Hawking says there are no gods

[Skeptic Ginger]

As a theist, I disagree, but I can respect an atheist who thinks that way.

So, at risk of getting off-topic, just out of curiosity, do you believe morals come from one's religion or one's god(s)?

 

[Jodie]

It would seem you have some other, (as yet undefined), theistic belief Jodie. I was however addressing my post to epeeist who is a Roman Catholic. Epeeist, although a well of knowledge about the faith, seems to be struggling to blend his theistic beliefs with concepts such as evolution.

Oh well, theist isn't exactly the right word I would use, but atheist isn't appropriate either, to describe what I think we are.

I think it's interesting that the human species believes in something "divine", for a lack of a better term, regardless of ethnicity, country, or culture. My question is whether this is a necessary stage that a species goes through in the evolution of consciousness. How do our thoughts and beliefs affect our perception of ourselves, the development of our conscious and subconscious, if we construct something infinite and undefined as a goal to obtain?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Everything I said can apply to the second definition.

Not whole organisms which is the only logical definition of panspermia.

Evolution theory, regardless of abiogenesis, currently supports that life began from only one source. There might have been some genetic exchanges in some sort of soup in the very beginning, especially before cells developed cell walls.

But what genetic research supports is that life began once, not multiple times from organisms carried by meteorites.

In addition, while some microorganisms have survived for years in space, no meteorites with living organisms have ever been found.

That's my POV, I understand yours. I also know I've had this discussion before, be it with you or not and I recall the changing of the definition of panspermia though I can't for the life of me see what useful hypothesis comes from using a useless definition.

But can we please stop this off topic sidetrack here? Unless you want to assert panspermia is evidence of gods, enough is enough. There are panspermia threads elsewhere.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The Big Bang is not a paradigm. Big Foot is much less so.
Change of paradigms doesn’t change well-established facts. For example, Kepler used Tycho Brahe’s tables of observations and Brahe was geocentrist. Change of paradigms change some fundamental laws that explain global facts and derivedative. What we are discussing now is about fundamental laws. Hawking supposes that these laws are fixed. This is an unjustified supposition that contradicts what we know about history of science.

No no no nope. You aren't understanding what I mean by a paradigm shift. It most certainly has nothing to do with changing facts, evidence or the scientific process at all!

It doesn't require replacing knowledge.

It is a commonplace that science is not fixed and that many of our current knowledge can be replaced by new knowledge in the future. This is not a reason to believe in supernatural facts or pseudosciences. I am sure that Hawking knew this elemental datum. I am a little surprised that he spoke of some “fixed laws”. Perhaps we should discuss the original book instead of a recension.

Maybe you missed his point as well.


Old paradigm: Ask the question, do gods exist? One must prove the negative that gods don't exist, but one cannot because one cannot test all possibilities.

New paradigm: There's no need to prove there are no gods because there is no evidence to suggest gods exist in the first place.
Hawking uses a different approach to get there. He sees no evidence of any god-like thing acting when the universe and physics are explored.

The approach I've taken has nothing to do with changing the scientific process. It's simply that we can ask a different question, i.e. shift paradigms in how we think about the question of gods existing.

My question is to explore the god beliefs we do have evidence of, key word being 'beliefs'. We have no evidence whatsoever of real gods. We have overwhelming evidence that god beliefs are beliefs in mythical gods.

All god beliefs, no evidence of actual gods. There is no reason whatsoever to look for something there is no evidence of in the first place.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... the details of that approach towards panspermia are no more than a pedantic side issue. You do understand my larger point, don’t you?

Pedantry would require a slight misuse of grammar or vocabulary. Pedantry is not arguing with two strikingly different definitions of a word. See my post above. This sidetrack has run its course.

... Thus, if you’re looking at religion and the God question from the outside as it were (either because you’ve already conducted your personal research and now moved away from the subject, or simply because you are not interested in the subject at all)

Clearly that's not true...

... , then you can look at the issue broadly; but if you’re interested in actually studying the issue, to see what core of truth (if any) it might have to offer, then you will tend to see these things with a far finer resolution.

You appreciate this larger point I was driving at, I hope? Given the context of the specific discussion where I’d said this?

So we atheists just aren't interested in god?

The subject fascinates me because I don't understand people believing in magical sky daddies or other versions of gods in today's modern world. And yet they do.

Look at that poor woman in Pakistan who converted publicly from Islam to Christianity. She spent years in prison under the death penalty and when a court let her go, probably because they know Pakistan looks real bad to the outside world when they do medieval stuff like this, crowds of men are marching and ranting in the streets that the woman should be executed.

How do you explain that? Especially in light of science moving past god beliefs as the human race evolves into modernity?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Numbers of believers can be relevant to why we might want to invest some subject with greater precision than others. Here’s three reasons why:

Whooosh.

