Questions about God?

[Thelema]

You aren't debating. Everything you say is condescension trying to elicit response. By inflicting I mean that you and the OP are trying to force your "rightness" on everyone else. Nice analogy w/ the gay orientation. Someone being gay and standing up for their right to be so isn't infringing upon you, however if they tried to tell you being gay was the right way to be and that you should see the truth of it being the one and only orientation, then that would be infringement.

Atheists can contribute quite well to wrong in the world too. They aren't somehow exempt.

I'm not inflicting my beliefs on you or the OP since I am not telling you your beliefs are wrong, just your insistence on bothering everyone else with it. These arguments have been done to death. They are anathema on internet forums.

You can form theories about whatever stance on this issue with available knowledge, sure, but it isn't considered fact. If the proof is there either way where are the experiments and data and scientific journals backed up by others and the entry into education as FACT.

Psychology is a science mired in differing philosophies. Much of it can't be called "fact" like in other science. The psychology of consciousness for example, which has a lot of Descartes. The mind-body problem and such which you talked about a little. When you are learning about subjects in psychology there are many definitions and theories for one problem. More than one accepted even. Speculation and theory. Good stuff.

Philosophy isn't even majorly about this religion debate. And it isn't rigid like you would have us believe.

We live so short a lifespan and the universe has existed and will exist much longer than we will. A discovery tomorrow can very well demolish some thing we hold true today, it has happened.

I realize both the internet troll aspect and proselytizing aspect of this thread and it annoyed me. My tiny sentence was meant only to warn that this is where this kind of thread ends up. Sometimes messier and with more foul language.

Therefore because I am not here to convince either of you, only wishing that you had more tact and tolerance, I am leaving the "debate." Have fun all.

~A parting gift. A nice article for both sides. Man vs. God - WSJ.com

You're the one telling me that we shouldn't argue and then when asked why, you can't give a straight answer, except to attack me. When you can't attack my argument, you attack me. That's not kosher.

We can discuss anything and everything, but don't insult me. You seem to be the only person that is getting offended by this thread.

"Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence"

It doesn't matter how religion allows you to grasp existence, feeling the Earth is flat, Xenu put theton in your body and demons steal babies if you don't put a charm on them is a pretty grasping belief, so what. I'd rather depend on scientific theories that explain things in the correct way.

 

[Thelema]

1. The cosmological argument, which states that
a] within our natural psychical laws it is impossible for something to come out of nothing,
b] at the big bang something DID come out of nothing
therefore
c] something SUPERnatural must have caused the big bang

I'll show you the problems with this idea.

It starts off with a contradiction, that "it is impossible for something to come out of nothing", but a supernatural thing supposedly came out of nothing and then caused the Big Gang. That's a contradiction. Calling something supernatural doesn't allow you to get around contradicting your own premise. That something needed a cause too. It's special pleading to claim the supernatural doesn't.

It's also a contradiction to claim that matter came out of nothing when the first sentences claims that nothing can come from nothing. It also makes a leap to say the matter came from nothing. Science hasn't come to a consensus, but it is possible that matter always existed. So the matter that has existed, may have existed infinitely in to the past, no first cause. And even if there was a first cause, we have no knowledge of it in any way, so we can't say something supernatural caused it, or God. Perhaps the first cause was a totally natural process. There is no way to know.

It says that "at the big bang, something did come out of nothing", so I think I'm right in calling bs at that. Any scientist will say that the matter was already there.

Maybe it wasn't right to assume you meant God when you said supernatural, but I've seen this theory before and it had God instead of supernatural.

You don't see these contradictions in the argument?

 

[worrywort]

I'll show you the problems with this idea.

It starts off with a contradiction, that "it is impossible for something to come out of nothing", but a supernatural thing supposedly came out of nothing and then caused the Big Gang. That's a contradiction. Calling something supernatural doesn't allow you to get around contradicting your own premise. That something needed a cause too. It's special pleading to claim the supernatural doesn't.

It's also a contradiction to claim that matter came out of nothing when the first sentences claims that nothing can come from nothing. It also makes a leap to say the matter came from nothing. Science hasn't come to a consensus, but it is possible that matter always existed. So the matter that has existed, may have existed infinitely in to the past, no first cause. And even if there was a first cause, we have no knowledge of it in any way, so we can't say something supernatural caused it, or God. Perhaps the first cause was a totally natural process. There is no way to know.

It says that "at the big bang, something did come out of nothing", so I think I'm right in calling bs at that. Any scientist will say that the matter was already there.

Maybe it wasn't right to assume you meant God when you said supernatural, but I've seen this theory before and it had God instead of supernatural.

You don't see these contradictions in the argument?

yea I see what you're saying, I don't have any proper training in philosophy so maybe I didn't word the premises quite right, but let me try saying it a different way;

ok, forget about the first premise and forget about the big bang and forget about God for the moment! Just working on a purely logical philosophical level let me try to prove that there is such a thing as an uncaused cause in this universe.

so, what do you make of this?;

a] an infinite string of causes is impossible
b] therefore an uncaused cause must exist

let me expand

Here's the reason why I believe an infinite string of causes is impossible; Imagine you have a domino called X and it represents this moment right now, and you have an infinite string of dominoes stretching out to the past. If you need an infinite number of dominoes to fall before you reach domino X, you will never reach domino X. Would you agree?

