Is The Big Bang Really Proof Of Gods Existence?

[itinerant1]

Wow. I’m sorry to interrupt this thread, but I’ve just been glancing through it today, and I must say that I have a morbid fascination with the psychology behind this post (#34).

“Either there’s a god or life is worthless!” What a childish attitude…The next thing you know, you’ll be demanding to play with all the toys or you’re going home, harumph!

The fact that you enjoy being alive is good. It’s unfortunate that many people are unable to revel in how beautiful life is. However, there remains the ultimate existential problem. What does one’s enjoyment in life amount to if all is merely cosmic dust in a swirling mass of atoms, with no memory even of life after death. What does one feel or think about such a world-view, that ultimately there is no meaning or purpose to one’s life, not even a memory of it will survive. It’s easy to avoid the existential issue by escaping into endless distractions while consciousness remains.

To me such a world-view contradicts the obvious implications of beauty in nature. It’s like an act of faith inverted, where one puts his all in the becoming of the cosmos and what must be, the nothing. That is akin to a religious act of faith. It is an upside-down religion, the product of flawed intellectual insight or a disorder than can be corrected psychologically.

Peace and happiness!

itinerant1, the Anti-Atheist

 

[AntiTheist]

What does one’s enjoyment in life amount to if all is merely cosmic dust in a swirling mass of atoms, with no memory even of life after death.

It amounts to enjoyment in life.

What does one feel or think about such a world-view, that ultimately there is no meaning or purpose to one’s life, not even a memory of it will survive.

It’s irrelevant what I think about it; what I think about it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.

It’s easy to avoid the existential issue by escaping into endless distractions while consciousness remains.

You’ve got it precisely backwards here. The “existential issue” is part of the “endless distractions” that come with having such a sophisticated piece of machinery between our ears. We’re hard wired to look for patterns and “meanings,” even when there aren’t any, because looking for patterns and meanings helped our race to survive to get to this stage.

To me such a world-view contradicts the obvious implications of beauty in nature.

“Beauty” is a concept we attribute to things. The only implication of beauty is that our minds are inclined to find certain things beautiful.

Can you actually construct a logical argument (sound and valid) that begins with “humans find some things beautiful” and ends with “therefore, all things have an objective meaning”? I don’t think you can.

I appreciate the friendly tone of your message, but I highly disagree that there is some great existential problem lurking here – it’s a problem only to your mind, which naturally wants solutions and patterns and meanings, even if there aren’t any to be found.

 

[Cecilianus]

Wow. I’m sorry to interrupt this thread, but I’ve just been glancing through it today, and I must say that I have a morbid fascination with the psychology behind this post (#34).

“Either there’s a god or life is worthless!” What a childish attitude…The next thing you know, you’ll be demanding to play with all the toys or you’re going home, harumph!

If I could just interject my own thoughts, I would agree that ultimately in the long run, to the universe, nothing we do matters in the slightest. However, to us, right here and right now, what we do matters a great deal.

I would go farther than you. It doesn’t even make sense to say that anything matters “to the universe” - as if the universe were some sort of anthropomorphic unitary being.

I don’t need to believe that something “objectively special is occurring” when I have feelings. The chemicals that compose me have perfectly good reasons for causing me to feel what I feel (for example, I tend to feel love for people who are kind to me, who share my values, etc. Those are all great reasons).

As a classical musician, I could not disagree with you more strongly. Emotions reveal a beauty and intelligibility in the object being contemplated, especially such emotions as we experience when we enjoy the beauty of nature, or listen to music. Considered in the heart of the matter, music quite frankly has nothing to do with sound waves.

I would say that the poster who has these kinds of thoughts has some sort of neurological inability to be happy with the way things are. I mean, to actually say that you would
consider suicide in the face of reality seems to speak to a very serious condition. In all honesty, I would seek a professional’s help.

Have you never sat quietly and just felt the joy that it is to be alive?

I have! I can’t answer for MindOverMatter, though; we don’t tend to agree on much.

