Where do religious folk who are climate deniers reconcile this?

[daveman]

I don't find it insulting, no matter your obvious intent. It's been pointed out several times how the analogy is false.

And yet again you refuse to conduct my thought experiment. What are you afraid of?

Thing is, as I've said before, I can admit the possibility I'm wrong about God.

But you can't admit you might be wrong about God.

Your claim you're more open-minded than me is patently false.

oh, no no, no. I have not discounted the possibility of a god. There is a tiny, minute possibility there might be one. I choose not to believe so.

What thought experiment? Sorry, missed it.

It's here: Where do religious folk who are climate deniers reconcile this?

And you didn't miss it; you weaseled out of performing it here: Where do religious folk who are climate deniers reconcile this?

I've clicked on both links. They don't do anything.

Oh, bloody hell. This thread, Post 263. You quoted it in Post 267.

 

[daveman]

[
But I'm not all het up. Your prejudice against believers insists I am.

And you don't have prejudices against those who don't believe?

I treat people the way they treat me.

 

[Dr Grump]

I'm well acquainted with the meanings. I wonder if you are. You keep demanding proof of God.

Faith precludes proof. Proof of God would render faith meaningless, and utterly negate Man's free will.

Let's have a thought experiment. In this experiment, God created the universe 10 minutes ago, in its current state as of 10 minutes ago, with all the "evidence" it's billions of years old built-in, with the light from distant stars created in transit, and us with all our memories of a lifetime in place.

Now...how could you disprove this?

You can't disprove it. No more than you can disprove the Tooth Fairy.

 

[daveman]

I'm well acquainted with the meanings. I wonder if you are. You keep demanding proof of God.

Faith precludes proof. Proof of God would render faith meaningless, and utterly negate Man's free will.

Let's have a thought experiment. In this experiment, God created the universe 10 minutes ago, in its current state as of 10 minutes ago, with all the "evidence" it's billions of years old built-in, with the light from distant stars created in transit, and us with all our memories of a lifetime in place.

Now...how could you disprove this?

You can't disprove it. No more than you can disprove the Tooth Fairy.

We may have made a breakthrough here!

So, what have we learned of the nature of faith here? Do I need to walk you through it? It would be a lot quicker, given the nature of this thread.

Matters that are inherently unknowable can neither be proven nor disproven. THAT is the nature of faith. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1, KJV) You can argue against it until you're blue in the face...errr, fingers, in this case...but you can't state categorically that it's false. Nor can you demand proof of a matter of faith, then pretend that the absence of proof is evidence the claim is false.

The origin of the universe is inherently unknowable...unless you invent a time machine. Not real likely, is it? Besides, as Schrödinger and his cat demonstrated, observing the experiment alters it. If you go back in time to observe the origin of the universe, whether ten minutes or 13.8 billion years, you're standing outside of it and would alter it. And you might, I dunno, make butter pecan ice cream impossible under the laws of physics of the universe whose birth you witnessed, and that would be entirely unacceptable.

Now astrophysicists have come up with some ideas to explain how the universe began, based on things they see. Those are all thought experiments, too -- since the events they're trying to describe are unobservable. They're just as falsifiable as my created-ten-minutes-ago thought experiment, or the Biblical account of creation, or the Tooth Fairy. In other words: Not at all.

Get it now?

 

[Zorro!]

Not too sure if this is current events (climate change) or religion (Christianity).

Climate deniers are always rambling on about empirical evidence not being available on humans causing climate change (even though scientists use the well-proven and peer-reviewed modelling...

You understand that models simply spit back the assumptions programmed into them? The real world has never responded as predicted by the extreme models.

...yet there is absolutely zero evidence of a god...

There are very good reasons to believe in God. In fact, I can come up with five in very short order:

1. God makes sense of the origin of the universe.
2. God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.
3. God makes sense of objective moral values in the world.
4. God makes sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
5. God can be immediately known and experienced.

... almost all climate-change-is-being-caused-by-humans deniers are conservatives, and quite a few are Christians. Seems hypocrisy to me...

