Do facts actualy point to a Creator?

[Radrook]

Lol! CYBERBORISjohnson isn't a physicist, and his misquoting of Hawking's 'The Grand Design' demonstrates it. Nowhere in that book does Hawing talk of life in other dimensions (other universes, yes). And the dimensions Michio Kaku talks about are the dimensions of String Theory, and the life is possible life in other universes; as usual, the portentous voice-over has it wrong in several places. It's frankly naive to think these are remotely authoritative links about physics.
No, I've read it all; and unlike some, I address only what people say, and make no other assumptions.
You mean like your false accusations about me: "griping about some deity spying on you when you are naked", and others? I would have thought that, as a Christian, that would give you pause.
Project much?

If you address only what people say then address this:

Michio Kaku said:

“Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg likens this multiple universe theory to radio. All around you, there are hundreds of different radio waves being broadcast from distant stations. At any given instant, your office or car or living room is full of these radio waves. However, if you turn on a radio, you can listen to only one frequency at a time; these other frequencies have decohered and are no longer in phase with each other. Each station has a different energy, a different frequency. As a result, your radio can only be turned to one broadcast at a time.Likewise, in our universe we are "tuned" into the frequency that corresponds to physical reality. But there are an infinite number of parallel realities coexisting with us in the same room, although we cannot "tune into" them. Although these worlds are very much alike, each has a different energy. And because each world consists of trillions upon trillions of atoms, this means that the energy difference can be quite large. Since the frequency of these waves is proportional to their energy (by Planck's law), this means that the waves of each world vibrate at different frequencies and cannot interact anymore. For all intents and purposes, the waves of these various worlds do not interact or influence each other.”
― Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/18800.Michio_Kaku

 

[Loudmouth]

If you address only what people say then address this:

Michio Kaku said:

Where is there mention of a deity?

 

[bhsmte]

Where is there mention of a deity?

It is hidden between the lines.

 

[Radrook]

I made no such claim. I simply pointed out that while there is some non-trivial consensus that something must have created the universe among laypersons (not, as we will shortly see, among experts), there is fairly extreme disagreement over what that something is, what qualities it has, and more.

The view isn't restricted to lay persons as you seem to prefer to imagine. It has included many of the most brilliant scientific minds in history which I need not enumerate since you already know but choose to ignore. As to the ID's qualities, that is totally irrelevant to the conclusion of an ID. When the conclusion about Dark Matter was reached it's real nature did not affect its presence. Its presence or existence was considered indisputable because of the observed gravitational pattern which indicated its presence. Your objection has absolutely no bearing on the subject at all. So why bring it up?

First of all, could you cite these disagreements? I'm not entirely sure you're referring to. Secondly, I don't know much about dark matter, but I can point to one significant difference between intelligent design and gravity: I can demonstrate gravity trivially, while demonstrating intelligent design may in fact be fundamentally impossible due to its unfalsifiable nature - or could you show us what a universe your god couldn't design would look like?

That constitutes a similarity not a difference. LOL! Gravity provided a pattern and life coming only from life provides a pattern. there is another pattern as well but that would only serve to provoke the ubiquitous:

I caint see!" response.

What you are describing is yore inability to admit that what you are seeing is evidence. If indeed it were otherwise then you would be consistent when faced with identical data instead of suddenly regaining the basic ability to reason and losing it again when it is deemed convenient.. That kind of strategy just doesn't fly.

What something exactly looks like is irrelevant to the effects it has which indicates its presence. Yikes! This is getting ridiculous. Are you just spouting whatever comes into your head or is this a genuine manifestation of illogical thought?
Sorry I ask but it's hard to imagine that this is really genuine.

BTW
Unfalsifiability doesn't nullify the existence of something that announces its existence in clearly detectable ways. So your premise is off. Furthermore the choosing of an extremely unlikely explanation over one that clearly demonstrates an almost 100% likelihood based on repetition of a pattern is illogical and strongly indicates stubborn fanatically motivated bias. Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

They conclude intelligent design, sure. They also conclude that it must have been their god that did it. Which means that clearly, somewhere, something has gone wrong.

