Debate the topic "Does an Intelligent Designer of the universe exist?"
Offline This is a challenge to anyone who wants to defend the proposition that an Intelligent Designer does not exist. I will defend its negation in a LOGICAL, RATIONAL manner. There will be no arguments made on the basis of faith. Considering the location of this forum, it would seem reasonable to expect the same type of argument in return. However, in my limited experience with atheists, I've yet to witness one who could actually produce this type of argument. Nonetheless, I am optimistic that I may encounter a worthy foe eventually.
So here is the game plan. I will provide multiple arguments in favor of my position. These arguments will be supported by a multitude of scientific and philosophical evidence. If you are to be successful in defending your position, you must first tear down my arguments, and then erect in their place a positive case of your own. So if you happen to be someone who suffers from intellectually laziness by thinking it is sufficient for you to just resort to unsubstantiated skepticism to defend your claim, please, abstain from engaging. You see the topic of this debate is "Does an Intelligent Designer of the universe exist?". It is not a proposition, but rather a question. So their is no place here for anyone who likes to play the "you are the one asserting the claim so you have the burden of proof-card", considering both sides will be making claims. So I welcome anyone capable of accomplishing this in a LOGICAL, RATIONAL manner.
My first argument is on the basis of the existence of the universe. It is by no means any new, groundbreaking argument that I have authored. However, I've yet to witness a cogent rebuttal of it.
The argument is as follows.
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
I have no doubt that you are familiar with the structure of an argument. So as you can see, this argument is air tight logically. That is to say that based on the 2 premises, the conclusion is logically inescapable. So to dispute the conclusion, one must argue against the truth of one or both premises, demonstrating they are less plausible than their negation. In accordance, I will attempt to demonstrate their validity with the following:
Support of premise 1
A. For something to come into being without any cause whatsoever would be to come into being from nothing. This would be worse that magic. If a magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat, at least you have a cause, even if it is the deceiving magician. But this is still better than NOTHING. I don't think anyone sincerely believes that things, like say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.
B. If something could come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn't come into being from nothing. Why don't bicycles and root beer POP into being? Why only universes?
C. I would assert common experience and scientific evidence confirm premise 1.
Support of premise 2
A. The universally accepted "Big Bang" model.
B. Redshift of light.
C. Abundance of certain light elements.
D. Microwave cosmic background radiation.
E. The thermodynamics of the universe.
F. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem
Clarification of the Cause
A. For think of what the universe is: ALL of space-time reality,including ALL matter and energy.
B. As the cause of space-time, matter and energy, this cause must be transcendent. Therefore, it is nonphysical, uncaused, immaterial, unimaginably powerful, and beyond space and time.
C. Furthermore, it must be a personal being. This is the only way a timeless cause can create a temporal effect. This is because if a cause is sufficient to produce its effect, then if the cause is there, the effect must be there too. To illustrate, water freezes @0C. The cause of the freezing is the temperature achieving 0C. If the temperature was always 0C, the water is eternally frozen. It would be impossible for the water to begin to freeze a finite time ago. Since the universe began to exist a finite time ago, its cause would have to be a personal being with free will, who chose to create as a free act, independent of any prior conditions.
D. To further illustrate why this cause must be a personal agent, consider causality. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes. A prime-mover is unavoidable for the chain of events to begin. So whatever this may be, it has to be an uncaused cause, which exists by a necessity of its own nature. It follows logically that this cause must contain within itself the cause for the initial event. This is only achievable for an agent that is capable of free-will. Which, by nature, constitutes personal, intelligent beings. We experience this type of causation regularly. To illustrate, imagine 100 dominoes arranged in a manner that would allow you to push the first, into the second, into the third...into the hundredth. Assume you push the first, and they all fall as planned. If we then ask what was the immediate cause of #100 falling, we would say #99 knocked it over. It would follow that the immediate cause of #99 to fall, was #98, and so on all the way to #1. Now, what was the cause of #1 to fall? We could say because you pushed it. Okay, what caused you to push it? Easy, you chose to. But what caused you to choose to? You wanted to, simple as that. You had to make a choice, push it, or don't push it. This is an antonymical pair that exhausts all possibilities. Maybe their were factors that were considered in making your decision, but ultimately, none directly caused you to act. You acted because you chose to, end of story. Every event now has sufficient cause for happening, and we need look no further.
Conclusion
This demonstrates the existence of a beginningless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, changeless, immaterial, enormously powerful, Personal Creator of the universe, which I happen to call, God.
The second argument is in regards to the fine-tuning of not only the universe as a whole, but also biological organisms.
1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to physical necessity, chance, or design.
2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
3. Therefore, it is due to design.
Now again, this is logically iron-clad argument. That is to say if the premises are true, the conclusion follows inescapably. So are the premises more plausible than their negation?
Before we discuss this argument, it’s important to understand that by “fine-tuning” one does not mean “designed” (otherwise the argument would be obviously circular). Rather during the last forty years or so, scientists have discovered that the existence of intelligent life depends upon a complex and delicate balance of initial conditions given in the Big Bang itself. This is known as the fine-tuning of the universe.
