Because redefining the term is all the believers and apologists have left.
Hawking says there are no gods
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Because redefining the term is all the believers and apologists have left.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
This, for me, is the sticky wicket. To prove the existence of God, the claimant must recast either the definition of "god" or the definition of "exist." Naturally this does not convince me that there exists a God, specifically the God they believe in. Stephen Hawking speaks of a specific formulation of the universe and a specific formulation of a god, and has concluded they are incompatible. What other kinds of universes there may be or what other kinds of gods simply has no bearing on his sentiment.
The Sparrow
Graduate Poster
I don't disagree with you at all. But the claim in the OP is that Hawking ruled out ANY Gods (supposedly) and the argument is an undetectable God could still exist. (or a god that has the power to mask all evidence of its existence)
I suppose that is true. But why should I even entertain that such a god might exist. On what basis should I?
And how do I tell the difference between "hiding" god and "completely made up fiction" god?
So we're just stuck in this loop forever? Everytime we say "No God" the other side just gets redefine it and start over?
What possible intellectual purpose does this serve?
The edges are not this fuzzy.
What possible intellectual purpose does this serve?
The edges are not this fuzzy.
ServiceSoon
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The tactic of redefining terms is also used by scientist. Invoking an operational definition is one example. Science can also be self-referential.
Thanks for illustrating how accurate I was in my prediction:Wikipedia against Jean-Pierre Vernant! I should have imagined.
For a deeper understanding of what the gods were, I advise you to read chapter V et seq. of Jean-Pierre Vernant: Myth and Society in Ancient Greece. You can see it here: https://philarchive.org/archive/TIEOONv1 .
Youre welcome.
You will now undoubtedly waffle on about metaphors, we need to interpret x as z and so on. By all means do that but then you are no longer talking about the Zeus that people claimed existed.
According to the Greeks Zeus lived on and ruled from Olympus.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
No gods at all may have been a concept developed later in the thread from the totality of Hawking's writings, but the quote in the original disputes "God," in big-G notation. If he does not define that further, then I assume it means a common definition. An author need not define every word he writes if the meaning he intends is what he trusts the reader to arrive at without help. And in this context I believe that meaning is the God most widely understood by average English-speaking people. It could also include any deity that is substantially equivalent, e.g., Allah.
From Hawking's context I infer he means a god that interacts with the universe in the way Western worshipers describe: one that heals the sick, speaks to the hearts and minds of his devotees, effectuates miracles, has created the universe and takes part in it as a going concern. You know, a god that matters. I don't read Hawking as having precluded the existence of gods that don't matter, and we've addressed that at length several times in this thread. My purpose is not to re-open that debate. It's instead to note for the record my conclusion that I'm not convinced by arguments in favor of immaterial, ineffectual, unobservable gods as a way of skirting Hawking's line of reasoning. That's entirely pyrrhic in my opinion.
Which, according to how I read the OP, recasts what Hawking meant by god and what is meant by existence. Hence I am not convinced. That is my conclusion.
Or, in Joe's terms, why should we keep riding the merry-go-round? We don't have to. We've pointed out that in order to refute Hawking, his critics have to recast too many things in order to leave a refutation with a footing any surer than snot on Teflon. It smacks of unprincipled wordplay and, as such, fails to convince. Repeating it doesn't obligate us to question the conclusion we drew the first time.
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But as I said earlier why would you want to use the word "god" for such an entity? God has been so broadly defined by those in this thread that want to be able to say we can't know that god or gods don't exist to mean nothing more than "something".
There really isn't any reason to use the word god with that definition apart from trying to confuse people and play silly word and semantic games with the language.
This. Again nobody is impressed by anyone's ability to prove a dog has 5 legs just by calling the tail a leg.
71 pages of some inane Hashtag-NotmyGod argument is no better then that.
Great, we've established the if stretch the meaning of words to their breaking point and hide behind it you can prove anything. Great, here's a cookie, you've accomplished nothing.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
Regardless, you seem to be arguing that it should be "rule IN" rather than "not rule OUT" quite vehemently.
FWIW The scientist in me would not consider any supernatural causes when conducting a scientific investigation. It just wouldn't make any sense.
OTOH our knowledge of science is still very limited. As Sir Isaac Newton once remarked:
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/30297.htmlIsaac Newton said:
We may have found a lot more smooth pebbles or pretty shells since Newton's time but we have still to get our feet wet.
