a little help?

[Malachy23]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
Your listing off scientific theories such as evolution, but you havnt made any argument as to why these are true.

Do honestly expect me to argue for the truth of the theory of evolution. If I say the world is round or that gravity keeps my on the ground do you expect me to present all the scientific evidence in favor of those theories. If you don’t believe in evolution you belong in a mental institute.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
Plenty of people are more than happy to believe God and evolution are both true, so you will need to prove why the two ideas are mutually exclusive.

Cognitive dissonance.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
You accuse me of being illogical and irrational, while I have been the only one actually bringing up logic and using it properly.

“You” haven’t.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
you hves made several statements that shows that you do not know how science works and that he does not know how logic works, and I have explained why, but instead of you rebutting and explaining why Im wrong, you instead just assert that I am being illogical.

I have explained why your/his/her (seriously stop plagiarising, especially plagiarising nonsense, as it just makes you look even stupider then you already are) use of logic was completely flawed. LOL. Spotless logically speaking? No, not even close I’m afraid.

1. God is uncreated - A completely illogical starting point undermining your whole argument of logic to begin with. It doesn’t matter if the steps you follow are logical in relation to the previous statement if what you’re talking about is completely illogical. All you have shown how do to is make logical steps from one premise to the other, not that your premise is logical. Big difference. Observe:
2. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is uncreated
3. All Uncreated things do not require a creator
   3)Therefore, The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not require a creator.

Does this mean The Flying Spaghetti Monster exists? According to your “logic” it does, which as a result means God does not exists!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
The burden of proof is currently on you. you made several assertions at the beginning, many of which I have rebutted with arguments. you have not responded with a single piece of evidence or any argumentation, you are merely responding by calling everything I say absurd.
maybe you have reason for it which id like to hear.
You have the burden here. I have presented arguments, you have yet to respond, but have merely dubbed my arguments absurd.

I have no burden. Your claiming God exists. The burden of proof is on you to prove he does exist, until then you have no argument. You rebuttals have been gibberish and I don’t need to respond to them because I already stated what I needed to, including evidence, in my origional thread. Until you put a proper argument there is no need for me to reply.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
I have to say that many of your fellow atheists would be rather ashamed to see the way you are arguing. you are basically doing all the things that most atheists accuse theists of doing - making assertions without evidence and calling other viewpoints ridiculous.

As I said, I said what I needed to in my origional thread. If you disagree with it, provide evidence for why it is wrong. You haven’t done so.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
Most importantly, I have shown that your conception of the existence of the universe is the same as our conception of the existence of God.

It’s anything but. It’s the absolute opposite because you’re not taking into account the problem of improbability. Whatever caused the universe to come into existence will be a very simple, very easy to understand ocurance, ie, very probable. God happening into existence is beyond the realm of possibility and science has already shown that there is no evidence whatsoever that God exists, and the universe as a matter of fact did not come into existence through an intelligent designer and is exactly as it should be without God

 

[Malachy23]

And to conclude:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
If our God cannot exist in the way we say, then neither can your universe. He has essentially shown that he believes in the same sorts of things we do about how something can exist, you just cannot bring himself to call it “God” and put yourswelf under the possibility of having to be accountable to God.

Oh shut up you utter fool. Can you muppets actually read or are your minds so utterly warped by your insane and delusional beliefs that every bit of information that comes into your minds is so utterly distorted by your delusions that you’re not capable of actually understanding what I or anyone who disagrees with you says? I think you’ve shown with your posts this is true.

Now, I’ve done my best to clarify my position but I’m sure the christian posse will completely distort it. You lot really are a joke and I love that you’ve proved Richard Dawkins quote oh so right. “Darwin chased God out of his old haunts in biology, and he scurried for safety down the rabbit hole of physics. The laws and constants of the universe, we were told, are too good to be true: a set-up, carefully tuned to allow the eventual evolution of life. It needed a good physicist to show us the fallacy, and Victor Stenger lucidly does so. The faithful won’t change their minds, of course (that is what faith means) but Victor Stenger drives a pack of energetic ferrets down the last major bolt hole and God is running out of refuges in which to hide. I learned an enormous amount from this splendid book.”

