TedM

aa, surely you have better things to do than tell me I'm an atheist.

Huon

God can change the laws that apply to himself whenever he wants. God is God, by Jove ! There are no "natural laws" for God.

outhouse

pseudoscience born through imagination



thats the best question you have offered yet.


and the answer would be the first people who didnt understand where rain came from, or why they heard thunder.

they filled the gaps in their imagination with deities, not god as you call it. the real word is ignorance made deities.


Now if you mean who made the abrahamic gods? well displaced Canaanites factually evolved into Israelites and used the god El before Yahweh in northern tribes while Yahweh was used more in the south. both born of mythology prior to Israelites existing.

Yahweh was popular because he was a storm deity of power, who turned into a warrior deity when these primitive people went to war or needed protecting by invading armies. In times of peace people loyal to Yahweh switched back to El and Asherah and Baal.


do not let your ignorance rule your imagination.

Of course they dont. Children are born atheist, our default position.

Not only that what people call god are many different things, defined at mans hands again! and thats just within the abrahamic traditions.


Not all deity worship is too a created charactor like the one you have created in your imagination.


in the world today there arer very few tribes known who do not have a deity, but none use the term god. Two I can think of after much study on this, that do not have deities qualify, BUT they do have many spirits and demons that take place for a deity. So really they dont qualify.

By the way, they follow things like smoke spirits and fire spirits ect ect ect all a reflection of their severe ignorance on nature and illness.


NO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it is not

people who believe in your concept of god are a minority of the planets population. If we add those who follow alla or mohammad, then your thought would be gaining strength BUT even you will admit, that is not your god, just a perversion.

Well what do you think the christian deity is to jews? a perversion of their god.

What do you think the jews gods were to the Canaanites?? yes a perversion




the difference between me and you is I call one more deity a perversion, then you do. were very close on this.










False

this is a matter of education and knowledge, in history and theology and mythology, combined with intelligence and nothing more. learn what i know and youll have the same view.



I know facts you dont understand, because you lack the knowledge, you are admittedly uneducated on these matters.


Im not trying to be harsh bud, but your using faith, not reason and logic. You possibly have a closed mind and do not want to learn about the deity you place faith in. Im actually here to learn more and advance my knowledge.


Heres some facts

Moses never existed as written.

Noah never existed as written.

many of the abrahamic fathers didnt exist as written.

The bible contains a lot of mythology, written in allegory and metaophors to teach morals and build a fictional history to give a certain people identity. which of course is nothing more then a compilation of legends redacted so many times no other work has ever been so fragemented.

Man wrote and created the mythology surrounding the deity you place faith in. and this faith evolved, mirroring ever primitive culture it touched.

Scientifically no deity exist, as there is nothing to test for.

Man evolved into existance

Scientifically creation is pseudoscience, this means nothing at all, not even a fly can be attributed to a myth called creation.

outhouse

a statement of ignorance.


people who have freedom from faith, have opened up their minds and not allowed deities to stop their education or fill the gaps in their knowledge.

these are the people who make the advancements in society for the betterment of humanity.

Some of the worlds brightest minds, do not use a deity or worship.



doesnt mean some of the brightest minds are not theist either.



where your wrong is simply labeling people as theist or atheist

You shoule judge people by their knowledge, not if they believe in pseudoscience or lack of it.

Many theist possess more knowledge then I do in certain areas




something you need to learn is that not all atheist are anti-theist

EarlDoherty

And just how do we know that cause and effect need not apply to a supernatural being? You postulate this on no logical or knowledgeable basis whatsoever, simply in order to assume the existence of a god who is not subject to that law. This is entirely arbitrary, and a colossal case of begging the question.

This is the whole point about my earlier long posting. You simply cannot argue from such a position.

Is it any more lacking in rational sense than the postulation of a God who contravenes every observation and law of the universe he is supposed to have created? And who can’t even make himself known to all humankind but stands by and allows a plethora of different gods and concepts about such gods to develop? And who behaves consistently throughout the history of religious beliefs in ways which are thoroughly at odds with even the enlightenment which humanity has managed to achieve? Does any of that make sense to you?

