You can now listen to today’s Atheists Talk, or you can download the mp3. This was the session with Jeff and Lee of KKMS Christian talk radio, and I found it infuriating — they never answered any questions with a straight answer. Out of exasperation, I sent in this question, which was read on the air:
Jeff and Lee were asked a straightforward question: what is their best evidence for a god? Their reply was a shameless exercise in longwinded vacuity. Could they possibly simply ANSWER THE QUESTION, without babbling about the trinity and other such nonsense that even they admit they don’t understand?
That finally got them to try and answer…they claim to believe in a god because the world looks created to them. That’s awfully shallow and silly — they understand even less biology than they do theology, and that answer doesn’t explain at all why they believe in Jesus rather than Thor — but it’s something I’ve encountered often. It reinforces the importance of evolution, and explains why the religious are often so adamant in opposing science: it undercuts their rationale for believing in such goofball ideas.
It’s good when someone calls them out on it…
YAY! Watchmaker argument. My favorite.
fail
“what is their best evidence for a god? Their reply was a shameless exercise in longwinded vacuity. Could they possibly simply ANSWER THE QUESTION, without babbling about the trinity and other such nonsense that even they admit they don’t understand?”
Why do you take theists to task over the evidence for God?
You don’t know any more about the subject than they do!
There is no empirical evidence for OR against the existence of God.
Nor is there any evidence for OR against evolution or creationism.
The fact is neither “side” has a clue
oh, come on… if I were a theist I could come up with something better than that.
We’d be able to refute that one, too, but that’s not the point.
Man, if only god stuck to making watches. Need I remind everyone of his infamous “sewage next to the entertainment complex”, er, mistake? The hell was he thinking?
Russell’s teapot.
And outright lying.
Thanks for playing.
You don’t know any more about the subject than they do!
There is no empirical evidence for OR against the existence of God.
Nor is there any evidence for OR against evolution or creationism.
The fact is neither “side” has a clue
Are you on drugs? Seriously?
No evidence for evolution?
#3: “Nor is there any evidence for OR against evolution or creationism. The fact is neither “side” has a clue.”
Well, that proves you don’t have a clue. (why do I have this feeling I’m feeding a troll?)
“Why do you take theists to task over the evidence for God?
You don’t know any more about the subject than they do!
There is no empirical evidence for OR against the existence of God.
Nor is there any evidence for OR against evolution or creationism.
The fact is neither “side” has a clue”
I was compelled to post a comment for the very first time because that made my head hurt.
Peter Carmenzind #3,
Uh, because they’re the ones claiming such a thing?
The fact is that you don’t even want to have a clue. If you did, you’d have one. It’s pretty easy. Talk to the hand now.
Posted by: Peter Camenzind | August 3, 2008 5:37 PM
Of course, scratch that “posted by: Peter…” line at the bottom of my #10 post, somehow the blockquotes automatically excluded it.
To Peter in message 3 A lack of empirical evidence does not disprove god but it fits the criteria one would expect of a world with no god.
A lack of evidence also does not support the existence of god but it DOES NOT fit the criteria one would expect of a word in which there is a god.
Peter Camenzind:
Funny, a lot of people complained that Dawkins had no business writing The God Delusion without having studied theology.
Let me guess: your hobby is hanging out with aeronautical engineers and pilots at the airport, and telling them that heavier-than-air flight is impossible, right?
And they had so many funnier proofs to choose from:
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm
(h/t to JeffreyD, who is sorely missed)
Ok. So I’m only like 5 or 6 minutes into this debate and it sounds like the only reason these guys went to church/bible study was to get laid. How sad. :-(
“Are you on drugs? Seriously?
No evidence for evolution?”
That depends on how you define “evolution”
If it means “mutation, natural selection” etc. then the statement is true. If you simply mean “change over time” or “common descent” then you have point.
@Peter C.:
The only god consistent with the evidence is the “god of the gaps”. Not a very satisfying god for these twits.
Watchmaker is just the start of the gap, and it keeps getting smaller year after year.
There is very good evidence for mutation and natural selection, so you’re boned on both meanings that you infer.
Well, as far as post #3 goes, I actually appreciate–as an atheist who loves atheist and science blogs–when people come in and disagree with the prevailing viewpoint. That’s what it’s all about, and I respect it very much. But as someone else has already said, you’re going to have to do a lot better than that. Your comments seem to be those of a person who’s never read any arguments against his/her point of view–ever. The statement that there is “no empirical evidence” in support of evolution is just plain uneducated. Or perhaps all too well educated in creationist/right wing christian propaganda. What is it? Home-schooling?
Prof. Myers-
A lot of god believers, as you probably already know, apparently have no problem with evolutionary theory- mostly fundamentalists that are so against it. “Intelligent” god believers say evolutionary theory neither works for or against belief in a god- even bible believers who accept the evidence of science see no contradiction with things like Genesis because they say the 7 “days” mentioned are not normal 24 hour days since the sun wasn’t “created” until the 3rd “day”. They believe a god could be working through natural selection. As for evidence for god, that depends on who you talk to, different things to different ones but that’s something philosophers like Aquinas debated.
This brings up something else- it seems to me that agnosticism is more sensible than athiesm. Athiesm is defined by Webster’s as “The belief that there is no God, or denial that God or gods exist.” Given that definition, I don’t see how you can prove a negative. It’s an unscientific way of dealing with the god issue. Better to be agnostic, maybe some people say agnosticism is cowardly, but it seems more logical.
“There is very good evidence for mutation and natural selection, so you’re boned on both meanings that you infer.”
True. But can you link these phenomena to the emergence of highly organized structures, processes or systems?
Ha! I’ve still got it…
#14, it would rather seem that his hobby is to tell aeronautical engineers that there is no proof either for or against heavier-than-air aircraft.
You know, the loathsome “let’s put half the kittens in a blender” middle ground.
imsosrmt:
Should we also be agnostic with respect to Isis, Dionysus and fairies in the bottom of the garden?
Are you agnostic about Zeus, Santa, or fairies imsosrm?
Whoops. My previous comment should say “#13.” Sorry.
You beat me Blake.
It must be the hat.
Those Drugs i spoke of earlier, maybe you should trade out and get something that can take of “it”
Peter writes “But can you link these phenomena to the emergence of highly organized structures, processes or systems?”
And could you give an example of these my friend.
It sounds like they find their reasoning pretty awkward to explain as well.
My question would have been why they cling to all the supernatural fluff and absolute claims about reality when it sounds like they are really just in it for the community feeling. Wouldn’t that be the moral thing to do?
If by “it” you mean a theonoma, yes.
Otherwise, stop trying to invent gaps to squeeze a god into.
Oh my, this sounds horrible. Sorry, I can’t even bring myself to listen to it because I can tell it will just make me mad. Good for you PZ for sending in that question and making those dumb asses look like the idiots they are.
Until he said this I was going to suggest we had Charlie Wagner on the line (again).
#21
On the bright side, by acknowledging evidence for common descent, Peter C. is doing better than the Liberty University Department of Biology and Chemistry.
Blake, spurge,
Again, defintion from Webster’s which borrowed from T.H. Huxley:
Agnostic: “A person who believes that the human mind cannot know whether there is a God or an ultimate cause, or anything beyond material phenomena.”
The important part being the connection of the god idea with the idea of an ultimate cause. By the way, in regards to Santa I’m definately agnostic.
Why do so many religinuts with no understanding of biology absolutely insist, to the point of inanity, of arguing against it?
That is a serious question. It is not as if they are seeking to understand the world around them, they are simply trying to prove their repeatedly refuted arguments. As such, I find it mostly pointless to engage in a true argument or debate with them as, if they were truly curious, they would have addressed, with valid logic, the mountains of arguments against their dogmas.
It was the physicist Richard Feynman who made the case against god clear for myself.
“It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama”
The stage is indeed far too large.
Also why they’ll never consider the evidence, if they can help it, and deny it when they’re forced to think about it.
Gee, yes, the extreme conservatism produced via heredity is exactly what we’d expect of a designer. Even they know it’s BS, meaning that they have to teach it in schools for the simple reason that it’s not something that is backed up with evidence.
Propaganda has to do what evidence cannot do.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
“Blah de blah. . .hate theists. . .blah blah. . .no direct answers. . .blah blah. . .sycophants will always agree. . .”
Just add one little “a” in that mess above, and you have the echo chamber of a fundie Christian site.
But instead, we have an echo chamber from a fundie Atheist site.
Boy, what a breath of fresh air!!! /sarcasm
God believers would be better off if they just gave up on the evidence and proof level of things and just admit they accept the existence of this mythological hokum for irrational and emotional reasons rather then rational, factual ones.
LisaJ:
It wasn’t horrible at all. Berkshire performed admirably. PZ’s letter was read appropriately. The two callers asked good questions. So for the most part it was a good show. However: the two Christians floundered rather terribly. I was somewhat disappointed that Berkshire brought up old testament stuff in places where he could have hit them with equivalent new testament material. But then he skillfully pointed out how contradictory their grounds for ignoring the old testament really are. I was also annoyed at the breaks, which seemed to come at the worst times. But overall it was a good show.
For some reason, the ongoing argument for evolution against creationists is beginning to remind me of Eddie Murphy’s “It wasn’t me.” routine.
Why do you take theists to task over the evidence for God?
“You don’t know any more about the subject than they do!
There is no empirical evidence for OR against the existence of God.
Nor is there any evidence for OR against evolution or creationism.
The fact is neither “side” has a clue.”
Posted by: Peter Camenzind | August 3, 2008 5:37 PM
petercamenziphrenia:
the inability to separate irrefutable rational evidence of biological commonality from delusional fantasies of immortal exceptionalism.
“The world looks created” – compared to what?
Is this a shared evolutionary trait?
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
You can lead a Christian to knowledge, but you can’t make him think.
imsosrmt @ #34
“By the way, in regards to Santa I’m definately agnostic.”
Please tell me you are joking.
As for the radio show you almost had to feel sorry for Jeff and Lee. Even they knew how lousy their arguments sounded.
Try a different dictionary. Atheism describes a lack of god-belief, the absence of theism. The Oxford English Dictionary is a better authority, in my opinion. Webster’s is a bit slow to respond to changes in popular usage.
Besides, “agnostic” is too broad; some agnostics are deists, pagans, etc.
Oh my, I can’t believe I had to unlurk for this…
imsosrmt, agnostic and atheist are not contradicting labels. It isn’t theist>
Oh my, I can’t believe I had to unlurk for this…
imsosrmt, agnostic and atheist are not contradicting labels. It isn’t theist,agnostic,atheist. It’s gnostic theist,agnostic theist, agnostic atheist, gnostic atheist. I’ve never heard of a truly gnostic atheist, almost all atheists are agnostic. Gnosticism denotes what you know, and theism, denotes your belief. That being said, if I see no evidence of purple sun pixies then I can’t believe in them, but that belief is by no means a certainty. I’d recommend you cross reference other dictionaries, because atheist in it’s basest form means “lack of god belief”.
Comment #46 was intended to reference comment #20. My bad.
Those are not necessarily incompatible. In fact, I am both. I’m agnostic in the sense that I can’t know for absolutely sure whether a god (any god) does or doesn’t exist. And I’m atheist because everything I’ve seen points to the fact that all gods are human creations. You may not know if something is true or not, but that doesn’t mean there is a 50-50 possibility.
From the interview:
When I heard that I spontaneously said aloud, “Oh my.” And we hear about Darwin being blamed for Nazism? Riiiiight.
PZ, your first mistake was asking fundies for evidence. You know they’ll never give you an answer. Ask for evidence for god and they’ll tell you to look at trees or the bible or anything just to avoid answering the question.
Religion serves as an outlet for the uneducated and unambitious to have a career making millions from the intellectually lazy. The only sure way to become unemployed as a preacher is to become too educated and find out you’ve been living a lie (or fondle small children but that may just get you a transfer).
Peter Camenzind #3 wrote:
So, the existence of God is not an empirical matter, is it? If you were to ask people who believe in God WHY they believe in God, they will all have no idea. Nothing lead to their belief at all, they don’t know why they hold it, it’s just a grand puzzle, like asking why they think chocolate tastes good.
Nonsense. Of course the existence of God is either going to be supported by evidence, or it isn’t. It’s a factual claim, a hypothesis about the way reality is — and so people have all sorts of reasons for why they believe there is a God, things they can point to to explain why they came up with the hypothesis in the first place. Even the two gentleman from Christian talk radio eventually came up with an argument — the world looks designed. That’s an evidential claim.
Perhaps you meant to say that there is no good evidence for the God hypothesis. And that there are more reasonable explanations for the evidence. Which, I grant, is true. But that supports the alternative hypothesis.
Peter C.: “Ha! I’ve still got it…”
Is “it” 3rd stage syphilis?
imsosrmt: Athiesm [sic] is defined by Webster’s as “The belief that there is no God, or denial that God or gods exist.”
and
Again, defintion from Webster’s which borrowed from T.H. Huxley:
Agnostic: “A person who believes that the human mind cannot know whether there is a God or an ultimate cause, or anything beyond material phenomena.”
Dictionary definitions are descriptive–not prescriptive. These definitions don’t determine what individual atheists believe or don’t believe, and they don’t determine what individual agnostics do or don’t claim to know. They’re just convenient labels that fit each person to varying degrees. For more helpful definitions, you might look up “hard atheist” and “soft atheist.”
Or better yet: when encountering someone calling himself an atheist or an agnostic, take the time to find out how those labels apply to him. You might be surprised.
Peter Camenzind, be careful, the religious herd mentality is deadly:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25995012
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/international/middleeast/12cnd-stampede.html
In the atheist/agnostic debate I see the idea of god as best defined as a final cause(forget Thor, Zeus, fairies and all the rest)- that is why agnosticism (not knowing) makes more sense to me because atheism gives the impression of finality “There is no god”- how can I have finality in dismissing something (god idea) that, as Myers shows, even the believers don’t agree on when it comes to evidence for god? How can I say, with my limited viewpoint, that definately there is no god? I appreciate all the clarifications on the definition of atheism, but if everyone has a different twist on the definition then meaning start changing.
Richard in Edmonton- very good, thank you, something to think about.
Andres Diplotti- I don’t know, for me, using the simple definitions, I don’t if I could call myself an agnostic and an atheist.
And, Feynmaniac, I’m agnostic on Santa, because, hey, you never know.
