Scientists Deem Creation to Be the Most Rational Explanation of Universe

[Woody]

wesmorris: Your logic is flawed because it cannot account for the unknown or unknowable.

Woody: State your new law on reality, and I will be happy. You can assume we don't exist, and that would prove there is no God. Are you ready to go there with your argument?

 

[Cris]

woody,

All your machinations boil down to one outdated puerile theist claim - we do not know the origin of the universe therefore a god did it.

There is still no proof of a god in anything you have stated, even if I were to accept any of your tortuous attempts at logical reasoning.

Absence of a proof for a natural solution does not in any form lend evidence to a supernatural solution. You still have to show evidence for a god and the supernatural to reach your conclusion and you haven't done that.

 

[Sarkus]

Furthermore, Woody, you are basically defining GOD as merely the "cause" with the Universe as the "effect".

There is no value in what you conclude.
It adds nothing.
It means nothing.
It is merely a label for something for which the only two things you can say about it are: 1. it "caused" the Universe, and 2. it has been labelled "God".

But even out of these two things, the first is not a proven fact. It could be self-caused. It could be eternal (contracting/expanding for ever more). We just don't know. There is no evidence.

So really the only thing you have given us in this proof is that you have given the label "God" to... er... something that you have given the label of "God" to. :bugeye:

Well done, that person!

 

[Woody]

Cris said: Absence of a proof for a natural solution does not in any form lend evidence to a supernatural solution. You still have to show evidence for a god and the supernatural to reach your conclusion and you haven't done that.

Woody: You totally write off the validity of hypothesis testing. Hypothesis testing works like this: A and B are two proposals of reality that encompass all possibilities. Either A or B is true but not both and there is no other alternative but A and B. If I disprove A then by deduction I prove B. It's as simple as that. I don't have to demonstrate B. I only need to eliminate A as an alternative. You can deny A or B are an alternative which leaves us with nothing. This is the same as saying reality doesn't exist.

I merely proved there is an external "force" that created the universe, using the KNOWN laws of physics and logic. I disproved that the universe can exist eternally on its own merits.

The weakest place in the armor has to do with entropy, but it is still bullet-proof.

This is merely logic and physics. But you don't like the conclusion. Disproove the conclusion by either a) proving we don't exist or b) there is a new law of the universe that overides the existing laws.

 

[Silas]

Yes, yes, people have jumped in too soon to rubbish him. Woody is actually right on this one, and his arguments need a little more careful study. You do have to tread carefully when dealing with the entropic consequences to the Big Crunch. (Hawking thought at first that when the Universe had reached full expansion in four dimensions and begun to fall back ... that the time dimension would also run backwards, which actually would solve the entropy problem.)

Disproove the conclusion by either a) proving we don't exist or b) there is a new law of the universe that overides the existing laws.

Disprove is the same as prove, Wood, there's only one 'o' in it. Anyway, the point I want to make is that if the existing laws are inadequate, the scientific suggestion is that there must indeed be a new law of the universe that overrides the existing laws. In fact cosmologists are looking for that new law (or those new laws, for there may be several) as we speak!

To me, that is the proper attitude of the scientist - believing or not. People like Michael Behe and your Ph.D. in microbiology, who have found a personal limit to what they believe is explorable or understandable, who want to say "here I place the limit of my incredulity - after that there can only be God", are basically fighting humanity's basic instinct of curiosity and discovery. The cut off point is always purely arbitrary. Many scientists have stood at such places in the past (not necessarily attributing further action to God, but lets say they did for the sake of argument), and the result has always been that the level of knowledge beyond which they did not believe human ingenuity can go is always now seen as a primitive level. Think of the glory of the scientist in 1895 - the world and the universe is almost totally explicable and it works like clockwork! And God must have been the winder. 10 years on, 20 years on, and the Universe is considerably more complex - if God wound up the Universe he must have done so with more infinite subtlety than could have remotely been conceived by our friend of 1895.

 

[wesmorris]

Woody: You totally write off the validity of hypothesis testing. Hypothesis testing works like this: A and B are two proposals of reality that encompass all possibilities. Either A or B is true but not both and there is no other alternative but A and B. If I disprove A then by deduction I prove B. It's as simple as that. I don't have to demonstrate B. I only need to eliminate A as an alternative. You can deny A or B are an alternative which leaves us with nothing. This is the same as saying reality doesn't exist.

You are mis-utilizing hypothesis testing. You should know better than that. Hypothesis testing is used to interpret data. You can't use it the way you're trying to use it and expect valid results. GIGO, beeyatch.

