For me personally, it's self evident in all things. Basically all of life from plant to animal has an order to it (not everything in the planet is alive), more so, the universe has an order to it (physics). Basically in a bad nutshell, big bang theory states the universe had nothing and then a reaction occurred one day billions upon billions of years ago that started things going. Thats all well and grand but what caused this momentous event? Science lets us see how it got done, not who or what did the doing. I have this funny feeling that if we somehow created a vacuum model and it lasted for billions and billions of years, nothing would happen. We know in this age of science and reason that magic does not exist. However there is some science we don't fully understand. As a species for all our technical marvels we have still not mastered making an AI nor have we graced ourselves with beings that we have created (yes we can artificially inseminate to make other beings, but that's a sort of cheat since were using already created material). As to why I choose my flavor of religion, well I'd rather not derail the post but if the topic comes up I will share suffice to say I am Christian (in my past I started life as a Catholic, went Atheist, went Buddhist and finally landed as a non denominational Christian). But one of my idea's about a creator is that this being is a master architect/scientist. I could be wrong. I have no scientific evidence to prove my religion. Its a gut feeling when I look at all things considered.

I fail to see how a thread about religion reaches 2000 posts and yet Licurg's thread about a rape simulator gets closed after a mere 108. Aren't we splitting hairs here?

That's just pushing the question one step upstream, and complicating it further by attributing to this new "uncaused cause" a series of elaborate anthropocentered traits (whether this anthropocentrism is denied or not) : consciousness, agency, values, abilities, even emotions (love, anger, etc)...

As far as I'm concerned, the idea that the universe has started at some point is absurd. And the idea that the universe has always existed is absurd. I deduce logically that the universe doesn't exist, and neither do we. So there.

There are a million theories and vague ideas, but this is a struggle for many people -- Christians and atheists alike. Right now, the Christian church is being divided into "universalists" and "nonuniveresalits" and "annihilationists." Some Christians refuse to believe that God would do permanent, everlasting ill to someone. And they note that the word "eternal" also has many other meanings in Greek -- it can be an age, a moment, or a long time or forever. So they think people will be in Hell for an age, and then either be annihilated or escorted back into God's presence.

C.S. Lewis seems to believe that everyone gets what they want in the end. It's just that the absence of God in a person's life ends up being Hell -- because that's all that's left sans God.

Anyway, more back to point, why wouldn't God make us all want to believe in him in a specific way? I personally believe (and have been told that I'm calloused and non-pastoral in my belief) that sin is very real, very destructive. If God really made a garden and really was close to people for a while and then some of them decided that they hated God for one reason or another, then they would teach their children about another god or no god at all. After hundreds of generations, people would be completely lost and totally unreachable.

Except that God also indicates in the Bible that your faith in him is in according to what you are given to work with (I can fish up some verses if people need them). So an unreachable Native American who pursued goodness, discovered an entity that empowered him and led him to love his neighbor and his enemy, and he in turn loved that entity, and he recognized that he was broken and evil and sinful and he needed grace from the entitty, and he asked for it, (I have no idea if God absolutely requires all of these items, but if they are all present, I believe his promise is true) then that person would in fact believe in the one true God and be saved.

Contrarily, I know a lot of people who say they love Jesus, but the name they use is not representative of the character presented in the Bible.

I think we are all built to look for someone higher than us. It may just be in our DNA to respond to leadership or parents. I don't know. But I really think that there's something in us that directs us toward God our whole lives and that we have to exert energy to resist it. That's how it was for me and I've talked to a lot of others like that. But I most certainly don't know how it is in very atheistic places. Perhaps A) it's just cultural current or B) you can be taught by your parents to somehow totally ignore it, C) some folks don't feel it at all, or something else?

"The knowledge about the land in the Gospels concerning agriculture, architecture, botany, culture, economics, geography, language, law, personal names, politics, religion, social stratification, topography, weather, etc., are types of details that would fall away or be easy to get wrong if we did not have high quality eyewitness accounts. That combined with the incredible quality and number of manuscripts makes them the strongest historical accounts in existence."

