Shpongle

So, what you are saying is... once you have beer you no longer care about the creation of the universe.

Makes sense to me!

*runs off to get beer*

Tom Sawyer

Maybe this is why so many religions ban alcohol.

With such readily available euphoria on hand at reasonable prices, there is no need beg a deity to give you his divine euphoria

Edit: Eric, if you truly want to talk about the existence of God and purpose of the universe, you should try starting individual posts do deal with the issues rather than post some long-winded sermon that doesn't really do anything but preach to the choir.

Eric H

Hi salmon of Doubt.
quote
Are you saying that there is a 50/50 chance of God existing? How do you arrive at that conclusion?! And if you aren't saying that there is a 50/50 chance of God existing, what ARE you trying to say?
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The probably or maybe God can only exist in a persons mind, so the probably God does not exist at all.

That only leaves two possibilities, God either exists totally, or there is no God at all.

You could toss a coin and say if it lands heads, there is no God; you have a fifty- fifty chance of being absolutely correct.

We humans complicate things by saying if God exists he could be any one of a thousand definitions of God that Christians, Muslims, Hindu, etc come up with.
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Hello Mike
quote
Why do I have to start with a premise that God exists? Is there anything I need this hypothesis for? (Thanks, Laplace.)
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You’re a freethinking man, and so you can start with any hypothesis that you like, and I'm sure you do.
these are only my thoughts

From my point of view I couldn’t start of by saying on the off-chance there could be a God, that wouldn’t seem right either.
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Mike quote
Does suffering and evil exist in heaven?
Does free will exist in heaven?
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Hopefully there is no suffering or evil in heaven, so your next question was probably going to be; does that mean there is no free will in heaven?

The only way I can perceive freewill in heaven is if the people who are there WILLINGLY choose to love their neighbour as they love themselves.

If there is a God that can seem to be an explanation for the suffering and evil that exists on Earth.

My thoughts about God are that if he is clever enough to create the universe as we see it, he would also have the greatest purpose to want to put this in motion.
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Mike quote
Stopping a criminal from committing evil doesn't prevent him from deciding to do it in the first place, nor does stopping the natural disasters intervene with anyone's free will. The God as you describe him to me looks like a policeman who, watching a person being robbed, ignores any of his calling for help for the same reason.
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If life on Earth was all that was on offer from God, nothing would make sense and I would also be an atheist.

You describe God as a policeman standing by, that is putting him on fairly equal terms with the robber.

By comparison God has more powers than superman, there would be nothing fair if he was a dictator, even a morally good dictator and he supervised all our actions.

I could not regard myself as morally good, and I would find it oppressive if someone kept tapping me on the shoulder and kept telling me what to do all the time.

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Mike quote.
And what you say is inconsistent with the Bible. If I recall correctly, it says that God intervened in the world, in fact very often.

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There are many things we struggle with when it comes to trying to understand the Bible. If I wanted to justify killing thousands of people there are passages in the Old Testament where the Lord ordered this to happen.

Possibly mankind is like a child growing up, and so mankind learns and matures with each generation.

Maybe God has a greater purpose for those people who suffered and died, maybe there is a way they learn. It only makes sense if God had good intentions when he intervened in the ways that he did.

One of the occasions was the ten plagues.

If you think of it from humanities point of view the first two or three plagues could be dismissed as a freak of nature, by the time you’d seen ten happen it would make you think it could be something else.

But when you read the Bible after a couple of generations had passed, many people went against God’s word because they had not seen it for themselves.

It seems if God wanted to give us true freedom he had to teach us over many generations, but he could not impose his will on us by force.

It seems again that if we where all one hundred percent sure he existed, we may obey his words for all the wrong reasons, out of fear, or obedience, rather than willingly.

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Sorry a bit stuck for time, I’m of to the pub for a beer, catch you all later

Peace

Eric

DMB

Eric: you seem to have a somewhat precarious understanding of probability.

It is true that a normal unbiased coin has about a 50 % chance of coming up heads and a 50 % of coming up tails, but not all binary choices carry this sort of probability.

If you throw an ordinary die, there is a probability of one-sixth that you will throw a six, and a probabilty of five-sixths that you will throw a non-six.