That other conclusion is totally irrelevant to the first. The ID need not be a god or even supernatural. That is simply a detail that you feel impelled to introduce-not me.

Almost all cosmologists (you know, the guys whose data people like Craig rely on for their arguments to demonstrate god) are atheists. I've heard figures as high as 80%. There is a strong correlation between level of education and atheism, with the people who discover the data you wish to use to demonstrate god overwhelmingly going in the other direction. Ask any physicist whether they think that physics proves god, and you're unlikely to get a positive response.

First, your insinuated belief that I am averse to cosmology or cosmologist has absolutely no basis in reality. I participated in a forum which was based on discussions concerning cosmology and responded to the questions that emerged in a knowledgeable fashion. Neither am averse to any other science unless the science involved isn't really staying true to the scientific method. Then I avoid it like the Bubonic Plague.

As to your appeal to authority and bandwaggon, sorry, nice try but no cigar. For some mysterious reason I tend not to be swayed by, you know, fallacious reasoning.

 

[Radrook]

It is hidden between the lines.

Strawman!
Show me where I said that he is mentioning or even insinuating a deity.
Misrepresenting everything I post or say doesn't advance your case.

 

[Radrook]

Where is there mention of a deity?

Did I say that he mentions a deity? Perhaps you dozed off temporarily and dreamed it?

 

[PapaZoom]

I think we can all agree that people are doing more than just asking the question. This is what they believe to be true. It is disingenuous to claim that they are just asking the question. More over, they have no interest doing research to answer that question.

Yes but just because I believe that God is responsible for the creation of the universe, doesn't mean my questions to you aren't sincere. You're right that I have little interest in researching some questions. Does God exist? Yes. /end I can't get myself to a place to contemplate our world without a Supreme Designer. It would require fakery.

But that doesn't mean I won't consider your objections. Your perspective matters. Not so much in answering the question but in understanding your thinking. I think that is why we often talk past each other, we're really not interested in what others think and the why behind it. I'm trying to be better at doing just that. I know I often miss that mark.

Part of the problem is that it is not an honest question. There is no intention of testing the idea, and no intention of supporting the idea with evidence.

For a question to be honest that doesn't mean we must be willing to test every idea. It does mean we ought to give the idea a fair hearing and chew on it a while before offering a reply. I've been a Christian for many decades. It would take quite a lot to get me to a place where I even could honestly question my belief that God exists as a reality. I have zero doubts about that. Yet I'm not opposed to having my beliefs challenged. As for evidence, there is plenty of evidence for God's existence. Evidence comes in many forms. These have been discussed over and over for many centuries. And yet here we are still debating His existence. I don't think that will ever change.

 

[PapaZoom]

With all due respect, I don't. On the scientific side, you have people who are actually trying to put forward testable ideas. They put their ideas at risk through experiments and new observations. On the theistic side, you have a belief that was never reached through evidence or testing, and a belief that is impervious to evidence and questioning. No matter what is observed, no matter what the results of experiments are, the theistic belief will remain.

This is not the case. The belief in a Creator God is open to evidence and testing. There isn't a test that one can do in a lab, that's true. But there are tests. And we've been engaging in those tests and examining the evidence for God for centuries.

What is being put forward is a false equivalence between scientific theories and religious beliefs. They are not the same thing. Science actually asks questions. Religious orthodoxy is dogmatic and resistant to questions.

Science does not ask questions. Scientists do. Religious orthodoxy doesn't ask questions either. Faith-minded people do. The history of the world is the history of questions being asked, explored, and answers sought (and often found). The early scientists were Christians. Today we have physicists that are Christians and probably in all branches of science, you will find faith-minded believers. Some of the greatest minds in philosophy have been, and currently are, Christians.

Christianity is a faith for thinking people. God gave us a mind that can reason and explore and discover the mysteries of the universe. This includes defending the faith from a scientific perspective. The Fine Tuning argument for the existence of a Divine Creator is a strong argument in my opinion. Many disagree. But to suggest that the FT arguments doesn't offer evidence for the existence of a Creator is disingenuous.

