God of the gaps

[Jet Black]

I am going to push a bit more on the information and logic/mathematics end. If we start with utter nothingness, no equations, no logic, no time, no matter, how is it possible for utter nothingness to decide to put into play a large equation in which is embedded the tensor for the four fundamental forces as we know them today. This is what utter nothingness had to be able to generate, if there is not something back there with mind capable of generating such things:

you're cheating because you don't have "nothing" in the first place, you beg the question of the existance of a perpetual mind with some abilities and some will to do things (I assume). you are just presuning the existance of the very things you are trying to explain and then attaching a God label to it.

 

[Jet Black]

And if one truly starts with nothing, why does nothingness suddenly pop tensors into existence with which to create a universe? It seems to me that one is faced with something more than merely a naturalistic universe. Oh my gosh, I am close to using the G word again.

And I think that people are missing the impact of all roads leading to god-like traits in whatever we find back there. Maybe we are like the 7 blind men describing the elephant. Each road leads to a small piece of the elephant but the commonalities that come from all of the blind men give us the qualities of self-creation/self-existence, information, math logic, immense power, creativity, the ability to create ex nihilo, but we dare not call that God for fear of becomine a deist or theist. And at the end of the day are you not playing a similar semantic game as I was with god of the gaps? It looks like a god, it quacks like a god, but it aint god.

again in repeated referral to "God like traits" you seem to be implicitly suggesting things like intelligence and I suppose feelings again. Or are you perfectly happy with the concept of a God that has no brain that does not care whether you live or die or whether there are WOMD in Iraq, a "god" that just ticks along mindlessly and mechanically according to whatever rules it has? you know, you could almost get away with calling God "The Universe" if you played at that game too long. It doesn't look or quack like a god because it doesn't care and is utterly unintelligent.

 

[Jet Black]

This feeling and the fact that we are ignorant leads us to posit a deity to explain away the fact that there is something. We think by giving him supernatural powers we have explained something. But we haven't. It is no more likely that a supernatural being just is than it is that the universe just is.

in fact, it is probably less likely that you have a supernatural being. Both a supernatural being and a universe must share a bunch of properties. i.e. they must both exist, they must be logically consistent, not destroy or contradict themselves and those sorts of things, but a supernatural being must also have a bunch of other properties such as intelligence, will and so on, and as far as we know, these are all just emergent properties of complexity. complexity can often be treated as a synonym for "improbable" because it requires specific organisations of energy flows, or information flows and so on, whereas the universe does not. it has ways to describe how information flows (speed of light and so on) but beyond that there is no element of control or specific goal oriented flow as there is in a mind.

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

Now, I would be perfectly happy to say it is a God of the Gaps argument IF you would actually explain why you are not a creationist as I outlined in my reply to Ed. To refresh, if all roads lead to the creation of something out of nothing--creation ex nihilo, Why are you not a creationist like me?

You may not like it as it's an exceedingly simple line of rationale to an exceedingly difficult issue (if not impossible). I am not a creationist simply because at the moment that I realize that first cause becomes the crux of the issue, I see that assigning god to the task would create the old spiral of death… then what caused god? How could god just exist? Just because it’s god? It feels like a cop out to an impossible problem (speaking personally of course, I’m in no way meaning to insult anyone’s belief) It’s at this point that I have to come to the self realization that I may not have the capacity to ever understand the solution to first cause. However, I do not feel inclined to actually give an answer either as giving one will only raise more unanswerable questions. It is for this reason that I am what I consider to be a true hard-core agnostic and not a theist.

 

[Jet Black]

......I see that assigning god to the task would create the old spiral of death… then what caused god? How could god just exist? Just because it’s god? ......

I feel the god hypothesis creates more problems than it solves, because now not only would you have to explain the first cause, but you have to explain intelligence and will and those sorts of things, since they are no longer simply emergent properties of a temporally developing system.

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

I feel the god hypothesis creates more problems than it solves, because now not only would you have to explain the first cause, but you have to explain intelligence and will and those sorts of things, since they are no longer simply emergent properties of a temporally developing system.

More to the point, ANY answer we give creates problems and raises more questions. We may have to concede that we simply may not have the mental capacity to solve this problem at all. Like I said before, dogs will never be able to learn higher mathematics. Why do we feel the need to be so special that we can figure out every problem in the universe? Sadly, we may not have the brain for it. The inevitable conclusion for me is to admit that there is no answer right now and remain agnostic. If no answer presents itself in my lifetime I will remain agnostic to the bitter end. This goes both ways. If god herself sits me down and explains it all to me (and trust me I’ll have a lot of questions for her) I will be as doggedly theistic as I am now agnostic.

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

Now, I would be perfectly happy to say it is a God of the Gaps argument IF you would actually explain why you are not a creationist as I outlined in my reply to Ed. To refresh, if all roads lead to the creation of something out of nothing--creation ex nihilo, Why are you not a creationist like me?

In addion to my philosophical answer I’d also like to respond on a personal level. Two of my best friends are devout theists. One a born again Christian and the other a Pentecostal. Now I admit that my sample set is rather small, but these are the only two people I’ve been able to sit down with and get frank answers from while remaining civil. When it came down to brass tacks so to speak, given a binary choice to believe in god or not believe in light of actually not knowing, they choose to believe in god for no other reason than to “hedge their bets” in a manner of speaking. Given no proof one way or the other, they choose to believe in order to negate the chance of the possibility of going to hell. To use the term of another learned colleague, I find this to be a bit “weasely”. I understand that they do not represent all theists, but I suspect that if I was able to sit down with each and every one there would be a large subset that would have to admit this when push came to shove.

 

[Edx]

So are you saying that it is possible to start with a lab full of utter nothingness and perform experiments on it? Come on.

Like I said, realistically we will probably never know. Theoretically we might. Many things are possible, after all.

No, given that every single option leads us to a thing which has self-existence/ self-creation, power, information and logic/mathematics, it is ignoring the data to say that that isn't something godlike.

I think those qualities are debatable, as it is still in realm of philosophy. And "God" is self defined depending on your belief. Since your belief is in a Biblical God, that is quite a bit different.

I am going to push a bit more on the information and logic/mathematics end. If we start with utter nothingness, no equations, no logic, no time, no matter, how is it possible for utter nothingness to decide to put into play a large equation in which is embedded the tensor for the four fundamental forces as we know them today. This is what utter nothingness had to be able to generate, if there is not something back there with mind capable of generating such things:

I didnt say utter nothingness, and I dont think Quantum Mechanics suggests utter nothingness. I simply said that since there is a gap, and if, as you your self claim, we can never know, then filling it with a god is a god of the gaps argument.

Once again, it isn't inventing this godlike thing if all roads lead to a thing with those qualities. It is following the logic. Was the vacuum self-existent? How do you know? But all physics starts with something. No physics starts with utter nothingness Tell me the equation for utter nothingness--it is a contradiction in terms to ask that.

Except your own reasoning fails your argument. If we can never know, then it cant be so obvious to postulate a god-like entity, can it?
Then again like I said, "god" means different things to different people.

NOw, IN some sense, we are both playing a bit of a semantics game. The typical colloquial use of God of the gaps involves things like flagellum. Evolution can't explain the cells flagellum therefore God must have created it. But in the case of existence, no science will ever explain that event.

Assuming that is correct, thats not the point. You seem to think that god of the gaps stops at a certian point where after you are logically free to make up whatever you like simply because you believe science wont be able to explain whatever it is. God of the gaps refers to a gap in knowledge, it doesnt matter if we will ever fill that gap scientifically.

You can kid yourself that it will, but given that practically we will never even probe the earliest moments of the Big Bang because it would take an accelerator a lightyear in diameter, how on earth are you going to probe back before that?

