The existence of the universe requires a god

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 136 here:

...
The universe could not exist in the form that it is in unless there was an omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient God.
...

For debate:

Please offer some means to confirm the referenced claim is true and factual.

[Difflugia]

I'm sure you do understand what I'm driving at here, it is that despite being very very very confident that we understand, that we have masses and masses of supporting evidence, we can still be wrong and at a very deep and fundamental level. Past successes of a theory are no guarantee to future success. So do not use the past and experiences of it and patterns derived from it, to imply that the future must be in harmony with those patterns.

It baffles me that you think this argument has any sort of explanatory power. The fact that you are trying so very hard to turn "anything's possible" into an argument that's acceptable testifies to how weak the other arguments for the resurrection must be. Try it on any other claim and see how it holds up compared to any other evidence:

"Is the Moon made of cheese?" Anything's possible.

"Does coffee contain caffeine?" Anything's possible.

"Did the same person write Luke and Acts?" Anything's possible.

"Did Jesus exist as a historical person?" Anything's possible.

"There are no tables available. Do you have a reservation?" Anything's possible.

[Sherlock Holmes]

I'm sure you do understand what I'm driving at here, it is that despite being very very very confident that we understand, that we have masses and masses of supporting evidence, we can still be wrong and at a very deep and fundamental level. Past successes of a theory are no guarantee to future success. So do not use the past and experiences of it and patterns derived from it, to imply that the future must be in harmony with those patterns.

It baffles me that you think this argument has any sort of explanatory power. The fact that you are trying so very hard to turn "anything's possible" into an argument that's acceptable testifies to how weak the other arguments for the resurrection must be. Try it on any other claim and see how it holds up compared to any other evidence:

"Is the Moon made of cheese?" Anything's possible.

"Does coffee contain caffeine?" Anything's possible.

"Did the same person write Luke and Acts?" Anything's possible.

"Did Jesus exist as a historical person?" Anything's possible.

"There are no tables available. Do you have a reservation?" Anything's possible.

The point you seem to be missing is that to answer any of these requires we make assumptions, establish axioms from which to reason.

If you disagree with that statement then simply say so and explain why you disagree.

I take it you'll agree, well then as I explained using Newton, if the axioms are untrue then the conclusions may well also be untrue.

Since axioms are not proven to be true, but are taken (often quite reasonably) to be true we have to be open to the possibility that what we think is reality, how we think "things work" might in fact be wrong.

This is all I've been saying, so if you disagree with any of these assertions say so and say why please.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #79]

That claim is unsupported by evidence, how can you show that "the supernatural has never been demonstrated to exist at any time in any form" I think the only rational claim you could make is that you have never experienced anything that you regard as evidence for the supernatural.

No point in continuing to beat this dead horse, but you've yet to give us one example of the supernatural having been demonstrated, or a dead person being confirmed has having come back to life once dead. Instead, you're claiming that I've not provided evidence to prove that something (the supernatural, or ressurections) do not exist, and this is not possible. Or do you think it is possible to prove that something does not exist? If so, explain how this is done.

You are again extrapolating your subjective experiences and reasoning to the status of a universal truth, your statement is one of personal belief nothing more.

Give one example of where a genuinely dead person has been confirmed as having come back to life. My personal belief will be shown wrong if you can do that.

If you are making assertions that you cannot prove then don't object when I call you out for that, it matters not why you can't prove it, what matters is that you cannot prove it, it is a belief nothing more.

You're not calling me out on anything, but dodging the question and insisting that I prove a negative rather than you providing just one example to disprove my claim. I admit I cannot prove that something does not exist, and neither can you. I don't know why you keep missing this simple point.

It doesn't matter what you'd "want". The fact is that such an event could have occurred and then not recorded in a way or to a standard that you demand, that obviously does not mean such an event never occurred only that it could have and you are not satisfied by what remains, again this is all about your subjective view of reality.

