Feel free to prune out bits you don't wish to continue. This has become overgrown. Fascinating conversation though.
Even though Agnostic Atheism is used commonly to describe someone in your position, I do not believe it is a necessary distinction. It may exist purely because the existence of Agnostic theism needed a counter point (since it's someone who is unsure but lives as if there is a God, whatever that means) despite agnosticism already meaning that you live as if there's not a God because you neither confirm nor deny His existence.
Hitchens would have been the one to cite, not the Vlogger and whatnot, probably the next approximation of Dawkins. However, even though historical atheism did encompass all branches of non-theism, modern terminology has caught up. Again, everything from a Hindu to a pagan would have been considered atheist under the original use of the term. Language evolves and Agnosticism is now the stance for not believing in God while not taking the stance that God does not exist. Atheism is the stance for God does not exist.
But I digress, there is some significant semantics at work here thanks to the ambiguity that time has dealt to atheism.
But I'm actually doing the same thing Dawkins is here. Honestly, I'm actually debating with an Atheist (you) with Dawkin's own definition. This has been quite an entertaining thing to do, I assure you. I assume this doesn't happen that often but the entire point of Huxley's terming of Agnosticism was that he did not want to assume any position because both terms establish a belief in the affirmative or negative. So I can just as easily use Huxley here on his own term.
"When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis," ? had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble."
Thomas Henry Huxley (evolutionist, abolitionist, epic defender of the scientific process or reason) as you may or may not know, disliked theists and atheists alike and lamented being associated with atheists just because he wasn't a theist.
My complaint with dawkin's scale is that he centers it around specific religion based theology. In all honesty, I think it's because he views the position I've been espousing as a legitimate scientific hypothesis while viewing specific faiths as unnecessary leaps in logic. So perhaps he isn't even debating against what I'm saying at all? That he readily admits that "knowing there is not God" is as faith-based as "knowing there is one" is nice. We don't get that kind of honesty in most debaters.
I'm very interested in your answer here. I find it far more probably that given our universe's principles that we likely have a cause outside ourselves. I'd love to have "something from nothing" explained as a more likely scenario and I'm not being sarcastic in this sentence like I know it sounds like. I've spoken with a lot of people over the years and it almost always comes down to a debate against religion rather than the noble pursuit of truth.
I personally believe that most people would suspect handiwork given all the information rather than pure randomness. But I believe a lot of us have been marred or harmed by the ignorant adherents of religion in a way that has truly biased us against the general idea of it even though it's quickly becoming within our own capabilities. Had I been born before virtualization technologies existed, I may have been far closer to the middle intellectually if not even over to the side of atheism. But that I see miniature universes created and destroyed, all with man-made logic and rules, I have a harder time believing that we aren't designed than anything else. That I believe our technology is approaching a day where we can create immense and complex universes digitally makes me really wonder about the likelihood that other beings would desire to do the same and what the likelihood would be that we're the first.
Our universe's principles make me doubt that we're the first and in my eyes almost demand some sort of cause or grand explanation side stepping it.
Still, let's be clear, these are individual people and not a religion itself. Many Christians have no problem with Stem Cell research. Again, it's the people who have a problem that will always be the loudest. To generate a prejudice about a people based on the squeakiest of wheels would be to err in judgment of the whole cart.
We need not and likely cannot disprove these faiths. We can only strive to make sure we live in a world where one's lifestyle may be distinct from another's lifestyle without suffering a bloodied nose.
Look, I get the fear. I understand the concern that giving even a foot towards the idea of a creator of any sort is giving a foot to adherents of specific offensive faiths. But the pursuit of science and truth should never be about what it may lead to and only what it does and is. I would say that the belief in a specific deity, particularly a personal one that is never actually personal, is miles and miles and miles away from some nameless faceless creator hypothesis. The leap of faith is a significant distance.
It's the believing in an unknown that is faith. Pure and simple. To cite atheists who may be just as guilty of this faith as an adherent of a specific faith would be to let a weasel guard the hen house. Few people are willing to admit that they have faith in something and also admit that there's no evidence of it. A believer will say, "I have faith, look at all the universe as evidence." An atheist will say, "I have faith that you're wrong, look at the absence of His activity in all the universe as evident". Of course, I side step the argument with my position we wouldn't necessarily know anything about the creator. Not even that he's still alive or even if we're a particularly good creation.
In all honesty, I would say most self-proclaimed atheists are mere agnostics that are only atheist towards specific faiths.
Look, a developer of a game may rightly be considered the game universe's God. In fact, not only did he create it but can also directly alter and influence it. Yet, if the game's inhabitants learned how exactly He did it they may not be that impressed even if grateful for existence.
Again, there is a great gap between yours and my mentality. When you think of God, you think of everything people of specific man-made faiths would tell you. When I think of God intellectually, I think of an engineer, a hobbyist, or something like that. I am literally demystifying the notion of God here from a scientific perspective. If you want to talk theology, I am well versed in it. But this is science we're discussing and I'm not about to bring any assumptions about personal qualities of a creator that we have no knowledge of just because a book someone wrote tells me to.
