A question theists never seem to answer:
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The recent 0+0 thread started me thinking about this: One poster in that thread had called Llama to account for the theistic belief that God had created the universe out of nothing. His question didn't get very far (it never has in my experience) and Llama really just shrugged it off. I then began to recollect that I had observed pretty much the same thing happen many times before, so I decided to create a thread dedicated to that specific question. At first I thought it would be a non-starter since all the theists would have to do is appeal to God's omnipotence as an easy out, but, the more I thought about it, the less it seemed to me that theists could get off so easily. The difficult part is that even most theists do not believe that omnipotence includes the ability to do the logically impossible, and I will argue the creation ex nihilo is a logical impossibility.
So, without further a due, my argument:
P1. God cannot do that which is logically impossible (e.g. make a square circle etc.).
P2. To create something out of nothing is logically impossible.
C. Therefore, God could not have have created the universe out of nothing..
Going through the points:
Premise One:This seems relatively uncontroversial since many apologists agree, and even require for their own benefit, it to be true since it solves thorny problems that result from maintaining that God is not to be beholden to the laws of logic (I'd love to see a theist deny it though since the ramifications are really fun).
Premise Two: Here is where I believe many theists will balk, so I'll give a further argument that creation from nothing is a logical contradiction:
The law of identity states a thing is what it is in itself. “Nothing” is, by definition, the lack of anything. Nothing has one, and only one, property, that of nonexistence. Since nothing is only that which doesn't exist, If it is the substance from which everything is made, then there isn't anything that can be made from nothing except that which is also nonexistent as a result. But things do exist. So to say that everything was made out of nothing is logically contradicted by the mere fact that things do exist.
After writing this last paragraph, I felt like some theists might accuse me of equivocation, so I tried to think of how they might say, for instance, that “nothing” is not a substance and that God did not use a substance called “nothing” from which to create the world, but that what is meant by creation ex nihilo is God created something where there was formerly nothing etc. But, honestly, that seems to be a distinction without a difference. If I were then to ask the theist what material God did use to create everything, what else are they going to say other than “nothing” or what is logically equivalent to it, and they're right back in the same boat.
Another rebuttal they might use is to say God created the world from part of Himself, but that seems to contradict theology. If God created the world of himself, then the world is part of God, and so is Satan, hell, sin etc. which I believe most theists would deny. If they try to say that God created the world from a part of himself but that it is no longer part of himself, then they are going to run afoul of logical possibility once again, but I'll only address that argument if it arises.
Conclusion: I don't see how this can be denied if one accepts P1 and P2.
And from here we can argue:
P1. The Bible claims that God created the universe from nothing.
P2. It is logically impossible for God to have created the universe out of nothing.
C. Therefor, the Bible is flawed, and, God as depicted in the Bible, cannot be the real God since he is depicted as doing the logically impossible.
One last note is that, since the universe is required to be here anyway, then why not just use Occam's Razor to eliminate the un-parsimonious part of things, i.e. God.
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Until you can show me otherwise we must go with the tried tested and true, gravity pulls things towards an the object producing the gravity. So as much as you like to say otherwise, you have nothing to back it up. These laws of the universe are the laws that we use to explain natural phenomenas such as gravity so yes we now how many things interact with each other, we can prove that gravity works only one way. So can you plese show me otherwise, because making statements like sure show that you are talking shit and nothing more. Now the supernatural as in things that defy nature or are nothing explained, well they are that unexplained, once we understand them, they are no longer supernatural. As for the TRUTH, seriously here no god, no god required for a naturally explained universe, only those that are uncomforatable with the truth need god.
A post facto conclusion.
You gotta rewrite this.. I don't understand what you're saying--especially the parenthetical statement.
Once again.. I would contend you are confusing things.
I am not saying that God suspends the laws of physics. Nor does the term "supernatural" mandate they must be. Merely, that the entity effects the world in a, as of yet, incomprehensible way in terms of natural laws (e.g., the northern lights back in 1 b.c.e.).
Saying God is supernatural can be, merely, a label placed on the deity--it is not a foregone conclusion that he is in fact "beyond comprehension" in some objective sense. Just like you can say now that "hurricanes, lightning/thunder, tsunamis, etc" are "just natural phenomenas" because we have discovered how they can be explain through "natural mechanics"--so to may God be able to be explain, at least in part, through "natural mechanics."
You're preaching to the choir here. It certainly seems to fit the facts a lot more simply than the convoluted explanations theists come up with.
