The Atheological Argument from Scale

[singpeace]

Normally I cite sources in a forum like this. Right now I'm tired, so I'm just going to talk from my heart.

For what it's worth:

Why do any of us collect things we never use? Because we can; we like them; we feel we earned them; we have plans for them; or they make us feel we are at home.

God explaining himself to me is like Trump explaining all his plans and dreams and desires and knowledge to a two year old child. I don't need him to explain himself to me or prove himself to me. What I don't know now, I will know soon enough.

My Father is honorable, honest, good, kind, and merciful. I love him and know I am safe with him. He pays for everything I have - even gives me air to breathe and has my whole future mapped out for me guaranteeing that I will be beyond wealthy one day. I was an orphan and poor but he adopted me. He chose me. He is my Dad.

He makes my life easier, not more difficult. He makes me happy and content with myself. He keeps me out of trouble. He forgives me every time I mess up. I lay my head on my pillow and feel peace; not fear. He takes care of every need I have. He's way richer than Trump, and He's your Father, too.

WHAT IF it is all really true, just like the Book says? Every atheist has asked that question just as every Christian at some point has wondered if God were real. If we are a product of chance... and finite... how can we have purpose at all? But we do have purpose... every human being knows deep in his heart it isn't really by chance.

Sorry, guess I vented a bit.

[Jon_Day]

Normally I cite sources in a forum like this. Right now I'm tired, so I'm just going to talk from my heart.

For what it's worth:

Why do any of us collect things we never use? Because we can; we like them; we feel we earned them; we have plans for them; or they make us feel we are at home.

God explaining himself to me is like Trump explaining all his plans and dreams and desires and knowledge to a two year old child. I don't need him to explain himself to me or prove himself to me. What I don't know now, I will know soon enough.

My Father is honorable, honest, good, kind, and merciful. I love him and know I am safe with him. He pays for everything I have - even gives me air to breathe and has my whole future mapped out for me guaranteeing that I will be beyond wealthy one day. I was an orphan and poor but he adopted me. He chose me. He is my Dad.

He makes my life easier, not more difficult. He makes me happy and content with myself. He keeps me out of trouble. He forgives me every time I mess up. I lay my head on my pillow and feel peace; not fear. He takes care of every need I have. He's way richer than Trump, and He's your Father, too.

WHAT IF it is all really true, just like the Book says? Every atheist has asked that question just as every Christian at some point has wondered if God were real. If we are a product of chance... and finite... how can we have purpose at all? But we do have purpose... every human being knows deep in his heart it isn't really by chance.

Sorry, guess I vented a bit.

See...here's what I don't really get...you say God shouldn't have to explain himself...and yet there's this really big book where that's about all He does (or at least that's what those who believe often say).

Problem is...a lot of those explanations don't make a lot of sense. So if He shouldn't have to explain Himself...why is there so much emphasis put on the explanation of His "will"?

[ENeGMA]

But they also stopped assuming it.

After they did assume it.

You are assuming that some ancient standard you imagine (but are wrong about) was in place and once in place must always be in place.you don't have a concept of theological evolution. Theological views are just human understanding. Human understanding grows.

Exactly.

And pretty soon human understanding will grow such that there won't be any need for theology.

That's certainly been the historical trend. I bet it continues.

I covered that. the issue was not the shape of the erath. They give a a rat's hind quarters what the shape of the earth was or how the sun goes. The issue was chruch authority.

This is just sophistry.

The issue was the Church's authority to decide issues like whether the earth revolved around the sun or not, which they did.

wrong! go learn some history you man! I am a history of ideas guy. I was a Ph.D. candidate in the history of ideas and I studied the history of science. I know this is bs. go learn it. what you are sayign is popular misconception.

Nope.

What you're saying is a popular misconception among know-it-all contrarian pedants.

Galileo was criticized by the Church partly for his support of heliocentrism.

Nope. was not! the issue was Aristotle. some historians have even argued that the real issue was that Galileo offended the pope who had been his friend, and that pope was getting even. I don't know if that's really credible but the point is there's a lot more to it than the popular view.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/galileo/#4

"I have been judged vehemently suspect of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the sun in the centre of the universe and immoveable, and that the earth is not at the center of same, and that it does move. Wishing however, to remove from the minds of your Eminences and all faithful Christians this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error, heresy, and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. (Quoted in Shea and Artigas 194)"

So I guess you know the issue better than Galileo?



