Justify the belief that gods do not exist.

[wiploc]

Some people believe that gods do not exist. (One can call this position "atheism" or "strong atheism" or "anti-theist perversion," anything you want. But we aren't going to argue terminology in this thread. Clarity is good, so you can explain what you personally mean by "atheist," but you shouldn't suggest that other usages are inferior.)

This thread is to make a list of arguments, of reasons to believe that theism is false.

And we can discuss the soundness of those arguments.

I'll start:

1. The Parable of the Pawnbroker.
(I'll just post titles here, so as not to take too much space at the top of each thread.)

2. Presumptive Falsity of Outrageous Claims.



Feel free to add to this list.

[otseng]

Much of the mass/energy content most likely came into being when inflation stopped.

I've never heard of this. Can you provide a reference to this?

Another problem is when did natural laws and processes arise? Did it spontaneously appear with the origin of the universe? How could that happen? Or are laws somehow eternal?

If we postulate that the universe began as a quantum fluctuation then clearly we would need for the laws of quantum mechanics to have existed prior to the universe. However, this is not a problem because those laws are explainable by purely natural actions. And by that I simply mean actions that have occurred by pure chance.

How did those laws arise that existed independently of the universe?

So the entire universe could have come into existence from a quantum fluctuation with nothing other than laws of pure random chance behind it.

Would you agree that according to our observations, this would have only happened once? Have we ever observed a quantum fluctuation producing matter that has existed on the order of billions of years?

[otseng]

In the beginning of the Big Bang we have reasons to believe that matter and antimatter were created in equal parts. The question then arises "Where did the antimatter go? Why didn't the whole universe just annihilate itself? Scientists don't have an answer for where antimatter went.

Yes, valid questions. Another question is why did it only happen once in the history of our universe?

Actually there are potential reasons why it only happened once. After all why should we expect it to happen again if all the antimatter is already gone?

If you had a box of kindling wood and you set it on fire and burned it up and it all turned to ash would it make sense to ask why you can't do it again? It's a one-way process. Maybe it's the same thing with antimatter becoming gravitational energy in the early universe. The universe is quite different today, so there's many things that took place in the early universe that are no longer occurring today.

The difference is that the universe arose out of nothing. There was no "initial kindling wood" for the universe to form out of. Antimatter and matter must've arose simultaneously from nothing. Though it's possible for this to happen all the time on the quantum scale, we don't ever observe it happening on the macro scale.

In fact, this may have occurred at the end of inflation.

Well, speaking of inflation. I'm quite skeptical of that as well.

I just heard an interesting talk on public radio that evidence for inflation has been discovered. I was very sleepy at the time I listened to this so I didn't catch the details. I fell asleep. But clearly progress is being made in this area.

Well, I'm now convinced of inflation!

Actually inflation was originally proposed to solve the problem of magnetic di-poles. But then it was soon realized that it solves the horizon problem and the flatness problems too. It was quickly realized that it actually solved many problems that it was never intended to solve.

Yes, I agree that there are many other things that it "solves".

As far as I'm concerned it still constitutes "magic" no matter what.

I had expected pushback from you on this, but I'm glad we agree on this.

The question is, does magic need a magician to explain it? And if it does, then why call it magic since it has an explanation? The magician would then be the entity that has no explanation. May as well save a step and just let magic be magic all on its own.

Well, the "magicians"in this case would be the ones who postulated the theories. They offer ideas that try to convince the audience that what they present is the truth, but, in fact, contain much hand-waving.

I have no problem with magic. I'm convince that reality is indeed magical.

I recently just listened to a book from Dawkins and I was surprised that he too took this view.

To expect that a God is behind everything is to actually expect that some little guy is pulling all the levers making the "magic" happen and therefore it's not really magic at all.

I don't believe that God is behind everything. But, if naturalistic explanations are not viable, then I believe a supernatural explanation is then rational.

[otseng]

I agree that it is a huge problem for Christianity. Not one that can easily be dismissed by far.

But still, it's not a problem for secularists at all. So in terms of justifying a belief that gods do not exist, why should a secularist need to even address the "Problem of Evil" at all?

There is no problem of evil in a secular world.

That only becomes a problem when you postulate the existence of a God.

Of course. I would even go further. In a secular world, there is no concept of objective evil.

I absolutely agree. The very concept of evil is a human construct. We define evil in terms of our own humanity.

But consider this:

Imagine that you have a young son or daughter whom you love very much. Now imagine that some human criminal butchered and killed your child. You would no doubt consider that to be an "Evil" act.

But what if instead of a bear or alligator viciously ate your child for dinner? Would that then not be "Evil". How above if your child contracted a horrible disease and suffering horribly whilst dying from it? Would that be "Evil"?

People used to believe that disease was evil. It was either evil demons doing it, or God himself doing is as a punishment to someone.

