Thoughts on the Existence of the Universe

Started by Randy Carson, February 19, 2016, 07:51:57 PM

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Blackleaf

#210
Quote from: LittleNipper on March 12, 2016, 09:29:29 PM
People go to hell not because GOD wants them to go there. They go because they, like yourself, they have no wish to seek GOD. And frankly I have no way of knowing how many people end up in hell. That is between them and GOD. But if one excludes GOD, one cannot blame GOD for a lack of freedom of choice.

Wrong again.

1. God chose for people, as well as 1/3 of his angels, to go to Hell. It was his plan from the very beginning. As you said, he knows the final act. He knew it from the start, which means he could have taken an infinite number of measures to prevent it, and chose not to. If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, then 100% of all of history is his responsibility.

2. Theists like you love to shift the blame from God to humanity. It's convenient for you to ignore the obvious: that your god is a heartless monster. Many of us, myself included, would gladly believe in God if there was even a sliver of evidence that he even exists. But there is no evidence. He chooses to remain silent and hidden, gives us a flawed book that has been edited countless times and expects us to trust in it completely for no reason, and even creates a mountain of evidence for us to believe that he doesn't exist. For a god who apparently is so obsessed with getting attention that he would punish unbelievers with eternal torment, he sure gives us a lot of reasons to not believe in him.

Answer me this one question, and no dodging this time. Why is God hiding? Why, after years of honest belief and seeking after God, did he not even once answer my prayers? Why did he choose to ignore me when I said that my faith was being pushed beyond its limits?
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Blackleaf

Quote from: LittleNipper on March 12, 2016, 09:22:39 PM
And again, for an individual who has no proof of how life originated on this planet, and cannot create biological life from water and minerals, you seem to be far more at a disadvantage in the realm of provable reality. I'll say this for you, you certainly know how to throw insults, but not much else. I guess you feel pressure to prove there is no God so that you have nothing to feel ashamed about...

Once again, you prove your inability to understand simple concepts. As I explained to you before, the burden of proof is not on us to prove that God exists. It's on you to prove that he does. No one here ever said that they knew how life came to be. Atheists are the ones honest enough to say "I don't know." Christians claim to know what they can't prove.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Mike Cl

Quote from: LittleNipper on March 12, 2016, 09:22:39 PM
And again, for an individual who has no proof of how life originated on this planet, and cannot create biological life from water and minerals, you seem to be far more at a disadvantage in the realm of provable reality. I'll say this for you, you certainly know how to throw insults, but not much else. I guess you feel pressure to prove there is no God so that you have nothing to feel ashamed about...
Insults?  I guess speaking the truth about you is an insult.  You believe in a fictional story.  Nothing provable about it.  I would say you are an insult to those who like to try a think critically.   But those are two foreign words to you--thinking and critical.  You don't know how to do or be either.  I have asked you time and again to exchange ideas.  All you can do is preach.  You don't know how to discuss.  And no, I do not feel ashamed about what I think.  And I feel no pressure to prove anything to you.  That would not be possible, I realize.  You are hopelessly caught up in your fantasy and fiction.  Discussion is beyond you ability.  I am not the one directed to come here.  I come to exchange ideas--and it has been so long since you have had an idea about anything you would not know one if it bit you.  You simply vomit up your poison and and believe you are a good little boy. 
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

josephpalazzo

Quote from: LittleNipper on March 12, 2016, 09:22:39 PM
And again, for an individual who has no proof of how life originated on this planet, and cannot create biological life from water and minerals, you seem to be far more at a disadvantage in the realm of provable reality. I'll say this for you, you certainly know how to throw insults, but not much else. I guess you feel pressure to prove there is no God so that you have nothing to feel ashamed about...

YOU KNOW, WE DON'T KNOW...Such arrogance deserves all the mud throwing...

facebook164


Quote from: Baruch on March 12, 2016, 09:57:55 PM, atoms are the creation of the human mind, the human mind is not the creation of atoms.

How then do you explain the world before the human mind existed?

Baruch

#215
Quote from: facebook164 on March 13, 2016, 12:08:20 PM
How then do you explain the world before the human mind existed?

I don't explain the world.  I am not a brainiac, though I play at one.  There is here and now ... and I basically don't need to know much more than that, as a biological entity.  Food and sex and sleep and we are done here.

How do you explain that you are unconsciously following the philosophy of Plato?  That there are things out there (such as the past or future) and we can intuit with our special Greek organs what is objectively real (timelessly real).