If you have a finite number of dominoes however, i.e. if there was a first domino that fell, then even if you had billions and trillions of dominoes you would eventually reach domino X. And as there is such a thing as a moment called "now", [i.e. we did reach domino X] then there must have been a beginning. There must have been a first domino that fell of its own accord, without any cause before it.

now what does this tell us? it tells us that basically things can pop into existence without any cause. It tells us that this is an actual possibility because it's happened at least once before. It tells us that something can come from nothing, and not just any old "something" but the entire universe! The entire universe and everything in it began from nothing.....

Now what do you normally call it when things materialise out of thin air? "freaks of nature", "the supernatural", "miracles"?

 

[sweety345]

As a fellow believer in our loving Father, I commend you. Knowing Him is truly the best thing that can happen to anyone in this life and your sharing that with others is so very cool!

YES!!

 

[Lea]

Ok ok I better delete this. Have I written something stupid again? Just don´t understand why the God wanted people to sacrifice him animals. This God is no good!!

 

[Thelema]

yea I see what you're saying, I don't have any proper training in philosophy so maybe I didn't word the premises quite right, but let me try saying it a different way;

ok, forget about the first premise and forget about the big bang and forget about God for the moment! Just working on a purely logical philosophical level let me try to prove that there is such a thing as an uncaused cause in this universe.

so, what do you make of this?;

a] an infinite string of causes is impossible
b] therefore an uncaused cause must exist

let me expand

Here's the reason why I believe an infinite string of causes is impossible; Imagine you have a domino called X and it represents this moment right now, and you have an infinite string of dominoes stretching out to the past. If you need an infinite number of dominoes to fall before you reach domino X, you will never reach domino X. Would you agree?

If you have a finite number of dominoes however, i.e. if there was a first domino that fell, then even if you had billions and trillions of dominoes you would eventually reach domino X. And as there is such a thing as a moment called "now", [i.e. we did reach domino X] then there must have been a beginning. There must have been a first domino that fell of its own accord, without any cause before it.

now what does this tell us? it tells us that basically things can pop into existence without any cause. It tells us that this is an actual possibility because it's happened at least once before. It tells us that something can come from nothing, and not just any old "something" but the entire universe! The entire universe and everything in it began from nothing.....

Now what do you normally call it when things materialise out of thin air? "freaks of nature", "the supernatural", "miracles"?

I don't know, it's an interesting question that nobody knows the answer to. We have no knowledge of what was there before the big bang at all.

Yes, I can't figure a way that the past could be infinite.


Did you just say that something can" pop into existence without a cause"? You've done it! You're refuted the cosmological argument!::

Putting God at the Big Bang is sort of like me saying that I don't know where this rock I picked up came from, so maybe an intergalactic cruiser warped space and traveled into our dimension to place that rock there for me to pick up.

We don't normally call anything that materializes out of thin air anything. We have a concept of something that can do that, but we have yet to see any corresponding material representation.

Does lightning materialize out of nowhere? Seemingly, it does, and we used to say that a god was responsible. But we eventually came to know that lightning was a completely natural phenomena and nobody says that a god is responsible for lightning anymore. Supernatural, God(s), magic, etc, was forced from that gap of understanding. It wasn't right to put it there in the first place. Why? When we don't have an explanation for something, we can't put X there. We can't use God or anything else as some sort of placeholder for things we don't understand. Humans hate saying that we don't know, so over the ages we created all sorts of gods and demons and all sorts of explanations for things we knew nothing about. We've done away with almost all the old superstitions and to me, God is just the last big one.

 

[worrywort]

As a fellow believer in our loving Father, I commend you. Knowing Him is truly the best thing that can happen to anyone in this life and your sharing that with others is so very cool!

YES!!

........

 

[worrywort]

Tbh I don´t get Bible very much, esp. the Old Testament. The God seems there very cruel and materialistic, he orders people to bring him fire sacrifices of animals. Idiot, what does he need it for?? I can´t see any moral answer to this. The Jesus teaching in the New Testament seems to be allright and I wanted to believe that, but actually God has been always one and the same and it was him who ordered the fire sacrifices. Who can ever trust such God?
There are lot of good and wise things in the Bible, but how can I ever trust God after those stupidities he´s done that are not in accordance with my conscience?

Hi Lea, no no you definitely didn't ask anything stupid. In fact the questions you asked are probably among the most difficult and important questions I've ever had to deal with. I still grapple with them today. i.e. If God is good, then why is there so much evil and suffering in the world [and seemingly in the Bible too]?

well, let me try my best to give an answer. Firstly I believe it can be argued that the very presence of evil actually points toward God rather than negating him,

For example, If you saw a man cruelly beating an animal for fun, would you think that that man had done something "wrong"? or would you think that even though you, personally, don't like to see animals being treated cruelly, whats "wrong" for you isn't necessarily "wrong" for him? I'd assume you'd agree with the former, that cruelly beating an animal for fun is a behaviour that no human should participate in.

Now what about other questions, like; is it ever ok for a man to be a racist? or can you ever imagine a society where betraying your brother or running away in a battle was honoured and esteemed? The question I'm trying to get at is; do you believe that there is an objective moral law, that is universal for all humans? Because if so, I believe from that it's possible to deduce that there is a God and he is good.

