Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: However...Pt 3
| Posted On: 03/24/07 10:20:08 PM |
Age 45, AR |
It certainly seems we have identified the nerve which you prefer not to have touched. I will ignore the ad hominems and limit my response to the few cogent points contained in your screed. Imagine that instead of debating you over the internet, I spent all my time debating one of your "mostly space" brick walls. What would you think of me then? I would agree that I would be deserving of every ad hominem leveled at me. Why? Because it is futile and foolish to argue with an inanimate object. Inanimate objects have no will, no personality, no intellect. I would be, in effect, arguing with myself. You argue. If I do not have a will, you are arguing with a brick wall, and you are the fool. Your arguing presupposes that I have a will. That is, I am accountable, I am responsible, I can change, I can reason, etc.... Now, you can go right along denying this, but if you deny that man has a will, and keep arguing nevertheless, then you really are a fool. Next, in our discussions, I have had the privilege of introducing you to one of the elementary laws of logic. The law of sufficient reason. This law states that every contingent effect must have a sufficient cause outside of itself. No self caused, effects. Note, the law does not say that everything must have a cause. God does have a will. Man has a will. Man's will must have a cause. God's will cannot have a cause. Am I, as you foresee, being arbitrary? Not in the least. The difference? Man is contingent, God is necessary. God is self existent. In fact, if we do not presuppose God's self existence, we can never make sense out of our existence, or out of the existence of our will. Now, you can go ahead and try to explain how an atheistic universe gives rise to man. I will sit back and shoot down every theory you offer and it will be easy. Not because you are dumb or stupid or any of those things which you have abandoned reasoning to call me. You will not do it because it cannot be done. If your view of the universe is correct, then the reality outside of man is impersonal, unintelligent,and morally indifferent. How do you get man, with intelligence, knowledge, personality, and morality, out of a universe, which pre-exists man, and which has none of the characteristics which you attribute to man. An element cannot give rise to its opposite. Eggs do not turn into gold, and the impersonal does not give rise to the personal. Man is contingent. He must have a necessary cause outside of himself which accounts for man's personality, intelligence, goodness, knowledge, etc.... Christianity accounts for all of this, and nothing else does. By the way,the story of Jonah is not illogical. Logic is not synonymous with what you agree with. Logic measures abstract propositions. It tells us if arguments are sound, if propositions are held in valid relationships. Logic can tell us what is possible and impossible. Logic cannot tell us what is real. If God exists, and He is all powerful, it is possible to perpetuate the life of a man in the belly of a fish for three days. There is no illogic here. You do not like this story. But, you do not get to determine what passes for logic. The laws (absolute/universal) of logic alone get to determine what passes for logical and illogical. Finally, I honestly could not decipher your response to the charge that you expect reality to conform to you mind. Is this your expectation? When you die, does reality die with you? Did you create reality de novo when you thought your first thought? Do I not exist because I am 45 and you are 30 and no reality pre-exists your thinking? On the other hand, if reality is not dependent on your mind, pray tell on what does it depend?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: However...Pt 3
| Posted On: 03/24/07 09:05:16 PM |
Age 30, MO |
I just rechecked the web. I searched: "law of causation" "sufficient reason" "law of identity" and "excluded middle." All of them were entered at the same time. 8 hits had them all. So, pardon me if I stand by my previous assertion. hj hjhop.blogspot.com (not for children or infantile adults)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: However...Pt 3
| Posted On: 03/24/07 03:15:31 PM |
Age 30, MO |
"Since reality is under no compulsion to conform to your mind" Really? You know of course that solid objects like walls are made of mostly empty space right? I mean, they really are. The density of an atom is like a grain of rice in a football stadium. Why do I perceive it the way I do? Could it by my mind? Well, what else? My sensory organs? I suspect that it has something to do with scale (If I were really really tiny, it might make sense for me to see atoms as they really are.)
"your ignorance of and incredulity over the foundations of logic are irrelevant." In all fairness (to me), I'm not the one who would say that transport in the belly of a whale is a viable method of travel. Logic?