The electron didn't exist (as an idea) until people thought it up (as an idea).  But most people think that their ideas refer to something real outside themselves.  Same thing with atoms.  There is a something involved with a something at very tiny scales ... but we are the species that names all things ... and we try to force fit factual reality to our ideas (this is dysfunctional, but most people are).  Of course one should fit one's idea to factual reality.  In the human sphere ... we change our environment radically.  As any dead Greek philosopher could tell you .. the relationship between ideas and factual reality is a dialectic.  Our ideas change who we are, and who we are changes factual reality, which then drives further changes in ideas.

Simple example ... we can have the idea that the world is flat, or that the world is round.  Until Magellan circumnavigated the world (not Columbus, he went only part way, and that could be done on a flat world) there were few practical reason to know if the world was a sphere or not.  For me, personally, I still don't need to know that (other than to win in a quiz show), since I have never and probably never will go around the world.  For me, the idea that the world is flat or the world is round, work the same in practical terms.

Once upon a time, we had a very powerful idea, that the world is flat.  In modern times we have replaced that with another equally powerful idea, that the world is round.  People have moved from one ideology (study of ideas) to another.  And that is the basis for most people's knowledge ... they accept the dogma of the society they live in.  That is what is relevant, not what pre-humans might have experienced.  The primary study of humans is humanity ... not what made up ideas, partially constrained by measurement (which is also an idea) will describe a micro-world that most of us can't see.  There are electron microscopes that let you see individual atoms (sort of) and the electron clouds of electrons providing the binding of molecules.  Really amazing ... but confirmation bias can't be escaped.  Science works because it is a game, like chess, with definite rules on how the confirmation bias evolves over time.  And games don't spontaneously appear from the primordial swamp ... they are created by ideas in human brains.  Science is a very good game, and has many more practical uses than chess ... but it only exists because monkey people and their monkey shines.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

LittleNipper

#216
Quote from: Blackleaf on March 12, 2016, 10:01:42 PM
Wrong again.

1. God chose for people, as well as 1/3 of his angels, to go to Hell. It was his plan from the very beginning. As you said, he knows the final act. He knew it from the start, which means he could have taken an infinite number of measures to prevent it, and chose not to. If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, then 100% of all of history is his responsibility.

2. Theists like you love to shift the blame from God to humanity. It's convenient for you to ignore the obvious: that your god is a heartless monster. Many of us, myself included, would gladly believe in God if there was even a sliver of evidence that he even exists. But there is no evidence. He chooses to remain silent and hidden, gives us a flawed book that has been edited countless times and expects us to trust in it completely for no reason, and even creates a mountain of evidence for us to believe that he doesn't exist. For a god who apparently is so obsessed with getting attention that he would punish unbelievers with eternal torment, he sure gives us a lot of reasons to not believe in him.

Answer me this one question, and no dodging this time. Why is God hiding? Why, after years of honest belief and seeking after God, did he not even once answer my prayers? Why did he choose to ignore me when I said that my faith was being pushed beyond its limits?

God knows what you think. And God knows if you will change your mind. And God knows the truth concerning every aspect about you and if you will eventually come to Christ. That is what Omniscience is all about. God knows you better than you know yourself. You will have to tell me exactly what you once believed. The only prayer that God will definitely hear from an unsaved individual is the prayer asking for God's forgiveness and acknowledging Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. All other prayers from unsaved individuals maybe answered but only at God's own discretion. 

God has answered my prayers and I am very sure that God has protected me on more than one occasion. My father has informed me that on several occasions as a young man God actually saved his life, and I know this to be true because of what happened to me.

I have no idea what you may have prayed for. God is not the jinni of some lamp where you get whatever you wish for. So I really have to say that you need to be more specific and then I will try to see if I can help you.

LittleNipper

Quote from: josephpalazzo on March 13, 2016, 11:59:11 AM
YOU KNOW, WE DON'T KNOW...Such arrogance deserves all the mud throwing...
YOU say there is no GOD! The arrogance is in your court and not mine. You need to prove there is some other way biological life can originate or God is the only logical explanation. Now there are Christian scientists and non-believers who are scientists. Scientists in general are pretty smart individuals; however, if they cannot spontaneously produce some real living thing and not simply the building blocks of living things, then the likelihood that "mother nature" could do it by chance is rather an impossibility.

Give the parts of 5000 watches to 5000 monkeys and I would submit that the likelihood that even one of them would reassemble a watch, much less a watch that works is an absolute impossibility.

Baruch

Psst ... atheists have a non-god of the non-gaps ... and shouldn't throw stones.  But you are arrogant also ... it is part of being human ... chutzpah.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Mr.Obvious

#219
Quote from: LittleNipper on March 13, 2016, 04:41:31 PM
God has answered my prayers and I am very sure that God has protected me on more than one occasion. My father has informed me that on several occasions as a young man God actually saved his life, and I know this to be true because of what happened to me.

