Continuation of Christianity debate.

[Gregrios]

This thread has become a feeding place for trolls.

[Dancing Mustard]

This thread has become a feeding place for trolls.

You're right, you should be banned.

[Gregrios]

This thread has become a feeding place for trolls.

You're right, you should be banned.

Thanks for your usual 2 cents worth of crap.

[Juan_Bottom]

This thread has become a feeding place for trolls.

You're right, you should be banned.

Thanks for your usual 2 cents worth of crap.

And yours!



DM?

[jonesthecurl]

Ok: next question - what colour were Adam and Eve?
More generally, colour of eyes/ hair, did Adam have a hairy chest, what other characteristics would we expect all their descendants to exhibit if in fact they do not evolve at all into different skin tones, eye colours, pre-disposition to allergies, etc?
ANd how come we don't all look like Adam and Eve if they are our only, divinely-created, genetic ancestors?

[Napoleon Ier]

I'm still waiting for a serious rebuttal of Jenos Ridan's pamphlet.

[muy_thaiguy]

Ok: next question - what colour were Adam and Eve?
More generally, colour of eyes/ hair, did Adam have a hairy chest, what other characteristics would we expect all their descendants to exhibit if in fact they do not evolve at all into different skin tones, eye colours, pre-disposition to allergies, etc?
ANd how come we don't all look like Adam and Eve if they are our only, divinely-created, genetic ancestors?

In short (since right now I'm in a bit of a hurry), Adam and Eve were the first ones created, after them, other people were created as well. Just that Adam and Eve were given the chance to live in Eden, but, well, we all know how well that turned out.

[Mr_Adams]

I've heard this theory, of corse, and think it's plausible, but not true.

[jonesthecurl]

All right then (granting your hypothesis for the moment, though many fundamentalist Christians will not, and it isn't in the Bible), move the question onto the small number of survivors of the Flood.

[Juan_Bottom]

I'm still waiting for a serious rebuttal of Jenos Ridan's pamphlet.

I never believed it to be true, but now I know you only exist to troll.

[Napoleon Ier]

I'm still waiting for a serious rebuttal of Jenos Ridan's pamphlet.

I never believed it to be true, but now I know you only exist to troll.

Hmmm...I wonder, is it the fact that asking for a rebuttal to advance an interesting philosophical argument is trolling to his eyes, or simply that he proclaims his opinions with absurd pomp despite nobody giving a f*ck what he thinks, that pushes me to laugh this comment off?

[Juan_Bottom]

simply that he proclaims his opinions with absurd pomp despite nobody giving a f*ck what he thinks, that pushes me to laugh this comment off?

Did you just repeat what everyone says about you? Damn that's funny. I'm not even trying to be mean, but damn that was funny.

And it HAS been rebuked in other threads before he even posted it here.

[Gregrios]

How far back is this pamphlet anyway?

I've searched back to page 81 & haven't seen a thing. Talk about digging up ancient history.

[MeDeFe]

How far back is this pamphlet anyway?

I've searched back to page 81 & haven't seen a thing. Talk about digging up ancient history.

The funny thing is that I have replied to it at length every time it has been posted, and Jenos has never taken me up on even one point.

[Gregrios]

How far back is this pamphlet anyway?

I've searched back to page 81 & haven't seen a thing. Talk about digging up ancient history.

The funny thing is that I have replied to it at length every time it has been posted, and Jenos has never taken me up on even one point.

Since you know where it is, why don't you bring it back up to speed so we can have a looksie.

[Juan_Bottom]

Since you know where it is, why don't you bring it back up to speed so we can have a looksie.

Pages 75-77

[Gregrios]

How far back is this pamphlet anyway?

I've searched back to page 81 & haven't seen a thing. Talk about digging up ancient history.

The funny thing is that I have replied to it at length every time it has been posted, and Jenos has never taken me up on even one point.

I just got done looking it up and I'd love to be the one to break it to you.

The reason why that debate died so fast is because both you and Jenos are so long winded.

Seriously man, no one wants to read an entire essay especially when there's most likely no chance of anything being accomplished.

I didn't even read it all. It's just not worth it.

[MeDeFe]

How far back is this pamphlet anyway?

I've searched back to page 81 & haven't seen a thing. Talk about digging up ancient history.

The funny thing is that I have replied to it at length every time it has been posted, and Jenos has never taken me up on even one point.

I just got done looking it up and I'd love to be the one to break it to you.
The reason why that debate died so fast is because both you and Jenos are so long winded.
Seriously man, no one wants to read an entire essay especially when there's most likely no chance of anything being accomplished.
I didn't even read it all. It's just not worth it.

That only tells you have a too short attention span. A long post with ten points demands a long reply.

[Napoleon Ier]

How far back is this pamphlet anyway?

I've searched back to page 81 & haven't seen a thing. Talk about digging up ancient history.

The funny thing is that I have replied to it at length every time it has been posted, and Jenos has never taken me up on even one point.

I demanded a serious rebuttal, not one which claimed gravity is a magic entity which "just is" and can't be explained.

[Napoleon Ier]

For general interest of debate, here's Jenos (excelentissimo) proof of God's existence, MeDeFe's joke of a floundering attempt at countering in, and bolded, my point-by-point destruction of his laughable and puny flailings assaulting this immaculate piece of theologico-philosophical work, (as posted on pg. 77, and since unanswered by MongDeFairy).

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.

[Gregrios]

How far back is this pamphlet anyway?

I've searched back to page 81 & haven't seen a thing. Talk about digging up ancient history.

The funny thing is that I have replied to it at length every time it has been posted, and Jenos has never taken me up on even one point.

I just got done looking it up and I'd love to be the one to break it to you.
The reason why that debate died so fast is because both you and Jenos are so long winded.
Seriously man, no one wants to read an entire essay especially when there's most likely no chance of anything being accomplished.
I didn't even read it all. It's just not worth it.

That only tells you have a too short attention span. A long post with ten points demands a long reply.

That's true. I do have a short attention span and your reply probably did need to be long.

.... but am I the only reason it died?

[MeDeFe]

First of all Nappy, congratulations for only resorting to one instance of putting words in my mouth and being condescending, that's a lot less than your average recently, I might consider taking you off my ignore list again if you keep it up. (Now we're even)

So let's see, points 1 through 4. You rather missed that I'm working from a relativistic understanding of explanations/descriptions. (Or maybe I should have made that clearer in the first place.) Any explanation is relative to and limited by humans and their knowledge and what humans and human technology can perceive. There might be a causal chain for every phenomenon, but if the chain can not (at least in theory) be recreated by humans the phenomenon will not have an explanation (or at least not a full explanation). This does not in any way make it magical, just unexplainable. I think it likely that at some point the particles (or maybe dimensions) being dealt with will be so small that there's not even a theoretical chance of showing that they exist.
Also, the Graviton has to my knowledge not yet been experimentally proven to exist, it's mathematically sound, but the particle has not yet been found. Wikipedia goes so far as to state that it's virtually impossible to build and operate the necessary instruments because a part of them would collapse into a black hole. A rather nice example for what I just said, don't you think?

The degree to which a causal chain needs to be recreated depends on the question, if you're trying to find out why a supposedly earthquake-proof building collapsed you will probably not have need of theoretical physics, for example.

So, working under this, as I see it reasonable, premise that at some point we will have to admit that we have reached the last step of the causal chain that we can reliably observe and after that it's mathematics and speculation, Tom Morris 4th point does becomes weak, there can indeed be a causal chain for the universe, but this does not mean the universe has a full explanation.


For point 5 and 6 (probably 7 and 8 as well), all we've got is speculation, do you even have an idea of what a "complete lack of anything" is? Not just the space between any two hypothetical subatomic particles where there isn't a hypothetical subatomic particle, but not even any hypothetic subatomic particles between which there can be a space, not even a dimension for the particles to exist in. I know I don't. For all we know (which is to say: nothing) a total lack of any matter or dimensions might even lead to random, spontaneous generation of matter (or dimensions). Matter itself might be "essential", existence might be a necessary feature of matter. We don't know, you postulate that it has to come from "somewhere" because it cannot from nothing, but you have not yet been able to watch this "nothing", so your claim is as far-fetched as any other. And furthermore, to me the claim of a sentient being with all the attributes ascribed to god being essential sounds far more unlikely than some subatomic particle or dimension "popping into existence".

Specifically for point 7: the only definition I was able to find at the time of writing my original reply was that of "contingent on", which really means "dependent on something that might happen in the future", it was even used in the context of economics, you can imagine what that did for my regard of T.M.
I now take it it's meant that you could imagine the universe not existing, but as I asked above, can you really imagine a complete lack of universe?

Specifically point 8, if a mathematical model were to be developed that explained how dimensions and matter could spontaneously pop into existence, would that process then be "god"?
Or if this universe is the result of processes in a different universe, one with completely different physical conditions that (if observable) actually could be shown to have spontaneously "popped into existence". Would that other universe then be "god"?


To some extent I see the notion of god as a lack of phantasy in one respect and an excess of fantasy in an other, everything has to be just so and there has to be an ultimate fundament to rest things on (lack) and this fundament has to have all these fancy features and love us (excess). And nevermind that the second part goes against everything we have observed so far, practically all of the features ascribed to god have only been observed in evolved biological beings that have comparatively well-developed brains, it's almost as far from essential as you can get. But they're ascribed to this supposedly essential deity; how does that deity by default get those features that are the product of a long process? I might be able to imagine dimensions spontaneously appearing, but that boggles my mind.
That deity might have been creating universes all over the place, ours is, as far as is currently known, about 13.7 billion years old and of unknown size, but at any rate damn large. Yet we're supposed to be special and chosen and loved? To me that looks like extremely wishful thinking somewhere beyond the scale of "she didn't spit at me and hit me when I asked if she'd pass the salt, she must be in love with me".

[Gregrios]

.... and behold, it shall die just as it did before.

[naxus]

Honestly the test for christianity is when we get to other planets/systems/galaxies and discover lifeforms that the bible doesnt cover or even say anything about thier world.

Quick question does the bible mention creation of other worlds?

[Gregrios]

Quick question does the bible mention creation of other worlds?

Why would it? It has nothing to do with us.