# Stephen Hawking (RIP)



## elacsaplau (2 Apr 2018)

I always admired Stephen Hawking and I respect the old dictum *de mortuis nihil nisi bonum
*
I've been wondering about his funeral. My question is whether a leading Christian figure - say a Catholic bishop would opt for a humanist funeral and so by extension why would a famous thought leader and atheist go for a funeral in a church with all that symbolises?


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## joe sod (2 Apr 2018)

maybe its humility on death, you may come up with great theories to describe nature today, but you still only getting a small glimpse into the mysteries of nature and existence. Einstein had a similar philosophy he did not believe in the literal events of the bible but he believed in a greater intelligence that was responsible for everything to which great minds like his occasionally got a glimpse. Einstein was not a practising jew but at the same time he did not reject judaism ,he remained a jew. Maybe this was more to do with solidarity with his fellow jews who suffered so much during the holocaust. Its also the case that great minds can be wrong and their theories disproved by later discoveries. For example Einstein was not a believer in quantum mechanics, he famously said "God does not play dice", but quantum mechanics is the foundation of modern physics. Who is to say that Stephen Hawkins theories may also come to be disproved or encapsulated in a much greater future theory.


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## odyssey06 (2 Apr 2018)

Perhaps you are reading too much into the occasion rather than his actions and words in life.

https://phys.org/news/2018-03-family-friends-farewell-stephen-hawking.html

_"Hawking was famously an atheist but his children Lucy, Robert and Tim chose the church of St Mary the Great to say their farewell."_


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## TheBigShort (2 Apr 2018)

odyssey06 said:


> Hawking was famously an atheist but his children Lucy, Robert and Tim chose the church of St Mary the Great to say their farewell."



And their mother was a strong believer too, according to the movie depiction anyway. 
Interestingly, during the movie, Hawking makes reference to God at some point, as gesture of conciliation to his wife, but also perhaps as a gesture to recognise that he may be wrong.


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## odyssey06 (2 Apr 2018)

https://www.google.ie/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/5199149/stephen-hawking-death-god-atheist

Seems pretty definitive to me that Hawking was an atheist.


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## TheBigShort (3 Apr 2018)

odyssey06 said:


> https://www.google.ie/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/5199149/stephen-hawking-death-god-atheist
> 
> Seems pretty definitive to me that Hawking was an atheist.



I wouldnt dispute that. But as all of this is theoretical, then I think he would acknowledge the possibility that he could be wrong, as distinct from believing that he was wrong.
Im atheist. I dont believe in after-life, the resurrection or any of the magic tricks of the bible. That said, I place great value in the words and teachings of This post will be deleted if not edited immediately Christ with regard to forgiveness, tolerance etc. I simply dont buy into the after-life.

I am open to the possibilty that I could be wrong. Im minded to think of Stephen Frys response to Gay Byrne when asked if it transpired that his aetheism turned out to be wrong, what would he say to God? Fry responded with an accusatory retort directed at God with regard to all the cruelty in the world. I couldnt help think, that that would be so much the wrong approach to take.

If there is a God, and an after-life, the first thing I would to say to God is "Oooops!...got that bit wrong."
I would be trying to plug into his all-forgiving channels, rather than trying to take him on in a moral debate about the injustices of life on earth.
I suspect Hawking would, if faced with God, be prepared to accept he was wrong also - although I doubt he was/is.


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## elacsaplau (3 Apr 2018)

Hi TheBigShort,

I suppose the only point I was trying to make is that if we take your example of Stíofán eile (Fry not Hawking) then I'd be also surprised, when his time comes, if he had a church funeral. Similarly, with say, Richard Dawkins.


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## dub_nerd (3 Apr 2018)

If Hawking had been around at the same time as Newton, whose Lucasian chair he occupied at Cambridge, he would have been a priest! Taking Holy Orders was mandatory for Cambridge graduates at the time, though Newton managed to wangle his way out of it. As for the religious funeral, it seems to have been Hawking's children who decided: "_Our father’s life and work meant many things to many people, both religious and non-religious; so the service will be both inclusive and traditional, reflecting the breadth and diversity of his life._"

What I find more intriguing is why people care about the views of someone like Hawking on religion.  I suppose it's because 1) he's famous, and 2) he made a few remarks about god in order to sell books. I wouldn't consider that Hawking is more qualified than the next man to talk about ultimate origins. In fact, he seems to have made some rather elementary philosophical mistakes. In _A Brief History of Time_, he wrote:

_“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”_​
What he is talking about here is the philosophical problem whereby science can never -- even in principal -- explain why the universe operates according to any rules at all, let alone particular ones. No matter how many layers of the onion you peel back there will always be more. Even speculative multiverse theories which allow for different laws in different universes must encode additional rules according to which the particular physical constants evolve.

But then twelve years later in _The Grand Design_, he writes:

_“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."_​
In the interim he seems to have forgotten his own point, that this singularly fails to explain why or how "_there is a law such as gravity_". In fact, it makes things worse, because it seems to suggest that the laws exist independently of the things they govern. We have the prospect of some sort of Platonic world of ideal forms (the laws), with the physical world as an afterthought or at best a kind of hylomorphic unity.

In the preface to _A Brief History_ Hawking says his publisher told him that every equation he included would reduce book sales. That's probably what made it a disappointing book, as it seemed (to me anyway) very lightweight for such an accomplished scientist. But then Hawking must have intuited that mentions of god would boost sales, as he is so often quoted on them.

Two hundred and forty years ago, another funeral fired the public imagination. Speculation was rife about whether the philosopher David Hume might have renounced his atheism on his deathbed. (In fact Hume never claimed to be an outright atheist, and showed deist leanings). His musings on the relationship of science and philosophy are arguably far more insightful than anything Hawking came up with. One facet of his epistemological framework is about the problem of induction. By this he challenged the validity of any scientific argument from the particular to the more general.

Hume's problem of induction is similar in a way to Hawking's question about "_what breathes fire into the equations_". Why should there be any laws at all? The assumption that there _are_ is what drives science, indeed what makes it possible in the first place. But science cannot give us any idea why this should be so. A famous Einstein quote mirrors this conundrum of Hume and Hawking:

_“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible”_​


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## joe sod (3 Apr 2018)

elacsaplau said:


> I've been wondering about his funeral. My question is whether a leading Christian figure - say a Catholic bishop would opt for a humanist funeral and so by extension why would a famous thought leader and atheist go for a funeral in a church with all that symbolises?


 
some very good responses to this topic. In the overall scheme of things it probably did not bother him how his funeral was. Afterall he was a philosopher (natural philosophy). Maybe if he went for a humanist funeral, there would be too much made of it, people would read too much into it as if Hawking was trying to make a political point from beyond the grave. It would just have been a big distraction from his lifes work. By going for a traditional christian funeral it was generally ignored .


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## TheBigShort (3 Apr 2018)

elacsaplau said:


> Hi TheBigShort,
> 
> I suppose the only point I was trying to make is that if we take your example of Stíofán eile (Fry not Hawking) then I'd be also surprised, when his time comes, if he had a church funeral. Similarly, with say, Richard Dawkins.


U
Hi elacsaplau

I would make some subtle distinction between Hawking and Fry, Frys atheism seems to stem from the fact that there is so much injustice in the world that therefore God does not exist, and if he did, Fry would hold nothing but contempt for God.
Hawking on the otherhand, to best of my knowledge, carried no such resentment to God. He simply didnt believe in God, in a universe determined by physics.


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## Purple (4 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> If Hawking had been around at the same time as Newton, whose Lucasian chair he occupied at Cambridge, he would have been a priest! Taking Holy Orders was mandatory for Cambridge graduates at the time, though Newton managed to wangle his way out of it. As for the religious funeral, it seems to have been Hawking's children who decided: "_Our father’s life and work meant many things to many people, both religious and non-religious; so the service will be both inclusive and traditional, reflecting the breadth and diversity of his life._"
> 
> What I find more intriguing is why people care about the views of someone like Hawking on religion.  I suppose it's because 1) he's famous, and 2) he made a few remarks about god in order to sell books. I wouldn't consider that Hawking is more qualified than the next man to talk about ultimate origins. In fact, he seems to have made some rather elementary philosophical mistakes. In _A Brief History of Time_, he wrote:
> 
> ...


