Theists, are you immune to being decieved?

[Statler Waldorf]

I did a couple pages back, with Floontium the eternal material. This actually plays into my main point, which is that you can make up any damn thing you want. Handwaving and just-so stories do not reality make.

And as I have already pointed out, you did not actually account for such laws because your explanation required the existence of such laws in order to be viable.

And just what is contradictory about the idea that the laws of nature can be changed, especially since it's the cornerstone of both your creation account and miracle claims? Don't just assert things, Stat: demonstrate them. Fact is, we already have the technological means to alter or discard some laws of nature; a plane falling at a certain speed will temporarily counteract gravity, for one. You're just applying whatever labels you want to things, in the hopes that your assertions will just be accepted without question.

Your explanation involved time travel. Time travel cannot exist or ever exist because it would make it so that time travel was possible and not possible at the same point in time and in the same sense thus violating the law of non-contradiction. It would also make it so that the laws of nature existed and did not exist prior to the invention of time travel also violating the law of non-contradiction. God doing something for special significance in history does not violate the law of non-contradiction. Lastly, a plane flying does not change the laws of nature any, it merely uses them to achieve a desired result.

Classic argument from ignorance for Stat.

Esquilax has to believe that pigs can fly in order for his materialism to be viable. Check mate.

There's no need to go further than that, or to attach a definite label at all, because- and this may come as a shock to you, Stat- your experience of the world is not all that there is to reality. This "I haven't seen it, and therefore it cannot possibly exist at any point," attitude of yours is childish, reminiscent of a baby's object impermanence, and I will not take part in it.

We do have to take it further than that because Christian Theists have already succeeded where you have failed. Your rejection of our position and adherence to your own position despite the former succeeding where the latter has failed over and over again is nothing more than blind faith. Pigs cannot fly and materialism cannot account for the laws of nature; denying either of these facts soley upon blind faith is irrational.

Sure, if the only thing you're willing to entertain is your misrepresentation of my position.

It’s difficult to accurately represent a position that is constantly changing.

Which misses the point entirely, again.

The point is that your silly explanation was still illogical so it was not in any way analogous to my explanation.

Until you can demonstrate that your account of things has any basis in reality, all you have is a just so story. A fairytale.

No, I have a view of reality that succeeds where yours has failed. I will take that any day.

Because magic (miracles, godpowers, whatever you want to call it) can be used to explain anything. Doesn't mean it's real.

That’s incorrect. If my conceptual scheme is logically consistent-and if any part of it is true (i.e. laws of nature exist) then the entire conceptual scheme has to be true.

Every other god accounts for it all just as well as yours does. Made up gods do too.

Give me an example and I will show you why you are wrong.

My time travel one does as well, regardless of your by fiat assertion that it can't because you don't find it compelling.

You’re right, I do not find illogical arguments compelling.

Floontium accounts for it all perfectly well.

No because it is material and thus would be subject to the laws of nature.

and to be clear, the laws of nature only need to be accounted for in a creationist worldview; in a naturalist one, it's perfectly fine to say that they just worked out this way,

Perfectly fine according to whom? You’re making up rules of reasoning again I see. Secondly, I guess God just exists. That is just the way it is and it is exactly what we expected. Fair is fair.

that the process was unguided, possibly random or the result of a cascading series of consequences,

What process?

because in a world without a god, there was no goal involved. It just shook out this way, and that's not a problem, because it's exactly what we'd expect.

What is exactly what you would expect? Why would you expect regularity in natural laws and not irregularity?

There: I just accounted for the laws of nature under materialism, at least as a possibility.

I thought you said you did not need to account for them? You need to get on the same page with yourself. You’re travelling down the exact path I was hoping you would, so by all means continue down it.

Don't presume to tell me what I think, Statler.

I should not assume that your writings are an accurate representation of your thoughts? Yikes.

Only when you demonstrate where your god came from.

I never claimed to only believe in that which I can demonstrate. So you do not only believe in that which you can demonstrate? Or you do? How many of you are there?

Besides, I already noted that up above.

Arbitrarily asserting that you are immune to laws of proper reasoning does not account for or demonstrate anything.

How do you know mine does? I'm interested in how you know the future of all human technology and discovery, Stat.

I do not, nor do I need to; I only need to know that the law of non-contradiction is immutable.

We are discussing that, yes: and as usual, you are profoundly wrong at every turn, surviving only on the same smug back patting I called Chad on earlier.

As you engage in your own smug back patting, how hypocritical of you.

Where's the evidence that a god was involved? [/qote]

He says he was.

[quote] Because, you know, that would be the justification for believing that anything other than natural processes were involved; see, nature has an advantage, in that it's demonstrable already. How can you demonstrate your god?

As you have helped to demonstrate, my god must exist in order for us to know anything at all. Just look at the logical absurdities, faith in the future, and intellectual laziness you have had to resort to in order to defend His non-existence.

No, me saying magic is to make fun of you, but I think we all know what miraculous thing I'm referring to.

You can make fun of me all you like but I am not the one who believes that pigs really can fly we just have not seen one do it yet.

And again, you resort to a strawman. My position is that one ought not to categorically rule out the existence of a thing based solely on what we know now: we are wise to recognize that we don't yet know everything. Similarly, we are also unjustified in believing in something- like gods- without evidence for it. This is a special trick that rational people can do, called "keeping an open mind."

If a person is not justified in believing in gods without evidence (I have proof for what I believe) then you are not justified in believing that materialism will ever account for the laws of nature. Fair is fair.

So, even if that wasn't an argument from ignorance all over, you've just asserted that mine is wrong, again. You are acting like a toddler, Stat.

Logical negation is not an argument from ignorance; it is used all the time in proper logic. Secondly, you are in fact wrong because your view of reality cannot make sense of the reality we all observe.

If you can't show it, you don't know it, Stat.

Unless He who knows everything and who cannot lie tells me, then I can know it for certain. Your empiricism is self-refuting by the way.

My time travel scenario, to which your only response so far is to proclaim it illogical, as if merely saying so makes it so.

I assumed that you could see the obvious logical problems in such a position. I will not make that mistake again.

So, fallacy detection: "material things cannot alter natural laws," is an argument from ignorance, aside from being flatly wrong (black holes are made of material things, initially.)

Straw-man alert. Black holes are still subject to natural laws.

P1) All matter is subject to laws of nature.
P2) Floontium is material
C) Therefore Floontium is subject to laws of nature

Second of all, you're ignorant of Floontium: it's capable of suspending and generating natural laws. That's where they come from. They're stable because only Floontium can generate new ones, and all the Floontium in the universe has been expended in creating the initial set.

So it’s immaterial now?

I have not once used them, mainly because I have not once even proclaimed anything as true, without being tongue in cheek about them.

Materialism can account for the laws of nature, we just have not found the answer yet. Sound familiar?

Don't mistake your inability to comprehend my position as some kind of fallacious argument, Stat.

Do not fault me for being unable to comprehend the incomprehensible. That is a reflection upon the inadequacy of your position, not upon me in any way.

The laws are contingent on us, and our pursuit of understanding, and are a product of such.

Really? So if we suddenly stipulated that all electrons would attract to one another rather than repel one another it would happen? Additionally, if natural laws are dependent upon us, then are you asserting that no natural laws existed prior to Humans?

The idea of such an entity as you describe is itself only sustainable so long as our understanding of the natural universe, and the "laws" we use to describe it remain consistent. The moment our understanding changes, so then will your description of God.

Not at all, my understanding of natural laws pertains to the material not the immaterial.

This is historically true. Your defense of your hypothesis of God is a product of scientific understanding, and it is convincing to you, only because to you, it seems to fill the gaps of science's understanding.

This is also factually incorrect, the sufficiency of God as a doctrine significantly predates modern science.

But just like many others have failed to nail down God's hiding place, so have you.

The blind often think others are hiding when they are really out in the open.

Your entire defense of God hinges on laws that you think are absolute because you think science says so.

The laws of nature are not absolute, they are regular because God says so. Science does not say anything, that is reification.

You then see this as an opportunity to seize a gap of ignorance, and clumsily cram God into it.

No I see it as a classic instance of the materialist borrowing what can only be true under Christian Theism and using it to try and argue against Christian Theism.

I imagine you very much like the idea of an "absolute anything" that is supported by scientific discovery because you think this "anything" can be attributed to the God of your creation so long as nobody else has a better solution.

Nobody else even has a solution, much less a better one.

You mistakingly assume that these descriptive rules that the human mind has established are a "thing" at all, and you have mistaken them for objects that exists apart from a reflective mind giving them a purpose.

I have clearly stated numerous times that the laws of nature are descriptive and not normative. What you are failing to make sense of is why we can make such descriptions. Why do all electrons repel one another? Why is the sum total magnetic flux through any Gaussian surface always zero? And so on…

The universe doesn't care about these "laws" that we use to describe it. The universe behaves, and we try to understand it by establishing what we think are norms.

All you are doing is restating the problem. What causes the Universe to “behave” in that regular and predictable manner?

These norms are revisable and are not absolute as you desperately hope we will concede them to be.

I never said they are absolute; God has altered them from time to time in particular instances throughout redemptive history. However, what you are referring to is our understanding of the laws of nature changing, not the actual laws themselves changing. The relativistic effects of motion existed prior to Einstein and the 20th Century.

But these "laws" are helpful to us as general rules of understanding. They're not at all absolute because they are tools that we create to understand, they are not given to us by a celestial entity as you seem to think.

I never said they were given to us. I really wish you would accurately depict my position. God causes matter to behave in a regular and predictable manner thus making it possible for us to use such descriptive terms.

Science has shown us that the laws you claim exclusive rights to are not at all absolute when we look at the material world on the molecular level. Particles, (matter) violate these "laws" that we've created constantly. Quantum randomness and entanglement are just two examples. But all of these things exist naturally in our material world. Invoking a God gets us no closer to understanding anything. It's a cognitive sinkhole.

Essentially your answer is, “Well that’s just the way it is”? That’s not good enough, I am sorry. If you are going to assert that such regularity exists and will continue to exist then you are going to have to justify this assertion. I have justification for this belief, you have none.

It's only symbology to those that insist on trying to make sense of what is obviously no more than blatant primitive absurdities.

Obviously you have never read Revelation. John clearly states that what he is shown is symbolic in nature (Revelation 1). Biblical literalism does not mean what you think it means. It only means that the reader interprets the passage in accordance to its literary style. Being an apocalyptic book (much like Daniel), Revelation should be interpreted according to that literary style.

I wouldn't be surprised to find an apologist of Homer making similar utterances, such as yours, directed at the lucid interpretations of those who doubt the theological claims written in The Odyssey. Idiots indeed.

I would be surprised to find that.