I actually dislike the terms atheism and atheist because I feel it implies we are the ones who are ‘different’; that theism is the natural or default position and we are choosing to go against that in an antagonistic way.
As someone who was never religious I no more chose not be religious than I chose not to grow to be 6 feet tall – it just didn’t happen.
Sam Harris talks about it:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2007/10/the_problem_with_atheism.html
One good paragraph for those who don’t want to bother with the clicking:
Yes, these two are still just as stupid as they’ve always been and they’re dodging questions desperately because they have no answers. If the whole premise is “aliens who have no concept of the supernatural or gods need to be convinced”, they failed utterly. The aliens would think these losers were out of their minds.
That said though, I’ve been listening to Atheist Talk since it started and it still comes off as very amateurish, unfortunately. I know they aren’t radio professionals but they still stumble constantly and to be honest, the commercials they run are pretty ridiculous. Can they try to actually act like they’re running a semi-professional operation?
the holy trinity being the core belief for xians, and what?… they really don’t understand it?… how can that be?… this should be “revealed” in the most uncertain of terms, without any ambiguity… lame, lame, and more lame… jeff and lee, for shame!
Here’s a question I once put to a New Age credulist, but it works just as well for a Theist: What’s the difference between believing something and wanting to believe something?
I’ve found that this question will shut credulous people right up. Meanwhile, any rational materialist could tell you the difference without hesitation.
imsosmrmt #57
“And, Feynmaniac, I’m agnostic on Santa, because, hey, you never know.”
I refuse to engage in a debate of whether it’s okay to be agnostic about Santa Claus because then I would have to seriously examine what I’m doing with my life.
this has made me very hungry for some (+)s
Say, the reason that I read PZ’s question was because I wanted to see if they would have a more specific response to the questioner than to the question. And they did, they were almost ready to chortle, implying that no one should really take PZ seriously. That’s why I added in there “PZ is a friend of mine.”
Second, as Lee was telling his story about growing up in a non-religious household it reminded me of the story that Francis Collins told on the air a year ago. He said “No one had ever preached the gospel to him.” I was trying to figure out how anybody in American society could be so lucky. Is it genuine? I don’t know, I’ve heard this sort of testimony many times. Even Jeff told a story I had heard many times about growing up Catholic and not knowing much about Salvation, but the point that he made was that his Christianity was not a religion. It is a relationship with Jesus. As a Catholic, he said, he had never experienced that.
So, I asked them during a break (gotta pay the bills, Lewelly,) if perhaps they were so willing to accept the conversions that they had because the pump was “primed” by the over-whelming atmosphere of Christianity in our society. They kind of dismissed it as “God Delusion” stuff.
Well, for mypart I am firmly convinced that if there were a god he would strike down everybody on the Internet who repeatedly misspells the word “DEFINITELY”!
#57
1) What the heck does “final cause” mean?
Do you mean “first cause”? (because a final cause would come last, after all the other causes)
Assuming that’s the case, either everything must have a first cause, or not everything need have a first cause. If everything must have a first cause, then what caused the first cause (since, by that argument, it must have one)?
On the other hand, if it’s not necessary for everything to have a first cause, why assume one at all, without evidence?
2) Funny, you’re happy to redefine “god” mid-discussion (after the usual God-definition got creamed), but if two atheists were to give you slightly different definitions of atheism, that’s a problem because “meanings start changing”? If you want to redefine god to a Deist god (an amorphous thing with apparently only one attribute, “cause”), that’s dandy, but then you can’t go adding back a whole pile of additional attributes after that point. No more church for you, then – unless you’re fond of UU (are there other deist churches, anyone?).
FYI, just because argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy doesn’t make the appeal AGAINST popularity a logical necessity.
Peter Camenzind at #16:
I highly recommend you begin to educate yourself using the extensive information concerning evolution at talkorigins.org.
Your ignorance on the subject is breathtaking.
Yes, efrique, my bad, I meant first cause or ultimate cause, not final cause, I’ll blame my typo on many martinis.
In response to your second point, I’m not trying to change the generally understood definition of “god” in mid-argument. My god definition is, and has been, a first or ultimate cause. It’s not a real argument to throw in Thor or Santa or fairies or whatever when we’re talking about the god that most “educated” or “intelligent” god believers are talking about. The god of philosophy and much of theology was developed in a way that’s
a little more sophisticated than that.
You have given me something to think about with the suggestion that it’s not necessary for there to be a first cause, although could you elaborate on that. Still seems to me, agnosticism is the way to go.
Ed herring, You’re right, I definately, definitely agree.
I think a good argument the thiests could make is the unmoved mover or uncreated creator. I was suprised they didn’t mention it.
One of my pet peeves has come up here: The “You can’t prove a negative” thing. Why in fact, yes you can! I can prove negatives that can rule out possible cases from an infinite number of instances. No finite set of prime numbers contains all the primes. Really? How many possible finite sets of numbers are there? Infinitely many! Could I really have examined all those sets to know none of them contained all the primes? No, but I don’t have to:
1. Every number is either prime or is the product of two or more primes.
2. Take some finite set of prime numbers and multiply them all together to get one huge-ass number.
3. Add one to the huge-ass number
4. Therefore, if I divide huge-ass plus one by any of the primes in the original set I will get a remainder of one.(This should be clear, but I can give a proof of this if you need me to.)
5. So, by premise #1, huge-ass plus one is either prime or has as a factor at least one prime not included in the original set. Either way the finite set didn’t contain all the primes.
This proof has been around for about 2300 years. The earliest documentation we have of it is in Euclid. It probably dates at least back to Plato’s personal students, perhaps to Pythagoras or Zeno of Elea. Some library-burners have kept us from knowing for sure.
Here’s another negative. Nothing has phlogiston in it! Have I examined all material substances to determine they had no phlogiston in them? No! It just turned out that positing phlogiston to explain combustion was cumbersome and competing theories of combustion were more coherent and better fit observations. So no phlogiston then. Here’s a link if you don’t know what I’m talking about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory
I think that God or the gods is kind of like phlogiston theory, a dead end. I am an atheist not because I know everything about everything and have absolute certainty there are no gods. I am an atheist because appealing to gods to explain things doesn’t get us as far as we might hope to go. Plato first hit on this in Euthyphro when he argued an appeal to the gods could not help answer deep questions about morality.
It’s not so much a question whether god exists, but whether we will get any kind of useful milage in understanding the world by positing that God exists. Looks to me like we won’t, so no gods.
The first is correct. No one has been able to prove that god(s) exist or do not exist.
The second is wildly wrong. There is a mountain of evidence for evolution, 150 years worth. Enough to fill whole libraries with more coming in every day. We see it in action every day in medicine and agriculture, new diseases and evolving resistance to anti-anythings.
Creationism was suspected to be mythology 1600 years ago and known to be mythology by anyone educated a century ago.
You like all Death Cultists have also made a simple minded mistake. The existence of god(s) is a religious question. Evolution, fact and theory, is a scientific understanding that has absolutely nothing to do with religion.
Imsosrmt:
For goodness sake, eschew Webster’s biased and PoS dictionary and pick up the Oxford English Dictionary.
Tony:
How is the “unmoved mover” or “uncreated creator” any help in explaining this universe?
Martin
Tony #70
The “Uncreated Creator” argument requires two contradictory principles: that “everything has a cause” and “there exists something (God) that has no cause.” If it is possible for there to be something that has no cause then the principle “everything has a cause” is already denied; if “everything has a cause” then there cannot be a an “uncreated creator.”
If you allow an “uncreated creator” you abandon your initial principle and can claim anything. What the argument actually wants to claim is “everything in the universe has a cause except for one thing.” But why just one thing? Once you’ve admitted one “thing without a cause” why can’t there be more? Why can’t anything/everything be “without a cause”? If you assert that “everything has a cause” to be consistent you can not then say, later in the argument, “Well, not everything.”
On #45 “As for the radio show you almost had to feel sorry for Jeff and Lee. Even they knew how lousy their arguments sounded.”
I don’t think so. I really think that all the weird things that Jeff and Lee believe in actually do make sense to them.
I’m not sure if I think they are just too plain stupid to get it, to understand how weird those beliefs and how weak their arguments are – or if they might be intelligent enough to get it but can’t because they’ve been brainwashed too much. I’d like to think that they really are just some regular guys who, probably like the vast majority of Christians, haven’t received proper education in evolution, haven’t given the whole issue too much thought since and who are happy with the cosy feeling of the all-loving creator caring for them each day etc., and that’s it for them. I can’t get the impression that they grasp e.g. how the scientific method works, e.g. that evidence does make a difference, that there is a huge difference between simply wanting to believe something and having good reasons for believing it, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary explanations, and that therefore, e.g., (Neo-)Darwinian answers to questions about life’s complexity are, because of their level of detail, much more valid than the extremely NON-extraordinary, simplistic “God did it” answer.
When listening to Jeff and Lee talking at length about irrelevant parts of their doctrine, instead of giving straight answers to very clear and even simple questions, I can’t help being reminded of the way little school boys happily recite for their teacher some poem or definitions or mathematical rules that they’ve successfully learned by heart. Does anybody know what impression I mean? Example: Around 43 minutes into the show, the host was not satisfied with Jeff’s and Lee’s first answer on the fact of poor design in nature, like fish with blind eyes, and asked again about “blaming the victim”, “what sin did that fish commit?”. Again, they directly launched into the same stuff: “Well, sin entered the world… I mean, WE BELIEVE that, you know, God… going back to the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, and… there was that one tree they were not to eat from… uh… Satan, you know, deceived Eve, ate from the fruit, she gave it to Adam… that’s when sin entered the world, sin was handed down through Adam through all man.” Hallo? They think this is an answer?
I am almost convinced, however, that many full-blown creationists (for example highly intelligent, trained scientists, even biologists!) fully understand both the scientific theories and the shortcomings of creationist arguments and are therefore knowfully lying when advocating their religion-coloured view while talking about scientific aspects in the evolution/creation debate. Somehow I am more afraid of the influence that that latter group can have on people. The exemplar that infuriated me the most was Jonathan Wells, in a debate that I just recently came across:
http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=CsESXuZgl4g&feature=related
Or is there a third possibility – that religious doctrine actually can make make people (whether of the first or second group I decribed) literally stupid? Imagine a study that could prove that religious indoctrination destroys brain cells ;-)…
They agree to August Berkshire’s point about Jesus sacrificing himself for our sins as being equivalent to “god sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself”. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
Sastra:
You may be interested in the latest episode of Point of Inquiry, in which DJ Grothe interviewed a journalist who just published a book called “50 Reasons People Believe in God” or some such. It’s a compilation of reasons regular people from around the world give for believing in gods, as opposed to reasons that theologians give, or many of those that atheists argue about. Reasons like “my god is obvious” or “well, everyone believes in my god”.
Oh, they didn’t have a decent answer.
Surprise!
Interesting debate, but as usual…there was not enough time to get into any particular topic in depth.
@ PZ:
“Jeff and Lee were asked a straightforward question: what is their best evidence for a god?”
Well, they brought up the the Bible for one. Although they should have brought up answered prayer and a few other things.
Maybe this will eventually become “evidence” too:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1215331162371&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
the bible is poor evidence for god, as anyone who’s actually read it with any comprehension can tell you. and even if it was, it kinda makes him look like the bad guy in a number of places. i’m sure you’ve heard that bible study is the surest route to atheism, right?
anyways, pz, i think the question is rather stupid. it’s pointless rhetoric. did you actual expect a real and substantial answer? this sort of belief is irrational (arational? anti-rational?) by definition. you cannot get a rational explanation (let alone evidence) for an irrational behaviour.
mmm, the word “evidence” in scare quotes… What’s not to trust?
In what way?
And how is the discovery of a historical artifact evidence for God?
And couldn’t this discovery be proof of the Mormon faith?
Ok. So I’m only like 5 or 6 minutes into this debate and it sounds like the only reason these guys went to church/bible study was to get laid. How sad.
Sad? I can’t think of a better reason to go to bible school! ;)
we all know that god whispers into the ears of the choosen few but for some queer reason he can’t send emails to a few billions peeps waiting with baited breath. go figure.
Pascal’s Real Wager
No, to an atheist it’s not more sophisticated. It just looks like hypocrisy to reject one creation myth (Thor, Odin, Vishnu, whatever) in favor of the possibility of a different creation myth, no matter how sophisticated.
That’s why Thor, Santa, garden fairies, etc. are relevant here. There is no logical basis for rejecting one and not the other, since there is no objective evidence for any of it. It just puts the agnostic in the same boat as the devoutly religious, who are very good at being a-theistic towards other Gods and creation myths, but clutch tightly to their own version… which has no more objective evidence, only blind belief.
As is often pointed out here, the only real difference with an atheist is that we’ve gone that last step, and crossed the last God off the long list of rejected God concepts that everyone carries around with them.
wtf tom. the bible is one hell of a complilation of human history and thought. it’s like you don’t live with and eat pig because the last 70,000 years have told us we can exhange diseases with them. if you eat anything but scaled sealife you risk the chance of liver flukes, etc.. . we need guys to fight wars so you don’t do the do with the same sex. and on and on and on.
@ arachnophilia, #80:
“i’m sure you’ve heard that bible study is the surest route to atheism, right?”
If that is the case, should one infer that most atheists have read it cover to cover?
I would rather argue that the current “lectionary” verse reading system that some denominations use is a good way to fast track people into atheism. They often leave out particular verses without explanation and rehash the same passages year after year.
@ Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, #82:
“In what way?”
At the very least they should have brought up examples of it in their own life (or others’ lives).
@ #83:
“And how is the discovery of a historical artifact evidence for God?”
If it is an authentic find, would it not give credence to certain passages from the Bible? At least in the minds of some…
gees, it’s pretty simple. any one who dismisses the bible, etc as pure poopycock is a fool…. just as anyone who subscribes to the bible as an absolute truth is a fool.
Buckyball, #89
I’m an atheist and haven’t ever been anything else; the bible didn’t play any part in that. It’d probably be fairer to say that most deconverted atheists have read it cover to cover and that deconverted atheists are more numerous – on this site at least.
That being said, I have read bits and pieces of the bible and found it doesn’t make me want to believe in god; on the contrary, it makes me sure I don’t want the god described in it to exist, since in most of it he is (by my standards) a monster.
An artifact described in the bible is only evidence for the artifact’s existence; it speaks nothing of the validity of anything else.
