Continuation of Christianity debate.

[jay_a2j]

Ok so probably a really bad question but what if Christianity is not the "One true" Religion?

so anyone got an answer to this?

It's a question based on a hypothetical. "What if" can not be addressed because, "it is". And I wouldn't call it a religion (man has a hard time with that), its a relationship.

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" HEB11:1

[Neoteny]

1. The existence of something is intelligible only if it has an explanation (this is confirmed by the definition of the term intelligibility.).

2. The existence of the Universe is therefore either:
a. unintelligible, or
b. has an explanation

(logical deduction from #1)

3. No rational person should accept 2a. (Confirmed by the definition of rationality.)

4. Therefore, 2b is the rational conclusion and the Universe has an explanation.

5. But there are only three kinds of explanation:
a) Scientific: C + L = E (Independent physical, initial conditions, plus relevant laws, yield the Event explained.)
b) Essential: the essence of the thing to be explained requires it's existence.
c) Personal: this posits explanations that cite the intentions and powers of some personal Agent.

6. The existence of the Universe cannot be explained Scientifically; if the Universe is just natural conditions and laws, there can be no initial physical conditions or laws outside of it--independent of it--to explain it.

7. The explanation cannot be an Essential one; the Universe is a contingent one, and therefore is not necessary. It could just as well 'not exist' as exist. Its essence doesn't require it to existence.

8. So a rational person should believe that the Universe has a Personal explanation.

9. The only personal agent capable--having the power and wisdom--to create the entire universe out of nothing is 'God'.

10. Therefore, a rational person believes there exists a God.

Haven't I seen this before??? Don't you make me copy and paste, rebuttles buddy! (FRIGIDUS, you cut me off! Awesome though!)
Also, this is a pointless debate. The Einstiens of Atheism live here in the chatterbox. Just look at the past religious threads. They always start out Jesus this, logical god that, but by the end of it, it's just a bunch of atheist arguing about dark matter.

Fucking dark matter...

[naxus]

True that its almost impossible to figure out if any relgion or "Relationship" is true or the correct one but what else is everyone gonna do.So if everything was created by god who made god or where is he from?

[tubaman]

True that its almost impossible to figure out if any relgion or "Relationship" is true or the correct one but what else is everyone gonna do.So if everything was created by god who made god or where is he from?

Exactly. This is one of my biggest problems with religion. Who created god? When was he created? Where was he created? Who created the guy who created god? Was he even created at all? Does that even make sense?

[Hiiiaiiei]

Ive gotta question... why doesnt god have more jesus babies?

ITS BEEN 2000 YEARS!
HES GOTTA WANNA HAVE ANUTHER BABY

[Frigidus]

Ive gotta question... why doesnt god have more jesus babies?

ITS BEEN 2000 YEARS!
HES GOTTA WANNA HAVE ANUTHER BABY

Quite. If we were made in God's image he's a horny bastard.

[protectedbygold]

It's a question based on a hypothetical. "What if" can not be addressed because, "it is". And I wouldn't call it a religion (man has a hard time with that), its a relationship.

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" HEB11:1

Aren't you the same guy who believes 9/11 was an inside job and that there's a group of bankers setting up to secretly take over the world's economy?

[muy_thaiguy]

It's a question based on a hypothetical. "What if" can not be addressed because, "it is". And I wouldn't call it a religion (man has a hard time with that), its a relationship.

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" HEB11:1

Aren't you the same guy who believes 9/11 was an inside job and that there's a group of bankers setting up to secretly take over the world's economy?

Just for a bit of clarity, this thread and the Logic Dictates thread were both made long before Jay became a conspiracy nut. In fact, it wasn't until early winter, late fall of this year that he started believing that stuff.

[MeDeFe]

1. The existence of something is intelligible only if it has an explanation (this is confirmed by the definition of the term intelligibility.).

2. The existence of the Universe is therefore either:
a. unintelligible, or
b. has an explanation

(logical deduction from #1)

3. No rational person should accept 2a. (Confirmed by the definition of rationality.)

4. Therefore, 2b is the rational conclusion and the Universe has an explanation.

5. But there are only three kinds of explanation:
a) Scientific: C + L = E (Independent physical, initial conditions, plus relevant laws, yield the Event explained.)
b) Essential: the essence of the thing to be explained requires it's existence.
c) Personal: this posits explanations that cite the intentions and powers of some personal Agent.

6. The existence of the Universe cannot be explained Scientifically; if the Universe is just natural conditions and laws, there can be no initial physical conditions or laws outside of it--independent of it--to explain it.

7. The explanation cannot be an Essential one; the Universe is a contingent one, and therefore is not necessary. It could just as well 'not exist' as exist. Its essence doesn't require it to existence.

8. So a rational person should believe that the Universe has a Personal explanation.

9. The only personal agent capable--having the power and wisdom--to create the entire universe out of nothing is 'God'.

10. Therefore, a rational person believes there exists a God.

1. intelligible - understandable, in the way that you can "get your mind around it", but where is the prerequisite of an explanation? Personally I'm quite happy to let, say, gravity go on and be something that comes with matter and just is. There are degrees of understanding as well, it's not a 1/0 issue.

And understandable in what way? In the way it works? That would in this case be the physical laws and whatnot. In 'where it all came from'? I'm not convinced knowing exactly down to the last detail how the universe started (or if it ever did) is necessary to understand the basic workings of the universe.

2. has just fallen flat on its face because there's a third option of partial understanding, but I'm not done yet, even if we allow for only his two options and disregard 3. that "We cannot ever fully understand the unvierse and where it came from" is not all that irrational and nicely allows a person to get on with other stuff than posting on an internet forum.

4. is correct under my previously stated premises, you need to disregard the problems with the first 3 points in order to accept this one.

5. Back in my first reply I accepted this one. No more...
There's really only one sort of explanation, which is really more accurately termed 'description': we see phenomenon A and can list the factors which caused the phenomenon, then we can list the factors that caused the factors causing A to come about and so on. At some point, though, we're forced to say that we observe entities with certain distinguishing features behave in a certain way under certain conditions, but can not (yet) say why they behave that way. This applies to all explanations, be they of scientific phenomena (why does this rubber ball bounce back if I throw it against a wall?) or human behaviour (why did you murder your wife?). I'll here postulate that there is no such thing as an "essential explanation", what does it even mean that something must exist? Do you have an example of such a thing, I can't think of one.

6. Why do there have to be initial physical conditions outside of the universe? In a thread some time ago someone pointed out that there is evidence that a physical constant (I think something to do with electrons) has changed over the last 15B years. That shouldn't be possible since it's supposedly a constant, but if it is possible I really see no reason why there can't be initial conditions inside this universe at one point that simply don't occur nowadays and which started off the universe we see. A proto-universe so to speak, we've had that discussion as well, with time not yet an established dimension and suchlike, remember?
In the old thread it was mentioned in reply to this that no closed system can be fully explained without referencing to whatever's outside the system. Well, but so what? If Godel's incompleteness theorem (says Colossus) is true it only means that we cannot fully explain the universe. (Which, unlike what Morris may think and say, is not a problem.) And anyway, what's "outside the universe" supposed to mean. The universe is not some ball which we're sitting inside where we can just walk up to the boundary, poke a hole in it and take a look at what's "outside".

7. The universe is dependent on something that is uncertain or will happen in the future? Pardon me, we, humanity, might be a little uncertain about whether and how the universe began, but that does in no way imply that the universe is uncertain about this, no matter what the explanation is. Even having questioned the validity of essential explanations already, what does this have to do with anything?

8. And where did this Person come from? We're back to the old question of who created the creator, and that's one you cannot get out of. A creator outside of the universe "must" exist only if you can prove that nothing else can have caused it. And Tom Morris has shown nothing of the sort so far. Even if you can show that the universe has to have been created, there's nothing to indicate that the creator is "essential" and must exist, you end up with an infinite regress.

