Post Any Evidence For God Here

[Ray Rider]

...every object has a phenomenal cause if you insist on the infinity of the series -- but the series of phenomenal causes is an insufficient explanation of the series. Therefore, the series has not a phenomenal cause but a transcendent cause... the series of events is either caused or it's not caused. If it is caused, there must obviously be a cause outside the series. If it's not caused then it's sufficient to itself, and if it's sufficient to itself, it is what I call necessary. But it can't be necessary since each member is contingent, and we've agreed that the total has no reality apart from the members, therefore, it can't be necessary. And I should like to observe in passing that the statement "the world is simply there and is inexplicable" can't be got out of logical analysis.

...What we call the world is intrinsically unintelligible, apart from the existence of God. You see, I don't believe that the infinity of the series of events -- I mean a horizontal series, so to speak -- if such an infinity could be proved, would be in the slightest degree relevant to the situation. If you add up chocolates you get chocolates after all and not a sheep. If you add up chocolates to infinity, you presumably get an infinite number of chocolates. So if you add up contingent beings to infinity, you still get contingent beings, not a Necessary Being. An infinite series of contingent beings will be, to my way of thinking, as unable to cause itself as one contingent being.

- Frederick C. Copleston in a debate with Bertrand Russell

[crispybits]

It is only absurd to believe that a sky daddy could create the universe from nothing insofar as we have no evidence for it. That being said, it is at least a claim consistent with what we know. You've posed a thought experiment that is completely illogical and based on nonsense premises. Your thought experiment needs to make sense if it's going to disprove anything. And it doesn't, because it suggests that somehow causality comes from acausality (whereas causality is always inherently present in the creation story).

No, it's absurd for the same reasons as you say a causal universe comes into being acausally is. And I'm not even trying to do that (how many times....). I'm arguing against the necessity of God in the creation of the universe. I can easily concede that God is one possibility and still claim that he isn't a necessity. Just the same as I can argue that causality is a part of the nature of our universe, but it doesn't need to be present without (outside) of it. Your argument is "nothing causal can come from an acausal state", which is equivalent to "nothing real can come from an unreal state" which is the middle bit of "There was nothing, now there is everythingthing, therefore God." I am saying it's fine to say "there was nothing, now there is everything. Therefore no conclusion due to lack of information except for wow isn't it all brilliant!"

This definition of causality discusses how causality plays out in a universe with space and time. It is an example of a more general understanding of causality (that "causes" precede "effects" -- this is a simple logical description that is independent of physical descriptions). You can't semantically argue your way out of this, because it avoids the real question.

I'll ask again, causality is a "special rule" above all the other natural laws becuase of what? Why? You have not at any point explained this except to say "well it must be, because it just must."

And causality needs a temporal element. Without a "before" and an "after" you can't have a "cause" and an "effect". Everything just is all at once and nothing causes anything. Your "maybe there's an extra-universal temporal dimension" argument is ridiculous. I could just as easily say "maybe there's an extra-universal primordial pool of custard" and base arguments on that for all the meaning it has. I'm not the one in this argument adding extra stuff in to explain anything though, you are the one that constantly needs to add extra dimensions or extra layers of rules upon rules to make your argument make sense.

And all this "maybe there's extra-universal multiversal stuff going on" that you keep arguing back to is a fallcy anyway, because God (in the experiment) is the thing that created everything. If you say there's a multiverse then either God created that too and all arguments remain the same or God is part of the multiverse in which case his definition changes radically.

Your argument is sound at first glance, but it doesn't stand up in reality. You're essentially saying that if I lift an object up, I do work against the gravitational force, leaving me with a net change in energy, since the kinetic energy is zero at both the beginning and the end. But energy is always conserved, so something must have happened when you lifted that book. In particular, you pushed the Earth downward. Obviously the effect is so minuscule that the Earth doesn't care. But be assured, lifting that book was a zero sum process, if you take into account the entire system, which is what you are required to do when considering energy conservation.

<Realised a flaw in the way I was arguing this bit, will re-post it later>

No, but all of the physics is in place so that a designer can come in and write a program on it; they don't need to invent the laws that make up transistors from scratch.

