A question for athiests

[Kind David]

Just out of curiosity, if you don't believe that God is real, what do you believe governs reality? What's your theory? What is it that determines the rules of physics, the architecture of everything that is?

Why would "reality" need a governor? And how could a governor of reality govern?

A "theory" is a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena. Using the scientific method a theory is tested. Hypotheses are made. Then tested.

Having no belief in a god or gods is not a theory. Postulating invisible beings who "govern reality" is not a theory. It can not be tested. Believing in invisible beings is a faith. Believing that there is a "governor of reality" is exactly the same as believing that there is a Rain god who controls the weather, or that there is a god of Love who makes people fall in love with each other.

Finally how would a governor of reality "determine" the rules of physics? Or is that just one more super power your god has that we puny humans will never know?

 

[MrGoodBytes]

Thanks. Some context to that picture:

It's me at a music festival in Sweden, keeping a drunk girl who was wobbly on her feet from falling flat on her face. That's my wife standing next to me.

It was a bit of a challenge keeping my hands from rising too far as I held on to the drunk girl. I managed to get her to a chair before I crossed a line, though just barely. Someone snapped a shot of me that lends a suitably heroic air to the experience.


eudaimonia,

Mark

I automatically assumed that the woman in your arms was your girlfriend, in trance due to techno and sleep deprivation. Oh well.

 

[PhilosophicalBluster]

In the beginning, Eris created the other gods. She wouldn't have if she had known that they'd take her credit for the whole ordeal. Eris then created the universe (this generally considered to be a bad idea). This all actually happened last Thursday, but Eris, being the goddess of chaos, decided to make it look 13.7 billion years old. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Douglas Adams! Huzzah!

 

[redwards]

I don't want to jump in on page 33 and go over something that might already have been covered here, but neither am I in the mood for 33 pages of reading, so I'll ask:

Have you already covered Lee Smolin's theory of fecund universes (or anything similar)?

 

[griggs1947]

Mark, how right you are about that chain of explanations. Theists beg the question and special plead to exempt God from that query; William Sahakian maintains that we commit the fallacy of multiple questions thereby. No, it is appropriate to query what made Him and what designed Him?

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

Mark, how right you are about that chain of explanations. Theists beg the question and special plead to exempt God from that query; William Sahakian maintains that we commit the fallacy of multiple questions thereby. No, it is appropriate to query what made Him and what designed Him?

You should try and make your communication skills less pretentious.

 

[griggs1947]

Existence just is. Were there God, then there could be nothing! How could there be nothing as the law of conservaton shows the eternity of the void?
High level theologians accept that but still posit God as the explanation why and that He sustains Existence

 

[Tikiman06]

If there is an all-powerful God, the laws of conservation mean nothing to Him, he, being all-powerful, can literally do anything, as such Laws are created and defined by Him.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

If there is an all-powerful God, the laws of conservation mean nothing to Him, he, being all-powerful, can literally do anything, as such Laws are created and defined by Him.

What if they aren't? What if God is as limited by the natural laws as we are?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Existence just is. Were there God, then there could be nothing! How could there be nothing as the law of conservaton shows the eternity of the void?
High level theologians accept that but still posit God as the explanation why and that He sustains Existence

I'm a level 18 Cleric and I concur

 

[Tikiman06]

What if they aren't? What if God is as limited by the natural laws as we are?

Then God is not all-powerful, and therefore your idea of God, is not God at all.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Then God is not all-powerful, and therefore your idea of God, is not God at all.

Not everyone defines God as an omnipotence, and not everyone defines omnipotence in the same way.

 

[Tikiman06]

Not everyone defines God as an omnipotence, and not everyone defines omnipotence in the same way.

Either way, God, if creator of everything, logically created not only the world, but the fundamental laws that govern it, and it is more than conceivable that God predates universal laws.

Also, whoever said that we should ask who created God, the theory held by most people is that God created himself, being a self-creating substance (according to some that is, not necessarily what I believe.)

 

[quatona]

"Self-creating substance", eh?

 

[MrGoodBytes]

"Self-creating substance", eh?

I'd love to hear an explanation on how this would work.

 

[CauseAndEffect]

Just out of curiosity, if you don't believe that God is real, what do you believe governs reality? What's your theory? What is it that determines the rules of physics, the architecture of everything that is?

I don't exactly what governs reality nor do I have a theory. In so far as the behavior of matter and energy ( i.e. that which comprises material and physical reality) it would be causality ( at least in terms of aggregate matter - quantum physics is different) An important thing to understand is that when we observe reality, more specifically, the behavior of matter and energy in said reality, it is our minds that are assigning particular value to these observations. The values could be names or even something interpreted to appear 'orderly.' We often marvel at the reality around us and notice how consistent matter and energy behave, how predictable yet how grandiose reality can be. The drive to understand the great principles of the universe often seems so large that we sometimes feel we are too puny to understand. Thus some of us would like to imagine a 'superhuman' or 'god' is the answer but, truly, god is a non answer. God as an answer only begs more questions. So it seems to me that the universe is orderly but it is also not this way. The larger, human, level of perception seems to yield evidence of order and majesty when observing our world and beyond. Yet, at the quantum level, there is a beauty like no other, something so absurd , something so pure, something so unordered, the very essence of what is, utterly splendid chaos.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Either way, God, if creator of everything, logically created not only the world, but the fundamental laws that govern it, and it is more than conceivable that God predates universal laws.

No, it is not conceivalbe. The statement "God can create universal laws" would be such a fundametal, universal law already.