re: Questions For Theists To Answer

[Al Farabi]

Why does the universe need a reason to have been made?

This question presupposes that one of my arguments for the existence of God is that the universe needed a reason to be made. The fact that a reason exists (God’s will) does not in any way indicate that a reason was needed. Saying that presence indicates necessity is ludicrous.

What sanctioned your god making the universe?
Who says that God needs to be sanctioned? By whose authority do you propose He was bound? The idea that a sanction was required presupposes the existence of a higher authority. One of the fundamental properties of the very IDEA of God, is that there is none.

Can you prove that your god exists?
Nope. Can you prove He doesn’t? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Science.

Why do we use the original 10 commandments rather than the replacements that God gave to Moses after Moses broke the tables containing them?
Because it makes no functional difference? The only differences are ones of slight rephrasing. The order and meanings remain the same, so what difference does it make? Do you really care that much that we use the version that says “You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.” Instead of the one that says “You shall not kill. Neither shall you commit adultery. Neither shall you steal?”

If God is all-loving, why does he order people to death for crimes they DID NOT EVEN COMMIT?
That seems unfair to us, for sure, but again you are taking yourself outside the bounds of the argument. Your question assumes (in a very humanistic, atheistic way) that human moral ideals bind God. Who are you to say who God can and can’t kill? This is putting God beneath you, which is fundamentally against the spirit of Theism. God is transcendent of the rules of this universe. In fact, one could even argue that murder is only wrong because it is a sort of playing God. God can kill whoever he wants, but you can’t because you aren’t God.

Does God have the right to rule the universe?
The question of God’s right to be in charge is a very atheistic one. It is also not logically defensible. Firstly, it is based on the purely atheistic assumption that the universe would continue to function without God. The fact that this is not true to a theistic cosmology means that this argument is not valid. Until you prove the proposition that the universe would function without God, and he is simply choosing to rule, your question has no meaning.
Secondly, the spirit of the question is a bit silly as well. Let me give an example. The Large Hadron Collider. There are very few people who can operate it, and they, logically, are the ones who operate it. Theoretically, I’m sure they could just start it up, and leave forever and let be what will be. They don’t do this because they want to have someone to make sure that things don’t get totally out of hands and explode and destroy all that work (not to mention the lives at stake). Nobody questions their right to be the ones operating the LHC, because that would be silly.

Can you show that God is not a malevolent, omnipotent and all-deceiving being?
Nope. Can you show that anyone is not a malevolent, omnipotent, and all-deceiving being? You just can’t operate under that assumption.

How is God going to punish me if I don't believe he exists?
If you believe Danté, you go to Limbo, which is essentially the Garden of Eden. It’s actually a pretty sweet deal; you get to hang out forever in like a really pleasant place and chat it up with Socrates and Plato. Not too shabby! You just don’t get to experience perfect alignment with God`s will, but if you don’t believe he exists then that isn’t much of a punishment.

How can you prove that your scriptures (Bible, Koran, Torah, whatever) really represents the will of God, and not the humans, who wrote it?
How can you prove that your Scientific Laws really represent the way the universe works and not the ideas of the humans who wrote it? Don’t hold Religion to more rigorous standards than you hold Science.

Can God create a rock so big that he cannot lift it?
A big rock is only hard to move because it and you are affected by the laws governing the universe. God is not. Logically, God would never find a rock, no matter how big he made it, hard to move at all.

[scikidus]

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Why does the universe need a reason to have been made?

This question presupposes that one of my arguments for the existence of God is that the universe needed a reason to be made. The fact that a reason exists (God’s will) does not in any way indicate that a reason was needed. Saying that presence indicates necessity is ludicrous.

Presence indicating necessity is indeed ridiculous. However, you have misunderstood the question. Science gives us a few ideas on how the universe formed. If you believe that God made the universe, then you are rejecting those ideas. How do you propose God made the universe? Is the previous question really scientific?

Originally Said by Al Farabi

What sanctioned your god making the universe?
Who says that God needs to be sanctioned? By whose authority do you propose He was bound? The idea that a sanction was required presupposes the existence of a higher authority. One of the fundamental properties of the very IDEA of God, is that there is none.

Again, you misunderstand the question. The question is: "Why did your particular god (over any other hypothetical entities) make the universe, and why did he make the universe in the first place?"

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Can you prove that your god exists?
Nope. Can you prove He doesn’t? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Science.

Can you prove that there isn't an invisible unicorn in your bathroom which stays perfectly silent and moves out of the way when you walk in?