"Out of curiosity, I googled each of the four laws and received over one million hits for each." I know, isn't great how you do exactly what I did only a little bit at a time and get different results? I searched or all of them on one page (since you suggested that I could find them in any intro to logic textbook). Just because each by itself has over a million hits doesn't mean that they are going to overlap very often, and indeed they don't. What's the word...? Oh yeah: "SNAP!" I stand by my assertion. "All I can conclude is that your experiences and representations are not reliable, and you do not know the first things about logic." You could also conclude that you don't know what words mean and are a bit of a thicko. But I wouldn't expect you to think for a second that you might be hilariously and rather embarrassingly Wrongy W. Wronginstein himself. "My original point was that all argumentation presupposes that man has a will." Since when? "A will must have a cause outside of itself." You are just making things up. Evidence, bucko. Why must a will have a first cause? Does God have a will? As in 'God's will be done'? Then HE must have a direct cause--oops! I mean, unless you arbitrarily change the idea of will or God can mean whatever you need it to mean for the sake of your argument. "Christianity can account for this cause, atheism cannot." Well, it just proved that it can't be god, so what else is there? "You cannot deny absolutes without assuming absolutes." I can deny flying spaghetti monsters without assuming flying spaghetti monsters. "I must pause in wonder at the depths to which man can self-deceive. I reminds me of the quip that some things are so stupid only the most intelligent can believe them." I know, there is at least a tiny bit of intelligence behind absolutely everything that you said. Also, "SNAP!" again. hj hjhop.blogspot.com
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: However...Pt 3
| Posted On: 03/23/07 12:47:41 PM |
Age 45, AR |
Since reality is under no compulsion to conform to your mind, your ignorance of and incredulity over the foundations of logic are irrelevant. Out of curiosity, I googled each of the four laws and received over one million hits for each. All I can conclude is that your experiences and representations are not reliable, and you do not know the first things about logic. My original point was that all argumentation presupposes that man has a will. A will must have a cause outside of itself. Christianity can account for this cause, atheism cannot. As far as Toulmin goes, he is existentially correct in so far as all arguments must be practical and pragmatic. He is formally incorrect in his attack against absolutism. Absolutes are transcendentals. You cannot deny absolutes without assuming absolutes. Absolutes are necessary laws of thought. When Toulmin tries to formalize his theory, he falls into absurdity. To speak in terms of absolutizing anti-absolutism is to speak in terms of nonsense. Absolutes are transcendentals. Christianity can account for transcendentals, atheism cannot. As a Christian, I have no quarrel with much of Toulmin's theory. But when you, Toulmin, or anyone else claims to have absolutely disproven absolutes, I must pause in wonder at the depths to which man can self-deceive. I reminds me of the quip that some things are so stupid only the most intelligent can believe them. Speaking of quips, I like yours. "The mark of human genius is the ability to simultaneously hold conflicting and incompatible thoughts." Ergo, the mark of human genius is also the inability to simultaneously hold conflicting and incompatible thoughts. And away one goes, sloganeering their atheistic mind into intellectual oblivion. Once again, the atheistic mind is demonstrated to be at war with itself. When Christians say "Jesus saves" we are making a radical claim. Jesus saves the whole man including the intellect and the mind. The atheistic system is full of yes and no, oil and water. This in part, is what Jesus comes to redeem. Sin makes even the most intelligent really stupid.
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Uh...
| Posted On: 03/23/07 09:48:59 AM |
Age 19, MN |
I'm not saying that non-Christian scientists are dishonest or anything like that. But, I do know that people are biased by nature as well (you and I are both prime examples of this, albeit on opposite ends of the spectrum). And there are creationists who have provided mankind with excellent pieces of scientific work (if you don't believe me, look up the guy who invented the MRI or the guy who has a super-computer model on plate tetonics that is recognized by secular scientists). Anyhow, AiG does have a very high standard with peer review. Finally- "I'm warning you, this could shake up your worldview. When you start demanding solid evidence, a lot of atheistic beliefs become much harder to maintain." (Just a little paraphrasing :) Have a great day!
