Hawking says there are no gods

[JoeMorgue]

To restate it: there is a region to which it is in principle possible for me to travel but which is it in principle impossible for you to interact with at all, and if I were to travel there I could never get any information back to you about it, because I would have passed beyond your horizon.

Okay fine but we have to have a starting point of a reason to think it exists as all to start this never ending game of 20 excuses why it's technically not impossible.

That's the point of the Dragon in the Garage. The Dragon in the Garage is perfectly logically congruous. Every reason we can't prove it isn't there is 100% valid.

The problem is there's millions of garages across the US and they all act is if they are 100% dragon free in every possible way... why would we bother disproving something we have no reason to even consider?

Sure the universe could, within reason, contain all manner of "undetectable, undefined" stuff. But we don't go looking for it without reason.

If somebody told you there was a dragon in his garage and his "evidence" was a list of after the fact reasons you can't prove him wrong... you wouldn't consider that evidence. A list of excuses why you're not wrong is not good evidence you are right in anything but pedantics and rule lawyering.

So why should God be nitpicked to death and back? Because someone... made up the idea and that somehow shifts the balance? No.

And again I need to point out the absurdity of God, the most powerful being in the universe in every way he's actually worshiped or thought of by anyone in real life, again being reduced to basically a homeopathic vague vagueness defined as something can't possibly do anything in order to defend him intellectually or argumentatively.

"Well you can't technically speaking according to the rule book 100% disprove God semantically, hypothetically, metaphysically, legally, argumentatively, and epistemologically (that needs to be a word)."

Okay? And? You'd be hard pressed to make something up you could disprove under those criteria. We don't waste our time going 60 pages about whether or not a super intelligent can of key lime pie filling with the voice of Marvin Hamlish lives on Kepler-16b.

 

[kellyb]

It tells us nothing about how likely it is for life to emerge given the presence of those ingredients.

I heard one astrobiologist say the chances of intelligent life emerging on earth could have been as low as being on par with a tornado blowing through a junkyard and spitting out a fully functional helicopter, or as high as this https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ (he explained it to me around 2003, but that sounds similar to what he was describing...)

So, we truly still don't know.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Paradigm shift refers to modelling of worldviews -- all within inductive reasoning. It has nothing whatever to do with deductive reasoning involving a priori truths.

Huh? Not sure where you are getting that from.

From Duckduckgo:

Paradigm shift ►
n. A radical change in thinking from an accepted point of view to a new one, necessitated when new scientific discoveries produce anomalies in the current paradigm.
n. A radical change in thinking from an accepted point of view to a new belief.

Old POV: ask if gods exist and even though it's obvious they are fiction, cling to the problem one can't 'prove' the negative.

New POV: ask what explains god beliefs.
With no evidence of any real gods, one can conclude all gods are fiction and ignore the need to 'prove' there are no gods.

There is no more reason one has to prove there are no gods to be certain anymore than one needs to prove there are no invisible dragons to be certain.

That is demonstrably false. The invisible dragon is defined to be non-existent, so nothing need be done to demonstrate its non-existence. Much work went into demonstrating the fictional nature of gods.

So it's been demonstrated that gods are fictional?

What have I said that was demonstrably false?

There is no reason to be condescending.

Sorry, but you weren't getting to the point. I suppose I could have just snipped it. There are pages and pages of this stuff in the thread. It's redundant and the debate points are old news. If others wish to discuss them, that's fine.

It is from the point of view of the theist because they are using the feeling as evidence in their argument. You don't consider it worthy of being used as evidence. But evidence is a function word, it isn't a thing in itself. It refers to how facts are used.

I'm suggesting a way to avoid getting into arguments about using this word. You can accept or not accept it.

Sorry to burst your bubble but this is nothing new, we've discussed this stuff in page after page in old threads

Phil Plait says don't be a dick. I say don't coddle people about their false beliefs. I'm not preaching in front of a church or telling my god-believing friends they're fools. The forum however, is an area for debate.

What you are saying is people believe their evidence is inner experiences and that makes it valid evidence because it's evidence to them. It doesn't have anything to do with 'worthiness', it has to do with what is acceptable scientific evidence.

We don't accept those inner experiences as evidence of anything else people believe just because their conclusion about what it means is real to them.


I'm not being condescending by refusing to engage in debates I don't find relevant to the thread. I'm simply not interested in debates on philosophy or whether or not there is a real world or it's all in our minds. And I'm not going to argue whether one does or does not need to prove there are no gods before I conclude:

There is overwhelming evidence all god are fictional.
There is no evidence any real gods exist.

I have supported using the word 'all' with an analogy to evolution theory and the complete absence of evidence of real gods.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It tells us nothing about how likely it is for life to emerge given the presence of those ingredients.

It could be incredibly unlikely. We know within the distance of EM radio waves we have not received any evidence of life with our level of technology or better.

But the number of potential planets is so large that incredibly unlikely cases are extremely likely to have occurred. This one here on Earth happened.

 

[Phlegm]

Huh? Not sure where you are getting that from.

From Duckduckgo:

Old POV: ask if gods exist and even though it's obvious they are fiction, cling to the problem one can't 'prove' the negative.

New POV: ask what explains god beliefs.
With no evidence of any real gods, one can conclude all gods are fiction and ignore the need to 'prove' there are no gods.




So it's been demonstrated that gods are fictional?

What have I said that was demonstrably false?


Sorry, but you weren't getting to the point. I suppose I could have just snipped it. There are pages and pages of this stuff in the thread. It's redundant and the debate points are old news. If others wish to discuss them, that's fine.


Sorry to burst your bubble but this is nothing new, we've discussed this stuff in page after page in old threads

Phil Plait says don't be a dick. I say don't coddle people about their false beliefs. I'm not preaching in front of a church or telling my god-believing friends they're fools. The forum however, is an area for debate.

What you are saying is people believe their evidence is inner experiences and that makes it valid evidence because it's evidence to them. It doesn't have anything to do with 'worthiness', it has to do with what is acceptable scientific evidence.

We don't accept those inner experiences as evidence of anything else people believe just because their conclusion about what it means is real to them.


I'm not being condescending by refusing to engage in debates I don't find relevant to the thread. I'm simply not interested in debates on philosophy or whether or not there is a real world or it's all in our minds. And I'm not going to argue whether one does or does not need to prove there are no gods before I conclude:

There is overwhelming evidence all god are fictional.
There is no evidence any real gods exist.

I have supported using the word 'all' with an analogy to evolution theory and the complete absence of evidence of real gods.

Based on your replies I think we need to stop the discussion here. This cannot possibly proceed anywhere fruitful.

Sorry to have wasted your time. I'll be moving on to other areas of life. Good bye.

 

[qayak]

From the OP: "If you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask: What role is there for God?"

How you answer that question is not a question for science. That is depending how you slice politics, morality, sociology/psychology and what not.

What a ludicrous statement. Of course it is a question for science.

Science can't do morality.

Of course it can.

Morality is not observer independent, science can describe it, but not do it.

Funny, Relativity isn't observer independent either and science does pretty well with that. Regardless, science is better at "doing" morality than any religion on the face of the Earth is, or has ever been.

 

[Roboramma]

Couldn't transmit info even via quantum entanglement? Or a series of relay stations in between?

No. Entanglement can't transmit information at all, and relay stations wouldn't work.

I'd just say Many Worlds is an exception to the rule, and kind of doesn't count since it's not even in this universe.

If the claim is that something being undetectable means it doesn't exist then something that exists but is also undetectable shows that the claim is false.

Also, all future branches of the wave function of the universe are in this universe, but the branches are independent of each other and what happens in one is undetectable from any of the others.

 

[Roboramma]

Sure the universe could, within reason, contain all manner of "undetectable, undefined" stuff. But we don't go looking for it without reason.

Absolutely, I agree.

Feynman has a nice little discussion somewhere (in a book or maybe one of the Feynman lectures), about how, for instance, relativity makes changes to newtonian mechanics only at the bound where we are at very high velocity, and so some people might say that we had no good reason to suppose that newtonian mechanics held in that regime, because we had never tested it there, but everything we do in science requires assuming that things keep working beyond where it's been tested, because we can't know for certain which variables matter.

Maybe the laws of physics work exactly as we think, except when a guy named JoeMorgue is eating vanilla ice cream while walking on the beach in Thailand and whistling "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Sure, maybe, but very very probably not, and taking that seriously would mean that science would lose all it's predictive power. On the other hand when we start to see some anomolies in the data that doesn't quite work with the theoretical framework that we have, then we have to start taking seriously the idea that we've entered a regime where the theory breaks down.

I'll try to remember where exactly Feyman has this discussion because he says it better than I do, but I think it's also basically the point that you are making.

 

[kellyb]

But the number of potential planets is so large that incredibly unlikely cases are extremely likely to have occurred. This one here on Earth happened.

It sounds like you might be falling into the gambler's fallacy, maybe:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy

The gambler's fallacy (also the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of statistics) is the logical fallacy that a random process becomes less random, and more predictable, as it is repeated. This is most commonly seen in gambling, hence the name of the fallacy. For example, a person playing craps may feel that the dice are "due" for a certain number, based on their failure to win after multiple rolls. This is a false belief as the odds of rolling a certain number are the same for each roll, independent of previous or future rolls.

P1: Random event X just happened.
P2: Random events "even out" by active self-correction.
C1: Random event X is more/less likely to happen.

Or the inverse (which is weirdly on-topic)

You commit the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy if you deduce, from an unlikely outcome of a random event (e.g. a dice roll), that many such events (dice rolls) probably occurred before.

For example, if you roll two dice and get double sixes, and then reason as follows:

It is unlikely that double sixes would be thrown in a single roll.
It is more likely that double sixes would be thrown in a long series of rolls.
So someone has probably been throwing these dice before I came along.
The Inverse Gambler's Fallacy is frequently mentioned in discussions of multiple universes and the anthropic principle. For example, many people reason thus:

It is unlikely that a single universe would happen to have physics capable of supporting life.
It is more likely that such a universe would exist if there are multiple universes.
So, there are probably multiple universes.

 

[kellyb]

No. Entanglement can't transmit information at all, and relay stations wouldn't work.

You're right about entanglement, it seems. Bummer.

Why wouldn't relay stations work?

If the claim is that something being undetectable means it doesn't exist then something that exists but is also undetectable shows that the claim is false.

Also, all future branches of the wave function of the universe are in this universe, but the branches are independent of each other and what happens in one is undetectable from any of the others.

You're right. I concede. LOL

 

[psionl0]

So how do the qualifications of a well known astrophysicist matter?

They don't.

What matters is does his statement hold up to scrutiny. And it does.

It doesn't as my frequent analysis of the content shows.

And other than discrediting Hawking, you've not presented a credible argument that is does not.

You must be reading my posts with your eyes closed.

 

[psionl0]

It sounds like you might be falling into the gambler's fallacy, maybe:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy

This is not necessarily the case. The gambler's fallacy assumes that the probability of crapping out on the next roll of the dice is altered by the past history of the dice rolls.

There are a couple of corollaries that are not "gambler's fallacy":

• If we don't know the probability of a certain outcome, we can estimate it from the past history of outcomes (assuming that each outcome is independent of each other outcome).
• The greater the number of future rolls of the dice, the greater the probability that at least one of the rolls will be CRAPS!

 

[kellyb]

They don't.


It doesn't as my frequent analysis of the content shows.


You must be reading my posts with your eyes closed.

I'e been reading your posts and I'm with Ginger on this one, for sure.

But at this point, we've all been reduced to the equivalent of Bugs and Daffy yelling "Duck season!", "Rabbit season!" at each other back and forth.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It sounds like you might be falling into the gambler's fallacy, maybe:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy

Or the inverse (which is weirdly on-topic)

No, it has nothing to do with any gambler's fallacy.

It's strictly the numbers.

The idea life evolved only once is absurd, IMO. I don't understand why anyone thinks they can't just say it.

 

[kellyb]

This is not necessarily the case. The gambler's fallacy assumes that the probability of crapping out on the next roll of the dice is altered by the past history of the dice rolls.

There are a couple of corollaries that are not "gambler's fallacy":

• If we don't know the probability of a certain outcome, we can estimate it from the past history of outcomes (assuming that each outcome is independent of each other outcome).
• The greater the number of future rolls of the dice, the greater the probability that at least one of the rolls will be CRAPS!

Ah, I see what you mean.

 

[kellyb]

The idea life evolved only once is absurd, IMO.

The idea of a tornado blowing through a junkyard and spitting out a fully functional helicopter is also absurd, but it's a big old universe, and here we are.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The idea of a tornado blowing through a junkyard and spitting out a fully functional helicopter is also absurd, but it's a big old universe, and here we are.

That fallacy comes from the Creationists arguments, I'm surprised to see you using it.

The reason you can't throw parts together and expect one time in a trillion or whatever it will come out a plane is because with evolution, parts are built up one at a time with successful sequences being kept and unsuccessful ones tossed. You don't get a buildup throwing everything together at once.

But, as for life evolving, look around. Life exists in almost every condition possible from scalding hot sea vents to miles down in the crust.

Look at how many planets Kepler and K2 detected: 2,300 confirmed planets so far and those are all in this galaxy. And Hubble discovered galaxies formed early in the Big Bang meaning there are a heck of a lot of galaxies.

The conditions for life to develop are common in this solar system.

 

[kellyb]

That fallacy comes from the Creationists arguments, I'm surprised to see you using it.

The analogy comes from the astronomer, an atheist, who came up with the theory of panspermia. The creationists just jumped on it because that's how they do.

The reason you can't throw parts together and expect one time in a trillion or whatever it will come out a plane is because with evolution, parts are built up one at a time with successful sequences being kept and unsuccessful ones tossed. You don't get a buildup throwing everything together at once.

I know that, and those who say the analogy is valid know that. The math of the odds is still probably/possibly around one in 10 to the power of 40,000.

But, as for life evolving, look around. Life exists in almost every condition possible from scalding hot sea vents to miles down in the crust.

Irrelevant.

Look at how many planets Kepler and K2 detected: 2,300 confirmed planets so far and those are all in this galaxy. And Hubble discovered galaxies formed early in the Big Bang meaning there are a heck of a lot of galaxies.

The conditions for life to develop are common in this solar system.

Also irrelevant.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The analogy comes from the astronomer, an atheist, who came up with the theory of panspermia. The creationists just jumped on it because that's how they do.

Regardless who used it first, it's a FAIL.

I know that, and those who say the analogy is valid know that. The math of the odds is still probably/possibly around one in 10 to the power of 40,000.

The odds are zero, the process of throwing a bunch of parts in a room lacks the capacity to end up in any kind of organized fashion. The argument is a FAIL.

Irrelevant.
Also irrelevant.

Well I still agree to disagree then. Your argument is a fail, even though you wanted to add some odds there which would actually favor my argument. And you think it's irrelevant how easy it is for life to evolve and how many places are possible for it to happen in.

 

[kellyb]

Regardless who used it first, it's a FAIL.

The odds are zero, the process of throwing a bunch of parts in a room lacks the capacity to end up in any kind of organized fashion. The argument is a FAIL.

LOL!

I need evidence that it's literally zero.

If you don't like the aeronautics springing forth from a junkyard via weather analogy, how about monkeys accidentally typing Shakespeare?

Imagine a monkey sitting at a keyboard. If given an infinite amount of time to press keys at random, the monkey would almost surely type the complete work of William Shakespeare. At least, that’s according to the “infinite monkey theorem.” Natural DNA variation is akin to this process – as time goes by, random changes pop up across the genomes of different individual organisms. In theory, over infinite time, every possible variation of the genetic letters will have existed. On a practica*l human timeline, however, only a very small fraction of possible variations will ever appear.

This universe is made of absurdities.

Well I still agree to disagree then. Your argument is a fail, even though you wanted to add some odds there which would actually favor my argument. And you think it's irrelevant how easy it is for life to evolve and how many places are possible for it to happen in.

We don't know how easy or hard it is for life to evolve in terms of abiogenesis. The fact that it can adapt and survive extremes once here has been demonstrated as "easy", but not it's initial formation.