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987mk
Guest
Yet there is no evidence God exists.
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PRmerger
Guest
That shouldn’t be a problem for you, mk, eh?
You have asserted that you believe without evidence.
Isn’t that right?
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zyzz
Guest
What is wrong to grant me my miniscule wish, to show that THERE IS a God, and it is not just a figment of your imagination? If God does not care about me, why should I care about him? You keep on asserting that “God loves me more than I can imagine”, but he is unwilling to give me the evidence, that he exists? Is he too busy, or something?
After all he SUPPOSEDLY promised: “knock and the door will be opened”, and “ask and you shall receive”… I think that these are simply human wishes, and God never talked to anyone at all.
Why do you keep on telling me what the church says? Don’t you realize that the authority of church means nothing to a non-Catholic? Let me remind you: “only God has the authority to speak for God”. No one else, not the Pope, not the church, not the Magisterium… NO ONE. Keep this in mind if you wish to present an argument. Before you hit the “Submit” button, read your post again, and make sure that you do not refer to the church, to the Magisterium, the Bible, the “sacred” tradition.
If God cares about us at all, he must give us assurance of his existence. If he does not care, then… he should not be surprised if we do not care about him either. And in that case the only thing he can do is to PUNISH us with eternal torture for not believing for something that HE did not present the evidence. Hardly the epitome of “love”, let alone “justice”, much less “mercy”.
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zyzz
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Sure looks like that you confused me with 987mk. It was I who said that there are MANY things that I am willing to accept without direct, personal verification or evidence… but only those propositions, which are irrelevant.
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Peter_Plato
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Actually, he did - he became fully human, walked amongst human beings, taught and performed miracles. We humans had him nailed to a cross for his trouble.
I mean what greater evidence could God provide than personally becoming fully human? Sure beats some cheap magic trick.
Perhaps he is a tad concerned about what his second reception will be since we haven’t exactly improved our manners.
Judging by your excessive “rules for the behavior of God,” I can understand why he would prefer that you work out his existence or lack thereof for yourself so you can live with the consequences.
Does any of your predetermined “evidence” for what God would do to prove he exists include “becoming a human being and showing he truly loves us by living among us and suffering the full fallout of human existence?”
It was at the top of my list. Second was creation of an entire universe from nothing. Cosmological fine tuning proved that, so as far as I am concerned I have all the evidence I need.
Frankly, if you cannot see that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate, there isn’t much left to say.
I find the evidence unimpeachable.
Believing it isn’t the issue, however, but living out the implications certainly is.
My guess is you simply choose not to live out those implications, preferring instead to rationalize away your unwillingness. Can’t help you there, either.
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inocente
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inocente;13533435:
Apart from copyright, patents and other forms of intellectual property rights.Peter Plato;13533063:
Actually, my “logic” states that all you have to accept is that there are ideas living inside your head that chemistry or physics do not or cannot account for. Do you want to set about proving there are no ideas in your head?
I suppose you can’t prove that there are ideas living there, either, unfortunately. Strictly speaking, you can’t provide “evidence” for ideas. Or evidence that proves the existence of you as a personal subjective identity. Can you?
So these “copyright, patents and other forms of intellectual property rights” are evidence that human beings accept the reality of supernatural ideas and are willing to endorse their reality by acknowledging proprietorship.
Was that your point?
No, as stated my point was that you were wrong, there are mountains of empirical evidence for ideas.
But you’ve now made another error. Evidence of ideas is not evidence for any particular idea about their origin. It no more confirms your dualist idea that any other.
btw Supernatural is defined as that which “cannot be explained by the laws of science and that seem to involve gods or magic”. There’s no reason to believe that in principle the mind is inexplicable. Nor are theists required to believe in whichever dualist doctrine of mind you believe. Nor are atheists prohibited from believing in magic. The thread seems to have wandered off-topic.
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Peter_Plato
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Well, I am not a dualist. Try to reconcile that with your other presumptions of what I am saying or implying.
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Aloysium
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God is Love.
I assume you have some idea of what it means to know and care about another and to give yourself to them.
If you do, then you’ve got the basics.
The universe is about relationships.
Our primary relationship is with Reality. I am telling you that the Ground of our being is an infinite, eternal loving Act of creation.