If you're going to be a proponent of science, you should just be concerned with truth and not how other people will reject or abuse it. Truth is ours. Nothing else. I couldn't care less what some anti-evolutionist thinks about how the universe was created if they don't even have the Earth's creation right. I mean, seriously, how much have we failed if we let these people cloud our judgement and reason?
To paraphrase Thomas Huxley, I wouldn't burn down the ship to kill cockroaches.
I don't understand why there being horrible possibilities or bad implications makes something less true or possible.
The part you got kind of wrong in my intention is this, super-evolved as I intended has nothing to do with time, per se. It merely meant that the being has evolved into something far superior (super, if you will) to our own species that to compare its traits to our own would make them superhuman subjectively. Say along the lines of intelligence or capability (a creature that can receive and transmit radio waves for example). I don't mean the equivalent of us in 10 billion years. Though, maybe? If we ever get off this rock. Perhaps the sentient computer life we eventually create.
In struggling to come up with a way that the universe could have come from nothing we see people failing to account for the subsets that make up the set (such as quantum forms that I mentioned Krauss failed to explain). Again, his argument is the equivalent of showing that planets pull towards each-other for no reason because gravity does it. Or that radio waves exist for no reason because a transmitter emits it. What's more is that a plausibility does not a fact make. Let's say we disregard where all the things came from to do the things that he says they do from nothing. This is one far stretch of a hypothesis compared to a very simple one: Someone created it.
Consider the idea that someone made this universe the same way a developer makes a game. Isn't that a far easier explanation for this universe's existence? I mean, sure, that someone magicked it into existence would be complex. But that someone like a developer designed the procedural generation that our universe follows (the laws of science) and then just hit the processing button. We have SOOOOooo many examples of this already. No Man's Sky being a very interesting one.
The problem is that scientists look at magic beings when they think of creators. Just like you in this argument, they have been so conditioned to think of a magical impossibility that they can't see a simple explanation for what it is. For example, some autistic programmer from universe 5 made a procedurally generated universe in his dad's basement one summer and it isn't even a particularly complex one. Seriously, forget the religious minded. Forget faith. Forget oppressive faith-based governments and sharia law. Come at the problem of existence with the assumption that we exist when we did not have to, that our existence is stable enough to support organic life and that something most certainly caused this existence as opposed to non-existence. Come with the observations that we make tiny universes all the time with our limited technology and that almost all things we've observed as a species since the beginning of our humble existence as sentient beings have had causes.
Yet somehow, with the weight of all of observable science and with a bulk of simple answers to the problem of existence I am somehow supposed to go with one of the least likely solutions of something from nothing? I mean, sure, several faiths are even less likely but taken metaphorically not as ridiculous as a less likely and more complex answer of something from nothing.
However, Krauss' argument still leaves it at something from something while calling something nothing as I've stated so many times before. You can't point to the fact that matter can come into and out of existence in a quantum vacuum without talking about where the quantum vacuum (a thing that actually has electromagnetic waves in it) came from or why any of the numerous principles of quantum mechanics exist in the form they do.
Basically, Krauss is just trying to explain a way that matter came into existence without explaining energy. Depending on how knowledgeable you are of science, saying that energy existed is the same as saying that matter existed because the two can be converted into the other. For some reason, Krauss thinks that Matter = Universe when it's only part of the equation and not even half (even succeeding to explain matter and energy would still leave principles of interaction, the laws of science themselves). It would be interesting to see how he thinks the temporary virtual particles created in a quantum vacuum would create macro matter.
I may have you at a disadvantage here though. Science in all its forms has always been a great passion of mine. By my second year of highschool I was already attending science courses in university from premed biology to chemistry and eventually more complex physics. I suppose that the only reason I'm not a professional scientist is that the kind of research scientist I'd had to have been would have been a university employee, something I've always hated the idea of.
Anyways, allow me to explain why quantum fluctuations are a poor mechanic to rely on.
Quantum fluctuations produce temporary virtual particles (though saying temporary and virtual is like saying "ATM machine"). It absolutely must be temporary due to the uncertainty principle requiring a short-lived state not having a well defined energy. The larger the energy source (aka, easier to define), the shorter the state in existence. So if our universe has any absolute value of energy at all besides 0 then we should have disappeared in less than a moment. Not even observable were there someone to observe it. The only thought people have is that maybe if our universe's total energy was 0 then we'd be able to persist. Maybe. We don't even know how that works with individual virtual particles which exist for so short a time that only the result of their interactions while around is observable.
Even then, even if this were true and that were possible then we still have a given that a space, a quantum vacuum that already had at least some electromagnetic energy had to have existed for the conditions of quantum fluctuation to occur.
