Is The Big Bang Really Proof Of Gods Existence?

[Charles_Darwin]

I have no problem with creationists saying that evolution is unlikely; only with them saying it didn’t happen.

It is not just about evolution…

I edited my post above, here is the vid again. This video explains what the universe really seems to be fine tuned for, your god must love black holes . liveleak.com/view?i=ed3_1216586842

 

[mathematician]

It is not just about evolution…

I edited my post above, here is the vid again. This video explains what the universe really seems to be fine tuned for, your god must love black holes . liveleak.com/view?i=ed3_1216586842

Except that I said nothing above about the universe being fine tuned for life. The point is that the fundamental constants have got to have very tightly defined values before a universe consisting of more than just hydrogen and helium can exist at all. (For that matter, they have got to have very tightly defined values before black holes can exist.)

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Except that I said nothing above about the universe being fine tuned for life. The point is that the fundamental constants have got to have very tightly defined values before a universe consisting of more than just hydrogen and helium can exist at all. (For that matter, they have got to have very tightly defined values before black holes can exist.)

Well it appears to be that way, however we don’t really know enough about the subject to form any meaningful conclusion as to why.

I personally like the equilibrium hypothesis where it is equated to pushing over a glass of water, it takes just the right amount of force to make the glass spill, if the force was 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% less it would return to upright .

However as i have said above just because i like this hypothesis, doesn’t mean its true. The truth is have have a look more research to do in this area before we can start making such claims.

PS. you were hinting at fine tuning.

 

[mathematician]

Well it appears to be that way, however we don’t really know enough about the subject to form any meaningful conclusion as to why.

Well the only alternative interpretations anybody has managed to come up with is the multiverse hypothesis, and that seems to have been invented purely for the purposes of avoiding the only other possibility on the table. There is certainly no empirical evidence for it; nor is there ever likely to be.

It is true that the existence of God cannot be empirically verified either. The difference is that his existence isn’t a hypothesis which has recently been dreamt up in order to paper over some embarrassing facts.

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Well the only alternative interpretations anybody has managed to come up with is the multiverse hypothesis, and that seems to have been invented purely for the purposes of avoiding the only other possibility on the table. There is certainly no empirical evidence for it; nor is there ever likely to be.

It is true that the existence of God cannot be empirically verified either. The difference is that his existence isn’t a hypothesis which has recently been dreamt up in order to paper over some embarrassing facts.

Nope, it is an ancient hypothesis that has been invented to explain (just like in this case) unknown objects and phenomena.

Your claim that god is the only other possibility is totally unfounded. Your hypothesis is no different than that of those that hypothesised that the stars were gods. The truth is we don’t have enough knowledge to form any sort of meaningful hypothesis. The intellectually honest just admit… we don’t know.

 

[mathematician]

The truth is we don’t have enough knowledge to form any sort of meaningful hypothesis. The intellectually honest just admit… we don’t know.

Except that if you are already a theist for other reasons, there is one hypothesis just waiting to be adopted. That an atheist will do anything to avoid adopting that same hypothesis goes without saying.

 

[kk23wong]

Facts are facts.
Dreams are dreams.
Subjects are subjects.

1. Facts are facts.

Qualifications are not a must.
(Edison only had a **Light Bulb **before he has become famous.)
Only if you have the TRUTH.
(I discovered a Consious Earth.)

It is not a new religion. (We have plenty of them.) Science can do.

1. Dreams are dreams.

Philosophy MUST NOT be high sounding nothing.

1. Subjects are subjects.

The truth cannot be bounded by academic subjects.

Teru Wong

 

[liquidpele]

Facts are facts.
Dreams are dreams.
Subjects are subjects.

1. Facts are facts.

Qualifications are not a must.
(Edison only had a **Light Bulb **before he has become famous.)
Only if you have the TRUTH.
(I discovered a Consious Earth.)

It is not a new religion. (We have plenty of them.) Science can do.

1. Dreams are dreams.

Philosophy MUST NOT be high sounding nothing.

1. Subjects are subjects.

The truth cannot be bounded by academic subjects.

Teru Wong

Once again, if you want to participate then post something comprehensible.
If you a trolling, please find something better to do with your time.

 

[Geremia]

In fact, you might be interested in Maritain’s Introduction to Philosophy

What about Modern Thomistic Philosophy by Phillips or A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy by Cardinal Mercier? Are they any better? Thanks

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Except that if you are already a theist for other reasons, there is one hypothesis just waiting to be adopted. That an atheist will do anything to avoid adopting that same hypothesis goes without saying.

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.

 

[Cecilianus]

There are only two possibilities. Either the universe came into existence with fundamental constants which allowed stars (and therefore elements heavier than helium) to form, or it didn’t, and the latter is hughly more likely than the former.

You can find that number all over the web.

But if it didn’t, you wouldn’t know what the world would have been like. You can’t single out “the state of the universe having stars” as being special unless you assume, a priori, that having stars is a privileged state - which presumes God’s existence, which you were trying to prove.

The “second possibility” that you mentioned is simply a blanket term that covers every possible state of the universe that does not happen to exist. If G had been different, you could do the same thing.

Having 6 lottery numbers all come out the same is very unlikely, yes. Having them come out in the precise order “142635” is just as unlikely. But we don’t raise our eyebrows when that happens, because we don’t see a pattern - we don’t assign that combination as a special or unique state. Same with the constitution of the universe today.

 

[mathematician]

But if it didn’t, you wouldn’t know what the world would have been like.

There are only a limited number of possibilities

a.) A universe comprised wholly of hydrogen, helium, and nothing else.

b.) A universe comprised wholly of sub-atomic particles.

c.) No universe at all, because it would have collapsed back in on itself within a few million years of the big bang.

That exhausts the list of theoretical possibilities. (Unless the physicists have got it badly wrong.)

 

[JOHNONEVI]

No, we DO discover order in nature through science - we look at the data and then find equations that fit them. An exception I suppose would be Newton’s laws of motion - which he originally presented in the Principia as axioms - but these were definitions relating to fundamental concepts; they do not presume any more “order” than the consistency of a definition.

That being said, I don’t see how the attempted proof works any more than you do. Things in nature can be ordered - usually through statistical “ordering” - without there being any person doing the ordering. Statistical distributions are inherent in the nature of matter, without being imposed on from without.

I enough about the difference between physics/ mathamatics and metaphysics/ philosophy to draw the conclusion that metaphysics and philosophy are much older than physics. Science was developed to help Man understand the nature of his world.The very earliest civilisations were mystified and confounded and from time to time terrified of the world they were born into. They spent considerable time understanding their enviroment. Mathamatics particularly that associated with translating the movements of the stars in the skies detailed the relationships between the different elements. Mathamatics is the pivotal force in the developement of music and the higher arts. The principal of math that I am utilizing in my argument is that of reducing each formula to its common denominator. That is in my argument] that the universe is all about relationships. From the movement of the stars and the constellations to the seasons and the weather patterns on Earth. Hence the old metaphysical axiom Above as Below. There are several Biblical verses alluding to this as well. I don’t agree that science can’t prove the existence of God. That is its purpose. Sacred geometry of the Egyptians looked at the human body particularly its shape and proportion as a gateway to the divine.

 

[JOHNONEVI]

Yes it is my personal opinion, but it seems to be the case that physicists are more open to the idea of God than are (say) biologists. This is not an exact quotation, but one renowned physicist, who also happens to be a priest, remarked (more or less):

“Many of my colleagues in science are both wistful and wary of religion. They are wistful because they can see that science doesn’t have all the answers to life’s questions, and they would like a fuller picture. But they are wary because they know that religion is based upon faith, and their idea of faith is that you have to close your eyes, grit your teeth, and believe half a dozen impossible things before breakfast, because some unquestionable authority tells you that you have to.”

Which of course isn’t John Polkinghorne’s understanding of faith.

And then there is this astro-physicist, who died jusst a few yesrs back:

That well known theist(!) Fred Hoyle, in case you are wondering.

Demonstrating the existence of God in the end will infinitely easier than explaining the nature of God. In the end most religions are political movements. Alduous Huxley in his fascinating account of demonic possession The Devils of Loudon writes in the epilogue that people gathering in multitudes is much more dangerous and has the power to undermine society than any drug addiction. So it is easy to see how a political leader would harnass the influence of a religion to further his agenda. Constantine is a remarkable example of this. I don’t know if any field of knowledge could ever provide us with all the answers. I beleive the mystery of our own biology and pathology should be the final frontier and if we could unlock the portals to those realms the answer to our existence would be there. Seek ye first the Kingdon, then rest will be given unto you.

 

[itinerant1]

What about Modern Thomistic Philosophy by Phillips or A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy by Cardinal Mercier? Are they any better? Thanks

I am not familiar with the book by Phillips, so I can’t comment on it. Anything by Cardinal Mercier is good. However, many books on Thomism are difficult reading for someone just starting, and even later on. I would recommend the following titles:

Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy by Mortimer J. Adler. This book explains key concepts needed for understanding Aristotle and hence Aquinas.

Aquinas: An Introduction to the Life and Work of the Great Medieval Thinker, by Frederick Copleston. A must read for learning Thomism.

An Introduction to Philosophy: The Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition by Daniel J. Sullivan. An excellent introductory text.

History of Philosophy, Volume 1 by Frederick Copleston. Covers the origin and rise of philosophy in ancient Greece through to Roman times. Required to be on your bookshelf for frequent reference.

History of Philosophy, Volume 2 by Frederick Copleston. Covers the middle ages through Aquinas and the Schoolmen. Required reading to be kept on the shelf next volume 1.

To know any subject well, one must know its history. This is especially true in philosophy; to understand the questions raised and the answers posed. A.N. Whitehead said the history of philosophy in the west consists of a series of footnotes on Plato. There is some truth to that statement. Plato cannot be ignored even though no matter what philosophical persuasion a reader comes from, he will probably disagree with half of what Plato said.

Plato actually gave us the insight that led to the distinction between philosophical knowledge and scientific knowledge. This was Plato’s insight into universals and essences. Philosophy studies the essences of things, while science studies the phenomenal aspects of things. These are two different kinds of explanation of being. Aristotle followed Plato in regard to the essences, though he explained their existence very differently than Plato had, but Aristotle did not always keep his science and philosophy separate. He mixed both kinds of explanations, for instance, in his Physica, using a substantive logic throughout. Hopefully, this will be of some help.

 

[Cecilianus]

To know any subject well, one must know its history. This is especially true in philosophy; to understand the questions raised and the answers posed.

For philosophy, yes; for physics and a lot of other disciplines (e.g. history itself), the history of a subject is generally pretty irrelevant. My thermodynamics professor summed it up pretty well when I asked for some biographical details (the first name, actually) of Rudolph Clausius, and he responded: “I don’t know, and, frankly, I don’t care.” It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to physics whether Kepler came before or after Newton; his laws are still derived from Newton’s in the same way. If later developments - such as quantum mechanics and relativity - are usually taught after basic mechanics and physics, it’s just because they’re easier.

 

[itinerant1]

For philosophy, yes; for physics and a lot of other disciplines (e.g. history itself), the history of a subject is generally pretty irrelevant. My thermodynamics professor summed it up pretty well when I asked for some biographical details (the first name, actually) of Rudolph Clausius, and he responded: “I don’t know, and, frankly, I don’t care.” It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to physics whether Kepler came before or after Newton; his laws are still derived from Newton’s in the same way. If later developments - such as quantum mechanics and relativity - are usually taught after basic mechanics and physics, it’s just because they’re easier.

I will let Stephen Hawking know his book “On the Shoulders of Giants” need not have been written. And Newton need not have gone through all of his early notebooks erasing Descartes name so others would not know how indebted he was to Descartes for many of his ideas.

And Darwin need not have wasted his time on the history of biology when he said, “Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.”

Without Homer, there would have been no Virgil, and without Virgil there would have been no Dante.

You’re right, we don’t need no education, just give us school in a box and a degree for reading textbooks.

 

[Cecilianus]

I will let Stephen Hawking know his book “On the Shoulders of Giants” need not have been written. And Newton need not have gone through all of his early notebooks erasing Descartes name so others would not know how indebted he was to Descartes for many of his ideas.

And Darwin need not have wasted his time on the history of biology when he said, “Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.”

Without Homer, there would have been no Virgil, and without Virgil there would have been no Dante.

You’re right, we don’t need no education, just give us school in a box and a degree for reading textbooks.

I never said that people don’t need to be familiar with current scientific literature - far from it. But nobody is likely to make a whole lot of progress poring over Newton and Kepler and Darwin. Their work is so heavily ingrained in the current models of the universe that you won’t find anything in them that you won’t find in a textbook, at least a graduate level textbook, or in the contemporary literature. And the modern literature has corrected all the shortcomings in and superseded all the older models. Education means learning about reality. The history of ideas is only useful insofar as it teaches us about the reality the ideas are trying to describe - which is only when there is no consensus about anything and we need to turn to “primary sources” in order to find out what any philosopher meant, because philosophy is so vague that no textbook can adequately represent any individual philosophy!

 

[itinerant1]

I never said that people don’t need to be familiar with current scientific literature - far from it. But nobody is likely to make a whole lot of progress poring over Newton and Kepler and Darwin. Their work is so heavily ingrained in the current models of the universe that you won’t find anything in them that you won’t find in a textbook, at least a graduate level textbook, or in the contemporary literature. And the modern literature has corrected all the shortcomings in and superseded all the older models. Education means learning about reality. The history of ideas is only useful insofar as it teaches us about the reality the ideas are trying to describe - which is only when there is no consensus about anything and we need to turn to “primary sources” in order to find out what any philosopher meant, because philosophy is so vague that no textbook can adequately represent any individual philosophy!

Oh, so modernist!

I never found Thomism vague. Generalities are always risky. In fact, Aquinas is so clear and concise, no textbook could be near as clear as Thomas is himself.

“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions.” —C.S. Lewis

“To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an absolute narrowness; just as to spend one’s last earthly money on the newest hat is to condemn oneself to the old-fashioned. The road of the ancient centuries is strewn with dead moderns.”
—G.K. Chesterton

 

[AntiTheist]

Its either God, or I’d rather have never of existed at all.

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 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).

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?

If you care not for objective identity, meaning, purpose, moral truth, and existential significance, then mere pleasure, however finite and fleeting, is going to appear a better deal to you.

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.

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.

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.