Either he must have made the calculations before he set off the "big bang" or he must be continually tweaking every atom and molecule in order to produce exactly 1robin exactly now. 1robin can't possibly be a result of random chance, that much is clear.
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The "something can't come from nothing" argument
- Thread starter Big_TJ
- Start date
Of course, for every person born it is a miracle it isn't someone else instead. Or wait, it isn't a miracle because if we weren't born then it isn't fine tuned. Oh dear...
Ok it is a miracle I was born and I was fine tuned as such which means it really wasn't a miracle. It is a miracle either way, whether something could calculate that or is a product of happenstance.
Miracle is simply something improbable that happens despite its improbability. If miracles have to break nature then it doesn't happen. I don't think the improbability of it all makes a universal super computer any more likely.
Wouldn't a lottery still appear as chance if someone had unknowingly rigged it in the background?
Let's see. Since the universe of 1robin was fine tuned it has no option but being the way it is. It was predetermined. And since the odds of us appearing by chance in this predetermined universe are impossible we must also be predetermined. Even if we started off with "Adam and Eve" we couldn't have come into existence by chance. Which means that every organism must be individually designed and created by a god, or this god must at least control every atom and molecule so that every organism comes into existence exactly how, when and where this god wants. How does that sound?
I exist therefore god seems to be missing something. Still we dont know god wasn't going for random chance. Any of gods moves would look the same random or determined and still doeant help the issue.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
We have two choices. The universe popped into existence without explanation or cause or it did so with them. No one knows for certain but every justification and piece of evidence suggests the latter is massively more probable than the former. Instead of the thinking beginning to exist think state changes in reality. Any change in a state requires a cause.
Science gets you to time = 1 x 10^-47th. It gets a singularity which does not contain it's own explanation or cause. For that we are forced to look beyond nature because we no longer have any nature to look at.
No one derives a necessary uncaused first cause for a system because of it being outside of nature. It comes from philosophy. There is no such thing as infinite regression of causation. If you needed a thousand dollars and there existed an infinite number of people who had to borrow it from another to get it to you will never get your money. Infinite causation never produces anything. If you have something the causal chain necessarily ends with a first uncaused cause.
We do not get our conclusions from where you suggest we do. I find the concept of God written in a book by men completely ignorant of what 3000 years later cosmology and philosophy would require. They could not have known what to make up to make a believable lie. Lets call this concept X. The Christian God = X.
Now from science alone I get a universe that appears to be finite and to not contain it's explanation or cause. By philosophy I can say certain things about what the cause of the universe must be. It must be immaterial, it must be more powerful than I can imagine, it moist be more intelligent than I can imagine, it must be independent of time, etc...... and it almost has to be personal. Now I get this description without and reference to theology what so ever. I take that description and compare it to X and I find them a perfect match. So I have a valid argument that justifies my faith. Combined with thousands and faith approaches certainty even if no one argument alone does.
You did not seem to understand how the argument works and is derived. BTW that description also rules out almost all other potential God's in history.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
That sounds horrible. I really can't even understand it and little of it appears to come from my views.
I have no idea where you got this so I will give an extremely brief summary of my views.
1. A universe coming from nothing has zero chance without an external personal agent.
2. If I ignore 1. then a life permitting universe of any kind is an infetesinmally small subcategory of all possible universes.
3. Once we get past 1. and 2. then our universe seems to have won a trillion lotteries in favor of evolution and that makes it a multiplicative probability and astronomically small yet again, without intent.
4. Most people associate who we are, not with the body, but with the spirit or soul. God could have used any body for my soul. He either needed to set up initial conditions or tweaked a thing here and there to get bodies (any human bodies) to place souls specifically created in.
5. It is not my claim but a secular one that evolution seems to be miraculous, and abiogenesis even more so. I believe Sagan for example said this.
6. With God no dice are necessary. Without him a billion sided die rolled a trillion times had to come up with the same number without intent. And that, only once you get dice from nothing without agency.
We have three choices. Einstein's Theory of Relativity describes a "block universe" which simply never came from anywhere but just is. Time and the Block Universe Read this link very carefully and explain to us where the Theory of Relativity is wrong.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
I meant likely choices. Einstein was wedded to an a-priori steady state universe. He even invented a constant from thin air to make the equations operate by his preference. He said it was the biggest professional mistake in his career. I almost added a third option. Everything in the third category has only the merit of not being proven impossible to a certainty. I felt I had stated that so many times as to not be necessary but I see I was mistaken.
