This is why I think God exists.

THe back and forth roundabouts of the last 5 or so pages have done my head in. Time for some music.

Dades wrote: »

Twas just a jest, no?

You've witnessed what happens when you start a discussion in A&A and disappear for a length of time. The discussion continues with or without you.

use logic please wrote: »

Do you want to take me on on my argument for the supernatural?

We have heresay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence...

use logic please wrote: »

What qualifies you to make sweeping statements like the ones you've just made? If you check my posts, I never call anything "jibberish", I have more respect for people's opinions. Axiom op is not intended to address the God in question, it's used in an argument to show why I think the supernatural exists.
The way you talk, it's as if you've just won a Fields Medal or something and feel empowered with all knowledge and can proclaim as rubbish anything you don't subscribe to.

You've just slipped into yellow, after starting with pretensions of standing atop the pyramid.

I'm not going to address your last question on this forum as I have already left it for another day.

Er, it's the entire reason you started this thread. You started out claiming to be able to make a logical case for God, and now that we're getting into the nitty gritty of it you're suddenly dismissing it as the sort of thing you're not willing to discuss.

Is this attitude an unwillingness to get into a proper debate?
Now, give me a better axiom, and tell me what's wrong with mine without resorting to sarcastic rhetoric.

I try to avoid axioms beyond the basics ("the universe is in principle knowable", or "I'm not a brain in a jar"). Here's my position: We don't know anything about the ultimate origin of existence, nor, if such exists, do we know anything about a greater existence beyond space/time/bigbang. It's really that simple. Trying to create rules about nothingness and ultimate sources is an imagination game, nothing more. What is wrong with your axioms is that they are arbitrary and based on nothing whatsoever.

ps, I no more "resort" to sarcastic rhetoric than a samurai "resorts" to sword fighting

use logic please wrote: »

If I didn't attack the substance of your argument, then why are you defending it?

I was responding to your specific comments.

Alright, give me one good reason why the universe should be knowable.

Well that's why it's such a fundamental axiom, your question doesn't even make sense without making that assumption. If we don't assume the universe is in principle knowable then no discussion of any sort can take place, because everything and anything and nothing goes.

"I am not a brain in a jar" is supposed to convey what?

That particular statement is to avoid the rather redundant school of thought known as solipsism.

Why did you selectively omit the fact that I offered to pm you about what I thought when you quoted me there?

Because I'm interested in an open debate. I have little doubt that I'm going to have numerous criticisms of your reasons for believing in a personal God and I'd rather continue that discussion here than start a two-way via PM.

Now really, you've clearly given up. You started out all of this confident that you could make a convincing logical case for the existence of God, and at this point you're resorting to vaguely hostile one liners. Are you going to address our criticisms of your position or not?

OP I'm going to try and put the failings in your argument across to you in as polite and condense as I possibly can.

Your argument is fundamentally based on an unfounded principle, which you have arbitrarily held up as an axiom. Namely that everything natural must have a cause and the prime cause which brought the natural universe into being must be uncaused as there was no preceding event to cause it. Therefore the prime cause since it is itself uncaused cannot be natural and therefore must be supernatural.

There are a number of flaws in this "axiom" but the primary flaw is that you are basing it upon the laws of physics as they are apparent now in the universes present state at our macro level of experience. However the early universe was a very different place. It was unimaginably hot and dense, to the extent that normal matter (atoms) and it's composite subatomic particles (protons, neutrons, etc.) could not exist.

In that intense heat and density the universe consisted of even more fundamental elementary particles (quarks, leptons, bosons) which do not behave as one would expect. These elementary particles behave according to quantum mechanics which is completely outside the scope on normal human experience and can only be described and explored mathematically.

According to the laws of quantum mechanics things happening in the future can be the cause of things that happened in the past, particles can pop in and out of existence from nothing, everything and anything is possible based on a scale of probability. Your "axiom" does not apply to the universe in this very early state.

If we go even further back in time to a few microseconds after the big bang, even the laws of quantum mechanics break down. We currently do not know how the universe behaved during this period. Quantum mechanics is weird enough, but what was happening during this period we simply can not describe at present, we can merely speculate.

So base assumption of causation is completely without foundation. We currently do not know what happened at the time of the big bang and as you've rightly pointed there is no before the big bang as time as we know it did not exist.

