God

[FragMaster1972]

I was thinking steal code and create a block of code that disallowed deletion of a certain posts. I'm sure it could be done easily enough. Though it occurs to me now that through the same methods you could delete it....there's gotta be a way around this..... *thinks til head explodes*

[Lord Lanair]

I haven't read through all the posts, so hopefully no one has brought this up already...
We can see other glaxies that are billions of lightyears away. How did the light from them get here in only a few thousand years? Someone once suggested to me that the speed of light was initially faster. That is impossible, since the energy output of nuclear fusion (the energy source of the sun) depends on the square of the speed of light (e = mc^2). If light ever traveled fast enough to get here from the more distant objects we can see, the sun would have put out enough energy to blow up to many times its current size, and would have engulfed the first few planets.
Conclusion: The universe must be around 13 billion years old.
-Blake

First of all, the light from different galaxies has been travelling for different amounts of time, depending on which galaxy is in question.  The light we see now is actually a representation of another galaxy when it was much younger (billions of years).  So the speed of light did not need to change for us to see this, and depending on how far away the other galaxy is, the further back in time we're seeing it.

And what makes you think our sun was around so soon after the big bang?  Even if the speed of light did increase, and then decrease, our sun, and us, would not be around to see it.    

[SS]

Lanair, I'm not alert enough to try and understand what you just written, but my sub-concious CrapMeter has just slammed to 100%.

[FragMaster1972]

First of all, the light from different galaxies has been travelling for different amounts of time, depending on which galaxy is in question.  The light we see now is actually a representation of another galaxy when it was much younger (billions of years).  So the speed of light did not need to change for us to see this, and depending on how far away the other galaxy is, the further back in time we're seeing it.

And what makes you think our sun was around so soon after the big bang?  Even if the speed of light did increase, and then decrease, our sun, and us, would not be around to see it. 

That's exactly my point; If we see a galaxy that is billions of light years away, it was here billions of years ago to emit the light. Thus the universe is billions of years old.

Now to quote the bible:

And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth." And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth." And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also.

If you read carefully, you will see that according to creation, god made the earth, then the sun and moon, and then the stars. Thus if the light from the stars got here in a few thousand years, the earth would have been incinerated. Big bang theory doesn't have this paradox, since it says that the universe is about 13 billion years old. I'm not sure why you brought it up.
-Blake

[Rug]

Agreeing to disagree sounds good, Spawn, cos it isnt going to go anywhere. If I responded to that, I'd be repeating myself a lot, and its time to stop once we've reached that point.

And yes, I am 15.

Still. The Hell Channel. *nods sagely*.

[Night Spawn]

SS,

Good day to you.  I've got a lot to respond to... thanks, man... :rolleyes:    I can see that you've definitely put some time and thought into this post (great post).  I might end up simply agreeing to disagree some issues.  I'll definitely discuss the proofs for several posts, though.

I might as well get to the fun one first - "The Impossible Faith".


Arguments for God's existence[/size]


ARGUMENT 1 -- The Impossible Faith

This is an argument that I really enjoy using.  As you could see, it actually takes the impossibility of the Christian faith existing and turns it around as evidence.  Let's go through the factors.

Factor #1

After reading your response to this one, and now, others, I notice you never directly responded to any of Holding’s arguments, so I’ll be offering quotes from him a lot.

If the life of Jesus was a story, it's the most logical thing for the author to have happen.

The most logical thing to have happen would be what some Islamists posit: a "fake" Jesus being crucified or Jesus showing His true power and not dying such an unholy death.  This isn't a "glorious defeat" at all.

JP Holding writes,

"Malina and Rohrbaugh note in their Social-Science Commentary on John [263-4], crucifixion was a "status degradation ritual" designed to humiliate in every way, including the symbolic pinioning of hands and legs signigfying a loss of power, and loss of ability to control the body in various ways, including befouling one's self with excrement."

The questions still exists today: Why did Christ die such a shameful death, Why didn't He just kill them all, Why didn't He just disappear suddenly from the cross to show His divinity?  There are many people who don't believe today just because of this.  Even Celsus, an ancient pagan critic of Christianity, writes:

But if (Jesus) was really so great, he ought, in order to display his divinity, to have disappeared suddenly from the cross.

Those questions exist today, because no one wants a crucified savior - a savior who died such a horrible death and didn't show divinity when he could have easily.  How is this logical?  It isn't like LOTR or the Matrix in any extreme way at all.  This is a jump of a totally different kind.

It's a huge stumbling block for us, but an even bigger one for them back then.  I'll elaborate below.

If the life of Jesus was real, then it's the most logical thing fo the romans to do: public death & humiliation, to remove all threat of the religion. Afterall, they weren't expecting his come back.

