Vastness of Space Suggests There Is No Almighty Creator

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Limited space....infinite space....what's the difference
in creating useful premises regarding deities?

Exactly!

And "omnipotent" or "really great" or "good at blowing an east wind" -- what's the difference in creating useful premises regarding deities? Once you work out a little about how sun and shade raise and lower air pressure, how heat and cold moisten or dry the air, what other premises do you need to begin to understand weather? Aeolus becomes just a little bit unnecessary, wouldn't you agree?

 

[Revoltingest]

Exactly!

And "omnipotent" or "really great" or "good at blowing an east wind" -- what's the difference in creating useful premises regarding deities? Once you work out a little about how sun and shade raise and lower air pressure, how heat and cold moisten or dry the air, what other premises do you need to begin to understand weather? Aeolus becomes just a little bit unnecessary, wouldn't you agree?

I'm confused.

 

[Kenny]

And I understand the "must" that drives your belief.

.

Lol as in your musn’t drives yours?

 

[idav]

That, as has been pointed out, might work for deism or polytheism, but it would mean that any idea of a personal god is the idea of a being inefficient well past the point of awe.

That is true enough, we can even look at the human body to see inefficiency which would make a personal God seem rather flawed. In truth "creation" took billions of years via trial and error, nature gets zero points for efficiency, but alas we exist so nature gets A for effort and persistence.

 

[Twilight Hue]

But at the inception of Earth the planet was extremely hostile to life. It wasn't until some 1.4 billion years later that life was able to arise.

.

Which pretty much blows the Bible's book of Genesis out of the water.

 

[Skwim]

Which pretty much blows the Bible's book of Genesis out of the water.

As well it should be.

.

 

[Kenny]

But at the inception of Earth the planet was extremely hostile to life. It wasn't until some 1.4 billion years later that life was able to arise.

.

And all done... just for you!!

 

[DavidFirth]

Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.


It's amazing that this verse has not changed over thousands of years yet scientists change their minds often because they're often wrong and yet people are still dim enough to trust them.

 

[djhwoodwerks]

The Big Bang is an extremely firm idea,.

I agree with the big bang, but, I believe God pulled the trigger! I don't believe God poofed the earth out of nothing. I think when God started creating, He caused an explosion, and it's still expanding today.

 

[Prestor John]

"Scientists now know that the universe contains at least two trillion galaxies. It’s a mind-scrunchingly big place, very different to the conception of the universe we had when the world’s major religions were founded. So do the astronomical discoveries of the last few centuries have implications for religion?

Over the last few decades, a new way of arguing for atheism has emerged. Philosophers of religion such as Michael Martin and Nicholas Everitt have asked us to consider the kind of universe we would expect the Christian God to have created, and compare it with the universe we actually live in. They argue there is a mismatch. Everitt focuses on how big the universe is, and argues this gives us reason to believe the God of classical Christianity doesn’t exist.

To explain why, we need a little theology. Traditionally, the Christian God is held to be deeply concerned with human beings. Genesis (1:27) states: “God created mankind in his own image.” Psalms (8:1-5) says: “O Lord … What is man that You take thought of him … Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty!” And, of course, John (3:16) explains God gave humans his son out of love for us.

These texts show that God is human-oriented: human beings are like God, and he values us highly. Although we’re focusing on Christianity, these claims can be found in other monotheistic religions, too.

If God is human-oriented, wouldn’t you expect him to create a universe in which humans feature prominently? You’d expect humans to occupy most of the universe, existing across time. Yet that isn’t the kind of universe we live in. Humans are very small, and space, as Douglas Adams once put it, “is big, really really big”.

Scientists estimate that the observable universe, the part of it we can see, is around 93 billion light years across. The whole universe is at least 250 times as large as the observable universe.

To paraphrase Adams, the universe is also really, really old. Perhaps over 13 billion years old. Earth is around four billion years old, and humans evolved around 200,000 years ago. Temporally speaking, humans have been around for an eye-blink.

Clearly, there is a discrepancy between the kind of universe we would expect a human-oriented God to create, and the universe we live in. How can we explain it? Surely the simplest explanation is that God doesn’t exist. The spatial and temporal size of the universe gives us reason to be atheists.

As Everitt puts it:

The findings of modern science significantly reduce the probability that theism is true, because the universe is turning out to be very unlike the sort of universe which we would have expected, had theism been true.
source
​

So, if we humans are indeed god's masterpiece

Ephesians 2:10
“For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us
anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for
us long ago"
​

then the whole of the universe, all septimuchoquadrilion + cubic miles of it with its two trillion galaxies does appear to be considerable overkill. I certainly don't need a universe this large, and I doubt anybody else does either. Either its godly creator has no control over himself (OCD perhaps?) or he simply likes to have lots of stuff around himself (Hoarder Disorder?), OR, he doesn't exist at all.