Demanding evidence, to you, is "evidence" of hypocrisy? That looks like a concept in need of further consideration.

Don't worry about what Christians do or do not believe. The strength of a concept is how well supported it is by real world evidence. Who accepts it or rejects it has no bearing on that.

Democrat Sen. Mazie Hirono: ‘Believe in Climate Change as Though It’s a Religion.’

Many years ago, the journalist Michael Kinsley noted an odd truth about American political life:

“A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”
​

While there are any number of other gaffes that a politician can make (please refer to anything ever uttered by Joe Biden), this particular type of screw-up has become known as a “Kinsley gaffe.” It can be very embarrassing for a politician to accidentally tell the truth. He’ll usually catch himself and start lying again immediately, and his partisans will pretend to believe the falsehoods over the truth, but everybody still knows he screwed up. He can lie about being momentarily and unintentionally honest, but he can’t unsay it.

Or she! It’s 2019, and it’s time we all recognized that women can be every bit as deceptive and untruthful as men. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) certainly is.

 

[Dr Grump]

Not too sure if this is current events (climate change) or religion (Christianity).

Climate deniers are always rambling on about empirical evidence not being available on humans causing climate change (even though scientists use the well-proven and peer-reviewed modelling...

You understand that models simply spit back the assumptions programmed into them? The real world has never responded as predicted by the extreme models.

...yet there is absolutely zero evidence of a god...

There are very good reasons to believe in God. In fact, I can come up with five in very short order:

1. God makes sense of the origin of the universe.
2. God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.
3. God makes sense of objective moral values in the world.
4. God makes sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
5. God can be immediately known and experienced.

... almost all climate-change-is-being-caused-by-humans deniers are conservatives, and quite a few are Christians. Seems hypocrisy to me...

Demanding evidence, to you, is "evidence" of hypocrisy? That looks like a concept in need of further consideration.

Don't worry about what Christians do or do not believe. The strength of a concept is how well supported it is by real world evidence. Who accepts it or rejects it has no bearing on that.

Democrat Sen. Mazie Hirono: ‘Believe in Climate Change as Though It’s a Religion.’

Many years ago, the journalist Michael Kinsley noted an odd truth about American political life:

“A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”
​

While there are any number of other gaffes that a politician can make (please refer to anything ever uttered by Joe Biden), this particular type of screw-up has become known as a “Kinsley gaffe.” It can be very embarrassing for a politician to accidentally tell the truth. He’ll usually catch himself and start lying again immediately, and his partisans will pretend to believe the falsehoods over the truth, but everybody still knows he screwed up. He can lie about being momentarily and unintentionally honest, but he can’t unsay it.

Or she! It’s 2019, and it’s time we all recognized that women can be every bit as deceptive and untruthful as men. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) certainly is.

Your reasons for a belief are fine. But that is all they are. Belief not fact. Here is a fact - there is absolutely no empirical proof of a god. In fact, there is no type of proof whatsoever.

Quoting a single politician is you trying to make a point. Now quote 50 per cent of them saying that. I can cherrypick too.

 

[Zorro!]

Not too sure if this is current events (climate change) or religion (Christianity).

Climate deniers are always rambling on about empirical evidence not being available on humans causing climate change (even though scientists use the well-proven and peer-reviewed modelling...

You understand that models simply spit back the assumptions programmed into them? The real world has never responded as predicted by the extreme models.

...yet there is absolutely zero evidence of a god...

There are very good reasons to believe in God. In fact, I can come up with five in very short order:

1. God makes sense of the origin of the universe.
2. God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.
3. God makes sense of objective moral values in the world.
4. God makes sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
5. God can be immediately known and experienced.

... almost all climate-change-is-being-caused-by-humans deniers are conservatives, and quite a few are Christians. Seems hypocrisy to me...

Demanding evidence, to you, is "evidence" of hypocrisy? That looks like a concept in need of further consideration.

