ed: Well even Einstein admitted that the existence of the laws of physics plainly imply a Lawgiver.
pos: Why do you keep repeating this? Physics is simply the way we observe the universe working, just because something is predictable does not mean there is a law giver.
No, almost all scientists agree that the laws of physics DO exist and do control how the universe behaves. Our descriptions of them, of course, may not always be correct but that does not mean they don't exist.
pos: People had already discovered they could experiment
Not an ongoing systematic self correcting process of experimentation and study of the universe and everything within it. This was invented by Christians.
pos: Except that hundreds of years before the universe was being explained already.
Only in fits and starts and stops.
pos; Goodness, modern science as you call it was based on earlier Greek, Babylonian and others people of science, without which progress in the then prominently Christian world would not have been possible.
I don't deny that what the Greeks and the others did, was helpful and was incorporated into modern science but given their worldview it was unlikely they would have come up with the process mentioned above. They did not believe as a society as a whole that the universe was intelligible and orderly, objectively exists, and even the well educated could get their hands dirty and do experiments, not just slaves.
pos: Why do you keep repeating this? Physics is simply the way we observe the universe working, just because something is predictable does not mean there is a law giver.
According to Einstein it does.
pos: Einstein certainly did not make this connection.
Einstein referred to himself as a religious non believer, agnostic, he believed (in his earlier days) in Spinoza's god. ( a non personal god)
Yes, he did make the connection, google it. But you are right he erred because he attributed it to an impersonal lawgiver which is a contradiction and makes no sense rationally. Einstein was not infallible in case you didn't know.
pos: Einstein believed the problem of God was the "most difficult in the world"—a question that could not be answered "simply with yes or no." He conceded that, "the problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.
In a letter to Joseph Dispentiere on 24th March 1954 he wrote.
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
In January 1954 he wrote to the philosopher Erik Gutkind, the actual letter can be seen
here.
Still, without Brouwer’s suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong ... have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them.
I am not claiming that he believed in a personal God, see my statement above.
pos: And here we are off downhill again, you are mixing up logical impossibilities with design possibilities, You are effectively saying that Physics dictated to your god how the universe was formed, in which case he is simply not a god but a mere observer.
A square circle is a design too, some designs apparently are logically impossible if you have certain goals in mind for your design, this is well known in engineering. And so it is for God too. He dictated the laws of physics to accomplish His specific goals for the universe and humanity. The universe is a school for spiritual growth and a process to destroy evil forever at the same time producing the greatest goods. And apparently this is the only universe that can do both.
pos: Here is that 'personal beings' again, which is word salad, as for free will as you call it, it is becoming doubtful it even exists.
There is no such thing as free will
Now you just destroyed the foundation of your whole thread and argument, without free will you cannot weigh arguments and evidence, engage in true experimentation, use logic and come to conclusions based on those things. So your argument using all these things is self refuting. So why even engage in debates or accept anything science SAYS?
pos: Again you are placing god in the submissive role to physics, either he created the laws of physics and the universe, or he did not.
To say he could only have done it in a way that is destructive to his beloved creation is to beg the question of how much creating and design your god of choice actually could or did do.
No, see above about creating things with goals in mind and how they can be constricted to what is possible.
pos: Besides didn't the bible say ' For with God nothing shall be impossible.' ?
Actually understood in context of the rest of the bible, this should be better understood as saying "With God nothing that is possible is impossible."
pos: A quick visit to any devastation zone will make you see they not only do hurricanes destroy crops, livestock, property, pollutes water (which oddly, god in his wisdom does not replace, no matter what prayers are offered) they actually pollute the ground around them making the water undrinkable.
Yes, I don't deny that they do very bad things but they also do very good things, such as spreading nutrients around and providing rain to areas that often badly need it, among many other things. The destruction of much of the property and the death can be avoided by not building near coastal areas, so much of that has little to do with God but rather the stupidity and risky desires of humans.
pos: Besides didn't your god stop the sun (and the moon) in Joshua 10:13 ? , of course that is ridiculous, but it shows that if your god exists he is not averse to breaking the so called 'laws' of the universe.
He doesn't break the laws of physics, He suspends them. But only very rarely as seen in Jeremiah 33:25 and by counting the number of supernatural events in the Bible as compared to the time that it covers which is 13.8 billion years.
pos: Sorry Ed your argumentative gymnastics here is amazing, your arguments just get sillier each time.
What gymnastics? Everything I have stated is philosophically and logically sound and you have yet to demonstrate otherwise or even attempted to do so.
