Hawking says there are no gods

[Skeptic Ginger]

I find myself out of my depth here and floundering.

Help me Ginger!

I'm waiting for the chaff to blow away so I can address the wheat and not piddle around with these little distractions.

I have yet to see an answer to, if not science, then what?

 

[David Mo]

You are missing the whole point. There are no articles on the existence of gods because there is no evidence gods exist.

There are studies looking at the outcome of prayer and they show clearly that prayer has no effect on people if they don't know you are praying for them. It might have a questionable result if people know they are being prayed for.

The Cargo Cults are evidence of humans creating god beliefs in recent times. That says a lot about how god beliefs came about.

There are no gods, only god beliefs.

I'm afraid you're the one who's wrong about the problem.

It is the one who claims that science proves the inexistence of God who must show where and how it does it. Science. Not philosophy.

The ineffectiveness of prayers or the appearance of unreasonable cults does not scientifically prove that gods do not exist. It may be a clue, but it is not a scientific proof.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Deists affirm that some thing as 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.

You don't have to know to believe in a god. You only have to believe.

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.

Answer:

"Intersubjectivity" has been used in social science to refer to agreement. There is "intersubjectivity" between people if they agree on a given set of meanings or a definition of the situation. Similarly, Thomas Scheff defines "intersubjectivity" as "the sharing of subjective states by two or more individuals."
Wiki with reference; Scheff, Thomas et al. (2006). Goffman Unbound!: A New Paradigm for Social Science (The Sociological Imagination), Paradigm Publishers (ISBN 978-1-59451-196-7)

Intersubjectivity is a form of subjectivity. I.e. if 2 or more humans share a belief, e.g. a belief in a god, that is a case of intersubjectivity. But that is shared doesn't make it objective.
Now for the possibility of obtaining a universally accepted standard of action that is not possible in practice because of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development
Different moral actions are cases of different stages of cognition and different beliefs, i.e. it is a case of cognitive relativism.
For you to achieve a universally accepted standard of action you have to get all adults humans to reach the same cognitive development and then that is not even enough. They also have to share the exact same beliefs of what good and bad are.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

I'm waiting for the chaff to blow away so I can address the wheat and not piddle around with these little distractions.

I have yet to see an answer to if not science, then what?

There are no gods, therefore it is morally wrong to believe in a god/gods.

As a deduction it is invalid:
P1: There are no gods.
Conclusion: It is morally wrong to believe in a god/gods.
The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.

You need a second premise; P2, and you then need to show evidence for it using science for it to be sound.

Remember no philosophy!!! So state P2 and give evidence.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

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.

Yes we do. How many myths do you need to see before you recognize a pattern?

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".

I can't give you an education in anthropology in a forum but your post reveals you lack some knowledge in that field.

Here are a couple books that might be worth your time:

The Hero with an African Face by Clyde W. Ford.

Bill Moyers did a series on Campbell's work on myths if you prefer video to reading. A book was published after the series:
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell.

Where god myths originated was from story telling that then led to texts being written down as humans moved on with the technology of writing. You don't need a name like JK Rowling to trace these myths back to their origins.

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.

I'm not following.

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.

Sure he was. But a lot of people need a paradigm shift before they will understand.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

...

Sure he was. But a lot of people need a paradigm shift before they will understand.

For the purpose of the sub-debate about ethics, I will grant you that there are no gods.

So again:
There are no gods, therefore it is morally wrong to believe in a god/gods.

As a deduction it is invalid:
P1: There are no gods.
Conclusion: It is morally wrong to believe in a god/gods.
The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.

You need a second premise; P2, and you then need to show evidence for it using science for it to be sound.

Remember no philosophy!!! So state P2 and give evidence.

 

[David Mo]

You don't have to know to believe in a god. You only have to believe.

But deists aren't fideists. They are rationalists. They believe in the Supreme Being or the Force of the Universe through reason. At least the usual deists. If there are now irrationalist deists, I do not know.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

But deists aren't fideists. They are rationalists. They believe in the Supreme Being or the Force of the Universe through reason. At least the usual deists. If there are now irrationalist deists, I do not know.

Yeah, but words are cheap.
Compare:
I know there is no gods.
Versus
I know there is at least one god.

One of them must be false and thus only a belief. So to claim knowledge is not sufficient in itself and one of these "I" must be irrational.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
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.

No, it means you haven't been able to reassess that question and look at it from a different scientific POV.

You are not alone, but that's what's happening.

Take a completely different example. See if you can't see the parallels.

I was teaching an occupational safety class and no matter what I said, people did not change their behaviors. When I discussed it with a professional educator (I'm a clinician) she pointed out the obvious which I hadn't considered. The problem was not a knowledge deficit.

I had only ever thought of education as addressing a knowledge deficit. You are there to impart knowledge your students don't have. Turns out, that's not the only deficit people have.

Back to the thread, we know gods are myths (I do anyway). And we address woo all the time, that's what the JREF was all about. So why the double standard just because there are so many god believers out there? Since when is the majority the arbitrator or fact?

(With global warming the majority is part of the argument, but that's because they have the science behind them. It's a different issue in case anyone confuses the arguments.)

Back again to the thread. The existing paradigm is the usual: science doesn't look for creators, science doesn't address the supernatural, non-overlapping magisteria, science based vs faith based and so on.

OK, science doesn't address those things, it's a great excuse to dodge the issue and not offend any god believers.

I think it's time to move past that. If science can address other forms of woo, what the heck is the problem addressing god beliefs?

Simple, people need a paradigm shift. Why are we asking people to disprove the existence of gods when we don't ask them to disprove invisible pink unicorns or Hogwarts?

It's not an evidence deficit, it's a failure to ask the right question. What best explains god beliefs?

Think about it, we have evidence of god beliefs. We don't have evidence of gods.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
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.

Consider asking, can a fact be red or blue? Can it be wet or dry?

Is it possible we are attributing too much significance to good or bad, beautiful or ugly?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm afraid you're the one who's wrong about the problem.

It is the one who claims that science proves the inexistence of God who must show where and how it does it. Science. Not philosophy.

The ineffectiveness of prayers or the appearance of unreasonable cults does not scientifically prove that gods do not exist. It may be a clue, but it is not a scientific proof.

Care to provide a single sliver of evidence for gods existing beside people believe it?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

There are no gods, therefore it is morally wrong to believe in a god/gods.

Nope, sorry. We can understand moral thought by observing it in non-human primates and in certain kinds of brain damage. You can't invent morals that don't exist.

The rest of your post suffers from the same misunderstanding about moral thought.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Consider asking, can a fact be red or blue? Can it be wet or dry?

Is it possible we are attributing too much significance to good or bad, beautiful or ugly?

Evidence for that using science!!!

Now what you write there is not science. Further it can't tested using the scientific method.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Nope, sorry. We can understand moral thought by observing it in non-human primates and in certain kinds of brain damage. You can't invent morals that don't exist.

The rest of your post suffers from the same misunderstanding about moral thought.

I am a pacifistic. I believe it is wrong to kill another human.

Now according you, that is not morality.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

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.


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.

I am indifferent to theoretical psychics, which can't be tested.
If we don't know, then we don't know.

 

[dann]

So how do you use science to do ethics on something, which is a fact?

I don't. I try to avoid doing ethics at all. If you analyze a Trump tweet, for instance, and determine that 1) it's a lie, 2) it's based on made-up facts, and 3) he wrote it for a purpose, which it seems to serve, that's where I stop.
If somebody agrees with my analysis and insists on applauding Trump's lying, self-serving tweet for this reason, I don't see the purpose of adding, "... and lying is baaaad!"

How can a fact be good or bad?

You may consider a fact (as well as a lie!) to be good or bad depending on your answer to the question: Does it serve my purpose?
The weird thing about Trump ethics is that the answer to this question seems to determine if any statement is considered to be not only a fact but also true.
Believers seem to do their thinking in a similar fashion: It makes me happy (or a least less unhappy) to think that there is a god. So God is true!

 

[David Mo]

Intersubjectivity is a form of subjectivity.

Intersubjectivity is neither objectivity nor subjectivity because this dilemma has not any sense in moral affairs.

I don't know any value that can be objectivelly settled up. I know some values that are common to more or less wide communities. Some values are practically universal. This points the way. Of course this is only a path, not a direct goal. For example: we want to finish the hunger in the world. Even if we never acomplish it, this is a path. Morality works in the same way.

 

[Roboramma]

I am indifferent to theoretical psychics, which can't be tested.
If we don't know, then we don't know.

Theoretical physics can be tested. Some of it hasn't been tested yet. There may be specific theories that we are never able to test, but there are experiments going on every day and new angles for testing these theories are being thought of all the time.

There are some things that we don't know. There are other things that we do know.

The highlighted was a typo I assume.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

I don't. I try to avoid doing ethics at all. If you analyze a Trump tweet, for instance, and determine that 1) it's a lie, 2) it's based on made-up facts, and 3) he wrote it for a purpose, which it seems to serve, that's where I stop.
If somebody agrees with my analysis and insists on applauding Trump's lying, self-serving tweet for this reason, I don't see the purpose of adding, "... and lying is baaaad!"




You may consider a fact (as well as a lie!) to be good or bad depending on your answer to the question: Does it serve my purpose?...

Yeah, but that is not science. Skeptic Ginger claimed you could answer that using the scientific methodology. You can't. There is no test/experiment/observation possible, because you can't give evidence for any answer of what serves your purpose.
I.e. any answer is based on how you think/feel and that doesn't meet the requirements for it being evidence. Any answer is not observer independent.

Now for morality/ethics, yes - it boils down to does it serve me/my purpose and sometimes that is about feeling good and avoiding bad. I.e. I like/want versus I don't like/want.

 

[David Mo]

Yeah, but words are cheap.
Compare:
a. I know there is no gods.
Versus
b. I know there is at least one god.

One of them must be false and thus only a belief. So to claim knowledge is not sufficient in itself and one of these "I" must be irrational.

If b has shown to be repeatedly false, a is with all probability right. This is how reason works.