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Dealing with the in tray again ...
Well first of all, Krauss was simply reiterating the well-known call to apply rigour to the word "nothing" that was issued by Michio Kaku. Anyone who has actually read the output of cosmological physicists over the past decade or so, knows very well that in their literature, they use the term as a shorthand for "a particle-free metric space". They then move on to the matter of demonstrating that the moment quantum fields exist, a genuinely particle-free metric space cannot exist.
WRONG.
Matter-antimatter annihilation took place after the first particles arose from the initial energy input into the process. The gamma rays produced during this event became the cosmic microwave background, as a result of metrical space expansion.
Anyone who has spent time in a class devoted to quantum physics, knows that one should be extremely careful about using words such as "cause". Not least because classical causality cannot account for numerous experimentally observed quantum interactions. Courtesy of the fact that the quantum operators taking part in those interactions have non-zero commutators, at which point we're dealing with entangled interactions, which are completely beyond the remit of classical causality.
Furthermore, if you pay attention to the cosmological physics literature, every physicist in that field regards the observable universe and its contents as being the products of testable natural processes. Though understanding some of the processes being invoked in some of the pre-Big-Bang cosmologies circulating in the literature, requires an in-depth understanding of the Ricci calculus, an intimidating discipline even for mathematicians familiar with the operation of tensors.
Which constitutes an unsupported blind assertion on your part.
And once again, no cosmological physicist asserts this. Instead, they provide, in their published papers, testable natural processes for the purpose.
For the same reasons that I imagine you do not believe in the easter bunny, tooth fairies or santa claus.
@electroncapture
This question has been asked by Christians too, and the simple answer is we see no proof of any god.
Whether it is Islam or Christianity we just do not believe in a god as there's no proof there is one.
Is that what you are looking for?
Look!!! I feel here and there is no God/. I feel over there, and there is no god. I open the closet and feel in the closet, there is no god. I feel in the fish tank and there is no god. I stick a finger up the cat's butt and feel around, still no god. I have felt everywhere I can think of and still no god. So why do atheists feel there is no god?? Well where in the fuck do you suggest we feel that we have not felt before? Are you hiding him up your butt? Come over here and bend over. Let's have a look!
@Cog Re: "Are you hiding him up your butt? Come over here and bend over. Let's have a look!"
C'mon, man, that's just rude.... *look of disappointment*... You can't be talking like that to folks around here. Where are your manners, you uncouth primate? You are suppose to say, "PLEASE come over here and bend over." Manners, dude... MANNERS.
@Tin: Yes, Yes, your right, Whitefire has been teaching me that. "Yes mistress yes! May I please have another." I have been a bad little monkey. I deserve to be punished!!! Again!
Re: Cog - "I have been a bad little monkey. I deserve to be punished!!! Again!"
Hey, Whitefire! Cog needs your "therapy" skills again!
RE: Tin: She's punishing me by making me wait!
@Cog...
A little trick from my former days.... first I give you a few signs, then I tell you I’m coming, then you wait...
Oh come on! Enough of the dominatrix theatrics! Hit him again!!! I'm so bored....(oh manners, sorry)...Please.
Re: Grin - "...Please."
See there, Cog? Manners. Thank you, Grin, for setting a fine example for Cog to follow.
Oh, and yes, Miss White, please do wallop that mangy primate again for us. That funny sound he makes just cracks me up when you put the gag ball in his mouth.
GAG BALL!!!???? You told me that was a chew toy for chimps!!! Damn you woman!!!
It was babbbeeee, it was ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkuKrymtuCg
Whitefire13: Oh, okay, So the bad Tin Man and Grinseed are just cyber bullies. THOSE ASSHOLES!!!
@Whitefire Re: Ball gags for Cog
Oh! You tell him they are "chew toys"? Oops. My bad. I didn't know. My apologies. Hope I didn't screw that up for you.
Oh, in the interest of avoiding any more screw-ups like that, what term do you use for his butt plugs?
@shineyhappyperson.
"what term do you use for his butt plugs?"
Bananas.
