Hawking says there are no gods

[3point14]

Things either exist or they don't, and whether we know of them or not doesn't change that. There is no scientific evidence for the existence of deities. There is no reason to believe they exist. But having an absolute conviction they necessarily cannot exist simply because we haven't evidence to the contrary is assumption:

We make the same assumption about Hogwarts.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Provide a list of participating theist members and a list of participating atheist members. Don't know why you seem to think all participating members are atheists.

I never claimed that. I was speaking in general terms, exceptions allowed of course.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I'm sorry. I woke up at 4 this morning and I realized I still am having trouble with this.

IF a god is needed to create the universe THEN God created the universe.
I am ok with this.

IF no god is needed to create the universe THEN ???


This is the one I am having trouble with. It is incomplete and carefully worded in a troubling way.

"THEN" we don't know.

If you can't learn to live life accepting there are countless things we just don't have the answer to, then prepare for more sleepless nights. Because that is a fact.

 

[The Sparrow]

I'm sorry, I guess I was too subtle.

The converse of "IF a god is needed to create the universe THEN God created the universe" is "IF a god is NOT needed to create the universe THEN God DID NOT CREATE the universe".

The second statement does not logically follow from the first. It may well be true but you can't use the converse to prove it.

Thanks. I think it is a wording think for me.
I guess the phrasing 'is not needed' introduces the idea of it being optional.

I would re word it as
IF a god is included in creating the universe THEN God created the universe
IF a god is excluded in creating the universe THEN God did not create the universe

I just perused an article on what he did say though. https://www.livescience.com/63854-stephen-hawking-says-no-god.html

AS I UNDERSTAND IT, he is saying the universe was not created by god.
His conclusion seems to be founded on his belief that there are naturalistic explanations and evidence for every step.



Hawking explicitly states god did not have a role in creating the universe.
Abrahamic religions explicitely state god did have a role in creating the universe.
The 2 are not compatible.
The universe is a physical thing and its cause and falls within the realm of science.
Determining its origins falls within the realm of science.
Cause and effect fall within the realms of science.
I don't really get the exact moment or transition from a science domain to a philosophical domain. Can someone point out exactly where that occurs in the cause chain?

 

[The Sparrow]

"THEN" we don't know.

If you can't learn to live life accepting there are countless things we just don't have the answer to, then prepare for more sleepless nights. Because that is a fact.

Well, we can rule out a god defined as 'creator of the universe'.
Besides, its the logic rules that got my mind racing, not the theist/atheist issue LOL

 

[The Sparrow]

Whatever is "out" there or "in" us exists whether we believe it or not. Until we can reach our toes as infants we are unaware that we have toes.

In other words, we don't know everything, so there still COULD be woo, therefore there IS woo.

 

[The Sparrow]

I don't know either. I'm presuming that if anything divine exists it can't be detected by technological means. The only way to prove that assumption wrong is to find a way to do it. Or, if there's an afterlife involving the divine, we'll each find out when we die, but that's not an experiment I'm eager to make yet.

What if god interacts with the natural world. Could that be detectable?

 

[David Mo]

I don't know either. I'm presuming that if anything divine exists it can't be detected by technological means. The only way to prove that assumption wrong is to find a way to do it. Or, if there's an afterlife involving the divine, we'll each find out when we die, but that's not an experiment I'm eager to make yet.

It would be necessary to establish a concept of god that would be verifiable through controlled experimentation. I don't know how that can be done. I think it's simply impossible, which leads me to believe that the concept of god doesn't really mean anything. Unless it is a primitive concept that has been proven a thousand times to be false. Joshua stopped the Sun, the seven days of creation, etc.
This is my main reason for being an atheist.

 

[Chanakya]

I can only assume that you are referring to the "reductio ad absurdum" process.

I guess. It is my understanding -- and I may be wrong, because I'm not a scientist, and don't actually do science -- that if you set out to 'prove' God's existence, by conducting experiments or whatever, then that is when your n=0 reads 'there's no God', which via your experiments you seek to disprove.

