That statement would seem to contradict the properties typically ascribed to god.
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peas on earth
Oh, absolutely correct. I know that I, myself, would never want to run for God. Being God is just like every other executive position in existance, only infinitely worse. The people who work under you are incompetant and ungrateful, and they resent your authority to the point where they either try to usurp you, or else they claim that you don’t exist and ignore your directives. Not only do your consituents expect you to do everything, both they and the stockholders hold you responsible for everything that goes wrong. Furthermore, they’re constantly demanding to talk to you day and night, and on Sunday mornings when you’d rather sleep in, they all come to your house, sit down, and start to sing—real loudly, and off-key. You never get any days off, and there is no holiday pay; in fact, you’re actually expected to work harder on holidays, when everybody else gets them off. And if you think unions here are bad, believe me, Local 666 has caused the downfall of more than one guy who tried to fill the Big Chair. And besides, remember what happened to the last guy who ran for this office??? Take my advice and resign immediately if you’re ever elected…you’ll sleep much better at night knowing that the responsibility is not yours.
bullfighter:
Of course it is. I’ve never said otherwise.
Chaim Mattis Keller
cmkeller wrote:
Incorrect. A quantum mechanical phenomenon called “vacuum fluctuation” CAN create matter out of nothing, provided that the product of the mass-energy and the duration is less than Planck’s constant.
Cosmological physicists such as Stephen Hawking have determined – or think they have determined – that under certain really weird circumstances, matter created by vacuum fluctuation can be made to last a lot longer. In their view, the big bang which started our whole universe going may have been nothing more than one great bug vacuum fluctuation.
I’m not flying fast, just orbiting low.
BIG! I meant great BIG vacuum fluctuation! A great “bug” vacuum fluctuation would be one that caused the spontaneous creation of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Oh, and while I’m at it, vacuum fluctuation is the mechanism behind so-called “zero-point energy.”
How has this thread progressed this far without mention of the famous quote: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him.”
'Nuff said?
tracer:
I thought that those fluctuations could only create sets of opposing particles (i.e., one natter, one anti-matter) which would annihilate one another instantly.
Or did I misunderstand?
As far as the Hawking theory goes, I have a serious problem with it. Under “really wierd circumstances…” If there’s truly nothing in existence (and that’s what we’re talking about, right?) what “circumstance” is there?
Chaim Mattis Keller
Quixotic mentions the famous quote, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him.”
I never really understood that quote. Its meaning, it seems to me, is that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to pretend that he does exist.” That never made sense to me; it puts God right up there with Santa Claus and Washington’s Cherry Tree. If God didn’t exist, society would manage with various governments and laws. Am I missing something?
bullfighter, you mentioned:
“The idea that God could violate this law because he is not physical is just an assumption by those who believe in God and not anything that has ever been observed.”
Do you believe then that the only truth is what has been quantified? I can’t believe that’s the point you’re trying to make–I think anyone would agree that science doesn’t have all the answers.
I think a bigger question would be, “CAN humankind know everything?” Is there an upper limit to what we can know about the universe?
Many religious types will claim that only Ghod can know all, while humanists and science folks will tend to believe that humans can learn all there is to learn.
Show of hands?
-andros-
There’s always a bigger fish.
I was under the impression that Godel (umlaut on the O, but I’m not going to try to do one) had demonstrated that there were limits to human knowledge mathematically. Not to mention the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
The “If God did not exist…” quote always links itself in my mind with Voltaire’s “If Satan became God, he would find it necessary to clothe himself with the attributes of divinity.” (Of which we have an example on this board!) 
Keeves said:
Yes – the whole point of the quote. 
Basically, I suspect that whoever said it recognizes that humans have a tendency to make up supernatural explanations for things they do not understand.
Thus were the gods born. And, as some of us think, thus was the God you believe in born as well.
So some of us might modify the quote to, “Because God does not exist, it was necessary for man to invent him.”
Or “Man creates God in his own image”?
I’ll go along with that to a certain degree. Everyone’s concept of God (whether accepted or rejected) is based on his own environment, personality, upbringing, hopes, fears, etc.
The bottom line, to me, is, Do we have this need to perceive God from our own necessity to find something to believe in, or Do we have this need to perceive God because there is a real God who is pushing us to perceive him?
Obviously, there we differ among ourselves. But I think it’s helpful for those of us on the religious side of the debate to notice the fact that our image of God is largely created by our own wants and needs. And it’s helpful for those on the other side of the debate to take note of a potential to go post hoc ergo propter hoc. For many atheists (not necessarily any of our posters, though if the shoe fits…) the fear of being accountable to a real God is a strong incentive to reject the idea, just as the wish-formation concept is a strong incentive for religionists. Scary thoughts, either way.
And indeed, we know that man does invent gods and subsequently believe in them, even rationalizing that all sorts of things constitute “evidence” for said god or gods. So given some arbitrary god (say, the christian one), it seems absurd to reject the mundane explanation (“we made it up”), without a single shred of evidence to the contrary.
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peas on earth
andros:
I agree that science doesn’t have all the answers and that humankind will never know everything. Not only is there the Godel proof in mathematics but there is the uncertainty principle in physics that implies it is impossible to predict some future events. Even without these, some situations are so complex that science may never be able so solve them fully (human psychology might be like this).
On the other hand, I don’t know of any ways that people can know things reliably if science CANNOT address those questions. I have heard people talk about “other ways of knowing”. I don’t know of any that work. We cannot guarantee something is true because somebody says so. We can’t depend on the fact that a belief gives us a good feeling. I think it is extremely unwise to believe someone who claims to have a revelation from God. If that person can back up his or her claims by parting the sea or turning staves into serpents or making accurate prophesies we might have valid reason for believing, but then the question becomes one that can be tested by scientific means.
Basically, there are things that science can’t know, but if science can’t know it, neither can we.
It ain’t what a man don’t know that makes him a fool, but what he knows that ain’t so.
- Josh Billings