O.K.; don’t want to get too hung up on this, but that’s not what I said. The way you worded that makes it sound like a dichotomy between “created universe” and “doesn’t start with a singularity,” which is exactly the opposite of the point I’m making. You make it sound as if any tipping of the scales towards less evidence of “doesn’t start with a singularity”, would suggest “was created”. My point is that that isn’t true.
Absolutely. If some people want to believe that the universe is carried on the back of a giant turtle, that’s certainly their prerogative. But such beliefs ought to be relegated to the area of religion, or possibly philosophy, but certainly not cosmology.
Didn’t mean for a “dichotomy” with those two: rather I posit there is a dichotomy between a “created” universe and one that is not “created” inasmuch as you cannot have both be true (as far as I can tell).
I’m not sure how to respond to that. Lots of fairly suspect people have been smart, and lots of fairly great people have been perceived as crazy. I suppose what you have said could be said of almost anyone smart enough to post at Straight Dope.
I do not believe that that is the case. I post it whenever I am challenged to prove logically the existence of God. I have posted it twice unilaterally, but both times were to open threads in Great Debates. But I would like to clarify once again (I have no idea how many times this is now) that the proof does not determine that God is an ontological necessity; it determines that God is an ontological actuality.
As I recall, the proof I gave was that atoms do not exist, and in fact can not. Photographs can be optical illusions.
Well, I don’t buy into your premise. I think it is a manifold premise; that is, a premise that is loaded. The term finagling, for example, is biased. It suggests that something deceitful has been done without specifying any error. It puts the term *prove * in quotation marks — a rather Lakatosian rhetorical technique that poisons the proposition. And it makes a false statement since nothing can be shown to exist necessarily except for necessary existence.
Incidentally, Gadfly, it might be threads like this that contribute to your misperception. The record shows that I am not the one who raised the subject of the modal ontological proof. I am responding to it.
I should point out, too, that I’m a practical atheist inasmuch as I only believe in things for which we have empirical evidence.
It just doesn’t seem reasonable to me to fight on the metaphysical nature of being with someone who defines it with respect to an expression of the existence of a concept related to existence. If you are like me and are strictly empirical in your approach to “being”, then God in actuality isn’t. As such, there doesn’t seem to me to be any conflict whatsoever between religion and science as they make assumptions that are totally different to start out with.
And in fairness, I should point out that I’m a practical theist for exactly the same reason. Despite that God’s existence is logically compelling, it is my experience and observation that make it peremptory.
This thread is so far over my head that I can’t discuss the merits of it except to ask UncleBeer if Templeton were a Muslim would that relevant to dismiss his thesis as well?
The hand-stabbers won’t be satisfied until it is illegal to make fun of anyone except christians. In fact, they’d all like to outlaw christianity :rolleyes: