The distance between Christianity and the 4 Gospels

[Res Ipsa]

No, we don't. I'm unable to chose to believe in the "creator God" you outline.

We don't have a choice to believe. If we believe, we have a choice to follow.

That has been my personal experience. Whichever part of my brain is in control of what I believe doesn’t seem to be controlled by the part that thinks it’s Res Ipsa.

[Morley]

I'm going to add the obvious, using different words. As Jersey points out, we can't choose what we believe. We can only choose how we act. (And sometimes we can't manage that.)

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I'm going to add the obvious, using different words. As Jersey points out, we can't choose what we believe. We can only choose how we act. (And sometimes we can't manage that.)

That’s a deeply philosophical position you and Jersey Girl, if she believes that, are staking out. I find it highly problematic we’re deterministic with regard to belief, but at the same time we’re ‘free willistic’ with regard to action.

- Doc

[Jersey Girl]

I'm going to add the obvious, using different words. As Jersey points out, we can't choose what we believe. We can only choose how we act. (And sometimes we can't manage that.)

That’s a deeply philosophical position you and Jersey Girl, if she believes that, are staking out. I find it highly problematic we’re deterministic with regard to belief, but at the same time we’re ‘free willistic’ with regard to action.

- Doc

Yes, I believe what I wrote with regard to to god belief. It seems logical to me. If you'd like to challenge my thinking, please do it.

[Morley]

I'm going to add the obvious, using different words. As Jersey points out, we can't choose what we believe. We can only choose how we act. (And sometimes we can't manage that.)

That’s a deeply philosophical position you and Jersey Girl, if she believes that, are staking out. I find it highly problematic we’re deterministic with regard to belief, but at the same time we’re ‘free willistic’ with regard to action.

- Doc

I think Jersey and I approach this a bit differently, even if it appears we end with the same conclusion. That said, I appreciate what I think is her approach.

For me, beliefs are determined by experience, education, and the like--including a belief (or not) in God. They'll change over a lifetime. I don't get to choose whether or not I believe in hobbits or climate change. My life experience, innate intelligence (or lack thereof), and the things I've learned will determine this. No matter how hard I try (and believe me, I try so very hard!), I can't choose to believe in unicorns. Or to not believe in a heliocentric solar system.

On the other hand, I can choose how I behave.

[Res Ipsa]

I'm going to add the obvious, using different words. As Jersey points out, we can't choose what we believe. We can only choose how we act. (And sometimes we can't manage that.)

That’s a deeply philosophical position you and Jersey Girl, if she believes that, are staking out. I find it highly problematic we’re deterministic with regard to belief, but at the same time we’re ‘free willistic’ with regard to action.

- Doc

Yeah, that's why I talk about how it seems to me. It might be determinism all the way down.

[Gadianton]

Either God or an alien can account for fine tuning. But without a universe, where is an MG-level physical god or alien doing the creating from? Another physical universe much like this one? And if we can have other universes, then why not just have a multiverse and solve the problem directly? An MG-level physical god may have created this universe, but now god's home universe must be explained.

It's possible that the fine-tuned parameters will have good explanations once fundamental laws are understood better. Or as stated, there could be a multiverse to select from. I don't really like just saying that future physics will account for "fine tuning" or that the multiverse accounts for it, I'd rather just say it's an interesting question, and let science work on it, and hold these options as possibilities.

There are a few problems with "God" as the answer. The most glaring problem for Mormons like MG, is that MG's god really isn't "God", because he's an exalted man -- a contingent being. For MG, God is just another physical fact -- a wise alien at best. Saying a powerful alien created us for a purpose is a dystopian sci-fi plot, but the plan of salvation doesn't amount to more than this given it's the product of contingent beings who are merely optimizers within extant material parameters.

Even for proper theologians who didn't grow up in the backwater cult that MG and myself grew up in, fine tuning is circumstantial evidence. It may be that God is a necessary being in real theology, but he didn't necessarily fine-tune the universe. If it's fine-tuned, it just so happens that he did fine tune it, and if he did, then that's what we see. But maybe he didn't? What if God created the multiverse?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

That’s a deeply philosophical position you and Jersey Girl, if she believes that, are staking out. I find it highly problematic we’re deterministic with regard to belief, but at the same time we’re ‘free willistic’ with regard to action.

- Doc

Yes, I believe what I wrote with regard to to god belief. It seems logical to me. If you'd like to challenge my thinking, please do it.

