Ricket Posted:

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, wrote “God’s Debris” which suggests that an omniscient, omnipotent god annihilated himself, as it knew everything except its own nonexistence, which resulted in the Big Bang.

Read it – Mr. Adams can be very interesting at times. Although that is not exactly the same as having a creator with finite abilities and a finite life span. I’ve talked to people who can’t seem to reconcile their own feelings, and say “I usually don’t feel there is a God, but I also cannot believe thing got this way by accident”. To them I’ve proposed the theory I mentioned before. Just because there was a creator doesn’t imply the existence of an all-powerful being or afterlife, both of which are much more unlikely concepts in my view. (Just to be clear I don’t believe in a creator myself)

MC Banhammer Posted:

I don’t believe there is one, at this point in human history. Even evolution is a theory. I doubt anyone could prove conclusively that there is a deity who created the universe, any more than one could prove conclusively that there is NOT a deity who created the universe.

Which is all actually a different discussion than what I believe the OP intended. If I may be so bold as to reword it, I think he’s asking “If there is no deity who created the universe, then where did the universe come from?”

MCB, I’m a little disappointed in this response.

“Even evolution is a theory.” I’m not pedagogue or anything, but I think you should at least look at this.

(And also, as has been already mentioned, that whole Pascal’s Wager thing.)

Jalapeno Bootyhole Posted:

MCB, I’m a little disappointed in this response.

“Even evolution is a theory.” I’m not pedagogue or anything, but I think you should at least look at this.

(And also, as has been already mentioned, that whole Pascal’s Wager thing.)

???

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_scientific_laws_or_theories_have_been_proven_wrong

The Large Hadron Collider experiment exists to either prove or disprove a scientific theory.

It used to be believed than an atom was the smallest particle.

As new evidence and research comes to light, more discoveries are made which put other theories into place, displacing other ones. Are you saying that evolution is immune to further discoveries?

MC Banhammer Posted:

Are you saying that evolution is immune to further discoveries?

I don’t think anyone has said that, ever. What has been said is that the preponderance of evidence (genetic, fossil, geological, etc.) supports the theory, and it is exceedingly unlikely that it could ever be disproven.

Moniker Posted:

I don’t think anyone has said that, ever. What has been said is that the preponderance of evidence (genetic, fossil, geological, etc.) supports the theory, and it is exceedingly unlikely that it could ever be disproven.

Exceedingly unlikely <> impossible.

I think it’s quite likely that in another, say, thousand years, people will be talking about “That Darwin, whose theories were sound given the technology of the time, but now of course we realize he was wrong, because 50 years ago we discovered <xxxx> which now shows the flaw in his argument.”

The argument I am making here is that a preponderance of evidence is not proof. Take for example the preponderance of evidence in ancient times that the sun, moon, and stars rotate around the earth. How could they NOT believe that? Because their tools were limited. I don’t believe we’re discovered everything yet, nor that our tools are as good as they are ever going to be.

MC Banhammer Posted:

The argument I am making here is that a preponderance of evidence is not proof.

The preponderance of evidence currently points to a heliocentric solar system. It could be disproved by future discoveries. But I will not be holding my breath. Will you?

Moniker Posted:

Most of what I’d like to to say has already been said here, so this will likely be short.

OverclockedJesus and man-man put it succinctly. “Who made the universe” begs the question, and it’s illogical to stop an infinite regress by making up something out of whole cloth.

Shii, you attempt to solve this problem by defining something outside of nature, which is irrational on the very face of it. As there is nothing outside nature which has even approached demonstrability, let alone a “supernatural creator” to whom one might ascribe a number of other characteristics, it is wholly unscientific to bumume such a thing exists. We do, however, know that the universe exists – so with the data we’ve got at hand, it makes the most sense to bumume that it has always been around and always will be.

Finally, there was no “before” the universe, because the universe exists in no less than four dimensions. I’m talking about time, here. To say something like “before” the universe or “after” the universe is a non-sequitur of the very worst kind, in the same way “outside” or “past” the universe is absurd.

These questions boil down, ultimately, to faith. Faith is an unsubstantiated belief; something which one holds to be true in spite of a lack of evidence. There is evidence for the universe, clearly, and so it behooves us not to make things up which would violate all known laws of physics. We leave that to quantum mechanics.

QED.

If I’ve screwed something up, it’s the beer talking, and I hope someone will correct me. It’s just that I find first cause arguments to be so ridiculous as to be unworthy of extensive thought.

The problems with your line of reasoning are that 1. I’m trying to convince you to believe what I do, and 2. that I’m examining this situation from a logic-driven, scientific standpoint.

When there is a situation that is unprovable either way, you can argue til you’re blue in the face and have no further proof for your side than your opponent does. You can claim that the universe has always existed and I will continue to believe what I do, and neither of us will ever persuade the other.

MC Banhammer Posted:

5000 years ago,

We didn’t have modern science 5,000 years ago.

EDIT: Or science at all, for that matter. We did have theology, though.

Shii Posted:

When there is a situation that is unprovable either way, you can argue til you’re blue in the face and have no further proof for your side than your opponent does.

I don’t need to prove anything, Shii. You do. You make a positive claim for the existence of god, and you have to support it with evidence. If there is no evidence, then it is silly for you to believe, and even more ridiculous for you to try to convince me to believe.

Moniker Posted:

I don’t need to prove anything, Shii. You do. You make a positive claim for the existence of god, and you have to support it with evidence. If there is no evidence, then it is silly for you to believe, and even more ridiculous for you to try to convince me to believe.

When he said “The problems with your line of reasoning are that 1. I’m trying to convince you to believe what I do, and 2. that I’m examining this situation from a logic-driven, scientific standpoint.” he meant he wasn’t trying to convince you, and wasn’t examining the situation from a logic-driven scientific standpoint.