Does God exist? (15 Viewers)

[BradCube]

No I'm asserting consistency in our approach is objective whilst using a fundamentally subjective interpretation of intelligence is not.

Surely our consistant approach to various matters relies heavily upon our intelligence though?

 

[Kwayera]

Wouldn't arrogance imply that there is an external life to ours that our attitudes could be measured against?

Either way I don't think you will find that most people believing in the improbability of life on earth treat it arrogantly. I myself would be more comfortable saying privileged or lucky. Arrogance implies that I believe it should have and only could have been this way.

No, it wouldn't. One generally only finds this arrogance when one has been raised with and truly believes that the Earth and Universe were made or "tweaked" specifically to allow for our existence; I find this arrogance in you, as well.

Yes, we are lucky.

 

[BradCube]

No, it wouldn't. One generally only finds this arrogance when one has been raised with and truly believes that the Earth and Universe were made or "tweaked" specifically to allow for our existence; I find this arrogance in you, as well.

Yes, we are lucky.

So I thought I would bring in the dictionary meaning of arrogance:

ar·ro·gance: offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride

Now in all honesty, I don't mind that you think I'm arrogant. In fact, I've come to expect that sort of reaction whenever I acknowledge that I am a Christian. I would like to make sure though that what you see of my opinions is not offensive. I don't try to sound like an arrogant prick on these forums so I apologize if I come across that way.

I can also confess to you that I don't feel like I should be (or have any right to be) in existance at all - I feel lucky and acknowledged that I am privileged as I said before.

 

[BradCube]

It'd make my life more enjoyable because it'd mean I could go to bed.

Well I'm going to hop off-line now anyway but the idea is far from over for me. It doesn't have to continue in discussion with you if you would prefer not to, but I would like to see how Kfunk weighs in when he's back online.

 

[Kwayera]

Now in all honesty, I don't mind that you think I'm arrogant. In fact, I've come to expect that sort of reaction whenever I acknowledge that I am a Christian. I would like to make sure though that what you see of my opinions is not offensive. I don't try to sound like an arrogant prick on these forums so I apologize if I come across that way.

I can also confess to you that I don't feel like I should be (or have any right to be) in existance at all - I feel lucky and acknowledged that I am privileged as I said before.

It's not that I think you are especially arrogant as a PERSON. It's kind of hard to define; but yes, I do think you believe that we as a race are special or privileged or franchised to be in existence. You yourself have said previously that the universe and its laws appear "tweaked" to be just right for our existence, that the stars aligned or somesuch nonsense in favour of Earth's position to allow for life, that evolution was somehow induced to come up with humanity.

I don't even just see this in Christians and the like; my best friend, a "humanist atheist", herself believes somehow in a universal benevolence. Perhaps I am a misanthropist, but that is something I find infuriating, especially with those whom would credit it to some benign deity.

You do display this basic "arrogance" (perhaps that is too strong a word, but I can't really find any other), and in that a basic, probably subconscious refusal to believe otherwise. I find this in each and every Christian I meet; it is no personal insult to you, by any means, but more of an observation.

 

[undalay]

From my limited knowledge i've summed up the three main groups on this topic.

1. Religious:
Replaces ignorance with god.

2. Athiest:
Believes the eventual edification of ignorance.

3. Agnostic:
Accepts ignorance can not be completely demolished.


Bradcube, you seem to believe in god because of 'gaps' which seems to fall into the first category.

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Bringing back youbrokemylife's argument on pixies (which i don't think bradcube actually understood).

The Love between two people (lets say romantic love) can not properly be explained. I.e. Why it happens, how it happens. In fact love is quite similar to a mental disorder neurologically.
So alot of 'gaps' are existant in love.
Youbrokemylife suggests that a pixie uses their magic to make people fall in love with each other to explain these gaps.

Solid evidence against these pixies is about the same amount as with god: nil.
Arguments for and against God can be used for the argument of pixies and vice versa.

Bradcube you deny the existance of pixies simply because it fills less gaps than god. I don't really see the logic in that.

This ties back into group 1, in the first part of my post.
Why replace ignorance with god, when you can replace it with unicorns, or pixies, or the matrix.
What makes you believe in god more than the rest.
Leads me to religion.

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Now lets take a look at religion.
Religion is the biggest influence on whether a person believes for or against a god.
However i just want to make clear that whether god exists, and all the arguments for the existance of god, is not a justification of particular religion, but this works both ways.

Just because a religion is bullshit (e.g. all of them) does not mean god is bullshit.

Lets examine creationism.
They believe life is too complex to randomly come into existance.
So some high power must of created it.

Let's ASSUME this as true for now.
This is NOT an argument for christianity. Just because "something" created life does not mean it was the classical god in christianity.

Life too complex -> god created life -> religion x is confirmed -> everything in relgion is true.