You asked me directly if I thought "such a record could be regarded as evidence", so I answered that question. Should I have attempted to describe what someone else would want? I'm not from Missouri, but when someone makes claims about the supernatural existing, or resurrections happening, my position is to show me the evidence that supports such claims. Anything could have occurred in the past, but that has no bearing on whether or not it did.

You seem to want to use the scientific method when it suits you and dismiss it when it does not. Newton was completely wrong about the natural world, it is non-Euclidean, time and space observations can differ based on the situation of the observer, Newtonian mechanics asserts the opposite, absolutely incompatible. So yes we can discuss the utility of these theories and argue that because Newton's has a great deal of utility then he was not wrong, but theoretical physics is not concerned with utility that's for the engineer.

Newton did far more work than you seem to realize. Theoretical physics hardly existed when Newton was alive. People were still trying to calculate the oribts of planets and moons and predict comet paths. He thought Pb might be turned into Au (alchemy), and people were still using leeches for disease treatment. People of that time had no concept of galaxies, black holes, neutron stars, or anything of the sort. He lived 400 years ago after all, and despite your insistence that he was "completely wrong" he very clearly was not in many of his discoveries in mathematics, optics, mechanics, fluid behavior, etc. Do you think differential and integral calculus are "completely wrong" because Newton didn't discover Relativity? Do optical materials no longer create refraction?

Newton was wrong, nature really does seem to adhere to a non-Euclidean 4D geometry, surely you must agree with this? If Newton says nature does not adhere to a non-Euclidean 4D geometry when we can see that it does, then Newton is very obviously wrong!

I agree that General Relativity explains things in certain conditions that Newtonian mechanics does not. So what? That does not mean that Newton was "wrong" ... it just means his physics is not extendable to conditions when things are moving at velocities that are a significant fraction of the speed of light, or so massive that his laws break down. His physics does still apply, very accurately, to a large number of problems and scenarios that don't include the extremes that require a better (Relativity) physics. It would be better to say Newtonian mechanics is not complete, rather than to say it is "completely wrong", which is itself a completely wrong characterization.

[Difflugia]

The point you seem to be missing is that to answer any of these requires we make assumptions, establish axioms from which to reason.

I'm not missing that point, I'm making it. You've been desperately trying to avoid defining the possibility of a resurrection in a way that's meaningful. You seem to want "anything's possible" to be the standard for the resurrection because it doesn't require support, but you also keep arguing as though it tells us something more than "anything's possible." As I said earlier, if the possibility of the resurrection is in the same "anything" as other fanciful statements, then there's no debate; I agree with you. If it's not and there's a difference between resurrections and invisible unicorns, you've neither specified nor supported it.

If "anything's possible" is among your your axioms, then you're just saying that human resurrection is in the set of "anything." That didn't seem to be what you meant by that. If that actually is all you meant, then I apologize.

[Sherlock Holmes]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #79]

That claim is unsupported by evidence, how can you show that "the supernatural has never been demonstrated to exist at any time in any form" I think the only rational claim you could make is that you have never experienced anything that you regard as evidence for the supernatural.

No point in continuing to beat this dead horse, but you've yet to give us one example of the supernatural having been demonstrated, or a dead person being confirmed has having come back to life once dead. Instead, you're claiming that I've not provided evidence to prove that something (the supernatural, or ressurections) do not exist, and this is not possible. Or do you think it is possible to prove that something does not exist? If so, explain how this is done.

You are again extrapolating your subjective experiences and reasoning to the status of a universal truth, your statement is one of personal belief nothing more.

Give one example of where a genuinely dead person has been confirmed as having come back to life. My personal belief will be shown wrong if you can do that.

If you are making assertions that you cannot prove then don't object when I call you out for that, it matters not why you can't prove it, what matters is that you cannot prove it, it is a belief nothing more.

You're not calling me out on anything, but dodging the question and insisting that I prove a negative rather than you providing just one example to disprove my claim. I admit I cannot prove that something does not exist, and neither can you. I don't know why you keep missing this simple point.

It doesn't matter what you'd "want". The fact is that such an event could have occurred and then not recorded in a way or to a standard that you demand, that obviously does not mean such an event never occurred only that it could have and you are not satisfied by what remains, again this is all about your subjective view of reality.

You asked me directly if I thought "such a record could be regarded as evidence", so I answered that question. Should I have attempted to describe what someone else would want? I'm not from Missouri, but when someone makes claims about the supernatural existing, or resurrections happening, my position is to show me the evidence that supports such claims. Anything could have occurred in the past, but that has no bearing on whether or not it did.

You seem to want to use the scientific method when it suits you and dismiss it when it does not. Newton was completely wrong about the natural world, it is non-Euclidean, time and space observations can differ based on the situation of the observer, Newtonian mechanics asserts the opposite, absolutely incompatible. So yes we can discuss the utility of these theories and argue that because Newton's has a great deal of utility then he was not wrong, but theoretical physics is not concerned with utility that's for the engineer.

Newton did far more work than you seem to realize. Theoretical physics hardly existed when Newton was alive. People were still trying to calculate the oribts of planets and moons and predict comet paths. He thought Pb might be turned into Au (alchemy), and people were still using leeches for disease treatment. People of that time had no concept of galaxies, black holes, neutron stars, or anything of the sort. He lived 400 years ago after all, and despite your insistence that he was "completely wrong" he very clearly was not in many of his discoveries in mathematics, optics, mechanics, fluid behavior, etc. Do you think differential and integral calculus are "completely wrong" because Newton didn't discover Relativity? Do optical materials no longer create refraction?

Newton was wrong, nature really does seem to adhere to a non-Euclidean 4D geometry, surely you must agree with this? If Newton says nature does not adhere to a non-Euclidean 4D geometry when we can see that it does, then Newton is very obviously wrong!

I agree that General Relativity explains things in certain conditions that Newtonian mechanics does not. So what? That does not mean that Newton was "wrong" ... it just means his physics is not extendable to conditions when things are moving at velocities that are a significant fraction of the speed of light, or so massive that his laws break down. His physics does still apply, very accurately, to a large number of problems and scenarios that don't include the extremes that require a better (Relativity) physics. It would be better to say Newtonian mechanics is not complete, rather than to say it is "completely wrong", which is itself a completely wrong characterization.

I want to address something before we proceed any further.

You write

Instead, you're claiming that I've not provided evidence to prove that something (the supernatural, or resurrections) do not exist, and this is not possible.

Which is misrepresentative of our discussion. You have made several assertions, statements that you clearly regard as factual.

I've asked for evidence that leads you to establish these claims, when I do so you accuse me of asking for the impossible as if it is I that must be at fault.

If you are making claims that you cannot support with evidence then that is something you must answer for not I. If you are making claims for which proof is impossible then why make such claims?

I'd like to get this cleared up before we proceed as honesty is essential in any meaningful discussion and I'm pretty sure you're not being dishonest.

Here are some of the assertions you claimed as being true (emphasis mine)

• A (genuinely) dead person coming back to life has never been observed in the history of humankind

• There are certainly claims that this sort of thing has happened (eg. in holy books), but it has never been demonstrated for human beings to be anything but myth.

• This atheist objects to claims about the supernatural on the simple basis that the supernatural has never been demonstrated to exist at any time in any form.

It is not me asking for the impossible but you believing the impossible, that's the problem here. Three times you have stated with the utmost certainty that some event or other never ever has occurred, I ask how you can be sure of that, what leads you to claim that, and you berate me for asking!

Let me paraphrase. I say X is true, you ask can you prove this claim? and I berate you and say why are you asking for the impossible?

If proof of a claim is an impossibility then why am I not permitted to simply regard the claim as false? why must I regard it as true? because you say so?

[Sherlock Holmes]

The point you seem to be missing is that to answer any of these requires we make assumptions, establish axioms from which to reason.

