Hawking says there are no gods

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Of course science has limits but that doesn't automatically mean your belief in a god is a better thing with fewer limits. Exactly how do you use religion to design a new style of computer or find the cure for a disease? It would save a lot of hard work for scientists if you people could get some answers to these problems from your god.

I am an atheist in effect.
I just defend all beliefs, because of my belief in all humans.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I am an atheist in effect.
I just defend all beliefs, because of my belief in all humans.

Having intellectual standards doesn't make you a bad person. Trying to equate "telling people they are wrong" with "not believing in them" is dishonest.

You are not better then me because you believe every fool thing that crosses your or anyone else's mind. Do you understand that?

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

So you misspoke, you don't "accept" all human beliefs because you infact rejected that one. I bet there are many more. How does your god feel about that incident?

You don't seem to understand that I wrote that I accept that other people have other beliefs than mine.
I don't reject them as humans. I just don't do as some of them want me to do.
Of course, I reject contradictory beliefs to mine. It is impossible to actually hold
contradictory beliefs. I just don't view them as wrong or false. I view them as different, but accept them as beliefs.

BTW I am an atheist.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Having intellectual standards doesn't make you a bad person. Trying to equate "telling people they are wrong" with "not believing in them" is dishonest.

You are not better then me because you believe every fool thing that crosses your or anyone else's mind. Do you understand that?

That is impossible. It is impossible to hold contradictory beliefs.
So you believe that I can do a contradictory thing. Okay.

 

[Thor 2]

That is impossible. It is impossible to hold contradictory beliefs.So you believe that I can do a contradictory thing. Okay.

Not so. Many religious people for example hold contradictory beliefs. It screws up their minds no end but they cling to them.

- Jesus died on the cross for our sins ........ Jesus didn't die he's still there.
- God is all powerful and Jesus is God ....... the Devil leads Jesus around by hand taking him to the top of mountains.
- Mary was a virgin and God is Jesus father ....... the lineage of Joseph is important to prove the legitimacy of Jesus as messiah.
- The Pope is the legitimate successor of Peter and what he says goes ........ the Pope screws up at times.

I could go on.

 

[epeeist]

Your simplification just emphasises the absurdity of Catholic belief. A god who is all loving ect, in spite of all that horrible stuff he does in the Bible? Limbo was a theory but purgatory ??? An empty Hell ???

The lengths that some will go to in trying to make their religion palatable is endless.

There are many reasons for people to have problems with religion. But you seem offended that it's a complicated topic. Why? Do you think there should be simple answers to everything?

In posting, of course I'm making simplifications. A topic that might easily be a two-hour lecture taught by a professor of theology that I've heard in the RCIA, and at that barely scratching the surface, I'm not going to do justice to from memory.

By analogy, if a high school student can't adequately explain the nature of the universe to me in terms of physics, that doesn't mean physics is flawed. It means I should refer to a better source, like Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

 

[epeeist]

Not so. Many religious people for example hold contradictory beliefs. It screws up their minds no end but they cling to them.

- Jesus died on the cross for our sins ........ Jesus didn't die he's still there.
- God is all powerful and Jesus is God ....... the Devil leads Jesus around by hand taking him to the top of mountains.
- Mary was a virgin and God is Jesus father ....... the lineage of Joseph is important to prove the legitimacy of Jesus as messiah.
- The Pope is the legitimate successor of Peter and what he says goes ........ the Pope screws up at times.

I could go on.

Light has properties of both a particle and a wave.

Oh wait, that's a physics contradiction, which is reconcilable and thus not really a contradiction but a metaphysical physics truth...

 

[Thor 2]

There are many reasons for people to have problems with religion. But you seem offended that it's a complicated topic. Why? Do you think there should be simple answers to everything?

In posting, of course I'm making simplifications. A topic that might easily be a two-hour lecture taught by a professor of theology that I've heard in the RCIA, and at that barely scratching the surface, I'm not going to do justice to from memory.

By analogy, if a high school student can't adequately explain the nature of the universe to me in terms of physics, that doesn't mean physics is flawed. It means I should refer to a better source, like Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

Offended? Where do you get that idea?

Befuddled and bemused I certainly am, by the way theologians will twist and turn to try and explain the contradictions they are forced to confront. Yes I can imagine a two hour lecture by a professor of theology trying to explain one of these contradictions. I have visited "Catholic Answers" a number of times.

 

[Thor 2]

Light has properties of both a particle and a wave.

Oh wait, that's a physics contradiction, which is reconcilable and thus not really a contradiction but a metaphysical physics truth...

Try again.

Through the work of Albert Einstein, Louis de Broglie and many others, it is now established that all objects have both wave and particle nature (though this phenomenon is only detectable on small scales, such as with atoms), and that a suitable interpretation of quantum mechanics provides the over-arching theory resolving this ostensible paradox.

The thing is I am not at pains to try and explain what you see as a contradiction. I am content to accept that some things may be beyond our understanding at this point of time.

This is the fundamental difference between the rationalist and the theist. The theist looks to his religion for answers. The rationalist is content to say "I don't know" ...... but will keep looking.

 

[epeeist]

Offended? Where do you get that idea?

Befuddled and bemused I certainly am, by the way theologians will twist and turn to try and explain the contradictions they are forced to confront. Yes I can imagine a two hour lecture by a professor of theology trying to explain one of these contradictions. I have visited "Catholic Answers" a number of times.

Theology is a complicated topic, and that's what seems to upset you (or befuddle or bemuse or confuse you) in some way. Which I don't really get, hence my second post asking why it should be any simpler than any other topic including physics.

I mean, when a physicist tries to reconcile the increasing rate of expansion of the universe by postulating there's stuff called dark matter and energy which can't readily be detected, is that twisting and turning to try to explain the contradictions they are forced to confront?

Also, just as one can't readily learn string theory from a Q&A blog, so too with theology. So that you've visited Catholic Answers, meh. It would be like a flat earther saying they've visited a physics website for useful snippets...

 

[epeeist]

Try again.

Through the work of Albert Einstein, Louis de Broglie and many others, it is now established that all objects have both wave and particle nature (though this phenomenon is only detectable on small scales, such as with atoms), and that a suitable interpretation of quantum mechanics provides the over-arching theory resolving this ostensible paradox.

The thing is I am not at pains to try and explain what you see as a contradiction. I am content to accept that some things may be beyond our understanding at this point of time.

This is the fundamental difference between the rationalist and the theist. The theist looks to his religion for answers. The rationalist is content to say "I don't know" ...... but will keep looking.

(emphasis added)

Ah, it seems we agree. Some things - whether in physics or religion - may be beyond our understanding at this point in time.

 

[Thor 2]

(emphasis added)

Ah, it seems we agree. Some things - whether in physics or religion - may be beyond our understanding at this point in time.

So some aspects of religion may become understandable at some point in the future, when modern man develops an understanding on a par with that of Stone Age peasants thousands of years ago? Yes got it.

 

[Steve]

So some aspects of religion may become understandable at some point in the future, when modern man develops an understanding on a par with that of Stone Age peasants thousands of years ago? Yes got it.

All aspects of religion are well understood. Humans created religions and all the baggage that goes with them. There is nothing mysterious about religion.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You, probably unwittingly, are equating fiction with myth. Are the two the same? Harry Potter is known not to exist both by his inventor and by people who read books about him. But Zeus was believed - probably mistakenly - to exist, by people who worshipped him; and in general the stories about him were not fictional in the sense of being believed as authentic neither by their authors nor their readers.

I therefore believe that myth and fiction can't be simply or casually equated.

But that's like saying science fiction differs from literary fiction because one has fantastical elements and one attempts to be realistic.

If you look at those Greek myths now they are nothing but stories. Stories about Jesus turning water into wine is just as fictional.

You are creating a distinction to fit your bias that god myths are somehow different from other forms of fiction.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I remember having read, not long ago -- although in some newspaper or magazine, not some technical journal -- that they were actually researching this whole panspermia thing, in the context of some asteroid or meteor that had entered the solar system, or something like that. (I'm sorry, my recollection is hazy. Nor will I take the trouble to Google this, because this is not central to the discussion at all, for reasons I will explain shortly).

Anyway, my point was: If people are still researching this, then obviously it means they've kept an open mind about it. If they'd been certain that such a thing is impossible, then why waste time and energy (and money) researching it out, right? Any scientific research necessarily requires an open mind. Surely that is obvious?

In any case, you seem not to have understood my underlying argument. Seen against the actual argument I was presenting to JoeMorgue, I'm afraid your objection -- even if for the sake of argument I were to grant that you are correct -- is pedantic.

