God Is Self-contradictory. Hence, God Doesn’t Exist.

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Diogenes' Dog: "If you are looking to find God within the laws of physics AAF, you have the wrong idea of God. It is as naive as Uri Gagarin famously NOT finding God "up there" when he was the first man in space".

That is nice talk, pal, but I'm afraid it's empty. Above all, you cannot justify reducing all principles of logic and reason to just only that small portion of them called 'laws of physics'. And as one arguing on the con-side, I would not allow you (as pro-side) to chip away this easy such a large area from the battle field.

I've said time and again that God can be defined in various ways, but only few of those definitions are credible and worthy of consideration. And these serious concepts of God are found only in theology, many religions, and numerous philosophies from the time of the ancient Greeks and up to the present. Personal and constumized definitions of God don't count, because they are elastic and flimsy and so easy to dispose of them out of hand.

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Well, in fact I was responding to your statement...

That argument is more often used to refute the "cosmological argument" for the existence of God as a necessary first cause. Your argument is flawed because we know the universe is not eternal, but about 13.7 billion years old.

Having said that, I don't like the use of God as a scientific explanation (even as a "first cause"), and Ockham's razor is rightly used to remove God from the workings of the physical universe.

However, the transcendant experience people have of "God", and the profound changes in personality & outlook such experiences can produce are not open to scientific scrutiny, or logical proof/disproof. They go beyond the rational scientific paradigm. Hence God cannot so easily be dismissed as "redundant" in terms of human experience (which after all is arguably more important to us as "Daseins" (existential beings) than objective 'knowledge' of how the universe works).

What about Meister Eckhardt's definition of God as "scintilla animae" - The spark of (our) being? Or the "Ontic Logos" - the idea (origin) of Being?
Using these definitions, it is possible to see God in humanistic terms as the deepest part of our psyche. In which case it would seem illogical NOT to believe in God.

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Diogenes' Dog: "Well, in fact I was responding to your statement...".

Good! So you were not trying to create a 'straw-man' out of my argument, nor to corner me in that little corner called 'laws of physics'!

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Diogenes' Dog: "That argument is more often used to refute the "cosmological argument" for the existence of God as a necessary first cause. Your argument is flawed because we know the universe is not eternal, but about 13.7 billion years old".

My good friend, your statement above is both false and unwise.
It's false, because that razor is frequently used to chip off every redundant entity, not just the 'first cause'.
And your statement is unwise, because regarldess of religious orientation, one cannot safely base the fundemental core of his/her belief system on such fast-moving and shifting sands like those theories and temporary hypotheses of cosmology or any other branch of science.

Who created the Creator?
This question is valid and eternal, whether '13.7 billion years old' supposition turns out to be true or wrong.

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Except of course anyone who has done any reading about the universe knows the universe - and certainly not our world - is anything close to eternal.

You have no foundation. Sorry, try again.

 

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I'm afraid your above post, Archie, is not very clear to me.
Can you elaborate more, please?

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True, I was not creating a "straw man". I see no point in using logical fallacies to score points. My argument is that you have yet to prove that the existence of God is illogical. Your "dilemma" argument IS a false dichotomy!

I am well aware of that AAF. The topic under discussion (in case you had forgotten) is the existence of God. Any other metaphysical entity would also be subject to Ockham's razor, but they are not under discussion.

AAF, there is good evidence for the universe being (at least approximately) that age. Whatever it is, the evidence is overwhelming that IT IS NOT ETERNAL. Your attempt at a diversion from the central flaw in your argument is not convincing.

...Unless the Creator is ETERNAL, and therefore NOT CREATED (as theists propose). Your question begs itself and is based on a disputed premise. It is thus similar in form to the old "When did you stop beating your wife". It is neither "valid" nor "eternal"! (In fact it's pretty dumb).

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the ressurection of the dead is supposed to be on sunday. ? ? ?

 

According to George Romero, the dead can walk the Earth any day of the week.

I wonder if Jesus ate any brains?

 

Not clear? Dear me.

The universe is not eternal. It started about 13.7 billion years ago and will end, one way or another, in another very long but finite length of time.

Therefore, your foundation to this whole argument, "... we can assume the universe is eternal..." is not only unsupportable, but demonstrably wrong.

Would you care to start over with your proof of the non-existance of God?

(Is that more clear?)

 

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Diogenes' Dog: "True, I was not creating a "straw man". I see no point in using logical fallacies to score points. My argument is that you have yet to prove that the existence of God is illogical. Your "dilemma" argument IS a false dichotomy"!

Good! Now it makes sense.

