Quantum mechanics practically revolves around around probability and randomness. For example, if you look at radioactive decay, a radioactive particle has only a probability of splitting apart - it's impossible to determine when the particle will actually decay.



Probably has something to do with Latin roots; after all, the Pope is located in Rome, Italy. If you google its etymology, you could probably find something.



Programs mostly rely on pseudo-random number generators, so programs don't necessarily exhibit true randomness. However, just because randomness doesn't exist in computer science doesn't mean it doesn't exist elsewhere, such as in physics/quantum mechanics.

I think it boils down to how you define randomness. If you expect 'randomness' to simply suggest a certain degree of unpredictability, then technically the website could be 'random'. I mean, a random stat generator for say, Pokemon, could reasonably expected to be deemed 'random' without having to go into all those determinism debates.

If you're standing by my first point, my rebuttal stands. It seems like you haven't been exposed to formal reasoning (from a debating standpoint or a mathematical standpoint), so I'm going to explain my first response to you more carefully. The premise (or starting point) of your argument is that "God is an idea that must be created". You proceed to push this point through several rhetorical transformations before arriving arriving at the conclusion (the end point of your argument) that "God is an idea that must be created". This sort of argument is formally known as a tautology, but you may know it informally as "circular reasoning" and it is not considered a logically valid form of argument. The problem is that instead of your argument forming a chain from premise through several steps to a conclusion, you arrive back where you started and your arguments form a circle that do not advance the point. I don't mean to single you out - you're certainly not the only person in this thread to have this difficulty. It just means you need to rework your arguments so that your premise is different from your conclusion. If you follow logically valid steps from premise to conclusion, and everyone accepts your premises, than you "win" the point. If your reasoning is not logically correct, you need a new argument. If you disagree over the premise, then both parties must push backwards to find a premise which they share, and argue forwards from there. If it is impossible to find a shared premise, then further discussion is pointless.


Don't confuse the Judeo-Christian "miracle" with arbitrary supernatural events.


What do you mean by "all this"?


You should take time to familiarize yourself with the evolution of henotheism and monolatrism into monotheism.


This argument relies on the presupposition that God only exists as an idea and not as an independent entity. You need to back up that idea without the use of tautologies as per my earlier paragraph in this post.


Because God is the subject of worship.


Lots of people like the idea of Hidden Variable theories to explain quantum mechanics because non-determinism makes them uncomfortable. Problem is....they don't work. Bell's Inequality solves the EPR Paradox, but forces us to discard either reality or locality if we wish to preserve determinism through hidden variables, and those are properties which most physicists hold more dearly than determinism. the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics is deterministic, but it discards locality - something which should make you deeply uncomfortable.


You are semi-correct in that chaotic behavior does not imply truly random behavior; however, you are ultimately incorrect in that random (nondeterministic) behavior does exist unless you're willing to discard one of the properties mentioned above. Feel free to do so, but be prepared to justify your claims.

[edit]

You also clearly do NOT understand "conventional" reasoning, because inductive reasoning is by nature statistical.

[/quote]Didn't they? Without even knowing what those words Elf listed, I can say they did have an idea of God. They didn't know the world outside of what they could explore. They didn't know Tornado's formed when cold and warm air met in low pressure environment and other natural events, instead they turned to where they didn't know. They likely thought stronger, inhuman forces lived outside in the unknown land they never explored. As they grew in civilization and population, they explored more and discovered the cause of these then phenomena must not be coming from Earth, but above. They likely grew to think the Heavens (where, ultimately, the Gods lived) were upset or angry.

As modern science was introduced, we were able to discover that tornadoes were in fact not caused by the Gods.

That is an incorrect interpretation of my post as such I can pull out anything YOU don't know and tell you to predict it.




So you're telling me that Conservation of Matter ceased to exist for Jesus?





And oh dear, I didn't know we were engaged in a formal debate, where my circular logic does not apply since it isn't formal. Thats just like saying "I don't like this so it can't be accepted as formal proof." If people believe in what I say it is true becasue there is nothing to refute my point, even if the contrary is true. But you'd probably ignore that as well and throw it under the "Tautology" category as well.


If I must:

God does not exist.
Why?
Things that we can see or feel or touch exist. For example a rock, a bird, and air. Things that have more credence than a book whos validity is being disputed over.See Here.
We can not touch God and therefore does not exist.

k thnx bye

We can't see, feel, or touch black holes, yet we believe they exist based on observation of their effects...

(To play devils' advocate:) Yes, because they have observable, scientifically-verifiable effects on the universe. We can't prove that they exist yet, nor can we disprove that they exist. There are (as far as I know) no scientifically-verifiable observations that could be explained primarily (cf. Occam's Razor) by the existence of God, nor do we have any conclusive experiments to prove he/she/it/they do/does not exist.