Don't worry about what Christians do or do not believe. The strength of a concept is how well supported it is by real world evidence. Who accepts it or rejects it has no bearing on that.

Democrat Sen. Mazie Hirono: ‘Believe in Climate Change as Though It’s a Religion.’

Many years ago, the journalist Michael Kinsley noted an odd truth about American political life:

“A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”
​

While there are any number of other gaffes that a politician can make (please refer to anything ever uttered by Joe Biden), this particular type of screw-up has become known as a “Kinsley gaffe.” It can be very embarrassing for a politician to accidentally tell the truth. He’ll usually catch himself and start lying again immediately, and his partisans will pretend to believe the falsehoods over the truth, but everybody still knows he screwed up. He can lie about being momentarily and unintentionally honest, but he can’t unsay it.

Or she! It’s 2019, and it’s time we all recognized that women can be every bit as deceptive and untruthful as men. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) certainly is.

Your reasons for a belief are fine. But that is all they are. Belief not fact. Here is a fact - there is absolutely no empirical proof of a god. In fact, there is no type of proof whatsoever.

Quoting a single politician is you trying to make a point. Now quote 50 per cent of them saying that. I can cherrypick too.

Facts are not dependent on what percentage of any group agrees with them. That is simply hand waving and means nothing, what is meaningful is how well a concept explains real world data.

Take for example the Origin of the Universe that flows directly from the Big Bang Theory that is the reigning theory of cosmogony.

In one of the most startling developments of modern science, we now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning about 13 billion years ago in a cataclysmic event known as the Big Bang. What makes the Big Bang so startling is that it represents the origin of the universe from literally nothing. For all matter and energy, even physical space and time themselves, came into being at the Big Bang.

As the physicist P. C. W. Davies explains,

"the coming into being of the universe, as discussed in modern science is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming-into-being of all physical things from nothing.​

Of course, alternative theories have been crafted over the years to try to avoid this absolute beginning, but none of these theories has commended itself to the scientific community as more plausible than the Big Bang theory.

In fact, in 2003 Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin were able to prove that any universe which is, on average, in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal in the past but must have an absolute beginning. Vilenkin pulls no punches:

It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.​

That problem was nicely captured by Anthony Kenny of Oxford University. He writes,

"A proponent of the Big Bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing."​

But surely that doesn't make sense. Out of nothing, nothing comes. So why does the universe exist instead of just nothing? Where did it come from? There must have been a cause which brought the universe into being.

This argument summarizes as follows:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Given the truth of the the first two premises, the conclusion, 3, necessarily follows.

From the very nature of the case, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe. It must be uncaused because there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be timeless and therefore changeless—at least without the universe—because it created time. Because it also created space, it must transcend space as well and therefore be immaterial, not physical.

Moreover it must also be personal. For how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect like the universe? If the cause were a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then the cause could never exist without the effect, but, with a will, such an entity could refrain until the chosen moment of creation.

Taken together, we have an entity that sufficiently explains the origin of the Universe that's perfectly familiar to Theists and clearly the inference to the best explanation.

 

[Dr Grump]

Your reasons for a belief are fine. But that is all they are. Belief not fact. Here is a fact - there is absolutely no empirical proof of a god. In fact, there is no type of proof whatsoever.

Quoting a single politician is you trying to make a point. Now quote 50 per cent of them saying that. I can cherrypick too.

Facts are not dependent on what percentage of any group agrees with them. That is simply hand waving and means nothing, what is meaningful is how well a concept explains real world data.

Take for example the Origin of the Universe that flows directly from the Big Bang Theory that is the reigning theory of cosmogony.

In one of the most startling developments of modern science, we now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning about 13 billion years ago in a cataclysmic event known as the Big Bang. What makes the Big Bang so startling is that it represents the origin of the universe from literally nothing. For all matter and energy, even physical space and time themselves, came into being at the Big Bang.

