Oops. Why God Did Not Create the Universe

No, the important thing is that you've shown you can't think for yourself and you're cowed by nearly anything a philosophy or science "god" says, no matter how asinine.

You still haven't explained how "everything from nothing" is any more plausible than a creator.

 

A "creator" for nothing?

 

I'll meet you more than halfway on this... I say "more than halfway" because you've made no attempt to answer my question except with sarcasm and other questions which is evasive and rude.

So I'll answer your first question. Then, if you answer mine, I'll answer your second question. But if you simply continue with the "holier than thou" BS, you forfeit. Agreed?

 

Oh, yes. Please tell me all about "rude." I wonder which one of us started down that path in P&R, and which one of us is characteristically more unrelenting even where it is not called for.

I read Dawkins's book, The God Delusion, and his arguments made perfect sense to me. I cannot improve upon the words and reasoning of this scientist, and I don't pretend to. As for Hawking, I tried going at his A Brief History of Time several years ago and admit that it was hard sledding. However, I take comfort in explanations that do not require the supernatural to complete the picture. If you don't find these two people, among others, to be sufficiently compelling in their arguments, then I don't see how I could possibly settle it for you. I am not in their league. I cannot hope to accomplish what they have failed to do for you.

As for the "holier than thou" part, you are the one who has chosen to go holy on the entire scientific community that has brought man's understanding of the world around him to its current level. It may fall far short of perfect, but it has come a long way since the "holy books" were written.

However, I await your response to the questions I posed earlier.

 

You et atheists do not comprehend modern science even when it is spoon fed.

The best minds in physics tell you our universe appears spectacularly designed and you misunderstand what they write.


Hawking did not say the universe does not appear designed...
he said if there are 10 to the 500 other universes than our universe does not appear designed.



----------------------------------------
Bernard Carr is an astronomer at Queen Mary University, London. Unlike Martin Rees, he does not enjoy wooden-panelled rooms in his day job, but inhabits an office at the top of a concrete high-rise, the windows of which hang as if on the edge of the universe. He sums up the multiverse predicament: “Everyone has their own reason why they’re keen on the multiverse. But what it comes down to is that there are these physical constants that can’t be explained. It seems clear that there is fine tuning, and you either need a tuner, who chooses the constants so that we arise, or you need a multiverse, and then we have to be in one of the universes where the constants are right for life.”

But which comes first, tuner or tuned? Who or what is leading the dance? Isn’t conjuring up a multiverse to explain already outlandish fine-tuning tantamount to leaping out of the physical frying pan and into the metaphysical fire?

Unsurprisingly, the multiverse proposal has provoked ideological opposition. In 2005, the New York Times published an opinion piece by a Roman Catholic cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, in which he called it “an abdication of human intelligence.” That comment led to a slew of letters lambasting the claim that the multiverse is a hypothesis designed to avoid “the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science.” But even if you don’t go along with the prince of the church on that, he had another point which does resonate with many physicists, regardless of their belief. The idea that the multiverse solves the fine-tuning of the universe by effectively declaring that everything is possible is in itself not a scientific explanation at all: if you allow yourself to hypothesize any number of worlds, you can account for anything but say very little about how or why.

http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=137

 

My thought is that the appearance of design is akin to the perception that one's misplaced keys are always in the last place you look. Of course they are, you stop looking after that.

Maybe a bad analogy. What I mean is that consciousness is required to imagine creation. Consciousness needs certain extraordinarily rare conditions (so far as we know) to arise. It is therefore natural for an arisen consciousness to initially consider its current location and appearance to be too extraordinarily rare to be an accident.

Paulos, on chance, also comes to mind:

"A different argument points to the near certainty of some stocks, funds, or analysts [read traders] doing well over an extended period merely by chance. Of 1000 stocks (or funds or analysts), for example, roughly 500 might be expected to outperform the market next year simply by chance, say by the flipping of a coin. Of these 500, roughly 250 might be expected to do well for a second year. And of the 250, roughly 125 might be expected to continue the pattern, doing well three years in a row simply by chance. Iterating in this way, we might reasonably expect there to be a stock (or fund or analyst) among the thousand that does well for ten consecutive years by chance alone. Once again, some in the business media are likely to go gaga over the performance."

- John Allen Paulos, "A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market"

None of this, however, explains away First Cause where, imho, God comfortably resides.

Edit: oh, by the way, would it not be true that the more universes/dimensions there are, the greater the odds that Santa and the "teapot in orbit" exist?

 

Your belief was the old fallback. the weak anthropic theory.

However, I believe you underestimate what hawking and other physicists are saying about the appearance of design.

They are saying there is no way our universe got here by chance or random events.... no possible way... unless you have almost infinite universes or a new unified universe theory is discovered.

 

What can I say Gayfly... you bring out the best in me.

Try to be logical about this. I already wrote "not a 'sky daddy,' a creator" so you can't possibly answer my question without knowing what I mean by "creator." Therefore I need to answer your first question first as I originally suggested.

Here's the difference. "Sky daddy" implies a magical, benevolent, male, anthropomorphic being who sits in the clouds watching over us as would a father. Creator is ANY intelligent entity that is capable of creating the universe we perceive.

Think about what that means before firing back at me with the same old arguments. Also think about how puny, ignorant and insignificant humans are in the very limited scheme of things we think we understand, let alone the grand scheme of things we don't. Someone wrote in another thread that humans have discovered less than 1% of all knowledge, to which I replied less than a zillionth of 1%. Have you noticed that the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know? I happen to believe that things are far more complicated than we can even imagine right now. So spare me the "holier than thou" smear because at least I recognize and acknowledge human limitations and our place.

Now... "everything from nothing" is more plausible than a creator because? I'll answer your second question if you make a good faith attempt to answer this.

 

No one denies the complexity of the world and universe around us and our limited knowledge of it. But to deny that which our more intelligent minds have scrabbled together over time would bring us back that much further. So I am not inclined to dismiss what we do have, such as it is, because it is less than perfect.

As for the "everything from nothing" being more or less plausible than a creator, you still have not addressed the origin of this creator. You are truncating your judgment and suspending reason with a broad brush by summarily dismissing the question of a creator's origin, and yet you delve argumentatively, if not necessarily knowledgeably, into the minutia of that which you characterize "everything from nothing." Not very "fair and balanced," is it? It appears that you are approaching this science with an agenda.

 

Have you read the Grand Design?