Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God

There is no appeal to probability.

Which says nothing about what Fred Hoyle is talking about. The real "leap of faith" here is shown by atheists that think the universe just got here somehow for no reason at all with no source whatsoever...like a Rolex watch that just happens to be laying on the surface of a planet in a far distant galaxy.

You prove the thread premise. No one is proposing a God of the Gaps argument (what we cannot scientifically explain we can fill up with claims of God).

Indeed, just the opposite is happening...the more we know about the universe and as science progresses we
are able to present a picture of the cosmos that shows an unplanned and uncaused universe is astronomically
absurd. An unshakable faith in nothing as science progresses is seen more and more as the truly unenlightened
wish of frightened children.

 

Sure it is Just because you don;t believe it doesn't make it any less so.

 

really, there's no real evidence for the alleged existence of god, in that article

it's speculation and the source is crap


"Apologetics Press is a site that focuses on Christian apologetics. The site's editors compile topics related to Christianity, throw out the ones that don't agree with them, and makes the ones that do look trustworthy.
Apologetics Press seems to be written from a fundamentalist point of view, as they hold that there are no biblical contradictions."

"The site has a sleek design, having recently been revamped. Despite this, it still contains obvious bias and reversal of scientific method, the site is also a good place where one can practice one's knowledge of logical fallacies."

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Apologetics_Press

 

No evidence there isn't. No one knows for sure, but it's hard to believe everything just happened by chance. So much can't be explained. Much like all those UFO sightings.

 

Did the WSJ article explain how the four fundamental forces came to be and what possible range of values they could have been otherwise?

 

Not if the total energy of the universe is still zero.

http://www.livescience.com/33129-total-energy-universe-zero.html

 

Saying that God must have caused the universe because the odds of it happening uncaused is exactly what a God-of-the-gaps argument is, otherwise known as an argument from ignorance. Until someone knows exactly how the universe started, such arguments are nonsense.

 

If you are thinking of potentiality in finite terms perhaps. Occurrence in dimensions outside of time and space is beyond knowing, but if an infinite number of conditions occur simultaneously, one of them is going to be perfect, and existence as we know it will be birthed. It does not require intelligent design, but infinite arrangement of currently incalculable variables.

If anything, chaos is the closest thing to God. Omnipresent, beyond fathom, responsible for all life... from the combinations and clusters of our DNA from the soup we begin as to the collision of asteroids on planets... viruses... proteins... environmental conditions caused by random groupings. Failure upon failure... evolution... it is all the work of chaos in an otherwise orderly system. Makes it a bit easier to grasp the concepts of suffering etc. Chaos is the alpha and omega. The builder and destroyer of worlds. Time and space are a crutch. Start eliminating them from your thinking to look for larger answers.

 

Well my statement of position is a bit more complex than that.
I don't claim to know beyond a doubt that a deity is behind it all but as science learns more and more about the universe around us a universe that just happens to be (like a Rolex on the surface on a distant planet, as already stated) seems rather bizarre.

We'll likely never know for certain given the issue. But to assume something as amazing as the Big Bang singularity, in which our entire universe spewed out of an infinitesimally small dot in an instant of creation, is random and pointless seems nihilistically stupid.

 

Did you say if?

 

Yes. IF.
Who's to say the universe and life itself is the result of "infinite conditions" however?

Entropy has been built into the system and into all beings. Birth, death, etc.
The constant breaking down and birth of entire galaxies is proof of that. If you want to look at that as chaos, fine. I see it as supreme order and part of an overall design.

This leaves us right back at the start of the circle of belief/disbelief: everything I can see, know or imagine has a
reason and cause for being. I don't see why I should imagine otherwise.

 

Certainly I am not one to say, just postulating.
Within the framework of the fourth dimension... where we are... exists birth and death to be sure... however even your perspective violates the bolded statement, presuming the designer is an eternal being. I am supporting my supposition with the whole photon collision thing from earlier. Some matter exists outside of time and space, though entanglement makes it observable within it. This suggests, along with a bunch of M theory neither of us really comprehend, that there are dimensions in which time does not exist but are ruled by laws of some sort... chaos happens. This is just one way of wrapping my head around life the universe and everything. Doesn't make me any more correct than any theist... it is all philosophical. There is just some science to support my wide eyed notions.

I don't see any reason for you to believe otherwise... but every reason to imagine it. I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, just sort of reacting to what I see as incorrect conclusions based on a complete lack of understanding of that we do not. I do not see this providing evidence of a God, nor of my supposition. I offer my supposition to suggest God is not the only answer.

I have no agenda.

 

No one is going to discover ultimate and mysterious truths here. I'm just using empirical evidence (everything has a cause) to postulate the presence of God (without commenting on the nature of God, which is also unknowable as far as I can tell).
I look at brilliant theologians, scientists, philosophers, etc. throughout history who have all acknowledged God
in one way or the other and then I look at the snarky, angry, superior acting atheists that don't merely reject
religion but revile it and I have to think that just based on this yardstick alone, I am on the right track.

If they are comfortable with their totality of existence coming down to a brief and often meaningless birth/life/death
cycle then so be it. Their spiritual poverty is their own business.

This is not a comment on you and your views, which I find interesting but ultimately unfulfilling but, as usual, discussions of God are often brief and unsatisfactory as once someone has stated their basic views there is nothing more to say that matters and minds are rarely, if ever, changed.

 

obviously he did, it's one of those unknown things, like the existence of god

that's called fallacious thinking, an argument based literally on ignorance of the truth

"Argument from ignorance (Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance stands for "lack of evidence to the contrary"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to prove the proposition satisfactorily to be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four,

1. true

2. false

3. unknown between true or false

4. being unknowable (among the first three).

In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof.

The fallaciousness of arguments from ignorance does not mean that one can never possess good reasons for thinking that something does not exist, an idea captured by philosopher Bertrand Russell's teapot, a hypothetical china teapot revolving about the sun between Earth and Mars; however this would fall more duly under the arena of pragmatism[vague], wherein a position must be demonstrated or proven in order to be upheld, and therefore the burden of proof is on the argument's proponent."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

it's like ufos in that it's so looney and associated with mentally ill people

 

A few scientists saying there needs to be a primary mover doesn't do anything to solve the problem of what started everything in the first place. The primary mover coming from nothing makes as much sense as everything else coming from nothing.

 

Then the possibility exists.

 

A primary mover would, by necessity, not come out of the time space continuum launched when the Big Bang singularity created time and space itself.

Clearly there was no such thing as time or space before the singularity therefore there was "something" before
our limited universe ever existed. Therefore can we posit an awesome force that comes from "nothing" (our nothing)? It's already been shown by science in the Big Bang singularity.
The real question is what triggered the singularity?

 

again with the fallacious thinking, an argument based literally on ignorance of the truth

anything's possible, my argument is about real evidence, not fantasies

 

The evidence is real whether you like it or not. You dislike the idea of God so you attack the evidence.

 

it's not even close to real evidence for the existence of god

oh look, you're making up fairy tales, what a surprise

in reality, what i like is seeing the truth told

 

Just because you disagree doesn't make you right. Hold onto that hate.

 

apparently you aren't aware of what an appeal to probability is.

No, the leap of faith is not by atheists, but by theists, who think that our inconsequential planet revolving around our non-descript star in a common spiral galaxy within our infinitely large universe was entirely created to house homo sapiens sapiens in order for them to worship that very same entity.

Such human-centric conceit is not surprising, since it is a reflection of our collective ignorance coupled with our individual egotistical need for the transcendence of self existence.

We interpret the scientific world differently it seems. The fact that universal forces are in balance is precisely why our universe behaves the way it does. Is this the work of a creator or merely the adherence to scientific principles and laws as yet unknown?

According to the big bang, the laws of physics as we know them in this universe did not apply in the first picoseconds of existence. To you this might indicate a creator, to me it indicates nothing more than a natural process of establishing balance amongst competing forms of energy.

 

i disagree because your assertion isn't based on evidence

 

I'm late in the conversation...but what is the evidence? A couple scientists that cannot pinpoint a scientific fraction of a second happening, does not equate to the existence of a big guy in the sky' Clearly this is not the opinion of all scientists and with good reason. That being said, there are many scientists that practice forms of religious faith and still will not be satisfied with a mythological explanation for the universe's existence. Again...what evidence?

 

Go and read it.

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Your biased opinion.