Exactly Holding's point!  They wanted to prove that Jesus wouldn't save himself or defend himself and he didn't.  Holding writes,

"Hengel adds: "A crucified messiah...must have seemed a contradiction in terms to anyone, Jew, Greek, Roman or barbarian, asked to believe such a claim, and it will certainly have been thought offensive and foolish." That a god would descend to the realm of matter and suffer in this ignominious fashion "ran counter not only to Roman political thinking, but to the whole ethos of religion in ancient times and in particular to the ideas of God held by educated people." (10, 4) Announcing a crucified god would be akin to the Southern Baptist Convention announcing that they endorsed pedophilia! If Jesus had truly been a god, then by Roman thinking, the Crucifixion should never have happened."

Factor #2

When you're looking for a humble leader, who better than an outcast?
One of the key concepts of Christianity is forgiveness - who better to teach this?
Not a mistake, but a vital component for success I'd say.

This isn’t a component for success at all.  The argument isn’t simply that Jesus was an outcast.  The argument is that everything about Jesus as a person was all wrong to get people to believe he was a deity.  Starting off with Jesus being a Jew, Holding writes,

“Bringing a Jewish savior to the door of the average Roman would have been only less successful bringing one to the door of a Nazi -- though the Roman may not have wanted to kill you; he would certainly have laughed in your face, slammed the door, …”

So, due to his being Jewish, Christianity shouldn’t have spread to the Gentile nations.  Holding presses forward with,

“The Romans naturally considered their own belief systems to be superior to all others.  They also believed that superstitions (such as Judaism and Christianity) undermined the social system established by their religion - and of course they were right. However, the point is that anyone who followed or adopted one of their foreign superstitions would be looked on not only as a religious rebel, but as a social rebel as well[/b]. They were breaking with the status quo, upsetting the apple cart, taking part in a 60s style rebellion against the establishment. They upset the Roman concept of piety and were thought to be incapable of it. In those days, things were not pluralistic or "politically correct" and there were no champions of diversity on the college campuses: Today, atheists and theists can debate in a free forum, but back then one of the camps would have the state (and the sword!) on their side - and in the time we're talking about, that wasn't the Christians!”

That’s why Paul mentions that he’s from Tarsus.  He does it to let the critics know he’s from a place which signifies a high honor rating - kind of like when some people say they‘re from the right side of the tracks.  Look at Jesus, on the other hand… he hails from Galilee.  This was a Jewish land and a place of much trouble.  Jesus wasn’t from the right side of the tracks, which is what the Romans looked at.  He was from a puny village that no one acknowledged.  

Holding adds,

“Not even a birth in Bethlehem, or Matthew's suggestion that an origin in Galilee was prophetically ordained, would have unattached such a stigma: Indeed, Jews would not be convinced of this, even as today, unless something else first convinced them that Jesus was divine or the Messiah. The ancients were no less sensitive to the possibility of "spin doctoring" than we are.”

How hard would it have been for the disciples to simply lie and say Jesus was from Sepphoris  Capernaum, which would still let them take advantage of the Prophetic birth message.  They could easily have given him an indisputable honorable birth.  It’s less likely that more people are going to notice one man in from a puny village.

Then there’s minor extensions like saying Jesus was a carpenter, which was considered a vulgar occupation and was compared to the work of slavery.

Factor #3

This is a really good one.

All the disciples had to do was teach that Jesus’ body was taken up into Heaven like Moses or Elijah.  This would’ve been much easier to sell to the Greeks and Romans “for whom the best "evidence" of elevation to divine rank was apotheosis -- the transport of the soul to the heavenly realms after death; or else translation while still alive.”  

So, teaching this to pagans would’ve been impossible.  Pheme perkins writes, that “Christianity’s pagan critics generally viewed resurrection as misunderstood metmpsychosis at best.  At worst, it seemed ridiculous”.  You’ve also got the pagan world being awash with beliefs like matter being evil and the root of all man’s problems.  So, a physical resurrection is the very last thing you want to preach.

Why bother preaching it and purposely making the road harder?  There’s only one logical answer -- they really had a resurrection to preach.


Factor #4[/i]

It can't succeed because the Roman's disliked innovation? Pffft.
By those lines, how did we come into a world where people go round wearing next to no clothes,
gay marriage is [almost] accepted, and so on.

Holding gave sources for the first question you pose.  As for the rest, I wasn’t under the impression that Romans did that

The Roman world didn’t like change.  Why do you think so many early Christian martyrs died such terrible deaths?

This is a hurdle that Christianity shouldn’t have been able to make over -- not without some sort of proof.


Factor #5

Ok, I'll accept that - it is very hard to get people to do what they don't want.
So there must have been a good reason, or people with good persuade scores.

You had me smiling until I read the last part

I don’t think the disciples were very good when concerned with persuasiveness.  They weren’t even concerned with being persuasive, but with being truthful (as you can see from all of the factors).  They weren’t merely wanting converts, but wanted the world to know the truth.


Factor #6[/b]

Yeah, getting people to do what they don't want is hard, but people wont stay the same forever.

You’ve got to look at this factor with the other ones in mind… why would people want to convert to Christianity?  If it wasn’t preaching anything demonstrable or true, then it wasn’t inviting at all.  

Kinda like flat-earthers.


Factor #7

Fair point - it's difficult to create rumours when people want to prove you wrong.
But not impossible, if you have a strong enough control over things.
But who had such strong control? Well, the Romans did.
The Romans were extremely successful at a lot of things they did.
What if the Romans wanted to try controlling the Jewish religion. Could they create an elaborate and fragile religion and make it strong enough whilst maintaining control into the future. Of course they could!
Some food for thought: The centre of Christianity; the ruler of the Church, where? Rome.

They didn’t maintain control at all.  Christianity jumped way beyond control.

Such a response isn’t too “weighty” as I’m sure you know (especially keeping in mind the other factors).  Why would the Romans want to create a religion that not only challenged their own beliefs, but proposed an entire knew belief system?  They were smart enough to create a religion that would have helped theirs out in the long run.  It requires complete idiocy to create a new religion, defend the new religion against themselves, create a religion that embarrassed themselves greatly… in the long run and short.  Why would they have done this and then argued with Christians about the religion (they hated and killed Christians)?

This is more than a fair point, it’s a very strong point.  There’s just no way to for Christianity to get past this unless it was preaching something terribly true.


Factor #8[/b]

That can either be an impressive deity, or just someone very good at persuading people.

Come on, SS.  You’ve got to realize the former is more likely, though.


Factor #9

Sure, the idea doesn't fit perfectly for the Jewish. The fact that Judaism still exists as a major religion shows how difficult it would be for Jews to believe. But Roman & Greek history are full of gods and mortals interacting, so the idea is not so abhorrant to them.

The other factors show why Christianity shouldn’t have even been regarded by any of them.  This  factor simply increases the likelihood of it not only not making it out of the Jewish communities, but not converting many Jews, and not shooting ahead of the Jewish religion.  But Christianity did, so it had to have had something backing it up.


Factor #10

Again, back to point two. This is a perfect role for Jesus - as the complete underdog.

This isn’t like point 2, if that’s what you’re saying.  Some of these appear like others, but are divided due to minor differences, which need further elaboration.

This isn’t a perfect role for Jesus either.  Holding writes, “A merely human Jesus could not have met this demand and must have provided convincing proofs of his power and authority to maintain a following, and for a movement to have started and survived well beyond him. A merely human Jesus would have had to live up to the expectations of others and would have been abandoned, or at least had to change horses, at the first sign of failure.”

Jesus’ background won’t help him teach scriptures like 2Corinth. 5:12.  He had to teach that birth, ethnicity, gender, wealth, appearance, and charisma meant zip.  That’s a very radical message back in the ancient days, because they took their major identity from whatever group they belonged.  Jesus basically taught that was pure trash and unholy.  Like a wick slowly going out, the fire of Christianity should’ve been quickly put out just by this.

Women, back then, were on the same level as slaves or animals.  Who would’ve wanted to be equal with them?  Imagine all the rich and powerful people having to hear that their slaves are equal to them.  And you’ve got the people from the right side of the tracks being told they were equal to the ones on the left side of the tracks.  All of this would’ve definitely been met with swords and stone unless something incredibly great was backing it up.


Factor #11

Pffft. The women wanted to go put herbs on or something? That's something men wouldn't do.
And they then went and got the male disciples.
A weak excuse at best.

This is another really strong one.  JP writes about women,

“women were regarded as "bad witnesses" in the ancient world. We need to emphasize that this was not a peculiarity as it would be seen today, but an ingrained stereotype. As Malina and Neyrey note, gender in antiqutiy came laden with "elaborate stereotypes of what was appropriate male or female behavior." [72] Quintilian said that where murder was concerned, males are more likely to commit robbery, while females were prone to poisoning. We find such sentiments absurd and politically incorrect today -- but whether they are or not, this was ingrained indelibly in the ancient mind. "In general Greek and Roman courts excluded as witnesses women, slaves, and children...According to Josephus...[women] are unacceptable because of the 'levity and temerity of their sex'." [82] Women were so untrustworthy that they were not even allowed to be witnesses to the rising of the moon as a sign of the beginning of festivals! DeSilva also notes [33] that a woman and her words were not regarded as "public property" but should rather be guarded from strangers -- women were expected to speak to and through their husbands. A woman's place was in the home, not the witness stand, and any woman who took an independent witness was violating the honor code.”

Women weren’t nearly in the same position they are in now.  It was a much different, more harsh world.  The disciples obviously wanted to share the truth no matter what.  They even stuck to the truth by using women as the main witnesses (and main converts) despite their terribly low place in society (and the fact that they weren’t to be regarded as credible witnesses).  They could easily have lied and put any of the males in their place to make the story more credible back then, but they didn’t.  Obviously, there was something backing them up which went above and beyond societal rules.  
Not only does sticking with this lend weight towards their credibility, but it also gives Christianity another stumbling block… that was overcome.


Factor #12

Well you'd hardly convince non-believers to go look at an empty tomb, and who would want more to be told than the people that loved Jesus the most?
They're the most logical people who would go to the tomb, whether for real, or in a story.

This goes beyond the burial story, but pretty much everything.  Matthew was a tax collector (hated people back then), Peter and John were dismissed based on social standings, and Mark was tossed aside also.  The only one left is Paul, but he wasn’t a witness.  It may be possible for them to overcome this major problem (credibility as witnesses), but it would be terribly hard… maybe impossible when keeping in mind the other factors.  

Christianity was always in the business of other religions due to its claims, so it could easily have been crushed by authority, but it wasn’t.  Why?


Factor #13

Essentially, it couldn't spread due to the Romans being in control? See #7.

This has been discounted on three counts: (1) No hard evidence (2) It ultimately makes no sense and (3) It doesn‘t deal with the very early rise of Christianity.  So, there’s one other choice left.


Factor #14

Jesus was sold as just a human - ie: someone who the lowest people could identify with.
There are plenty of stories of his 'perfection' though - he never cried as a baby? Pfft.

Where do you get that from - that Jesus was sold as just a human?  

You’d think that people who are creating a deity would do a better job.  A God who is ignorant of certain things just won’t ring too many bells.  Maybe in the long run it will, but you’ve got to get through the short term first.


Factor #15

This one isn’t like 10 and 2.  It’s more related to 1 than anything.  It’s intention is to build on 1 by focusing on the events before and after his death, while 1 deals with his death alone.  This one points to facts that Jesus would’ve been seen as a prophet without honor.  Who would want to believe in something like that?  It seems like something helped push it all along.


Factor #16

Jesus was a rebel, we know that. Why is it odd that he brought with him unsual customs?

Possibly, because the many drastically unusual customs he taught challenged everyone.  It’s not like today, where you can peacefully challenge.  

Wright adds,

“Wright concludes:
"This subersive belief in Jesus' Lordship, over against that of Caesar, was held in the teeth of the fact that Caesar had demonstrated his superior power in the obvious way, by having Jesus crucified. But the truly extraordinary thing is that this belief was held by a tiny group who, for the first two or three generations at least, could hardly have mounted a riot in a village, let alone a revolution in an empire. And yet they persisted against all the odds, attracting the unwelcome notice of the authorities because of the power of the message and the worldview and lifestyle it generated and sustained. And whenever we go back to the key texts for evidence of why they persisted in such an improbably and dangerous belief they answer: it is because Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead. And this provokes us to ask once more: why did they make this claim?" (page 570)”

Not only why did they make it, but where is the response to this claim?


Factor #17

The best way to build belief in a falsity - if people can verify things themselves, then they are more likely to believe.
All you need to do is make the verifications good enough to fool most people.

You provide an analogy, but no parallels with the Christian community.  What are they going to do to fool them?  I mean, the named historical figures which were around at that time, places which could be checked, witnesses who could be checked, and they even kept to the truth no matter what sort of absurdities (I.e. women) arose.

Holding concludes: “I propose that there is only one, broad explanation for Christianity overcoming these intolerable disadvantages, and that is that it had the ultimate rebuttal -- a certain, trustworthy, and undeniable witness to the resurrection of Jesus, the only event which, in the eyes of the ancients, would have vindicated Jesus' honor and overcome the innumerable stigmae of his life and death.”



ARGUMENT 2 -- Kalam Cosmological Argument

Your reply surprised me.  You typed,

Bleh, that's just a string of statements.
You can prove anything like that.

1. Whatever is hot will appear red.

2. Tomatoes are red.

3. Therefor, Tomatoes must be hot. The heat can't come from the plant, because it doesn't have any. Therefor God made the heat.

See, that's just silly.

You fail to provide any type of information proving a parallel to the Kalam.  You won’t be able to, because the Kalam is logically sound, while yours is logically fallacious (premise 1 and conclusion).  Most atheistic philosophers themselves agree with the entire argument, but debate with the theist on how to interpret the conclusion.  It’s nowhere near silliness, for the statements are recognized facts in various fields.

