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Adel Bibi

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Can anyone prove the existence of a supernatural deity?

I think that any philosophical ideal that isn't governed by the laws of physics will never be proven. Therefore, I guess all gods are just delusion. Whenever a person believes in god, that is because he found his parents doing so. Which means all our beliefs are nothing but a geographical accident!

Topics: Does god exist Existence of God philosophy physics religion
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    Vincent Moon

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    Dec 6 2012: Well one argument for a God is the First Mover argument. You of course must know Newton's 1st and 3rd laws, which govern all physical motion, and state that an object that is at rest stays at rest until an external force is applied to it, as well as that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

    So if you are moving right now it is because some force acted on you, and in order for whatever acted on you to have moved something must have acted on it, and so on indefinitely.

    These laws being found true for all physical things goes to show that if all objects were at rest at some point, then nothing would have ever moved and the universe would be completely still.

    The universe is on the contrary not still and full of constantly moving parts, so there must have been some variable (we can call it "x" for now) that acted on something else without itself being acted on; in other words the First Mover, which could not have possibly been a physical thing, because it violates the very first law of physics in that it moved without any external force being applied to it.

    This is a problem which has bothered physicists for centuries and still goes unanswered. Many highly intelligent people who have encountered this issue simply replace that "x" or First Mover variable with the word "God", and regardless of how strongly you may find your laws of physics to be, they have gotten no closer to answering this question then any Faith in a deity has, and until you can disprove a "First Mover" you will never be able to disprove a God.

    • John Smith 30+

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      Dec 6 2012: Forces don't need initial movement to begin acting: all you need to disprove that "first mover" argument is two magnets...
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        Vincent Moon

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        Dec 6 2012: A magnet is an object that has a magnetic field (magnetic field is that part of the electromagnetic field that exerts a force on a moving charge. A magnetic field can only be caused by another moving charge (i.e., by an electric current), and is thus reliant on that charge's initial movement. I'm no physicist, but Newton was, and it's going to be a pretty tough argument if you're trying to disprove his founding law of all physics.

        • John Smith 30+

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          Dec 6 2012: "A magnetic field can only be caused by another moving charge"

          Permanent magnets are caused by spin, which makes electrons behave like rotate charges (that you cannot slow down or accelerate, only reverse direction) even though they're point particles and thus cannot rotate, this has nothing to do with the macroscopic movements of the magnet itself. I am a physicist and I can tell you that if you wish you can switch the magnets for two electric charges (but harder to visualize) or two masses. You seem to know some of the terms but you lack understanding of the principles behind them. If you do not understand that forces can cause motion without there having been initial motion then you do not understand classical mechanics.

        • Entropy Driven

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          Dec 8 2012: False. Electrons and protons experience both repulsion and attractions that don't depend on them moving. Their charges do the repulsion/attraction. ANother example of a force is gravitation. So, forces that can start/stop movements are there. A conscious prime mover is not justified either way. Even supposing that there's a need for prime movers, they don't need to be conscious, or supernatural. They can be properties of reality (like the attraction.repulsion of charges in subatomic particles). It can also be that the natural/initial state of affairs is movement, thus making the idea of a prime mover unnecessary. Why would the natural state be firm and unmoved, rather than the other way around? Why should Newtonian laws of motion be applicable to all states of physical reality if these laws derive from our most proximal, thus limited, physical experience?

          So the prime mover idea requires us to buy into unwarranted assumptions.
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        Vincent Moon

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        Dec 6 2012: Well it sounds like the charges you refer to rely on the law of inertia, because they remain at a constant velocity forever, but in in order for these charges to be in motion they must be in response to some previous action a long time ago. If you could theoretically have an electron at rest then you could not get that electron to move or "spin" without imposing some initial force on it. It's great to hear from an actual physicist, but to be clear you are physicist who rejects Newton's First Law of Motion?

