The existence of God

Originally posted by twhitehead
Because that is where the evidence points. And don't be asking endless questions about it because I don't care to explain it all to you when I know that you won't listen anyway. Just know that I have examined the evidence sufficiently well to have justifiable knowledge that God does not exist. Disputing my claim will not change whether or not it is objectively false, nor will it change the fact that 'universal' should never have appeared in your OP.

Suppose your believed that no gold existed in China. What would constitute evidence that there is no gold in China?

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
Ok fair enough, so what is your answer?

Don't know. There's an absence of reliable evidence, that is to say evidence which is scientifically controlled rather than anecdotal or subject to bias, and experiment is pretty much ruled out, on the other hand I don't see any especial reason why not.

Originally posted by DeepThought
Don't know. There's an absence of reliable evidence, that is to say evidence which is scientifically controlled rather than anecdotal or subject to bias, and experiment is pretty much ruled out, on the other hand I don't see any especial reason why not.

Do you think the answer matters?

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
Do you think the answer matters?

That depends on the answer. If God does not exist then no, not really. If, on the other hand, God does exist, then whether it matters depends on what God is like.

Originally posted by DeepThought
That depends on the answer. If God does not exist then no, not really. If, on the other hand, God does exist, then whether it matters depends on what God is like.

So do you think it is impossible to know whether or not God exists?

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
So do you think it is impossible to know whether or not God exists?

Well, if the Christian faith is broadly correct then one finds out after death. In this life then no, unless God pays a personal visit and there is a stamp of unmistakable authenticity to distinguish it from some sort of hallucination, I think it is basically indeterminable.

In the thread "Your purpose in Life", in response to my asking why does God not require a creator FMJ wrote:

Everything that has a beginning requires a cause, God is infinite and requires no cause.

First off, it is not absolutely clear that the universe had a beginning. The Big Bang theory essentially refers to the period of cosmic inflation at the very beginning of time. The standard interpretation is that what preceded this was the moment of creation with a problematic claim that it was due to a quantum fluctuation. The objection to that is a fluctuation in what exactly? One feature of cosmic inflation is that it eliminates any trace of what the earlier epoch was like. One possibility is that it was the end of an old epoch in the universe and that the universe is actually infinitely old (and by your argument causeless) with periodic inflationary expansion. So it is not necessarily the case that the universe had a beginning.

Suppose however that it did. With no laws of physics to constrain what can happen before the universe started to exist there is no particular objection to anything and everything happening. So there is nothing to stop a universe with our laws of physics just popping into existence.

Cause and effect are problematic concepts in fundamental physics. There is no physics theory that establishes what cause and effect are. Essentially if there are two events and one precedes the other and the other would not have happened without the former we say that the former caused the latter. However, we do not really have a right to claim that the latter event would not have happened. Our intuition is based on macroscopic phenomena. At a microscopic level things happen because they can, and what can happen is determined by various conservation laws. There is no event that causes a nuclear decay except the formation of the radioactive nucleus. Radio-active decay just happens basically because it can. So I disagree that "anything with a beginning must have a cause.", at least with regard to universes.

A typical argument against an infinitely old universe is that with an infinite amount of time having had to elapse before we could reach the present, time would never have reached now so the universe must have a finite age. This is a necessary step in arguing for a creator as one has to establish that there was a point of creation. It seems to me that this must apply to God as well. If God is infinitely old then he would never have got round to creating the universe. So the same problem exists for God.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
Suppose your believed that no gold existed in China. What would constitute evidence that there is no gold in China?

There are many possible things that would constitute evidence that there is no gold in China. In fact there are infinite possibilities. One such possibility would be strong evidence that there is no gold on earth.

Originally posted by DeepThought
Suppose however that it did. With no laws of physics to constrain what can happen before the universe started to exist there is no particular objection to anything and everything happening. So there is nothing to stop a universe with our laws of physics just popping into existence.

A much more fundamental problem is trying to define 'before' if time is a property of the universe (and our current understanding of it would seem to suggest it is).

Funny how we still have a serial 'thumbs downer' that doesn't have the guts to actually contest peoples posts - and most likely doesn't even read them either.

Originally posted by twhitehead
There are many possible things that would constitute evidence that there is no gold in China. In fact there are infinite possibilities. One such possibility would be strong evidence that there is no gold on earth.

What would you regard as strong evidence that there is no gold on earth? One example is enough.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
What would you regard as strong evidence that there is no gold on earth?

Again, a whole range of possibilities exist. Probably the only sound one that I can think of would be evidence that gold couldn't have formed in our part of the galaxy and isn't found in our region. Gold isn't easily detectable, so it would almost certainly have to be either a physics based argument or a statistical argument based on thorough surveys of the neighbourhood.

So you have a point with your endless string of questions? Or do you just love asking endless strings of pointless questions to which you never remember the answers?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Again, a whole range of possibilities exist. Probably the only sound one that I can think of would be evidence that gold couldn't have formed in our part of the galaxy and isn't found in our region. Gold isn't easily detectable, so it would almost certainly have to be either a physics based argument or a statistical argument based on thorough surveys of t ...[text shortened]... just love asking endless strings of pointless questions to which you never remember the answers?

For you to truthfully say (with certainty) "there is no gold on earth", would you need to have:

A. No knowledge of Earth

B. Partial knowledge of Earth

C. Absolute knowledge of Earth

Originally posted by DeepThought
In the thread "Your purpose in Life", in response to my asking why does God not require a creator FMJ wrote:

Everything that has a beginning requires a cause, God is infinite and requires no cause.

First off, it is not absolutely clear that the universe had a beginning. The Big Bang theory essentially refers to the period of cosmic inflatio ...[text shortened]... hen he would never have got round to creating the universe. So the same problem exists for God.

The universe couldn't have been expanding for ever. It must have had a beginning and requires a cause. God by definition is eternally existing, and therefore has no beginning and thus requires no cause.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
For you to truthfully say (with certainty) "there is no gold on earth", would you need to have:

A. No knowledge of Earth

B. Partial knowledge of Earth

C. Absolute knowledge of Earth

B

Now I will ask you again: is there any point to this endless string of questions most of which have been asked by you in the past and adequately answered. I know for a fact that we have had the no gold in China discussion before. Why did you ignore the answers last time? Are you incapable of learning? Or do you think you achieve something by repeatedly asking the same questions over and over ad infinitum?