Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[Simon Moon]

So what? So lets say Dawkins does not argue against the philosophical arguments very well. There are many other atheist scholars that do argue against them, and provide very powerful rebuttals. Just because atheist A is week on one subject/argument, does not mean that atheism itself has been defeated on that subject.

And also, just because you think the "who created god?" is a BS question, does not mean it is. All we ever hear from theists in response to this question is, yet another unsupported assertion.

The parallels between something like the Hawking-Hartle proposal are startling.  A universe, that isn't past eternal, yet was not created.  Theists screech like banshees to be offered that as a solution to the universe, but they don't bat an eye when they offer up basically the same thing for their god.

What?!

Theists being guilty of special pleading?!

Tell me it ain't so...

[Jehanne]

And I insist: Dawkins is a dumbass when it comes to the philosophy of religion. Many reviews of his books explicitly state that he doesn't understand traditional arguments for God's existence. Dawkins discusses, embarassingly, the BS question "who created God?" in some of his books.

Why are most scientists and philosophers atheist?

Nature -- Leading scientists still reject God

The PhilPapers Surveys

Why are you so smart, and so many other smart people dumb?

[Simon Moon]

And I insist: Dawkins is a dumbass when it comes to the philosophy of religion. Many reviews of his books explicitly state that he doesn't understand traditional arguments for God's existence. Dawkins discusses, embarassingly, the BS question "who created God?" in some of his books.

Why are most scientists and philosophers atheist?

Nature -- Leading scientists still reject God

The PhilPapers Surveys

Why are you so smart, and so many other smart people dumb?

Yep...

74% of all philosophers are atheists.
72% of all scientists.

And, among the elite scientists, members of The Royal Academy in England and the National Academy in the US, 96% are atheists.

And if anyone thinks most of the rest that believe in a god are Christians or Muslims... nope. Most are deists.

[polymath257]

I disagree. The likelihood is precisely the same: guaranteed in both cases. Either something exists and there are natural laws that describe its properties, or things are random and the laws of probability apply. Either way, there would be natural laws. The only other case is where nothing exists, and we know that isn't the case.

What do you mean by "guaranteed in both cases"..........? Appeal to randomness doesn't explain anything, I don't understand how you can assert such nonsense. Given randomness, it's vastly more likely that... randomness arises, no laws, complete chaos. Given a rational lawgiver, a personal designer, it's vastly more likely that an orderly universe arises. This can't be more straightforward.

How is it vastly more likely? Seriously, why would it be any more likely in the case of a designer (who has to obey their own rules of behavior---in other words, other physical laws).

Imagine that, one morning, you enter the kitchen and find a plate and cup on the table, with breadcrumbs, and some peanut butter on it, plus a pack of sugar, and empty cartons of milk. You conclude that one of your house-mates got up at night to make him- or herself a midnight snack and was too tired to clear the table. This, you think, best explains the scene you are facing. Now,  it might be that someone burgled the house and took the time to have a bite while on the job, or a house-mate might have arranged the things on the table without having a midnight snack but just to make you believe that someone had a midnight snack. But these hypotheses are clearly more contrived explanations of the data at hand.

Based on the laws of physics that we are accustomed to, yes. With different laws, no. You are assuming the laws we work under are the only ones possible.

We apply the same kind of reasoning (i.e. abduction/inference to the best explanation) when it comes to the appearance of design, talk as long as you want about randomness bringng about pretty fish and determining the value of the cosmological constant... it's embarassingly contrived and completely unwarranted.

The difference, of course, is that we know that kitchen plates don't move around by themselves. There physical properties do not allow for that. This means that there has to be something else that moves them.

In the case of the universe and its components, we know that they *do* move around by themselves because they have properties and thereby obey natural laws. For example, gravity naturally and without intelligent intervention, allows for the formation of stars and planets. In spite of their having structure and being orderly, not designer is required for their formation. The natural laws are sufficient.

And no, it's not straightforward that the laws of probability apply. You should first define carefully Kolmogorov's axioms, and, more importantly, define a sample space which includes all possible outcomes. In the case of a coin toss, the sample space would be {Heads, Tails}, it could of course be a much more complicated set in other examples. In the case of a random universe... I don't see how we can meaningfully define a sample space and start assigning probabilities to each outcome.