 

[Lazerlike42]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
first of all it seems to be that your are picking up on the points that werent part of the main discussion and making them out to be the main point! u may or may not meh!

That doesn’t mean anything. I was responding to responses from my origional post so how could I be picking up on points that weren’t part of the main discussion if those points weren’t brought up by someone else, ie, you!

Actually, I was asserting that the things he listed in his most recent post were things he had not mentioned or made central to his first.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
i dont think your rebutting the points i hav made but ill address ur points.

You’ve barely made any points and the ones you have posted I have replied to and shown why they are ridiculous. Go back to page 3 and you’ll see multiple examples. Generally you’ve just spouted a bunch of gibberish about faith and god being outside of nature which I already addressed in my origional thread. Then you hear the argument that God was never created, that he exists outside of time. Putting aside the fact that this makes no sense at all, since time is a measure of things, if God exists outside of it (nature) he becomes 100% impotent and unable to do anything at all let alone create a universe or answer prayers or grant everlasting life.

He has not responded to my points. He has called them ridiculous, but he has not given any reason to think they are ridiculous other than that he believes they are. What little argumentation he has given against my points, he has not addressed.

For example, I have explained that he can only disprove the God of Abraham if he disproves the concept that is meant by the term “the God of Abraham,” but he has refused to address the concept by calling it absurd. My argument is to say, ‘This is what we mean when we say God, now explain why the entity described in this concept does not exist.’ His response has been to declare that the concept that I have described to him is absurd. However, he has not given the reasons why this concept is absurd. His argument is, “your definition of God makes no sense.” What I am waiting for is an explanation of why that is the case.

Here, there is an argument that I will admit he mentioned before which I did not address, namely that if God is outside of time He is impotent and can do nothing. However, He gives no evidence for this. It is merely an assertion. We believe God is outside of time but He can reach in to time, because time is His creation. He may consider this ridiculous, but if he cannot provide a good argument for why this is ridiculous, then
he ought to reconsider his position because it is obviously not very strong.

He also says the same of God being outside of nature. However, this argument only works if one is to presume either 1) nature is all that exists or 2) nature cannot interact with supernature. Theists would consider nature and supernature to be two subsets of existence, and so neither of these presumptions apply. For them to, it would have to be proven that this is impossible.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
you say that I have not responded to the ‘fact’ that God is improbable. However this is an assertion that requires evidence. You havnt provided any evidence for this btu im hoping that youy will.

I have, multiple times, including in my origional thread. Postulating God as the explanation for the creation of the universe explains nothing because you’re left with answering the even bigger question of what created God. God does not explain anything because it regress the problem, infinitely so. If you argue that something complicated like a Universe or life needs something even more complicated to bring it into existence then your argument holds that God’s existence can only be explained by something even more complicated then he bringing him into existence. And then that more complicated God who created your God would have to be explained by an even more complicated God and that one would have to be…and you see where I’m going. By using God as an explanation for creation you get this infinite regress of ever more complicated God’s creating lesser god’s for all time before time even began, which of course makes no sense whatsoever. The basic principle is human beings are far too complicated to have ever just happened into existence. We’re simply far too complicated to happen into existence through chance. Theists then turn to God as the explanation but you fail to realise that God would have to be vastly more improbable then we humans (infinitely more so in the case of the Judeo-Christian Islamic God) so if we couldn’t just happen into existence by chance (as we are far too improbable) then sure as hell God could never just happen into existence (be an uncreated entity) as he would be infinitely more improbable then we are. God is way, way, way too improbable to have ever happened into existence. The laws of probability simply don’t allow it.

This is the entire point, really. I would rather deal with this one point than all the rest, because it is the only thing that matters. He believes that God cannot exist, because of infinite regressions. He breaks this down to meaning that God would have to exist by chance. However, this is not how it is. God does not exist by chance - He exists by necessity.

Over 800 years ago, Thomas Aquinas stated this rather succinctly:

We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence — which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.