@Tin: See! doG has been paying attention. What the fuck is your problem Tin? Low on oil again?
@doG
"what term do you use for his butt plugs?"
Bananas."
I was over 40 before I heard of and understood the terms "butt plug" and '"fisting"
I question God's existence because:
1) Religion can be very harmful. I won't go into detail about how much religion screws things up, but--I predict--if civilization ever comes to an end, religion will shoulder a large part of the responsibility for this. Islamic terrorists with nuclear weapons come to mind (although the "Christian" world with nukes can be argued to be just as bad).
2) Lack of physical evidence of God (although absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence), although--in fairness--I still wonder about the origin of the Big Bang.
3) The contradictory nature of the claims of different religions that each maintain a special access to absolute truth.
4) The idea that religion seems to be a process that we use to legitimize our claim that humanity is somehow apart from the rest of the natural world, so we're entitled to do horrible things like driving many other forms of life into extinction for our pleasure and convienence.
5) The logical fallacies concerning God's existence. For example, if God exists (and can do anything at all, as God has no limits), could God create a rock that is so heavy that it would be impossible for Him to lift it.*
6) Pascale's Wager states that if we live as Godly people, we lose nothing when we die if we are wrong, but gain Heaven if we are right . . . so what's to lose? My answer to this is that if I live as an atheist because I choose to avoid the evil that religion does (like extremist terrorism, for example), then I lose nothing when I die if God doesn't exist, yet would probably be a good man in God's eyes if I'm wrong and He does exist, since religion does so many fucked-up things.
7) If God exists, He conceals evidence of His existence from us . . . so it's just as reasonable to assume that He doesn't want us to believe in Him, so atheism is in keeping with His wishes.
8) If God exists, then we should wonder about where God came from. If this is an unanswerable question, then why not skip a step and decide the the origin of the Universe is an unanswerable question. If we decide that God has always existed, then we could skip a step and decide that the Universe has always existed.**
And so on.
-----------------------------------
* I may have--ironically--found a way to refute this criticism of God's existence. If I was religious and someone asked me this question, then I could say: "If God exists and had no limits, then God could stand in front of you and give you an answer that would provide a way around this double-bind, paradoxical question.
** This idea is not original with me. Carl Sagan made these points in his writings.
@Kevin
"I may have--ironically--found a way to refute this criticism of God's existence. If I was religious and someone asked me this question, then I could say: "If God exists and had no limits, then God could stand in front of you and give you an answer that would provide a way around this double-bind, paradoxical question."
Sagan's using it was not original. I'm pretty sure there's a logical fallacy in the argument which negates it. I'm sure I've come across it, but simply can't remember where. Consequently, feel free to dismiss my claim out of hand.
Besides, I remain unconvinced that god can be argued into or out of existence. I demand actual evidence, and will accept nothing less.
Otherwise, a clever sophist could argue an atheist out of his atheism and into any belief you care to mention. Politicians everywhere use sophistry constantly, and it always works on at least on some people .
Lincoln's aphorism "You can fool some of the people all of the time -----" seems most appropriate for US political life today.
I kind of agree with your idea that argument alone doesn't solve anything.
After all, Aristotle believed that men have more teeth than women because he found an argument to justify this position.
He didn't get off his ass and actually count peoples' teeth, as that would have been a form of manual labor, which is only suitable for slaves.
Aristotle also argued that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects . . . which wasn't overturned until Galileo in the 1600s, when he supposedly dropped weights off The Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Even before he dropped the weights, he defeated Aristotle in his own turf by asking:
"If two different-sized weights are attached together by a long, thin wire . . . does this arrangement fall faster than either of the two weights alone because it's heavier, or does the lighter weight slow the fall of the heavier weight because it creates a drag?"
Aristotle held back science for almost 1,000 years because of his idea that all knowledge can come from thought alone.
@Kevin
"Aristotle held back science for almost 1,000 years because of his idea that all knowledge can come from thought alone."
I'm sure that can be argued, but I 'm not convinced it's correct.
Aristotle was a genius who lived in the fourth century bce. To place his contributions in context, I think it's necessary to examine all of his work and to put him within the context of his times. IE What was was there before him and at during the time he lived.
My perception is that Aristotle bears no blame for holding back science. That could only happen through the control of society/thinkers/writers/scientists by power paradigms, political,social or religious.
"----and it was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle
Well I'd say the adoption (largely by Christians) of some of Aristotle's worst ideas held back humanity.
Nyar...or today’s equivalent of “quantum” in woo woo...
...mind you some use it as a stepping stone...
Take a little of “this” and add a whole lot of “that”.
@Nyarlathotep
"Well I'd say the adoption (largely by Christians) of some of Aristotle's worst ideas held back humanity."
Indeed. Held back by whom? By whom? Even after the invention of the printing press, universal literacy was still centuries away.
The scientific age did not begin until the end of the Sixteenth century. The scientific method did not exist as a broad concept.
I agree that the anti science and anti reason stance of the of Catholic church is largely to blame***
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((9)))))))))))))))))))))))))
***Just how nasty and repressive the church could get with thinkers even as late as the sixteenth century is illustrated by the case of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)
"Giordano Bruno (/dʒɔːrˈdɑːnoʊ ˈbruːnoʊ/, Italian: [dʒorˈdaːno ˈbruːno]; Latin: Iordanus Brunus Nolanus; born Filippo Bruno, 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist.[3][4] He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets, and he raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no "centre".
Starting in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism was also a matter of grave concern,[5] as was his teaching of the transmigration of the soul/reincarnation. The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600. After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science,[6] although historians agree that his heresy trial was not a response to his astronomical views but rather a response to his philosophical and religious views.[7][8][9][10][11] Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.[12][13] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
IMO, certainty is a mental illness. I would guess that for most of us, when we sound certain, we are actually damn-near certain, but expressing doubt about the nonexistence of a supernatural being with unlimited super powers would be dishonest. On the other hand, evidence suggests to me that I have not always existed, and that I exist now. If the definition of God were limited to "my hypothetical creator" I could roll with that. I would be intentionally deceiving theists, but IMO, theists hunger for deception.
I agree that theists hunger for deception.
We like to go to magic shows--knowing in advance--that we are paying money to an expert in deception who will deliberately con us for our entertainment. Viewing a magic show allows us--just for a moment--to take a vacation from the real world, and live in a space where humans can survive being sawed in half, or that rabbits can jump out of hats. In such a space, anything is possible . . . including the idea that we might live forever, or that things like pain, illness, and loss don't really exist. A magic show allows us to consider a Universe that is as we want it to be.
It is so much easier to allow ourselves to be deceived then to invest the intellectual work of asking ourselves about the inconsistancies of religion, and how religion hurts humanity and holds us back from achieving all that we're able to.
Religion is for people who long to be comfortable in a Universe that is indifferent to our wants and needs.
God is a kind of Santa Claus for grown-ups.
Why do I think for certain there is no god? And by god I mean as portrayed by organized religions like Abrahamic religions.
Simple: for any intelligent god to exist it would require space time like we do—it would have to evolved to have intelligence and intent like we do to navigate that space time for food etc for survival. All that sounds like an alien race, a life form just like us, facing same existential question pre-big bang that we do—which is certainly not all these religions say nature of god is.
You see, even “god” would need space to exist in first, making it pretty “human”. I don’t find any plausible scenario based on this rationale to any sort of benefit of doubt to say I am not certain.
Now if you’d to say ‘god’ is nature, the space time, the laws governing that space time (speaking in terms of Newtonian world here), etc etc, then I’d merely disagree with your interpretation of the word ‘god’ as it’s conventionally defined.
Because I was born lacking belief in any god, and nearly 50 years later I've yet to encounter a reason to think differently.
No god has ever been objectively, repeatedly demonstrated. In fact, when asked to do so, believers often resort to emotional appeals such as "god doesn't want you testing him" or "I can feel it in my heart" and other such indemonstrable nonsense.
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