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Does Quantum Theory disprove the idea of God?

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Dunk#7 said:
You either accept that something came from nothing based on faith.

Or you accept that a creator must have always existed and created the universe.
I'll take "false dichotomies" for $500, Dunk. Our understanding of the beginning of spacetime is far more sophisticated than "something coming out of nothing."
Unfortunately, you seem disinterested in understanding any of those explanations, presumably because they don't fit your schtick that both views take the same type of faith, in equal measure.

EDIT: Clarified language.
 
genjiZERO said:
No right, only things that can produce evidence can be said to be proved within limits of error. But the concept of god is utterly abstract (and again, has no fixed meaning). Additionally, it is a concept that can never be quantified. Thus, there is no hypothesis that can be tested. And since it can't be tested, nor can be semantically fixed, it can never be proved nor disproved.

My response was to a statement that summarizes as "because a conception of god was forged by imaginative story-tellers in the past - god does not exist". My statement was not to prove the existence of god, but to point out the error in the reasoning of the post I quoted.
Yeah sorry about that.

I'm just pissed off at seeing these fucking threads all the time. I have to debate this shit with my friends and family ALL THE TIME because they're Christians and they think I'm going to hell.

foodtaster said:
lol, he mad

You say there's no way of proving one way or another but then say you need evidence... which is it?
Fuck off. I can't think when I'm in a bad mood.
 
Dunk#7 said:
I agree with you, but with that being said you would also have to accept that many other claims out there are not science.

Every current concept about the beginning also has to explain where it came from. You can only go back so far before something had to come from nothing. At which point you have to take that on faith.

You either accept that something came from nothing based on faith.

Or you accept that a creator must have always existed and created the universe.

Either way you are relying on something that cannot be proven.

Science cannot and will not ever explain the beginning of the universe. It is unscientific to claim you can spontaneously have something from nothing.

No you do not. You can just say "we have no fuckin clue" and try to find it out by conducting experiments and gathering data to build a hypothesis, which is what we have been doing for a very long. The two choices you presented are not the only ones.
 
Our universe proves intelligence can be created through science. Our intelligence and form is limited to the universe's scientific laws.

I find it plausible science and different scientific laws could have created intelligence before the big bang.

We can't create ourselves. We create limited digital intelligence through science.

It makes sense to me that the before big bang an intelligence couldn't create itself, and created physical intelligence through a long, in our perception, scientific process.
 
Dunk#7 said:
I agree with you, but with that being said you would also have to accept that many other claims out there are not science.

Every current concept about the beginning also has to explain where it came from. You can only go back so far before something had to come from nothing. At which point you have to take that on faith.

You either accept that something came from nothing based on faith.

Or you accept that a creator must have always existed and created the universe.

Either way you are relying on something that cannot be proven.

Science cannot and will not ever explain the beginning of the universe. It is unscientific to claim you can spontaneously have something from nothing.

Science indicates that time, space and matter, as we know it, emanated from a particular origin point. We can use what we currently understand to attempt to describe this origin. That is science. Obviously we are limited but you are adding additional factors into things with talk about a possible creator and furthermore that this creator has always existed.

You can put faith on matter magically appearing from nothing or a creator of magical space farts from a malfunctioning hyper reality probe. None of that is science. None of that furthers our understanding of the universe around us.

Science killed God a long time ago and the futile attempts to re-inject God in between the gaps in our understanding is a joke.
 
Atramental said:
Yeah sorry about that.

I'm just pissed off at seeing these fucking threads all the time. I have to debate this shit with my friends and family ALL THE TIME because they're Christians and they think I'm going to hell.

lolz. It's all good. They do appear a bit too often. I basically say the same thing in every one.
Gaborn said:
There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of "God." "God" is a question of philosophy, not science.

Agreed. It's also something I don't think gets iterated enough. Science and philosophy are very different things.
 
Dunk#7 said:
You either accept that something came from nothing based on faith.

Or you accept that a creator must have always existed and created the universe.

I think it should be pretty clear that "It was either nothing or a conscious, omnipotent, omniscient superbeing" is a false dichotomy.

To the OP, I'm not well versed in the quantum stuff, but I would think that the answer is no, quantum mechanics doesn't disprove god. I guess you could use determinism to argue against a soul which would simultaneously debunk multiple religions' gods.
 
Azih said:
Which is?

If you don't know that, you have bigger problems. Get that nose checked and stop playing stupid on message boards. ;)

Unless you're telling me there aren't reptilian drudge pirates that live in your nose?
 
