(November 7, 2009 at 2:58 pm)Craveman Wrote: That quote does state that you, as a Christian, should spread the word of God. How are you otherwise going to convince any non-believers to follow your God? Surely you have to try and convince them there is a God for them to follow. Or am I interpreting this Biblical verse wrong yet again?

I agree that as a Christian I am to spread the word of God. I just don't see the link between that and saying somehow I personally have an obligation to convince anyone. In other words, my job as a Christian would be to point others to God. But if they don't want to believe, it is not my problem as I have done what I was to do.

(November 7, 2009 at 2:58 pm)Craveman Wrote:

(November 6, 2009 at 1:49 pm)Craveman Wrote: You havn't stated any yet so how would you know what my presuppositions are? I like to believe that I'm open and fair to reasonable suggestions and evidence...

rjh4 Wrote:So enlighten me, Craveman. What are your presuppositions that allow you to be open and fair to any claims to miracles or God?

Saerules already answered that question on my behalf (thanks Sae!!) It was obvious what I meant in my previous quote so anyone could have answered that on my behalf.

I guess my use of the word presuppostion was not as clear as I thought. I am using it to refer to your First Principles. I don't think being open and fair to reasonable suggestion and evidence really qualifies. I hope this makes it more clear what I am talking about because I really am interested in your thoughts on this matter.

(November 5, 2009 at 7:10 pm)Saerules Wrote:

Quote:Saerules: How do you believe the bible tries to justify Gods actions then?

Under the guise of him doing 'good'... when it is from him whence came evil. Example: Sodom and Gomorra getting destroyed is viewed as 'good' by most Christians... who don't understand that 'God' created every single person in Sodom and Gomorra to be exactly that way.

How did God create everyone there to be that way? I dont believe has that sort of control over us.

(November 5, 2009 at 7:21 pm)chatpilot Wrote: solarwave your answers to my posts border on the absurd. Are you really using that tired ancient argument that atheist can't know morality since they don't know god? As I said many times morality does not come from god but from how we are brought up in our respective societies and how they interpret right from wrong. You don't need a god to know that killing is wrong since killing your own people will stunt the growth of your society and lead eventually to extinction as a race.

That is not real morality. That is relative and cant be applied to anyone but yourself. Killing is only bad on your view based on whether you value human life or not. How highly you value human life is totally subjective. Explain to me why killing is wrong apart from your own bias for humans. What you call morality is very different from what I do.

I can see that we both have different views on morality. But to assert that morality comes from god and is innate in all of us is ludicrous! The way I see it I define morality from a more human perspective whereas you define morality from a divine perspective based on your own biases that stem from your acceptance of the Christian faith and its god.

I'm with solarwave I thought that was well expressed. Morality is fixed. What Atheists have in their shifting socioculturally based decency is something else.

(November 8, 2009 at 5:46 am)fr0d0 Wrote: What Atheists have in their shifting socioculturally based decency is something else.

Bullshit, that is a NTS in disguise. It is morality and you know it, but it doesn't fit in your point of view so you try to spin it as something else.

I didn't mean to insult the Atheist position Leo just work out the difference.



'Christian morality' then is consistent where 'secular morality' changes to suit the society. How's that?

(November 7, 2009 at 8:20 am)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: So basically you are just giving the argument from design?

Well aside from the fact evolution completely refutes that, since you won't accept evolution - I'll give you another argument:

If the universe is complex, as you say, and the simplest life is even more complex, as you say... then how does God make it any less complex? If God is to be there from the beginning... then doesn't that just complicate things further? How does postulating God - something else to explain -...help?

If life and the universe requires an explanation... why doesn't God? If God can be there from the beginning.. why can't they? Or rather, why can't whatever started off the big bang be there form the beginning... without the extra addition of a superintelligent deity, "God", to create it all from the outset?

Why the special pleading for God? If you are simply to define it so you can say "God's whole purpose is to be there from the beginning... he doesn't need an explanation..." why can't you do the same for say, a big bang singularity, or the laws of physics, etc? Why postulate God [i]in addition[/i?] - you are only adding an even more complex thing to explain! it complicates things further, does it not? Special pleading alert on your part, I say.

First, you are absolutely wrong when you say that evolution refutes the arguments I made. That is way too simplistic. The fact is, evolution (common descent) takes the first life form, whatever it was, as axiomatic. Common descent does not explain how the first life form came to be. You may then point to abiogenesis, but even that fails to explain where the matter/energy came from. Even the big bang singularity I don't think explains where the energy/matter came from. So explain to me EvF, where did the energy/matter for the big bang come from? Did it always exist? Was it formed out of nothing? Then, please go on to explain to me how energy and matter come together to produce logic, which is not matter or energy? Or is logic merely manmade also?

Relative to special pleading on my part, I seem to have read that such is not really special pleading. But I don't feel like looking that argument up or even arguing it here. Suffice it to say that special pleading or not, I think that holding that God exists and the Bible as the word of God explains much more and is more consistent with reality than anything you can come up with as a world view. In fact, once you answer the questions above (if you can), we may find out that your whole worldview is really incoherent to begin with.

If you don't mind, I'll just tackle the whole, "where did all the energy and matter come from" question.

Obviously it all came about as a result of the big bang. However, this poses a further question which is what was before the big bang? There are two answers to this that I can see. The first is of course that all the energy of the Universe was wrapped up with the singularity that subsequently went 'bang' (technically it didn't actually go bang but I won't quibble about that now).

Now, there is no reason to presume that this singularity didn't always exist. There are two reasons to suppose this, firstly it may well be that there was never a time, now matter how far back you travel, that either the singularity or universe or something else didn't exist, the universe that we currently inhabit simply being the form it happens to take today.

Secondly, if, as some suspect, time itself came into existence along with everything else at the point of the big bang then the whole question of what was before and where did it all come from become meaningless questions.

Personally I favour the string theory argument from which M theory is derived whereby the big bang that brought about our universe was as a result of two colliding membranes floating around in the multiverse. If this is true, and it seems pretty plausible and is certainly supported by the maths then there would have been multiple big bangs not only on the membrane that this universe exists but also on our partner membrane. The multiverse of course may have always existed.

Any of these answers seem far more probable than simply saying "God did it."

Darwinian: How do you know how probable God doing it is?

I don't have a problem with the big bang being the result of membranes colliding, but I think saying that a singularity randomly expanded starts to get a bit confusing. I don't think I can attempt trying to fully explain why I have a problem with it since I don't fully understand how space, time, energy and matter works at that tiny size. As far as I know though it would have stopped time and so why would it expand randomly.

I dunno

rjh4 Wrote:I guess my use of the word presuppostion was not as clear as I thought. I am using it to refer to your First Principles. I don't think being open and fair to reasonable suggestion and evidence really qualifies. I hope this makes it more clear what I am talking about because I really am interested in your thoughts on this matter.

So far the existance or non-existance of a creator has not been proven. Therefore I will call myself an agnostic atheist. I believed that civilisations have tried to use various religions to try and explain the unknown. Many people, especially philosophers, have tried, speculated and used various philosophies to try and explain where it (us/universe/life/etc) all came from but have failed. All we can do is guess and wonder... I will however not settle for religion to try and explain the unknown, especially the Christian God. My believe is that Christianity is yet another man-made religion and it gets used to control the masses and to fill the coffers of the rulers. Our fear of our mortallity and the unknown keeps us from asking too many questions which obviously helps to upkeep the Christian followers

I am open to believe but havn't had any plausible evidence to support a believe in the Christian God as the creator. I hope this answer your question