I will prove to you that God exists

[Sheldon]

Universes are not laptops. Read your Hume, he debunked this nonsense almost 300 years ago.





Boru

Debunked simply means people (atheists) disagreed with what he said. Furthermore in his time it wasn't known to the degree that the universe is fine-tuned for life.

That's not remotely what debunked means. You don't live within throwing distance of a dictionary do you? You know you can Google word definitions right? BTW, it's still not "known" that the universe is fine tuned for life, that's a subjective religious belief. 

Drew: Do you know of some force inside spacetime that caused spacetime to exist? We have mountains of evidence that natural forces came into existence. That tells us nothing about what caused them to exist or why the myriad of exacting properties and characteristics for life obtained.

You don't have a decent counter explanation and that's why few people claim to be atheists.

Sigh, argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, and "a deity did it, using magic" has no explanatory powers. However thanks for asserting that atheists are rational, and theists are not.

[Angrboda]

I'm not sure but I also fouled up the name of the person I responded too...I have 26 responses I try to get to them.





Exactly. So whether other universes are the same or different is a moot point.

They would still be in just as narrow a range as ever only now you're saying for some reason, they had to be in that narrow range. I believe it was designed to be in that narrow range and if other universes are the same that just more evidence it was intentionally caused. I'm pointing out this is a bad argument.

Well now I think you're just arguing semantics. Yes, in some sense they would still exist in a narrow range but their having the value that they do would no longer be something that required an explanation such as design by a god. If you don't know that they can vary, then you have no fact needing explanation, by gods or otherwise, it would just be a brute fact. Your argument for design requires that they can be something other than what they are, otherwise your entire argument from design is unsupported.

I have reviewed this thread and find no place where you clearly provided such evidence. I can only find three potential sources for a claim that you had done so in this thread which are your remarks concerning Victor Stenger's book, your noting that the cosmological constant was predicted to be much greater than it is, and your claim that eminent scientists believe in the multiverse hypothesis due to a lack of persuasiveness of other natural explanations combined with the assumption of fine tuning. In the latter case, the evidence would be what it was that convinced the scientists that the universe is fine tuned, including evidence that the characteristics could be other than what they are; in that they serve as proxy for the evidence itself and if those scientists do not have support for the possibility of variation, then their speculations are unsupported, regardless of what did or did not persuade them. I haven't seen you present any actual citations of scientists giving their reasons for subscribing to the multiverse hypothesis, so that isn't well supported either; so far we have only your say so in the matter.

If you provided such evidence elsewhere then you'll need to tell me where that was. Otherwise I would ask you to summarize, repost, or copy and paste the evidence you believe you provided.

[Nay_Sayer]

This is like reading through trying to explain things to a petulant child.

It's almost painful.

The tone has definitely shifted from arguing for a fine-tuned universe with apparent evidence to Nuh Uh, How could it have happen any other way?! and atheists are poopie heads!

[The Valkyrie]

This is like reading through trying to explain things to a petulant child.

It's almost painful.

The tone has definitely shifted from arguing for a fine-tuned universe with apparent evidence to Nuh Uh, How could it have happen any other way?! and atheists are poopie heads!

"If you stick the fork in the electrical socket you'll hurt yourself."

"No, I'm magic!"

"No you're not!"

"God protects me and makes me magic!"

[Alan V]

This is the problem with atheism. It doesn't offer a plausible explanation except multiverse which invokes entities to infinity any beyond!

Atheism isn't an explanation for the origin of the universe.   It is mute on that subject.   It neither endorses nor rejects the multiverse hypothesis.

There are plenty of good reasons to reject the God-concept even without considering the cosmological argument.  Drew can't seem to absorb that bit of information.

He also can't grasp Hawking's quantum cosmology, which rejects the multiverse idea and yet does not rely on God.

We are becoming as much of a broken record as he is, since he ignores the same points over and over again.

[Angrboda]

How did the forces that caused the universe to expand operate? Were those 'natural' forces inside spacetime that hadn't come into existence yet? A laptop isn't the universe its a far less complex contrivance. If mindless natural forces can cause the universe a laptop is child's play.

You miss the point. A laptop (or a pocket watch) is a demonstrably manufactured thing you can quite literally watch them being made. No one has ever seen a universe being made. This is, and always has been a false analogy.

Again, I suggest you read Hume’s A Treatise On Human Understanding. It’s a bit heavy going, but very valuable in pointing out the flaws in your argument.

Boru

If you mean to direct him to Hume's comments regarding the analogy implicit in arguments for design, that is in Part II of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

To wit:

Hume criticizes the argument on two main grounds. First, Hume rejects the analogy between the material universe and any particular human artifact. As Hume states the relevant rule of analogy, “wherever you depart in the least, from the similarity of the cases, you diminish proportionably the evidence; and may at last bring it to a very weak analogy, which is confessedly liable to error and uncertainty” (Hume, Dialogues, Part II). Hume then goes on to argue that the cases are simply too dissimilar to support an inference that they are like effects having like causes:

"If we see a house,… we conclude, with the greatest certainty, that it had an architect or builder because this is precisely that species of effect which we have experienced to proceed from that species of cause. But surely you will not affirm that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause, or that the analogy is here entire and perfect (Hume, Dialogues, Part II)."

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy || Argument from Design

Though I confess, it's probably immaterial as Drew not infrequently doesn't understand the thing to which he is objecting.

[Sheldon]

This is like reading through trying to explain things to a petulant child.

It's almost painful.

Do you know I almost posted that exact same assertion earlier. That's exactly what it is like, like trying to explain simple principles of rationality to a precocious, but very petulant small child. 

You can almost hear Drew wailing, "but why am I wrong? As he sulks...and he is hiding his arguments from the facts, in the same way a child hides it's face behind its hands, in the pretence it can't be seen. It's sad that someone can have their arguments so thoroughly rinsed, pulled apart like warm bread in front of their eyes, and yet seemingly not just remain oblivious to the fact, but is doing some sort of parody of Charlie Sheen's public breakdown, "Winning!!!!"... 

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Angrboda

If you mean to direct him to Hume's comments regarding the analogy implicit in arguments for design, that is in Part II of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

I gleefully accept the correction. 👍

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This is like reading through trying to explain things to a petulant child.

It's almost painful.

Maybe if we give him a glass of milk and a bikkie he’ll calm down.

Boru

[arewethereyet]

So, so tempted to post The Song That Never Ends.