I'll leave this bit because the example is flawed (which is my fault) in terms of useful discussion and I need to get to work very soon, but I'll come back to it if you want (and maybe even if you don't) when I have more time later.

[crispybits]

And saying there are invisible badgers.

How do you know there aren't invisible badgers?

Atheists are all consistently wrong, and it's always for exactly the same reason. Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

Absence of evidence can be taken as reasonable evidence of the likelihood of absence, especially when the definition of what is unevident is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipresent.

Besides which that argument is flawed. Atheists do not make any claims about what is not, they just say (generally speaking) "I do not believe that God exists". Not "God doesn't exist", even Dawkins and Hitchens don't go that far. It's the theists who come along and say "God exists", give no evidence, and then claim the atheist argument is flawed because we're just pointing out the complete lack of evidence provided. To extend that analogy, you're now saying that there are invisible badgers, and to bak up your claim you're sying "well nobody has ever proved they DON'T exist, therefore they must exist!"

[chang50]

...every object has a phenomenal cause if you insist on the infinity of the series -- but the series of phenomenal causes is an insufficient explanation of the series. Therefore, the series has not a phenomenal cause but a transcendent cause... the series of events is either caused or it's not caused. If it is caused, there must obviously be a cause outside the series. If it's not caused then it's sufficient to itself, and if it's sufficient to itself, it is what I call necessary. But it can't be necessary since each member is contingent, and we've agreed that the total has no reality apart from the members, therefore, it can't be necessary. And I should like to observe in passing that the statement "the world is simply there and is inexplicable" can't be got out of logical analysis.

...What we call the world is intrinsically unintelligible, apart from the existence of God. You see, I don't believe that the infinity of the series of events -- I mean a horizontal series, so to speak -- if such an infinity could be proved, would be in the slightest degree relevant to the situation. If you add up chocolates you get chocolates after all and not a sheep. If you add up chocolates to infinity, you presumably get an infinite number of chocolates. So if you add up contingent beings to infinity, you still get contingent beings, not a Necessary Being. An infinite series of contingent beings will be, to my way of thinking, as unable to cause itself as one contingent being.

- Frederick C. Copleston in a debate with Bertrand Russell

Of course the world might well be intrinsically unintelligible,why not?It takes a lot of fatuousness on the part of one partially evolved mammalian species in our tiny speck of the universe to imagine we could know anything with certainty about subjects of this size and complexity.We can only go where the evidence points never forgetting everything we think we know could be 100% incorrect.

[Gillipig]

This is an impossible thread. Even the theologians doesn't claim to have evidence for god. How would any of you guys have it? And btw, if there was any evidence of god, it would be part of science.

[jonesthecurl]

Well, you're the one talking about things that happen "before time".
And that god could create the universe, but not cause it.
And suggesting that my arguments are merely semantic tautolologies while seeking yourself to redefine just about every word in the dictionary.
And saying there are invisible badgers.
Oh, wait, that last one was me. My bad.

Anyhow, I'm off to bed now. If I can define bed.
G'night.

Well, someone redefined my bed as a bed of roses, but forgot to take out the thorns - so I was kept awake by an annoying little prick.

[jonesthecurl]

The difference between quantum mechanics and invisible, gravity-producing badgers/ a god outside of space- time that caused everything without causing it, in a time that isn't part of time is this:

Quantum mechanics is necessary to explain the way things work. Scientists spent a long time getting the details as correct as they are by examining the actual world and discarding or refining ideas as the evidence mounted.

I made the badgers up.

Of course, it's "possible" that god operates in the world on a daily basis, magically interfering with the results of experiments so that it only appears that some of our science is right. I guess we can't "prove" that to be false either, especially as god would catch on to what we were trying to do and frustrate our proofs.

[Metsfanmax]

Absence of evidence can be taken as reasonable evidence of the likelihood of absence, especially when the definition of what is unevident is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipresent.

Absence of evidence can be taken as a reasonable justification for not wasting one's time going to church or praying (this is my position). It should not ever be taken to comment on the likelihood of absence of a higher power, because by construction this higher power is unknowable to us. If we aren't supposed to be able to perceive God, and we haven't, you can't claim anything about the likelihood of God's existence simply because you haven't found him yet. This is similar to the invisible badger argument. If the badgers are invisible, then by construction we can't possibly ever see them. So how could we know whether they exist or not? How could we possibly say whether it is likely that they exist if, by definition, we cannot ever gather information on them?

Now, if humans were themselves all-knowing, I would consider this a stronger argument. But, for example, if the three spatial dimensions of the universe are a subset of some larger set of dimensions that humans cannot perceive (for example), then anything existing in those higher dimensions could very well be totally real but definitely unknowable to us. To insist that it doesn't exist, or even is likely not to exist, because some moderately intelligent species descended from the apes has not yet been able to come up with an answer one way or the other, is ludicrous.

Humans should rightfully be humbled by both the scale of the universe relative to us, and what we have learned in spite of that. It should not fill us with the arrogance to suggest that we can know more than that about which we observe.

[Metsfanmax]

To sum up my position briefly: we have no definitive evidence one way or the other (yet) on why our universe was "created." So feel free to make up your own explanation if you feel the need to have an answer to the question, and don't be concerned if your hypothesis is different from that of someone else. They're all equally fanciful, and you shouldn't be trying to convince people to abandon their hypothesis for yours when yours has exactly as much evidence as theirs.

But my recommendation is just to accept the reality of not having an answer, and move on with your life. It's ok to not know.

[2dimes]

And saying there are invisible badgers.

How do you know there aren't invisible badgers?

Atheists are all consistently wrong, and it's always for exactly the same reason. Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

Check and... Mate!

Now I have to go chase invisible badgers out of my hen house.

[jonesthecurl]

And saying there are invisible badgers.

How do you know there aren't invisible badgers?

Atheists are all consistently wrong, and it's always for exactly the same reason. Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

Check and... Mate!

Now I have to go chase invisible badgers out of my hen house.

How will you know when they're gone?

[Gillipig]

To sum up my position briefly: we have no definitive evidence one way or the other (yet) on why our universe was "created." So feel free to make up your own explanation if you feel the need to have an answer to the question, and don't be concerned if your hypothesis is different from that of someone else. They're all equally fanciful, and you shouldn't be trying to convince people to abandon their hypothesis for yours when yours has exactly as much evidence as theirs.

But my recommendation is just to accept the reality of not having an answer, and move on with your life. It's ok to not know.

There's no reason to believe there is a "why" altogether. So unless someone can prove that there is (this is not something you can do by just talking, you'd need science for that.) the logical thing to do is to assume there was no intention behind the "creation" of the universe.

[2dimes]

And saying there are invisible badgers.

How do you know there aren't invisible badgers?

Atheists are all consistently wrong, and it's always for exactly the same reason. Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

Check and... Mate!

Now I have to go chase invisible badgers out of my hen house.

How will you know when they're gone?

The chickens? You just keep a count.

[Metsfanmax]

To sum up my position briefly: we have no definitive evidence one way or the other (yet) on why our universe was "created." So feel free to make up your own explanation if you feel the need to have an answer to the question, and don't be concerned if your hypothesis is different from that of someone else. They're all equally fanciful, and you shouldn't be trying to convince people to abandon their hypothesis for yours when yours has exactly as much evidence as theirs.

But my recommendation is just to accept the reality of not having an answer, and move on with your life. It's ok to not know.

There's no reason to believe there is a "why" altogether. So unless someone can prove that there is (this is not something you can do by just talking, you'd need science for that.) the logical thing to do is to assume there was no intention behind the "creation" of the universe.

In principle, we can't prove that causality actually exists at all; it just certainly seems like it does. In principle, there's no reason to believe there's a "why" for anything we observe. But faith that there is a logical reason has worked out well for us, so it makes sense to try to extend it as far back as we can and see if we can explain what happened; this is what cosmologists are doing. I would say that many (if not most) physicists hope that we could eventually explain the cause of the Big Bang some day, and in that sense describe the "cause" of the creation of the universe. I am in this camp; I believe it is at least possible in principle to do this, and some physicists have already produced falsifiable models describing such causes.

