RE: Theists: What is the most compelling argument you have heard for Atheism?
March 30, 2017 at 1:44 pm
(March 30, 2017 at 1:30 pm)SteveII Wrote:(March 30, 2017 at 12:20 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: This is flat out wrong.
The only place that you've ruled out necessity is in your fevered imagination. A corollary of this fact is that any calculation of how improbable the current physical constants are is based on nothing but hot air. Nobody knows the ranges these values can take, nor even if they can take other values. Your statements here are nothing but fancy lies.
I read the whole article. It does not support your assertion other than a theory (perhaps M-Theory), when it is formulated, can answer the question. That does not sound settled to me. A particular telling paragraph in the article was (emphasis added):
Quote:Meanwhile physicists have also come to appreciate that the values of many of the constants may be the result of mere happenstance, acquired during random events and elementary particle processes early in the history of the universe. In fact, string theory allows for a vast number--10500--of possible worlds with different self-consistent sets of laws and constants [see The String Theory Landscape, by Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, September 2004]. So far researchers have no idea why our combination was selected. Continued study may reduce the number of logically possible worlds to one, but we have to remain open to the unnerving possibility that our known universe is but one of many--a part of a multiverse--and that different parts of the multiverse exhibit different solutions to the theory, our observed laws of nature being merely one edition of many systems of local bylaws [see Parallel Universes, by Max Tegmark; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, May 2003].
Regarding the probability, I understand your point that if we do not know the range, we cannot assign probability. However, why isn't the range of possible values unlimited? What factor(s) could constrain the constants of the universe before the universe? Or are you saying that one constant could be a restraint on another before the universe existed? Why?
Physicists posit a multiverse for the express reason to overcome the odds of getting the constants we have? Are you saying they are wrong?
If if if if, if ifs and but's were candy and nuts we'd all have a party, and you are STILL stuck with a countless number of deity claims in human history that everyone tries to fill the gap with. I think Ocham's Razor deals with this simply, to the quick.
Which makes more sense to you, which seems more of a probability?
1. Allah exists, or humans made him up?
2. Yahweh exists, or humans made him up?
3. You do know that Yahweh started out prior as a lessor god in the divine polytheistic family of the Canaanites right? Are they real gods or did humans make them up?
4. The Hindu creator God Brahama exists, or humans made him up?
5. The Egyptian sun god Ra exists, or humans made them up?
In terms of probability, considering all the competing claims and dead claims of the past, and the fact nobody has any universal evidence that is not bias, I'd say there is no super natural all powerful being. I'd say humans are merely projecting their own human qualities on things that do not exist in reality.