However, if it’s the Ark of the Covenant and does the cool Raider’s of the Lost Ark melty thing to people who open it then that’s another story.
Nazis? I hate Nazis.
They have it backward…that the world looks created is evidence of a god BECAUSE they already accepted the existence of a god as an a priori condition.
…but for some queer reason he can’t send emails to a few billions peeps waiting with baited breath.
Well, me, I refuse to correspond with anyone who eats worms. Call it unfair, if you must, but I have my standards.
… Seriously, #6 had it at ‘Russell’s Teapot’.
Also, were a raving nutter in the street to declare unto me that the Kaiser had ordered him to save string, I would not believe him. Ye, even though in a formal, logical sense, I cannot precisely entirely disprove this. In fact, were you to ask me, I would even say: ‘no, I do not believe the Kaiser ordered him to save string, as (a) he looks to young to even have been alive when the Kaiser was and (b) I doubt the Kaiser ever needed string that badly’…
I’m sloppy that way, logically, sometimes. I’m prepared to say I do or do not believe something on less than entirely airtight evidence. Like, in fact, just about everything else in the real world. This being the real world, formal, complete, airtight, mathematical proofs don’t tend to present themselves, but I’m sloppy, lazy, y’see, and I find it’s still generally simpler to take a stand on stuff like dead European rulers ordering bums to save string. A confident stand, even. So, clearly, in addition to being sloppy and lazy about this, I’m also dabbling in hubris.
Elvis being alive and living on Pluto, Yahweh talking to guys in cheesy suits with bad hair and worse business ethics, same deal. I’m lazy. I say ‘I don’t buy it.’ Instead of saying, as apparently I should, ‘technically, I cannot prove this either way… so just put me down as undecided (but no, don’t put me on the Elvis Lives newsletter, thanks all the same)’.
Of course, formally, I guess, I should declare I’m agnostic with respect to everything, really. I mean, hell, am I really writing this? Or am I dreaming I’m writing this? Or was that just the last sentence… Ah hell… Now I’m confused… Or wait… Am I really? I mean, maybe I just think I am…
Put me down as undecided.
it never cases to amaze me. how it is that thinking humans want to argue about “how my god is bigger than your god” when the obvious is ignored.
Is there any wonder, why christianity is perpetuated and lingers? Jeff and Lee exemplify the buffoonery and foolishness that allows such a convoluted and illogical belief-system, to persist.
–S.
Hi buckyball,
Have you read “Burr” by Gore Vidal?
I can cite ample evidence that Aaron Burr was actually a real person, but I hold no illusions that the quotations attributed to him are false. I even do this when new evidence of the life of Aaron Burr comes to light.
The difference is that the Bible only has tangential evidence of really insignificant bit-players actually existing.
If you were merely pointing out that the two men interviewed had not even been able to articulate the best of the terrible answers to the question asked by PZ, I apologize, but your post was framed in a way that made it appear to imply that prayer can heal, et cetera.
Jesus being god, as christians believe, sacrificed his life to save mankind. For a god that can’t die it would seem he gave up very little, is this “fall” thing a joke, an inept god created the scenario for the fall then punished mankind for his ineptness?
all evidence points to all living creatures die, man don’t want to die so he invents “everlasting life”, that makes it easier to die I guess. Problem is many live their whole life preparing for a non-existing after life, very sad.
“What’s the difference between believing something and wanting to believe something?”
Believe in something that you believe something that is true. If you want to believe that means that you wish it was true.
I want to believe I am rich in money, but my bank account tells the real story.
I Believe in God because I know he is real. Because of the way people that were in history acted. For example. Saul who was changed over to Paul had something so great happened to him that he stopped killing Christians and laid his life down for Christ. Something had to happen to make that change. Also people didn’t just die for Christ, they were torchered for him. A big difference. Anyone can die for something, but can they live for something even though it is the worst thing they can go through in life. I think we all know that dying is not that hard. However, they are so sure that Christ is God that they were willing to be torchered.
Also Jesus manipulated matter. He was able to take five fishes and five loaves of bread and feed more than 5000 people with it and they had food left over. He was able to walk on water in real time (without any equipment), he was able to control the weather in real time. This is according to witnesses. The things that Jesus did were not some kind of magic tricks, they were real because he is working from outside of our system.
Jewish prophets also wrote about a messiah to come and he would also die and rise again. This was written before Jesus was even born and thats not just from the Bible but there was a stone tablet that was found that said the same thing.
People who have died also said that they saw a light and claming they sometimes see dead relatives and all of that. As I said before they are not making this stuff up. Remember what I said last time about people meeting relatives that they did not know, but when they came back they found out that they had died before they were born.
Atheists who have died and have come back such as Ian McCormick and Howard Storm show a conversion that does not make sense unless it was real. Go ahead and email them and see if it was just a confabulation or their mind trying to survive so it makes something up.
If the entire theory of evolution is true, it had to start out from somewhere. The information in the genome didn’t just get there by itself. If it did then that means the simplest life forms that started the planet were more intelligent than the most intelligent humans on the planet and I can’t believe that. Something not only had to jump start this process (because you can’t get something out of nothing when the universe has not even been made) but also put in the information needed so that evolution could work.
Bacteria is simple compared to a human brain and you just don’t get information from thin air. It has to come from somewhere. You have to have some building plan before you can build.
Ken,
Epic fail on all points. Try reading something other than the bible once in a while.
For starters, you need to know what evolution as a scientific field includes in its scope: http://www.talkorigins.org/
Here’s a hint – something from nothing, as you put it, isn’t necessary for evolution to be true.
“If I can’t test Jesus using the scientific method he does not exist!” (yeah, if God does not submit to your rules or standards he does not exist).
If he is God then he is more intelligent than you and goes beyond your feeble scientific methods. Like an ant trying to understand how a human thinks. Humans are trying to figure out how God thinks.
We are living in a sandbox created by God and we are trying to reverse engineer what is in that sandbox. God created something out of nothing and that will be always out of our reach. We can change what already exists, but we cannot create a universe without nothing.
Look at us right now. We can’t even create anything like the human brain without using something not even close and using if statements to try to make it look like intelligence.
Sure, we can create a light bulb and let there be light and all of that but we can’t even get anywhere near to create a sun out of nothing. That is always going to be out of our reach. We never will be able to get there (with or without science).
We can’t even save ourselves from Global Warming and we are supposed to be intelligent and have tons of advances using modern science.
Do the math (Probability) and you will see that using mathmatics you will eventually come to the conclusion that it is impossible to have this life without God (with or without evolution). Evolution itself is moot. The mathmatics tell the real story.
“Ok. So I’m only like 5 or 6 minutes into this debate and it sounds like the only reason these guys went to church/bible study was to get laid.”
Churches CAN be good places to meet girls, if you’re that way inclined. In fact it’s just about all that they’re good for.
The first time I ever got laid was with a girl I met through our church youth group. And the second time. And the third time… : D
Hell, I even had my wicked way with one of our minister’s daughters on a couple of occasions. He would have been mortified if he’d ever found out.
Baptist girls go hard. Woo hoo!
Ken @ 98
Also people didn’t just die for Christ, they were torchered for him. A big difference. Anyone can die for something, but can they live for something even though it is the worst thing they can go through in life. I think we all know that dying is not that hard. However, they are so sure that Christ is God that they were willing to be torchered. Evidence only that they BELIEVED in God, not evidence that their belief had a good basis. People have died, and been tortured, for other religions, after all. By your argument, they must be true also. Yet, if they are true, than Christianity cannot be true, since one of the central doctrines fo Christianity is that it’s the sole truth, meaning that those other religions must be false, ergo, people have died and been tortured for false beliefs. Which rather destroys your argument.
And @100:
You’re starting off with the assumption that God exists. Yet, there is no evidence for God, or any other deity. If God exists, and it wants us to believe in it, then why doesn’t it give us evidence? If God is intervening in the world, then we should see evidence of its interventions, even if we couldn’t understand why it did what it did. If God is deliberately avoiding being proven, then it means that we are gradually defeating God, gradually removing places where God can work. Yet, I know of no religion that believes in a deity that can be defeated by mortal humans! If God simply doesn’t intervene, then what point is there in worshiping it?
“Here’s a hint – something from nothing, as you put it, isn’t necessary for evolution to be true.”
I was talking about God being true not Evolution.
Evolution is moot as I said below. It does not prove that God does not exist. As I mentioned that you have to have a starting point for the information in the genome. Information doesn’t just get there on it’s own.
Ken @103:
As I mentioned that you have to have a starting point for the information in the genome. Information doesn’t just get there on it’s own.
You’re right. The Flying Spaghetti Monster puts it there with His Noodly Appendage. ;-)
But seriously, that’s BS. Gene duplication, mutations, insertions, and similar processes create new information, and natural selection weeds out the useful from the harmful.
BDC #83 “And how is the discovery of a historical artifact evidence for God?”
In the same way that the discovery of Troy VII provided evidence for Zeus.
“people have died and been tortured for false beliefs.
Which rather destroys your argument.”
Only when people wanted them to admit to something they did not believe in. For example. “Admit you are a witch and I will stop this torcher.” Early Christians would accept torcher because they believed so strongly in Jesus. That is a huge difference.
As I said do the math. Follow the mathmatics. God is real. There is no doubt left in my mind. It is what it is.
If get myself to believe that there is no cliff and I close my eyes and I am blinded from the truth. I will step off that cliff to my death. That cliff really did not care if I believed in it or not. It was there all along.
ken,
– you imagine God to be vastly intelligent. It is reasonable to assume so for a being that has planfully created an entire universe. If that being would not exist, we’d have a universe full of destruction, entropy, very hard to live in. And that’s what we see. It is irrational to assume creation when there is no information on how that creation started. Saying ‘by magic’ means that you need to explain how that magic works, what sorts of energy are at work, how to detect that causality. What can be predicted based on magic? It could be that God acts completely randomly, thus making his actions unpredictable, but that is not the God you are speaking of.
– you say it is impossible for us to figure out how such a God thinks. You confirm that we cannot evaluate his motives. That means we cannot make any meaningful conclusions about his character. When he says he’s good, or loves us, we have no way of knowing if that is true. Some children grow up thinking it is good that they get beaten – because their abusive parents say it is. When these children grow up, they start understanding more about their parents, and realize that it was not good, but a weak and faulty character their parents were driven by. Abusive parents act irrationally, have no sense for adequacy of consequence, change their minds on a whim, focus on punishment and arbitrary rules rather than kindness and consideration. Sounds familiar?
– you say that you are certain that we will never be able to create anything like a brain or a sun. How do you know? Are you from the future close to the end of the universe? Can you see the future for all eternity? Do you have absolute knowledge of physics? If not, you are guessing. And even if you were right, there is still no reason to assume that anything else can do those things in a purposeful manner. We know how suns form, and there is no evidence for anything but physical causality in that process. If we can add one imaginary cause without evidence, it is equally valid to add any number of additional chimeric causes. It is not rational to choose one cause from an infinite number of imaginable ones and declare that is the one; why not more than one then, why not another cause for the first one, ad infinitum?
– Mathematics? What are your calculations? Show us the numbers, and how you arrived at them.
Ken, stars are the result of natural forces. No god required.
Also, if you look back at what you have written and substitute any other creator-god for your god, I think you will understand why your assertions come across as vacuous.
The funny thing is that if you had been brought up in a different culture, you would be defending the god/s of that culture with the same fervor. Wanting to believe that something exists doesn’t magically make that thing exist.
As for evolution, go read something other than the bible. An undergrad intro to biology would be a good start.
um…. torcher?
what is he talking about?
During the Middle Ages, Jews refused to be converted to Christianity in the face of torture. How does this fact mesh with your argument?
I’m looking forward to hearing Ken’s mathematical proof of the existence of his god. Come on Ken, don’t keep us waiting. There are a lot of potential converts here.
(I trust that it is something more than “Numbers! BIG numbers!!11!!”, as that will only show that mathematics is one of the growing number of subjects you are ignorant of)
test
“Ken, stars are the result of natural forces. No god required.”
So, the natural forces just jump started on it’s own? God can create things and then let them go on doing their own thing.
So trees which pull in carbon dioxide and let out oxygen which life needs to breath and then humans let out carbon dioxide which trees need. This was all done by a simple cell without any intelligence being jump started. Really?
As I said before nature just isn’t enough. Can Shakespear write without being taught to write? No.
Can a cell start with no information evolve into something very complex without some form of intelligence starting the process? No
Can a builder build a house without a plan? You have to have something kick off the process and then you have that same something add in intelligence to the cell to allow it to evolve into something. You cannot start off with nothing without having something and you can’t start that something without adding in intelligence to it.
There is order to the entire universe and there are laws and there is something that is beyond our intelligence doing all of this starting of processes. It just does not make sense. It is not mathmatically possible to do this without God, period. End of Story
It is not logical. It is not rational.
I’m going to go ahead and assume that Ken was referring to mathEmatics when he was talking about probability, although an unknown form of number crunching would explain all of his calculation errors.
Ken #113 wrote:
Self-praise is no recommendation.
RE: #109 Nanu Nanu
“um…. torcher?
what is he talking about?”
I was wondering the exact same thing. It was only later on that I realized he was attempting to spell out “torture”
Ken, I refer you to JoJo’s comment at #74.
Also, if by “mathmatically” you mean “mathematically”, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means
It is not logical. It is not rational.
You have no idea what these words mean. “I can’t believe it happened that way” is not logic or rationality.
There is no doubt left in my mind.
So why are you here, asshole?
In Terry Eagleton’s infamous review of The God Delusion, he opens by stating “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.”
And yet when you prod a theist for evidence for god, I mean really prod as PZ had to here, they will invariably come up with the argument from design. In other words, they are willing to hold forth on biology with no knowledge at all, not even of British birds.
Hypocrites.
“The belief that there is no God, or denial that God or gods exist.” Given that definition, I don’t see how you can prove a negative. It’s an unscientific way of dealing with the god issue.
Why do people get so very stupid about epistemology when God is involved? Proof is not a requirement for rational beliefs, and very few of our rational beliefs are proven. E.g., prove that Booth killed Lincoln, for the first of a very very large number of examples.
By the way, in regards to Santa I’m definately agnostic.
You (wrongly) opposed agnosticism to atheism. If you are claiming that you do not deny the existence of Santa, you’re lying, or simply can’t be taken seriously.
