Atheism is unreasonable

[Mister Agenda]

What goal post have I previously moved that justifies you making that assertion?

You will find the answer if you look at whatever I was responding to.

I strongly doubt that.

Ok, I have a simple question for you...which will make or break the case. Do you believe that the disciples believed that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them..yes or no?

I don't even know for sure that Jesus existed and you want me to guess what thoughts were in the heads of his followers? None of their adventures are well-documented either, unless you count Paul. Catholic church traditiion has most of them dying horrible deaths as martyrs, but again, that's the claim, not the evidence. Certainly people have willingly died for beliefs that fall far short of believing in a literal resurrection, so that doesn't prove anything. So it beats me. Some early sources make it sound like a 'spiritual resurrection', others make it sound like a literal one, but none of them are actually contemporary to the event in question.

Another thread

Fair enough.

Is it logically possible to be able to change the future is the question. Omnipotence means you can do anything that is LOGICALLY possible.

If the future can be changed, it can't be fully known. That's what I lean towards. I don't think true omnisicence is possible, and if there's a God, it can't logically foresee everything.

I think the concept of changing the future is logically impossible since God cannot do something any different than what he knows that he WILL do.

That's the other way to approach it, but it puts God in the position of not having any options, God must do what God already knows God will do. Where's God's free will in that scenario?

Now, if you can prove that God can't do something that is logically possible, then yeah, you will be smokin'.

It's always interesting to see which leg a Christian will choose to cut off of the theodicy tripod to save what they can. You chose to limit omnipotence, which is a worthy choice in my book. So many Christians choose to take their saw to omnibenevolence instead.

Once science fails to answer certain questions for me, I have no choice but to look elsewhere. If I go to the bank to borrow money and get denied...and I continue 9 or 10 times and still gets denied...eventually I will go to another bank and see if I can get money from there.

A better analogy would be if you looked in your closet.

That is why there is this thing called "The argument based on the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus" which is used to pinpoint exactly which God in the pool of the many theistic creation myths.

Too bad that argument fails. There's no more evidence that Jesus resurrected than that the Trojan War started because of an argument among Greek goddesses. Have you considered using an argument based on something actually known to be true?

[His_Majesty]

No dumbass, 2+2=4 is necessarily true.

If something is necessarily true, then it is POSSIBLE for it to be necessarily true...becuz if it weren't possible, then it wouldnt be actually true...dumbass.

A possibility refers when there are multiple outcomes. A necessarily refers to when there is one outcome.

If there is only one outcome, then that is one POSSIBLE outcome, becuz if weren't possible, it wouldn't be an outcome, oh stupid one.

For example, when you buy coffee at a coffee shop, you have a possibility of ordering a Latte, but it is necessary to pay for your order.

Bullcrap. It isn't necessary to pay for my order, I could pull out a gun and stick the place up and get them for all of there Latte's, and not pay for anything.

Since this is the only point of mine you responded to, I assume you couldn't counter my others. Do you now believe that self-replicating molecules exist?

Don't know, don't care. It is irrelevant to where did DNA come from and the fact that science can't tell us anything regarding origins.

Do you now believe that consciousness can arise from unconsciousness or do I have explain how babys are made, again?

No. Explain to me how consciousness first originated..then you will be talking some good shit.

Did you find an abiogenesis step that would be considered impossible? Finally, do you now believe that abiogenesis has a higher likelihood for the origin of life than god?

No and no.

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And I don't agree with your definition. Since you pulled it out of your ass instead of out of a dictionary, I don't see any logical reason why I should adopt it, especially since it leads to silly ideas like quantum vacuum not within a space-time continuum being 'supernatural'.

Actually, it is a legitimate definition and I can understand why you wouldn't adopt it, because it will go against your worldview. A quantum vacuum exists in space-time...there has to be space for it to operate in, and there has to be time at which it operates.

What did elipses and sentences a paragraph long ever do to you, to deserve such abuse?

It didn't do anything compared to what I am intellectually doing to you.

You haven't proven infinity is a problem, a similar apparent paradox (Zeno's) indicates you could never walk across a room because there are an infinity of dimensionless points to cross, yet we manage. You've asserted a problem, but not proven it.

I'd like an answer to my analogy. If you want to talk Zeno's paradox, we can do that after you admit that you are unable to answer the analogy. No ducking and dodging here.

And you have no knowledge of whatever greater universe may exist beyond our cosmos, so that the same rules hold outside our cosmos is another assertion.

Doesn't make a damn of a difference. Speak of cosmology all you want, the infinity problem applies to anything.

Stating the apparent paradox isn't proving it really is a paradox. Zeno's Paradox has never been fully solved, yet Achilles can still pass the tortoise in a race.

So you can't answer the analogy, got it.

If there is an infinite past, then it's not a real paradox, because here we are.

But we are not here because the past is infinite, and that is the whole freakin' point. If the past was infinite, then we wouldn't be here...and you have yet to refute the analogy, which means that I must be on to something here.

If God has an infinite past, God has the same 'problem': God will never have gotten around to creating anything.

No, because no one is claiming that God endured through past infinity.

I can never take an infinite amount of steps, but that doesn't prevent me or the road from existing. You might not be able to tell how far along I am if it's infinite in both directions, but I'm on it somewhere.

No, because each step you takes represents an event that comes to past...and if you can't reach infinity step by step moving forward, then there couldn't have been an infinite amount of steps which lead to your births moving forward on an infinite time line. It is the same shit, there isn't a bit of difference. There is no way you can ADMIT that you will never reach infinity if you if you take an infinite amount of steps, but yet believe that the event of your birth can come to past if there was an infinite number of events which preceded it.

This is called the taxi cab fallacy.

Please don't become an atheist.

Ok..I won't. Only because you said so.

Quantum foam may well be infinite. As I pointed out earlier, it has all the salient features of a creator God except mind, personality, and 'supernaturality'.

Then it doesn't have the explanatory value needed to explain life, information, and consciousness.

'If you don't know the answer, that proves me right' is the argument from ignorance in a nutshell.

What I am saying is it is logically impossible for time to be infinitely long in the past. Logically impossible. No matter what you say about cosmology, quantum mechanics..nothing can help you in this regard. A timeless first cause is necessary. No escapes. Now of course, you can continue to deny it all you want, but there should be no reason why you can't answer a simple analogy if it is in fact what actually happened lol.

Logical absurdities can be demonatrated in a syllogism. It's not a logical absurdity, it's absurd in your opinion.

Yet you can't adequately answer the analogy

You say in reply to an example about hypothetical aliens.

It would be their law vs our law, but there is clearly no objective law.

Can you name a group of people that thinks rape is right? Not even rapists think that.

There isn't a belief so absurd that at least some people don't believe it

You keep confusing human nature with nature in general. It's our nature as a social species that has to cooperate to survive and has a myriad of other characteristics in common that determines what is right and wrong for humans, but it's not mystically revealed to us, we have to figure it out, largely by trial and error, in fits and starts, often taking a step backwards for two steps forward.

This is bio-babble.

Well, Charles Manson wasn't most rapists, was he?

He was a murderer that also ordered the slaughter of innocent people...that has to fit the bill somewhere in the discussion.

You are so hard to get through to. No. I JUST said that a society that disallows rape is OBJECTIVELY better to live in that one that allows it. What about the idea of living in a rapey society strikes you as okay just because the people in it think it's acceptable? As a rule, humans don't like being raped. It's traumatizing. It's still traumatizing if it's socially acceptable.

How the hell is it objectively better? In order to even make that statement, you have to already presuppose a standard of what is considered "better", which is begging the question

One, your decision to believe the author is just and holy is subjective to you. You cannot escape using your own judgment.