Simply put, humans have a drive to understand why, and so we're certainly going to try! Centuries of scientific progress have shown that we scientists are a bit more likely to shed light on this question than the armchair philosophers.

[jonesthecurl]

"We scientists", when speculating about invisible, atemporal, acausal, non-detectible all-powerful beings (or invisible badgers) are simply being anal-vocal. That's not "science".
You can't claim the mantle of science while spouting groundless verbiage.

[Metsfanmax]

"We scientists", when speculating about invisible, atemporal, acausal, non-detectible all-powerful beings (or invisible badgers) are simply being anal-vocal. That's not "science".
You can't claim the mantle of science while spouting groundless verbiage.

Obviously it's not science. I was playing your metaphysics game when I made those arguments. I don't defend the existence of invisible badgers or invisible pink unicorns, I just speculate that they could exist when I'm wearing my philosopher hat. To reject the possibility of their existence is groundless, as I pointed out, but it's also a useless exercise, because they were invisible to begin with, so whether or not you proved they exist changed nothing about reality. All of this has little to do with the reality that scientists encounter on a day-to-day basis, which is why I rarely worry about religious issues. But, sometimes it's intellectually enjoyable to find holes in atheist/religious arguments, and this was one of those times.

[crispybits]

Absence of evidence can be taken as reasonable evidence of the likelihood of absence, especially when the definition of what is unevident is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipresent.

Absence of evidence can be taken as a reasonable justification for not wasting one's time going to church or praying (this is my position). It should not ever be taken to comment on the likelihood of absence of a higher power, because by construction this higher power is unknowable to us. If we aren't supposed to be able to perceive God, and we haven't, you can't claim anything about the likelihood of God's existence simply because you haven't found him yet. This is similar to the invisible badger argument. If the badgers are invisible, then by construction we can't possibly ever see them. So how could we know whether they exist or not? How could we possibly say whether it is likely that they exist if, by definition, we cannot ever gather information on them?

You'd be right if the theists didn't also imbue their definition of God with a load of other things. He's not just "The Creator" (a job title I think you and I could both agree that "something" could feasibly hold), but then they anthropomorphise him with all thse other qualities, and credit him with pretty regular interference into the affairs of man. Absence of evidence for the Christian God, as described by the bible, could be taken to be implied evidence of absence. It's not a clear cut thing, you can't say definitly either way, but...

Lets look at the badger thing. I say "there are invisible badgers everywhere!". You say "OK prove it, go find one.". I say "I don't have to prove it, just trust me there are invisible badgers everywhere". You say "I don't see any evidence for invisible badgers, therefore I don't believe they exist.". How do you deal with it when I then say "but absence of evidence isnt evidence of absence! You can't prove me wrong!" The burden of proof when someone makes a claim is on the person making the claim to supply evidence, not on the doubters to prove something isn't (because definitively proving a negative on that scale is close to impossible most of the time).

Now, if humans were themselves all-knowing, I would consider this a stronger argument. But, for example, if the three spatial dimensions of the universe are a subset of some larger set of dimensions that humans cannot perceive (for example), then anything existing in those higher dimensions could very well be totally real but definitely unknowable to us. To insist that it doesn't exist, or even is likely not to exist, because some moderately intelligent species descended from the apes has not yet been able to come up with an answer one way or the other, is ludicrous.

Humans should rightfully be humbled by both the scale of the universe relative to us, and what we have learned in spite of that. It should not fill us with the arrogance to suggest that we can know more than that about which we observe.

I agree with this, so whay are you constantly trying to claim during this discussion that causality is a rule above rules, or that there is extra-universal time, or the rules are somehow existant without a universe to operate on? You are the one that keeps adding extras onto everything that can't be proved. All I've done is said "this is what we can see is definitely real and the limits of how far it can apply based on current evidence and logic, this is what some people say, lets take what we can see and what these people say and see if it all matches up". I'm not bringing anything extra in at all, I'm taking it all at face value.

And this multiverse thing is the biggest red herring ever and I wish you could just drop it. If we talk about "the thing God created" then we're talking about the whole lot, the universe, the multiverse, everything. The theist argument is that there was NOTHING and then he created it all, not that there was a multiverse and he poked it and made a universe fall out of it.

