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Cosmological Argument - Discussion

Royal PITA said:
39 dead by their own hand. It's a choice.
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A choice led by faith.

Although the number of deaths in atheist Mao's "Cultural Revolution" are debatable, it's usually over a million and as high as 20 million. Which is worse: Mass Murder or suicide?
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I don't think I mentioned any such dichotomy, and I'm having trouble seeing the relevance to the thread of our conversation. Are you by any chance conflating faith in specious religious cult with a belief in a political ideology?
 
Dragonfly said:
Those "applicable laws" might have been there before the universe was formed. How would we ever know?
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If you believe Hawking, the physical laws wouldn't be there.
 
Originally Posted by calamity View Post
I'm not sure about "zero." There is ample evidence that precursors of life are present in space rocks. We've known this for at least a decade.

Life Ingredients Found in Superhot Meteorites—A First
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ZERO!

Your article is dated 2010! That's at least 10 years ago! You'd think that by now, they'd have created life on their petri dish! :lol:


Read the long explanation below as to why he gave that conclusion:



An Open Letter to My Colleagues

James Tour


The proposals offered thus far to explain life’s origin make no scientific sense.

Beyond our planet, all the others that have been probed are lifeless, a result in accord with our chemical expectations.
The laws of physics and chemistry’s Periodic Table are universal, suggesting that life based upon amino acids, nucleotides, saccharides and lipids is an anomaly.
Life should not exist anywhere in our universe.

Life should not even exist on the surface of the earth.17
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An Open Letter to My Colleagues | Articles | Inference: International Review of Science







James Tour

is a synthetic organic chemist at Rice University.

James Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering at Rice University.

He has over 590 research publications and over 100 patents, and has received numerous scientific awards.
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James Tour | Authors | Inference: International Review of Science





LOL!

That open letter is an OPEN CHALLENGE! "Correct me if I'm wrong!"


That's another public challenge James Tour had thrown to the science community!


I'm still searching for any rebuttals to his open letter!

I can't find any!
 
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Dragonfly said:
Shall we dig into the Cosmological Argument for a bit?

Here's a very high-level, 5 mile high "bullet point" for what this thread should focus on (at least at the beginning):



Something can't come from nothing. Therefore, if there's something, it was created.

The Universe exists, therefore something created the Universe.

Of course nothing in this argument necessarily states that the cause "must be god".

The argument also tends to fall completely apart when the question gets asked:

Well if something can't come from nothing, then where did "god" come from?

Thoughts?
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I find it more reasonable to think God has always existed than I do to think matter and energy have always existed. If matter and energy had a beginning then the only logical explanation for their origin must be something which existed outside the strict scientific bounds defining matter and energy in the first place, such as God.
 
marke said:
I find it more reasonable to think God has always existed than I do to think matter and energy have always existed.
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Why is it "more reasonable" to believe in something supernatural than something natural?


You put a book down by your chair just before you head upstairs and go to bed.
The next morning the book is not by the chair, but instead it's back in the bookcase.

Is it more reasonable to think a ghost put the book away, or that perhaps your spouse/child put the book away after you'd gone to bed?
Or that you even walked in your sleep at some point in the night and put the book away.
 
Dragonfly said:
Why is it "more reasonable" to believe in something supernatural than something natural?


You put a book down by your chair just before you head upstairs and go to bed.
The next morning the book is not by the chair, but instead it's back in the bookcase.

Is it more reasonable to think a ghost put the book away, or that perhaps your spouse/child put the book away after you'd gone to bed?
Or that you even walked in your sleep at some point in the night and put the book away.
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We are talking about origins here, not ghosts and books. Which do you believe has always existed with no beginning or origin, God or matter? If matter has always existed how is that not a matter of blind faith and not empirical science? If matter had a beginning, how did it originate from nothing?
 
marke said:
We are talking about origins here, not ghosts and books. Which do you believe has always existed with no beginning or origin, God or matter?
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Matter.

I see absolutely no reason to believe a god exists, or ever existed.

Ghosts and God are both supernatural concepts.

You said it's more reasonable for you to think God did it.

It's not more reasonable. It might be easier. It might be more pleasant if you think about the idea of eternal paradise and reuniting with your deceased family.
But it's for sure not "more reasonable". Not any more reasonable than thinking that book was returned to the bookshelf by a ghost.
 
Angel said:
Go Tell the Internet Skeptics!

The cosmological argument ends as soon as God is reached in the causal regress.
Any additional questions, like What caused God?, are frivolous, otiose, and beside the point.
​



Oy!


Oy!


One of the all-time great westerns. Please tell me you haven't seen it!


Oy!
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Why does it stop at god? You just arbitrarily drew the line there and can't really provide a reason why. If you're arguing EVERYTHING MUST be created by something else and have a beginning, then that would apply to god. If it doesn't, then it can also not apply to the universe. There's no evidence the universe had a beginning.
 
Dragonfly said:
Matter.

I see absolutely no reason to believe a god exists, or ever existed.

Ghosts and God are both supernatural concepts.

You said it's more reasonable for you to think God did it.