        • Entropy Driven

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          Dec 8 2012: "but in in order for these charges to be in motion they must be in response to some previous action a long time ago"

          Why? Why assume that they had to have been at rest initially?
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        Vincent Moon

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        Dec 8 2012: @Entropy Driven

        Your argument is the most logical I've heard so far, but still doesn't explain the cause of anything. Science is not aimed at simply answering "what?"; it has to also answer "How?". You seem to think that repulsion and attraction just happen, without cause and without explanation. This is completely unscientific, and although the causes of repulsion/attraction have not been found, a real physicist would never argue that the causes do not exist.

        Gravity is another problem that physicists have yet to answer. They have answered What?: a force that attracts a body towards any other physical body having mass, but not How? And the answer to that question is down a rabbit hole that physicts have been unable to reach for now.

        Gravity does bring up another interesting thought though, which is that if its force brings masses together and is found all throughout the universe, then what is the force which ever seperated these masses in the first place? The Big Bang? what caused that? and more importantly how?
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      Obey No1kinobe 50+

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      Dec 6 2012: the question is whether you can prove a deity

      not disprove magical unverifiable fallacious human concepts or hypothesis

      Surely you can see the error in - everything needs a cause, except I'll invent a first cause that doesn't. Special pleading. Suggest we don't know much about before the big bang or whatever and to posit a deity is an argument from ignorance.
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        Wilbert Hunt

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        Dec 6 2012: "That is pretty weak proof."

        Why am I not surprised that you value your existence so little?

        "Suggest we don't know much about before the big bang or whatever and to posit a deity is an argument from ignorance."

        Frankly, science knows pathetically little about what occurred before the "big bang," as "ignorance" abounds as to our origin and that of the universe.

        Anything that has the appearance of facts or knowledge (from a scientific perspective) is so speculative, that the inference of a God, or a deity in the process is as valid as the scientific guesswork that often passes as profound insight.

        It's not!
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        Vincent Moon

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        Dec 7 2012: @ Obey I was simply stating that the physical laws which we agree on and employ in every aspect of physics cannot explain the origins of the universe we observe around us.

        "Surely you can see the error in - everything needs a cause, except I'll invent a first cause that doesn't. Special pleading."

        The things we hold true can be of two types; either material or immaterial. The laws of physics apply to all material things and state that material things cannot move without an initial action, and as result cannot explain the origins of our universe. You misunderstood me, I am not inventing a first material thing which caused the first movement; that would be a fallacy. No material thing could have made the first movement, unless all that we know in physics is based off of fallacy. Therefore, the initial cause must have been immaterial and not subject to physical laws, and is as of now, incomprehensible to us. Your opinions on what that initial cause could be, or whether or not you call it "God" or "deity" are not of my concern. As for other's specific concepts on what that "God" or "deity" means to them personally; I make no attempt to disprove or prove any of them.
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      Adel Bibi

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      Dec 7 2012: @Vincent Moon,

      You proposed a very nice idea, although there is a small mistake.

      When you claim to have a first or "initail" cause for the forces to start by which you called "First Mover", you implicitly say there has been time before the big bang for the first mover to exist.
      This dilema takes us back to the causality problem? what caused the big bang to bang?

      The question is wrong in this case, because for events to happen there has to be a cause. While cause and effect only happnes in the correct order when there is time sperating betwee them (event, cause).
      When you have no time, that means you could simply have a (cause) then you have an (event), or you could simply have (a cause and effect at the exact moment).

      So there is no meaning for causality if you have no time. Therefore the universe doesn't actually need a first mover just like it doesn't need to have a cause. Then, the laws of Newton's mechanics can not be applied in our case.

      Excuse my English,
      Greetings.
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        Vincent Moon

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        Dec 7 2012: Time is just a word we use to understand the specific order in which we experience events. Regardless of whether or not "time" existed as we know it, before the Big Bang, science would tell us that something (as in something physical) could not come from nothing, and therefore everything physical must have a cause. Even if the the "cause" and the "effect" were to exist simultaneously because of the lack of what we call "time", the latter effect would still be unable to exist without the former cause. Science will never be able to fully answer questions on how something (matter) came from nothing, so logically the answer to that question will come from somewhere else. God? perhaps.

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