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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:

The truth is that we don't understand what caused the singularity to expand rapidly some 13.73bn years ago; we do understand (with a suitably great degree of certainty) what happened thereafter and there is neither necessity nor evidence for supernatural/divine involvement.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Did you also know that the original founder of the Big Bang Theory was a Catholic Priest?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Penny S: Super Earth, not Earth, radius 1.61 Earth. I was going for actual close radial measurements, whch I thought you were predicting.

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Ah, you have a very strict definition of 'Earth-sized'. In that case I agree, none have been confirmed of Earth size yet.

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Penny S: Locked rotation - look at work by Joshi, Haberle, Doyle, Heath. I suppose it is speculation, but it is peer reviewed speculation with the maths done and everything.

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Yes, I agree with you about the locked rotation thing. But what you are saying about the effects this may have on continents, oceanic and atmospheric circulation, and their implications on the existence of life, there are still a lot of things we don't know about that.

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Originally posted by SusanDoris:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Did you also know that the original founder of the Big Bang Theory was a Catholic Priest?

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That is interesting, but it does not negate the current thinking on the Big Bang theory, which is constantly being looked at, revised and tweaked as more knowledge becomes available.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't see how there could be evidence for divine involvement, since 'evidence' generally refers to naturalistic stuff. How can you find physical evidence for something non-physical?

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Originally posted by Evensong:

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Originally posted by SusanDoris:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Did you also know that the original founder of the Big Bang Theory was a Catholic Priest?

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That is interesting, but it does not negate the current thinking on the Big Bang theory, which is constantly being looked at, revised and tweaked as more knowledge becomes available.

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No it doesn't negate the thinking of the Big Bang Theory.

Which is precisely my point.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't see how there could be evidence for divine involvement, since 'evidence' generally refers to naturalistic stuff. How can you find physical evidence for something non-physical?

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Quite right. You can't.

Atheists are a bit confused about this tho. They essentially have problems with their methodology when it comes to evidence. They seem to be able to prove what they have not tested.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't see how there could be evidence for divine involvement, since 'evidence' generally refers to naturalistic stuff. How can you find physical evidence for something non-physical?

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

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Originally posted by Evensong:

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Originally posted by SusanDoris:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Did you also know that the original founder of the Big Bang Theory was a Catholic Priest?

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That is interesting, but it does not negate the current thinking on the Big Bang theory, which is constantly being looked at, revised and tweaked as more knowledge becomes available.

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No it doesn't negate the thinking of the Big Bang Theory.

Which is precisely my point.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't see how there could be evidence for divine involvement, since 'evidence' generally refers to naturalistic stuff. How can you find physical evidence for something non-physical?

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Quite right. You can't.

Atheists are a bit confused about this tho. They essentially have problems with their methodology when it comes to evidence. They seem to be able to prove what they have not tested.

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I think lots of people are confused about this. But it does depend on how you define 'evidence'. If you define it as scientific evidence or naturalistic evidence, then there cannot be any for God, unless you think God is a sort of big ugly bloke.

But you might define evidence just as anything which supports an argument, in which case it's more complicated. I tend to call this 'grounds' to avoid ambiguity. Thus a nice sunny day might be grounds for believing in God, but it's not evidence.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't see how there could be evidence for divine involvement, since 'evidence' generally refers to naturalistic stuff. How can you find physical evidence for something non-physical?

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And here is the thing. Science and religion are working on two different things. Attempting to combine is, ultimately, ridiculous.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
No necessity to understand cause and purpose?

That's a very trusting, accepting and pacifistic position to hold. Not very inquiring or scientific at all.

Why, some might even call it a faith position.

Some might be in danger of being considered coquettish then mightn’t they?

In terms of why there was a singularity;-

As to its cause – Since there is no possibility that I could work that out it is currently irrelevant to me.

As to purpose - it was a singularity – it can’t have purpose.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Did you know that when the Big Bang theory was first formulated, alot of people didn't like it because it seemed to agree to much with the creation stories in Genesis? The previous cosmology rested on the idea that the universe was eternal (based on Aristotelian philosophy), whereas the BBT implied it had a beginning and therefore accorded with Genesis 1 and Jewish/Christian cosmology. and, to exactly the same extent, also accorded with virtually every other creation myth ever invented by mankind – how is this relevant?

Now however, it seems to be used AGAINST the idea that God created the world. The idea that the universe was created by a conscious act is a hypothesis. There is no evidence to support this hypothesis. There are no places in the equations where we have to put a large set of brackets and fill them with the words then something supernatural/miraculous occurs. The idea that God made the world/universe is the unnecessary hypothesis of a creator god . Since it cannot be proven wrong there is an infinitesimally small possibility that it might be right – so what?

