by Fisherman 38 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I’m not saying that it’s simply statistically improbable for me to exist in particular, or life in general for that matter. I’m saying it’s miraculous that matter, life, and consciousness should have arisen at all.
There is no conceptual difference. If you accept the improbable in the particulars, you have done the same for the whole. The whole is just a bunch of particulars.
I’m not saying it’s improbable that the universe arose by itself. I’m saying it doesn’t make sense. To say that existence arose by itself is, I suspect, a bit like saying that a square can be a circle. It’s not probability that’s the problem with the statement, as if we had an infinite number of squares then one of them is bound to be a circle. It’s that the statement defies logic. It would be a “miracle” of a sort if a square could be a circle, just as it would be a “miracle” if the universe could arise from nothing, not because it’s unlikely but because it doesn’t make sense conceptually.
To me what makes more sense is the view that a ground of all being, outside of time and space, caused our universe to come into existence. We cannot understand the nature of a being outside of the universe and outside the chain of causality, but the fact that we exist is evidence that there must be one. It is the nature of the reality we inhabit that gives evidence that there was intentionality behind the act of creation, and therefore God.
I like Krauthammer’s quip that “atheism is the least plausible of the theologies”. But again, not because atheism has a lower probability - if that could be worked out somehow - but because it doesn’t make sense, whereas belief in God does make sense.
belief in God does make sense
Only if the word 'god' is just being used as a placeholder.
Yes, in a sense, because God is, by definition, that which does not require explanation. Unlike everything that exists, he does not have a cause, but is himself the ultimate cause. Because he is not subject to external conditions, we define him by saying what he is not: he is not temporal, spatial, caused, constrained, alterable, or limited. He is a category of his own, or he is outside categories altogether. Conceptually that is a kind of “placeholder”, but that is from our inability to fully conceive and describe God because we are finite beings. This doesn’t impinge on who God is in himself, which is independent of our ability to conceive or describe what it means for God to be God.
Sounds a lot like sophistry
Would it be better if reworded to something like: we didn’t just get here by ourselves, somebody must have put us here. And whoever it was that put us here is beyond our ken?
I wouldn’t call “it just happened” sophistry, but it doesn’t make sense to me, because it’s like throwing hands up in the air, or, ironically, invoking a miracle, rather than an explanation.
God is a thought stopper
I have to stand with Slimboyfat on this.. Actually debates like this will keep going on because frankly both sides are unprovable. It comes down to how you view things.
”Belief In God makes sense” , at least to me it makes perfect sense . I cannot watch a wildlife tv programme without marvelling at the beauty and order of things and seeing the hand of an infinitely wise creator. You may see the same things and think “isn’t evolution wonderful “
It all depends how you see it .
" It all depends how you see it ."
It all depends on whether you view it through the prism of Facts and Evidence, or if you ignore those two things. But each to his own !
It also made 'sense' that the earth was flat and removing bad blood was a cure. I have no fight with believers, if however they ask me to explain why I don't believe, I try to help them understand.
We were discussing improbability and then suddenly it became about feelings, being able to 'sense' a correct conclusion. It's cool, whatever.
