This Godless Universe

[Habitat]

4 hours ago, XenoFish said:

So it's a collective insult?

 

Could well be. Especially if you are paranoid !

[Frank Merton]

2 hours ago, StarMountainKid said:

We may feel frustrated or depressed or meaningless living in a Godless universe, the ultimate questions forever remaining unanswered, but would the alternative be any better? If we somehow discovered God as the Creator of all this, or perhaps after death going to Heaven and then knowing everything, all our questions answered, then what?

Would we just be happy all the time, in a state of Godly bliss, like a sort of drug-induced state of elation and all-knowing ecstasy, no further effort required of us? This doesn't sound like a good idea, either.

Sort of the bimbos of Heaven, having all knowledge but intellectually vacant, as there would be no use for further thought.

I don't really have a problem with what you describe.  That the universe is "Godless" is pretty obvious, actually, and my reaction tends to be we are lucky it is, as now we are really free, at least when it comes to doing what is right and good in our existence (instead of having to follow religious dictates that history has shown often were wrong).  It does create a personal responsibility, though, to do what is right and good, as we have no vengeful deity (policeman) and so I suppose some see this as license; I don't.

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, TruthSeeker_ said:

It's a pretty darn lucky accident, since the laws of nature are of splendid precision to give rise to lifeforms. The conditions are exactly right for carbon-based life to emmerge, almost as if this was what the Universe was encoded to produce.

Ohhh what a lie!!!!

As I said, if that was lucky, what about everything after that - you just pretend that The Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction, The Late Devonian mass extinction, The Permian–Triassic extinction event and the KT event were then followed by the Toba Eruption which left a mere 2,000 people on the planet were not "luck"?

How do you classify that "luck"? 

If the Universe is "Fine tuned" for life, how can you possible state that you can openly categorise every form of life possible? (Victor Stenger's Argument whom you posted from this week as well) Even in this Universe, silicone, organoboron even Arsenic is utilized by some organisms now, showing us the diversity of life can be further ranging than we realise, even water in not a given, Carl Sagan postulated hydrocarbons, hydrofluoric acid, and ammonia as possible alternatives to water.

And what is your proof that the Universe is fine tuned for "us" Do you assume no other species do, or even "can" exist?

And why are "we" so important? Is that why you come to the conclusion of ID? You think this Universe was just made for the humans on this planet? Because if you do, that is preposterous. 

 

Sean Carroll refuted William Lane Craig's Fine Tuning argument (You never watched it did you?) with these 5 pertinent points:

1. We don’t really know that the universe is tuned specifically for life, since we don’t know the conditions under which life is possible.
2. Fine-tuning for life would only potentially be relevant if we already accepted naturalism; God could create life under arbitrary physical conditions.
3. Apparent fine-tunings may be explained by dynamical mechanisms or improved notions of probability.
4. The multiverse is a perfectly viable naturalistic explanation.
5. If God had finely-tuned the universe for life, it would look very different indeed. [Carroll considers this his most important point. Here he goes into not only the cosmos, but the nature of human culture which, Carroll avers, comports much better with naturalism than with theism.]

 

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Don't be like Psyche101 and pretend this is an unimportant issue.

I never said it was unimportant, I ever have said it is the ONLY ID argument that plays by the rules, and that being said, it remains a poor argument. What I said was you represent it badly as you do not have a clue as to what you are talking about, what you have gleaned from the books you have skimmed has given you a twisted idea. You continually overstate your understanding of it, and think it is a "gotcha" moment, when you do not even understand entropy, if it was not so pitiful it would be laughable. 

You have never even been able to state "Why" it is a good solution, even though I have asked you many times, which leads me to believe it is something you have heard about, but do not understand. Whenever I ask you for an explanation, you post a dust jacket or a YT link - that is a fail, and illustrates your failing with regards to your argument. 

The Universe is NOT fine tuned for "us" we evolved from materials in this Universe that already existed, we are the current state of entropy for the Universe. 

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Some physicists are openly speaking of multiverses, to try to explain the fine-tuning of this one Universe.

That is a lie too, Multiverse were not theorised to combat the Fine Tuned Argument, Multiverses were theories way back in 1952, when Erwin Schrödinger gave a lecture in where he said that his Nobel equations seemed to describe several different histories, which were "not alternatives, but all really happen simultaneously." And they have been hypothesised both in science and literature as "alternate universes", "quantum universes", "interpenetrating dimensions", "parallel dimensions", "parallel worlds", "alternate realities", "alternate timelines", and "dimensional planes".

What is rather funny is that many of the people you have referred to for your "Life after death" Argument (Well, you posted their names, I told you what their argument was, and why better information supercedes it) are against the idea of fine tuning as an argument for God, and Richard Carrier even states it is an argument against God!! 

