The God Issue

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- Zebedee
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #60 - March 25, 2012, 02:52 AM

Quote from: harakaat on March 25, 2012, 02:33 AM
That reminds me of a certain Quranic verse:

"Or were they created out of naught? Or are they the creators? Or did they create the heavens and the earth? Nay, but they are sure of nothing!" -- Quran 52:35-36.

Sounds really musical in Arabic.

Yes, indeed. I do try to read the Qur'an in Arabic whenever I read it, but my Classical Arabic vocabulary isn't really the best. That so, one doesn't need to understand everything to appreciate the sonorous sounds, rhymes and rhythms of the surahs of juz 'Amma.

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Moving on, what do you think of the concepts of the afterlife and the soul?

They're interesting ideas, and not logically impossible as far as I can tell, but beyond that I can't say much about them. I may engage in casual speculation from time to time, but they don't really factor into my equations. I'm open to the possibility, but I don't have strong opinions on them really.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #61 - March 25, 2012, 02:55 AM

You might find this book interesting, Zebedee.

قل للمليحة في الخمار الأسود
مـاذا فـعــلت بــناسـك مـتـعـبد

قـد كـان شـمّر لــلـصلاة ثـيابه
حتى خـطرت له بباب المسجد

ردي عليـه صـلاتـه وصيـامــه
لا تـقــتـلــيه بـحـق ديــن محمد
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #62 - March 25, 2012, 02:58 AM

Quote from: Zebedee on March 25, 2012, 02:52 AM
Yes, indeed. I do try to read the Qur'an in Arabic whenever I read it, but my Classical Arabic vocabulary isn't really the best. That so, one doesn't need to understand everything to appreciate the sonorous sounds, rhymes and rhythms of the surahs of juz 'Amma.

Yes, those, and al-Rahman! I used to know it all by heart. My dad and I used to recite it at night -- I'd recite the first half, and then he'd do the second, and the next night we'd alternate. Good memories

قل للمليحة في الخمار الأسود
مـاذا فـعــلت بــناسـك مـتـعـبد

قـد كـان شـمّر لــلـصلاة ثـيابه
حتى خـطرت له بباب المسجد

ردي عليـه صـلاتـه وصيـامــه
لا تـقــتـلــيه بـحـق ديــن محمد
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #63 - March 25, 2012, 03:18 AM

Quote from: harakaat on March 25, 2012, 02:55 AM
You might find this book interesting, Zebedee.

Maybe, but for the most part my days of reading sciency literature are over.

Quote from: harakaat on March 25, 2012, 02:58 AM
Yes, those, and al-Rahman! I used to know it all by heart. My dad and I used to recite it at night -- I'd recite the first half, and then he'd do the second, and the next night we'd alternate. Good memories

Yes, al-Rahman's a very distinctive and unique surah, I quite like it. But the longest surah I've kind-of memorized is suratul Jinn, which is a classic. Other than that, just shorter stuff like al-'Alaq, al-Shams, and so forth. But needless to say, I don't really have the incentive or time for hifz as I used to.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #64 - March 25, 2012, 04:10 AM

Quote from: Ishina on March 22, 2012, 12:15 PM
I don't understand the comparison. An atheist can study the same body of work without necessarily committing to the goal of refining an assumed deity. Maybe out of curiosity, drawn to the quality and charm of the work as mere literature and mythology. Nobody was suggesting the body of work should be unavailable to anyone. I just wonder why one would approach any endeavour of discovery with such a narrow goal in mind.

I apologise, I agree that nothing should be assumed. I guess I misunderstood and thought you were saying that one shouldn't take from different traditions at all, instead of just one shouldn't take from different traditions to refine previous assumptions. As you say, that is a narrow goal.

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #65 - March 25, 2012, 05:44 AM

Quote from: Zebedee on March 25, 2012, 02:14 AM

So, if we go by the prevailing cosmology, that the universe began about 10 billion years ago, then it would appear that the universe is a contingent entity and as such has some external phenomenon that occasioned its existence. Alternatively, one may contend that the universe is eternally existent, but simply existed in a different form, but I understand that according to the current Big Bang model, the universe is not past eternal, so it did indeed begin at some point. Out goes that hypothesis. Other than this, one could maintain that the universe caused itself to begin to exist, but this is surely absurd given that an object that doesn't yet exist cannot exert the requisite influence to bring anything, nevermind itself, into existence. Therefore, it seems like the last hypothesis standing is the 'external cause' one.

Some great posts in here zbd, but if I may do you think if the physical cosmos is infinite then that is enough for it to counter the claim of contingency? Does the cosmos only require a temporal cause or an ontological cause too?

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Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #66 - March 25, 2012, 07:51 AM

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according to the current Big Bang model, the universe is not past eternal, so it did indeed begin at some point

As far as I know, which isn't a lot, this doesn't mean too much. The Big Bang explains the universe as we know it began to exist at a point in time, not that matter itself began to exist at that point. So the universe itself isn't dependent on an external entity but the universe as we know it may be.