Newton, Hume and Einstein and even a nod to Aristotle with the mention of hylomorphism. 

Personally I'm a atheist because there is no logical basis to support the existence of god or gods so I choose the light of science and reason over the darkness of religion.


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## Purple (4 Apr 2018)

TheBigShort said:


> That said, I place great value in the words and teachings of This post will be deleted if not edited immediately Christ with regard to forgiveness, tolerance etc. I simply dont buy into the after-life.


Those teachings existed long before This post will be deleted if not edited immediately. "Christian Values" were values long before there were Christians.


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## TheBigShort (4 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> Those teachings existed long before This post will be deleted if not edited immediately. "Christian Values" were values long before there were Christians.



Great.


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## dub_nerd (4 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> Newton, Hume and Einstein and even a nod to Aristotle with the mention of hylomorphism.
> 
> Personally I'm a atheist because there is no logical basis to support the existence of god or gods so I choose the light of science and reason over the darkness of religion.



I don't see science as an alternative to religion, or even see them as being in competition. I definitely don't see them as light versus dark. I'm passionate about science and am fine with _methodological_ naturalism as the only sensible approach to doing it. I just think it's a mistake to turn that around and say that science proves that naturalism is true. It not only doesn't but it _can't_, even in principle. Most of the things that are important to us concerning ethics and values simply aren't the domain of science. That doesn't mean that they require a supernatural explanation, of course. It just means science can't and won't ever explain them. It also doesn't mean that they can't be considered logically. It is a mistake to conflate science with logic. It is one of the great conundrums that science depends on logic for which there is no scientific justification. Conversely, arguments for supernatural causes can be entirely logical without being scientific.


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## Purple (4 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> Conversely, arguments for supernatural causes can be entirely logical without being scientific.


Yea, but they can't be explained my observable fact or logic.


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## dub_nerd (4 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> Yea, but they can't be explained my observable fact or logic.



Of course they can. There is nothing illogical about arguments for the supernatural. The observables are experiential. What you mean is that there are not reproducible phenomena as would be required for a scientific treatment. But we already agree on that.


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## Purple (5 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> Of course they can. There is nothing illogical about arguments for the supernatural. The observables are experiential. What you mean is that there are not reproducible phenomena as would be required for a scientific treatment. But we already agree on that.


No , I mean that they can't be explained my observable fact or logic.


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## dub_nerd (5 Apr 2018)

Well then I'm afraid you're just mistaken. Let's forget the experiential side for a moment. What's not observable or logical about the Cosmological argument?


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## Purple (5 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> What's not observable or logical about the Cosmological argument?


It explains the unexplained with the unexplainable. It is no more observable or logical than the celestial teapot. 
What is observable or logical about the Cosmological argument?


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## Firefly (5 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> It explains the unexplained with the unexplainable. It is no more observable or logical than the celestial teapot.
> What is observable or logical about the Cosmological argument?



You've lost me there. Then again, I was never great on the Star Signs


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## dub_nerd (5 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> It explains the unexplained with the unexplainable. It is no more observable or logical than the celestial teapot.
> What is observable or logical about the Cosmological argument?



The Cosmological argument is a _logical_ inductive argument from the _observable_ existence of the universe to the existence of a first cause. You seem to think an argument is illogical just because you don't _like_ it. That's not how it works. Induction is a specific form of reasoning in which the premises of an argument support a conclusion, but do not ensure it (definition).

A first cause is also a _reasonable_ inference. Compare it to the scientific alternative:


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## TheBigShort (5 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> It explains the unexplained with the unexplainable. It is no more observable or logical than the celestial teapot.
> What is observable or logical about the Cosmological argument?



In fairness, the same thing could be said about the Big Bang theory. Im not disputing that there was not a massive explosion, as that is scientifically observable, but its 'logical' assumption that it created the universe is pure theoretical. 
What existed before the Big Bang is not observable and, when you think about it, not logical either.


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## dub_nerd (6 Apr 2018)

In fairness to the Big Bang theory, it is very well supported by observational evidence, though not in every detail. Also, there is no "before" the Big Bang. Space and time (probably) came into existence at the same instant. The Big Bang is the subsequent expansion of space which is still continuing, not an explosion into a pre-existing void. Classical physics cannot deal with the very early moments of the expansion. For that we need something like Alan Guth's cosmic inflation theory. It is not at all well supported by observation, though there are efforts underway to find evidence for it.

Just because time (might) begin with the Big Bang, it does not mean there is no antecedent. In fact cosmologists are anxious to find one, because otherwise the Big Bang smacks of creation _ex nihilo_ which, from a scientific point of view, is _also_ about as useful as a celestial teapot.

As of right now, there is no evidence whatsoever of any of the antecedents which have been postulated over the years -- an oscillating universe of alternate expansions and collapses considered by Einstein, the conformal cyclic cosmology of Roger Penrose, or the Steinhardt-Turok model of colliding branes and its ekpyrotic variant. Inflation theory is still the primary candidate for explaining the extraordinary homogeneity of the universe without which neither we, nor much of anything else, could exist. The BICEP experiments at the South Pole which are looking for the B-mode polarisation of the cosmic microwave background are the best hope for finding evidence of inflation, though so far they have turned up nothing.

But let's be clear -- even the eternal inflation/multiverse variants of Guth's inflation theory are _not_ eternal in the past. There is still a beginning. Nor are they very economical, generating a thousand trillion trillion new Big Bang universes every second. You have to smile when you consider that some materialists argued against god on the basis the _one_ universe designed for our needs is overly extravagant.

Nope, the Cosmological argument is actually a lot more robust than any of the collection of metaphysical celestial teapots lined up against it. In fact, even if any of those unlikely scenarios turned out to be true, they would still require an ontological first cause.


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## Leper (6 Apr 2018)

Well Holy God! The arguments and presentations here are spiffingly excellent. I must confess that I have missed out on such conversations over the past 65 years. How I'd like to share a tea break with all the contributors on this thread.

Any chance any of you can tell me what the weather in Co Kerry will be like in 8 days time?


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## Purple (6 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> The Cosmological argument is a _logical_ inductive argument from the _observable_ existence of the universe to the existence of a first cause. You seem to think an argument is illogical just because you don't _like_ it. That's not how it works. Induction is a specific form of reasoning in which the premises of an argument support a conclusion, but do not ensure it (definition).
> 
> A first cause is also a _reasonable_ inference. Compare it to the scientific alternative:


A first cause/ cosmological argument just puts another layer of the unknown on the already unknown. It then tells us that the new unknown is unknowable. It has no place in a scientific argument.


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## TheBigShort (6 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> I first cause/ cosmological argument just puts another layer of the unknown on the already unknown. It then tells us that the new unknown is unknowable. It has no place in a scientific argument.



Does that not make the case for the existance of (a) God stronger then?


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## dub_nerd (6 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> A first cause/ cosmological argument ... has no place in a scientific argument.



It doesn't pretend to be scientific. It can't be. No theory of an ultimate origin can ever be, by definition, because it will be just a fact without further explanation. By the same token it can never be replaced by a scientific argument since such an argument cannot, by definition, exist. This is a pretty basic _logical_ argument.



Purple said:


> [It] just puts another layer of the unknown on the already unknown.



It merely says that _some_ layer must be the first, the most basic. It is almost tautological, unless you believe in the possibility of an infinite regress of ever more fundamental explanations.


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## dub_nerd (6 Apr 2018)

Leper said:


> Any chance any of you can tell me what the weather in Co Kerry will be like in 8 days time?