Did you also know that the original founder of the Big Bang Theory was a Catholic Priest? Plenty of very clever people are religious – though, I understand, very few who are professional cosmologists, physicists or biologists. Degrees of intelligence may inform the style of that religiosity but it seems to be some other factor(s) which enable faith.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't see how there could be evidence for divine involvement, since 'evidence' generally refers to naturalistic stuff. How can you find physical evidence for something non-physical?
Different tangent but how could something non-physical affect things that are physical? Matter is affected by four forces – gravity, electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces. Those four forces account for every effect and there is no room for any other. Additionally – were there a fifth we would detect its effects and be able to measure it.

“My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.” population geneticist J. B. S. Haldane

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Atheists are a bit confused about this tho. They essentially have problems with their methodology when it comes to evidence. They seem to be able to prove what they have not tested. Sometimes a proof can consist of rational deduction from known facts – Known facts NOT wishful thinking.

However – I think you are failing to differentiate between we do not believe and we can prove to be untrue. It is not possible to disprove the existence of god but since the concept is both unsupported and unnecessary the burden of proof is on you. I’m sure you’re familiar with Russell's teapot (if you check Wikipedia - Garvey is trying to redefine atheism, Wood relies on his peculiar interpretation of “reasonable”, Reitan’s “difference” is irrelevant and Chamberlain thinks he can equate Winston Churchill with said teapot).

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
But you might define evidence just as anything which supports an argument, in which case it's more complicated. I tend to call this 'grounds' to avoid ambiguity. Thus a nice sunny day might be grounds for believing in God, but it's not evidence. But only to the same extent as it is “grounds” for believing in Thor, Minerva, Ganesh or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

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HughWillRidmee: It is not possible to disprove the existence of god but since the concept is both unsupported and unnecessary the burden of proof is on you.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
It is not possible to disprove the existence of god but since the concept is both unsupported and unnecessary the burden of proof is on you.

The concept of God is extremely well supported unless you discount all of history and personal experience as fiction. Which is acceptable but completely unreasonable.

The concept is not unnecessary. First cause is very necessary. The fact that you're not interested in it is irrelevant. But logically, it is necessary. God creating the world is the more reasonable option than nothing creating the world and it's all a matter of chance.

So the burden of proof lies on you.

Oh dear – all of history? – including the seventy-thousand years or more of modern humanity prior to the concept of a single god developing out of a plethora of gods, goddesses, demons, spirits, earth-mother etc. Many people have believed in some sort of supernatural power(s) – even if you consider them all to be ideas of god it doesn’t mean that they were right. Until a few hundred years ago people knew that the sun went round the earth – they could see its path during the day and there it was, back at the start again, the next morning. Does the fact that it was widely accepted (and taught by the christian church) make it true? Does belief in Odin or Oceanus, Gaia or Ganesh support your concept of god? Lots of people got it wrong, lots of people still get it wrong – but most religious people, whatever their belief, reckon they’ve got the true deal - do you? Why should your experience be valid whilst Mohammed’s or Brigham Young’s, Ceasar’s or Epicurus’s (where it differs from yours) is not?


Personal experience as fiction. Well yes actually it probably is. We know that memory is not like a video, it’s more a few bullet points which we weave into a guesswork story when we “remember” – that’s why eye-witness testimony is the worst possible evidence in terms of the judicial process. What we call memory is easily modified by suggestion – students who can’t recall being abused as children when questioned about it gave graphic accounts of the abuse six months later when re-questioned etc. etc..


I don’t know whether there was an external cause to the Big Bang or not – I don’t see that it’s likely that I will ever know if there was let alone, if there was, what it was. Are you defining god as the cause, if so where did the cause come from? You say first cause as if your god did not have a cause - yet you say that cause is logically necessary. Either keep your cake or eat it, or explain to me how you can do both simultaneously.


Even if we found that the universe had been created it wouldn’t be evidence for your god – it might, based on exactly the same evidence (it’s here), have been coughed up by a diseased eight foot high rabbit in a slaughter house in another of the eleven dimensions that string theory predicts (though eleven is a consensus – some say fewer or more). Difference is, I don’t actually think it was an eight foot rabbit so I don’t have to prove it was, you on the other hand........

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
I see no reason why I would want to prove the existence of God.
Comment was addressed Evensong.

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HughWillRidmee: Comment was addressed Evensong.

