Hawking says there are no gods

[Darat]

No, the god theory is functionally off the table. It's still on the list, but at the very bottom, under "Hell if I know. Must be something I haven't thought of yet."



Like the skeptics were lying as a prank?
Ok, assume you were there and heard it, too.

I think SG was saying her first hypothesis would be someone was playing a prank on the sceptics, as would be mine.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I think SG was saying her first hypothesis would be someone was playing a prank on the sceptics, as would be mine.

And my second would be to investigate the fascinating physical explanations.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

I will give you the obverse of what I said to kellyb -- if you start with the assumption that there is no god, then what you say makes sense.

A theist would argue that it makes no more sense to begin with the assumption that there is no god than to begin with the assumption that there is.

From their point of view, there is a universe. So, god. Because they begin with god.

Yes it is circular.

You can't start from a neutral position because there is no neutral position in bipolar opposites.

Yes, you can.

• I start with X.
• I start with non-X or rather Y.
• I don't need that.

 

[kellyb]

Interesting enough one can look at this problem from different angles as well.

OK so if you want to call the Earth a sample size of one, that's correct.

But if you take into consideration how small of a piece of the Universe we have sampled, the fact you only find one planet with life loses significance. That's where I say pedantic scientists would say we can't project.

That's silly. Of course we aren't a one-off.

The fact that we're the only one in this solar system is definitely not significant evidence against there being life elsewhere.

But I still wouldn't go so far as to say "of course" anything when looking at a sample size of one.

I completely understand the "intuitive sense" that surely we're not "it" like that, but we'd feel the same way whether it was true or not.

And there's also this stuff, which has led to some actual astrophysicists re-exploring "god theory", but in my mind, it just fits the pattern of the universe being made of mind-boggling unlikely coincidences all over the place.

 

[Roboramma]

Interesting enough one can look at this problem from different angles as well.

OK so if you want to call the Earth a sample size of one, that's correct.

But if you take into consideration how small of a piece of the Universe we have sampled, the fact you only find one planet with life loses significance. That's where I say pedantic scientists would say we can't project.

That's silly. Of course we aren't a one-off.

I don't think we can draw any conclusions based on our existence one way or the other. How common is life in the universe? Does it appear on 1/10 planets, 1/100? 1/10⁹? 1/10²⁰?

Whichever of those numbers was correct, we'd still find ourselves on one of the planets where life did form. Only in the case where life never formed would things be different.

The appearance of life relatively early in the earth's history may be a hint that it's not that "hard" for life to form, and thus that it's probably not unique to the earth, but I think that evidence is relatively weak and we will have to do more work to really get a good picture of how common life is in the universe.

I'm with kellyb in being pretty much agnostic about this issue.

 

[Darat]

I think she's just undecided on the topic. She feels about the god question the way I feel about the question of if there's probably intelligent life elsewhere in the universe right now.

That's confusing different things, atheism is a label about belief not knowledge, if she doesn't believe in any god or gods she is an atheist, doesn't matter if she thinks a god or gods could exist. In terms of the examples you were replying to: whether someone is pregnant or not is a factual matter, one is either pregnant or one is not so it is a matter of knowledge. However someone could believe they were pregnant regardless of the facts.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
And there's also this stuff, which has led to some actual astrophysicists re-exploring "god theory", but in my mind, it just fits the pattern of the universe being made of mind-boggling unlikely coincidences all over the place.

A search for the word god turns up blank in that link. You'll have to explain how you got to: "has led to some actual astrophysicists re-exploring "god theory".

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... I'm with kellyb in being pretty much agnostic about this issue.

I have no issue with different opinions on this question. My position remains unchanged.

We are not special. That may be hindering some folk's conclusions.

 

[kellyb]

A search for the word god turns up blank in that link. You'll have to explain how you got to: "has led to some actual astrophysicists re-exploring "god theory".

They're using sneaky quasi-coded language there. They mention the "Anthropic Principle", which:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe

The fine-tuned universe is the proposition that the conditions that allow life in the universe can occur only when certain universal dimensionless physical constants lie within a very narrow range of values, so that if any of several fundamental constants were only slightly different, the universe would be unlikely to be conducive to the establishment and development of matter, astronomical structures, elemental diversity, or life as it is understood.[1][2][3][4]

Various possible explanations of ostensible fine-tuning are discussed among philosophers, scientists, theologians, and proponents and detractors of creationism. The fine-tuned universe observation is closely related to, but is not exactly synonymous with, the anthropic principle, which is often used as an explanation of apparent fine-tuning.

eta:
ALSO.

One hypothesis is that the universe may have been designed by extra-universal aliens. Some believe this would solve the problem of how a designer or design team capable of fine-tuning the universe could come to exist.

LOL

 

[Darat]

You either have the word "exist" or the word "undetectable" poorly defined here. It's possible to both exist and be undetectable. Earlier in the thread I brought up regions of the universe that exist outside of our light cones. For instance, my light cone and yours don't overlap completely, so there are regions that are within mine but outside of yours. Those regions are in principle detectable to me but not to you. So, under your definitions, whose light cone defines what exists, mine, yours, or someone else's?

ETA: verb tense is a little tricky here as the regions I'm talking about are either in my (or your) past or future light cones. That should be obvious from the nature of light cones, but I realise I may have written that in a less than clear manner.

While I agree to your general point, your example doesn't really work as there is nothing stopping you communicating what you can observe to him so in effect the "lightcone of detection" is the sum of both of your lightcones.

 

[Roboramma]

A search for the word god turns up blank in that link. You'll have to explain how you got to: "has led to some actual astrophysicists re-exploring "god theory".

Yeah, I read that article and there's nothing about god in there. It's a discussion of the fact that new physics is bringing up philosophical questions, but none of those questions relate to god, or at least none of the answers that anyone takes seriously do.

 

[David Mo]

The evidence is there in abundance. What you don't have is someone asking the right question: What explains god beliefs?

OK here's your problem right here. You have an erroneous view of particular sciences like anthropology, psychology, sociology, and so on.

What explain belief in gods is a different question of the truth of these beliefs.

I don’t think so. I have read some books and articles about science and I have an idea.

If you believe that it is abundant bibliography about anything it is not difficult to find a single article or book. Put an item and we sill see.

Therefore, if you think that there is abundant scientific studies about God’s existence (or gods in general) it would be easy to quote here one or two of them. Go on! Take the existence of the Tasmanian devil. Voilà!

“Transmission of devil facial-tumour disease”
A.-M. Pearse & K. Swift
Nature volume 439, page 549 (02 February 2006)

 

[David Mo]

So, do you think Zeus and Thor are just as plausibly real as Vague God Vaguely Vaguing?

What?

I believe that gods don't exist. Any god.

 

[Roboramma]

While I agree to your general point, your example doesn't really work as there is nothing stopping you communicating what you can observe to him so in effect the "lightcone of detection" is the sum of both of your lightcones.

You are actually right, except that in an expanding universe there are regions that I could (in principle) travel to that he could not. If I were to travel to that region I could never get a message back to him. This is much more obvious at larger scales, but is really just the fact that the observable universe is a sphere centered on you, and the observable universe for someone in another galaxy is a different sphere.

But yeah, my previous post didn't bring up the expansion and I think it's necessary for my point to be correct.

 

[kellyb]

We are not special.

That's actually more my point.

Life might not be so special that it necessarily turns up all over a universe like ours, much less intelligent life, and there's also the issue of whether or not natural selection "rigs" it to where most/all intelligent species self-destruct/self-eradicate after achieving a certain level of technological sophistication, so maybe there was intelligent life before us, and it will pop up elsewhere in the future, but for now we're alone.

We really don't know.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

What explain belief in gods is a different question of the truth of these beliefs.

That presumes 'no real gods' is not in the answer to the question and the evidence is over whelming that 'no real gods' is in the answer.

As for the rest of your post, I'm not seeing anything there to reply to. Sorry. Whether one can find books addressing specifically what you want to find is as relevant as finding science by majority vote. And the Taz Devil transmissible cancer, WTF? Sorry, I do not get your point there at all.

 

[Roboramma]

I have no issue with different opinions on this question. My position remains unchanged.

We are not special. That may be hindering some folk's conclusions.

We are just a natural phenomenon, like anything else in the universe, so in that sense we are certainly not special.

Is life unique to the earth? I don't know, but I don't think starting with the statement that it's not is particularly useful, so if when you say "we are not special" you mean "we are not unique", that just seems to be assuming your conclusion.

We have some very weak evidence that I think suggests that we aren't unique, but any conclusion in that direction should be extremely tentative. We really just don't know.

 

[psionl0]

Of course it is, that is probably why no one has said that in this thread except for you.

I believe you have created what is known as a strawman.

When I pointed out that Hawking's musings weren't based on science you were the one who instinctively leaped to his defence and stated that his "opinion is based on his scientific work".

Since you apparently don't believe that this statement needs to be justified in any way, you must believe that everything he says is "based on his scientific work".

 

[kellyb]

When I pointed out that Hawking's musings weren't based on science you were the one who instinctively leaped to his defence and stated that his "opinion is based on his scientific work".

Since you apparently don't believe that this statement needs to be justified in any way, you must believe that everything he says is "based on his scientific work".

Hawking's musings were based on science, though.

He did formulate that opinion as a direct result of his scientific work.

That does not mean his opinion about the merits of chocolate vs strawberry ice cream would be based on science, though.

 

[psionl0]

Hawking's musings were based on science, though.

He did formulate that opinion as a direct result of his scientific work.

No he didn't. He just formulated a bunch of "I think"s and merely implied that our current level of scientific knowledge was sufficient to rule out all gods.