So why should I be an atheist?

[Erik]

Jimmyjet,

1. I really don't think the idea that our universe began is evidence that there is something "outside" of the universe. Much greater minds than mine have wrestled with the subject and don't really seem to give much credence to it, other than to say that multiverses are possible, but we wouldn't know anything about them. Needless to say, it is a stretch to then assume that a god might inhabit some such place even if it exists.

2. Most important, however, is that you are engaging in an infinite regression, which you seem to recognize, but somehow you cannot accept its logical conclusion: if you propose that something can exist without a cause, which you have to do to avoid the regression, there is no reason to assume that the universe cannot exist without a cause. You say that everything we have observed suggests that they have a cause; my understanding of cosmology is that the background radiation left over from the Big Bang means we cannot peer that far back, so we can't observe whether the universe had a cause or not.

3. I agree that our understanding of the universe can be radically different within just a couple of generations, but I don't understand why anyone would consider that fact relevant to whether the notion of god is a valid assumption. Unlike scientific theories, many of which are tweaked and some discarded, the theory of god seems to survive nothwithstanding that the foundations have been removed. The Earth is not the center of the universe. Lightning isn't Zeus hurling thunderbolts. There is no evidence for souls, and plenty of evidence against their existence. Evolution shows we were not specially created. The Earth is billions of years old, not thousands. The universe is vastly larger than previously thought, we are just a tiny tiny speck, and the great majority of the universe is totally hostile to us. Etc. In other words, previous excuses for believing in gods have been hammered into dust; that is, we have many actual instances of disproof, and not one instance of positive proof. The proper stance therefore is to assume they do not exist. That might be eventually proved wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Simoon]

jimmyjet wrote

hi erik,

yes i definitely think there is something outside of our universe.

all evidence points to this.

There is actually no evidence for this claim. There are flawed arguments. Nothing more.

as i stated, we know that this universe had a beginning - mostly because of the intrinsic in it, that we refer to as time.

Yes, the universe in its present state had a beginning.

so either 1) it created itself or 2) something else was responsible.

This sounds like a false dichotomy to me.

Have you exhausted all possible choices?

Just because you can only think of 2 choices, doesn't mean there aren't more.

to assume 1, we would need to think that there is something in this universe for which there is an effect without a cause. every single cause has an effect, as far as we can determine.

This is a major flaw in your argument, the same with all versions of the cosmological arguments.

This the called the 'fallacy of composition'. Which takes the form:

1. The parts of the whole X have characteristics A, B, C, etc.
2. Therefore the whole X must have characteristics A, B, C.

What you are doing is claiming that since everything we know of within the universe has a cause and effect relationship, the universe itself must obey the same rules.

Cause and effect almost certainly do not apply to the universe itself.

The modus ponens of your argument is unsouond due to this fallacy of composition.

I might continue with the rest of your fallacious argument later, but since it is already unsound up to this point, not sure if I should bother.

[jimmyjet]

Erik wrote

Jimmyjet,

1. I really don't think the idea that our universe began is evidence that there is something "outside" of the universe. Much greater minds than mine have wrestled with the subject and don't really seem to give much credence to it, other than to say that multiverses are possible, but we wouldn't know anything about them. Needless to say, it is a stretch to then assume that a god might inhabit some such place even if it exists.

2. Most important, however, is that you are engaging in an infinite regression, which you seem to recognize, but somehow you cannot accept its logical conclusion: if you propose that something can exist without a cause, which you have to do to avoid the regression, there is no reason to assume that the universe cannot exist without a cause. You say that everything we have observed suggests that they have a cause; my understanding of cosmology is that the background radiation left over from the Big Bang means we cannot peer that far back, so we can't observe whether the universe had a cause or not.

3. I agree that our understanding of the universe can be radically different within just a couple of generations, but I don't understand why anyone would consider that fact relevant to whether the notion of god is a valid assumption. Unlike scientific theories, many of which are tweaked and some discarded, the theory of god seems to survive nothwithstanding that the foundations have been removed. The Earth is not the center of the universe. Lightning isn't Zeus hurling thunderbolts. There is no evidence for souls, and plenty of evidence against their existence. Evolution shows we were not specially created. The Earth is billions of years old, not thousands. The universe is vastly larger than previously thought, we are just a tiny tiny speck, and the great majority of the universe is totally hostile to us. Etc. In other words, previous excuses for believing in gods have been hammered into dust; that is, we have many actual instances of disproof, and not one instance of positive proof. The proper stance therefore is to assume they do not exist. That might be eventually proved wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

hi erik,

1) i dont see any other choice. either it started itself, or something else besides itself started it. that is a 100% true logical statement. if we take on the assumption that something else was responsible, that something else is not part of this universe, since it was around when the universe was not. i think most physicists now actually suspect the multiverse is true. i had this thought process before many of them crossed over.

as far as knowing anything about the multiverse, i agree - we dont. other than i dont think time can be an intrinsic, like it is for us. if so, we still run into the problem of who created the creator.

but you touched on why some physicists dont like the idea of the multiverse - it takes some things out of their hands.

2) no infinite regression problem is necessary in the multiverse. it is a problem for us in our universe, because of the way that it was created. we can make no such statement about physics in the multiverse. the multiverse could be (and i think most like is) much stranger than we could possibly imagine. if it has another spatial dimension, just how could we possibly imagine it ?

i read an article about the multiverse, with a whole bunch of physicists giving what were probably over 100 different possibilities for it. it made me chuckle some. cuz they are all thinking of variations of this universe. not a one proposed anything different. of course, they could not write an article about anything if they said they had absolutely no idea, and probably could not even imagine what it would be like.

instead, they gave all such of variations. if the hubble constant was this, if the curvature was that, etc.

