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Please stop blowing up misunderstandings out of all proportion.
....... A stroll around religious discussions at TNS finds witting intentional, witting underhanded, and quite often unwitting underhanded insults to intelligence that generally paint those who ascribe to a religion as delusional believers in a non-existent entity that is such nonsense as to deserve regular mocking, all nonchalantly of course. ................ We have the rest of the internet to discuss the existential argument.....
However, since he isn't interested in reading any arguments that point out why it will ultimately fail...
I thought this thread must have been deleted as there was nothing in the original subforum saying it had been moved - I only found it here because I looked in on the off chance that it had been mentioned, but here it is.I think Namaan is actually trying to do something worthwhile, though it's doomed to failure. If you read the Qur'aan (Koran), you'll soon see that it attempts to argue its case in scientific and logical ways, and that could lead followers of Islam to think that science and religion could be compatible and that God could be accounted for by science.The problem comes, however, as soon as you try to define what God is. Let's start with a definition from Gordian Knot:-Quote from: Gordian Knot on 24/01/2012 01:14:22First though, one question Why is it that the whole concept of God is a fundamentally irrational idea?Definition of God. A conscious awareness that chose to set in motion the creation of everything we call reality.That runs straight into a problem: the conscious awareness would have to have created itself [Why? There is no evidence for non-existence to be found anywhere. Evidence, by definition, exists. What if we invented the concept of non-existence? As such, if there is no non-existence, and ever was only existence, then no need for self-creation.] if it is to be a member of the set of things called "everything we call reality) If it isn't in that set, it isn't real.Let me go through some of the fundamentals:-Imagine a primary realm of existence in which an intelligence resides, or a primary realm of existence which is that intelligence. He/it happens to exist and has no purpose in existing [How do you know this? Do you have evidence for this statement? Or if we're just considering hypotheticals, on what basis are you making an assumption of a lack of purpose?] - the only things which can ever have purpose are things that are made (or done) to carry out some end which has been calculated in advance by an intelligence. For God to have a purpose, he would have to have been created for that purpose by another intelligence [More assumptions. Again, how do you know this? What if there was only ever existence and only ever a self-subsisting infinite God? If we're just assuming and supposing after all...], in which case we've started with the wrong candidate - we must transfer our interest to his creator, and when we find the top creator we have inevitably reached one who has no purpose [And we've come full circle. On what basis do you gather that the creator at top has no purpose?].Now, this supreme intelligence and primary being (who is in that position by chance [You know this how?] - it's not of his own doing [Same, what is the basis for these assumptions? Please don't just say reasoning again, I'm clearly not finding your reasoning very impressive.]) decides to make things (as he might as well do something with his time [How are you assuming that time is experienced in his realm?] and powers to pass the time). He makes a universe (or maybe many of them) and populates tiny parts of it with life. There are now more intelligences in existence, but he regards himself as superior to them [You say it as if you've had a chat with him. Without getting too specific, this is hardly the only possible interpretation.]. Is he justified in that opinion? What does superior mean? (It has more than one meaning, but we can ignore the one that simply means it has more of something, such as more strength or more material). Is a stone superior to a rock? No: not unless a purpose is involved. If you need something heavy to weigh something down, a rock may be superior to a stone. If you need something that you're capable of throwing, a stone may be superior to a rock. Superiority (of the kind we're interested in) is completely tied up in purpose and otherwise has no role. If God made us for some reason, whether that be to pass the time or to have someone to talk to, we would have a purpose for him, but nothing he does can ever give him a purpose for himself because he wasn't created for a purpose [Repeat of more assumptions]. Superiority cannot have any role to play in a comparison between him and us. Of course, in a world where many people also believe in royalty, they have a false idea about superiority sitting in their heads which backs up their ideas about God being inherently superior too, even though both these ideas (royalty and God) are completely baseless.So where is this going? Well, there is nothing about God that can make him qualify as anything more exciting than an alien being which happens to have existed first and which happens to have access to all the levers of power (and to have made sure that we cannot access them) [All assumptions and suppositions. You don't know that he's like an "alien being which happens to have existed first". You don't know that he just "happens to have access" to power as if it were a random and pointless affair, and you have no basis to say that we cannot access power - have not humans harnessed the power of nature through an understanding of science? This is made possible by a consistent display of the universal laws. GR and SR are fundamentally based on the assumption that the laws that apply here, apply everywhere. That's quite the foundation for access to power from where I stand.]