If you don't, the how would you respond to the question I raised in post 3?
If the universe is nothing more or less than God's thought, then it is part of God, but, if it is part of God, then so is evil, Satan, hell etc. (as I pointed out in the original post), and God cannot be considered all good. And if evil is the lack of God, then we have God including the lack of himself.
See, you've raised a very tough problem for your own concept. If everything exists only as thoughts in the mind of God, then I exist only as thoughts in the mind of God and so do my thought, but then my thoughts are God's thoughts, so I don't have thoughts, God does. When I think, it is really God doing the thinking.
But if God is really doing the thinking, then isn't he helping himself make sense of things because the observers and their minds and thoughts are actually his?
Not a thing. It is the person who sees the Bible as other than parable and allegory who troubles me.
Thanks for reminding me. Dang me ! Hard for me to conform to the rigid, writing norms .....
When I read my written words to the audience here, I read very slow, with voice inflections .... It's most all like poetry, my writing , having real fun with language and simple messages, best to be spoken , as speeches in dramatic poetic style. Well, so I try .... It's fun !
Podcasts would work better for me, my encouraging loving consultant friends, tell me. I am aware of this problem of my writing style. Those that actually know me have little problem reading my words. I e-mail alot of what I write here at RRS.
You can always ask me to say in different words, if curious.
.... and thanks for your sharing presence here , freely say what comes to mind .... every style has its fans ..... like music .....
BTW, the definition of G O D is my main target ... I've hoped everyone would get that from my posts.
Again: GOD and everything is ONE, as all is 100% connected. All science/philosophy is a discussion of the ONE. Religion stinks of dogma.
SIMPLE, in a zillion words .....
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Ok I will summerize, the god that is presented by religion, one that communicates directly with humans (ok doesn't directly communicate to humans, only the followers can hear him and only the followers repeat it to the masses, never does god speak directly to the masses), created the universe out of nothing (most religions), created all things as is (most religions of course) and desires worship (again most religions here) has been disproven by science. As such I have no need to believe that this universe and all things in it were created by a god of any sorts. With the exception of Einsteins god (one that set forth the laws of the universe and basically left the universe to run naturally) or something like the matrix (this reality is simply the simulation of a super computer, and our bodies are used to power this computer).
You're still speaking of these "laws" as if they're an entity of their own. These "laws" are mere assumptions backed by observed repitions. For all you know, next year gravity could repel objects. You can't prove that gravity works ONLY one way. All you can do is fail to disprove that the last time you dropped something it fell towards the earth.
I'll make a humble attempt to give you an example:
A scientist comes up with a hypothesis that all voters get stamped on the hand with an "I Voted" stamp. He wants to prove this so he goes and observes a local polling station. And sure enough, every time someone goes in they come out with a stamp on their hand saying they've voted. He sees 1, 2, 3, ...1000 people come out with this stamp. Other scientists test it and get the same results. After so many years and so many consistent results, scientists deem it to be a law - a law as reputable as the law of gravity. People start to believe that it's impossible for someone to leave without a stamp. But there's no necessary connection between voting and stamps. Someone could come out of there without a stamp.
Please know that modern science is founded on a Christian worldview that God made the universe with order. Standing on this foundation, scientists use logic to reverse-engineer the universe.
Only those uncomfortable with the truth - that they need to submit to their Creator - deny His existence.
Yes, but my point was broader. Mass/energy conservation is a physical law of matter, but I was also alluding to something like an ontological extension of that: e.g. with matter, what ever changes matter undergoes, it is always physical matter: That matter cannot act upon itself to become else than what it is, and that physicality is the essential character of matter through all seeming transformations where matter acts on matter (and I also think logic suggests that such a principle should hold for all substances). In other words something like, to give it a name, the principle of conservation of ontological identity of a substance in its essence.
Now you could say that I'm engaging in circular argument here that, by definition, physical change cannot change the physicality of matter, but, that is exactly the point, and I'd really have to ask why this would not hold for the spiritual/supernatural as well.
If, by definition, physical change cannot change the physicality of matter, then how can spiritual change change the spiritual-ness of the spiritual? Suppose the spiritual acted on itself to change itself to the physical, what would the chain of causality look like? The spiritual would first have to act on the spiritual. At this point what is doing the acting and what is being acted upon are still the same sort of thing. Then what happens? The spiritual that has been acted upon by itself must either now remain the spiritual or, through some discontinuous change where what did the acting is not sufficient to entail the ontological change in what was acted upon, be something different. The other alternative in describing the causal chain from spiritual to natural is that, at some point, the spiritual would have to act on the physical. But that assumes the physical already exists as a substance on which the supernatural is acting.