You talk about God in the gap. Atheists are also guilty of "No God" in the gap. This is it, the pursuit of proof of no God by bending science and math in such a way where not-God may be possible and relying on highly unlikely scenarios that would literally require a God's eye view to verify. All energy=0? How the hell would we even begin verify that? Quantum vacuum produced from nothing by Quantum Gravity? We don't even have a working model of quantum gravity and quantum gravity itself is a thing...
Maybe that's a turtles all the way down scenario? Maybe quantum cheerios cause quantum gravity and quantum cheerios are of course a product of quantum potatoes even though science will initially think quantum whole wheat was the cause?
We shouldn't be bending our principles around the outcomes we expect. When we do that we get math that relies on the Earth being the center of the solar system rather than correct math.
But all of those possibilities were just to explain that we don't know jack about nill. Things don't have to be the way we think they are. A creator of our universe doesn't have to even know Earth specifically exists or even care about it if he/she/they do. I was, in a way, agreeing with you. God, if God continues to exist, doesn't have to be some all knowing, all powerful, omnipresent, everlasting being.
There are just sooo many possibilities and if we are going to accept that we don't know anything really about any creator then I can't confirm or deny those possibilities. I can just only explain other scenarios, like the example of some creatures that reproduce by creating an egg-universe in which the life inside will eventually become sentient and powerful enough to "hatch". I by no means believe any of the scenarios I've put forth. I'm just describing all the ones I can think of. If natural selection really does result in the most fit creatures for their environments, the leaving it unchecked should result in something that could ultimately result in a creature fit to survive outside of the universe in which it was created. Interfering would potentially damage the impact of natural selection and assist an unfit species from attaining the level of transcendence.
Anyways, people who aren't part of this discussion aside, the argument of complexity doesn't require a component of efficiency to be deemed sufficiently complex. If you find an inefficient clock in the woods that keeps poor track of time you don't assume that it came together randomly and naturally just because you've seen better clocks. Complexity just has to be complex enough to not appear random.
Additionally, scale alongside complexity magnifies the difficulty of efficiency because intricacy is often sacrificed at the benefit of scale while scale is often sacrificed at the benefit of intricacy. What I mean to say is that the larger the environment the less intricate the individual components tend to be. So, say you created an entire universe? Who gives two shits East of Sunday if the heart pumping in creatures living on a blue planet in one solar system amongst so many in just one galaxy amongst sooo many is inefficient as long as it gets the job done? All that really matters at that scale is that it all works and is stable enough to support that kind of complexity and intricacy.
In any event, evolution appears to be a strong enough principle to result in complex arrangements that aren't necessarily efficient. I see no reason to make this argument with biological matters. I do have serious questions about abiogenesis (sustained organic life from inorganic material) that the life in a test tube experiment fell ultra-short on but not enough to make any sort of claim that organic life isn't natural. I certainly see evidence of evolution so that's the side I'm leaning on until/unless evidence to the contrary is presented.
But keep in mind, I think we both agree that a step towards a specific named and personified deity is a larger step of faith than either the mere belief or disbelief in an unknown creator.
So you're forcing specific attributes on my side that aren't there. Hence my complaint that you're projecting specific deities on my side of the fence.
As above, I also don't know that a "perfect" universe was even a goal. Most of the time we just shoot for interesting rather than absolute perfection. In order to presume a bumbling or incompetent creator we would first have to make assumptions about His motivation for creation.
In any case, the "pimply kid in his parent's basement" you're proposing isn't "prime". Proposing that as an explanation is just shifting the goalposts back immensely to the beginning of that universe.[/quote] I literally used the pimply kid as an example that our universe's creator, should we have one, doesn't necessarily need to be the prime or unmoved mover. Um... so yeah, I agree that it isn't "prime".
But by necessity, we need to eventually hit a creator or universe in which cause and effect is not required as long as we're going to reject turtles all the way down. Something has to be the bottom. I was just making two points there:
1. That the creator of our universe doesn't necessarily have to abide by any of the laws of our universe.
2. That the creator of our universe could potentially abide by any or all of the laws of our universe.
So we simply don't know. It could be pimple jr. or it could be Dr. Who's final incarnation as a being with extreme knowledge, capability, and technology.
I'd be careful to distinguish between bias and belief. If I lean some way it is not necessarily out of bias. I would have no problem with the possibility that the universe can come from nothing if I believed that there was evidence of that. The Christian faith deals primarily with the creation of the Earth or more specifically (since the scriptures say He hovered over the surface of the Earth's waters before day 1) Him creating life on it. So you mentioned moving goal posts around, faith really makes it easy to do. So I would not have a conflict because of that.
I simply believe that it is far more likely that the universe was designed rather than popping into existence. Bias requires that my belief gives unfair weight to evidence on one side than another. I think I've been nothing but fair and willing to listen to all sides of the matter. Hopefully I've come across as at least somewhat knowledgeable on the matter.
