The most decent argument I've come across for the existance of God
Offline Ok, just a bit of background info.
I came across this site through that special that was on TV with Kirk Cameron arguing with the Rational Responders (both argued quite badly, but thats beside the point). Anyway, thought I would post this, see what everyone thinks.
Ok, I am a maths and physics student (currently doing a masters) so that would be my area of expertise. I was raised in a catholic household, but not very stringently. The argument I put forth here is pretty much based on the Big Bang theories.
So in order to have life on a planet, we know that we require a lot of different conditions to be satisfied (the planet has to be made up of the right atmosphere, be the right distance from a sun etc) and as we have found this is incredibly improbable. So the chance of life existing on a planet is incredibly low. Now if we take into account the big bang we find that in order to get from a big bang to a universe containing planets, stars and galaxies, we require at least 50 different specific conditions in the big bang (ratios and presence of different types of matter, temperature conditions as well as densities). When all of these are within a certain small range as our universe is, we get a life permitting universe, with stars, planets and galaxies. As you can probably tell, this is even more improbable. So we have the improbably of a life permitting universe on top of the improbability of a planet being able to support life. This means that the chance of us simply being here is more or less a mathematical impossibility. This leads me to believe that our universe is more than chance, because chance would not lead us here (it would be like winning the lottery every single time it was run, in every single country in the world, and then some). Looking at this objectively implies that it is more likely to be intentional. I'm not saying that this is evidence of a christian god, or any other, but more that an intelligence gave rise to our universe being as it is.
Whilst this is not unequivocal proof, it is quite a reasonable and logical argument. The problem is most christians arguing the existance of god know little or nothing about the universe they live in. If any of the rational response team wish to respond then I would appreciate any input. Cheers.
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Hello big thinkers!
I hope you don't mind if I jump in the middle of your conversation. I also hope our search for the truth brings better understanding of our life, tolerance to free thought and peace among all people.
The concept of God is phylosophical issue. Not scientific at all. It originates form the simple question: What is the purpose of this life? Why we are born then why do we die?
Is it the end of our existance once we die?
The real challenge to prove any theory regarding afterlife lies in the fact we don't have the means to provide evidence from afterlife. No witnesses available. It is an absolute lack of knowldge.
Thus at this point we don't have a choice but to commit ourselves to several assumptions.
The first of them is the view of the majority of you guys atheists: suggesting that there is no any form of conscious existence after death. We are degraded to non-living matter. No spirit.
The second of them is the opposite one. Let's simply say that there is afterlife.
And the third one is simply taking stanse of non-commitment - we agree we are not able to know.
Any of those three groups can't present a valid proof to support their position.
Thus all of us we end up believing in certain position.
We are all believers...
No worries. It doesn't hurt. It makes us happy.
Peace!
Sorry, I'm running out of time so I didn't get to read page 2 of this debate yet.
No matter how improbable our universe and it's constants are I still think it has to be vastly more improbable for a sentient being with the power to alter our universe just existing in the first place. So really the argument from imprabability just doesn't work.
Random is not as random as we think. Every molecule moves "randomly" and yet chemical reactions are totally predictable. There are billions of tiny reactions happening in your body right now just to keep you sitting there alive. This has nothing to do with a god. It is just physics/chemistry.
I think that life is not random, but under the right conditions it is inevitable.
If I take 100 six sided dice, the chance of me rolling all 6's is pretty low. (1:6^100) But if I rolled 100 million dice once per second for 1000 years I'm the probability of rolling 100 6's is basically inevitable. (just trying to get across some sense of scale).
Ok this is not my area (and I do like the multiverse thory), so I could be wrong. What if the 6 constants and many other factors balance each other out? Is it possible that in the formation of the universe there was no other option, hat by interacting with each other the constants we observe are the only possible outcome?
Zen-atheist wielding Occam's katana.
Jesus said, "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division." - Luke 12:51
I don't understand why Lee Smolin would have trouble with string theory since (in his view..) as of now it's untestable and replace it with this 'cosmic evolution' (which is also as now, untestable...).