• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Hawking says there are no gods

Status
Not open for further replies.
Yet again if you want to declare yourself the wise old teacher to a bunch of naive students, talk down to them, invent a magical way of thinking that you unilaterally and by fiat declare over all other ways of thinking you can't be wrong about literally everything you say.
 
If after thirty years you have not learned that scientific articles should base their conclusions on scientifically established data and rigorous implications and not on "reasonable" speculations, your case is serious.

Indeed I can't possibly imagine how I've managed to be successful for decades in my career without your personal guidance. Your incomparable wisdom shines like a beacon across the murky waves of an otherwise rudderless and confused body of professional scientists who may not yet have sipped from your cup brimming with erudition.

That said, you changed "reasonable deduction" to "reasonable speculation." And you changed my argument, from the activities that constitute science, to what makes for a good research report in a journal (thus begging your premise). In my estimation, you've responded to somewhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of my posts by rewriting what I said or otherwise missing/dodging the point.

I noticed you also omitted to answer my question regarding how often calling everyone else ignorant works for you in a debate. That was not rhetorical. It was a serious question, In order to formulate my next response, I will need to know how much of your following arguments will be -- as this one is -- based on bluff and bluster.

Can you explain to me what you mean by "straw man"?

The part I highlighted, where you suddenly narrowed the scope of what your critics had to supply in order to refute you. I should have guessed you wouldn't know what was meant after you omitted to address the charge of misrepresenting the sciences that study where beliefs in gods come from.

I hope you realize that this article you cite is neither an article in a scientific journal nor is it scientific.

All hail David Mo, the personal standard of scientific validity.
 
Last edited:
I do not ask for scientists who talk about God. There are quite a few. From the beginning I am asking for scientific articles that speak of the existence of God.

To be more accurate, you recently said this

If you know what science is, prove it. Say what I'm wrong about. But don't expect me to believe you because you proclaim it.

I told you what you were wrong about -- your idea to limit what can be called science only to that which appears in a search report in a scientific journal. All you've done since then is continue to beg that premise of your argument. If you're going to ask only for scientific articles that refute the idea that science occurs also outside research reports, then you're so wound up a a ball of your own assumptions that I have to agree with my colleagues when they say you are ill-equipped to debate your own beliefs.
 
The more we try to pin this down the more hazy it gets to the point that I'm almost just sure some people want "knowledge" to be this hazy, undefined thing that is determined by who can just speak the most "Deepity" instead of any external standard or practical or meaningful application.
 
Again we keep coming back to the most basic and most unavoidable conclusion; "I want magic to be real so I'm never wrong."
 
If you say so. The career I've pursued for thirty years generally requires me to publish in them, which I have. And to read the journals in the several fields my clients practice. But I supposed you must know best.



But you have to grossly misrepresent the sciences that do deal with gods in order to say this.



I'm interested. How often does calling everyone else ignorant work for you? And how often does it work when you know practically nothing about the people you're talking to?

DavidMo is the more accurate/correct in this topic - Hawking is expressiing his opinions on the existence of God based on the current body of scientific knowledge. Hawking is an expert in this domain - so his opinions are to be reckoned with . . . but they are his opinions.
If you read the Hawking quotes in the article, and note his heavy use of conditional language, it appears that Hawking also agrees with DavidMo. He is clearly expressing opinion and not scientific fact.
 
Yes, it's his opinion that it is scientific fact...

By the way, conditional language is in no way restricted to opinions. It appears quite frequently in scientific articles...
 
It seems like a lot of people really think that labeling and categorizing what "type" of opinion everyone has and what tribe they fall under is like... super important.

The only labels and tribes I'm concerned with is "More factually correct" vs "Less factually correct" and "actual meaningful statement" vs "Meaningless deepity wordsalad gibberish."
 
DavidMo is the more accurate/correct in this topic - Hawking is expressiing his opinions...