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Re: Re: Re: Interesting...
| Posted On: 03/22/07 08:10:34 PM |
Age 30, MO |
"My point was on the subject of the Red Shift. Incidentally...just because the article wasn't published by a secular college doesn't make it wrong. I mean, be honest with me, do you really expect a secular college to publish an article that would refute million/bilions of years?? If it did, what would that do for the scientific community in regards to evolution, the Big Bang, and other things??" As an academic myself I would DEMAND it. If they could objectively indicate that the age of the universe was only thousands of years old, if the measurements pointed to a universe only thousands of years old, you'd get the Nobel Prize in physics for totally changing our view of the universe in every way. Absolutely. If a scientist falsified his data to say that the universe was older than it was...he'd be through...nobody would ever trust him again. The whole scientific enterprise depends on people being honest, and lies undermine everything that truth seekers represent. At the same time, I'm not simply going to trust someone because they say the earth is young unless lots and lots and lots of experts can repeat their results. That's where peer-review comes in. Because I am not an expert on these topics, I want evidence that these people who do nothing except study them to endorse it. Scientists operate in good faith: if someone falsifies data or conclusions, they can ruin the future experiments of other researchers and they will be found out. You get one chance. You might be wrong, but you cannot deceive or else you will lose all credibility. I would also mention that religious schools with respectable science departments DO publish things that support an old universe: I worked for one such department in college. At the same time, you sound as if you simply can not trust secular institutions--that all scientists there are liars. How could you make any scientific or technological progress without honesty if the facts you depend on are not reliable? Can't. "Plus the factor that this implies that the Bible is true (which would basically result in the ACLU suing over religion being taught in the public colleges, which is a no-no in the U.S. Supreme Court)?" Wrong. Let's say that scientists found evidence of a supernova that exploded at just about the time of Jesus' birth. That would then be a sceintific fact. The ACLU doesn't have an interest in suppressing facts, only that no taxpayer funds religious preaching. They don't suppress the fact that Romans practiced crucifixion, for instance, which is an important fact in the story of Jesus' life. The ACLU doesn't hate Jesus or Christians or Muslims or Cargo Cults. But they will object strenuously to any attempt at government indoctrination because of what the Constitution says. Now, finding a supernova in the sky might seem to validate the Biblical account. But, in fact, even if we prove that there was something in the sky at about that time, the best we can confidently conclude is that the story made it into the folklore of a region. Even if scientists could verify that the tomb of Jesus was empty on day 3, the scientist can't jump to the conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead. Bodies are disinterred far more often than they are resurrected. The verification of individual details do not validate an entire story, only the individual details. "But, for both of our sakes, I will contact AiG and tell them to please consider your e-mail and to respond to it, fair enough??" Sure. All I want are this guy's references and credentials. That way, I can fact check. I mean, they kept saying "Some studies have found" or "some scientists say", well, I want names. I, in fact, demand names, honestly, because any legitimate scientist would eagerly provide them. I think I did pretty well for an amateur last night, and they may be able to correct me on some things and clarify some points, but the burden of proof is still on them to show that their sources are in fact scientific. I'm warning you, this could shake up your worldview. When you start demanding solid evidence, a lot of religious beliefs become much harder to maintain.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: However...Pt 3
| Posted On: 03/22/07 04:22:26 PM |
Age 30, MO |
When you google the search terms, "law of causation" "sufficient reason" "law of identity" and "excluded middle", you get nine results for the entire web. I can certainly forgive myself for not being aware of those 9 websites--your assertion about "any intro to logic book"...well, I dunno. But the idea of contingent effect, if I'm reading it correctly, seems to say "caused (contingent) things are caused". A=A. Not much there in terms of philosophy. I looked up the "excluded middle," which is the logical premise that all assertions are either true or false--maybe that's true in an ideal world where perfect knowledge is possible--also maybe in math. Fortunately, my training is in the realm of real world argument. You might think about Stephen Toulmin's model of argument, which talks about real world arguments based on probability and qualifiers. I mean, practical experience shows that not everything is black and white. With Toulmin, you can say, "X is probably true, unless y." It's a more subtle form of reasoning and eschews the shortcomings of absolutist logic when dealing with practical issues. You do not consider that god might not be the root of "good" behavior. It might be the capacity for sympathy, which seems to be almost universal (with the possible exception of sociopaths). When you see someone throw a ball, many of the same areas light up as when you actually throw a ball yourself (these are called "mirror neurons"). This means that everyone "experiences" what those around them do and feel, even if it's vicarious. It's a very, very efficient learning tool because it's automatic. Perhaps we are nice to one another because it's nice to see people acting nicely? Perhaps we don't see murder as beneficial or the moral equivalent as erosion because all of the societies that evolved with murder as a virtue have killed themselves off? Eep! Ah, what fun! Playing with ideas. Gotta love it. Also, with respect to your final comment, it is often said that the mark of human genius is the ability to simultaneously hold conflicting and incompatible thoughts. I don't think we need to go that far in this case, however. hj hjhop.blogspot.com
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Re: Re: Interesting...
| Posted On: 03/22/07 03:32:01 PM |
Age 19, MN |
Two comments: One, I do have some logical reasons for the existence of God. Two: I can't guarentee that AiG will post your response, because they are very busy (however, they have posted, many a time, responses that would come from your position). There's no guarentee, anymore than from my position. Incidentally, I wasn't really trying to touch on the subject of other things like the "missing day" and so forth. My point was on the subject of the Red Shift. Incidentally...just because the article wasn't published by a secular college doesn't make it wrong. I mean, be honest with me, do you really expect a secular college to publish an article that would refute million/bilions of years?? If it did, what would that do for the scientific community in regards to evolution, the Big Bang, and other things?? Plus the factor that this implies that the Bible is true (which would basically result in the ACLU suing over religion being taught in the public colleges, which is a no-no in the U.S. Supreme Court)? But, for both of our sakes, I will contact AiG and tell them to please consider your e-mail and to respond to it, fair enough?? Have a good day!
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Re: Interesting...
| Posted On: 03/22/07 12:10:00 PM |
Age 30, MO |
"If you are wrong, are you willing to face the possible consequences? You said yourself that there's no evidence to prove or disprove God's existence, but that means it's even money on who could be right. Who's being more rational???" Big fallacy here. Just because there are two possible answers, yes there is a god or no there is not, does not mean that the likelihood that they exist is the same. For instance, you can say that yes or no, either there is or there isn't a telephone booth on the far side of the moon. We can't prove it wrong. Does that mean that they are both as likely? Not by a long shot. And if you told me that you KNEW that there was one there because the truth had been revealed to you, or it had spoken to you, I'd be forced to call the guys with white coats! Right? Now, you look at EVIDENCE and you can make some reasonable inferences: the odds of a bunch of atoms spontaneously lining up all at once in telephone booth form (which, incidentally, is exactly what creationists claim for complex forms of life) with the laws of physics is so improbable that for all human purposes to call it impossible. Not in a universe this old! Now, if you were to look at it on an eternal time scale, then yes, at some point, odds are a telephone booth will spontaneously appear--in fact, the odds demand it. Except the universe is of a finite age. So, probably not. I'm putting my money on the phone booth not being there. We have data about the universe that suggests its age. We have no data about god. I'm going with the numbers because they have never let me down. BTW, I looked at answers in creation, like you suggested. I wrote a very detailed considerate response, but I have not seen it posted yet. I'm worried that it might be censored, but I wanted you to know that I did try and I found it wanting in every way, for reasons that were clear in my post last night--should it ever be allowed up. If it doesn't go up, you should see that people are consciously keeping evidence from you and you should be angry that they are not letting you make up your own mind. hj hjhop.blogspot.com
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Re: Interesting 2
| Posted On: 03/22/07 01:47:20 AM |
Age 30, MO |
4. "Missing Antimatter." I'm not a particle physicist. Won't pretend to be. I don't even know if this is a valid assertion. 5. "Missing Time." Again, needs to be quoted. "Some experiments indicate that the universe may be young, on the order of 10,000 years old." Who did them? Which experiments? Evidence, buddy. Evidence. What journals were they published in? Anything? "Alien abductees" at least have stories to tell. C'mon here, I wasn't born yesterday. The burden of proof is on this guy to show me this, and given his shoddy performance thusfar, I'm not putting my chips on his number. 6. "Missing Mass." Again, I need to quote him: "Many scientists assume that the universe will eventually stop expanding and begin to collapse inward. Then it will again explode, and repeat its oscillating type of perpetual motion. This idea is an effort to avoid an origin and destiny for the universe." Whether or not the universe has the outward velocity to escape its mass, will slow down to an imperceptable crawl but never fall back on itself, or will collapse is a matter of pinning down the precise values for the force of gravity, I believe. Now, if the universe falls back on itself, do you not have the original conditions of the first explosion? Why not again? This guy's cosmology is horrific! 