What is so special about us?!?

[Welsh cake]

I am not merely suggesting that God is the universe, and that the universe is the living embodiment of God, because that would suggest that God is a biological organism, which he is not. Also, I have already expressed a distaste for this "invisible man in the sky" tripe that keeps popping up; no one is asserting that there is an invisible man in the sky except the atheist stand-point, which is searching for said invisible man.

God is no a biologically living thing. His existance is hand-in-hand with the universe's, that is all.

That tells me absolutely nothing about your claim, or how you propose to define your God's attributes.

The poorly-defined 'magic man' example continually comes back to haunt you is because of two reasons - firstly god is literally defined as that in the Bible, an anthropomorphic male entity with arms and yes, apparently back-parts (according to Exodus 33:18-34:9, which takes the popular atheist rebuttal "Your God's an ass" to a whole new level), and secondly, you like every other theist are failing at a basic level to establish an existence claim. To date no one has ever managed to provide a clear positive ontology of god. Stating god goes "hand-in-hand with the universe" is not even convincing or a persuasive argument, it explains nothing.

[Zen Badger]

But you did in your question above. I agree that they are either the acts of people being crappy or natural events. The responsibility / accountability lies with the doer not the observer. I know of no Christians in my church who would state God is liable for everything. They would state he is the originating cause and continues to work in our lives. You're supposing a definition of liable as primary cause of individual acts from involving responsibility of the initial cause. He gave us this world (per the bible) and we've done a good job of messing it up. Neither does this responsibility in either definition correlate to him loving us at all.

No, I didn't. I made the point that for a supposedly "loving" being god lets a lot of crappy

stuff happen to us.

The question then being if god is not responsible for the crappy stuff who is?

And if god is the supreme arbitrator of the universe why does he allow it to happen?

[tackattack]

Perhaps your idea of loving is diminuitive of God's concept of Love. Perhaps you're still not willing to hold people accountable for their actions. Arbitration isn't an attribute I attribute to God nor is it a common one. Perhaps your understanding of the attributes of God is misinformed. Also, if you insist he is liable for the negative in the universe, why not attribute all the positive in the universe to him as well. Some starving children on 1 planet out of the universe may be heart wrenching to our dimunitive perspective, when viewed alongside of the sheer awesomeness of the universe is miniscule.

[Purple Rabbit]

Of course I'm arguing from my beliefs! No one can argue from anything but beliefs. Person A telling Person B of an experience doesn't mean Person B will automatically go out and have said experience. Hell, they might be having the experience all the time and no even realize it for what it is. *ahem*

This is your central problem. You don't differentiate between belief as a dogmatic belief system from unfalsifiable sky hook arguments and belief in the common meaning of tentative assumption ready to be verified or falsified by evidence. In this core thesis of yours that all is belief, there is no room for more probable and less probable and anything goes. IOW you are confusing homonyms of 'belief' and it seems to me you're doing this on purpose to push your religious agenda. In essence you are claiming that there is no line between science and religion.

Well the big difference between science and religion is that science achieves pragmatic knowledge of the world as we perceive it. Not only that, it clearly demonstrates this knowledge by what can be achieved with it. Science can put men on the moon, cure a number of diseases, find ways to improve crop, bring electricity to your home, explain what process fuels the sun, model reality from the subatomic level to the cosmological level in astonishing detail. It currently shapes our world in a high degree. Think about that when you are in hospital and dependent on medical science. Think about that when you are typing on your computer while in the circuits on the motherboard processes based on quantum mechanics are put to your use. Think about that when you eat the food on your plate. There is no short cut to knowledge wih sky hook arguments like a god "who did it all". Achieving verifiable knowledge has been a painstakingly long process of trial and error. Of trying what works and what doesn't. A process of centuries to struggle free from the idea that knowledge of the world could be gained from just fabulating away with gods, angels and other supernatural additions popping up to fill the gaps of understanding. Thinking that there are short cuts to answers on great questions is the folly of the tribal human mind. Knowledge of the world is not for the take like in a drive-in hamburger restaurant. Religion claims to give a topdown answer to these questions but demonstrably is unable to answer even the most simple questions of the reality we're. It achieves nothing, nothing at all but self-delusion and abject moral.