I have reasons to believe that it is true, though.

Second, if God determines the laws of morality, they could have been otherwise, and therefore are subjective to him...and pretty arbitrary to boot. If God discerns the laws of morality, then they are inherent and potentially can be discerned without God...and the universality of laws against murder indicates that we can at least figure out the big ones.

No, because God's laws and standards are as necessary as his own existence, and it is impossible to take the wet from the water.

That some degree of subjectivity is inescapable does not mean there are no objective facts. We each only have the knowledge, brain, senses, and personal experiences we have with which to work. Even objective facts we can only apprehend with some subjectivity, because we have little choice in the matter. Much of the usefulness of science is that it gives us a means to reduce subjectivity; but science can't tell us what we should value, it can only help us figure out how to best achieve the values we have. Those values nearly all humans have in common are based on our innate moral sentiments. The world is objective (and even that is an axiom), but our perception of it is necessarily somewhat subjective. Our reality as we perceive it is a messy mix of subjective and objective.

Lets save morality for another thread

There are several possibilities, as you're aware by now. I'm on the team that thinks not making up answers is a virtue, so I don't have a problem with 'I don't know' as the only honest current answer.

Then you give birth to the option that a mindless and blind process could have done it, which was my point from the very beginning.

He's dead, Jim.

Well, in that case, so is Charles Darwin, but that don't stop you people from damn near worshiping his theories.

Time can't fix that, it just makes it worse. The event you're proposing doesn't require time, it requires a miracle.

I couldn't have said it better myself

Opinion doesn't carry much weight in these matters.

I agree.

I am no kind of theist, so kindly stop trying to press gods on me.

To each his/her own

You've switched from 'all the time' to 'at all'. I don't pretend to be able to imagine all the possible ways it could have happened if there's no God, especially if we don't rule out other supernatural causes.

Well, if God didn't do it, there there is only one other way it could have happened.

No it would not prove that. It would prove that no supernatural intervention is required for life to exist, though.

Well, billions of years ago there was no natural intelligence around to conveniently put everything in its proper place to get shit happening...so therefore I have to believe that either a mindless and blind process did it, or I can believe that a super-intelligence did it, and I've made my decision.

Synthetic, designed life would. A self-replicating molecule produced by mimicking conditions that held in the Hadean era, on the other hand, would prove a self-replicating molecule can arise spontaneously under the right circumstances, AND it would prove it wasn't even that rare, else even the right conditions wouldn't succeed on a human scale of time.

More bio-babble. Go in a lab and demonstrate it.

You don't know what the actual odds were, because no one does, and you don't know how many chances there were, because no one does...but it was a LOT of chances.

Well, I know that life doesn't just happen spontaneously and certain astronomical conditions have to be met in order to get it. That is enough for me to disregard the entire concept as bullcrap.

Only if you so badly understand the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics that you think the earth ibeing an open system receiving enormous energy from the sun doesn't allow local decreases in entropy.

The universe as a whole is a closed system, sparky.

Entropy in the universe is relative. The entropy at the time of the BB bang could have been maximal, and the entropy after more than before, and spontaneous order would still appear if maximum entropy increased faster than actual entropy. For instance.

Makes no sense. If our universe started from a singularity point, then how will you get any kind of low entropy from that???

If they were different, they would still be precise. No one has ever proven they CAN be different

They are what they are...the question is, how did they get there in the first place? Mindless and blind process, right?

, it's just a thought experiment. A good case can be made that the constants are what they are beause the universe's energy budget is zero, and a universe's energy budget MUST be zero. In that case, even if there are multiple universes, none of them will be very different from this one, except for being in different stages of development.

What??

Your standards are odd. I'd consider anyone who takes a hundred milllion years to get there an under-achiever if they were as smart as a person.