I dont kid myself actually. In fact I said realistically you are probably correct. The point is talking in absolutes that 'we will never figure out how to understand the universe' in this way is just used to support your religious conviction. But its irrelevant anyway. Even if it is impossible to know, filling it with a god is just like the ancients who thought the stars were gods. Its a gap, and you fill it with god.

Thanks for this.

It wasnt an insult I hope you realise? Quantum Mechanics seems to be the most "scientific" study of the universe that can answer this question. Much of it isnt science in the strictest sence however and everyone involved that I have heard has admitted this, so you have to take some of it with a pinch of salt. However, aside from QM there is no way of real way of knowing at least at this point.

So is this an argumentum ad past failure? Because they have been bad in the past, they will be bad on everything? My point was that they came up with the traits of the first cause and modern scientific knowledge can't seem to top what they did.

I know you are going to hate this, but this is not just that theyve been wrong in the past, but that they are incapable of ever teaching us anything, unlike science, enabling us to really know things. All they would have is logic, and as I said a logically consisent argument is doable for just about anything. It doesnt mean its valid. Theology is trying to back up its religious beleif, but philosophy tries and use logic to try and figure out the most reasonable, logical, conclusion. In that respect philosophers are far more reasonable using logic than Theologians, but that doesnt mean philosophers can ever know either.

I would agree with you Ed if you could provide a single empirical test for anything prior to 10^-43 sec after the Big Bang. There is no empirical/observational data for you to check the logic. All we have is logic for this.

Exactly, that is why all we have is logic for those things but all that means is the idea can be logically consistent. It doesnt mean its reality.

And indeed, logic is a funny thing. Where did it come from? I find it hard to bring it out of utter nothingness. Maybe you don't.

Logic is just reasoning abilities, but as I said it can be abused.

Edited to add: Ed, while you say that one can put anything into existence with logic, what do you think is happening with string theory? It now postulates an infinitude of unobservable universes and calls it science and they call it the brane theory. They can never observe these things, not even in principle. So, yes, Ed, one can use logic and math wildly when there is no input from the observable. So why is it wrong for me to do it and right for physics to do it?

Hey look, I dont know that much about Quantum Theory so Im not going to argue for it or. The difference is however that it is based on things about the universe that rest far more on reality than simply a will to put a religious belief bible-god where the gap lies. Your faith requires you to believe regardless, but you cant say the same for Quantum theorists who are trying to use reason and logic in the correct way and they certianly dont claim certainty in their ideas.

And to push ahead a bit further, doesn't this creation of something ex nihilo sound a bit like what theists are often criticized for? I mean if all positions have to end with the creation of something out of utter nothingness, in what way are you less a creationist than I?

Creationist means a belief in a god that created the universe literally as is described in one of their holly scriptures, so no that wouldnt make me a creationist even if I did believe in branes and strings

Ed

 

[Edx]

And if one truly starts with nothing, why does nothingness suddenly pop tensors into existence with which to create a universe? It seems to me that one is faced with something more than merely a naturalistic universe. Oh my gosh, I am close to using the G word again.
.

You are commiting the same fallacy creationists do when talking about abiogenesis. Abiogenesis isnt something from nothing either its about complex chemical reactions, but abiogenesis also doesnt mean "create" in way Creationists use the word.
The universes "creation" probably lies along the same lines. If you dumb down the word "creation" so far it can mean anything then we are all Creationists.