Each arrow is a fallacy.

I just had to attack religion, because it is the BIGGEST factor in bias in the argument for/against god.

 

[boris]

Bringing back youbrokemylife's argument on pixies (which i don't think bradcube actually understood).

The Love between two people (lets say romantic love) can not properly be explained. I.e. Why it happens, how it happens. In fact love is quite similar to a mental disorder neurologically.
So alot of 'gaps' are existant in love.
Youbrokemylife suggests that a pixie uses their magic to make people fall in love with each other to explain these gaps.

Solid evidence against these pixies is about the same amount as with god: nil.
Arguments for and against God can be used for the argument of pixies and vice versa.

Bradcube you deny the existance of pixies simply because it fills less gaps than god. I don't really see the logic in that.

This ties back into group 1, in the first part of my post.
Why replace ignorance with god, when you can replace it with unicorns, or pixies, or the matrix.
What makes you believe in god more than the rest.
Leads me to religion.

You made me do the biggest face palm, because I explained what love is and WHY love exists. There are no holes in it. I explained why we feel love, how we feel it and why the feeling is significant. It can all be explained on a biological level.

I watched DOGMA again last night guys. God is female.

 

[ethanmcinnes]

god was created to control the masses by governments a long time ago and new religions have sprung from old religion everything in the world evolvs just like a tree grows from a seed religon has also developed. think about it there are around 5 mainstream religion's each with millions of priests devoted to thier sect/religion/beliefs how can so many be sure yet according to each religion the others are wrong.

 

[KFunk]

The problem for me is that you're trying to apply some sort of notion of 'probability' to ultimate reality (if our one universe is all there is). It is reality, I can't see how we can have the possibility of another ultimate reality... If we don't have multiple universes then I would say whatever laws govern our ultimate reality would probably have to be necessarily the way they are.

Then that's the kind of answer you need to provide to that question - i.e. that the laws governing our universe must be necessary. A solid argument would probably be needed to back up such a claim, however, and would want to take into account current physical theories.

 

[KFunk]

I've been thinking about this today and getting lost within it. Here's what I think you are saying (and please correct me if I am wrong!): Humans are what associate information with intelligence and since we are essentially talking about the birth of life that lead to humans we cannot stipulate that the cause there is also intelligent.

If this is what you are saying then I think I would say that this is a properly basic belief. It's on the same level to me as asking me to affirm my own logic without using logic. The problems lies in that we can only experience our life from a human perspective, so discounting an idea such as intelligence in the origin of life simply because we are also agents of intelligence seems a little illogical to me.

I probably should have explained my reasoning a little more. To a large extent it was rooted in logical analysis of properties. Using some common logical notation:

Px - is read as "x is P" or "x has propery P" (e.g. Wx might be 'x is a woman').

Rxy or xRy - is read as "x bears relation R to Y" (e.g. xLy might be 'x is in love with y').

My interest then regarded how best to capture the notion of information you were using. Firstly, there are technical notions of information, such as Slidey mentioned, which invoke patterns, differences and the like. However, your conception was the more colloquial one which involves the ascription of meaning. Quoting you again:

"Information is data which has been given order and meaning by something external to it."

Here something (y) seems to be a piece of information if some intelligent being (x) ascribes meaning (M) to it (on a rough initial analysis we might say 'y is a piece of information' if and only if xMy - allowing us to reduce to concept of information to an instance of meaning ascription).

If it were the case that the concept 'information' were specified by a simple, single-place predicate/property (like "x exhibits a pattern") then information would exist whether or not we, humans, were around to see it. On the other hand, if meaning is constructed be intelligent beings (i.e. if it is captured by such a relation) then we can explain the 'existence' of information through our understanding of this process. Sure, god is a possible source of meaning ascription, but is not necessary - humans will suffice for this purpose. God then becomes superfluous to explanations of the existence of information because any time we say "why is X information?" we can turn around and answer "simply because we recognise it as such! it is constructed through our meaning ascription." God need not be invoked.

Substantive questions remain, of course, such as 'how did we come to have the capacity to ascribe meaning in the first place?' and 'how did the natural world come to contain things which we can ascribe meaning to?'. The answers to these respective questions are likely to interact to some degree and will probably draw a lot on physics, cognitive science, evolutionary theory and the like. In any case, I don't see how, on the conception of information taken from you above, god becomes a necessary explanans for the existence of information.

