From when I've heard Stenger speak on the Non-Prophets and the Atheist Experience, (I have yet to read the book because I want to finish Hitchens first) he argues against the most common model of god. The problem with arguing against god is you get people who say "But that's not my god" and it becomes a useless futile act. Stenger explained that he attacks the god that studies have shown the average person would believe in, (I.E. Answers prayers, created world, Promises heaven, threatens hell)

So chances are maybe YOUR specific view might be a little different, but in that case have you just definied God to some being that is free from considerations of the majorly accepted god model? If that's so, it's just your opinion, unprovable, untestable, and utterly worthless.

(January 22, 2009 at 6:42 am)DD_8630 Wrote:

(January 15, 2009 at 1:38 pm)Sam Wrote: Also I was essentially getting at the same point i.e.;

Highly complex universe due to randomness = Improbable

Actually, it is randomness itself that allows large, complex structures to form. An initial uniform will be uniform for all time, but randomness will 'seed' tiny inhomogeneities that will, say, grab slightly more matter than the surroundings.

(January 15, 2009 at 1:38 pm)Sam Wrote: Being capable of creating said universe from nothing must be significcantly more complex = Very Very Improable

I've heard Dawkins say something to that effect. Why would a Creator necessarily be more complex than the Creation? As we all know, the universe can develop on its own without any obvious divine interference (the expansion of the universe, novae, evolution, etc, all occur naturally). So perhaps the Creator needs only to be at least as complex as the initial universe?

Basically, why does a Creator need to be complex?

DD Hi
Our debate in my thread "determinism vs. indeterminism" has burnt out but I'm glad to see that it has revived in this thread under another name.
The French have a saying :La meme Jeannette mais autrement coifee.
It's basic french ,need not to be translated.
The debate here is going on in the high spheres of the creation of the universe, which is very interesting,but my impression is of speculative thinking, doubtfully related to the last theories of the physicist.

If the theory of Stephen Hawking who recognized that his,for long years assumption that information of black holes is going to vanish in nothing when the black hole has finished his radiation,is not true and the information wanders to other parrallel universes is right, then the debate about the creation of "our" universe becomes a "provincial" debate.

The Bible teaches us about the creation of our world and so do perhaps the theist and the Id-ists. Isnt it all obsolete?:thinking
Instead of thinking about one Creator we must begin to think about a lot of them .

The Bible is perhaps right afterall when it gave god a lot of names like Lord ,God allmighty,King,King of kings,Father,Jehovah,Allah and so on.
We'll have from now on to be carefully and to name for each universe the righr name of it's Creator .
Here is an important question : are Paradises and Hells common to all universes or has each of them his ownn retribution/punishment
institution?
Now let's come down to our ordinary physical world.
I think it would be more interesting to debate about chance (indeterminism) in Physics,Biology,Sociology,Economy,Politics,even,why not, Meteorology and so on .
Such a debate I believe shall bring us back with no doubt to atheism.

(January 23, 2009 at 12:19 pm)Eilonnwy Wrote: So chances are maybe YOUR specific view might be a little different, but in that case have you just definied God to some being that is free from considerations of the majorly accepted god model? If that's so, it's just your opinion, unprovable, untestable, and utterly worthless.

I understand what you are saying. I suspect that no 'model' can achieve what Stenger thinks might be achieved. We are applying things that may not apply to a supernatural being. Can we really define 'supernatural'? I don't think so......

(January 23, 2009 at 1:35 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: DD Hi
Our debate in my thread "determinism vs. indeterminism" has burnt out but I'm glad to see that it has revived in this thread under another name.
The French have a saying :La meme Jeannette mais autrement coifee.
It's basic french ,need not to be translated.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough French to translate that. Neither, it seems, does Bablefish: "The same Sleeve-board but otherwise coifee."

What does it mean?

(January 23, 2009 at 1:35 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: The debate here is going on in the high spheres of the creation of the universe, which is very interesting,but my impression is of speculative thinking, doubtfully related to the last theories of the physicist.

If the theory of Stephen Hawking who recognized that his,for long years assumption that information of black holes is going to vanish in nothing when the black hole has finished his radiation,is not true and the information wanders to other parrallel universes is right, then the debate about the creation of "our" universe becomes a "provincial" debate.

Hawking's theory has been quite famously disproven. The information is radiated out by the black hole, albeit in a garbled form. There is no 'parallel universe' involved in this or any other scientific theory. Perhaps you are confusing scientific fact for science fiction?

The rest of what you say is unsubstantiated conjecture, with a load of Bible-twisting thrown in to boot.

(January 23, 2009 at 1:35 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: Now let's come down to our ordinary physical world.
I think it would be more interesting to debate about chance (indeterminism) in Physics,Biology,Sociology,Economy,Politics,even,why not, Meteorology and so on .
Such a debate I believe shall bring us back with no doubt to atheism.

All roads lead to Hell

(January 23, 2009 at 3:31 pm)DD_8630 Wrote:

(January 23, 2009 at 1:35 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: DD Hi
Our debate in my thread "determinism vs. indeterminism" has burnt out but I'm glad to see that it has revived in this thread under another name.
The French have a saying :La meme Jeannette mais autrement coifee.
It's basic french ,need not to be translated.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough French to translate that. Neither, it seems, does Bablefish: "The same Sleeve-board but otherwise coifee."

What does it mean?

(January 23, 2009 at 1:35 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: The debate here is going on in the high spheres of the creation of the universe, which is very interesting,but my impression is of speculative thinking, doubtfully related to the last theories of the physicist.

If the theory of Stephen Hawking who recognized that his,for long years assumption that information of black holes is going to vanish in nothing when the black hole has finished his radiation,is not true and the information wanders to other parrallel universes is right, then the debate about the creation of "our" universe becomes a "provincial" debate.

Hawking's theory has been quite famously disproven. The information is radiated out by the black hole, albeit in a garbled form. There is no 'parallel universe' involved in this or any other scientific theory. Perhaps you are confusing scientific fact for science fiction?

The rest of what you say is unsubstantiated conjecture, with a load of Bible-twisting thrown in to boot.

(January 23, 2009 at 1:35 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: Now let's come down to our ordinary physical world.
I think it would be more interesting to debate about chance (indeterminism) in Physics,Biology,Sociology,Economy,Politics,even,why not, Meteorology and so on .
Such a debate I believe shall bring us back with no doubt to atheism.

All roads lead to Hell

O.k. Let's try to clear our problems one by one.
1) Not knowing french doesn't harm anybody,but you got me right: the
same Jeannette but otherwise hair dressed.
2) Hawking seems to be not your cup of tea because it's the second time you reject his theories.
Great scientist have oftenly had fierce opponents who either fought
about priority of a certain theory or denied the opponents theory alltogether.
It is known that Suskind a former co-worker of Hawking denied the "Hawking paradox" by maintaining that the information of the black hole is "smeared" on the space/time horizon.
It is true that after Hawking recognized his paradox as untrue and proposed the parallel universe solution many physicist opposed this idea.
Nevertheless the idea is still under research by famous physicist and as counterintuitive as it may be it is by no means considered as science fiction as you present it.
3) About my so polite betitled "unsubstantial conjecture" I dare say that
from a little bit of sense of humour nobody is known to have died of.
4) Now let's embark to the road of Hell.
Before we embark I would repeat what I have said in the thread of that nice "Moslem"who tried to convince us about the existence of Allah-God bless him,that I have already ordered a nice chair in the Hell just near to the Fire together with a load of tarr which will support the fire for the next 100 millions of years.
Members of that forum are invited to order the last chairs next to me.
Now let's visit first the Hell of Sociology.
If we take a just random example of behaviour of masses we can see how predictable social laws lead often to total randomly reactions of humans.So just begun revolutions.It's this duality of determinism and indeterminism of which I'm speaking.
Let's take the road to Economy Hell.
The actual world wide economic crisis speaks more than any theory how famous and hailed economists,like for instance this genius Allan Greenspan who seemed to know the future of the economy as 1+1=2
failed miserably in their predictions and one can seek for millions of causes and not find exactly why the Economy has plunged in such a big degree of randomness.
Again the same duality of prediction and chance.
Now Let's embark to Meteorology Hell.
There was a time when Meteorologists thought that by means of ultra computers they will be able to predict weather exactly for a span of a day.
It has proven as a dream never to come true because of the randomness of climatic factors.
I have no skill whatsoever in Meteorology but I dare to come up with this thought that the temperature on the face of the earth can not theoretically ever be exactly predicted, due to the second principle of termodinamics.
The dual aspect of determinism and indeterminism is felt dayly by us when we look to the wheather forecast then swear the Meteorologists as being lyers or idiots.

