

I didn't deny it because it was inconvenient - I gave an explanation of why I can easily dismiss the calculation. You can go and read it and respond to it at your leisure.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I never said I consider all claims to experience as factual. In fact I reject many off hand. I said the weight of numbers in this case is so overwhelming as to suggest there is some truth behind them that defies completely a naturalistic explanation.

Except for the simple fact that religion is extremely prevalent in our society, people are indoctrinated en masse all the time, congregations around the world are regularly whipped upon into delusional frenzies and people, as a general rule, are prone to misapplying causation to an experience they cannot fully understand or comprehend. There are hundreds of naturalistic explanations. Numbers aren't a convincing argument.

Combine that with the fact I myself have the experience, plus people I know to be trustworthy have as well, and I have studied that particular issue more than any other in theology, and I have more than enough justification in believing that God exists and at least some portion of personal experience claims are true. Your position on the other hand requires that they ALL MUST be false. Hopeless.

Your position requires all other experiences, beliefs, theological positions and justifications other than your own ALL MUST be false. Just as hopeless. The only real difference between you and me is that you trust in something that is more likely to be a delusion than an actual, factual event. I don't.

Yet we have something where once we had nothing (or that is the best conclusion of science at this time). I guess you do not feel the need to have an explanation for it. Fine, I already knew that you did not before I asked the question.

Yet again, irrelevant to the point I've made - and unfounded. As far as I am aware, there never was "nothing". You have yet to justify that claim.

Again, it is not my claim but secular sciences. I am not a cosmologists or a biologist, I do not pretend to have the background to establish truths in those two areas on my own (unlike you do with the quantum). I am only conveying what I have found to be most consistent with modern scientific understanding. It is not an apologetic conclusion, it is not a church doctrine, it is however the conclusion of the secular scientist's of which I have given a tiny fraction of their reasons for stating it.

Yet again not one point I made is my own. They are all widely acknowledged scientific conclusions. Now if your merely holding out hope they are wrong I have no problem with it but you cannot makes claims about the quantum and deny claims about genetic parameters. You must be consistent.

Is that it? You show no actual sign of addressing my argument, just "the calculation is right, so you're wrong"? How about you actually respond to the point I'm making? Do you even understand the argument that I am making?

Quote any statement where I said any of those claims came from anything I know. I said that is what I have heard and read countless people who are qualified to know (if anyone is) state, not me.

You're clearly dodging the question. You're using their research and numbers to support your conclusion about the likelihood of life forming without understanding that their research and calculations only apply to life forming under a specific set of conditions. Unless you want to assert the life can ONLY form under those specific conditions (which you have no reason to), then their research does not support your conclusion. Stop dodging the question by hiding behind "Hey, it's THEM who are saying it - not me!". I don't care WHO is saying it. I'm explaining TO YOU why their research doesn't support YOUR conclusions. Do you have a response or not?

 

[gnostic]

I have already done everything you ask over and over again.

Sorry, 1robin, but citing pseudoscience webpages is hardly what I call relevant "scientific" sources.

And even when you do quote what scientists say or wrote, you cherry-picked what they say or had written, leaving out important and relevant details or add something (your opinions) that they say or write.

 

[Thief]

Kinda difficult to take anything you say seriously when you flat out lie to the whole forum for no reason other than to start a fight and throw hissy fits about how it is all supposedly someone else's fault.

Hypocrisy!

 

[McBell]

Hypocrisy!

You wish.
But then, that is all your song and dance really is now isn't it, wishful thinking?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

There is zero possibility you could even know you were right even if you were. You cannot possibly expect me to believe that you have the capacity to know whether God can be experienced or not. That is arrogance on a scale that even I could not have predicted.

It's a good thing that I never actually said that, then. What I said was that we have just as much (if not more) reason to call quantum events observational evidence of the existence of multiple Universes then you have to call proposed experiences attributed to a God actual evidence of the existence of a God. For one reason, quantum phenomena can be directly and repeatably observed and tested, while personal experiences can not. For another, experiences that COULD be attributed to some form of God could actually be the result of any number of non-magical phenomena with far more rationality, while there are only a few currently proposed explanations for quantum superstates - one of which includes the many worlds theory.

I did not say there were no pathetic and invalid counter arguments used to explain away what is inconvenient. I said there is the potentiality that people can experience God, unlike what I compared it to.

This is also something you have yet to demonstrate in any way whatsoever. How can you demonstrate that God can or has been experienced? How can you demonstrate the necessary causal link between an experience and a magical, mythical superbeing?

No it cannot be said you are seeing another universe. Actually let me restate that, you can say it, you cannot show the statement means anything what so ever.

Just like when you attribute an experience to God. That's my point. I have just as good, if not better, reasons to say that quantum events are direct observational evidence of multiple worlds as you have to claim that supposed experiences can be direct observational evidence of God. Until you understand that and find actual, hard evidence, your claim is meaningless.

It is the nature of the God concept that experience may potentially exist necessarily.

Making more claims that you can't support does not aid your argument.

It is not in the nature of quantum physics that experiencing it is to experience another universe.

See above. The many worlds interpretation of quantum physics is still a valid hypothesis, and has some traction in terms of support from scientists.

Currently there is no reason to think hat even if other universe exist that there will ever be evidence for them.

See above, again. If you understand how observations of quantum phenomena don't count as observations of multiple Universes, then you should also understand how personal experiences don't count as evidence of a God.

To suggest otherwise is just pure fantasy. Not to mention that quantum physics is in it's infancy and no one is sure what an observation of it actually means. I think there are 10 theories which any evidence can fit into which no one anywhere knows which one it belongs in and half are mutually exclusive to they other half. When a laymen claims that they know no one can experience God or what quantum theory is true (much less means) it just makes me tired.

The fact that you so gloriously miss the point of my argument - and have to lie about what claims I've made - makes me tired also.

 

[Thief]

You wish.
But then, that is all your song and dance really is now isn't it, wishful thinking?

We done this soooooo many times.
You're just trolling.

 

[outhouse]

We done this soooooo many times.
You're just trolling.

Its all you have provided.

No evidence.

No biblical support.


No support from anyone, isn't that what wishful thinking is?

 

[Thief]

Its all you have provided.

No evidence.

No biblical support.


No support from anyone, isn't that what wishful thinking is?

God said I AM!

Bible said so.

God as Creator.....Genesis.

No proof required.

 

[idav]

God said I AM!

Bible said so.

God as Creator.....Genesis.

No proof required.

Thanks for the sermon then.

 

[1robin]

It's a good thing that I never actually said that, then. What I said was that we have just as much (if not more) reason to call quantum events observational evidence of the existence of multiple Universes then you have to call proposed experiences attributed to a God actual evidence of the existence of a God. For one reason, quantum phenomena can be directly and repeatably observed and tested, while personal experiences can not. For another, experiences that COULD be attributed to some form of God could actually be the result of any number of non-magical phenomena with far more rationality, while there are only a few currently proposed explanations for quantum superstates - one of which includes the many worlds theory.

That is exactly what you stated. Here is the actual conversation.

My statement: 1. There is the potentiality to experience God. There is not currently and maybe forever any way to experience other universes. These are not equalities.

Your response: Wrong and wrong.

According to your omniscience God CANNOT be potentially experienced but we CAN experience other universes. That is corrosive in the extreme to credibility which it's denial only makes worse.

This is also something you have yet to demonstrate in any way whatsoever. How can you demonstrate that God can or has been experienced? How can you demonstrate the necessary causal link between an experience and a magical, mythical superbeing?

I do not have to. In the exact way I can logically trust my five senses in absence of a defeater I can logically trust my spiritual sense in the absence of a defeater.

Just like when you attribute an experience to God. That's my point. I have just as good, if not better, reasons to say that quantum events are direct observational evidence of multiple worlds as you have to claim that supposed experiences can be direct observational evidence of God. Until you understand that and find actual, hard evidence, your claim is meaningless.

No you do not. My experiences of God have not only an age old ex-planation but also a result which is by far the best explanation. That is not the same as your quantum guess. You simply have a poor observation on which is grafted an explanation that appeals to you, or one you borrow from another which is based on what appealed to them. Quantum theory is not at the stage where your conclusion is the best explanation for the data. It is not even known to be possible, it's only merit is that as yet has not shown it's self to be impossible. However even if we pretended these two observations and conclusions were equally justifiable then we are back with the same double standards I complain so much about. You accept one and deny the other yet above consider them equal.

