Hawking says there are no gods

Status
Not open for further replies.
Skeptic Ginger said:
I beg to differ. We study human behavior all the time. You want to use a good/bad measurement solely and I say what use is that?

The kind of research you don't believe can be done is typically measured using comparisons.
Click to expand...

How do you observe these comparisons? You don't scientific instruments and you don't have a scientific theory of ethical comparison.
So how do you see a comparison? What does it look like? What is its color, form, shape and so on? What does it smell, touch/feel, taste or sound like?

You can't observe(scientific methodology) a comparison, because it is a subjective biased process in your brain.
A comparison e.g. whether it is good or bad to kill a human takes places for you in your brain and you don't use observation(scientific methodology). You state your bias.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I think you are getting your terms conflated here and aren't making a lot of sense.

Yes, people exist that believe in all sorts of unsupportable things, including gods.

So?
Click to expand...

Skeptic Ginger said:
"Do science"? You mean set up an experiment to learn something?

Can you determine if a fact is good or bad using philosophy?
Click to expand...

These quotes combine.
There is no objective universal methodology for ethics.
There is no objective universal methodology in philosophy for ethics.

I judge other humans beliefs including woo and religion based on my subjective biased beliefs.
So do you!
 
The Sparrow said:
In other words, we don't know everything, so there still COULD be woo, therefore there IS woo. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Nope, we don't know what we don't know. Once we know it, it isn't woo anymore, assuming it ever was a woo.
 
Last edited:
The flat earth theory comes to mind.

Or that black holes exist, gravity is real, we know everything there is to know about physics.....it goes on and on. An observation seems to suggest one thing but with more refined exploration, investigation, evidence you realize that it was never what you assumed it was. That could be true for a creation myth.

Those glass lens that are on display from the ancient world , I think it was in Babylon, I'll google it to see. On the placard it lists them as some kind of ancient religious icon in which a person could look through and see monsters. Wouldn't a bacteria look like a monster? I'm thinking the context got misunderstood somewhere along the thousands of years. Same with religious beliefs.
 
Last edited:
Jodie said:
....
Those glass lens that are on display from the ancient world , I think it was in Babylon, I'll google it to see. On the placard it lists them as some kind of ancient religious icon in which a person could look through and see monsters. Wouldn't a bacteria look like a monster? I'm thinking the context got misunderstood somewhere along the thousands of years. Same with religious beliefs.
Click to expand...

lol......whut?
 
She's describing, and speculating about, ancient microscopes. Microscopes go back longer than usually assumed but I doubt the ancients saw bacteria.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
That's your distinction? :boggled:

Maybe because the person(s) who made up god beliefs aren't around so we can ask.
Click to expand...
It's a distinction with a difference. We know that Harry Potter and Superman are works of fiction because the authors tell us so. That's why we don't have to examine their bona fides.

OTOH we don't know how the legends of individual gods originated. It may have originally been a con by a fraudster seeking power and privilege or it may have been a person or persons who misinterpreted an event that they had witnessed. One thing you can be sure of is that none of these people said "this is just a story".

That is why this section is chock full of people arguing about gods (and whether they are real or not) but nobody is arguing about whether Superman exists or not.

This was just an observation of mine and it makes me just as guilty as others here of thread drift. The real issue in this thread is whether we can establish anything scientifically about gods or - more to the point - whether Stephen Hawking was being strictly scientific when he dismissed the notion of gods.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
She's describing, and speculating about, ancient microscopes. Microscopes go back longer than usually assumed but I doubt the ancients saw bacteria.
Click to expand...
Ya, I get that, and you are right, they lacked the magnification or resolving power to see bacteria.
I'm just baffled as to what the heck that has to do with religions, god, or this thread.
 
Thor 2 said:
No matter how many times 3point14, Cheetah, ynot, or myself say the same thing we can't seem to flush this silly thinking away. Just won't go past the "S" bend.:(
Click to expand...
I guess when we're trying to communicate with those that believe in a super sky-fairy that can do magic and miracles, and "works in mysterious ways", There's bound to be a substantial "blockage".
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
Now explain how scientists can test that and get it outside theoretical physics.
Click to expand...

We don't know how to test it yet, but if someone can figure out some predictions about the state of the universe that are implied by the model we can go out and look for those and see if they are in line with the way the actual universe behaves. That's how we tested the Big Bang theory, and now the array of evidence in it's favour is so strong that no one who understands it really doubts it.

It is a fact that Hawking could think it(theoretical physical math), but that doesn't make it a fact.
Click to expand...
Well, yeah, that was my point. As I keep having to repeat for some reason: we don't know if there was something prior to the big bang or not.

Hawking's model tells us that there may not have been something prior to it, in spite of all the philosophical arguments about uncaused causes, etc. We have a consistent model that includes no t<0. So if your argument is based on the idea that one is required, well, it's wrong. But we also don't know if a time before t=0 existed or not. It's just that we know it's possible that none did.
 
psionl0 said:
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.
Click to expand...

What we are discussing is who should provide a justification for their belief.

Whether there are many people who believe something or not does not affect the nature of the debate. The one who have to take the first step is the one who maintains a belief that clashes with proven or usual experience. And the more unusual it is, the stronger the proof must be.

(When I say experience I am not meaning private experiences).

A different thing is when someone says that "science shows X". Then it is him who has to justify his claim. Therefore I am demanding a simple evidence that science demonstrates that God doesn't exist: an article in a peer reviewed scientific journal. My conclusion is similar in both cases:
Hundreds of years without a proof that God exists means that God doesn't exist.
I have been some years demanding a scientific article that shows that God doesn't exist without any success. This means that science doesn't show that God doesn't exist.
 
Last edited:
Tommy Jeppesen said:
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.



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.
Click to expand...

Deists affirm that some thing like a god was the cause of the Universe. They believe that know that. Usually they don't affirm any feature of this "divine" force. If they didn't know that it exists it would be impossible to affirm that it exists.

The potpourri with genetic, objectivity and subjectivity is not clear for me. You should explain many things. You believe that the rules of moral action are subjective, but that has nothing to do with their being genetically determined. It has to do with the possibility of obtaining a universally accepted standard of action, which would refer more to intersubjectivity than to objectivity. Leave genetics alone.
 
Last edited:
Thor 2 said:
I find myself out of my depth here and floundering.:rolleyes:

Help me Ginger!
Click to expand...

What is the problem?

The universe is natural and there are no gods. Hence the different beliefs in different gods are natural phenomenons, it is not supernatural. I.e. a belief in a god is not evidence of the supernatural nor is the belief itself supernatural. These beliefs can be explain using psychology, sociology, history and biology.
The same with woo. Not that woo works, but rather the belief in woo is a natural phenomenon.

So these beliefs can be studied, described and explained by science.
Now please point to a peer-reviewed study in a field of science that show scientific evidence for the facts that there beliefs are good or bad using a scientific methodology.

Thor 2, reread the thread and you will find the claim from other posters that science can do ethics, i.e. using a scientific methodology you can know e.g. whether killing another human is good or bad.

Now I ask - how can a fact be good or bad? It is a fact, that there are believers in religion and woo. Neither is science, but it is still a fact that there are believers in religion and woo.
So again, how is that good or bad?
And remember only use science.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom