You are missing the point, I'm saying that there might be something outside of spacetime that isn't a sentient creator. A starting point or a point that always was that is dead as a stone and just as irrational as calling a real stone, creator or God. The essential thing is that you assume causality to work before Big Bang, but we have nothing that proves or disproves if there even was causality before. — Christoffer
Now imagine beyond that level of complexity with unknown properties of something that we might not even define as matter, but still not sentient. — Christoffer
'Nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely'No, you don't, please read Russel's analogy and understand it before posting — Christoffer
How is that even a logical calculation? You're just making these calculations up. Stop the pseudoscience nonsense. — Christoffer
Probability needs data and you have none. — Christoffer
And you are not even making sense. There's no logic to your calculations, there's no rational understanding of how to verify or falsify your argument and you are writing fallacy after fallacy.
Do you truly understand burden of proof? Do you truly understand begging the question? Do you truly understand false cause? I can go on. — Christoffer
None of them conclude there to be a creator. They could just as well point to an interdimensional stone that hit another interdimensional stone and the blast resulted in our four-dimensional spacetime through Big Bang — Christoffer
You're just making these numbers up. You estimate without any real logic applied. — Christoffer
How can you even calculate this probability? Based on what? Is there a 50% probability that there is a teapot flying in space, just because it's unable to be confirmed? — Christoffer
Especially when some of the points don't even point to any probability of a creator/God, like Big Bang. How is that a 50% probability of the existence of a creator/God? — Christoffer
You're just spamming posts with the same calculation without really listening to the counter-arguments. — Christoffer
No evidence of any of these concludes that there is a God. That's an assumption made before the conclusion.Begging the question, Burden of proof, false cause, Texas sharpshooter, ambiguity, anecdotal, post-rationalize special pleading, composition/division - are all fallacies that needs to be avoided throughout all arguments. You can't ignore them. While confirmation bias, dunning-kruger, belief bias, the backfire effect, fundamental attribution error, anchoring are all biases to avoid. — Christoffer
You cannot combine probabilities like that and how do you even calculate these probabilities — Christoffer
Please keep in mind I am by no means at all anti-God or an atheist or even agnostic. I simply reject the particular efforts of foolish people who try with foolish premises and foolish arguments to prove what cannot be proved, and if it were proved, would be without significance i.e. the material existence of God. — tim wood
"Unicorns and fairies are factitious ideas "
So are gods. — Bloginton Blakley
You are aware that the ideas of an omnipotent God and a perfect or a perfectly good God are inconsistent with each other, yes? — tim wood
Therefore, everything in the universe is caused to change by something external to the universe. — Walter Pound
This part of the argument confuses me. How could a changeless thing, cause changes to occur and remain changeless? — Walter Pound
Because sex cannot be derived from being/existence, then sex cannot be an attribute — tim wood
And 'round we go. That's a fine definition. However, it corresponds to nothing real, nothing that actually exists — tim wood
This lack of substance seems a feature of your arguments, and I, unfortunately, a predilection for calling out what I think is non-sense — tim wood
The only rule here is that whatever you wish to attribute to God must be derived from his existence only. — tim wood
So I ask you again: "nothing" figures in your argument. What do you mean by "nothing"? — tim wood
If there can be something that's timeless, how would we get to any restriction on just what can be timeless? Why couldn't any arbitrary thing be timeless at some point if it's possible for there to be timeless things? — Terrapin Station
Whatever exists--whatever its nature, if we go back to the earliest thing, either it always existed or it began non-causally. — Terrapin Station
Right, it has no start, and there's no meaningful way to peg a particular point as a temporal middle. It could have an end, of course. There could be something for which there's no way to peg a particular point as a temporal middle. — Terrapin Station
If it's possible to be timeless and finite, then that's possible period. It can't be limited to just some things and not others. — Terrapin Station
Again, those are the only two options logically ('the universe acausally began or something always existed'). Ruling them out means you just don't bother thinking about or talking about this issue. — Terrapin Station
That's actually just a set of assertions, worded different ways, that it's not possible for something to always exist. It's not an argument for it. — Terrapin Station
Also, that would mean that it's not possible for god to have always existed. — Terrapin Station
No one could explain either how anything can begin acausally--any explanation would imply a cause, or how anything could always exist (since that's completely counterintuitive). — Terrapin Station
If I always existed, yes. I'd necessarily exist without being born. That's what the words "always existed" conventionally refer to. — Terrapin Station
In all these arguments of yours it appears you're desperate to make reality agree with your ideas as they're expressed in your language. You're allowed to do that, it's called belief. But reality does not work that way and that's why there is something called science. What you're creating when you mix the two is simply non-sense. Granted there are some interesting twists in language, but they're just in language, not in the world. — tim wood
There can't be anything to cause the universe, because that necessarily implies that something exists prior to the universe — Terrapin Station
So again, either the universe acausally began or something always existed — Terrapin Station
"Always existed" logically means that it never came into being. — Terrapin Station
That is an excellent definition. I'm pretty sure, though, there is no such thing nor ever was as your "nothing" as you define it — tim wood
"Quantum fluctuations" can't be both quantum fluctuations and nothing. Quantum fluctuations are something. If they exist, then they're part of the universe, and explaining the origins of the universe would have to involve explaining where quantum fluctuations come from. — Terrapin Station
So either whatever exists suddenly appeared, non-causally, or something has always existed — Terrapin Station
And for this topic, "nothing" really needs to be defined. So, out of the gate another gee-whiz argument — tim wood
So they're natural and then change to unnatural? — Terrapin Station
I was never under the impression that you were only talking about the Big Bang, by the way. I thought you were talking about any arbitrary event. I thought the Big Bang was just an example. — Terrapin Station
At any rate, there could very well be a zero probability that a Big Bang would occur after the one which did occur. It could need particular conditions that will never obtain again, despite infinite time. — Terrapin Station
But they have finite time periods in which there's a zero probability of them occuring. — Terrapin Station
Which brings us back to the unanswered question of "Why would you be associating 'zero probability in some finite time periods' with god? That couldn't be more arbitrary." — Terrapin Station
Evidence? That's news! What evidence? — tim wood
You're only using "natural"/"non-natural" to refer to probability right? — Terrapin Station
If I say that the probability of the Big Bang occurring today is zero and you say it's not, then we need a way to determine which one of us is correct. — Terrapin Station
We're not just assigning probabilities randomly, are we? — Terrapin Station