Come on.

If you knew what that phrase meant you would know how totally absurd your statement is. Of cousre it has everything to do it it. but of course you don't know what it means because you don't read theology.

I don't read the kind of theology you read, inspired by Hegel and Heideggar and other continental philosophers.

every day you come o the net and tell religious people who much greater you intellect is than there but you never bother to study what they believe do you?

As if the kind of theology you do is at all representative of most of Christian theology.

God as being itself totally destroys the idea that God is a big man in the sky who plans out the universe step by step.

God as being is an idea rejected by huge amounts of the Christian faith.

NO not necessarily. They used to incision the world was like that. The idea of an open limitless expanse of outspread is really pretty new. As late as 1700s science thought there wasn't much past our solar system and a few stars. As late as the 1890s one could still find absurdly ridiculous ideas at the popular level such as a glass dome over the earth holding air in.

Yet atheists existed in those periods.

I'm speaking probabalistically.

In such a universe, wouldn't the supposition that God existed by more probable?

Don't look now but you just beat your own argument. I don't think it would prove it but say you are right. You just gave a ratioanl reason to create a big universe.

God wants you to find him but he doesn't want it to be done deal.

How do you know this?

He wants you to have to search. that's why he didn't make his existence obvious. Since God wants you to search (to instill the ideals of the good) that's' a reason to make such a big universe.

This is exactly my point about religious "explanations" being ad hoc rationalizations of whatever the religious person wants to believe.

If God were obvious then God exists because it's obvious that God exists.

If God were not obvious then God exists because God wouldn't want it to be obvious that he exists.

What a good argument.

YOU THINK TAT BECAUSE YOU DON'T READ THEOLOGY! SO YOU DON'T' KNOW WHAT THE REAL CHRISTIAN THINKERS SAY!

By "real Christian thinkers" you mean van Til, Tillich, and like 3 other people.

so what if they are?

Then we have no reason to believe theological "explanations" because they explain nothing.

They're just circumlocutions to get the idea of God not to contradict the manifest reality.

All you've proven is that you can make "God" compatible with any evidence by coming up with an absurd enough explanation about how God behaves ("He wants us to NOT have any evidence that exists! Therefore the lack of evidence that he exists is irrefutible evidence that he exists!), and calling this "sophisticated theology".

you are assuming God would give all the answer in a neat little bow that assumes God is a big man in the sky. All the assumptions a you are making fit a kind of Christianity that country hicks use back int eh 1800s but not thta is used today by major theologians. see what I'm saying?

It's only good for weeding out the uninformed.

So the uninformed include those who believe in a personal deity?

[Howze]

I was wondering if this passage has any bearing on the discussion:

Gen 15: 4-6 4 Then the word of the LORD came to him: "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." 5 He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."

6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

The passage points to the infinity of stars so I don't see the problem with an infinity of size (so to speak) in which they are contained should be a problem for the believer.

[Jon_Day]

I was wondering if this passage has any bearing on the discussion:

Gen 15: 4-6 4 Then the word of the LORD came to him: "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." 5 He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."

6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

The passage points to the infinity of stars so I don't see the problem with an infinity of size (so to speak) in which they are contained should be a problem for the believer.

Maybe that line just means the dude would have a lot of descendants.

Maybe it means that we are all made of star stuff...and so shall all offspring be...as well as everything else for that matter.

Where does the passage point to the infinity of stars? Just because He says "if indeed you can count them"? This doesn't imply infinity. He doesn't say you cannot can't them, only questions if you could. This could be due to the fact that they "twinkle" in and out...often when you go to count them...it's very difficult to keep track of where you were...because the planet is moving, and some of them are dying.

[Seasanctuary]

I hear it was harder to count the stars before street lamps.

[Metacrock]

He's merely stating that it would have been within the realm of possibility for God to create a smaller universe. He's not asserting any assumptions whatsoever.

that's absurd. it's presented to us as an argument.

