How is there reality without God?

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EarthScienceguy
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How is there reality without God?

Post #1

Post by EarthScienceguy »

Neils Bohr
"No Phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." Or another way to say this is that a tree does not fall in a forest unless it is observed.

The only way for there to be an objective reality is if God is the constant observer everywhere.

Physicist John Archibald Wheeler: "It is wrong to think of the past as 'already existing' in all detail. The 'past' is theory. The past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present."

God is everywhere so He can observe everywhere and produce objective reality.

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #41

Post by OneWay »

JoeyKnothead wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:42 am
OneWay wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:10 am
JoeyKnothead wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 11:07 pm
OneWay wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 10:25 pm
JoeyKnothead wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 10:19 pm
OneWay wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 9:22 pm
DrNoGods wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 9:20 pm [Replying to OneWay in post #33]
They are not facts they are just unproven opinions.
OK ... so you can't refute any of it. Got it.
No, it is you can't prove I can't refute any of it.
I propose the best way to show you can refute a claim is to not rely on others for their input, but to actually refute a claim.

Just tossing that out there.
In a debate you have to prove your input.
Isn't that the purpose for the debate?
My comment stands, shall I say, unrefuted.
You say a lot of things but that does not make it so
Then please explain to this dullard where my referenced comment was refuted.
You refuted yourself by not being able to prove yourself.

When are you going to figure out you are way way way way way out of your league?

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #42

Post by JoeyKnothead »

OneWay wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:45 am You refuted yourself by not being able to prove yourself.
I contend my previously mentioned comments are logically sound. I'll hold this contention until shown otherwise.
When are you going to figure out you are way way way way way out of your league?
When you show me the errors of my thinking.

I now contend it takes you five "way"s to convince yourself you've got some kind of argument.
I might be Teddy Roosevelt, but I ain't.
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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #43

Post by OneWay »

JoeyKnothead wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 1:03 am
OneWay wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:45 am You refuted yourself by not being able to prove yourself.
I contend my previously mentioned comments are logically sound. I'll hold this contention until shown otherwise.
When are you going to figure out you are way way way way way out of your league?
When you show me the errors of my thinking.

I now contend it takes you five "way"s to convince yourself you've got some kind of argument.
You want me to show you the error of your thinking?
Get a pen and a paper
Sit down
and write down everything
that you do
in your life that is stupid
then stop doing them one by one
till you are not
doing anything any more
that is stupid in your life.

When you do this
you will see the errors
in the way of your thinking.

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #44

Post by JoeyKnothead »

OneWay wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 2:06 am
JoeyKnothead wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 1:03 am
OneWay wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:45 am You refuted yourself by not being able to prove yourself.
I contend my previously mentioned comments are logically sound. I'll hold this contention until shown otherwise.
When are you going to figure out you are way way way way way out of your league?
When you show me the errors of my thinking.

I now contend it takes you five "way"s to convince yourself you've got some kind of argument.
You want me to show you the error of your thinking?
Get a pen and a paper
Sit down
and write down everything
that you do
in your life that is stupid
Expecting a theist to show they speak truth, and expecting the pretty thing to hush while the game is on.
then stop doing them one by one
till you are not
doing anything any more
that is stupid in your life.
I'm a man. Doing stupid things is kinda our specialty.
When you do this
you will see the errors
in the way of your thinking.
So no actual rebuttal of the statement I did make, just this generic reply.

Your ability to avoid directly addressing what I said is noted.
I might be Teddy Roosevelt, but I ain't.
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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #45

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #30]
You believe that the only thing that exists is matter and energy and they obey the laws of nature that we experience.
Yes, because I've never seen anything that convinces me otherwise. It seems a reasonable default position to take.
This is exactly my point. This is nothing but a belief statement built on nothing. Science does not support this belief. Your belief system is more radical than the theist that you believe has no support for their belief in God the creator.