String theory, M Theory, Internal Inflation, black hole cosmology are why we postulate Multiverses, not just the Weak Anthropic principle, it is not why the Multiverse theory exists, again, you are under qualified, and too self serving to understand that, it is not all about you, as much as you not only want the Universe to be, but every post as well it seems.

Good God man, get over yourself.  

[Habitat]

Truth Seeker, you need to try harder. Psyche 101 does not have you on ignore yet, which suggests to me you still have a way to go. He has "banned" a couple of others besides me, apparently, they were obviously making far too much sense to be tolerated.

[psyche101]

16 hours ago, Stubbly_Dooright said:

I personally, would have loved to see how they came to their conclusions by ways of displays or such. 

Some of the lectures I have watched have had displays, honestly, the theist put up display that look like primary school slides, I thought it was just Ken Ham and his education background, but nah, they all have rather poor presentations.

And it strikes me that they just repeat themselves over and again (like a certain TS poster here) in the hope that eventually they will be right or something. I noticed Sean Carrol making the same complaint in one of the links I left for TS:

In terms of style, from my perspective things got a bit frustrating, because the following pattern repeated multiple times: Craig would make an argument, I would reply, and Craig would just repeat the original argument. For example, he said that Boltzmann Brains were a problem for the multiverse; I said that they were a problem for certain multiverse models but not others, which is actually good because they help us to distinguish viable from non-viable models; and his response was the multiverse was not a viable theory because of the Boltzmann Brain problem. Or, he said that if the universe began to exist there must be a transcendent cause; I said that everyday notions of causation don’t apply to the beginning of the universe and explained why they might apply approximately inside the universe but not to it; and his response was that if the universe could just pop into existence, why not bicycles? I was honestly a bit surprised at the lack of real-time interaction, since one of Craig’s supporters’ biggest complaints is that his opponents don’t ever directly respond to his points, and I tried hard to do exactly that. To be fair, I bypassed some of his arguments (see below) because I thought they were irrelevant, and wanted to focus on the important issues; he might feel differently. I’m sure that others will have their own opinions, but soon enough the videos will allow all to judge for themselves. Overall I was moderately satisfied that I made the responses I had hoped to make, clarified some points, and gave folks something to think about.

LINK

 

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The deist part had me having to go searching on that definition. I couldn't come up as to why it's considered not a religious term. When God is brought up, and it's not a proven subject and it's still considered a religious individual, then I do believe Deists are religious.

 

Thank you Milady

 

[psyche101]

4 hours ago, TruthSeeker_ said:

Except that the hole needed the water to fill in in order to form a puddle.

I actually like this metaphor, maybe the Universe was waiting for life to emmerge?

[psyche101]

3 hours ago, TruthSeeker_ said:

We have another 4.5 billion years to make it to another planet, or to plant our seed elsewhere. I'm fairly optimistic and hopefully things don't go nuclear. Still, I see this life as a transition to something else. I have no reason to believe this is the only mode of existence that can possibly be.

Frank pointed out your timeline errors, no need to go there.

You do not "see" anything, or you could then argue that, you canot argue your case, you just post dust jackets. There is plenty of "evidence" as to why we do not go on after death, what principle states we can go on after death? Not anecdotes, a reason, just like there is a reason as to how we do not persist after death. What part of us survives death other than memories in others?

[psyche101]

3 hours ago, StarMountainKid said:

We may feel frustrated or depressed or meaningless living in a Godless universe, the ultimate questions forever remaining unanswered, but would the alternative be any better? If we somehow discovered God as the Creator of all this, or perhaps after death going to Heaven and then knowing everything, all our questions answered, then what?

Would we just be happy all the time, in a state of Godly bliss, like a sort of drug-induced state of elation and all-knowing ecstasy, no further effort required of us? This doesn't sound like a good idea, either.

Sort of the bimbos of Heaven, having all knowledge but intellectually vacant, as there would be no use for further thought.

 

 

Further to that, I find it nothing short of astounding that people find life "meaningless" because we have an understanding of development, and are on the brink of understanding our origins. 

That seems downright ridiculous to me. 

[Frank Merton]

I guess to me, "meaning," and "purpose," and "fulfillment," and even love and happiness, are all things to fret over and make us unhappy.  They are desires and of course we want them, no "buts."  "If wishes were horses beggars would ride."   There is no need to worry about it if we don't get everything we want.

[eight bits]

Frank

As near as I can make out from following this conversation, the concern is not whether our lives have meaning, but whether our lives have meaning to somebody else.

Personally, I don't much aspire to be the means to accomplish somebody else's ends. A certain amount of that seems inevitable and even desirable. I feed the birds in the winter; they sing year 'round. It is a good deal.

"God" couldn't possibly need me. Even if I accepted the premise that I am supposed to be thrilled to be the means to accomplish its ends, the conclusion that serving in that capacity imparts meaning to my life doesn't follow.

On the contrary, it sounds like a "make work" scheme. During the 1930's, American local governments hired the unemployed to sweep up the litter in public parks, and also hired others to replace the litter in the parks so that a third group could sweep up the same litter again. (Similarly, in the dark days before the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a joke told by the workers in the hopelessly unproductive factories, "We pretend to work, you pretend to pay us.")

As the Koran explains (in the context of describing how Isa-Jesus is not really Allah's child even though Allah is the sole cause of Isa's mother's pregnancy), if God wills something, then it is so. Amen, now that's a god. It follows he doesn't need me. It also follows that he didn't need Miriam, but then Allah is just one more boy god who's taken a fancy to Earth girls; can't blame him on that one.

Edited June 24, 2016 by eight bits
The order in which letters appear affects meaning.

[Frank Merton]

Pertaining to meaning, whether or not our lives have meaning to others is their business.  We of course want to be popular and have people like us, but this is just another instinct for community existence.

If you are talking about having a spouse and children and relatives and friends, this is all good, but if we buy them with our behavior, it is meaningless.  We are better holding our lamp under a cover so no one sees and seeing to it the main beneficiaries of our good works are not known to us.

I find the reference to Allah unnecessary and a bit preachy if not underhanded.  I understand the idea, as do we all, perfectly well.  It is irrelevant, except I can't help but observe that most Muslims seem to think they have a job on earth to do his work.

[eight bits]

Frank

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I find the reference to Allah unnecessary and a bit preachy if not underhanded.

The thread title is "The Godless Universe." Allah is a prominent god. The aspect of him that I mentioned, being solely responsible for the pregnancy of Jesus' mother, is professed by the majority of the living human race (most of which majority attribute that pregnancy to a distinct but clearly related god, Allah's immediate literary antecedent).

Examples are fair game in a discussion that is only too obviously prone to glittering generality. As to "preachy," I would think it to be breathtakingly obvious to even the most casual reader that I hold no brief for Islam, nor do my remarks in this instance address the truth of what Islam teaches. That mythology teems with male gods and other celestial beings who have caused women to become pregant is a fact about the common heritage of humankind, and informs the very concept of god.

"Underhanded" limns an outright accusation of dishonesty, further clouded by weasel-wording in this case. If not? Indeed, not. A simple, clear and direct statement of personal views cannot be dishonest. That is the reason that I am answering you on that point, that its reference to dishonesty might not have reflected your actual intention.

Otherwise, I don't engage trolls who discuss other people's honesty rather than the topic. There's more than enough of that crap already without accepting it as something normal.

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It is irrelevant, except I can't help but observe that most Muslims seem to think they have a job on earth to do his work.

So, my example is irrelevant, except insofar as it is relevant. I couldn't agree more.

[XenoFish]

Just because we have a purposeless accidental existence in a godless universe, doesn't mean we can't enjoy the speck of time we have to exist.

Some people need fairy tale's to keep the existential dread from setting it. 

[Podo]

16 hours ago, TruthSeeker_ said:

It's a pretty darn lucky accident, since the laws of nature are of splendid precision to give rise to lifeforms. The conditions are exactly right for carbon-based life to emmerge, almost as if this was what the Universe was encoded to produce. Don't be like Psyche101 and pretend this is an unimportant issue. Some physicists are openly speaking of multiverses, to try to explain the fine-tuning of this one Universe.

But see, it's observational bias. It doesn't matter how lucky it is, the universes with no life in them won't be aware that there is no life because when there is no life there is no observation. Even if we're one in a bajillion-fafillion, we'll still be the ones that are aware of it, completely unaware of the bajillion other universes that did not create life. I think that multiverses are entirely likely, and I think that it was indeed lucky that our universe is tuned for carbon-based life. But, luck is luck. Just because we're lucky doesn't make us special, it makes us lucky.

[StarMountainKid]

12 minutes ago, Podo said:

But see, it's observational bias. It doesn't matter how lucky it is, the universes with no life in them won't be aware that there is no life because when there is no life there is no observation. Even if we're one in a bajillion-fafillion, we'll still be the ones that are aware of it, completely unaware of the bajillion other universes that did not create life. I think that multiverses are entirely likely, and I think that it was indeed lucky that our universe is tuned for carbon-based life. But, luck is luck. Just because we're lucky doesn't make us special, it makes us lucky.

Yes, if the universe wasn't the way it is we wouldn't be here, and if we weren't here the universe wouldn't be the way it is (fine tuning). I think it's not really luck, it's just the way things are. In a sense, you being alive right now was encoded in the universe when it began, because its evolution created you. Not that you were "meant to be", though.