Making more claims that you can't support does not aid your argument.

Come off it man. I said it is the nature of the concept. Are you actually saying I can't support what is true of one of he oldest concepts know to man. Doctrinally and experientially there exists every reason (and not one to counter any of them) to believe it is possible to experience God. It does not even lack proof. The only things it likes is objectively available proof. A standard much of science can't even see from where it is.

See above. The many worlds interpretation of quantum physics is still a valid hypothesis, and has some traction in terms of support from scientists.

It is, if your criteria is only that it is not impossible, but even then the implications of both the BGVT and what the bible claims stand regardless. You have not done anything to either to invent a fantasy that has no evidence what so ever.

See above, again. If you understand how observations of quantum phenomena don't count as observations of multiple Universes, then you should also understand how personal experiences don't count as evidence of a God.

Even if I grant that, which I do not, it would make no difference to anything. If you can't see the obvious differences between two radically different claims of this magnitude, I can't help. The only thing they even have in common is that they are deductions. They are not even both experiential. To get rid of the one you happen to find inconvenient you must condemn deductions in general. That is as laughable as the debater who I saw condemn all testimony in general in order to get rid of the Gospels.

The fact that you so gloriously miss the point of my argument - and have to lie about what claims I've made - makes me tired also.

That is it. I do not tolerate claims to lying because:

1. I know exactly why I claimed X and it was not to deceive.
2. You can't possibly know my motivations and yet would have to in order to make that claim.

You can keep your unknowable personal attacks to yourself or this discussion will not continue.

 

[Thief]

Thanks for the sermon then.

Not a sermon....but you're welcome anyway.

 

[idav]

Not a sermon....but you're welcome anyway.

God said I AM!

Bible said so.

God as Creator.....Genesis.

No proof required.

Uh yeah, when you have no evidence to present then your just preaching as seen above. "god said, bible says so, its in Genesis....." Uh yeah.

 

[Thief]

Uh yeah, when you have no evidence to present then your just preaching as seen above. "god said, bible says so, its in Genesis....." Uh yeah.

And you would then say.?...nothing Greater than yourself.

And you would say science is wrong.
Creation just happened....no Cause and effect.
Substance can move on it's own.
Nothing need be there. Things just move....on their own.

The singularity had a beginning.
It had a cause.

 

[viole]

This is not true. Worlds can be generated randomly and be tuned for nothing but your missing the whole point. Worlds such as this compared to the panorama of possible worlds is extremely rare. There are entire classes or types of worlds that do nor require anything like fine tuning. For example worlds in which Boltzmann brains would occur could be produced by countless variations. Worlds which lacked any life at all could be caused by countless variations of initial conditions. But this even belittles the issues. Why is there anything to begin with. Nothingness has no causal potential. The chance of getting any universe from nothing is 0. Like I quoted, experts look at this universe as if something built it expecting us to come along or that some super intellect monkeyed with physics to produce a unimaginably improbable result.

Well, I am an eternalist and B-theorist, therefore I deny that things like causality apply to our universe. They do not apply either for the microscopic world within our universe. It applies only when a time arrow emerges, ergo in pre-existing systems which are not thermodynamically stable.

So, any argument that uses sentences like "coming from" or "pop out" are meaningless to me when applied to spacetime continua or systems that provide said causality context.

But you seem to accept the possibility that something can exist without a fine tuner, as your argument of random universes appears to confirm. So, can something come from nothing, even without a conscious architect?

A tornado in a junk yard building a 747 is a bad analogy for evolution but not for the universe in general. Random expansions operating without intention by probability should have produced another type of universe.

How do you know? Can you create random universes in order to draw a statistycal analysis?

You seem to possess superhuman knowledge concerning the laws that generate consistent universes.

Incidentally, there are string theorists that postulate Universes subject to a law of natural selection as well. True, speculations, but sufficient to show that your own speculation is not the only game in town.

Produce as much evidence for abductions as for fine tuning and I will grant the existence of aliens. Why are you not that consistent?

Well, we have a lot of eye witnesses. Probably more than the ones who saw Jesus taking off to Heaven. UFO technology seems to depend on the time the observers live in, lol.

