Hawking says there are no gods

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Roboramma said:
I'm pretty sure that lecture is quite old. For instance Hawking says:



And yet modern observational cosmology strongly suggests* that the universe won't collapse again, contracting one of the predictions of his model (at least according to Hawking).

I didn't read the whole thing, but I'd like to point out one more time, that this is a model that is not (yet?) standard cosmology, to draw philosophical conclusions from it is entirely premature.

*The evidence for the accelerating expansion is very strong.
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He seemed to just be throwing the "no boundary"/"imaginary time" thing in as a sidenote. He never went beyond claiming it was a "real concept" in cosmology, too.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
OK. So is it then appropriate to say that "time began at the big bang" or does that leave out some very important context?
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No one is really sure what time is. We know that because it is almost impossible to define time without referring to time. Time could just be how we perceive things, a figment of our imagination. It could be that it is nothing more than how we perceive the law of entropy.

One theory is that the universe before the Big Bang had many more dimensions but was very unstable in that form and the Big Bang was actually the splitting of that universe into more stable ones with ours consisting of the four dimensions we perceive and others consisting of the other dimensions.

The thing I find silly is that the idea of time is absolutely mind boggling, and infinitely interesting but people don't want to discuss that, they want to discuss how their boring, pathetic, hide and seek god can be protected by the complexity of it.
 
BadBoy said:
ok, lets drop the word games for a moment as this is a derail of the discussion. I will ask you a straight question then.

Having just witnessed a phenomena that on the face of it has no obvious and apparent scientific explanation or evidence for one, would you "not rule out" a supernatural (essentially magic) explanation, even though there is no evidence for that either?

The point being (and I think you are aware), is that by rephrasing that as "not rule in a supernatural explanation until there is evidence to do so" is more more poignent and correct. Saying "not rule out" is pointless in the sense that every single made up nonsense explanation is not rued out" either.

I never claimed one was the opposite of the other, infact that is my whole point.
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If I witnessed an apparent miracle I certainly wouldn't "rule IN" that it really was a miracle. There is no basis to say that it must be a miracle.

OTOH I wouldn't "rule OUT" miracle without further investigation. It most likely would turn out to be something entirely natural or even fraud but the investigation is a necessary step.
 
qayak said:
Time could just be how we perceive things, a figment of our imagination.
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I don't believe that's correct. The idea that time, whatever it is, is interwoven with motion and the speed of light is fairly solid.

Speed alters time, for sure, so that (to me, at least) means it's real and definitely not just a figment of our imagination (even though our perception of time might be more imaginary or illusion than real.)
 
Okay, Skeptic Ginger.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-biology/#EvoMet
1.1 Three Kinds of Appeal to Evolution in Evolutionary Ethics
Talk of ‘evolutionary ethics’ may suggest a well-defined field of inquiry, but in practice it can refer to any or all of the following:

Descriptive Evolutionary Ethics: appeals to evolutionary theory in the scientific explanation of the origins of certain human capacities, tendencies, or patterns of thought, feeling and behavior. For example: the appeal to natural selection pressures in the distant past to explain the evolution of a capacity for normative guidance, or more specifically the origins of our sense of fairness or our resentment of cheaters. (See section 2.)
Prescriptive Evolutionary Ethics: appeals to evolutionary theory in justifying or undermining certain normative ethical claims or theories—for example, to justify free market capitalism or male-dominant social structures, or to undermine the claim that human beings have a special dignity that non-human animals lack. (See section 3.)
Evolutionary Metaethics: appeals to evolutionary theory in supporting or undermining various metaethical theories (i.e., theories about moral discourse and its subject matter)—for example, to support a non-cognitivist account of the semantics of moral judgment (the idea that moral judgments do not purport to represent moral facts but instead just express emotions, attitudes or commitments), or to undermine the claim that there are objective moral values, or to cast doubt on whether we could have justified beliefs about such values. (See section 4.)
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Compare the highlighted parts:
The first one: If cheating is a biological fact, i.e. there are humans, who cheat as a biological feature and humans, who resent cheaters, what does it tell us?
That cheating and resenting cheaters are both facts. Now how do you then declare one fact morally right and the other morally wrong?
How can a fact be morally right or wrong? Answer that.

The second one: "... to justify free market capitalism or male-dominant social structures ..." That would mean that e.g. #MeToo and the idea of a welfare state is problematic, because they could lack scientific grounding. I bet you disagree!