[Metacrock]

After they did assume it.

look mr fundamentalist atheist you are living in the century before last and you think the only form of religious thought is that, what was in the 1800s in the American west. you are just trying to destroy soemthing that is not what I believe it's not what most modern Christian thinkers believe. You want to keep religion in the past so you keep flogging it's corpose and feeling good about how God can't send you to tell becuase you have this rotting corpse of religion you can flog every now and then. Tht's not going to cut it. It's not modern, not post modern, it's "nowehresville."

It's ignorance.

Exactly.

yes, ignorant.

And pretty soon human understanding will grow such that there won't be any need for theology.

That's certainly been the historical trend. I bet it continues.

No it's not the trend obviously, since I am there, I am a theologian and I am an evolutionist, I know more about evolution than you do I can argue for it more effectively. I'm a modern thinker, you are stuck back in Bugtussel with Uncle Jed trying to overcome what you learned in Sunday school when you were eight.

the historical trend clearly is for theology to keep pace with modern thought, but hicks who read theology don't know that. so there's a whole world of theology going o;n at Oxford, Harvard, Yale and places like that that you never heard of. Uncle Jed didn't tell you about it.

This is just sophistry.

one good bit of sophistry deserves another.

The issue was the Church's authority to decide issues like whether the earth revolved around the sun or not, which they did.

NOPE! was not. That's the issue uninformed atheists who don't read history read back into it through stereotypes because they don't care to learn the truth and hey don't know how to learn history.

If that was the issue it's irrelevant today because they chruch assume such authority today. It doesn't' want it. It doesn't need it.

Nope.

What you're saying is a popular misconception among know-it-all contrarian pedants.

here's what you are asy that Meta (before]

"wrong! go learn some history you man! I am a history of ideas guy. I was a Ph.D. candidate in the history of ideas and I studied the history of science. I know this is bs. go learn it. what you are sayign is popular misconception. "

so that's the way little know nothings who don't history dismiss their intellectual betters and academic scholarship by calling them names and just demanding "NOPE>"

that's betting your ignorance.

Galileo was criticized by the Church partly for his support of heliocentrism.



http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/galileo/#4

So tell me how it is that before him the very same concept (Copernican)was advanced for decades but because it was presented as a mathematical way to adjust the epicycles and not a challenge to chruch authority no one cared and one got in trouble?

the Copernican system wasn't in trouble until Galileo made an issue of it. He died in 1543 and they didn't make his system hertical until 1616 why do long?

you don't know the facts, you have not studied it, you find one quote on a little surface level website and you think you scored some huge victory. you are stupid to go read a book.

get the book man! God and Nature by Numbers and Law, or The book by Popkin and read the facts!

"I have been judged vehemently suspect of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the sun in the centre of the universe and immoveable, and that the earth is not at the center of same, and that it does move. Wishing however, to remove from the minds of your Eminences and all faithful Christians this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error, heresy, and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. (Quoted in Shea and Artigas 194)"

So I guess you know the issue better than Galileo?

Of course you think that settles it because you so shallow you have no concept of the complexities. This is the guy himself not the people persecuting him. So Obviously he will interpret the reasons in a way taht makes them look evil and himself venerated.

You are ignoring a huge amount of complex stuff and these guys wont let you quote quotes.you are going get your post zapped.

read the book I listed ignoramus.


what really demonstrates how dumb you are is the fact that you are too blind see the stuff you think supports you actually supports me. I said the true issue was not "let's stop science" but chruch authority. so what have you proved to show that's not true, nothing!

You can show the chruch disagreed with Copernicus. why? becasue he disproved Aristotle and the chruch liked Apostle just as I said.

That means I'm right, figure it out little guy.

[ENeGMA]

It takes a special kind of arrogance to continually bring up the fact that you never even got your PhD as some mark of your intellectual superiority.

You know what we both have in common? Neither of us have PhDs. Get over yourself.

The Galileo affair was due, in part, to his position vis a vis the rotation of the Earth and the Church's opinion on that matter.

"One quote on a surface level website". It's the SEP, a peer-reviewed encylopedia. The article's written by Machamer, one of the leading philosophers and historians of science in philosophy today.

He teaches at the HPS program at Pitt, universally regarded as the best HPS program in the world.