9. And now we give it a name, hey, let's call it Bob. And we ascribe attributes to it, "power" and "wisdom". Now really, the origins of the universe we largely see today might have required some large-scale border conditions, but "wisdom"?
This step is completely unnecessary and serves no other end than to introduce the term 'God' into the line of reasoning.

10. the conclusion has been shown not to follow, because the premises are flawed on several levels, thank you for your time.

Are you finally prepared to start debating or will you continue ignoring me in the hope that I and my objections might disappear?

[jonesthecurl]

Very well put.
But wouldn't you have to add that you gave the object of your affection the disease?

[MeDeFe]

Very well put.
But wouldn't you have to add that you gave the object of your affection the disease?

He deleted the post, and I was just going to reply to it, too.

[jonesthecurl]

Oh, um, the post I was replying to has just disappeared, so this makes no sense now.

[Neoteny]

Eh?

[jay_a2j]

True that its almost impossible to figure out if any relgion or "Relationship" is true or the correct one but what else is everyone gonna do.So if everything was created by god who made god or where is he from?

God has always existed, "I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end".

Yes protectedbygold, I am he. There is a direct correlation with what is happening now and what the Bible says about end time prophesy. But if you guys can't even see whats happening now, you aren't about to see the correlation.



Actually muy, it was around August 2007 that I started questioning 911.

[Dancing Mustard]

Actually muy, it was around August 2007 that I started questioning 911.

How strange, I heard that's when Kool-Aid started its Pan-America 2-for-1 advertising strategy...

[jay_a2j]

Actually muy, it was around August 2007 that I started questioning 911.

How strange, I heard that's when Kool-Aid started its Pan-America 2-for-1 advertising strategy...

Yeah, but when I went to buy some you had just cleaned out the store. Not nice DM, sharing is caring!

[Dancing Mustard]

Actually muy, it was around August 2007 that I started questioning 911.

How strange, I heard that's when Kool-Aid started its Pan-America 2-for-1 advertising strategy...

Hur hur. No yuo!!!1

Yeah... nice one.

[naxus]

True that its almost impossible to figure out if any relgion or "Relationship" is true or the correct one but what else is everyone gonna do.So if everything was created by god who made god or where is he from?

God has always existed, "I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end".

Yes protectedbygold, I am he. There is a direct correlation with what is happening now and what the Bible says about end time prophesy. But if you guys can't even see whats happening now, you aren't about to see the correlation.

Explain how god has always existed has that doesn't make sense to me

[MeDeFe]

Actually muy, it was around August 2007 that I started questioning 911.

How strange, I heard that's when Kool-Aid started its Pan-America 2-for-1 advertising strategy...

Hur hur. No yuo!!!1

Yeah... nice one.

Oh come on DM, you can do a lot better than that, I know it.

[jay_a2j]

Explain how god has always existed has that doesn't make sense to me

I can't explain it. God says He is eternal and I believe Him. The way I see it we have 2 possible scenarios. 1) God has always existed and created everything that is in existence. or 2) Something came from nothing. I find 2 harder to swallow than there being an eternal force that created everything.

[heavycola]

Explain how god has always existed has that doesn't make sense to me

I can't explain it. God says He is eternal and I believe Him. The way I see it we have 2 possible scenarios. 1) God has always existed and created everything that is in existence. or 2) Something came from nothing. I find 2 harder to swallow than there being an eternal force that created everything.

When confronted with a choice of theories, choose the one that is easier to believe. This is the principle known as Occam's La-Z-Boy.

[Napoleon Ier]

1. The existence of something is intelligible only if it has an explanation (this is confirmed by the definition of the term intelligibility.).