Gay marriage is a fascinating subject. The US government instituted marriage licenses as a regular requirement towards the end of the civil war as a way to prevent interracial marriages and it just somehow persisted. Before then, common law marriage was accepted and licenses were only to make exceptions for what would otherwise be illegal (for example, if there was a mandated one-year mourning period after a spouse died but you really wanted to get remarried sooner you'd need to get a marriage license). I believe that marriage (a religious and cultural human practice that is not owned by any specific religion or culture) is such a fundamental human right that the government should not be able to issue anything with the term marriage on it. I'm all for the full abolishment of the marriage license and the unfair government control over this human right. Two consenting adults should be able to make that commitment, not ask permission.
I believe that much of the debate on allowing gay people to get married is due to the ignorant thinking that the marriage license relates directly to their own religion's or culture's expression of marriage. The word marriage being the obvious culprit for such an association. But hey, people are dumb. I'm sure they'd find a way to fight about it anyways. But it looks like people have been a lot less offended by civil unions so I'm led to believe that the term is more offensive than the actual rights they're fighting for.
Shame that people have to be all up in other people's business when it has nothing to do with them. Go ahead, be gay, be atheist, be whatever as long as I can be what I am too. If there is a God that weighs our actions and sorts us accordingly, then the scales are his business and not mine. The Bible certainly doesn't command we try to legislate people into Christianity if they don't believe. Oh well. At least I vote according to my conscience and reason rather than along party lines or whatever.
There's definitely at least some agnosticism in there as long as you're not claiming that God absolutely doesn't exist.Ingjald said:
What does any of this have to do with the protestant version of the Christian God? My entire discussion with you has been about an a-religious creator or creators of the Universe who may or may not have any impact in the universe today. I certainly never specified a specific deity or quality about said creator aside from that they created it through whatever means. So I'm not sure where this comment came from. You just have to not believe in a creator or local spirit deities or what have you.
You just defined Agnosticism twice. I'd personally call agnosticism and agnostic atheism synonyms. They're both ultimately living as though there is no God and being unsure whether that's correct or not. The difference between Atheism and agnosticism is the belief that God does not exist on the Atheist side. I also find it a bit of an affront to agnosticism which is a perfectly valid stance to say, "I don't know but I'm going to make a choice and be on this side" whereas agnosticism itself even if functionally atheistic in lifestyle is purely not purposefully living either way.
Even though Agnostic Atheism is used commonly to describe someone in your position, I do not believe it is a necessary distinction. It may exist purely because the existence of Agnostic theism needed a counter point (since it's someone who is unsure but lives as if there is a God, whatever that means) despite agnosticism already meaning that you live as if there's not a God because you neither confirm nor deny His existence.
And yet he called himself an antitheist because he didn't think atheism was a strong enough term for him. But damn, that was a brilliant man. The world is less for his loss even though I disagreed with his forays into religion.
Hitchens would have been the one to cite, not the Vlogger and whatnot, probably the next approximation of Dawkins. However, even though historical atheism did encompass all branches of non-theism, modern terminology has caught up. Again, everything from a Hindu to a pagan would have been considered atheist under the original use of the term. Language evolves and Agnosticism is now the stance for not believing in God while not taking the stance that God does not exist. Atheism is the stance for God does not exist.
But I digress, there is some significant semantics at work here thanks to the ambiguity that time has dealt to atheism.
Dawkins actually created this scale as a way to side step agnosticism and to establish that absolute belief in non-existence is no unlike absolute belief in existence. I'll give this to Dawkins, he's fair in a lot of ways but he understood that under the current definition of Agnosticism it basically covered everywhere in-between his spectrum. I think he decided to create this spectrum to prevent himself from being called an agnostic when he is everything but atheist.
But I'm actually doing the same thing Dawkins is here. Honestly, I'm actually debating with an Atheist (you) with Dawkin's own definition. This has been quite an entertaining thing to do, I assure you. I assume this doesn't happen that often but the entire point of Huxley's terming of Agnosticism was that he did not want to assume any position because both terms establish a belief in the affirmative or negative. So I can just as easily use Huxley here on his own term.
"When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis," ? had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble."
Thomas Henry Huxley (evolutionist, abolitionist, epic defender of the scientific process or reason) as you may or may not know, disliked theists and atheists alike and lamented being associated with atheists just because he wasn't a theist.
Believing that God does not exist only happens one way. Believing that God does exist can happen in a myriad of ways from believing in the Christian God to believing in a vague unknown being or beings that designed the universe and brought it forth using unknown technologies/abilities.
My complaint with dawkin's scale is that he centers it around specific religion based theology. In all honesty, I think it's because he views the position I've been espousing as a legitimate scientific hypothesis while viewing specific faiths as unnecessary leaps in logic. So perhaps he isn't even debating against what I'm saying at all? That he readily admits that "knowing there is not God" is as faith-based as "knowing there is one" is nice. We don't get that kind of honesty in most debaters.