It’s not that I “care not” for those things. It’s that there’s no good reason to suppose that any of those things exist outside of human minds.

Well, I can assure you that such things as mathematical objects and music DO exist outside of our mind - I can see it as clearly as I can see the keyboard I’m typing on.

And what is this “mere pleasure” stuff? People are driven to act by their values, which do not always necessarily consist of simple pleasure-seeking. Values come from a lot of sources: biological empathy, reason, one’s training in society, etc.

A lot of people find meaning and significance in helping others, in building a better world in the here and now, the world that matters to us in this moment. It’s irrelevant if the “significance” is “objective” or whether it “matters” to the universe or to some other being: it matters to us, right here and right now.

But such things as biological empathy, reason, and society DO have a foundation in truth. We have biological empathy because it was adaptive for us to do so; there are good reasons for us to act that way, and those that don’t act that way don’t survive. It’s because the world really is such a way that we ought to practice empathy.

If nothing else, reading your post has made me very glad that I don’t share your sorrowful, depressive view of the world. It is with much satisfaction that I go outside now to sit quietly and enjoy the sheer joy of this beautiful, fleeting existence that is all the more precious to me for the simple reason that it will not last forever.

 

[Cecilianus]

You’ve got it precisely backwards here. The “existential issue” is part of the “endless distractions” that come with having such a sophisticated piece of machinery between our ears. We’re hard wired to look for patterns and “meanings,” even when there aren’t any, because looking for patterns and meanings helped our race to survive to get to this stage.

What is it a distraction from?

If we’re hard wired to look for meaning and pattern, maybe that’s what our machinery is supposed to do - and doing anything else is kind of a distraction.

And looking for patterns and meanings works because the world really has those patterns and meanings. Do you not believe in science? Science is full of patterns and equations and meanings. There really isn’t anything else to science. Science is something that atheists should glory in - atheism is inexcusable without science to give it some sort of intellectual respectability.

“Beauty” is a concept we attribute to things. The only implication of beauty is that our minds are inclined to find certain things beautiful.

To say that we find them beautiful implies that it is the thing itself which is beautiful. Our finding something beautiful is a consequence of the thing itself being beautiful. And our minds are inclined to find them beautiful because they are; our minds don’t delude us.

Can you actually construct a logical argument (sound and valid) that begins with “humans find some things beautiful” and ends with “therefore, all things have an objective meaning”? I don’t think you can.

Can you construct a logical argument that you exist and are doing anything? There are some things we don’t bother to argue for because we see them already. I don’t need to construct a logical argument that beauty is objective because I see it as clearly as I know anything else.

 

[itinerant1]

unfounded speculation is meaningless.

Unfounded meaninglessness is speculation.

 

[Cecilianus]

Unfounded meaninglessness is speculation.

Actually, Charles Darwin, all science is “unfounded speculation” - and I know you wouldn’t say that science is “meaningless”. Science does not proceed in logically valid syllogisms. It generally proceeds using the line of argumentation, “If p then q; p, therefore q” (i.e., if this theory makes the following predictions; the predictions turn out to be true, therefore we have evidence for this theory). That’s called the fallacy of affirming the antecedent, or the converse error.

Because it’s technically a logical fallacy, science is capable of making progress; we can always find better approximations and closer theories. But it works - and I don’t need to tell you (because you already know) what an improvement science has made on the condition of human knowledge!

 

[itinerant1]

Actually, Charles Darwin, all science is “unfounded speculation” - and I know you wouldn’t say that science is “meaningless”. Science does not proceed in logically valid syllogisms. It generally proceeds using the line of argumentation, “If p then q; p, therefore q” (i.e., if this theory makes the following predictions; the predictions turn out to be true, therefore we have evidence for this theory). That’s called the fallacy of affirming the antecedent, or the converse error.

Because it’s technically a logical fallacy, science is capable of making progress; we can always find better approximations and closer theories. But it works - and I don’t need to tell you (because you already know) what an improvement science has made on the condition of human knowledge!

I’m not sure who you are addressing. I was not referring to *science *in the post you cited. Science gives us knowledge of the world by confirming or disconfirming a hypothesis; using hypothetical-deductive reasoning, and so on.

 

[itinerant1]

LOL, dude the ONLY reason i am an atheist is evidence. If there was strong EVIDENCE that god existed, i would believe in god. I avoid nothing! Now if you want your hypothesis do be accepted, provide evidence for it. Like i said, unfounded speculation is meaningless.

You avoid nothing??

I have never come across a refutation of Aquinas’ demonstrations of the existence of God.

 

[Cecilianus]

I’m not sure who you are addressing. I was not referring to *science *in the post you cited. Science gives us knowledge of the world by confirming or disconfirming a hypothesis; using hypothetical-deductive reasoning, and so on.

I was addressing the quote from “Charles Darwin” that you quoted - “Unfounded speculation is meaningless”, which I addressed by pointing out to him that science is from a strictly logical point of view “unfounded speculation” (since the argument form usually used - affirming the antecedent - is formally invalid). I was lazy so I didn’t go back and find where he originally said it.

 

[itinerant1]

I was addressing the quote from “Charles Darwin” that you quoted - “Unfounded speculation is meaningless”, which I addressed by pointing out to him that science is from a strictly logical point of view “unfounded speculation” (since the argument form usually used - affirming the antecedent - is formally invalid). I was lazy so I didn’t go back and find where he originally said it.

Gotcha!

 

[AntiTheist]

Cecilianus:

Emotions reveal a beauty and intelligibility in the object being contemplated, especially such emotions as we experience when we enjoy the beauty of nature, or listen to music. Considered in the heart of the matter, music quite frankly has nothing to do with sound waves.

You are confused. It is indeed sound waves that consitute music physically, outside of the human mind; it is inside the human mind that we attribute beauty to it.

Since you probably won’t agree with that, consider the following: there is a great amount of disagreement about what constitutes “beauty.” There are some things that some individuals find beautiful that others would be repulsed by. There are other things that the vast majority of people find beautiful, but such things are not always universal.

In short, “beauty” is a subjective value judgment. The value judgment happens in less than the blink of an eye, and it doesn’t happen consciously, so you’re not aware of it, but it’s nonetheless completely dependent on the person experiencing beauty.

I can assure you that such things as mathematical objects and music DO exist outside of our mind

Sure. I’m just saying that they don’t become “beautiful” until a human being experiences and/or thinks about them.

Without a mind to think about them, they’re just “stuff.”

To say that we find them beautiful implies that it is the thing itself which is beautiful.

It doesn’t. For example, there are people in this world who honestly find torture and rape beautiful. Are you willing to agree that torture and rape are themselves beautiful things?

If not, you’ll see what’s wrong with your argument.

It’s because the world really is such a way that we ought to practice empathy.

Yes, empathy has survival value. I was just pointing out that living according to your values – and not according to the dictates of some supernatural “morality” – doesn’t imply merely chasing pleasure in the simple sense.

What is it a distraction from?

From living your life.

If we’re hard wired to look for meaning and pattern, maybe that’s what our machinery is supposed to do

Well, sure, whatever our machinery does is what it has evolved to do, obviously. The thing is that it’s not always appropriate for the context we apply it to.

Our pattern-recognition sense is great for when primitive man was hunting mammoths; but when we start applying it to things that don’t have patterns hidden in them, we get conspiracy theories and supernaturalism.

It’s similar to the argument I presented against your idea of beauty: just because a person sees something as beautiful doesn’t mean that beauty is really there, and just because a person thinks he sees a pattern doesn’t mean that the pattern is really there.

Can you construct a logical argument that you exist and are doing anything? There are some things we don’t bother to argue for because we see them already.

Yes. Obviously, “I exist and am doing something” is self-evident because we both accept it. Equally obviously, “beauty is objective” is not self-evident because not everyone accepts it.

As I already said, there are sadists and masochists who find pain, rape, and torture “beautiful.” There are people who consider things that you find disgusting to be beautiful.