And for fuck’s sake learn to spell “definitely”; misspelling it makes you look illiterate.
Nothing lead to their belief at all
Sastra, I point this out only because you write so well and I hate to see it marred: the word is spelled “led”. Not “lead”, “led”. “led”, not “lead”.
@ kingl,no 120 :
//In other words, they are willing to hold forth on biology with no knowledge at all, not even of British birds.//
This has been one of the most intriguing experiences when debating the deluded here : Their ignorance of their own holy book,and their ability to pick choice examples from it to make a point while at the same time declaring the 3 statements saying the opposite thing irrelevant or not meaning what they say or some such.
@ ken,No 113: (Kenny,is that you love??)
//It just does not make sense. It is not mathmatically possible to do this without God, period. //
The fact that you dont like it and it makes you uncomfortable does not make it impossible ken,the Universe is not obliged to make you happy.
What the heck does “final cause” mean?
Do you mean “first cause”? (because a final cause would come last, after all the other causes)
“final cause”, properly used, is Aristotle’s telos, the purpose that caused something to occur or be created.
Imsosmrt (#69):
Thanks for replying! I’m so used to drive-bys, I forget to even check for a reply sometimes.
You said:
My god definition is, and has been, a first or ultimate cause. It’s not a real argument to throw in Thor or Santa or fairies or whatever when we’re talking about the god that most “educated” or “intelligent” god believers are talking about. The god of philosophy and much of theology was developed in a way that’s a little more sophisticated than that.
Ah! Sophisticated belief. How interesting.
What is your evidence that “most educated believers” possess such a belief that god is nothing more than a first cause?
Note that Christians specifically believe in the divinity of Christ (otherwise, they’re something other than Christians) – and that is not merely belief in a first cause, but adding a whole pile of other attributes. Similarly Muslims have a pile of additional beliefs about God (you can’t be a Muslim unless you accept some of them). As do many Jews. So where are your multitudes of sophisticated deists coming from?
I think it’s pretty clear that in fact most believers don’t have a “god is just first cause” belief.
If that’s the case, it’s perfectly reasonable to bring up fairies and santa claus and Zeus when arguing with people who believe in the divinity of Christ or that Mohammed is Allah’s final prophet who was visited by the angel Gabriel or whatever else – because if you belive ANY of that, Zeus and fairies and santa are relevant.
You have given me something to think about with the suggestion that it’s not necessary for there to be a first cause, although could you elaborate on that.
I made no claim either way – I pointed out the logical flaw in the argument that there is a first cause. Let me reiterate:
1. Either everything requires a cause or it doesn’t.
2. If everything does, there can be no first cause,
since it requires one itself.
3. If it doesn’t – once we agree that some things don’t
have to have causes, the argument for first cause breaks
down.
That is, the existence of a “first cause” is simply logically flawed.
Though in fact, yes, things happen without causes all the time, if you look at tiny enough things. Take a look at quantum mechanics some time. Get used to the idea that the “cause and effect” life that you directly experience is not the way things work at all scales and times. Atoms decay with no cause. Particle-antiparticle pairs pop into and out of existence all the time. It’s even possible that the seed of everything we see came into existence the same way – acausally. I see nothing in current cosmology that would require me to point at all that stuff and call it god – indeed, I think that’s a bad idea because the word brings a lot of unwarranted baggage with it in the minds of many people.
Still seems to me, agnosticism is the way to go.
Agnosticism is about (lack of) knowledge (as opposed to gnosticism), atheism is about (lack of) belief (as opposed to theism). The two are not mutually opposed. It’s possible to hold a strong-agnostic position that says “since it’s unknowable we shouldnt even talk about belief”, but many atheists are weakly agnostic and take the pragmatic position that we can legitimately say that we lack belief in the absence of evidence, and yet at the same time agree that we’re not completely excluding the possibility.
If my conversations with atheists are typical then few atheists claim to be 100% certain there’s no god – they’re generally open to the possibility of evidence to the contrary (but remembering that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence). While I’m also not 100% sure there’s no purple unicorn in my fridge, its not reasonable for me to act as if its a serious possibility – I would require at least some evidence to not treat the proposal with less than extreme skepticism.
Belief in a first cause requires a very strange set of assumptions (that everything must be caused except one special thing, that must not be). Given that rather strange cosmology, it’s as reasonable to require evidence to believe in that as to believe in the purple fridge unicorn.
In response to your second point, I’m not trying to change the generally understood definition of “god” in mid-argument. My god definition is, and has been, a first or ultimate cause. It’s not a real argument to throw in Thor or Santa or fairies or whatever when we’re talking about the god that most “educated” or “intelligent” god believers are talking about.
This is thoroughly disingenuous. You were talking about atheism being illogical. You can’t just substitute your definition for “god” for everyone else’s and then declare people illogical for denying your concept when they haven’t stated an opinion on it. And if you are saying — it really isn’t clear — that most “educated” or “intelligent” god believers are talking about “a first or ultimate cause”, that’s absurd.
But your original major error is the very absurd notion that one can’t logically believe something unless they have proven it. And then you blithely ignored all the examples people offered, such as the belief that there are no fairies and that Isis doesn’t exist, that show that such unproven beliefs aren’t illogical.
Do any intelligent theists post here? There are intelligent theists aren’t there? We have exactly as much evidence for and against god as we do for invisible unicorns, right?
And we have as much evidence for evolution as we do for gravity– probably more… Theist’s do know about DNA, right? Surely, not all of them are not completely ignorant because of their faith.
I know their invisible friend forgot to mention DNA in any of the tomes he inspired, but I’m sure a few must have had their profiles run(and given the poor spelling, logic, and grammar I suggest some ought to have the chromosomes checked as well).
Note to parents: don’t let the kiddies play on the computer unsupervised–they’re making you believers look reeeeallly stupid. Moreover, they’re hanging out at “atheist” sites. (Scary!)
One of my pet peeves has come up here: The “You can’t prove a negative” thing. Why in fact, yes you can!
Right you are, but you can’t prove a universal empirical negative, such as “there are no white ravens”, and that’s what people usually mean. But it is useful to point out the error.
Ken, #98
“I Believe in God because I know he is real. Because of the way people that were in history acted.”
You are familiar with the story of Moses and how he led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt aren’t you? If you are you will be aware that these people, we are lead to believe, were presented with real actual evidence of god.
If you think the Bible is history, and you can know because of the way people acted in this history, then ask yourself how these people when supposedly presented with the evidence for god, went off worshipping other deities when Moses’ back was turned?
The way these people acted tells me that the god of The Bible/Torah/Koran has to be pure fiction.
Ken, your writing skills, reasoning, and knowledge level suggest that you dropped out of school early. Is that correct? Does it occur to you that, when differing on some matter with better educated people, there’s a good chance that you’re the one who is wrong?
we are lead to believe
Please please please help halt this degradation of the language. The word is “led”, not “lead”.
Buckyball @ #89:
@ arachnophilia, #80:
“i’m sure you’ve heard that bible study is the surest route to atheism, right?”
If that is the case, should one infer that most atheists have read it cover to cover?
That would not follow at all. Actually, I don’t accept the premise that it’s the surest way (though it may be reasonable for those in Christian-majority countries), but if it were, then it still needn’t account for the majority of atheists. Perhaps there are many other less-sure ways that account for a larger number, for example.
I would rather argue that the current “lectionary” verse reading system that some denominations use is a good way to fast track people into atheism. They often leave out particular verses without explanation and rehash the same passages year after year.
That sounds less conducive to it to me. Less explanation and more repetition of something that doesn’t make sense taken as a whole is a better means of convincing people that it’s true (or at least keeping them from changing their minds) than detailed study.
@ Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, #82:
“In what way?”
At the very least they should have brought up examples of it in their own life (or others’ lives).
@ #83:
“And how is the discovery of a historical artifact evidence for God?”
If it is an authentic find, would it not give credence to certain passages from the Bible? At least in the minds of some…
Such people would then be mistaken.
It’s only evidence in a very weak sense of the word. That is, the whole story is more likely true given that some part of it is historically verified than if that part isn’t. But this is only a marginally beneficial kind of evidence. It’s like trying to verify a claim of the form A&B by noting that a predicted consequence of B is true. Well, it does make A&B more believable, but does pretty much nothing for A alone.
More concretely, one could compare Biblical stories with stories about the Trojan war (e.g. the Iliad, or Odyssey), or works of fiction throughout history that incorporate real people, places and events. E.g. that England was invaded by Saxons doesn’t mean that Merlin was real, let alone could perform magic.
It seems thus far that the only details of the Bible that can be verified by any physical evidence are the “mundane,” non-miraculous ones.
That or they thought the other gods might be a little less enamoured of arbitrary testing, punishing and smiting.
“i’m sure you’ve heard that bible study is the surest route to atheism, right?”
If that is the case, should one infer that most atheists have read it cover to cover?
No, your reasoning is quite fallacious. Regardless of numbers, those atheists who didn’t study the bible may have taken less sure routes to atheism (meaning that a larger fraction of people taking that route didn’t become atheists).
This is no comment one way or the other as to whether studying the bible is a sure way to atheism, just that your reasoning sucks (don’t feel too bad; most people can’t reason well).
truth machine, #132
we are lead to believe
Please please please help halt this degradation of the language. The word is “led”, not “lead”.
Apologies, apologies, apologies. I totally agree. In my defense I will honestly say that I did type “led” but fackin Word must have changed it to “lead” without my permission.
I think truth machine @135 is being gentle @135; the intended inference is obvious and tm chooses stupidity over malice as the possible cause.
No, your reasoning is quite fallacious.
Oops, reading more carefully, I see you (Escuerd) were making the same argument I just did. Shame on me, and my humble apology.
kingl, one reason I don’t like using spellcheckers. I too often see malapropistic homophones (and always validly spelt!).
I think truth machine @135 is being gentle @135; the intended inference is obvious and tm chooses stupidity over malice as the possible cause.
John, if you really mean 135, I’m quite confused. My #135 was mistaken, and I certainly don’t think any malice was involved by anyone.
How nice,one can actually read all the posts in a thread again…
As to thread topic :
I really couldnt stand listening to the crap from those two simpletons for too long.I listened to their “debate” with PZ a while ago,and it made me physically ill.This one wasnt much better.
Notice to PZ tho: If those 2 standard edition dumbwits infuriate you,Im concerned you might have a heart attack doing Mister Banana.
In my defense I will honestly say that I did type “led” but fackin Word must have changed it to “lead” without my permission.
So does Microsoft toss dice? It didn’t change “how he led” in the previous sentence.
Hm. Let me see, from the quote we get “If that is the case, should one infer that most atheists have read it cover to cover?” – it could have been “If that is the case, should one infer that hardly any Christians have read it cover to cover?” and just as valid.
Of course, the real intent of the quote is that the bible is full of contradictions, horrors and warped morality.
This was never addressed, but is what the original poster clearly meant @80.
So I stand by mine, unless Escuerd cares to correct me.
Flo #75,
“On #45 “As for the radio show you almost had to feel sorry for Jeff and Lee. Even they knew how lousy their arguments sounded.”
I don’t think so. I really think that all the weird things that Jeff and Lee believe in actually do make sense to them.”
I’m sure in their minds it somehow makes sense. They probably just believe having faith is enough. However to convince atheists, or at least do well in a debate with them, they have to come up with arguments. My point was that these arguments had many so holes in them and they were articulated so badly that even they realized it. They believed what they were saying, they just knew what they were saying came across as a lousy argument.
As to why they really believe, I think it’s a mixture of lack of education, inherent mental shortcomings, and rationalization. Their religion, or maybe just even just the religious community they are in, makes them comfortable so they rationalize. The mental shortcomings and lack of education makes this go alot easier.
John, I think you’re confused, but I’m sleepy so it may be me, and I don’t really care much at this point, and I like you too much to argue with you about something I don’t care about. So, good night. :-)
To clarify, my previous was to truth machine, and obviously I was mistaken that tm was being charitable.
My bad, but I stand by my claim the point was not addressed.
Ken @ #98:
“What’s the difference between believing something and wanting to believe something?”
Believe in something that you believe something that is true. If you want to believe that means that you wish it was true.
Not true. You might want to believe in something you don’t actually want to be true. More likely, you might want something to be true, but not simply want to believe it. Your example of wanting to believe you have a lot of money is a good example of this. I imagine that more than wanting to believe it, you’d like it to be actually true. This is sort of beside your point, and may be a bit pedantic, but I think the distinction’s important.
I have a hard time defining belief in terms of words that aren’t synonyms.
I Believe in God because I know he is real.
This is the same as saying “I know God is real.” But for it to be knowledge, it has to be justified.
Because of the way people that were in history acted. For example. Saul who was changed over to Paul had something so great happened to him that he stopped killing Christians and laid his life down for Christ. Something had to happen to make that change.
That’s a terrible justification. Many people have changed their minds about many things, including rather drastically. It doesn’t make them right.
Also people didn’t just die for Christ, they were torchered for him.
Are you trying to say they were set on fire?
A big difference. Anyone can die for something, but can they live for something even though it is the worst thing they can go through in life. I think we all know that dying is not that hard. However, they are so sure that Christ is God that they were willing to be torchered.
Basically, you’re saying that they sincerely believed in God is a sufficient justification that you should do so. That’s silly, though.
Also Jesus manipulated matter. He was able to take five fishes and five loaves of bread and feed more than 5000 people with it and they had food left over. He was able to walk on water in real time (without any equipment), he was able to control the weather in real time. This is according to witnesses. The things that Jesus did were not some kind of magic tricks, they were real because he is working from outside of our system.
This is question-begging. Basically, you’re using a premise that’s part of what needs support. The extraordinary claims are remote in history, and the only accounts were written decades later, which is more than enough time for legends to spread.
People claim Sathya Sai Baba manipulates matter too, and do so quite fervently despite the fact that in the age of video recording, it’s easy to demonstrate that he’s a cheater. This isn’t to say that Jesus (if he was real) was a cheater, but that people can convince themselves that they’ve seen a miracle even when they haven’t, and that when the event in question has had decades to build up myth, something mundane will often be recounted as something extraordinary.
Jewish prophets also wrote about a messiah to come and he would also die and rise again. This was written before Jesus was even born and thats not just from the Bible but there was a stone tablet that was found that said the same thing.
