People who can't think for themselves and can only rely on other people to tell them what their opinions are think everyone else is like it to so if a religious person goes "Look! Look! Here's a famous scientist/atheist/skeptic" who said this we'll have no choice but to fall to our knees and go "Oh you're right, you've trapped me in a conundrum and I have no choice but to change my mind!"
The supernatural
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People who can't think for themselves and can only rely on other people to tell them what their opinions are think everyone else is like it to so if a religious person goes "Look! Look! Here's a famous scientist/atheist/skeptic" who said this we'll have no choice but to fall to our knees and go "Oh you're right, you've trapped me in a conundrum and I have no choice but to change my mind!"
Chanakya
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I don't think he does, actually. ([eta]I plugged "special pleading" into Google translate just now, English to Persian. Then I translated the result back from Persian into English. And what I get back is "special request". So, probably not his fault, especially if he's not even familiar with the concept of special pleading, or indeed of logical fallacies.[/eta])
If you wish to take the trouble --- knowing fully well that you'll probably be ignored despite doing a great job of it and taking time and effort over it --- then you might actually clearly explain to him how all four of his "reasons" are simply that, and also why that is a problem. Who knows, Allah may yet show him the light of wisdom, thanks to your words. Yeah okay, given what we've seen of his methods (over and above the language thing I mean), probably not I suppose, but who knows, just maybe?
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Aquinus only made one proof and just reworded it 4 different times and they all are nothing more than "And then and then and then reductionism, then call the point where you can't reduce anymore God, declare victory."
Bullish!t
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OK, for Heydarian (and anyone else if they want) here's a summary of Aquinas, what he said, some context and how those ideas are taken apart (if anyone can read the ideas and not spot all the special pleading and "Yeahbut..." and "Well, that's what I say it is..." nonsense, and not see that it is essentially goddidit, yes, definitely, goddidit, because goddidit and you can't make me think anything else, well, I don't know how we can help) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas)
Chanakya
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I'd suggest this link for a thorough discussion, in terms clear enough that a translation software wouldn't garble it beyond comprehension.
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heydarian, if you'd be willing to leave aside what you've started focusing on here of late, which would be telling us we'll be destroyed unless we believe in and genuflect to your God, as well as making outlandish claims about 6000 year old men and the impending destruction of large parts of the world and your own privileged knowledge about such; and instead focus on those four "reasons" that you keep talking about (and that people here keep telling you --- quite rightly --- that they've already refuted by pointing out that they're simply special pleading): perhaps you could check out this link: https://homeweb.csulb.edu/~cwallis/100/st2.html
Those "reasons" of yours, which no doubt you've read somewhere, aren't some new revelation. They had been famously articulated by Thomas Aquinas something like a thousand years ago. And they've already been debunked many years before any of us were born, and debunked very thoroughly and beyond the slightest possibility of lingering doubt about their validity.
I understand your difficulty with the translation software. I've personally checked out the term "special pleading" by having it translated into Persian, and then back into English, and I can see how you might be confused by people apparently telling you that it is a "special request". (If you're interested, then here's the link to the Wiki on the logical fallacy that is being referred to by the term "special pleading": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading.)
Anyway, you can check out that link I supplied here (here it is one more time, just to make sure there's no confusion about what I'm referring to here: https://homeweb.csulb.edu/~cwallis/100/st2.html). The discussion linked to is thorough enough and made in clear enough terms that I think you'll realize how those "reasons" of yours are fallacious, wrong.
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If it is indeed the same argumnet put forward by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century (a great deal has changed since the 13th cent. … all of science has been discovered since then!), then according to Wikipedia (and according to the link given above by Chanakya), that was 5 arguments -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas)
1. the*argument from "first mover";
2. the*argument from causation;
3. the*argument from contingency;
4. the*argument from degree;
5. the*argument from final cause or ends*("teleological*argument").
But if you look at those 5 arguments, they are really all the same argument. They all try to show that an “infinite regress” occurs when we try to explain such things as why we see that everything is subject to “change” & why all things have a “cause” etc.
