(September 16, 2021 at 2:44 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: Um, what are you even talking about? The entire discussion was about what caused the universe, which means the universe is the last element of the causal chain.
This topic was supposed to be about peanut butter, but then it went all over the place, like boldly into the God of the gaps fallacy: "we don't know what was before the universe, therefore God".
And if there is something that has failed over and over again through human history of religious scams it's God of the gaps: we don't know what is on top of that mountain, therefore god; we don't know what is in the clouds, therefore god; we don't know what is under ground... - it's pathetic.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"