What is time to a being that is eternal? Reminds me of playing the game Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3...you fight Galatus, the boss of the game at the end...and after he beats you, he says "What good is earth's mightiest warriors to one that rules the universe" (paraphrase)

[Surgenator]

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No dumbass, 2+2=4 is necessarily true.

If something is necessarily true, then it is POSSIBLE for it to be necessarily true...becuz if it weren't possible, then it wouldnt be actually true...dumbass.

A possibility refers when there are multiple outcomes. A necessarily refers to when there is one outcome.

If there is only one outcome, then that is one POSSIBLE outcome, becuz if weren't possible, it wouldn't be an outcome, oh stupid one.

For example, when you buy coffee at a coffee shop, you have a possibility of ordering a Latte, but it is necessary to pay for your order.

Bullcrap. It isn't necessary to pay for my order, I could pull out a gun and stick the place up and get them for all of there Latte's, and not pay for anything.

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I was assuming you didn't want to be a criminal, but that was too much for you. Plus, arguing this point is waste of my time.

Since this is the only point of mine you responded to, I assume you couldn't counter my others. Do you now believe that self-replicating molecules exist?

Don't know, don't care. It is irrelevant to where did DNA come from and the fact that science can't tell us anything regarding origins.

You finally state your dishonesty, your lack of knowledge, and add a blatant assertion without anything to back it up. Do you wonder why people laugh at you?

Do you now believe that consciousness can arise from unconsciousness or do I have explain how babys are made, again?

No. Explain to me how consciousness first originated..then you will be talking some good shit.

I don't think you'll listen if I did. You clearly stated your dishonesty above. And you haven't explained anything but spout assertions without backup.

Did you find an abiogenesis step that would be considered impossible? Finally, do you now believe that abiogenesis has a higher likelihood for the origin of life than god?

No and no.

So you can't find any step that you consider impossible for abiogenesis, yet you say it is impossible?

So abiogenesis is a possible explanation for the origin of life that uses natural means, but somehow a supernatural-external-semiintelligent being is more likely? So if you can't find your socks one day, do you think a supernatural sock theif took them is more likely than you misplacing them? Because misplacing them would be the natural explanation, but you think super natural ones are more likely.

[coldwx]

His_Majesty - You made quite an extraordinary claim that

There is no fossil record.

I will now ask you for the third time, please defend this claim. This quote from you was submitted to this thread before a debate regarding evolution was proposed and as such I would expect you to defend it here.

[Mudhammam]

Don't know, don't care. It is irrelevant to where did DNA come from and the fact that science can't tell us anything regarding origins.

Science is the only method that can tell us anything about origins, dip shit. You're stupid revelations, on the other hand, only tell us about one thing: you.

No. Explain to me how consciousness first originated..then you will be talking some good shit.

You first. But no magic allowed.

Doesn't make a damn of a difference. Speak of cosmology all you want, the infinity problem applies to anything.

But we are not here because the past is infinite, and that is the whole freakin' point. If the past was infinite, then we wouldn't be here...and you have yet to refute the analogy, which means that I must be on to something here.

No, because no one is claiming that God endured through past infinity.

I can understand your difficulty with God's alleged infinity because of the infinity problem applying to "anything," as you admit, but surely I did not imagine you would concede that God must then have a finite past. This is very interesting. So, God is not infinite... or God does not have a past? If God does not have a past, then you're basically saying that God has never created anything because such action requires change from a prior state of non-action. Or you're declaring that all actions of God are ever-present. God always was and will forever be: creating the Universe, condemning sinners before their temporal birth, and impregnating virgins? I mean, how ridiculous do you want to sound? And since you've established the requirements that, like a quantum vacuum, "there has to be space for it to operate in, and there has to be time at which it operates," then this finite God of yours is in fact quite useless for the purposes you've sought here.