So once again I'm left with the classic Irish man's dilemma, do I eat the potato or do I let it ferment so I can drink it later?
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #67 - March 25, 2012, 10:49 AM

Zebedee put it best when he said it's all speculation. So let's all just get drunk and sing Monty Python songs together.

قل للمليحة في الخمار الأسود
مـاذا فـعــلت بــناسـك مـتـعـبد

قـد كـان شـمّر لــلـصلاة ثـيابه
حتى خـطرت له بباب المسجد

ردي عليـه صـلاتـه وصيـامــه
لا تـقــتـلــيه بـحـق ديــن محمد
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #68 - March 25, 2012, 02:04 PM

@z10

Quote from: z10 on March 25, 2012, 05:44 AM

Some great posts in here zbd, but if I may do you think if the physical cosmos is infinite then that is enough for it to counter the claim of contingency? Does the cosmos only require a temporal cause or an ontological cause too?

Aaaargh! Cosmology! You know, I'm not even that interested in getting into a load of guestimation about subjects as remote from human understanding as this; discussions on the subject of God just inevitably descend into it. But since you asked, brother z10, I will guestimate away.

But let's say that the cosmos is infinite (though in what way, temporal?), that presumably still wouldn't account at all for the ordering and structuring of the universe. And if the universe is eternal in some form or another but time is contingent, then of course we'd need more than a temporal cause to account for, at least, the varying states the universe has. Basically, what is the 'trigger' that changes the states of the universe? I'd say though, that with the current understanding, more than a temporal cause is necessary because space-time itself apparently came into existence, and again, presumably can't be the cause of its own existence.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #69 - March 25, 2012, 02:11 PM

@deusvult

Quote from: deusvult on March 25, 2012, 07:51 AM
As far as I know, which isn't a lot, this doesn't mean too much. The Big Bang explains the universe as we know it began to exist at a point in time, not that matter itself began to exist at that point. So the universe itself isn't dependent on an external entity but the universe as we know it may be.

I simply understand that the universe itself, nevermind the state it's in now, is not past eternal. But I'm not exactly read on the subject myself and I'm not terribly interested in arguing about it.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #70 - March 25, 2012, 02:23 PM

Quote from: Zebedee on March 25, 2012, 02:38 AM

You said that complexity can be explained by nothing more than time and natural selection, but you're just making the assertion yet again. That's not really reason for me to accept it. But I don't hold it against you for not going into it, it's no doubt a very difficult thing to prove.

That's because you don't understand what natural selection is, nor are you aware of the evidence that variations have accumulated - producing complexity.

If you read a pop-science book from an evolutionary biologist (like Dawkins) it will probably become clear, and won't seem so improbable to you. I can't share with you the evidence for theory of evolution better than an evolutionary biologist so i'd advise you to either read; the greatest show on earth by Richard Dawkins or Why evolution is true by Jerry Coyne.

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But of course, the intellectual, psychological, physiological and emotional apparatus that humans possess goes far beyond survival necessity. Bacteria are no doubt, survival wise, the most successful organisms on the planet, and some of them are very sophisticated, but it would seem that humans have been endowed with something much more unique and valuable than a complexity-based means of survival. If survival were the only concern, there wouldn't really be any need for things like humans to emerge, the most you would need is sophisticated amoeba, so why all the humans? And if evolution is such that it is certain to produce highly sophisticated creatures, that have far more than mere survival value, then does that not loan credence to the hypothesis that this process is 'designed' to generate such sophisticated life forms?

Again this shows me that you probably have never read a pop-science book presenting the evidence for the theory of evolution.

Sometimes traits in an organism are a by-product of other genetic variations that are conducive to survival. And they continue to exist and proliferate because they haven't (currently) been detrimental to the survival capability of the species.

Natural selection is an environmental pressure, it doesn't have intentionality.

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Re: The God Issue
Reply #71 - March 25, 2012, 02:45 PM

@strangestdude

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That's because you don't understand what natural selection is, nor are you aware of the evidence that variations have accumulated - producing complexity.

Dude, I understand perfectly well what natural selection is. I've studied evolution and biology formally and informally. I understand at least the basic concepts. Funny, you seem to know an awful lot about what I don't know or understand. Just because I don't accept everything some infallible evolutionary biologist says about the explanatory capability of current evolutionary theory doesn't mean that I don't understand things or even that I'm wrong. Debate is always ongoing in science, and we hardly know all there is to know about evolution.

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If you read a pop-science book from an evolutionary biologist (like Dawkins) it will probably become clear, and won't seem so improbable to you.

I believe I've said elsewhere in this thread that naturalistic processes are indeed a valid explanatory hypothesis for the complexity observed in the universe, I simply don't believe the matter is concluded beyond all question, as people like you seem to think.

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Again this shows me that you probably have never read a pop-science book presenting the evidence for the theory of evolution

But of course! How dare I be so incorrigibly irrational and perverse to have reservations once a matter has been decided upon by an infallible edict from Dawkins and the theory of evolution!

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Sometimes traits in an organism are a by-product of other genetic variations that are conducive to survival. And they continue to exist and proliferate because they haven't (currently) been detrimental to the survival capability of the species.

Natural selection is an environmental pressure, it doesn't have intentionality.

Again, you're just reiterating aspects of the theory of evolution that are not contested by me, not unknown to me, and which were never part of our discussion in the first place.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #72 - March 25, 2012, 02:53 PM

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I've studied evolution and biology formally and informally. I understand at least the basic concepts.

My mistake then, I apologize. We'll have to agree to disagree.

An alternative to religion;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2nfXfTg92E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWNW-NXEudk
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #73 - April 04, 2012, 08:01 AM

Quote from: Zebedee on March 25, 2012, 02:14 AM
Not really. It's a simple inference based on an understanding of causality. Sure we might get into a philosophical pissing match about the limitations or even the existence of causality, but for all practical purposes contingent entities like you or me generally have a cause(s) of their existence that is external to them.

Yes, contingent entities are contingent. But I was asking why you suppose the universe is contingent.

Quote from: Zebedee on March 25, 2012, 02:14 AM
So, if we go by the prevailing cosmology, that the universe began about 10 billion years ago, then it would appear that the universe is a contingent entity and as such has some external phenomenon that occasioned its existence.

I've heard nothing in the prevailing cosmology that states the universe even began, let alone began at a certain point in time. Only that the changes to the arrangement of the already existing universe can theoretically be traced to a point 13-14 billion years ago, beyond which there is no prevailing cosmology.

Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #74 - April 04, 2012, 05:06 PM

Ishina 13.72 billion years to be exact . What happened before this we don't know and is mere speculation. What we know is that there was this phase where there was an expansion of matter & energy.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #75 - April 05, 2012, 04:27 PM

@Ishina

Quote from: Ishina on April 04, 2012, 08:01 AM
Yes, contingent entities are contingent. But I was asking why you suppose the universe is contingent.
I've heard nothing in the prevailing cosmology that states the universe even began, let alone began at a certain point in time. Only that the changes to the arrangement of the already existing universe can theoretically be traced to a point 13-14 billion years ago, beyond which there is no prevailing cosmology.

Forgive me for quoting from William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith but he has some interesting referenced quotations from physicists on this question of the universe's beginning.

On p. 126:

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P. C. W. Davies comments, "If we extrapolate this prediction to its extreme, we reach a point when all distances in the universe have shrunk to zero. An initial cosmological singularity therefore forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity. For this reason most cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe. On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself."⁵⁹

59. P. C. W. Davies, "Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology," in The Study of Time III, ed. J. T. Fraser (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1978), 78-79

And on page 127:

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As physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler emphasize, "At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo."⁶¹

61. John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 442.

I should say though that I'm a bit wary of this notion of 'ex nihilo' and the statement that nothing existed prior to the singularity and so forth. Craig himself, in response to the atheist counter argument, alluded to in this thread, that the universe may very well have came from nothing, gives quotations by physicists explaining the rather liberal use of the term 'nothing' in physics, and that physicists don't mean 'nothing' in the literal sense, as we might understand it.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #76 - April 05, 2012, 04:57 PM

Craig is going to have to do better than a choice excerpt from 1978 to establish any kind of certainty of what happened in what is still a very active research area. I'm also not sure how what most cosmologists thought in 1978 is related to what physicists think in 2012.

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Re: The God Issue
Reply #77 - April 05, 2012, 06:36 PM

zebedee you do know that craig isn't a cosmologist and is no kind of authority or holds no credibility in presenting himself as a public academic/speaker on the subject.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #78 - April 05, 2012, 06:39 PM

One of my lecturers told us in the first week to "be wary of considering any theoretical physicist an authority on theoretical physics". I'm not sure how he feels about theologians trying to do theoretical physics... but of course WLC would quote those physicists whose viewpoints match his, even if he hasn't the first clue about the subject.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #79 - April 05, 2012, 10:12 PM

@Ishina

Quote from: Ishina on April 05, 2012, 04:57 PM
Craig is going to have to do better than a choice excerpt from 1978 to establish any kind of certainty of what happened in what is still a very active research area. I'm also not sure how what most cosmologists thought in 1978 is related to what physicists think in 2012.