So, you are almost certain that the universe was not created by someone or something? You feel that you have evidence sufficient to believe it is by far most likely to the 80%-99% certainty level? Bear in mind the hypothetical creator I've posited in this discussion when considering this and not specific faiths that may color one's view of it necessarily being magic.
I'm very interested in your answer here. I find it far more probably that given our universe's principles that we likely have a cause outside ourselves. I'd love to have "something from nothing" explained as a more likely scenario and I'm not being sarcastic in this sentence like I know it sounds like. I've spoken with a lot of people over the years and it almost always comes down to a debate against religion rather than the noble pursuit of truth.
I personally believe that most people would suspect handiwork given all the information rather than pure randomness. But I believe a lot of us have been marred or harmed by the ignorant adherents of religion in a way that has truly biased us against the general idea of it even though it's quickly becoming within our own capabilities. Had I been born before virtualization technologies existed, I may have been far closer to the middle intellectually if not even over to the side of atheism. But that I see miniature universes created and destroyed, all with man-made logic and rules, I have a harder time believing that we aren't designed than anything else. That I believe our technology is approaching a day where we can create immense and complex universes digitally makes me really wonder about the likelihood that other beings would desire to do the same and what the likelihood would be that we're the first.
Our universe's principles make me doubt that we're the first and in my eyes almost demand some sort of cause or grand explanation side stepping it.
Eh, they seem to be losing power rapidly. In my opinion, they're only a threat to some social issues and generally stay the hell out of science. I'm still mad about stem cells though, as the only exception I can think where religion has interfered with modern science in recent memory. I mean, I get that if you believe that a fetus is human life (it is genetically human and organically alive by all definitions albeit not sentient) then you're going to be against abortion. But to waste what comes out of it is foolish at best. I mean, what a backhanded way to throw a tantrum at failing to legislate morality, you know?
Still, let's be clear, these are individual people and not a religion itself. Many Christians have no problem with Stem Cell research. Again, it's the people who have a problem that will always be the loudest. To generate a prejudice about a people based on the squeakiest of wheels would be to err in judgment of the whole cart.
We need not and likely cannot disprove these faiths. We can only strive to make sure we live in a world where one's lifestyle may be distinct from another's lifestyle without suffering a bloodied nose.
Look, I get the fear. I understand the concern that giving even a foot towards the idea of a creator of any sort is giving a foot to adherents of specific offensive faiths. But the pursuit of science and truth should never be about what it may lead to and only what it does and is. I would say that the belief in a specific deity, particularly a personal one that is never actually personal, is miles and miles and miles away from some nameless faceless creator hypothesis. The leap of faith is a significant distance.
Believing that any kind of creator/s does/do not exist and never has/have is every bit as big a leap of logic as believing that God does exist and that His name is Ted. It's a wild jump away from the facts we have at hand. That the universe exists and little else.
It's the believing in an unknown that is faith. Pure and simple. To cite atheists who may be just as guilty of this faith as an adherent of a specific faith would be to let a weasel guard the hen house. Few people are willing to admit that they have faith in something and also admit that there's no evidence of it. A believer will say, "I have faith, look at all the universe as evidence." An atheist will say, "I have faith that you're wrong, look at the absence of His activity in all the universe as evident". Of course, I side step the argument with my position we wouldn't necessarily know anything about the creator. Not even that he's still alive or even if we're a particularly good creation.
In all honesty, I would say most self-proclaimed atheists are mere agnostics that are only atheist towards specific faiths.
This is because you have a predefined notion of God and that he somehow has to be magic to be God which is already an impossibility as the term "magic" implies. So there is no criteria which can ever be met to supplicate your demands of God. In reality, all a being needs to be deemed God is to have created our universe. Nothing more necessarily but nothing less absolutely. In the Christian faith He needs to be "this", in the Islamic faith He needs to be "That", but none of that matters as long as the being is the one (if he/she was just one) that created the universe as we know it. Supernatural or natural means aside, it does not matter. If you are the one who created the universe, you are its creator, it's God. It exists because of you and would not have existed without you.
Look, a developer of a game may rightly be considered the game universe's God. In fact, not only did he create it but can also directly alter and influence it. Yet, if the game's inhabitants learned how exactly He did it they may not be that impressed even if grateful for existence.
What has any of this to do with me? I am merely positing that our universe came from something rather than nothing. Nearly all of observable science points to causes to all of our effects and to claim nothing rather than something is to shake off scientific observation in a vain attempt to shake of the Muslim religion's boogy man deity which has nothing to do with my comment. Your definition of God is that of a magical being whereas my definition is that of a being who, if found, would be real and therefore natural albeit alien to our universe purely because of the presupposed existence.
Again, there is a great gap between yours and my mentality. When you think of God, you think of everything people of specific man-made faiths would tell you. When I think of God intellectually, I think of an engineer, a hobbyist, or something like that. I am literally demystifying the notion of God here from a scientific perspective. If you want to talk theology, I am well versed in it. But this is science we're discussing and I'm not about to bring any assumptions about personal qualities of a creator that we have no knowledge of just because a book someone wrote tells me to.