Note especially the last line, my emphasis added: “This all men speak of as God.” Aquinas, in that argument, was not proving the existence of the Judeo-Christian God, or of any God, really. He only brings God into the equation at the very end. His point in that argument is to show that, since everything comes into existence because of something else, there must be something that dose not need other things to bring it into existence, otherwise we would have a series of infinte regressions, looking for something else to create the creator and something else to create that and so on and so on.

His point is that something has to exist which needs no creator. Now atheists like to say this thing is the universe, and theists like to say this thing is God. My point is very, very simple: both us and our atheist friend believe that it is possible for something to exist without a creator. He believes the universe can. We believe God can. If he believes the universe is uncreated, then he cannot say that calling something uncreated is absurd, because he has already acknowledged that it is possible, indeed necessary, for something to exist without a creator. If, then, he wants to argue against God, he must do it on other grounds.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
The only thing as far as i can see is an argument about the energy in the universe which you say proves that God is not necessary,

I said the energy of the universe is ZERO which eliminates the argument that God was necessary for the creation of matter. That is simply a matter of fact.

Please go back and read the extensive argument I have given on this point. You are mixing apples and oranges. The total energy of the universe has a mathematical value of zero, but it nevertheless exists. If it did not exist, we could not measure it to see that it is zero. It is zero because there are equal amounts of positive energy as negative energy. Nevertheless, there is energy.

As an aside, I must say that this idea actually sounds an awful lot like several Eastern religions.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
but that does not have anything to do with whether or not He is probable or not. even with that said we have rebutted this argument of and you have not said one peep about it

That shows he wasn’t responsible for the creation of the universe. The problem of improbability is what outlined above. Two different but equally devastating facts. Your christians posse’s group haven’t even come close to putting up a decent rebuttal. Besides, the entire scientific community has already examined these principles and they has survived so forgive but you lot aren’t going to disprove them.

It does not show that God was no responsible. It shows, at most (and I would question this), that He was not necessary. You were responding to a Christian argument that God is *necessary *because otherwise there would be no way for anything to exist. The energy argument claims to show that things could come into existence without God - it does not show they had to. You are making assertions beyond what the argument itself claims to prove - indeed beyond what you first introduced the argument to prove.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
your second point then says that all the evidence we have tells us there is no God, but again this is another assertion for which you have provided no evidence.

Yes I have. I have cited multiple scientific source and evidence that has survived rigorous scientific inquiry.

You have cited the names of various scientific theories/laws. You have not made any connection as to why the truth of these theories rules out the existence of God, especially given that most of the scientists who work with them do not believe they do, and Christians have no problem accepting thjem to be true while also accepting the existence of God.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
Your listing off scientific theories such as evolution, but you havnt made any argument as to why these are true.

Do honestly expect me to argue for the truth of the theory of evolution. If I say the world is round or that gravity keeps my on the ground do you expect me to present all the scientific evidence in favor of those theories. If you don’t believe in evolution you belong in a mental institute

I never denied evolution. I merely gave an example. I apologize for having failed to explain myself well enough before. My point was that you cited evolution as one of your pieces of evidence, but you didn’t show why if evolution is true, theism is false. This gets to the next objection, that “cognitive dissonance” makes the two ideas mutually exclusive. Cognitive dissonance is merely the idea that two ideas seem to contradict in the minds of people. Something as simple as an adult crying and saying he is happy at the same time is cognitive dissonance to a 4 year old, but that doesn’t mean that both things are not true, nor does it mean that it even seems dissonant in any way to other adults who understand better what is going on.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
You accuse me of being illogical and irrational, while I have been the only one actually bringing up logic and using it properly.

“You” haven’t.

If you are going to make this assertion, please provide evidence. I have explained how logic works, what it is, and have even offered to provide quotations from university textbooks about logic. You, on the other hand, have made demonstrably erroneous statements about logic as well as the scientific method and have given me good reason to believe that you know little about either. All I am asking for is real evidence, instead of assertions.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
you hves made several statements that shows that you do not know how science works and that he does not know how logic works, and I have explained why, but instead of you rebutting and explaining why Im wrong, you instead just assert that I am being illogical.

