B
BB2
Guest
Fair enough. That was the impression I got as well, but nevertheless, everything is a-okay
.
- Status
.
T
tonyrey
Guest
It would be helpful if you can specify which of their arguments have brought you closer to God…
C
chazcheh
Guest
In my journey, and the atheism I came across just was never able to convince me.It would be helpful if you can specify which of their arguments have brought you closer to God…
I felt that there was no room for possibility. I.e the possibility of there being something else out there that was just not controllable by nature itself. This point I just could never get my head around.
I also felt that the new atheism was moving and organising to be itself a religion of some sort. Mainly because of the movement of trying to convince others to follow them in their beliefs. To me, if you are trying to promote free thought then let people think freely without you trying to convince them of your thoughts
The attacks by, in particular Dawkins and Hitchens, on faith feel as though they hate God as opposed to not believing he/she existed.
I also felt that Atheism only respect some aspects of science to better prove or strengthen their argument, and disregard other theories or research that could potentially disprove their argument.
I also felt that much debate was attacking the catholic church, so that was the first reason I started to delve deeper into their thoughts on the catholic church. Alot that I saw was a mis understanding or mis interpretation of certain aspects of the church.
There is much much more to it than this, but these were some of the main things I felt troubled me.
Again I hope I dont come across as insulting or offensive as I am just stating my own thoughts of my journey.
God Bless
A
Al_Moritz
Guest
Your observations are spot on.
Atheists, with rare exceptions, are no better than creationists in cherry-picking what they like and don’t like about science.They are only proudly ‘pro-science’ until scientific data are not on their side. For example, debating cosmological fine-tuning with atheists is mostly just as frustrating and hopeless as debating evolution with creationists. And just like creationists often pretend that evolution is an ‘atheistic invention’, so do atheists often pretend that fine-tuning is a ‘religious’ argument – notwithstanding the fact that leading cosmologists, who are often atheists or agnostics, take fine-tuning very seriously and are troubled by it to an extent that they feel they need the multiverse as a ‘way out’.
B
Bobber90
Guest
What did you learn?
B
Bobber90
Guest
Can the data ever emerge for us to suppose fine-tuning? I don’t think so. Specifically, saying that there is a low chance of this universe happening does not mean that the universe couldn’t have happened by chance. There’s a low chance that I might win the lottery, therefore if I do win it, it wasn’t chance. Sure, I can sympathise with those who are frustrated with people ignorant of a lot of science - I am one of the ignorant - but if science were to generate a theory of God as strong as that of evolution, or the conservation of energy, not one of the Dawkins crowd would remain atheist. They may be anti-theist as well as atheist, but they are truly pro-science.
(Such a theory of God would remain “[it’s] only a theory!” though… =P)
Anyway, on the topic - the OP has my respect for considering the options.
A
Al_Moritz
Guest
Your post just confirmed my observations. Thank you. Given the ridiculously small odds, none of the leading cosmologists who have studied fine-tuning takes the ‘brute chance’ argument seriously, not a single one of them. They know better – hence their ‘escape’ into the multiverse.
B
Bobber90
Guest
You may view it as an ‘escape’, and for some perhaps that is the motivation. However, if the multiverse idea is alternative to belief in a deity, and one which is potentially subject to investigation, the question is why one would choose to believe in a God instead of a multiverse? If there were a multiverse, then this universe is accounted for by ‘brute’ chance, just as a deity would explain it.
B
Bobber90
Guest
By the way, I am not taken by the brute chance argument because I think it is faulty. I believe you write that there is a low probability of the universe happening by chance. That is the very statement which I think cannot be made. There may be a low probability of the universe forming as is, but we cannot know that the processes or causes of this unlikely arrangement are unlikely. That is like claiming we could not win the lottery by chance because such an outcome is so unlikely. In a good lottery, that is the only way we can win. We do not know (yet?) about the conditions of the universal lottery.
lol - and to add arrogance to irritation, I may be a help to you by posing questions that will not go away. Given that you present these arguments to a large audience, it would be beneficial to refine them before the main audience gets them!
lol - and to add arrogance to irritation, I may be a help to you by posing questions that will not go away. Given that you present these arguments to a large audience, it would be beneficial to refine them before the main audience gets them!
