Thread: HOW ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT IT TO HAVE HAPPENED?

HOW ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT IT TO HAVE HAPPENED?

Image an empty room. There is absolutely nothing in this room at all. Not even time exists.
Now just for a moment imagine that you are in this room.
Suddenly you sense an energy approaching. As it gets nearer to the room the intensity of the power of this energy gets stronger and stronger. It feels mighty and powerful, like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. As it gets close to the room it seems as though something is going to explode.
It is God.
Now how would you expect God to come into the room?
Do you think that He would sneak in unannounced? or knock on the door and ask if He could come in?
NO – He would burst in with an almighty BIG BANG. Stars would fly from Him and fly off in every direction in the room. The room itself would have to rapidly expand to contain them.
The scientists are right. God has entered this world with a BIG BANG.
HOW ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT IT TO HAVE HAPPENED?

http://johngoodsmith.wordpress.com

Originally Posted by johngoodsmith

HOW ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT IT TO HAVE HAPPENED?

Secularly, and without a special pleading for an unnecessary and impossible creator.

interesting theory - god as an IED

Suddenly you sense an energy approaching. As it gets nearer to the room the intensity of the power of this energy gets stronger and stronger. It feels mighty and powerful, like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. As it gets close to the room it seems as though something is going to explode.

If there's nothing in the room, than there's nothing in the room to feel anything; there's also nothing in the room to transmit sound, radiation or anything else to indicate something it coming or changing.

It's a stupid and illogical circumstance.

Now how would you expect God to come into the room?

A giant foot would descend from above and the room would fill with the scent of Camembert cheese.

Forgive me Lynx_Fox if i offended you - i am simply on a quest to discover how God fits in to discoveries and theories that science has put forward - could it be that God was responsible for the big bang? Please tell me...........

who mentioned a hall?

Originally Posted by johngoodsmith

Forgive me Lynx_Fox if i offended you - i am simply on a quest to discover how God fits in to discoveries and theories that science has put forward - could it be that God was responsible for the big bang? Please tell me...........

She might well have been, but your hypothetical situation does nothing to support the idea.

Your question is, perhaps, an interesting one, but your banal and trivial way of presenting it seems to have little merit. That is why you have received lighthearted, whimsical responses.

Thank you kindly for your response - it may have been banal and trivial but unfortunately God cannot be proved or disproved by science no more that science can prove or disprove what i had for dinner last xmas - so i wasn't going to put forward a intricate scientific thesis -

Originally Posted by johngoodsmith

... how God fits in to discoveries and theories that science has put forward ...

s/he doesn't

Originally Posted by johngoodsmith

God cannot be proved or disproved by science no more that science can prove or disprove what i had for dinner last xmas

Bad comparison. Have you never watched CSI?

Further, the concept of "dinner" is well defined.
The timeline of "last xmas" is very specific and actionable.
The composition or make-up of a meal four months ago is easily discovered.
The act of eating is ordinary and mundane, and very natural.

The god concept is none of those things.

The god concept is not defined at all, and if you ask 12 different people what god is you'll get 12 different answers, and none of those answers will be anything more than a bunch of mystical hand waving, mumbo jumbo, and woo.

The god concept also isn't mundane or ordinary.

If I make a claim that I have a brown coat in my closet, testing the truth of that claim is not at the same level as testing the claim that there is a magic sky pixie acting as an ethereal dictator floating throughout the entire universe who punishes us for thought crimes and takes human form... or in whatever form it takes actually gives a rat's ass about what we do, who we screw, and whether or not we masturbate... given the enormous number of animals and lifeforms on the planet, the enormous number of planets around stars, the enormous amount of stars around galaxies, and the enormous number of galaxies around superclusters, and the enormous amount of superclusters around the universe...

No... Not the same as "brown coat in closet" or "contents of dinner last xmas." Sorry, it's just not even close. Besides, your entire argument is basically a god of the gaps, and it's stupid. "I can't explain this, therefore goddidit."

Originally Posted by johngoodsmith

Thank you kindly for your response - it may have been banal and trivial but unfortunately God cannot be proved or disproved by science no more that science can prove or disprove what i had for dinner last xmas - so i wasn't going to put forward a intricate scientific thesis -

You say that God cannot be proved or disproved by science. I sense you feel this is an important statement. It would be if it were original, unrecognised, or disputed. It is none of these things. Science, which currently employs methodological naturalism, has absolutely nothing to say for or against God. Hence your observation is banal and trivial. This is not intended as an inuslt, but an objective description of the situation.

Originally Posted by johngoodsmith

Forgive me Lynx_Fox if i offended you - i am simply on a quest to discover how God fits in to discoveries and theories that science has put forward - could it be that God was responsible for the big bang? Please tell me...........

You haven't. I was just pointing out that the scenario didn't make sense.

As for your new question an hypothesis that god was responsible for the "big bang," not only doesn't answer the question but ultimately just adds an unnecessary complication as now we'd have to wonder how god came about. Being there's no credible proof for god in any context, even all the ones which formerly were attributed to god but now are explained entirely by naturalistic science, there's not reason to think that a god was involved here either.

Originally Posted by Ophiolite

Science, which currently employs methodological naturalism, has absolutely nothing to say for or against God.

Just a slight caveat: Psychology, sociology, and neuroscience say many things about the god concept, but mostly they say that the evidence suggests it's little more than a shared delusion in the minds of many humans.

