Hawking says there are no gods

[Skeptic Ginger]

Because ancient Greeks' idea of gods cannot be debunked with Google-Earth. It is "a little" more complex than Hercules, the film.

Are you seriously in need of more evidence to refute the existence of Greek gods?



I'm sorry, I just can't take that position seriously.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

That the Greek religion wasn't Walt Disney.

Here is a rule: Old is bad in some cases. That is so, because in certain types of science, there are always new discoveries, which make the old ones outdated.

Here is an universal rule: Because it is so in certain types of science, it is always so for everything, because I say so. Skeptic Ginger's rule and that is a scientific fact, because IT IS.

Hi Skeptic Ginger. All types of science are not exactly the same as medicine.
Sometimes old is still valid, because it is a general condition of humans, which stays the same overall for all humans. And knowledge is old. Some forms of knowledge are around 2000 years old and still hold.

What amounts to early science, proto-science, started in western culture with the old Greeks and still hold. Not much, but some.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You keep confusing not agreeing with you Tommy, with you not making convincing arguments.

 

[Darat]

So a 30 year old book on ancient Greek myths is supposed to support what exactly?

Since it is meant to counter a post I made then it is to support only one point, and that is that Zeus did not live on Mount Olympus. (Because that is the only claim I have made about what many people in the past believed.)

I have no Idea what "Walt Disney" has to do with the discussion.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

You keep confusing not agreeing with you Tommy, with you not making convincing arguments.

Could you start making arguments and not using free floating claims?

Science can do morality because the standard I choose to use, is objective, because how I choose it is objective and the evaluation itself (method) is objective:
Here follows your argument where you explain both: That the choice of which standard to use is objective and that the standard/method itself is objective.

 

[David Mo]

Are you seriously in need of more evidence to refute the existence of Greek gods?



I'm sorry, I just can't take that position seriously.

If a Greek tells you that Zeus (in ancient Greek "to shine") is the powerful source of light (sometimes in the form of a lightning, sometimes in the form of annihilating light - as in the legend of Semele), which inhabits the celestial Olympus, temples, banquets or homes, what good is it to you to prove that he is not in the photo? The cultured Greek will tell you that he already knows and will laugh at your naivety.

 

[Darat]

According Wikipedia.

:ld

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.

 

[David Mo]

Here is a rule: Old is bad in some cases. That is so, because in certain types of science, there are always new discoveries, which make the old ones outdated.

That's why these people are puzzled when they learn about that Heisenberg found interesting things in Plato or Einstein in Hume. "If they're already dead!" said the other.

 

[David Mo]

:ld

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.

That Greek people you speak of is only in your head and in the clumsy simplifications of Wikipedia. Some Christians still imagine God as an old bearded man. This is not what (all) Christians mean.

 

[Porpoise of Life]

How about all the stories where Zeus appeared before mortals, performed great fears of magic and strength, impregnated women who gave birth to children with superhuman capabilities?
If the argument there is also going to be that we shouldn't take any of that literally, and that Zeus never interferes with the mortal world in such crude ways, and that we should strive to seek the deeper spiritual truth of those stories, then there is no distinction between a god and a story about a god.
If you've accepted that it's all metaphors and stories, and that the gods never do what they do in those stories, then there's no use in looking for them.

 

[Roboramma]

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.

Time is well defined in physics. It's a dimension with very precise mathematical properties, which are influenced by energy/momentum, again in a very precise way, and those properties have been rigorously tested experimentally.

To the extent that we don't know what time is, we don't know what anything is.

There are some very interesting modern ideas that space is emergent (to oversimplify, basically that distance is really a measure of the entanglement between two points, but there's a lot that goes into why this idea has come about).

Some are starting to speculate that time is emergent also, but there is very much less in support of that idea.

It could be that it is nothing more than how we perceive the law of entropy.

Entropy is related to the arrow of time, but not really to time itself.

 

[Darat]

That Greek people you speak of is only in your head and in the clumsy simplifications of Wikipedia. Some Christians still imagine God as an old bearded man. This is not what (all) Christians mean.

So let's see who agrees with me that Zeus was claimed to live on Mount Olympus if I type in "where did the Greeks believe Zeus lived" into Google.

Wikipedia
British Museum

And every other link on the first page of results.

Have you considered that it may be you that is wrong on where the ancient Greeks believed their god Zeus lived?

 

[Garrison]

The cultured Greek will tell you that he already knows and will laugh at your naivety.

Because he understands that the gods are nothing but fairy tales? Or is he engaging in the same goalpost shifting all believers indulge in when it turns out that the claims of their religion don't match reality? Simply saying 'oh no Christian believes the garden of Eden was a literal place today' does not erase the fact that their faith certainly did take such things to be literal right up until they failed to match up with reality. 'Metaphor' is not a magic word that excuses the absurd claims that various religions have made that turned out to be untrue.

 

[dann]

I have no Idea what "Walt Disney" has to do with the discussion.

That's where you'll actually find many of them: "All known divine male beings in Disney media." (Disney Wiki)
That's one of the things they have in common with Donald Duck.
(And since I don't want to discriminate: "All known divine female beings in Disney media.")

