The existence of God and the efficacy of prayer

[Desert Fox]

In The Kalām Cosmological Argument, he formulates the argument in the following manner:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence

There is no reason to suppose 1 is true- quantum mechanics involves acausal events.

The other ones look like fun too.

He is just declaring the first thing anyway. I can declare that you are made of Blue Cheese but it does not make it so.

 

[jimbob]

He is just declaring the first thing anyway. I can declare that you are made of Blue Cheese but it does not make it so.

Indeed, and then you get onto the special pleading about the infinite, which seems to have a load of steps that are not needed to come to a conclusion that is probably right, on the way to something that doesn't follow, but which uses long words seemingly with no reason other than to confuse.

If I want to know about the cosmos, I'll ask a cosmologist. Philosophers intruding into this seem like kids playing compared to them. Cosmologists don't use long words to confuse, they use equations to be precise and work through the logical consequences of their theories.

He's built up a complex edifice and missed (or skated over) the fact that his central premise is, as you said, an unfounded assertion - in fact it is an assertion that is contradicted by current scientific knowledge.

ETA:


"If you take multiple arcane philosophical theories then you can spin them to say something that is widely accepted giving you a veneer of credibility (alternatively, you could just look at the scientific evidence, e.g. the red-shift of galaxies, and come to the conclusion that the Universe is about 15-Billion years old)"

"If you take that with my seemingly reasonable, but non-factual previous assertion, therefore god"

 

[PartSkeptic]

Ditto with Buddhism for me... more so than others, in fact. Some forms of Buddhism that don't involve the gods & stories & rituals can even be defined as just a self-help & life-improvement method, instead of being a religion full of unrelated religiony stuff just also trying to claim life improvement as a side effect for PR.

Which forms of Buddhism do not involve gods and stories and rituals - other than some Westernized self-help manual that "borrows" selective teachings?

 

[PartSkeptic]

There is no reason to suppose 1 is true- quantum mechanics involves acausal events.

Please explain. It may not be possible to predict with certainty a specific quantum event but the underlying mechanisms that "cause" the event have been explained. Or am I missing something?

Even Krauss admitted that there was something before the Big Bang.

Craig has been briefed by some scientists who are theists. He is no dummy, although I think he has some areas of weakness.

 

[welshdean]

Please explain. It may not be possible to predict with certainty a specific quantum event but the underlying mechanisms that "cause" the event have been explained. Or am I missing something?

Even Krauss admitted that there was something before the Big Bang.

Craig has been briefed by some scientists who are theists. He is no dummy, although I think he has some areas of weakness.

 

[jimbob]

Please explain. It may not be possible to predict with certainty a specific quantum event but the underlying mechanisms that "cause" the event have been explained. Or am I missing something?

Even Krauss admitted that there was something before the Big Bang.

Craig has been briefed by some scientists who are theists. He is no dummy, although I think he has some areas of weakness.

It's not just that the event is not predictable, the evidence is that the universe itself doesn't "know" when it will happen, i.e. it is not predetermined. In other words, there is nothing that instigates the decay of a plutonium isotope at any one point in time.

 

[Pixel42]

Please explain. It may not be possible to predict with certainty a specific quantum event but the underlying mechanisms that "cause" the event have been explained. Or am I missing something?.

Take radioactive decay. We can predict what percentage of the atoms of a lump of uranium will produce an alpha particle in the next month, say, but there is no way of predicting which particular atoms will do so. Nothing happens to the atoms that do that doesn't happen to the ones that don't. The emission of an alpha particle from an atom of a radioactive element is an event without a cause.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Which forms of Buddhism do not involve gods and stories and rituals - other than some Westernized self-help manual that "borrows" selective teachings?

All of them. None of them. The one on the left.

 

[PartSkeptic]

Take radioactive decay. We can predict what percentage of the atoms of a lump of uranium will produce an alpha particle in the next month, say, but there is no way of predicting which particular atoms will do so. Nothing happens to the atoms that do that doesn't happen to the ones that don't. The emission of an alpha particle from an atom of a radioactive element is an event without a cause.

I did some research into this and I see that other forums argue about how "causeless" it is.

It seems I again disagree. But since we are dealing with science we can argue fact and not anecdotes (until we get to the Ultimate Cause!).

The way I see it (and of course, I stand to be corrected) is that:

One is dealing with large numbers of particles. And they are all non-identical both in terms of their internal state, and their position in time and space.

Science knows why they decay. It accomplishes a lower energy state. The fundamental particles making up a molecule are not in identical states. They are, after all, a complex assembly of quantum wave functions.

Added to this is the known scientific phenomenon of quantum vacuum fluctuations – namely that the temporary appearance of energetic particles in empty space is allowed by the uncertainty principle. This is due to interaction of “quantum waves” in the “empty space”.