This fine-tuning is of two sorts. First, when the laws of nature are expressed as mathematical equations, you find appearing in them certain constants, like the constant that represents the force of gravity. These constants are not determined by the laws of nature. The laws of nature are consistent with a wide range of values for these constants. Second, in addition to these constants, there are certain arbitrary quantities that are put in just as initial conditions on which the laws of nature operate, for example, the amount of entropy or the balance between matter and anti-matter in the universe. Now all of these constants and quantities fall into an extraordinarily narrow range of life-permitting values. Were these constants or quantities to be altered by less than a hair’s breadth, the life-permitting balance would be destroyed, and no living organisms of any kind could exist.
For example, a change in the strength of the atomic weak force by only one part in 10100 would have prevented a life-permitting universe. The cosmological constant which drives the inflation of the universe and is responsible for the recently discovered acceleration of the universe’s expansion is inexplicably fine-tuned to around one part in 10120. Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of the Big Bang’s low entropy condition existing by chance are on the order of one out of 1010(123). Penrose comments, “I cannot even recall seeing anything else in physics whose accuracy is known to approach, even remotely, a figure like one part in 1010(123). And it’s not just each constant or quantity that must be exquisitely finely-tuned; their ratios to one another must be also finely-tuned. So improbability is multiplied by improbability by improbability until our minds are reeling in incomprehensible numbers.
So when scientists say that the universe is fine-tuned for life, they don’t mean “designed”; rather they mean that small deviations from the actual values of the fundamental constants and quantities of nature would render the universe life-prohibiting or, alternatively, that the range of life-permitting values is incomprehensibly narrow in comparison with the range of assumable values. Richard Dawkins himself, citing the work of the Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees, acknowledges that the universe does exhibit this extraordinary fine-tuning. But even if we grant that SOMEHOW the universe did overcome this astronomical problem and provided these initial conditions for life to exist, how did life actually originate? Seems like the best answer an atheist can present is abiogenesis occurred, followed by Darwinian evolution. Now I hold the view that the absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence. So I don't reject this claim based solely on the FACT that neither abiogenesis nor Darwinian evolution have EVER been observed (before anyone attempts to condemn and correct me, let me make it easy for you; point me to the recorded observation of abiogenesis and then list JUST ONE observation of an organism that occupied multiple Kingdoms of biological classification.) But also that the probability of this happening unguided is unrealistic. To give just one example, Barrow and Tipler have calculated the probability of an evolutionary genome to be between (4-180)110000 and (4-360)110000. Now multiply this by the improbabilities associated with the universe's formation. So if this somehow did happen, it is rock solid proof of a miracle, and would therefore also be powerful evidence for the existence of God.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
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Define "god concept" for me please.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Why is the multiverse a problem?
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
jackspell... it's all down to likelyhood...
Using Occam's Razor an atheist believes that intelligent design is an illusion created by multiverse theory, or many worlds theory. In this view it is more likely for the multiverse theory to be correct than a God to exist.
In my case when I use Occam's Razor to this problem I think it's more likely that the Universe was created by an immaterial and atemporal First Cause with intent. Bear in mind that when I say immaterial and atemporal I mean "mass" as we know it and "time" as we know it.
There is no certainty or hard logic to apply here, because we lack hard evidence in both sides of the argument.
Thank you for dumbing that down for him, very good answer Taralek
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
A descriptive term that may or may not differ in any meaningful way from "intelligent designer". The terms could even be interchangeable.
multiverse is a problem to intelligent design because it supposes the existence of several physical realities with different random settings. Our reality just happens to have the right settings for life out of sheer luck. Thus there is no intelligence or design working. There is no one on the "other realities" to question the luck so it is an illusion to think that this reality was tailor made for us.
The only thing you have proven here, like all theists of all labels, is when they get a whiff of smelling their own personal desires like a dog sniffing the ass of their own ego, it is hard to convince them they are not connected to reality.
Please, for your own sake, so that you don't waste the rest of your life on a placebo, take that wishful thinking hand out of your back.
You already reject the god claims of others. You think you have the greatest thing since the wheel and sliced bread. You falsely assume that we haven't seen your arguments before. WE HAVE!
I don't give a shit.
Steve Jobs proved his cliams
Alexander Gram Bell proved his claims. We landed on the moon, not because of Allah or Vishnu or pink unicorns, but because of SCIENCE.
Theism does not prove claims, like Jobs And Bell and NASA . Theism does not have the same rigors as scientific method. Theism relies on marketing, just like fast food joints don't give a shit if you get fat, it only cares about selling what feels good.
If you had anything beyond your own personal bias, it would be taught like gravity and evolution in every credible university and you could take your findings to a patent office and surely win a Nobel Prize.
Religion is the trophy to human credulity. It only demonstrates our psychological insecurities.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Well, another self-styled king of ad hominems. How impressive.
