Bishop Barron on Stephen Hawking and Atheism

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I am a scientist. When I read Hawking’s book, The Grand Design, I was unconvinced. An atheist might say that religion is a desperate attempt to explain the existence of the universe, but Hawking’s speculative theories seemed just as desperate. I got no insight or satisfaction from it.
 
DaddyGirl said:
…But even if those theories are not true, I don’t see how one automatically goes to the default that a god did it.
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No. God of the gaps is NOT automatically “the default”.

But why does it have to be. “…anything but God” when scientistic folks are presented with a plausible theistic alternative like intelligent design?
 
What argument would you present to someone who says “philosophy is just mental concepts and has nothing to do with the world”?
 
I would say that philosophical statements about philosophy, made by real people in the real[sup]TM[/sup] world demonstrate that such a claim is self-refuting.
 
thinkandmull said:
“philosophy is just mental concepts and has nothing to do with the world”?
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That in itself is a rather philsophical statement. Epistemology and ontology are branches of philsophy, and you need to work those out before anything in the “real world” can be studied and conclusions about the real world reached.
 
Why? People know what the real world is since they were children
 
thinkandmull said:
Why? People know what the real world is since they were children
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If that were true, why then do they need someone to tell them that…

Originally Posted by thinkandmull
“philosophy is just mental concepts and has nothing to do with the world”?

LOL

Philosophy is done by real ppl in the real world about the supposed real world.
 
thinkandmull said:
Why? People know what the real world is since they were children
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You mean that they take for granted that their mental experiences are reflective of a real world. But that’s just the thing, we only have our mental experiences. Our experience is not the real world itself, but entirely mental. We take for granted that it’s representative of a real world, and caused by a real world, and tells us real things about a real world.

That is, in my opinion, the most rational course of action. I don’t find the idea that I’m a brain-in-a-vat who is only being given an illusion of a real world tenable. I roll my eyes at solipsism. But if we’re doing any serious consideration of the matter, we can’t just ignore that our “common sense” epistemology is itself a philsophical and not empirically falsifiable position.
 
thinkandmull said:
Why is there God instead of nothing/
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Well, there’s bound to be disagreement on this board. But very briefly…

(1) From nothing, nothing comes.
(2) There is something. (Us. Earth. Stars. Atoms. All things that exist).
(3) Therefore, not nothing.

We could use the standard cosmological arguments to demonstrate that all non-God things that do exist are insufficient to explain their own existence, but that’s not precisely what this argument is about.

I haven’t watched the clip with Bishop Barron. I imagine it’s in regards to Steven Hawking not grasping what the philosophers means when they speak of “nothing” ?

Even stepping aside from that, as previously commented on, empirical science itself is reliant on philosophy, at least insofar as it has an epistemology based on reasoned arguments and observation but which is not empirically falsifiable. I can understand not taking something like solipsism seriously after some consideration, but the fundamental question solipsism is in response to and understanding that our experience of reality is not the same thing as the reality being experienced should not go unappreciated.
 
STT said:
Why there is not only God?
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God calls into being what does not exist.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…

John 1: 3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. …

Romans 4:17 as it is written, “I have made you father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist.

2 Timothy 1:9 He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began,

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was ordered by the word of God, so that what is visible came into being through the invisible.
 
IWantGod said:
For 2 reasons
  1. Absolutely Nothing cannot positively exist.
  2. Because his nature is existence.
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i don’t think that answers the question. Why is there necessary existence instead of nothing (which doesn’t have positive existence). In God is there the reason why he exists at all? Why being is a thing instead of nothing?
 
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