Let’s examine the premises closer:


Premise 1

Whatever begins to exist has a cause of it‘s existence

Premise 1 is self-evident.  C.S. Lewis writes,

"There never was a time when nothing existed; otherwise nothing would exist now."

This is intuitively obvious.  How can something come from literally nothing?  It’s like a serial killer’s dream defense

Traditional atheists would simply say “the universe has always existed”, but not lately (due to the Big Bang theory).  Check out what this well-known atheist, Quentin Smith, says,

“the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing.”

Huh?  Try to imagine absolute nothingness, for me… how can something come from it?  There’s nothing there!  It’s much worse than magic.

You bring forth vacuum fluctuations, which I find very inviting,

Which is apparently possible with "Quantum Electrodynamics and some very impressive physics", because: "Particles are constantly created and destroyed from nothing (in a vacuum)."
I don't actually know any of the theory behind that, but I trust the person who I'm quoting to know what they're talking about.

That person probably got the quote ultimately from an issue of Discover.  It read,

“Quantum theory … holds that a vacuum .. Is subject to quantum uncertainties.  This means that things can materialize out of the vacuum, although they tend to vanish back into it quickly….  Theoretically, anything -- a dog, a house, a planet -- can pop into existence by means of this quantum quirk, which physicists call a vacuum fluctuation.  Probability, however, dictates that pairs of subatomic particles … are by far th most likely creations and that they will last extreme Ely briefly…. The spontaneous, persistent creation of something even as large as a molecule is profoundly unlikely.  Nevertheless, in 1973 an assistant professor at Columbia University named Edward Tryon suggested that the entire universe might have come into existence this way….  The whole universe may be, to use [MIT physicist Alan] Guth’s prase, “a free lunch”.

First off, these “subatomic particles” are called ’virtual particles’ and are merely theoretical entities.  It’s not even clear that they actually exist as opposed to being merely theoretical constructs.

The more important point is these subatomic particles, if they are real, don’t just come out of absolute nothingness.  This “vacuum” isn’t what you’re probably think of - it’s not absolute nothingness.  It’s a sea of fluctuating energy, an arena of violent activity that has a rich physical structure and can be described by physical laws.  These particles are thought to originate by fluctuations of the energy in the vacuum.    So, nothingness isn’t the cause (if nothing can even cause something to exist), rather the quantum vacuum and the energy locked up in the vacuum are the cause of these particles.

What about the quantum vacuum… where does it come from?  As William Craig says, “If quantum physical laws operate within the domain described by quantum physics, you can’t legitimately use quantum physics to explain the origin of that domain itself.  You need something transcendent that’s beyond that domain in order to explain how the entire domain came into being.  Suddenly, we’re back to the origins question”.

I say we just leave this behind.  Even the famous David Hume, probably the most skeptical human to ever live, says, “I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause”.


PREMISE 2

The universe began to exist.

This premise contains two sub-arguments:

2.1 Argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite.
2.11 An actual infinite cannot exist.
2.12 An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
2.13 Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.

2.2 Argument based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition.
2.21 A collection formed by successive addition cannot be actually infinite.
2.22 The temporal series of past events is a collection formed by successive addition.
2.23 Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite. [/I]

2.2 is actually easier to defend, but I always start with 2.1.  If that doesn’t work, then I’ll move on to 2.2.

That doesn't mean that something cannot be infinite, infact quite the opposite: there is a hell of a lot of mathematics that relies on the concept of infinity - without it, several key concepts break down.

Keep in mind that I’m speaking of an actual infinite, not a potential infinite.  I have no problem with a potential infinite existing in reality.  As far as mathematics goes, just so long as it stays in mathematics, it’s fine.  Once it gets put into reality situations all sorts of absurdities arise, though, as I’m sure you can tell (you seem well knowledged in math).  As Craig notes,

“the idea of an actual infinity is just conceptual; it exists only in our minds.  Working within certain rules, mathematicians can deal with infinite quantities and infinite numbers in the conceptual realm.  However -- and here’s the point -- it’s not descriptive of what can happen in the real world.”

It also contains evidence from the Big Bang model of the universe.  I don’t think you’ll challenge that.  Pretty much everyone embraces it.

So, we’re to the conclusion


CONCLUSION

This is what’s so heatedly debated.  What caused the universe?  I believe we can extrapolate several key qualities about this ultimate first cause (whatever it may be).  

A cause of space and time must be an uncaused, beginning less, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal being endowed with freedom of will and enormous power.  Now, all except the personal being should be agreed with, thus far.

