How does God do anything?

[James Brown]

The answer God is a possible explanation to the question why a universe that allowed life came to exist

Sorry Drew. God is an answer to the question “why did a universe come to exist”, not an explanation of anything at all.

"Daddy, how did the magician pull the rabbit out of his hat?"

"By magic, son."

Do you have a non-magical explanation for how the universe came to be?

No. But them I'm not a cosmologist.

By the same token, I don't know what's causing the noises in my attic, but I don't believe that it's ghosts.

 

[Drew2008]

I'm pointing out those who don't believe we owe existence to God or a Creator or a bunch of scientists from a long gone universe have no better alternative explanation. By what actual means did naturalistic forces (that didn't exist yet) create the universe? If your lack of an answer doesn't count against your belief a Creator doesn't exist why should my lack of an answer matter? Its not expected I should know how God caused a universe to exist anymore than Neanderthals would know how to create a nuclear bomb.

Just to clarify, you are stating that there is nothing unnatural, that whatever you mean by god or god forces it is ultimately something we can understand, observe, make predictions about, has material existence, quantify, etc. You are saying we can forget about and get beyond the bullshit labels that is language. We should recognize that discussions about angels on pinheads are neural stimuli only. You are claiming that there isn't anything ultimately unexplainable. We only react emotionally out of ignorance, assign it woo value, no different than a toddler believing bullshit stories about flying reindeer or ghosts, or adults telling stories about vampires or how their houses are haunted. I can agree with that.

So what you are ultimately talking about is human scientific intuition, that instinctive desire in many of us to understand the physical universe of which we are part.

Does that accurately reflect your position?

The problem is the supernatural is defined as what can't happen unless it does happen in which case its natural. At one time it was accepted that time is the same every where and the idea you could slow down time was relegated to the supernatural meaning it can't happen...until we discovered it does happen at which point time dilation became a natural phenomena. What if everyone routinely saw ghosts and it was a part of our collective experience. Ghosts may continue to be an unexplained phenomenon but it wouldn't be considered unnatural.

I mentioned scientists have created (caused to exist) a virtual universe. What if they created a nice planet and populated it with virtual humans (who couldn't tell they are virtual). Would the scientists who caused them to exist become unnatural or supernatural? No doubt some of the beings on this virtual planet would come to the belief the universe they exist in was intentionlly created while others would be skeptical of such a claim. Kind of like what we have now.

 

[abaddon]

I'm pointing out those who don't believe we owe existence to God or a Creator or a bunch of scientists from a long gone universe have no better alternative explanation.

If I can't explain a murder, it doesn't mean your explanation is just as good or better. Your attempt at an explanation stands or falls on its own.

By what actual means did naturalistic forces (that didn't exist yet) create the universe?

Was the universe created?

If your lack of an answer doesn't count against your belief a Creator doesn't exist why should my lack of an answer matter?

If atheists can't explain the universe's alleged "creation", that should count against their atheism? This assumes that "origins" has the same significance to atheism that it does for theism.

The only problem anyone can possibly present for atheism is to turn up a God. (And that you have to look for God outside the universe is a big strike against.)

Origins matter to creationism for obvious reasons. Atheists, not being creationists, don't need to come up with answers to why the universe exists.

 

[Drew2008]

The answer God is a possible explanation to the question why a universe that allowed life came to exist

Sorry Drew. God is an answer to the question “why did a universe come to exist”, not an explanation of anything at all.

"Daddy, how did the magician pull the rabbit out of his hat?"

"By magic, son."

Do you have a non-magical explanation for how the universe came to be?

No. But them I'm not a cosmologist.

By the same token, I don't know what's causing the noises in my attic, but I don't believe that it's ghosts.

There are plenty of non-ghost explanations for noises in the attic. The cause of the universe if discovered will be called natural...I doubt it will be anything like what we call natural now.

 

[Rhea]

What is the actual mechanism by which God can affect the natural world? How did he create the universe?

I'm pointing out those who don't believe we owe existence to God or a Creator or a bunch of scientists from a long gone universe have no better alternative explanation. By what actual means did naturalistic forces (that didn't exist yet) create the universe? If your lack of an answer doesn't count against your belief a Creator doesn't exist why should my lack of an answer matter? Its not expected I should know how God caused a universe to exist anymore than Neanderthals would know how to create a nuclear bomb.

Why do you assume naturalistic forces did not exist yet?
Why do you assume the universe started to exist?

Looks a lot like you building a straw man so you can knock it down, maybe?

But let’s look at some of those natural mechanisms. No, I do not ~know~ for certain this is how things happened. I might even have bungled the descriptions below. But yes, I am willing to speculate about which natural forces could have been involved.

YOUR JOB is to then speculate what forces your supposed god supposedly used to supposedly create a universe where there supposedly was not one before.

