My stance has always been that it may be possible that some sort of intelligence created our universe/reality. Currently I see no reason to conclude that there is.

But if there is one:

1) We don't know if it still exists
2) We have found no evidence of it within our universe/reality
3) We have no current means to learn anything about things outside our universe/reality, if such a thing is even coherent

My conclusion is that it is entirely irrelevant, unless new evidence emerges. In other words, it makes no practical difference to me if there is a creator.

There's all these arguments trying to establish a generic creator, such as Kalam or intelligent design. Call the creator God if you want, we haven't learnt anything about it just by giving it a title. So if I let your arguments stand, and there is a creator, can you tell me what difference it should make to me?

(March 11, 2015 at 7:28 am)robvalue Wrote: So if I let your arguments stand, and there is a creator, can you tell me what difference it should make to me?

That depends on whether you're talking to a theist or a deist. Your position is patently true if there's a distant, uninterested or incapable creator (the deist concept) however if there is/are interventionist, theistic god/s, the difference it/they would make would likely impact every area of your life. We're simply fortunate that there's no evidence to back up any theistic propositions, no testable claim which has ever been upheld nor any way to differentiate between theistic & deistic concepts in the realm of 'logic argumentation' (e.g. Kallam, fine-tuning etc.).

Irrespective of the actual existence of any deity, the behaviour of the believers can & does impact directly on your life. That alone requires that we understand what's going on so that we can build suitable/adequate coping mechanisms, both personal (e.g. use of reason) & social (e.g. secularism).

Oh sure, yeah. You make good points. But I'm talking about making changes in my behaviour to actually allow for this creator. Even if I believed there was one, I have no way to communicate with it, or any reason to think it cares what I am doing. If I also believed it was actually doing anything to interact, that would be cause for concern. But just the existence of a creator doesn't lead to this without further justification and evidence.

Arguments like the Kalam at best take you to a deistic God, and I'm saying even if I allow these arguments, it doesn't get to the point of anything I can actually interact with. So just trying to convince me there is "something up there" is really pointless, unless you can demonstrate you have some way of actually knowing something about it. Of course christians would try and just switch in their god and hope I don't notice. That needs its own justification, for which I see none.

Here is my idea of a creator if there was ever one.
Its a creator who simply does not care. He created everything and life and just watched it
evolved and changed over time. This type of god does not care about anything and just watches and observes.
Considering that if a god existed which is highly unlikely by the way i am sure that type of god exists.

Yeah, I've discussed that with my friends before, we call it the "Sim City abandoned save game hypothesis". After he got bored and threw a load of disasters everywhere to screw most of it up, he left it running and never came back to it.

The whole point of trying to convince you "something is up there" is so they can try to weasel in their particular god afterwards. Notice how the overwhelming majority of people using these arguments are theists. That's because these arguments are the first step in their sales speech. They're trying to get you to drink the kool-aid, and the creator arguments are their attempt to get you to come inside and see what beverages are available.

The kalam and company are really nothing more than segues to Jesus or Allah.

Yes, that's very true. Part of this is trying to highlight that you've barely got started by establishing a creator. You're gonna pull out a story book and just point to characters in it? That's supposed to be the rest of the argument is it?

Well you see you need a good story no contradictions or flawed morals and even still you need some evidence to point out that, that god exists.

So... no one's got anything for me?

All this guff and ridiculous arguments desperately clawing to prove there is "a god" and yet the consequences of that argument are Jack's spit?

Well, I'll just keep on being Rob then.

And when the next dumb "there is a god" argument comes up, I'll redirect it here :p

The first problem is that a lot of people like to discuss the existance of a creator but fail to set up at least the most primitive set of definitions. Thus each of them have their own notions and they do nothing more than argue pointlessy over a non-issue. I'd have to say here that this question is fundamentally rhetoric so most ways to discuss it lead essentially to the same null result.

The other problem is that in a rigorous sence we can not have a complete set of data on any physical phenomena as we can do with some purely abstract things in logic and math. On the other hand, people are often only satisfied with yes/no type of answers which is a fundamentally wrong, simplistic, black and white approach to reality. If there is some absolute truth it is that there are no known 'absolute absolutes' in the world but only probabilities and some of them are more or less close to absolute yes or no. Some happen to be asymptotically close to absolute at least in a local sence which is usually more than enaugh for a rational person (this is the case when a rational person gives a strictly yes or no answer). And some are just undefined.

The third problem is that human science does not have nearly enaugh understanding of extra-universal happenings. It's not even possible to define the border of our Universe and say if something could or could not exist outside. There is still no way to see beyond the temporal limit early in the Universe's life, too. The model of our Universe is far, far from being comprehensive enaugh to present more or less clear hypotheses for said questions and there are no ways to test them experimentally (which is a crucial thing).

Speaking of the creator question there's obviously not enaugh data to even define the question in a more or less probable way, let alone to answer it. I'm not speaking about the abrahamic version of the creator now. Just about some potential entity that may have created our Universe. For example some alien experimentators... or even an alien hooligan. Our universe may have been created competely ocasionally and without any knowing by the creator. Or it may have been created by itself. The answer by itself potentially is of a great importance in a cosmologically long run. And maybe sometimes humans or any other sentient (in our sence) species will come to answer this question. For example through becoming able to create universes by themselves or arriving at a better understanding of the process of universe formation and evolution. But nowadays there is no known data that leads our scientists to consider the absence or existence of creator(s) and determine their motives or role in Universe's life. Hense the question is irrelevant for now. Everything has it's own time.

Speaking of certain religious people who like to point out that there is no way to prove the absence of a creator for now, they seem not to understand that this issue by itself can not in any way help them to defend their own myth. While there can potentially be a creator, traditional religious myths have nothing to do with said entity in any way other than stating that there is one. This is due to the fact that scriptures are essentially religious cosmological hypotheses which present lots of details on their respective gods rather than just stating vaguely that there's a creator. These hypotheses even in the most intricate of their statements have been long disproved and dismissed as myths.