Well then I would say science should have nothing to do with such a decision if believers and non-believers can produce reasonable “theories” for each of their sides. In that case it should fall back on theology and history. Unless you can determine which of these men are right and which wrong. You should as you say base it on its merits but you are not interested in learning about the sources that produce it’s merits, remember?
If a person has a history of and an authenticated fatal illness or physical affliction such as paralysis and the affliction is immediately cured at the scene of one of the locations of an appearance, aside from the doctors who are part of the investigative body for the church the personal doctors of the patient also verify the illness and cure. Now we are referring to immediate responses at the scene. If these are recognized as supernatural and even the doctors have said there can be no other possibility in such cases, are you that desperate to disbelieve, that you would claim the others that have been cured shortly there after are not of supernatural means?
The definition of the 1st law of thermodynamics: The first law of thermodynamics is called energy conservation. It states that the amount of energy in the universe remains constant (even though you insist that energy was never created) - no energy is now being created, or could be created, in this closed system, or destroyed. Again, energy cannot be created or destroyed in this closed system, we call the universe!!! Therefore it HAD to com from somewhere outside this closed system, that we call the universe!!!Good question! I think that most of the moral teachings of the Church are good for society, but there are some that I do not think are good (such as their teachings on contraceptives and homosexuality). I think there are some atheistic moral systems that would be better for society and some that would be worse. In the modern world, countries that have large numbers of atheists have some of the best living conditions. But this is at best circumstantial evidence, and the causal link is unclear. In the end though, I care more about which system of morality and religion is true, than which one makes me most comfortable.
It’s okay; I guess you could say that I am putting forward evolution (although I had no plans to discuss the issue until people brought it up). The evidence seems to be overwhelmingly in its favor. I’m completely with you that evolution does nothing to invalidate Catholicism, but I think we should care how things happened. Not only is it interesting to know what happened, but I think it’s especially important for Catholics who want to engage in apologetics to understand evolution. I think that if you argue for a position that contradicts science in one area, people will be less likely to trust your scientific knowledge in others.
How so?
I’m not sure exactly what you’re driving at. How do you define intelligence? Are you asking how humans became so intelligent when we evolved from relatively unintelligent animals, are you asking how animals evolved intelligence when the very first life forms had none, or are you merely asking how life came from non-life?
First, I want to make clear that evolution only refers to the development of life after it began. So even if it were impossible for life to develop without God, this would not be any evidence against evolution.
In specific answer to your question - your rejection of the First Cause could stand a little work.
I read everything you write, I just didn’t have much to say about it. There needs to be some reason to believe, because otherwise we could end up believing anything. I don’t need a formal scientific experiment, but there has to be something which makes me think that God probably exists.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m guessing you’re talking about my post on Kreeft’s argument. I thought my response was pretty solid, but I really would be interested in what you think is wrong with it.
This is a very skillful sidestep but sidestep nonetheless. We were not talking about time but matter. Matter is something that is counted like apples.
This is another divergence. This statement of yours is not in the least related to the causality I pointed out which you have just replied to. What I said was that an infinite set of caused-causes does not work. If you do not like caused-causes then substitute created-creators. And your statement has no bearing on this.
We are not saying it is possible for there to be no God and no universe at the same time. If there is nothing then there is nothing. But how do we know that it is impossible for there to be no universe and no God? Because we know for a fact that we exist and there is a universe. So the question is where did we come from? Did we just pop out from nothing or were caused into be being by something who does not need to be caused?
This is not about evidence. This is about logical reasoning. You are mixing your proofs again – quantum physics (physical) and philosophical proofs.
But this does not demonstrate that our intuition is wrong. It merely demonstrates that our experience of space and time is inadequate at explaining something. Not that our intuition is wrong. Besides what this proof uses is not intuition but rational argumentation. Just because we know something intuitively does not mean it defies reason.
Yes an infinite of caused-causes is impossible logically. We need to be specific here – an infinite regress of CAUSED-CAUSES that is causes dependent on something else itself.
No but in the case of causality it does. We cannot go to infinity with a cause that in turn keeps requiring another cause. You have first to show that this kind of causality if possible to infinity.
If the universe is a necessary being (meaning that everything else depends on it and without it nothing could have existed) then it will have been the creator of everything else. Do you believe this to be the case.
