(June 2, 2016 at 4:20 am)Socratic Meth Head Wrote: God is supposed to be Omnipresent, and Hell is supposed to be a seperation from God.

This makes no sense, they cant co-exist, its one, or neither.
Christians cant sacrifice God's supposed Omnipresense or hell in order to have a somewhat consistent belief.

There's no dichotomy. They're just metaphorical, representations of mankind's moral vicissitudes.

(June 5, 2016 at 4:26 pm)IATIA Wrote:

(June 5, 2016 at 4:02 pm)RozKek Wrote: ... the universe simply just is.

My belief also and it offers no contradictions.  No beginning, no end, no time, it just is.

The difference is we atheists can disagree and new empirical evidence will change our minds eventually when we catch up with the present frontier of science, unfortunately new empirical evidence just makes theists use this new evidence to reinterpret their beliefs and then make out as if that was always what they believed.

Personally I presently accept that the universe didn't exist until the big bang ... I think it has gone way beyond being just a belief, though if new empirical evidence challenged that I would throw out that premise like my days collection of rubbish.

I can only guess at what was before the big bang and I am presently swayed towards multiple universes or the multiverse ....

The gap in our present knowledge however doesn't make me reach for a "God", the least likely explanation in my opinion ....

Even if the Intelligent design rabble could somehow (even though I can't see how) prove that a "God" started the ball rolling that doesn't lead to any verification of a fictional book written by semi-illiterate stone age people.

With two thousand years you could make any fairy story seem logical to people that just accept what they are told by their parents and those indoctrinating their parents.

Dog.

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(June 5, 2016 at 4:44 pm)quip Wrote:

(June 2, 2016 at 4:20 am)Socratic Meth Head Wrote: God is supposed to be Omnipresent, and Hell is supposed to be a seperation from God.

This makes no sense, they cant co-exist, its one, or neither.
Christians cant sacrifice God's supposed Omnipresense or hell in order to have a somewhat consistent belief.

There's no dichotomy. They're just metaphorical, representations of mankind's moral vicissitudes.

Same old same old .... anything a religious person feels they can't validate it just becomes metaphorical ... I don't think the semi-illiterate stoneagers were writing anything metaphorical.

But even if they were why are those interpreting the bible in the 21st century any more credible than throughout the past 6000 OT or 2000 for the NT?

It seems a bit lame to me that those stone age people wrote metaphorical stuff that only some zealot in the 21st century could understand?

Dog.

(June 5, 2016 at 1:38 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: We have no scientific proof or evidence of any sort regarding how this all began, and as far as we know, everything in nature, every force, etc, has to come from something. So thinking there was no supernatural element at play still doesn't line up with how we understand nature, and still requires a certain degree of faith.

No, actually, you're wrong. Leaving aside quantum mechanics, which suggests that you can, in fact, get something from nothing, all of the evidence from physics suggests that this "you can't get something from nothing" style of causality breaks down past the Planck time. That things require causes in this specific iteration of the universe is simply a function of the linear time inherent in this specific iteration, but it's not a uniform standard applicable to every region of spacetime, just what we can observe.

Essentially, prior to the Planck time the universe existed in a state completely unlike anything we've ever known, and beyond our current ability to measure, so expecting that it operates by the same causal rules is extremely silly.

(June 5, 2016 at 4:47 pm)madog Wrote: Personally I presently accept that the universe didn't exist until the big bang ...

The Big Bang was just our known universe. I was speaking of everything, everywhere, multiverses or not. The 'energy' soup that 'predates' the BB. Including whatever it is that our universe is expanding into (if anything).

It just is. No before, no after, just a stagnant pool of endless possibilities.

(June 5, 2016 at 4:26 pm)IATIA Wrote:

(June 5, 2016 at 4:02 pm)RozKek Wrote: ... the universe simply just is.

My belief also and it offers no contradictions.  No beginning, no end, no time, it just is.

Before 1920 people thought the universe was just the stars they could see.  Today we can  see distant galaxies.  We still have no idea how large the universe is or what it is.  But we do know that we will soon cease to exist

Stars are born and die.  Galaxies float through space and merge with each other like cells in a living organism.  Imagine that a single grain of sand represents our universe.  Now imagine that the real universe is a trillion trillion times the size of our perceived universe.

(June 5, 2016 at 5:17 pm)IATIA Wrote:

(June 5, 2016 at 4:47 pm)madog Wrote: Personally I presently accept that the universe didn't exist until the big bang ...

The Big Bang was just our known universe.  I was speaking of everything, everywhere, multiverses or not.  The 'energy' soup that 'predates' the BB.  Including whatever it is that our universe is expanding into (if anything).

It just is.  No before, no after, just a stagnant pool of endless possibilities.

It wasn't aimed at your comments .... I was just pointing out that there is no problem with us disagreeing as we would look at new empirical evidence. Even those that support the big bang theory would accept new empirical evidence that trashed the theory, in fact scientists love when theories are trashed as it gives them a new path to explore

Theists hate empirical change because they have to do all sorts of gymnastics to try to protect their dogma ....

Dog.

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(June 5, 2016 at 5:21 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Before 1920 people thought the universe was just the stars they could see.  Today we can  see distant galaxies.  We still have no idea how large the universe is or what it is.  But we do know that we will soon cease to exist

Stars are born and die.  Galaxies float through space and merge with each other like cells in a living organism.  Imagine that a single grain of sand represents our universe.  Now imagine that the real universe is a trillion trillion times the size of our perceived universe.

Isn't it a fantastic time to be alive .... how people can hold on to an ancient fiction book when you actually let what you state sink in

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(June 5, 2016 at 4:47 pm)madog Wrote:

(June 5, 2016 at 4:26 pm)IATIA Wrote: My belief also and it offers no contradictions.  No beginning, no end, no time, it just is.

The difference is we atheists can disagree and new empirical evidence will change our minds eventually when we catch up with the present frontier of science, unfortunately new empirical evidence just makes theists use this new evidence to reinterpret their beliefs and then make out as if that was always what they believed.

Personally I presently accept that the universe didn't exist until the big bang ... I think it has gone way beyond being just a belief, though if new empirical evidence challenged that I would throw out that premise like my days collection of rubbish.

I can only guess at what was before the big bang and I am presently swayed towards multiple universes or the multiverse ....

The gap in our present knowledge however doesn't make me reach for a "God", the least likely explanation in my opinion ....

Even if the Intelligent design rabble could somehow (even though I can't see how) prove that a "God" started the ball rolling that doesn't lead to any verification of a fictional book written by semi-illiterate stone age people.

With two thousand years you could make any fairy story seem logical to people that just accept what they are told by their parents and those indoctrinating their parents.

Dog.

---

(June 5, 2016 at 4:44 pm)quip Wrote: There's no dichotomy. They're just metaphorical, representations of mankind's moral vicissitudes.

Same old same old .... anything a religious person feels they can't validate it just becomes metaphorical ... I don't think the semi-illiterate stoneagers were writing anything metaphorical.

But even if they were why are those interpreting the bible in the 21st century any more credible than throughout the past 6000 OT or 2000 for the NT?

It seems a bit lame to me that those stone age people wrote metaphorical stuff that only some zealot in the 21st century could understand?

Dog.

I didn't claim that the believers actualized and worshiped them metaphorically.  I was speaking as a conventional non-believer.

(June 5, 2016 at 5:38 pm)quip Wrote:

(June 5, 2016 at 4:47 pm)madog Wrote:  

I didn't claim that the believers actualized and worshiped them metaphorically.  I was speaking as a conventional non-believer.

Maybe it would be easier if you didn't try to sound cosmic in the way you phrase stuff .... say what you mean in plain English and then maybe we could converse

Dog.

(June 5, 2016 at 5:50 pm)madog Wrote:

(June 5, 2016 at 5:38 pm)quip Wrote: I didn't claim that the believers actualized and worshiped them metaphorically.  I was speaking as a conventional non-believer.

Maybe it would be easier if you didn't try to sound cosmic in the way you phrase stuff .... say what you mean in plain English and then maybe we could converse

Dog.

Or alternately, you could broaden your linguistic horizons....or bow to my cosmic vernacular.    Your choice.

(June 5, 2016 at 5:54 pm)quip Wrote:

(June 5, 2016 at 5:50 pm)madog Wrote: Maybe it would be easier if you didn't try to sound cosmic in the way you phrase stuff .... say what you mean in plain English and then maybe we could converse

Dog.

Or alternately, you could broaden your linguistic horizons....or bow to my cosmic vernacular.    Your choice.

I know the meaning of the words you use but just consider the way you string them together self adulation ... cosmic was being nice