Let them believe what they will. What does that have to do with the plausibility of our own universe's design? Just because they don't see their own God in our explanation (or even if they do) and just because they move goal posts or find larger gaps to fit a magic being in doesn't have anything to do with truth.
If you're going to be a proponent of science, you should just be concerned with truth and not how other people will reject or abuse it. Truth is ours. Nothing else. I couldn't care less what some anti-evolutionist thinks about how the universe was created if they don't even have the Earth's creation right. I mean, seriously, how much have we failed if we let these people cloud our judgement and reason?
To paraphrase Thomas Huxley, I wouldn't burn down the ship to kill cockroaches.
Yes, I can imagine the implications, as you just did, and it will eventually happen when technology makes it viable for us to make.
I don't understand why there being horrible possibilities or bad implications makes something less true or possible.
Eh, I'll stick with the term super-evolved. I get that you dislike it or something like that but you also basically understood the intention of my comment which is the entire point of language. To convey a point accurately and succinctly.
The part you got kind of wrong in my intention is this, super-evolved as I intended has nothing to do with time, per se. It merely meant that the being has evolved into something far superior (super, if you will) to our own species that to compare its traits to our own would make them superhuman subjectively. Say along the lines of intelligence or capability (a creature that can receive and transmit radio waves for example). I don't mean the equivalent of us in 10 billion years. Though, maybe? If we ever get off this rock. Perhaps the sentient computer life we eventually create.
The way I see it is that the atheist camp is having the same problems that the faith camp is. They're starting with the assumption that something is true and then trying to gather information to prove it. This is not the way the scientific community should run experiments. Assumptions should not be made. Hypothesis should be tested.
In struggling to come up with a way that the universe could have come from nothing we see people failing to account for the subsets that make up the set (such as quantum forms that I mentioned Krauss failed to explain). Again, his argument is the equivalent of showing that planets pull towards each-other for no reason because gravity does it. Or that radio waves exist for no reason because a transmitter emits it. What's more is that a plausibility does not a fact make. Let's say we disregard where all the things came from to do the things that he says they do from nothing. This is one far stretch of a hypothesis compared to a very simple one: Someone created it.
Consider the idea that someone made this universe the same way a developer makes a game. Isn't that a far easier explanation for this universe's existence? I mean, sure, that someone magicked it into existence would be complex. But that someone like a developer designed the procedural generation that our universe follows (the laws of science) and then just hit the processing button. We have SOOOOooo many examples of this already. No Man's Sky being a very interesting one.
The problem is that scientists look at magic beings when they think of creators. Just like you in this argument, they have been so conditioned to think of a magical impossibility that they can't see a simple explanation for what it is. For example, some autistic programmer from universe 5 made a procedurally generated universe in his dad's basement one summer and it isn't even a particularly complex one. Seriously, forget the religious minded. Forget faith. Forget oppressive faith-based governments and sharia law. Come at the problem of existence with the assumption that we exist when we did not have to, that our existence is stable enough to support organic life and that something most certainly caused this existence as opposed to non-existence. Come with the observations that we make tiny universes all the time with our limited technology and that almost all things we've observed as a species since the beginning of our humble existence as sentient beings have had causes.
Yet somehow, with the weight of all of observable science and with a bulk of simple answers to the problem of existence I am somehow supposed to go with one of the least likely solutions of something from nothing? I mean, sure, several faiths are even less likely but taken metaphorically not as ridiculous as a less likely and more complex answer of something from nothing.
Oh, sure, I absolutely agree that we're dealing with an extreme lack of information and an extreme inability to gather what information may exist.
However, Krauss' argument still leaves it at something from something while calling something nothing as I've stated so many times before. You can't point to the fact that matter can come into and out of existence in a quantum vacuum without talking about where the quantum vacuum (a thing that actually has electromagnetic waves in it) came from or why any of the numerous principles of quantum mechanics exist in the form they do.
Basically, Krauss is just trying to explain a way that matter came into existence without explaining energy. Depending on how knowledgeable you are of science, saying that energy existed is the same as saying that matter existed because the two can be converted into the other. For some reason, Krauss thinks that Matter = Universe when it's only part of the equation and not even half (even succeeding to explain matter and energy would still leave principles of interaction, the laws of science themselves). It would be interesting to see how he thinks the temporary virtual particles created in a quantum vacuum would create macro matter.
I may have you at a disadvantage here though. Science in all its forms has always been a great passion of mine. By my second year of highschool I was already attending science courses in university from premed biology to chemistry and eventually more complex physics. I suppose that the only reason I'm not a professional scientist is that the kind of research scientist I'd had to have been would have been a university employee, something I've always hated the idea of.
Anyways, allow me to explain why quantum fluctuations are a poor mechanic to rely on.