You can know this only through love.
In your case it would involve setting aside the paranoia and giving your mind over to God.
Time will reduce you and I into blathering idiots, you would have nothing to lose that you will not anyway.
But, you’re not going to do this. No one’s going to pull the wool over your eyes.
You’re a math prof if I remember right.
And, you did it all yourself (good going btw) without any help from books and schools?
With regards to the church, we journey to God together; you are welcome aboard the love train.
What is required is a transformation.
We are to become more Christ-like, more loving.
Looking at this another way, we become our true Selves, freed from the consequences of sin.
I’m not sure any of this provides you with anything but further fodder for your argumentative stance. Whatever, thanks for allowing me this opportunity to express myself.
The eternal punishment comes in where we are what we have done in the context of choices given in life between love vs indifferent/hateful self-centredness.
If a person see an old lady who’s fallen on the ground and he runs to steal her purse rather than help her up, that is who one has become by one’s own choice.
I assume you do not have an issue with this being a bad thing. Well, time exists in a background of eternity and our actions can’t actually be undone since they did happen. But one can still connect with love, being sorry for what was done and repenting.
Although you state that one should know God outside any church or magisterium, you are here, talking to people.
If you did want to know God on your own, you would be praying instead.
I’m not sure why you are here. Hopefully I’ve provided enough for you to get a good rant going. Retirement can be boring.
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Peter_Plato
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So, apparently, you admit there are “mountains of empirical evidence” for the existence of supernatural things. What is your point?
The entire universe is one huge mountain of empirical evidence for the supernatural since the natural could not have brought itself into existence, and everything natural (matter, energy, space and time) came into existence 13.7 billion years ago.
Again, what is your point - that the supernatural cannot, in principle, provide itself with empirical evidence?
I have a free will - that is not a natural entity. Any of my actions that are free and not caused are empirical evidence for free will since, by definition, will that is unencumbered by the causal order but, instead, originates novel causal chains is a free will.
Natural entities are caused by other natural entities, unless they are not - which brings us back to the Big Bang. It could not have been caused by any natural entity since matter, time, energy and space (the possibility and grounds for natural entities) began then. What caused the Big Bang could not have been natural, therefore, the cause was super-natural, by definition.
No dualism is implied here - merely a continuum of being based upon characteristics, capacities or other attributes. “Natural” simply implies beings limited to space and time by dependency upon matter and energy for actuality and continuity. The natural order could not have bootstrapped itself into existence, therefore it has to be superintended by whatever is “beyond” it that is not limited to matter, energy, space or time.
Natural evidence is not sufficient evidence in any case because all natural evidence is contingent upon something else to explain it both causally and metaphysically.
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inocente
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You need to stop putting words in my mouth, it’s wicked, you should repent as the time is neigh etc. The good folk at CAF keep empirical evidence of every post for all who have eyes to see. I encourage you to look once again. What I said, and you even quoted it, was “there are mountains of empirical evidence for ideas”.
I love your “natural entities are caused by other natural entities, unless they are not”. Your mind is a sharp as ever.
Don’t know how many times I have to quote Monsignor George Lemaître, the originator of the big bang theory, stating that it does NOT prove a creation event. Anyone who knows the history will know how he hot footed it to the Vatican to warn his pope to not say that, and the pope never mentioned it again. Here, once again is Lemaître:
We may speak of this event as of a beginning. I do not say a creation. Physically it is a beginning in the sense that if something happened before, it has no observable influence on the behavior of our universe, as any feature of matter before this beginning has been completely lost by the extreme contraction at the theoretical zero. Any preexistence of the universe has a metaphysical character. Physically, everything happens as if the theoretical zero was really a beginning. The question if it was really a beginning or rather a creation, something started from nothing, is a philosophical question which cannot be settled by physical or astronomical considerations." - catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8847#sthash.M7IL1tw2.dpuf
And that will always be the case, since there’s no possibility of finding physical evidence to prove it one way or the other. But in any event, none of that has anything to do with your claim that ideas are supernatural, nor with the OP. If you want to start a thread on what empirical evidence can or can’t prove, then it might indeed be interesting, but 800 posts into this thread is not the place to debate it as many posters who might be interested won’t be subscribers.