Unless you’re willing to say, “everything’s beautiful!” (which reduces “beauty” to a meaningless concept), you are clearly incorrect.

 

[Cecilianus]

Cecilianus:

You are confused. It is indeed sound waves that consitute music physically, outside of the human mind; it is inside the human mind that we attribute beauty to it.

It is likewise inside the human mind taht we recognize that sound waves constitute music physically. The activity of the intellect does not change the fact that the object of the intellect is external.

Since you probably won’t agree with that, consider the following: there is a great amount of disagreement about what constitutes “beauty.” There are some things that some individuals find beautiful that others would be repulsed by. There are other things that the vast majority of people find beautiful, but such things are not always universal.

Rather, the fact that there is disagreement over what constitutes beauty indicates that there is an objective standard of beauty which people are trying to grasp. Some people have clearer insight into contemplating beauty, just as some people have better intellects in other areas.

In short, “beauty” is a subjective value judgment. The value judgment happens in less than the blink of an eye, and it doesn’t happen consciously, so you’re not aware of it, but it’s nonetheless completely dependent on the person experiencing beauty.

You’re confusing the object of the judgment with the judgment itself. As to whether something is beautiful, that indeed is a value judgment, just as whether something is true is also a judgment. But what is it that the mind is judging?

The judgment is “completely dependent on the person experiencing beauty” because without the person to experience beauty, the beauty would never be experienced. But also, without the beauty being there to be experienced, it will not be experienced either. Both are completely necessary.

Sure. I’m just saying that they don’t become “beautiful” until a human being experiences and/or thinks about them.

Without a mind to think about them, they’re just “stuff.”

They don’t become experienced as beautiful until a human being experiences them. But they are still beautiful, regardless of whether anyone is around to appreciate them.

It doesn’t. For example, there are people in this world who honestly find torture and rape beautiful. Are you willing to agree that torture and rape are themselves beautiful things?

If not, you’ll see what’s wrong with your argument.

Those people are clearly wrong. Just like the flat-earth crowd and the neo-geocentrists and the six-day creationists. Granting that there IS an external world, are you willing to grant that these people are correct about it? Of course not. So why should your hypothetical rape lovers have to be correct as well, granting an external beauty independent of the human mind?

And I don’t think they would really think that rape and torture are beautiful - if they do, then they’re using the word “beautiful” in a very different meaning than I am. Nobody can view torture as beautiful in the same way that a work of fine art (a painting, or a symphony) is beautiful. The word would have to be used very analogously, if not equivocally.

Yes, empathy has survival value. I was just pointing out that living according to your values – and not according to the dictates of some supernatural “morality” – doesn’t imply merely chasing pleasure in the simple sense.

I agree - though Christian theologians do not regard morality as supernatural, but rather a built-in part of human nature which is therefore discernable by reason, and by value-judgments. Living according to your values - which means seeking those things we see to be good - IS morality, in the Christian sense of the term.

From living your life.

You haven’t explained what IS your life. My life - that which I see as the purpose of my life - is the contemplation of beauty. Everything else is a distraction from that. I contemplate the beauty around me, the joy of food, the clear refreshing rejuvenating taste of water, the wonderful smell of fresh air. There is nothing essential to human life which I do not experience beauty in; and the highest purpose of life is not bare survival (what sometimes people call vegetating rather than truly living), but the experience of the joy and wonder of the world, and of God.

Well, sure, whatever our machinery does is what it has evolved to do, obviously. The thing is that it’s not always appropriate for the context we apply it to.

Our pattern-recognition sense is great for when primitive man was hunting mammoths; but when we start applying it to things that don’t have patterns hidden in them, we get conspiracy theories and supernaturalism.

It’s similar to the argument I presented against your idea of beauty: just because a person sees something as beautiful doesn’t mean that beauty is really there, and just because a person thinks he sees a pattern doesn’t mean that the pattern is really there.

But we use the same faculty to determine patterns as we do to determine randomness - our intellect. Even studying and describing this randomness - through statistical and probabilistic mathematical structures - is very intellectual; you can’t teach Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics for example to gorillas. Or even to children (unless they’re really, really smart).

