Louis
Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006
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| Quote (skeptic @ Oct. 29 2007,23:26) | Existence can be taken as evidence of something. By our understanding, the universe began, at least as we now know it, at the Big Bang. By our methods of observation anything before the Big Bang is undefinable and yet we know, or we think we know,that there was something before the Big Bang. This something opens the door for many things and while it doesn't demand a deity it certainly includes one.
As far as detection, who gets to define detectable? If we limit detection to human terms then we unduly frame the universe with unwarranted restraints. Imagine bat sonar. Without the advent of technology there would be no way we would be able to detect or understand bat sonar. We would have to conclude that it doesn't exist if proposed and it's future existence is dependent upon our level of technology. We ran into this very case with the electron. Consider a Star Wars example for the metaphysical case. The Force is detectable but not by any except the Jedi. Does the Force only exist for the Jedi? Are normal people like Han correct is saying it doesn't exist because they've never seen it. What if God is beyond our level of understanding and forever beyond our understanding, does that lack of understanding eliminate the existence of God? It comes down to how much credit we're willing to give to human understanding and what limitations we're willing to accept. |
Obliviot,
1) There was something "before" the big bang? Not as far as I know. For starters "before" means nothing in that context and furthermore there are formulations of big bang cosmology consistent with the idea that the whole universe is a vacuum fluctuation (IIRC, IANAPhysicist). Appealing to "there is a creation so there must be a creator" and "there was a beginning so there must be a beginner" won't save your claims. firstly because these arguments have been refuted in the past and secondly because they push the problem one step back. One can go into an infinite "it's turtles all the way down" regress.
2) No one is defining detectable. If one is claiming an interventionist deity then the very fact that they are claiming that their deity intervenes means that either those interventions are detectable (and thus open to rational, reason based, observational enquiry IN PRINCIPLE, if perhaps not in practise at any specific moment in time) or those interventions are defined away by the theist claimant as undetectable (and thus are not actually interventions at all, but wishful thinking and an appeal to mystery).
Neither is anyone putting artificial limits on the universe, this as usual is a confection of your own delusion as explained several times in this very thread. Of course you'd know that having read and understood it all....but I digress! No one is saying that "the universe is definitely 100% all we can detect" what people are saying is "the universe appears to work a certain way, we have developed methods for teasing out how the universe appears to work, whatever the universe might "really" be underneath that appearance is irrelevant because we can by definition never know about it, so let's deal with the universe as it appears to work". There's a big difference. Forgive me if I am less than optimistic that you understand this difference despite the fact that this is about the seventeenth time I've explained it on this thread (in several different ways).
3) No one is saying "because we have not seen it, it definitely does not exist". What people ARE saying is "because there is no evidence for it existing, it is not reasonable or rational to claim it does exist and thus there is no practical reason to suppose it DOES exist and thus we can act as if it does not exist until such time as evidence is forthcoming which demonstrates it does exist". The distinction is a pragmatic one. We appreciate the philsophical nuances, we are aware of the limitations of knowledge
I don't do my day to day activities in the expectation that an evil zombie monkey is staring at me from the shadows waiting to shit in my sandwich. It might well be the case that this evil zombie monkey is just lurking there laughing at my foolish scepticism and waiting to shit in my sandwich but I have no evidence supporting the existence of a crap happy evil zombie monkey. Thus I carry on my day to day life merrily ignoring even the remotest possibility of evil zombie monkey turds finding their way into my brie, bacon and cranberry on a sourdough baguette. I treat god(s), unicorns, homeopathy, voodoo and turd obssessed evil zombie monkeys the same way.
Likewise for bat sonar (really bad example by the way), although you run into a real problem with this example. Bat sonar is not supernatural. It operates on principles that are entirely natural, and for which we had plenty of evidence before we even knew the phenomenon existed. The fact that we didn't discover bat sonar until we did is not significant. We haven't understood every phenonmenon in the universe even now, the process of discovery is slow and painstaking and difficult. Demonstrating the existence of a phenomenon takes time and effort. Describing it accurately takes even more effort. Not every issue is easily resolved. Only recently have we as a species had the social and cultural conditions necessary to do this in a coordinated and sustained manner.
4) What if god is beyond out "level of understanding"? What does that even mean? Again you seem under the impression that the opposing view to your own is that we know and can know everything absolutely. This is very far from the case. The provisional nature of knowledge, the limits of observation, the problem of induction etc are not only all known but all gleefully accepted. Didn't you read those quotes from Feynman? Didn't you read that story from Sagan? Didn't you read what Douglas Adams had to say? I don't quote them as authorites (far from it) rather as people who have had the ideas I have had before me (if you see what I mean!). All this has been covered in this thread several times before. Hence why I urge you and everyone to keep this epistemological/philsophical conversation here where it is relevant and equally why I have all but fucking begged you to go back and actually read what I have written for some modicum of comprehension. The conversation with you cannot advance UNTIL you stop merely repeating yourself ad nauseum and learn to understand what someone else's argument actually is as opposed to what you think it is.
Get on with it.
Louis
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Bye.
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