Atheism is unreasonable

[His_Majesty]

No, it isn't,

Ok, so our universe popped in to existed from non-space, yet, it is expanding in preexisting space? Makes no sense.

and no, there doesn't. My worldview is that words have to mean something in order for us to have a coherent discussion and that mere assertions can be dismissed as such.

What?

An analogy isn't a question. It's a comparison.

It is a comparison of how things would be if the past is eternal and infinite regression is possible. I summed up the analogy by asking you a very simple question that I would expect you to be able to answer should it be true..you were unable to do so...so just accept defeat in that regard and lets move on.

Your worldview won't allow you to accept that your analogies are poor.

Right, it is so poor that you can't answer the question which topped it off. I knew you wouldn't be able to answer it, you just didn't know. Well, now you know, and "knowing is half the battle".

We are here whether the past is infinite or not, we are a brute fact.

Denial of defeat.

YOU aren't claiming it, but many Christians do.

Then they are wrong, too. Christians are not immune to erraneous thinking.

Thanks for clearing up another point where your version of God differs from the usual Christian understanding. So therefore, God had a beginning, and you've asserted that anything that begins to exist must have a cause, so what caused God? I think avoiding that conundrum is why so many Christians try to make God an exception to the claim that there can't be an infinte past and God has existed forever.

Apparently you don't know what atemporal/timeless means.

By definition, if I take an infinite amount of steps I will reach infinity

So what is the number right before infinity?

, so I suspect you meant to say something different

Think again.

although I never claimed I would ever take an infinite amount of steps anyway. I can walk a finite distance on an infinite road.

Stick to the analogy.

The universe seems to be future infinite

The future is infinite, but the past is finite.

, but any point in time I can imagine will eventually come to pass.

Wow.

I don't know whether whatever became the universe is past finite or infinite, and I don't really care, but at least I know what I don't know, which is more than you can say.

If you don't care then why are we having this discussion?

No, it only explains how the universe originated.

Well, how?

Yet all you do is repeat it, and never present a properly constructed logical proof. That's because there isn't one. 'It doesn't sound plausible' is not a logical proof.

If it can't happen in an analogy, it can't happen in reality. If it can happen in reality, it can happen in a analogy. Unfortunately for you, you can't explain how it could happen in either reality, OR analogy. Not my problem.

You can't construct a syllogism that concludes a past infinite is impossible without a past infinite being impossible contained in the premises. What we can't prove impossible we must accept as at least a remote possibility.

Ok, constructing a syllogism is easy...but it is pointless given the fact that I would have to explain why each premises is true...but since I am already doing that with the analogies, no need for a syllogism.

There would be no universal law that applies to both species except where we share the same nature, but we can each have laws objective to our own natures.

Have you considered looking up the definitions of 'objective' and 'universal' in a dictionary?

Looking it up in the dictionary? I find it funny that you are requesting that I look the terms up in the dictionary, but yet in the same paragraph where you are giving such good advice, you are showing your ignorance of the terms definitions. If something is objective, then its objectivity is independent of who has what nature

This has been at least the second time (and counting) time you've questioned my intelligence only to showcase your own ignorance in the process.

We don't presuppose the standard, we derive it from experience: no one likes getting raped, raping isn't necessary, and preventing rape greatly improves the odds of our not being raped. The axiom isn't that 'rape is bad', it's that 'needlessly harming other humans is bad', and you can't have an ethical system of any kind without at least one axiom. Isn't the basis of your ethical system the axiom that a supremely just God authored it? Do you consider that assumption begging the question?

So a slave master, who from birth always experienced the slavery of Africans to be a good thing, since that was his experience, that makes it right?

SMH. No need to discuss the subject of morality with you any further.

Your point from the beginning was that must be what I believe, because I'm an atheist. It IS what I consider most likely, but not because I'm an atheist. I could be a Buddhist atheist, or a Raellian atheist, or an atheist who never geve it much thought. I happen to be a rational skeptic (aka scientific skeptic), which is my epistemology, how I figure out what I know.

I repeat, on judgement day, God doesn't give a damn what kind of atheist you are..and since he don't, then I don't.

First, non sequitur, my observing that time will not suffice to bring about the resurrection of a dead man has nothing to do with Darwin.