Cosmic ray showers, lethal doses of ionising solar radiation, and hard vacuums 
... giving way to a providentially provided benign atmosphere in most places.


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## Purple (6 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> It doesn't pretend to be scientific. It can't be. No theory of an ultimate origin can ever be, by definition, because it will be just a fact without further explanation. By the same token it can never be replaced by a scientific argument since such an argument cannot, by definition, exist. This is a pretty basic _logical_ argument.
> 
> 
> 
> It merely says that _some_ layer must be the first, the most basic. It is almost tautological, unless you believe in the possibility of an infinite regress of ever more fundamental explanations.


okay, so we are back to the celestial teapot.


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## dub_nerd (6 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> okay, so we are back to the celestial teapot.



You can call it any disparaging name you like if it makes you feel better. As I said originally, it's still a thoroughly logical argument based on observables, with no possibility -- even in principle -- of a scientific alternative.

And once you get over that initial hump, of course, it has further merits. It allows you to reason about the extraordinary apparent fine-tuning of our universe which science can't explain either.


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## Purple (6 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> You can call it any disparaging name you like if it makes you feel better. As I said originally, it's still a thoroughly logical argument based on observables, with no possibility -- even in principle -- of a scientific alternative.


No, it is thoroughly illogical. It simply fills the void of knowledge which we don't currently have with something that cannot ever be explained. 



dub_nerd said:


> And once you get over that initial hump, of course, it has further merits. It allows you to reason about the extraordinary apparent fine-tuning of our universe which science can't explain either.


 "apparent fine-tuning" or things we don't understand yet. I don't accept the premise that ignorance validates the existence of the supernatural.


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## Sophrosyne (6 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> I don't accept the premise that ignorance validates the existence of the supernatural.



Only if you think of "God" as "super"natural.

Perhaps mankind has to make some further evolutionary leaps.


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## Purple (6 Apr 2018)

Sophrosyne said:


> Only if you think of "God" as "super"natural.
> 
> Perhaps mankind has to make some further evolutionary leaps.


If God isn't supernatural then he/she/it works within the boundaries of science and so is not God.


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## joe sod (6 Apr 2018)

There are alot of questions that cannot be answered by science, although alot more of them can be answered today than 500 years ago. I think we have become too arrogant because of the advances in technology to think that science has the answers to everything. Its funny that the most scientific illiterate people can be the most strident in their beliefs that science holds the answer to everything. Another issue which evolution does not really have a satisfactory answer for is why are humans so much more intelligent than any other animal. Why did other animals not develop to the same level as humans and why did humans not have to compete with animals of similar intelligence. I know that humans had to fight for survival against huge pre historic animals but never had to compete with any animal that came any way close in intellignce.


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## Sophrosyne (6 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> If God isn't supernatural then he/she/it works within the boundaries of science and so is not God.



As I mentioned, it depends on your idea of "God".

Perhaps homo erectus, had he the thought processes, would have regarded us as "Gods".


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## odyssey06 (6 Apr 2018)

joe sod said:


> There are alot of questions that cannot be answered by science, although alot more of them can be answered today than 500 years ago. I think we have become too arrogant because of the advances in technology to think that science has the answers to everything. Its funny that the most scientific illiterate people can be the most strident in their beliefs that science holds the answer to everything. Another issue which evolution does not really have a satisfactory answer for is why are humans so much more intelligent than any other animal. Why did other animals not develop to the same level as humans and why did humans not have to compete with animals of similar intelligence. I know that humans had to fight for survival against huge pre historic animals but never had to compete with any animal that came any way close in intellignce.



Science is actively looking for answers to its 'known unknowns'. 150 years ago we didn't have a theory of evolution. We do now. Some 'why' questions may be very challenging to answer, but if science does not have the answer, then neither does any other methodology.

Dolphins are very intelligent, just in a different way to humans. Other animals are as developed as humans, just they developed in a different way.

Humans (homo sapiens) did compete with Neanderthals, who were almost as intelligent as us. We never had to compete with huge prehistoric animals, unless you mean extinct large predators such as short faced running bears and cave bears. When dinosaurs were around, our ancestors were were about the size of shrews.
Even today, humans with all our intelligence and knowledge can fall victim to leopards, bears, crocodiles, wolves, lions, tigers and snakes.


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## dub_nerd (6 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> No, it is thoroughly illogical. It simply fills the void of knowledge which we don't currently have with something that cannot ever be explained.



I think we've beat this one to death. You continually use the word "illogical" for any idea you don't like. To me, _logical_ means founded on logic. The Cosmological argument is founded on inductive logic. That's all there is to it. Your objection is nothing to do with logic, so I think you need to choose a different terminology.



Purple said:


> ..."apparent fine-tuning" or things we don't understand yet. I don't accept the premise that ignorance validates the existence of the supernatural.



This is in danger of turning into a "science of the gaps" argument. You cannot counter the Cosmological argument by saying "we just haven't discovered enough yet". It is an argument _in principal_. There is no possibility, _even in principal_, that you can come up with a scientific explanation of the universe that _explains itself_. That is an example -- to use your favourite term -- of a thoroughly illogical argument.

Nevertheless, I take your point about apparent fine tuning as one that is worth pursuing further. I think the average person has little appreciation of the extent of such tuning involved in our existence. Therefore the assumption that science will readily provide a solution seems disturbingly dogmatic and "faith-based" to me. This is not the sort of happy accident whereby we live on a planet at the right distance from a star in the right region of a galaxy, with a plethora of other accidents that favour our existence (although those chemical and environmental conditions are all interesting too and have been extensively written about).

No, it is a question of more fundamental universal parameters. The expansion rate of the universe, for instance, has to be tuned to one part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ... otherwise we would get rapid recollapse or runaway expansion. Either way there could be no interesting structure in the universe. The existence of atoms (and pretty much everything else) depends on something that scientists call the _fine structure constant_ -- a number that crops up in many fundamental relationships in physics. A different value for the fine structure constant would mean no possibility of nuclear fusion, no possibility of most of the chemical elements, and a host of other negative implications for the world as we know it.

Many similar arguments can be made. Do actual real scientists take your blasé attitude of sweeping all this under the rug of "things we don't understand yet"? No, they most certainly do not. The fine tuning of the cosmic expansion has been referred to as "_a remarkably precise and totally unexpected relation_". The namesake of this thread, Steven Hawking, said of the fundamental constants that "_the remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life_". Physicists Robert H Dicke and Fred Hoyle have written about it. Freeman Dyson said: "_The more I examine the universe, and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the Universe in some sense must have known we were coming_". Richard Feynman wrote of the fine structure constant:

_Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to pi or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the "hand of God" wrote that number, and "we don't know how He pushed his pencil." We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out, without putting it in secretly!_​
I could go on, but I've already quoted some of the great thinkers in theoretical physics. Now, I could finish with a rhetorical flourish and say that scientists are stumped by the fine-tuning problem and have nowhere left to run. But I don't really think that Feynman, an atheist, was seriously talking about the "hand of God", or that Hawking who cited God in order to sell books actually believed in him/it. And seeing as I am a big fan of science myself, and fully accept that methodological naturalism (the philosophical assumption that a scientific explanation exists) is the right way to approach it, let's see where scientists think we should be headed. But since we are talking about _arguments in principle_ we won't get too hung up on particular theories.

Inflation theory might conceivably explain the cosmic expansion rate. But it introduces additional fine tuning of its own. The problem is simply replaced by whatever it is that causes the false vacuum decay to roll over at a particular energy level into the regular residual expansion that we observe. And this is a general problem with any conceivable scientific theory. It is simply illogical and implausible to posit that there could be an ultimate explanation that requires no arbitrary parameters to be put in "by hand". Science cannot produce such a thing, even _in principle_.

