The existence - or lack of - a God is one of humanity's fundamental questions. Since the first birth, the first sunrise, the first death, humans have sought to explain the world around them. The whole of human existence, in the end, comes down to this: Is there a God?
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Explanation:
"To the extent that scientists do not allow for the possibility of God, they cannot aptly explain the origins of the universe. "
This is a God of the gaps argument. At one point in time people made the argument that if we didn't allow the possibility of God we couldn't explain lightning, the sun, weather, etc.
The fact that our knowledge is incomplete does not mean that we need God to fill in the gaps. History has made a fool of such arguments in the past.
- reckoner
August 14, 2008 8:24AM
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Einstein's statement reflects his view that the universe could be explained in an experimentally deterministic way. He spent his last years in life trying to come up with a unified theory of physics because to him the notion of quantum uncertainty was so unsettling. The next great discovery in physics will likely a unified theory (after we find the Higgs boson of course). Regardless, Einstein's view has more to do with a certain view of nature rather than the existence of a god that shapes all things with some omnipotent guiding hand.
- bschild June 4, 2009 1:29AM
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Good is the health , well-being and longevity of our entire species and planet. You can believe in a god and be for the good of all humanity or you can not believe in god and be for the good of all humanity. On the other hand saddling people with original sin, the fall of man and a final judgment day is definitely not good for the psychic of humankind. If we become extinct through our own suicidal self-destructive tendencies taught to us by people who claim to believe in god, will it be god's fault? Therefore the Abrahamic god and all gods are irrelevant compared to love.
- atliberty July 9, 2009 12:52AM
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Matter Cannot be Destroyed – or Created
- From American Atheists
By American Atheists - An Educational Organization for Atheists
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Objection?
You claim to have an objection to the statement "matter cannot be created or destroyed" yet show no evidence to the contrary.
The icing on the cake of your "argument" seems to be blindly asserting that god isnt improbable; again without any proof or explanation.
Care to provide some?
- Elliott R
July 25, 2008 1:56AM
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Ample proof, every day at every research university!
You said, "we would need ample evidence that the laws of physics have been broken or at least horribly misunderstood. However, we have none." The so called definitions of the laws of physics as man understands them are researched and refined every day at universities all over the world. People are still receiving PhDs and grants, so yes, there is ample proof that our understanding of physics is still being refined. Every single day.
- joelinda September 3, 2008 2:48PM
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What research is
You are seriously misinformed about the nature of scientific knowledge.
Yes, our understanding of physics is constantly being refined. However, there are some basic concepts that have been confirmed over and over again and are not in doubt. Yes, occasionally we find a special case in which an old rule seems not to apply, but that leads us to the discovery of new, broader rules, which can be simplified in each special case to the old ones. We have wholly rejected some very old theories, most of which were formulated before the idea of the scientific method was popular. (As a "scientist" Aristotle claimed that objects fall because they want to, and that projectiles move forward because that is in their nature.) However, by and large we are building upon old knowledge rather than scrapping it entirely.
One of the concepts which we come to, time and time again, in all different areas of physics, is the concept of symmetry and conservation. There are several fundamental quantities (or related pairs quantities, like energy and mass, or space and time) that follow invariance rules. Conservation of mass and energy is a very basic, foundational principle, and one which is not at all in doubt among scientists.
- thoughtcounts Z
October 30, 2008 8:54AM
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Research is a refining of current knowledge/consensus
No need to attack. When you say things like "You are seriously misinformed about the nature of scientific knowledge." then you lose a civilized debate. Debate the topic, not the person.
I agree with you on most of your points about what science and research are. I'm an engineer, not a scientist, if you care to draw a distinction. So, I know science changes when consensus changes. God's laws of nature don't change, but the human understanding of those laws changes via peer review. No need to go back to Aristotle. Just go pull some textbooks off the shelf from the 1930s.
Yes, conservation of mass and energy are not up for debate here. This debate is about God. He is free to violate any law of physics he wants, since he created them in the first place. Look at the elegance of the universe. How could that have happened by accident? Also, if we hold to the fact of conservation of mass and energy, then how did the big bang happen?
Faith and Science are two very different things. God created the laws of nature that we call Science. No doubt, he has violated them a few times as serves his purpose. God also created the faith that humans must exercise in order to understand a bit more of him each day.
- joelinda November 6, 2008 9:09AM
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Matter always existed?