When there is a combination of these effects, there is enough energy for decay to occur.

The statistical distribution of these effects on a macroscopic level can be observed - just as the macroscopic effect of molecules of gas in a sealed container can be observed.

With regard to gas molecules we know that the molecules have a distributed pattern of momentum. One cannot predict which molecule will escape at what time though a tiny hole in the container unless an instantaneous snapshot of the entire system can be done, and then incredibly precise calculations done to get to future states.

Even this would not work because one would have to take into account the underlying quantum vacuum fluctuations. To remove the randomness from these particles popping in and out of space one would have to take a snapshot of every underlying quantum wave to predict where the fluctuations would take place.

We know what causes the state of a system to change from one state to the other. And we know that each change has a cause - namely the previous state, and the laws of physics. The fact that precise measurement of any one particle is impossible does not negate the cause and effect chain.

Luckily for us, statistical (quantum) mathematics does work. In fact, works so well that science can move back in time to within an almost infinitesimal amount of time before the Big Bang.

The key is to move back past this singularity at time = 0. Something was there! And something caused the chain of events to start. It may have been another multiverse, but eventually we need a prime cause. One that "just is".

And theists call that God - an entity with intelligence and the ability to "cause" things to start happening.

 

[MikeG]

........Luckily for us, statistical (quantum) mathematics does work. In fact, works so well that science can move back in time to within an almost infinitesimal amount of time before the Big Bang.....

After.

 

[Pup]

The key is to move back past this singularity at time = 0. Something was there! And something caused the chain of events to start. It may have been another multiverse, but eventually we need a prime cause. One that "just is".

And theists call that God - an entity with intelligence and the ability to "cause" things to start happening.

One could use the same logic to say that God couldn't just pop into existence out of nothing, if everything has a cause. If you're making up stories, you can make them up however you want.

But you don't speak for all theists, because not all theists call that entity god. Mormons believe matter is eternal, and was organized by God (the God of Genesis) but not created.

From http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Matter

Addressing the issue of creation ex nihilo, Joseph Smith [the founder of the church] asserted in one of his final sermons: "Now, the word create…does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence, we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos-chaotic matter, ..."

 

[PartSkeptic]

One could use the same logic to say that God couldn't just pop into existence out of nothing, if everything has a cause. If you're making up stories, you can make them up however you want.

But you don't speak for all theists, because not all theists call that entity god. Mormons believe matter is eternal, and was organized by God (the God of Genesis) but not created.

From http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Matter

Thanks. I stand corrected.

And the Hindus call the prime cause Brahman (the Ultimate Reality), and then populate it with Gods.

My version is somewhat similar in that the prime cause is an Ultimate Intelligence, and that God is a creation of that entity, and that God and Satan and the Universe exist in only in the mind of that entity.

How about the rest? That everything has a cause?

MikeG - Thanks for the correction. I suppose I lose marks for my silly mistakes.

 

[MikeG]

......MikeG - Thanks for the correction. I suppose I lose marks for my silly mistakes.

No, we all make them.

-

All you've done by creating an Ultimate Intelligence (the god which created god) is to kick the can further up the road. Where did the Ultimate Intelligence come from?

 

[jimbob]

I did some research into this and I see that other forums argue about how "causeless" it is.

It seems I again disagree. But since we are dealing with science we can argue fact and not anecdotes (until we get to the Ultimate Cause!).

The way I see it (and of course, I stand to be corrected) is that:

One is dealing with large numbers of particles. And they are all non-identical both in terms of their internal state, and their position in time and space.

Science knows why they decay. It accomplishes a lower energy state. The fundamental particles making up a molecule are not in identical states. They are, after all, a complex assembly of quantum wave functions.

Added to this is the known scientific phenomenon of quantum vacuum fluctuations – namely that the temporary appearance of energetic particles in empty space is allowed by the uncertainty principle. This is due to interaction of “quantum waves” in the “empty space”.

When there is a combination of these effects, there is enough energy for decay to occur.

The statistical distribution of these effects on a macroscopic level can be observed - just as the macroscopic effect of molecules of gas in a sealed container can be observed.

With regard to gas molecules we know that the molecules have a distributed pattern of momentum. One cannot predict which molecule will escape at what time though a tiny hole in the container unless an instantaneous snapshot of the entire system can be done, and then incredibly precise calculations done to get to future states.

Even this would not work because one would have to take into account the underlying quantum vacuum fluctuations. To remove the randomness from these particles popping in and out of space one would have to take a snapshot of every underlying quantum wave to predict where the fluctuations would take place.

We know what causes the state of a system to change from one state to the other. And we know that each change has a cause - namely the previous state, and the laws of physics. The fact that precise measurement of any one particle is impossible does not negate the cause and effect chain.

Luckily for us, statistical (quantum) mathematics does work. In fact, works so well that science can move back in time to within an almost infinitesimal amount of time before the Big Bang.

The key is to move back past this singularity at time = 0. Something was there! And something caused the chain of events to start. It may have been another multiverse, but eventually we need a prime cause. One that "just is".

And theists call that God - an entity with intelligence and the ability to "cause" things to start happening.

I would say that the most parsimonious interpretation is that it is acausal - there is no trigger event.
I would say that the invocation of "quantum fluctuations" just moves the trigger event to another acausal event - namely the quantum fluctuations.

Look up some of the quantum double slit experiments, and quite odd things happen, and to me it seems the simplest explanation is not simply that we can't measure a particle's momentum and velocity to arbitrary accuracies, but that the particle itself can't "know" both simultaneously and that constraining one genuinely does smear the other out.

Back to whether something is acausal.

Lets consider an atom of ²³⁸U (i.e. Uranium-238) which has a half life of 4.468 billion years according to wiki.

If you looked at that atom for 4.658-billion years you would have a 50% chance of observing it emitting an alpha particle. There would be no trigger for that event, it would just happen randomly.

Just because there is a potential well that determines the probability of an event, it doesn't make the event deterministic, just that the number of sides on the dice are set.

 

[PartSkeptic]

All you've done by creating an Ultimate Intelligence (the god which created god) is to kick the can further up the road. Where did the Ultimate Intelligence come from?

It seems that nearly everyone can agree that the prime cause "just is". That is was always there. And that its existence cannot be explained.

If the physical universe was always there, no matter what dimension, state or form then that is one explanation for our universe "popping into existence".

If the Ultimate Intelligence was always there, then we are are an illusion in its dreams, and all and anything can change at any time, although the dream is likely to be highly structured.

There is a third possibility that scientists have come up with recently. That is that the physical universe was always there, and intelligent life evolved to the point that it could create a simulation on a vast scale, and we are in that simulation. Then it may appear like there is an Ultimate Intelligence depending on the rules.

There is no God or supernatural in the first scenario. There is a possibility of a God in the second and third scenarios. That possibility is high because it makes it more interesting. Will we ever truly know? Highly unlikely.

Mankind used to use rituals as tools to manufacture things. Like a Japanese sword. We now know how it worked, and can write down the recipe and instructions.

If there is a God then there are rituals that can assist communication to achieve goals. We just need to understand the basics, and accept that they are not laws that work every time because one is dealing with an intelligence.

Imagine talking to a machine with advanced artificial intelligence to get it to do something. It is not the same as pressing the button on a vending machine. It could be very frustrating trying to understand what "state of mind" it is in. It could have decided it only grants request to blond people on Tuesdays. And never to anyone with the name MikeG!

 

[Darat]

One could use the same logic to say that God couldn't just pop into existence out of nothing, if everything has a cause. If you're making up stories, you can make them up however you want.

But you don't speak for all theists, because not all theists call that entity god. Mormons believe matter is eternal, and was organized by God (the God of Genesis) but not created.

From http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Matter

It's not just Mormons. All of the mainstream Christian variations believe the same.

 

[MikeG]

........
If there is a God then there are rituals that can assist communication to achieve goals. We just need to understand the basics, and accept that they are not laws that work every time because one is dealing with an intelligence.

Imagine talking to a machine with advanced artificial intelligence to get it to do something. It is not the same as pressing the button on a vending machine. It could be very frustrating trying to understand what "state of mind" it is in. It could have decided it only grants request to blond people on Tuesdays. And never to anyone with the name MikeG!

Without using the word, you are predominantly talking about prayer here, so how do you account for the fact that numerous blinded studies have demonstrated that prayer doesn't work?

 

[PartSkeptic]

Without using the word, you are predominantly talking about prayer here, so how do you account for the fact that numerous blinded studies have demonstrated that prayer doesn't work?

Do you have a reference or link for me?

I wonder what they prayed for? I wonder how long they waited for results. I wonder how they evaluated the results.

In the immortal words of a band of four wise men rolling along in a stoned state:

"You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need"

But seriously. Tests do not work. Go figure!

 

[Shalamar]

Do you have a reference or link for me?

I wonder what they prayed for? I wonder how long they waited for results. I wonder how they evaluated the results.

In the immortal words of a band of four wise men rolling along in a stoned state:

"You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need"

But seriously. Tests do not work. Go figure!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer

Basically: Prayer had no effect on the health of those being prayed for.
In some studies, it may be that those people who KNEW they were being prayed for actually did worse.

 

[Tale]

accept that they are not laws that work every time because one is dealing with an intelligence.

Capriciousness is not essential to intelligence. It is a function of human intelligence only as a consequence of how it developed. One of the hallmarks of our advancement since that time has been our efforts to reduce the impact of that capriciousness in matters of importance.

So why should a supposedly advanced or ultimate intelligence be dominated by such a flaw?