Proof's For God's Existence

[4588686]

[quote name='Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam' timestamp='1303105886' post='2229708']
Do you Hasan understand how particles seem to move from particle to energy(wave) and back to particle and as such seem to pop in an out of existence but don't really? It is some pretty complex stuff. Do you understand how things in quantum mechanics underdetermine the results that we actually get when we do experiments? No one really does.[/QUOTE]

No. No I don't. That's why I don't make claims about contentious areas of theoretical physics.

[QUOTE]However, it is a philosophic axiom that of the things we encounter, nothing brings itself into existence but rather has a cause.[/QUOTE]

Says who? Anything can be a philosophic axiom to somebody. I've read a fair ammount of philosophy. I don't remember ever opening any book and reading about the day that philosophers decided that everything has a cause. From what I do understand of modern theoretical physics (and philosophy) the only consensus I really have seen on this issue is that we have a very limited understanding of causality and don't fully understand just what causality is. All the more so on the quantum level and in the very earliest miliseconds of cosmology.

[QUOTE]This seems to be a fairly logical axiom and not at all "some right-wing Catholic" unscientific claim. I think that this logical claim is what Socrates was asserting and not some sweeping unsupported cosmological claim.
[/quote]

It's a reasonable and intuitive axiom. Whether it is true is something nobody yet knows. Certainly not a lay person like Socrates (or myself). The point was that Socrates chose to venture into a contentious issue or modern theoretical physics and philosophy and assert some definitive result. He did right after complaining about atheists dismissing Aquinas's five ways despite their lacking in the intellectual background to understand 13th century scholastic philosophy. I'm sure you understand what I'm getting at here.

[Tally Marx]

[quote name='Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam' timestamp='1303105886' post='2229708'] However, it is a philosophic axiom that of the things we encounter, nothing brings itself into existence but rather has a cause. This seems to be a fairly logical axiom and not at all "some right-wing Catholic" unscientific claim.
[/quote]


I have only rarely heard people try to defend a Causeless (and eternal) earth position, and they sounded more like philosophers than anything else while doing it. I couldn't count the ifs and clouds that were uttered and made. The argument, though it had a scientific basis, was completely in the realm of philosophy by that time.
When it comes to the ancient history of the universe, we are ALL philosophers.

Edited April 18, 2011 by Tally Marx

[Socrates]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1303097884' post='2229687']
I'm sure many atheists dismiss Aquinas's arguments without understanding




Kind of like how some right-wing Catholics[/quote]
Yeah, if it were left-wing Episcopalians/Muslims/Buddhists/Wiccans/Baha'i making the argument, that would be totally different.
But we all know them right-wing Cath'lics are STOOPID, and therefore whatever they say can be automatically dismissed.


[quote] who lack the scientific-intellectual background to actually understand theoretical physics or cosmology make sweeping and unsupported claims about a very contentious issue in theoretical-physics and cosmology.[/quote]
Except the argument has absolutely nothing to do with physics, but metaphysics. It's about existence and Being itself.

Physics can tell us about the properties of existing material things and their actions, but can tell us absolutely nothing about why there is something rather than nothing to begin with - why a functioning physical universe exists in the first place.

And as far as I'm aware, scientific evidence all points toward the physical universe having a beginning, rather than simply existing eternally. (Incidentally, the now almost universally-accepted Big Bang theory was first formulated by a Catholic priest.)
Anything before the "Big Bang" is outside the realm of physical science.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam' timestamp='1303105886' post='2229708']
This seems to be a fairly logical axiom and not at all "some right-wing Catholic" unscientific claim. I think that this logical claim is what Socrates was asserting and not some sweeping unsupported cosmological claim.
[/quote]
But it's so much more fun to engage in ad-hominems and gratuitous political jabs, than boring old rational philosophical debate.



I don't think I'll respond to any more posts on any subject by Obama-voters, as they are obvious idiots, and obviously incapable of posting anything intelligent or worth my time.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Winchester' timestamp='1303089270' post='2229643']
[img]http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/cc358/WRCedric/bill-and-ted-socrates1.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z6M91hqCdb4/0.jpg[/img]
[/quote]
Dude, all we are is dUSt in the wind.

