The Black Vault

at1with0 wrote:

event_horizon wrote:

at1with0 wrote:For how long has the equation 1+1=2 existed?

For you? Never.

I guess the relevant part of the question is was that equation true prior to the big bang.

I dunno. I wasn't there. Were you?

event_horizon wrote:Occam's Razor wins this argument though, no matter what anyone believes.

No, it doesn't. Unless you care to demonstrate how. Simply throwing that name out there doesn't illustrate how the argument is won. What is your argument anyway? You don't believe in God? Ok, that's fine. You've already erroneously concluded that I am a Christian by jumping the gun on my response.

Taken from here

But a true skeptic will tell you that he only uses Occam's razor as a tool for considering different explanations. Skeptics who truly appreciate the healthy investigation of the universe use Occam's razor to pick the simplest (and in their belief, most logical) explanation, but stop short of using it to discount other, more complex explanations. After all, evidence could come to light later on that shows the more fantastic is true, and a true skeptic's aim is to keep an open mind.

So if you're going to use Occam's razor, do so with an open mind. Calling someone else's theories crap does more to harm your credibility as a healthy skeptic than it does to the person you're debating with.

Occam's Razor cuts both ways. Many, such as I, agree that the simplest explanation for the universe is that it was created by an outside force.

event_horizon wrote:I dunno. I wasn't there. Were you?

So you're suggesting that at some point in time, 1+1 isn't 2?

frrostedman wrote:Occam's Razor cuts both ways. Many, such as I, agree that the simplest explanation for the universe is that it was created by an outside force.

Who is to say that is more or less simple than the universe always having existed and not even a creation.

frrostedman wrote:Occam's Razor cuts both ways. Many, such as I, agree that the simplest explanation for the universe is that it was created by an outside force.

What have you actually explained in suggesting an outside force created the Universe, though?

Don't you still have to explain where that force came from? Isn't explaining that force going to be even trickier than explaining the existence of the Universe? Why would we treat the force as being separate from the Universe, and not a non-sentient part of it, akin to gravity?

It seems to me that we've brushed one question under the carpet by invoking something even harder to explain. That's why I think the argument that God as creator is not simpler, as far as Occam's Razor is concerned.

It reminds me of an old story, where a small boy wonders what holds the Earth in place. He suggests that it sits on top of a giant turtle, and this is a simple explanation as it gets around the question of how such a giant rock could be suspended in the air upon nothing.

But then, he is left wondering what is supporting the turtle. His idea is that it must be yet another turtle. In wondering what the next turtle is resting on, he imagines there must be an infinite number of turtles all the way down.

In seeking an explanation for something seemingly hard to grasp, like a giant body resting upon nothing in space, he has come up with a far more complex chain of an infinite number of turtles, which simply takes us backwards and gives us more questions than answers, and all the worse, it doesn't even explain the existence of the turtles, or where they came from.

While positing God as the creator of the Universe is obviously not as absurd as the above example, I think it does highlight the general problem with dropping in an infinitely complex supernatural being as an answer to a question we can't currently figure out the answer to, and calling it the simplest solution.

Rykuss wrote:You've already erroneously concluded that I am a Christian by jumping the gun on my response.

I didn't conclude that you were a Christian...not sure what gave you that idea. I can see you're playing the middle ground here.

Rykuss wrote:So if you're going to use Occam's razor, do so with an open mind.

I'm open-minded about many different things, but "God" is not one of them.

You could be open-minded forever on this issue based on the fact that it is impossible to prove a negative. It's no more possible to prove that "God" doesn't exist any more than it is to prove purple mechanical pterodactyls don't exist, because "hey, they could be "flying" around in intergalactic space somewhere trillions of light-years away." There's an infinite number of these kinds of things you can be "open-minded" about.

There's a very fine line between being open-minded and being foolish when it comes to this. I'm more interested in moving forward and putting ancient beliefs to rest. And if someday we were to prove that there is a "God," so be it...but it doesn't make sense to work backwards and assume there is one or might be one when there's a complete absence of evidence.

Rykuss wrote:Calling someone else's theories crap does more to harm your credibility as a healthy skeptic than it does to the person you're debating with.

Whose theory did I call "crap?" The Biblical "God" isn't considered a "theory." It's considered either a "fact" by believers or false by unbelievers.

If you had an open mind, you'd consider the possibility that ancient tribes' conception is not entirely accurate, rather than redundantly and incessantly attacking the beliefs of the ancients. You'd consider that God is the totality of all that is (which any omnipresent being is).

at1with0 wrote:

event_horizon wrote:I dunno. I wasn't there. Were you?

So you're suggesting that at some point in time, 1+1 isn't 2?

I'm saying that before time, things were most probably different. Nobody knows exactly how equations might work in a higher-dimensional space. And if there was no space at all, nothing but zero would have existed -- you should have no problem comprehending that figure, since your moniker/existence is so familiar with it.

at1with0 wrote:If you had an open mind, you'd consider the possibility that ancient tribes' conception is not entirely accurate, rather than redundantly and incessantly attacking the beliefs of the ancients. You'd consider that God is the totality of all that is (which any omnipresent being is).

You might as well be an ancient human.