And no one has ever seen the evolution from one phylum to another but that does not stop you from believing in evolution.
Not necessarily. I think that is more likely than finding that god beings exist and have played a role in nature, but humans may never find the answers to some problems before we go extinct eventually.
Then what do you do with Jesus? He is worshiped as God and has been for 2000 years. It can be proved that He was a real person that died on the Cross. And is worshiped because He rose from the dead proving He was God. For 2000 years that has been the belief. it is a belief that started in the very city that He died.
to know that life began somehow on Earth a few billion years ago (mechanism TBD), and it diversified via evolution into what we see today, and Earth and all of its contents are real.
No one observed this. This is nothing more than a story out of the fossil record. This may fit your preferred belief system better. But it is not anymore observed than the calculations in cosmology. There is no hope of observing the past. Why do you believe people with Ph. D.s in biology more than those in astrophysics?
A lot of the quantum weirdness is explained ... and it doesn't apply to trees falling, or the moon. What is needed are more advances to reconcile General Relativity and quantum mechanics, develop a theory of quantum gravity, and things like that. Physics is nowhere near "done" so that conclusions can be made about everything in cosmology. There are simply things we don't know yet.
Why do you believe that your faith statement about a materialistic universe that has no basis in Physics has any more validity than my theistic belief in the creation of the universe that does not beak any physical laws of nature and gives the universe that we all observe?

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #46

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #45]
This is exactly my point. This is nothing but a belief statement built on nothing. Science does not support this belief.
The "belief" as you put it is based entirely on the results of science. Science not only supports it, it is the entire basis of it.
And no one has ever seen the evolution from one phylum to another but that does not stop you from believing in evolution.
What do you mean by "seen"? Of course no person as lived long enough to physically observe, for example, fish evolve to amphibians because (a) no humans existed when that happened, and (b) it took far, far longer than any human lifetime ... even if you include the ridiculous stories in Genesisof 900+ year old people. Evolution is a formal scientific theory, and rightfully so, because there are enough observations and enough evidence to confirm it. When someone can debunk the overwhelming evidence, it will fail to be accepted. Until then, it remains the best explanation we have for how life diversified on this planet.
Then what do you do with Jesus? He is worshiped as God and has been for 2000 years. It can be proved that He was a real person that died on the Cross. And is worshiped because He rose from the dead proving He was God. For 2000 years that has been the belief. it is a belief that started in the very city that He died.
I don't doubt that some preacher named Jesus was walking around the Middle East 2000 years ago, and that he upset the Romans and was crucified. But the claim that he "rose from the dead" is just an unconfirmed story. To use your own line of argument, who saw this actually happen to confirm it? The empty tomb story, and claims people saw him after the crucification, are not confirmed by anything but hearsay in one holy book. Why it is any more valid than the story of Muhammad taking a night trip to heaven aboard a winged horse-like creature called Buraq, or stories in other holy books.
No one observed this. This is nothing more than a story out of the fossil record.
The fossil record is evidence ... and fossils can be dated whether you believe it not. They are observations. I do believe it, and the fossil record (among many other observations, genetic support, etc.) proves evolution. I expect your main opposition to it is that it shows humans evolved from a great ape ancestor, that humans aren't anything special in the grand scheme of things, and these contradict religious beliefs based on the bible stories.
Why do you believe that your faith statement about a materialistic universe that has no basis in Physics has any more validity than my theistic belief in the creation of the universe that does not beak any physical laws of nature and gives the universe that we all observe?
But it does have a basis in physics. It is based on observations of matter and chemistry, physcs, biology, geology and everything humans have learned about nature and how it works. On the other hand, not one of the thousands of gods humans have invented have ever been confirmed to exist, and humans have created thousands of religions that often are completely incompatible with each other so all of them cannot be true. You've evidently chosen one god, and one religion, out of thousands rather than some other with completely different gods and beliefs. Are a billion Hindu's wrong (to use just one example)? Are their gods not real, or their holy book stories, etc.?
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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #47

Post by OneWay »