(January 25, 2009 at 2:07 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: 2) Hawking seems to be not your cup of tea because it's the second time you reject his theories.

You misunderstand: Hawking himself stated that he believed the bet lost. He now believes that information is radiated in a garbled form, and I agree with him.

(January 25, 2009 at 2:07 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: Great scientist have oftenly had fierce opponents who either fought about priority of a certain theory or denied the opponents theory alltogether.
It is known that Suskind a former co-worker of Hawking denied the "Hawking paradox" by maintaining that the information of the black hole is "smeared" on the space/time horizon.
It is true that after Hawking recognized his paradox as untrue and proposed the parallel universe solution many physicist opposed this idea.
Nevertheless the idea is still under research by famous physicist and as counterintuitive as it may be it is by no means considered as science fiction as you present it.

On the contrary, it is: even the 'many-worlds' hypothesis is a controversial interpretation of quantum mechanics. The consensus among scientists is that there is probably only one universe (ours), and that there certainly is no evidence thus far of alternate ones.

(January 25, 2009 at 2:07 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: Now let's visit first the Hell of Sociology.
If we take a just random example of behaviour of masses we can see how predictable social laws lead often to total randomly reactions of humans.So just begun revolutions.It's this duality of determinism and indeterminism of which I'm speaking.

Let's take the road to Economy Hell.
The actual world wide economic crisis speaks more than any theory how famous and hailed economists,like for instance this genius Allan Greenspan who seemed to know the future of the economy as 1+1=2
failed miserably in their predictions and one can seek for millions of causes and not find exactly why the Economy has plunged in such a big degree of randomness.
Again the same duality of prediction and chance.

Now Let's embark to Meteorology Hell.
There was a time when Meteorologists thought that by means of ultra computers they will be able to predict weather exactly for a span of a day.
It has proven as a dream never to come true because of the randomness of climatic factors.
I have no skill whatsoever in Meteorology but I dare to come up with this thought that the temperature on the face of the earth can not theoretically ever be exactly predicted, due to the second principle of termodinamics.
The dual aspect of determinism and indeterminism is felt dayly by us when we look to the wheather forecast then swear the Meteorologists as being lyers or idiots.

You are confusing approximation with indeterminism. Economic and meteorological forecasts are wrong not because the universe is fundamentally indeterminate, but rather because the economy and the weather are chaotic systems: tiny variation in the initial conditions lead to completely different outcomes. A particular breeze being slightly faster than measured, or a particular market sector being infinitesimally more saturated than polls determine, will yield completely different results.

It boils down to information. The weatherman is wrong because his calculations were a) derived using simplifying approximations and assumptions, and b) given inaccurate information. If a completely general and un-approximated solution could be derived, and if it were given the complete set of relevant data, it would be able to predict the climate at any time in the future.

Determinism, then, is the philosophical position that the universe is (in principle) predictable: given enough information about the present, one can predict the future with 100% accuracy.
Indeterminism is the position that the universe cannot be so modelled.

Quantum mechanically, the universe is indeterminate: there are truly random events in the universe that cannot be predicted, so neither can the universe at large be predicted. It can be approximated to certain degrees of accuracy, but it can never be predicted with 100% accuracy.


I hope that clears up the misconception you seem to have about determinism and indeterminism: first, they are mutually incompatible (both can't be true), and second, the universe is indeterminate (quantum mechanically speaking.).

(January 25, 2009 at 2:58 pm)DD_8630 Wrote: I hope that clears up the misconception you seem to have about determinism and indeterminism: first, they are mutually incompatible (both can't be true), and second, the universe is indeterminate (quantum mechanically speaking.).

I agree with this finding. It is a shame that some "high up" atheist figures like gogreen18 on YouTube hold the flawed view that there is no free will, simply because of some argument about behaviour. With an indeterministic universe, there can be no determinism.

Gogreen18 high up? Since when? Because she has subscribers and some good videos out doesn't make her a authority on anything, just someone who makes good videos.

Anyway, I don't hold much of this determined universe idea either. There is some degree of predictability, but in no way a 100% predictability, and some variables we will probably never find but we can only speculate.

I mean she is one of the high up atheists on YouTube, and I'd say quite a large percentage of the online atheist community has at least seen one of her videos. A load of them have gone viral since she got banned, especially after P.Z Myers linked to her. Of course, she's not an authority on anything, but she is high up enough to have an effect, especially on the younger generation for which she speaks.

Okay, fair enough.