7. "Missing Life." This guy has no concept of how big the universe is. Imagine radio waves coming from the earth and spreading out, like the old RKO logo. As the waves become more diffuse, they become harder to detect. I believe exponentially so (it would have to do with the equasion of the surface area of a sphere). Not much of a chance there, I'm afraid. The sheer enormity of the universe makes even the thought of meaningful contact on a human time scale...highly unlikely. But we're looking! :) What does he have to say about redshift? His alternatives to a receding universe are: 1. "Gravitation." Gravity tugging on light would stretch it out. Unseen objects in the way are distorting the light, he says. OK, I think we just found his missing antimatter! Haha! 2. "Second-Order Doppler Effect" The universe is spinning around the earth. I thought we tossed that out with Copernicus? I don't know about the math for sure, but to account for the variations in redshift that we are interpreting as distance, wouldn't we have to have some unknown force operating that related specifically and exclusively to the earth? This is an updated Ptolmaic model of the universe--we have to privilege the earth as our vantage point. Nope. Can't do that. 3. "Photon Interaction." I need to quote because this is weaker than neo-ptolmaicism: "It is possible that light waves exchange energy during their movement across space and lose some energy in the process. A loss of light energy is equivalent to a "reddening" of its light. A theoretical understanding of this proposed "tired light" process has not yet been developed." NO MODEL? You mean you made it up!?! Of course, light has a constant speed. A basic premise of the atom bomb, which worked, by the way (e=mc^2). This is just...dumb. Listen, I'm an amateur, and I've done pretty well against this clown with the astronomy I studied in high school and taught in an astronomy lab in college. A professional would intellectually pants this guy. Do you have better evidence? A better source? Something with references, so I can check up on his sources? HJ hjhop.blogspot.com
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Re: Interesting...
| Posted On: 03/22/07 01:15:02 AM |
Age 30, MO |
I am going to answers in Genesis. I warn you, however, I have been a lifelong amateur astronomer. This is not my first time dancing around the astronomy may pole. I'm going to look for data, mind you. And I will look up sources. You deserve that much. First off, I looked at the author of the article "The Bible and Astronomy," Donald B. DeYoung's credentials.... It's not looking good. He doesn't have ANY publications in peer-reviewed science journals or university presses. In fact, only a bible college has ever published him. Their biology curriculum is a joke: "The department seeks to prepare students to serve as well-educated Christians in a secular world, engaging in careful thought about the relationship of biology to the Christian faith." I doubt that they say, biology doesn't care about what reilgion you are. But, ok, maybe he's completely undiscovered by established scientists. Inauspicious beginning though. His objections to the Big Bang: 1. "Missing Origin"--All matter/energy always had to exist. We have to go backwards in science, working from data. Not put the cart before the horse. In a philosophical sense, if the entire universe were a singluarity, it's difficult to talk about time, since it is measured in change (see relativity) and at a singularity there everything is on top of itself...that, however, only shows that we haven't worked all the way back or we don't understand singularity. Indeed, the laws of physics seem to break down in a singularity, or at least do really wierd things. 