You have admitted yourself that we don't have enough scientific evidence earlier in the thread. 'Complete set of evidence' and 'Not nearly enough' are two different things entirely. You're very good with words, but as I said earlier as well: Absolutely basic logic distates that when we can't even begin to understand something, saying that it's true is misguided. You're good with words, much better than I am - but whatever you say can't dodge that little fact.

Really? I can think of many other ways.

Ah so you agree it is a false religion.

No no no, here is your problem:
"and thus must be beyond space and time"
There is simply no reason to assume that. Just because it is not dependan on the universe does not mean it is not dependant on anything else OR eternal.
You keep talking about logic and then spurt out these baseless assumptions.

Ys lets all buy the book because clearly you know what you are talkin about^^

Yeah IF, and big IF, a baseless IF. How do you know it doesn't have a cause.

Maybe it is only impossible for us to distinguish.

Maybe we could also stop assuming that there is such a thing?


So what, this magical being of his has no attributes, who cares, why do you bore us with this shit?

Assuming again that space and time must have had a cause.

Assuming that transcendent minds can cause anything.

Maybe it didn't? Ever considered that?

Oh I see, he rests his timeless being cause stuff on the beginning stuff and his beginning stuff on the timeless being. Yes, circular reasoning is fun.


It is amazing what a skeptic you are when it comes to anything else but your own BS.

I will just let this stand below the stuff you said above about credible reasons and consideration. Astounding.

Backwards logic. If the universe wasn't like it is, there could be different life. Maybe this is not the only universe, there are a myriad of other possiblities other than it being "fine tuned". Not to mention that it isn't fine tuned at all.

Nothing does not exist, you keep forgetting that. There is no need to explain why anything exists if no other state is possible.

Yes you really are the harbinger of logic. LMAO

Be precise, then this won't happen.

You are bringing up this nobrainer socrates stuff and equate it with your false logic. Let me help you:
1.) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2.) The universe began to exist.
3.) Therefore, the universe must have a cause.
Thanks to quantum mechanics we know know that 1 doesnt need to be true. And argument 2 isn't a sure thing either, nobody knows what happened in the first few moments of the big bang. Therefore 3 has no meaning, it is completely made up.

Big words from the guy who believes in god, there is no doubt about alot of things in your mind. You are the one who bears the burden of proof, for gods, for beginnings and for the usefulness of philosophy for science in the past 100 years.

No once again I lecture you for free about what the your two gurus are saying.

So why didn't they?

You and your obsession with logic, I didn't even make a logical statement so how can it be a logical error. I did not deny the conclusion, I denied you giving it the name "god". Please try to read properly.

After talking to you I know it perfectly.

But he didn't, that is why I call them baseless, what is so complicated about that.

Yeah but how many times? I think I did it 3 times already and another time in this post above. Instead of addressing it you keep talking about other things.

I don't like all of them. His premises, his conclusions, and I gave you reasons. I can do it again a hundred times, if you need that.

There is no nothing.

There is no nothing. So anything did not arise without a cause, it was always there.

Yes except for your god, right?

You continuosly do that.

There is no non being.

Now you are getting it!

Exactly, OUR experience, we don't know what is outside the universe.

Now that is logic LOLOL

Meaning it is not omnipotent.

No,because YOU want it to.

There is no non being so it requires no explanation.
Yes, so lets not base a religion around the burning of rome and let it not dictate our everyday lives maybe?


It defies your own logic, which is that this being has no cause etc..

Because didn't need to come from nothing. There is no nothing.

Agreed, ther eis no nothing, so nothing ever needed to come from it.

Yes.

Yes,only everything exceot your god of course.

Yes we mislabeled it in the past, no we know there is no nothing, we just couldn't detect it before. Just like cavemen probably thought air is nothing.

I tell you again there is no reason to assume that there was ever nothing anywhere.

I find it incredibly strange when people think that you can learn fundamental truths about the world by playing simple word games such as "Something cannot come from nothing, therefore God exists." You don't put in a single empirical fact, yet by manipulating a handful of (partially undefined) words you arrive at the most amazing revelation about our existence. How is this not patently ridiculous?

I'm glad you're enjoying it. I think there are good arguments for why this being necessarily had a mind, but the people who disagree with me don't think it exists, and in fact one person as been arguing for non-sentient cause, so I'm not sure why you think both sides rely on the idea that god(s) is some kind of being with a mind and purpose. If there were more than one such being, then there would be no way in principle to distinguish between them, so there can only be one.

I think we can understand enough about God that He has a will and an intellect, but omniscience is not something I'd call limiting. However, Aquinas held that the attributes of God are analogous, in that they are neither completely identical, nor absolutely comparable. For example, accidents and substances can both be said to have being, but accidents lack an independent existence that substances have, so the being of an accident is analogous to that of a substance. God is described in anthropomorphic terms, but that is a description to help us understand how God is acting rather a description of what God is. I'm not sure where you got the idea that we are God's best pals.

The fact that you can't distinguish some things does not mean that there can be only one of them.

So where did its will and intellect come from? Yeah, let me guess, for some reason they were always there and that's no problem.

If the argument was simply "Something cannot come from nothing, therefore God exists" then it would be patently ridiculous. If I'm using a term that you think is not adequately defined, then please tell me so I can fix that. If there were a God that created the universe, it would not be dependent on the universe for its existence, so it would exist beyond space and time. Science can only tell us about things that exist in space and time that are observable, measurable, and verifiable, so there is no particular reason to expect there to be empirical evidence for God.

