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What is the difference between your God and mine?
- Thread starter SA Huguenot
- Start date
I'm fond of the saying, "you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy".
That is as true for Christians who convert to atheism, as it is for atheists who convert to Christianity. It's not about the beliefs, but about the believer and how they believe, how they treat their beliefs, then or now. They are the same type of believer. A fundamentalist Christian becomes a fundamentalist atheist, and vice versa.
There are a lot of Christians who have a lot of different views about God. Which particular view of God are you saying is the one and only true Christian view of God? The one you've adopted? If so, weren't you just as sure you had the one and only truth when you were an atheist as you are now about your beliefs?
That's not an atheist claim, that's a claim of anyone who understands anything about the nature of science and what it does and not examine. That's a view of Christians too, who understand what science is.
If God is not bounded by any of these things, then when you say he exists "outside" these things, aren't you in fact creating a boundary inside of God? Aren't you making God like a block of Swiss cheese, where you have placed holes inside of God where God does not exist? Aren't you creating gaps in God, in your particular mental image? Are you sure that is the "Christian view" of God?
There is no such thing as the scientific God. Science does not teach anything about God. Science examines the natural world and it's mechanisms. You are mistaking theology with the empirical sciences.
No they don't. The laws of this universe came into being after the Big Bang. You have your facts wrong.
What is the difference between your Christian God and others Christian God? That's more the real question.
What is it about people like this that feel like they can speak on behalf of an entire people group they don't belong to? It's kind of boring, really. 
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
It constantly astounds me how you Christians often misrepresent - willfully misunderstanding - the Scientific Process. Stuck in your paradigm, you believe that the principles of Science are as rigid and dogmatic as your own doctrines, and scream "ah-HA!" when they change. Yet that is how science functions; change and discovery.
There is no "Scientific God". Science is a process of discovery, asking "how" to the many questions present in our universe. If the universe is a painting, Religion looks at the painting and simply says "The Painter painted it", and then makes up some story (often with no evidence) as to how. Science explores the painting, to better understand how the painter painted it.
IMO, the skeptic does stop being a skeptic outside of religion. Skepticism includes skepticism of scientific explanations as well. Personally, I am skeptical of the "Big Bang" theory.
Not to say I don't have some beliefs/ideas/thoughts about how the universe works, just I don't assume anyone ought to accept them without going about trying to disprove them as thoroughly as they can.
In fact, I expect them to be disprove at some point.
For a believer, they can say God did it and leave it at that. A skeptic is never satisfied and has to be dragged, kicking and screaming across the line into the acceptance of anything.
I don't have as much of an issue with belief as I do with faith. Faith stifles the inquisitive mind.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
No. Not really.
The big bang is already based on established facts.
Nottingham University...
Theories are always based on established fact.
Theists however have no theories whatsoever, they have only ideas to go on and cannot demonstrate any type of probability to even qualify as a theory.
PureX
Veteran Member
I agree with "Hugo's" primary point: that the "laws of physics" are not random, nor do they generate random results. Existence is the result of a specific set of forces that generate incredible variety and degree of complexity. And atheist or not, like it or not, this begs the question: ... to what end? To what purpose? These are the questions that all human disciplines are ultimately exploring: art, religion, science, and philosophy,
When I read "your God and mine", the thread title, I assumed a discussion of how various religions picture God not a diatribe and false dichotomy about science. It's a false dichotomy because it presents a false, black & white, choice rather than allowing for different views. You ignore how Jews think of G'd, Muslims, Hindus and others for starters.
You ignore people like me who started as an atheist who did not care one whit about religion, neither hating nor loving it. When I started believing in the Divine, I certainly did not become a Christian but rather see science as the lens through which we learn about God's world.
There are also many Christians who are scientists but you ignore them.
You ignore people like me who started as an atheist who did not care one whit about religion, neither hating nor loving it. When I started believing in the Divine, I certainly did not become a Christian but rather see science as the lens through which we learn about God's world.
There are also many Christians who are scientists but you ignore them.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
That doesn't really make much sense. How can existence itself be the result of anything? These 'forces' of which you speak must surely exist, so how can existence result from them?
Why do you think there has to be a purpose? How can there be a purpose to existence itself? Can something that doesn't exist impart purpose? If the purpose comes from something that exists, then how can it be the purpose of existence? Purpose is something that appears to emerge from the complexity you mentioned before, rather than the other way around.
PureX
Veteran Member
That's the big mystery, isn't it. What is the source of that energy, and of the limitation imposed on how that energy could and could not be expressed? Because whatever that source is, it is the source, sustenance, and purpose of all that is. Theists call this mystery source "God". Atheist just keep trying to make the question go away. But so far, it isn't going away.
I don't know that there has to be. But everything I experience within existence is fulfilling it's place in the 'order of things'. Everything that is, is the result of those 'laws' (limitations) that have allowed and enabled them to occur. Including myself. And this leads me to speculate as to the outcome, or the 'goal' of all this organization. I would not be human if I didn't.