[4588686]

[quote name='Socrates' timestamp='1303150814' post='2229842']
Yeah, if it were left-wing Episcopalians/Muslims/Buddhists/Wiccans/Baha'i making the argument, that would be totally different.
But we all know them right-wing Cath'lics are STOOPID, and therefore whatever they say can be automatically dismissed. [/QUOTE]

[mod]personal attack- MIKolbe[/mod]I never said that right wing Catholics as such are stupid or even that right wing Catholics tend to be stupid. I was pointing out the contrast between your (reasonable) condemnation of atheists who lack an intellectual background in 13th century Scholastic philosophy criticizing Aquinas's five ways with your unsupported declarations about causality despite your lack of any credentials in physics. The "kind of like how some right-wing Catholics..." referred only to you. Not right wing Catholics in general but to one right wing Catholic who chose to contradict himself. While you are whiney you are not stupid so I doubt any of this is a surprise to you.

[QUOTE]Except the argument has absolutely nothing to do with physics, but metaphysics.[/QUOTE]

Right. Causality has nothing to do with physics.


[QUOTE]Physics can tell us about the properties of existing material things and their actions, but can tell us absolutely nothing about why there is something rather than nothing to begin with - why a functioning physical universe exists in the first place.[/QUOTE]
I didn't say that it could. It may comment on your claim that "Material things cannot ultimately cause themselves." Physics doesn't have the final say. That's something for philosophers to discuss as well. That philosophical discussion, however, is highly informed by the results of theoretical physics which have cast doubts on the traditional understanding of causality as understood by former metaphysical systems. Our understanding of causality is evolving because of scientific results which neither of us are qualified to interpret. That you chose make pronouncements about causality despite your lack of expertise stands in fairly stark contrast to your prior pronouncements about atheists who lack the proper philosophy qualifications to comment about Aquinas's five ways.



[QUOTE]And as far as I'm aware, scientific evidence all points toward the physical universe having a beginning, rather than simply existing eternally. (Incidentally, the now almost universally-accepted Big Bang theory was first formulated by a Catholic priest.)
[b]Anything before the "Big Bang" is outside the realm of physical science.[/b]
[/quote]

Hm. Hopefully there will never be any physical evidence that will cast doubts on your bold epistemological proclamations.
[url="http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/44388"]http://physicsworld....icle/news/44388[/url]

Is Penrose right? I don't know and neither do you. But obviously all the evidence isn’t in for you to get up an declare how causality works and what physics can investigate.

Edited April 22, 2011 by MIkolbe

[kafka]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1303264259' post='2230409']
Hm. Hopefully there will never be any physical evidence that will cast doubts on your bold epistemological proclamations.
[url="http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/44388"]http://physicsworld....icle/news/44388[/url]

Is Penrose right? I don't know and neither do you. But obviously all the evidence isn’t in for you to get up an declare how causality works and what physics can investigate.
[/quote]
I read that article. Excerpt:

"Central to Penrose's theory is the idea that in the very distant future the universe will in one sense become very similar to how it was at the Big Bang."

He seems to be in large part basing his theory on a speculative endpoint to our current universe. That is in my judgment pretty far out there. Chasing smoke. The article doesnt explain about the concentric circles supposedly found in the CMB. He could easily be misinterpreting them (if they truly exist).

Individual scientists tend to make a lot of interpretive errors and even errors in collecting data, which are corrected in subsequent generations. A beginning point to the universe has passed a few generations of some of the brightest and well equipped scientists in history. It fits in well with the theories of relativity and a vast amount of carefully collected scientific measurements, calculations, data, etc.

Science has its limits. Human persons have their limits. God gave us our limited reason to interpret the scientific data, and God's revelation guides the meaning of scientific data.

[Laudate_Dominum]

Small world. I was just reading this paper published yesterday.

[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1104/1104.3688v1.pdf"]Pre-Big-Bang Cosmology and Circles in the Cosmic Microwave Background[/url]

Here are some of the main papers on this that I've scoped out.

[url="http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1011/1011.3706.pdf"]Concentric circles in WMAP data may provide evidence of violent pre-Big-Bang activity[/url]
[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1012/1012.1268v1.pdf"]A search for concentric circles in the 7-year WMAP temperature sky maps[/url]
[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1012/1012.1305v3.pdf"]No evidence for anomalously low variance circles on the sky[/url]
[url="http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1012/1012.1486.pdf"]More on the low variance circles in CMB sky[/url]
[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1012/1012.1656v1.pdf"]Are There Echoes From The Pre-Big Bang Universe? A Search for Low Variance Circles in the CMB Sky[/url]
And of course the paper from yesterday linked at the top of this post...