As concerns evidence of fine tuning, well, there is not a lot, for the simple reason that we have no clue how Universes exist, how they acquire stability and how many there are.

That is not what occurred here. This universe is as if you flipped a quarter and it landed on it's edge a million times in a row.

Again, how do you know? If I were an A-theorist, I could invoke an eternity of tries. Give me enough time and I cannot randomly generate any order you like.

Your building some false sharpshooter fallacy case that does not apply. We are not finding an arrow stuck randomly in the ground and calling a improbability. We are finding an arrow (without any evidence of a bows pre-existence) that phased out of reality and shape shifted into a rose and calling that improbable and miraculous. I do not think you understand what is involved here and I do not have time to go through the whole range of what randomness would be expected to produce cosmologically.

Well, you should find the time. If you are successful, i will personlly invite you at dinner in Stockholm when you collect your Nobel prize.

You cannot even mention randomness when you do not know what probability theory is, I am afraid. Probability makes sense when you have a set of outcomes and the exact mechanisms to produce one. Since we do not know either, in case of Universes, you will find this pretty difficult.

Let me state modern cosmological evidence again. We have evidence of one universe that is finite before which nothing existed. That means there are only two types of potential things (that we have any reason to suggest could have existed) to explain the universe. Abstract concepts like numbers and disembodied minds. Since abstract concepts have no causal power they are impotent and are not a candidate. That leaves only a disembodied mind. By using principles of sufficient causation we can also induce the mind was more intelligent than anything known, that it is more powerful than anything know, that it is independent of matter (strangely enough major players in philosophy and physics have come to grant that mind is primary and mater derivative), timeless, space less, etc.... Now how in the world did men 4500 years ago guess the exact parameters that modern philosophers would derive for whatever cause the universe and ascribe them to God.

Please show me evidence of a physical or scientific paper that shows that the mind is primary. Not the opinion of some phylosophical inclined physicists, for I could show you the opinion of scientists that think otherwise, like more than 90% of the members of the national academy of science.

And what parameters are you talking about that have been correctly guessed 4500 years ago?

I just happened to mention complex life as an example, as you point out even structured Universe would require extreme fine tuning. In fact most of the fine tuning that is discussed is not for intelligent life but a structured universe. One that has not "collapsed soon after it came into existence from nothing", one that has the right gravity constants to allow planets and stars, one that can produce chemical evolution, etc... This is not what we would expect a random event to produce.

Yes, but how can you show me that the universe is fine tuned for complex life without begging the question? I think it is fine tuned for viruses instead, and complex life is a useless by-product or something that virus can use for their survival. Why am I wrong, if I am wrong?

I had to read that three times to understand it. Yes I would imagine a God that created us intentionally to be interested in us, to care about us, to have right and wrong standards for us to follow, to have an ultimate plan for us. I was only discussing a limited segment of reality and not what all goes into my faith. If you add up everything that my faith is based on you get a personal God that I have personally experienced without question. I was just explaining something about freewill.

Well, your God is an interventionist, otherwise you would not believe in the power of prayer and you would be a deist, which would be slightly more logical.
For He could antincipate prayers at the beginning of time and fine tune even better.

And you beg the question by positing that there is something called free will that trascends the laws of physics, whatever they are.

There is some but it would only cove that type of thing in general. Theology Is not concerned with genetic technicality but the far far more important spiritual necessities, and the historical events that ground them, so there would not be much specific about some random event concerning the Dinosaurs and that is why I have probably never developed any position about it. It is not really a good question in a theological context.

Well, most good questions are not such in a theological context. And theology is the ultimate question begging theory, since it assumes the existence of God and this imaginary spirituality and tries to fit reality into it, somehow. In this respect, theology is akin to leprechaunology. Why are leprechauns invisible when exposed to electromagnetic radiation? Bad question.

This is a little odd. Your grafting your own ascetic preferences onto an infinite consciousness that you deny exists. The Atheist position that there is no God but if there was then they would perfectly understand it's thinking is a little schizophrenic. I realize that your comment was also meant as humor.