The reasoning for this first cause having freedom of will is the simple question asking “how can an eternal cause create a temporal effect?”.  If it’s mechanistic, then an eternal cause should create an equally eternal effect.  The reason for it being personal is several:

(a) There are two types of explanations -- scientific and personal.  
Imagine you walk into a kitchen and you see a kettle boiling on the stove.  You as, “Why is the kettle boiling?” Your wife might say, ‘Well, because the kinetic energy of the flame is conducted by the metal bottom of the kettle to the water, causing the water molecules to vibrate faster and faster until they’re thrown off in the form of steam’.  That would be a scientific explanation.  Or she might say, ‘I put it on to make a cup of tea’.  That would be a personal explanation.  Both are equally valid, but simply explain that in question in different ways.

There’s no way the first state of the universe can have a scientific explanation, because, since it’s the first state, it simply cannot be explained in terms of earlier initial conditions and natural laws leading up to it.  So, it seems, if there is a first state, it requires a personal explanation.

(b) The same argument used in the “freedom of will” argument above.

©  Anthropic Principle

Even if it fails to be a personal first cause, I’ve still got the conscious first cause argument, which does the theist much favor still.


ARGUMENT 3 -- Teleological Argument[/b]

Blah. (I assume that's a typing mistake on the second line.)
P1. If chaos shows order, then it is ordered.
P2. Chaos shows order.
C. Therefor, chaos is ordered.
Which is blatantly rubbish.
One can see patterns in chaos, and a small subset can appear ordered, but as a whole it isn't.
The same is true with the universe - you can see patterns, it can appear designed, but if we could see it all it might not be.
(It might be designed, but it just as easily might not be)

Yeah, that was a typo.  My apologies.  I believe the Teleological Argument is closely related to the Argument from Fine Tuning, so I’ll mix the two.

Just the very word “chaos” would make me question the relation between the two, which, you’re right, is almost non-existent.  I don’t think that’s a good parallel to design, though.  What do you think caused the seemingly designed structures all around us?

One thing I like bringing up is the cosmological constant.  One of the world’s most skeptical scientists, Steven Weinberg (atheist) has even admitted that it’s “remarkably well adjusted in our favor”.  The constant is part of Einstein’s equation for General Relavitity, which could have had any value, positive or negative.

Excuse the lengthy quote, but Weinberg is the famous guy on the issue who can explain it probably better than anyone.  He writes,

“if large and positive, the cosmological constant would act as a repulsive force that increases with distance, a force that would prevent matter from clumping together in the early universe, the process that was the first step in forming galaxies and stars and planets and people.  If large and negative the cosmological constant would act as an attractive force increasing with distance, a force that would almost immediately reverse the expansion of the universe and cause it to collapse.”

Amazingly, this isn’t what has happened, though.  Weinberg continues on with,

“In fact, astronomical observations show that the cosmological constant is quite small, very much smaller than would have been guessed from first principles.”

Physicist Robin Collins, a physicist and philosopher, says, “the unexpected , counterintuitive, and stunningly precise setting of the cosmological constant is widely regarded as the single greatest problem facing physics and cosmology today…  The fine-tuning has conservatively been estimated to be at least one part in a hundred million billion billion billion billion billion.  That would be a ten followed by fifty-three zeroes.  That’s inconceivably precise”.

This would be like going out in space and throwing a dart at random towards the Earth.  The target would be a bull’s eye that’s one trillionth of a trillionth of an inch in diameter.  Which is less than the size of one solitary atom!  Lee Strobel describes it as “Breathtaking” and “Staggering”.

Collins concludes that “if the cosmological constant were the only example of fine-tuning, and if there were no natural explanation for it, then this would be sufficient by itself to strongly establish design”.

There’s other evidence for fine tuning.  If you increase the mass of the neutron by about one part in seven hundred, then nuclear fusion in stars would stop.  There would be no energy source for life.
If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life in the universe would be impossible.

Popular Intelligent Design proponent, Stephen Meyer, in Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe made a list of over 30 separate physical or cosmological parameters that require precise calibration in order to produce a life-sustaining universe.

The evidence for fine-tuning comes in ample amounts, so I’ll skip over it.  It’s led Discover magazine to admit,

“The universe is unlikely.  Very unlikely.  Deeply, shockingly unlikely.”

Yet, we are here.  Do you attribute such an unimaginable concept to design or chance?  Or necessity if it is even a choice?


Minor Issues

Re: The fear thing.
If it didn't mean the same thing in the original language, it should be translated to it's proper, equivalent definition in English.

They simply define “fear” in a slightly different way than we usually do.  There is an English definition for “fear” at dictionary.com, which gives a definition of “Extreme reverence or awe
”.  There’s no problem for me here.  It all depends on whether or not you ascribe the right definition to the right passage.

A good father protects a child whilst allowing them to grow and develop into a unique, free-thinking being.

If any father today acted like the Christian God, they'd have social security coming down on them in an instant.

Free-will is all well and good, but I wouldn't have wanted my parents to give me the free-will to whack my brother in the face with a hot iron. (And they didn't.)

Your parents couldn’t have taken that free willed decision away from you.  They can enforce penalties if you do that particular action, but you’ll always have the free will to do it.

A good father does that, correct, but a good father will also let the son  go once he  reaches a certain age.  The son now has to go and learn the rest about life on his own.  He is his own man and can act freely, but responsibly at the same time.  It’s all up to him.

This version does mention Cain's wife, though. Where'd she come from?

Too long of an answer.  I don’t link Christiananswers.net usually, but they have a good summary here.  

Well, the keywords being 'unneeded complexities'; Personally, I see a single unique entity as more of an anomoly then multiple entities.

Since one Creator is sufficient to explain the effect (the universe), it’s unwarranted to posit a plurality.  



Wow… I think I’m going to go to sleep for about 10 hours now.  Goodnight… err… afternoon.

[Guest]

It should be the other way around:
1. Whatever is hot will appear red.

2. Tomatoes are red.

3. Therefore, Tomatoes must be hot. The heat can't come from the plant, because it doesn't have any. Therefore God made the heat.

In statement 3 you assume the converse of statement 1, which is not necessarily true. It should be:

1. Whatever is RED is HOT.

2. Tomatoes are red.

3. Therefore, Tomatoes must be hot. The heat can't come from the plant, because it doesn't have any. Therefore God made the heat.

HOWEVER, it is also incorrect to assume that everything that has a cause we don't understand is caused by God. Thus both arguments are logically incorrect.
-Blake

[RipperRoo]

If I ever have a spare 6 years, I'll bother reading that.

[Lord Lanair]

That's exactly my point; If we see a galaxy that is billions of light years away, it was here billions of years ago to emit the light. Thus the universe is billions of years old.

If you read carefully, you will see that according to creation, god made the earth, then the sun and moon, and then the stars. Thus if the light from the stars got here in a few thousand years, the earth would have been incinerated. Big bang theory doesn't have this paradox, since it says that the universe is about 13 billion years old. I'm not sure why you brought it up.
-Blake

Oooooh, sorry frag/blake.  I didn't see what you were trying to prove!  LOL

Yes, I agree, the story of Genesis is probably not how God created the universe, but was instead a creation of the early Jews who had the information presented to them in the only format they would understand.  I mean, if you started talking quantum physics, they wouldn't understand, but this way, Genesis reveals the main point (God created the universe) in a way early man can understand.    (Actually not completely my idea- my grandfather thought this one up).

-Spawn... While I admire you taking the time to write all of that, can I please have a (brief) summary?  :blink:  

[Perdition]

frag's real name is blake?

umm  I think god is made out of play doh< on topicness

wow spawn.  That has to be the longest post ever made on this forum(excluding spam)

[Blake]

I agree that the story of the creation of the universe could be interpreted to mean the big bang (aside from it all taking place in 6 days).  However, that raises the question of where God came from. Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest explanation is almost always true, and it seems a lot simpler to have a sea of universes randomly popping into and out of existence, rather than an intelligent creator.

[Lord Lanair]

Um... I hate to say this cliché, but there are some things that must be taken on faith alone.  Personally, I feel that God exists, and actually cares deeply about us all.  I really don't have the intelligence enough to go delving into the theoretical possibilities of what's beyond us, or when and where God came from... there are just questions people shouldn't ask and can't understand.

Oh, explain to me how a series of universes popping in and out of existance is simpler than just one creator.  :mellow:  

[Night Spawn]

Hello, Blake.  

However, that raises the question of where God came from. Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest explanation is almost always true, and it seems a lot simpler to have a sea of universes randomly popping into and out of existence, rather than an intelligent creator.

Randomly popping into existence from where and from what?  According to the Kalam and Teleological argument I gave, everything points towards an intelligent designer.  Of course the designer will be complex, but Occam's doesn't say anything about that, because this complex designer will have an incredibly amount of explanatory power and will be an incredibly simple explanation and is a sufficient cause for the universe.  Why do you think atheists are always calling Christians "lazy thinkers"... simple... because we go with God (the simplest explanation).

I see you've got some knowledge of science, but the physics isn't there (read my Argument 3).

As far as the Bible being interpreted as a 6-day Creation, I've dealt with this at various forums.  I always begin by using biblical evidence for an old earth and against a young earth.

Biblical Evidence for an Old Earth[/size]

1.  The naming of the animals argument.  Adam named all of the animals on th 6th day - the same day Eve was created and (I believe) animals were created and when Adam went into a "deep" sleep.  Seems like a  lot in one day, methinks.

2.  The "Day of the Lord" refers to a seven year period of time.

3.  Genesis 2:4 refers to all 6 days of creation as one day, "This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven."
Is this an analogy or should it be interpreted with the calendar day interpretation?