And actually, I can prove that the Semitic god (Yahweh/Allah) does nto exist under the criteria supplied by theists. There are many proofs that omnipotentence, omniscience, free will, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, etc. are impossible. If you say that they are possible outside of out logic, then you have left the field of evidence and have moved into pure faith, where you can't trust anything.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Why do we use the original 10 commandments rather than the replacements that God gave to Moses after Moses broke the tables containing them?
Because it makes no functional difference? The only differences are ones of slight rephrasing. The order and meanings remain the same, so what difference does it make? Do you really care that much that we use the version that says “You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.” Instead of the one that says “You shall not kill. Neither shall you commit adultery. Neither shall you steal?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCz0-HY1TLU

Originally Said by Al Farabi

If God is all-loving, why does he order people to death for crimes they DID NOT EVEN COMMIT?
That seems unfair to us, for sure, but again you are taking yourself outside the bounds of the argument. Your question assumes (in a very humanistic, atheistic way) that human moral ideals bind God. Who are you to say who God can and can’t kill? This is putting God beneath you, which is fundamentally against the spirit of Theism. God is transcendent of the rules of this universe. In fact, one could even argue that murder is only wrong because it is a sort of playing God. God can kill whoever he wants, but you can’t because you aren’t God.

So you are saying that our mortal definition of "moral" doesn't apply, because God might use a different definition.

Congrats: you have just killed religion. After all, if God can redefine words, what's to stop him from redefining everything in the fucking Bible? Maybe God is Satan, and Hell is Heaven and Heaven is Hell. All good Chirstians go to Hell. Interesting. Maybe by "no man shall sleep with another man" God really means "no man shall get to decide who can sleep with whom, because it's non eof their fucking business in the first place."

Thank you.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Does God have the right to rule the universe?
The question of God’s right to be in charge is a very atheistic one.

Well, duh, we're atheists. And "atheist" is the adjective as well, so no need to "atheistic."

Originally Said by Al Farabi

It is also not logically defensible. Firstly, it is based on the purely atheistic assumption that the universe would continue to function without God.

Why shouldn't it? The laws of nature hodl up perfectly fine, and last I checked, God isn't in Einstein, Newton, or Maxwell's equations.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

The fact that this is not true to a theistic cosmology means that this argument is not valid.

In other words: My beliefs say that your question is wrong, therefore your question is wrong. In other words: I say you're wrong, so therefore you're wrong.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Until you prove the proposition that the universe would function without God, and he is simply choosing to rule, your question has no meaning.

*observes that the universe keeps working*
*notes that no one's heard from your God in a few millennia*
Q.E.D.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Secondly, the spirit of the question is a bit silly as well. Let me give an example. The Large Hadron Collider. There are very few people who can operate it, and they, logically, are the ones who operate it. Theoretically, I’m sure they could just start it up, and leave forever and let be what will be.

Completely wrong. The LArge Hadron Collider cannot and should not be compared to the universe. The LHC requires constant fine-tuning and control. It is a simulator at best, an machine for conducting experiments. The universe is simply a bunch of matter and energy following a bunch of rules.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

They don’t do this because they want to have someone to make sure that things don’t get totally out of hands and explode and destroy all that work (not to mention the lives at stake). Nobody questions their right to be the ones operating the LHC, because that would be silly.

Actually, you're completely wrong. Many scientific boards weigh in on the functioning of the LHC, not to mention the European Union and multiple anti-LHC groups. And again, you can leave the unievrse alone and it'll work. Teh LHC will stop working immeadiately.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Can you show that God is not a malevolent, omnipotent and all-deceiving being?
Nope. Can you show that anyone is not a malevolent, omnipotent, and all-deceiving being? You just can’t operate under that assumption.

That's not an assumption, it's a question. How do you know that your God hasn't just lied to you all of the way through? He's told you a bunch of stuff that is compleely untestable. That's part of religion: you have to take the Bible on faith. God could be competely bullshitting you, and you wouldn't know it. Heck, maybe God is gay, and he's really pissed off that you misread that part of the Bible. Porp 8 makes God cry rainbows. Ha ha.

On the other hand, science makes testable predictions. We know that Einstein isn't bulshitting us, because his work made many testable predictions, all of which were found to be true. It validated his work.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

How is God going to punish me if I don't believe he exists?
If you believe Danté, you go to Limbo, which is essentially the Garden of Eden. It’s actually a pretty sweet deal; you get to hang out forever in like a really pleasant place and chat it up with Socrates and Plato. Not too shabby! You just don’t get to experience perfect alignment with God`s will, but if you don’t believe he exists then that isn’t much of a punishment.

And how do you know Danté isn't bulshitting us?