As the physicist P. C. W. Davies explains,

"the coming into being of the universe, as discussed in modern science is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming-into-being of all physical things from nothing.​

Of course, alternative theories have been crafted over the years to try to avoid this absolute beginning, but none of these theories has commended itself to the scientific community as more plausible than the Big Bang theory.

In fact, in 2003 Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin were able to prove that any universe which is, on average, in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal in the past but must have an absolute beginning. Vilenkin pulls no punches:

It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.​

That problem was nicely captured by Anthony Kenny of Oxford University. He writes,

"A proponent of the Big Bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing."​

But surely that doesn't make sense. Out of nothing, nothing comes. So why does the universe exist instead of just nothing? Where did it come from? There must have been a cause which brought the universe into being.

This argument summarizes as follows:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Given the truth of the the first two premises, the conclusion, 3, necessarily follows.

From the very nature of the case, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe. It must be uncaused because there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be timeless and therefore changeless—at least without the universe—because it created time. Because it also created space, it must transcend space as well and therefore be immaterial, not physical.

Moreover it must also be personal. For how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect like the universe? If the cause were a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then the cause could never exist without the effect, but, with a will, such an entity could refrain until the chosen moment of creation.

Taken together, we have an entity that sufficiently explains the origin of the Universe that's perfectly familiar to Theists and clearly the inference to the best explanation.[/QUOTE]

And this is where religious folk lose me. You expect to make the point that nothing can't come from nothing (ie.unbelievable), but that this 'timeless' entity not only has always 'been', but the beginning of its existence is just explained as 'uncaused' or 'timeless'...I find that excuse a convenient copout.

In saying that, I find your point of view interesting..

 

[Zorro!]

Your reasons for a belief are fine. But that is all they are. Belief not fact. Here is a fact - there is absolutely no empirical proof of a god. In fact, there is no type of proof whatsoever.

Quoting a single politician is you trying to make a point. Now quote 50 per cent of them saying that. I can cherrypick too.

Facts are not dependent on what percentage of any group agrees with them. That is simply hand waving and means nothing, what is meaningful is how well a concept explains real world data.

Take for example the Origin of the Universe that flows directly from the Big Bang Theory that is the reigning theory of cosmogony.

In one of the most startling developments of modern science, we now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning about 13 billion years ago in a cataclysmic event known as the Big Bang. What makes the Big Bang so startling is that it represents the origin of the universe from literally nothing. For all matter and energy, even physical space and time themselves, came into being at the Big Bang.

As the physicist P. C. W. Davies explains,

"the coming into being of the universe, as discussed in modern science is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming-into-being of all physical things from nothing.​

Of course, alternative theories have been crafted over the years to try to avoid this absolute beginning, but none of these theories has commended itself to the scientific community as more plausible than the Big Bang theory.

In fact, in 2003 Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin were able to prove that any universe which is, on average, in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal in the past but must have an absolute beginning. Vilenkin pulls no punches:

It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.​

That problem was nicely captured by Anthony Kenny of Oxford University. He writes,

"A proponent of the Big Bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing."​

But surely that doesn't make sense. Out of nothing, nothing comes. So why does the universe exist instead of just nothing? Where did it come from? There must have been a cause which brought the universe into being.

This argument summarizes as follows:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Given the truth of the the first two premises, the conclusion, 3, necessarily follows.

From the very nature of the case, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe. It must be uncaused because there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be timeless and therefore changeless—at least without the universe—because it created time. Because it also created space, it must transcend space as well and therefore be immaterial, not physical.

Moreover it must also be personal. For how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect like the universe? If the cause were a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then the cause could never exist without the effect, but, with a will, such an entity could refrain until the chosen moment of creation.

Taken together, we have an entity that sufficiently explains the origin of the Universe that's perfectly familiar to Theists and clearly the inference to the best explanation.

And this is where religious folk lose me. You expect to make the point that nothing can't come from nothing (ie.unbelievable),

How does something come from nothing?

but that this 'timeless' entity not only has always 'been', but the beginning of its existence is just explained as 'uncaused' or 'timeless'...I find that excuse a convenient copout...