Of course, there’s a lot about Jesus that most Jews would say is just flat-out wrong about the messianic prophecies. But then again, one might argue that we might expect that the Jews who didn’t become Christian had a different view of these. But consider that when something is written down beforehand, it’s easy to retcon it as well. The claim that Jesus rose from the dead is a rather extraordinary one, and all that we have to back it up is about are later accounts that, if they weren’t associated with such a major religion, would be treated as a local legend.
People who have died also said that they saw a light and claming they sometimes see dead relatives and all of that. As I said before they are not making this stuff up. Remember what I said last time about people meeting relatives that they did not know, but when they came back they found out that they had died before they were born.
Well, I didn’t read what you said last time, but that people who came near to death (or whose hearts stopped, or whatever) having hallucinations in line with the religious beliefs of the culture they’re a part of isn’t surprising, and is again, fairly weak evidence for the claim that an intelligent being with special interest in human beings created the universe, and will grant them an afterlife based on whether or not they accept that he exists (or any other religious variation on this).
Atheists who have died and have come back such as Ian McCormick and Howard Storm show a conversion that does not make sense unless it was real. Go ahead and email them and see if it was just a confabulation or their mind trying to survive so it makes something up.
Emailing them would hardly resolve whether it was a confabulation or made up. I think this is little more than an appeal to emotion, which is something I’ve come to expect from religious apologists.
If the entire theory of evolution is true, it had to start out from somewhere.
Incorrect. This has nothing to do with evolution. This seems like a variation on the “If there’s no god, then everything came from nothing,” argument. It doesn’t follow, and is really just a straw man. I don’t know why there’s something rather than nothing. Why should we think a priori that there ought to be nothing, though? This seems like you projecting your own bias.
The information in the genome didn’t just get there by itself. If it did then that means the simplest life forms that started the planet were more intelligent than the most intelligent humans on the planet and I can’t believe that.
Er, no it doesn’t. New information can arise by gene duplications and mutations, and made non-random by differential reproductive success (natural selection). You ought to expect complexity to arise from a simple self-replicating system.
Your assumption that it required the organisms to be intelligent is question-begging. I.e. you’re assuming it was intelligent design, and then arguing that the designer was god, and not single-celled organisms, or self-replicating polymers. The problem comes in with assuming that intelligence needed to be behind biological complexity in the first place. Of course, even if it were, this would be only an incidental truth that gave no deeper understanding of where complexity in the universe came from in the first place, because it would simply replace the complexity of biology with the complexity of the mysterious designer.
I stand by my claim the point was not addressed.
That may be. I didn’t address that at all, only a pure flaw in logic, the same one Escuerd addressed.
Ok, bye.
The quote in your #135 is actually original to buckyball’s post at #89; Escuerd quoted it at #133, hence your confusion. Right argument, wrong target.
Truth Machine @ #138:
Oops, reading more carefully, I see you (Escuerd) were making the same argument I just did. Shame on me, and my humble apology.
No worries. It’s fully my fault, as I evidently screwed up the HTML tag to italicize it. It wasn’t obvious where Buckyball’s post ended and mine began.
I blush as I find I misattributed to Escuerd @133 what belongs to buckyball @89.
My bad. Sorry, Escuerd.
I guess I’m too tired myself.
Religion requires and promotes mental, educational, moral and emotional retardation. The rationalisation component is the intellectual dishonesty aspect to their lack of morality. The comfort component is the insecurity aspect to their lack of emotional development. The mental and educational parts of their artificial retardation you’ve stated about as blandly as I do.
However, those two are the things which (in greater measure than they possess) would allow them to notice the inconsistencies of religion on their own rather than requiring someone else to point stuff out to them. The other two things which keep people religious (ie my latter 2 and your former 2) can’t go away just on having the reality of the situation pointed out. Inherent dishonesty may not be fixable at all and growing up from emotionality to rationality may take a long time and the provision of alternative support structures in the meantime.
It wasn’t obvious where Buckyball’s post ended and mine began.
Yeah, I was going to comment on that, but I actually had no trouble understanding you when I went back and actually read all the words.
I guess I’m too tired myself.
Silly us. :-) I really am going to turn this damn thing off any moment now.
Ah, I think I need to learn to use the style tags appropriately here. The italics tags seem to cut off at every paragraph break (perhaps that’s to prevent mistakes from screwing up the page).
test
test
Yep. Lesson learned.
The italics tags seem to cut off at every paragraph break
Yes, a problem well known to frequent/long time posters.
(perhaps that’s to prevent mistakes from screwing up the page).
Whatever the reason, it sucks. Blockquote doesn’t have that problem.
The quote in your #135 is actually original to buckyball’s post at #89; Escuerd quoted it at #133, hence your confusion. Right argument, wrong target.
Yes, but I have no excuse, because there was no question that
That would not follow at all. Actually, I don’t accept the premise that it’s the surest way (though it may be reasonable for those in Christian-majority countries), but if it were, then it still needn’t account for the majority of atheists. Perhaps there are many other less-sure ways that account for a larger number, for example.
were Escuerd’s words, and made the same point I did in #135. The truth is that I simply hadn’t read “Actually, …” when I made my post. I would pound mightily on anyone else who was so sloppy. Shame on me.
[Help! Let my compulsive self go! Good night!]
tm, enough of the hairshirt.
As I see it, you did pound on yourself.
Goodnight.
August is holding up well. I would be laughing in their face and throwing “You got to be f-ing kidding me…” left and right.
PZ you are almost like Red Bull, but instead of wings you give people balls… :) As soon as your email came in August became more edgy.
Also Jeff and Lee need to let religion go. They would feel much better about life as evidenced by their lack of understanding of their own realm.
Ok. So I’m only like 5 or 6 minutes into this debate and it sounds like the only reason these guys went to church/bible study was to get laid. How sad. :-(
——————————
It only took me 15 posts to find the post I was going to write. Great minds? There is some church somewhere that overtly uses sex to draw in members. The girls actually go trolling for guys like these poor schmucks.
One of these dim bulbs says he was totally unaware of the Christian message AT AGE 26!!!
Does that sound any more plausible than the other bunk they’re trying to promote?
Enjoy.
Ken (Comment #98):
Interesting thing about these so-called “prophecies” is that when you look at the Old Testament passages in context, they often have little or no obvious connection with Jesus (as depicted in the New Testament) at all. And when you look at the claims of prophetic foretelling in the New Testament, you often find that the writers have misquoted or paraphrased the original OT passage in order to make it fit their narrative better.
I assume you’re referring to this. Firstly, the interpretation that the stone speaks of a Prince of Princes living again after three days is disputed. Secondly, the point of this interpretation is not that it supports the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, the point is the opposite – that if a Messiah rising three days after death was already an established theme in Jewish theology, then it becomes more plausible that the story of the resurrection was an invention intended to appeal to an existing tradition of messianic expectation.
So that would be a fail on two counts, then.
#98 “… People who have died also said that they saw a light and claming they sometimes see dead relatives and all of that. As I said before they are not making this stuff up. Remember what I said last time about people meeting relatives that they did not know, but when they came back they found out that they had died before they were born….”
Looks like Kenny’s back …
kingl,up at comment #130, you make the point that I always wondered about when I was going to parochial school. If the Israelites just saw 10 plagues (including the killing of first borns if you didn’t have lambs blood over the door) AND they just saw the sea parted, why in the world would they question their god and move to idols just because Moses was gone for a while. I’m pretty sure that if I just saw the sea part too let me cross that I’d be a confident believer.
I am sick of “communicating” with these flipping robots.
Religion is the least of my issues with them. They are, simply put, bland, boring, uncultured, and uninquisitive people. Even as a kid in church I recognized that I had nothing in common with them – I didn’t like their sappy music, their mawkish art, their chitchat and the crap “hip speak” that they adopted to “relate to the young people.” These people are gauche dorks, and if this is how atheists go “mainstream,” to hell with it.
And the only reason that they talk to August is that they know that converting him would be a big feather in their caps.
But Thor is not a Creator God. That would be Odin (with his brothers Vile and Ve). And even they started with the corpse of the eternal giant (“jætte”) Ymer.
Thor is more of a preserver god – like Vishnu.
Ken’s first comment (@98) shares a similar fascination with NDEs as the previously banned Kenny? Do we have a new head on the hydra?
Ken: Personal incredulity is not evidence. Emergent Behaviour is something you should look at.
Cephus – if you live nearby and wish to volunteer, by all means. It can be a pain to get up every Sunday and I would be happy to bow to a professional. Hey, we need better ads and you are welcome to write some new ones and record them.
We appreciate all the heartfelt comments about our ineptitude regarding our appearance on Atheist Talk. Lee and I do not claim to be experts on evolution, biology, theology, or any ology. That is why we have those who are the experts on the show so we can benefit from their research.
We will discuss our Atheist Talk appearance on our show today throughout the day but dedicate the 5:00 hour (Central Time) to our experience. Feel free to drop in and participate. We stream live at http://www.kkms.com and you can call us at 888-332-5169 or locally at 651-289-4499.
Jeff Shell
#121 (truth machine, OM) “Proof is not a requirement for rational belief”
Good point. That’s why I see the god question as an open question. Atheists can’t “prove” no god exists and god believers can’t “prove” god exists. And yes, I do accept that the term “atheism” is more nuanced than I the way I was first using it here. And sure, many god-believers come off as stupid and maybe are stupid but you can’t do a survey of history and not come across a lot of quality material written by god believers in theology or philosophy or in other areas. Intelligent people down through the ages were god believers, whatever the specific belief system. Some people here can dismiss it as just that “they were products of their times” or “they didn’t really believe” but it doesn’t seem that simple to me.
#126 (efrique)
“It’s even possible that the seed of everything we see came into the world the same way- acausally.”
How is that possible? I accept what you said about things happening all the time “now” without causes (quantum mechanics)- but the “beginning” or “start” had to be built upon something already there or there was really no “beginning”, perhaps some kind of infinite loop of causation. Just thinking out loud with this, so go easy on me.
Re: #166
“Cephus – if you live nearby and wish to volunteer, by all means. It can be a pain to get up every Sunday and I would be happy to bow to a professional. Hey, we need better ads and you are welcome to write some new ones and record them.”
I don’t, not even close, but you should look at some of the other atheist, or even Christian broadcasts out there to see how they do it. Take ACA’s Atheist Experience for example, you’ve got hosts with presence and personality that speak clearly and make it fun to listen to. Every time I listen to Atheist Talk, that “get awe inspired” commercial makes me cringe. I admire and congratulate Minnesota Atheists for getting out there and doing something like this, it’s certainly not the easiest thing to do, but it’s still pretty rough around the edges, even after being on-air for 8 months. It’s got potential for greatness, I’d just like to see it meet that potential.
Listening to the podcast now. Holy crap, what lame bullshit. At least these guys will admit that some of their superstition doesn’t make sense but, alas, they still choose to believe it. Behold the power of religion to stunt a person’s mind. Also love the squirming they do: “The Bible says ‘don’t murder’, not ‘don’t kill'” and when August points out that God commands his people to slaughter other tribes that ain’t murder, no sir, that’s just killin’ so perfectly okay.
Jeff, I think it was (I get them confused since they both spout the same nonsense, did some lame-ass wriggling away from August’s question about whether or not he considered Catholics to be Christians. And, apparently, Lee discovered stupidity later in life. I agree with a previous poster, kudos to them both for admitting that their faith came about because of sex. :)
Too much stupidity to dissect point by point but I was giggling at their irrational, reality-defying justifications for believing in stupid things. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy again about rejecting this crap years ago.
Kristine at #163–“They are, simply put, bland, boring, uncultured, and uninquisitive people… I didn’t like their sappy music, their mawkish art… these people are gauche dorks…”
Well-put. A simple stroll through one of their “family bookstores” (hateful phrase) will reveal little in the way of actual books but much in the way of angel plaques and other pious bric-a-brac. I think it’s the unmitigated tackiness and banality they seem to embrace; give them the choice between, say, one of Tolstoy’s essays on Christianity and a Lee Strobel “book”, or a Picasso to hang on their wall or a Thomas Kinkade–well, we all know which ones they’re gonna choose, right?
Lee and I do not claim to be experts on evolution, biology, theology, or any ology. That is why we have those who are the experts on the show so we can benefit from their research.
Right. That’s why you also have articles at your website such as “Truth (and Humanity) Lose in Kansas”:
“On Tuesday, the Kansas Board of Education overturned science guidelines that questioned the validity of Darwinian evolution. In addition, the Board defined ‘science’ as restricted to naturalistic explanations. The rationale for their decision? Math teacher Jack Kreb offered…etc. Let’s see. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote…”
*vomit* Oh, yeah, you defer to the experts all right.
We will discuss our Atheist Talk appearance on our show today throughout the day…
I can just see it:
Gosh, Lee, all these people who need christ are saying that we didn’t do a good job on Atheists Talk. Do you have any comment on that?
Well, Jeff, the good news is that you don’t have to be an expert to accept Jesus into your life! Jesus loves you no matter how much you don’t know about evolution, which is a lie anyway…etc., etc.
I think I’ll pass on your show, thanks.
#168, Imsosmrt said:
“It’s even possible that the seed of everything we see came into the world the same way- acausally.”
How is that possible? I accept what you said about things happening all the time “now” without causes (quantum mechanics)- but the “beginning” or “start” had to be built upon something already there or there was really no “beginning”, perhaps some kind of infinite loop of causation. Just thinking out loud with this, so go easy on me.
I’m not sure how you arrive at that conclusion.
You accept that things can happen acausally, except at the start, where they can’t?
I understand that there’s a conceptual difficulty for humans with something just “popping” into existence in something like a quantum fluctuation; quantum stuff is so far outside the realm of our experience that our ability to really understand it is poor – as many physicists have remarked on (they can do the calculations just fine and show that they work perfectly – but none of it makes sense in the way we’ve evolved to understand things). But that is indeed how some physicists describe what they think happened. Our understanding of the initial conditions is poor because the conditions were so extreme that our understanding of physics doesn’t really work properly any more – but strides are being made in that direction; a number of theories permit an acausal beginning, where something indeed just “happens”.
I don’t claim any of those theories are correct – the evidence is far from in. However, it is not logically necessary to suggest an ultimate cause, and it’s logically flawed (as I demonstrated) to require one.
@ #96, Autumn:
Have you read “Burr” by Gore Vidal?
No.
“If you were merely pointing out that the two men interviewed had not even been able to articulate the best of the terrible answers to the question asked by PZ, I apologize, but your post was framed in a way that made it appear to imply that prayer can heal, et cetera.”