Our current lack of knowledge in this area can't be used as an excuse to bring in a supernatural agent, because that is a logical fallacy known as an argument from ignorance and can be summarized as "We do not know, therefore we do know". It is patently false that not knowing can lead to knowing.

use logic please wrote: »

I should say that my argument depends on an the axiom "Natural existence must occur in space and "linearly"* in time."

If you could come up with a single sentence to define our current understanding of how we have arrived at this point in our existence, that would satisfy the enormous variety of professional and amateur science-fiends here, then it would probably win you a Nobel prize. Such an axiom would be so overloaded with parenthetical remarks and conditional clauses that it would collapse under its own weight and form a black hole.

use logic please wrote: »

I should say that my argument depends on an the axiom "Natural existence must occur in space and "linearly"* in time."

I'm willing to accept that this is a more than reasonable attempt to state the most commonly held idea of how humans understand and experience the universe.

use logic please wrote: »

I think I've argued a reasonable case for the existence of the supernatural here.

Having defined what you termed 'Natural existence', and having correctly pointed out that it leaves some question unanswered, you then declare the answers to be the found in realm of the complementary term 'supernatural'. Unfortunately, 'supernatural' is culturally loaded with the ideas of gods, spirits, souls, etc...; and your selection of that particular word is not justified by anything you said beforehand. Why not choose the more fitting antonym 'unnatural'? If I stated that everything that science represents is 'natural', and everything else is 'unnatural' and therefore god is unnatural, then the negative sense in which 'unnatural' is otherwise normally employed would probably cause offence.
I appreciate that you are trying to keep your points clear and concise, but there is still the problem that your conclusions are points that you choose to make, rather than points that necessarily follow your premise. That makes your case a matter of opinion rather than of proof.

use logic please wrote: »

Nothing can have happened "before the big bang." as without the big bang there'd be no time. Post 270 gives what axiom op, it's not something that created the big bang. It's the statement "Natural existence must occur in space and "linearly"* in time."
It's explained better in my post 270. It's basically what I think is the best thing to base this discussion on, it has to be based on something.

Space and time occur "in" natural existence. Not vice versa. Natural existence does not need a cause any more than "supernatural" existence would.

raah! wrote: »

I'm not gonna spell out to you the incorectness of what you just said

I am not surprised, because nothing about what I said was incorrect. Your lack of willingness therefore to explain what is wrong with it likely stems from an lack of ability to do so. As I said before, merely saying something is incorrect and wandering off does not mean it magically acquires the attribute.

raah! wrote: »

I read that in the last post, only one paramater is necessary to declare fine tuning. The cosmological constant. Saying you can "vary the others to make up with this" is the same as not changing anything.

Errrr no, it is not. Have you ANY evidence at all on which to base the claim that if you change the "cosmological constant" that there is no combination of other parameters that would result in a stable universe? If you have not then I am afraid what I am saying is perfectly valid and what you are saying is... to be kind to it... not.

If you HAVE then please let us know, but copyright it first in case someone gets to the nobel prize committee with it before you do.

I am however curious where you pulled the 20% out of.

raah! wrote: »

Yeah, because if you didn't change the parameters, they wouldn't be changed! That's your super powered argument.

No, it is not. I never made this argument, never said anything of the sort, and never would. Really you should re-read what I wrote because what you have taken from it does not represent the original in ANY form.

What my argument IS saying is that just because we have a universe with a number of constants that are all inter-balanced... we can not make any assumptions that this is the ONLY combination of such constants that would result in such a thing, nor have you presented anything to back up such an assumption.

Therefore the "fine tuning" argument falls apart, because we have no way of calling it fine tuned when our combination of constants could be any one of an infinite number of such balanced equations.

And if your only defense of this is "Physicists who know more than you came up with it" then I am not sure you have any ground at all to stand on, let alone weak ground.

use logic please wrote: »

With that attitude, you cannot expect take part in a logical discussion. Since this is an A&A forum, what you've done is a little like going to an Oasis fansite and saying "are oasis good?"

Do not think the analogy holds. It would be more accurate if you had said he went on to the Oasis fansite and said "Are Oasis still touring" and a very valid site it would be to go and ask on too.

use logic please wrote: »

Most people are on this forum because the are either Atheist or Agnostic, which means that they are biased when the question "is there any evidence of a God?"

Not a safe generalisation. Many people are here because this is a place targeted often by people who think they DO have the evidence. So it is a legitimate site, out of many types, to come and wait to find out if any has been presented yet.

use logic please wrote: »

What we see around us could be evidence of a God

And granny smiths apples COULD be evidence that OJ really did murder his wife. Simply saying something could be, or even is, evidence is not enough. Anything COULD be evidence for anything else. You have to then say HOW it is evidence for the proposition in question.

