Improbability isn't proof for the intervention of a supernatural being

Alot of people, alot of the people reading this post, believe that the creation of life is so complex,that a supernatural invisible being must have had some part in creating life, that it's too complex of a thing to happen on its own. (Just reading the words "invisible being" makes me laugh at the absurdity of the idea, but that's not my point.Read on)

But for those of you who think this,you're looking at the idea backwards. You shouldn't pick an idea,and then find other idea's to help you make sense of the first idea.

Read this next part over again and again until you get it.

You look around and observe. If you find evidence of something,ie. like a tree branch lying on the ground, then you can come to a conclusion ie. there must be a tree around here. That's a hypothesis, stating a possibility based on evidence. To test your hypothesis, look around for a tree. If you find one, you were right, if you don't find a tree, you let the tree thing go.

Please bear with me...

Imagine that you took an intelligent human being that had no experience,no knowledge beyond being able to speak and reason,use his brain, and you introduced him to the world.
He has no preconcieved notions. What he sees is his reality, based %100 on what he sees (and no he doesn't have schizophrenia or anything, his observations of his physical world are sane and logical.)

Then you teach him math and biochemistry, genetics,etc so that he understands how life is formed. And through his studies he comes to the conclusion that the odds against the formation of even a one celled organism are astronomically high.

The next thing going through his head isn't "Gee this is so complicated, an invisible being that I have no evidence for existing must have had a hand in the creation of life."

Why isn't that thought going through his head?
Because remember, he's only coming to conclusions based on the evidence that he sees around him. He hasn't found any physical evidence of an invisible being, so he never even asks the question "Is there an invisible man?"

What he thinks about it is"Hey, that's neat, I just learned that somethings are way more complex than I ever imagined." and then he moves on.

Mostly I wrote this post because alot of you have thought processes that are all messed up, and I'm a jerk, so I'm bringing it up.


Thank you for your attention, and you may now tune out reality again.
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Shooby. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

You make an excellent point. If it wasn't for the pre existing and accepted God hypothesis, these people would be marginalised at best.

I'd also add that if his teachings included seeing every fossil discovery made over the last 200 years, accepting the evolution hypothesis, at least back to single celled organisms, would become inevitable. If someone espoused the flood and 6000 year old earth hypotheses, he would consider the person brain damaged, or at least not far removed from a cave man.

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(Just reading the words "invisible being" makes me laugh at the absurdity of the idea, but that's not my point.Read on)

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If you haven't heard it before, you might appreciate this:

"In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told.

Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you.

He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy [censored]!"
-- George Carlin Politically Incorrect, May 29, 1997

[BluffTHIS!]

You use good examples and logical deduction from them. However it all depends on one thing - observable phenomena. Now granting that all phenomena is not observable by us either in time or place because of scientific limitations which we might overcome in the future or not, it is still clear that after deducing that a quantum singularity was the source of the big bang that produced the universe, there are two indisputable conclusions.

1) There was a cause/creator of that quantum singularity; and

2) It is impossible even with the most advanced instruments, travel and unlimited time to discern what that cause was because there can be no trace of that cause observable by the physical nature of the singularity.

So then what was the cause of the singularity? As I have said before, Stephen Hawking calls it "God", even though he does not believe in a personal deity.

[siegfriedandroy]

You have no idea what this 'unbiased' person would think if presented with such a scenario. You are imposing your naturalistic presuppositions upon him. Who knows what he would think when presented with phenomena whose possibility of evolving by chance is astronomically against the odds. Personally, I usually bet against such phenomena that are nearly, if not immpossible.

You people make me want to throw up. Never mind.
Shooby

[BluffTHIS!]

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Mostly I wrote this post because alot of you have thought processes that are all messed up, and I'm a jerk, so I'm bringing it up.

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If you can't logically or scientifically rebut my response which was made on scientific and logical grounds, then perhaps it is your thought processes and scientific understanding that is deficient.

[KeysrSoze]

OK then, how about that it is NOT indisputable that a creator (whether some sentient god or otherwise) was needed. For instance, Edward Tryon proposed that the universe may be a large scale quantum mechanical vacuum fluctuation where positive mass-energy is balanced by negative gravitational potential energy. In other words, it could have literally appeared out of nothing.

[BluffTHIS!]

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In other words, it could have literally appeared out of nothing.

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Something had to have been the cause of its appearance out of nothing. What do you call that cause?

[snappo]

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In other words, it could have literally appeared out of nothing.

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Something had to have been the cause of its appearance out of nothing. What do you call that cause?

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something had to have been the cause of that cause. what do you call the cause of that cause?

[Alex/Mugaaz]

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In other words, it could have literally appeared out of nothing.

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Something had to have been the cause of its appearance out of nothing. What do you call that cause?

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something had to have been the cause of that cause. what do you call the cause of that cause?

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As it was pointed out here before, there may be naturally occuring events without a causes, search for half life.

[snappo]

i agree with you. in fact i was trying to make the same point.

Ok, I'll respond now. The "I'm going to throw up" feeling has subsided.
This response is directed to BluffTHIS! BTW:

First of all, I don't really know alot about the big bang theory, and other theories of how the universe started. I have general knowledge gleemed from NOVA and PBS, but in no way do I "really" understand the theories.

But even though I don't fully understand the theories, I do realize that the theories are just that, "theories".
We can only sort of guess.