To summarize, at some point you'd have to a have a magical transformation along the lines of the essence of a circle acting upon itself to become the essence of a square, or you'd have to admit the prior existence of a substance of a different essential character from what was acting upon it.
I think though that I may be talking past your argument here since later I think you indicate you don't believe that the spiritual and the natural are really ontologically distinct substances.
Sorry to break up what you were saying mid-sentence, but I do tend to make some assumptions about the nature of God that, to keep things concise, I hope are already shared between my audience and myself. So it is probably the lack of those assumptions being explicitly stated that is rendering this sentence difficult to understand.
I subscribe to the idea that God must be a simple, singular being with no parts and whose properties or qualities identical with himself as a whole - put succinctly, that he and his essence are identical, or, to use the terminology we have been using, that he has no form that is not also essence. The reason I assume this is that I believe it actually gives the greatest benefit of the doubt to the theists in positing a god that is both logically defensible and a logical first cause. Your welcome to counter with a different conception of God of course.
My argument then is, naturally, based on God of the nature of the I posit. But, if God has no form that is not also essence, and his form and essence are inextricably unified in including those things that define him as God, then it is difficult to imagine that he could create something of himself that is in any way different from himself. Would he not have to do the logically impossible in doing so?
If we are discussing the Biblical God, then the Bible asserts as much:
Malachi 3:6 “I the LORD do not change...” and
Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
In attempting to posit the nature of God, we cannot just ignore what most Christians would deem God's revelation about his own nature can we?
You're quite right in asserting that what the spiritual is is not well defined, but, if we are going to speak about meaningfully at all, then we have to make some attempt to define it, right? - otherwise we descended into meaninglessness where it is everything and nothing.
One approach might be to suppose the only definition of the spiritual we can give is what it is not, but, if we do so, in characterizing it this way, what we are using to characterize what it is not other than what we know is (i.e. the material)? But, if the material is what the spiritual is not, then how, by using the process of subtraction in the manner the you seem to argue for in your computer program argument, can we arrive at the material.
Of course all this assumes that the spiritual is left wholly intact in creating from it, and I think your skeleton sculpture analogy and your computer program analogy both assert that is not really the case, as does your saying that it is only “common understanding” that God is unchanged by the process of creation. So I think you are saying that both God and the universe are changed by the process of creation in the sense that they became two separate things with each inheriting a particular set of the character traits out of a being or thing that once possessed them all.
I'll admit that, as far as I can tell, you are presenting a coherent account. But what you are proposing is a radically different theology than what I think most Christians accept, and I was basing my arguments on a more conventional Christian theology.
Sure, I suppose if we accept what you are proposing - that, at one time, what became Satan, sin, hell where all once part of the being of God, a God, not characterized by those things usually ascribed to God such as being all good, but by “just existing”. And then he exuded a portion of himself that evolved towards evil while he evolved towards good (or some similar history), then maybe you have an account of creation that does not run into the problems I proposed in my original post, but, like I said, it is radically different than the mainstream Christian theology I was aiming at.
You're right, I'm not happy with that anaolgy, at least insofar as it is supposed to show how part of the perfect can be imperfect. I just don't agree that would be the case. Even assuming that a computer program is the right analogy, and that God doesn't have something like, to use an analogy, a fractal nature where removing a portion of God would result, not in a God chunk, but rather a perfect copy of the original, then we still have explain how taking it out of its original context makes it imperfect. Why would taking the line out of the program make it imperfect? My natural thought would be that it would be either a perfect line of code, or something too atomic to have any meaning because it has no context.
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HEY MA , I got one , damn she turns me on , I am a highway star ..... my girl and my car ...........
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( I was there when the fans rushed the stage and the Deep Purple kept playing (((
edgar winter band - free ride
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how about this one
krokus - eat the rich
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ANARCHY , REVOLUTION, evolution NOW
Symphony X "Serpent's Kiss" ...... welcome to the garden of eating !
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*
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ETC , get free .......... break the chains .........
Ready to kill , and god is on my side .....
Beware of my rage against the machine ..... the rich , NO MASTERS
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Rage Against The Machine - Killing In The Name
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Atheism Books.
No! at least not if they fully accept P1 and P2. But, as I expected, the most logically minded and philosophical theists will give up on strict creation ex nihilo in the face of this argument.
