Evidence that God is real

Discussion in 'Religion' started by James R, Aug 31, 2018.

  1. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    You say you believe.
     
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  3. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Dis-belief in nothing.
     
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  5. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    What is dis-belief?
    What is nothing?
    There is no such thing as nothing so how can you say there is nothing...
    Alex
     
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  7. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    It's going to naught.
     
  8. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    If you are naughty does that mean you were doing nothing?
    People defend themselves saying they were doing nothing ...how can that be?
    Breathing is something so they lie.
    The word nothing should be removed.
    Alex
     
  9. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Yes

    But but but since you have not answered the questions I asked I am moving to disbelief

    If you wish to have my belief to be realised please answer questions put to you

    Not just my questions, but other posters questions, which you seem to have ignored, a la Jan style

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  10. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    They may be read which is not ignored yet not answered.

    So you are back and it sounds like you need another holiday ... staying at home is not a holiday ... can you stay with a friend?
    Alex
     
  11. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Should disbelief be removed?
     
  12. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    Disbelief in what?
    Sounds like at an attempt to control folks thinking ... why?
    Alex
     
  13. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Yazata,

    It's nice that you're trying to help the theists and all, but I was hoping that they they would say something about the evidence for God that they think is most significant.

    While we wait for them to come up with some suggestions, I'll reply to your post.

    We've had entire threads on the fine-tuning argument. In this context, I'd recommend reading Viktor Stenger's book The Fallacy of Fine Tuning.

    One major problem with the so-called fine-tuning arguments regarding physical constants is that advocates of fine-tuning rarely allow the constants to vary as a set. Rather, they insist on altering only one constant at a time, while keeping all the other constants the same. It seems very likely that the overall phase space in which all the relevant constants can take values such as would produce a universe suitable for complex intelligent life is a large one. If that is true, then arguments as to the extreme improbability of finding the particular set of constants we find becomes far less persuasive.

    The argument that starts with "Everything must have a cause" and then goes on to create an ad hoc exemption for God is fatally flawed, in my opinion.

    Serious epistemological difficulties is right on the money. That people have subjective experiences that they interpret in the context of religion is one thing. It does not remotely follow from this that God exists. Besides, there are scientifically plausible explanations for many such experiences, which do not need to invoke God.

    As for mathematics, I think that's a separate discussion. Nobody claims there is a God of mathematics, apart from those who claim there is a God of everything else.

    I agree that "miracles", as reported, are not persuasive evidence of God.

    I don't know how you could argue that mathematics or the laws of physics are supernatural. Physical laws are, of course, amenable to physical investigation. The "laws" of mathematics also seem to be amenable to appropriate kinds of investigation. My personal opinion is that both kinds of laws are, at least in part, human constructs - ways of making sense of the world that we have invented. I'm somewhat inclined towards instrumentalism rather than realism in this regard, and there is a philosophical discussion that can be had.

    God of the gaps, in other words.

    Theists tend to believe that God has ongoing effects in the world, and that such effects can include physical effects. Typical theist descriptions of God do not have God as a mere absent Creator or Provider of Laws, but as a present and immediate agent - a person with very human-like traits and behaviours.

    Discussion of God's supposed ongoing physical effects on the world brings us back to the topic of miracles. All other suggested effects are apparently below the level of empirical verification.

    Secular practitioners of meditation report experiencing the same kinds of feelings as the religious ones, but they interpret things rather differently.

    I agree with you. In some ways, it's like a recipe. If you do this, then you will experience that. Mind you, learning to do this well might take years of practice, just like any other skill.

    Experiences that come from meditation are bit like the feelings that come from creating art or music. You can tell somebody how to play a musical instrument, but they won't really be able to have the full experience of what it is to create music without a lot of practice.
    Science is a different recipe for gaining a different kind of knowledge. However, both science and meditation are inherently empirical. Do this, and you will find that. Not so different.

    But an extra layer that is often added to meditation actually has nothing to do with the experience itself. It is the religious overlay: if you have this kind of experience it means God is talking to you, or you're One with the great cosmic reality, or whatever. It's almost like a value judgment - that the thing isn't enough in itself, but must be shored up with unevidenced mumbo-jumbo.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2018
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    (continued...)

    I'm not sure what your "typical" atheist would look like.

    From what I read on the internet, it would seem that the the majority of thoughtful atheists do not believe there is no God - a point that they spend quite a lot of time making to theists on internet forums. Rather, they do not believe there is a God. The reason usually comes down to lack of evidence. Which brings us back to the thread topic.