Here’s my speculation:

1. The universe was not created. It did not begin. It is. It always was. I don’t need to imagine that it was created because that is not required. It is entirely possible for it to have always been here.
   1. And it can go through cycles that make it more or less possible to detect previous states without affecting the fact that it was always there.
2. And the natural forces inside it also always were. They are the forces and the properties that exist. Like gravity attracting large bodies to each other, and the inter-molecular forces that distinguish liquids from solids which results in water flowing downhill, but not houses (usually). Those forces are present everywhere, and always have been.
   1. Notwithstanding that those forces interact with each other and there can be inflection points of behavior that create a change in the dominant force when certain threshholds are met. Because, yeah, if I push a house hard enough, it will go downhill.
3. The specific forces include, but are not limited to, these four fundamental ones which generally act by lack of equillibrium seeking equillibrium. Balls roll downhill. Magnets attact each other
   1. Gravity - things with mass and energy attracting each other
   2. The weak force - the exchange of certain bosons between sub-atomic particles that cause decay into other sub-atomic particles
   3. Electromagnetism - exchanging photons between charged particles resulting in friction and elasticity among other things
   4. The strong force. - which holds the subatomic particles of atoms together, enabling atoms.

One can see without much effort how these forces “can affect the natural world,” and result in things moving, orbiting, agglomerating, reacting and reproducing.


Your turn. What is your speculation about the actual means your idea of god used to create the universe. And since you claim that the universe was created, and had no forces in existence prior to that creation, I am very much looking forward to your specualtion on how, mechanistically, it was done.

 

[Drew2008]

Was the universe created?

According to most scientists the universe came into existence about 13.5 billion years ago. Whether it was intentionally caused to exist or came about unintentionally from unknown process is the question we are debating.

If atheists can't explain the universe's alleged "creation", that should count against their atheism? This assumes that "origins" has the same significance to atheism that it does for theism.

The atheist position we don't know what caused the universe or life to exist but we claim it wasn't a Creator is very weak. Lets go back to your murder analogy. Suppose all we find is a body and we don't know if it was murder (intentionally caused to occur) or natural causes. You claim its natural causes but can't come up with a natural explanation. I claim it was intentional but can't find the smoking gun. It just means were in the same boat.

 

[Rhea]

Was the universe created?

According to most scientists the universe came into existence about 13.5 billion years ago. Whether it was intentionally caused to exist or came about unintentionally from unknown process is the question we are debating.

If atheists can't explain the universe's alleged "creation", that should count against their atheism? This assumes that "origins" has the same significance to atheism that it does for theism.

The atheist position we don't know what caused the universe or life to exist but we claim it wasn't a Creator is very weak. Lets go back to your murder analogy. Suppose all we find is a body and we don't know if it was murder (intentionally caused to occur) or natural causes. You claim its natural causes but can't come up with a natural explanation. I claim it was intentional but can't find the smoking gun. It just means were in the same boat.

No, Drew. According to most scientists the universe went through a moment that changed everything. What went on before that moment does not equal a creation.

We came upon a body that looks like it was previously alive and is no longer with evidence suggesting propbably natural causes.
You came upon a body and claim it was a beach-ball yesterday.

Or, one could say that you came upon a body with all the evidence of a heart attack and claim that since we can’t prove it wasn’t aliens, then it was probably aliens, and you will build monuments to the aliens.

 

[Drew2008]

Why do you assume naturalistic forces did not exist yet?
Why do you assume the universe started to exist?

Its not an assumption the scientific consensus is that the universe came into existence about 13.5 billion years ago. There appears to be a lot of data and facts that support that conclusion. Scientists also tell us that the laws of nature we now observe break down in the singularity (an unnatural phenomenon we call natural). The natural forces we are familiar with including the existence of time began to exist.

YOUR JOB is to then speculate what forces your supposed god supposedly used to supposedly create a universe where there supposedly was not one before,

No that's not my job I have no idea how God or naturalistic forces would cause themselves to exist. I don't exactly know how scientists caused a virtual universe to exist but I know it was caused by intelligent means such as designing and engineering.

The universe was not created. It did not begin. It is. It always was. I don’t need to imagine that it was created because that is not required. It is entirely possible for it to have always been here

It is required because to the best of scientific knowledge the universe didn't always exist. At this point your speculation goes against the weight of science. Did time always exist? If it did how did we cross an infinite amount of time to get to 2021?

Gravity - things with mass and energy attracing each other

If it weren't for the fact gravity is something we observe all the time it would be considered a supernatural force. There is no known explanation of what gravity is or why it exists. We call it natural only because we observe it all the time. If we observed ghosts on a regular basis even if we can't explain it we'd consider them to be natural. We do know one thing about gravity we wouldn't exist without it.

 

[Drew2008]

No, Drew. According to most scientists the universe went through a moment that changed everything. What went on before that moment does not equal a creation.