But I will not ask you to show me that we can travel to Mars with your supernatural fabulations. Just show me how you can move a single atom in this universe uniquely with your sky hook contraption called christianity.

[Watson]

This is your central problem. You don't differentiate between belief as a dogmatic belief system from unfalsifiable sky hook arguments and belief in the common meaning of tentative assumption ready to be verified or falsified by evidence. In this core thesis of yours that all is belief, there is no room for more probable and less probable and anything goes. IOW you are confusing homonyms of 'belief' and it seems to me you're doing this on purpose to push your religious agenda. In essence you are claiming that there is no line between science and religion.

Bingo! There isn't any line between science and religion, everything in this entire world is connected. There can be no less credible or more credible anything, because without faith/belief you have no idea if what you are seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting/touching/feeling is all a lie or not.

Religious agenda? What do you think I'm trying to do, convert you or something?

Well the big difference between science and religion is that science achieves pragmatic knowledge of the world as we perceive it. Not only that, it clearly demonstrates this knowledge by what can be achieved with it. Science can put men on the moon, cure a number of diseases, find ways to improve crop, bring electricity to your home, explain what process fuels the sun, model reality from the subatomic level to the cosmological level in astonishing detail. It currently shapes our world in a high degree. Think about that when you are in hospital and dependent on medical science. Think about that when you are typing on your computer while in the circuits on the motherboard processes based on quantum mechanics are put to your use. Think about that when you eat the food on your plate.

I'm very thankful for science, you know. Yes, I wouldn't be able to type right now if it were not for science. It would not be able to do many things without science.

Science as a whole is fascinating and the study of how things work is interesting and cool. Who doesn't want to know things like that?

There is no short cut to knowledge wih sky hook arguments like a god "who did it all". Achieving verifiable knowledge has been a painstakingly long process of trial and error. Of trying what works and what doesn't. A process of centuries to struggle free from the idea that knowledge of the world could be gained from just fabulating away with gods, angels and other supernatural additions popping up to fill the gaps of understanding. Thinking that there are short cuts to answers on great questions is the folly of the tribal human mind.

Never did I say that God simply 'did it all.' I stated that God as He is created this world and created us in such a way that we would be capable of learning more about life and how it works. Whether or not you believe in Him is irrellevant to that.

Knowledge of the world is not for the take like in a drive-in hamburger restaurant. Religion claims to give a topdown answer to these questions but demonstrably is unable to answer even the most simple questions of the reality we're. It achieves nothing, nothing at all but self-delusion and abject moral.

You're right that religion does not acheive knowledge, humans acheive knowledge and have the capacity for understanding that knowledge. It's not a question of knowing, it's a question of understanding all that is around us, and how it is linked. And, really, you think love is an abject moral?

Hm.

But I will not ask you to show me that we can travel to Mars with your supernatural fabulations. Just show me how you can move a single atom in this universe uniquely with your sky hook contraption called christianity.

Look! God just poofed into my room and moved a subatomic particle! It was amazing, this gold beam of light just showed upand said "I'm God" an dthen it showed me the subatomic world and how it could move an atom.

Or how abou this?
Look! A subatomic particle just moved! It was amazing, I looked into a telescope* and saw all these little subatomic particles, and one of them just moved all by itself!

*Forgive me for my lack of knowledge in science if you can't actually do this. The point still stands.

[Purple Rabbit]

Bingo! There isn't any line between science and religion, everything in this entire world is connected.

Then please connect for me the laws of gravitation with christian dogma. How can we arrive from christian dogma, which is assertion without evidence, to observables?

There can be no less credible or more credible anything, because without faith/belief you have no idea if what you are seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting/touching/feeling is all a lie or not.

Why is it a lie without religious faith? That is a non sequitur. It does not follow that all is a lie from the fact that your religion is a lie. I think you are mixing knowledge with morals. However, the fact that you don't like how reality is constituted has no bearing whatsoever on the way reality IS constitued.

And there is a perfect example of how our scientific models of reality are getting more and more accurate in terms of predicting, explaining and describing phenomena. An example how the scientific method can validate between more probable and less probable: general relativity more accurately describes celestial mechanics than Newtonian mechanics.

