Based on probability, if one had to make a choice, is it more reasonable to be an Atheist or a Theist

[PRmerger]

What I mean by ‘a good case’ is a reasoned argument with some justification to support it, not just an assertion. What convinces you that there is something ‘outside’ space, time, matter and energy?

Because the universe began to exist. So it needs a cause.

That’s just plain logic.

And this, too, is just plain logic: its cause cannot consist of time, matter, space and energy…therefore it is outside of time, matter, space and energy.

 

[tonyrey]

Your failure to specify the amount of time required implies that you don’t know how long it would take to achieve “advantageous variations”.

If you cannot specify **one **precise example it becomes a gratuitous hypothesis.

An open-ended argument imposes** no limits **

on the possibilities.
I disagree. There will always be limits on what is logically and actually possible. This is why I disagreed with your earlier statement when you said:

If you cannot specify those limits it is a gratuitous hypothesis.

Your argument boils down to the belief that anything is possible if there is sufficient time for it to occur.

Given enough time, could you become the planet Jupiter, or become more powerful than God? No, of course not. Your statement was far too broad.

You have still failed to specify the time limits to what can be achieved by purposeless variations.

:

What you fail to realise is that your hypothesis is self-destructive. If there is no self there is no self-control, self-respect, self-awareness, self-possession, self-sacrifice or self-determination. In other words life becomes meaningless.

But I do not deny the existence of the self. What made you think so?

Like David Hume you imply that thought is merely “a little agitation of the brain”.

Modern medicine is not based on out-dated atomism but on holism which treats the whole person and not merely individual organs. Our beliefs, values, feelings, emotions, principles, ideals, goals, choices, intuitions and decisions are far more valuable and significant than our instincts, habits, reflexes, impulses, reactions, sensations and conditioned responses.

Maybe someone else can enlighten me, but I don’t see how this explains how “all of our empirical knowledge is subordinate to moral discernment, spiritual insight, self-control and love”. Maybe we need to break it down a bit. How is our empirical knowledge, for example that fire can harm us, subordinate to love? I don’t understand what you’re getting at.

How do you derive moral discernment, spiritual insight, self-control and love from **physical **processes?

 

[Richca]

This may be where we are debating at cross purposes. I wasn’t talking about logical possibility. I’m talking about actual possibility, i.e. Is it actually possible within the reality that we experience?

Well, since the universe has being and exists, then it is not only logically possible that there is a God who could create such a universe, but it is also actually possible that there is a God who did create the universe.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

PRmerger stated that “The universe is all space, matter, time and energy.” To be ‘outside’ the universe means in no space, no time, no matter and no energy. I’m not suggesting that this is self-contradictory. I merely stated that “I don’t think that we necessarily even know whether ‘outside the universe’ has any meaning.” I’m still not convinced that a good case has been made for there being anything ‘outside’ space, time, matter and energy. What evidence is there that suggests such a thing is possible?

The Big Bang.

The notion that there is nothing before the Big Bang that caused the Big Bang is absurd.

 

[Aloysium]

The Big Bang.

The notion that there is nothing before the Big Bang that caused the Big Bang is absurd.

Since time and space came into being at some point and all the structure that we understand through our laws of physics, came to be with the passage of time, where was all this, before it was? Any contradiction, it would appear, lies in the conceptual framework used by the poster, to whom you replied.

 

[goout]

OK, let me try to clarify. I said:

And you replied:

What I mean by ‘a good case’ is a reasoned argument with some justification to support it, not just an assertion. What convinces you that there is something ‘outside’ space, time, matter and energy?

The same thing that convinces you there is something outside of you. Common sense.
You look, you see, you think, you observe that now you are, but at one time you were not. You came to be by some other movement than yourself. You did not will yourself into being.
When you were not, where were you and who were you? And how did your being come to be?

What is that which is not you? Or the more truthful question would be “who is it who is not you”?
Some philosophies effectively claim “I am the center and cause of all that is”, which is false on the face of it, by common sense.
“Only that which I can observe truly exists”. Nope.

Same question applies to all created “stuff”. It exists, and it came from some first cause.
Simple question:
What is it or who is it that brought something from nothing?
How do you answer this question?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Well, since the universe has being and exists, then it is not only logically possible that there is a God who could create such a universe, but it is also actually possible that there is a God who did create the universe.

Herein lies the problem. Nixbits seems to be confusing what is conceivable – in the sense of being logically possible – with what is imaginable. Simply being imaginable does not require any logical or ontological constraints. I can imagine that a blue and white striped elephant can appear out of nowhere in front of me, but that does not mean it will or can logically or factually occur.

The appearance of the elephant depends entirely upon the ways things actually are and why they are. Knowing with any degree of certainty that something is conceivable – in the sense of can actually happen (plausibility) – requires assessing a whole range of conceptual possibilities and factual antecedents to determine if they all support the plausibility of the event occurring.

The blue and white elephant just popping into existence is NOT conceivable, but it is imaginable because the imagination is not constrained by either fact or logic.

Those who still think whatever is imaginable is thereby, for that reason alone, made conceivable are about as rational as the striped elephant since what grounds its existence (imaginability) pretty much aligns with their misconceived warrant for how things come to exist (imaginability.)

I can, in fact, imagine a striped elephant named Albert Einstein who is so brilliant that he can explain why – according to hitherto undiscovered and esoteric principles of quantum theory which are so beyond human intellectual capabilities as to remain forever unknowable to humans – things like Einsteinian elephants (and universes) can just pop into existence from nothing. Very imaginable but that actually means nothing.

I suppose if you don’t require any warrant besides imaginability for why things can exist, something from nothing makes perfect sense – but then you have to be willing to accept that blue and white striped elephants can just pop into existence from nowhere and out of nothing. That pretty much describes irrationality and the boundaries of insanity, depending upon how willing a person is to use that perspective as a takeoff platform for their views on the world. :takeoff: