A review of the Modern Day Debate: Dr. Ben Burgis Vs Stuart Knechtle | Evidence for a God? |
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t3194-a-review-of-the-modern-day-debate-dr-ben-burgis-vs-stuart-knechtle-evidence-for-a-god
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_slomGeK8o
Dr.Ben: There's a similar problem with the belief that the universe was created and is ruled by an all-powerful morally perfect being the problem with this is usually called the problem of evil although that word evil sometimes throws people off because we're not just talking about people doing evil things to one another we're talking about undeserved unnecessary gratuitous suffering whether it comes about from evil human actions or cancer or earthquakes or accidents on the highway one of my favorite professors in grad school quentin smith uh points out in one of his papers you could run the problem of evil just based on natural laws that lead some animals to kill and eat other animals in really cruel ways that involve a lot of suffering uh inflict a lot of suffering on the parade
Reply: If someone recognizes that evil exists, then this is actually evidence that God exists, rather than not.
Evil: Why does God allow evil and suffering in the world?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1915-evil-why-does-god-allow-evil-and-suffering-in-the-world
1. If objective moral values exist, then God exists.
2. Objective moral values exist. It is always wrong to torture, rape, and kill little babies for fun.
3. Therefore, God exists.
1. If evil exists, good exists
2. If evil and good exists, God exists
3. Evil and good exists, therefore, God exists.
What has to be asked, is, if evil exists, why an all-good creator does permit evil to exist, and how that is compatible with his all-goodness. That's an entirely different question. It is possible that God has reasons for allowing evil to exist while being all-good, even if we don't have a full comprehension of the greater picture. The atheist does not believe that God exists because of evil but does also not believe in God DESPITE the odds which favour the belief that God was rather involved in creating the universe and life, rather than not.
So even if the believer in God has not a full understanding of why God created a world where there is suffering, but there can well be an acceptable explanation once the full picture is exposed. If God created the universe and life, then, upon what we do know, we can infer that God’s intelligence and mental power are unimaginably higher than ours, and that gives us good reasons to believe, that there is a bigger picture which we do not understand, but when we do, we will grant that Gods goodness is fully compatible with the broken world we live in.
Dr.Ben: The teleological argument does not bring us to an all-loving, all-good God. It could be a comedian God. Or a spider God. Or not even personal.
Reply: Nobody claims that the teleological God leads os to a specific deity.
Dr.Ben: Why should we not believe that the universe always existed ?
Reply: The universe is not past eternal but had a beginning
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1333-kalaam-the-cosmological-argument-for-gods-existence#5124
Only when potential motion exists ( the possibility to instantiate actual motion ), actual motion can be instantiated. Each thing beginning to move is moved by a cause. The sequence of motion cannot extend infinitely. Therefore, there must be a first mover, that puts motion in motion which is God. The theory of the Big bang is a scientific consensus today: According to Hawking, Rees, Vilenkin, and 100’s of other physicists, finite nature (time/space/matter) had a beginning. While we cannot go back further than Planck's time, what we do know, permits us to posit a beginning. The Second Law points to a beginning when, for the first time, the Universe was in a state where all energy was available for use; and an end in the future when no more energy will be available (referred to by scientists as a “heat death”, thus causing the Universe to “die.” In other words, the Universe is like a giant watch that has been wound up, but that now is winding down. The conclusion to be drawn from the scientific data is inescapable—the Universe is not eternal. Why can't the past be infinite? If the past is infinitely old, then getting from the past to the present would be like trying to arrive at the surface from a hole infinitely deep—from a bottomless pit. In other words, if the hole is infinitely deep, someone would never, ever make any progress at all in getting closer to the surface of the hole. There would always be an infinite distance to go before arriving at the surface of the hole.
Dr.Ben: Many theorists think that string theory is rational.
Reply: The problem is, as I understand it, that string theory (or, more generally, the theory that physicist call "M-theory") seems to allow a very large number of possible solutions, or as the physicists call them, vacuua (as in the plural of "vacuum"). In fact, there are roughly 10-to-the-500th-power vacuua. That's an immense number that I don't even know how to describe except by using scientific notation. It's much more than a googol, or even a googol of googols. But it's less than a googolplex.
It's about 10^109! (10-to-the-109-factorial). (Oops. Obviously not.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstring_theory
Please note that the number of superstring theories given above is only a high-level classification; the actual number of mathematically distinct theories which are compatible with observation and would therefore have to be examined to find the one that correctly describes nature is currently believed to be at least 10^500 (a one with five hundred zeroes).
Dr.Ben: Everything has to have a cause.
Reply: Nope. Everything THAT BEGINS TO EXIST, has a cause. God is eternal, and uncaused. God had no beginning.
Dr.Ben: Why was God the first cause, and not the Big bang singularity?
Reply: Gabriele Veneziano February 1, 2006
Physicists Stephen W. Hawking and Roger Penrose proved in the 1960s, is that time cannot extend back indefinitely. As you play cosmic history backward in time, the galaxies all come together to a single infinitesimal point, known as a singularity--almost as if they were descending into a black hole. Each galaxy or its precursor is squeezed down to zero size. Quantities such as density, temperature, and spacetime curvature become infinite. The singularity is the ultimate cataclysm, beyond which our cosmic ancestry cannot extend.
Strictly speaking, according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, a singularity does not contain anything that is actually infinite, only things that MOVE MATHEMATICALLY TOWARDS infinity. A singularity's mass is, therefore, finite, the 'infinity' refers only to the maths. Can we have an infinite universe for example? The answer is no, the universe is finite. Stephen Hawking in 'A Brief History of Time' (1989 page 44) describes the universe as being "finite but unbounded".
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t3194-a-review-of-the-modern-day-debate-dr-ben-burgis-vs-stuart-knechtle-evidence-for-a-god
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_slomGeK8o
Dr.Ben: There's a similar problem with the belief that the universe was created and is ruled by an all-powerful morally perfect being the problem with this is usually called the problem of evil although that word evil sometimes throws people off because we're not just talking about people doing evil things to one another we're talking about undeserved unnecessary gratuitous suffering whether it comes about from evil human actions or cancer or earthquakes or accidents on the highway one of my favorite professors in grad school quentin smith uh points out in one of his papers you could run the problem of evil just based on natural laws that lead some animals to kill and eat other animals in really cruel ways that involve a lot of suffering uh inflict a lot of suffering on the parade
Reply: If someone recognizes that evil exists, then this is actually evidence that God exists, rather than not.
Evil: Why does God allow evil and suffering in the world?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1915-evil-why-does-god-allow-evil-and-suffering-in-the-world
1. If objective moral values exist, then God exists.
2. Objective moral values exist. It is always wrong to torture, rape, and kill little babies for fun.
3. Therefore, God exists.
1. If evil exists, good exists
2. If evil and good exists, God exists
3. Evil and good exists, therefore, God exists.
What has to be asked, is, if evil exists, why an all-good creator does permit evil to exist, and how that is compatible with his all-goodness. That's an entirely different question. It is possible that God has reasons for allowing evil to exist while being all-good, even if we don't have a full comprehension of the greater picture. The atheist does not believe that God exists because of evil but does also not believe in God DESPITE the odds which favour the belief that God was rather involved in creating the universe and life, rather than not.
So even if the believer in God has not a full understanding of why God created a world where there is suffering, but there can well be an acceptable explanation once the full picture is exposed. If God created the universe and life, then, upon what we do know, we can infer that God’s intelligence and mental power are unimaginably higher than ours, and that gives us good reasons to believe, that there is a bigger picture which we do not understand, but when we do, we will grant that Gods goodness is fully compatible with the broken world we live in.
Dr.Ben: The teleological argument does not bring us to an all-loving, all-good God. It could be a comedian God. Or a spider God. Or not even personal.
Reply: Nobody claims that the teleological God leads os to a specific deity.
Dr.Ben: Why should we not believe that the universe always existed ?
Reply: The universe is not past eternal but had a beginning
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1333-kalaam-the-cosmological-argument-for-gods-existence#5124
Only when potential motion exists ( the possibility to instantiate actual motion ), actual motion can be instantiated. Each thing beginning to move is moved by a cause. The sequence of motion cannot extend infinitely. Therefore, there must be a first mover, that puts motion in motion which is God. The theory of the Big bang is a scientific consensus today: According to Hawking, Rees, Vilenkin, and 100’s of other physicists, finite nature (time/space/matter) had a beginning. While we cannot go back further than Planck's time, what we do know, permits us to posit a beginning. The Second Law points to a beginning when, for the first time, the Universe was in a state where all energy was available for use; and an end in the future when no more energy will be available (referred to by scientists as a “heat death”, thus causing the Universe to “die.” In other words, the Universe is like a giant watch that has been wound up, but that now is winding down. The conclusion to be drawn from the scientific data is inescapable—the Universe is not eternal. Why can't the past be infinite? If the past is infinitely old, then getting from the past to the present would be like trying to arrive at the surface from a hole infinitely deep—from a bottomless pit. In other words, if the hole is infinitely deep, someone would never, ever make any progress at all in getting closer to the surface of the hole. There would always be an infinite distance to go before arriving at the surface of the hole.
Dr.Ben: Many theorists think that string theory is rational.
Reply: The problem is, as I understand it, that string theory (or, more generally, the theory that physicist call "M-theory") seems to allow a very large number of possible solutions, or as the physicists call them, vacuua (as in the plural of "vacuum"). In fact, there are roughly 10-to-the-500th-power vacuua. That's an immense number that I don't even know how to describe except by using scientific notation. It's much more than a googol, or even a googol of googols. But it's less than a googolplex.
It's about 10^109! (10-to-the-109-factorial). (Oops. Obviously not.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstring_theory
Please note that the number of superstring theories given above is only a high-level classification; the actual number of mathematically distinct theories which are compatible with observation and would therefore have to be examined to find the one that correctly describes nature is currently believed to be at least 10^500 (a one with five hundred zeroes).
Dr.Ben: Everything has to have a cause.
Reply: Nope. Everything THAT BEGINS TO EXIST, has a cause. God is eternal, and uncaused. God had no beginning.
Dr.Ben: Why was God the first cause, and not the Big bang singularity?
Reply: Gabriele Veneziano February 1, 2006
Physicists Stephen W. Hawking and Roger Penrose proved in the 1960s, is that time cannot extend back indefinitely. As you play cosmic history backward in time, the galaxies all come together to a single infinitesimal point, known as a singularity--almost as if they were descending into a black hole. Each galaxy or its precursor is squeezed down to zero size. Quantities such as density, temperature, and spacetime curvature become infinite. The singularity is the ultimate cataclysm, beyond which our cosmic ancestry cannot extend.
Strictly speaking, according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, a singularity does not contain anything that is actually infinite, only things that MOVE MATHEMATICALLY TOWARDS infinity. A singularity's mass is, therefore, finite, the 'infinity' refers only to the maths. Can we have an infinite universe for example? The answer is no, the universe is finite. Stephen Hawking in 'A Brief History of Time' (1989 page 44) describes the universe as being "finite but unbounded".