Originally Said by Al Farabi

How can you prove that your scriptures (Bible, Koran, Torah, whatever) really represents the will of God, and not the humans, who wrote it?
How can you prove that your Scientific Laws really represent the way the universe works and not the ideas of the humans who wrote it? Don’t hold Religion to more rigorous standards than you hold Science.

That is stupid. I hold science to much, much higher standards than I do for relgion, and science still passes much mroe often than religion does.

We know that the scientific laws represent the way the universe works becasue the universe follows those laws. Weve shown this experimentally millions of times. Were we to find that there was a descrepency, we would observe the available data and develop several testable ideas to replace the failed idea.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Can God create a rock so big that he cannot lift it?
A big rock is only hard to move because it and you are affected by the laws governing the universe. God is not. Logically, God would never find a rock, no matter how big he made it, hard to move at all.

So you're saying that there's something that God cannot create.

That violates the definition of omnipotent. Logic is irrelevant: the definition of omnipotent trumps any natural logic.

And again, if you want to redefine omnipotent to be suseptible to logic, then I can redefine the Bible to promote atheism.

Your argument has been terminated. Good day.

[tagnostic]

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Why does the universe need a reason to have been made?

This question presupposes that one of my arguments for the existence of God is that the universe needed a reason to be made. The fact that a reason exists (God’s will) does not in any way indicate that a reason was needed. Saying that presence indicates necessity is ludicrous.

I'm not sure where your coming from here, what presupposed argument, and why does the existence of the universe have anything to do with a "celestial being", it is what it is regardless of what you personally believe. Then you come back in the same statement(s) and say that a reason does exist that it's a higher beings will, which is it? there doesn't need to be a reason, or that the reason (from your perspective) is that its (insert)higher powers will?

What sanctioned your god making the universe?
Who says that God needs to be sanctioned? By whose authority do you propose He was bound? The idea that a sanction was required presupposes the existence of a higher authority. One of the fundamental properties of the very IDEA of God, is that there is none.

Can you prove that your god exists?
Nope. Can you prove He doesn’t? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Science.

the difference i don't rely on that circular argument, you say that the absence of the existance of a higher power is "OK" yet my physical proofs are insubstantial logically, yet i believe that in every other aspect of your life you take these 'scientific' physical laws into account. why is it that you can mentally hold these laws in abeyance when it doesn't reconcile with your personal beliefs that defy them?

Why do we use the original 10 commandments rather than the replacements that God gave to Moses after Moses broke the tables containing them?
Because it makes no functional difference? The only differences are ones of slight rephrasing. The order and meanings remain the same, so what difference does it make? Do you really care that much that we use the version that says “You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.” Instead of the one that says “You shall not kill. Neither shall you commit adultery. Neither shall you steal?”

no one is arguing whats moral or what someone said to someone else centuries ago,
its not relevant

If God is all-loving, why does he order people to death for crimes they DID NOT EVEN COMMIT?
That seems unfair to us, for sure, but again you are taking yourself outside the bounds of the argument. Your question assumes (in a very humanistic, atheistic way) that human moral ideals bind God. Who are you to say who God can and can’t kill? This is putting God beneath you, which is fundamentally against the spirit of Theism. God is transcendent of the rules of this universe. In fact, one could even argue that murder is only wrong because it is a sort of playing God. God can kill whoever he wants, but you can’t because you aren’t God.

no one is trying to play god, if there ain't one why pretend. if you take god out of the equation it's called genocide/murder who wants that? its moral not religous.



Does God have the right to rule the universe?
The question of God’s right to be in charge is a very atheistic one.
[/quote]
that's non sequitor how can i deny the right of something i don't believe in?
no question, no problem.

It is also not logically defensible. Firstly, it is based on the purely atheistic assumption that the universe would continue to function without God. The fact that this is not true to a theistic cosmology means that this argument is not valid. Until you prove the proposition that the universe would function without God, and he is simply choosing to rule, your question has no meaning.

not defending, the universe seems to be just fine.

Secondly, the spirit of the question is a bit silly as well. Let me give an example. The Large Hadron Collider. There are very few people who can operate it, and they, logically, are the ones who operate it. Theoretically, I’m sure they could just start it up, and leave forever and let be what will be. They don’t do this because they want to have someone to make sure that things don’t get totally out of hands and explode and destroy all that work (not to mention the lives at stake). Nobody questions their right to be the ones operating the LHC, because that would be silly.

wut

Can you show that God is not a malevolent, omnipotent and all-deceiving being?
Nope. Can you show that anyone is not a malevolent, omnipotent, and all-deceiving being? You just can’t operate under that assumption.

i don't have to prove that humans don't exist, i accept the fact that not all people are not the same and don't have the same world view as i do, you on the other hand have stated as fact an unprovable belief, the burden of proof is on you.