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:


Oh dear – all of history? – including the seventy-thousand years or more of modern humanity prior to the concept of a single god developing out of a plethora of gods, goddesses, demons, spirits, earth-mother etc. Many people have believed in some sort of supernatural power(s) – even if you consider them all to be ideas of god it doesn’t mean that they were right. Until a few hundred years ago people knew that the sun went round the earth – they could see its path during the day and there it was, back at the start again, the next morning. Does the fact that it was widely accepted (and taught by the christian church) make it true? Does belief in Odin or Oceanus, Gaia or Ganesh support your concept of god? Lots of people got it wrong, lots of people still get it wrong – but most religious people, whatever their belief, reckon they’ve got the true deal - do you? Why should your experience be valid whilst Mohammed’s or Brigham Young’s, Ceasar’s or Epicurus’s (where it differs from yours) is not?

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:


Personal experience as fiction. Well yes actually it probably is. We know that memory is not like a video, it’s more a few bullet points which we weave into a guesswork story when we “remember” – that’s why eye-witness testimony is the worst possible evidence in terms of the judicial process. What we call memory is easily modified by suggestion – students who can’t recall being abused as children when questioned about it gave graphic accounts of the abuse six months later when re-questioned etc. etc..

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
[QB]
Are you defining god as the cause, if so where did the cause come from? You say first cause as if your god did not have a cause - yet you say that cause is logically necessary. Either keep your cake or eat it, or explain to me how you can do both simultaneously.

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
[QB]

Even if we found that the universe had been created it wouldn’t be evidence for your god

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Sure it would. As above. It's the definition of God.

Whether its my limited understanding of God or not is irrelevant. If I found (say at death?) it was a diseased eight foot high rabbit I would indeed have to acknowledge it as God.

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
[QB] Difference is, I don’t actually think it was an eight foot rabbit so I don’t have to prove it was, you on the other hand........

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't see how there could be evidence for divine involvement, since 'evidence' generally refers to naturalistic stuff. How can you find physical evidence for something non-physical?

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And here is the thing. Science and religion are working on two different things. Attempting to combine is, ultimately, ridiculous.

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To make the conclusion that God does not exist, when God has not been factored into the experiment in the first place, makes an inconsistent leap. “Methodological atheism jumps to ontological atheism with no explanation.”

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what would count as evidence of the supernatural or of God? And if it turns out there is not any sort of event, fact, datum, or combination of facts that would count as evidence of the supernatural or of God, then how is this stance distinguishable from a priori atheism, rather than a result of a survey of the pertinent evidence? And if it is indistinguishable from a priori atheism, why countenance the objection seriously at all?

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee: I don’t know whether there was an external cause to the Big Bang or not – I don’t see that it’s likely that I will ever know if there was let alone, if there was, what it was. Are you defining god as the cause, if so where did the cause come from? You say first cause as if your god did not have a cause - yet you say that cause is logically necessary. Either keep your cake or eat it, or explain to me how you can do both simultaneously.

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Originally posted by Yorick:
Could some clever theist offer an answer to this? I’ve often wondered about it, but don’t recall ever seeing a satisfactory answer. I’ve got my pain au chocolat and coffee, and it would be nice to have this sorted out whilst I enjoy them.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Let's invert the argument. Assume that there must be a cause to everything. At some point on the chain, I don't care where, designate one cause as "god." Fine. Now go a step backward. Oh, another cause! We must have designated the wrong thing as god. Keep going back... and back... and back... until you find an uncaused cause you can designate as "god". But wait! We can't do that, because we've already postulated an endless chain of causes! ("a cause to everything"). The argument disintegrates.

The problem is this: if everything has a cause--strictly everything--then there IS no first, uncaused cause, and therefore nothing worthy of the name "god/God". Either causality ends up being a vast Moebius loop, or ... well, as far as I can make out, it can't exist. Because how could the whole train of causes ever have gotten started? Eternal regression. And the Moebius loop idea forces the question of how the whole loop got there in the first place--which leads us back to the idea of a creator-of-causes who is somehow outside of that loop of causality.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
First cause is logically necessary in a time/space universe.

God created time/space.

First cause no longer applies to eternity.

Easy

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Originally posted by Yorick:
Meh. I think the problem here is that, as we emerged from our cave one day and saw lightning set a tree on fire, we invented God to explain it, and ever since then we’ve been doing all kinds of silly intellectual cartwheels to make ourselves not look like arses for continuing to believe it.

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Yorick: You don't need to posit a cause for gravitation or the mass of a hydrogen nucleus or the value of fundamental constants. They just are.

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Originally posted by Yorick:
I think it's a good question, Q, that you answered yourself. It's the third lemma of your Munchhausen trilemma. Scientific fact is axiomatic. You don't need to posit a cause for gravitation or the mass of a hydrogen nucleus or the value of fundamental constants. They just are.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Yorick: You don't need to posit a cause for gravitation or the mass of a hydrogen nucleus or the value of fundamental constants. They just are.

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Why?