A
Al_Moritz
Guest
The multiverse does not solve the design problem, see chapter 1.4. in my article:
home.earthlink.net/~almoritz/cosmological-arguments-god.htm
B
Bobber90
Guest
I have vague memories of this, I’ll have a look.
This is the section:
‘In fact, it creates another fine-tuning problem. In order to solve the fine-tuning problem of our particular kind of universe, the multiverse would have to make the occurrence of that universe by a pure chance process statistically inevitable, against all overwhelming odds. Yet this would require a truly random distribution of physical constants in extremely fine grades among the members (universes or domains) of the multiverse, in order to allow for a sufficient variety of physical constants between them (trillions times trillions times trillions etc. variations), so that ours would be guaranteed to arise by chance. This could only be achieved by careful design of the underlying many-universe generator. Thus, instead of solving the design problem, the multiverse theory just pushes it back one step.’
But it does 2 things:
a) puts constraints on the multiverse. The multiverse is imaginary, therefore it can immediately meet the requirements by a snap of the fingers - it has no constraints.
b) shows that you do not understand the role of chance in these matters? Something does not have to have a 100% chance of happening in order to happen. A single coin toss can return the side we want.
A
Al_Moritz
Guest
Thanks again for further confirming my observations about atheists (and agnostics) dodging the issues. Of course the statement can be made. Just read some books by leading cosmologists on the subject.
T
tonyrey
Guest
Thank you for your gracious reply! Your post is at the opposite (lower) extreme from some we encounter on this forum…
To regard nature as all-powerful amounts to pantheism - which appealed to Spinoza and others but devalues personal reality and doesn’t account for free will or love.
God bless
Tony
S
Sacred_Heart_1
Guest
I would think that as a Catholic it would be Jesus Christ that leads you into the belief into God.
B
Bobber90
Guest
Thank you. In the spirit of helping each other, if I were you I’d find ways to answer my simple questions before a more tenacious opponent faces you with them!
T
tonyrey
Guest
- It is logically possible that **any **type of universe can exist.
- There are no *a priori *conditions for a “universal lottery”.
- There is no obvious reason why this universe should satisfy the immense number of conditions necessary for rational existence over an immense period of time.
- The fulfilment of the immense number of conditions necessary for rational existence over an immense period of time requires explanation.
- The progressive development of life towards greater complexity, organisation, autonomy and sensitivity in spite of overwhelming odds also requires explanation.
- Random mutations and natural selection do not explain the existence of truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love.
- It is incomprehensible how rational beings could have emerged from an ultimately purposeless process devoid of hindsight, insight and foresight.
- It is impossible to reconcile “Chance and Necessity” (Monod) with personal autonomy, moral responsibility and human rights.
- The immense complexity of the human brain (“a feat of fantastic difficulty”) reveals the extreme improbability of the Chance theory.
- “We still seek a theory of Order in its most important form, that which is represented by the complex functional and structural integration of genetic messages.” (Medawar)
- The quanta of physical energy and the laws of nature do not account for the explanatory ultimacy of the mind whereas Design presupposes the unity and explanatory ultimacy of mind:
- The rejection of teleological explanation in favour of physical causation entails a retrospective interpretation of reality which precludes further investigation into the ultimate purpose and significance of development:
B
Bobber90
Guest
How? How do we know that? That is the crux of the matter - how universes are made - and you propose to zip it up with the judgement that anything goes? I suspect this is counterfactual, and that not everything goes. But again, how would we know?
It is precisely my point that we cannot say anything a priori about the universe. There may be conditions of universe formation, there may not. Perhaps we are looking at the interactions of membranes for the origins of the universe?
You mean no obvious teleology, or no obvious causes? I agree that the causes of this universe, regardless of what’s in it (as that changes nothing for the moment) are not obvious. Not obvious is an understatement!
So it would not require explanation if a universe existed without life, supposing that we were able to observe it or know of it?
We cannot require that something has a cause. What if something does not have a cause? Is that possible? Perhaps. Therefore to us, perhaps something “Must be explained!”, yet to comprehend it we cannot talk about causes. Is the universe such a thing? Can you prove that it is not such a thing?