You missed the point. I didn't say resources should not be expended on study. I said numbers of believers are not evidence real gods exist.

You’re over-generalizing when you say that last. I don't see how you can know that no one can be “argued back” from a stance such as yours. The best you can do is speak for yourself.

But I’m being pedantic, I guess, in pointing that out. I do take your larger point, absolutely.

I'm telling you about me, I'm not telling you what you should believe about me. I'm not shifting my paradigm back. Generally shifting paradigms involve forward movement.

I see now where you’re coming from, and why we’ve been speaking over each other.

You’re seeing this firmly from your personal perspective. While I’m seeing this from a perspective that isn’t necessarily mine alone (or yours alone), but what might be generally reasonable.

Why do you think Hawking bothered with describing this POV of his?

... -- as I was saying to David Mo earlier upthread -- as long as they realize the subjectivity of their own belief, and as long as they don’t seek to invest their subjective opinion with a spurious objectivity that they then seek to proselytize. This would apply alike to theists and atheists, although obviously it is usually the former (the theists) who tend to go in for this sort of thing. But absolutely, I’d object to it when fellow atheists do it, too.

As far as your particular “paradigm shift”: I’m not demonstrating why it is unsupportable, because I’m not even saying it is “unsupportable”. Absolutely not! If you’ve yourself thought this out to your satisfaction, weighed things to your satisfaction, and arrived at a subjective conclusion that satisfies you: why on earth would I contest that purely personal conclusion?

Evidence of people's god beliefs being belief in mythical gods is easily found in overwhelming abundance. There is nothing subjective about it.

The lack of evidence of real gods when you'd expect to see evidence is easily exposed such as no evidence prayer has an effect unless the person you are praying for believes they are being prayed for.


I am not talking about subjective evidence.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

There are some serious gaps in what we know about how the universe works. Dark matter and dark energy which are just plugs to reflect the fact that the data doesn't fit the theory. The two great theories of relativity and quantum physics don't work together. We have the Standard Model but that isn't enough. Maybe there's room for other forces and the particles that carry them which could mimic the effects of a 'god'. It may be premature to say that the laws of the universe are fixed.

Sure, and Hawking didn't say all the answers have been found. That assertion would be laughable. What he's saying (and I think I do understand, others are welcome to debate that) is that where and what would a god be doing? Dark matter and dark energy are god territory so is god messing with theoretical physicists?

And it's not like measurements are fluctuating all over the place that suggests some magical intervention we don't know about. Not observed. Hawking is saying if a god were involved here we would expect to find something suggesting mucking about. There's no mucking about. I don't have to understand dark matter or energy or string theory to conclude there's no god mucking about. There's no god bringing down a hurricane on the evil city of Miami because they have too many gays there.

The universe functions just fine thank you, no gods in evidence or needed.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If the laws of nature are fixed (and assuming that the Hawking conclusion follows) then everything that happens in the universe, including individual thoughts and acts, is controlled by these laws.

That would mean that not only is there no room for a god, there is also no room for sentience, consciousness or free will.

That's debatable. You have to insert a number of underlying premises in order to conclude everything is predetermined if we believe X.

Subject for a different thread.

 

[qayak]

If the laws of nature are fixed (and assuming that the Hawking conclusion follows) then everything that happens in the universe, including individual thoughts and acts, is controlled by these laws.

That would mean that not only is there no room for a god, there is also no room for sentience, consciousness or free will.

So we have some agreement here. If the laws are fixed we are controlled by them. However, it isn't a control the way people think of robots being controlled. Think of it like the casinos in Las Vegas. They don't know what particular choices a particular individual will make but they do know what choices a large population will tend to make in given situations. We see this in our lives all the time and we see it in the rest of nature. I think it does indeed have an impact on free will but I don't think it affects sentience or consciousness much.

But here's the thing:The current batch of monotheistic gods has a much larger effect on free will. They actually rob you of any choice. God is all knowing and all seeing so he knows you are going to McDonald's for lunch tomorrow and you have to go whether you want to or not because he knows you are going. Your live is completely determined from conception to death, and beyond and there is nothing you can do to change that. You will be punished for decisions that aren't yours to make, be put in deadly situations through no choice of your own, etc.

Free will is the ability to make your own choices. The human ability to reason allows you to make more/better choices. There maybe limits on that ability because we are subject to a few laws of the universe. I'll take that. It makes life a pretty spectacular experience for those of us lucky enough to win the egg/sperm lottery.

 

[Chanakya]

Pedantry would require a slight misuse of grammar or vocabulary. Pedantry is not arguing with two strikingly different definitions of a word. See my post above. This sidetrack has run its course.

But you're the one who insisted on running with the sidetrack, despite my pointing out repeatedly that, although interesting in itself, it's only incidental to the discussion.