I wouldn’t exactly call their answers terrible. I think they mentioned today on their own show that they were not given any of the questions ahead of time…and it’s difficult to cover a great deal of ground in such a short period of time, considering the depth of the subject matter. I’m not sure how often August debates, it was clear that he had done it quite a few times before.
@ #135, Truth Machine:
No, your reasoning is quite fallacious. Regardless of numbers, those atheists who didn’t study the bible may have taken less sure routes to atheism (meaning that a larger fraction of people taking that route didn’t become atheists).
This is no comment one way or the other as to whether studying the bible is a sure way to atheism, just that your reasoning sucks (don’t feel too bad; most people can’t reason well).
When I read:
“i’m sure you’ve heard that bible study is the surest route to atheism, right?”
It was unclear what the original poster’s intent was. Some atheists rarely read the Bible (and some Christians, too, which someone else pointed out).
So, I replied:
If that is the case, should one infer that most atheists have read it cover to cover?
Implying that in order to really bolster one’s atheism, one should read the Bible in its entirety…regardless of whether the Bible led them into their atheism in the first place or not.
Sort of like to become a better biologist, you do research, read textbooks, etc.
You might become more informed, but a better atheist? eh.
#173 efrique
Like you said, something from nothing is a difficult concept- quantum mechanics aside doesn’t there have to be some kind of essence to build off of in the beginning? That’s why if we’re not going the god believer or first cause route than it seems that there must be some kind of infinite loop of substance existent. I’d be interested to look into those theories that incorporate the acausal aspect- if you have any weblinks- just to get a sense of what it’s all about.
Then, of course, you have the whole problem of how the concept of time plays into all this.
Well, I’ve learned some from this thread- thanks to all- good to see more reasoned discourse now that the “cracker” thing has died down. I do hope that PZ Myers will spend more time debating the god believers that accept science (including most or all of Darwin) rather than the fundamentalists. Debating the fundys is like debating children- what does it prove? Take on a little more of a challenge and debate the god issue with science-accepting god believers and that would be more interesting.
I can just see it:
Gosh, Lee, all these people who need christ are saying that we didn’t do a good job on Atheists Talk. Do you have any comment on that?
Well, Jeff, the good news is that you don’t have to be an expert to accept Jesus into your life! Jesus loves you no matter how much you don’t know about evolution, which is a lie anyway…etc., etc.
I can just see it:
Gosh, Lee, all these people who need christ are saying
Well, Jeff, uhh that’s good quesiton.
Yeah that’s a uhhh good question Lee ahhh.
that we didn’t do a good job on Atheists Talk. Do you have any comment on that?
Yahhh uhh that’s good quesiton.
Yeah uhhh good question ya.
Well, Jeff, the good news is that you don’t have to be an expert to accept
Ummm that’s good quesiton.
Yeeahh that’s a good ummm question ahhh.
Jesus into your life! Jesus loves you no matter how much you don’t
That’s good ummm aahhh quesiton.
Good question yahhh.
know about evolution, which is a lie anyway…etc., etc.
#176 Imsosmrt:
quantum mechanics aside doesn’t there have to be some kind of essence to build off of in the beginning?
You keep asserting this without explaining why you think that there must be something at the start, other than to say otherwise “there must be some kind of infinite loop”, without explaining why that must be so. Though it sort of depends on what you mean by “something” (if your something is the right kind of nothing then you might have a point, see some of the pointers later on).
I don’t think you can set quantum stuff (or some even deeper underlying theory of the very small) aside, since that’s where the something comes in.
I’d be interested to look into those theories that incorporate the acausal aspect- if you have any weblinks- just to get a sense of what it’s all about.
Sure. You might like to start with this. If that’s a bit too much like hard going, Hawking’s book (A Brief History of Time) gives a (somewhat handwavy) discussion about initial conditions – as wikipedia makes clear, that’s not the only one, but it might give you some sense of the sort of thing. (And these days, there’s a number of exciting possibilities coming out of string theory that also have the beginning of the universe arising out of essentially nothing.)
There are a lot of interesting articles that are in various journals that you’re unlikely to be able to see if you don’t have access to them (e.g. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7088/full/nature04804.html).
If you search on inflation cosmology you can turn up some helpful links that give some of the information you need, like:
Inflation for Beginners
Cambridge Cosmology public home page
An exposition of inflationary cosmology.
(and lots more)
Moving out from physicists to philosophers, you might find some of Quentin Smith’s books and other writings helpful.
http://www.qsmithwmu.com/vita.htm has links to many of his articles.
Then, of course, you have the whole problem of how the concept of time plays into all this.
It kind of depends what you’re asking about there, so I’ll just make some random comments.
Time isn’t some ethereal clock sitting outside the universe marking progress. Time is something in (of) the universe that depends on where you are and what you’re doing. Some physicists argue that the arrow of time is a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics (in sufficiently simple situations, time doesn’t appear to have a direction like we’re used to, it appears to be the second law that gives it one).
Time begins with the universe (drives me nuts when people try to say stuff like “before the big bang” without anything to suggest that there was a before – some theories do have a before, such as the bang-crunch models, but not all). It’s kind of like standing at the north pole asking “which country owns the land half a mile north of here?”.
I’m not sure if that answers you since you didn’t really ask a question there.
(Some of this relates back to Hawking’s book again. I’m not particularly enamoured of the book, but it’s a way to get at least some of the flavour of at least one view, without a lot of the mathematics.)
Imsosrmt:
Um, you believe in a different God or something? ‘Cos we’ve heard all the arguments (well, all the fallacies) for the Christian one before, over the years.
Still, if you have something new it might be a little more interesting – like hardly at all interesting.
#178 efrique
Thanks for all the links. As to why it seems that there has to be something at the start- maybe that’s just my mind not grasping how something could come from nothing. Here’s an analogy, perhaps a bad one, but when you build a house you have to have materials to build with- no materials, no house. Those materials have to be made or found somewhere. No building materials, no universe. That’s why the infinite loop concept works for me as a way around this, but maybe I’m just not seeing something simple here, who knows?
#179 John Morales
OK, I came in late to all this, but it just seems too easy to keep on debating the creationists and ID believers. The god-concept has variations (and not just Christian), some of which make more sense than others. Many have deep philosophical underpinnings and have been debated for centuries. If you’re good, you take on the best opponents, not go after the handicapped.
This goes to why I have a problem with those (#23,#24,#87) who asked me if I was agnostic in regard to Zeus, Santa, fairies, and whatever other stupid god-concept that has ever been expressed down through the ages. No disrespect, but I especially disagree with foldedpath #87 who said (to paraphrase) that there’s no logical basis for rejecting one (creation myth) and not the other(s), because there is no objective basis for any of it. If only it were so easy! That’s like saying that to be an atheist, you have to accept every argument for atheism ever advanced, including the stupid ones. For example, if someone said that they were an atheist because their parents were atheists, I would reject that argument for atheism but I wouldn’t reject the concept of atheism because common sense tells me better arguments for it can be made. It’s the same with the god-concept, you can reject the stupid concepts of god and the stupid arguments, but that does not imply a complete rejection of the whole idea. So that’s how I see it- wish I had your certainty but I don’t.
Imsosrmt, a while back PZ wrote something that’s applicable to your comment to me:
That’s pretty much what I’ve written @179. You can vaguely dispute the contention, as you just did, or you could bring forth this superior argument you allude to.
Explain the formation of the 1st single cell and listen to your own explanation and tell me if it doesn’t sound weird to you. You can’t fully grasp how life began yet you mock those of us who admit we don’t fully comprehend the complexities of God.
By the way, lighten up. You all take yourselves way too seriously.
Hell, I don’t comprehend the complexities of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
#180 Imsosmrt:
Here’s an analogy, perhaps a bad one, but when you build a house you have to have materials to build with- no materials, no house.
Yes, you’ve identified the problem – your analogy is the problem. It’s based on intuition built from experience of the very large – things about the size of a human. The dimensions we’re talking about at the beginning are far, far tinier than a single atom, and the physics is entirely different.
If you have a look at some of the inflation cosmology, you will see that what is understood to have happened** does indeed imply matter (“materials”) – and the rapidly expanding space for it to be in – coming out of nothingness.
**(and it isn’t all just “maybe it happened this way” – the mathematics has to work and you have to match what we actually observe into the bargain)
If you haven’t read some of the latest cosmology (and by that I mean say from the last 20 years or so), you can’t really call your belief “sophisticated”, since it is built on ignorance. Finding these things out won’t make you not believe – but it will show you that many of your statements about “what it seems must be” are simply argument from ignorance.
You may still want to attribute the parts of the story that we don’t have yet nailed down (and there certainly are some) to some deist god. That’s up to you, but a god of the gaps is hardly a satisfying thesis, because the gaps keep going away.
God as ultimate cause may have been a plausible (even “sophisticated”) position as recently as half a century ago; it’s much less defensible and far less sophisticated now, because maintaining it involves either having to remain ignorant of (or to read but misrepresent, as some theists do) all the progress in theory and observation.
Imsosrmt @180:
1. Appeal to “common sense”, eh?
2. Atheist/Agnostic. It’s been clarified elsewhere.
3. My atheism does not require certainty in the sense I think you mean – my beliefs are provisional and subject to revision. It is nice to have an open mind.
efrique #184
To quote from “Inflation for Beginners”:
“The idea of chaotic inflation led to what is (so far) the ultimate development of the inflationary scenario. The great unanswered question in standard Big Bang cosmology is what came “before” the singularity. It is often said that the question is meaningless, since time itself began at the singularity. But chaotic inflation suggests that our Universe grew out of a quantum fluctuation in some pre-existing region of spacetime, and that exactly equivalent processes can create regions of inflation within our own Universe. In effect, new universes bud off from our Universe, and our Universe may itself have budded off from another universe, in a process which had no beginning and will have no end.”
That doesn’t sound like a description of “matter coming out of nothingness.”
I’m no expert but it sounds like a description of a process that continues (one universe budding off from another), thus preserving conservation of matter. For me, this explanation is how a need for a first cause (God) could be avoided. Otherwise, you have matter coming out of nothingness which doesn’t work for me on a logical level.
That said, I don’t have the answers, that’s the whole reason I came here. The links you provided have been great resource and I will continue to study them.
John Morales,
It’d be great if you could send me some links to Myer’s anti-god arguments, especially those having to do with the first cause/prime mover issue.
As for your post #185, thanks for the links.
I guess, however, I didn’t make the point well enough- I’ll try again in broader terms: any debate can bring forth strong and weak arguments. In the god debate, both sides at times use stronger and weaker arguments. Both sides rightly dismiss the weaker arguments of the other side but as I see it, the stronger arguments still stand on either side and we’re kidding ourselves if we think we can dismiss them easily.
For example: how did the universe begin- where did matter come from if it didn’t exist originally? Isn’t there a law of physics concerning conservation of matter? It couldn’t just appear out of nothing, could it? There doesn’t seem to be a clear scientific answer to this and so some would answer with a god concept “creator”. Until and if science can give a clear answer, I don’t see how the god concept can be completely dismissed as a possibility. We all can agree (I hope) that the process of learning is continuous- the mysteries of the universe are being unlocked and we don’t have any final answers. We may never have final answers. Maybe the answers down the road will clarify things but it seems that for every question answered there are many new ones. So it is problematic for me to see anyone on either side claim to know “for sure” and not keep seeking. It’s tough to get a fundamentalist to admit that their “book” might be wrong and might not tell them how this world works. And it can be just as tough to get an atheist to admit that their personal disbelief in any god concept has nothing to do with whether a god actually does exist.
Imsosrmt:
Well, the search box in the upper left of this very page is your friend; or if you want I can send you a cheque to cover my hourly rate for research.
You’ve just now brought up anti-god arguments.
Why not stick to the topic you brought up in the first place?
Remember, you’re the one making the claim there’re good arguments yet to be addressed; you’re the one still not providing such.
I know damn well it’s because you don’t have any.
Care to admit it?
Bah, mangled first paragraph during editing. I think my drift is clear though :)
Imsosrmt, you may wish to peruse this before responding.
John Morales
First of all, thanks for the link, that was what I was hoping to find.
You must not be reading my posts carefully- I did provide an example of a “good” argument – the argument of first cause. Before you get worked up and say that Myers disposed of this argument (I think it was #29 of the arguments in the link you provided), read again what Myers wrote about it (or, actually, copied from someone else):
“The universe we live in now “began” about 13.7 billion years ago. Whether the universe existed in some other form before that – whether there was energy/matter/gravity/etc. (a natural world) before that – is unknown.
We don’t know if the natural world had a beginning or whether it always existed in some form. If it had a beginning, we don’t know that a god is the only possible creative source. We don’t know that a god can be an uncaused cause. What caused God?”
Sorry, but that doesn’t get rid of the god argument. “What caused God?” The god believers would just say that god is eternal and so had no cause: the whole I AM thing.
Then there’s the line “we don’t know that a god is the only possible creative source.” Either the earliest matter and energy in the universe existed already in some form or it didn’t exist at all. (To paraphrase Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction: something cannot both be and not be at the same time, same place, and same way.) If matter and energy didn’t exist at all at some point, what would be another “possible creative source” other than a god concept? To “create” means to “make out of nothing”. Where does science allow for “making out of nothing”- there’s always a prior form or place where the energy or matter “was”, no spontaneous generation.
The first cause argument, as I see it, could be disposed of only if it can be proven that the matter and energy of the universe have always existed in some form. Otherwise, you have the problem of where the energy and matter came from. Something doesn’t come from nothing: conservation of matter and energy. The scientific aspects of this question are still being worked on in the physics realm. The first cause argument doesn’t “prove” the existence of a god but it is an argument that cannot be just tossed aside, even if PZ Myers would like to. The point being, sure, this type of argument has been addressed by atheists but not in a way that, if you’re honest, has removed it from the table. If you still think the first cause argument is weak, then you must have some inside information that you should share with today’s science researchers who continue to study and develop new theories about the origins of the universe.
And so for me, the whole first cause argument remains a major stumbling block to accepting atheism, but I appreciate the time and efforts that you and others have put in answering my questions and challenging me.
Nope, Cosmological Argument for the existence of God has been done to death.
Not new. Not interesting.
The cosmological argument for God, for the search-challenged.
