At work.

"..... It is god's light connected to all things..... "

So, your diety does not exist within the confines of black-holes then?

See what I mean about religitards?

At work.

(October 8, 2018 at 2:27 pm)SteveII Wrote:

(October 8, 2018 at 1:01 pm)Rahn127 Wrote: Steve, do you have any facts or information that would indicate that the proposition "a god exists" is true ?

I just listed like 20 points that qualify for "facts or information". In those 20 points was the unbroken, reported personal experiences of God from like a billion people. Is a billion pieces of "fact or information" enough? 

Quote:Let's start by describing the god you believes exists and how you obtained this description.

Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, creator of all there is, the God partially revealed in the OT and then the incarnation described in the events of the NT as a God who sacrificed for us and who wants to have a personal relationship with us. 

Information from: natural theology, revealed theology, inferred systematic theology, personal experience of me and others.


I notice that you seem to have a need to keep the conversation as vague as possible. You actually asked for theists to answer your OP. But I think that you thought you would get answers that you could just dismiss with a condescending line or two about the Bible. Your actual knowledge of the subject is so weak that you need to keep things vague to mask it. If I'm right, you are nothing more than a simple-minded member of the atheist echo chamber. Congrats.

If I am wrong, you will address my evidence point by point as your OP implied you wanted to discuss. 

Which is it? Simple-minded or intelligent discussion.

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(October 8, 2018 at 12:02 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote:

---

1) Not me, per se -- Biblical scholars.  I personally prefer Bart Ehrman's detective work which concludes that the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, based on a careful study of the Gospels.

https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Apocalyptic...art+ehrman

2) Billions of people can and do misinterpret their personal experiences, as psychology has shown.

https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Gorilla...le+gorilla

3 and 4) You are assuming that the universe came from nothing, which even the big bang theory does not assume.  The universe, in some form, may have existed forever.  After all, energy doesn't seem to be either created or destroyed, just transformed.  We don't really know yet, but your jumping to conclusions proves nothing.  Further, other scientists have speculated how it is indeed possible for something to come from nothing (without anything supernatural involved).

https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-...e+big+bang

5) Consciousness is not a separate being, it is a process of physical bodies and specifically physical brains.  It varies with brain chemistry and structure.

https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Sci...sciousness

So yes, there are alternative explanations for each of your points, and from my perspective every one is more probable than yours because they do no depend on the existence of a whole other spiritual or supernatural dimension to reality.  The more moving parts any explanation requires, the less probable it's likely to be.  Your explanations are way too complicated for what they are required to explain.

I am happy to discuss each point with you in as much detail as you like. However, I am not going to have dueling Amazon book links. Pick one and give me the basics.

I'll start on the one you did actually expand on. The reason there must be a first cause is that a infinite amount of past causes/effects is not logically possible. There is no such possibility as an actual infinite number of anything in the real world. If there were an infinite number of past events, we could never have gotten to the events of today because there would still need to be an infinite amount of events that need to pass before we can get to today. 

No scientist has ever had a theory where things come into being ex nihilo.

Hawking Radiation for one example of "Something from exnihilo"

Along with spontaneous nuclear fission for things happening without causes.

(October 8, 2018 at 2:27 pm)SteveII Wrote: <a tissue of lies>

Steve keeps posting the same old lies. I have debunked them at least five times by now, others countless more.

He tends to put people who show him up as a pathetic little lying whiny arsed crybaby on ignore.

Steve, I'm what happens when the truth has it's boots on.

Quote:<a tissue of lies>

A perfect description of theism

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(October 8, 2018 at 5:56 pm)Peebo-Thuhlu Wrote: At work.

(October 8, 2018 at 2:27 pm)SteveII Wrote: I just listed like 20 points that qualify for "facts or information". In those 20 points was the unbroken, reported personal experiences of God from like a billion people. Is a billion pieces of "fact or information" enough? 


Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, creator of all there is, the God partially revealed in the OT and then the incarnation described in the events of the NT as a God who sacrificed for us and who wants to have a personal relationship with us. 

Information from: natural theology, revealed theology, inferred systematic theology, personal experience of me and others.


I notice that you seem to have a need to keep the conversation as vague as possible. You actually asked for theists to answer your OP. But I think that you thought you would get answers that you could just dismiss with a condescending line or two about the Bible. Your actual knowledge of the subject is so weak that you need to keep things vague to mask it. If I'm right, you are nothing more than a simple-minded member of the atheist echo chamber. Congrats.

If I am wrong, you will address my evidence point by point as your OP implied you wanted to discuss. 

Which is it? Simple-minded or intelligent discussion.

---

I am happy to discuss each point with you in as much detail as you like. However, I am not going to have dueling Amazon book links. Pick one and give me the basics.

I'll start on the one you did actually expand on. The reason there must be a first cause is that a infinite amount of past causes/effects is not logically possible. There is no such possibility as an actual infinite number of anything in the real world. If there were an infinite number of past events, we could never have gotten to the events of today because there would still need to be an infinite amount of events that need to pass before we can get to today. 

No scientist has ever had a theory where things come into being ex nihilo.

Hawking Radiation for one example of "Something from exnihilo"

Along with spontaneous nuclear fission for things happening without causes.

 

He's still prattling on about his unfounded assertion that everything needs a cause

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Quote:Evidence refers to pieces of information or facts that help us establish the truth of something.

Only you would dilute that word so heavily but like Reformed Epistemology when theists can't win the rewrite the rules to favor themselves  .

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(October 8, 2018 at 3:09 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote:

(October 8, 2018 at 2:27 pm)SteveII Wrote:

---

I am happy to discuss each point with you in as much detail as you like. However, I am not going to have dueling Amazon book links. Pick one and give me the basics.