A major difference between religion and science is that religion has no such method. It cannot resolve between truth statements even within one creed of religion, let alone between different religions. This is because truth statements in religion are almost all unfalsifiable. The ones that are falsifiable await refutation by science. They are in the gaps of scientific knowledge.

Are we even in agreement her that the set of truth statements used to model the world should be a consistent set?

Religious agenda? What do you think I'm trying to do, convert you or something?

You are deliberately mixing homonyms of 'faith' to credit unsubstantiated religious claims over naturalistic ones. It's parasitic behaviour on the achievements of science.

I'm very thankful for science, you know. Yes, I wouldn't be able to type right now if it were not for science. It would not be able to do many things without science.

Science as a whole is fascinating and the study of how things work is interesting and cool. Who doesn't want to know things like that?

Then you should be deeply worried by the fact that religious faith cannot say anything about our reality, that god is totally absent in the current scientific model. If you adhere to truth, even if it is not absolute truth, you should investigate how this difference between science and religion arises.

Never did I say that God simply 'did it all.' I stated that God as He is created this world and created us in such a way that we would be capable of learning more about life and how it works. Whether or not you believe in Him is irrellevant to that.

You are just restating unfalsifiable truth statements one of which (that god reality) is a god did it all statement. If we are indeed agents free from divine intervention than we should be able to choose our nature. Science teaches us that such is not the case. That your behaviour is determined by natural laws in a chain of cause and effect. When your brains fail your identity changes. Investigate these things and you will find that the statements of science are incompatible with that of religion.

It really is very simple. God does not interfere when a kid dies of kid cancer. Science tries to interfere. God is not relevant, scientific knowledge is.

You're right that religion does not acheive knowledge,...

Nothing more than this is needed as a starting point.

...humans acheive knowledge and have the capacity for understanding that knowledge. It's not a question of knowing, it's a question of understanding all that is around us, and how it is linked.

Please enlighten me how you can link god and kid cancer on religious faith alone.

And, really, you think love is an abject moral?

Hm.

Of course not, just that it is cherry picking the statements in the bible.

Look! God just poofed into my room and moved a subatomic particle! It was amazing, this gold beam of light just showed upand said "I'm God" an dthen it showed me the subatomic world and how it could move an atom.

Do you think by this you have shown it to me? Don't be a silly boy.

Or how abou this?
Look! A subatomic particle just moved! It was amazing, I looked into a telescope* and saw all these little subatomic particles, and one of them just moved all by itself!

*Forgive me for my lack of knowledge in science if you can't actually do this. The point still stands.

Yeah, using telescopes on sub atomic particles generally is a bad idea.

[Watson]

Bingo! There isn't any line between science and religion, everything in this entire world is connected.

Then please connect for me the laws of gravitation with christian dogma. How can we arrive from christian dogma, which is assertion without evidence, to observables?

First of all, Christian dogma does not equate to religion. God and His observable principles of nature do. Think of it for one moment from a religious stand-point; God created all of life as a gift to us, and created us with the extraordinary capability of scientific understanding, which by the way, does nothing to refute Him.

There can be no less credible or more credible anything, because without faith/belief you have no idea if what you are seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting/touching/feeling is all a lie or not.

Why is it a lie without religious faith? That is a non sequitur. It does not follow that all is a lie from the fact that your religion is a lie. I think you are mixing knowledge with morals. However, the fact that you don't like how reality is constituted has no bearing whatsoever on the way reality IS constitued.

I didn't say that all is a lie without religious faith, I said without faith how do you know that all is not a lie? You don't, if you don't have faith. I alsodid not say I don't like how reality is constituted, because reality is constituted in such a way that I can choose to have faith in it or not. Since it is an extremely unhealthy practice to have no faith, I choose faith.

And there is a perfect example of how our scientific models of reality are getting more and more accurate in terms of predicting, explaining and describing phenomena. An example how the scientific method can validate between more probable and less probable: general relativity more accurately describes celestial mechanics than Newtonian mechanics.

This...literally proves nothing about what I said. At all.

A major difference between religion and science is that religion has no such method. It cannot resolve between truth statements even within one creed of religion, let alone between different religions. This is because truth statements in religion are almost all unfalsifiable. The ones that are falsifiable await refutation by science. They are in the gaps of scientific knowledge.

I'd like you to show me somethings sciencehas proven and let me take a crack at connecting them to God.

Are we even in agreement her that the set of truth statements used to model the world should be a consistent set?

Somewhat. Not everything can be said to be cut from the same bolt of cloth, but it is all part of the same tapestry. So yes, in a way, the model of truth should be set for all.

Religious agenda? What do you think I'm trying to do, convert you or something?

You are deliberately mixing homonyms of 'faith' to credit unsubstantiated religious claims over naturalistic ones. It's parasitic behaviour on the achievements of science.

...What? Seriosly, what does this even mean? Demonstrate to me how I am 'mixing homonyms.'

I'm very thankful for science, you know. Yes, I wouldn't be able to type right now if it were not for science. It would not be able to do many things without science.

Science as a whole is fascinating and the study of how things work is interesting and cool. Who doesn't want to know things like that?

Then you should be deeply worried by the fact that religious faith cannot say anything about our reality, that god is totally absent in the current scientific model. If you adhere to truth, even if it is not absolute truth, you should investigate how this difference between science and religion arises.

I have, thoroughly. And in so doing I have found that the so-called 'differences' between science and religion actually melt completely away. They exist co-dependent on each other, not at each other's throats.

Never did I say that God simply 'did it all.' I stated that God as He is created this world and created us in such a way that we would be capable of learning more about life and how it works. Whether or not you believe in Him is irrellevant to that.

You are just restating unfalsifiable truth statements one of which (that god reality) is a god did it all statement. If we are indeed agents free from divine intervention than we should be able to choose our nature. Science teaches us that such is not the case. That your behaviour is determined by natural laws in a chain of cause and effect. When your brains fail your identity changes. Investigate these things and you will find that the statements of science are incompatible with that of religion.

"God created theuniverse" is no more a God did it all statement than saying the Big Bang createdthe universe. The proposition that the construction of the universe was God's doing and that His design for it was set up in such a way as to include many different options for us does not contradict at all with a theory like the Big Bang or the singularity.

I reallydo not believe that, that I'm incapable of doing things if my brain doesn't want me to, or that you are too. I have options, I have dominion over my mind. My decisions are my own, so that if I fuck up, only I can take responsibility.

It really is very simple. God does not interfere when a kid dies of kid cancer. Science tries to interfere. God is not relevant, scientific knowledge is.

Why would God interfere? That goes against His nature entirely, the reason for the kid's cancer is that the cells in his body mutated into cancer cells and now the doctors will try to fix him. Do you want to know where God comes in?

God built a path called life and He gave it many different paths. He gave it to us as a gift because He loves us, and let us pick the paths we want to walk. The kid with cancer has many different options, one being; "be angry and sullen and depressed all the time about the cancer," OR, "be happy that he lived a good life so far and hope for the best, including good doctors."

Both options have an incredible affect on the kid, believe me.

You're right that religion does not acheive knowledge,...

Nothing more than this is needed as a starting point.

So clever.

...humans acheive knowledge and have the capacity for understanding that knowledge. It's not a question of knowing, it's a question of understanding all that is around us, and how it is linked.

Please enlighten me how you can link god and kid cancer on religious faith alone.

See above.

And, really, you think love is an abject moral?

Hm.

Of course not, just that it is cherry picking the statements in the bible.

No it's not. Pick out any Bible verse you'd like, I'll show you what it means from the eyes of God and the eyes of love. Give me full context and passage, too, since that helps/matters.

Look! God just poofed into my room and moved a subatomic particle! It was amazing, this gold beam of light just showed upand said "I'm God" an dthen it showed me the subatomic world and how it could move an atom.

Do you think by this you have shown it to me? Don't be a silly boy.

No, take this as combined with te below:

Or how abou this?
Look! A subatomic particle just moved! It was amazing, I looked into a telescope* and saw all these little subatomic particles, and one of them just moved all by itself!

*Forgive me for my lack of knowledge in science if you can't actually do this. The point still stands.

Yeah, using telescopes on sub atomic particles generally is a bad idea.

Not the point. It still stands depending on whatever scientific method we have for observing subatomic particles. You see that claiming to see on ethrough science and claiming to see one through God is no more or less credible than the other. Unless you have faith in the answer being given, you don't know that it isn't all a lie.

