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The Invisible Pink Unicorn (serious analysis please)

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z0rp
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05 Feb 2009, 9:22 pm

Didn't I make a post about the cosmological argument in this thread or another one?


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twoshots
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05 Feb 2009, 9:32 pm

Cyanide wrote:
Orwell wrote:
DentArthurDent, you have previously asked for evidence of a God and I have described the cosmological argument to you, which maintains that a supernatural force is logically necessary for the natural world to exist. If I recall, that argument was rejected on the grounds of "I dunno" which, to me, is basically the atheist equivalent to "Goddidit." Instead of saying "Goddidit," atheists say "I don't have a better answer than you do, but your answer doesn't fit into a strictly materialist worldview and so I'm just going to say 'dunno' to avoid having to come up with an effective rebuttal."

The cosmological argument, among other things, provides evidence that there was some supernatural force involved in the creation of the Universe. The questions which then remain to be settled are whether it was one entity or many, whether or not it is a personal God, and what the nature of that God is. Is it the invisible pink unicorn? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? The Judeo-Christian God? Allah? Ahuramazda? This is comparative theology, and gets messier than simply the debate over whether a God exists. They should be regarded as separate debates.


Well if a supernatural force created the universe, then what created the supernatural force? Was it always there? If so, then why couldn't it be that the universe was just always here?

Informal fallacy: missing the point.The cosmological argument generally posits that a "supernatural force" consists of being acausal or a cause in and of itself.

The argument from contingency, for example, argues that
1. anything which could not be (e.g. the existence of a universe is clearly not logically necessary) must have a "cause",
2. Causal chains cannot be of infinite length
3. Ergo, there must be a non contingent supernatural thing at the beginning of the causal chain. The non contingent thing is reasoned to be God.

I believe I have addressed that *particular* critique many times on this forum.


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Cyanide
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06 Feb 2009, 2:31 am

twoshots wrote:
Cyanide wrote:
Orwell wrote:
DentArthurDent, you have previously asked for evidence of a God and I have described the cosmological argument to you, which maintains that a supernatural force is logically necessary for the natural world to exist. If I recall, that argument was rejected on the grounds of "I dunno" which, to me, is basically the atheist equivalent to "Goddidit." Instead of saying "Goddidit," atheists say "I don't have a better answer than you do, but your answer doesn't fit into a strictly materialist worldview and so I'm just going to say 'dunno' to avoid having to come up with an effective rebuttal."

The cosmological argument, among other things, provides evidence that there was some supernatural force involved in the creation of the Universe. The questions which then remain to be settled are whether it was one entity or many, whether or not it is a personal God, and what the nature of that God is. Is it the invisible pink unicorn? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? The Judeo-Christian God? Allah? Ahuramazda? This is comparative theology, and gets messier than simply the debate over whether a God exists. They should be regarded as separate debates.


Well if a supernatural force created the universe, then what created the supernatural force? Was it always there? If so, then why couldn't it be that the universe was just always here?

Informal fallacy: missing the point.The cosmological argument generally posits that a "supernatural force" consists of being acausal or a cause in and of itself.

The argument from contingency, for example, argues that
1. anything which could not be (e.g. the existence of a universe is clearly not logically necessary) must have a "cause",
2. Causal chains cannot be of infinite length
3. Ergo, there must be a non contingent supernatural thing at the beginning of the causal chain. The non contingent thing is reasoned to be God.

I believe I have addressed that *particular* critique many times on this forum.


Well, I seldom read any of the religious threads here.



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06 Feb 2009, 3:45 am

Aside from the fact that there are no 2000 year-old texts referencing an invisible pink unicorn, there is nothing to prove or disprove its existence. Of course, there are no 2000 year-old texts referencing God either (The oldest fragments are younger than that, and the oldest complete manuscripts are several hundred years younger), which would suggest that the notion of god may not be as ancient as it claims to be.

In regards to ancient texts vis a vis the proof or disproof of god, I prefer to use the rules of evidence as implemented by the state and federal courts.

New ideas such as the invisible pink unicorn will alway's be dismissed as having been a human invention rather than divinely inspired, will not be believed, even by their followers except for a very few.

Even older ideas, for example the return of christ, have many who claim to believe them but few who actually do. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people alive today who claim to be the returned christ, yet few find themselves welcome in any church. One would expect that a church full of people who expect the return of christ would be a bit more receptive when somone comes to the door saying "I have returned" (of course, sometimes the congregation will believe that christ has indeed returned, sometimes with disasterous consequences).

It takes a long time to start a religion. New religions invariably suffer from accusations of illegitimacy and heresy. In 500 years, the cult of invisible pink unicorn will be driven from their homeland. In 2000 years, the Holy Bohemian Church of the Invisible Pink Unicorn will dominate the world through a shadowy network of covert agents. In 3000 years, someone will postulate the existence of a deaf mute singing bunny, and the cycle will repeat.



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06 Feb 2009, 4:00 am

Averick wrote:
DNForrest wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
The Aboriginals also have flood legends, as do some native American tribes...


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/science/14WAVE.html

A fairly interesting theory that the flood legends that happen with so many stories of ancient cultures/religions are the direct result of an asteroid/comet impact in the Indian ocean.


I agree. At first glance of Ben's post I thought there was nothing in common between both genotypes of natives, rather interestingly though, if a catastrophe large enough happened to affect both natives more than an 6000 miles away, that could uphold the mythos after the real first-hand knowledge passed from generation to generation.


Flood legends can also be explained as a way for the earliest humans to understand why they sometimes found seashells on the top of a mountain. Not being familiar with what we know know about geology and tectonic movement, early humans might assume that the mountain had always been there, and at one point beyond anyone's memory the mountain had to have been under water. A catalyst for the invention of a flood myth could be as simple as a child asking his father why they were finding seashells at such a high altitude.



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06 Feb 2009, 4:22 am

DNForrest wrote:

So if that's a satisfactory explanation of how God made the universe to you, then a scientist saying "The Big Bang exploded it into existence" should be, too.

"In the beginning, there was nothing. Which exploded."
- Terry Pratchett.


That's a common misconception about the big bang theory. The Big Bang theory does not claim to be the first event, it is simply the oldest event we can detect. Nobody knows what happened before the Big Bang, and although there are many theories, none of them claim to be the one and only true explanation. Science doesn't work that way.

The Big Bang theory simply states that at one point in time, all of the matter in the universe was compressed into a small space, which caused it to explode due to critical mass and eventually become what it is today. Nobody takes this on faith. The theory is constantly being tested, and all of the tests so far would seem to confirm that it happened.

Contrast this with the intelligent design theory, of which I know of no apparattus with which to test, and know of no tests ever conducted to confirm it. To believe in intelligent design, one must rely on faith alone.