Steven Hawking COMES OUT! I am an atheist, SCIENCE is more convincing than GOD!

He did say he believes in aliens, it is well-known... and this thread covers the other one, even though this 30 year old news is a "current event" in this forum.

 

Our current president makes the issue political, because science could at some point slander the official Prophet of the Obama White House by proving the man to be a false prophet and insane or an evil liar, and it would be a false and malicious slander in the eyes of the Mooslim believer, so Obama to accomplish his future advocates the genocide of all life in the entire universe that slanders the prophet of Islam because the future MUST NOT belong to them.

Like I said in a previous topic in 2013 with regard to climate change:

“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." (Obama)

Translation: The future must not belong to science.

http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=303777&p=1062649202#post1062649202

People created gods to explain the thunder and the control of the clouds, then laws to keep promiscuity from spreading a plague, then came philosophy and science, and science devoid of a golden rule created rubbers and Hitler’s master-race. So my biggest problem with Hawking is his comments on philosophy.

 

Tsk tsk.

Whatever you say, man.
I am merely attempting to delineate before and after the Big Bang singularity occurred (I assume you agree there was a before and after).
I'm not interested in being drawn into some childish tift where nothing is truly in doubt so you can feel like you won something.

Like what, for instance? You know I'm not defending any and all versions of God, right?

Laugh out loud. I hardly think "any potential source of the universe" (whatever that could be) could be said to have the same attributes as God.

I don't know but it seems trite and vapid to me.
It says nothing itself.

 

And conflating inert matter with highly active and evolving advanced organic molecules interacting with huge sources of energy and millions of years.

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Well where did your god come from?

 

After, sure. Before, not possible since time didn't exist. Is this really such a hard concept to grasp?

Without getting bogged down in the three omnis (omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence), let's just start with the big one, the idea that God is sentient. Even if I concede that the universe had a cause, there's no evidence suggesting that the cause needed to be sentient.

Since the only definition of God you provided was "the most unlikely source of the universe, except for all the others," you will need a new definition if you want to include any other attributes.

 

It seems to be for you. Whether time itself existed prior to the singularity or not science (that thing you revere so much) has definite proof of the Big Bang singularity, the moment at which the universe began.http://gizmodo.com/astronomers-discover-first-direct-proof-of-the-big-bang-1545525927

"Somebody's going to win a Nobel Prize. At least that's what the physics community is saying after the announcement on Monday that a Harvard team has found the first direct evidence of cosmic inflation right after the Big Bang. It's more proof that the Big Bang really was the beginning of it all." These words obviously refer to a before/after cause and effect.

I'll leave it to you to argue with astronomers over the before and after of the universe. They seem to believe they have proof positive of it (no time necessary). Let's stop the stupidity.

By definition God is a sentient being if God is assumed to be omniscient (all knowing) and what version of God would not be?
You're grasping at straws in pointless distinctions.

No I won't.

 

The version our limited limited bandwidth dissallows us from comprehending.

A beetle crawling by your foot has no way to comprehend our existence, but we're right there in front of it.

The same could be true of a higher power/existence, they may have no idea something calls the Bible exists

 

I have zero interest in the bible when it comes to the existence of God or not. The bible proposes a certain religion, which I happen to approve of, but realistically we have no way of knowing God's motives, intentions, interests, etc.

I am certain of God due to the presence of the universe. That's all I can be sure of.

 

You might want to read your sources again. Nowhere do they say anything about "before" the Big Bang.

An imaginary one? You assume God is omniscient to show that God is sentient. In logic that's called affirming the consequent.

You mean no you can't.

 

Personally I have no problem with people who wish to believe in God (which ever one that is), neither do I have a problem with people who do not wish to believe in God (which ever one that is).

My only issue with believers is that they assume that the gods written about by man are in fact the one true God, we see all sorts of "reasoning" as to why their God should be the true one and yet all this reasoning is based purely on what they have been told is true .. So in essence if you have faith, great I am happy for you.. however if you have religion then you are no different to any other person pushing their own personal belief system. Religion isn't about God(s) it is about man's desire to control others.

I do not believe in religions god, not a single one of them .. does that mean that there could not be a "designer" for everything, not in the slightest .. just not the one of many that religions try to foist onto others.

There is always a question that when asked gives responses not unlike those religious people claim are illogical from non-religious people, that question is, If there is a god, who or what created god?

 

Scientific knowledge is limited, vastly limited. Yet from this limited knowledge some will make great claims, like scientific materialism can understand the nature of reality. Of course what this actually is a psychological manifestation....

...the arrogance of the human ego.

But thankfully this materialistic understanding, and the claims it has made is imploding. QM started it, yet it will take perhaps many more decades for it to ooze out into public consciousness. For most humans if not religious, are still interpreting reality from materialism, and it forms their cosmic views. Most atheists are stuck in this view, I think.

 

arrogance? to happily admit we know some but not all? that's a laugh, when held in comparison to "I know the universe was created for the benefit of special chosen people by my favourite jewish sky god, who happens to be the one true god, while every other god is false"

meantime, how ought we interpret reality? emotionally? through the primitive lense of bronze age goat herders? magically? what do you recommend?

 

You might want to do some reading yourself. Through cosmic microwave background detection the beginning of the universe has been set at approximately 13.8 billion years ago by science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
That means at any point before that, say 14 billion years ago, there was no universe (to the best of our knowledge).

Whether time existed before the singularity of not is immaterial when we can pinpoint the approximate age of the universe and set a real approximate starting point at which the singularity occurred.
So we can definitely say though there was no such thing as time prior to the singularity there definitely
was a point at which we can say before this, there was no universe at all. Subject closed.

And you seem to be assuming God is not omniscient at all. A very odd position for someone that doesn't even believe God exists. By definition God is omniscient so you might want to leave logic and philosophy to others that know their way around.

No, I mean my paraphrase of Churchill was not a "definition" of God at all (it was a statement of the relative value of belief in God versus atheism or any other system) and it isn't my job to untangle the
massive knot of confusion and error that exists in your mind because you are trying in vain to be clever and get around my views.

 

And as is exemplified in this thread most atheists think that by falsifying one god they can justify their athiesm. I hate to say it but in order to justify athiesm through falsification you need to falsify all religions. You should finish that task sometime after your dead from old age or you put bullet through your head in frustration. Both theism and athiesm require faith.

 

no need all religions falsify themselves as everything to do with them is but of man's making .. unless you can show me anything written by one of the god's that is .. can you?

BTW, Who or what created god?

 

Actually many religions do not profess to have their texts written by god.

You are applying your own biases. One cannot come to athiesm through falsification as your post shows.

 

Yes there are and as such are failures due to the failing of the human mind to be able to comprehend god, everything ever written by man concerning god(s) is but man's interpretation of what they THINK god wants or means.

What biases, can you proof that ANY religious writings are from god or are not interpretations of the writers?

Still waiting BTW .... Who or what created god?

 

Atheism is the default position, the null hypothesis. It requires having no faith in a positive claim rather than having faith in a negative claim. I'm faithless because I'm unconvinced.

 

if you walk into a dark room are you confident nothing is there to walk into?

 

That's a ludicrous comparison. One has reason to expect something in a dark room because the vast majority of rooms have things in them. The universe is a cruel and often horrifying death trap that we have only seen one of and thus have no patterns to predict.

 

He says it is very probable that they exist which is not the same as saying they DO exist

 

Your assertion of the null hypothesis is simplistic and speaks to a growing problem in science and society. You assume that there are no unknown unknowns. In science and life you have to assume that unknown unknowns exist. Over simplification of the system is among the worst things you can do in science and in life

 

Yes, CMB tells us that the universe began 13.8 billion years ago, and Relativity tells us that space and time are inextricably linked, so if one began at the Big Bang so did the other. What neither one does is suggest what, if anything, might have existed "before" the Big Bang.

I'm not assuming anything about what God may or may not be. All I'm saying is before you can assume and omniscient or sentient God, you first have to show how either of these is necessary to create a universe.

 

We simply don't know what existed before the singularity but it's good to see you finally admit there is a before and after cause and effect to the Big Bang. It's incredible but this "seam" in the fabric of existence itself opened up for an instant and all of time, space and matter came spewing out and the universe is still expanding nearly 14 billion years later.
This is an act of creation. What can we possibly attribute it to?

Could a God that was not omniscient and sentient create this universe? It's a pointless exercise in speculation because only an omniscient all powerful being could be God.

 

If you told me that there's leprechauns, I would demand proof before I believed it. Why should a god be any different?

There are an infinite amount of explanations. My favorite hypothesis at the moment is random quantum fluctuations. But really, I'd find it weirder if, in a theoretically infinite nothingness, something didn't arise out of it for no actual reason. On a long enough timeline everything becomes possible. And though time didn't exist before the big bang, there might have been something similar to it.

There's only hypotheses before the singularity. They're all equally ridiculous to actually believe in without any evidence.

And the the very ideas of complexity and design are human inventions. You can't use those to argue that the universe was designed, because it's not that the universe looks like complexity and human invention, it's that human invention and complexity look like the universe. The universe came first and all of the concepts humans have come up with have been adapted from our surroundings somehow.