DrNoGods wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 1:01 pm [Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #45]
This is exactly my point. This is nothing but a belief statement built on nothing. Science does not support this belief.
The "belief" as you put it is based entirely on the results of science. Science not only supports it, it is the entire basis of it.
And no one has ever seen the evolution from one phylum to another but that does not stop you from believing in evolution.
What do you mean by "seen"? Of course no person as lived long enough to physically observe, for example, fish evolve to amphibians because (a) no humans existed when that happened, and (b) it took far, far longer than any human lifetime ... even if you include the ridiculous stories in Genesisof 900+ year old people. Evolution is a formal scientific theory, and rightfully so, because there are enough observations and enough evidence to confirm it. When someone can debunk the overwhelming evidence, it will fail to be accepted. Until then, it remains the best explanation we have for how life diversified on this planet.
Then what do you do with Jesus? He is worshiped as God and has been for 2000 years. It can be proved that He was a real person that died on the Cross. And is worshiped because He rose from the dead proving He was God. For 2000 years that has been the belief. it is a belief that started in the very city that He died.
I don't doubt that some preacher named Jesus was walking around the Middle East 2000 years ago, and that he upset the Romans and was crucified. But the claim that he "rose from the dead" is just an unconfirmed story. To use your own line of argument, who saw this actually happen to confirm it? The empty tomb story, and claims people saw him after the crucification, are not confirmed by anything but hearsay in one holy book. Why it is any more valid than the story of Muhammad taking a night trip to heaven aboard a winged horse-like creature called Buraq, or stories in other holy books.
No one observed this. This is nothing more than a story out of the fossil record.
The fossil record is evidence ... and fossils can be dated whether you believe it not. They are observations. I do believe it, and the fossil record (among many other observations, genetic support, etc.) proves evolution. I expect your main opposition to it is that it shows humans evolved from a great ape ancestor, that humans aren't anything special in the grand scheme of things, and these contradict religious beliefs based on the bible stories.
Why do you believe that your faith statement about a materialistic universe that has no basis in Physics has any more validity than my theistic belief in the creation of the universe that does not beak any physical laws of nature and gives the universe that we all observe?
But it does have a basis in physics. It is based on observations of matter and chemistry, physcs, biology, geology and everything humans have learned about nature and how it works. On the other hand, not one of the thousands of gods humans have invented have ever been confirmed to exist, and humans have created thousands of religions that often are completely incompatible with each other so all of them cannot be true. You've evidently chosen one god, and one religion, out of thousands rather than some other with completely different gods and beliefs. Are a billion Hindu's wrong (to use just one example)? Are their gods not real, or their holy book stories, etc.?
Is there any part of any of this that you
can pick out and prove it? I challenge you to a one on one debate
in the head to head debate forum on this topic. I would like to see if you
can prove anything you ever say in a post.

Do you accept

yes or no?

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #48

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #0]

Evolution's been observed, so is established fact. Now, as to how such processes play out, that's fair game.
No it is not. No one has been doing a million years of study. Not even a 1,000-year study. The closest thing is a 30-year-old Ecoli experiment at Michigan State. And that experiment has shown that there is not enough time for evolution to take place. Therefore making it impossible.
If that's accepted, you still haven't shown you know what lies beyond, regarding your claims of a god, and logic not holding.
All cosmologists are making the claims not me. Are you making the case that there is nothing that lies beyond this universe? Now that would break not only the laws of physics but also the law of the principle of sufficient reason (everything must have a reason or a cause).

The argument you are making is breaking the very laws of logic that you say you hold. "Everything must have a reason or a cause." So logically this universe must have a cause for its existence.

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #49

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to OneWay in post #47]
Is there any part of any of this that you
can pick out and prove it? I challenge you to a one on one debate
in the head to head debate forum on this topic. I would like to see if you
can prove anything you ever say in a post.

Do you accept

yes or no?
No ... that would clearly be a waste of time when all you can seem to say is "can you prove it" (and I have no interest in head-to-head debates in any case). You've yet to attempt any actual rebuttal and just repeat this same thing to nearly everyone. If you've got any relevant rebuttals post them in the public section and see how you do. I'll give you an easy one ... how old is the Earth, and why do you accept that age?
In human affairs the sources of success are ever to be found in the fountains of quick resolve and swift stroke; and it seems to be a law, inflexible and inexorable, that he who will not risk cannot win.
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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #50

Post by OneWay »

DrNoGods wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 1:55 pm [Replying to OneWay in post #47]
Is there any part of any of this that you
can pick out and prove it? I challenge you to a one on one debate
in the head to head debate forum on this topic. I would like to see if you
can prove anything you ever say in a post.

Do you accept

yes or no?
No ... that would clearly be a waste of time when all you can seem to say is "can you prove it" (and I have no interest in head-to-head debates in any case). You've yet to attempt any actual rebuttal and just repeat this same thing to nearly everyone. If you've got any relevant rebuttals post them in the public section and see how you do. I'll give you an easy one ... how old is the Earth, and why do you accept that age?
If you are not here to debate then why are you here?
This is a debate forum.

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