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Peter_Plato
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NO ONE? Not Abraham? Not Moses? Not the Prophets? Not Jesus?
So who, we might ask, gave YOU the authority to speak for God by determining with such finality to whom God could or could not give his authority?
Sounds like you are usurping the right of the magisterium to speak for God by making such a bold statement on his behalf.
If God became incarnate in Jesus and Jesus gave the Church magisterium the authority to bind and loose and to speak in his name, then your little magisterium of one autonomous human being is, in fact, incorrect in your unilateral ruling in your attempt to speak for God on who should not speak for God.
The question then becomes, “To whom, if anyone, did God give the right to speak in his name?”
To zyzz, who adamantly claims God does not exist, yet with equal bravado claims to be able to speak for God? Or to Moses, the Prophets, Jesus, and through Jesus, the Church?
Your claiming that he gave NO ONE that right seems to jump the gun just a little. How would you determine that? By the fact that God didn’t consult with you prior to authorizing Jesus and the Church?
Given that the longest continuous chain of documented claims of God-interventions in human history is found in the Judeo-Christian tradition, I would suppose that that series of claims to “authority” from God trumps your claim to speak for God, along with trumping your claim that God has authorized NO ONE – presumably, meaning NO ONE before he gave YOU authorization to say NO ONE could speak for him.
Your little song of “Nobody But Me” gets a little shrill after giving it some thought.
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Charlemagne_III
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I realize the authority of the Church means nothing to you. My answer was to assure you that it is not me, but the Church, that can read the mind of God. Please keep track of what we have been talking about before you go ballistic?
God has given us assurance. He gave the Jews of the temple in Jerusalem assurance of his existence, and they crucified him for his assurance. If he gave you the same assurance (preaching and miracles) would you treat him the same way?
I expect you would treat his preaching as nonsense and his miracles as fraudulent. You might not crucify him, but you would surely protest that he had given you no assurance of anything.
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Charlemagne_III
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You typically presume to speak AS IF Lemaitre was denying the Creation when he was merely denying the physical evidence of Creation, which his theory was implying without demonstrating. As Lemaitre said, it is a philosophical question, not a scientific question. But philosophy can be based upon empirical evidence as well.
Lemaitre was concerned that the Pope was putting him in the embarrassing position of having to conflate religion and science with his scientific colleagues, many of whom he knew to be atheists and agnostics who would have immediately set out to discredit the Big Bang. This is why he hot-footed it to the Vatican, because his theory was in danger of being repudiated by the Pope’s premature connecting of the science with the religion.
We know that decades later Carl Sagan, an atheist, unconsciously drew the same connection between science and religion AFTER the scientific proof came rolling in.
Genesis, 1000 B.C. : “Let there be light.”
Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.
“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”
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Peter_Plato
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You forget that Fr. Lemaitre died over 50 years ago, which means cosmology and physics did not cease to progress beyond his work when he passed away. A great deal has been done with regard to the science of astrophysics, physics and the fine tuning of the universe.You need to stop putting words in my mouth, it’s wicked, you should repent as the time is neigh etc. The good folk at CAF keep empirical evidence of every post for all who have eyes to see. I encourage you to look once again. What I said, and you even quoted it, was “there are mountains of empirical evidence for ideas”.
I love your “natural entities are caused by other natural entities, unless they are not”. Your mind is a sharp as ever.
Don’t know how many times I have to quote Monsignor George Lemaître, the originator of the big bang theory, stating that it does NOT prove a creation event. Anyone who knows the history will know how he hot footed it to the Vatican to warn his pope to not say that, and the pope never mentioned it again. Here, once again is Lemaître:
We may speak of this event as of a beginning. I do not say a creation. Physically it is a beginning in the sense that if something happened before, it has no observable influence on the behavior of our universe, as any feature of matter before this beginning has been completely lost by the extreme contraction at the theoretical zero. Any preexistence of the universe has a metaphysical character. Physically, everything happens as if the theoretical zero was really a beginning. The question if it was really a beginning or rather a creation, something started from nothing, is a philosophical question which cannot be settled by physical or astronomical considerations." - catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8847#sthash.M7IL1tw2.dpuf
And that will always be the case, since there’s no possibility of finding physical evidence to prove it one way or the other. But in any event, none of that has anything to do with your claim that ideas are supernatural, nor with the OP. If you want to start a thread on what empirical evidence can or can’t prove, then it might indeed be interesting, but 800 posts into this thread is not the place to debate it as many posters who might be interested won’t be subscribers.
