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Comment by micwawa | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, did anyone read The God Delusion and find his central argument disappointing (complete nonsense)? I read the book after he promised to reduce the probability of existence of God to the probability of something completely absurd.

His argument appears to be the following. First, when the universe began there was no God (this is the assumption.) So God would have had to come into existence by random chance, sometime after the creation of the universe, which we all can agree is absurd. Therefore, no God. Booyah. In your face Intelligent Design.

I read this a couple times to make sure that I was understanding it correctly. But it still seems to me that this is about as blatant an example of question-begging that you can find.

He's an entertaining author, sure.

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The God Delusion gives a handful of arguments both for and against the existence of God. Your summary comes across as a straw-man, a misrepresentation that's supposed to convince us that the real argument is poor. Where did he make this before/after argument?

Intelligent design is just one hypothesis among many to explain the complexity (the apparent "design") of the universe. But it posits the existence of an even more complex entity. If we really need intelligent design to explain where eyeballs and bird wings came from, why don't we also need an explanation of the omnipotent designer?

Yes, there's a handful of arguments, but at some point in the introduction he says (I don't have the book in front of me, so this is my best memory) that the main argument in the book will be the Boeing 747 Gambit, presented in Chapter 4. This is why I read the book. Then, he goes on to describe how unlikely it would be for God to form completely by chance. In order for this argument to make any sense, he has to assume that God happening by chance is something happens inside of the universe (or some universe).

There's a few too many straw-men running around here. I'm attempting to summarize my view of an argument, and asking if that's correct.

It is a valid argument , until you get into the math and physics of the infinite and of compact manifolds. Dawkins is a biologist.

I think Dawkins was too early. In more recent years, we have identified biological pathways for how humans generate spiritual thoughts/feelings, and we have economic models for how religious beliefs exploit trust and counterfactuals (that is, if you wanted to invent a lie and make it as widespread believed as Christianity, you would do marketing tricks that look exactly like Evangelism and Cults, and then L Ron Hubbard provided empiric proof with Scientology. (which maybe is what you meant by "probability").

The argument may be valid, but only as far as it argues an irrelevant case: Hardly any religious person would suggest that God came into existence sometime after the creation of the Universe. Am I missing something?

You're suggesting half of the Bayesian argument: Given a universe without God, it is quite probable that religions exist. But what I would like to see is the other half: Given a universe in which (some) God exists, the current universe is nearly impossible.

"It's a valid strawman argument" isn't my conception of a valid argument. Validity includes relevance, not just internal consistency. The point of religion is that there is no such thing as disproving the existance of god, just as there is no such thing as a valid proof of the existance of god. Religion is built on faith, which is the rejection of proof. Dawkin's faith in science is a religious view, not a scientific one.

An interesting point.

I think ultimately he has the same problem of first causes that the argument for God does. In both arguments you have to draw a box around the universe/timespan/laws you will consider and then make an assumption about the initial state. In Christianity, the box is drawn outside the universe itself by considering God to exist outside of time and space and predating the universe itself. Dawkins just draws a slightly smaller box, but neither argument is without assumptions.

Besides, these arguments all sort of start on shaky ground anyway because the nature of faith is that it's not based totally on things that are empirically provable. By it's nature it isn't something that claims to be rooted in empiricism. No matter what side of the argument you fall on, at a certain point after weighing all the evidence there is a chasm you have to cross between what is actually provable, and what you believe to be true.

Just started to check it out. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book. I've found the common atheist arguments (ie.. people start wars in the name of religion, therefore religion is bad) usually pretty weak.

The first part looked interesting. I wanted to see exactly what he is attacking, and it seems to be specifically the idea of the supernatural. He notes that Einstein has been misrepesented as a believer (didn't know that - so I learned something already!).

However, I would expect a physicist, engaged in deep study of the physical world - to deny the existence of the supernatural. Doesn't accepting that kinda ruin the whole basis of their life's work? Dawkins mentioning Einstein didn't believe proves nothing. Einstein not believing something doesn't make it false.

Ultimately, what it comes down to, at least for me is - we know little about the origins of the universe, not to much about even our own minds, and nothing outside of our consciousness.

re "Doesn't accepting that kinda ruin the whole basis of their life's work?"

Not for Newton, Pascal, Maxwell, Planck, Heisenberg, John Lucas, John Eccles, or John Stewart Bell -- all religious.

There is also a group who aren't religious but see reason to believe in a universal consciousness, e.g. Bohm, Schroedinger, and Penrose.

Biologists seem to be more prone to deny the supernatural, presumably due to the culture wars surrounding the teaching of evolution.