See, if you were right about this, than this supposed omniscient, omnipotent creator of the universe is also the one who put you in a situation in which you needed to be protected. This God would also be the one who endangered your father's life. That's what you get with the creation being a controlled environment by an omnipotent and omniscient creator of everything.
This might not be a perfect analogy, but if Jigsaw the fictional serial killer were to trap you in a room and put you in life-and-limb-threatening situations only to let you go at the end, would you call that saving you? And even if you did, would you call the entire thing praise-worthy?

This has been brought to you by myself and others several times now. Do you perhaps not understand the implications of an omniscient, omnipotent creator of everything? Everything, including every bad thing that happens, would then be exactly how he chose it to be in advance of the creation. With every conceivable reality that he could have chosen to create with his omnipotence, and knowing in advance what would happen in each possible one with his omniscience, he chose to create his creation the way he did.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

facebook164


Quote from: Baruch on March 13, 2016, 12:57:27 PM
I don't explain the world.  I am not a brainiac, though I play at one.  There is here and now ... and I basically don't need to know much more than that, as a biological entity.  Food and sex and sleep and we are done here.

How do you explain that you are unconsciously following the philosophy of Plato?  That there are things out there (such as the past or future) and we can intuit with our special Greek organs what is objectively real (timelessly real).

The electron didn't exist (as an idea) until people thought it up (as an idea).  But most people think that their ideas refer to something real outside themselves.  Same thing with atoms.  There is a something involved with a something at very tiny scales ... but we are the species that names all things ... and we try to force fit factual reality to our ideas (this is dysfunctional, but most people are).  Of course one should fit one's idea to factual reality.  In the human sphere ... we change our environment radically.  As any dead Greek philosopher could tell you .. the relationship between ideas and factual reality is a dialectic.  Our ideas change who we are, and who we are changes factual reality, which then drives further changes in ideas.

Simple example ... we can have the idea that the world is flat, or that the world is round.  Until Magellan circumnavigated the world (not Columbus, he went only part way, and that could be done on a flat world) there were few practical reason to know if the world was a sphere or not.  For me, personally, I still don't need to know that (other than to win in a quiz show), since I have never and probably never will go around the world.  For me, the idea that the world is flat or the world is round, work the same in practical terms.

Once upon a time, we had a very powerful idea, that the world is flat.  In modern times we have replaced that with another equally powerful idea, that the world is round.  People have moved from one ideology (study of ideas) to another.  And that is the basis for most people's knowledge ... they accept the dogma of the society they live in.  That is what is relevant, not what pre-humans might have experienced.  The primary study of humans is humanity ... not what made up ideas, partially constrained by measurement (which is also an idea) will describe a micro-world that most of us can't see.  There are electron microscopes that let you see individual atoms (sort of) and the electron clouds of electrons providing the binding of molecules.  Really amazing ... but confirmation bias can't be escaped.  Science works because it is a game, like chess, with definite rules on how the confirmation bias evolves over time.  And games don't spontaneously appear from the primordial swamp ... they are created by ideas in human brains.  Science is a very good game, and has many more practical uses than chess ... but it only exists because monkey people and their monkey shines.

And as usual just s big dodge.

No, i do not follow Plato. I do not think there is a world of ideas out there of where we are the shadows. I believe the other way around: what we experience as ideas are the shadows of the real world.

And no, we do not force fit facts to our ideas, we have a fantastic tool , science , that shape our ideas from the facts.

And no, there was never, in historical time, a common hypotesis that the earth was flat. Anyone, on the savanna or the sea, sees that mountains dissapears under the horizon.
The error Columbus made was to undersestimate the circumference.


And you didnt explain how your worldview are compatible with the universe before there was humans..,

josephpalazzo

Quote from: LittleNipper on March 13, 2016, 04:55:38 PM
YOU say there is no GOD!

This is proof you don't understand atheism.


Here's what atheism says: there is a lack of evidence that God exists.  If you want to attack atheists, the only way to go about this is to show there is an abundance of empirical, observable, undisputed evidence that God exists. Anything else you throw at atheists will miss the mark.  For far, you get an F.

sdelsolray

Quote from: Baruch on March 13, 2016, 05:04:30 PM
Psst ... atheists have a non-god of the non-gaps ... and shouldn't throw stones.  But you are arrogant also ... it is part of being human ... chutzpah.