For instance, if you were to create story that took place in another country 100 years ago that included over 100 personal names, would you be able to pick the right names and in right frequencies to be historically accurate? Our intuition about which names are common or uncommon is often inaccurate because of a small sample size, so without the Internet, it is doubtful anyone could get that right even if they were writing a modern story that took place in their own country.

There is a strong correlation between the names used in the Gospels and those that were actually used in 1st century Palestine. On the other hand, the names of 1st century Jews in Egypt had a completely different pattern. It’s not only the right frequency, but there is disambiguation for the more common names, such as Simon Peter, Simon the Zealot, Simon the Leper, Simon of Cyrene, Simon the Tanner, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, all while there is no disambiguation for the less common ones. Furthermore, the Gospels all have different patterns for how they refer to the principle character, but they all have the same pattern for disambiguation.

Names are also one of the hardest things to remember. You can remember all sorts of details about someone, but not their names because there usually isn't a logical connection between a name and the person. If the Gospels have correctly got the detail that’s the hardest thing to remember, isn't there every reason to think they could get the more important details right?

There are also other minor details that can be independently checked, such as in Luke 19, where Jesus is passing through Jericho and Zacchaeus climbs a sycamore fig tree in order to see him, so the question is...were there sycamore fig trees in Jericho at that time? The answer is yes, but someone writing from outside the land wouldn’t have known unless they had been to Jericho or someone who had been to Jericho had told them. Another example is at the feeding of the 5000, where Mark and John both comment on there being green/much grass. Mark says there were many coming and going, but he doesn't say why. John fills us in by saying it was Passover time and Luke tells us the feeding was near Bethsaida, so the question is...would there have been green grass at Passover time near Bethsaida? Precipitation charts say they were at the end of their rainy season, so yes.

The four canonical Gospels contain many of these types of minor detail that would have been very easy to get wrong if they were just making stories up, but the fact that they consistently get them right strongly indicates that they are eyewitnesses or that they were accounts given to them by eyewitnesses. If the accounts were created much later and removed from the events they narrate, then these sorts of details about the land would drop out, which is what we see when we look at non-canonical Gospels. So instead of conflicting with the canonical Gospels, they are evidence for them, because they give us a baseline for what later development would look like.

Dr. Peter Williams’ lecture on this topic.

This is greatly over-simplifying a very complex topic where there is a lot more disagreement than agreement among scholars. There are just too many things don’t fit nicely into one established theory of who copied from whom, to what extent they copied, if some copied at all, if they had a common Q source, what that hypothetical source would have contained, etc.. Even if Matthew and Luke used Mark, there is enough difference in the synoptic gospels that they qualify as independent sources, so they still remain worthy and useful sources of historical data.

Dr. Mike Licona is currently doing research into a different topic that has a strong potential to throw a monkey wrench into this one. He’s been researching almost 100 Greco-Roman biographies and looking at where they report the same events. In particular, Plutarch wrote nine biographies of people who lived around the same time and participated in some of the same events, so we can compare how he told the same story multiple times. When we do that, we see a lot of what we would call contradictions between his own accounts of the same event, but he consistently makes the same kinds of modifications over and over, which strongly suggests that they are instead intentional compositional devices. Licona has identified a number of compositional devices that ancient biographers used that gave them the flexibility to modify how they presented what they were reporting in order to emphasize, combine, or clarify something. Furthermore, Licona has identified the same compositional devices used many times in the Gospels, which also strongly suggests that they are intentional.

Some examples of the devices are compression, transference, and dislocation. Compression is where the author combined several related events that took place over a period of time and made it appear to happen at the same time. Transference is used sometimes where someone sends a messenger and the author has the person who sent the messenger saying the words rather than the messenger. Dislocation is where the author takes an event or part of an event and places it in a different context.

Dr. Mike Licona’s lecture on this topic. Apostolic authority was the primary criteria for which books were considered authoritative, so the four Gospels and Paul’s letters were quickly recognized as such by the early Church. The books of 1 Timothy and 2 Peter also testify of this. Only 7 of the 27 books in the NT canon were in question, so the councils functioned as a definitive step at the end of a careful process that confirmed those books that were already largely believed.

