Hawking says there are no gods

Status
Not open for further replies.
"You are only correct if we assume anything actually exists."

Why the flying fudge fart are we having to give that any level of credence beyond "Laugh it out of the room?"
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
All other world-views than yours are magic to you.
Click to expand...

Straw man. Your world view is magical because it gets you out of any sort of uncomfortable clash of facts. Again, you're fond of calling any disagreement with you "special pleading," but that is an accusation that comes from an assumption of one's own worldview as evidently correct. You seem to think that being dogmatic about relativism somehow excuses you from being dogmatic.
 
JayUtah said:
No, it doesn't. Actually exists. I phrased my question specifically to avoid your typical evasion.

Now please answer the question.
Click to expand...

Actually exists, is context dependent.
Actually: as the truth or facts of a situation
Take a hallucination: The content of it both actually exists and doesn't. Here is how, a hallucination is an actual process, which produces actually experiences, which actually doesn't match the rest of the actual reality.

Take religion: It consists of actual beliefs, which can leads to further actual behavior, e.g. burning witches.

Your problem is that you are aiming for a form of positivism(philosophy).
Only that which is independent of the mind is actual. The problem is that this claim is only actual in the mind.
I.e. the rule of independent of the mind is not independent of the mind. It doesn't work, because it leads to a false dichotomy.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
Actually exists, is context dependent.
Click to expand...

Exactly the sort of weasel-worded evasion I expected. This is why the Dragon in the Garage thing works.

Take a hallucination
Click to expand...

Okay, what process would someone use to determine that you had actually had an hallucination?

Your problem is that you are aiming for a form of positivism(philosophy).
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm referring to positivism, and you're the only one who seems to think that constitutes a problem.
 
Last edited:
Judge: Mr. Hutz do you have any evidence to present?
Hutz: I have hearsay and conjecture. Those are kind of evidence.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
Only that which is independent of the mind is actual.
Click to expand...

Is the seat belt in your car independent of your conception of it? Is its physical behavior in a collision dependent on whether you believe in it, or whether you conceive of it having the properties it boasts? If it fails and you sue your car manufacturer, will it suit you for them to claim the seat belt never existed in any sort of actual way?
 
And we're back to basic object permanence. We're one step away from playing Peek-a-boo with Tommy.
 
Chanakya said:
Here's how this rhetoric is disingenuous: The dragon is a wholly pointless and ridiculous idea that no one takes seriously
Click to expand...

Whether or not you take the idea seriously is irrelevant. The conclusion still stands; garage dragons do not exist by definition.

Chanakya said:
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.
Click to expand...

Except that a lack of evidence where evidence would be expected is, indeed, evidence of absence - which leads to hard atheism.

All gods fall into either one of two categories: they are either garage dragons, such as the undetectable "unmoved first mover", or they are not. In the case of them being garage dragons, they do not exist by definition; in the case of the latter, any argument for their existence is, at best, bare assertion, and is therefore discarded.

Gods don't get special treatment in this regard. Bare assertion isn't enough to force us to admit the possibility of Santa Claus. It certainly isn't enough to force us to admit the possibility of gods.

Chanakya said:
Yes, because this is a dragon that no one believes in anyway, and because its existence is basically inconsequential (relative, that is, to the colossal consequences of the actual existence of God).
Click to expand...

The garage dragon's existence is every bit as consequential as the existence of any undetectable gods. That is the point.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
Only that which is independent of the mind is actual. The problem is that this claim is only actual in the mind.
I.e. the rule of independent of the mind is not independent of the mind. It doesn't work, because it leads to a false dichotomy.
Click to expand...

I'm new here, but wondering exactly what you mean by this? Have you completely rejected Kant? On Hegelian grounds or some other?

Kant probably knew full well that the noumena were subject to his categories. They are a projection based on the fact that we experience only phenomena, but there was some clear relation to the world.

Darwin had much to say about this. As do the Darwin awards every year.
 
Phlegm said:
I'm new here, but wondering exactly what you mean by this? Have you completely rejected Kant? On Hegelian grounds or some other?

Kant probably knew full well that the noumena were subject to his categories. They are a projection based on the fact that we experience only phenomena, but there was some clear relation to the world.

Darwin had much to say about this. As do the Darwin awards every year.
Click to expand...

