The question really isn’t whether or not you should reject the possibility-it’s whether or not you should seriously entertain the possibility. If you want to get meta enough, you could spend your lifetime entertaining all the different possibilities as to what might jump out from under your bed if you dare to get up…but life is too short to be wasting time contemplating possibilities for which no evidence has come forth.
Like I said, I don’t see any justification to consider it an unlikely prospect either. My own experience tells me that “created” vs “not created” is an important question. I don’t see my own experience as being particularly helpful here, and I suspect that this may be an important issue when considering the prevalence of theistic belief, but I certainly don’t have any other experience to replace that with.
I’m right with you on the conclusion that it may not be appropriate to seriously entertain the prospect that the universe is a space alien. On what basis though do you conclude that it is not appropriate to even entertain the prospect that the universe has been created?
Because that explanation immediately raises the question “Who created the creator?” At some point there must be an uncaused cause. *Something *had to spontaneously spring into existence. We know the universe exists. We don’t know that gods exist. So if something has to spring spontaneously into existence, it’s more plausible to say the universe did.
I don’t reject the possibility entirely. I just put it in the some category as sock gnomes.
There are an infinite number of unsupported hypotheticals and human life is finite.
Do you also spend time contemplating the invisible unicorn in your garage? You know, he’s a very wise unicorn and has the capacity to bring about an earthly utopia if enough people believe in him.
A “creator” is a total non-starter because it’s regressive. It doesn’t explain anything. It just unnecessarily adds another thing that needs to be explained.
But maybe there isn’t a first cause.
Maybe the universe has always existed.
Forever expanding and then collapsing in upon itself again, until another Big Bang occurs.
You seem to be suggesting that all none verifiable hypotheses are equally unlikely.
It does nothing to render the hypothesis invalid either, unless you feel compelled to explain the ultimate origin of everything.
You can’t reject the hypothesis that a chair that you are sitting on has been created just because that doesn’t immediately answer all further questions. The chair was created, the answer is regressive, but it’s not forced to be infinitely regressive.
“Turtles all the way down” is silly, but it doesn’t absolutey deny the ability of turtles to stand on each other.
Based on my imperfectly applicable experience I conclude that “was the universe created?” is an important question. What the hell are you basing the conclusion that it isn’t on?
If we don’t get to use our imperfectly applicable experience, we might as well give up on the whole thing, which incidentally means that rejecting anything is just as pointless as not rejecting anything.
I actually think enigmatic is just being precise with language here. I agree that it is strictly correct to say that we can’t prove that there is no creator god or other similar being.
In practical terms though, doing that makes no difference to our daily lives, we end up with billions of conceivable fantasies and absurdities that, to be perfectly fair and accurate, we cannot say do not exist. We do, however, treat the world as if they do not exist until given good reason to do otherwise…so far? good reason is lacking.
Into that pot I lump creator beings, individual deities and santa claus.
All supernatural ones are.
The fact that it doesn’t explain anything makes it invalid as a hypothesis.
That it’s logically impossible. Any magical “creator” fairy you want to postulate has to be part of the “universe.” It’s meaningless and pointless to speculate about it.
Not at all. But a supreme being is a pretty far-fetched idea. It violates numerous fundamental physical laws. In order for a supreme being do exist, most of what we know about the universe has to be wrong. That’s a pretty big stretch. Sock gnomes are less outrageous.
But I *don’t *reject the hypothesis that the chair was created. I have a wealth of evidence that that the chair was created. I can see marks where parts of it were machined. I can go visit chair factories where other chairs are made. I believe the chair was created because I have evidence that it was.
However, I do reject the hypothesis that the chair was poofed into existence by God right before I saw it in the store. It’s *possible *that’s where the chair came from. However I have no reason to believe such an outlandish thing.
Do you believe that its possible that each piece of furniture in your house was spontaneously crafted by angels the moment before you first saw it?
There’s no evidence that it was. If it was created, like a chair, I’d expect there to be some “craftsman’s marks” like the chair has. As far as we can tell, it has none.
As I said, there are literally an infinity of unsupported hypotheses. You could spend 24 hours a day contemplating evidence-free possibilities. Critical thought is the process of rejecting the unsupportable. The fact that something is *possible *is meaningless. What matters is if that possibility has evidence back it up.
The hypothesis that someone created the chair you are sitting on is invalid because it doesn’t explain the existence of carpentry?
That’s like arguing that any magical “carpenter” you might postulate has to be part of the “chair”.
How exactly is it “logically impossible” for the universe to have been created?
I would say that we can’t prove ANY a posteriori knowledge. We can’t PROVE Barack Obama is President or that the Earth orbits the Sun. All we can do is create provisional explanations that agree with observations and correctly predict future events.
The fact that the non-existence of God can’t be proved like a mathematical theorem means nothing. If you adopt such an extreme standard for truth, you can’t make ANY claim about the nature of reality, even a fundamental one like “I am sitting in a chair right now.”
I agree, I merely concede that point in theory so that the conversation might move on. In practice, as you rightly say, allowing such an extreme position to stifle discussion gets us no-where.
There is no reason to assume that something that can create a university would be subject to it’s fundamental physical laws.
I bow to your superior and absolute knowledge of the tell tales signs of universe machining.
Critical thought, combined with my actual experience tells me that the question of deliberate construction is a more valid one to apply to an object than assertaining it’s status as an extraterrestrial or sock gnome.
Please don’t. What features of the universe do you believe imply deliberate construction?
Why? The existence of sock gnomes would be a pretty amazing revelation if true. Another sentient species sharing the planet with us! With access to magic or technology allowing them to survive undetected for so long! It would be an earth-shaking discovery, and far more relevant to our day-to-day lives that the isolated actions of a remote creator god billions of years ago.
If you think that “I am unwilling to reject the possibility that the universe was created” is an extreme position, I can only conclude you are new to this theology shit 
I have no intention to stifle debate on this stuff, I’m just somewhat bewildered at the level of vitriol people seem to direct at the suggestion we are allowed to even consider the possibility of a creator.
It’s only an extreme position if you apply a different epistemological standard to God than you do to any other hypothetical entity.
It’s not the *considering *that the problem. It’s the refusal to move past considering to *rejecting *that’s frustrating. Particularly because agnostics have no problem considering and rejecting countless other similarly unsupported (but still possible) hypotheses on a daily basis. Nobody’s agnostic about the unicorn in the garage, or the sock gnomes, or the country of Yugopotamia, or Earth’s other two moons, even though, using the standards of truth you’re proposing, these should all be propositions open to debate.
God, if defined as any type of entity involved in the hypothetically deliberate creation of an object of verified existence, to whit, the universe.
This would seem to cover a much broader range of possibilities than “I believe in sock gnomes entirely on the basis of the fact that my socks are missing”
We are going in circles here. Like I said, I am not arguing that the universe was created, I’m merely arguing that it is not appropriate to reject that possibility.
And now I’m going to bed.
You are saying that because the “God” possibility is large, it must be given more consideration than other possibilities, but this makes no sense, because it totally disregards such things as probabilities and evidence. Using this logic, I must give the possibility of the Earth having an ancient civilization living at it’s core more weight than the possibility that the beer in my refrigerator is cold, just because it’s a larger concept.