God's existence

[Al_Moritz]

Al:

Or quite bad, considering the non-existence of an actual infinity!

God bless,
jd

Well, 300 billion galaxies in the universe, each containing about 300 billion stars, while being a lot, are not precisely an infinity.

 

[JDaniel]

But that of course is not what you said. You made an authoritative statement that only bacteria could be found elsewhere in the universe.

Do you see the fundamental issue with declaring that it’s impossible for god to do something on earth but no problem at all with doing it in heaven? Why is it impossible for god to “actualize” (whatever that is supposed to mean) faith and hope on earth?

cerad:

He did, at one time.

jd

 

[JDaniel]

If it weren’t for natural disasters causing us pain, suffering, and death, we’d still have each other, exercising our God-given free will to cause all of those things. And we’d still be left with plenty of reasons to experience these virtues of love, hope, and faith.

The point is, you’re forced to do a lot of intellectual gymnastics to square this “fine-tuned universe” with objective reality. It only works for you if can take all the horrible, completely commonplace tragedies, and rationalize how these things are somehow necessary for our spiritual development. That tsunami had to wipe out Tohoku, Japan back in March, because God loves us all so much and wants us to love each other more. And thanks to Him, we have this fine-tuned Universe to make it all possible.

ASimon:

On the contrary: I say it merely takes intelligence and logic.

God bless,
jd

 

[Al_Moritz]

ASimon:

How is this a counter-argument?
jd

Oh well, that is an example of those bogus arguments against fine-tuning that I was talking about. The fine-tuning argument is about any life at all, not about the most perfect life (heaven on Earth) that atheists may wish for. The latter was never a part of the argument, so bringing it up as an ‘objection’ is just an irrelevant distraction, a cheap excuse not to seriously study the argument.

That lack of serious study is also why ASimon could make such a bold claim like “Any skeptic, or non-believer, or scientist, or rationalist that knows anything is going to make short work of that”. He doesn’t know what he is talking about. Again, leading cosmologists know about the seriousness of fine-tuning problem, which is why the atheists and agnostics among them feel compelled to promote the multiverse as an explanatory necessity – they have no other choice.

 

[JDaniel]

I know there are billions of planets. For my own research do you mind posting a link to the scientific evidence about the strong possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. I read about a lot of hypothetical situations about life elsewhere, or many sources break down the mathematical probabilities of life elsewhere. Nothing really ever goes past that though.

EO:

Never forget that it is the universe that is primarily fine tuned, not merely the Earth. The Earth exists within the context of the universe; it is the universe that conditions it.

God bless,
jd

 

[Al_Moritz]

(Claim: 99% of all life forms that have ever existed on this planet have already gone extinct)

I’d like to see some documentation of this!

It’s probably true, or it’s at least 90 %. So what? There is a time for all life, and that time comes and goes. Our time to go will come too.

If that is the case, would it not be better had we not lived at all? Or, was all human life futile once the human race goes extinct? Well, those ideas obviously only make sense to the nihilist.

 

[JDaniel]

Are you saying this is a reason not to believe or a reason the “finely-tuned world” theory doesn’t work? I can kind of see what you are saying, but you could refute the entire entropy thing by saying that God gave us a sun to prevent our system (biologically) from becoming disordered. Clearly we don’t understand creation enough (if you believe in creation) to know why that law of thermodynamics exists (possibly so that all of energy is not contained in a ridiculously condensed ball in a space system, constantly condensing itself more to become more ordered), but you could say that having a sun which constantly emits energy into our system to prevent it from becoming disordered is further evidence of it being finely-tuned. If we didn’t have the sun, biology, and therefore, intelligent life wouldn’t exist.

Hi! Karebear:

There are two conclusions that pretty directly follow from an understanding of entropy: first, that the universe will, in billions of years, come to an end. And, second, that it had a beginning, about 16.75 billion years ago. So, either it gathered itself together to bring itself into being, or . . .

God bless,
jd

 

[ASimon]

Oh well, that is an example of those bogus arguments against fine-tuning that I was talking about. The fine-tuning argument is about any life at all, not about the most perfect life (heaven on Earth) that atheists may wish for. The latter was never a part of the argument, so bringing it up as an ‘objection’ is just an irrelevant distraction, a cheap excuse not to seriously study the argument.

That lack of serious study is also why ASimon could make such a bold claim like “Any skeptic, or non-believer, or scientist, or rationalist that knows anything is going to make short work of that”. He doesn’t know what he is talking about. Again, leading cosmologists know about the seriousness of fine-tuning problem, which is why the atheists and agnostics among them feel compelled to promote the multiverse as an explanatory necessity – they have no other choice.

I don’t ask for things to be perfect. I ask for “fine-tuning” to mean something remotely comparable to what it’s supposed to mean. When you begin with the idea that our planet is perfectly situated to support life (which the OP did), then acknowledge as a matter of objective reality how unpredictable and dangerous the natural world is (and how much we, meaning humanity, must do for ourselves to survive it), then try to sell that as God’s “fine-tuning,” that’s just a flagrant re-definition of the term to square the circle and keep expanding the tautology.

 

[andy60]

I think there is more to it. We need to look at the love he had and what he gave us during creation. He wanted to share this love with us. But with it came free choice and look at where it taken us! All he created was by the Word and it was for us thru Him!

 

[JDaniel]

Well, 300 billion galaxies in the universe, each containing about 300 billion stars, while being a lot, are not precisely an infinity.

Al:

And never will be - except by postulation.

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

Oh well, that is an example of those bogus arguments against fine-tuning that I was talking about. The fine-tuning argument is about any life at all, not about the most perfect life (heaven on Earth) that atheists may wish for. The latter was never a part of the argument, so bringing it up as an ‘objection’ is just an irrelevant distraction, a cheap excuse not to seriously study the argument.

That lack of serious study is also why ASimon could make such a bold claim like “Any skeptic, or non-believer, or scientist, or rationalist that knows anything is going to make short work of that”. He doesn’t know what he is talking about. Again, leading cosmologists know about the seriousness of fine-tuning problem, which is why the atheists and agnostics among them feel compelled to promote the multiverse as an explanatory necessity – they have no other choice.

I always learn from you, Al. Be not frustrated. Our efforts will bear ever more fruit, in my opinion!

jd

 

[Al_Moritz]

I always learn from you, Al. Be not frustrated. Our efforts will bear ever more fruit, in my opinion!

jd

Oh well, perhaps I just have a grumpy day But it’s good to put the finger on the wound sometimes. Anyway, I am glad you like my (name removed by moderator)ut.

 

[Al_Moritz]

I don’t ask for things to be perfect. I ask for “fine-tuning” to mean something remotely comparable to what it’s supposed to mean. When you begin with the idea that our planet is perfectly situated to support life (which the OP did), then acknowledge as a matter of objective reality how unpredictable and dangerous the natural world is (and how much we, meaning humanity, must do for ourselves to survive it), then try to sell that as God’s “fine-tuning,” that’s just a flagrant re-definition of the term to square the circle and keep expanding the tautology.

Well, we are talking about two different fine-tunings here, the universe and the Earth. Anyway, I don’t give much about the ‘finely-tuned’ Earth. As I said, given the vastness of the universe it probably was bound to happen somewhere, right distance from a star, planet clash creating the moon, warts and all.

 

[karebear92]

Hi! Karebear:

There are two conclusions that pretty directly follow from an understanding of entropy: first, that the universe will, in billions of years, come to an end. And, second, that it had a beginning, about 16.75 billion years ago. So, either it gathered itself together to bring itself into being, or . . .

God bless,
jd

Wouldn’t that go entirely against science, though? I don’t know. I just don’t understand how material nature can spontaneously appear from nothing. It makes much more sense that something in material nature was created by something entirely outside of material nature (God). Thats just me, however.

God bless!

 

[Al_Moritz]

Wouldn’t that go entirely against science, though? I don’t know. I just don’t understand how material nature can spontaneously appear from nothing. It makes much more sense that something in material nature was created by something entirely outside of material nature (God). Thats just me, however.

God bless!

Well, what if material nature is all there ever was? But then, the alleged eternal matter of eternal fields would have to have magical rabbit-out-of-hat characteristics that do not square with anything from science that we know about actual matter and fields (e.g., no entropy increase, huge explosions out of ‘nothing’). So much for coherent and ‘scientific’ naturalist reasoning.

 

[eo_chibears]

Wouldn’t that go entirely against science, though? I don’t know. I just don’t understand how material nature can spontaneously appear from nothing. It makes much more sense that something in material nature was created by something entirely outside of material nature (God). Thats just me, however.

God bless!

I feel the same way. It’s hard to wrap my mind around how all that is spontaneously appeared from absolutely nothing.

 

[ASimon]

Wouldn’t that go entirely against science, though? I don’t know. I just don’t understand how material nature can spontaneously appear from nothing. It makes much more sense that something in material nature was created by something entirely outside of material nature (God). Thats just me, however.

