We could only ask your question (which I agree isn’t illogical) from a perspective outside our universe. I think it would be as hard to claim that our universe had to come into existence as it would be to claim that man as we know him had to evolve. Perhaps you mean some universe? Given that, when would you ask the question? When would you know that no universe would have evolved? In ours, we’ve at least got proton decay as some kind of effective upper bound for time. In the meta universe there would be no such thing, and no doubt no entropy either. So the question “couldn’t it have failed to happen” assumes some observation time, and at any metatime point it either had happened or could be said to not have happened yet. So I don’t think it is possible to answer that in the positive.
If there is no metatime, and everything is somehow happening at once, then the answer becomes trivial once we can see into the metauniverse. But, if there is someone to see into it, we’ve already answered the question.
This seems to be an example of a very weak anthropic principle!
Even assuming the existence of a supernatural being or beings who interacted with people, can you connect this being or beings to a creator deity? Certainly, if you believe any of the creation myths were inspired or dictated by supernatural beings, they got the story totally wrong. Thus we have two cases - either there is a creator god who did not inform these entities of the real story (and we still have Valteron problem, or there is no creator deity, and these entities, though supernatural, had nothing to do with creation.
I have not called them god or gods since I’d assume your definition of god would include being the creator.
So, the only evidence that counts in this discussion is evidence of knowledge of the natural world, in which these supernatural entities have done a poor job. So we need not argue about evidence for their existence, because it is besides the point. Though one or more of these entities might claim to have created the universe, we might think this is an unjustified claim, since none of them seemed to understand what they created, when they created it, or how it got created. Thus, whatever entity made that claim seems to have been lying. That doesn’t say anything about entities not making the claim, or course.
Valteron, I have to say that your OP, and, by extension, pretty much this whole thread is, in a nutshell, eloquent masturbation.
Why would you post such an argument? You know very well that any brave theists who take up arms against you will, at some point, run into some logical fallacy. And yet you set out to frame the discussion in the language of logic. You’ve obviously had this argument before. So have I. The theist, when asked, “Why would God do [insert whatever terrible act here]?” they always respond with some variant of “God works in mysterious ways.” Thus ends logical debate. The athiest rolls his eyes, writes the theist off as an idiot, and stalks away. Why? Because the athiest always couches the discussion in science and logic. And it’s silly to bait the theists unless you just want to show off how logical you can be.
On that note, I would challenge you to beat an articulate theist on his own terms. I’m agnostic myself, so I can’t volunteer. Can you disprove God’s existance using only the language of mysticism and faith? No? Of course not! What’s that you say? “Logic is superior to faith?” Okay, mister smarty pants, prove that one!
But allow me to play devil’s advocate here. Your thesis:
Well, I don’t remember everything from my undergraduate logic course, but I do remember that there is no “degree” of logicality on any of those awful truth-tables we were required to fill out. Something is either logically sound, or it isn’t.
In that vein I propose that both the uncreated universe and the uncreated god are equally illogical:
a) An eternal god is created by magic. He goes on to create the big bang/universe/everything/whatever.
b) The pre-big bang singularity is created by magic. It explodes for no reason, leading to the universe as we know it.
However, if you want to assign degrees of logicality to it, one of the above scenarios already has a magical figure built in. In the other, the magic comes from nowhere. :dubious:
If our universe had not existed, ‘outside of it’ would not mean anything; we can ask the question from the perspective of there not being anything at all anywhere, ever - no meta-space, no meta-time, no existence of any thing.
Put another way, it could be asked as “Is the property of existence inevitable?”.
Valteron, I agree with your conclusion, having reached it myself long ago.
But long before either of us was born, a brilliant man named Baruch Spinoza got there first. God and nature are one and the same–Spinoza’s name for it translates as “God (or Nature)”
Also, Arthur C. Clarke said something like,“Once you declare that God created everything, you’ve doubled the size of the problem.”
The plain truth is that some people have an overwhelming need for God–they can’t function witout belief and they can’t understand those of us who can.
Spinoza said that the universe has an infinite number of modes, ways of expressing itself. One of my favorites is the human imagination.
With it, one can “create” almost anything, from James Bond to Jehovah, from Hercules to hobbits, from Atlantis to Allah. The problem begins when people mistake fantasy for fact and mythology for methodology.
This happens quite a lot in these threads, that someone asserts that certain proofs of God’s existence have been proven logically false but fails to tell me where I can find these debunking of proofs of God. I’ve given a location for the proof of God in the works of St. Thomas; they’re available at your local library and probably online somewhere. Now many atheists have told me that St. Thomas’ arguments have been shown to be logically false, but no atheist has yet shown me that St. Thomas’ arguments are logically false. Do you see the difference. Now it seems to be the atheists who firmly believe in something whose existence can’t be shown in the physical world.