"All we can see, measure, and know shows us that matter and energy have always existed."
The author's statement above simply is not accurate. Big Bag theory, while certainly not an established fact, is widely accepted. According to that theory, matter as we know it did not exist prior to the Big Bang. Indeed, the physical laws of the universe that we are so familiar with did not exist. We cannot know what laws prevailed because the conditions prior to the Big Bang are beyond all experience and, so far at least, are untestable. One may well deny the Big Bang and that's fine, but the statement that matter and energy have always existed is not supported.
- goodwyne
October 11, 2008 12:12PM
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Your science is about 100 years behind the times.
Citing the law of conservation of mass-energy against God/creatio ex nihilo is absurd. The law only applies after the Big Bang; in all likelihood energy conservation was violated at the Big Bang.
http://web.archive.org/web/20031106212441/http :// www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/ask/a11609.html
- obrienr
October 11, 2008 8:58PM
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not so!
Had the law been violated, then one might invoke Him but then one would still be saying fatuity as He is so incoherent as His properties so contradict each other as we ignostics so loudly proclaim. The law is perpetual: the present is key to the past.
One should always look for natural causes and explanations as that is our experience that makes for the presumption of naturalism. They are despite Leibniz the sufficient reason.
Ex nihilo is fatuous as it is contrary to experience and to posit nothingness is to posit nothing whatsoevr as knowledge. See Peter A.Angeles "The Problem of God: a Short Introduction."
The occult adds nothing to knowledge! As atheologian Keith Parsons notes , it merely invokes the fig leaf of ignarnce.
- skeptic griggsy October 15, 2008 3:31PM
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Scoence: no God
That law, the conservation of mass-energy exhibits itself in two ways: one, therefore their cannot be absolute contingency- no Esistence -as the contingency argument so requires;two, it exhibits itself in quantum energy, whence comes matter-energy. So here, science indeed does exhibit no reason to posit a dvine creator
Science finds no cosmic teleology- no preordained plans for events in Existence. Thus arises the atelic argument that therefore one cannot posit God as behind events.
To posit God as somehow involved would be the new Omphalos argument that God hides Himself as the epistemic distance argument would endorse in effect. John L. Schellenberg observes that that distance reflects His hiddenness so much that He probably doesn't exist!
- skeptic griggsy October 14, 2008 3:37PM
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sorry for the typo
therefore,there cannot be absolute...
- skeptic griggsy October 14, 2008 4:06PM
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Matter cannot be created nor destroyed
Your reasoning is nonsense and has no sound justification.
What William Carroll reminds us , “St. Thomas Aquinas developed an analysis of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo that remains one of the enduring accomplishments of Western culture. The key to Aquinas' analysis is the distinction he draws between creation and change. The natural sciences, whether Aristotelian or those of our own day, have as their subject the world of changing things: from sub-atomic particles to acorns to galaxies. Whenever there is a change there must be something that changes. The Greeks are right: from nothing, nothing comes; that is, if the verb "to come" means a change. All change requires an underlying material reality.
Creation, on the other hand, is the radical causing of the whole existence of whatever exists. To cause completely something to exist is not to produce a change in something, is not to work on or with some already existing material. If, in producing something new, an agent were to use something already existing, the agent would not by itself be the complete cause of the new thing. But such a complete causing is precisely what creation is. To create is to give existence, and all things are totally dependent upon God for the very fact that they are. God does not take nothing and make something out of "it." Rather, anything left entirely to itself, separated from the cause of its existence, would be absolutely nothing. Creation is not some distant event; it is the continuing, complete causing of the existence of everything that is. Creation, thus, is a subject for metaphysics and theology, not for the natural sciences.
What is essential to Christian faith, according to Aquinas, is the "fact of creation," not the manner or mode of the formation of the world. Aquinas' firm adherence to the truth of Scripture without falling into the trap of literalistic readings of the text offers valuable correction for exegesis of the Bible which concludes that one must choose between the literal interpretation of the Bible and modern science. For Aquinas, the literal meaning of the Bible is what God, its author, intends the words to mean. The literal sense of the text includes metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech useful to accommodate the truth of the Bible to the understanding of its readers. For example, when one reads in the Bible that God stretches out His hand, one ought not think that God has a hand. The literal meaning of such passages concerns God's power, not His anatomy. Nor ought one think that the six days at the beginning of Genesis literally refer to God's acting in time, for God's creative act is instantaneous.”