Hi JustAnotherBeliever,
I had almost missed your post.
Tillich?
I see the problem with the argument as being one of equivocation (admittedly subtle and clever). "Something" can mean "some thing" or it can mean "existent", and "nothing" can mean "no thing" or it can mean "nonexistent". If I were to say God is "nothing", I would probably not be intending this as an affirmation that God is not a thing but rather existence itself, I would more likely be intending to say that God=Nonexistent. Of course, if you define God as existence itself, then "God exists" is irrefutable by virtue of being a tautology.
Again, when most theists say that God created the world out of nothing, they don't mean that God created it of himself but that he is not a thing, so he created it out of nothing. They mean he created it out of nonexistence.
Just from what little I have gleaned of his thoughts in your reference to what Todangst says, I think I'd have to agree. If God=Existence then you are adding nothing to the concept of existence by calling it God, or to God by calling him existence. It would be like calling a car a fairy and a tree a troll. You are just exchanging one word for another without adding any information in the process.
I think you are also right in assessing that God, by that definition, is something it is very hard to attribute volitional acts to or to imagine a personal relationship with
Anyway, you've encouraged me to read more about Tillich.
Well no crap, If you accept P1 and P2 it is logically impossible to accept "C." But we don't accept P2, because it's illogical gibberish you dreamed up. The theists haven't "given up on strict ex nihilo". Maybe you should look back over the posts on this thread and see how the Christian arguments stand up while the Atheists give up admitting they "don't know", have trouble understanding the basics of science, etc.
... and the honest answer is ??? It's , "We don't know much" , as all honorable scientists will first honestly tell you. The truly curious don't claim to know much ....
And SO there is wonderful science , while the dogma shit religious loons babel their lies, as the hypnotized retards they all are .... Heal the sick.
Atheism Books.
Christian arguments based on the myths of the ancient savages have no merit. In the first place you have rejected the original theism of the Jews and replaced it with derived mythology. Christians can't even successfully defend why the Jews were wrong in their interpretations as they don't even grasp what Jewish theology entailed. If you don't even understand where your beliefs came from how can you even claim to understand further complexities and assertions made by these ancients.
It is the wise who recognize they don't know or would like to understand that have brought knowledge and understanding to the world, not the village priest. Humans progress by learning what they don't know and adding to knowledge. A 6 year old cannot generally solve a quadratic equation and doesn't even have a clue why it is important. As knowledge accumulates by the time he is 16 he can solve it and understand its usefulness. We are much like the 6 year old when it comes to understanding the Universe and the laws of physics. As we progress in our joint knowledge our understanding will grow and more answers will be forthcoming. Making assumptions about origins using clearly marginal mythology does not add to knowledge as it is a dead end. The fact you have the Internet and computers today is because engineers like me took knowledge to new levels. If we hadn't, you'd be using carrier pigeons or lugging clay tablets around by donkeys.
So when I say I don't know, all I mean is I don't know how to explain it in a useful way that has merit. I will not claim something is true based on belief in an ancient religion of ignorant savages. If science has no answer today, it may have one tomorrow or in the next century. You have the advantage today of seeing how human progress has brought the modern world which ancients did not. Science based on understanding the unknown brought you here, why do you reject it now?
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Not "giving up on" the concept that something can be created from nothing does not mean your christian "argument" stands up at all. In fact it means that your christian contention cries out for definition and evidence.
If you can demonstrate this trick that you haven't given up on I am all ears. But, until you can at least explain why on earth you cling to illogical fallacy you should spare us the admonition for adhering to logic, and spare us also the dishonest assertion that such illogical unsubstantiated claptrap is "an argument", let alone one that "holds up".