Isn’t there a law of physics concerning conservation of matter? – Insosormt
No. Conservation of energy, yes. It is quite possible the universe has zero total energy. The “budding off” process you mention would not conserve matter, but again, would preserve energy. You can look all this stuff up – try Scientific American for a start, or Google.
And the fact that you say the appearance of matter from nothing “doesn’t work for me on a logical level” is fallacious on two levels: this is not a matter of logic – there is nothing logically wrong with the idea – and the fact that you find something implausible is not an argument.
The cosmological argument has been disposed of by Christians, if they’re honest. Deists, too.
Immanuel Kant killed it in the Critique of Pure Reason over 200 years ago.
After Kant and Hume, serious philosophers have been unable to take the first cause argument seriously.
Kant in particular disposed of all of the traditional arguments for the existence of God, save for one, including the cosmological and ontological arguments. (Darwin killed the other one, which is why modern philosophers are mostly atheists. Kant knocked most of the legs out from under theism, and Darwin axed the last one. Kant + Darwin = atheism.)
No, it’s publicly available information and has been for over two centuries. The fact that some theists ignore one of the best-known facts in philosophy doesn’t change that. (Many Christian philosophers and theologians do not ignore it; it’s one of the reasons why non-fundamentalists generally acknowledge that you can’t prove the existence of God through reason and must rely on faith.)
Modern science only shows how right Kant was in thinking that our naive intuitive notions about causation can’t possibly get us an answer to the basic question. (“Why is there something rather than nothing at all.”) Kant was all over that.
Modern apologists have to admit (if they’re even marginally honest) that the cosmological proof isn’t a valid proof—it’s just an “argument,” they say, hoping to shift the burden of proof.
But it’s not a probabilistic argument. The only way to make it work as one is to jigger the prior odds and effectively assume the conclusion—so it not only isn’t a proof, it isn’t evidence.
Modern science shows that sort of jiggering of prior odds is a bad idea. Attributing low-level physical facts to intelligent agency is one of the most reliable ways to be wrong. (You might make a strong anthropic argument for the dependence of low-level physical facts on intelligent agency, but if you can make that work, the cosmological argument is superfluous. It proves nothing, and shifts the burden of proof not at all.)
Wow, Paul!
Heck, !!!.
Nick, John, Paul – knowledge is power so thanks for the contributions.
Paul, yes, good old Kant. If I can remember enough from my philosophy days, Kant says we cannot use our minds to reason to a first cause because metaphysical questions such as this are beyond our experience and for him the mind’s knowing is connected with experience. He’s not saying there isn’t a first cause, he’s making the argument that we cannot reason to it. I guess he’s your appeal to authority on that question. Be sure to take a look at the link in the next paragraph.
John, you write as if I’m trying to prove the existence of a god- no, what I’m saying is that some of the god arguments are not so easily dismissed- they might be right even if we cannot know it. I’m also saying that some of what is going on in the world of science now makes the first cause idea still relevant. It became relevant again when the steady state idea for the the universe was replaced by the “Big Bang” theory, positing a “start” to the universe.
Recently I read up some on J. Richard Gott and Li-Xin Li who in the 1990’s critiqued Hawking’s idea of a self-contained universe and came up with an idea of a “closed timelike loop”. I’m no expert, but it seems to me there is still much to be said about this and other ideas about the “start” of the universe. Take a look, for example, at Rudiger Vaas’ “Time before Time” at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001910/01/VAASTIME.PDF
Nick, thanks for the clarification on the law of conservation which is apparently limited to energy, rather than energy and matter as I had mistakenly written.
As Wik. puts it:
“In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total amount of energy in any isolated system remains constant but cannot be recreated, although it may change forms, e.g. friction turns kinetic energy into thermal energy. In thermodynamics, the first law of thermodynamics is a statement of the conservation of energy for thermodynamic systems, and is the more encompassing version of the conservation of energy. In short, the law of conservation of energy states that energy can not be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another or transferred from one body to another, but the total amount of energy remains constant (the same).”
So, if energy can change form but not be created or destroyed, how do we come up with the original energy that led to the formation of the universe? Either the energy existed in some other form already or it was, “created”, which the law of conservation of energy says is impossible. It must have existed already in some way, or we have the god problem again.
I thought I was writing as if you claimed there were unadressed/novel arguments.
I don’t see how current scientific theories affect this particular metaphysical “proof”; however if you can establish that claim, it will be novel to me.
BTW: Nice handwaving away of “good old Kant”.
Well, I’m certainly not learned about these matters, but I can read for myself: It has been shown, at the same time, that the contingency of all the phenomena of nature and their empirical conditions is quite consistent with the arbitrary hypothesis of a necessary, although purely intelligible condition, that no real contradiction exists between them and that, consequently, both may be true. The existence of such an absolutely necessary being may be impossible; but this can never be demonstrated from the universal contingency and dependence of sensuous phenomena, nor from the principle which forbids us to discontinue the series at some member of it, or to seek for its cause in some sphere of existence beyond the world of nature. Reason goes its way in the empirical world, and follows, too, its peculiar path in the sphere of the transcendental.
[…]
The intelligible object of these transcendent ideas may be conceded, as a transcendental object. But we cannot cogitate it as a thing determinable by certain distinct predicates relating to its internal nature, for it has no connection with empirical conceptions; nor are we justified in affirming the existence of any such object. It is, consequently, a mere product of the mind alone.
Imsosmrt#186:
Indeed not, though the extremely flat empty space our universe comes from in that document sounds pretty close to “nothingness”. But that’s not the only cosmology – you needed some basic references, which I gave; I certainly wasn’t trying to hide the existence of the different cosmological options. If you read more, you’ll find some where the universe can appear from even less than the pre-existing infinitesimally small region of extremely flat empty vacuum from which our own universe arises in that article (if it’s the one I’m recalling – I have read quite a few).
That’s a possible cosmology that instead supposes an eternal universe.
That one helps you even less than the scenario I was discussing. If the universe has existed forever, it doesn’t need a creator at all, since it was never created. In an eternal universe, there can be no first cause, so god as you defined it cannot exist in that cosmology.
I think you’d be better off hoping the particular version of cosmology I was discussing is right, because there’s a very, very tiny place you can for the present still squeeze in some very tiny kind of god (its not a god with quite the attributes you want – hardly worth the title at all, but it’s less bleak for you than that one).
Uh, we’ve known since 1905 (more than a century now!) that matter is not conserved. Surely you’ve heard of E=mc^2 ??
Indeed, matter is certainly not conserved in the cosmology described by the article you just quoted – our entire universe arises from a miniscule region of extremely flat empty space. Did you misunderstand it so badly?
So you keep saying. But the article you quote has our entire universe – everything we see – arising from nothing more than an infinitesimally small region of extremely flat empty vacuum (and the supposition of another pre-existing universe for it to “bud off” from is just a convenient way of getting a sufficiently uniform infinitesimally small piece of space to begin inflation with. That might be the easiest qay to get one, but you don’t have to start that way)
That particular scenario is the focus of many of the basic articles, but there are other articles that cover possibilities more like the one I was discussing.
Again (and I know you have been told this multiple times in this thread, so I don’t know why you’re back on it now) I have met few atheists who do “completely dismiss” the possibility.
You don’t need to completely dismiss a possibility to reject it as a reasonable explanation.
If I put a slice of pastrami on the table, and come back ten minutes later to find the meat gone and the neighbor’s cat sitting near my table licking her paw, I don’t HAVE to PROVE that the postman didn’t sneak in the back door and take it in order to make the reasonable presumption that there are less wildly unlikely possibilities that I would be better to take as my initial presumption, before I go sending the post office a bill for my lunch. I don’t dismiss the possibility he did it – it’s clearly not easily dismissed, since I wasn’t there to see – but I would be crazy to operate under the presumption that he did.
If my neighbor nevertheless insists I give serious attention to his religion of blaming the postman for his many missing lunches (in spite of the simpler explanation afforded by his increasingly-wide cat), excuse me if I ask for some evidence of lunch-stealing postmen before I take the conjecture at all seriously.
Imsosmort #196:
How did you miss the answer to this? In fact that’s central to what we’ve been talking about the whole thread. It’s dealt with by modern cosmology. Read some of the references I gave you again, or read around some more if you missed it.
Uh, I just checked. It’s even mentioned in the “Inflation for Beginners” document you quoted. Please try to understand what you read before you begin quoting it – or you just end up quotemining.
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy
In both cases keep an eye out for mention of a guy called “Tryon”.
It boils down to this – everything in the universe – dead set seriously – all those billions of galaxies, galaxies which in turn have billions of stars – ALL OF IT can come about from a vacuum quantum fluctuation, with conservation of (mass+energy) the whole time.
Interesting link (my emphases).
The first antimony being
Care to clarify how you think this invalidates the previously-mentioned conclusion?
imsosmrt,
I’m not saying that the cosmological argument being invalid proves that there’s no god. I’m just saying that it’s invalid. It not only doesn’t prove there is a god, it doesn’t provide any evidence either way. It is irrelevant.
What it does show is that there is something wrong with common intuitions about causation.
One possibility is an infinite regress. Maybe every particular thing has a cause, and there is no first cause.
Early versions of the cosmological argument assumed that there couldn’t be a literal physically existing infinity of causes. (Though maybe God could be infinite because he transcends the intrinsic finitude of the physical. How convenient.)
Once people got more comfortable with the idea of infinity and less comfortable with the idea of time being finite—how could there be a moment with no preceding moment?—the apologists switched tacks.
Instead of making a “first cause” argument that said there had to be a first cause in time, they made the more general causal argument that even if the causal chain has no beginning, it couldn’t simply exist for no reason external to itself. The underlying question is “why is there something rather than nothing at all?”, whether time started for no reason or has always been there for no reason.
The problem with that tack is that our knowledge of causation is exclusively knowledge of causation within space and time. We’re evolved to think in causal terms, but we have no reason to think that reasoning is valid outside of space and time.
Here’s an analogy. On the surface of the earth, it makes sense to ask “which way is up?” and for somebody to respond by pointing upward, away from the center of the earth. To somebody who doesn’t understand astronomy, it might always seem like a good question to ask “which way is up?” no matter where you are—surely there’s always an up.
But there’s not. In deep space, in free fall, there is no up. Up turns out to be relative, and upness itself is contingent. To ask “which way is up?” in deep space is to make a category mistake, and ask an invalid question.
Given that we understand causation only within space and time, asking the cause of space and time appears to be a category mistake as well. (Unless our space and time are produced from within another spacetime, in which case there’s another regress and the problem repeats.)
Maybe time is infinite and has no beginning. For any particular thing in spacetime, we can ask why and get an answer in terms of something else in space time, but if we ask “why?” about everything, we can’t reasonably expect an answer.
Asking why about everything may seem reasonable at first, but consider the fact that when we ask a (causal) why question, it’s always about something in particular and the answer is always in terms of something else.
How can you ask for an explanation of everything in terms of nothing and expect an answer of that form? The question is grammatically similar, but semantically, it’s radically different.
Now suppose that instead of saying there’s an infinite regress, we say there’s a first cause. Does that mean there’s a god?
No. All it means is that there is some kind of thing that is uncaused, but can cause other things. There’s some kind of thing that just is that way.
Is there reason to think it’s God? I don’t think so. I think there’s reason to think that it’s not.
The traditional theistic god is a person or “an intelligence” of some kind. It is or has a mind.
We actually know some things about minds that we didn’t know hundreds of years ago. One is that a mind is one of the things that must be caused. Minds are computational processes, which require computers of a sort in order to exist. They are not special substances that can magically will themselves into existence, any more than a computer program can run without a computer to run on, and compute the computer into existence.
Minds generally don’t have any special causal powers. They can process information to allow you to exert normal causal powers deftly, but they don’t defy the laws of physics. (If you could do that, you wouldn’t need intelligence so much. You could use brute force.)
So if there’s some special kind of stuff that can just exist without needing to be caused, but can cause the normal kind of stuff, it would appear to just be weird stuff and in particular, low-level stuff. Whatever the lowest-level stuff is (that all the phenomena we see emerge from), maybe it’s just that stuff. Vibrating strings or quantum loops or something. Maybe that stuff just is and isn’t caused by something else. Why not?
I find that much less farfetched than that a disembodied mind can just be, for no reason, and bring matter, energy, space, and time into existence.
The theistic conflation of the “first cause” with God is based on a profound misconception about the nature of minds. Minds seem somehow simple and independent of normal matter and causation. In light of modern science that’s a very bizarre idea.
However weird it might be that (say) vibrating strings would just be for no reason, it’s even weirder to think that a powerful mind could just be, for no reason. Minds are very complex, richly structured things, and it would be an amazing coincidence if stuff not only just existed, but just happened to be patterned just right to be a powerful intelligence. Strings, at least, are dead simple.
Apologists play on the intuition that God Did It is a simple explanation. It’s not. God cannot be simple, and for him to just be, for no reason, is about as farfetched as anything “just existing” could be.
No matter how you slice it, our expectation that we can ask “why?” about everything and expect a reasonable answer has to break down somewhere. Positing a first cause is an admission of that problem—that whatever answer we get is going to be very counterintuitive.
By hypothesis, God is the kind of thing that you can’t ask “why” about—he’s uncaused. Neat trick.
We can play that game, too. We can just say that the bottom-level physics described by a correct theory of everything just is that way. And that theory is a better one—it’s far more parsimonious.
Theists are looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
Everything we know from science tells us that phenomena like life and minds necessarily emerge from the interactions of simpler and dumber things. Our minds are made of modules that interact in intricate ways, as are our bodies. Progress in science is the ability to explain complex phenomena in terms of simpler ones, and we’ve made a lot of progress.
In particular, we know that minds sit on top of a deep stack of phenomena, with things like stupid little particle interactions at the bottom.
When theists posit a superpowerful mind that created the universe, they’re undoing all the progress we’ve made in science, and posing a bigger problem than we started with. We’ve explained complicated stuff in terms of simpler and simpler things, and now they want to explain the simples in terms of something more unlikely and complicated than anything we’ve ever seen.
That’s not answering the question—it’s just deciding to stop asking “why” at particular place that gives them the answer they want. Going from “why are we here?” to “why is God here?” just makes things worse.
The God theory seems appealing, but only because it’s not a theory. It’s the place where you stop asking questions and expecting intelligible answers. If you’re going to play the game that way, there are lots better places to stop and just accept that some stuff just is that way.