I will point out yet again how prominent and consistent it is no argument against God comes from reliable and well understood science. They all hide in the deepest end of theoretical science. It is as if they use ambiguity as camouflage. God is such an extraordinarily fantastic proposition that arithmetic, geometry, Newtonian physics, and the like should disprove it if untrue. I should not be stuck in the fantasies of quantum theory, unbounded finites, or multiverses in every debate.
Block universes, manifolds, graphs, and the like are not real natural entities. They are tools used to represent thought experiments. You will never find a bell curve sitting in the desk next to you in class. It is reality I care about not pictures representing it.
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Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
It is a presupposition that it requires intelligence. It is a pre-supposition that it is immaterial, it is a presupposition that these "properties" are not innate within the universe itself.
I could go on. Your "pure" philosophical argument is flawed and your conclusion is based upon presuppositions. It could fit just as soundly to say that the universe is more vast than we know and that it has properties we don't yet understand that has created this view of the universe we currently see.
THERE WAS NEVER A "TIME" IN WHICH THE UNIVERSE DID NOT EXIST! That is something you do not understand to a drastic degree. That is why it is erroneous to say that the universe "began". When did "time" begin? What was "before" that? They become nonsensical and you cannot philosophically argue with absurd fallacies of logic.
Your "god" theory has zero evidence. You haven't brought a single shred of it. And I have proven several times as well as bringing up historical counterarguments to the philosophy that invalidates it.
Desperation? No. I actually do not see how it is valid at all as it only made sense in hindsight and with stretching of the words. They were poetic verses who simply said "godidit". If you wanna hash that out then fine but you first have to explain to me how the Ancient Egyptians had better medicine than the middle ages and why, if they had such knowledge from god, did they assume it was demons that caused illnesses and do such ignorant things as drill into people's heads?
It matters because its something we have never observed before. The "act" the very "act" of "creation" is illogical and goes against what we know philosophically and scientifically.
Let me pose it to you as I would teaching a logic class.
X is X. Y is not X. X indicates C.
Why is it illogical to claim Y indicates C?
1robin
Christian/Baptist
This is hopeless. Good thing much of my motivation is to kill time. It is not pre-supposition it is a principle called sufficient causation. A cause has no contain a sufficient characteristic determined by it's effect. I can say to release 1000 joules of energy it must have at least that amount of energy in it for example. I can look at Hiroshima and know a wooden cube did not cause it. I can look at an aircraft carrier and know two mice on a tread wheel are not powering it.
If I am looking for a cause of the material universe it must be immaterial not by pre-supposition, not even by deduction, but by absolute necessity. If I look for a cause of time it must be independent of time necessarily. It must be powerful, must be intelligent, must be rational, must even probably be personal. You can get these almost certainties without cracking a single theological text or having faith in anything supernatural.
No you don't understand. Space-time began with the big bang. Duration could without any hurdle what so ever been related to something else. You act as if our not knowing something prevents it from existing which is that same old certainty or nothing thing again. It was not me who said time or space began it was someone a little more qualified than me or you and a few thousand just as qualified.
It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning. - Alexander Vilenkin.
Yeah I am sure that is why so radical a view convinced the majority of the founders of modern science.
Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." (2)
George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word." (3)
Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned natures numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming". Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose".
Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." (6)
John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in." (7)
George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"
Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory."
Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan." (10)
Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance." (11)
Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." (12)
Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." (13)
Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." (14)
Stephen Hawking (British astrophysicist): "Then we shall be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God." (15)
Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." (16) Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his latest book, The Physics of Christianity.
Ed Harrison (cosmologist): "Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God the design argument of Paley updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument." (18)
Edward Milne (British cosmologist): "As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God]." (19)
Barry Parker (cosmologist): "Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed." (20)
Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel (cosmologists): "This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'." (21)
Arthur L. Schawlow (Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in physics): "It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life." (22)
Henry "Fritz" Schaefer (Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia): "The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." (23)
Wernher von Braun (Pioneer rocket engineer) "I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science." (24)
Carl Woese (microbiologist from the University of Illinois) "Life in Universe - rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street. One day I can say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case life on Earth could be entirely unique." (25)
There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His MindAntony Flew (Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater) "It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design." (26)
Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science." (27)
Quotes from Scientists Regarding Design of the Universe
Guess these idiots don't know what evidence is either.
