I thought even a fool would understand I meant truth in the philosophical and metaphysical sense, but clearly I was mistaken.

that all good, but the reason Darwin is accredited for it, and why they call it "Darwinism" is because he brought physical proof of evolution in action. we all speculate, but we all don't turn speculation into theory...

He stood upon the shoulders of a great man, stole his hypothesis and claimed it as his own.

i don't know he stole anything... Darwin spent years in the Galapagos studying, collecting samples, showing how the species changed... but yet you claim he stole an idea from a man who said man could have come from monkeys? maybe he did, but i don't remember seeing your guy at least trying to prove anything...

Kant was a Christian philosopher; Darwin studied in hopes of joining the clergy. It is a little too coincidental to think that Darwin just came to the same conclusion as Kant. Can I prove that Darwin read Kant? Nope. But I feel that the evidence for Darwin stealing from Kant is convincing enough.

uhhh... ok...if you say so...


anyway, back to the topic, so your thinking god created everything, so you don't believe in the big bang?
i personally don't believe the BBT, but for other reasons, not god...

I believe God caused the big bang. I can't think of any other cause which could be space-less, time-less and powerful enough to create the universe.

huh.. i was expecting you to say something different...but that answer works as well as any other they have right now...

Hope you buttered that Slice well!
Cinnamon and Egg would have helped too!
Strange you should revert to Woo and ad-Hominem!
Besides,Metaphysics don't put Food on the Table or clothes you,Scientific Research and Truth does!
If you don't believe me,go on a deserted Island and claim that a Rock is equivalent to Bread,or try drink your Metaphysics and claim they are Water!

Guess Einstein stole his Theory from some Christian Physicist as well!

No, but Einstein was a deist. He believed in God, just not a personal God.

What in the Sam Hill is "Woo"?

I'm afraid you don't know the meaning of ad hominem. See, ad hominem means "To the man". I'd have to say you were wrong, because of some personal insult. I didn't do that, I simply stated that you were too foolish to see the obvious.

You appear to favor gross over-simplifications.

We haven't been discussing the beliefs of all atheist philosophers. lol. Please, try to use some basic sense in this discussion. Not all atheist philosophers have difficulty with this topic. So which are we discussing?

Further, I'm not sure that you've, thus far, meaningfully, accurately represented the position of any actual atheist philosopher.

Some atheist philosophers are quite stupid, and many, like you, will examine and comment on topics (such as evolution) which they haven't adequately studied.



Ah! You declare it! So it must be true! The simple, comfortable world of the Theist!

I can't imagine it, so it cannot be. How simple the world must be to someone so arrogant. None!




Yeah, when I was 12 I thought this was a serious problem. A Very Serious Problem. A great mystery! One of several seeming massive holes in the theory of evolution - how could a species come into existence some of whose members exalt in creating symphonies, when clearly the creation of symphonies can't help a proto-human survive in a pre-civilized world.

I believe this for years, until I actually formally studied evolution - and not at the Christian library, but in postgrad courses at a real university - and realized that this isn't really a problem. Symphonies aren't a problem, metaphysical pursuits aren't a problem.

The process of evolution does not work meticulously to only permit the existence of exact specific qualities which only have survival advantages. Evolution is messy and complex.

We need only look at masturbation to see how seemingly non-survival-oriented behaviors and abilities can arise as inadvertent consequences of selection for behaviors or abilities which do have survival advantages.

The more a primate enjoys sex, the more motivated they will be have sex, the more offspring they might have and the greater survival advantage there is for the genes that favor sex enjoyment (until a threshold is crossed where their sex enjoyment or excessive sex motivation detracts from survival probabilities). Now 'sex enjoyment' could come from several possible places, in this case there is the physical stimulation of genitals. So enjoying genital stimulation can be a survival advantage.

But what do some primates do with this capacity? They don't ONLY use it to pass on their genes - they actually waste energy and time and potentially increase their risk of becoming prey by engaging in behavior which appears to give no direct survival advantage.

This is how evolution works. A quality may lead to a survival advantage in some context, and accidentally give rise to qualities and behaviors which do not.

If one is doubting the theory of evolution, then the proper question to ask is NOT 'do metaphysical pursuits offer a survival advantage' but rather 'might metaphysical pursuits inadvertently arise as a result of other qualities and developments which do offer survival advantages' and the answer there is an easy, obvious "Yes".

Once you've gotten past the 'might they', then more challenging and interesting questions arise such as 'did they actually' and 'how did they'.

That's nice.

Again with the placing conclusions first, and then working backwords. You believe in a god, therefore you see the night sky and sunset as proof of god.


----

Also, for which god is this proof? And for which alleged qualities of god is this proof?

People who believe in god often take god as a whole - all or nothing. Anything which can be distorted into 'evidence' for god is then seen as evidence for every alleged aspect of god.

God tells me the universe is 6k years old. I see a sunset and see proof of God's existence. Therefore the universe is 6k years old.

Can I prove that Darwin read Kant? Nope. But I feel that the evidence for Darwin stealing from Kant is convincing enough.



I'd wager Darwin was inspired by other thinkers, Kant or otherwise. This is how science works. To call it 'stealing' is silly.

But why specifically Kant? Especially when others were also working on similar ideas at the time, and some had entertained similar ideas going back to the greeks?

There might be a god, and that god might have caused the big bang.

But our collective failure to put forward a better idea than god is not evidence that the god idea is correct.

The people who think this is evidence that god caused the big bang are those who believe: "If there was another explanation, I ought to be able to think of it." This is incredible hubris.

Literally, yes. There is a more popular, modern, colloquial use of 'ad hominem' to mean something like 'the use of spurious insults in a debate'. Since language is a matter of consensus, I'm afraid we may eventually need to accept this definition of ad hominem as also 'correct'.

I won't, because words mean things. By changing the meanings, we change our history. I'm not willing to sell my inheritance for a bowl of lentils.

God explains the big bang perfectly, God fits all the criteria of being time-less, space-less and incredibly powerful. God also explains the timing of the creation. See if the cause of the universe wasn't personal, then both the cause and the effect would exist simultaneously. So why isn't God an acceptable theory in this case? Which isn't to say "stop the science". Newton believed in God, but he tried to understand Gravity. Galileo believed in God, but he tried to understand the universe. It's this dogged desire to not accept the perfect theory, which shows incredible hubris.

Well I would agree that it would be extreme hubris for an atheist to insist they have knowledge of events outside of time and space. But failing to fully embrace a particular god theory simply because the big bang is not inconsistent with a time-less, space-less, incredibly powerful being isn't exactly hubris, imo. It's actually a reasonable, non-presumptive position to say 'I don't know about all that.'





Which god theory, and acceptable to whom, and to what degree?

Many, many scientists have no objection to the proposition that an unknowable transcendent creator put the universe into motion, but most of the same people would insist that its not a useful theory due to perceiving it as permanently untestable by humans.

So:

God theory: an unknowable transcendent creator that put the universe into motion

Whom: many modern scientists

Degree of acceptance: no objection to entertaining the idea, not useful as a scientific theory

But this, alone, isn't the god theory that most theist like and advocate for. And most god theories carry baggage which is not consistent with everything we know about the physical universe.

If there was a god theory which made testable predictions about some details of the big bang, some physicists would be all over it. ('prediction' of new observations not yet made of consequences of past events).

Even the relatively innocuous theory of a vaguely characterized transcendent creator doesn't have a place in science, and rightly so (at this point in history). Which isn't to say that scientists should insist such a being couldn't exist, only that its far outside our ability to investigate.

You mention your perception that some god theory (which you've not fleshed in detail, here - is it one of the standard Christian god theories?) fits the qualities you'd expect of a big bang style creator. That's good enough to be interesting, but not good enough to be 'taken as fact'.