The law of thermodynamics is not presented as a metaphysical absolute. Why are you under the impression that if a proposed law is shown not to be universal that therefore a logical contradiction arises? If evidence arises that show the law not to universal then so be it. I don’t understand the problem.
Muchas gratias.You are right and I understand your point and where you are coming from and where you are going.
I would think it would be easier for a person or a tree or an airplane or a satellite to transfer to the surface of another universe than for a particular set of protons and where is the proof that matter is missing from this universe and going to another? He seems to want to get people going in a negative way but it gives him attention. He is not being a serious scientist. I remember once he said that if he had to write up scientifically the things he wrote in A Brief History of Time, he would have several boxes of formula. I appreciate his training and all but, he is pretending too much.Perhaps, you can start a thread.
So, true.
Yes, it is odd enough when you read this stuff, but recently I saw a cosmologist on TV talking about (evidenceless) parallel universes and about the same you being poor in one universe and being rich in another. Seeing him in person talk like that made him really appear like a nutcase straight from a mental institution. I am not comfortable having such thoughts about a fellow scientist, but that is how I felt.My son was just telling me that he thinks Hawking is proposing that the multiverse exists in our space but in different dimensions. Well, if people can come up with these theories and not justify them then sci-fi fictions writers can just take over AIP and the other physics journals.
I’ve divided your post into 3 main sections to make answering it easier. So for your first, “isn’t God’s existence a matter of faith, which is irrational, and so argument is either irrelevant or impossible?”
But if this is true, then how could we decide that atheism is right? It would just be one more truth claim that we could not asses. Obviously, if there are competing truth claims only one can be right. But I disagree that we can not test which truth claim, or religion is better than others. Actually, Christianity is unique in this sense, in that we can test it. Why? If there is good historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, so good that evidence for it is superior to evidence for any other religion, then we should believe that Christianity is true. As it happens, I do think evidence for Christianity is very good as people like, NT Wright, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, Carsten Peter Thiede, and many others have argued in popular and scholarly sources, and I myself have argued on the board in several threads. If we should believe Christianity on the evidence, then obviously, we should reject competing and incompatible truth claims such as Zeus, Isis etc. Reason can also asses some problems with those as well, but I am trying to be brief. On the resurrection see:
I answered this directly in another thread, but it is really just asking a version of the problem of evil. There are two problems of evil: the intellectual and the emotional. The intellectual deals with the compatibility of the existence of God and evil, the emotional, more with how we deal with suffering. I here concern myself with the intellectual, not because I don’t think the emotional is serious, but for space considerations.
Or, as someone once said, you first must have a universe at all, before you can complain about it.
Just a heads-up, not for you, but for thread lurkers who might take you seriously. You and MOM and most posters to this thread know less about critical thinking than you do about physics, and it shows. You are way too full of yourselves. IMO of course.You are right and I understand your point and where you are coming from and where you are going.
I think that Hawking should at least justify the violation to his peers. I see that he justifies putting the law aside by proposing a multiverse theory.
If I understand it correctly, he has noticed that there are protons that seem to appear and disappear and is taking this occurrence to propose that spontaneous creation can occur. He addresses the problem with the laws of thermodynamics with his proposition of multiverses. So, the proton that appeared just popped up from another verse. It pushed through the bubble of this universe or the surfaces of our universe with another come close and protons transfer from the surface of the other universe to ours. Is this correct? This is wild! Why would matter transfer from one universe to another at the subatomic level and why only these particular protons?
I am disappointed with Hawking because I do not think that he should be taking advantage of his fame to promote his atheism and just be a rebel and become more famous and sell books. It seems to me as though he wants to get attention - so he proclaims - philosophy is dead (reminiscent of Nietzsche’s God is dead) - not very original.
I have to flat out disagree here. I believe that science and religion can exist in the same brain, but I don’t believe they are compatible. This article goes into depth about this idea. Miracles, prayer and historical accounts of divination do not stand up to scrutiny. I know that you have stated that you believe otherwise. I fail to see how prayer can work, that is if you believe praying does help improve material circumstances. Prayer is statistically inconsistent. There are people who pray everyday, yet their condition does not improve. There is people that pray, and their prayers are answered, however this is a probably certainty. It’s simply counting the hits, and ignoring the misses, it’s confirmation bias. Show me scientific proof of a miracle, and we’ll talk. Most miracle accounts that I have seen, have been thoroughly debunked to my satisfaction. So far there has always been a natural explanation. If God wanted to make his own existence apparent, he would simply have to cure a notable amputee, and this amputee could then be subject to a range of controlled experiments. In addition to this, you could be 1 million dollars richer simply by proving it. This goes for all your claims that you can prove the existence of God through science. I’m pretty much showing you how to become a millionaire for free (if you are not already). This money could go a long way for a charity, and would be useful in promoting the definitive proofs of Catholicism.
“By above reason, he did not mean irrational, but not strictly provable by reason.” Sugar-coated special pleading. You’re simply creating an abstraction - above reason means nothing to me.