Well, does this random universe have any properties at all? if so, those properties themselves provide natural laws (what is a property but a potential for a type of interaction?).

if there are no properties at all, then we would not be here at all, so there would be no discussion.

The question, as I see it, is whether, given the fact that a universe with properties exists, is it more probable that it came from a designer or that it did not? This is a different question than whether a designer would make an ordered universe or not.

And the way to tell that relative probability is to have some idea what sorts of universes would come about with a creator and what sorts would come about without one and compare them to the actual universe. And at that point, I see no way to establish the probabilities either way.

Finally, don't forget that any proposed designer has to have some 'rules of behavior'. In this context, those rules of behavior *are* the 'physical' laws that the designer obeys. But that means that such rules are *prior* logically to the designer.

And we know that we are inclined to attribute intentions to things that have none: how many people name their cars or complain about their computers being cranky?

This is a well-known fault in how the human mind works and so it needs to be guarded against. That is quite sufficient to show that appearances are not enough in this case.

That's not a defeater to the principle of credulity. We were ultimately wrong about the luminiferous aether but we weren't wrong when we accepted it, temporarily, as a a plausible explanation. All science is based on the appearances, all scientific explanations are an inference to the best explanation of the available data, and the best explanation might be wrong, but one simply can't have better than the best explanation, nor is justified in going with any other contrived explanation.

Absolutely true. But seldom is the 'best explanation' the one that immediately comes to mind via intuition. And, given our tendency to attribute intention to inanimate objects, it is good to be skeptical of any conclusion of intention unless the evidence is very good.

I see you don't understand basic logic. I am showing how your proposed contradiction is not a contradiction within my model.

So what? A wrong model can also be empty of contradictions .............. You assumed an eternal past on your model and then incorporated a starting point. Nice sleight of hand.

No, I never included a starting point. In fact, that was the whole argument: there need not be a starting point.

Yes, a consistent model can be wrong. But you were claiming an infinite regress is a self-contradiction. If you admit that an infinite regress is *internally consistent*, that is quite enough to show that the Kalam argument fails.

I am going you to ask you again once: Can false propositions yield true propositions ? If you really know anything at all about logic, you would know, above all, that false implies everything.

Agreed/ That is very basic (although standard) logic. And it holds both ways: if the existence of God is false, then the assumption of God would prove everything.

But so what? I am not claiming there has been an actual infinite regress. I think it is *possible*, but I do not know whether there has been one or not.

YOU are claiming such cannot happen. You have proposed a contradiction, but I showed that it is NOT a contradiction in that model. You now seem to be agreeing that the model is internally consistent (but you claim it is wrong). if so, that destroys your argument that an infinite regress is inconsistent.

Your false model being empty of contradictions doesn't prove your case, it only reveals you are confused.

No, my model being free of contradictions shows that having an infinite regress is not self-contradictory. And *that* shows that the Kalam argument fails.

Most things have more than one cause, so it is reasonable to assume that, if the universe is caused, it has multiple causes. That seems like a very good reason.

You should elaborate more on the assertion "Most things have more than onc cause". We know to distinguish between several categories of causes since Aristotle.......

I think it quite obvious. Most events involve an interaction of more than one thing. When there are two things, that means there are at least two causes. And, of course, both of those things have their own causes (usually more than one), and so we get an infinite tree of previous causes, not a line of causes.

And, I am talking about what Aristotle would call 'efficient causes'. The other types of Aristotle enumerated we not longer consider to be causes.

Which we know happens in reality in quantum systems. There is no 'reason' why electron-positron pairs appear out of nothing, exist for a while, and disappear again.

Gosh.. not this again. QM violates determinism, not causality. Besides, as I explained pages ago, an object or particle in QM should be redefined because it doesn't have the same nature as in classical mechanics, QM incorporates probabilistic reasoning. When everything is defined properly, there is no violation of causality.

Then, please describe *exactly* what you mean when you say one event causes another. And, in particular, detail how the time of a muon decay is caused under your understanding.

And I am saying the universe potentially didn't begin to exist. If it is a consistent possibility for your god, then it is also consistent for the universe.

You're not really comparing like with like, you know... God is purportedly timeless, the universe is not.

I disagree. Time is part of the universe. It is *within* the universe. The universe is a four dimensional spacetime manifold.

But that means that the universe as a whole is timeless. it simply exists. All causality is *within* it.

