Stephen Hawking gives up on God!

[Jon_Day]

O come off it man! what is wrong with you!?? are you so unread you can't see what final cause in front of your face? just because he doesn't' use that term doesn't' mean that's not what he's describing. oblivious it is..

Actually that's completely wrong. When he says "forces like gravity" he is clearly speaking of more than just gravity alone. See, when we put an "s" at the end of a word, it becomes plural. There was not a statement that indicated that gravity is the final cause of existence. Besides all this, that was simply an incredibly brief, cherry picked excerpt for an article. So not only did you get the concept wrong, but you got it wrong from a really simple little clip.

he didn't say anything about supernatural. he doesn't go by the little atheist straw man the cult has brain washed you to believe is the real issue belief in God..

I literally have no idea what you're trying to say here. All I can gather from it is: atheism bad. me good.

the er zots made up hijacked version of supernatural you don't even understand but it's a word you dared not even knowing what it means..

What are you talking about? What does this have to do with the discussion at hand? Why do you just keep telling me I don't understand things and attempt to attack my intellect? I may not be a physicist, but I'd like to think I'm capable of handling the significantly simple subject matter we're tackling in our exchanges...you and I. I've not heard a single iota of complex thought come from you, but you always approach me as if I should be in awe of your statements, and that my mind is that of a child who simply does not understand your lofty concepts. Talk about ego.

I got it, need it or not, you don't got it..

Got what? Milk? How about actually saying something of substance instead of recycling jargon and cliches. So far all I hear from you is: red herring, strawman, poison the well, atheists bad. It's getting tiresome. I could have this same conversation with a 12 year old kid, and it would likely result in the same. I don't even understand what you're saying you've got that I don't got.

that's false reasoning. First of all it can't be verified. micro verification of localized incidence does not prove universal verification of macro scale truth. Just because you can verify the immediate physical world arund you doe snot prove that's all there is..

I don't see where I suggested that because I can verify my immediate physical surroundings that this means that's all there is. The question was what would be the justification for supporting materialism, and I was simply suggesting that there are plenty of reasons, one being the fact that you can verify your immediate physical surroundings...yet you cannot verify whatever else there may be. Because you cannot verify what else there may be, the possibilities of what else there may be are endless. It could be, literally, anything. What basis of reason would you have for supporting that OVER what comes first, which is your immediate physical surroundings. Personally, I'm glad I don't bump into walls, and one of the reasons I don't is because I'm willing to believe that my immediate physical surroundings are real, solid, and that my need to interact with them is far superior to my need to interact with a limitless amount of possibilities of "what else there may be".

secondly, SN (the real version not the counterfeit that you argue agaisnt but the real thing) has been verified by 200 empirical studies..

I don't know what version you're talking about that is counterfeit. I'm curious about it, so if you'd care to explain, I will admit I do not understand what you're talking about with this statement.

trying to put a spin on not being able to answer the argument. you lose the argument, you don't get to pass the baton off to team mates.

Actually, you did not provide an argument specifically...you provided separate statements that each can be debated separately. I chose to debate those that I had adequate information about, and chose to leave the other alone...as I did not have enough information to debate it. This fact does not make the statements that I did refute accurate, it simply means the last statement is not something which I can adequately refute. I have no "teammates" as you're calling them. Perhaps there are other people who post on this messageboard who have some sort of similarities in their viewpoint...but we are all very different people, do not meet, and have no agenda.

[Jon_Day]

YourMaster:
Is there some reason to believe in god? Wishful thinking can be a reason I suppose.

Intelligence is a better one. Our humanity is another. But then humanity is something you creatures lost sight of a long time ago.

What creatures are you referring to specifically?

[element771]

The necessity of appealing to the divine as an explanation for why a given phenomenon occurs has decreased correlating with the rise of the scientific method, no?

This misses the point entirely.

No one is suggesting the God of the Gaps...I hate the God of the Gaps argument.

Science could explain every natural phenomenon there is (and I believe that it can) and it would still not answer the most fundamental question. The question is what Hawking asks in Brief History of Time. Science is able to explain the natural world but what breathes fire into the equations?

[MooseOnTheLoose]

Atheists accuse Christians of approaching science by assuming God exists and working back from there.

Atheists, however, assume that God does not exist and work back from there.

Don't try to say they don't, because they do.

[MooseOnTheLoose]

Originally posted by Jaecp
The necessity of appealing to the divine as an explanation for why a given phenomenon occurs has decreased correlating with the rise of the scientific method, no?

So do you believe that science will ultimately know everything about everything?

If this occurs then science will become redundant, and man will be God.

Perhaps this is what Dawkins and his ilk believe will happen. There is no God but science (and evolution) will make us God. Wow.

In any case, and as I've already stated, God's science is infinitely better than yours.

[MooseOnTheLoose]

BTW as a Christian I can't recall ever appealing to the divine for an explanation of a given phenomenon, even though there is much about this universe I obviously don't understand.

