(May 13, 2016 at 10:08 am)Rhythm Wrote:

(May 13, 2016 at 10:00 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote: For instance virtual particles have not been directly observed, but there is reasons to believe that they exist.   I haven't experienced these reasons, but I can rely on the testimony of multiple independent people to convey their experiences.   I can also look at those who contest it, and their reasons. I can look at the assumptions and reasons, and see if the conclusion follows.    I don't think, that we needed to understand gravity, before we said that gravity existed.   We had reason to believe it, before understanding it.  However if the claim is why x occurs, then this is a claim of understanding, and we need to explain why that or give reason for that claim.

Purportedly, those people on either side of the issue understand what it is they're talking about, we wouldn't refer to them without confidence in that, and have managed to convey that understanding to you.....or what, again, are we talking about?

You haven't described any situation in which something depends upon what is being claimed...you've simply re-iterated the necessity of understanding to any claim or consideration of a claim.  

Not that any of this matters..because we're not talking, when we talk about god-belief.....about something that scientists do in labs and then report on for verification..are we?  Why would the analogy apply?  How is it supposed to be informative?

I think that you are trying to connect different things, and making assumptions which where not stated.   I'm not sure what you are saying here. From what I can tell, the conversation has veered into epistemology.  Unless you are saying we can only know, those things which happen in a lab.  In which I would ask, how do you know that?

Quote:I think that you are trying to connect different things, and making assumptions which where not stated.

By all means, elaborate.  

Quote:I'm not sure what you are saying here.

No? I'll try again.  You began by saying that you think something in our conversation regarding belief and understanding depends upon the claim being made...and then failed to describe a situation in which -anything- depended on the claim being made.  You described a situation, which, instead...explicitly depended upon the understanding of a great many people of -whatever- claim was being made. Was the one thing supposed to support the other or was that just stream of consciousness type stuff?

Quote:From what I can tell, the conversation has veered into epistemology. Unless you are saying we can only know, those things which happen in a lab.  In which I would ask, how do you know that?

......?

Time Traveler Wrote:

Quote:Question: How long was this period prior to the creation of time in which God existed in a timeless, changeless state?

I think the answer has to be that the proposed prior existence would be instantaneous. Without time, you could say 'everything happens at once'. There would be zero time between the 'timeless state' and time beginning. As you said, that makes God's beginning the same instant as the universe beginning; and God is scientifically superfluous if a quantum vacuum fluctuation can do the same job.

Which brings me to the tangential thought that the God of the KCA is a job description more than a being.

(May 13, 2016 at 10:33 am)Rhythm Wrote: No? I'll try again.  You began by saying that you think something in our conversation regarding belief and understanding depends upon the claim being made...and then failed to describe a situation in which -anything- depended on the claim being made.  You described a situation, which, instead...explicitly depended upon the understanding of a great many people of -whatever- claim was being made.  Was the one thing supposed to support the other or was that just stream of consciousness type stuff?

Perhaps we are using a different definition of "understanding" here. I'm not really sure where the confusion is. All I am saying, is that we do not need to understand "why?" in order to believe that X exists or that X causes Y. These claims only need be sufficient to show that X exists or that X causes Y. If however you are claiming why X is the way it is, or why X causes Y, then this does require reasons for that claim.

(May 13, 2016 at 8:02 am)The Reality Salesman Wrote:

(May 13, 2016 at 7:53 am)SteveI Wrote: God's decision to create was a timeless one in that there was no period of indecision preceding it. God could not have created the universe sooner. It simply is that God was timeless and changeless sans the universe and temporal and changing with the universe.

Do you see that there is a counter intuitive quality in making statements such as this? When you say that God decided to create "x", you imply a state in which God existed, but "x" did not, and then an event occurs that leads to a state where both God and "x" exist. If something is "timeless", there is no timeline or series of events. You have to reconcile this or revise...

I am more than implying that there was a state that God existed and the universe did not. But there is an event that marks the change from one state to another--therefore establishing the difference between previous and current states and therefore a "timeline". There is nothing incoherent about that.

We agree, as I've said, that people don't need to understand their beliefs in order to hold them.

