Hawking says there are no gods

[Belz...]

Why does free-will require those states to self-cause themselves? What does that mean physically? And why can't it happen in a deterministic universe?

Are you saying that in a non-deterministic universe, states of the brain COULD self cause themselves?

I'm not sure "non-deterministic universe" isn't an oxymoron. A chaotic universe is basically the quantum field.

 

[Belz...]

You have to admit, we have the appearance of making free-will decision. There is at least that.

Optical illusions also create appearances. But no, there isn't that.

So why can't that grey matter create free-will decisions?

Physics.

It's really simple. Every event is caused. You have two options. Either the event is determined by causal factors, or it's random. In neither case is it "Free", because nothing is created out of some sort of magic that happens to determine itself. There's no physical or indeed any logical basis for that. This is under any coherent philosophy or ideology.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Okay, if you permit me to paraphrase, you're characterizing your definition of "universe" as not, "everything that exists," but rather something more like "everything that's known." When you say "a god could exist outside the universe" you mean more or less, "a god could exist whose nature is entirely unknown."

The problem is, as others have pointed out, no actual religion describes a god whose nature is entirely unknown. Religious leaders base their authority and power on claiming to know!

Even you, when you describe a god who's the First Cause, are claiming to know. The god is unknown; it's outside of our understanding that you describe it as being outside the universe. But somehow you know that.

I submit that that claim ultimately lacks any meaning.

Suppose A says, "The First Cause is unknown."

Then B says, "The First Cause is a god, about whom absolutely nothing else is known."

Hasn't B just said exactly the same thing as A, in more words?

You are good. The problem is that the unknown is what has objective reality is independent of your mind? You live in a cognitive bubble.
You of course believe you can know something about objective reality other than it is objective - not your mind and independent of your mind. You can't and neither can I.
I am just honest - I believe I live in a natural word.
All knowledge when checked because vacuous tautologies or run into Agrippa's Trilemma.
So you believe in a natural world and a religious person believe in religious world.
Now you are going to argue about what makes sense, is meaningful and all that. All of these words have no objective referent, they are qualia. You only know them in your mind.

 

[Belz...]

You are good. The problem is that the unknown is what has objective reality is independent of your mind? You live in a cognitive bubble.

Completely irrelevant. You have ways to make sure, for all practical purposes, that the reality exists and can be used to produce results. Anything else is completely pointless, because whether you're a brain in a vat or some god imagining another life or in the matrix or in a real universe, the effect is the same, so there's no point in discussing fantasy scenarios. The only thing that matters is how things can be demonstrated to work within the perceived reality.

 

[JayUtah]

You don't care for philosophy, so how can you speak on behalf of philosophy.

I said I don't care about philosophical realism, and I said that in the context of a debate where you were trying to argue that quantum mechanics justified philosophical anti-realism and I was trying to point out what you've finally realized, in this thread, your Hawking article was really saying. I never said I don't care for philosophy. I am just as worthy of speaking about philosophy as anyone here. I don't see any particular insight in your attempt to apply philosophy in this thread. You're waving your hands wildly at a smattering of pseudo-philosophical concepts and trying to argue that it somehow trumps what science can observe, comprehend, and conclude. It's a fairly unremarkable anti-science stance we've seen many times before.

 

[JayUtah]

...there's no point in discussing fantasy scenarios.

No point if you're an atheist, but considerable value if you aren't. If you can argue a gap in the concept of knowledge that's big enough to fit your god into, it doesn't matter whether that existence is purely hypothetical, theoretical, or inconsequential. It doesn't even matter that the god you've "proven" can or must exist in that gap isn't remotely the god of any religion. What matters is that your fantasy scenario refutes the atheists in principle if not in effect. A hollow, invisible, impotent god is still a god, so take that!

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Please respond to the arguments I make. You're using every post of mine simply to further evangelize your beliefs.

I answered and you don't listen.
I accept science in the #3 position.
You made a claim, but didn't use reasoning.

You claim that QM is pure math, yet according to the OP it leads to this: "I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science".
Could you try to make a coherent position relevant to the OP?

Meaningless gibberish.

You tried to endow quantum mechanics with the magical philosophical properties you needed to argue that there can be no actual reality. Yet quantum mechanics is nothing except a mathematical abstraction. You want to rely upon it when you think it provides a foundation for your philosophy. Yet you reject it the moment it becomes apparent it also has the power to refute it. That's what special pleading is.

So how do you square - "I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science" versus "Yet quantum mechanics is nothing except a mathematical abstraction"?

BTW How is this possible: "Yet you reject it the moment it becomes apparent it also has the power to refute it" if "Yet quantum mechanics is nothing except a mathematical abstraction"?

So science is not philosophy and has nothing to do with philosophy, yet science can refute philosophy.

I have other things to do. You can have your reality of science is not connected to philosophy or reality as such, because QM is is nothing except a mathematical abstraction, yet the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Philosophy, the idea that we understand ketchup but can never hope to understand catsup.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Completely irrelevant. You have ways to make sure, for all practical purposes, that the reality exists and can be used to produce results. Anything else is completely pointless, because whether you're a brain in a vat or some god imagining another life or in the matrix or in a real universe, the effect is the same, so there's no point in discussing fantasy scenarios. The only thing that matters is how things can be demonstrated to work within the perceived reality.

There they are!!! Those qualia words, who only have meaning in your mind, because they make sense.
Does it occur to you, that you prove my point by retreating down to how reality makes sense to you!
And that reality might make sense differently for another human.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Philosophy, the idea that we understand ketchup but can never hope to understand catsup.

Subjective again.

 

[JayUtah]

You made a claim, but didn't use reasoning.

I identified your premise as a straw man. That's reasoning.

Could you try to make a coherent position relevant to the OP?

