God did not create the universe, says Hawking

[Dameedna]

Sorry I haven’t read through the entire thread, it’s just too large.

But when I read Hawkings statement(which was probably taken out of context in SOME way by the media), I was pissed off and embarrassed for athiests. (I am one).

How is saying “the laws of nature simply existed” any different than saying “God is the necessary being”?

No-one wants to delve into the mystery, they want the answers and they want to believe THEY have them. No further questions to be asked. We are all completely safe, and secure in our contradictory knowledge of how things really are.

What nonesense.

 

[Crimsonflyboy]

Sorry I haven’t read through the entire thread, it’s just too large.

But when I read Hawkings statement(which was probably taken out of context in SOME way by the media), I was pissed off and embarrassed for athiests. (I am one).

How is saying “the laws of nature simply existed” any different than saying “God is the necessary being”?

No-one wants to delve into the mystery, they want the answers and they want to believe THEY have them. No further questions to be asked. We are all completely safe, and secure in our contradictory knowledge of how things really are.

What nonesense.

The difference is that Catholics believe that there was a mechanism that created the universe otherwise known as a first cause. To say that laws of nature simply existed is to say that there was no mechanism to create the universe. That is to say that the universe exists simply because it exists. This is just avoiding the question.

 

[ContegoFides]

Well, Stephen Hawking also asserts that black holes eat information, at least with respect to this universe - an assertion that is vigorously opposed by Kip Thorne and many other first rate theoretical physicists, and which is fundamentally untestable and unprovable. So, 1) clearly Stephen Hawking believes in or speculates about things which by definition cannot be measured and 2) information loss is counter intuitive and just seems wrong, though possibly it is correct. Anyway, the points to be made are that 1) the man is fallible even in his baliwick, so I’m not sure why his statements regarding spiritual matters should be believed simply because he said them, and 2) contemplating the reasonableness of the existence of things that cannot be measured is, itself, imminently reasonable. (While Stephen Hawking might not be believed simply because he says something, he has contributed substantially to physics and thus should be considered carefully regarding conclusions in his field - meaning that any assertion that contemplating the reasonableness of the existence of things that cannot be measured is NOT reasonable is clearly incorrect.)

All that aside, Stephen Hawking’s statements about atheism will be believed by Christians, even scientists who are Christian, just about as much as atheists will believe the Pope’s statements for reasons for belief in God. Atheists citing Hawkings’ conclusions for the reasonableness of Atheism to convince a Christian will be just as effective as a Christian citing the Pope’s conclusions for the reasonableness of belief in God (as the Catholic Church proclaims Him) to convince an atheist.

Ironically, both have worked in the past. But now I’m rambling. /me shrugs.

 

[ContegoFides]

Slight edit to above to be fair. In July 2005 Hawking presented a paper stating that information might be released from a black hole. However, the paradox might not really be resolved - and Kip Thorne still opposes the idea of information loss altogether.

 

[ManOnFire]

Of course, if it is self gratifying to hold these beliefs, that is one way to approach life. I simply can’t see it that way. You are also quite correct that my perception and view of reality doesn’t have any affect on you, nor would I presume to force my views on anyone else.

I have only presented my own views that science offers humanity its best and only chance at survival on a planet that is fraught with over population,excess consumption, dysfunction, disease, wars and a regrettable love affair with superstition and mystical thinking. To fail to recognize the peril we face is, in my judgment, naive.

The promises of science, however, are at least reassuring. In this century I would hope that we would learn to biologically and socially enhance ourselves through genetics and a rational and reality based paridigm for ethical conduct. This will require, in my opinion, the abandonment of magical thinking and mystical beliefs. Achievable goals in this century include understanding the quantum, beginning an exploration of space and arriving at a systematic basis for the study of consciousness.

I am again mindful that it is my own judgment and it isn’t as though I am on a crusade to compel others to my manner of thinking.