How could I possibly even speculate an answer to that? We are discussing the origin of all that is, and we don't even know what "all that is" is. So clearly, this kind of question seeks an answer that is far beyond even our scope of conjecture.
But that's because the complexity is, itself, an expression of an organizing set of imposed limitations. It is those imposed limitations (on the abject chaos of limitless possibility) that have allowed that complexity to occur.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Why? It's something we don't know. I don't see why anybody would call our ignorance by a name, let alone do anything like revere or worship it.
Why do people think energy is important to existence? Energy is conservation is the consequence of the fact that the laws of physics don't change over time (Noether's theorem). It's a feature of the way the universe works, not some mysterious, eternal 'stuff' that is more basic than time, space, or any other feature of the universe we find ourselves in. See: Conservation of energy - Wikipedia
Exactly, so why bring in purpose and the name 'god'? We don't know what we don't know and, in this case, probably never will.
You've just said that these things are "far beyond even our scope of conjecture", now your telling about them as if you know. These limitations are 'imposted'? We're talking about existence, imposted from where?
PureX
Veteran Member
Really? You can't see why people would do this? It's seems quite obvious to me. They need to refer to it, somehow. To put a label on it. I'm OK with "the great existential mystery" but then I'm a Taoist, so ... of course. But most humans like to personalize these things. (Just look at how they treat animals as pets.) And as for worshiping this great existential mystery, I think that derives from a combination of fear of the unknown, and gratitude for the gift of being. Both quite understandable, and very humans inc incentives, to me.
We have no idea what energy is. All we know is that it's what makes everything "happen". Existence is a "happening". It is an event taking place. And the impetus of that event is "energy". But that energy is being directed. It is not being expressed randomly. It is being limited in it's expression, and therefor is being guided by what is possible, and what is not possible. And it's in this relation between energy and limitation that order forms, and organization happens, and then increased complexity, until everything that is possible to occur finally gets it's opportunity.
This is NOT a random result. It's an extraordinarily specific result. Which is why it begs us to consider it's possible goal, or purpose.
It's what we humans do. That's how we relate ourselves to the world around us, and particularly to the unknown aspects of it. Why do fish swim? ... Because they can. And because they're good at it.
That's the million-dollar question. How does one sitting within "existence", thinking that existence is "all that is", ponder an origin for existence, somehow existing outside of and/or prior to existence? Clearly, we have reached the limits of our imagination, here. And so here we sit, facing a conceptual wall. Facing the great existential mystery. Facing the inexplicable-ness of "God". Call it whatever you like. Whatever you're comfortable with. But the mystery remains. And it's an important one to the vast majority of humans. Because within that mystery lay our own ultimate purpose. And thereby the "way forward" for ourselves, and for all humanity.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Did you follow the link? Energy is a quantity that is conserved because the laws of physics don't change with time, just like momentum is a quantity that is conserved because the laws of physics don't change from place to place. In special relativity, they get combined into the energy-momentum 4-vector and energy conservation applies to a particular frame of reference but if you observe the same situation from another, you'll see a different amount of energy. In general relativity it gets more complicated and it's an open question as to whether energy is conserved at all for the whole universe.
You're again making confident assertions about what you've already admitted is beyond our ability to even conjecture.
"Prior to existence" is obvious nonsense. You can't have "prior" without time and time is part of existence. Outside of existence is just as bad. Anything outside of existence cannot, by definition, exist. You seem to want to twist the fact that we don't know the basis for existence into the nonsensical, self-contradictory idea that something can exist apart from existence.
Is it? Do you have statistics? What was the question?
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
Christians, maybe. Not all theists. I can show you exactly what the physical manifestations of the gods that I worship are (though whether you recognize them as gods or not is entirely up to you). There's no "mystery" to be had.
PureX
Veteran Member
I wasn't discussing "gods" with a little "g". We can call water a god and be very confident in it's objective wetness. But that's a different issue. ... Unless you want to discuss the existential mystery of water, beyond it's atomic/molecular make-up.
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
"Gods", then. Capitalization is nothing but a matter of ego.
The fact of the matter is you said "Theists", which are people that include more than your monotheistic worship of a single god. A single deity. Your god may be a "mystery source", but this does not go for all Theists.
If we interpret the Universe using the B-theory of time, then the Universe is a-temporal, and any questions about its origin is meaningless. It will have de-facto no beginning, for time does not flow for it.
I just have to invoke that theory, which entails the block Universe, and it is much better in-line by things like relativity, to demote all of your questions to the sate of "moot".