Clearly that's not true...So we atheists just aren't interested in god?

How do you conclude that from what I said?

The subject fascinates me because I don't understand people believing in magical sky daddies or other versions of gods in today's modern world. And yet they do. (...)

I'm with you there. I too find it amazing, the things people believe. And sometimes I try to make sense of why they believe what they do. (Other times I leave their weirdness be.)

 

[psionl0]

That's debatable. You have to insert a number of underlying premises in order to conclude everything is predetermined if we believe X.

Subject for a different thread.

"Does God exist?" is strictly speaking also a subject for a different thread (although nobody here is going to leave that question alone). This thread is supposed to be about Stephen Hawking's take on the matter.

He basically made 2 statements: one is a premise (the laws of nature are fixed) and the other a claim that his conclusion (no room for God) necessarily follows from this premise. One of the ways of testing his statements is to examine other implications of these 2 statements.

Hawking touched on an old philosophical question: "is the universe deterministic?" The answer to this question has far reaching consequences.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Heh, so you go solipsizing (is that a verb?) even beyond actual solipsism?

Whether solipsism, or your particular brand 'extreme solipsism', thinking this way can be a good mental workout, I suppose, as well as kind of fun, once in a while: but are you saying you do this all the time?

Long answer:
A skeptic is skeptical of how all words work including "I" and "exist". "I think, therefore I am(exist)" on closer look works like a tautology. It ends being irreducibly true for the content, but empty of all other aspects. Here is a classical approach of a solipsist - I exist and I have experiences. It doesn't follow that if you have experiences, that they are yours. You might not have them, i.e. they are not yours, rather they come to you. If they come to you, there is something else. The answer, that is given by the solipsist, is that, this is my subconsciousness. But that is not "I", that is something else, otherwise it wouldn't be sub. So a solipsist in practice has a 2 factor model, "I" and "something else". I call something else the rest of reality. A solipsist calls it my subconscious, but it is not the solipsist's to own, but she doesn't control it. I don't control reality, I am a result of reality and "I" is a epiphenomenal property, which itself has no causal powers just like the mind. I don't have a mind, this brain causes I and the mind and this brain is caused by something else.
So I am the exact opposite of a solipsist, A solipsist treats "I" as fundamental, I treat "I" like an illusion, which works.

Now for the word "know". I am old school back to Agrippa's Trilemma. No one has Knowledge with reason and logic, because everybody ends up running into Agrippa's Trilemma. So I state what I believe. Some beliefs I can term knowledge but they are really beliefs, I don't check anymore, because they work for me and my interaction with "something else"; i.e. my belief in the rest of reality and that it is independently of me as it appears to me. I.e. the computer screen in front of me is there as something different than my and it is a computer screen in "itself"(Kant versus a Boltzmann Brain universe). Do I Know this? No, I don't and I don't care because I don't need to believe in Knowledge. I don't need to Know as some people need to.

I agree, this kind of over-generalization it might be wise to guard against, both in oneself and in others.

But I’m not sure I see the relevance of this in the context of what we were speaking of?

Look closer! If cognitive relativism holds for the subjective parts of reality and only the objective parts are fixed as the same for all humans, then for all of reality, there can't be an universal, absolute and objective as independent of human cognition model. So if someone speaks for all humans as for what reality is for all humans with universal reason, logic and evidence, it can't be so.
I.e. logic has a limit, "It is impossible that the same thing belong and not belong to the same thing at the same time and in the same respect", but says nothing about another thing. It can be wrong and right to kill another if it involves 2 or more humans' POW. As for reason, it can't decide in an unbiased sense a bias for or against something, it can change it between as for or against something. E.g. that objectivity is better than subjectivity is a bias in favor of objectivity and against subjectivity. And you can't decide between good and bad using observation, because observation can't see neither good nor bad.

In the end all one factor claims of what reality is, are subjective, because they are over-reductions of reality. Several humans can respectively believe in e.g. the FSM(there is One god), scientism(there is One form of facts) and objective communism(all answers can be derived from a(One) material condition). The same goes for that all laws of the universe are fixed in One sense; they all can't be, because then diversity(biological evolution) in human behavior would be impossible.
Reality is the set of a multitude of factors, which doesn't add up with reason, logic and evidence. I.e. reality is the set of X, Z, Y and so on, but the "and" is an "and" of a list and not a logical "and". The list doesn't add up with reason, logic and evidence.

To be a skeptic in these debates is to state the limitations of human understanding; there has in all of human history been no one System of reason, logic and evidence. Neither in science, philosophy nor religion, i.e. there is no single Truth or Fact.
What reality really is a single sense, is a belief, no matter what specific sense we are talking of.

