Smart Kid

[Lonewulf]

And you've yet to move beyond argument from popularity on that front.

Indeed.

That's pretty much all I have to say.

 

[volatile]

Billy, you're not doing too well here. Principally, you're answering a complex question by making it MORE complicated, not less. This type of answer is unsatisfactory, for a number of obvious reasons.

Saying "God did it" as a means to explain the origins of the universe makes your problem bigger, deeper, weirder. It, as Dawkins says, "doesn't answer anything at all". Once you postulate an omnipotent God as the answer to the current gaps in our secular knowledge, you just shift the First Cause problem one chain up the ladder. It's a postponement, not a solution.

Your entire argument, as already pointed out, is an argument from incredulity. You don't know why the universe exists, thus God did it (or might have, at least). As Lonewulf and others have tried to explain, this ad hoc postulation is no better an answer than saying faeries did it, or pixies, or that we're all in the Matrix or something.

We can't prove God didn't create the universe. We also can't prove that pixies didn't. But that doesn't mean we should hold either hypothesis seriously. To believe anything without evidence, or in the case of a lot of religious thinking even to believe something against the evidence, is silly.

 

[BillyJoe]

Yep those seem to be the possibilities. I do note god isn't on that list.

You haven't followed argument.

God is not on that list because I was showing where physics ultimately takes us. God is not derived from physics, therefore god is not on that list. Ultimately physics leaves us with two alternatives: time without beginning or something from nothing. We can't get our heads around either of these two possibilities. Therefore, seeing as physics does not provide the answers, perhaps we should not be too dismissive about alternative explanations.

See, it's easy.

If you want to put forward a theory of god with testable predictions, then we can keep the possibility.

This is not my argument so I don't have to do anything of the sort.
In any case physics fails us on the ultimate questions.

If you can't, we don't have to keep that possibility open any more than hyper dimensional leprechauns pulling the universe out of an oversized kettle.

The hyper dimensional leprechauns pulling the universe out of an oversized kettle posits qualities for the ever existing deistic god that created everything else that are entirely unnecessary.

There's no reason to keep absurd possibilities on the table based on a non-answer to a question you admit you don't know the meaning of.

Your hyper dimensional leprechauns pulling the universe out of an oversized kettle posits is absurd. The ever existing deistic god that created everything else is no more absurd that time without beginning or something out of nothing.

My previous answer bears repeating; there's no basis to keep god as a possibility based on a meaningless questions.

Those questions are not meaningless (one of them must be true). Your previous answer doesn't even address it.

And you've yet to move beyond argument from popularity on that front.

I am not going to repeat the explanation of why this was not my argument because there is no evidence that you will do anything other than misread and misunderstand it again this time.

 

[BillyJoe]

The Cyote

And you've yet to move beyond argument from popularity on that front.

Indeed.

Friggin' hell, can't anyone follow an argument around here?

 

[volatile]

Argument from Incredulity ("We can't get our heads around either of these two possibilities") with a God of the Gaps thrown in for good measure (" In any case physics fails us on the ultimate questions.").

Your argument boils down to "I don't know, so Goddidit (or 'Godmightadoneit')". It's patently ridiculous.

 

[Lonewulf]

Your hyper dimensional leprechauns pulling the universe out of an oversized kettle posits is absurd. The ever existing deistic god that created everything else is no more absurd that time without beginning or something out of nothing.

LOL

 

[BillyJoe]

Billy, you're not doing too well here. Principally, you're answering a complex question by making it MORE complicated, not less. This type of answer is unsatisfactory, for a number of obvious reasons.

Since when is a more complex answer excluded?

What is more complicated, matter as cheese, or matter as a collection of atoms?
What is more complicated, the atom as a ball, or the atom as a collection of subatomic particles?
What is more complicated, the subatomic particle as a ball, or a collection of quarks?
Straightforward cause and effect, or backwards in time causation?
Non-locality/action-at-a-distance/entanglement anyone?

Saying "God did it" as a means to explain the origins of the universe makes your problem bigger, deeper, weirder. It, as Dawkins says, "doesn't answer anything at all". Once you postulate an omnipotent God as the answer to the current gaps in our secular knowledge, you just shift the First Cause problem one chain up the ladder. It's a postponement, not a solution.

Considering the increasingly complex answers provided by physics and, considering physics has no answers to the ultimate question, god can perhaps not be so easily dismissed as you may wish to believe.

Your entire argument, as already pointed out, is an argument from incredulity. You don't know why the universe exists, thus God did it (or might have, at least). As Lonewulf and others have tried to explain, this ad hoc postulation is no better an answer than saying faeries did it, or pixies, or that we're all in the Matrix or something.

If the faeries v god argument is not clear yet, I give up.
And I am not saying "God did it". I'm saying...see previous reply.