Quantum fluctuations produce temporary virtual particles (though saying temporary and virtual is like saying "ATM machine"). It absolutely must be temporary due to the uncertainty principle requiring a short-lived state not having a well defined energy. The larger the energy source (aka, easier to define), the shorter the state in existence. So if our universe has any absolute value of energy at all besides 0 then we should have disappeared in less than a moment. Not even observable were there someone to observe it. The only thought people have is that maybe if our universe's total energy was 0 then we'd be able to persist. Maybe. We don't even know how that works with individual virtual particles which exist for so short a time that only the result of their interactions while around is observable.
Even then, even if this were true and that were possible then we still have a given that a space, a quantum vacuum that already had at least some electromagnetic energy had to have existed for the conditions of quantum fluctuation to occur.
You talk about God in the gap. Atheists are also guilty of "No God" in the gap. This is it, the pursuit of proof of no God by bending science and math in such a way where not-God may be possible and relying on highly unlikely scenarios that would literally require a God's eye view to verify. All energy=0? How the hell would we even begin verify that? Quantum vacuum produced from nothing by Quantum Gravity? We don't even have a working model of quantum gravity and quantum gravity itself is a thing...
Maybe that's a turtles all the way down scenario? Maybe quantum cheerios cause quantum gravity and quantum cheerios are of course a product of quantum potatoes even though science will initially think quantum whole wheat was the cause?
We shouldn't be bending our principles around the outcomes we expect. When we do that we get math that relies on the Earth being the center of the solar system rather than correct math.
I'm not going to lie, his writings actually have influenced my way of thinking about the universe and our position in it (that, despite the ending of the first book, we are not necessarily important in any way nor that there is necessarily any meaning to it all that would be meaningful to us in the slightest).Also, brownie-points for HHGTTG-reference. Would that I could summon a babelfish...^^
I'm saying that deists believe that God does not interact. This is their stance and assumption. I believe that even that is too much of an assumption. That's why I made the comments that we may just not be relevant to direct interaction. God may also not be all-knowing and even be aware that this one pebble in the universe has life while being directly involved in other solar systems and galaxies. We can only state that we have not observed direct real-time interaction from God on our planet or observed in space from any of our current means. We also haven't observed alien life.
I didn't posit or reject multiple creators. Polytheism being the belief and worship of multiple gods. It's possible that it was a committee, joke or not. Highly complex environments usually are the result of a development team or whatever else. Hopefully our universe is complex and not a shoddily built high school computer project. Heh.
But all of those possibilities were just to explain that we don't know jack about nill. Things don't have to be the way we think they are. A creator of our universe doesn't have to even know Earth specifically exists or even care about it if he/she/they do. I was, in a way, agreeing with you. God, if God continues to exist, doesn't have to be some all knowing, all powerful, omnipresent, everlasting being.
There are just sooo many possibilities and if we are going to accept that we don't know anything really about any creator then I can't confirm or deny those possibilities. I can just only explain other scenarios, like the example of some creatures that reproduce by creating an egg-universe in which the life inside will eventually become sentient and powerful enough to "hatch". I by no means believe any of the scenarios I've put forth. I'm just describing all the ones I can think of. If natural selection really does result in the most fit creatures for their environments, the leaving it unchecked should result in something that could ultimately result in a creature fit to survive outside of the universe in which it was created. Interfering would potentially damage the impact of natural selection and assist an unfit species from attaining the level of transcendence.
Yep, we sure do know a lot of ignorant folks who argue both ways when it is convenient to them. Are they in this thread? Let's get them!
Anyways, people who aren't part of this discussion aside, the argument of complexity doesn't require a component of efficiency to be deemed sufficiently complex. If you find an inefficient clock in the woods that keeps poor track of time you don't assume that it came together randomly and naturally just because you've seen better clocks. Complexity just has to be complex enough to not appear random.
Additionally, scale alongside complexity magnifies the difficulty of efficiency because intricacy is often sacrificed at the benefit of scale while scale is often sacrificed at the benefit of intricacy. What I mean to say is that the larger the environment the less intricate the individual components tend to be. So, say you created an entire universe? Who gives two shits East of Sunday if the heart pumping in creatures living on a blue planet in one solar system amongst so many in just one galaxy amongst sooo many is inefficient as long as it gets the job done? All that really matters at that scale is that it all works and is stable enough to support that kind of complexity and intricacy.
In any event, evolution appears to be a strong enough principle to result in complex arrangements that aren't necessarily efficient. I see no reason to make this argument with biological matters. I do have serious questions about abiogenesis (sustained organic life from inorganic material) that the life in a test tube experiment fell ultra-short on but not enough to make any sort of claim that organic life isn't natural. I certainly see evidence of evolution so that's the side I'm leaning on until/unless evidence to the contrary is presented.
That something can be written about doesn't make it any less plausible.
There being no creator is an untestable hypothesis believed against a lack of evidence and is therefore a matter of faith.
