I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!

[Kyuuketsuki]

I've been an atheist as well.

Really? So presumably, as you're quite a gobby chap now, you were somewhat effusive then in support of your atheism? Presumably you wrote articles or posts about it much like you do now yes? Care to point us to some of them?

Kyu

[Ace Otana]

I'd be interested in what part of the argument as well. I've finished educating myself with immaterialism. Turns out its utter bullshit. I now fully understand why they say god is non-material.
It breaks every law there is. It's beyond the scientific method because it's outside just about everything. It's a useless argument.

[Jon Paul]

Mr. Paul's arguements have been addressed.

Addressed? Yes. Addressed exactly like you just addressed them, begging the question that they are "refuted" without actually refuting them.

Read through the thread. I've answered every objection to my argument (that's why I'm still here on page 26!) and I haven't seen any response which actually addressed the substance of the arguments without confounding them with a straw man, a misunderstanding of the argument, or other fallacies.

Those who gave reason for rejecting the arguement, according to Jon, "Just didn't understand properly".

That is not what I said. I said they either used fallacies to attack me, did not understand the argument, or confunded the argument with some other argument which is not mine.

Again, I ask of Jon, please post exactly what it is of your arguements or "proofs" that you are claiming are not being refuted.

Again, read through the read. What of, my arguments HAS been refuted? I have seen no refutation of A) the a posteriori argument from potentiality/contingency, B) the epistemological, a priori argument from the logical coherency of the epistemic structure of Christian worldviews.

Sure, I have seen ridiculed the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But that is not a refutation of either A, or B. Until you categorically refute and show the error in my arguments and evidence A and B, then insofar as this debate is concerned, the arguments remain unrefuted and rationally sound.

---

I now fully understand why they say god is non-material.

If you didn't understand this from beginning, then you understood less than every Christian since two thousand years.

It breaks every law there is.

Since the God my argument arrives at transcends the natural world, invoking natural laws to disprove the proposition is like invoking macrophysics to understand microphysics. You cannot invoke laws that predict certain natural laws and behaviour a place where those natural laws and behaviour does not apply. You cannot apply the notion of time and space outside the spatiotemporal universe, for instance.

Physicists understand this, otherwise it would be meaningless to speak of an "expanding universe", since that entails a spatiotemporal limitation to the extent of the spatiotemporal realm, and applying spatiotemporal thinking to outside of the spatiotemporal realm is then a fallacy (the classical question .. "but if the universe ends somewhere, what is there then outside it?", which ignores that the sentence itself has posited a spatiotemporal "end" to the universe).

This fact is reflected in the works of many physicists, and is often exploited by atheist philosophers, like Quentin Smith, who like to use the actual ontic embodiment of "the natural laws breaking down at a certain point in time" (a self-contradiction since temporality implies natural laws), beyond which we cannot apply natural laws, for instance to postulate the spontaenous generation of the universe by way of a quantum fluctuation (a rather fringe theory often advocated by atheists, for instance, Purple Rabbit on this forum earlier in the debate).

It's beyond the scientific method because it's outside just about everything. It's a useless argument.

It is beyond the scientific method because the scientific method a priori excludes the investigation of any proposition which includes objects that transcend the natural world.

Again, such an a priori exclusion is not a refutation of my arguments. If you appeal to such an a priori exclusion of God as a possibility for investigation, as evidence that God does not exist, then you are begging the question, and the same can be done in the opposite direction, by begging the question that God does exist and excluding any other possibility a priori on no logical grounds. But that is not what the scientific method mandates at all. It is methodological naturalism, which in no way implies scientific realism (i.e. that it's means and scope of investigation, and it's level of knowledge about that scope, namely the natural world, is the complete reality, which much in modern physics, like in quantum physics, has explicitly disproven by demonstrating real limits to our knowledge, and a radically different natural world that would have been called supernatural a few centuries ago).

[Ace Otana]

Wrong again. Material is energy and is extremely important for anything that exists. It's energy which is also material that allows the sun to exist and burn and even allows us to think. Being beyond material is being beyond the forms of life and non-life. You have made a contradiction where you once mentioned that god is part of the universe but the universe is made up of energy/material and your god is not. Your god is just a figmentation like santa , fsm and many others. FSM is a non-material character because it has no energy. It has no material in order to exist.

Energy/material's are all governed by laws of physics. Your god is not above any of these laws. UNLESS! He is not energy/material and so cannot possibly exist within the material world(reality) and so is not governed by the laws of physics. Now being in the realm of non-material means it cannot be proven nor dis proven. So you use the material world as some footprint that's not really there to use as explanations for your god. Now likely hood is as important as anything else. It's because we cannot prove that it's impossible to exist within the non-material realm we therefor class it due to it's lack of supporting evidence that it is classed as very improbable.

The laws are simple and easy to understand. Either you are made of nothing and therefor governed by nothing and therefor cannot possibly exist within the world of matter/energy and laws. I don't say it cannot exist but cannot exist in the material world that is governed by the laws of nature.

So really god can do fuck all because he does not exist within the material world and so therefor doesn't actually exist. Everything you see, hear or feel is energy. We can think because of energy and movements are also energy. If god is non-material he is non-energy and non-energy cannot effect energy. Non-material argument is one of the worst you can use to defend the existence of god because it breaks every law that governs energy and matter. laws that govern the earths rotation, the suns gravitation pull, light and heat for which life is dependant on.

Despite the non-physical god of yours, it cannot be proven to be impossible and nor can it be proven to be true. But I seriously doubt the existence of a god that is made up of nothing. Nothing often means = not real.

