The Atheists' Preference of Science over God / Humanity

[Uber Genius]

Indeed, "An agent must have done it" doesn´t explain the "how

So until we explain how the laws of physics arise, you will be skeptical of their existence? That is a bold method indeed.

So you just changed the topic from what could cause a universe to how.

Nice bait and switch, red herring, non-sequitur take your pick.

We can't explain HOW quantum gravity relates to GTR. According to your method we must be skeptic of that they relate.

You continue to reduce what science or philosophy can say about the external world.

You sure know how to compare apples and aeroplanes.

Sorry my analogy was over your head.

Information above a certain level of complexity doesn't arise by chance or necessity, therefore most scientist, except those using your methodology immediately infer argent causation.

"Comparing Apples to aero planes," does sound clever though and I'm sure it will make a great bumper-sticker.

 

[quatona]

So until we explain how the laws of physics arise, you will be skeptical of their existence? That is a bold method indeed.

Except that this is not at all what I said.

So you just changed the topic from what could cause a universe to how.

I was under the impression that the question "how...?" was the question asked here most of the time.
But, yes, for everyone who is content with an answer that basically comes down to "The universe was caused by something that is capable of causing the universe" the "how"-question may go too far.

We can't explain HOW quantum gravity relates to GTR. According to your method we must be skeptic of that they relate.

No, according to my method knowing HOW things interact and cause each other are the very prerequisites for an assertion to qualify as an explanation.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

While laws of nature are also facts of nature, not all facts of nature are laws of nature.

The fact that you're still hung up on the word "law" is affecting your thinking here. It's similar to how some theists mistakenly call DNA "code" and insist that a god had to be involved because codes are a product of minds.

You're letting a trick of language lead you down the wrong path. Try and imagine it without any labels at all and you'll see that a prohibition against stealing, which necessarily is created by intelligent agents, is categorically different than the speed of light in a vacuum, which isn't necessarily created by an intelligent agent.

No category error there.

It's perhaps one of the most aggregious examples of a category error that I've seen.

And even if so, Einstein agreed with me.

Arguments from authority don't constitute good evidence of anything.

 

[Uber Genius]

Except that this is not at all what I said.


I was under the impression that the question "how...?" was the question asked here most of the time.
But, yes, for everyone who is content with an answer that basically comes down to "The universe was caused by something that is capable of causing the universe" the "how"-question may go too far.




No, according to my method knowing HOW things interact and cause each other are the very prerequisites for an assertion to qualify as an explanation.

i quoted your method verbatim. How is that not exactly what you said? Didn't you say exactly that a causal agent doesn't explain HOW
It was created.

I responded if that is your method of knowledge then the entailments are NO EXPLAINATION HOW NO KNOWLEDGE.

or are you giving some special pleading that all natural causal stories which don't explain "how" it is the case a comes into being or obtains certain properties, e.g. light has say particle and wave properties since we have over a dozen theories of HOW and we don't know HOW it is the case, it should be exempted due to some other properties properties?

I think no one has ever pointed out the logical ramifications of your epistemology.

"That's not what I said, perhaps is oh gee those are the entailments?"

Again "knowing how is a prequisite for knowledge," you say what you said you didn't say ...yet again.

This is not true of any scientific epistemology, not even the logical positivists.

We don't know how the laws of nature arise.

How quanta demonstrate particle and wave properties.

How new body plans arise for all major phyla in only 40 million years 540 million years ago.

100s of foundational theories of science that have no account of "how." Your making it up.

I would focus on the more compelling defeaters:

Hiddeness of God
Probabilistic problem of evil
Problem of Hell for judeochristian religion

These are serious objections that don't run into having recast scientific knowledge in a way that greatly limits its ability to describe the external world and destroys huge portions of science that we already are building on.

 

[Ed1wolf]

Not sure you are saying anything meaningful here.

The only reason there ever is a discussion about what is true of the external world is that there is more than one explanation of the data we have collected.

What I am saying is that most atheists know deep down there is a God, but they are in a state of denial. Read Romans 1.

 

[quatona]

i quoted your method verbatim.

No, you didn´t.
Here´s what you said:
"So until we explain how the laws of physics arise, you will be skeptical of their existence?"
You didn´t quote me at all.

How is that not exactly what you said?

In that it´s simply not what I said.

Didn't you say exactly that a causal agent doesn't explain HOW
It was created.

Yes, that´s what I said. It´s something completely different than what you "quoted" me saying, though.

I responded if that is your method of knowledge then the entailments are NO EXPLAINATION HOW NO KNOWLEDGE.

I made no statement concerning the "method of knowledge". I made a statement concerning what´s required for an assertion to be an explanation.

or are you giving some special pleading that all natural causal stories which don't explain "how" it is the case a comes into being or obtains certain properties, e.g. light has say particle and wave properties since we have over a dozen theories of HOW and we don't know HOW it is the case, it should be exempted due to some other properties properties?

No, I am not.

Again "knowing how is a prequisite for knowledge," you say what you said you didn't say ...yet again.

That´s, again, neither what I said nor what I meant to say.
(If I had said it, it should be easy for you to find the post where you found this quote of me.)

 

[Kylie]

I didn't argue he was a theologian. Did you miss that point? Or just misrepresent it?

So why did you assume that he MUST have been talking about a god?