Realising this, some scientists have turned to another general approach. Building on the success of biological evolutionary theories in explaining how apparent design can arise by random chance, they posit that the universe we inhabit is just one among an ensemble of many possible ones, each of which has a possibility of existing. There are a number of different theories in this class, but they equally suffer from a number of general problems. The first is that there is simply no evidence that any such theory is real. In fact, a number of impertinent scientists have cried foul -- they point out that all such speculation is in the realm of the metaphysical, and that scientists have abandoned the scientific principle by engaging in it.

A second problem is that the supposed multiverse is _not_ akin to the fitness landscape within which biological evolution occurs. In fact, biological evolution is the furthest thing imaginable from a random process. Darwin's theory of evolution contains within it three essential principles. It is a theory of _common descent_ by _random mutation_ and _natural selection_. The random mutation part is ... random. The rest is not. Common descent requires continuity of existence, and natural selection similarly requires that advantageous traits can be preferentially conserved and propagated. Multiverse theories, by and large, involve universes that are completely causally isolated. You can't "evolve" a universe with just the right properties, it has to genuinely be a completely random throw of the dice. (There is one exception that I know of, which is Lee Smolin's theory of fecund universes which evolve inside black holes and are subject to a sort of natural selection, but this is beset by its own theoretical problems). The fine tuning in our own universe is such that even entirely profligate schemes like "eternal inflation" don't produce it in any sensible time frame (as Alan Guth acknowledges).

And thirdly, after all that, multiverse theories _still_ don't solve the problem. Because they still need their own rules and fine tuning about how the ensemble is produced in the first place.



joe sod said:


> I think we have become too arrogant because of the advances in technology to think that science has the answers to everything. Its funny that the most scientific illiterate people can be the most strident in their beliefs that science holds the answer to everything.



I agree. Without wanting to cast aspersions, my experience is that many people who bang on about "sky fairies" and "celestial teapots" are irrational dogmatists who have difficulty following a logical argument and are not very well schooled in science.


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## joe sod (6 Apr 2018)

odyssey06 said:


> Dolphins are very intelligent, just in a different way to humans. Other animals are as developed as humans, just they developed in a different way.



I know they are intelligent , but at the end of the day they are still swimming around in the oceans like they did for many thousands of years. They did not develop a society or a culture or a history or change their environment in any real sense . I know in the modern era we like to promote ideas that put animals on the same level as humans and I have seen the documentaries that show how they can communicate etc. However nothing I have seen has convinced me that any animal has any semblance of the intelligence and organisation of a human. I know that this is now an old idea and very unfashionable to suggest that humans are masters of their environment. I think everything in nature is harmonious and makes sense and has a place except for man. From a logical viewpoint mankind should not exist.


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## odyssey06 (6 Apr 2018)

joe sod said:


> I know they are intelligent , but at the end of the day they are still swimming around in the oceans like they did for many thousands of years. They did not develop a society or a culture or a history or change their environment in any real sense . I know in the modern era we like to promote ideas that put animals on the same level as humans and I have seen the documentaries that show how they can communicate etc. However nothing I have seen has convinced me that any animal has any semblance of the intelligence and organisation of a human. I know that this is now an old idea and very unfashionable to suggest that humans are masters of their environment. I think everything in nature is harmonious and makes sense and has a place except for man. From a logical viewpoint mankind should not exist.



True, re: dolphins, but then what you have said has also been true of humans for the vast majority of our time on earth as a species. 
It would have been true of our most direct ancestors, and Neanderthals. 
It is only with the coming of agriculture that we moved to the stage of changing the environment and seem to stand out as an outlier to the rest of nature. Our species was just as intelligent in 30,000 BC but as hunter gatherers we would have seemed in harmony with nature - at least in those places where we co-evolved with nature such as Africa and Eurasia.

Ants are probably more organised than humans. Dolphins are as clever in their domain. Killer whales have culture in the sense that different whale groups in different regions pass on hunting techniques to their offspring. Chimpanzees are almost as intelligent. 
But it took our combination of general intelligence, organisation and language to produce a creature capable of the next level of environmental control.

I wouldn't agree with the idea that logically we shouldn't exist though! The idea that nature is harmonious has a certain appeal, but I don't see it as underscored by logic. If nature is supposed to be harmonious why do we have catastrophes such as asteroid & comet impacts, ice ages, supernova ... and worse, the burning off of atmospheres, gamma ray bursts...


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## joe sod (6 Apr 2018)

odyssey06 said:


> I wouldn't agree with the idea that logically we shouldn't exist though! The idea that nature is harmonious has a certain appeal, but I don't see it as underscored by logic. If nature is supposed to be harmonious why do we have catastrophes such as asteroid & comet impacts, ice ages, supernova ... and worse, the burning off of atmospheres, gamma ray bursts...



but these events ice ages, supernova etc are part of nature, even though they are incredibly destructive (only from our human perspective) they are still harmonious ( i mean harmonious as it is part of nature and makes sense). For example the stuff that man does for example creating nuclear waste and elements that nature could not create in that environment, also the creation of toxic dumps with all sorts of different wastes like plastics metals and chemicals all mixed together no natural process can create. I think this is what differentiates man from everything else, nature can clean up after itself but it cannot clean up after mankind. For example nature may create a toxic substance like oil that may leak out in that location but no natural or animal process will dig that oil out of sea and transport it thousands of miles and an oil spill causes it to pollute the sea where there was no oil in the first place.

      Another idea suppose man existed to current levels of technology and was wiped out by some catastrophic event. Then millions of years later some new intelligent animal like man came along and started looking for his origins or what existed before like we do today with the dinosaurs , how would he explain all the debris left behind by man that is different to everything else in nature. For example how would a man from 1000 years ago cope with digging up something like a car created by us. He would hardly think it was made by some prehistoric animal (prehistoric from his perspective). It would not make sense to him and it would not be "natural"


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## odyssey06 (6 Apr 2018)

joe sod said:


> but these events ice ages, supernova etc are part of nature, even though they are incredibly destructive (only from our human perspective) they are still harmonious ( i mean harmonious as it is part of nature and makes sense). For example the stuff that man does for example creating nuclear waste and elements that nature could not create in that environment, also the creation of toxic dumps with all sorts of different wastes like plastics metals and chemicals all mixed together no natural process can create. I think this is what differentiates man from everything else, nature can clean up after itself but it cannot clean up after mankind. For example nature may create a toxic substance like oil that may leak out in that location but no natural or animal process will dig that oil out of sea and transport it thousands of miles and an oil spill causes it to pollute the sea where there was no oil in the first place.



Mars looks pretty dead... I don't see how can that be in harmony with anything. It has the peace of the grave.
There are many 'natural' events that could lead to the end of all life on Earth. I see no harmony in that.
We may have the capacity for great destruction, but let us hope, also the capacity to hold back from the brink...



> Another idea suppose man existed to current levels of technology and was wiped out by some catastrophic event. Then millions of years later some new intelligent animal like man came along and started looking for his origins or what existed before like we do today with the dinosaurs , how would he explain all the debris left behind by man that is different to everything else in nature. For example how would a man from 1000 years ago cope with digging up something like a car created by us. He would hardly think it was made by some prehistoric animal (prehistoric from his perspective). It would not make sense to him and it would not be "natural"



In our past, we regularly made the opposite mistake.
Ancient civilizations thought that the stars were gods rather than a part of nature. We now know that they are part of nature.
They thought that the bones of dinosaurs were the bones of the giants of the myths and legends.
In Ireland we have the "Giants Causeway", formed by a natural volcanic process.
So we as a people have a strange sense of what is 'natural' that does not always tally with reality.

Peasants in 18th century France put an astronomer on trial for unnatural witchcraft... though they were as unnatural as he!


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## dub_nerd (7 Apr 2018)

There are indeed natural waste lands. Toxic oil seeps have been used to tar the bottoms of boats, and the La Brea tarpits in Los Angeles are an interesting place to visit where oil seeps laid waste to generations of American megafauna over tens of thousands of years.