To sum up my position briefly: we have no definitive evidence one way or the other (yet) on why our universe was "created." So feel free to make up your own explanation if you feel the need to have an answer to the question, and don't be concerned if your hypothesis is different from that of someone else. They're all equally fanciful, and you shouldn't be trying to convince people to abandon their hypothesis for yours when yours has exactly as much evidence as theirs.

But my recommendation is just to accept the reality of not having an answer, and move on with your life. It's ok to not know.

Again I agree, but the problem is that some people make up a magical sky daddy and tell everyone else that he's had a word with them and not only do they claim special status from the creator of the entirety of reality, but they also say he's very good and kind and loving and that they have some more stuff from him, stuff that tells everyone else how to live their lives (all for their own good of course), stuff that means they can threaten us with eternal damnation if we don't do what they say their sky daddy said to do. Stuff that's caused and is still causing men of various different sky daddy cults to kill or maim others for their sky daddies.

That's what many are motivated to oppose. Not the notion that there may or may not be a God, I'm quite happy either way with that for my own definition of God, if he exists then great, if he doesn't that's fine too. But the damage that the idea of God has the ability to drive men to do to themselves and each other. And the only way to attack that sickness of the human mentality is to attack the idea.

[MeDeFe]

But, sometimes it's intellectually enjoyable to find holes in atheist/religious arguments, and this was one of those times.

You never managed to say what the holes were, though.

[Gillipig]

To sum up my position briefly: we have no definitive evidence one way or the other (yet) on why our universe was "created." So feel free to make up your own explanation if you feel the need to have an answer to the question, and don't be concerned if your hypothesis is different from that of someone else. They're all equally fanciful, and you shouldn't be trying to convince people to abandon their hypothesis for yours when yours has exactly as much evidence as theirs.

But my recommendation is just to accept the reality of not having an answer, and move on with your life. It's ok to not know.

There's no reason to believe there is a "why" altogether. So unless someone can prove that there is (this is not something you can do by just talking, you'd need science for that.) the logical thing to do is to assume there was no intention behind the "creation" of the universe.

In principle, we can't prove that causality actually exists at all; it just certainly seems like it does. In principle, there's no reason to believe there's a "why" for anything we observe. But faith that there is a logical reason has worked out well for us, so it makes sense to try to extend it as far back as we can and see if we can explain what happened; this is what cosmologists are doing. I would say that many (if not most) physicists hope that we could eventually explain the cause of the Big Bang some day, and in that sense describe the "cause" of the creation of the universe. I am in this camp; I believe it is at least possible in principle to do this, and some physicists have already produced falsifiable models describing such causes.

Simply put, humans have a drive to understand why, and so we're certainly going to try! Centuries of scientific progress have shown that we scientists are a bit more likely to shed light on this question than the armchair philosophers.

Just because somehing is caused by a previous event doesn't mean that the event was part of a greater plan. When a tree falls it kills many animals living in the forest, but it does so without an intention, there is a "why it falls" but no "why it decided to kill animals". It makes sense to assume there's an explanation to how the universe came into being, but in no way does that indicate there was an intention behind it's creation.

[crispybits]

But, sometimes it's intellectually enjoyable to find holes in atheist/religious arguments, and this was one of those times.

You never managed to say what the holes were, though.

I'm glad you managed to say that politely, because when i first read that sentence I was tempted to type something a lot less civil.

[2dimes]

Obviously it's not science. I was playing your metaphysics game when I made those arguments.

The dice are so rigged in that game. Brutal!

[AndyDufresne]

Quick, so we've made 100 pages and nearly 1500 posts. Have we solved everything yet?


--Andy

[jonesthecurl]

Oh boy, now we've done it. The badgers are talking to me!

[crispybits]

What are they saying jones? Maybe we should write it down in a book....

[2dimes]

Quick, so we've made 100 pages and nearly 1500 posts. Have we solved everything yet?


--Andy

that was very immature, i am a 16 year old preachers son tryin to be real with you guys and then you come in and pull a smart ass move like that. If you dont truely have a comment to say on this topic, then get out, we dont appreciate you being childish

Yeah Andy.