Where do we draw the line between evil and simply bad things that happen?

I think we have a very difficult time drawing this line. You might argue that modern day men in their suits and ties can sit around and philosophically define apologetic arguments or precisely what constitutes evil and what doesn't. But as I say, it wasn't always that way. Back in the days of the Bible people believe in being possessed by evil demons and they probably thought that mentally ill people were indeed possessed by evil. They also thought diseases were evil too.

We invent the concept of evil, and we define it. Therefore evil is not even objective in religion. Evil is always a subjective notion whether it secular or religious.

There is no such thing as objective evil. If religious people are clinging to that notion for a reason to believe in a God then they should really stop and rethink that one.

Hey, another thing we agree on! Yes, to be totally consistent in a secular worldview, there can be no such thing as objective evil.

In case people misunderstand me, I'm not saying that objective evil does not exist in a religious worldview. For all religions that I know of, evil is acknowledged to exist and dealing with evil is one of the major themes of all of them.

[wiploc]

Yes, to be totally consistent in a secular worldview, there can be no such thing as objective evil.

In case people misunderstand me, I'm not saying that objective evil does not exist in a religious worldview.

I've never understood this, and I've never gotten a theist to explain it. What does evil have to do with theism?

Why, if objective evil is possible with gods, isn't it also possible without gods?

Why, if it's impossible without gods, isn't it also impossible with gods?

[otseng]

So I think the only way to conclusively proof God or Gods don't exist is to show they were created by men. This is easier to do than following the insanity of proving something doesn't exist.

This would be a good approach. At least this would eliminate many of the gods.

However, I would disagree that proving something does not exist is insanity (as already pointed out by McCulloch).

[KenRU]

[Replying to post 354 by wiploc]

I've never understood this, and I've never gotten a theist to explain it. What does evil have to do with theism?
I've had it explained to me (by theists in some of the debates I've had), that god defines what is evil, not man. Therefore, we must use god's standard to recognize evil. Whatever action god says is evil we must accept it as such. Apparently we have neither the capacity nor wisdom to decide what is good or evil on our own.

Pretty convenient, eh?

[Divine Insight]

Much of the mass/energy content most likely came into being when inflation stopped.

I’ve never heard of this. Can you provide a reference to this?

I wouldn't know how to provide a reference to this very specific issue. The reference I would provide is simply inflation theory itself, coupled with the recent discovery at the LHC for evidence for the Higgs Field.

I can however outline the idea here.

1. Inflation theory has to do with quantum fields changing properties.

In other words inflation itself is believed to be caused by a quantum field that had changed in property causing inflation to begin from that initial quantum fluctuation. This change of state is "caused" both by pure chance as well as by specific conditions being present at the time. In other words, specific initial condition must first exist. The probability that these conditions will exist in a quantum field is given by Quantum Mechanics. The probability is low. However even low probabilities will occur given enough chances. And in this theory there infinitely many chances, thus even events with very low probabilities will ultimately occur eventually if things are constantly changing "forever". (although don't think of forever in terms of entropic time) Forever simply means that change is a constant that never ceases. It doesn't imply that time has a direction in this context.

And so it is believed that Inflation was "caused" this property change of a particular quantum field. In inflation theory this field is referred to as the "Inflaton Field". However in principle this field could be the very same field that we today call the "Higgs Field".

So what we realized from this is that a quantum field itself can change property and can cause inflation. This can all be shown to be valid mathematics in quantum field theory. In other words, nothing new needs to be proposed beyond what is already in the theory.

2. Now that we have a mechanism for Inflation we can ask, "What happened when it stopped?" What caused Inflation to stop? Well, clearly if our original theory is correct concerning what caused Inflation to start, then it most likely stopped in the same way. In other words this "Inflaton Field" once again changed properties. It didn't merely "turn off" but instead it transformed into a different behavior.

What behavior might it have changed into? Well, it may very well have become what we now call the "Higgs Field". This would explain several things. First it explains what happened to the Inflaton field and it explains why there is a Higgs field. It all explains how mass (and therefore gravity) would have come into existence at that time, and have no existed prior to this.

3. Add in the other element of the disappearance of antimatter at this very same moment in time and it would be a very good guess that these events are related.

Why?

Well, because the disappearance of anti matter could potentially explain the mechanism that changed the property of the Inflaton field causing it to become the Higgs Field which resulted in giving all particles mass and gravity. This would also explain why gravity then has precisely the correct value to perfectly offset matter. It was created directly from the energy of the antimatter.

It's almost too perfect to not be true.

It explains quite a bit.

I don't think anyone has actually proposed this idea formally in physics. But reading books on Inflation theory and the search for quantum gravity this appears to me to be the best explanation. And of course, if true, it also explains why there would be no such thing as "quantum gravity". Gravity would not have existed on the quantum scale directly. Instead it is a direct result of the Higgs Field. And that makes sense because what sense does it make to speak of gravity before particles had mass?

