Theories of Our Origins: All equally Absurd?

[Your Funny Uncle]

That reminds me of the "coalition" formed by Veritas48 & Telemantros & Dawahfilms a while ago (although i don't consider them "fundamentalists"). They intended to make some mutual case for their own different monotheistic Gods, and the result was what appeared to me as little more than a deistic argument for the First Cause.

Indeed. I suppose that I could broaden that to any theist who believes in a religion that is based on a holy text. I see the same arguments again and again and I think "Even if I accept your arguments, so what? How does this prove your particular religion?"

 

[TheFlyingBastard]

What I'm saying is that until and unless we come up with a way of seeing before the big bang or outside our universe, the point is moot. The most well reasoned explanation is as provable as god or my wild speculations. Yes it's more intellectually satisfying to both of us not to posit a god or other super-being, but in terms of practical effects on our understanding of the actual universe as we perceive it, you might as well suggest that it was created by a sentient jellybean. It really makes no difference to anything.

That may all well be the case but that doesn't make deism a "quite reasonable" conclusion. It's understandable how people would think so, but it's not reasonable.
There's also the danger of basing other ideas on this deistic belief - such as contact with this supposed deity - and then going around telling foolish stories on how this deity told you to wake up when you passed out from heat stroke.

 

[quantumfireball2099]

Well, if he is a troll and his purpose was to waste our time arguing/reading about this then he won.

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

Well, if he is a troll and his purpose was to waste our time arguing/reading about this then he won.

Do you think it's a waste of time to discuss these things? It's my experience that most atheists arrive at that position because we've given the matter a lot of thought. This is borne out by the recent study that showed atheists no more about the various religions than the faithful. I don't see us discussing these matters as a bad thing, whatever the catalyst.

 

[Aught3]

Look, theists have made myriad guesses as to how the universe came into being. It's not going to be possible to summarise them all in one go. Still, pandeism believes that god existed and then created the universe whereas (as I have said) all the atheist is assuming is that the universe exists.

It's ok to assume more than that for the purpose of scientific investigation. If "the universe exists" were really the only assumption a rational mind could allow itself to have in the matter of cosmology, no good scientist would have been able to formulate any research program into the realm of the unknown.

You don't seem to be getting my point. The atheist and theist make the same amount of assumptions up to the point of inserting a god. That's when the theist makes an extra assumption (a rather large one) that the atheist does not have to make. This is what makes the theistic position more absurd unless they can produce some good evidence for the existence of their god.

If it's the case that God is a metaphor for the 'energy', then I don't care. That would just make pandesism ontologically indistinct from atheism.

That's like saying iMac-fans are indistinct from iMac-haters because they both think iMac is a computer assembled in a factory.

Correct, on an ontological basis Mac-fans and Mac-haters are indistinct because they both accept the existence of Macs. Whether or not a god exists (i.e. atheism/theism) is an ontological question and different positions should be distinct on an ontological basis.

Pandeism and atheism are still distinct worldviews with different qualitative landscapes. Theism is the attribution of divinity to something...

I disagree. It's not enough for a theist to say something is god-like they have to say that something is a god. An atheist could attribute divinity to the universe or the oceans or a planet because it appears to have god-like powers. The theist imbues their object with more than it's natural powers giving it a supernatural ability to be conscious, caring, and creative.

There are other considerations being taken into account (remember in my first post I granted the questionable premise that the facts and evidence for each position were equivalent) but, all things being equal, then we should prefer the model that postulates a universe from nothing over a multiverse theory.

But if we are to prefer this model, that would be not so mcuh because it rests on fewer assumptions as because it makes more sense than other alternatives in the grander scheme.

Is "it makes more sense in the grander scheme" the equivalent of "making less counter-intuitive assumptions"? They seem the same to me

All things are not equal in this case. Modern physics has more explanatory power, more evidence, and more confirmed predictions than classical physics.

And that's my point. We prefer modern physics not so much because it's based on less assumptions as because it can account for more things with more accuracy.

Your point is irrelevant to our discussion. Others in this thread have made it by pointing out the evidence in favour of the big bang model. This is one way to address the OP. I'm am doing it a different way. I grant the (faulty) premise that the evidence for each theory is equivalent and explain why we should still go with atheism in the question of cosmic origins.

In fact, this idea that the theism/atheism dichotomy hinges on what one thinks/says about a creator, is a mistake. You can be theistic without the belief that someone created the universe ... and you can be atheistic with the belief that someone created the universe ...

You seem to have forgotten the topic of this thread. The OP specifically elaborated a god-centred account of creation and the no-god big bang model. That's the comparison I'm making.

If the God hypothesis managed to acheive these things then it would be preferred over atheism, unfortunately for you it has none of them.

The phrase "God hypothesis" in the matter of the origin of the universe is just meaningless to me. "God" has to be specified. "Yahweh hypothesis", "scientists hypothesis", "nature hypothesis"... these are more meaningful with clearer referents.

Re-read the OP for details.