Too many people think giving evidence is a two step process as follows:

1) State your claim
2) List some stuff and leave.

When in fact it is a three step process as follows:

1) State your claim
2) List your evidence
3) Explain how and why 2 supports 1.

Anything I have ever been presented as “evidence” for god so far in 20 years of asking simply follows the 2 step process above and hence is NOT evidence.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I am not surprised, because nothing about what I said was incorrect. Your lack of willingness therefore to explain what is wrong with it likely stems from an lack of ability to do so. As I said before, merely saying something is incorrect and wandering off does not mean it magically acquires the attribute.

I believe I posted a definition.

Errrr no, it is not. Have you ANY evidence at all on which to base the claim that if you change the "cosmological constant" that there is no combination of other parameters that would result in a stable universe? If you have not then I am afraid what I am saying is perfectly valid and what you are saying is... to be kind to it... not.

Go read the wikipedia page on fine tuning, read any description of it, and read the part that relates to the cosmological constant. There are arguments against it, obviously, just your ones aren't very good.

What's more, there are plenty of variants of that argument that include the possiblity of a few (even life sustaining) universes, whilst still being arguments for fine tuning.

I am however curious where you pulled the 20% out of.

Well I'm not going to trawl back to quote anything, but it's probably the 25% involved in that experiment, where the parameters were varied over a certain level. Mind you these were only a certain set of parameters.

That experiment could be considered a proper response to fine tuning, yours cannot be. I can link you to a nice article which summarises the contentions if you like, by some fellow named stenger. (or you could look it up)

No, it is not. I never made this argument, never said anything of the sort, and never would. Really you should re-read what I wrote because what you have taken from it does not represent the original in ANY form.

Yes you did, the analogy with boys pushing is exactly that. That's like saying adding one to both sides of the equation changes something. It's ridiculous, if you multiply everything by the same constant it will be the same.

It would be helpful for you to recognise that the constants in question are generally more similar to the ratio of one boys strength to the other. They would not otherwise be dimensionless.

What my argument IS saying is that just because we have a universe with a number of constants that are all inter-balanced... we can not make any assumptions that this is the ONLY combination of such constants that would result in such a thing, nor have you presented anything to back up such an assumption.

Nor have I presented said assumption. It is however the only combination that would result in this universe. Or one of a very small number that result in a "habitable" universe.

Therefore the "fine tuning" argument falls apart, because we have no way of calling it fine tuned when our combination of constants could be any one of an infinite number of such balanced equations.

No it could not. And I reference the cosmological constant. The most fine tuned of all the fine tunings. The others can be used as well.

And if your only defense of this is "Physicists who know more than you came up with it" then I am not sure you have any ground at all to stand on, let alone weak ground.

Yes, because that's the only thing I said in that post.

Edit: I just read your thing there, it does seem to suggest that you don't actually know what the fine tuning arguments are. The analogies about cards and boys pushing particularly demonstrate this.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Quoting from a dictionary does not show why I was wrong. It just shows what a dictionary says. As I said already, but I am happy to repeat, you did not give a “premise” you gave a wholesale assumption. Given your skills with a dictionary however, I will not waste time pasting the definition of assumption for you.

This is hilarious.

As I said, all we know for sure is that we have a universe with a number of constants and that universe is “stable”. This is all I know. This is all you know. This is all anyone so far in all the works of peer reviewed science knows.

We know the constants have to be in a certain ratio for planets to form. There are a few right ratios, but then they diverge of infinitely, creating an infinite number of wrong ratios

Computer simulations have been done to see how different universes form with different constants.

What we do NOT know therefore is whether this is the only set of such constants that are stable. It is the assumption that we CAN claim this however that the entire “fine tuning” argument is based on. However since the assumption itself is based on nothing, the “fine tuning” argument is based on nothing.

"If this constant was not within such and such, then planets would not have formed" The constants in question are relations between things. That's what the cosmological constant is, and what you are doing is not a response to it. There are responses, you just haven't heard them yet.

Quite literally all you are basing it on is you saying over and over “I mentioned the cosmological constant so there” as if merely mentioning it has proven something useful to anyone.

It proves you don't understand the argument anyway.

No, I did not. I know what my argument is. I should do, it is MY argument. So I do not need you to tell me what it is, especially when what you are telling me resembles it not at all.

You sure do like putting things in capitals. Don't get so offended.