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Hawking says there are no gods

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TragicMonkey said:
What do you consider to be good? And how did you arrive at that conclusion?
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The society and culture I was brought up in alongside with inherent behaviour traits from the evolution of humans that presumably have helped my genes to survive at least to me. (But my genes are pretty pissed off they've screwed up their chance of being passed on.)
 
TragicMonkey said:
I never said they did. That's precisely why I'm arguing that "no gods exist" is NOT a scientific conclusion.



Either gods exist or they don't. Agreed? A or Not-A. And whether A or Not-A is the true state of being is independent of whether we think the correct answer is A or Not-A. Is that agreed? Having no evidence for A is not the same thing as having evidence for Not-A. Is that agreed?

And yes, if gods interacted with reality then science --if you could devise the right experiment or observation method -- could investigate. But I have yet to see anybody's proposed experiment on how to determine if gods exist or not. So far all we've got is "we came up with alternate explanations for certain phenomena once claimed to be caused by gods", which is not in any way to my mind an experiment at all, much less a conclusive one.
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Which gods is the question you have to answer first of all. The gods that most people in the world claim to believe in certainly don't exist as anything but fictional concepts, just like we can say Harry Potter doesn't exist as a real person but as a fictional character he certainly does exist.

Is there some other "entity/being/concept" that we can imagine could exist - yes there is but why use the label "god" for that? I say we keep the label "god" for those beings that the religious folk say they believe in.

It confuses conversations to use the same word for very different things.
 
psionl0 said:
Considering that the mere mention of the words "quantum mechanics" gives most members here a headache, I don't know what else you expected. Did you think that the scientifically illiterate were going to keep their mouths shut? :eek:
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I was hoping for what's going on. I'm just saying that I'm a little tired of the same thing.

I don't think quantum mechanics has much to do with the existence of God.
 
David Mo said:
I get it. You only want to discuss the existence of God with people of low intellectual level. ...snip...
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No I want to discuss the existence of gods that people say they believe in.

Gods that no one believes in really don't really interest me. Actually to be 100% accurate they do interest me - as I do like fantasy books that come up with new and weird concepts for gods but they are only interesting in terms of being entertainment.

If you want to discuss any of those fictional concepts really happy to do so but remember that's just riffing on entertainment and we need to move to one of the entertainment sections of the forum.

David Mo said:
But if the existence of God is a problem that can be solved scientifically also the solution will serve for the defense of God made by educated people. Or is it only for those who do not think too much? That they don't interest you doesn't seem like a reason to me.
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Which god are you asking about the existence of? I provide a link a post or two above that shows how we can show that Zeus does not exist. Unless you tell me which one of the many gods people do believe in you are talking about when you use the word "god" it's very hard to have any meaningful discussion.

David Mo said:
And the best way to know if a question is scientific is to go to the science departments of the universities and consult scientific journals. Which one do we go to?
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Again I gave you a link you can use to prove that Zeus does not exist.
 
Darat said:
No I want to discuss the existence of gods that people say they believe in.


Again I gave you a link you can use to prove that Zeus does not exist.
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Rousseau believed in God; Descartes believed in God; Newton believed in God; Antony Flew believed in God and so on.

I have not ever seen any scientific experiment that shows that they are wrong. I have philosophical reasons to think they are wrong. Dawkins has philosophical reasons, Russell had philosophical reasons; Sam Harris has philosophical reasons... Perhaps you know an article that shows that God doesn't exist published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. It would be a great surprise.

Your link doesn't work.
 
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ynot said:
I would rather people designing and building planes listen to what science has to say about what methods and materials are good/best to use than listen to what philosophy has to say.

Many people say strategy of warfare is a science - https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=Strategy+as+a+Science&oq=Strategy+as+a+Science&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l3j0l2.1079j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

That a hammer is more “of value” to drive in a nail than a marshmallow is a reality, not “a philosophical position”.