What evidence? How is it questioned? What observations, if made, would disprove the existence of God?

We know from science that information comes from intelligence. Random process have no thought to what matters. Information must be systematic, not random. DNA alone is a systematic organization of information. It is scientific to make an inference to the best explanation. Given that we know information comes from a mind, it's reasonable to infer that there is a Mind behind the existence of DNA. Abductive reasoning is a sound approach in considering questions about our world and existence.

Also, the burden of proof lies with supporting an idea, not in disproving the idea when there is a lack of supporting evidence. There is no theory in science that is accepted simply because it hasn't been disproven.

Christians have been supporting their beliefs for Centuries. The history of Christianity proves this. Arguments from causation and ontology are examples. There are many examples of supporting evidence for the existence of God.

Finally, science does hold on to scientific theories even in the face of contrary evidence. Haeckel's embryos is one such example.

http://www.discovery.org/a/3935 Yes it's from 2007 and it's a Christian organization. But don't commit the genetic fallacy. The source is irrelevant if they print the truth. Scientists do have their golden calves.

 

[PapaZoom]

In what way is it supported? The burden of proof lies with those making the positive claim.

What evidence demonstrates that the universe was created for human beings as opposed to rock features on Mars, or giant black holes? It would appear to me that the universe is as finely tuned for a geologic feature on Mars that looks like a face as it is for humans. All of the supposedly fine tuned characteristics of our universe that give rise to life are also required to create the Face on Mars:

This is a good question to explore. But what you say above is not true. It is not true that all of the fine tuned characteristics of our universe that have given rise to life are also required to create the human face on mars. Making the universe conducive for life is far more complex than a rock formation resembling a face. In AZ, where I just was, is a mountain that looks like a giant lying on his back. On my wall, where my modem was mounted, there was a little group of termites that chewed up the plasterboard. It was more like wood pulp paper and not chalk. Apparently the modem attracted the little critters. They chewed up the wall just behind the modem. When I stood way back, it looked like the face of Jesus (sort of). It definitely looked like the face of a bearded man. Up close it looked like a hold in the wall.

 

[The Cadet]

That constitutes a similarity not a difference. LOL! Gravity provided a pattern and life coming only from life provides a pattern. there is another pattern as well but that would only serve to provoke the ubiquitous:

It's been explained at length that "life comes only from life" has significant problems. For starters, it's easy to hypothesize a functional path from non-life to life; we can't demonstrate that that's how we came from just yet, but there are numerous explanations that could very well work out. Beyond that, it's a logical impossibility, as it leads to an infinite regress - and implies that if the intelligent designer is alive, he must necessarily have come from another, older living thing, and apparently it's just turtles all the way down. You've had these problems explained to you at length, and you have yet to offer anything in terms of a substantive rebuttal.

BTW
Unfalsifiability doesn't nullify the existence of something that announces its existence in clearly detectable ways.

Allow me to translate what you just said from woo to english:

"Being unable to, even in principle, determine the difference between something existing and not existing doesn't nullify the existence of something that we can determine exists."

You clearly do not understand the concept of falsifiability. If a hypothesis is unfalsifiable, what it means is that we cannot devise a test that the hypothesis could, even in theory, fail. What this necessarily means is that we are unable to determine the difference between the hypothesis being true and the hypothesis being false - if we could, we could make a test that it could, at least in theory, fail. If something is unfalsifiable, it is by definition undetectable, and it follows that it is also useless.

This is why it matters so much that the hypothesis is falsifiable. Because if it isn't, we cannot tell if it is true or false. It doesn't matter if the hypothesis has a ton of evidence supporting it; if it's unfalsifiable, that evidence is fundamentally worthless, because no evidence would not count as supporting evidence.

So I'll ask again. Could you propose a universe that your "intelligent designer" could not create, and explain why?