How is God going to punish me if I don't believe he exists?
If you believe Danté, you go to Limbo, which is essentially the Garden of Eden. It’s actually a pretty sweet deal; you get to hang out forever in like a really pleasant place and chat it up with Socrates and Plato. Not too shabby! You just don’t get to experience perfect alignment with God`s will, but if you don’t believe he exists then that isn’t much of a punishment.

what if i don't believe in Dante'?

How can you prove that your scriptures (Bible, Koran, Torah, whatever) really represents the will of God, and not the humans, who wrote it?
How can you prove that your Scientific Laws really represent the way the universe works and not the ideas of the humans who wrote it? Don’t hold Religion to more rigorous standards than you hold Science.

well my science says that gravity works, your religion says that people can fly, lets find out.

Can God create a rock so big that he cannot lift it?
A big rock is only hard to move because it and you are affected by the laws governing the universe. God is not. Logically, God would never find a rock, no matter how big he made it, hard to move at all.

so, logically god can't find a rock he created?

thank you so much
for bringing this in
such a polite and
considered way.

[Al Farabi]

Originally Said by scikidus

Presence indicating necessity is indeed ridiculous. However, you have misunderstood the question. Science gives us a few ideas on how the universe formed. If you believe that God made the universe, then you are rejecting those ideas. How do you propose God made the universe? Is the previous question really scientific?

Okay well the question you pose is not the one that was asked. It is a good one though, so I'll address it.

I don't think that the idea of God creating the universe is mutually exclusive with any other idea at all. You like the big bang? God caused the bang. String theory? God manipulates the Branes. All a creator indicates is a reliable First Cause.

Originally Said by scikidus

Again, you misunderstand the question. The question is: "Why did your particular god (over any other hypothetical entities) make the universe, and why did he make the universe in the first place?"

Again, this isn't what was actually asked, but a much better question. And the answer is (you're gonna like this) we will probably never know! This is getting into motivations for actions. How can we speculate on motivation for an action? God wanted to. Why did you create your particular post, instead of some other member?

Originally Said by scikidus

Can you prove that there isn't an invisible unicorn in your bathroom which stays perfectly silent and moves out of the way when you walk in?

That is exactly my point, actually. It's a silly question, isn't it?

Originally Said by scikidus

And actually, I can prove that the Semitic god (Yahweh/Allah) does nto exist under the criteria supplied by theists. There are many proofs that omnipotentence, omniscience, free will, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, etc. are impossible. If you say that they are possible outside of out logic, then you have left the field of evidence and have moved into pure faith, where you can't trust anything.

I find this difficult to believe. I would like to be shown these proofs.

Originally Said by scikidus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCz0-HY1TLU

That doesn't connect to my response in any way. I said it made no difference which of the two one abides by, and I think this was a strong response to the question posed. I can't help but notice you ignored this. Regardless, this video is funny. Incorrect, but funny anyway. Issues I noticed in order I noticed them:

The decimal system, and in fact all of the "Ten-is official" examples he gave, were not present in egypt at the time the bible is thought to have been written.

I thought at first he had messed up the first three, but then on a second viewing I noticed that he got the commandments totally wrong. He completely missed the 2nd (You shall not make for yourself any graven image, or any likeness blah blah blah... the no idols one. I don't wanna write it out. Exodus 20:4), and turned the 10th (You shall not covet thy neighbour's wife or house or ass or manservent...etc.) into two different commandments. I think this somewhat undercuts his poosition of authoruty on the subject, but we continue.

George asserts that Thievery and Bearing false witness are the same because they are both dishonest. He is missing a fundemental difference though. The ten commandments are split in order to distinguish between personal crimes, and ones that damage the community as a whole (as reflected in the layout of Dante's inferno). Thievery will hurt the person you steal from. Bearing false witness is an attack on the foundations of the justice system. Different? Yes, enough that they ought to be seperate.

Again, can coveting and adultery be put together? Well, no for sure if you consider the fact that coveting includes their stuff. Clearly it is not just about faithfulness. But even sticking with Carlin's commandments, they don't quite work. The do not covet one is saying that the thought is bad, independent of the action itself. Similar to the way that racism is wrong even if you never hurt a minority.

Finally, Killing. Here is a common mistake: equating the actions of the church with the will of God. There are many popes in Hell, my friend. Just because the church breaks the rules doesn't mean they aren't still rules. The church is not above God.