Forward in time perhaps but backwards? When you talk eternal that means no begginning and no end. Where did the first state come from? If the first state of the universe is all there was and caused the others to appear then by reasoning that first state is God. And another thing, that the first state of the universe gave way to the second does not necessarily mean that the first created the second or caused the second into existence.
But where did the unvierse come from? Was the universe always there? How did it come into being? Is there some property in the unvierse that indicates it could have caused every other thing into existence.
We may not be able to “break-it” up into a series of causes but the principle remain. The Frist cause argument **does not **reast on the assumption that we can **“neatly break”**everything up into a series of causes. The first cause argument rests on the fact that causality in nature exists but that causation has to stop somewhere. We may not be able to break it down precisely to the list minute but the priinciple is there.
But the whole point of the question is what caused or created time, space, matter and energy not whether causation laws apply. You get derailed in your reasoning because you keep mixing up philopshy and physics.
Depends on how you define reason for existence. If you mean cause or is dependent on something else for it’s being, then yes, Everything has a reason for it’s existence in the sense that there is nothing material that has created itself or has appeared from nothing.
If there is such a thing as perfection outside of God. But if we say that everything is imperfect so everything needs a reason for existence. Here again we have to define what we mean by perfection.
Yes, he did by simple reasoning. If a book was not with a because he has to get it from b, for the book to actually exist there must be an end in the line somewhere who has the book. Otherwise the book is just an illusion. Be we know the universe and us are not mere illusions so therefore Someone must have caused us into existence.
And how is an infinite series of caused-causes possible? How does that lead to anything being in existence without there being the necessary Being that does not need to be caused intot existence.?
But what has been shown by this proof is not the possibility of something existing but the NECESSITY of something existing or else nothing exists.
If you do understand that I have only been making arguments for Geneeral Creator then why bring up the attributes of the Catholic God at all? I already know that you think the possible of a Catholic god existing is incredibly small right from the word go that is why I have not argued for it at all in this thread. So let us stick to this statement so that we do not muddy the water.
I had that "twilight zone’ thought that you might have somehow morphed into him. I had to check and re-check that i actually got the poster right.I guess I didn’t express myself well. I was not trying to say that just because I presume something will be a waste of time, I don’t do it. I buckle up when I get in a car even though it will almost certainly be a waste of time. So even if it will probably be a waste, you have to take the potential importance of it into account. I grant that in the case of God, it’s an extremely important issue, and I’m not saying that it should be ignored. What I am saying is that even though I am by no means an expert in theology or in the arguments for God’s existence, I have a decent understanding. I do not assume that there is no God, but after spending hundreds of hours studying the arguments made by top theologians, I see no reason to think that the Catholic conception of God is more likely that many of the other conceivable Gods. I think that he may even be less likely than some gods that are conceivable but that no one believes in, for there is not substantial evidence in his favor, and there is some substantial evidence pointing towards his non-existence. Also, I don’t think that the number of people who believe in Christianity is substantial evidence, considering how many people believe other religions just as passionately, and how poor the reasons are for why most people believe. Even if I was convinced that I should dedicate every spare moment towards studying in an attempt to find what, if any, God actually existed, I think I would first have to get up to speed on all other religions and understand them at least as well as I understand Christianity. So in that situation, I would die before I had studied all other religions as well as I have examined Christianity. But I don’t think that spending my entire life doing that would be worthwhile. Since the gods people believe in are only an infinitesimally small portion of all the possible gods, I would almost certainly be wasting the life that I think is almost certainly the only one I will ever have. So I do want to know the truth, but I don’t see how logic should dictate that I spend more time researching Christianity. However, I do find religion fascinating to learn about, so I will continue to read and explore Christianity. But you would have to convince me that there was a significant probability that Christianity was true before it would be rational to sacrifice most of my life to study it in the type of depth that you think it needs to be studied in.
I have tried to learn about Christianity as honestly and fairly as I can. Now I understand that you argue that I should learn more, and I will, but I do not think I am logically compelled to in the way you suggest. How am I being selective to accept that your name is Tom but not accept your claim that God exists? I think it would be irrational to be equally willing to accept claims that are likely to be true as claims that are unlikely to be true (from a Bayesian standpoint).