No, because each step you takes represents an event that comes to past...and if you can't reach infinity step by step moving forward, then there couldn't have been an infinite amount of steps which lead to your births moving forward on an infinite time line. It is the same shit, there isn't a bit of difference. There is no way you can ADMIT that you will never reach infinity if you if you take an infinite amount of steps, but yet believe that the event of your birth can come to past if there was an infinite number of events which preceded it.

This is called the taxi cab fallacy.

That's cute that Christian apologists make up their own fallacies now.
My guess is that this is some variation of Schopenhauer's remarks that "The law of causality is therefore not so obliging as to allow itself to be used like a cab which we dismiss after we reach our destination." This is great. You borrow an invented fallacy to argue in favor of a "necessary first cause" that derives its origin from a philosopher who explicitly used it to argue against a First Cause.
If there's no absolute beginning of time, that doesn't mean that an event in time could never arrive. It means that one can only traverse an arbitrarily chosen set within the sequence of events. The problem is not logical impossibility but inconceivability (which, of course, your God fails to assist--as usual).

Then it doesn't have the explanatory value needed to explain life, information, and consciousness.

...As opposed to your explanation which is just that life, information, and consciousness exist...because they HAVE TO EXIST!!!!!! NECESSARILY!!! That's invaluable.

What I am saying is it is logically impossible for time to be infinitely long in the past. Logically impossible. No matter what you say about cosmology, quantum mechanics..nothing can help you in this regard. A timeless first cause is necessary. No escapes. Now of course, you can continue to deny it all you want, but there should be no reason why you can't answer a simple analogy if it is in fact what actually happened lol.

Define cause.
Define time.
Define necessary.
I do not perceive any cogency in your use of these terms. Necessity applies to an effect that has a sufficient ground. Cause denotes change. What cause or change occurred in your "first cause" to move it to action at all? Oh look, an infinite regress again.

You have established neither the meaning nor the necessity of your "unchanged change" that exists irregardless of time.

[Lemonvariable72]

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No dumbass, 2+2=4 is necessarily true.

If something is necessarily true, then it is POSSIBLE for it to be necessarily true...becuz if it weren't possible, then it wouldnt be actually true...dumbass.

A possibility refers when there are multiple outcomes. A necessarily refers to when there is one outcome.

If there is only one outcome, then that is one POSSIBLE outcome, becuz if weren't possible, it wouldn't be an outcome, oh stupid one.

For example, when you buy coffee at a coffee shop, you have a possibility of ordering a Latte, but it is necessary to pay for your order.

Bullcrap. It isn't necessary to pay for my order, I could pull out a gun and stick the place up and get them for all of there Latte's, and not pay for anything.

Since this is the only point of mine you responded to, I assume you couldn't counter my others. Do you now believe that self-replicating molecules exist?

Don't know, don't care. It is irrelevant to where did DNA come from and the fact that science can't tell us anything regarding origins.

Do you now believe that consciousness can arise from unconsciousness or do I have explain how babys are made, again?

No. Explain to me how consciousness first originated..then you will be talking some good shit.

Did you find an abiogenesis step that would be considered impossible? Finally, do you now believe that abiogenesis has a higher likelihood for the origin of life than god?

No and no.

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And I don't agree with your definition. Since you pulled it out of your ass instead of out of a dictionary, I don't see any logical reason why I should adopt it, especially since it leads to silly ideas like quantum vacuum not within a space-time continuum being 'supernatural'.

Actually, it is a legitimate definition and I can understand why you wouldn't adopt it, because it will go against your worldview. A quantum vacuum exists in space-time...there has to be space for it to operate in, and there has to be time at which it operates.

What did elipses and sentences a paragraph long ever do to you, to deserve such abuse?

It didn't do anything compared to what I am intellectually doing to you.

You haven't proven infinity is a problem, a similar apparent paradox (Zeno's) indicates you could never walk across a room because there are an infinity of dimensionless points to cross, yet we manage. You've asserted a problem, but not proven it.