Unfortunately, the unfounded claim of 'Your "dilemma" argument IS a false dichotomy' is still there. You have no proof of that. It's merely an assertion on your part. Just because our part of the universe or the universe as a whole might have a finite age, does not imply that its supposed 'Creator' must have a finite age as well. Even if that is true, the problem with the hypothesis of 'God' becomes, in this case, worse not better. How, in heaven, that supposed 'Deity' came to existence out of nothing! And so I hope now that you see how clever and wise our theologians are, when they insist that 'God' is eternal and that His age has no beginning or end. But this same assumption of the theologians makes the objection of the main Thread above lethal and fatal. And that is their DELIMMA.

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You are correct; the age of the universe, well established and not infinite, has no bearing on the existence or duration of God.

Not hardly.

Until you know enough about the universe to grasp it's finite nature, you will cling to your ignorance.

Here's the short version: The universe is subject to the second law of thermodynamics.

Or,

Or, in the delightful words of Flanders and Swann,

What that means in dog years is this: Someday all the energy in the universe will be 'used up'. Everything, everything, every cotton picking thing will be the same temperature and nothing will happen. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The universe by any meaningful standard will cease. (You'll probably say, "But it will still be there!" No. There will be no life, and no one to look at it 'there'. No change, no time, no nothing. Space and time being the same thing, there will be no space, either. It's barking gone.)

If the universe were infinitely old, this would have already happened.

Therefore, the universe had a start, and will have a finish. QED.

Here's what you don't know about God. God is not subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Why? It's one of the perks of being God, that’s why. That's who God is. Sort of like "Why does the President get to be in charge?" Because that's who and what the President is.

Your whole argument is foundationless. Your premise is fatally flawed.

 

Could God microwave a burrito so hot that he himself couldn't eat it -->Simpsons.

 

PK, you better make peace with God. There's a great cookout in Heaven every weekend as I understand.

 

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Hi Archie:

"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument. ~William G. McAdoo".

Not exactly!
Ignorant men don't argue!

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"Carrying this thought to a ridiculous extreme, what this means is that even if the universe consists of more or less empty space at a temperature of 10^-30 kelvin, random fluctuations will occaisionally create atoms, molecules... and even solar systems and galaxies! The bigger the fluctuation, the more rarely it happens - but eternity is a long time. So eventually there will arise, sheerly by chance, a person just like you, with memories just like yours, reading a webpage just like this.

In short: maybe the universe has already ended!"

~~ John Baez

It's interesting that an entity which had no beginning and no end would create a universe at this point and time in its existence, that is if theists truly believe a god exists, somewhere. One must wonder what he did before creating the universe?

But if that god is the "fluctuation" that John refers, then it is a god that made many attempts to create the universe, starting small and working his way up.

Perhaps that's what he was doing all that time.

 

I must salute your well developed sense of irony!

 

No. No such temperature is possible. This incongruity gives me reason to believe you aren't as well read on the subject as you'd like to be thought.

Why is a temperature of 10^-30 K impossible, Q?

And, you don't understand the concept of entropy and 'heat death'.

And maybe your grandmother has grown green gossamer wings and flown to the moon.

Q, you have to look at the theories and the 'agenda' behind them. And just for general reference, 'new and revolutionary (novel)' does not always presage 'meaningful'.

But let us leave cosmology and venture into theological speculation.

Who knows? Does that substantially alter our presence in this universe? And you have it backward; God did not create a universe at this point and time in its existence; we are here at this point and time in God's creation.

We're back to the gossamer wings.

Q, when you read 'new theory', watch for this formulation:

Chapter One starts, "What if – {insert pet goofy theory here}."
Chapter Two reads, "Well, if {ipgth}, then we can account for – gravity, magnetism, acne, quantum fluctuations."
Chapter Three says, "And if {ipgth}, then we can remove – world hunger, solar flares, graffiti, fat girls at dances."
Chapter Four says, "Thanks to {ipgth}, we are free from – bed wetting, ingrown toenails, bad humor."
And finally, Chapter Nth says, "Therefore, we can safe conclude {ipgth} is proper, useful, fully equipped and politically correct."
Usually, it's a bit more subtle, but the progression remains.

 

I'm afraid it is with John Baez you disagree, not me. And of course, John is far more knowledgable on the subject than you and I put together, although it now appears your addition to that would be very little.

I have looked at the theory behind the explanation, its called General Relativity. The agenda is science.

So, I ask you then, what did he do before he created the universe? It must have been pretty boring.

Funny, I don't remember seeing any of that drivel in GR. I would ask you to have a look at the theory yourself, but I doubt you'll grasp any of it.

 

Here, Archie, have a look at two schools of thought, which one do you use?

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:m:

Good one !I love it!

But it believe it or not, Q, science research in practice (not epistemology), more often proceeds the Creationist way, i.e. HYPOTHESIS first, FACTS later.

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