2. The existence of the Universe is therefore either:
a. unintelligible, or
b. has an explanation

(logical deduction from #1)

3. No rational person should accept 2a. (Confirmed by the definition of rationality.)

4. Therefore, 2b is the rational conclusion and the Universe has an explanation.

5. But there are only three kinds of explanation:
a) Scientific: C + L = E (Independent physical, initial conditions, plus relevant laws, yield the Event explained.)
b) Essential: the essence of the thing to be explained requires it's existence.
c) Personal: this posits explanations that cite the intentions and powers of some personal Agent.

6. The existence of the Universe cannot be explained Scientifically; if the Universe is just natural conditions and laws, there can be no initial physical conditions or laws outside of it--independent of it--to explain it.

7. The explanation cannot be an Essential one; the Universe is a contingent one, and therefore is not necessary. It could just as well 'not exist' as exist. Its essence doesn't require it to existence.

8. So a rational person should believe that the Universe has a Personal explanation.

9. The only personal agent capable--having the power and wisdom--to create the entire universe out of nothing is 'God'.

10. Therefore, a rational person believes there exists a God.

1. intelligible - understandable, in the way that you can "get your mind around it", but where is the prerequisite of an explanation? Personally I'm quite happy to let, say, gravity go on and be something that comes with matter and just is. There are degrees of understanding as well, it's not a 1/0 issue

What are you rabbiting on about here? Gravity isn't fully understood, but scientists never threw their arms up and said "oh wow, gravity is beyond our current understanding so it must be a completely magical phenomenon that 'just is'".

No, they now have pretty good explanations for it in terms of exchange of virtual particles, just like they managed to explain the electromagnetic force.

What doesn't have an explanation? Things don't spontaneously appear into existence...hence why we observe uniformity at the macroscopic level. We may not understand phenomena, but they still have a rational explanation.

And understandable in what way? In the way it works? That would in this case be the physical laws and whatnot. In 'where it all came from'? I'm not convinced knowing exactly down to the last detail how the universe started (or if it ever did) is necessary to understand the basic workings of the universe.

Maybe it isn't, but that isn't the point, is it? The point is trying to understand why the universe is, like scientists try to understand why gravity is, and come up with string theory or explanations in terms of virtual gravitons.

2. has just fallen flat on its face because there's a third option of partial understanding, but I'm not done yet, even if we allow for only his two options and disregard

No, 2. really hasn't. We can partially understand something, but that doesn't mean that a phenomenon is half rationally explainable and half magic, it just means we have more work to do in coming to grips with it. Just because you understand half of a mathematical proof but not the other doesn't mean you wave your hands about and say 'and after this point it's all magic and so abracadabra and the hypotenuse is equal to the root of the sum of the squares of the adjacent and opposite.

3. that "We cannot ever fully understand the unvierse and where it came from" is not all that irrational and nicely allows a person to get on with other stuff than posting on an internet forum.

And if Newton had just said "we cannot ever fully understand gravity and where it came from", then everyone accepted that, we would never have been able to explain it, partially or otherwise. No, unless there's some very good reason to assume that, it's completely irrational to make such claims. In fact, if a deity explains the universe, but you reject this deity on grounds that are completely unjustifiable using any kind of logic, namely that "we can never explain the universe or where it came from", it makes atheism a matter of...Faith.

4. is correct under my previously stated premises, you need to disregard the problems with the first 3 points in order to accept this one.

Of course 4. is bloody correct. People in their right mind don't see something and if they don't understand it just assume it doesn't have an explanation.

5. Back in my first reply I accepted this one. No more...
There's really only one sort of explanation, which is really more accurately termed 'description': we see phenomenon A and can list the factors which caused the phenomenon, then we can list the factors that caused the factors causing A to come about and so on. At some point, though, we're forced to say that we observe entities with certain distinguishing features behave in a certain way under certain conditions, but can not (yet) say why they behave that way. This applies to all explanations, be they of scientific phenomena (why does this rubber ball bounce back if I throw it against a wall?) or human behaviour (why did you murder your wife?). I'll here postulate that there is no such thing as an "essential explanation", what does it even mean that something must exist? Do you have an example of such a thing, I can't think of one.