We can't prove God didn't create the universe. We also can't prove that pixies didn't. But that doesn't mean we should hold either hypothesis seriously. To believe anything without evidence, or in the case of a lot of religious thinking even to believe something against the evidence, is silly.

Pixies are irrelevant to the ultimate questions.
Unless you define the pixy as the ever existing being who created everything else.

 

[BillyJoe]

Argument from Incredulity ("We can't get our heads around either of these two possibilities") with a God of the Gaps thrown in for good measure (" In any case physics fails us on the ultimate questions.").

Your argument boils down to "I don't know, so Goddidit (or 'Godmightadoneit')". It's patently ridiculous.

Strawman.
And you know it.
Otherwise why suddenly "or Godmightadoneit"?
Prick of conscience perhaps?

 

[BillyJoe]

My God, I think you're finally getting it!


(laughter of the gods)

 

[volatile]

Strawman.
And you know it.
Otherwise why suddenly "or Godmightadoneit"?
Prick of conscience perhaps?

Not at all. I know you're not a theist, you seem to be at most a deist and at least an agnostic. Not suddenly "Godmightadoneit", at all - you're entire argument rests on the so-called un-provability of the God hypothesis, and thus its acceptability in discourse.

We don't know why the universe exists, you say, thus God did or at least might have created it. That's your entire argument right there, in a nutshell.

 

[volatile]

Since when is a more complex answer excluded?

What is more complicated, matter as cheese, or matter as a collection of atoms?
What is more complicated, the atom as a ball, or the atom as a collection of subatomic particles?
What is more complicated, the subatomic particle as a ball, or a collection of quarks?
Straightforward cause and effect, or backwards in time causation?
Non-locality/action-at-a-distance/entanglement anyone?

The matter as a collection of sub-atomic particles is not more complicated than the atom as ball model , because the "matter as ball" model was not able to explain certain experimental results. The sub-atomic particles hypothesis did do this, and elegantly. It was a simpler way of explaining what was experimentally observed.

Considering the increasingly complex answers provided by physics and, considering physics has no answers to the ultimate question, god can perhaps not be so easily dismissed as you may wish to believe.

I think you're confusing the word "complex" with "difficult to understand"...

If the faeries v god argument is not clear yet, I give up.
And I am not saying "God did it". I'm saying...see previous reply.


Pixies are irrelevant to the ultimate questions.
Unless you define the pixy as the ever existing being who created everything else.

OK, you're saying God might have done it. God of the gaps. We know.

As for pixies, I define pixies as "ever existing magical spirits who knitted the universe out of pixie dust". Prove the Pixie Hypothesis is false. You've told us its "irrelevant", but you've made no credible attempt to disprove it, because its impossible.

The fact that something could have happened is no reason to suggest that it did, or even might have.

 

[BillyJoe]

Not at all. I know you're not a theist, you seem to be at most a deist and at least an agnostic.

My position is that I believe in something only if there is evidence for it.
So, I am certainly not a theist, not a deist either, and barely even an agnostic, depending on the definition.

We don't know why the universe exists, you say, thus God did or at least might have created it. That's your entire argument right there, in a nutshell.

My original argument was that god cannot be as easily dismissed as the other characters mentioned. I have given my reasons.

Essentially it is that those other characters are not posited as answers to any ultimate questions, or really any questions at all, so that, although there is no evidence for or against them, I feel justified in disposing of them forthwith. At least I am not going to waste time arguing about their possible existence. God, however, is posited as an answer to the ultimate questions of our existence and, seeing as we have no answers to these questions and, seeing as physics seemingly cannot answer those questions in any meaningful way, the god question cannot be so summarily dismissed. That is all.

Nevertheless the lack of evidence that god exists means that I do allow him to play any practical role in my life. Despite what others may have assumed.

 

[BillyJoe]

The matter as a collection of sub-atomic particles is not more complicated than the atom as ball model , because the "matter as ball" model was not able to explain certain experimental results. The sub-atomic particles hypothesis did do this, and elegantly. It was a simpler way of explaining what was experimentally observed.

Well, it was originally thought that an atom was just simply a ball.
However, experimental results indicated that, no, it's a bit more complicated than that.
I think that is an accurate assessment.

I think you're confusing the word "complex" with "difficult to understand"...

I think the model of a ball is pretty simple
A model that has to incorporate electron clouds, energy levels, protons, neutrons, the strong nuclear force, quarks, and possibly vibrating strings, is surely a more complex model than a simple ball.

OK, you're saying God might have done it. God of the gaps. We know.

That really is too strong for my position. I have nothing invested in that god. And it is not god of the gaps. It is god as the ultimate answer to "time without beginning" or "something out of nothing", about which physics seems to have nothing at all to say. The deist god was never anything else, never like the theist god who is being literally squeezed out of existence by the advances of science.

