(June 24, 2015 at 8:24 am)h4ym4n Wrote: Drich, do you any answer to where god came from, other then the typical special
pleading answer of it always existed?

that's an easy one.

to have a point of origin refers to linear thought bound by a forward progression of time. So what is time? Time is the MEASURE of passing of moments. God is From the point before the measure of time was possible.

(June 24, 2015 at 8:29 am)Drich Wrote: lol, maybe in some idealic setting, but just look at how your peers are defending the use of science to disprove God, or the distain they have when I attribute a scientific understanding to how God operates..
Again, science has become an excuse as to why God can not exist, despite what 'purist' think science should be.

That's not an issue for science. Science does not depend on whether or not people want to find or bury god. I'm sure that scientists --being human-- go into a lot of their research with goals and biases and any number of things that don't matter to the discovery of how things work. And it even taints their results from time to time. The nice thing about the scientific method and the fact that so many different people seek to either confirm or overturn such claims is that over the long term we excise the stuff that is wrong and end up with answers. Our modern world is evidence of that.

Drich Wrote:The search for the 'God partical' (with the hydron super collider) is a good example of 'science being used to disprove God.

Perhaps in the eyes of those who you mentioned as wanting that result. Discovering a particular particle helps us to understand the universe better, but it neither proved nor disproved god. That was not the goal. We learned something, and it can be applied to what we know in order to expand our knowledge. And that's great. If it proves or disproves god somehow, that's just fine too. But I don't recall that the world suddenly realized that god did or did not exist. Learning of the existence of the Higgs Boson did not change my mind, and it didn't seem to change yours. So claims about what it proved regarding god seem premature, to say the least.

Drich Wrote:so?

So as I explained in the paragraph that followed that one, there is nothing for science to discover if that is the nature of god. If you define god to be out of the reach of conventional discovery, then why would you chastise science for not looking deeper if you know god won't be there?

Drich Wrote:You seem to be oblivious to the fact that one does not have to be in a specialized field of study in order to have full access to God. God has given us access to Him if we simply A/S/K for Him, yet we take His formula and apply it to all sorts of other disciplines and endeavors instead.

Consider how it is applied in those other circumstances. If we apply it with consistent methods that are designed to produce quantifiable, repeatable, and falsifiable results, then we get... just that. Others can test the work that has gone before and either refute it, confirm it, or modify it. And their work can similarly be compared and tested and refined further (or scrapped, or confirmed). In a religious context, ASK is none of those things. There is no method with specific and clearly-outlined steps, just a set of vague instructions (in this case literally just three actions which are heavily context-dependent). The results cannot be independently verified, quantified, falsified, or repeated. Many people who believe in the efficacy of it will not hesitate to question the methods and results of others who claim that it worked, but did not produce the results that the former expected.

The ambiguity of the method and the results should cause us to dismiss it as a useful method of learning anything. But to the believer the ambiguity is its greatest strength because it helps to shield it from scrutiny.

(June 24, 2015 at 9:15 am)Nope Wrote:

(June 24, 2015 at 8:16 am)Drich Wrote: What makes you think God has left us alone? In the story the third mouse stopped at discovering the mechanical workings of the paino, but as you well know there is much more to a piano making music. If the 3rd mouse kept looking, he would have discovered the keys and ultimately the hands that operated those keys... But again the point of the story was to illustrate that the mouse stopped looking once he could describe how the piano works.

We too stop looking in 'science' once we discover how the 'piano works.' but do not consider the being operating the keys. IF science always stops where the 3rd mouse stops then that would indicate a huge flaw in 'science' Again IF in fact there is a God.

You are interpreting the story with your particular religion in mind but the pianist isn't trying to do anything for the mice. He isn't guiding them or making rules for them and is probably not even aware that they are there. The pianist would probably hire an exterminator or buy a cat if he or she knew they had an infestation of rodents. That sounds like a deist version of a  deity.

that's the awesomething about a 'story.' I can make the pianist say or do whatever I like. So if you need the story to include a want or demand of the mice similar to what God wants of us we can amend that. However for the point of this thread and how I used the story to illustrate man's contentment with an explaination of how things work without the 'pianist' the story as is works well.

(June 24, 2015 at 9:46 am)Drich Wrote:

(June 24, 2015 at 8:24 am)h4ym4n Wrote: Drich, do you any answer to where god came from, other then the typical special
pleading answer of it always existed?

that's an easy one.

to have a point of origin refers to linear thought bound by a forward progression of time. So what is time? Time is the MEASURE of passing of moments. God is From the point before the measure of time was possible.

Yes, conjuring gods through mere assertion, while failing to recognize that our usual understanding of time/space and causation breaks down at a certain point when contemplating origins is easy.  Who would have thought it?   

(June 24, 2015 at 8:34 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote:

(June 24, 2015 at 8:10 am)Drich Wrote: "our understanding of science"

That's a cute term that can include or exclude whatever you want it to. For example The German "understanding of science" in the 1930's and 40s said that non-Aryan races were not infact human, but a sub class, which needed to be purged from the planet.

'Science' as you understand it/have defined it is an excuse to not believe in God. Similarly 'science' can also be a tool used to show how God operates.

Man, you never pass up an opportunity to go Godwin, hm?

There's nothing about science that points to any kind of god.  Please demonstrate how science implies a god.

Coherent, legible sentences please.

you don't understand the point of the op either huh?

Again in the story of the mice, Man/mouse is content with his observations (science) that conclusively point to the strings and hammer is the only source of the music.

I am saying Man uses science as a way to not acknoweledge God, because 'man' thinks God is a God of woo only. when infact God is the God or the cause of the hammer striking the strings.

(June 24, 2015 at 8:46 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote: God created the natural word becaus the bible says so?

Do you expect that to convince anyone at all?

now read the last paragraph

Ok, fine.

God, I wish to see some evidence of your existence. I am told often enough that you know what is in my heart (being a poetic euphemism for the core of my being and not literally the organ powering my circulatory system); thus you ought to know that my wish is a sincere one as well as what I would consider satisfactory evidence. You would know that I cannot be persuaded by ambiguous coincidences, natural phenomena that happen anyway, convoluted and self-serving pseudological arguments, dreams, bible or kerrang verses, pronouncements or indeed threats from your followers, or anything else of a similarly weak and unconvincing nature. According to many if not all of your followers, you are the same god that created the Universe and made a woman from a bone, so surely I am not asking for anything beyond your capabilities. The only criteria I ask is that the evidence be clear, unambiguous and, without any other explanation, point without question to your existence and yours alone - even and especially should the answer turn out to be no. All this I ask you in the context of every verse in the book you supposedly wrote or caused to be written in which it is promised that you will answer every prayer honestly asked, as well as Drich's insistence on his A/S/K system (whatever you take that to mean in practice) and indeed any other ceremonial ritual necessary for the propagation of such requests. Thank you.

Inb4 Stimbo not honestly A/S/K-ing.

Well, that's up to the god I'm petitioning, not the D-man.

Who was that apologist who said God isn't magic? One of those books Steve Shives reviewed. He was banging on about God not being magic, but magic is real and evil. God does amazing stuff which is err... something else. Definitely not magic though. Some sort of God power which isn't evil and makes things out of nothing. As we're so often reminded- this is impossible, which is why we need God to do it for us.