So all of this fits together too well not to have some relationship to physical reality within the current context of Quantum Field Theory.

If we postulate that the universe began as a quantum fluctuation then clearly we would need for the laws of quantum mechanics to have existed prior to the universe. However, this is not a problem because those laws are explainable by purely natural actions. And by that I simply mean actions that have occurred by pure chance.

How did those laws arise that existed independently of the universe?[/quote]

Answering that question is not important to the theory thus far. Just accepting that they must be there is sufficient. The important thing to realized here is that those "laws" are not intelligent. They don't require any intelligence.

In fact to even think of them as "laws" is probably misguided. We create "laws". Laws are nothing other that our description of how things are behaving. In the quantum world things behave quite randomly, although they also have some consistency. But consistency does not imply intelligence. A die shows us this.

If we have a die that can show only one of 6 faces at any given interaction, then this is a consistent behavior. It's both consistent and random. It's consistent because it can only show one of 6 possibilities, but it's random in that it can show any one of those 6 possibilities per interaction. So now we have two laws. The law that this die can only show the numbers 1 thru 6 and only in whole steps. And the law that it can show any 6 of these numbers with total randomness during any given interaction with another die.

So there we have "laws" without the need for any guiding intelligence.

Having "laws" does not imply that there is an intelligence behind things.

So there is no problem with postulating that quantum fields have "laws" that may ultimately transcend entropic time as we know it. There is no need to further postulate that these "laws" would need to have had any intelligence behind them.

So in this way we end up with physical behaviors (or "laws") that transcend our macro physical universe but do not themselves require an "intelligent designer".

It's simply not a problem.

So the entire universe could have come into existence from a quantum fluctuation with nothing other than laws of pure random chance behind it.

Would you agree that according to our observations, this would have only happened once? Have we ever observed a quantum fluctuation producing matter that has existed on the order of billions of years?

No, we haven't. But this is not a problem either. In fact, based on the probabilities predicted by Quantum Mechanics it's highly unlikely that we would witness such an event even if we lived for the entire lifespan of the physical universe itself. So we can't dismiss these things simply because we don't see them happening within these time frames. Billions of years is a blink of an eye in this context.

There are other reasons we may not see this as well. It is quite possible that once inflation has taken place and settled down into a Higgs field where there now exists a massive physical universe, that very condition may potentially prevent another inflation event taking place within this same universe. I mean this is clearly just a speculative guess, but it's certainly one the could be possible.

Also we may someday be surprised. Who knows what might actually happen next? For all we know the night sky could dramatically change right before our very eyes on a very large scale blowing the minds of everyone. A riff shooting through the universe at greater than the speed of light. Something we currently believe to be impossible.

In fact, that's a good point toward your last question right there. Perhaps the limitation that things can now only change at a rate that does not exceed the speed of light is the very thing that is preventing another inflation event from occurring within our current macro universe.

Let's not forget also that this limitation that material objects cannot exceed light speed is clearly also related to the Higgs Field?

Why? Well, because the limitation on the speed of massive objects is caused by their mass growing larger as their speed through spacetime increases. And since the Higgs Field is what is causing things to have mass then clearly it's the Higgs field that is preventing this.

Therefore it the Higgs field can prevent this, then perhaps the Higgs field is also preventing another quantum fluctuation from erupting too.

~~~~

I just love physics because it does offer so many plausible explanations for things. The explanations I've explored in this post may or may not be true, but they are certainly plausible in theory and they don't require a preexisting intelligence to make them work.

So explanations for a universe that does not require an intelligent agent behind it at least exist. Whether they represent ultimate reality or not is a totally separate question.

This model simply does not require an intelligent agent behind it.

[Divine Insight]

The difference is that the universe arose out of nothing. There was no “initial kindling wood� for the universe to form out of. Antimatter and matter must’ve arose simultaneously from nothing. Though it’s possible for this to happen all the time on the quantum scale, we don’t ever observe it happening on the macro scale.

We don't need to have things arising from "nothing". There is no problem with postulating the quantum fields have always existed independent from the macro universe. This would not imply the existence of an intelligent being. There is no need to associate intelligence with the quantum fields. Although, you certainly could postulate that some intelligence is associated with them, but there is no need to do that.

Also what do you mean when you say we don't ever observe this happening on the macro scale? Why should we expect to see that happen on a macro scale? In fact what would that even mean?

Are you suggesting that we should be seeing baseballs and anti-baseballs popping into and out of existence? There are very good reasons to explain why that never happens. There's no reason to expect that to happen.

Actually inflation was originally proposed to solve the problem of magnetic di-poles. But then it was soon realized that it solves the horizon problem and the flatness problems too. It was quickly realized that it actually solved many problems that it was never intended to solve.

Yes, I agree that there are many other things that it “solves�.

Well, don't you think that gives Inflation quite a bit of merit as a viable explanatory theory?

As far as I'm concerned it still constitutes "magic" no matter what.

I had expected pushback from you on this, but I’m glad we agree on this.

I have no problem considering the existence of quantum fields "magic". Although I should be careful when using that term because for me "magic" doesn't imply or require an intelligent again. For me the term "magic" simply means anything that I personally cannot explain.

I cannot explain the existence of quantum fields. So for me they are "magic". But that in no way implies that there is a magician behind them. In fact, it there was a magician behind them then they would no longer be magic. At least not in any real sense of magic. Instead they would just be slight-of-hand tricks being done by a magician where his tricks could potentially be "explained" in ways that do not require "magic".

The question is, does magic need a magician to explain it? And if it does, then why call it magic since it has an explanation? The magician would then be the entity that has no explanation. May as well save a step and just let magic be magic all on its own.

Well, the “magicians� in this case would be the ones who postulated the theories. They offer ideas that try to convince the audience that what they present is the truth, but, in fact, contain much hand-waving.

Sounds to me like you just described theists.

At least the secular scientists offer solid reasons for why their theories make sense.

I have no problem with magic. I'm convince that reality is indeed magical.

I recently just listened to a book from Dawkins and I was surprised that he too took this view.

I'm glad to hear that. Science does not say there cannot be magic. But what it does offer are explanations and theories that suggest that there does not need to be a magician behind the magic. In fact, if there was a magician behind the magic then it would be magic at all, instead it would just be slight-of-hand Tom Foolery.

Ironically I think this is what religious people need. They refuse to believe in magic. Instead they insist that there must be a magician behind it that can explain the magic in every detail to the point where it's no longer magic.

So the real irony here is that it is actually the secularists who accept true magic, whilst the theists passionately argue against magic in favor of a magician who can explain all the magic away.

To expect that a God is behind everything is to actually expect that some little guy is pulling all the levers making the "magic" happen and therefore it's not really magic at all.

I don’t believe that God is behind everything. But, if naturalistic explanations are not viable, then I believe a supernatural explanation is then rational.

Well, I tend to not use the term "supernatural" since I have no clue that that term actually means. I mean, science is far from being a completed study, in fact, it may never be a completed study. Therefore we don't currently new the true complete nature of reality, and we may never know. So if we don't know what constitutes reality how can we even begin to speak of the supernatural?

What appears to be supernatural today may be nothing more than the natural aspects of reality that we have yet to discover.

So that's a meaningless term until we know the true nature of reality completely. Which may ultimately be impossible to discover.

In the meantime there are very good explanations for how our universe could have arisen without the need for any preexisting intelligent agent. It's just not necessary based upon our current understanding of physical reality.

[Divine Insight]

Hey, another thing we agree on! Yes, to be totally consistent in a secular worldview, there can be no such thing as objective evil.

In case people misunderstand me, I'm not saying that objective evil does not exist in a religious worldview. For all religions that I know of, evil is acknowledged to exist and dealing with evil is one of the major themes of all of them.

Are you familiar with the Eastern mystical religions?

I realize there are many different philosophies in those religions just like in the Western religions, but it's been my understanding that the Eastern philosophies don't think in terms of "objective evil" but instead they do actually view "evil' as being a subjective perception.

In fact, I'm not even sure if they even use the term "evil" like as if it is some objective concept at all. They speak more in terms of "suffering" rather than in terms of evil.

They also point out that much suffering is self-inflicted precisely because it is entirely subjective. We choose to be unhappy about certain situations when we don't need to be making that choice if we really stop and think about it.

So I would hesitate to say that all religions recognize "evil" as an objective concept. Although I'm sure that they would all agree that there is a very strong consensus among humans regarding how some actions are indeed perceived by almost everyone as being undesirable or even "wrong".

But gee whiz, even secular atheists acknowledge that. Strong subjective consensus does not make something objective.

So I would not agree that "all religions acknowledge that evil exist". But what I would agree with is that everyone (including secular atheists) recognize consensual subjective rejections of certain behaviors as being undesirable and even considered to be "wrong" from the a subjective point of view of humans.

But I'm pretty sure that in religions like Buddhism they would be quick to point out that human perspectives are not absolutes in reality and that other beings, such as animals, may have a totally different subjective view of reality and what they might consider to be unpleasant or undesirable may be quite different from what we perceive.

That pretty much blows the concept of objective evil clean out of the water doesn't it?

So I disagree that all religions take the same stance on objective evil. I personally don't see where they do. I think they different greatly when it comes to this concept.

[help3434]

In answer to the question of the thread I do not believe that God or gods exist because I do not see room for them in what we know about formation of the planets, stars, etc. Everything else is just arguing against various religious conceptions.