It is not schizophrenic, I think. After all, if He exists, and we are in His image, then i am perfectly entitled to think like Him. I don't think that "in His image" means being apelike or having a nose, so I am left with the thesis that we are intellectually similar. I actually think that it is more schizophrenic to state that God's ways are sometimes mysterious and sometimes not, if I were a believer.

It is perfectly legal to assume a hypothesys to come to an absurd conclusion that allows us to deny it. We do that in math all the time.

The level of complexity is irrelevant. About the most simple explanation possible for the universe is that a mind created it, and about the most complex explanation possible for abiogenesis is some of the naturalistic journals I have read. I do not accept one or deny the other based on arbitrary complexity levels. This is the I know what the God who does not exist would do argument. I decide which one to accept based on comprehensiveness, best fit, consistent with the most evidence, philosophic necessity or deduction, etc.....

Good for you. Alas, even you manage to convince yourself and others of the existence of a trascendent consciousness, you would have just ran the first meters of the marathon that leads to Jesus.

Apart from your location is space nd time, I do not see how you can justify believing in Jesus and not the great Spirit at the bottom of the sea, for they have the same evidence of existing.

Is Ciao pronounced like "chow"? Are you non-English?

Yes.
I am swiss-swedish. But Italian is my second language followed by german and english.

chow

- viole

 

[1robin]

Well, I am an eternalist and B-theorist, therefore I deny that things like causality apply to our universe. They do not apply either for the microscopic world within our universe. It applies only when a time arrow emerges, ergo in pre-existing systems which are not thermodynamically stable.

You must have spent all weekend on his thing. I can worship Santa Clause or the bunny rabbit but that will not make them any more logical. You can hold that the universe is eternal even when there are tons of reasons to think that is impossible. My degree is math and infinity is usually a boundary condition where the natural can't not go. It either provides an unreachable boundary or causes mathematic contradictions to occur. IOW it is off limits to the natural. You can't cross an infinite span of things like time, if the universe is infinite then the energy it contains would be infinite yet it is a very cold place. I am going the long way round the barn to say that you can believe something whether it is possible or not, does not make it true or logical, nor consistent with the evidence. Even if causality applies to everything ever observed by anyone at anytime does not apply to the one thing we cannot observe but you can not do so on logic or reason. You must do so on pure faith. You seem to divorce time from the universe for some reason. Space time is only non existent when space and change do not exist. Even fluctuating quantum energy fields change temporally. Your describing a very bad metaphysical belief not a scientifically justified theory.

So, any argument that uses sentences like "coming from" or "pop out" are meaningless to me when applied to spacetime continua or systems that provide said causality context.

Arguments are not required to make sense to you. They are required to be consistent with what is known or based on what can reliably be conjectured. Existent things require an explanation. The universe exists and your explanation seems to be missing.

But you seem to accept the possibility that something can exist without a fine tuner, as your argument of random universes appears to confirm. So, can something come from nothing, even without a conscious architect?

I actually do not believe anything can exist without a creator but my arguments take in any context that my opponent might have that is not impossible. However none of this matters. We know of one universe that seems to be fine tuned on a razors edge and it requires an explanation. Fantasy universes do not.

How do you know? Can you create random universes in order to draw a statistycal analysis?

Of course I cannot but people who specialize in doing this type of thing all say similar things. The one universe we know exists is not one that probability explains very well.

You seem to possess superhuman knowledge concerning the laws that generate consistent universes.

This is basic stuff in cosmology. I am no cosmologist but I do not have to be because I have access to thousands of them. Nothing I have said is inconsistent with mainstream cosmology.

Incidentally, there are string theorists that postulate Universes subject to a law of natural selection as well. True, speculations, but sufficient to show that your own speculation is not the only game in town.

The difference is that my speculations are not grounded in some remote corner of a theoretical physics lab. My deductions are based on comparatively simply concepts that are derived from the much more accessible realm of supplied science. Over many years I have lost all the omniscience that I had at one time invested in theoretical scientists. At one time I thought they were God like. After much research I think they are in many ways narcissistic speculators of fantasy. Al theories are not equal. Depends on what they are based on. String theory at this point in time is based on precious little. I never claimed I am the only game around, I claim only that I am the best game around at this time, and by a very wide margin.

