Why do you believe what you believe?

One might say that there is no reason why one should not believe in God--also, no reason why one should. Pixies and other such entities are not on the same level as the creator of the universe.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 07-27-2005 06:38 AM

But how do you know the monster under my bed didn't create the universe and is now just having a kip?

If the monster under the bed created the universe, then that's just another name for god. I'm not sure what a "kip" is. A night on the town? A moment of mischief?

In my case, it's a mixture of historical and geographical accident [due to being born in a Muslim family] and some soul-searching that I do as I grow older.

Kip= Sleep.

(Charles, you devil, you beat me to it.) Ahh, but you don't know what I know. I happen to know that pixies, before they picked up the habit of hovering behind people's heads, were in the universe-creation business. Unfortunately, the creation of a universe is a one-time-only event and, consequently, business became rather slack soon afterward. Pixies being pixies however, they quickly found another useful pastime for the next 12 billion years or so.Seriously, your objection is precisely why I ended my post with the following:

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Somehow, most people have a pretty good understanding of what is irrational to believe and what isn't. Why then is it that when it's God we're talking about, that understanding starts to falter so often?

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The only reason you give why believing in God is not irrational, as opposed to believing in pixies, is that God created the universe.But given what science has revealed to us about the universe, that is exactly what is irrational about believing in God. The evidence tells a different story. Now, people have no problems in seeing the irrationality of a belief in pixies, but they make an exception for belief in one particular pixie, viz. God. My question was: why? I don't think "because God created the universe" is an adequate answer.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

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One might say that there is no reason why one should not believe in God--also, no reason why one should. Pixies and other such entities are not on the same level as the creator of the universe.

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Which implies that belief in pixies is, a priori, more rational than belief in God.

There are only 2 answers as to how the universe exists:1. It has always existed2. It was created by something or other. If pixies, then pixies are god.I suppose one might say that the universe created itself, but that doesn't make any sense to me. If it didn't exist, it couldn't create anything. Or one might say that our universe was created by another universe, but that just begs the question.Big Bang theory suggests that the universe came into existence, but of course there is no way to investigate what happened before .000000001 second or whatever the figure is after the expansion began and after space and time--mind you--came into existence in its present form. It's hard to imagine a universe existing with no space-time around, but I suppose anything is possible. Maybe there was this male quark and it combined with the female quark and thus birthed the universe--thus the term "charmed quark." These two quarks had to have been dating for eternity; otherwise, something created them.So there has to be something that is eternal.

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There are only 2 answers as to how the universe exists:

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1. It has always existed

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2. It was created by something or other. If pixies, then pixies are god.

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You forgot a third possibility:The universe exists without a cause, even if it hasn't always existed.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 27-Jul-2005 01:09 PM

One fine day it just started existing on its own? That makes no sense to me. Something out of nothing? Ex nihilo?

Why not? This is one of the classical arguments that supposedly prove that God exists, that the universe needs a creator. The arguer needs to prove two premises: (1) that the universe had to have a beginning and (2) that everything that exists must have a cause.(1) was traditionally argued by an infinite regress type of argument, which never seemed convincing to me. Current scientific knowledge is much more convincing that the universe had a beginning, although still not definitive.(2) is traditionally argued by personal incredulity. Some people cannot imagine something happening without a cause, and so they claim that this must be reason enough to assume that the universe must have a cause. This, too, is not very convincing.Another way to argue (2) is to claim that everything we observe has a cause, and so the universe itself must have a cause. Even if everything we observe does have a cause, one cannot simply assume that the unverse has a cause; this is the fallacy of composition -- assuming that the whole has the same properties as its constituent parts. Even if everything within the univese does have a cause, the universe as a whole is unique enough that it does not have to share that same property.(This is also ignoring that some people will bring in virtual particles as evidence that some things may not have causes.)

All these labels you come up with--the fallacy of this and that--could be applied to the above. What is this fallacy? The fallacy of "it's possible that something that makes no sense could be?"Yeah, I suppose it's possible. It's just another way of saying that the universe in some form always existed. And that business about virtual particles does not apply since we observe them within a universe where there are all sorts of other things around.

From a viewpoint within the universe, it has always existed, because 'always' means "for all time". Since "all time" is part of the universe and there is no time outside or before the universe - 'outside' and 'before' are meaningless concepts if applied to the universe - the universe can be said to have always existed. But all that is sophistry of course. In the same way, saying that a creator created the universe is begging the question also. Who created the creator?

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

If something created the creator, then he, she, or it is not the creator.But if something exists--as it does--then there has to be something that is eternal--either nature or pixies.Something can't create itself.

I guess I don't understand what it is that doesn't make sense. That the universe may have existed forever? I don't see the logical impossibility of that. That the universe may have "begun" without a cause? Again, there is nothing about that which strikes me as nonsense.