3) i already stated this and why. i think it is way more typical that the more people learn about the universe, that they will lean toward a god, not away from one. in our experience, the more remarkable things are typically created by the more intelligent people. that does not change my opinion that there is nothing in this universe that leans toward or away. but if one knows the human equation, it is almost a slam dunk that people will move more towards a god. remember, god is an answer to what started the spark, and what designed the system. after that, the system could very easily have been left to run on its own. so no scientific fact can ever disprove the notion of god. and while nothing can prove it either, people will tend to move towards it, imo. however, moving towards the idea that a god exists, does not mean that people will move towards all these big religions. i do think people will eventually tend to see all the hypocrisies in them, and that they have basically used people for their purpose. in fact, i think the more educated people become, the more they will spot this about religion.

[jimmyjet]

Simoon wrote

Quote:
so either 1) it created itself or 2) something else was responsible.
This sounds like a false dichotomy to me.

Have you exhausted all possible choices?

Just because you can only think of 2 choices, doesn't mean there aren't more.

not a false dichotomy at all. i already explained this in my post to erik. either A or not A. 100% true

[jimmyjet]

Simoon wrote

This is a major flaw in your argument, the same with all versions of the cosmological arguments.

This the called the 'fallacy of composition'. Which takes the form:

1. The parts of the whole X have characteristics A, B, C, etc.
2. Therefore the whole X must have characteristics A, B, C.

What you are doing is claiming that since everything we know of within the universe has a cause and effect relationship, the universe itself must obey the same rules.

Cause and effect almost certainly do not apply to the universe itself.

The modus ponens of your argument is unsouond due to this fallacy of composition.

I might continue with the rest of your fallacious argument later, but since it is already unsound up to this point, not sure if I should bother.

i did not say must. but when everything in it has a cause and effect, i think it makes sense to lean heavily in the direction that the universe did as well.

however, i did leave open the possibility that there was no cause and effect for the universe. i think it is highly unlikely.

[jimmyjet]

just a reminder - matter, space, time, gravity, light are all things that we have some knowledge about in our universe.

we can not use this knowledge to say anything definitively about what is in the multiverse.

if we were multiverse beings, 6 spatial dimensions may be the norm. effects may not need causes. some much larger dimension of sorts, with time as a portion of it, may exist.

and all these things would make sense to us if we actually existed in that environment.

they make zero sense to us in our current environment.

[Smellyoldgit]

dimmyjet wrote

i already told barney ....
i already explained this in my post to erik ....

Can one of you not on dimmyjimmy's ignore list explain that everything he writes is visible to the world.

[jimmyjet]

one other thing to toss out - most everything that i have read about the singularity is that it is not a part of this universe.

which is one of the statements about it that makes me think that we are expanding through 4 spatial dimensions, much like the flatlanders on the sphere.

their singularity, the center of the sphere is not part of their universe, but it is the point from which it sprang.

so it would probably be more proper to think about our singularity as part of the multiverse, not part of our universe.

so the actual creation of the universe would be part of the physics of the multiverse.

and of course we have no way of getting there.

which is why the big bang theory is about the development of the universe, not its creation.

[ghoulslime]

Smellyoldgit wrote

Can one of you not on dimmyjimmy's ignore list explain that everything he writes is visible to the world.

The window licker is too stupid to realize that nobody is trying to convince him of anything. He is a little court jester, here only for our amusement.

[ghoulslime]

lostsheep wrote

Lol! It's good to see some lively smack downs again!

I was just thinking the same thing. It is fun to have any occasional sheep line up for the slaughter.

[ghoulslime]

jimmyjet wrote

..i dont see any other choice. either it started itself, or something else besides itself started it.

Or it always existed in a constant state of dynamics. What a fucking genius you are!

[ghoulslime]

jimmyjet wrote

...that is a 100% true logical statement.

...claims the mutton-headed dunce who infuses his posts with fallacious arguments.

Knock it home, Jimney nitwit!

[ghoulslime]

jimmyjet wrote

i think most physicists now actually suspect the multiverse is true. i had this thought process before many of them crossed over.

Let everyone exclaim the glory of this visionary astrophysicist! Somebody get that man a fucking wheel chair right away!

[ghoulslime]

jimmyjet wrote

one other thing to toss out - most everything that i have read about the singularity is that it is not a part of this universe.

which is one of the statements about it that makes me think that we are expanding through 4 spatial dimensions, much like the flatlanders on the sphere.

their singularity, the center of the sphere is not part of their universe, but it is the point from which it sprang.

so it would probably be more proper to think about our singularity as part of the multiverse, not part of our universe.

so the actual creation of the universe would be part of the physics of the multiverse.

and of course we have no way of getting there.

which is why the big bang theory is about the development of the universe, not its creation.

Only in imagination land, you incredible fucking whack job!



The singularity that created our universe was a mass, a gravitational singularity of infinite density which contained all of the mass of the Universe. Quantum fluctuations caused it to rapidly explode in the Big Bang. The Big Bang inflated the mass of the singularity, creating spacetime and eventually the present-day Universe. The singularity WAS the universe in a single mass. And you are a mass of infinite stupidity.

[jimmyjet]

Erik wrote

Needless to say, it is a stretch to then assume that a god might inhabit some such place even if it exists.

hi erik,

i am not in anyway trying to make an argument about whether there is a place or not for a god in the multiverse.

just that it seems pretty clear that there is a multiverse.