Well, we have a lot of eye witnesses. Probably more than the ones who saw Jesus taking off to Heaven. UFO technology seems to depend on the time the observers live in, lol.

Jesus was not among the options, however lets examine that claim. There are currently hundreds of millions of people who have claimed to have experienced a risen Christ. This experience (unlike UFO's does is not easily explained by mistaking one thing for another). There exists no actual reason to be less trustful of our spiritual experiences than our visual perceptions. So even in your invented comparison Christianity still outstrips anything necessary to justify faith. My faith is not based on Jesus' ascension and so the number of witnesses is not important. You keep giving me theories that not only contradict what can be observed but have not been observed themselves by anyone yet you balk at only having two witnesses for a minor secondary detail of the bible.

As concerns evidence of fine tuning, well, there is not a lot, for the simple reason that we have no clue how Universes exist, how they acquire stability and how many there are.

You do not include unknowns in the data set of things used to examine what is known. We know we have one, finite, very very fine tuned universe. That is all. That is perfectly consistent with theism and must remain an unexplainable brute fact to non-theists.

Again, how do you know? If I were an A-theorist, I could invoke an eternity of tries. Give me enough time and I cannot randomly generate any order you like.

You seem to think if here is a label that can be applied to a fantasy reality that that reality must be included as a possibility. That is not the way science, philosophy, or anything beyond speculation works. We look at the evidence we have, not the fictions or fairy tales we can invent, and then try and see what explains them the best. I could give you eternity but without God or some similar first cause you will not ever generate anything, of any kind, at any point.

Well, you should find the time. If you are successful, i will personlly invite you at dinner in Stockholm when you collect your Nobel prize.

You cannot even mention randomness when you do not know what probability theory is, I am afraid. Probability makes sense when you have a set of outcomes and the exact mechanisms to produce one. Since we do not know either, in case of Universes, you will find this pretty difficult.

I have a math degree and took 9 hours of probability theory and at least 20 hours of math that used probability. It is actually far far worse than I indicated. If we are going to grant that by some magical process nothing could create something, and that since we know of one thing then there must be other things like it then the spectrum of possible "other" universes would be infinite. That is a game ender so lets instead consider only a billion. Now scientists far more qualified than I agree that of that billion possible universes only a handful could have any life of any kind (at least that we could think of). Inflating the numbers will not help because it is the ratio that is effectual. I am ball parking but probably being generous to say for every 1000 possible universe only one or two would allow life (or even structure) to exist. Most universes are self annihilating. So why is it that even if we find multiple universes (which we have not) do we find ourselves in the highly improbable one that supports intelligent life instead of the far more probable Boltzmann brain universe or simply without anything what ever.

Please show me evidence of a physical or scientific paper that shows that the mind is primary. Not the opinion of some phylosophical inclined physicists, for I could show you the opinion of scientists that think otherwise, like more than 90% of the members of the national academy of science.

I will have to look it up but this was not really part of my primary claims. It was from a journal that is at home but is a very popular philosophic principle. For this one I had to (and have stated more than once) to rely on some very theoretical science. Since I deny the merit of most of extremely theoretical science in a debate I cannot simultaneous posit it. It was just interesting. Anyway you can easily find a hundred papers on it but I will try and find he source I mentioned in the mean time.

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

And what parameters are you talking about that have been correctly guessed 4500 years ago?

Do you simply deny all of the dominant cosmological models. Do you ignore the BBT and the BGVT? Genesis and these models are consistent.

1. They both posit a finite universe.
2. They both posit mass, time, and space coming into existence at the same moment.
3. They both posit a universe which does not contain it's own explanation.

From philosophy we can also conclude that the cause:
1. Is independent of time.
2. Is independent of matter.
3. Is independent of space.
4. Is more powerful than is comprehendible.
5. Is more intelligent than is comprehendible.
6. I is present at all time space locations.
7. Is personal (capable of choosing).

You will find all of that in dominant cosmology, dominant philosophy and Genesis.

What I expect will be your response would be to suggest that since I can't know for certainty these things they do not hold up. This is called an inflation of uncertainty argument. However we are dealing with things that have almost no certainty available. What we must do (and what science oriented folks say they do) is to adopt the best explanation. My explanations are orders of magnitude better than yours and consistent with far more of the reliable data. As of yet I have not seen the slightest attempt to justify a single position you hold.