4.  The seventh day of Genesis is not closed. In all other days, "there is the evening and the morning, the n day."
In the book of Hebrews, the author tells us to labor to enter into God's seventh day of rest. By any calculation, God's seventh day of rest has been at least 6,000 years long:  
For He has thus said somewhere concerning the seventh day, "And God rested on the seventh day from all His works"... Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:4-11)

5.  The psalmist (Moses, the author of Genesis) says "For a thousand years in Thy sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night." (Psalms 90:4).

6.  The apostle Peter tells us with God "A thousand years is as one day" (2 Peter 3:.

7.  The third day must have been longer than 24-hours, since the text indicates a process that would take a year or longer. On this day, God allowed the land to produce vegetation, tress and fruit. The text specifically states that the land produced trees that bore fruit with seed in it (3). Any horticulturist knows that fruit-bearing trees requires several years to grow to produce fruit. However, the text states that the land produced these trees (indicating a natural process) and that it all occurred on the third day. Obviously, such a "day" could not have been only 24 hours long.

Various Interpretation

Here's a number of interpretations that can be used to interpret Genesis.

The Day-Age Interpretation - The six days of the Day-Age view are understood in the same sense as "in that day" of Isaiah 11:10-11—in other words, as periods of indefinite length and not of 24 hours duration. The six days are taken as sequential but as overlapping and perhaps merging into one another. According to this view, the Genesis 1 creation week describes events from the point of view of the earth, which is being prepared as the habitation for man. In this context, the explanation of day four is that the sun only became visible on that day, as atmospheric conditions allowed the previous alternation of light and darkness to be perceived as coming from the previously created sun and other heavenly bodies. The Day-Age construct preserves the general sequence of events as portrayed in the text and is not merely a response to Charles Darwin and evolutionary science. From ancient times there was recognition among Bible scholars that the word "day" could mean an extended period of time.

Frame Work - The distinctive feature of the Framework view is its understanding of the week (not the days as such) as a metaphor. According to this interpretation, Moses used the metaphor of the week to narrate God’s acts of creation. Thus, God’s supernatural creative words or fiats are real and historical but the exact timing is left unspecified. The purpose of the metaphor is to call Adam to imitate God in work, with the promise of entering His Sabbath rest. Creation events are grouped in two triads of days: Days 1-3 (creations kingdoms) are paralleled by Days 4-6 (creation’s kings). Adam is king of the earth; God is the King of Creation.

Analogical - According to the Analogical view, the "days" of Genesis 1 are God’s workdays, analogous (but not necessarily identical) to human workdays. They set a pattern for our rhythm of work and rest. The six days represent periods of God’s historical supernatural activity in preparing and populating the earth as a place for humans to live, love, work, and worship. These days are broadly consecutive. That is, they are successive periods of unspecified length. They may overlap in part, or they may reflect logical rather than chronological criteria for grouping certain events on certain days.

Calendar day - This one posits that the 6 days were 6 of our calendar days.

I don't hold the Calendar day, for I'm not a young earth creationist.  The other ones are more valid, in my opinion.

-Spawn

[Night Spawn]

Hello again, Blake (sorry for the double-post).

It should be the other way around:
1. Whatever is hot will appear red.

2. Tomatoes are red.

3. Therefore, Tomatoes must be hot. The heat can't come from the plant, because it doesn't have any. Therefore God made the heat.

In statement 3 you assume the converse of statement 1, which is not necessarily true. It should be:

1. Whatever is RED is HOT.

2. Tomatoes are red.

3. Therefore, Tomatoes must be hot. The heat can't come from the plant, because it doesn't have any. Therefore God made the heat.

HOWEVER, it is also incorrect to assume that everything that has a cause we don't understand is caused by God. Thus both arguments are logically incorrect.
-Blake

I've already explained and defended the Kalam in my lengthy post above.  You're welcome to challenge the premises themselves, rather than unparalleled (and wrongly attempted) anological premises.

1.  I never asserted such a bold proposition: that everything that has a cause we don't understand is caused by God.  I never said we don't understand the Big Bang, because we do understand a good degree of it.

2.  Your entire analogical argument is completely unparallel to the Kalam.  Both premise 1's are demonstrably wrong, while the Kalam's premise 1 is demonstrably right with ocular proof giving it more grounding.  Premise 2 follows from the incorrect premise 1, while the Kalam has a logically sound premise 2, which follows from a logically sound premise 1.  As for the conclusion, I gave it in my lengthy post above.   A direct response is welcome.

3.  The entire thing is a strawman at best.

[RipperRoo]

Screw double posts, start posting 10times in a row, just kinda make it into smaller chunks please, it takes less willpower to read 10 small posts than it does to read one large one.