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Hawking says there are no gods

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ynot said:
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
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Half of the search results on the first page all reference the same one guy. The other half ask the question, is strategy a science? The one exception is one result saying the scientific method is a good business strategy. Which is not the same as saying all strategy is scientific.

Von Clausewitz said military strategy isn't art, or science, but commerce. I'll take his opinion over your investigoogled "many people" any day.
 
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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Can you please name one of these modern moral values, that have been arrived at scientifically?

And none of this derived-from-assumptions crap. I want the base assumption itself.
 
Darat said:
"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.
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Are you claiming to have no ethical principles?
 
Darat said:
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?
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It's a branch of philosophy called --and stop me if I've mentioned it before-- ethics. The conclusions are not scientific, of course, but that's my point.

ETA: Or just show me how you determine what is right or wrong via philosophy
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How do I, personally, derive my ethics? I start with the proposition that compassion is the highest virtue, happiness is the highest good, and work down from there. I don't use science because, for the jillionth time, not everything is a matter for science.
 
TragicMonkey said:
....snip...

How do I, personally, derive my ethics? I start with the proposition that compassion is the highest virtue, happiness is the highest good, and work down from there. I don't use science because, for the jillionth time, not everything is a matter for science.
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No I meant (to use the wording you use) show me how you used philsosophy to give you the "right" proposition to start with.

That's what you are claiming that ethics/philosophy can inform us of what are the "right" proposition to start with.
 
Darat said:
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.
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No, it's not. I'm not claiming gods exist and purporting to have evidence. Hawking, per the OP, observed a phenomenon and didn't see evidence of gods in it, and people are therefore trying to extrapolate from that the nonexistence of gods. Hawking probably didn't (I didn't read the paper so correct me if I'm wrong) find evidence of goats in his research either. Does that mean goats do not exist? Science only speaks to what it finds, it cannot make rulings on what it doesn't find beyond "there is no evidence for X". That is not the same as saying "there is evidence X does not exist".

Consider, and I hate doing this, an analogy: Miss Scarlet shoots Mr Green in the ballroom. Colonel Mustard and Professor Plum are present and see her do it. Mrs White is nine thousand miles away in Indonesia at the time, purchasing goats for a cosmological experiment. On the witness stand, Mrs White is asked if she saw Miss Scarlet shoot Mr Green. She replies no. Can the lawyer then declare "there you have it, this testimony proves Miss Scarlet's innocence"? No, because he's inquiring in the wrong direction. Mrs White cannot answer that question. Plum and Mustard could, although they may lie or be mistaken. But at least they're the proper people to ask.

Whatever conclusions anyone reaches in physics doesn't prove anything outside of physics. "I don't see divine involvement in the Big Bang" is not the same as "there is nothing divine".
 
Darat said:
No I meant (to use the wording you use) show me how you used philsosophy to give you the "right" proposition to start with.

That's what you are claiming that ethics/philosophy can inform us of what are the "right" proposition to start with.
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That's not what I'm claiming at all. You're still hung up on trying to use science where it isn't appropriate. There are no "right" (in the sense of "correct", "reflecting the absolute physical truth of reality") answers in ethics because it is not science. I wouldn't use the scientific method to determine ethical questions any more than you'd use a religious catechism to determine the mass of Jupiter.
 
Darat said:
If he has so what? You and I are not Hawking.
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That doesn't mean that we are both equally ignorant of quantum mechanics.

The difference is that you think you don't have to understand a word that Stephen Hawking wrote in order to talk authoritatively about the subject.

David Mo said:
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.
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"Quantum mechanics" was Stephen Hawking's argument (see the OP llnk).

Unfortunately few posters know anything about quantum mechanics which is why so many posts here don't DARE discuss Hawking's argument.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Are you claiming to have no ethical principles?
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I am claiming there is nothing in principle that stops science being able to describe any ethical principles I or anyone else may have.

That there is nothing in principle means we couldn't come up with a black box I can use rather than having to do all the thinking for myself.