I'm not missing that point, I'm making it. You've been desperately trying to avoid defining the possibility of a resurrection in a way that's meaningful. You seem to want "anything's possible" to be the standard for the resurrection because it doesn't require support, but you also keep arguing as though it tells us something more than "anything's possible." As I said earlier, if the possibility of the resurrection is in the same "anything" as other fanciful statements, then there's no debate; I agree with you. If it's not and there's a difference between resurrections and invisible unicorns, you've neither specified nor supported it.

If "anything's possible" is among your your axioms, then you're just saying that human resurrection is in the set of "anything." That didn't seem to be what you meant by that. If that actually is all you meant, then I apologize.

Can you prove that "anything" is impossible? of course you cannot so what is wrong with someone saying at that any "thing" might be possible? This often comes up when people try to use science to discuss what is in fact philosophy.

[Difflugia]

Can you prove that "anything" is impossible?

No and that's why it's meaningless.

of course you cannot so what is wrong with someone saying at that any "thing" might be possible?

Because it's almost always meaningless as part of a logical argument. It becomes confused with colloquial, but ill-defined meanings of "possible" that have some threshold of probability. People that use the phrase "anything is possible" as part of an argument, nonetheless imagine a class of things that is so absurd that it's not part of that "anything." They apply "anything is possible" to Jesus, but not Russell's teapot or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If that difference is important to the argument, the argument is fallacious.

The probability of things in that class has a lower bound of zero, but most people don't have a concept of what an asymptote is. The probabilities never actually reach zero, but for any probability that can be specified, no matter how low, there's always something with a lower probability in that set. It's represented by the mathematical symbol ε (lowercase Greek epsilon), meaning an arbitrarily small, but mathematically nonzero number.

There are events in that class that are possible, but so unlikely that we wouldn't expect them in ten consecutinve lifetimes of a universe. If that's the class in which you intend your specific event, in this case human resurrection, then you're one of the very, very few people using the claim correctly. The fact that one of your responses included the phrase "very well might be true" tells me that you're not.

This often comes up when people try to use science to discuss what is in fact philosophy.

I think this might be a bit of projection. It far more often comes up when people try to apply the philosophical concept of "possible" with its arbitrarily low probability to mean that some event was conceivably historical. Not coincidentally, it's a mainstay of Christian apologetics.

If you can think of anything that is so absurd that it shouldn't be covered by your argument, then your argument is fallacious. If you can't think of such a thing, then your argument is meaningless.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Can you prove that "anything" is impossible?

No and that's why it's meaningless.

of course you cannot so what is wrong with someone saying at that any "thing" might be possible?

Because it's almost always meaningless as part of a logical argument. It becomes confused with colloquial, but ill-defined meanings of "possible" that have some threshold of probability. People that use the phrase "anything is possible" as part of an argument, nonetheless imagine a class of things that is so absurd that it's not part of that "anything." They apply "anything is possible" to Jesus, but not Russell's teapot or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If that difference is important to the argument, the argument is fallacious.

I have to disagree, the meaning of "anything is possible" is precisely the same as "we cannot say with complete certainty that some proposed thing is not possible" - that's has a very clear meaning.

The probability of things in that class has a lower bound of zero, but most people don't have a concept of what an asymptote is. The probabilities never actually reach zero, but for any probability that can be specified, no matter how low, there's always something with a lower probability in that set. It's represented by the mathematical symbol ε (lowercase Greek epsilon), meaning an arbitrarily small, but mathematically nonzero number.

There are events in that class that are possible, but so unlikely that we wouldn't expect them in ten consecutinve lifetimes of a universe. If that's the class in which you intend your specific event, in this case human resurrection, then you're one of the very, very few people using the claim correctly. The fact that one of your responses included the phrase "very well might be true" tells me that you're not.

This often comes up when people try to use science to discuss what is in fact philosophy.

I think this might be a bit of projection. It far more often comes up when people try to apply the philosophical concept of "possible" with its arbitrarily low probability to mean that some event was conceivably historical. Not coincidentally, it's a mainstay of Christian apologetics.