It is dishonest to pretend that you do not presuppose a god when you present the kalam cosmological argument. it is no different than an advocate of intelligent design pretending that they really were not referencing a god as the author of "creation." As I pointed out in the previous post, there is no reason to invoke the argument if you are not attempting to insert a god into the equation. And as to the lottery question, no matter how improbable it is, abiogenesis only has to happen one time. Unless you claim an entire body of unprovable knowledge exists and is true, the likelihood is still 1.
Teralek, interesting counterpoints. I like the way you think.
ETTTTT you are the theist not us. You have a particular concept in mind.. You reject the concepts of others. All concepts of every god are not equal at the same time, only a moron would say "anything is possible"
IT IS UP TO YOU, not us. We are not going to do your homework for you.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Theorists now recognize that the Anthropic Principle can only legitimately be employed to explain away our observation of fine-tuning when it is conjoined to MWH, according to which an ensemble of concrete universes exists, actualizing a wide range of possibilities. MWH is essentially an effort on the part of partisans of chance to multiply their probabilistic resources in order to reduce the improbability of the occurrence of fine-tuning. As you put it, “if you deal the cards enough times, eventually every hand will come up.” The very fact that otherwise sober scientists must resort to such a remarkable hypothesis is a sort of backhanded compliment to the design hypothesis. It shows that the fine-tuning does cry out for explanation. But is MWH as plausible as the design hypothesis?
If MWH is to commend itself as a plausible hypothesis, then some plausible mechanism for generating the many worlds needs to be to be explained. The best shot at providing a plausible mechanism comes from inflationary cosmology, which is often employed to defend the view that our universe is but one domain (or “pocket universe”) within a vastly larger universe, or multiverse. Alexander Vilenkin is one who vigorously champions the idea that we live in a multiverse.
At the heart of Vilenkin’s vision of the world is the theory of future-eternal, or everlasting, inflation (Vilenkin misleadingly calls it eternal inflation, even though he proves that the inflationary multiverse has only a finite past). According to generic inflationary theory, our universe exists in a true vacuum state with an energy density that is nearly zero, but earlier it existed in a false vacuum state with a very high energy density. The energy density of the false vacuum overwhelmed even the intense gravitational attraction generated by the high matter density of the early universe, causing a super-rapid, or inflationary, expansion, during which the universe grew from atomic proportions to a size larger than the observable universe in less than a microsecond.
But Vilenkin needs more than generic inflationary theory. In order to ensure everlasting inflation, Vilenkin hypothesizes that the scalar fields determining the energy density and evolution of the false vacuum state were characterized by a certain slope which issued in a false vacuum expanding so rapidly that, as it decays into pockets of true vacuum, the “island universes” thereby generated in this sea of false vacuum, though themselves expanding at enormous rates, cannot keep up with the expansion of the false vacuum and so find themselves increasingly separated with time. New pockets of true vacuum will continue to form in the gaps between the island universes and become themselves isolated worlds. Moreover, each island is subdivided into subdomains which Vilenkin calls O-regions, each constituting an observable universe bounded by an event horizon. Despite the fact that the multiverse is finite and geometrically closed, Vilenkin claims that the false vacuum will go on expanding forever, constantly generating new worlds.
At this point Vilenkin executes a nifty piece of legerdemain. As the island universes expand, their central regions eventually grow dark and barren in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, while stars are constantly forming at their ever-expanding perimeters. We should think of the decay of false vacuum to true vacuum going on at the islands’ expanding perimeters as multiple Big Bangs. From the global perspective of the inflating multiverse, these Big Bangs occur successively over time, as the island boundaries grow with time. In the global time of the multiverse, each island is at any time finite in extent though growing.
Now comes the sleight of hand. When we consider the internal, cosmic time of each observable universe, each can be traced back to an initial Big Bang event. We can now string together these various Big Bang events as occurring simultaneously. Big Bangs which will occur in the global future are now to be regarded as present. As a result, the infinite, temporal series of successive Big Bangs is converted into an infinite, spatial array of simultaneous Big Bangs. Hence, from the internal point of view there now exists an infinity of universes. As Vilenkin puts it, “The infinity of time in one view is thus transformed into the infinity of space in the other”
Vilenkin’s deft transformation seems to presuppose a static theory of time or, as it is sometimes called, four-dimensionalism or spacetime realism, according to which all spacetime points, whether past, present, or future, are equally real. For if temporal becoming is an objective feature of reality, then the global future is potentially infinite only, and future Big Bangs do not in any sense exist. If there is a global tide of becoming, then there is no actually infinite collection of Big Bangs after all. Internal observers, unaware of the global perspective, are simply mistaken in their taking the successive Big Bang events to be occurring simultaneously. This is a good illustration of how issues in the philosophy of time impinge crucially on scientific debates.
By postulating many worlds, Vilenkin can find purchase for the Anthropic Principle in order to explain away the fine-tuning of the universe. Quantum fluctuations in the scalar fields determine what sort of vacuum will decay out of the false vacuum, each associated with a different set of values for the constants of nature. By postulating an infinite array of island universes, randomly varying in their constants, Vilenkin can then appeal to the Anthropic Principle to explain away the observed fine-tuning: we can observe only a universe which is fine-tuned for our existence.
But if an infinite ensemble of simultaneous universes does not actually exist, Vilenkin’s attempt to explain away the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life collapses. For if, in fact, an infinite array of universes does not yet exist, if most of them lie in the potentially infinite future and are therefore unreal, then there actually exist only as many observable universes as can have formed since any island’s origin in the finite past. Moreover, since Vilenkin himself has shown that the multiverse cannot be extended into the infinite past but must have had a beginning, there can be only as many island universes now in existence as have formed in the false vacuum since the multiverse’s beginning. Given the incomprehensible improbability of the constants’ all falling randomly into the life-permitting range, it may well be highly improbable that a life-permitting island universe should have decayed this soon out of the false vacuum. In that case the sting of fine-tuning has not been removed.
Vilenkin’s whole multiverse scenario depends in any case on the hypothesis of future-eternal inflation, which in turn is based upon the existence of certain primordial scalar fields which govern inflation. Although Vilenkin observes that “Inflation is eternal in practically all models suggested so far” , he also admits, “Another important question is whether or not such scalar fields really exist in nature. Unfortunately, we don’t know. There is no direct evidence for their existence” This lack of evidence ought to temper our confidence in MWH.
Wholly apart from its speculative nature, however, the multiverse hypothesis faces a potentially lethal problem, which Vilenkin doesn’t even mention. Simply stated, if our universe is but one member of an infinite collection of randomly varying universes, then it’s overwhelmingly more probable that we should be observing a much different universe than that which we in fact observe. This same problem proved devastating for Ludwig Boltzmann’s appeal to a multiverse hypothesis in classical physics in order to explain why, if it has existed forever, the universe is not now in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium or heat death. Boltzmann made the bold speculation that the universe as a whole does, in fact, exist in a state of heat death, but that here and there random fluctuations produce pockets of disequilibrium, which Boltzmann referred to as “worlds.” Ours is one of these, and we shouldn’t be surprised to observe our world in such a highly improbable disequilibrium state, since observers cannot exist anywhere else. Boltzmann’s daring MWH has been universally rejected by contemporary physics on the grounds that were our universe but one such world in a multiverse, it is vastly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller region of disequilibrium —even one in which our solar system alone was produced in the twinkling of an eye by a random fluctuation—than what we do observe, since that is incomparably more probable than the whole universe’s being progressively formed by a decline in entropy from an equilibrium state.
Now a similar problem afflicts the contemporary appeal to the multiverse to explain away fine-tuning. Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1:10 10(123) , an inconceivable number. If our universe were but one member of a multiverse of randomly ordered worlds, then it is vastly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller universe. For example, the odds of our solar system’s being formed instantly by the random collision of particles is about 1:10 10(60) , a vast number, but inconceivably smaller than 10 10(123) . (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison)Or again, if our universe is but one member of a multiverse, then we ought to be observing highly extraordinary events, like horses’ popping into and out of existence by random collisions, or perpetual motion machines, since these are vastly more probable than all of nature’s constants and quantities’ falling by chance into the virtually infinitesimal life-permitting range. Observable universes like those strange worlds are simply much more plenteous in the ensemble of universes than worlds like ours and, therefore, ought to be observed by us if the universe were but a random member of a multiverse of worlds. Since we do not have such observations, that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. On naturalism, at least, it is therefore highly probable that there is no multiverse.
All this has been said, of course, without asking whether the multiverse itself must not exhibit fine-tuning in order to exist. If it does, as some have argued, then it is a non-starter as an alternative to design.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Here is another way to read the argument.
p1. I have hypothesis A, B and C for fine tuning.
p2. A and B are wrong.
C. Therefore C.
Well, I haven't heard any support for either hypothesis so until you do so it's all gibberish. I tried to elaborate on your sad argument in a previous thread. The second premise reads as a conclusion from the first premise which is wrong and does not follow.
Since neither hypothesis can be tested, the only thing that we can determine are their probability. I have showed you why your second premise is wrong, and also why your conclusion is wrong. I'm not sure why you are trying to make this into a logical or semantic argument, Mr. metaphysical.
It is really a very simple refutation to your unoriginal argument that you have copied and pasted from somewhere on the internet.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
If I am begging the question, as so many claim, SHOW ME HOW. The argument is obvious and never even argues for God.
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. (God is of no relevance here.)
2. The universe began to exist. (Again, no mention or contingency for God).
3. So it follows logically therefore, the universe has a cause.(No implication here neither)
So, somebody please show me where the presupposition is hiding?
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Do you believe the Universe / Cosmos was created by supernatural means ?
Read the initial argument! There is lots of support.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Lol, I'll try again even though I guarantee you it will end as last time.