As for pixies, I define pixies as "ever existing magical spirits who knitted the universe out of pixie dust". Prove the Pixie Hypothesis is false. You've told us its "irrelevant", but you've made no credible attempt to disprove it, because its impossible.

I will just refer you to my previous post.
If you want to discus the existence of pixies count me out, they are not positioning themselves as answers to any questions I'm interested in discussing.

The fact that something could have happened is no reason to suggest that it did, or even might have.

I agree. I rest short even of "could have happened". I see god as an interesting voice, in a way those other characters are not, in examining the ultimate questions of our existence. No more than that.

 

[The Grave]

A cause....a cause. My kingdom for a cause.

Still on strings...


What I actually said was that it is wrong to say, as PT did, that:
"...if there's not evidence to support a god hypothesis...Then IT is non-existent!"
It is just as wrong to say that as it is to say:
"...if there's not evidence to support a string hypothesis...Then IT is non-existent!"




There is no evidence for the string hypothesis.
Likewise for the god hypothesis.

What the really really really dumb people don't get is that.....


Say there was a really big present under my X-mas tree and it was not on my most wanted list, given to my parents.

I may decide to postulate how the hell it came to be there.

1. My great aunt....no she's dead.
2. My girl friend...no, she's tight!
3. god! No he's on holy-day!
4. Then it must be some guy santa.

There is no evidence of santa, so the very intelligent among us say "Ho, ho ho, you must be joking!"

Let's look now at the GOD HYPOTHESIS... compared to santa:

1. Oh look a rainbow
2. I haven't got a clue how that is made
3. Let's invent a mystical creature called 'god'...IT created it after that flood I'm about to invent.
4. There's absolutely no evidence for god... AND BECAUSE it DOESN'T EXIST - yes you've guessed it THERE'S also NO EVIDENCE THAT it DOESN'T either.... gosh-golly-gee aren't I clever!

Griff.... Happy, Slappy, Crappy Happy Talk, Talk about things you like to trash....

You've gotto have a dream.........

 

[Lonewulf]

My God, I think you're finally getting it!


(laughter of the gods)

Considering that you're *still* arguing the same kablooey, I'm not sure that I agree with you.

It is hilarious how you write off, without evidence, the "Leprechauns-make-universe-from-pot" theory, but "invisible-ubergod-consciousness-made-world-for-funsies" is still in. You write off one claim without evidence of nonexistance, but you do not write off the other claim. It is this core double standard that I find most amusing.

Well, it was originally thought that an atom was just simply a ball.
However, experimental results indicated that, no, it's a bit more complicated than that.
I think that is an accurate assessment.

I do believe that the argument you are arguing against is, principally, Occam's Razor. The argument has less to do with complexity, and more to do with invisible assumptions. The theory that has the least number of necessary assumptions is usually accepted over theories that have a greater number of necessary assumptions, provided that these assumptions have yet to be shown, and provided that the theory fits within current evidence known.

For example: There are more invisible assumptions in YEC (Existance of god, current evidence is wrong, instruments are all unreliable, theories need to be revamped, etc.), than current models of evolution. Not to mention that you'd have to ignore current evidence, so perhaps that is not the best example.

Another example is simplifying a model of a theory (such as, say, the orbits of the planets, back when it was thought that they all had perfect circular orbits and not elliptical orbits), as was pushed by Copernicus.

 

[volatile]

It might interest you to look over in the Proof of God thread, in which we've all tried, really hard, to explain this to Billie...

 

[shalomsteph]

How weird...my atheism was solidified when I went to the Grand Canyon. I had goose bumps and a lump in my throat...and I knew that God did not exist. That did not happen in 6,000 years. No way. It threw creationism out the window.

 

[Lonewulf]

It might interest you to look over in the Proof of God thread, in which we've all tried, really hard, to explain this to Billie...

Hm, I've been to that thread for a bit, but I gave up there as well. You're right, I don't know why I'm trying to explain this to Billy again.

Hey, let's call truce and argue over gun control again? As long as we're on Arguments that Never End (tm), let's have one that involves things that go boom...

 

[volatile]

Hm, I've been to that thread for a bit, but I gave up there as well. You're right, I don't know why I'm trying to explain this to Billy again.

Hey, let's call truce and argue over gun control again? As long as we're on Arguments that Never End (tm), let's have one that involves things that go boom...

How about a bare-knuckle fist fight to the death, instead? Probably more productive, and better for the spectators!

 

[Lonewulf]

How about a bare-knuckle fist fight to the death, instead? Probably more productive, and better for the spectators!

Sure, you're on.

I dare you to beat my Atheism Kung-Fu!