Originally Said by scikidus

So you are saying that our mortal definition of "moral" doesn't apply, because God might use a different definition.

Congrats: you have just killed religion. After all, if God can redefine words, what's to stop him from redefining everything in the fucking Bible? Maybe God is Satan, and Hell is Heaven and Heaven is Hell. All good Chirstians go to Hell. Interesting. Maybe by "no man shall sleep with another man" God really means "no man shall get to decide who can sleep with whom, because it's non eof their fucking business in the first place."

You misunderstand me utterly completely. I'm saying that God is the only one who can end life. If God ends a life, it is natural for that person to die then, because what is natural and what is God's will are the same. If you kill someone, you are playing God, and that is wrong. God is above morality, because God cannot be bound by any of our rules, at all, ever. If he is bound by our rules he is not God.

Originally Said by scikidus

Why shouldn't it? The laws of nature hodl up perfectly fine, and last I checked, God isn't in Einstein, Newton, or Maxwell's equations.

Actually, Einstein believed very strongly in God for his whole life, and was motivated in his science by a desire to know how the universe worked in order to understand God. Newton too, was trying to understand the cosmos, as they were established by God. He was a religious man. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive in any way.

That aside, If God created the universe, wouldn't it follow that He created the laws of nature? All of our science is just trying to understand God's creation in all it's complexity.

Originally Said by scikidus

In other words: My beliefs say that your question is wrong, therefore your question is wrong. In other words: I say you're wrong, so therefore you're wrong.

Actually what I meant was that the question is rooted only in atheistic beliefs, and does not address or attempt to refute and theistic beliefs. The question is not resolvable because for any side to win the other would have to accept unestablished premises that are outside their belief system. So the question, literally, in unanswerable and wrong.

Originally Said by scikidus

*observes that the universe keeps working*
*notes that no one's heard from your God in a few millennia*
Q.E.D.

Again, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Sorry. Besides, not everyone thinks God ever directly talked to people at all. The bible is allegorical (a fact that is accepted by all but the fundementalist christian ideologies). God may never have contacted anyone ever. The idea of God, however, was concieved independently all across the world in thousands of different cultures, and is present in such thought as Aristotle, who concieved that, even though the universe could have no beginning or end, there had to be an "Initial Cause" that got the first things in motion.

Originally Said by scikidus

Completely wrong. The LArge Hadron Collider cannot and should not be compared to the universe. The LHC requires constant fine-tuning and control. It is a simulator at best, an machine for conducting experiments. The universe is simply a bunch of matter and energy following a bunch of rules.

Maybe the universe needs "constant fine-tuning and control" as well. Maybe God is the one doing this. The universe is following rules put in place by God just like how the LHC is behaving such as the operators control it.

Originally Said by scikidus

Actually, you're completely wrong. Many scientific boards weigh in on the functioning of the LHC, not to mention the European Union and multiple anti-LHC groups. And again, you can leave the unievrse alone and it'll work. Teh LHC will stop working immeadiately.

I'm sure there is a way you could get it to just keep running as long as there was power. But that is beside the point, because my point above answers this too. Again, who says you can leave the universe alone. That is not evidence against God, that is the asssumption that there is no God.

Originally Said by scikidus

That's not an assumption, it's a question. How do you know that your God hasn't just lied to you all of the way through? He's told you a bunch of stuff that is compleely untestable. That's part of religion: you have to take the Bible on faith. God could be competely bullshitting you, and you wouldn't know it. Heck, maybe God is gay, and he's really pissed off that you misread that part of the Bible. Porp 8 makes God cry rainbows. Ha ha.

I'm not sure what I was to take away from this. First I would like to say that God's word for me is verified the same way as relativity is for you.

I read something (the bible) or heard something (from anothe religious person) that told me it had been tested and verified. Now I just have to have faith that it's true!"

You read something (a book or magazine or journal or web page) or heard something (from a similarly inclined person) that told you it had been tested and verified. Now you just have to have faith that it's true!

That aside, As I stated earlier, if God created the rules by which the universe operates, then all we are discovering through scientific endeavour is about God's creations. That's why science is good, and was praised by many theological thinkers like Al Farabi (an early egyptian thinker and, obviously, my screen name), Moses Maimonedes, and St. Thomas Aquinas thought that natural philosophy (the precurser to modern science) was absolutely vital. Science lets us know God through His creation.

I'm also offended by your assumption that because I believe in God I am against Gay Marriage. I have no issue with Gay marriage. I can see how the bible could be interpreted to say that, but that's a stupid, ignorant, and clearly wrong way of interprating it. That said, you have no right to make that kind of assumption, nor to directly attack my beliefs ("Porp 8 makes God cry rainbows. Ha ha"). This is not grade 3.