Ok, two objections.
p1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Every one thing that begins to exist is referring to the set of all things contained within the universe. The universe is not a THING, it is the set of all things. See Russell's paradox about including sets as part of themselves. (aka barber paradox and so on)
Therefore your second premise does not follow from from first premise. (since you don't like the term non sequitur)
Second objection...
p1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
This implies that there are two sets of things, those that begin to exist, and those that do not begin to exist. Therefore in order for your argument to conclude God, this set MUST include more then just GOD, otherwise it will read like this.
p1. Everything except for GOD has a cause, and we call that begging the question.
I'm sure this is the funniest objections you have ever heard
lol.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
Of course. But that changes nothing in the argument. Even if I didn't I would still believe that everything that begins to exist has a cause. Who doesn't believe that? I would also believe the universe began to exist at the big bang. Who doubts that? So my worldview has no weight in the argument.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
I will give additional support shortly. Then you can refute it.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
I'm having fun, are you jackspell?
To be continued after work tonight
hopefully you're up for actual fact presenting refutation of the original argument.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
Do you believe this supernatural cause is most likely the God that Christians worship ? Surely you've considered that option, no ? What are your thoughts ?
I settle for Ocham's... since it's served me and is more known to me than that obscure pothead Ben guy.
Brian... I have idea what can crawl out your innards.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
I don't think so... If you formulate the theory correctly the only thing that you are implying or presuppose is that the Universe has an unlikely setting of physical constants, laws and scales (fine-tuning). Precisely the ones we need to create life as we know it. For theists the explanation for that is "God" - The intelligent design theory.
But actually Kalam argument goes another step in asserting that everything has a cause, thus the universe had to have a cause. In order to avoid causes, ad infinitum, you then claim that the cause of the Universe is outside the boundaries of physical laws and has pretty weird properties like an uncaused existence.
However nothing of this proves God - For me it indicates the existence of a First Cause (FC). Instead of FC I could have said God. it's a question of semantics. I know the word God has a different weight in peoples minds than the words FC, that's why I rather use it. That and because it's more scientifically correct to use FC than to use God.
jackspell! My God! you write so much that I get a laziness attack!
Intelligent design theory IDT as I stated above, only indicates that the universe was created with an intent. It does not prove the existence of a religion specific God. It could be God or The Matrix!
Saying that Multiverse theory (MT) was a "partizan" response response to fine tunning is the same as saying God was a partizan response from religious groups.
But yes, I think all of this discussion derives from seemingly self evident fine-tuning.
Scientists have actually come up with "some plausible mechanism for generating the many worlds" or just this one. And if you are not careful they may even say that they use mathematical formulas to back up their claims and you just use Rhetoric!
The answers you seek are in the String Theory and the Loop Quantum Gravity, which I cannot explain to you because I'm not a physicist.
http://youtu.be/FMSmJCKaaC0
Given the most recent discoveries I think "future-eternal inflation" is the more realistic scenario to the future of this Universe.
Lastly I just want to say that in my opinion it's more likely that we only have one Universe (this one) and it was created by a FC with intent. For me it is more likely the existence of this FC than the existence a multiverse reality. I don't go any further than that. If you want to call it God, to this FC, unless you explain what you mean by "God", I would say it's a naked assertion.
ProzacDeathWish personal beliefs shouldn't be used to discredit a theory or the claimer. You just look at the Universe and look at the theory and then decide. Everyone believes in something!
You know that matter and energy that made this Universe exist? Well the most proven law of science tells us that matter and energy has always existed. No more... no less.
Should I tape it to your forehead until you get it?
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Hey I know you're like the boss in here. Hardcore atheist and everything but I humbly disagree with you. If "The best available measurements suggest that the initial conditions occurred about 13.7 billion years ago" that means the universe had a "dead state" - Why?!... No one can say for certain that the First law of thermodynamics implies that 13.7 billions years ago all matter already existed in this "dead state". Actually the Big bang theory makes all physical laws go wild "at" or "before" the moment of conception.
I know that asking what came before the begining is like asking what's north of the north pole... if I may use words of Steven Hawking (Amen!)
But everything gets pretty weird as soon as we leave the Newtonian Macrocosm. For my limited mind there is a paradox between the Big Bang and the First law of thermodynamics.
Cause and effect does not need a source with intent behind it.
You also are using "intent" and "cause" as if they were interchangeable. (IE) "I was intent on causing a dispute between my two brothers".
I know it doesn't, but fine-tunning does.
To put it in another way; Kalam argument is mindless but IDT gives it purpose.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/big-bang-theory7.htm
I think this page might also help to put some light in the seemingly incompatible Laws of physics and the Big Bang.
No it doesn't. We only know so much. Give science time, it'll figure out what happened 1 second earlier than the "initial conditions" that you describe. There is no need for a god of the gaps. The room for the god of the gaps has been shaven over and over... he doesn't have much more room to hide.
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The problem with the WHOLE fine tuning argument is that we don't know any other conditions for which life could arise, the argument of fine tuning also fails because we don't know the changes in the variables before it becomes unsustainable for life and how each variable affects the other set values of the universe, what are all the conditions in which life can arise....the simple answer is we don't know. As such the whole fine tuning argument in regards to god is also bunk, god is not required, you are using god in place of plain ignorance....aka the god of the gaps.