On the contrary, it is unreasonable to think that something as complicated as a lawgiver (especially one that is conscious) can exist without physical laws.

Um.. what? 

The physical laws describe the physical world by definition, that's what 'physical' means. A lawgiver obviously is not physical ... so?

But what does it mean to be physical?

Physical laws describe the behavior of things. We then say that the things they describe are physical. So, the reason electromagnetic waves are physical is that they interact with things in a regular way. That is what allows us to write down physical laws.

A designer has to obey some sort of 'laws of behavior'. And those laws of behavior would be the physical laws for that designer.

there must be a *method* by which the designer puts the design into practice. And that method is, again, a set of behaviors of the materials, and is thereby a set of physical laws.

Remember, physical laws are *descriptive* and not *prescriptive*. that means that *anything* that has patterned behavior is subject o physical laws: the patterns *are* physical laws.

[Rahn127]

The problem is, they want this imaginary law giver to be made of nothing while at the same time capable of doing anything.

Even in this sentence, I used the word capable, which implies an ability, which implies something that has properties.

The only way something can have a property is if that property is described by existing physical laws.

[R00tKiT]

How could a God that exists out of time do anything?  

Incredulity. Just because you can't imagine some action taking place independently of time doesn't mean it's impossible.

 How could a God who experiences no time ever decide to change his/her/its mind and do anything? 

A deity doesn't change its mind. If it did, it wouldn't be a deity.

By the way, no physicist from over the last century has had any intrinsic issues with the Cosmos being an actual infinite, either in space or time.

Can you cite some sources supporting what's above? 

This line flgrantly ignores the fact that if your god exists and does what you say he does, there can be no "natural laws".  For your god is allegedly all powerful and all knowing (how both of these are impossible in the same reality is another problem), and natural laws are constraints which make both properties impossible for a being to hold.

This is ridiculous. Natural laws don't apply to a god who is purportedly outside of the universe. Also, this old retarded claim (omnipotence and omniscient being logically incompatible) has been debunked repeatedly. If god knows what he's about to do, he will never change it -a deity doesn't change its mind, because it "gets everything right" without the need of trial and error. Changing one's mind and second-guessing are purely human mental operations, extrapolating them to God is not very clever.

Time is already defined in Hawking-Hartle.  If you add another definition then you are guilty of equivocation and your argument is invalid.  Don't be stupid.

I am sorry if adding another definition is too much for your brain to handle. If this helps, you can substitute for the word time anything you like to be able to speak coherently about things happening prior to the universe, just don't keep invalidating arguments for no reason. The word "prior" here is, as explained before, in a causal sense. If causality holds outside of spacetime, then something (X) caused the spacetime. A new definition of a "time" or, even better, a sequence of events, is simply the sequences of all causes and effects that ever happened, and we assign to each element of this causal chain a rank i. If A causes B, and B causes C, then A would "happen" at rank i=0, B at rank i=1, etc. This is really simple and there is nothing incoherent about it. 

Again, you can replace time/rank/sequence with anything you like, arguing about semantics won't help you here.

What a joke...

So now, those that find no evidence, or need, for a god to be involved in the evolutionary process, are the biased ones. Evolution is explained without the need of a deity anywhere in the process. You, and other theists, are the biased ones, trying to insert your god, where it is not needed, nor does it add any explanatory power.

How do you know that evolution doesn't need God? What if God sustains the laws of physics/chemistry? Surely, evolution wouldn't have occured if chemistry laws didn't hold or if the universe didn't fullfil many life-permitting conditions...

So lets say Dawkins does not argue against the philosophical arguments very well.

Then he should shut up, never half-ass a subject as deep as religion, and apologize humbly to philosophers who actually understand these arguments. How many people do you think were misguided by his writings?

 There are many other atheist scholars that do argue against them, and provide very powerful rebuttals. Just because atheist A is week on one subject/argument, does not mean that atheism itself has been defeated on that subject.

Evolution is irrelevant to the question of God's existence to begin with, because it's open to the theist to say that it was God's intention all along. This subject is not exactly a threat to theism. You say we don't need God during the process of evolution, sure, we don't need computer engineers either when our computers are already up and running. If you think God either systematically intervenes in the creation to keep some process going, or doesn't exist, then you have a really narrow imagination. You would agree that an all-powerful God is capable of creating some self-sustaining universe that works wonderfully and never intervene again (deism), or intervene rarely through exceptionally occuring miracles(theism), neither scenario is in conflict with evolution.

