An uncreated universe is more logical than an uncreated God!

[Valteron]

As you have probably noted this is one of many postings I have done on topics near and dear to atheists.

As I explained to the moderator in the other thread, when an atheist does a certain amount of promotion for the cause, he gets a nice prize from Satan: A matching pair of bronzed Renaissance Popes. Make great bookends or conversation pieces.

Anyhow, on to the debate.

The main difference between atheists and theists, when you get right down to brass tacks, is that theists believe that the universe was created by an omnipotent God. But when you ask them who created God, they will generally answer that God is eternal, has always existed and will always exist.

The same theists are often aghast at the atheist’s contention that the universe had no creator, a position they tend to regard as absurd and impossible. But is it so?

According to the maxim of William of Ockham (c. 1285–1349) known as Occam’s Razor, *entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem * or “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.”

As the Wikipedia article explains: "The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or “shaving off”, those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae (law of succinctness or parsimony):

Okay, so what is more reasonable to believe in? An uncreated universe ?
Or an uncreated God who created the universe?

There is not, and there has never been, a proof that God exists. But the fact that matter exists, that the universe exists, is a self-evident fact.

Why does the idea of an uncreated universe seem so odd to people who believe in an uncreated God?

The answer to “Why is the Universe here?” is “Where else should it be?”

Why is there something rather than nothing? Is not the simplest answer that “nothing” cannot really exist? Okay, I realize we use the word, as in “There is nothing in my wallet”, but there is something there, if only space and air.

“Nothing” is only a construct in our imagination, formed by combining the words “no” and “thing”. But since “thing” means “matter of some kind that exists” and since “no” is a negation or denial of existence, “no thing” is really an impossibility.

In other words, matter and the universe in general exist because they have to exist. There cannot NOT be anything.

We know from science that matter cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed.

We know that the universe exists. We know of no way that its matter could cease to exist. It can keep fexpanding, falling in and big banging, for example, but matter remains. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that it has always existed.

So, let’s just take out Occam’s Razor and “shave off” God, because his removal makes no difference in theorizing on the nature of the universe.

So who needs God? Brother William of Ockham, thanks!

[tomndebb]

@Valteron

As I explained to the moderator in the other thread, when an atheist does a certain amount of promotion for the cause, he gets a nice prize from Satan: A matching pair of bronzed Renaissance Popes. Make great bookends or conversation pieces.

Who created Satan?

[Valteron]

@tomndebb

Who created Satan?

The Christian Church created Satan loosely based on a charecter who was kind of a prosecutor in God’s court in the Hebrew myth known as the Book of Job.

I am only joking about Satan. He does not speak to atheists. (Geez! Nobody can stand us!)

[Mangetout]

@Valteron

“Nothing” is only a construct in our imagination, formed by combining the words “no” and “thing”. But since “thing” means “matter of some kind that exists” and since “no” is a negation or denial of existence, “no thing” is really an impossibility.

An object called ‘nothing’ would be an impossibility, but the complete absence of any thing(s), even though we find that difficult to grasp, would not be impossible. Of course there would be nobody there to notice the absence of all the things that might have been.

I think you’ve interpreted the question as “Why does the universe exist instead of ‘nothing’ existing?”, which is logically flawed, but 'why does the universe exist at all, rather than failing to exist?" seems logically sound to me. Perhaps you could explain in greater depth if you feel I’m missing something.

[Revenant_Threshold]

Occam’s Razor is not a law. Merely because we shouldn’t add extra things, doesn’t mean those extra things don’t exist.

[tomndebb]

@Valteron

I am only joking about Satan. He does not speak to atheists. (Geez! Nobody can stand us!)

That’s not true. Why, some of my best friends are atheists.

What no one can stand are proselytizers.

[Mangetout]

@Revenant Threshold

Occam’s Razor is not a law. Merely because we shouldn’t add extra things, doesn’t mean those extra things don’t exist.

That’s true - not everything necessarily exists or occurs in its hypothetically simplest form.

[Valteron]

@Revenant Threshold

Occam’s Razor is not a law. Merely because we shouldn’t add extra things, doesn’t mean those extra things don’t exist.

But it is a wise suggestion and a good way to come to a possible hypothesis. Look around you. You see the universe. We wonder how it came about.

We see that matter exists. We know that matter is “eternal” in that it cannot be created or destroyed, as far as science knows, only transformed. So it is quite possible that the universe has simply always existed and always will exist.