Continued below:
1robin
Christian/Baptist
I would prefer only one obvious thing you deny and I support be discussed at a time. BTW I gave specific verses that recorded mechanism and you respond with hypotheticals from other verses about agency. Both are true. Whittle and thermodynamics, metallurgy, etc..... are needed for a full explanation of a jet engine. God and the hydrological cycle are needed and given.
Let me state the argument in one of it's dozen or so equivalent forms just to avoid this pot hole you created. All changes in state require causes and explanation. The beginning is a change in state regardless of what the state change was and does not contain an explanation within it.
Are you qualified to teach a logic class? You have a masters or higher in logic?
Because your example is so generic no correlation exists between X and C nor are they defined in any way. The same way your hypothetical has no correlation with the philosophical argument I made.
What do you think? That Aquinas, Augustine, Craig, the Muslims with the Kalam, Zacharias, Leibniz, plus juts the few examples above, etc.... are so dense as to not know the simplistic methodology required to validate this emphatic and extremely straightforward argument that has stood for thousands of years?
Hey where is your avatar from? Looks familiar.
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Are you a calvinist? If you have free will god created the universe by closing his eyes and doing it craps style with dice. Saying there is a cause says little to nothing of the source or possible intent.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
I certainly reject Calvin's deterministic doctrines about election. The rest of your post I did not get and its conclusion does not follow from its premise.
What I am saying is if calvinism is false then god made humans random style so that he did not choose our destiny.
OK let me try to clarify your view again. First your god decides to create a universe "fine tuned" for "life". Then he sets up the initial conditions for the "big bang" to ensure that about 13.7 billion years later the conditions will be such that this universe can support "life". Then he makes a lot of life including 135 million years worth of dinosaurs all without souls. Then he wipes them out and creates humans as containers for souls. Am I getting nearer to your view?
1robin
Christian/Baptist
Calvinism concerns the determined destiny of who will be saved or not and I think it is a horrible idea and not biblical. I reject it so have little need to defend it or attack it. I think it isn't true like I think pink unicorns are not true and live accordingly. Did you want a theological debate about Calvinism? Why?
1robin
Christian/Baptist
That seems to be at least part of the picture. Are you making a non optimality claim or something? Only if God had limited resources or time is time an issue. I have heard it described as creating like a painter instead of an assembly line. The bible does not really expound on prehuman life all that much so I would have little to offer or reason to discuss it. What is your contention exactly?
"All changes in state require causes and explanation". Cause and effect. What about the universe?
1. Did your god create the Universe from nothing or
2. Did he change some state? Cause and effect?
From your post I was curious how you arrive to a particular type of god one that gives free will or pre destines every single thing.
Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
What parts are based on evidence?
Except I have already explained that if A is not B and A implies C then B does not have to imply C.
When did I say anything about ceasing to exist? I stated that I have objected to several things in your argument and pointed out the fallacies and you have done little to counter me.
Few questions.
1) what is a "professional atheist" and how do I become one?
2) Can you bring up a time an atheist in a formal debate has conceded the point?
3) IF it is universally accepted then why does the argument not have built in answers for all of the historical critiques that I have mentioned?
There is no authority to the argument and you can't just repeat over and over and over that it is infallible when I keep bringing up problems with it. Though I suppose there is a key distinction to make is that I haven't actually stated that the argument itself was invalid but that your claim that it was the "best answer" was invalid.
There is no "Must". We don't know what cause the first cause even if there was a first cause. IF you notice no scientist worth his salt when studying the big bang refers to anything as incoherent as a "first cause". Mainly because we do not know. It is a blank in our knowledge and if you wish to put god in that as the answer then that is your prerogative but it is not by any sort of default or deduction a "best" answer.
IT is impossible to determine its validity is a better way of stating it. Therefore it is not "best" or "worst" or any other value qualifier.
That the universe is self causing. One such theory is that instead of "white holes" which is theorized to have existed actually spew matter out at a different point in time which would be the big bang. So the eventual theoretical removal of matter via black holes is actually the condensed constant stream known as the big bang and it would also explain the driving force of both "dark energy" and entropy.
"There was" itself becomes incoherent. There was no time when the universe did not exist. This is because time itself is a quality of the universe.