 

[KFunk]

Paul Davies has discussed fine-tuning at length, and in his book The Goldilocks Enigma (2006) he summarises the current state of the debate in detail. He concludes by enumerating the alternative responses:

* A - The absurd universe - It just happens to be that way.
* B - The unique universe - There is a deep underlying unity in physics which necessitates the universe being this way. Some 'Theory of Everything' will explain why the various features of the Universe must have exactly the values that we see.
* C - The multiverse - Multiple Universes exist which have all possible combinations of characteristics, and we naturally find ourselves within the one that supports our existence.
* D - Intelligent Design - An intelligent Creator designed the Universe specifically to support complexity and the emergence of Intelligence.
* E - The life principle - There is an underlying principle that constrains the universe to evolve towards life and mind.
* F - The self-explaining universe - A closed explanatory or causal loop: 'perhaps only universes with a capacity for consciousness can exist'.
* G - The fake universe - We are living in a virtual reality simulation.

That's a neat little list for the purposes of this thread - cheers. Universe A still makes me laugh and then enter a few seconds of existential angst. A close friend of mine, and some scientists it would seem, appear to consider G as a strong contender, which is interesting.

 

[hurikai]

the universe is isotropic and homogeneous on a large scale. uniformity of cosmic background radiation supports this, however this is not exactly perfect, which is why on smaller scales we have clumps of galaxies. the expansion of the universe is also in agreement with this assumption known as the cosmological principle. a consequence of this is that our universe is likely to be made mostly of dark matter; recent experiments on cosmic background radiation and inflation theory suggests that our universe is likely to be relatively flat, with a density greater then our observable value.

Almost all current cosmological theories take as a given the assumptions of the Cosmological Principle (that the universe is homogenous in its structure and isotropic in its direction), the Location Principle (that the Earth and Solar System do not occupy a special location in the universe) and the assumption of the universality of physical laws.

Challenges to the Cosmological Principle such as Shapley’s 1933 suggestion of an “evolutionary tendency in the metagalactic system” and the hierarchical universe proposed by Charlier and then de Vaucouleurs (Lightman & Brawer 1990, p. 26) place the validity of current cosmological models under threat.

Copied from my cosmo assignment =D


Along with this, I suppose one could launch an argument for theism based on the value of omega being amazingly close to 1 and on how all of the universal constants seem to, by extremely, extremely fortuitous circumstances, be conducive to life.

<3 cosmology

________________________________


I am currently an agnostic leaning towards atheism but I have to say that a lot of people here are amazingly close-minded to the possibility that they might be wrong.


Also, I dislike the 'pixie' argument, variously known as Bertrand Russell's 'celestial teapot' argument and recently advanced by atheists such as Richard Dawkins. While this can be seen as an argument against the validity of religious certainty, it should be noted that this argument should be taken as an argument for AGNOSTICISM, not ATHEISM.

 

[hurikai]

Oops, didn't see that.

<3 Sashatheman

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

You made me do the biggest face palm, because I explained what love is and WHY love exists. There are no holes in it. I explained why we feel love, how we feel it and why the feeling is significant. It can all be explained on a biological level.

You can't really explain why one person loves Y over X, which is the mystery the pixies would solve. Love has quite a bit of mystery to it, truly, as do all social interactions.

Then that's the kind of answer you need to provide to that question - i.e. that the laws governing our universe must be necessary. A solid argument would probably be needed to back up such a claim, however, and would want to take into account current physical theories.

I only want to disagree with the "random luck" hypothesis. I don't see how you can have a probabalistic singular reality, afaik you would need some sort of outside reality (which just puts us back where we started) or multiple realities. Bu t yea, I'm sure there's an answer.

 

[Born2baplacebo]

God exists. That's why a majority of wars have been fought because God instigated them, cos He is a hypocrite.
"Hurt Not Thy Neighbour"
Fuck. Where was that when the Crusades came around?

 

[BradCube]

I probably should have explained my reasoning a little more. To a large extent it was rooted in logical analysis of properties. Using some common logical notation:

Px - is read as "x is P" or "x has propery P" (e.g. Wx might be 'x is a woman').

Rxy or xRy - is read as "x bears relation R to Y" (e.g. xLy might be 'x is in love with y').

My interest then regarded how best to capture the notion of information you were using. Firstly, there are technical notions of information, such as Slidey mentioned, which invoke patterns, differences and the like. However, your conception was the more colloquial one which involves the ascription of meaning. Quoting you again:

"Information is data which has been given order and meaning by something external to it."

Here something (y) seems to be a piece of information if some intelligent being (x) ascribes meaning (M) to it (on a rough initial analysis we might say 'y is a piece of information' if and only if xMy - allowing us to reduce to concept of information to an instance of meaning ascription).

If it were the case that the concept 'information' were specified by a simple, single-place predicate/property (like "x exhibits a pattern") then information would exist whether or not we, humans, were around to see it. On the other hand, if meaning is constructed be intelligent beings (i.e. if it is captured by such a relation) then we can explain the 'existence' of information through our understanding of this process. Sure, god is a possible source of meaning ascription, but is not necessary - humans will suffice for this purpose. God then becomes superfluous to explanations of the existence of information because any time we say "why is X information?" we can turn around and answer "simply because we recognise it as such! it is constructed through our meaning ascription." God need not be invoked.