Henotheism is the worship of one god while accepting that there may be other gods worshipped by other people.
Monolatrism is the belief that multiples deities may exist, but only one god is worthy of receiving worship.
Monotheism is obviously the belief in and worship of only one God.


If you accept the hypothesis that
a) God exists
b) God created the universe
c) God cares about (and occasionally interacts with) humans
Then you run into the problem of authenticating messages that claim to be from God. Miracles provide that authentication, as clearly no being that exists within the physical universe is capable of violating its laws. Such a violation would have to originate outside the physical universe. My belief is that under normal circumstances the physical laws of the universe operate in an ordered and consistent fashion that we can study scientifically. If God has a purpose that requires him to temporarily suspend these laws (in my example, for the purposes of message authentication), then I do not believe it is illogical that he would do so. Claiming that such a thing is unscientific and therefore impossible is putting the cart before the horse: God is not bound by the physical laws that we study through science, the physical laws that we study through science bind the universe because of God's ordered nature. A nature which we infer from the presupposition that He created the universe, the principle that a creation is reflective of the the nature of its creator, and the empirical observation that the vast majority of the time the universe behaves in an ordered fashion.



You are never excused from the use of improper logic.


Actually it's not like that. It's like saying "your argument doesn't follow the laws of reasoning, so it can't be accepted as a formal proof" which is actually exactly what it was.


That's how the governments of countries run by dictatorship or authoritarianism would like things to work. Fortunately, that isn't the way things actually work.


No, I only classify things as tautologies that fall under the definition of such. You can check things like that with a truth table.


I'm not sure of the relevance of the Bible to this argument. No one here is arguing that "God exists because the Bible says so". Once we agree on the existence of God, then it makes sense to argue which account of God should be accepted. Until then, the Bible has very little to do with it. Thanks for making your argument from a more logically sound position. Let's take a look at what you're actually saying, and then I'll respond to it.
The fundamental axiom of your argument seems to be that something exists if and only if we can see, feel, or touch it (essentially, make physical measurement). Your second axiom is that God is not something which we can physically measure, and finally include that therefore God does not exist. If we accept your two axioms then the argument holds. Unfortunately, I have some minor quibbles about your second axiom, and utterly reject your first on several grounds (which I'm not going to fully explore right away). Your options are then to concede the point, continue to maintain your axioms for no other reason than that they are your axioms (at which time you revert to tautology), or to attempt to defend their validity on some deeper ground.

My quibble with your second axiom is that I believe God can effect physical changes should He so choose. While He is not directly measurable, and the effects are certainly not repeatable in the way that is desirable for a scientific experiment, the effects themselves would be physically measurable if you happened to get lucky with equipment in the right place at the right time.

My rejection of your first axiom is based on three points:
1) I maintain that the existence of God is necessary as a prime cause for the existence of the physical universe.
2) Reason and rationality are without normative value as means to know truth if all that exists is the physical universe.
3) Personal experiences of God responding to prayer. I don't expect you to defend against this attack, since anecdotal evidence is difficult to respond to, but I would certainly be interested in hearing a response to specific scenarios.



The obvious question is, of course, whether something must be scientifically verifiable to exist.

There was a time it wasn't yet scientifically verifiable that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and so the assumption was made(incorrectly) that it was.

Tell you what Elfprince according to you my argument isn't logical. I'll accept that, but what i won't accept is the fact that you think there is some being out there that defy divine laws set in place in the Universe. Nothing can do so. It is impossible.

I didn't say your new argument was illogical, I said I disagreed with your premises and asked you to justify them further.

I also find it curious that you use the term "divine" to describe the laws governing the physical universe even though you do not acknowledge the existence of divinity. My point regarding miracles was exactly that they ARE divine laws, and therefore can be suspended by nothing that is not divine.

No, I don't acknowledge God, and bodies are celestial and therefore Divine. Divine does not in any way pertain to specifically God.

The only way it applies to celestial bodies is by way of analogy between heaven in the spiritual sense and "the heavens"

Exactly what I'm saying it "does not in any way pertain to specifically God."

No. You missed my vocabulary lesson. The only time it doesn't pertain to God or gods is when someone is when it's used to make an analogy to something that also pertains to God or gods.

For example one might say that objects moving through space are "celestial" or "divine" because we call space "the heavens" ONLY as an analogy to the spiritual realm where God is believed to dwell. The word divine is entirely without meaning except in relationship to an understanding of God.

