The universe is proof of god!

[Juma]

"Not anything" would be a better match.

So where is this ”not anything”?
It sounds like a joke but is perfectly true: there is no ”not anything”.
It is something we humans has dreamed up: it is the result of applaying philosophy without empirical evidens.
Reason without reality.

"Not anything" = "Nothing". Asking where is this "not anything" is kind of obvious isn't it? It's not anywhere.

Exactly.

 

[bilby]

There are only two possibilities; either there has always been something that exists, or something started to exist from nothing.

Adding or subtracting gods from the above does three eighths of fuck all to help decide which is correct.

QED

How about there also being two possibilties; Either the physical universe was extremely lucky to come into existence - continually maintaining its existence through much more lucky moves ...OR ... the universe came into existence by the purposely alternative?

Isn't this just as valid as the two possibilies in the top quote?

No, it's not.

There are a lot of things wrong with your dichotomy, not least of which is that it's not obviously exclusive - there are other possibilities than the two you claim.

Apart from being a false dichotomy, it also suffers from assigning probabilistic claims to a single observable.

If you buy the winning ticket in a raffle, you only know how lucky you are if you know how many losing tickets were out there. If yours was one ticket in fifty million, you were very lucky. If it was one of five, you were only a little bit lucky. If there was only one ticket, you were not lucky at all - you had to win.

We know of one universe. Are others possible? We don't and can't know.

And even if we were to accept your false dichotomy as valid, which it clearly isn't, it doesn't have any effect on the question posed in my true dichotomy - was there always something, or did something begin to exist from nothing?

Asking an unrelated question doesn't help to resolve the original question. It's a pure non-sequitur.

You may as well attempt to address my question by asking 'Is Manchester United the best football team, or is it Liverpool?' - regardless of the answer (which may well be 'neither of these'), my original question still needs to be addressed.

 

[bilby]

There are only two possibilities; either there has always been something that exists, or something started to exist from nothing.

Adding or subtracting gods from the above does three eighths of fuck all to help decide which is correct.

The Big Bang theory doesn't help either - it says that something small, dense, and with very low entropy existed at the Planck epoch, but says nothing about what happened before that.

We don't know which is correct; I lean towards the 'something always existed' side, but that's just a hunch and quite likely wrong.

As adding gods doesn't help resolve the question, and just adds another unevidenced and needless entity, I reject doing that as un-parsimonious and valueless nonsense.

That lots of people imagine that adding a god and exempting that god from the original question is somehow a solution, is merely an indication of how disinclined humans can be to thinking when they have decided that they like a particular answer. Special pleading remains a fallacy even if you really really want it to be allowed.

An eternal universe has been rejected by even Krauss and Hawking.

So what?

Lots of ideas are rejected by all kinds of people. I couldn't care less who rejected an idea; all I care about is their reasons for doing so, and whether that reasoning is sound.

Appeals to Authority are logically fallacious too.

 

[Random Person]

There are only two possibilities; either there has always been something that exists, or something started to exist from nothing.

Adding or subtracting gods from the above does three eighths of fuck all to help decide which is correct.

The Big Bang theory doesn't help either - it says that something small, dense, and with very low entropy existed at the Planck epoch, but says nothing about what happened before that.

We don't know which is correct; I lean towards the 'something always existed' side, but that's just a hunch and quite likely wrong.

As adding gods doesn't help resolve the question, and just adds another unevidenced and needless entity, I reject doing that as un-parsimonious and valueless nonsense.

That lots of people imagine that adding a god and exempting that god from the original question is somehow a solution, is merely an indication of how disinclined humans can be to thinking when they have decided that they like a particular answer. Special pleading remains a fallacy even if you really really want it to be allowed.

An eternal universe has been rejected by even Krauss and Hawking.

So what?

Lots of ideas are rejected by all kinds of people. I couldn't care less who rejected an idea; all I care about is their reasons for doing so, and whether that reasoning is sound.

Appeals to Authority are logically fallacious too.

There is no support for an eternal universe by physicists. If you want to reject science and just make things up, that's your prerogative.

The universe is expanding. If it was eternal it would have experienced a heat death or expanded to oblivion by now.

 

[skepticalbip]

So what?

Lots of ideas are rejected by all kinds of people. I couldn't care less who rejected an idea; all I care about is their reasons for doing so, and whether that reasoning is sound.

Appeals to Authority are logically fallacious too.

There is no support for an eternal universe by physicists. If you want to reject science and just make things up, that's your prerogative.

There are more cosmological models for an eternal universe than there are for a universe "beginning". There are some oscillating universe models and then the old "modified steady state" model that still has adherents. The "Big Bang" model does not address "beginnings". The "Big Bang plus Inflation" model comes a bit closer by going back to Plank time after expansion began but it doesn't address "beginnings" either - it leaves open whether the first state had lasted forever in the past, the end of a collapse phase of an oscillation universe, or a spontaneous event from nothing. Krauss offered a model for the universe beginning but then you thought he was an idiot because of it.