Sorry but you're talking philosobabble.
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Please show me where I suggested using philosophy rather than science in the field of aerodynamics. It has always been my argument that science is best for scientific questions and philosophy best for philosophical questions. I was speaking of ethical good. I can't believe you are unable to distinguish between an ethical proposition and a physics one.
 
Darat said:
Again I gave you a link you can use to prove that Zeus does not exist.
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It just shows that he doesn't live there anymore. People (and gods, I guess, and ducks, both real and imaginary) move.
And that's the problem with characters of fiction. You just write a new story. You can't really subject Donald Duck to anything other than analysis and interpretation. It would be absurd to try to use science.
 
qayak said:
As you are aware from the discussion of the subject from years ago, I disagree with your statement and many others do as well. Many years ago you could say that ethics and morals were philosophical because science hadn't gotten around to it yet. However, that can't be said anymore. Because philosophy moves so slowly scientists have been forced into aspects of it because of the swift advancement of scientific discoveries and they have begun assigning values. We also use a crude ethics/moral value system in our courts for sentencing.
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Is killing someone wrong? What is the scientific basis for your answer?
 
Darat said:
The society and culture I was brought up in alongside with inherent behaviour traits from the evolution of humans that presumably have helped my genes to survive at least to me. (But my genes are pretty pissed off they've screwed up their chance of being passed on.)
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Which is an explanation of why you may hold the ethics you do. But are those ethics right? Do you agree with them?
 
TragicMonkey said:
Is killing someone wrong? What is the scientific basis for your answer?
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Problem with your question is that it seems a very simple question however it isn't, it's just our everyday language often contains huge amount of assumptions and baggage that we all usually understand so don't bother unpicking it.

And I would say for most people not avowed total pacifists the only answer to your very vague question is "it depends" whether they want to "use" science, the uncollected sayings of Agnes Nutter or the creed of the RCC to come up with an answer.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
That's because you are in denial. We don't need to do that experiment unless you can show one shred or sliver of evidence that gods exist. Otherwise we should be concerned with any and everything one can imagine such as invisible pink unicorns.
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That doesn't sound very scientific: prove a thing exists before we devise an experiment to prove it exists. You're relying on the unprovability of deity, which is what you're arguing against .
 
Darat said:
Problem with your question is that it seems a very simple question however it isn't, it's just our everyday language often contains huge amount of assumptions and baggage that we all usually understand so don't bother unpicking it.

And I would say for most people not avowed total pacifists the only answer to your very vague question is "it depends" whether they want to "use" science, the uncollected sayings of Agnes Nutter or the creed of the RCC to come up with an answer.
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Like all ethical questions it's a philosophical position. You are reluctant to 'unpick the baggage' because you'd have to admit that.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Which is an explanation of why you may hold the ethics you do. But are those ethics right? Do you agree with them?
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"right" is nothing more than a human behaviour hidden behind everyday language, it has no meaning outside actual human behaviour. There is no "right" in the universe outside the context of how a human behaves (behaviour does not just mean external behaviour but also covers internal behaviour).

We like to think these folk-fictions are meaningful but they are no more an accurate description of reality than saying the sun rises every morning and sets every night. As we know the sun does not rise nor sets - yet we still use those words because they are useful, we just have to be careful to remember that as Didactylos wrote - the turtle moves no matter what we might want the world to be.
 
TragicMonkey said:
That doesn't sound very scientific: prove a thing exists before we devise an experiment to prove it exists. You're relying on the unprovability of deity, which is what you're arguing against .
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Not really, it's simple saying "show us the evidence ". If someone tells me they have a way of predicting the lottery I'll say "show me the evidence" before I believe them it's the same for the gods the religious folk believe in. Once the evidence is shown then we have something to discuss but until the evidence is presented we have nothing to discuss. Don't forget many of the religious do believe they have evidence and are usually more than willing to share that evidence.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Like all ethical questions it's a philosophical position. You are reluctant to 'unpick the baggage' because you'd have to admit that.
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Not at all. But I am now most intrigued, what part of philosophy gives me to tools/means/whatever to determine if something is right or not?

ETA: Or just show me how you determine what is right or wrong via philosophy
 
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