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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by Yorick:
What would you say to me if DNA evidence was found which proved that Jesus had no human father? That science cannot speak to religious claims? I don't think so.

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Firstly, what would count as DNA evidence that Jesus had no human father? It was found that one of the purported foreskins had only half the usual complement of chromosomes? But that would still require us to think the evidence that the foreskin actually derived from Jesus was reliable. Also, the doctrine of the incarnation requires that Jesus was an actual functioning human being, and it would be questionable whether an entity with only half the usual chromosomes would count as fully human, even were he biologically functional.

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Originally posted by Yorick:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by Yorick:
What would you say to me if DNA evidence was found which proved that Jesus had no human father? That science cannot speak to religious claims? I don't think so.

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Firstly, what would count as DNA evidence that Jesus had no human father? It was found that one of the purported foreskins had only half the usual complement of chromosomes? But that would still require us to think the evidence that the foreskin actually derived from Jesus was reliable. Also, the doctrine of the incarnation requires that Jesus was an actual functioning human being, and it would be questionable whether an entity with only half the usual chromosomes would count as fully human, even were he biologically functional.

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With all due respect plus some additional bonus respect that isn't due, you're missing the point. It was a rhetorical question about a hypothetical situation, so your issues are unimportant here. unless you,re sidestepping, of course, in which case I take back the abovementioned respect (both due and undue).

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Originally posted by Yorick:
With all due respect plus some additional bonus respect that isn't due

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It was a rhetorical question about a hypothetical situation, so your issues are unimportant here.

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Originally posted by Truman White:
Until the early twentieth century it was a religious claim that the universe wasn't eternal and had a finite beginning in the past (contra the prevailing Newtonian scientific view). The current standard cosmological model now speaks in support of that claim.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by Truman White:
Until the early twentieth century it was a religious claim that the universe wasn't eternal and had a finite beginning in the past (contra the prevailing Newtonian scientific view). The current standard cosmological model now speaks in support of that claim.

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In the sense in which a religious claim that the universe has a finite beginning in the past contradicted the Newtonian scientific view(*), it predicted that the finite beginning was roughly six thousand years ago, give or take a couple of thousand years. That claim has been comprehensively rubbished.

The sense in which it was made as a genuinely religious claim, it was just as compatible with a universe that is eternal in time, as pointed out by Aquinas no less (who, having no better information, thought it true in both senses).

(*) Newton himself thought the religious claims were literally true.

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Originally posted by Truman White:
as well as the philosophical and mathematical absurdity of the idea of there being an infitite number of past events.

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Originally posted by Truman White:


BTW, the idea that the universe is past eternal is as comprehensively rubbished by the same evidence that shows it's older than 6,000 years, as well as the philosophical and mathematical absurdity of the idea of there being an infitite number of past events.

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Originally posted by Truman White:
Bishop Usher reckoned the universe was about 6,000 years old.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
I find the question very interesting.

What if we found unequivocal, scientific evidence that all that is written in the Gospels was true?

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
I find the question very interesting.

What if we found unequivocal, scientific evidence that all that is written in the Gospels was true?

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I asked somebody a variant of that once. Her response was "I wouldn't believe anyway. I don't want to."

Which I found appalling but refreshingly honest.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Truman White:


BTW, the idea that the universe is past eternal is as comprehensively rubbished by the same evidence that shows it's older than 6,000 years, as well as the philosophical and mathematical absurdity of the idea of there being an infitite number of past events.

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Is it? Surely an infinitely long universe with repeated Big Bangs and Big Crunches is far harder to disprove than YEC simply because it is impossible to prove what happened before time.

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Originally posted by Truman White:
Bishop Usher reckoned the universe was about 6,000 years old. Paul didn't put a date on it - just said that God existed before the universe, and that everything that was made (all material and non material) came into existence through Christ.

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BTW, the idea that the universe is past eternal is as comprehensively rubbished by the same evidence that shows it's older than 6,000 years, as well as the philosophical and mathematical absurdity of the idea of there being an infitite number of past events.

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Originally posted by Truman White:


On the repeated Bangs and Crunches you don't have a "before time" in an absolute sense, just before the formation of each universe. You still have to cope with an initial finite beginning - the first Bang since an actual infinite of bangs is absurd.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Truman White:


On the repeated Bangs and Crunches you don't have a "before time" in an absolute sense, just before the formation of each universe. You still have to cope with an initial finite beginning - the first Bang since an actual infinite of bangs is absurd.