First flat earth, then geocentric, heliocentric, one universe, big bang, etc.etc. etc. If God doesn’t exist, then space goes on forever and ever. Even if matter can be created de novo from gravity, what would make anyone honestly believe it happened only once? In one place? Even if science figures out “this next” mystery in a godless world, the next generation will learn more than the last, on and on, forever and ever, with NO end, thanks to infinity. To think otherwise would be to believe in magical thinking and mystical beliefs. First cells, then molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks, neutrinos, on and on forever and ever microscopically. To think otherwise would be to believe in magical thinking and mystical beliefs.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

I don’t think you can produce predictions for that (angels on heads of pins, Friday night or no), from physical models that perform in physics. Angels just don’t proceed from those models as predicted elements in any way, let alone as predictions about their dancing on pins. I realize you may be taking a self-deprecating tone here in point out in a humorous way regarding the stark difference between physics model and anything that would address “angels”, but if not, that’s crazy talk. There’s no amount of money that’s going to produce predictions from GR and QM that involve angels in any capacity.

But they might as well have done… I suppose it depends on who pays!

But those models do synthesize and extrapolate to produce predictions that cannot be tested, but even so, predict conditions and dynamics that Hawkings discusses in his book: a universe doesn’t need any creator god to come to be, from that model, as an extrapolated model.

They fulfil an alternative to the shallow reading of theistic justification by “God of the gaps”, but fails as an alternative to God on the same basis the Flying Spaghetti Monster fails… can you tell me what it is yet? :takeoff:

How so? There’s no evidence for any God beyond our universe any more than evidence for a multiverse, emprically, and can’t be. Theoretically, God is a non-object. In physics, the multiverse has at least a performing and coherent model for this universe that serves as the basis for it, which is more than we can say for God. Theoretical extrapolation isn’t empirical evidence or testing (we are bound to internals of our spacetime that way), but it isn’t the nothing we have on the theology side, models that predict nothing and don’t perform at all, and don’t even rise to the level of “performing or not”.

Scientific investigation requires experiential basis - God has this. Theoretical extrapolation doesn’t, not when it simply involves invention on this scale

:hypno:

What would be the theory that has “God passing the scientific method”. This again, sounds like either some light humor, or crazy talk. Have I missed some theory that incorporates God or angels, here?

I said, passes the scientific method more succesfully than this, which passes it only in the brains of some nutty gnostic physicalistic cults or something, surely?

I don’t see how that fails to be self-critical. It’s acknowledged as theoretical only, untestable, unavailable empirically. But it does proceed from what works, demonstrably, in this universe. It may be incorrect, but its grounded in what has proven itself here. And that’s more than theology can say.

-TS

It fails to be self critical in that it fails to confess, admit, or indicate, (or, in these dogmatic days, realise) the gaping lack of evidence behind the hypothesis



All this still just says “we’ve made up a math assuming reality works like this. The math works, but is not supported by any evidence whatsoever. That the math works shows it’s entirely reasonable, ignoring the lack of evidence!”

It’s like pointing at the pin, and saying “I have equated how many angels can dance on this pin. Because this pin exists, and the math works, therefore it is entirely reasonable to believe that the angels exist… now we just have to figure out if they prefer slamdancing or a nice restrained waltz”

:whacky:

 

[djeter]

I have a couple of interesting takes on the Hawking thing. The first was an article by Roger Scruton in the WSJ last Friday that made some very succinct points and shows how Hawking is really out of step with other physicists on this (and Kant).

You can find it here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/09/28/memo-to-hawking-theres-still-room-for-god-by-roger-scruton/

The second (and even better) is a previous post that is reading selections from an article by my favorite physicist Steven Barr who has broken with the ID crowd to advocate a God of Laws who is the hidden forces and principles that govern processes of matter and structure. He cites several examples of what he means in this essay called Fearful Symmetries:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/09/17/reading-selections-from-fearful-symmetries-by-stephen-m-barr/

Both well worth the read

dj

 

[Touchstone]

They fulfil an alternative to the shallow reading of theistic justification by “God of the gaps”, but fails as an alternative to God on the same basis the Flying Spaghetti Monster fails… can you tell me what it is yet? :takeoff:

Uh, no, I don’t think I can.

Scientific investigation requires experiential basis - God has this. Theoretical extrapolation doesn’t, not when it simply involves invention on this scale

God has an experimental basis? Like he’s demonstrated experimentally? You must be joking around with me. God’s claim to fame, if he does exist, is that he he perfectly evades experimental detection and verification. That’s why you need religious faith, because God is an experimental fail.

The extrapolation of M-Theory uses strongly grounded science – experimentally validated innumerable lines of inquiry – as the basis for that extrapolation. It’s extrapolation, and the extrapolative part cannot be experimentally confirmed, even in principle, but the basis is experimentally sound, which is a feature “Goddidit” does not have.

I said, passes the scientific method more succesfully than this, which passes it only in the brains of some nutty gnostic physicalistic cults or something, surely?

Denialism.

It fails to be self critical in that it fails to confess, admit, or indicate, (or, in these dogmatic days, realise) the gaping lack of evidence behind the hypothesis

The qualifications are clear. The evidential basis for the theories that work in this universe is strong. Anything beyond this universe is beyond experimental reach, so it must remain theoretical in nature as an idea. But the basis for the idea about a multiverse proceeds naturally from well-grounded and tested theories from nature around us.

All this still just says “we’ve made up a math assuming reality works like this. The math works, but is not supported by any evidence whatsoever. That the math works shows it’s entirely reasonable, ignoring the lack of evidence!”

The math works, and spectacularly well, in this universe, and incorporates and explains so much evidence that is called the “Theory of everything”, a title it has not earned because its role in unifying GR and QM requires such high-energy experiments to test it we don’t have technology to verify it with and won’t for some time (so far as we can tell).

But there is no human idea that draws upon so much evidence, which explains, predicts and stands liable to falsification as this idea. Anything beyond this universe is necessarily theoretical and non-empirical, but such extrapolations could not me more securely grounded in models that perform against the evidence than this. Extrapolating God out there by comparison is a joke, if we are talking about grounding in the evidence.

That doesn’t mean we can conclude the theoretical ideas that proceed from performing science are correct. We can’t tell, we can’t test it, ever. But it does mean that our basis for such ideas is grounded in evidence and performative knowledge that theistic ideas are not.

It’s like pointing at the pin, and saying “I have equated how many angels can dance on this pin. Because this pin exists, and the math works, therefore it is entirely reasonable to believe that the angels exist… now we just have to figure out if they prefer slamdancing or a nice restrained waltz”
:whacky:

It’s not at all like the idea of angels. Maybe the Higgs boson is a better example, if you are looking for an in-universe analog. Angels – something inconsistent with scientific knowledge – would be an idea in the theistic/supernaturalist camp. Neither angels nor Higgs bosons are purely hypothetical at this point – extrapolated from perfrorming theory, which makes it analogous to multiverse/M-Theory. It may be incorrect, but it’s grounded in what works. The angels thing, that’s fluff, theology, and isn’t grounded in anything that performs.

-TS

 

[djeter]

…our basis for such ideas is grounded in evidence and performative knowledge that theistic ideas are not.
-TS

If Mr. Hawking is right, the answer to the question “What created the universe?” is “The laws of physics.” But what created the laws of physics? How is it that these strange and powerful laws, and these laws alone, apply to the world?

There are those who will say that the question has no answer —that it lies at or beyond the limits of human thought. And there are those who will say that the question has an answer, but that it is answered not by reason but by faith.

I say that perhaps, in the end, they are the same position. That is what Kant believed. You find out the limits of scientific understanding, he said. And beyond those limits lies the realm of morality, commitment and trust.

Kant, who destroyed all the systems of metaphysics and dug a grave for theology, was also a believer, who, as he put it, “attacked the claims of reason in order to make room for those of faith.”

You have a bias for scientism. Even the thinkers of the Enlightenment, having argued the claims of faith to be without rational foundation, did not then dismiss religion, as one might dismiss a refuted theory. Many of them went on to draw the conclusion that religion must therefore have some other origin than the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and some other psychic function than providing a world-view that consoles those who subscribe to it. The ease with which the common doctrines of religion could be refuted alerted thinkers like Jacobi, Schiller and Schelling to the thought that religion is not, in its essence, a matter of doctrine, but of something else. And they set out to discover what that something else might be.

Rather than THINK a little harder you dismiss “theism” and claim your ideas are grounded in something that provides “evidence” or “proof.” Do me a favor. Read this and see if you still feel so secure:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/09/29/selections-from-dismissing-god-by-donald-d-hoffman/

dj

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Uh, no, I don’t think I can.

God has an experimental basis? Like he’s demonstrated experimentally? You must be joking around with me. God’s claim to fame, if he does exist, is that he he perfectly evades experimental detection and verification. That’s why you need religious faith, because God is an experimental fail.

The extrapolation of M-Theory uses strongly grounded science – experimentally validated innumerable lines of inquiry – as the basis for that extrapolation. It’s extrapolation, and the extrapolative part cannot be experimentally confirmed, even in principle, but the basis is experimentally sound, which is a feature “Goddidit” does not have.

Denialism.

The qualifications are clear. The evidential basis for the theories that work in this universe is strong. Anything beyond this universe is beyond experimental reach, so it must remain theoretical in nature as an idea. But the basis for the idea about a multiverse proceeds naturally from well-grounded and tested theories from nature around us.

The math works, and spectacularly well, in this universe, and incorporates and explains so much evidence that is called the “Theory of everything”, a title it has not earned because its role in unifying GR and QM requires such high-energy experiments to test it we don’t have technology to verify it with and won’t for some time (so far as we can tell).

But there is no human idea that draws upon so much evidence, which explains, predicts and stands liable to falsification as this idea. Anything beyond this universe is necessarily theoretical and non-empirical, but such extrapolations could not me more securely grounded in models that perform against the evidence than this. Extrapolating God out there by comparison is a joke, if we are talking about grounding in the evidence.

That doesn’t mean we can conclude the theoretical ideas that proceed from performing science are correct. We can’t tell, we can’t test it, ever. But it does mean that our basis for such ideas is grounded in evidence and performative knowledge that theistic ideas are not.

It’s not at all like the idea of angels. Maybe the Higgs boson is a better example, if you are looking for an in-universe analog. Angels – something inconsistent with scientific knowledge – would be an idea in the theistic/supernaturalist camp. Neither angels nor Higgs bosons are purely hypothetical at this point – extrapolated from perfrorming theory, which makes it analogous to multiverse/M-Theory. It may be incorrect, but it’s grounded in what works. The angels thing, that’s fluff, theology, and isn’t grounded in anything that performs.

-TS

Touchstone, I’d recommend you try reading what djeter replies to you… I’m beginning to give up on you comprehending what I’m trying to tell you…

You have a limited understanding of epistemology, I’m afraid… and appear to be the model scientismic atheist.

Entertainingly enough, as Dameedna demonstrates, your position to the average materialist agnostic/atheist may well be similar to that of a gnostic cultist to a conventional theist! Anyway…

A pertinent quote from his reference:

It is elementary in the philosophy of science that no matter how much data one collects, there will always be infinitely many theories compatible with that data, and that make contradictory predictions about the outcomes of new experiments. It is because the theories of science are not logically dictated (although surely influenced) by the facts that scientific theory building is such an interesting and nontrivial enterprise. The atheist, then, can marshal an array of evidence that there is no God, and the theist that there is. In neither case can the evidence logically prove the claim. Both choices are, equally, a step of faith.

Think about it… mmmOK?

 

[Touchstone]

If Mr. Hawking is right, the answer to the question “What created the universe?” is “The laws of physics.” But what created the laws of physics?

Hawking says “dunno, can’t know”. I’d agree with that response. It’s not clear that “created” is apropos here, at all. It may be, it may not be. We don’t know. If some context obtains as eternal or uncreated, then it’s nonsense to ask what created it.

How is it that these strange and powerful laws, and these laws alone, apply to the world?

Dunno. Can’t know. It’s foolish to pretend otherwise.

There are those who will say that the question has no answer —that it lies at or beyond the limits of human thought. And there are those who will say that the question has an answer, but that it is answered not by reason but by faith.

Yes, but that’s just a self-serving way to say “I don’t know”. A pretense of knowing when one does not know.

I say that perhaps, in the end, they are the same position. That is what Kant believed. You find out the limits of scientific understanding, he said. And beyond those limits lies the realm of morality, commitment and trust.

“Beyond” is problematic, here. Morality doesn’t lie “beyond”, or “within”, but rather moves along an orthogonal axis. Morality isn’t “beyond” science any more west is “beyond” north.

Kant, who destroyed all the systems of metaphysics and dug a grave for theology, was also a believer, who, as he put it, “attacked the claims of reason in order to make room for those of faith.”

And an admirable job he did – philosophy is as ungrounded and subjective as theology. But Kant operates from an abstraction, the mind removed from the human animal, which makes him effective in exposing philosophy qua philosophy as being every bit as bankrupt as theology, but ignores the reality of humans as animals, sentient beings in the real world. We might look to Hume as well, and note that we cannot deductively establish the inevitability of the sun coming up tomorrow, but for Kant, Hume and Nietzsche the salient reality of humans as hardwired to treat reality as reality and empiricism as nomologically authoritative means their arguments fall victim to the very criticisms they have launched: the human mind is not an abstraction, but a biological machine in a real world context, hard wired for certain “axiomatic” modes of understanding and operation.

Real world to Kant: your brain is a biological machine, and can’t help but embrace necessarily many of the “leaps” you decry as “leaps”. Humans are wired to make such leaps, and musing that such leaps are not “reasonable” in the abstract is to simply ignore the core facts of human cognition.

You have a bias for scientism. Even the thinkers of the Enlightenment, having argued the claims of faith to be without rational foundation, did not then dismiss religion, as one might dismiss a refuted theory. Many of them went on to draw the conclusion that religion must therefore have some other origin than the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and some other psychic function than providing a world-view that consoles those who subscribe to it.

Yes, but they had the were operating without knowledge available to them that we have available today. I don’t doubt that for Jefferson, it was very hard to imagine how the various species in the world came to be in all their diversity and splendor without a “cosmic designer”, even as a rational a thinker as he was. Humans are predisposed psychologically toward telic inferences, and ignorance tends to give way to suspicions of teleology, demonstrably. But Jefferson simply didn’t have the insights of Darwin and all the evidence that overturns our intuitions and arguments from ignorance today.

The ease with which the common doctrines of religion could be refuted alerted thinkers like Jacobi, Schiller and Schelling to the thought that religion is not, in its essence, a matter of doctrine, but of something else. And they set out to discover what that something else might be.

Yes, but this begs the question: why would some non-scientific pursuit of an answer be seen as having any good prospects at all? Science is not an oracle, and is quite limited, but what it can learn and demonstrate, it can demonstrate. Some theological investigation can’t hope to show anything at all. Why should we even suppose that such an effort could possibly bear fruit, never mind identifying cases where it has done so? If you don’t have a coherent model for what is an answer vs. a non-answer, it’s appropriate to ask if one is pursuing knowledge or answers at all.

Rather than THINK a little harder you dismiss “theism” and claim your ideas are grounded in something that provides “evidence” or “proof.” Do me a favor. Read this and see if you still feel so secure:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/09/29/selections-from-dismissing-god-by-donald-d-hoffman/

dj

Ugh. That’s a fail on the same lines as Plantinga’s EAAN – why should objective truth-finding be valuable for survival. Even the lowly cockroach is a marvel of objective truth-finding, a basic insight of science that Hoffman apparently can’t see. How does the cockroach acquire food? It must use its senses (antennae, etc. – the cockroach has a remarkably acute sense of smell!) to locate, identify and acquire food, for example. If it couldn’t discriminate between features of its surrounding that objectively obtain – food from non-food, it wouldn’t survive, or more to the point, there’d be no cockroach species to talk about, and to suggest was somehow not in touch with objective reality.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Touchstone, I’d recommend you try reading what djeter replies to you… I’m beginning to give up on you comprehending what I’m trying to tell you…

You have a limited understanding of epistemology, I’m afraid… and appear to be the model scientismic atheist.

Entertainingly enough, as Dameedna demonstrates, your position to the average materialist agnostic/atheist may well be similar to that of a gnostic cultist to a conventional theist! Anyway…

A pertinent quote from his reference:

It is elementary in the philosophy of science that no matter how much data one collects, there will always be infinitely many theories compatible with that data, and that make contradictory predictions about the outcomes of new experiments. It is because the theories of science are not logically dictated (although surely influenced) by the facts that scientific theory building is such an interesting and nontrivial enterprise. The atheist, then, can marshal an array of evidence that there is no God, and the theist that there is. In neither case can the evidence logically prove the claim. Both choices are, equally, a step of faith.

Think about it… mmmOK?

As Ken Ham is wont to say – we all work from the same evidence, we just have different interpretations! And he’s right, on the surface. Starlight that is judged to have come from 100 million lightyears away may be interpreted to per the Omphalos, per Ken Ham – God just made it look that way, when it was actually put there, looking that way, 6,000 years ago!

Omphalos, like Last-Tuesdayism, are just reductio ad absurdum of the point being made. Any data can be explained by any interpretation if the interpretation simply asserts authority over the evidence. But this is why parsimony, falsifiability and empirical performance are so important, epistemologically. These factors counter the interpretation running roughshod over the data; the data at least have their day in court this way.

One can dismiss the values of parsimony, falsifiability and predictive performance. One can embrace the Omphalos, an idea in which evidence is entirely subjugated, annihilated as an epistemic factor. Not disputing that.

But such a choice is at odds, demonstrably, with our real world biology. We are wired to treat reality as real. Again my invitation to anyone who doubts this to try holding their hand over an open flame and seeing how many times they can repeat “Reality isn’t real” as the flames burn the flesh of the hand. It’s NOT just a matter of all commitments being equal. We are, as humans, wired for faith in the reality of reality, and this is easily and clearly shown to anyone who doubts it.

-TS

 

[Mystic_Banana]

As Ken Ham is wont to say – we all work from the same evidence, we just have different interpretations! And he’s right, on the surface. Starlight that is judged to have come from 100 million lightyears away may be interpreted to per the Omphalos, per Ken Ham – God just made it look that way, when it was actually put there, looking that way, 6,000 years ago!

Omphalos, like Last-Tuesdayism, are just reductio ad absurdum of the point being made. Any data can be explained by any interpretation if the interpretation simply asserts authority over the evidence. But this is why parsimony, falsifiability and empirical performance are so important, epistemologically. These factors counter the interpretation running roughshod over the data; the data at least have their day in court this way.

One can dismiss the values of parsimony, falsifiability and predictive performance. One can embrace the Omphalos, an idea in which evidence is entirely subjugated, annihilated as an epistemic factor. Not disputing that.

But such a choice is at odds, demonstrably, with our real world biology. We are wired to treat reality as real. Again my invitation to anyone who doubts this to try holding their hand over an open flame and seeing how many times they can repeat “Reality isn’t real” as the flames burn the flesh of the hand. It’s NOT just a matter of all commitments being equal. We are, as humans, wired for faith in the reality of reality, and this is easily and clearly shown to anyone who doubts it.

-TS

Again, I think you’tre missing the point. Darwinism is just as dogmatic and tautological, as YEC. In fact, I sometimes think YEC is a genially knowing parody of blindly righteous Darwinism. I’ve read the apologisms for Darwinism against it’s detractors… and, as I’ve said many times, the apologisms hold as much water as a cheesegrater… geomorphology? You can use it to justify…

…anything…

We are wired to treat reality as real??? Sounds like a-priori reasoning to me - similar to super-theistic Kant… oh, the irony…

GET REAL!!! The level of assumption behind every single reply you make to everyone is so drowned in dogma it’s untrue.

I remember reading something by (atheist) Wyndham Lewis saying religion had an incredible power in simply insisting that things are this and that because they are (no argument allowed). Yet today, it seems this unknowing assumption is the stance of many an atheist…

Putting your hand in the fire hurts and harms, although I’m sure there are some who would disagree to such an absolute statement… but extrapolating what’s going on, on a technical level, from the hand, the fire, the reason behind the fire, the reason behind the reason… that’s not quite so easy to discern, and your claims that such ideas as Hawkings is presenting as scientifically reasonable is all logical progression falls to pieces at the point where ultimately, it ends up conjuring idealistic mathematical solutions… from thin air…

which not even YEC can reasonably be said to stoop to…

That falsifiability… of course, these new ideas, compiled by Hawking, fail to be falsifiable! But on top of all that, they additionally lack certain essential justifications that everything from Yeti to the Loch Ness monster have more claim to…

only reasonably, of course, not that I expect the average scientismic luddite to realise that…

 

[Touchstone]

Again, I think you’tre missing the point. Darwinism is just as dogmatic and tautological, as YEC. In fact, I sometimes think YEC is a genially knowing parody of blindly righteous Darwinism. I’ve read the apologisms for Darwinism against it’s detractors… and, as I’ve said many times, the apologisms hold as much water as a cheesegrater… geomorphology? You can use it to justify…

…anything…

A rabbit skeleton in the Cambrian, perhaps? And that’s just the retail proxy for the manifold ways in which evolution is liable to falsification with every new bit of evidence uncovered. You can call a black swan “white”, but it remains what it is. Evolution stands liable on a whole slew of lines of testing to falsification. YEC admits of none, and is upfront about its unfalsifiability. To compare is just so much talkin’ smack.

We are wired to treat reality as real??? Sounds like a-priori reasoning to me - similar to super-theistic Kant… oh, the irony…

No, that’s what we conclude, at length, from observing human behavior, anatomy, physiology and psychology. The evidence strongly supports the idea that ‘reality is real’ is a cognitive imperative, even (especially) at subliminal levels.