    I don't know about good justifications in general. I can think of many reasons somebody might think it is good to believe in God. I am concerned here only with whether the belief can be justified with regard to evidence.

    Since the Enlightenment, atheism has primarily developed in the context of Christianity. Most outspoken atheists today still live in predominantly Christian countries, if for no other reason that than they risk persecution if they are outspoken in this way in other countries. Christianity is a familiar and easy target for many atheists.

    I'm more interested in religion from a psychological and anthropological perspective. In general, I am fascinated to find out what people think about things and why they think as they do. The reasons that people believe in Gods are many and varied. It is particularly interesting to me that the main reasons seem to have very little, if anything, to do with there being good evidence for God's existence.
     
  15. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    No wonder the universe appears fine-tuned, it is a result of existing tuned properties. It could not be other than what it is.

    This is like saying the universe is finetuned for the emergence of hydrogen, but it is hydrogen which is finely tuned by universal potentials, not the other way around......

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  16. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Which properties are you referring to?

    There's no evidence of that, as far as I'm aware.

    Hydrogen atoms as we know them can only exist in a universe that has particular values of certain fundamental constants. The question is why those particular constants are observed to have the particular values they have, rather than some other value.
     
  17. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    The constants are what they are

    If they were any other value - we would be living in a different type of Universe. What type(s) of differences? Who knows

    Guessing we could speculate but that is all we could probably do. Might try to setup a highly unusual environment

    But obviously can only use stuff available - which is subject to the constraints of this Universe

    Further if other Universes exist with different PHYSICS (which I doubt), in ANY Universe the same unanswerable question remains WHY THESE CONSTRAINTS?

    Well not exactly UNANSWERABLE

    Answer Because they are

    I'm guessing the best we can ever expect to do is break the universe down into its smallest components and see if we could fit them together into any other arrangement

    Somewhat like taking a jigsaw puzzle down to its pieces and seeing if we can make a picture of a sunset from a forest scene

    Not going to happen

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  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Mathematical properties .
    It's not complicated. Specific causal conditions yield specific results.
    What we see was not placed in a fine tuned universe. What we see emerged from prior existing universal conditons.
    If conditions had been different, reality would have been different.
    Of course, but that is due to the fact that hydrogen emerged from the fundamental universal conditions, regardless of any tuning. Hydrogen is the tuned result of universal potential, not the other way around.
    If the original conditions had been different we'd have particles with different values.

    The universe was deterministically causal to what we see, not the other way around.
    The universe is not fine tuned, reality is. Patterns (polymers) are tuned constructs.

    There was a time the earth was not tuned for life. Then (with cooling) life emerged a fine tuning of available natural resources, starting with cyanobacteria which produced the oxygen which made it possible for more complex life to emerge and continue to fine tune itself through evolution, until 4.5 billion years produced mankind, the finely tuned organic pattern which is now busily destroying the well tuned balance of its own environment.

    The finely tuned universe argument is not even wrong. It never was. What emerged from it was finely tuned to the universe.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2018
  19. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Mathematical properties are not characteristic of any universe. They are tools valid in any universe. Did you mean physical constants, like the speed of light or the Planck constant?
     
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Mathematics are definitely characteristic of this universe. How does order evolve unless an orderly process is followed. IMO, we have named this orderly process "mathematical" in essence and have developed an interpretive symbolic language to assist us in codifying these constant values and orderly functions of the observable universe, the mathematics of the universe.
    In a sense, yes. Constants are fixed "values". But I do not mean this as "numbers", those are human symbols. But they work, values interact by mathematical mechanics. It is what allowed us to develop the scientific discipline of "physics" in the first place.
    The orderly non-sentient information sharing system of universal vales and functions.

    The universe itself is a geometric pattern, which is by definition a mathematical construct.
    But it is not just the universe which is mathematical in essence, it is everything what emerged from the universal mathematical mechanics.

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    The Mathematical Mechanic: Using Physical Reasoning to Solve Problems
    When almost every cosmologist believes they are "discovering" the natural inherent mathematical nature of universal laws that rule the formation of universal patterns, I believe them. Why should they lie about what they believe?
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2018
  21. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    We're starting to drift off topic again. This keeps happening in this thread, probably because there's no evidence of God to discuss.

    Detailed discussion of fine-tuning could be had in a different thread, if anybody wants to start one.
     
  22. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    You have labelled it "orderly" AND then defined what orderly means

    Circular argument anyone?

    Repeat - Universe - it is what it is

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  23. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    When W4U says "the universe is mathematical", he means the same thing as the rest of us mean when we say "the universe is emergent from a few basic physical forces".
     

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