The universe is expanding. If it was eternal it would have experienced a heat death or expanded to oblivion by now.

There is no reason to assume that what we observe the universe doing now is what it always has done.

 

[bilby]

So what?

Lots of ideas are rejected by all kinds of people. I couldn't care less who rejected an idea; all I care about is their reasons for doing so, and whether that reasoning is sound.

Appeals to Authority are logically fallacious too.

There is no support for an eternal universe by physicists. If you want to reject science and just make things up, that's your prerogative.

The universe is expanding. If it was eternal it would have experienced a heat death or expanded to oblivion by now.

The observable universe is currently expanding. My position - that we do not and cannot know whether something has existed eternally, or whether something began to exist from nothing - is absolutely not a rejection of science. The scientific consensus is that we do not and cannot know what occurred before the Planck Epoch; Many people have conjectured that the physical universe began shortly before that point, but that remains purely conjecture.

Note also that my position is not with regard to the observable universe; it is in regard to everything (including anything we cannot currently observe, but which does exist, if there is anything that fits that description).

It's worth reiterating that whatever the answer is to the question 'was there always something, or did something start to exist from nothing', hypothesising a god or gods doesn't help to address the question in any way.

 

[Keith&Co.]

that's a joke too

And you just automatically go to explaining your joke.

Proving that if you have to 'splain...

 

[Random Person]

There are more cosmological models for an eternal universe than there are for a universe "beginning". There are some oscillating universe models and then the old "modified steady state" model that still has adherents. The "Big Bang" model does not address "beginnings". The "Big Bang plus Inflation" model comes a bit closer by going back to Plank time after expansion began but it doesn't address "beginnings" either - it leaves open whether the first state had lasted forever in the past, the end of a collapse phase of an oscillation universe, or a spontaneous event from nothing. Krauss offered a model for the universe beginning but then you thought he was an idiot because of it.

The universe is expanding. If it was eternal it would have experienced a heat death or expanded to oblivion by now.

There is no reason to assume that what we observe the universe doing now is what it always has done.

Sure, there are models, but they aren't based on any known physics.

 

[Random Person]

So what?

Lots of ideas are rejected by all kinds of people. I couldn't care less who rejected an idea; all I care about is their reasons for doing so, and whether that reasoning is sound.

Appeals to Authority are logically fallacious too.

There is no support for an eternal universe by physicists. If you want to reject science and just make things up, that's your prerogative.

The universe is expanding. If it was eternal it would have experienced a heat death or expanded to oblivion by now.

The observable universe is currently expanding. My position - that we do not and cannot know whether something has existed eternally, or whether something began to exist from nothing - is absolutely not a rejection of science. The scientific consensus is that we do not and cannot know what occurred before the Planck Epoch; Many people have conjectured that the physical universe began shortly before that point, but that remains purely conjecture.

Note also that my position is not with regard to the observable universe; it is in regard to everything (including anything we cannot currently observe, but which does exist, if there is anything that fits that description).

It's worth reiterating that whatever the answer is to the question 'was there always something, or did something start to exist from nothing', hypothesising a god or gods doesn't help to address the question in any way.

There's no evidence for an eternal universe and there is some for a universe that had a beginning.

If the universe was eternal, then this moment would never exist. An infinite number of moments would still be unfolding prior to now.

 

[bilby]

The observable universe is currently expanding. My position - that we do not and cannot know whether something has existed eternally, or whether something began to exist from nothing - is absolutely not a rejection of science. The scientific consensus is that we do not and cannot know what occurred before the Planck Epoch; Many people have conjectured that the physical universe began shortly before that point, but that remains purely conjecture.

Note also that my position is not with regard to the observable universe; it is in regard to everything (including anything we cannot currently observe, but which does exist, if there is anything that fits that description).

It's worth reiterating that whatever the answer is to the question 'was there always something, or did something start to exist from nothing', hypothesising a god or gods doesn't help to address the question in any way.

There's no evidence for an eternal universe and there is some for a universe that had a beginning.

Then publish it and claim your Nobel. Or is what you fondly imagine to be 'evidence' in fact mere conjecture?

If the universe was eternal, then this moment would never exist. An infinite number of moments would still be unfolding prior to now.

Seriously?