Why does matter exist rather than not exist? Because matter basically means “all the stuff that exists”. It becomes nonsensical to ask, "how come all the stuff that exis, exists? "The reason you cannot dig down any further in this concept is that you have essentially reached the bedrock of self-evident truth. Things that exist exist because they exist. It cannot be otherwise. There is no need to explain material existence with a God who created them.

If the idea of a universe with no beginning and no end bothers you, in your innermost mind, then you in no way solve the problem by using God the Creator as an explanation. You just move the problem up one level from an uncreated universe to an uncreated God.

But as I pointed out, the universe and all material existence is there around us. Nobody on Straight Dope holds interminable debates as to whether the universe, which means the sum total of the material world, exists.

But God, on the other hand! A completely different story, there. Thousands of years of theologians, and nobody has any convincing proof that God exists.

So you can believe in an uncreated and eternal universe that you can plainly see around you, or you can beleieve that the universe was created by an uncreated God whose very existence has never been proven and is very much doubted by millions of intelligent people.

The simplest answer is that we live in an uncreated universe made up of matter that has always existed and will always exist. Even if galaxies and planets and suns change over time.

Unless someone can prove that God exists and created the Universe, the simpler explanation, which eliminates God from our reasoning, is the simplest and most apparently correct. At least based on what we see and know.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@Valteron

But it is a wise suggestion and a good way to come to a possible hypothesis.

No, it isn’t. A hypothesis can only be evaluated against evidence. Occam’s Razor does not provide evidence, it’s a logical concept, and not all that good a one. Merely because something is simpler doesn’t make it any more likely to be true.

[Evil_Joe]

If you take time as a dimension like the other ones, all times, past, present and future exist concurrently. We seem however to be experiencing it in the way we are familiar, moving forward from a past time. So if all times are concurrent how can there have ever been a point when nothing existed?

[Polycarp]

@Revenant Threshold

No, it isn’t. A hypothesis can only be evaluated against evidence. Occam’s Razor does not provide evidence, it’s a logical concept, and not all that good a one. Merely because something is simpler doesn’t make it any more likely to be true.

Au contraire! It’s an excellent tool for its purpose. But what most people fail to grasp, I’ve found, is that its purpose is not to prove anything, but to provide a methodology for sifting through hypotheses.

Like this: It is not impossible that alien beings from Zeta Cancri VI crossed interstellar space, have been observing humans for several decades using stealth technology, mastered English, and decided to adopt the persona of a gay atheist Quebecker using the username Valteron, registered on this board, and made the OP to this thread. But that requires a substantial amount of hypothetical postulates to make it a reasonable explanation. We know that atheists exist, we know that gay people live in Quebec, and the persona exemplified by Valteron in his posts is very much what one might expect of someone in his shoes who had been abused by being force-fed religion. That Valteron is indeed a gay atheist Quebecker human being requires far fewer hypotheses than that he’s an impersonation by interstellar aliens.

It does not prove anything; it filters out the less probable explanations.

But for a wide range of subjects, there is an explanation which is simple, obvious, and wrong. Buffalo, New York, was almost certainly not named after Bison bison, commonly called buffalo. The probable explanation is that the city was named after Buffalo Creek (AKA Buffalo River), which was in turn named for its idyllic beauty when first discovered by a French voyageur who called it Beau Fleuve. “Buffalo” on this theory is an Anglicized bastardization of “Beau Fleuve.”

First application of Occam’s Razor calls for filtering out the probably-true explanation and going with the animal. But this does not disprove Occam’s Razor – it says to not unnecessarily multiply hypotheses. When one investigates a situation more thoroughly and finds that the simplest explanation doesn’t hold up, one still uses the Razor to sift through the next series of hypotheses.

How does this apply to the OP? Quite simply.

Valteron is quite correct that, in the absence of any sensible case of Intelligent Design, one that holds up under skeptical analysis, and in the absence of reasonable grounds to hypothesize the existence and characteristics of God, an uncreated universe is called for as least hypothesis.

However, Valteron literally begs the question, in the technical sense of the word, by advancing as a premise in his argument that there is absolutely no evidence to prove that God exists. That has been a hotly debated topic here for seven years and counting.

Occam’s Razor does not prove that the universe is uncreated. It advances that as least hypothesis, the one most likely to be correct, in the absence of adequate evidence that God in fact created it. But even if one grants his premise, which I do not, it still does not prove the result, just gives it precedence as the most likely answer. He still has to deal with whether Muskrat uncovered it, whether it came into existence as a result of Og ejaculating after masturbating, etc.

