Goddidit Vs Naturedidit

[Baruch]

You are aware it was an avowed theist who came up with a formula for the motion of planets. He believed it could be calculated because he believed the universe was designed by a creator...Yet in spite of his ass backwards thinking it lead him to the theory of gravitation and how to calculate it.

A reverse ad hominem ;-)  People here will say ... historical fallacy, authority fallacy.  And atheists all think they are geniuses, smarter than Newton (because they all have iPhones, not Androids).

[Baruch]

It always cracks me up when an atheist stoops to theology to make an argument.

The Devil quotes the Bible, to his purpose.  Usually this applies to priests/pastors however ;-)

[Baruch]

The problem I see is in viewing God as a subjective persona de jour rather than an objectively testable reality. Some theists even go so far as to say "proof of God" is antithesis to faith! Makes me want to pull my hair out.

I like to start with comprehensive definitions and work logically forwards through "creation" from there.

Sorry, you are approaching this backwards, but then most do.  As a mystic, I see and hear G-d all the time, and I am seeing and hearing the same things you do, not things that aren't there.  But if you are a Vulcan, then you must vulcanize your rubbers ;-)  Logic = consistent crap.  Fine, be a reductionist ... start with 1+1=2 therefore Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead must exist.  Pythagoras already failed millennia ago.

[Drew_2017]

God is a hypothesis.

The sad fact is that theists have never properly advanced passed the hypothesis stage.

Rather, theists prefer to create a conclusion and then move backwards from that point.

Theists don't science, and that will always be their downfall.

Create a conclusion huh? So say the people who call naturalism the 'default' position...

I might add the theist hypothesis has advanced to the model stage as in the case of scientists who cause virtual universe to exist using intelligence, planning and engineering. Have you seen the naturalist model of how a universe comes into existence?...right neither have I.

[sdelsolray]

You are aware it was an avowed theist who came up with a formula for the motion of planets. He believed it could be calculated because he believed the universe was designed by a creator...Yet in spite of his ass backwards thinking it lead him to the theory of gravitation and how to calculate it.

Drew continues to demonstrate he doesn't understand, or conveniently ignores, the differences among non-sequitur, coincidence, correlation and causation.  How quaint.

[sdelsolray]

A reverse ad hominem ;-)  People here will say ... historical fallacy, authority fallacy.  And atheists all think they are geniuses, smarter than Newton (because they all have iPhones, not Androids).

It was Kelper, not Newton, who discovered and described the laws of planetary motion.

[SGOS]

It was Kelper, not Newton, who discovered and described the laws of planetary motion.

Yes, a rebel priest, who was thrown out of the church for discovering it.

[Baruch]

It was Kelper, not Newton, who discovered and described the laws of planetary motion.

Kepler ... and the laws were just curve fitting without Newton's laws of motion and law of gravitation.  But yes, lets give the Austrian astrologer (his actual job) a nod.

[Hydra009]

You are aware it was an avowed theist who came up with a formula for the motion of planets.

You love to bring up the fact that some of the greatest scientists in history have been theists, seemingly implying that their worldview somehow contributed to their discoveries or that their great accomplishments somehow confers legitimacy to their beliefs.  (the fact that some great scientists were atheists is conveniently ignored)

So I have a question.  Let's say that tomorrow a scientist invents cold fusion.  If this scientist had a Marxist worldview, would that be relevant?  Let's say he's a libertarian.  Or an anarchist.  Or an orthodox Jew.  Or a devout Muslim.  Or a born-again Christian.  Or an atheist.  What conclusions should we draw based on that?

[Hydra009]

I disagree its failed.

The millionth and third time is a charm.

Even today scientists expect to be able to solve problems by applying math and formulas to the universe even though there is no reason to think the universe should be so accommodating. Can you explain why we can extract formulas from a universe created by mindless forces?

It's almost as if particles interacting with other particles could somehow be mathematically modeled.  How strange.

[trdsf]

Yes, a rebel priest, who was thrown out of the church for discovering it.

Actually, Kepler never took vows, though he studied for it.  And he was never excommunicated from any church, although of course the Reformation and Counter-Reformation raged around him and forced him to move from time to time.

MikoÅ,aj Kopernik (a.k.a. Copernicus) was a Catholic canon... but he too was never tossed out of the church for his research -- in fact, the Vatican's reaction at the time was sort of "Huh.  That's an interesting way to look at it."  It didn't become a church problem until Galileo made the theory widely accessible and it became a point of contention in the fight over interpretation of the bible with Protestants.

Interestingly, Newton threw away a remarkable opportunity to extend his theory of gravitation even further -- by appealing to divine intervention rather than doing the calculations.  First, the speed of light was already known to be finite and a decent first estimate made -- so someone did the calculations to show that enough mass in one place could have a gravitational field with an escape velocity of c or higher.  Newton's response was essentially that something would prevent that much mass being in one place, without giving a mechanism or reason, it "just couldn't".  And second, it was already shown during his lifetime that gravitational interactions could build up and reduce the solar system to chaos -- and Newton's response was that periodically god would reach in and fix things so it wouldn't happen.

So, being religious caused Newton to miss perturbation theory even though he fully had the math to do it -- it was later picked up and expounded upon by Fourier, who had no such foolish notions about divine intervention -- and the theoretical underpinnings of black holes, which he could have predicted four centuries before they were actually discovered.

[trdsf]

You love to bring up the fact that some of the greatest scientists in history have been theists, seemingly implying that their worldview somehow contributed to their discoveries or that their great accomplishments somehow confers legitimacy to their beliefs.  (the fact that some great scientists were atheists is conveniently ignored)

So I have a question.  Let's say that tomorrow a scientist invents cold fusion.  If this scientist had a Marxist worldview, would that be relevant?  Let's say he's a libertarian.  Or an anarchist.  Or an orthodox Jew.  Or a devout Muslim.  Or a born-again Christian.  Or an atheist.  What conclusions should we draw based on that?

We can even go that one better.  We know that geometry was formalized by pre-christian Greeks, that algebra was systematized by a Muslim scholar, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, from whose name we get the word 'algorithm', and that zero was invented by Hindu mathematicians.  And it's nearly impossible to overstate the importance of any one of these three developments, scientifically and even artistically.

So maybe we should all be worshipping Zeus, or Brahma, or we need to convert to Islam.

[Hydra009]

So maybe we should all be worshipping Zeus, or Brahma, or we need to convert to Islam.

Sure.  After all, their scientists did use the theistic method.  :P

[Ananta Shesha]

Sorry, you are approaching this backwards, but then most do.  As a mystic, I see and hear G-d all the time, and I am seeing and hearing the same things you do, not things that aren't there.  But if you are a Vulcan, then you must vulcanize your rubbers ;-)  Logic = consistent crap.  Fine, be a reductionist ... start with 1+1=2 therefore Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead must exist.  Pythagoras already failed millennia ago.

Backwards? I approach from before the beginning where the is nothing but an infinite absolute "God", then work forwards into an organized creation without special pleading.

The logic I refer to is simply sticking with the laws of equal/opposite reaction and conservation of energy.

[Ananta Shesha]

We can even go that one better.  We know that geometry was formalized by pre-christian Greeks, that algebra was systematized by a Muslim scholar, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, from whose name we get the word 'algorithm', and that zero was invented by Hindu mathematicians.  And it's nearly impossible to overstate the importance of any one of these three developments, scientifically and even artistically.

So maybe we should all be worshipping Zeus, or Brahma, or we need to convert to Islam.

What's in a name.....persona conjuring?