What is the falsification methodology of the God argument?

[mikkel_the_dane]

You spend a lot of time quibbling over meaning which is clear to everyone else, and you spend no time actually discussing the issue. Your attempts to derail the discussion are not going to work and are not fooling anyone.

Yeah, you are right. The majority of all humans are religious. I should just do like everyone else and become religious. Thank for saving me and showing me how to figure out how to know.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Maybe one day you'll understand that you don't have to live as though you're a brain in a jar and you can join us in a proper discussion.

I don't live like that. I believe in a natural world. I am just honest about the limits of knowledge.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Its a direction

Yes. A direction to a location.

. You can go south of the equator and still go further south.

Until you actually reach south. If you keep walking beyond that, you'll be going north.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Your best honest answer would be "I don't know"

Same as yours. Same as everybody's.

Again if a singularity existed which gave birth to the universe, whether it existed for a billion years or a quadtrillionths of a second, it existed before.

Our current framework of the cosmos is incompatible with the notion of a "before".
I don't know how many times it must be repeated.

Time is an inherent part of the universe. it doesn't exist when the universe doesn't exist.
For a "before" to exist, there must be a temporal context. But there is none.

The word "before" is invalid in this context.
So is "causality", as causality also requires temporal conditions. Causes happen before effects.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The Big Bang Theory is the leading explanation about how the universe began.

It's not, actually.
It is a leading explanation, but it's not about the origin of the universe.
It explains the expansion of the universe, starting from the earliest known moments. How space-time expanded from an initial high density state.

It does not include an explanation of what that initial state came from. Its origins is unknown.
The big bang occurred. The question what triggered the big bang, or what even went bang, is unresolved.

And I don't expect it to be conclusively resolved any time soon either.

The basics of the theory are fairly simple. In short, the Big Bang states that all of the current and past matter in the Universe came into existence at the same time

No, it does not say that.

Big bang theory deals with the expansion of space-time, starting with an existing high density state.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

South is a direction, not a place.
For example, you leave Washington and all you tell your family is you are going south?. What exact place would they find you at?

You are making a silly semantic argument based on the double meaning of the word "south", which can be both a direction and a location.


You're in Washington and all you tell your family you are going in the direction of Alaska.
Same thing.

 

[samtonga43]

God in three persons is thrice more difficult to explain than God in one person, which also has never been explained. Yeah, virtual particles do exist.

"Virtual particles are often popularly described as coming in pairs, a particle and antiparticle which can be of any kind. These pairs exist for an extremely short time, and then mutually annihilate, or in some cases, the pair may be boosted apart using external energy so that they avoid annihilation and become actual particles .."

"As a consequence of quantum mechanical uncertainty, any object or process that exists for a limited time or in a limited volume cannot have a precisely defined energy or momentum. For this reason, virtual particles – which exist only temporarily as they are exchanged between ordinary particles – do not typically obey the mass-shell relation; the longer a virtual particle exists, the more the energy and momentum approach the mass-shell relation."
Virtual particle

LOL! Of course one cannot 'explain' the Trinity. It is a supra-rational concept.

If you read carefully, you will see that I did not ask if virtual particles exist.
I asked if they BEGIN to exist.

 

[Aupmanyav]

LOL! Of course one cannot 'explain' the Trinity. It is a supra-rational concept.
If you read carefully, you will see that I did not ask if virtual particles exist.
I asked if they BEGIN to exist.

Yeah, you can escape need to explain by terming them as 'supra-rational'. People like me term them as irrational concept.
"These pairs exist for an extremely short time." That means that they begin to exist and then cease to exist - unless we part them by using energy - "the pair may be boosted apart using external energy so that they avoid annihilation and become actual particles."

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You spend a lot of time quibbling over meaning which is clear to everyone else, and you spend no time actually discussing the issue.

I have tried to broach this to Mikkel a few times, and will again presently, but he has previously declined to discuss it.

You haven't solved the epistemological problem in solipsism and the problem of the-thing-in-itself. How you know something independent of your mind, if you only know through your mind?

I think you have things turned around. What is of primary interest is what's going on in ones head, not what's out there contributing to the experience - that is, subjective truth, or how things will appear to us from our various subjective vantage points.

Consider the chair in my living room. I experience it subjectively from 360 degrees, each view being different. I can use the device of a chair being out there prior to my experience of it as a mental model that will allow me to predict the experience of that chair. It really doesn't matter what that thing out there is or if there is anything at all. If you found out that there was no external reality corresponding to one's apparent experience of it, what would change? What would you do differently. If the rules of your radically solipsistic reality remain unchanged, then you will successfully predict and even control future experience.

science is based on beliefs, that you can't test

Disagree. The stellar success of science tells you that the principles upon which it is founded are valid. People keep forgetting that. The "truth" of an idea isn't something out there beyond experience such as so-called objective or absolute truth. A better way to view knowledge is that collection of ideas that work, are useful, and allow us to control experience. You say you want to send a probe to Pluto? You have a set of ideas about launching and controlling spacecraft, about celestial mechanics, about when and where the two should meet.