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I Am Not A Mathematician (or a cosmologist) but a circular system of time which keeps crunching and banging is not impossible to comprehend to me.

It might not be true, but I cannot see why it is so obviously easy to disprove. There is no beginning or end, the thing just keeps cycling around and starting again.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I thought that Aquinas wasn't concerned with the beginning of the universe, but saw God as underpinning creation at each moment. In some Eastern religions, there is the interesting idea that each moment is the beginning, but I don't think that is a Thomist idea.

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Originally posted by Truman White:
There's a stack of historical discoveries made by Christians - the modern scientific method emerged in the Christian West spearheaded by scientists who believed the universe was ordered by a creative Mind and therefore should be open to investigation.

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The point about the finite beginning of the universe is that Paul believed the universe had one. Misguided attempts to date that from Scripture doesn't change that core belief.

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On an actual infinite of past events (as opposed to infinity as a useful tool in pure maths) - nope, still don't get it.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I Am Not A Mathematician (or a cosmologist) but a circular system of time which keeps crunching and banging is not impossible to comprehend to me.

It might not be true, but I cannot see why it is so obviously easy to disprove. There is no beginning or end, the thing just keeps cycling around and starting again.

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
ISTM we're all kind of in the same boat.

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
ISTM that trying to figure out where everything came from always hits a "but where did THAT come from?" problem.

If a Creator (of any religious flavor) is the Uncaused Cause of everything else,...well, how can there be something that's uncaused?

In a non-theistic, Big Bang scenario, where did the materials for the bang come from?

In a steady-state, "everything's always been here" scenario, where did the everything come from?

ISTM we're all kind of in the same boat.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I don't understand what IngoB wrote above, but one who believes in an eternal universe is emphatically not in the same boat, because there is no beginning or end, the thing is just constantly cycling. There is no need to explain where the big bang came from - as it was from the debris of the previous universe.

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Where did the first lot of debris come from? Doesn't an infinite series have a first term?

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Originally posted by Dafyd:


From any point within those sequences it is true that the value is entirely determined by the previous two values. Nevertheless, it still looks as if there are two more questions that need to be asked to fully explain what is going on: namely, why are the values in this sequence set at the value they are - the difference between the Fibonacci sequence and the F1 sequence; and then why are the rules the way they are (the difference between the Fibonacci sequence and the F2 sequence).

Those look like they're valid questions, even though they cannot be answered by the techniques you'd use to determine what n(x) is at any point given sufficient prior values.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I agree the question of why the universe is like this rather than any other formation is (presumably) valid to a cosmologist, but is not the question I am talking about - which was the question of whether an eternal universe can be as easily disproved as YEC.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Can one not decide that the answer to the question "what is the ultimate purpose of my existence?" be "no purpose at all"? Would such an answer be equally religious in nature as something like "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever"?

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Originally posted by Truman White:
@Hugh. You said

Generally, where the state provides a level of protection against the consequences of old age, poor health, unemployment etc. fewer people demonstrate a need for supernatural beliefs

Sorry mate, you're well out of date on this one. The rise if faith in general has coincided with a growth in prosperity. You see it in Africa, Latin America, Africa and the Far East. In Turkey and India, modernisation has helped create an upwardly mobile bourgeoisie who are the most fervent supporters of the religious parties. I gave you the reference to China. The evidence is there if you want to do your homework.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
my point is that where personal uncertainty increases so does recourse to the supernatural. That this is commonly accepted is illustrated by the constant, and very silly, repetition of “there are no atheists in foxholes”.

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If 'there are no atheists in foxholes' is silly then it does not illustrate your point. If you use silly evidence to illustrate a point, that shows that the point itself is silly.

Really, you're engaging in Just So stories here. The little sociological research that I'm aware of tends to reject such single factor causes

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It is also a possible explanation for the alliance of some businessmen and some religious leaders in the US who spend vast amounts of time and money trying to prevent the poorer citizens gaining increased peace of mind regarding their health needs.

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This attributes a degree of self-awareness to the leaders of the religious right that does not appear warranted.

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Originally posted by Truman White:
Bishop Usher reckoned the universe was about 6,000 years old. Paul didn't put a date on it - just said that God existed before the universe, and that everything that was made (all material and non material) came into existence through Christ.