Originally Said by scikidus

That's part of religion: you have to take the Bible on faith

I couldn't have said it better myself. Eventually no matter what you believe, you are going on faith. Whether it's faith in God or faith that Science can eventually explain everything, it is faith. The intolerance of faiths for each other is the biggest problem for humanity and always has been. Your intolerance of all others is no better.

Originally Said by scikidus

On the other hand, science makes testable predictions. We know that Einstein isn't bulshitting us, because his work made many testable predictions, all of which were found to be true. It validated his work.

And how do you know Danté isn't bulshitting us?[/quote]

Well Dante was a poet, and his poem was an allegory, and I was actually trying to be lighthearted about this. Yes, Dante was making up his own ideas. He has no basis in scripture and never tried to do anything more than make up a story. So in short he WAS bullshitting us.

The point is, there are many different beliefs about that. I personally think that you still go to heaven if you were virtuous.

Originally Said by scikidus

That is stupid. I hold science to much, much higher standards than I do for relgion, and science still passes much mroe often than religion does.

We know that the scientific laws represent the way the universe works becasue the universe follows those laws. Weve shown this experimentally millions of times. Were we to find that there was a descrepency, we would observe the available data and develop several testable ideas to replace the failed idea.[/quote]

I won't say the thing about God creating universal laws again, but I will say this:
I'm sorry, please read up on the reformation and maybe read some theology and then re-examine that picture, and your argument. That is ignorant and false, and hardly representative of all belief in God. We are not all literalists.

Originally Said by scikidus

So you're saying that there's something that God cannot create.

That violates the definition of omnipotent. Logic is irrelevant: the definition of omnipotent trumps any natural logic.

And again, if you want to redefine omnipotent to be suseptible to logic, then I can redefine the Bible to promote atheism.

If logic is irrelevant then there is no paradox. Logic says there is a problem. If logic is null, then there is no problem to consider in the first place! Nice!

Additionally, if you decide you want logic back, consider:

1. God is not limited in the size of stone he can move
2. God is not limited in the sie of stone he can create

Tell me where the problem lies now?

[tagnostic]

Originally Said by Al Farabi

1. God is not limited in the size of stone he can move
2. God is not limited in the sie of stone he can create

Tell me where the problem lies now?

god is stoned?

[Al Farabi]

hahahahahaha well said.










...so do I win?

[scikidus]

Nope. I'm writing a response. I'm busy though so give it a little while.

[Al Farabi]

I eagerly await

[scikidus]

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Okay well the question you pose is not the one that was asked. It is a good one though, so I'll address it.

I don't think that the idea of God creating the universe is mutually exclusive with any other idea at all. You like the big bang? God caused the bang. String theory? God manipulates the Branes. All a creator indicates is a reliable First Cause.

If God exists, it is certainly possible that he did those things. But saying so is not scientific, it is religious. If it were scientific, I could go on and ask about the nature of God. But God prevents questioning. So we are simply using a God of the gaps fallacious argument.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Again, this isn't what was actually asked, but a much better question. And the answer is (you're gonna like this) we will probably never know! This is getting into motivations for actions. How can we speculate on motivation for an action? God wanted to. Why did you create your particular post, instead of some other member?

So how is it scientific to assume that God did it? That's God of the gaps.

And I made my post instead of some other member because I do not know if any othe rmember will make the points that I wanted to make. There are no costs to posting on this forum, so it was worth my time to respond.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

That is exactly my point, actually. It's a silly question, isn't it?

Yes, exactly. Of course there's no invisible unicorn in your bathroom! That's rediciulous!

I'm simply extending that idea to God.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

I find this difficult to believe. I would like to be shown these proofs.

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.p...istence_of_God

There's one more that I developed, that isn't on that list. If I were to run into the Vatican. find the Pope, and shove several ounces of cyanide down his throat, would he survive?

This isn't against "Do not test the Lord" because he's not testing the lord, I am.

Plus, the Pope is supposed to be God's representative on earth. Shoudln't he have the highest chance of surviving? Or would God be too unresponsive to act before the cyanide kicked in?

Originally Said by Al Farabi

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCz0-HY1TLU"]

That doesn't connect to my response in any way. I said it made no difference which of the two one abides by, and I think this was a strong response to the question posed. I can't help but notice you ignored this. Regardless, this video is funny. Incorrect, but funny anyway. Issues I noticed in order I noticed them:

The decimal system, and in fact all of the "Ten-is official" examples he gave, were not present in egypt at the time the bible is thought to have been written.