On a cosmic scale, supernovae can sterilise volumes of hundreds of thousands of cubic light years of all life. If we lived closer to the centre of our galaxy where such events are more common, we would have been toast long before we invented sliced bread. I don't think mankind can outdo nature in sheer destructive power. But I do think we can modify our environment in a way that no other species we know of can.

Even though bacteria have formed our atmosphere and rusted the planetary crust, and plants have spread to every corner of the globe, those are the unintentional collective effects of countless organisms. An artifact such as the Antikythera mechanism -- an ancient computer which might be the work of a single individual -- would surely convince any discoverer that its maker was possessed of a deep intelligence and ability to shape its environment. Certainly other animals are intelligent, but our intelligence is of such a degree as to seem of an entirely different order.

I can understand joe sod's comment about the seeming unnaturalness of this situation. It's hard to understand how air travel or astrophysics could have been essential to our competition with other creatures. I suppose we have to understand it in terms of brain plasticity and the evolutionary advantage of a general purpose intelligence that could adapt to many different situations. It has led to an overshoot in our dominance of the planet. That said, bacteria were here long before us and will probably be here long after us. Intelligence could be an evolutionary dead end, providing one worrying possible resolution to the Fermi paradox.


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## joe sod (7 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> I can understand joe sod's comment about the seeming unnaturalness of this situation. It's hard to understand how air travel or astrophysics could have been essential to our competition with other creatures. I suppose we have to understand it in terms of brain plasticity and the evolutionary advantage of a general purpose intelligence that could adapt to many different situations. It has led to an overshoot in our dominance of the planet. That said, bacteria were here long before us and will probably be here long after us. Intelligence could be an evolutionary dead end, providing one worrying possible resolution to the Fermi paradox.



Ive heard of that before, if there was intelligent life in the universe why have we not encountered them. Maybe we are destined to wipe ourselves out anyway so there is no point in worrying about global warming. If we went to the gargantuan efforts to control warming we would probably just get hit by an asteroid and be wiped out anyway. Im arguing against my original point now but probably one thing that does not distinguish us from other animals is our inability to control the human population. If we were really serious about controlling green house gases and other deleterious environmental changes surely we should be discussing population control properly. 
We are on the exact same path as every other animal exponential population growth followed by collapse.


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## Purple (9 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> I think we've beat this one to death. You continually use the word "illogical" for any idea you don't like. To me, _logical_ means founded on logic. The Cosmological argument is founded on inductive logic. That's all there is to it. Your objection is nothing to do with logic, so I think you need to choose a different terminology.


That's a rather long post about an argument that nobody is making other than you. Inductive logic can be a screen for the most implausible and incredible notions which, in theory, could be true. That's the whole point of the celestial teapot argument. 
There are lots of things we don't know. There are lots of things we may never know. Suggesting that those gaps in our knowledge can or should be filled by God, or Gods or Celestial Teapots or any other such constructs is no different from ancient man worshiping the god or gods which lit the sun every morning and extinguished it in the sea each evening. Both are just fulling the unknown with the illogical and unreasonable.


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## dub_nerd (9 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> There are lots of things we don't know. There are lots of things we may never know. Suggesting that those gaps in our knowledge can or should be filled by God, or Gods or Celestial Teapots or any other such constructs is no different from ancient man worshiping the god or gods which lit the sun every morning and extinguished it in the sea each evening. Both are just fulling the unknown with the illogical and unreasonable.



Certainly there are lots of things we don't know and may never know. But there is only one thing we _know_ we will never know -- an ultimate _known unknown_ if you like.  That is the thing which Hawking alluded to in the closing page of _A Brief History of Time_, the unparameterisable existence of fundamental laws, whatever they are. This is not an _if_, _but_ or _maybe_. It is an inescapably logical _fact_.

I've noticed that people who object to metaphysical speculation don't seem to get so exercised when Steven Hawking does it. But it's not just Steven Hawking's idle musings in a bestselling book. Theories such as cosmic inflation are motivated by the metaphysical speculation that apparent cosmic fine-tuning must have a simpler underlying explanation. (It is hard to get across the degree of fine-tuning involved in the flatness problem without getting into arcane physics). In recent decades those theories have crossed a line of untestable speculation involving infinite numbers of causally disconnected parallel universes and such like. Personally I consider such speculation to be entirely logical and reasonable (which it is, as it employs logic and reason), but let's not kid ourselves that it is _scientific_. Those who scornfully object to one line of speculation and not another are just revealing their own dogmatic bias.

(EDIT to note: I am talking about reasonable inferences from the evidence, not _anti_-scientific obscurantism like Young Earth Creationism).


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## Purple (9 Apr 2018)

I'm no expert in the area but theories such as cosmic inflation were, as far as I know, postulated in order to solve the flatness problem. They are based on something, tied to something, explain or broaden our knowledge, of only theoretically, about how the universe works. "God" is an intellectual cop-out from a  scientific perspective. It is a dead end. It explains nothing and builds on nothing.


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## dub_nerd (9 Apr 2018)

"God" explains quite a lot, and can be a starting point for a lot more. But that's not the point here. The Cosmological argument is just an argument for a "first cause". As such, it's kind of irrefutable. The trajectory of science is to aim for greater unification, to explain the complexity of the world with deeper and simpler explanations. It is an approach that has worked well for science, although it is by no means scientifically obvious (or even explicable) why that should be the case. The Cosmological argument just skips a few steps ahead and tells science what it's going to find if and when it gets to a single underlying explanation. That explanation will be the first cause.

(P.S. Cosmic inflation is currently an idea that can predict a large variety of universes, and by explaining everything threatens to explain nothing. That could change if we discover the B-mode of the CMB polarisation, but right now even scientists recognise that it is based on nothing more than a desire to avoid the implications of special fine-tuning. You accused me of writing an overly long post before, but I'm happy to provide an explanation with references if you wish).


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## Purple (10 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> You accused me of writing an overly long post before, but I'm happy to provide an explanation with references if you wish)


Your posts are interesting and informative. They just aren't always answering the issue. I'm hardly one to take a position on that though. 


dub_nerd said:


> The Cosmological argument is just an argument for a "first cause". As such, it's kind of irrefutable.


 Sure, but there are lots of theories about what that first cause was. I think most people see this issue as if time is linear and "first" is independent of, and not affected by, the physical universe.


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## dub_nerd (14 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> Sure, but there are lots of theories about what that first cause was.



I'm open to correction if you're able to tell me what they are. But I do know a _little_ bit about this stuff and I think I enumerated pretty much all of the cosmogenic theories myself in post #23 and not one of them is a theory about a first cause. In fact I believe it is a matter of basic logic that a scientific explanation of a first cause is an oxymoron (and I make that case in the last paragraph of this post). What's more, the evidence that the universe had a hot dense beginning is uncontested in science today. Whether that was a true beginning or just the latest phase of an oscillation is undecided, but there is no evidence for the latter case. Even in the couple of half-baked theories that exist, any evidence of a previous phase gets erased by the transition to the current phase. If there is no possibility of evidence then the case is undecidable by science. This puts such theories on a par with every other metaphysical explanation. The theories are motivated by little more than unease with the idea of the universe springing into existence _ex nihilo_.



Purple said:


> I think most people see this issue as if time is linear and "first" is independent of, and not affected by, the physical universe.



I don't really understand that sentence. But certainly the idea of "first" has to be more than temporal antecedence since we are talking about the creation of time as well. Some of the early medieval writers dealt with this, positing an ontological first cause even if the physical universe is eternal.

But here's a train of thought. I'd be interested to know where you think it becomes illogical. Either the physical universe had a beginning or it did not. The overwhelming evidence is that the universe that we inhabit had a beginning, something over thirteen billion years ago. It may be a continuing phase of an older universe but there is zero evidence for that. If it is a true beginning then it may be that there is a way to create the universe "from nothing" as some sort of quantum fluctuation. However, according to quantum field theory, quantum fluctuations are excitations in quantum fields which are the most fundamental realities postulated by science today. The field that may have started it all is dubbed the _inflaton_ field in inflation theory. If that is true then science hits a brick wall as there is no more fundamental theory than quantum field theory. If a more fundamental theory is found, then whatever entities _that_ theory deals with will be unexplainable by science.