It'a quite clear after you understand semi-advanced physics that nothing could exist before the universe started.

Now, you could contest the Big Bang, but from the moment you assume it happened then I don't see nothing absurd in the sentence: "First, when the universe began there was no God"

Because unlike you put it, this is NOT an assumption. If the Universe did had a beginning (and all measurement indicate it did) then this (nothing existed before, not even God) follows directly from the laws of physics.

In fact Dawkins greatest problem when trying to explain people this, is exactly the one I feel when trying to explain other parts to believers. They are ignorant about certain parts of science that make what they are saying impossible, and since it's fairly advanced science, they just refuse to believe it and trying to understand it.

I would welcome to discuss religion with another person from my area (astrophysics) but I've never met an astrophysicist that was religious... I guess because it would be really hard to mix both things.

>It'a quite clear after you understand semi-advanced physics that nothing could exist before the universe started.

The implicit argument here is limited to the type of things that make up the universe we can see and observe. It would be most accurate to say that the things that make up the universe could not have existed before the universe started. Philosophically speaking we can't preclude the existence of things that could be of a different type, or exist outside our own universe. It's the same problem explored in Plato's cave.

Sorry, but you just don't understand physics and cosmology. It's not about the "type of things that make up the universe we can see and observe" it's about ANYTHING that makes up for the universe, including dimensions for instance.

This is exactly the issue that I was pointing. People discussing these themes don't have enough knowledge to discuss them and they enter in easy - but totally incorrect - getaways like the one you just did. And when trying to explain them the science behind it, they realize it jeopardizes their faith and refuse to learn it.

Your argument assumes a level of understanding in cosmology and physics that does not currently exist. The standard model, as it stands is incomplete and does not predict all observable phenomena, it is intellectually dishonest to imply that we have fundamentally answered these questions empirically.

I'm sorry, but it's your level of understanding in cosmology and physics that is the problem here.

1 - I'm not claiming that the standard model is the ultimate mode. I'm just claiming that following the assumption of the Big Bang which is part of the standard model, then the existence of a God before the creation of the universe is a de facto impossibility.

2 - Something that may or may not exist outside our universe, can't have any influence or even be able to observe our universe. This, is not a theory, it's the definition of Universe. Thereby, the most your could say from the Plato's cave allegory, was that a God created the cave, but that the rest of the world where that God was must have existed before he himself came to exit.

The key difference in our viewpoint here is that you take the standard model as dogma, and I do not. It is incomplete, subject to amendment as new facts are discovered as any good scientific model should be The logical progressions of our arguments diverge from there, understandable so.

"I'm not claiming that the standard model is the ultimate mode."

"First, when the universe began there was no God"

I don't see how this follows or doesn't follow from physics. Certainly, according to physics, God is not necessary. But to most believers God is not something that cares about physics, because God exists outside physics. Physics can only comment on what is governed by physics. Telling people they are ignorant does not refute this basic objection.

I'll put in another way. Perhaps we can say everything we want about the closed (let's just say 10-dimensional) manifold on which we live. We can pinpoint exactly where the negative signature of the metric degenerates, we can solve Cauchy problem for all time, or whatever. How does that tell us any information about a larger ambient manifold, or any disconnected components of the manifold? After all, Nash's Embedding Theorem holds for all signatures.

TL;DR: It's a logic truth, if you accept the Big Bang theory, then God couldn't exist before the beginning of the universe.

I think you didn't understand the premise here.

The premise is: "The Universe started in the Big Bang.", now, following from that premise it's impossible to have a God before the Big Bang.

You can contest the Big Bang theory and with it find a loophole for the existence of God, but the OP was finding it "amusing" and nonsensical what actually follows directly from accepting the Big Bang theory: God couldn't exist before the beginning of the Universe.

This assumes that the Universe contains God. Most understandings of a divine creator place him outside the bounds of the physical universe, and therefore immune to your argument. Unless you're referring to a specific idea of "God" that does include him/her/it as a part of the universe.

If the God is outside the physical bounds of the Universe then he cannot interact with the Universe. From the moment the God can exert some change or even just observe parts of the universe then he must be within the physical bounds of the Universe.

Again, the issue here lies in your understanding of the Big Bang theory.

Let me present an alternative scenario, if a video game developer creates a virtual world, is he required to exist within the virtual world to exert any change or "even just observe parts" of the virtual world?

Ok, but this is just playing with the word "before".

>>but I've never met an astrophysicist that was religious

You should visit the IAS in Princeton sometime.

I believe they exist, I've just never met one personally to discuss these things.

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