But keep in mind, I think we both agree that a step towards a specific named and personified deity is a larger step of faith than either the mere belief or disbelief in an unknown creator.
You keep bringing up the idea that the creator of this universe didn't create a flawless universe. Ergo, it feels like you're trying to discredit my position because you think I'm assuming that a creator must be perfect or all knowing.
So you're forcing specific attributes on my side that aren't there. Hence my complaint that you're projecting specific deities on my side of the fence.
As above, I also don't know that a "perfect" universe was even a goal. Most of the time we just shoot for interesting rather than absolute perfection. In order to presume a bumbling or incompetent creator we would first have to make assumptions about His motivation for creation.
Pond scum was just a random example. I own a house with a pond. It is presently infested with duckweed which I am raising tilapia in to hopefully keep the amount of duckweed down. So pond scum is on the brain. Nothing more.
Sure, but I'm uncertain what your point it here. Has science made the claim that there was necessarily nothing before our universe? That our universe must necessarily be the whole of existence with nothing preceding it? Wild speculation there, one that our foremost minds are rapidly speculating against. The existence of the universe via a random process and the existence of the universe via a creator both lend themselves to the concept of multiple universes.
In any case, the "pimply kid in his parent's basement" you're proposing isn't "prime". Proposing that as an explanation is just shifting the goalposts back immensely to the beginning of that universe.[/quote] I literally used the pimply kid as an example that our universe's creator, should we have one, doesn't necessarily need to be the prime or unmoved mover. Um... so yeah, I agree that it isn't "prime".
But by necessity, we need to eventually hit a creator or universe in which cause and effect is not required as long as we're going to reject turtles all the way down. Something has to be the bottom. I was just making two points there:
1. That the creator of our universe doesn't necessarily have to abide by any of the laws of our universe.
2. That the creator of our universe could potentially abide by any or all of the laws of our universe.
So we simply don't know. It could be pimple jr. or it could be Dr. Who's final incarnation as a being with extreme knowledge, capability, and technology.
It does motivate me to do "good" in society and it also gives me a way to feel closer to my belief that our universe has a creator. However, should it come down to a heaven/hell scenario I am concerned that my faith would be found lacking in lieu of my distinction between intellect and faith. In any event. Pure and undefiled religion in the eyes of God, is found in helping orphans and widows in their time of need.
I'd be careful to distinguish between bias and belief. If I lean some way it is not necessarily out of bias. I would have no problem with the possibility that the universe can come from nothing if I believed that there was evidence of that. The Christian faith deals primarily with the creation of the Earth or more specifically (since the scriptures say He hovered over the surface of the Earth's waters before day 1) Him creating life on it. So you mentioned moving goal posts around, faith really makes it easy to do. So I would not have a conflict because of that.
I simply believe that it is far more likely that the universe was designed rather than popping into existence. Bias requires that my belief gives unfair weight to evidence on one side than another. I think I've been nothing but fair and willing to listen to all sides of the matter. Hopefully I've come across as at least somewhat knowledgeable on the matter.
Exactly my point. Why the religious feel that others must believe and behave the same as them is beyond me. How Christianity went from an incredibly oppressed people to oppressors is astounding to me. What a shame. Surely a religion about love and turning the other cheek when confronted by non-Christians should be turned into a spread-by-the-sword religion and persecution of others [/sad-sarcasm]
Gay marriage is a fascinating subject. The US government instituted marriage licenses as a regular requirement towards the end of the civil war as a way to prevent interracial marriages and it just somehow persisted. Before then, common law marriage was accepted and licenses were only to make exceptions for what would otherwise be illegal (for example, if there was a mandated one-year mourning period after a spouse died but you really wanted to get remarried sooner you'd need to get a marriage license). I believe that marriage (a religious and cultural human practice that is not owned by any specific religion or culture) is such a fundamental human right that the government should not be able to issue anything with the term marriage on it. I'm all for the full abolishment of the marriage license and the unfair government control over this human right. Two consenting adults should be able to make that commitment, not ask permission.
I believe that much of the debate on allowing gay people to get married is due to the ignorant thinking that the marriage license relates directly to their own religion's or culture's expression of marriage. The word marriage being the obvious culprit for such an association. But hey, people are dumb. I'm sure they'd find a way to fight about it anyways. But it looks like people have been a lot less offended by civil unions so I'm led to believe that the term is more offensive than the actual rights they're fighting for.
Shame that people have to be all up in other people's business when it has nothing to do with them. Go ahead, be gay, be atheist, be whatever as long as I can be what I am too. If there is a God that weighs our actions and sorts us accordingly, then the scales are his business and not mine. The Bible certainly doesn't command we try to legislate people into Christianity if they don't believe. Oh well. At least I vote according to my conscience and reason rather than along party lines or whatever.
Well, trolls are gonna troll. I would only request that you not follow prejudice with more prejudice. Though, I would certainly question the sample pool of that poll. Atheists and rapists? Haha, the hell?