GET REAL!!! The level of assumption behind every single reply you make to everyone is so drowned in dogma it’s untrue.

I remember reading something by (atheist) Wyndham Lewis saying religion had an incredible power in simply insisting that things are this and that because they are (no argument allowed). Yet today, it seems this unknowing assumption is the stance of many an atheist…

Putting your hand in the fire hurts and harms, although I’m sure there are some who would disagree to such an absolute statement… but extrapolating what’s going on, on a technical level, from the hand, the fire, the reason behind the fire, the reason behind the reason… that’s not quite so easy to discern, and your claims that such ideas as Hawkings is presenting as scientifically reasonable is all logical progression falls to pieces at the point where ultimately, it ends up conjuring idealistic mathematical solutions… from thin air…

The point of the challenge to remove any need to assert dogma, or trust what I say at all. You can show yourself, in vivid and painful fashion, right there in your home. You need not accept any assertions from me. The pain in your hand and the reflex to yank your hand away will do all the convicting needed. I can just observe from afar.

That falsifiability… of course, these new ideas, compiled by Hawking, fail to be falsifiable!

And he readily acknowledges as much. This is not a point of confusion for Hawking or anyone reading his book.

But on top of all that, they additionally lack certain essential justifications that everything from Yeti to the Loch Ness monster have more claim to…

only reasonably, of course, not that I expect the average scientismic luddite to realise that…

This is physics, not the National Enquirer. You wouldn’t except breathless reports of a a Calabi-Yau manifold seen running through the forest, or coming up for air in the Loch out back… This is to misunderstand what physicists study and how they study it.

It also seemingly ignores the stupendous success those physicists have in demonstrating their claims and knowledge, which your 'essentially justified" believers in Sasquatch conspicuously cannot begin to match.

I know, that all grooves on the reality-is-real meme, and that’s problematic. But there it is.

-TS

 

[AndyT_81]

Touchstone,

Ugh. That’s a fail on the same lines as Plantinga’s EAAN – why should objective truth-finding be valuable for survival. Even the lowly cockroach is a marvel of objective truth-finding, a basic insight of science that Hoffman apparently can’t see. How does the cockroach acquire food? It must use its senses (antennae, etc. – the cockroach has a remarkably acute sense of smell!) to locate, identify and acquire food, for example. If it couldn’t discriminate between features of its surrounding that objectively obtain – food from non-food, it wouldn’t survive, or more to the point, there’d be no cockroach species to talk about, and to suggest was somehow not in touch with objective reality.

If you think that description is somehow an accurate representation of the EAAN, you really need to read the EAAN again, perhaps more slowly this time…

 

[Touchstone]

Touchstone,

If you think that description is somehow an accurate representation of the EAAN, you really need to read the EAAN again, perhaps more slowly this time…

You don’t find Plantinga dubious about the connection between natural selection and performative models of the world deployed by animals and other beings? Plantinga doubts the rationality of the conjunction of N&E, based on “what we know of evolution”, which is where the problem leaks out badly for Plantinga. He doesn’t even attempt to present empirical evidence for his “low or inscrutable” assessment of the prospects of veridical beliefs as the product of evolutionary naturalism. Philosophy just casually cognizant of biology, and making a hash of it, in presupposing from the get-go his conclusion…

But yeah, the core problem is a clumsy and simplistic view of the role and efficacy of veridicality in naturalist evolution as a predictable, observable outcome. Evolution doesn’t produce perfection or clairvoyance, but information concering the extra-mental world is a value asset, a useful advantage in climbing the evolutionary hill. And this is demonstrable.

-TS

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Touchstone

What would be the theory that has “God passing the scientific method”. This again, sounds like either some light humor, or crazy talk. Have I missed some theory that incorporates God or angels, here?

Carl Sagan said in Cosmos:

“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”

God said in Genesis:

“Let there be light.”

Is this God passing the science test, or is this science passing the God test?

 

[AndyT_81]

Touchstone,

Philosophy just casually cognizant of biology, and making a hash of it, in presupposing from the get-go his conclusion…

Kind of the inverse of Richard Dawkins? Sorry, couldn’t help myself.