Now you've done it. Now the Ying to his Yang is going to come back and say nothing but "This philosphiphizer says...." over and over.
 
Chanakya said:
What about you, kellyb, and Darat? I realize this is open to subjective interpretation, there can be no set-in-stone guidelines that either you or I can lay down: but what would your personal interpretation be? How would you define the terms of discussion, given what I’ve said here, and how would you state your views on soft and hard atheism in light of this?
Click to expand...

I think what you're calling "god ideas" is what I'd call "philosophical non-theistic religions".

I agree with you that the classic christian god can be out-right rejected and actively disbelieved in (hard atheism) a lot more easily than the non-theistic religions, which seem to propose unfalsifiable theories about the nature of reality.

I'm agnostic in every sense of the word, right down to its Ancient Greek roots, about those religions. I don't think I'd call myself a "soft atheist" there, tho, because there's no "theos" presumed or claimed to exist in the religion to fully reject, be somewhat skeptical about, or actively believe in.

But at the end of the day, I'm with Descartes on the whole "I think, therefore I am" thing, about how all we can really be sure of 100% is that we exist. I think it's more "I feel, therefore I am", though. Thinking is optional. :)
 
Darat said:
It isn't a mere assertion. It is his conclusion based on his and others theories of how the universe came about and how it "is". His theories are mathematical theories, if you wish to claim his conclusions are wrong you'll need to show where and how his theories are wrong. Now there are only two ways of doing that, one is to show that they do not fit the evidence we have or that there is a mathematical mistake in the formulation. Either method requires you to present the maths to support your claim.
Click to expand...

I pointed out, very early in the thread, that Hawking's statement that there was no time before the Big Bang is simply not something that is known. I linked to an article by Sean Carroll, who is a respected theoretical physicist out of CalTech and a world expert on the early universe, explaining that point.

So, no, he doesn't need to show an error in Hawking's math (there isn't one). As I said several times, Hawking has a perfectly good model in which there is no time before the Big Bang.

We don't know if that model is correct or not, and there are other models, in which the math works perfectly well, and which are also consistent with all the data that we have, in which there is a time before the Big Bang.
 
psionl0 said:
Yes, quantum entanglement makes the model a lot more complicated. Yet it is still just a model and not the real thing. A model might include randomness to help figure out the outcomes but that doesn't mean that randomness actually exists. It just means that we need a better model.
Click to expand...
QM is a model, but it's the best model that we have, and when it comes to any of it's implications, I'll trust the model more than your intuitions. Yes, it might turn out to be wrong in some aspect, but it's right almost all the time.


Relativity doesn't really apply at atomic dimensions and smaller. In fact, for this reason, it was Hawking himself who wrote in "A Brief History of Time" that General Relativity predicts its own downfall. (The idea that the universe originated as a singularity comes from the general theory of relativity).
Click to expand...
The problem isn't only at atomic dimensions and smaller. Entanglement can remain over macroscopic distances, and experiments have already been done which show that any signal would have to propagate at faster than the speed of light. That's the problem with hidden variables, and it is a problem that's present over macroscopic distance scales.

All of this actually makes sense under the Everett Interpretation, which is entirely deterministic and the probabilities in the theory can actually be derived from it rather that tacked on as a separate rule.
 
Roboramma said:
QM is a model, but it's the best model that we have, and when it comes to any of it's implications, I'll trust the model more than your intuitions. Yes, it might turn out to be wrong in some aspect, but it's right almost all the time.
Click to expand...
I have no "intuitions" about QM. I know that both QM and Relativity will have to yield to a superior model once one comes along since both are incomplete.

That "wrong in some aspects" is often the catalyst for a complete rethink about physics.

Roboramma said:
The problem isn't only at atomic dimensions and smaller. Entanglement can remain over macroscopic distances, and experiments have already been done which show that any signal would have to propagate at faster than the speed of light. That's the problem with hidden variables, and it is a problem that's present over macroscopic distance scales.

All of this actually makes sense under the Everett Interpretation, which is entirely deterministic and the probabilities in the theory can actually be derived from it rather that tacked on as a separate rule.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that Everett's "many worlds" interpretation does away with random forces but you seem to know what you are talking about so I won't argue the point.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom