Michael Jordan exists – I saw him on TV yesterday, looking sad because the team he co-owns just had the worst season of any NBA team ever, percentage-wise.
I started a thread of my own to discuss what atheists think, and why. The nice part is that I don’t think it’ll be possible to hijack that thread with strawmen views about atheists.
All things are possible to him who has faith.
Preach it, Brother!
Um…I mean…nevermind.
No I’ve sighted several credible physicists who claim to believe in God. Neils Bohr, Michio Kaku are two very prominent and credible physicisits who claimed to believe in God. I suppose I could compile a list of every famous physicist who believe in God. If that will help.
Why not just produce a survey of them?
It wouldn’t help, but the real problem is that it wouldn’t support your contention.
I said rare, not non-existent. I even remarked that they were notable (for their rarity). A list of physicist believers only shows that such a group is not a null set. I am well aware of Polkinghorne, Barbour, and a few others.
Now, let’s see a survey of all physicists showing what percentage are actually theists. This poll that I have found shows fewer than 10% of physicists and astronomers believing in a god.
Care to elaborate? It makes a lot of sense to me and it’s something other scientists and philosophers have proposed before.
Can you put it in some kind of understandable English? What does it mean for the metaverse to be “basically some sort of infinite mathematical wave function?” It looks to me like this is some standard infinite-possibility philosophical stuff with math terms thrown in to make it sound like science.
In Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond spoke of proximate and IIRC ultimate causes. As defined by Thomas Aquinis, G-d represents the causal substrate of the world. It’s not necessarily temporal and indeed I find it easier to think of it as non-temporal. Now this doesn’t tell us the nature of G-d: the causal chain could be finite, but it could also be infinite. But I find it hard to imagine that it is neither finite, nor infinite. So G-d exists.
Sincere thanks for the link; you may have provided it a few months ago, but I couldn’t recall it.
I’m having difficulty locating Russell’s killer refutation, but I must confess that my philosophical skills are strictly introductory. Seriously. I’ll dive in anyway: Bertrand Russell: Well, that’s always assuming that not only every particular thing in the world, but the world as a whole must have a cause. For that assumption I see no ground whatever. If you’ll give me a ground I will listen to it. That’s an interesting observation, and I think I agree. I can imagine the universe having a cause. But I can also imagine a universe without a cause (possibly), just as I can imagine a curved line without a beginning (a circle). But I can’t see how any part of the universe could have a causal substrate that is neither infinite nor finite. Maybe there’s a probabilistic angle that I’m not considering. I don’t know. Or maybe there are differing types of infinite regress. I doubt whether nontrivial or ultimate causes circle around to meet each other though, as I see no evidence for that.
I’ll leave the final rebuttal to Russell: First, as to the metaphysical argument: I don’t admit the connotations of such a term as “contingent” or the possibility of explanation in Father Copleston’s sense. I think the word “contingent” inevitably suggests the possibility of something that wouldn’t have this what you might call accidental character of just being there, and I don’t think is true except in the purely causal sense. You can sometimes give a causal explanation of one thing as being the effect of something else, but that is merely referring one thing to another thing and there’s no – to my mind – explanation in Father Copleston’s sense of anything at all, nor is there any meaning in calling things “contingent” because there isn’t anything else they could be. Elsewhere, Russell qualifies that entities can be useful and meaningless at the same time: the definite articles “the” and “a” were examples. Somewhat clearer, perhaps: The difficulty of this argument is that I don’t admit the idea of a Necessary Being and I don’t admit that there is any particular meaning in calling other beings “contingent.” These phrases don’t for me have a significance except within a logic that I reject. I can’t see the problem of simply marking out different locations on the causal chain. Now I might question Father Copleston about the coherence or known characteristics of this ultimate entity. But that’s a different line of attack, as it were.
I like to think of ‘science’ as a process and ‘a science’ or ‘sciences’ as fields of study. Which did you mean?
But otherwise, I see what you are saying. It’s a high level abstract theory, so it can be difficult to quantify in real world terms.
I will try to cater to your background. What level are you at in math and physics? Are you familiar with wave functions, fractals, or information theory?
I’m not certain what various mysteries or contradictions you are referring to. But if you are alluding to the fine tuning problem, you might want to visit the 2010 thread, Paul Davies enumerates all possible explanations of the fine tuning debate (Anthropic Principle) Included for completeness:
There’s an analogous argument that advances in processing power will make realistic virtual reality a certainty. In fact there will be lots of virtual worlds. In fact there will be so many virtual worlds, that this is probably one of them. We discussed this hypothesis in 2003 (and found it wanting in some ways, as is typically the case): http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-226502.html
Do we live under monotheistic or polytheistic circumstances? The choices as I see it are
- One g-d,
- Many gods,
- Many gods, but they are One,
- Neither one g-d nor many gods.
