Lon
Well-known member
Logically, something has had to exist, always.
1) Nothing + Nothing = Nothing
2) Only something+something can= something
.: Something in or outside the universe has always, eternally, existed.
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Is there a Christian cosmology that doesn't include miracles?
- Thread starter tieman55
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Logically, something has had to exist, always.
1) Nothing + Nothing = Nothing
2) Only something+something can= something
.: Something in or outside the universe has always, eternally, existed.
I still don't see where your god came from in there.
The Judeo-christian god doesn't appear to have 'revealed itself' until about 3200 years ago, when it was first written about. There was apparently no revelation of it in ancient China, where we have writing from 300 years earlier, or in the writing of ancient Egypt from 1800 years earlier. The ancient Egyptians were polytheists, and indeed the ancient Jews were the same until a process of assimilation introduced a heirarchy of gods, and eventually one god with the others sidelined.
So on that evidence it's hard to escape the conclusion that, far from existing forever, this god was invented in the Second Millennium BCE by ancient Jews, likely a result of politics.
Stuart
Thumbs up for a victory of empty rhetoric over substance, Stripe. Firstly you said nothing in your reply to my post addressed to Clete, and now you have quoted the parts of Clete's subsequent reply that say nothing.
And meantime, in another thread I have been agreeing with JudgeRightly about the need to conform to scientifically established facts, including paraphrasing your right comment along the same lines.
Stuart
Stuu;n[URL="tel:2744070" said:
That implies "nowhere" is an ontological thing. It's not.
God was all that existed.
God is Spirit, not physical.
Post #96 in this thread, you yourself said the following:
Stuu;n[URL="tel:2743690" said:
Post #100 in this thread, you yourself said the following:
Shall I go on?
If something has always existed, then it is logical for that thing to exist, yes.
God is not a physical being, and so therefore does not have a physical location.
As far as the spiritual plane is, all we know is that it's "above" us, "outside" this universe.
No, that's false.
It's called the First Cause argument:
| Also called the cosmological argument; the argument that there has to be an uncaused cause that made everything else happen, otherwise there would be nothing now. 1. At least some things are caused. 2. Nothing can be the cause of itself (nothing can bring itself into existence). 3. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes (There couldn't be anything, without a first cause to get things going). Therefore (from 1-3), necessarily, 4. There is (was) an uncaused first cause. 5. The thing is (was) God. Therefore (from 4&5), necessarily, 6. God exits. |
Anything that has a beginning had to have come into existence at some point.
God does not have a beginning, and is therefore exempt from that rule.
He is the Uncaused Cause.
To avoid suffering.
Sin causes suffering.
Don't be dumb, Stuu. Apart from that being an argument from incredulity, it also completely ignores what was said.
Jesus showed repeatedly that He was God. The people around HIm (and people to this day) rejected Him.
God has tried in various ways and various manners to bring mankind back to Him.
He's tried talking to them directly, but they were absolutely terrified of His voice, and sent someone to speak to God for them, to relay what He said through the mediator.
He's tried sending prophets to speak for Him, but most of the time they ignored what was said... The entire Bible describes the utter failure that Israel was as a people in serving their God.
They rejected Him, so He tried sending His Son, and they killed Him.
If God spoke, it would be undeniable that it was Him.
But as I said above, when He speaks directly to people, it terrifies them if they have not already submitted to Him.
It would be counterproductive to His goal to do so, because that's what happens when you shove clear and unambiguous evidence in someone's face who has up until that point utterly rejected His existence.
See Pharaoh and the 10 plagues, and most of the miracles that were done in the Bible, which for the most part, produced only unbelief.
Actually, it wouldn't be noisy at all, because other gods don't actually exist. There is only one God, There is none beside Him.
False.
Faith is the proper response to the evidence, as I believe Clete mentioned above.
I don't have faith just because some book tells me to.
I have faith that God exists because I have been convinced by the evidence that He exists.
False.
This is an emotional argument.
Reality is that God is the standard of perfection, and violating that standard results in suffering.
It's the law of the excluded middle: Either one is righteous or he is not righteous, he cannot be both.
God is righteous, and because He is the standard, anything that falls short of that standard is not righteous and therefore unjust, and so there must be, by necessity, consequences enforced. The wages of sin is death, and because sin has an eternal consequence, therefore the punishment must also be eternal. Death is separation. God told Adam to not eat of the tree in the middle of the garden, or he would die that day. Adam chose to eat of the tree, and he died that day spiritually, and was kicked out of the garden and God's presence.
God designed man to live forever with Him. From a spiritual standpoint, that means that man's soul/spirit (because man is more than just a bag of meat and bones) is not able to be destroyed or annihilated. If such were possible, Christ would not have needed to go to the cross. The same applies to the "change everyone's mind eventually to love God" position, which many Christians hold to, unfortunately.
The latter also precludes the fact that God lets man choose to be with Him or against Him (and there is no middle ground, by the way), because such a choice would only be temporary, and for all intents and purposes, just an illusion of free will.
Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
If you look at Christ, you see God.
Implying that God cannot make a sound? :dunce:
In what way?
Which begs the question that there has to be a "where" to create from.
Again, relational to our "position," God is "outside" the universe.
What lies beyond the boundary of our universe cannot be described using physical terms, because it is by definition super-physical, or supernatural.
You're question begging again, trying to imply that God's existence is illogical because you leave out the part where he has always existed.
The correct phrase, to avoid confusion, is "never having a beginning."
There are only two extant options possible.
Accept God.
Reject God.
The Law of the Excluded Middle precludes anything other than those two options, because God said you're either for or against Him.
If you reject God, then the natural consequence is that you are separated from Him, because God cannot tolerate injustice.
You'll note that human sacrifice is immoral.
But that's not what happened.
What happened was that Christ WILLINGLY laid down His life for mankind, and sacrificed Himself.
Love is the commitment to the good of someone.
There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for someone else.
Thus, by God sending His own Son to die on the Cross, and He willingly, God showed His love for us, in that even while we were in rebellion against Him, Christ died for us.
Love is freely given, it cannot be coerced (which precludes universalism).
Clete, could you explain the kinsman redeemer to Stuu, if it's not too much to ask?
Considering God made us, He has every right to demand His standard be observed, so I'm not sure what your trying to get at here...
About what? That God's standard of righteousness and justice is absolute?
No you couldn't.
Evidence has convinced me (and I'm sure Clete as well).
There's plenty of it, so that's not the problem here, Stuu. It's that you've refused to let the evidence convince you.
For God to fellowship with man.
The most important thing in all of existence (aside from God, of course) is relationships. He can't do that if man is separated from Him.
This makes me believe that you're intentionally wasting my time. It's that or you're stupid. I'm only going to respond to this single point and won't even read the rest of your post and we'll see how well you respond to having wasted all the time it took for you to write that post.
God did not come from nowhere. No, that is not a double negative. Your ridiculous argument would have to imply the idea that God actually came from nowhere in order for it to be the equivalent of your fantasy big bang theory which explicitly asks us all to believe that nothing plus nothing equals everything. (And no, the total energy of the universe is not zero, there's not nearly enough antimatter for that, not even remotely close. It only happens to be one of the biggest problems in all of modern cosmology.)
There was never a time where there was nothing and then God CAME into existence from nowhere. God has always existed. ALWAYS. Can you not understand that? He didn't come form anywhere because He didn't need to, He was already there. HE HAS ALWAYS EXISTED! Get it?
Your question about how can God have always been there when the universe hasn't always been there is the absolute height of idiotic stupidity (You have to be just intentionally wasting everyone time.) Of course the Creator preexisted His own creation!! DUH!
Clete
I'd love to and was sort of already going down that road but it's proved to be the equivalent of trying to explain the residential home building process to a six year old boy who likes to play with Lincoln Logs?
I mean the concept of voluntary penal substitution gets brought up and this guy's brain jumps to the issue of human sacrifice of all things. Besides, I'm really starting to believe that he's just playing games and intentionally wasting our time for the fun of it.
How does that apply to your god? What existence does it have in the situation of space-time not existing, and how could you possibly know?
We live in a universe that came into existence, and there is no meaningful way of discussing the concept of 'before' the universe because time only appears with the inflation of space-time. So to try and give the property of existence outside time (to use a temporal word like 'eternity') to anything is to overplay your hand absurdly. You appear to me to be serious about knowing how the universe really works, unlike others here. You understand the significance of interstellar events to hypotheses about the evolution of the solar system, for example. So how have you let yourself deal such cheap platitudes to me? It's very much not appreciated. If you wish to be convincing you will have to do a couple of orders of magnitude better than that.
Stuu: The universe did indeed make itself, in the sense that when you inflate space-time rapidly in a Big Bang, a lot of gravitational energy is converted to matter and other forms of energy...
I don't get quote-mined by creationists very often. Thanks for the back-handed compliment! I do appreciate that at least here you have included the qualification I have bolded. Do you acknowledge the difference it makes?
Stuu: But it's logically possible to exist without coming into existence,
That tautology does not address my point. Perhaps I should try a question: how is it possible to exist without coming into existence?