You think that we can show that x causes y, that we can make a sufficient claim in that regard, -without- answering the question of why x causes y? How would you propose that be done?
(Might you be confusing correlation with causation, btw? You don't have to show or have reasons for the "why" to make a sufficient claim of correlation.)

LadyForCamus Wrote:

Quote:I can't believe WLC has been working on one logical argument for 40 years..

He's hanging his hat on what he thinks is the strongest argument. Imagine how bad the other arguments are.

RoadRunner79 Wrote:

wiploc Wrote:I don't know.  I'm not a quantum physicist.

You can read up on the Copenhagen interpretation.

I've never seen anyone giving a reason for this.... Usually just general hand waving, and appeal to very small things or vague references.   Thought maybe by the way you where talking, you knew something that I didn't.

I'll take a stab. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that we cannot simultaneously know the position and velocity of a particle. A nonexistent particle would have a position and velocity of (0,0). We can't even know that, so when we use our instruments to detect the effect of an absence of particles on an incredibly tiny scale, we find effects that can be explained by particle pairs 'popping into existence' and immediately annihilating each other. It's like someone squeezed on zero and made it divide into +1 and -1 for a nanosecond. A variety of 'forces' seem to be mediated by virtual particles.

I am not a physicist, I hope one comes along and gives a better explanation and shows where I'm wrong.

RoadRunner79 Wrote:

LadyForCamus Wrote:It would be like me saying to you:  "Well RR, if you can't explain the mathematical equations behind special relativity to me then I don't have to believe that gravity exists."  

Kind of silly, don't you think?

Except for when I'm being Poe, and demanding that the same requirements that others put forth they hold up to as well. I don't believe that we need to understand something in order to believe it. 

I'm just asking for the reasons that this claim is being made.   Then I will compare the reasons with what others say.  I think that the principle of causality is fairly foundational to science, and that the reason for denying it is more ideological than anything.

Causality is something we are aware of because we observe it in the universe. It may or may not apply TO the universe. Assuming that what is true IN the universe is true OF the universe is a fallacy of composition, like concluding that a wall made of unbreakable bricks must be unbreakable.

(May 13, 2016 at 10:18 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:

Alasdair Ham Wrote:I think existence itself has always existed and always will... that's what I think.

That's even the theist position if they thought about it more. A universe is the set of all things that exist. If God exists and nothing else does, God is the universe. Even in theology there was never not a universe; and there was never 'philosophical nothingness'.

Absolutely. I'm sometimes approached by people familiar with Lawrence Kraus' book "A Universe From Nothing" saying that his theory proves that the universe come from nothing...

The way I understand it is it it IS literally impossible that something came from nothing. Theists often say "Something can't come from nothing" as a really annoying reason to believe in God, but nevertheless that does make logical sense. It is indeed logically impossible for something to come from nothing unless we redefine "Nothing" to be something.

Lawrence Kraus' book should really have been called "A Universe From Empty Atomic Space That Isn't Really Completely Empty But Is Actually Teeming With Quantum Activity" but that wouldn't have made a very catchy book title

It's just like how the original meaning of "atom" meant a completely indivisable building block of reality, so it's impossible by definition to divide an atom into smaller parts.... but then when scientists discovered that what they thought were the atoms of reality were in fact made of smaller parts, they kept the definition and remodelled it rather than redefining the even smaller parts as "atoms" and calling what they initially called atoms something else.... because 1. That would have been confusing 2. Every time they found something even smaller they would have to then call that an "atom" 3. That itself does no good because even if they eventually fail to ever find a smaller part than whatever the smallest they find is, science can't prove the non-existence of something so nothing can actually prove that they ever find the true indivisible "atom". 4. This is the way science works, it remodels stuff, and the other previous 3 points I hope helps show to folks who aren't already familiar with what I am saying that if science worked differently it would be far more confusing.

Science needs working definitions, to keep calling atoms atoms even when they are found not to be what atoms actually are defined to be is better than the alternative which would be to keep redefining what they found as atom.

TL;DR it's better for scientists to keep the same label (e.g "atom", "empty space", etc) and change their model of what that label refers to than to keep redefining the label to fit their model.

Hmmm. If I wanna work on my conciseness maybe I should try writing a bunch of stuff then doing the "TL;DR" at the end and then deleting all the previous stuff I rambled on and on about what do folks think of that suggestion?

-Hammy