 

[kellyb]

Because he understands that the gods are nothing but fairy tales? Or is he engaging in the same goalpost shifting all believers indulge in when it turns out that the claims of their religion don't match reality? Simply saying 'oh no Christian believes the garden of Eden was a literal place today' does not erase the fact that their faith certainly did take such things to be literal right up until they failed to match up with reality. 'Metaphor' is not a magic word that excuses the absurd claims that various religions have made that turned out to be untrue.

Most evangelicals STILL believe in a literal Eden.

For example: when a Christian claims that the sacred host contains de body of Christ his belief wouldn't be refuted by a chemical analysis of the host.He knows perfectly that what he is eating has not the taste and form of meat. He would say that it is Christ's flesh in a superior or metaphysical sense that science cannot grasp.

Many/most Roman Catholics believe to this day that the wafer and wine literally turn into blood and human flesh at some point during the consumption process.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation

eta:
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/transubstantiation-for-beginners

John Chrysostom is known as "the Doctor of the Eucharist." In 398 he became Patriarch of Constantinople. He wrote, "We must reverence God everywhere. We must not contradict him, when what he says seems contrary to our reason and intelligence. His words must be preferred to our reason and intelligence. This ought to be our behavior to the Eucharistic mysteries too. We must not confine our attention to what the senses can experience, but hold fast to his words. His word cannot deceive." Writing of the words of institution he said, "You may not doubt the truth of this; you must rather accept the Savior's words in faith; since he is truth, he does not tell lies."

Centuries later Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the scholastic theologians, taught the same. He said that the existence in the Eucharist of Christ's real body and blood "cannot be grasped by the experience of the senses, but only by the faith which has divine authority and its support."

 

[qayak]

Time is well defined in physics. It's a dimension with very precise mathematical properties, which are influenced by energy/momentum, again in a very precise way, and those properties have been rigorously tested experimentally.

To the extent that we don't know what time is, we don't know what anything is.

Well, yes, there is this thing we call time and we know it exists because we can measure it and it is involved in the basic laws of the universe but try and define what that thing is exactly without referencing the thing itself. We can define all the other aspects of the universe without referencing them but not time.

Entropy is related to the arrow of time, but not really to time itself.

Yes, there is no reason time shouldn't run backwards but it doesn't and that maybe because of the law of entropy. If time ran backward the law of entropy would have to reverse which is not possible in this universe.

 

[JayUtah]

So am I a philosopher? Yes, I...

The question is not "Are you a philosopher?" The question is by what standards have your claims to expertise in philosophy been measured? You admit you don't measure up to the conventional academic standards of philosophy. Now you're variously claiming there are no standards, or that there are and you somehow measure up to them. You've constantly tried to have your cake and eat it too, and to excuse yourself from the consequences of all of this evasion and equivocation.

You dabble in amateur philosophy. Fine, but don't invent a University of Jeppeson, grant yourself a degree from it in philosophy, and then use that as a pretense to try to intimidate other posters. It's dishonest and rude. And more importantly, it's a very poor argument.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

The question is not "Are you a philosopher?" The question is by what standards have your claims to expertise in philosophy been measured? You admit you don't measure up to the conventional academic standards of philosophy. Now you're variously claiming there are no standards, or that there are and you somehow measure up to them. You've constantly tried to have your cake and eat it too, and to excuse yourself from the consequences of all of this evasion and equivocation.

You dabble in amateur philosophy. Fine, but don't invent a University of Jeppeson, grant yourself a degree from it in philosophy, and then use that as a pretense to try to intimidate other posters. It's dishonest and rude. And more importantly, it's a very poor argument.

I have never claimed a degree in philosophy and philosopher is not a protected title. So lay it off. As for you being able to judge what level of proficiency I have, I would like to hear your level of degree in philosophy. The case of me being proficiency in philosophy is not zero.
And you can't judge it, you can only use probability and assumptions.

So yes, I am an amateur philosophy, but whether I dabble you can't judge. So stop doing that.

 

[Darat]

I have never claimed a degree in philosophy and philosopher is not a protected title. So lay it off. As for you being able to judge what level of proficiency I have, I would like to hear your level of degree in philosophy. The case of me being proficiency in philosophy is not zero.
And you can't judge it, you can only use probability and assumptions.

So yes, I am an amateur philosophy, but whether I dabble you can't judge. So stop doing that.

This is becoming quite familiar, you holding other people to a standard you don't adhere to.

 

[Lithrael]

(...) when people claim 'science tells us we should eat lots of veggies, cut down on sugar, and exercise regularly', they don't mean that that's literally a natural force like gravity, and if you'd respond with "Science can't tell you to want to be healthy, it can just inform you what happens if you do certain things. Preferring not to have your feet amputated because of diabetes isn't science,

This part is Tommy’s actual position...

so why won't you admit that the question of what is proper nutrition lies beyond the ken of mere science?", "You can't prove scientifically there isn't an abstract Essence of Foodness", or "Food existed before science, so you can't tell me a food scientist knows more about food than someone who's been eating stuff all his life", you'd be laughed at.

This part is the straw man that he was never arguing. Is it because his actual position is so basic and axiomatic that everyone wants to shift it a few tracks over so that it’s something you can argue about? SG keeps arguing that there’s a lot of scientific reasons for the morals people have, when Tommy already completely agrees with that.

The honest responses are the posters who say “well sounds like your position is x and that’s just useless so quit it.”