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## Purple (16 Apr 2018)

You summed up the whole thing nicely with this;


dub_nerd said:


> It may be a continuing phase of an older universe but there is zero evidence for that.


Just extrapolate that to every/any other theory about what happened before the start of the universe/ the start of this phase of the universe. There is zero evidence for any of it, including god (or the teapot). That's the nub of it; inserting god (or the teapot) into the discussion makes no sense as it is baseless and illogical. You may as well say it was fairies or pixies or the whole thing started 5000 or so years ago and all the evidence to support quantum theory, geology and the fossil record is just god playing a joke on us. Introduce god and all science is meaningless as anything and everything can be explained by the big sky fairy.


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## dub_nerd (16 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> There is zero evidence for any of it, including god (or the teapot). That's the nub of it; inserting god (or the teapot) into the discussion makes no sense as it is baseless and illogical.



I see you still can't get your head around the fact that evidence and logic are two different things. Scientists have come up with all sorts of theories for which there is no evidence. They are not _illogical_, just lacking evidence. 



Purple said:


> You may as well say it was fairies...



... except that _would_ be illogical. 



Purple said:


> Introduce god and all science is meaningless.



That's simply baloney. How does god make Newtonian gravity meaningless? On the other hand we know, as a matter of the most trivial logic, that science isn't going to come up with any theory for the origin of everything.


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## Purple (16 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> I see you still can't get your head around the fact that evidence and logic are two different things. Scientists have come up with all sorts of theories for which there is no evidence. They are not _illogical_, just lacking evidence.


I can get my head around it just fine thanks.


dub_nerd said:


> ... except that _would_ be illogical.


 It is no more or less logical than "god"


dub_nerd said:


> That's simply baloney. How does god make Newtonian gravity meaningless? On the other hand we know, as a matter of the most trivial logic, that science isn't going to come up with any theory for the origin of everything.


 To extrapolate that the absence of a scientific explanation for anything therefore leaves room for a logical argument for the existence of god is simply baloney. Just as the absence of such as explanation does not leave room for the existence of fairies or the celestial teapot. They are all equally absurd.  
As for Newtonian gravity, sure that could just our explanation for what God does to stop things from falling into space.


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## dub_nerd (16 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> I can get my head around [the difference between lack of evidence and illogic] just fine thanks.



And yet you keep conflating the two.



Purple said:


> [Fairies are] no more or less logical than "god"



Fairies are little people that live at the end of your garden. If they made the universe then they made the garden and themselves with it. That's illogical. God doesn't live at the end of your garden. Ergo, fairies are less logical than god.



Purple said:


> To extrapolate that the absence of a scientific explanation for anything therefore leaves room for a logical argument for the existence of god is simply baloney.



No, it simply isn't. That's like saying that the lack of a scientific explanation for the presents under your Christmas tree leaves no room for the hypothesis that your family members put them there. Not all logical arguments are scientific, particularly ones involving agency and intentionality. A teleological argument for the existence of god is not illogical.



Purple said:


> As for Newtonian gravity, sure that could just our explanation for what God does to stop things from falling into space.



It could indeed. But when we see things that work the same way repeatedly we tend to assign them the status of physical law. If they are the direct action of god then it seems he does certain types of actions habitually.


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## Leo (16 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> Fairies are little people that live at the end of your garden. If they made the universe then they made the garden and themselves with it. That's illogical. God doesn't live at the end of your garden. Ergo, fairies are less logical than god.



I made a shed, I can walk into said shed. You saying God's magical powers don't extend to creating a door?


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## Purple (16 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> And yet you keep conflating the two.


No, I don't. 



dub_nerd said:


> Fairies are little people that live at the end of your garden. If they made the universe then they made the garden and themselves with it. That's illogical. God doesn't live at the end of your garden. Ergo, fairies are less logical than god.


 The Fairies could have made the universe and the garden they live in; inductive logic. 



dub_nerd said:


> No, it simply isn't. That's like saying that the lack of a scientific explanation for the presents under your Christmas tree leaves no room for the hypothesis that your family members put them there. Not all logical arguments are scientific, particularly ones involving agency and intentionality. A teleological argument for the existence of god is not illogical.


No, it's like saying that the lack of a scientific explanation for the presents under your Christmas tree means it is logical (inductively) to say that Santa put them there. It is nonetheless reasonable and logical (in the way people who aren't looking to justify the absurd understand what logic means) to dismiss the Santa argument as irrational and fanciful and an attempt by children to hold onto magic in the face of rationality. 
A theological argument for the existence of god is logical only if you ignore the fundamental illogicality of the premise used to construct the argument.   



dub_nerd said:


> It could indeed. But when we see things that work the same way repeatedly we tend to assign them the status of physical law. If they are the direct action of god then it seems he does certain types of actions habitually.


 Sure, but it could just as likely be a celestial teapot.


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## dub_nerd (16 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> Fairies are little people that live at the end of your garden. If they made the universe then they made the garden and themselves with it. That's illogical. God doesn't live at the end of your garden. Ergo, fairies are less logical than god.





Leo said:


> I made a shed, I can walk into said shed. You saying God's magical powers don't extend to creating a door?



See my answer to Purple below.



Purple said:


> The Fairies could have made the universe and the garden they live in; inductive logic.



If the fairies had to make the garden before they could live at the end of it then fairies are _not_ (or at least not always) little people that live at the end of your garden. So we need a different definition of fairies. You didn't define fairies so I filled in the blanks. If you want to make the case that "fairies are no more or less logical than god" under a different definition of fairies (perhaps one that sounds very much like god) I'm fine with that.



dub_nerd said:


> That's like saying that the lack of a scientific explanation for the presents under your Christmas tree leaves no room for the hypothesis that your family members put them there. Not all logical arguments are scientific, particularly ones involving agency and intentionality. A teleological argument for the existence of god is not illogical.





Purple said:


> No, it's like saying that the lack of a scientific explanation for the presents under your Christmas tree means it is logical (inductively) to say that Santa put them there... A theological argument for the existence of god is logical only if you ignore the fundamental illogicality of the premise used to construct the argument.



First, note I said _teleological_, not _theological_. That means an argument from agency. You know in advance that presents don't arrive under the Christmas tree on their own, so _someone_ put them there. Now all you have to figure out is _who_. You could of course hypothesise it was Santa, but assuming you are an adult -- perhaps even one who has put presents under the tree for your own children -- you probably know better. So what's your equivalent argument for how you know a universe that looks designed wasn't made by rational agency? You mention "fundamental illogicality" but apart from continually repeating that mantra you have made no case for it. Note, I am not placing the burden of proving the non-existence of god on you -- that would be unreasonable. I'm merely asking you to substantiate your claim of illogicality. The inference that someone put the presents under the Christmas tree was not illogical. I'm merely extrapolating to a universe that looks designed.



dub_nerd said:


> ...when we see things that work the same way repeatedly we tend to assign them the status of physical law. If they are the direct action of god then it seems he does certain types of actions habitually.





Purple said:


> Sure, but it could just as likely be a celestial teapot.



Teapots don't generally do things of their own agency. You can keep invoking teapots, fairies, and Santa as much as you like. I recognise the argumentative ploy involved in presenting nonsense hypotheses as a way of ridiculing an argument you dislike. But we'd probably move along quicker if you stuck to logic for a while. Merely asserting that something is "no more logical than fairies (or teapots or Santa)" doesn't make it so. With respect, that just sounds like a Richard Dawkins groupie who hasn't done much original thinking of their own.