Originally Posted by inow

Originally Posted by Ophiolite

Science, which currently employs methodological naturalism, has absolutely nothing to say for or against God.

Just a slight caveat: Psychology, sociology, and neuroscience say many things about the god concept, but mostly they say that the evidence suggests it's little more than a shared delusion in the minds of many humans.

My devout agnosticism prevents me conflating the notion of God with the generally ineffectual attempts to characterise it by conventional religion. I agree the fields you have cited are effective in dispelling the notion of that human description of God. I don't think they relate in any significant way to the possibility of an actual God. Science, at present, just doesn't go there.

Doesn't go there or can never go there?

i'd say "can never go there", since science limits itself to the natural world
anything supernatural, such as god, falls outside its remit

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Doesn't go there or can never go there?

Doesn't go there. The naturalism is a convenient methodological device. It is not an essential characteristic of science, it just happens to permeate current science because it is functionally beneficial. This need not be the case under other circumstances in the future.

Originally Posted by marnixR

interesting theory - god as an IED

God, bored stiff, blows himself up. His parts scatter to form the galaxies and everything else. At least this way God can be everywhere.

Originally Posted by marnixR

i'd say "can never go there", since science limits itself to the natural world
anything supernatural, such as god, falls outside its remit

Originally Posted by Ophiolite

Doesn't go there. The naturalism is a convenient methodological device. It is not an essential characteristic of science, it just happens to permeate current science because it is functionally beneficial. This need not be the case under other circumstances in the future.

Interesting. The god closed to human inquiry is very different from a god we can know. I wonder, what form of inquiry could lead us to understand such a concept? How could we even begin to define the terms of such an investigation?

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Interesting. The god closed to human inquiry is very different from a god we can know. I wonder, what form of inquiry could lead us to understand such a concept? How could we even begin to define the terms of such an investigation?

good questions - i must admit i don't even have the beginning of a promise of an answer

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Interesting. The god closed to human inquiry is very different from a god we can know. I wonder, what form of inquiry could lead us to understand such a concept? How could we even begin to define the terms of such an investigation?

I most certainly did not intend to imply that god, if she exists, would necessarily be unknown, or that there would be no method of knowing it. All I state is that currently, for convenience, science does not provide the means to do so. There other means, which theists have spoken of for many centuries.

Hi - hmm in response to one of my comments you said that we would be led to ask Where did God come from - but surely if something always has to come from something you are always going to have to keep going backwards to ask what made the something - but if God is then it would be more believable than always trying to find something making something - well what do you reckon?

Originally Posted by Ophiolite

I most certainly did not intend to imply that god, if she exists, would necessarily be unknown, or that there would be no method of knowing it. All I state is that currently, for convenience, science does not provide the means to do so. There other means, which theists have spoken of for many centuries.

I did not mean to imply that that was what you were implying. I think.

I meant only to ask what are the ways of knowing god. There are philosophical arguments (first cause, etc...), personal experience and honest faith. I would not deem these scientific. Are there any others i have not considered?

I think we are talking past each other. Earlier you noted:

The god closed to human inquiry is very different from a god we can know.

This seemed to be in response to my suggestion that science, assuming methodological naturalism, did not investigate God. You then observed:

what form of inquiry could lead us to understand such a concept?

I understood this to mean that in the absence of science how could we understand such a God. I had in mind precisely the methods you suggested in your last posts. Certainly they are not scientific methods, since I thought we had excluded these. However it seems this is not what you had intended in your original remarks. So we've been niether agreeing or disagreeing, just saying spearate things.

Perhaps an entity came from another dimension with access to complete blankness and decide to pay you a visit. Even weirder you could've prolly been trapped in a pre determined empty space by such entity. Like me creating a universe out of nothing, in that black space of my choosing u exist

Originally Posted by Ophiolite

Originally Posted by johngoodsmith

Forgive me Lynx_Fox if i offended you - i am simply on a quest to discover how God fits in to discoveries and theories that science has put forward - could it be that God was responsible for the big bang? Please tell me...........

She might well have been, but your hypothetical situation does nothing to support the idea.

Your question is, perhaps, an interesting one, but your banal and trivial way of presenting it seems to have little merit. That is why you have received lighthearted, whimsical responses.

I've noticed you've called God she several times throughout your time on the science forum. I am curious where you got this notion from, as I too believe if there is a god it is feminine energy. I'm agnostic of course though so :?

Originally Posted by Quantime

I've noticed you've called God she several times throughout your time on the science forum. I am curious where you got this notion from, as I too believe if there is a god it is feminine energy. I'm agnostic of course though so :?

I alternate my description of god as she, he and it. This is to convey my view that those who call god he likely think of him as a male and are thus locked into a conventional Abrahamic theistic paradigm. This is as true of the atheists as the theists, many of whom have equally dogmatic views of what it is they are not believing in.

By using all three forms I am able to implicitly express my contempt for this narrowminded view to my own satisfaction, while not giving offense. (Oops! did I say that out loud.)

Originally Posted by Ophiolite

the atheists .... many of whom have equally dogmatic views of what it is they are not believing in.

Haha! Good one, but missed the mark I think.

It's hard to be dogmatic about disbelieving an undefined vague generality that changes from person to person and day to day.