God bless!

Well, two thoughts here. The first being that the physicist Lawrence Krauss has written a book (helpfully titled “A Universe from Nothing”) that discusses how the Universe could’ve come from nothing. He also has multiple lectures on youtube that are easy to find where he explains the ideas.

The second thought is that you can grant a Prime Mover deity who created the Universe, call him “God,” stipulate that this Prime Mover doesn’t need a cause for himself, if all that makes more sense to you than just a Universe from nothing.

But I won’t neglect to mention, the reason this is problematic for the Christian (or any theist), is that you have all your work still in front of you to find equally credible reasons to believe that this God knows you’re here, cares about you at all, has certain rules he’d like you to follow, and punishes/rewards people whether you do or not. You need to presuppose a ton of conditions in order to get from a Prime Mover God to anything like the Christian God.

The fact is, deism isn’t that insane. It does appeal to our basic intuitions that something had to come from something. There’s just as little evidence for a Prime Mover as there is for a Christian God, but the upside is, nothing about my life changes if the Prime Mover actually does exist.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Well, two thoughts here. The first being that the physicist Lawrence Krauss has written a book (helpfully titled “A Universe from Nothing”) that discusses how the Universe could’ve come from nothing. He also has multiple lectures on youtube that are easy to find where he explains the ideas.

Right. And while he may be a good cosmologist, he is philosophically an absolute amateur who confuses the physical ‘nothing’ of the quantum vacuum with the philosophical nothing. Here is a good link by cosmologist Luke Barnes about it:

letterstonature.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/of-nothing/

 

[JDaniel]

Wouldn’t that go entirely against science, though? I don’t know. I just don’t understand how material nature can spontaneously appear from nothing. It makes much more sense that something in material nature was created by something entirely outside of material nature (God). Thats just me, however.

God bless!

Karebear:

Exactly. Even though there was more than likely no BEFORE the universe’s existence, we must induce that something brought it into existence - that was in existence before it was formed. Here we are using an a posteriori dialectic to come to a necessary conclusion. The universe could not have sprung from pre-existing universe stuff, unless, as Al Moritz and others have pointed out, one has faith in some multi-verse hypothesis. (I refuse to call them “theories” as I believe that would be demeaning to the word as it is used in good science.)

The Church’s position is that the universe was created. This word, “created,” was not used then the way it is thrown about in today’s usage. Man literally “creates” nothing. Man juxtaposes and compiles pre-existing stuff to bring about something quasi-new. On the other hand, God truly creates. He created the universe where there was absolutely nothing before. He did not take a slice or two of nothingness, or any thing else, and slap it together. He formed the universe, and us, in a pure emanation from His Divine Will.

God bless,
jd

 

[karebear92]

Well, two thoughts here. The first being that the physicist Lawrence Krauss has written a book (helpfully titled “A Universe from Nothing”) that discusses how the Universe could’ve come from nothing. He also has multiple lectures on youtube that are easy to find where he explains the ideas.

The second thought is that you can grant a Prime Mover deity who created the Universe, call him “God,” stipulate that this Prime Mover doesn’t need a cause for himself, if all that makes more sense to you than just a Universe from nothing.

But I won’t neglect to mention, the reason this is problematic for the Christian (or any theist), is that you have all your work still in front of you to find equally credible reasons to believe that this God knows you’re here, cares about you at all, has certain rules he’d like you to follow, and punishes/rewards people whether you do or not. You need to presuppose a ton of conditions in order to get from a Prime Mover God to anything like the Christian God.

The fact is, deism isn’t that insane. It does appeal to our basic intuitions that something had to come from something. There’s just as little evidence for a Prime Mover as there is for a Christian God, but the upside is, nothing about my life changes if the Prime Mover actually does exist.

Thanks, I will look into the Lawrence Krauss. My only objection to what you wrote is that we have a religion from the beginning that is not based on physical evidence and therefore we don’t need it to prove what we have already accepted is, essentially, unprovable. Although we don’t have physical evidence, we do have a religion that traces our roots back and gives us (at least we believe) scriptures through which God reveals himself and answers the questions you addressed. Then we have Jesus, who basically, at least in my opinion solidifies my belief. That is why I believe what I believe. It is completely based on something that is non physical. I feel like, on the other hand, Atheists believe in something entirely physical but still, at least for now, unprovable. So there is essentially faith in what exactly? I have not watched the stuff you recommended yet, so I apologize if I am mistaken on my views.