Hell, how do you know that the world doesn't disappear everytime you close your eyes?

[Purple Rabbit]

Then please connect for me the laws of gravitation with christian dogma. How can we arrive from christian dogma, which is assertion without evidence, to observables?

First of all, Christian dogma does not equate to religion. God and His observable principles of nature do.

You're talking jibberish. Does not compute. Non sequitur.
Name me one observable to which we uniquely can identify the hand of god. Not any god, no, your god.
Or better still an observable that cannot have natural origin.

Think of it for one moment from a religious stand-point; God created all of life as a gift to us, and created us with the extraordinary capability of scientific understanding, which by the way, does nothing to refute Him.

Why should I indulge in moral abject activities? I rather use my rational faculties. You fabulate a lot but you give not one shred of evidence. Could not Zoroaster have created it on equally ungraspeble grounds? Then show me how we can unambiguously distinguish between this utterly shameless attribution of the beauty of nature to your abject god and the attribution of it to Zoroaster?

There can be no less credible or more credible anything, because without faith/belief you have no idea if what you are seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting/touching/feeling is all a lie or not.

Why is it a lie without religious faith? That is a non sequitur. It does not follow that all is a lie from the fact that your religion is a lie. I think you are mixing knowledge with morals. However, the fact that you don't like how reality is constituted has no bearing whatsoever on the way reality IS constitued.

I didn't say that all is a lie without religious faith, I said without faith how do you know that all is not a lie? You don't, if you don't have faith.

Why should not knowing be a reason for god? That does not make sense but only shows your determination to fabulate answers rather than to investigate. This really is illogic and I urge you to investigate into this. You disqualify yourself in debate with such arguments. Not knowing is never a reason to blindly assume and it certainly is not valid in reasoning. Also please observe that you mix knowing and having faith. Having faith is not the same as knowing.

If science is wrong about something it will be falsifiable. Build in into the scientific method is the condition that all scientific statements are stated falsifiable. In religion such a check is totally absent. Furthermore science is ultimately verified by what it accomplishes. Religion accomplishes nothing observable. Science accomplishes a lot.

Since it is an extremely unhealthy practice to have no faith, I choose faith.

Again you bring in a moral judgement to argue a logical necessity. This is a fallacy. You show no sign of even understanding what valid reasoning is. Even if it was unhealthy to have no faith, that as such does not make faith true. Furthermore, figures show that having no faith has no negative effect on health. So you are fabulating away again.

And there is a perfect example of how our scientific models of reality are getting more and more accurate in terms of predicting, explaining and describing phenomena. An example how the scientific method can validate between more probable and less probable: general relativity more accurately describes celestial mechanics than Newtonian mechanics.

This...literally proves nothing about what I said. At all.

It proves there indeed is a way in which some truths are verifiably more true than others. The condition needed therefore is falsifiability which is absent in christian dogma.

A major difference between religion and science is that religion has no such method. It cannot resolve between truth statements even within one creed of religion, let alone between different religions. This is because truth statements in religion are almost all unfalsifiable. The ones that are falsifiable await refutation by science. They are in the gaps of scientific knowledge.

I'd like you to show me somethings sciencehas proven and let me take a crack at connecting them to God.

Electricity. Now connect it to your god please.

Are we even in agreement her that the set of truth statements used to model the world should be a consistent set?

Somewhat. Not everything can be said to be cut from the same bolt of cloth, but it is all part of the same tapestry. So yes, in a way, the model of truth should be set for all.

Then your god concept should be restricted to the realm of logically valid statements and you cannot argue that not knowing what is truth is an argument for your god.

Religious agenda? What do you think I'm trying to do, convert you or something?

You are deliberately mixing homonyms of 'faith' to credit unsubstantiated religious claims over naturalistic ones. It's parasitic behaviour on the achievements of science.

...What? Seriosly, what does this even mean? Demonstrate to me how I am 'mixing homonyms.'

By saying that faith is required to know anything and not making a distinction between religious fabulated faith and falsifiable assumption.

I'm very thankful for science, you know. Yes, I wouldn't be able to type right now if it were not for science. It would not be able to do many things without science.
Science as a whole is fascinating and the study of how things work is interesting and cool. Who doesn't want to know things like that?