So, the false expectations scientists had about God and the idea of a Created Universe have been disproved?

Big freakin deal.

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.


It's amazing that this verse has not changed over thousands of years yet scientists change their minds often because they're often wrong and yet people are still dim enough to trust them.

Maybe people trust scientists because an ability & willingness to change your mind in the face of knowledge or evidence that you're wrong is a sign of intelligence? Or maybe it's because the scientific method produces results - how many diseases has dogmatic adherence cured? How many amputees have had their limbs regrown by your god - and how many times has your god been willing or able to reproduce those results while being watched? Was it dogmatic faith or trust in the scientific method which was partially responsible for the destruction of classical European culture and the loss of so much knowledge? Is it religious faith or scientism that's compelling people to fly planes into skyscrapers, murder abortion doctors or detonate their bomb vests in a crowded marketplace?

 

[blü 2]

Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

It's amazing that this verse has not changed over thousands of years

That's like saying it's amazing that the words of the Iliad, written down in the eighth or ninth century BCE, haven't changed.

Why, but for transcription error, would the words change? Who'd bother to change them?

yet scientists change their minds often because they're often wrong

Yes, science is a human activity and makes mistakes; but unlike religion, it argues honestly from examinable evidence, expresses its conclusions in falsifiable form, and tests and retests those conclusions looking for errors and then correcting them.

If religion corrected itself according to conclusions honestly drawn from facts about reality, then, for example, there'd be no creationism. But because such religion pretends to be free of errors, it rests inert in the face of them, and stays in error for centuries, sometimes millennia, longer than need be.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

One could choose to see the vastness of space, then assume there is no God, however this assumption is solely based on what the viewer really wants to be true along with a surface view of the surroundings. Perhaps, a deeper look might reveal a different picture.

I think that a deeper look reinforces the idea that ours is a godless universe. Here's the argument. Please excuse its length:

Suppose that either Case A or Case B is true, but not both. If A were true, then we might observe Situation 1 or 2 to be the case, but if B were correct, only situation 2 would be possible. We make an observation and find that situation 2 is the case.

An example would be that if there were an intelligent designer - call this Case A - the universe might have physical laws or not. An intelligent designer could will the planets to move as the whim struck it, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes in an ellipse, and sometimes in a triangle. Call that Situation 1. An intelligent designer could also create regular laws. That will be Situation 2.

But a godless universe - Case B - can only find itself in situation 2. It needs regular laws to keep the planets in their orbits, and those orbits will always be elliptical, and the motions of the orbiting bodies predictable.

Situation 2 is observed. Which is the case, Case A or Case B?

We can't say. But I'm going to assert that case B is slightly more likely to be the case than it was before we observed Situation 2. The reason becomes obvious as we add more and more examples where the situation is one of two possible were Case A the case, but only one of the two is possible in Case B.

Another example: In a universe with an intelligent designer (Case A), we might (Situation 1) or might not (Situation 2) be protected from what would be needless suffering if there a god present capable of preventing it.

But in a godless universe, Situation 2 is inevitable. That suffering will occur. Once again, we observe Situation 2 to be the case. Does that establish the veracity of either Case A or Case B? Once again, no, not by itself, although we will see that it also makes Case B a little likelier than it was before we observed Situation 2 to be the reality.

In a universe with an intelligent designer (Case A), that intelligent designer might (Situation 1) or might not (Situation 2) be evident to us the way that the sun is. In a godless universe (Case B), we wouldn't be able to find a god (Situation 2). Situation 2 is the reality once again.

In a universe with an intelligent designer (Case A), that intelligent designer might (Situation 1) or might not (Situation 2) create us with the will to do only good. It might (Situation 1) or might not (Situation 2) interfere in our affairs. In a godless universe, there would be no such interference. Once again, Situation 2 is what we observe.

The vast universe is yet another piece of similar evidence:

In a universe with an intelligent designer (Case A), the universe might (Situation 1) or might not (Situation 2) look custom designed for us. In a godless universe (Case B), we will discover that the universe does not look custom made for us (Situation 2). Yet again, Situation2 is the observation.

Keep adding more and more of these, each with Situation 2 being observed, and eventually, by consilience - the confluence of a multitude of independent occurrences that all point to the same conclusion, each of which alone is not necessarily convincing, but when considered collectively, is compelling - we get a clear picture that Case 2 is very likely the case. Ours is a godless universe, at least in the sense of the creator, ruler gods of Christianity and Islam. There is still a place for deistic gods, for example.