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quetzalcoatl: One reason is that you will end up with an infinite regress, if every term has to be explained, since the explanation itself will need to be explained. Hence, the Munchhausen trilemma as above. It is OK to start with an unexplained term, or axiom.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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quetzalcoatl: One reason is that you will end up with an infinite regress, if every term has to be explained, since the explanation itself will need to be explained. Hence, the Munchhausen trilemma as above. It is OK to start with an unexplained term, or axiom.

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I don't believe in the First Cause as a convincing argument for the existence of God, but I find 'it just is' an unsatisfactory answer too.

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Yorick: Do you need to be satisfied with the value of the speed of light?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Yorick: Do you need to be satisfied with the value of the speed of light?

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To the question "Why does the light have the speed it has?" the answer "It just does" is unsatisfactory to me.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Yorick: Do you need to be satisfied with the value of the speed of light?

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To the question "Why does the light have the speed it has?" the answer "It just does" is unsatisfactory to me.

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Yorick: I wonder what you make of the answer to the question, 'what's two and two?'

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Karl: Liberal Backslider: Now, you could then ask why μ0 has the value it has.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
One of the problems here is apparently the idea that every explanation must also have an explanation. I'm not sure where this idea comes from, but it seems quite an odd one to me.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Yorick: I wonder what you make of the answer to the question, 'what's two and two?'

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Four. But I don't see why that is relevant?

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Karl: Liberal Backslider: Now, you could then ask why μ0 has the value it has.

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Exactly. You just shifted the question to another fundamental constant.

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Karl: Liberal Backslider: True, but as I pointed out, the answer to that is not "it just is"; it's "we don't know". "We don't know" is a bit annoying, but there's plenty of things in that category. Science is full of 'em.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Yorick: I wonder what you make of the answer to the question, 'what's two and two?'

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Four. But I don't see why that is relevant?

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Originally posted by Yorick:

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Yorick: I wonder what you make of the answer to the question, 'what's two and two?'

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Four. But I don't see why that is relevant?

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It's a matter of satisfaction, isn't it? You say you find the fact that the constant c is 'just what it is' to be unsatisfactory when this doesn't answer why it is what it is. But that's a different question altogether.

2 + 2 = 4. It just is, mathematically speaking. Why doesn't come into it.

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Yorick: 2 + 2 = 4. It just is, mathematically speaking. Why doesn't come into it.

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Originally posted by Yorick:

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
I don’t know whether there was an external cause to the Big Bang or not – I don’t see that it’s likely that I will ever know if there was let alone, if there was, what it was. Are you defining god as the cause, if so where did the cause come from? You say first cause as if your god did not have a cause - yet you say that cause is logically necessary. Either keep your cake or eat it, or explain to me how you can do both simultaneously.

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This. Could some clever theist offer an answer to this? I’ve often wondered about it, but don’t recall ever seeing a satisfactory answer. I’ve got my pain au chocolat and coffee, and it would be nice to have this sorted out whilst I enjoy them.

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I consider this argument to be valid, i.e., I consider the existence of the (metaphysical) God to have been proven by it beyond reasonable doubt.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
One of the problems here is apparently the idea that every explanation must also have an explanation. I'm not sure where this idea comes from, but it seems quite an odd one to me.

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Truly? It would appear to be a fundamental human attribute. If we humans did not have this drive to understand, we would not be having this Internet discussion. We would still be just another food source for leopards.
We are as we are because we* have this desire to learn.

*"we" as a function of species. There are obviously individuals who benefit from group membership.

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Originally posted by Tortuf:
Yesterday I was driving in the rain, thinking mostly about how wet I was going to get going into the grocery store.

Then it occurred to me that I live in a world where water is purified by evaporation, driven hundreds of miles by winds that seem to come out of nowhere, and then released on a landscape that needs that water to sustain life. All of that happens without us doing anything.

That same system can also cause the pitiless demons straight out of Hell known as tornadoes.

It is fantastic, miraculous and complex beyond our wildest imaginations and it is happening all around us all the time. And yet when it rains all we think about is are our windshield wiper in need of a change.

I think if we saw the world that God created for us as the miracle it is we would have more respect for it. We might even be more willing to see God here with us instead of locked away in a church and only let out on Sundays.

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Originally posted by Grokesx:
The Mandy Rice-Davies riposte is apposite here, as it would be for my contention that between them, Hume, Kant and Russell blew the cosmological argument out of the water, and that Feser is a tiresome arse.

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Originally posted by Yorick:
Meh. I think the problem here is that, as we emerged from our cave one day and saw lightning set a tree on fire, we invented God to explain it, and ever since then we’ve been doing all kinds of silly intellectual cartwheels to make ourselves not look like arses for continuing to believe it.

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A perfect summary!

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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.