There are other avenues of research that suggest the possibility of testable pre-big bang cosmology / multiverse hypotheses. This will be the third time in the past couple days that I've shared the following paper from Fr. William Stoeger of the Vatican Observatory:

[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0602/0602356v2.pdf"]Retroduction, Multiverse Hypotheses and Their Testability[/url]

And another paper of interest from Stoeger (with Ellis and Kirchner):

[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0407/0407329v2.pdf"]Multiverses and Cosmology: Philosophical Issues[/url]

Edited April 20, 2011 by Laudate_Dominum

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Socrates' timestamp='1303074336' post='2229559']
I don't think most modern-day atheists who blithely dismiss Aquinas's proofs for God have the philosophical-intellectual background to actually understand them (nor do most present day "theists," for that matter). Rather than address the real argument, they shoot down weak straw-men caricatures.

For the dogmatic materialist, who will only accept as proof that which uses the scientific method, God can indeed be neither proved nor disproved. But that is do to the self-imposed limitations of one's own materialist dogma (which is in itself extremely philosophically flimsy), not to any flaw in the proofs themselves.

God is Pure Act, the Source of all Being, utterly above and beyond any material thing, and thus cannot be proved in any scientific experiment designed to prove or disprove the existence of something material. You can't go into the lab and perform some experiments or physical procedures and cause God to appear in physical form, where you can shake His hand, and measure and record His physical characteristics. Such a "god" would be by nature utterly different from the Judaeo-Christian concept of God, and thus be no God at all.

Atheistic materialism is utterly incapable of dealing with the issue of being itself, why things exist, rather than not exist. It avoids the issue altogether, or declares existence to be absurd (via the atheistic existentialists).
Philosophically, atheism creates far more problems that it resolves. Material things cannot ultimately cause themselves.
[/quote]
I've yet to see any convincing means by which God can be 'proved' in any rigorous sense, scientific or otherwise. At best the philosophical "proofs" establish the logical consistency of a given natural theological concept of God. I'd be stoked to be shown otherwise. I'm still on the fence with this, but I think it may be possible to make valid probabilistic inferences as to the reality of the divine. My thoughts on this are very vague and preliminary atm though. I had this weird daydream a while back about inventing a branch of natural theology based on Bayesian probability and computer models and cr[s][/s]ap. lol.

Have you (or anyone else) read Father Spitzer's book [url="http://www.amazon.com/New-Proofs-Existence-God-Contributions/dp/0802863833/"]New Proofs for the Existence of God[/url] by chance? I've been previewing it on amazon and it seems pretty interesting. Just curious.

Peace.

Edit: fil[s][/s]ter fix.

Edited April 20, 2011 by Laudate_Dominum

[kafka]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1303286809' post='2230478']
Small world. I was just reading this paper published yesterday.

[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1104/1104.3688v1.pdf"]Pre-Big-Bang Cosmology and Circles in the Cosmic Microwave Background[/url]

Here are some of the main papers on this that I've scoped out.

[url="http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1011/1011.3706.pdf"]Concentric circles in WMAP data may provide evidence of violent pre-Big-Bang activity[/url]
[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1012/1012.1268v1.pdf"]A search for concentric circles in the 7-year WMAP temperature sky maps[/url]
[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1012/1012.1305v3.pdf"]No evidence for anomalously low variance circles on the sky[/url]
[url="http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1012/1012.1486.pdf"]More on the low variance circles in CMB sky[/url]
[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1012/1012.1656v1.pdf"]Are There Echoes From The Pre-Big Bang Universe? A Search for Low Variance Circles in the CMB Sky[/url]
And of course the paper from yesterday linked at the top of this post...

There are other avenues of research that suggest the possibility of testable pre-big bang cosmology / multiverse hypotheses. This will be the third time in the past couple days that I've shared the following paper from Fr. William Stoeger of the Vatican Observatory:

[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0602/0602356v2.pdf"]Retroduction, Multiverse Hypotheses and Their Testability[/url]

And another paper of interest from Stoeger (with Ellis and Kirchner):

[url="http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0407/0407329v2.pdf"]Multiverses and Cosmology: Philosophical Issues[/url]
[/quote]
those concentric circles are some very interesting stuff. We'll see what the scientific community does with this in the long run. One of the problems I see, is that these scientists who are doing the research are fixed on theConformal cyclic cosmology (CCC) , so that could be in part blinding their interpretation of the circles. I'm not a scientist but the circles could be evidence for something else God built into the very young universe.

