Prove me wrong: there is no God

[Immanuel Can]

Irreducible complexity is just God of the gaps.

I only listed three of the many, many irreducible complexities.

You tried to do something with the moon-Earth ratio, perhaps didn't realize that things like the Sun-earth ratio is even more critical, and the relations of all the planets are also key contributors to things like the earth's rate of rotation, and gravitational position, and so forth -- Jupiter protecting the inner core from bombardment, for example -- and that a marginal change of any of these, and the Earth becomes either far too hot or far too cold to sustain life. Likewise, the tilt of the Earth's axis. Likewise the universal expansion rate. Likewise myriad other cosmological features.

And then there's the biological level: which is where I pointed to the symbiosis problem. You don't have any explanation, and so far as I have been able to discover, there is none for triadic symbiosis, and such things. The development of the eye, or of the flagellar motor...these are not possible to describe in evolutionary stages, because any "reduction" in them produces an instant and total dysfunction -- hence, and evolutionary injury or liability, not an advantage, and they can't be selected for. And I didn't even mention things like the severe dearth of transitional forms in the fossil record.

And then there's the microscopic level...DNA's specifications...the strong and weak forces in the atom...and on, and on, and on. There are literally thousands of known problems of irreducible complexity, for which "time plus chance" explanation simply will not do.

So no, this is not a "God of the gaps" issue. The "God of the gaps" critique supposes that there is an alternate scientific explanation for these. But in all these cases, there is NO alternate explanation that anybody can offer. They're simply mysteries of design. And they amount to an astronomically-against chance that any planet would exist here, let alone life itself, let alone you and me.

Yet here we are. Some explanation required. None available but design. "Time plus chance" simply isn't adequate to the job.

[commonsense]

Laws of nature are revisable.

The formulations of scientific laws are being refined, but the Regularity of nature remain unchanged, of course.

You don't understand the definition of "miracle." A "miracle" is, by definition, a divine intervention that produces something contrary to the expected, or contrary to what would otherwise happen.

Even ancient people knew this. They knew that water doesn't stand up in walls by itself. They knew that food didn't fall from the sky. They knew that lamps do not burn when they run out of oil. They knew that dead men do not rise from the dead.

Which is precisely why they called such events a "miracle."

Point of information, the lamp did not run out of oil. The oil just lasted a lot longer than expected.

[Immanuel Can]

The formulations of scientific laws are being refined, but the Regularity of nature remain unchanged, of course.

You don't understand the definition of "miracle." A "miracle" is, by definition, a divine intervention that produces something contrary to the expected, or contrary to what would otherwise happen.

Even ancient people knew this. They knew that water doesn't stand up in walls by itself. They knew that food didn't fall from the sky. They knew that lamps do not burn when they run out of oil. They knew that dead men do not rise from the dead.

Which is precisely why they called such events a "miracle."

Point of information, the lamp did not run out of oil. The oil just lasted a lot longer than expected.

It's a traditional, but not Biblical story. I'm only repeating it because most Jews would say it was a miracle.

[commonsense]

I can't see why Pantheism doesn't satisfy the "creationism" model.

Nobody said it didn't "satisfy" some "creation model". I just said it wasn't the real God. That's quite a different claim.

Understood that you believe this.

But then what exactly would be meant by "creation model" => the existence of God. If it can imply the existence of a false god (not God) then it doesn't to you imply the existence of God.

Am I correct you mean to say "creation model AND <something else> => God. Then should refrain from "creation model" => God

The original creator could just as well have been an atom.

[commonsense]

It is impossible to prove anything...

Sorry...I'm not seeing an answer to my questions. Just an ad hominem, with an attempt to escape.

Let me ask you again, and most pointedly: is Israel "chosen"?

You said Israel, but do you mean Israel or the Jewish people or the Jewish religion?

It is unclear to me, whether the Jewish people were the chosen people or the choosing people.

[Immanuel Can]

It is impossible to prove anything...

Sorry...I'm not seeing an answer to my questions. Just an ad hominem, with an attempt to escape.

Let me ask you again, and most pointedly: is Israel "chosen"?

You said Israel, but do you mean Israel or the Jewish people or the Jewish religion?

It won't matter. Because "chosen" means there has to be a "chooser."

To say that the Jewish religion is only "chosen by Jews" would be unremarkable, and in fact tautological. What does it amount to, if some belief is merely "chosen" by those that choose it? If the Jews only "choose" to believe they're the people of God or the inheritors of the Law or the rightful denizens of Jerusalem, then what information does that give us? Only that they want something that, plausibly, is not even theirs, if God is not the "chooser".

But Jews understand "chosen" to mean, "chosen by God." They refer to things like God's promise to Abraham, or the selection of Israel out of Egypt, or the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai. All these would signal interventions from the Creator, and more...that He had specially chosen Israel for some destiny or purpose unique to them, and which He was guaranteeing them to attain. Likewise, the "giving" of Jerusalem to the Jewish people signifies an intervention...and if God did not "give" anything to them, then they have no title to it at all.

But Janoah insists no such thing can happen: God can't act into His creation. So the term "chosen" would cease to have any meaning...nobody "chose" it, and it isn't "chosen" to be anything, then.

So I would like to know what he believes about all that.

[MikeNovack]

[quote="Immanuel Can" post_id=808503 time=1783368616 user_id=9431

Yet here we are. Some explanation required. None available but design. "Time plus chance" simply isn't adequate to the job.
[/quote]

Why not? ENOUGH time plus chance.

No matter how small the probability of event X, as long as not zero, given ENOUGH time the event may be expected to occur. Since "time" is not limited before the universe came into existence, as long as the probability greater than zero, should expect the universe to come into existence.

It is only the events that are IMPOSSIBLE (probability zero) that no amount of time make likely. You need more than saying "the universe coming into existence as a chance event is very, very, .........,very unlikely.

[MikeNovack]

In your opinion are Pantheists theists?

Of a sort, but of a limited sort. They certainly believe in a "god" concept, but it's certainly not the real God.

Person A says, I believe in the true God, I believe I have reasons for my belief in the true God. The other people who say sort of thing believe in a false god.

Person B says, I believe in the true God, I believe I have reasons for my belief in the true God. The other people who say this sort of a thing believe in a false god.

I am person C, how am I to judge between you?

IC, you are trying to convince me/us that you are right and Spinoza wrong. Proceed.

[Immanuel Can]

I am person C, how am I to judge between you?

One has to judge the various claims. And there's quite a difference among them, so you have lots of judgments to make. But it's really not that hard, because a lot of them turn out to be pretty implausible, when you look at the details. There's a very limited selection of plausible alternatives, actually. Most are pretty hair-brained. You're not allured by tales of leprechauns and wood-sprites, for example. And you will find that other conceptions of the creator are practically irrelevant: for example, Deistic answers turn out to be inconsequential, because they posit a "god" who is an absentee landlord, not a reality you can encounter anyway. Polytheistic conceptions don't solve the problem of the First Cause, but just push it back one level, instead. Unitarian conceptions of God have no answer to the problem of evil: and assuming you're already convinced that there's such a thing as evil, and that it's a real problem, then you're going to find those sorts of answers pretty dusty and useless. So there's a lot you can eliminate at the starting gate. You'll be left with relatively few options, if you're taking the search seriously.

So you judge among those alternatives, based on their particular claims, based first on things like their rationality and correspondence to reality, their coherence, their consistency, and even their moral implications; and ultimately, on their ability to provide you with actual knowledge of the living God.

This only becomes a useful answer, though, when you actually get around to trying to do it. Because God Himself has promised to meet you, if you sincerely search. The problem is that far too many people will not even search.

[Will Bouwman]

Irreducible complexity is just God of the gaps.

I only listed three of the many, many irreducible complexities.

You tried to do something with the moon-Earth ratio...

The point I was making is that in order to have the effect that it has, the Moon has to be the size it is. The same is true of the other cosmological features you mention; they all have to be exactly what they are for current conditions to obtain. It is simply an article of faith that God wished for just these conditions.

And then there's the biological level: which is where I pointed to the symbiosis problem. You don't have any explanation, and so far as I have been able to discover, there is none for triadic symbiosis, and such things.

Oh yes there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis

The development of the eye, or of the flagellar motor...these are not possible to describe in evolutionary stages...

Oh yes they are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_flagella

...I didn't even mention things like the severe dearth of transitional forms in the fossil record.

Every creature that has ever lived, or ever will, including you, is a transitional form.

And then there's the microscopic level...DNA's specifications...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/

...the strong and weak forces in the atom...

Well, you can see my response to that in the chapter on Nuclear Physics:
https://willybouwman.blogspot.com/2024/ ... ation.html

...and on, and on, and on. There are literally thousands of known problems of irreducible complexity, for which "time plus chance" explanation simply will not do.

There are no known problems of irreducible complexity; just problems of credulity, research and wishful thinking.

So no, this is not a "God of the gaps" issue. The "God of the gaps" critique supposes that there is an alternate scientific explanation for these. But in all these cases, there is NO alternate explanation that anybody can offer.

The gaps are in your research.

They're simply mysteries of design. And they amount to an astronomically-against chance that any planet would exist here, let alone life itself, let alone you and me.

Yet here we are. Some explanation required. None available but design. "Time plus chance" simply isn't adequate to the job.

It has the advantage that it isn't dependent on the existence of a being that cannot be proven.

[MikeNovack]

I am person C, how am I to judge between you?

One has to judge the various claims. And there's quite a difference among them, so you have lots of judgments to make. But it's really not that hard, because a lot of them turn out to be pretty implausible, when you look at the details. ........

So you judge among those alternatives, based on their particular claims, based first on things like their rationality and correspondence to reality, their coherence, their consistency, and even their moral implications; and ultimately, on their ability to provide you with actual knowledge of the living God.

This only becomes a useful answer, though, when you actually get around to trying to do it. Because God Himself has promised to meet you, if you sincerely search. The problem is that far too many people will not even search.

IC, I assure you, that other person will have just as good "other reasons" explaining why their conception of deity is correct. Why yours should be rejected. In assure you they are also trying to do it, and they are searching sincerely. That they do not arrive at the Christian answer is not because they are stupid, not searching sincerely,etc.

I gave you a specific example to argue against, the Pantheism of Spinoza. Understood that you consider his reasons wrong and yours right, but you aren't trying to convince yourself but some third party. Try doing that. Note that I could have given you another example t argue against. You are going to have the same problem, inability to consider their reasons "for".

[Immanuel Can]

Irreducible complexity is just God of the gaps.

I only listed three of the many, many irreducible complexities.

You tried to do something with the moon-Earth ratio...

The point I was making is that in order to have the effect that it has, the Moon has to be the size it is.

That's actually not an explanation of anything. It amounts to, "the reason the moon is the size it is, is that it is the size it is." It doesn't even come close to explaining why it didn't end up being some other size, among the vast possibilities, and why that size should be ideal for the kind of world and life we have.

The same applies to the rest of your explanation: essentially, "Jupiter is in place because Jupiter had to be in place to shield our inner system from meteorites." That explains nothing at all. WHY is Jupiter there? How could it be that it amounts to being just the size, and just in the placement, we need it to be, so we can exist? And why is the Sun the size and distance from Earth it is, so we don't become a smouldering desert or a frozen lump in space? And so on.

And then there's the biological level: which is where I pointed to the symbiosis problem. You don't have any explanation, and so far as I have been able to discover, there is none for triadic symbiosis, and such things.

Oh yes there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis

You'll have to do much better than that. Triadic symbiosis requires the simultaneous completion of at least three different animals. To define "symbiosis" does not come close to explaining how such a thing would ever be evolutionarily possible.

The development of the eye, or of the flagellar motor...these are not possible to describe in evolutionary stages...

Oh yes they are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_flagella

Again, you simply misunderstand the complexity of the problem. It's not that it's difficult to imagine stages...it's that at every stage prior to completion, the appendage is non-functional, and thus would be a genetic injury, not a survival advantage; and thus, it would be weeded out by survival of the fittest, not persist.

...I didn't even mention things like the severe dearth of transitional forms in the fossil record.

Every creature that has ever lived, or ever will, including you, is a transitional form.

That's not true, actually. A transitional form is a "bridge" between species, not merely a variant of an existing species. If Evolutionism were true, there should be billions of such transitional forms for every single complete species on the planet: yet neither in the present situation, nor in the fossil record, do we find such forms in the vast numbers that the theory would lead us to expect.

And then there's the microscopic level...DNA's specifications...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/

Same problem. You're not understanding the dilemma...you're just citing works that don't really address it.

There are no known problems of irreducible complexity; just problems of credulity, research and wishful thinking.

I've listed a good number. But, of course, it's always possible to deny that what's right in front of you exists. I can't stop you doing that. And I won't try.

Carry on believing what you will, I guess.

[Immanuel Can]

I am person C, how am I to judge between you?

One has to judge the various claims. And there's quite a difference among them, so you have lots of judgments to make. But it's really not that hard, because a lot of them turn out to be pretty implausible, when you look at the details. ........

So you judge among those alternatives, based on their particular claims, based first on things like their rationality and correspondence to reality, their coherence, their consistency, and even their moral implications; and ultimately, on their ability to provide you with actual knowledge of the living God.

This only becomes a useful answer, though, when you actually get around to trying to do it. Because God Himself has promised to meet you, if you sincerely search. The problem is that far too many people will not even search.

IC, I assure you, that other person will have just as good "other reasons" explaining why their conception of deity is correct.

And I can tell you this isn't true. They may have reasons that they are willing to accept, and that are "good to them," in that sense. They won't be as rational, as coherent, and as realistic as other answers.