What sense would it make to discuss a cause for an eternal being? The very definition of eternal is that it has always existed. If it has always existed, what need is there for a cause? When would the cause operate?

The Universe, on the other hand, according to the reigning theory of science is a temporal entity, that is, about 13 billion years ago, it began to exist. Why?

I'm not insisting that you agree, but, I do think that you can agree that the question is not an irrational one and that the assumption that the origin was caused rather than uncaused is perfectly rational as well.

 

[Dr Grump]

[
What sense would it make to discuss a cause for an eternal being? The very definition of eternal is that it has always existed. If it has always existed, what need is there for a cause? When would the cause operate?

The Universe, on the other hand, according to the reigning theory of science is a temporal entity, that is, about 13 billion years ago, it began to exist. Why?

I'm not insisting that you agree, but, I do think that you can agree that the question is not an irrational one and that the assumption that the origin was caused rather than uncaused is perfectly rational as well.

I agree to a degree. Who is to say the universe hasn't been contracting and expanding for trillions of years? And maybe there never was a start? We made the word eternal, but who says this being was eternal. Our logic stats that something has to come from somewhere or something. Everything in the universe does. Except for this unprovable 'being'. Kinda convenient IMO...

 

[Zorro!]

[
What sense would it make to discuss a cause for an eternal being? The very definition of eternal is that it has always existed. If it has always existed, what need is there for a cause? When would the cause operate?

The Universe, on the other hand, according to the reigning theory of science is a temporal entity, that is, about 13 billion years ago, it began to exist. Why?

I'm not insisting that you agree, but, I do think that you can agree that the question is not an irrational one and that the assumption that the origin was caused rather than uncaused is perfectly rational as well.

...I agree to a degree. Who is to say the universe hasn't been contracting and expanding for trillions of years? ...

That was a theory for awhile, it fell out of circulation over the entropy problem which is that no one could come up with a logical reason to believe that entropy would reverse during the collapse/bounce cycle, meaning that entropy would continuously build and that's not sustainable over eternity.

... Our logic stats that something has to come from somewhere or something. Everything in the universe does...

Exactly. Anyway you can see the tendency, if one rejects Theism to move toward the position that "the universe popped into existence from nothing, for no reason at all." On a comparative basis I don't find that position to be more rational than Theism.

The 2nd reason that I tend toward the Theistic explanation is that God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.

 

[Dr Grump]

Now astrophysicists have come up with some ideas to explain how the universe began, based on things they see. Those are all thought experiments, too -- since the events they're trying to describe are unobservable. They're just as falsifiable as my created-ten-minutes-ago thought experiment, or the Biblical account of creation, or the Tooth Fairy. In other words: Not at all.

Get it now?

True. But they do have knowable data from experiments that they can compare information to.
There is no knowable data about a god. None whatsoever.

 

[daveman]

Now astrophysicists have come up with some ideas to explain how the universe began, based on things they see. Those are all thought experiments, too -- since the events they're trying to describe are unobservable. They're just as falsifiable as my created-ten-minutes-ago thought experiment, or the Biblical account of creation, or the Tooth Fairy. In other words: Not at all.

Get it now?

True. But they do have knowable data from experiments that they can compare information to.
There is no knowable data about a god. None whatsoever.

That experimental data was created along with the rest of the universe 10 minutes ago.

You cannot prove me wrong.

 

[2aguy]

Not too sure if this is current events (climate change) or religion (Christianity).

Climate deniers are always rambling on about empirical evidence not being available on humans causing climate change (even though scientists use the well-proven and peer-reviewed modelling method that show unequivocally that we are having a negative effect), yet there is absolutely zero evidence of a god. Only faith. It seems - and I'm only going on anecdotal evidence on this board - that almost all climate-change-is-being-caused-by-humans deniers are conservatives, and quite a few are Christians. Seems hypocrisy to me...

Moron...they hide data, they change data, the models can't even predict the weather that has already happened.....

The science doesn't support anything you asshats claim....