Explanatory power?
The Big Bang theory postulates a finite beginning for the universe. A finite beginning suggests an infinite Beginner.
Many people claim to have had experiences with ghosts. If ghosts exist, at least on some occasions something of the mind survives the death of the brain, for at least a certain amount of time.
This does not prove the Nicene Creed. It indicates the possibility of a Divine presence in the universe.
Guess what percentage of ghosts would be human:
I’m not seeing it, to be honest.
The multiverse theory offers an explanation of how this particular universe, with finely-balanced characteristics apt for the evolution of life - our life - comes to be. It suggests that a great many universes, or even all possible universes, come to be, and therefore the fact that this universe has come to be is not especially suprising.
But it does nothing to address the wider question; why does anything exist, as opposed to nothing existing, which looks like a perfectly feasible state of affairs? Why do there exist conditions, circumstances, laws or what you will whose operation brings into being a multiplicity of universes? If there is a multiverse, why is there a multiverse? And I don’t see that the multiverse theory has any more explanatory power than deism when it comes to that question.
Deism, in fact, seems the more attractive position. There is a universe; we don’t have to postulate that. Deism simply observes that the universe exists, and postulates an account of why it exists. Multiverse theory, by contrast, has to postulate that the multiverse exists, and is then unable to offer any postulate as to why it exists, if indded it does. It seems to me to offend against the Ockham’s razor principle on a grand scale, and to no purpose; the postulate multiverse does not nothing to answer the question which deism seeks to answer. How is that more rational than deism?
I should get the obligatory IANAPhysicist/Cosmologist thing out of the way – I am certainly in no position to judge if multiversism is a reasonable model or if it is merely pseudoscience.
Still, it seems to me that the multiverse has been held to explain a number of phenomena besides the apparent and highly unlikely “fine-tuning” of “our” universe to which you refer.
Perhaps you are right that it goes no way to explaining why “anything exists” (I don’t believe that anyone has offered the multiverse as an explanation for the “first cause” existence of anything, have they? It’s a “tool” for a particular job*), but positing a creating deity goes no further (unless deities get a free-pass on the “things must have a reason to exist” requirement).
- “Look this hammer you sold me is really not very good at cutting wood”
[quote=“The_Great_Unwashed, post:25, topic:695712”]
Perhaps you are right that it goes no way to explaining why “anything exists” (I don’t believe that anyone has offered the multiverse as an explanation for the “first cause” existence of anything, have they? It’s a “tool” for a particular job*), but positing a creating deity goes no further (unless deities get a free-pass on the “things must have a reason to exist” requirement).
Well, Stringbean brings it up in post #7 in this thread in a way which suggests that he sees it as weighing against the rationality of Deism. I don’t think it does weigh against the rationality of deism, though, for the reasons already given.
Yes, I don’t think positing a deity is any more successful as an account of the the existince of the universe than positing a multiverse; it’s just no less successful than the multiverse, and certainly no less rational. There is no empirical evidence at all for either hypothesis (nor would it be rational to expect any).
A deity makes for a fine placeholder for stuff we don’t know yet. The ancients performed a rain dance to bring water to their crops until irrigation came along.
Quantum machinists and general relativists speak the same exact thing because GOD ON HIGH ORDAINED IT … that will work fine until someone comes up with universal field theory.
“Look this hammer you sold me is really not very good at cutting wood” — You need to sharpen your hammer when you get it home, they’re not sold with an edge.
IFAICT the multiverse model offers no explanation as to why anything should exist at all, but you seem to suggest again that it does in this post.
I think you may have misunderstood Stringbean’s post:
Some people might say (and indeed do) that the universe is such an amazingly unlikely thing to have spontaneously arrived that there must have been a creator (whose posited existence at least explains the apparent unlikeliness).
Stringbean points out that if you adhere to the multiverse model then the apparent unlikeliness of the universe is no longer a problem.
Anyway, bottom line, you asked for a distinction between belief in a creator and multiversism, and I tentatively offered “explanatory power”, because falsifiable or not (indeed, true or not) the multiverse model offers explanations to a number of otherwise difficult-to-explain phenomena; creation by deity (to my mind) explains nothing.
Throughout history, there have been a (gradually increasing) number of questions we know the answer to, and a consistently infinite number of questions that we do not. The questions you pose currently fall in the later category. Likewise throughout history, people have wanted to posit supernatural entities as the answer to the questions we haven’t yet answeredthrough science. It was wrong then, and I see no reason to believe that’s changed.
Or, depending on how you look at it, creation by a deity explains everything. That is the problem of the “god of the gaps”; as science explains more of the universe, a diety is needed less and less to explain the remaining unknowns. Multiverse models are more rational in that they adhere to either existing or scientifically valid hypothetical natural laws. By definition, a creation deity is supernatural and is outside any laws of physics.
They’re a more rational answer to the question why a particular set of conditions favourable to live prevails in the [corner of the] universe that we observe.
But they are not a rational answer to the question of why anything at all exists, which is a question to which deism offers an answer. While the multiverse theory is “internally rational”, so to speak, it’s not rational to offer it as an alternative to deism. It isn’t, rationally, an alternative.
But there’s nothing irrational about that hypothesis.
But following the logic chain one step further gets into the absurd. If there is a God because we cannot understand how the universe started without one would presuppose a God over him who made Him and then one more on top of that etc… The opposite of turtles all the way down.
This is akin to Hindu beliefs … man is just an existence between the beasts of the fields and the gods above, who themselves have gods above and the beasts have yeasts below. Be nice or you’ll be reincarnated into a slime mold.
Following this up with a practical example: Consider the young woman with two small children and a ripped grocery sack on a busy sidewalk. It’s completely rational to help her, as all of us would. There’s no scientific reason known to do this, why do we all feel compelled to do so? Someday it might be known why, but today it’s not.
It’s still completely rational.
Why does the deity exist? There is no more reason for a deity than a universe.
We can ask how they universe exists, but there may be no reason why. It just does. It is the same as asking why did the intelligent species on earth look like us. We know how, but there is no reason why.
Of course we know why. Cooperation and assistance to others in our tribe is a good way of increasing the odds of survival. There is nothing mysterious about altruism. Especially to those helping to continue our species.
I’m not saying that a deity does exist. I’m saying that it’s not irrational to postulate a deity to account for the phenomenon of existence.
Equally, it’s not irrational to postulate that there can be no meaningful account for the phenomenon of existence. But the question addressed in this thread is not whether Deism is the only rational position on this question; just whether it is a rational position.
(Nitpick: It’s not all all the same as the question of why we appear the way we do, though. Our appearance has been shaped by the processes of evolution. We look the way we do because our physical characteristics are well-adapted to survival in our environment.)
Why is it rational to accept fairy tales as answers to anything? Given what we know about the beginning of the universe the only rational answer is “I don’t know” anything else at this point is either made up bullshit or some form of hypothesis that does not yet have the evidence to back it up.
The trouble is that we can’t prove it’s made-up bullshit. Now, yes, the inductive evidence is pretty strong. All religions are made-up. We live in an age when new religions get made up as a commonplace matter. The Mormon church, the Theosophists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Rastafari, etc.
But induction isn’t absolute proof. It could be that Zeus is a real God, with supernatural power (and lots and lots of offspring.) The possibility can never be foreclosed without any remaining doubt.
It’s rational to accept this possibility (while also assigning a tremendously small probability to it.)
It’s also rational, under the standard scientific method, to note other possibilities, such as solipsistic doubt, or that “cause and effect” aren’t real. Science takes certain things as postulates. It is always rational to footnote your postulates as such. At some point, you say, “Unless one is a ‘brain in a bottle’ or the cosmos is a ‘holodeck sim.’” Then you ignore it and move on, building particle accelerators and orbiting telescopes and doing real science.
Bzzt! Category error! The deistic proposition is metaphysical. If it is true, there will be no evidence to back it up - no observable, empirical evidence at any rate. There may be rational grounds for rejecting metaphysical positions, but “lack of evidence” is not one of them.
Consider another metaphysical proposition; that a woman has a right to choose with regard to continuing or terminating the pregnancy she is carrying, and that laws which abridge this right are unjust. (It doesn’t matter whether you think the proposition is true or not. I could have chosen any other moral proposition to illustrate this point. You just have to note that we don’t yet have “the evidence to back it up”, and we never will.)
So, is someone who affirms and asserts a woman’s right to choose “accepting a fairy tale”? Is the assertion “made-up bullshit”? Is it a hypothesis that may one day be evidenced, and that shouldn’t be accepted until it is?
If you are not comfortable saying any of these things - and most people aren’t - then that suggests that adhering to metaphysical propositions is not inherently irrational. On the other hand, dismissing them as fairy tales and rejecting them on the grounds that they are unevidenced is inherently irrational, since a moment’s thought tells us that the paucity of evidence tells us precisely nothing about their validity or otherwise.
Here you are I are going to have to disagree, The acceptance of the metaphysical/supernatural based on its inherent lack of evidence is flat out idiotic. First of all the knowledge of said supernatural being/event had to come from somewhere and would therefore be testable and have at least the possibility of observable evidence. If not then we could not even begin to know about any of the thousands of gods in human history. The second reason I find this kind of thinking idiotic is that you are opening yourself up to EVERY single supernatural claim, you are saying that every single claim ever made without evidence to back it up or the possibility of evidence appearing is rational. Unicorn farts started the big bang is now a rational claim. Papa Smurf snoring while dreaming of Debbie Gibson and having a wet dream started the big bang is now a rational explanation for the big bang. You don’t get to say that this claim over here is legit because magic but that one over there isn’t because magic. Every line of metaphysical bullshit becomes rational under this train of thinking.
Someone who affirms and asserts a womans right to choose is engaging in a moral discussion, Where is the metaphysical claim here? God made the universe is a claim, Beating children is bad is a moral statement, these things are not equivalent.
Dismissing hard claims that have no evidence is the only rational choice. Note I am not saying it is impossible that god did it. I am saying that you are dropping cash on a bet that makes the powerball look like a sure thing in comparison and then you are giving odds to boot. I for one will take those odds.