Reality is at a minimum for you a 2 factor explanation - you and the rest. The rest then includes several facts and indeed you are not even one single factor. Reality is a lot of stuff going on and it doesn't add up. So I have stopped to claim that I Know with reason, logic and evidence. I state what matters to me.

 

[psionl0]

So we have some agreement here. If the laws are fixed we are controlled by them. However, it isn't a control the way people think of robots being controlled. Think of it like the casinos in Las Vegas. They don't know what particular choices a particular individual will make but they do know what choices a large population will tend to make in given situations. We see this in our lives all the time and we see it in the rest of nature. I think it does indeed have an impact on free will but I don't think it affects sentience or consciousness much.

< brevity snip>

You are missing the point. In a deterministic universe, there is no room for "random forces" either. The bet that every person made and the result of every spin of a wheel has been pre-determined by the state of the universe. We are nothing but robots.

Since we don't know everything about the universe, we calculate probabilities and that can take a long way. Unfortunately it is a common mistake to forget that we are just dealing with things we don't know and start to believe that random forces actually exist. The same problem also occurs with quantum mechanics.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

...

Free will is the ability to make your own choices. The human ability to reason allows you to make more/better choices. There maybe limits on that ability because we are subject to a few laws of the universe. I'll take that. It makes life a pretty spectacular experience for those of us lucky enough to win the egg/sperm lottery.

There is no free will and that you have your own choices is an illusion. The universe controls you and not the other way around. You don't have a mind, a brain causes "I" and "the mind" and a brain is caused yet again.
As for random, i.e. undetermined, doesn't make it free, it makes it random. Free will is a case of Ex Nihilo, it comes out of nothing and is not connected to the rest of reality. Free will is like God. You can believe in it, but you don't have to.

 

[David Mo]

Change of paradigms doesn't change the laws, it just changes our ability to grasp the concept and understand the law. Hawking stated the laws are fixed. They either are or they are not but a paradigm shift doesn't change the law. The history of science does not contradict Hawking and adds nothing to the discussion.

Did Lavoisier know the laws of the quantum mechanics?

 

[David Mo]

No no no nope. You aren't understanding what I mean by a paradigm shift.

I agree: I don't know what you mean by "paradigma". I am using the word in the usual meaning coined by Thomas S. Kuhn. Hawking was speaking of "fixed" scientific laws. I was referring on this point.

 

[dann]

I think it's interesting that the human species believes in something "divine", for a lack of a better term, regardless of ethnicity, country, or culture.

I hope that you're aware that a considerable (and rapidly expanding) part of "the human species" doesn't believe in anything divine (or "divine"). It doesn't seem to depend much on ethnicity. Country and culture do seem to play a role, however: Demographics of atheism (Wikipedia) And existential security seems to be very important for people's ability to let go of god beliefs.

My question is whether this is a necessary stage that a species goes through in the evolution of consciousness. How do our thoughts and beliefs affect our perception of ourselves, the development of our conscious and subconscious, if we construct something infinite and undefined as a goal to obtain?

You would have to ask a couple of other species to answer that question.

 

[David Mo]

The correct formulation of the problem is: In the current state of our knowledge of the forces of nature (science) we have not any reason to postulate the existence of God.
This is not a proof of the inexistence of God. This is a refutation of any attempt to place God in this world. God is not a question of facts.

But the religious man can say: Well, if Science doesn't prove that God doesn't exist. God is not a question of fact but a belief. Atheism and theism are only beliefs. I am an agnostic theist --a fideist-- and science cannot refute me as long as I place God in a spiritual world.

And then, what atheists can say?

 

[qayak]

You are missing the point. In a deterministic universe, there is no room for "random forces" either. The bet that every person made and the result of every spin of a wheel has been pre-determined by the state of the universe. We are nothing but robots.

Since we don't know everything about the universe, we calculate probabilities and that can take a long way. Unfortunately it is a common mistake to forget that we are just dealing with things we don't know and start to believe that random forces actually exist. The same problem also occurs with quantum mechanics.

And that's another view. But what says that the universe itself doesn't operate on probability? You could have laws that only allow that things will probably happen. For instance: Say it takes 10 inputs of various forms to be certain a particular thing happens. Then say that at only 5 inputs that thing will definitely not happen. We still have 6, 7, 8, and 9 inputs where the thing may or may not happen in progressively likely ratios.

 

[psionl0]

And that's another view. But what says that the universe itself doesn't operate on probability? You could have laws that only allow that things will probably happen. For instance: Say it takes 10 inputs of various forms to be certain a particular thing happens. Then say that at only 5 inputs that thing will definitely not happen. We still have 6, 7, 8, and 9 inputs where the thing may or may not happen in progressively likely ratios.

That implies that "random forces" actually exist. This is just the God question with a different name.