If you enter a lottery and examine the chances of winning the jackpot or not winning the jackpot, the chances of the latter are enormously higher that the chances of the former.

With the examples I have given, i.e. a coin coming up heads, a die coming up 6 and you winning the jackpot in a lottery, there exist methods for calculating a fairly precise probability. But there are other questions whichwe can postulate in binary form where it is more difficult, such as does extraterrestrial life exist or does it not exist? Any probability we come up with in this situation must at best be an estimate and we need to explain the evidence on which it is based. Your god problem is similar to the extraterrestrial life one, and you have given no reason to suggest that the probability should be 50 %.

Kubulai

Are you saying that there is a 50/50 chance of God existing? How do you arrive at that conclusion?! And if you aren't saying that there is a 50/50 chance of God existing, what ARE you trying to say?
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The probably or maybe God can only exist in a persons mind, so the probably God does not exist at all.

That only leaves two possibilities, God either exists totally, or there is no God at all.

You could toss a coin and say if it lands heads, there is no God; you have a fifty- fifty chance of being absolutely correct.

We humans complicate things by saying if God exists he could be any one of a thousand definitions of God that Christians, Muslims, Hindu, etc come up with.
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The probably or maybe pixie can only exist in a persons mind, so the probably Pixie does not exist at all.

That only leaves two possibilities, pixies either exists totally, or there are no pixies at all.

You could toss a coin and say if it lands heads, there are no pixies; you have a fifty- fifty chance of being absolutely correct.


of course it has no effect on the chance of either of the premises being correct only on you ending up with one that is.

heads dancing pixies, tails no dancing pixies, toss a coin you have a fifty fifty chance of being right

Eric H

Hi Zadok001
quote
At Infidels, we don't START from the premise that there is no God. We start from the premise that if God exists, certain conditions of reality would be true. We find, in general, those conditions to be false, hence, we believe God does not exist. If you wish to change that standard, your objective should be to approach the question of "How can I show evidence of God's existance," rather than "What can I say about God once he is shown to exist?"
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Point taken, but my post wasn’t trying to prove the existence of God, my point was trying to find an ultimate purpose for creation if there is a God. And would this ultimate purpose make sense for life as we understand it.

To my way of thinking the greatest God humanity could have would be a God who loves all of humanity as he loves himself. How could anyone do any more for another being?

If God has freedom himself it would not be right if he took away our freedom, or did not create us with freedom.

If he created us to live by an ultimate purpose of the two greatest commandments, what more could he do for us as a whole.

Maybe your thoughts are entirely different.

Peace

Eric
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Hello Mageth, what can I say in reply to your post, other than its round to your place for a beer.

Peace

Eric
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Hi Kubulai

Thanks for the detailed explanation of probabilities, but

Is there at least one God who is responsible for creating the universe yes or no?

What other options are there, other than pixiex or aliens?

Peace

Eric

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Eric H
To my way of thinking the greatest God humanity could have would be a God who loves all of humanity as he loves himself. How could anyone do any more for another being?

For the sake of argument, how about a God who loves all of humanity more than he loves himself?

Eric H

Hi.
quote
QueenofSwordsVeteran UserRegistered: November 2000Location: Nowhere in particularPosts: 5559 Originally posted by Eric H To my way of thinking the greatest God humanity could have would be a God who loves all of humanity as he loves himself. How could anyone do any more for another being? For the sake of argument, how about a God who loves all of humanity more than he loves himself?
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To love someone more than you love yourself requires sacrifice, If you only had a hundred pounds and you gave someone sixty, that would show a greater love for them.

In human terms the way to show this love in the greatest way is if you are prepared to risk your own life for another, you have nothing greater to give.

You hear of a parent who will risk their life to save their child from a burning building and die in the process
You hear about a fireman who will risk his life to save a complete stranger from a fire and the fireman dies.

What about God, how can he sacrifice himself in this greatest way?

For the sake of argument, what would happen to the universe if this all-powerful God sacrificed himself in this way?

To what extent could a God love humanity more than he loves himself?

When you seek ‘an ultimate’ there is a need to keep pushing the boundaries until you can go no further.

It is only by constant challenging that you can search for a greatest purpose.

Peace

Eric

Shadowy Man

This is opinion, not fact.

Kubulai

why does the universe need a cause?

why doesn't god?