No, I looked around me and saw no evidence that one did.
Not really.
No.
I find that strange.
Yes. In this case, absence of evidence.
No. I need evidence to believe that something does exist, not that it doesn’t. That something (gods, angels, pink unicorns, and also more commonly accepted things like beer, dogs and a nice little pub I went to in Prague once) doesn’t exist is the default assumption, which is changed upon confrontation with sufficient evidence. For gods, angels and pink unicorns I haven’t seen any yet. I have, however, seen beer, heard of beer, drunk beer, seen beer being drunk. I have also seen dogs, read about dogs, heard of dogs, wrestled with dogs, played with dogs. And as for the pub in Prague, I was there.
It is of course possible that beer doesn’t exist, that dogs don’t exist, and that the pub in Prague never did. I just see that as less likely than the alternative.
Why can’t there be a “wind it up and watch it go” Creator? A Creator that sets the universe up in its very early state - small, dense, way too hot for even hydrogen atoms to have appeared, and then kicks back and spectates? Watches the whole thing unfold - expansion, hydrogen formation, stellar formation, fusion to heavier elements, novae, supernovae, heavy-element planets, complex chemistry, self-replicating molecules, the first cells, evolution, intelligence, apes that are too clever by half; - and doesn’t intervene? Are we supposed to be able to extropolate from the current state of the universe that if a creator had been involved waaaay back then, things would look different now?
Put another way, is there a difference between an avalanche started by a thrown snowball and one started by a gust of wind?
I disagree, why should it be the default assumption? It is the default assumption for you, because someone, something, convinced you it should be. But again we come to the question of evidence, or proof. I have the proof I need, but would that same proof convince you?
Do you believe that rrggldhdxvw exists? If not, did you spontaneously decide that no rrggldhdxvw exists? Did an argument or theory convice you that rrggldhdxvw doesn’t exist?
There’s no reason there can’t be such a creator, but what reason would you have to believe there is? If we’re going to blindly speculate on what might exist in other realms which are completely disconnected from ours, then the universe might be a ball in the mouth of a giant space dog, and the dog is owned by the Jolly Green Space Giant, who goes to Space Giant University with 6000 other space giants. Or the universe might be a seed in a giant space tomato in Space Giant Farmer John’s field. How does that help us understand anything better?
Well, the pragmatic answer is because if we go around assuming that everything imaginable exists, our lives would become extremely complicated. We would quickly succumb to apathetic convulsions as we realized that any actions would cause us to be burned alive by horrific demons, as well as skewered by red-hot spears, as well as slowly eaten by Hungarian quarrydogs, and so forth. Oh, and inaction would cause the same things to happen, as we assume that Hungarian quarrydogs who slowly eat people who don’t do anything exist as well. That way lies madness.
Not only that, but if you stop and think for a while, I think you’ll find that you agree with me. You do not believe in, say, winged reptile rhinos who play the harp expertly. That’s because you assume they don’t exist and will continue to do so until you’ve seen enough evidence that they do.
Good answer, but this still presupposes that we can say something about the nature of the Creator. In the avalanche example, we’ve seen avalanches, we’ve seen gusts of wind, and we’ve seen snowballs. But we’ve only seen this universe, and it either is or isn’t created by an intelligence or agency. There is no way to determine, using your method, whether it was or wasn’t.
William of Ockham wrote, “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate,” which is best translated into English as “Plurality should not be posited without necessity.” I don’t see how you go from that to “God is not necessary and therefore doesn’t exist.”
If you’re going to go with the bastardized version so often touted as “the simplest explanation tends to be the simplest”, then suppose you write possible explanations for the creation, assuming a creator and assuming no creator. I think the argument “God made it” is, strictly speaking, simpler than most explanations that either preclude or just don’t include a creator.
There seems to be two different arguements here. If someone believes the Bible is for the most part historically accurate even in the face of evidence to the contrary then for me thats chooseing tradition over the truth.
On the other hand even though I don’t embrace the story of Noah or the parting of the red sea, I do beleive in the possibility of miraculous events defined as an event outside the commonly accepted natural law.
I think it is completely logical that the definition of God would change over generations. If an individuals concept of God changes as they learn and grow then why wouldn’t that be refelcted in society. Especially in a culture where literacy increased. Individual growth would begin to influence the overall concept over generations.
Personnally I think we all have a direct line to God but it’s not like a light switch we can just turn on or that God flips on at a whim. We have to choose to listen, and that means giveing up some preconcieved ideas, religous and otherwise.
I don’t see how “Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler” implies that God doesn’t exist. Besides, I’m pretty sure Einstein was a deist.
I didn’t say you could, that’s why I specified the gorilla behind me. Read the thread again and you’ll see that I was addressing two myths (not your position specifically): that “you can’t disprove things” and that “you can’t prove a negative”.
Your position, and mine, is that neither “There exists no x (such that x has property P of “observability”) for all space and time” nor “There exists no x (such that x has no property P of “observability”) for any space and time” are provable. These statements are not by any means equivalent to “You can’t disprove things” or “You can’t prove a negative”.
I’ll grant there is some difference in the final configuration of the avalanche whether you have the computational power or not, but is it detectable? Can you gather enough precise information about the avalanche to do the computation, even if you had unlimited computing power? Do you claim information cannot be destroyed? Do you claim measurements are perfectly precise?
What about next summer after the snow has melted - could you tell from the river flow and erosion patterns that last winter’s avalanche was started by a snowball? (And yes, I grant that somewhere there WILL be some tiny differences in landscape resulting from a snowball/wind avalanche, but I claim they will be lost in the noise of any measurements you would care to make.)
We have to extrapolate our observations back a hell of a long way to get an impression of the early universe, and there are disagreements about the implications of what we see. I contend that it is possible to have a non-intervening Creator who simply cannot be proven/disproven, because there is no discernable difference between a non-created Universe and one generated by such an entity.
If you’re right, a Creator would have to have fiddled about with the Universe enough to leave his fingerprints on it. You are claiming that in the absence of such fingerprints, a Creator would be disproven. I don’t disagree with the argument, but with the premise. I’m also not sure you can prove the absence of any such fingerprints, unless you know where some MUST have been left if a Creator had been at work.
On the other hand, since a non-intervening Creator is not discernably different from no Creator at all, I would take the “absence of fingerprints” as proof enough that I don’t have to worry about it. Vengeful, lightning-bolts and hellfire Creators are a concern but are provable; invisible, insubstantial do-nothing Creators are not provable but are also irrelevant.
When I use the phrase, and when I’ve seen it used, it is shorthand for “you can’t prove a negative as it pertains to this discussion”, as in, för this discussion, “you can’t prove God doesn’t exist anywhere anywhen”. I admit it’s sloppy. OK?
