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Ahimsa
Guest
So God is the “source” of nothingness?
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edwest2
Guest
The Church has taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ for 2,000 years. It is a matter of trust and belief. Just as we trust our teachers to give us reliable information that will help us later in life, we either trust the truth as the Church presents it or we don’t. It is normal to question but when an answer is given, we decide what to do with that answer. Trust it because we believe the person who told it to us is telling us the truth - or not trust the source of the information.
God bless,
Ed
God bless,
Ed
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levinas12
Guest
God is the source of “beings”. “Nothingness” is not a being.
This is not analogous to the null set (which could be counted along with the other sets). It is not the case that there are beings and, additionally, another thing called “nothingness”.
You seem to be reifying “nothingness”.
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Ahimsa
Guest
So, God is not the source of “nothingness”?
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Lui
Guest
To quote Socrates; “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing”.Don’t you know whether you are thinking? Is there some doubt about it?
Of course, just like it is an assumption that any faith is the truth.
Many Catholics believe their religion is a fact but so do many Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists etc. Depending on where you are born by chance and your upbringing is what determines what you believe is the truth or were you born as a Jew or Muslim just to find out your religion is a lie while catholicism is the truth?. If you happen to be born in a devoted Hindu family in Bombay, you will most likely be a Hindu all your life. If you are born in a devoted Catholic family in Arkansas, you will most likely have Catholic beliefs.
Everyone thinks his religion is a fact which is why there have been wars about this ever since mankind exists.
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levinas12
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I think the answer is “yes” … but, and I hesitate to say this, there are various philosophical meanings attached to “nothingness” … so if we define “nothingness” in the scholastic medieval sense, as “nihil” in the classical sense of the word, then, yes, God is not the source of “nothingness” … however, Heidegger, for example, has used phrases such as “the nothing nothings” (the German probably sounds more profound) … this is a different sense of “nothingness” … in fact, for Heidegger, “being” (Sein) or the “world” or the event of “manifestation” (ereignis) are “no-things”, i.e., not entities, not substances, not things, not beings (seinde) … this opens up an entirely different discussion about God … because God Himself is “no-thing”, not a res, a thing, not a being (over against other beings) …
I apologize for this digression …
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Ahimsa
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Is God a “nihil”?
Or are there different “types” of “no-thing-ness”, with God being one type of “no-thing” and “nothingness” being another type of “no-thing”?
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
ahisma
Well, that’s assuming that the Bang originated from a true singularity, “infinitely” small (if that’s possible). Another possible version of the Bang is that the Bang orignated not from some infinitely small point, but from the actions of a previous universe, instead. In such a scenario, some sort of laws existed prior to the Bang, and the Big Bang that we know about, is simply one Bang in a potentially endless series of Bangs.
Now you are talking science fiction. If you stick with what is known, the Big Bang favors the Genesis account of Creation, not an endless series of universes.
**Actually, both Einstein and you could be right. Einstein could be right, in the sense that multiple universes have always existed; and you could be right in that our universe had a distinct beginning. **
Actually, science does not favor Einstein’s preference, but certainly says the universe had a distinct beginning. Nor did Einstein ever hold that universes could be born out of each other. That’s a later preference of people who could believe in anything … anything but God!
Well, that’s assuming that the Bang originated from a true singularity, “infinitely” small (if that’s possible). Another possible version of the Bang is that the Bang orignated not from some infinitely small point, but from the actions of a previous universe, instead. In such a scenario, some sort of laws existed prior to the Bang, and the Big Bang that we know about, is simply one Bang in a potentially endless series of Bangs.
Now you are talking science fiction. If you stick with what is known, the Big Bang favors the Genesis account of Creation, not an endless series of universes.
**Actually, both Einstein and you could be right. Einstein could be right, in the sense that multiple universes have always existed; and you could be right in that our universe had a distinct beginning. **
Actually, science does not favor Einstein’s preference, but certainly says the universe had a distinct beginning. Nor did Einstein ever hold that universes could be born out of each other. That’s a later preference of people who could believe in anything … anything but God!
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levinas12
Guest
To say that God is a “nihil” might be rhetorically too confusing for most people.
But “nothingness” does have various senses in the history of philosophy.
And so, God is a “no-thing” … because He is not simply one object among others, one being over against another being … He is not a member of a larger set …Cantor may have had an inkling of this …
God is so totally “outside” of “beings” that He can assume human nature without obliterating or cancelling human nature (Jesus) - this is the ultimate Hegelian aufhebung.
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StrawberryJam
Guest
You or StAnastasia can tell us what non metaphysical knowledge this deity brought to us.Strawberry
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It was what our primitive ancestors understood about the natural world. Nothing more. **
And how do you know this “nothing more.” You certainly did not learn it from your primitive ancestors.
