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Old 08-15-2007, 09:37 AM
Piers Piers is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 1,616
Default Re: Reasonable Assertions About Personal God Except One

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1. There is no reason there should be something rather than nothing. Nothing can't create something. So since there is something, an entity immeasurably powerful, somehow outside of time must have created it.

Okay. That might make sense.


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It might make sense, although not sure about that, but that in no way makes it likely. With no idea how to estimate this lets use the infamous DS principle to give the universe a 50-50 chance to have been created. Now you have made three further assertions to the one that the universe was created
1) That an entity created it. In other words some self contained object created the universe, rather than some generalized natural process of the meta-universe. I am not sure I understand what that means in this context so I will ignore it.
2) That the entity was powerful. You do not need to be powerful to have a large effect, levers - pulleys - button that releases N-bomb. And how dose one calibrate power in this context anyway.
3) That the universe was created outside of time. Since time is a human invention used to help simplify understanding of how the universe works, its not clear what it means in this context, but maybe that is what you mean.

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2. Any entity that created the universe is probably "good".

Okay. That might make sense.


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Huh!! What on earth does ‘good’ mean? I guess making anything can be considered constructive and you might relate that to ‘good’? Bit thin though. As this does not mean anything to me, I will ignore it for the moment.

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3. Since he is good, he would likely make his existence and his wants known to creatures that are self aware enough to understand him.

Ditto.


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Hold on! This is going too far. You have slipped in so many extra assumptions that your proposed scenario has to be unlikely in the extreme even if it can be made to make sense.
1) Your use of the word ‘he’ and ‘his wants’ appear to apply that not only do we have an entity, but a aware one, even a self aware one. Most things in the universe are NOT self aware, self awareness is vary rare - think about dividing the number of self aware objects in the solar system by the number of objects in the solar system to get an idea of what I mean - maybe use this number as an upper bound for an estimate of the likelihood of an entity that created the universe being self aware.
2) That a self aware entity that made the universe knows what it has done. Well you do a trick with a couple of little black holes you created - they disappear - "Gosh! What fun I wonder what happened".
3) "wants known to creatures that are self aware enough to understand him" Yikes! If I created a universe in the lab as part of my "Meta-universe studies" practical I doubt I would care that much about anything in it. Further even if this entity is self aware, I see no reason why human emotions can be attributed to it. I still don’t understand the ‘good’ bit either.

Do you realize just how big the assumption of consciousness, that you have slipped in as if its automatic, actually is.

(Might make sense) to the power of three = Highly improbable.

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4. He also would like his self aware creatures to love and admire him and to demonstrate that by respecting his wishes. Wishes that are in their best interest. On the other hand if they totally defy him there will a price to pay.

Perhaps not unreasonable.


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Sorry - totally unreasonable. The universe is a big place. It unlikely that our highly improbable creator would be able to interact with the universe in any way. No reason to believe that its mental capacity is much greater than a typical human. With an infinite universe, however sparse life is there is still going to be too much of the stuff for anyone to cope with. So its specially selected us, why? Say there is one intelligent life form per galaxy, so an upper bound for the chance he has picked us might be estimated as around 1/(number of galaxies). "like his self aware creatures to love and admire him and to demonstrate that by respecting his wishes" - and if all the above does hold I still don’t see why it should care a $hit about us.

(Might make sense) to the power of three * (Perhaps not unreasonable.) = Indistinguishable from zero.

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5 ...
An interesting and somewhat plausible theory.


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Each further assumption about this things feelings significantly reduces our already indistinguishable from zero estimate.

Without any form of experimental supporting evidence, every extra assumption reduce the likely hood of our hypothesis by at least an order of magnitude.

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Maybe its just me. But I have a problem with #6.


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No kidding. Your not alone.

I do not see that the assumptions in 6 are noticeably less plausible then most of the other ones.
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