As I've shown in my last post the Big Bang violates the laws of physics. Thus it invalidates your statement that "the most proven law of science tells us that matter and energy has always existed. No more... no less.".
"God of the Gaps" is just a prejudice against any intent to put purpose on the Universe. What do you mean by God of the gaps? Do you mean the God from Abrahamic religions? If so I agree with you. If by God also mean a FC with intent of creating life, then I think you have an agenda and you're not even looking at both sides of the argument. This is dangerous because you may be closing down research avenues when everything should be under scientific scrutiny.
If you ask me the intelligent design theory is perfectly valid. The problem is virtually all of their defenders seek indocrination. Again! personal beliefs should not invalidate a theory... only arguments against the theory... not your historical accounts of shaven Gods that live in gaps.
Yes, I know that, but I go with what I know. It seems to me, when I look at the Universe, that life is a pretty rare set of conditions.
We don't know exactly every condition necessary to create every type of life. - We don't know what types of life can exist; and we don't know the likelihood of all the physical conditions that allow the existence of these life spots.
However by observing this Universe, life does seem to need a precise set of conditions, extremely precise... the rest is science fiction.
That's the problem with it now isn't it, any variables that could produce life, any intelligent lifeform from that universe would make the same argument, it is basically an argument from ignorance, the problem lies now, with that said, there is no evidence pointing towards your IDT as being valid, even worse the argument for ID comes up with the problem of trying to explain the infinite regress problem that arises, for something has to create that being (ID) to create this universe, which then has to explain that other being for creating another being to created your creator of this universe, etc, etc, etc. Your entire argument falls apart at that point.
No you didn't.
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The link you provided says that the laws are believed to break down as you move towards the point of singularity. This seems logical since before the "big bang" the laws did not exist.
"since the laws of science break down as you approach the creation of the universe, there's no reason to believe the first law of thermodynamics would apply."
I don't know how can I be more clear to you...
I think you are mixing up this a bit... ID doesn't come with the problem of explaining infinite regress. Kalam might have to face that problem but not ID! Intelligent design only rises as a possible explanation to fine tuning observations. Nor does it need to explain how the FC was created! Remember that all the laws you know break down at the begining!
That's all ID, if properly postulated does, and I don't see any reason at all to dismiss it up front.
I can imagine a Universe were a FC would be less likely to exist. This Universe is packed with life in every corner and is in a steady state (didn't have a beggining). Thus ID theory is falsifiable.
Incorrect, if you are going to propose intelligent design you now have to explain where the intelligence comes from since science has started to answer that the "fine tune" part of the universe began milliseconds after the big bang occurred, are you proposing that the intelligence began the fine tuning after the big bang, or what exact? So far from what I gather from your argument is that the ID did this before not after the big bang......if it is before you have the issue of infinite regress, if it was after, you have the problem of proving any intelligence existed milliseconds after the big bang occurred.
As for all the laws breaking down yes, they do, however after the expansion those laws begin, there is a change in state of the energy, and as such, we dont know if with the amount of energy released at that moment in time if it is even possible for any different variable for those given forces. It maybe set due to the amount of energy released. The other problem is like I stated we don't know all the variable for life, as it stands we only know of one form, a carbon based life form. Since we haven't even bothered to properly explore any other part of our own solar system, let alone our part of the galaxy. Like I said, you now have the problem of explaining this intelligence and how it started milliseconds after the big bang.
It's nice that you can imagine a universe like that, but ours is not like that, the evidence points towards a natural event, not a intelligent event.
You didn't show that the Big Bang violates the laws of physics. You showed that some people think so. You also showed that some people give credence to the notion the laws of science break down as you approach the big bang. The fact is we just don't know. You can't claim one of the theories is THE theory until you can prove it. And you can't. This is a yet to be determined area of science. There are many conflicting ideas.
Science.Howstuffworks is a nice site, but it isn't a sole source. You can find other pages on the same site with more information or conflicting information (probably because we just don't know what came before the big bang)
http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/big-bang-theory4.htm
You simply don't know. And until you do you shouldn't use one specific theory and think it is the only one. You should understand that there are many plausible theories and we'll learn more in the future.
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I'm not claiming that this theory is THE theory! You are the one claiming that this theory is impossible and only yours is true. This is what I take from your comments. I'm just claiming that this theory is one of the possible explanations based on rational and observational facts! I am not asking you to believe this as the ultimate theory to be accepted as proof beyhond doubt. Not even I beleive that! That 1 x 10-43seconds that you talk about was exactly when the physical parameters of reality were set, a most crucial time.
I also don't think I have to explain how the intelligence or intent came to be. The ID theory doesn't have to answer that. It's impossible. As is impossible to explain who made the "strings"...
The intelligence started at least at the moment the Big Bang started. Moment zero seconds.