As for Plantinga apparently being horribly wrong about his take on evolution in its role of his EAAN, from my reading of the argument, all that is required for the argument from the idea of evolution is : Brains are evolved under the combined process of natural selection (the driving force of which is the ability to survive to at least child bearing age) and “random” mutation.

I’m no biologist, but I’m pretty sure that is a relatively uncontroversial statement.

But yeah, the core problem is a clumsy and simplistic view of the role and efficacy of veridicality in naturalist evolution as a predictable, observable outcome.

Huh? You might want to expand on that a bit.

Evolution doesn’t produce perfection or clairvoyance, but information concering the extra-mental world is a value asset, a useful advantage in climbing the evolutionary hill. And this is demonstrable.

Tell me, what part of Plantinga’s argument assumes that evolution is unable to provide a brain which can impart improved survivability to an organism, and thus enable it to climb the “evolutionary hill”?

 

[greylorn]

He really has lost his mind. He has gone from a physicist to believing in magic lol

How interesting to find someone, presumably representative of most Catholics posting here, putting down Hawking for proposing exactly the same fundamental belief— creation from nothing— upon which Catholic metaphysics and its consequent belief system is founded.

Do not Catholics believe that God created the universe from nothing?

Is it okay that God can create from nothing, but that there is no other possibility of creation from nothing by some other force?

Do you understand either gravity, or the other natural forces which define the universe, or even God?

It is no wonder that more and more intelligent people are giving up on religion, with ideas such as this still at the core of religious belief systems.

Finally, I propose that Hawking, and the Church, and anyone who proposes that anything can be created from nothing, is wrong. That notion is the most absurd, counterintuitive idea that humans have ever invented. It was apparently first proposed in a slightly different form by Hermes Trismigestus a few millennia back, and he got it wrong too.

Do you really want to be the pot, calling the kettle, “black,”?

 

[Touchstone]

Touchstone,

Kind of the inverse of Richard Dawkins? Sorry, couldn’t help myself.

No worries. I think being casually familiar with (non-scientific) philosophy is not much more a problem than being passingly familiar with astrology. Admittedly, there’s utility in familiarity as a matter of cultural literacy, and the history of man’s navel-gazing over the century, but I think a scientist would just laugh at the idea that he doesn’t speak “philosophy” in the way that Plantinga doesn’t speak “science”. That’s a great trade for the scientist, and a huge deficit for the philosopher, I’d say, as I type on my science-powered MacBook…

As for Plantinga apparently being horribly wrong about his take on evolution in its role of his EAAN, from my reading of the argument, all that is required for the argument from the idea of evolution is : Brains are evolved under the combined process of natural selection (the driving force of which is the ability to survive to at least child bearing age) and “random” mutation.

I’m no biologist, but I’m pretty sure that is a relatively uncontroversial statement.

I think is wholly mistaken. What do you think a biologist, or biologists make of that? Are you aware of the reactions to this by people who study biology? If Dawkins is clumsy on his theology, and admittedly he is, at points, he’s a Doctor of the Church compared to Plantinga’s engagement with actual evolutionary theory.

Huh? You might want to expand on that a bit.

OK, but it would have to be a separate thread. If you’re game I am, let me know and I’ll spin it up.

Tell me, what part of Plantinga’s argument assumes that evolution is unable to provide a brain which can impart improved survivability to an organism, and thus enable it to climb the “evolutionary hill”?

Plantinga’s doubt is not centered on nominal evolution being unable on its own; theistic evolution seems quite capable to him as a means of producing veridical faculties. Plantinga doubts the conjuction of N&E, that is that naturalistic evolution can be expected to provide veridical faculties. Evolutionary naturalism doesn’t predict, or require that all or even most beliefs are veridical, but rather that true beliefs, in areas which implicate survival and fecundity, tend to confer an advantage precisely because they are veridical – the fish that has a more acute sense of smell has a feeding advantage in that its model of the extra-mental world will outperfom models based on less accurate or robust information.

Information is power, and truth kills, when it comes to evolution.

-TS

(There’s little penalty, survival wise, in indulging fanciful beliefs about gods and demons, in contrast to visual acuity in hunting, or sonic imaging for a bat hunting for food. In fact, false beliefs may confer an evolutionary advantage of sorts with the disadvantages of misconception being outweighed by the “social cohesion” benefits that a collective commitment to such beliefs garner in the community. A false belief in Molech may still provide cultural and social benefits that give it an advantage to the “rationalist independents” down the river a ways…)