Firstly, because if there exists an objective moral law that is universal for everyone, then by its very nature it must be transcendent, i.e. a mere human could not construct this universal sense of oughtness and implant it into every human being to have ever lived. Secondly, I believe it points to Gods goodness because this sense of oughtness we all have always points us upward to the good. We never feel we ought to have done the wrong thing [if we do, it's only because we ultimately feel some good will come of it]. And thirdly, when we violate the moral law we feel guilt and guilt is a personal emotion, which implies that whatever gave the moral law is a personal being also.

CS Lewis does a much better job of explaining it in the first 5 chapters of his book "Mere Christianity" which you can listen to here - [Ch.1 starts on part 2 at 6:28]

Although I have a feeling you already agree with everything I just wrote...i.e. that God is transcendent, personal and good. You just find it hard to believe that the God of the Bible is that God. I have some more thoughts but this could turn into an essay so for now I'd just like to commend you for staying true to your own sense of morality, and I'd say just stick with it and follow it and it'll lead you to the truth eventually.

Why Bible should be the one and only holy book given by God.. everything on this earth was created and given by God.. other books written by other people and can be also means of getting to know God.. nature can be means of getting to know God.. everything. There are many ways, arent´t they? Why should only Bible be the way.

Yea I agree, God can be found everywhere, in all kinds of things, and I'm sure there are a lot of truths in other religious books. The problem comes when you line up each religious books claims and teachings and compare them to each other, eventually you'll come to some contradictions. i.e. Some say God is personal, some say impersonal. Which is right? They can't both be true. The next problem is, how do you decide which parts are true and which are not? If you pick and choose depending on what suits you best, you're not really conforming to God, you're making God conform to you [not that that's what you would do Lea, just hypothetically speaking! ]. But saying that, I do believe God has given us everything we need in order to discover and discern the truth, and that includes the moral code written on our hearts, so I believe our intuition plays a major role in leading us to the truth. But God also gave us reason, and the two must go together. If something feels right but is logically impossible then it is false.

But thanks for the questions Lea, and if you have anymore keep them coming cause you always seem to ask very interesting questions!

 

[worrywort]

Did you just say that something can" pop into existence without a cause"? You've done it! You're refuted the cosmological argument!

haha! oh yea sorry! :: you're right, I meant to say "things can pop into existence without any natural cause".

I don't know, it's an interesting question that nobody knows the answer to. We have no knowledge of what was there before the big bang at all.

yea, that's right, there is lots we still don't know, but there are some things we can know; one is that the universe must have begun with an uncaused first cause, because it is an impossibility for it not to have done. But you're also absolutely right to say that this doesn't necessarily point to God. A singularity could also be the eternal uncaused first cause, or any number of other impersonal causes.

But do we both agree that the universe must have had a first cause, and that cause, itself, must be uncaused? If so, then that's basically premise 2 of most cosmological arguments, which are usually stated like this;

1. If something has a beginning to its existence, then it must be caused by something.
2. Nature [space-time, matter and energy & the laws of nature] had a beginning.
3. Therefore nature must be caused by something.
4. The cause of nature must be either natural [itself] or non-natural [supernatural]
5. Nature cannot cause itself to come into existence
6. Therefore the cause of nature is supernatural

so what do you make of this?

premise 1 I think is basically common sense. If you open your bedroom door and find a crocodile on your bed you don't assume it came from nowhere. You wanna know where it came from. It also doesn't contradict the existence of an uncaused cause, because an uncaused cause doesn't have a beginning.

Premise 2 I hopefully just proved in my previous post. Even if the big bang was not the beginning of the universe, it still requires a beginning at some point.

Then Premise 3, if we accept the first 2 premises, again, is pretty obvious. We're not really saying much yet, other than, the universe can not be infinite. It must have been caused by something at some point.

Now premises 4-6 are where it gets interesting because we've already established that whatever this first cause was MUST have been uncaused itself, so thats one characteristic. Now we're going to try to add a second characteristic to it; supernatural.

Premise 4 may be a false dichotomy, but I'm yet to find any alternative ways to look at it.

Premise 5 I believe to be true because how can nature cause itself? Before Nature was created, there was no nature.

therefore, premise 6 must be true.

Now when I say something supernatural must have caused the universe, that doesn't mean we can smuggle in visions of ghosts and goblins and fairies etc. Supernatural simply means something beyond natural law. Maybe something existing in different dimensions to us. At this point it could still just as easily be a random, impersonal, supernatural, uncaused force.

But would you agree with everything I've said so far, or can you see any holes?

 

[Lea]

There is Bible with it´s stories and commandments, there is Koran with different stories and comandments, there is Bhagavadgítá with yet different ones... christian God ordered fire sacrifices, ordered to eat only certain kind of animals, others being "impure", for example pigs etc... Jews keep until today at these commandments very strictly and as I´ve lived in a family of rabbi for a year and in other jewish families as well, I know their "faith" can go ad absurdum. They don´t even tear toilett paper on sabbath, dont pick up phones, don´t switch on lights.. And I don´t doubt there are many of similar brainwashed people who would kill for their dogmas and beliefs. Moslems must have animals killed in a "halal" way - well at least the indian cows are lucky they are sacred.

Too many religious teachings, all opposing each other. but there is only one God. So, either some of the religions are rubbish, or the God tells contradictory stories to each nation. Or everything is just made up and there is no God.

As I said (you left it out in the quote, btw. I wonder how you quoted me after I deleted it ), and as you said as well, we have the word of God written in our hearts, that means an innate sense for what is good and what is bad. And because of this, we know that there must be something that gave this to us and this something (God?) must be good.

Still you somehow didn´t explain the God´s cruelty in the Old Testament and why would we need to eat kosher (or halal) or keep Sundays or Sabbaths etc., today or at all. Isn´t it sufficient just to be good people? Why to make it so complicated? If we have God´s word in our hearts, why do we need Bibles?

Why should we keep commands from some book which was grabbed out somewhere in Middle East and the origin of which we cannot verify plus which was likely tampered with by greedy priests over centuries to suit their businesess?

Paul Brunton basically thinks that religion was given to masses who are not evolved enough and unable to deal with finer metaphysical truths. They don´t have abstract thinking, that´s why they need things they can touch, music to hear, churches to go to, dogmas to keep. That all gives them religion. Paul Brunton also says people build shrines to Jesus and worship him, but they would do better to worship his teaching. Which was basically - the Kingdom of God is inside you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashrut

 

[Thelema]

haha! oh yea sorry! :: you're right, I meant to say "things can pop into existence without any natural cause".

yea, that's right, there is lots we still don't know, but there are some things we can know; one is that the universe must have begun with an uncaused first cause, because it is an impossibility for it not to have done. But you're also absolutely right to say that this doesn't necessarily point to God. A singularity could also be the eternal uncaused first cause, or any number of other impersonal causes.

But do we both agree that the universe must have had a first cause, and that cause, itself, must be uncaused? If so, then that's basically premise 2 of most cosmological arguments, which are usually stated like this;

1. If something has a beginning to its existence, then it must be caused by something.
2. Nature [space-time, matter and energy & the laws of nature] had a beginning.
3. Therefore nature must be caused by something.
4. The cause of nature must be either natural [itself] or non-natural [supernatural]
5. Nature cannot cause itself to come into existence
6. Therefore the cause of nature is supernatural

so what do you make of this?

premise 1 I think is basically common sense. If you open your bedroom door and find a crocodile on your bed you don't assume it came from nowhere. You wanna know where it came from. It also doesn't contradict the existence of an uncaused cause, because an uncaused cause doesn't have a beginning.

Premise 2 I hopefully just proved in my previous post. Even if the big bang was not the beginning of the universe, it still requires a beginning at some point.

Then Premise 3, if we accept the first 2 premises, again, is pretty obvious. We're not really saying much yet, other than, the universe can not be infinite. It must have been caused by something at some point.

Now premises 4-6 are where it gets interesting because we've already established that whatever this first cause was MUST have been uncaused itself, so thats one characteristic. Now we're going to try to add a second characteristic to it; supernatural.

Premise 4 may be a false dichotomy, but I'm yet to find any alternative ways to look at it.

Premise 5 I believe to be true because how can nature cause itself? Before Nature was created, there was no nature.

therefore, premise 6 must be true.

Now when I say something supernatural must have caused the universe, that doesn't mean we can smuggle in visions of ghosts and goblins and fairies etc. Supernatural simply means something beyond natural law. Maybe something existing in different dimensions to us. At this point it could still just as easily be a random, impersonal, supernatural, uncaused force.

But would you agree with everything I've said so far, or can you see any holes?

There goes that supernatural loophole! That's not fair. You have made no such case for the existence of anything supernatural. Saying maybe from another dimension and all this doesn't let you get past showing some evidence to support your claim. We can say maybe, but we have no reason to put that in the more plausible category.

Saying everything as in, encompassing all that exists, and then saying outside of this is absurd. That's like saying all horses are mammals and then going on to talk about cold blooded horses. Saying supernatural isn't duct tape for arguments; you can't stick a little here and a little there and end up with something just as good.

1. That's not necessarily true (see nuclear decay, quantum fluctuations, positron-electron pairs)
2. That we can't know. We have no idea what was before the big bang.
3. See 1 and 2
4. Yes, that's a true dichotomy
5. You're getting far out on a limb
6. Not quite.

You still have too many problems to come to your conclusion.

Ghosts and goblins do fall into the genus of supernatural, like we fall under the genus warm blooded. If we're using that definition of supernatural, gravity was supernatural not too long ago.

And what about my space cruiser rock theory? What if I say the space cruiser was supernatural?

When are you going to get around to God doing it? You still haven't made much headway in showing he exists.

Is the cosmological argument another instance of humans putting God in the gap of our understanding? A few hundred years ago we might be having this discussion about rain, earthquakes, lightning, and just about everything else.

 

[worrywort]

I wonder how you quoted me after I deleted it

hehe! I like to have a think before I reply so I usually copy posts to my wordpad so that I can have a ponder offline! dunno why?! just habit!

Before I try to answer the questions about God's cruelty, I just want to get the problem in perspective.