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## Purple (17 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> If the fairies had to make the garden before they could live at the end of it then fairies are _not_ (or at least not always) little people that live at the end of your garden. So we need a different definition of fairies. You didn't define fairies so I filled in the blanks. If you want to make the case that "fairies are no more or less logical than god" under a different definition of fairies (perhaps one that sounds very much like god) I'm fine with that.


 What's your definition of God.







dub_nerd said:


> First, note I said _teleological_, not _theological_. That means an argument from agency. You know in advance that presents don't arrive under the Christmas tree on their own, so _someone_ put them there. Now all you have to figure out is _who_. You could of course hypothesise it was Santa, but assuming you are an adult -- perhaps even one who has put presents under the tree for your own children -- you probably know better. So what's your equivalent argument for how you know a universe that looks designed wasn't made by rational agency? You mention "fundamental illogicality" but apart from continually repeating that mantra you have made no case for it. Note, I am not placing the burden of proving the non-existence of god on you -- that would be unreasonable. I'm merely asking you to substantiate your claim of illogicality. The inference that someone put the presents under the Christmas tree was not illogical. I'm merely extrapolating to a universe that looks designed.


Teleological design is the same as intelligent design. I hope that's not where you are going with this?
You can go around this all you like but whatever badge you put on the notion of what we don't know about how the universe came into being justifying the argument for the existence of god is just fanciful. It is filling the void with nonsense. It is just another unknown beyond the unknown we are looking to explain.



dub_nerd said:


> Teapots don't generally do things of their own agency. You can keep invoking teapots, fairies, and Santa as much as you like. I recognise the argumentative ploy involved in presenting nonsense hypotheses as a way of ridiculing an argument you dislike. But we'd probably move along quicker if you stuck to logic for a while. Merely asserting that something is "no more logical than fairies (or teapots or Santa)" doesn't make it so.


 Arguing against it doesn't make it untrue. I am not using an argumentative ploy, I am pointing out the absurdity of inserting the supernatural into a discussion about the gaps in what we know about the universe.



dub_nerd said:


> With respect, that just sounds like a Richard Dawkins groupie who hasn't done much original thinking of their own.


 With respect you sound like someone who is trying to construct a scientific argument to justify the illogical and absurd. You are attempting too build an argument based not not on a reasonable inferences from the evidence but on an unreasonable inference based on the lack of evidence.
In your argument "god" is just "some other thing we don't know about".


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## dub_nerd (17 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> What's your definition of God.



The First Cause of the universe, probably with rational agency to account for apparent design in the universe.



Purple said:


> Teleological design is the same as intelligent design. I hope that's not where you are going with this?



Not in the sense I suspect you think, unless you think the medieval scholastics were best mates with American evangelicals. Given that you only just Googled the term, I'm going to hazard a guess you're confused about this one.



Purple said:


> It is just another unknown beyond the unknown we are looking to explain.



Science isn't looking to explain a First Cause. If you think it is, could you give some attributes that such an explanation would have? When you think about it just a little, a scientific explanation of a First Cause is oxymoronic (though for some reason that doesn't seem obvious to dogmatic materialists).



Purple said:


> With respect you sound like someone who is trying to construct a scientific argument to justify the illogical and absurd. You are attempting too build an argument based not not on a reasonable inferences from the evidence but on an unreasonable inference based on the lack of evidence.



First of all, my argument is not scientific. No theory about First Causes can be (though you seem to think otherwise). It doesn't have the attributes of reproducibility or falsifiability. I actually _do_ science, so I know the difference. Nevertheless it is not _illogical_. That's just a term you keep bandying about without justification. Logic is the study of the principles of correct reasoning. An argument can be logical without being correct, for instance if it is based on untrue premises. Theories of various sorts are falsified all the time. That does not mean they were illogical to begin with. According to your usage, for instance, the theory of the luminiferous aether was _illogical_, not merely falsified by the Michelson-Morley experiment. That's incorrect.

If it's any help, your position seems to be one that I have seen referred to as _epistemological scientism_ -- the idea that only science can ask meaningful questions (even in this area where we know in advance science can never provide a meaningful answer). Essentially it's a "nobody's allowed play with my ball even though I'm not playing with it myself" kind of position.


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## Purple (17 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> The First Cause of the universe, probably with rational agency to account for apparent design in the universe.


"Probably" being the operative word. In your definition god is simply "something we don't know and, based on what we currently know, will never know". That's a big vague. 



dub_nerd said:


> Not in the sense I suspect you think, unless you think the medieval scholastics were best mates with American evangelicals. Given that you only just Googled the term, I'm going to hazard a guess you're confused about this one.


Now you are getting personal, as well as coming across all arrogant, but I presume you know that medieval scholastic's were all creationists.



dub_nerd said:


> Science isn't looking to explain a First Cause. If you think it is, could you give some attributes that such an explanation would have? When you think about it just a little, a scientific explanation of a First Cause is oxymoronic (though for some reason that doesn't seem obvious to dogmatic materialists).


 I have no idea what the first cause was or if there was one as we currently understand it.



dub_nerd said:


> First of all, my argument is not scientific. No theory about First Causes can be (though you seem to think otherwise). It doesn't have the attributes of reproducibility or falsifiability. I actually _do_ science, so I know the difference. Nevertheless it is not _illogical_. That's just a term you keep bandying about without justification. Logic is the study of the principles of correct reasoning. An argument can be logical without being correct, for instance if it is based on untrue premises. Theories of various sorts are falsified all the time. That does not mean they were illogical to begin with. According to your usage, for instance, the theory of the luminiferous aether was _illogical_, not merely falsified by the Michelson-Morley experiment. That's incorrect.


By your logic fairies are logical, as is just about anything which cannot be dis-proven. When we get to the realm of arguments which are logical within themselves but are not supported by any evidence then to me that is absurd (hence my continued use of the word).  



dub_nerd said:


> If it's any help, your position seems to be one that I have seen referred to as _epistemological scientism_ -- the idea that only science can ask meaningful questions (even in this area where we know in advance science can never provide a meaningful answer). Essentially it's a "nobody's allowed play with my ball even though I'm not playing with it myself" kind of position.


 I did google that one. Of course science is not the only thing that can ask meaningful questions but using the lack of scientific evidence to justify a non scientific proposition is, in colloquial parlance, comparing apples and oranges.


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## dub_nerd (17 Apr 2018)

Purple said:


> "Probably" being the operative word.



It is the operative word in all scientific theories also. You presumably know that science cannot prove anything to be true, but operates on balance of probability from observed regularities.



Purple said:


> In your definition god is simply "something we don't know and, based on what we currently know, will never know".



No, we can reason about god's attributes, from the nature of the universe for instance and our own existence in it.



Purple said:


> Now you are getting personal, as well as coming across all arrogant...



I was just going by your confusion about _teleological_ vs. _theological_ in your previous post.



Purple said:


> ...but I presume you know that medieval scholastic's were all creationists.



As, by definition, is anyone who hypothesises about god as a first cause. Not to be confused with Young Earth Creationists, or Intelligent Design proponents of special design.



Purple said:


> I have no idea what the first cause was or if there was one as we currently understand it.



And do you think that science, _even in principle_, can ever provide the anwer?



Purple said:


> By your logic fairies are logical, as is just about anything which cannot be dis-proven.



No, fairies that live at the end of your garden are not logical if there are no gardens. If you want to provide a different definition of fairies then we can consider them on their merits to see if they entail a logical contradiction.



Purple said:


> When we get to the realm of arguments which are logical within themselves but are not supported by any evidence then to me that is absurd (hence my continued use of the word).



Ok, so you agree they are logical. That's progress. As to evidence, this brings us full circle to the Cosmological argument. The evidence is the existence of the universe.


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## Purple (17 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> It is the operative word in all scientific theories also. You presumably know that science cannot prove anything to be true, but operates on balance of probability from observed regularities.


 We are going around in circles here. Do you think that god is a reasonable or logical answer to where the universe came from, operating on balance of probability from observed regularities?



dub_nerd said:


> No, we can reason about god's attributes, from the nature of the universe for instance and our own existence in it.