How about moving forward to today instead of relying upon the words of Fr. Lemaitre as if he intended them to be dogmatic proclamations?
Of course, in his day there were insufficient reasons for proving “a creation event,” that does not mean his words regarding the sufficiency of evidence that existed then still apply fifty years after he stated them. Do you suppose he would insist that his words should ring true for all times and places? Science, according to Fr. Lemaitre, would not progress any further when he passed away? I have no reason for thinking he would agree with your “spin” on his words.
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Peter_Plato
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Okay, I will repent when “the time” takes on the quality of a high-pitched nasal sound emitted by horses.
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inocente
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I’m surprised you never castigate Charles for that tired old tv script he keeps quoting. Now that is out of date, since it’s now known that the universe spent a considerable time in what are called the dark ages before light first shone.
Rather than the pseudo-science of American intelligent design fundamentalism, let’s stick with real science. The real science says the big bang starts from a singularity, so that as Lemaître says “any feature of matter before this beginning has been completely lost by the extreme contraction at the theoretical zero”. That’s not dogma or old-hat, that’s a permanent limit imposed by the theory itself, the complete impossibility of empirical evidence one way or the other.
That seems to be how God wants it, even if you don’t. You want proof, God wants faith. God wins. Tough.
And as I said, it’s still off-topic.
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zyzz
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These kinds of posts are the reason for me to come back. They provide excellent entertainment. Let’s review some.
- To refer to Jesus as God himself is not a good argument vis-à-vis someone who is not a Christian.
- Not even his contemporaries accepted him as a God. Looks like the so-called “miracles” were only of the “ho-hum” category.
- You insinuate that God became “gun-shy” because he was (allegedly) ill-treated. Well, come on!
- So he is a “tad concerned” about his second appearance. God is now bashful?
- Is he now not “omniscient” so he does not “know” how people will react to his “new, improved” manifestation of himself?
- My “rules” are not different from the “rules” I expect for any other claim.
- Why should he suffer the fallout from the human existence? On the very contrary, he could show his divine nature. After all it is said that “all knees will be bent in front of Jesus”. What is wrong to bring this wondrous moment to the present?
- The creation ex-nihilo is just part of the mythology.
- The fine-tuning argument is especially amusing. This is why:
Why would I believe Jesus to be God incarnate? It is just a 2000 old story, without any corroborating evidence. Not even the contemporaries accepted this claim. Sheer mythology.
If you find that “evidence” unimpeachable, it only tells us about your requirements for sufficient or unimpeachable “evidence”.
Believing is certainly an issue, the central one. Pretty much everyone believed in God’s existence before some apologists tried to “prove” it.
Your “guess” about my lack of belief is totally unfounded, and quite insulting at that. You accuse me of intellectual dishonesty and insinuate that my lack of belief is simply due to me desire to live some kind of “immoral” and “evil” life. Of course you know nothing about my everyday life.
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Lion_IRC
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Why do you keep saying that?
There’s tons of evidence that God exists.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
Ah, well then let’s do the complete quote.
“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form or shape, **with darkness over the abyss **and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters. Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light.”
Not sure why biblical quotes irk you so much, and all the more so when they converge with modern science.
By the way, none of this is off topic since the purpose of this thread is to discuss why atheism might be absurd (it certainly does not ever converge with science) whether with respect to the Big Bang or Intelligent Design…
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Peter_Plato
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Well, now you are insinuating about my insinuating. All I said was that “My guess is you simply choose not to live out those implications, preferring instead to rationalize away your unwillingness. Can’t help you there, either.”
Whether or not living out the implications of Christ’s teaching is necessarily “immoral” or “evil” is completely open to debate. Yet, here you go accusing me of accusing you of something which does not follow from what I said.
Is it true or false that you choose not to live up to the implications of Christ’s teachings – i.e., that he founded a Church on Peter that has the authority on Earth to “bind and loose?” Anything else, is simply reading into my words meaning that justifies your feelings of affront. That isn’t what I said, now was it? How you chose to take what I said is an entirely different matter, no?
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