I thought at first he had messed up the first three, but then on a second viewing I noticed that he got the commandments totally wrong. He completely missed the 2nd (You shall not make for yourself any graven image, or any likeness blah blah blah... the no idols one. I don't wanna write it out. Exodus 20:4), and turned the 10th (You shall not covet thy neighbour's wife or house or ass or manservent...etc.) into two different commandments. I think this somewhat undercuts his poosition of authoruty on the subject, but we continue.

George asserts that Thievery and Bearing false witness are the same because they are both dishonest. He is missing a fundemental difference though. The ten commandments are split in order to distinguish between personal crimes, and ones that damage the community as a whole (as reflected in the layout of Dante's inferno). Thievery will hurt the person you steal from. Bearing false witness is an attack on the foundations of the justice system. Different? Yes, enough that they ought to be seperate.

Again, can coveting and adultery be put together? Well, no for sure if you consider the fact that coveting includes their stuff. Clearly it is not just about faithfulness. But even sticking with Carlin's commandments, they don't quite work. The do not covet one is saying that the thought is bad, independent of the action itself. Similar to the way that racism is wrong even if you never hurt a minority.

Finally, Killing. Here is a common mistake: equating the actions of the church with the will of God. There are many popes in Hell, my friend. Just because the church breaks the rules doesn't mean they aren't still rules. The church is not above God.

Yes. In truth, that was just for fun.

Personally, I don't know why that's one of the questions for theists to answer, because ti doesn't make sense.

I find that really the Ten Commandments just boil down to "Don't Be Evil."

Originally Said by Al Farabi

You misunderstand me utterly completely. I'm saying that God is the only one who can end life. If God ends a life, it is natural for that person to die then, because what is natural and what is God's will are the same. If you kill someone, you are playing God, and that is wrong. God is above morality, because God cannot be bound by any of our rules, at all, ever. If he is bound by our rules he is not God.

So if God isn't bound by morality, and the ide aof "good" and "evil" are defined under morality, who are we to say that god is omnibenevolent?

Also, why should God be the only one who can end lives? Evolution has trained billions of living creatures to kill off the weakest. Are you saying that God intervenes every single time?

Oh, and watch this. It's not directly connected to that last statement, but it makes you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Actually, Einstein believed very strongly in God for his whole life, and was motivated in his science by a desire to know how the universe worked in order to understand God. Newton too, was trying to understand the cosmos, as they were established by God. He was a religious man. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive in any way.

Although they may have been religious, that doesn't affect their equations. "E=mc^2" doesn't contain a god clause.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

That aside, If God created the universe, wouldn't it follow that He created the laws of nature? All of our science is just trying to understand God's creation in all it's complexity.

The laws of nature may have been in place before the universe veen existed.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Actually what I meant was that the question is rooted only in atheistic beliefs, and does not address or attempt to refute and theistic beliefs. The question is not resolvable because for any side to win the other would have to accept unestablished premises that are outside their belief system. So the question, literally, in unanswerable and wrong.

Fair enough.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Again, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Sorry. Besides, not everyone thinks God ever directly talked to people at all. The bible is allegorical (a fact that is accepted by all but the fundementalist christian ideologies). God may never have contacted anyone ever. The idea of God, however, was concieved independently all across the world in thousands of different cultures, and is present in such thought as Aristotle, who concieved that, even though the universe could have no beginning or end, there had to be an "Initial Cause" that got the first things in motion.

It is true that the absence of evidenc eis not the evidence of absence. However, hwne something has never been observed to exist, and it is impossible ot prove its existence, Occam's Razor kicks in, and it becomes best to just ignore it altogether.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Maybe the universe needs "constant fine-tuning and control" as well. Maybe God is the one doing this. The universe is following rules put in place by God just like how the LHC is behaving such as the operators control it.

This si possible. However there is no evidence supporting it. Certain thigns have always been constant, like the speed of light or that gravity if only an attracting force. Sure, they may have been different in the pasrt, but all evidecne poitns ot the contrary.

Agian, Occam's razor. It takes less assumptions to assume that the laws of physcis are constant than it does to assume that God exists and that God is maintainign the universe.

Furthermore, if God is maintaining the universe, where's the evidence saying that we have to worship him?

Originally Said by Al Farabi

I'm sure there is a way you could get it to just keep running as long as there was power. But that is beside the point, because my point above answers this too. Again, who says you can leave the universe alone. That is not evidence against God, that is the asssumption that there is no God.