2. "Missing Fuse": Ok, this one is one that I would be curious about. Why go "pop" all of a sudden and how do you overcome such immense gravity and start to expand? I'm not sure. Does it, perhaps, depend on initial heat? This one I can't say. Now, that doesn't mean that there was not a natural cause, just I don't know what it is. There is still a perfectly viable baby in that bathwater. :) 3. "Missing Star Formation": A bit of this needs to be quoted: "No natural way has been found to explain the formation of planets, stars, and galaxies. An explosion should produce, at best, an outward spray of gas and radiation." He is talking about a chemical explosion. Gas? You don't even have atoms yet! Not even hydrogen! It will, however, eventually cool to allow the most basic element, hydrogen, to form. We have, however, detected the radiation. It's called the Cosmic Background Radiation. It's uneven (which means the Bing Bang likely asymetric). The unevenness sets the stage for the very natural process by which hydrogen gas clouds clump and coalesce--gravity alone probably does this, but I'm no expert. When a gas cloud reaches a certain density, the simple hydrogen atoms begin to fuse together under the pressure of gravity into helium (the next simplest atom). When the hydrogen runs out, the helium starts to fuse...and so on up the table of elements until iron, I think. At that point, the star becomes so dense that fusion into higher elements is no longer possible. The center collapses sending out a shockwave at very high speed, distributing all of the blown off complex atoms into space. That becomes the stuff of star systems. And the process begins again. Ejecta, over billions of years, forms new clouds from the debris of old stars and coalesce into disks of dust that form into planets. Very natural. Mostly cooling, a little fusion. No god needed. More coming...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: However...Pt 3
| Posted On: 03/21/07 09:48:54 PM |
Age 30, MO |
"How much you know, how little you understand, or are willingly ignorant of Truth, as in 2 Peter 3:5 (KJV) "For this they WILLINGLY ARE IGNORANT, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water..." Mr. Pot, Mr. Kettle. Read a science textbook. "But, to get back to your lame reasoning of God, Omniscience, and Free Will: 1. God did give us Perfect Free Will. 2. God, not being bound by Time, already knows if YOU ever came to your senses, finally putting your trust in Him and Christ's sacrifice for YOUR sins, or that YOU never did, and so end up damned for eternity." [Boy if I'm wrong, will my face be red!] "3. To say it, again...just because God ALREADY knows which direction your soul is headed does not mean YOU never had Free Will." So, you're answer is "No, you're wrong?" We call it the nanny-nanny boo-boo defense. Where does it say that god exists outside of time? You made that up. Haha. "If you believe this life is all the time we have on this planet, why do you waste so much of your precious, limited time arguing with Believers?" Consider it service to my fellow man. "When you declare yourself to be an atheist, you aren't declaring war on God...you are declaring war on your own conscience." My conscience has never ever been cleaner, bucko. Really. hj hjop.blogspot.com
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: However...Pt 3
| Posted On: 03/21/07 09:16:16 PM |
Age 45, AR |
I apologize, I assumed to much. Pick up any introduction to logic book and you will learn that logic is predicated on four foundational rules, the law of identity, the law of the excluded middle, the law of non-contradiction and the law of sufficient reason (otherwise known as the law of causation). These rules are taken in logic as first principles. They are necessary truths. It would be impossible to even attempt to prove these rules are false without employing reasoning techniques which take the rules as being true. The law of sufficient reason states that every contingent effect must have an efficient cause outside of itself. In short hand, there are no self caused contingent effects. It is illogical. To cause itself, the effect would have to exist and not exist at the same time and in the same relationship. So what is the cause of the human will? The will cannot cause itself, it would have to exist and not exist at the same time. This is a problem that atheism cannot overcome. Some atheists punt. They accept there is no human will. But, this comes at a price. If man has no will, you lose your right to make moral complaints. Some atheists say the will has a sufficient cause outside of itself, nature. But, this commits the naturalistic fallacy. It confuses descriptions with prescriptions. If the will and nature are synonymous, man never chooses, he only does what nature demands. Moral complaints against murder become as trivial as moral complaints against rocks eroding. Atheism lacks intellectual punch because it undermines the necessary predicates or foundations for human intellegence, morality, logic, and reason, but then claims intelligence, morality, logic and reason. Oil and water. It will not work. Your system is at war with itself. Your are, in Christian language, double minded.