Physicists and evolutionists have in my books come close to making sense of a universe without a God. Unfortunately, they haven’t been able to reach minds like yours.

This isn’t an answer to my point, Ted. In fact, you are simply sidestepping it. One cannot “conceive” of a God with unknown origins and attributes, because you have no basis on which to do so, and no groundwork laid on which to postulate such a thing, let alone understand it. No physicist ever presents a theory based on nothing that he has been able to observe or deduce from what is so far known about the universe. How could such an idea ever enter his mind?

You are a religious ‘physicist’ who says: I cannot explain this aspect of the universe, so I am going to suggest (and believe) that there exists some force, some explanation that follows none of the rules we can detect or deduce, that allows for not even a theoretical understanding of its behaviour, and I will choose that option rather than the trust that objective science will eventually come up with an explanation for our as yet lack of understanding. Moreover, I choose that option solely on the basis of my own personal feeling that the other position does not make sense to me and I cannot “conceive” of it.

I wouldn’t be too proud, or secure, about such a choice if it were me.

“If one is going to assume God exists…”??? Right there is your basic fallacy. Surely that God exists should be a conclusion, not an assumption, like anything else about this world we live in, especially something as crucial as the existence of the supernatural and a supernatural being. If, through some avenue, we knew that a God existed, but didn’t know anything about him or his motivations, then we might reasonably be allowed to make some assumptions about things that are “beyond our understanding.” But if the assumptions that are beyond our understanding are presented solely in support of an a priori desire or need to believe in a God, with no actual basis for them other than the argument from personal incredulity, surely you can see the logical unacceptability of this.

Sorry, but that’s totally devoid of any sense at all. It’s about the same as postulating the existence of a pink elephant in an alternate universe, even if biological study of this universe shows that not only are there no pink elephants, the DNA of an elephant cannot possibly produce a pink skin. Do you then come along, maybe because an ancient scripture speaks of a pink elephant, and postulate that it makes sense to suggest a separate category of elephant, one which our observations can never reach, which contradicts all that we can possibly know about elephants? Do you want to live your life having recourse to such non-sense?

You say that you "make a distinction between the natural (which requires an origin) and the above-natural, which may or may not require an origin.” But you accept them both equally. The unknown and unknowable is placed on the same footing as the known and knowable. No wonder this world is in such a mess.

(P.S. I confess I have lost track of the Hebrews 8:4 discussion, but I do remember that when I read your “revised” posting after my initial response, it did not strike me that you were saying anything different than the prior posting, just attempting to reword it.)

Earl Doherty

MrMacSon

You are merely proposing, not dealing with facts or logic.

You can't have your cake and eat it too -


The Law of Identity states that an object is the same as itself: A ≡ A. ..... ie. it is not something else.


The law of Non-Contradiction, in logic, states -

"one cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time". (note Aristotle's use of indices: 'respect' and 'time').


The law of the excluded middle

.. ambiguity can arise from the use of ambiguous names, but cannot exist in the facts themselves:

It is impossible, then, that 'being a man' should mean precisely not being a man, if 'man' not only signifies something about one subject but also has one significance. … And it will not be possible to be and not to be the same thing, except in virtue of an ambiguity, just as if one whom we call 'man', and others were to call 'not-man'; but the point in question is not this, whether the same thing can at the same time be and not be a man in name, but whether it can be in fact

EarlDoherty

Things that are “inherent in our nature” are there through the process of evolution. Our limited minds needed (and still need) some such belief to make sense of an un-understood world. It is only “unnatural” in the context of that limitation. And if you believe that evolution is “intentional” (from another remark of yours) you know nothing about it from a scientific point of view. The reason some people seem to assume that evolution is working in a positive direction (though even that may be debatable) is that inherent within the natural selection process is a move toward greater complexity and efficiency. But no evolutionary scientist that I know of suggests that some force is intending a move toward any end result. And if evolution can operate without conscious or intentional direction, why not the universe as a whole?