BTW, the idea that the universe is past eternal is as comprehensively rubbished by the same evidence that shows it's older than 6,000 years, as well as the philosophical and mathematical absurdity of the idea of there being an infitite number of past events.

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Originally posted by Golden Key:


mr. cheesy--

I'm not necessarily against your Constantly Cycling Thing--but where did it come from?

Not when did it begin its cycling. But--thinking of it as a discrete thing--where did it come from?

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And no, I wasn't pushing YEC at all. I'm MOTR about how we got here, though I could cope if YEC turned out to be true.

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I was just saying that whether you (gen.) go with non-theistic evolution, steady state, a Constantly Cycling Thing, all the technicolor flavors of some sort of theistic creation, etc., you wind up saying "Stop here, and don't go any further back".

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Because without that limit, it's "Turtles All The Way Down".

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Not really the same thing at all, although thanks for the memory of Discworld again

[ 23. March 2015, 07:45: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
The fact that religious people often claim that there are no atheists in foxholes shows that they agree with my point - that where personal uncertainty increases so does recourse to the supernatural. The actual reference to atheists in foxholes is silly - but that does not mean that the misused concept behind it is invalid.

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This attributes a degree of self-awareness to the leaders of the religious right that does not appear warranted.

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Then why do they spend so much time and effort opposing things that would benefit their flocks?

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Originally posted by Truman White:
@Hugh writes

In how many of these countries are the masses (not the bourgeoisie) being provided with real security - decent minimum wage levels, tax credits for poor workers, child benefits, meaningful old age pensions, affordable high quality healthcare? The upwardly mobile may support religion as a tool of their elitism - that doesn't mean they follow its precepts. Religion is still too often one of the opiates of the masses.

So the poor are believers because they don't have the best of modern social protection, and the bourgeoisie are beleivers because it supports their elitism. Who does that leave out?

You'd be a tad more credible if you could recognise when your arguments don't stack up.

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Originally posted by Teilhard:

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Originally posted by Komensky:
Alas, this thread is bound for nowhere. The faithful are very difficult to impeach: they can claim in all honesty and sincerity about accepting scientific facts. However, they always have a special card up their sleeves, which I call The Doctrine of Infinite Exceptions. The fact that there is not only no evidence for God, but no evidence for their miracle claims either (healing, walking on water, etc.) does not bother them. They can merely say "ah, the obscurity and lack of evidence is all part of God's magical plan"—and your questioning the fact that there is no evidence only fulfils what they see as prophetic words from the Bible or Christian thinkers that reason is an enemy of God. Knowing this, they can always play that card.

It makes real dialogue between Humanists (as an example) and the religiously convicted extremely difficult. If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to convince them to value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, then what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?

K.

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The claim that "there is no evidence for God" is a claim -- not a fact ...

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I don't understand what IngoB wrote above, but one who believes in an eternal universe is emphatically not in the same boat, because there is no beginning or end, the thing is just constantly cycling. There is no need to explain where the big bang came from - as it was from the debris of the previous universe. I don't really see why this so difficult to grasp.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
ISTM we're all kind of in the same boat.

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No, we are not. And your very own words show that... You had to modify your question when talking about the "uncaused Cause", and that is no accident. The thrust of the question has been deflected, since the point of being "uncaused" is basically not coming from anywhere at any time. And if we continue our queries, then we indeed ask practically how such an entity can be, i.e., we ask what characteristics the "uncaused Cause" must have in order to be able to exist as an "uncaused Cause". That's exactly the classical path of discussion that you can find in the Summa Theologiae: first show the necessity of an "uncaused Cause", then show what it necessarily must be like.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I am saying the universe is cyclical, there is no 'back' to go to.

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Originally posted by Eliab:

Since none of us have anything in our direct experience which is beginningless (or otherwise uncaused), we are all in the position of having to believe something (at least provisionally) that we cannot comprehend. The analogy to a mathematical infinite series extending forward and back is of limited conceptual help (to me at least) - I agree that in principle the series itself has no beginning, but to say the universe has no beginning is like trying to imagine some immortal mathematician reading out an infinite series of numbers and never having started with one particular number.