Then you should be deeply worried by the fact that religious faith cannot say anything about our reality, that god is totally absent in the current scientific model. If you adhere to truth, even if it is not absolute truth, you should investigate how this difference between science and religion arises.

I have, thoroughly. And in so doing I have found that the so-called 'differences' between science and religion actually melt completely away. They exist co-dependent on each other, not at each other's throats.

You show no knowledge of the scientific method. You fail to observe the sharp distinction between epistemic rigour of the scientific method and the anecdotal dogmatic sky hook fabulation of religion. God is totally absent in the scientific story of reality and yet you simply neglect that fact.

Never did I say that God simply 'did it all.' I stated that God as He is created this world and created us in such a way that we would be capable of learning more about life and how it works. Whether or not you believe in Him is irrellevant to that.

You are just restating unfalsifiable truth statements one of which (that god reality) is a god did it all statement. If we are indeed agents free from divine intervention than we should be able to choose our nature. Science teaches us that such is not the case. That your behaviour is determined by natural laws in a chain of cause and effect. When your brains fail your identity changes. Investigate these things and you will find that the statements of science are incompatible with that of religion.

"God created theuniverse" is no more a God did it all statement than saying the Big Bang createdthe universe. The proposition that the construction of the universe was God's doing and that His design for it was set up in such a way as to include many different options for us does not contradict at all with a theory like the Big Bang or the singularity.

You simply don't know what you're talking about. Firstly, the big bang is the scientific account of the universe from the moment some 10e-35 seconds after the beginning. Second the big bang model predicts the abundances of the light elements in the early universe with an astounding accuracy. It explains features of the microwave background radiation. It explains the abundances of fundamental particles to some degree. The god-did-it "explanation" is devoid of explanatory predictive and describing power. It simply is no match to the big bang theory. There is no god in the equations of physics.

I reallydo not believe that, that I'm incapable of doing things if my brain doesn't want me to, or that you are too. I have options, I have dominion over my mind. My decisions are my own, so that if I fuck up, only I can take responsibility.

So you are a little god yourself. Anything more that you wanted reality for you to offer, by sheer fabulation?

It really is very simple. God does not interfere when a kid dies of kid cancer. Science tries to interfere. God is not relevant, scientific knowledge is.

Why would God interfere?

It seems to me that moral perfectness would be a pretty good reason. In my country it's a fellony to not assist people in distress. Your god is capable of helping the innocent but inactive as a bystander. That is morally abject.

That goes against His nature entirely, the reason for the kid's cancer is that the cells in his body mutated into cancer cells and now the doctors will try to fix him. Do you want to know where God comes in?

If that goes against his nature than he is evil. Are you sure you are worshipping a good god?

God built a path called life and He gave it many different paths. He gave it to us as a gift because He loves us, and let us pick the paths we want to walk. The kid with cancer has many different options, one being; "be angry and sullen and depressed all the time about the cancer," OR, "be happy that he lived a good life so far and hope for the best, including good doctors."

For god's sake, innocent kids get cancer and your god despite his allmighty powers fails to interfere. What option has the kid on his own?

And, really, you think love is an abject moral?

Hm.

Of course not, just that it is cherry picking the statements in the bible.

No it's not. Pick out any Bible verse you'd like, I'll show you what it means from the eyes of God and the eyes of love. Give me full context and passage, too, since that helps/matters.

You show me? And what guarantee against cherry picking is that. Read Leviticus.

And what father should ever submit his own son to the whims of a god and the trauma of a burning stake over an unfalsifiable god? You're human aren't you, judge that from a human perspective and get back your senses.

Not the point. It still stands depending on whatever scientific method we have for observing subatomic particles. You see that claiming to see on ethrough science and claiming to see one through God is no more or less credible than the other. Unless you have faith in the answer being given, you don't know that it isn't all a lie.

Scientific statements are stated falsifiable, must be reproducible are under the scrutiny of peer review. All this does not gaurantee absolute truth but tentative verifiable demonstrable truth in that we can build explanatory, predictive and descriptive models of reality with it that work. Science is based on verification not on simply believing statements on faith. It is a human activity and as such prone to error and fraudulent behaviour and yet it is the best kind of knowledge available to man as is manifest all around us.

And please, don't screw up the quote tags again.