Substantive questions remain, of course, such as 'how did we come to have the capacity to ascribe meaning in the first place?' and 'how did the natural world come to contain things which we can ascribe meaning to?'. The answers to these respective questions are likely to interact to some degree and will probably draw a lot on physics, cognitive science, evolutionary theory and the like. In any case, I don't see how, on the conception of information taken from you above, god becomes a necessary explanans for the existence of information.

Ok, so I am pretty sure that I understand what you are saying now, but I don't know that I follow your conclusion with as much confidence as you seem to have.

Surely just saying "simply because we recognize it as such! it is constructed through our meaning ascription." does not prove that such a belief is wrong. It only shows that we have no proof outside of our understanding that such a belief is true. Again I find this line of thinking could be applied to any properly basic beliefs. ie why is X logical? Well "simply because we recognize it as such! it is constructed through our meaning ascription."

If there could be some proof outside of our own understanding and intellect that showed such a belief in information to be wrong, then I would revise my thinking in this matter. Being that we are the only source of our own understanding however I am left thinking that my belief in this matter is logical "simply because I recognize it as such!"

If we can truly regard this original information as a product of intellect (similar to the information we see today) then we must look at what this intelligence could be - God or otherwise.

 

[KFunk]

Also, on the intelligence debate that Brad and Schro are having: my feeling is that intelligence is too complex a concept to take for granted at the outset of a debate. Naturally I advocate havinh at least a base set of logical, and other, presuppositions at the core of the debate so as to avoid having things crumble into an exercise in hand-waving (though I still think there is a time and place to question some of the presuppositions it makes for extremely heavy travelling). Some of the issues associated with 'intelligence' emerge from the ways in which we assess it. Many animals have amazing cognitive abilities that we lack - say abilities to recognise certain objects or sounds, to judge spatial relations and to process certain tasks at high speeds - and yet we fail to attribute any significant amount of intelligence to them. Our definitions invariably tend to be anthropocentric (some animals, do of course, still perform well on such human-centred scales). In any case, my feeling is that the complex, multi-dimensional nature of the concept 'intelligence' warrants further analysis if the debate heads in that direction.

I should also point out, as is probably clear above, that I wasn't discounting an intelligent creator on the basis that we are intelligent. Rather, I was arguing that the existence of information, given a certain kind of relational definition, needn't imply an intelligent creator given that we are intelligent ourselves (in the appropriate way).

 

[BradCube]

You can't really explain why one person loves Y over X, which is the mystery the pixies would solve. Love has quite a bit of mystery to it, truly, as do all social interactions.

I've been thinking this and I thought I would take the question back further. How do you know love actually exists youBROKEmyLIFE? If it is as mystical as you make out, why do you believe in love and not God? If it is not mystical, then you must have proof of it being so - in effect showing why your pixie idea's are inaccurate.

 

[KFunk]

If we can truly regard this original information as a product of intellect (similar to the information we see today) then we must look at what this intelligence could be - God or otherwise.

My case really rests on the logic of explanation and, yet again, that ever-handy intellectual tool - Ockham's Razor. The general idea is this:

If information is conceived in terms of meaning ascription then in order for something to be information it is enough that we recognise it as such (i.e. that we ascribe meaning to it). Thus, when we say 'wow, look, a piece of information! How did that get there?' we need only answer 'information is there in virtue of the fact that we recognise it as being there'. Now, it is also possible that god designed aspects of the world to contain information, but the simple fact that information exists is not enough to show this. Why? Because we have a simple, naturalistic explanation based on meaning ascription which has no need to postulate entities with as much ontological significance as god. I am not saying that god is not a possible source of these structures, but rather that the existence of information, as such (given a relational, meaning ascription-based definition), does not entail the existence of god.

Long story short: god is superfluous to our explanation of why we find information in the world (given the definition of information you have used).

 

[KFunk]

If there could be some proof outside of our own understanding and intellect that showed such a belief in information to be wrong, then I would revise my thinking in this matter. Being that we are the only source of our own understanding however I am left thinking that my belief in this matter is logical "simply because I recognize it as such!"

A quote from Quine to rock the boat a little - this is the kind of territory you enter when you start questioning logic etc... :

"[W]e cannot detach ourselves from it [that is, our conceptial scheme] and compare it objectively with an unconceptualised reality. Hence it is meaningless, I suggest, to inquire into the absolute correctness of a conceptual scheme as a mirror of reality. Our standard for appraising basic changes of a conceptual scheme mus be, not a realistic standard of correspondance to reality, but a pragmatic standard."

(p.s. it seems I recently broke 200 posts in this thread. Scary? I think so...)