Proof there is a God

Discussion in 'Religion' started by JBrentonK, Sep 23, 2015.

  1. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    SideShow Post #64
    To which I replied in Post #67
    The above prompted SideShowBob Post #71
    The above remarks by you indicate that you do not realize that calculus & mathematics beyond algebra & Euclidean Geometry require a lot of prerequisite knowledge.

    It would be interesting to try to teach Differential Geometry to the 8-year old without first teaching Euclidean geometry & differential calculus.

    Why do you think that subjects like Differential Geometry (aka Metric Geometry) are not usually taught prior to the 4th year in college? The reason is that mathematics is analogous to a building which requires a foundation as well as stories 1-10 below the eleventh story.

    You seem to view mathematics courses as analogous to history. You can learn American history with no knowledge of European or ancient history. You cannot learn calculus or Differential Geometry without several prerequisite courses.

    To teach the 8-year old such disciplines would require first teaching quite a few prerequisite courses. It would require the equivalent of several semesters of other mathematics.
     
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  3. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    You're still missing the point. I can explain calculus to an eight-year-old - not necessarily making him a Nobel laureate but enough for him to understand the basics of how the infinitesimal pieces add up. That's all I was asking of the person who claimed to have a mathematical proof of God.

    You make my point. Most Americans have an understanding of their own history like an eight-year-old.
     
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  5. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Millions of people have already assumed God exists for thousands of years.. To my knowledge none has been able to offer any proof that can mathematically be verified.
    You seem to be arguing that somewhere proof of God exists (in some form), but offer no proof. Therefore my impression that you are arguing from faith. Makes no difference to me, either way. If you are an atheist you are my brother, if not, you can still be my friend.

    To clarify my position, I am an atheist but I do not dismiss the probability of a mathematically connected wholeness. But that does not meet the qualifications of the assumed properties of God.
    Faith throws in a few bells and whistles such as love, anger, revenge as properties of god.

    I always heard that belief in God could cure us of those pesky natural emotions.
     
    Last edited: Oct 25, 2015
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  7. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    What thread have you been reading? I've said repeatedly that ANY mathematical proof of God is impossible.
     
  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    So, are you a brother Atheist or just saying that the existence of a god cannot be mathematically formulated, which does not necessarily make you an atheist.

    There is a difference in saying; God exists but cannot be mathematically proved, and saying; God does not exist BECAUSE it cannot be mathematically proved.

    In context of the OP "Proof there is a God" (implying that God exists), the first answer could easily be said by a religious person, while the latter is a more definitive rejection of the concept of an "unknowable (non-mathematical) God".

    I have stated repeatedly that I agree with Tegmark who proposes that the universe is ONLY mathematical (implying that God does not exist).


    I hold to the latter view. Do you? If your answer is the same as mine we are in total agreement. If your answer is based in the former view, we are in total disagreement.


    Note: that on all occasions where you stated that God cannot be mathematically proven, I have agreed with you. It is the other stuff like, "you can mathematically prove nonsense" which raises doubt in my mind.
    But if you rewind Tegmark to 11:40, you will find that he addressed the question if Mathematical laws are descriptive of physical laws. Tegmark proposes that all physical expressions are a result of the universal mathematical functions and that is why we can describe these physical expressions in mathematical language in the first place.
    We did/do not invent the mathematics of the universe, we "discovered" them.

    Perhaps we are saying the same thing, but from a different perspective.
     
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2015
  9. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    I have said that God can not be mathematically proved. I have said nothing in this thread, as far as I can recall, about whether God exists.

    No. As I said earlier, mathematical proofs are only as good as their premises - i.e. as good as their connections to the real world. Inability to connect to the real world does not effect the real world.

    I would say no, we invented mathematics the same as we invented English or Esperanto, to describe the world. Our invented descriptions neither define nor create.
     
  10. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Mathematics governs the universe.
     
  11. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Like the Encyclopedia Britannica governs the UK.
     
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  12. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Are you implying that mathematics is nothing more than a figment of one's imagination? Because you would be wrong.
     
  13. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Yes.

    Feel free to elaborate.
     
  14. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    If we were not living in a mathematical universe we would be experiencing pure absurdity. Mathematics is required to make sense of reality because IT IS REALITY!!! If math were absurd, then so to would reality be absurd. Mathematics is a language that is so general that it must be embedded within reality. It dictates everything we see before us. For example, the New York Stock Exchange, which would be confusing to play if not for its mathematics.
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Classic argument from absurdity. You do know that there is no math that can accurately predict what matter will do on the quantum level? You can only calculate statistically what might be likely to happen. But if math were reality, then it would be possible to calculate everything.
     
  16. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Rubbish.
     