[element771]

So do you believe that science will ultimately know everything about everything?

I believe that this can potentially happen as long as we are referring to the inner working of the universe.

If this occurs then science will become redundant, and man will be God.

I don't see how this follows. Simply knowing the rules does make one God.

[showmeproof]

This misses the point entirely.

No one is suggesting the God of the Gaps...I hate the God of the Gaps argument.

Science could explain every natural phenomenon there is (and I believe that it can) and it would still not answer the most fundamental question. The question is what Hawking asks in Brief History of Time. Science is able to explain the natural world but what breathes fire into the equations?

The equations are descriptions of what is and how it works..in that sense.scientists breathe fire into the equations. Why those equations match up with the observations is due to the method that they use. Your question: "What breathes fire into the equations" is simply a restatement of "why is there something rather than nothing". I'm not saying I have an answer, nor do I truly know whether science has that answer as Hawking thinks may be the case. But, what makes you think that something or someone needs to 'breathe fire into the equation', why do the equations have to have an intentional purpose? Is it possible that this is just an ill-phrased question that may not have an answer?

[Metacrock]

The equations are descriptions of what is and how it works..in that sense.scientists breathe fire into the equations. Why those equations match up with the observations is due to the method that they use. Your question: "What breathes fire into the equations" is simply a restatement of "why is there something rather than nothing". I'm not saying I have an answer, nor do I truly know whether science has that answer as Hawking thinks may be the case. But, what makes you think that something or someone needs to 'breathe fire into the equation', why do the equations have to have an intentional purpose? Is it possible that this is just an ill-phrased question that may not have an answer?

that doesn't prove what makes it work. you are talking a hypothetical discretion. I can make a real detailed drawing of the enterprise but that wont make the transporter work.

[showmeproof]

that doesn't prove what makes it work. you are talking a hypothetical discretion. I can make a real detailed drawing of the enterprise but that wont make the transporter work.

Yes but what makes you think that there needs to be an intentional purpose behind the equations? Why, cannot the equations just explain a reality that just is; with complete indifference?

When we attempt to break down the universe into it's forces and particles we are stripping it down to its fundamental components and attempting to understand how they interact...not why they are there in the first place; that is a mute point because they are fundamental particles. Sometimes we have conceptualizations of how they might interact (hypotheses), but in other cases we have direct observational evidence which further narrows the properties of some of the more theoretical particles.

You are asserting that because science can't answer the why the fundamental particles are there in the first place that god must be the answer....and despite your attempt and that of Element's this is a god of the gaps argument. Why do you propose the concept of God as an answer to anything? Nonetheless a very complex god that has intentions that has uncannily human like mental properties...but even better its the greatest mind that can be conceive...why should we think that such a thing exists as the foundation, or as you say the 'ground of being'? Why something so complex at the start, why not something much simpler?

[YourMaster]

that doesn't prove what makes it work. you are talking a hypothetical discretion. I can make a real detailed drawing of the enterprise but that wont make the transporter work.

Believe it or not physicists are working on teleportation.

In subsequent years, other scientists have demonstrated teleportation experimentally in a variety of systems, including single photons, coherent light fields, nuclear spins, and trapped ions. Teleportation promises to be quite useful as an information processing primitive, facilitating long range quantum communication (perhaps unltimately leading to a "quantum internet"), and making it much easier to build a working quantum computer. But science fiction fans will be disappointed to learn that no one expects to be able to teleport people or other macroscopic objects in the foreseeable future, for a variety of engineering reasons, even though it would not violate any fundamental law to do so.

http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

This is a pretty old article (there's been much done since then, but I'm lazy right now & I don't feel finding more articles).

[Jaecp]

Why did physics have to come from anywhere? Why can't it be intrinsic?

Response

Why did god have to come from anywhere? Can't he be intrinsic

Rebuttal

We can observe physics, play with it, make it ours
God... not so much

Proving Physics to exist in the first place is a trivial matter

Provijn a god to exist in the first place is not a trivial matter, seeing as how its still on the theists "to do" list :P

Not sure how serious you are, so imma sleep

True in the sense that one of Dawkin's favourite hobbyhorses is the "Who created the creator" business so if physics didn't need one then you can tell him neither did God.

You want to observe God, play with him, make him yours? Best of luck, mate!

Proving God exists requires an atheist to remove certain mental chocks and allow his perceptions to run more freely. Unfortunately too many off them are caught in a loop chasing their own scientific tails.

It boils back down to the "if humans can't directly observe it, comprehend it, or place it within the boundaries of human science then it can't and doesn't exist" line of thinking.

Not "freethinking" at all in other words.

Not strictly true,

Proving that your god exist requires more than just atheists getting rid of their chocks or whatnot, its also any non-christian theist. They have no problem with the supernatural, yet have no chosen your god/religion.

