My mind's in a knot... (Re: Who/what created God?)

Rahvin, are you at least partly aware that according to the brightest physicists of our time, we are still Civilisation type 0 out of Civilisations 0, 1, 2 and 3? It means our development is a type 0, our knowledge is type zero and all we know about reality, existence and our world is very likely no more than a fraction of a percent of all there is to know.Your belief and jumping to premature conclusions that there is no god makes as much sense as the belief in the talking snake or the god that took a day off after working for 6 days to create the universe.I am willing to believe that in our collective experience of this consensual reality, no one has probably seen god, but in the 19 century no one had seen Pluto. Does this mean that Pluto does not exist? Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

But you are strongly implying that our animal logic that has saved us from preditors and has supplied us with food and shelter, can be extended all the way to the ultimate reality and be applied there.While there is a certain chance that this might be correct, your certainty is currently very unwarranted by all measures of science.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

What's that suposed to mean? Then anything goes. is that it? So far no one has seen the flying spaghetti monster either. Do you think it exists?Edited by fallacycop, : typo

Hi Peg, What type of answer are you seeking here?Scientifically speaking time begins at the Big Bang. Time is a means of measurement. It would be like asking, what is distance...? Now. Of course relative to whenever you read this.Oni

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"All great truths begin as blasphemies""I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

Hi Abogot, The point is that no matter what one feels is out there, if all things require some form of origin, then so too does God.I'm going to assume that the God that is being spoken of is the one claimed to exist in scriptures, any other references to another type of God should not be included in this argument.Would you not agree that if all things which have a high degree of complexity require creating then that would include God as well? If you do not think so, why not? I would say that disbelieving in God DOES go with all measures of science, since science does not deal with the supernatural, science by definition seeks natural explanations for natural phenomena. If one were ONLY looking at science, then proof for the Biblical God can not be found within it. Thus if one is seeking to "find God" then one should take the proper avenues that better explain these matters, science does not have one thing to say about God, and hopefully never will.I do agree with your over all point, man has not in any way reached the levels of intelligence that is required to fully grasp this reality in which we find ourselves in. That is not to say that there is some other reality that awaits us, but one never knows. So, yes, prematurely saying that "God absolutely does not exist" does not come with evidence to support it, but neither does "God does exist". However, with all of our current means of investigating such a possibility, no evidence for God can be found. Everything that we know to exist, with a few exceptions, has an explanation as to how it got there, there has not been any reason to invoke the supernatural.

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"All great truths begin as blasphemies""I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

Hi onifre, And so does the "laws of physics". If they are here, some other set of laws must have created them. Then what set of laws created the laws that created ours and so on? You get the infinite regression, there is no way around it. The way to avoid this is not to quarrel who's right, but to find the answer why we reach infinities and what is wrong with our reasoning. I'd rather not push my primitive human logic that far. Besides, i am not merely saying that complex things require a creator. I meant everything, the whole universe requires a creator(that is - if human logic is right and not rigged by some evil creator). If take a look at the Delayed choice expriment, you'll see what i mean. I don't trust those 5 senses, they are good up to a point. They are worthless when talking about god and the fundamental reality. And I am afraid we might also need a new level of logic if we wish to attain anything in that direction.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

Kardashev scale This reminds me of the principle "Everything that can happen will happen". I am not the biggest fan of Decoherence/MWI but if you adopt that school of thought, yes, anything can happen(although in a different universe). No, here no. But my understandiing of the world is now close to that of John Wheeler(scholar of Einstein and teacher of Richard Feynmann) - i used to naively believe matter was made of stuff, then of energy, now i am fairly confident everything in what we call universe is information. While this doesn't say anything about the mathematical object - Spaghetti Monster, it would be foolish to rule out anything that lies out of our experience.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