The reason I believe in the Bible above any other book, is because of the evidence. The prophetic evidence far surpasses any other religious text [link], Jesus's fulfilment of prophecy which links the new testament to the old, the evidence for Jesus's resurrection [link], the scientific evidence [link1 link2] and also the historical evidence,[link] i.e the fact that the bible is actually a history book. It's totally verified by archaeology. It's not just myths and legends. Plus many more reasons on top of this. So there is definitely something powerful about the Bible that puts it way above any other religious book. The supernatural evidence is overwhelming. So I keep this in mind whenever I encounter difficulties in the text.

Having said that I do have a few scattered thoughts on the matter;

1. Why does God seem so cruel in the Old Testament?

Firstly, my understanding is that Gods commandments in the Old Testament are basically God setting the bar at 100%. He's saying, this is what it takes to have heaven on earth. If everyone obeyed these commandments perfectly we'd be ok. And I think a lot of people naturally try to humanise God, so we think of him like a boss. i.e If your boss told you that if he finds one speck of dust in the entire office he'll shoot you in the head, of course that would sound totally unreasonable. But God is not human. He is 100% holy and pure and his commandments are the standard we need to reach to be perfect ourselves. Imagine being in heaven where everything is perfect and pure, then one day somebody steals something or murders someone. It would taint everything and leave a big black blotch in heaven. God's reaction would be to quarantine that blotch and totally remove it from heaven. This, I believe, is why the punishments seem so severe in the Old Testament.

But now you're probably thinking, if the standard is 100% what hope is there for anyone?! And you'd be right, there is no hope. Nobody is perfect. The bible says "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God", and whenever someone sins against God they are violating a holy standard, which I believe, is why we feel guilt. We have all violated a Holy God so we all have a backlog of payments that we need to pay to redeem ourselves, and this, I think, is where the most beautiful doctrine of Christianity really shines out among all other religions, because wherever you look into world religions you see the same thing; DO, DO, DO, DO this, DO that, pray 5 times a day, Don't cut your hair, fast once a month, DO, DO, DO, DO, DO, all these things you have to do to pay the price to redeem yourself and attain nirvana/paradise/enlightenment/heaven etc, but when you look at Christianity you see the word DONE. It's all done for us! When Christ died on the cross he payed the price for all our sins, so that all we have left to "DO" is accept the free gift.

2. Why were animal sacrifices required in the Old Testament?

Animals are pure. They have done nothing wrong. When a sinner violated Gods holy law he needed to pay the price, so God allowed them to substitute an animal in their place to take the penalty of death for them. If humans didn't sin, God would never have required animals to be sacrificed. The reason we aren't required to sacrifice animals today is because God sent his son, Jesus, to be a sacrifice for all mankind.

3. How do we know the Old Testament hasn't been tampered with?

In 1947 the dead sea scrolls were found. [link1 link2] They contain fragments of every book of the Old Testament [except Esther] including a complete book of Isaiah. They have been accurately dated to at least 68AD, but maybe even as early as 335BC. When the text of these scrolls were compared against modern translations of the Bible they found that around 95% of the text was identical. The only errors were a handful of punctuation/grammatical errors. What does this tell us? It tells us that that the Old Testament you have in your hand today is practically identical to the ones they had over 2000 years ago. Which tells us that allegations of tampering, or translation errors, etc are all false.

4. If God's word is written on our hearts, why do we need bibles?

Good question! I had to think about this for a while! Firstly, just to be technical, the Bible actually only claims that the "requirements of the law" are written on our hearts. Basically the moral code. God's "word" goes a lot more broader than that. There is a lot more we can learn about God, that we can't by just listening to our hearts. Secondly, think of a hero in your life, then imagine if that hero bought out an autobiography in the shops. You might be interested to read it, right? Well, the God that you can intuitively feel in your chest, the God that has written the pure moral code on the hearts of all mankind, has bought out an autobiography too! The Bible is God's way of revealing himself to the world including every other facet of his nature, which, personally, I'd be very intrigued to read. And thirdly, I don't believe our right and wrong "radars", are constant things that remain in 100% working order throughout our lives. They're changeable. i.e. If you consistently do the wrong thing, you'll eventually starve your conscience and will no longer be able to discern that what you're doing is wrong. Morality takes practise. We need to train our conscience just like everything else, and the bible is a great way to do this, because the Bible is constant. So if we ever lose our way we can realign ourselves to it.

Sorry this post has gotten a bit long, but I do have one final thought which is this; This whole problem of pain, evil and Gods commandments I think cuts right to the heart of this idea of belief and what it truly means to believe in God. The best answer I've come across for the problem of pain, is simply that whatever evil God allows in this life, it is ultimately for the greater good. The evil God allows is only so that He can provide the most good for the most amount of people for the most amount of time. On a small scale we can all easily see this pattern, i.e. no pain no gain. When we exercise, we battle through the pain because we have faith that ultimately more good will come of it. The short term pain will be outweighed by the long term gain. But on a larger scale, when atrocities and tragedy's strike, and especially when we, ourselves, are involved, it's a LOT harder to keep the faith. Do we really believe that ultimately God will bring more good out of the situation than bad? I think this is what God means when he asks us to believe in him.

 

[worrywort]

"1. If something has a beginning to its existence, then it must be caused by something"
1. That's not necessarily true (see nuclear decay, quantum fluctuations, positron-electron pairs)

Firstly Quantum events are not entirely uncaused. They require a vacuum, and a scientist to spark the vacuum. Also the particles exist for a period of time inversely proportionate to its mass. At the big bang there was no vacuum, no scientist, and the universe is far too big to last 14 billion years as a virtual particle.

But secondly, understand what you're saying here; If truth is ultimately unknowable, then life is about playing the odds, so let's think about those odds. All around us, everywhere you look in life, whenever anything happens, we expect to find a reason, a cause. The whole point of science is to try to figure out how things work, and I'm sure quantum physicists are trying to figure out the reasons for the quantum phenomena right now. But quantum psychics is just one small possible anomaly, while the rest of the entire universe still follows the law of cause and effect. To accept the first premise all I'm doing is putting my money on the law of cause and effect, while you're putting your money on the hope of a few as yet unproven theories. Now who's using more faith out of the two of us?

"2. Nature [space-time, matter and energy & the laws of nature] had a beginning."
2. That we can't know. We have no idea what was before the big bang.

again, what's more likely? just follow the clues; we have the impossibility of an infinite string of causes which proves there must be an uncaused first cause. Then we have Einsteins theory of general relativity which links all space-time, matter and energy as inseparable, so it's impossible for any matter to exist without time. Then, in addition, we have all the evidence of the big bang theory which seems to corroborate with the universe having a beginning. To accept premise 2 you just have to agree that the universe must have had a beginning. At this point we're not concerned with what came before.

"5. Nature cannot cause itself to come into existence"
5. You're getting far out on a limb

Could you tell me your reasons for thinking I'm on a limb here? Here's my understanding; If nature [space-time, matter and energy & the laws of nature] came into existence, then before it was in existence there was no nature, so how could something natural be the explanation? i.e. Babies don't give birth to themselves! To me, this premise seems obvious.

Saying maybe from another dimension and all this doesn't let you get past showing some evidence to support your claim.

all I've claimed so far is that there exists a uncaused first cause and it is non-natural. The evidence for this is in the premises I've just explained which proves that it is impossible for a non-natural uncaused first cause NOT to exist. That IS the evidence right there. If you can't dispute the premises you must accept the conclusion or play the faith card.

 

[Lea]

Thank you Worrywort. You are very clever, should think of some religious career . I think your explanation is very good.

As for the animal sacrifices, I didn´t know that but even like this it´s weird and hard to understand. I know I will hardly ever understand it because it would require to understand the God´s mind (and believe in him in the first place, I mean to believe in this personal kind of God as he was portraited). In any way I think the rules that Got set up for people of Old Testament were specificaly destined for them and tailored for their mentality which was probably still materialistic and primitive. God had to talk to them in a manner they understood and give them rules for which they were mature and able to keep them. For example if he said "won´t steel the slave of your fellow", doesn´t mean that God approves with slavery but that people weren´t mature enough to not keep slaves? But still this is strange, like a double moral. Steeling is wrong, that´s clear. But keeping slaves is right? Dunno if I´ll ever understand things like this and if it´s not just a loss of time trying to understand it at all.

One more thing I still don´t completely understand is that Jesus died for our sins. Does this mean we can now freely commit crimes? I know it doesn´t. But we cannot live completely free of sin either.. We have to eat etc., and every our action brings with itself some kind of destruction. Paul Brunton thinks that the Jesus´s crucifixion was a parable of crucifixion of ego. Does faith in Jesus equal crucifixion of our own egos? (Because ego is the part of us that is sinful and that keeps karma going etc.) By this I mean not simply being good, but ready to give up everything, our lives, our whole selves for the faith, for something higher. And if we want to truly believe in Jesus, we have to do this otherwise it´s no faith, only some shallow belief which in consequence is as good as no belief at all.

Shortly, we cannot believe in Jesus unless we cruify our egos? After we have crucified our egos, we are still here, still living sinful mortals but we are "pardoned" for it at the same time? This is about the only explanation that would make sense to me.

Btw., if you want to look at what Paul Brunton writes about Christianity in The Religious Urge, here is the link Comments On Specific Religions - Notebooks of Paul Brunton. I really admire this man, I never read anything better in my life than his books!

 

[Banvard]

I have some respect for Theists – but people who fully believe in the Bible are just blind mice trying to find that god like piece of cheese. If I told you I was Jesus, would you believe me? Can you imagine someone in this age, walking on water, parting the sea, and making wine and bread out of nothing? Imagine in two-thousand years time, society crumbles back to the Middle Ages, and all knowledge is lost; just reading and writings skills remain. One day a farmer digs up an old book, which happens to be “The Lord of the Rings”. For the next few years, they study it – and concluded that it really took place, and that Frodo was a messiah who sailed to the heavens – Valinor. They establish a whole religion on a book that was made up by one man, for his own reference. Then for the next thousand years, people start to add to the story, making it fit with their own beliefs.

The archeology is verified because those who wrote the New Testament shaped places and things to fit in with the Old Testament.

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams

 

[Thelema]

Firstly Quantum events are not entirely uncaused. They require a vacuum, and a scientist to spark the vacuum. Also the particles exist for a period of time inversely proportionate to its mass. At the big bang there was no vacuum, no scientist, and the universe is far too big to last 14 billion years as a virtual particle.

But secondly, understand what you're saying here; If truth is ultimately unknowable, then life is about playing the odds, so let's think about those odds. All around us, everywhere you look in life, whenever anything happens, we expect to find a reason, a cause. The whole point of science is to try to figure out how things work, and I'm sure quantum physicists are trying to figure out the reasons for the quantum phenomena right now. But quantum psychics is just one small possible anomaly, while the rest of the entire universe still follows the law of cause and effect. To accept the first premise all I'm doing is putting my money on the law of cause and effect, while you're putting your money on the hope of a few as yet unproven theories. Now who's using more faith out of the two of us?

again, what's more likely? just follow the clues; we have the impossibility of an infinite string of causes which proves there must be an uncaused first cause. Then we have Einsteins theory of general relativity which links all space-time, matter and energy as inseparable, so it's impossible for any matter to exist without time. Then, in addition, we have all the evidence of the big bang theory which seems to corroborate with the universe having a beginning. To accept premise 2 you just have to agree that the universe must have had a beginning. At this point we're not concerned with what came before.

Could you tell me your reasons for thinking I'm on a limb here? Here's my understanding; If nature [space-time, matter and energy & the laws of nature] came into existence, then before it was in existence there was no nature, so how could something natural be the explanation? i.e. Babies don't give birth to themselves! To me, this premise seems obvious.

all I've claimed so far is that there exists a uncaused first cause and it is non-natural. The evidence for this is in the premises I've just explained which proves that it is impossible for a non-natural uncaused first cause NOT to exist. That IS the evidence right there. If you can't dispute the premises you must accept the conclusion or play the faith card.

I'll have to do more research to see if you are correct or not, but it is beside the point in terms of the validity of your argument and here's why. We don't know, nobody knows, and we can't take a step we don't know about. Your assertion that everything has a cause and effect is a big statement that nobody knows is correct or not. There are particles yet to be discovered by science, and who knows what theoretical physics has in store for us in the future, we don't even know everything there is to know about the past 14 billion years going back to the Big Bang and nothing before it. The Universe is a strange place.

We can't play the odds when we have no idea what the odds are. Science is used as the gold standard because it's the most reliable; if science can't even explain the Big Bang, I'm skeptical we're going to do it here.

What a huge assumption that you know about the rest of the Universe! I don't think a physicist would make such a claim!

No, it's not impossible that matter always existed, I just said that I didn't see how the past could be infinite; that doesn't mean it isn't possible. I don't understand how nuclear fusion works, doesn't mean I can then say that it doesn't work.

You haven't proved anything since your premises can't be known to be true or not. You make claims of "everything" about the Universe and that's something we just can't do at this point. And I'll research your first premise.

I can make an argument too:

Parallel Universe travel is possible
This rock sitting here is extremely unlikely
I can't think of how it came to be here
Space travelers may want to put rocks in places


Conclusion: intergalactic supernatural space travelers. <----assuming big things is easy.

Seriously tho, I have an argument I think is spiffy:

God would not say something that isn't true
If the Bible is the word of God, it will be 100% true
If anything in the Bible is proven false, it is not the word of God

I think you know where I'm going with this, what do you think?

And on a side note, faith is a strange concept. Isn't faith based on some sort of evidence? If you have faith in God, for example, you do because you read about God in the Bible and people tell you about him, that's evidence. Faith doesn't seem like something you have without evidence, but something you call a belief you know you can't support with evidence. "Have faith" is like saying, "believe it on bad evidence."

 

[worrywort]

Btw., if you want to look at what Paul Brunton writes about Christianity in The Religious Urge, here is the link Comments On Specific Religions - Notebooks of Paul Brunton. I really admire this man, I never read anything better in my life than his books!

thanks for the link Lea! It's interesting how he suggests that the church was never Jesus's idea. That Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is in our hearts. Which has got me thinking, because he also taught that our bodies have become the new temples for the holy spirit, and I've always hated church! lol! so I might look into that further. I mean, I'm dubious right now, but I'll examine it.

One more thing I still don´t completely understand is that Jesus died for our sins. Does this mean we can now freely commit crimes?

it means we don't have to worry about living up to any kind of standard anymore....erm, it's a brilliant question! I love this question because in a sense the answer is kind of yes!....BUT, it comes with a very big BUT!...erm, let me try and explain my understanding of it, but hang around til the end cause there's lots of conditions;

Firstly, according to the Bible, God is 100% pure and holy. Humans are not, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" [Romans 3:32]. The only way we could work our way into heaven is to be 100% perfect, and that's not gonna happen! So the Bible says, the only way you can get into heaven is through Gods grace. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" [John 3:16]. So when Jesus died on the cross he paid the price of all our sins for us, so that we can all now get into heaven. So the sins of every person in the world have been paid for. All that's left to "DO" is accept the gift.

So lets say you've accepted the gift. What does this mean? It means you've got a ticket into heaven and you will be spared Gods wrath! great! So does that mean you can now go and commit any crimes you want? No, because the moral law still stands. The moral law was given for our own good. If you continue sinning it may not affect your salvation, but it will affect your experience on earth. Violating Gods law is bad news for us and everyone around us. Plus God still disciplines those he loves, so if you purposly commit sins God will no doubt show up at some point.

The good news about this, however, is that if you've accepted the gift, and you're sincerly trying not to sin, but you keep slipping up, it doesn't matter! You don't need to worry! You could slip your way right down into prison, and God still wouldn't condemn you. Of course prison wouldn't be pleasant, so I'd advise you try not to slip that far! but as far as God's concerned, you don't need to worry. Your salvation is secure, You're spared Gods wrath, so you're totally "right" with God and totally free to have a relationship with him and experience his love.

Now, lastly, how do we accept the gift? and this is where the conditions come in, because you cannot accept the gift if you don't believe there exists a gift to be accepted, and you wouldn't accept the gift if you didn't believe the gift had any value. The term "belief" can have two meanings. One is believing that something exists, and the other is trusting in something. Believing that God exists is not only what God requires. ["even the demons believe that God exists" James 2:19]. When the Bible asks us to believe in Jesus, its asking us to trust that he is all that he claims to be. If we truly believe that God is good, then we would obey his commandments because ultimately they're for our own good.

So, in conclusion, are we now free to commit crimes? yes, but if you truly believed in Jesus you wouldn't want to, and if you didn't truly believe in Jesus you wouldn't be free to commit crimes.

p.s. just for the record, this is just my understanding of the matter. There is a lot of debate still going on over the technicalities of all this stuff, so I could be wrong!

 

[worrywort]

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams

But what if there really are fairies at the bottom of the garden?! Wouldn't that make the garden even more beautiful and fascinating!? Isn't that at least worth investigating?

[i don't literally believe in fairies btw! just for the record! ::]

 

[worrywort]

You haven't proved anything since your premises can't be known to be true or not. You make claims of "everything" about the Universe and that's something we just can't do at this point. And I'll research your first premise.

ok, fair enough, I'll leave you to have a ponder! Infact it's probably rude of me to push the point any further because I know if it were the other way around, I may not have all the answers, but I'd still be holding to my convictions, so fair play to you.

God would not say something that isn't true
If the Bible is the word of God, it will be 100% true
If anything in the Bible is proven false, it is not the word of God

I think you know where I'm going with this, what do you think?

yea I understand what you mean. We can't have absolute knowledge of the entire universe so claims of absolute certainty can't really be made. But I'd argue, is that really how we live our lives? Do we know for sure that the plane won't crash when we travel on it? No, but we play the odds. Every step we take is a step of faith. Faith is conviction based on evidence. Without the evidence part we'd just have convictions, and if that were the kind of faith that God rewarded then the best kind of faith would be when you have no evidence whatsoever, but still hold to your convictions, which obviously isn't true. Faith and reason go together. It does involve a leap into the darkness but a wise leap should always be backed up by strong evidence.

More often, though, when the Bible uses the word faith it's in a much more personal connotation, like the way we trust our loved ones if someone were to ever slander their names. We'd look our loved ones in the eye and know that they would never do what they've been accused of doing. More than anything God wants a relationship with us. He wants us to trust him when he tells us he is good and that his plans for our lives are to prosper us and not harm us. This kind of faith requires the heart aswell as the mind.

anyway, just for completions sake, the rest of the cosmological argument goes on to say that because this uncaused first cause must exist outside of nature, then it must be non-natural, transcendent, space-less, time-less and immaterial. It also must be powerful to have provided the energy to sustain an entire universe, and intelligent enough to design a universe that's able to support life*. Then lastly it must be personal, because if this being does not have a will, then the power to create would not be acted upon. So we end up with an uncaused, supernatural, transcendent, space-less, time-less, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal being, which sounds a lot like God.

*This would be where the arguments from design come in. The cosmological argument is just one piece of evidence in a body of evidence. Each piece tells us something different about God. The argument from design shows that there must be a higher intelligence guiding this universe because the odds that life could've evolved by accident are too monumental. I also believe we can read a lot into God's character through the beauty of his design.

If you'd like me to continue with the argument from design, let me know, or if you have any other questions or objections about God, fire away!

 

[Thelema]

Faith isn't like believing my chair I sit in will hold my weight. My chair has been demonstrated to hold my weight thousands of times before and is made of steel-a very strong and stable material. My chair can be tested to hold a given weight independently. I can consult engineers that can evaluate the tensile strength of the steel that my chair is comprised of.

Until we have reasons to believe my chair is not able to hold my weight, it is the furthest thing from faith to believe it can. Believing a plane will stay in the air, your roof won't collapse and all other things are about as far from faith as you can possibly be.

Comparing the belief you have in your house not collapsing to belief in God is ridiculous. I can consult the experts-physicists, biologists, geologists, archeologists, anatomists and I'm sure others that will explicitly tell you the Bible is wrong in many instances. I don't even need to get past genesis for the Bible to be wrong.

What do you think of my argument? Are the premises correct?

The cosmological argument is just terrible; If I can give it a once over and find glaring flaws in it, it's more bad for your than good. You should have looked at the first sentence when it claims that something can't come out of nothing and then says, oh wait, God can and you should have laughed. And then to go even further, on false premises that make no sense, claim that that thing which created us isn't just a force, but is an entity and then that entity is a God and then it isn't just any god, but your God? Are you for real?

And the Intelligent Design argument is almost just as bad. What do chances have to do with it? Can you give me the chances this rock I found in the dirt will be in that exact spot, in the exact time, composed of atoms in that exact arrangement? I'd like you to really find this out, find out the chance of that. The crux of the argument is how unlikely something is and how we don't know about something and sets up a false dichotomy where if it isn't X it is Y.