 

[Woody]

wesmorris said: You are mis-utilizing hypothesis testing. You should know better than that. Hypothesis testing is used to interpret data. You can't use it the way you're trying to use it and expect valid results. GIGO, beeyatch.

Woody: Oh but I can! We are merely arguing about my risk of being wrong. You can say there is more data that I have not evaluated. I then say to you: show me the data! All the data supports the known laws of science and logic. Show me the data that has not been considered.

 

[wesmorris]

You are not analyzing numerical data. You're blathering about a godular hypothesis. That is not data.

 

[§outh§tar]

3) If it was not created by a God then there is no God. is satisfied

Not necessarily. Stop grasping at straws. Unless you demonstrate why this is necessary, your argument is destroyed.

You don't get something from nothing according to and [c]. Hence this solution violates 3 laws.

I guess God violates 3 laws then too. Sorry, you have disqualified your own argument.

If you will respond God is eternal, then I will ask: why can the universe too not be eternal?

Foiled again!

 

[Woody]

wesmorris said: You are not analyzing numerical data. You're blathering about a godular hypothesis. That is not data.

Woody: The laws I stated are based on ALL observable data over the history of mankind. Do you know of at least one data point that disagrees with any of the four laws that were stated?

 

[Woody]

Southstar:

I guess God violates 3 laws then too. Sorry, you have disqualified your own argument.

If you will respond God is eternal, then I will ask: why can the universe too not be eternal?

Foiled again!

Both points were already covered in the argument: Something (either God or the universe) has to be eternal, otherwise we do not exist. The universe can not be eternal because of the law of entropy. If God is cause then he does not need a cause. A cause does not need to have a cause. An effect needs to have a cause. A cause produces an effect.

 

[Woody]

Silas said:

Anyway, the point I want to make is that if the existing laws are inadequate, the scientific suggestion is that there must indeed be a new law of the universe that overrides the existing laws. In fact cosmologists are looking for that new law (or those new laws, for there may be several) as we speak!

OK, I finally find someone that can agree on some points.

First of all , there will always be more data. Hypothesis testing determines the risk of being wrong based on the data you currently have. There never will be perfect information, so you will always run the risk of being wrong, whatever conclusion you might come to about an eternal universe vs. an eternal God.

Therefore, the question of God vs. no God is determined by faith no matter how much infromation you have. What risk are you willing to tolerate for being wrong? If I am wrong I lose nothing except maybe the time I spent in church and in prayer (or even on this religion forum). For the most part all of that time added value to my life. On the otherhand, If an atheist is wrong they lose everything.

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As for the new laws. There will be new theories, but they need observable data in order to stand, otherwise they will go to the scrap heap like other theories with no supporting data.

There is no limit to the new theories humanity will come up with, so if there is indeed a God afterall, humanity can question his existence forever.

Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 2nd Timothy 3:7

 

[Repo Man]

Please, not Pascal's Wager again!

All of the worlds religions cannot be right. And considering the utter ignorance of the humans who dreamt them up, it is far more likely that they are all wrong. Certainly Christian authorities have hindered progress towards a more rational and equitable planet over the centuries, with their opposition to birth control, the treatment of venereal disease, even things as mundane as lightning rods, which were denounced as an impious attempt to thwart the will of god.

If you choose to believe in some nonsensical deity, or to believe that the moon is made of green cheese (the latter is as plausible as the god of the Bible), you may do as you like. But you will not have my respect or support.

 

[wesmorris]

Woody: The laws I stated are based on ALL observable data over the history of mankind.

No, you didn't present data. You presented ideas.

As I know it, hypothesis testing as you claim to use it is a tool to analyze numbers that relate to experiments.

The data you cite supports only the idea that the universe is around 16 billion years old. As far as we can tell, that's the point at which time began, so it has neither existed forever, nor is it eternal - so your question is flawed. What "existed" before time began? I think in our frame of reference it can only be thought of as some form of "possibility" unless new experimental data in support of some theory lends insight to the matter.

*shrug*

You haven't tested a statistical hypothesis. I haven't seen what is done with hypothesis testing in logic, but every link on the first page of google's results only spoke of statistical hypothesis tests.

I did find this slide-show. It looks like it'll take a lot more work to show any relevance to your 'proof'.

Do you know of at least one data point that disagrees with any of the four laws that were stated?

I don't object to the laws, I object to the analysis.

 

[§outh§tar]

Southstar:



Both points were already covered in the argument: Something (either God or the universe) has to be eternal, otherwise we do not exist. The universe can not be eternal because of the law of entropy. If God is cause then he does not need a cause. A cause does not need to have a cause. An effect needs to have a cause. A cause produces an effect.