Are these untested ideas? Not once photos of Pluto begin arriving at earth. Success is what defines the science and all of the principles underlying it as useful. That's a s close to truth as we can get, and it is close enough.

But your response is typically that knowledge isn't possible because we can't get outside of experience to experience reality before consciousness renders it in the theater of consciousness. I've argued that that is irrelevant, and excessive concern about this undermines one's ability to make progress in one's own understanding. It feels like you won't walk because the ground you see before you might not be what it appears to be in its fundamental essence. These ideas don't help you. The opposite is the case.

What benefit has this program of radical skepticism and nihilism been to you that you cling to it so tenaciously? How does it inform your life for the better? Has it helped you to make better decisions or avoid worse ones to manage your conscious experience as all good ideas do? Has it made the mental map you use to navigate experience more useful in controlling outcomes for you? As I said, I suspect it has done the opposite - kept your map less complete and your fund of useful knowledge less robust.

Was it you that equated skepticism with permanently doubting everything? Whoever did that, I disagree. The doubting in skepticism refers to questioning man's ideas, not reality. We consult reality to see if man's ideas can accurately predict experience. If they can, they're keepers and we add them to a growing and dynamic fund of knowledge comprising or mental map of reality. If there is insufficient empiric support for the ideas - they fail to be useful - we reject them. And then the doubting on that issue is complete.

As you alluded with your reference to the limits of knowledge, yes, in this process we never eliminate philosophical doubt. I agree with you and Descartes that our experience might not be of that which it appears to be, but this doesn't actually affect further thinking and decision making.

Anyway, these ideas are offered constructively. It is my hope that they will modify your philosophy and behaviors of thought for the better.

 

[We Never Know]

Same as yours. Same as everybody's.



Our current framework of the cosmos is incompatible with the notion of a "before".
I don't know how many times it must be repeated.

Time is an inherent part of the universe. it doesn't exist when the universe doesn't exist.
For a "before" to exist, there must be a temporal context. But there is none.

The word "before" is invalid in this context.
So is "causality", as causality also requires temporal conditions. Causes happen before effects.

"Time is an inherent part of the universe. it doesn't exist when the universe doesn't exist."

Again if a singularity existed but the universe didn't, the sigulartity existed (fill in aword here) the universe.

 

[We Never Know]

It's not, actually.
It is a leading explanation, but it's not about the origin of the universe.
It explains the expansion of the universe, starting from the earliest known moments. How space-time expanded from an initial high density state.

It does not include an explanation of what that initial state came from. Its origins is unknown.
The big bang occurred. The question what triggered the big bang, or what even went bang, is unresolved.

And I don't expect it to be conclusively resolved any time soon either.



No, it does not say that.

Big bang theory deals with the expansion of space-time, starting with an existing high density state.

"The question what triggered the big bang,"

There could be no "what" being the universe nor time existed. Without time nothing happens.

"Big bang theory deals with the expansion of space-time, starting with an existing high density state."

What did this high density state exist in?
Again, no time, no expantion.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

"The question what triggered the big bang,"
There could be no "what" being the universe nor time existed. Without time nothing happens.

Yes. Part of the reason I don't expect this conondrum to be solved any time soon.

"Big bang theory deals with the expansion of space-time, starting with an existing high density state."

What did this high density state exist in?
Again, no time, no expantion.

It existed at Planck time. Which is the earliest possible moment after T = 0 I think.

This stuff goes way over my head though.

I'm guessing this is also a situation where spoken language simply fails us, because we are completely geared to living in a temporal world on the level of newtonian physics, pretty much.

Even the notion of time slowing down relative to an observe as speed increases, is already mindblowing to us.
Quantum mechanics, approaching T = 0, conditions beyond the event horizon of a black hole,... These are things that are so alien to us that we have zero instinctive affinity with them.

So I imagine that there comes a point that we simply can't properly express it using english words and need to switch to semi-crazy math, which would be way beyond my capabilities, to describe it.

 

[We Never Know]

You are making a silly semantic argument based on the double meaning of the word "south", which can be both a direction and a location.


You're in Washington and all you tell your family you are going in the direction of Alaska.
Same thing.

North isn't a place either. Alaska is.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

North isn't a place either. Alaska is.

I think you're just playing dumb.

 

[We Never Know]

Yes. Part of the reason I don't expect this conondrum to be solved any time soon.

It existed at Planck time. Which is the earliest possible moment after T = 0 I think.

This stuff goes way over my head though.

I'm guessing this is also a situation where spoken language simply fails us, because we are completely geared to living in a temporal world on the level of newtonian physics, pretty much.

Even the notion of time slowing down relative to an observe as speed increases, is already mindblowing to us.
Quantum mechanics, approaching T = 0, conditions beyond the event horizon of a black hole,... These are things that are so alien to us that we have zero instinctive affinity with them.

So I imagine that there comes a point that we simply can't properly express it using english words and need to switch to semi-crazy math, which would be way beyond my capabilities, to describe it.

Think of it like this, the singularity and the universe couldn't exist together. The moment the singularity started expanding out everywhere, it was no longer a singularity, it became the universe.