God surrounds the universe, so the universe did in fact originate from its surroundings. On the other hand, those who don’t believe in God have no reason to believe that the universe has surroundings, and thus can’t explain where it comes from. (It’s possible that science will some day make statements about the ‘multiverse’ that exists beyond the borders of what we call the ‘universe’ but that would only expand the atheists’ problems; where did the multiverse originate from?) I have already addressed the question of whether God originated from his surroundings or was brought there by some agent, and hence see no need to repeat myself.
I confess the boulders falling from the sky was an imperfect analogy. What I was responding to, though, was Valteron explaing the universe’s existence by “where else should it be”. His basic argument seems to be that a universe existed and had to be either here or elsewhere and here makes as much sense as any other place. I object that this is begging the question, “Why does the universe exist?”
For sure there are issues where atheists and theists agree. However, in virutally every area where our society has widespread disagreements, they break with religious thought on one side and secular thought on the other. This is even more true when you look at the entire sweep of human history. For instance, one finds that a large and powerful government that attempts to control economic decisions is closely associated with secular societies, while economic freedom is associated with religious societies.
However, there is no issue of which I can think where the division is between atheists and theists. There may be some issues on which atheists tend to fall predominantly on one side, (there being too few atheists to know what the real distribution might be), but there are no issues, (aside from the issue of whether a god exists), on which one can draw a line and find all atheists on one side and all theists on the other. For any issue (aside from the divine) where one finds a large number of atheists, one will also find a large number of theists on the same side.
I am afraid that your claim about economic theory made me laugh. Italy and Spain were significantly more religious under Fascism than they are, today. For that matter, I would never characterize the U.S. as “religious” although I certainly know individuals who would like to pretend that to be true.
The Big Bang explains why galaxies are speeding away from one another as if expanding from a central point. It does not follow that there was nothing before the Big Bang. Indeed, one theory of the universe is that it “pulsates” with one Big Bang after another over billions of trillions of years. This is the theory that sees the universe as expanding until the force of the initial blast weakens and the whole universe collapses back into the single “cosmic egg” that again explodes, etc. etc. ad infinitum.There is nothing magical about the Big Bang. It is based on the known laws of physics.
Polycarp, I did not say I was offended by anything you said. I simply have not brought up my sexuality in this thread, nor do I see the relevance of your religion to my OP.
Randy Seltzer, you are right that there cannot be degrees of logicality. But you have to make allowance for “verbal shorthand” in expressing an idea. The US constitution speaks of “a more perfect union” which is also an impossibility, since something can only be perfect, not “more” perfect.
What I actually mean is that “the dictates of logic and the guiding principle of Occam’s Razor would lead us to prefer the idea of an uncreated universe over the idea of a created universe created by an uncreated God.”
(By the way, Randy, since you are new here, watch what happens now that I have explained in greater detail what I meant by “more logical”. At least a couple of people (you know who you are) will jump on me claiming that I am being “tied into rhetorical knots” and that I am “squirming and twisting” out of my original position. This is a common technique here on the SD boards. Nit-pick some detail of the language used, and then when the person explains what they meant, accuse them of shifting their position ETC. ETC.)
To my basic postion, I have added the secondary observation that the existence of the material universe is self-evident, whereas the existence of God is not, is the object of considerable doubt and cotroversy, and has never been logically proven. Even people of religion who claim that their belief in God is not illogical will nonetheless admit that their belief is really founded on faith.
I have yet to meet anyone who says that their belief in the existence of the material universe is a matter of faith.
This is not a third hypothesis, but rather a minor variation on the second hypothesis. Instead of Jesus duping people about His divinity, you now have someone else choosing to dupe people about His divinity. But you still have the problem of an infinite chain of dupings that originates without any real basis and somehow grows to fool billions of people. That still carries all the logical contradictions that I already listed in my first post.
(It also carries an additional logical contradiction. You says the Gospels were written “many, many years” after Jesus died. They were written at most forty years after He died, maybe less, and it’s a bit of a stretch to call that “many, many years”. Moreover, forty years is not an adequate time span in which to create a whole new mythology and transform a man into a God. Think about well-known people who died about forty years ago. Does anyone say that JFK is the one true son of God? Does anyone claim that Martin Luther King was born of a virgin? Does anyone believe that Elvis saved the entire human race from damnation? The idea that somebody could invent such myths and popularize them in such a short time span is laughable.)
Answering your questions in order, yes, no, and no. You claim that Islam “is as vigorous as ever today”, yet it isn’t. Islamic civilization enjoyed a brief flourishing after it was founded, expanding rapidly and becoming the world’s most advanced civilization. That lasted a short while, and then Islam sank into decay. It has never risen. Saying that Islam “is as vigorous as ever today” is like saying the Chicago Cubs are “as victorious as ever today”; the Cubs are notable only for their lack of victories and Islam only for its lack of vigor.
