[quote]forlife wrote:
pat wrote:
If not God, then where does everything come from? If not God then what?
By “god”, I’m sure you mean “my god”, rather than the thousands of other “gods” people have created for themselves over the millenia. Because literally billions of people have placed their faith in some god other than your own, and have believed just as devoutly in their god as you do in yours.
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Creating gods to suit your own purpose is one thing. Discovering via the exercise of pure reason as Aristotle did, is a whole other. The cosmological argument was not an exercise in creating a god to suit a need.
If your best answer is you don’t know and you can’t be bothered to find out, then you got no business mocking what others believe.
There’s no shame in admitting you don’t know. In fact, doing so is the most honest and admirable approach, when in fact you really don’t know. Making up stories to explain what you don’t know, and insisting those stories are true when you have no reliable objective evidence for them, and calling this insistence “faith” but refusing to recognize the “faith” of people that have made up very different stories from you, doesn’t earn you a gold star in the search for truth.
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It’s not a matter of shame in not knowing. It’s the mocking of others who seek the answers from somebody who can’t be bothered to have an alternate explanation to source and structure of all things large, small, material and immaterial.
Trust me there is a whole lot more that I do not know then I do. That does not mean, I do not know what I do.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Everything falls into place and I mean everything when you understand that Pook the Missionary, the Buddhist apologist, the Meddler in American affairs, has one concern - promoting his faith. [/quote]
The difference being that Pook’s faith is supported by objective evidence and is subject to change, while your faith is unsupported by objective evidence and is beyond dispute.
I love how you Christianists equate faith with science, as if a completely random guess, admittedly uninformed by even a smidgeon of objective facts, is the same as a 50% or 25% or even 10% probability of being true.
[quote]pat wrote:
Creating gods to suit your own purpose is one thing. Discovering via the exercise of pure reason as Aristotle did, is a whole other.[/quote]
Do you seriously believe that only YOUR god was discovered by pure reason, and that not even a few of the thousands of other gods were similarly discovered by pure reason? Christians can’t even agree on the god they worship, let alone the multitude of gods from other faiths, all of which are just as earnest and devout about their particular beliefs as you are about yours.
And your god theory does? Why is it logically possible for your god to have always existed, while it is not logically possible for matter and energy to have always existed?
How about the possibility that this law is simply the way the universe operates, and has always been in effect? You can’t dismiss this as a logical possibility.
[quote]It’s not a matter of shame in not knowing. It’s the mocking of others who seek the answers from somebody who can’t be bothered to have an alternate explanation to source and structure of all things large, small, material and immaterial.
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More specifically, it’s calling the bluff of others who choose to believe in something for which there is no objective evidence, yet can’t provide a logical reason for why this belief is any more valid than the beliefs of billions of other people with different faiths, or with none at all.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Indubitably now he will trundle up with his catapult and hurl the boulder of “ad hominem” at me, shrieking in French beneath his breath, blaming America for leaking its spiritual values into his beloved homeland. Ho hum.[/quote]
Ah, the Flat-Earther will now join up with the Deadhead. Oh, what a might duo those two will be!
Say, flushy, have you asked pat’s opinion of your Flood fable? Is he a true-believer worthy of sucking up to?
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Now THAT was a subjective statement if I ever saw one. Seriously, LOL.[/quote]
Science is informed by objective data. Religion isn’t. Are you seriously arguing this point?
[quote]Speaking of bitter men…
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There you go with the ad hominems again. Why is it that people who disagree with you are bitter, mocking, zealots while you are the epitome of equanimity, integrity, and good will? I give you credit for being a sincere and reasonably decent human being, is it so hard for you to return the favor?
[quote]pushharder wrote:
The people who disagree with me are not bitter, mocking zealots because they disagree with me. They are bitter, mocking zealots because they exude bitterness, mockery and zealotry. You have done all of this on this thread; not with every post mind you like Pookie but you HAVE peppered this thread with those attributes. Want me to copy and paste?[/quote]
Where did you get your clinical psych degree, since you are so skilled at diagnosing a person’s underlying motivations?
More importantly, why does it matter? How do my motivations, or your completely unbiased opinion of them, have any bearing whatsoever on the validity of the arguments being made, on either side?
I think it would be hilarious to meet some of you guys in person. You are so convinced that we are these bitter, hateful, vindictive people, and I think 5 minutes of real conversation would probably give you a different perspective
[quote]forlife wrote:
pat wrote:
Creating gods to suit your own purpose is one thing. Discovering via the exercise of pure reason as Aristotle did, is a whole other.
Do you seriously believe that only YOUR god was discovered by pure reason, and that not even a few of the thousands of other gods were similarly discovered by pure reason? Christians can’t even agree on the god they worship, let alone the multitude of gods from other faiths, all of which are just as earnest and devout about their particular beliefs as you are about yours.
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Yes.
It does not solve the problem of contingency.
And your god theory does? Why is it logically possible for your god to have always existed, while it is not logically possible for matter and energy to have always existed?
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It’s not my theory.
That which sets “things” in motion has to necessarily exist outside the causal chain. The which creates, cannot be created by definition. “It” cannot be subject to it’s own laws, otherwise “it” would not be able to do what it did.
Energy is just work and physical matter is infinitely divisible. No matter what, when you break things down they begin to share a commonality with more and more things. The various forms of physical matter are made up of atoms. Every thing shares this fact right? Break it down further and you have protons, neutrons and electrons, at this point, a piece of wood could not be differentiated from plutonium. Break it down further and what do you get? You get to a point where everything thing in the universe shares commonality. Where does that come from, it all delves nicely right into the cosmological argument. Which in the link I provided describes it nicely as more of an argument type rather than an argument in itself.
That may be true, but there is a reason it is that way. I want to know why. That’s just the way it is, is not sufficient to me. If we don’t question we don’t learn. If somebody did not ask why, we would not be where we are today.
[quote]
It’s not a matter of shame in not knowing. It’s the mocking of others who seek the answers from somebody who can’t be bothered to have an alternate explanation to source and structure of all things large, small, material and immaterial.
More specifically, it’s calling the bluff of others who choose to believe in something for which there is no objective evidence, yet can’t provide a logical reason for why this belief is any more valid than the beliefs of billions of other people with different faiths, or with none at all.[/quote]
If there were a bluff to call, then maybe but that is not the case. If it were a bluff there would be an alternative reason and further the alternative would be correct. Here is a link which has the argument in many forms and it’s many objections.
Mind you this has been going on for centuries, don’t think the testosterone forums will quell the fire.
Doesn’t it strike you as a little odd that billions of people are unreasonable in their faith, despite believing just as sincerely as you do, while only those who believe in your particular god are “reasonable”? I mean, I can see disagreeing with people who see the world differently from you, but come on…we’re talking about faith here, which your compadres have defined as beliefs NOT informed by evidence. You have no more evidence than the billions of other believers, yet you feel confident in your atheism toward all of their gods except your own. If that doesn’t give you pause, I don’t know what would.
You are assuming without evidence that things were set in motion, while dismissing the possibility that matter and energy have always existed. Yet you accept without question the idea that your god has always existed.
All the more reason to recognize the possibility that everything in the universe is comprised of the same building blocks, rather than positing a supernatural force which magically violates this common rule.
Yet you seem satisfied with the idea that your god has always existed, “just because that’s the way it is.”. At least apply the same standard consistently to other ideas.