 

[We Never Know]

I think you're just playing dumb.

If you leave your home telling your family you are going north. If north is a place where would your family find you?
They know what direction you went but don't know the place, a location.

Take the south pole. The pole is the location, south is the direction it is.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Think of it like this, the singularity and the universe couldn't exist together.

The way I always understood it, is that "the singularity" and "the universe" are the exact same thing. That the universe simply changed form due to whatever quantum fluctuation or what-have-you.

The moment the singularity started expanding out everywhere, it was no longer a singularity, it became the universe.

Right, so they are the same thing. Nothing gets "created". Rather something that exists changes form, which starts time.

 

[We Never Know]

The way I always understood it, is that "the singularity" and "the universe" are the exact same thing. That the universe simply changed form due to whatever quantum fluctuation or what-have-you.



Right, so they are the same thing. Nothing gets "created". Rather something that exists changes form, which starts time.

Ah! So to you the universe always existed.
That's more in line with the big bounce theory where it always existed but periodically collapses and re-expands.

So in this tiny very dense place(a singularity) does time still exist? I guess in reality its would have to.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I have tried to broach this to Mikkel a few times, and will again presently, but he has previously declined to discuss it.



I think you have things turned around. What is of primary interest is what's going on in ones head, not what's out there contributing to the experience - that is, subjective truth, or how things will appear to us from our various subjective vantage points.

Consider the chair in my living room. I experience it subjectively from 360 degrees, each view being different. I can use the device of a chair being out there prior to my experience of it as a mental model that will allow me to predict the experience of that chair. It really doesn't matter what that thing out there is or if there is anything at all. If you found out that there was no external reality corresponding to one's apparent experience of it, what would change? What would you do differently. If the rules of your radically solipsistic reality remain unchanged, then you will successfully predict and even control future experience.



Disagree. The stellar success of science tells you that the principles upon which it is founded are valid. People keep forgetting that. The "truth" of an idea isn't something out there beyond experience such as so-called objective or absolute truth. A better way to view knowledge is that collection of ideas that work, are useful, and allow us to control experience. You say you want to send a probe to Pluto? You have a set of ideas about launching and controlling spacecraft, about celestial mechanics, about when and where the two should meet.

Are these untested ideas? Not once photos of Pluto begin arriving at earth. Success is what defines the science and all of the principles underlying it as useful. That's a s close to truth as we can get, and it is close enough.

But your response is typically that knowledge isn't possible because we can't get outside of experience to experience reality before consciousness renders it in the theater of consciousness. I've argued that that is irrelevant, and excessive concern about this undermines one's ability to make progress in one's own understanding. It feels like you won't walk because the ground you see before you might not be what it appears to be in its fundamental essence. These ideas don't help you. The opposite is the case.

What benefit has this program of radical skepticism and nihilism been to you that you cling to it so tenaciously? How does it inform your life for the better? Has it helped you to make better decisions or avoid worse ones to manage your conscious experience as all good ideas do? Has it made the mental map you use to navigate experience more useful in controlling outcomes for you? As I said, I suspect it has done the opposite - kept your map less complete and your fund of useful knowledge less robust.

Was it you that equated skepticism with permanently doubting everything? Whoever did that, I disagree. The doubting in skepticism refers to questioning man's ideas, not reality. We consult reality to see if man's ideas can accurately predict experience. If they can, they're keepers and we add them to a growing and dynamic fund of knowledge comprising or mental map of reality. If there is insufficient empiric support for the ideas - they fail to be useful - we reject them. And then the doubting on that issue is complete.

As you alluded with your reference to the limits of knowledge, yes, in this process we never eliminate philosophical doubt. I agree with you and Descartes that our experience might not be of that which it appears to be, but this doesn't actually affect further thinking and decision making.

Anyway, these ideas are offered constructively. It is my hope that they will modify your philosophy and behaviors of thought for the better.

Well, I believe in a natural universe. I just don't believe like you do, when it in effect comes to knowledge. That is all.

So here it is:
Philosophy of science
"...
All scientific study inescapably builds on at least some essential assumptions that are untested by scientific processes. Kuhn concurs that all science is based on an approved agenda of unprovable assumptions about the character of the universe, rather than merely on empirical facts. These assumptions—a paradigm—comprise a collection of beliefs, values and techniques that are held by a given scientific community, which legitimize their systems and set the limitations to their investigation. For naturalists, nature is the only reality, the only paradigm. There is no such thing as 'supernatural'. The scientific method is to be used to investigate all reality.
...
"

That you don't understand how science is a set of unprovable axiomatic assumptions, which equates to beliefs, is your problem, not mine.

 

[Nakosis]

One may conceptualize God as 1. Another may conceptualize God as 47. Both have faith, ones concept is closer to the truth.

What I find is whatever people conceptualize God as it is possible for them to interact with the concept of as they would expect God to interact.

So it is impossible to know whether this "God" they interact with is closer to the "truth" or not.

IOW, if it walks like a God, it is God to them. Maybe not to you or to me.