Yes, but how can you show me that the universe is fine tuned for complex life without begging the question? I think it is fine tuned for viruses instead, and complex life is a useless by-product or something that virus can use for their survival. Why am I wrong, if I am wrong?

It is not really important for me to identify which form of life it is fine tuned for because the range of variables in which any life we can imagine can exist with is infinitesimal. IOW we have one extremely improbable universe regardless of which life form you concentrate on. Anytime anyone sees consecutive improbabilities occur time after time we automatically infer agency (unless that agent is God of course). Agency is light years a better explanation for this universe than probability.

Well, your God is an interventionist, otherwise you would not believe in the power of prayer and you would be a deist, which would be slightly more logical.
For He could antincipate prayers at the beginning of time and fine tune even better.

Deism is the most self contradictory position I can imagine but that is another topic.

And you beg the question by positing that there is something called free will that trascends the laws of physics, whatever they are.

I hope your not defending a deterministic universe. This is an all but dead philosophy.
Choice is not competing with the laws of physics, they need not transcend them.

Well, most good questions are not such in a theological context. And theology is the ultimate question begging theory, since it assumes the existence of God and this imaginary spirituality and tries to fit reality into it, somehow. In this respect, theology is akin to leprechaunology. Why are leprechauns invisible when exposed to electromagnetic radiation? Bad question.

Did Leprechaun's write the most scrutinized 750,000 words in human history? Are there hundreds of millions of people (1 out of 3) that claim to have experienced Leprechauns? Are leprechaun's the most influential moral foundation in human history? Do 3 out 4 people believe some kind of beings similar to leprechauns exist? Do Leprechaun's adequately explain the universe or anything at all? Guess they are not equivalent after all. A much better analogy is to compare theology with dark matter. Actually theology has advantages that dark matter does not have. Beyond the offensiveness of the act this reducto absurdum is intellectually bankrupt.

It is not schizophrenic, I think. After all, if He exists, and we are in His image, then i am perfectly entitled to think like Him. I don't think that "in His image" means being apelike or having a nose, so I am left with the thesis that we are intellectually similar. I actually think that it is more schizophrenic to state that God's ways are sometimes mysterious and sometimes not, if I were a believer.

Your interpretation of made in his image is biblically unsound. It is not based on any sound hermeneutics or exegesis and no biblical commentary I have ever seen claims anything like what you have. In his image means we are free moral agents and personal and does not even hint we are omniscient which would have been as obvious in the bronze age as today.

It is perfectly legal to assume a hypothesys to come to an absurd conclusion that allows us to deny it. We do that in math all the time.

Not in any class I ever had. We do not assume conclusions in math we derive them.

Good for you. Alas, even you manage to convince yourself and others of the existence of a trascendent consciousness, you would have just ran the first meters of the marathon that leads to Jesus.

I am at the finish line and have merely decided to encourage those that are still at the starting gate. You do not speak to those at the beginning of a journey about the finish until it becomes relevant.

Apart from your location is space nd time, I do not see how you can justify believing in Jesus and not the great Spirit at the bottom of the sea, for they have the same evidence of existing.

No they do not but even if they did I have met Christ not any sea spirit so my beliefs are perfectly justified in Christ but not your sea monster.

Yes.
I am swiss-swedish. But Italian is my second language followed by german and english.

You guys make good knives, to bad you do not have an army to give them to. I am just kidding but Sweden ought to feel a great debt to other nations. Maybe give away some of that oil or something.

You are obviously educated and intelligent but I noticed there is not even an attempt by you to show your counter claims are true. You simply state another view as if the stating is justification enough. No reasons, no deductions, no evidence just declaration.

 

[idav]

And you would then say.?...nothing Greater than yourself.

No

And you would say science is wrong.

OK

Creation just happened....no Cause and effect.
Substance can move on it's own.
Nothing need be there. Things just move....on their own.

Sure cause and effect just happened. More likely than creation just happened.

The singularity had a beginning.
It had a cause.

Well if singularity needs a cause then the cause needs a cause as well. At some point you have to be satisfied with it just is, just happened that way, an non-cause. The source has to be a non-cause.

edited for clarity