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Interesting...
| Posted On: 03/21/07 08:56:31 PM |
Age 19, MN |
What strikes me so interesting is that you did not answer the question of whether you'd be open to hearing some evidence for Christianity. I didn't say that you had to accept it as true or that you couldn't try and counter the arguments. As far as your arguments for oral stories, you probably are correct that oral stories are less reliable than written ones in terms of accuracy. But, there's evidence to indicate that the history of the world is accurate from the Christian perspective. Also, there are alternative (and rational)explanations about the red shift (try this link if you are interested- http://www.answersingenesis.org/search/Default.aspx?qt=Red%20Shift-). By the way, you talk as if you've seen evolution yourself...have you? Finally, in regards to Pascal's Wager, you kinda shirked the point. If you are wrong, are you willing to face the possible consequences? You said yourself that there's no evidence to prove or disprove God's existence, but that means it's even money on who could be right. Who's being more rational??? Are you willing to look at some evidence or not? Have a great day!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: However...Pt 3
| Posted On: 03/21/07 08:28:53 PM |
Age 41, TX |
"Here's one that will blow your mind. God is omniscient. God is infallible. Because he is omniscient, he knows what you are going to do tomorrow. Because he is infallible, he cannot be wrong. Therefore it directly follows that you can not be said to have a real choice, because if you did, then god could be wrong, which, by definition he can not." How much you know, how little you understand, or are willingly ignorant of Truth, as in 2 Peter 3:5 (KJV) "For this they WILLINGLY ARE IGNORANT, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water..." But, to get back to your lame reasoning of God, Omniscience, and Free Will: 1. God did give us Perfect Free Will. 2. God, not being bound by Time, already knows if YOU ever came to your senses, finally putting your trust in Him and Christ's sacrifice for YOUR sins, or that YOU never did, and so end up damned for eternity. 3. To say it, again...just because God ALREADY knows which direction your soul is headed does not mean YOU never had Free Will. That argument is always brought up by COMMON scoffers, so I'm surprised that YOU took the time to use it...If you believe this life is all the time we have on this planet, why do you waste so much of your precious, limited time arguing with Believers? When you declare yourself to be an atheist, you aren't declaring war on God...you are declaring war on your own conscience. Ergo, your constant inward and outward battles with Truth?
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Re: Re: Re: They Like Jesus but not the Church
| Posted On: 03/21/07 05:25:53 PM |
Age 30, MO |
It's no pity to live like an unbeliever. An athiest realizes that this is your one shot. This life is not a test; this is the real deal. It makes everything all the more precious and everything you do more important. And, I think, it makes death a little less scary. I will be just as I was before I was born, and that's just fine. On another topic--Has anyone ever considered the church as a business? I mean, look at all the stuff that they are selling you on this website! Don't get me wrong, but when some yoga bozo tries to get me hooked on yoga to sell me his book and video, I react the same way. hj hjhop.blogspot.com
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: However...Pt 3
| Posted On: 03/21/07 05:19:29 PM |
Age 30, MO |
You'll have to explain the law of sufficient reason. I have a feeling that it is a principle generated to justify a certain type of believe that already existed, but your comment means very little without a definition.