It's not more reasonable. It might be easier. It might be more pleasant if you think about the idea of eternal paradise and reuniting with your deceased family.
But it's for sure not "more reasonable". Not any more reasonable than thinking that book was returned to the bookshelf by a ghost.
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Some people reject the idea of God while blindly believing matter has always existed.
 
marke said:
Some people reject the idea of God while blindly believing matter has always existed.
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No one who understands the science believes "matter" always existed.
 
marke said:
Some people reject the idea of God while blindly believing matter has always existed.
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Why does matter need to have a beginning while god can't have a beginning? You're just arbitrarily making those conclusions with no reasoning or explanations to back it up.
 
marke said:
Some people reject the idea of God while blindly believing matter has always existed.
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The blindness is in the belief of the supernatural. You have no proof.
You have nothing but faith. Faith is not an infallible pathway to truth.


Matter exists. It has physical properties.
 
Dragonfly said:
Matter.

I see absolutely no reason to believe a god exists, or ever existed.

Ghosts and God are both supernatural concepts.

You said it's more reasonable for you to think God did it.

It's not more reasonable. It might be easier. It might be more pleasant if you think about the idea of eternal paradise and reuniting with your deceased family.
But it's for sure not "more reasonable". Not any more reasonable than thinking that book was returned to the bookshelf by a ghost.
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RabidAlpaca said:
Incorrect. The big bang did not create matter. There's no evidence to suggest it hasn't always existed (no evidence to suggest it has either)
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Matter came about from its underlying energy.
matter can be created out of two photons. The law of conservation of energy sets a minimum photon energy required for the creation of a pair of fermions: this threshold energy must be greater than the total rest energy of the fermions created.

...to produce ordinary baryonic matter out of a photon gas, this gas must not only have a very high photon density, but also be very hot – the energy (temperature) of photons must obviously exceed the rest mass energy of the given matter particle pair. The threshold temperature for production of electrons is about 1010 K, 1013 K for protons and neutrons, etc. According to the Big Bang theory, in the early universe, mass-less photons and massive fermions would inter-convert freely. As the photon gas expanded and cooled, some fermions would be left over (in extremely small amounts ~10−10) because low energy photons could no longer break them apart. Those left-over fermions would have become the matter we see today in the universe around us.

Matter creation - Wikipedia
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RabidAlpaca said:
Why does it stop at god? You just arbitrarily drew the line there and can't really provide a reason why. If you're arguing EVERYTHING MUST be created by something else and have a beginning, then that would apply to god. If it doesn't, then it can also not apply to the universe. There's no evidence the universe had a beginning.
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You are right. There is no way to scientifically determine the origin of matter. Blind speculations about the origin of matter are not scientific, they are philosophical, they are theological, they are opinionated guesses and assumptions, but not science.
 
marke said:
You are right. There is no way to scientifically determine the origin of matter. Blind speculations about the origin of matter are not scientific, they are philosophical, they are theological, they are opinionated guesses and assumptions, but not science.
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Which is why science hasn't made any conclusions about the origin of matter. You, on the other hand, don't hold yourself to those rules and feel entitled to make up a story that makes you feel good which you can't back up or explain reasonably.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
Why does matter need to have a beginning while god can't have a beginning? You're just arbitrarily making those conclusions with no reasoning or explanations to back it up.
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Truth does not have "needs." The truth about the origin of the universe and matter, for example, does not need to be backed up by human speculations. Truth remains true no matter whether humans comprehend it or believe it or not.
 
marke said:
Truth does not have "needs." The truth about the origin of the universe and matter, for example, does not need to be backed up by human speculations. Truth remains true no matter whether humans comprehend it or believe it or not.
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And the truth is "we don't know".

The truth is NOT "god did it".
 
Dragonfly said:
The blindness is in the belief of the supernatural. You have no proof.
You have nothing but faith. Faith is not an infallible pathway to truth.


Matter exists. It has physical properties.
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Matter does exist and what you believe about its origin is not a fact of science, but a blind opinionated belief.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
Incorrect. The big bang did not create matter. There's no evidence to suggest it hasn't always existed (no evidence to suggest it has either)
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True. Speculations about the origin of matter are not scientific, they are philosophical and theological blind beliefs.
 
calamity said:
Matter came about from its underlying energy.
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We thank God for energy. Others have no idea where energy came from, leaving them in ignorance of who or what to thank for its existence.
 
marke said:
True. Speculations about the origin of matter are not scientific, they are philosophical and theological blind beliefs.
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They are theories grounded in science. Not faith.

Making them far more "reasonable".
 
RabidAlpaca said:
Which is why science hasn't made any conclusions about the origin of matter. You, on the other hand, don't hold yourself to those rules and feel entitled to make up a story that makes you feel good which you can't back up or explain reasonably.
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Are you claiming that I am wrong to have opinions about the origin of matter? Are you claiming you do not have opinions about the origin of matter? Are you claiming your opinions about the origin of matter are scientific but mine are not? Clothing assumptions, speculations or opinions in scientific terminology does not make those opinions scientific.
 
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