I'll start on the one you did actually expand on. The reason there must be a first cause is that a infinite amount of past causes/effects is not logically possible. There is no such possibility as an actual infinite number of anything in the real world. If there were an infinite number of past events, we could never have gotten to the events of today because there would still need to be an infinite amount of events that need to pass before we can get to today. 

No scientist has ever had a theory where things come into being ex nihilo.

Moving the goalposts fallacy.  You only asked for me to show there were indeed alternative explanations.  I have done so, whether you investigate them on your own or not.  Plus I already offered short summaries.

With quantum mechanics, scientists have already shown that the physical world can behave in non-intuitive ways.  So neither of your arguments, against infinities and against ex nihilo creation, may be correct in reality.

Not mention it's not your job to provide explanations to reject his unfounded attempts at slapping god stickers all over everything .

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(October 8, 2018 at 4:27 pm)HappySkeptic Wrote:

(October 8, 2018 at 3:55 pm)SteveII Wrote: Fine. My point would have been there are problems with those alternate explanations so they might not actually be explanations to the Christian beliefs/worldview. Silly me, I thought you wanted to have a discussion on...well...a discussion forum. Well, I'm not doing both sides of it.

You can have your over-used quantum mechanics red herring--although I have no idea how it get's you around the infinity problem.

---

The argument "there can't be an infinite regression to the past" is reasonable when discussing the current nature of our universe.  Infinite regression can best be disproved by thermodynamics.

However, thermodynamics is a property of the current universe, since the big-bang.  Our laws of physics, and even the existence of time itself only has meaning from that moment onward.  There have been proposals that the big-bang actually created two universes, moving in opposite directions in time.

As for quantum-mechanics, we have no theory which can model a singularity, but we know it will be something new.  Quantum mechanics does away with strict causality, and deals with probabilities.  All possibilities are probed, while only one history seems realized in the long-term.

Trying to use common-sense regression ideas to explain the universe fails.  We know it fails.  We don't know all the answers, but inserting "God" has never increased scientific knowledge,, ever.  The big-bang is a better stopping point for infinite regression than any imagined deity, but few scientists think that is the beginning of "existence" itself.

And now he's trotting out the infinite regress canard

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Quote:I just listed like 20 points that qualify for "facts or information". In those 20 points was the unbroken, reported personal experiences of God from like a billion people. Is a billion pieces of "fact or information" enough? 

Nope you listed nothing

I'm going to hypothetically assume that the god Stevo mentioned exists somewhere.

If I remove the omnipotence, the omniscient, the omnibenevolence, the power to create, what are we left with ?

It's easy to pile all kinds of traits on to something, but what is that something that this god is ?

Strip away all the powers and what remains ?

At work.

Aren't a billion pieces of 'Hearsay'........ Just a billion pieces of 'Chinese whispers'?

(October 8, 2018 at 6:29 pm)Peebo-Thuhlu Wrote: At work.

Aren't a billion pieces of 'Hearsay'........ Just a billion pieces  of 'Chinese whispers'?

Steve loves to trumpet his Billions ploy it's a rehatch of" A Billion can't be wrong " yes they can .

(October 8, 2018 at 5:44 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: The nice thing about God's proof is that it's God's light connected to all things and connects to God and points to him by being a reflection of his attributes and glorifying him accurately and being the balance by which all deeds are held account to.   It's rational that God if he exists could bring down a proof and light from him, and not only rational that he can, but rational that he would. The witness is not far, look within yourself, and you will find God and his Guide both with you and beyond you, like blue butt Rafiki told Simba "look harder, see, he lives in you".

The name of God is a living word of truth,  and beautiful names of God and his perfect words, they are his proofs, and they come together as chosen ones and a way to God, split after the founder, in Twelve courses/ways back to God, and they are the guides and leaders and stars of guidance to hold on to, and bright suns of which the final stage will be a day without night.

2 In that time [of the Beginning of Days] the Valar brought order to the seas and the lands and the mountains, and Yavanna at last planted the seeds that she had long devised. And since, when the fires were subdued or buried beneath the primeval hills, there was need of light, Aulë at the prayer of Yavanna wrought two mighty lamps for the lighting of the Middle-earth which he had built amid the encircling seas. Then Varda filled the lamps and Manwë hallowed them, and the Valar set them upon high pillars, more lofty far than are any mountains of the later days. One lamp they raised to the north of Middle-earth, and it was named Illuin; and the other was raised in the south, and it was named Ormal; and the light of the lamps of the Valar flowed out over the Earth, so all was lit as it were in changeless day.

3 The seeds that Yavanna had sown began swiftly to sprout and to burgeon, and there arose a multitude of growing things great and small, mosses and grasses and great ferns, and trees whose tops were crowned with cloud as they were living mountains, but whose feet were wrapped in green twilight. And beasts came forth and dwelt in the grassy plains, or in the rivers and the lakes, or walked in the shadows of the woods. As yet not flower had bloomed nor any bird had sung, for those things waited still their time in the bosom of Yavanna; but wealth there was of her imagining, and nowhere more rich than in the midmost parts of the Earth, where the light of both the Lamps met and blended. And there upon the isle of Almaren in the Great Lake was the first dwelling of the Valar when all things were young, and new-made grass was yet a marvel in the eyes of the makers; and they were long content.
(The Silmarillion 1:2-3)

Quote:information from: natural theology, revealed theology, inferred systematic theology, personal experience of me and others.

So a giant pile astrology and hearsay that's not information that's make believe then strapping that make believe onto reality and expecting people who are not part of your cult to buy it under the guise of "open mindedness " which is theist code for " I have this land in the Everglades i like to sell you "