Either you accept that the universe came from nothing, which is impossible, or you accept that nothing is impossible.

Vacuum fluctuations and whatnot.
 
In my opinion nothing can ever scientifically prove or disprove God.

If there is some mechanic in the world which seems to explain away any need for conscious intervention by a deity, than a theist will just say "well that's how God set it up".

Evolution makes it it uncessary for a designer? "well evolution is just Gods way of designing". That kind of thing.

These goal posts can move forever, until they are completely beyond reach for anyone. The point where no one will ever be able to say one way or the other.

So the universe has been completely mapped, all properties known, all causes and effects going back to the beginning are completely understood. No need for any deistic intervention, conscious will, or anything like that? A system fully known, no explanation lacking. "well... isn't God's plan wonderful?"

God will always be a matter of faith. No proof will ever be found, for or against. Either you think there is a God, who reveals himself in strange ways... like through crazy mystics in the desert (ie Abraham)... Or you don't. No proof possible.
 
with quantum theory god would exist and not exist at the same time, depending on whether god was being observed :P
 
I'd suggest that it's practically impossible to "disprove" the existence of God. "God Exists" is not an effectively falsifiable claim in itself.

What can be disproven, however, are claims about God. For example "The world was made in 7 days" is clearly and fully refuted and effectively disproven based on evidence. But for the faithful even such disproofs are easily refuted by saying "That's the way God wanted to make it seem".

So at best you can say 'X' theory (in this case X being Quantum theory) lends weight to the idea that a God is unnecessary, or refutes a given claim about God's activities in reality.

EDIT: Dammit! BocoDragon beat me to my key points while I was making a coffee.
 
Science may not be able to 'disprove' the existence of God but science has, inadvertently, made the chances of any gods' existence less and less and less likely as the discoveries pile on.
 
Tigel said:
Common sense disprove the idea of God.
oh_you.jpg
 
One thing quantum and astrophysics does, is beggar religious ideas about god.

"And lo, he set a bush aflame and it did burn, incandescent, for a day and a night!"


ORLY? BECAUSE HERE'S A FUCKING GAMMA RAY BURSTER:

iXxn2.png


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst

Bluntly speaking, the Middle Eastern men who thought up this shite, were simply not imaginative enough to understand the scope and scale of the solar system, never mind the fucking absurd magnificence of the universe.

All subsequent attempts to envelop "god's" involvement in something that obviously dwarfs their literal and supposedly accurate descriptions of "him" simply shows how anthropomorphized and amateur their scams were. Even though they worked for a few thousand years.
 
Orayn said:
I'll take "false dichotomies" for $500, Dunk. Our understanding of the beginning of spacetime is far more sophisticated than "something coming out of nothing."
Unfortunately, you seem disinterested in understanding any of those explanations, presumably because they don't fit your schtick that both views take the same type of faith, in equal measure.

EDIT: Clarified language.

Please explain one of those "more sophisticated" beginning theories to me.

Every one I have ever heard sounds completly rediculous. How do you get from generic matter to life? On the backs of crystals? Really?

There is not a single theory on the beginning of the universe that has been adopted by the scientific community that is reasonable.

Seriously, explain one.
 
Undubbed said:
Science may not be able to 'disprove' the existence of God but science has, inadvertently, made the chances of any gods' existence less and less and less likely as the discoveries pile on.

'Less likely' is an incorrect term to put it, since there is no mounting evidence against it.

A proper term would be 'less interesting'. Religious creation stories suddenly become way too simple.

Tigel said:
Common sense disprove the idea of God.

Obviously the guy above me doesn't think so.
 
Science can't probe the supernatural world, so no, science cannot verify god's existence.

However, since god can do anything, he could theoretically send obvious signals to the natural world confirming his existence such as a hidden code in our DNA. Science can't poke at the supernatural, but the supernatural can (apparently) poke at the natural.
 
You can't say an all-powerful God is limited by anything here, unless he chooses to be limited.


Science can never disprove God, get over it.
 
I actually think a deterministic universe actually works against the existence of god, at least in the religious sense.

Most religions are heavily dependent on free will, hence the whole part about heaven and hell, a set of rewards and punishments to mold behavior. Of course free will in religious terms is often nullified by the fact that god in omniscient and knows what you are going to do before you do, so do you truly have free will?

Lots of complex theological puzzles there.

IMO, nothing about the universe can tell us anything about the existence of a god, because if god created the universe, then he isn't part of the universe.
 
Willy105 said:
'Less likely' is an incorrect term to put it, since there is no mounting evidence against it.

A proper term would be 'less interesting'. Religious creation stories suddenly become way too simple.

I would say "less necessary".

Before God was the answer to: "why are we here? why do we have these bodies? these minds? this world?" etc.

God seemed the most likely answer at one point. He seemed necessary to explain it all, because we had no way to account for all these worldy phenomena otherwise.

Now, we no longer require God to explain these things. We unconvered natural processes which account for all these forms around us. We've pushed him all the way back to "there might not be a universe to support the development of these phenomena without God".. but that is far, far less of an exmple of his authorship than we once claimed. For most of theistic history, we thought his hands were directly sculpting all the phenomena.

By analogy: it's like we once thought God was the programmer of everything in a videogame. He modelled the characters, he designed the levels, created the textures, the physics enginge, Etc. Now he's he's been relegated to the role of producer "hey guys let's make a videogame, people". He started it, but he wasn't required to created every detail in it.

Were a God to exist, he still is "creator" of everything in the universe... but it's not quite the same meaning of creator that we once assumed, where he was required to sculpt every tiny detail on his own. Now he's just the spearhead of the project, at best, because we know he isn't required to have directly shaped things in our universe.
 
Cubsfan23 said:
You can't say an all-powerful God is limited by anything here, unless he chooses to be limited.


Science can never disprove God, get over it.

Luckily, non-falsifiability doesn't stop God from not existing. Nor does it stop the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the teacup on the other side of the sun.
 
If a scientist proved that a god existed or not (taking that all he says is true), there's no way I would be sure. Practically? I already do that.

If a philosopher did it? I would take his conclusion as absolutely true, but my live wouldn't change.


In conclusion: It's and a waste of time to worry about such things and a worthless thing to do.

tl;dr: I don give a fuck if a god doesn't or does exist.
 
Dani said:
Science killed God a long time ago and the futile attempts to re-inject God in between the gaps in our understanding is a joke.

No it didn't. There's no scientific evidence that actively disproves God's existence. Yes, we can use scientific research to construct an empirical understanding of the world, upon which we might use Occam's Razor to suggest that belief in God is less rational than disbelief in such an entity's existence, but that last step isn't scientific in and of itself, but is instead philosophical.

The problem with the "God of the gaps" isn't even the specific claims made by such an approach, unless they contradict empirical evidence, of course. No, what's problematic with that approach is more attitudinal, in that it may be considered to corner off scientific and empirical endeavour with hand-waving, conveniently ignoring holes in our understanding. That doesn't mean that it isn't theoretically possible that God has (or had) an active participation in our universe's creation, however, it just means that we should be careful in our application of such a hypothesis.

As for the question in the OP, no, quantum theory does not outright disprove the idea of God' existence.
 
HeadlessRoland said:
Yes, science can disprove negatives...

I don't really understand this.

Let's say humanity doesn't know if atoms exist.

Someone: "Atoms don't exist"
Scientist: "Well, some things can only be explained if atoms exist and here's what we can do with the knowledge of their existence, an atomic bomb. So practically, they are proven to exist."
 
Stumpokapow said:
Pretend you are someone who does hold that belief.

On what basis do you believe in a god or higher being?
I'm basically a deist, I believe in a first mover or first causer rather...I don't believe in any specific religion, but I think that the natural order of the way things function within the universe points to the existence to some sort of higher being...Rather self-aware or unaware
 
99hertz said:
In conclusion: It's and a waste of time to worry about such things and a worthless thing to do.

tl;dr: I don give a fuck if a god doesn't or does exist.


OK philosophy and science. Time to pack that shit up. A gaf-er called us out.
 
Dunk#7 said:
You either accept that something came from nothing based on faith.
Or you accept that a creator must have always existed and created the universe.
If space and time are infinite, then why can the universe have not existed forever?

If space and time are finite, then the creator would have had to create space and time. What does it mean to 'always' exist when there's no such concept as time? What does it mean to 'exist' when there's no space or time to exist in, and thereby no cause or effect? And even if it did somehow exist in the absence of time and space, or cause and effect, what would it be like?

At best, the god you are arguing for is unnecessary. At worst, it's incomprehensible, and if it's not conceptually impossible, it would at least be unlike any human concept of a god.
 
The reason you can't disprove God, because there is no working theory of God to begin with. The idea of God is utter nonsense. Literally. You can not sense a hypothetical God(nor could a God sense you). Which is to say God isn't in the realm of the real.

EDIT: Also God isn't some philosophy issue. That is aside from stupid-philosophy, but then God fits perfectly fine in stupid-science too.
 
99hertz said:
If a scientist proved that a god existed or not (taking that all he says is true), there's no way I would be sure. Practically? I already do that.

If a philosopher did it? I would take his conclusion as absolutely true, but my live wouldn't change.


In conclusion: It's and a waste of time to worry about such things and a worthless thing to do.

tl;dr: I don give a fuck if a god doesn't or does exist.
Fuckin apatheists!
 
Interestingly, I've long thought that quantum principles could actually allow room for God, which is the exact opposite of the conclusion that the OP draws.

Recall the dilemma people describe when they try to reconcile the notion of an omniscient God with the concept of free will - if God knows what the outcome of our actions will be, how can we truly have free will? However, what if God simply knows every outcome of every quantum event of every particle and, therefore, of every conglomeration of particles (i.e., the choices of humans and other volitional agents). He knows all the possible outcomes of every decision we'll make, yet that does not change the fact that at the moment of choice we do have true freedom, and thus our personal "reality" (whatever it is) proceeds from that basis thenceforth.

In particular, if the multiple universe theory is true, with each quantum event creating a branched universe/alternate reality, then "God" could have intimate knowledge of all such possibilities, and you (i.e., the "you" in your own universal frame of reference) would in fact be held responsible for your own actions (good or bad) while the alternate universe "you" would be held responsible for the actions THEY took. Perhaps God's "judgment," as religious people conceive of it, is a weighing of the morality and righteousness of all of our actions from all such universes. If, on sum, all "instances" of ourselves tended to make good ethical choices, then we're judged worthy.

I don't actually believe any of this, mind you, but it's interesting to think about sometimes.

N.B. - the above assumes that strict determinism is true, wherein all macro actions (even those of willful agents) can be viewed through a reductionist lens and must follow necessarily from antecedent causes, down to the particle level. I neither concede nor believe that strict determinism is true on the macro scale, however; I'm more of an emergentist, philosophically. These are simply random musings.
 
Science in the purest sense is intrinsically agnostic. And nothing will ever disprove a nebulous deistic "God." If however, if you referring to any God as described by a religious text, then yes, it already has been done.
 
OuterWorldVoice said:
Wrong. The correct answer is: God exists outside of time and space and everything cause he's God.

This answer is definitely not bullshit or theological acrobatics and douchebaggery.
 
Synth_floyd said:
If God created the universe then what created God?


If the universe came from something what was here before that? If there was a big bang then how long was it there before it blew? How did it get there? Was there only one?

Is the idea of God simply our subconscious processing the noise from the big bang into a belief that all existence comes from a powerful source that we may never fully understand?
 
MuseManMike said:
Wrong. The correct answer is: God exists outside of time and space and everything cause he's God.

This answer is definitely not bullshit or theological acrobatics and douchebaggery.

It is, though. You should see the outrageous lengths theologians have to go to in order to "explain" how a non-time entity can make decisions and take actions.
 
MuseManMike said:
Wrong. The correct answer is: God exists outside of time and space and everything cause he's God.

This answer is definitely not bullshit or theological acrobatics and douchebaggery.

Even if that's true then how did God come into existence? What is God made of? How does God work? etc. etc. etc.
 
MuseManMike said:
This answer is definitely not bullshit or theological acrobatics and douchebaggery.

*looks around* Are you surprised to see responses like that here? It takes less critical thinking skills to answer like a smartass and keep your head buried in the sand.

Synth_floyd said:
Even if that's true then how did God come into existence? What is God made of? How does God work? etc. etc. etc.

Existing outside time and space is a way of saying something can't even be fathomed using terms and concepts we're familiar with. That includes physical things such as having a beginning, end, etc. Not saying people should/shouldn't believe in a god, just saying.
 
MuseManMike said:
Wrong. The correct answer is: God exists outside of time and space and everything cause he's God.

This answer is definitely not bullshit or theological acrobatics and douchebaggery.


Men LITERALLY invented him. This is a fact.
 
onipex said:
If the universe came from something what was here before that? If there was a big bang then how long was it there before it blew? How did it get there? Was there only one?

Is the idea of God simply our subconscious processing the noise from the big bang into a belief that all existence comes from a powerful source that we may never fully understand?
Actually, it is wrong to call it an explosion. The big bang was a rapid and almost instantaneous expansion.
God is the result of our vast unknowing. We are at our very core, evolutionarily adept at seeking and finding pattern. God simply fills this innate need to know, for some.

Edit: My last post before this one was sarcasm. I was parodying the typical answer from believers.
 
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