I have explained why your/his/her (seriously stop plagiarising, especially plagiarising nonsense, as it just makes you look even stupider then you already are) use of logic was completely flawed. LOL. Spotless logically speaking? No, not even close I’m afraid.

Again, my logic has been spotless. You are equating what makes sense to you with what is logical. The logic I have presented and claimed as logic could be presented to any professor of logic in any university and be recognized as “spotless,” as it were. Please read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness before responding on this matter again.

1. God is uncreated - A completely illogical starting point undermining your whole argument of logic to begin with. It doesn’t matter if the steps you follow are logical in relation to the previous statement if what you’re talking about is completely illogical. All you have shown how do to is make logical steps from one premise to the other, not that your premise is logical. Big difference. Observe:

1. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is uncreated
2. All Uncreated things do not require a creator
   3)Therefore, The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not require a creator.

Does this mean The Flying Spaghetti Monster exists? According to your “logic” it does, which as a result means God does not exists!

Please read the article on soundness. You present a perfectly valid argument. Where we disagree with each other is our premises. Premise 2 is certainly true, however, premise 1 I consider false. However, I cannot simply assert it is false, I must prove that it is. No premise can ever be illogical. If you wish to disagree with the premise that God is uncreated, you may, but you cannot simply assert that it makes no sense, you must address it. Of course, this topic has been addressed extensively above.

I will not attempt to prove that premise 1 is false because I do not believe you really believe in the FSM. If you do, I would be happy to prove that premise 1 is false.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
The burden of proof is currently on you. you made several assertions at the beginning, many of which I have rebutted with arguments. you have not responded with a single piece of evidence or any argumentation, you are merely responding by calling everything I say absurd.
maybe you have reason for it which id like to hear.
You have the burden here. I have presented arguments, you have yet to respond, but have merely dubbed my arguments absurd.

I have no burden. Your claiming God exists. The burden of proof is on you to prove he does exist, until then you have no argument. You rebuttals have been gibberish and I don’t need to respond to them because I already stated what I needed to, including evidence, in my origional thread. Until you put a proper argument there is no need for me to reply.

I will not address who the burden is on in terms of proving God’s existence or not, because that is a meaningless and unhelpful discussion. This is not some debate. I am not trying to “win.” If I were, I would argue this point, but what I really care about is you.

Please go back and read my rebuttals slowly, paying attention. My rebuttals cover your primary points in your first piece, and calling them gibberish does not deal with them. The fact is you presented evidence, I responded to it with arguments, and you responded to that by calling it gibberish - which is merely an assertion without evidence to this point.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
I have to say that many of your fellow atheists would be rather ashamed to see the way you are arguing. you are basically doing all the things that most atheists accuse theists of doing - making assertions without evidence and calling other viewpoints ridiculous.

As I said, I said what I needed to in my origional thread. If you disagree with it, provide evidence for why it is wrong. You haven’t done so.

Please read my arguments again. I have presented many.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulainn
Most importantly, I have shown that your conception of the existence of the universe is the same as our conception of the existence of God.

It’s anything but. It’s the absolute opposite because you’re not taking into account the problem of improbability. Whatever caused the universe to come into existence will be a very simple, very easy to understand ocurance, ie, very probable. God happening into existence is beyond the realm of possibility and science has already shown that there is no evidence whatsoever that God exists, and the universe as a matter of fact did not come into existence through an intelligent designer and is exactly as it should be without God

This has been dealt with above extensively. No theist claims God “happened” into existence.

The problem here is that you are acknowledging that the universe came into existence, and acknowledging that something “caused” it to. You are saying that what caused it to was very probable. That’s fine, but what made that come into existence? And what made the thing that made that come into existence itself come into existence? You are caught in the same boat as me: you are arguing that something caused the universe to exist, but cannot stop the infinte regression that occurs once you take that first step. The theist’s solution is to simply be logical and say that something must exist which does not require a cause.

Your final point I will not take the time to quote because I have already addressed it in previous posts as well as in these last few.