Quote from: LittleNipper on March 13, 2016, 04:55:38 PM
YOU say there is no GOD! The arrogance is in your court and not mine. You need to prove there is some other way biological life can originate or God is the only logical explanation. Now there are Christian scientists and non-believers who are scientists. Scientists in general are pretty smart individuals; however, if they cannot spontaneously produce some real living thing and not simply the building blocks of living things, then the likelihood that "mother nature" could do it by chance is rather an impossibility.

Give the parts of 5000 watches to 5000 monkeys and I would submit that the likelihood that even one of them would reassemble a watch, much less a watch that works is an absolute impossibility.

This one has the burden of proof/persuasion backwards.  He demands from others that which he is responsible for providing.  Lazy is as lazy does.

LittleNipper

Quote from: Mr.Obvious on March 13, 2016, 05:12:46 PM
See, if you were right about this, than this supposed omniscient, omnipotent creator of the universe is also the one who put you in a situation in which you needed to be protected. This God would also be the one who endangered your father's life. That's what you get with the creation being a controlled environment by an omnipotent and omniscient creator of everything.
This might not be a perfect analogy, but if Jigsaw the fictional serial killer were to trap you in a room and put you in life-and-limb-threatening situations only to let you go at the end, would you call that saving you? And even if you did, would you call the entire thing praise-worthy?

This has been brought to you by myself and others several times now. Do you perhaps not understand the implications of an omniscient, omnipotent creator of everything? Everything, including every bad thing that happens, would then be exactly how he chose it to be in advance of the creation. With every conceivable reality that he could have chosen to create with his omnipotence, and knowing in advance what would happen in each possible one with his omniscience, he chose to create his creation the way he did.

You have entirely skipped the simple fact that we now live with sin in a sinful world. Satan doesn't like Christians anymore than atheists do. And so he motivates his servants to be selfish, cruel, spoiled, liars, cheaters, sexual deviants, connivers and worse. However, God is working to illustrate to Christians that even with such people around, it is possible to live for God. And even when Christians make mistakes, He is willing to forgive and get the Christian back on track. Christians do not live here forever and that is due to the wages of sin; however, Christians will one day go to be with God and live without any influence of sin. This is what I look forward to. Atheists just have old age to look forward to at best. If you're twenty and healthy, and don't ruin your body through drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, drug addiction, and smoking habits, you may (given you don't have some accident of any consequence) have about 40 more years and then you will be old. Time will fly by --- especially once you get out of school and then it will run from Christmas to Christmas at an ever increasing clip.

Blackleaf

Quote from: LittleNipper on March 13, 2016, 04:41:31 PM
God knows what you think. ((And?)) And God knows if you will change your mind. ((Which proves that... Wait. What does it prove?)) And God knows the truth concerning every aspect about you and if you will eventually come to Christ. ((What does God's foreknowledge have to do with him hiding himself?)) That is what Omniscience is all about. ((Thank you, Nipper. I totally needed you to define omniscience to me. My 24 years as a devout Christian have obviously left me with little insight in such matters.)) God knows you better than you know yourself. ((This just makes him an even bigger asshole, because he knew exactly what it would have taken to save my faith, yet he chose not to do it.)) You will have to tell me exactly what you once believed. ((http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=9700.0)) The only prayer that God will definitely hear from an unsaved individual is the prayer asking for God's forgiveness and acknowledging Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. ((Excuse me? Didn't you just say that God is omniscient? If so, he hears my every prayer. But regardless, you're assuming that I wasn't saved when i prayed. I was as devout a Christian as they came, and God ignored my every prayer.)) All other prayers from unsaved individuals maybe answered but only at God's own discretion. ((Again, my prayers were done before losing my faith. After losing it, I didn't bother.)) 

God has answered my prayers and I am very sure that God has protected me on more than one occasion. ((Two paragraphs in, and you still haven't answered my question.)) My father has informed me that on several occasions as a young man God actually saved his life, and I know this to be true because of what happened to me. ((That's what I used to think too. But unlike you, I wasn't the type who'd simply regurgitate what my pastors and teachers told me to believe. I investigated. I looked for answers because I wasn't afraid of being wrong. In fact, I was certain that the deeper I dug into the truth, the stronger my faith would become. That, obviously, wasn't the case.))

I have no idea what you may have prayed for. ((I asked for God to show that he was listening. I asked him to give me a sign. I asked him to cure me of my depression. Are these requests too big for God?)) God is not the jinni of some lamp where you get whatever you wish for. ((Oh look. Another cliche I've totally haven't heard a million times before.)) So I really have to say that you need to be more specific and then I will try to see if I can help you. ((You can start by answering my question. That question, once again, is this: Why is God hiding?))

The bolded words are my responses.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--