. "God" needs more than that to qualify as God [Far more], because all we have to go on otherwise is that he's the big chief alien [Perhaps from where you stand.], and that is insufficent to justify his claim to be God [Again, perhaps from where you stand.]. Taking on the name "God" doesn't do it either - I could call myself God, but no one would take that as evidence for me being God.So, what we need is some kind of definition of God which sets out something about him which would actually qualify him as God. Being here before someone else isn't good enough - our parents are not more divine than us through existing before us, and we are not more divine than our children either. Having access to more power doesn't make anyone more divine than anyone else either: mass-murdering dictators are very powerful as people go, but they are certainly not more divine. Morality might be seen as a factor, but people are riddled with faults which aren't of their own doing - they have no free will [You have no free will?] and are simply driven by their desires and the attempts of their intellect to make them do the best thing at all times. If they had been made perfectly (like an artificial intelligence system which uses a correct morality formula to govern its behaviour) they would express perfect moral behaviour at all times, but that would not make them more divine [Why not? What is your basis for reaching this conclusion?].I'll leave it to you to come up with suggestions as to how "God" might try to qualify as more than just a natural alien being, but I can tell you for free that there is nothing that can succeed. If he tries to qualify using magic, he will have to understand how that magic works in order to qualify as God, and by understanding it he destorys it's magical nature. If he tries to qualify by being supernatural, he has to make an arbitrary [Why arbitrary? Because "God has no purpose"?] divide of nature into supernature and nature, and then the leaky barrier between the two will burst [How do you know this?] and reunite them [On what basis?] - if things can interact, they must be part of the same system or they would have no mechanisms to allow them to interact, and that system in which all interacting things reside is by definition nature [An arbitrary definition, but let's work with it. Do you somehow know what the full set of "things" are in the universe? This would be necessary, of course, to know what nature is by your definition]. God has to be part of nature [You know this how?], and that automatically opens him up to scientific study - even if we can't access him to study him, he can study himself and become a scientist [Which is meaningless when considering the idea of an infinite, creator, designer God who understands himself and the universe to infinity]. If he understands how he works, he will inevitably be forced to describe himself as a natural being, but if he can't, he fails to qualify as God due to a lack of essential knowledge.God is logically impossible [Hardly convinced of this.], as I said before. All he can ever be is a powerful alien being which happened to exist first [Assumptions repeated.], and that isn't something you should base a religion on.
First though, one question Why is it that the whole concept of God is a fundamentally irrational idea?Definition of God. A conscious awareness that chose to set in motion the creation of everything we call reality.
Indirect evidence like finely tuned constants isn't any help in this regard, since there are other reasons they could exist that way (see the anthropic principle).
I've read about that. Perhaps I'm just not intelligent enough to understand it , but to me it says a whole lot of nothing. Empty logic, as it were. Or rather, the principle itself isn't wrong, but it's used and abused well beyond its explanatory capacity (not unlike using Darwin's theory of evolution to "explain" everything from human sociology to the economy).It only gets a "well, duh" response from me for formalizing an obvious relationship, and doesn't actually do any explaining with regards to exacting universal constants, etc.
Please consider again for a second my third point on why I avoid existential arguments on God: "In my experience, existential arguments take a lot of time to make, much less time to break down, and achieve relatively little."With respect, I will present your last post below as case in point (with my comments in bold text in square brackets):
That (Definition of God = A conscious awareness that chose to set in motion the creation of everything we call reality) runs straight into a problem: the conscious awareness would have to have created itself [Why? There is no evidence for non-existence to be found anywhere. Evidence, by definition, exists. What if we invented the concept of non-existence? As such, if there is no non-existence, and ever was only existence, then no need for self-creation.] if it is to be a member of the set of things called "everything we call reality) If it isn't in that set, it isn't real.
Imagine a primary realm of existence in which an intelligence resides, or a primary realm of existence which is that intelligence. He/it happens to exist and has no purpose in existing [How do you know this? Do you have evidence for this statement? Or if we're just considering hypotheticals, on what basis are you making an assumption of a lack of purpose?] - the only things which can ever have purpose are things that are made (or done) to carry out some end which has been calculated in advance by an intelligence. For God to have a purpose, he would have to have been created for that purpose by another intelligence [More assumptions. Again, how do you know this? What if there was only ever existence and only ever a self-subsisting infinite God? If we're just assuming and supposing after all...], in which case we've started with the wrong candidate - we must transfer our interest to his creator, and when we find the top creator we have inevitably reached one who has no purpose [And we've come full circle. On what basis do you gather that the creator at top has no purpose?].
Now, this supreme intelligence and primary being (who is in that position by chance [You know this how?] - it's not of his own doing [Same, what is the basis for these assumptions? Please don't just say reasoning again, I'm clearly not finding your reasoning very impressive.])...
...decides to make things (as he might as well do something with his time [How are you assuming that time is experienced in his realm?]...
...and powers to pass the time). He makes a universe (or maybe many of them) and populates tiny parts of it with life. There are now more intelligences in existence, but he regards himself as superior to them [You say it as if you've had a chat with him. Without getting too specific, this is hardly the only possible interpretation.]. ...
... Is he justified in that opinion? What does superior mean? (It has more than one meaning, but we can ignore the one that simply means it has more of something, such as more strength or more material). Is a stone superior to a rock? No: not unless a purpose is involved. If you need something heavy to weigh something down, a rock may be superior to a stone. If you need something that you're capable of throwing, a stone may be superior to a rock. Superiority (of the kind we're interested in) is completely tied up in purpose and otherwise has no role. If God made us for some reason, whether that be to pass the time or to have someone to talk to, we would have a purpose for him, but nothing he does can ever give him a purpose for himself because he wasn't created for a purpose [Repeat of more assumptions]. Superiority cannot have any role to play in a comparison between him and us. Of course, in a world where many people also believe in royalty, they have a false idea about superiority sitting in their heads which backs up their ideas about God being inherently superior too, even though both these ideas (royalty and God) are completely baseless.
So where is this going? Well, there is nothing about God that can make him qualify as anything more exciting than an alien being which happens to have existed first and which happens to have access to all the levers of power (and to have made sure that we cannot access them) [All assumptions and suppositions. You don't know that he's like an "alien being which happens to have existed first". You don't know that he just "happens to have access" to power as if it were a random and pointless affair, and you have no basis to say that we cannot access power - have not humans harnessed the power of nature through an understanding of science? This is made possible by a consistent display of the universal laws. GR and SR are fundamentally based on the assumption that the laws that apply here, apply everywhere. That's quite the foundation for access to power from where I stand.].
"God" needs more than that to qualify as God [Far more], because all we have to go on otherwise is that he's the big chief alien [Perhaps from where you stand.], and that is insufficent to justify his claim to be God [Again, perhaps from where you stand.]. Taking on the name "God" doesn't do it either - I could call myself God, but no one would take that as evidence for me being God.
So, what we need is some kind of definition of God which sets out something about him which would actually qualify him as God. Being here before someone else isn't good enough - our parents are not more divine than us through existing before us, and we are not more divine than our children either. Having access to more power doesn't make anyone more divine than anyone else either: mass-murdering dictators are very powerful as people go, but they are certainly not more divine. Morality might be seen as a factor, but people are riddled with faults which aren't of their own doing - they have no free will [You have no free will?] and are simply driven by their desires and the attempts of their intellect to make them do the best thing at all times.
If they had been made perfectly (like an artificial intelligence system which uses a correct morality formula to govern its behaviour) they would express perfect moral behaviour at all times, but that would not make them more divine [Why not? What is your basis for reaching this conclusion?].
I'll leave it to you to come up with suggestions as to how "God" might try to qualify as more than just a natural alien being, but I can tell you for free that there is nothing that can succeed. If he tries to qualify using magic, he will have to understand how that magic works in order to qualify as God, and by understanding it he destorys it's magical nature. If he tries to qualify by being supernatural, he has to make an arbitrary [Why arbitrary? Because "God has no purpose"?] divide of nature into supernature and nature,
...and then the leaky barrier between the two will burst [How do you know this?] and reunite them [On what basis?]
- if things can interact, they must be part of the same system or they would have no mechanisms to allow them to interact, and that system in which all interacting things reside is by definition nature [An arbitrary definition, but let's work with it. Do you somehow know what the full set of "things" are in the universe? This would be necessary, of course, to know what nature is by your definition].
God has to be part of nature [You know this how?], and that automatically opens him up to scientific study - even if we can't access him to study him, he can study himself and become a scientist [Which is meaningless when considering the idea of an infinite, creator, designer God who understands himself and the universe to infinity].
God is logically impossible [Hardly convinced of this.], as I said before. All he can ever be is a powerful alien being which happened to exist first [Assumptions repeated.], and that isn't something you should base a religion on.