Ed

 

[caravelair]

Now, looking at all the options for the reason of the universe's existence (or at least the ones I can think of), we have

1. God
2. the universe itself
3. logic
4. vacuum
5. inflaton field
6. ourselves

as i see it, this is the main problem with your logic. you simply can't assume that the universe will conform to one of the explanations that you can imagine. the correct explanation may not be among these options at all. 2000 years ago, perhaps the ONLY explanation for a rainbow that they could imagine would have been god. that doesn't mean it's logical to conclude that god is the correct explanation. people back then would never have been able to guess that the cause was refraction of light, because they didn't have knowledge of the properties of light. nowadays, we have a lot more knowledge to base our conclusions on, but we still don't know everything. there is a lot we don't know about the universe and it's properties. especially around the time of the big bang, as physics then would have been different. so for us to say "god is the only explanation of the universe that i can think of, therefore it's correct" is just as silly as the people of 2000 years ago concluding that god is the explanation for rainbows. it's simply not logical to conclude something based on lack of knowledge. we don't know the cause of the universe, and we may never know. that thought might make some people feel uncomfortable, but it's the honest truth.

 

[grmorton]

to me it sounds like you are trying to argue the objective nature of a completely abstract concept i.e. "existance".
Even if there is absolutely nothing, existance is still there because one can make a positive statement about it "absolutely nothing exists".

"Existance" is absolutely unavoidable. the interesting thing though is "why particular things exist" or "why things exist in the way that they do". I think people are getting the concepts of "the existance of the universe" and "existance" tangled up.

That is an interesting concept that nothing would exist. But would it? I would define absolutely nothing as lacking even existence. If one doesn't define it that way then one is postulating that nothingness is eternally self-existent (a godlike trait) and is able to create mathematical equations to govern a universe that is then created. Seems kind of like a god-concept to me. And this is why I keep getting the feeling that people don't want to use the term God for this thing that obviously has the traditiona attributes of God. Is this a semantical/political game to avoid the use of the term God?

 

[grmorton]

you're cheating because you don't have "nothing" in the first place, you beg the question of the existance of a perpetual mind with some abilities and some will to do things (I assume). you are just presuning the existance of the very things you are trying to explain and then attaching a God label to it.

nothingness is not something. it is the absence of something. I think your last post was the cheatin' one.

 

[grmorton]

again in repeated referral to "God like traits" you seem to be implicitly suggesting things like intelligence and I suppose feelings again. Or are you perfectly happy with the concept of a God that has no brain that does not care whether you live or die or whether there are WOMD in Iraq, a "god" that just ticks along mindlessly and mechanically according to whatever rules it has? you know, you could almost get away with calling God "The Universe" if you played at that game too long. It doesn't look or quack like a god because it doesn't care and is utterly unintelligent.

No, I have over and over listed the traits I call god-like. Please review these. brains are not in the list. self-existence or self-creation, information, math/logic, creation/creativity. Where in this list do you see brains? My point is not to go beyond what we can deduce from the necessity of forming the universe. I can't tell if God has a brain from logic. I can tell that whatever created this universe had to have eternal self-existence or self-creation.

and you are right about one thing. One could take a very patheistic position on this. Indeed, I think pantheism is much more reasonable in light of the data than is atheism. You are not going to get me to go beyond what I can deduce (so don't think you will trap me that way) and I can't deduce the god of the theists out of this. But, I can deduce PART of the god-concept of the theists. The limitation is that it can also be claimed to be THE god-concept of the pantheist.

 

[grmorton]

You may not like it as it's an exceedingly simple line of rationale to an exceedingly difficult issue (if not impossible). I am not a creationist simply because at the moment that I realize that first cause becomes the crux of the issue, I see that assigning god to the task would create the old spiral of death… then what caused god? How could god just exist? Just because it’s god? It feels like a cop out to an impossible problem (speaking personally of course, I’m in no way meaning to insult anyone’s belief) It’s at this point that I have to come to the self realization that I may not have the capacity to ever understand the solution to first cause. However, I do not feel inclined to actually give an answer either as giving one will only raise more unanswerable questions. It is for this reason that I am what I consider to be a true hard-core agnostic and not a theist.

My point is, that all positions have to have something that just is? Some uncaused cause. That could be, as my op said, the vacuum, the inflaton field, us, the universe itself (pantheism) so I have already covered these possibilities. Something has to be eternally self-existant. If not, we wouldn't be here. Our choice is which self-existent entity do we want to chose? Sure one can try to stay as an uncommited fence sitter and be agnostic about it and no one can possibly tell you you are wrong. But that doesn't make it necessarily the best position. I like a life where I commit to something rather than fence sit.