But it would be an error in reasoning to assume that, generally speaking, 'there's no God' is necessarily the default position always. It isn't.

That is why, generally speaking, soft atheism makes sense, and hard atheism isn't logical, isn't reasonable. (Although hard atheism may work for some specific God claims.)

Surprisingly, many atheists seem to make this error, and veer unthinkingly towards hard atheism.

 

[psionl0]

Thanks. I think it is a wording think for me.
I guess the phrasing 'is not needed' introduces the idea of it being optional.

Logical negation is a more precise concept than we might be used to in English. The logical negation of "it is HOT" is not "it is COLD" (it could be COOL, WARM, FREEZING etc). Therefore the correct way to negate it is to say "it is NOT HOT".

I would re word it as
IF a god is included in creating the universe THEN God created the universe
IF a god is excluded in creating the universe THEN God did not create the universe

You might as well say
IF God created the universe THEN God created the universe
IF God did not create the universe THEN God did not create the universe
which follows the rules of logic but is only trivially true.

I just perused an article on what he did say though. https://www.livescience.com/63854-stephen-hawking-says-no-god.html

AS I UNDERSTAND IT, he is saying the universe was not created by god.
His conclusion seems to be founded on his belief that there are naturalistic explanations and evidence for every step.

This is the bit that bothers me. I wouldn't have expected a scientist of the calibre of Stephen Hawking to make the outrageous claim that our current level of scientific knowledge is sufficient to explain all about the origins of the universe.

He even goes further. He says

If you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask: What role is there for God?"

That is a statement of what he believes and not a scientific fact. Unfortunately, because he was such a brilliant scientist, it leaves the impression that it has been proven scientifically that gods can not exist.

 

[David Mo]

I am prepared to be wrong, i.e. to have misunderstood the following quote, so here it goes:


https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12

As far as I can tell it is from a site manned by scientists and thus is relevant to the OP.
At least one scientist(Hawking) claims it is possible to determine if gods exist or not.
Versus
At least one scientist(the site) claims it is possible to determine if gods exist or not.

To me that is a contradiction. Now no one of the positivists(strong atheists) seem to be willing to tackle it.

Science cannot intervene in the problem of God's existence because this concept is so vague that it can mean anything or nothing at all. When believers dare to give an operative concept of God it turns out to be refuted immediately. What ind of Supreme Beins is it that he is ot able to manifest himself?

I do not believe in subjectivity. Consciousness is intentional. That is to say, it is always consciousness of something external or of mental states. There is no subjective consciousness of something subjective.

 

[David Mo]

"There is no god" isn't an a priori default position. It's a claim that needs to be tested.

These sentences have not to be tested:

Trees don't suffer from depression.
There are no talking zebra.
The day after tomorrow the world does not end.
There are not homunculi dancing in Venus.
Aphrodite does not live in a cave in Panama.
Moses was not a pharaoh of Egypt.
Invisible malachite UFOs don't come down to Earth every Christmas.
There is no man who moves stones with his eyes.
There is no dwarf who has died ten times.
God doesn't exist.

For the same reasons.

 

[The Sparrow]

...
You might as well say
IF God created the universe THEN God created the universe
IF God did not create the universe THEN God did not create the universe
which follows the rules of logic but is only trivially true....

Agreed, but seems to me it more accurately reflects Hawking's position (not saying hawking is right or wrong)

 

[Chanakya]

It may have begun at that point. (...) So, it could be that this model is correct and "time began" (there some problems with that phrasing) at the big bang.

Sure, that there was a t=0, and now t>0, might mean that time began at zero. That's what it means when you render the math into normal language.

But because I cannot grasp the idea of time beginning, and of there being a situation when there had been no time, I was wondering if saying 'time began' makes any sense at all, except only mathematically.

It is my (admittedly sketchy) understanding that the Copenhagen Interpretation cautions us against this kind of unthinking translation of math into everyday language and everyday thinking. I was wondering if we could say the same when it comes to cosmology, e.g. when we speak of the t=0 point.[/QUOTE]

 

[psionl0]

These sentences have not to be tested:

Trees don't suffer from depression.
There are no talking zebras.
The day after tomorrow the world does not end.
There are no homunculi dancing in Venus.
Aphrodite does not live in a cave in Panama.
Moses was not a pharaoh of Egypt.
Invisible malachite UFOs don't come down to Earth every Christmas.
There is no man who moves stones with his eyes.
There is no dwarf who has died ten times.
God doesn't exist.

For the same reasons.

For some reason I am reminded of that old song from Sesame Street.

Most of your statements are not in dispute. However, the last one is widely disputed. It is valid for you to say "believe what you bloody well want and I will stick to what seems indisputable to me". However, if you say, "science is on my side" then you had better come armed and ready.

 

[theprestige]

How would one test and prove this? Even if we managed to "look" everywhere, all the "god" side will do is claim that god is undetectable.

Testing a negative claim is notoriously difficult. That's why people generally try to avoid making them. Negative claims work much better as null hypotheses to positive claims.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Science cannot intervene in the problem of God's existence because this concept is so vague that it can mean anything or nothing at all. When believers dare to give an operative concept of God it turns out to be refuted immediately. What ind of Supreme Beins is it that he is ot able to manifest himself?

As per deism a creator god, which is the cause of the universe, but doesn't intervene after the universe came to exist, is unknowable. And there has been and probably are humans, who believe in such a God.

I do not believe in subjectivity. Consciousness is intentional. That is to say, it is always consciousness of something external or of mental states. There is no subjective consciousness of something subjective.

Neither do I, i.e. subjectivity in itself. Rather I view subjectivity as a through biological evolution causation in living organism, which gives rise to some behavior, which is not objective. That goes back to problem, that we can't make ethics objective.
In short, the replication of the fittest gene causes subjective ethics in humans.

 

[Chanakya]

But, as you say, we don't actually know.

As I was saying in my post just preceding, addressed to you (that would be post #539 -- thread's moving fast!), unless I misunderstand you when you say this, that's not quite what I meant.

I was wondering if it's correct -- even if/when this is true -- to translate the math into everyday thinking, and say/think that time actually 'began' at some point.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

As I was saying in my post just preceding, addressed to you (that would be post #539 -- thread's moving fast!), unless I misunderstand you when you say this, that's not quite what I meant.

I was wondering if it's correct -- even if/when this is true -- to translate the math into everyday thinking, and say/think that time actually 'began' at some point.

It is not. Math is a process in a brain/computer. It doesn't follow that it corresponds to the rest of reality. I.e. that t=0 can be true in theoretical physical math, but it doesn't mean that is true outside theoretical physical math. That requires testing/observation, but we can't do that, because we are in time. Thus what happens in reality outside theoretical physical math at t=0 is unknown. There is a reason it is called theoretical physics.

 

[Roboramma]

Sure, that there was a t=0, and now t>0, might mean that time began at zero. That's what it means when you render the math into normal language.

But because I cannot grasp the idea of time beginning, and of there being a situation when there had been no time, I was wondering if saying 'time began' makes any sense at all, except only mathematically.

It is my (admittedly sketchy) understanding that the Copenhagen Interpretation cautions us against this kind of unthinking translation of math into everyday language and everyday thinking. I was wondering if we could say the same when it comes to cosmology, e.g. when we speak of the t=0 point.

The problem with "time began" is that the language suggests a process there. If, as Hawking suggests, there is no past-boundary then it's not that there was "a situation where there was no time", it's just that the universe's temporal extent is finite. It's really not much different from a universe whose spacial extent is finite but unbounded. For instance a universe that curved back on itself so that if you travelled far enough in one direction you'd end up back where you started.

This is not a problem of translating math to the real world: to whatever extent the math means anything it must be talking about something real.

As to the Copenhagen Interpretation, it doesn't directly apply here but I see why you bring up Bohr's philosophical position. I am not a fan, to be honest.