Your arrogance on this issue, as on every other, is astounding.

I'm sure there were other issues involved, sociological and otherwise. But that doesn't change the fact that the nature of the universe was a central issue.

But anyway, back to the main issue: get over yourself. Pride comes before the fall, I once heard.

[Howze]

Maybe that line just means the dude would have a lot of descendants.

Yep, that too.

Maybe it means that we are all made of star stuff...and so shall all offspring be...as well as everything else for that matter.

Not so sure about that exegesis

Where does the passage point to the infinity of stars? Just because He says "if indeed you can count them"? This doesn't imply infinity. He doesn't say you cannot can't them, only questions if you could.

You can't count them because they are virtually infinite in number. God asking Abraham to 'count the stars' is asking him to consider whom is making these promises to him. Someone who made an infinity of stars.........

Surely this is the worst argument in all atheology, and that is saying something.

[YourMaster]

One of the arguments proposed by atheist philosophers in support of atheism is the so-called "argument from scale". It claims, basically, that the universe is unnecessarily vast; and that if God existed, he would have made it much smaller than it is. It's been advanced most notably by Nicholas Everitt in his book "The Non-Existence of God", and by many other thinkers, such as Richard Carrier.

Few people paid attention to this argument, and those who did critiqued it on the basis that it is allegedly subjective. "How big does it have to be, exactly?" they said; but this is not the point of the argument. Now, there are trillions of stars and galaxies, and black holes and all the other cosmological stuff: what is their purpose? The problem is not that the cosmos is too vast, but that it contains a number of seemingly useless entities.

It seems that God could have easily created a universe much simpler and smaller. So this argument looks very powerful to me, much more powerful than the popular argument from evil which "can be looked upon as the skeletal remains of dinosaurs", as prof. Charles Taliaferro brilliantly puts it. So, what do you think of this? Is the vastness of the universe evidence against the existence of God? And, for theists, what could be the reason for God creating so many cosmological objects, beautiful to behold but with no apparent purpose in "the great scheme of things"?

-Requiem

Seems like a stupid argument. It's just as circular as trying to say there must be a first cause or an infinite regress is impossible or whatever. If the universe is massively big (and there's a lot of information to suggest it is) then how could we possibly make any statement about it?

We can say dark flow suggests X, inflationary cosmology suggests Y, but how you apply that to a god theory (either way) is beyond me. The only advantage it gives to nontheists (or people who are trying to investigate this stuff for whatever reason) is it makes metaphysical cosmological arguments very problematic (or at least little more than elaborate guesswork). After all a metaphysical cosmological argument does try to make a scientific statement (and I think today we can safely say metaphysics is a poor substitute for real science). From there religion comes back down to earth (and they need to prove their claims based on the evidence pertaining to those specific claims).

So it at least frames the argument in more concrete terms. Now it becomes a matter of objective evidence (and I'm not sure why a nontheist would feel he or she needs anymore than that).

[Jon_Day]

Yep, that too.



Not so sure about that exegesis



You can't count them because they are virtually infinite in number. God asking Abraham to 'count the stars' is asking him to consider whom is making these promises to him. Someone who made an infinity of stars.........

Surely this is the worst argument in all atheology, and that is saying something.

I don't think the passage mentions that the reason it is difficult to count the stars is because of them being virtually infinite in number...but I can see where it's a reasonable assumption to make regarding said passage.

[Requiem]

Relevant post on Paul Manata's blog:

http://analytictheologye4c5.wordpres...-the-universe/

[Zombie]

Well, is it a testament to an author's size and glory who creates a book 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pages in length just so one page has '42' written on it in small font?

Some would argue inefficientcy, others inelegance, and so on. But as the article states:

"Now, since God is truly (analogically) big and awesome, and since creation testifies to its creator, why wouldn’t we expect a very large, extremely large, indeed, incomprehensibly large universe?"

http://analytictheologye4c5.wordpres...-the-universe/

That statement to me says more about the viewer's projection than god or the universe. Why cant god be extremely tiny and simple?

[37818]

. . . that if God existed, he would have made it much smaller than it is.

Is nothing more than a straw-God [starw man] argument.