(May 6, 2016 at 6:58 pm)Jehanne Wrote: 4) The Universe is its own explanation and cause; the no-boundary theorem of Hawking and Hartle prove this;

Is that the scientific consensus, or just your opinion that it's what scientists ought to believe, or what?

(May 7, 2016 at 1:18 am)wiploc Wrote:

(May 6, 2016 at 6:58 pm)Jehanne Wrote: 4) The Universe is its own explanation and cause; the no-boundary theorem of Hawking and Hartle prove this;

Is that the scientific consensus, or just your opinion that it's what scientists ought to believe, or what?

Theirs is a mathematical proof, subject to inspection, criticism, and even, revision; their theorem is not a physical proof.  It's basically a conjecture, and while I'm no expert, their theorem is available to the the entire World to see.  Point is that completely naturalistic explanations exist for the Universe's origin, cause, explanation and meaning.  We need not invoke "god"; such is completely an optional and superfluous belief.  I would rather embrace that which I can see (mathematical equations and formulas, even though I cannot fully understand all of them, others do) versus that which I have no access to whatsoever (such as "the supernatural").

I'll remind individuals such as Steve that there are a lot of beliefs (and infinite number, in fact) for which there is no evidence.

So, has Steve abandoned this one too?

(May 7, 2016 at 7:25 am)LadyForCamus Wrote: So, has Steve abandoned this one too?

Nah. I think you called it right, elsewhere, when you pointed out that they preach their pre-loaded bullshit until they get called out on it to such a degree that even through their delusional lensing (similar to gravitational lensing, except the dense object is their skull), they are forced to realize that they don't have any answers, at which point they retreat back to the apologetics forums until they find some more BS that they THINK covers the topic, only to come here and get their asses handed to them by people who haven't sacrificed their critical thinking skills in favor of "faith" in the cult's ancient teachings. 

Rinse and repeat.

But fear not, folks, we're not hurting anything but their egos... those thick skulls have a pretty good armor value.

(May 6, 2016 at 10:59 am)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(May 6, 2016 at 8:54 am)SteveII Wrote: Then please elaborate on Relevance, Explanatory Power (before and after comparison), and Predictiveness and why God fails in these marks while another cause might score higher on such a thing as the creation of the universe. I have to think that applying principles in lab might be a little different when applying them to the creation of physical reality from nothing.

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Quote: Consider the usual elementary textbook “scientific explanation” of the motion of the balls in the above example following their collision. This explanation proceeds by deriving that motion from information about their masses and velocity before the collision, the assumption that the collision is perfectly elastic, and the law of the conservation of linear momentum. We usually think of the information conveyed by this derivation as showing that it is the mass and velocity of the balls, rather than, say, their color or the presence of the blue chalk mark, that is explanatorily relevant to their subsequent motion.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scient...planation/

It's easy to see why natural preconditions are relevant to any naturalistic explanation of the creation of the universe.  It's less clear why the pre-existence of a supernatural being leads to that creation without plenty of ad hoc assumptions.

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Explanatory power is a measure of how well we understand the phenomena from the explanation.  Saying that a car "burns gas" to make it go does not have as much explanatory power as a detailed examination of the workings of a typical internal combustion engine.

Quote:The sense of explanatory power that this paper seeks to analyze has to do with a hypothesis’s ability to decrease the degree to which we find the explanandum surprising (i.e.,  its ability to increase the degree to which we expect the explanandum). More specifically, a hypothesis offers a powerful explanation of a proposition, in this sense, to the extent that it makes that proposition less surprising. This sense of explanatory power dominates statistical reasoning where scientists are “explaining away” surprise in the data by means of assuming a specific statistical model...This  notion  finds  precedence  in  many  classic  discussions  of  explanation. Perhaps  its  clearest  historical  expression  occurs  when  Peirce  (1935,  5.189) identifies the explanatoriness of a hypothesis with its ability to render an otherwise “surprising fact” as “a matter of course.”

http://fitelson.org/few/few_10/schupbach_sprenger.pdf

Quote:Deutsch takes examples from Greek mythology. He describes how very specific, and even somewhat falsifiable theories were provided to explain how the gods' sadness caused the seasons. Alternatively, Deutsch points out, one could have just as easily explained the seasons as resulting from the gods' happiness - making it a bad explanation, because it is so easy to arbitrarily change details.[1] Without Deutsch's criterion, the 'Greek gods explanation' could have just kept adding justifications. This same criterion, of being "hard to vary", may be what makes the modern explanation for the seasons a good one: none of the details - about the earth rotating around the sun at a certain angle in a certain orbit - can be easily modified without changing the theory's coherence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_power

The notion of "goddidit" doesn't provide any real detail on the how of it.  The process remains as much of a mystery after the explanation as before it.

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Predictiveness is the ability of a hypothesis to generate novel predictions about the phenomena.  Einstein's relativity has generated numerous predictions which can be tested against the natural world.  The hypothesis of "Goddidit" doesn't really generate any predictions about what we should observe about either the material or non-material world.

Sorry for the delay. Busy couple of days. Your posts are among the most thoughtful so they are often the ones that take the longest to respond to with equal thought. 

Regarding scientific explanation, the lack of naturalistic explanations for the beginning of the universe is the problem. Of course a naturalistic explanation is preferred. I firmly believe in methodological naturalism. It is the argument that that no longer becomes possible when discussing an explanation of the universe. While a material and efficient cause is preferred, it seems we are stuck considering only an efficient cause.

When you say ad hoc assumptions, are you referring to why there cannot be an infinite regression of past events? If you want to deny that premise, you can do that, but it is not a defeater for what is held as a metaphysical truth. 

Regarding explanatory power, I think you are forgetting we are talking metaphysics and not lab experiments. The KCA is an inductive argument, and as such the premises are providing strong evidence for the conclusion in a probabilistic sense. In contrast, a deductive argument would be certain.  In addition, when discussing explanatory power, you are usually comparing two or more theories. When you compare God creating the universe to "I don't know", I would say that the God hypothesis is superior--especially since there are no logical errors in the argument.

Regarding predictiveness, there are at least a couple of things we should expect to see if God created the universe:
1) There would have been a reason for the effort. The fact that we are here would be a key reason. A possible world where God created a universe without any sentient beings to appreciate it would not make much sense. 
2) He would reveal himself in some way (which he did). It would not make sense for God to create the universe and then remain hidden.

SteveII still doesn't want to accept how his God hypothesis suffers from either "something from nothing" problem or "infinite regression of thoughts".

Steve we are here because we satisfy the constraints imposed by the universe, not because god wants us to appreciate his handiwork (which, if it were so, would be decidedly half arsed). Your reasoning is backwards the universe doesn't exist for us, we exist because conditions allow us to.

As regards god revealing himself, you have not shown one iota of evidence to support this. If your god revealed himself through the bible it would a) accurately describe the universe an all its contents (not even close) and b) be the only holy book. You have no satisfactory to show your god exists, that is why you hate scientific method.

(May 8, 2016 at 9:13 am)Irrational Wrote: SteveII still doesn't want to accept how his God hypothesis suffers from either "something from nothing" problem or "infinite regression of thoughts".

Those things are never a problem when you can use magic as an explanation.

(May 8, 2016 at 9:33 am)LadyForCamus Wrote:

(May 8, 2016 at 9:13 am)Irrational Wrote: SteveII still doesn't want to accept how his God hypothesis suffers from either "something from nothing" problem or "infinite regression of thoughts".

Those things are never a problem when you can use magic as an explanation.

(May 8, 2016 at 9:13 am)Irrational Wrote: SteveII still doesn't want to accept how his God hypothesis suffers from either "something from nothing" problem or "infinite regression of thoughts".

There is no infinite regression of thoughts. We have already discussed this many pages back.