See if you get this: The intelligence or intent is a theory to explain the observational fine tuning, nothing more nothing less. I don't see any irrationality here.
Yes we don't know if these physical settings were the only ones possible (unlikely given our current knowledge) - Then you would have to explain why these physical settings were the only ones possible;
But I personally believe that this intent exists before the Big Bang. I cannot explain or demonstrate this to you on rational-observational terms.
we don't know if life can be based on things other than carbon and water. But as I told you in this I go with what I know, not with what I don't know, putting other things on the equation (eg. silicon based lifeforms) is unecessary and goes against observations.
Have you seen The Matrix? This is actually a good analogy to what I personally believe.
The movie was based on several philosofical thought experiements since Plato's cave to the brain in a vat.
The virtual world is the real world to the people living in it. But when Neo awoke he discovered that he was living in a world that was not the "real" one. However he could only discover this when he awoke in the real world when he compared the 2. You see, before this he had no frame of reference. Only now he nows that the real world is more real than the virtual one. He probably feels more aware too. People in the virtual world actually think they are truly awake and are convinced that this virtual world is the only thing that exists and the people who believe in the Matrix are religious fanatics - The Matrix can't be natural.
The Big Bang in the virtual world started when the Matrix was turned on. Time zero when the virtual physical contants were set. But there was still the "Real world" BEFORE the Big Bang.
You know what's funny here?
what's funny is that I'm the one who suppose to be dogmatic here... but I concede you could be correct... With comments like those you're not showing ANY skepticism to your side of the story!
why is "intent" unnatural??!! Do you have any idea of what you've just said?! You could translate that into: "I believe in the Natural numbers (0,1,2,3,4,... ad infinitum), but I don't believe in number 1!" Intelligence is a natural event!!
Yes WE simply don't know, that's why this theory is valid.
I'd have to believe in some sort of god if shit "crawled". But even without the crawling, we all shit, so no need for a god to shit.
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Retrofitting science as a false attempt to insert your pet deity in as the solution DOES NOT WORK.
MYTH blah blah blah=thermodynamics +myth=My pet diety
Any idiot, and far too many idiots try to pull this crap.
Allah, blah blah blah=thermodynamics+Allah=Allah exists.
Now, whats the matter, if "anything goes" because thermodynamics does not apply, then Allah is just as good an explanation as yours.
OR
There never was a god, and the universe DOES NOT NEED a cognition to occur. People make up gods as a mental placebo sugar pill.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-BQVmvulmQ&annotation_id=annotation_144642&src_vid=dpy65mysu5s&feature=iv
I don't have a deity or a pet God. I never spoke of it in this post.
there is no MYTH in my words. Only Matrix!
Of course Allah is just as a good explanation as the Matrix, the only thing is Allah or whatever deity based on religion has attached myths that have no grounds on reality.
The only point we disagree is that I think one of the plausible explanations for the fine tunning is the "The Matrix"
This a cool video!
It reminds me about the occasional inconsistence about my theist badge here.
But I guess in some definitions I am a theist. I believe in the Matrix. However when I speak of the Matrix itself I'm more an Ignostic than anything else.
However the way I'm being attacked by categorical rejection of an intellingent First Cause to this Universe; leads me to believe that many here are strong atheists.
I have a better idea. How about you get somebody to teach you about the following law of thermodynamics that deals with exergy. I have no expectations of you comprehending this. But if the universe was eternal, it would have already depleted the USABLE energy or "exergy". Look into Einstein.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
And we actually have a pretty damn decent one... It could be simply that these are the only parameters POSSIBLE. This is the only existence we are capable of testing and these values hold true in our universe. This may actually be one of the ways things work in reality. Your argument for design is basically you claiming that if these values were different the universe wouldn't exist as we know it.
You are right. It would not. There would just be different values and where those values coincided with life conditions? There would be life. And indeed that's how probability works. It's how lottery winners exist. You are basically a lottery winner claiming that the lottery was divinely guided rather than "you got lucky". Don't worry. Plenty of lottery winners are guilty of the same mistake as you.
Okay... I will refer to you in my original post...
Neither of us know what the answer is. The only difference is I am honest enough to state that I do not know what occured before the big bang. I know what the numbers are I don't know why the numbers are those. No one does. What you are doing is using philosophy... Philosophy is not reality. It is merely thinking about things. Things thought off in philosophy have turned out to be entirely and insanely wrong. The honest truth is no one bloody knows.
Especially You. That's the beauty of science. The only people who are likely to find out why the numbers are the way they are are scientists. Not priests, not prayer and not people who believe in a god.
And even our world moves in general towards entropy and heat death. Bear in mind we are a nuclear powered life form... All the energy we gain from food comes from light (either directly or indirectly) generated from the largest nuclear explosion everyone has seen. The closed system we live in is the solar system and it is massive. We are an anomaly, a dot outside the norm in terms of life... An outlier. But we are powered by the massive heat death and entropy of the sun where every second of atomic explosion releases countless photons, a small amount of which powers our life.