I’m inclined to emphasize options 2 or 3. Permit me to work through a couple of examples. Common sense says mathematics is created, though I understand most mathematicians assume it is discovered. When I consider a fractile, say the ever popular Mandelbrot set, the idea that it could have been invented seems absurd, for nobody can hold the entity in their head: it is infinite after all.
But if it was discovered, what the heck is it? It obviously has no mass and isn’t directly observable in nature, right? And although there is the concept of the Mandelbrot set, that is something different than the Mandelbrot set itself. More generally math seems to play some deep function in reality, for reasons that are unclear. Under most circumstances it’s wise to blow the question off and say, “It’s just a model.” But here I might hypothesize that math plays a key role in the causal substrate and is therefore an aspect of divinity, at least as defined by Thomas Aquinas.
Human rights are another god. For Fang Lizhi[sup]1[/sup] human rights concepts grew out of science: 1. “Science begins with doubt,” whereas in Mao’s China students were taught to begin with fixed beliefs.
2. Science stresses independence of judgment, not conformity to the judgment of others.
3. “Science is egalitarian”; no one’s subjective view starts ahead of anyone else’s in the pursuit of objective truth.
4. Science needs a free flow of information, and cannot thrive in a system that restricts access to information.
5. Scientific truths, like human rights principles, are universal; they do not change when one crosses a political border. Again, human rights are something that lack mass, but are they a mere concept? They are peculiar to sentient entities and arguably play a causal role in human history. Or not: some members of the KGB seemed to think that they were mere conceptual effluvia. At times, some American conservatives and advocates of realpolitik have had similar attitudes.
Finally, I suppose any human motivation could be a god, if it has causal properties. Unless Aquinas’ definition demands that ultimate causes must encompass the natural world outside of human endeavor as well. Then there will be fewer gods or fewer aspects of one g-d.
[sup]1[/sup] Chinese astrophysicist and human rights campaigner, (1936-2012). RIP
Assuming that gods actually existed, it seems more logical for there to be many gods rather than one. If one god can come into being/always have existed, why not many? Why would some god-spawning process stop with one?
Edited to numbered points by me.
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I meant more the sort of logical paradoxes that arise when you try to make sense of such abstract concepts as “existing”, “before time”, “god”, etc.
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Yes, very analogous. And I think there’s a pretty good argument that we do live in a simulation, but the kind we live in is advanced enough that there’s no longer much of a meaningful distinction in calling it one. Are there specific points you want me to address, and should I do so here or the other thread?
Or just mistaken, or looking at events through the filter of thier preconcieved notions. Everyone, has their personal bias to some dgree. They interpret the world and events through the filter of what they believe to be true, and what they want to be true. Someone can be completely sincere about what they believe, but that doesn’t make it solid evidence.
When I was a Christian , and even after I left the church I attended I had several profound experiences., which is why I still tend to believe that there is something beyond this physical life that we have yet to understand. I admit I don’t know and can’t know, and that those experiences I had have other explanations besides, “God”
Joining a church at 19 or 20, gave my life purpose and direction that I didn’t have at the time. I interpreted it as God leading me. I accpeted the beliefs of the denomination I joined because they would good people and believed that was where God wanted me to be. I believed the stories of miricles and astounding spiritual events that were shared. Now, decades later, I can see and understand that I embraced a lot of things because of where I was emotionally at the time. I wanted to belong and to believe and have a mission , a purpose, a higher calling. I wanted my life to be meaningful to myself and others and at that time , Christianity provided those things. Years later when I began to ask and look for answers to questions that challanged those traditional beliefs I gradually and reluctantly left certain traditions and beliefs behind me.
While it’s certainly possible he’s embellishing the story, him being a liar is not the only possibility. MAny people talk of personal experiences through the lens of thier preconceved notions, and their emotional desires.
I used to run sound at a charasmatic church where people babbled in tongues and were smacked in the head and fell to the floor overcome by the holy spirit. They sincerely believed that’s what was happening, but it’s hardly evidence.
People emotions and subconscious are very powerful and there are other possible explanations.
Generally speaking, this sounds reasonable. But in this thread, I’m riffing off of Cecil’s interpretation of Thomas Aquinas. In that context, I think the spawning-process would be defined as G-d, and the results -math, human rights and the like- would be His minions. Only if there were different spawning processes that themselves were uncaused would there be multiple gods. Much of this is a matter of definition. (ETA: Yes the definition here differs than the one I used in post 494.)
Thanks for your reply. If you have an argument for a multiverse that was not put forth in the 2010 Paul Davies thread, I would be interested in reading it there. I may not reply though, as my knowledge on the subject is tapped out. But I will read it with interest. (If it was argued there, then I guess I see where you’re coming from. Though admittedly I’m not sufficiently familiar with wave functions.)
Nicely said and I echo a lot of your sentiments. I still use the Catholic Church as my vehicle for the journey as there is plenty of wriggle room for my own beliefs. Some people have said “well you’re not a true Christian, so leave” [BTW this tends to be atheists who say this] but why chuck out 2000 years of debate and study?