That's not what the Jewish bible says. Nor the New Testament. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses all saw your god, which indicates to me there must have been a physical location involved. Moses saw it's backsides in Exodus 33:23. In Deuteronomy 5:4 this god of no physical location spoke 'face to face' with the people of Israel. Manoah and his wife, Micaiah, Job, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos and Habakkuk all saw the Judeo-christian god. The writer of John (14:9) tells us that if you have seen Jesus you have seen God. Of course we don't have any eyewitness accounts of Jesus, so it would be more difficult to establish that anyone ever actually saw Jesus. I don't think you would dispute that Jesus existed in a physical location wherever he went. Are you saying this god can choose to become physical, or choose to exist in a not-somewhere state? If so, is that supported in scripture, or have you just made it up?
There you go again. You can do better, I know.
Or, just as validly,
| 1. The universe had no cause. |
Stuu: Why it is important that humans aim to be perfect?
I won't bother asking you to define sin, because you won't answer anyway. In another thread ok doser accused me of 'doing Satan's work', and when I asked what that involved, I was told there would be no point explaining it to me. So I will have to carry on doing Satan's work in the absence of knowing what it means. As far as I know I do little real harm to other humans, other species or the environment, or at least I take responsibility to make amends when I'm aware I have harmed. The same with sin. You won't tell me what it is, and so we can't make a link between it and suffering. I think it means nothing to say that sin causes suffering. Another platitude laid.
But at least we do have the claims in scripture that your god stores up nasty punishments. So when you say sin causes suffering, presumably that is because your god chooses to inflict it onto the less-than-perfect. I always find it amusing how much vitriol religious fundamentalists are prepared to pour on totalitarian regimes like China's, and yet here they are accepting that they will have to 'not sin' in order to conform to the much more brutal totalitarian regime of their own belief system.
My disbelief is expressed elsewhere, so it's not incredulity. It's that I have not observed it.
Your claim about knowing what Jesus did is all a matter of the supernatural faith of believers, not historical fact established with a decent probability. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, but in the case of Jesus we don't even have that, as far as we know.
So much for omniscience and omnipotence. And did that voice come from the physical location of the god in question? How did the people know what direction to talk back?
Somewhere here I suggested that had I been alive in ancient Palestine, I would have felt compelled to try to stop the execution of Jesus, and I was told that was blasphemous. So it would be great to hear a straight story on this: are you pleased that the ancient Romans killed Jesus, or are you lamenting the fact it happened as per your tone above?
Can you name one person who has literally heard the voice of your god and been terrified that they have not already submitted?
So this omnipotent god has a communication disability? This is all very cute, isn't it. Either this god is incapable of achieving its will, or else the world we currently inhabit is already exactly its will.
A good point, and indeed the admirable human attitude of skepticism.
We can all assert without good reason. So will I assert the opposite view, and I too will give you no good reason for it.
Stuu: We are subjected to the interpretations of writings that claim for themselves divine inspiration. That is the basis on which you somehow require of yourself perfection.
I think actually it is that you have either grown up in an environment of this belief system, or found yourself in a situation which has triggered your genetic predisposition to religious belief, and it happened to be christianity, just as it would probably be islam if you grew up in Bangladesh. It is well known from separated twin studies that devout religiosity can be strongly heritable. It may be that I would be like you but I don't have those genes.
It's a biblical argument.
That does read as quite obsessive.
Hang on there. You are asserting that righteousness has some quality of justice? This is a god that ordered (or at least is claimed to have ordered) the slaughter of the Amalekies, which included children.
...as per the philosophy of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, but not even they would destroy you or burn you forever in a fire of sulfur.
Well, that has been disproved by science. There has never been a time of just two humans, and humans were not designed.
Why do you want to spend an eternity living? Most people have trouble thinking of something to do on a wet Sunday afternoon. The meaning of my life is contingent on eventually dying. Also, I don't care to spend an eternity with a god that would indiscriminately order the killing of children.
Did this image occupy a physical location? Was that also the location of the god? Should I be looking for Jesus, or for the christ? I see them as two very different things. Good Man Jesus, Scoundrel Christ is the name of Philip Pullman's book. I am beginning to understand the point of it.
According to your assessment that we are all falling short, this god cannot impose its will for perfection either by divine fiat or by threats of severe punishment, so I don't know what other disabilities it possesses.
Stuu: insensible
In the sense of not being able to be felt (or sensed in any way, as the rest of my list describes).
I acknowledge your correct use of the expression 'begs the question', in a context of widespread misuse!
Again, that sounds impressive, but is meaningless.
In other words, a place to hide a god from the slicing action of Occam's razor.
I am being illogical because I leave out something that you say is illogical? You had to make an exception in your earlier argument, remember.
It is quite sweet the way you assert that this will avoid confusion!
It doesn't matter how willing the participant. There was a case of cannibalism a few years ago in which the victim gave willingly of parts of his body to be eaten. That didn't make it right. It's an immoral proposition. You are recommending that Pullman's scoundrel christ, through the death of the good man Jesus, remove my responsibility for my wrongdoing. I must take the rejection option on that reason alone.
If you don't love this god, you will suffer the severe punishment. Sounds like coercion to me.
On what ethical argument do you base that assertion? Parents make their children; there is never a question of who owns the children; parents should assert themselves as leaders in most aspects of the children's development, but they have no inherent right to demand standards be observed into independent adulthood. And children have the right to demand that their parents live up to standards too. So, how about laying down some standards in the other direction for your god? No more killing of Amalekites, ok, no more threats of severe punishments (which appears to be widely ineffective anyway); and no more irrational hatred of figs.
Stuu: Can you point to anything at all in the observable universe that tells you anything about that, independently of Bronze Age writing?
No, about the list of things I wrote that you sliced up into individual replies.
Stuu: I could post on a different forum and be told the same about a different god.
You have clearly never watched an argument between a devout Jew and a normally devout muslim both living in downtown Tel Aviv.
So you won't tell me what the evidence is, or how it is unambiguous, and you probably won't tell me which actions of mind constitute 'sin', and Clete wouldn't tell me which of my actions constitute 'the work of Satan'. I'm pleased for you that you are convinced.
What impression should I form of christianity from the way it inspires you to tell me what evidence I have?
Maybe this god could consider trying to form relationships on the basis of mutual trust and respect instead of threats of burning brimstone.
Stuart
Lon
Well-known member
It is the history of written language. Everything was passed down by word of mouth prior. It'd be difficult to try and tie history between cultures and their language development but you can see that gods were always part of early beliefs and most of a central God. I've read criticism sites from agnostic and atheists but most of these are peripheral issues and hunting in the dark.. They don't really deal with more pertinent concerns: Is there a God? How can I know Him? "What He did" is much further down the taxonomic scale. A seeker doesn't get lost in details. :up:
:think: You are arguing FOR God's existence at that point. :think: Getting on board with Einstein is good. Later in life Einstein began believing God had personality. :up:
It's a good point to raise about oral tradition, and of course that is going to be the main method of discourse among the vast majority of any ancient civilisation. It is certainly possible that a central god concept was the main mode of verbal discussion, and for some reason it was not recorded in writing. On the other hand, isn't it a tradition in some parts that you couldn't speak the name of the central god, but could indicated it in a slightly obscured written form? From what little I understand of it, the ancient Jewish transformation from polytheism involved a long political struggle that went via henotheism to monotheism, but as late as 800BCE there was still worship of a variety of gods, which might explain why there is a commandment against polytheism.
I guess those atheists and agnostics would not describe themselves as seekers.
Do you have complete quotes of Einstein that demonstrate this claim?
Stuart
Stripe plays at that one but gets nothing on it and it's straight through to hit off stump.
Stuart
Lon
Well-known member
Because it was literally invented by each culture. "When?" depends on the need.
The tradition as far as I trace, was due to commentary from Maimonides. They were/are trying to not take His name in vain (without reverence/common).
Sadly. Likely.
Yes, look up his letters to seminaries. Its an easy Google.
Lon
Well-known member
Depends on what you mean. Some are incapable of grasping Algebra, Calculus, Quantum Physics. Prayer on the other hand, gets the God of the universe involved and I've been praying.
Lon
Well-known member
Not exactly. Sometimes, my children emoted and often people who are going through something, are not seeing the big picture. They ARE communicating, but what I'm getting on this end isn't as 'logical' as I'd like it to be. I have to read between the lines. And, as I previously said, a person with Alzheimer, or Down's can be saved simply by trusting in Jesus Christ, not their lack of ability to be logical. I had an uncle who's mind was pretty much gone. He often asked me simply to pray for him. Maybe somebody knows "Jesus Loves Me, this I know" and not a lot else. We communicate through hugs, nods, discipline, and a good many other ways other than verbal communication. While it is true 'making sense' is communication, it is not true that I've always got all the answers. Often on TOL, somebody asks me if I meant one thing, when I meant and tried to convey something else. We communicate whether the other person gets it or not. While we certainly have a common ground concerning apprehension, I definitely have something else in mind than when a few on TOL use the term. See here "...there is no agreement upon the definition of logic..." So, even if 'logic' is one set of clear parameters in your mind, some or many will disagree with you on those terms. That's why I'm always back to trusting God over constructs of men and 'logic' is a construct. If we see it as 'truth' God certainly is truth, but until the whole world gets on page to what is and isn't logical, the guy/gal claiming it is often on a high horse.
Right Divider
Body part
Logic is not limited to humans, correct?