The difference is that the laws of physics are not a physical, tangible entity rather this is an anthropic term (much in the same way the concept of beauty is man-made) describing how our universe works or behaves. If the laws of physics are inherently part of our universe (that is these laws cannot exist apart from our universe) than there is no need to explain how they were created as they originated at the beginning of the universe.This of course begs the question of where did the universe originated from. The current prevailing theory is that time is intricately linked with the dimension of space i.e. spacetime (Einstein's Theory of Special and General Relativity), and thus time itself began at the beginning of the universe. Thus it makes no logical sense to say what happened before spacetime was created. Of course these are all cosmogonical questions that border between science, philosophy and theology. Cause and effect only make logical sense in relation to time. Therefore this quanundrum only applies if time goes backwards to infinity (time has no beginning). If time is finite in the past (has a beginning) than there does not have to be an infinite sequence of regression. The real question is how do we find out which view is correct either through direct/indirect observation/ experimentation or through logical deduction? Why not? It was Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Plato who asked questions such as these that really laid the groundwork for the study of philosophy and modern science. This is often used as an excuse for the existence of the supernatural. So what exactly do you trust? Do you believe in extrasensory perception (outside the 5 senses)? And up to what point does this take you? We can used deduction (logical reasoning) along with emperical evidence to determine the likelihood of something existing or not i.e. God. And what is this fundamental reality you are talking about and where is the evidence it exists? Not really. Logic is logic. There are not levels of logic. Logic is just the rules we use to determine what reality is through deductive reasoning, observation and inference.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Inherently part of the universe is as good an explanation as waking up and finding a live dinosaur in your bed and saying it was an inherent part of your bed. Unless we were talking about god. But weren't we discussing just that? You've just proven that the infinite regress of god is wrong, since god is not a subject to time. Cheers! I believe in modern theoretical physics - not everything, but most of it. That's what you believe. There is a discipline that deals with this sort of thing - physics. And when logic fails us what do we do? Pretend a problem does not exist?Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

The laws of physics are a theory, the fact that they exist to describe our reality is their only objective.Yet, I find interesting that the very primitive human logic, which you claim cannot fully comprehend reality, came up with these laws to describe reality. So by your own standards the laws of physics do not fully describe reality, because we cannot fully comprehend it, and so they are not really any "law" of anything other than what we, stupid humans, perceive to be reality. But they are the very same 5 senses that were used to invoke God in the first place. Humans questioned their existance and came up with the God concept, no other creature has ever shown signs of doing this, except for us. Determining that there is a God, if that is what you are saying, was done by using your 5 senses. If they are good enough to determine that there IS a God, then why are they now not good enough to determine there ISN"T a God...? Thats a double standard Abogot.We observed nature in our emergenced and invoked God, using our 5 senses. We know observe nature and, using the same 5 senses AND an advanced intelligence, say that no such God exist. Whatever side of the table you're on, God v.s. No God, the same 5 senses were used to determine both. I don't think that invoking a God prematurely gets us there any faster. In fact, if history shows us anything is that God can be used to slow progress down.OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

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"All great truths begin as blasphemies""I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

1. The laws of physics are satisfied in that all energy coming from and existing in God as per the Bible. So as per 1LoT, no energy is created or destroyed.Imo, conventional science has more of a physics problem than an eternal omnipotent God relative to 1LoT.2. God and his entourage exists within the universe, i.e. our realm, the cosmos/heavens according to the Biblical record.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Hi, Buzz. Can you give a reference for this?

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I'm Bluejay.Darwin loves you.

Genesis 1:1 is not clear on this. It simply states that when the heavens were created God did it. It does not say that he created the universe. He exists in the universe and by definition he is part and parcel of the universe in which he exists. It does not designate any specific heavens.The Bible says he, God, has always been and unchangeable. It states that his abode is in the heavens. His nature is to create and he's eternally been creating, changing and destroying things in the universe. Something has to be eternal. The mystery is that there was no first thing if he has been always creating.The phrases relative ot Jesus, "from whom all things came" and "in whom all things exist" is a mysterious statement. Jesus came from God's Holy Spirit which/who is the agent of creation. Thus the above phrases. The implication in all of this is that in a sense all things and God are in some sense co existent

what caused the big bang? and why must time have begun there?time is really only an abstract thoughtEdited by Peg, : No reason given.

Yes, that's right, that's why in post 51 I said: I wasn't kidding when i said that in reply to you. I do consider such a possibility real, that's why i haven't been pushing the god notion as assertively as of lately. It does make more sense that this rather organised sensation/experience was caused by a causal agent, but there is a certain chance that it isn't so. And it stems directly from the fact that our human logic may be rigged by an evil creator and steered into the wrong direction. This isn't exactly intuitive, but those laws need a medium and a creator. Since you are an atheist, you might believe those laws were created in another medium by another set of laws, but this also leads to infinite regression. If you want to discard human logic altogether and throw it out the window, you could say that their origin would not make sense to a human being, but you seem to have a strong belief in human logic, so i see no need for you to do that.BTW I am not alone expressing great doubt in human logic. In 2002 Stephen Hawking changed his mind and based on Goedel's incompleteness theorem said a complete and final mathematical dsecription of a Theory of Everything was impossible.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.