hj hjhop.blogspot.com
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Re: Re: Re: Hmmmm
| Posted On: 03/21/07 04:59:13 PM |
Age 30, MO |
"Kinda weird, especially since we haven't been able to replicate it on any scale (think of Mount St. Helens or Hiroshima or Katrina)." Yeah, we haven't been able to replicate a moon, but we know it's there. "But it wouldn't be weird to you since you assume (rightly or wrongly) that there isn't a god at all out there, just like I assume that there is a god (rightly or wrongly again) and come to the conclusion that Jesus rising from the dead is not totally improbable (especially if He was God)." No. It is totally improbable. I mean, you'd have to work out the numbers, what the likelihood of all the bits of his body reassembling after a few day's death. And that, my friend, is really, really unlikely. But it could happen. The chances against are countless orders of magnitude beyond what we could reasonably expect given the age of the universe, but it still could happen. It would sure look like a miracle, but would not necessarily be one. It is still _possible_, however improbable. 'Oh rats! HJ's right after all, there's no afterlife.' It is not like I'll die and be dissapointed." For the sake of space, I am omitting what is essentially a restatement Pascal's Wager. Basically, Pascal said: "If I don't believe and I'm wrong, it's far worse what will happen to me than what happens if I do believe and I'm right." Except that that's no evidence for the truth or untruth of God's existence! And the motivation to believe is just to avoid punishment? How lame a faith is that? hj hjhop.blogspot.com
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Re: Re: Re: Hmmmm Pt. 1
| Posted On: 03/21/07 04:58:23 PM |
Age 30, MO |
"Realize though, from the Christian perspective, you would believe in some apparently weird stuff too." You're absolutely right. The truth is stranger than any fiction that we can make up, and I don't mean to be glib. It's a wierd universe. But you have to understand that the difference between my (admitted) wierdness and yours is that I have observations and data. For instance, redshifted light from distant galaxies that indicate motion away in all directions--go backward in time, and everything is on top of one another it HAS to be. (Redshift is like the doppler effect for light waves and gives direction--hence we can tell which way the wind is moving with doppler radar.) Same principle: the waves are just a little bit elongated. The cosmic background radiation: remnants of something really really, hot, huge and uniform (more or less) across the sky. Whatever was so darned hot, it was everywhere at once. This is not an opinion, only the most logical explanation. I have observable evidence, not the contradictory 5000 year-old oral traditions of a nomadic tribe. I mean, I study oral traditions for a living--really. (I teach at the college level.) You know the first creation story? It was a song originally sung by illiterate bards. It has all of the hallmarks of the song of an oral culture, the product of an oral culture: in order to be memorable (they have no writting and spend a LOT of time just keeping knowledge alive by telling stories), there is repetition, big memorable events--it's what's called oral formulaic poetry. Oral formulaic composition, like the one told in, say, the first 20 verses or so of Genesis--it was never, NEVER told exactly the same way twice. In fact, they never would have conceived of it as being perfectly repeatable until it was written down. Really, I don't make this up. A great read is Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy. It talks about the changes in the mind that are made possible by literacy. Clearly, the modern conception of religion is completely different than that of the people who first compiled those stories. Ours is certainly a post-literate conception of reality--literacy makes all sorts of abstract and syllogistic thought possible. There's a reason why the first culture to make an alphabet with vowels was also the first to come up with systematic philosophy (Greeks). It's interesting because God "speaks" the world into existence in Genesis. He doesn't "think" about it into existance like Plato's prime mover--god as systematic philosopher is clearly a post-literate abstraction. I'm trying to be as clear as possible. Beowulf and Homer are also examples of oral formulaic poetry and they show numerous characterisics shared by the first Genesis account.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: However...Pt 3
| Posted On: 03/21/07 02:11:03 PM |
Age 45, AR |
God's decree (what you are calling his omniscience and infallibility) is the necessary precondition for man's ability to choose. Remember the law of sufficient reason? Atheists always get backed into a corner of having to say that either man self-determines his own will or that nature determines man's will. If man determines his own will then we have a self caused cause, which is illogical. If nature determines man's will, then we have hard determinism. Man has no free will and arguments are a waste of time. You are predestined by nature to believe what you believe as am I, and it is useless to argue about it, neither of us can change what we are predestined to believe. Christianity has the intellectually superior position. Our perfect, personal God has created us such that there is a sufficient cause for our choices and yet they are our choices, we remain morally responsible for them. God's decree and man's responsibility are compatible. This is the only explanation which makes sense of your desire to debate and argue. You assume that your words are logical, therefore, the law of sufficient reason must be in place. Yet, you also assume that man is responsible for the positions he takes, and that man can change. Your atheism fails to make sense of your argument. Christianity alone accounts for your arguments.
Next, nature is not a transcendental. We are a part of nature, remember? If nature is all that is, nothing transcends nature, right? Therefore, no transcendentals, by definition.
Finally, I did not say that atheists cannot think in moral terms. Atheists do think in moral terms, unavoidably so. Atheists are created by God, they bear God's image, and God is inescapably revealed to atheists. Atheists know what God demands and they are able to conform themselves, in part to God's moral requirements. Atheists cannot account for the fact that they do think in moral terms. Nothing transcends man in your system of thought. Therefore, man is never obligated to do or think anything. If you were a good atheist, you would act consistent with this truth.
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