All 5 argumnets reduce to the claim that, in order to stop that inifite regression, an intelligent designer God must therefore exist as the “ultimate uncaused cause" for any of that. It has to be an intelligent God, because Aquinas also thinks that he sees purpose and design in all things.
But that's really what philosophers might call an argumnet from incredulity or ignorance. i.e., where Aquinas could not concieve of how a universe could exist unless someone (ie God) had deliberately made it.
However, the appearance of design or purpose in the universe, is an illusion. And we now understand that from modern science. That's partly behind Darwins discovery of evolution, and it's also explained by all of chemistry and physics, where for example it explains why crystals look designed … but crystals simply form in those neat geometric patterns because that's the most energy efficient way of packing their consitiuent molecules together.
It's true that we (ie science) do not yet have a universally agreed explantion for exactly how the Big Bang occurred, but iirc over the last 30 years or so, most of the published papers on big bang cosmology have desicribed the same sort of possible explanation. Namely that the universe has always existed as some form of interacting energy fields …
… why must those energy fields always exist? The simple philosophical-type answer is that it's not possible for truly “Nothing” to exist, because “nothing” is not a state of anything at all … “nothing” is just our human word and human concept for something that has no existence at all. So, for example, what would it mean to say that “nothing existed before the big bang”? … well “nothing” cannot exist by it's own definition, so you cannot possibly have a state of “nothing” prior to the big bang.
IOW the whole concept of “nothing” is misleading. It's simply a word to say that the thing is impossible by it's own definition. IOW – something must always exist. The Universe that we experience must have always existed in some energetic form or other.
The Big Bang is now pretty much fully understood and described. It's a very rapid expansion from the interaction of various energy fields … that's like a “phase change” in which one form of highly compressed energy is converted to a different form of energy occupying or producing a much larger volume. How does that happen? Well, afaik, most of those papers over the past 30 years or so have come to the conclusion that prior to the Big Bang (and there was a “prior time” - see below) the universe consisted of a set of highly compressed interacting energy fields, such as gravity, the electromagnetic field, strong & weak nuclear forces etc. … because those fields were so highly compressed together, quantum interactions dominated, and the fields would necessarily undergo random quantum fluctuations in magnitude and direction …
… as soon as any fluctuation occurs, there is an immediate interaction with the mass of all the other surrounding fields, and the fluctuation is quenched back to zero within a very short time, eg within one Planck Time … but momentarily, when the fluctuation occurs, that is actually the sudden emergence of a mini-Big-Bang with an emergent embryonic space-time, ie a very short lived embryo universe … and that process occurs perhaps a trillion trillion times per fraction of a second (time now exists, as the duration of that fluctuation) …
… but because the interactions are random, eventually one or more fluctuations must appear with such magnitude and so rapidly that the force of all the surrounding fields cannot stop the inflation … at that point the inflating mini-universe accelerates by sucking out the energy from all of the other surrounding fields, and that becomes the Inflationary Stage of the big Bang (as described 30 years ago by Alan Guth). From that point you have continuous time and continuously expanding space, leading to the Big Bang proper … and from there all of the physics is pretty well understood.
One thing to note in all of that, is – it turns out that it is fairly easy to calculate all of the energy in our universe. Some of that energy acts in one sense, and the rest of it acts in an opposing sense … but when we add up all of the positive acting energy plus all of the negative acting forces, the total sum is exactly Zero! That is – the overall energy of our universe is zero! That fits exactly with the above description where at any single instant the pre-big-bang fields are cancelling one another completely to zero …
… another thing to note that is, that “Time” does exist before the Big Bang, but it's discontinuous or momentary, ie a brief space-time that arises from each quantum fluctuation.