This topic has been done to death on this board.
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?13301-The-idea-of-an-infinite-past (731 posts)
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?12838-The-religion-of-quot-no-beginning-quot (597 posts)


We've even had threads about the question of why one person was unable to grasp the very clear arguments that debunk this crap.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?13855-Alternative-interpretation-to-that-of-literal-mindedness
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?13465-Equation-for-how-long-it-takes-untermensche-to-turn-a-thread-into-a-discussion-of-the-infinite

I can understand that some people (yourself clearly included) don't really grasp the concept of infinity. But that's no excuse for inflicting 1,300+ posts on us about it. And it's no excuse for bringing back a dead topic - you will find all of the arguments on this subject you could possibly want in those threads.

 

[Random Person]

Then publish it and claim your Nobel. Or is what you fondly imagine to be 'evidence' in fact mere conjecture?

If the universe was eternal, then this moment would never exist. An infinite number of moments would still be unfolding prior to now.

Seriously?

This topic has been done to death on this board.
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?13301-The-idea-of-an-infinite-past
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?12838-The-religion-of-quot-no-beginning-quot


We've even had threads about the question of why one person was unable to grasp the very clear arguments that debunk this crap.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?13855-Alternative-interpretation-to-that-of-literal-mindedness
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?13465-Equation-for-how-long-it-takes-untermensche-to-turn-a-thread-into-a-discussion-of-the-infinite

Despite the findings of the acerbic brain trust, the universe had a beginning.

You guys missed the golden era of an eternal universe. it called a "static universe" and it was glorious. You could get a Coke for like a nickel too.

 

[bilby]

Then publish it and claim your Nobel. Or is what you fondly imagine to be 'evidence' in fact mere conjecture?

If the universe was eternal, then this moment would never exist. An infinite number of moments would still be unfolding prior to now.

Seriously?

This topic has been done to death on this board.
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?13301-The-idea-of-an-infinite-past
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?12838-The-religion-of-quot-no-beginning-quot


We've even had threads about the question of why one person was unable to grasp the very clear arguments that debunk this crap.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?13855-Alternative-interpretation-to-that-of-literal-mindedness
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?13465-Equation-for-how-long-it-takes-untermensche-to-turn-a-thread-into-a-discussion-of-the-infinite

Despite the findings of the acerbic brain trust, the universe had a beginning.

Oh, well why didn't you just say so before? Here we all are waiting for you to provide a shred of evidence, when all we really needed was for you to repeat your assertion.

You guys missed the golden era of an eternal universe. it called a "static universe" and it was glorious. You could get a Coke for like a nickel too.

I can't stand Coke.

 

[Rhea]

Despite the findings of the acerbic brain trust, the universe had a beginning.

I like the way the quote tag plays into the assertion to make it almost joke-like in its vacuity.

.
.
.
.

Random person has no way of proving this.

 

[Random Person]

Despite the findings of the acerbic brain trust, the universe had a beginning.

Oh, well why didn't you just say so before? Here we all are waiting for you to provide a shred of evidence, when all we really needed was for you to repeat your assertion.

You guys missed the golden era of an eternal universe. it called a "static universe" and it was glorious. You could get a Coke for like a nickel too.

I can't stand Coke.

You have shown very limited knowledge or understanding of anything up to this point, so why should i give the slightest consideration to what you do or do not consider 'likely'?

Your assessments of the likelihood of stupid or impossible things make you an unreliable source, and your opinion is valueless to me.

If you have some evidence to support your opinion, then I shall consider it; But I am not at all hopeful that it exists, or if it does, that it will be any less awful than the rest of your nonsense.

 

[bilby]

Oh, well why didn't you just say so before? Here we all are waiting for you to provide a shred of evidence, when all we really needed was for you to repeat your assertion.

I can't stand Coke.

You have shown very limited knowledge or understanding of anything up to this point, so why should i give the slightest consideration to what you do or do not consider 'likely'?

Your assessments of the likelihood of stupid or impossible things make you an unreliable source, and your opinion is valueless to me.

If you have some evidence to support your opinion, then I shall consider it; But I am not at all hopeful that it exists, or if it does, that it will be any less awful than the rest of your nonsense.

Yes, that's exactly my position; and it is clear that my lack of hope was justified.

 

[Copernicus]

Random Person, do you have any references, links, citations or quotes to support this: "It's been discredited and even Krauss backs away from it" ?
I went to look, and couldn't find any.

With still no response, I'm beginning to think that the answer must NO, which means it's probably untrue. AFAIK Krauss has backed away from nothing in his book.

Pops.

Here's a couple of sources.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html
https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...krauss-a-physicist-or-just-a-bad-philosopher/

Well, I did read Krauss's book, and I agree fully with his defense of it--that he didn't mean literally "nothing" in the sense that both of these critics took him to mean. That was actually pretty clear from reading the book, and I don't know how you missed it. It was written for a popular audience, not an audience of philosophers or physicists. The point is that there is no such thing as a perfect "vacuum". What we take to be "nothing" really isn't. Krauss's problem is that he likes to play around with words, and he can get a little snarky. Horgan, in particular, should have known better than to go after him for being a "poor philosopher", when Horgan himself is little better. I think that it goes without saying that Krauss is a poor philosopher, but so are a lot of scientists. There have been a number of popular books written with pretty much the same content as this one, but Krauss is an outspoken atheist. So he used the book to explain some elementary modern cosmology, but he also mixed in his thoughts about why the "gap" that the modern God rules over has shrunk down to the point where it is essentially too small to keep trying to cram him into that space.