You're changing the subject, albeit to refer back to the beginning of the thread.

So how do you square - "I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science" versus "Yet quantum mechanics is nothing except a mathematical abstraction"?

There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in quantum mechanics. Hawking specifically said so in the article you quoted, and in the book to which it refers. You should really try to read your own sources. You're creating a dilemma where none exists, out of two disconnected maxims.

I have other things to do.

Clearly you have time to put words in my mouth as well as into your own, so find a more plausible excuse for proposing to ignore me.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Subjective again.

Even for you that's gibberish.

 

[JayUtah]

And that reality might make sense differently for another human.

You skipped a rather important question. If you believe that science, religion, and philosophy are separately justified in having different approaches and reaching different right conclusions, then out of those three which is the most useful and reliable in determining whether something actually exists?

 

[Thor 2]

Okay, if you permit me to paraphrase, you're characterizing your definition of "universe" as not, "everything that exists," but rather something more like "everything that's known." When you say "a god could exist outside the universe" you mean more or less, "a god could exist whose nature is entirely unknown."

The problem is, as others have pointed out, no actual religion describes a god whose nature is entirely unknown. Religious leaders base their authority and power on claiming to know!

Even you, when you describe a god who's the First Cause, are claiming to know. The god is unknown; it's outside of our understanding that you describe it as being outside the universe. But somehow you know that.

I submit that that claim ultimately lacks any meaning.

Suppose A says, "The First Cause is unknown."

Then B says, "The First Cause is a god, about whom absolutely nothing else is known."

Hasn't B just said exactly the same thing as A, in more words?

You are good. The problem is that the unknown is what has objective reality is independent of your mind? You live in a cognitive bubble.
You of course believe you can know something about objective reality other than it is objective - not your mind and independent of your mind. You can't and neither can I.
I am just honest - I believe I live in a natural word.
All knowledge when checked because vacuous tautologies or run into Agrippa's Trilemma.
So you believe in a natural world and a religious person believe in religious world.
Now you are going to argue about what makes sense, is meaningful and all that. All of these words have no objective referent, they are qualia. You only know them in your mind.

Can't see that you have answered Myriad's post here Tommy. May be something profound in the highlighted but can't put my finger on it.

 

[JayUtah]

Even for you that's gibberish.

Am I correct in thinking that calling everything subjective, including the meanings of common words and phrases, is really just the catch-all "Expelliarmus!" of this particular argument?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Am I correct in thinking that calling everything subjective, including the meanings of common words and phrases, is really just the catch-all "Expelliarmus!" of this particular argument?

It's his magic word. He throws it down like the philosophical equivalent of a Wild Draw 4.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

You skipped a rather important question. If you believe that science, religion, and philosophy are separately justified in having different approaches and reaching different right conclusions, then out of those three which is the most useful and reliable in determining whether something actually exists?

You ask a good question. So I will continue.
Then out of those three which is the most useful and reliable in determining whether something actually exists?
That depends on, what something actually exists, is?
That depends on what you take for granted and if actually is a form of realism?
Are you doing realism in some form? It appears so?!!
What is existence?
What is that with useful? What is that?

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Can't see that you have answered Myriad's post here Tommy. May be something profound in the highlighted but can't put my finger on it.

You think you got me, because I refer to objective reality. I believe in the natural world, I just don't believe in Knowledge, just as I don't believe in Gods.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Carl Sagan's dragon is a lovely device for showing up the absurdity of some of our ideas, but I'm afraid there are nuances that it can't quite cover. To that extent, one sees how this device is misused for rhetorical grandstanding rather than for making cogent reasoned arguments.

Here's how this rhetoric is disingenuous: The dragon is a wholly pointless and ridiculous idea that no one takes seriously; and the intent is to have these traits supplanted on the subject under discussion. While often valid, there are times when this simply doesn't apply.

The intent is to demonstrate there is no difference.

The fact is that some issues are accorded greater precision than others. And nor is this necessarily a fallacious double standard, for reasons I've explained more than once, reasons that you've been singularly unable to either refute or accept.

Yes it is a double standard and the reasons you explained weren't convincing. You seem to be saying gods are important and invisible garage dragons are not. But don't ask you to actually spell those details out.

Let me see if trying another tack might help: You do know that courts of law will never pronounce you "innocent", don't you? They'll only say you're "not guilty". That is because it is often impossible to actually prove innocence. (Most cases aren't quite as cut and dried as David Schwimmer's shoplifting!)

Like that shoplifting case, some defendents can indeed be proved innocent. However, in general we tend to go with "not guilty", as showing that there isn't enough evidence for guilt is usually the best we can do.

Thus with God ideas. Some God ideas we can indeed disprove (in as much science can actually prove or disprove anything, that goes without saying). However, generally simply showing a lack of evidence is the best we can do, so generally soft atheism is what is reasonable.

Do you think we don't understand the issue of proving the negative? It's classic, you fail to convince so it must be because we lack some important data.

No, we have all the data, your argument is simply wrong.

I specifically address the point you think we somehow don't get. My POV, there is no positive so why any need to prove the negative? And this is where you miss the point of the invisible dragon.

If you would only try to clearly think through and address the points I have raised, for instance in my previous post, rather than go in for this asinine grandstanding, then we might make better headway.

It's not rhetorical grandstanding. It's you that doesn't get the analogy and you've done a poor job distinguishing the difference between invisible gods and invisible dragons. There is no difference unless you apply a double standard.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

It's his magic word. He throws it down like the philosophical equivalent of a Wild Draw 4.

And that is your magic. All other world-views than yours are magic to you. It means that they are actual magic, because it is a fact that there are other world-views than yours. You have just proved that reality is magical.
Other world-views work for other people, unless you want to claim that other people are not in the world.
Then who are you communicating with?