A reasonable criticism, but in fairness to Craig he does cite less antediluvian papers on the subject, such as the following by Alexander Vilenkin from 2002:

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It follows from the theorem that the inflating region has a boundary in the past, and some new physics (other than inflation) is necessary to determine the conditions at that boundary. Quantum cosmology is the prime candidate for this role. The picture suggested by quantum cosmology is that the universe starts as a small, closed 3-geometry and immediately enters the regime of eternal inflation, with new thermalized regions being constantly formed. In this picture, the universe has a beginning, but it has no end.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0204061v1.pdf

Quantum cosmology and eternal inflation, p. 11

And on the subject of a universe ex nihilo, this is interesting:

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The picture that has emerged from this line of development [3–9] is that a small closed universe can spontaneously nucleate out of nothing, where by ‘nothing’ I mean a state with no classical space and time.

Ibid., p. 2
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #80 - April 05, 2012, 10:15 PM

@serpentofeden

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zebedee you do know that craig isn't a cosmologist and is no kind of authority or holds no credibility in presenting himself as a public academic/speaker on the subject.

I know that Craig is not a cosmologist, but those quotes were citations from his book of physicists who are more qualified than Craig to speak on the subject. They are not Craig's opinions.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #81 - April 05, 2012, 10:23 PM

@Prince

Quote from: Prince Spinoza on April 05, 2012, 06:39 PM
One of my lecturers told us in the first week to "be wary of considering any theoretical physicist an authority on theoretical physics". I'm not sure how he feels about theologians trying to do theoretical physics... but of course WLC would quote those physicists whose viewpoints match his, even if he hasn't the first clue about the subject.

I freely concede the speculative nature of this discussion and the problems inherent in trying to know anything with certainty about the beginning or lack thereof or the universe. Ishina simply challenged me to support the claim that physicists generally believe that the universe had a beginning, which I understand they largely do.

And while he is a slippery casuist, I think it's more or less accurate to say that Craig's book at least constitutes a fair attempt to deal with the God question, something I've not seen terribly much of from the other side.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #82 - April 05, 2012, 11:07 PM

Well from what I understand, the vast majority of the world's top physicists believe the big bang wasn't the beginning of the Universe (and by that I mean it's grandest definition), and I don't know that Physics has anything hard yet to say about pre-BB happenings or lack thereof, if indeed it ever could.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #83 - April 28, 2012, 02:16 AM

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Well from what I understand, the vast majority of the world's top physicists believe the big bang wasn't the beginning of the Universe (and by that I mean it's grandest definition)

they believe? is there any scientific rationale behind these beliefs?

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Re: The God Issue
Reply #84 - May 11, 2012, 02:38 PM

scienitists don't have "beliefs", they educate people on objective empirical facts or they give opinions on the theoritical branches of science.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #85 - May 11, 2012, 03:43 PM

i see. in that case i was asking what the scientific rationale is behind the 'opinion' that the big bang wasn't the beginning of the universe?

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Re: The God Issue
Reply #86 - May 11, 2012, 04:14 PM

I suppose the scientific rationale behind it is that there is no evidence to support a statement either way.

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Re: The God Issue
Reply #87 - May 11, 2012, 07:46 PM

Quote from: serpentofeden on May 11, 2012, 02:38 PM
scienitists don't have "beliefs", they educate people on objective empirical facts or they give opinions on the theoritical branches of science.

Oh god.

The word 'belief' isn't dirty, ya know.

@ Abu

I don't know about the 'scientific rationale' for it per se, perhaps there is none. I could ask some of my lecturers for their own opinions and reasons I guess. There was a horizon program a while ago dealing with this at what I think was the Institute for Advanced Study (which is a big deal, at least for the calibre of minds going in if not the calibre of work coming out) in Princeton, and the vast majority of the physicists there too believed the big bang wasn't the beginning of existence. Not sure how or if they backed it up.
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Re: The God Issue
Reply #88 - May 11, 2012, 10:17 PM

i guess they feel it would be scientifically much more easier to explain if it wasn't the 'beginning', which is fair enough, but i don't know that it will even be possible to get an answer to this question. but who knows. simply knowing what happened at the big bang (i.e. via a quantum theory of gravity) in our lifetime would be mega-cool though

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Re: The God Issue
Reply #89 - May 12, 2012, 12:01 PM

Quote from: Ishina on May 11, 2012, 04:14 PM
I suppose the scientific rationale behind it is that there is no evidence to support a statement either way.

25 - 30 years ago most physicists/cosmologists thought the universe had a beginning known as the "big bang singularity". Now most physicists/cosmologists think we have an infinite universe and there was a "big bang phase" 13.7 billions years ago where there was an expansion of matter and energy.

apologists like WLC, hamza, adam deen actually use outdated quotes from physicists/cosmologists from the 80's in support of their propagating "the universe had a beginning" argument. Anyone who has read a bit of physics or studied physics at a-level level would know this is the fallacy of the false argument from authority, as this is not the consensus amongst physicists/cosmologists
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