The "Rule In" vs "Not Rule Out" is, at best, a minor quibble over procedural correctness and nuance. There's no mysteries of the universe hidden in it.
If you walk into a room and there's nothing in it that says a chair is in there; nothing that looks, acts, feels, or seems like a chair, you don't suffer an existential crisis over whether you've ruled out the possibility of a chair or ruled in the possibility of no chair because there's literally no difference. The chair either is or is not there.
Sure you can talk yourself into an existential crisis by making up magical undetectable chairs and calling the lamp a chair or arguing about whether or not the floor counts as a chair because you can sit on it if you really wanted to but... we don't. Because that's pointless and stupid.
And nothing, no matter the special pleading, done in this thread has been any functionally different from that.
If you walk into a room and there's nothing in it that says a chair is in there; nothing that looks, acts, feels, or seems like a chair, you don't suffer an existential crisis over whether you've ruled out the possibility of a chair or ruled in the possibility of no chair because there's literally no difference. The chair either is or is not there.
Sure you can talk yourself into an existential crisis by making up magical undetectable chairs and calling the lamp a chair or arguing about whether or not the floor counts as a chair because you can sit on it if you really wanted to but... we don't. Because that's pointless and stupid.
And nothing, no matter the special pleading, done in this thread has been any functionally different from that.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Dang, I meant to bring that up, but I forgot. Indeed, if the attributes are derived only from how well something satisfies the criteria of fitting the evident gap, then applying the label "god" to what you come up with is entirely presumptuous. It's no more valid a label than "steve" or "rama-lama-ding-dong." We don't insist that whatever comes out of the cookie jar must be a cookie. I consider this the inherent failing of the god-of-the-gaps approach, and a fairly obvious example of post hoc reasoning.
And that toward what purpose? For people to convince themselves they've won a rhetorical victory against skepticism? Cleverness for its own sake alone is not something I think has a useful role in philosophy. "Ha ha! You can't catch me!" seems to be the order of the day.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Strangely, there is no way of knowing what there 'was' 'prior to the Big Bang".
In this universe it is a term without meaning and purely speculation.
In this universe time began at the moment of the big bang.
Anything else is unsupported speculation and the land of We Don't Know and Can Not Observe
It may be that there will a theoretical breakthrough at some point and observations.
None exist at this time
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
More speculation of the land of We Don't Know
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
There is a land of We Don't Know and We Can Not Know, that is in that realm, anything else is unsubstantiated speculation.
We have expectations that if we could describe the events outside of the 'big bang/universe', they would have some consistency within the events of 'big bang/universe'. However it is all speculation, most theoreticians are very cautious and careful we talking about the land of We Don't Know.
The problem is people equate "The Land of We Don't Know" (or "The Land of We Can Never Know" or "The Land of that Question Doesn't Even Make Sense and Isn't Valid") with "The Land Where I'm Not Wrong Yet."
Thor 2
Philosopher
Yes it's most interesting that. The Abrahamic god used to chat to folk all the time. Often to the hero at the time and sometimes to a prophet who would then pass the message on. Didn't like talking to women so much however.
Miracles used to be almost commonplace back in those days too. The occurrence of miracles persisted until much more recently. About 200 Saints are reported as having mastered the art of levitation in the past. One of the most famous and recent was St. Joseph of Cupertino, only 400 years ago, who used to fly down the road to get lunch for himself and his fellow monks.
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The hidden god thing starts from the rather odd premise that this god either doesn't interfere or perfectly hides their interference so no one knows. This fits with no god ever believed in by any religion. Gods were explanations for natural phenomena, sources of law and moral teaching, usually with a fairly large chunk of obey or else, or simply the cause of good or bad fortune to their inventors/adherents. Given that gods are a human construct intended to explain or control the world around them the notion of a god that never intervenes is bizarre and one who could that can perfectly hide its interventions is impossible, unless you also posit that this god doesn't base its interventions on adherence to any faith or moral code, in which case the god doesn't seem like random chance, it is random chance. Put it another way, if there is a correct religion and a god that performs miracle on its behalf then however well disguised an individual miracle might be over the time the distribution of these disguised miracles is going to be impossible to disguise.
kellyb
Penultimate Amazing
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A lot of modern Christians seem to think god only hides from scientific tests and observation. "He" supposedly reveals "himself" quite clearly and obviously to people under other circumstances (the primary one being something like "having a receptive and open mind and heart".)
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