Exactly how old are you?
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tonyrey
Guest
If you know nothing you cannot know that you know nothing!Don’t you know whether you are thinking? Is there some doubt about it?
Your argument is a two-edged sword. In other words it gets you precisely nowhere - which is appropriate if you know nothing!
There have also been wars because people believe their belief that religion is false is a fact…
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Lui
Guest
Glad to see how you try to outsmart Socrates:thumbsup:
I’m only modest, not like certain religious people who think they know it all when actually they know squat.
Who says it gets me nowhere? Just because I’m not convinced there is a God and consider the Bible as a book of stories written by a bunch of unknown authors, it gets me nowhere?Your argument is a two-edged sword. In other words it gets you precisely nowhere - which is appropriate if you know nothing!
I don’t believe in fairies either but I still manage to live my life.
I’m pretty convinced that no one knows if their religion is a fact. They can insist all they want but at the end of the day all religions can be pure wishful thinking.
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Lui
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Your statement HAS no truth.
Well, at least I don’t think the"reward" of my belief will send me to Heaven. I’m modest enough not to think I’m better than others who will go to Hell because they’re not as morally correct as I am. How modest are you since you seem to like to pick an argument with anybody who doesn’t share your opinion?
On what else should I base it?
Did I say fairy tales or are those your words
Why do I need to prove that I consider the Bible as a book of stories written by men(my words btw)? I never claimed the Bible IS wrong so I don’t have to prove anything.Again, fairy tales are your words. I never said it is a fact that religion is wrong. I said the opposite: it is not a fact that religion is right. Ok, tell me who knows that religion is a fact if you don’t agree. If it was a fact it wouldn’t be called faith and the person who can prove it’s 100% an undeniable fact would win the Noble prize. I’ve never seen that happen. Those who claim that Christianity is a 100% proven undeniable fact are deluding themselves.
Why does it lead to nowhere if a person doesn’t believe in any religions? I still don’t get it. If I don’t believe in fairies(as I mentioned), Big Foot, the monster of Loch Ness, Aliens, Santa Claus it all leads to nowhere? Explain something if you have the urge to make that claim.
You just can’t seem to accept the beliefs of other people. I merely said I have an agnostic belief. Why do you need to argue about my belief?
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SGWessells
Guest
Yes, but he didn’t change his mind because God gave him a revelation, or he understood that Genesis was allegorical. He looked at Edwin Hubble’s scientific data on a visit to California and realized he was mistaken about an eternal universe. That’s how science works: by accepting whatever the observed and confirmed evidence tells us no matter how it goes against our preconceived and beloved notions. Revealed religion, on the other hand, says you may freely discuss subject X, as long as you keep believing dogmas Y and Z regardless. That is a recipe for ignorance.
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SGWessells
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I was reading this morning that the expansion rate of the universe had been a tiny fraction greater than 1014, it would have flown apart and no galaxies would have formed. But how do we know that didn’t happen? Not because God told us in a revelation, or his church taught, that galaxies had formed. We know this because galaxies have been observed and have to be explained. But what makes people think God ordered that the expansion rate be just the precise speed to produce galaxies? Because it did produce galaxies, therefore God must have intended it to. But we arbitrarily define God so that conclusion seems inevitable. But why couldn’t God have created a set of laws and sat back to see what happens? Why couldn’t he have tried 1020 and 109 expansion rates, seen that they didn’t work, and said, “let’s try 1014 and see what happens”? If you’re thinking, “God isn’t like that,” why not? Because we have defined him not to be like that. But it is our definition that makes galaxies the intended results of God’s plan, not just the inevitable result of physical laws that happened to operate one way rather than another.
The reason any universe would exist is that all the physical forces that produced it were fine-tuned to produce that universe rather than another. Suppose that galaxies had never formed, and that intelligent life evolved in a universe without galaxies, and defined God as we do. Wouldn’t they have marveled at the incredibly fine-tuned design of their universe, which proved God’s love and wisdom? Wouldn’t they have said, “suppose the universe had expanded a tiny fraction slower; then hydrogen and helium would have congealed into huge burning gas balls and life would have been impossible”?
Whatever conditions make a universe of any kind must be fine-tuned to make that universe; otherwise, they would have made some other universe. The way we discover those fine-tunings is by looking at the universe the* way it is*. What makes stars form? How do stars produce the heavier elements necessary for life as we know it? How do they fling them into space? We don’t answer these questions by asking how God did it, because God doesn’t tell us. “Let there be light” doesn’t tell us that the expansion rate of the universe is just right to produce galaxies, or that atomic collisions within superheated stars form carbon and other elements, or that supernovae scatter them into space where they can condense into planets, or that gravity curves spacetime so that light bends near a sufficiently massive objest. It tells us nothing about how the universe is
made. The only reason people think God made it is that we define God to be the sort of being who would have made it. But for all we know, God may well have been as amazed as we are by quantum mechanics.
Since the universe depends on the definition of God and not vice-versa, that definition is totally arbitrary. No observable constants or experiments prove that God’s wisdom is unsearchable and his ways past finding out (although somehow we know they are perfect despite that incomprehensibility). We just define God that way rather than another way and everything follows. Since God comes before the universe, nothing in the universe proves God’s wisdom or power unless we define God beforehand as the sort of being who would have created the universe as we observe it to be.
Medieval theologians marvelled at the wisdom and intelligence of God who made a cosmos so perfectly designed that the stars and planets revolved in their crystalline spheres around the earth in the center in pefect circles, while above them the sons of God sang in their joy. The point is that all the details were wrong, yet God still got credited for their intelligent design, because that’s how God was defined: as the intelligent designer of *any *universe we happened to discover. No matter what physical order we postulate, God must have designed it because we define him from the start as the only source of order. Therefore the medieval and the modern universe both exemplify God’s divine wisdom and ordered design even though the details are totally different and one of them is completely wrong. But both prove God’s wisdom because we define God as the sort of being who creates order with a foreseen and intended purpose. Any ordered arrangement proves God’s wisdom because we built the conclusion into the premises. The fine-tuning argument is thus one gigantic circular fallacy.
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Ahimsa
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The universe could be both eternal and incorporative of a Big Bang.
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SGWessells
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This thread is moving so fast, it’s hard to keep up.
Buffalo wrote: " the faith of the atheist is placed in chance, accidents and the like."
First of all, read some atheist literature before proclaiming what they believe. Second, atheists are no more unanimous than Christians in their worldviews. Third, nobody can “have faith in” chance and accident because they are unpredictable. If anything can happen, you can’t have faith that something particular will, or has. You may think atheists are stupid, but none I have read are that stupid. Fourth, being purposeless and being accidental are two different things, and do not logically entail one another, yet many on this thread seem to think that they do. Many scientific processes are exquisitely ordered and rigidly maintained by measurable constants (which, since they are proved, do not require faith, as even the Bible says (1 Cor. 13:9-12, Heb. 11:1). Yet for all their ordered precision, there is no evidence that they were intended to be as they are by some supernatural power. If atheists have faith in anything, it is believing as far as demonstrable evidence proves, and no farther, because doing so produces experienced results, such as the computers we are all using. Try turning on your computer by the power of prayer and see how long you have to wait.
Buffalo wrote: " the faith of the atheist is placed in chance, accidents and the like."
First of all, read some atheist literature before proclaiming what they believe. Second, atheists are no more unanimous than Christians in their worldviews. Third, nobody can “have faith in” chance and accident because they are unpredictable. If anything can happen, you can’t have faith that something particular will, or has. You may think atheists are stupid, but none I have read are that stupid. Fourth, being purposeless and being accidental are two different things, and do not logically entail one another, yet many on this thread seem to think that they do. Many scientific processes are exquisitely ordered and rigidly maintained by measurable constants (which, since they are proved, do not require faith, as even the Bible says (1 Cor. 13:9-12, Heb. 11:1). Yet for all their ordered precision, there is no evidence that they were intended to be as they are by some supernatural power. If atheists have faith in anything, it is believing as far as demonstrable evidence proves, and no farther, because doing so produces experienced results, such as the computers we are all using. Try turning on your computer by the power of prayer and see how long you have to wait.
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SGWessells
Guest
Buffalo wrote: “The atheists do have a god.”
What, a God who is not personal, neither creates nor orders nor supervises the universe (since it all happens by chance and accident), has no feelings about anything, issues no commandments, makes no judgments, gives no revelation, ordains no ritual or priesthood? What’s the difference between that “god” and nothing at all? If such a nonentity can be a god, anything can be a god; and if anything is a god, then “god” becomes merely a synonym for “something.” So what your statement amounts to is, “atheists believe something.” Yes, they all admit that. So what? You’re trying to manufacture a contradiction out of thin air.
What, a God who is not personal, neither creates nor orders nor supervises the universe (since it all happens by chance and accident), has no feelings about anything, issues no commandments, makes no judgments, gives no revelation, ordains no ritual or priesthood? What’s the difference between that “god” and nothing at all? If such a nonentity can be a god, anything can be a god; and if anything is a god, then “god” becomes merely a synonym for “something.” So what your statement amounts to is, “atheists believe something.” Yes, they all admit that. So what? You’re trying to manufacture a contradiction out of thin air.
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