camanintx
Well-Known Member
So please tell me how much a single atom weighs or what color is a single molecule of iron.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
There is no evidence for a god.
- Thread starter YouOnlyScienceOnce
- Start date
It seems designed to him because his brain is wired in such a way as to look for religious explanations to natural phenomena. It is the same mechanisms that made people attribute thunder to Thor and earthquakes to Poseidon. You will find more information on this if you google neurotheology. It is an evolutionary trait providing pseudo solutions and explanations until such time that we have the means to find the correct solutions and explanations. For example 2000 years ago morality was attributed to gods just like thunder was attributed to Thor but now we know how morality evolved and we have meteorology so we have no need for Thor or moralmaking gods anymore.
Last edited:
So you actually do believe that a god sits in the clouds and designs and creates snowflakes? Because of course there's no difference believing that and believing that a god sat and designed and created the natural laws who in their turn create the snowflakes. You have simply just moved the same argument one step back which doesn't make it any less silly you know...
They didn't spring into existence at all; they were always there.
That is called "the anthropic principle", isn't it? A perception flaw, basically.
Horrorble
Well-Known Member
What evidence do you have that there is a god?
I thought there are geologists biologists and physicists who believe in God?
Many, of course. But I doubt you could find any that are young earth creationists.
Emergence is just a word meaing (simplistically) "properties or features of some system we can't currently completely explain using known laws". It doesn't mean that things we call emergent properties are not the product of laws, or even that there can be "emergence" which is not reducible, at least in principle, to the laws of physics. Emergence has also been used by theologians and philosophers as evidence of a creator/God, e.g., certain papers in The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion (Oxford University Press, 2006), or in From Complexity to Life: On the Emergence of Life and Meaning (Oxford University Press, 2003). There are also volumes which use emergence or particular types of emergence to argue that science and theism are compatible or even that scientific explanations of particular types of emergence are evidence of a creator/God, e.g., Philip Clayton's Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness (2004) or Moreland's Consciousness and the Existence of God: A theistic argument (from the series Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion; 2008).
camanintx
Well-Known Member
Emergence deals with properties or features of a system which do not exist within the parts of that system. I never said they were not reducible to the laws of physics, in fact I would argue that they always are. A single atom has no weight, but put it in proximity to another atom and gravity induces a force which we interpret as weight. Likewise, the presence of natural laws does not imply the presence of a lawgiver.
There an important distinction missing in the above. The dynamics of a system are not said to exhibit emergence if we can explain how the laws of physics produce the system's dynamics. The laws of physics are not "parts of that system" per se (at least not in the way "parts of the whole" is usually understood), but any system from planets to the trajectory of a projectile is governed by physics. The reason this is important is because you brought up emergence in response to this:
Emergence is irrelevant to laws unless you are using it to show that things (like emergent properties) can be produced apart from laws. In other words, the argument was essentially that laws require a creator of those laws. One can simply deny that this is true, but you didn't. Instead you cited emergence, which doesn't make sense (to me) as a refutation of the argument when you
If they are always reducible to the laws of physics, you haven't really said much about whether or not these laws require a "law-creator" of some sort. Basically, why refer to emergence at all rather than simply explain why this
is not the case? Put another way, how does emergence entail something like what I quoted immediately above?
johnhanks
Well-Known Member
And yet you have no trouble believing that an immensely complex begetter of these complex and interrelated laws just sprang into existence on its own, or just happened to "be".
True of human laws, but these are a poor analogy for the regularities described by scientific "laws". You have been misled by the use of the same word to describe two quite different things - rather as though the use of the word crust to describe the upper layer of the earth's surface led you to demand there must be a baker for that crust.
Looncall
Well-Known Member
I wonder if he has been misled, or is just plain lieing. This lawgiver argument is so silly, it looks to me to be just a desperate tactic of a failing ideology.
Simurgh
Atheist Triple Goddess
Your whole argument is based on the watchmaker argument, which has been refuted very elegantly and concisely time and again. All told, that so-called argument is nothing but an analogy and does not stand up to logical examination. It is contradictive, misses salient points, and tells us nothing about the imaginary watchmaker.
Anyhow who made/created the watchmaker in the first place?
A bit ridiculous since that brings up the question of who designed the designer, and who designed the designer of the designer, etc. If we take to probable view that there was never a creation point (The Big Bang Never Happened by Eric Lerner elaborates on it) talking about about creation or design is pretty meaningless. Yet I forgot, being short-sighted anthropocentric primates that we are that's an absurd idea.
camanintx
Well-Known Member
Why are you separating the laws of physics from the system? While our understanding of those laws may be limited and separate, the laws themselves are integral to the system.
It makes sense if the laws are an emergent part of the system as well.
Don't physicists derive most of these laws from other, simpler laws? Isn't it the goal of physicists to find a grand, unified theory that explains all other theories? When all of nature shows us that the complex and organized derives from the simple and chaotic, why should we posit a complex and organized cause to explain anything?
From observation it typically takes a few thousand times of repetition in easy-to-understand words to get Creationists to partially understand this one. Often it just continues to fly over their heads.
The Bible states that "You are worthy, Jehovah, even our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created." (Revelation 4:11) I think there is no such thing as an imaginary watchmaker. All watches have makers. In fact, all things have a Maker. Despite the fact that God's "invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world's creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship", the Bible foretold that some would neither glorify God nor thank him, but become empty headed in their reasonings. (Romans 1:19-23) I choose to believe the evidence in front of my eyes.
Who made your maker? You have two answers. Either your maker didn't have a maker in which case you lie when you say all things have a Maker or your maker must have had a maker who must have had a maker ad infinitum. Which is it?
The true God is from "everlasting to everlasting", like time without beginning nor end. One must ultimately come to the "Source of life". (Psalm 36:9, 90:2) Our limited thinking cannot fully comprehend someone eternal. I believe we can come to know the only true God by means of his communication with us. When I said all things have a Maker, it is with the exception of the One who is the grand Creator and life Giver, Jehovah.