Paul, I’m henceforth shamelessly going to point anyone bringing up the CA to your preceding two posts. They are a tour de force.
Actually, considering Nick and Efrique’s posts as well, I adjudge mine runtish. Ah well.
imsosmrt, I didn’t mean to make an argument from authority about Kant. Just a historical note.
I would not recommend reading himself Kant on this, at least not to start with. His terminology is obscure and in some ways counterintuitive, and it tends to get preserved in translations. You have to grok Kant-speak.
I’d recommend getting Mackie’s The Miracle of Theism. It has the kind of serious, thorough, philosophical rebuttal of arguments for God that’s missing in the recent spate of “New Atheist” books, and it’s way more readable than Kant.
BTW, I don’t think most of the cosmology you’re talking about is particularly relevant. (I don’t think loop spacetime raises any basic issues that an infinite regress into the past doesn’t raise, and that was addressed long ago.)
The problems with the cosmological argument don’t depend on the snazzy physics. They depend on picking and choosing which intuition to sacrifice when, and unjustifiably equating a “first cause” with a “god.”
John@201
Thanks. I’m happy to help out.
Nitpick: in relativity, mass-energy is the conserved quantity.
With that minor correction, this is your argument against a past-finite Universe, as far as I can tell:
1) The total mass-energy content of the Universe is a fixed amount, due to conservation.
2) That amount is non-zero.
3) Before the Universe existed, there was no mass-energy.
4) We’ve gone from no mass-energy to some mass-energy, which violates conservation.
If you disagree with that characterisation, please let me know, and I’ll try to fix it. However, in the form I’ve stated it, it fails on all four points:
1) There is no global law of conservation of mass-energy in general relativity. Mass-energy is conserved only locally. Conserved quantities arise due to symmetries; energy conservation is a consequence of time-translational symmetry. Expanding Universes are not time-symmetric, hence no global conservation.
2) The total mass-energy of the Universe may be zero, in which case even a global conservation principle wouldn’t prevent a transition from ‘nothing’ to ‘something.’
3) Your conceptual model of a finite Universe appears to be a temporally finite lump of stuff embedded in an eternal void. The transition from void to stuff is where you see ‘something’ coming from ‘nothing.’ But this is cheating. An eternal void implies an eternal spacetime, which is not ‘nothing.’ We are, instead, going from ‘something’ to ‘something else.’ If you really want ‘nothing,’ then get rid of the void and imagine the finite lump of stuff as all there is. But in that case, there’s no transition at all.
4) See 1)
Great.
So, MartinM, I think I get you.
‘Twas a bad question to ask in the first place, given current understanding.
John Morales, efrique, Paul W., MartinM:
Excellent responses, thank you all- I was hoping when I waded in here on these issues I wasn’t just going to be trashed for not completely accepting the party line. I’ve been able to obtain some clarifications and much of what you’ve written and the links you’ve provided have been very helpful. You should be charging tuition.
Just a few comments:
MartinM,
Yes, you’ve addressed exactly what I was concerned with.
In your answer #1 you state “Expanding Universes are not time-symmetric, hence no global conservation.”
I’m not completely sure what you mean by “not time-symmetric”, perhaps not bound by time? Beyond that, does this mean that, given that mass-energy is conserved only locally, that on an overall or global scale, new energy can be created (meaning made out of nothing) and/or completely destroyed? How then are mathematical measurements not skewed by this? Go easy on me if these questions sound foolish to you- my professional background isn’t in these areas.
Take a look here at page 9 and in particular the discussion of initial cosmologies: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001910/01/VAASTIME.PDF
The problem of “something out of nothing” appears to still be an issue today, despite what you seem to be implying in the 4th part of your answer to me.
John Morales,
I encourage you also to look at the page 9 discussion of initial cosmologies in the paper I linked up. I originally included the link to this paper because:
1) It’s an interesting response to Kant.
2) It shows the unsettled state of cosmology.
3) It shows that “ex nihilo, nihil fit” is still discussed.
enfrique,
The first part of your post, I agree completely that a type of cosmology that presupposes an eternal universe would make a god concept less able to be sustained. In fact, you quote me partially from post #186 and further down in that same post in reference to the idea of “budding universes” I said “For me, this explanation is how a need for a first cause (God) could be avoided.”
My apologies for the mistake about the conservation law and matter- I’m bound to make a few gaffs like that given my background isn’t this field.
I do appreciate that you re-emphasized that your atheism is at least open to the possibility of a god concept, athough, as you say, you don’t find it reasonable. This is much less objectionable to me than a fundamentalism that mirrors religious fundamentalism: the “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with the facts” type of non-reasoning that for me has harmed the believability of the god-concept.
Good analogy with the cat and postman. Instead of a cat, the neighbor should have had a dog, preferably a mean one, and they never would have fallen into superstition.
Paul W.
Thank you for your reply. I’ll have to track down Mackie’s book.
As I mentioned to the others, I hope you take a look at the page 9 discussion of initial cosmologies on the above link. At least for some, the problem of “something out of nothing” still exists.
Interesting that you use “mind” for the god concept. The god-believers might first use the term “will”. Remember, in Judaism “I AM” was the name for their god-concept.
I also found it interesting that you say “God cannot be simple.” As contradictory as it may sound, god-believers have usually posited their god-spirit as being simple. (Not simple as in “dumb”, at least according to them). Apparently it is allowable because god is a “spirit”. If you don’t believe me, some background from Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_simplicity.
Imsosrmt, you still haven’t advanced any arguments that a putative “first cause” must be a deity. I can but repeat Paul’s summary, because he expressed it better than I could:
In short, there’re gaps in our knowledge, but making intuitive guesses is not the way to fill the gaps. Made-up concepts like God aren’t satisfying to inquiring minds.
I refer you to #197, where you haven’t addressed my claim, and you’ve also dismissed the Kant quote I furnished (the last paragraph of the post) to clarify your paraphrase without addressing it.
Looking at your response to Paul, I can’t believe you’ve actually understood what he posted (else why point out what Paul has already addressed directly).
Sigh. And this is how it’s gone:
So far, you’ve come up with the Cosmological Argument, Paul has refuted it rather convincingly, and your response is to say “At least for some, the problem of “something out of nothing” still exists.” which efrique, MartinM have addressed with no counterclaim from you and “I also found it interesting that you say “God cannot be simple.” As contradictory as it may sound, god-believers have usually posited their god-spirit as being simple.”
Are you now implying this is your disinterested presentation of the arguments that “god-believers” offer and their response ? I thought you were putting in the claim:
Do you still hold to your original contention in #190 or not?
Imsosrmt: Sigh again. Just looked at the theological link (though a theological claim is premature as you’re trying to establish there is a deity in the first place).
The term “simple” in that context is jargon:
Did you (a) pick an ad-hoc article without reading it or (b) think we can’t read or (c) just plain old troll?
If I’m charitable enough to consider you’re not being disingenuous, I am accordingly forced to reconsider your acuity.
Feel free to prove me wrong either way.
Fixed.
Nuts. On the one hand, they claim that the material universe and everything in it is evidence for god, then they turn around and say, no, no, god is not material, god has nothing to with the material. God is simple essence. That’s self-contradictory garbage. If god is “simple”, then god is utterly irrelevant to anything to do with the material universe.
They can’t have it both ways. If god created the material, then somewhere inside god existed all of the concepts relating to the material universe and the potential to bring those concepts into real, material existence; if god is aware of the material universe (omniscience), then that connection to the material universe is constant.
All of which courtier-like handwaving on their part brings us right back to the original objection: If the alleged impossibility of an orderly, complex, material universe arising without god means that god exists, it also means that it is impossible for god to come into existence with all of that orderliness and complexity already there.
I see that you people are shamelessly flaunting your cosmological opinions in public again. How obscene! ;)
Owlmirror OM, that should be.
Grats.
John Morales,
Let me just summarize where I’m at in my thinking on the idea of a first cause and that may clarify things.
Yes,I stand by what I posted in #190: “The first cause argument, as I see it, could be disposed of only if it can be proven that the matter and energy of the universe have always existed in some form”
A review of the science of cosmology and physics will show you that there are today many competing theories on the origins of the universe- some posit a beginning, some do not. If at some point it can be proven that the universe, or at least the energy of the universe existed “beforehand” in some “infinite” way or in some parent universe, then there’s no need for a first cause and then the god concept as a first cause would be irrelevant. There are many good and compelling theories but no finality on this quesstion.
As for “something out of nothing.” You said that this has been dismissed. No one has dismissed this at all. Did you even bother to look at page 9 of the “Time before Time” article? To quote:
“Initial cosmologies, on the other hand, run into deep metaphysical troubles to explain how something could come out of nothing and why there is something rather than nothing at all (cf. Nozick 1981).”
The author, Vaas, then provides various citations and quotations to underline this point. To me, this shows that the issue of a first cause is still relevant because it is relevant in the world of science.
As to what the first cause could be,(and this is just my thinking, no experts backing me up) if something cannot emerge from nothing than what other than a god-concept would work? Any other first cause would have to have emerged from nothing, violating the conservation law. Yes, as someone pointed out, it is true that the god-concept is very convenient, because it fills in a blank.
As for Kant, once I reviewed it again (it has been a long time since studying it in my undergrad years), I think I have a cursory understanding of his argument. I accept his point of view. We can’t use reason to “prove” a first cause because our reason is connected with experience and any first cause would be beyond our experience. (If I’m wrong, feel free to clarify it for me.) So what? That doesn’t mean a that a first cause doesn’t exist. Someone here pointed out that Kant himself was a Christian, so he must have believed in that first cause that he couldn’t prove.
So where I’m at now: it doesn’t seem that using reason one can “prove” a god exists and it also doesn’t seem using reason that one can “prove” that a god does not exist. Agnosticism.
I wasn’t trying to irritate anyone (Owlmirror and John) by linking to the Wik. explanations of the god-believers’ ideas on their god being “simple”. It’s just happens to be what they believe (at least the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim god believers seem to have it as part of their philosophy)- their concept of a spirit has no parts, apparently. Why be offended by it? Study it, refute it, whatever. Thomas Aquinas and others who spouted this stuff had a lot of influence- that’s just a historical reality. Maybe it is “nuts” as Owlmirror puts it. I don’t claim to understand it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try to look at it.
BTW, it’s often the case in an anonymous forum that it becomes easy to blast away at others. John, if I was “just plain old troll” I would have not spent so much time reading posts, reading links, thinking carefully about these issues and writing back many times. Just because I might disagree at times (and I haven’t disagreed about everything), doesn’t constitute trolling. Overall, I’ve got to say I appreciate that in our discussions we’ve been able to disagree intellectually in a civil way.
Imsosmrt,
I think people are getting a bit frustrated because you seem not to absorb certain points.
1) Atheism is not the certainty that there is no god, for all possible senses of the word “God”. There is no line between atheism and what you’re calling agnosticism.
In the broad sense, “agnostics” who don’t know are atheists, i.e., they do not believe.
Originally, “agnostic” did not mean that you don’t know if there’s a god, but that you don’t think you can know. You can be an agnostic atheist (one who doesn’t think that you can know there isn’t a god, but thinks there probably isn’t one) or an agnostic theist (one who doesn’t think that you can know there is a god, but thinks there probably is one).
Most people who call themselves atheists do think that there’s probably no god—that is, that there’s probably nothing best described as a God.
Most of us acknowledge that there might be something that somebody might call a god, and our degree of disbelief depends on the particulars of the “god” concept in question.
A lot depends on what you mean by “god” or “God.”
2) There might be a first cause. Maybe something existed without being caused and caused everything after that. There is no reason to think that a first cause is a god, or anything like a god. There’s no reason to think it’s intelligent, and reason to think it’s not.
3) Whether it’s an uncaused cause or not, there might be something that caused our universe and (indirectly) us. Again, there’s no reason to think it’s intelligent, much less a god.
4) Even if something intelligent created our universe, there’s no reason to think it’s a first cause, and good reason to think it’s not. Intelligences are things that depend on causal interactions of other things, in order to exist. They don’t will themselves into existence.
5) If something intelligent created our universe, you might call that “god”, but that’s probably a bad idea. It would be better to call it a powerful alien and then think hard about whether you’d want to call that god.
(For example, it may be possible to create a pocket universe and set off runaway inflation, resulting in a big bang and a universe more or less like ours. Would that make us “gods”? I don’t think so.)
6) If some intelligence created our universe, there’s every reason to think it’s just a powerful alien, and not a god in any traditional sense. Yes, it would be a “creator,” but creating universes is neither necessary for being a god, nor sufficient. Most gods people have worshipped were/are not creators in that sense, and the most plausible universe-creating beings are not what people mean when they talk about God.
7) Theologians who say that God is simple are kooks. Nothing simple could have the properties of the kind of God people actually worship, such as the god of the Bible. A simple, unchanging god would be stupid and oblivious. Nothing simple can know a lot of stuff, and something that doesn’t change can’t notice anything new.
For there to be a difference between a being that knows something and an otherwise similar being that doesn’t, there has to be a difference between those being. For a being to know a whole lot of stuff that another being doesn’t, there have to be a whole lot of differences. For a being to be intelligent and knowledgeable, it has to be very, very complex. There’s just no way around it—a simple god just can’t cut it as normally intelligent and knowledgeable, much less superintelligent or omniscient.
(That argument doesn’t depend on any details of cognitive science or the computational theory of mind. It follows from the simple realization that there’s a difference between something that knows something and something that doesn’t know that thing. No matter how knowledge is represented in matter or some immaterial spirit-stuff, each bit of knowledge implies some difference from an unknowing state, and having lots of knowledge necessarily implies lots of structured state.)
Imsosrmt, I appreciate the detailed response, but I stand by what I myself wrote.
Yes,I stand by what I posted in #190
OK. Fine. The arguments haven’t moved your position, I shan’t keep at it.
PS re: trollings and blastings. Please re-read what I’ve actually posted. I’ve basically taken you at your word, and this is where it’s led.
This thread’s into the archives now, so this will be my last post here, maybe I’ll pop in on some other topics on newer threads once in awhile. Thanks for bearing with me.
Paul W., thanks for the extensive response. That “god is simple” thing does seem rather contradictory- another thing I’ll have to look into. The first cause thing for me still is a problem because of the “something out of nothing” issue but I’ll leave it at that.
John Morales, thank you also for your responses. Maybe I’m a bit obtuse, stubborn or sometimes it can be semantics issues on these types of discussions.