This is the same reasoning that allows the IRS to catch unsophisticated tax cheats. If a mistake in the taxes were innocent (Case A), it would be random, and sometimes hurt the tax payer (Situation 1), sometimes benefit him (Situation 2). With the unsophisticated cheat (Case B), the mistakes always go the same way: In the tax payers favor (Situation 2). It is the absence of situation 1 occurring over multiple instances where it might have that identifies which Case is likelier the case.

 

[whirlingmerc]

"Scientists now know that the universe contains at least two trillion galaxies. It’s a mind-scrunchingly big place, very different to the conception of the universe we had when the world’s major religions were founded. So do the astronomical discoveries of the last few centuries have implications for religion?

Over the last few decades, a new way of arguing for atheism has emerged. Philosophers of religion such as Michael Martin and Nicholas Everitt have asked us to consider the kind of universe we would expect the Christian God to have created, and compare it with the universe we actually live in. They argue there is a mismatch. Everitt focuses on how big the universe is, and argues this gives us reason to believe the God of classical Christianity doesn’t exist.

To explain why, we need a little theology. Traditionally, the Christian God is held to be deeply concerned with human beings. Genesis (1:27) states: “God created mankind in his own image.” Psalms (8:1-5) says: “O Lord … What is man that You take thought of him … Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty!” And, of course, John (3:16) explains God gave humans his son out of love for us.

These texts show that God is human-oriented: human beings are like God, and he values us highly. Although we’re focusing on Christianity, these claims can be found in other monotheistic religions, too.

If God is human-oriented, wouldn’t you expect him to create a universe in which humans feature prominently? You’d expect humans to occupy most of the universe, existing across time. Yet that isn’t the kind of universe we live in. Humans are very small, and space, as Douglas Adams once put it, “is big, really really big”.

Scientists estimate that the observable universe, the part of it we can see, is around 93 billion light years across. The whole universe is at least 250 times as large as the observable universe.

To paraphrase Adams, the universe is also really, really old. Perhaps over 13 billion years old. Earth is around four billion years old, and humans evolved around 200,000 years ago. Temporally speaking, humans have been around for an eye-blink.

Clearly, there is a discrepancy between the kind of universe we would expect a human-oriented God to create, and the universe we live in. How can we explain it? Surely the simplest explanation is that God doesn’t exist. The spatial and temporal size of the universe gives us reason to be atheists.

As Everitt puts it:

The findings of modern science significantly reduce the probability that theism is true, because the universe is turning out to be very unlike the sort of universe which we would have expected, had theism been true.
source
​

So, if we humans are indeed god's masterpiece

Ephesians 2:10
“For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us
anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for
us long ago"
​

then the whole of the universe, all septimuchoquadrilion + cubic miles of it with its two trillion galaxies does appear to be considerable overkill. I certainly don't need a universe this large, and I doubt anybody else does either. Either its godly creator has no control over himself (OCD perhaps?) or he simply likes to have lots of stuff around himself (Hoarder Disorder?), OR, he doesn't exist at all.

.

​

No. It means God is infinite and it's not about us, it;s about God
and in fact all made through, coming from, going to, and made for Jesus and while even the stars will wear out, He will not

Psalm 102 a soul who pours out his compaint to god

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Only the blind, as in unaware to what can be made aware within one who came from such.

No, blind as in not being able to see.

Weren't we discussing observing the universe? You wrote, "99.9999999% of human beings do not independently observe/see this universe." I'm seeing it right now. You seem to be talking about deep space. That's another side of the universe, like the back side of the chair I'm looking at from its front. I don't see the entire chair because it's not all visible to me from my present position and perspective, but you wouldn't say that I don't see the chair, would you?

But if I were blind, I wouldn't see the chair.

If you have seen with your own literal independent eyes and your own telescope, you should share your observations.

I don't need to directly visualize the galaxies, although I have seen Andromeda through a telescope. I can see pictures like the Hubble deep field survey.

I'm not sure what your point is here, but if it is that direct observation is the only acceptable evidence in support of a belief, I disagree. Can you explain why you have taken this tack so that I can know where we are going with it? I don't see the point of this discussion yet.

A lot of people are needy.

I like to help the needy, don't you? I am grateful to have no unmet needs physical or psychological.

Even those having the never satisfied, over-need mentality of physical evidence for everything.

That's a different meaning of need. Yes, some people need a concrete reason to believe the things that they are willing to believe, others don't. The will to believe is enough for them. I assume that they are satisfying some need that the disciplined empirical skeptic doesn't have.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Do some of you really feel that egotistical, self-righteous need to negate other human's beliefs , views and experiences of this subjective dream of life ?