For example. A glass of water is matter. It is energy. It will remain where it is. The earths gravity will continue to pull the glass and water towards the earth. The only way you can move this glass of water is with another material/energy source that is governed by laws of nature. What would be impossible is for a being made of non-material to move it.

I want you, jon, to explain to me how god is non-material and is able to effect the material world that is governed by laws of nature.

It turns out that non-material is an argument made a long time ago but has many errors with it.

[Jon Paul]

You have made a contradiction where you once mentioned that god is part of the universe

I have never said that. My argument specifically arrives at the conclusion that God is not part of the universe, he wholly transcends it. He is not made of spaghetti, and he is not flying in space through time like FSM.
spatiotemporal universe to begin with.

Now being in the realm of non-material means it cannot be proven nor dis proven.

It certainly does not. Being material or non-material is not a question of "realm". Space and time are not matter, yet they can be proven to exist. Our realm is not "matter". Matter is that which objects within our real are composed of. Our realm is the spatiotemporal universe, which contains matter. Immateriality is certainly real, for space and vacuum is in itself void of matter, but still exists and contains energy. Vacuum, though it is void of matter, contains what we call vacuum energy, which is not matter. This has been experimentally proven per the Caisimir effect. That means that, even that which is void of matter is not void of energy, it is itself energy, and therefore energy exists independently from matter.

So you use the material world as some footprint that's not really there to use as explanations for your god. Now likely hood is as important as anything else. It's because we cannot prove that it's impossible to exist within the non-material realm we therefor class it due to it's lack of supporting evidence that it is classed as very improbable.

You have completely misunderstood the relationship between matter, space and time, and energy and the concept of probability. Probability relates to the epistemic realm, not the ontologic. As Dawkins says, in Climbing Mount Improbable, improbability does not preclude actuality (as Arcanus pointed out). My claim of God is ontologically verifiable, and has nothing even to do with probability, as probability is the likelihood from a limited knowledge of the totality of the universe, of a thing to take place and become actual within the already-existing universe. Not the likelihood of a thing to be actual, which was actual before, is actual now, and always will be actual in all of temporality (like, the proposition that the spatiotemporal universe exists, or the proposition that God exists).

Wrong again. Material is energy

Precisely. Matter presupposes energy. Energy does not presuppose matter.

The laws are simple and easy to understand. Either you are made of nothing and therefor governed by nothing and therefor cannot possibly exist within the world of matter/energy and laws. I don't say it cannot exist but cannot exist in the material world that is governed by the laws of nature.

"Nothing" and "immaterial" are far from the same. Both because space and time are not "nothing", and not matter, but still exist. And also because energy exists independently of matter, in the void of the universe, in which we are only now discovering things such as dark energy, gravitational fields and other entities affecting our experimental results (the Casimir effect and quantum fluctuations), but we have known for long that vacuum (voidness of matter) contains energy. In that context, indeed matter is only an expression of energy which is equivalent to it's energy content (E=mc2). Matter is only potential energy which is temporarily enclosed, as opposed to the free kinetic energy of the motion of such objects of matter. In a nuclear bomb you see the potential energy of matter be freed/converted into kinetic energy.

If god is non-material he is non-energy and non-energy cannot effect energy.

Again, that does not follow, since vacuum which is void of matter is not void of energy. You demonstrate your tremendous ignorance of physics, and the nature of energy.

[Kyuuketsuki]

Jon Paul,

Apparently you missed my post above ... I'm sure that was completely unintentional so I'll repeat:

I've been an atheist as well.

Really? So presumably, as you're quite a gobby chap now, you were somewhat effusive then in support of your atheism? Presumably you wrote articles or posts about it much like you do now yes? Care to point us to some of them?

Kyu

[Jon Paul]

Really? So presumably, as you're quite a gobby chap now, you were somewhat effusive then in support of your atheism?

I went from indifferent atheist, to strong atheist in the sense that God could not possibly exist, to the point I was a militant atheist, and saw religion as a problem and disease of humanity which should be ridiculed and exterminated, preferably in the sense of a persecution and execution of all religious people who refused to "move out of the dark ages".

Presumably you wrote articles or posts about it much like you do now yes? Care to point us to some of them?

I didn't write or think much intellectually about my atheism for the most part that I was an atheist. The option that God existed was inconceivable to me, and as such an a priori exclusion ("not possible") regardless of what any logical truth or argument might point to, and regardless of the fact that I had no reasonable grounds on which to make such an a priori exclusion. That is why I remained an atheist, for when I changed my attitude as an atheist and began thinking, reading and writing, I ended up turning towards Christianity.

[Ace Otana]

This argument states that since the designer exists outside of the natural laws of the universe, he is therefore exempt from any laws requiring a design to have a designer.

[Ace Otana]

This argument states that since the designer exists outside of the natural laws of the universe, he is therefore exempt from any laws requiring a design to have a designer.

My argument certainly does not.

Does god exist outside the natural laws or does he not? The so called designs seem to be within natural laws but god is not. Care to explain?

If god is outside natural laws then he is exempt from any laws requiring a design to have a designer.

[Jon Paul]

I stated that, for God to transcend the natural world, that means he transcend the laws, the logical order, and so on, which apply within the universe. This transcendence is one of primariness, not one of exemption.

It does not mean that God is "exempt from the logical order that applies to the universe", since he is the primary transcendence of that order, and it only applies because of that very fact, and it does not mean that "God is forced by the universe to follow the universe's order". It's the universe which follows Gods order.