The ultimate irony of the situation is that should a god as defined by you exist, the people closest to him are scientists who don't believe in him.
Again, the mathematics of such figures are highly suspect. No one bloody knows how it all began, we don't know the mechanism. We don't know what happened. Giving such figures only occurs in certain mathematical hypothesis which your god is not.
Atheists are basically very strong agnostics. We don't believe in a god because there is absolutely no evidence for one. Your evidence is apparent design, which is a faulty assumption that people make all the bloody time and usually for good things. It's always a good idea to praise god for saving you from Cancer but never one to blame god for killing Steve Irwin with a Stingray (Or indeed that woman who died the same year who was killed by a stingray while on a bloody boat! Highly improbable and inconcievable but it happened!)
The thing is we don't know. If we proved that there was a god empirically rather than philosophically where one can happily argue for a lot of non-existent things because philosophy is merely thought.... Then atheists would probably change their tune. We can keep disproving the existence of god and you will never ever change your tune because you cannot disprove the existence of something. You can merely say that it's highly unlikely to exist. Just as fairies and sasquatch and the loch ness monster. A god is just one of those "very unlikely things to exist". There is no evidence of one at all bar philosophical which is a 50:50 split because in a philosophical argument you cannot tell use the "Clearly these people are morons of the highest calibre" argument because it's philosophy. We can do that in science.
And scientifically speaking you are guilty of one fatal error which is assuming that a lack of knowledge is tantamount to the presence of your god. Pre-Big Bang is the ideal place for a god to be hidden because he is out of the known reach of science. Everywhere else has proven to be non-existent.
I am sure the moment we prove how the universe began (if we ever managed that lofty goal) the theists would move the goal post again.
http://a-million-gods.blogspot.com/
I will make this short and simple. For the M-theory to avoid design then the mechanism that generates them has to also avoid fine tuning. No one has yet to propose any viable options. Also, look into the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem. In 2003 they where able to PROVE that ANY universe, that is on average, in a state of cosmic expansion, CANNOT be eternal in the past, but must have a past space-time boundary. Checkmate.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Ok... I grant to you that you know more about physics than I do... But that is not undeniable proof of ID. There could be an infinite regress of Universes with space time boundaries. And how do you know that all Universes are in a state of cosmic expansion?
And actually many of these theories are still under discussion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOkAagw6iug
We actually disagree less than what you think. I think our difference is that you can actually prove without doubt that ID is a reality. I merely think is the most likely theory. Some others here think is the less likely and some others reject it completely just for the sake of it
This Universe is just a "membrane" that exists in a "superstructure" you can call the Matrix if you want to... The most difficult thing in this debate is to find words!
Here is the problem with lotto analogy. The odds of winning the powerball are long. And yes someone almost always wins. And yes, in the many worlds hypothesis every work is equally probable. We are concerned with why do we have a LIFE-PERMITTING WORLD, WHEN A LIFE PROHIBITING IS SO MUCH MORE PROBABLE. Now imagine a lottery with a billion white balls, and one red. Now, reach in and pull the red, blindfolded. Have fun.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Oh the old stupid pathetic "razor's edge" argument.
Once again.
Low probability=My pet god did it.
Ok
Low probability=Allah did it.
Still makes sense right, all things being equal?
Or how about reality
Low probability=shit happens and we got lucky, no cognition required.
Your god is merely your imagination and your emotions allowing you to mentally be fooled into believing crap. Wanting a god to be real does not constitute evidence.
Did you really think coming in here that we have never run into this bullshit before? It never ceases to amaze me how many theists think they can pull one over on us.
What would be so frightening to you if you suddenly realized we were right? Your pet god claim was not around 1 billion years ago. It won't be around after our species goes extinct because there will not be any future generation to sell our myths to. No famous person friend or foe, will be remembered. Our planet will die and all life on it, just like a tree or pet eventually dies. The universe does not need us to exist, we are merely in it and it will continue without us.
THAT is reality. Facing it instead of propping up bullshit, will take away your fear and need for that sugar pill. Life will go on if you give up on it. You can still be happy and do good for others, it will simply mean you have grown up, much like a kid grows up and gives up on Santa. Your private parts wont fall off by accepting reality as it is, not emotional claptrap you want your utopia to be.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Cause and effect...
The 1st premise fails, logically because it ignores the reality of cause and effect, that is to say that effect MUST be seperated from cause by a period of time.
A simultanious cause and effect are equal to an uncaused effect. There is no difference.
Time, the temporal dimension of space, did not exist until the Plank Instant AFTER the rapid expansion of the primordial universe. Since time did not exist until a point AFTER the 'effect' of expansion, there can be no CAUSE.
1. Cause and Effect are a temporal concept.
2. Time did not exist until the universe expanded.
Thus, there can be no Cause to the Effect of expansion.
Thank you for playing, come again.
Christianity: A disgusting middle eastern blood cult, based in human sacrifice, with sacraments of cannibalism and vampirism, whose highest icon is of a near naked man hanging in torment from a device of torture.