Proof of God - for or against???

[HK]

A smartphone is just another conduit for information from the living. It's not like they magically provide facts out of thin air, someone had to put them there :dunno

 

[Ammonite]

1. Something exists
2. You don’t get something from nothing
3. Therefore, something necessary and eternal exists

Worst logic I have ever heard in my life. :nod:

 

[BornReady]

Worst logic I have ever heard in my life. :nod:

Premise 2 is false. Subatomic particles appear out of nothing quite frequently.

 

[Pet Sounds]

Premise 2 is false. Subatomic particles appear out of nothing quite frequently.

No, they don't. That would violate the conservation of energy. Nothing is ever added or taken away in the universe. Just converted from other things. Everything comes from something else.

 

[BornReady]

No, they don't. That would violate the conservation of energy. Nothing is ever added or taken away in the universe. Just converted from other things. Everything comes from something else.

A particle/anti-particle pair form such as an electron and an anti-electron. The total energy of the pair is zero. Scientists estimate the total of the energy of the universe is very close to zero.

 

[Pet Sounds]

A particle/anti-particle pair form such as an electron and an anti-electron. The total energy of the pair is zero. Scientists estimate the total of the energy of the universe is very close to zero.

I bet you watched that Lawrence Krauss video.


This is an example of something being created out of something. These things are being "created" from already existing energy/material, not out of nothing. It's like converting currency. Money isn't s being created from nothing when converting currency. Use dollars and pounds as an example. If I have 1 million dollars and zero pounds, but then convert all my dollars to pounds, all the money I now have in pounds didn't come from "nothing". It came from the dollars, it is now the equivalent but just in a different state. And you can't create anything either, you just move it around. Or else energy would constantly keep being added and subtracted to the universe.

 

[BornReady]

No, I haven't seen that video. What I wrote is from a quantum mechanics book. It doesn't change the amount of energy in the system when a particle/anti-particle is created because the particle is positive energy and the anti-particle is negative energy. The sum of the two is zero. The particle and anti-particle are created out of nothing. If they come in contact with each other they will both disappear back into nothing. Quantum mechanics is pretty weird.

 

[Pet Sounds]

No, I haven't seen that video. What I wrote is from a quantum mechanics book. It doesn't change the amount of energy in the system when a particle/anti-particle is created because the particle is positive energy and the anti-particle is negative energy. The sum of the two is zero. The particle and anti-particle are created out of nothing. If they come in contact with each other they will both disappear back into nothing. Quantum mechanics is pretty weird.

No, if they come into contact they will create another photon or particle. The energy from the particle pairs is turned into a photon. It is conserved. Converted

How does a particle get created out of nothing? What is it made of? Where did it come from? A vaccum? Vaccums don't exist. These particles pop up from energy fields which permeate ever milimeter of the universe, and they are made from those energy fields. A particle has never come into existence out of nothing anywhere, or at anytime in the universe.

And I think you are thinking of positive and negative charge, not energy.

Electron–positron annihilation occurs when an electron (e−) and a positron (e+ , the electron's antiparticle) collide. The result of the collision is the annihilation of the electron and positron, and the creation of gamma ray photons or, at higher energies, other particles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron%E2%80%93positron_annihilation

and the reverse is true:

Antiparticles are produced naturally in beta decay, and in the interaction of cosmic rays in the Earth's atmosphere. Because charge is conserved, it is not possible to create an antiparticle without either destroying a particle of the same charge (as in beta decay), or creating a particle of the opposite charge.

 

[BornReady]

Perhaps I misunderstood what I was reading. I don't remember anything about a photon being emitted upon annihilation. The creation/annihilation of these particles is more of a prediction of quantum theory than an observation. Apparently they cannot be observed because they are so short lived.

So what do you think of the argument?

1. Something exists
2. You don’t get something from nothing
3. Therefore, something necessary and eternal exists

 

[FreightTrain]

A particle/anti-particle pair form such as an electron and an anti-electron. The total energy of the pair is zero. Scientists estimate the total of the energy of the universe is very close to zero.

Thank God (oh no, another pun) Born joined the thread! Maybe arguments will be more challenging and thought-provoking now.

 

[Panacea]

So what do you think of the argument?

1. Something exists
2. You don’t get something from nothing
3. Therefore, something necessary and eternal exists

Even if premise two were true (I don't think it necessarily is), premise three makes a second huge leap in logic. Nothing about the concept that everything needs an origin to come into existence necessitates said origin(s) being eternal.

