this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 85 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (33 children)

Technically this could all be true even if the universe were created 4000 years ago. As somebody says in Robert Heinlein's novel Job: A Comedy of Justice, "Yes, the universe is billions of years old, but it was created 4000 years ago. It was created old." (approximate quote from memory)

I absolutely agree with science, but strictly speaking we can't know for sure the universe isn't the creation of some superbeing operating outside of it - or it could even be a simulation.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 weeks ago (17 children)

The existence of a god is something that can't be disproven. You can always find gaps in knowledge and explain the gap by saying a god / multiple gods did that. As gaps narrow with more knowledge, you can always just say that the holy books were just a metaphor in this one case, but the rest of it is literally true.

It gets even more complicated when you run into people who refuse to believe in any science, or anything outside their own personal experience.

Personally, I believe the Earth is a sphere. I've been to Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. The time the flights took and the routes the in-flight maps showed make sense for a spherical earth. So did the scenes visible out the windows, and the day/night cycle. The mere existence of time zones and seasons strongly suggests the Earth is a rotating sphere tilted slightly off vertical. But, it could be that I'm living in a Truman Show world, where everything is a lie designed to make me believe something that isn't true. I haven't personally done all the math, all the experiments, etc. to prove the Earth is a sphere. And, if this were a Truman Show world, the producers of the show could mess with my experiments anyhow.

For someone who doesn't want to believe, there's really nothing you can do to make them believe. The world really relies on trust and believing Occam's Razor.

[–] jlou@mastodon.social -1 points 3 weeks ago (16 children)

If we assume that god, by definition, must be omniscient, there is actually a way to disprove the possibility with the following paradox:

This sentence is not known to be true by any omniscient being.

There are also more traditional arguments like the problem of evil

@science_memes

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This sentence is not known to be true by any omniscient being.

I don't understand how this disproves the existence of an omniscient being. What if I said "This sentence is not known to be true by any logical being." Is my existence disproven now?

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Being logical doesn't imply knowing every true sentence.

Also, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knower_paradox

@science_memes

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Logical meaning having the ability to follow logical rules to determine whether or not any statement is true or false. I've followed that train of logic and determined that the sentence you provided is neither true nor false. I've determined that it is paradoxical. Why would an omniscient being be unable to know that this is a paradox?

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