bionov wrote:Stephen Hawking, the most famed physicist alive today, once wrote that "the actual point of creation lies outside the scope of presently known laws of physics…"
In a perhaps more telling statement from Hawking he stated that “An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!”

Stephen Hawking is going over the edge with his philosophizing.

Fie on all these intellectual arguments for or against the existence of God. God is something that you either feel or you don't. The rest is after-the-fact rationalizing. The fact is the feeling that God is there, or isn't.

ant wrote:

bionov wrote:Stephen Hawking, the most famed physicist alive today, once wrote that "the actual point of creation lies outside the scope of presently known laws of physics…"
In a perhaps more telling statement from Hawking he stated that “An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!”

Stephen Hawking is going over the edge with his philosophizing.

More silliness from ant. Hawking is not going over the edge. He is explaining that there is an edge, and that science can recognise its limits and identify the location of the edge. In A Brief History of Time, Hawking describes his conversation with Pope John Paul in which the pope asserted, and Hawking agreed based on his knowledge of physics, that the moment of the big bang lies beyond the boundaries of scientific understanding.

Here is a link to a talk by Stephen Hawking last week on God and the Big Bang

And Here Is What Happened, Actually.

Here’s a quote from the Big Book of AA to ponder:
“We read wordy books and indulge in windy arguments, thinking we believe this universe needs no God to explain it. Were our contentions true, it would follow that life originated out of nothing, means nothing, and proceeds nowhere.”

bionov wrote:Here’s a quote from the Big Book of AA to ponder:
“We read wordy books and indulge in windy arguments, thinking we believe this universe needs no God to explain it. Were our contentions true, it would follow that life originated out of nothing, means nothing, and proceeds nowhere.”

Thanks bionov, I have discussed this at http://www.booktalk.org/post117195.html#p117195

The totality of the world is, then, in need of a reality that is independent and upon which all conditional, finite and relative phenomena depend. All humans need that reality to fill them with being, and all of us possess a sign of its infinite life, knowledge, power and wisdom. This permits us to gain valuable knowledge concerning that reality and enable every intelligent, curious person to deduce the existence of a Creator.

All asumptions without grounds.

The totality of the world is, then, in need of a reality that is independent and upon which all conditional, finite and relative phenomena depend. All humans need that reality to fill them with being, and all of us possess a sign of its infinite life, knowledge, power and wisdom. This permits us to gain valuable knowledge concerning that reality and enable every intelligent, curious person to deduce the existence of a Creator.

I didn't see it as an assumption, merely as wishful. I'll reword the way I read it.

"The totality of the world is, then, in need of [an anthropomorphized reality] ... to deduce the existence of a Creator."

In order for us to deduce the existence of a creator, something magical would need to happen to our reality. It would need infinite life, knowledge, power and wisdom. It would need all these anthropic properties. At least I think that's what he's saying.

Interbane wrote:

The totality of the world is, then, in need of a reality that is independent and upon which all conditional, finite and relative phenomena depend. All humans need that reality to fill them with being, and all of us possess a sign of its infinite life, knowledge, power and wisdom. This permits us to gain valuable knowledge concerning that reality and enable every intelligent, curious person to deduce the existence of a Creator.

I didn't see it as an assumption, merely as wishful. I'll reword the way I read it.

"The totality of the world is, then, in need of [an anthropomorphized reality] ... to deduce the existence of a Creator."

In order for us to deduce the existence of a creator, something magical would need to happen to our reality. It would need infinite life, knowledge, power and wisdom. It would need all these anthropic properties. At least I think that's what he's saying.

What I try to do in reading language such as bionov's attempted proof of the existence of God is to ask what it could mean from a natural perspective. I think it is rude of bionov (but typical of theists) to slyly assert that science is unintelligent and incurious because it refuses to be bullied into postulating the actual existence of imaginary entities.

The laws of physics, like Chhthulu, are metaphorically speaking all-wise, all-powerful, all-knowing, infinite and eternal. The laws of physics could on this poetic basis be described as our divine creator, in the sense that Spinoza and Einstein equated God with nature. But that does not mean that the laws of physics are an entity. That final fallacy is the logical jump which theists wrongly make.

God does not exist. The evidence against God is overwhelming, showing that all the myths are psychological and political projections of human fantasy. But such projection often has great value, and should not be simply rejected because its overt supernatural premises are wrong. Often such language conceals a covert natural understanding which can be decrypted. Stellar mirroring provides the secret decryption key to bring Jesus back from the crypt.

Just so you don’t think I’m only using Judeo-Christian theology, let’s look at how a great Muslim thinker argued for the existence of a Creator. Let me first quote from the Preface of “Tradition of Mufaddal”.
“All Praise is due to He Who Created, without Himself having been created.”
Here is a quote from a conversation Mufaddal had with Imam Sadiq.
[ Mufaddal said to Imam Sadiq: "Master, some men imagine that the order and precision we see in the world are the work of nature."
The Imam responded: "Ask them whether nature performs all its precisely calculated functions in accordance with knowledge, thought and power of its own. If they say that nature possesses knowledge and power, what is there to prevent them from affirming the eternal divine essence and confessing the existence of that supreme principle? If, on the other hand, they say that nature performs its tasks regularly and correctly without knowledge and will, then it follows that these wise functions and precise, well calculated laws are the work of an all-knowing and wise creator. That which they call nature is, in fact, a law and a custom appointed by the hand of divine power to rule over creation." ]