I will have to echo the other poster; this has always been bad logic.

 

[Pet Sounds]

Perhaps I misunderstood what I was reading. I don't remember anything about a photon being emitted upon annihilation. The creation/annihilation of these particles is more of a prediction of quantum theory than an observation. Apparently they cannot be observed because they are so short lived.

So what do you think of the argument?

1. Something exists
2. You don’t get something from nothing
3. Therefore, something necessary and eternal exists

I'm sure you actually read it right. Because I have heard this said countless times. I think it is basically scientists writing pop books for laymen saying this, in an attempt to make QM seem more interesting to the audience.

Basically they are mathematical fictions/placeholders that can be used only because they can't be observed. Since we can't really say where something is, we assume it is everywhere, even though it isn't. Just for bookkeeping sake. So "virtual" particles are created in the math to account for them. But they aren't real. They don't exist outside those equations or in reality. It's actually a really confusing subject but the bottom line is that everything that goes in must come out. Everything that comes out, must have had the equivalent gone iin. Though the forms may be different. This is a universal law in physics and chemistry. Everything has to be accounted for, and come from somewhere.

That logic sounds like Ayn Rand where she says "existence exists." Which is a tautology.

I'm not really sure it is a bad idea. Or else how do you beat infinite regress? You would have to trace causes forever, unless something stood outside those causes. A peripheral causation. A linear causation would just go on forever. Something eternal and necessary that exists would not have to be god either. It could be some natural mechanism that keeps creating universes or whatever it is that is being created. That process could be said to be eternal and necessary.

 

[Diggin Deep]

OK...I've been following this since I walked away from the discussion last week. I think it comes down to a "faith vs science". While just trolling OTz, I've spent about 6 days trying to write my interpretation of faith vs science and it's turned out to be a 6 page paper in Microsoft Word. I will post it as I can without completely taking up too much of the thread, even though I started it over the course of tomorrow.

Until then...troll on

 

[Diggin Deep]

Here is my introduction:

Faith and Science very frequently are two things on polar sides of the spectrum or at least they appear to be in media and by many popular writers today. People are always picking fights – picking a fight with people of faith or people of science. People of faith don’t want to exercise their spiritual mind. People of science often demonize people of faith, because they don’t want to exercise their brain and the ability to actually look at data.


This is one of those topics where there isn’t always a right or wrong. Sometimes there are certain things that are on both sides of the same coin where we can only see the character of God. By just seeing the character of God, by just having faith, by just having beliefs, by just having an awareness of the spiritual realm – you can’t have truth. Neither can you have truth by just having science, by just having observable experiments, or by just having the intricacies of math. You really need both faith and science to actually come together to have truth - Even in the world of spirituality, the world of The Bible, the world of things that are outside of a laboratory – like prophecy. Prophecy in The Bible is when God gives spiritual prompting to one person to give a word of understanding and encouragement about something you can’t actually see and measure in the moment right now.


1 Thessalonians 5:19-22 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.


Some people treat prophecy with contempt by saying, “Oh No, that doesn’t happen – you’re crazy!” and then others treat prophecy with contempt by saying, “Oh God said it, OK, that is just how it is!”. The scripture says to test it. Just because someone says they have a prophetic word, doesn’t mean it’s true. To test it – that’s scientific language. It’s a process of testing and measuring. This is a process of science and a process that God actually values.

I am pro-God and pro-Science.

 

[Diggin Deep]

I think there is sometimes confusion about the meaning of these terms: evidence, belief and so forth. What is the relationship between these terms? In short, evidence is anything that comes to your attention. It could be something that comes out of a laboratory experiment if you are a scientist, but it could also be just a personal experience. But the constitute is that the person experience is essentially what becomes the evidence for developing your beliefs. So you look at the evidence and then you build up some belief based on that evidence. But belief in itself is not faith. It is very clear from scripture that faith is when you actually act on your belief.

So this cycle continues with belief leading to faith and then once you have acted on that belief, you get some type of feed back as to whether that was reasonable or not reasonable actions to take. That now becomes part of your knowledge. So we can now somehow complete this cycle and realize that once you gain knowledge based upon acting upon that belief, you now have additional evidence that will support future actions, future tests.