Gnostic teachings became popular during the 2nd century and indirectly caused the formation of canon by forcing the Church to put its stamp of approval on those books it already considered to be authoritative. Authors of new books could not pretend to be someone with apostolic authority, so it became easier for them to write about events that no one could verify, which again explains the stark contrast in historical details between them and the canonical Gospels. I think that fact combined with the late date they were written gave the Church good ground to reject the books they did. By the around start of the 3rd century, we have a number of writers that give is us a good idea of what they considered to be canonical, which are closely align with the modern canon. If you think they should have included something they didn’t, then you’re welcome to make that argument.

I’ll grant that it’s possible that Jesus was an alien, but I think anything that is logical is possible, so simply granting things that are possible isn’t saying much. However, if you say we can’t claim that Jesus was raised as long as naturalistic explanation is remotely possible, then you’re no longer doing serious history. “Careful” means an investigation that proceeds under strict controls, not stubborn denial of anything that can’t be proven beyond all doubt.

In Dr. Mike Licona’s book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, he discusses the criteria employed by professional historians for weighing hypotheses, he looks at which historical facts the vast majority of historians on both sides agree on, and he does his best to objectively apply those criteria to the Bible is order to determine which hypotheses best fits the facts.

For instance, the vast majority of historians on both sides grant the empty tomb, that the disciples believed that Jesus had appeared to them after his death, and Paul’s conversion. The idea that the body was moved explains the empty tomb, but it lacks explanatory scope because it does not explain the appearances to the disciples or Paul’s conversion. If I were to recommend one book to you, it would be this one.

So you're telling me, the colourblind man, that "blue" is like "teal". :)

Please excuse any flippancy on my part, it's integral to my nature. I really do appreciate you trying to work through this with me. I just couldn't resist with your opening line.

To respond to the majority of what you have written, I have indeed experienced such events in my own life. I have been taken down paths by instinct, or intuition, or what I even like to believe is Fate at times, that seemed ordained to shape my life into what I have become. I have even had events that one would have to catagorise as mystical or religious or paranormal.

One that remains with me happened during a hypnosis session with my parapsychology teacher in college. We were attempting a "past life regression", which is not something I really believe in (though I do believe if something soul-like exists, it makes sense for it to be "recycled" alongside all other matter and energy in the universe). Anyway, during the session I had a perfect vision of where a friend of mine was at that time and what she was doing (sitting on the third floor of the college library at a table in front of the elevator, with her back turned to it). I left the session and strode immediately to where she was in my vision, and I was precisely correct.

However, and this is the tricky part, I ascribe none of these things to God. I believe they are part of the fabric of reality. In the same way distortions of of spacetime create the manifestation of gravity, so other forces give cast to our lives that we (selectively) interpret as meaning. When I look at the whole of my life there are many events which counteract the existence of any implicit or explicit narrative to that life. In short, I don't think my life has purpose or meaning, apart from what I give it.

I think that often we retroactively give events agency and import. Something trivial, or even negative happens, and we forget it or fret over it. And then later an unexpected but positive consequence comes from it, and we go "ah, THAT'S what that meant". What we don't incorporate are all the other occurrences that didn't lead to a meaningful outcome. This is a form of selection bias.

I think this "purposeful" view of the universe can also lead to solipsistic thoughts, in that we view events as happening in order to give purpose or convey meaning specifically to us. Even terrible events in which others suffer misfortune, or lose their lives, become object lessons in our person drama, played out so that we might learn something. This can lead to people believing that others are secondary or subordinate players in the grand opera of their own existence, which is a harmful way to view a fellow soul.

I must take exception to this statement, especially the specificity of it being a Christian phenomenon. These events are well documented in all religious believers, and indeed come under the phenomenological classification of "religious experience", not "Christian experience". It has even been more broadly categorised as "mystical experience", which I find personally more accurate since I am a borderline mystic and have had such experiences myself.

I believe if you speak with others who are equally ardent about their own, differing religion, you will discover much commonality of experience. As you will with people who explore consciousness and perception absent religion, such as myself.