Ciao
- viole
PureX
Veteran Member
Quantifying energy expressed does not tell us what energy IS. We have no idea what energy actually IS. Vibrating strings, tubules, bubbles; there are lots of theories, but no actual knowledge. And understanding at all about why energy can express itself in some way, but not in others So far, there appears to be an array of way energy can express itself, that we are calling "quantum particles". But we have no idea why this array and not any other. And yet everything that exists so far as we know exists as it does because energy is being expressed in these certain ways, and not in any others.
I can confidently assert that we do not know what energy is, or why it manifests as it does. And that it is because energy exists, and manifests as it does, that everything we experience as existence is what it is.
What part of this do you disagree with?
We don't know what we can or can't have regarding existence. That's my point. We don't know what the limitations or possibilities of existence are. We're a bunch of blind men debating the 'edge of light'. Because everything we bump into here in the darkness seems to have an edge, we assume that the light must have an edge, too. Yet we're never going to know, for sure, if it does or doesn't. Because to a blind man, light is always going to be just an idea.
But human definitions don't determine the nature of what is being defined. So insisting that something "can't be", by definition, is just semantic sophistry.
Anything can or can't "exist" when we don't know what the limitations of existence are.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
It isn't anything at all in and of itself. At most it's a property of things (or systems of things). It really is no more mysterious than momentum. It keeps track of the fact that physical laws don't change over time, just like momentum does for space. It is entirely an aspect of how (known) physical laws work. If the laws of physics change, then energy can appear or disappear. You seem to have a kind of science fiction view of it, rather than science.
I'll quote this here (as I did on another thread) as you don't seem to want to follow the link...
The conservation of energy is a common feature in many physical theories. From a mathematical point of view it is understood as a consequence of Noether's theorem, developed by Emmy Noether in 1915 and first published in 1918. The theorem states every continuous symmetry of a physical theory has an associated conserved quantity; if the theory's symmetry is time invariance then the conserved quantity is called "energy". The energy conservation law is a consequence of the shift symmetry of time; energy conservation is implied by the empirical fact that the laws of physics do not change with time itself. Philosophically this can be stated as "nothing depends on time per se". In other words, if the physical system is invariant under the continuous symmetry of time translation then its energy (which is canonical conjugate quantity to time) is conserved. Conversely, systems which are not invariant under shifts in time (an example, systems with time dependent potential energy) do not exhibit conservation of energy – unless we consider them to exchange energy with another, external system so that the theory of the enlarged system becomes time invariant again. Conservation of energy for finite systems is valid in such physical theories as special relativity and quantum theory (including QED) in the flat space-time.
...
With the discovery of special relativity by Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein, energy was proposed to be one component of an energy-momentum 4-vector.
...
Thus, the rule of conservation of energy over time in special relativity continues to hold, so long as the reference frame of the observer is unchanged. This applies to the total energy of systems, although different observers disagree as to the energy value.
...
In general relativity, energy–momentum conservation is not well-defined except in certain special cases. Energy-momentum is typically expressed with the aid of a stress–energy–momentum pseudotensor. However, since pseudotensors are not tensors, they do not transform cleanly between reference frames. If the metric under consideration is static (that is, does not change with time) or asymptotically flat (that is, at an infinite distance away spacetime looks empty), then energy conservation holds without major pitfalls. In practice, some metrics such as the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric do not satisfy these constraints and energy conservation is not well defined. The theory of general relativity leaves open the question of whether there is a conservation of energy for the entire universe.
...
With the discovery of special relativity by Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein, energy was proposed to be one component of an energy-momentum 4-vector.
...
Thus, the rule of conservation of energy over time in special relativity continues to hold, so long as the reference frame of the observer is unchanged. This applies to the total energy of systems, although different observers disagree as to the energy value.
...
In general relativity, energy–momentum conservation is not well-defined except in certain special cases. Energy-momentum is typically expressed with the aid of a stress–energy–momentum pseudotensor. However, since pseudotensors are not tensors, they do not transform cleanly between reference frames. If the metric under consideration is static (that is, does not change with time) or asymptotically flat (that is, at an infinite distance away spacetime looks empty), then energy conservation holds without major pitfalls. In practice, some metrics such as the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric do not satisfy these constraints and energy conservation is not well defined. The theory of general relativity leaves open the question of whether there is a conservation of energy for the entire universe.
-- Conservation of energy - Wikipedia [my emphasis]
All of it. You're confusing an effect with a cause. Energy exists because of the way things are, not the other way around.
This is just nonsense. The limitations of our knowledge don't change the meaning of words. You can speculate all you want about how everything we know of having come about through something outside of what we know of, but when you're talking about 'existence' that means all that exists, regardless of the limitations of our knowledge.
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Justanatheist
Well-Known Member
I find it particularly boring when they talk about atheist's in this way, The only thing I may have in common with another atheist is my lack of belief in a god. Atheist really tells someone next to nothing about an atheists worldview.What is it about people like this that feel like they can speak on behalf of an entire people group they don't belong to? It's kind of boring, really.