I'd like an answer to my analogy. If you want to talk Zeno's paradox, we can do that after you admit that you are unable to answer the analogy. No ducking and dodging here.

And you have no knowledge of whatever greater universe may exist beyond our cosmos, so that the same rules hold outside our cosmos is another assertion.

Doesn't make a damn of a difference. Speak of cosmology all you want, the infinity problem applies to anything.

Stating the apparent paradox isn't proving it really is a paradox. Zeno's Paradox has never been fully solved, yet Achilles can still pass the tortoise in a race.

So you can't answer the analogy, got it.

If there is an infinite past, then it's not a real paradox, because here we are.

But we are not here because the past is infinite, and that is the whole freakin' point. If the past was infinite, then we wouldn't be here...and you have yet to refute the analogy, which means that I must be on to something here.

If God has an infinite past, God has the same 'problem': God will never have gotten around to creating anything.

No, because no one is claiming that God endured through past infinity.

I can never take an infinite amount of steps, but that doesn't prevent me or the road from existing. You might not be able to tell how far along I am if it's infinite in both directions, but I'm on it somewhere.

No, because each step you takes represents an event that comes to past...and if you can't reach infinity step by step moving forward, then there couldn't have been an infinite amount of steps which lead to your births moving forward on an infinite time line. It is the same shit, there isn't a bit of difference. There is no way you can ADMIT that you will never reach infinity if you if you take an infinite amount of steps, but yet believe that the event of your birth can come to past if there was an infinite number of events which preceded it.

This is called the taxi cab fallacy.

Please don't become an atheist.

Ok..I won't. Only because you said so.

Quantum foam may well be infinite. As I pointed out earlier, it has all the salient features of a creator God except mind, personality, and 'supernaturality'.

Then it doesn't have the explanatory value needed to explain life, information, and consciousness.

'If you don't know the answer, that proves me right' is the argument from ignorance in a nutshell.

What I am saying is it is logically impossible for time to be infinitely long in the past. Logically impossible. No matter what you say about cosmology, quantum mechanics..nothing can help you in this regard. A timeless first cause is necessary. No escapes. Now of course, you can continue to deny it all you want, but there should be no reason why you can't answer a simple analogy if it is in fact what actually happened lol.

Logical absurdities can be demonatrated in a syllogism. It's not a logical absurdity, it's absurd in your opinion.

Yet you can't adequately answer the analogy

You say in reply to an example about hypothetical aliens.

It would be their law vs our law, but there is clearly no objective law.

Can you name a group of people that thinks rape is right? Not even rapists think that.

There isn't a belief so absurd that at least some people don't believe it

You keep confusing human nature with nature in general. It's our nature as a social species that has to cooperate to survive and has a myriad of other characteristics in common that determines what is right and wrong for humans, but it's not mystically revealed to us, we have to figure it out, largely by trial and error, in fits and starts, often taking a step backwards for two steps forward.

This is bio-babble.

Well, Charles Manson wasn't most rapists, was he?

He was a murderer that also ordered the slaughter of innocent people...that has to fit the bill somewhere in the discussion.

You are so hard to get through to. No. I JUST said that a society that disallows rape is OBJECTIVELY better to live in that one that allows it. What about the idea of living in a rapey society strikes you as okay just because the people in it think it's acceptable? As a rule, humans don't like being raped. It's traumatizing. It's still traumatizing if it's socially acceptable.

How the hell is it objectively better? In order to even make that statement, you have to already presuppose a standard of what is considered "better", which is begging the question

One, your decision to believe the author is just and holy is subjective to you. You cannot escape using your own judgment.

I have reasons to believe that it is true, though.

Second, if God determines the laws of morality, they could have been otherwise, and therefore are subjective to him...and pretty arbitrary to boot. If God discerns the laws of morality, then they are inherent and potentially can be discerned without God...and the universality of laws against murder indicates that we can at least figure out the big ones.

No, because God's laws and standards are as necessary as his own existence, and it is impossible to take the wet from the water.

That some degree of subjectivity is inescapable does not mean there are no objective facts. We each only have the knowledge, brain, senses, and personal experiences we have with which to work. Even objective facts we can only apprehend with some subjectivity, because we have little choice in the matter. Much of the usefulness of science is that it gives us a means to reduce subjectivity; but science can't tell us what we should value, it can only help us figure out how to best achieve the values we have. Those values nearly all humans have in common are based on our innate moral sentiments. The world is objective (and even that is an axiom), but our perception of it is necessarily somewhat subjective. Our reality as we perceive it is a messy mix of subjective and objective.

Lets save morality for another thread

There are several possibilities, as you're aware by now. I'm on the team that thinks not making up answers is a virtue, so I don't have a problem with 'I don't know' as the only honest current answer.

Then you give birth to the option that a mindless and blind process could have done it, which was my point from the very beginning.

He's dead, Jim.

Well, in that case, so is Charles Darwin, but that don't stop you people from damn near worshiping his theories.

Time can't fix that, it just makes it worse. The event you're proposing doesn't require time, it requires a miracle.

I couldn't have said it better myself

Opinion doesn't carry much weight in these matters.

I agree.

I am no kind of theist, so kindly stop trying to press gods on me.

To each his/her own

You've switched from 'all the time' to 'at all'. I don't pretend to be able to imagine all the possible ways it could have happened if there's no God, especially if we don't rule out other supernatural causes.

Well, if God didn't do it, there there is only one other way it could have happened.

No it would not prove that. It would prove that no supernatural intervention is required for life to exist, though.

Well, billions of years ago there was no natural intelligence around to conveniently put everything in its proper place to get shit happening...so therefore I have to believe that either a mindless and blind process did it, or I can believe that a super-intelligence did it, and I've made my decision.

Synthetic, designed life would. A self-replicating molecule produced by mimicking conditions that held in the Hadean era, on the other hand, would prove a self-replicating molecule can arise spontaneously under the right circumstances, AND it would prove it wasn't even that rare, else even the right conditions wouldn't succeed on a human scale of time.

More bio-babble. Go in a lab and demonstrate it.

You don't know what the actual odds were, because no one does, and you don't know how many chances there were, because no one does...but it was a LOT of chances.

Well, I know that life doesn't just happen spontaneously and certain astronomical conditions have to be met in order to get it. That is enough for me to disregard the entire concept as bullcrap.

Only if you so badly understand the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics that you think the earth ibeing an open system receiving enormous energy from the sun doesn't allow local decreases in entropy.

The universe as a whole is a closed system, sparky.

Entropy in the universe is relative. The entropy at the time of the BB bang could have been maximal, and the entropy after more than before, and spontaneous order would still appear if maximum entropy increased faster than actual entropy. For instance.

Makes no sense. If our universe started from a singularity point, then how will you get any kind of low entropy from that???

If they were different, they would still be precise. No one has ever proven they CAN be different

They are what they are...the question is, how did they get there in the first place? Mindless and blind process, right?

, it's just a thought experiment. A good case can be made that the constants are what they are beause the universe's energy budget is zero, and a universe's energy budget MUST be zero. In that case, even if there are multiple universes, none of them will be very different from this one, except for being in different stages of development.

What??

Your standards are odd. I'd consider anyone who takes a hundred milllion years to get there an under-achiever if they were as smart as a person.

What is time to a being that is eternal? Reminds me of playing the game Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3...you fight Galatus, the boss of the game at the end...and after he beats you, he says "What good is earth's mightiest warriors to one that rules the universe" (paraphrase)

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Hey buddy there is a formal debate waiting for you. Or you too chickenshit?

[Mudhammam]

Lemon, the

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brackets, dammit!!

[Mister Agenda]

Actually, it is a legitimate definition and I can understand why you wouldn't adopt it, because it will go against your worldview. A quantum vacuum exists in space-time...there has to be space for it to operate in, and there has to be time at which it operates.

No, it isn't, 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.

It didn't do anything compared to what I am intellectually doing to you.

What you are 'intellectually doing' is pissing everywhere and calling it rain.

I'd like an answer to my analogy. If you want to talk Zeno's paradox, we can do that after you admit that you are unable to answer the analogy. No ducking and dodging here.

An analogy isn't a question. It's a comparison. Your worldview won't allow you to accept that your analogies are poor.

But we are not here because the past is infinite, and that is the whole freakin' point.

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

No, because no one is claiming that God endured through past infinity.

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

No, because each step you takes represents an event that comes to past...and if you can't reach infinity step by step moving forward, then there couldn't have been an infinite amount of steps which lead to your births moving forward on an infinite time line. It is the same shit, there isn't a bit of difference. There is no way you can ADMIT that you will never reach infinity if you if you take an infinite amount of steps, but yet believe that the event of your birth can come to past if there was an infinite number of events which preceded it.

By definition, if I take an infinite amount of steps I will reach infinity, so I suspect you meant to say something different, although I never claimed I would ever take an infinite amount of steps anyway. I can walk a finite distance on an infinite road. The universe seems to be future infinite, but any point in time I can imagine will eventually come to pass. 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.

This is called the taxi cab fallacy.

Your opinion on what's a fallacy doesn't carry much weight considering what you've been posting.

Then it doesn't have the explanatory value needed to explain life, information, and consciousness.

No, it only explains how the universe originated.

What I am saying is it is logically impossible for time to be infinitely long in the past. Logically impossible.

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. 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.

No matter what you say about cosmology, quantum mechanics..nothing can help you in this regard. A timeless first cause is necessary. No escapes. Now of course, you can continue to deny it all you want, but there should be no reason why you can't answer a simple analogy if it is in fact what actually happened lol.

There's definitely a reason why you can't support your thesis with more than assertions.

It would be their law vs our law, but there is clearly no objective law.

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?

How the hell is it objectively better? In order to even make that statement, you have to already presuppose a standard of what is considered "better", which is begging the question

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?

I have reasons to believe that it is true, though.

We all have reasons to believe the things we believe are true, that's why we believe them.

No, because God's laws and standards are as necessary as his own existence, and it is impossible to take the wet from the water.

That makes God synonymous with morality, not the author of it, and that position is no barrier to the idea of us being able to discover better moral principles by experience.

[quote='His_Majesty' pid='794859' dateline='1415753702']
Lets save morality for another thread

I won't bring it up again on this thread if you don't.

Then you give birth to the option that a mindless and blind process could have done it, which was my point from the very beginning.

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.

Well, in that case, so is Charles Darwin, but that don't stop you people from damn near worshiping his theories.

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. 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.

Well, if God didn't do it, there there is only one other way it could have happened.

Universe gnomes? Computer simulation? Super collider universe generator?

Well, I know that life doesn't just happen spontaneously and certain astronomical conditions have to be met in order to get it. That is enough for me to disregard the entire concept as bullcrap.

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.

The universe as a whole is a closed system, sparky.

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

Makes no sense. If our universe started from a singularity point, then how will you get any kind of low entropy from that???

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.

They are what they are...the question is, how did they get there in the first place? Mindless and blind process, right?

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

What??

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.

[Lemonvariable72]

Lemon, the

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brackets, dammit!!

Shut up I'm on mobile.

[The Valkyrie]

His_Majesty - You made quite an extraordinary claim that

There is no fossil record.

I will now ask you for the third time, please defend this claim. This quote from you was submitted to this thread before a debate regarding evolution was proposed and as such I would expect you to defend it here.

Read, "I refuse to look at or acknowledge any of the overwhelming evidence for evolution because I'm blinkered and doing so would contradict my silly little, contradictory book of fairytales."