I really do appreciate you sharing your perspective, and I hope I haven't been insulting or diffident in my reply. I can only relate my own experience and perspective in kind. And it sounds to me like I have had the same core types of experiences that others equate to the presence of God, only resulting in a different set of conclusions on my part. It makes me wonder if perhaps the experiences are what are common to the human condition, and perhaps we should focus on the shared bond of those, rather than dividing ourselves over them via hundreds of religious and mystical and occult factions.

I have moved through many selves as well in my life journey, though science has always played a part in it at every stage. But even there I have gone from a nihilistic reductionist to a Charcotian mechanist to a modern emergencist. The question of "why is there something instead of nothing" has always fascinated me, but I reject the notion of the Prime Mover because that is a non-solution (what created the Prime Mover? if the Prime Mover can exist without having to be created, then why not the universe?).

I am in the middle of a fascinating book on the very subject (Why Does the World Exist?) and can recommend it to anyone else who is vexed by this supreme conundrum. The variety of the thought and theory on the matter is rich and startling.

If something is eternal, then it can't coherently be said to have a beginning or a cause. This holds for both the Prime Mover and the universe, if it is eternal. Before Big Bang cosmology, atheists had held that the universe was eternal and didn't have a cause, so that is nothing knew. Also, keep in mind that the explanation of an explanation doesn't need an explanation or else every explanation would suffer from infinite recursion. For example, if we had discovered an artifact on the moon, we could come to the logical conclusion that it was built by aliens without having any sort of explanation for the aliens.

One of the fascinating approaches to genesis cosmology is the very practical notion that the Universe is indeed eternal, yet at the same time has a measurable age (at least by our systems of definition). This is because the phenomenon we describe as "time" did not exist before cosmic genesis, but rather came into being as an aspect of that event (current front-runner candidate being the Big Bang).

So in a real sense it is meaningless to talk about "before" the Big Bang, or any other cosmological genesis point. Time is, in essence, a by-product of formation, and has no context when referring to the "perfect" stillpoints that nascent universal singularities spring from.

Personally I am enamoured of the notion of fractal reality, the idea that our universe is but a particle of a great universe, while each particle of ours is a universe as well. Permutations of repetition and recursion on infinite levels with infinite variety. It's hard for me to picture a more beautiful existence.

Touching on religion, you actually find this advanced notion in Judaic mysticism, specifically in the Kabbalistic Tree Of Life. This lays out creation as a tree of levels, with the most base being Malkuth and the most divine being Kether. Yet this philosophy also has the notion of "Malkuth-in-Kether", which is to say the highest point in one kind of creation is the lowest point in the next. So too the corollary, that the lowest point in one level is the final, ascendent point of that beneath.

This is very appealing to me, the idea of perpetual growth and improvement and advancement. If I have a soul and it is immortal, I never want to be "done", but rather to always have something higher to strive to.

I have thought about this quite a bit and although I'm obviously not certain, I strongly suspect that the question "Why is there something instead of nothing?" is actually trivial because there is no such thing as "nothing". I believe that "nothing" as in "the absence of anything, including matter, radiation, space, time and physical laws" is a fictional concept, a human invention.

We like to think in terms of opposites - good vs. evil, black vs. white, something vs. nothing, which is why the concept of nothing seems intuitive. But the fact that we can give a verbal definition of "nothing" doesn't mean that it is a meaningful concept or something that relates to reality in any way. No one has ever observed "nothing" and it is not clear that "nothing" is even a possible state of the world.

People often assume that "nothing" is the default and that it is existence that is in need of explanation. I believe it is the other way around - ironically, it is "nothing" that is in need of an existence proof.

Your post argues an excellent point, and it is one that is gaining increasing traction in the community where this topic is debated. In the book I mentioned earlier, I just last night I finished the chapter in which one of the pre-eminent physicists of our time states that very same point - that existence is not an inherently remarkable state, and that nothing is not a reasonable default condition.

He goes on to make the point that just because nothingness appeals due to its simplicity doesn't mean it should perforce being the ideal minimal condition. This led me to a comparison of my own - a sphere is arguably the simplest 3D form one can describe (mathematically speaking), yet a true perfect sphere is virtually non-existent in our experience of the universe. The mere fact of being "simple" does not automatically lead something to be ubiquitous.