 We can speculate but that's about it.



dub_nerd said:


> I was just going by your confusion about _teleological_ vs. _theological_ in your previous post.


 See that sounds both arrogant and presumptive. Presumption may explain the position you take on this subject.
Anyway, I just misread your post; one of the problems caused by dyslexia.



dub_nerd said:


> As, by definition, is anyone who hypothesises about god as a first cause. Not to be confused with Young Earth Creationists, or Intelligent Design proponents of special design.


 Where one stops and the next starts... that's a whole different discussion.



dub_nerd said:


> And do you think that science, _even in principle_, can ever provide the anwer?


 I don't know and I don't know without feeling the need to put a name on my not knowing.



dub_nerd said:


> No, fairies that live at the end of your garden are not logical if there are no gardens. If you want to provide a different definition of fairies then we can consider them on their merits to see if they entail a logical contradiction.


 Why do you think fairies only live at the bottom of the garden? They are magic after all and so, "logically", could live anywhere.



dub_nerd said:


> Ok, so you agree they are logical. That's progress. As to evidence, this brings us full circle to the Cosmological argument. The evidence is the existence of the universe.


 Anything is logical as long as you ignore the absurdity of the premise. That in no way brings us full circle to the Cosmological argument.


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## Sophrosyne (17 Apr 2018)

This is one of the more interesting discussions on AAM, even though never the twain shall meet.


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## dub_nerd (17 Apr 2018)

dub_nerd said:


> [Probability] is the operative word in all scientific theories also. You presumably know that science cannot prove anything to be true, but operates on balance of probability from observed regularities.





Purple said:


> We are going around in circles here. Do you think that god is a reasonable or logical answer to where the universe came from, operating on balance of probability from observed regularities?



Yes, of course I do, otherwise I wouldn't be arguing the point! My premises are 1) the universe exists (I reject solipsism); 2) the universe shows evidence of extreme fine-tuning without which any sort of structure, let alone life, could not exist; 3) science has not had any success in explaining (or explaining away) the fine-tuning; 4) this is not just based on current absence of evidence --there are solid reasons to believe that science will not be able to explain this in future, in particular the weak anthropic principle in science generally relies on a metaphysical belief in some version of multiverses; 5) it is a matter of logical necessity that science cannot ever explain first causes; 6) it may be that the universe has no first cause but the scientific evidence is against that; the universe is evolving, therefore the only possible eternal universe is an oscillating one which is unlikely on thermodynamic grounds; therefore it is likely on the basis of the evidence that the universe sprang into existence _ex nihilo_.

I therefore find it likely, indeed almost inevitable, that the universe has a first cause. The evidence for a _rational_ "First Cause" is more tenuous as it relies on ideas like consciousness for this there is no very satisfying scientific definition. But I would include: 1) extremely unlikely occurrences are _a priori_ evidence of agency and design; 2) it is extremely difficult to apply a scientific theory of natural selection to the cosmos as a whole, as an alternative to design; 3) the universe therefore shows evidence of design; 4) designs have a purpose; 5) consciousness, in particular self-awareness, is an unexpected consequence of the emergence of structure in the universe; 6) the gap between the physical and the phenomenal or experiential -- the so-called "hard problem of consciousness" -- cannot easily be explained by science; in any case, even if consciousness can eventually be entirely explained in terms of the neural substrates, the existence of creatures capable of reasoning about the universe who themselves depend for existence on extraordinary fine tuning is highly suggestive of design. There is a lot more to this argument, but that is a flavour.



dub_nerd said:


> We can speculate but that's about it.



I would put that statement in the same category as "evolution is only a theory". Scientists (rightly) complain when people misunderstand the status of scientific theories. Saying that "evolution is only a theory" is usually intended to reduce it to "mere" speculation, rather than a sober assessment of the facts.



dub_nerd said:


> And do you think that science, _even in principle_, can ever provide the anwer?





Purple said:


> I don't know and I don't know without feeling the need to put a name on my not knowing.



Well then I think you should give it some thought. It is a matter of logic that science cannot come up with a theory of first causes. Think about the nature of scientific theories. To use an example you brought up yourself, why do things fall down? Because the Earth is massive and massive things experience gravity, "down" is just a direction that we define locally with respect to the centre of the Earth (and which we now generalise based on our understanding of universal gravitation).

But what is gravity? According to the metric theory of gravity, it is a local change to the curvature of space due to the energy-momentum tensor in the presence of massive objects; objects are just following geodesics in spacetime according to Newton's second law (which we now generalise based on our new understanding of curved space time).

But what makes massive objects massive, then? According to quantum field theory they couple to the Higgs field, whose messenger particle is the recently discovered Higgs boson. Not all particles couple to this field, creating a fundamental division in the Standard Model between massive and massless particles. Other divisions include those between the fermions (the particles with anti-symmetric wave functions under particle interchange) and the bosons (particles with symmetric wave functions), which determines which particles are "solid" and why gravity doesn't make you fall through your chair.  (Our understanding of all the force interactions is now generalised under the concept of quantum fields and excitations within them).

But why is there a specific number of fields and interaction strengths? Hmmm ...that's beyond the ken of science. But suppose tomorrow we came up with a theory for it which allowed us to further generalise and extend our abstractions in terms of some new "X". Do you think it's possible that "X" has literally _zero_ unexplained parameters, no "magic numbers" without which it would not be "X" but "Y"? Would such a concept even have any explanatory power? I would say the answer to both questions is no, as a matter of logical necessity.

But, I can hear your immediate objection -- "god" doesn't explain anything more than "X" does. And I agree with you -- the Cosmological argument only takes us so far. It argues that there there must be a first cause (lower case) as a matter of necessity. For a further investigation of god's attributes we have to consider the teleological (and other) arguments. Among other things, we have to consider whether the universe shows evidence of design.



Purple said:


> Why do you think fairies only live at the bottom of the garden? They are magic after all and so, "logically", could live anywhere.



Fair enough, if you care to enumerate their attributes, and say what "magic" means, I'm happy to reconsider where they might live based on any evidence you provide.



Purple said:


> Anything is logical as long as you ignore the absurdity of the premise.



Not if it entails a logical contradiction. If that's what you mean by absurdity then I agree with you. Anything that does not entail a logical contradiction is logical (but it is not illogical just because it may be _wrong -- _that sort of argument from absurdity ignores how absurd it is that anything exists in the first place; I call this the fallacy of mundanity). But, great -- we're agreeing! 

(



Purple said:


> See that sounds both arrogant and presumptive.


Then you have my apologies. I shouldn't have done that.
)


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## dub_nerd (17 Apr 2018)

Just as an aside, and not in reference to anyone on here, I find it troubling that people nowadays confuse "science" and "scientifically inspired philosophy" so easily. As someone who has spent decades studying science, I find it really tragic that some people only feel the need to make desultory mention of "sky fairies" or "celestial teapots" to convince them that they have won an argument on solid scientific grounds. Not that it cuts any ice with _me_, but for their own sake I wish people understood more about the philosophical underpinnings of science, and when science becomes _scientism_. There are any number of resources out there dealing with this question -- this one is a reasonable starting point. If you can further find a copy of _"What is Scientism"_ by Mikael Stenmark I thoroughly recommend it as a short but comprehensive introduction.


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## Purple (19 Apr 2018)

Very interesting and informative posts dub_nerd but for me scientific proofs require observation and testing. Therefore while we can draw hypotheses about the existence ofGod based on certain facts that's not a scientific basis for drawing a conclusion. 
I think we both agree that we cannot inductively or deductively conclude that God in the Christian/Jewish/Muslim definition exists.


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## dub_nerd (19 Apr 2018)

Agreed, Purple. I would never claim these arguments are scientific. Nevertheless I contend that they are both logical and rational, and partly based on "suggestive" evidence. Anyway, thanks for sticking to your guns and making me think harder than usual about them.


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