A proper understanding of logical fallacies will improve the quality of debate

A thread started to lecture others on a subject the proposer doesn't understand is a train wreck waiting to happen.Of course I suppose I could have simply noted that designtheorist is indulging in ad hominem since he failed to directly deal with the points that I made... But I feel that would risk giving people the false impression that his accusations had some truth to them.

I think the issue is that "smacks of" is a pretty weak claim. So the Big Bang sort of looked a bit like divine Creation to some people. That's only a superficial impression, not a solid argument. It doesn't even give us a good reason to think that there might be a solid argument for God in the Big Bang (and if there is one, nobody seems to have found it).Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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I am quite satisfied with "smacks of." Hawking thinks it smacks of is strong enough to turn his back on his most important paper of his career, the one with Penrose supporting the big bang.

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But he didn't turn his back on it. Did you not read the quote in Message 223 saying otherwise ?Further you have not shown that Hawking was motivated by this concern. By my reading he was motivated more by the desire to find a theory in which our universe would necessarily come into existence without relying on apparently arbitrary boundary conditions. THis is certainly ambitious but it is a legitimate goal for a cosmologist, to seek to explain (in the full scientific sense of the word) as much as possible.
If you have quotes which show that his motivation was simply to avoid the Big Bang because it "smacked of divine creation" you will have to show them.And let us not forget that you yourself say that : "the singularity is a mathematical concept not a physical concept" (Message 163)
If you can believe the big Bang theory without believing in an actual singularity, why can't Hawking ?

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My previous thread showed the big bang is both compatible with and supported of the idea of a Universe Designer or Creator God.

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No, it did not. In fact I do not see how you can honestly claim this when you were unable to answer some important objections raised in that thread.

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I mentioned this in passing because I was under the impression Hawking had abandoned his "no boundaries universe" - the Hartle Hawking state - to embrace colliding branes and a return to the big bang.

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So you mentioned a website because it contradicts an impression that you have - even though that impression hasn't been brought into the discussion ? That's a pretty weird thing to do.

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Of course, colliding branes is another way to get rid of the need for a creator which seems to be Hawking's main motivation.

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That may be the motivation that you want him to have, but it's far from clear that it is his motivation. It seems to me that his goal is to have a complete explanation of why our universe is the way that it is without appealing to boundary conditions.

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Hawking rejects the universe having a beginning of time.

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But isn't he referring to the universe as seen in "imaginary time" here ? Isn't it the case, according to Hawking, that in "real time" that the universe does go all the way back to an incredibly hot, incredibly dense state that closely approaches a singularity ?

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With the big bang, the universe had a beginning. With Hartle Hawking, the universe does not have a beginning. There is an expansion, but no edge, no boundary, no beginning. Through this contrivance he is able to do away with the need for a creator. But again, this idea has never caught on.

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Again, if you go back in "real time" everything will be the same as the classical version of the Big Bang theory, right up until the point where quantum effects take over - and any theory which doesn't take account of those is almost certainly wrong anyway. Differing views over whether the "initial" state constitutes "a beginning" don't seem to be significant here.I'm still waiting for any evidence that Hawking rejects any part of the Big Bang, apart from a literal singularity, which it seems that even you don't believe in.

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What I reject is the idea the singularity could have any period of existence without being in expansion. The singularity is a mathematical concept.

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You just contradicted yourself. If the singularity is ONLY a mathematical construct then it cannot ever have physically existed. Either it is something that was physically real or it isn't. And quite frankly since the idea that it did exist relies on using Classical physics and ignoring Quantum effects even though they are significant I don't think that you have much of a case that it was a physical reality.

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Some people have this mistaken notion that the universe could exist in an infinitely dense and infinitely hot state without expanding. I

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I don't see why you feel the need to disagree with people who aren't here, and so far as I can tell don't even exist.

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I believe in the singularity but it existed for less than one millionth of a second.

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So you do NOT believe that it is just a mathematical construct. Why did you contradict yourself and how do you deal with the quantum effects that must be considered before concluding that the singularity actually existed ?

So you've read the book. Now where do you get the idea that Hawking went for the "no boundary" proposal because he wanted to "get rid" of God rather than deal with the problem of boundary conditions ?I'm pretty sure that you didn't get it from Hawking's actual words. e.g.In chapter 8 p122-3 Hawking seems quite happy with the idea of a God, but much less happy with the idea of arbitrary boundary conditions:e.g. This is the writing of an agnostic, who is willing to take the idea of a God seriously, not someone devoted to crushing the idea altogether.

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I don't read the passage the same way you do. But we are way off track anyway. This thread is about logical fallacies.

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I don't see how you can possibly read it as indicating hostility to Divine Creation or even as consistent with hostility to Divine Creation. It pretty clearly DOES object to arbitrary boundary conditions. But perhaps you had a case of confirmation bias that lead you to skip over all the mention of boundary conditions as the problem ?

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I used the Hawking quotes as an example. If you read the quotes I provided, it is clear that Hawking understands that a universe with a beginning "smacks of divine intervention."

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It's a fact that the quote that you got that phrase from didn't say anything about Hawking's beliefs. So why use it ? It's a clear example of a logical fallacy (non sequitur).

On face value the argument is petty silly. Even if Hawking thought that the Big Bang "smacked of Divine Creation" it would be both too weak to be of much value in supporting the assertion that the "Big Bang Theory Supports a Belief in the Universe Designer or Creator God" and an argument from authority (and not a very good one).Using quotes which don't even support this is sillier too.The arguments that Hawking DOES think this are:1) Hawking didn't argue against it.We might also point out that Hawking didn't say that it was true or that he personally agreed with it. This is at best weak circumstantial evidence, far from conclusive.2) Hawking "abandoned" his own paper and the "Big Bang" because the Big Bang "smacked of" divine creation .Hawking's paper was based on Classical physics, and thus failed to take Quantum effects into account, even though those effects are significant as the singularity is approached. According to Hawking's own words his efforts in handling the Quantum effects and to tackle the problem of boundary conditions lead him to abandon the idea of an actual singularity (although he retained the appearance of one in time as we see it).
(See Message 223,Message 293 for sample quotes).Thus, this claim misrepresents what Hawking did, and goes against Hawking's own statements on his motivations, while offering no real evidence to support any alternative view.Presumably this is an example of confirmation bias (Hawking's statements about his motivations are ignored), jumping to conclusions (the fact that Hawking's new view did NOT support the idea of a Divine Creator is used to conclude that he is hostile to the idea) and likely a dose of tribalism (designtheorist's "tribe" hold that all theories which go against the argument in the original thread are convoluted attempts to evade it).Thus we have fallacious arguments used to attempt to support a claim which is too weak to be useful without invoking further fallacies.

I'm hoping that designtheorist has learnt what a logical fallacy is. Oddly enough, despite claiming to have taken a college course in logic it seems that he simply equated "logical fallacy" with "bad argument" to the point where he was unable to see statements that an argument could be a good argument despite being a logical fallacy (more of that confirmation bias at work).

It is all to common for apologists to falsely claim that the arguments that they oppose contain fallacies. This is just another example.

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The problem is the author has framed the argument in a way to philosophically exclude the possibility of something or someone existing outside of time and matter. Since the question arises from the discussion of the big bang and the fact it "smacks of divine intervention," the author is committing the logical fallacy of begging the question.

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The problem with this is that it is simply untrue. The argument simply states that something that does not come into existence cannot require a cause to bring it into existence. Which should be perfectly obvious.

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Said another way, the question is "Is a timeless and immaterial Creator God responsible for the big bang?" In this example, the author is attempting to argue that nothing can exist outside of time or have the quality of being immaterial. His argument is begging the question.

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This is simply silly. The argument in fact attempts to answer the question of why there is a relationship between "beginning to exist" and "having a cause" and finds that the reason does not apply to things that exist at the first moment of time (if there is one - and assuming that there are no other time dimensions where there are earlier moments).
It does not argue that such entities cannot have a cause (only that any such cause cannot bring the entity into existence), let alone argue against beings "outside of time" or lacking material substance. All that is designtheorist's invention.

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It is circular reasoning based on an unexamined and false premise. The unexamined premise is "Nothing exists outside of the material realm of space and time."

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Strictly speaking, circular reasoning requires the conclusion to be used as a premise. A statement that does not appear in the argument at all - neither as conclusion nor premise - cannot be used as the basis of a claim of circular reasoning. Thus your assertion is clearly false.

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When you look at the larger historical context, Hawking clearly agrees with those who think the big bang "smacks of divine intervention." If Hawking did not agree with the assessment, he would not have changed his opinion about the big bang and introduced his view of the "no boundary universe" or his other views on cosmology.

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As has been shown in earlier posts, Hawking has only rejected the idea of an initial singularity, and apparently even accepts that there is the appearance of an initial singularity in our "real" time as opposed to the "imaginary" time, which gives a more accurate view of the universe.Hawking was lead to this view by a desire to integrate Quantum Mechanics into the theory of gravity (which is necessary for cosmology) and by a desire to make the theory as complete as possible (i.e. unexplained "boundary conditions" are undesirable from a scientific view, and a theory which removes them is - all else being equal - preferable to one that does not). Hawking also argues that it seems perplexing, given theism, why a God would require inexplicable boundary conditions, while leaving the rest of the universe open to our investigation (without considering the merits of Hawking's argument there is no sign of any aversion to the idea of a Divine Creator at all). (see Message 223)Further quotes from Chapter 8 of A Brief History of Timep133 Hawking then goes on to explain that time must be described using imaginary numbers to deal with Quantum Mechanics' "sum over histories", while classical theory uses only real numbers. These terms are mathematical convention only , and when Hawking refers to "real" space-time or "real" time he means "real" precisely in this sense.p135 p136 Hawking is quite clear. Specifying the initial conditions of the universe is a problem. The no-boundary universe solves that problem. This is his stated motivation. Speculations that he had some other motive cannot be considered as evidence.