As a last comment on that – what the above shows is that whereas Aquinas, and almost all religious people today, thought that God must be the explanation for how & why our universe exists, there is now (and has been for 30 years or more) a reasonable scientific explanation which actually fits all of the evidence & data that we have, ie our knowledge of quantum interactions and the Big Bang, what sort of particle-fields existed within the first 1000th of a second after the “Bang”, ie all sorts of initial short-lived high energy exotic particle-fields, the way in which that inevitably leads the to the formation of stars and galaxies etc. in a universe that has taken 13.8 billion years to reach it's present state … none of that was known to Aquinas … but all of that does arise in models of pre-big-bang Inflation with a model/explanation of the sort that I've tried to give above. You could also include the likelihood of Multiverses forming from that same process … all that would mean is that numerous smaller universes formed and became continuous space-times of their own, before our universe finally appeared … and thats also possible within models of Inflation as described by Guth (ie Inflationary models do predict the formation of many such universes).
Edit to add – in the above description, we could reasonably describe that pre-Big-Bang set of energy fields as truly “Nothing”, ie because on average (averaging-out the constant fluctuations), their overall effect sums exactly to zero (which is what we now find with the sum of all of the energy fields in the universe today). So in that sense, you could say that the Inflationary Stage of the Big Bang arises from truly “nothing”, or what we should perhaps properly mean by the word or concept of “nothing”.
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Chanakya
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The same. You're right, I checked back and it was twelve-hundred-something, so not quite the "around thousand years ago" that I'd said it was.
So that, at one level, simply and pithily saying "special pleading", as people have been doing here, puts paid to that bilge. As in that discussion I'd linked to, that debunking can today be way more detailed and way more thorough and complete, given the science of today; but absolutely, in a sense that is overkill, because absolutely, a sharp ten or twelve year old of today, who has a good grasp on the basics of logic, will probably be able to show up Aquinas's pseudo-wisdom for the misguided claptrap it actually is.
The point is, I doubt our friend heydarian understands what people mean when they keep saying "special pleading". For one thing he may not have come across the concept at all --- indeed, I'm not sure he even understands what logical fallacies are --- and for another, the translation software garbles up the term into meaningless nonsense at his end (for instance, translating the term "special pleading" into Persian, and translating it back into English, when I tried it myself, gives me this: "special request").
So that, if the idea is to get across to him --- as opposed to talking past him, and instead using him as foil in order to address one another and/or some imaginary lurking audience --- then the thing to do would be to clearly explain these things to him. I myself did not want to put in that time and effort, and so took the easy way out and directed him to links that would lead him to a thorough yet clearly worded discussion, that he might understand even via his translation software, ...provided he wants to.
That last "provided he wants to" is a bit troublesome, because of late he seems to have given up even the pretense of rationality, and gone all-out one-dimensional cross-eyed fanatic, with his prophesies of doom and destruction, and hints about his own privileged access to information about the details of such, ...but still, no harm in trying I suppose.
I realize this is off-topic, as far as this thread, but I don't suppose a single comment on this from me, and a single reply back from you, would disturb the flow of this thread --- such as it is! --- too much.
This is something I'd not come across before. (I'm not a physicist myself, and what little of QM I've happened to have "come across before" are only from your everyday popular sources.) This bit about time existing even before the Big bang, in some "discontinuous" form, could you comment some more on this, and/or link to some discussion on this?
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Yep, agree with all of that (probably no surprise).
I'd like to think that heydarian could have a reasoned objective discussion of all of these points. Ie putting aside his religious beliefs for that moment, and just trying to understand why all of science points very strongly away from his God beliefs. But I doubt if he is willing ever to do that. It sounds to me as if he is committed to the beliefs in that so-called I'Jaz literature, which is apparently very popular amongst many Muslims today, and which makes all the exact claims that he's making about "Miracles in the Koran", and especially claiming that all of science is actually described in those passages of the Koran.