So I could say "Hey Alexa I want to have a thousand pounds shall I steal it from the local bank?" and it could reply with "Based on our model of your behaviour the answer is you would not think that was right".

Now surprisingly I may still steal that thousand pounds from the bank because we often do things that we say we know are wrong, in other words we behave in a way that is contrary to what our "ethical philosophy" statements might be.

It's almost as if ethics doesn't accurately describe how humans actually behave...
 
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psionl0 said:
That doesn't mean that we are both equally ignorant of quantum mechanics.

The difference is that you think you don't have to understand a word that Stephen Hawking wrote in order to talk authoritatively about the subject.

...snip...
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You do know your attempt at insulting me makes no sense whatsoever since I haven't been posting about what Hawking said?
 
TragicMonkey said:
No, it's not. I'm not claiming gods exist and purporting to have evidence....snip..
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Never said you did, I said that the people who say they believe in their god often are more than willing to share their evidence with you if you ask them. And often if you don't ask them, they can be downright evangelical about this sharing!

TragicMonkey said:
Hawking, per the OP, observed a phenomenon and didn't see evidence of gods in it, and people are therefore trying to extrapolate from that the nonexistence of gods. ...snip...
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Some folk may be but we have really moved passed what Hawking said and I don't think SkepticGinger was referring to Hawkin's argument when she was talking about the need to have evidence of something before we can start to determine if something exists or not.
 
TragicMonkey said:
That's not what I'm claiming at all. You're still hung up on trying to use science where it isn't appropriate. There are no "right" (in the sense of "correct", "reflecting the absolute physical truth of reality") answers in ethics because it is not science. I wouldn't use the scientific method to determine ethical questions any more than you'd use a religious catechism to determine the mass of Jupiter.
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And if I want to understand people I wouldn't use ethics because it does not describe how people actually behave. Why would I use a tool that doesn't do what it says on the tin?
 
Darat said:
And if I want to understand people I wouldn't use ethics because it does not describe how people actually behave. Why would I use a tool that doesn't do what it says on the tin?
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Ethics isn't meant to describe how people do behave, it's meant to show them how they ought to behave.
 
Darat said:
And trying for insults isn't the way to try and have an honest discussion....
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I wasn't trying for insults (I have had worse thrown at me in these pages anyway).

As for "honest discussion", at first I suspected that you were being a little slippery. However, it seems from other posts that you have made that you want to move on from Hawking and discuss peripheral issues related to the non-existence of gods.
 
psionl0 said:
"Quantum mechanics" was Stephen Hawking's argument (see the OP llnk)..

Unfortunately few posters know anything about quantum mechanics which is why so many posts here don't DARE discuss Hawking's argument.
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Let's DARE.


As I understand it Hawking's argument is simply that quantum mechanics describes how the whole universe could be the result of a quantum fluctuation. Since quantum fluctuations happen spontaneously without any cause, no cause (apart from said fluctuation) is needed to explain the existence of the universe. Surly any god must be a much more complex explanation than that. Occam's razor.
In addition, since time and space itself is a result of the fluctuation, there is nowhere and no time for god to do anything.

Sure you can imagine a god that is outside the universe, snaps it's fingers and poof, a quantum fluctuation, if you reeeaaally want to.
 
psionl0 said:
"Quantum mechanics" was Stephen Hawking's argument (see the OP llnk).
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The article doesn't say that the quantum mechanics proves that God doesn't exist.
The article says that, according Hawking, "the combined laws of gravity, relativity, quantum physics and a few other rules could explain everything that ever happened or ever will happen in our known universe".

Of course this is a philosophical and disputable opinion limited to an imprecise concept: "our known universe".
 
Cheetah said:
As I understand it Hawking's argument is simply that quantum mechanics describes how the whole universe could be the result of a quantum fluctuation. Since quantum fluctuations happen spontaneously without any cause, no cause (apart from said fluctuation) is needed to explain the existence of the universe.
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Quantum mechanics isn't a cause of random fluctuations. It merely describes them. We can't identify the causes because we have currently reached a limit to how much farther we can break down the universe.
 
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