Recent speculations that the universe began as "quantum tunneling from nothing" reaffirm the ancient Greek principle that you cannot get something from nothing. For the "vacuum" of modern particle physics, whose "fluctuation" some see as bringing our universe into existence, is not absolutely nothing. It is not anything like our present universe, but it still is something. Or else, how could it fluctuate? Even if the universe were the result of the fluctuation of a primal vacuum, it would not be a self-creating universe. The need to explain the existence of things does not disappear.
So to say that matter cannot be created or destroyed just indicates its within a closed system and has no bearing on whether God brought it into existence or not.
- Big O
December 7, 2008 7:53PM
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heat transfer
The universe cannot be infinetly old, according to my very limited knowledge, because heat flows from warm to cold bodies. If the universe has always existed, everything should be the same temperature. Where am I wrong?
- tgo
December 15, 2008 5:04PM
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Heat treansfer
This universe hasn't always existed. It had a beginning and it will cease to exist when it reaches absolute zero unless something changes.
- Big O
January 4, 2009 2:05PM
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But wait,
I to have always had strong beliefs about god and the universe and have as well made my decision about religion and I do not believe in a god. But if matter can not be created nor destroyed, where did it all start out at? The BIg Boom theory states that the universe was like a balloon which under compression finally exploded causing a chemical reaction beginning life in our universe and our universe itself. But something can not come from nothing. How did the first universe come to be? My argument has always been "we are still discovering this answer" but i have yet to see scientists evaluate this answer any further than I myself have. Any words of comfort?
- peaches
March 2, 2009 5:53PM
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Words of comfort?
Science teaches that there is a First Cause that is infinite and beyond observation. In other words what most people call God. Forget religion . Think of the universe as a large pool of energy . Every action or thought causes energy, ripples across the pond, the butterfly effect. Creation is the interaction of all the ripples.
- mike1948
July 24, 2009 1:06AM
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Black Holes and Revelations.
Matter can be destroyed. See Stephen Hawking's 2005 essay on Information Loss in Black Holes. The entropy of a black whole is considered below:
S = (c^3)(kA)/(4)(hbar)(G)
where S is the entropy, c is the speed of light, k is Boltzmann's constant, A is the surface area of the event horizon, ħ (hbar) is the reduced Planck's Constant and G is the gravitational constant.
If the above equation is found to be absolutely true, that the entropy of black holes consume physical information, human beings would have to wonder by what catalyst matter is created?
- Cheerikiara
May 12, 2009 4:22PM
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This is a spiritual universe.
All we realize only exists in our mind.
- jaker277
June 30, 2009 10:11AM
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What about Black Holes?
If the laws of physics apply then why is matter destroyed in a Black Hole?
I think there is a God and I have no idea why He created you.
- robertwsx
August 8, 2009 11:02AM
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debated
Matter is not destroyed when it enters a black hole... it adds to the mass.
There are questions about entropy in relation to black holes... specifically do black holes 'destroy' information.
- MrBook
August 8, 2009 1:31PM
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He can't even get the science right!
It's mass can not be created or destroyed not matter. Energy has mass. Get the science right.
- mike1948
August 14, 2009 11:39AM
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Elaborate
Can you elaborate on that statement? Energy is such a broad term after all.
If I carry a ball up to the top of a hill does it gain mass? Does a photon have mass?
- MrBook
September 1, 2009 12:01AM
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Questions?
"If I carry a ball up to the top of a hill does it gain mass?"
The ball or the hill?
"Does a photon have mass?"
No.
- mike1948
September 1, 2009 12:24AM
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The ball
Does the ball gain mass? It is gaining energy (potential)
Photons have (are) energy, if energy has mass then why don't photons have mass?
- MrBook
September 1, 2009 12:37AM
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Nonsence.
I can make no more sence out of science then you can make out of religion . Well, maybe a little.
- mike1948
September 1, 2009 9:45AM
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no sense?
If you do not understand the Science then why do you keep making unsupported Scientific arguments?
- MrBook
September 1, 2009 4:49PM
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Unsupported?
I understand enough to know that you are twisting it to support your anti-religious attitudes. Why do you make judgments on religious ideas you have no understanding of?
- mike1948
September 1, 2009 10:08PM
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