Just on the idea of time before the Big Bang - I can't point to any internet sources describing that, because I've never really tried to look for that. So I don't know what has really been published on that idea. But what I mean is, and what I am describing, is just this - if those primordial energy fields existed and somehow produced the Big Bang, which AFAIK all or most of the more recent published models do agree about, i.e. where inescapable (according to QM ... that's really just the Uncertainty Principle once again) random fluctuations of the fields must occur, then any fluctuation within one force field will cause an interaction with the surrounding fields, i.e. to produce some kind of miniature inflating embryo universe ... afaik, that's really what is said to happen in all of those models that predict any kind of multiverse ... but any sort of embryo universe, however small and however short-lived, is itself the instant appearance of a space-time event ... i.e. each embryo universe has it's own space-time ; that consists of the time that it takes to continue inflating, and the volume of space that is created by the inflation ... in case it's not obvious ;- that is just what it means to have any sort of embryo universe formed from any of those fluctuations ...
... if we think of that as Multiverse creation, e.g. where countless numbers of such universes are forming from an ocean of field fluctuations, then each one of them is forming by the creation of it's own space and time ...
... our universe is just one of those many universes ... however, our universe may be the only one where that space-time persists for longer than a tiny fraction of a micro-second. But, when we talk about any universe existing at all, that is THE "Space-time" ... i.e. the universe (any of them ) exists as a persisting "space-time".
heydarian saeed
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Hi. are you OK?! I agree that we should be clear together. Denial of the Qur'an is equal to: denial of God - Resurrection - reckoning of deeds - prophets - divine blessings and verses. The result of this performance; Lack of logic - lack of intellect - confusion - oppression - stupidity - arrogance - not seeing the truth and other bad effects.
The most important reason for denying God is this: You do not see the truth - the power of God is amazing to you! - The comprehensive knowledge of God is amazing for you! - You are very afraid of auditing your actions! - Your knowledge is limited. So you can not understand the truth of God. And you deny him. God has nothing to do with you. It is your own actions. Which leads you to destruction. God bless you. He does not expect anything from you either. You are not clear with yourself and your conscience.
I sincerely hope you get well.
All my talk is not just with you. To all who think like you. And I wish you all good health. And I hope you are well.
I have said many times that; God does not force you to accept His existence. He has left the choice with you. Think wisely.
heydarian saeed
Graduate Poster
Hi. Thank you for reading my speech. I have seen a few verses from the Qur'an that refer to the theory of human evolution. This does not mean that it has been approved. Just mentioned. Did you pay attention?
The Qur'an only mentions. Neither confirmed nor denied.
Gord_in_Toronto
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It's clearly not. It's perfectly possible to believe in God and still think the Qu'ran is ignorant nonsense.
Scorpion
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Yes, that is my position. I knew from the moment I read the cruel verses about eternal hellfire for unbelievers, that the Quran was evil lies about God.
Well, maybe God really is an evil bastard. The Bible is also full punishment, injustice and hellfire. That does not in itself make it all lies, although it probably is. That god of the Quran and the Bible is not one I would like to worship.
On the other hand, if some believers came up with really credible arguments for the existence of their gods, I would probably eat chow and start worshiping anyway, regardless of how cruel he is.
Scorpion
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As far as I am concerned the bible is largely myths, and hellfire is non existent. But Muhammad stole the idea of eternal hell from the bible to scare people into following him. The authors of the bible probably stole the idea of the lake of fire from the Egyptian book of the dead.
MRC_Hans
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The above is just yet another pile of complete bilge from a religious fanatic. And it's also full of all sorts of pathetic little threats.
You are telling everyone here that they are ignorant and not obedient to your beliefs and that their repunishment for not believing you, will be death ("destruction"). But I'm pretty sure that it's you who is the ignorant one in this thread ... you have talked a lot about science claiming that you know it all from the Koran, but what exactly are you own qualifications in science, and particularity in the things you keep talking about, i.e. evolution, relativity, Big Bang and/or universe formation, quantum theory ... please tell us where you studied all those subjects and which degrees and doctorates you have (such that you can lecture people here about any of that)?
And since you probably won't answer that question (and certainly not in any honest coherent way), I'll tell YOU what I think the actual answer is – I doubt that you have any genuine academic education in any of those areas of science.
Mojo
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