The Catholic church accepts evolution as the truthful account of the development of our physiology, because of the evidence for it. Suppose there was evidence of a link/dependence between the ‘mind’ and ‘physiology’ - then there is reason to believe that the basis or nature of cognition is also a product of evolution. You approach it the wrong way to say that our values are so great that they cannot have been evolved. Perhaps great values can be evolved, and have - or that the tendency to view certain as great is evolved.
It is unimaginable that creatures for whom there is a teleology would have evolved without there being a teleology to the universe as a whole. Yes. But it is not inconceivable that creatures whose thoughts can be deliberately consistent with logic might have evolved. Rational creatures is not the same as creatures for whom there is a higher purpose. Besides, evolution is all about hindsight. Those creatures which happened to have survived pass on their genes - life can be explained backwards, not forwards.
Chance, necessity, free will and morality are not sealed issues. Daniel Dennett confronts most of these in light of evolution, and finds that there is a variety of free will worth wanting in evolutionary accounts of humanity.
It has evolved.
Well, good luck to them. I have no idea what that is!
It is all those things because it is a tautology, rather than a detectable empirical fact. Of course the Greatest Possible Being is great!
The speculative interest of reason does not entail order in the world, nor if it did would it entail purpose, nor divine intelligence. Kant is simply wrong here, though I appreciate the lack of context.
I really really do not believe in teleology. I think that Aristotle appears foolish for it, and that it is dubious, anthopocentric, unnecessary and unhelpful as a basis to understanding reality. On that I am not agnostic!
B
Bobber90
Guest
To put things another way, I think it is impossible to make the fine-tuning argument for the following reasons. I can easily see how it is a belief consistent with the features of the universe, how it is a majestic thought, but I do not think it is a persuasive one or logically compelling outside of the emotions.
We cannot know about the probability of the existence of certain conditions of the universe and, if we did know they were improbable, their improbability would not imply it was created outside of random processes.
b) The probability of such features depends upon the probability of the processes which caused them (if any), and these are apparently beyond knowing. If there is a process which tends towards the creation of favourable universes, the existence of useful conjunctions is probable. If there is a process which tends away from such creation, the universe is improbable. Indeed, the universe may have been uncaused.
We cannot know about the probability of the existence of certain conditions of the universe and, if we did know they were improbable, their improbability would not imply it was created outside of random processes.
- We cannot say that the universe is probable/improbable because:
b) The probability of such features depends upon the probability of the processes which caused them (if any), and these are apparently beyond knowing. If there is a process which tends towards the creation of favourable universes, the existence of useful conjunctions is probable. If there is a process which tends away from such creation, the universe is improbable. Indeed, the universe may have been uncaused.
- We would not be able to argue from improbable but extant outcomes to non-random causes anyway.
H
hiinEnkelte
Guest
I applaude you on taking the time and effort to dig into something that is so important, chazcheh. I have a similar story regarding Protestantism leading me to Catholicism.
Your story reminds me of a quote by Blaise Pascal. He once wrote about atheism that “If they thought seriously, they would see that [it] is so misguided, so contrary to good sense, so opposed to decency, so remote in every way from the good form they seek, that they would be more likely to reform than corrupt those who might feel inclined to follow them. And, indeed, make them describe the feeling and reasons which inspire their doubt about religion: what they say will be so feeble and cheap as to persuade you of the contrary.”
What drives us to decide, ultimately, is such an existential matter, as well.
H
hiinEnkelte
Guest
Bobber90–I am inclined to agree with you. The strength of the teleological argument is, I believe, not what many theists think. But it is not without merit.
I studied philosophy in my undergraduate and came to adore philosophy of religion. I’ve read the influential essays and articles on the teleological argument. The “problem” is just a particular mindset, in that the theist accepts a form of the principle of sufficient reason.
You write “The probability of such features depends upon the probability of the processes which caused them (if any), and these are apparently beyond knowing.” I agree. By arguing by analogy, the theist has set himself up with weaker evidence with such a strong premise (that the processes of this design are an at least a near-omniscient designer outside of this universe). I am not claiming what Hume does, that for an analogy to have any force we need direct experience of what we are making an analogical inference about, but the analogy, it seems to me, is nonetheless stretched. Chance, for all we know, could have created this universe.
- Status