Carl Sagan had it right. If we can postulate a step in the process of existence which does not adhere to the “cause and effect” law, namely a God who always existed and needed no cause, if that can make sense to us (supposedly), then why not identify that initial step with an always-existing universe of matter and energy? At least we can observe the latter, we live within it. We cannot say the same about a redundant initial step preceding it, identified as a God who in fact is NOT part of our observable universe.

Why does it make sense to you to postulate a God who doesn’t obey the law of cause and effect, but it makes no sense to you to postulate a universe which as a whole does not obey the law of cause and effect? A physicist debater whose name I don’t remember made the very simple and logical proposition: Just because within the workings of the universe, everything operates by cause and effect, does not mean that such a principle of operation has to have applied to the universe as a whole, that such a law must figure in our explanation of the origin of the universe or even whether it had any origin at all. If religious people can ‘conceive’ of a God who is eternal and had no origin, why is it impossible for them to conceive of a universe which itself is eternal and had no origin? If nothing else, shouldn’t they be equally inconceivable? At least the eternal universe might one day reveal through science its originating secrets. There seems no hope that God will do the same.

Earl Doherty

MrMacSon

A notion; the notion of 'supernatural' is simply based on thought. It is fiction only.

Nothing is outside time and space.

Everything we know is explained by logical philosophy & science.

EarlDoherty

In my previous posting I asked: If religious people can ‘conceive’ of a God who is eternal and had no origin, why is it impossible for them to conceive of a universe which itself is eternal and had no origin? In fact, both are non-conceivable, given the present state of our minds and our knowledge. The answer is that religious people will accept the inconceivability of God, but will not accept the inconceivability of an eternal, unthinking universe. (Though it is in fact developing the ability to think through inherent evolutionary processes: we, intelligent life, arising out of the same elements as make up the wider universe, are the universe becoming aware of itself and developing the capacity to think.)

I am going to anticipate something you might say, Ted. The difference between the two options, between a God without a cause-and-effect origin, and a universe without a cause-and-effect origin, is that God has a mind, he is conscious, he is intelligent, he can choose to act or not act. (All of this, of course, is postulation based simply on the assumption that God exists.) This is much preferable to a non-conscious, automatically evolving universe, and more comforting. This is why some, like you, will accept one thing, but not the other. It’s a matter of wishful thinking.

(Would that we lived in a universe which showed a concern for the aware creations it has produced within itself. But again, in fact it is, since it is producing conscious minds which are capable of that concern and of taking steps to bring about an improvement in living conditions. Certainly, this is something your postulated God has never done. Every advance in human well-being was laboriously brought about by humans themselves, with no outside help. The Son of God come to earth couldn’t even educate us about disease and hygiene! Can you explain that conundrum about your unknowable God who operates by different principles, Ted?)

But how can we even know that God has a mind, let alone an intelligent one? Because his “creation” involves things which we know from experience are the products of intelligence? But wait a minute. Wouldn’t you now be bringing processes and “laws” from this universe and applying them to God? Wouldn’t you be contravening the postulation you have set up that God is an entity who operates by principles that are totally unknown and unknowable to us? If God “needs” our universe’s law of intelligence to produce creation, shouldn’t he also need our universe’s law of cause and effect to explain his own existence, a “cause” which must lie prior to himself? Is there a pre-God God? Is it turtles all the way down?

The God option creates far more problems than it solves. It's the product of preference, not logic.

Earl Doherty

outhouse

It blows my mind in this day and age with all we know

people still put faith in something that flat isnt there, has never been seen, or heard and has nothing that can be attribuited to it in any way shape or form.

It doesnt exist, yet the majority of people beleive.


its exactly like Santa Claus



We are still primitive beings, is probably what this equation states.


I for one, am for evolving foward, not backwards.