 

[Diggin Deep]

Now in science, essentially the same thing is done. Science uses slightly different terminology. So when it comes to evidence, a scientist talks about it as statistics. A scientist will ask, what is the evidence you have? Then they will give you some kind of statistical analysis. Science uses statistics and as they analyze the statistics, they develop some belief (but in the realm of science, they don’t like to use the word belief, because it sounds a little too wishy washy) – so we’ll say hypothesis. So they develop a hypothesis based on the evidence and then they’ll test that hypothesis. The testing of the hypothesis is equivalent to acting on your belief. So we refer to it as testing, but in fact it is a demonstration of faith.

Basically, they’re saying that now that they think this what is going on, let’s do an experiment based upon that belief and see what we get. When we collect the evidence we get from that test, we can add it into the broader range of knowledge we got and develop a theory. The theory becomes the basis of additional evidence. Then we can go back into the cycle and refine our understanding, enhance our beliefs, and continue to develop increasing knowledge that builds up the scientific enterprise. The essential process is the same as it is in Christian faith or anything that we do. Anytime we take an experience, develop a belief and then act on that belief, we ultimately develop knowledge.

 

[Diggin Deep]

Now we think about this issue of trying to establish something in terms of a statistical probability. Dawkins was kind of pushed to answer the question of whether or not he believed that there is a God and what the probability of there being a God. Obviously he was very uncomfortable with that and for good reason, because it is a question that science cannot address. Nevertheless, he decided to give some probability – 99% against or something like that. I want to demonstrate that probability, the concept of probability is kind of another way of saying – we don’t know. Let’s use a coin toss for example. Before I flip it, what is the chance that the coin will land heads up?...50%. I flip it, and again what is the chance it lands heads up? From your perspective, it is 50%. From my perspective, it is 100% one way or the other – right? It’s not like half heads, half tails. What’s the difference from your perspective and my perspective? I have visual evidence. When I ask, what is the chance, what is the probability of the coin landing heads up, you are basically saying, “I don’t know”.

You have to have additional information to definitively say heads up. You probably believe that it is either heads or tails – right? It’s not like you are saying that it is only heads or tails once someone looks at it. Although, there may be people in physics who would argue that, but in fact it is possible that I can know something that you don’t know and on that basis I can assign greater certainty to a statement. I think this is an important concept, because too often we accept some scientist’s description of something being statistically probable as evidence that scientists know something that we don’t. And all that the scientist is really saying is, “I don’t know, but this is the way things have happened in the past and so I can assign a probability.” So we have to be very cautious of the claims that we make based upon the evidence.

 

[Diggin Deep]

Heck...I'll just post it all. The boredom of sitting at the office after hours has consumed me.

 

[Diggin Deep]

Now what is science? Science is basically the process which we seek to understand the way the universe works. And science is very successful in doing that. In fact, the technology that allows us to do what we do on a daily basis – the whole process has been worked out based upon scientific understanding of the way the universe works. Technology is a wonderful example of successful science. One thing that science does really well is explain to us how the universe works. That is one of its major contributions to our understanding of the world.

A second thing that science does is lead to advanced technology that leads to things that allow us to look at how the universe works. Another thing that science does is allow us to take a look at what is going on behind the scenes. It’s kind of like watching how a film was made. That is pretty much what science is for life. That is something that intrigues me about science is that it kind of gives us a "behind the scenes" look of how it all works and what actually God has been doing in the process of creation. It is an exciting aspect of what science can lead to.

 

[Diggin Deep]

There are certain things that science cannot do. For example, science is not able to give us answers to questions of purpose. Questions that probably keep us awake at night are, “Why am I here? What is this all about? What am I suppose to be doing?”. Those are the kind of questions that people actually struggle with…I know I do. Science doesn’t have any answers to those questions. If you lay awake at night wondering about the theory of relativity, I’m not sure how many of us actually do that, but that is something that we can turn to a text book and find an answer on. So we can rest easy and go back to sleep. Most people aren’t actually staying awake worrying about something like that.

Another thing science cannot do is address unique events, such as individual experiences. For example, I love my wife and children very, but there is no way that science can prove if or how much I love my family. I hope she understands and believes that I do, but it’s not a scientific question. Another thing that science cannot prove is the claim that Jesus died and came back to life. That’s an amazing claim and science would probably try to put some probability on that basis (“we never saw it happen so it’s less than .00004% probable, but we can’t say definitively that it never happened, because we don’t know.”).

So, science is not able to give us absolute certainty about anything. In fact, that is why science talks about things in terms of statistics. Because science is always open up the possibility that maybe additional data is something that is not already a part of our knowledge will have to recline our understanding of the way the world works.