Well. I don’t know if your faith needs to be questioned so much so as the idea one’s free will with regard to a belief is written, so to speak, but actions are subject to choice. If you (third person you) don’t have a choice but to believe in a god, then faith itself is an unavoidable state of belief for you. If I’m to believe that your programming, spiritual or otherwise, is unaffected by any factors that doesn’t lead to god-belief, then the immutability of your faith can’t just be constrained to belief, but also has to apply to actions. One necessarily leads to the other, and we’re now into the question of determinism. If you’re fated to believe in a god I don’t see how you could take any actions to disabuse yourself from that fate, thus your actions are also locked into place, only begetting more faith. You have no free will on this matter, if you have no free will on this matter.

- Doc

[MG 2.0]

Can you cite your source for saying that "... the Fine Tuned Universe that Joseph Smith observed before him that was one of the reasons which brought him to the grove ..."? I'm afraid I can't keep the various versions of the FV straight in my mind.

For I looked upon the sun, the glorious luminary of the earth, and also the moon, rolling in their majesty through the heavens, and also the stars shining in their courses, and the earth also upon which I stood, and the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, and the fish of the waters, and also man walking forth upon the face of the earth in majesty and in the strength of beauty, whose power and intelligence in governing the things which are so exceedingly great and marvelous, even in the likeness of him who created them. And when I considered upon these things, my heart exclaimed, “Well hath the wise man said, ‘It is a fool that saith in his heart, there is no God.’” My heart exclaimed, “All, all these bear testimony and bespeak an omnipotent and omnipresent power, a being who maketh laws and decreeth and bindeth all things in their bounds, who filleth eternity, who was and is and will be from all eternity to eternity.” And I considered all these things and that that being seeketh such to worship him as worship him in spirit and in truth.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... t?lang=eng

Regards,
MG

[malkie]

Can you cite your source for saying that "... the Fine Tuned Universe that Joseph Smith observed before him that was one of the reasons which brought him to the grove ..."? I'm afraid I can't keep the various versions of the FV straight in my mind.

For I looked upon the sun, the glorious luminary of the earth, and also the moon, rolling in their majesty through the heavens, and also the stars shining in their courses, and the earth also upon which I stood, and the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, and the fish of the waters, and also man walking forth upon the face of the earth in majesty and in the strength of beauty, whose power and intelligence in governing the things which are so exceedingly great and marvelous, even in the likeness of him who created them. And when I considered upon these things, my heart exclaimed, “Well hath the wise man said, ‘It is a fool that saith in his heart, there is no God.’” My heart exclaimed, “All, all these bear testimony and bespeak an omnipotent and omnipresent power, a being who maketh laws and decreeth and bindeth all things in their bounds, who filleth eternity, who was and is and will be from all eternity to eternity.” And I considered all these things and that that being seeketh such to worship him as worship him in spirit and in truth.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... t?lang=eng

Regards,
MG

A grudging OK, I guess.

I'm not sure I see anything that really counts as an observation of "fine tuning" per se. I doubt that Joseph had any idea about categories of forces, and universal constants, or could argue anything other than an extremely vague "governing the things which are so exceedingly great and marvelous" and "maketh laws and decreeth and bindeth all things in their bounds". Nothing significant that hadn't been said before by many others. No concept of what kind of changes might make it all fall apart. No real evidence that he was a thought leader in this, prescient, a man ahead of his time.

The characterization of the universe as finely tuned suggests that the occurrence of life in the universe is very sensitive to the values of certain fundamental physical constants and that the observed values are, for some reason, improbable. If the values of any of certain free parameters in contemporary physical theories had differed only slightly from those observed, the evolution of the Universe would have proceeded very differently and life as it is understood may not have been possible.

In 1913, the chemist Lawrence Joseph Henderson wrote The Fitness of the Environment, one of the first books to explore fine tuning in the universe. Henderson discusses the importance of water and the environment to living things, pointing out that life depends entirely on earth's very specific environmental conditions, especially the prevalence and properties of water.

In 1961, physicist Robert H. Dicke claimed that certain forces in physics, such as gravity and electromagnetism, must be perfectly fine-tuned for life to exist in the universe. Fred Hoyle also argued for a fine-tuned universe in his 1984 book The Intelligent Universe. "The list of anthropic properties, apparent accidents of a non-biological nature without which carbon-based and hence human life could not exist, is large and impressive", Hoyle wrote.

Belief in the fine-tuned universe led to the expectation that the Large Hadron Collider would produce evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry, but by 2012 it had not produced evidence for supersymmetry at the energy scales it was able to probe.

But if you like to think of the statement you quoted as a declaration and recognition of fine tuning, I won't try to dissuade you.