And one could always try the very much disliked Pascal's wager in a case like yours, but then, everybody 'KNOWS' that that can't be worth anything.

 

[grmorton]

In addion to my philosophical answer I’d also like to respond on a personal level. Two of my best friends are devout theists. One a born again Christian and the other a Pentecostal. Now I admit that my sample set is rather small, but these are the only two people I’ve been able to sit down with and get frank answers from while remaining civil. When it came down to brass tacks so to speak, given a binary choice to believe in god or not believe in light of actually not knowing, they choose to believe in god for no other reason than to “hedge their bets” in a manner of speaking. Given no proof one way or the other, they choose to believe in order to negate the chance of the possibility of going to hell.

That IS Pascal's wager.

To use the term of another learned colleague, I find this to be a bit “weasely”. I understand that they do not represent all theists, but I suspect that if I was able to sit down with each and every one there would be a large subset that would have to admit this when push came to shove.

[/color][/i]

While Pascal's wager is not why I am a theist today (or even yesterday), I don't find it to be a sufficient reason alone. If all we are after is sugar from the cosmic sugar-daddy, then that is a poor reason to believe. ONe should beleive (not know) because one looks at the preponderance of evidence and makes a choice about what one thinks is the likely outcome.

In my case, the OP really outlines why I can't be an atheist. All roads lead to something that is either pantheistic, deistic or theistic. Since matter, space and time arose at the Big Bang, I can't really see the universe (what I can observe) to be the cause of itself because it requires the vacuum, the inflaton field or whatever as a prior substrate--an unobserved substrate for the most part. That leaves me deism or theism. Plato's demiurge was unware of our existence. I reject it for no reason other than that that seems so silly, but sure, I might be wrong. Thus I am lead to theism.

I know lots of people will jump and say I can't do this, but indeed, I can.

 

[grmorton]

You are commiting the same fallacy creationists do when talking about abiogenesis. Abiogenesis isnt something from nothing either its about complex chemical reactions, but abiogenesis also doesnt mean "create" in way Creationists use the word.
The universes "creation" probably lies along the same lines. If you dumb down the word "creation" so far it can mean anything then we are all Creationists.

Ed

I will address your other post tonight but this one is NOT the same as creationism. Tell me where the evolutionary natural selection for tensors is? What process does it? Lee Smolin suggested such a process where black holes are baby universes and those that are selected reproduce. The problem with this is the utter lack of observational support. So where is the natural selection for universes happening? Please cite observations of it occuring now, please.

 

[Edx]

I will address your other post tonight but this one is NOT the same as creationism. Tell me where the evolutionary natural selection for tensors is? What process does it?

Evolution and natural selection are biological, Glenn.

Lee Smolin suggested such a process where black holes are baby universes and those that are selected reproduce. The problem with this is the utter lack of observational support.

Im not sure why you are telling me this.

So where is the natural selection for universes happening? Please cite observations of it occuring now, please.

I dont think you have completely shaken off the bull**** of Creationist thinking. No offence, but talking about evolution and natural selection in regards to anything but biology is wrong.

Ed

 

[spanner365]

in fact, it is probably less likely that you have a supernatural being. Both a supernatural being and a universe must share a bunch of properties. i.e. they must both exist, they must be logically consistent, not destroy or contradict themselves and those sorts of things,

A supernatural being would have presumably taken care of such things if he existed first. Can we really say it is less likely because, for example, they must be logically consistent when the question of creation remains unanswered?

but a supernatural being must also have a bunch of other properties such as intelligence, will and so on, and as far as we know, these are all just emergent properties of complexity. complexity can often be treated as a synonym for "improbable" because it requires specific organisations of energy flows, or information flows and so on, whereas the universe does not. it has ways to describe how information flows (speed of light and so on) but beyond that there is no element of control or specific goal oriented flow as there is in a mind.

But how can we say that these "ways to describe how information flows" are more likely to come about (i.e. just exist) then the kind of complexity they result in? Maybe I shouldn't have said that "it is no more likely for a supernatural being to exist then it is for the universe to just exist." I really don't know which is more likely.

 

[spanner365]

No. Time did not exist before the big bang. Time was created with this universe, yet modern physics speaks of lots of things external to the present universe and logically prior to it.

I still don't understand something can exist "prior to something else" without time being involved.

Don't try to be Bobby Kennedy. It doesn't work here.

Thank you for not answering the question.

I don't think you understand the issues very well. Take a few philosophy courses and then come back.

And you wonder why you have been called so many names?
Why do you accept that god can just exist but yet have a problem with the universe just existing?

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

My point is, that all positions have to have something that just is? Some uncaused cause. That could be, as my op said, the vacuum, the inflaton field, us, the universe itself (pantheism) so I have already covered these possibilities. Something has to be eternally self-existant. If not, we wouldn't be here. Our choice is which self-existent entity do we want to chose? Sure one can try to stay as an uncommited fence sitter and be agnostic about it and no one can possibly tell you you are wrong. But that doesn't make it necessarily the best position. I like a life where I commit to something rather than fence sit.

Herein lies the crux of the problem. It’s the reason I am what I consider to be a true agnostic and not a “fence-sitter”. It’s the reason I take offence to the term and the reason theism isn’t a valid option for me. For clarity, I will include the definition of agnostic on which I base the reason I call myself as such.



ag·nos·tic ( g-n s t k)
n. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.



You are a very learned individual, and I respect your intellect. However, our existence here has been infinitesimal in duration. During this extraordinarily brief time, we have managed to come from zero knowledge to pondering first cause. Before we get so full of ourselves that we think we can take a stab at the ultimate questions of existence, I suggest we take a step back an gain a little perspective. Our understanding of the universe we live in is infantile. We are struggling to understand the behavior of photons or why time is not constant. How can we delude ourselves into thinking that we have even a basic concept of the actual possibilities from which we can choose on how existence came to be much less think we are actually making an educated decision based on the choices. I think the concept of not being able to know is threatening to our intellect, and would cast our efforts to learn in such a futile light that we simply refuse to entertain the possibility. We have a multitude of examples for life forms around us that that could never comprehend things we can, yet we refuse to put ourselves in that frame of reference. Why is the human animal so special? It’s this arrogance that led to the thought of god and how special she made us and how we are the center of the universe and everything was put on this planet just for us. Rubbish. We are animals. We are governed by the same laws. We are limited by the same features. If a dog can’t ever understand certain intellectual concepts, how are we so special that we can escape these same limitations on a different scale? Once you understand this and can knock yourself down a few notches you will begin to realize that you are not qualified to make educated guesses in these matters. Doing so would only serve to be self soothing so you can go through life happy that there is meaning to our existence. Anything else than agnosticism is simply filling in the gaps, which I propose are huge in contrast to our actual knowledge of the universe, so that we can pat ourselves on the back for making sense of the whole thing. In this light, god is nothing more than an intellectual pacifier. I refuse to pacify myself by making an ignorant decision on something I have no basis for. Make no mistake, god is put in the gaps on a regular basis. It’s my observation that not only is this true, but the larger the gaps for the individual, the larger the role god plays. I hear a string theorist make an analogous reference comparing stings to the voice of god. This made me cringe. Not because I cared what this guy believed, because I knew that every person that looked up to this man’s intellect would feel justified in filling their gaps with god. Sure enough, the next time I saw my aunt, whose strength in gaps was only rivaled by her strength in faith, professed that she heard that some scientist found that when they split an atom small enough they heard the voice of god. Make no mistake Glenn, although your gaps are fewer and further in between than most, you are still committing the same fallacy.