Otherwise you're wasting bandwidth, time (yours and ours) and a fair dollop of your brain cells that might have been better applied in thinking before you speak.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
I finally get what your saying, and I fucking agree with you 100% on this I AM GOD AS YOU........your scaring me now
Your right the idea of someone leaving without a stamp is quite true, we have you as a perfect example trying to disregard that gravity doesn't change, it does the exact samething everywhere that we have observed, every planet, the sun, the moon, all have gravity. Since a planet could not form is gravity repelled, which would completely destroy various other theories and laws, but since that hasn't happened, and never will, until maybe the destruction of this universe. As much as you would like to think that laws can be changed by some magical imaginary being, it doesn't. Now for the second part
Science is founded on many many world views, the Greeks world view of emperical evidence, islamic world used more experimentation than the greeks did and this is led to early scientific method, india gave us various heliocentric models of gravitation, and that gravity was a force of attraction, china gave us other methods of mathematics. But the foundations of modern science starts to form in the age of enlightenment, 16th-17th century, how odd that this was the rise of postive atheism as well in that age, and while many early scientists in this era where chrisitan (of course being the largest religion in the Western world at the time) the scientifc findings were increasingly impacted the religious views of the world, finding that religion was wrong, and to this very date still wrong, the bible got it all wrong and yet you want us to follow it's teachings as truth? There was never an adam and eve, there was never a beginning in which there was nothing (for this universe as described in genesis and various other holy texts) There was never a world flood that drowned everyone everywhere and all of this shown with the science of cosmology, biology and geology. I cannot submit to a god that doesn't exist, that it's own holy texts got it all wrong.
Can matter turn into energy? Energy is not matter.
i.e., things cannot act on themselves to change themselves into something that does not share the same "ontological identity of a substance in its essence."
Physical change can change the physicality of matter into energy.
Why could not the "spiritual/supernatural" (whatever that means) allow for the same transition between "ontological identities."
Of course.. perhaps matter is a derivative of energy (I believe this is still a theory out there, although not proven), could not energy be a derivative of what is now terms "spiritual/supernatural."
Once again.. I must point out, that the way that I'm using the words (and a way that is okay based upon my understanding of christian theology) in the sense that "spiritual/supernatural" merely means the currently unexplainable.
The first premise is incorrect.
You mean.. sort of like how matter acts upon matter to create energy?
But even if that isn't correct explanation of the process (as I don't think it is since "matter and energy" are rarely able to be separated into such nice little categories), perhaps the same could be said for the "spiritual/supernatural"/physical/energy. Perhaps they are all "intermixed" in this thing called "the universe."
Obviously I can't give you any proof of this.. I'm just giving a logical construct in which it would work.. one that takes into account our current inability to understand/define/obverve one branch of the trichotomy, i.e., now termed the "the supernatural."
As I stated before.. there is no need to confine "God," before "creation of the universe," into a box that he existed as "essence" completely devoid of any "essence" which is shared in the world today.
Would seem like a strange bit of causation.. but just as easily as you have made an analogy, let me make one. Whose to say this "pre-universe" state wasn't more akin to a "piece of string acting upon itself into the shape of a circle, or a square, or perhaps splitting itself into two parts so that one makes a circle and the other makes a square"?
I take issue with this definition in two respects. In one respect.. that he has no "parts"--this seems strange.. depending on how you are defining "part." Everything I have observed seems to have "parts"--even water has a "part." While not an apendage, it can still be separated.
A more importance question, however, more likely the question of "essence" and how it has not been defined with regard to God--and it seems rather important for the argument at hand. You seem to want to define "essence" as something akin to "character"--I am not.
If you are going to hold the premise that "God is inextricably unified"--even though nothing else in the world can be defined in such a way (brash generalization)--then I cannot argue from that position. I would merely suggest that he is not so for the purpose of this argument..
What i meant by my statement is not undercut by these verses. The bible, like science books, deals with God after creation. At least this would be the way I understand it..
There would be no purpose in describing a God that existed prior to "the universe"--even if he was "different" in some way then the way he is now.
This would be the same as a science book teaching me about "the universe prior to the universe."
Which, in essence, it is. As this conversation shows (I think) I can mold the terms "spiritual" and "supernatural" into any hypothetical way I see fit in order that it fits into a logical construct.
The question "how can God create something from nothing?" can merely be answered "because the spiritual has a quality that allows for this to be possible."
Since "spiritual" has no real definition.. why couldn't this be how it is defined as?
You're going to have to rewrite this.. I don't quite understand you're argument.
Maybe I do.. and so I will respond to the one part I think I do..
There is no need to define the spiritual as "not material."
Good summary. With the addition that.. there is no need to accept from this summary that God prior to creation was completely separated from the quality that was used to create the universe.
I don't think so.. I don't think Christian theology usually deals with this issue.. of God prior to creation v. after creation of the universe.. or the definition of spiritual/supernatural.
Of course.. maybe I am wrong.
Ah.. I like this summary too.. good stuff.
You're right.. and its something I didn't really think of before..
I guess the real issue would be.. is there any "objective sense of perfect."
A perfect tool for gardening is not the perfect tool for writing.
So in what sense do we say "God is perfect"?
And.. once that question is answered.. another must be.. Can this "perfect" be taken away from or changed in anyway so that it would still remain perfect? yet the thing taken away would not be?
Please know that this is the dumbest thing I've read all day, and I read the entire thread. It even trumps your oh-so-humble attempt to give an example. You obviously know nothing of modern science, please stop talking about things you know nothing about. Then again, talking about things without any knowledge of them never stopped any other theist, so I'm not optimistic...
You said it.
But since almost your entire contribution reads like the usual waffle put forward by theists ( eg: The question "how can God create something from nothing?" can merely be answered "because the spiritual has a quality that allows for this to be possible" ) then your guess as to how rght in the head you are is as good as mine.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Heh... did you really read my whole post? Because if you did.. I don't understand your contention. My statement "how can God . . . . spiritual . . . allows for this to be possible" was in response to the last posts mention of the definition problem with words like "spiritual" and "supernatural."
It was not meant to suggest that the "spiritual" allows for X, merely that since it is difficult to come to some agreement as to what "spiritual" means or what boundaries it has... that people can "define" it in anyway they want.
So.. ya. But I appreciate your response questioning my intellectual honesty or competence.
Unfortunately I did, thanks.
So, as a theist you find it difficult also to define just what spiritual means. That's comforting to know. It might mean you're on the path to being rational.
But wait, I spoke too soon. You follow up this with the observation that people can therefore "define it any way they want". Since when have definitions been up for grabs like this? Isn't the point of language as a means of communication (and last I looked "spiritual" was a real word) that predefined terms save us all the hassle of having to redefine them every time we speak them. It's a drag I know, and would destroy the theology industry overnight if t became law, but it's just one of those little rigours that rational people like to adhere to.
So.. ya. Now you can see why intellectual honesty seems to be an issue here. Your competency - at least in the speaking plainly department - has already been decided, I think.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
For the purpose of argument.. yes. That's why it's helpful to agree on a definition before the conversation begins.. but, whose to say what definition is correct?
That's the problem I was getting at. I wasn't meaning to say that any particular definition someone gives is therefore "right" in some objective sense--i.e., "everyone can be right."
Since the beginning of time.
Dictionary, see def. for God.
There might be an agreement as to a general definition.. but, as to specificity, with certain words, there is many issues left to be defined.
If you want to keep our discussions purely within the limits of a dictionary, i.e., the agreed definitions, then fine:
Spiritual:
1. of, pertaining to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal.
2. of or pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature: a spiritual approach to life.
3. closely akin in interests, attitude, outlook, etc.: the professor's spiritual heir in linguistics.
4. of or pertaining to spirits or to spiritualists; supernatural or spiritualistic.
5. characterized by or suggesting predominance of the spirit; ethereal or delicately refined: She is more of a spiritual type than her rowdy brother.
6. of or pertaining to the spirit as the seat of the moral or religious nature.
7. of or pertaining to sacred things or matters; religious; devotional; sacred.
8. of or belonging to the church; ecclesiastical: lords spiritual and temporal.
9. of or relating to the mind or intellect.
–noun
10. a spiritual or religious song: authentic folk spirituals.
11. spirituals, affairs of the church.
12. a spiritual thing or matter.
So... where in this definition does it address whether spiritual can interact with physical? Or cannot? Whether there is some overlaps? Whether there is some superset from which spiritual and physical are derived? etc.
I'm sure.
Heh.. better stop with the sarcasm and condescending attitude. Perhaps it isn't your purpose.. perhaps it is not. But seeing as I have not made any judgments as to your personal characters.. I would prefer you do not with me.
It's not very useful for the purpose of a debate/conversation.
However.. if you wish to continue, I guess I can respond in kind--it's quite fun.. although not very productive.
I finally get what your saying, and I fucking agree with you 100% on this I AM GOD AS YOU........your scaring me now
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Cool, please fix my messy words .... Help?!!!
You are "saved" , Google, "condemned to be free" ! Celebrate ! Stop the party crashers !
http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/09/20/existentialism-abandonment-condemned-to-be-free.htm
Atheism Books.
Well i will answer this question....the first one answers that, incorporeal, meaning having no physical existance, no physical existance cannot interact with the physical as it has no means to do so. So if god is purely spiritual then he is incorporeal which cannot affect the physical realms.
Very convoluted analogy, but if an author reads his book aloud, then there is an existing external world into which he speaks, and, if he reads to an audience, then there is an existing external audience. The story came into existence in the authors mind when he created it from his though, and it is brought into existence in the minds of his audience members by the audience members themselves in their thoughts through their interpretation of the message he conveys. At no point in this whole process does something come into being out of nothing
Except not many atheists I know believe that the universe came out of nothing. That is a straw man. I'll tell you what, I'll create a post and poll everyone in this thread. I doubt many will say that they believe the universe came from nothing.
You don't give a description of what you believe atheists think, but I assume it must be based on cosmology. But, even if one uses only standard Big Bang cosmology, and even making the (far from universal) assumption that Einstein's theory of general relativity must be a complete valid description of the universe all the way back to the very beginning, and even assuming there was nothing “prior” to the Big Bang singularity, you still have to make a false assumption to say the universe came from nothing. You'd have to ascribing time outside the universe where relativity says there is none - you have to assume there was a time when the universe didn't exist. There is no evidence at all that the universe is embedded in a higher temporal dimension where there can be a “before” time when the universe didn't exist. If you viewed the universe from an outside perspective (if that were possible), the universe would be a static geometric object – what is sometimes referred to as block spacetime. It would just be.
An acting force makes creating something out nothing that is not itself nothing more logical? An acting force can't even act on nothing because there is nothing to be acted upon!
Begging the question. You have to already believe in God for this to have any validity.
If you are an atheist, please say whether you believe the universe came from nothing.
I think I already addressed the whole coming from nothing, the singularity is not nothing, it was small, massively condensed, extremely high temperature, but it was never nothing, it was something, from where all the energy of this universe expanded (which we call the big bang). Now it gets really scientific about how it all occured, energy to matter etc, etc, etc. However no where does it state that the universe started from nothing, there was something, we call a singularity. Only theists believe something came from nothing. There was nothing and then god created something. which is illogical really.
You're right; Many different cultures made many different contributions to science.
I honestly don't know of any atheists living during that age who made any major contributions to science. Maybe there are - I'd be curious to know. Remember that this also occured during the Reformation, but I don't make any claim that the Reformation caused the rise of modern science.
What they impacted were the Aristotelian elements that had been mixed in with the Catholic Church's teachings. It wasn't the Christian teachings that were impacted but rather the ancient Greek teachings (that Thomas Aquinas opened the floodgates to). The Christian insistence on the rationality of God's universe drove scientists to find the general principles that are the foundation of modern science. Christianity wasn't refuted, it was affirmed.
The "Universe" ? Better to say in plural, "Universes". I don't just mean other dimensions.
Why would we consider our "Big Bang" unique ? Think much MUCH bigger, and smaller. How far might it go out there ????? Beware of assumptions.
The "small tiny bang" of non unique" energy / matter dancing !
Infinite/Eternal ???? Why not? ....
How many Bangs (transitions) !?!?!?!
Atheism Books.
Energy is incorporeal... it certain affects the physical realm.
Your quite wrong about this, science found many of the teaching of religion to be wrong, we were not the centre of the universe as the church taught, but punished Galileo for showing it to be wrong. It was affirmed really there was never adam and eve (there goes the creation of man) the flood never happend (there goes Noah), The universe was not formed from nothing (there goes genesis and the whole creation process described by christians), the earth took about 9 billions years to form and another 4 billion before humans even showed up (again out goes the entire genesis chapter on creation). Snakes don't talk, Donkeys don't take, you cannot survive in the stomach of a whale for three days as there is no air in there to survive that long plus all the stomach acids would kill ya (even more christian stories out the door). There was never an exodus from egypt as per the bible and torah (no evidence at all given the number of people described nor is there any record of that amount of slaves leaving egypt as this would have been a major event in egyptian history and would have been recorded somewhere) I could keep on going on and showing how science proved christianity wrong, but I figure you will get some other dumbass idea that it's right, even though you been proven wrong.
David Hume is one of them to the disciple of Philosophy, as well as Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach, Benjamin Franklin (ok pragmatic Deist, not christian), Thomas Paine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Those are some of the philosophers, inventors and scientists of those times, the catholic church has tried to influence science, changing it`s view and statements about the bible (evolution, the big bang, etc, etc, etc) yet it in the end, the bible got it wrong.
No not quite, it requires something to contain it, be it a photon. particle etc, etc, etc, energy doesn't exist without the physical realm, be it Kinetic or potential energy, which we can then break it down even more, Thermal (which the singularity had in extreme amount), Gravitational energy (again the singularity has bounds of) Chemical, Nuclear, Electrical, Radiant, Magnetic, elastic, and sound energy. But again they are all require physcial forms for energy to be active in, it isn't really incorporeal as in the classical component of not having any physcial properties.