But your belief that reptiles came from birds does.

Second, Darwin's theory has been continuously revised to fit new evidence as it's discovered, the modern theory of evolution has considerable differences to the original theory as Darwin had no inkling of molecular biology, for instance. Revising his theory at will is in no way comparable to treating it as sacred. And if Lamarck had been born out by the facts, it would be Lamarck's theories you'd be accusing us of damn near worshipping. Every new discovery we've made in biology regarding the fossil record and heredity has been an opportunity for nature to prove Darwin's basic thesis wrong, and if something broke the theory tomorrow, we'd go 'huh, didn't see that coming' and go with the new information. Don't project your committment to never change your mind on to us. Most of us got to the positions we now hold by changing our minds.

It can all be revised with more false interpretations lol.

Universe gnomes? Computer simulation? Super collider universe generator?

The lengths people will go to not believe in God lol.

Certain astronomical events have to be met in order to get it ONLY if life happens spontaneously. A designer doesn't need ideal conditions, and an omnipotent designer doesn't need any. An omnipotent designer could design us to live in the core of a black hole if it wanted.

Maybe he wanted to show his engineering skills.

And that's why it's destined to become an ever thinning cloud of dispersing photons, chump.

If the low entropy is getting high and will run out in a finite proper time, that must mean it couldn't have been running for an infinite amount of time, now doesn't it?

Entropy is a variable. If thermodynamics worked the way you think it does, life would be impossible. In any state short of maximum entropy (the system is as disordered as it can possibly be), significan increases in local order are possible as long as there is energy available to drive it. The universe is trillions of years away from anything that can reasonably be described as maximum entropy.

I will ask again; how will the level of chaos be that low if it started from a singularity point with no guided hand to orchestrate the process??

That seems to be the best bet, given what we already know.

Right, a mathematically precise system/order of events from a mindless and blind process. Would you trust a mentally handicap person that is blind to do your math homework for you? No? But you trust it to create life, intelligence, and consciousness?

If the net energy of a universe must equal zero, which appears to be the case, because that seems to be our universe's energy budget and that lends some support to the quantum vacuum fluctuation origin which predicts a zero energy budget (positive energy being balanced by negative energy), even if there are multiple universes, they will likely have similar constants because of the constraint that positive and negative energy must balance, or at least be so close to perfect balance that the energy budget is extremely close to zero.

What does that have to do with a low entropy singularity?? Nothing.

---

You laugh too much...

"If this was football, I'll be scoring touchdowns / but it is the circus tho, cuz I see some tough clowns"

The theory... actually theorem... was you who brought up.
And that theorem allows for both interpretations. Meaning that it is incomplete. It is lacking in further detail in order to conclusively say something about the past of time.

So the light can be on and not on at the same time...gotcha.

Actually... not quite... it's one more point against your position.
You may address it as well, or, just cover your ears and listen to what people are telling you. Reality, in many instances, doesn't seem logical: evidence: Quantum Mechanics - Your computer!

"Listen to what people are telling you". When the sense that they are talking outweighs the sense that I am talking, I will.

---

Your difference of opinion is with your own holy book, and the theologians who've explicated your religion.

My "own holy book" is the word of the living God.

Yet you're defending the contrary view. When you arrive at a contradiction, one of your premises is flawed.

Give me a contradiction.

I.E., give your money to the robber "of your own free will".

See, there is that "opinion" thing again, Parker. Because the 2 billion Christians in this world, we don't feel like we are being robbed. I am sorry you feel that way.

I.E., refuse to surrender your money, and get murdered.

The "money" you are referring to is actually the robber's money.

You really haven't thought about what I've written here.

I thought about it..just ain't buying it.

So, you'd find the robber not guilty ... got it.

God only wants what is his..and if you take something from him, he will take something from you.

Tell me again about your so-called morality.

Jesus Christ.

Rather than preaching, answer the point, or admit your incompetence to do so.

I don't know what answer I can give you that will be satisfactory to you...so it all comes down to whether or not Christianity is right for you...you know what it is, you know what it is about...and you freely reject it. Point blank, period.

You know about Jesus, you know about Christian theology...and you reject it..and now you are on here asking questions as if that is the one question keeping you from being a Christian.

The bottom line is this...according to Christian theology, Jesus died on the cross for your sins, etc. Either accept it, or reject it. You've rejected it, no one forced you to reject it...and not only have you rejected it, but you've argued against it...sounds like you are free to do what the hell you want to do...so don't come crying to me talking about how you don't have free will.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/def...sh/perfect

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/def...lish/mercy

Omnibenevolence does not mean omnimerciful...I don't know what part of that you aren't understanding...but taking that in to account will help clean up some of that mess you have going on over there.

You're arguing against it in this thread. Are you so uneducated you don't realize this?

I guess I am the first Christian apologist to argue against Christianity

Those are intellectual disciplines, not evidentiary material.

They are intellectual disciplines, and when used properly regarding the right subject matter, can give a person good reasons to believe in God.

Worked for me.

Do you need me to look up "evidence" for you as well, or can we trust you to learn how to google these things sometime this year?

Don't flatter yourself. I only asked you to define the term because it seemed as if you were committing a non-sequitur, so I wanted to see whether or not you had a different definition of the term than I had...and come to find out, you didn't, you were just WRONG in that regard, that's all.

Obviously. He actually said some intelligent things here and there ... in stark contrast to you.

He probably said more intelligent things than Charles Darwin too.

Because the Universe seems to be a closed system ... Einstein.

Any more questions? Because my job is done here.

Yet the human body is deteriorating just like the universe.

---

No, but the confidence level is much higher, especially regarding his thoughts given his own accounts of his military campaigns.

"His" thoughts? How do you know whose thoughts they are? Or are you just going by what you were told?

Are you going to trot out your taxi cab every time I make a reasonable point?

I will point it out as it applies.

So we shouldn't be too confident of King Tut's adventures given the lack of detail.

Good good.

Does that reasoning apply to martyrs of other religions as well, or is it special for Jesus? If they actually died as martyrs, it proves they died for what they believed. It doesn't tell us what they believed, and it doesn't make what they believed true, any more than Heaven's Gate cultists dying for what they believed means there really was a mother ship coming for their souls.

But there is a difference, though. There is a difference in dying for what you BELIEVE to be true, and dying for what you KNOW to be false. The disciples (those that were allegedly martyred), would have died based on what they knew to be false, because they were the ones making the claims and basing their lives of those specific claims. Do you think the Heaven Gate's members would have died if they knew that they were dying for a lie? Probably not...and in that same sense I don't think the disciples would have died for their own lies.

That's the most popular version among Christians of today, yes.

Based on the Gospels, I have no reason to believe otherwise.

If the omniscient being knows about them, they are what it foresaw, and wouldn't BE changes. 'I see in the future that the future will be changed thusly' isn't very coherent.

We agree, so what is the big idea?

If you think about it, God doesn't have to have all of the powers attributed to their fullest possible extent in order to do everything he is supposed to have done. In fact, the stories make more sense if he has some limits. For instance, God frequently is depicted as having emotional reactions to events, which seems odd if he's seen them coming for millions of years.

I don't know about that one. Just to share a quick story with you, I remember watching this crime show about a missing young woman. The woman went missing, and they tracked her last whereabouts at a gas station where there was video surveillance of her. It showed her making a purchase and when she walked out the door, a man approached her and they began talking, and she walked off with him beyond the view of the camera, and that was the last time anyone saw her alive.

Now, my point is, one of the the officers that was investigating the case was featured in the program, and he was watching the tape and said (paraphrasing) "I watched this tape probably a million times, and every single time I hope she doesn't follow that man".

So in other words, he watched the tape many times, knowing the outcome, but that didn't change the fact that each time, he had certain hopes (figuratively).

What you seem to be suggesting is just because God knows what will happen, that he shouldn't feel a certain way about it when it actually happens...and I don't think that necessarily follows.

If his omniscience is limited to what it's logically possible for him to know, and free will makes people's actions somewhat impossible to predict, it might not be logically possible to know every detail of the future, though he could still know each event as it unfolds and predict everything that is predictable. Just a thought.

Give me an analogy of that...analogies work for me, people..don't know about y'all.