CCC doesnt make sense to me based on Divine Revelation and reason. I mean it is possible, but there has to be a beginning point somewhere. One specific moment where something is created out of nothing. This is reasonable, all things have a beginning, so it makes sense that the universe as a whole has a beginning.

But I guess they will continue to search and speculate until they find God.

Edited April 20, 2011 by kafka

[Tally Marx]

[quote] He does not believe that space and time came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang but that the Big Bang was in fact just one in a series of many, with each big bang marking the start of a new "aeon" in the history of the universe. [/quote]


I was never any good at physics....
But, it seems to me that to disprove the idea that everything needs a cause, this new theory would have to prove that there was no first Bang at all. It doesn't really matter if the Bang we think is the First Bang, is in actuality the [i]First[/i] Bang. Regardless of when exactly the series began or when exactly it will end, the possibility that it could have had a beginning in the first place remains. A ray has a beginning but no end. Mayn't this be the same?
Penrose would need to prove an eternal series, without beginning or end, not just a series (which may or may not have an end).
Maybe his theory includes the assumption of an eternal series and I just missed it. If so, please enlighten me.



[size="1"]Edited for clarity[/size]

Edited April 20, 2011 by Tally Marx

[Socrates]

[quote name='kafka' timestamp='1303266776' post='2230423']
I read that article. Excerpt:

"Central to Penrose's theory is the idea that in the very distant future the universe will in one sense become very similar to how it was at the Big Bang."

He seems to be in large part basing his theory on a speculative endpoint to our current universe. That is in my judgment pretty far out there. Chasing smoke. The article doesnt explain about the concentric circles supposedly found in the CMB. He could easily be misinterpreting them (if they truly exist).
[/quote]
True. It's all really speculation, rather than scientifically verified fact.

All such materialistic "explanations" of how our universe came into being still fail to answer the question philosophically of why there is being rather than non-being.

Proposing that some kind of primal matter or other material "stuff" (even if its properties are quite different than those of the universe we know) existed prior to the "big bang" ultimately leaves you right back where you started philosophically. How did that earlier matter come into being? Why did it exist rather than nothing? And why is this primal material capable of randomly exploding into an orderly functioning universe in which intelligent life can exist?
Proposing infinite material regression does nothing to solve the central issue.

When you really consider it, it seems an incredible leap of "faith" on the atheist's part to declare that some kind of random explosion brought about the universe in all its functional order and complexity.

In our day to day experience, explosions or "big bangs" bring about destruction, disorder and chaos, rather than order and creation.


[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1303289647' post='2230480']
I've yet to see any convincing means by which God can be 'proved' in any rigorous sense, scientific or otherwise. At best the philosophical "proofs" establish the logical consistency of a given natural theological concept of God. I'd be stoked to be shown otherwise. I'm still on the fence with this, but I think it may be possible to make valid probabilistic inferences as to the reality of the divine. My thoughts on this are very vague and preliminary atm though. I had this weird daydream a while back about inventing a branch of natural theology based on Bayesian probability and computer models and cr[s][/s]ap. lol.

Have you (or anyone else) read Father Spitzer's book [url="http://www.amazon.com/New-Proofs-Existence-God-Contributions/dp/0802863833/"]New Proofs for the Existence of God[/url] by chance? I've been previewing it on amazon and it seems pretty interesting. Just curious.

Peace.

Edit: fil[s][/s]ter fix.
[/quote]
The proofs for God are logical, which is not the same thing as a physical proof. If your demanding material proof (other than the fact of material existence) itself to prove an immaterial God, then perhaps the exercise is futile. I agree with St. Thomas (who was no intellectual slouch) that it is contrary to logic and reason that the material universe be the cause of its own existence, or that there be an infinite regression of physical causes.

But no doubt I'm just saying that because of my starboard political leanings.

I haven't heard of that book, but maybe I'll check it out.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1303264259' post='2230409']
If I agree with you will it help satisfy whatever emotional insecurity you have that makes you so desperate to find martyrdom on the internet? Seeing as the odds of you ceasing to whine and posture as a victim are slim to none I guess I'll just point out how stupid your whining is. . . .
[/quote]

[img]http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g470/GregoryIRice/DudeWalter.jpg[/img]

. . . He's crackin.'

[4588686]

[quote name='Socrates' timestamp='1303322767' post='2230568']
[img]http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g470/GregoryIRice/DudeWalter.jpg[/img]

. . . He's crackin.'
[/quote]


How so, Socrates?

[Socrates]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1303322913' post='2230570']
How so, Socrates?
[/quote]
Donny, you're out of your element.