 

[Random Person]

Random Person, do you have any references, links, citations or quotes to support this: "It's been discredited and even Krauss backs away from it" ?
I went to look, and couldn't find any.

With still no response, I'm beginning to think that the answer must NO, which means it's probably untrue. AFAIK Krauss has backed away from nothing in his book.

Pops.

Here's a couple of sources.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html
https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...krauss-a-physicist-or-just-a-bad-philosopher/

Well, I did read Krauss's book, and I agree fully with his defense of it--that he didn't mean literally "nothing" in the sense that both of these critics took him to mean. That was actually pretty clear from reading the book, and I don't know how you missed it. It was written for a popular audience, not an audience of philosophers or physicists. The point is that there is no such thing as a perfect "vacuum". What we take to be "nothing" really isn't. Krauss's problem is that he likes to play around with words, and he can get a little snarky. Horgan, in particular, should have known better than to go after him for being a "poor philosopher", when Horgan himself is little better. I think that it goes without saying that Krauss is a poor philosopher, but so are a lot of scientists. There have been a number of popular books written with pretty much the same content as this one, but Krauss is an outspoken atheist. So he used the book to explain some elementary modern cosmology, but he also mixed in his thoughts about why the "gap" that the modern God rules over has shrunk down to the point where it is essentially too small to keep trying to cram him into that space.

Yes. He didn't mean literally nothing, but he also didn't mean literally something either. That's the equivocation people are referring to.

He's allowed his rabid disbelief in God to take hold if his senses.

 

[Copernicus]

Yes. He didn't mean literally nothing, but he also didn't mean literally something either. That's the equivocation people are referring to.

He's allowed his rabid disbelief in God to take hold if his senses.

No, he is making a perfectly reasonable point--that we know enough about the universe to explain how it evolved without reference to a supernatural cause. That is hardly taking leave of his senses, since it is a common viewpoint among physicists. He wasn't actually proposing to disprove the existence of God. His purpose was to get laypersons interested in reading about physics and cosmology. Hence the provocative title.

However, it is worth pointing out that these two critiques in no way "discredit" his book. They just criticize his rhetoric. More importantly, there is no evidence at all that he is "backing away from it". Rather, he defends it in the Horgan critique that you gave us. You just made that claim up.

 

[Juma]

Well, I did read Krauss's book, and I agree fully with his defense of it--that he didn't mean literally "nothing" in the sense that both of these critics took him to mean. That was actually pretty clear from reading the book, and I don't know how you missed it. It was written for a popular audience, not an audience of philosophers or physicists. The point is that there is no such thing as a perfect "vacuum". What we take to be "nothing" really isn't. Krauss's problem is that he likes to play around with words, and he can get a little snarky. Horgan, in particular, should have known better than to go after him for being a "poor philosopher", when Horgan himself is little better. I think that it goes without saying that Krauss is a poor philosopher, but so are a lot of scientists. There have been a number of popular books written with pretty much the same content as this one, but Krauss is an outspoken atheist. So he used the book to explain some elementary modern cosmology, but he also mixed in his thoughts about why the "gap" that the modern God rules over has shrunk down to the point where it is essentially too small to keep trying to cram him into that space.

Yes. He didn't mean literally nothing, but he also didn't mean literally something either. That's the equivocation people are referring to.

He's allowed his rabid disbelief in God to take hold if his senses.

Rabid disbelief? I can very well understand why someone well versed in modern physics doesnt accept the physically impossible concept ”god”.

 

[Random Person]

Yes. He didn't mean literally nothing, but he also didn't mean literally something either. That's the equivocation people are referring to.

He's allowed his rabid disbelief in God to take hold if his senses.

No, he is making a perfectly reasonable point--that we know enough about the universe to explain how it evolved without reference to a supernatural cause. That is hardly taking leave of his senses, since it is a common viewpoint among physicists. He wasn't actually proposing to disprove the existence of God. His purpose was to get laypersons interested in reading about physics and cosmology. Hence the provocative title.

However, it is worth pointing out that these two critiques in no way "discredit" his book. They just criticize his rhetoric. More importantly, there is no evidence at all that he is "backing away from it". Rather, he defends it in the Horgan critique that you gave us. You just made that claim up.

He is claiming that the universe emerged from nothing that is really something. that's ridiculous.

Krauss is also loony about his atheist beleifs.