No scientific theories can be proven false with 100% certainty, just like with religious theories. However, I think that the problem of evil provides as compelling of evidence to reject Catholic doctrine as the evidence we use to reject the majority of scientific claims. But the reason we see science as reliable is not that it can’t be disproven, it’s that it makes testable predictions and these predictions have been shown to be unbelievably accurate. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of religious predictions have been shown to be inaccurate.
I don’t know how it would be possible to show that prophecies are always released regardless of their accuracy. I know that you have faith in the Catholic Church, but for someone outside the Church, there is not the same level of trust. I think I have good reason to doubt the Church’s willingness to disclose harmful information given how many Church leaders brushed the abuse by priests under the rug and their secrecy surrounding the miracle that Mother Theresa supposedly performed.
How is prophecy to be interpreted? Obviously people want it to be interpreted in the way that matches what actually happened, but I don’t think there’s a consistent approach to prophecy that enables you to determine its meaning in advance. When prophecy makes a clear prediction, it succeeds no more than would happen by chance alone. For example, there have been countless religions that predicted the end of the world on a certain date based on prophecy. When the world doesn’t end, instead of saying they were wrong, they just say that they misinterpreted the prophecy.
Sorry, I couldn’t find it. Which link on the left is it under?
So what specifically do you recommend that I read? I’m willing to do some reading, just not an absurd amount, at least not at this point. Everyone seems to have different recommendations of what I should read. What’s the one thing that you think would be most likely to make me think twice about considering Christianity incredibly unlikely to be true?
Thanks, I’ll check them out.
I was not saying this claim would be equally reasonable to the claims made by Christianity. Circumstantial evidence is far better than no evidence at all. I was merely saying that there are also some very silly historical claims you couldn’t definitively refute, so this alone is not evidence that something is true.
I know that archeology has shown that many of the places in the Bible were real, despite the lack of evidence for some things such as the Exodus that we would expect to have evidence of. But I just don’t see how this makes it more likely that Christianity is true. If the Bible was the result of a myth growing out of the historical Jesus, of was completely made up, it seems likely that they would use real place names and that they would incorporate some actual historical events in order to make it seem believable. So how do you think archeology provides evidence for Christianity and which discoveries do you find most compelling?
Just like you, I think my current beliefs match the truth. It’s not that I don’t want to know the truth, it’s that I think I’ve already found it. By the way, someone of another religion could use this same argument against you.
I do not agree with your assumption that a lot of the ancient Jews remained Jews despite knowing that Judaism was false. We’ve discussed prophecy before, and I just don’t find it convincing. Since you seem to have a good understanding of it, I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on the Tyre and Egypt prophecies in Ezekiel. It seems like a clear case of unfulfilled prophecy (especially things like Egypt being completely desolate for 40 years). I have read several attempts at reconciling it, and I just didn’t find any of them compelling.
I think there are reasonable natural explanations.
I agree.
Well I’m open to exploring it. But even within one religion, everyone seems to think differently about what one should read in order to realize that their religion is true. No matter how much I read, someone could accuse me of not being interested in learning if I wouldn’t read the book they found convincing. As I said before, direct me to the source you think would be best and I’ll take a look. I’m not going to spend my entire life researching religion because I don’t want to waste the only life I will ever have, but I am willing to do some research (and I’m pretty sure I’ve already done more than most people ever will).
The doctors do not assess the possibility, merely whether they know of any natural explanation. There are occasionally people who recover from even severe illnesses for no known reason, regardless of whether religion was involved. So I think that given the millions of sick people who have been to Lourdes, some of them probably would recover either right before or right after their visit to Lourdes by chance alone.
But the final decision is made by the religious authorities.
I agree with you that the media is not perfectly reliable. But the reporting on Mother Theresa came from a number of different news agencies, so I think that somewhat lessens the chance of it being false. But if you don’t think I should accept news stories as probably being true, why do you think I should accept the Catholic Church’s accounts of events that happened? Many things that the media has said have been confirmed by my personal experience, and even if imperfect, it has established a reputation for generally being reliable. But the Catholic Church has not built up such a reputation with me. And when it comes to supernatural claims made by the Church, I have no way whatsoever to verify any of them. So by the standards with which you think I should reject the media’s claims about Mother Theresa as dubious, I should also reject the Catholic Church’s claims about miracles as dubious.