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The advantage that a theistic 'uncaused cause' has, it seems to me, is to be by definition some completely different category of 'thing' to anything else in the physical/material/temporal universe. I can't comprehend it, but I can see immediately why I ought not to be able to comprehend it (and, indeed, why no finite intelligence ever could). God eternally existing isn't conceptually the same thing as an infinite series of past events. I can meaningfully ask (or so it seems to me) of an eternal or uncaused universe, "what would that have looked like if an observer like me had been around to witness events 'before'?" and when I do I find that this meaningful question has no meaningful answer. Whereas I don't think I can meaningfully ask what an observer like me would have seen given the opportunity to enquire into the origins of God.

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Reading that back, I'm not sure its all that clear. I mean something like - my question about "What happened at the big bang?" is not rendered meaningless just because there were in fact no people about to see it, or because as a matter of causative process there couldn't have been - the event (or series of events) was a physical occurrence and it is conceptually possible for physical occurrences to be witnessed.

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Whereas God is eternal and incomprehensible by definition - he isn't the sort of thing even susceptible to explanation of the "this is what I would have seen" sort.

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So I think we're stuck with incomprehension either way - theistic or non-theistic - but the theistic account at least locates the incomprehension properly in something that we can see must be incomprehensible. The non-theistic "it just is" is harder for me to accept than anything which I have to assume on theistic grounds.

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Originally posted by Eliab:
What do you mean by "cyclic"? Is each 'Big Bang' the same actual event or not?

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If you mean that the universe is cyclic in a sort of life-cycle sense (egg-caterpillar-cocoon-butterfly-egg...) you might be right that there could be an infinitely repeating pattern, but each egg is still a different egg.

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The fact that, as a matter of detail, the infinite past contains an infinite number of points resembling one another and through which no specific information about prior states can pass does not make any real material difference to the difficulty in conceiving a real infinite series of past events with no beginning.

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I suppose you might be saying that time itself is cyclic - that there is exactly one Big Bang event, which it will always be true to say we both came from and are heading towards. That would be a different way of describing a beginningless universe, but not, it seems to me, an explanation of it.

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So far it is not clear to me which you mean - what would a hypothetical observer see? The process repeating infinitely many times (with or without observable variation each time), or one process, not 'repeated' but self-contained in one circular causative loop?

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
As far as I can understand these things, the existence of the bottle (in your analogue) maybe does not need explaining: it just is, has been and will be for ever. The physical constituents of the bottle are there today because they have always been there.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Once more, that's the wrong direction of argument (horizontal in my diagrams). If you say "it's there because it always has been there (if in other forms)", then you are thinking about the "time" direction. I'm thinking about the "explanation / possibility" direction (vertical in my diagrams). The universe could not have been. Even an endless cyclical universe could not have been. But it is. I'm asking "why?" That's not a "why" that can be answered by "has been, is, will be". I don't care whether this thing lasts for a picosecond, an eon, or indeed forever. However long it may last, this existence itself still could not have been, but is. And that requires an explanation.

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Now you can say that the existence of the universe (whether eternally cyclical or not) is just a "brute fact". That there is "no reason" for that. Two things need to be said about that: First, that is exactly why I say that atheism (or at least atheistic materialism) is less rational than theism (or at least Creator-ism). Because the latter can affirm all the reasoning of the former, but claims additionally reason even for the existence of all things. Personally, I'm a theist intellectually because I'm an optimist about human reason, i.e., I think we are right in thinking that the existence of everything has a reason. Second, obviously we cannot simply assign "brute fact" status to just everything we like, or we completely destroy all human knowledge and know how. Why is the sky blue? Brute fact. Why do teeth rot? Brute fact. Why did the car's motor fail? Brute fact. Etc. That doesn't work, that just makes us utterly stupid. Practically speaking, we do not "brute fact" most of the world. Thus the person wishing to apply brute-fact-ness as a kind of exit strategy from in depth questioning must give reason why one can sensibly attribute brute fact status to certain things. And that reason cannot just be "because it conveniently shuts up the questioner". Until such an explanation is forthcoming, this is IMHO simply not a valid intellectual move. It is merely rhetoric, it is merely assuming as given that which one cannot motivate, and then fronting hard about it.

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So I will say to this "brute fact" approach to the existence of the universe: First, I personally don't want it. I am too optimistic about human reason to accept it. Second, if you want it, you need to work for it. A simply declaration is not enough to establish it.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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