One other thing that argues that "nothing" is an inherently unnatural concept versus "existence" is the plain fact that most civilisations did not conceive of the number "zero" until later in their numeric development. In some cultures it was considered a conceptual anathema, and even now it induces problems in mathematics that no other number does. So one could indeed argue that nothing is an exceptional case, rather than the normative.

EDIT: I personally believe that true nothingness is an unattainable state, now that there is not-nothing. True nothing would have to expunge everything entirely, and retroactively to ensure that there is nothing, always and forever. That we have not been expunged means that this did not happen (much in the same way as we can feel comfortable that time travel doesn't work as we expect it would because we haven't met any time travellers). Ergo, no nothing.

"Nothing" means non-being, so it does not exist by definition and referring to nothing as a state or asking for an existence proof of it is missing the the concept. The pointing being that non-being has no properties or potential to become something, so if we have something, where did it come from? If it's eternal, then it always existed, but if it had a beginning, then what caused it?

don't confuse 'desert folk' with 'stupid' -> they were well aware of the way language was used at the time and how to understand it. It's perfectly clear to say that "Nothing is impossible for God" or "If your right hand causes you to sin then cut it off." Yes, a minority of people are stupid. Today, however, there's also the 'sue-them-all' culture that teaches people not to bother with common sense. Not sure what you mean by 'make something alive what is without life' ??
Square circle is nonsensical by definition according to what we know. (As stated, we may not know enough about some things). Actually, we (and I speak broadly, not for everyone) think that most religions went and drew the wrong conclusions based on their observations and the need to satisfy their spirituality. Not that they were 'made up' by a 'conman' to seize control. Or they grew apart from the original (Garden of Eden) 'one God' faith by adding in other things.

I don't have the actual books here, so I don't know if and where the actual information is, but this is what I gathered from some literature list I found rummaging in my old study folders in the attic:

Philipp Wilhelm Hausleutner - Eine kurze summarische Hinrichtungsstatistik für die Reichstadt Augsburg 1350-1750 (Schwäbisches Archiv 1, Stuttgart 1790)

Franz Gut: Die Übeltat und ihre Wahrheit. Straftäter und Strafverfolgung vom Spätmittelalter bis zur neuesten Zeit (Zürich 1995)

Mark Häberlein (Hg.): Devianz, Widerstand und Herrschaftspraxis in der Vormoderne. Studien zu Konflikten im südwestdeutschen Raum (15.-18. Jahrhundert), Konstanz 1998

Thomas Lentes/Thomas Scharff: Schriftlichkeit und Disziplinierung. Die Beispiele Inquisition und Frömmigkeit (1997)

Hubert Ermisch: Die sächsischen Stadtbücher des Mittelalters (1889)

Andreas Blauert: Frühe Hexenverfolgungen. Ketzer-, Zauberei- und Hexenprozesse des 15. Jahrhunderts, Hamburg 1989

Karl Meier Lemgo, Hexen, Henker und Tyrannen (1980)

Günter Jerouschek: Die Hexen und ihr Prozeß. Die Hexenverfolgung in der Reichsstadt Esslingen (1992)

Wolfgang Behringer (Hg.): Hexen und Hexenprozesse in Deutschland, 1992

Karl-Heinz Kirchhoff: Die "Wiedertäufer-Käfige" in Münster. Zur Geschichte der drei Eisenkörbe am Turm von St. Lamberti, Münster 1996

That's just some. I don't know if any of them are available in languages other than German. Especially the last onemay be interesting, though these three people (Anabaptist leaders) were not burned but tortured to death with pliers in 1536.

If you want to know about the Anabaptists and Hussites, some of most spectacular executions in terms of number and cruelty took place in Görlitz/Zgorzelec. Görlitz was like a "last stronghold" for the catholics when protestantism swept over the land from Bohemia. Since half of Görlitz is in Poland, maybe you can find some sources in your language.

What exactly is your point here, it sounds exactly like what I said to you.

Why is a square circle nonsensical, but not making dead alive?


I don't believe you. Do you apply this kind of generosity to the book of mormon, scientology and team jamotide?
Very good! That is what recent science suggests.We actually explained this to the religious folk about 50 pages ago...but I guess it needs to hammered home a bit more.