On the existence of God

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Klax

We know it by rationality.

 
Just like the second aborigine:

An analogy is a three-legged horse, but try this:

An aborigine who, let’s say, has had no contact with moderns until he is given a demonstration of a functioning piece of 21st century technology, maybe a smartphone. He then later, without the device, tries to explain what it does to a fellow tribesman. His mate then pooh-poohs the description, calling it impossible and meaningless, saying it is irrational, and then demanding that his reasoning is flawless. God’s ‘technology’ and relationships with time and space and material are likewise beyond our ken.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

@Dale

@Klax

We know it by rationality.

Just like the second aborigine:

An analogy is a three-legged horse, but try this:

An aborigine who, let’s say, has had no contact with moderns until he is given a demonstration of a functioning piece of 21st century technology, maybe a smartphone. He then later, without the device, tries to explain what it does to a fellow tribesman. His mate then pooh-poohs the description, calling it impossible and meaningless, saying it is irrational, and then demanding that his reasoning is flawless. God’s ‘technology’ and relationships with time and space and material are likewise beyond our ken.

I fail to see the relevance of that analogy no matter how many times you refer to it. Who is the first aborigine? What is the smartphone analogue?

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

@mitchellmckain

God is not dependent upon anything which is not God. (I understand this to be a fundamental assertion of Christian theology, which I certainly agree with)

Therefore to say God is independent of nothing is to say that there is nothing which is not God.

But that means that God cannot create anything… unless God can alter His state of being independent of nothing.

So… it is entirely possible to believe in a God who is not a creator and thus independent of nothing. That could certainly be a religion which denies the existence of evil and it would likely do so unless it is an evil which is also of God. Though the one I had in mind above was the Unity church founded upon the power of positive thinking. You can practically see their eyes glaze over when you speak of anything evil or wrong with the world. I found it kind of creepy.

The God who is independent of nothing sounds just like the God I believe in before He created anything. But regardless of whether you imagine a God who is independent of nothing, it would be reasonable to ask if the God you imagine is capable of creating anything and therefore becoming one who is independent of something? If He is capable then would He? Would He have a reason to create something which is not independent? Does He value the existence of anything other than Himself?

I can hardly see any reason to call a being God who cannot create anything or who does not value anything other than Himself. That is a god to bury next to Zeus, Odin, Ra, the Demiurge of Plato, and a goodly number of Christian conceptions of God (like the godfather) which are equally contemptable. Even for myself, I can aim higher than any of those. And if I give my aim a name and credit a being such as this with existence, can this be any greater than God? Is it not more likely that other people simply haven’t aimed very high and thus have invented a god much lower than the real thing?

God has never been the God you believe in before He created anything. Aye, our aim is human: shoot everything except the target.

[mitchellmckain (Scientist and Christian)]

@Dale

How many separate universes can be contained within them?

The video you posted arguing ten dimensions to be maximal is interesting but mathematically flawed. I think it is confusing dimensionality with higher orders of infinity at some point. It can be demonstrated that adding on dimensions will not give you a higher order of infinity which would be required to extend the scope to cover all possible universes. Adding a single dimension amounts to adding a single parameter – adding a single degree of freedom, and imaging that you can get all possible universes with a single additional parameter is absurd. It is dubious that even the addition of a large but finite number of parameters can give you all possible universes.

Frankly I think this is an ad-hoc attempt to go from the ten dimensions posited by string theory to a multiverse of all possible universes and thus to an anthropic principle favorable to an atheist hope that science suggests this rather than creation by God. Science provides no such thing. Science has not found any evidence whatsoever of a multiverse. The only evidence science has found is that the steady state universe is wrong and the only measurable universe came into existence 13.8 billion years ago.

[EastwoodDC (Dan Eastwood)]

Welcome @sky, and a good question. I am agnostic and can’t add too much to what has already been said. BUT, I can summarize my view of fine-tuning very simply:

If things were different in the past, then things would be different now.

Fine tuning presumes that the world as we see it now is somehow privileged, that the question “Why are we here?” can only occur in our observed reality. BUT there could be infinitely many different histories that are equally privileged. The only privilege that matters is the ability to ask this question: “Why are we here?”

I like to think that somewhere in the multiverse, there are other strange creatures asking these same questions, and wondering if they are unique.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Klax

I fail to see the relevance of that analogy

I should have tweaked it for this application, I realized in retrospect, so that your rationality could have correctly deduced its relevance here.

Here it simply means that the second aborigine’s presumptions and rationality are incorrectly based on limited horizons.

Did you really not understand it where it was posted originally?

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@mitchellmckain

The only evidence science has found is that the steady state universe is wrong and the only measurable universe came into existence 13.8 billion years ago.

I’m good with that. (Hey, Dan @EastwoodDC – long time no see. But I haven’t been anywhere else, either.)

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

We have all the evidence we’ll ever have and ever need to know with absolute certainty that the infinite, eternal multiverse exists. The fact that science doesn’t, can’t ‘know’, can’t measure it, is utterly irrelevant.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

@Dale

@Klax

I fail to see the relevance of that analogy

I should have tweaked it for this application, I realized in retrospect, so that your rationality could have correctly deduced its relevance here.

Here it simply means that the second aborigine’s presumptions and rationality are incorrectly based on limited horizons.

Did you really not understand it where it was posted originally?

I understand its utter failure as an analogy just fine.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

That you say that is not unexpected.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

Somebody has to.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Does anyone else not get it?

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

That your analogy fails from its premiss on?

[heddle (David Heddle)]

@Klax

We have all the evidence we’ll ever have and ever need to know with absolute certainty that the infinite, eternal multiverse exists.

It doesn’t matter how often you say that. Proof by assertion remains a logical fallacy.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

The assertion is by reality, how it works. ‘Proof’ is irrelevant. Key concepts: uniformitarianism and Kolmogorov complexity.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Klax

The assertion is by reality, how it works.

@heddle

It doesn’t matter how often you say that…

…it doesn’t make it true, because you have not connected your assertion to reality except by your aboriginal presumption.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

It’s not my assertion. It’s reality’s. Again, the key concepts are uniformitarianism and Kolmogorov complexity.

I’m not either of your aborigines. Which one are you? Apart from neither.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Klax

uniformitarianism

There’s a little problem with that. What you know as nature and what you know of nature began at the big bang. Your projections otherwise are irrelevant.

(At least you appear to not have objected and to have understood what I meant by aboriginal. …except until you added your edit. )

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

(Off topic, but if anyone is interested, nasa.gov is live with the Perseverance landing.)

[EastwoodDC (Dan Eastwood)]

@Dale

@mitchellmckain

The only evidence science has found is that the steady state universe is wrong and the only measurable universe came into existence 13.8 billion years ago.

I’m good with that. (Hey, Dan @EastwoodDC – long time no see. But I haven’t been anywhere else, either.)

I’m pretty sure it’s been less than 13.8 billions years since we last chatted!