I’m frankly unsure what you’re referencing here; obviously being an intellectually honest atheist, you would not write about Islam unless you had a strong working knowledge of its teachings and history. Hence you know that Islam is not an entirely separate religion from Christianity, but rather a mutation and oversimplification of Christianity. As distorted as the final product is, the core morals of Christianity are all there: individualism, pragmatism, equality, self-discipline. Hence it’s no surprise that when Mohammed came preaching, the people of the Arab world preferred his message to the philosophy of the decaying Persian Empire. It’s also no surprise that the primitive tribes of Central Asia and North Africa readily accepted his message. The only place where Islam was unable to conquer was the place that had a superior religion: Christian Europe. To say that Islam was a “campaign of mass deception” is absurd. It was a campaign a mass truth, but highly selective truth with important parts left out. It was perfect for recruiting Jihadis, not so good for building stable societies that would last for the long haul. For that one needs Christianity.
As for your assertion that Islam “triumphed over rival belief systems that were far more violent”, I have no earthly clue what you’re talking about. Back in the seventh century there wasn’t anybody more violent than Islam. One might point to later moments in history, such as Berbers and the Egyptian Army confronting Tamerlane and the Mongols at the end of the thirteenth century; maybe that would be a matchup between equal levels of savagery. I certainly can’t think of any instance of Islam defeating someone who was more violent. What were you thinking of?
(If you’re willing to lay aside secular principles long enough to indulge in the old, theistic process of reading a book, try The Great Heresies, by Hilaire Belloc. It tackles the history of Christianity and Islam better than any other work I’ve ever read.)
The Roman Emperors were deified. Alexander was descended from gods. Perhaps those who called Jesus the son of God believed it, and convinced themselves of it? After all, wouldn’t he be at least as powerful as the emperor, and thus have to be divine? After all, what is the trinity except the attempt to combine a second god with monotheism? Of course it might be an intentional method of making people listen to the message, justified by the belief that it was necessary for salvation.
Oddly enough, it spread to Indonesia long after this “decay” you mention.
Islamic states have lasted, what, 1300 years? No stability there. :rolleyes:
I don’t know what he was thinking of, but I’d call the Crusaders more violent. I’m not aware of Islamic armies sacking their own cities on the way to battle. As for conquering Christian Europe, you seem to forget about Spain and much of the Balkans. I think Constantinople might count also. The notion that battles depend on the religious faith of the participants is so, well, medieval. Do you really block out all history at odds with your relgious preconceptions?
Islamic experts might correct me, but I thought Mohammed was far more familiar with Judaism than he was with Christianity. I’ve always read that Islam is far more like an offshoot of Judaism and parallel to Christianity than an offshoot of Christianity. There were of course many other influences. Anyone know?
Of course, on the other side, we have the posters (you know who you are) who persistently throw out sloppy, broad brush claims of truth that do not stand up to the most cursory analysis, lacking both internal logic or a grounding in actual, as opposed to peceived, facts, who will insist that they are right depsite the poor quality of their arguments and insist that they are being picked on or hounded simply because their beliefs are not popular (which is really humorous when it turns out that their fiercest critics are on the same side of the philosophical line and just wanrt them to shut up and stop making “their side” look bad).
However, the evidence today strongly suggests that this is not going to happen, and that the universe, propelled by dark energy, will expand forever. The “steady Bang” as Arthur C. Clarke called it, is appealing, but it doesn’t seem to be true.
I’m sorry, but this is as odd a retelling of history as I have encountered in a while. While Islam clearly owes part of its beliefs to both Christianity and Judaism, the idea that it is little more than a bowdlerized Christianity makes no sense, given that it more closely resembles Judaism than Christianity. Claims that “individualism, pragmatism, equality, self-discipline” are, somehow, “Christian” traits are without foundation. Mohammed never ventured into Persia (which had little contact with the birthplace of Islam as those lands were more breakaway states from the Byzantine empire than the Persian. (Islam reached Persia in its second generation.) There is also a bit of unsupportable disdain for the “primitive tribes” of Central Asia and North Africa, given that many of the North Africans were, in fact, Christian and that the use of “primitive tribes” reflects an older, untenable view of peoples that is more reflective of 19th century ethnology than 21st century anthropology.
Given that the Ottoman and Mogul empires lasted about as long as similar Christian empires (until overthrown by European intervention, just as the (South)Western Roman and Eastern Byzantine empires fell to Islam, previously), any claim that “stable societies” require Christianty are simply laughable. (China certainly never required Christianity.)