 

 

 

[Podo]

5 minutes ago, StarMountainKid said:

Yes, if the universe wasn't the way it is we wouldn't be here, and if we weren't here the universe wouldn't be the way it is (fine tuning). I think it's not really luck, it's just the way things are. In a sense, you being alive right now was encoded in the universe when it began, because its evolution created you. Not that you were "meant to be", though.

[Frank Merton]

7 hours ago, StarMountainKid said:

Yes, if the universe wasn't the way it is we wouldn't be here, and if we weren't here the universe wouldn't be the way it is (fine tuning). I think it's not really luck, it's just the way things are. In a sense, you being alive right now was encoded in the universe when it began, because its evolution created you. Not that you were "meant to be", though.

 

 

 

You assert something we don't know.  It may be that most universes are not fit for life as we know it, but there may be many different combinations of any given universe where life occurs.  

Even if not, the fact that we exist is enough for me to say life is possible.  So what if we are alone?  That has no valid sequelae.

[Rlyeh]

On ‎24‎/‎06‎/‎2016 at 11:32 AM, TruthSeeker_ said:

Except that the hole needed the water to fill in in order to form a puddle.

I actually like this metaphor, maybe the Universe was waiting for life to emmerge?

The hole didn't need anything, it's the puddle that needed the hole.

[psyche101]

On 6/24/2016 at 11:02 PM, XenoFish said:

Just because we have a purposeless accidental existence in a godless universe, doesn't mean we can't enjoy the speck of time we have to exist.

Some people need fairy tale's to keep the existential dread from setting it. 

 

 

When we find that our existence is finite, and we make ur own meaning, life takes on a new look and one realises that what we have is to be cherished and explored to it;s fullest. Understanding how we got here only makes life more meaningful to the individual, living for "the next life" is just not living. 

I do not understand at all people who feel that understanding our own existence removes meaning. 

[psyche101]

On 6/25/2016 at 4:29 AM, StarMountainKid said:

Yes, if the universe wasn't the way it is we wouldn't be here, and if we weren't here the universe wouldn't be the way it is (fine tuning). I think it's not really luck, it's just the way things are. In a sense, you being alive right now was encoded in the universe when it began, because its evolution created you. Not that you were "meant to be", though.

 

 

 

Exactly right, we exist because of the universe, the universe does not exist because of us. 

[Frank Merton]

5 hours ago, psyche101 said:

Exactly right, we exist because of the universe, the universe does not exist because of us. 

We may find it does exist because of us -- that would be a surprise but is possible.  Not because we need for it to be the way it is but because in some way we can't begin to understand we make it the way it is.  Speculation alert!

My feeling is it is just probability -- if we are possible then we are, given enough chances for us to be.

[Horta]

On 6/21/2016 at 5:38 AM, TruthSeeker_ said:

 

 

This is quite a strawman.

Atheists simply don't accept the existence of (religious) gods, that's it. There most certainly could be some causa causarum, but it isn't some right wing extremist anti gay rights campaigner who wants to stone people for working their days off. 

This is one of the reasons I don't particularly like Kraus' claims. Not because they are unscientific or hold no logical possibility (you might have heard of quantum physics? - there is a whole branch of science dedicated to it), but because it plays along with this creationist fallacy. I don't know of any atheists (or scientists) who believe the universe appeared from nothing. Every one I know of (including Kraus) says that they don't know.

It is only religious people who claim to know.

The "bits of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self replicating bits" is not only staggeringly ignorant (you have heard of the principles of physics and chemistry?), but when you realise what is being offered in it's place, utterly lacking in intellectual integrity.

[Podo]

On 2016-06-29 at 9:42 PM, Horta said:

This is quite a strawman.

Atheists simply don't accept the existence of (religious) gods, that's it. There most certainly could be some causa causarum, but it isn't some right wing extremist anti gay rights campaigner who wants to stone people for working their days off. 

This is one of the reasons I don't particularly like Kraus' claims. Not because they are unscientific or hold no logical possibility (you might have heard of quantum physics? - there is a whole branch of science dedicated to it), but because it plays along with this creationist fallacy. I don't know of any atheists (or scientists) who believe the universe appeared from nothing. Every one I know of (including Kraus) says that they don't know.

It is only religious people who claim to know.

The "bits of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self replicating bits" is not only staggeringly ignorant (you have heard of the principles of physics and chemistry?), but when you realise what is being offered in it's place, utterly lacking in intellectual integrity.

Religion in a nutshell, really.

[XenoFish]

I think religion also gives people the illusion of control. As if prayer will accomplish anything other than confirmation bias.