Ah, but your causal chain must have been set off by a "first cause", which essentially and necessarily exists.

6. Why do there have to be initial physical conditions outside of the universe? In a thread some time ago someone pointed out that there is evidence that a physical constant (I think something to do with electrons) has changed over the last 15B years. That shouldn't be possible since it's supposedly a constant, but if it is possible I really see no reason why there can't be initial conditions inside this universe at one point that simply don't occur nowadays and which started off the universe we see. A proto-universe so to speak, we've had that discussion as well, with time not yet an established dimension and suchlike, remember?
In the old thread it was mentioned in reply to this that no closed system can be fully explained without referencing to whatever's outside the system. Well, but so what? If Godel's incompleteness theorem (says Colossus) is true it only means that we cannot fully explain the universe. (Which, unlike what Morris may think and say, is not a problem.) And anyway, what's "outside the universe" supposed to mean. The universe is not some ball which we're sitting inside where we can just walk up to the boundary, poke a hole in it and take a look at what's "outside".

But again, short of proving that this proto-universe has rational explanation we will be unable to find, you can only stop trying to find the explanation by suspending all critical thought (cf. your acceptance of gravity as something magical which "just is").


7. The universe is dependent on something that is uncertain or will happen in the future? Pardon me, we, humanity, might be a little uncertain about whether and how the universe began, but that does in no way imply that the universe is uncertain about this, no matter what the explanation is. Even having questioned the validity of essential explanations already, what does this have to do with anything?

I'm not sure you've quite grasped the concept of contingence. If the universe isn't essentially necessarily existent, it's contingent...now, if you want to prove the contrary, be my guest, but that incoherent and irrelevant jumble of words you wrote there certainly went no way towards doing that.

8. And where did this Person come from? We're back to the old question of who created the creator, and that's one you cannot get out of. A creator outside of the universe "must" exist only if you can prove that nothing else can have caused it. And Tom Morris has shown nothing of the sort so far. Even if you can show that the universe has to have been created, there's nothing to indicate that the creator is "essential" and must exist, you end up with an infinite regress.

Well, the very fact that something must end the chain of infinite regress makes a first cause essential, doesn't it? And that's exactly what the concept of a deity is...the "essential" being or cause which doesn't have a scientific explanation (as it transcends this universe).

9. And now we give it a name, hey, let's call it Bob. And we ascribe attributes to it, "power" and "wisdom". Now really, the origins of the universe we largely see today might have required some large-scale border conditions, but "wisdom"?
This step is completely unnecessary and serves no other end than to introduce the term 'God' into the line of reasoning.

At the very least however, a transcendent "first cause" for the universe with the power to bring about its existence has been shown to exist.

10. the conclusion has been shown not to follow, because the premises are flawed on several levels, thank you for your time.

[tzor]

Explain how god has always existed has that doesn't make sense to me

It's easy. Time is a relative dimension of space time; the space time universe itself has always existed. (The Hawkings model ... greatly simplified.) Therefore anything outside the space time universe has always existed within the framework of the space time universe which in turn always exists.

[naxus]

Explain how god has always existed has that doesn't make sense to me

It's easy. Time is a relative dimension of space time; the space time universe itself has always existed. (The Hawkings model ... greatly simplified.) Therefore anything outside the space time universe has always existed within the framework of the space time universe which in turn always exists.

Oh ok.So if god has always existed why did he create the universe, EArth, and eventually man kind?

Also if he's all powerful and cares about his creations then why is he letting humans(Created by him) slowly poison and destroy the earth(which was also Created by Him)?

[tzor]

Oh ok.So if god has always existed why did he create the universe, EArth, and eventually man kind?

Also if he's all powerful and cares about his creations then why is he letting humans(Created by him) slowly poison and destroy the earth(which was also Created by Him)?

You know you ask a lot of questions. This can be a good thing.

If you want the extreemely simple it no longer makes sense answer: God is love.
That apparently answers both questions, although in a no longer makes sense way.