You might be surprised at how many Christians would assert God can perform paradoxical things with justifications like 'he is the author of logic so he isn't bound by logic'. Don't sell yourself short on having a more reasonable perspective.

Well, some naturalists believe that the universe could have popped in to being out of nothing...so Christians are not alone in nonsensical thinking.

Um, a debate would be more talking, so that's one of the stupidest challenges I've ever been offered.

So in other words, "I won't debate you formally, but I will debate you in the main threads".

Makes no sense.

There's no record of the events of the resurrection outside of the Gospels written at least decades later.

The Gospels are four independent books which narrates the same events. I've pointed this out enough times on here. They are INDEPENDENT books, and when they were originally written, they were originally not only outside the "Gospels", but outside the Bible altogether. Second, the "decades" later thing means nothing, as long as they were all written during the lifetime of the original disciples, that is all that matters. Who are we to tell someone when to wrote an event?

Logically, the Romans would have noticed this bit from the crucifixion, in fact it is so likely they would have noticed it that an explanation is required for why they neglected to record it:

Matt 27:50-54 “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.”

Maybe they did write about it, we just haven't discovered the documents yet. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

The dead were walking the streets of Jerusalem...and no one thought to write it down until at least 40 years later? Now THAT stretches belief. And if the crucifixion is fanciful, still more the resurrection, with each Gospel having a different version and a claim for 500 witnesses without naming any and none of them writing it down as far as we know.

Ok, well let me ask you this then...if we have 10 accounts of this mass resurrection account written shortly after Jesus' death, and they all testify to this account, would you be a Christian? Yes, or no?

Jesus may have been historical, but his supposed miracles don't rise above the level of legend.

Why not?

[LostLocke]

FYI...
Reptiles didn't come from birds.
Reptiles and birds share a common ancestor.

[fojo]

Good point Locke. It also really annoys me when people say we descended from monkeys or apes. Same deal

[His_Majesty]

FYI...
Reptiles didn't come from birds.
Reptiles and birds share a common ancestor.

Bullshit. Archaeopteryx is supposedly the missing link in the idiotic reptile to bird chain..or are you that ignorant?

[Cyberman]

Yes, that are.

[His_Majesty]

Good point Locke. It also really annoys me when people say we descended from monkeys or apes. Same deal

When you agree with someone that is factually wrong, that would make you wrong too..or is being wrong the new "right" around here?

[Whateverist]

Good point Locke. It also really annoys me when people say we descended from monkeys or apes. Same deal

Yeah, that annoys me too. Obviously we both descended from something more more primitive and no longer in circulation.

[Esquilax]

Bullshit. Archaeopteryx is supposedly the missing link in the idiotic reptile to bird chain..or are you that ignorant?

No, Archaeopteryx is the missing link in the dinosaur to bird chain; dinosaurs and reptiles are on different prongs of the classification system. They aren't even in the same class, let alone anything of more specificity.

I mentioned this in my debate post, and evidently it didn't rub off on you any. If dinosaurs and reptiles are really in the same "kind" to you, maybe it's a good thing you got booted out of our debate, since at that point "kinds" evidently have no resemblance to anything within our understanding of biology and out classifications of organisms, meaning it really would be a useless quibble to have.

[GrandizerII]

Just think about that for a second. This non-living material suddenly CAME TO LIFE.

It wasn't sudden. It took time. Also, life should be seen a spectrum and not an "on or off" thingy.

[downbeatplumb]

[quote='Mister Agenda' pid='795177' dateline='1415812560']
We don't presuppose the standard, we derive it from experience: no one likes getting raped, raping isn't necessary, and preventing rape greatly improves the odds of our not being raped. The axiom isn't that 'rape is bad', it's that 'needlessly harming other humans is bad', and you can't have an ethical system of any kind without at least one axiom. Isn't the basis of your ethical system the axiom that a supremely just God authored it? Do you consider that assumption begging the question?

So a slave master, who from birth always experienced the slavery of Africans to be a good thing, since that was his experience, that makes it right?

SMH. No need to discuss the subject of morality with you any further.

Yes indeed it would not be wrong in that society to keep slaves, after all it is specifically allowed for in the bible and that, for many years, was where people looked to for moral guidance. Just as well those days are over eh.