The third one: "... the idea that moral judgments do not purport to represent moral facts but instead just express emotions, attitudes or commitments ...", "...undermine the claim that there are objective moral values..." and "... whether we could have justified beliefs about such values ...".
This one is where the actual meat is, because your claim of using science amounts in philosophical terms, that there are moral facts, objective moral values(that follows from your methodology) and you have justified beliefs about such values.

Now to the conclusion of the paper:
Thus, although the evolutionary story fits naturally with a merely non-cognitivist metaethical view, it may fit equally well with a cognitivist view. If one rejects the existence of moral truths, the latter would then lead to an error theory (Mackie 1977). But as discussed in section 4.1, it is far from clear how much support evolutionary biology itself lends to moral anti-realism or irrealism. It is consistent with plausible evolutionary stories that although our capacities for normative guidance originally evolved for reasons that had nothing to do with moral truths as such, we now regularly employ them to deliberate about and to communicate moral truths. So all three metaethical views discussed here—expressivism, error theory and moral realism—remain on the table.
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Notice that this paper doesn't support neither your view or mine as such. You are a moral realist and I am in favor of expressivism and error theory.
So you solved nothing, because this overview show that science doesn't support neither your view nor mine. I.e. the jury is still out on this one.

But it is possible to solve it. It is simple.
Take flying, the movement through air. Humans can't do that as humans, no human can fly unaided. That is an objective fact; i.e. it is common to all humans.
Now take morality and observe that there is no common morality to all humans. That is also an objective fact; i.e. you state without bias and judgment what you observe.
There are no objective morality, because we can't observe objective moral facts.

So how do we explain that humans can disagree over whether there are objective moral facts. Because all, who claim that there are objective moral facts, in fact claim that their subjective bias is an objective moral fact.
That is it. That is no unique to you, but rather common among humans.
Look here:
There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single definition of morality will be applicable to all moral discussions. One reason for this is that “morality” seems to be used in two distinct broad senses: a descriptive sense and a normative sense. More particularly, the term “morality” can be used either
  1. descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
  2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.
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And now I will show you what always happens:
Take a fact. Humans kill other humans. Rewrite to fit A is B and state it as a premise:
Premise 1: Killing of other humans is a fact.
Now add a conclusion:
Premise 1: Killing of other humans is a fact.
Conclusion: Killing is wrong.
Rewrite it to letters:
P1: K is F
C: K is W
The conclusion is invalid.

It doesn't matter how specific you go on a given moral code. You need to add at least one more premise. Now what you will find is that one necessary premise to support the conclusion, is not a statement of a fact. It is a biased evaluation.
All normative morality is a bias. It is a bias, because it is always a subjective evaluation, a weighing of a fact as either right or wrong. But facts are never morally right or wrong. You can't observe morally right or wrong. Right and wrong has no observer independent referent.

Any signs including words have 3 parts. It is a sign. Its meaning is not in the sign, that is in a brain. And the sign is about something, the sign has a referent.
A host of words have no objective referent, because what they are about are subjectivity; i.e. the evaluation of facts as how they matter to a person or group. "Matter" is the subjective part.

And here is the final straw to objective moral facts. The fact, that we can disagree, is the evidence. that it is subjective.
Compare with flying unaided. That is the difference. We can't change common objective facts, they are common to all humans, but morality and subjective are not objective and that is how we can disagree.
If you disagree, you give evidence to fact that morality is subjective, because that you can disagree, is because it is subjective.
 
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psionl0 said:
If I witnessed an apparent miracle I certainly wouldn't "rule IN" that it really was a miracle. There is no basis to say that it must be a miracle.
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Pretty sure he was meaning "rule in the possibility" all along here.
 
No one is arguing there are no subjective measurements, Tommy. The problem is you aren't stepping out of your dogmatic place to consider the bigger picture.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
No one is arguing there are no subjective measurements, Tommy. The problem is you aren't stepping out of your dogmatic place to consider the bigger picture.
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The bigger picture is that in part it consists of smaller pictures, yours and mine.
E.g. physics is a part of the big picture, but is not the big picture. You as you exist are a part of the big picture, but you are not the big picture. I as I exist are a part of the big picture, but I am not the big picture.

The big picture is not a single frame with one uniform color. The big picture is a patch works of parts, who are interconnect in time, space and through causation.
So you have to be able to hold several parts in your reasoning and account for that in connection.
That is where you fail. You think you only have to use one "set of glasses", science.

Now we need JoeMorgue. He is good at expressing what is at play. He wants correct answers for all of us, which are the same for all of us.
That is possible for some parts of the universe, but not all.
It breaks down for metaphysics, what the universe is? Physical/material and so on. And it breaks down for morality.
That is in part how philosophy became science. I and other know that the idea of one grand unified methodology to explain the big picture is not possible. Hence in practice science is the practical solution to that. Simply explain in practice, what you can using methodological naturalism and accept there is no one grand unified methodology to explain the big picture.

The joke is that some people use science as the one grand unified methodology to explain the big picture and I know that is philosophy, not science.
So back to JoeMorgue and the core problem. If there is no unified common "we", then what is there? Individuals!!!

Go back to my last post and find this: "... accepted by an individual for her own behavior ..."
There it is!!! It is right there.

The big picture is a lot of interconnected smaller pictures and you are one and I am another.
And you can huff and puff, but you can't change that. You and I as long as we exists are part of the big picture, but also both individually a small picture.
If you want it in the technical jargon: You are an emergent non-reductive property, which are interconnected to other properties, but part of you can't be reduced down to other properties.
That is so for all humans and that is how you know that one grand unified methodology to explain the universe fails. You can't reduce humans down to only something else, because the idea that you can reduce humans down to only something else, requires that idea that you can do that and that requires a human.

Stop doing science as a grand unified methodology to explain the big picture. That is philosophy and when you do that, you are up against skepticism. And that I can do, regardless of what else you consider me to be.
 
kellyb said:
Pretty sure he was meaning "rule in the possibility" all along here.
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That doesn't make sense. The only reason to change "not rule OUT <supernatural>" to "rule IN <supernatural>" and make such a big noise about it is to imply that I support <supernatural> as the most likely explanation.

i.e. it is the same strawman that ynot keeps trying on me.
 
psionl0 said:
That doesn't make sense. The only reason to change "not rule OUT <supernatural>" to "rule IN <supernatural>" and make such a big noise about it is to imply that I support <supernatural> as the most likely explanation.

i.e. it is the same strawman that ynot keeps trying on me.
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That is not unique to you or me. It is the standard straw man. It is that if you are not a hard atheist, you are a theist in disguise. You are an apologist in disguise, because it is not possible that there is another possibility.
In the end - I don't know or any variant to that effect - means that you are in effect a theist or worse.
 
JoeMorgue said:
And none of that changes the fact that "There's a bunch of all powerful demigod deities on the top of a nearby, easily claimable mountain we just never bother to go check" is no longer accepted as true or worth discussing or handwringing over.

While you and yours spend all your time hairsplitting over meaningless distinctions as to the verbiage of how we say "They aren't there" as if it matters it doesn't change the fact we no longer believe in them, the fact that Gods people used to believe in with the same fervor as anything today have been taken off the table as far as rational discussion goes is a thing that happens.

We've disproven countless Gods in every way that matters. All you're left with is tone policing and nitpicking the exact way people word it.
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You're so convinced that you're so smart that you don't know what is going on.

The Greeks did not believe that gods were things that could be obseved like vulgar things ("photographed"). They didn't believe that they lived in palaces like temples on the top of a mountain that anyone could visit as if they were a tourist. Your ignorance of the history of religions is as imposing as your arrogance.
If humanity don't believe in the gods of Olympus today it is not because of increased rationality, but because they were replaced by other god and demigods as irrational as them.

What we are discussing is whether science has presented evidence that gods, in general, do not exist. I am waiting for you "and yours" to present some evidence of it.
Oh yeah, it is so obvious that you don't find a single one. This evidence is like gods! Invisible.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
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Stop doing science as a grand unified methodology to explain the big picture. That is philosophy and when you do that, you are up against skepticism. And that I can do, regardless of what else you consider me to be.
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No, just no and your arguments are not convincing. Biology won that battle at least 3 decades ago.

I can tell from your posts that you made no effort to understand the link I posted. I found my citation enlightening given I'm one to dismiss philosophy as outdated naval contemplating. Instead the philosophical POV in the paper started with the the evidence is what it is and moral thought and decisions stem from biologic brain function and went from there to where that biology leads to and the kinds of philosophical thought that might explain those paths.

You seem to be clinging to the magical philosophical basis for ??? whatever.

There is no magical component of the human brain outside of biology anymore than there is a consciousness outside of the physical body.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
No, just no and your arguments are not convincing. Biology won that battle at least 3 decades ago.

I can tell from your posts that you made no effort to understand the link I posted. I found my citation enlightening given I'm one to dismiss philosophy as outdated naval contemplating. Instead the philosophical POV in the paper started with the the evidence is what it is and moral thought and decisions stem from biologic brain function and went from there to where that biology leads to and the kinds of philosophical thought that might explain those paths.

You seem to be clinging to the magical philosophical basis for ??? whatever.

There is no magical component of the human brain outside of biology anymore than there is a consciousness outside of the physical body.
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The question is still in the link you gave if it is a case of realism or not? I.e. if you can remove the individual and go universal with Reason, Logic and Evidence?
Of course ethics is biological, but it is a case of realism or not?

Read my sig: I don't believe in God and all the rest outside of methodological naturalism. But I am a cognitive and ethical relativist/subjectivist and skeptic.

We are inside a natural universe debating over whether science can do morality as morality. Not if morality is biological. Those are not the same.

It ends here: "Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not." Protagoras.

Can you using science remove the individual human and do the measurement using the scientific methodology?
That is the game.

Biology is a fact! Is it a fact, that you can do the measurement using the scientific methodology?
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
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Can you using science remove the individual human and do the measurement using the scientific methodology?
That is the game.

Biology is a fact! Is it a fact, that you can do the measurement using the scientific methodology?
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IOW you are immersed in your dogmatic POV you don't understand that it is being challenged. You keep repeating yourself as if other people in the thread are going to post, Eureka!

Sorry, ain't happening. I understand your POV and I raise you 3 decades of biology and philosophy.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
IOW you are immersed in your dogmatic POV you don't understand that it is being challenged. You keep repeating yourself as if other people in the thread are going to post, Eureka!

Sorry, ain't happening. I understand your POV and I raise you 3 decades of biology and philosophy.
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You don't even seem able to understand this: "... So all three metaethical views discussed here—expressivism, error theory and moral realism—remain on the table."
That is the end game. Meta-ethics as biology is either individual feelings and/or no facts; or facts.
You use a link to claim it is a fact and the link tells you it is not.
 
David Mo said:
You're so convinced that you're so smart that you don't know what is going on.

The Greeks did not believe that gods were things that could be obseved like vulgar things ("photographed"). They didn't believe that they lived in palaces like temples on the top of a mountain that anyone could visit as if they were a tourist. Your ignorance of the history of religions is as imposing as your arrogance.
If humanity don't believe in the gods of Olympus today it is not because of increased rationality, but because they were replaced by other god and demigods as irrational as them.

What we are discussing is whether science has presented evidence that gods, in general, do not exist. I am waiting for you "and yours" to present some evidence of it.
Oh yeah, it is so obvious that you don't find a single one. This evidence is like gods! Invisible.
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Nice bit of straw manning and goal post moving and an ignorance of the properties the believers in Zeus ascribed to him.
 
Darat said:
Nice bit of straw manning and goal post moving and an ignorance of the properties the believers in Zeus ascribed to him.
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The is no Zeus, therefore all swans are white.
You problem is that you take a methodology, naturalism, and claim it can answer a metaphysical question in the end. It can't because, it, naturalism, is a metaphysical position itself and you take for granted one to disprove another. You can't, because it is not logical.
It amounts to begging the question.

Edit:
We assume naturalism.
We find no God using naturalism.
Therefore all positions other than naturalism are incorrect.

You assume, what you have show.
The answer is we don't Know, what the universe is. That is how we came to methodological naturalism. Philosophy failed at figuring out what the universe is in metaphysical terms, because it is unknown, hence we use an assumption.
 
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Tommy Jeppesen said:
The is no Zeus, therefore all swans are white.
You problem is that you take a methodology, naturalism, and claim it can answer a metaphysical question in the end. It can't because, it, naturalism, is a metaphysical position itself and you take for granted one to disprove another. You can't, because it is not logical.
It amounts to begging the question.

Edit:
We assume naturalism.
We find no God using naturalism.
Therefore all positions other than naturalism are incorrect.

You assume, what you have show.
The answer is we don't Know, what the universe is. That is how we came to methodological naturalism. Philosophy failed at figuring out what the universe is in metaphysical terms, because it is unknown, hence we use an assumption.
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Wow, so much straw you could build an entire village of straw houses populated with straw people.
 
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