In my personal and biased opinion, there is adequate evidence to demonstrate, or at least suggest, the reality of God. In Valteron’s no less and no more personal and biased opinion, there is not.

And Occam’s Razor cannot split that hair. It’s not supposed to; that’s not what it was designed to do.

[Revenant_Threshold]

I think you’re conflating simplicity and probability too, Polycarp. Your example of Valteron’s unearthly nature shouldn’t be considered less possible because it requires a more complex explanation that we don’t need; it’s less possible because there’s no evidence for him being a Zeta Cancrian, while there’s good evidence he’s Canadian.

Your example of Buffalo is just moving the situation one level up. All Occam’s Razor is being used for here is to say “If a theory doesn’t work, think of some new ones”. It still doesn’t say anything about probability.

What Occam’s Razor should be used for isn’t to determine probability of some theory over another, but just as a reason for us to not consider every theory that we can think of. We could sit around postulating all day on whether it’s actually morning or not and time to go to work, and from a philosophical point of view it would be a good idea, but practically it’s not feasible. So we accept the simplest explanation so that we don’t have to actually consider the vast amount of possible explanations.

[Heckxx]

@Valteron

Why is there something rather than nothing? Is not the simplest answer that “nothing” cannot really exist? Okay, I realize we use the word, as in “There is nothing in my wallet”, but there is something there, if only space and air.

“Nothing” is only a construct in our imagination, formed by combining the words “no” and “thing”. But since “thing” means “matter of some kind that exists” and since “no” is a negation or denial of existence, “no thing” is really an impossibility.

In other words, matter and the universe in general exist because they have to exist. There cannot NOT be anything.

To me, these kind of proofs are like, if the English language was structured differently, it wouldn’t work anymore.

Language is a barrier to conveying understanding, and therefore, I think it is near impossible to try to prove or disprove something as ethereal as God or the universe in a few short sentences of paragraphs.

[monavis]

@tomndebb

Who created Satan?

According to the Bible:God created Satan, he was an angel who rebelled. Why
satan rebelled is another story. And why God permitted him to exist is another.

Some theologians say God didn’t kill Satan because God Knew he was going to create Humans and it would humiliate Satan.

Monavis

[Apos]

I don’t think OR is about simplicity anyway, it’s primarily about not trying to sell me a tank when all I really need is a bicycle. In other words, when we sit around trying to explain something, we shouldn’t use a lack of knowledge as an excuse to invent all sorts of other entities that themselves require even more explanation on top of what we were already trying to deal with. That’s why it’s often cast as a principle of parsimony: it’s basically your mother nagging you to not keep making things harder on yourself, honey.

[RTFirefly]

@Valteron

that the universe exists, is a self-evident fact.

IYHO. Two days out of five, I’m convinced I must be imagining the whole thing.

@tomndebb

Who created Satan?

Never met his parents, but I know Satan exists, because I spoke with him at several Dopefests. Even played mini-golf with him once.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@tomndebb

Who created Satan?

:: sheepishly raises hand ::

It wasn’t JUST me, Tom. We were making cookies.

[ITR_champion]

Responding to Valteron is likely a waste of time since when he sees a logical refutation of his arguments he just ignores them; in his last thread I answered his original post point by point and he only responded to one small portion of my post. Nevertheless I’ll try again and see whether he has the guts to respond.

@Valteron

The main difference between atheists and theists, when you get right down to brass tacks, is that theists believe that the universe was created by an omnipotent God. But when you ask them who created God, they will generally answer that God is eternal, has always existed and will always exist.

Firstly your characterization of theists is wrong. Some believe the universe was created by an omnipotent God, some by a god who was potent but not omnipotent, and some by two or more gods.

Secondly while arguments about creation are a difference between atheists and theists, not by any stretch of the imagination are they the main difference. The main differences lie in morality, attitude, and behavior.

The same theists are often aghast at the atheist’s contention that the universe had no creator, a position they tend to regard as absurd and impossible. But is it so?

Yes.

Okay, so what is more reasonable to believe in? An uncreated universe ?
Or an uncreated God who created the universe?

The second is more reasonable. The universe is an object, hence it demands an agent to explain its existence. God transcends categories such as “object” and hence does not demand explanations.

There is not, and there has never been, a proof that God exists.

There have been many proofs that God exists. See, for instance, The Summa of Theology by Saint Thomas Aquinas; he has five of the best. Now if you want to argue that all these proofs are bad proofs, I’m willing to listen. But saying “there has never been a proof that God exists” is like saying “there has never been an apple” or “there has never been a romance novel.”