However, there are lots of things we take as evidence for something without having empirical evidence for it. For instance, If you come across a watch, it's reasonable to conclude that the best explanation for it is that it was designed. When looking at the universe, it's either going to be completely obvious that it was designed or people are going to complete miss it, but it is nonetheless still reasonable for someone to draw that conclusion without having empirical evidence for the designer.

Likewise, with this argument:

1.) Everything that has a beginning has a cause.
2.) The universe had a beginning.
2.) Therefore, the universe has cause.

Science, logic, philosophy, and common sense indicate that 1 is true. Science and philosophy indicate that 2 is true. The form of this argument is valid, so if premises 1 and 2 are true, then the conclusion must also necessarily be true. You're free to try to challenge the premises or the form of the argument, but for someone who thinks the premises are true and the form is valid, it is entirely reasonable to come to the conclusion that the universe has a cause.

Is this cause God? That's for other arguments, but in the very least there exists a cause of the universe corresponds to our idea of God would be if God were to exist.

That's something mostly fundamentalists use to compensate for their lack of everything else. I had some fun trying it out and trolling around as a creationist/ID'er and let me tell you...creationists/christians loved it. Just using meaningless word arguments, silly philosophy and flawed logic to reinforce their ideas and they'll consider you an intelligent champion for the cause. All you need is a good grasp of English, some ID/apologetic resources, and some free time to write full word play posts.

It's really easy to be one of those types. Just be a theist and close your mind to everything else, while pretending that you're looking for evidence to the contrary and other viewpoints that you've already decided against. Now you have everyone wasting their time on you while you appear to be the inquisitive and ready to learn when you really just want to shut them down and repeat your nonsense. I did not do anything different than Soy here is doing. He just replied to you with more of his same crap, responding to you just to defend himself instead of taking the advice and making the correct adjustments.

With that mindset they think that if they're not convinced of something then it isn't true, and if they are convinced of something that it is. It is as silly as it sounds. Not theism or Christianity which are fine imo, but the way the fundies just say and think stupid things. There are not enough Catholics around to compensate for them unfortunately.

We need this thread to die.

I believe that Christianity is true not because it gives me solace, but because to the best of my knowledge Jesus rose from the dead. If that is false, then I want to know. While it's true that some aspects of Christianity can give solace, it's not exactly comforting to know that I will be held accountable for my actions. Do you grant that it is possible for God to exist and that science indicates nothing about whether that is true? Would God be more likely if we were in a smaller universe? I don't think that follows.

"You ask, “What is the point of all that space in the vast cosmos if God is concerned with Earth?” But why think, Jon, that God is concerned only with the Earth? I know of no theological reason to think that creation “exists for the development of human beings alone.” Maybe God has created life forms throughout the universe. Or maybe God is like a cosmic artist who simply delights in the beauty and grandeur of His creation. In fact, the vast size of the universe is not unrelated to life on Earth. For the elements of which we and the Earth itself are formed were cooked up in the interior of stars and scattered through supernovae. In order for us to exist on Earth the universe has to be old enough in order for the heavy elements to be synthesized in the interior of stars and scattered throughout the universe. But the size of the universe is a function of its age. Given that the universe is expanding, a universe that is this old will also be this large. Thus it turns out that the size of the universe actually bespeaks God’s concern for us. It also magnifies God’s majesty and greatness, as we learn more about the incredibly vast cosmos we inhabit, and underlines His condescension in visiting this planet in the person of Jesus." - William Lane Craig

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/disenchantment-with-atheism#ixzz2tQwQuWul I hope you can tell the difference between saying that you don't know what causes it, so God must have been the cause, and giving a logical argument from what we know that shows that God's existence is logically necessary.

I've said we don't have a complete set of evidence, but I never said we don't have nearly enough. Physicists like Lawrence M. Krauss will tell you that they have a very high degree of certainty that the universe had a beginning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaGktVQdNg

I'll fully agree that when we can't even begin to understand something, saying that it's true is misguided. While it's true that we do not have a complete set of evidence for the origins of the universe, we certainly have more than enough to begin to understand it.

If I used flawed logic, you're welcome to point out where. Likewise, if I'm playing word games, then point out where. I'm not sure which advice you're referring to here, but if it's good advice, then I'll take it. I've said it before that I'm open to the possibility of being wrong and that I have no doubt there are things that I currently believe to be true that are wrong. I've changed my mind a number of times because of discussions I've had, even about a major issue. It would be wonderful if you'd stop making up asinine assumptions about me though.

If you're willing to grant the universe has a beginning, but we have no clue about what caused it, then I also take that you're willing to grant that it has a cause. From there we can use logic and philosophy to figure certain things about this cause. For instance, the universe can't be the cause of the thing that caused it, so the thing that caused the universe can't be dependent on the universe for its existence. This cause is the cause of energy and matter, so it can't be dependent on energy or matter for its existence, and thus must be an immaterial cause. I don't see you're unwilling to make these logical deductions. This cause is immaterial, so it can't be confirmed or denied by a scientific process. However, that does not mean that cosmologists are unaware of the metaphysical implications of the universe having a beginning, and indeed many have struggled with that. If there are other logical explanations, then I'm all ears.

Let me try again to point out how you contradict yourself.

You "prove" that the cause is independent because you premise that the universe is dependent.
You "prove" that the cause is immaterial because you premise that the universe is material.
From other posts you "prove" the cause has a will because you premise that the universe does not.
Yet you premise the universe to be logical, but you reject that the cause may be illogical, accidental or arbitrary.

Basically you are picking and choosing the aspects of "god" which you take to be transcendent and which immanent in our universe. And I see no logical argument from you for this arbitrariness.

Your false god is logic and causality.