Why is Hamza Tzortzis wrong? The attributes of god.
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After attempting to prove god created the universe, Tzortzis believes he can deduce some attributes of the divine. He believes these qualities matches that of Allah and, thus, give credence to Islam. The arguments are: 1) to be the creator of the universe, he must be eternal, or rather, outside of time; 2) he must be transcendent, meaning independent of creation; 3) he must have a will, so he could will the world into existance, and thus he is a person and may have personal relationships with humans; 4) he is powerful; 5) he is all knowing; and 6) he is one.
Professor Krauss did not address most of this issues because they are theological in nature. They are rubbish if you don't believe in god beforehand. I'll attempt to answer them anyway, and 'thank god' professor Krauss uses his time for more useful enterprises.
1) A god out of time is unchangeable. Any change would cause him to have a pre-change state and a post-change state, putting him in a timeline and contradicting the premises. Because he doesn't change, he cannot change his mind and thus cannot will the creation of the universe.
2) If god is outside of spacetime, he is therefore unable to affect things in spacetime. Any effect he has would place him inside the universe by definition. To be omnipresent and to be at all potent, he has to be inside spacetime. To be everywhere he needs to be in space, to be eternal he needs to be inside time.
3) To be able to maintain a relationship with humans, god would have to be capable of change. A one way veneration by the human part is not a relationship because it lacks reciprocity. Also, any mental abilities god had would be alien to us, because our faculties – reason, love, fear, intelligence, compassion – are the result of evolutionary processes, to which god would not have been subject.
4) He would be powerful as a force of nature indeed, but he would lack a will. In a way, he's powerless, because he cannot do what he wants, because he wants nothing.
5) That he is all knowing is a non sequitur – the world could be the product of a force without intellect. Even if god were a person, the universe could still have been created unwillingly – god might not even be aware of the universe.
6) The final point is well answered by professor Krauss. Tzortzis says that Occam's razor, the principle by which the simplest sufficient explanation is probably the right one, means there is only one god. Krauss answers that zero gods are simpler than one. Perfect. But as to 'explanatory scope', there is none offered for having one or more gods, as far as science can tell.
Again, the use of deductive arguments for these issues leads to absurdity because our brains have not evolved to instinctively know true from false in subjects far removed from our survival needs, which is the case with the origins of the universe. Through science, inductive reasoning fares much better, and it is through science, not intuition, than we can hope to understand the cosmos.
It is funny that you can argue that a god outside time could not have created a world because that implies change. The funny thing is that that is precisely the argument I had heard defending the thesis that god is outside of time. The idea was that god could not have created the world because that implies change, so it must be described as having created, creating and going to be creating the world all at the same time. That is, the world creation was not an event, it should be out of time and in all time at the same time. Quite funny.
You are right. Saying god is out of time is simply a game of words that stop having any meaning the moment you start describing the actions of god. Action implies time.
There are other ways a theologian could put this, but the one you mention is my favorite because of its absurdity. If god is affecting equally all times, he can't switch on and off, which leads us to two conclusions:
1- well they'd say that in gods perspective all prayers are done at once and he listens and answers all at once, not making any sense to ask if he answers first or if people pray first.
2- The second point is very interesting. If the creation is absolutely necessary, and this follows from the allegation that god is out of time, than there is a necessary relation of 1 to 1 between God and the creation. If two objects have such a relation (necessary and exclusive) than they are the same object. Could we than reach the conclusion that god is the creation? Moreover, if god is immutable, than he is not all mighty and vice versa.
Yes, the first point is a rather silly thing, but all the endeavor of using reason to deduce god is silly at best. If god actually acts within time, he's by definition in time as a cause. His own perception of time is no more relevant than a mere point of view. Not only this idea precludes a relationship with men (because there is no reciprocity), it also leads to the deterministic fate thing/problem Presbyterians call upon themselves. Well, I'll leave it aside because the whole issue is senseless.
Now, the second issue is a tad more interesting. I reach the conclusion that a reasoned god would either: A) be inside the universe, B) be the universe, and thus not a god, or C) is transcendent, but has nothing whatsoever to do with the universe (how many of those can we postulate?). This argument is a little more interesting because of its heterodoxy but let's admit its just as senseless.
I wouldn't blame deductive reasoning for the bullshit Tzortzis says. Actually, mere deduction can be used to refute him, as you've done. Deductive reasoning is a process. But if you feed it with garbage, one cannot expect anything better coming out. Garbage in, garbage out.
Science is better is this respect for it rejects falsified garbage, or at least admits the possibility of rejecting falsified garbage.
Right. There's certainly nothing wrong with deductive reasoning, and there can't even be inductive science without deductive reasoning. But any deduction involves two things: valid premises and a presumption that you can tell right from wrong somehow. Not onlyTzortzis premises are BS, but relying on human intuitions to understand the ontological nature of something transcendent... it's ridiculous.
Fixed a small error: "there can't be inductive science withOUT deductive reasoning."
This is way deeper than the Tzortzis debate. We certainly cannot rely on our intuitions, but we ar bounded to our nature. As far as we can tell, we are animals molded by an evolutionary process that happened entirely in a tiny part of the history of a single planet. Both our intuition and our intellect should be limited by this.
When people search for transcendence inside of their own minds they are making a very presumptuous claim. They are claiming that their own self contains something that transcendent. It is funny to call such a thing transcendent though.
Science, on the other hand, is our means of transcendence. It makes our understanding surpass our most naive instincts and allow us to expand our knowledge to the edge of our capabilities. This is as far as transcendence can go.
I completely agree that science is our best shot for reaching beyond the limitations of our brains. Absolutely. By I'll contend we have another tool of 'transcendence', so to speak. Because our conscience is just a small fraction of our minds, it might be argued that there is a transcendence to be found within: beyond conscient thought and languages, we could tap into dormant feelings and faculties. It could be achievable with arts, meditation, drugs... Science can reach outside of us onto the cosmos. This other thing could reach within us into our minds. As for reaching anything outside everything... well, that's just a foolish concept.
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