If you can think of anything that is so absurd that it shouldn't be covered by your argument, then your argument is fallacious. If you can't think of such a thing, then your argument is meaningless.

To say that some future state of a system is not possible is a proposition that must be supported by a rational argument, like any proposition else it is a belief.

Because we rely on axioms, beliefs, to build all such arguments we can not ever be certain that the axioms are always unavoidably true at all times.

If we infer from past observations some axiom then that is different to claiming the axiom is true in the future, that is we cannot regard a future experiment as if we had already performed it.

The so called "laws of physics" are examples of this, we cannot prove that some future experiment will definitely yield some result until we do the experiment and once we have done that it pertains only - at that point - to the past, we must do the experiment again if we want to definitely know what will happen in the future.

[Difflugia]

I have to disagree, the meaning of "anything is possible" is precisely the same as "we cannot say with complete certainty that some proposed thing is not possible" - that's has a very clear meaning.

I guess I should have been more precise and said that it rarely has the meaning that the apologist wants.

If one wants to establish a probability that's above any arbitrarily small value, "anything is possible" won't do that. That's the confusion between the philosophical and practical that you mentioned earlier.

It's philosophically possible that Elijah just appeared to me in my living room to wish me a happy new year. If I assert that he did, the only reasonable probabilities are that I'm playing word games, being metaphorical, lying, or delusional.

To say that some future state of a system is not possible is a proposition that must be supported by a rational argument, like any proposition else it is a belief.

To say that such a proposition can be expected with any probability above an arbitrarily small ε, however, is equivocating on the definition of "possible."

If we infer from past observations some axiom then that is different to claiming the axiom is true in the future, that is we cannot regard a future experiment as if we had already performed it.

The so called "laws of physics" are examples of this, we cannot prove that some future experiment will definitely yield some result until we do the experiment and once we have done that it pertains only - at that point - to the past, we must do the experiment again if we want to definitely know what will happen in the future.

Since each experiment gives us greater certainty and with enough experiments, we may approach arbitrarily close to absolute certainty (even if we can't philosophically reach it), your statement is exactly the blurring between practical probability and philosophical possibility that you were earlier projecting onto others.

[Sherlock Holmes]

I have to disagree, the meaning of "anything is possible" is precisely the same as "we cannot say with complete certainty that some proposed thing is not possible" - that's has a very clear meaning.

I guess I should have been more precise and said that it rarely has the meaning that the apologist wants.

If one wants to establish a probability that's above any arbitrarily small value, "anything is possible" won't do that. That's the confusion between the philosophical and practical that you mentioned earlier.

It's philosophically possible that Elijah just appeared to me in my living room to wish me a happy new year. If I assert that he did, the only reasonable probabilities are that I'm playing word games, being metaphorical, lying, or delusional.

To say that some future state of a system is not possible is a proposition that must be supported by a rational argument, like any proposition else it is a belief.

To say that such a proposition can be expected with any probability above an arbitrarily small ε, however, is equivocating on the definition of "possible."

If we infer from past observations some axiom then that is different to claiming the axiom is true in the future, that is we cannot regard a future experiment as if we had already performed it.

The so called "laws of physics" are examples of this, we cannot prove that some future experiment will definitely yield some result until we do the experiment and once we have done that it pertains only - at that point - to the past, we must do the experiment again if we want to definitely know what will happen in the future.

Since each experiment gives us greater certainty and with enough experiments, we may approach arbitrarily close to absolute certainty (even if we can't philosophically reach it), your statement is exactly the blurring between practical probability and philosophical possibility that you were earlier projecting onto others.

This is where - I think - you are in error.

No amount of experiments can prove an axiom, just because something always behaved in some way in the past does not prove that it will always behave that way in the future.

Can you prove that the laws of physics won't change in some way tomorrow? No.

Science is based on axioms, assumptions, beliefs, very reasonable beliefs I'll admit but beliefs nevertheless.

I am personally always mindful of this and open to the possibility that my beliefs could be wrong.