The problem we run into is that we have people who are holding on to ideas that formed in an era when people knew very little about the world around them (compared to what we know now) and had a plethora of false beliefs about how the world operates. We know, for a fact, that many of those beliefs are simply not true. Belief in a god (whether its yours or another religions) is the last hold out of ideas from an era where people believed the earth was the center of the universe, everything was made of 4 (or 5, if your chinese) elements or any number of other patently false ideas.

With the idea of god, many of them are described in fashions that are difficult to provide evidence for, for or against, and essentially unfalsifiable.

Let me ask you one question here, Moose,

Why should I consider that your specific god is responsible for everything thats around us in the first place?

So do you believe that science will ultimately know everything about everything?

If this occurs then science will become redundant, and man will be God.

Perhaps this is what Dawkins and his ilk believe will happen. There is no God but science (and evolution) will make us God. Wow.

In any case, and as I've already stated, God's science is infinitely better than yours.

It has certainly been the trend over time to replace theistic explanation for scientific ones. I think that on a long enough time line (seeing as how modern science is quite young, really, so I'm speaking of a period of time in the millions or billions of years) we will be able to know what is knowable

Man becomes god? What? Science is not a god. Your off in left field mate.

BTW as a Christian I can't recall ever appealing to the divine for an explanation of a given phenomenon, even though there is much about this universe I obviously don't understand.

But of course, you live in the modern era and not the bronze age.

This misses the point entirely.

No one is suggesting the God of the Gaps...I hate the God of the Gaps argument.

Science could explain every natural phenomenon there is (and I believe that it can) and it would still not answer the most fundamental question. The question is what Hawking asks in Brief History of Time. Science is able to explain the natural world but what breathes fire into the equations?

Don't you see how Metacrocks entire point is that of a god of the gaps question?

A question is not being answered (Metacrock asking why until we don't know) and then a solution is proposed (God)

Thats about as GotG as it gets

[Tassman]

former is dependent upon latter IN BIOLOGY. not in other things. so you don't have an argument.

What other things?

you are only arguing that your little tiny pathetically limited same of data should control the way we understand a huge seemingly infinite universe which we have no yet begun to explore.

We have no evidence of anything else …so yes.

It's equally a scientific fact that the observation only applies to biological life, and since consciousness is not reducible to brain chemistry we have reason to believe to that it's part of the universe as a whole.

Well, yes it is. No brain = no mind. To believe our mind is a “part of the universe as a whole” is a bare assertion. Further, there are known physical reasons why such a phenomenon occurs.

You are referring to so-called ‘Self Transcendence’, i.e. a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify as an integral part of the universe as a whole. Such a phenomenon is purely physical and demonstrably caused by selective brain damage.

Recent research has explored the neural basis of spirituality by conducting before and after studies of patients having a brain tumor removed. The result was: "Damage to posterior parietal areas induced unusually fast changes of a stable personality dimension related to transcendental self-referential awareness. Thus, dysfunctional parietal neural activity appears to underpin altered spiritual and religious attitudes and behaviors." Feb. 11th 2010 issue of the journal ‘Neuron’.

This has reinforced previous studies re the direct causal link between brain- functioning and Self Transcendence”.

apparently you don't know what proto pan psychism means. it means mind is the basis of reality, Mind creates energy and all else that is. So the universe is like a thought in am big mind.

……hence god, with the universe and us existing in his all-encompassing mind! Nice idea but completely unsupported by evidence.

[YourMaster]

you are only arguing that your little tiny pathetically limited same of data should control the way we understand a huge seemingly infinite universe which we have no yet begun to explore.

That's what you guys do. Every single metaphysical cosmological argument I've seen suggests our little intuition can provide an infallible guide to everything (superintuition)

You're the folks making the affirmative claim, not us. Where science is silent I freely admit that I don't know. Where they have a hypothesis that although looks very good on paper, isn't proven and doesn't enjoy wide support, I present it for what it is (a hypothesis that isn't yet proven and doesn't enjoy wide support). I don't extrapolate a magic wizard from ignorance, nor do I misrepresent or place false hope in unproven scientific theories.

In fact the basis of my arguments are usually that since we don't know we can't formulate a valid logical argument from a wild guess. The basis for my religious skepticism isn't completely scientific. I don't need to guess whether or not there's other universes, I only need to examine the intrinsic reliability of religious claims based solely on things down here on earth. I know you guys have no more proof for your god-man claim than the imams have for their stories, the rabbi's for the burning bush, the Greeks for Zeus, etc. I can discern myth from reality without help from a telescope!

[Tassman]

This misses the point entirely.

No one is suggesting the God of the Gaps...I hate the God of the Gaps argument.

Science could explain every natural phenomenon there is (and I believe that it can) and it would still not answer the most fundamental question. The question is what Hawking asks in Brief History of Time. Science is able to explain the natural world but what breathes fire into the equations?

On what basis do you assume that there is more than “the natural world”? And why would you assume that there is need for “fire to be breathed into the equations” and that such a ‘fire-breather’ is a supernatural deity?