How is it vastly more likely? Seriously, why would it be any more likely in the case of a designer (who has to obey their own rules of behavior---in other words, other physical laws).

I think it's time to introduce formal notations here, I am going to assume you are familiar with the notation of conditional probaility .

Let's call T the proposition "A personal creator exists", . U the proposition : "there is a universe ",  C the proposition "There are personal agents who exist because of life-permitting conditions, fine -tuning, etc.".

Then we have P(T|U&C)>P(T|U). That is, taking into account our own existence and life-permitting conditions supports the proposition T. The fact that our existence is contingent upon many vastly unlikely outcomes does warrant an explanation, and the most straightforward explanation for a universe bringing about personal agents is a personal creator who intended for this to happen. All theories that describe the workings of the universe are by definition within the universe and therefore have zero explanatory power when it comes to explaining the universe itself.

Saying that a universe like ours doesn't require an explanation is the inverse gambler's fallacy, any unlikely outcome deserves careful consideration. If you shoot at someone 1000000 bullets at point-blank range and still miss the person, there is a serious need for an explanation, you can't just say: we're asking for an explanation just because the person survived the experience. Well guess what, the universe's occurence is vastly more impressive than the latter example.

The difference, of course, is that we know that kitchen plates don't move around by themselves. There physical properties do not allow for that. This means that there has to be something else that moves them.

In the case of the universe and its components, we know that they *do* move around by themselves because they have properties and thereby obey natural laws. For example, gravity naturally and without intelligent intervention, allows for the formation of stars and planets. In spite of their having structure and being orderly, not designer is required for their formation. The natural laws are sufficient.

Natural laws are neither sufficient nor insufficient in this context, they are completely irrelevant. We are already in agreement that these laws are descriptive. If they are, then they simply help us describe better what happens in our universe, you should simply step back a bit and ask yourself: why do we have this universe with such laws in the first place? 
Computer engineers design computers too and "leave" them to users, and there you go: you have a computer that magically works without intelligent intervention.....

No, I never included a starting point. In fact, that was the whole argument: there need not be a starting point.

Yes, a consistent model can be wrong. But you were claiming an infinite regress is a self-contradiction. If you admit that an infinite regress is *internally consistent*, that is quite enough to show that the Kalam argument fails.

Your model is not a model for an infinite regress of causes. It's a model in which infinite regress already happened, and where we're free to choose a finite interval of time along this infinity. But this infinity is, as I argued, logically impossible in itself. Incorporating a logically impossible proposition in your model will yield to anything. What you should do, instead, is suggest a model of this very regress of causes that doesn't lead to contradiction.

I disagree. Time is part of the universe. It is *within* the universe. The universe is a four dimensional spacetime manifold.

But that means that the universe as a whole is timeless. it simply exists. All causality is *within* it.

Causality doesn't depend on time. Again, if you assume causality breaks down outside the spacetime, then you allow for things to pop in and out of existence without any causation. This is literally the end of any possible discussion about anything.

[brewer]

Paleeese. My magic unicorn can do all that stuff without requiring worship, or war, or judgement, or...................

[Jehanne]

By the way, no physicist from over the last century has had any intrinsic issues with the Cosmos being an actual infinite, either in space or time.

Can you cite some sources supporting what's above? 

The idea of beginning-less Universe is well-accepted as being a possibility.  Consider the Nobel laureate, Professor Roger Penrose's, model of an infinite Universe:

Wikipedia -- Conformal cyclic cosmology

No physicist and/or mathematician and/or any other scholar has challenged Sir Roger's idea of a Cosmos without a beginning.  But, while you are at it, consider this:

Wikipedia -- Abraham–Lorentz force

In particular, this:

Wikipedia -- Abraham–Lorentz force, Signals from the Future.

Stop appealing to Science; you reject it, as simple as that, because, you espouse positions that no scientist or other scholar espouses.

As for what you say, it may be absolutely true.  God may exist.  So what??

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

Because if there's a deity THEN it has to be Klorophyll's deity since that's the ONLY deity that makes sense to Klorophyll.

[The Architect Of Fate]

At work.

 Because if there's a deity THEN it has to be Klorophyll's deity since that's the ONLY deity that makes sense to Klorophyll.

 

Isn't that convenient for him