Yes. Obviously, “I exist and am doing something” is self-evident because we both accept it. Equally obviously, “beauty is objective” is not self-evident because not everyone accepts it.

There are philosophers and Buddhists who do not accept it. And I haven’t taken a worldwide poll to see how many people accept it. I accept something as self-evident when it is self-evident to me, when I see it clearly and would not dream of denying it.

As I already said, there are sadists and masochists who find pain, rape, and torture “beautiful.” There are people who consider things that you find disgusting to be beautiful.

Unless you’re willing to say, “everything’s beautiful!” (which reduces “beauty” to a meaningless concept), you are clearly incorrect.

As I said above, sadists and masochists (if they really believed and understood that torture was “beautiful”) would be wrong.

I would be hesitant to say that “everything’s beautiful” due to such things as the examples you gave; this would not necessarily reduce “beauty” to a meaningless concept, however. Scholastic philosophy held that the terms “beautiful”, “good”, “being”, “one”, and “other than” could be predicated of everything whatsoever - this is why they were called “transcendentals”. In other words, the words “beauty” and “being” are interchangeable synonyms.

I don’t think this is really true, but I do think that it’s driving or hinting at something true.

 

[AntiTheist]

Those people are clearly wrong.

And they would say that you’re clearly wrong.

Saying “This object is beautiful” is a statement on par with “this food tastes good.” It’s only ever a subjective value statement.

Just because a certain food tastes good to you doesn’t mean there’s an objective “good taste” out there in the universe and that some people are right about it and some people are wrong. There are people out there who love brussel sprouts, you know…

 

[Cecilianus]

And they would say that you’re clearly wrong.

Saying “This object is beautiful” is a statement on par with “this food tastes good.” It’s only ever a subjective value statement.

Just because a certain food tastes good to you doesn’t mean there’s an objective “good taste” out there in the universe and that some people are right about it and some people are wrong. There are people out there who love brussel sprouts, you know…

Disagreement doesn’t make it a purely subjective matter. There are six-day creationists who disagree with people who acknowledge the Big Bang model, and that’s not just a matter of taste. Beauty is not a matter of taste either.

 

[itinerant1]

Disagreement doesn’t make it a purely subjective matter. There are six-day creationists who disagree with people who acknowledge the Big Bang model, and that’s not just a matter of taste. Beauty is not a matter of taste either.

It’s a common ploy by atheists to label everything and every opinion they disagree with as relative and subjective, everything except their own opinion, which they are sure is true and correct.

In any case, I would say that beauty is both subjective and objective. There is some truth to the saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And what one person finds beautiful can be a matter of taste, and varies with individuals.

However, there is an objective aspect to beauty, which is related to truth and being. There is some quality things possess that makes them objectively beautiful. The ancient Greeks realized this, and discovered that beauty, for one thing is proportional, and that proportion can be expressed in a mathematical formula called the Golden Ratio. Many things in nature exhibit this ratio.

There is much I can say about beauty and its relation to truth and being, but I will begin with just this one idea of the Golden Ratio, providing a couple of links to pages that introduce the idea: Here and here

 

[AntiTheist]

Disagreement doesn’t make it a purely subjective matter.

No, of course not, but there’s a difference between questions of fact – whether or not the earth is flat, for example – that can be verified by anyone at all (by means of evidence) and questions of opinion – whether or not a food tastes good, for example – that necessarily vary from person to person.

Now, one’s opinion does not inhere in the properties of the object about which one forms that opinion. Just because one person thinks that a certain food is “gross,” for example, doesn’t mean that there’s anything at all objectively gross about the food in question. That idea of “gross” resides entirely in the mind of the person who experiences and interprets the food.

It’s the same with other subjective value judgments, like “cool,” “interesting,” and (yes) “beautiful.”

“Interesting” isn’t a property that things have; it’s a property that a thinking mind ascribes to things. So too “beauty” isn’t a property that things have; it’s a property that a thinking mind ascribes to things.

It’s not a “ploy” to insist that we look at things clearly, as they actually are.

 

[itinerant1]

No, of course not, but there’s a difference between questions of fact – whether or not the earth is flat, for example – that can be verified by anyone at all (by means of evidence) and questions of opinion – whether or not a food tastes good, for example – that necessarily vary from person to person.

Now, one’s opinion does not inhere in the properties of the object about which one forms that opinion. Just because one person thinks that a certain food is “gross,” for example, doesn’t mean that there’s anything at all objectively gross about the food in question. That idea of “gross” resides entirely in the mind of the person who experiences and interprets the food.

It’s the same with other subjective value judgments, like “cool,” “interesting,” and (yes) “beautiful.”

“Interesting” isn’t a property that things have; it’s a property that a thinking mind ascribes to things. So too “beauty” isn’t a property that things have; it’s a property that a thinking mind ascribes to things.

It’s not a “ploy” to insist that we look at things clearly, as they actually are.

What’s missing here is that values and judgments can be based on objective or actual characteristics possessed by the thing in question. To say that beautiful sounds differ from noise reflects something about the real world. Harmonious musical notes possess certain mathematical ratios. The ancient Greeks figured that out in the 5th century B.C.: the Golden Ratio

The mere random plucking on the strings of a musical instrument doesn’t make for a song and does not sell. When you buy a CD you are assuming that fact. Yet when you discuss so-called subjective value judgments it contradicts, I’m sure, much about your own behavior in the real world.

Not any chiseling away on a stone make for a beautiful statue. There is something objectively different in a stone carved by an artist and a stone randomly chipped at with a hammer and chisel.

Ask yourself “What are the differences?” and perhaps you will begin to think a little more clearly.

 

[Fran65]

Harmony, symmetry and balance are objective. That people are capable of appreciating disharmony and imbalance does not mean that beauty is a subjective judgement. Rather it demonstrates the enormous variety of taste amongst people.

Yiou really should read about the Golden Ratio as Itinerant mentioned. It is interesting and informative.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

What does poetry have to do with anything .

Love is caused by chemicals in the brain. THAT IS A FACT. That is the ORIGIN of the emotion, knowing the origin of the emotion does NOT change the emotion.

Why do you demean things just because we know there true origins? Truth is a GOOD thing.

I think causal assumptions like these demean the concept of FACT… and of SCIENTIFIC RATIONALISM when such things are declared FACT in it’s name. Your presumption to the TRUTH makes me glad to be part of a religion that realises it’s own FAITH :harp:

 

[KyivAndrew]

.
It is with much satisfaction that I go outside now to sit quietly and enjoy the sheer joy of this beautiful, fleeting existence that is all the more precious to me for the simple reason that it will not last forever.

The famous atheist philosopher Kai Neilson in justifying atheism stated: “You can have all these purposes in life even though there is no purpose to life so life doesn’t become meaningless and pointless if you were not made for a purpose.”

So an atheist can find meaning in his life by the purposes he/she chooses for him/herself. O.K. in a world full of atheists, what purpose in life can be given to the blind and deaf paraplegic whose prognosis looks dim, the schizophrenic who is immune to medications and lives in an alternative reality, the severely developmentally challenged we have with us in our homes or in our family homes. If you were born as one of them what purpose in life would you choose AntiT to give your life meaning? Atheism provides no hope or answers to these folks.

You can say what you want AntiT because by the looks of it you come from a comfortable Western existence which blesses you with pleasure. What purpose for those in life hanging by the thread from a fatal disease. At least Christianity provides a purpose and has a Theodicy which we believe to be eminently true and that all lives, even the most miserable, are not without purpose in Christ’s salvific mission on earth.

Christianity can answer the deepest longings of the human heart in the middle of suffering. Atheism can’t. This is a side note. This is just a reflection of mine and not an argument for the existence of God. As C.S. Lewis argued, however, in the Argument from Desire: Every innate desire corresponds to a real object, and there is an innate desire for God.