There was a point to this exercise, and it wasn't to attempt to route your argument at every step. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised, in fact expect, that you will be capable of producing a counter-argument to all my comments above. But that's just the point isn't it? We're discussing something about which we really have no clear knowledge of.
When you ask me to clearly define God, the question misses the premise of the discussion. If I knew what God was exactly, a being I define abstractly as being infinite, designer and creator, it would really be tantamount to defining in finite terms an infinite being. We can't draw an infintely long line, but we can imagine and discuss the concept of a line of infinite length quite coherently; mathematicians more so than most. The analogue to an equation for a line might be the abstract terms that I've been using all along: an infinite, designer, creator God.
But I will entertain the possibility of greator rigor. Let's start simple and get back to the point on design. If God has designed his creation to infinite capacity, then the design should leave its trace on the creation in the form of things like exacting universal constants, emergent/non-reducible systems, etc. I am aware, of course, that most of these are taken as mere incidences of concidence by the mainstream view on science. So going full circle back to my first post, how many such coincidences are needed, in what form, under what assumptions, etc. before the overall-package of data can be scientifically recognized to be potential evidence of intentional design?
Have you watched the Zeitgeist Film?... Well, at least the first one, it now appears as if they've made four. But, at least the first one discusses religion.
Anyway, if you wish to apply science to God... Perhaps one should just use the scientific method to analyze the way religion itself works. What each religion takes from other religions. The basic meaning of their symbolism.
Science must be a religion for these people so they can distort and control it.
Science + God = Illogical madness. Science by definition cannot exist within a framework that includes a fictional character, with no evidence to support it's existence whatsoever. Only a creationist would ask such an illogical question as they would feel it is rhetorical, in my opinion........
Namaan, coming into the discussion rather late I misunderstood the point of the thread (I think). I think it is unusual, though not impossible, for a non-believer to apply scientific principles to developing a theory of God. Most people in science have an idea and then try to see whether this idea fits all the known facts and is self consistant. Being human, the effort needed to undertake such a task requires, and reinforces, some degree in belief that the idea is correct. Nonetheless, some scientific approach could be developed to look at concepts from a hypothetical position. Is this what you are expecting?
From my perspective it hard to know where to start. What God are we trying to scientifically justify? Is it a particular one or rather the more general concept of the universe being in the control of an intelligence? I think specific God-qualities, as defined by most religions, fall down when subjected to any scientific study. At least, it seems to me that for most religions, many things that were previously held to be indisputably true have been proved wrong, although a large number of people still believe in the old ideas whilst some are happy to modify their view to fit in with modern interpretations. I would point out the ideas of natural selection versus the idea that God created the world in 6 days a few thousand years ago as one example. I think a staring point would be to pick an example of the features that the God, that we are trying to have the theory about, possesses.
I suspect that the abstract God we will end up defining will be so "hands-off" that it would make no material difference whether he exists or not. Such a God may be indiscernable from the natural universe itself. So the question is what God are we trying to work with?
I think you will find the millions who have suffered from religious persecution would not think things have been blown out of proportion.
I don't wish to be rude, but if this is your opinion, why do you post here?
Why not go to a forum such as this one, where members are more disposed, nay, perhaps even welcome and revel in such arguments. This is a science forum, pure and simple, not a science vs religion forum.
I have made my choice, nobody, but nobody influenced me in my choice and I am happy with my choice, as I presume you are with your choice. If I had any doubts about my choice, I would seek to address them. I do not impose my choice upon others and respectfully request that they do not impose their choice upon me.All of us here are capable of making our own decisions. We really don't want or need anyone to try to convert us. Those of us who believe, will doubtless continue to believe, those of us who don't, will continue to disbelieve. Let's just leave it at that.
The anthropic principle is often part of theories of everything that describe many (or infinite) universes, each of which has different parameters. The hope is that these theories will be testable at some point, and if we can observe these other universes, we'll have some confirmation that the anthropic principle is the reason for the fine-tuning.But at the moment, there's not really evidence for it.
What you can't do is to look at existing observations and try to figure out what kind of god fits those details and call that your "theory of god." Looking at existing observations is a good place to start when formulating a new hypothesis, but it's not scientifically sound to use existing observations as evidence that your new theory is right.
The fine tuning of constants is a good example. You can look at them and say "that's evidence of god," or "that's evidence of the anthropic principle at work," but neither of these are sound scientific theories. They might lead to testable hypotheses (in the case of the anthropic principle, we could look for other universes or parts of our universe where the parameters aren't fine-tuned).