JoeMorgue was objecting to hairsplitting about the God question, and protesting that nowehere else do we do this. And I was telling him that we do this all the time when precision is important, e.g. in court cases, and in detective fiction (and, I suppose, with actual detection by actual detectives as well), and with scientists who're actually testing out some particular issue.

This panspermia business was only an example. It can be easily substituted, if need be, with another that is more 'correct'.

This is off-topic so I will only make a quick remark, you are welcome to explore the topic and start another thread. That was astronomers looking at new-found organic molecules in meteorites (previously less complex organic molecules had been found). Either they made off-handed remarks or the news media reporting on the find added their own theories or both. The problem with the story was that there was no geneticist involve.

Welcome to the new science of overlapping specialties. An astro-biologist would probably have been a better source to be giving reporters a story about the new finding.

Regardless, they did not find multiple organisms or even replicating organic molecules in the meteorite. So it was not evidence of panspermia.

There was also some guy (in India I believe) who claimed red rain was evidence of panspermia. He found the red substance consisted of spores or something. The scientific consensus was the red rain was from an Earth source.


As for people still researching it, sure, there will always be room to look for lifeforms seeding 2nd and 3rd planets. But as for all kinds of spores or lifeforms buzzing around the Universe, there is no evidence of any such thing.

The Discovery Institute is still looking for irreducible complexity too, that doesn't mean most scientists haven't dismissed the hypothesis.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You appear not to know what you're talking about.

That has nothing to do with panspermia.

This is the "just make random **** up forum" now isn't it?

I don't see anything here moving the discussion forward.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

[snipped, nothing to discuss]

I'm afraid you haven't understood my argument at all, if you can say that.

Or maybe you failed to make one though I know you believe you have.

This is one of those cases where your failure to convince me is not my failure to understand your post.

[snipped some more that isn't relevant] ...

And the reason I say, the sense in which I say, that the religion-fictions are different from the Tolkien-type fictions, is that large numbers believe in the former, while no one believes in the latter.

Numbers of believers doesn't mean a thing unless you are a social scientist.

[snipped some more]


I agree. The former, your #1, leads to hard atheism. The latter, your #2, leads to soft atheism.

If you can do what you've yourself suggested in your #1, then your hard atheism is reasonable. If you cannot, and yet hold on to hard atheism, then your hard atheism is not reasonable, not rational.

What you've suggested in your #2 is always reasonable. That is why I find soft atheism to be reasonable.

Incidentally:
(a) The fact that soft atheism is "soft" need not imply that it is half-hearted. Your realize that, right?
(b) "God" is a large word, it encompasses many individual God-ideas. I believe there are some God ideas that lend themselves to (reasonable) hard atheism, and some that don't.

Soft atheism, hard atheism, blah blah blah...

I'm way past that. You are not addressing my paradigm shift, demonstrating why it is unsupportable. Once you've shifted, you can't argue the person back to pre-shift POV.

 

[Thor 2]

If you don't understand how the genetic tree of life argues against multiple genetic origins then you need to brush up on the genetic family tree.

The Tree of Life Web Project is a good place to start. Notice there is a single emergence, not multiple emergences* from all that panspermia salting of the planet.

*There is an hypothesis that the original lifeforms spent a period of time exchanging DNA but that's not evidence of panspermia.

That has nothing to do with panspermia.

This is the "just make random **** up forum" now isn't it?

Well I can see a connection Yuppy and I'm sure if you look hard you might too. It's all in the "lack of multiple emergences" thing that you cut out of your quote.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

When all this is said and done is it just going to be people complaining that arguably the smartest man of our time dared to make a statement about God without burying it under the approved mountain of groveling, milquetoast, apologetic language? That he dared said "God does not exist" (even though he didn't exactly) instead of the "more appropriate" way of "If it pleases everyone I would like to state that it is my person opinion that the best way for me to view the world is for me personally to hold the opinion that I personally do not consider God to be something that exists in my world view grovel grovel grovel apologetics apologetics apologetics..."

Good comments.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I can't imagine why you so desperately cling to your strawman. Hawking ruled out ALL gods and I am merely saying that his reasoning is not scientific and I am not trying to hide behind some ambiguous definition of a god.

If it makes you happy then insert the god of your choice and imagine that this is the god we are discussing.

But to do this you ignore the other argument, all gods we know of are fictional human inventions and there is no evidence of any actual gods.

That is more scientific than the assertion magical gods could exist and no one can say they don't.