You said"1) There was a cause/creator of that quantum singularity"

Sure, of course there's a cause, everything has a cause.
But a creator. The reason that you bring a "creator" into the mix is because:
1.It seems that you have a pre-formed belief that you are trying to justify
2.Because the big bang is a very complicated thing, and if that is how the universe started, we hardly understand it at all. And because we hardly understand it at all, it seems to me that you think "it's complicated,so something must have guided it in to being".

What was before the Big Bang? What was the cause of it? What was before it? Can matter be created out of nothing?
These are questions that are mostly unanswered, they are dam ned hard questions, but just because we don't understand something, doesn't mean that some invisible force that we have" no physical evidence" for existing had anything to do with anything.

You seem to have some scientific knowledge BluffTHIS!,
which makes the idea that you believe in the invisible man more suprising.

WHY do you "believe" in the "INVISIBLE MAN'????????

There is no, I REPEAT, no physical evidence of anything supernatural existing.

If you're going subscribe to logical thought, please stick to the evidence. When you don't,and I read your replies, the "vomiting" feeling comes back, and pepto bismal is nasty.LOL.

And by the way, just because Stephen Hawking says something puting the words God and Big Bang in the same idea, that doesn't make it true. Stephen Hawking is subject to the same rules as every other logical mind, an if he chooses to believe in something for which there is no evidence for, I would much rather have him leave that out of his writings.

Shooby /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[BluffTHIS!]

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As it was pointed out here before, there may be naturally occuring events without a causes, search for half life.

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All you mean is that certain physicists have postulated same without proof. And if you have been reading these forums for months and read earlier exchanges on it, then you would have seen my responses. And the only things that do come close are subatomic actions. Failure of science to be able at this level of knowledge to explain those apparent uncaused actions does not consist of proof of non-causality. Stating that it does is an example of the logical fallacy of affirming a consequent from a negative premise. And there is a very possible explanation: quantum entanglement.

[BluffTHIS!]

Shooby, I never said that just because Hawking calls the first cause "God" that it implied my particular religious views of God are correct. And I made clear that he does not believe in a personal god. But you never answered the question: what do you call the the cause of the quantum singularity?

How would I know? We can't replicate the beginning of our universe, and we can't go back and observe, so nobody knows.
But I know that based on evidence, the question shouldn't be "Did a supernatural being help?"

Shooby

[BluffTHIS!]

Since when you reach the quantum singularity you have reached the theoretical beginning of our universe, and since there by its very nature cannot be any observable evidence of what preceded it, then saying that a supernatural being created it is a valid logical hypothesis, although not a scientific one since it lacks falsifiability. If you think otherwise then provide an alternative besides a denial of that hypothesis. And please don't be stupid enough to use an alternative physical theory to the big bang since the logic would be the same.

You said:
"If you think otherwise then provide an alternative besides a denial of that hypothesis"
Nice way of trying to twist out of that one.
It's not logical to state a hypothesis without any evidence.
You don't seem to grasp that.
It's a huge point, and it means "everything" when deciding about the God question.
I think that purple headed lime monsters are going to overtake the universe tomorrow at 3 o'clock eastern standards time.
The logical man says" what evidence do you have?
The guy says"None, but I heard about this idea from another person, so now the idea is alive."
The logician:"Without evidence, even the hypothesis is meaningless,it shouldn't exist."

Shooby

I understand, your saying"What if he has a good imagination and comes up with the idea that flying monsters exist" without him ever having any evidence for the existence of flying monsters.
You said"You are imposing your naturalistic presuppositions upon him."

There is only one correct view of observable physical phenomena. If your view differs, I don't know what to tell you. I already explained it once.
Shooby

[Alex/Mugaaz]

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As it was pointed out here before, there may be naturally occuring events without a causes, search for half life.

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All you mean is that certain physicists have postulated same without proof. And if you have been reading these forums for months and read earlier exchanges on it, then you would have seen my responses. And the only things that do come close are subatomic actions. Failure of science to be able at this level of knowledge to explain those apparent uncaused actions does not consist of proof of non-causality. Stating that it does is an example of the logical fallacy of affirming a consequent from a negative premise. And there is a very possible explanation: quantum entanglement.

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My only point was that this idea is not certain, all speculation about God's existence because of this relies on the fact that it IS 100% accurate. I am implying NOTHING more.

[snappo]

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As it was pointed out here before, there may be naturally occuring events without a causes, search for half life.

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All you mean is that certain physicists have postulated same without proof. And if you have been reading these forums for months and read earlier exchanges on it, then you would have seen my responses...

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you have done the same thing you accuse physicists of doing. you say that physicists claim something can occur without a "cause" without proof. well you claim that every event must have a cause without proof:

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Something had to have been the cause of its appearance out of nothing.

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where is the proof of that?

[hurlyburly]

It's all about the afterlife. Everything else is justification to reinforce the idea that people will live in the love of god for all eternity. Take away the afterlife and there is no religion. A chance at immortality is all they want.

[hurlyburly]

What makes it improbable is that the big bang theory doesn't require a god at all. God was already the progenitor, so he was added in as the cause. You could just as easily believe that god was created then too, and it took him billions of years to get bored of flying around, he found our ball of gas, took a nap in the center, and the solar system formed around him. "All" didn't reach very far for early man.

My version is more accurate anyway, Genesis doesn't give him credit for the whole universe. The bit about the stars may give him credit for our galaxy, but there's certainly no indicator of the other galaxies, so it's a man-made extension.

[hurlyburly]

"phenomena whose possibility of evolving by chance is astronomically against the odds"

Sample size is too tiny.

[hurlyburly]

"an example of the logical fallacy of affirming a consequent from a negative premise."

aka faith?