Perhaps I misinterpreting your post, but I see no comparison here. A Roman Emperor had both the means and motive to set himself up as a divinity. Being an Emperor, he wants as much supplication from his subjects as possible; there’s the motive. Being an emperor he has substantial control over the distribution of information, and the ability to silence skeptics by force. It makes perfect sense that a Roman Emperor would try to pose as a god. But, notably, none of these would-be gods had a following that outlasted their lives, or at least not be very long.
On the other hand, if you’re a carpenter and wandering preacher from a small town in an insignificant vassal state on the fringes of the Roman Empire, you have neither means nor motive. Your only means of communication is speaking, which isn’t terribly effective unless your a one-in-a-million speaker. As for motive, claiming godliness is more likely to get you crucified by the Romans than to win you earthly power. Or if you think that Jesus never made such a claim, then whoever did start the claim also lacked a goods means for spreading it and also faced considerable danger from making that claim.
Which Islamic state, exactly, has been stable for 1,300 years?
I have not forgotten about Spain. Let me try to clarify my argument. Islam, once founded, expanded in all directions, and was successful everywhere except one place. That one place was the Christian world. Muslims armies attacked into Asia Minor and France, and both were repulsed. Hence Christian civilization must have had something going for it that the other civilizations crushed by Islam did not have. Specifically it had a strong society and a strong faith that gave its people the power to fight back. The fact that Islam captured a small corner of Europe for a short time does not defeat the argument.
Ahem. Here we go (the proofs are from the Summa Theologiae, Part 1, Question 2 , Article 3) :
He jumps from “first mover” to “God”. Isn’t that a little hasty? Maybe I think that the first mover was the universe itself. St. Thomas does not address any other candidates for what this first mover must be. That to me is not philosophically sound. In other words, that there is a first mover may be philosophically demonstrated here, but that is a far cry from God himself.
Same as above. He demonstrates the necessity of a first cause, but leaves out all the steps between that and God. The universe itself may have been the first cause.
Again, something may have been necessary, but St. Thomas just assumes that it is God. Maybe, perhaps, it is the universe itself?
This is just not true. There is, for example, a “coldest temperature” i.e., absolute zero, but there is no hottest temperature. It is not the case that fire is the cause of everything that is hot (nor, indeed, that it is “the hottest thing”). St. Thomas also assumes here that there is an independent, objective definition for “good”, of which God is the ultimate “goodness”. I would say “good” differs from person to person, and therefore it is not possible to have an “ultimate good” that anybody could agree on.
There is no goal. St. Thomas posits that “natural bodies work toward an end”, but does not show that this is the case. I feel most people would disagree with that assumption these days. Just because things behave the same way consistently is not evidence for a God. There are rules that the objects in our universe obey. It’s called physics.
You’ll also note that most of these “proofs” rely on our own ignorance of infinity or our ignorance in some other way (for example the nature of “good”). I don’t necessarily think it is impossible that there was an infinite regress of causes or movement, etc., but even if you accept that for the moment, these proofs do not convincingly prove anything to anyone who hasn’t already accepted their conclusions.
I’d like to add that I don’t think logic alone can be used to come to any meaningful conclusions about the universe. We tried that for thousands of years and came up empty handed. Logic is certainly useful, but we have to have assumptions to base our logic on. The only way we can be confident in our assumptions is through evidence and science. Unfortunately I think science is a long way from being any help in the god debate. (God’s existence, anyway. It certainly has been enormously useful in freeing us from the superstitions that gods and demons and angels control nature on a day to day basis. )
That said, do you have anymore “proofs” of god you’d like to try out?
Personally, the only reasons for believing in god(s) that I think are valid are these:
It makes me feel good.
Personal revelation. (Obviously you can’t convince people of this one.)
Any other justifications and I think you’re just lying to yourself. Science and philosophy are no help either way. You either believe it because it makes you feel good, or you believe it because you had some mystical experience you can’t explain to yourself. Other than that, if there is no reason to believe something, I don’t believe in it. Of course, that doesn’t make it not true, it just means there is no reason to believe it. Kind of like fairies.
Actually – and I hope this isn’t too much of a hijack – Occam’s Razor works very well for some lines of work. Police investigators, for instance, use it to great benefit, though they state it a little differently: The best answer to “what happened?” is usually the most logical answer, and the most logical is almost always the simplest. It prevents investigators from chasing off after complex solutions when simple ones will solve the case and get the conviction.
Actually, that was rather my point. Occam’s Razor is not a very good tool to determine the truth of something - but it’s an excellent tool for guiding our study, since it allows us to (possibly temporarily) forget about the loopy, unbelieveable yet potentially correct reasons. It stops us treating all theories as the same and so getting bogged down when we could look at the easier ones.
And yes, i’m sure what happened is often the most logical or simple answer - but what makes it logical or simple is the evidence.