No, he's expressing the logical consequent of his observation of the laws of the universe.

...but they are his opinions.

No, it is a conclusion defensibly reasoned from the premises that arise out of his study of the physical world. Sorry to be so dismissive, but we've already had nearly a hundred pages of rebuttals that boil down to little more than this same feeble attempt at downgrading science and its findings.

If you read the Hawking quotes in the article, and note his heavy use of conditional language, it appears that Hawking also agrees with DavidMo.

I can say with considerable confidence that Hawking does not agree with David Mo, either his conclusions or his approach. It is important for a scientist to state the conditions under which his conclusions hold. It is being neither wishy-washy nor improper to do so. All the attempts at refuting Hawking in this thread have simply speculated what other conditions might hold in some other fantasy universe. And because Hawking's statements do not reach those fanciful conditions, it is argued they cannot be scientifically valid.
 
Last edited:
So basically the false dichotomy being clumsily constructed is:

1. If we go into a room, look everywhere in the room, and don't find a chair "science" is graciously allowed to go "We have not found any chairs."

2. But "Philosophy" is the only one to go "There are no chair", it gets to define what a "chair" is, and "science" has to be toady and groveling before its wisdom.
 
Last edited:
DavidMo is the more accurate/correct in this topic - Hawking is expressiing his opinions on the existence of God based on the current body of scientific knowledge. Hawking is an expert in this domain - so his opinions are to be reckoned with . . . but they are his opinions.
If you read the Hawking quotes in the article, and note his heavy use of conditional language, it appears that Hawking also agrees with DavidMo. He is clearly expressing opinion and not scientific fact.

The fun part is this: The sub-title to this sub-forum is: "Because who could have an opinion on these two topics?" :D

All strong positive claims, on the ontological status of what reality is, are all opinions.
How do I know this?
Simple - all the claims have no observable effect! Including the initial singularity. How come that is so? Because the scientists admit themselves. If in the initial singularity there is no time and space or if what caused the the initial singularity had no time and space, we can't observe it. We can't observe the causation to the universe, only the effect. So how do they know, what caused the universe? They don't. Their physical and mathematical models are in theirs brains and they make a leap of faith. They trust their thinking and the core part of the axiom of naturalism - that the universe is fair and also is so for that which we can check. The physics they claim are not testable and must be accepted, hence:
"I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science," Hawking, who died in March, wrote. "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?"
From the OP - "I think" is an opinion about "the laws of science" and "that the laws of nature are fixed", which means that "if you accept, as I do", that the universe is fair and this is a fact, because you think so.
But I don't accept that, because nobody can know something independent of their mind about that which is independent of their mind.
What they do is this:
We can observe something. Based on the assumption, that which we can't observe, behaves like that, which we can observe, so we can say something about that, which we can't observe and that is the exactly same science, because both are based on, what we can observe.
That is not the case, one is theoretical science(math in the brains of the scientists) and the other science is experiential and field science, which require observation.
But their problem is that "the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing" can't be observed as they point out themselves. If it has no observable data (the chair/God/the invisible dragon), then it is not science. "Nothing" has no observable data, so it is not science.
"The universe was spontaneously created out of nothing" is nothing but a thought in their brains and no different that the thought of a creator god.
Both are unknowable, because they are independent of observation. They can't be observed, so they are unreal.

That is their double standard. They will demand observable data, when it suits them and ignore that, when it suits them. "Nothing" is both unreal and real depending on, what they want out of "nothing". No God is possible and that is a fact and "the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing" is fact, because they think so in both cases.

I can think that differently.
I am apathetic towards what reality actually is independent of the mind in the ontological sense, but I care about how that is used to judge humans, who think differently.
And that makes me wrong! The joke is that I am not wrong, I am different. Nor are they wrong, nor do they don't get it, they get it differently than me to the point of that I don't really get, because I not really getting it.