  17. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    I disagree that anthropologists, archaeologists and historians can't piece together the prehistoric notions of God. The evidence indicates that before monotheism came polytheism, which was a natural progression from animism. In Genesis 1:1 there survives evidence of the former: In the beginning the [pantheon of gods] created the [sky and the ground]. The Elohim, the plurality of gods worshiped by ancient Hebrews and Canaanites, is preserved in the first creation myth. In Chapter 2 they seem to forget that they were polytheists and proceed to assume that the Creator God is called Yahweh. (Probably inappropriately translated I AM, in keeping with the deception that Elohim is another name for the "one and only God". In fact, I think the first sentence of the Bible should probably read, in English, In the beginning the gods of Phoenicia, who we refer to as "The Elohim", created the heavens and the Earth. )

    The idea of animism was well understood by anthropologist Franz Boas (PhD Physics, 1881). He observed the last of undisturbed tribal people in the North American Northwest (from the Yukon to Inuit territory). In The Mind of Primitive Man (free ebook) he says, for example:

    To primitive man, - who has been taught to consider the heavenly orbs as animate beings; who sees in every animal a being more powerful than man; to whom the mountains, trees, and stones are endowed with life, - explanations of phenomena will suggest themselves entirely different from those to which we are accustomed, since we base our conclusions upon the existence of matter and force as bringing about the observed results.
    And, really, just look at the clarity of thought in the mind of the scholar. It completely destroys all the hocus pocus that goes with modern religious superstition.

    I would have to go back and revisit my earlier post, but my intention was to say that every definition of God known to exist is fabricated out of myth. To accommodate Boas, I should have also mentioned that folklore (oral tradition) is the huge contributor to the evolution of so many gods of ancient mythology. But the word "God", as plainly as we mean in modern English, is nothing more than a remnant of ancient cultural baggage brought to Europe and the Americas by older cultures, primarily the parishes of the Holy Roman Empire which survived 1500 years of wars and invasions to conquer the New World. And that's the surviving concept of God which Protestants - most notably, fundamentalists - are worshiping! What a mixed up cauldron of confused beliefs.

    Again: my argument is that it is quite easy to prove that God does not exist, since every known definition of God is fabricated out of folklore and mythology - especially during the transition from animism to polytheism, in the assignment of impersonal forces of nature to "mythical personalities", eventually arriving at this slightly "nicer" definition: the personal God of Hebrew mythology. But, as I said, our common notion of God was preceded by an earlier Hebrew/Canaanite polytheism, and that was preceded by an earlier Ugaritic (Phoenician) and Mesopotamian animism. Most contradictory of all, in the apologist's insistence that the God of the Bible issued Moses the Commandments (by engraving them in stone) is that the Mesopotamian system of laws actually written into stone, which we know as the Code of Hammurabi, is the one that delivers the maxim "eye for eye, tooth for tooth". (For each of 282 laws, Hammurabi proscribes an amount of retribution commensurate with the amount of injury done by the perpetrator, and [to some extent] the degree of guilt.)

    It makes no sense to me to argue "well, God might exist". This is no different than saying "well, the tooth fairy might exist". Presumably every reader here (OK, adults! ) has no problem with the statement the tooth fairy can not possibly exist. And why is that? Because we universally recognize that this a a fabrication of folklore. So you see, the only bridge for the religious apologist to cross, in order to throw off the yoke of superstition, and to emerge as the perfection of Boas' "primitive man" - that is, to become an atheist - is simply to acknowledge that God is a myth and therefore the notion that God exists must once and for all be discarded as a plausible proposition.

    If and when that day comes, then perhaps people can congregate for the causes which preserve their safety and survival, rather that to bicker forever that the sole purpose of public policy ought to be to restore God in public policy as was commonly done in centuries past.

    As you see, the argument in this thread is entirely directed toward the difference between progress and regression.

     
  18. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    That is quite a profound reply.

    I agree. It seems to me that mathematics is a quantitative branch of logic (a man-made construct) that helps us make predictive models describing the physical world.
     
  19. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Nobody claims that we know (have discovered) ALL the maths, yet. Remember the empty frame on the wall in the video.?
    It is empty because we have not yet been able to measure things at that level.

    But explain to me how Einstein came up with E = Mc^2, or predict that light will bend in a gravitational field, which took years to confirm. Was that from direct observation or from theory using mathematics. Did we fashion an atom bomb from the maths or from trial and error.
    Do you actually believe Einstein wrote the equation before he came to the mathematical conclusion of such a revolutionary proposal, which was met with the same rsistance you are displaying now. I do believe it is now considered a fundamental mathematical (shorthand) description of the potential inherent in all matter.

    question: does the universe function mathematically or randomly?

    And finally, what is the objection to the recognition that everything in the universe has mathematical properties, and that "from what we have discovered to date" we can predict and test if a suspected mathematical function is true or false?

    There are phenomena, such as weather, which are very difficult to predict (or even analyze) because the mathematics involved are just too variable.
     
    Last edited: Oct 27, 2015
  20. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    O.M.G.

    Has the planet gone mad, or is it just me?

    I... actually agree with Spellbound on something. I think I need to go and lie down.

    My personal feeling is also that mathematics is, to use a crude analogy, the programming language that runs the software of the Universe.
     
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  21. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    And it's apparent we will never be able to measure things at that level with certainty.


    Math can be used to describe physical phenomenon, but the universe doesn't follow mathematical laws, as if everything was possible and only these laws restrict the behavior to certain parameters, as if by divine guidance.
     
  22. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Rubbish.
     
  23. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    But how can the Universe NOT follow mathematical laws?

    What else could possibly govern the laws of physics?
     
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