Continued in next post…
I only use evil for the sake of arguing, I personally do not believe in objective evil. Science is self-correcting. Just because a theory might seem weird or complex, this does not mean that it can’t be right. Now I know you probably know this, but my point is if the theory is complete bunk, science will get rid of it, so you need not worry. Scientists are currently testing this theory, and if it does not stand, it will be thrown out, and new theories will arise. As I said, you need not worry, science will determine whether the multiverse theory compromises our current understanding of the universe.
You must understand that atheism is a response to theism, if theism didn’t exist, atheism would not need to exist. It is consequently an opposite. I don’t particularly like the word, because it brings about a whole multitude of stereotypes and imagery. I am not proud of this, and while I may share a lot of common ground with atheists, I do not agree on all things. I’m sure this is the same with yourself and ID proponents or creationists. But I think there is good reason to be a skeptic and metaphysical naturalist, if you will, simply because they don’t create unnecessary assumptions and view the world as it is. There is no good evidence that Jesus did rise from the dead, there are plenty of more reasonable and natural explanations, such as Jesus was not the son of God, but a charismatic preacher. Supernatural intervention is at the bottom of my list for possible reasons. It is more likely that Jesus was not who he said he was, he could have been, but there is currently no reason to think so. Note that the bible is certainly not a reliable historical text, there are many inconsistencies. I don’t think you can prove or disprove God’s existence; I’m an agnostic in this sense. I look at the evidence and I see what is more reasonable. There will always be a God of the gaps, because it is likely that there will likely always be gaps for God to hide in. You have to accept that you are flying in the face of well over a thousand different religions, let alone specific dialects of these religions. While this does not necessarily disprove yours, it means that your ‘evidence’ has to be very compelling, which I don’t think it is. Proving that a God is necessary is one thing, but proving that God is personal and the God of Catholicism, is by no means easy.
When looking at the problem of evil by itself from the intellectual point of view. God is by definition incompatible with evil. The characteristic of being perfectly good contradicts the allowance of evil. To say that we create evil out of our own free-will is absurd. This still does not account for natural disasters. How do you explain something like an asteroid striking earth and killing many innocent people? God must foresee this happening, otherwise he is not omnipotent, yet he won’t intervene. If you think that God does indeed intervene with these things, how do you explain hurricanes, disease, and other such phenomenon that you observe on a frequent basis?
The doctor cannot completely eradicate pain from the equation, God can. To say “God works in mysterious ways, I cannot know his reasons for allowing evil to exist” is special pleading. Fine tuning is one explanation, but I prefer the explanation that there may have been many big bangs, or that there is a multiverse. in each of these universes, the laws may not be fine tuned, but we live in one that appears to be - it is a statistical certainty. If the multiverse theory were to hold up, there may be no need for a beginning at all, the universe may have always been, in which God is unnecessary in his role as designer and creator. For more explanation of multiverse theory.
I agree with Dawkins here. I deny objective morality on this basis. There is currently no scientific evidence for objective morals. I can only see using the example of the rape of a little girl as an appeal to emotion. I form my own morality based on what I see to be reasonable, it is unreasonable to rape a little girl. Factors such as empathy (as an evolutionary product), the idea that I have no reason to rape a little girl and that rape is opposed by most laws are reasons enough to have a sense of subjective morality. No objective, God given rules needed. To say that God created these objective morals is simply undue credit, I simply suggest that these rational morals that have been created by us, have simply been assigned to the concept of God. This brings to mind the quote which may not exactly be true for Catholicism, but it brings up a good argument in the likeness of God and man.
Contiuned…
My argument is not ‘we can’t see a good reason for God to allow this suffering, therefore there isn’t one’, it is ‘we can’t see a good reason for God to allow this suffering, therefore it is highly improbable that God exists’. Which goes back to Occam’s razor; the simplest answer is often correct. However, it is not ALWAYS correct, which is why one cannot disprove God’s existence, because it is inevitable that there will always be the chance that I am wrong. God is always a possibility, but then again so is my invisible wizard friend Jim, yet there are good reasons why I don’t consider Jim’s existence. I can make special pleadings and make reasons for his inconsistencies ad infinitum, which just keep on pushing Jim out of skeptical inquiry. Russell’s teapot demonstrates this well.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
The fact that you admit that evil is troubling supports the complexity that evil brings into the equation. You have justified it for the most part well, but in the process you have made more assumptions. Occam’s razor works to cut this back.
The multiverse will forever remain speculation because it cannot be scientifically demonstrated, and it does not solve the design problem, see section 1.3.4. and following of my article:
Your post doesn’t tell me that you have any more of an understanding of science; certainly not one valuable to the progression of science. If you had more than an adequate grasp of anything beyond the pseudo-science and the cellulite farms swimming around in your behe clone of a brain, then perhaps instead of insults you could have actually formed an intelligible rebuttal instead; which although would have almost certainly been flawed in one of its premises (those pertaining to the nature of energy), it would have at least bordered on the capacity to form coherent syllogisms.
thanks for your answer, i’m out all day today, but will try to answer tonight.
By the way, my article also makes some comments about Occam’s Razor.