Philosophy Discussion Forums

Robert Jastrow, Astronomer

“Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover…. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”

Jastrow seems to identify here the work of the God of Abraham as described in the first chapter of Genesis.

Henry F. Schaefer III

“A Creator must exist. The Big Bang ripples and subsequent scientific findings are clearly pointing to an ex nihilo creation consistent with the first few verses of the book of Genesis.”

So that Creator should be the God of Abraham, rather than Einstein.

Stephen Toulmin, Philosopher

“… if we are to understand how science came to part company from the foundation of ethics, we need to focus attention on the history of scientific specialization. It was the development of specialization and professionalization that was responsible for excluding ethical issues from the foundations of science, and so, though inadvertently, destroyed most of the links between science and the foundations of ethics.”

One of those foundations of ethics would certainly have been the God of Abraham rather than the God of Einstein.

Einstein agreed with Spinoza that other human attributes besides intelligence cannot exist in the mind of God, as he made abundantly clear in his rejection of a personal God. “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own – a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.” Though Einstein could see God possessing supreme intelligence, he could not see God reflecting any aspect of supreme love or justice or mercy. Why he could see the one human trait in God but not the others seems a type of special pleading typical of many deists. Possibly this was because, reflecting on the supremacy of intellect in his own person, Einstein saw intellect as the human trait that dominates all other traits. Thus Einstein created his God in his own image and likeness.

Whereas the God of Abraham created man in his own image and likeness.

There are the usual Deists who allow for a God but not a personal God like the God of Abraham. But why would an impersonal God who created the universe go to the bother of creating laws that are personally intelligible; then go on to the bother of creating intelligent personal beings who find these laws intelligible; and finally leave these personal beings with a yearning to believe the Creator is something a good deal more personal than an omniscient and omnipotent prig who cares not a fig for their yearning?

I love the way these theists end up posting their own answers to their threads, but quotes, as if to reassure themselves that there personal delusions are the truth.

This is an indication that not only did they not want to ask the question, but were not prepared to lay out the conditions where such a question could be asked.

In effect such threads are pure vanity.

If a person wants to ask, is such a thing possible, then they have to, at the very least, DEFINE and DESCRIBE their understanding of that thing!
No such effort has been made on this thread.

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑December 6th, 2022, 6:34 am I love the way these theists end up posting their own answers to their threads, but quotes, as if to reassure themselves that there personal delusions are the truth.

This is an indication that not only did they not want to ask the question, but were not prepared to lay out the conditions where such a question could be asked.

In effect such threads are pure vanity.

If a person wants to ask, is such a thing possible, then they have to, at the very least, DEFINE and DESCRIBE their understanding of that thing!
No such effort has been made on this thread.

It's an old strategy of nonsense peddlers. First they find whatever poor excuse to undermine well-established rational, scientific knowledge. Then they proceed with "now I can believe whatever I want and promote it as the ultimate truth". Defining THAT thing works against their open-ended system of beliefs, so they will make every effort to avoid it.

Thomas Aquinas, 13th century Theologian

"Nature is nothing but the plan of some art, namely a divine one, put into things themselves, by which those things move toward a concrete end: as if the man who builds up a ship could give to the pieces of wood that they could move by themselves to produce the form of the ship." (Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Book II, Chapter

This is an interesting convergence of 13th century theology with modern astronomy. We are told by modern astronomers that the physical constants that govern the universe are so precisely tuned as to make life possible, appeared immediately at the time of the Big Bang. Were those constants slightly tuned any differently than they are, life would not be possible. The piano that is finely tuned does not tune itself. It requires a human to tune it. Thus, Aquinas argues, we may infer that the building blocks of the universe have been inhabited by a plan they will work out over vast periods of time. All that is required is for the divine Pianist to play out what Eistein called "the music of the spheres."

Count Lucanor wrote: ↑December 6th, 2022, 12:03 pm

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑December 6th, 2022, 6:34 am I love the way these theists end up posting their own answers to their threads, but quotes, as if to reassure themselves that there personal delusions are the truth.

This is an indication that not only did they not want to ask the question, but were not prepared to lay out the conditions where such a question could be asked.

In effect such threads are pure vanity.

If a person wants to ask, is such a thing possible, then they have to, at the very least, DEFINE and DESCRIBE their understanding of that thing!
No such effort has been made on this thread.

It's an old strategy of nonsense peddlers. First they find whatever poor excuse to undermine well-established rational, scientific knowledge. Then they proceed with "now I can believe whatever I want and promote it as the ultimate truth". Defining THAT thing works against their open-ended system of beliefs, so they will make every effort to avoid it.

Indeed.
Don't look now he's dragged out the big guns and Thomas Aquinas has come out of the box.
Of course Thomas Aquinas obviously believed in exactly the same god as Einstein and all the others he has quoted.

Charlie Chaplin, Actor, Director

"Man is an animal with primary instincts of survival. Consequently, his ingenuity has developed first and his soul afterwards. The progress of science is far ahead of man's ethical behavior."

And the ingenuity of science may get even farther ahead as the God of Abraham is left behind. The God of Abraham created our world. Science may yet find a way to destroy it with missiles of annihilation. So much for Chaplin's "primary instincts of survival."

Werner Heisenberg, Physicist

"Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life."

It was from the God of Abraham that the world received "guiding ideals" for a scale of values that rendered the "meaning of our deeds and sufferings." As the modern world retreats from the God of Abraham, more and more "negation and despair" rule because the strong foundation religion supplies is fast disappearing and can only be replaced by a cacophony of irreligious values that undermine the "presuppositions of life."

Bram Stoker, Writer

"Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explains not, then it says there is nothing to explain.”

So it is that science, because it cannot explain anything not scientific, is dumbfounded by the God of Abraham.