Define "physical forms for energy to be active in."
Define "classical component of not having any physical properties."
Ok at this point I must apologize for any mistakes in the following post, a friend came over and we been drinking.
Ok on to the point, I have defined phsycial forms, chemical, nuclear, thermal, etc, each of them are forms of phsycial properties in which the energy is active or stored in. For example thermal requires particles, if there are no particles for the energy to transfer to (due to the speeding up of the movement of the particles) then heat will not occur. With that said chemical energy which can cause an exothermic or endothermic reaction. Again transfer of energy of one state of matter to another. Same applies to the rest, they all require some form of physical property really.
Classical component of not having any physical properties as in immaterialism, which it has no phsyical properties, as such if it has no physical propeties, it cannot interact with the physical or corporeal universe, basically minds and ideas in those minds, you can create a whole world in your mind, but in the end it isn't real, those ideas don't become corporeal because you think of it.
I'm just gonna have to disagree with you on the meaning of incorporeal. How I understand the definition is not material or tangible.
Energy may require matter to interact with.. but the energy itself is not material.. therefore incorporeal.. as I understand the definition (dictionary.com).
Without an agreement on the definition.. not sure what can be said.
that's cool with me, I am too inebriated (thank goodness for spell checker) at this moment to continue this discussion, I think we need the help of those in the scientific community (deludedgod this is a call to you) to properly explain it all......damn my love of guinness.
you are arguing on the assumption that you know the limits of logical possibility. you are also arguing a point that nobody but nobody can claim to have any concrete evidence of. how, when, where, why the universe was created. therefore your argument is entirely invalid because it is based on the blind faith that god created the universe out of nothing.
"Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later."
-C.S. Lewis
There are certain things in logic that must be accepted as necessarily true because you can only deny them by contradicting yourself. If I were to make the statement “I do not exist”, my very uttering of that statement would prove it false. I can't say “I do not exist” unless I exist. The same is true if I were to make the statement “I made something out of nothing”. Nothing, by definition, doesn't exist. I have to contradict my assertion to claim I made something out of it.
I'm not making an assumption of the limits of logical possibility, I'm making an assumption of the basics of logic. Sure, we don't know the limits of logical possibility, but we do know the basics.
I'm not making an empirical claim here. I don't (and don't claim to) have any concrete evidence of how (or out of what) the universe was created. But even in situations where we don't have complete knowledge, we can still eliminate the impossible.
If I'm looking at a test question, and it's multiple choice, and the possibilities are (a), (b), or (c), I know without a doubt the answer isn't (d) even if I have no idea what the answer is. Even if all the answers that actually appear happen to be wrong, the answer is still not (d) because there is no (d).
Here I have no Idea what you are talking about. I'm responding to a common Christian doctrine that is dogma in Catholicism and is very common in Protestantism as well.
Winner so far of this thread for best rebuttal by a theist is going to have to go to RhadTheGizmo.
Rhad, imho, you are the only theist so far who has stayed entirely within rationality with your response.
I'll get back to you on your last post some day soon.
I just wanted to say hi to some of my voyeur friends from work who I know love reading my posts.
Hi
j j holland, kirsten marlow, jeffery adkins, larry simkins, ben hogan, sherri maple (or whatever) and I'm sure many more.
Thanks for you interest. I'm really glad to see you dumb shits are such losers that you don't have your own lives and have to be up in mine.
I also know you're all strongly opinionated about my writing. It's just too bad that none of those opinions include anything more that superficial ridiculing.
Not that any of you will follow my advice, but I'd really love to see all of you mind your own fucking business. While you're at it, you might also try not criticizing what you don't understand - stupid mother fuckers.
P.S. kirsten, I was sorry to hear about you car window - not! lol you suck
Winner so far of this thread for most petulant put-down of co-workers by an atheist is going to have to go to 3t7.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Pretty ill natured sounding I'll confess (my post about thread winner probably sounded arrogant too, that was really more about letting Rhad know I would likely be awhile in responding to his last post).
But, hey, I know my coworkers read my stuff here, so I thought I'd give them a little extra.
I wait patiently.
Seriously, no hurry at all.
CAN there be winners if there are no losers? .... is life a contest ? ....
Yin Yang , and the middle ? Umm , Black / White , but so many shades of gray ....
Games ?
Atheism Books.