Dear Woody,

Your argument is painfully hollow and I do hope you see that I am only trying to help you out with it.

You have not yet demonstrated why a) God is a cause (of the universe), and why b) God is not an effect of something else (which we don't know of).

Therefore you are appealing to your own arbitrary axioms to make your case.

 

[water]

If I say "Women are equal to men", then what sort of a statement is this? An ethical one.

Not really, because biologically women are equal and in some senses superior to men, we know that the male gene is going to disappear in a couple hundred thousand years, biologically it can be effectively argued then that women are superior to men. What you are talking about here is based on gender which is subjective nonsense, innately women and men are essentially the same in many respects we are taught to be different through gender roles. An ethical statement would be that "women are morally superior to men".

When it comes to salaries, the ethical principle "Women are equal to men" is applied. It used to be that women, for the sake of being women, were payed less for the same work.

Why should gender be "subjective nonsense"?

The same way they go and "disprove" the Bible, when there is nothing to disprove. You can't disprove an ethical principle.

Of course one can disprove and ethical principle it happens all the time, an ethic cannot be contradictory as the Bible is, thus the bible is a bunch of nonsense as a result, if an ethical principle cannot be universalized, and cannot be coherent it is not a ethical principle so much as it is garbage.

Tell me: How do you disprove an ehtical principle?

How do you disprove that, for example, blacks are inferior to whites?

we know that the male gene is going to disappear in a couple hundred thousand years

So now you claim to know the future ...? And you dare say "the bible is a bunch of nonsense"?

 

[Silas]

Well, water, I agree the male gene disappearing in a coupla hundred thousand years is evident nonsense. But there's nothing mysterious about "knowing the future". The sun is going to expand in about 5 bn years, and the Earth will be burnt to a cinder. The Bible is a "bunch of nonsense" because it doesn't provide evidence that everyone can agree on.

First of all , there will always be more data. Hypothesis testing determines the risk of being wrong based on the data you currently have. There never will be perfect information, so you will always run the risk of being wrong, whatever conclusion you might come to about an eternal universe vs. an eternal God.

Therefore, the question of God vs. no God is determined by faith no matter how much infromation you have.

THANK you! That was my point. The question of God vs. no God is determined by faith. The existence of God is (as I understand God, and he's not just an alien superbeing) outside the realm of science.

What risk are you willing to tolerate for being wrong? If I am wrong I lose nothing except maybe the time I spent in church and in prayer (or even on this religion forum). For the most part all of that time added value to my life. On the otherhand, If an atheist is wrong they lose everything.

In what sense does an atheist "lose everything" if they are wrong? If you think we atheists are going to be denied eternal life, then, well, we know that - most of us believe that conscious thought stops and there is eternal nothingness. If you think atheists are going to hell, then exactly how is that going to encourage me to believe in your vengeful, spiteful, hateful God? I might indeed end up believing in him, as I burned in the eternal torments of Hades, but worship him? Never.

 

[Woody]

Southstar said:

Dear Woody,

Your argument is painfully hollow and I do hope you see that I am only trying to help you out with it.

You have not yet demonstrated why a) God is a cause (of the universe), and why b) God is not an effect of something else (which we don't know of).

Therefore you are appealing to your own arbitrary axioms to make your case.

Woody: As I said before, I did not prove that God exists, I only proved that an outside force created the universe, given the data we currently have accessible. The argument is bulletproof. You must either disprove one of the four axioms or come up with a new proven axiom to disprove the argument. These are the laws of the universe and they have been tested and retested. They are not arbitrary laws.

There will always be more information in the future that could revise the current laws of the universe and supersede the argument I have presented. My argument is based on the current understanding of the laws.

 

[Woody]

Silas said: In what sense does an atheist "lose everything" if they are wrong? If you think we atheists are going to be denied eternal life, then, well, we know that - most of us believe that conscious thought stops and there is eternal nothingness. If you think atheists are going to hell, then exactly how is that going to encourage me to believe in your vengeful, spiteful, hateful God? I might indeed end up believing in him, as I burned in the eternal torments of Hades, but worship him? Never.

Woody: You believe that logos ends when you die because you believe science is the only reality. But we theists also believe the mind is a reality as well. How do you explain volition? I am not talking about animal instincts here. How do you explain human emotions that are not Darwinian -- for example the appreciation of a beautiful butterfly.

And the argument continues:

Michael Behe

 

[everneo]

The argument is bulletproof.

yeah, it is so thick.