No. I think that most of the skeptics here simply like to discuss interesting issues. We want to know, among other things, what others believe and why they believe it.

Live your life as you want and accept other's rights to choose to live as they choose...as long as they're not trying to personally harm you.

I think that's what we're all doing here. Everybody here i volunteer who presumably is here because they want to be.

If you want to engage in a productive discussion, engage with those who share your same personal views instead of arguing against someone else's belief system.

Discussions with people of differing opinions are more productive for me.

Wanting to do that is a futile, negative, non-productive, selfish attempt to just validate one's own views and reality.

You don't seem to understand the mind of religious skeptic - our purpose, our values, or our methods.

You needn't worry so much about the believers. As I said, they're here as volunteers freely offering their opinions for discussion, and I doubt that they are as fragile as you imply.

Certainly, you don't see this thread as a pulpit for the believer to preach unquestioned, do you - one where the rest of us are expected to sit silently by lest we rankle some delicate sensibility in the process of trading ideas about ideas? If a poster is that sensitive, he probably should stick with the DIRs only, or start a blog.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.


It's amazing that this verse has not changed over thousands of years yet scientists change their minds often because they're often wrong and yet people are still dim enough to trust them.

The scientists have delivered. Their contributions have made life longer, healthier, more comfortable, and safer. Because of them, we have access to more useful information than ever before.

The theologians have given us stories, commandments, and poetry.

It's not hard to pick one. The scientists have the better method not just despite their willingness to change, but in part, because of it.

Some of us find virtue in flexibility of thought. Religious scripture is ossified. All that can be done there it to try to interpret it differently as new information comes in. We now know that the universe was not created as described in Genesis, and many Christians accept that truth. But they still have the six days of creation, which isn't going anywhere.

So rather than update the scripture to reflect a modern understanding, we're told that the Bible authors didn't really mean what their words said. How is that better?

Incidentally, the scripture from Romans is not correct. The god of the Christian Bible is not evident. Gravity is evident. Birth, life and death are evident. The sun is evident. Even the ID researchers cannot find their god in the evidence. They have to rely on faith to support that belief.

But that scripture is stuck in that form forever. That is a defect of that way of thinking, not a virtue.

 

[FearGod]

.."

Baha'u'llah has said;

"Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute."

But the stars aren't fixed even though it appears to be so by the naked eyes.

 

[Tumah]

These texts show that God is human-oriented: human beings are like God, and he values us highly. Although we’re focusing on Christianity, these claims can be found in other monotheistic religions, too.

If God is human-oriented, wouldn’t you expect him to create a universe in which humans feature prominently? You’d expect humans to occupy most of the universe, existing across time. Yet that isn’t the kind of universe we live in. Humans are very small, and space, as Douglas Adams once put it, “is big, really really big”.

I don't think this argument would cut it for Judaism. I don't normally like to quote this type of work, but here is an excerpte from an important Jewish text that's at least 700 years old:

That first knot has three thousand worlds connected to it...between each [major] world are one thousand [minor] worlds. ...
There are five small finger-widths included in this knot. And this knot's length is three thousand worlds and five finger-breadths. It's width is three thousand worlds.
And all of it is connected in a circle that rises and falls. In one circle there are six thousand worlds within it....
From that knot the line of measurement begins to spread out. It measures one thousand which is one ring and one thousand which is one [other] ring, to unite one to the other. And these rings are two hundred thousand worlds...
Between each ring are five hundred thousand worlds...
From here, it spreads downwards and the line of measurement measures three simple, small finger-widths without any knots. The length of each small finger-length is six hundred thousand worlds. With this finger-width, the heavens were fixed among the sixty thousand worlds. And each world is made up of four thousand other worlds...

It goes on and on like this.​

I'll readily tell you that this is not talking about the physical universe. It's talking about the layout of a certain element of a spiritual dimension when viewed in a certain way. It's not important. But I think it's very clear that the language is used to convey the vastness of just this tiny aspect of this dimension which in context of Jewish theology is understood to be many, many times larger than our own universe. So the idea of humanity being a speck of dust to a mote of dust next to VY Canis Majoris is an idea already accounted for in Judaism.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

But the stars aren't fixed even though it appears to be so by the naked eyes.

To a mid to late1800 audience, one can only give so much to consider in each passage. This Passage saying that each Sun has its planets and planet has its creatures a number we can not compute. Abdul'baha has given a comprehensive vision to us about the creation of the Universe, in the 'Tablet of the Universe' - Tablet of the Universe

It is a provisional english translation, but science will benefit greatly from this insight in the future.

Regards Tony