The laws of physics say that you can leave th euniverse alone. All models to date have shown that the laws of physics as far as we know are consistent with reality. Simulations have been run showing that with our understanding of the laws of physics, a non-uniform explosion with a hyperexpanson of its contained space-time will result in clumping of matter and development of star system, just like the real universe. While the simulations are running, no one is tinkering with the machine.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

I'm not sure what I was to take away from this. First I would like to say that God's word for me is verified the same way as relativity is for you.

Wrong. We have evidence that relativity is correct: it explains the gravitational lens effect found during solar eclipses, Gravity Probe B found frame-dragging with the rotations of the earth, observations of colliding galaxies perfectly match the prediction if gravity moved at the speed of light, etc. The list goes on. There is evidence for sciecne. That's how science works. Religion has beliefs without evidence. That's called faith.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

I read something (the bible) or heard something (from anothe religious person) that told me it had been tested and verified. Now I just have to have faith that it's true!"

You read something (a book or magazine or journal or web page) or heard something (from a similarly inclined person) that told you it had been tested and verified. Now you just have to have faith that it's true!

Belief: Any cognitive content held to be true.
Faith: Any cognitive content held to be true without evidence.
Theory: Any cognitive content held to be true and thoroughly supported by evidence.

Science uses theories. Religion has faith.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

That aside, As I stated earlier, if God created the rules by which the universe operates, then all we are discovering through scientific endeavour is about God's creations. That's why science is good, and was praised by many theological thinkers like Al Farabi (an early egyptian thinker and, obviously, my screen name), Moses Maimonedes, and St. Thomas Aquinas thought that natural philosophy (the precurser to modern science) was absolutely vital. Science lets us know God through His creation.

You have just described deism, which I admit is a rather beautiful idea. However, it rests on the assumption (without evidence) that God created the universe.

If you have the time, I recommend that you look up some pictures fromt he Hubble Space telescope. Those are quite beautiful too.

Oh, and be sure to look at this picture: http://www.madison.com/communities/b...e_blue_dot.jpg

Originally Said by Al Farabi

I'm also offended by your assumption that because I believe in God I am against Gay Marriage.I have no issue with Gay marriage. I can see how the bible could be interpreted to say that, but that's a stupid, ignorant, and clearly wrong way of interprating it. That said, you have no right to make that kind of assumption, nor to directly attack my beliefs ("Porp 8 makes God cry rainbows. Ha ha"). This is not grade 3.

Well, sorry. Take that "you" as a general "you." I'm glad that you're progressively-minded. For my part, I had dinner with a group of Fundamentalist Christsians a few nights ago, so I'm still ancy.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

I couldn't have said it better myself. Eventually no matter what you believe, you are going on faith. Whether it's faith in God or faith that Science can eventually explain everything, it is faith.

One more time.

Belief: Any cognitive content held to be true.
Faith: Any cognitive content held to be true without evidence.
Theory: Any cognitive content held to be true and thoroughly supported by evidence.

Science uses theories. Religion has faith.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

The intolerance of faiths for each other is the biggest problem for humanity and always has been. Your intolerance of all others is no better.

I'm tolerant, in the right that I don't actively got out against religion. If people ask me, then I respond. I have yet to go out on the street and scream at people wearing "t"'s around their necks.

That being said, I am tolerant of religion of until the point where it becomes harmful to society. When the Israeli government diverted funds that would have gone to the soldiers in the war in 2006 to prayer groups so that the y could pray for help, I spoke out.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

Well Dante was a poet, and his poem was an allegory, and I was actually trying to be lighthearted about this. Yes, Dante was making up his own ideas. He has no basis in scripture and never tried to do anything more than make up a story. So in short he WAS bullshitting us.

The point is, there are many different beliefs about that. I personally think that you still go to heaven if you were virtuous.

I thank you for that.

Originally Said by Al Farabi

I won't say the thing about God creating universal laws again, but I will say this:
I'm sorry, please read up on the reformation and maybe read some theology and then re-examine that picture, and your argument. That is ignorant and false, and hardly representative of all belief in God. We are not all literalists.

Er, I was talkign about the scientific method int hat quote. What are you referring to?

Originally Said by Al Farabi

If logic is irrelevant then there is no paradox. Logic says there is a problem. If logic is null, then there is no problem to consider in the first place! Nice!

Additionally, if you decide you want logic back, consider:

1. God is not limited in the size of stone he can move
2. God is not limited in the sie of stone he can create

Tell me where the problem lies now?

I said that the definition of omnipotency is above logic. Omnipotency itself is not.

Definitions, Postulates, Axioms
Logic
Everything else

[scikidus]

@Loki: Please, please, find us a spoiler button. It would be very helpful.