Let me ask you: do you consider the Greek gods good explanations of the origin of the universe? If not, and if they have sufficed for some people, why do you reject such polytheism? But is it not obvious to both of us that polytheism supposes created and contingent "gods"? For the legend is that Zeus was never eternal, but sprang from the head of his father, Cronos, as the Greeks used to tell the story. Do you really regard, then, the story of Zeus, Hermes, Poseidon, et al. to be plausible on the same level as a scientific or monotheistic explanation of the origins of the universe?

Is it not obvious to you that those legends are fictitious, or that they don't even manage to answer the First Cause problem? If it's obvious, then I think, and I'm sure you think, too, that we can simply eliminate ancient Greek mythology from among the explanations we regard as plausible. Perhaps there are others that, for the moment, you wish to keep in play -- fine, we can examine them on a case-by-case basis, can we not? But to eliminate nothing and to fail to eliminate the obvious, well, surely we're not that handicapped in our inquiry, are we?

The "sincerity" of the belief of ancient Greeks in Zeus...does it make the whole thing any more plausible or relevant to the First Cause question? No, obviously: whether or not a person believes it "sincerely" is not even a relevant consideration in such a judgment, is it? Are not men very commonly "sincerely" wrong? That surely should be obvious to us both, I think; is it not?

So we have our first step: eliminate all the wildly untenable. The Greek gods go. So do all forms of polytheism, for similar reasons. And we're left with this, even at the first step: that either we're going to opt for some non-Theistic explanation, or one that is monotheistic. You seem attracted to Spinoza...okay, let's momentarily hold onto Spinoza...but we no longer need the Greek gods, the Norse gods, the pagan gods, the wood sprites and leprechauns. We can eliminate those easily, can we not?

[MikeNovack]

Let me ask you: do you consider the Greek gods good explanations of the origin of the universe? If not, and if they have sufficed for some people, why do you reject such polytheism? But is it not obvious to both of us that polytheism supposes created and contingent "gods"? .............
Spinoza...okay, let's momentarily hold onto Spinoza..............but we no longer need the Greek gods, the Norse gods, the pagan gods, the wood sprites and leprechauns. We can eliminate those easily, can we not?

No we can not.

You have made a decent argument against the Greek gods, the Norse gods, BUT, you have not made any argument against polytheism in general and certainly not paganism in general. Nor against "Nature spirits".

Perhaps YOU can eliminate those easily, but person "C" cannot.

For example, take "polytheism"/"paganism". Present your case that the "Triple Goddess" (ASPECTS "Maiden, Mother, Crone") is really "polytheism" any more than the Trinity Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. << person C likely to wonder about that >>

[Immanuel Can]

Let me ask you: do you consider the Greek gods good explanations of the origin of the universe? If not, and if they have sufficed for some people, why do you reject such polytheism? But is it not obvious to both of us that polytheism supposes created and contingent "gods"? .............
Spinoza...okay, let's momentarily hold onto Spinoza..............but we no longer need the Greek gods, the Norse gods, the pagan gods, the wood sprites and leprechauns. We can eliminate those easily, can we not?

No we can not.

You have made a decent argument against the Greek gods, the Norse gods, BUT, you have not made any argument against polytheism in general and certainly not paganism in general. Nor against "Nature spirits".

The same critiques work for all...they all posit contingent, limited, creatures as "gods." And this is precisely why the concept "God" is conventionally distinguished with a capital "G" -- because the truth is, they aren't even the same concept at all.

Polytheist "gods" are all, by their own believers' account, contingent and limited beings. They don't preside over everything, don't have all-knowledge, aren't all-sufficient (which explains the need for multiples of them), and they often aren't even claimed to be eternal in the past or the future. They have their own "origins," (as Zeus from Cronos), and often their own projected "demises" as well (as in the Norse Ragnarok, the death of the gods). Poseidon presides over the water, but not land. Apollo presides over war, but Venus over love and Mercury over messengers. The wood sprites are not powerful over the mountain sprites or the water sprites... and so on.

Any such contingent entity cannot be God. Any limited entity cannot be God. They can only be "gods." But by their own adherents' account, they are not the Supreme Being, not the First Cause, and thus are not the actual "God" concept, and don't really constitute any explanation of the origin or existence or meaning of the universe. It is not rational to say, "Zeus created everything," and also say, "Zeus was created from the head of Cronos." Those two statements flatly deny one another.

"Triple Goddess"

You'll have to explain this belief. I'm unfamiliar with it. Does it posit a single divine unity, or a plurality of gods? This will determine whether we eliminate it at the first, second or third step of inquiry.