Most of Europe was converted under the support of the Roman government–which had conquered most of Europe, most of Africa was conquered by white people who set up governments that pressed Christianity on the populace, and all of South America was conquered by Europeans who set up governments that pressed Christianity on the populace.
And? Bearded dudes in togas is the most obvious explanation?
Where did they come from?
You can’t say that the universe needs an explanation for existence but deities don’t. Adding deities doubles the number of things we have to explain the existence of.
The argument is that everything would need to be created except a Prime Mover. Something that is not subject to the laws of physics. Everything has a cause. You keep turtling back and eventually you get to the the Initial Event in the known universe. Something caused that Initial Event. That is “God”, beard or toga optional.
So why give “god” a personality? Why not view the creation event as an act of regular physics that occurred and passed and lead to here?
Depends what you mean by “personality”. But if it’s just an act of regular physics, it was caused by something else. Eventually you need to get to a “thing” that could cause an event but could itself exist without a cause. I call that God.
You’re arguing that you need an event to create a thing, and a thing to create an event.
Why assume either? Why not assume that everything always existed? (And note that I did not say “Existed as it is now.”) Would you call an unfeeling, uncaring chemical reaction mess of universal proportions, God? Why not just call it “The Universe”? “God” implies a lot of other stuff and is an ambiguous word since most everyone intends it to mean a significantly different thing from “The Universe”, let alone between one another.
I’m simply arguing that “stuff” has to come from something else. Everything has a cause. (Unless you can point to something that doesn’t.) This is a basic principle of science. I wouldn’t call “an unfeeling, uncaring chemical reaction mess of universal proportions, God”. I’d reserve the title for that which created the chemical reaction [seeming] mess.
Why are you arguing that? And why is “God” not “stuff”? Why can’t the universe be composed of your creation-not-necessary version of stuff?
When a quantum physicist tells me that a a quantum particle has to rotate 720 degrees to make a single loop, I shrug and accept it as observable reality. It doesn’t match up with reality as I experience it in every day life, but I don’t see that what’s common in every day life has to extend to everything.
Some things might not need to be created. And heck, when have you ever experienced the creation of something? I bet everything you’ve ever experienced was an act of taking some objects and mashing them together–i.e. transformation.
You’re arguing that creation is necessary when we have no experiential evidence of the creation of anything.
How about everything?
http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.html
http://www.csicop.org/sb/2006-06/reality-check.html
No, it’s not. See, the folks from the articles above are actual scientists. Are you? I’ll stick with what they say for now, since they’re not contradicting themselves as you are. There’s no reason your “God” should get a free pass from your assertion that “stuff has to come from something else.”
I’m not sciency enough to know for sure whether this is true…but I know a logical fallacy when I see one. This is a whopper.
Because that is our experience with everything else in the universe that we know.
I attribute the term “God” to that which caused the Initial Event. And it seems to me that the concept of “stuff” must necessarily precede the actual stuff. So, God, while he may choose to manifest himself, also exists on a higher plane that gives birth to “stuff”.
It can, I guess. But then you’re putting as much faith into an unknown as I am. I’m less comfortable with matter and energy being not created as I am with them being created. To the best of my knowledge, we have no instances of either of the two being created on their own. One transforms to the other, but those are events that have causes.
I agree with that. But I am unable to suspend the logic that says that since all things we know of have causes, all things have causes. Of course, I may be wrong, but based on the evidence so far, this seems to me to be the most sensible position. I also believe that if there is an object resting on a table and I push it off, it will fall to the ground. That this might not actually be the case for some unknown object, but it is sensible to assume the as I push Object X off the table it will fall to the ground.
Some things might not need to be created. And heck, when have you ever experienced the creation of something? I bet everything you’ve ever experienced was an act of taking some objects and mashing them together–i.e. transformation.
It is believed (as per The Elegant Universe, IIRC) that the elements were created after the Big Bang, the simplest ones first. Also, we create, i.e., “cause” events all the time. We cause objects to interact with each other: whether it be a cue ball hitting an object ball or baking soda interacting with vinegar.
You’re ignoring the parentheses. They are there for a reason. It was merely an aside, not part of my proposition.
The Big Bang is a postulation of the current shape of things. “Creation” is a somewhat ambiguous term in this context. That I’m aware of, most people think that the Big Bang is something that occurs and reoccurs endlessly, like a black hole re-expanding and then collapsing again.
And even still, there is no evidence that anything was created, but rather–like Fantome notes–separated into positive and negative.
But at least I’m not positing the existence of something for which I have no evidence of. The only thing in the entire universe that we can demonstrate the seeming existance of is “everything”. It’s a safer assumption to make that “everything” has a mysterious beginning than that “everything plus one” had mysterious beginnings. Like I said, there’s already enough complexity that adding further levels of it is rather silly.
But I don’t have any particular dog in the argument. I couldn’t care less whether there was something before everything, because even if there was, there’s no reason to ascribe human characteristics and moral teachings to it.
Magellan, you are simply mistaken in your assumption that “everything needs a cause.” Moreover, your solution of positing a God to be the cause only pushes the problem back another step. If the universe needs a Creator, then, by your own logic, something had to create the creator, and something had to create THAT creator and it’s turtles all the way down.
From the cite (bolding mine): “Insights from modern physics suggest that our wondrous universe may be the ultimate free lunch…”
More important, as far as I understand it, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle speaks to the location (position) of a particle not that it is a fresh new particle that is created out of nothing or popped into nothingness. That particle is sometimes talked about as popping in from another time or place, maybe another universe. So, the notion the QM does away with the First Cause argument is weak IMO.
We’re using “nothing” in two different ways: no “stuff” vs no cause" From your cite:
In Hawking’s analogy he uses heat as a “cause”. What cause is there for these bubble universes popping into existence? I’d also ask, what is it that causes a particular bubble to appear at a particular space at a particular time?
I’m a bit skeptical about the site, but I’ll play. It seems to me that the authors is not granting even his own hypothetical. He proposes a void: “Suppose we remove all the particles and any possible non-particulate energy from some unbounded region of space. Then we have no mass, no energy, or any other physical property…”, then stipulates that this void does not in fact have zero energy:
"Stepping down the ladder you find that the bottom rung corresponding to a field of zero photons is not zero energy but rather E/2. This is called the zero-point energy.
This result is true for all bosons, particles that have zero or integral spin. On the other hand, fermions that have half-integral spin, such as the electron and quark, have a zero-point energy of -E/2 (negative energy is no problem in relativistic quantum mechanics; in fact, it is required by the simple mathematical fact that a square root has two possible signs)."
But I am not a cosmologist, so I might not be understanding the author as well as I should. I did find the article interesting and will look more into this if I can find the time.
You’re free to stick with whatever you’d like. The fact is that the First Cause argument might be correct. and if it is, God would be exempt from cause. I’m not really sure what your point is, really. Except maybe that no one who is a scientist should post in threads having to do with science.
I’m not aware that “most” people believe this, or even most scientists, though they may. I would have guessed that a multiverse/brane theory would have been the favored theory, not that there can’t be overlap.
Except if it’s right, as I believe it is. Occam can be taken too far.
I have done neither and have no interest in doing so. For all I know, or care, every conception of religion or God that man has ever had could be 100% wrong. I’d still maintain the existence of a Prime Mover.
Incorrect. The argument is that a Creator God would not be bound by the laws of the universe he created, so he needn’t be subject to its laws. In fact, you’re “turtling down” is the very argument for a Prime Mover God.
And on that note, goodnight, all.
This is no argument at all. You can’t just declare, by fiat, that your magic fairy isn’t subject to physical laws. That’s just hand waving. How could the creator NOT be subject to physical laws? You can’t just say it’s magic and run away. It doesn’t work that way.
The point is that if that the idea that people sit down and think about their belief based on any evidence is not evident. The continued existence of religion seems to rest solely on indoctrination for at least 99% of the world population.
And you’re looking at one piece of evidence, remember. I’m not talking about the 99% rule as being “proof” of the non-existence of deities. I’m saying that there are simple, boring explanations for the persistence of the beliefs in deities. There’s a simple, boring explanation for their creation, and there’s a simple, boring explanation for their spread. While not as impressive as Invisible Men in Togas, the cumulative weight of these evidences forms a pretty good proof.
If I am to ask any other person from Mars what he thinks is more likely, Invisible Men in Togas or “People made up shit and convinced their children to believe it before they could rationally question it”, I’d bet the guy from Mars would vote for option B.
If it has the power of persuading your average Martian, it’s evidence.
Now, I have no problem with people believing in their DoC. If you converted after you had studied the histories and methods of Buddhism and Sikhism and Confucianism and Zoroastrianism and everything else there is on the menu, and you’re happy with Christianity, then I’m glad for you.
But, I do find it questionable to teach your child to believe in your DoC when it can be shown that 99 times out of a hundred he would not chose it of his own.
I want the data available for exactly what evidence there is to support or not support religions or the beliefs of any particular individual religion. People should be able to make their own choices and they should have the availability of pertinent information. They shouldn’t be indoctrinated into any one belief before achieving maturity and they should presented with the full menu if they chose to look at it.
If you’re going to sell someone on a religion based on the assertion that a deity will improve their lives, that’s a false assertion. There’s no evidence that those who are religious are happier than atheists. More likely the opposite is true going from the reverse correlation of intelligence and religiosity. There’s no evidence that a deity will answer your prayers. There’s no evidence that nudity is bad. There’s no evidence that homosexuals are bad. There’s no evidence that charging interest is bad. There’s no strong evidence that getting circumcised is good. There’s no evidence that worshiping an idol is any better or worse than worshiping an invisible spirit. There’s no evidence that the Jewish people are the chosen of God. There’s no evidence that you’re going to heaven or to hell. There’s no evidence that there’s one or many deities.
Proselytizing with assertions that have no basis in reality or anything demonstrable–especially when most of those assertions can be explicitly shown to be false–is just dishonest. If someone chooses to accept those assertions, that’s their business and I don’t care. But have some self-realization about how much evidence you have to support your position when you go off proselytizing or bringing up your children.
Let people examine Buddhism and Christianity, Hinduism and Shinto. Let them try them all out and see if anything resonates with them. Let them consider what we can demonstrate about the explanations for the universe and human morality, and decide whether reason and science is enough for them, or if they need a philosophy or religion to fill a spot in their life.
But like I said, be realistic about the lack of evidence behind deities. There’s no evidence to support their existence. Their history, spread, and continuation can all be explained through simple human interactions. If you chose the philosophy of one of these deities, be self-aware that you’re probably just following what some human(s) made up a few thousand years ago and there’s no Divine Rightness about it and you’re being an ass if you imply that there is.