He is a physicist who recognized that if the universe began to exist, then it must need a Beginner!

Source please.

And even if he did say it, doesn't mean he was right. There is a lot he got wrong.

A very natural "scientifically minded" observation.

No, it's not. It's the argument from incredulity.

point goes to his premise. Not his understanding or lack thereof of the problem of evil. He rejected atheism based on his discovery.

Did you miss that point?

Citation needed.

 

[Kylie]

You even got a "winner" vote. This is new atheist babble.

Do you mean to say that the laws of nature are necessary beings here? No physicist has suggested that in the last 100 years.

And since the early 1970s (Brandon Carter's work on fine-tuning of the universe for life), most physcisist think they constants were not even necessarily the strength they are , I.e. Their respective values could have ranged by orders of magnitude.

further the laws do transcend our universe (Stop reading Larry Krauss he is lying to you about science. Specifically equivocating about the word nothing.)

All science attempts to explain causal relations. There are three general inferences, random chance, necessity, and agents. But the challenge here is that there is not a possibility of an infinite causal regress. So at some point you will need an explanatory ultimate. That ultimate must be a necessary being by definition. We have two candidates abstract objects (which don't stand in causal relation to other objects) and God (JudeoChristian/Islamic version, not the Greek pantheon version).

This is why Michael Ruse (atheist philosophy professor at Florida state) has called arguments like "God of the gaps," Intellectually irresponsible and bereft of understanding."

So this is the extent of your argument?

I say something that you disagree with, and you call it "babble"? You then make claims but give no support for them. Please tell me how you conclude that the laws of nature transcend our universe. Have you been outside our universe?

And Krauss is lying about science? He has degrees in undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics with first class honours at Carleton University (Ottawa) in 1977, and was awarded a Ph.D. in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982. But yeah, I'm sure he's not a good source about science...

And then you trot out the tired old first cause argument. An argument that has been refuted so many times that I can't understand why anyone would still use it - unless they are someone who just latches on to whatever they find to agree with their point of view without even bothering to actually examine the issue.

Got a source for that quote by Michael Ruse? Preferably one that includes his reasoning?

 

[Ed1wolf]

While I'm simpleton to your argument I might build it out further with a discussion of Eugene Vignor's early 1960s argument something along the lines of, " The uncanny usefulness of mathematics."

Also although we don't know about the cause of the laws we don't want to say they are I caused when we have a universe that clearly had a beginning. Instead of arguing from an potentially intermediate cause (laws of physics) why not jump straight to a causal ultimate that necessarily is eternal and uncaused. God being the only candidate for an explanatory ultimate.

Hume's problem of induction already limits what can be said qua science.

Here is another article from a world-renowned physicist on the problem of founding scientific knowledge.

TAKING SCIENCE ON FAITH | Edge.org

You shouldn't call yourself a simpleton. You seem intelligent. Yes, Vignor is right, atheism cannot explain how the universe seems to be mathematically based. Such a thing is extremely unlikely to be by chance, most likely a great mathematician created this universe. Paul Davies is right but actually it goes beyond even that, without God science would be impossible. In addition to the other things I have mentioned about the orderliness, there would be no correlation between subject and object without God, thereby also making science impossible.

 

[Ed1wolf]

Spare me the rhethorics, will you?

Unless you have that backwards.

Ok, I will. Do you have any evidence I have it backwards?

 

[Ed1wolf]

No, seems to be more like that´s your claim.

Huh? You were the one claiming that humans created natural laws and most scientists agree that they came into existence at the BB so what am I supposed to think your view is?

 

[Ed1wolf]

Yes, it is, because you assume that laws of nature need a creator in the same way that laws of legislation do.

Show that they work the same way, then we can proceed from that point, but until then, you are asking us to accept an assumption as fact.

I already stated that they both control things. And I am not the only one, Einstein said it too.

kylie: By this logic, a Lego set is the same as a television set, since they are both sets. The case in which I keep my books is the same as the case that a lawyer uses to get his client of of jail. Which is also the same thing as what my daughter uses to keep her pens and pencils in for school, since they are all cases.

No, you are just using objects with the same names, it is more than that. Both laws have the same function, ie to control things. Try again.

 

[Kylie]

I already stated that they both control things. And I am not the only one, Einstein said it too.

In completely different ways.

No, you are just using objects with the same names, it is more than that. Both laws have the same function, ie to control things. Try again.

And you are trying to say that the two different kinds of laws must both have creators for exactly the same reason - they have the same name!

 

[Rebecca12]

I see nothing more from the theists in this thread than a god of the gaps.

 

[dcalling]

I already stated that they both control things. And I am not the only one, Einstein said it too.

And even some atheist scientist partially agree on this too (indirectly). Many scientists are so amazed that how the parameters of the universe are so finely turned, that if you adjust the parameters by just a little bit and the universe will not come to be, i.e. if the gravtional force are a little stronger, the initial explosion won't be able to happen, and if it is a little bit weaker, everything will fly apart so fast our world won't come to be either. They are so hell bent on not allow a designer into the place, that someone come up with a multi-verse theory so that all those different parameters can be totally random in different multi-verses....

 

[mnorian]

Mod Hat on

Thread has been
Permanently Closed
By
Consensus of the Staff Because
of
Egregious and continual Flaming.
Carry On.
(not here tho)



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