 

[PapaZoom]

Everyday of your life, you rely on conveniences brought to you through the scientific method, that you likely take for granted and don't even think about.

Yes. I don't dispute this.

 

[PapaZoom]

Can I ask how you mean tested? Perhaps it is just me but I consider the fact that we have an ever widening base of knowledge the repeatedly seems to work to be a test that validates science works.


He has a valid point but I do not see how it changes the fact that science does work. It is certainly possible that there are better models out there but we have not found them yet.

It can't be tested in a lab. It can be tested via observation and the use of reasoning. So can things of faith be tested this way.

 

[bhsmte]

It can't be tested in a lab. It can be tested via observation and the use of reasoning. So can things of faith be tested this way.

Can you give an example of these tests?

 

[PapaZoom]

I disagree.

Take a problem. Try to solve it using multiple methods, one of which is the scientific method. Then see which method achieves the best results.

The reason why the scientific method won out, is because it achieved the best results.

Science accomplished immensly more in just 2 centuries then all other methods combined in the 10.000 years preceeding it.

Positing unfalsifiable and unsupportable entities is about as unscientific as it gets.

And how do you find out if those inferences are wrong?

I have said before I agree the scientific method is good. But it's not the only way to "test" observable data. Positing a Supreme Being is not an unsupported idea. Much of what Darwin did was to observe, observe, observe, and then make a reference to the best explanation. If this is legitimate for Darwin, so is making inferences from the observable universe as well as the microscopic world.

 

[Loudmouth]

You are misunderstanding my statements and giving them an unintended twist. The person claimed that my argument did not exist. I replied that it is tantamount to saying that inductive reasoning doesn't exist because that is what my argument was based on. Nothing more.

That's completely wrong. You can lack an inductive argument for the existence of an ID, and inductive could still exist. The two are completely independent of one another.

You still have not produced an inductive argument for the existence of an ID. The only conclusion we can draw is that you can't use inductive reasoning to reach that conclusion.

 

[Loudmouth]

I have said before I agree the scientific method is good. But it's not the only way to "test" observable data.

What are the other ways, and what are some examples of this method being applied?

Positing a Supreme Being is not an unsupported idea. Much of what Darwin did was to observe, observe, observe, and then make a reference to the best explanation. If this is legitimate for Darwin, so is making inferences from the observable universe as well as the microscopic world.

The question is whether the observations support the conclusion. In Darwin's case, they did. What are the observations you are citing, and how do they support your conclusion?

 

[Loudmouth]

Did I say that he mentions a deity? Perhaps you dozed off temporarily and dreamed it?

Are you saying that there is no support from physics for the existence of a deity?

 

[durangodawood]

With Darwin, his hypothesis was at least empirically testable in principle, at the time. And since then, it has been tested against further observation, and found generally correct after certain refinements.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

If you address only what people say then address this:
Michio Kaku said: <parallel universe talk>

Yup, that's a reasonable quote. It sounds like a 'parallel' multiverse of the type that comes with the Everettian 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics - and may even be it. In that model (and almost all multiverse models) the different universes cannot interact. I quite like MW as a concept; it's the simplest interpretation and makes fewest assumptions - even though, intuitively, it seems profligate...

But why? what about it?

 

[PapaZoom]

Can you give an example of these tests?

Hasn't this been offered so many times that it's simply common knowledge. I said, "via observation and the use of reasoning." Is there no way you can see how anyone could logically conclude of God's existence through reasoning? How about CS Lewis? GK Chesterton? Ravi Zacharias' ministry is built upon approaching the realities of God through reason and logic. I'm not excluding Scripture here, he's certainly a fan of God's word. But one can approach reality and examine it via a logical process can they not? I'm not saying that such an approach is scientific. So what if it isn't? If science can't approach a question because it isn't falsifiable but philosophy can address it, I then find value in philosophy to the same degree I find value in the scientific method. We ought not to reject the possibility of God simply because it can't be tested in a lab. It certainly can be tested in a mind. And in the end, even when we do "science" ultimately we're simply doing science through reason and logic - which is done in the mind.