No you're mistaken. The claim is the universe came into existence from a singularity.


Posted on February 16, 2011 by Matt Williams

What Is A Singularity?​

Ever since scientists first discovered the existence of black holes in our universe, we have all wondered: what could possibly exist beyond the veil of that terrible void? In addition, ever since the theory of General Relativity was first proposed, scientists have been forced to wonder, what could have existed before the birth of the Universe – i.e. before the Big Bang?

Interestingly enough, these two questions have come to be resolved (after a fashion) with the theoretical existence of something known as a Gravitational Singularity – a point in space-time where the laws of physics as we know them break down. And while there remain challenges and unresolved issues about this theory, many scientists believe that beneath veil of an event horizon, and at the beginning of the Universe, this was what existed.

Definition:​

In scientific terms, a gravitational singularity (or space-time singularity) is a location where the quantities that are used to measure the gravitational field become infinite in a way that does not depend on the coordinate system. In other words, it is a point in which all physical laws are indistinguishable from one another, where space and time are no longer interrelated realities, but merge indistinguishably and cease to have any independent meaning.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

So you are saying that a singularity isn't anything? Or are you saying that the singularity began to exist too? Or what? Common sense says that if the universe arose from a singularity then it existed as a singularity before it became what we see today.

Where does the magic come in?

 

[Elixir]

According to most scientists the universe came into existence about 13.5 billion years ago. Whether it was intentionally caused to exist or came about unintentionally from unknown process is the question we are debating.

Then "we" are wasting our time.

We lack any means of demonstrating either a natural or "unnatural" origin of the universe.

The fact that every single phenomenon that has ever been subjected to scientific scrutiny has either been found to be of either natural or unknown causes, gives us no reason to suspect that a debate over of natural vs. unnatural or supernatural causes of the origin of the universe, can yield any useful insights, observations or means of determining the actual origin of the universe.

The only reason I can imagine for a theist to try to force the fact that we do not fully understand the origin of the universe into their theology, is to convince him/herself that there could be - no matter how unlikely - an entity resembling their concept of their religion's god, that might be responsible for "creating" (by means that remain just as unknown as they were before the debate) the universe. This is oft referred to as mental masturbation.

For anyone not interested in reaffirming the possibility that some specific supernatural entity might be responsible of all of existence, there is no point to the "debate" at all. Some may wish to participate in order to disabuse the theist of any notion they might hold that repeatedly pointing to gaps in scientific knowledge increases the likelihood of their god's existence, but that is a futile pursuit. Theists are not provisionally theistic as a rule; they are dedicated to their own a priori religious beliefs. They hold to positions not arrived at (or subject to change via) logical processes, so discussion is only for the benefit of the "precious tiny doubt" that rules their paradigm.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The problem is the supernatural is defined as what can't happen unless it does happen in which case its natural.

Well, no. The supernatural are those things (forces, states, processes), which cannot exist without having to rewrite a LOT of textbooks. A major upheaval to our dicumented understanding of the universe and its operation,
Minds operating without a physical body, such as after death or in astral travel.
No matter how many people see 'ghosts,' they may become commonplace, but they won't stop being supernatural until someone explains the mechanism for their operation.

 

[Elixir]

...to the best of scientific knowledge the universe didn't always exist.

Who told you that, and why did you believe them?
I don't pretend to be some scientifically transcendent font of the "best of scientific knowledge", but people (cosmologists, astrophysicists) who know more about it than I ever will, have told me that we can only look back in time to a certain point, beyond which the current physical laws of the universe did not apply. This does not necessitate the non-existence of the universe, it only points to the fact that our knowledge is limited. That limit does not elevate anyone's "god hypothesis" to a level of a default assumption.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The problem is the supernatural is defined as what can't happen unless it does happen in which case its natural.

Well, no. The supernatural are those things (forces, states, processes), which cannot exist without having to rewrite a LOT of textbooks. A major upheaval to our dicumented understanding of the universe and its operation,
Minds operating without a physical body, such as after death or in astral travel.
No matter how many people see 'ghosts,' they may become commonplace, but they won't stop being supernatural until someone explains the mechanism for their operation.

But only for people who claim to have magic. For people who see such claims as more of your standard woo it doesn't need disproven because it's only an unevidenced claim.

The obvious final act in Drew's argument is that until humans are all omniscient then all of his claims are legitimate, including magic. Big woot.

 

[Rhea]

Why do you assume naturalistic forces did not exist yet?
Why do you assume the universe started to exist?

Its not an assumption the scientific consensus is that the universe came into existence about 13.5 billion years ago. There appears to be a lot of data and facts that support that conclusion. Scientists also tell us that the laws of nature we now observe break down in the singularity (an unnatural phenomenon we call natural). The natural forces we are familiar with including the existence of time began to exist.

Be careful that you understand “this version of the universe began when the existing matter changed dramatically” is different from “the matter poofed into existence.”

Scientists coalesce around an understanding of a singularity being as far back as we can detect artifacts of history, but I do not think you can quote a single one of them saying that at some point the singularity did not exist and that moreover they are certain the singularity did not itself collapse from a previous incarnation of “universe.”

You are making claims about what scientists think that do not match what scientists are saying. I am making a claim that the matter/energy in that singularity always existed. Always. And that there is no evidence to suggest it did not. “The universe” may have looked very different as a singularity, but it can abslutely have always existed.

Your claim that the singularity did not exist until your god created it is NOT a part of the consensus of science.

YOUR JOB is to then speculate what forces your supposed god supposedly used to supposedly create a universe where there supposedly was not one before,

No that's not my job I have no idea how God or naturalistic forces would cause themselves to exist. I don't exactly know how scientists caused a virtual universe to exist but I know it was caused by intelligent means such as designing and engineering.

Then you don’t have any business in this thread, since that is the topic.

What is the actual mechanism by which God can affect the natural world? How did he create the universe? Does he just think stuff and then it happens? How can he read the minds of seven billion people at once? I’ve never heard a good answer to the question. “Because he’s god“ doesn’t count.

Either give your ideas on how, mechanistically, your god makes things happen or go start a thread on whatever topic you want to talk about that does not involve giving your ideas on how, mechanistically, your god interacts with matter.

The universe was not created. It did not begin. It is. It always was. I don’t need to imagine that it was created because that is not required. It is entirely possible for it to have always been here

It is required because to the best of scientific knowledge the universe didn't always exist. At this point your speculation goes against the weight of science. Did time always exist? If it did how did we cross an infinite amount of time to get to 2021?

No, my speculation is in line with science. What scientists call “the universe” is what we see today. But you are claiming they are ALSO saying that no previous universe existed and indeed even the singularity was non-existent at some point.

And I believe you are completely wrong.

My speculation does fit with science because it includes the expectation that the singularity did not poof into existence.

Gravity - things with mass and energy attracing each other

If it weren't for the fact gravity is something we observe all the time it would be considered a supernatural force. There is no known explanation of what gravity is or why it exists. We call it natural only because we observe it all the time. If we observed ghosts on a regular basis even if we can't explain it we'd consider them to be natural. We do know one thing about gravity we wouldn't exist without it.

Drew, we understand a LOT more about gravity than that. There are known theories (“explanations”) that describe it. And, wonderfully, lots more to be learned.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Be careful that you understand “this version of the universe began when the existing matter changed dramatically” is different from “the matter poofed into existence.”

But actual understanding might hamstring his argument. If no one believes what he says they believe, then thrry'll never be swayed by arguments built upon a foundation of Styrofoam....

 

[Keith&Co.]

But only for people who claim to have magic. For people who see such claims as more of your standard woo it doesn't need disproven because it's only an unevidenced claim.

The obvious final act in Drew's argument is that until humans are all omniscient then all of his claims are legitimate, including magic. Big woot.

....and the god of the gaps is gapped further and further down....

 

[Drew2008]

So you are saying that a singularity isn't anything? Or are you saying that the singularity began to exist too? Or what? Common sense says that if the universe arose from a singularity then it existed as a singularity before it became what we see today.

Where does the magic come in?

Magic pretty much describes a singularity...the real question is how do we make the magic disappear?

A singularity means a point where some property is infinite. For example, at the center of a black hole, according to classical theory, the density is infinite (because a finite mass is compressed to a zero volume). Hence it is a singularity. Similarly, if you extrapolate the properties of the universe to the instant of the Big Bang, you will find that both the density and the temperature go to infinity, and so that also is a singularity. It must be stated that these come due to the breaking down of the classical theory. As yet, there is no theory of quantum gravity, but it is entirely possible that the singularities may be avoided with a theory of quantum gravity.

because a finite mass is compressed to a zero volume

Infinities don't describe reality as we know it. Its a mental concept not a reality.

That's at least as magical as pulling a rabbit out of a hat. My point is there is no way to eliminate what appears magical to us.

The irony is I'm not invoking magic. A transcendent being knowing how to cause a real universe to exist is no more magical than scientists causing a virtual universe to exist.

 

[Drew2008]

Your claim that the singularity did not exist until your god created it is NOT a part of the consensus of science.

I didn't make that claim. Of course we are inquisitive people someone is bound to ask where or how did the singularity come about?

 

[Rhea]

Your claim that the singularity did not exist until your god created it is NOT a part of the consensus of science.

I didn't make that claim. Of course we are inquisitive people someone is bound to ask where or how did the singularity come about?

It doesn’t have to have come about. It could have always been there. (As I said twice already) It could have been a previous universe collapsed into a singularity along a cyclical pattern. Makes more sense than a god.