Elfy:

One of your premises is based on:
Everything has a cause
Thus the universe must have a cause
Therefore "The only thing that could have caused that is god"

Here is my counter-argument:

A "cause" or otherwise creationary event must occur at some point in time
The universe is is infinitely old
Therefore the universe had no cause

I anticipate your scientific counter argument that claims that the universe is in the neighborhood of 14 billion years old. More modern interpretations of the big bang theory and string theory have suggested that while energy and mass are interchangeable (as given by e=mc^2) space and time are also interchangeable. This has been suspected for quite a while, what with when space is warped, time is warped with it (time passes more quickly in a gravitational field (which is really just warped space) than it does in interstellar space). Thus when, at what we commonly call the "big bang," the entire universe was a singularity, thus infinitely small. Via the space<->time relationship, with just an infinitismal of space you'd have infinite time.

More simply, I'd compare it to the graph of 1/(1+x^2). The graph goes on forever in both directions but the area under the curve is finite (and also happens to be pi, but that is irrelevant). You can't think of time as this linear thing. The universe is ~14 billion years old from our time frame, which is relative. The "area under the curve" is 14 billion years, but the curve goes on forever.

I'm familiar with at least one cosmology similar to what you propose based on a statistical analysis of Type 1a Supernovae - it's been taken apart pretty well over at the Bad Physics Blog.

While I'm sure that blog post has some merits in its criticism, a lot of her arguments basically boil down to "this doesn't agree with our current scientific laws therefore it is wrong." I'd like to see a peer-reviewed criticism, or a response from Wun-Yi Shu. A blog post that reads like a high school student trying to win over support of other students doesn't completely hold the merit that a more thorough review would.

Furthermore, even if this particular theory is proven incorrect, as many are, even with our current theories the very beginning of the universe is a pretty big wtf for us right now. Most models that place the age of the universe around 14 billion years (such as the big bang model) basically say something along the lines of "from the way things are expanding, the universe looks about 14 billion years old, but basically, time has no real meaning at the very beginning of the universe."

From this, I think that some sort of supernatural being with no creator that apparently exists outside of time et al that arbitrarily decided to create the universe is just as plausible as a universe that has existed forever. Both (at our current understanding) require a leap of faith.

That's why I choose to accept neither of them. I just opt for an "I don't know how the universe was created." for now.

So you're an Agnostic?

How far did you read? Her argument is more like "the mathematics of this don't make sense". For example....Shu's c doesn't actually work out to be a velocity. Also, I'm not sure if you've noticed this, but physicists in general are a pretty feisty bunch, so the tone of the article doesn't say much about the qualifications of the person who wrote it.



I think a prime cause is more likely than not, but fortunately you'll notice that objections to 0rac343 were threefold =)

On a related note, it's worth pointing out the philosophy-as-physical-theory is pretty rampant right now in theoretical physics, because very few of the models we're pursuing are experimentally verifiable (see the religious wars over String Theory vs LQG vs whatver, ditto for QM interpretations), or at the very least have yet to make any predictions that could be experimentally verified.

DShiz: You seem to be confused about what agnostic actually means. Agnostic is the opposite of gnostic (not to be confused with the oft-considered-heretical Gnostic Christian Sect. The word I'm using simply comes from the word gnosis which means divine knowledge). The word "agnostic" merely means that one does not believe that the nature of god can be known. You can be an agnostic christian, or an agnostic atheist. Check out this handy chart: http://www.lousycanuck.ca/wp-content/uploads/atheist_chart.gif

I think about god the same way I think about the idea that captain Jean Luc Picard is in my closet right now. He very well might be in my closet, but I won't believe it until I have proof. The burden of proof is on religion to prove it to me. On a number line of belief vs. disbelief, we should start at 0 with no belief (that is, not having any real opinion) and move towards accepting or rejecting something based on evidence.

Elf: Like I said, some parts of the paper are pretty wonky, like the value of c part. Other parts could potentially make sense but the author dismisses them because they overturn current physical laws. I'm not saying the author is wrong, they make some good points, but the basic concept of space<->time interchangeability has some good merit, though this person's paper is pretty poor.

As for the prime cause business, unless you can give me a a good argument as to why god wouldn't need a cause also, I remain unconvinced. In your argument I expect:

No philosophical nonsense. I do not mind philosophy and thought experiments, but if your argument is indistinguishable from a modern art critic's (dude, it's all about the dichotomy between the underlying metaphor that emphasizes symbolic reasoning through the dimensional plane of epistemological thought. dude), expect it to be overlooked.

Syllogism.

Something with a loose scriptural basis. I often hear christians assigning characteristics to god that are basically pulled from their a. If you want to claim that god exists outside of time, where is the verse? Otherwise it's just theological voodoo to me.