But the fact that matter exists, that the universe exists, is a self-evident fact.

It’s self-evident to Christians and members of most other religions; it is not self-evident to some atheists.

Why does the idea of an uncreated universe seem so odd to people who believe in an uncreated God?

If one finds an object, it must originate from somewhere. Some objects can be explained as originating naturally from their surroundings. For instance, if we find an apple under an apple tree, we can surmise that it grew on the apple tree and then fell; Sir Isaac Newton could give you the details. If, on the other hand, we found an apple in the middle of a vast, barren desert, we’d need an explanation for how the apple got there. In short, some agent must have put the apple there. Expanding that thinking to the universe level, the universe did not originate from its surroundings. Hence an agent must have put the universe there.

The answer to “Why is the Universe here?” is “Where else should it be?”

This statement is meaningless drivel. Suppose an enormous boulder falls out of the sky and crushes my car. I ask, “Why is this boulder here?” My neighbor overhears the questions and answers, “Where else should it be?” The neighbor has not offered any useful knowledge; rather, he has demonstrated his inability to be useful.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Is not the simplest answer that “nothing” cannot really exist? Okay, I realize we use the word, as in “There is nothing in my wallet”, but there is something there, if only space and air.

“Nothing” is only a construct in our imagination, formed by combining the words “no” and “thing”. But since “thing” means “matter of some kind that exists” and since “no” is a negation or denial of existence, “no thing” is really an impossibility.

In other words, matter and the universe in general exist because they have to exist. There cannot NOT be anything.

For us in the universe, there cannot not be anything. But from a hypothetical viewpoint before the dawn of time looking towards the future, nothingness and existence would both have been valid possibilities. Existence did not trump nothingness until God decided that it should be so.

We know from science that matter cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed.

Incorrect. We know from science that matter can be created and destroyed. Albert Einstein could give you the details.

We know that the universe exists. We know of no way that its matter could cease to exist. It can keep fexpanding, [sic] falling in and big banging, [sic] for example, but matter remains. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that it has always existed.

Do you have an explanation for why this is reasonable, or am I only supposed to take your word for it?

So, let’s just take out Occam’s Razor and “shave off” God, because his removal makes no difference in theorizing on the nature of the universe.

You’d do better worrying about whether God shaves you off than whether you shave God off.

So who needs God?

Everyone.

Brother William of Ockham, thanks!

I’m not sure what you’re thanking him for since nothing you said is at all related to what he said, as Polycarp has already explained. Let me offer a further example which may be illuminating. Suppose we have a fact, namely that Christianity exists. Two main explanations for this are offered.

Explanation 1: Christianity exists because God exists and people respond logically by worshiping Him.

Explanation 2: Christianity exists because one Jewish carpenter falseley claimed to be God and somehow managed to dupe a large number of people into believing him. These people then went out to dupe other people, and they went on to dupe others, and so forth.

Explanation 1 is very simple and requires few entities: God and the simple, straightforward faith of human beings. Explanation 2 is absurdly complicated. It requires the explainer to continually introduce more and more entities to patch up the obvious contradictions. How did Jesus dupe so many people? Well, the people were stupid. Then how did those stupid people manage to convince so many others of Jesus’s divinity? Well those stupid people were also really smart, smart enough to organize the world’s most successful campaign of mass deception. And how did a campaign of mass deception manage to overtake most of the world? They did it by violence. Then how did Christianity triumph over rival belief systems that were far more violent? They did something or other. &c… &c…Obviously explanation 1 must be the correct one due to its simplicity, while explanation 2 constantly requires more and more factors. (The fact than none of the individual factors make any sense puts the final nail in 2’s coffin.) That’s how Occam’s razor works.

[tomndebb]

@ITR champion

Secondly while arguments about creation are a difference between atheists and theists, not by any stretch of the imagination are they the main difference. The main differences lie in morality, attitude, and behavior.

I am really not interested in this thread, per se, but I suspect that you are seriously mistaken with this claim. There are a relatively few issues of morality/ethics in which a preponderance of atheists would find themselves on the opposite side of the discussion from (some large but varying number of) theists, but I doubt that there is a serious difference between atheists and theists regarding the general views of morality and behavior.

I am not sure what you mean by “attitude,” so you may be correct, based on your definition.

[Lilairen]

@Valteron

The main difference between atheists and theists, when you get right down to brass tacks, is that theists believe that the universe was created by an omnipotent God.

As a theist who neither has this belief nor any way of supporting such a belief within the construct of my actual religion, I suspect your axioms are faulty.