I get the psychology involved differently and I get that my psychology is one of being wrong and not one of them, because of reasons.
They can talk for ONE worldview and I can't have another because of being psychological different.
In effect they hold some cognitive/emotional/psychological different humans as being as an observable fact wrong or actually wrong in the thinking. That is not a fact, so they explain it as if different humans than them really don't get reality.
The joke is if that was really the case, there would be no humans. The first Homo Sapiens Sapiens didn't have degrees from a university and didn't know what reality really is, yet we are here now.
So the human race has survived before science, yet that is no possible, because of reasons.

That is the contradiction in their worldview. :)
 
No, he's expressing the logical consequent of his observation of the laws of the universe.

...

Epistemological rationalism doesn't work outside the brain. Start reading the deconstruction of that. All logic are tautological in itself and only says something about thinking. You can't use thinking on that which doesn't depend on thinking, the universe as such is not depended on thinking.
Your thinking is caused by something, which doesn't think.
 
Making up new philosophical terms for "getting to make stuff up" doesn't make them valid.

Just because reading the entrails of a goat has a name doesn't mean it gets a seat at the same table as acting like a rational adult.
 
We're not going to have explain the whole "Show me where in my car the 'going 60 miles an hour' part is" with Tommy like we did with Jabba are we?
 
But their problem is that "the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing" can't be observed as they point out themselves. If it has no observable data (the chair/God/the invisible dragon), then it is not science.

There are observable data from which reasonable deductions follow. Science is based on that fact, not on your bug-bear. You are not an expert on science.

That is their double standard. They will demand observable data, when it suits them and ignore that, when it suits them.

No, that is your straw man. You make up a cartoonish version of science, and then try to hold actual scientists to task when they act in ways that violate those comically naive expectations. At no point do you consider that your foisted premise might be wrong. So it comes across as ignorant pontification. Which, in fact, it is.

I am apathetic towards what reality actually is independent of the mind in the ontological sense, but I care about how that is used to judge humans, who think differently.
And that makes me wrong!

No, you apply one intellectual standard to yourself and a different intellectual standard to your critics -- judging them for thinking differently -- and pretend no one can see you doing this. You then rewrite their arguments to "correct" them to what they "should" have been, seemingly ignorant of how colossally arrogant an approach that is. That is what makes you wrong, as well as dishonest and hypocritical.

They can talk for ONE worldview and I can't have another because of being psychological different.

No, you are the one talking of one worldview and insisting that it must apply to everything. Your critics instead note that the conclusions Hawking draws are consistent with the worldview he laid out for them. His argument is consistent from beginning to end, but you argue that it must be scientifically invalid because he didn't consider all the navel-gazing hypotheticals that you self-appointed "philsophers" can speculate.

Then you pretend you're the brilliant one.
 
Last edited:
I don't accept you as an expert on my thinking.

I accept that; i.e. that you don't accept that. And I get that you are an expert on thinking for everybody because you say so for a "we"; yet that is not everybody. That is the end game. A human with a different cognition/thinking/emotions/feelings/psychology can still have a good enough life despite not being you and not accepting that you hold the ONE worldview.

You claim of ONE worldview is falsifiable and the falsification is that other humans can think differently than you, be a part of the universe and have a life different that you.

Worldview: a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world.
Notice particular, all different worldview are particular and yours is special only for your "we". The rest of humanity, "them", still have a life.

My worldview is not "holistic", yours are. Mine is the opposite of being characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.
I can't explain neither you nor me by only referencing the whole.
You can, because you can explain everybody else wrong by reference to the whole; i.e. what the universe really is.

I have actually learned something from you. I deconstruct the authority of any "we" versus "them". Yours is a particular "we", but still a "we" versus "them". My reason for that, you already know. I am a deviation from the mean, because I am a special needs person and some people will go out of their way signalling that I am not part of their "we". Hence I fight all versions of "we", which can judge "them".
I just start with your kind - the "we" of with scientific evidence.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom