Quote:Quote Alpha Male "A natural universe beginning from nothing isn't magic?"

NO, just like a Hurricane doesn't need the ocean God Poseidon as a starting point. Just like Thor isn't a magical gap answer to explain the existence of lightening. 

If you are going to say everything comes from something, then where did your God come from? 

Problem with your sky wizard as a starting point is that begs the question. YOU claim that everything comes from something else, then that means your God had to be started by something even more complex, and that more complex thing had to be created by something even more complex, and so on and so on and so on. It's called infinite regress.

But, if you claim your God didn't have a cause, then it seems to me the universe wouldn't need something prior either.

How about YOU do the right thing, and accept your belief is merely a desire to want a hero? How about you accept you bought something you like, which is nothing more than a projection of human's qualities in fictional form?

Did the Ancient Egyptians make up and falsely believe in their gods? How about the Mayans? Surely if a God exists it has to be Allah? Or maybe the one real one is the Hindu creator God Brahma? 

Or, maybe humans make them up? Maybe the universe is simply one giant weather pattern incapable of caring about our species. Maybe humans need to give up on old superstitions and mythology and stop pretending we are the center of all this in cosmic time.

God didn't come out of nothing, it came out of human imagination, just like the ones you rightfully reject.

When you bank yourself to a supernatural being... you are not really interested in mortal problems. Its ok. You can all wait for your gods. Mattwes nothing to me.

(November 12, 2017 at 1:52 pm)LastPoet Wrote: When you bank yourself to a supernatural being... you are not really interested in mortal problems. Its ok. You can all wait for your gods. Mattwes nothing to me.

When I was growing  up I really wanted to believe. But once I started seeing the same "I got it right" claims from all the world's religions, and started noticing all the mythology and superstition in all of them, the only reasonable conclusion I could come to is humans merely like what they are sold.

It is a frightening proposition to think of "all this" being a product of a super cognition, even a "si fi" version, where some think we are the product of a giant Bill Gates. That would put humans in the position of being mere lab rats at best. 

Hard to swallow humans being the most important species on this planet, much less the universe knowing just on our planet it has had had 5 mass extinction events in 4 billion years, and that our species has only been around in it's current form 200,000 years with only about 10,000 years of written language, and only recently western concepts of checks and balances on power.

(November 12, 2017 at 12:09 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 9:10 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: Bullshit.

“For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds. Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.“ (Matthew 16: 27, 28)

Jor, I'd stick to philosophy if I were you. Every passage of Holy Scripture must be considered in light of the whole testimony of the Bible. Please don't make the same mistake as many Christians do by pulling one verse from its context to make a point. Even this one verse that you quoted, is steeped in allusion to prior texts and foreshadows those to follow.

And if I were you, I'd stick to making lame excuses for why you never actually address my scriptural points. You're all mouth and no trousers, Neo.

(November 12, 2017 at 12:09 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Anyways, those calling theistic beliefs 'delusions' are clinging to a very weak connotation for no other purpose than to insult. I think I have one beer still in the fridge. I could be wrong. I have no evidence that there is. If there isn't a beer in the fridge that doesn't mean I am delusional. It would just mean that I am mistaken. On the other hand, if I check the fridge find no beer and yet insist that there is beer that might count as delusion...until I dig deeper and find one in the back of the crisper.

Now people believe in God for many reasons from personal experience to careful study of Scripture, from observation of Nature to reflection on life's significance. They may be wrong but they are not holding those beliefs in strong evidence to the contrary which would qualify as delusion.

Since it wasn't my point that the religious are deluded, all you've done is address an irrelevant strawman. Congratulations, asswipe.

(November 12, 2017 at 12:09 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: It used to be that denigrating sincerely held religious convictions was considered a form of bigotry.

Go blow it out your ass.

(November 12, 2017 at 12:09 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 9:10 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: Bullshit.

“For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds. Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.“ (Matthew 16: 27, 28)

Jor, I'd stick to philosophy if I were you. Every passage of Holy Scripture must be considered in light of the whole testimony of the Bible. Please don't make the same mistake as many Christians do by pulling one verse from its context to make a point. Even this one verse that you quoted, is steeped in allusion to prior texts and foreshadows those to follow.

Anyways, those calling theistic beliefs 'delusions' are clinging to a very weak connotation for no other purpose than to insult. I think I have one beer still in the fridge. I could be wrong. I have no evidence that there is. If there isn't a beer in the fridge that doesn't mean I am delusional. It would just mean that I am mistaken. On the other hand, if I check the fridge find no beer and yet insist that there is beer that might count as delusion...until I dig deeper and find one in the back of the crisper.

Now people believe in God for many reasons from personal experience to careful study of Scripture, from observation of Nature to reflection on life's significance. They may be wrong but they are not holding those beliefs in strong evidence to the contrary which would qualify as delusion. It used to be that denigrating sincerely held religious convictions was considered a form of bigotry.

Glad to see I'm not the only one capable of rejecting what the bible says.  Unless you already know what the whole thing means going in, no passage necessarily means what it appears to say.  That's fair.  Now, how shall we decide what the whole thing means?

(November 12, 2017 at 2:45 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: Since it wasn't my point that the religious are deluded, all you've done is address an irrelevant strawman.  Congratulations, asswipe.

I wasn't writing to you; but rather, returning to the more general topic being discussed.

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(November 12, 2017 at 2:49 pm)Whateverist Wrote: Unless you already know what the whole thing means going in, no passage necessarily means what it appears to say.  That's fair.  Now, how shall we decide what the whole thing means?

It's the journey not the destination.

(November 12, 2017 at 4:43 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 2:45 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: Since it wasn't my point that the religious are deluded, all you've done is address an irrelevant strawman.  Congratulations, asswipe.

I wasn't writing to you; but rather, returning to the more general topic being discussed.

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(November 12, 2017 at 2:49 pm)Whateverist Wrote: Unless you already know what the whole thing means going in, no passage necessarily means what it appears to say.  That's fair.  Now, how shall we decide what the whole thing means?

It's the journey not the destination.

It is a journey from the falsehood and being a lie, to being something real and being honest with ourselves and God and others.

How to face that what claim we are even to ourselves is a lie and to become true and cleanse ourselves from the stench and evil we have immersed ourselves despite clothing it with the images from the light claiming falsely to it.

In short, is to journey to free from valuing the illusions of Satan over that of the True Living Judge, and to incline to that spirit from God and leader from God that is ever with us calling us back...it is to be born of that spirit and light and leader as opposed to the children of Satan and copies of Satan we all strive to become and praise.

Good and evil exists, the former is God the latter is irrational darkness clothing itself with the former.

May God make us incline to him and free us from the web of lies we immerse ourselves in and free us from the web of knots blown into by sorcerers that are ever watching our footsteps, making sure to plant enough traps so we never make it out of the darkness.

Indeed the envious eye is real, the army of envious creatures is real, and the dark magic subduing the hearts preventing us from reflecting and realizing the clearest and dearest of all proofs and truths is ever there.

(November 12, 2017 at 12:09 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 9:10 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: Bullshit.

“For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds. Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.“ (Matthew 16: 27, 28)

Jor, I'd stick to philosophy if I were you. Every passage of Holy Scripture must be considered in light of the whole testimony of the Bible. Please don't make the same mistake as many Christians do by pulling one verse from its context to make a point. Even this one verse that you quoted, is steeped in allusion to prior texts and foreshadows those to follow.

Now here is the problem we have Neo, Christians love to quote scripture, but when it's quoted back at them use this typical type of vague excuse, that the early church thought Jesus would return in their lifetime is not in question to most scholars .

Romans 13:11
And do this, understanding the occasion. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

I Corinthians 7:25~31
25 Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. 26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. 27 Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. 28 But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.

29 What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31 those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away


*Bold Mine

We could go on,  but Christians love to slide between fact and allegory as it suits them making a nonsense of the bible itself, proclaiming that others do not truly understand, but often they do so without explaining it themselves or when they do it's so twisted and tortured relying on snippets from other scriptures (and by doing so committing the same offence)

(November 12, 2017 at 10:13 am)Mathilda Wrote: Citation required. Also a definition of what you mean by inanimate matter vs animate matter. And define life while you're at it.

I see you ignored my example of a car being made up of inanimate matter, yet no one would argue that a car can't be animated. What you are doing is performing a fallacy of composition. It is energy that animates the car. The only difference between inanimate and animated matter is whether there is a flow of energy through it that can perform work. I could have instead used the example of an ice crystal growing, or snow recrystalising over time while the temperature (energy) changes but stays below freezing.

@emjay: I get that some theists appear to be playing word games in order to cling to their belief.

Can you understand that I see the same thing in some atheists?

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(November 12, 2017 at 11:09 am)emjay Wrote: I'm glad you're not hurt by it... this is already one of those threads I wish I hadn't partaken in for all the division it's creating. My point about delusion was not that belief in God itself was delusional, but that to the extent that I see (any) belief as emotionally/irrationally driven I find it less credible. But I daresay you're the same;

Yep. See above. The difference is that I see emotionally/irrationally driven beliefs among atheists as well as theists.

Dawkins said that evolution allowed the atheist to be intellectually fulfilled. That's a powerful emotional driver.

Quote:I don't know what came before the big bang, and it may be impossible to know. But I'm comfortable with that.

Copout. When you need to appeal to personal credulity/incredulity and then ignorance and apathy in order to maintain your position, don't you get that I see that the same way you see certain theist arguments?

Quote:Maybe not, but at least it's trying to find them and looking to this universe, rather than speculating about the unknown and unknowable, to do so.

Only materialist bias has you congratulating them for sticking to this universe (which they really don't).

Quote:Fair enough, but it remains the case that magic is not the simplest explanation for... anything.

Do you even know what Occam's razor says? It says that you shouldn't multiply entities needlessly. In the case of a universe with a beginning, as science says ours has, it's not needless to infer an additional entity, i.e. a creator.

Quote:What I'm saying is whether you see me as biased... and clearly you do... any even if you're right... doesn't make any practical difference to how I perceive others; I'm still no more likely see what I personally consider irrational/emotionally driven belief as credible.

You find irrational/emotionally driven arguments that agree with your existing biases as credible. It's only those that go against your biases that you have a problem with.

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(November 12, 2017 at 12:13 pm)emjay Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 11:20 am)Mathilda Wrote: What makes you say that millions of abiogenesis experiments are performed a day?

Again this is a typical theist tactic of just stating something that they wish to be true without any evidence to back it up.

Yeah, I wondered what that was about but at the same time, tbh I'm not hugely interested; the idea still remains perfectly plausible to me in principle based on the nature of chemistry and physics, so if that's referring to human experiments, no amount of them can compare to the billions of years worth of 'trials' nature itself had the chance to perform.

Bingo - billions of years worth of opportunity for abiogenesis, but it supposedly only happened once.

I'd find abiogenesis and evolution more believable if there were multiple instances and trees rather than just one.

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(November 12, 2017 at 1:49 pm)Brian37 Wrote: NO, just like a Hurricane doesn't need the ocean God Poseidon as a starting point. Just like Thor isn't a magical gap answer to explain the existence of lightening. 

If you are going to say everything comes from something, then where did your God come from? 

Problem with your sky wizard as a starting point is that begs the question. YOU claim that everything comes from something else, then that means your God had to be started by something even more complex, and that more complex thing had to be created by something even more complex, and so on and so on and so on. It's called infinite regress.

But, if you claim your God didn't have a cause, then it seems to me the universe wouldn't need something prior either.

Your last statement is philosophically correct. Existence implies either an eternal creator, or an eternal universe. When science hadn't settled on the big bang and alternatives like the steady state universe were possibilities, neither side had an advantage with this issue. The problem for atheism is that science has said for some time now that the universe had a beginning, i.e. it hasn't existed eternally.

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(November 12, 2017 at 8:38 pm)possibletarian Wrote: Now here is the problem we have Neo, Christians love to quote scripture, but when it's quoted back at them use this typical type of vague excuse, that the early church thought Jesus would return in their lifetime is not in question to most scholars .

God is under no compulsion to act according to the beliefs of humans, even his followers or chosen apostles. Jesus said no one knows the time of his return except the Father.

(November 12, 2017 at 9:10 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 8:38 pm)possibletarian Wrote: Now here is the problem we have Neo, Christians love to quote scripture, but when it's quoted back at them use this typical type of vague excuse, that the early church thought Jesus would return in their lifetime is not in question to most scholars .

God is under no compulsion to act according to the beliefs of humans, even his followers or chosen apostles. Jesus said no one knows the time of his return except the Father.

And yet, he also (supposedly) said that this generation would by no means pass away before these things came to pass, in fact he said it often:

“For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.  I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” – Mt. 16:27,28

“Tell us, when will these things be (the destruction of the temple), and what will be the sign of your coming, and of the end of the age? . . . This generation will not pass away until all of these things take place.” – Mt. 24:3,34

“If I want him (John) to remain until I come, what is that to you.  You follow me!” – Jn. 21:21-23 (According to church tradition, all the apostles except John died before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.)

All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.” – Mt. 10:22-23


In Pauls letters even Revelation and the bible (supposedly the word of god) thinks that too.. you see our problem ?